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

[starandhope]

She glances around at the stacks, taking them in for a moment.

"It is difficult," she admits. "I've only just been reunited with my husband, and he's been through a terrible experience recently. I hate being parted from him." She sniffs again, and dabs once more at her eyes. "But it could be so much worse. And everyone I've met here has been very kind, despite everything."

[bashasasdemon]

"Your husband?" At least you have someone here. He doesn't say it. No one needs to know just how badly he misses Ziede and Tahren right now- or Tenes, or Sanja. Shit, he might even take Ramad. (Actually no, best shove that thought away as far as possible. That still hurts a bit.)

"I'm sorry to hear that," he says, and if it's rote, well, what else is he supposed to say, "But... yes. It could be worse." Out of deference to what seems to be a more sheltered life, he won't then go detailing all the ways that this is plenty bad enough and how it could get worse a the drop of a hat.

[starandhope]

“Yes,” Mina agrees. Perhaps she’s sheltered. She knows in some ways she has been - lucky in ways that many people in her situation were not. But she knows hardship and horror.

“And I know I’m far from the only one here who is concerned for loved ones left behind,” she adds. She knows she’s not special or unique in that. “I suspect all of us here will have to work together if we’re to return home again.”

[bashasasdemon]

"It is starting to look that way." Most people have seemed... reasonably trustworthy. But trust has gotten Kai poisoned and kidnapped and all sorts of other less desirable things, so he'd rather not rely on that alone. And there's definitely one or two that don't seem trustworthy in the slightest.

He sighs, stubbornly keeping his hands by his sides. Showing his frustration won't help here. "Where to start, is the question." There's so little they know and so much to look into.

[starandhope]

"Where not to start," Mina says, straightening herself up a bit, "is weeping in the stacks as though one has nothing better to do."

This is her attempt at self-deprecation.

"I shall consult my own notes, to begin," she adds. "Perhaps we can all gather together and compare notes."

[bashasasdemon]

He gives a little huff of a laugh, shaking his head. "...Sometimes we need to get it out, to move forward," he says, but otherwise won't comment. His edges might be too sharp to cry much anymore, but it's not an existence he wishes on others. It's probably the better way to get it out, to grieve, in a situation like this.

"Right. I've been mostly focusing on trying to map the place out, with almost no success, but I guess that's its own sort of information." He'd like something more concrete, but he very often doesn't get what he'd like.

[starandhope]

"It is," Mina says. "Navigating this place is very important. It's strange that, the moment I think I'm lost and start trying to look for the circulation desk, I always find it."

[bashasasdemon]

Kai nods. "I've found the same. That's the only area that's actually consistent, too. It seems to be some sort... center, or verge point, or something." He admittedly does not understand even a little the type of magic at work here, but it's clear there's something making the desk and the rest of it easier to get back to.

[starandhope]

"Yes - the stable point around which all the rest of it seems to revolve. Like a child's top," Mina says thoughtfully.

[bashasasdemon]

That's not a bad way to put it. "How, I don't know. Why... it does seem that they mean for that area to be a... holding point? Base camp? They have provided the bare basics of living, after all." Just the basics there, though more can be found in the various other rooms that rotate. But there's no scavenging for food needed, at least. "Which would indicate they have some sort of use or purpose for us."

[starandhope]

“I believe so, yes,” Mina says. She pulls a book at random off the shelf. “Have you looked at these at all?”

[bashasasdemon]

"Yeah. None of them are full stories- some are missing the ending, or the middle, or are just scattered notes. I've seen that sort of thing for... last works of famous authors, or notes from important figures, things like that. But never everything in a library." It seems to have picked that as a theme, but... why?

[starandhope]

“I have to assume, as we’ve been brought here as Editors, that we’re meant to finish some of them,” Mina says with a shrug. “It’s the logical conclusion. Now, how we’re meant to go about that, let alone why, is beyond me at present.”

She carefully replaces the book in the exact spot she pulled it from on the shelf.

[bashasasdemon]

That... makes some level of sense, but also seems extremely stupid. (Not Mina's guess, just the entire idea of it.) "I guess we could get a pen and try to fill in the blanks," he says flatly, tone fulling indicating that he has no confidence that would work.

[starandhope]

"Somehow I doubt that's what our captors have in mind," Mina says with an almost-sardonic smile. "But I also can't think what it will entail. Being brought here, even in such a short time, has brought into stark relief how little I know of the wider universe."

As if her world hadn't already been shattered open with the whole revelation about vampires existing.

[bashasasdemon]

Kai sighs. "You're not the only one. But I don't think that really has anything to do with what we could have known." He's older than... pretty much any mortal, he's traveled and learned a lot, but he's still a fish out of water here. There's so much that none of them know, and the knowledge between all of them is so varied.

[starandhope]

"I suspect you may be right," she concedes. "Still, it's somewhat... humbling. Even a few months ago, I wouldn't have thought even my own world could contain... vampires."

[bashasasdemon]

There's a beat, and the veil is thick enough to hide his eyes, but she might be able to make out the confused expression. "I don't know what that means," he's forced to admit after a moment. See, they were just talking about this...

[starandhope]

"I can't help but envy you your ignorance," Mina says with a sigh. "Monsters, demons who feed on human blood."

[bashasasdemon]

Oh for-- "Demons don't drink blood," he says, with the tone of someone who has had to explain this entirely too often before, reaching up under his veil to pinch his nose in frustration. This is the exact kind of bullshit the Hierarchs spread to engender a fear of demons, and whether the Arike had similar teachings before or just couldn't help but let the fearmongering get to him, he'll never know.

[starandhope]

Mina isn't sure what reaction she was expecting to get to her information, but it wasn't this. It throws her for a bit of a loop, leaving her searching for an appropriate response. He speaks as someone who knows this very well, and she knows that she is very much a novice when it comes to the occult powers that have so recently affected her life.

But she knows a few things for sure.

"This one, apparently, does," she says after a moment's pause. "It is Un-dead, and it murdered my dearest friend."

[bashasasdemon]

Ok, well, he can exactly argue with the murder. He’s murdered a lot of people, and while he feels like most of them deserved it he can’t say by any means that others are less careful. Especially since he remembers, belatedly, that what these words mean might be very different in her world.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” he says, and he means it, “For clarity’s sake, can you tell me what ‘demon’ and ‘Undead’ mean in your world?”

[starandhope]

"I can try," Mina says, "though I'm far from an expert. All I know, I've learned from Professor Van Helsing, who has devoted his life to the study and eradication of such creatures."

Look, if she knew she was speaking to a demon, she might be more careful with her language.

"The monster that murdered my dear Lucy is called Count Dracula. Van Helsing told us that he was a man, once, centuries ago. But he renounced God, and became Un-Dead, a vampire. He feeds on the blood of living people to sustain himself, and has many dark powers."

[bashasasdemon]

That… sounds like the kind of nonsense that people who know nothing about demons would come up with. But he’s trying to keep an open mind; maybe in her world it does work that way. Somehow.

“So he said renouncing a god was enough to change what he was?” He’s trying not to sound as dubious as he feels, and he mostly manages. “Is it the same person as he was, or just the same body?” If she knows, that will tell him whether it’s an actual demon or not. At least in the way he understands them.

[starandhope]

Mina shakes her head. "There is only one God in my world," she says, but - "But I don't know much more beyond that. I'm sure becoming what he is entailed more than simply saying he renounced God. There are other people in my world who do that, and they don't suddenly become evil blood-drinking immortal creatures. He - must have tainted his own soul, somehow. Trapping himself on Earth. I would try to learn more from this library, if it wasn't so difficult to navigate and if the books in it were actually complete."