I'm not saying that it's aliens - TAKE A LOAD OFF, LOG 2

[libraryassistants]

Who: Readers and Actors
What: Beta Story final log
When: November 28 - December 11
Where: Woodhurst (UK) and the SS Radiance (in space!), 2019
Content warnings: Please tag warnings in comment headers!

In Woodhurst:

There is quite a bit of confusion in the village as the weeks pass by- by now it is clear that some people are very much not themselves, and there are multiple theories as to why. Aliens, obviously- the really weird bit is that it’s not just certain edgy teens purporting this theory, but since there’s been some (alleged) activity previously, maybe they’ve come back! Some tourists (and perhaps some locals) have made signs of the ‘Take me with you!’ variety, mostly loitering in the town square or in the park, whenever they get chased out of one or the other.

Suffice it to say, those people aren’t being taken seriously by those in charge- though even they have to admit that something strange is going on. Prevailing theories amongst officials are ‘gas leakage’ and ‘water contamination,’ neither of which are suitable explanations but no one seems to want to think too hard on it. As a result, the friends and families of those acting out of sorts are in a strange position. Do they try to seek medical help? Wait and hope it sorts itself out? Or do they join the crowds bidding welcome to their potential alien guests, demanding their real loved ones return?

Visitors of all stripes might find themselves a bit more scrutinized, as a result. Didn’t a bunch of weird people show up just as people seemed to start changing? Readers and aliens alike had best be on their most normal behavior, or it’s possible they’ll get cornered by someone asking what’s happening, or… a fanatic who wants to be taken up into their spaceship. Some of whom have some weird questions about probes. Good luck figuring out what that’s about.

On the IMW Group Supply Ship: Radiance

Things are not all well further up in the atmosphere, either. The staff have had to deal with much more pushback than they were expecting, including some people who seemed to not enough understand the concept of mental health (which was not in the briefing- shouldn’t they have at least heard of it before?). A few cases also seem to be quite severe, involving a level of intervention that they weren’t really prepared for- but of course, they’re here, so they’re going to do the very best they can to get all the humans the help they need! Hopefully legally.

Most alarmingly, however, it seems there have been some kidnapping attempts! …Kidnapping attempts that didn’t involve them! Someone, or multiple someones, have managed to get the patients off the ship without first filling out their discharge paperwork, and that simply will not do. As a result, security is ramped up on the ship… sort of. There’s very little in the way of a security crew, after all, and it’s not like they can call in reinforcements. So mostly this means that there are some very tired counselors who have been put on hallway shifts, and everyone has been assigned a little name badge that they MUST wear at ALL TIMES.

(There are actual people guarding the shuttles now, but again… there’s only so much security. The real question is, do you really want to beat up the aliens who are just trying to help?)

To their credit, the various Group members are trying to listen to the concerns of the patients who are here… less than willingly, and are beginning to filter some cases back to the planet by request. But they are going to do it properly, which means the proper forms. A wrap up visit with their counselor, a form agreeing to be finished with treatment, a politely worded request to maybe not tell people about the aliens (it’s not an NDA, because the Group has never needed those, it’s really just a form asking if they’re going to talk about it so management can figure out how badly this is going to go). Oh, and would you mind filling out this survey about your experience?

Of course, not everyone is in a hurry to leave- or at least needs something to do while waiting for bits of paperwork to approve. All the regular classes and sessions are still going, and they even retrofitted one of the spas to have water instead of… whatever it was before. Now certified safe for humans!


[Information on what's available on the ship is in the first log; info post is here.]

Comments

[curzed]

He has incentive to bend his not inconsiderable resources to finding Nephele as quickly as possible once free of this pocket of the Warp. Such a thing as necromancy simply can't be allowed to slip into the galaxy at large for fear of its inevitable terrible results. "A contract will require far more detailed terms than just that, you realize." Binding is binding, and he took such things very seriously indeed.

Wouldn't, in another few decades. Technically any such contract with xenos was inherently null and void, but so long as its purposes served him..

"There is no escaping doom." His shoulders twitch upward, barely a shrug. "So comes the night, whether it's sought or not." The deck is taken back with hand not occupied by orange, which is set down still half-eaten. He takes the time to lick his fingers clean, unwilling to get the cards covered in orange juice. Blood would be fine, but that? No. "Do you believe they work?"

Curze's smile is brief and terribly sharp. "Not that belief has much to do with it. If we wish to buck the trend then ten instead of seven." There's artless grace in the reshuffling of the cards even though Illarion just did, and no sense he's attempting to organize them in any fashion.

One by one, ten cards are set face-down. On this planet, in this time, the pattern laid out would be called Grand Cross. He doesn't know it as that.

[unsheathedfromreality]

"A verbal agreement brings the parties to the contract table, it doesn't replace it." The cadence of the words are those of something long-memorized and oft-repeated. "I would not leave the fate of my world up to something nebulous and easily forgotten."

He will spend the time and energy to get it right -- or as right as he can, without a lawmage beside him to catch what he might miss. Though the primarch's apparent passion for the letter of the law is reassuring, in a sense; if he's as hostile to loopholes as another shrike, so much the better.

No escaping doom, well. Illarion breathes out in a sound almost like a laugh. "I didn't escape, but it didn't keep me either." Fate might feel fixed, but there was always the chance of an unexpected twist. As to his belief in the cards -- he's silent and corpse-still, apparently staring at the table top. "Belief doesn't come into it," he finally says. "I know they can work, for the right mage. You seem like you've put the practice in."

As the primarch begins to lay the cards down, he looks away. Fortunately, someone's come through the door, providing an excuse for his shift in attention as he honors the old superstition. He'll let the cards be read to him, not peer at them himself before they're turned over.

text brick

[curzed]

"You had not struck me as one who puts much stock in such things." There's something appraising in that steady black gaze. It changed nothing, of course, but it IS interesting. "My memory is flawless-" For now. "-but I do lie rather often.. it is for the best to have it all in writing, then, isn't it?" Except by saying so he could well violate any contract he makes. It would rely on whatever passes for honor that he has, if anything.

Attention flickers away only for a moment, on the off chance it's one of those he's pinned as xenos entering. "I am no magos. But this is a ... popular form of entertainment among the people of Quintus." As close to a home as he'd ever gotten! Curze slides the overlapping card off to the side by the orange; it'll be needed again in a minute. "Position one is the situation affecting you." The card is hooked on one clawlike black nail and turned over. "Ten of Eagles." Those look like cups, and it annoys him that they are. "The angels of death, in a normal deck. Wars, crusades, the heros of the battlefield. Often signifies a death in battle, excellence, and duty. The second card affects it, makes it harder. Every card in this position is a problem." The one set aside is put back on its original position, now revealed. "Six of Thrones." Pentacles, in this era. "The challenge of your situation is the need for vigilance and efficiency. There's no room for error." The card directly below it is likewise flipped - Wheel of Fortune, reversed. This one is absolutely scowled at. "I don't know what a 'wheel of fortune' is supposed to be, but by the number it is Mankind, in the place of the root of the current difficulty, it's foundation and distant past. Inverse, it's ... failure, unwelcome changes, bad luck, and unusual loss."

It really gets on his nerves that these aren't the ones he knows, but he can interpret them easily enough. To the left, the next card is turned. "The Master of Swords, reversed; this is the place of the more recent past, possibly including current events. The corruption and misuse of authority and power. It suggests .. tyranny. Cruelty, manipulation, and fogged ability to think and reason. It may be a situation but is often an individual. Someone held the reins and steered poorly deliberately." To the right, onto the next card, a woman with a cup in hand. "Lord of Eagles in the place of the best outcome you can hope for. It is the card of service in the shadow of a greater presence, often a woman. It also is a mark of great sacrifice." His brow furrows slightly, the image distorting the longer he watches it. "..Sacrifice and a rising in position. Rulership." The previous cards are considered for a long silent moment before he sets it aside for the moment. "The likely state of your immediate future," the card above the others, "Ace of Eagles. Authority, secrecy and fear. False appearances. Exterminatus. Not a good end for you, I'm afraid."

His smile is utterly humorless as he flips the top row of four in quick succession. There's always a terrible end somewhere in every future he picked out. "This place is a factor of the first card." A woman holding a sword, upside down. "The Lord of Swords reversed. Your situation is caused, directly or indirectly by a powerful female. She relies on manipulation, deception and cruelty. Her coldhearted determination to achieve her own agenda doesn't factor in the consequences to others, she simply doesn't care. Her intellectual prowess is a weapon, used to strip others of their power and inflict great harm. She is a reminder to be cautious of those who may mask their malicious intentions with intelligence and charm." There's a building theme here. The card directly next to it follows. "The events and people beyond your control, the Champion of Eagles." Reversed. "This is ... ordinarily associated with a tendency to become emotionally unreliable. Exercise caution when making decisions based on emotions or the lack thereof. Self-reflection is required moving forward. Where you are, where you've been, and what you've done to get yourself into this." Onto the second-to-last, eight swords. "Hopes and fears of this situation, and what is making it difficult to navigate. Your greatest obstacle is created by your own mind, but you possess the power to break free from these mental constraints and find your path forward."

The last card is turned. "Your final outcome. The Champion of Thrones is the card of diligence, hard work, and practicality, broadly positive if you maintain your work."

He folds his hands before himself, resting his chin on them again, studying the layout with depthless black eyes. "It seems you've gotten where you are via noble service in warfare and a manipulative, particularly vicious woman, and the consequences of those actions linger. There's a trend here of powerful women making things worse for you. One of the two got you killed, the results of the fighting or these powerful women, you weren't as cautious as you should have been, and still aren't. Perhaps both. Address it going forward, because it's still causing you problems. Your bad luck and losses have continued since that break, and will continue, compounded by this other figure in your life, this tyrant who's so recently used poisoned power and corrupted authority to cloud your ability to make rational decisions. As things stand this very moment, this third and final figure will enter the stage, or has already but hasn't quite made her move, and through some great price she will rise in position and take you with her. Unfortunately the Ace of Eagles taints it; this is not a good end for you. This authority figure brings only death, which should be yours but you're already dead."

"But you do have a way out. You have the ability already to break the constraints that are on you and will be placed upon you again. It will be hard. It will take work, and it will take persistence. Or you die. .. Again." He doesn't look up from the laid out array. "Which one is your Monarch, I wonder? Though both will be, one already is."

[unsheathedfromreality]

So, and so. The primarch's a self-admitted liar, with all that implies for the validity of any contract entered. There may not be much Illarion will be able to do in the breach of it, given the disparity in their relative power, but ... now he has those terms to think about before they sit down to author anything binding.

"It is," is all he'll say for now. It is best to have it in writing.

It's a good thing he doesn't sleep -- it will be more time to think about contingencies.

He keeps his gaze on the door as the primarch begins his reading, though at least some of the cards are in the periphery of his ((out-eyes)). It is easier to feel he's not influencing the reading by seeing them before they're flipped when neither he nor the primarch is familiar with the suits and local readings. Nor, it seems, are the meanings -- what Illarion remembers of them, which is admittedly not so comprehensive as a skilled diviner's recollection -- exactly parallel to what he'd expect.

But it does not make them wrong. Far from. Even knowing that a false diviner -- or simply an unexperienced one -- could still craft a convincing narrative from the interstices and imprecisions in meaning built into the cards, there are too many specifics there for Illarion to believe the reading contrived. He looks back down at the spread as the tenth card -- Champion of Thrones, and is that name not omen-laden by itself? -- is revealed, and he listens in silent stillness to the primarch's interpretation. Nothing shows on his face except the faintest twitch of his lips at "a trend of powerful women making things worse for you," for what had his life -- and death -- been, after all?

You weren't as cautious as you should have been, and oh, how that rings true. He had thought Esfir had loved him. He had thought that transcended any consideration for his usefulness to her.

To all appearances, he had thought wrong.

He does not answer the question asked of him immediately, having eyes only for the cards as his mind turns over their interpretation, fitting pieces together. Mapping them onto his past -- and trying to project the future laid out before him. (Or you die. ...Again.) At last, he taps the card the primarch had called Master of Swords. "The King of Eyes. My Monarch, as you say." Then the Lord of Eagles, the woman with the cup. "The Prince of Locusts. I ... "

A moment's hesitation, as he reaches within himself to look for something he hasn't tried since coming to the Library. It's not there. " ... was a Knight of her Court. No longer." The forced devotion to her had snapped with the King of Eyes' leash.

"She's his fext, his undying general. Leads his forces in war." As high a position as could be achieved in the Monarch's service -- which left only one conclusion on where else she might go, and it seems both impossible and entirely plausible that she'd somehow do it.

As for that last woman, the woman with the sword ... He lays a finger on that card, staring at it expressionlessly. "I know her. She's not involved with the Unearthed."

So not under the terms of their nascent contract, whichever of the two she might be.

[curzed]

A new name. Who is the Prince of Locusts? Such a name evoked the same disaster suggested already in flickering sparks of what was to come, but not for him. "If I were to hazard a guess, I would suggest regicide is your Prince's intention." It's not a guess. "Who settles for merely leading armies when all can be owned?"

But that's not a route that would go well for Illarion. It would be inconvenient were the elf to die before Curze could find his home planet and see to the threat himself. "I can offer little comfort. Although what comes cannot be changed, it can be faced with dignity." There's no question in his mind if anything can be altered.

Nothing ever changed. "Not being caught by surprise also has its benefits." The final card is considered. It does leave a window open. An impossible if. It could go better than the exterminatus suggested elsewhere, with enough work. Steady progress and not giving into--

The thought's shaken off. That didn't have the right feel to it. The proper future had a certain echo, if he listened close enough.

The woman with the sword is not part of this undead scourge. "No. She is a mother figure. Your own or your offspring's."