[WORLD ONE] SPEED DATING EXTRAVAGANZA

[spellbindmods]

Who: Participating coven members
Where: The Palai marketplace
When: Day 49
Open/Closed: OTA

[ Any and all who are in the marketplace will find that there is suddenly a mysterious barrier around the marketplace (that may be eerily familiar to some) -- specifically one large portion of the marketplace with a large number of tables and chairs, perhaps purposefully set out for nefarious reasons.

A few Palai are ushering coven members to chairs, and everything seems about normal. As normal as the Palai can be when they're putting on a show anyway. It's not until a sizable portion of the coven members are seated (and also supplied with breadsticks and small shrimp), that things get a bit more bizarre.

Thanks to the power of the Eltos, a small band of energy keeps coven members stuck to the chair (magic can interfere, of course), but that's not the end of it. On each table, next to those delicious smelling breadsticks and shrimp, is a bowl of scraps of papers. Every five minutes, a strip of paper will pop out from the bowl.

If you ask the Palai, they'll be inclined to explain speed dating to you. Asking questions, getting to know a person, then being shimmied off to the next potential mate -- this is made possible by Elto magic yet again, through flying chairs that transport their holder to a new table at standard intervals.

The Palai are extremely invested in this exercise? Will you let them down? ]

[ OOC: In the spirit of speed dating, each character will have a top level. All who want to respond to this top level can with questions from this post, but the threads have to end at 10 comments from each character. After this last tag, the characters can be assumed to have been whisked to a different potential match. You're free to have characters make up their own questions, interact with Palai serving food, etc. ]

Comments

[rootbound]

[waits for the silence to break...

waits some more...

okay if they don't do something the Palai are probably just going to sit them at this table indefinitely. breaks up a breadstick, leans over a bit, and starts arranging the pieces into a small grid in front of Jay's table setting]

Here, let's just play naughts and crosses until they get tired of keeping us.

[rebells]

[From the look on his face, he would really much rather continue to pretend he isn't here and this isn't happening, or possibly he thinks he can will himself out of this situation.

But eventually he . . . unfolds a bit . . . and stops turning alarming colors . . . and all right, this isn't as bad as it could be. Removed from the expectations of it all, this is just being placed in a situation of forced conversation.

Silently, he breaks apart a breadstick and makes an X in the center of the grid. There. Participation.]

This is ridiculous.

[rootbound]

[puts an O in the top right, head pillowed sideways on the table to eye the grid]

You're telling me. You'd think this sort of thing would at least be, I don't know, voluntary participation -- do they not think any of us are taken because we tend to wander off separately?

[under the complaining, there's a thread of mental text to Jay, though: Their barrier looks like the one on the island. Could an Eltos hermit be living up there or what?]

[rebells]

I can't fathom what they might be thinking.

[Although remembering their aversion to leaving people alone does at least make this make slightly more sense. Sigh. An X in the middle top square.]

It's possible, although it raises more questions. How would an Elto get up there?

[rootbound]

At least we get a little something out of it. The shrimp are rather good.

[an O in the bottom right, playing just to be obviously doing something rather than actually invested in the game . . . i mean, really, it's tic tac toe

Dragged by an Uvi? Got away somehow? I don't know, it just seems worth noting. No Palai in the city has ever been known to have gotten to the island, right?]

[rebells]

They're fine. I'd rather not give them credit for feeding us while they trap us.

[The Oresoren would never do this to him!!! Although they might tease him mercilessly. An X in the center right, then.]

No, they were quite clear about being unable to get up there. If one of them did make it up, they didn't share that secret with the rest of their kind.

[rootbound]

I'm not giving them credit. I just believe in free food being a rather good thing...

[inspects the grid, amused]

Oh no. You beat me. I bow to your enviable skills.

Could be one got up and didn't have the nerve to try and make it back down, or whatever they used broke. Who even knows until we get through it somehow, I suppose.

[rebells]

Yes, and you were trying so hard, too.

[With a small smile--the first time he's smiled during this whole conversation.]

There's too many variables as is. Well. I'm hopeful that we'll be able to get at least one or two people past the barrier tomorrow.

[rootbound]

[gives him a tiny thumbs up; he's kind of pleased by the response, and it shows on his face]

Geir might try biting the barrier again. It didn't give the first time, but his venom might have eaten into it more over the past few days. Maybe that will go through...

[rebells]

[He's not displeased, either--well, more than he is about the whole situation. He reaches silently for another breadstick.]

He has . . . magic barrier-eating venom?

[rootbound]

[takes a shrimp, almost primly]

He has venom that should go through just about anything, including the magical and the divine. In theory. We were very surprised when his fangs wouldn't get through the barrier.

[rebells]

Do you think there are powers higher than the divine governing this place? Is that even possible?

[rootbound]

Mm, I don't know. More like...a different set of powers, a different kind of divinity, gods we're unfamiliar with? If they are separate from the Tree and its branchings entirely, if we're in a realm outside that, then it makes sense that the powers as defined by that paradigm might not apply properly.

That's a guess, of course, but it's what I have.

[rebells]

[Are they just staring at each other across the table while having a mental conversation. The Palai are either confused or really pleased at this turn of events.]

Your world's deities are centered around a tree? Ours is different. I suppose it stands to reason this world's would be different still.

[rootbound]

[yeah they're totally gazing at each other with intense focus over the table, amazing...Vern doesn't really mind one way or another, the conversation's too interesting.]

No one's mentioned a Tree or Yggdrasil when I asked them about their magic yet, and where I'm from all magic comes from there, so it does pan out. Weird. The universe is larger than we all thought, I suppose.

[rebells]

Universe or universes. I've talked to people here who were quite sure they'd traveled between multiple ones.

[rootbound]

All right. Another layer of bewilderingly vast complexity to reality. Sounds fun.

[rebells]

It would be fascinating, if knowledge of it wasn't coming at this kind of price. I suppose it still is, in a way.

[rootbound]

In a way!

[the chairs are shifting...]

--oops, make sure to make a face after I go so they don't think we actually made a romantic connection there.