Arthur E. Hastings (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
smilefornow) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
abraxaslogs2024-03-22 01:00 pm
smilefornow) wrote in abraxaslogs2024-03-22 01:00 pm
Open Log
Who: Arthur + OPEN
When: Late March
Where: Solvunn Primary Settlement, Horizon
What: Arthur is having a bad time with the weather
Warnings: Language, will add more if needed
Primary Settlement
The one benefit to the weather is that there is plenty of downed wood to collect. Arthur always needs wood, particularly now that he's volunteered himself to help with Ed's inn. And of course there are plenty of broken fences and posts and front steps that need mending. Stigr Bjarni isn't the only carpenter in the settlement, but he has a Summoned working for him right now and so they often seem to be busy. It's strange, to think that people actively want things that Arthur helped to build and seek him out to repair their shutters or build them a new milking stool.
If only the weather weren't...this. He's seen The Wizard of Oz. He knows what tornadoes can do. And if ever there were a world where a twister could pick up a house and drop it on a witch, it's this one. While nothing has reached house throwing levels, Arthur doesn't trust the weather. It could get worse any moment.
He's on his way back home to Stigr's house. During something of a lull - or what passes for one - he'd been out at the edges of the settlement, repairing a chicken coop, and picking up good wood as he went. He's got a nice sack of it slung over his shoulder, and his wooden box of tools in one hand. At least until a particularly strong gust sweeps up and catches Arthur full force. There is not much weight to him, even now, and he's awkwardly burdened by sack and box. The wind catches him and he spins, arms pinwheeling to keep his balance. His tool box drops. The latch lets go. The sack slips off his shoulder. Branches and chunks of wood spill out as it goes. An attempt to catch at least one of them fails miserably and Arthur Hastings goes heels over head onto his arse.
"Fuckity duck!"
His glasses join the list of things now dropped and scattered and at the mercy of the elements.
"Fuckity duckity!"
Horizon
Good Dog, even the Horizon is under assault from the elements!
In Arthur's domain, Blandings Castle is covered in snow and lightning cuts across the sky above it. This is not what he expected when he slipped into that sleep that isn't sleep to escape the sound of the tornadoes. No, the terrible weather is waiting for him here, too. And nothing he does makes any difference. Try as he might, he can't think it away. That's simply not fair. He ought to be able to banish storms from his little patch of magic not-world if he wants.
The old English estate that he's created as his personal paradise is anything but. And there are no delightful Hollywood crews to descend in the cold and turn it all into a merry lark, like in the story when the boiler went out in winter. That had been a good one. But in reality, it's simply unpleasant and the empty castle has taken on an unwelcoming air.
Frowning, he heads round and down to the pig shed. The Empress, his enormous black Berkshire sow, is inside and grunting in displeasure at the weather.
"I know, old girl." Arthur opens the pen to coax her out. "Sound and fury, and all that. Come on, let's have a ramble. Maybe it's nicer somewhere else. I don't think folks mind ramblers, I've had a few come through...."
And anyone who wants to keep others out can build a wall. It's not as though he plans on entering anyone's buildings uninvited or snooping around. He just wants to try and find a nice place to spend some time. With his pig.
Still wearing his early 1900s tweed suit and cap, he sets off down the road that leads out of his domain and into the rest of the Horizon.
Somewhere has got to be free of terrible weather....they just have to find it.
When: Late March
Where: Solvunn Primary Settlement, Horizon
What: Arthur is having a bad time with the weather
Warnings: Language, will add more if needed
Primary Settlement
The one benefit to the weather is that there is plenty of downed wood to collect. Arthur always needs wood, particularly now that he's volunteered himself to help with Ed's inn. And of course there are plenty of broken fences and posts and front steps that need mending. Stigr Bjarni isn't the only carpenter in the settlement, but he has a Summoned working for him right now and so they often seem to be busy. It's strange, to think that people actively want things that Arthur helped to build and seek him out to repair their shutters or build them a new milking stool.
If only the weather weren't...this. He's seen The Wizard of Oz. He knows what tornadoes can do. And if ever there were a world where a twister could pick up a house and drop it on a witch, it's this one. While nothing has reached house throwing levels, Arthur doesn't trust the weather. It could get worse any moment.
He's on his way back home to Stigr's house. During something of a lull - or what passes for one - he'd been out at the edges of the settlement, repairing a chicken coop, and picking up good wood as he went. He's got a nice sack of it slung over his shoulder, and his wooden box of tools in one hand. At least until a particularly strong gust sweeps up and catches Arthur full force. There is not much weight to him, even now, and he's awkwardly burdened by sack and box. The wind catches him and he spins, arms pinwheeling to keep his balance. His tool box drops. The latch lets go. The sack slips off his shoulder. Branches and chunks of wood spill out as it goes. An attempt to catch at least one of them fails miserably and Arthur Hastings goes heels over head onto his arse.
"Fuckity duck!"
His glasses join the list of things now dropped and scattered and at the mercy of the elements.
"Fuckity duckity!"
Horizon
Good Dog, even the Horizon is under assault from the elements!
In Arthur's domain, Blandings Castle is covered in snow and lightning cuts across the sky above it. This is not what he expected when he slipped into that sleep that isn't sleep to escape the sound of the tornadoes. No, the terrible weather is waiting for him here, too. And nothing he does makes any difference. Try as he might, he can't think it away. That's simply not fair. He ought to be able to banish storms from his little patch of magic not-world if he wants.
The old English estate that he's created as his personal paradise is anything but. And there are no delightful Hollywood crews to descend in the cold and turn it all into a merry lark, like in the story when the boiler went out in winter. That had been a good one. But in reality, it's simply unpleasant and the empty castle has taken on an unwelcoming air.
Frowning, he heads round and down to the pig shed. The Empress, his enormous black Berkshire sow, is inside and grunting in displeasure at the weather.
"I know, old girl." Arthur opens the pen to coax her out. "Sound and fury, and all that. Come on, let's have a ramble. Maybe it's nicer somewhere else. I don't think folks mind ramblers, I've had a few come through...."
And anyone who wants to keep others out can build a wall. It's not as though he plans on entering anyone's buildings uninvited or snooping around. He just wants to try and find a nice place to spend some time. With his pig.
Still wearing his early 1900s tweed suit and cap, he sets off down the road that leads out of his domain and into the rest of the Horizon.
Somewhere has got to be free of terrible weather....they just have to find it.
no subject
"She's quite a sow," he smiles, understanding now: the pig follows Hastings like a dog because it might as well be a dog. He can keep this version of Ghost, more a memory than a true creature, from attacking it, though in life, he has always had to keep an eye on Ghost around hogs and boars. Lady Stark would not have been best pleased, but the one he's thinking of is not here.
"This is Winterfell. It's the seat of the lords Stark, and the seat of the Kings in the North. The Starks ruled the North for thousands of years, but three hundred years ago, they bent the knee to the Targaryens and submitted to the Iron Throne. House Targaryen were dragonlords, you see, and they are gone now, all but one. We are not subject to the Iron Throne now; we do not mean to be again. So it is my sister's seat and my own, now, in life and here."
All of this is said pleasantly as they move through the yard, and when they reach the Great Hall, he pushes the great wooden door open to admit them.
Inside: a big room with slate floors, candles all over, a big fire, a table before it, chairs, more tables laid out through the room with benches for seating. Mugs of ale wait on one of them, and big earthenware bowls of Gage's best beef stew, as Jon remembers it from when he was a boy, and the second-best spoons in the North. The Manderlys have held more wealth than Winterfell since they came to White Harbor.
no subject
This is like something out of the stories his mother had read him and Percy. Not just visually, but the way Jon describes it. The names mean nothing to Arthur, but he can assemble the general context easily enough. One royal family got bullied by another royal family until they said 'fine, you can be in charge-in charge of everything' and then decided they didn't like that idea. He's reasonable certain history is full of that sort of thing.
"Quite impressive!"
The Empress ambles over to the fire and flops down in front of it with an impressive thud. Arthur takes a seat at the table, looking about him with interest. Yes, this is most certainly a working castle from a different time.
"I grew up on a little chain of islands, not much in the way of castles. A couple of old forts, but they're....not in good shape."
That's on way of putting it.
no subject
"Take a seat," he says, indicating one, then follows his own advice. As Hastings speaks, Jon lifts one of the mugs, drinks some of the fresh cool ale. It's Winterfell ale, smooth and rich and mellow, not the stronger and more sour stuff he'd had to drink at Castle Black.
"You have any need to repair them? You can always build at least one of them up -- use the stones from another. That's the way it's been at Winterfell, in truth. All of it was built long ago, but not every part is still in use. Parts of it were burned a few years back; those were rebuilt. All the wood you saw outside."
no subject
He's quiet a moment, considering how to answer. He has learned to temper what he says, and to who. It upsets people. And then they don't know what to say and it's terribly uncomfortable. He'd rather not make the hospitable young man uncomfortable.
"Repairing our forts wasn't high on anyone's priority list," is what he settles for. It's quite true. "Not much need. Very small place, Wellington Wells. With nothing anyone wants."
Or at least nothing anyone should want.
no subject
Wellington Wells must be too remote to need much defense, but if it had forts to begin with, that cannot always have been the case. It must have been raided by sea at some point, like the Stepstones had often tended to be.
"Do you have a king? A lord? Someone you can petition? It does much for people to feel that they have a place of safety, even if it may not be needful." A moment of consideration, then he adds, "Back in the Night's Watch, most of the castles on the Wall had been abandoned. The Watch was no longer what it had been. We didn't have the men for them, so we only manned Eastwatch and Castle Black and the Shadow Tower. It left the North in a bad way, when it came to defending from what was beyond the Wall."
His voice has become very quiet towards the end, there.