fh_trips | Backpacking Trip: London Below, Tuesday

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graduate backpacking 2010

Backpacking Trip: London Below, Tuesday

The plan for today, for anyone who felt like exploring, was a choice of options:

If you cared to follow Door, there was a trip out to visit a quarter-legion of Roman soldiers who wandered in through a patch of old time and took up a permanent campsite by the Kilburn River. (Or, if you're from London Above and can't see the water, by the pipes that used to be the Kilburn river.) So warm up your Latin or your telepathy, or be prepared to depend on someone else's, and eat a nice hearty supper before the trekking starts.

If you were in the mood for something less ...tunnelly, Ingress will take you up to the rooftops to meet Old Bailey and his birds!

[OOC: OCD up, post open, and I utterly messed up the adventure dates, so instead y'all get a choice today and on Thursday, we'll have an extra Market!

AIM is fhbelow, not that I'll be in until later in the evening, but feel free to use it to coordinate!]

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Before or after adventures elsewhere.

Oatmeal today. The real sort, soaked in salt water all last night, with tinned peaches and restaurant sugar packets for flavour.

Or bacon and egg sarnies for dinner. It's probably bacon. It tastes like bacon. It might be bacon bits. The eggs are real! ...real pigeon eggs. Look, they taste the same.

Edited 2010-06-08 19:35 (UTC)

For reading and relaxing and putting funny hats on the busts. (It's not as if Door never has.)

For swimming, wading, and please not drowning. No lifeguard on duty.

Besides the souvenirs she'd bought before London, the other thing that had been in Francine's lost duffel was her swimsuit.Once she had it again and remembered an indoor pool had been mentioned, it was kind of hard to resist.

Except now that she was here, she couldn't quite bring herself to do more than sit at the edge, dangling her feet into the water. Entering the house itself had been a bit of a creepy jolt for Francine, though it was just a flash of emotion, nothing like Dinah's reaction had been. This was like that, but not. There was no flash of anything; the swimming pool just seemed... sad.

Edited 2010-06-08 20:47 (UTC)

For sleeping in like a lazy sod, or collapsing in like a weary traveler.

Door leads the group (those who chose to come), a lantern held high in her hand. (Well, as high as a rather small girl can hold a lantern.) It's a very necessary lantern, as are any lights you lot brought along with you, because as train tunnels turn to sewer tunnels and sewer tunnels get smaller and older, everything's getting darker as well -- and wetter.

Soon the air is thick, not just with water, but with an acrid, sulfurous scent, choking if you breathe it in too hard, and the lights are as dim as fireflies in, well, a fog. Which is exactly what the group has been caught in.

"We'd best turn round and try another route," Door says, covering her mouth and coughing. "This is an old-fashioned London pea-souper from the turn of the century - the last turn of the century. Not all the patches of old time down here bring in Roman soldiers."

Turning around and trying another route is easier said than done, though, because the fog is so thick that you can barely see each other's faces unless you're huddled in a group, let alone seeing the walls, the steps, and any random holes you might fall into.

"...Bugger."

Edited 2010-06-08 19:59 (UTC)

Or just generally talk and react to being stuck in a pitch-black tunnel full of smelly fog.

"Bugger," said Door. What? It bore repeating.

Dinah coughed, and looked apprehensively around them. "There's a way out, right? I mean. When the fog-- hack clears up?" Fast? Soon? Maybe?

"Yes. We're not in the labyrinth or anything. We can't be; wrong side of the city entirely, and we're not that lost." That was reassuring, right? "Just don't move about too much now; you could step in a hole and break your neck."

Dinah cleared her throat and nodded, trying to see through the fog, and then asked, "Got it. Can't see much to take off into this anyway."

"It's --" Cough. "--not too bad if you don't take deep breaths. It's the blindness that kills you, not the choking." Said, well, not cheerily exactly, but at least far too matter-of-fact-ly.

Dinah squinched her eyes shut. "And how fast does that happen?"

Door stared at her for a few second, and that's when the unhealthy cheer started up. By way of laughter. "I---cough-- aha-no. Not that sort of - ha - blind. Just fog-blind. Down here not being able to see your way is like cutting off an arm."

Dinah blinked open her eyes, feeling silly, and said, "Oh. Whoooops. I'm too used to Fandom now, I think. Just because you have to take everything so literally."

Door wiped fog-grit off her face and closed her eyes for a moment, not not nearly as desperately as Dinah had. "Like accusing someone of being childish and the next morning everyone wakes up three feet tall?"

"Exactly like that. Or wishing you understood guys, and waking up as one." Dinah rolled her eyes and stuck out her tongue. "That was special. Did you get that, when you were at Fandom?"

"I didn't." Door grinned. My roommate, on the other hand... got to understand girls better. One would hope."

Dinah laughed, the sound echoing strangely in the fog. "I'd hope so too. Tony and Priestly did. That was -- pretty amusing." She grinned at Door. "It's nice to talk to someone new who just gets how weird that place could be."

"I suppose I have an advantage there." Door took a few careful steps backward, feeling her way to the tunnel wall; having someplace solid to touch helped with the odd vertigo of being lost down here. "Fandom isn't all that much stranger than here."

"Gotham gets weird, but if something random like this happens, you know someone is making it happen, and you can go punch then," Dinah said, shivering. "I'm in favor of that."

Sexy guides, in black leather and velvet, gliding out of the fog. They can probably get you out of that fog - just be careful what you promise in return.

[Wait for our lovely Velvets to ping in. They're pretty, but kind of cold. No, really cold. They'd just like a little bit of your heat...]

Edited 2010-06-08 20:06 (UTC)

One glanced their way, looking them over from beneath lowered lashes. "Well now, what do we have here?"

Right here? A canary in a --fog mine. Taking a few steps away, sure she remembered a passageway just right here; c'mon, it hadn't been that far, there had to be a way out of all this....

"Are you lost, little girl?" Ligeia purred, sliding up alongside her prey. "My, aren't you --" fingers ghosted just above her hair. "--bright. In such dreary place."

Dinah inhaled, then coughed, startled by the woman's sudden appearance, then got her breath back, swallowing. "Um. Thanks?" She blinked, caught by the beauty of the woman's clothing and the perfection of her appearance. "Ohhh. I love your dress... We're all lost," she added, looking hopeful. "The fog came up so fast. Do you know the way out?"

"Thank you," she responded, bemused. "A way 'out'...you could say that, I suppose. I'm a Velvet, girl. We know every nook and inch of the Underside."

Ligeia's idea of 'out' for a little tidbit like this, however, was probably different from what the girl wanted.

"Whew." Dinah gave the woman a blinding smile of relief, and then looked worried. "We can pay you. I know that's kind of, um. Standard, down here. Since you all need to survive without a lot of new stuff." She looked curious, and gave the woman's dress a longing look. "Is Velvet your family? Or because of your dress?" She remembered what Door had said about manners, and added, "I'm Dinah. Lance. Hello."

Edited 2010-06-09 03:03 (UTC)

Ligeia waved a hand dismissively. "It's what we are, Upworlder. Now, don't worry. We will handle payment once I've got you out of the fog, and then I can go back for your friends. It's easier to guide one or two at a time than try to herd a whole group out all at once."

And it would give her a chance to take her payment without interference from the girl's friends.

"We should tell them," Dinah said, sounding uncertain to her own ears. "They'll miss me in a second. Or a minute." Why had she said that? As much as she wanted out of the fog, she didn't want to panic anyone. "So they're not worried..."

"My sisters are about," Ligeia coaxed. "They'll take care of your friends, if they aren't already leading some of them out, but you run the risk getting lost even worse if you try to find them."

"Ohhh." Okay, that would suck. Dinah took a step forward toward the woman, and gave her a tentative smile. "What was your name?"

"I am called Ligeia," she replied, offering one slim, pale hand. "How about you?"

"Dinah." She smiled, reaching out a hand carefully, hoping Ligeia would take it to guide her. She reminded Dinah of ghosts, and marble statues, and paintings by Renaissance masters.

Quick, quick, quick, unless like certain people, you're really bad at heights. However, you won't find Saint Nick up there waiting for you. Instead, it's a small man in a suit made of feathers and a dashing balaclava, who'd love to tell you about his collection of Fine Wyse BrDS.

[Plz to be waiting for Old Bailey to ping in!]

"So there's this bloke see," The Old Man, Bailey by name, was talking to a bunch of Ravens who had perched on the roof. "An' 'e gets him a job in a shop."

One of the Ravens cawed a question.

"No, 'snot a bird shop. It's a fing, wossname, a food shop."

Another question.

"No they di'nt sell carrion. You want to tell this?"

It's good to remember when you switch the days around for availability, which days you switched them to. Preferably before you put up the entire post and tell at least one Velvet that they get to be bad today.

As usual, if you'd like Door or Ingress at the house, ping down here! Velvets and Old Bailey have their own threads, and if you'd like someone to rescue you from unwanted velveteen advances, you can either make your own arrangements with another backpacker, or ping here for that too.

Richard and the Marquis are completely welcome on the trip if they so desire, or up with Old Bailey, as well.

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Backpacking Trip: London Below, Tuesday

The House With No Doors

House - Dining Room

House - Library

House - Pool

Re: House - Pool (afternoon)

House - Bedrooms

Adventuring!

Adventuring - Mill around and bitch? Try to find your own solution?

Re: Adventuring - Mill around and bitch? Try to find your own solution?

Re: Adventuring - Mill around and bitch? Try to find your own solution?

Re: Adventuring - Mill around and bitch? Try to find your own solution?

Re: Adventuring - Mill around and bitch? Try to find your own solution?

Re: Adventuring - Mill around and bitch? Try to find your own solution?

Re: Adventuring - Mill around and bitch? Try to find your own solution?

Re: Adventuring - Mill around and bitch? Try to find your own solution?

Re: Adventuring - Mill around and bitch? Try to find your own solution?

Re: Adventuring - Mill around and bitch? Try to find your own solution?

Re: Adventuring - Mill around and bitch? Try to find your own solution?

Re: Adventuring - Mill around and bitch? Try to find your own solution?

Re: Adventuring - Mill around and bitch? Try to find your own solution?

Re: Adventuring - Mill around and bitch? Try to find your own solution?

Re: Adventuring - Mill around and bitch? Try to find your own solution?

Adventuring - Oh Look: Guides!

Re: Adventuring - Oh Look: Guides!

Re: Adventuring - Oh Look: Guides!

Re: Adventuring - Oh Look: Guides!

Re: Adventuring - Oh Look: Guides!

Re: Adventuring - Oh Look: Guides!

Re: Adventuring - Oh Look: Guides!

Re: Adventuring - Oh Look: Guides!

Re: Adventuring - Oh Look: Guides!

Re: Adventuring - Oh Look: Guides!

Re: Adventuring - Oh Look: Guides!

Re: Adventuring - Oh Look: Guides!

Re: Adventuring - Oh Look: Guides!

Up On the Rooftops!

Re: Up On the Rooftops!

OOC