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Who: Everyone!
What: December's welcome log.
When: Dec 1st-7th
Where: The Merchant Dome/The Pools
Warnings:
Notes: This is your December welcome log. Come in, go nuts.

It’s the most wonderful (welcome) time of the year.

The Council knows that being a newb and not knowing anyone (especially when one might be living in close quarters to them in the very near future) can be a real pain in the ass. So, every month they throw a welcome party, the theme and location tend to vary. The theme for December is Holiday Cheer and this month’s party takes place in the Merchant dome. But it’s not the everyday appearance of the merchant dome. No, for the next five days the Merchant dome’s appearance has been altered to look like a sort of Bavarian Christmas Market. There are small clusters of tables every so often, so people can just sit and chat and eat and drunk.

Some enterprising person has even managed to make it snow through some unknown means. It’s not cold, but the snow is soft and steady and slowly building up.

The entire dome, all of the streets and all of the merchant stalls are practically glowing with white fairy lights that are strung everywhere. Vendors in their stalls gleefully cry out to paterons passing by, offering them free food or drinks. The food consists of the sort of things that one might expect to find in a place like this: sausages on buns and on sticks, pretzels, pizza, loads of cookies of every variety that one could think of, including elaborately decorated gingerbread, chocolates, fruits, french fries. Think winter fair food, and be as absurd and as complicated and extra as you want. It is a fair, after all. Go nuts. Drinks are also along the same line: hot cider, mulled wine, hot buttered rum, hot chocolate both with booze and without, as well as all the normal things: water, coffee, tea, milk, soda, and a variety of fruit juices that you’ve both heard of and not.

But food isn’t the only free thing that people are giving away! They’re also offering characters hats and gloves and scarves, small toys, books, delicate ornaments, perfumes, wine… it’s a giant welcome party after all, and these people are cheerful and happy. Even offering to pay just gets met with laughter and being told not to worry about it.

There are even some carnival rides set up! A medium sized ferris wheel, a carousel, a giant slide and ice skating ring are all along the outside of the stalls.

At the far end of the dome, the snow has fallen deeper and held to several inches. Wouldn’t you know it just happens to be perfect snowball snow! So, there of course needs to be a snowball fight! What did you think those free mittens and gloves and scarves are for after all? The snowball fight can be organized into teams, or one on one depending on the player’s choice. This is a friendly fight, of course, so no rocks or slush balls or anything. Well, probably not. No one in the Sphere is your mother.

However, the meeting isn’t just about socializing! the opposite end from the snowball fight, there are smaller tables set up with people sitting behind them. In front of the tables are homemade brightly colored signs that advertise things like jobs and clubs. The people and interests here in The Sphere are hugely varied and people are just so earnest to tell newcomers about them. They’re earnest to the point where they may just actually reach out and grab a person in order to force them to stop and to listen to whatever spiel they happen to be working on. Booths that are in attendance for jobs include: Agriculture: “help grow the food that feeds us all! Farming is life!”, The library: “No skill needed! We’ll teach you what you need to know!” The school system: “Teachers wanted! Education is the right of everyone!” Maintenance: “Help keep the domes clean!” As well as various restaurant booths looking for help for both servers and chefs.

For the hobbies involved they are even more varied. Book club: “we live in a multiverse, let’s read the books from it! With wine!” Garden club: “we want to grow stuff on our terms!” Sprinkled among are various skill learning clubs, among them: woodworking club, smithing, robotics, technology, first aid. It seems that despite the fact that no one is required to work in the City, people are still offering skills as needed.

If discrete enough inquiries are made, a passcode to the Black Market hidden behind some of the stalls is offered. The entrance is hidden enough that someone needs to be looking for it, and there is a rather large bouncer guarding the door and asking for the proper passcode. The passcode of the day happens to be gumdrops.

Inside the black market is large, but much more dimly lit than the regular market dome that the welcome party was held inside of. There are various pockets of people clustered under bright neon lights. The lights, someone confides to you, are code for what they’re offering. And nearly everything is on offer if a person has the ability to make a trade. Things from home, character skills and even favors tend to be the currency here, but watch out: the hawkers within are shrewd and sharp. If they make a deal with someone, it’s nearly always going to favor them. Eventually.

There’s also a large and loud party happening inside. Think of a rave with a large amount of people who happened to be a bit out of their minds. Drugs aren’t given freely here, they’re too valuable, but should someone want to figure out what they’re rolling on, eventually someone will ask or offer. The drug that they are currently using is called ‘self’ and it’s something that affects your character in an intensely personal way. For some, it’s an experience like your favorite cocktail mixed with a vicodin, and for others it’s just like being drunk. For still more people, it’s like ecstasy without the side effects.

The drug has no physically addicting properties.

But seriously though who cares about Christmas?

While the welcome party rages on in the merchant dome, people have made a smaller party in one of the recreation domes. Around the pools, as a matter of fact. There’s almost like a small barbecue clustered around the largest of the three pools, and the light is constant and sunny here. The large pool is olympic sized, and is a sparkling blue. It’s fresh water, and probably clean enough to drink. I still wouldn’t drink it. The second pool is slightly smaller and more kidney shaped with a gradual sand mound at one end of it. This pool is salt water and looks a bit more like a beach than a pool. The third pool is a kiddie pool, complete with a splash pad, that’s running. Buckets drop, it’s got one of those mushroom things, and sprinkler jets. There aren’t any kids though, so people are welcome to go nuts.

Bathing suits and towels are provided in the changing rooms. There’s frozen and fruity drinks flowing freely, along with finger food and snacks. Loud music is playing from a local band that’s just generally of a pop sort. There’s people dancing rather in a rather haphazard fashion, but the dance floor is there and present!

Wildcard
Go nuts, choose your own adventure!

Inspiration images

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"Yes, quite." Having no idea what this 'you-tube' was had little impact on the task at hand, after all.

He raised his eyebrows at her ingestion but also raises a hand, reaching out with his mage senses for any sort of change in her or in the snow. There was none. Disappointing.

"If you're likely to consume alien snow that resists the draw of nature, I'll be sure to keep you around, should your assistance be required further." She seems this time though to have escaped any sort of lasting effect. "My name is Dorian, by the way. Dorian of House Pavus." He inclined his head in greeting. "How do you do?"

Alex's face is just a quizzical mask as she waits for the snow to melt. It tastes like snow, and it tastes like water when it finally starts to trickle down her throat and whatever. "Hmm. This is just so weird." But she swallows what's left in her mouth, feeling the cold settle into her stomach, and that's weird too, but her dark eyes flick down to the hand that was raised. "What's with the hand?"

And then she smiled, and offered her hand to him in a match for his greeting. "Alex. Alex Reagan. It's nice to meet you. And yeah, my friends say I do dumb things all the time."

Disappointingly, Dorian sensed little active magic about the snow. There was an ambience, much like a breeze on a summer day or a gentle rain over a lake, as though it had become part of the surroundings. It did occur to him this could be due to magic being such an intrinsic part of the environment, not unlike the colleges of magic in Tevinter, but being wholly unfamiliar with the type of magic in question, it would require unraveling the enchantments in question, but that sort of thing was best handled in a secured environment: a laboratory for instance.

Ah, but she'd introduced herself, hadn't she? Blinking, he lowered his hand, looking over to her and smiling slightly, inclining his head. "Dorian Pavus, a pleasure." He cleared his throat before crossing his arms, tapping his chin thoughtfully.

"As for the hand, I was probing the surroundings, and your interaction with the snow in particular, in an effort to sense any magic involved in the process."

Alex watched him as he considered their setting, and she was reminded more than a little bit of Tannis Braum and how he responded with the environment around them that day in the woods. There had been something mystical about him that day, and she was seeing it in the same way with Dorian, though he wasn't looking for the presence of a missing boy. Nope, this was more generalized and less focused, and Alex wasn't thinking about what it might been for the city that she'd currently found herself residing in. At the moment, she was leaning more towards a scifi movie, but maybe there was something about it that she didn't know.

Of course his statement wasn't one that she could hardly let go without comment, and she just watched him, her eyes on his before she asked, "and did you find any? I mean, I know science here tends to be a little weird." For an example, Alex gathered some of the mass of her hair and drew it to one side, exposing her ear and the golden circle behind it for an example. "But I hadn't really thought that there might be magic involved, actually." There's an undercurrent to her voice, because honestly? Alex Reagan liked the idea of magic.

Well, the idea of it so long as it wasn't involving demons, blood, or sacred geometry. She had enough of that to last a life time, especially with her friendly neighborhood stalker living next door.

"Something, yes, but until I glean an understanding of just how the locals utilize their magic, it will remain simply that: something." He makes a dismissive gesture with his hand, as though finished with this line of thought for now, until such time as he was able to dissect the melting, and the ambient freezing, without interruptions.

"It would be rather difficult to collect the lot of us from various realities without the employ of magic, wouldn't it?"

Alex is just watching him for a long moment, her eyes moving over him before they slip across the crowds of people who are around them. "Most of the locals," her voice is soft as she steps a little closer to him, keeping her words for him and him alone. "Say that there's no such thing as magic, actually. I mean, I've actually tried to talk to them about it. More than a few of them." A beat before she adds quickly, "I mean, people normally talk to me about like anything." Which is not an exaggeration. She's only been stonewalled by a few people and that's with damned good reason.

It's more of why she thinks something's up with them.

"I guess it depends on whether or not you believe in things like bilocation or Star Trek transporters. But honestly, I don't know what to think. You can feel like magic around us?" A beat, and a calculating look passes over her face. "Do you think you could like help me find the source of it?"

It was something Dorian was distinctly disappointed by, but he nodded. "I could give it a shot, certainly, but I'm not some sort of magical bloodhound, you know. That talent is more suited to a Templar."

"Oh." Alex just flushed a bright red, and made a little self-deprecating laugh to go along with it. "Sorry, I totally didn't mean to make it sound like that. Honestly, I just thought with all of the sensing magic stuff that like you kind of did it." Shrugging a bit, Alex just added, "what's a Templar? I'm assuming you don't mean like a Knight's Templar?"

"I can sense magic as well as any other mage, certainly. It's all very technical." He waves a hand as though to dismiss the topic of conversation. "They are knights in that we refer to them as Ser, but more a religious order. Officially, they're tasked with policing mages and southern Templars have abilities that allow them to sense mage, disable spells, and the like."

"Huh." Alex just considers that for a moment, processing it and having a slight bit of confusion on her face before she explains. "Weird, in my world we had the Knights Templar who were involved with the crusades and stuff and religion through that way, but there wasn't anything like actual mages or magic there. I mean, other than in stories. But it's interesting how there's similarities, don't you think?" Don't mind her, Dorian, Alex is gently starting to find a thread that composes the multiverse and she wants to give it more than a little bit of a tug.

But then she realizes what she's doing and gives him an apologetic smile. "Sorry, I'm a nosy reporter, it's a hard habit to break. So they're kind of like the Magical Cops society?"

"Perhaps the world 'Templar' is more universal than we've ever given it credit for," he shrugged at the sentiment. "Either way, yes. In a way, they are a sort of 'magical cop', at least they were, and in the south. It was much the same in my homeland for a time, but then the mages rose to power, the Templars started working for them, blah blah blah and so it goes."

"Huh." Alex just frowned for a moment, thinking about it. "It's kind of weird that there are some like almost universal constants, right? Like Templars or Knights being found in different places. We have the idea of mages in my world, but magic isn't really a thing." There's a little bit of doubt in Alex's statement, because she lacks Strand's skepticism for it. And she's seen magic. Sort of. It's complicated.

"What's your homeland called, Dorian?" It would be interesting to see if it was a version of Earth like other people's were.

"Are you certain mages aren't 'a thing'? We can be rather secretive, you know." It wasn't commonplace in his homeland, of course, but those who didn't want to be ruled in the south? Most didn't know they existed.

He smiles proudly at the inquiry regarding his homeland, though. "I hail from the Tevinter Imperium, the oldest human nation on Thedas."

"No, I'm not really sure of anything not really being a thing anymore, but I'm sort of assuming that they would have come up in all of the research I had done back home with the cults and everything honestly. But then again, who knows." Certainly not Alex Reagan and she had dedicated her life for the last three years to leaving no stone unturned with things.

"Thedas." Alex says it softly like she's committing it to memory; she can't help it. "That's your planet?" Pausing for a moment, Alex just gives him a little grin. "Yes, I am completely aware of how awkward that question sounds, actually."

"In my world, Ancient Tevinter hid entire messages in plain sight, only to be revealed by Veilfire, which, by way of explanation, is a magic flame only conjurable by mages. We do have our ways of hiding from non-mages."

He raised an eyebrow for a moment before laughing. "No! Thedas is continent on which the Imperium thrives. Is 'Washington' the name of yours?"

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