piper90 | [Video]

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Good evening.

[There’s a woman speaking, tone clipped. The corporate jumpsuit hangs off her small frame, and her hair is swept up into an old-fashioned bun. Or so it seems - she’s standing a bit away from the screen, and it’s tilted at an odd angle.]

I am given to understand that this is how to contact my new coworkers? My name is Beatrice Brewer, at your service, and I assure you I am quite qualified. I am - was - an apprentice of the fifth circle in, ah, a collection of magi, have experience in a thrilling variety of crises, and am quite keen to get started on - [a heavy sigh, more notable for the fact that someone observant might catch that she doesn’t breathe] - this situation.

[There’s a long pause.]

Drat, is this bloody thing even on? Dreadful place, what sort of dog and pony show are they running, honestly. Stuff? Stuff? Of all the names?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

THAT IS THE WORST CONSTANT FOR THERE TO BE BETWEEN REALMS. TRULY TAKES HUMANITY'S INCLINATION TO IGNORE THE COSTS TO A NEW LEVEL.

I WISH YOU BETTER LUCK FIXING YOUR WORLD THAN I HAD. SHOULD ANY OF US EVER GET BACK.

oh you got people thinking they can just ride this shit and come out on top, too?

fuck those fucking fuckers, man.

YES. WE DID. THOSE THAT THOUGHT BY LIGHTING THE MATCH, THEY COULD RISE ABOVE, AS WELL.

THUS FAR, THEY HAVE MANAGED TO ACCOMPLISH GETTING THEMSELVES EATEN ALONG WITH EVERYONE ELSE.

hey at least its one less goddamned thing to deal with. ours are still fucking about ruining shit.

THE ADVANTAGE OF HAVING PEOPLE THAT KNOW ENOUGH TO BREAK IT IS THAT, IDEALLY, THEY KNOW ENOUGH TO TRY AND FIX IT IF THEY'RE CORNERED. OR AT LEAST HAVE THEM TELL YOU WHAT THEY BROKE, INSTEAD OF PLAYING CATCHUP.

I FEEL ABSURD TYPING LIKE THIS AT YOUR LITTLE RED X. SURELY WE CAN ARRANGE FOR A MORE CIVILIZED WAY TO TALK?

sure. where you at?

NEAR THE RESIDENCE ROOMS, I BELIEVE, BUT I DO NOT REQUIRE SLEEP, SO I HAVE BEEN ATTEMPTING TO GET MY BEARINGS.

aight ill head over.

[one bat-transition later]

"Hoi! Brewer!"

Jogging towards Beatrice is a small woman with messy black hair, wearing a jumpsuit with both sleeves torn off. Her right arm is all metal, heavily engraved, and her eyes are dark and bright. There's a crooked, welcoming smile on her face as she slows from her jog. She's only two inches taller than Beatrice, but carries herself like she 6'5".

"Good evening, Ms. Saturday. It's nice to have a face for the name."

It is so much less unnerving. She studies the - elf? Nothing stands out in that respect, save that the woman is of a sensible height. Beatrice herself stands rather formally, face neutral, hands behind her back. Her hair lends her height, okay?? And her dignity and unwavering belief in it adds another few inches.

"I admit, you're not quite what I expected." Beatrice clarifies by gesturing towards the arm. "I don't associate that level of modification with magic, typically. Is it custom work?"

"Yeah, more or less," Saturday says, meaning it's a long story. "Magic as all get-out, though. An' how could you even be expecting much, when we'd just met?"

She sticks out her hand in greeting.

"Pleasure to see you face-to-face."

"Interesting." Beatrice eyes up the arm a moment longer. There's no way she doesn't want to know everything about how it works.

There's a distinct pause as Beatrice lets the hand hang in the air. It starts to rapidly gets awkward, but just as the moment seems to reach its breaking point, she gives the strange woman a brief handshake - letting go quickly. If the mortals want to try and make contact, her ice-cube cold touch is their problem.

"You did mention that humanity's tales of Elves originate from your people," she points out dryly. "But you don't strike me as particularly inclined to burst into poetry or as demonic - yet."

"Yeah, we don't really do that shit. 'Cept those weirdos down the Tir, but they got their heads stuck up seven thousand years ago. The stories got a lot wrong, and what got remembered was like - stuff people wanted remembered, more'n'the truth. Elves are just people who do stuff, like everyone else."

It's a remarkable little speech, the more so for how idly Saturday rattles it off, as if she's had to give it so many times it's become rote.

She womanfully does not flinch at Beatrice's icy-cold grip, and Beatrice will find that her right arm is as warm and response as a real hand. It barely feels like metal at all.

The touch of mortal warmth is more disconcerting than that it comes from metal, really. The handshake is exactly as brief and perfunctory as Beatrice can make it. Something about Saturday's phrasing seems to strike Beatrice's funny bone, however, judging by the minute turn of her mouth.

"What are stories of history if not what people want remembered more than the truth? Just some are more successful at blotting out the truth than others. Accounts such as the Norse Eddas - do they recall ancient warfare with and between the Elven people, then? History, warning?"

"I can only imagine how essential managing the impressions of such stories were for when you reemerged. My own people had - attempted a similar gambit of harnessing what people wished to remember but." A wry twist. "Those with their heads stuck seven thousand years ago."

"Some history, some pop culture, some made up shit 'cause it's seven thousand years between high ends on the magic cycle an' people got imaginations," Saturday says, cheerfully assuming that Beatrice will ask if she wants to know more. "An' nobody re-emerged. People just started waking up as orks an' trolls an' elves an' whatnot. And also able to fling fireballs, an' deflect bullets, talk to spirits... dragons started buzzing Mt. Fuji... wild time."

She throws up her hands, waving them elaborately to punctuate the sense of chaos she's trying to invoke.

"Except for a couple batches of immortals, no one knew it was coming, see? The history got forgotten. Still is, except me an' my friends have had a real weird time lately so we know some stuff. Anyway, who're your people, exactly? You didn't say."

The question is so sudden and innocent one could almost suspect she genuinely had just tacked it on to keep Beatrice part of the conversation. Except Saturday very much didn't. Woman's ice cold and not breathing, an' she ain't stupid.

She arches one brow at the elf. As if she ever trusts innocent. "I was under the impression that more than one of us had already made themselves known here," Beatrice points out. "But if you are unclear, I am a vampire – although we typically use other terms amongst ourselves. We're no strangers to pop culture either."

Beatrice still seems more interested in the practicalities of how the Awakening worked. "But surely there is someone interested in sorting out the line between history and the made up? Or are your 'batches of immortals' the self-proclaimed authority and power on that front?" People are, after all, very predictable, but if this girl 'knows stuff' as she claims, perhaps she can elaborate. Particularly on what truly has Beatrice's eyes gleaming with interest.

Look, immortals are consistent, but evolutionary matters? That is interesting. That is new. That is her own precise area of interest. Which means Saturday gets hit with an absolute barrage of questions, not even giving her time to digest the other points.
"..Sorry, can you clarify woke up as these other - species? Subgroups? Does that mean you are all genetically the same as a human? Did expression follow determined paths, or was it random? Are you one of those that awoke, or are you ah. Native, so to speak?"

"Oh, yeah, we got those too - " Saturday starts to say, pleased to have guessed right. Then Beatrice hits her with five questions at once, and her eyes widen.

"...okay, like. I can probably answer a lot of that but like I'm not an expert an' mostly I'll be telling you what other people told me, I can't - get super into detail and stuff. I mean I dropped outta school in the ninth grade. But okay.

"So like, our world is on this cycle where magic rises to a level where it starts expressing genetics for being an elf, or a mage, or an orc, or whatever. And people who like already had the potential could suddenly use magic - not that they couldn't before, but there wasn't enough, right? Like being born with gills in a world that doesn't have water, all this stuff was just kinda hanging out in our DNA doing nothing until the magic levels rose.

"Don't ask me any questions about the magic levels 'cause there's math with letters in it involved. What I know is magic is tied into essence, which is like the life energy of everything, but more so. It's the thingness of being. Kinda like what the Stuff is supposed to unravel which is deeply freaky, honestly. It's also kinda like a soul but it's no religious. I dunno, sometimes I think of it as like, the air the electricity in my nerves leaps through, but I dunno if that's just poetry or whatever.

"What that means is, I'm an elf, my parents were elves, my grandparents were human. We're all genus homo, but subspecies, sapiens included. Got latin names and all. The Awakening was a while ago, like I said - my grandparents' generation. It wasn't random, 'cause genetics. And we're all native earthpeople, we didn't come from anywhere else, just some of us had the genes that woke up when the magic levels rose an' some of us didn't."

Whew. Saturday looks exhausted by remembering all that, and corralling it into something like coherent order.

Beatrice seems to be following along with what Saturday is saying with easy attention. Most definitely someone who would have soaked up Scylla's lectures like a sponge.

"Some of the concepts you describe are - startlingly familiar, actually. We underwent our own rise and then ebb of magic centuries ago, and there was some panic once it wasn't able to sustain what..the current mages were accustomed to. Although vampires were not, ah, impacted to the same degree in my world, while it sounds as if they were part of this reawakening in yours? My home's magic is, as well, tied into the energy of life, although possibly determined, to some degree, of what perception of it says it ought to be? That was, at least, blamed for the shift in how it could be accessed, although blood sorcery bypassed that quite handily." Perception is a concept familiar to Scylla's pet UMT as well. It's so sad they can't be here to nerd at each other. Well, except for the whole blood magic thing.

"Essence," Beatrice muses. "A solid word for the concept. Much less unwieldy than quintessence, and certainly better than juice."

There's around a solid minute where she gets lost in her own head, scooting around various magical puzzle pieces and reverberations across worlds when Beatrice snaps back into focusing on Saturday with a sudden intense focus.

"I'm sorry, did you say dropped out of education? In the ninth grade?"

Saturday starts to respond to Beatrice's comments, then recognizes the look on her face and lapses into the familiar, homey silence of someone smarter than her figuring things out. In fact, she's just starting to consider steering Beatrice to the mess so she can get a snack while the serious business of heavy cognition occurs when Beatrice suddenly snaps into focus, almost glaring at her.

Saturday about jumps out of her skin.

"Uh, yeah," she says, a little baffled. "Some stuff happened, I didn't wanna go anymore, and pops didn't make me."

"You didn't want to go?"

She's somewhere torn between that outraged focus and sheer bafflement.

"Good heavens, why not? An education is the most valuable gift anyone can provide to a fledgling-" oh wait, that's not the right human word. "-to a child. In my own lifetime, I would have traded a great deal to have been permitted to go. The subsequent struggle by the next generation-ahem." She's getting off the point, even if Beatrice is having trouble wrapping her mind around that this young woman of some magical capability would willingly give up what she had ached so strongly for. That someone would have different desires and experiences, of course, is not to be counted. "Surely you - your father continued your education at home, yes?"

The tone strongly indicates she is hoping Saturday says yes.

Saturday raises her arms behind her head, crossing them and stretching to buy time. She kinda doesn't want to defend herself to this woman, who is asking questions she has no right to ask. Most people woulda got the hint at "stuff happened."

But. The lady just got here, Jorgmund aren't exactly gracious hosts, and community solidarity is about the only thing the New Hires have going for them, as a collective.

"Like I said. Some stuff happened. I didn't wanna go, and after the stuff that had happened, pops wasn't gonna make me. He didn't stop me learning anything I wanted to, I just didn't go to school anymore."

The hint was there and blithely discarded in order to get the information she actually wanted. Dancing around it is just a slowdown from answers.

It's hardly as if Beatrice cares about the details of 'stuff' or the travails of this elf's life, so skipping right past it works for her. In either case, Saturday's answer seems to mollify her.

"So you still covered it then, just not..there? I suppose information is much more readily available in the modern age. You seem to understand the mechanics of your world's magic well enough – where did you learn that?"

"I learned whatever I wanted to learn, yeah." Her wording is precise, on purpose. "And whatever stuff pops figured I might need an' could get me to sit still for."

She's willing to breeze by the details. They'll come out, sooner or later - she saw Beatrice eyeing her arm hungrily.

"My best friend's a mage. She talks at me to figure stuff out a lot. Eventually I picked things up."

Beatrice, malicious compliance winner of the Tremere cup olympics, definitely does not miss the wording. It's evident from the way her gaze sharpens, but all she says is, "It's good that he valued learning."

"That's a fair bit to have just picked up," Beatrice observes in a tone just as bland as the first comment. She's not quite buying what Saturday is selling about herself. "In any case, it's interesting how much you mention is similar to more recent observations of my world. Is this more established information in yours? What of vampires, do you know much of them? I would be curious if they are likewise similar across worlds."

"I can, of course, answer any questions of my own land in turn," she adds after a beat, remembering to be gracious about the Sacred Exchange of Information (tm).

"For sure. We got vampires, though not as many as you'd think - most people who get infected go ghoul."

She's relieved enough to be off the subject of her upbringing that she has to take a beat to remember that might not make any sense to Beatrice.

"Human-Metahuman Vampiric Virus," she explains. "HMHVV. Though I mean, what you turn into depends on a lot of stuff including like, your metatype - human, orc, elf, whatever - and what strain you catch. Most common one's actually the Krieger strain, HMHVV-III, that turns people into ghouls, like I said - kinda like zombies, if you have those? Except they can keep their minds through it, which, let me tell you, fucking sucks. Bullshit contagious, too. Basically it fucks up your essence generation so you keep leaking it out and can't like, make more? So you have to get it from other living things. How you have to get it depends on strain and your metatype, like, vamps only happen if a sapiens gets infected? Their thing is blood, they gotta take in essence with blood or they get hugely sick all over the upholstery, ask how I know."

"..Hrm."

Beatrice folds her hands behind her back, expression reserved. "That is interesting. We have had some attempts to classify our nature as – akin to a virus, but they have been – questionable in methodology and attempted treatment."

"Our kind have several sub-classifications, but the differentiation is directly passed down, typically, from creator to childe, not based upon any aspect inherent to the person. You don't chose what clan you are embraced to, as the saying goes." There's nothing at all bitter about her half-smile. Why would there be? "Not to say there are no similarities at all. We do require some - vital aspect of life-essence that is found in the blood of the living, and possibly elsewhere. Much of my recent work has focused on the attempted isolation of that essence."

"Ghouls, however, mean something rather different for us. Those are the living who consume the blood of vampires and are, in turn, bound to them. Not at all zombies, which are entirely the domain of necromancers. How does the public perception in your world handle these...zombie-ghouls and vampires?"

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