lostcarnival | ⇨ THE ATHENAEUM

Who: Everyone!
When: Day 47 - Day 58 ish
Where: The Athenaeum
What: The carnival arrives at book world. First week, they'll be performing for magical manifestations of book characters. Second week, it's time to hunt (for books, in the library.) Around Day 58 some stuff will occur.
Warnings: Reading is mandatory.

FAERIE TALES↴

Though the carnival will be performing for its guests in the first week, they are welcome to search the Athenaeum while they are off duty during that time. The manifestations of story characters will be out in full force during performance week, with animals, people, objects, and even locations growing out from various tales. Most are distracting at worst, and will be curious to check out the carnival. Some, however, can be as dangerous as they were in their stories of origin. You know what to do.

► IT'S TIME TO ROLEPLAY: The best way to deal with book ghosts is to follow their narrative to its logical conclusion - turn the tables, work the story so it ends in your favour! Naturalistic and narratively satisfying plotting will have the manifestations following your lead. However, push too hard and introduce too many plot holes, inconsistencies, or illogical plot twists, and they will reject your reality utterly, becoming quite aggressive in the process. You can also use your natural abilities and powers to fight them in a traditional sense, but in the Ringmaster's experience, it's best to fight reality benders by bending reality right back at them. If you aren't careful, it's possible to be dragged fully into a story's reality, and then things get really messed up.

► IT'S ALSO TIME TO READ: The carnival came here for a purpose, and that purpose is to research. Specifically, the Ringmaster is looking for information on the Queen's Miracles - the set of ancient fae artifacts that the Blue Rose is one of. The carnival needs these artifacts to defend itself, but nobody knows where they've been for thousands of years. That's what the books are for. However, nothing is stopping you from pursuing knowledge for personal reasons. The halls are open to your perusal, and only your heart can guide you to the book you truly seek. Check the plot post to see what's allowed, and sign up to find plot info or other important game information below.

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Paper books. Seeing them isn't the shock it had been when Scout first joined at fourteen, fresh from a galaxy where hardly anyone does paper books anymore and any hard copies of writing are on things less prone to disintegration in water. She's been to several paper libraries since then, and in fact her clearest Portland memories not involving other carnival workers are of spending time in the libraries in that world.

This is still an awful lot of them, and there's that smell she got to know in Portland, that dusty sour note that comes with old books. All this paper absorbs sound and makes quarters seem close, even when there's plenty of space around her. Coupled with the organization system or lack therof, it's enough that while Scout is not daunted by research or being surrounded by writing, she can't help wishing they'd just get what they're after and leave.

"If this is a recipe," she says out loud, slowly, flicking rapidly through something, "then why are there this many pages about someone's relationship with their husband?"

mace it up

A hot wind scented with ozone and metal blows through and Scout raises her head sharply, glances at whoever's nearby. "Hey, we need to get... oh."

Right after the wind came a sweeping cut, the shelves and books smoothly sliding away to be replaced by a tawny plain surrounded by rolling dun hills, under a cloudy gray sky. White-armored men and top-heavy gray humanoid robots are blasting away at each other on two sides, close enough to make out individuals.

Nothing looks quite real. Edges are too crisp and defined, proportions aren't right, the ground is a flat texture, smoke is red and curls in stylized patterns, and of course there are unlimited battle droids which are so fragile that a shove is enough to destroy one. They explode or go to pieces dramatically, but a stricken trooper just falls. In the distance, a tall bald black man with a purple lightsaber is performing battlefield acrobatics.

"Come on," Scout says, edgy, her eyes flicking from droid to trooper to Jedi and then to the horizon and a small red shape on it, then back to the droids and troopers. "I think this is Dantooine, we don't want to be part of this battle."

Syrlya pauses halfway through pulling a book from the shelf, glancing aside to Scout at her out-loud mumbling. His search has been frustratingly fruitless so far, and it sounds like he isn't the only one.

"What is it a recipe of?" Or meant to be, if the book is even more off topic than it sounds.

She flips back to check the title, pursing her lips. "'Absolutely magical stuffed wyvern eggs', apparently. Maybe it's actually a metaphor? The real wyvern eggs are the relationships they made along the way, or something?"

Probably she should have put it back as soon as she realized this wasn't relevant, but there was always this lingering feeling that something could be relevant, just tucked away past the description of the market of farmers. So sometimes she looks a little further. It seems to work just as well as the more cursory glances, which is to say, not well at all. The last foot or so of her tail curls and uncurls impatiently.

Scout opens this book, which has a very imposing cover with metal-capped corners and inset stones, to a random page further along, then to the back. Dust rises whenever the pages turn. "The end is shroud-of-night soup. So I guess this is all chapters ending in recipes? I don't get it." Wrinkling her nose she looks at Syrlya. "How about you, anything interesting?"

"How do you make a recipe a metaphor?" That really just creates more questions than answers any.

He finishes drawing the book off the shelf, turning it over in his hands before flipping open the cover. He spares Scout's a short glance--it definitely doesn't look like a romance-slash-recipe book, but he's come to quickly realize that the Scribe and Curator have no sense of anything in regards to clarity of their hundreds, thousands of works.

"Not so far," his gaze lowers as he quickly skims the two pages he's on, before snapping the book shut and pushing it back on the shelf. His finger skates along the spines as he reads them, and then settles on another one to do the same thing. "I don't understand the order of this at all. The Priory is much more organized."

"Probably, I don't know, the ingredients are people or character traits and then the recipe is how they go together." Scout makes a face. Her strength is not in literary analysis. "Or something. I wouldn't rule it out, anyway."

She closes this book and slots it back in where she took it from, then like Syr runs her fingers along several dusty spines and one spiral ring. It would be nice if the Force could help her here, it would be tremendously convenient, but it's never worked like that, not for her anyway. She's known several people who could probably walk on in here, pick out a book at random, and it would turn out to be the right one, but the best she's found in several days has been a couple interesting stories. Well, one good story, one that left her with a lot of unanswered questions, and several that physically conjure characters or scenes, which is a very mixed experience.

"So is - so was the Temple archive," she says, a little tense about talking about it no matter what tenses she uses. It's fine, there are plenty of temples. "What's the Priory?"

"An order of scholars and historians. They have a library... very much like this, actually." Not to the same scale, but large enough that from Syrlya's perspective he can hardly tell the difference.

He glances sidelong to her, repeating the same question back. "What is the temple archive?"

"I see. You're not part of it, I take it?" She makes a small gesture with her chin, indicating the vast and quiet expanse of books. "I feel like if I was a librarian I'd be pretty annoyed."

Scout tugs out the spiral-ringed book closest to hand, opens it, and without changing her facial expression closes it and returns it to its place. Armor repair with or without casual binding is unlikely to have anything in it she'll find useful.

"That was was the library closest to where I grew up," she says, though it's a little more complicated than that. The Jedi archives had also housed artifacts, and members of the Order dedicated to research and discovery. She'd been told again and again how special it was, but of course, it had only really sunk in after she was unable to return.

"I am not, though..." Though he could have been. It had been extremely tempting, but he felt he had far more to learn from the Vigil, when it came to preparing himself for fighting the dragons and completing his duty.

"Though I have worked with them frequently. Often they have information you cannot find elsewhere, for good reason." Only because he trusts them as the holder of much of the world's hidden information. They have only the best intentions.

"If it was in a temple, was it something religious?" That's where he's most familiar with temples. It occurs to him, he doesn't know much about Scout outside of their shared job. And, apparently, that she's familiar with openly travelling through space.

"Aw, I think it's rather nice," Hinawa says, thumbing through another cookbook. "You get to learn all about their families from it!"

It's safe to say she would definitely be one of those bloggers.

Scout suppresses a sigh, not wanting to be rude to her roommate. "I guess. But this one's kind of, um, spicy? The writer and their husband are..." She turns a couple of pages, delicately, looking for the right phrasing. "...um, getting along very well and trying to expand their family ranks, I guess."

It's a sexy mommy blog, apparently. Scout's not scandalized, but she does feel like it bloats an unnecessary amount of padding more than usual.

⇨ THE ATHENAEUM

Scout | OTA

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