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

[curzed]

He's going to circle back around to the Razor Knight(s) sooner or later, but he's patient and will bide his time. It's not that it's particularly important, but curiosity is its own rewards when there's not much else to do than investigate half-written books and toy with the strange sorcery of this place.

"Tellus." Even he doesn't have every planet in the Imperium memorized, simply because finding a list is like pulling teeth. "Boywold is where you live upon it?" Continents, nations, cities, towns- it could be any of these. "Felinid is the official designation for you of the catlike persuasion are given." A dry, terrible amusement etches the word 'official'; bureaucracy is a burden all its own and he avoided it when he can. "For the trillion worlds of the galaxy, there are so few selected here. And all the wonders are half-written!"

Something almost gentle enters the Night Haunter's voice. It doesn't quite enter his bearing. "Do not worry about the armor, little amurrun. I am not here for you."

[bestofall]

“The city-state of Boywold, yes,” Festival confirms easily.

For the first time since the conversation started, though, he’s genuinely thrown off balance by information he didn’t even know to fish for. Ordinarily the reassurance would be an invitation for questions was to whom this man is here for, if anyone, but he can’t help but ask instead:

“I’m sorry, but did you say a trillion? And whatever is a galaxy?”

[curzed]

The education of many planets leaves something to be desired. He can't really complain, his own was no better. Nostramo didn't bother to educate most of the billions that called it home.

But with Festival's dubious education now in play, the Night Haunter makes a low, thoughtful rumble. "Can you see the stars at night, on your planet?"

[bestofall]

“Of course. And the moons as well.”

It’s a little less fun to be ignorant when he isn’t feigning it.

“You don’t mean to tell me the stars are each a world unto their own?”

[curzed]

"Every one of those stars is a sun like the one that bathes your world in warmth and light, but it is so distant it seems only a point in the sky."

He gestures towards the ceiling with one grimy hand. An educator, he is not. But this he understands well enough, and he speaks with the confidence of knowledge, not guessing. "Every one may hold one world orbiting it, or many. Or none. All the stars you see are only a fraction of what is there, beyond perception of mortal eyes. If you could step back far enough.."

The primarch traces one black nail across the floor, carving a spiral shape directly into it as a woodcutter might with far more sturdy tools than a fingernail. "You would see them begin to form this shape. The shape they form is called a 'galaxy', forged of billions of stars and trillions of planets. And each may have life on it just like your own. Or so different as to be incomprehensible."

[bestofall]

Festival glances up as though he expects for a moment to see the stars on the ceiling above them. Then down as his new friend gestures--no, as this behemoth carves a sigil in the floorboards with his fingernail. The fur on the back of Festival's neck stands up at that, but only one lash of his tail betrays how much that perturbs him otherwise.

"I--I see!" he says, though he's not sure he does; the scope of what the man's describing is, quite frankly, ludicrous. "Only...are you quite sure? That seems like entirely too many."

[curzed]

Space is absolutely, mindbogglingly enormous. "I am quite sure. And here is a secret, my friend."

In anyone else it would be mischief, as his voice drops to a conspiratorial whisper. Playful. Somehow it always turns darker when it's Curze, ominous. Like the information could get someone killed in some places. "You may take certain specially designed pict-casters, and point its lenses at the darkest, most lightless point in the sky. And a pict taken of a space no bigger than your fingerpad, reveals tens of thousands of galaxies, beautiful spirals in the darkness all made of billions more stars."

[bestofall]

Mindbogglingly enormous like Curze?

He feels more of his fur standing on end, tail puffing out--can't quite manage the facade of the easygoing fool in the face of something so (literally) astronomical spoken to him in that dark little whisper. And, well, perhaps even the most empty-headed of young men might do as he does now and take a step back, showing a glimmer of fear for the first time even if it's not Curze that frightens him.

"That's--you must be telling tales."

[curzed]

Space is way bigger!

There is something truly, profoundly unsettling about deep space. It brought into stark relief just how insignificant mortal life is.

But it is also heart-rendingly beautiful. Nothing they can do will touch that distant, burning perfection. "Oh, often, yes. But not about this. We are in a library, are we not? Perhaps one of these unfinished tomes has a pict or two, and you may see for yourself." His smile is jagged, friendless, and rather more like a shark's than a man with all those pointed teeth. "Shall we go see if we can find them? It is one thing to listen to another's stories. It is different to see it for yourself."

[bestofall]

“Perhaps we ought,” agrees Festival uneasily. He’s having a bit of a mental Moment about the apparent insignificance of his life, if not mortal life in general.

“D’you suppose that’s why so many here come from such strange places?”

[curzed]

Curze steps around his collection of bowls and heads for the distant bookshelves on bare feet, certain Festival will follow. Curiosity is a terrible thing, and knowledge something more might be out there, beyond easy sight would surely tempt anyone.

It's not even a deception. Finding the right books, however.. "To see things we might not have otherwise known of?"

[bestofall]

Festival more or less skitters out of his way, then goes trotting after Curze at his heels, two or three steps to the giant's one. He's all but silent in the strange little boots he wears on his cat-like feet, even at a fast clip.

"This is meant to be a place of unfinished stories of all kinds, is it not? Yet somehow I thought it less strange that it should be another world or a plane of the divine than that it might be on another, ah, planet."

[curzed]

"If you understand what this place is meant to be, you have gotten further than many have," Curze says promptly. The chances of finding just what he's looking for in the towering shelves is going to be challenging, but most of the tomes in this particular library seemed to favor covers with pictures. Finding one with stars.. MIGHT actually be possible in a reasonable timeframe.

All he really needs is one. "My brother also wonders if this may be another plane of reality, because of its changing nature." He wanted more evidence before drawing conclusions. "But the galaxy is vast, and galaxies themselves innumerable. What we call a different plane might simply be a distant part of some other star system."

[bestofall]

"I was told we were to be Editors of these stories."

Of course it's a demiplane, thinks Festival, any simpleton could see that. But out loud he asks, "Is it not simply magic? To make everything change and move the way it does here?"