call me maybe

[from_scratch]

Cam is out flying. There's a decent cloud of atmosphere around the gold plane, now, millenia of demons making air around themselves for comfort and not sealing it up because why would you bother. There's a small forest, here - the effect is kind of ruined by the lamps it has to grow under, but it's still pretty.

He feels an open summons and lets it grab him -

with the Joker (kappa)

with Ripper (kappa)

with Darren (Aestrix)

with Minus (kappa)

with Emma (Marri)

with Facility 3141592 (armokGoB)

with the admin (kappa)

with Jarvis (kappa, Aestrix)

with Miles (kappa)

with Hank (Nemo)

Comments

[marrinikari]

"New demons... pop in?" she asks, confused. "The idea of a personal black hole is kinda adorable. And anything that even kinda works in a dorm room will be super easy. Free furniture, college students. I could email some of the dorm lists but I mean, as long as you could get it to an elevator I've definitely seen people just leave things outside with notes saying 'free'."

[from_scratch]

"Okay then. Furniture replacement is go if there's a place to stash what's here already, then. And yes, new demons pop in, daeva of any kind can't reproduce."

[marrinikari]

That was not what Emma was thinking at all and she will now be slightly flustered. "Um, I meant like, where do they pop from? Can you pop back? Is it like... in a particular place, or random? Could there secretly be a hundred million more demons just really really far away from the-" snerk "-plane of gold?"

[from_scratch]

"Oh, we appear near other demons, more or less. We think, anyway, but there could be another cluster an octillion miles away that nobody knows about. Most demons don't seem to pop from anywhere. They just start existing."

[marrinikari]

"If most just exist, what about the rest?" She inspects the room. None of the furniture is terribly heavy, or too large, but it's a little awkwardly bulky. The two of them could move things by hand, but it might be time consuming. "Do you want to conjure... I dunno, a cart or something? Or I can ask a couple of my friends to help." She rolls her eyes fondly. "They can be bribed with pizza."

[from_scratch]

"What happens to the cart if I make a cart?" asks Cam patiently.

[marrinikari]

"If you can make a little folding one, I'd keep it. My mom has one at home and she's moved some crazy stuff with it. Seven foot bookshelves once, I think."

[from_scratch]

"Okay, little folding cart for you it is." Cam makes a little folding cart and starts stacking mediocre dorm furniture on it.

[marrinikari]

Emma is not particularly strong and Cam has a few inches on her, but she is used to dorm furniture by now. Helping ensues. It will take a couple trips to the basement, but the elevator is close and they have a folding cart and it's not much of a hassle. The basement's small, but not close to full; short term residents don't have much in storage. There is no shortage of places to put mediocre dorm furniture.

[from_scratch]

Cam disposes of all his mediocre dorm furniture except the bed which he's not even going to try to haul, replaces it with nicer and comfier things, and then makes himself a slice of toast, hmming to himself about what's next.

"You want to know where not-most demons come from?"

[marrinikari]

"...sure," Emma says slowly. "If you're okay telling me, I mean?" From his attitude, she's guessing this may not be common knowledge.

[from_scratch]

"Well, humans back home don't know, unless someone spilled the beans and I didn't hear about it, but it might be relevant to you, and this is a different world. But kindly don't go telling everybody until I've thought about it some more. Some of us daeva are dead summoners. If this world now works on afterlife rules like my world does, you will now be some kind of daeva after you die."

[marrinikari]

"...oh." She hasn't given dying a lot of thought, before. "So, um, I might be a demon when I die?"

She adds, "Promise not to tell. Not that it'll matter unless someone took a picture of... whatever it was we did."

[from_scratch]

"Well, if your world now works on those rules, it's much better than the alternative - and off the top of my head I'd peg you for a fairy, not a demon."

[marrinikari]

"You said they're telekinetic, right? But they work the same as demons as far as... uh, afterlife?" He has mentioned fairies and angels once apiece; she has not managed to mentally group all three kinds as 'daeva'. "What's the difference? As far as... what kind you pop in as, I mean."

She has no idea what her world's alternative is, but that means his world's 'will show up as a living being' is certainly much better than '???'

[from_scratch]

"Well, no, Fairyland's different from Hell in addition to fairy magic being different from demon magic. Fairyland's more interesting all by itself. I think but cannot be sure that it's about what kind of magic suits you best."

[marrinikari]

"Interesting in a good way? Have you seen it?" Pause. "Do they have an El Dorado?" She is not particularly serious, but really. Someone should make up for demonic naming deficiencies.

[from_scratch]

"I've never been to Fairyland. I have seen pictures of the landscapes, it's very pretty in a lushly sylvan kind of way, but have never heard rumor of an El Dorado."

[marrinikari]

"I like forests," she says wistfully, then sobers. "Thanks for telling me. It would have been kinda a shock." She looks at her pocket, which still holds the floating pencil for earlier. "Uh, mostly. The telekinesis thing I guess would be similar." She considers. "Are your 'parlor tricks' similar enough that people have practice, do you think? You said there's some telekinesis." Faint smile. "Maybe I'd just be weird and super competent."

[from_scratch]

"There is extremely tiny parlor trick telekinesis. It is slow, requires a lot of concentration, allows next to no precision, and unless you're preposterously good at it won't work over distances greater than an inch. Fairies can move pretty much anything however they want. I don't think practice makes much difference."

[marrinikari]

"Did you need to practice- I don't even know what to call it," Emma says ruefully. "Creating things? You seem to need at least some detail to create things, can you just... tell, somehow, how much you need to know?"

[from_scratch]

"I don't know that much about how naturally occuring demons do it because I haven't met any new ones," says Cam. "In my case I was recently dead and had twenty-two years of knowledge of stuff-that-existed to use. I think it may be that naturally occurring demons can make themselves air and water and some basic food instinctively."

[marrinikari]

"Makes sense, just, not quiiite what I was thinking. I meant more-" she stops to think. "You asked for the make and model of your empathy blocker, earlier. Did you already know before you-" won't say died, it seems too weird when he is standing there "-became a demon that you needed that much detail? Or did you try to make things with less detail and fail? Or do you just... know somehow... that that's how much detail you need to know before it works?"

[from_scratch]

"Mmm... well, I knew a few things about how demon magic worked before, I'd met demons and asked them questions," says Cam. "And then I experimented some when I had the magic myself."

[marrinikari]

"Why am I not surprised that you did experiments?" Emma grins.