Anton Shudder (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
gistful) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
tushanshu_logs2016-04-01 08:49 pm
gistful) wrote in tushanshu_logs2016-04-01 08:49 pm
[Midnight Hotel] April catch-all
Characters: Anyone, everyone.
Date: Month of APRIL, 2016 (2017 in-game).
Location: The Midnight Hotel.
Situation: Catch-all post and April Fool’s Day! Feel free to use this post for anything that happens within the Midnight Hotel during the month, using the subject header to label specific rooms or for specific people. See also the OOC note at the bottom.
Warnings/Rating: Mark your threads if content warnings become applicable, please!
The month of April kicks off with gusto with a Hotel-wide prank.
On April Fool’s Day, everyone will wake up to discover that everything is on the ceiling. Yes, everything – the ceiling is now the floor. Even the people sleeping in the beds are on the ceiling. Careful when you get out – don’t fall!
On the plus side, even things like food and items are affected, as if there’s a small localised anti-gravity field around everything/everyone, so there’s no mess, no fuss; there’s also no flipped skirts, no dangling hair, no blood rushing to the head. Whoever performed the prank has done a lot to make sure it’s fun, rather than a health-hazard.
Of course, some climbing might be needed to reach the fridges, and only the microwaves are really safe to use, since they’re on the ceiling with the furniture – unlike the ovens and stoves. The network console is a little bit more difficult to get to, but someone’s also created a set of hand-holds going from the lobby ceiling to the entry/exit doors (with a lighter-gravity effect so they can be easily used just by pulling oneself along, rather than needing to climb). There’s an area a few feet around the entrance where gravity slowly rights itself, to minimise difficulties getting out the door.
There’s also an area – the sitting area on the lobby balcony, right over Anton’s private rooms – where the anti-grav is ‘malfunctioning’; that is, there’s a zero-gravity effect. (When the kedanese children discover this, about mid-morning, it becomes the favoured kidlet location, and won’t be uncommon to see children floating around over the reception area, shapeshifting miniature wings, flippers or paddles to give them some movement.)
Luckily, there are ways to get around being relegated to the ceiling for a day! For one thing, only people who wear shoes will be affected (no rifling through private drawers here); and only people who were in the Hotel the last few days. Someone walking off the street who hasn’t visited for a while won’t be. On the other hand, someone affected can take an unaffected person’s hand and it would work the same way – the effect will even linger for a little while after, if contact ends.
For those characters who will try to look at the man behind the curtain, the prank is relatively simple. The last few days of March, Anton (with Erskine as a go-between as needed) requested everyone’s shoes with an offer to label them with everyone’s names. The guise comes under the legitimate observation that many kedan who frequent the Hotel take off their shoes while they’re inside, and shoes are getting mixed up – so to prevent a loss of patron’s shoes, Anton will label them. (John Constantine’s shoes, if he turns any of them over, are oh-so-helpfully labelled as the property of ‘Joan of Constantinople’; meanwhile Yorda receives her very first pair of custom leather sandals.)
In the course of the labelling, Anton’s drawn an erasable sigil on the soles of the shoes. These sigils are covered by the name labels, so they aren’t immediately visible, and they show no magical presence until the second part of the prank kicks in overnight: a very subtle ward which covers the whole of the Hotel and dictates which direction the internal gravity falls. The furniture has been bestowed with similar sigils, quite frequently hidden inside River’s labels.
Anton himself will react to the whole thing as if nothing is different, and will perform his usual daily duties with bland impassiveness.
Not all of the kedan approve of the prank, given the circumstances, but on the whole it lightens the Hotel’s atmosphere, even after April Fool’s is over.
After April Fool's the Hotel's furniture will be back to normal! For the rest of the month, none of the kedan in the Hotel are nearly as belligerent as elsewhere and will quite willingly talk to Foreigners, but many of them are obviously grieving, frequently in groups.
There is a definable change to the Hotel's evening processes in April also. Namely, Anton has bought a piano and installed it in the larger dining area, near the unused 'bar'/secondary prep area. Anyone is free to play it during the day, but in the evening, from 7pm to 11pm, Lucifer is on shift to provide mood music. For the whole of this month, many kedan will request dirges or songs otherwise appropriate to grieving for a loved one.
At the same time, Anton will open up the Hotel's kitchen and dining as a walk-in restaurant. This is on a provisional basis to test the veracity of the idea. That means there's an uptick in classiness in the evenings – though there is still an area in the kitchen set aside for those who would prefer to make their own meals or use the prepacked ones, and the service cooks are well aware not to encroach on that space (or steal their utensils). There is a menu with many Earth-influenced dishes (and an occasional kedanese overtone). Many of these tastes are still new to the kedan, that makes the restaurant function fairly popular!
The service area of the kitchen will be open from 5pm to 10pm, but the kitchen itself will remain open at all hours, as is usual, for those who make their own meals. The 'restaurant' kitchen staff are all kedan who had already been cooking meals for their own families, but will now be conditionally members of the staff for the restaurant function. (They will not perform requests outside the offered menu, or meals outside the allotted time, as their duties are limited to the 'restaurant' function rather than the Hotel at large, and they therefore have no obligation to Hotel patrons who aren't also restaurant patrons.)
[APRIL FOOL’S NOTE: If your character is on the staff and you’d like to assume Anton or Erskine asked them to help collect shoes from patrons, feel free! They would have been given the same reason as everyone else.]
[The Midnight Hotel’s status page is available here, with the rules at the top. PLEASE POST TO THE STATUS PAGE IF YOUR CHARACTER WOULD LIKE A ROOM, JOB OR AREA IN THE GARAGE, OR ARE MOVING OUT. Anton will manufacture means of payment until Foreigners are able to properly offer recompense or choose to move out.]
Date: Month of APRIL, 2016 (2017 in-game).
Location: The Midnight Hotel.
Situation: Catch-all post and April Fool’s Day! Feel free to use this post for anything that happens within the Midnight Hotel during the month, using the subject header to label specific rooms or for specific people. See also the OOC note at the bottom.
Warnings/Rating: Mark your threads if content warnings become applicable, please!
The month of April kicks off with gusto with a Hotel-wide prank.
On April Fool’s Day, everyone will wake up to discover that everything is on the ceiling. Yes, everything – the ceiling is now the floor. Even the people sleeping in the beds are on the ceiling. Careful when you get out – don’t fall!
On the plus side, even things like food and items are affected, as if there’s a small localised anti-gravity field around everything/everyone, so there’s no mess, no fuss; there’s also no flipped skirts, no dangling hair, no blood rushing to the head. Whoever performed the prank has done a lot to make sure it’s fun, rather than a health-hazard.
Of course, some climbing might be needed to reach the fridges, and only the microwaves are really safe to use, since they’re on the ceiling with the furniture – unlike the ovens and stoves. The network console is a little bit more difficult to get to, but someone’s also created a set of hand-holds going from the lobby ceiling to the entry/exit doors (with a lighter-gravity effect so they can be easily used just by pulling oneself along, rather than needing to climb). There’s an area a few feet around the entrance where gravity slowly rights itself, to minimise difficulties getting out the door.
There’s also an area – the sitting area on the lobby balcony, right over Anton’s private rooms – where the anti-grav is ‘malfunctioning’; that is, there’s a zero-gravity effect. (When the kedanese children discover this, about mid-morning, it becomes the favoured kidlet location, and won’t be uncommon to see children floating around over the reception area, shapeshifting miniature wings, flippers or paddles to give them some movement.)
Luckily, there are ways to get around being relegated to the ceiling for a day! For one thing, only people who wear shoes will be affected (no rifling through private drawers here); and only people who were in the Hotel the last few days. Someone walking off the street who hasn’t visited for a while won’t be. On the other hand, someone affected can take an unaffected person’s hand and it would work the same way – the effect will even linger for a little while after, if contact ends.
For those characters who will try to look at the man behind the curtain, the prank is relatively simple. The last few days of March, Anton (with Erskine as a go-between as needed) requested everyone’s shoes with an offer to label them with everyone’s names. The guise comes under the legitimate observation that many kedan who frequent the Hotel take off their shoes while they’re inside, and shoes are getting mixed up – so to prevent a loss of patron’s shoes, Anton will label them. (John Constantine’s shoes, if he turns any of them over, are oh-so-helpfully labelled as the property of ‘Joan of Constantinople’; meanwhile Yorda receives her very first pair of custom leather sandals.)
In the course of the labelling, Anton’s drawn an erasable sigil on the soles of the shoes. These sigils are covered by the name labels, so they aren’t immediately visible, and they show no magical presence until the second part of the prank kicks in overnight: a very subtle ward which covers the whole of the Hotel and dictates which direction the internal gravity falls. The furniture has been bestowed with similar sigils, quite frequently hidden inside River’s labels.
Anton himself will react to the whole thing as if nothing is different, and will perform his usual daily duties with bland impassiveness.
Not all of the kedan approve of the prank, given the circumstances, but on the whole it lightens the Hotel’s atmosphere, even after April Fool’s is over.
After April Fool's the Hotel's furniture will be back to normal! For the rest of the month, none of the kedan in the Hotel are nearly as belligerent as elsewhere and will quite willingly talk to Foreigners, but many of them are obviously grieving, frequently in groups.
There is a definable change to the Hotel's evening processes in April also. Namely, Anton has bought a piano and installed it in the larger dining area, near the unused 'bar'/secondary prep area. Anyone is free to play it during the day, but in the evening, from 7pm to 11pm, Lucifer is on shift to provide mood music. For the whole of this month, many kedan will request dirges or songs otherwise appropriate to grieving for a loved one.
At the same time, Anton will open up the Hotel's kitchen and dining as a walk-in restaurant. This is on a provisional basis to test the veracity of the idea. That means there's an uptick in classiness in the evenings – though there is still an area in the kitchen set aside for those who would prefer to make their own meals or use the prepacked ones, and the service cooks are well aware not to encroach on that space (or steal their utensils). There is a menu with many Earth-influenced dishes (and an occasional kedanese overtone). Many of these tastes are still new to the kedan, that makes the restaurant function fairly popular!
The service area of the kitchen will be open from 5pm to 10pm, but the kitchen itself will remain open at all hours, as is usual, for those who make their own meals. The 'restaurant' kitchen staff are all kedan who had already been cooking meals for their own families, but will now be conditionally members of the staff for the restaurant function. (They will not perform requests outside the offered menu, or meals outside the allotted time, as their duties are limited to the 'restaurant' function rather than the Hotel at large, and they therefore have no obligation to Hotel patrons who aren't also restaurant patrons.)
[APRIL FOOL’S NOTE: If your character is on the staff and you’d like to assume Anton or Erskine asked them to help collect shoes from patrons, feel free! They would have been given the same reason as everyone else.]
[The Midnight Hotel’s status page is available here, with the rules at the top. PLEASE POST TO THE STATUS PAGE IF YOUR CHARACTER WOULD LIKE A ROOM, JOB OR AREA IN THE GARAGE, OR ARE MOVING OUT. Anton will manufacture means of payment until Foreigners are able to properly offer recompense or choose to move out.]
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Despite the question, there was no sense of alarm in Anton, no sense of shame or a need to hide in the event his guess was accurate.
Friends covered for each other, picked up the slack. The only healer Anton had ever known who would deliberately put himself in someone else's position, do things they were meant to do, for someone with whom he had only a passing relationship with, was Hopeless. Primarily it was a reflection of his sense of his patient's responsibility. Sometimes it was just because Hopeless was like Anton--he'd been born and raised a servant of others.
That was why the sense of deja vu. Anton hadn't seen the similarities at first, with how Amberdrake made himself noticed, because Hopeless had been the opposite--he'd made himself unseen. But the gentle, carefully-spoken manner was the same.
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It was a common disclaimer, coming out of his mouth.
And while Sanzo was more to Drake than a mere patient... the feeling wasn't mutual. Anton's read on him was right; Amberdrake was a kestra'chern. His time was never his own. Even after having been made the leader of his people... Drake merely saw it as more responsibility. More to do, to ensure all his people were safe.
It didn't fan his ego, and he'd never introduce himself as the King of White Gryphon. No, he was just a kestra'chern. A kestra'chern who'd been put in charge of taking care of a lot more people than usual.
He tilted his head to one side, a little. Curious. "You don't seem alarmed at the idea of a mind-reader... have you known many with that ability?"
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"Many?" Anton repeated thoughtfully, with a kind of reserved nostalgia. "No. Only one. But I suppose you could call him an empath as well; it was the emotions attached to the thoughts which dragged him into them. It isn't a common ability, where I'm from. He was hunted for it."
Which ... didn't precisely answer Amberdrake's implicit question. So Anton added, "He was a member of my unit in a very long war. We became brothers, the lot of us. After two centuries, there was very little any of us tried to hide from him."
As if they'd ever been able to do so. When Hopeless said nothing, it was because his vow of silence was just that strong, or because he believed it was the best thing for them.
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He unclasped his hands to make a vague gesture at himself with his tattooed hand. The golden lotus, hand-drawn, was spread across his entire palm. "Empaths are often mistaken for mind-readers, I find. But I can only feel the emotion one gives off. I could tell if someone was angry, but not why. Not until I found other clues; other puzzle pieces to form context."
As a kestra'chern, those puzzle pieces formed much of his life. Never a complete picture, of course. Just pieces, here and there...
"You are a soldier, then?" Drake asked next, letting his hands drop to his sides. "Two... centuries... of war?" Amberdrake stared. He'd thought a decade of war was an eternity! It had certainly felt like one. Though to be fair, Amberdrake had been in the center of the Mage War since long before it had been actually called a war.
It wasn't a war until someone opposed the conqueror, after all. Someone who didn't immediately end up dying on a stake by the side of the road as a warning to others, at least.
Not that Urtho hadn't met with just as terrible a fate in the end, but at least he'd managed to drag the Kimyavir down with him.
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"I was," Anton acknowledged. "In my world magic has a rejuvenating effect. People such as I live to be centuries old." Anton himself was over five-hundred, had already started going grey; middle-aged, for a sorcerer. "The war was against a rather impractically powerful and charming zealot. He wanted to open our dimension to his dark gods. We objected. So the war ran. You're a mental therapist?"
The description was altogether too much like Hopeless's initial explanations of his odd habits, the way he talked to people, the way he sought out their inner beings. The deja vu was strong, now, and so was the nostalgia and the resigned, long-held wistfulness of regret. "People like you--" And him. "--are accepted, not feared, in your world?"
no subject
His skin.
"It's more complicated than 'accepted' or 'hunted'," Amberdrake finally settled on saying. "It depended on where one was, and... when one was. Our war was against a powerful zealot as well; he disliked anything that was not exactly like himself. He wanted to wipe out many categories of people I belong to... and we objected."
The smile he gave Anton was a wane one, full of years. Not as many years as Anton had gone through, but... years, anyway. "And so the war ran. Once there was a powerful enough opponent to his madness for us to rally behind, at least."
Us. Amberdrake had been in Urtho's army as surely as any soldier. He'd been Urtho's friend. His own kestra'chern, in fact, and he still guarded his dead leader's secrets, even now.
"Mental therapist is a very... simplified way to put it, but yes," Drake shifted back to this topic. "The term on my world is kestra'chern. Holistic therapist; healer of the mind and heart. That I am an Empath, or a Healer... those are unnecessary for my true profession. Though I do make use of them in fulfilling my duties, of course." Why waste what he had?
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Then he smiled slightly, at Amberdrake's echo of his words. "We've had one of those as well," he admitted, "but he was mortal, and rose to power some time after the magical war."
God only knew what might have happened to the world if Hitler had been around at the same time as Mevolent--if the secrecy pact had even managed to survive that long.
"Kestra-chern," Anton repeated thoughtfully, with the intonation of a man well-used to learning new languages on the fly. "We call it psychology--the study of the mind. Psychologists, or psychiatrists, for the therapists. The principle is academically recent, and there's still a good deal of doubt as to its uses--even among sorcerers." Who ought to know better. So much for that. "Hopeless had been interested in that study for quite some time. He always said he didn't have much of a choice, given his abilities."
And still not a twig of discomfort, though the wistful regret grew a bit sharper, underscored by quiet, grim concern. It was nearly impossible, these days, to think of Hopeless without thinking of Erskine.
"Will you--" Anton began before he'd really thought it through, and then checked himself. No, terrible idea; even if the mannerisms Anton had noticed went skin-deep, they would still be liable to make Erskine miss Hopeless all the more. Bad enough, to try and get Erskine to see someone about his mental pains, without that someone reminding him of the man he'd lost.
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It was a job that was really hard to quantify in another language!
"Will I what?" Drake prompted with a gentle smile. Yes, he could tell Anton had second-guessed the question, but that didn't stop him from prodding, just a little bit. Sometimes that was all it took.
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He cut off abruptly at the smile and the gentle prompt. It was exactly the way Hopeless would have done it--answered a half-finished statement with a prodding question, with an encouraging smile. The similarity was downright eerie.
If he'd had any doubts about the goodness of the idea, they were thus confirmed. "I was going to ask whether you intended to begin a practice here," Anton said, quite honest, "because I have a friend in need of such services. But I do not think you would be ... suitable, after all. You would remind him too much of Hopeless."
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That was something he'd done on plenty of occasions, when he wasn't the ideal fit for a client. And others had referred clients to him, as well, for the same reasons.
"I don't know how to not be a kestra'chern," he added thoughtfully, about opening a practice. And then he gestured around them at the hotel as a whole with his tattooed hand, and smiled again. "I get the feeling you understand that, too." This building wasn't something Anton had idly taken up. There was no way. Not with all the power invested in it; the way it spanned more space than it should...
Drake was pretty sure that, had he had Magesight, this place would have been blinding to it.
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Creating a sanctuary. Perpetuating a sanctuary. Too many nations were willing to live and let live, allow evil men to escape justice, for the sake of ending the war. Too many nations set aside their allies in favour of 'peace'.
... Which brought him back to another, quite legitimate concern, this time on Amberdrake's behalf. Anton brought his gaze back to the other man. "How does your Empathic Gift work?" he asked evenly. "If you do not wish to give me details I understand; but I ask for the sake of your comfort, as my presence may give you some discomfort when your Gift is at its usual strength."
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"...What sort of discomfort, and why?" he asked, "You seem quite mellow, but I know that could be an act." It wasn't the least bit accusatory; Drake himself was often putting on an act, if only to hide his anxieties and profound sadness. Kestra'chern didn't burden others with that stuff; especially not the top kestra'chern. He had no peers to lean on, not really.
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"I'm under a contract with my magic," Anton said simply. "It's taken my most negative emotions--my hatred and my rage--and turned them into a physical being called a gist. Most of the time, it's contained with me and cannot interact with the rest of the world, though it dearly wishes it could. Hopeless could sense it, but it isn't precisely a being of thought. It may be more defined for you."
So, after a fashion, Amberdrake was right--Anton's evenness was an act, in that it concealed something greater behind it. But it was also what Anton wanted to be, so after a fashion it was the truer face than what it hid.
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"That doesn't sound particularly healthy, to me. Locking it away, that is. But," and true to a kestra'chern, "I can hardly claim full understanding of your contract and of your ways. We are from two very different places, after all."
What worked for Anton worked for Anton. Locking part of one's self away... Drake would never recommend it, but he understood that they were from two completely different worlds.
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He'd tried it before, not always seriously. To give the gist quarter was to start losing lengths of chain, until the gist was all that was left. There was a reason Anton was known for being older than most gist-users lived to be.
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"I think I understand," he said finally, "at least, as much as one can without experiencing it. Is that why you strive to make the Hotel a safe haven; because it is the opposite of what the gist would do?"
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"I wish you luck, when you return." He bowed slightly. "But as you are here, please alert me to anything you might need."
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