( open ) liberate your sons and daughters the bush is high but in the hole there's water

[synergismus]

Who: Everyone!
What: Events around the city, any time.
Where: Everywhere in Baedal.
When: Whenever you’d like.
Notes:

• Behold, your all-purpose open game log. There are a couple pre-written starters to help you generate new and open CR, and you may also use this post to start your own group activities or planned threads. GO WILD!
  
• No one is late to this post. You may use it forever.
  
• The companion thread for this post is right here!
  
• DON'T THINK TOO HARD ABOUT IT JUST RP.
  
• Helpful links: Neighbourhoods, City Map.
  
• Lucky Pastry Advice for the Month of Velldaren: A truly rich life contains love and art in abundance.
  

Warnings: Zombie horrors in the appropriately titled ZOMBIES! thread, otherwise TBA. Please put warnings in subject lines of your comments if content warrants one.

Comments

[payglorytoashes]

Rodolphus stands shunted off to the side, away from no one group of people in particular, just... away. Out of the way, he would say if asked, but if asked, he would be very surprised indeed. He's holding a mug of hot chocolate but only for the warmth, though he does have a jacket on — something dark, of course, and tailored to his somewhat old-fashioned taste. He stares up at the dome almost as soon as he arrives and picks his place, unmoved and uninterested by the conversations and people around him. If he didn't like being in the middle of it, though, he wouldn't have come. Sobek Croix is comparatively isolated from city lights and he could easily have used magic to provide an enlarged view just for himself, if he'd been so inclined.

[thiswaycomes]

The stars here make no sense. It's maddening.

She hasn't been here long enough to grasp the haphazard clockwork and so the sky frequently seems irrational to her. She'd come hoping for some better explanations but while the lecturers are helpful they're not as in-depth as she would prefer.

It's possible there's no one in this city that would discuss science to the depth the Rani desires.

But the meteor shower is at least engaging. Her attention is on the dome above, and she drifts backwards a few steps for a better vantage point. A bump tells her she ought to have checked before moving; she turns to see she's gently collided with a man. She'd leave it at a polite nod but she sees he holds one of those drinks being handed out, between that and this being something of a social event, she supposes some pleasantry is in order.

"My apologies. Have I caused you to spill your drink?"

[payglorytoashes]

He has, as Bellatrix might testify, not much estimable ability in the art of evasion, particularly not when he's staring up at the sky. In any case, while a quiet, unathletic man, he is also a 6'2" naturally broad-shouldered man, someone who is less accustomed to moving out of other people's way than he is to crowds accommodating his. Perhaps that has more to do with his habitual million mile stare than his size.

Rodolphus glances at the Rani, then his cup, then his jacket. Polite society usually calls for a polite lie in response to polite inquiries, but there is no hiding the spill. Not that he seems to care very much.

"Yes," he says simply. "It is fine."

Unsurprisingly, a wizard from a self-isolated magical community has little awareness of science, though he has studied enough astronomy to grasp the basic mechanics and the basic poetic nature of stars and space. He looks back up, perfectly indifferent to having spilled his drink on himself, a strange and silent communion which seems entirely one way: the sight of the meteors goes into him, is apparently swallowed up, and nothing comes out.

[thiswaycomes]

Polite society usually expects a polite offer to right any wrong visited upon a polite stranger, even after a polite refusal, but this man genuinely does not seem to care. And that suits the Rani just fine. She can play at being nice, jump through all the ought to hoops one is expected to obey, but if she doesn't have to...

She watches him for a long moment, watching the way the spectacle above is clearly taken in, deeply, but there is no outward display--yet another thing polite society expects. While she may be reasonably well-versed in their ways, the Rani is far enough removed--by her own choice--from it to not be able to fully grasp its more subtle cues. She cannot read a person, cannot know what they might be thinking, not in the instinctual way most can glance at another and draw conclusions. So she cannot tell if this man is utterly lacking in I care about this sort of interest, or if he is so very interested he is lost in what he sees.

"An interest of yours?" A shoulder raises, head tilting ever so slightly. You know, all this, what's above us.

[payglorytoashes]

His initial response would seem to indicate the former, in the British tendency to misdirected understatement: "Passingly."

But aware that one word replies are not considered acceptable by polite society (and he is not yet aware that neither of them have to follow those rules, since neither of them give a flying fuck about them), Rodolphus lowers his eyes again to make eye contact.

"Of course, they are not 'my' stars." As if, his voice implies, the light reaching people's eyes from so far away that the star may be dead by now could belong to anyone, but you know what I mean. "But I do not miss them."

[thiswaycomes]

One eyebrow raises along with a nearly imperceptible lift of her shoulders, a shrug coming from someone who doesn't care enough to complete the gesture.

"I find myself in agreement on both counts." She doesn't miss her own universe, not in the sentimental way. She wants to be back there because it's where she belongs, but that's a tactical assessment, not some yearning from her pair of hearts.

"I thought I would come anyway. I thought I might at least learn something about this place."

[payglorytoashes]

Having run the gamut of his capacity to do the polite society thing, Rodolphus nods in agreement. He feels exactly the same way, so there's no reason to repeat it, right? Of all the burdens of polite conversation, it's the groping he hates the most. It seems you can have a stock of the correct answers, yet never truly be prepared for every interaction. Of course, he could try having a real conversation. She seems somewhat open to that, and if she were not (he thinks, unrepentant as only boring people who know they're boring can be) she shouldn't have said anything.

"It is not a place which yields knowledge," he says after a moment of careful assessment. "It yields mostly theater. Beautiful theater, such as this." He indicates the sky. "Yet what can we possibly learn from it? Our position in the universe, or in relation to other galaxies? It is only a different kind of Fog."

[thiswaycomes]

"And yet," she says, surveying the crowd with a disinterested gaze, "so many are taken with it. They allow it in such number that they must want it. I suppose for many it's an easier alternative to thinking for themselves."

She gazes back up at the shooting stars, magnified above their heads. "How wonderful," she muses, drily, "for the city that so much of its kidnapped populace feels that way." It must work wonders for control and for keeping them under whomever's thumb.

[payglorytoashes]

"Of course they want it," he says, calm in the irony of his circular reasoning as he looks back up, "it's beautiful."

And maybe he's talking about more than Baedal here; maybe there are one or two stars he misses from this sky. It is easy to ignore, however, as was his intention and as probably suits the Rani's social intuition. What's left of the cocoa is tepid. He tastes it on a whim, and it tastes exactly like tepid free cocoa.

"Let them." Rodolphus concludes with a shrug. Who am I to know better? The Rani must have a different perspective, but he hardly suspects how different.

[thiswaycomes]

She supposes there's a sense to it--and it's not as if she hasn't held a populace under her thumb, relying on their interests elsewhere, on misdirection. But it chafes now that she's under the thumb, not the one pressing down.

She lets his remark about beauty go; it seems easy enough to do so, he doesn't seem to be anticipating a response. And honestly, it's easier than getting into why she finds beauty useless, especially in a place where so many have come to lose themselves in that idea.

"I'm the Rani," she offers, finally, one concession to the rules of interaction.

[payglorytoashes]

He looks back at her again with an expression of mild interest which has to do with his finally sensing they seem to be on the same page in regard to polite interaction. There's nothing he could really point to in her manner that would support that conclusion; it could even be wishful thinking on his part. Yet he feels it's acceptable to return the name and not offer any other normally obligatory gesture.

"Rodolphus Lestrange," he answers. Rani sounds a title, but he has no official title to give her in response. Nothing he'd care to claim here, anyway, apart from 'Hellsing agent', which he deems unnecessary for now.

[thiswaycomes]

She nods, giving him a cursory glance in response to his name, then filing it away mentally. She doesn't try to shake his hand, or offer any of those empty pleasantries like how nice to meet you. And it pleases her that he doesn't seem to require them.

"How do you make your living here?" And even that's not polite conversation; she finds it beneficial to know what people do, how they might be of use to her.

[payglorytoashes]

"I work for a guild." Not everybody is a fan of Hellsing, but he will answer if she presses. "And you?"

This question is only polite seeming. Rodolphus is genuinely curious. 'What do you do' is almost always a much more interesting answer in Baedal than it is elsewhere.

[thiswaycomes]

"I work for myself." It may sound rather more self-important than the standard answer to that question, but it's true. "I'm a scientist--I study many areas but my specialty is in neurochemistry and neurobiology. I contract with interested parties for products. It's serving me well so far in the city.