october 2019. welcome to the void.

[modblob]

Who: Everyone in Anchor.
What: Fourth Introductory Mingle
When: The Month of October 2019
Where: Around and outside the city.
Warnings: Please add any warnings in the subject lines.

Redshift: Welcome to the v͖͕̺̲̘̱̜͎o̴̦̣̠̦̘̹͞i̯̖d̛̪̬͈̱̦̝͍̕.

Click here to read what characters will experience when arriving in Anchor.

a. sini express delivery service.

There's something odd rolling through Anchor. Whether they wake with it next to their beds or find it sitting neatly in some corridor as if placed there just for them, characters will start finding items that are distinct and unique enough that they have to belong to someone. But where are they coming from? And whose are they?

The easiest way to find out is probably to walk around with the item held high yelling "Does this belong to you?" but that's not a good way to cover a lot of ground.

Don't worry, though! There's someone (something?) to help you. Chiming in periodically from communicators or intercoms across Anchor comes a voice that might sound a little familiar to anyone who made it as far as that spaceship wreckage in the wasteland. Softly laughing and humming, this some-one-thing will cheerfully coax characters in the right direction, giving tips and offering little clues to anyone who might be confused about whose item they have.

Characters struggling with identifying whose item they got might hear a helpful voice whispering out of their device as they move around the city - "Warmer, waaaaarmer...oh no! COLD!" They might hear a laughing voice coming out of a nearby speaker, giving tips or riddles about the person the item belongs to - "Her eyes are grey!" or "What kind of spider is sweet as pie?" Sometimes, it'll just be amused giggling at the efforts of those trying to find their object's owner. That bubbly voice is everywhere, encouraging residents to solve the riddle because "It'll be wooooorth it. Pinky swear!"

And no matter what, it can't be turned off or muted, and it doesn't respond to any direct attempts to communicate in return.

b. flu season.

No one probably takes special notice, at first. It's a sniffle here, a cough or chill there. 'Tis the season in some universe, after all, and even the advanced decontamination process isn't completely flawless. But what starts as a tickle in the throat gets a little worse over the span of a week, or in some cases a lot worse.

Whether laid up for a few days or longer, afflicted characters can expect to feel a few consistent symptoms. Dizziness, lightheadedness, chills and fever, coughing and sneezing (that kind of sneezing that comes in annoyingly long bursts and makes you feel like you've shot your brain out of your nose).

Oh, and hallucinations. Mild ones! Nothing to write home about! (If you even could, anyway.) Hallucinations are the last stage of this mild interuniversal flu, an annoyance more than anything...

And it leaves some people immune, and some people even more susceptible to what might follow.

c. harvestival festival.

Something good is happening in the agricultural sector. Weird, right?

But lo, the whole place has started to bloom seemingly overnight. Tiny fruits become noticeable, then large. Edible vegetation is flourishing, and you can tell which vegetation is edible thanks to the flocks, gangs, and small herds of creatures that have emerged from the still-wild depths of the sector. None of these creatures are aggressive except as a means to protect themselves when scared. Unused to strangers as they are, they'll probably let you get pretty close! Which means you could hunt them, I guess, or try to lasso and bring home some critters to the farm and fenced areas.

The food varies wildly. From electric pink berries the size of a pinkie to giant purple melons nestled in beds of vines. The tastes are as exotic and strange as the fruits themselves. A few people might even recognize some kinds of fruit from home. The root vegetables, squash, and edible vegetation is as colorful as the fruit, though a little more weirdly shaped. Why does that carrot-seeming thing look like a coiled spring? Who knows? You can't judge its life.

The culinarily inclined can take harvested goods to the kitchen areas and start experimenting, but beware! Even plants that look like they could be from Earth or other areas that the residents of Anchor know probably taste a little weirder or more intense than normal. Your best bet for a good recipe is to taste a little bit of everything before you get started. The spicy, the melony, the crunchy, salty, and sweet. There are no available records of what any of these things are, so you'll have to make it up as you go! The only consistent thing across all the agricultural sector's bounty is that NONE of it is poisonous. And none of it will get you high, Klaus and Kabal, so don't get your hopes up.

Navigation.

Comments

[braidmage]

"What's the difference?"

We've officially surpassed Reynir's knowledge of the nuances of the superhero genre, and he's going to need a little bit of clarification. Maybe it's to do with not having powers? But Qubit had said that not all superheroes had unusual abilities and it was more about dressing up in costumes, and that mask is definitely kind of a costume, so...

"Oh. I guess I can understand that, if he's somebody who really really loves his home and would hate to be away from it."

Reynir can't really relate, but there are people like that in the world. He's sure his own mother and father would be pretty miserable if they were brought here, for instance. But for him, this place is an interesting experience, and relatively safe all things considered...

He waits while she puts on the jacket, coming to the conclusion that this must definitely be a close friend that she misses a lot, just based on the way that she puts it on. Reynir might be lost about a lot of things in this place, but he gets people. He gets missing someone like this. Reynir smiles softly at her and says:

"It suits you."

It doesn't look like it's hers, still, but it looks like she's carrying a part of someone else with her, and that means it is reflecting the truth.

[tenuefarfalla]

Cho chuckles a little when Reynir says it suits her, but she hugs the jacket to herself all the same. "From what I can tell... and I really don't think the distinction has a lot of real world application, it's the difference between answering to a higher judicial system, and using your own definition of justice. Though even that doesn't seem to be consistent from person to person." She shrugs. "He's a good guy. I think he's a hero. He helps people. That's all you need to be a hero, right?"

It's nice to feel close to her friend again. Though she's surprised that he hasn't tried to reach out to her yet. Not as surprised that he hasn't made his own presence known on the network - that part makes sense. She's easy to find, though. It's puzzling. "I'm Cho, by the way. It's nice to meet you. Would you like me to help you look for Jason? He's kind of a private guy. It'll probably be easier with someone who knows what he looks like."

[braidmage]

Higher judicial system. Gosh, Reynir hadn't considered that side of it. When Qubit had spoken about his superhero exploits, it all seemed very government-sanctioned. He'd mentioned talking to a prime minister about plans for how to stop a catastrophic volcano eruption, so obviously he is the kind of hero who works within the system. But apparently Cho's friend is one who doesn't. But, like, in a good way? She's making it seem like it's not a bad thing. Which he kind of doesn't get, but he's willing to roll with it.

And there's no question that helping people is the first requirement for being a hero.

"That sounds right to me."

When she introduces herself, Reynir realizes he had forgotten that step, laughing and offering his hand for her to shake: "Reynir. I'm so glad to meet you and that I found who the jacket belongs to, or, a friend of who it belongs to."

He nods to her offer to accompany her in looking for Jason, and they've only gotten a few steps before Reynir stops in his tracks, an excited grin spreading across his freckled face:

"Actually, hang on a second! I've got an idea... that might... help..."

The words are spaced out, because he is speaking at the same time that he's unhooking a little pouch at his belt and pulling out a scrap of dark green fabric, roughly the size of a bandana, and a little stick of white chalk. He looks around for a surface to draw on and, seeing none, gives a rolling shrug and just kneels down, laying that cloth on the floor and beginning to draw. He starts confidently with a circle - one that is way too perfect for it to be entirely natural. Then marks and angles and looping arrows begin to join it, symmetrical and strange. He hesitates now and then before making a mark - not like he has memorized a pattern and is replicating it, but rather like he's improvising, creating something new on the fly.

As he is drawing, he explains:

"If we wrap this around the mask... hopefully it'll... draw him towards us... if he's around... kind of like a beacon... it won't tell us which way to go... but I figure it'll help our chances... at least a little bit."

Reynir, of course, skipping step one and forgetting to explain that he's a mage, that he can draw runes to accomplish any variety of different things...

[tenuefarfalla]

She shakes his hand enthusiastically, the sleeve of the jacket slipping down to cover him up to the wrist in the process. Cut for someone so much larger than Cho.

When Reynir crouches down, Cho does the same, somehow remaining graceful, keeping the drape of her dress from flashing anything inappropriate, keeping perfect balance on her very high heels, and making it look almost easy. She peers at the symbols that Reynir is drawing with interest, but stays silent while he works lest she distract him. When he mentions the mask, she obediently unzips the little hidden pocket and takes it out, handing it over without hesitation. "It's magic?"

He will not be the first person with magic she's met, and it stopped bringing her up short long before she ever arrived in The Anchor. This, at least, is a nice and calm and logical looking kind of magic. She assumes that different shapes and patterns serve different purposes, and you string them together to make a spell the same way you string together words to make a sentence.

[braidmage]

Reynir is, however, a little surprised by Cho's lack of surprise. He's run into a lot of skeptics and naysayers and people who really were baffled by the idea that runes could do so much. But Cho just seems interested, and so he beams, a little proud and a little flattered. He sort of has a thing about being underestimated so it's really nice to meet somebody who doesn't just assume he's incompetent.

"Yes, I'm a mage. This rune is a little bit like one I've seen back home carved into some stables, to make it easier for the horse to finds its way home if it ever got lost. Except I'm modifying it a bit, and making it stronger, I hope."

He sits back against his heels, contemplating the design, and impulsively adds a few last marks before tucking the chalk away in that little pouch again and reaching up for the mask. He knows it's a precious item, something that belonged to her friend, so he handles it carefully, setting it down in the middle of the circle and then folding the fabric around it before handing the little bundle back to Cho, to hang onto.

"Are you a mage?"

Hey, you never know!

[tenuefarfalla]

Cho shakes her head. "No. Not me. I'm a scientist." Which is definitely not the same thing. Anyone can study to go into her field, but everyone she's met with magic has been born with it in them. "I knew a mage, though, in the place I was before this city. Her name is Marjara. The magic she does looks different than this." She raises the bundle of green cloth held carefully in her hand, to illustrate the 'this' that she means. "She wasn't the only person there who did magic, but she was the only one I met who called themselves a mage."

So, with this, Jason will find them? That's pretty neat. She wonders if it works no matter what you wrap the cloth around. Maybe she'd be a little less afraid of letting Marmalade wander if she knew she had a way to bring him back to her. "Do we have to stay in one place for it to work? I don't imagine the stables moved around much."

[braidmage]

Reynir nods, clearly familiar with what a scientist is - just because there's magic in his world doesn't mean science doesn't have a place. He doesn't know a lot about it, but then again, he's a peasant, a son of sheep farmers. Emil probably had to take some science courses at his fancy school in Sweden. Probably a lot of people in Reykjavík who were educated there know a lot more science than he does.

He listens to her talking about her friend, nodding and getting back to his feet.

"Magic's different in different cultures. If my friend from Finland was the one doing this it would be totally different. Less runes, more poetry. Where was she from?"

Reynir wonders, if they'd actually been more willing to tech him at the mage's academy, whether he would then be able to actually summon his fylgja and give it Jason's jacket, so it could track him by scent or essence. But he doesn't know how he would even start to do that...

"Sure, staying still would be good, if I were 100% sure it was going to work. But I've never actually used this rune before, so it's probably better leaving it as a sort of back-up plan and still looking the normal way."

[tenuefarfalla]

"A place called Thedas. Not on Earth. Another world." So very very different from her own, but all the more fascinating because of it.

Cho roots around in her bag for a moment, and comes up with a pencil case, lacquered hardwood and strong magnets, very sturdy. She opens it up, carefully dumping the contents into the smallest section of her bag, and then even more carefully places the chalked up cloth and mask inside of it. When she's finished, she glances up at Reynir. "To protect it from getting smudged or coming unwrapped," she explains.

He was kind enough to offer the additional help, and she's taking it very seriously.

[braidmage]

Reynir's eyes go wide and he makes a soft 'ooo' sound, nodding his understanding. He's met people in this place who aren't from Earth, too. It had been bizarre and alarming and wonderful, all at once.

He watches her handling the pencil case, a little confused but also patient enough to wait and see what she's up to. Once she tucks away the rune and the mask, and explains her reasoning, Reynir nods sharply, approvingly.

"Good thinking."

See, look at them! Teamwork already. Once she's got it stored away again, Reynir gestures for her to lead the way. Time to look for Jason. Hopefully, they can find him. Reynir wants to meet this vigilante. But until then, he's happy to make a new friend with the person right in front of him.

"Have they got mages at all where you come from?"

Most people here, he's found, don't. There are other trends he's noticed, too.

"And let me guess. You're from Earth, sometime near the year 2000, and everybody's got computers and robots and the planet is full of healthy people."

An altogether weird and revealing way of describing it...

[tenuefarfalla]

Teamwork makes the dream work!

Jason's jacket has an inner pocket for a stun baton that's currently empty. It's big enough to allow for the pencil box, so Cho slips it in, and gathers her things, and is ready to go.

"No mages. No magic. Except for the rabbit-from-a-hat and is-this-your-card? kind." Lots of that. Not so much the kind of stuff that Reynir just did. "And that's... I mean, not everyone has computers and robots, and a lot of people are sick in poorer parts of the world, but that's pretty close, yes." Broad strokes, anyway, and Cho recognizes the kind of conversational opener she's used herself while comparing worlds with a new acquaintance.

She picks a direction, the one that Reynir was already traveling in, and continues their search, mindful to make sure that the redhead is in step with her. "Even then, some worlds are very different. Jason comes from an Earth where the cities have different names than the ones I know, and there are people with super powers. No one has magic or superpowers where I come from. I've often wondered why there's such a high concentration of thinning walls between universes in this general period of a few hundred years. Some people say it's just a coincidence, but I'm not sure I believe that."

[braidmage]

"...why would someone put a hat on a rabbit? Wouldn't the ears get in the way? And how is that magic?"

Okay so he's slightly missed the point, but obviously Cho was assuming he would have a level of familiarity with the norms of stage magic that is clearly lacking.

Despite the way that Cho is qualifying her answer, Reynir nods along - her world sounds similar in many ways to those of a lot of people he's met in his time here. At least, compared to his own. And from the sound of it, Jason comes from somewhere mostly the same, too. The mention of superpowers has him nodding, and he explains:

"A man named Qubit explained those to me. I think I understand for the most part."

The stuff about thinning walls between universes is over his head. He thinks he gets the gist of it - that so many people in this place between universes come from a similar time, and similar worlds - but what is there to be learned from that? Some things are just too deep for him to probe into. There are too many smaller mysteries much closer to his own life that he hasn't solved, yet, to worry about the big stuff.

"I asked because... I'm not. From near the year 2000, with robots and computers and everything. So sometimes I feel a bit... like an outsider. I don't understand stuff everybody else takes for granted. Like rabbits in hats, I guess."

[tenuefarfalla]

"I used to not understand a lot of the things my friend and his friends were talking about, too. I think we've all been there at one point or another. We just need someone to explain them to us, and then we know, and we're part of the group. If you ever run into anything like that, you can always ask me, and I'll try to explain it - if I can. My contact on the network is my name. Easy to remember."

And then, considering she just offered to explain things he didn't understand, she figures she should start with rabbits in hats. He must come from a world with real magic, but not entertainment magic. A few magicians have qualified their powers to her by explaining that they don't pull rabbits from hats and make rubber balls disappear, so she took a shot. "The rabbit isn't wearing the hat. It comes out of the hat. It's called an illusion. There's a person, a Magician, and they have a top hat. It's shaped like a tube with a medium brim." She holds her hands up to demonstrate rough dimensions. "They hold up the hat, and they show you that it's empty. Then they reach into it, and they appear to pull a rabbit out of it, and they call it magic, but it isn't magic. It's just a very clever deception. The easiest way to do it is you have a hat, and it is empty, but there's a hidden way to open up the top of it. You set it on a table with another secret compartment, and you line the hat up with it. Then you reach in, pull up the material of the hat, open the secret door, and pull out the rabbit that's hidden in the table. It looks like it came out of the empty hat."

[braidmage]

"Really? Are you serious? You better be sure before you offer to do that for me because there's..."

And Reynir blows out a breath, puffing his cheeks out, a nonverbal indication of being completely lost when it comes to a lot of stuff. He has learned a great deal since he came here, but he mostly only asks questions about things that are absolutely necessary to understand what the other person is talking about. Which means that a lot of little details slip through the cracks. He has an unofficial running list in the back of his mind of stuff he's just never heard of before but doesn't know where to look up.

Then Cho goes ahead and demonstrates her willingness by taking him through the rabbits and hats quandary, bit by bit. Her explanation is thorough - maybe overly so, but he can understand why. She doesn't know what he'll be familiar with and what he won't. Reynir listens, only half paying attention to where they're actually walking, trying to visualize the trick in his mind. It sounds... honestly, weird, and not very entertaining. Just... pulling animals out of garments? What's the point? What does it accomplish?

But he gets at least the fundamental conceit:

"So the idea is the magician can't do any magic but is pretending to be able to create a rabbit from nothing, but it's all a trick... the rabbit isn't needed for anything, the point is just to be flashy, and... lie?"

Showmanship and illusions and tricks and pranks and deception aren't unfamiliar to Reynir, he's just never heard of this particular configuration before.

[tenuefarfalla]

"Yes, sort of. Though it's not-- It's not the truth, but it's not intended to be a lie, exactly. No one othr than very young children actually believes that the magician pulled a rabbit out of a hat, or sawed a woman in half, or transformed into a tiger. We all know that it's not magic, because magic isn't real where I come from. So it's more about the skill that it takes to create the illusion. No one is asking how the magician vanished from inside a locked safe. They're wondering how they made it look like they did."

She's not sure if it will make sense to someone from a world with actual magic, but she's doing her best to put herself in Reynir's shoes. "It may rely heavily on a cultural expectation, which I know is difficult to understand from the outside. I wish I knew enough about your world to draw a comparison. It lets the audience... have a sense of the miraculous. When the illusion is so out of this world and you just can't explain it, it fills you with a kind of awe. It's a nice feeling, a feeling that maybe anything really is possible. That's what I get from it, anyway."

She shrugs one shoulder. It might seem infantile to some people, but she likes it. She's getting more comfortable with allowing herself to like things just because. "And I am serious - about my offer, I mean. If you have any questions, you can ask me. I can't promise that I'll have all the answers, but I'll do my best."