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singillatim2024-02-05 06:23 pm
[open] General Store
WHO: Louis de Pointe du Lac and YOU (new players welcome too)
WHAT: Opening the General Store!
WHEN: throughout February (at evening/night if you want Louis) + party on an Aurora night second half of the month
WHERE: General Store, Milton
Feel free to also use this setting as open starters or closed to characters other than Louis! Just indicate it if you do! His general store? No... Our general store...
A. Home Improvement
CONTENT WARNINGS: a little bit of vampire blood, talk of hunting animals for food
It started out of the practical need to store and barter goods. Louis's home is not a fit place to entertain anyone other than rats, and he doesn't want to disturb the people who live in the Community Hall.
Louis turns his attention to the thoroughly-looted husk of the General Store. Louis feels oddly shy about starting up anything, self deprecation rearing its ugly head. Lestat called his business back home a "human hobby."
He needs all the help he can get. There's the plumbing and leaks from the recent storm, trash to throw out, walls to paint, shelves to fix. He'd like to make arrangements for daytime hours when he can't be there. And finally, putting a new coat of paint on the GENERAL STORE sign with an addition:
Marché du Lac
How handy is he? Louis did small repairs at his club when a handyman wasn't available at night, he's fairly nimble... and he's never done construction in his life. But any fool can board up a broken window and repair shelves, he reasons.
"Fuck!" he hisses when he hits his thumb with the hammer. He automatically puts his thumb in his mouth, and the taste of that little bead of blood is shockingly good. He must be hungry. Time for a break.
He slips his hammer into the loop of some scavenged cargo pants. He might be terrible at construction, but at least he looks good doing it.
...Why is he working at night?
B. Having a Few People Over
To celebrate the reopening of Milton's only general store, Louis invites the town for food and drinks on the next Aurora night. At the risk of being accused of living in it, he wears his best 3-piece suit, the gray one from home. The place is well-lit, both due to the Aurora and every light source Louis could get his hands on. It's a myth that vampires don't like light. They just have a sun allergy.
Louis used to run a club, he knows how to plan a party. He doesn't know how to cook; he enlisted help for that. Among as much variety as Louis could get, the caterer Lalo Salamanca made a mushroom stew. Delicious--but watch out! A few special mushrooms may have found their way into the batch, possibly into a few bowls, and Louis has no idea...
He puts jazz records on and opens the doors. Empty shelves have been pushed out of the way for mingling or making music--he sorely misses live music. Louis would only request that it be good. (Louis reminds himself to explicitly instruct Lestat not to eat any musicians he deems bad.)
C. Open for Business
It's little more than a single counter and a few shelves worth of stock. Louis contemplates trying to bring in people to sell their own wares just so the rest of the shelves won't look so empty.
He arranges the odd collection of whatever he could scavenge and make presentable: dry goods, cans, candy, alcohol, cigarettes. The storeroom is depressingly half empty. The freezer, moved to an unheated room, is surprisingly full of meat.
In the window he puts up a passable copy of Tim's missing bunny poster. He sets up a little seating area where people can eat and drink if they wish. (It feels odd not to place the round little tables and woven chairs outside like at home, where the weather was mild enough.)
Louis emerges from the back room in an apron at the sound of the bell over the door. His suit and tie are so people won't mistake the owner/manager for a lowly clerk... as much as anyone can "own" anything in this scavenged town.
"Evenin', what can I get for you?"
D. Back in 15
Louis expects at least one teenager to take up loitering... Big mistake. If any hapless souls hang around too long and are trusted not to steal, Louis simply takes off his apron, dons his coat, and says without warning as he leaves,
"Mind the counter while I'm gone."
Congratulations, you now work here until he returns. He'll be back in a few minutes... right?
Do you:
- Invite friends and avail yourselves of the candy, booze, and free aprons
- Actually tend the store
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"Well I can see that. But why? You're fixing up the buildings?"
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He sighs. When he injures himself or goes to his coffin after a long night of hauling debris, sometimes he wonders if he shouldn't just give up.
"I want to be able to barter in my own space out of the cold. I don't want just anyone to know where I live. Why not fix up the store?"
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Less delicate, though, is the other topic. "So you're...making a store?"
Stores meant money, and unfriendly shop keepers. Louis doesn't seem unfriendly, but that could change if he became in charge of something like that or wanted to guard his stock. And money...well, he never had money. So his brain associates 'store' with 'place to keep poor kids away from' and he doesn't like that.
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"Well if you think it's stupid, you can just go on tradin' your goods in the cold. But I fail to see how you'd like that better," he grouses. Weird kid, but Louis knew that already. The average young man Louis knows, enlisted or not, wouldn't mind loitering around a store or soda shop.
He gestures to the front windows less sourly, "I also want to put a few little tables inside, you know, somewhere people can sit and have somethin' hot to drink..."
He trails off, frowning at nothing in particular.
"I miss the cafes at home. We'd sit on the chairs outside, and the weather was good enough for it, and these fat pigeons would come along hopin' for a piece of beignet."
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There were places like that in Prehevil, around the shopping distract. The orphans would usually get run off if they hung around there too long. And the last time he was there it was full of--he closes his eyes and shivers. No. No he needs to not think of that. It sounds like a good memory to Louis, he doesn't want to ruin it with his Termina or other Prehevil memories.
"I bet it was nice."
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"Very used to people questionin' and patronizin' me and all the rest. Gets old real fast."
He puts his hands in his pockets instead.
"Come by sometime. Better to see it than me tryin' to explain." Given the circumstances, Louis isn't going to be picky about customers or loiterers. He just wants the store to look less empty, and what's wrong with someone stopping by to warm their hands?
"It don't look like much right now, but I know how to run a place. You not much for stores where you're from?"
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When he plucked Claudia out of her old poor life, it was something dirty to be forgotten in the deluge of gifts and love he showered her with. The act of saving her from a problem of his own making was a selfish assuaging of his guilt. What does he even know, really?
"There's stores back home I wouldn't be allowed in either, no matter how much money I had... I used to be a rich man. But there always someone with more power who want to put a boot on my neck. Long as you don't hurt nothin', you're welcome here even if you're not here to trade. I'll be open when people tryin' to sleep in the Hall. It'll be nice to have a warm place for the night hunter, the night watchman, the... whatever it is Mr. Rorschach does on the roofs. More people active at night than I thought there would be."
Louis's ulterior motive in opening a store is to save himself the trouble of dangerous hunting and foraging and let the suppliers come to him. He is still a selfish man, one who has realized he isn't cut out for the adventurer's life. It takes years of training and experience he doesn't have. The life of near-starvation and risk taking he's led these past few months isn't sustainable for him and his particular diet.
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"Heh." Rorschach sure was a 'whatever it is.' Levi likes the guy, but he sure doesn't understand him much.
"I won't hurt or break anything, I promise. I usually just leave anything I've brought in in the hall or its basement, though."
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"No reward for your troubles? How do you eat, store food?"
Unless... Levi doesn't eat...?
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"If I'm hunting for myself I don't need a reward, and if I get more than I can eat I'd rather other people eat it than let it go to waste.
"There's a refrigerator. No power usually, but its cold enough that doesn't tend to matter."
Levi eats! Just not as much as he probably should.
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"I ain't talkin' about waste. God forbid anyone waste anythin' around here when people always hungry. Same strategy here, goin' keep stuff in the ice box in a cold room. Well, if there's anythin' you need besides animal products, you might find it here if you don't find it in the Hall... if people take it all without askin'... These are lean times. Can't wait for spring."
If it comes. Winter has a way of seeming interminable.
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