[Location - The Birdhouse - Open to ALL] [brief visual]

[smecker.livejournal.com]

Paul eyes the table full of food and the cheap plastic chairs he's got set up. There should be plenty-- if he runs out, he'll take it as a very good goddamn sign, because it means people showed up.

The food isn't anything too complex-- there's a big tossed salad, some lasagna, garlic bread (and room on the table for people to place their own additions, if they want). The point of this isn't to be gourmet: it's to get people here, to try and make everyone get onto the same page.

Paul pinches at the bridge of his nose. That may be too much to hope for. Same book, though. Same book would be nice. Reading out of the same encyclopedia which has some common rules about not screwing each other over in the face of dealing with a common enemy.

He reminds himself to be polite, to bite back on his natural bitchiness, or at least cloak it in socially-acceptable levels of sarcasm and humor. Then he picks up his tablet to broadcast a reminder to the city.

"Hey, Taxon: food's on. Come with your brains engaged."

It's a few minutes yet until noon. Paul has a seat in one of the chairs and leans his head back to stare at the ceiling, waiting for people to arrive.


[OOC STUFF! The Birdhouse layout is visible here. Since Paul lives in the building now, it does count as a private residence: if your character requires an invite to get in, they will find the way blocked unless someone invites them inside. If characters want to do that, either knowingly or unknowingly, that is cool OOCly, but I'd like a private PM first about it since it may all factor into things Paul does with the Birdhouse over time. I'm also totally down with playing out a vampire not being able to get in, and trying to have to cover that up if they want to.

EVERY CHARACTER IN TAXON is welcome in this thread, regardless of whether or not you have established CR, positive or negative, with Paul. Just post them arriving!

I'm going to put up a thread of placeholder for 'eating' versus 'Paul trying to get everyone to give introductions', in which people can go around the circle saying who they are, that sort of thing. All the threads I post will be taking place on the ground floor of the birdhouse-- if you want your character to explore, go for it! Just put in your subject line where they are poking around.

If anyone has any questions about layout or what characters would find, please feel free to ask me!]

Comments

[smecker.livejournal.com]

"....right."

Paul sips at his coffee, still eying the woman. Reminds him of the one girl, a little-- River. But more with the unease.

"I'll be over... there... if you have any questions."

[a-pretty-fire.livejournal.com]

She followed him. She followed him because it was his party and her parents had left her with good manners. (And blood on her poor bare feet, but that had washed away a long time ago. She could barely feel the memory of it any more.)

"Have you ever been to Rome?"

[smecker.livejournal.com]

Great, Elvira is following him. Paul tries, with possible crappy success, to keep the table between the two of them.

"No," he admits. "Always wanted to. Never actually made it. There's a lot there I'd have liked to see. Germany was more my speed though."

[a-pretty-fire.livejournal.com]

He succeed, but only because Drusilla was far stronger than her filmy white dress and distracted eyes would suggest. She could have shattered the table like kindling.

"I remember Germany," she said, with wistful nostalgia, "All those little soldiers marching off to war. They didn't know they'd never come home."

[smecker.livejournal.com]

Yeah, she's creepy. Paul busies himself straightening things on the table, reminding himself where his gun is, where the holy water is. Not that he necessarily knows or thinks she is a vampire, it's just become part of his paranoid mental inventory for anyone in Taxon now. Those fangs on his neck left a mark.

"Before my time," he says aloud, with forced brightness. "Been around the block, hm?"

[a-pretty-fire.livejournal.com]

Drusilla made no attempt to hide who or what she was. She was dead and she was mad, but she was still honest. She left the lies and the tricks to those who had use for them. She was more than capable of luring people in with nothing but soft words.

"Only the interesting ones," she said, tapping crimson nails on the table top.

[smecker.livejournal.com]

"Well, sometimes you have to go around the boring blocks to get to the interesting ones, I've found."

Paul looks around for Cain. He can excuse himself and say he has to go talk to him. Or someone. Anyone except miss Elvira here.

"That shade on your nails is almost overdone, you know," he says a little shortly. Defense mechanism.

[a-pretty-fire.livejournal.com]

"Oh, no," Drusilla disagreed, "It's my favourite colour. The colour of someone's insides."

Her voice was as melodious and gentle as ever. Only the snap and crackle and sharpness in her eyes betrayed the fact that she was cross with him for the insult.

"Almost," she repeated, tasting the word, "Only when you don't understand it."

And the ones who didn't understand it didn't deserve it.

[hasaheart]

There is a Cain hovering in the general vicinity of the coffee, looking rather like he might exit stage right first chance he gets.

Fidget, Cain, fidget.


All these people. In the same place.

[smecker.livejournal.com]

'Colour of someone's insides.' Right.

Paul eyed Drusilla warily. "I'm understanding that our ideas of aesthetics, and probably morality, our vastly different. Aaaand there's someone over there I've been wanting to talk to, so-- arrivederci, and all-the-fuck-that."

Edge, edge, edge away, trying to get over to Cain.

[a-pretty-fire.livejournal.com]

"Aren't you going to introduce me to your friend?"

Drusilla was playing. She was like a cat with a mouse and, since snapping the neck of the little creature in front of her was no longer an option, she would have to settle for teasing instead.

"It's good manners."