st_opsummoningme: (demon days)
[personal profile] st_opsummoningme
Freedom from her bonds had given Illyana more than freedom of movement. It had returned to her the use of her magik and her ability to teleport. These abilities had, in turn, allowed her to finish making ready the library for public use. It was less about collecting books and media from around the premises (and some from Limbo, or donated collections harvested from the Otherworlds) and arranging shelving and seating, most of which had been relatively easily done. It was more a matter of laying the appropriate wards, and negotiating the finer points of the old-fashioned catalog and check-out system, which included odd donated items such as sporting equipment and electronic devices available for rental. Xavin's espresso machine counter necessitated a mini-bar refrigerator, glass-domed cake stands for assorted pastries brought in from the kitchen, and various cafe sundries.

Repurposed from what had been the 'Garden Room,' the library space with its high wooden ceilings, chandeliers, and landscape murals over busy floral carpet still looked somewhat like a touristy banquet hall, yet the area was now also highly saturated with layered magic. The hodgepodge collection of random books and so on were fiercely protected by these magics. When needed and as possible, worn volumes had been restored. The books could not be damaged nor marred from here on out, at least not by coffee spills nor page-tearing or inconsiderate attempts at margin notation. Nor would they leave the boundaries of the library area without proper dispensation, simply stopping mid-air and dropping should the attempt be made at the threshold. Ask at the Desk for Assistance With These Items, prompted the signs on several glass display cases featuring certain perhaps unsettling curiosities within - books in arcane languages, skulls from indeterminate creatures, and artifacts such as a green glowing cube suspended on a chain. At said desk, a gleaming service bell sat waiting, should the staff be needed and not clearly present.

Illyana finished affixing the large engraved plaque to the wall beside the double-doors, and then returned to attend the newly opened library with little fanfare:

Madonna Inn Expanded Public Library

Established ~01.25.2018 Earthly Gregorian Calendar

Open All Hours

Volunteer Staff on Duty as Schedules Allow

Classes & Tutoring for Most Subjects Available Upon Request

Donations Encouraged

Disruptive Patrons Will Be Zealously Evicted
st_x5_494: (drinking)
[personal profile] st_x5_494
Alec leaned against the bar drinking beer that tasted definitely 'pre-pulse' and wondering what the hell this was all about. He understood he was stuck here now - he had tried all the various ways he knew how to get out of a place and none of them had worked. He wasn't necessarily giving up, but right now beer was a lot more appealing.

There were a few nice things about this place like how there was no pulse to deal with and there were a variety of people so being a transgenic didn't seem like a big deal, not that he was going to go around advertising that either way.

A slight sigh as he motioned for another beer. He was desperately trying to get drunk.
st_oriedqueen: (gorgeous profile)
[personal profile] st_oriedqueen
Summary: Regina enlists Odo in her quest to supply the inn.

Odo. Just the man I wanted to see )


Summary: Regina runs into Jane in town. A flashback and uncomfortable truths are shared.

Less exploring, more pillaging. The town has resources the Inn needs. )


Summary: On their quest for sulfur for Snow's bullets, a dog is found, Abby is Gibbsed, and Regina is Abbied.

I'd ask what a Gibbs is, but I'm afraid you might tell me. )
st_raighttovampire: (Smirk)
[personal profile] st_raighttovampire
Next week was Thanksgiving, and Caroline's preparations were well under way.  She had a list of food, all of the bartenders were working on drinks. There would be entertainment - the new guy, Coby, had said something about performing and she'd heard that he'd played on his balcony over the weekend.

Since it was one of the usual days for check-ins, Caroline had decided to take the opportunity of waiting for arrivals to decorate the lobby. As with every other holiday, the inn had a huge storage room full of decorations, all labeled and packed away for the right season.

Gourds had arrived in the last delivery, so now the pink of the lobby was complimented by the orange and yellows of pumpkins and squash. A cornucopia spilled fake fruit onto the front desk, where the staff kept coming by and rotating one apple a few degrees, as though it would look more real that way.  They had lapel pins on, she'd noticed. Well, who said non-real people didn't deserve a little holiday cheer too?

Caroline perched on a ladder and fastened a streamer into the high corner of the roof, and watched the door. 
st_aff: (Halloween Town)
[personal profile] st_aff
By afternoon, the pale blue of the morning sky had bleached and deepened to an icy slate gray. Seagull cries haunted the beach gone missing in an impenetrable fog. Even the lighthouse at the point barely pierced the rolling boil above a choppy, murky, bottle-green sea.

All the living souls in Bonesville clung close to the lights of The Hangman's Grill, like terrified barnacles on a pier. Even the stranger and more criminal folk that made up the population of Bonestown avoided the ocean on days like this. Idiots who beach-combed in fog were how ghosts got made. Well, some of them.

So even had their (mostly) human gazes been able to make out the strange glowing as a new cave mouth opened at the base of the sea cliff, there was no one near the beach to do so. A very few ventured down to the cove on matters of "business" late in the afternoon when the weather settled to something slightly less legendary, but they appeared not to notice the new cave or anyone leaving it until they crossed onto more traveled paths.

For those at the Madonna Inn who had been there the last time a door opened to another world, the experience was familiar. The door to Room 144 had preemptorily sealed itself shut and refused to open until whatever happened beyond it had happened. When it did, the bank of windows that had been at the outer wall had disappeared and the rock walls extended out into a cave.

From within the room, the sounds of screeching seagulls and crashing waves carried and echoed, but none of the coastal moisture crossed the spatial-temporal barrier. And when the first to venture forth emerged, they were greeted by a slowly reddening nautical warning of a sky.
st_raighttovampire: (Cheer)
[personal profile] st_raighttovampire
Independence Day called for joyous celebration. Caroline was up before dawn getting the last details ready. She laid out a breakfast buffet and mimosa bar with the help of her volunteers, set up games outside in the grass, dragged tables and umbrellas all over the property to make a fun little venue. The highlight of the whole business was a small stage that she'd convinced Piotr and Percy to build for her.

The backdrop of it could have various backgrounds projected onto it and, tonight would be an awesome movie screen for her triple feature: The Sandlot, Jurassic Park and, of course, Independence Day. Because nothing said America like fighting off invaders from outer space. Rey had worked a minor miracle by figuring out how to hook (and charge!) Caroline's cell phone to the speakers so there was music all day even when Lindsey wasn't up to playing.

In the storerooms, Caroline had found not just a SnoCone machine, but a popcorn cart and a cotton candy maker. Stephanie had agreed to take on running the last one, so Caroline hauled boxes and boxes of the sugar out to its location on the lawn.

A baseball game started to shape up around noon, while the scent of grilled meat filled the air.

It took a lot of work and most of the population being bullied into helping in some way or another, but on the 4th of July, Caroline was ready to declare independence from worrying about being trapped here.

The evening culminated with a brilliant lights display by two of the mages. Not fireworks, but not half bad either.

[Feel free to make up whatever activity you'd most like to see at the party. Sorry, this went up so late.]
st_raighttovampire: (Golden girl)
[personal profile] st_raighttovampire
As she often was on the first and fifteenth, Caroline had placed herself strategically in the lobby of the hotel where she could keep an eye on the usual entrances through the lobby, cafe and restaurant. But this time, while she waited for any new faces who might need orientation, she was working.

On the message board, she'd posted a list of needed volunteers - and filled in a few names already. Cooking, grilling, entertainment (day and evening), games, set up, tear down, beverage stations. After a suggestion from the massive Russian hottie, she added a sign up for a baseball game, including an umpire spot.

Baseball:
1. (Team Captain) Russian hottie (male)


The pink lobby was slowly starting to fill up with stars and streamers, decorations that muted the garish pink or at least obscured it with red, white and blue. Since most of the residents weren't from the US, she was laying off the really overtly American themed decorations and leaning more on the summer barbecue angle.

As far as Caroline was concerned, this was starting to look like a real festival.
st_andingtall: (dead gorgeous)
[personal profile] st_andingtall
Date: 12 June 2017

After deciding that D&D is the way for Angua to make friends, Sam steals a page from Regina and leaves flyers around. He runs into Harry while he's signing up.

[Here | rating pg | ongoing | nerds being nerds]
st_oriedqueen: (hmmm chinhand)
[personal profile] st_oriedqueen
Date: 12 June 2017

Regina posts a Help Wanted flyer and gets a call from Abby. She's determined to keep her promise to Snow.

[Here | rating gen | ongoing | discussion of firearms]
st_ereoscopic: (Default)
[personal profile] st_ereoscopic
Abby wasn't sure if the semi-regular happenings of arrivals would continue today, especially after Songrun, but just in case she made her way to the cafe. It would be the perfect spot to see the lobby if anyone new didn't make it as far as the cafe seeking answers. It also gave her lots of room to spread her "project" out.

There were bits and bobs but mostly it was a couple of tubes, lens, spring and nobs. Abby was determined to make a microscope. It might not be especially useful around the hotel but it was a comfort to her. Besides it kept her mind occupied and she was finding that, that was more important as time in the hotel went on.

Time seemed to fade around her, which usually happened when she focused on her work, and it was the protest of her back muscles that had her stretching. It was then that she noticed more people trickling into the cafe and some unfamiliar faces. Which meant it really was check in day today and she stood to greet friends she hadn't met yet. In Abby speak that was practically everyone. No one was a stranger - at least not for long.
st_illcounts: (Default)
[personal profile] st_illcounts
The first day the portal opened to another world, Johnny practically ran through the doorway to get there. It was only after hours of trying and putting something together for communications that he finally gave up and resigned himself to yet another world. The place made him feel more of a fish out of water than the hotel did, so he'd planned on just visiting. Though he was sure some of the people might want to stay there rather than the hotel.

Which meant for Johnny the forages into the world, were strictly that - forages to find out what he could salvage and use back at the hotel. What he did discover was a treasure trove for him and that was a few areas that had scrap metal and 'junk'. So he'd sent messages to both Abby and Kitty to see if they wanted to join him and see what they could find, use and barter. Truth be told, Johnny was kind of in heaven rummaging through the scrap metal with ideas flying in his head how he could use some of the items.
st_alksthroughwalls: (sweet)
[personal profile] st_alksthroughwalls
Fifteen days into this particular strange trip, Kitty had redistributed alcohol supplies between the cafe, restaurant, and night club to make it possible to easily tend bar wherever people decided to gather. Today, as most days, she settled into the lobby cafe after chivvying the cook into chicken tenders and french fries (after convincing him it was a single plate meal). It was the closest she could get to "bar food" from him and someone would probably arrive sooner rather than later to make something else.

A few people trickled in after awhile, but none of them demanding. Like her, they drank coffee from the samovar she'd put out. And also like her, most of them had something else to keep them occupied. At the moment, Kitty had a notebook open (from the gift shop; she kept her school notebooks separate in case she made it home during the term) and was sketching plans to upgrade the hotel's computer technology. She needed more raw computing power to work out the energy requirements to do what Illyana did with a thought.

She lifted her head periodically to check for new customers, and had just seated herself at the end of the bar after refilling the samovar when the first new new customer arrived. Immediately, she flipped to a fresh page in the notebook and headed it "Day 15" and made a hash mark for one new arrival. Then she looked up from her notebook and offered one and all her best bartending smile.
st_aff: (Default)
[personal profile] st_aff
None of them planned it.

It just happened.

After a week of nothing but Iron Chef: Chicken, Sam had gone to the Copper Cafe to make himself a salad and found Steph already there making waffles. Dean joined them when he couldn’t find Sam in the room and immediately started pouring draft beers. Snow crept down a little later, apparently planning to make mashed potatoes to go with her chicken, and found Steph already peeling them.

With promises of alcohol and no questions, they convinced Snow to stay. And then, to their surprise, she not only helped Steph with the potatoes but overheard Dean bitching about a bakery with no pies and rolled up her sleeves to make one or three. The Chef drifted in a bit later, made fried chicken without talking to any of them and left them to their demented, sad but drunkenly social New Year’s Eve “party”.

By ten they were bored of draft beer and Sam and Steph went and raided the Steak House coolers for champagne—Steph because she wanted it and Sam because it was entirely plausible that an insurance investigator/estate appraiser would know something about what was decent champagne. But when they found a room service cart, they didn’t stop at champagne.

Why should they? They couldn’t go anywhere. They had nothing to do except when Sam and Dean could sneak off to bust the odd ghost or Steph to crawl the odd roof and Snow for a horseback ride. No reason they couldn’t spend the next three days drinking in the Cafe if they wanted.

Which was why when the new guests started arriving in groups of threes and fours, they were still there, drinking, listening to whatever crap music Steph on her phone and ready to share their booze for consolation. There wasn’t any way for people to get out of the lobby without seeing them, either, so they ended up consoling a lot.

Of course, there were four of them and eventually like twenty-six new people, so pretty soon it was less you’re stuck, it sucks, I’m sorry and more have a drink, grab a chair, have some pie. Some stayed in the wood-and-red leather cafe with its copper fittings, and some didn’t.

Whatever they chose, not one could say it wasn’t an interesting New Year’s Day.

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