7362/Welcome to Croft Manor

Welcome to Croft Manor
Date of Scene:	30 April 2019
Location:	Surrey, England
Synopsis:	Summary needed
Cast of Characters:	Lara Croft, Silver Sable

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Lara Croft has posed:
The plane ride had been an experience, to say the least, but now the duo were arriving in Surrey, England, at the property of Lara's parents, where she grew up. A massive home behind a large gated wall. It looms at the front of the property with a large yard around and behind it.

Lara leads Silver up to the front doors explaining how she'd had it remodeled recently after it had fallen into disrepair, talking of an entire tree having crushed into the eastern wing's roof from a terrible storm while she'd been away for all these years.

She'd also been lost in an ownership battle over the place with her Uncle, who had done everything in his power to get the home from her ownership and into his own. But... she'd come across the right documents to prove her rightful claim to it, and that had all been settled.

Once inside, the manor is dark, she starts to flip on some lights in the main foyer and even a fire suddenly strikes to life inside the cavernous grand hall, the main staircase across the way from where they are, with a huge window above it that looks out onto the starry night.

"Home... sweet home." Lara says, her voice even echoing in the wealth of space. She doesn't sound too sure of that statement either.

Silver Sable has posed:
Silver's got a pocket flashlight and it stabs through the darkness once she's inside. The silver-haired mercenary doesn't complain or object. She keeps up easily. Surrey isn't the Ivory Coast or Pakistan or the Balkans, so Silver's dressed the part. Tan trousers, cute red booties with a high heel that just barely peek out. Cream colored turtleneck. Her silver-hued overcoat would look like a proper raincoat if it didn't fit her with such style, the cuffed sleeves exposing several inches of her forearm.

Once the lights are on she tuckes the pocket torch back into her pocket.

"It's lovely," she tells Lara. It's a polite statement. The Croft manor is objectively an expression of exquisite architectural taste, yes. But there's a hollow emptiness that feels more like a long-defunct library than a home. All hard edges and old dust.

"What are we looking for here, precisely?" she inquires, and keeps easy pace with Lara as the archaeologist prowls around her ancestral home.

Lara Croft has posed:
Lara is a blue/gray henley shirt and some dark charcoal colored slim fit cargo trousers, she doesn't seem to be one to dress up much, even in nicer places like this. Its just her nature really.

The fire in the fireplace casts a warm glow across the main hall, but also long shadows as the light from it is obstructed by the furniture gathered before and around it. One of the tables has a stack of books on it, with boxes beside it filled with even more books.

Lara steps further into the room, toward its center as she pauses to turn back to Silver. "My father's library." She says to Silver. "I wanted to check on notes he had, I know that he covered Saint Symeon's legacy before, but I'm sure he didn't find... what you and I have found."

As she makes for the main staircase, the massive stone stairs that split in the middle and separate going east and west, she looks to her friend. "Are you hungry? Do you want something to eat or drink?" She's desperately trying to be a 'good host' and it shows, as she seems a bit awkward at it, like she's trying to impress Silver.

Silver Sable has posed:
Silver keeps up easily with Lara despite the other woman's familiarity with the location. She walks with long, confident strides and athletic legs that bear her along the stairs with little effort. Lara's words strike Silver as more uncertain speculation than sincere offer. She smiles slightly ,and shakes her head. "I'm fine," she tells Lara.

Fingers squeeze Lara's fingertips. A little reassuring gesture to drive home that she *is* fine, that Lara need not worry so much. "I am excited to see the library. Perhaps less excited about the prospect of a few dozen hours of research. I imagine some coffee will be prudent in an hour, da?" she suggests, as a convenient compromise.

Lara Croft has posed:
"Coffee, yes." Lara says then as she walks then beside Silver up the staircase. She motions to take a right at the juncture then and she proceeds up to that floor next. At the top there is a long hallway to their right that looks out over the main hall, then a series of doorways that lead deeper into the second floor of the east wing. Lara steps to the first set of double doors and she pushes them open, inside is a sitting room with another set of doorways beyond that, this sitting room though has a blanket and pillow set on the leather sofa that becomes visible as she flips on the lights. "Ah yes, this, uh, this is my room." She says then, though this doesn't really look like it would be her room. "Makeshift, I don't actually go into my... into the room I grew up in any longer. Its upstairs, in the tower... I haven't been up there in a long time." There's another fireplace in this sitting room, but its empty of wood, ash or any such thing, just a clean fireplace.

"Once we find the books we need, we'll take to the kitchen to get that coffee going, yeah?" Lara steps through the sitting room and opens another pair of double doors into a long and dark hallway, with windows on their left that let light in from outside in the backyard of the property.

Silver Sable has posed:
"If it's allowed." Silver's voice is neutral and absent, but it belies the flickering, playful grin she casts at Lara when the Brit looks back at her. "I understand some librarians are dreadfully intolerant of food around their books."

It's levity, trying to help Lara relax. Shake off the dour, ominous chill that's plagued the aristocrat since the two women approached the long-vacant Croft manor. She stays in Lara's personal space. There isn't a lot of warmth in the building, literal or spiritual. It helps to have another human being nearby. Someone to create a little nexus of activity and disrupt the long-dormant energies of the old building.

"Do you think it will take long? I admit to not being the most ... studious of book readers," Silver confesses. "I much prefer old movies to books. American movies," she clarifies. "Do you like Westerns?"

Lara Croft has posed:
As they step into the next long dark hallway, Lara only flips on the first few sets of wall lamps to illuminate the first half of it, leaving the far off half dark and arguably a little spooky in presentation still as at the end of the hall are yet another set of double doors, which lead into the office where she found her father dead so many years ago.

No, instead, walking close beside Silver Lara has them take a right through an archway that leads to a balcony overlooking the library. Its a huge two story tall room with rows and rows of bookshelves and glass-covered alcoves filled with relics recovered by Richard Croft himself, true museum-worthy artifacts from thousands of years of human history.

"I don't think it'll take terribly long, no. I just have a number of curiosities that I think may be answered by my father's writings on the subject." She says as she leads Silver along the balcony overlooking the first floor of the library. Lara bumps shoulders with Silver then and smiles over at her. "I won't yell at you if you spill a little food on a book. Maybe if you spill a lot though..." She then flashes a light grin.