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]

"Well, I can stick around for that long."

[midst_of_threads]

"Thank you," Flynn looks thoughtful, "I might be able to help you with your vices now. Even if I can't undo them, maybe I can make you a warning system so you can tell if you're letting it get too far. Or I could just make you a lot of random cool stuff." Flynn grins.

[affodell]

"I like the random cool stuff. If you can undo the vices - or prevent them from getting worse even though I'm going to learn more automancy - that would be pretty great, as long as you can do only that and nothing else. But I don't think a warning would help me much."

[midst_of_threads]

"I can try," Flynn reaches out, carefully, with the threads. It's much easier to communicate with them now and Cayra feels Flynn asking permission to inspect her mind.

[affodell]

Cayra grants permission for limited, indistinct peering.

[midst_of_threads]

The threads show Flynn the areas in Carya's mine where the 'mancies have started to overflow into Cayra's thoughts and personality.

"I think I can stop the vices without interfering with your use of magic by setting up a barrier between your personality and the magic."

[affodell]

"...Will you be able to reverse it without side effects if it turns out that this does something weird like preventing me from actually using, or learning more of, the magic?"

[midst_of_threads]

"Yep, I'll just remove them. I'm not changing any part of your mind, so there shouldn't be a problem."
Flynn reaches out with the threads to shape the barrier.

[affodell]

Cayra lets her.

[midst_of_threads]

Flynn gently pushes back Cayra's magic and weaves the shield around her personality.

"Alright, do you feel any different?"

[affodell]

"Yeah. Less, uh, pressingly gregarious - if there's an effect on the automancy vice it's too subtle to notice without doing my whole notetaking rigmarole."

[midst_of_threads]

"Great! And the weaving didn't change me?"

[affodell]

"Nope, you're all clear."

[midst_of_threads]

"We should keep the limitations for a few more days. I don't think they'll be any problems, but just in case."

[affodell]

"Yeah, agreed. In case the threads turn out to be fickle or something."

[midst_of_threads]

Flynn starts walking towards Crake's Hollow.
"I wonder how many more types of magic exist out there somewhere."

[affodell]

"No idea. I plan to hang out in that bar more and see who walks in."

[midst_of_threads]

"There are so many possibilities now. Maybe I'll wander for a bit after I get things under control here. I still don't understand exactly what the threads are, or why I have a world and you have alucines."

[affodell]

"Or how the bar works in the first place, if it's not just another alucine!"

[midst_of_threads]

"I wonder if I could weave something like the bar. My own friendly universe-crossing ship."

[affodell]

"The room already has its portals in three places. But maybe something independently ambulatory would work too."

[midst_of_threads]

"True, I could just make a bunch of portals. Even the threads said they had trouble reaching new universes. If someone made the bar, they must have been crazily powerful."

[affodell]

"Yeah. And it seems like a weird way of accomplishing any specific goal - like, maybe it's doing something very big very quietly, but it's not the most efficient way of doing anything we saw it do, which means those are side effects, or they didn't care about efficiency. It seems more like the kind of thing you'd just sort of toss off for fun, not like a huge resource outlay. Which implies even more power than that."

[midst_of_threads]

"Maybe the person who creates a universe connecting bar is also the kind of person who creates universes? Or maybe not. If you don't have to worry about vices, how far can your 'mancies go?"

[affodell]

"Oh, if I don't have to worry about vices, I can learn tons of things. Oneiromancy in particular might have amazing untapped vistas, because oneiromancers lose receptive language so after a while they can't receive suggestions anymore, not in the way people usually phrase suggestions anyway - there's probably less of it to learn than anything else because it's almost solo research beyond that point. But there's only as much as has made it into the knowflowers; I'll have to combine 'mancies in substantial quantities or do independent research to accomplish anything truly unprecedented. Will the wall last? Because if I learn a dozen 'mancies all the way and then it collapses I'll be a disaster."