odd little alucine

[affodell]

It's never previously occurred to Cayra to put a door across an alucine boundary, but now that she's encountered it in practice it makes sense. It makes it visually obvious and it lets you lock it if you want. This door wasn't locked, and it looked like it led to a public bathroom, not a bar, from the signage, so she's still confused. Still, it's a good idea. She twists open the glass vial pendant around her neck and bends her head to the little blue lily inside to make a note of it; as an afterthought she tries to send it off to her antheomancer-chatcircle, anything to have a decent conversation, but it doesn't go. Her flower doesn't look wilting, but she can put it back in the garden and get a fresher one for the vial later. At least her personal files look okay. She closes up the vial again, giving the flower a touch of antheomancy for its health, and finds a bathroom inside the bar that dominates this little alucine.

And then she emerges into the bar. It doesn't seem to be staffed. Or stocked. Why wasn't it locked?

Hello, anybody here?

with Flynn (ErinFlight)

with Harry (andaisq)

Due to some icon rearrangement errors, some of Flynn's tags appear with an incorrect icon. The correct face for this thread is Rosario Dawson's.

Comments

[erinflight]

"What happens if you touch the boundary? Is it solid?"

[affodell]

"You can't go through it, but it's not... an object, exactly."

[erinflight]

"And does the light just come out from all of it equally? Wouldn't that make big alucines really dark?"

[affodell]

"Big ones still have lids, you can still see in them. It's a little brighter if you're near an edge, of course, but you can get along just fine in any alucine during the day."

[erinflight]

"So your alucines don't tend to be miles tall, mostly just miles wide? That sounds like they might have been made by someone instead of just randomly appearing. Do they already have plants and animals when you find them?"

[affodell]

"They're usually wider than they are tall, but I don't see why that means someone needs to have made them. Rocks are usually wider than they are tall because if you stand them up they typically fall over. They have plants and animals, those can go through portals like anything else."

[erinflight]

"I was just thinking it might be significant if they are generally shapes well suited for things to live in, instead of being inch high mile wide slabs or huge roughly circular spaces where the middle wouldn't get enough light. What happens if you dig down? Is there a border on the bottom too?"

[affodell]

"Yeah, after a certain point you can't dig any farther."

[erinflight]

"You know I'd always assumed that if other humans did live out there somewhere, they'd live on other planets. I never even imagined anything like this bar. I guess the universe is a lot bigger than I thought."

[affodell]

"I suppose. How big is the universe, uh, Bar?"

Bar is how people address me, yes. There are many hundreds of billions of universes, some similar, some wildly different, some clustered and many alone.

[erinflight]

"That's crazy! Wow. I don't even know what to think about that."

[affodell]

"But we can't get to them from here, can we? Or not trivially, or it would happen all the time."

Either of you could let the other into your world, but you are not guaranteed to find another door, and you cannot exit into a world without someone from it.

[erinflight]

"Could one of us hold the door open?"

[affodell]

Yes, if you held open your door, she could enter your world, and come back, but if you let the door close it would cease to lead here.

[erinflight]

"If I go back home, I'll have to leave again soon. I'm probably not going to be able to figure out much wandering around by myself. Could I go back with you? Maybe I'll figure something out and be able to get back home, if not I won't have lost anything."

[affodell]

"...To be perfectly honest if you have a poorly controlled vice that only might be counteracted by learning three kinds of 'mancy and might just leave you with four vices, three mancies, and all the usual problems associated with weaving."

[erinflight]

"I was hoping someone at your home could kill me when I lost it. At home there's not anyone who could. When I feel myself getting close, I could weave something big for you as payment."

[affodell]

"I don't know that I could kill you and I'm not sure how hard it would be to find someone who could. How hard are you to kill?"

[erinflight]

"I don't really know. Weavers kill each other all the time, but the threads can heal all normal wounds: arrows, knives, jumping off cliffs."

[affodell]

"The magics with the vices of calm and friendliness and abstract thinking are powerful in their own right. Especially the calm one, that's heavily defensive. Stone magic."

[erinflight]

"Can the portals between Alucines be closed? Maybe I could go into one of the empty ones and then shut it off."

[affodell]

"Ostimancers can do it. I don't know any of those. And an ostimancer won't stay shut up alone in a little alucine forever. They can make portals too. So someone else would have to shut you in, and there couldn't be any flowers for you to learn ostimancy from, and they'd have to be sure they got all the portals, and we'd have to be sure weaving couldn't make portals itself."

[erinflight]

"That's probably not worth the risk. Are there any 'mancers whose power gives them knowledge or helps them figure stuff out?"

[affodell]

"Not directly, no. Antheomancy is closest and it will only tell us what's already on the network."

[erinflight]

"Well, it doesn't seem like you have any instant solution to my problems, which is life I guess." Flynn rests her chin on her arms, "I really don't blame you for not wanting to bring a weaver home."