unfinishedlibrary | Careful of the stacks

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Careful of the stacks - LIBRARY LOG

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!]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

He seemed well enough for now. No scent of illness, no change in heart rate that suggested fainting - perhaps again - was likely to happen soon. Nothing is said about it, but Konrad's paying attention.

Vampire is a word from myth, as is undead. They're no more real than daemons and gods were, or so he would have argued a mere week ago.

The Night Haunter doesn't mock Harker's story, or call any of it into question. The man didn't seem like he was inventing anything, just describing his experiences, and assigning names of the impossible to what he'd observed. .. What was once assumed impossible.

Creatures that feed on mankind. Creatures that, superficially, might resemble one of his own Night Lords. Or himself. "A shovel seems an inadequate weapon."

Despite the warnings, Harker was mostly healthy. He still gets faint and has to sit sometimes when he gets stressed or panics, which usually leads to a small nap wherever he is and waking up fine. But it had been at least a month or two since the last time that happened. Despite the bad memories, his heartbeat was very steady.

Harker had scars under his stiff collar and shirt from the creatures. His blood had revitalized the centuries-old warlord. "I realize that now." He replied, looking a little sheepish. "You must realize I did not believe in any of this before. I was sleep-deprived and irritated. I wanted nothing more than to kill him and escape. The shovel made sense at the time."

Yet he didn't seem upset as he explained his reasoning. "When he left with his boxes of earth. The count had to sleep in the dirt of his home, but I did not know that yet." He waved a hand when he added the detail. "He left me with those women, and I knew I did not have long before they came for me. So I tried to scale the wall again… and fell all the way down the battlement to the river below. The rest is truly a blur before I awoke in a monastery being told I had been raving for weeks." Yeah, he should not have survived that fall. Much less the woods full of wolves. "I knew Mina was in danger somehow, so I had her sent for. What I did not know is the count was already there and was infecting her beloved friend Lucy. The kindest soul anyone has ever met."

"... Until recently, I would have agreed with disbelief. Such things are considered utter myth.." But in its way it proved Sanguinius' veiled warning, put names to the images that itched in the back of his mind of impossible things wreaking havoc amongst humanity.

That Harker lived was remarkable, facing four of these daemons. These 'vampires', and the creatures they held in thrall. More carefully cut out rectangles are set aside.

"Quite the same. I had read Lenore once but never dreamed such was real." He knew a line from the story well enough to translate it when one of the women in the carriage said that the dead travel fast. If only he had listened to those villagers.

It was not that he smiled, not the bitter one, but that same soft one from earlier in their talk. "Mina came as quickly as she could, and we were married in the monastery before they deemed me well enough to travel home to England. My employer, Mr. Hawkins, was as close to a father as I had met us at the train station, he insisted we move in with him as he worried for my health.

Sadly, he died less than a week after we moved in. I didn't know he had named me his heir. It is only important to this as he was buried in London, which is far from Exeter, where I have always lived. I saw the count walking down the street just after the funeral. He was younger and following a woman. It was then that Mina decided to read my journal. I had made her promise not to unless she felt it significant. I believed I had been mad." He explained as he waved a hand again, watching the other cut the paper. "While I was working, she met a man named Van Helsing, a doctor and the man who realized Lucy was a vampire and set her free. They realized together that my experience was with the very being that attacked Lucy."

What rectangles have been cut are carefully stacked and measured against each other; one's discarded for some unknowable imperfection. Every useful or even potentially useful detail that's been mentioned is filed away neatly for later use.

"How does one set a vampire free? You mentioned infection, but also that these creatures are devils. They can make a human become one of them?" A medicae apparently knew what to do about it, interestingly.

"It's shockingly simple for as complex as they are. You drive a stake or blade through their heart and cut off their head. They can also be repelled with religious imagery, such as a cross." He explained. "Dr. Van Helsing was very knowledgeable on these things. They infect through the sharing of blood. The bastard forced his blood on Mina."

His words were spoken low, again worried of anyone hearing. "We were staying with Lucy's former suitors, who became some of the best friends I have ever had. Dr. Steward, Lord Godolaming, and Quincey Morris." So they are at least are nearing the furcoat. "The count broke into the room where we slept and had me in some kind of trance. I woke to Mina covered in blood, crying with the others around." He reached up, lifting a strand of his white hair. "That is when this happened. I used to have brunette hair." Such a small detail, but... "I went out that morning and got the blade you saw. We were going to one of his homes to destroy the boxes, and I wanted to kill him for touching Mina." Theres a bit of fire in him when he says it.

.... He's going to come back to that later, once the rest of the tale is done, because it's really no magic bullet that cutting off something's head kills them. That's rather how beheading works.

Lucy, infected by blood and turned into a vampire. Mina, infected by blood and ... not? Or merely not yet?

"Would you have still, if he had not touched your wife?"

It was true, but he didn't know that much about the supernatural to know that. "I was already helping to hunt him at the time for what he did to me. It was just different after he touched her. It mattered more to spare her, than it mattered to get revenge for myself. If that makes sense." He explained with a wave of his hand.

"Van Helsing explained to us that Mina was not yet fully undead, despite putting a holy wafer to her forehead. Which burned her. Still, he said if we killed the Count, she could return to normal. I will admit seeing her suffer those weeks of chasing him back to his castle hurt worse than any day I was stuck there." He really loved his wife. "We had to split up once Mina figured out his route. My Mina really is the smartest person I have ever known. Even through the sway he held on her, she fought him and figured him out. She stayed with the professor while Lord Godolming and I went upriver on a boat and the others rode on horseback. We aimed to cut him off, but Lord Godolming and I had a bit of an accident with the boat and ended up racing on horseback as well. We reached them just before they got to the castle with the sun setting. His hired men were loyal and didn't care that we had our rifles on them. Eventually I got tired of the standoff and walked through them to his box. Mr. Morris followed, but apparently got stabbed along the way." Again, very normal for soldiers to move for a lawyer. Very normal. "We got the lid off, and Mr. Morris stabbed him in the heart while I slit his throat. He crumbled to dust before our eyes... and that is when Mr. Morris fell, and I tried to catch him."

So, it was all very fresh. "Mina's burn from the holy wafer vanished; I do believe she is alright." Looking up to Cruz again. "That was rather long-winded; I do apologize."

There's a slight nod from the pale giant, thoughtful acknowledgment and little else while Harker relates first that the hunt was partly about sparing her her fate, and that killing the vampire should break the infection.

It wasn't quite right, that loyal men wouldn't defend their hypothetically helpless master against a pair of civilians; Harker should have been shot down on the spot, and his friend with him. Instead there was .. only one stabbing, and no other interference? Did these hired men have no loyalty after all, or was it something else?

"Some stories take more time to relate than others." He doesn't seem bothered by it. "These events are strange indeed, but if nothing else you believe them to be fully true." Lies have a sound, have a smell. "And there have been ... very strange things, lately. More than one simple story to frighten children has become real."

This is one of them. "Tell me, Jonathan Harker, if you'll forgive the questions." He pauses his meticulous work on making cards for a moment, scissors still. "What other ways, if any, do you know of warding these creatures off? A stake in the heart and beheading kills any living thing I've ever encountered." And religious iconography is nonsense.

It was all truth to him. He may have doubted his mind after the castle, but he had kept his journal. The same one that he had placed on the bed near the fur coat and box of shells. The entries he took in the castle helped so much in proving he wasn't insane to himself.

The young man had not really considered how much of what happened shouldn't have happened. Like the fact he lifted the box with Dracula inside and threw it off the cart before they even tried to get the lid off. He wrote it all off as willpower.

"It is fully as I remember it, and as I wrote in my journal while in captivity in the castle." He replied when Night Haunter spoke of him, believing it was true. "Aside from us ending up in this impossible world?" he asked with a tip of his head.

"Please, always feel free to ask me anything. I always enjoy conversation." Blue eyes meeting the other's then. "If all 50 boxes of soil had been destroyed, he wouldn't have been able to rejuvenate his powers and would have been as weak as any man. The same is true as if we found him in the daylight. That one I saw myself, when I tried to slash him the afternoon after he attacked Mina. He jumped back but was clearly uneasy." The sound of all those gold coins hitting the floor should have been a comfort, but he had been busy chasing after the vampire.

"Stuffing the mouth with garlic or a sacred wafer, anything holy. These apparently can also end him, but I had not seen that one; I was simply told about it by the professor." He started to twist his ring as he said it. "There are more ways to repel than kill from my understanding."

"Aside from this library, yes. If my brother's stories did not align with your own I would doubt still."

There are few things Konrad won't willingly alter his ideas on if presented new evidence, and as this isn't one of those few things..

Garlic though. Isn't that a spice of some form? How would one define holiness? "What strength do such creatures have when they are not as weak as any mortal?"

"Your brother's stories?" He inquired. Watching his new friend curiously. Idly wondering what Night Haunter's world was like.

These days, Harker was learning nothing he knew was unchangeable. Well, one thing would never change. His complete trust and devotion to Mina. But that was not ideology.

"I believe I was told easily up to the strength of 10 or more men. I have seen him command the wolves, move down a building as easily as any of us walking, turn to mist, and control the weather. He also held me in a trance that kept me asleep when he attacked Mina. I would also count the hundreds of years he has been alive, as well as the women he keeps making like he is."

The scissors are gestured with a little. "Daemons. Vampires. Devils. We are taught such things are superstition and nothing else. And yet.." Sanguinius isn't one to make up stories, he's a terrible liar. And now those stories are rather substantiated by Harker, intentionally or otherwise.

Back to cutting. He's about halfway done, there's plenty left to be made. "A difficult opponent. You are lucky to live still."

Suspiciously lucky, in fact. "Your decision to end the creature is a just one, even if your wife was not one of its victims. Well done." There's not a trace of mockery. Courage wasn't only an astartes trait. Humanity the galaxy over was just as capable, perhaps moreso under the right circumstances, as they had none of the power and durability. How many victims would such a thing as this Count have, over the course of centuries? How many innocent lives?

"We are taught the same, and that they are blasphemous to even consider." It sounded at least like the ideas were laughable in both worlds until they had no choice but to face them.

"Between us, I expected to die. I made peace with it when Mina was infected." Running his hand through his hair a bit, clearly a sigh of stress, but only a little.

Stubbornness only gets one so far. "Thank you." He replied, finally looking a little relieved. "Even if he had not harmed Mina, harming and causing the death of Lucy was enough reason to kill him. She was Mina's beloved friend and a very sweet girl. We all knew each other growing up." Despite the horrors he went through, it was the pain of others that drove him to seek out the count. "I would do it again in a heartbeat, even if I am not sure my health could take it."

Finally... "May I ask what you are making, or should I simply wait to see?"

If Harker did it once, he could again. It was still incongruent, the description of climbing up after a supernatural being, of walking unhampered through 'loyal' soldiers, falling from a height that should have killed him, other small, interesting things...

.. They'll be questioned in time, or just watched for. "Potentially hundreds of victims have had their vengeance through you, or their release from infection." Curze's duty was to render judgment and it's terrible price, but this was something that should be rewarded with all due ceremony were the circumstances different.

The little stack of rectangles, and the line discard, are considered. "A deck of cards." By hand. Because. "Which requires them all looking precisely the same from the back."

He would, even here, if someone he cared about was in danger, he would rise against the threat. The young solicitor could no longer turn his eyes away from such things. He's seen too much to return to a true normal life.

Sadly, he would lack answers, but they were the truth. Even if no one from his world was there to back it up. He had not seen Mina yet, but even if he had, they were not of the same world. "I had not considered that. That could be quite the number, given how old Count Dracula was." Jonathan didn't let it get to his head; in his mind, he did it for selfish reasons. To avenge those he cared about… and maybe that baby and its poor mother.

"Oh?" He lifted his head again, curiosity returning. "That would be quite wonderful. Do you have certain games you would wish to play?" Thinking on it, he added. "Perhaps make the backs all black or another solid color?"

Though this library is full of unfinished books, he was going to see, at some point, if he could find anything further on vampires. How far they've spread, how many planets the infection could be on.

If it would be worth the Imperium's time to hunt down the creatures responsible instead of simply glassing the planet from orbit. "One way or another, it is handled." For now. Presumably those devil-women were also destroyed in the process, else the cycle was going to continue.

"..Mm. Yes." It's possible to play games with the cards he intended to make, plenty did across the countless worlds of humanity. "Ruthasha or Whist perhaps. It's been a long time. Nobody wants to play with me." His smile is thin and full of sharp teeth. "I am a cheater."

Not intentionally. Playing cards against someone compulsively stuck seeing the future makes things complicated in the avenues of fairness. "Though a black back may be for the best. As obscuring as possible."

Perhaps one of the books would have the answer he sought. Harker himself assumed the infection started with Dracula, but he never asked Van Helsing. Nodding when his new friend said it was handled. Not really wanting to think more on the horrors for now.

The devil women had at least been handled. They should be free of the surge if Dracula is truly dead. "I do not know these games, but I would be willing to learn. We seem to have nothing but time." Oh, he finally noticed those teeth, but despite his heart rate speeding up, he smiled back. Maybe they are just part of Night Haunter's race. "Why do you cheat, if I may ask?"

Nodding then, black did seem best. "If possible, you could add an even layer of the glitter for effect?"

"If opportunity presents itself I will .. attempt instruction. It is not something I excel at." Teaching is for other people.

Chances are fantastic he'll wind up with a completely different genre of vampires, and get the wrong impression about how things are set up in Harker's time and place. The trouble with libraries and a lack of real indexing he can access. At least the name gives him a pretty good idea of where to begin searching. How many Count Draculas could there be?

The scissors are gestured with slightly again, almost the way someone might wave something off. Probably he's not a vampire, he just has a whole lot of suspicious coincidences to them. "I do not cheat intentionally. It is a side effect." Though mentioning glitter draws his attention back to the faint dusting of sparkles he has YET TO GET RID OF.

It's the only time so far he's bothered to try to wash, here. Some still remained. "Glitter may become part of the process whether I wish it or not. It doesn't come off, and I am certain it multiplies when unobserved."

"That is alright; I am an excellent student. Even if you can't, I am certain I could show you one of the games I know." Jonathan would have to think of one. He had not considered any of the games he used to play since he left Exeter in May. The Crew of Light may have played games to pass time, but not him. If Jonathan wasn't with Mina or learning to shoot from Mr. Morris, he was working or sharpening the kukri plotting.

With their luck, he would end up finding one of the very romantic versions of the count. Or one where Harker is switched with Renfield.

"A side effect?" Jonathan is curious about that, no real judging in his tone. "That is rather how glitter works. Last time I came across it, I kept finding it on all of my clothes for weeks." Amusement in his tone. It had to have been a party of some kind, but he didn't elaborate. When he stared at it on the fur coat earlier, it was likely just a fond memory when he saw the sparkle.

Edited 2025-11-09 16:57 (UTC)

The book he's going to eventually find is going to be so wildly off base from what Harker's described that Konrad's going to be left wondering what, exactly, got left out of this retelling.

It doesn't seem like he intends to explain what he means by a side effect, as this too is dismissed before he returns to cutting out his perfect little rectangles. Getting enough was going to be hard, but he's pretty sure he will. "And because of it, one may tell everywhere I have been for the past two days." He doesn't make it sound like it's a bad thing, exactly, except that he's leaving a trail and the Night Haunter's not supposed to be that easily tracked. "There's more in that.. small supply room with all the 'art' items, if you wish to join me in the plague that is relentless sparkle."

Too late, Harker already is. it's on his coat, soon it'll be on the bed, on him..

Probably best Harker never knows. He was happier being oblivious and hoping to eventually get home to his wife.

Jonathan doesn't press when Night Haunter doesn't answer him. If the other ever chose to share, he would be there; otherwise, it was fine to not know. "No one should be paying that much attention. If they are, we may have bigger problems to be concerned with." Pushing himself to stand.

"I think I will do that. Would you like me to gather more paper as well?" Did he want more glitter on him? No. But if he had it, no one would know who left the trail.

"Oh, then there are bigger problems! I keep track of most of you." He says it like it's supposed to be a joke, but he really is. Not all of them, some were either beneath his notice or irrelevant, but others .. the aliens especially, he kept tabs.

And now he's going to be keeping track of Harker too. The man was refreshingly innocent. "..Mm, if you can find identical cardstock." One of hte pieces he can't use is offered for comparison purposes. "Variation in color changes the outcome. Perhaps I will see if Sanguinius will also wear the contagious particles as well. He will wear them in his feathers until his dying breath."

He should find that admission a little off-putting, but he doesn't; he smiles when it's said. Even if it's a joke, it doesn't matter. Harker feels that it is a good thing. "Well, at least I know if something goes awry, I have an ally I can depend on."

Taking the offending piece, he nods. "I will do my best to make sure it is a match, Night Haunter." He stops and looks back. "Hold that thought, please; I have more questions when I return." Because clearly he had to meet the other brother first, as bloody as his coat had to have been.

He hurries along, and of course it takes about 10 minutes before he returns with a small stack of cardstock of the same type, some glitter, and another knife. Even some glue, which he was a little confused by as he had not seen this kind before. Making his way back over with his spoils to return to the floor. "My apologies for the delay; I picked up a little more of our mess before finding what we needed."

Curze is endlessly patient when he had to be, or had something to keep himself occupied with; there's a short nod and he returns to what he'd been doing before. It's strange. It's been decades since anyone mortal had lingered in his presence without reeking of terror.

Not a bad thing. But strange.

He's still listening. The tread of Harker's footsteps is clear for quite a while, and when the man returns, he glances up briefly from his current card. Probably there were tables or something this could be done at somewhere, but he's perfectly content with the floor and Harker didn't seem to mind it much either. "The same servitors placing bowls everywhere could have handled that." The cleaning, specifically.

Presumably there's servitors. Something was putting singing bowls and UFOs everywhere. "But no apologies needed, we are ... not on a schedule." Well. He is. But that's only because he has things he wants to do, but it's not a need.

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Please let me know if you want me to skip some of it <3

Up to you! I'm happy to have the WHOLE THING TOLD but his responses will be smol

As long as it is okay! lol the shortest dracula abridged.

i'm okay with it c:

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huh, so glitter existed in Victorian times... and was ground or powdered glass

DEATH SPARKLES. imperium approved

Victorians, very metal.

the VA i picked for curze has an excellent romanian accent. accidentally oops.

Oh please do share. I believe I shared Harker's with you.

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