[Midnight Hotel] Fourth-wall catch-all; 15-30 April 2016

[gistful]

Characters: Anyone, everyone.
Date: 15-30th April, 2016 (2017 in-game).
Location: The Midnight Hotel.
Situation: It’s the fourth-wall event and there’s a sudden influx of patrons! Feel free to use this post for anything that happens within the Midnight Hotel during the two weeks of the fourth-wall event, using the subject header to label specific rooms or for specific people. Regulars should feel free to continue using the non-fourth-wall Hotel post for pre-fourth-wall threads! See also the OOC note at the bottom.
Warnings/Rating: Mark your threads if content warnings become applicable, please!

Once more, it seems, the Dreaming has seen fit to lure in temporary residents. Luckily, the Hotel and its kedanese staff have done this before -- even accounting for the fact that it isn't exactly usual. If this goes on, they may start to predict the event!

It takes a day or so to sort things out, but once sorted the Hotel breaks out the same sleeping-bags as they had last time, and set aside as many areas of the common-room and even the lobby as sleeping areas. Any spare bed-rooms are also filled to the brim, though there aren't many of those these days.

The Hotel, like some of the other buildings around Keeliai, displays some occasional damage of the explosion-that-wasn't; in fact, seems to show it more obviously than most other places. Mostly it's cracks in frames or the smell of smoke in random areas, or some loose shingles; the worst that happens is the plumbing may be a bit unreliable until the wards can right themselves.

As before, Mr Shudder lets Foreigners without a soul-gem stay for free, as long as they follow the rules--which they are told upon entry. (Most notably, that's the 'no violence' rule.) Luckily, the new walk-in restaurant function means there's plenty to eat for everyone, and the cooking staff are on overtime this fortnight to make sure everyone is provided for.

Strangely, Mr Shudder himself is scarce for these two weeks. He does drop by in the evenings to make sure things are progressing well, but if anyone asks all he'll say is that some old friends have arrived and he and Erskine are helping them out elsewhere in the city. Anton will be around if anything untoward happens--but for the most part management is performed either by Anton's kedanese staff, or by Klaus von Reinherz.


[ooc: The Midnight Hotel’s status page is available here, with the rules at the top and ongoing status at the bottom. PLEASE PM ME IF YOUR CHARACTER WILL PERFORM A VIOLENT ACT. The Hotel is a neutral-zone and the proprietor is very strict as to acts of violence, and it will receive a response.

It will not be necessary for fourth-wall characters to officially check into the Hotel during the event.]

Comments

[badly_behaved_priest]

Aside from the going unseen business, there really was nothing that overtly threatening or ill-intentioned about Hopeless' actions. Yet they seemed well thought out, especially if this man was exceptionally good at reading others as he appeared, possibly another Empath? Sanzo wasn't pleased at the idea, it was bad enough to have to deal with his roommate knowing just about everything he felt!

And the look in his eyes- this was not going to be someone Sanzo could rattle in return. He felt all the more defensive. There was no even footing here and it was his own damn fault for starting the interaction. Dammit.

"What are you even doing?" he snapped, gesturing at the common area in general. What were this guy's motives?

[scryinghope]

Well. Hopeless would certainly have to be careful; he wasn't used to people assuming 'empath', or anything similar, right off the bat. There wasn't anything similar in his world--except him. (At least, no one in recent enough memory to think of it as an option.)

But there was no indication of unnerve at Sanzo's hypothesis--just the same sorts of thoughts and emotions the commons already had. Hopeless could hide behind other's minds, if he was careful. So in answer to the question Hopeless only tilted his head slightly. "I'm trying to help," he said. "The explosion has put people off their guard. They're worried, and upset, and can use a bit of distraction from it. People tend to behave a bit strangely when they're worried. I'm good at noticing that sort of thing."

Behaviour, not emotion--which he was. He just ... was good at the other thing too.

He smiled a bit wryly. "But it's habit to try and observe people without being noticed myself. It was necessary, in the war I came from when I arrived here. May I make you some tea?"

[badly_behaved_priest]

Hopeless' reply eased some worries and gained Sanzo some new ones at the same time. For all he could tell, Hopeless wasn't lying and had little reason to. Being a combatant did explain the careful way he avoided being seen. It's not as if Sanzo and his group hadn't been sneaky here and there when they didn't just slash, bash, or blast things to literal pieces. This didn't make Hopeless much less unnerving but it was an explanation. As for his concern for others, that made Sanzo want to detach from this real fast.

The ones that openly cared tended to die and he already had one caring jackass to keep alive. Always the hypocrite, Sanzo was. The offer of tea was the least unsettling of the information he'd been given and it was not beyond him to accept food, drink, or shelter from suspicious sources but the less he got to know this man, the less horrible he'd have to feel if something horrible happened. Because surely something would.

"No," he replied, curt and with a false air of uncaring. "I don't need any help from you."

It was frustrating enough that Amberdrake could pull his therapist crap on Sanzo, he didn't need more of that. Especially not from someone so obnoxiously perceptive.

[scryinghope]

It certainly wasn't a lie; Hopeless had been hired as a valet precisely so he could spy, and when the war began he had gone into the work full-time, on behalf of his side. He just had one or two extra advantages in the course of it.

"I've noticed," Hopeless observed, "that when people say they don't 'need' help, it usually means they don't want it for one reason or another." He smiled. "Good thing I'm only offering tea. Possibly even a cake. I won't be here for long enough to bother you, anyway; I don't have a soul-gem."

(At the last, Sanzo might feel something different--a sense of sad acceptance, despite the lack of any other indications of what might be going on in Hopeless's head. It's not a deliberate broadcast on Hopeless's part, either; just the knowledge of when he was going back, and what he was leaving behind, and an emotion that was all his strong enough to rise above the background noise he used to cover everything else.)

[badly_behaved_priest]

Hopeless didn't play anywhere near the realm of fairness and Sanzo didn't know if he wanted to punch Hopeless or himself more right now. Goddamnit. Why did he say anything? Oh yeah, because he was an idiot.

"If it gets you to tone down the sad bullshit, I'll take the damn tea," Sanzo said, tone sharp but with an underlying layer of guilt.

[scryinghope]

Well, it wouldn't be the first time someone got annoyed at him for being 'prescient'. That fact isn't the one which is surprising.

"You're not exactly unobservant yourself, are you?" Hopeless noted. He hadn't said anything to indicate sadness over the fact that he might be leaving. It could have been an assumption--albeit a correct assumption--but Hopeless wondered.

But then he smiled, and bowed slightly, holding up an arm to motion Sanzo back to the area where Hopeless had set up his tea. He had a spare teacup, on this occasion; he frequently did, in the hope it might be used. "Hopeless. Sometimes my friends call me Descry."

[badly_behaved_priest]

"...Just a habit," Sanzo replied, not eager to share that he was an empath right off the bat. He hadn't known it himself for long and his perceptiveness was usually chalked up to his rank as a Sanzo or the company he was "stuck" with. It did make him wonder what brand of monk or priest this "Hopeless"- what a depressing name- was. He really wished Amberdrake had explained why he was an empath.

He mused, grumpily, over that while he moved to sit down. He would have crossed his arms to make the extra point but couldn't exactly pull that off currently. Instead he just leaned back in his chair and looked grumpy.

"Sanzo," he said finally, in reply to Hopeless offering his name. If one could call that a name. "What's with those 'names'? Sound more like insults." Kouryuu the river orphan really shouldn't be talking there.

[scryinghope]

Hopeless sat with an easy sort of humble dignity, pushing his sleeves up his arms. He wasn't wearing anything so obviously ecclesiastical; if not for the fact that he did pray in public, it would be difficult to tell he wasn't just a scholar.

"I chose them," Hopeless said simply as he picked up the teapot--still hot, thanks to Anton's sigils. "In my world, choosing one's own name is an important means of self-identity. When I was younger, the monks called me Máenach Giolla Thaidg." The Irish rolls off his tongue the way languages do when they're as familiar as breathing. "It means 'the quiet one, servant of St Thaidg'--St Thaddeus." The patron saint of lost causes, if Sanzo knew him. "Hopeless was at least something I chose myself."

Though Sanzo wasn't the only one to object. Rover had felt just Hopeless on its own was too depressing; that was why Hopeless had chosen to the other. Descry Hopeless. Scrying hope.

"Milk and honey?" Hopeless put down the pot and reached for the others, looking inquiringly at Sanzo. No questions on his part, yet; most people were put at ease, if they were allowed to ask the questions. There was a lot to be divined from that.

[badly_behaved_priest]

"No," Sanzo replied curtly as he thought over Hopeless' other responses. He wasn't familiar with this saint, even if such a saint existed on his world. He wasn't especially well versed on western religions. Hazel hadn't made him especially eager to learn more.

That Hopeless had, at least, chosen his name, was something. There had been little choice in Sanzo's name, before or after he'd become a Sanzo. It is not as if he objected to either name. There was nothing to be ashamed of of his first and the second had been granted by his master.

"I'd think it would say something about you, that choice of name, but it's not my business what others choose to call themselves." And it really wasn't as far as he was concerned. "I take it you weren't as fond of your previous name."

Why else make a point that he got to choose such a depressing name for himself?

((ooc: continuing thread here.))