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Council of Rhakotis ([personal profile] specialcollections) wrote in [community profile] librarycardedooc2022-04-01 10:00 pm
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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
quietisviolent: (033)

[personal profile] quietisviolent 2022-04-19 03:24 am (UTC)(link)
It was one of those situations where the scratching and clawing noises of something wanting to break them to pieces were more of a reassurance than the silence and there was no way to know it until that silence fell. There was no way to know if the thing was still there or gone; no way to know that if it was there it was trying to open the door or just waiting. Maybe someone had come across it and was staring at it. As the silence fell between them she paused and straightened up, looking towards the door that separated them from it.

She glanced back to Yondu when he started talking, then shifted back to her work. Not that it lasted for long. Her work slowed then stopped after Yondu suggested trapping the thing somewhere and she paused for a long moment before she stood and faced him, first trying sign language.

You crazy? Pen it up?

She shook her head in heavy disagreement. Her next signs were sharp and fast to accentuate her disbelief at his suggestion.

Where? How?
yondu: (0 8 3)

[personal profile] yondu 2022-04-21 06:27 am (UTC)(link)
"There are some of these airlock things between here an' that computer. If we could time it right an' shut it, could catch it. But it'd be some split second timing."

And while he is being vaguely altruistic, he adds. "...But that's an afterthought. I'm fine with not dealin' with this damn thing if it stays away from us." It just, you know... might not stay away from them.

Doing the right thing is, sometimes, an act of general self-interest and not just a strong do-gooder desire.
quietisviolent: (038)

[personal profile] quietisviolent 2022-05-05 06:39 pm (UTC)(link)
Alena's glare lasted momentarily after his explanation before it softened and faded into thought. She had plenty of cyberware meant to enhance her reflexes and give her an upper hand in hand-to-hand and melee combat and Yondu so far has been a reliable backup. It wasn't entirely impossible, just risky. But she was used to risky. She started to respond slowly, still thinking about it.

It wasn't lost on Alena that if they trapped this thing then they could walk more freely in this cursed place. While it was easy enough to deal with this thing right now she could only imagine what a nightmare it would turn into if they found anything else that was the same level of threat but required them to stop staring at the thing they'd just gotten away from.

I have augments that make me harder to kill and if things go bad they will heighten my reflexes and reaction.

She paused, then her eyes came into focus on Yondu.

Difficult. Not impossible. Okay.

She returned back to her work and it wasn't long before she put two wires together and the door started to pull itself open with an effort.