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

scouting

[extrasaltypotato]

"I've noticed that door in particular loves to change where it opens to," Hikaru commiserates. "Can't tell if it cycles through them in any particular order, or it's a roll of the dice, or if there's some trick to choosing the destination. It's frustrating."

Re: scouting

[bashasasdemon]

"What." It's stated in the sort of startled deadpan that one gets when they really don't want to believe the thing you've just said. But also Kai clearly does believe it, even if it makes him even more unhappy about all of this. "How? that doesn't make any sense." Magic doesn't work like that. Or at least, none that he knows of does.

Re: scouting

[extrasaltypotato]

"It's like a tunable Waygate on Mundus," he says, as if those words made sense in that order. "If they randomized, ah, the order in it encoded chevrons, or however it parses what address the other end is linked to, assuming it is random. Or a shorter range personal portal spell - I can't do those yet, but I should be able to soon."

Re: scouting

[bashasasdemon]

Those words do not make sense in any order. What?? There's a moment where Kai just stares at him, which is somewhat counteracted by the veil but his confusion is probably still clear. "...Translation?" he asks after a minute. He's learned so many languages, he's not afraid to admit when he doesn't know what something means, and Hikaru might as well be speaking a new language.

Re: scouting

[extrasaltypotato]

He has the good grace to facepalm, dragging it down to his chin. Sorry, Kai, sometimes he forgets that other people haven't had his training.

"I think the door isn't a conventional door, but some kind of portal that puts two places next to each other that wouldn't be as the crow flies. Maybe you'd call it a wormhole or a teleportal. Great magical gateways on Mundus that could do this were called Waygates, and when they worked, you could put in an address code to choose another waygate for it to connect to. Is that clearer?"

He coughs into his palm, embarrassed. "Ignore the part about chevrons. That's... I watched a lot of science fiction as a teenager and that was a reference."

[bashasasdemon]

"I see." He would not call it either of those, because as far as he knows that doesn't exist, but he is quickly learning that a lot of things that shouldn't exist don't. It is, at least, one of the easier thinks to conceptually understand (at least when it's been dumbed down enough for him). "Yes, that's clearer. Though I don't understand why they'd do that if you can't control it. Unless they are specifically designing this place to make it difficult to navigate."

He clearly thinks that's what they did.

[extrasaltypotato]

"Or their control over the space is limited at the fringes. Or both."

He sighs.

"I admit, this isn't my area of expertise. Most of the magic I learned on Mundus is very direct war-magic. The manipulation of physical forces, conjuring flame and frost, counterspells and banishment. Things like that."

[bashasasdemon]

Kai tips his head in acknowledgement, not adding that his own expertise is very, very similar. He's learned to do a few things in peacetime, but... not a lot.

"So, the doors move, the walls move, and everything in it moves." He sighs. "I'm not sure how we're expected to get around. Though I have learned that if you try to make it back to that big desk, you always can." Which is also very weird.

[extrasaltypotato]

"There must be some way to navigate the stacks, else they'd be unfit for purpose, but what that is I don't know," Hikaru says. "Still, good to know there is a fixed point."

[bashasasdemon]

Kai shakes his head. "I don't know much about how libraries are normally organized," he admits, "Has anyone been able to see some sort of pattern?" He doesn't know they are organized, even knows how to find most of what he would look for in the ones in Benais-Arike. Admittedly he's never had much cause to think about it before now.