open ♔ november/december socialization

[wynn]

WHO || Everyone! [ota]
WHAT || Shenanigans.
WHERE || Anywhere in the castle, surrounding environs, London, Andres Isle, etc!
WHEN || November & December [backdated]
HOW || Actionspam

[ The castle can be a happening place, even on more mundane days. This log is for random interactions over the course of November and December.

You are encouraged to start your own threads and tag around, and feel free to threadjack into any on-going threads that aren't specified as 'closed' in the subject lines since people can enter into rooms even in the middle of what's going on. WE ARE BIG ON THREAD-JACKING HERE. You can also specify 'single thread', meaning you want only one response for all participants, rather than multi-thread, where a number of different scenes/threads can be done as replies to the top prompt.]

On this log:
Wynn & Section Heads @ Andres/London
Cheryl @ Reception desk
Sam @ Various
Elena @ Andres/London
Drax @ Dragon's Hide Wing
Des @ Pub / Castle
Paige @ Caste Grounds
Grimrot @ the Library
Vi @ Andres
Matt @ Andres/London
Alisha @ bars in London
Cora @ Library/ Castle Grounds
Will @ Castle pond / Hoard wing/ Firing range / Castle grounds
Malina @ Dragon's Fire wing/ kitchen/ bar / castle grounds
Alainn @ Dragon's Fire library / kitchen / Andres
Jordan @ Andres/ London
Sylar @ Kitchen
Logan @ Castle Bars / London
Faith L @ London / kitchen / training room / castle grounds
Dean @ Rose's room / bars / armory / training room/ firing range / kitchen
Rose @ Andres / armory / training room / bedroom
Des & Buffy | Closed
Thea @ Training Room / Castle grounds / kitchen / TV rooms / bars
Sam & Buffy | Closed
Alex @ Firing Range / Airfield / Room / Garage
Failboat @ Breakfast
Alice @ Andres/ London
Sweets @ Dragon's Light Wing
Lydia @ Medical / Training room / etc

Comments

[generaldavideus]

Basics all start somewhere. You learn how to move, how your body reacts in a combat situation, and it becomes instinct. It gives you room to think.

[He pauses, holding out a hand to steady the bag and stop her.]

Once you can think, you can worry about where you're punching as opposed to how. Human joints don't take a whole lot of pressure to cause damage. You're small but that also means you're fast and can move easier than he can. Punch the right place at the right time, and you can effectively cripple someone before they get a chance to maneuver something as awkward and cumbersome as an assault rifle around to shoot you.

[immuno]

You can really teach me how to do all that?

[ She sounds doubtful, but she does stop hitting the bag when he stills it, lifting her gaze to his face. ]

[generaldavideus]

[He nods.]

If you're willing to put in the time, yeah. Plus, learning how to move can be transferred to any kind of weapon, whether it's a knife, a sword or a gun - it all starts with building up the muscle memory so that you don't have to think about it.

[Everything after this is building on the basics she learns here. It's like math - she can't do complex equations without first knowing how to add.]

[immuno]

[ She hesitates, pulling her lower lip between her teeth and studying the heavy bag with some deep thought for a moment. Then, she nods, seeming to settle on the decision. Her knuckles jab back into it as she sighs out. ] It's algebra. [ Strength training gives her the tools. ]

[generaldavideus]

Exactly.

[He moves to steady the bag again for her as he makes a face.]

I hated algebra.

[He didn't really have the attention span for it, and he always seemed to miss the parts in the middle that seemed crucial to solving the equation properly.]

[immuno]

And I hate the smell of sweat and vinyl. [ All of which is involved in training. Ugh. Her criticism comes out in a contradictorily saccharine voice. ] Look. We're bonding.

[generaldavideus]

[He laughs a bit at that.]

It could be worse. The guy who taught me was morally opposed to bathing.

[immuno]

I take it you were squired to Sir Lan.

[ Reputations get around. Also, Lydia has a great knowledge (local) check. ]

[generaldavideus]

[His mouth works for a moment before he nods.]

Well, I was, but he wasn't the one to teach me how to fight. My teacher was a guy named Sven Swordeater.

[immuno]

He sounds even more charming.

[ She doesn't even bother making an exceptionally sassy face because that comment stands for itself. Wow. Sven Swordeater. ]

[generaldavideus]

[He laughs.]

Vikings can be a bit literal. He earned that name the hard way.

[immuno]

By eating his sword? I wouldn't think you'd have anyone to learn from, if that were true.

[generaldavideus]

It wasn't his sword.

[He holds up one hand, drawing it lengthwise across his face.]

When he was in battle, another person caught him across the mouth and he survived.

[immuno]

I take it your world wasn't one with clerics.

[generaldavideus]

No. Not a lot of modern medicine either. There was magic though, when you could find it.

[but a lot of it was few and far between and rather uncontrollable.]

Most of it was held by the gods.

[immuno]

Sounds about right. A great deal of the magic in this world is a gift from the gods, anyway. There's nothing to confirm that it's what sorcerers and wizards draw on, admittedly, but given that even they lose their magic when the Veil closes, it's a safe bet, given where the gods are stationed, so to speak.

[generaldavideus]

[He nods.]

I wasn't in Faerun, though. My gods were of the traditional Greek-Norse-Aztec variety. And they ... pretty much sucked. I spent a lot of my time there cleaning up their messes.

[immuno]

Well, that would hold with the mythology.

[ Said to the tune of "I don't know what you expected." Girl's well-read, ok, she knows what fuck-ups Zeus and Odin are. ]

Although, I thought in the case of the Norse, they generally had Loki clean up their messes for them? The Aztecs mostly just tried human sacrifice and hoped for the best.

[generaldavideus]

[He snorts.]

Loki was the worst of them. He kidnapped a handful of sixteen year-old kids from their old universe to facilitate his own escape plan into our world, all the while promising it to the new threat to the gods. Meanwhile, on other hand, the rest of the pantheons spent their time arguing about who's fault it was that it was happening in the first place instead of working together and mobilizing to stop it.

Between the sniveling cowards and egos too big to actually see the big picture, it's no wonder they were going extinct.

[Never mind the inbreeding, the lack of technology, the way they were just letting people waste away and drown in their barbaric lifestyles for no other reason than they felt that advancement would lose them their new paradise just as it did the Old World.]

[immuno]

Why would an all-powerful deity need a bunch of teenagers to get to another world? [ Focusing on the important facts here. ]

[generaldavideus]

He didn't. He just needed one of us, and we all got caught in the aftermath.

[He pauses because this was the part that was hard to explain.]

One of us was something called a gateway witch. She had the power to open portals between worlds. Loki needed her to open a portal for him to escape through, so he sent his son, Fenrir to get her. He borrowed magic from someone more powerful than him to do it, but since the process wasn't a clean one, she was able to draw people there with her and give herself ... a distraction.

She slipped away while Loki was figuring out what to do with us.

[immuno]

Portals between worlds?

[ No wonder Loki wanted her. Any suggestion of the possibility for inter-planar travel, at least away from a magic-less world to one with magic, is nigh unheard of. Here, it's the kind of thing people kill for, go to war for. ]

Is she safe? Is she here?

[generaldavideus]

She's dead.

[It's stated bluntly and too the point, because he doesn't like lingering on memories of her any longer than he has to.]

She was just as much of a threat and a megalomaniac as they are. In the Old World, where there's no magic, she barely had any power or influence. Once she got to Everworld again, she was nearly a god in her own right and she thought that she had what it took to challenge them. She used her abilities to bring in people with machine guns and just ... mowed through peaceful settlements of people without a second thought.

[She manipulated their minds, their hearts - he remembers those parts of Senna clearly, even if he doesn't remember her name.]

One of us couldn't stand by and let her hurt innocent people, whether it was our world or not. So she killed her.

[immuno]

[ If she were feeling more empathic, Lydia might take that as a hint to back down. But she's too logically-minded for that, so instead of picking up on a thread that should be left alone before it unravels, she sets on it like a dog with a bone. ]

But you said "a gateway witch." Not "the." Are there others like her? David, if there are people who could move between planes, they might have a way to get us back to our own worlds. Back through the Veil. If you know something about how she did it—

[generaldavideus]

The only other one I know of is her mother and she's just as bad if not worse.

[After all, she sold out her own child to keep herself safe.]

And I'm pretty sure their magic only works between Everworld and the Old World - they're part of the magic that created it.

[It's not entirely a lie, because it's a reasonable guess - if their magic only really worked super effectively in Everworld, it means it's tied to that realm more than anything else.]

Add to the fact they wouldn't do it out of the goodness of their hearts. You'd have to pay a pretty hefty price.

[David's price was his agency and he didn't even really ask for that particular adventure.]