Arthur E. Hastings (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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abraxaslogs2025-01-17 05:30 pm
smilefornow) wrote in abraxaslogs2025-01-17 05:30 pm
Entry tags:
Open Catchall
Who: Arthur Hastings
When: January
Where: Thorne Castle
What: Exploring and poking around
Warnings: Will add if needed
Castle Baths
Oh.
Oh goodness.
Arthur had been told the baths were rather spectacular. He'd hope so, as it's a castle, and their rooms don't have bathrooms attached. Or even those metal tubs old time nobles would have dragged into their rooms, in front of the fire place, to bathe in. Even he had a wooden tub back in Solvunn, though he had to use buckets to fill it and dump it out. Not ideal, but better than he'd had back in the Garden District.
It was rustic. He could pretend he was an old timey person, and there was a certain luxury in bathing in one's own bedroom.
These baths were anything but rustic. They were opulent. They were magnificent. They were the sort of baths Roman emperors had built and done all sorts of scandalous things in. Good Dog, that big one was about the size of a swimming pool!
"Wowee!"
Arthur is without shame at his glee over the palatial baths. If he's stuck up here in Merlin Land, he's going to enjoy the perks. And this is a perk. He wastes no time in yanking off his clothes and setting aside his glasses before practically leaping into the biggest and deepest of the bathing pools.
Library
If there is one thing Arthur can complain about in regards to Solvunn, it's the books situation. They have books, of course, but not quite the collections he's used to as an Englishman from the twentieth century. This is more like it! He's never seen The London Library, but this is the sort of thing he'd always imagined. At least as far as scale. So many books! Even if he lived here, he'd never have time to read them all!
But he's sure tempted to try.
It's overwhelming. He doesn't know where to start. How are books even organized here?
Maybe someone can help...
Dining Hall
Now this was also something new.
Arthur is used to a measure of self sufficiency in Solvunn. He cleans his own clothes, repairs his own things, and cooks his own food. Of course he joins in communal meals, and he has tea and lunch with friends, but overall....traditional restaurants aren't exactly a part of Solvunn life.
Here, people will put out food. Food already cooked and prepared, that all he needs to do is eat. For any meal! Or any time! Lunch won't be cold salted meat and bread with a thermos of cold tea! And the variety... Solvunn's food is very good. But it's a rather insular place, and he only knows how to cook so many things. His daily diet isn't the most varied, aside from still compulsively gobbling down any greens he has on hand. He eats as varied a diet of veg as he can manage.
He's not even sure what some of the food on offer here even is.
He turns to whoever else happens to be looking for a bite right now.
"What do you recommend?"
When: January
Where: Thorne Castle
What: Exploring and poking around
Warnings: Will add if needed
Castle Baths
Oh.
Oh goodness.
Arthur had been told the baths were rather spectacular. He'd hope so, as it's a castle, and their rooms don't have bathrooms attached. Or even those metal tubs old time nobles would have dragged into their rooms, in front of the fire place, to bathe in. Even he had a wooden tub back in Solvunn, though he had to use buckets to fill it and dump it out. Not ideal, but better than he'd had back in the Garden District.
It was rustic. He could pretend he was an old timey person, and there was a certain luxury in bathing in one's own bedroom.
These baths were anything but rustic. They were opulent. They were magnificent. They were the sort of baths Roman emperors had built and done all sorts of scandalous things in. Good Dog, that big one was about the size of a swimming pool!
"Wowee!"
Arthur is without shame at his glee over the palatial baths. If he's stuck up here in Merlin Land, he's going to enjoy the perks. And this is a perk. He wastes no time in yanking off his clothes and setting aside his glasses before practically leaping into the biggest and deepest of the bathing pools.
Library
If there is one thing Arthur can complain about in regards to Solvunn, it's the books situation. They have books, of course, but not quite the collections he's used to as an Englishman from the twentieth century. This is more like it! He's never seen The London Library, but this is the sort of thing he'd always imagined. At least as far as scale. So many books! Even if he lived here, he'd never have time to read them all!
But he's sure tempted to try.
It's overwhelming. He doesn't know where to start. How are books even organized here?
Maybe someone can help...
Dining Hall
Now this was also something new.
Arthur is used to a measure of self sufficiency in Solvunn. He cleans his own clothes, repairs his own things, and cooks his own food. Of course he joins in communal meals, and he has tea and lunch with friends, but overall....traditional restaurants aren't exactly a part of Solvunn life.
Here, people will put out food. Food already cooked and prepared, that all he needs to do is eat. For any meal! Or any time! Lunch won't be cold salted meat and bread with a thermos of cold tea! And the variety... Solvunn's food is very good. But it's a rather insular place, and he only knows how to cook so many things. His daily diet isn't the most varied, aside from still compulsively gobbling down any greens he has on hand. He eats as varied a diet of veg as he can manage.
He's not even sure what some of the food on offer here even is.
He turns to whoever else happens to be looking for a bite right now.
"What do you recommend?"
library
He's here alone now, or so he thinks. He hears Arthur's footsteps and from one of the shelves at eye level, a book is suddenly slid out of its spot on its shelf, leaving a large gap, wide enough for a shaggy head and a grinning face to peer through.
“Hey,” Eddie calls out to him, at a level slightly louder than one should really speak in a library. “You’re looking a little lost. Or spoiled for choice.”
no subject
Arthur gives a little two fingered salute through the gap in books. His own voice is hushed, a natural reaction to being in a library. Or any official sort of place, really. It's just what's done.
"And yes. Both lost and spoiled for choice. I don't imagine they use the Dewey Decimal System here..."
And he doesn't want to be a bother. The last thing he wants to do here is be any sort of bother. He's heard some upsetting stories about this place. Not that he's one to believe gossip, of course, but...well.
Just best to be careful.
no subject
With another grin, he disappears from the gap in the bookcase and seconds later, emerges on the other side to greet Arthur properly.
“So, what are you looking for? I’ve been here…basically every day since arriving. They may as well make me a librarian at this point.”
no subject
Arthur doesn't mean to sound surprised, but he wouldn't have taken young Master Eddie as much of a reader. He was a rock and roll man, and in Arthur's experience, rock and roll people were too busy with music to spend much time with books.
But his experience is rather limited.
"Ah, just something with a good bit of adventure and some humor. Something in an H. G. Wells vein. Though I suppose here...well, fantasy fiction is just fiction."
no subject
Music may be the love of Eddie’s life, but reading can’t be discounted as a secondary love. Fantasy in all forms has always been an escape from him—movies, television, games, music, and reading. Try to get him to read something he has no desire to read, though, and that’s another story entirely.
He could use a break anyway, and what better way to take that break than by recommending the books he’s found that sound interesting to Arthur? Someone should get the opportunity to read the while they’re all away from Solvunn.
“Alright,” Eddie responds with a grin, slamming one hand onto the cover of the large book in lieu of clapping his hands together. “What level of Wells are we talking here? Tried and true War of the Worlds Wells? Or weird-as-hell Island of Doctor Moreau Wells? The latter of which is my personal preference, by the way.”
no subject
And so Arthur had managed his own secret library of banned books. Even when deep on his Joy, he hadn't been able to stop himself from rescuing books. To burn them all...that would be like burning up bits of his own soul.
"I was thinking The Time Machine Wells. So a bit in the middle, I suppose."
Not too strange. His own life is strange enough.
"What other sorts of books do you like?"
no subject
He cracks his knuckles like he's about to get into some serious physic work and disappears behind the shelves again.
“Lord of the Rings is my favorite,” he calls. “Anything fantasy, really, but nothing’s beating Tokien. Sci-fi. Pretty much any comic book and, uh, D&D guidebooks, of course.” He pokes his head out with a grin before disappearing once more.
For all of the ways in which Hawkins tried to oppress him and his interests, all the media he wanted to consume was always available to him. It wasn’t always easy to get ahold of, but he could get ahold of it. Book banning was a thing, of course, but those books usually didn’t just cease to exist. From the sound of it, Arthur’s world didn’t work quite the same. Eddie still can’t wrap his brain around the concept of listening to such a limited array of music for so long, or being forced to rescue books to keep them from being destroyed.
“I, uh, guess that answers my question, then,” he begins as he searches through the shelves for a title that screams H.G. Wells. “Books weren’t any more available to you than music, huh? What other things have you read? Like, what really left a lasting impression?”
no subject
Said with a touch of a scathing tone. His own opinion doesn't need voicing, the simple distaste with which he says 'Superman' says it all. And he thinks that Eddie is the sort of fellow who would also prefer the spirit-assisted detective.
"And books were technically available. Just...heavily rewritten versions. Having read both Shakespeare's original Titus Andronicus and the romantic comedy rewrite you can find in Wellington, I think it would have been kinder to just destroy them. Oh, but my favorite author is Wodehouse. The Blandings Castle stories. They're clever and funny and I used to imagine myself as part of that world."
Hence why his domain is a recreation of Blandings Castle.
no subject
The years of being surrounded by fellow Tolkien nerds has finally washed off and Eddie doesn’t immediately wheel around with an aggressive glare anymore. He’s met more types of people than he ever expected to meet outside of his tiny Indiana town, and (unfortunately), many of those people come from worlds that don’t have Tolkien, or where Tolkien hasn’t been born yet.
“But, uh, you’re gonna read it. Or try to. I mean, I’m not gonna force it on you if you don’t care for it, but it is kind of the fantasy series to end all fantasy series? Wizards, elves, evil magic rings. I’ve got a copy in the Horizon if you're interested.”
He laughs as the topic turns to comic books, with a clear disdain for Superman. And Eddie gets it. He was into X-Men and Batman; Superman was never really a must-buy for him, but Arthur’s description of Doctor Occult absolutely piques his interest.
“You know, a detective that talks to the dead sounds right up my alley,” he chuckles, reappearing from behind the shelves with a book in hand. “If you have any copies to lend, you know who to send them to.”
It sounds awful, living in a world where all you can get you hands on is heavily revised stories. Eddie knows so very little about the books in Thorne’s library, but he can only assume they’re not censored or rewritten.
“Alright, well, maybe this—“ he produces a book with a flourish and a low bow. “Will be just as good as the Blandings Castle stories, if not good enough to hold your interest.”
The title reads The League of Seers in gilded font, and while the cover is plain and worn, Eddie had flicked through it earlier and found it interesting—and seemingly about a league of time travelers rather than about people who can actually see the future. He had intended to take it with him if he found nothing else of interest, but finding the information he came here for has been harder than he realized. Not a lot of time for fun reading.
“And if we’re lucky, not heavily rewritten."