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

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!]

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Long had known plenty of magic in his time, little of it good by his reckoning. But there had been exceptions.

"I once knew a witch," he begins, unconsciously slipping into a once-upon-a-time sort of cadence, "who at our first meeting sang a great wall of ice into being between us-- a gesture of some hostility. She also threatened to freeze me into black ice, 'crop and craw' if I recall her words correctly.

"Now by the standards we have created, which is she?"

"I think I'm missing a lot of the context," said DG carefully, unable to stop herself from wondering exactly what had prompted the witch to create the icy barrier in the first place, "But it she was trying to hurt you without being provoked, I'd say the answer's obvious."

Long laughed, delightedly, and gave DG an approving nod.

"Yes, you are missing a lot of the context," he admitted, eyes twinkling a bit with amusement. "But I had not threatened her, I had not harmed her. Still-- at any rate, she remains the best witch I have ever met, in a moral sense. 'White' magic, if such a thing does exist and if it is not merely our projection of our own ethical outlooks upon paranormal forces.

"I myself do not care for magic. But I have learned to avoid equating the practitioner with the practice. Mostly." He offered DG a very white smile.

She would have loved to hear the rest of the story, but she knew that he wouldn't give her a straight answer. He wasn't that sort of person.

"That's lucky for me," she said, with a hint of dry sarcasm in her voice. Would he still be talking to her if he thought that she was a bad witch? Probably. He'd just be on alert when he did. "What's your definition of a good witch?"

"Ah, and you turn the rhetorical table on me," Long sighed with a wry smile. He tilted his head to the side, obviously deep in thought for a moment, then took a nibble from the food in his hand. Chewed and swallowed before saying:

"My objections to magic stem from the fact that it is not... natural, in my world. It is an imposition of one's will to change the extant order of things-- to make a mountain into a river, to... to destroy what is, or to create things that are not.

"It is also an eminent distraction. What need has one of enlightenment if one has power? Princes do not admit their own ignorance and enslavement upon the wheel of suffering, and neither do wizards, because both fancy themselves masters and not prisoners. To steal an analogy from a different theology, it is not easy for a rich man to enter Heaven-- and magicians are rich, in power.

"Logically, my definition of a good witch would be one who seeks to use his or her power to counter the excesses of those who use theirs with no regard for balance and nature. One who frees those imprisoned by sorcery, one who returns rivers to mountains... One who understands that the parlor tricks of magic, while impressive, do not lift her outside of the cycle of samsara nor exclude her from the universal plight."

....ask a simple question, DG, get a philosophical treatise in response.

"It's only fair," DG pointed out, though she was surprised by the depth of the answer that she received from Long. "Some of that makes sense. But it isn't as simple as just being powerful. You have to learn to use it. To control it."

And he'd just described the way that DG had used her magic to defeat the evil witch of the dark. The creature had been living inside her sister for a long time, using her magic and her form to seize control of the O.Z.

"And I don't know what I can do with rivers and mountains."

Edited 2011-10-21 18:53 (UTC)

"Of a certainty one must learn to control one's power, magical or otherwise. To do otherwise is to be highly irresponsible, and such a person would certainly qualify as unethical by my definition, as one does not require malice behind one's actions to still do great harm."

Long smiled a bit. "I should advise you not to find out, as the rivers and mountains are quite content in their current configuration," he said, although he might have been teasing.

She nodded at that, thinking of the damage that she'd accidentally caused when she'd let go of her sisters hand but not prepared to elaborate. It wasn't something she ever talked about. The knowledge was still too fresh and the memories - regained after a great deal of effort and trail - were still too raw.

DG wasn't entirely sure if he was teasing her or not with that remark, but she decided to interpret it that way.

"I can safely say that the geographical features of Taxon are safe from me," she promised.

This earned a broad smile from him, very white in the darkness of his face.

"I am pleased to hear that. Tell me-- if you do not mind-- does your magic operate on any sort of themed paradigm? Saara's was mostly by song, although of a surety she had other gifts as well."

"Nothing like that," she said with a shake of her head, "It's mostly by ... thought. When I concentrate, I was bring it up from somewhere inside me."

From the light inside her. But she didn't need or want to get into the details of the prophecy and the way that one daughter of the O.Z had been drawn to the light while the other was drawn to the darkness.

"It's strongest when I'm with my sister and we're working together."

"Ah, a familial magic? Interesting. It presupposes a genetic factor. Was your mother also a sorceress?"

DG nodded in confirmation, glancing briefly downwards before managing to elaborate on what would have otherwise been a rather unsatisfactory answer.

"She was. A very powerful one. But she gave up her powers to save someone she loved."

To save her.

Long's interest was piqued. He leaned forward slightly in his chair, one brow arching.

"Someone she loved? How dramatic. A lover, or a child?" he asks, smile a bit knowing. Someone is familiar with his narrative tropes.

"A child."

If DG's hesitance hadn't revealed the truth before, the way that her voice caught when she spoke - and the way that she avoided Long's rather too knowing smile - made it clear enough. She'd as good as admitted that she had been that child.

Edited 2011-12-12 18:32 (UTC)

Long smiles, triumphantly pleased that his deduction was correct.

"And have you been worthy of her sacrifice, do you think?"

That was a difficult question to answer. She'd stopped the O.Z from being plunged into eternal darkness and she'd rescued her sister from the control of the witch, but there was still a lot that needed to be done before the kingdom was truly safe.

"I don't think I can answer that question."

Long spreads his hands and smiles. "But who else can I ask? Your mother is not here to do so, after all..."

"No," she agreed. DG was rather grateful for that. She loved her mother - the mysterious woman with lavender eyes who had done so much for her without her even realising it - with all her heart, but she didn't want her to be trapped in Taxon. She wanted her to be safe at home in the O.Z. "But Glitch and Cain are here."

The people who knew her best and the only other prisoners who knew the O.Z.

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

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