[open] General Store

[flambeaux]

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:

1. Invite friends and avail yourselves of the candy, booze, and free aprons
2. Actually tend the store

Comments

[desperate_times_right]

[Good news Vasiliy, Chloe’s pretty sure a robot uprising is exactly what's going on with Uzi, though she hasn't spoken much with her about it.]

Yeah, Renny’s great. He came with me to explore that prepper base or whatever, by the waterfall. Sounds like he's an adventurer at home, too.

It definitely seems like everyone here has a story to tell. The aurora won't touch anyone boring, I guess.

[sputnik]

[ Konstantin can't help the reaction that comes at Vasiliy's comment — a sort of perking up that brightens him all over, and maybe something mostly seen in the eyes. It's a genuine happiness, something he's not sure he's felt in a long time. And while he doesn't verbally respond, there's a brief moment where he looks to the other man and sends that smile specifically to him: a response of its own. ]

The aurora...

[ He lifts his glass thoughtfully towards his mouth, though doesn't drink from it, only lets the rim of it brush his lip for a moment before lowering it again. The lights... ]

That's what they say brings us here, right. ...It sounds like we've all definitely been drugged, to me.

[ He gives another laugh (because of course he does), torso tipping forwards a little, an expressive man with his amusement. ]

[m1895]

[ He doesn't miss the smile—of course he doesn't; it makes his breath hitch midway down his throat with the renewed wave of warmth that rushes through his chest—just being in Konstantin's presence, listening to him talk, watching him subsequently laugh after he takes a drink feels like basking in the rays of the sun on a bright day.

It's incredible, that one person could be so magnetic, so charismatic—he really is exactly the sort of exceptional, larger-than-life person one expects a cosmonaut to be, the kind of man whose shadow Vasiliy has always stood in without minding much. ]

I wish I knew more about the universe. I don't think we're drugged right now—when people dream on anaesthesia it is not usually like this. [ He looks over at Chloe in particular. ] What is the last thing you remember?

[ He doesn't share his growing theory that some of the population, beyond just himself and his housemate, might just be dead or pulled from their worlds and crudely transplanted through time without explanation just as he had been—he had assumed upon his arrival, albeit more waveringly these days, that he'd somehow died in his sleep back in Chicago. A gas leak, a heart attack, a pulmonary embolism. Some unremarkable, silent death he wouldn't remember. Konstantin's arrival had both corroborated the theory and disputed it—he'd awoken completely alone, last time, a stranger taking first steps on a desolate alien planet. This is a lot more communal than his experience of dying.

And there's the matter of the darkwalker, and the woman's voice—some sort of entity may have just... brought them here, deliberately. ]

[desperate_times_right]

[Chloe’s still wearing that same broad smile, but her shoulders tense a little. Something about this is starting to feel like an interrogation, and that makes her nervous even though she didn't do anything. Is this some kind of good cop bad cop thing they've got going on?]

Like I said, I was at a party. We’d just got word the civil war was ending, and everyone was out in the street celebrating.

[Depending on where he comes from, the EMT is current enough that he might even know about it.]