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

[bashasasdemon]

Ok, well, Kai likes these people already. (Assuming the assassination was necessary; he certainly has opted for 'political maneuvering' when he's had the option. Which is not often, but, you know. He's done it.) "Good for them," he says simply, the statement somehow very neutral- which does imply that he feels quite positive about it, in his way.

"...That does sound pretty adorable." Look, he can admit that. He's not completely heartless.

[aetherweaver]

"Heh. The ones who taught me are quite... different than the rest of their fellows, but they're essentially refugees in a foreign land. They had to be open to other people assisting their order to survive." He's at least able to understand the Lemures, even if things around them make him twitchy.

Nara'a smiles. "I'll have to draw you a picture - it's difficult to summon one without the right arcane geometry available at my fingertips, but a picture will do for now."

[bashasasdemon]

"I see." That, if anything, just makes him more sympathetic. That could have been a word to describe him, once. And it certainly was a position where you had to cooperate to survive.

He makes an acknowledging noise, declining to show either interest or disinterest in pictures of adorable animals. (He's not that tough, Nara'a can guess how he might feel.) "What is the Void you mentioned?" he asks. He tries to limit those kinds of questions, but he feels like he's heard something similar mentioned.

[aetherweaver]

Oh gods. How to even explain. "... My world is split into thirteen shards - reflections, if you will - and a single Source. The Source is where I live, but they are all connected aetherically. When a Calamity happens -" remember those, Kai? "- one of the shards suffers an equal calamity. It is destroyed and absorbed back into the Source. The first attempt to create a Calamity brought the thirteenth shard perilously close to the edge of no return, but not quite over it as the ones behind it intended. It was flooded with the power of elemental Darkness."

He pauses for a moment so the other can keep up. "We call that the Void, as the living beings there were twisted into what we call Voidsent. Creatures that survive by absorbing the aether of others, and sometimes are summoned into the Source by those who wish to use their skills. If you kill them on the Source, they are sent back to the Void. If you kill them in the Void, their aether hangs around for a bit. If no one else absorbs it, they re-form."

[bashasasdemon]

Kai is almost sorry he asked. That is a lot of magical theory that went completely over his head there. He definitely remembers the Calamities at least.

"So it's... another world, connected to yours?" He might just think of it like the underearth, for his own sanity, at least until he can get his head around it. "How do people use it?"

[aetherweaver]

"Essentially." ... He kind of lost Kai there, oops. He needs to remember not everyone even knows what aether is. "The veil between it and our world is particularly thin, so it's possible to make a tear in the barrier and allow voidsent through. They generally need an artificial form to inhabit - or they take over a living body."

[bashasasdemon]

He remembers, kind of, that aether is roughly equivilant to the sort of energies witches use. But there's a lot of sort of's, enough to muddy the waters of understanding.

The explanation here, though. That. Certainly seems very familiar to him. How he's going to feel about this is going to depend a lot on how it's used and how it happens, he can tell already. "A living body specifically?" No he's not asking for a reason, don't worry about it. "...Do they let it take over them? Or provide another form for them?"

[aetherweaver]

"... I - hm." He thinks for a moment - or appears to be thinking. In reality, something in the back of his mind stirs. "I suppose that might work. But they sometimes let it take over. Sometimes... it is not intentional."

He goes quiet for a few long moments, something dark behind his red eyes. "I've seen both. The latter tends to be in those consumed with a lust for power."

[bashasasdemon]

That's hardly a surprise. "I feel like, with any kind of powers, that's possibility," he says dryly, "And generally the lust for power is the reason for it all going terribly wrong."

He pauses, but it's mostly trying to figure out how direct to be. "And how does it work for you?" He didn't miss the look in his eyes, nor forget that this started by asking for the other man's skills, after all.

[aetherweaver]

He hesitates. He shouldn't lie, but people tend to be uncomfortable around Voidsent for good reasons. "I..." He stops in his tracks and looks at Kai in the - well, where his eyes would probably be.

"Reapers still contract with voidsent. And not all of them control it well. I do - for now. But if I don't feed it aether it will get hungry eventually."

[bashasasdemon]

That's more or less what he expected. "Can you communicate with it?" He wonders what that would be like, honestly. Also for reasons Nara'a shouldn't think too hard about. He would have liked to talk to Enna, at least a little, he thinks. Or know this body's name. ...Talamines probably wouldn't have answered his questions.

The presence of the voidsent clearly doesn't bother him. Feeding it, though. "How do you feed it?" He suspects he knows. Which could be... an issue.

[aetherweaver]

"In some way. Less verbally, but yes." He sighs at the question after, though. "... I have to kill things. Generally sentient things, which is not a problem when I'm doing mercenary work."

Which usually sustains him between things... but not here.

[bashasasdemon]

Of course. Kai sighs too, mussing up his hair. That is a difference from him, then; he can eat life, but he doesn't have. Mortal food works just as well, and even then he doesn't need as much. Maybe that's a difference of inhabiting a body, but he doesn't think that's it. "Right. Aether is energy, right? Is there any chance feeding it normal food would work?" It's a long shot, but Nara'a already knows how much of a problem he has. He doesn't need it restated.

[aetherweaver]

"I mean... it's taking from me right now. So if I keep my energy up, it'd be like subsisting on a low amount of food for a while. It should be all right for a little bit. I don't know how long 'a little bit' is, though."

It probably depends on how much he draws on it.

[bashasasdemon]

Kai nods slowly, thinking it over. He can survive without food for a while, drawing on his attachment- how thin it is now- to the underearth. It's not comfortable, but very possible. He hopes the voidsent operates under the same idea. "I guess the best we can do for now is keep you well fed. And give you first shot at any fights." That last bit is kind of a joke, but also kind of... not.

[aetherweaver]

"Heh. I'd appreciate it." He turns and continues walking towards the kitchenette. "I'd also thank you to keep it quiet... I don't think many other people will care to want to speak to someone with a Voidsent bound to their soul."

[bashasasdemon]

"I won't say anything." Unless it becomes suddenly and violently necessary, but he's really hoping it won't come to that. For now? Make sure Nara'a, at least, is fed.

[aetherweaver]

He assumes the 'unless it's needed' thing applies, but he doesn't have to say it. "... I do wish the kitchen had more spices, though. I'm no master chef, but even I know that this food is largely bland."

[bashasasdemon]

"No kidding." Kai sighs. He's not a great chef either, but plain lentils with no seasoning is pretty... unfortunate. "Salt can only get you so far. Maybe we can find some herbs in the garden."

[aetherweaver]

"Maybe. I've mostly been focusing on the larger vegetation, but I don't know what the seasons are here so I'm not quite sure when the herbs would be best. ... Though to be fair I don't recognize all of them anyway."

[bashasasdemon]

"That's a good point. I wonder if we could find out, or if they make it stay constant somehow." Kai is- or was at some point in his life, at least- skilled enough to know the times and the turn of the seasons from the setting of the sun, given a few days. He could probably camp in the garden for a little while and see how consistent it is. If it lines up with anything.

[aetherweaver]

"Maybe. I think I'd prefer some bigger spaces... anything that looks big enough for a proper run." Climbing a fence is a workout but not the kind of workout he wants.

[bashasasdemon]

"It's definitely that. ...I guess you could run in the stacks." Since. They just keep going. But he knows that's not really what Nara'a means.

[aetherweaver]

"And risk knocking over the books?" He tries to pass it off as a joke, but his face is mildly horrified.

[bashasasdemon]

Not a look Kai expected from Nara'a, and it gets a bark of a laugh out of him. "Look, if they're not going to give us a place to run around, I think they can deal with picking up a few books."