[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

[bulletbiter]

[ Well, they could always talk about the weather, but where's the fun in that? ]

You told me about the environment of your world the last time. You can tell me more. I'm curious.

[ Julius says this all very politely, with a touch of formalness. He's earnest, though - the stoicness all comes from manner and not any way of actual reservation. ]

10 years later

[talim]

It's... sort of complicated. Where I come from, there are two worlds, Rieze Maxia and Elympios. For a long time, they were separated by a schism; I was born and raised in Rieze Maxia, a world where the spirits, and hence the environment, flourish. Everyone has something called a mana lobe. It's what enables me to use artes, both healing and otherwise.

Eympios, on the other hand, is barren. It's a dying world; the opposite of lush Rieze Maxia. The spirits there have been dried up, and that means that just about everything else has followed suit. What I've been studying is a solution to work around that.

pets

[bulletbiter]

[ It's magic, but phrased in a way that he can understand. ]

Are spirits like people, or plants?

[ If it was the latter, it might be less complicated. ]

[talim]

They're... well, some spirits are like people, but not all. Not plants, though. It's more like the spirits are what feed the plants what they need to grow.

[bulletbiter]

But are they... sentient?

[ Spirit rights?? Ethics...? ]

[talim]

It's... complicated, but there are some spirits that resemble humans in ways. Great Spirits. They watch over us humans and their fellow spirits alike.

[bulletbiter]

I see.

[ not really but details ]

Did you ask the Great Spirits about the world where the spirits were gone?

[talim]

There's one Great Spirit in particular who ended up in the human realm that I spent a long time journey alongside. Her name is Milla. Milla Maxwell. She was... she was someone I admired more than anyone else. Headstrong, determined...

Almost everything I learned about spirits, I learned from her.

[bulletbiter]

Could she restore the lesser spirits?

[ jude didn't really answer his question, so: ]

pretend that said *journeying

[talim]

[ jude snaps himself out of his little reverie. he didn't answer the question, did he... oops. ]

She could. In a sense. That was part of her purpose.

... You sure are curious about this. Any particular reason?

\o/

[bulletbiter]

The environment should be protected, for everyone's sake.

[ Since spirits were a part of the environment, they should be revived as well. It was all very logical for him, more so by the fact that he's become keenly aware of how a ruined world would bring only bad tidings for its people. ]

I'd wish for your world to become well again.

[talim]

Trust me, I wish for the very same thing. More than anything.

[ jude's gaze is downcast. he absently picks at a breadstick, not all too interested in eating. every one of these dates has been so different. ]

That's why I'm putting everything I have into protecting it.

[bulletbiter]

I'd like to help.

[ Though as he says it, he realizes something important: that he doesn't know how. ]

Just let me know what I can do for you.