abraxaslogs | OPEN MINGLE: Welcome to Thorne!

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OPEN MINGLE: Welcome to Thorne!

WHO: OPEN to all Summoned in Thorne
WHAT: A party, info dump, and magic study session all rolled into one! Eat, drink, mingle -- make some friends!
WHEN: A couple days after the newest Summoned start appearing
WHERE: A ballroom in Castle Thorne

NOTES: This is an open mingle log where everyone can tag one another! New characters may hear some gossip and chatter about a few recent important events that happened in Abraxas. This includes many of the Summoned being kidnapped by a cult and experimented on months ago, including a surprise escape on a giant turtle, and very recently peculiar lights on the outskirts of Thorne. There is a new Summoned Conclave with three people from each faction who can represent and advocate for the Summoned. In their first act, they got permission for some Summoned (ooc: Level 3 Influence) to carry weapons on them.

General.

Rhy Maresh will have sent a written invitation to all Thornean newcomers within a couple of days of their arrival, inviting them to meet their fellow Summoned. Otherwise, there will be fliers posted in the dining area that anyone can see. If your character has CR with Rhy, Kell, or Istredd, you can assume they were told and got an in-person invite -- and you can even assume your character helped with setup if desired (decorations, helping set out food, etc.), since they definitely needed the assistance. Up to you!

Istredd will also be hosting a group meditation to allow newcomers to access to the Horizon (and network). New Summoned who wish to learn how to step into the Horizon have an opportunity to have their connections to the Singularity activated. If preferred, they can also get one-on-one help from those who've been around for a bit. He will also discuss the magic in Abraxas and point them in the direction of teachers of magic, combat, or other things they may be interested in.

Banquet.

The large ballroom is bathed in warm, golden light from dozens of chandeliers above, reflecting off the gleaming inlaid floors and brass light fixtures along the walls. It is at once neatly sectioned, yet naturally open, allowing the length of the room to flow from one potential activity to another with ease.

In the center, a circular area has been left clear, and every half hour or so during the first half of the evening, two native Thornean (apprentice) mages come up to offer magic demonstrations -- mostly flashy elemental magic, adding sparks and atmosphere. If any of the Summoned who've been around longer wish to show off as well, they are welcome to do so.

Along the walls stand narrow refreshment tables, where one can serve oneself wine from large glass carafes. Hot tea is also available in a few flavors. (Though those who have been here a while may notice there are fewer carafes, and more expensive options for alcohol and refreshments are missing this time.) For those looking to eat, a large dining table has been set out toward the center of the room, with plates and utensils and large platters of food in the center -- nothing fancy, but perfectly serviceable, and arranged to look good even if the ingredients themselves aren't nearly as lavish as they have been in the past. Still, despite the impending war and tightened purse strings in the face of shortages, the kitchen has agreed to help welcome the newly Summoned as best as they can.

Both the handful of large tables and the smattering of small, taller tables for standing at are in full view of the demonstrations so the show can be enjoyed with food and drink, whatever your desire. Bright summer flowers garnish every table, freshening up the space.

Of course, there's plenty of space to stand and mingle, walk around, and see what everyone else is up to. In the back of the room, the folding screens offer a quieter area, for more private conversation and meditation as desired.

Magic Studies.

Behind the folding screens made of tall, carved wood in intricate patterns, there are a handful of low sofas and chaise lounges around a fireplace at the far side of the hall. This sectioned-off area has been enchanted to provide some insulation from the sound of the banquet beyond, and once you step inside, the quiet is like a gentle blanket settling over everyone who chooses to spend some time here.

This is the best place to ask questions in some semblance of privacy, to learn about your new home, and to receive guidance on entering the Horizon and using the so-called network of telepathic notes only the Summoned can send one another.

A mage named Istredd seems to be the one 'in charge' of this particular endeavor, but others who have been in Abraxas a while are likely also about, lending their assistance to those who are newly arrived and sharing thoughts on their experiences so far.

Just be careful -- even if the insulating enchantment is sturdy, there are still Thornean natives around, refilling refreshments outside and demonstrating their magic. You may want to be careful how candidly you discuss any displeasure toward Thorne or its crown, considering the Queen's notoriously explosive temper, and the rumors of the dungeons deep beneath the castle. It's hardly a secret, at this point: a conflict has been sparked, and the mood around the castle is a tense one, even amidst a celebration such as this.

(( ooc: Feel free to make your own top levels and tag around! This is meant to be an open mingle, with the above as mostly setting and flavor, so don't feel limited if you want your character to do their own magic demonstrations, for example, or even if your thread ends up moving outside the ballroom. Have fun!

It should be noted that if you would like to handwave your character's first experience to the Horizon, you can do so. It's a blanket permission from me / Istredd that he took your character there, helped them leave, and showed them how to go back in with their memory now.

Most of this was written by Lena aka Rhy player! Have fun! ))

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Wilhelm isn't in much of a party mood either. This thing isn't even a party so much as a gathering. A little stiffer, a little more restrained. But he doesn't want to draw attention to himself through his absence either, and draw concern from those who, for whatever reason, have decided to care. So he compromises by slipping in after the thing is already underway and resolving to last an hour. Or most of an hour.

There are a few new faces. A few missing ones too. One day, Robin wasn't there to slide into the seat across from him in the dining hall or latch onto him as he went about his day. That's just how it goes, but it sucks.

The girl tucked into a corner with a book snags his attention as he drifts around the room clutching an emotional support glass of wine. After a moment of hesitation, he approaches.

"You know there's a whole library, right? If you're looking for somewhere quieter." He pushes a hand through his hair, scratches at his head. "I could show you, if you want."

Edited 2023-06-11 19:21 (UTC)

He lucked out, she saw him move in her periphery. There are a few things amusing about his choice of opening line. She got her book from the library, so she knew where it was. She smiled, it was a little too wide to be sincere. Tucked her book next to her leg for the moment. And answered him in sign language.

[I didn't notice the room was noisy.]

Sign doesn't translate the way everyone speaking Abraxas's common tongue does. But the point should still get across. She'll shift back to the local spoken language right after, no sign of an accent to confirm she's Deaf, "Reading lips is a lot of work, I just needed a break. I do plan to try and talk to more people later."

"I'm Bay."

Embarrassment jumps into his expression as she starts signing and, though he doesn't know what any of the signs translate to, he realizes she must be deaf.

"Oh, sorry, I didn't know..." Ah, but she just said all this lip-reading was wearing her out. Wilhelm presses his mouth shut, twiddles a strand of hair.

If Bay has been to the Horizon already, then her connection with the Singularity would let her send and receive messages with her mind. All of the Summoned are linked that way. But if she's fresh out of the pool, then maybe she hasn't gone yet. He'll ask in a minute, but first:

"I'm—"

He spells out his name by forming his fingers into each letter, the way you would if you were making shadow puppets. W-I-L-L-E. He sticks with his nickname to shorten the tedious process.

Bay smiles, reassuringly. She feels comfortable with this, like she's dealt with it before. But she doesn't have those memories. He was trying, it was sweet, but it wasn't exactly useful. She rests her hand on his arm. "If it's just one on one I'm fine. Trying to whip my head around and follow four or five people talking is the problem. Talk normally, don't mumble, don't change speeds. It's okay."

She really wished more people signed, but she will take just more people understand and not over or under reacting to her needs. She's trying to make it clear she's fine, "Just try again, alright?"

Leave it to him to stumble upon the most awkward route by which to navigate any given social situation. He looks relieved, though, by the prospect of carrying on the conversation normally. Well, his version of normal. He's also relieved that she's not offended by his clumsiness.

"Okay." He takes the seat next to her, since it looks like he's sticking around for now. "So, what were you reading about?"

Tapping the cover of the book she's still holding. Yes, he can read the title himself, but he's attempting to socialize.

Bay shifts her position so she can easily keep an eye on his face, specifically his lips. As much as so many people were a problem, just the one person was easy enough to deal with, "History of the local language. I need a little more context while I learn the sign language they have here. Since only a few people speak ASL, and most of them aren't fluent."

Coming out of that fountain gave her a full understanding of the local spoken and written language, complete with understanding how to lipread it. Which was nice. Didn't make it easier for her to communicate herself.

"You're doing better than a lot of people, you didn't start yelling like that would work." See, little things that she appreciates. "But could you say your name again? I did not catch what you were doing with your hands other than it started with a w."

He has long since given up on trying to wrap his head around the universality of language here. The weird thing is, for him, words sometimes come through in English, other times in Swedish. He doesn't want to think about the added compilation of not being able to hear at all.

"Oh, my bad." Sheepish still, he chuckles. So much for that stroke of brilliance. "I'm Wilhelm. Or you can call me Wille."

And, for the record, that's a V sound, teeth buzzing against lip.

Bay cannot avoid it, she's already dealing with two languages in her head at once before. Before she lost her ill-gotten history, she thought purely in English. Now she thinks in both Sign and English in equal measure and now she had this third language she knew but never spoke before.

"Wille," her repetition is fairly good given she can't hear, matching the movements of his lips as easily as if she was his reflection. Another skill she has but can't quite name a source for.

"So... Europe right? I can't place where but it isn't French or Italian. German?" He lead with the letter W, but he pronounced a V. Which wasn't a thing she could remember her father doing, eliminating his languages. Spanish probably also out, but she didn't do much with her mother's language as with her father's.

Yes, the Deaf girl is good at languages. That's got to be confusing.

He shakes his head, considers letting her twenty-questions her way to the right country as he plucks up his wine glass, which he'd had to set down to finger spell his name.

"Getting warmer." But after a sip, he decides to concede: "Swedish."

Well, that places them on the same globe, which is a minor anomaly. He's looking at her with some curiosity.

"You speak— Uh, know a lot of languages? That's cool."

"That makes sense," it isn't the same language, but they share sound structures. Bay had a head for languages before- this. Part of how she picked up sign as quickly as she did in her real life. How she turned around a failing French grade in the space of a few months.

"My situation is... unique. And doesn't make any sense." She paused, sipped her tea, "But between my biological parents I had four languages growing up. So I learned something of each, I think. Not that I can speak any of them like this."

There's a franticness to her words the more she says. A lot of emotions bubbling behind them. A frustration she's not quite dealing with.

He notes the distinction she makes with biological parents, but he isn't sure what to make of it, and it's not the sort of question you should ask someone whose name you learned five minutes ago. He senses her frustration too, and wonders if it has to do with the obstacles she has to overcome to communicate, or something else.

"I guess that's one good thing about this place, right?"

That it works in mysterious fucking ways.

"The incredibly bad timing you end up here?"

Bay could see a few good things about this place. She distrusted all of them, except possibly the library. She assumed that was the other girl's interest. Bay was well read on art history and artistic theory, but now she was far more invested in spending a few hours lost in a book.

"My life just recently became complicated, more than it's normally complicated."

He quickly shakes his head. See, he has the special ability to be bad at communicating without any obstacles in his way.

"No, no, I just meant...because it's easier to talk to people here." Sighing, he pushes a hand through his hair. "Sorry. That really sucks."

It's not dismissive, the way he says it; it's full of sympathy that matches his expression. Without knowing the precise details, he can relate to having your life bunch itself up in all kinds of complicated knots. There was a time when he ached to go back and set things right, at least as much as he could set them right. And now? He doesn't know. Time moves on, and it takes you with it.

Bay shifts out of Abraxian's common tongue to English for this, it feels insincere to say it in anything less than her first-ish language. "A key part of having a culture, is language. Being able to communicate with each other is great, but it's also very dangerous."

It's very easy to see the advantage of a communal language, but it's very easy for that to be a weapon. Which is why Emmett's mom doesn't believe in speech therapy or talking. When she was Bay's age she was forced to speak, and has never forgiven Hearing people for it.

"I can't really fix anything without my sister anyway. I'm also not sure how I want to deal with things if I can't fix them."

Wilhelm has no idea what she means by dangerous, if he's being honest, but he elects to nod along and sip at his wine in place of responding. Besides, it seems like she's got a lot of other things weighing on her mind. How could she not, having just been dragged into this world with no say in the matter? It was like being cut out of one place and pasted into another, leaving behind a jagged hole of all the things that were supposed to be.

A whole year has passed since he was pulled from the water, naked and disoriented, in the belly of the castle, but he still remembers what it was like. Only, he hadn't really wanted to talk to anybody those first few days, and definitely not about any of the things eating at him. He was indiscriminately angry, as if everybody shared some of the blame for his having to be there.

If she wants to get it off her chest, though...

"You have a sister?"

A neutral-ish question, he hopes. She could just chat about her sister, or she could crack into whatever made everything so complicated.

For any other person, 'you have a sister' is a very easy question. Simple. Yes or no.

"It's a lot more complicated than 'yes,' but yes."

A year ago, Bay wouldn't have even offered the information freely. She and Daphne were too new, and worse, hated each other. It was easier to steal her sister's last name, her last name, and try on the life that was never her's. Which was now her life, in some twisted way.

"Our lives were tangled together within hours of our birth, we share parents. She's the only person who gets all of the weird ways I deal with the world. Sister is about the only word that fits."

And she wasn't here. And maybe Bay was mad about it, and maybe she wasn't hiding that latent anger very well. Her words were a little sharper than she meant, not that she could hear the way her voice shifted at the topic. If Daphne was here, Bay wouldn't be alone.

He senses that there's much more to the story. Normally, you wouldn't have to specify that you and your sibling share parents, but she'd said biological parents before, so...whatever her situation is, it sounds as complicated as she says it is. Untangling all of it isn't really his business, though. He's just here to lend an ear and some sympathy.

"I kind of get it. My brother understood me in a way nobody else really can."

They'd lived in the same fish bowl. Under the same pressure from all directions: their parents, the public, the weight of the past. Their position isolated them from their peers, an invisible but unbreachable wall. It was always just the two of them. Until it was only Wilhelm left. He frowns into his wine glass.

"It's...hard, not having them around."

His brother, her sister.

Bay has two (three, ish sorta) other siblings, but those bonds were normal, easy. They were the bonds siblings had. Well, with Toby, raised to stand by each other as brother and sister. Abby was a baby, she was sure in another twelve years they'd have something in common. Still, Wilhelm was trying and she wasn't about to undermine that effort with how complicated that story was.

Not right now. Eventually she'll need to explain it just to explain everything else. But it can wait a little while.

"How long has it been?" Bay last saw Daphne a little over a week ago, she got the sense this was a lot longer of a time for Wilhelm and his brother.

His eyes flick up to her, then away.

"Over a year. That's how long I've been here, a year."

When he was in Bay's place, he couldn't fathom so much time in this world. It was dark, unknowable, like the depths of the ocean, and it freaked him out. He couldn't imagine who he would be in a year's time either. Wilhelm has changed, he's sure of it, in ways unmeasurable — because you can't go through what he's gone through and stay the same. If we're not changing, we're not living, Istredd had said to him once.

For all that, his grief hasn't changed. Some days he's fine, even passing as a functional human being; some days Erik's absence cuts as sharp as it did when he got that phone call from his mom.

Bay leans in and places her hand on his. It's not anything more than an offer of understanding, She's been without Daphne for a week, and it felt impossible. A year.

That's rough, buddy.

"Hey, you're okay." She didn't intend it to mean he wasn't suffering, but that his suffering was normal here. That whatever feelings are just behind those eyes, that's right. "We'll see them again."

It hurts more than it should. We'll see them again. Only if there's an afterlife, and Wilhelm wants to believe there is. It's not Bay's fault — she doesn't know, and he didn't really say. Talking about it gives Erik's death that much more mass, and it's already a blackhole collapsed somewhere inside him. He swallows, and brushes his thumb against the outer edge of her pinky. The touch is nice.

"Yeah...you will."

A stiff flicker of a smile, and then he needs to shift topics.

"Hey, so, if you have any questions about how things work around here, or if you want a tour around town...let me know, okay?"

Give her a moment to put together where she screwed that up. It's clear on his face the moment she said, that whatever she did was wrong. She doesn't move her hand away as realization dawns.

"Oh. Oh I'm so sorry."

She doesn't have a frame of reference for this, exactly. Her world shattered by accident, her father, in her new reality, was dead. But- it didn't feel real because her reality was so fluid. If she and Daphne could return things to the normal weirdness, it'd be okay. That's not a thing she can say to him.

"Definitely will take you up on a tour where it'll be hard for me to pay attention. Like the Castle Town. And..." she trails, trying to find the best least awkward way to say what's on her mind but she also is bad at subtle so she'll just say it. This conversation has been weird enough she might as well double down, "is everything being coed just how people are here? The bedrooms, the baths?"

He pats her pinky with his thumb, a sort of acknowledgment of her condolences, and then gently pulls his hand away from hers. He's never figured out what to say to all the sorrys people give out when someone's died.

But he's happy to provide answers to her questions, and it's a little bit of an out of body experience to realize that suddenly he's the person who knows stuff. (Suddenly, as if an entire year hasn't ticked past.)

"I guess so. At least, in the castle it is. I mean..." He gestures around the room with his glass. "There aren't that many girls here, for whatever reason."

He isn't sure if it's the Queen's preference, or Ambrose's, or just a weird coincidence. The mages who also reside in the castle are more evenly divided than the Summoned.

"There are some private baths in the back, and you can always try to trade rooms if you end up with someone weird."

Yeah, she'd noticed. It was easy enough to figure out seeing a handful of women, and so many guys. At least once she could notice the body language from the locals and how they reacted to the Summoned. It wasn't fear, it was somewhere between curiosity and ill ease.

And here it was almost all guys, maybe part of her sitting in the corner reading.

"That's what I've been doing, and I have a room to myself for the moment. Anyone who has to room with me has to be used to some of my needs." The castle artificers enchanted a lantern to react to someone touching the door so she'd know if someone is there. "I just don't quite have a grasp on the culture. Is this practicality or is everyone just chill about nudity here?"

"I think it's a little of both?" he ventures, scratching at his head. "I mean, you'd still get weird looks if you decided to, like, walk around the castle naked or something. But it's expected in the bath, so..."

He shrugs. Though he still feels a little awkward when he encounters someone else in the bath, it fades fast. It's not that different from a locker room.

"This place looks old-fashioned, but the people here don't really have a lot of old-school ideas about how men should do this, and women should do that. Maybe that's part of it."

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