rainbowlounge | Winter RP: The Citadel

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roleplay: open

Winter RP: The Citadel

It's late afternoon, just approaching evening, and one of the less-imposing reception rooms in the Citadel at the heart of the City of Glass is lit up by a glorious sunset. The dry heat of the desert day is starting to die off; the temperature sits at a pleasant level now.

The walls of the room are made of thick, solid glass panes, in deceptively delicate white stone frames. They are punctuated at regular intervals by wall hangings embroidered with intricate geometric patterns, in green and gold. There is a large, extravagant rug, woven in similar colors, covering the floor. The ceiling, high above, is more glass, fogged, and gilded around the edges to match the gold in the tapestries.

One wall is dominated by a pair of double doors that swing open onto an enclosed pleasure garden, with carefully maintained flowers climbing the walls and a murmuring fountain in the center. There are white gravel paths marking out four regular quadrants.

The portals are opening once again...

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"Um, yeah," Leah said. It felt like she was admitting something, which was ridiculous. This was just a beautiful woman. She could handle this.

Okay, who was she kidding, she could not.

"I was supposed to be in the library, but I guess I... I guess I took a wrong turn?"

She nodded. "It can be easy to get lost here, if you're not familiar." Of course, that didn't quite explain how she'd ended up here. "Or even if you are," she added, a little ruefully, "though I don't think this section of the palace has been rebuilt lately."

"I, uh." If she could stop using all these stupid filler words she might actually sound like the impressive PhD student she actually was. "I... wasn't supposed to be in a palace? I was at school, actually."

Edited 2015-03-01 03:07 (UTC)

Well, she'd already known the poor girl was a great deal more lost than she was--since Lonura had never seen her before, and, well, she would have stood out at court--but it was nice to have confirmation, so they could actually talk about it. "I wish I could tell you how you'd ended up here instead," she said. "I'm not quite sure how I did, to be honest--I was supposed to be on the other side of the palace. You said you were at school? Are you studying anything in particular?"

"Yeah," Leah said, and got a little more enthusiastic. This she could manage. "I'm in the middle of my PhD in history. I haven't quite figured out what my dissertation is going to be about, so I guess I'm really only beginning it, but I can't wait. It's going to be amazing."

"What area of history are you studying?" Lonura asked, her interest caught--a lot of music, at least sung music, related to history either real or imagined, so reading about it was one of her hobbies. "Any particular area or era?"

((I reserve the right to joss this at any future point.))

"Oh, um, Colonial America and the runup to the revolution," Leah said. "I mean, that's why I'm in Boston, so... oh, um, this isn't Boston, sorry."

Lonura blinked, several times. "I...no, it isn't. I've never...where is Boston?"

"It's..." Leah paused, at a loss. It was increasingly clear that she was either hallucinating or in someplace so far from anything she knew that no frame of reference would apply, so how could she explain that? "It's... a city. Where I live. My country was sort of founded from there."

Only sort of.

"I see," she said, though she didn't, not really. "I'm guessing the founding has to do with the revolution you're studying?"

"Yeah," she said. "Hence the sort of. There's arguments that the revolution really began in New England, which I think is true, but of course the actual founding documents and governmental work was done in Philadelphia."

Lonura nodded. "So, the actual activity was mostly concentrated in one province, but the leaders met in another--presumably safer--to add a layer of legitimacy to their war?" That part did make perfect sense to her.

"Initially, yes." Okay, Leah could do this. The American Revolution was her jam. "Of course, once the revolution really got going, the war moved south from New England to Virginia and New York. Philadelphia was captured by the British-- um, that's the people we were rebelling against-- at one point and the government had to flee for the hills. But my interest is more in the function of women during the war. Abigail Adams, Deborah Sampson, Mercy Otis Warren and the like. They had much more influence than the standard scholars would have you believe."

She nodded again. "I see." It wouldn't have been that way in Glass, but in Feredar it might have. Gods only knew how it would fall out when Isselu, in theory, united the crowns.

Gods grant that day was long in coming.

Still, it would be interesting to see how history recorded the War, and Nolani's sisters-in-law and their roles in it.

"What kind of influence?" she asked. "Were many of them overt soldiers and diplomats, or did they more function behind the scenes, running spy rings and the like?"

"No overt diplomats," Leah said, "which was stupid because Abigail Adams's presence at the British court during the postwar negotiation phase probably smoothed the way for a lot of concessions. I think women were about half and half soldiers-- disguised as men, which is a whole other thesis-- and spies and support work. The army wouldn't have survived the winter at Valley Forge without the efforts of local women and the women they left behind, for example. And of course Abigail Adams, Mercy Otis Warren, and Mary Dickinson, and others like them, had a large effect on the Continental Congress, which more or less controlled the war." She shrugged. "It was almost all behind the scenes work, but it was much more influential than people think."

"That's often the way of things, isn't it?" Lonura said softly. "The behind-the-scenes work has much more influence than history credits, and it's often work performed by people whose voices are lost for other reasons."

"Pretty much exactly," Leah agreed. "I guess that happens here too? That sucks."

Lonura nodded. "Yes, to an extent, though I'm not sure it's usually along gender lines. At least not here in Glass, though they're a little more rigid in Feredar." She shook her head. "I'm a musician, not a proper historian, so the picture I might get is a little different from yours, but still..."

"This place is called Glass?" Of course it was. "Anyway, historians aren't... we aren't the be all end all of history. We're all biased. The good ones say so." She shrugged, and blushed a little at being called a proper historian by this woman, and added, "So, um, tell me about this place?"

"Yes, it is," she confirmed. "Or, more properly the City of Glass, or the Kingdom of the City of Glass, on official documents. Creatively named for our capital, built out of the most abundant material available. A lot of our population is made up of semi-nomadic traders. We're not quite as clannish as the Islanders, but far more so than most other nations. Our native magic thread is fire, and, because we're...hm...our climate is considered inhospitable, and we're bordered by mountains on most sides, so we don't have a lot of Unthreaded mages here." Lonura herself, of course, being one of the exceptions, but that wasn't something she typically discussed with anyone she wasn't very close to. "We're a monarchy. My beloved's mother is the current Queen, making my beloved Crown Princess here, as well as Queen Consort in Feredar. What about your nation? Other than being a revolutionary state."

"Democracy," Leah said, a bit distracted by the mention of magic, and more than a bit disappointed by the mention of a girlfriend. "Well, republic really, but most people don't know the difference. What was that about magic?"

"Oh, a republic! Like Asendar!" Although the question about magic was...well, magic simply was, so it was hard to answer. "It's...just magic?" she tried. "Some people have it, some people don't. It passes down family lines, and there are eight threads...every mage's thread is somewhere in their bloodline, even if very far back. Sometimes a thread will reappear without warning."

((OOC: Asendar is a republic in the same way Venice is.))

"We, uh." Leah thought about how to phrase it. "We don't... have magic where I come from. So... that sort of caught my attention."

"You don't?" Lonura said. "What a strange world you must live in." She could hardly imagine it."

Leah laughed, and immediately regretted it, because her laugh made her look stupid and girlfriend or not, this was still a gorgeous woman. "I was just thinking the same about you. I mean, you don't seem to have much technology... computers? Internet?"

Winter RP: The Citadel

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