barring emergencies

[the_very_best]

Bella's not sure where she has wandered. She thought she was about to walk into a shop, but this appears to be an unattended bar. With none of the windows associated with the shop she thought she was entering. It could be an elaborate psychic assault of some kind, but it doesn't feel very... assault-y... and she was in the middle of a town and doesn't think any humans want to sic their 'mon on her. It's strange. She approaches the bar, looking around warily, hand hovering near her belt.

with Max (Benedict)

with Earth and Lightning (kappa)

with Ann and Sabrina (kuuskytkolme)

Comments

[imeanforever]

The door opens again.

[pythbox]

Earth looks over at it.

Lightning, being closer to Bar, asks: "That's another one, right?"

[imeanforever]

Yes.

"Excuse me?"

[from_scratch]

"I look like a five foot tall fairy when I'm a girl?"

[pythbox]

"No, the other ones of comparable apparent age were taller and didn't have wings," says Earth. "Although one of them was some kind of plant creature visually indistinguishable from an ordinary human. Hello," he adds in the newcomer's direction. "This is a weird magic place called Milliways and that is an alternate universe version of you and we're discussing how to rescue some people in my world from magically enforced servitude."

[imeanforever]

"None of you tell me your names," she says, "it causes magically enforced servitude."

[pythbox]

"Thank you," says Earth. "Does it count if the name I'm usually called is the default used for every single elemental of my type who isn't otherwise named and is also the name of my element? It could be very awkward to conceal it if so."

[imeanforever]

"I have no idea, no previous examples."

[from_scratch]

"Are nicknames safe?"

[imeanforever]

"Yeah. Mine's Promise."

[from_scratch]

"Right, call me Revelation."

[pythbox]

"Given how our local version acts when she has my amulet, I'm not especially worried about telling you mine as a test," says Earth.

[imeanforever]

"If you want to, and we need the information for some reason, I won't stop you, although then you probably want to avoid being in a room with me and anybody who can get my name or otherwise vassalize me. Uh, how do we know that me and him and this other person and so on are the same... personality or whatever?"

[from_scratch]

Revelation opens his mouth and gestures at the bar, rethinks what he was about to say, and says, "Informative napkins, but it's possible you shouldn't interact with their source."

[pythbox]

"Hmm. Yes," says Earth.

"Unless you happen to know you're safe from the thing," says Lightning to Bar. "Do you happen to know you're safe from the thing?"

[from_scratch]

I will be quite all right, but your worry is touching, says Bar. It will likewise be entirely safe for her to accept her free beverage and any she cares to otherwise obtain directly from me.

"She says it's fine," Cam reports. "Both ways, beverages included."

[imeanforever]

"Okay. And you were so concerned because?"

[from_scratch]

"The bar's name is Bar."

[pythbox]

"Are beverages usually a problem?" wonders Earth.

[imeanforever]

"There are two ways for my kind of magical servitude to happen - learning somebody's real name, or feeding them. The feeding thing is mostly a problem between fairies and mortals - I can go foraging and not worry if somebody has some long lost claim to a tree I pick nuts from or something as long as I'm not actually stealing - but I wouldn't take food from a strange sort of person without being sure."

[pythbox]

"Well. Would you like to help us out?" inquires Earth. "If so, I should probably tell you my element, because it's not very likely that you could interact with elementals for long without learning someone's."

[imeanforever]

"I think I want to know more about what's going on first, but I am generally opposed to the servitude thing and haven't got anywhere with my world's version yet."

[pythbox]

"In my world, there are elementals and humans. Elementals have wings and halos, like my vines or his sparks, and are very magically powerful in our own element; magic-using humans have affinities for multiple elements, but can do much less with them than we can. Magic-using humans can also create amulets that bind elementals to obey whoever last touched them. Elementals can't interfere directly at all with our own or others' amulets. Humans consider it unsafe to let any elementals go free, and we're very valuable and useful for doing magic with, so they capture any of us that they find. My friend and I are part of a university collection, and we've been trying to find someone who seems like they might be able to steal and break all the amulets in the collection. But I don't know if it's possible to break an amulet without using my world's magic to do it."

[imeanforever]

"If I got the name of a human who could do magic, I could make them do it, but I wouldn't want the human to get hurt following my orders."

[pythbox]

"If you stole all the amulets and brought the elementals here and explained everything to them first, that might not be much of a problem. Humans think we're unavoidably destructive, but I don't. I would avoid surprising busy elementals with sudden freedom, particularly if they're upset or traumatized, which we frequently are, but I think we have the chance to do a much better job than that."