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

[unsheathedfromreality]

The flat disagreement gets an actual cough of a laugh out of the shrike. "Fine. We might both enjoy it." Technically, that is a lie: Illarion doesn't conventionally enjoy anything. (Though he is beginning to realize -- legible emotions or no -- that novelty and danger can keep him engaged when nothing else would. Being chased through the woods by a bigger predator had fulfilled both criteria.) "But it isn't the most productive use of time."

The notion this isn't the first planet the primarch's subjugated -- all on his own? -- is ... something, for Illarion to wrap his mind around. He's no reason or evidence to believe it's not possible, but it's so far beyond the scale of his understanding he sits and contemplates it for a solid minute.

But can you overestimate yourself? he thinks, but does not ask, once he's done with that rumination. "Suppose if right of future conquest is grounds for judicial authority, then you have it." There's not much to his tone, but what there is implies that he doesn't think much of the idea of "right of future conquest".

He has also noticed that none of this is a yea or nay to his initial offer, but he'll let that simmer a little longer instead of pursuing it straightaway. Instead, indicating the cards, "Is that a deck of Triumphs? For divination?"

It surely goes by another name, elsewhere, but the notion of using cards for both playing and foreseeing is ... common, he'd hope.

[curzed]

He's still mulling it over. It would get him what he wants, ideally - a stable location he can take his fleet to. He would inevitably agree, if he didn't like the terms then he simply wouldn't abide by them. Honor was something others luxuriated in, he had no such compunctions. "Oh, and what better things would you suggest could be done? In this place, in that tedious library. Take your pick."

The egg is, finally, eaten. Shell and all. It's how he's always eaten an egg before, and that this one is cooked inside is a novel change from the raw he would find in scattered nests up along blackened buildings in Nostramo when he was younger. Crows never much liked his raids but they also couldn't actually stop him. And the added calcium was always a bonus. "It's a human world, it's under human jurisdiction. I need to know little else at this juncture." Either it already was part of the Imperium or it would be whether it wanted to or not.

Either way, killing aliens is his duty. "...The lesser arcanoi, or some local variant." 'Triumphs', a different name but perhaps the same idea. "Some do believe it can tell the future, if you know how to read it. I don't know all of these cards, but most are the same. These cups, I think, are intended to be the suit of eagles. Page, knight, queen and king analogize well enough to the proper servant, champion, lord and master. But overall.."

[unsheathedfromreality]

It's a little odd to watch a grown man eat an egg with the shell on -- among elves, it's more a habit of growing children or gravid women. Or, Illarion supposes, the starved, or those who couldn't bother to care much about what they were eating so long as it kept them moving.

The shrike wonders if the primarch will eat the banana with the peel on, too.

He spends longer than is proper just ... watching the other fellow eat and following that line of thought, before rousing himself to answer the question of what else they could do in the Library besides try to kill each other: "Take it over. De jure or de facto, whichever can be arranged. You're the conqueror." And Illarion is the warlord, and an architect of cultures, besides. The Editors -- what he'd seen of them, when he bothered paying attention -- were a motley group with no central purpose, and the Librarian and the Assistants seemed more like the Library's shepherds than its rulers.

If the Editors had a job to do, surely it could be accomplished better with a unified purpose and culture.

(Likely, he should be horrified by his own suggestion -- if he had a sense of horror left. Not the gist of building a real unified organization out of the Editors, but that this creature should be the one to do it.)

Then he dismisses the idea -- and the unproductive non-argument about jurisdiction over human colonies -- and leans a little over the table to peer at the cards. It's old instinct to not speak of what he can see of the deck that's still held in a stack, restricting his comments to what would be visible to an ordinary elf. "Knight, courtier, prince, Monarch, for us," he remarks. "Cups might be shells. Swords for fangs...

"Do you believe?" Or had he practiced at it long enough it wasn't belief but simply true, the way (don't think of her) Esfir had become a diviner.

[curzed]

The second egg disappears much as the first did, crunchily. He's never really recovered from most of his life needing to eat what he could find, and any nutrition being good nutrition. It had driven the cooks hired to attend him while he was king absolutely nuts. If it was on his table and remotely edible generally it would be assumed to be part of the meal. "I have a brother who's more the sort to conquer libraries. I wouldn't want to step into his arena." Which implies it does happen, and one of the twenty did in fact specialize in rogue libraries. "But if it becomes necessary.. then I will do what I must." His reasons for interference were narrow. He was a creature of order and law, and so far the library didn't rankle that beyond being unable to leave.

But they were free now, and sooner or later he'd find a way to acquire the attention of the Imperium. "Courtiers outrank knights?" Why would some fancy noise-maker-- eh. Different cultures. It's meaningless, noise. Let others worry about the details of alien ways. "..Yes and no. I do not use them for such a purpose, but they can be. They are a research tool, to unravel what I already know but haven't understood." A card is turned over, likely already seen by elf not-eyes: the ace of wands. "Discordia, especially this card, is a warning. Unforseen consequences. Things are not what they seem. It keeps reappearing."

Another. Nine of wands. "Confusion, madness. Something unseen." A third,three of wands. "Danger from within. Hidden threat." He keeps flipping several more, and they're all the same suit, except for a lone eight of cups. "The warning is clear. What it's warning of, less so."

[unsheathedfromreality]

The notion flits through the back of Illarion's head to go buy more food. It's two parts morbid curiosity and one part parental instinct that -- it seems -- did not die with the rest of him. (Long-engrained patterns seemed to have survived the best of any of his soul; perhaps there's use in leaning into them when they rear their heads.)

He's got pocket change enough he could be something else, and no other use for it. He'll see what happens with these first offerings.

"That's more specialized than I'd thought your brothers would be." Though not bizarrely so. Control of information was the heart of any extended campaign, military or political; libraries were far from the only way to gather and maintain information, but a spymaster or rhetorician or propagandist would want control of them as much as he'd want any other store of it. "Be interesting to see if he shows up."

not that you'll learn anything about it, illarion; the eels will not permit it

"Technically two words for the same thing." The members of a Prince's Court could be called either, though "knights" held the more martial connotation. "Courtier above knight's a holdover from a mistranslation." The second-ranked face card had been something closer to duke in the elven tradition but someone had gotten crossed up somewhere along the line and leaned into the theme of Princes and their Courts rather than landed nobility. And that boring little bit of trivia is not one Illarion even wants to waste breath on sharing, which is why he is not Magnus.

He cocks his head as the primarch deals; if he were guessing, this might be the suit of feathers being dealt from, though from what little he remembers of Esfir's foretellings -- what little he's trying not to remember -- that one wasn't so ill-omened. Regardless, the draw mostly being in-suit is unusual enough, if one leaned into coincidence.

"Is that for you, or your victims?"

[curzed]

The eels are always waiting.

"It would be better to think of him as a keeper of knowledge, the obsession with libraries is merely a side effect of this." A little less specialized, when described that way! And doesn't even begin to get into the sheer amount of bullshit the Thousand Sons were capable of, if even half the rumors were true. The idea of that sibling showing up seems to sour his mood a little, and he picks through the other items in offering in a moment of sullen quiet.

It gives time for review. Courtiers and Knights are basically the same; who in Nostramo weren't used to mistranslations and things not quite sounding the way they should when rendered into Gothic?

The cards are picked back up one at a time and slid back into the deck, reshuffling beginning before he pauses, reconsiders, and sets the deck in front of Illarion. "Let's find out. Shuffle, pick seven. Quickly now, don't think too much about it."

[unsheathedfromreality]

The least indication of a sulk at the mention of this other -- so far absent -- brother is picked up. So, not surprisingly, there were rifts and tensions in this enormous family as well. Useful.

Perhaps he's offered his deal to the wrong member of them -- but one played the cards one had, as it were, and this is the primarch he was to work with. There might be value in appealing to another as a potential intermediary in the future...

But for now, speaking of cards. He accepts the deck as it's set down, picking it up and shuffling it himself -- deliberately focusing on a point just above his hands as he does so, with his eyes and ((eyes)) alike. It's perhaps just superstition that watching the shuffle affects it, when you can see the cards sliding past each other, but it's a clinging superstition all the same. One, two, three, four riffles -- then he turns cards off the top, one through seven, onto the table between them.

"Huh. So ... ?" They're the same. Which of them is it warning?

(Or is it both of them?)

[curzed]

The same cards in the same order, again. Only an idiot wouldn't listen, but he ... doesn't know what the warning is for. What is he missing?

They're studied through narrowed eyes, gaze little more than black slits, frowning. One of the pieces of fruit in the little box Illarion's brought over is picked up and much like the eggs had been earlier, bitten into whole. Probably not how oranges are meant to be eaten, but it doesn't seem to trouble him.

For a moment or two the flavor is distracting, though. Unfamiliar, sharp, and not at all unpleasant.

"I accept your terms," he concludes, half an orange still clasped in his hands, expression turning thoughtful. "Information on your planet, its defenses, what to expect of this Monarch, and it will be excised. If your people are sincere enough in throwing themselves at the mercy of the Emperor, perhaps he will grant you a measure of grace."

Perhaps they'll be allowed to live. "In return I will not kill you until your usefulness is ended."

That's not what all those warnings are for though. Repeated eight times, now.

He's missing something important. "Often when humanity speaks of fortelling the future they expect a series of events. You know the conclusion, therefore you know how to reach it. The warning is present, surely we know what causes it. And yet..."

That's just not how it works. "The road lies before us, and what is being missed lies waiting to be revealed."

[unsheathedfromreality]

There's that question answered. Not the first time Illarion's seen someone eat an orange that way, but those who did it were usually younger and far less experienced with the world. Another point of information to tuck away for later.

He leans back in his chair as the primarch makes his pronouncement, experiencing ... Not relief, exactly. But an internal, emotionless recognition that this will make his unlife in the Library much easier, and positions him for better control of Nephele's eventual contact with the Empire.

If they make contact with the Empire. Too many factors in play there to say they will -- not least that the King of Eyes might well have his way with the world before anyone can come to their rescue.

But it is good to have contingencies. Even if he's years out of habit in negotiating them. "These terms are agreeable. You would, I hope, not object to formalizing them in a contract?" Because that's how a shrike negotiates and delineates his obligations with outsiders -- even a lone shrike, with family or clan or flock to protect.

His attention turns back to the cards as the primarch's musings do, and he picks up the cards with the intent to reshuffle them. "And yet," he murmurs, "the world and its ways are far larger than any of us can hold alone, or read the meanings of. Your doom might still be off-stage."

One, two shuffles, before he offers the deck back. "Suppose it'll rule something out if you try reading the cards for me." If it's the same ones again, then that must mean he's a factor, right? And if not ... he can admit some intellectual curiosity at what the cards might have to say of him, beyond death and fate as he is.

[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."