unfinishedooc | TEST DRIVE MEME #2

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TEST DRIVE MEME #2

Welcome to the Library

Those who are new awake in the stacks.

You’re not sure when you fell asleep, and the memories of the last things you were doing are hazy at best. But now you’re here, and all you can see is books in every direction, the bookshelves teetering high enough above you to reach to the sky.

A helpful sign points you in the direction of the main circulation desk, and even if you try to ignore it and go in any other direction, the desk is where you will find yourself. A figure sits behind the desk, not even looking up as they sort through books and other media; they look, to your character, to be the exact picture of what they expect a Librarian to be.

Trying to ask the Librarian a question will get them shushed, but they’ll point down a hallway to the side, leading to a kitchenette and what appears to be a dorm room, where they’ll find they’re not alone in this strange place. But once they’ve looked away, when they look back, the Librarian is gone.

The Lobby

Those who are already familiar with the Library will see the Lobby change for the second time. It’s not paper plate UFOs and metal walls this time. Instead there are cheerful garlands strung about, and a stack of books shaped into a Christmas tree taking pride of place. The Help Desk is closed, the ‘Back in 5’ sign once again a bald-faced lie, but there is a menorah sat behind in the window, conveniently just out of reach of anyone who tries to get it. The candles are lit in a… somewhat sporadic fashion, the correct order but with no rhyme or reason to what ‘night’ is being represented. Either time is strange here, whoever’s in charge of it doesn’t know what day it is either, or they simply don’t care. Or some mix of the three.

Those two particular winter holidays are not the only ones represented either; characters will find a smattering of decorations or festive accessories from a great number of holidays, from their own worlds and beyond. There is what looks like a cabinet with instructions to pick your fortune from one of the many drawers. For some reason, there are a number of what looks like a child’s toy ponies placed on and around the cabinet. There are also some posters declaring in bold, decidedly upsetting typeset: “THE GOD-EMPEROR WISHES YOU A FESTIVE SANGUINALIA!” complete with a picture of a certain Library resident in all his feathered, shining glory. (The poster is not remotely shiny, but there are helpful accent lines to show that he should be shining.) And, for some reason, there is also a giant straw goat in the garden now, surrounded by festive strings of lights. Please do not set it on fire.

The Kitchens

It seems the decorations are not the only thing in the holiday spirit. The kitchens, usually bereft of anything but the most basic foodstuffs, are now full to the brim with a variety of holiday foods. There is always a tureen with hot mulled wine and a try of sweet pastries near by it, there’s ham and latkes in the fridge to be heated up, jelly doughnuts, moon cakes, pies, and an assortment of other delicious things. If your character would expect to find a certain thing within the stash, they do, regardless of how niche it may be. Christmas chili? Of course there’s christmas chili!

Oh, and that mulled wine isn’t the only alcohol around either- champagne, sake, hard cider… again, anything anyone might expect to find. Just try not to overdo it too much, alright? Everyone still has to sleep in the same room, and the Assistants aren’t going to show up to hold your hair back.

Crafts and More

What good are holidays without crafts? The Maker’s Space has been specially supplied with anything you might need to make your festive crafts- this includes everything you’d need for a gingerbread construction! (You’d think this would be in the kitchen, but don’t kid yourself- those things are not for eating.) There’s strips of colorful paper rings and instructions on how to make your own, little things of clay and paint and directions on how to craft your own dreidel, ’stained glass’ paper lanterns, and more. Oh, and glitter. Obviously there is a lot of glitter available.

There are also snow globe kits, mostly generic winter themes- trees, presents, and the like. Strangely enough, however, when they’re complete and shaken, they’ll show a memory from the person who shook it- a memory of a holiday, or snow, or generally something that invokes the feeling of the season- light, and hope, and togetherness. It’s fragmented, almost stop-motion in between the falling bits of ‘snow,’ but once it has settled the normal, basic scene inside returns.

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"I want to tell you," escapes him. It is weakness, to be sure. But it is his brother, and he has been alone for so long. "Throne. All of it. But I want it to be right."

He runs a hand through his hair -- a sad ash-blond, streaked with white and grey. "I can at least warn you of the bastard four, before anything else. I will need paper, and a way to burn it after. Or otherwise make certain it is gone. There can be no trace for others to see." His expression is deep and earnestly haunted. This risk is true and honest and real.

"A burden shared is a burden halved, dear brother." He does not want to distress Guilliman by these shades of his past, but if it would help ease his mind, Sanguinius would gladly listen. It was the least he could do.

"The Librarians' desk has these implements. There are ways to destroy things as well. The place, though, is not kindly to fire." Being mostly paper books.

And all of the burdens that then result from the sharing? he thinks, but only hums.

"Fire is not required. But a way to destroy the material after, yes. It should not be known beyond a select few. What else is not acceptable behavior?"

If Guilliman can bear it, so can Sanguinius. He would rather suffer than feel the pain of someone suffering alone. If Guilliman could not let down his guard around Sanguinius, then who?

"We shall find a way to destroy it." He can get creative. "We are not allowed to damage the Library or its contents. Even these," he gestures to the embarrassing poster advertising the obviously-fake holiday of Sanguinala. "If you tear them down, they reappear. But books are warded more strongly." As his Librarians told him was important--some arcane tomes were so dangerous that even to look at them brought madness. The protections on the books here just made sense. "We are also not permitted to harm each other. And that is where our brother went awry."

Roboute had never been the most expressive of his brothers -- he was always distant, endlessly busy. It had been easy, once, to mistake it for high-mindedness, the Thirteenth simply thinking he was better than the rest of them. But this exhausted, halfway-broken man... he had embraced Sanguinius so eagerly, remembering things that this version did not yet know.

And yet, now, he hesitated. But not for his own sake.

"I see. Sensible library conduct, all. I do not require a book. Merely enough scrap paper to put down the signs, only long enough for you to know them. The knowledge cannot go any further than it absolutely must."

"We can find some paper by the Assistant Librarian's desk." That's one option. Scraps of paper and those little things called 'golf pencils'. He gestures for his brother to follow, stopping after a few steps to turn and face him.

"If it is really as fearsome as you say, you could simply trace the symbols on my hand." There would be no need to destroy anything that way.

"No." His response is immediate, and emphatic. It takes a second for his good sense to catch up.

"...I must sound paranoid. I know. Or unwell. But I have seen terrible things. I will tell you what I can. Paper will do." A nod. Please, continue to lead him?

The 'no' is so sudden that Sanguinius's wings flick with surprise. It had seemed a reasonable solution to him.

But he does not question. Because he's seen some...also terrible things. "I understand." At least he understands enough, and he guides his brother to the desk with the phone for the Assistant Librarians. It's very easy at his height to bend over the desk, rifling for office supplies.

Roboute follows, though he seems increasingly, quietly stressed. How to explain? How to start? He is overthinking.

"You have clashed at least once with daemons," he says softly, as Sanguinius looks for paper and pencil. "I need to show you five. Enough paper for that." He continues, "I ask you to believe me, as I tell you their substance, and their masters. These are the things that have stolen our brothers."

Guilliman always overthought. It was better, perhaps, than Sanguinius, who too often plunged into danger and left the thinking until later, more times than he cared to admit.

There's a flare of concern, before he remembers. Of course. Guilliman is from much, much later than he was. Of course he must have found out about Signus.

Saguinius wasn't sure if this was a relief or not. One less thing to have to explain. "They have stolen our brothers?" He could easily imagine it, though he still had no idea of the plans of Kyriss and Ka'Bandha, beyond the dripping monstrosity that had once been Meros. "Surely we are launching rescue missions, yes?" SURELY.

"No. Sanguinius." This time it is gentle, mournful, but determined. This, then, is the point of no return. The cruel truth he must force upon his brother. "They have turned them traitor. Turned them against the Imperium and mankind. Not all of them. But more than just Horus."

"No." The word comes out just above a whisper. He wants to refute it, but he can't. Guilliman wouldn't lie. Ever. But especially not about something like this. "How could they? Against our duty? Our father? Their own brothers?"

But even as he says the last, he thinks of Horus, and the chill of horror that swept over him when he realized his brother had sent him and his legion out to Signus to die.

"Who. Please. Tell me who has turned against us."

"Paper," he reminds. Because he has to keep this going. He has to finish. If Sanguinius is too horror-stricken, though, he'll grab one of those little hand-stapled notepads for himself. And then a golf pencil. He begins to draw. A fistful of sharp angles.

"Some, they tempt. Some, they break. There are factions. I have heard that their followers call it 'the great game.'"

He taps the paper once, pulling his brother's attention to the blocky symbol.

"Khorne. One of four. War. Skulls. Blood." And then, a name. "Angron."

He waits to see what Sanguinius says. What he does.

You cannot break the news of their brothers' betrayals of...everything, and expect Sanguinius not to forget, momentarily, about scratch paper and golf pencils. He takes a stack of the small sheets, rough cut squares with discarded printouts on the back. The first is half a recipe for something called zucchini bread.

"Ka'Bandha," he says, quietly, as though there was even a risk in speaking the daemon's name. "He tried to tempt me. To leave my Legion, to turn against duty." He taps the air above the shape. "That is familiar." But he did not fall, to the temptation, the threats, the force. How could his brothers, how could ANGRON, of all of them, fall to that?

"I have heard that name before. A Bloodthirster."

He does not share that the beast still stalks Sanguinius's sons to this day. He does not relate the mystery of what happened during the Devastation of Baal. He merely scratches through the symbol, long hatch-marks burying it behind a dozen other dark lines. He hopes that will be enough to make it meaningless. He will still dispose of it later.

He places a second piece of paper on top of the first, but does not start to draw.

"Khorne and the others are the great powers of the warp. Chaos. They are not gods, in the sense that they do not create. They are parasites on sentience. They hate the Emperor and his plans. And they saw us as a way to get to him."

This is where he pauses, again.

"...I know how it must sound. If you had not fought their spawn already, I would not hope you might believe me. I did not believe until we fought them ourselves, above Calth."

Sanguinius is not as fragile as Guilliman thinks. He remembers Kyriss and Ka'Bandha, and the daemon general's last promise--that it would be the end of Sanguinius and his line.

But Sanguinius had fought him off, and they had not foreseen Meros's sacrifice. All things must end, including Sanguinius himself, including his sons. But if they went down fighting to the last, it was enough.

And he did not need any assurance that they would.

So he doesn't ask, not because he is afraid of the answer, but because he does not want the knowledge of the future to be a burden to Guilliman. He knew, from the sliver of the future he himself held, how great and horrible that burden could be.

"Who could believe such things could exist. Or that our own would collude with them." Abominable. Unthinkable. It made him feel weak, that others had thought, and did, things he could not even imagine. "Ka'Bandha had said he was given this opportunity by Horus himself. But I refused to believe such talk--it seems to me creatures of lies cannot be held to the truth." Refused. Past tense. It was the worst loss of all, even worse than the five hundred sons, that he commemorated on his own skin.

Sanguinius is, of course, not as tender as Guilliman is telling himself. But grief does strange things to people. Even those who think they're more than human. Even those who have been told that they're tools. Maybe they'll have time to work on that.

"You were right not to trust it. Even when they tell the truth, they do it in service of their masters' aims." He sighs. "I do not know why our brothers did it. Some were tempted. Some, I think, were tricked. Or broken. But now, they are enemies. It is too late to save them."

It cannot be otherwise. He remembers what the Emperor told Mortarion, when he had possessed him. But at this point in time... he cannot give false hope. "One brother joined each of the four. Two more serve the whole -- Horus is one of them. And three more followed without worshipping."

He begins to draw again, a cluster of circles and lines reminiscent of an old Terran warning sign.

"Nurgle. The Plague Lord. Mortarion's new master."

"I cannot believe it is too late to save them. They must regret their choice--that is a seed of hope." Even Meros, who had willingly sacrificed himself, had felt regret, among the horror, among the knowledge that there was no other way. To give up on his brothers would be to give up on the idea of Meros ever being freed from that horror.

"Fully half of us. Gone to this evil." He doesn't want to believe it; the room feels like there's something wrong with the gravitic sensors for a moment, his hand grasping the edge of the librarian's counter. Still, he studies the symbol, because this could be the key in saving his brothers. At least some of them. "Does Curze know?" Mortarion had been aloof with him, with many of them, but he had found some amity with the Night Haunter.

"We have spoken of it. The things he sees are the things I have lived. That is what I meant, brother, by sympathising with his pain. He saw all of it. But he still joined them." A bleak chuckle. "Perhaps because he saw himself joining them. He did not follow any of the gods, at least. Merely left a trail of blood across the stars, then let himself be killed."

Feeling his ire start to rise, he directs it toward scratching out Nurgle's sign with hard black scribbling. This, perhaps, he will soak in a sanitizing solution until it dissolves.

A third piece of paper. On this one, he draws a circle, a line, two swooping crescents. It is beautiful, even as it makes his throat burn.

"Slaanesh. Excess and obsession. Perfection. Fulgrim. He killed Ferrus, Sanguinius. And nearly killed me. There is only one of the fallen who I can believe might still be saved, at your time. Because I still cannot understand what happened to him."

"I can see his path into darkness, but perhaps not that far." But even as he says it, he realizes, he could see it. Curze, with his tormenter's delight, that went far, far beyond the grim duties they were assigned. He could see it taking over.

"His end might have been his statement of remorse." That, he could also see, a surrender to death to make the weight of what he had become end. Even Curze, he suspects, is not free from the burden of retrospection.

He closes his eyes briefly at the tale of Fulgrim. And Ferus Manus. There was no need to press for details: Guilliman's reaction was enough, the barest outlines awful enough. "We kill our own. We kill each other." His wings press tight against his back, as though he could protect himself from this dreadful truth, reaching a hand out to rest on top of one of Guilliman's, in a small, ineffective gesture of comfort. What comfort could there be to this breaking of the most sacred bonds of brotherhood? "Tell me, who might yet be saved?"

"Perhaps." But he's shaking his head. "But the bodies remain. Even the one that is here, he is determined that the future he sees is the only one. I do not know how to change that. Perhaps you do."

The third symbol, he is beginning to scratch out, when Sanguinius sets his hand on top of his. He stills, closing his eyes with a sigh and leaning toward his brother.

"I am harsh," he says quietly. "I know. I may be wrong. I hope I am. Perhaps you can find a way that I could not, in my foolishness. If you are not blind, as we were."

The sign of the Prince still only half marked-out beneath his hand, Roboute continues.

"...Tzeench is patron of sorcerors. Holder of hidden knowledge." Can Sanguinius guess what is coming? "I have tried to find out what happened," he says softly, solemnly. "Because it doesn't make sense. There is nothing. Even directly after -- when we were trying to rebuild. No records remain. But the wolves burned Prospero. And the next time anyone saw Magnus was with the traitors."

"I am sorry." He hears how empty the words are, and winces. A trite expression, though he meant and felt it. "The loss of even one of those under our protection is a great pain to endure. And at the hands of one of our brothers...," he could not imagine. It was not the first time he had felt that there were things beyond the limits of what he could understand.

"Do they know? Our brothers, here? Do they know this?" It would change nothing in Curze, he was sure. The Nostraman's fatalistic streak would never swerve. But Magnus. There might be hope for Magnus, if he knew, if he could be made aware.

He could hope. But there seemed no end to bad news. "And on what authority did Russ's Legion attack Prospero?" Appalling. Unthinkable.

"He claimed our Father's. And he had Custodes and Sisters with him. But we could not confirm the details. Russ refused to relinquish his logs." He pinches at his nose. "And the traitors had time to plan their treachery. Alpharius was also among them. And Perturabo."

That's eight of the nine. Who is the last...? He'll get to that.

"Not yet. Not fully, in Konrad's case. They are both so young. Before Nikea. And I am supposed to tell him that he --" he catches himself, corrects what was about to say, "holds the potential to embody all of those fears? And worse? I should, you will say. I cannot disagree."

He can feel how heightened emotion stimulates the most simple elements of his brain chemistry, tries to activate his tear ducts. Something about hormonal release...? He has to throttle the autonomic function at the source. And even though he manages, it takes a long, silent moment for him to continue.

"But I have not seen any of you in so long. And I bring you news of a future that is horror upon horror. I do not know how many more times I can see my brothers wish me gone."

"Our father, seeking the destruction of Magnus's home?" All the libraries. All the knowledge Magnus had accrued. Sanguinius was not as obsessed with knowledge as his red brother, but he could imagine how much the loss of all his books and tomes must have hurt--almost like losing Sanguinius's own sons.

"I cannot advise you." It felt weird advising Guilliman of anything, to be honest. "Kurze is so convinced that nothing can be altered in the visions he sees." Is he right? Sanguinius does not know enough to question such matters.

He lets his hand rest on Guilliman's forearm. "Brother. You do not harm me with this knowledge." There's a reason he's not pressing about his own future. "But I cannot anyone wishing you gone. Your wisdom is always measured and valuable."

"It doesn't make sense," he repeats. Even with his far more jaded view of their Father and his reasoning. An error great enough, and he might well have summoned Magnus back to Terra for judgement, or even containment, but -- but what could have happened to justify that? The Magnus he had once known... Roboute can't imagine it.

"And yet," he says softly. "I remember how they looked at me." He sets a hand on Sanguinius's in turn. A bleak smile on his face. "Those who survived. I tried to embody His will. Just as I had before." Ash. Ash and dust... "Lorgar is the last of the traitors. I do not know if he was lost before Monarchia. But he was beyond saving after. A circle, with eight arrows pointing outward. The sign of Chaos, Undivided. He was denied one god, and four others claimed him."

TEST DRIVE MEME #2

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