username: ens_porter [video]

[ens_porter]

[The young man is looking... understandably nervous as he faces the camera. He makes an effort to smooth his hair down and then flashes a winning (?!) smile. Is that a piece of broccoli in his teeth? Crap! He scrubs the cuff of his shirt against it and then coughs to cover the embarrassment, before diving into his totally-not-rehearsed-like-sixty-times speech.]

So.

Uh.

Hello. Hi. I-is this thing on? Joking, I'm kidding, I know it's on. Annnnd that's the punchline ruined, great, I'm amazing at this.

D-disastrous introductions aside, I'm Ashley. You may remember me from such greatest hits as 'that guy who tripped into the Chrysalis and brought us all here somehow' and, uh, 'that nervous dude who handed me a towel in the shower once' and you would be right, uh, that is, correct on both counts. I'm really sorry, by the way. For the... you know, the... thing. The first thing. Not the towels. Towels are great. I love towels.

Captain Childe asked me like a month ago to do some work with, uh, getting everyone in and settled and doing what we can to make you guys comfortable as much as we can actually help with. We know that you guys don't want to be here any more than we do. Ethyraia! Not exactly a fun time at Grandma's, right? Right.

Anyway, if you have any questions, or... you know, anything, or you just want to chat, come say hi. Introduce yourself? I know I'm kind of setting myself up to be the basecamp whipping boy over here but please don't yell at me I don't do well with that kind of attention.

Or you could just... I don't know, tell me something about yourself? We're still figuring each other out, right? Iiiiiiiiiii am a Scorpio, and I'm afraid of cats. N-not big cats. Lions are fine? I mean... like, normal housecats. So there you go, that's the fun fact of the week.


[ooc note: Tags on this post will be boomeranged when possible over the next 4-5 days, but no tags will be done after August 1st.]

Comments

@jon.snow

[northerndragon]

What is a Scorpio?

[A desert bug? A siege weapon? Ashley can’t be either of those things.]

[ens_porter]

more text!! that's great, fantastic. hello, thank you.

a scorpio is???

it's

like a sign you're born under i guess? depending on the month. astrology. liiiike... you could be a leo! maybe.

[northerndragon]

Is there a sign for wolves? Leo sounds like lion. I would not like to be a lion.

I was born in the eighth month. Early in it. I do not know if it was summer yet that year, or still only spring. There was a war, then.

1/3

[ens_porter]

sry mate, 8th month is leo month. unless you want to be a virgin.

[ens_porter]

ahhhh autocorrect!!! i mean, virgo. virgo!! sry so much i'm sure you're not a virgin.

although virgo means virgin anyway.

[ens_porter]

can i start over

CRYING 😂

[northerndragon]

You don’t have to start over. It’s not your fault that my birth makes me a lion.

Only, it’s the sigil of enemies of my family. Their words are HEAR ME ROAR.

But a man’s deeds show what he is, not his birth. Being a lion isn’t any worse than being a bastard.

[ens_porter]

[That went... so much better than he expected? No yelling? Not even any angry capitals? Well, some angry yelling capitals, but Ashley doesn't feel they're directed at him.

Jon can't hear it, but Ashley heaves a sigh of relief.]

fancy that... i suppose things could b different on your world? on earth astrology is... you know, the placement of stars in the sky, and certain constellations...

sry i'm a navigator i like stars a lot

[northerndragon]

Where I come from, people don’t even call all the stars the same thing. Some see crowns in a constellation, some see cradles.

Now we all only have these stars. Has anyone put names to them yet?

[ens_porter]

i actually have been working on a star map!! i mean

most of the stars already have names scientifically speaking but no one wants to say 'we're in orbit around kepler-1625', you know? so i guess i've just been... naming things that already have names.

but we are within the constellation cygnus, from an earth perspective!!

[northerndragon]

[He had tried to learn about the stars, back in New Amsterdam, but you could barely see them in the city, and you were barely allowed outside of it.]

Which one is that — the boat?

[There were never any Romans in his world, and Latin and High Valyrian are not the same.]

1/2

[ens_porter]

the swan!!

here i will draw you a picture

@astarkov

[sunmon]

What's late spring?

[ens_porter]

it depends!! there are technically three signs that govern spring. aries, taurus and gemini. aries is early spring (it starts around the equinox) and taurus is more middle spring. gemini is just before summer.

[sunmon]

Are any of those cool animals?

[ens_porter]

aries is a ram

taurus is a bull

gemini is twin humans

do any of those sound cool???

[sunmon]

Twin humans aren't animals.

[ she'd hoped for something like a hawk or a cat 😩 ]

I'll be a Taurus. 😤 🐂

[ens_porter]

okay but TECHNICALLY humans are animals...

okay.

taurus it is. that means you are stubborn and hard-working, as well as dependable and loyal. you like routine and change is scary!!

[sunmon]

All that from a birth season?

@jon.snow

[northerndragon]

Everything Ashley is telling you is wrong, Alina. Wrong when it comes to my world. It might be that it isn’t wrong for others.

We don’t know when a season will come or how long it will last. It was summer for most of my life. I have lived for twenty-five years. Winter came less than a year ago, after some years of autumn. I had not seen winter since I was a small boy, though the words of my father’s house are WINTER IS COMING.

[You know, the one with the wolves. Anyway, what is it with you people and your absurdly short, predictable seasons?]

[sunmon]

Years spent in each season?
How in the Saints' names do you farm?

yeah good question THANKS GRRM

[northerndragon]

We farm when it is fair enough and keep food stores for winter. How does anyone else farm when they have only a few moons?

If I am ever able to return home, I want to find a way to create rooftop gardens or gardens where we grow in water. We have glass gardens, here and there, but glass is too costly for common use.

I'M SO SORRY

[sunmon]

That's what they're doing here, isn't it? Growing in water.
I've never seen anything like it.
Then again, I don't spend a great deal of time on farms.

[northerndragon]

Aye, it seems to be a common way of farming in these later years, but it isn’t common for my people. If we could master it, then famines in long winters would be less of a threat.

What do you do if summer was only long enough to store four years’ worth of food, and then winter lasts for five, or ten? It has happened before — it will happen again.

[sunmon]

Winter has never lasted for more than six months in Ravka.
Our winters are brutal. I don't think anything but a Fjerdan could survive something like that going on for years.
Don't get me wrong. It's colder in Ravka than in some of our neighboring countries the rest of the year, too. But it's not winter. The ground's not frozen.