specialcollections: (Default)
Council of Rhakotis ([personal profile] specialcollections) wrote in [community profile] 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.

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).

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.

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.

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.
NAVIGATION
yondu: (2 3 0)

[personal profile] yondu 2022-04-10 04:34 am (UTC)(link)
"I ain't found many people."

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.
blue_ice: (slightly soft)

[personal profile] blue_ice 2022-04-10 04:45 am (UTC)(link)
"Me neither." So that's a no. Seto briefly touches the ring, but steels himself. He has to carry on.

"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."
yondu: (1 3 2)

[personal profile] yondu 2022-04-10 07:47 am (UTC)(link)
He's... mostly glad he's not. Sometimes he kind of wishes he was, but that's harder.

"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."