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]

"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.