Ye Olde Everybody EP on a Sunday

[ostro_goth]

The door opens, and Ragnar Lothbrok wanders in from a place that looks like a camp-site in hilly country, with cooking fires, and people laugh. Not all of these voices are male. Ragnar looks a bit astonished -- he closes the door with an odd gesture, as if letting go of a branch. Then, he quickly walks to the back of the room and vanishes into a door there; after a few minutes, he comes out again and walks towards the bar to order a horn cup of good spring water. What, did you think Vikings live on mead alone?

Dorian Gray comes wandering in from his house; as the door closes, there's a brief glance of a huge room with marble floors, the walls covered in portraits from all eras of art history, even some that ought not to exist yet. He's reading as he walks, his nose deep in 'The Count of Monte Cristo', chuckling as he walks. He only notices that he's in Milliways when he almost hits a pillar; then, he smiles, slouches on a sofa by the fireplace and orders coffee. He keeps reading.

Father Pearse Harman comes downstairs after the Sunday service, in order to eat a proper Sunday dinner (despite this being Lent -- Sundays are traditionally non-fast-days) of a very British kind -- it features a roast leg of chicken, Yorkshire pudding, two kinds of vegetables, and gravy. There will even be pudding afterwards, 'pudding' being a generic word for 'dessert', and this particular pudding being apple crumble with custard. For once, the priest seems to actually have an appetite.

Madame Thénardier has actually been to mass as well, simply to try and look like a good solid bourgeoise who does what she's supposed to; she is actually wearing a lace scarf in her usual generous cleavage. But now, having made the effort, she gets a basket of chicken wings from the bar, orders a new book that seems to delight her, and retires to her usual nook behind the fireplace to read and eat. She occasionally wipes her hand on her apron, but the new book nevertheless soon acquires greasy smudges.

Katrina Crane comes in from the back, bringing with her two baskets full of assorted seed packages that are all open, and possibly mislabelled, as well as her copy of Culpeper's and one or two other herbal books. She sits at a table, orders tea, and then proceeds to identify, consolidate, re-label and generally sort all the seeds for the herb garden.

Dr. Hannibal Lecter enters from the kitchen, carrying what looks like a breakfast tray -- coffee and fresh juice, mushroom and eggs on toast, an elegant salad with fruit, and a plate of crisply fried black pudding garnished with radishes. It may be a bit late for breakfast, but Dr. Lecter is known for the unorthodoxy of his meals, after all; so he wears the face of a man who expects no comments.

Teja enters from the back door as well, carrying a laughing toddler and followed by four cats who very casually slink in before the door happens to close. They secure a table near the stairs, and some waitrats bring over a high chair, which the toddler (almost two years old now) is put into. A plate of fruit for the child soon follows, and tuna for the cats. Two places are set at the table, Teja is served a clay cup of well-watered red wine, and then, he leans back, content like a man who has done his work.

Lady Margolotta enters from a drawing room the sombre and elegant lines of which are disturbed by posters, scattered papers, floofy poufs, empty mugs of cocoa, and an iconograph on a tripod. Apparently, some meeting of the Überwald League of Temperance just ended. Margolotta is carrying a tattered pamphlet that, however, says TRAIN SCHEDULE on the first page. She notices immediately that there is light coming from the windows, and finds herself a table in the darkest corner of the bar, as far away from the windows as possible.


[[OOC: Everybody is here for your tagging pleasure! Say in your comment whom you want for your charrie, or they might get just anybody...]]

Comments

[margolotta]

"So you think that vampires are demons, and should be killed?" Lady Margolotta says.

Apparently, the situation in that world is very bad.

[jonathanparagon]

"If they go out killing humans every night, yes, they should be killed", he says matter-of-factly. "There are exceptions. Some find willing donors and stop short of killing them, or buy pre-drawn blood, or feed only from animals. I know two who've given up living human blood almost completely. But as for whether they're demons, they are in my world - or at least they have a demon in them, that's a fact."

[margolotta]

"If they go out killing humans," she says, "they should be reasoned with first, and asked to mend their ways. And then maybe killed, if they don't. Anybody is, of course, entitled to defend themselves."

[jonathanparagon]

"I'm not sure they can, unless they're given a way to get the upper hand over their demon first. Those two I mentioned? The only known two in the world who've had their human souls given back."

[margolotta]

"Can't your demonologists simply drive them out?"

[jonathanparagon]

He shakes his head.

"They're too closely tied to the body, from the moment of turning. Even putting the soul back in doesn't drive the demon out - and for most vampires, their soul's gone on to whatever their afterlife is and has to be dragged back with strong, difficult, dangerous magic. You can be dead for up to a day before you wake back up as a vampire."

[margolotta]

"So they're the possessed dead body variety the priest here keeps going on about?" Margolotta says.

[jonathanparagon]

"If you mean Father Harman, I don't think it's the same world - but they are basically possessed dead bodies. Do things work different for you?"

He's quite willing to believe it.

[margolotta]

"Yes," Lady Margolotta says. "We're just one of the Disc's naturally occurring species, just like dwarfs, trolls, werewolves, elves, orcs, feegles and so on."

[jonathanparagon]

"You're born a vampire there, not turned?" he asks with interest. "...and werewolves are too?"

...yes, all right, he knows all about the Disc already. But he's not going to let her know that, and besides, he wants to hear her viewpoint.

[margolotta]

"Yes," she says. "We have vampire families and werewolf families, who do not always get on well, and both of them terrorise the humans."

[jonathanparagon]

"And the humans strike back when they get a chance?" he guesses.

[margolotta]

"They hide behind locked shutters," Lady Margolotta says. "Or rather, they used to. They no longer do, in most places."

[jonathanparagon]

"Are your vampires sensitive to sunlight?" Jonathan asks curiously.

[margolotta]

"Yes, we are," Margolotta says. "But that's not the reason for the shutters; it was to keep us out at night."

[jonathanparagon]

Jonathan blinks. "...did that work? I mean, vampires of my world could just rip the shutters off. But then they still couldn't get in uninvited."

[margolotta]

"We're not that terribly strong," Margolotta says. "But much of it was rather a case of whistling in the dark."

[jonathanparagon]

"Yeah", he says softly. "I can see that. It's not so easy knowing what's out there in the dark."

[margolotta]

"And they knew the monsters have teeth, some have claws, and they will hunt them in the darkness for fun and food," Lady Margolotta says. "You can imagine that it held us back as a community."

[jonathanparagon]

That makes him stop and give her a long, assessing look.

"...vampires in your world must really be different, 'cause I've never met one like you before."

[margolotta]

"No?"

[jonathanparagon]

"No", he says simply. "They don't really do the motherly thing. And you're... working against being a monster?"

[margolotta]

"I'm working towards everybody in Bonk, even in Überwald, getting to join the present time and reap its benefits, rather than being stuck in the past, and considered scared and backwards."

[jonathanparagon]

"That sounds like it's going to be a lot of work", he says with sympathy and admiration.

[margolotta]

"I think the worst of it is already done," Lady Margolotta says.