This is what you give me to work with, well honey, I've seen worse

[foolsmakeitcolder]

WHO: Recipients of the Matchmaker's Invitations
WHAT: Intrigue. Scandal. Outrage. Budding friendships. Mostly shenanigans.
WHEN: 5 Cloudreach 9:49, Sundown
WHERE: Various Locales
NOTES:

Find your location header below and post your starter. Your destiny will find you.



To each location in the Gallows, a basket is delivered: each will contain fresh-baked bread from the Gallows kitchens, a pot of honey butter and something to spread it with. For outside locations, there are always adjacent comfortable indoor areas to escape to; nobody's meant to stand outside in bad weather.

To the one encounter outside of the Gallows: guests will be informed upon being seated that the tab has two rounds of drinks paid for, or it can be used for the equivalent of bar food instead. Additional orders will start a new tab.

To all locations: a small assortment of cards labeled: "Icebreakers". Each card contains a question for one person to ask another, both serious and funny. Players are encouraged to make up their own. Think "What's something about you that I would never guess?" and "would you rather fight 50 duck-sized bears or one bear-sized duck?"

Your destiny awaits. The Matchmaker sends their regards.

Comments

The Library - East Wing

[foolsmakeitcolder]

[nonvenomous]

There was a time when Mr. Dickerson might have arrived here fashionably late and in his finest vest, wire taut, wary.

Today he is:

Early.

In an old brocade vest nearly as tattered as the rest of him.

Already eating a piece of bread.

He is also smoking in the library, the stub of his joint spindling oily elfroot fumes from the tin he’s rested it in while he rolls a massive wad of bread in his jaw. There are icebreaker cards for him to read to himself while he waits, front and back.

At the entrance, a lithe black cat sits in the coil of her own tail. Her eyes are overlarge in her skull, green, goggling.

She watches the door.

[grindset]

There's hardly any need to watch. Richard ought to know this sound well enough: it's the tap... tap... of spring-cushioned metal softly meeting stone. The third foot in a distinctive gait.

Not at all an unusual thing to encounter here in the library. From time to time this same tapping will pass an entryway or move along an adjacent aisle, ignoring signs of presence and hoping to remain ignored in turn. This time, at this entryway,

it stops,

and in leans Viktor, with cantilevered neck and drawn brow, whereupon he meets two verdant lamp-eyes more or less involuntarily. After an acute application of willpower:

"Tell me you didn't bring props."

[nonvenomous]

It makes sense, in the way it would for someone who makes a hobby of matchmaking. Two bony nerds, both alike in dignity.

Dick is not unkind: he pinches up one last drag and snuffs the joint out after the third tap. A haze about the ceiling and odeur de skunk are all that remains by the time Thot chatters her surprise at eye contact, ekekek.

Eventually she’ll put it together.

“The props were provided.”

With no indication that he’s been cheating, Richard takes his time reading the current card before he taps it back into the deck.

“I hope you like bread.”

[grindset]

"Bread's fine."

Viktor likes bread very much, actually.

He also approves of the level of presentability he sees, having gone to no exceptional lengths himself, as doing so might have given an unwanted impression. His hair does look like it may have encountered a comb within the last twenty-four hours, but that effort was made not for this occasion nor the man sitting by this table. So begins the inaugural meeting of the shabby vest club.

Moving into the freshly skunky space, taking care with his crutch around the cat, "What's that? More instructions?"

[nonvenomous]

“Pre-written questions.”

Mr. Dickerson centers the stack next to the bread basket, where a chunk of one loaf is already conspicuously missing. The better to free up his hands for the purpose of seeing his snuffed joint settled in its tin, and the tin tucked away into his vest.

He doesn’t look up to take measure of Viktor until that’s done, appraising in much the same fashion he had been when he first set foot in the infirmary.

Not unfriendly.

Not volunteering much of anything else either. He looks tired.

“I believe we’re intended to ask them of each other.”

Thot takes care to keep herself well clear, a leggy shade helping herself up onto a shelf to keep watch over these proceedings.

[grindset]

Not unfriendly, looks tired about sums it up; Thot's wired stare makes her the outlier.

Viktor's attention darts off just late enough for the trailing movement to be caught. He could have been looking at anything, of course; but he was watching the hand, specifically, the tin, the stump of rolled cigarette disappearing, and entertaining his own corresponding awareness of the packet of dried stems in his pocket. That looks like butter with a sweet additive, too—pity this was a blind meeting, he might have brought a cup—

These filament thoughts push his interested frown a touch heavier as he plucks the deck up from where Dickerson set it and settles into a vague lean on the stick tucked in his armpit. With a crisp flick of card stock, he flips the top one to see.

No reaction whatsoever. The text on this card makes him feel precisely the same way as someone in a distant universe may feel while reading a Bazooka Joe comic.

Moving on to the next, "You think the bread is meant to lead to an eventual search for drinks?"

They're on the case.