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]

"All that and you don't even have to deal with pyromancy's emotional disregulation. Nice gig if you can get it."

[fortheliving]

"Yeah, magic's pretty nice. Plus I get to live for a few hundred years, as long as nobody shoots me first. Or, well, actually people have shot me, but if they shoot me... better, I guess?"

[affodell]

"I'm gonna be immortal."

[fortheliving]

"Well, la di dah. These Mancies just get better and better, huh."

[affodell]

"Yeah. I mean, by the time I'm immortal I will probably have a meaningfully difficult time wresting my attention from whatever's caught my personal attention to pay attention to someone else dangling from a cliff, but I think if I'm very careful I will just be able to direct my personal attention where it ought to be, just for unconventional reasons."

[fortheliving]

"Best of luck on that. I haven't necessarily had the best track record with that kind of thing, but impulse control has never been my strong suit."

[affodell]

"Sounds like stories."

[fortheliving]

"Well, the magic I have isn't the only kind around, and some of them do things to your head. Like the charmingly named 'Hellfire', which is a potent magic source that destroys things very nicely, but makes you angrier and more impulsive. I ended up... relying on it, a bit. It didn't turn out very well."

[affodell]

"But you can put it down again after you pick it up?"

[fortheliving]

"Well, if you give it up completely, which is pretty hard. It was mostly only possible because I'd taken a tiny fraction of the power I could've had. If I'd gone the full package deal, I'd probably be kicking puppies on a professional basis by now."

[affodell]

"Professional puppy-kicking. I don't think my world has that. Unfortunately for 'mancers it's the learning, not the using, that causes the vice, and you can't unlearn whatever you decide to learn."

[fortheliving]

"That sucks. Some people think it's that way on my world too. That if it ever happened, you're stained for good. I tend to disagree, and fortunately there are people who agree with me."

[affodell]

"Lucky you. 'Stained' is a weird way to talk about it though."

[fortheliving]

"I mean, it's kind of literal. We've got this... magic... vision thing. If you've used the kind of magic that does nasty things to your brain, it's like a black stain all over your soul. Or sometimes something more symbolic, but it leaves a mark."

[affodell]

"Now I'm curious if you can see it on me."

[fortheliving]

"I can check, if you like. It's like... seeing how someone would be described in the introduction to their book, or something. Lots of symbols of what they're like and who they are. But I can't use it in here, so I'd rather you stand just outside the door if we're going to do this; the bar's full of magic, it hurts my head."

[affodell]

"What else will you pick up if you do this?"

[fortheliving]

"If you've got any secrets you're really guilty about, it might give me some weird hints about them. Murder especially, I definitely recommend against it if you kill people. Hmm... I'll probably get some outline of your personality and your values, but it's all pretty vague. There's a version with more detail, but I don't really do it as a party trick because they get the same view, and it upsets people. Speaking of which, don't look into my eyes, I avoid people's eyes as a habit but you might as well be forewarned. But, like, usually I'll See someone as a guardian angel with a fiery sword, or I'll See blood dripping from their hands, or there'll be holes in their skull, or something. That kind of thing."

[affodell]

"I've never killed anybody. Thanks for the eyes warning. Hmm, I think your cultural references might be lost on me - the thing with the sword in particular. What would the perforated skull mean, for that matter?"

[fortheliving]

"The guardian angel, that's sort of- a divine figure, who protects people and fights evil. She's a good friend of mine. The skull thing was in the case of a man who had had some really nasty mind magic done to him that basically turned him into a vegetable. Really awful."

[affodell]

"Eugh. Okay, I think I'm more curious than I am freaked out, so assuming that's the extent of the detail I'll go stand just outside the bar and you can do the thing."

[fortheliving]

"Sure. It won't look like much of anything, I'll just be looking at you. Then I'll either look away, or look away while grabbing my head and making angry painful noises."

[affodell]

"Uh, I don't want to hurt you."

[fortheliving]

Harry waves a hand negligently. "It's not likely you'll hurt my head, I'm just including the option in case it happens and you freak out. You'd have to be a lot more powerful than you've mentioned for that."

[affodell]

"So if I were a fully realized automancer, immortal and bioluminescent and sprouting extra limbs at my convenience and that sort of thing, then you'd get the headache, but since I can only do little stuff," she develops a case of interesting golden tiger stripes for two seconds, "you'll be okay?"