unfinishedlibrary | [log] Chopped: Link's Exploded Backpack Edition

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[log] Chopped: Link's Exploded Backpack Edition

Who: Anyone who wants to salvage the Unreasonably Large Food Pile left in the kitchen ... and elsewhere ... by Link's departure.
What: An Unreasonably Large Pile of delicious fresh food!
When: April 1st
Where: The kitchen and surrounding areas in the Lobby. The bugs and lizards might spread ...
Content warnings: Contains live insects!! Potential insect-eating. Should be pretty tame otherwise!

It starts with a hurried post on the bulletin board in Illarion's efficient script:

There is an enormous pile of food in the kitchen that needs to be saved.

Anyone who can prepare or preserve it welcome.

After an hour or two, a tidy little inventory appears beneath the initial message, along with an attempt to track -- by name or description -- who's taken what, and how it's been used. There are some inventive descriptions on there for the items Illarion doesn't recognize.

(It doesn't look exactly like this -- because Illarion doesn't know the names of everything in the pile, or everyone who stops by, and certainly wouldn't make a spreadsheet -- but the poor digital substitute will have to stand in for his glorious real list.)

Those who do respond to the urgent missive will find the kitchen exactly as described: Absolutely full to overflowing with fresh produce that could've grown in the Library's garden, alongside a veritable market wagon of fresh fish, meat, and more produce. (Along with ... rocks and wood?)

Oh, and there's also a minor infestation of live bugs and reptiles actively escaping into the stacks.

Illarion's right in the thick of it for hours, first tirelessly triaging the mass into what should be cooked or preserved first, what will store well in the icebox, and what can be kept around on the shelves. Then he turns his hand to preparing the meat and fish for drying (and saving the fat from the richest cuts).

Once he's certain the most perishable items are taken care of, he sets aside some of the fat, honey, and berries for himself. Then he goes out hunting, pursuing the bugs and lizards loose in the Lobby and stacks. He's got no shame whatsoever about chasing them under furniture or up bookshelves, and soon has his sabertache full of squirmy tidbits.

Then it's back to the kitchen, to render the fat and make crunchy insect pemmican from his prizes.

(He's enough of a magpie he can't resist making off with some of the gems. There's someone out there who will look stunning in rubies and amber...)

((OOC: Feel free to use this as a jumping-off point for whatever you wanna do with your top levels! No need to tag Illarion -- go wild.

The spreadsheet above is fully editable -- feel free to put in what your guys take on tab 2 ~~& I'll eventually get some automation going to track the item inventory~~ and tab 1 will do inventory for us. Have fun!!))

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Dionysus raises his head, chuckling quietly. "I have a way with animals," he says, though noting her own... features, he's not going to make much more comment on that, "I was raised with a particular awareness of the woods and its denizens. So perhaps they sense something in me?" They definitely do, he's talking to them (or part of them) but she doesn't need to know that.

She's not perceiving what comes off the insects as words. Closer to a kind of buzzing or vibration that can be slow or quick, harsh or light. The little vertebrates she hears - 'hears'? - with a word at a time, sometimes two or three.

Safe, a lizard had 'said', and another had echoed it. Refuge, the frog had conveyed.

"That sounds like Wild Magic," Hisako says, and flicks her eyes at another lizard, which as she was speaking had gone: scary noise. "Wildmages tend to say something like that, about having a way with animals. Can you... hear them?"

She doesn't have the Wild Magic herself. Her understanding is that a reasonably powerful Wildmage hears animals as speaking in full sentences, conveying much more information than Hisako's getting.

Even as they are afraid, they don't budge. It seems when they 'said' Dionysus was safe, they truly believe that. A few minute even nestle in closer to him.

"Alas, I do not," he says, with a shake of his head, "That sounds lovely, though. I wish I could. I am just a witch. A healer." He's been adding that explanation, since it seems most here don't know what a witch is, doesn't recognize his garb or his tattoos, the swirly reddish-black ink up his arms the only part of him that is truly visible.

"'Witch' seems to mean different things to different people. Thanks for clarifying," she says with a wry smile.

Should she keep this secret? Probably not, right, besides she already admitted it to Nara'a. "I can hear them but uh... it's new to me. If I had a lot of Wild Magic I'd be connected to them and they would be lent a more humanlike understanding of things, and they'd like me." Hisako lifts folded wings in a shrug. "I don't. Guess this is an Immortal thing that's just never been relevant before."

What she has is not functionally very different from being very good at reading animal body language/picking up on pheromones etc, except she doesn't have to be watching the animal in question.

"Oh, can you? That sounds wonderful." And now his little friends are maybe getting some reminders to keep Certain Things to themselves, best they can. But it can be hard for them, so he won't be too bothered if they slip up. He can lie his way out of a great many things.

Though, something else she says catches his interest. "Immortal?" She's certainly not human, but she implies she used to be mortal.

Listening! the frog 'says'. It's been a long day for this frog okay, it's been hopping around a great dry place since getting disgorged from Link's backpack. The lizard that doesn't like Hisako's voice has been staring at her with beady eyes and goes: scary thing. Wrong thing.

"They're mostly saying they don't like me," she says in a dry tone, opening her wings slightly just to fold them again. "I'm a Stormwing, specifically. I probably shouldn't be surprised, I've heard mortal animals have to acclimate to us."

It's just that the mortal realm she'd been part of had had Immortals in it since time immemorial, so a lot of mortal animals were used to them. There's still a certain dislike, it's just milder.

"Oh no, why is that?" he says, seeming to address the frog in his hands, rubbing down it's back with a finger in a gentle pet. He knows why, of course. He can feel it too, through them. But it seems that may be some sort of... sense of her species, rather than anything about her personally. If anything, to him she seems a bit upset about their dislike. Which he understands, he would also be upset.

"What is a Stormwing?" he asks, before laughing a bit sheepishly, "Other than 'you,' I suppose."

"I'm not sure!" She's a little miffed about it.

Where she's from, there's something like a wavelength shared by all animals, Wildmages, and animalistic Immortals. They can speak through this, though without a Wildmage's alteration most animals can only make so much use of it. With her human head Hisako's tuned to it well enough to receive but not to speak, and she unwittingly broadcasts something about being strange and wrong.

Could be worse. If she was a spidren the animals would have found hiding places long before she was even in sight, and wouldn't come back out for hours.

"You know, I don't think anyone's actually asked that here yet." Not phrased like that anyway. "We're what's called 'Lesser Immortals' like centaurs, merfolk, basilisks and so on. We aren't gods, we can be killed, it just can't happen through things like age or starvation, or sickness. Humans dreamed us up, back when the world was more malleable, and here we are."

"That's a shame. Maybe they'll get used to you with time." The creatures seem dubious of this, but maybe if Dionysus says so, they can at least not be rude to her. Maybe. They'll see.

Dionysus nods, seeming to take that in. "I see. Were you dreamed up to do anything in particular?" He takes all that in stride at least- he doesn't think that's how it works in his world, but then again, he doesn't really know. He knows how he was made; he's not sure about those that came before him. Being dreamed up to serve a purpose makes as much sense as anything.

She smiles wryly. "Some do, I've heard. I'm sure I'll find out."

"Stormwings were." She looks up at the veiled figure and tilts her head, very birdlike. "I can tell you, but how I pitch it is going to depend on something. What are your thoughts on wars fought between humans?"

Hisako grins and has an amused warmth in her voice but this is also a serious question. There are a lot of warrior types in this library! There's no escaping them! It'd be impolitic to phrase her peoples' origin properly in their presence. This man who may or may not be a god doesn't have the look but who knows.

Dionysus tilts his head curiously. “That’s an interesting way to phrase it,” he says with a chuckle- is he human? Is he not? He won’t tell.

But he thinks about it for a moment, more deciding how to word it than anything. “I think it’s possible for people- or humans, I suppose- to live without killing anything. Killing each other seems… especially pointless.” He has lived through the old days, when The Hunt was all there was, the only real food what you chased down and killed with your own hands. But killing not for food but for… what? Pride? Land? It’s all foolishness to him.

"I'm an interesting person!" she says promptly, and grins.

Hisako can taste the fear on the small animals, the vertebrates anyway. Compared to human fear it makes her think of selecting a good-looking fruit that ends up having the flavor of slightly soured water. It had taken her a minute or so to become conscious of the fact that the veiled man doesn't have the blandness of someone with an untroubled heart, he's giving nothing.

She's spent hundreds of years around gods and Immortals who give her nothing in that way and so it really hadn't registered. Even now it's only so odd. She's curious more than anything.

When he's answered she nods and goes on with a light tone that dips to mockery now and then. "In the long ago, a traveler walked the breadth of the mortal world. Everywhere she went she found war or its aftermath and the promise of fresh hostilities. Armies meeting armies to contest and re-contest for the ownership of the same land, and behind them leaving the starving, the abandoned, the dead. Not to mention the propaganda to excuse it - oh, duty, oh, honor and glory and the avenging cycle!

"She grew sick to her soul of it, this traveler, and wished for a creature to defile what mortal killers left and strip the glory away from dying in battle. Something so repulsive and horrible it would make humans remember their mortality and think twice about the spending of their one precious life. She dreamed of such a thing, and the first Stormwing was born."

After a pause Hisako adds "So I'm pretty sure she was afraid of birds."

"I believe that!" She seems interesting! And not just because she's 2/3rds bird.

He listens to her tale, and while he certainly can't tell if it's a fable made to tell a lesson or explain the world, there is some sort of sense to it. Except that Hisako doesn't seem all that terrible to him. Uncanny to most mortals, perhaps, but then again, he's not one of those.

He does laugh at her joke, shaking his head. "I think that's the only way that makes sense," he agrees, "I would have to assume that the main reason they would be disgusted would be whatever the 'defiling' of their glory means?" There's some obvious answers; there are scavengers among birds, after all. He's just curious if it's more than that.

"Ripping them to pieces, eating of their flesh and adorning ourselves with their bodily fluids, playing with them, taking trophies sometimes, fouling what's left, carrying the scent with us," she says promptly. Hisako is not carrying any such scent or adornment herself, it must be said. She's relatively clean and smells like human sweat and skin oils, steel, and silver, and probably could use a bath but it isn't urgent.

"Sometimes finding a fallen warrior who's not quite dead and has been thoroughly disillusioned by what he was doing, and will accept becoming a Stormwing himself, or herself. From everything I've heard they tended to find that really disheartening."

Dionysus nods, and she can probably imagine that he's putting on a sage sort of expression. "That would certainly discourage me," he says, though he's teasing a bit- he did say he didn't see the point already, after all. "Does it work, do you think? To discourage it?" He doesn't think anything like that would be possible in his world, but it's certainly a thought.

Mock severe, she tells him, "See that it does."

"Hard to say. Of course there's always going to be violence in the human heart, and plenty of the time those who fight don't actually have a choice. The people actually sending younger folks to die while comfortable themselves certainly didn't care. Even when we could get at them, disrupting a funeral, that kind of thing, the wealthy and powerful think they're above that!" Hisako shifts her weight and grasps idly at the floor with one taloned foot, her tone getting more somber. "Still. We had an impact. If one person decided it wasn't worth our feeding and entertainment and they could find another way, that was justification for us to exist."

She shakes her head and sighs. "It's over now, of course. Until I came here the only mortals any Stormwing's seen in centuries have been the pets of one god or another, and those rarely. Humans have just about forgotten us."

Edited 2026-04-07 07:16 (UTC)

Dionysus makes a gesture like crossing over his heart, but it's not hard to tell that he's smiling.

"It's always the powerful who are the real problems," he sighs, his own tone matching hers despite the cheer from before. Something he too does his best to knock down when he can. "I am glad that it dissuades some. That is more than none, after all. Is it a life you're happy with?" An odd question, perhaps, but he would not like the idea of a species suffering for such a cause either.

However, her follow up statement has him curious. "What do you mean? You clearly still exist. Were there not stories about you?" Humans have very short memories, but stories? Those can last generations.

If Stormwings had been designed, deliberately, on purpose, the way Coldfangs were, instead of being an expression of helpless pain and alienation from mankind, then there probably would have been something in their makeup that made peace their mission, made them prioritize those actually most responsible for war. Instead they're just people, with specific needs and their own ideas of how to meet them.

"I don't know if I'd be happy with it. I've never had the chance to live like that! I've just kind of been idle for a long time," Hisako says frankly. She hasn't deflected, and actually has been rather more casual about relating what Stormwings do than she's previously been inclined towards. There's something about the veiled man that makes her inclined to like and want to trust him. "Sometimes I still feel like a mortal, anyway. That kind of thing doesn't just go away easily."

"Sure, but they're just stories now. A curiosity. 'Once, there were monsters in the world, and we have driven them out', sort of situation." The metaphor of a Stormwing is still true, that the body is meat and glorious death in battle is a fantasy covering a sadder, more disgusting reality. It's always been true.

Yeah... Dionysus definitely gives off that vibe. Part of it is the veil and himation, the obscurity of witching; they're not meant to be seen as people so much as mystics, to help their art. Part of it is just that he comes off as very friendly and non-judgemental. Part of might also be... well, what he is. There is an effect to him that's loosening, the tinges of a softer, kinder sort of madness that allows in a little more freedom of the soul.

It probably helps that even with the veil, he's pretty emotive, and has clearly been on 'her' side of this whole conversation. "Really? So you were... separated from them, somehow?" He doesn't miss that she used to be mortal; he knows how that feels, though he's had a very, very long time to get used to it himself.

He huffs at the explanation. "Sounds like they could use some reminders, then," he says, and it's hard to tell if he's joking. (He's not.)

"The thing about finding a fallen warrior to transform into a Stormwing is they're usually hurt or dying. The transformation heals their wounds. I was never a warrior, but I had several Stormwing friends." She opens her wings enough to flourish in an and so! sort of gesture before furling them again.

"I had a difficult time of it, but you can get used to anything. Now this Story went and made me human again for a while-" a few days, the time in which the Readers were present? one decade, the period after Jadis's injury? thirty nine years, her whole life? Even the last of those doesn't feel terribly long. Hisako's ten times that age. -"and now I'm back." She shrugs, looking... not upset. Vaguely troubled. She isn't quite comfortable in her skin and steel.

"Aaah, I see. I am glad they were there for you, if this is what you wanted." There's always the chance it wasn't, after all; there's more than one story of stolen mortals being turned into something else, something they didn't want to be.

The information about the Stories is... concerning. "I see. I can imagine that must have been very disorienting for you." He certainly would be. Would this place make him mortal again? He's not sure he'd like that, but then again being in this lifeless space already makes him feel so much smaller than he normally does.

"I do like being alive," she says lightly. Even as open as she's been so far, Hisako doesn't feel like getting into how very much she had not wanted to become a Stormwing. Not just now.

She shrugs again. "Stormwing converts tend to describe the change as 'liberating', but it can take a while to grow accustomed. Nothing I haven't done before, and fortunately, the fear of heights has not come back. You might imagine how that makes things more difficult."

"Fair enough. Most people do." At least, for a normal mortal lifetime. Longer than that is... complicated. But he understands all too well not wanting to get into that.

That gets a little laugh. "Yes, that sounds like it would have been extremely inconvenient."

She'd had to choose to try to adjust or keep focusing on being miserable indefinitely, and Hisako had chosen to adjust. It helps that once she'd become more comfortable and sure with heights she learned to really enjoy flight.

"And here I've been talking for how long and you're nodding along and no names have been exchanged," she sighs. "I was coming up with bird nicknames for everyone but I want to take a break from that. I'm Hisako Godsup."

'Godeater', though without any suggestion of boastfulness or accomplishment.

"Oh, so I'm missing out on a fun nickname?" the witch teases. He's curious now! What bird would you make him!! (Spoilers he can be all of them.)

"Dionysus. A pleasure to meet you, Hisako." He will ignore the second half of her name right now. But he will definitely remember. Sounds like there's a story in there.

[log] Chopped: Link's Exploded Backpack Edition

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