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

[affodell]

"Know about like seeing me use them, or something else?"

[erinflight]

"Know that they specifically exist ahead of time, not just know there's some sort of doorway there."

[affodell]

"Hm - would it be more or less complicated to make it something like having a password written on them? Then I can do it very unobtrusively -" She displays the palm of her hand; it says 'password', then it doesn't. "And if I want to let someone in but I don't completely trust them, I can write it on them someplace they can't see and rub it out before they can show anyone else."

[erinflight]

"That would be a lot easier, that way the portal wouldn't have to see inside your mind. Is that everything? Are you ready to try?" Flynn is jittery and keeps looking towards the door.

[affodell]

"Not just yet," says Cayra. "I want to make sure I understand. So I will have two pieces of door-size cloth, and they'll both lead to a room that's like a walled alucine all its own, and - what happens if something happens to my cloth?"

[erinflight]

"If I can get two portals to work, I'll try to make you a third. But if you lose one, you'll have to go inside the room to figure out where it is."

[affodell]

"What if one's destroyed or something, say I piss off a pyromancer?"

[erinflight]

"I guess the portal would disappear too. Maybe I should try to make one of them on something more sturdy. Bar, do you sell any fireproof cloth?"

[affodell]

Yes, although if you want it quite indestructible it will be quite expensive.

"Like...?"

For three, seventeen thousand units.

"Augh."

[erinflight]

"Let's make one with the normal cloth first, and see how easy it is to destroy it."

[affodell]

"Experiments are expensive. Making them specifically to be wrecked seems like it can probably be improved on."

[erinflight]

"I'm doing this so I have a chance to experiment. I've never tried to weave anything this complicated, and I don't know if it will turn out the way we want. Maybe the threads will make the portal stronger, maybe it will stop being cloth altogether, I don't know enough about weaving to guess."

[affodell]

"You have a point. But if you're going to get less coherent as we go, yet might have more than a few portals in you, I'd like to have clear plans for what-all you'll make before you make any of it."

[erinflight]

"I really hope the effects aren't noticeable that quickly, but I can either make a lot of portals so you don't have to worry about one getting destroyed, or make some gold so you can come back and buy indestructible cloth."

[affodell]

"I can afford the indestructible cloth if I'm not going to buy anything else for a while, since Bar can draw down escrow," says Cayra. "But I don't know what other things-for-you-to-weave I might need to buy."

[erinflight]

"You know, since the point of this is to experiment, I could try to make an indestructible portal. Actually, are there any other alterations you would like with the portal or with the room? If I try a couple slightly different things, I might get a better idea of exactly how the threads are interpreting me."

[affodell]

"Why do you need a cloth at all? Why can't you just make a portal that - folds up and sticks to walls and isn't on anything?"

[erinflight]

"I could try, but then it might end up stuck in the place I made it. Or maybe you couldn't carry it since it wouldn't have an edge and would teleport anything it touched. It might also be the wrong size, way too small or too big, since I wouldn't have a specific surface to place it on."

[affodell]

"...Okay. If I were designing this like your magic had no constraints at all, I'd want a large room, its own walled alucine, and two or more portals on cloth - with pockets for dowels at each end so it can be hung neatly - each of which was password-protected both in who could pass through them and in who could interact with them. So if I place one, no one can touch it or move it around, even at the remove of tools or torching the entire building it's in or something, unless they have my password written on them somewhere. And then it matters much less how destructible it is."

[erinflight]

Flynn slowly nods, "I can aim for that. Something that big is more likely to mess with me, so I'll want to do it in steps and you can test to make sure I'm still rational."

[affodell]

"My point about making plans for what's next after you've managed this stands, though, especially if you won't have much sociability left when you're done with the portals. So - what else?"

[erinflight]

"I'm not just doing this to make you happy, I'm trying to figure out how weaving works. If this ends up working well, then I can make you something else, but if it doesn't I'll want to figure out why. I don't want to use all of my rationality up without gaining something for me and the people at home."

[affodell]

"That makes sense," concedes Cayra. "Uh, one sec." She unvials her flower and does something with it, then puts it away again. "Sorry about that. Okay. So I probably need to tell you the password?"

[erinflight]

"You probably shouldn't in case I lose too much."

[affodell]

"How can you make it depend on a password you don't know?"