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

[angel_of_baal]

"Part of figuring that out might be discovering why we were selected." He gives what's supposed to be a wry shrug, but with the wings and armor, probably looks a bit ...more than that, which merely underscores his point. "I have a certain set of skills. The Librarius is not among them."

Besides, that sort of sorcery was forbidden now. But the last question is a good distraction for all of that. "Oh, no. Only my father and one or two of my brothers. Most baseline humans are, well, your size. I think." Honestly, it's been a while since he's seen any.

[starandhope]

"It's difficult to find any pattern, when we all seem to come from such different worlds and times," Mina points out with a sigh.

"...Are you not human?" she asks carefully.

[angel_of_baal]

"You might be right. It's perhaps my ego that chafes at the fact that I was torn from my Legion and they from me...by sheer chance." It's a little unsettling. He's not...special?!?

That's also a hell of a question. "I am...partially so. I am the son of my Father, the Emperor of Mankind." Close enough. "But these," The big wings, kind of hard to miss, "are not human."

[starandhope]

Emperor of Mankind? All mankind? That sounds almost blasphemous to Mina's good Christian ears, but she's more interested in the wings.

"No, they don't seem to be," she agrees. She's certainly never heard of a human with wings. Hikaru has a pair, but they are nothing like what this man sports. "They look like - well, like angel wings."

[angel_of_baal]

No, no, it's not blasphemous at all. The Emperor has outlawed all religions equally. The Imperium is to be a place where logic and reason and compassion rule, not superstition.

He laughs, because "My legion is called the Blood Angels, and I their Great Angel." So it fits.

"They gave me considerable trouble as a child." Of the 'murder the mutant' variety. He grew up fast.

oh boy here we go

[starandhope]

Mina pauses for a moment.

"The Blood Angels?"

That is certainly an ominous name, particularly given recent events in her life.

noooooo

[angel_of_baal]

What's in a name, right? Just a silly little bunch of words.

Just like his elongated eyeteeth are just a silly little dental anomaly.

It's fine. "My Legion, honored among the legions of the Imperium." He points to the chestplate of his armor, with a blood-drop shaped ruby. "It symbolizes the blood we shed, so that humans can live in peace."

[starandhope]

Luckily, Mina doesn't immediately associate sharp teeth with vampires. She's never seen one!*

[ *That she remembers. ]

"How very...medieval," she comments faintly. Like the Crusaders, or something. "Who, or what, threatens humanity?" In her world, it's all just people fighting other people - over geographical boundaries, or religion, or money, or all three.

[angel_of_baal]

And with luck and the Library Assistant, she shall hopefully never have to.

The word 'medieval' has no register for him. Terran history has faded to a faint blur of the time before the Emperor of Mankind unified humanity. "Many things. Xenos species--aliens, abominations to nature, who seek only to conquer and destroy." A pause. "And other, darker things, that lurk in shadows." He'd only spoken of them to Curze, but his legion had suffered at their nightmarish hands.

[starandhope]

"Monsters?" she ventures. Mina has some experience of monsters, though the thought of needing entire armies to fight them is a terrifying one.

[angel_of_baal]

"Very much like monsters, yes. They seek to enslave, or bind, or devour innocents." The Nephilim he had fought, for example, with his Legion before things went...as they went: hideous bloated monstrosities of blue, taking over the minds and wills of the human colonists. "It is my charge and the charge of my Legion to destroy such creatures so that innocence can prevail."

Don't worry, ma'am, you're absolutely safe with him.

Unless....

[starandhope]

"I am glad, then, that your world has warriors who have taken on such a noble calling," she says. "I've only recently discovered that my world is much darker than I ever thought, but there are good men in it, like my husband Jonathan, who face the darkness and fight for the light."

[angel_of_baal]

"I regret that there is need for it, but I am proud of my Legion and their deeds." They fought hard against every enemy, without flagging, without losing faith. Truly, he was honored to lead them.

But then his voice gets somber. "I, too, have had a recent similar discovery. Creatures from some darkness, entirely malign and feeding off of pain and misery." His wings shifted, discomfited, as if he can still feel the blood, sticking his feathers together.

"You are lucky to have one so close to defend you, but." He hesitates, but he's already started down that road. "The enemy he faces is a dark one if it is like ours. He will need you, very much." A note of envy--he might be tall, and powerful, but it was lonely. He had no one he could treat as an equal, much less trust as a spouse.

[starandhope]

“It is very dark indeed,” Mina says, equally somber. “It murdered my friend Lucy, and tried to murder my Jonathan. It’s terribly frustrating, to be here and unable to help him. I’m glad, at least, to know that our situations back home will not change during our time here, and to know that he and I aren’t alone in the fight - we have allies. But still.”

She holds out her hands, palms up. “I don’t like feeling helpless.”

[angel_of_baal]

"Do we know that?" Because he sure didn't. It would be perhaps some relief to know his Legion was not without him, at such a critical time. Some relief.

Minus the missing them. "It seems it does not stop me from worrying about my Legion." He assumes she feels the same, but about her companions.

"Why do you think you're helpless?" Sure, she probably can't fight as he can, but...none of his Legion could, either. It didn't make them helpless or less courageous. If anything, the opposite.

[starandhope]

“I asked Mr. Durand if he could tell me anything about my husband back home,” Mina explains. “He told me that my Jonathan is in no more or less danger than when I left him. I take that to mean that he will continue to be so, at least for the time being.”

She understands. She is, perhaps, slightly less worried about Jonathan’s immediate safety, but that doesn’t make her feel any less like she needs to go home right now.

“I feel rather helpless in the face of such dark powers,” she continues. “There was nothing I could do for poor Lucy. It was like an illness that took her, I didn’t even know at the time that she was being preyed upon by a monster. I have no idea how to fight something like that.”

[angel_of_baal]

"Ahhh." Uh. He doesn't quite think that that sentence means that this husband is never going to be in trouble, just perhaps at the moment of questioning. He's only recently acquainted with daemons, but he has had enough verbal combat with his brothers to recognize a possible equivocation.

Still, there's no need to shatter her hope. She wanted to believe it, and it gave her solace to believe that her husband was safe however long she is here. He may be a monster, but he is not the kind to destroy a woman's hope. "I am glad to hear it, then."

True, or not.

"I recently also encountered...things beyond my understanding. Dark, evil things. We were, for a time, helpless before them." His eyes looked haunted for a moment, remembering Ka'bhanda's malign laugh, the tormented look from Meros..., 500 of his men, down at one blow. "Faith and loyalty are potent weapons, I have found."

[starandhope]

She is, indeed, choosing to believe the most generous interpretation of what was told to her. For the moment, anyway. The alternative is, what? To go mad with worry? She's believing what she needs to believe, in order to function.

"Yes," Mina says after a moment's thought. "I have to agree, on both points. If we are to defeat this monster, this Dracula, faith and loyalty will be key."

[angel_of_baal]

That is the way of it, sometimes. But sometimes, to refuse to believe evidence in front of one was fatal. He could not believe his own brother would betray him and his legion had paid a price, a high price, for his innocence.

"And surely, you can do both of those--faith and loyalty. So you are anything but helpless against this enemy." So, no more talk of helplessness.

[starandhope]

"You have a very eloquent way of putting it," Mina says with a faint smile. "It almost does give me hope, though I still don't see how, exactly. But, perhaps with time. Maybe being here will provide me with some knowledge or insight."