riverviewlogs | introductory mingle: SAMPREMI

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introductory mingle: SAMPREMI

who: everyone in Riverview!
what: Introductory Log and Sampremi Celebration
when: March 8th - March 15th
where: In several different locations in the downtown area of the Inhabited City.
warnings: please put any necessary warnings in the subject lines

sampremi celebration

In the days leading up to March 8th, new residents may notice advertising around the city, everywhere from digital screens to paper flyers pasted on blank walls, featuring the name of the spring holiday in celebration of new beginnings, new love, and lust: Sampremi. The advertising mentions that there will be street festivals set up at various locations throughout the week and lists where the market will be set up on each day.

street market

The main draw of the holiday is a roaming street market that features special treats and street food that can only be found during Sampremi, a bustling bargain market with any kind of goods you can think of, and fair games that allow a person to win a prize for that special someone.

i. street food

One of the major draws of the festival is the special street food that can only be obtained this time of year. Almost everything you can buy at the Sampremi Festival is meant to be shared - whether it's one piece of meat on two sticks or desserts baked with a narrow part in the middle for convenient tearing, everything is built in twos. The stalls sell everything from cups of soup, sandwiches, roasted or fried meat, deep-fried vegetables and cakes, dumplings, donuts, bagels, turnovers, and anything else you can think of.

Many of the savory dishes are based on the meat of a particular fowl native to the moon Riverview is situated on that has a taste and texture halfway between chicken and duck, cooked to be spicy (ranging from very mild to throat-burning). Many of the desserts are based around a fruit native to the moon that is spherical, red-orange, and has a light sweet taste that is similar to a combination of mango, pineapple, and strawberry. Both ingredients are considered to be aphrodisiacs. Of course, the foods aren't actually aphrodisiacs and any effect is purely placebo.

ii. fair games

The festival features an entire row of fair games ranging from very high-tech games featuring virtual reality and neon holograms to extremely old-fashioned games with darts and balloons or balls and glasses. The games all have prizes in various shapes and sizes, with the standard stuffed animals, but also with goods and special items donated by any business in the city; ranging from tiny prizes to huge and expensive ones.

Due to the nature of the holiday, many of the stalls are set up to cater to winning a prize for your partner, and due to the nature of the Quarantine, a lot of them involve aiming or other aspects of pretending to fight.

iii. shopping

Originally, the part of the street festival that involved an actual market, with stalls and booths set up with goods, was aimed primarily at romantic trinkets like flowers or jewelry, gifts intended to be purchased for a loved one. As time has gone by, however, this aspect of the market has increased, with many businesses participating, though the emphasis is still on small businesses and anything relating to local culture rather than booths for any of the larger more corporate businesses.

There is still plenty of jewelry to be found, for sure, mostly handmade and artisan, but the scope of the Market has widened immeasurably. The Sampremi Market is an excellent place to find specialty foods, clothing, jewelry, art, or other goods that were originally native to cultures on other planets in this reality, or other realities altogether. Many residents in the city use the market to share their unique cultural goods and traditional dress with others.

iv. adult

In a side alley of the Sampremi Market on any day, one can find an area roped off with a red silken cord, attended by members of the Perimeter Guard in casual dress who will ID anyone entering to make sure they are 18+. Once characters are permitted entry, they will find all of the adult offerings that the market has to offer.

Since Sampremi is, historically, a celebration of lust and physical love, the adult offerings are all set up to cater to two or more people of any sex or gender configuration. One can find an adult or sexualized version of almost anything that's featured in the main market, from fair games to adult goods to street food laced with actual aphrodisiacs (there are always warnings for food spiked in this way to avoid accidental consumption).

v. roommates or wildcard

Feel free to use this prompt to set up headers for a communal floor, or threads open to roommates for the purpose of getting to know each other. Or if you have an idea for a prompt that isn't in this list, set at the Sampremi Festival, feel free to write it up!

visual inspiration

click on thumbnails for larger view

Credit (left to right): Theo Prins, andreasrocha @ tumblr, hrormir @ deviantart, nkabuto @ deviantart

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Steve takes a careful note of their well-armed roommate. He doesn't actually say anything at first, since the guy doesn't seem hostile, but Ivar's collection is going to catch his attention. Things like weapons are important to note. Steve is coming back from one of his runs when he finds Ivar on his bed, sharpening his array of blades. He pauses as he comes in, returning the polite nod, and finishes walking into the room where he watches the young man at work.

"You can use all of those?"

The question is mild, but carries his alert curiosity. Being able to use one weapon or the other is good training, but the wide difference in style between Ivar's arsenal is actually impressive. Not everyone can use a sword and an ax.

Ivar glances up at Steve. Then continues to stare because the man is built like a brick wall. This is clearly not someone to be messed with. He sits up a little bit straighter with pride at the question. He's worked hard to develop his skills. Just learning how to throw an ax or draw a bow from a sitting position was no easy feat.

"All of them and more." He didn't have his full arsenal on him when he was brought here. Ivar was lucky that he had just come from battle or he might have only had his knife.

Steve stands near Ivar's bed. He's leaning against the bed opposite him, appraising the display of weapons that Ivar has laid out. He keeps them in good shape, and Steve can tell the young man isn't an amateur toting around heavy blades just to prove he's a tough guy. He might carry a stubborn chip on his shoulder (that Steve can also relate to), but he knows what he's doing. On one hand, it's sort of sad. Ivar is young to be so devoted to battle, but he's dressed like a warrior.

"Can I see one?"

He asks because Steve can't help but be curious. He wants to know just what this viking warrior is handling when he's on the battlefield. It says a lot about a person, and he wants to know more about Bucky's roommates.

Ivar likewise takes in Steve's appearance. He's grown up in a warrior society and knows the look of someone who can handle themselves in battle. The way the man carries himself speaks to being a soldier or other type to be found on the field of battle. He approves. Fighting and raiding are all the teen knows, bred into his very bones.

"Sure." He picks up the sword and offers it tip first to the captain. It's a blade of no small weight and that alone speaks to the Viking's skill. He's honed them after many long hours of practice with his brothers.

Steve accepts the blade, taking it by lifting it from beneath the flat with both hands, feeling the weight as it rests on them. He looks back up at Ivar as he holds it, mentally noting the strength that it would take to wield the weapon against the teenager's appearance. He's impressed. There is a certain way that warriors carry themselves that even some experienced heroes don't have. The sharp look of a fighter that has been trained for battles is something that stands out. Even with Ivar sitting on the bed, Steve can tell he's ready for battle. He takes hold of the sword's hilt, turning it and testing the balance.

"What were you doing with all of these before you got here?" Waging war by the looks of things, but Steve wonders just who the young man was fighting.

There was something in the way Ivar carried himself, a tenseness like he was always waiting for a fight to start. Part of it was the Viking way. Part of it came from the chip on his shoulder, a lifetime of being told he was useless, just a cripple, someone who would never amount to anything. The anger inside of him burned brightly, both a strength and weakness to his character.

He sees Steve as having something inside him as well. Not anger, nothing that would send him berserk in battle. No, what he had was more subtle, something that would carry him through no matter what.

He answers Steve, hand coming to rest unconsciously on the handle of his knife as he answers. "Killing people." He says this very casually, as if all teenagers spent their lives in battles brutally butchering people with ancient weapons. Well, they did where he was from. "My brothers and I were waging war on an English king."

Steve doesn't look surprised by the answer. Ivar looks like he's made for war, and it isn't so surprising to Steve that a young man that looks like a Viking would have been at war. He holds up the sword, stepping back to a clear space so he can swing the blade a few times experimentally. If that is what Ivar is using, he's trained well.

"Are you worried about getting back?" Being cut off in the middle of a war would have made him anxious. Crazy with tension, trying to get back home. He returns the sword to Ivar's bed, setting it down alongside the rest of the weapons he has laid out.

"Being pulled away from your family must be hard."

Ivar picks up the sheathe for the sword, placing it back inside. "Not so much as I'm worried about how my brothers will get along without me. They need me to plan for them. I'm the strategist." The rest of his brothers, especially Bjorn, only saw a straight line that involved smashing and stabbing their way to victory. Ivar was the only one to see patterns in things. He used things like how people thought to his advantage, allowing him to plan three steps ahead of everyone else around him.

"I...do miss my brothers." For just a single moment, loneliness flickers across his face. They were the only family he had left, and as much as Ivar didn't like them most days, he still loved them.

Steve understands that concern. Part of him also wonders if their world will be safe when so many heroes are in quarantine, but he knows that he just has to have faith in the rest of them. It's a difficult feeling to overcome when he can't check in, though, and when Ivar says brothers, Steve feels for him. Leaving family behind hurts.

"They might come here. We don't know how the portal works," he says. After all, if they can get there, then why can't others from their worlds show up too? There's still hope. And Steve Rogers carries all kinds of impossible hope around. It's what got him this far.

"We can check with newcomers and make sure we hear if they come through. That way we won't miss them."

"Sure. Just let me know if you hear about any idiots trying to fight and stab someone as soon as they come through. That will be them." He loves his brothers, but he doesn't think too highly of their self-control.

Ivar knows his brothers all too well. If they end up in an unfamiliar place, their first thoughts are going to be to fight their way out of it. The only reason Ivar hadn't done the same thing was being in an acute state of shock when he came through. Fortunate for him, otherwise, he'd likely be in prison right now.

Steve smirks at the mental image of Vikings charging through the portal. It reminds him of Hercules or Ares. Or Thor. "Swing first, ask questions once everyone is on the ground" is a familiar method that he appreciates more than he should. He's also a man that prefers to fight his way out rather than submit to anyone, and while that's not always the best course of action, it is a familiar one.

"If I hear about anything like that, I'll probably go out and meet them," he says. Steve is pretty sure that falls within his job description anyway, and he can probably take the attack of a band of Vikings better than most without anyone getting seriously hurt. And part of him does want to meet the men that Ivar calls his brothers. He already likes Ivar himself so far.

"You didn't stab anyone when you came through, did you?" After that, he feels that this is a fair question to ask.

"Good. You look like you can handle yourself. Their names are Bjorn, Ubbe, Hvitserk, and Sigurd, just in case you run into them." Ivar wonders if they'll end up here. After all, if he ended up here, there was a likelihood of the portal drawing in people from the same world, wasn't there? He almost hopes they do. Ivar's never fully been on his own before.

"No...but I thought about it," he confesses. Ivar had been so confused and shocked when he came through that he had just sort of gone with everything going on around him. By the time they were done explaining where he was and what was going on, the urge to slice someone's throat to get any questions had passed.

"If I run into any of them, I'll make sure to bring them back here. I'm sure they'd be relieved to see you."

He can still remember what it was like to wake up in a different world where nothing made sense and everything seemed hostile. It made a difference to have someone friendly and somewhat familiar. Having family would make all the difference.

"And I'll try not to get stabbed. I don't think the others would let me live that down," Steve says. There's humor in his expression as he says that. The Avengers still expect him to have a handle on everything, even though Bucky is Captain now, and he hasn't really done anything. "Anything I should know to keep from bleeding?"

Ivar had adapted surprisingly well for being here such a short amount of time. It was his natural inclination to think things through when confronted with a new situation or problem, something that had served him well. Even so, he was taking things slowly, still being confronted by so many new things.

"Just tell them that I'm here and that they haven't been captured by the English." A thought that had run through his head when he first showed up here. "And watch out for Bjorn. He's the best fighter. He once killed a bear with nothing but his hands and a knife." Not an exaggeration either. Ivar came from a family of badass warriors. Each of them was highly skilled in their own way.

Steve doesn't scoff or doubt when Ivar tells him about his brothers and their strength. He can see the experience echoed back in Ivar's eyes, so his brothers are likely the same. And Steve would like to meet the rest of the family after this talk with Ivar. Defeating a bear is no small accomplishment.

"I'll keep that in mind. How do you think I'd compare to the bear?"

The question he asks with a little teasing, but underneath that is honest curiosity. He might be a hero in his world, but even then he wonders how he measures up in others. A fighter likes to know what he's capable of.

Ivar looks the man over, his gaze keen and calculating. You can practically see the thoughts running through his mind, weighing his brothers against the soldier before him.

"Better than the bear. But you seem like the type to go for an honorable fight. Vikings are a little dirtier and rougher." Ivar in particular went for cheap shots, but that was because he needed every advantage he could get in a fight. Still, any Viking would take the advantage in a fight if meant putting their opponent down for good.

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introductory mingle: SAMPREMI

roommates!

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