OPEN CATCH-ALL SAFEHOUSE LOG. THE SWANKIEST SAFEHOUSE YOU WILL EVER SEE.

[capitolprivilege]

Who| Any well Tributes who took Stephen Reagan up on his safehouse offer!
What| Catch-all log for mansionanigans, though you're of course free to start your own!
Where| Jove Manor, a few miles outside the Capitol: a lavish estate up in the mountains.
When| From his announcement up until the end of the disease plot!
Warnings/Notes| What you bring with you! Also, a reminder: if you're visiting, please comment either to Stephen's IC offer or this OOC post! Also, feel free to make up details about the house. If you want an indoor pool or a chandelier you can swing on, I'm not gonna tell you no.


If you accepted Stephen's offer, you were driven up a few miles out of the Capitol, into the mountains. You stopped at a checkpoint, where a doctor or two scanned you with some kind of futuristic device and performed a quick test or two to make sure you were in good health. Then, you were ushered back in the car, and as you turned a corner of the winding mountain road, Jove Manor came into view.

It is a gorgeous house, nestled in a secluded cleft in the mountains. The grounds are not so expansive as they might have been, but there are sloping lawns leading up to the house, trails that lead through cultivated patches of woods, an outdoor fountain, and a pool in the back courtyard.

The exterior of the building itself is that delightful Capitol blend of Roman and twenty-first century American architecture, with gleaming white walls and marble columns. However, the inside is -- there's no other word for it -- old-fashioned. The floors are shining hardwood or lush carpets, and the elaborately carved furniture has none of the streamlined contours and space-age chrome that characterizes the Tribute center. The patterns, the materials, the design, it's almost baroque in its elaborate complexity. It makes a clear statement: we are old money.

The Tributes will be in the east wing, which can run independently of the rest of the house. It has a ballroom with gold-rimmed, fancy mirrors, a painted ceiling and a crystal chandelier; a dining room that can seat a hundred easily; an underground room with one wall a giant screen that picks up both live broadcasts and plays recorded documentaries about the heavily censored history of Panem from a Capitol perspective -- more specific descriptions will be in the subthreads.

The bedrooms are spread out over four floors: two underground, two above. The above-ground rooms have large, airy windows; the underground ones have screens that will show several views, like a jungle, a desert, a mountaintop, or a cityscape. They're furnished less ornately than the rest of the house: the furniture is fairly simple but high-quality; the sheets, soft.

Tributes will have free run of the East Wing, with its ballrooms, intercom system, underground theater, pool, bedrooms, dining hall, and well-stocked wine cellar. Supervision is minimal: though Peacekeepers are around and can be called, they can't keep an eye on all of you all the time. Avoxes on loan from the government will bring you almost anything you ask for, within reason. You should be very comfortable.

Comments

POOL

[capitolprivilege]

Even up in the mountains, it can get hot. Luckily, there's a cute little indoor-outdoor pool, with the great Capitol eagle rendered in tiles on the bottom. Basically, it's shaped like a great big 8, with a glass wall that only reaches down to the surface of the water where the two pools meet. There's a hot tub inside -- of course there is -- and comfortable lounge chairs outside the outdoor section.

There's another pool, fully indoors and underground, but it's a more traditional rectangle, with marked lanes clearly meant for exercise.

Frozen drinks available on request. So is swimwear.

Re: POOL

[hit_girl_mindy]

Ok, so she'd not used to fancy....anything, so this all feels weird. But you know what? She can shrug off weirdness and looking like everything is a million times better than her if they have a pool. It was hot, she wasn't going to pass up a more intimate pool time over the training room's gruff hole in the ground.

She starts on laps for a solid hour, and once her bones are at their limit, she goes straight for the hot tub, letting the warm water massage her exposed skin.

Re: POOL

[carnagecarnival]

He doesn't come out for a swim. It's broad day (even a half-sweep later that still makes him unneasy) and if he wants to be sure of this all, he needs to check it the fuck out first.

Task one, to look for cameras. Entries, exits, so on. Two, observe the actual scenery because this world of gill-less seadwellers never stops being mind numbingly baffling. Naturally, this leads to check the water. He crouches low and dips his fingers in, then his bare feet. Deciding that feels alright, he finally turns to the one person out here with him at the moment, and more importantly, the strange bubbling section of water closed off and away from the rest. He eyes it and her, puzzling out the fact that it looks dangerous but she clearly ain't bothered.

He, meanwhile, is fully-clothed aside from his feet. His paint is still on. And he doesn't seem to notice any issue with the narrow-eyed staring as he moves slowly closer.

For Sigma

[carnagecarnival]

The water terrifies. It has done so for sweeps and it has not stopped once ever. It grips something awful, choking sense and reason, even making rage sputter out so all what's left is a mind numbing fear. A fear where all one can't even scream and that, he knows, is some of the worst kind. Truth told, he ain't sure why the Messiahs gave gift of fear to the Indigos. The fishfolk would've done well with it. They would've conquered. But maybe that's why, because Messiahs favor indigos and love them.

And so they blessed him with holy fear. And so they cursed him with it because they love him and he must learn and repent. He must face the fangs or so be consumed while his back is turned. A tiny heretical part of him deep deep inside wishes sometimes they maybe didn't love so much before he stomps it out again like always.

He breathes deep as he approaches the water, expecting like always for it to snap up and swallow him whole like he ain't even air to breathe. He expects the water to burn like acid, or like the way as when the stylists say "a little hot" and it winds up scalding because they forget his blood is colder than them and theirs. In the heart and the head, it is such, but on the outside where the body lay, it's a decent temperature, if warm. He chased every last tremble out of his body sweeps ago. A creature made from fear can maybe never be truly fearless but he doesn't have to show it. And anyway, sometimes it could help, like the way a threat brought life, they way hurt brought clarity, death brought rejuvenation. And maybe he's a little masochistic.

In the night, the dark, when all these diurnal motherfuckers get their sleep on, he is alone and he ain't watched for once (Funny how that went being alone so long and then suddenly never getting the chance). He pulls his braid undone, wondering again if it would hurt less if he cut it short, or if it'd just hurt more to forget the feel of Mituna's fingers running through it, combing out the knots he couldn't be bothered with and making that gentle ssshhh to stop his hiss. The water silences them thoughts right up, just like he knew it would. Just a few seconds on the surface, and he ducks below.

The tiniest itty-bitty bit of frill hidden just along the edge of his ears and jaw, like a cruel promise of could-have-beens, gets that burn-tingle of relief, too long going without. It makes him hate them things what he never lets show even more and its a wonder he ain't torn them yet, he really wonders why. The fear held in his lungs immediately wails. It screams in his skull. He is forever halved in two parts what can't agree if he belongs here or he doesn't. He swims to the end and lets himself sink like a stone, counting the scars along his side-- one, two, missed three, but all else are claw marks desperate made by his own self-- to remind he ain't a seadweller and there ain't no gills to save him. He blinks eyes open to stare up at the surface despite the burn, his hair floating out around him as he pulls his knees closer and lets the fear eat him alive nice and easy as he makes himself get used to it, remember the feeling, savor it, so it can't hurt later or get in the way...

In the flicker-lights of the surface, he thinks he sees a shadow. He near-gasps, near motherfucking drowns himself right there, and he shoots to the surface. He gasps and sputters, moving fast for the side of the pool and scrambling out like a meowbeast what got thrown in, back facing to whoever it is and for once he intends to keep it that way.

"Don't! DON'T COME NO MOTHERFUCKING CLOSER!" He starts and he scrambles on to where he left his things, surely he left his paint there, he can't possibly have been so stupid as not to-- Shit! Fuck! He's so fucked. He sits back on a chair-side there and starts uselessly trying to pull his hair over his face then finally just looks up at the figure through his fingers. His true face is missing and he is only half himself. He is all kinds of exposed, every scar to air, and-- "Oh," Is the intelligent revelation from him when he sees and realises who it is. He asks from behind his hands, "YOU ALONE?"

[futilecycle]

It was a relief to know that this would not be his time to die. Sigma had hated illness even before his death Arenas ago - even before he'd plunged a needle into his own arm with the reassuring thought that he need not bear the effects of Radical-6 again before slipping back into the past. There would be no way to escape from a third infection.

But confined in a beautiful quarantine, of sorts, the opulence is a bit much. It chills the Doctor to think that this is privilege he may be awarded in the near future, and rather than the distraction it intends it returns his thoughts to the Capitol and their suffering inhabitants. Howard and Eponine are not here. The first night of his stay Sigma spent doubled over his borrowed bathroom sink, literally ill with worry. He could do nothing for them, now, but wait for nature to take its inevitable course, for better or for worse... Only the arrival of another one of his charges served to console him.

Sigma wanders in the night when the manor is peaceful and without the risk of unwanted company, and this evening it gives him the opportunity to meet with the Initiate in private. Sigma enters the pool room in a t-shirt and shorts, not intending to bathe but to dip his feet as they spoke; cyborgs were not buoyant. Thinking nothing of it, he approaches the poolside and waits for the Initiate to surface.

And immediately regrets the mistake.

"God, Initiate-" He follows him around the pool, hesitating only when his friend commands. His guilt is plain on his face, fewer cameras and audiences to hide his true self from. "Forgive me, I did not mean to startle you. Yes. Yes, it is just me." It is only now that Sigma takes notice of the troll's scars, paired with the realization that the makeup the Initiate wore was almost certainly washed away... he keeps his surprise in check, eyebrow raised only long enough to suggest a nervous twitch, but worries the other will notice he keeps his eyepiece trained on them...

THEATER

[capitolprivilege]

It's part movie theater, part presentation room, part den. There's comfortable seating for about twenty people, with tables that extend and retract out of the armrest, all facing the front wall, which is all one big screen.

If you come in, chances are it'll be tuned to the Hunger Games, but there are other things you can watch, if you like. They're not technically movies, but the biographies are so fictionalized and dramatized they might as well be. There are documentaries about the Districts, important Capitol historical events, famous politicians, famous Victors, and of course, recordings of previous Hunger Games.

If you pick out a tape about the first District uprising, you might find out something about the Reagans' history: they rose to prominence when a man named Marcus Reagan, Stephen's great-grandfather, used deadly and terrible force to pacify a particularly troublesome section of the Districts. It was brutal, and got him rewarded with a political position.

open - backdated to the beginning of a-10: week 6

[riddledwith]

Edward could have stayed back in the Capitol and stayed cautious about those around him, but instead of risk potential infection, he hopped on the offer of a safe haven immediately. He was certainly impressed with the generosity of the host, and with the house as well (What great taste!), though a bit bored with the idea of parties for entertainment.

The theater, however, with its wealth of documentaries, was interesting enough to keep him entertained and distracted from the internalized shame and disgust at his failure so soon in the arena.

Unless anyone else were to object, the screen is untouched by the current arena if he can help it. Instead, he begins his quest to learn about the history of the Capitol, the important political figures, and especially the history of the Reagan lineage. Nothing like being properly educated on the family history of your host and District escort, and Edward liked to know all there was to know about the people he was going to be working with.

If anyone else is into documentaries, feel free to join him. Like the scholar he is, he's even got a pen and paper to take notes in his shorthand, which includes cyphers for anyone looking over his shoulder -- pretty much useless since what he's taking notes on isn't dangerous information. Purely for his own entertainment.

[He pretty much spends all his time in the theater so interactions can be whenever and also numerous.]

[capitolprivilege]

There is a wealth of information to be found. Most of it is heavily biased in the Capitol's favor, of course, and riddled with euphemism and propaganda, but Edward would learn that Marcus Reagan's son Antonius and his wife Livia became a political force to be reckoned with. They established a culture in the Reagan dynasty of trusting one's family over everyone else, and it was partly due to their complete trust in each other that they solidified the Reagans' place as people of influence. Marcus and Antonius died peacefully of old age; Livia's son, Julius, was not so lucky. He died under mysterious circumstances -- a sudden and tragic illness, the documentary calls it. His death is partly responsible for his eldest son Cyrus's quick ascent through the Capitol's ranks. Currently, four Reagans live: Portia Reagan, Stephen's mother, is a high-society event coordinator; Livia Reagan, Stephen's grandmother, is happily retired; Cyrus Reagan, Stephen's older brother, is a member of President Snow's cabinet; and Stephen himself is an Escort in the Hunger Games, expanding the Reagans' sphere of influence into the Games as well as the social party scene.

Another documentary will tell Edward about the house itself: the original building and the grounds were given to Marcus Reagan as part of his reward for his service in the war, and each generation has added to it since. For instance, the underground swimming pool was put in because one distinguished guest of the Reagan family enjoyed swimming for exercise and the outdoor pool was completely unsuitable. This says a great deal about both the Reagans' fabulous wealth and the lengths they will go to in order to curry political favor.

Edward might or might not hear the opening of a door, and the soft approach of footsteps on the carpet. He will, however, hear Stephen say lightly, "That one's a little out of date. Sorry."

BALLROOM

[capitolprivilege]

If you want to throw a party, this is the place to do it. There's a giant chandelier that just might hold the weight of one or two people, an excellent sound system, walls covered in mirrors with gilded gold frames, and a painted ceiling. There are clusters of furniture here and there: comfortable chairs to take the weight off your feet around low little tables.

Alcohol isn't that hard to get your hands on, either: ask an Avox, find the wine cellar, find the kitchens. There's booze if you look for it.

Open

[carnagecarnival]

He fixes himself so his veins run soft and distant again. He fixes his face so the edges of painted teeth are sharp. With all done, even after coming this far, he doesn't want to still and stop. He begins to explore the place he's come to.

But the search end soon enough when he finds the ballroom, and there, from the ceiling, a great chandelier. He's got an option; resist betraying this human seadweller's hospitality-- because what else could he be, holy shit this place was sickeningly grand-- and carry along. OR he could make use of a moment opportune, a set up perfect, and take advantage of means to hone a skill and take his mind off the docterrorists he laid himself down for to get in here, District three, and every little other thing in his life he ain't thinking about right now.

What is he saying, that ain't a choice.

He takes a few steps back to start. Then, he's running and leaping and flying through the air as his hands curl around the chandelier's edge. And he swings. Back and forth, back and forth, like a pendulum, the high-lows of Messiahs' work. Like the motherfucking grief trapeze of the Carnival.

He swings high and spins in the air, like a true performer. He lands smoothly on his feet-- a visceral image in his mind of the one time a troll fell on his own horns and the blood, oh, the blood was everywhere-- and turns around to do it again, from the other side this time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vjPBrBU-TM

[capitolprivilege]

The tinkling of the chandelier's crystals is what catches Stephen's attention as he walks by. He pauses, listening. There it was again: the unmistakable jingle of crystal on crystal.

Odd, and worrying.

Stephen pulls open one of the great gilded double-doors to take a peek inside, and his jaw just about hits the floor.

"Oh, my god," he mutters, staring wide-eyed at the acrobatic feats.

A troll was swinging from the chandelier.

A troll was swinging from the chandelier.

The chandelier.

For a moment, Stephen was utterly lost for words, and could do nothing but stare, slack-jawed.

DINING ROOM/KITCHENS

[capitolprivilege]

Don't ask the Avoxes to bring you meals in your room. They're working hard enough as it is. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner are served from 8-10am, 11-1pm, and 6-8pm respectively, and if you get hungry in between, you can see if you can find something in the kitchens.

The dining room is set like an old-fasioned college's: there is a high table along one wall, with three more perpendicular to it. All the tables are covered in surprisingly ordinary white tablecloths, with glass plates and cups. The silverware is silver, of course: if you feel the urge to take some, no one will try to stop you. There are large, draped, floor-to-ceiling windows along one wall that let huge shafts of light in, and behind the high table are several portraits of men and women in suits and voluminous dresses.

The kitchens are chrome and steel and tile, clean and sparkling. There's a walk-in freezer, a couple of pantries, stoves and ovens and microwaves and distillers and food replicators and other devices you won't recognize. It's not so well-stocked as it could be, since all this was happening on very short notice, but if you're creative, you can probably whip something up for yourself.

[polyturtle]

The first place Don went - once he learned that the situation was mostly YOYO outside of dining hours - was the kitchen. Given the situation, and his own edginess after learning where the disease might have come from, he needed something - anything - to try and shave a little bit of that edge off. Get his mind off of the worst-case scenario.

And left to his own devices in the kitchen, he knew just what to make.

Within minutes, he was kneading flour, sugar and salt with water and olive oil, turning it into dough. While he'd not made one himself in a long time, the way his hands deftly transformed the ingredients into something more tangible could have fooled most people. No one who knew about New York pizza - and knew how to make it - ever forgot.

Now it was a question of using the right oven for the job, as he washed his hands in search of sauce ingredients.

[hit_girl_mindy]

"Need any help?"

Of course you'd see Mindy here who was, actually, feeling very weird about how grandiose everything looked. Sure, she'd lived in New York, but she never really went INTO places like that unless she was killing a higher up. This was not her sort of place, and she felt like everything she looked at would shatter with the wrong glance. She was glad enough to find a familiar face.

Tony's arrival

[arrogantalloy]

After spending his time wandering the halls of the mansion and feeling enough like it was creepy like the mansion he mostly grew up in. Tony walked into the kitchen, strange technology aside it pretty much hit an almost nostalgic button with him.

While Tony wasn't a master chef, anything he did make actually tended to taste fine but took forever to make, he was a great forager and while Tony had spent most of the day in the absence of alcohol, Tony had decided while he was in the kitchen he might as well find out what non-fermented fruits were available for the tasting.

Anyone who comes in will probably hear him muttering to himself before they see him.

SECURITY CHECKPOINT

[capitolprivilege]

It's a small, pregenerated building: the walls were hauled to a clearing by the side of the mountain road and assembled. Everything is run on portable power cells, from the lighting to the testing equipment.

Visitors are escorted inside and, one by one, asked to lie on a white examining table. The building is windowless, lit brightly from industrial overhead bulbs, and has few comforts. A doctor in a face mask and scrubs performs a quick examination, testing their temperatures, listening to their breathing, taking throat swabs and dropping them into a machine, and waving an electronic wand over their chests.

If you are clean, you will be shown back to the car and allowed to continue on to the safehouse. If not, two similarly-masked Peacekeepers will see you returned to the Capitol -- in the back of a locked van, if necessary.

Re: SECURITY CHECKPOINT

[pepsi_cola]

"But I love him!" Victory shrieks,

She's causing enough of a fuss that anyone could come into the building and see her, dressed in a nightgown with a slit practically up to the navel and an Avox hurriedly shoving tissues at her and picking up the bloodied ones. One security officer is trying to placate her, and the doctor is shaking the electrical wand at her.

She's audible even from outside the windowless building.

"I'm not even sick!" she yells, undermining herself nearly immediately with a coughing fit.

THE D3 ANNOUNCEMENT + OPEN STEPHEN THREAD

[capitolprivilege]

Late at night, the night of the 27th, the intercom system of Jove Manor will crackle to life.

Stephen considers introducing the recording, saying a few words, but for the most part decides against it.

All he says is, "I think you should hear this."

Then, this broadcast plays.

"In light of this, if anyone wants to return to the Capitol," Stephen says, following the broadcast, "transportation will be arranged."

Conversation can take place over the intercom, but Stephen himself will be in the dining hall, sitting at one of the low tables with a small handheld microphone and a tablet. Every so often, he'll glance over his shoulder at the portraits, but mostly, it's the tablet that has his attention -- unless someone comes in, of course.

Re: THE D3 ANNOUNCEMENT + OPEN STEPHEN THREAD

[hit_girl_mindy]

She needs a drink.

Not just any drink, a good, stiff, unsweetened drink. No beer, no wine, something hard. This was needed, and to hell with what anyone said, or cried about her being a minor. Fuck that. No one could be a minor, hearing that. What was someone her age supposed to do when they heard something like this, hold their mommy's hand? Ask daddy if they would be all right?

Fuck that. Mommy she never knew, and they brought daddy around to fuck with her, but he'd told her all she needed to know before she left. Wasn't she in the belly of the beast anyway, this house, this fucking testament to the Capitol and all its excess?

No one could get drunk enough and manage a smile. All you could do was take the shot, let it burn your throat and settle in your stomach and try to wrap your head around it. Good people, innocent people, all gone. What would their flunkies cover their bullshit with now?

There. Whiskey, burning life into her veins now, cruel and bitter and everything she wanted. Perfect.

[capitolprivilege]

Stephen sees it. He sees her get the drink, sees her pour it, sees her knock it back.

"You know," he says quietly, subdued, from across the table. "I can't seem to bring myself to stop you."

[earthborn]

It's not often one sees a Capitol Citizen acting in the formal capacity. Or maybe it's just that the Capitol government prefers to act as if it were one monolithic entity, pretending to a solidarity that Shepard knows must be a lie. They prefer the illusion of godhood; you never meet the doctors who revive you from the dead, and when you wake up in your bed, you find your personal space has been further intruded upon by the presence of a medical device bearing thanks from an unknown source.

Ah, but rounds first. Crew before duty, duty before maintenance, curiosity only after the due diligence has been served, and self last of all. When that's sorted, Shepard comes back around to the nervous rich boy with the ugly pants and the pale look on his face. A willing dispenser of aid and information in a population mostly categorized by just plain not giving a fuck about the lives of others.

"I hear we have you to thank for the charity," It's not kind; many would have said it with gratitude, for the circumstances if not the impulse. But Shepard has never trusted kindness. The kind were apt to turn on you, and no Capitolite had ever once been on her side, "Is that right?"

No, sir, this is judgement in Shepard's eyes, in the way she tips her hips and folds her arms, pure and unfiltered. The good stuff, strong enough to get you in trouble if you aimed it the wrong way.

Re: THE D3 ANNOUNCEMENT + OPEN STEPHEN THREAD

[splendid_roman]

Ian arrived in the dining hall, pale and out of breath from his run there. "I need to go back," he said, without preamble, all politeness forgotten in the wake of the news.

[arrogantalloy]

Tony's already in the dining hall nursing a bottle of wine when Stephen lets the broadcast play, off to one side in one of the comfortable seats. While it plays Tony stands and easily comes over, with so few people in the party mood he's been less excessive than he has since coming here.

When it finishes he looks very thoughtful for a moment.

"Hmm."

He's clearly finding something off in it, most of it however comes from thinking about how is own world works. Then he just refills his glass contemplatively.

closed.

[assassinat]

Dragging two men along with her didn't do well for her reputation (especially with a man who she wants to make fall for her), but it was important to take care of the ones she knew would tank themselves at the first opportunity presented. Matt, who wallows in his own guilt and lets it consume him was the primary concern, but add in Tony's wild adventures with alcohol as well as the plethora of problems she's built up.

Well, it didn't make her look anymore attractive. Motherly is not the image she wants to send to others.

Another restless night meant she was up early, like clockwork, and instead of walking in on Matt (they've had a lifetime of awkward mornings), she chose to check up on Tony. Maybe if she's lucky, it's too early in the day for him to have picked up a bottle. Natasha's not exactly the kind of person who banks on luck. Chances are, he managed to sneak one into bed or pilfered it from one of his potential roommates. Once inside, she checks before sitting down at the edge of the bed beside him, leaning in to whisper.

"Good morning, Mister Stark. I brought water."

[arrogantalloy]

While Tony had indeed spent most of the night swimming his high percentages, his bed had been comfy enough to let him sleep through the whole night without waking for a change. Which meant he didn't have the need to take anything back with him.

He was woken slightly by the feeling of someone sitting on his bed, while still waking up hearing his name while being spoken to he smiles pleasantly before wriggling in bed to make himself sound clearer.

"As always Pep, you are a lifesaver."

He still manages to mumble it, which was no doubt added to his rubbing at his face to help him wake up.