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

Illarion Albireo | Original

[unsheathedfromreality]

i. arrival

The dead don't sleep.

Illarion hasn't, since first he opened his eyes again at a necromancer's fell command.

So waking up somewhere unlike the battlefield he last remembers himself on is a system shock.

It's fortunate for everyone around him that he is, for the first time in years, his own man. No voice in the back of his head -- no all-obliterating hatred of everything that exists driving him to kill -- so his first instinct is to get away from anything moving and somewhere safer to survey the terrain.

And "safer", in his mind, is up. It's maybe moments between him awaking slumped over in a chair -- where he was still as an untenanted corpse -- to him bolting past whoever happens to be there when he does, shoving them aside and climbing the nearest of the stacks in a shower of displaced books.

ii. kitchen

There is a spoon in the microwave and Illarion's watching it like a hawk.

It's not doing anything interesting and he registers within himself the vaguest sense of disappointment that it isn't. Clearly, there is some principle here that he hasn't fully understood -- or the warning to not put metal in the microwave is over-broad, a phenomenon he's well-familiar with from having raised children.

Still, he waits the full five minutes he's put it in there for, and when it fails to explode at the end of the timer he merely opens the door and takes the spoon out.

The faint smell of cooking meat that results gets only a mild oath out of him: "Godspit. Should've worn gloves."

That'll need fixing.

iii. kitchen (reprise)

The failure of the spoon experiment sent Illarion into the stacks for two whole days to learn more about microwaves and their explosive potential. Given the nature of the Library -- and his unwillingness to inform the Assistants he planned to test their provided kitchen equipment to destruction -- it was not a particularly fruitful expedition. (Natural sciences have also never been his discipline, so what he did find was often not explained at a level he grasped.)

Still, he found a few leads here and there -- and the quiet time in the stacks gave him ample time to consider what he'd learned with the experiment of the spoon. Microwaves were not, after all, some kind of magic, simply a vehicle for heating things very rapidly ... and what applied to a fire must also apply to a microwave.

He's picked a quiet time in the kitchen -- a quiet time well past midnight -- for his next set of experiments. A pile of halved grapes, a crumbled ball of foil and paper, a light bulb, a half-filled wine bottle, and various other miscellanea are organized neatly on a nearby counter while the shrike stares intently at an egg he's put in for seven minutes.

When it predictably detonates, he nods in evident satisfaction and makes a note on a piece of paper. Time to try the wine bottle.

iv. wildcard

((Feel free to hit me up on Discord if you're interested in running into Illarion but nothing I've written works!))

iii

[extrasaltypotato]

"What in Scherzo's name are you doing!?"

This from a teenaged sized but clearly adult man with pointed ears, dragonfly wings, and who's dressed in a red mantle, black and gold robes, and a tall pointy wizard hat.

He moves with shocking speed, acheiving a second of literal flight, and attempts to interposed a staff tipped with a red crystal between Illarion and the door of the microwave.

"Can you not read!? If that thing explodes, the door and your chest will get riddled with glass!"

[unsheathedfromreality]

A living being might start to be shouted at and intercepted so abruptly. Illarion -- merely stops, contemplating briefly whether he ought to take a swing at this fae vision with the bottle.

That impulse, thankfully, doesn't make it all the way to volition.

"That would be the point," he says, without inflection. It might be mistaken for patience rather than apathy.

ii

[starandhope]

"What on Earth are you doing?" Mina exclaims when she smells the burning meat and quickly discerns what just happened. "Here, we'll need a damp cloth..."

Does she know basic first aid? Of course! What kind of Victorian housewife would she be if she didn't know how to deal with a minor burn? She quickly soaks a cloth in cool water and approaches the stranger, used enough now to people with unusual appearances to set aside any of that in favor of assistance.

[unsheathedfromreality]

"The warning implied it would explode."

That's what Illarion was doing: Trying to blow up the microwave, rather than the far more disappointing result he got. The spoon -- no longer scorching -- he sets aside, turning to watch the woman hurry after a rag and water. Solicitous as a first-time father with his infant, and all for a stranger? That's ... something.

Enough of something -- enough of unexpected kindness -- that he puts out his injured hand at her approach. It doesn't look blistered the way healthy living flesh would; it really does look cooked, as a piece of butchered meat held against a grill.

Fitting, given he's about as lively as butchered meat, and not breathing any more than it would be.

Quietly, he remarks, "Not much water will do for me."

subjecting her to every undead character for the lols

[starandhope]

"And so you attempted it?"

Mina cannot comprehend why anyone would do such a thing. Still, he's clearly been hurt, and...

She stares at the wound, and before she can even catch herself, says, "My God, what are you?"

Then she immediately realizes what she just said, and clears her throat, pressing the cloth to his skin. "Apologies. My manners aren't always what they ought to be. I was only startled."

as one should (poor girl!)

[unsheathedfromreality]

"Yes."

Illarion did have his reasons for doing so, but she hadn't asked why, only that he'd done it. An explanation could wait until it was requested.

He had been looking at his own hand, contemplating the texture of the injury and what he might need to do to repair it, but his gaze snaps up at her surprised question. He looks at her only briefly -- he needs a veil; why hasn't he bothered making one yet? -- before shifting his gold-in-black gaze to a safer target. That wall over there.

Back home, the scent of sea water -- of tears -- that followed him would've been a dead giveaway to his nature, which goes further to show he may be entirely alone here. (Stars and Saints forfend.)

"An elf," he answers. And: "One of the Unearthed dead.

"No apologies needed." For he was certainly unapologetic about his own nature -- though it's not as if he's had any opportunity before now to contemplate what effect that nature would have on the living around him. If he isn't any longer at active war with them.

Very quietly, he adds, "Perhaps I should apologize."

she is doing her best!

[starandhope]

He really doesn't look anything like her mental image of an elf, but she'll let that slide for the moment.

"I'm becoming concerned by the number of people here claiming to be dead," she remarks after a moment's thought. But that's more of a rhetorical statement.

"You owe me no apology. Except, perhaps, for trying to make the microwave explode. You could have injured more than just yourself, you know."

she is, and i love her

[unsheathedfromreality]

Rhetorical statement it might be, it gets the tiniest twitch of a smile out of him. Reflex, almost. "'Claiming'," he echoes, and echoes, his voice for a moment sounding like he's at the bottom of a well and not right next to her. "As if there's benefit to do so."

If there were more elven warmth in his tone that would come off more like teasing, rather than a bland statement of fact.

"Yes." He knows. If he is fully truthful with himself, he didn't really care, though -- "That is why I waited to try it alone."

i

[flantastic]

Look, Rakia had just been going over there to give the was-whatever-it-is-dead-or-just-weird a couple of corpse-checking prods before deciding upon his next course of action, and suddenly the guy's extremely full of life, scaling a shelf, and scattering books. "The hell? This sucks." Dodging falling books is no one's idea of a good time, really. He's caught a couple and is debating throwing them back.

[unsheathedfromreality]

The shower of reading material abruptly intensifies to a localized downpour as Illarion finds a sparser shelf and -- somehow, unaccountably -- shoves his way onto it. Books stop falling shortly after, with no sign of the suddenly lively corpse to be seen ...

Except one eerie gold-in-black eye, peering down over the edge of the bookshelf at the fellow on the ground. Something decidedly paranoid in that alien regard.

[flantastic]

Rakia warily drops a hand to his waist. The eye not looking human doesn't faze him at all--he's just wearing a human disguise, after all--but this entire situation is weird and he does not like it. "You alright there?" he calls up to the top of the bookshelf. "You're making a mess."

[unsheathedfromreality]

"Fine," comes a rumbling basso growl -- a voice belonging to a far bigger creature than the one that vanished up there. Than one that could vanish up there.

A moment stretches past. "What are you? Where is this?" the voice demands, and this time it's more suited to the size of the (presumed) speaker.

Though it doesn't sound right, for a room of a size the stacks are in. The echoes are off.

[flantastic]

Now, that was interesting. The shifting size the voice seemed to indicate. It did nothing to get Rakia to put his guard down, but it was interesting. "I'm a Granute," he calls up to the voice, pausing a moment before adding, "but I look like a human at the moment. And I can't say I really know where we are, either." He glances around at the other higher shelves like he's not quite trusting the way the voice sounds, like he suspects something else might be coming. "It's some kind of library."

iii. kitchen (reprise)

[ugh_emotions]

Perhaps if things were a little different, the explosive egg experiment would have gone unnoticed. Alas, it was not the case; because SecUnit had very, very good heading, and didn't fucking sleep.

It only takes 1.23 seconds for it to stop pretending to sleep, race into the kitchen, and immediately start deploying the Fire Mitigation Protocol. Which in this case was mainly immediately disconnecting the Human Food Heating Device from its power source and ensuring that the door remained closed, keeping any flames or smoke trapped inside.

"Are you fucking stupid?" it says flatly. It doesn't turn to look at the human; it's keeping all of its attention on the ongoing fire hazard.

[unsheathedfromreality]

That--

Illarion had actually been getting somewhere this time. He was in the midst of jotting down his observations when the--

that's not a human

--other burst into the room and immediately turned their(?) attention on the microwave.

And Illarion, by turn, leaves off what he was doing to fix his attention on the newcomer.

"Sometimes," he answers the question. There's no particular emotion in his tone.

His voice is also wrong for the size of the kitchenette, like he's speaking from somewhere with far better acoustics.

"This," he continues, gesturing at the microwave, "was intentional."

[ugh_emotions]

The person seems human. Looked like it, to someone who could see. Sounded like it. Was largely indistinguishable from one - unless, of course, you had ways to tell that sort of thing.

(And it had been just a bit too fast. Probably it should have slowed its speed a bit more than it had; but it had been concerned about the unfolding Fire Problem.)

(It frowns at that voice. The resonance didn't match with expected human parameters. Did this human have some sort of vocal augment, to make it sound like that? (If he had those, why hadn’t he bothered to get ones for his eyes as well?))

"So the answer is yes," it says. "Why the fuck are you intentionally trying to blow up the Food Heating Device?"

[unsheathedfromreality]

The -- person's -- different inside in a way Illarion's never seen before. He tips his head just slightly kata for parallax -- some of his hair disappears from three-dimensional view -- and gives a slow blink.

Much more interesting than trying to destroy the microwave. (Maybe not as satisfying for the slow insect-relentless gnawing inside him, though. Not at all as satisfying as breaking something.)

"The instructions warned against putting metal in it. That didn't actually destroy it."

So he moved on to seeing what would -- or at least, what would destroy itself.

[ugh_emotions]

Internally, this person is indeed very, very strange. Some of it is organic - including part of its brain - but most of it is constructed of inorganic materials. It's as if someone had grown human tissue around an inorganic frame.

Its eyes also snap to the human's hair. Which is somehow disappearing. (What the fuck?!)

(Was every human or whatever in this place fucking weird?)

(And did they have to all be weird in different fucking ways? Couldn't some of them be polite, and at least be weird in the same way? For fuck's sake.)

"The instructions aren't there so you can destroy the stupid thing, they're there so you don't start a fire and fucking kill everybody, you idiot," it says. (Its Act Like A Human code suggests that now would be a really great time to grind its teeth. It lets it, just to see how it feels.)

[unsheathedfromreality]

The blend of metal and living flesh is -- elegant, in a way. Almost an elven aesthetic, if one compared it to their use of live wood in building.

It would also, Illarion thinks, be horrific if his sensibilities on that front hadn't been utterly destroyed by the Unearthed. Not that this -- trellised human -- likely had any say in how they were made. Interesting, though -- very interesting -- that part of their maker's pattern involved very recognizable frustration.

He's begun to smile, just a little. Without even realizing it.

"The instructions," he says, slowly, "are incomplete, and meant to teach awe and fear of a device. A thing that operates consistently on knowable physical principles. Lie, and make it more dangerous than it is, and you'll protect half the fools who use it. The other half will kill themselves from complacency when their first fuck-up doesn't result in disaster."

... Also, he really wanted to make something explode.

I

[bashasasdemon]

It's an impulse Kai- sort of- understands. He very much did not react well to his own awakening in the stacks, and had he not been interrupted soon after he may well have tried to climb up for a better view. (The only reason it wasn't his first instinct is because he's spent too much time with scholars, or at least one, to jump to immediately climbing on bookshelves.)

He dodges out of the way as the man tears past him, climbing up the shelves with an unnerving speed. He's definitely a new arrival, which is interesting. People are still being brought here then.

Kai stays beneath the shelves, watching the man (?) for a moment, giving him a bit of space to orient himself. "You won't be able to see all that much from up there," he informs the man, "This place doesn't like us having a good grasp of our surroundings."

[unsheathedfromreality]

It's silent in Illarion's head.

Now that he's finally gotten to a perch where he can look out over the -- library? -- he can consciously acknowledge that. The King of Eyes isn't there -- neither are the rest of the Unearthed. He is, for the first time in years, alone with his own thoughts.

Considering that notion distracts him from his surroundings unforgivably enough that he's slow to catch on that there's someone down there -- someone he brushed past on the way up here -- someone who's talking to him.

He cocks his head with avian abruptness, leaning a little out from where he's stabilized himself on the side of one of the stacks to look down at whoever's talking to him.

... Huh. Between the veil and the faint shadow of an ((outward)) self, the other fellow looks like a shrike himself. Except no living shrike could survive having his ((outself)) entirely amputated, and that's not another one of the undead down there. "...Can see that," he finally calls back. It's as much an acknowledgment of the horrible terrain -- that extends kata and ana as much as in the other dimensions, and that's very unusual indeed -- as it is of the curious nature of his interlocutor.

"Not from here yourself?"

[bashasasdemon]

Kai can wait; he's well aware that coming to terms with... this is not a process to be rushed. (You could say he still hasn't come to terms with it, after all.) He might have just left Illarion alone, except there's something-- odd about him. He's not a demon, or at least he doesn't think so. But there's something in his senses that tells him there's more going on to the man that he can see.

He hopes that doesn't mean much, but unfortunately, new and strange things usually wind up trying to kill him. It's an unfortunate pattern.

"I'm not sure anyone is." The Librarian, maybe, or the Assistants- he hasn't actually talked to either of them, but has heard a bit- but they don't really count to him. They're not actually out here. "Far as we can tell, we've all been dragged here to be 'Editors.' Whatever that means."

[unsheathedfromreality]

Illarion stares out over the stacks another minute, two -- turning to look all around him. If he fixes his gaze in any one direction, the stacks appear to have a logical pattern to them. He could easily navigate from where he is to any distant point he chose.

But turn away and look back and it all shifts, even the signage. Or most of it -- there's something consistent about a "Maker Space" (whatever that is, in ... whatever language that is; puzzling that he can read it), but everything else is in flux. That should be disturbing. That should have the taste of madness to it -- though none of the other signifiers are present. (Seeing meaning in unknown languages might be a new one. It fit, in a strange way, with one of the usual signs.)

Without looking down, he asks, "The stacks don't stay the same?" A pause, then: "And you can read all the signs?"

He tucks the bit about Librarian, assistants, and Editors away for later questions.

[bashasasdemon]

Kai waits. This is probably faster long term than having to try the guy down later to explain, or the other way around. (The other way around feels mor elikely.)

"No, they don't." From the slight growl in Kai's voice, it's clearly he's not happy about it. "it's impossible to map, except for a stable area in the center. And yes. It seems like people can understand me no what language I speak, and likewise. Who or whatever made this used some very powerful magic, in pretty much ever aspect of its creation."