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Unfinished Library Mod & NPC Account ([personal profile] libraryassistants) wrote in [community profile] unfinishedooc2025-12-20 09:27 am
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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.
juniorarchivist: (pic#18218584)

[personal profile] juniorarchivist 2025-12-22 11:25 pm (UTC)(link)
[If he does his best to merge with the bookshelf behind him, that's purely incidental and not at all his horribly frayed nerves, and a fair amount of embarrassment mixed in with the alarm. He knew that visages weren't foolproof, some people could effortlessly pierce them and tell when a dragon was in their midsts, but somehow it's different when it happens to him.]

I'm ... I'm a half-elf? [That sounds like a lie. It almost certainly is. Oh look, a different topic and he's going to seize on it!] Tauren are .. kind of bull monsters? But they're very spiritual people, with oral traditions that go back tens of thousands of years. Some say they were the first druids.
steelfeathered: (pic#17430120)

[personal profile] steelfeathered 2025-12-22 11:39 pm (UTC)(link)
[She has no idea what an elf is but from the way he's carrying on, he'd tell her all about it if she said so and that's just not as interesting.]

Sounds like a people all right, and not all that much like ogres. The first of them were born warlike and plenty still are but a lot of the rest love the soil and farming.

[She tilts her head, birdlike.]

All right, let's speak hypothetically. In theory, if someone in this room was a dragon, why wouldn't he or she want to say so?
juniorarchivist: (pic#18218565)

[personal profile] juniorarchivist 2025-12-22 11:47 pm (UTC)(link)
I .. think the Tauren are mostly a nomadic hunting people, preferring to gather their grains and other vegetation from what grows naturally. [He taps his chin with a finger, thinking, determined to ignore that other, more nerve-wracking subject.] And usually, nature provides. They've had a .. very long territory war with the centaur though, so perhaps there's no choice but to stay nomadic. I hear the mainland centaur are vicious creatures!

[This is a much safer topic!

... And she's not going to let him stay on it, is she.]


I .. I mean, purely hypothetically, you do know that a lot of the younger races think 'dragonscale cloaks' are fashionable items, and skulls make excellent trophies to hang on their walls, right?
steelfeathered: (pic#17432843)

[personal profile] steelfeathered 2025-12-23 01:37 am (UTC)(link)
[The answer is 'no', evidently, because Hisako just stares and it takes a good moment for her to marshal her thoughts. Now it's her turn to have a bit of outrage, however muted it is in comparison.]

And the dragons let them? Or... no, you can't be anything like as powerful, huh. If someone tried that with one of our dragons, I don't know that even one of the Greater Gods could save them. I mean one could, it'd just unite the Dragonlands in being furious at gods and mortals alike and that's not a great situation, so they'd probably just be delivered to the border with an apology note.
juniorarchivist: (pic#18218592)

[personal profile] juniorarchivist 2025-12-23 01:57 am (UTC)(link)
You don't have to let them. They just show up with an army sometimes, and while it's possible to keep killing them somehow there's ... always more, and so few friends left to come help..

[There weren't many blues left. Almost never are they around each other, to come to each other's defense should some adventurer raiding party appear. For a moment, it's a wash of old grief and loss, there and gone like the surge of a flash flood, ebbing again quickly.

Rio's dealt with that for a while. He knows how to put it away.]


Malygos the Spellweaver advocated for culling them for their offenses. He was the best of us, our Aspect. He was killed for it, by the Dragonqueen herself and her allies.

[His smile is brief, bleak and utterly humorless.]

There's no fighting back, not really. These days the Bronze and the Green stand alongside the Red, and even the rejuvenated Blackflight seem to prefer the young races. We're only a few dozen left, and I'm .. not suited for that kind of thing anyway. This is what I'm good at. Books and scrolls and tomes.
steelfeathered: (pic#17434746)

[personal profile] steelfeathered 2025-12-24 06:26 am (UTC)(link)
[Hisako compresses her lips together into a line as she winces. Well, she did ask. Annnnd yep that's sorrow. Also really tasty, in a totally lateral way. She hesitates, then sighs. She likes to tease but her friends are right about her being soft, really.

Hisako surveys what's underneath her and hops down off her current perch, half spreading her bright-feathered wings to slow and control her fall, such that she lands with a clacking crowlike bounce atop a table on the same floor as Rio, far enough away that he probably won't see it as being dived at. She leaves some scratches in the varnish with her steel claws.

There! Closer to the same level without having to be on the ground. If she was standing upright with her neck extended she'd be about four and a half feet tall. She smiles without showing teeth, more awkward and sideways than the easy, slightly malicious grin she wears most often.]


Sorry, tragopan. It's disheartening to be part of a dying race, eh? Thanks for being honest with me.