thecapitol | The Crowning Of The Signless

The Crowning Of The Signless

Who| Everyone.
What| The Crowning of The Signless.
Where| An alcove in a nearby mountain.
When| From dusk to dawn, on Thursday.
Warnings/Notes| This event is mandatory for all Tributes to attend. Even if you do not tag in, your character will attend this party. Peacekeepers will be on high alert. There will be no chance to runaway.

Tributes are encouraged to sleep all during the day, before the crowning. The reason for this is revealed when they are roused at sundown and brought to the closest mountain to the city, where they are greeted by an alcove within the moutainside that has been carved into a temple to what may be an illicit faith. The stone alcove is dim-lit by candles arranged along walls and by what appears to be altars set before iron cancer signs, some plain, some inlet with intricate carvings. Bright red drapery hangs about the room, tapestries with the cancer sign and cirles of blending color spectrum. There are also some waist high leggings hung upon one wall. In the center of the room, shackles hang, glowing bright from some sort of internal heat and light. A hole in the ceiling is set on each side of it, to allow the smoke to escape from the great bonfire that roars beneath it. If one takes a seat upon any of large stones and logs aranged around it, they can see both the stars twinkling down and the way the smoke looks as though it is coming off the shackles.

The only windows otherwise are made from stained glass depicting images from the Signless's life, such as his rescue by "Alternia's First Mother" (so described on the metal plate below), "The Recording of His Teachings" depicting The Disciple writing the Signless's words into a book, "A New Follower" showing the Psiioniic joining the Signless, a boat deemed "The First Ship", and "The Execution" which features the death of the Signless before thousands of followers, a fifth troll- resembling Terezi- bearing the shackles as a necklace and another with great brown wings, a single window of Karkat and Kankri Vantas, as well as a sinister depiction of six indistinct shadowy figures of cerulean, blue, indigo, violet, tyrian, and maroon. Cave-style paintings cover the stone walls, styles ranging from simple scribbled etching to circles featuring twelve colors in circle, with bright red at the center, and yet more elaborate shadowy depictions of those in the stained glass, esepcially the Signless himself, both prior and following his execution.

But not all is dedicated to the Signless and his old posse of biblical age trolls. A shrine has been set up for redeemed and then so quickly lost victor, Matthew 'Punchy' O'Conner. Punchy has been painted upon a cave wall like he fits right into the theme. Upon his shrine lay all varieties of bling; Bling-jewelery, a bling goblet, bling boxing gloves, a hoodie, a nun habit, and a stone with a memorial rap engraved atop-- with bling, of course, all shimmering by the spotlights placed before the shrine. Refillable 40 oz bottles are lain out so that sorrowful guests, wishing to pay their respect to the boy so cruelly slain by rebels when he had turned from them, can pour one out in his honor.

Marius is also honored there with a tea light and small framed photograph set upon an empty table with an empty chair, along with souvenir versions of his and Cosette's wedding rings that guests can take home. Beneath all these rings is a photoshopped picture of javert with a single tear running down his manly face.

The only seating besides the stones and logs and Marius's single chair, are those that are sat at a table at the end of the room. Each is draped in a different color, six on each side for each district and each blood hue-- presumably of the Victor's choosing. Between these chairs sits yet one more with a tall back like a flogging jut that got the redesigned at the base to make a throne that some trolls might recognize as belonging to the Empress. The arms of the chair feature open shackles. The throne is decorated in chains of gold and jewels of all colors. The victor is given a crown of gilded flowers and thorns on chain.

Food can be found upon the altars or the victor's table, in surplus. Alternian delicacies are served, featuring insects, flavored or plain, and food made from insects. Guests may find a giant beetle being served upon a spit roast. Even the meats appear to be topped with bugs. The cakes, marshmallows (which can be roasted with stick by the fire!), and orange creamsicles may be the only things truly bug-free. Drink options are water, wine, and soda.

Stylists are encouraged to dress their tributes primarily in black, with a single bit of color put into the design matched according to district (with exception to trolls), or any manner of draping fabrics, cloaks, and costumery reminiscent of religious iconagraphy that one might expect of ancient aliens. Waist high pants and leggings are also in high regard, as well as fake horn, fangs, contacts, and anything to make guests look more trollish. The only rule is for the main colors to match to the blood assignment.

The music playing is the sort one might expect from a church, featuring mournful vocals, soft bells and melodies, and of course, organ music. But for one or two jarring differences. Where this music is coming from remains a mystery but since the space is open and clear, guests have plenty of room for dancing.

Those who don't wish to dance can talk and regale tales around the bonfire, or may instead seek out the book of "scripture" at one of the altars that features nothing more than various parables- with names that Tributes might recognize! Each Tribute has one parable contained within, telling a tale in flourished manner of a part of their life, featuring a pro-capitol moral at the end.

Elsewhere, are models of the flogging just, where guests can put their hands through the oversized cuffs and pretend to writhe in agony, an Alternian bioware helm where guests too can pretend to have their lifeforce and power used a battery for the sake of the Alternian empire, a dress-up station where guests can customize their appearance to match trolls sold into gruelling slavery to seadwellwers, and an area designed to look like a cave with extensive "Alternian" (gibberish) writings of the Signless's words, where guests too can pretend they've lost everyone they love and are carrying on their legacy by writing upon the walls and leaving their own messages of love and mourning. Not to mention, a life-sized drone with realistic piercing claws, for all your picture posing needs.

A sandpit lies just around a corner for children to make castles, dig trenches, and act out games of pretending they've trekked thousands of miles through zombie infested desert just to speak to a couple of people! Guests can also meet a "mutantblood lusus" a four-eyed crab creature with lizardlike structure-- only sized no bigger than the average dog and perhaps about as intelligent. Guests are warned not to put their hand too close, lest the claw pincers manage to pinch them.

Late into the crowning, everyone is brought out to the dark mountainside, well monitored by peacekeepers, and divided into teams. Everyone is given belts with velcro flags attached, colored according to the "blood" they were matched with by district. Those in the eighth, ninth, twelfth, third, tenth, and eleventh districts are deemed the "lowbloods. Those in the first, fourth, second, fifth, sixth, and seventh districts, are deemed the "highbloods". Each team is given a velcro board to attach the flags to. The first team to lose all their flags loses, winners getting tiny necklace copies of the shackles. The last one standing with a flag wins a larger necklace copy and the option to get it redesigned into a symbol of their choosing.

If you failed not to be "culled", fear not! All tributes receive a participation sticker at the end. This sticker features a number. It is not indicative of districts or of age, as will be announced shortly, but of the new scoring. These will be announced for everyone to hear- and pick out targets from.

The crowning officially ends with the coming dawn. And so begins, to everyone's surprise, preparation for the arena. Tributes will be going right from the crowning off to the Tribute launch tubes. Happy Hunger Games!

[Note: This is ICly on Thursday! Just before the arena on Friday!]

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He follows Jack back to their wall, watching him out of the corner of his eye in case the man goes down. After some time, though, he's starting to realize that that's just how this guy moves.

"Oh, well, back when our place was a speakeasy--that's a place where you can get booze back when it was illegal--Sena had a honey store as the front. So as a way to stick out, she started puttin' it in everything. I mean, it didn't taste terrible, but it's weird, you know?"

And sometimes you just want to get less sober faster and the honey doesn't help at all.

"We went and got some stuff from other places a couple times, but she got kinda mad..."

He wrestles with the cork on his bottle, "What about you, eh?"

Once they're back and settled Jack pops open his own wine bottle with all-too-familiar ease, the bottle already to his lips as Firo answers his question. After a hefty few gulps are taken, the pirate looks back to him at the mention of honey in liquor.

"Weird? Not entirely so." He swishes a hand forward, the wine bottle wobbling in his grasp with the movement. "There'd be a drink, back home, called bumbo -- or bombo, if you're so inclined, and haven't the faintest idea whose responsible for those the naming of it -- made up with rum and sugar and nutmeg and, in some cases, honey or cinnamon. Tasted a great deal better than the nasty Navy grog that was passed around." Another drink from his wine. "'Course, never could beat out straight rum."

His head tilts towards Firo at the question. "D'you mean, what about my family?"

As he watches Jack, he takes a long drink from his own bottle. "You're serious? Guess maybe she's not so weird then." There was a cocktail that used honey back home, but that was one drink. Sena still went a little overboard.

He laughs, suddenly self-conscious at how shallow his intended question was compared to that. "I meant your parties." He shrugs and looks away; he's smiling, but he's feeling even more homesick than usual underneath and doesn't want to show it. "...but I wouldn't mind hearin' about that either."

Firo could talk about his own family for days.

"Honest." It'd been necessary to use the recipe, on occasion, because the rum would start to run thin on longer voyages. But it definitely wasn't his preferred way to drink his booze, so he can sympathize.

A smile in return as Firo clarifies, but Jack is more than eager to sidestep any discussion of his own family. "Wild and crazy as you can imagine, lad. The best of 'em always are made of copious amounts of booze, a variety of sordid or otherwise disreputable wenches, and a few nasty brawls."

"Fights?" Despite sometimes (...often) hitting the liquor too hard, the Martillo parties didn't often lead to violence. Everyone there liked each other too much, and then there were the rules to contend with.

Firo imagined it'd be plenty different at sea, though. He takes a drink, then grins as he asks, "What's the captain supposed to do when that happens, huh?"

Edited (prepositions) 2015-03-09 21:48 (UTC)

"Mn," He affirms the first question with a muffled noise, chugging from the bottle of wine in his hand again.

Once he's finished, Jack flashes another grin and sweeps the hand holding the booze out. "Sit back, watch, enjoy the show. More often than not, it's best to let 'em settle it amongst themselves."

Firo leans forward and laughs.

"Really? I can't imagine anybody fightin' in front a' my boss."

Well, physically. There was always good-natured bickering going on.

"Aye, no lie. Can't do much more than that when it 'appens." Not to mention it was, at times, a much needed distraction -- and source of entertainment -- for the crew during those frequent spans of downtime on voyages.

And Jack, of course, was never really one to get between two men duking it out unless it was absolutely necessary. Better to keep distance and see how it plays out.

"Not the sort to allow it, is he?"

Picturing the sailors he's seen down at the docks, Firo supposes he can't blame Jack at all for that. They tended to be a brawny and sour-tempered lot; the kind a person smarter than Firo wouldn't needlessly pick a fight with.

"I don't think so. He's one a' the ones who taught me how to use a knife, but he's usually more... diplomatic, I guess."

Except for when someone really needed to get cut. Then Molsa was just as fierce as all of them--maybe even more.

"And we're all Family, so we can't fight with each other."

"Aha." Then a short pause. "Family, then? Are the lot of you related?"

From the way Firo talks about them all, it didn't exactly sound that way. And there were times where the crew of the Pearl would refer to one another in a similarly familiar fashion, calling each other brothers. But who knew.

He shakes his head. "Not at all. We're a... I dunno if you'd have it back where you're from, but we're a Camorra Family."

He was glad that that word--probably because it didn't really have an equivalent in English--wasn't blocked out of his head, at least.

"Just as real as any blood family, though. Everybody swears that the Family comes before anything."

Jack mirrors the head shake with his own.

"Never heard the word in me life. What's a 'Camorra family'?"

By the sounds of it, though, they were a tight group.

Thankfully, Firo's better versed in Camorra history than he is any other kind of history. He scratches his head, wondering where to start. "Well, it started back in the prisons in Naples as an organization for, like, protection, cooperation, all that. My Family's always been in the U.S., though."

His smile grows just thinking about them. "It's... really, it is a family, just not made outta people who're related. We work together and when there's trouble, we watch each other's backs."

His mouth tugs into a bit of a smile in return. "Not so unlike the crew aboard a ship, I'd wager, even with the petty squabbles." Well, except there might be more betrayal and back-stabbing in his circle. Maintaining one's own self-interest came with the job description and the type of people that the work attracted.

But being together for such lengthy spans of time tended to forge strong bonds out of necessity.

"Has to be that sense of camaraderie, that trust that the bloke at your back is with you in the heat o' battle, else there's only discord and no sense of order."

He cants his head in Firo's direction. "Is that what you did, then? Protection?"

Jack understands it, and Firo beams to hear him speak of the bonds between Family and crew. So few do, in his experience. "Exactly."

He shakes his head. "Nah, that ain't my racket. We all protect each other, but the protection of people outside the Family is its own job." Protection meaning shaking down people for money in exchange for the promise that you'd keep their home or business safe from hooligans. Including yourself.

After taking a drink to wet his throat, he looks up at the ceiling and continues, "I don't know how it'd go on your ship, but most of us work in just one a' the family businesses for our job. I manage our casino--I've worked there since they first took me in."

"Each o' the crew has their own role to serve aboard -- first mate, navigator, bosun, cook, the like. Takes more'n a man to properly sail a ship, no doubt about it."

He takes a swig from his own bottle and gives Firo a curious look. "Casino? What would that be?" It wasn't a term that had been used in his time, yet, even if there were definitely establishments that served the same purpose.

Firo bobs his head up and down in agreement. "Yeah. Nothin' that big can get done by one person." He's thinking of both Jack's ship and his Family.

His open mouth betrays some surprise at the question, in part because it's starting to seem like a word quite a few people here don't know. He recovers in a beat and answers, "It's a place where people go to gamble. But not, like, some crappy backroom at a bookie's--a real classy joint. And there's all sorts a' things, not just card games."

Firo's a bit of a snob when it comes to his establishment. It's pointless to try and sell people on it here, but he wouldn't even consider toning down the description; it's the Martillo place and impossible for him to represent as anything less than wonderful.

He leans further into the wall and grins.

"More or less a gambling house, then. There were a few that catered to the more well-to-do sort, back where I was, but there were, o' course, plenty of taverns or other such sordid establishments where one could partake. Nothing too fancy, though, for all that."

And for sailors that had just come to shore after many month at sea, they'd most likely end up squandering all their hard-earned coin.

"More of the 'more' than the 'less,'" he protests, more out of form than any actual affront. He thinks it's safe to assume Jack's probably not trying to rile him up.

He almost laughs at the image. "I'll bet. People're always gonna wanna do those things."

His amused smile takes on a hint of consternation. "They've made a lotta stuff like that illegal back home, but obviously it doesn't work. Just makes more trouble for everybody." He nods to affirm his point, obviously thinking his logical is impeccable.

An agreeing nod from Jack. "Human nature, i'n'it?" The remark could be applied to both of Firo's points -- people would always find a way to indulge in their bad habits, even moreso when it became something they were explicitly told not to do. That's just how it worked.

"'Course it doesn't work." He lifts an eyebrow, curious. "What else was made illegal?"

Firo can't hold back a grin at Jack's question. Based on what he's seen of the man, he's going to love this.

"Well, booze is the big one. No bars, no stores sellin' it, nothin' like that was legal for years. Lasted over a decade before they finally got rid a' it."

But, as they'd both mentioned so far, illegal didn't mean unobtainable.

Oh yes. That takes a few seconds to settle in.

Booze. Was illegal. Booze was illegal. What. How could those words be in the same sentence?

"That ain't right."

"Not at all."

Firo looks sideways at Jack with a smile. "You'll be happy to know the illegal booze business completely took off." He takes a sip of his own drink to punctuate that.

"I wasn't around back then, but Sena says our speakeasy had customers the minute after the law went into effect."

The appalled look on his face slides into amusement. Not surprising to hear that.

"O' course, that was foolish of them to think it'd work. The sun sets, the tides turn, and a man's gotta have his booze."

Jack tilts the wine bottle towards Firo, briefly, then takes a swig of it.

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The Crowning Of The Signless

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