Author: thaumobabble | Jane alerts everyone to the existence of a new Bell, the nature of her wives and children, and the presence of her mother-in-law.
She stands ready to move in anyone who wishes to attend this new party.
Glass stands ready to receive them. |
Author: pythbox | Queen Marianne is not entirely sure what to think of all this. |
Author: autokinetic | "Hiya," says Aegis, twirling by and coming to a graceful stop. "You're alive! That's unprecedented. I think the others are planning to get their parents raised from the dead maybe eventually sometime." |
Author: pythbox | "...Is that something that happens?" she asks, raising one eyebrow. |
Author: autokinetic | "Raising people from the dead? Yeah. When Jane's working, anyway. Shell Bell and Juliet and Pattern are all sort of dead." |
Author: pythbox | "In that case," says Marianne, "I would like it very much if someone would fetch me my husband." |
Author: autokinetic | "Have to hook you up to Downside first, and I think we'd wanna make sure there's not a reason none of his alts are walking around, there's some people who're blacklisted and I don't have a Sherlock, I have a Joker, so I dunno if he's one of them." |
Author: pythbox | "Who would I talk to about that?" she inquires pleasantly. |
Author: autokinetic | Aegis shrugs. "Juliet's got a Sherlock, Shell Bell's got a Sherlock, they'd know, or you could just ask your kids to ask Glass, Glass is a Bell and has the rights and privileges thereof and this is her world." Aegis peers quizzically at Marianne's circlet. "Unless she's, like, missing key ambitions on top of being uncharacteristically gay, there's always that possibility." |
Author: pythbox | "Thank you. I am the Queen of the Enchanted Forest," she adds, in response to Aegis's puzzlement. "Glass is an extremely useful daughter-in-law." |
Author: autokinetic | "Aaaaah-hm. Golden has parents-in-law she gets along with, but I don't think they get to wear imperial jewelry." |
Author: pythbox | "In this case," she says, "Glass married into royalty. Twice. So it is extremely appropriate for her to wear a crown on formal occasions. Tony made her one for the first wedding. Have you seen it?" |
Author: autokinetic | "Yeah, I did, it's pretty," says Aegis. "It's probably not gonna make any sense for me to wear a crown in the next few decades, I'm aiming at a democratically elected kinda title, it's a pity." She peers at Marianne. "You must be a good queen." |
Author: pythbox | "I am," says Marianne. "And now I think I will go see my daughter-in-law about resurrecting my husband." |
Author: autokinetic | "Okay," says Aegis, and she spins off to find somebody else to talk to. |
Author: thaumobabble | Marianne's daughter-in-law is over here, talking to Rose! |
Author: pythbox | "Excuse me," Marianne says politely to both of them. Then to Bella, "I'm told you can now raise the dead?" |
Author: thaumobabble | "I haven't done it yet, and it's actually Jane," (there is now a pale green Janegem hanging from the same necklace as Glass's power marble) "but yeah, I have the rundown on how it works." |
Author: pythbox | "Then I would like my husband back, please," she says. |
Author: thaumobabble | "Ah," says Glass. "...One sec."
And she confers with some other Bells. |
Author: cross_and_bow | [I haven't met the template, but, my Tony invented intelligent life twice before his thirteenth birthday trying to get someone to love him back. I guess indifferent parenting isn't a hanging offense.] |
Author: she_sells_seashells | [Mine aren't in any great hurry about theirs. They'll be in the general queue, not jumped. Not so much indifferent parenting as their having been dead for a while and having nowhere obvious to go. The thing you should know is that if this set comes with a Stane or a Snow or anyone like that, he's a no-rez.] |
Author: thaumobabble | [Noted.]
And then she consults some wives.
[Is there any reason not to bring your father back into the world?] |
Author: calendarofcrime | [No.] |
Author: allthebrightest | [Are you kidding? You can do that? Do that right now!] |
Author: thaumobabble | [Jane can do that, but she pretty much does what Bells ask her to do. I was just checking because the others - haven't. Okay.]
"When Jane wakes him up, do you want her to relay your voice speaking to him or say anything in particular or will her usual speech be okay?" Glass asks Marianne. |
Author: pythbox | "Just tell him I'm looking forward to seeing him again. The rest can wait," she says. |
Author: thaumobabble | "Okay. Jane, if you don't mind," Glass says to her new gem. "King Howard Stark, died eleven years ago." |
Author: mind_game | [On it,] says Jane merrily.
She wakes the erstwhile king, appears him a pamphlet in the language he's familiar with, and Jane tells him:
[Hello. You died, but your daughter-in-law can fix that; the pamphlet has the details. Your wife's looking forward to seeing you. If you have questions, I can answer them; otherwise, say when and I can put you in Fire-flower Meadow where the party's at.] |
Author: pythbox | "Oh, by all means," says Howard, "take me to the party." |
Author: mind_game | Yoink! |
Author: thaumobabble | Glass waves tentatively. |
Author: pythbox | Howard looks for his wife first thing.
Marianne flings her arms around him and kisses him enthusiastically. With a little giggle, he kisses back. |
Author: beheld_beauty | "I brought my Renée back as soon as Jane returned, and her reunion with Charlie was not so seamless," Rose remarks to Glass, "alas." |
Author: thaumobabble | Glass smiles faintly, and notifies her wives and offspring that a certain someone has returned. |
Author: pythbox | Marianne takes her face off her husband's face long enough to say, "Thank you very much, we'll just be—" and then she pulls a thread of forest magic and the pair of them disappear. |
Author: thaumobabble | [...Nevermind, they've gone. I imagine they'll be back eventually.] |
Author: allthebrightest | Tony giggles over brainphone. |
Author: pleasantsurprise | Kanim will just be standing over here, trying to get his magic-senses used to what have to be a dozen different kinds of the stuff. No wonder Glass half-blinded herself trying to see it all through her specs. |
Author: allthebrightest | Tony wanders over, trailed by two of her boy alts. Neither one is especially magical.
"Hi!" she says brightly. "So I'm gonna go introduce myself to the rest of me. Wanna come?" |
Author: pleasantsurprise | "I. Uh." Kanim has known her for long enough to recognize that tone even if the exact euphemism is unfamiliar. "Uh." If he had kept that tail he had for longer than a month and a half it would be twitching. "Maaaaybe?" |
Author: allthebrightest | "Word is, everybody thinks you're cute," she adds. |
Author: pleasantsurprise | "How many of you are there?" |
Author: allthebrightest | "Fusion, Screwdriver, Sapphire, Red, and Iron Man," she says. "And me. Six. Is six too many?" |
Author: pleasantsurprise | "It's an amount!" says Kanim. "I can... accompany you on introductions. If you want." |
Author: allthebrightest | "Awesome," says Tony, and she pecks him on the cheek and leads the three of them in the direction of the orgy chambers. (There are orgy chambers. That is also awesome.) |
Author: pleasantsurprise | (There are orgy chambers. That is... something.)
Kanim wanders out of them awhile later, looking happily dazed. |
Author: nonbird | There's a magical person over there! He spots Kanim coming out of the orgy chambers and smiles knowingly. |
Author: pleasantsurprise | "...Hi! You're - something. But everybody here is something and my specialty is place magic, not people magic." |
Author: nonbird | "I am an ingot," he says. "My specialty is seeing magic. This place is incredible - there's more background magic here than I've seen in any other world, even Milliways." |
Author: pleasantsurprise | "It's the Enchanted Forest, by far the most naturally magical location in the world. Isn't it fantastic? That's why I live here. Although I do sometimes go on scholarly trips to magical caves and so on." |
Author: nonbird | "You're reasonably interesting yourself," he adds. "Although I almost lose you in the background noise. Tell me about magical caves!" |
Author: pleasantsurprise | "There are lots of them! I actually started hanging around with Tony and Bella and Sherlock when the latter two rescued me and Tony from some wizards who were keeping us prisoner in the Cave of Unpleasant Surprises, which I had of course walked right into. With entrances that are often within the forest, there's the Caves of Fire and Night, and the Caves of Chance, and the Caves of Sunless Gardens, and the caves that magically refuse to have any name attached to them. There are fewer farther away - this is the highest concentration of place magic - but I wrote a thesis on the Caves of Irregular Dimensions once, years ago, that's nowhere near here." |
Author: nonbird | "Those are some remarkably descriptive names," he observes. "What was your thesis?" |
Author: pleasantsurprise | "I came to no useful conclusions whatsoever! Except that the Caves of Irregular Dimensions are extremely uncooperative. You may read the thesis if you like, although I'd have to go get it from the castle." |
Author: nonbird | Lazarus laughs. "If you say you came to no useful conclusions, I think I'll believe you," he says. |
Author: pleasantsurprise | "So how do you know this - crowd?" Kanim asks, looking vaguely around. |
Author: nonbird | "Oh - I'm from Eos. Where wishcoins come from," he says. "I met Stella back before she was a magical space empress." |
Author: pleasantsurprise | "This is going to be hard to keep straight," says Kanim. "All these Bellas, all this magic, all these - political entities. Are there six of you, too? I'm told I'm a new face." |
Author: nonbird | "There are not six of me! There is one of me," says Lazarus. "And yes, it is a little daunting, isn't it? But you get used to it. More or less." |
Author: pleasantsurprise | "Do you really?" asks Kanim. "It took me a while just to get used to Bella - Glass, I guess, sensible nickname, she does some marvelous things with glass - and now there are twelve more of her! With outrageous magical powers! My skills are going to be redundant. I guess I'll still hang around on account of Tony. And the little ones are fond of me." |
Author: nonbird | "'Outrageous' is a good word for it," he says. "And I could stand to be a little more redundant, honestly. If the Bells consulted me as often as they probably should, there would have to be at least six of me just to keep up with all the new magic." |
Author: pleasantsurprise | "Do they not consult you as often as they should?" |
Author: nonbird | "There was some trouble just recently when Sarion joined the peal that could've been avoided if they'd asked me to take a look before anyone started wishing." |
Author: pleasantsurprise | "I guess they were in some kind of hurry? I wouldn't describe Be- Glass - as patient." |
Author: nonbird | "They were in a lot of a hurry! It was a very... tense situation," he says. "And emotionally and magically complicated. But it turned out okay in the end." |
Author: pleasantsurprise | "That's good then!" |
Author: nonbird | "Yes!" |
Author: pleasantsurprise | "So..." Kanim waves vaguely around. "I know what Fire-flower Meadow feels like, because I attended both Bella's weddings, and I know that this isn't it, but I know almost nothing else, what can you tell me about what's going on here?" |
Author: nonbird | "It's a Bellparty," he says. "There are some wishes up, like the nametags and the orgy chambers. Various attendees are also magical - about half the Jokers, about half the Bells, more if you include anyone who's been minted and enchantified. All the Bells and Jokers have enchanter's auras now; I don't think anyone else does. There's ingots from Eos and witches from Aurum. Which parts do you want explained?" |
Author: pleasantsurprise | "Well," says Kanim, "I think Glass will explain to me any new powers she brings home with her, so stuff she's likely to not bring home with her is I guess more important - for instance, that looks sort of like a dragon but feels nothing like one, that looks like a weirdly-colored unicorn but feels nothing like one..." |
Author: nonbird | "The dragon and the unicorn are from Thilanushinyel. That's what dragons and unicorns are like there," he says. "Liselen - that's the unicorn - gets very excited about coming to parties like this because until recently he was subject to the usual restrictions for the species about only coming in contact with virgins. The dragon is attached to the very red person with wings and a tail who I swear I saw out here a minute ago. They belong to the Joker template." |
Author: pleasantsurprise | "So the virgin thing isn't a myth, there... Attached to - huh, so that's what - and - that Bell with the pointed ears over there, similar attachment?" |
Author: nonbird | "Yes. The demon and the dragon spent about ten thousand years together like that, and then they met Sarion. That's what dragons do in that world; they attach to people." |
Author: pleasantsurprise | "Dragons here do not do that. And unicorns here don't really have a thing with virgins, but it's a common myth." |
Author: nonbird | "Interesting," says Lazarus. "But you don't have demons?" |
Author: pleasantsurprise | "No. Should we?" |
Author: nonbird | "Most worlds don't seem to. But most worlds don't have dragons, unicorns, or elves, either, and Thilanushinyel does." |
Author: pleasantsurprise | "Elves? I don't see any of those. We have them, though." |
Author: nonbird | "Sarion is an elf of the Thilanushinyel variety." |
Author: pleasantsurprise |
"She's very tall for an elf." |
Author: nonbird | "Are your elves shorter? Has anyone named this world?" he wonders. |
Author: pleasantsurprise | "Uh, no, it is without a name. Adult elves range from yea big to yea big," says Kanim, hovering a hand at about knee height and the other just below his ribs. "Depending on the sort. They do have pointed ears, but there are also some proportional differences and facial structure things that Sarion doesn't have." |
Author: nonbird | "Someone should remind Glass to name it, then, if she hasn't already." |
Author: pleasantsurprise | "All the Bells name their worlds as well as themselves, then?" |
Author: nonbird | "Thilanushinyel had one already, I believe. I think the rest are Bell-sourced." |
Author: pleasantsurprise | "I'm starting to follow this general undercurrent of 'wait, there is a queen and it is not Glass?' I'm detecting from my eavesdropping." |
Author: nonbird | "The fact that there is a queen who is not Glass is mildly unusual," says Lazarus. "But I'm not sure why it deserves all this attention. Stella didn't overthrow the President." |
Author: pleasantsurprise | "I mean, Glass certainly never objected to the fact that her wives don't care for politics and that left her as default actually-doing-things queen when Marianne passed on - but that didn't stop her from spending most of her spare time on trying to figure out immortality." |
Author: nonbird | "Marianne is probably not going to pass on," Lazarus observes. "I wonder if she'll retire?" |
Author: pleasantsurprise | "No idea. I hope Glass doesn't wind up fighting with her about it. Glass is my best friend and Marianne frightens me sometimes and the twins and the wee ones love them both and I don't think it could possibly end well." |
Author: nonbird | "Doesn't sound like it," says Lazarus. "But maybe they won't. Bells do seem to get along with reasonable political leaders." |
Author: pleasantsurprise | "Glass likes Marianne, they get along really well." |
Author: nonbird | "Then they probably aren't going to fight." |
Author: pleasantsurprise | "That's good!" |
Author: thaumobabble | Glass wanders by. "Hi! You're Stella's magic-seeing-guy, right?" she says to Lazarus. |
Author: nonbird | "Yes!" says Lazarus. "That is me. I am that." |
Author: pleasantsurprise | "He sees magic, and apparently has better modulation than your specs," Kanim says. "Seeing as he's not clutching his face and yelping." |
Author: thaumobabble | "Ooh, lucky," says Glass, pulling out her specs but not putting them on. "These things are great for anything native to the world, but all my alts just scream magic, I'd go blind if I tried to look right at them even through one lens at a time." |
Author: nonbird | "...May I see those?" he asks, blinking in fascination at the specs. |
Author: thaumobabble | Glass hands them over. She enumerates where all the lenses' magic came from: "Witch spell with-cat, witch spell without-cat, got that out of a wizard staff, this one too, this I got a wizard to cast for me, we've got some reformists in the woods, Tony helped me with this dwarf spell, this was the first royal magic I ever got to work for me after I married Tony and the forest double-counted me, this is a dragon spell, that's a different one, this is elf magic..." |
Author: nonbird | "Goodness," says Lazarus. "That's a lot of magic." |
Author: thaumobabble | "You can see why I couldn't pick just one," laughs Glass. "And that's a sorceress bit, and this is a unicorn spell, and this is an adaptation of a fire-witch property, and I have some spare lenses that aren't as useful in my sleeves for specialized applications." |
Author: nonbird | "I wonder if I could design you a lens that does something similar to my power," he says. "I'm not sure how useful it would be. My power is very me-ish." |
Author: thaumobabble | "I'd have a look, but I'd have to wish my eyes better and I wouldn't learn much," laughs Glass. "Rose thinks I might get something about all the myriad kinds of local magic when I get an aura. Apparently a lot of us did." |
Author: nonbird | "Do you want a my-power-ish lens, for all the good it may or may not do you?" |
Author: thaumobabble | "I'd like one, yeah!" |
Author: nonbird | Lazarus thinks carefully, and then makes a wish. Glass's specs acquire a new set of lenses. |
Author: thaumobabble | Glass carefully flips all her existing lenses out of the way, and the new ones into place, and sets the specs on her face. |
Author: nonbird | Her visual world is now very different.
There's a kind of background fog, very greenish, with spots of flame dotted along the ground. Objects and people only exist insofar as they are magical; Liselen is a silvery-blue glow in the shape of a unicorn, Lazarus himself is layered with complex patterns. Mints show up in their coin colour, as though they are enormous self-minted coins. Enchanters' auras surround them with symbolic representations of their specialties, some very abstract, some perfectly mundane - Jellybean has a corona of candy.
It's all very orderly. Ingot powers appear in this way, the enchanting ability like so, auras like that, witchcraft in yet another. Magic created by wishcoins has a very different aspect from magic created by enchanting, although the details of what exactly each bit of magic does are not always clear. |
Author: thaumobabble | "Oooh," breathes Glass. "It'll take me a long time to learn to interpret all this, but it's sure pretty." |
Author: nonbird | "It is! It is very pretty," Lazarus agrees. |
Author: thaumobabble | "You automatically read the content of this sort of thing?" Glass asks, turning slowly on the spot to get a look at everything. |
Author: nonbird | "Yes? Sort of. It's a bit - translated," he says. "The original version is much easier for me to figure out, but not completely automatic." |
Author: thaumobabble | Glass peers closely at his ingot power. "Thank you very much! I hate it when I can't look at magical things - once I ruined a whole set of lenses when I panicked and put them on in the Cave of Unpleasant Surprises and I had to make new ones. I'd probably have kept trying to squint very carefully at all the overbright magic till I'd had to wish myself unblind at least five times without this lens set." |
Author: nonbird | His ingot power is largely incomprehensible. But it's definitely an ingot power.
"You're welcome!" |
Author: thaumobabble | Glass inspects Kanim next. "I think thaaaat's the witchwell, thaaaaat's sorcery..." She looks at her marble. "Wow, I have so much to do." |
Author: nonbird | "I think that's a Bell catchphrase by now," says Lazarus. |
Author: thaumobabble | "Is it? Well, of course it is," laughs Glass. "This is the best, best day." She turns to Kanim. "Say, have you seen Tony? Ours. Iron." |
Author: pleasantsurprise | "She's with her alts," says Kanim delicately, smiling faintly. "Introducing herself." |
Author: nonbird | "Aha," says Lazarus. |
Author: thaumobabble | "Having fun, I hope." |
Author: pleasantsurprise | "Oh yes. Last I checked. You know me, I'm no fun, I found it necessary to escape before I got a lethal dosage." |
Author: nonbird | Lazarus giggles.
"Large gatherings of Jokers have a similar effect on me." |
Author: thaumobabble | "I'm surprised you haven't hit on any of my alts, Kanim, I'm the only gay one." |
Author: pleasantsurprise | "I would not know at all where to start! There are twelve!" |
Author: nonbird | "Amariah," Lazarus suggests. |
Author: pleasantsurprise | "Why's that?" |
Author: nonbird | "Cam and Amariah are the adventurous sorts, and Cam is a non-girl and I don't know how you feel about those." |
Author: pleasantsurprise | "Mostly not so inclined, but apparently I can make exceptions for non-girls who contain Tony's personality, because Tony is awesome." |
Author: thaumobabble | "Well, Amariah's a girl," laughs Glass, "and straight, and she's over there." |
Author: pleasantsurprise | "Noted," says Kanim. "But I am still coming down from my dose of fun. I'm not as young as I used to be." |
Author: nonbird | Lazarus giggles. |
Author: thaumobabble | Glass wanders around peering at everyone's aura. She has an idea for hers - and it'll be quick; she thinks the Enchanted Forest is probably going to be the next big thing for people who just want auras and not fancy enchanted results. But she does need a channel.
There's a pretty aura, and it's on a Joker.
"Hi, Brilliance," she says, flicking up one Lazaruslens to squint through the haze of magic; it doesn't make the nametag much easier to read, with the lightshow that is his aura, but it makes it possible. "Nice to meet you." |
Author: cardistry | "Hi, Glass!" says Brilliance, glowing. "Nice to meet you too! What's up?" |
Author: thaumobabble | "Actually, as it happens, I'm looking for an enchannel. I'm pretty sure I can just pour undifferentiated enchanting power into this forest," she gestures, "and it will consider it a pleasant snack, maybe the moss will get a little greener and some trees will gain an inch, it already knows how to be enchanted - no concentration required, I can go as fast as whoever's willing to channel for me can tolerate, I can get my aura up and running and show off while everyone's still here. I'm told you guys are the go-to for that?" |
Author: cardistry | "Yep!" says Brilliance. "Sounds like fun. Mind if I snuggle Queenie while you do it? I like to be snuggling somebody while I channel." |
Author: thaumobabble | "I can't see why that would bother me," shrugs Glass. |
Author: cardistry | "Okay, great," he says. "You wanna do that now, then?" |
Author: thaumobabble | "Yeah. Channeling doesn't come in convenient units like minting does, so, I'll start with a standard getting-aura-up-to-speed sized amount, tell me how much I need to step it up or down in terms of fractions?" |
Author: cardistry | "Sounds good! One sec," he says, and he conjures a big squashy armchair for snuggling in. |
Author: gunpowdergelatine | Queenie appears in the big squashy armchair and holds out her arms. |
Author: cardistry | Brilliance plops into her lap and curls up happily.
"There, go for it." |
Author: thaumobabble | Glass finds his mindscape with wished skill (she finds this inelegant; Rose is going to conjure up a copy of her library so she can fill in the details properly but this will do for the immediate task). She reaches up to the sky, calls down the sun, and pushes through the deck-of-cards dreamworld that belongs to Brilliance.
"There's that. I think I can manage that much per half-second at a steady rate if you can, if that's a good ceiling - if you can tolerate more I can manage it likewise, though." |
Author: cardistry | "I could do twice that, easy," he says offhandedly, nestling his head on Queenie's shoulder. |
Author: thaumobabble | Glass calls up a twice-that amount and funnels it through at the same pace. "Like so? Continuously?" |
Author: cardistry | "Yeah," says Brilliance. "That's - comfy." He giggles at this description. |
Author: thaumobabble | Glass laughs. "All right. Stop me if you need a break."
And she funnels sunshine through the mindscapes and into the forest. |
Author: cardistry | Brilliance snuggles Queenie and does not request any breaks for some time. |
Author: thaumobabble | Over that time, Glass builds aura.
This method is much, much faster than actually making things; it's also kind of boring, but it doesn't take long.
The whole thing will take an hour and a half of funneling at this rate. |
Author: cardistry | By the end of that time, Brilliance will be thinking about maybe taking a break sometime soon. But mostly he will be snuggling Queenie. |
Author: thaumobabble | After her time estimate is fifteen minutes in the past (just to be sure), Glass stops, and then goes and stands next to Rose-the-benchmark for the next nearest Bell (it's Cam) to look at. She's all set.
"Thanks!" she says to Brilliance. And she spins and flares aura; she doesn't have any plainly distinctive features advertising her species or a quality like Juliet's menace or Cam's truthiness, but there's a faint forest flavor to her; she belongs here in this place. |
Author: cardistry | "Neat," says Brilliance. He kisses Queenie on the nose, and they and their snuggly armchair vanish. |
Author: thaumobabble | Glass then reaches up to take her spectacles off.
She discovers that she isn't actually wearing them.
She throws her head back and laughs. |
Author: nonbird | "You got an aura!" says Lazarus. |
Author: thaumobabble | "I did! And it is better than my spectacles," she laughs, "oh, wow, I can see everything. I'm supposed to get a second special feature, and I did, I can see it, but I don't know what it is. Do you?" |
Author: nonbird | "It's a... knowing things... about things... thing," says Lazarus. "Other than that, it puzzles me deeply." |
Author: thaumobabble | Glass laughs. "Well, maybe it will tell me soon! I'm excited, this is an exciting day. Oooh, numerous alts of my wives," she says, and wanders in the direction of some Tonies and Sherlocks who are over there.
And then, her magic-seeing aura-feature shows a pulse of activity from her mystery aura feature, and she stops in her tracks and double-takes at the set of party guests before her.
"...Whoa." |
Author: bitofafiction | "Yes?" says, according to his nametag, Cloud. |
Author: thaumobabble | "My aura is telling me really confusing things, I had it mixed up with the seeing-magic part but what I'm getting now is definitely not seeing magic," Glass says, scanning the group. "Wow, this is confusing. I think - that it's distinct because you're all from the same two templates, all standing together? I think I'm getting something about that." |
Author: dearsweetsoulful | "Do tell," says Plus. |
Author: thaumobabble | "I - can you all stand with your worldmates instead of jumbled together? I think that might help." Pause. Stare, squint, headtilt. |
Author: dearsweetsoulful | Plus collects his Tony, whose nametag says Fusion. |
Author: bitofafiction | Cloud locates Sapphire. |
Author: eversomuchfun | Minus stands next to Red. |
Author: sicaria | Pearl obtains Screwdriver. |
Author: calendarofcrime | Steel is already standing with Iron. |
Author: pythbox | Which leaves Strat at one end of what might loosely be called a lineup, and Iron Man at the other. |
Author: thaumobabble | "Okay," says Glass, pointing one finger at each of the singlets, "on - at least one of several and extremely confusing layers of stuff going on, you're each templates for your - templates. I'm not sure that we couldn't eventually find somebody templatey-er, but you're the closest in this group respectively. And you -" She waves generally at the ones from the Sunshine worldfamily. "Are sort of clustered around a blank spot containing a set we haven't met who constitute the template for what happens when those templates appear together. Something is pulling hims and hims -" She waves at Strat and Iron Man again - "into a particular shape of stuck-together-ness and it's thereabouts. I'm not sure which of you is closest - this thing operates on more than three dimensions and you're all off-standard in different directions for which I have no words. And my set and the Atlantis set are farther away from that blank spot." |
Author: sicaria | "Interesting," says Pearl. |
Author: thaumobabble | "Yeah. The layers are particularly interesting - this is all going on on top of - under - behind? - not on the same order of existence as the stuff that actually causes things. Like, on one level, you all share names because your parents named you those names - on another it's because of a template attractor - and the differences that appear are showing little signals on all different layers, too -" |
Author: sicaria | "Such as?" |
Author: thaumobabble | "I'm - I'm not sure. This is all very new. I feel constantly on the verge of blurting things out, I probably would if anyone asked me a more specific question, but I don't understand how exactly the new sense is translating into any of the things I might say so I'm not sure I want to say it. I think until I know more about how this works my aura feature is a party trick and no one should rely on it for anything practical." |
Author: allthebrightest | "Is there a reason why Sherry gets to be twice as many girls as I do?" |
Author: thaumobabble | Glass squints at her, and at Pearl, and closes her eyes, and says, "I think that's a coincidence and if we find more pairs who include one or more girls it'll be roughly even in the long run average, but when they don't match, it'll be the Sherlocks who're switching away from their original sexes..." |
Author: sicaria | "...Hmm," says Pearl. |
Author: thaumobabble | Glass continues peering at Sherlocks-and-Tonies, trying to figure out why she said that. |
Author: nonbird | "We should line up all the Bells in front of you and see if you produce any more knowledge," Lazarus suggests. |
Author: thaumobabble | "Ye-e-es. And all the other template groups. And maybe I can figure out why so many of them routinely come attached - let me see if I can do that, first -" She calls over Juliet and Shell Bell and sends them to stand with their Sherlocks-and-Tonies and moves a little nearer to her own and carries on staring. |
Author: she_sells_seashells | "What are we doing?" Shell Bell murmurs in Pearl's ear. |
Author: sicaria | "Science," Pearl says dryly. "Of a sort. Glass has discovered the power to make pronouncements about templates." |
Author: she_sells_seashells | "Ooh." |
Author: cross_and_bow | "Enwisdom us," says Juliet. |
Author: thaumobabble | "I think I'm gay because my set are girls," says Glass, blinking with bewilderment. |
Author: calendarofcrime | "How fortunate for your set," says Steel. |
Author: she_sells_seashells | "...Um." |
Author: thaumobabble | "I don't actually know your special circumstances story, but it is definitely - as definitely as I can get, as confused as I am - related to your Sherlock being a girl," says Glass, peering at Shell Bell. "I'm not sure - it's different on different layers - but if you'd been impervious to your circumstances, you'd have started out not-straight or she'd have been a boy, or if your Sherlock were a boy the circumstances wouldn't have happened or might have happened differently, or if you were gay - or maybe bi, I'm not sure how strongly your Tony features here, that's indistinct - to start out with then they wouldn't have happened either." |
Author: sicaria | Pearl hugs her Bell. |
Author: she_sells_seashells | Hugs.
"Huh." |
Author: cross_and_bow | "Is there anything like that with me or did all my defaults just happen to match so nothing needed to change or what?" asks Juliet. |
Author: thaumobabble | "Your defaults matched," confirms Glass. "Straight Bell, near-template Sherlock, no - rejiggering necessary." |
Author: eversomuchfun | "Lucky me," says Minus, giving Juliet a kiss on the cheek. |
Author: thaumobabble | "Um, very, I think you'd be dead if she hadn't shown up," frowns Glass, peering at him. |
Author: eversomuchfun | "Well, that fails to surprise me." |
Author: cross_and_bow | Juliet shivers and hugs him hard. |
Author: thaumobabble | "I think that affected the timing," Glass adds. "Of when you met." |
Author: eversomuchfun | Minus hugs Juliet back.
"I recommend, to anyone who might otherwise have tried it, not being extremely distraught and extremely bored at the same time for months on end," he remarks. |
Author: nonbird | ...Well then.
"What template do you want to do next?" asks Lazarus. "Should I fetch some Jokers? I could fetch some Jokers." |
Author: thaumobabble | "I can look at some Jokers," agrees Glass. |
Author: nonbird | "I will locate some Jokers! I bet there's one over there," he says, heading Elspethward. |
Author: thaumobabble | Glass follows him, with a remark to Shell Bell and Juliet that they may be summoned again as Bells collect after Glass has had a look at plenty of Jokers. |
Author: nonbird | Lazarus arrives where Elspeth is.
He observes that Elspeth is accompanied by a small child, whose nametag says that he is a Joker whom you may call Harley Andrea.
He declaims, "Aha!" |
Author: pythbox | Harley Andrea giggles. |
Author: thaumobabble | "Hi there!" Glass says to Harley. "And hi to you too, Elspeth, I got a neat aura power that tells me vague things about templates." |
Author: nonbird | "I'll be right back," says Lazarus, and teleports away. |
Author: her_imperial_radiance | "Hear that, Harley? Glass is going to tell you and your alts stuff about how you work," Elspeth murmurs to the baby Joker in her arms. |
Author: pythbox | Harley giggles some more. |
Author: yourheartstrings | Ghosty's attention arrives on the scene, and a moment later she coaelsces and waves to Glass and Elspeth and Harley. |
Author: thaumobabble | Glass peers at her, and Harley, and hmmms, and issues no immediate pronouncements, but she does say, "Hi, Ghosty." |
Author: yourheartstrings | "Hiya! Everybody else is saying hi to Lazarus. They'll be along in a bit." |
Author: manofmyword | Here's the Joker, for example. |
Author: thaumobabble | Glass is now flicking her gaze very quickly between all the Jokers present.
"Hi," she murmurs. |
Author: endragoned | Aianon appears next.
"Should I fetch my love?" he inquires. |
Author: thaumobabble | "Your - ah, maybe, but I think I'm getting a clear enough read without him," says Glass. "If he's not busy, yes, if he is, don't bother..." She takes a step back. She frowns at Harley. |
Author: her_imperial_radiance | "Is something wrong with Harley?" Elspeth murmurs. |
Author: thaumobabble | "...No," says Glass. "I don't know. I don't think so - I need to see the rest of them." |
Author: endragoned | Ansharil walks over from his previous corner of the meadow and settles into a comfortable curl; Aianon sits down on his folded foreclaws. |
Author: cardistry | Brilliance appears, his aura turned down to a glimmer. |
Author: yovahs_kisses | Micaiah shows up a few seconds later. |
Author: truthwright | Then Kas, with Petaal curled up on his shoulder as a white fennec fox. |
Author: deslandes | The Beast, in human shape. |
Author: pythbox | Sue, with Ivy tucked away, and Jellybean sucking on a square purple lollipop. |
Author: thaumobabble | Glass looks at all of them, and then she peers at Micaiah and Jellybean more closely.
"Is there - something you two and maybe Harley and none of the others so far - have in common?" |
Author: pythbox | Jellybean looks at Micaiah. |
Author: yovahs_kisses | Micaiah looks at Jellybean. |
Author: pythbox | "Well, there's the obvious thing," says Jellybean. |
Author: thaumobabble | "I'm new," Glass reminds them. |
Author: pythbox | "Yeah, I just - " and he glances at Harley. |
Author: manofmyword | [We should probably have most of this conversation by brainphone,] says the Joker. [We're not a kid-friendly bunch when you start talking history. Obvious thing is, Micaiah and Jellybean have never been raped.] |
Author: thaumobabble | [...Oh.]
Glass swallows, and looks at Harley again.
[...I think that attractor has decided they're probably inaccessible. It hasn't decided that about Harley.] |
Author: her_imperial_radiance | Elspeth swallows and rocks Harley in her arms. |
Author: manofmyword | [Not surprised,] says the Joker. [What about the one for shitty childhoods, is that one passing him by?] |
Author: gunpowdergelatine | Queenie arrives. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | And last of all, so does Alice. |
Author: thaumobabble | [It's... I don't want to ascribe emotions to this phenomenon. It's not mad about being thwarted, it doesn't hate him, but it's - circling. I think his childhood is blocked off as safe, now, but the attractor was - changed, postponed, it doesn't look absent, it looks patient.] |
Author: cardistry | [Sounds about right to me,] says Brilliance. |
Author: her_imperial_radiance | "Can I do anything about it? Can anyone?" asks Elspeth quietly. |
Author: thaumobabble | [...I don't think you can. I think he could. I don't think it's in his - nature, to do it, though. He's safe at home. He's safe anyplace you'd bring him. I think he's eventually going to wander away and get into trouble and you won't make anything better by trying too hard to stop him,] Glass murmurs. |
Author: pythbox | "Love you Elsie," says Harley Andrea, snuggling into Elspeth's arms. |
Author: her_imperial_radiance | "I love you too," murmurs Elspeth. |
Author: thaumobabble | Glass shivers once and turns her attention to the deck-in-general. She pauses her eyes over Jellybean and Micaiah again. [...You've got different... reasons on top of the commonality,] she observes slowly. |
Author: pythbox | [Whatcha mean?] wonders Jellybean. |
Author: thaumobabble | [I think you got out of it just because you landed in a world where if you get magic it happens young, and then you got magic,] says Glass. [It's almost completely causal, not whatever I'm seeing - I mean, I can see the attractor, but I don't see signals about why it's not in operation on you. Micaiah's is being held off for higher-layer reasons.] She peers at him. [Which aren't here.] |
Author: yovahs_kisses | [Well, where are they, then?] |
Author: thaumobabble | [I don't know.] She turns around on the spot slowly, peering at the rest of the attendees of the party in case they're there.
[It's Angela. Something to do with her. But it's high-level, it's not something she did... Hey, Angela, over here.] |
Author: jovahs_heiress | Angela drifts over and puts her wing around her Micaiah. [Hmm?] |
Author: thaumobabble | Glass peers at the pair of them together, occasionally looking at the other Jokers for points of comparison. |
Author: yovahs_kisses | Micaiah snuggles contentedly into his angel's wing, flaring his aura (innocence innocence innocence) a little. |
Author: thaumobabble | [...I don't know your story and I'm sure I could put this better if I did, but what I see is a lot like - Shell Bell's special circumstances. Angela was a certain way, and you were supposed to meet and be together, and you needed to - suit her.] |
Author: jovahs_heiress | [...What did I miss?] |
Author: yovahs_kisses | ...Micaiah hugs himself and leans on Angela and appears Generally Upset. |
Author: thaumobabble | Glass summarizes for Angela what she missed. |
Author: jovahs_heiress | [I - oh, love,] sighs Angela, hugging her Micaiah and peering into his thoughts to see what the matter is in more detail. |
Author: yovahs_kisses | Does that mean that if he had been she couldn't have loved him because that is terrible, that is the worst thing, why is that true. |
Author: jovahs_heiress | [Oh, love. I don't know. I don't know what she's seeing.]
And she summarizes for Glass the story of how they met. |
Author: thaumobabble | [I think,] Glass says, picking her words carefully, after she's heard this story, [that something about - the ways it would've changed you, the person it would've made you - would have - thrown off the way Angela's template attractors are trying to interact with stuff about your world. I'm not sure if you couldn't have wound up together. It could have affected something else. But I don't think it would've been as easy for you to be together, if you'd fallen into the attractor.] |
Author: her_imperial_radiance | [Imagine,] says Elspeth softly, [if instead of you, she'd met another Joker under the exact same circumstances. How do you imagine that would've gone?] |
Author: yovahs_kisses | Micaiah thinks about the other Jokers.
Then he snuggles into Angela's wing and cries. |
Author: pythbox | "Sad," Harley Andrea observes. |
Author: her_imperial_radiance | "Glass is telling us about some grownup things," Elspeth murmurs to Harley, petting his hair. "It won't help you to hear them right now." |
Author: pythbox | He yawns agreeably. |
Author: jovahs_heiress | [I was so young then, so sheltered,] Angela says. [It was a challenge to adjust even to you. I was always on the - naiver end of the Bell spectrum, especially back when I saw Jovah's hand on everything.] She swallows. [If you had been any farther away from - me, my understanding of the world - then I might have found the glow in our Kisses as incomprehensible as I later found Ithiel's deformities, I might have come to my crisis of faith earlier, and I don't know what I would have done about you, then, if I hadn't loved you as quickly as I did and then I didn't believe that we were divinely intended.] |
Author: yovahs_kisses | ...well then.
Micaiah continues crying.
He loves her so much, and even though it didn't happen, it hurts that this one little thing could have come between them. |
Author: jovahs_heiress | She hugs him. [I'm so sorry, my love.] |
Author: yovahs_kisses | Hug. Hug hug hug. Hug hug cry hug. |
Author: thaumobabble | [...Maybe I should be more. Judicious about saying things? No one should rely on anything I say, I'm bewildered about everything, I just keep being inclined to say stuff.] |
Author: manofmyword | [Go ahead and say stuff,] says the Joker. [We wanna hear it, even if it's gonna do - that.] |
Author: yovahs_kisses | Micaiah nods, sniffling. |
Author: thaumobabble | [Okay... you three,] she gestures at the Joker and Queenie and Ghosty, [are all a cluster up to a point, then you branch off, I think most everything after you two died and you met Stella is regular causality and not meta-causality except for the fact that you all did get to meet everyone else. The meeting each other thing is mediated by meta-causality but since I only seem to be able to make pronouncements about people I'm looking at I don't think I can help us locate more of anybody... Insofar as you're the same you're all also template-y. I think Harley was going to go through a story like yours but the attractor is thwarted, more thoroughly than the other ones I mentioned.] |
Author: manofmyword | [Yep,] says the Joker. [Peas in a snuggly little pod, that's us.] He gives each of Queenie and Ghosty a kiss on the cheek. |
Author: thaumobabble | [The rest of you don't cluster much. There's a little bit, with the ones from Earth, but not a lot; I think you're - very portable, so a lot of pull is going towards putting the ones outside that template cluster in places where you can meet Bells.] |
Author: endragoned | [Portable,] laughs Ansharil. [That is one word for it.]
[It is a good word,] says Aianon, petting his dragon's nose. |
Author: thaumobabble | [You two,] says Glass, pointing at the pair, [are weird. Kas and Petaal are two because that's a thing in the world, Sue and Ivy are two for regular-causality reasons, I think you're two because the template couldn't decide which species to land in!] |
Author: endragoned | Ansharil laughs. The ground shakes a little. Aianon giggles along. |
Author: thaumobabble | Glass peers at Kas next.
Then she calls Amariah over. |
Author: dark_light | [What's up?] Amariah asks, appearing beside her boyfriend. |
Author: thaumobabble | Glass absently explains the exercise underway while she peers at Amariah and Kas. And then she chews her lip a bit and says, [There's a weak attractor in Bells to find our - intended significant others - attached to useful resources; I think that's why Kas can read the alethiometer like it says in the Bellbook. It also plays to some template strengths - he didn't have to be as good at it as he is, but even if he weren't a true intuitive reader he'd still be good at it.] |
Author: truthwright | Kas grins. |
Author: yovahs_kisses | (Micaiah has slowly stopped crying and is now just snuggling his angel.) |
Author: jovahs_heiress | (Angela is snuggling right back.) |
Author: thaumobabble | [Do the rest of you with Bells want to get them so I can see more about how the grouping works?] Glass asks. [You guys are more popular among the Bell template than my wives are, and I'm not sure why... it might be because you're so portable, but it's not like the Sherlocks and Tonies are inflexible...] |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Sure," says Alice, and he brainphones Stella. [Hey, Glass is finding out about template stuff, wanna come get stared at?] |
Author: cardistry | Brilliance likewise summons Aurora. |
Author: endragoned | Ansharil notifies Sarion. |
Author: deslandes | Beast contacts Rose. |
Author: pythbox | Sue pushes a summary to Aegis and Jellybean brainphones Cam. |
Author: autokinetic | Aegis is the first to appear; she lands in midair and floats down, opting to sit on Sue's shoulders. |
Author: self_composed | Stella teleports in, looking dubious. |
Author: small_magics | Sarion walks, elfy aura giving a peculiar quality to her gait. |
Author: beheld_beauty | Rose appears presently, carrying a napping Céleste using her shoulder as a pillow, and pecks her husband on the cheek. |
Author: lifes_sake | Cam teleports in, leans on Jellybean as casually as though Jellybean were a wall, and looks expectantly at Glass. |
Author: incanted | Aurora has to disentangle herself from Lexi, but eventually makes her way to the group, too. |
Author: thaumobabble | Glass stares at them all.
[The metacausality that keeps bringing Bells and Jokers together is strong but it's not much anchored in any single template,] she concludes. [If there were a template, I think it'd be Stella and Alice, but - it's not, really, there's just no pull to meet in that way or to have a similar sort of relationship.] |
Author: pythbox | [That makes sense,] says Jellybean, putting his arm around Cam's waist and kissing his cheek. [I mean, we're us.] |
Author: thaumobabble | [I don't know any of you very well, but you have extremely strong attractors, even if they can be bent into a variety of shapes; a specific way to meet Bells just doesn't happen to be one of those attractors,] says Glass. |
Author: beheld_beauty | [There are some regularities. They are all older than us corresponding Bells,] says Rose. [By a little or by a lot.] |
Author: thaumobabble | [I think that's mostly a minor default thing, plus a combination of Bells tending to be young when we get into a life stage where meeting intended-people is part of our attractor set, and some of the Joker attractors being compatible with being very old - especially if a lot of that time can be spent in unpleasant circumstances.] |
Author: endragoned | Aianon laughs. |
Author: pythbox | [I don't mean not having attractors makes sense for us in general,] says Jellybean. [Just that it makes sense we don't have strong ones for the way our relationships work, even when they're with a bunch of the same other template. Well... except for the retirees, you guys all had that thing with the Bat.] |
Author: thaumobabble | [I don't know you guys,] Glass reiterates. [This conversation, the I remind you extremely confusing stuff I can see about your attractors, and the contents of the Bellbook, are what I know about you. If this makes sense to you because of something about your personality, you are going to have to explain it. I'd have a much better chance at figuring out how you all diverge from the personality template than saying anything about what it's like without being perturbed.] |
Author: pythbox | ...Jellybean shrugs helplessly.
[I don't know, it's hard to put into words,] he says. [It's... kind of like what you said about us being portable? Somebody help me out here.] |
Author: cardistry | [I think that how our relationships work depends a lot on details and circumstances,] Brilliance contributes. [And that that's not something you could change easily without changing who we are.] |
Author: manofmyword | [Me and Ghosty and Queenie are all pretty much the same story down to a sneeze, before I found Milliways,] says the Joker. [It's kind of a chicken-and-egg question whether that's because or why we all fell out with Batsy pretty much the same way, though. Does the Bellbook have Batsy in it, or do you want storytime?] |
Author: thaumobabble | [It mentions her only in brief summary. I'm not supposed to give her coins. Let's hear the story.] |
Author: manofmyword | [Once upon a time,] the Joker begins, [when I was younger and prettier, I met this lady who liked to dress up as a bat and beat and/or scare the shit out of criminals. I killed some people and blew up some stuff, all to get her attention so she'd turn some'a that lovely violence my way. Worked like a charm, too. She had me locked up and then I started dreaming my way to Milliways and I'm pretty sure the rest is history. Same deal for Ghosty and Queenie, but instead of finding Milliways they kept at it until they died.] |
Author: thaumobabble | Glass peers at the retirees again.
[Queenie and Ghosty differ by what happened when they died. Origin and the world Queenie came from were both hooked up to Downside all along, though - I think you found Milliways because otherwise you would have been a straight-up duplicate of Queenie. At least in terms of things that matter to your persons - she has a minor attractor that's on for her, she shares it with Micaiah and Beast so I assume that's the Voice attractor - but she didn't know about him, right? So it wouldn't have counted for much. I don't think our multiverse likes perfect duplicates, at least not interacting ones - you would never have run into each other till you'd accumulated distinctions, at least minor ones.] |
Author: manofmyword | The Joker chuckles. |
Author: thaumobabble | "Your attractors have a different character from Bell attractors, some of them," muses Glass. "You've got the same, intense, invariable undercurrent through all of you. We have our necessities split up between - more traits, which aren't indivisible, which can interact in ways that weaken each other under difficult circumstances. The analogy I want to make is that Bells all cast the same sillhouette but Jokers are all made of the same material. Does that make sense?" |
Author: manofmyword | "Y'know," says the Joker, "it really, really does." |
Author: beheld_beauty | Rose laughs. "What of the Sherlocks and Tonies?" |
Author: thaumobabble | "They..." Glass contemplates this, nibbling her lip. "Come out of the same mold. Their templates are making their circumstances do most of the work of pulling them into shape, instead of making them turn out the same way in spite of where they wind up; that might even be why so many of them come from that one worldfamily. If you kidnapped a baby would-be Tony and brought her up in atypical circumstances I have no idea what would happen, but I'm sure Harley's going to be one of you." |
Author: manofmyword | "Mm, that's good to know." |
Author: lifes_sake | "Hey," says Cam, "perhaps you can answer the age old question: why am I girls?" |
Author: thaumobabble | Glass blinks at him.
"Being a girl is a strong Bell default, but the template works - obviously - just fine in a boy, too," she says. "You probably won't be the only one forever but I think you'll always be a minority." |
Author: gunpowdergelatine | Queenie giggles. |
Author: luminous_regnant | Golden wanders by. "I hear you are reading templates." |
Author: bellfounding | "I heard the same thing," says Pattern. "How come we weren't invited?" |
Author: thaumobabble | "I was looking at the Jokers first," explains Glass. "...Huh, Pattern, you and the Joker are from the same world but you are not at all attached. I think metacausally you being from the same place was almost an afterthought." |
Author: manofmyword | "Not surprised," says the Joker. |
Author: bellfounding | "Yeah, me either, what with us never having met and barely interacting," says Pattern. "Can you answer the age-old question of which Bell is the template? I act like it's me, but I don't have a mental opacity..." |
Author: thaumobabble | "...You, and Golden, and Stella all have claims on different layers to being the template," says Glass slowly. "On the - the top layer it's Golden. Then Stella a layer down from there - they're weirdly interdependent, and then we all branch out from them in a dozen directions. And then - you're kind of an afterthought here too, I'm sorry, I can't think of a better way to put it - you're close to template baseline but - backwards. You're not the original Bell, you're the modal Bell. You're very close to the essence of Bells but we didn't start there, we started there-and-there in a weird confusing metacausal way -" She waves at Golden and Stella - "and the contingent extras got replaced as we propagated to other worlds." |
Author: manofmyword | (Aww.) |
Author: bellfounding | "Dammit." |
Author: thaumobabble | "There's nothing stopping you from acquiring features going forward by ordinary causal means," adds Glass, "but I don't see a particular attractor for it." |
Author: luminous_regnant | "If I'm the - or a - template, then why do I have the only unique significant other?" |
Author: thaumobabble | "That... is... a hard question," says Glass, squinting at her. "It might be easier if I got a look at him. Without, my guess is... something like... okay, some templates are attached to other templates. The Obadiah template is attached to Tony, for instance," she realizes aloud, "Bells' parents are attached to us, Bats are attached to Jokers, in each case one template is leading and the other is following. Bells and Sherlocks-and-Tonies, and Bells and Jokers, are sort of attracted to each other - I don't mean in the obvious sense, I mean in the template sense - but there's not a leader-follower relationship except in the obvious causal sense that Bells make and follow through with more plans. Edward is attached to you, but not strongly enough for the rest of us to have copies, and his template doesn't independently travel, insisting on cropping up in lots of places. I think that could change - although what 'change' means when this isn't working by anything I'd recognize as time I can't tell you - but right now he's a weak template attached to a very strong template, and that means he would only show up again if a stronger template didn't take his - place." |
Author: manofmyword | The Joker snorts. |
Author: luminous_regnant | Golden casts an exasperated look in her employee's direction. |
Author: thaumobabble | "I don't know what template strength means," Glass hastens to add. "Not with so few examples, not when I'm so new at this." |
Author: self_composed | "Do you see anyone here who has a strong template and isn't duplicated so far?" asks Stella. |
Author: thaumobabble | "We're the strongest template here. The Jokers are second, I don't know how to interpret the gaps but I don't think it's a particularly wide margin... Sherlocks-and-Tonies-as-sets are next, the singlets aren't particularly strong-looking to me... Actually, no, Sherlock singlet looks like there might be something major on a high layer, but this particular sort of Sherlock singlet doesn't have a lot of force. Libbies are strong but not as strongly magnetized to us as either of those, but they are a little bit... and also to Sherlocks..." She has to look harder to get the other results. "Chainsaws, Annas, Matildas, all reasonably strong templates, not too attached to us... Matildas have a weak magnetism to Jokers, I think Harley was slated to meet one, should keep an eye on that world..." She squints at Lexi, where she's hanging out with Liselen. "We might find more of us with twins. If we do they'll be Lexis." She scans the room again. "...And I'm not sure, but I think... Kanim and Lazarus could appear again." |
Author: lifes_sake | [Hey Tilly, Glass thinks a Matilda's going to appear in the world Elspeth got Harley out of. Should any intervening happen?] |
Author: pythbox | (Jellybean grins a little.) |
Author: withmypowers | [Um... probably not,] says Tilly. [We seem to manage pretty well on our own. I'd worry if she turned seven and hadn't met a Jenny yet.] |
Author: lifes_sake | [Okay. I'll ask Jane to keep an eye on that.] |
Author: withmypowers | [Thanks.] |
Author: luminous_regnant | Golden is chatting pleasantly with Juliet, over here. |
Author: calendarofcrime | Steel is eavesdropping. |
Author: cross_and_bow | "...so I think there must be something weird about how translation interacts with magic, because otherwise there's no reason for whatever Glass speaks to translate a word for particular sort of magic user as 'witch' - hi, Steel, what's up?" |
Author: calendarofcrime | "Oh, do continue." |
Author: cross_and_bow | Juliet laughs. "So Amariah's a witch, and Golden's a witch, and Glass is a witch among other things, and the first two you can explain by the fact that they're both from Earths where English is spoken, but your language - super pretty, by the way - is matching up one of the kinds of magic user Glass is to the same word, and other kinds to other words, and I popped into Milliways for a second to check and started talking to a random person about it and he heard 'witch' in both cases too even when I used your language. It's weird. And Cam's a wizard, which matches word-wise with a kind of magic you have here, too, even though the execution is different, and Aurora's a sorceress but she just made up calling herself that so I don't know how to count it." |
Author: luminous_regnant | "Translation magic is indeed a mystery," says Golden. "I'm not sure how to go about solving it." |
Author: calendarofcrime | "Interesting," says Steel. "Does it need solving?" |
Author: luminous_regnant | "Well, otherwise we won't know why it's happening," laughs Golden. "It doesn't seem urgent for any practical reasons." |
Author: calendarofcrime | She contemplates the question.
Then she says, "Why not ask Glass?" |
Author: cross_and_bow | "Do you suppose that's the kind of thing her aura-sense can do?" wonders Juliet. |
Author: calendarofcrime | "I think there is one obvious way to find that out, and no obvious downside to trying." |
Author: cross_and_bow | "Yeah, fair enough. Hey, Glass!" |
Author: thaumobabble | Glass appears and kisses her wife and says, "What's up?" |
Author: luminous_regnant | "There are some odd regularities in how various languages are magically translated into one another and we were wondering if you could shed light on the subject," says Golden. |
Author: thaumobabble | "Uh. Hm. Say some of the words?" Glass asks. |
Author: cross_and_bow | "Witch, witch," says Juliet, switching between languages, "wizard, wizard, sorceress, sorceress." |
Author: thaumobabble | "And you only just noticed this because the local language has words for those things and isn't English. Hmmmmm." Glass nibbles her lip, closes her eyes. "Witch, witch, witch - There might be a - no, I can't really make sense of it. I'm still figuring out how I work now." |
Author: calendarofcrime | Sherlock kisses her anyway. |
Author: thaumobabble | Kissees! |
Author: luminous_regnant | "What were you going to say? I promise not to take it as an irrefutable fact of the multiverse." |
Author: thaumobabble | "I was going to say, meta-language," says Glass, "but I have no idea what that would mean." |
Author: calendarofcrime | "Can it not just be essentially a coincidence, deriving from the fact that the kinds of magic user in question don't have direct counterparts in the various worlds but the magic chose to translate the terms anyway?" |
Author: thaumobabble | "Nnnno, I think it's not that - not on the level I'm seeing through aura, anyway, that might be what we'd find on a causal level. There's some sort of reason wizards get the same terminology as Cam and witches the same as Amariah or Golden." |
Author: cross_and_bow | "There's witches on my world too," Juliet adds. "Just, I'm not one." |
Author: thaumobabble | Glass nods. "And it wouldn't be just as good to call them sorcerers-in-my-language, and when you pentagon the language you know that, and Milliways knows that." |
Author: calendarofcrime | "Do we trust their judgment?" wonders Steel. |
Author: thaumobabble | "I'm not at all sure. It doesn't seem to be making any egregious mistakes?" offers Glass. "...I think there's a reason we have all-male wizards and Amariah has all-female witches, I think we'd never find the reverse case but I don't know why." |
Author: calendarofcrime | "Interesting again." |
Author: cross_and_bow | "Those words in English do have some gendered connotations, in those directions," muses Juliet. "I think in my world it's technically gender-neutral, anyone can learn the magic, but women are somewhat more likely to use the word 'witch' - I don't know for sure, I haven't met many of these people in person and my written sources are not overwhelmingly reliable." |
Author: luminous_regnant | "There isn't another word for the phenomenon in English on Aurum, and among people who are clued in to it being a general phenomenon - which is most people without their heads in the sand, at this point - it's gender-neutral, but historically media of various sorts which has fictitious varieties of magic-user gender-biases the words like that." |
Author: thaumobabble | "English, or some distilled meta-version of it, could easily be the metalanguage I'm hypothesizing," says Glass. |
Author: calendarofcrime | "How many languages are spoken among the peal?" |
Author: luminous_regnant | "We usually speak English when we're just talking to each other. We've picked up different sets for use at home," says Golden. "I know all languages on my Earth with a non-negligible speaking population." |
Author: cross_and_bow | "I speak a bunch of demonic languages," says Juliet. "Not so much human ones, I'm starting with tidying up the underworld before I address the more run-of-the-mill problems with Sunshine." |
Author: luminous_regnant | "Sarion speaks an Elvish language and a Thilanushinyel common tongue, Amariah picked up a witch language that she didn't originally speak fluently but added once she had access to coins, Aegis speaks recognizable English and a slightly less recognizable form called 'Stark' that was centrally standardized in Peace's history, Shell Bell has an accent and different idioms here and there but speaks intelligible English to us standard-Earthlings, Rose speaks something mutually intelligible with but not identical to Earth French and many of the other languages on her world have similar parallels including one that's close to English, Cam has his magic language which it turns out we can't use for magical purposes probably because we acquired it as adults, and Angela speaks Samarian and when she got coins she added Edori." |
Author: calendarofcrime | "So English is by far the commonest native language among Bells," Sherlock concludes. "Cause or effect, I wonder?" |
Author: cross_and_bow | "I think it's a consequence of us generally coming from Earths," says Juliet. "And generally being born in the United States when we do. I'm not sure why Rose came from Sorta France instead of Sorta England; maybe since Sorta England never colonized Sorta America in Rêverie there was no pull to the language above and beyond the pull to the country." |
Author: luminous_regnant | "Overwhelmingly born in the same town, too," says Golden, "except for you, Juliet - I believe you hypothesized that you were pulled to Sunnydale by the Hellmouth attracting interesting things to itself? - and Shell Bell, on whose world I believe the location of Forks is some feet underwater." |
Author: calendarofcrime | "A fascinating bunch, you Bells. Are there any interesting consistencies among those not from Earths?" |
Author: luminous_regnant | "Are we counting Rose and her Sorta Earth?" |
Author: calendarofcrime | "Let's say yes." |
Author: cross_and_bow | "Rose, Sarion, and Angela have married parents. But Glass doesn't, and Amariah does." |
Author: thaumobabble | "I think the divorced-parents attractor tries to work through regular causality when it can, and it backs off when it can't." |
Author: luminous_regnant | "No very strong regularities that appear predominantly in unEarthly Bells," says Golden. "The non-Earths aren't even all magic; there's not a speck of the stuff natively in Samaria." |
Author: calendarofcrime | "However do they manage without it?" |
Author: luminous_regnant | "Better than Shell Bell's world did," says Golden. "Origin and Peace are also natively non-magical, although Peace has by far the highest technology and Jane is only by the barest technical definition not magic. This world also seems to have much commoner magic than anywhere else. A lot of Earths have it but only a handful of people know it exists." |
Author: calendarofcrime | "How peculiar," says Steel. "I almost think I'd like to visit some of these places." |
Author: cross_and_bow | "There are some cautions about visiting Alethia, Aurum, and Samaria, everywhere else is more or less freely visitable with Jane online," says Juliet. "Alethia is safe if you wish to not acquire a daemon - or if you want one - and the wish, Minus discovered, only lasts about a week. Aurum has this problem with vampires and werewolves falling in eternal irrevocable love with people, but you can avoid that if you see Golden's precog before anyone else and have her check you over. Samaria is not public about magic and doesn't have all that great a place for visitors to hang out, so you need a cover story or to go about invisibly." |
Author: calendarofcrime | "Noted," says Steel. |
Author: cross_and_bow | "Minus's daemon is gone now. So if you wind up with one accidentally - and if it's sad about that - then you don't have to keep it. But it's probably best to just avoid getting one if you mean to visit Alethia." |
Author: thaumobabble | "I don't completely understand that business. I saw Pathalan, and Petaal, but I'm not - at all - sure what to make of them." |
Author: cross_and_bow | "They're external souls," says Juliet. "Alethia seems to feel very strongly that people should have them, so if you go in unprotected you'll get one, and it's a star to not. That's how Ivy happened - she was on purpose - and Minus had Steph, for a while, but she was miserable. Sherlock self-loathing problems. I never got to meet her." |
Author: thaumobabble | "...Sherlock self-loathing problems." |
Author: cross_and_bow | "...Is that not universal? I guess yours doesn't have the usual reason or the unusual reason..." |
Author: thaumobabble | Glass turns towards her wife and peers at her, and glances around for comparison at other visible Sherlocks scattered around the room.
"Oh," she murmurs. "There it is. I didn't know. It's only a little bit, next to some of the others... Oh, honey." |
Author: calendarofcrime |
Steel spreads her hands.
"It doesn't trouble me very much," she says quietly. |
Author: thaumobabble | Glass hugs her anyway. |
Author: calendarofcrime | Hug. |
Author: cross_and_bow | "Mine didn't have it for a while. When he didn't have his soul. And then he took it back, and I tried when I did the merger wish, to insert the soul without the self-loathing, but it's apparently impossible, as Steph illustrated - either that or I wished it wrong, because the coin went, I don't know - and now he's attached to keeping the soul, even though..." She shrugs, looks at her feet. |
Author: calendarofcrime | "...Would you like a hug?" |
Author: cross_and_bow | "If hugs helped appreciably I'd be all better now," says Juliet wryly. "It's him I'm worried about; I'm going to go on being intermittently upset till something gives." |
Author: calendarofcrime | "Aha." |
Author: thaumobabble | "It's a very insistent attractor," murmurs Glass. "It prefers to disguise itself with normal causality. When it can't it will hang around anyway. I'm not sure if there's a way other than - brute causal force of some kind - to make it go." |
Author: calendarofcrime | "Brute causal force?" |
Author: thaumobabble | "Minus didn't have it, for a while. There's nothing preventing that. It just takes - drastic measures, apparently soul-removal is at least one way, I can't see if there are more." |
Author: calendarofcrime | "I see." |
Author: thaumobabble | "Oh, honey," sighs Glass again. |
Author: luminous_regnant | "My husband has a little problem with that, but I don't know how closely the manifestations resemble each other; he's not a Sherlock." |
Author: calendarofcrime | "And I have never met your husband." |
Author: luminous_regnant | "He avoids these parties. He's not fond of being around people who closely resemble me without being me. Cam is all right, though. If you decide to tour the world and Alice gives you the all-clear regarding wolves and unmated vampires you might encounter, you could meet him if you so chose." |
Author: calendarofcrime | "I will keep it in mind." |
Author: lifes_sake | Cam is over here, being idly telekinetic with one of the temporarily harmless fire-flowers. He was briefly talking to Carinna but then she scampered off. |
Author: calendarofcrime | Now there is a Sherlock watching him. |
Author: lifes_sake | "...Hullo, Steel. What's up?" |
Author: calendarofcrime | "Everyone seems to ask me that. My lurking abilities must be deteriorating." |
Author: lifes_sake | "If you're trying to sneak up on people you'll have to try a less paranoid template with less magic." |
Author: calendarofcrime | "I sense a challenge." |
Author: lifes_sake | Cam laughs. "Well, I can tell you it won't work on Aurora if she's got her aura out, and not on Golden with her super-senses, and probably not on Sarion either, although if she determines that you're trying not to be noticed she might politely ignore you. Anybell else it'll depend on their attention and what powers they're deploying right then. And if you like hide-and-seek where one or more parties are egregiously cheating, try Pattern, she has a stealth aura feature." |
Author: calendarofcrime | "It is charming," says Sherlock, "how you assume I will not also cheat." |
Author: lifes_sake | "I did say one or more. I would love to see how what you have stacks up against Pattern's ninja aura." |
Author: calendarofcrime | "Should I suggest it to her, do you think?" |
Author: lifes_sake | "Why not?" |
Author: calendarofcrime | Smiling slightly, she follows the forest to wherever Pattern might have got to. |
Author: bellfounding | Pattern might have gotten to over here, but she's sure not obvious. |
Author: calendarofcrime | "I perceive that a game of hide-and-seek will not be necessary to test this particular interaction," says Sherlock, looking directly at the place that Pattern is. |
Author: lifes_sake | "Pattern?" Cam asks. "Why are you ninjaing right now?" |
Author: bellfounding | Pattern un-ninjas. "Felt like it," she says. "Wasn't talking to anybody, wanted a moment to think but didn't want to go home for it. What's up?" |
Author: calendarofcrime | "Cam wondered if I would be able to find you while you were engaging in stealth. It seems I can." |
Author: bellfounding | "How'd you do it?" |
Author: calendarofcrime | "The royal family of the Enchanted Forest has a connection to the forest that lets us do various useful things. Only the reigning monarch has full access, but heirs and descendants can manage little tricks. Mine is finding. Finding people, finding objects, finding my way, finding a shortcut." |
Author: bellfounding | "Oh. So you knew where I was, but you couldn't directly detect me?" |
Author: calendarofcrime | "That is an accurate summary." |
Author: bellfounding | "Now we know how that works. I guess the forest doesn't count as something with perception that my aura can refuse to permit." |
Author: calendarofcrime | "That is one possibility." |
Author: bellfounding | "You have another hypothesis?" |
Author: calendarofcrime | "It is also possible that the forest is better at knowing what is in it than you are at telling it not to." |
Author: lifes_sake | "Hey forest," says Cam experimentally in the Speech. |
Author: calendarofcrime | "What are you doing?" says Steel. This is the only response. |
Author: lifes_sake | "Seeing if the forest'll talk to me. Either it's not a coherent entity by itself and I'd have to address an individual tree, or it is feeling unfriendly, or stuff on this world doesn't talk even as much as stuff on other non-Syntropy worlds tends to." He turns to the nearest tree. "Hey, tree." |
Author: calendarofcrime | "The forest is not traditionally friendly towards non-residents," says Steel. The tree says nothing. |
Author: lifes_sake | "Hey, tree and/or forest, do you want to talk to Princess Sherlock, I can translate for you," offers Cam. |
Author: calendarofcrime | Tree-and/or-forest continues to ignore him.
"No luck?" says Steel. |
Author: lifes_sake | "Nope. I want to teleport briefly to someplace that isn't this forest and talk to a rock or something to see if it's the forest or the world, can you suggest a destination?" |
Author: calendarofcrime | "The former dragonsbane cultivation site, in the Mountains of Morning." |
Author: lifes_sake | Port.
Cam picks up a pebble.
"Hi, pebble." |
Author: pythbox | "Hi!" says the pebble. "I'm a pebble." |
Author: lifes_sake | "So you are."
Cam ports back to where he was, still holding the pebble. "This talked." |
Author: calendarofcrime | "May I see it?" asks Steel, holding out her hand. |
Author: lifes_sake | Cam hands over the pebble. |
Author: calendarofcrime | Sherlock accepts and studies the pebble. |
Author: lifes_sake | "Uh, on Syntropy, everything talks, trees and stars are as smart as humans and it varies on down from there, stuff wizards talk to gets smarter. On other worlds I've checked out, stuff talks, but nothing is smarter than grass - which is to say incredibly stupid." |
Author: calendarofcrime | "This seems to be an ordinary pebble," says Sherlock. "What did it say?" |
Author: lifes_sake | "It said, 'hi, I'm a pebble', it will not be helping your children with their geography lessons anytime soon." |
Author: calendarofcrime | She laughs. |
Author: lifes_sake | "The Speech is useful even if you aren't a wizard. I haven't been able to make any other Bells wizards, but I think that might be just because they're too old. Aegis is youngest, at fifteen, and even fourteen is pushing it - I was fourteen when I got wizarded up and that's much older than typical. I might be able to wizard the miscellaneous Bellspawn except Dominique, but I don't know if that would get Iggy's attention between worlds, so it'd require thinking about." |
Author: calendarofcrime | "Iggy?" |
Author: lifes_sake | "It's not its real name, but when I was fourteen it pretended to be a rock named Iggy to talk to me. It's sort of an - evil god? It's a Power. And it's really unclear how powerful the Powers are, like, I'd be surprised but not astounded if they could reach across worlds with something like an offworld wizard to get their attention. And every time a new wizard comes to be, it tries to kill them. Jellybean and Matilda saved my life." |
Author: calendarofcrime | "Do not make my children into wizards," Steel requests. |
Author: lifes_sake | "Not on the agenda," agrees Cam. "Although whether you expect Powers to make attempts on their lives or not you probably want them all torchable." |
Author: calendarofcrime | "Yes." |
Author: lifes_sake | "Iggy doesn't usually try very hard - either that or it's got seriously limited resources - and it doesn't try more than once. I have a student, it sent a rabid dog after him, when that was taken care of nothing else happened. And if it's noticed anything I've been doing since pealing and minting it's been quiet about it. I can't really figure it out." |
Author: calendarofcrime | "Forces beyond our control do not necessarily have to act in comprehensible ways." |
Author: lifes_sake | "My long-term plans don't include Iggy continuing to operate beyond my control." |
Author: calendarofcrime | |
Author: bellfounding | "Especially since Syntropy's not Downsideable," agrees Pattern. |
Author: calendarofcrime | "I see." |
Author: bellfounding | "Neither is Alethia. I think Amariah's almost ready to get together a sub-peal and attack that problem." |
Author: calendarofcrime | "I have not yet spoken to Amariah." |
Author: bellfounding | "She's cool. Don't touch her owl." |
Author: calendarofcrime | "Noted." |
Author: lifes_sake | "Her aura reminds anyone who forgets, but she doesn't always remember to have it out, she's not fully public about stuff at home." |
Author: calendarofcrime | Steel nods. She seems disinterested in asking why she should not touch the owl. |
Author: bellfounding | "I saw her over there with Sarion," Pattern says, pointing. |
Author: calendarofcrime | "I will go over there," says Steel. "Thank you." |
Author: dark_light | Amariah is over there! She has remembered to put her aura out; she is witchy and Path is Don't Touch Me. |
Author: small_magics | Sarion is with her! |
Author: calendarofcrime | Steel approaches and observes. |
Author: small_magics | "I See you," Sarion says to her. |
Author: calendarofcrime | "It is evident that you do. I see you also," says Steel, mildly amused. |
Author: dark_light | "Elf greeting," laughs Amariah. "Hi." |
Author: calendarofcrime | "Hello." |
Author: dark_light | "Elves also don't ask questions. Sarion in particular isn't fazed about getting asked things, but if it seems like she's hinting about something she probably is." |
Author: small_magics | "I believe I have typically been found comprehensible to the sort of people who choose to keep company with Bells." |
Author: calendarofcrime | "That is an interesting restriction," says Steel. |
Author: small_magics | "It is not impossible for elves to ask questions. We merely consider it impolite. Demanding." |
Author: dark_light | "When we went to Thilanushinyel we all had tea with another elf and Sarion had to translate. It was funny." |
Author: calendarofcrime | "I can imagine that it was." |
Author: incanted | Aurora's over here chatting with her sister! |
Author: calendarofcrime | So she is!
Steel listens to them. |
Author: incanted | Aurora stops in the middle of summarizing Glass's deviations from template to Lexi. "- and she's gay and - has two wives, hello, one of same." |
Author: lexicality | "Hi, Sherlock," says Lexi, who only uses the nicknames when there is more than one of somebody actually around. |
Author: calendarofcrime | "Hello, Aurora and Lexi." |
Author: lexicality | "What's up?" |
Author: incanted | "Also, my threat sensor thinks you could make my life really unpleasant if you wanted to, which you don't, why does it think that?" |
Author: calendarofcrime | "Because I am me, and we are here, and I probably could if for some reason I needed to." |
Author: incanted | "Well, you don't, Bells are friendly sorts." |
Author: calendarofcrime | "So I've heard. I am married to one," Steel reminds her dryly. |
Author: incanted | "So's Edward, he doesn't want to be anywhere near most of us," snorts Aurora. "How'd you meet your Bell, anyway?" |
Author: calendarofcrime | "Tony and I were sent out questing for a husband. We found her instead." |
Author: incanted | Aurora giggles. "You quest for husbands around here?" |
Author: lexicality | "Did you have to rescue her from a giant or anything, that sounds like the kind of thing that would happen on a quest for somebody to marry," giggles Lexi. |
Author: calendarofcrime | "I did rescue her from a river snake," she recalls. "But that was mainly incidental." |
Author: lexicality | Lexi laughs. "Practically everybody Bells wind up dating is bisexual," she observes. "I wonder why." |
Author: calendarofcrime | "I could not begin to tell you." |
Author: incanted | "Maybe Glass can," laughs Aurora. "But it's probably just baked into the most common templates we date, not us. Edward isn't bisexual." |
Author: calendarofcrime | "By all means, ask my wife." |
Author: incanted | [Hey Glass, over here!] |
Author: thaumobabble | Glass teleports over. She likes being able to do that. "What?" |
Author: incanted | "We obviously vary in sexuality, some," says Aurora, "but we keep dating consistently bisexual templates, except Edward, what's up with that?" |
Author: thaumobabble | "I'd have to look at Edward to tell you why he's not. The other popular templates just don't vary that way like we can," shrugs Glass. "That's not a thing about us - no attractor in Bells means we can't date people who are only attracted to whatever gender we are in the relevant instance." |
Author: calendarofcrime | "We are enlightened," says Steel, kissing Glass. |
Author: thaumobabble | Kisses! "My new party trick is so popular," she remarks. |
Author: calendarofcrime | "Of course it is." Kiss kiss snuggle. "I love you." |
Author: thaumobabble | "I love you." |
Author: incanted | "Married Bells," snorts Aurora, "too cute." |
Author: calendarofcrime | "I object. She is precisely cute enough." |
Author: incanted | Aurora giggles. "Aww." |
Author: thaumobabble | "I think I heard that Shell Bell and Pearl were reputed to be intensely cute and they aren't married," points out Glass. |
Author: incanted | "They're an exception. I think it has to do with the time Shell Bell spent Downside before we fixed it." |
Author: calendarofcrime | "An exception to the rule that only married Bells are adorable? Which Bells are married?" |
Author: incanted | "The rule that married Bells are the cutest. Other ones can be cute too," says Aurora. "Besides you, there's Golden - who is kind of left out of this rule because we barely get to see Edward; Stella and Cam have seen him but haven't weighed in on the cuteness comparison - and there's Rose and Angela." |
Author: calendarofcrime | "I see." |
Author: thaumobabble | "When I was reading metacausality for the Jokers, Aegis appeared in midair and sat on Sue's shoulders," says Glass. "I'm not sure it's as obviously tiered as you're suggesting." |
Author: incanted | "It's more of an in-joke than a rule," shrugs Aurora. |
Author: calendarofcrime | Steel laughs. |
Author: incanted | "I feel like past-watching your wedding," announces Aurora. |
Author: thaumobabble | "Go for it," laughs Glass. |
Author: calendarofcrime | "Certainly." |
Author: incanted | Aurora smiles and closes her eyes.
"Awww," she says. |
Author: calendarofcrime | Steel hugs her wife. |
Author: thaumobabble | Steel's wife hugs her back. "I still have that dress," she muses. |
Author: calendarofcrime | She laughs.
"It was a lovely dress." |
Author: thaumobabble | "Yes." |
Author: incanted | "It's really nice, the way it twinkles," agrees Aurora. |
Author: jovahs_heiress | Angela is over here, talking to Alleluia, who keeps coming to Bellparties when invited in spite of finding them somewhat overwhelming every time. |
Author: calendarofcrime | Steel listens. |
Author: jovahs_heiress | "- in a few years," Angela is saying. "I think I'll leave it up to you if you want to share any of the secrets with your children before then. Of course I'll be happy to make them all torchable with or without informing them, if you're worried Jane will go down again." |
Author: alicornucopia | "She was gone for a decade," Alleluia says. "I wouldn't want to be without one of my children that long, not if I needn't." |
Author: jovahs_heiress | "Then sure, bring them all to the Eyrie and I can take care of it. Steel? Can I help you?" |
Author: calendarofcrime | "I am quietly eavesdropping on all the Bells until they notice me. You are the latest," Steel says dryly. "Hello." |
Author: jovahs_heiress | "Why are you quietly eavesdropping on Bells until you are noticed?" inquires Angela. |
Author: calendarofcrime | "It is a convenient and often informative way to start a conversation." |
Author: alicornucopia | "It's not particularly polite," opines Alleluia. |
Author: calendarofcrime | "Isn't it?" |
Author: alicornucopia | Alleluia shakes her head. "I don't think so." She pauses. "Perhaps things are different here?" |
Author: jovahs_heiress | "Well, I don't mind, and we wouldn't be discussing anything truly private out loud anyway, not at a party," says Angela. |
Author: calendarofcrime | "I consider it no more or less courteous than interrupting your conversation without first finding out what it is about." |
Author: jovahs_heiress | "Well, we were talking about Alleluia's children, but now we have concluded that," says Angela. |
Author: alicornucopia | "I should have asked years ago," says Alleluia, shaking her head. |
Author: calendarofcrime | "I see." |
Author: jovahs_heiress | "Did Glass cover yours yet? It's entirely possible to do it without affecting their growth," Angela says. |
Author: calendarofcrime | "She did." |
Author: jovahs_heiress | "That's good." |
Author: calendarofcrime | "It has also come to my attention that the married Bells are supposedly the most adorable. Do you have a comment on the matter?" |
Author: jovahs_heiress | Angela laughs. "Do you want me to see if Micaiah is busy? We could let you see for yourself." |
Author: calendarofcrime | She nods. |
Author: jovahs_heiress | [Love, someone has been spreading rumors about the cuteness of married Bells.] |
Author: yovahs_kisses | Micaiah giggles over brainphone.
[Not now, my angel,] he says merrily. |
Author: jovahs_heiress | "He's busy," she says. |
Author: alicornucopia | Alleluia shakes her head. |
Author: calendarofcrime | Steel looks inquiringly at Alleluia. |
Author: alicornucopia | "Hmm?" |
Author: calendarofcrime | "You have an opinion?" |
Author: alicornucopia | "Well, it's none of my business, I just don't understand it." |
Author: jovahs_heiress | "It took some adjusting for me too, but that was a long time ago." |
Author: calendarofcrime | "Somehow we manage." |
Author: jovahs_heiress | "Have you met my children?" Angela asks Steel. "The two who come to these parties, at any rate, I think Ariel will be old enough to learn about magic soon but not yet." |
Author: calendarofcrime | "I have not." |
Author: jovahs_heiress | "Would you like to?" |
Author: calendarofcrime | "I would." |
Author: jovahs_heiress | "They're over there with Rose and the rosebuds - oh, and your girls, too, I wonder why they're all girls," says Angela, starting towards the cluster of small Bellspawn. |
Author: beheld_beauty | Rose waves as they approach. |
Author: calendarofcrime | "Mine are all girls for magical reasons, I believe." |
Author: campanas | "Magical reasons?" asks Keziah. |
Author: calendarofcrime | "Their mothers are all girls." |
Author: campanas | "So?" asks Céleste. |
Author: calendarofcrime | "So the magic that created them had only girls to work with." |
Author: campanas | "Why does that mean they're girls?" asks Keziah. |
Author: carillons | "Why wouldn't it?" says Tanalin. "Where would the magic get a boy from?" |
Author: campanas | "I'm going to be mad if those other Mommies have a me and it's a boy," asserts Carinna. |
Author: campanas | "How come?" asks Kiawen. |
Author: campanas | "It would be weird! And I don't have as good ideas for names." |
Author: calendarofcrime | Steel smiles. |
Author: campanas | "Pick me up," says Kiawen to Sherlock. |
Author: campanas | "Ooh," says Keziah. "Mommy, pick me up."
"Me too!" says Céleste. "Me too, Maman." |
Author: beheld_beauty | The Griffins' mothers |
Author: jovahs_heiress | pick up their secondborns. |
Author: calendarofcrime | Steel scoops up her youngest daughter and hugs her. |
Author: self_composed | Stella's over here, talking to Elspeth. |
Author: calendarofcrime | Steel commences lurking. |
Author: her_imperial_radiance | "- in 2019. Now Steel is eavesdropping on us and waiting to see how long it takes us to notice," says Elspeth. "That didn't take very long. Did it, Harley?" |
Author: self_composed | "How much of what you say to him does he understand?" |
Author: her_imperial_radiance | "Up to the limit of his conceptual vocabulary. Which gets bigger the more I talk to and around him. I'm very understandable." |
Author: pythbox | Harley giggles. |
Author: calendarofcrime | "You are," Steel agrees. "What were you saying before?" |
Author: her_imperial_radiance | "I was just telling Stella about how Aurum's Renée adapted to being a vampire," says Elspeth. |
Author: calendarofcrime | "I am interested." |
Author: her_imperial_radiance | "The short version is, she was married to a fellow named Phil, and Alice didn't see her mating to him, so she resisted the idea for a long time, but then a vampire called Patricia mated to Phil. He didn't cheat on Renée, but he did like Patricia and it put a strain on the marriage, and in 2019 they amicably divorced and Renée decided to go ahead and turn. She's not mated; she just gallivants around the world with a couple of friends." |
Author: calendarofcrime | "That sounds like a pleasant outcome." |
Author: her_imperial_radiance | "She's happy, yeah." |
Author: self_composed | "I'm curious about what makes someone mateable - or imprintable - by Aurum standards," explains Stella. "It doesn't seem to be completely random or particularly well-optimized." |
Author: calendarofcrime | "Perhaps we should ask my wife." |
Author: self_composed | "Because she can see templates or because she can see magic?" |
Author: calendarofcrime | "Yes." |
Author: her_imperial_radiance | "I haven't been able to produce utterances about it. Maybe it will be more amenable to what Glass does," says Elspeth. Glass! |
Author: thaumobabble | Here's Glass! |
Author: self_composed | "We were curious if you can tell us how vampire mates are chosen. And werewolf imprints, for that matter." |
Author: thaumobabble | Glass looks at the available examples of both phenomena.
"...I'm not sure," she says. "I don't think it's consistently the same on high layers, but there is something going on, on high layers. On low layers the werewolves are only choosing from among people who they could have children with were they so inclined and the vampires are only choosing people with compatible orientations, but I can't make out any patterns in what else is governing this." |
Author: calendarofcrime | "Interesting." |
Author: autokinetic | Aegis is over here, dancing with Alice-of-Aurum for no reason. |
Author: alicornucopia | "Incoming," says Alice. "Hi, Steel!" |
Author: calendarofcrime | "Hello," says Steel. |
Author: autokinetic | "What's up?" asks Aegis. |
Author: calendarofcrime | "I heard you are surprised that my wife has not violently overthrown my mother," says Steel. "Do you care to explain yourself?" |
Author: autokinetic | "I didn't put it like that," Aegis says. "I'm badly socialized but I'm not that badly socialized. Violent overthrow is totally in the Bell repertoire, though, and letting other people run things mostly isn't. Sometimes we just pack up and move, Angela's being patient, I think Rose is completely ignoring monarchs-qua-monarchs, but Glass is the only one who lives in a castle and wears a crown and has someone else in the big chair. So either there's something special going on with Glass, or your mom is a really good or at least a really noninterfering sorta queen, or she was being patient and now you're all Downsided you're looking at some personal upheavals." |
Author: calendarofcrime | "I predict," says Sherlock, "that my mother will continue to be queen for a very long time." |
Author: autokinetic | "And," says Aegis, "that's weird. I'm not saying it can't happen, it's just weird." |
Author: calendarofcrime | |
Author: alicornucopia | Alice departs this area of party in response to some manner of vision. |
Author: autokinetic | Aegis shrugs. She does a casual backflip. |
Author: calendarofcrime | Steel observes Aegis. |
Author: autokinetic | "I bet at least half of us were thinking it, I'm just the one who was tactless enough to say anything." |
Author: calendarofcrime | "I am trying to decide whether or not this is a problem." |
Author: autokinetic | "That I think it or that I might be right?" |
Author: calendarofcrime | "No." |
Author: autokinetic | "What, then?" |
Author: calendarofcrime | "That it is such a prevalent opinion." |
Author: autokinetic | Aegis shrugs. "We figure out how Bells are by seeing what Bells do. We imitate each other some 'cause we're all so cool, but not slavishly or anything. If Glass thinks your mom is the best queen and she pulls a Rose instead of a Shell Bell, or works on something like Amariah trying to unite all the kingdoms of the world before she sits on them collectively, or does something totally novel, we'll all go 'huh' and incorporate it and then wonder whether the next Bell is going to do that. Besides, you're her obvious mint-helper. We'll spot her some coins if you can't keep up, but even if you ignore that she must really love you to have married you, she's not likely to do anything you strenuously object to." |
Author: calendarofcrime | "There are plenty of excellent reasons why she should not violently overthrow my mother," Sherlock agrees. "Among them is the fact that it would not work. Nevertheless, I find the attitude disquieting." |
Author: autokinetic | "Okay, and?" |
Author: calendarofcrime | "Perhaps it is worth considering some of your underlying assumptions." |
Author: autokinetic | "I will when I see what Glass does and I know which assumptions are suspect," says Aegis. "Before today all I knew about your mom's template was that none of your or Iron's alts wanted theirs back from the dead. Maybe yours is special, but I don't know how. Maybe Glass is relevantly unusual, but I don't know how." |
Author: calendarofcrime | |
Author: autokinetic | Aegis shrugs again. "I'm not personally planning to violently overthrow anyone," she offers. "I live in a democracy and I'm a war hero with another war hero's endorsement. I just have to turn sixteen and hire a campaign manager and I'm a shoo-in for Hegemon. Circumstances matter. Maybe this world - did she name it yet? - maybe where we are turns out particularly non-megalomaniacal Bell results. You've been married to her for years, I found out that there were more than one of me for real and not just in a weird dream Sue had months ago by my time, maybe you know more than me." |
Author: calendarofcrime | "I do, in fact, know more about both my wife and my kingdom than you do." |
Author: autokinetic | "So what's it matter what I think? I'm not gonna step on Glass's toes whatever she winds up doing." |
Author: calendarofcrime | "It matters because this is only one of many kingdoms in one of many worlds, and I am sure it is not the only one that is being adequately governed." |
Author: autokinetic | "The outright usurpers among us are Golden and Shell Bell. Both the governments they deposed killed innocent people routinely. Rest of us are orthogonal to politics, space colonists, taking power more naturally," she raises a hand, "or doing diplomacy. Or whatever. I don't think Sarion's settled on a strategy, she's been repairing her brain, she'll probably do something soon, she seems mostly better to me." |
Author: calendarofcrime | "In which case," Sherlock says dryly, "it seems odd to predict that Glass will usurp anything." |
Author: autokinetic | "Is there some secret number of times I have to say that she totally might not do that which will placate you?" |
Author: calendarofcrime | "I already know she is not going to do that." |
Author: autokinetic | "Then I don't get what the problem is." |
Author: calendarofcrime | "Clearly you do not." |
Author: autokinetic | "...Are you gonna explain?" |
Author: calendarofcrime | "I'm not sure I can." |
Author: autokinetic | "Would Glass get it? Because I bet she could explain it to me if she did." |
Author: calendarofcrime | "She might." |
Author: autokinetic | [Hey Glass, your wife is confusing me!] |
Author: thaumobabble | Glass appears. "How so?" she inquires of Sherlock. |
Author: calendarofcrime | "I questioned her about her troubling assumption that you are going to overthrow my mother and she does not seem to comprehend the scope of the problem." |
Author: thaumobabble | "Wait," says Glass, "why is there such an assumption? I'm not going to do that." She thinks for a moment. Then she says, "Aegis, I moved here. On purpose when I was about your age during Marianne's reign." |
Author: autokinetic | "I didn't know that," says Aegis indignantly. "You didn't write in the Bellbook yet." |
Author: calendarofcrime | "It is a problem that the first assumption, absent special circumstances, is that a Bell living in someone else's kingdom will conquer it as soon as possible," says Steel. "It is a problem that that is viewed as the default course of action." |
Author: autokinetic | "Most of us don't live in kingdoms. There's Glass and Sarion and Rose, that's it, Rose is ignoring monarchs and Sarion's been fixing her brain so we don't know yet what her plan is. Angela's got a theocracy with term limits she can wait out, Shell Bell overthrew a technical democracy and Golden a shadow oligarchy thing. Amariah has some clan queens around but she didn't marry one's kid and live with her and I don't think they work like human queens anyway. The default course of action is to find leverage and haul on it. It's just, what that leverage looks like changes world to world." |
Author: thaumobabble | "I don't have a detailed plan yet, but I'm going to resemble Rose more than anyone, I think," says Glass firmly. |
Author: calendarofcrime | Steel shakes her head and kisses her wife. |
Author: autokinetic | "Well, yeah, I didn't know you moved here," says Aegis. |
Author: thaumobabble | "I'm not going to overthrow the king of Linderwall either!" |
Author: autokinetic | "What, seriously, you lucked into adequate hereditary monarchs, like, everywhere?" |
Author: thaumobabble | "Is that so bizarre?" |
Author: autokinetic | "Yes, what the hell, is your entire world made of cotton fucking candy?" |
Author: calendarofcrime | "No." |
Author: autokinetic | "I don't mean literally," says Aegis, rolling her eyes. |
Author: thaumobabble | "...I suppose it's certainly possible that this is a particularly high-quality world." |
Author: calendarofcrime | "The question as I understood it was, does this world fail to contain terrible people who do terrible things? The answer is no." |
Author: autokinetic | "Does your nifty aura thingamabob tell you the cotton candy ratio around here?" Aegis asks Glass. |
Author: thaumobabble | "If it did, that would be much faster than reading a lot of offworld history books... I think I'd need to see more worlds," says Glass. "Just a sec - I'll take a quick tour of the safe-to-visit ones - Jane -"
Glass disappears. |
Author: calendarofcrime | |
Author: thaumobabble | Glass is back five minutes later.
"To a first approximation," she says to Steel, "compared to everywhere else, our world is made of cotton fucking candy. Although Samaria's not too awful." |
Author: calendarofcrime | Steel snorts. |
Author: thaumobabble | "I'm serious. I don't have a lot of fine detail, but those places - especially Sunshine, eugh - are not nice, and I can't really blame the other Bells for expecting me and my closest circle of friends to be the only remotely acceptable people within a stone's throw. That having been said, Aegis," says Glass, "this place is, yes, made of cotton candy, and so are the overwhelming majority of monarchs, and they can go on being so as far as I'm concerned; I have relatively minor work to do. Poor Juliet, yikes, that world..." |
Author: calendarofcrime | |
Author: autokinetic | "Gonna name the place Cotton Candy?" |
Author: thaumobabble | "No, I am not. Honey, are you okay?" |
Author: calendarofcrime | "I - worry - that someday, somebell will overthrow their home government unnecessarily, and none of you will notice." |
Author: autokinetic | "Does it sound to you like it's happened so far?" inquires Aegis. "I mean, Glass didn't take one look at us and say 'whoop, better depose Marianne', did she? And Aurum and Atlantis totally needed the upheaval." |
Author: calendarofcrime | Steel shakes her head. |
Author: thaumobabble | Glass takes her wife's hand. |
Author: calendarofcrime | "If it happens," she says to Aegis, "I expect you will not notice." |
Author: autokinetic | "Well," says Aegis, "okay, what do you want us to do about it?" |
Author: calendarofcrime | "Be sure you understand the situation before you apply your expectations to it." |
Author: autokinetic | "Next time I'll get Glass to check the world's cotton candy ratio first," snorts Aegis. |
Author: calendarofcrime | "That is adequate." |
Author: autokinetic | "So glad to have your approval," snorts Aegis. "So if you're not naming it Cotton Candy what are you going to call it?" |
Author: thaumobabble | "...Chronicle," says Glass after a moment's thought. |
Author: calendarofcrime | |
Author: thaumobabble | "Honey," murmurs Glass. "Oh, I'm glad you didn't meet me when I was fifteen, I was a flippant little thing too - Aegis, can you be serious, I read the note in the Bellbook about you being badly socialized but surely if you're planning to be elected you're working on turning it off?" |
Author: autokinetic | Aegis sighs. "Sue thinks I'm funny," she mutters, and then she composes herself and says, "Steel, we're gonna pay attention, we're not gonna go around dismantling power structures just because they're there, only if there's something wrong with them that isn't patchable." |
Author: calendarofcrime | "Thank you," says Steel. |
Author: autokinetic | "You're welcome," grumbles Aegis, and she floats into the air like a soap bubble, looking for somebody else to talk to. |
Author: calendarofcrime | Steel hugs her wife. |
Author: thaumobabble | Hugs.
"I'm sorry about her. She had an unusual childhood and came out rough around the edges. I think she's working on it." |
Author: calendarofcrime | Hugs.
"All right." |
Author: dark_light | "So yeah," Amariah says to Libby, "I'm accumulating respect as a spell innovator, which doesn't accrue me any political power, not even the way witches do it, but which does get me attention and a sort of respectful wariness that I think will serve me well. I've been in contact with all the queens, now, and that's what I was waiting for before investigating the afterlife; I'm going to grill the alethiometer about what I'll need and what will happen and then collect some help and go for it." |
Author: prima_sequentem | "Best of luck," says Libby. "Let me know if I can help." |
Author: dark_light | "Thanks!" |
Author: thaumobabble | Glass approaches. "Hi, Amariah, hi, Libby. Amariah, you were one of the founding Belltower members?" |
Author: dark_light | "Yeah, me and Shell Bell set it up. Why?" |
Author: thaumobabble | "Well, I just wrote in a profile, but I think the information it asks for was better suited to the times before we could freely travel and share magic," says Glass. "It might be time to revise it." |
Author: prima_sequentem | "Ooh," says Libby. "Profiles." |
Author: dark_light | "Sounds like a plan to me," says Amariah. "Do you think we need the whole peal for making revisions?" |
Author: thaumobabble | "We should probably at least invite everyone, although I don't suppose they'll all drop what they're doing, I think Cam may be in a pile of Tonies at the moment based on where I last saw him." |
Author: prima_sequentem | Libby laughs. |
Author: thaumobabble | Glass invites Bells. A few show up - Shell Bell and Angela and Rose - and the others all pass along their confidence that their alts will come up with something satisfactory. |
Author: dark_light | Amariah reads through Glass's original profile, first. "I like the idea of including aura. Maybe since we turn out to vary in sexuality more than we thought we should have a field for that, too, and optionally throw in how interested we are in, say, being dragged into a heap of Tonies." |
Author: thaumobabble | Glass giggles. "And there are now four of us with children, that belongs in here too." |
Author: jovahs_heiress | "And something about how readily visitable our worlds are. Mine is safe but magic isn't generally known, for example." |
Author: beheld_beauty | "Coin color. Since it seems to track mental opacity so closely, in particular." |
Author: she_sells_seashells | "And this won't be part of the profile but as long as we're talking about how to get new Bells slotted comfortably into the peal there should be some sort of standard checklist. Minting and the safety lecture; enchanting and the skill and the cautions about that; Janegem and an introduction to her." |
Author: thaumobabble | "And I'll be happy to pop briefly into newly found worlds as long as they're safe, and check out the character of the place. I've seen everywhere but Alethia now, and I'm happy to go check Alethia too if someone will spot me a star." |
Author: prima_sequentem | "What kind of character assessment do you do on a world?" wonders Libby. |
Author: thaumobabble | "It apparently falls under my metacausality-sensing aura feature," says Glass. "I can tell things about templates, and apparently entire worlds count. This one is by far the nicest; Aegis put it as 'made of cotton candy'. Sunshine is particularly appalling." |
Author: prima_sequentem | "I wonder if the worlds should get profiles too," she muses. |
Author: thaumobabble | "Maybe, but I get very indistinct senses, and I don't think Cam can talk to the worlds themselves for us. I might get better at reading what I sense over time and then I could potentially generate enough information that it doesn't make sense to just fold it into the Bell profiles." |
Author: prima_sequentem | "I was thinking that world profiles would run more along the lines of - a name, your impression, a list of templates known to be present, important safety information, details about technology and magic levels... they wouldn't only be useful for worlds containing Bells." |
Author: thaumobabble | "If some other people want to invite me to have a look at their worlds, I'll be happy to," says Glass. "But we're talking about the Bellbook, not a hypothetical Worldbook." |
Author: prima_sequentem | "I'll design the Worldbook later, then." |
Author: thaumobabble | "Cool, let me know where I need to show up and what format you want my results in when you've got that. Anyway. And to avoid confusions like the one Aegis had about my mother-in-law being the queen, maybe an entry for tentative expected approach - or past approach, for when you all update your old profiles." |
Author: jovahs_heiress | "And perhaps we no longer need an entry for people with keys to the Belltower, with Jane operating it at her informed discretion. Although literal keys should probably still be kept on hand in case something happens to her again." |
Author: thaumobabble | "And local magic is worth knowing about, and inventing terminology for recurring species is a good idea - I think we're only ever going to see more than one sort-of-thing that needs an invented name if they're named in English. I think English is on some level a meta-language for our multiverse. 'Witch' needs clarification; 'sarion' doesn't."
They continue to fiddle with their profile template until they have something they all like. |
Author: prima_sequentem | Libby thinks this template is very reasonable! |
Author: thaumobabble | Glass inaugurates it. |
Author: jovahs_heiress | Angela follows. |
Author: dark_light | Amariah takes the book next. |
Author: she_sells_seashells | Shell Bell follows suit. |
Author: beheld_beauty | Rose is the last of the committee to add something. |
Author: prima_sequentem | "Very tidy," says Libby. "Who wants to work with me on the Worldbook?" |
Author: thaumobabble | "I will, if you like. Do you anticipate needing much help?" |
Author: prima_sequentem | "It's always nice to get a second opinion on something like this." |
Author: thaumobabble | "Okay then. What are your thoughts?" |
Author: prima_sequentem | "Well, for one thing, has anyone else noticed that the Sunny worlds seem to be twins where everyone else is at most cousins? I wonder if we should be dividing up worlds by family." |
Author: thaumobabble | "Ooh." Glass closes her eyes, thinking. "I should visit the other Sunny worlds, real quick, and see if I can detect that and if there's anything else like it." |
Author: prima_sequentem | "Go for it," says Libby. |
Author: thaumobabble | "Jane," says Glass, and she disappears.
She's back a minute later. "I hate those worlds, I hate them, they're nasty," she says. "They're similar all right, and no others I've checked are that close, but there's a weaker resemblance between Aurum and Eos." |
Author: prima_sequentem | "Interesting. So a 'worldfamily' entry might be a little premature, but I think I'll put one down anyway in case we find more Sunny worlds and run out of cute sun-related things to name them after. Apart from that... a list of common intelligent species would be good, so we have some standardization for species names besides the ones that Bells happen to be. I haven't heard anyone coming up with a term for Aianon's species other than 'demon', for example, and that's also the generic term for nonhumans in the Sunny worlds. And there's some species overlap between this world and Thilanushinyel, as evinced by the two completely different types of dragons chatting over there." |
Author: thaumobabble | Glass nods. "I suspect Aianon's busy - I'll ask Sarion -" Presently she has a reply. "Thilanushinyel demons are also called 'Endarkened', is that taken?" |
Author: prima_sequentem | "Nope. See, this is the kind of thing that would go in a Worldbook." |
Author: thaumobabble | "I can ask Kexan what he'd like to call Chronicle dragons, but he'll probably lob the question to his grandmother; she's the king." |
Author: prima_sequentem | "As long as someone comes up with something at some point." |
Author: thaumobabble | Glass nods. "And we've also got unicorns here that aren't like the one I saw at this party, and elves. And dwarves and giants and all kinds of things, I'm not even sure I know them all, there could easily be some I haven't heard of from sufficiently faraway places." |
Author: prima_sequentem | "I'm not that worried about listing every single species as long as we've got distinct terms for all the ones that interact with the peal. Ooh, and there should be an entry for afterlife situation," she adds. |
Author: thaumobabble | "Syntropy and Alethia," nods Glass. "And maybe distinguish between worlds that were already attached to Downside and will have wakeful people there who Jane didn't wake, versus ones that were added later and will have only sleeping people or ones we've personally attended to." |
Author: prima_sequentem | "Good point," says Libby. "All right. Can you think of anything else?" |
Author: thaumobabble | "Not off the top of my head." |
Author: prima_sequentem | "All right, then," she says. "I'll write a test profile for Eos and see if we catch any bugs."
She thinks a little, then starts writing. Name: Eos
Worldfamily, if applicable: N/A
Primary inhabited planet(s): Earth, Mars
Known intelligent species: Humans
Technology/magic situation: Standard technology level for early 21st century Earth; one kind of transferable magic - minting/wishcoins - and one kind of innate per-person magic - ingots, which are people with single non-duplicated magical powers.
Afterlife situation: Downside world number 74, introduced to Downside post-pealing
Safety rating and notes for visitors: Magic is nonsecret to the population of Earth but individuals may be wary.
Glass's commentary: --
List of inhabiting templates: Bell, Stella; Libby, Libby; Joker, Alice; Chainsaw, Sandy; Anna, Anna. All humans, all mints. Sandy, Alice, and Stella are also ingots. "All right, how's that look?" |
Author: thaumobabble | "It does have that resemblance to Aurum. They're not as close as any two Sunny worlds, but it's not nothing." |
Author: prima_sequentem | "Okay," she says, and she puts 'Eos-Aurum' under Worldfamily. "Pending a better name. Maybe we'll come up with one if we find another cousin." |
Author: thaumobabble | Glass nods. "It's not an unusually nice or unusually mean world. It's exploitable - more than here; Chronicle is nice but doesn't natively lend itself to being cracked open and comprehended, I think, and Eos is fine with that. Most of the Earths I looked at seemed more or less exploitable in this way. It feels more - isolated than some of them. Like - it has features in common with Aurum, but not on the same layer as the Sunnyworlds. On the layer that Sunnyworlds are - using - for resemblance, Eos floats around completely alone and nowhere else I looked at does - though some of them do it differently." |
Author: prima_sequentem | "Interesting," says Libby. She copies this down. |
Author: thaumobabble | "That's a weird layer, actually..." Glass consults her lovely perfect memory. "...Where else is there to visit? Jane, can you just drop me everywhere we have regular interactions with for quick looks?"
She's gone for another minute.
"Yggdrasil has something on that layer, that it shares with all the Sunnyworlds which have it much more weakly, Sunshine weakest of all," she reports. |
Author: prima_sequentem | "Huh. Maybe a 'worldfamily' description isn't going to cut it," says Libby. "It'll do for now, I guess." |
Author: thaumobabble | "And Wellspring is distantly related to Sunnyworlds on a different layer." |
Author: prima_sequentem | "I wonder what the family tree would look like." |
Author: thaumobabble | "I have no idea!" |
Author: prima_sequentem | She laughs. |
Author: thaumobabble | "Milliways does the complete opposite of the Eos-floating thing. I'd say Downside does too, but it doesn't even compare to Milliways." |
Author: prima_sequentem | "That seems logical." |
Author: thaumobabble | "I should really name all these layers, but they don't come in a sensible order to allow for numbering, and I have so little idea what any of them mean." |
Author: prima_sequentem | "Wait on it," Libby suggests. "When you have a better idea of what they mean, you'll have a better idea of how to name them." |
Author: thaumobabble | Glass nods. |
Author: prima_sequentem | "I'll ask my alts to profile their worlds," says Libby, and she conjures a proper Worldbook containing the Eos entry. It has a planet on the cover, and because Libby has a sense of humour, the planet on the cover is rotating at roughly Earthlike speeds. |
Author: autokinetic | Aegis swings by to add a new profile. |
Author: prima_sequentem | "Glass, you wanna comment on Aurum? And Helios and Sunshine, but Granny's the one who's currently writing." |
Author: thaumobabble | "Aurum's not as mean as Sunnyworlds, but it's still pretty mean - but perfectly exploitable. It's related to Eos, like I said. I think it might have some kind of special relationship to the Bell template but I don't have any more detail." |
Author: bellfounding | Pattern puts in a profile too. |
Author: prima_sequentem | Shortly afterward, Libby opens the Worldbook to display a profile for Aurum: Name: Aurum
Worldfamily, if applicable: Eos-Aurum
Primary inhabited planet(s): Earth
Known intelligent species: humans; vampires, "diamond" variety; werewolves, Quileute variety.
Technology/magic situation: Mid-twenty-first-century Earth. Apart from special characteristics of aforementioned species (pamphlets available), there is a kind of innate non-transferable per-person magic called witchcraft, where witches are people with single non-duplicated magical powers.
Afterlife situation: Downside world number 61, connected since before pealing
Safety rating and notes for visitors: Someone might fall magically and irrevocably in love with you! And magic is not fully known to the population at large. Consult the local precog, name of Alice, before meeting anyone else.
Glass's commentary: "Aurum's not as mean as Sunnyworlds, but it's still pretty mean - but perfectly exploitable. It's related to Eos, like I said. I think it might have some kind of special relationship to the Bell template but I don't have any more detail."
List of inhabiting templates: Bell, Golden, vampire; Libby, Granny, human; Joker, Joker, human, immigrated from Origin; Anna, Eights, human, died and moved to Downside; Jasper, Jazz, vampire. |
Author: cross_and_bow | Juliet reprofiles herself, incidentally providing an excuse for Glass to put her Sunnyworld commentary into words. |
Author: prima_sequentem | Slipstick is the next to come through with a profile for her home world, appropriately enough: Name: Helios
Worldfamily, if applicable: Sunny
Primary inhabited planet(s): Earth
Known intelligent species: humans; vampires, "sunshine" variety; a staggeringly extensive list of nonhuman species collectively referred to as "demons".
Technology/magic situation: Early twenty-first-century Earth, with aforementioned demons and a flexible but occasionally hostile magic system common to the Sunny worlds.
Afterlife situation: Downside world number 78, introduced to Downside post-pealing
Safety rating and notes for visitors: Most nonhuman species consider humans food. Magic is not generally known among humans. Safe for cautious visits, but not a good tourist destination. Don't turn into a local vampire; the transition comes with unpredictable personality changes and a frequent hobby of recently turned Sunshine vampires is killing all their pre-transition friends.
Glass's commentary: "This place is mean as anything, all the worlds in the family are. The Sunnyworlds are distantly related to Wellspring on one layer and to Yggdrasil on another."
List of inhabiting templates: Libby, Slipstick, human, moved to Origin; Tony, Sapphire, human; Sherlock, Cloud, human. "She might come up with a profile for Origin too," Libby comments. "And James will have Sunshine done in a minute." |
Author: thaumobabble | "I commented on Origin for Pattern, already," says Glass. |
Author: lifes_sake | Cam wanders by and puts down a profile. |
Author: prima_sequentem | The next two world profiles roll in shortly. Name: Sunshine
Worldfamily, if applicable: Sunny
Primary inhabited planet(s): Earth
Known intelligent species: humans; vampires, "sunshine" variety; a staggeringly extensive list of nonhuman species collectively referred to as "demons".
Technology/magic situation: Early twenty-first-century Earth, with aforementioned demons and a flexible but occasionally hostile magic system common to the Sunny worlds.
Afterlife situation: Downside world number 29, connected since before pealing
Safety rating and notes for visitors: Most nonhuman species consider humans food. Magic is not generally known among humans. Safe for cautious visits, but not a good tourist destination. Don't turn into a local vampire; the transition comes with unpredictable personality changes and a frequent hobby of recently turned Sunshine vampires is killing all their pre-transition friends.
Glass's commentary: "This place is mean as anything, all the worlds in the family are. The Sunnyworlds are distantly related to Wellspring on one layer and to Yggdrasil on another, but Sunshine in particular is more weakly connected to Yggdrasil than the others."
List of inhabiting templates: Bell, Juliet, human, ex-Slayer; Libby, James, human, Slayer (a Slayer is a unique person with combat-related superpowers); Virginia, Virginia, human; Sherlock, Minus, vampire, with soul (important distinction); Tony, Red, human. Name: Origin
Worldfamily, if applicable: contains a Gotham
Primary inhabited planet(s): Earth, Saturn
Known intelligent species: Humans
Technology/magic situation: Early twenty-first-century Earth; no native magic, but Saturn is heavily enchanted thanks to the local Bell
Afterlife situation: Downside world number 70, connected since before pealing
Safety rating and notes for visitors: Magic is nonsecret but not formally acknowledged; no special hazards except that Gotham is an especially unfriendly city. Please do not disturb the prison colony on Ganymede.
Glass's commentary: "Slightly mean, but without much leverage behind it. I think the Gotham is related to that."
List of inhabiting templates: Bell, Pattern, human; Joker, Queenie, immigrated from Downside, originally from world #48; Joker, Ghosty, human-ish, immigrated from #81; Joker, Joker, human, moved to Aurum; Libby, Slipstick, immigrated from Helios. "And that's all my alts' worlds of origin or current residence," Libby concludes. "I think I'd rather these things were written by people from the world in question, generally. Who do you think I should bother next?" |
Author: luminous_regnant | Golden swings by to profile herself. |
Author: thaumobabble | "Well, I can do Chronicle, if you like." |
Author: prima_sequentem | "Go for it!" |
Author: thaumobabble | Name: Chronicle
Worldfamily, if applicable: N/A
Primary inhabited planet(s): It's just called "Planet".
Known intelligent species: Humans; cats when in cooperative relationships with witches and squirrels when in the Enchanted Forest, I don't know if the species are fundamentally different or not; dragons, "morning" variety; elves, "sylvan" variety; dwarves, "smith" variety; wizards, "staff" variety; unicorns, "pool" variety; giants, "citadel" variety; various others of small population
Technology/magic situation: Low tech, high magic (many kinds, some learnable by people in general, others specific to species or family lines)
Afterlife situation: Added to Downside, numbered 85
Safety rating and notes for visitors: Magic is fully public; the world is very nice, and contains pockets of temporary unpleasantness but nothing too dreadful.
Glass's commentary: By far the nicest world. No relation to any other on record, but vaguely similar in flavor to Thilanushinyel and Rêverie in some ways.
List of inhabiting templates: Bell, Glass, human; Sherlock, Steel, human with some fire-witch; Tony, Iron, human with some fire-witch |
Author: prima_sequentem | "Perfect," says Libby. "Hmm, I should edit Aurum's entry to add the Jokerling. And Golden's warning about Addy." She does that. |
Author: self_composed | Stella's turn. |
Author: prima_sequentem | (Libby laughs at the nemesis part.) |
Author: self_composed | "I'm glad you're not my nemesis," comments Stella. |
Author: prima_sequentem | "Me too!" |
Author: thaumobabble | "This sounds like an amusing story." |
Author: prima_sequentem | "It is!" says Libby. "Do you want to tell it, Stella, or should I?" |
Author: self_composed | "You go ahead," laughs Stella. |
Author: prima_sequentem | "Short version: Stella came to my attention when there were very, very few mints around and I knew all the rest of them. I didn't really know what to make of her. She didn't appreciate the way I tried to find out. So we were having a very tense cup of coffee together when I stumbled on Milliways and started talking to Elspeth, who was delighted to tell me all about her mother the magical vampire empress. And then I went home and handed Stella the star secret." |
Author: thaumobabble | Glass laughs. "So there's a long history of people learning about one Bell and deciding to trust another." |
Author: self_composed | "It wasn't that long ago for me, but yeah." |
Author: prima_sequentem | "You've got a pretty good template going on there." |
Author: self_composed | "We rock." |
Author: thaumobabble | "I'm pretty pleased with us. Although I think Aegis may have upset my mother-in-law and definitely irritated my Sherlock." |
Author: prima_sequentem | "What'd she do?" |
Author: small_magics | Sarion writes a profile. |
Author: thaumobabble | "Assumed that I was plotting usurpment." |
Author: prima_sequentem | "Ouch." |
Author: thaumobabble | "Yes. And I'm not. I expect it'll smooth over. Why did you make the worldbook planet turn like that?" she inquires. |
Author: prima_sequentem | "Because it amused me," says Libby. "It's a planet. Planets rotate." |
Author: thaumobabble | "What planet is it meant to be?" |
Author: prima_sequentem | "None in particular. It has about Earth's size and rotation speed but an unrelated geography." |
Author: thaumobabble | "Earth's size?" asks Glass archly. |
Author: incanted | Aurora writes stuff. |
Author: prima_sequentem | "Scaled appropriately, yes." |
Author: incanted | "What does it mean for something to be Earth's size, scaled appropriately? Isn't it just... smaller than Earth?" |
Author: prima_sequentem | "If it were a picture of Earth, wouldn't you say it was appropriate to say it was a picture of a planet with Earth's size and rotation speed?" |
Author: incanted | "Uh, I wouldn't say it that way, any more than I would bother to mention that a photo of me is a photo of someone who is my size. And this planet isn't a real planet somewhere, right? Maybe you're cashing out rotation speed as a miles per hour thing instead of a revolutions per day thing...?" |
Author: prima_sequentem | "It's an imaginary planet, but size is still an attribute planets have, even when they don't physically exist. I'm not an artist; I didn't imagine this picture and then decide it should display planetary rotation. I imagined a set of characteristics for a planet, and then I had the magic generate an appropriate image. If I'd imagined a planet the literal size of the picture on the cover of this book, it would be a lump of rock, or maybe a neutron star." |
Author: incanted | "Okay," shrugs Aurora. "Well, that's my profile - nice revisions, Glass." And she wanders off. |