Stairgasm ((Open RP))

[3pc-point.livejournal.com]

It's the stairs that make Arthur decide he likes Hogwarts.

Like most students, he's turned out of the sorting room with a house name and the clothes on his back. The directions he's gotten are unreliable at best, ranging from "over there somewhere" to a series of twists and turns that finally lead him to a dead end. He's heading down a hallway, looking for the next person to ask when he runs out of hallways and comes out onto a landing leading to the staircases.

The staircases lead up and down and wherever they want to. He watches one staircase detach from the third floor and lazily stretch itself up to the fifth. Another set of stairs decides that being linear is boring and twists into a tight spiral, ending up on the same floor but on the other side. It's almost too much to take in, and frankly, it's one of the most amazing things he's ever seen.

Arthur is a bit of a stair nerd.

He'll claim that he merely has an appreciation of impossible architecture, that it comes with spending so long around people who can bend cities in their dreams. But there's a reason why the Penrose stairs are one of his favorites, why it's what he shows off first. They're simple, elegant, useful, and embody the fantastical nature of dreams that he finds so intriguing. While these stairs lack the subtlety of the Penrose ones, the sheer grandeur of them captivates him completely.

Which is why he's still there half an hour later, watching the stairs and walking up and down them to see them shift under his feet and swing him around to places he had no intention of visiting.

Comments

[timelady-susan.livejournal.com]

Susan liked the stairs, too. They were equal parts impossible and convenient, which seemed to be a mainstay of Gallifreyan architecture. What was more, they were magical, almost to the point of showing off.

"They're very interesting," she remarked to Arthur, as she passed him, stopping to admire them as well. "I wonder what kind of magic they use for them? This whole place seems magic, really, there's a sort of bigger on the inside feel. Very homey."

[apex-raptor.livejournal.com]

A dinosaur suddenly appeared at the top of the staircase Arthur was on, decked out in his official prefect hat (http://community.livejournal.com/hogwarts_hocus/1838832.html#cutid11). This wasn't one of the downright adorable turkey (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fb/Vraptor-scale.svg)-sized velociraptors, but a genetically engineered monster (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/72/Utahraptor_size_estimate_chart.svg) courtesy of InGen, for whom Hogwarts house-elves were the equivalent of truly excellent cat toys. The raptor was preceded by a small herd of the shrieking and disapparating creatures, fleeing for their lives. With an unholy reptilian screech of glee the raptor came barreling down the staircase after them, heading straight for Arthur--whom he nimbly leapt over at the last second, clearing his head with room to spare--and continued his pursuit of the poor elves until the last one had disapparated away, thus ending the game.

The raptor came to a stop at the foot of the stairs, rocking to maintain his balance as the structure moved beneath him. He was accustomed to such occurrences and thought it was rather fun to ride them. He canted his head upward to peer at Arthur and gave an inquisitive sort of chirrup-growl, his tail lashing from side to side. Maybe this one liked to stair-play, too?

[ringo-raver.livejournal.com]

"DO SOMETHING!"

Well, I can't say I'm shocked that Ryuk cracked.

[g-wormtongue.livejournal.com]

Grima was trying to climb the staircase when a part of it decided to split off and go its own way. He grabbed the rail, a panicked look crossing his face, then he shut his eyes tightly and muttered some choice words about magical stairs.

Still, he had to get up to the third floor somehow. He'd never liked the cursed things anyway and avoided them as much as possible.

"Sir, do you have any idea when the stairs might split off again towards the third floor?" He addressed the strange man who seemed to be confident and actually enjoying the ride.

[ariemorytwo.livejournal.com]

((Ari's just here observing / taking notes. She'll be doing this kind of thing for a while in open RPs, to study up for her Real Hogwarts plans: she's not inclined to trust the house elves' observations as useful as that can be for lazy handwaving purposes. No one should feel obliged to notice her or interact with her unless the player thinks their character would do so. NB: I lifted the idea of Hogwarts' uncanny geometry (http://www.hp-lexicon.org/hogwarts/hogwarts.html) from the Lexicon; not to call it non-Euclidean, mind...))

Ariane Emory, trailed by two house elves in awful wigs, was traveling the corridors with her notepad and Dictaquill. Thus far she'd seen:

• Portraits that moved and spoke. One had asked her for a password, and when she said she hadn't been given any passwords, the portrait had complained that no one cared about the "old ways" anymore, then let her into a secret passage anyway. The secret passage led to a broom closet, which contained nothing of any interest whatsoever.



• The Great Hall, where meals were served, and a large bulletin board beside the main doors stood mostly bare. There was an interesting flier about free wands outside the Ancient Runes classroom, and another flier that looked somewhat tattered, announcing an eating contest between someone named Beowulf and someone named Olympia Binewski. The eating contest had probably passed a while ago. The free wand offer might still be good, Ari supposed. But when had anyone ever given away something of actual value?



• Empty classrooms, cobwebbed and dusty, completely unsecured.



• Armor of dubious antiquity.

Throughout her exploration, she'd noticed that the geometry of the castle didn't seem right. The angles of doorways and ceilings didn't jibe. Passages seemed longer than they had any right to be, or shorter than they should.

The moving staircases came as a surprise nonetheless.

Fortunately, someone else was already negotiating them, so she didn't need to risk her own neck testing them out. She stood and watched for a while, murmuring notes and letting the Dictaquill write them down for her.