Careful of the stacks - LIBRARY LOG

[libraryassistants]

Who: EVERYONE!
What: A bunch of Editors walk into a library...
When: October 31st - November 13
Where: The Unfinished Library
Content warnings: Please add them as needed in the comment titles!

Welcome to the Library, Editors.

As the new residents drop into the Library, they are bound to have questions. Unfortunately it seems no one (except perhaps someone on the phone) appears to have any answers. But there is a nice little cart with a carafe of too weak coffee, a pot of too strong tea, assorted creams and sugar packets, and what appear to be leftover boxed shortbread cookies. There’s a sign inviting people to help themselves but reminding them not to take any food or drinks into the stacks, or touch any of the books with their grubby cookie hands. But aside from this little display and the nametags they’re all given, which do reappear whenever removed for the first week (where do they keep coming from?), the Editors are more or less left alone.

The Library is eternal, or at least it seems that way, unbothered by its new inhabitants. It certainly does not seem like this is anything unusual within its operation. Are there other sections of the Library with Editors, tucked into a different part of the stacks? Have there been Editors here before, and the ones here are simply a replacement? It’s impossible to say, just that the Library seems quite prepared for them. The refrigerators are stocked with appropriate (if generic) foodstuffs, any tantrums in front of the circulation desk are completely ignored, and attempts to set the Library on fire fizzle out before anything can even catch.

However, after a few days, some of the scenery in the Library seems to be changing. Little singing bowls and white noise makers pop up on various shelves and counters, yoga mats appear tucked under the bunk beds (plenty for everyone, somehow), and some of the rooms have started playing relaxing, meditative music over unseen speakers. More confusingly, there are also small UFOs hanging by string from the lower ceilings of the contained rooms, which on closer reflection are revealed to simply be two paper plates glued together and painted silver. In the beginning they’re quite sparse, but by the end of the second week they are everywhere and impossible to ignore.

At the start of the second week, there is a possible hint as to why, for at least part of it. On the table by the circulation desk there is a sign: “This Week’s Recommended Reading: Invasion of the Body Snatchers!” Next to it, there is a sign up sheet: a waitlist to check-out the ‘reading.’ (There is no explanation or apology for it actually being a movie.)

[ooc note: The Library prompts from the TDM can be considered canon to the game. Remember any of the locations listed in the setting are fair game. Have fun!]

Comments

[scienceofthearcane]

That answer did not make a whole lot of sense on why there were so many bowls collected, but Viktor looked at the crystal bowl with interest. Viktor is a nerd and collects rocks, so he honestly was thinking about accepting it, but thought twice about it, since Konrad made it sound so sinister.

"Is it very heavy? Most crystals would be, but I've never seen one that's been fashioned into a bowl."

[curzed]

"Not to me."

It might be perfectly safe. There's only one way to find out. Go on, Viktor. Take the crystal singing bowl from the creepy giant, who's now outright grinning.

... It is in fact perfectly safe. It's got weight to it, but isn't more than would be expected of a chunk of carved up rock.

[scienceofthearcane]

Konrad, you aren't making this sound any less sinister. But Viktor did eventually accept the crystal bowl in his good hand. It did have weight to it, but no more or less than one would consider a bowl made from a crystal to have. He eased himself down to sit on the side of one of the beds that Konrad was between with the crystal bowl beside him. He leaned down to pick up one of the pairs of paper plates that was made into a flying saucer.

"I doubt this will make sense without the context that the "required reading" would provide, either. I don't suppose you have viewed the video?"

[curzed]

Relieved of the crystal bowl, he picks up one of the metal ones and balances it carefully on his knee, then draws one ragged nail across its side, producing a strangely hypnotic single note. "'Video' is another word for pict-feed, I take it. Yes. Nowhere in it was these bowls. Or the mats under the beds."

He gestures slightly to the bed Viktor's currently sitting on. Viktor's new bowl continues to be astonishingly ordinary. Probably it can make a similar sound. "I'm not sure they're connected."

[scienceofthearcane]

The term "pict-feed" gets filed away in Viktor's mind. He also hadn't known what to make of the yoga mats.

"There were a few names before mine on the sign-up sheet for it, so I have not yet seen the video. What is it about then if the bowls are not included?"

[curzed]

Curze really did watch the movie. More than once. And then asked the library assistants for more information to work with.

It is apparently also a serious subject to him, by the way the shark's grin fades, the bowl's lone single sweet note stilled by one hand. "Invasion, as the remembrancer who made it marked on the cover. Xenos plant spores of some form, that when they reach a human colony, begin copying the populace one by one inside pods, killing the human they are duplicating, and releasing an alien monster in human appearance to replace them with."

He's not taking it as fiction, this kind of thing happens with disturbing regularity in the Imperium. "By the end of the feed, it seems few actual humans are left."

[scienceofthearcane]

Viktor is not taking it as anything but the gospel truth, and a chilling one at that. Viktor frowned first at Konrad, then down at the flying saucer that was in his hands.

"What a disturbing video. What was the purpose of capping and replacing the human population?"

[curzed]

"Aliens rarely mean well for mankind," the pale giant says gently. It's obvious to him. Some were occasionally friendly or neutral, but most.. "Unfortunately there was no noted purpose to it. It may have simply been ... biological compulsion, adapting to a new planet."

He shrugs, a twitch of shoulders and little more. "It may be that we are here to learn of it and prevent it from happening in other colonies. It may simply be a warning such a thing exists."

[scienceofthearcane]

"Just delivering a warning seems like overkill as a reason why the magic brought us to this library."

Viktor looked down at the paper plate flying saucer in his hands, then back at Konrad in speculation.

"You sound as if you are speaking from experience on the likelihood of aliens having hostile intentions."

[curzed]

There's a shallow nod of agreement. It certainly is overkill. Which suggested things of his abilities, and his brother's, are either pure coincidence, or in dire need. Both are concerning for different reasons. "I am only passingly familiar with sorcery. It is easier to think this is a purpose and not a mistake."

And if it was a mistake? What then? They couldn't leave.

"I am. We have encountered over two dozen xenos species. Two have not attempted to annihilate or enslave humanity." This is a subject he takes very seriously indeed. "The rest must be exterminated on sight, as they will not hesitate to do the same to you. Or worse."

[scienceofthearcane]

That made Viktor's eyebrows go up in surprise.

"I beg your pardon if it is rude to ask, but would you be considered human in the world that you came from?"

If so, then there is a big difference between the evolution of humanity as Victor knows it and what evolution has ended with in Konrad's world. All the more reason to try to add a machine component to humanity's eventual evolution, then.

[curzed]

Konrad's smile is immediate, and full of teeth better suited to a shark than a human.

"What do you suppose the answer is? Do you think I am human?"

[scienceofthearcane]

"That's a bit of a loaded question, but I would have to see your DNA before I could tell your species."

Viktor shrugged back.

"Just in my opinion, you seem like you could be sinister, but you haven't actually done anything aside from looking creepy."

[curzed]

That draws a soft huff. "Sinister! Creepy." He knows how he looks, he just doesn't care. Bothering with basic maintenance like washing blood off or bothering with a comb simply wasn't part of his routine unless some greater reason required it. Lately, nothing required it. "What a terrible thing to say. Not untrue, I suppose."

One black, chipped nail is drawn along the edge of the metal bowl he'd kept. The note it produces isn't at all unpleasant, but that has more to do with the singing bowl than the creature holding it. "Humans and a certain species of long-extinct animal shared ninety-eight percent of their genes. I suspect mine is rather less. DNA might not have the answers you believe. But I am of ... human stock. I am what I was made to be."

[scienceofthearcane]

Viktor's tone was as dry as dust.

"If you already knew that you looked like a monster, then don't be surprised if other people think that you are one."

Have a pointed linefais to go with the tone. Viktor is well acquainted with the idea that if you look a certain way, then other people will think you are that way, regardless of whether you really are. Viktor had reserved judgment until he had spoken to Konrad a little.

"A name tag that says "Night Haunter" is also doing you no favors."

[curzed]

"Oh, there's no doubt of that. I am a monster. Being one has very little to do with one's species." He knows very well he is both sinister and creepy, and it's probably as much choice as accident.

But he had a job to do and it served that job to be so. "The nametag changes every time it's removed." He's experimented extensively, but he's not removing it now. "Night Haunter is the name my people gave me when I was ...mm, about your size." And Konrad rather liked it better than he did Konrad Curze. "A profession, a title, a person.. it matters not."

[scienceofthearcane]

Since Viktor was in his thirties and very much an adult, he then had to wonder if that was either meant to be an insult or Konrad was mistaken about his age? Of course, the explanation about the name didn't make the name tag any clearer, so Victor raised one eyebrow.

"Night Haunter is a profession? A professional what?"

A spook, or ghost? Somehow, he couldn't quite imagine Konrad in a sheet.

[curzed]

He means it literally. When he was Viktor's size, he was first making a name for himself in tangible ways that lingered in the memory of others. He's rather more grown now, at somewhere around twice that height.

It's a little harder to tell exactly how big the pale creature is when he's sitting on the ground. "Professional butcher," is the blunt response. "To put it inelegantly. The exactor of retribution for innumerable crimes."

[scienceofthearcane]

Such a response might have put off someone else from asking anything more. But it just made Viktor more curious about where this pale stranger came from.

"What needed to be revenged?"

Sure, Konrad called it a retribution, to Viktor, the staunch pacifist, the two words were interchangeable.

[curzed]

A singing bowl is waved negligently. The line is fine indeed, and he doesn't think it's worth debating over, it seems. Revenge, retribution.. "All the terrors one human may wage upon others when they fear no consequences and believe themselves untouchable. They learned otherwise."

It was necessary work, as far as he's concerned. "When I finished my task, the people of my planet were safe from the predations of their own kind."