libraryassistants: (Default)
Unfinished Library Mod & NPC Account ([personal profile] libraryassistants) wrote in [community profile] unfinishedlibrary2025-10-31 06:42 pm

Careful of the stacks - LIBRARY LOG

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!]
wontforbidtherain: A side-view drawing of a bony dark-haired white woman looking down; folds in her neck suggest gills. (Default)

[personal profile] wontforbidtherain 2025-11-03 01:19 pm (UTC)(link)
"Where I'm from, the knowledge is not widely circulated, but I've never heard of people without the ability once they have training."
aetherweaver: (tilted up)

[personal profile] aetherweaver 2025-11-03 07:15 pm (UTC)(link)
"It's something biological. There's people I would really like to ask about it, but they're no longer around." It's not like he can wander into the aetherial sea and ask the ancients about it. And honestly, they probably wouldn't know. "But aether is what makes up the world around us - at least in my understanding of it."
wontforbidtherain: A side-view drawing of a bony dark-haired white woman looking down; folds in her neck suggest gills. (Default)

[personal profile] wontforbidtherain 2025-11-04 01:12 am (UTC)(link)
"I think 'what makes the world around us' tends to be more of a question answered by scientists rather than magicians where I come from." Aphra said.
aetherweaver: (eh?)

[personal profile] aetherweaver 2025-11-06 01:23 am (UTC)(link)
He pauses and tries to think that through for a few moments.

"... Is there much of a difference between those two?"
wontforbidtherain: A side-view drawing of a bony dark-haired white woman looking down; folds in her neck suggest gills. (Default)

[personal profile] wontforbidtherain 2025-11-06 01:46 pm (UTC)(link)
"Among most of the people I've met who are not from my home town, it is considered decidedly fringe to believe that magic is more than charlatans or superstition." Aphra said, then considered, "Well, perhaps that is not true, but most of the outsiders I've met believe it to be true."

One also gets into religion. Aphra isn't clear on how people can reject magic and beliefs about magic originating in other cultures, but believe their own religion is some exception to 'magic does not exist'.
aetherweaver: (confusion)

[personal profile] aetherweaver 2025-11-07 04:49 am (UTC)(link)
Religion's weird, even for someone like him who grew up revering a god. He's met gods. He's also killed gods - so it's hard to know what to believe in as a 'higher power'.

"I.. see. Aether being what makes up our star is quite well-known, and the manipulation of it is what people are referring to when using the word 'magic'. In its broadest sense, using a fire crystal to create heat to cook a fish could be considered 'using magic', so to deny its existence is... strange, to me."
wontforbidtherain: A side-view drawing of a bony dark-haired white woman looking down; folds in her neck suggest gills. (Default)

[personal profile] wontforbidtherain 2025-11-07 11:28 pm (UTC)(link)
"Then I think we may well need to work out the science of the world's construction before we get to the magic. I don't think we have these fire crystals -- do you mean that literally or is it a word for a mineral that combusts?"

Some rare types of coal have a smooth luster, and Aphra's elders had mentioned finding a sort of ice buried in deep-sea sediments that burns in air, as a curiosity that they would one day see.
aetherweaver: (smirk)

[personal profile] aetherweaver 2025-11-08 10:07 pm (UTC)(link)
"It's a crystal that's aetherically charged towards fire. If you strike it, it will combust. So both." Sort of both. Not quite the same as coal - he's seen coal before,

He shrugs a little bit. "It's a matter of elemental balance, in my world."