abraxaslogs | ( open ) an informal family dinner

Entry tags:

( open ) an informal family dinner

Who: the summoned of cadens
When: beginning of august
Where: the sarstina inn and tavern
What: the welcome committee (sam wilson, hilda, jesper) has come back together again for another cadens welcome event! everyone might remember the last event and this one will be much of the same. Including, but not limited to, another invite by hilda! | sam art credit!
Warnings: will update as needed!

THE DINNER

Just as before, this is kicked off with Hilda's invitation, and if any of the Summoned come by Sarstina's that evening, they will find it set up a little differently than usual, but very similar to last time.

There is a long table set up near the bar that has a whole party-spread, a ye-old-southern-party kind of set-up, if you will. There are dips, charcuterie plates, sandwiches, drinks, a pastry/dessert bar and almost anything else that Sam could get his hands on. It is all, of course, limited by what’s available in Cadens, but thankfully he’s been here long enough to figure his way around the food options. Behind the bar is Mag (because no one else is getting their hands on the alcohol stash, thank you very much) and she will serve whoever it is that comes up to ask for a drink and will refuse any sort of payment - it appears someone is covering the tab tonight.

The rest of the tavern is set up for a party, with tables and chairs scattered around, a stage set up in the corner, and a decently sized space in front of the stage for dancing if the night gets to that point. There may or may not be some live music later in the evening, no promises have been made, but if anyone else wants to get up on the stage they are more than welcome.

Nadine has been kind enough to provide little apothecary bags filled with a mild sleeping tonic and things to help settle the nerves that new (and old) Summoned can take with them. There’s a table near the door and by the bar that have these bags in wicker baskets with a small sign that reads: Visit Salves and Stitches for all your medical needs!

The vibes are definitely low-key and casual – come get an ale, come eat some food, and if you're new there is a very good chance you'll end up (gently and in the most friendly way) cornered by either Sam, Hilda, Jesper, or any of the other Summoned. They are here to help answer questions and give a bit more background on what the hell is going on. And also let you know about the deal that has been going with Mag and the Inn for almost two years now. Aka, if you're looking for a room, there is one here for you in exchange for work. You can leave whenever you have a job, or you can stay as long as you like. It’s all about helping Summoned get more settled, and as long as you’re good at taking instruction and picking up after yourself, Mag hasn’t had any issues. Not a bad gig, right?

And if being social isn't your thing, or you’re just not the party kind of person, the Welcome Committee understands. But also, really, who is going to turn down free drinks and free food? The Cities work on coin and commerce, so turning down a free meal isn’t really the smartest thing. Plus - there’s alcohol. And the food is pretty damn good.

OOC INFO

- this is a totally open post! There will be some TL’s below from the Committee Members, but otherwise, have fun, meet some people, and put up a TL of your own! there are various places to run into people around the tavern, and if you find someone who is willing to help you into the Horizon (Sam is happy to help, but he’s helping Host), Sam's been letting people know they can use his room upstairs.

- the only Rule is there will be no fighting. You want to duke it out? Take it somewhere else. There will not be warnings or second chances, so don't be an ass. Summoned have lived in this Inn since they were all portaled here ages go, this is their home. and if ANYONE is seen giving Mag a hard time, there are a few people here who will not hesitate and who are not afraid of squaring up. Also, you cause problems, and you will not be invited back :)

- The whole purpose of the Welcome Committee is going to be going overboard to be welcoming, especially to new faces. Even if your character didn't see the big invitation, feel free to have them invited by word of mouth, or chased down by any of the members. Some Summoned may have also checked the barracks for any new Summoned to bring them into town.

- Mag is an NPC who you can read a little more about in the NPC section of the Cadens setting page. Feel free to have her come in and out of your tags as needed!

THE INN

Magmara (or Mag) has run the inn for years and has been a familiar face in that neighborhood as a woman who always made ends meet, almost in spite of the way she took care of her friends and neighbors above all else. Most weren't always sure how she managed to run the place on her own, but she made due, though she always seemed a bit overwhelmed and exhausted. When the Summoned arrived in the Cadens through that first portal, Sam managed to stumble in and make quick friends with Mag. In exchange for manual labor, fixing up and cleaning up the inn, as well as whatever other various tasks Mag needed to be done around, Sam would be given free room and board (a deal she now offers to any Summoned that arrives in the city for as long as they need it).

The inn itself is 4 floors tall, with the top three floors making up the 15 or so rooms (around five rooms per floor), and the entire bottom floor reserved for the restaurant area. The tavern makes up the entire first floor and is a large open floorplan, with a small stage in the corner, a walled-off area for the decently sized kitchen, and a large wooden bar where Mag does all her business for both the inn and tavern (where can almost always be found standing behind). It serves drinks of some variety (though not nearly as large a selection as some of the more well-known taverns) and some food (usually a single, large meal that will be served to the tenants and whoever comes in throughout the night for a moderate price). It can be busy some evenings, but in general tends to keep a more 'dive-bar' kind of feel, filled with more locals and regulars than a casual dinner-going crowd.

The rooms themselves vary from fairly simple, single-bed inn-style rooms with a small bathroom and little else, up to a two 'bedroom' suite style with small kitchenettes and spaces for sitting rooms. Each bedroom has its own small bathroom for the tenants, with cleaning, washing, and chores left to those who live there. What used to be more of a working inn now serves as a kind of boarding house for newly arrived Summoned (or simply those who won't leave), and Mag has found herself quite okay with that.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

If you want to go back to the barracks and try, I wouldn't be opposed. It seems unlikely they'd let anyone return to that space, however.

[Possibly for the reasons they're talking about right now. If there is something about the water, though, then it's one of the pieces he's missing, and it would be beneficial to experiment on. He offers Jayden a nod.]

I do. As I said, they use the arcana symbols to seek out the broad strokes of a person--desirable occupations or personality traits. It's premeditated, in that sense.

Yeah, doubt they'd be too enthusiastic.

[But he says it just lightly enough that it's probably clear he isn't considering that option closed. Complicated, certainly, but still possibly on the table for a future plan.]

Hm. I can't say I'm too familiar with what arcana everyone's got, but d'you know if they're kinda' spread out evenly, or are some rarer than others?

[And then of course the followup question; if it's uneven, is there a reason for it? Are some arcana just less desirable for whatever the faction leadership wants, and if so, maybe that could tell the Summoned something?]

An understatement.

[Viktor makes no secret of his disdain--why summon people here from infinite worlds and then refuse to give them the resources to better anything? It's perhaps the most infuriating thing about this.

But not necessarily the detail they should be focusing on.]

Some are less common. I don't think we've ever taken a formal census, but there is... [He sighs, like he can't believe he's about to say this.] ...Jesper's book.

Have we ever talked to them much about the Summoning thing? I mean, I can't say I expect they were too helpful if we did, but I was curious about that.

[In what they did or didn't say, and in how they react. If they stonewall questions, or try to dance around them, or offer half-information.

Jayden can't help but look just faintly amused when Viktor actually says that Jesper's book might have a use, because oh no, that must hurt.]

He notes down arcana along with the 1-10 hotness scale or whatever it is?

It's not helpful. They continue to insist that we, as individuals, are important, but I have my doubts they knew exactly who they were summoning.

[They'd brought him here, dying, and wouldn't even offer him the resources to save his own life. He'd done that himself, in spite of the government, not because of it. It's still a mystery to him, that they would bring him here with the little time that he had.]

He does, among other things. [Viktor rolls his eyes.] It's good to have a record, even if I don't necessarily agree with the subjectivity of his assessments.

We don't seem very important to them, at least not day to day.

[It might be a little more bitter than he means it to be, but not more bitter than he feels about it. He's none too enthusiastic about his own experiences here so far, how useless the government seems to be, and how terrible the other factions have sounded like are.

But that's not really the point at the moment.]

Is it just for the Free Cities? Or is he trackin' down people from other nations in the Horizon or something too?

No, and they don’t call upon us when it’s needed, either. When some of our number went missing, I had to beg the government to help find them.

[Of course, Viktor rarely asks permission—he’d already made headway and just needed access to Academy resources to improve the technology. They never would have been able to find the missing without him, and yet they made him sit on his hands until it was almost too late.

He scoffs, talk of Jesper’s book providing good cover for what is really a larger frustration.]

All of us. It’s…surprisingly thorough.

[It's not a surprise that the Free Cities leadership was useless in the crisis--everything Jayden's heard and seen of them so far has indicated that--but it's still disappointing. It would've been better if it were just sheer incompetence rather than apathy, but considering this is the same government that abducts people from other worlds, pressures them to join the army, and then when they don't basically abandons them to survive on their own, apathy seems to be the standard.

But the comment also reminds Jayden of something, a distant hazy memory that suddenly clicks into place.]

You made the trackers, right? Blake had one.

[Viktor watches the recognition creep into Jayden's expression, and he nods in the affirmative. He's still getting used to being Known, and it's possible he shies away from it. That said, he rarely misses a chance to talk about his work.]

I did, yes.

[He'd altered it out of one of his preexisting projects, but he can't deny it was exactly what they needed, at the time. Still, it would have been meaningless, without Ciri and Blake putting themselves on the line.]

He was brave, to volunteer.

[It all could have gone so much more badly than it did.]

Yeah. It was a big risk.

[And he knows it had a huge cost. But without the trackers, who knows how difficult it would've been to figure out where they were, let alone do so in time to reach everyone?

He doesn't want to dwell on any of that, though, and moves on.]

Good idea, though. And pretty impressive technology to pull off getting to work here.

But a necessary one.

[He doubts the Free Cities government would have found them half as quickly as Viktor did--even the two weeks, give or take, was too long. And he knows that Blake and Ciri did not escape unscathed. He thinks he'll always be guilty about putting them through that, regardless, but he can't deny that the gamble was a success.]

I'm just glad it worked as well as it did.

[Jayden nods again, in agreement on both points.]

Did you ever find out what happened to that tracker? Blake and I stuck it on one of the cultists, but I never heard what happened to it after that.

[Considering, you know. All the everything that went on, he had a lot of other things to worry about and so this was mostly forgotten about until just now.]

The acolyte you planted it on escaped to Nocwich. We were able to locate them because the tracker was still functional.

[And Blake, despite the fact that he probably should have been on bedrest, didn't want to leave things unfinished.]

We alerted the authorities to their presence. [What they did after, Viktor doesn't really like, but he can at least know that the acolytes were imprisoned, rather than executed.] Then they returned the tracker to me.

[Jayden finds that he isn't totally sure how he feels about that, and he's also not sure why that is. It's good that the acolyte was caught, that they hadn't been able to just sneak away, but it makes him wonder if they weren't the only one. Could others have made it out and disappeared into the crowd?

Could they still be out there?]

That's good. That you caught 'em, I mean. And that you got the tracker back.

[Nailing it. Very casual response here. Moving on.]

Aside from those, and from tryin' to figure out how the summoning works, are you workin' on anything else interesting? I looked into how the magic and technology get all mixed together here, but there's no magic in my world, so I'm still kind of gettin' used to the idea and the potential for it.

Yes, I would prefer the technology remained in my hands.

[That said, he knows the Free Cities has some version of it, and likely uses it in some capacity. Given the situation they were in, however, Viktor will maintain that he did what he needed to do.

Now it's over, and though it all still percolates in the back of his mind, he has moved on to other things.]

It's helpful to think of magic itself as a power source that can be instructed to do all manner of different things. The systems vary, between my world and this one, but the principle is still the same.

Like electricity? Makes sense, though it'd still be just as weird to me to try an' get used to being able to direct electricity at will.

[He isn't arguing, though; it is a good way to think about it.]

There's magic in your world?

It's easier to direct electricity than magic.

[At least where he's from. Much less dangerous, too. but then again, he's an engineer. He knows what he's doing.]

There is, yes, but to find someone able to wield it is rare. The city I'm from took pride in its technological advancement.

[Jayden's not so sure the former is true; if asked to use magic or to control electricity, he's doing a whole lot better with the former than the latter. Then again, it's semantics, since controlling electricity that way would be magic, and he's overthinking this. Moving on.]

Oh, so kinda' like here? Or was there less combinin' magic and tech where you're from?

Sort of. The use of magic and technology together was something of a new development, for us.

[And it made the Council a lot of money, so they were willing to entertain it.]

But we were more technologically advanced in the first place, so I'd say we're ahead.

How much more advanced? Did you have computers and that sorta' thing yet?

[He's always curious when someone says their technology is further along than in the Free Cities, because for a lot of people it's the opposite, but also there's a big range for what 'more advanced' might entail.]

Computers? No, but I have learned of them.

[And he understands them, he thinks, between what he's seen in the Horizon and his own work on the Hexcore.]

I know that I'm technologically behind some of the other worlds here--but I'm quick to catch on.

Sounds like it.

[And he means that; no computers, but he can build tracking devices and whatever else he works on here? Pretty impressive.]

I'm good at usin' technology, but I'm not an engineer. No idea how a lot of it works, which seems to be the more important part here.

I didn't expect you to be.

[An engineer, that is. But he knows how to use technology, which is a plus in Viktor's book.]

If you ever have anything you'd like me to look at, I'd be happy to do so.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

( open ) an informal family dinner

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