4193/Zatanna's House of Mageek

Zatanna's House of Mageek
Date of Scene:	21 November 2020
Location:	Shadowcrest Manor - Bristol Township
Synopsis:	Lara delivers an ancient artifact of great power to the person she thinks could help her most with understanding it better.
Cast of Characters:	Lara Croft, Zatanna Zatara

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Lara Croft has posed:
Lara had been through quite a lot in the past month, and it'd all culminated in a huge event taking place in the heart of Central Park NY. The heroes had won that day though, thankfully or she would've been in a lot of hot water, and now the dust was settling on it all.

Arrinv at the home of the magician sorceress Zatanna Zatara, Lara's black jeep is parked out in the front, she retrieved a black bag that is quite long like its holding a musical instrucment or some kind of... staff!

Dress in a navy blue SHIELD jacket that is unbuttoned over a grey tanktop and a black hoodie that is zipped up to mid-stomach, Lara's approach to the home is uneventful. She rings the door and waits to be greeted, then removes her sunglasses to smile at the home owner when she appears on the other side of the now opened doorway.

Pleasantries are exchanged and Lara steps on in to the foyer. "It feels like it's been a decade since I was here last." The Briton says in her smooth and relaxed tone. "Thank you for seeing me about this too." She tells the other woman.

Zatanna Zatara has posed:
Meanwhile, Zee answers in her sleepwear.

...What, does everyone think she wears that full ridiculous getup all the time?

It's one of the advantages of having a mystical sanctum as one's personal residence, that certain important business can be conducted in the full comfort of home, without ever so much as having to drive to the office. Wait, drive? Well, teleport. But still! It's a hassle of its own. And so Zatanna Zatara appears at her door in what is comfort for her: a silk camisole and shorts set. "Oh, you got here pretty fast. It has been a while, hasn't it? Too long. Well, come in, /your grace/."

Titles and proper address! Although almost certainly, Zee finds it more amusing than she does a requirement of proper etiquette.

Ushered inside, the door closes, and presumably many wards reactivate, before she turns and starts down the hall toward the large entry into one of the adjoining rooms. Along the way, she glances down, evidently only realizing what she's wearing, and considers, "Uh, should I?"

It's not like changing is actually a lot of effort for her.

Lara Croft has posed:
Lara, of course, has to step carefully considering the size of the black bag that she's toting around at her side by the canvas handles sewn on to it. She lets her brown eyes roam over the interior of the beautiful home, admiring it once more as she refreshes herself with its semi-familiarity.

When Zatanna replies, Lara's eyes shoot back over to the home owner. The 'your grace' bit gets an instant smile from the Brit who knows all too well what the tone attached to the title was meant to infer, a bit of fun.

"Your etiquette is as wondrous as your home is impressive." Croft quietly replies back to her as the other starts to lead the way to a better place to speak on what brought Lara here. She glances her over when the question of attire is brought up and Lara releases a light exhaled laugh, short and sweet. "It's your home, I'm sure I'm intruding on your rare moments of relaxation. Whatever you're most comfortable with is fine, I assure you."

The British noblewoman follows along beside/behind, raising a hand up to take her aviator sunglasses from her hairline and fold their golden limbs in to a pocket on the interior of her light duty jacket. "I cannot even imagine how busy you must be, day to day, what with what you're capable of." Of course Lara's thinking of all the magic she's seen Zatanna conjure, including 'healing and repairing her clothing' the last time they saw each other a little over a week ago.

Zatanna Zatara has posed:
"Hmm. Well, I was reading in front of the fire, so-" Zatanna gives it a moment's thought and then utters a single reversed word: "Ebor." This conjures the matching robe to the set, which is still on the thinner, fancier side more than being a very substansial garment, but is apaprently sufficient to deal with whatever chill might exist outside the immediate presence of the burning hearth.

Looking down, one might realize she's wearing bunny slippers, too.

Down the hall, the room she turns into proves to be the library, although at Shadwocrest keeping track of that sort of thing can be a bit of a chore. Lara might well remember being it on the other side of the hall the last she came. And maybe it was. But what remains the same is that the downstairs, non-resistential portions of the old mansion are a veritable museum of artifacts, a vault of forgotten lore and dangerous arcane miscellany. The rows of shelves hold not only countless tomes, but the occasional mysterious jar, crystal ball or other gems in fancy stands, gilt boxes, less gilt dark wooden boxes, and even, on one, a skull. There are a few larger cases, apart from the shelves, holding more substansial objects... and Lara knows that this is not even the main room of this sort. Because there are books in here! Some of them are wall-to-wall artifacts.

But they're in the library because this is a research visit. "Honestly, magic makes quick work of a lot of things most people waste time on. When I'm busy, it's usually because of my touring schedule, or League business. Though of course, there are mystic concerns that sometimes require attention. Anyway," and by now she's reached a shelf, running her fingers across the spines of its many residents. "The staff. What have your WAND friends told you?"

Lara Croft has posed:
There's a lot in this house that pulls on Lara's curiosity strings. If she were still a young girl, she might very well lose herself in this home without even asking for permission. But in her adult years, she has to maintain a reserved nature, even if she still feels the draw to explore this magical place.

Once they arrive to the library Lara steps forward and finds a place to set the bag before she separates the straps and places her hands on the two zippers that reside beneath where the straps had been. "I'll admit... this home is ... remarkable, Zatanna." Lara says as she turns her eyes to look back to the now robed woman, who gets a soft smile from the Archaeologist.

"It reminds me of my family's manor, back home, but ... with actual magic seemingly coating its every wall." Lara seems happy, pleased, in good spirits as she glances down at the bag and starts to open the zippers left and rightward. "Like how I felt about my parent's home, when I was a child, before I grew up and realized it was my imagination fueling all of that."

Lara uncovers the staff and lets it rest on top of that now open black canvas bag. "As for WAND and what they've told me... the answer is, not much." She takes a step back then and stares at the very ornate staff with the dark wood pole and the purple gem set in to the headpiece at its top.

"Essentially, however, WAND doesn't have the most experienced magical practitioners, regrettably." She's trying to be nice there, clearly. "They do their best, but this artifact... well, we can't tell if its mere existence will lead to more trouble or not. So we're afraid to... throw it in a box in the SHIELD vaults, until we're sure it won't spontaneously cause any further issues."

Lara notes Zatanna's slippers there-after and smiles at them.

Zatanna Zatara has posed:
"Well, what's a wizard without their tower?" Zatanna muses, her smile unseen as she pours over the shelf. "Stephen has his Sanctum, John has the House of Mystery- although I'm pretty sure he won it in a card game, so really, he's just sort of... keeping it warm. But I suppose that's true of all of us. These places tend to have long histories, and we are caretakers, more than owners. In my case, it's a family legacy, almost as important as the craft itself." Which causes her to gesture around. "My father built most of the collection. I've only added a few things, by comparison."

Which causes her to think, and add: "I suppose it is a lot like your home, in that way. The history of it, the family ties. Next time, we ought to go there." Presumably not for magical study, but... tea, or something. Either way, she makes it sound no more effort than bothering a neighbor for milk.

OK, bad analogy, since one of her neighbors is Batman.

Eventually, she finds the book she seems to be looking for, and with a finger tips it forward and then pulls it from its place, before turning around to examine the staff, now properly on display. What Lara says about WAND hardly seems to shock her. "Well, obviously. I was being polite, after the incident, but those people are amateurs. I understand the impulse, of governments to feel they are doing things, addressing problems. But they need real experts. And beyond that, there are things you can't do with bureaucracy and red tape, decisions that are-"

She lets it drop, and turns her attention to the subject. Actually, more than studying the staff, she's paging through the book. "My immediate sense of its, the energies it throws off, are not catastrophic, but that's hardly proof of anything. It clearly links to, draws on some other plane, and it's hard to say how its powers might fluctuate. Although I will say, my experience of objects like this is that they -do- tend to require a user. A staff- or a scepter, a wand, and so forth -is not only a practical object, but a symbolic one. Wielding it invokes imagery of power. But just laying there?"

Lara Croft has posed:
Lara is actually familiar with both of those men as well, though she knows Stephen a little-- okay, no, she barely knows either of them, but she HAS been in the Sanctum Santorum on multiple occasions when the magical realm had essentially drawn her in to its embrace there-in.

She got a crystal skull out of it... it's in her apartment.

Her friend named it 'Boney'.

The talk of the homes does make her smile lightly as she stands there all prim and proper with her hands together in front of her while Zatanna is given the chance to examine the staff more closely. "Croft Manor is... sadly in a state of disrepair. There was a storm this past summer, it pushed a very large, very old, tree over against the west wing. It's... regretfully still there, I've been too busy to go and deal with it, though my family has at least had the damage covered over with some tarps and drapes. I really do need to deal with all of that, it's just... such... a thing."

Family home, and the extended family. She doesn't enjoy the prospect of it all.

"So yes, where your home is impressive and mysterious. Mine is--" Lara laughs softly and glances downward. "Embarrassing, at the present time at least."

As for the Staff, she steps over toward Zatanna to stand beside her. "The runes and etchings along its surface are the spells that I translated to bring the battle to Manhattan, though there are many more I haven't translated. I felt as though I should leave well enough alone, if I'm being honest." She glances over to Zatanna to her side then. "Is there a safe way to dismantle it?" She asks then.

Zatanna Zatara has posed:
"Oh, sorry to hear it. Well, we can put off high tea then, for a while. Still, I love Europe, and places like that..." Zatanna may already be planning her next tour, or next vacation, conjuring images of various ancient bastions in her mind. Or fancy Parisian hotels. Whichever.

What she can't let pass is the contrast Lara draws between the homes. "You'd be surprised, for all you consider it mundane, just a home... how many of those places have acquired a bit of magic over the years, from all they've seen, all that's happened in their walls. You don't crown a king, or murder one for that matter, without a place taking notice of it," Zee muses, happily distracted on their little architectural tangent. "We don't see quite as much of it in the states, since it takes time to build up resonances like that, and we... unmade much of what was already present. But it's not impossible."

As for the staff, her attention remains split between it and the book. "The spells are actually what I was curious about, I was seeing if any of the symbology might be duplicated here." Though from the furrow in her brow, she's not found any yet. "I would be very careful, translating them. Sometimes the incidental speech involved in that process can effectively count as incanting the spell. As for disassembly..."

She looks it up and down, and frowns. "I wouldn't. Just sitting, I don't think it will do anything, other than possibly continue to cause people to look for it, to seek it out, maybe even just to try and use it." There is a side glance here toward Lara, as if she might be an example of that impulse. "But we know it can be used against Set's forces. Disassembling it could invite them more freely."

"... or it might just explode, releasing all its energies at once. There's a reasonable chance of that with pretty much any magical artifact."

Lara Croft has posed:
Lara's eyes are down on the staff for much of what Zatanna says there, though she does glance over to the book in the other's hands because well... Lara and books. But ultimately her stare ends back up on the Staff up until Zatanna's opinion on its deconstruction and current danger is laid out. A single nod is given then to the woman beside her. "Essentially what I expected to hear." She quietly says. "If I've learned anything about powerful items like this, ultimately it's best to leave them alone." She says with a very faint ghost of a grin gracing her lips for a moment.

She shakes her head lightly again and turns her stare back down to it. She reaches out to wrap her hands around the staff's middle so she can raise it up in front of her again. She's comfortable holding it, having a little bit of experience doing so after all.

"I can leave it here with you for a few days, if you're interested." Lara adds, once more looking over to Zatanna. "Otherwise, well, I guess it's going to end up in a box in the deep down." The 'deep down' being a WAND nickname for the vaults, since traveling down to them is a bit of a journey for the Agents that dare to venture in to that place.

"You're inspiring me to return home as well, and take care of... all of that, now that you almost made it sound like a living being." She looks to her right and smiles once more.

Zatanna Zatara has posed:
"I will say one thing about your WAND friends: they actually have the right idea, with the warehousing. It's only that they don't have the people, or the necessary wards, or... really anything else. But look around you." There is plenty to see, and Zatanna sweeps her arm to indicate that great variety, the robe fluttering about her body. "Why do you think I have all of this? Sure, a few of these items can be useful, from time to time in very particular circumstances, but the majority are cursed, evil, or simply so dangerous that they're likely to do more harm even when used with good intention. If it was a simple matter to destroy them, that would often be the right call." She doesn't even have to say the rest. The fact that her house is full up with such objects and artifacts is a testament to the fact that there is no such easy solution. That the best thing, often, is just to lock them away.

Which brings things back. Lara offers the staff for her to look over, and in an apparent instantaneous exercise of the law of equal exchange, she closes and offers the book she was reading. Although it might only be that Lara was eying it, and she would have done so anyway.

"I'll lend you this. Its annotated compilation of writings from a number of practicioners who were active in the 19th century during the Egyptology boom and onward. A lot of them set off all kinds of horrible curses doing just what you were describing earlier, translating out hieroglyphs and the like," she explains. "Not reassuring, I admit, but you might find some similarities. At the very least, the foreword is interesting." When she offers it, gripped so that the cover is legible to the other woman, she can see part of the title: '-with foreword and notations by John Zatara.'

"He put it together after he fought Amen-Hotep." What was she saying at the park, about this Egypt stuff being a common problem?!

Lara Croft has posed:
As Lara turns to offer the staff to Zatanna, she lets her eyes roam around the library that they're occupying to look it over again very cursory at least. "I could spend days in here." The Briton quietly says with a shown-off little expression of excitement. But when they exchange items, her eyes are thusly drawn to the book given over to her.

She turns a step to her right toward one of the sources of light in the room so that she can better read the pages that she starts to flip through, then ends up on the part with the signature and lets her thumb gently run over it. "Fantastic." She notes, turning her gaze back to the other to show her a quick smile. "I'll read through all of this, and bring it back when I'm finished to retrieve..." She notes the Staff then, not seemingly too fondly either.

"Egyptian Archaeology is not my expertise, which isn't to say I haven't been enthralled with it since I was a little girl, but I've always placed it roughly... third on my list of favorites to 'dive in to'." Another look is given to the book and she starts to slowly turn through the pages again.

"But you're right, we don't have a better idea for what to do with these powerful items that we're recovering, but... it's far better to do what we're doing, than to leave them where they are to be found, and used, by very bad people." Another look is given over to the staff. "As that one was very nearly used by."

Lara closes the book again then and smiles to the other. "Thank you again, Zatanna. I won't take up any more of your evening though... You and your, bunnies, are likely eager to not be doing business things right now." She adds with a faint grin.

Zatanna Zatara has posed:
"You're more than welcome to come and visit if you ever have the urge." Urge to spend days pouring through the vast library, Zatanna must surely mean! "Apart from the fact that I like you, if I have to tolerate your agency mucking about in these things, the least I can do is make sure at least one of you has half an idea what they're doing." Very pragmatic reasons, you see.

Since they seem to be finished with their immediate business, Zee re-wraps the staff with a gesture (doesn't even need the backwards talk for that!), causing its cloth covering to conceal it once more. Evidently, she seems content it will be safe enough just sitting there, for the time being, since no further measures are taken. Losing interest in it (what's one new relic when you have a hundred?), she instead echoes back at Lara: "What are the first and second?"

As they chat, she leads the way back out into the hall, pausing in its midst.

"Oh, it's no trouble." The interruption doesn't seem to bother her. "I wasn't doing anything important, and all I've done is given you some basic advice and some homework. You're welcome to stay and have a drink if you'd like, unless you're getting back to work yourself. For all the size of this place, I don't have many visitors."

Lara Croft has posed:
"I might just do that." Lara says on the subject of coming to investigate the home, and its contents, more thoroughly. She smiles at the little jab at SHIELD, understanding that entirely. "SHIELD has been a very interesting experience for me. Normally I feel I work best on my own, but... they've opened up a lot of avenues for me that might otherwise have been quite a burden to navigate on my own."

As they leave the library, Lara holds that book at her right side against her hip. "Asian History is what my primary focus at University was, and if I hadn't chosen that, I would've gone with South America. It was... quite a toss-up, to be sure, but I've been dabbling in all of them since I was first able to read. My father was an instigator in all of this for me, but his research was far more broad than just any given society or place on Earth, he tried to absorb a little of everything. Though if he did have a focus, it was certainly in the occult, magic, so forth."

As they stride through the hallway, she notes the offer for a drink and considers it with a glance around. "I'm off now, so I was going to likely drive back tonight, but yes, I wouldn't mind a little more time out of the Jeep, before setting off again. That being said, I'm reluctant to disturb you any further than I already have." She has to be as nice as possible about it, it's in her genes!

Zatanna Zatara has posed:
Zatanna handles the matter of her guest's reservations first and foremost, turning to make a somewhat bolder point: "One thing you should know about me: is that I mean what I say, that I don't mince words." Zee seems to mean this conversationally, although given her particular magical style, it takes on some double meaning. "If you'd have been a disturbance, I'd have told you to come back later. If you were wearing on my patience, the house is more than capable of ushering you out without me even having to do anything."

And while there's so much 'disturb not a wizard less ye face their wrath!!' in that little speech, she finishes it with a crooked smirk. "But you're still here, hmm? So, come, let's have a drink."

Which leaves them to chatter more as they walk the halls. "I understand the need for the organization, and no doubt the benefits. Logistical support for your work. No one is truly an island- I have the League, after all, even if most of them have barely any appreciation for the kind of work I do." No doubt they appreciate her more overt actions, but that doesn't seem to be what she means.

As for Lara's father? It draws a shorter, simpler but more meaningful comparison: "I imagine they'd have got on well, the two of them."

Which leaves them to arrive, via a few more twists and unpredictable turns, in a smaller, more intimate den. It has a fireplace (the place has a lot of them - again more than seems logically plausible), several antique couches, and a cabinet on one wall. There's a bookshelf as well, because it seems impossible to escape them fully, in the house. She goes to open the cabinet, which turns out to be of the liquor variety, rather than full of magic doohickeys. "Preference? I've wine, too." Maybe she'll summon it from the cellar.