feast & after-party ♔ empty my heart | i've got to make room for this feeling

[wynn]

♬ Can't Take It In - Imogen Heap

WHO || Wynn, the new Squires, any and all Knights
WHAT || Squiring Ceremony Feast & Afterparty
WHERE || Knights Headquarters, the Dining Hall & Ballroom
WHEN || February 9th, 2012, 7:00PM / 9:00 PM
HOW || Prose OR Actionspam

While every dinner served in the Knights' exceptionally large Dining Hall manages to have a sense of occasion, given the sheer quantity of food necessary to serve the hundreds who take their meals there, the 'feast' Wynn's ordered for after this squiring party outdoes the norm. It's not a problem to produce so much food at the drop of the hat when mages can magically summon up entire banquets, and so the room teems over with the smells and spices of hundreds of unique dishes. Centerpieces built with peacock feathers and sweet smelling flowers dot the table at intervals. A silver cage in the very middle of the table includes several live birds, their feet and tufts each appearing to be silver as well. A banner hangs from the top of the cage, with the Knight's symbol of a black dragon on a silver field.

The food has a distinctly medieval flair to it today, which several of the older Shadowkind Knights express their boisterous appreciation for as they dive in. The first course consists of a civet of hare, a quarter of salted stag, a stuffed chicken and a loin of veal, the latter two covered with a German sauce with gilt sugar-plums and pomegranate seeds. At each end of the table is an enormous pie, surmounted with smaller pies, which form a crown. The crust of the large ones is silvered all round and gilt at the top; each contains a whole roe-deer, a gosling, three capons, six chickens, ten pigeons, and one young rabbit. Serving as seasoning or stuffing, a minced loin of veal, two pounds of fat, and twenty-six hard-boiled eggs, covered with saffron and flavoured with cloves.

A second course follows: aroe-deer, a pig, a sturgeon cooked in parsley and vinegar, and covered with powdered ginger; a kid, two goslings, twelve chickens, as many pigeons, six young rabbits, two herons, a leveret, a fat capon stuffed, four chickens covered with yolks of eggs and sprinkled with spiced powder de Duc, and even a wild boar.

Next came wafers and stars; a jelly, part white and part blue. A fourth course of cream with Duc powder, covered with fennel seeds preserved in sugar; a white cream, cheese in slices, and strawberries; and, lastly, plums stewed in rose-water.

Besides these four courses, there's a fifth, entirely composed of wines, and of preserves, which consist of fruits and various sweet pastries in the shapes of dragons.

---------------------------

Following this, assuming anyone is still capable of moving at all is the after-party: a black-tie affair in the lavish, opulent ballroom, every new Knight's chance to mingle and meet some of their new brothers in arms. Per usual, a couple hours are provided following the feast for everyone to change, do hair and makeup, and choose from the vast array of formal attire in the closets of the balcony "dressing rooms" located at the top of spiraled staircases on either side of the ballroom. A separate dressing room exists for men and women, and they include full bathrooms (with, thankfully, very modern plumbing).

The squires are usually among the last to arrive, and the ballroom is full to the brim with a fancy array of people, of all shapes, sizes and species.

Hope none of you are shy. They're all here to meet you. 

All open feast threads should be made under the FEAST heading below. Any other threads below will be for the after-party. Feel free to make your own open threads for people to come congratulate your newly pledged knight.

Comments

[lightblindbadass]

[He shrugs away from the door, snatching two glasses of wine from a passing waiter. He hands one to Nessa, then clinks his glass against hers with a sharp ting, then proceeds to down most of his in one big gulp.]

S'not so bad when you have someone to talk to who doesn't look at you like you're about to kill them or something. Cheers to that. [He gives her a cheeky grin, swirling the rest of the wine in his cup with deft movements of his wrist.]

[wildmind]

[She looks a little surprised by the gesture, but toasts him back and takes a sip, looking amused]

Wynn tries to screen out the potential psychopaths.

[lightblindbadass]

The quiz he gives you when you first meet him hardly reminds me of a polygraph or anything like that. Could be he missed one or two in the ranks.

Promise I'm not one though. Least, not the way I see it. [He gives her another grin. He really doesn't know how to have appropriate conversations with people. He needs to work on his talking skillz.]

[wildmind]

I think he's sort of a walking polygraph, to be honest. He doesn't require a machine.

[lightblindbadass]

Yeah, I'd noticed there was something kinda weird about talking to him. I've heard people talk about magic here, which is fu- [He seems to change his mind about his choice of words, maybe to brush up on his talking skills, maybe because he was in polite company, not that he usually gave any fucks about that.] -weird. Maybe it's something like that?

[He shrugs uncomfortably at the thought of magic being real. That crap was fucked up.]

[wildmind]

Fucked up? [She sure doesn't seem shy about the word.] A little bit, when you're not used to it. But I think with Wynn it's more about just... who he is.

[lightblindbadass]

Guess some people can read others better than most. [He's totally thinking about himself right now with his uncanny ability to read people himself.]

So, what is it that you do for the Knights?

[wildmind]

You have no idea. [She smirks against the rim of her glass, and then casts her eyes over the crowd] Actually, you hit the nail on the head.

I read people.

[lightblindbadass]

[That hits his intrigue button. He looks her over again.]

Another version of the walking polygraph test, hmm? Good instincts and the like?

[wildmind]

You might even say they never steer me wrong.

[lightblindbadass]

Never huh? [Well someone was rather confident. That reminded him of Carolyn, her face swimming in his head for a second before he pushed it down. Different place, different person.]

What do your instincts say about me?

[wildmind]

[She gazes at him levelly for a moment. Well, since he practically invited her...] That I remind you of someone.

[lightblindbadass]

[The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. What the Hell.]

Good guess. What are you, a witch?

[wildmind]

Oh heavens no. Nothing so esoteric.

[lightblindbadass]

So what then? No point in giving me a teaser like that if you aren't gonna spill.

[wildmind]

I'm a mindreader.

[lightblindbadass]

[He freezes in place, the sarcastic remark he was about to make forgotten. He somehow had the feeling that she wasn't kidding. Well, fuck.

Immediately he tried wracking his brain for everything he had thought of in the course of their conversation. Of course, along with that came quick flashes of the things he didn't want to think of, completely unbidden, the things he'd tried not dwelling on.

Growing up on the streets as much as in that sham of an orphanage, the truth of how he'd been found as a baby in a liquor store dumpster with his umbilical cord wrapped around his neck.

The first kill he'd made as a child defending another, the many many Slams he had been in and the sheer terror of the first few, his eye-shine job and the real reason he had gotten it being motivated by self-preservation.

He nearly panicked, trying as best as he could to suppress the flow of thoughts, though one last image was still too strong in his mind to hide.

Carolyn's face when she had come back for him and helped to pick him up off the ground. He'd thought he was dead, laying there with a bleeding leg that called out to those alien creatures like the scent of blood to a shark. His first thought was not selfish, that he should have just left the three of them to die there. He had thought They get to live. Good. She'd come for him then, reminding him she wouldn't die for him, only the other two. She'd gotten him going again. And then the aliens had gotten her instead of him, carrying her off into the eternal blackness.

That was the first time he'd mourned another person dying. His eyes snapped back to Nessa's, his mouth grim.]

How interesting.

[wildmind]

[She really doesn't want to pry, but the images are so strong that it's hard not to catch some.

It doesn't intimidate her, because strung throughout it all, she still doesn't get any sense that he's going to hurt her. And that lingering final thought, about the woman, Caroyln...]

It can be. Sometimes it can be a burden.

[lightblindbadass]

How exactly does it work? [He couldn't help but to be curious, and the more he knew about her strange ability the better he would be able to defend himself against it. Always on the top of his priorities.]

[wildmind]

I'm afraid it's somewhat hard to explain to someone who can't experience it. It has to do with unlocking the potential of my own mind, you could say. It required a lot of training to be able to do it on command.

[lightblindbadass]

So you can read anybody's mind then? Is there any defense to that?

...Did you just read my mind?

[wildmind]

There are, but they would take training from another telepath.

And you'll have to forgive me. Your thoughts were a little on the loud side.

[lightblindbadass]

[He looks at her a moment, gauging what she's said. Without proper training he couldn't block someone from reading his mind. That didn't sit well with him.

He shrugs uncomfortably, not sure how to make his thoughts less loud than they always were. He'd hardly ever felt the need to hold his tongue with anybody, much less reign in his thoughts.]

Nothing to forgive. Guess I'm just not used to having to keep my thoughts to myself. At all.

I am curious though. What did you see?

[wildmind]

Just bits and pieces. Images. Not enough to give me much of a story, so if you ever feel like filling in the gaps... [She lets that hang there and shakes her head] People's thoughts don't always tell you as much about them as you'd imagine. A lot of people bury the important things.

[lightblindbadass]

Probably not the best idea, filling in those gaps. Not unless you want your hair curled more than it already is.

But you were right. You do kinda remind me of someone.