[WORLD TWO | INTRO LOG]

[spellbindmods]

Who: All coven members
Where: In and around the new world’s apartment building where the coven is staying
When: Day (the calendar isn’t syncing for me hELP)
Open/Closed: Open to All

You’re in a room. It’s pretty bright — blindingly so, even. There’s something very stark and very clean about the place, and also the person you’re sitting in front of. You’re sitting? You’re sitting. There’s also a pane of very powerful plexiglass separating you from the uniform-clad person who is now speaking to you. It’s impossible to transcribe what they say verbatim, but here’s the gist of it: - You’re being welcomed to a city called Shehui. Depending on who you are, the level of technology may be light years ahead of you or child’s play. - There’s a very strict policy about magic. While there are measures put in place to prevent magic from happening, this is still something that they reiterate over and over. They don’t want to take chances. - Crime is also frowned upon. Small infractions will result in credit deductions, while major crimes will get you banned. Antisocial behavior is also looked down upon. You’re locked in the city for your initial eight weeks. You can leave afterwards, but trying to break out of the city or cause social unrest will result in monitoring and a potential ban. - This city is supposed to be somewhat relaxing. Is it a free pleasure cruise? No. Is it a self-contained society that runs on community and indulgence? Yes. - You’re being given an allotment of credits in order to stay in the city, which is what the economy there runs on. This goes on for quite some time. - You’re being moved to a housing location. Despite the slotted speaker in the middle of the plexiglass, the only time you have a chance to ask questions is when a small slit opens in the bottom and a package is slid towards you. - What’s in the package? There’s a credit card-like apparatus that has apparently taken a picture of you. It contains a place to write your name, an identification number and barcode. It also has a thin strip near the top that has scrolling script floating by. It states “WELCOME TO SHEHUI. YOUR ID WILL UPDATE WITH COMMUNITY NOTICES AND PERSONAL PINGS FOR JOBS AND VOLUNTEER OPPORTUNITIES RELATED TO YOUR INTEREST.” It’s a lot to take in, but that’s the long and short of it. Have questions? The person will reiterate a few times that there are information desks around the city. That’s all for now…now you’ll be traveling to your next destination: your new home. The floor slowly lowers as if you’ve been in an elevator the whole time. It connects to several other glass containers, much like your own, all suddenly clanking together in a chain. After a short wait, the chain begins to move — quickly. Faster, maybe, than you’ve ever gone before. It’s hard to even make out the scenery when you’re zipping past everything so quickly. Where does this trip lead you? The ground floor of your new apartment building. The plexiglass cases open up and you’re in a hotel lobby. There’s a flashing board on the wall — NEW ARRIVALS, COME HERE. A ▢ So now’s the time to get settled into your new digs. Your name is on the board, and there’s a promise that your things — which, by the way, were mysteriously taken — will be located in your room. No need to fight over bedrooms; those also hold name placards that are digitally installed. Maybe everyone else is already there. Maybe you’re the first person there and need to find a way to stake your claim on the fridge or a bathroom. B ▢ Maybe you don’t want to fuck with anybody right now and are busy exploring the apartment building. You may encounter some aliens, some strangers, some ice machines. There IS that floor that’s nothing but recreational stations. If you’re overwhelmed, the garden is a good place to start. The sport court is pretty empty right now, if you want to have any regrouping meetings.

The apartment building is locked up tight for three hours in order to let new arrivals get their bearings. After that, the ground floor lobby doors open into the city of Shehui. There’s a lot to take in, but let’s cover the biggest bases: C ▢ Right outside this communal apartment building is a large, digital job board. The list of available jobs and credit opportunities are constantly flashing by. Want to pick one out? Just hold up that ID card you were given and the instructions and location will be sent to the ID’s text scroller. D ▢ You’ve got 500 credits to blow on clothes, food, strippers…whatever you’d like? Right next to the apartment complex are tons of local businesses, from bistros to outlet malls. A movie theater, an arcade, a video game store…and the best thing about Shehui? Most everything is dirt cheap. Where are you shopping? What are you buying? Enquiring minds would like to know! E ▢ Right next to the shopping area is a wooded park. It’s akin to a nature trail that’s similar to Yellowstone in scenery and topography. If you’re more comfortable someplace less…tech or modern…then this may be exactly where you’d like to be. F ▢ Wildcard! How will your character interact with this new and unusual world?

Comments

[splinten]

[Dirk nods, but his attention is on Geir. He gives Geir's snout a pet.] You don't sound okay, bro. I'm sorry for upsetting you. This isn't the sort of bullshit you need to deal with.

[rootandbranch]

Of course I'm upset? Don't apologize, though.

[that sounds a little more normal, at least.]

I'm sorry you and your friends died. Even if you were used to it, that sounds awful.

[splinten]

It wasn't great.

[He will admit that much. He keeps patting Geir's snout, and he decides not to elaborate on the worst part of it, the blessing and the curse: that they'll all be displaced, pushed aside for other versions of them who might be more successful. That they're free and things will be better, but also that they're discarded and irrelevant.

He doesn't think Geir needs to hear that.]

But we're dealing with it.

[rootandbranch]

You're pretty good at that...

[Geir closes his eyes under the petting, feeling very tired for a moment. honestly, Dirk being so blasé is almost as unnerving as the discussion of death. is he overreacting? he doesn't think he's overreacting. he remembers, for a vivid moment, Vern's nightmares about being buried alive: death is a pretty big deal.

how could Qri...?

he can't quite see how else to respond to "it wasn't great," so he keeps his eyes closed and reviews the conversation quietly for a couple of moments. he tries to keep track. finally he slits one eye open and sighs, enormously.]

You were starting to say something else, about the classes and things. Sorry, I got distracted.

[splinten]

It's okay. At this point, I'm more concerned about you. [It was a BIG dragon sigh there.] Sburb tends to force its players to accept things that they shouldn't have to. It can be easy to forget that those things shock and upset people, when the game does its best to numb us to it. Frankly, it should still shock and upset people. It isn't right that the game forces its players to accept these things in order to progress.

[rootandbranch]

[Geir looks at Dirk. this part he understands already, perhaps even better than Dirk does.]

Right doesn't have much to do with being a god.

[honestly, his family treats death almost as cavalierly, albeit in a different way. it never made him flinch to remember that his half-brother's guts were used to chain Loki down. it occurs to Geir more clearly than it has for a while that his relationships with the members of the coven, much less Vern, are very different.]

[splinten]

[That is a good point.]

I guess not. Maybe that's why the game does it.

[He is still petting Geir. He's worried.]

[rootandbranch]

Maybe. It's weird that it's a game, but I guess every world has its own thing.

[he sounds pretty normal again??? that familiar pragmatic note has crept back into his voice.]

[splinten]

It's definitely still weird.

[Geir does seem to be doing better?



But now Dirk can't say the thing about how he's inherently destructive and bad, FUCK]

[rootandbranch]

[the upset isn't gone, but Geir has put it somewhere else to look at later, down where the vast gnawing hunger and clawing emptiness live. it's very easy and natural, like righting a gyroscope. he wonders if he does that less consciously more often than he realizes. is that part of being a god, or part of being what he is specifically? it's an interesting thought that can also go into the pit for now. introspection can wait.]

So you destroyed-- the wrong things? To win your game like you were supposed to? It sounds like you were still playing to win...

[rather than to destroy the game.]

And then people died. [no matter how casual and pragmatic the conversation, that part is still a bummer.]

[splinten]

I destroyed my relationships, and I hurt my friends badly. I don't think that's the point of the game, although I suppose if everything in Paradox Space is required for its self-perpetuation, it must have been. My fuckups are an immutable law of the universe's spacetime continuum, I guess.

[He keeps the pet going as he adds, quieter,]

And then people died.

[rootandbranch]

[Geir makes a low sympathetic noise in his throat, not quite a purr but akin to it. it all sounds desperately sad. Geir could see, in his own system, very clearly what his role meant for him as an entity. he knew where it would lead, and how that would shape things going forward; as little choice as he felt capable of making in it all, he was walking towards his ultimate effect on the world with clear eyes. for all Dirk's deadpan delivery and self-condemnation, to Geir, the picture he paints seems much more one of someone in over his head.]

...what are you going to do now...?

[splinten]

The honest answer is that I don't know. It would be nice, though, to try to rebuild. Paradox Space doesn't have any need for any of us any longer, so there's no reason we can't just go our own thing here. [Not going to get into how exactly the not needed thing works GEIR IS SO SAD RIGHT NOW]

I'd like to rebuild my relationship with Jake, at the least. Plus, I've made new friends here. Those both seem like things that are worth doing.

[rootandbranch]

[GEIR IS FINE!!!!! and glad, honestly, that Dirk going "I'm terrible" about himself doesn't actually seem to lead to him trying to punish himself anything but internally. that would be bad?? everyone would be deprived of Dirk.]

That makes sense. I'm glad Qri brought you here, so you could. I know Jake likes you a lot?

[it's a much bigger reason to cooperate with and be grateful to Qri than he had previously, that's for sure.]

Ummm... I have an idea. If you're worried.

[splinten]

[Glossing over the Jake thing, which flusters him tbh,]

You having an idea also concerns me. I didn't know one was needed.

[He's saying it fondly though so, it's okay.]

What's the idea?

[rootandbranch]

[Geir huffs gently at him! Dirk! you are TEASING.]

I just mean--! You said you were worried you might start being a douche again. Sooo, if you think you might be, why don't you ask someone?

[splinten]

[Yes, yes he is.

Oh, that kind of idea. Dirk pauses and turns it over.]

It's a relatively decent idea. In the past I just talked to my shades. Given that he was a sentient supercomputer clone of my thirteen year old brain, it didn't really help much for outside perspective on my bullshit. But it wasn't like I could really talk to Roxy or Jake or Jane, for various reasons, and the only other two people I'd ever had contact with didn't work for other, very different reasons.

[And Lil Cal was a puppet]

[rootandbranch]

See. See, this is what I meant about how it's hard to be a person by yourself. Or when there are only a couple of people around, I guess. When you're bad at thinking about something it's easiest to get other people to do half of it.

[he obviously puts this theory into practice.]

--you could ask me. I'm bad at human things, but I know tricking people. And if you weren't sure I got it, you could ask multiple people. Someone would tell you you were being a douche.

[splinten]

[A few thoughts cross Dirk's head. One, in contradiction to what he just said to Geir, is that he shouldn't rely on people. Another is that Geir would actually be good at this. The third, which presses into his chest, is, I don't want people to hate me.

Because his stupid ideas are awful. They're hateful and unforgivable and bad. He doesn't want people to see them, to know them, to know him. He doesn't want to be alone again and sometimes he feels like he never stopped being alone, that he never left that apartment in the middle of the ocean with nothing that moved except seagulls and the things he programmed, and if people realize who he really is and what he's really like then he will be alone again and he can't survive that.

It's irrational, and he hates how irrational it is. Geir has already proven that Dirk won't drive him away with his bullshit. And this really is a good idea.

He still doesn't want anyone to know.]

Hey. Can I do something kind of stupid?

[rootandbranch]

Sure...?

[they're already sitting in a dragon fort with Geir's head in Dirk's lap to be petted, anything is possible]

[splinten]

[It sure is! Because Dirk is leaning forward, over the dragon head, and just. Pressing his head onto Geir's. Halfway between someone cuddling a creepy puppet they lost, and a dude just kind of feeling over and dying.]

I just need a second. Cool?

[Yup just a second curled over Geir with his face flopped onto Geir's forehead. Striders are such coolkids.]

[rootandbranch]

[Geir responds by purring, so it's probably fine.

(why is this stupid, he wonders. hugs are great.)]

[splinten]

[Maybe the real idiot was the friends we made along the way.

After a little while, Dirk manages to straighten up. He still feels ten kinds of flustered and worried, but he has managed to gather himself.]

I'll try to talk to you about it. It will be a habit I work on.

[rootandbranch]

[Geir isn't sure what's going through Dirk's head right now. he can tell that the suggestion is hard for him emotionally, somehow, but the forces behind that are a little more misty. embarrassment, like Dirk explained before? fear...?

Geir's never had the option of hiding what he is from the world. as a monster with a clear fate, he's not made for it. there's no better version of himself in his mind's eye. he's still frantically trying to pin down who his self might be, defining it by how the lines of his personality tangent off of and intersect with other people's, through the way he scrambles to assign category after category of behavior and reaction. surely, if he manages to pin down everything else in the universe, the miscellaneous box left over will show him who "Geir" could be. if "Geir" even exists.

surely.

(if he tried to hide, he'd never find Geir at all.)

it seems like Dirk thinks he's worth asking for advice, which is... nice. it gives him a warm, fuzzy feeling, a little of the touched pleased flush that more or less knocks him over whenever Vern tells him that he trusts him. but maybe Dirk is embarrassed about laying on a dragon for a second, and asking for help? it fits the facts Dirk mentioned when this conversation started, about not wanting an assist.]

Okay.

You can do the face thing too, if you want. It's not stupid. I put my face on people all the time.

[literally, right now, his face is still on Dirk, it's happening.]

[splinten]

[It sure is.]

I'm not claiming to be a total expert on normal human interaction, but I think it's fairly unusual for humans to shove their faces into other people whenever.