Quincunx

The upraised hand folded itself into a pointing index finger* and jabbed at the air a few times, as Tzimfemme herself was inarticulate. . .amusement? rage? both? neither? . . . *Not the rude gesture. Sweetcherrie did bother to step around me instead of on me.

AM, not PM 2 to 4 AM actually, if you're on Central European time.

"'Course we do, you've only mentioned it three times this round," Tzimfemme replied from the doorway. The door had shut on an open-backed wooden cart and she was trying to heave it through the doorway on strength alone. "I was thinking about taking it off of your hands, after all I'm a persona stigma--" she put her right foot on the doorjamb and heaved on the poles of the cart, "--specialist!" Right then the sentient door decided to let go of the cart's sides and Tzimfemme flew into the room, tumbling to the right while the cart veered to the left, bumping its way over piles of paper and mummified applicants, before getting its poles wedged in the open drawers of two hanging file cabinets. One wheel creaked in midair and scattered road dust over Tzimfemme. Supine, she stuck one forearm into the air. "Anyone want to help me up?" she inquired. "Those corpses won't load themselves y'know."

Tzimfemme continued her dialogue with Zariah internally--and sometimes they will even fling themselves at you! (Although, given that velocity, Tzimfemme was more inclined to suspect outside flinging, possibly from Ogg and Yog's latest catapult.) She eased herself off of the chair and sauntered into the crowd, holding up her head with pride despite her hair tumbling heavily down her back. Remembering Pilocanci, she backtracked to the hologram who was watching Zariah with a perplexed expression. "Hey Hawk," she began, reeling him in. "Pilocanci--" "Whatever," she said, laying a Mel Brooks accent on the word. "I'm feelin' nostalgic, and better you than the last feeling. At least I could light a match off of your ass. I think. Is that a hard light hologram?" She touched his shoulder tentatively and felt the solid hologram. "Oh, nice. We hadn't worked out the practical application of the theory yet--" and their talk shifted to particle wave theory of magic, with formulas so odd and complex they curdled milk for a fifty yard radius. . .

Tzimfemme remained still for awhile, legs drawn up to her chest and arms resting on her knees, meditating on the messages she had been howling. The return of a fully human mind was such a relief. . .surely she wouldn't have to thank Peredhil verbally if he'd already seen everything? Brr. She sheathed herself in a silver flare of personality and went into the building, following the emotional shockwave back to its source. "May I cut in," stated Tzimfemme, slipping herself in between Zariah and Pilocanci, who were fortunately not dancing too intimately. The camouflaged canine reached into his pockets (no one was looking closely enough to violate the paradox) for another magic-suppressing gadget. The naked mage suppressed a few words while fending off Zariah with upraised hands, but settled for, "That won't work, dude, this is personality not magic, and I'd love to yikyak with you about that kind of technology later," and extended the fire to shield Zariah for a few seconds. "I think you're leaning on the day too heavily," she told Zariah in a hurry, while the flare muffled communications to the outside. "Pairs are nice and larger groups with proper guidance, but being pushed together is less fun. People get prickly and repellent--like repels like y'know?" Tzimfemme pushed her palms together but not quite to touching, then rambled on, "It's more fun to pursue them, and they don't often mind. . .poor silly lonely men," and she flicked a hand at Pilocanci, "even him. Chase one today and promise another for tomorrow and you'll be through the gauntlet in no time--just remember to not look back, yesterday's men take that for fresh permission--" At the decisive moment, the flare snapped back around Tzimfemme instead of forcing a new persona to the surface of Zariah. The naked mage, whiplashed, stepped gingerly to the nearest seat and leaned against it to collect herself before putting her words into practice.

If you're immediately thrown off of the server, change servers. If you're immediately thrown out of the channel, that ip is on the channel ban list and we need to start swapping PMs in order to fix it.

Multi-faceted roleplaying with especially strong pre- and post-game RP. . .awful detective skills and/or amazing subtlety from the wolves. . .success in my eyes! Some material in my posts came from christusrex.org (archive of prayers in many languages), florealpes.com (French botanical site), and newyorkcarver.com/scriptoria.htm (glossary of vellum-making terms). Waiting for Werewolf XVII, where I promise to be much less lovable (any of you producer or director types want the thankless task of being my character's husband?) Tanuchan, will you tell us about the "no linking your vote to another player's" rule now?

Woohoo! 3rd edition rules! (The entire cast of Werewolf XVI stares.) Erhmmm. . .right. I'll be sitting this one out. . .(slinks away)

I'm certain only that the long-ago Valentine would have been happier with a longer life.

It was noon Quincunx time, and Tzimfemme still wasn't sure how that was so--she was back on Pen territory after a fruitless run out to its border lands and should have been synchronized with the other Pen people, but it was hardly the first thing to go wrong today. Ambience of the day, maybe? She'd gone whooping and loping along the border lands to celebrate the coming of 50% discounted chocolates, but the ground was all wrong for a bacchanal--slippery and cold, and deceptive with mossy patches in which her legs had sunk to mid-calf. She reached up for a tree branch, thinking to travel like Tarzan, but the thickest white branches bowed back to earth under her weight--and she recognized the landscape. Blood and bones! The crack between the worlds had dumped her into Rydia's dreamworld, Starlight's land! Tzimfemme gritted her teeth, turned around, and cantered at an uneven pace through the loam--breaking twigs and streaking herself with chilled mud--and returned to the crack which hung in midair, four streaky silver arms radiating from a central point ("Tetrahedron," she reminded herself: this was server-side boss's land). "Bloody Rydia, can't she handle her own dreamscapes," she muttered, and strode into the flaw. This new land wasn't Pen either but it was good enough. Tzimfemme unbound her hair and took off, outrunning her anger on the foothills. Clumps of red clay cut into her feet and crumbling bone-white stones rattled down the slopes, crashing through oak leaves, leaving flecks of Tzimfemme's blood. She ignored her wounds--the slick clay gave nothing for free, not even traction. Hell, you could scoop it up and make an idol of the devil Orcennrasa (bloody kabbalah, that was Rosemary's department, why was she getting everyone else's baggage), and you'd have to pay a sin eater to take it away. No trace of copper in the dirt either, definitely the wrong foothills. All at once Tzimfemme recognized the foothills, and what duty (pleasure) (duty) would bring her to parade here on Valentine's Day, and she halted so quickly her rump skidded on the ground, then turned and raced back to the flaw for another try at reality--too late. Outside of the Conservatory, a short-furred slender silver hound, with human proportions, howled at the walls out of a human face. Her hair fell down, still wavy and brown, past her hackles and denied anyone politely calling her a pooka. Two requirements were on Tzimfemme's mind: getting out of this mistaken form before Orlan saw her, and getting the clay out from between her toes before the houndmaster called. She lifted a forepaw to her mouth but, scowling at the instinct, put it down again. Her tail switched against the grass as she watched the steady trickle of people into the hall.

Tanuchan #3: The most well-formed idea and one ready for play. Unfortunately there's a. . .lack of driving force or somesuch. Maybe it's just not evil enough for my view of a serial killers' convention. Tanuchan #2: Guild politics of an Evil Guild. Tanuchan #1: Lynching by ice-pick lobotomy? A "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" approach? (Thanks to Gryphon for sorting out the idea in the first place.)

Spring Thaw When the shovel spins out of my hands in the evening it cuts down through the soil and into the clay where it bites and it holds--I am wielding a bulldog-- I step onto the shovel and wriggle its blade left and right, up and down, I'm not dressed for this work, and my shoe slides to land on the slippery clay when the handle falls backwards and I do the same-- rising up in a block, it's half soil, half clay, and the soil's half knotted with last autumn's stalks, but by god there are earthworms, and not a clay brick but a moist orange layer--I shake the dog's neck and it lets soil go, bang its head on the ground to release all the clay--it will make my arms weary, all that weight on the shovel--and bite down again.

The more I think about it, the more I think a roomful of serial killers might not be the best Werewolf setting; it'd probably take less than a day for one of them to snap and start killing the competition, votes or no votes. It would, at least, be a fast Werewolf game. However, maybe a nest of fanatics under one charismatic leader would work, as everyone backstabs figuratively and literally for favor in the leader's eyes, or plots an escape and starts lynching everyone who might tattletale. Guild politics at its worst.

Just before dusk of that day, a monk in a heavy hood stood in a niche in the wall, flanked by thick pillars which rose to support separate arches. Concealed among casks of sacramental wine was one open barrel of snowmelt, fed by a pipe which dipped below the surface of the water, and a stack of tightly woven cloths with strings tied to the corners. The hooded monk picked the strings of one cloth out of the freezing water, catching a falling drop on his fingers before it struck the water, and tied it around his face without dislodging his hood. Shivering, he moved deeper into the niche and stepped sideways behind a frieze of Saint Ambrose, into the outer passages of the library. Thibault had entered by the gate of Saint Ambrose, over thirty-five years ago, and his patron needed to retrace the straying monk's footsteps. He stepped quickly past the braziers of laurel leaves and juniper buds, shivering as the mask dripped icy water down his neck. As Brother Thibault had done, he turned right instead of left and walked into the better-lit corridor. The pine torches clogged the corridor with smoke, being set closer and closer to the floor as the path twisted and doubled back on itself, until they were set into pits in the floor instead of rings on the walls. The choking smoke now also smelled of sulfur, and the hooded monk stepped slowly, crossing himself even before the streaks of red appeared. Set into the dead end, leering out through the smoke, heated iron sculptures captured by Syrian Christian armies stretched out yellow-painted arms, too many arms, into the smoke. The hooded monk dropped to his knees and repeated, word for word, Brother Thibault's terrified pleas to God on that long-ago night. The hooded monk shook the dust of the floor from his knees when he rose and quickly retreated to the proper passageway. This one was lit by dim phosphorescent fungus, grown in clusters along the walls and unreliable as St. Elmo's fire. He wound around a series of masonry baffles set at hip and knee height in the broad corridor, hurried past the braziers by the gate of Ruth, and walked for long minutes in a pitch-black spiraling corridor. Just before the second false wall, he pulled his hood down firmly over his eyes before stepping around it. Sunlight, the last traces of sunset, bounced from prism to prism, from the top of the abbey to this subterranean chamber, painfully bright. In the center of the circle stood a pre-Christian statue of Winged Victory, painted and gilded, with a polished silver-inlaid gold halo scattering sunlight in a nimbus around her head. He hurried past the statue without risking the temptation of looking at it and vanished into another unlit corridor at her back, part of the true path to the library.

1 had been carved into the wall by short yet razor-sharp ears, the writing instrument of Valdar reborn and not yet re-aged. . . 2 was scribbled next to that, the mark of a ineptly summoned child-demoness whom we knew as Rune. . . Now Minta the neato necro gnomie girl stood in front of the writing, digging through her innumerable pockets to find a quill, while a freshly summoned spectre floated beside her, already dreading when she'd puncture its glowing red eyes for ink. . . A few minutes later, the sign read: 1, 2, skip a few, 99, 100!

In the chapel, Brother Thibault almost smiled when news of Felipe's new, overreaching penance reached his ears, but rearranged his face to prayerful dignity. The abbot was keeping the novice out of the inquisitor's way before he had a chance to spill communion wine upon him or something equally disastrous. It was. . .security, for Felipe's soul and for the abbot's rule. The Lord worked in mysterious ways, but it was good to be reassured that He was watching over the brothers. Some of the younger, less pious brothers--copyists and librarians--had begun to wonder and speculate about the next sign of the Apocalypse. Brother Thibault did not speculate with them. His skill at reading had never been good, even after the blood of his head was no longer nourishing his hair instead of his brain. He knew the prayers, and that was enough. He finished his repetitions and looked up from the rail, waiting for someone to assist him to his feet, and wondered why there was a wooden bowl sitting on one of the windowsills.

"He shouldn't have worn that hood all the time," Brother Thibault rasped, "We could've seen that woman plant the seed of the devil in his face and have exorcised it! Ought to be praying over her also, brother, and that's not a task I envy. . ." He rambled on and on, heedless of whatever God or man was listening. The head copyist had banished him from the scriptorium for disturbing the silence, and Brother Jehan had blocked the door to the workshop with his own body. His escort, poor Brother Thomas, had tried to push a note into his hands, but the old monk had squinted at it and commented, "I'll need to have someone else read this to me later," and his tongue kept wagging. They stopped at the door of the empty blacksmithy, but a few minutes later, Brother Philips came around the corner, carrying two pails of water in which to cool his works. "Brother!" he barked, cutting into Brother Thibault's monologue by setting the buckets down a bit too hard. "Why so many words?" "Because we're next! You and me! The copyists aren't dying, the people who do the real work, they're dying!" Brother Thomas's expression wished, very much, to impose a penance on a brother over whom he had no authority, yet Brother Thibault ignored him and spoke up to the burly blacksmith. "I came out here to find out how many visitors we still have within our walls! This didn't start with Brother Adrian! It's not going to end until we get all those foreign people out of here!--" Brother Phillips had stepped behind Brother Thibault, reached around him, and placed one hand over his mouth. The old monk, after the initial shock of being manhandled, tried to turn away but the blacksmith sorrowfully held him fast. Brother Thomas nodded to the blacksmith, then retreated across the lawn to the safety and quiet of the main building. Brother Phillips watched the door shut and felt when his prisoner stopped talking, then released the old monk, lowered his head, and waited for Brother Thibault to deliver his penance. Instead, Brother Thibault bowed his head before Brother Phillips. "That was necessary. . .fear had hold of my tongue. Bless you, brother," and his voice quavered as he gave the blessing. "Part of what I said was true, brother. Accusing our brother monks won't save us, as we lived in harmony for many years before this began. Isn't that so, Brother Thomas. . .Brother?" Brother Phillips pointed across the lawn. "Pity. He should have heard that. Now, how many visitors were there? . . ." He left the taciturn blacksmith and walked down the path to the herb gardens. Under a small cheesecloth tent grew a row of seedlings, unusual for the winter. Brother Mathieu, lining the lower edges of the tent with rocks to secure it against the mountain winds, looked up and greeted Brother Thibault. "Brother, I am reluctant to ask again, but are the poultices only for two days? No one had rebandaged my hands today," said Brother Thibault, showing his bare hands. "It was Felipe's turn," Brother Mathieu whispered. They conversed quietly, and spoke in their vernacular that few other monks understood. One whispered 'absinthe' and the other crossed himself. Brother Mathieu listened, then looked at Brother Thibault with disbelief, and a short argument followed. This stopped in a moment when the bells signaled a change of hour, and Brother Thibault looked towards the kitchens with surprise as the kitchen helpers emerged in pairs, each pair carrying a large kettle. Brother Mathieu leaped to his feet, scattering small rocks, and shouted to the helpers, "Wait! I haven't told you to serve the soup yet!" He sprinted to the kitchens, leaving Brother Thibault to shuffle towards the dining hall alone, but not unwatched. ooc: Accusing Brother Igottafiln.

No kiddin'. He would've swept the Unique Item Description contests. p.s. Is it OK to submit to the consumerism of the 14th if you're being paid to do so?

I think "the squeaky wheel gets greased" sums up Katzaniel's problem nicely. At least we have a wolf-victim that might lead to clues against the wolves. . .now how to feed that into Brother Thibault's codgery old head. . .

Brother Thibault rarely dreamed. On this night, however, he watched a loaf-sized stone, placed carelessly in the window of the hive room, fall and strike the nose of the wolf who had nudged it aside. No, it had been a dog the last time. . .A wolf, now, in the abbey, fled from the bees which streamed out from the window. Beestings pricked the wolf, and the monks milled around and bleated sheep's cries. In the dream, he stretched his lye-stained but unknotted hands in front of him and, as the beekeeper told him to, picked up the stone-- He woke up when he fell out of bed into the freezing night air. From afar, he still heard the beekeeper crying out about bees and stones. Brother Adrian was not in the cells, and why was he shouting at this hour? The old monk looked around his room as best he could, half-blind in the dark, and saw no one. He crept back into his bed and closed his eyes. Whatever had happened could wait until the day had begun--this was no holy hour--and other monks were around so that Brother Thibault would not have to explore alone. He fell asleep again with the first words of a child's bedtime prayer on his lips.

Vahktang--the lunatic is always the first one who gets the blame--especially in a medieval setting. Trust me on this. I'm enjoying this far more than I expected, although the time pressure and newness of character is (for myself at least) leading to less than the best roleplaying. It's aggravating also to harbor one suspicion while my character has his mind set on another. No 'playing to win' possible.

*sigh* Y'know, if you weren't the highly respected, Newbie Guide to Terra writing, third person particular that you are, I'd have to be aggrieved. There's a new News Board door that you get to see here every time you log on and it looks like you know how to breeze past it. I'm still at the point of reading it. And NO ONE gets my spleen! That goes double for brute, wherever he is (his liver is a tale-bearer). --Tzimfemme, the Naked Mage

The novice from the vellum workshops placed a few sheets into Brother Thibault's arms, then gently closed the door in his face. Instead of the daily rage, he slumped his shoulders (Wounded pride. He would need to pray) and looked out over the frightening, empty lawns. Not until Brother Gulzar came out to the lawns with a rake did he dare walk across the paths and enter the other building. Brother Adrian hurried past him with a bucket of beeswax for the chapel's use; two days of vigils had depleted the wax tapers badly, and the tallow candles were still cooling outside. Brother Thibault stopped to shake his head at the nets and veils, then peeked around the door of the scriptorium--two people, safe to enter. Brother Caire was back at his desk with his simple pages, as was Brother Alcott with the pages for later illumination; Brother Rhys and the head copyist were not there. Brother Thibault stood in front of Brother Alcott's desk and again waited for him to sharpen his quill before coughing. "Brother. . .the head copyist is not here to record receipt of this vellum. Am I to stand here and hold these pages until he returns?" Brother Alcott started from his chair, muttering, "Oh no, of course not, brother! Please, let me take those!" He stacked the vellum neatly on the corner of his desk, then sat down again and reached for a flat stone with a strange, solid quill attached by a string. "Why are you using those?" asked Brother Thibault peevishly. He hated the slates. They were fine for monks who had taken vows of silence, who knew better than anyone that speech was unworthy of permanence, but the copyists should not dirty their fingers with it! The slate squeaked as Brother Alcott wrote a few words in common print, but Brother Caire set his shoulders and continued to scribe, reciting the words a bit louder than was necessary. "It's a temporary record, brother," he soothed the old monk. "You can leave before the head copyist and Brother Rhys return," and looked Brother Thibault in the eyes. "You're not frightened of him?" "The Lord will protect me. . .but I do not need to be protected from him," Brother Alcott said simply, and dipped his pen into the inkpot. Brother Caire recited his parchment's "Amen" to carry throughout the room. Brother Thibault shuffled along the corridor to his cell, greatly disturbed, and lowered himself to the floor to pray. The copyists had not whispered, like everyone had since the killings began. They were sure and in the grace of the Lord--Brother Thibault added his blessing, however weak, to that. He could not bless Brother Rhys, not yet, but he could think upon his face while praying, and his mind roved through the abbey, alighting upon the faces as he knew them before all this began. Good Bennet he remembered as an infant, some of the monks almost as old as he showed their faces as teenaged novices, and the strangers gave raw impressions. Brother Thibault prayed for protection for every face he could remember. OOC: accusing Brother Adrian.

Brother Thibault never talked much during breakfast, carefully cutting his portions of bread and vegetable stew into tiny pieces that would not hurt his teeth. Brother Mathieu had wisely decided to make today a day without meat, after the horrors of the early morning. Still, Brother Thibault thought darkly, we are no holier-than-thou White Monks and someday we will have to eat meat again--otherwise there will be no slaughtered animals and no fresh skins! Those scribes would choose letters over life, without a doubt!-- He finished his meal as hastily as he was able and beckoned to Brother Phillips. "Would you assist me, brother, to the vellum workshops?" he said in a voice which carried across the room. Brother Phillips offered his arm for support, and the pair strolled carefully across the paths; the blacksmith monk had turned to the most direct route across the lawns, but Brother Thibault explained, "No, no, the stones are better footing for me. . .and you are going to your workshop, not mine." Their laughter was muted, but broke the strained mood, and the old monk began to wonder if he was foolish for refusing to be alone. He announced himself at the door of the vellum workshop and waited for Brother Jehan to realize that all those pigskins required the help of another, older craftsman.

Inside the workshop, Brother Jehan glared at the stacks of unfinished and unripped vellum, then regarded the nervous old monk and ignorant layman, two people who never so much as spoke together normally. His eyes, accustomed to squinting over defective patches, softened a bit. "Take this, brother," he said, reaching into a dimmer corner and selecting a triangle of cowskin which had been slashed by a careless skinner. "Show Good Bennet all the steps that we use. Have him practice. We haven't that much need of pouncing powder." Brother Jehan pointed his eyes at the mortars and pestles which were smaller than Good Bennet's hands, and Brother Thibault nodded. "Come, Good Bennet. Take the skin," he began, and waited until the foundling turned it over unhappily. "Yes, it doesn't look much like vellum now, does it? It's still bloody, and furred, and dead. But even with all that, it was still part of God's work, and we can change it so that is ready to serve His purpose once more. We need to take this hammer and punch and put some holes around the edge, like so. . ." Instead of the weeks which the process usually took, they performed the tasks one after another ("It weakens the vellum, but we'll ignore that for now"), Brother Thibault droning instructions both practical and religious, Good Bennet working with exaggerated slowness after he ripped out several punch-holes while stretching the skin. Hours later, the cowskin had changed into a rippled, smudged, over-powdered piece of hide, but Good Bennet regarded his first scrap of vellum with satisfaction. "I must go attend to other duties now," Brother Thibault told the foundling, as they exited the workshop and Brother Jehan heaved a silent sigh of relief. "Some day, you can take that to the scriptorium and they will have you make your mark upon it. God bless you, child," and he pointed his poulticed hand to the scrap of vellum before shuffling down the path. Good Bennet put the scrap into his pocket, but immediately took it out again and admired it some more.