Restaurant

[Ritterton]

"Agreed, agreed," Artemis said and as he turned he felt the contraction of the muscles on the left side of neck and lower jaw. He walked back across the room and back towards the broken door.

[Mr. Handy]

Kate follows him.

[Laraqua]

The man hits a discordant note as his name is casually dropped. Then he looks over at them with a too-bright smile and . "You do realise that if you spend too much time away from the warmth, you'll never be warm again, don't you? So best eat, drink and be merry ... provided you find any food or drink."

[Mr. Handy]

"You seem to know more about what's happening here than you're letting on," says Kate. "Please explain it to the rest of us."

[Ritterton]

Arty followed up behind the other two and he just found it too odd to see Mr. Morgan there in a now functioning restaurant. He slid to off the light of his torch, slipping the shiny metal into his pocket with the wider, flared top pointing up. He didn't say anything, but rather his free hand came to rest on top of the other that held his cane.

[Overlord87]

"You were a passenger once, right, Mr. Morgan? Cheering on the others who ended up trapped in this nightmare. What happened then?", Jonathan presses on, hoping to gain as much information as possible.

Spoiler:

If it can help, I can make an Oral History spend.

[Laraqua]

Morgan stares at the piano for a long moment then says, "Find me a bottle of alcohol first. Then I'll tell you. Or food, perhaps."

(OOC: The Oral History spend plus your previous use of his name and situation unlocks the Storytime option but you'll need some leverage first.)

[Mr. Handy]

"Sure," says Kate. "There should be something in the kitchen."

[Laraqua]

Morgan shakes his head. "Yeah, that's not at all how this works. I stay in the well-lit rooms whenever I can. You want me to talk, you get me the food I need to survive."

[Mr. Handy]

"Okay," says Kate. "We'll go get it for you."

[Ritterton]

"Fine, sure, we can see what they might have for you to drink, not going to make a meal though," Arty said with an obvious level of frustration. There was something that just didn't sit with him right when he heard the guy bargain for information.

He turned and stepped back to the door of the kitchen. He shifted his walking stick, opened the door, and looked about to see if anything looked to be alcohol.

[To Kitchen]

[Mr. Handy]

Kate follows Artemis back into the kitchen.

[Overlord87]

Jonathan remains in the restaurant, keeping an eye on the man, as if fearing he'll disappear if left unchecked.

[Laraqua]

There's a bottle of cooking sherry in the back of the pantry and a small bag of carrots that look a little withered and old lying in the small cooler.

[Ritterton]

"Ok, carrots and sherry, not the best of either drink or food, but here, something to eat and drink," Arty said as he took one of the withered carrots and bit off a piece of one. 'Now, explain this place."

[Mr. Handy]

"Best we can do, I'm afraid," says Kate. "There is a war on."

[Laraqua]

He takes the carrots and the sherry, eyeing them hungrily. The man clearly hasn't eaten well in awhile. He doesn't speak until after he has consumed two of the carrots, then looks up at them. "You wanted to know things about what's happening? I don't know what to tell you other than it's been happening for a long time now. For me it's been ... maybe a couple weeks ... but when I check the dates on the tickets and the luggage labels it's been longer than that. Most people seem to be swept up from this station. I was on the train when it first came in. We wondered why it didn't keep moving but then we checked the engine room and we saw ... something you won't want to see. We sent a few people out for help when it became clear that the train wasn't moving and the telegraph wasn't operational but they never came back. So we had to figure it out ourselves."

[Mr. Handy]

"We managed to get the telegraph working earlier," says Kate. "I sent out a message to the Home Guard alerting them to what we knew."

[Ritterton]

"Why this place, what is the purpose of the train?" Arty asked. He wanted to wait, wanted to have the explanation proceed more conversational, but he was tired and that reverberated through his voice as he asked his questions. He sat the torch on a table, and then his walking stick. "What role does this station play?"

[Laraqua]

"I don't know but I don't think we were the first here. There were signs that others had been here, had died at the station. I *do* think we're the first train to stop here, though, and the train itself just never continued onward. Or perhaps it's simply that I survived and that for so long as I survive this train can't leave and no other train can arrive? Doubtful, though, we would have heard if empty ghost trains were trundling up the track to other stations. You see signs of the other deaths, on occasion, but they're not always *here*. It's almost as though there are slivers of potential rooms, or existing rooms, or some such, that we are winding between. Sometimes they are lit up and safe, sometimes they are not. Sometimes there will be a corpse. Sometimes there is no corpse at all. I know that it isn't simply the station's imagination, so to speak, as I've met some of those who later become corpses and I occasionally find their corpse again and again."

"I keep to the well-lit spaces, the warm spaces and I stay alive as best I can. I've explained this rather weary tale so often that I tire of it. I grow bored. I know you will be too wrapped up in the desire to escape to remain with me here and ... besides ... it's harder to share food with a half dozen than with one." He says this last bit calmly, as though it were simple reasonable fact.