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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More guns. It's her first thought when she turns, dagger still poised for her next throw in one hand (she moved fast between get rid of weird thing and knives! mode), and takes the man in. Always guns here, instead of weapons that made sense to her. But the hatchet was nice. More homey.

This means it's a moment of her ogling the side arms before she actually focuses on the offered bunny and looks up at the face of the man. No, not just a man. Beard man.

Maker, he'd give Blackwall a run soon.

"Whatcha think I'm gonna do with that, eh?"

Not reaching. Nope. She doesn't trust those little plastic eyes.

Guns are necessary where he's from, necessary toward sheer survival. He's brought just a knife to a gun fight before and it's very rare that it ends well. Not that knives can't be useful too in certain circumstances - or bows, or hatchets, or machetes or a metal pipe - whatever keeps you alive. Everyone has their thing, surely. Rick doesn't judge people for doing what's needed to stay alive. It's human nature, after all - and not just human nature, he supposes, but any living thing.

He doesn't begrudge her ogling the weapons though, anyone would. He has a few hidden ones as well since he knows from experience that you can never be too safe. Once that's over with, once she's looking back at him rather than at his armaments, he tilts his head and shrugs. "You're the one playin' to win it."

Rick looks around, tapping the first kid he sees on the shoulder, a young girl with a group of other young girls. He hands her the teddy bear and she seems happy enough. Clearly, he doesn't want it either. "They should offer things adults want too. You're a good shot. Good aim."

Her eyes follow the young girls wandering off, eyes softening slightly. Ah, kids. And the simple things that made them happy, like little pieces of useless fluff. And then the man was talking to her again.

"I'm freakin' brilliant."

The boast is softened somewhat by the huge grin she has with it. Yeah, yeah. Bragging and all. But the skill's for her enjoyment instead of winning over approval.

"Lookin' for a challenge?"

At least the toy is going somewhere it'll be appreciated rather than to himself or the woman who won it. Rick really prefers that to wasting anything. And really, it says something that that child still can appreciate something so simplistic as a stuffed teddy bear. Kids in his world, as rare as they are, don't get that luxury much of the time. Rick finds that he likes that they do here.

Her boast gets a slight smirk out of him. There's really no need for it. He's been standing here watching her skill, after all. He's seen it firsthand. However, something about the playfulness of it makes it less edgy and more amusing.

"I know better than to challenge someone with your skill. Don't mind shootin' a bit at the targets for fun though." He says. "If you're game for that, count me in."

"With that thing?"

She looks at the gun again, slightly puzzled expression in place. It was just...strange. But gave her an idea.

"We could manage a trade, yeah?"

That thing is what he's accustomed to shooting with, if she means the colt in the holster at his hip. So initially, he nods because yeah, he plans to shoot with his colt. What's strange to her isn't so strange to others. In fact, the colt and Rick have a very long, sordid and tumultuous history together. He lost it for awhile, but it's only recently been returned to him.

His nod stills and he shifts his weight from one foot to the other when she mentions a trade. He's not letting go of his colt... not willingly and not without incentive of the bad kind, the kind of incentive which he hopes doesn't exist here in this place as it does around every corner back home.

"What kind of trade?" He asks, suddenly very skeptical at the lack of straight-forwardness. That unease he feels in his chest? Yeah, that distrust is so natural to him now that he barely registers it anymore. It's something that just is. It's a part of him just as well as his blue eyes and dark brown hair.

"Teach me how it use your weird shite, and I'll teach some of mine, yeah?"

Sera can almost taste the distrust- she'd grown up among liars, rogues, thieves, and (worst of all) the occasional noble herself. That trades could end up with all the wrong kinda of screwing wasn't much news to her. An incessant cheer was always her favorite approach to it. And to non-distrusting types. Pretty much anyone that she didn't want to shoot arrows at, really.

"I've got some good ones."

Okay, that seems more fair a trade than what he was expecting. To be fair though, most of the people he's run into where he's from aren't entirely on the up and up. Even Rick himself has been known to be a little off-kilter now and then. Rick usually has a reason for going there. He doesn't set up residence there though, mostly because he has people to help bring him back and partly because that just isn't him.

The tension in his shoulders eases up a bit and after a moment of weighing her words and looking at them from every possible angle, he nods. "Alright."

One hand rests over his colt at his hip where he unsnaps the top flap of his holster to free the gun. "I only got the gun and the hatchet right now." And some knives hidden away in his boots just in case, but who's counting? "You ever used either of those?"

"The axe? Not much my thing. Too dwarfy."

It really wasn't at all, but at some point in her short experience with dwarfs them and battle axes had gotten all stitched together. Besides, she could've learned that at home. She leans around to look at his metal gunny bits instead, eyebrows going up.

"That one's new. Not much for getting too close, if I don't need it. Only got the one dress."

"Dwarfy?" It takes Rick a moment to wrap his mind around the comment. Dwarves. Axes. He gets it - eventually. There had been a time, before everything went South, that he'd seen movies, read comics and had a general knowledge about pop culture since he had a son who was engrossed in it.

When she eyes the gun, he nods. He's taught people to shoot plenty of times - something that's necessary in his world. He has no problem doing the same now.

"I can teach you." He says, pulling the gun from his holster. He rests it in his palm. "This is a Coly Python handgun. It's got a six-round cylinder." Rick unlocks the cylinder and spins it so she can see the bullets inside. "Six shots. See?" He claps it back in place.

Rick turns the gun to show her the hammer, unpins the safety on it. "Safety off. Pull back the hammer, you're ready to aim and shoot. Safety back on. Always." No stray shots in an area full of people. That wouldn't do. He pins thee safety back in place and looks at her. "Make sense so far?" Cause there's more.

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introductory mingle: SAMPREMI

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