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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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Ubbe’s head rolled slightly to the side and a almost grimace like expression as he shrugged. Even Ubbe sometimes wonders about if Ivar has any good in him left but he also knew it was there hidden behind walls upon walls of anger. That didn’t mean that Ivar was going to be doing good anytime soon he’d guess.

“We had parted ways,” a nice way of saying Ivar had started a civil war and disowned Ubbe.

“It is a lot to take in,” he said, after all he did know of different worlds per se in the terms of Viking lore but it was very much a different set of beliefs and those places were namely for those who have died and the gods who ruled over those realms.

Aaron frowned slightly at the response. "I'm sorry to hear that." Though if the apocalypse and his life before it even have taught him anything, it's that family means nothing of the blood and far more of the companionship.

"And yeah, it is, even for people like me, and we come from a place where people write books about this kind of thing. Fiction, fairy tales, but...it's not outside the ideas people have explored." He chuckles slightly. "I never thought I'd see it."

Ubbe would have disagreed if Aaron had said as much. His mind is still deeply rooted in the need to restore Ragnar's legacy and repair his broken family as difficult and impossible a task at it may seem.

"People write books about such things?" Ubbe questioned, the only books he'd ever seen had been those of a religious nature, none of which he had known how to read.

Respectable, certainly, and not something Aaron would contest, though he'd only ever suffered neglect and abuse at the hands of his own family, and he had no desire to procreate which was important for the whole 'legacy' thing.

He nodded at the question, though. "Sometimes. Uh...Vikings tell stories, right? About heroes or monsters? We just write them down."

“I see,” Ubbe said. While they had runes they were representative of a few things and never actually written word in the traditional sense.

“The Saxons do that. The stories of their god in any case.”

Aaron blinks at the term, one from world history class in high school, before nodding. "It catches on."

He chuckles, shaking his head. "That was a bad joke, but...basically, someone invented a machine that made it possible to, uh, enscribe an entire page of text at a time. It made it possible to make copies of books really quickly, instead of a priest having to do it one letter at a time, by hand. People started writing everything down, because it was so easy to do it. When you can save knowledge that easily, people are going to keep doing it."

Ubbe looks perplexed for a moment and then curious. He shrugs a little. "It seems that it would still be more time consuming when you could speak much faster could you not?"

He chuckles and nods. "Well, sure, but you can spread a story around the world when you write it down."

“Why would anyone care about spreading a story around? Though, our stories spread. People knew of my father far and wide,” Ubbe said, as an example but it’s a point of pride too. Ragnar’s legacy was quite broad.

"People are naturally curious. We want to know how the world works and stories help us understand our place in it." It was one of many reasons people shared stories, but it was the first he thought of.

“Certainly,” Ubbe agreed, though, he knew not all were curious. He had gained his curiosity from his father who had often been mocked for his.

“But can people not speak to one another of the stories?”

He nods at that. "Sure we can, and we do, but there were more than 6 billion people in the world. That's a lot of people to talk to, one on one."

In all honestly, it’s hard for Ubbe to even begin to fathom that many people. Large settlements were still rare in the North and places they raid and even those would likely barely break a couple hundred — if that.

“I imagine I don’t think I’d ever want to communicate with so many in any way.”

He laughs, nodding. "Not everyone does. I don't. I...don't really spend time with many people, but some people like to."

"Why don't you?"

"I just..." He takes a breath, looking down at his hands momentarily. "I've never really been a great storyteller, and...I'm not a huge fan of crowds?"

"But you're good with people," Ubbe counters. It didn't take a genius to notice that much and Ubbe is perceptive, another trait he inherited from his father. His eyebrows raise as he takes in the other's reaction, tilting his head.

He shakes his head. "I'm good at getting a read on people, and...I believe in people. I'm not a leader...or an entertainer."

"A good leader would say much the same things," Ubbe said but he shrugs. Leadership is not for everyone after all, neither is entertaining. But after all, Aaron had basically described a large portion of Ubbe's father's personality and leadership and Ragnar was the most famous Viking king of his day.

"Why do you believe in people?"

He shakes his head at that, bashful, glancing down momentarily. "Fine. Maybe, if pressed, I could lead, I don't know, a youth group, but I'll leave the rest to someone else. if it's all the same to you."

He cleared his throat before continuing. "I've seen what people are capable of when they come together under one banner. We have so much capacity for cruelty, I know that, but directed into a positive objective, we can accomplish anything. We're passionate, unyielding when we believe in something, and we love so much, it's...hard to really put into words."

Ubbe looks amused, although he has no idea what he means by “youth group”. But the amusement turns into something more of a genuine smile by the end of things as he tilts his head to look at Aaron.

In truth, the things that Aaron says are more akin to Ubbe’s beliefs about people and the world than his fellow Vikings. In a less obvious way, Ubbe has been as much out of place as his crippled brother has been in their world. Ivar actually belonged in spite of his legs. Ubbe only belonged because of his birthright. By most accounts he would be considered a terrible Viking despite his fighting and strategic prowess.

“You speak wisely.”

He rolls his shoulder in a dismissive shrug. He didn't really feel that wise. It just made sense to him. "I've seen people at their worst. I guess it serves to reason I would encourage them to be at their best."

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