spellbinders | [WORLD ONE] SPEED DATING EXTRAVAGANZA

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. ]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Interesting is one way of putting it, I guess?

[Waver's all nerves, to the point of just registering nothing but his own sense of internal screaming.]

[oh my god, waver. mikleo hesitates, then sort of awkwardly pats his shoulder and pushes the basket of breadsticks over; he doesn't know if waver's the sort of person whose nerves can be eased by food, but it's worth a try]

I don't think they'll complain if we make a good go of it and then say we're not particularly interested or compatible, do you? At least it's just questions, not something, er, more physical.

Please don't give them ideas. They might do that.

[Waver's not in the mood for food, but that's mostly because he doesn't trust the food at this point. He saw everyone's powers go haywire at the weird muted celebration. He doesn't want to relive the first time he met Mikelo.]

All right, all right, all right...

[well, food is no go, then, but...]

If you do want to ask me something, I don't mind answering, though...? I'm actually really interested to find out more about where you come from, too, if it's not a sensitive subject.

Oh uhm. [At least that's pretty easy. Kind of. Sort of? He's going to leave out the Grail part for now.] London. It's the capital of the country I'm from. Big city with a river cutting through it.

Does the river function as a trade route of some kind? Do you know anything about the history of how the city came up, or the landmarks...?

[he seems honestly, genuinely fascinated]

It used to be, but now it's used less for trade and more for sight-seeing. It started out as a really old settlement, and just kind of...grew. And grew. And kept growing in spite of plague and fires and world wars and everything.

[It was a pretty good city, even if Waver hated the Association most days.]

[he shakes his head in wonder]

It sounds like it's got as much or more history than Ladylake or Pendrago, then...that's truly incredible. Seraphs don't really build cities, so human ones are that much more fascinating. Do you enjoy living there?

I do but....[Wait a minute, those are some awfully familiar names.]

Ladylake and Pendrago sound like parts of some of the older legends we have.

Do they? Ladylake was named for the Lady of the Lake, a seraph who dwelled in the water around it; I'm less sure about Pendrago, since the historical evidence pointing one way or the other is mixed. Does that match up with your legends...?

[he's lit up a bit; he hadn't expected this sort of connection at all!]

The Lady of the Lake supposedly gave Arthur Pendragon the sword Excalibur in legend. So that's...that's that. Does that connect with any of your historical evidence?

[Waver's pretty sure 90% of Arthurian legend is bullshit, having met King Arthur, but that isn't here or there.]

[...he sits back in his chair and stares at Waver, wide-eyed]

I don't think I recognize the name 'Excalibur,' but Lailah, the current Lady of the Lake Ladylake is named for, uses a sacred sword kept there as her vessel. Sorey made a pact with her and drew it to become the Shepherd, who is...yes, a figure with a legendary status.

There is no 'Arthur' in Pendrago, but I've read about an 'Artorius.' He has a historical link with the Lord of Calamity, the greatest enemy of a Shepherd...though I don't recall anything about him being given a sword in that story.

Artorius is the Latin name for Arthur, I think. Something about the root meaning bear? [This is super weird.]

What is the actual story here?

I've never heard of a language called Latin, either. Or a city called London, or even a city that quite matches the geography and development you described...

Honestly, I don't know. I know the Shepherd is real, Sorey's right there, and a sword and a Lady of the Lake exist for sure...this is amazing, but also I feel like I'm going to get a headache if I think about it too hard.

....Okay, but you keep saying the Shepherd, but I don't know what that is?

--oh, sorry. A Shepherd is...a human who has the sensitivity and the power to contract with the seraphim and use their power, and who works to purify the land and people of their malevolence, their spiritual and emotional impurity, in a pretty literal sense. I said Sorey was one...he's actually the only one, back home. Historically there used to be more, but the strength of ability to see seraphs seems to have faded out of most humans over the generations.

Most people at home at least know the story, so sometimes I forget that hardly anyone here does.

Yeah, that's all brand new information. That part doesn't track with the mythology I was talking about, seraphim are a completely different kind of thing back home, and no one pays too much attention to the idea of spiritual or emotional impurity.

Weird how some names pop up in different worlds though.

Makes you wonder if we aren't the first ones to go wildly world-hopping, actually. Those commonalities had to come from somewhere, right?

[their chairs start shivering under them, at this point, preparing to move them off shortly; Mikleo actually holds onto the sides of his and grumbles]

Oh, come on, we were having a great discussion!

--Damnit! [Stupid Paalai magic!]

Come find me later, okay!?

I will, I will!

[zooms off; with the five million things happening the followup won't be for some days, sadly, but the topic will keep.]

[WORLD ONE] SPEED DATING EXTRAVAGANZA

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