Council of Rhakotis (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
specialcollections) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
librarycardedooc2022-04-01 10:00 pm
specialcollections) wrote in librarycardedooc2022-04-01 10:00 pm
Entry tags:
TEST DRIVE
TDM
SCOUTING - WHO'S THAT VILLAIN
It says something for the time that the walls of the pyramids are still gleaming, new and bright and shining, sanded impossibly sleek. They're a glimmering temptation for tomb robbers, but for the moment they're safe and well guarded. The Nile is more blessed and lush than it would be in later years, though not quite as fertile as it would have been a century earlier.
Something is supposed to happen tonight, though, and the Library has no idea what. Just that it's supposed to happen on this night. That in the morning, the massive tombs will be reduced to rubble, that the Sphinx will be little more than assorted boulders, that bodies will fill the desert. Something will continue hunting the world and shattering all of the holy relics and religious iconography that connects mankind to their gods and the next life. For someone technologically minded? Not a big deal. But a huge one when someone with a particularly blessed soul needs to be born in another 4,500 years and won't have the power to fight the threat that they need to.
If someone can catch the moment when things might turn, either return for help or stop it themselves, they can save not just the lives of those in the Pharoh's domain. They just need to know exactly what and when. It could be another time traveler stopping a threat at its source. It could be some sort of hellish force lashing back against the gods. It just needs to be stopped.
Something is supposed to happen tonight, though, and the Library has no idea what. Just that it's supposed to happen on this night. That in the morning, the massive tombs will be reduced to rubble, that the Sphinx will be little more than assorted boulders, that bodies will fill the desert. Something will continue hunting the world and shattering all of the holy relics and religious iconography that connects mankind to their gods and the next life. For someone technologically minded? Not a big deal. But a huge one when someone with a particularly blessed soul needs to be born in another 4,500 years and won't have the power to fight the threat that they need to.
If someone can catch the moment when things might turn, either return for help or stop it themselves, they can save not just the lives of those in the Pharoh's domain. They just need to know exactly what and when. It could be another time traveler stopping a threat at its source. It could be some sort of hellish force lashing back against the gods. It just needs to be stopped.
SALVAGE - A GOOD BOY
What was once a mighty secretive organization on an alien world has failed in its protective duties. Facilities with rows and rows of protective cells now lay derelict. In this one building in particular, some doors are torn off their hinges. Bodies can be found in various positions of anguish. Something, or a variety of somethings, scoured this world clean of the dominant sapient life and as a last-ditch effort to save what they could the people of this complex loosed every captive creature and being that they were keeping, and they still didn't manage to reach them all.
But in this building there's a very special computer, one with a predictive nature. There are any number of exceptional relics here that could be brought back to Alexandria, and they'd love them all, but the researchers would especially like to add this computer to enhance their powers of prediction to get the most accurate results with the most certainty possible.
Problem is that there are a lot of special access cards, many locked doors, and a few nigh-on-indestructible monsters between here and there. Such a small little thing might not be such a simple task to retrieve, especially in a building that seems specifically made of materials to inhibit teleportation (can't let certain subjects get loose, after all).
But in this building there's a very special computer, one with a predictive nature. There are any number of exceptional relics here that could be brought back to Alexandria, and they'd love them all, but the researchers would especially like to add this computer to enhance their powers of prediction to get the most accurate results with the most certainty possible.
Problem is that there are a lot of special access cards, many locked doors, and a few nigh-on-indestructible monsters between here and there. Such a small little thing might not be such a simple task to retrieve, especially in a building that seems specifically made of materials to inhibit teleportation (can't let certain subjects get loose, after all).
COURSE CORRECTION - BROKEN ENGLISH
There is an outcome that can't be avoided in this particular path. London is burning, people are dying, the streets are filled with carnage in one man's ceaseless search for war. Blimps travel overhead, spouting tinny German down upon panicked civilians as literally monstrous nazi soldiers attack the streets.
The sky is filled with zeppelins, and planes drop bombs in a throwback to the old war from decades before. In another universe with similar souls, this would be playing out differently. An exceptional team of monster hunters would be stopping this disaster, teaming up and with noble sacrifices eventually stopping the onslaught. But in this universe there is no noble sacrifices, no loyal soldiers to secret organizations built into the world to run out and prove themselves, no religious warriors ready to exact holy deeds.
There are just monsters. Vampires, werewolves, and clumsily made cyborgs are ready to use their various skills to go find what the planes and zeppelins overhead cannot. This needs to be stopped by a team of sufficient skill and strength to do so.
The sky is filled with zeppelins, and planes drop bombs in a throwback to the old war from decades before. In another universe with similar souls, this would be playing out differently. An exceptional team of monster hunters would be stopping this disaster, teaming up and with noble sacrifices eventually stopping the onslaught. But in this universe there is no noble sacrifices, no loyal soldiers to secret organizations built into the world to run out and prove themselves, no religious warriors ready to exact holy deeds.
There are just monsters. Vampires, werewolves, and clumsily made cyborgs are ready to use their various skills to go find what the planes and zeppelins overhead cannot. This needs to be stopped by a team of sufficient skill and strength to do so.
DOMESTIC - HOME SWEET HOME
Because Alexandria was pretty much built off refugees from different worlds, there's a wonderful mix of species and races and foods and types of construction in the civilian portions of the city, the areas that aren't part of the massive library. Unfortunately, some people do still carry old hate with them and fights do still break out. People do still have their very natural flaws.
A particularly rough fight, in true dramatic movie fashion, led to a bunch of sales carts in an open market being crashed in.
If you want your fair share of groceries, some of the vendors are letting people take some, or are making them simple dishes of food, if they help them clean up in the aftermath of the brawl.
A particularly rough fight, in true dramatic movie fashion, led to a bunch of sales carts in an open market being crashed in.
If you want your fair share of groceries, some of the vendors are letting people take some, or are making them simple dishes of food, if they help them clean up in the aftermath of the brawl.
R&D - MAGICAL DESIGN
Everyone's heard of the stereotypical crystal ball, and there is a healthy collection of them in the library. Unfortunately most of them operate via magic, and in magical aversive worlds this doesn't give course correctors and scouts much time for caution if they need to check their pathing. So the Library is putting the R&D department to the unique task of creating a completely digital version.
This may involve converting it to magitek first, or careful trial and error in a testing room, or just losing sleep over design attempts while a magical orb stares you in the face.
Whatever is the case, it's now your assignment to help in the creation of a device that can provide glimpses a few days into the future using this relic as a base. Try not to break it. Getting them is expensive and troublesome.
This may involve converting it to magitek first, or careful trial and error in a testing room, or just losing sleep over design attempts while a magical orb stares you in the face.
Whatever is the case, it's now your assignment to help in the creation of a device that can provide glimpses a few days into the future using this relic as a base. Try not to break it. Getting them is expensive and troublesome.
what's for lumch
..Better not to think of him. He presses a hand to his locket briefly and moves on. Plenty of time to prepare for the next search, wherever he ends up. It's all things, clues to ages past. Records of a few triumphs of civilizations, but mostly tragedies and losses. Boy, is he familiar with that last one.
All of these Deep Thoughts are interrupted by a few gourds rolling in front of his feet. He barely avoids tripping over them, stumbles back. Sighs. Might as well round them up.
"Not the most conveniently shaped foods in the world," he murmurs softly.
Going with a "oh hey it's you" scenario
"Holy hell!" He says the moment he lays on him.
But then? Then he remembers. "You know me, kid?" Sorry, Seto, everyone is a kid to him. But the tone is expectant enough to betray that, yeah, Yondu should know him. And even in this place he knows there can be duplicates. But god, god he's like the goddamn universe to cut him one break and give him someone back. He didn't want to be like this. He didn't want to be alone.
The little old shopkeeper is about to interfere, though, reclaim their wares gently from Yondu's arms to go with the ones that have already been retrieved.
all good!
Seto takes a moment to place his own gourds back with the others before facing the man. Yes, he knows him. Seto had heard about the phenomenon of former passengers' ghosts drifting in small clumps and landing in the same place before, but to witness it was a surprise after all this time.
"...yeah, Yondu, it's me. I must've disappeared shortly after you. Did anyone else you know land here?"
Just about everyone Yondu had been close to had disappeared at the same time he did...if the drifting really did occur in clumps, maybe some of them made it. He could hope.
no subject
But Seto was married, right? He's not got the heart to ask him if his man's here. The answer being 'no' is just more tragedy for them. But that's kinda the point of this place. To give people their second chances.
Maybe he'll get 'im back. They were important enough to their world.
"We should go somewhere an' figure out where we are with this. Last thing I remember was a mission where we had to deal with some birds an' some voidtears. Made it back to the train. Barely had time to get situated. Next thing I knew I was in a big ol' library without my SCA."
He thought it was that wierd being again. Or that he was dreaming. It took a librarian guiding him out and another solid week before he realized he wasn't going to be just waiting for a Ministry pick-up. No Anan to call. No train rescue. But him? The worst he had to deal with was losing his daughters, Soldat. Bad enough, but he had some hope that like him they ended up somewhere.
Didn't have a ring on his finger like Kaiba did.
no subject
"I don't know if getting close to those void tears induced mass destabilization, but we lost far more people than usual that platform. The Ministry called us again, and I tried to carry on the work you left..but looks like my time was finally up."
Game over. He sighed deeply and fell into step, more than willing to head somewhere to think. But before he does that, he turns to give Yondu the smallest of smiles, and reaches up to briefly pat his arm. It's an awkward movement, he's still adjusting to that kind of thing, but he's trying.
"I was worried...but I'm glad you're not dust."
no subject
"Yeah, I mean, I ain't give up, but I've had to change my approach." He starts to walk, but then four steps in realizes that he's still holding a dick gourd, and decides he doesn't want to be holding a dick gourd so he runs back to put it not-in-his-hands and into the appropriate dick gourd spot. Then he jogs back over to Kaiba with an and we'll never speak of this again look.
"Remember V? Dunno if you met 'im, but real smart. Loved the guy. But he got booted off too an' didn't end up here. So I appealed to change some shit. Made a good case that he was valuable to the course of some timelines. So they're gonna let me go after 'im.
"Pretty much I ain't givin' up, even if I have to fuck off to someone's world and make things so they go good for 'em." Or brute forces a timeline where the train doesn't grab them, or there's definitely a body to fall back on. Something. He can't do it for everybody, wouldn't even want to, but he can for a few folks.
"...Also I been runnin' some booze outa some worlds but what else is new. I need the money."