The Bear and Barnacle

He is only circumstantially a soldier but he is well trained and the first thing he does when he realizes he is not in his own bed is reach for his sword. Yet he does not draw. He only gives his surroundings an intent, searching look.

He is alone on a sandy strip beside a sea. This in itself would not be strange for in the past he and his brother have travelled together south to the Bay of Beleriand, but it is most strange because he would not have slept there in the open. Stranger still because the last he knew he was in Minas Tirith in his bed, losing himself in a book. The strangest of all for the unfamiliarity of the bright town that lies before him past the shadowy sand.

After his surroundings he thinks to examine himself. His grey-green wool cloak is spotted with fine beach sand. To his left he sees a travelling pack of the type he carries on his saddle and when he draws it close and opens it he finds it contains his own clothing, precisely folded, and a thick book. It is the book he was reading but if he were to bring a book on a journey to lands unknown he thinks he would choose a less fragile and more relevant work than this poetic Elvish history.

Again he looks up and around and tries to reconcile what he sees with any detail of the maps he has memorized in his studies. Is it just after dusk or just before dawn? He cannot tell and the stars are all wrong for the season. Is it not still winter?

He decides to wait for one hour for some memory to return or failing that for some inquisitive local who will direct a 16yearold boy who is very clearly lost. One hour and then he will go into this strange, bright, populous city, much though the idea makes him nervous and try to ascertain where he is and how he came there.

Hello to the world. Faramir and I are glad to have arrived or at any rate I am glad and he is confused. I have placed some basic info on his journal if anyone wants to see it and I am eager to play.

She's accustomed to being sent to odd places with little warning or explanation. So when the Crown informs her that she's needed in Margate, Mrs Mina Harker raises an eyebrow then starts preparing to move. By the end of the day, she has her essentials packed in a traveling trunk. By the next day she's selected and secured a flat out of the stack of brochures that were brought to her with word of her relocation. She'll purchase most of her furniture when she arrives, actually less expensive and less of a hassle than shipping her existing furniture, as she's discovered; but a healthy selection of her books, lab, and her bed are supposed to arrive when she does.

Early on Wednesday evening, her hired driver carries two small cases up to the top floor flat while she manages the larger trunk in one hand and a large rectangular case in the other hand. She can smell the closeness of the ocean, only a block away, and the fresh paint in the flat. Tipping the driver, she dismisses him and puts the trunk in the larger of the bedrooms. She considers the other case then carries it to the other bedroom and leans it against the wall commenting while brusquely, "Stay out of trouble for now, if you please."

Mina runs one hand over her hair, still pinned neatly up. Her white shirt is clean, the black skirt unwrinkled, and the red scarf still neatly wrapped once around her throat. In her pocket is a torn page from one those regional magazines that publish places to eat, things to see, and people to admire. Then with a final glance at the address that's been circled and the attached map, she leaves her new residence and strides down the street, wondering just what is going on at this pub.