Open Post: Welters

[sorrowandsorrow]

It's probably been noted before, but Janet's not actually dumb. The people of this mansion are varied and mercurial. They're not like Fillorians, some of whom are little bitches but who were largely cow-eyed and willing to accept her authority just because she was a pretty girl from another world.

So. She has to win people over. Maybe everyone needs a little fun to take their minds off things. Conveniently, welters is absolutely Janet's idea of fun. There's a bunch of insane rules, violence is encouraged, and you win if you're good at magic and being bossy.

The mansion grounds are also a little tempestuous as to their character, but apparently the master magician toying with all their lives is feeling charitable today. She's found a big, flat stretch of undisturbed grass, and she's sketching out welters squares with a piece of chalk.

Comments

[sorrowandsorrow]

"Why can't you see a lot of stars on your world? Light pollution?" Janet hazards.

[sorrowandsorrow]

Janet nearly beams at him, and tosses her hair over her shoulder. "They invented it about a zillion years ago. Supposedly students kept killing each other in duels, so they came up with this to make them stop."

[sporesprouter]

"Oh, no, it's just the moons. They're very large in the sky, so no matter where you are, one of them will be taking up about a third of it. The stars get lost in the moonglow, a little."

[sagramore]

"A tragic loss for a good old-fashioned pasttime, but I suppose. Is the game actually less dangerous?"

[timebethine]

"Tell me more about this game," he says. He is a little discomfited by the warmth of the marble ball in his hands, and eager to vouchsafe it to her again. "Is this how you play? Catching rocks? I'd expected more from magicians' entertainments."

[sorrowandsorrow]

"Sure, it's less dangerous." She's still grinning. "Usually people just have to go to the nurse instead of the mortuary."

[sorrowandsorrow]

"That's how you start." Janet holds her hand out for the globe. "You capture the squares, with magic. If I can get this going, I'll have to turn some of these squares into things other than grass. You know, sand, water, sheets of metal, whatever. It changes every game. Different kinds of spells win different kinds of squares."

[sorrowandsorrow]

"Oh, the moons, of course." Janet rifles through the papers Tress gave her again, for something to do with her hands. Not that she feels bad. "The giant moons. Sounds... pretty."

[timebethine]

He tips the ball into her hand, then folds his own hands at his back. "Something like a wizard's duel," he guesses. "But wielding the elements as blades."

[sorrowandsorrow]

"Thanks," Janet says, casually popping it back where it came from. This top isn't that boobtastic, honestly, it's just a great place to store something that took a lot of work to make and that you really don't want to lose.

"Yes, essentially. A good welters game can get pretty crazy." She smiles at the thought. "Anything goes as long as you can capture a square. And then there's protecting the ones you have, or recapturing the ones you lost."

[timebethine]

"Would I wielded such powers!" says Laertes, and he sounds genuinely envious and interested. "This game makes mine own middling duels appear no more than schoolboys' brawls."

[sporesprouter]

She nods. "It is. Not seeing one of them was honestly the thing that threw me most when I got here."

[sagramore]

"Sent by you, I suppose."

[sorrowandsorrow]

"Aw, no." Janet reaches behind herself just to demonstratively tap one of the black-metal staves strapped to her back. "I can use these things, and I can be pretty scary when I use them, but I don't really know what I'm doing with most weapons. Magic or bust for me."

[sorrowandsorrow]

"Only sometimes. I play by the rules." About this, she's quite serious, although her tone remains light. "There are a lot of them."

[sagramore]

"Mmm, that falls into the same category as the drinks: I'm not surprised. About the rules or your adherence. Will you explain it to me?"

[timebethine]

Immediately, Laertes's gaze--previously fixed on Janet's eyes to avoid her other orbular parts--snaps to Janet's weapons. "What are those?" he asks. Where before his interest had the kind of guileless curiosity one might expect to accompany pure ignorance, at the mention of a weapon, his focus sharpens. He is, Janet may notice, wearing a rapier strapped somewhat incongruously over his well-fitted jeans.

[ravkanwitch]

“It doesn’t really matter to me as long as they don’t try to order me around,” Nina shrugs, then gives Janet a smile. “Except maybe if it’s you.”

“What kind of game is it?”

[sorrowandsorrow]

"Absolutely."

At that, Janet strides a few feet away and makes a wide gesture to show the grid she's sketched. Objectively, it's not all that impressive. But it's got potential. Like so: "Some of these stay grass. Others, I'll change."

A tiny little-girl part of her wants to impress Sagramore, so she does a series of intricate motions with her fingers, mutters something in passable Japanese under her breath, and turns one of the squares into water. "Like that. Some of them will be sand, metal, whatever." Water's the easiest, but she won't tell him that. "Then you use spells to capture them, or defend them, or recapture them. Different spells work on different terrain."

[sorrowandsorrow]

Well, okay. If the puppy-eyed boy insists. Janet smiles thinly and reaches back with both hands, then, to balance one stave in each hand. "They turn into axes," she says, as if that explains it.

[sagramore]

Gratifyingly, he does look impressed. "You can change the whole yard into different things?"

[sorrowandsorrow]

"Yeah, I bet." This is easy enough to imagine. "Fillory is flat, which... I mean, you can't tell right away. But when you realize, it's pretty freaky. Uh, if your world is round, I mean. Mine was."

[sporesprouter]

"It's round, yes. The moons are evenly spaced around it. The island I grew up on wasn't far from the Verdant lunagree."

[sorrowandsorrow]

That qualifier pulls an answering smile out of Janet. She's getting more torn on the whole idea of this power struggle, especially since she hasn't even seen Claudius around lately, but there's no better feeling than having someone on your side.

"Do you have chess where you're from?"

[sorrowandsorrow]

"The Verdant lunagree." Has Janet commented on the fantasy bullshit she's surrounded by, lately? Honestly, there's something comforting about it. It sounds like something you'd hear in Fillory. "Do you guys have a sun, too? Or suns?"