Sonja Late-March Catch-All

[confirmationbias]

Characters: Sonja, Gene, Valdis & OPEN
Date: March 24-30
Location: The Midnight Hotel, The Welcome Center, and around the various sectors of Keeliai
Situation: People meeting with Sonja. She doesn't bite... with her teeth
Warnings/Rating: none


A: Harmless Plotting - The Midnight Hotel (Closed to Gene)

Sonja had left a message with Anton to request Gene join her in her room on the third floor when he saw him. While Sonja occasionally went down to the commons, especially to eat, it was generally tiring and she was often glad to retreat back to her room. 

So while she waited for Gene, she was holed up in her room, listening to the radio on her phone and scribbling out some math on printing costs. 


B: TableTop - The Welcome Center (Valdis & OPEN)

Sonja came to the hotel center late in the month with a stuffed satchel. She dropped it onto a table near the center of the main room and started pulling things out - wooden boxes, parchment rolls, a few sacks, and some loose-leaf paper. 

She rearranged some space on the bookcase and started to neatly stack the various materials. When she was done, she took one of the loose leaf papers, scribbled a few characters on it (some of them using some reference) and then hung it from the shelf, becoming a sign that said, in several languages including Japanese, Chinese, and Kedan - "Games."

During lulls at the center when Sonja wasn't tooling around on the consoles and crashing people's Network posts, she would take a game off the shelf and start trying to write up rules in different languages, or just for kicks, play herself. 


C: Making Rounds - Around Keeliai (OPEN)

Sonja is still making her way through the sectors, following Wan's plan of trying different combinations to solve the console message. She was getting pretty bored of that whole thing, and the only thing keeping her going was that she'd committed to it. 

It's not like she didn't like walking around Keeliai anyway. It was good exercise, and it was a good opportunity to meet people, get recognized, see new things, new people. Walking through town was her 'on' mode, and she looked a lot less likely to say 'bug off' if you approached her than normal. 

Sonja was a prodigious documentarian, and could be seen frequently taking pictures, or scribbling notes, or making person memos into her phone as she wandered around. She was also loose with her money, frequently stopping in shops and throwing a juulan or two around. 

Comments

B: Let the chess mastering begin!

[redlightgreenlight]

Valdis had never visited the Welcome Center before, but feeling quite aimless, she decided to see what it was all about. The first thing she noticed was that Sonja was busily scribbling away at something. A chess board was set up nearby and so Valdis made her way over and sat down next to the young girl.

"What are you up to these days?" She asked, hoping that the girl was making good on her promise to limit her time in the fire sector.

[confirmationbias]

"Huh?" Sonja said, not looking up. She kept scribbling at something until she finished her thought. A few seconds later, she remembered that someone had asked her something and looked up.

"Oh! Valdis, hi." She didn't think she'd seen Valdis in her- human form? That was a weird thing to think about. She hadn't seen Valdis as a woman in awhile.

"Nothing much. Giving that 'polite and respectful' thing a try."

[redlightgreenlight]

"And how is that going?" She asked, pulling the chess board over, ignoring the pain in her head in favor of looking over the board.

[confirmationbias]

A frown. "I'll let you know."

She noticed Valdis looking at the board. "Do you play?" Sonja was rather fond of the game.

She grabbed the sack of pieces and pushed it over to Valdis. The pieces were crude but recognizable.

"I commissioned a craftsman to make the pieces. A few juulan only gets you such good craftsmanship, but it'll do."

[redlightgreenlight]

A smile slowly lit up her features and Valdis opened the bag and began to set up the board. "Chess is the game of nobility and warfare," She replied, "Of course I play." Within moments the board was ready. "Black or white?"

Perhaps this was what she needed to get her mind off of things.

C

[theideaguy]

Sokka has been working on this magical little puzzle thing as well for the last long while, though he's currently not working on it. There's only so much he can take before he's fed up with it, though the Siren's call of it will eventually draw him back to looking over it. Though unlike Sonja, most of his work is academic. He's trying to come up with answers rather than prove them because, honestly, he remains convinced that once the answer works, he's convinced he'll just know it works. The right answer will make sense, in other words.

But instead, he's just on his way home from work. He's heading back through the Metal Sector, and it just so happens that, along the route he's taking back to the Midnight Hotel, he's going to run into Sonja. Not literally run into her... but you know, see her a little ways off.

She won't see him because she happens to be going the same direction he is, and so Sokka will jostle through some kedan, issuing the necessary apologies, to catch up.

"Hey, what are you up to? I don't usually run into you outside."

[confirmationbias]

"Oh! Uh, wandering sectors in a semi-random fashion, in an attempt to gather data for Wan's puzzle plan while also dipping into shops that look interesting, seeking out unusual phenomenon for observation, and also contemplating the nature of existence."

Also maybe looking for a place that has a console she could break into to retrieve pus, but best not spread that around willy-nilly.

[theideaguy]

Sokka's jaw drops a little bit when he hears the sheer size of the list she's working on. "All of that at once? That's quite the... list of things to do." Though... upon reflection, well... that last one she says isn't probably entirely legitimate, huh?

"I don't suppose you've made any more progress on it than I have, huh?" he says a little solemnly. "I've been banging my head against the wall trying to think of anything else that might solve it, and I've got nothing!"

[confirmationbias]

"Yeah, it's not exactly encouraging. Is there any one thing you want to get out of solving the puzzle?"

B.

[wintershepherd]

"It looks like you're settling in well," Jack said, eyeing the games she'd set up. "That one looks kind of like Parcheesi. Wait, do you have Parcheesi in your world?"

[confirmationbias]

"I'm not sure. I think it plays something like Green Earth's game, Twenty Five, but I never played it, just seen pictures.

"From what I gathered, you move your pieces through the circle and crosses based on the results of throwing the sticks. There are supposed to be elements of capturing, but I'm hazy on the details."

[wintershepherd]

"Right idea," Jack agreed. "Even though I've never hard of Twenty Five, which is no way nearly as fun to say as Parcheesi. I really want to know what someone was thinking when they named that. But then, the 50's were weird for naming. Frisbee!"

[confirmationbias]

"I'm sure it's a good story," Sonja said. It was kind of hard to guess what words were supposed to be funny sounding when everything was in a foreign language?

"Up for a game?"

B

[whitelotustile]

"I don't suppose you've learned Pai Sho?" Iroh had noticed Sonja and the games, and he was always interested in finding a partner to play with. Zuko would indulge him, and Wan would play if they used the old rules, but Iroh could usually beat either of them.

[confirmationbias]

"I can't say I've heard of it. How does it work?"

The name was reminiscent of another game she was familiar with that deal with dominoes, but she tended to avoid it due to its emphasis on randomness rather than skill.

[whitelotustile]

"It's played with game pieces on a board." Iroh gave a brief rundown of the game, including the note of local variations -- some sets of rules make it more luck-based, while others make it a game more like a hybrid of chess and go.

[confirmationbias]

"I see. The chance aspect is dictated by how much control you have over which tiles you can draw and place."

Otherwise the movement was interesting but no more complicated than Shogi. Harmonies were a little bit more complicated, but she'd learn them pretty quick.

"I suspect that the random tile draw ruleset is a bit friendlier to new players, so lets play that."

A, late as hell, March 24

[wrathfulkhan]

Gene had received the message from Sonja via Anton, and made his way up to her room as soon as he was able.

Once he reached it, he knocked on the door, curious as to why she'd requested his company.

[confirmationbias]

Sonja opened the door.

"Oh good, you got the message. I was a little afraid we'd miss each other. Did you want to come in?"

She opened the door wide to give him space. It was one of the larger rooms in the hotel, with a double bed, a private washroom and a window. There was a small coffee table flanked by two chairs. There was a bowl of sunflower seeds on the table (as well as a second bowl with discarded seed husks) and also a stoneware wine decanter and two cups on a platter, set beside a number of loose leaf pages.

The window sill was lined with a few fancy (but cheap) trinkets and a vase with some flowers, as well as a couple of books. The last piece of furniture in the room was another bookcase with several more assorted books on it.

[wrathfulkhan]

"Sure," he said, stepping into her room. It was about the size of the room that Gene shared with Tony. The room was sparsely decorated - it being the Hotel, after all, and it's hard to make a hotel a home - but nice, for all that.

"You wanted to see me?"

[confirmationbias]

"Yeah, I think we talked about meeting up again at the Tea shop, right?"

She closed the door and took a seat at the table, then started pouring some warm, clear liquid into the cups.

"Would you like some rice wine?"

B.

[12goingon113]

I don't think I've ever seen any of these before," Aang says to no one in particular while perusing the games being offered on the shelf of games.

[confirmationbias]

Oh, this is that 'Avatar' that Sokka was talking about, right? Can't be too many little bald kids with arrows on their heads walking around, could there?

Sonja logged off the console and acknowledged the newcomer.

"Some of them are just games that I found at different shops, some of Kedan origin, some of Foreigner origin, I assume. Others I've had commissioned, based on games back in my own world."

She was pretty hazy on some of the Kedan ones. Most Kedan didn't have a lot of patience to explain the rules to the game they learned as children to foreigners.

"You could probably assemble most games from the pieces available, as long as you can explain the rules."

[12goingon113]

Aang's a little less little now than he used to be, but...still scrawny by anyone's definition.

He sheepishly turns towards the voice, shoulders slouching slightly as he does so. Seems he didn't know you were right there when you were...er...right there.

"Woah, you must really like games."

[confirmationbias]

"They are fun. And useful."

[“You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.” ― Plato]

"Interested in playing one?"