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

[unsheathedfromreality]

With nothing much to see -- nothing much fixed -- Illarion gives up and shins back down the shelf. A book comes with him -- and something catches it, that's not one of his hands, though he transfers it with a stage magician's quickness to his left hand and reshelves it.

"Something of the Throne," he grumbles, almost to himself. "Or the gods, if this is a hero tale.

"But you said a Librarian brought us here. Not a Monarch? A god?"

[bashasasdemon]

Kai has no idea what's going on with this man, but he has no idea what's going on with most people here so that's not new. This just... feels more familiar than others. It almost- almost?- feels like when his connection to the underearth was an easy thing. But this man isn't a demon. He's fairly sure of that.

"That's what they call it, at least. I can't say it's not... whatever a Monarch is." Kai doesn't hold much in gods, but he supposes it could be that too. It's a whole new world, and he kind of hates it.

[unsheathedfromreality]

It made two of them, each confused by the other. Illarion casts a sidelong look at the other man, expression bleeding faintly incredulous. "Whatever a Monarch is?" he echoes.

Nephele was large, and rich with peoples beyond the four principal species. That some rare thinking kind, hidden on some remote isle of the sea or in an untouched forest, might be afflicted similarly to his own people, wasn't impossible. Might even be more probable than not.

Similarly, that a warped convoluted trap of a Library existed somewhere and could pull people to it without anyone being the wiser -- that, he could also accept.

But not knowing what a Monarch is?

That -- couldn't be. Shouldn't be. Even if he accepts the wild, science-fantasy idea of other worlds with other alien peoples on them somewhere ... They'd have to have Thrones, wouldn't they? They'd have to have Monarchs. Could Generation dream a world so completely unsupported that it ... didn't?

"You've never heard of a Monarch." Maybe it's still a language barrier, despite the translation magic. It did happen sometimes even with skilled translator-mages, if a concept in one tongue was thought of very differently in another.

(Or absent.)

"Who sits the Throne Above Thrones, then. Maintains the Spindle of the World?"

Could it be possible ... ?

[bashasasdemon]

Kai sighs. He's going to have to explain this too, he sees.

"I don't know what that means, either," he says, and he holds up a hand to stop Illarion from interrupting if he seems likely to, "If you talk to a lot of people here, they probably won't know either. Things they think are common are things I've never heard of, and the most basic facts of where I'm from seem to surprise them. I'd say you get used to it, but I'm not sure that's true."

"As far as we can tell," he continues, "we seem to have been brought from entirely different worlds. To me, that sounds... unlikely at best, but at this point I genuinely have trouble thinking of any other explanation for it. There are definitely people who understand the theories behind it better than I do." And some that have a level of experience with the concept, too. It's a lot.

[unsheathedfromreality]

Illarion's not one to interrupt explanations when he doesn't need to, but the faintest frown creases his face at this one. It was -- as the other man suggests -- hardly believable, but even the unbelievable had to suffice if there wasn't any other fit to the facts.

A Library at the nexus of many worlds was, at least, a simpler and one that didn't suggest he was falling to madness. There was a dangerous comfort in accepting it.

But not accepting it meant grappling with existential questions only Generation might answer, and Generation was not in the habit of answering questions.

The shrike's frown fades, and he gives a slow nod of acknowledgment. "We could be hallucinating," he volunteers. "One of us. Seems useless to think so."

A beat of a pause. "There a reason we're here?"

Better not to dwell on what he can't do anything to understand, or change.

[bashasasdemon]

"We could," Kai agrees, "But if we are there's not much we can do about it." So better to focus on the things that might have solutions, to make sure they're not totally unprepared.

"It seems so, but I don't understand what it is," he says, "We're called 'Editors,' apparently, and this is called the Unfinished Library. It seems like we're supposed to help finish the stories in here? But I don't know how."

[unsheathedfromreality]

It would be --

It should be heartbreaking, for Illarion -- Illarion, who was born in the years of the Queen of Lights, who's loved and lived and told stories for all his centuries alive -- to hear "we're supposed to help finish the stories here" and not feel anything about it. Except he's the one without a heart to break any longer, and he's the only one who knows the full irony of what he's been given when he's least able to care about it.

"Just taking a pen to paper on them doesn't help?" His gaze drifts from that patch of -- absence -- around the other man, to the shelves. Now that he's really looking, he can see that many of the books are obviously deficient. Blank pages, struck-out text, incomplete illustrations, all crowded between those covers.

[bashasasdemon]

"Doesn't seem to. But no one's being straightforward about what it is that we're meant to do." Kai shrugs. "I expect we'll find out in the most unpleasant manner possible."

Not necessarily because of the Library, but just because that's how his life tends to go.

[unsheathedfromreality]

"Frustrating," Illarion evaluates, without sounding much frustrated. Or much of anything. But being given unclear orders by someone who doesn't care much whether he has enough information to succeed at them... Isn't new.

Maybe he hasn't escaped anything, here. "'Unpleasant,'" he echoes then, tasting the word. "Been much unpleasantness here yet?"

It doesn't look like it, but what does he know about magic infinite Libraries? This labyrinth could easily be hiding entire burned-out sections.

[bashasasdemon]

"Other than being brought here?" That was unpleasant enough for Kai, but he knows he's not everyone so he'll add, "Not overtly, no. Confusing and frustrating, but so far nothing aiming to hurt us, as far as I can tell. They need us, so there's at least the basic of needs met and we haven't had to jump through any terrible hoops for those." He's just a pessimist.

[unsheathedfromreality]

"They have the power to take those back if we don't obey?" Illarion would not have esteemed himself a pessimist in life, but it wasn't for not knowing all the levers of power and coercion thinking beings wielded against each other. He'd just hoped for -- or coerced his own way into -- better uses of them.

Undeath stripped away hope. And, usefully, any control the withdrawal of the "base needs" might hold over him.

"Or the will for it," he amends, a moment later. Their captors sounded almost like the kind who might have qualms about really torturing their captives.

[bashasasdemon]

Huh. That's... an interesting perspective on this. Not one Kai would have thought of, considering he's much more interested in getting home. If he knew that not doing what they wanted would get him home, he'd be as much of a nuisance as possible. Or... more than he's currently being. He's not even sure he's actually succeeding at anything.

"I don't know," he says after a moment, "The one in charge- the Librarian- hasn't spoken to any of us, as far as I know. So who knows what they would or would not do."

[unsheathedfromreality]

Credit -- or blame -- Illarion for thinking within the situation he'd just been pulled out of -- his mind's exquisitely tuned toward the potential abuses of total power. Learning that their patron's as remote and mysterious as a god -- or Monarch -- ... does not help that bent.

He goes still -- corpse-still, unbreathing -- as he processes that idea. No one's met the Librarian. No one knows. "Right," he finally says. "Right. Think it's worth digging through," a broad gesture at the stacks and their woefully unfinished contents, "all that to learn? Or is it a waiting game now?"

[bashasasdemon]

“There’s probably no harm in it, at least. But since they’re all unfinished, and it doesn’t seem like there’s any kind of theme to them, I don’t know how useful it will be.” He’s probably going to wind up reading some himself, if only because he is someone who does things and eventually the impossible tasks are going to get to him. “I think at this point it’s mostly waiting, and preparing however we can.” Wish they knew what for.

[unsheathedfromreality]

Illarion nods slowly to that. Even undead, unsleeping, and at total loose ends with himself for the first time in years -- he can see that trying to sift through all of that would be a remarkably pointless use of time.

Won't keep him from indulging in a little of it, once he's run out of other things to do. But it's not a first priority.

"Once there's nothing else to do, then." A pause. "Did that veil come with you?"

An abrupt shift in topic, but an important one. Now that he's at leave to consider what direction eye contact might do to the other people here, it's going to get -- annoying -- to keep his gaze averted all the time.

[bashasasdemon]

Kai nods- that's more or less his take on it too. There are other leads, and he won't default to the most tedious option while he has other ones to follow.

The question about the veil gives him a little pause, but he doesn't see a reason not to answer. "It did," he says, shrugging, "I was carrying it when I got here." And he's glad of it, for a number of reasons. Seems no one here really knows what demons are.

[unsheathedfromreality]

Damn. It had been worth asking, though. "Suppose I'll need to find a new one myself."

And with that answered, and most of his initial questions settled, it's time to go explore. He makes to move off without saying anything further --

pauses. He's not one of the Unearthed anymore. There's not any urgency to be about his King's business that keeps him from politeness. "--Thank you," he adds, awkward about it from disuse.

[bashasasdemon]

"There is a room with fabric and stuff." Kai... doesn't know the first thing about sewing, other than the sort of basic repairs one can make to clothes, but veils can't be that hard.

He's also a little surprised that the man stops to thank him, but he nods. "You're welcome." They could all do with the allies here they can get.

[unsheathedfromreality]

One could always use allies in a strange situation. Which is why it's probably weird Illarion's neither asked for or volunteered a name, just: "Good. I'll look for it."

And then he vanishes into the maze of the stacks.