thecapitol | (no subject)

Who| Timaeus Nadir and all his guests. If you are in the Capitol, you've been invited!
What| A spectacular Viewing Party and opportunity for tributes to get sponsorship
Where| The Victoria Ascendant, on the lake
When| After the most recent death roll!
Warnings/Notes| Probable skeeviness of the Nice Guy variety.

Welcome to the Victoria Ascendant, latest in the Ascendant line of luxury yachts as built by the Nadir company. Tonight, the Victoria Ascendant is the stage set for a spectacular party, also paid for by the company and specifically designed and organised by a team of event specialists overseen by your host for this evening, Timaeus Nadir- wealthy eligible bachelor, melodramatic heir apparent to the company chair, frequent sponsor of the Games. The Victoria Ascendant is fully equipped with every obscenely luxurious item imaginable, and practically drips opulence.

When first welcomed aboard you will be assured that your every need will be seen to, your every desire catered for. Staff are on hand to answer any questions you might have or guide you to various areas of the ship, provide you with food, drink, or suggestions of how best to take advantage of the Victoria Ascendant's many amenities- they are here as hosts, but also as salespeople for those of the guests with money to burn- this party is serving more than one purpose. Tributes who responded to their invite will also receive a delicate, hand-written note in a golden envelope as they board- the content of which will be posted as a reply to their response to this post.(I'll do this once your character turns up.)

Although the Victoria Ascendant has a magnificent dining room for formal, sit-down occasions, the food for the party will be circulating the various lounge areas and decks. There is also a buffet table, for those of you who prefer to help yourselves, and a fully stocked bar. Provided are a baffling variety of foods and beverages, seemingly unconnected- but each tribute will find that if at any point during their stay in the Capitol they have requested a particular food or drink item, it is available here. Or, at least, the closest approximation the catering staff could conjure up. Seating is provided in intimate groupings around tables for the most part, though there are large, sprawling couches against the walls. Central to the dining area is a magnificent aquarium filled with brightly coloured fish. Anyone looking closely enough will recognise them- varieties of piranha- but don't worry, they've been more than adequately fed and the glass is thick.

While there are various screens displaying the Games throughout the ship, Viewing is also taking place on an enormous screen, set up in a seperate lounge area with full floor-to-ceiling windows all along one side. Here, staff wait to take bets or help organise the giving of sponsor gifts. Large, comfortable couches line the room, and the central table overflows with a spectacular arrangement of edible flowers and fruit.

Later in the evening, you will be told that the firework display is about to begin, and invited to go up onto the main deck to watch. The fireworks themselves will be launched from smaller boats across the lake, and the display is set to be truly spectacular. It will be set to some music that Tributes may find familiar- various melodies pulled from the most recent Arena. The large swimming pool on the deck is open, but it is too early in the year to be comfortable to use. Instead, it is being used as an unusual centrepiece for the evening. Floating in the illuminated water is a gigantic iceberg, sculpted into a stylised model of the current arena and populated with frozen figures. Eagle-eyed Tributes may be able to spot themselves depicted in ice- more often than not, the moment of their deaths are the pose of choice, if a little tweaked for the sake of a more dramatic scene.

Enjoy!

Adachi · Ariadne · Asha · Atticus · Beck · Blaine · Calico · Callista · Chris · Diana · Don · Eddie · Eponine · Eva · Gaila · Glinda · Harley · Howard · Julie · Kurt · Marty · Maximus · Momoko · Neffa · Parker · Peeta · Phil · Pruna · R · Sigma · Some · Thane · Timaeus · Topher

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"...Wait." Neffa's curiosity was thoroughly piqued.

Coming to a new world, he'd found, had meant anchoring himself to the familiar in whatever small ways he could. He'd heard of worlds with magic and worlds without; worlds that ran on the electricity of this place and worlds, like his, that still harnessed fire; worlds of deep forests and strange-colored skies and strangely-formed people; but all of them, thus far, had still been definable in their strangeness. You could count on the people who came from them to have fire, to know what forests were, to conceive in some way of magic as an idea. The groundwork for understanding was laid for them.

A month trapped outside his own world, and this was the strangest thing he'd yet confronted.

He set down his drink, focused more closely on Beck's face, searching for what he had not understood. He might have believed this of one of the stranger-looking people here, but so far as he could tell, this man was human. "Forgive me if I've misunderstood-- you come from a world without water?"

Edited 2013-05-01 11:03 (UTC)

Beck paused, confused as to why this User was confused. It was a pretty obvious thing to him; didn't everybody need energy? It didn't quite make sense to Beck why he had to consume two different types of energy that could either work splendidly or not work at all. With energy, all you did was drink it, and there you go....!

"Well, I don't know about water, but we had energy." He said, before looking down to the shimmering stuff outside of the window. "Which looked like water, I guess. Only it was like eating food and drinking all in one." Of course something else the actual definition between water and energy could be different, but he was just going off of his own personal observations.

"Why?"

He'd really thought that adjusting his personal definition of impossible would get easier, the hundredth or the thousandth time he was called upon to do it; it appeared that this was not the case. He took a long, slow drink.

"It's-- it's not the system I'm used to," he replied finally, when he could no longer use the glass in front of his face as an excuse not to reply. "I-- gods, I can't even picture that." His tone was one of wonderment. What, did they drink all their meals, then? Where did such a substance come from? If water in the sense he understood it was missing, what other gaps were there?

"Forgive me-- I hope it isn't rude to ask-- are you, er..." He waved a hand vaguely. "...human?"

No knowing if his definition of human was as strange as his definition of water, but a discrepancy there could turn out to be even more fascinating.

Beck could...kind of understand his confusion. In his own way.

Things in Argon were straight and simple. Being tossed in a User world was kind of difficult for him to grasp. Why did they have so many drinks? Why didn't they refresh you as easily as a glass of energy did? Why did you have to eat food and drink, just so you could feel as good as you would with a glass you could get from a club? It was complicated and kind of unnecessary, but Beck didn't really have any other options other than to follow it...

He waited for the question and blinked, shaking his head. "It's not rude." Beck shrugged. "I'm a Program."

Beck already had a conversation like this before. With Daniel! "I'm from a...computer." That's what it was called, right?

Neffa couldn't have told him. The word was familiar only because he'd heard it spoken here - it was how most of what had confused him most in his first weeks had been explained. The computer will take care of your placement, no further documentation necessary. No worries, dear, the computers run all the lights here. Ah, you've ruined the computer-- well, that'll be a week until we can send you a new communicator, next time keep it out of the water--!

That someone could be from a computer had not occurred to him. No one had ever spoken about computers like they had any sort of sentient being powering them before. He'd spent hours his first days poking at the communicator they'd given him, muttering into its crevices, trying to call the spirit up out of it, but it had never given him any reply.

It was reason to look at the stranger with new interest. "What, you're-- you mean from one of these?" He pulled his communicator from one of the deep coat pockets and held it up. "Like this?"

He realized belatedly that he was leaning farther forward than he'd intended-- he put a little more distance between them and added quickly, "Not, of course, that I mean to interrogate you." If they do run on something like spirits, though...

Beck looked at the little communicator...and shrugged. He knew what the inside of a computer looked like, but he certainly didn't know much about what it looked like outside. It was kind of hard to imagine the entire city of Argon (and Purgos, and Tron City, and Gallium...) inside of such a small little thing.

It didn't look normal to him...but then again, the entire idea of his world seemed to be abnormal to people.

"I'm...not sure." He said, giving Neffa a shrug. "I was just told that I was from a computer. It's hard to imagine where I came from being in a tiny thing like that, though."

Beck pulled out his own communicator and looked it over. "Where do you come from?"

Neffa was content to file that away under Things to Think About Later, when he had a free morning to himself and an inclination to talk philosophy with the air. He took a drink, and let his mind move to other things.

"It's called Ristopa," he said. "A city. The city, rather. As big as this one, or bigger-- just, not so tall." This city crowded out the sky in a way that sprawling Ristopa didn't; Ristopa punctuated the air rather than filling it, with the spires of the five sky-towers in their five corners and the palace climbing the hill to the west (silhouette-dark against the sunset, blinding white in the morning, a day's colors more reliable a clock than the watchtowers). "In the dry season it's full of dust, and in the wet season mud. It's the center of the Magicians' Guild, and the elementalists' order, and-- well. Magic in general, I suppose."

He paused; smiled and shrugged, in a way meant to come off nonchalant but looking more helpless. "Though magic means little to the people here-- I'm sure you've experienced something similar."

Magic. That was...kind of a foreign thing to him.

Beck didn't think of magic as a guy in a suit pulling a rabbit out from a hat. He saw it as a definition for things he couldn't really imagine being possible. Of course, it was a rather juvenile way to put it, but if no other word came to mind, that is what he would think of. Because you could try and go against your programming, or train a little harder, and whatever was "magic" wouldn't really be magic anymore.

He shrugged and took a sip of his own drink, a hand rubbing at his jaw as it sent a little zing! down his teeth. "Kind of. I guess."

Beck witnessed magic with Tron plenty of times before. How he managed to get through training every cycle was magic. "Magic meaning things that were kind of hard to do?"