TEST DRIVE MEME #2

[libraryassistants]

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.

Comments

[curzed]

The scar is new.

The one around Guilliman's throat. That wasn't the sort of wound even they would walk away from easily. He hasn't spent enough time in the Ultramarines' primarch's presence to know if this fatigue is typical or not, but combined with the scar it is noteworthy. Combined with the wariness, it painted a different picture than the usual.

"No dream, I'm afraid. It's all quite real, for a given meaning of the word 'real' when the Empyrian is involved." Which this library still had every hallmark of, albeit a bit more orderly than the chaos that usually was happening beyond the gellar fields.

Curze folds his hands before him, elbows on the table, and sets his chin on his hands to watch the other, still intact fruitcake, get unwrapped. "If you wish, I can provide what I know, but if I hear even a whisper of 'you must be lying', I'm going to strangle you with your own shirt."

He makes it sound so casually friendly. Never mind that thanks to the Librarian's assistants he certainly does not have the strength to actually follow through with that.

[guilliman]

Roboute levels a glare at Konrad. Disdain -- and grief, and regret. If only they had... if only...

"Fret not, brother. I have witnessed your vindication."

In his scarce free time he has trawled through the surviving records, seeking out every crumb of knowledge of his brothers' fates. How many times did he watch that assassin's ancient proof of an assignment completed? Eidetic memory means he can recall the sound perfectly, even now.

"I will treat your insights with the same credence as any source that has proven so reliable."

[curzed]

That's ... not the response he's expecting. This should result in a surge of indignant, restrained self-righteous anger that he even suggest he'd do such a thing, he's quite good at picking out the inevitable worst possible outcomes of any given situation and is very rarely wrong. Almost never.

It's unsettling when it happens, and for a handful of moments it seems Roboute's caught him terribly off-balance. Disdain he can expect. The rest, surely imagined. And nobody trusted his insights.

Almost on autopilot he resumes picking at his own fruitcake, continuing to dissect it to get at what he finds to be the better bits in a manner that suggests simply giving his hands something to do. It's not fidgeting. It's not. "Time and place are irrelevant. There are mortals here from twenty-eight thousand years ago, when Terra still had seven oceans and a population under ten billion. Sanguinius hails from some point in the future, after an attack of creatures he calls daemons which nearly decimate his Legion. There are xenos here from outside our own galaxy. Others I am not convinced are part of any galaxy at all."

When in doubt start with the easy stuff.

[guilliman]

"That attack is your future," is what Roboute zeroes in on, because, of course he's focusing on what impacts him and his -- and that does include his brothers, and his their Father's Imperium. "And if it is the one I am thinking of, it is far in my own past. What year was it last, for you? How long have you been with us?"

He takes a nibble of the cake, trying to glean what data he can from the ultra-processed fruits, grains, alcohols. It isn't much. Disappointing. "Hrmh. My mam's is better."

He's not throwing it out, mind you. Just letting present company know, in the most Italian way possible, that he's had better.

"Have you observed any pattern to those who appear? An intelligence or direction?"

oops this got long.

[curzed]

A raisin is slowly fished out of the medley of alcohol-pickled cake and eaten. Most of it he simply has no interest in, if any of the actual fruitcake has been eaten so far it's been incidental to the methodological removal of the bits of fruit. "Long enough," is not an answer, and he knows it, which might be why a date is actually supplied eventually. "Millennium thirty, year nine eighty-four."

Cheraut, and the mauling of Dorn near to death by Curze himself. Nostramo's destruction, the entire Eighth fleet going renegade at their primarch's behest, the recall to Terra for censure ignored. The last time he'd bothered to try to convince anyone of what was coming.

"Your mother makes this?" A mother is not a thing a primarch should have. Roboute's the only one with that particular honor, to Curze's memory. "I've identified ..most of what's in these but some elude me." Some of the ingredients are long extinct, and certainly never made it to Nostramo.

He'd meet the mother of the Thirteenth Primarch eventually, he's sure of that.

The thought's shaken off. "Every single one is more capable than you will expect a mortal to be, in one form or another. Not all are mortal. The assistants are either psykers beyond even Magnus' scale or something Other. There is little rhyme or reason to selection I can detect. For a goal of completing books in a library one would assume people.. such as yourself might be chosen, and yet here I am as well. So far the only unifying trait is a lack of willingness to burn the entire place to ash."

Angron is not likely to make an appearance by his guess.

np! they're talky boys!

[guilliman]

A soft exhalation of surprise. Throne, that long ago? Guilliman looks Curze over again, with new perspective. He's practically a baby.

"Millennium forty-two," he offers in kind, "year twelve." Then he see-saws his hand. "Approximately. Though I was not awake for the majority of it, at least."

He gives his little brother a moment to process that, taking another bite of his mediocre fruitcake. "She made something very similar, though influenced by available ingredients, and the traditions of the colony that became Macragge. If you ask for details I will give them," he warns.

Instead of letting himself be nerd-sniped into an infodump on historical agriculture, he takes the bait of Konrad's contemplation. "Prescience? You and Sanguinius both. Given an excess of data, being able to intuit a starting point can be invaluable."

[curzed]

"Promises, promises," is the dry rasp that's the only thing he says for a little while. He fears no information dump on agriculture!

Fears little at all, really, definitely not obscure Macraggish fruits. But ten thousand years is a long, long time even by his reckoning, and he knows he won't be there to see it. Maybe if Roboute had managed to live that long, and little worse for wear besides the tiredness and the scars, his estimation of the next few decades bringing all to ruination might ... not be accurate.

But Curze was never wrong, whether or not he wished otherwise. The two thoughts sit discordant next to each other. "It doesn't work that way." And it's strangely uncomfortable for reasons he can't get his teeth around having any of his brothers speak of that particular unwelcome 'gift', never mind Guilliman, king of practicality. Ui>Ten thousand years is a long way away, and at some point he's proven right to such a degree that even Guilliman believes.

Too late, though. Too late for anything. "Unless something operates very different for Sanguinius, which it might. In which case you'd be better off addressing matters with him. Which I dare say you might enjoy rather more than dealing with me, yes?"

Who didn't prefer Sanguinius? The Great Angel was best beloved by everyone, and for good reason.

"Keep the memory of this confectionery fresh, perhaps it will complete a book somewhere in this place."

[guilliman]

Guilliman shrugs, unexpectedly unbothered for a man so widely believed to have a Gloriana-class stick up his arse.

"Perhaps not. There may be no reason, as you say. I do not have enough practical data, yet, to form a strong theoretical. That will change. I do believe that you sell yourself short, however. And that is partly our fault."

[curzed]

"Too small a sample size to draw definitive conclusions from." Half of it gets one of those brief conceding gestures. "We are less than two dozen." Half of it sounded reasonable to what he knew of his brother; more information was needed in order to form a better idea of the situation and what to do, he could agree with that.

The rest on the other hand.. Curze really, really doesn't like it when things go in unexpected directions, and Guilliman is regarded with open suspicion, brow furrowing.

"I disagree on principle with the rest," he says slowly, "But I'm curious how you came to that conclusion."

[guilliman]

A hum of confirmation, a shallow nod. Curze understands what he's saying. Of course he does. Roboute had known that he was alone, upon his waking. But only now, once more in the company of an untainted brother -- no matter how strange and broken he might be -- does he appreciate what he had been missing.

"We could not accept the worst that the future might hold. Some of it, we found too terrible to consider. Which was foolishness." His expression twists, grief and fury fighting to breach his reasonable front. "And some of it was kept from us. None of that was your doing."

[curzed]

It is that, more than anything else, that makes him think perhaps there's some truth to how far in the future Guilliman resides. The blond primarch was not given to deception, but extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, and admitting an error... "Well."

Maybe it was a little satisfying. Vindication has many forms, and this one doesn't require his death. "Hindsight's vision continues to be excellent, it seems." But it also tells him he did try to warn others, and they didn't listen. That the future is fixed, and it is unstoppable, and it is terrible. He'd hoped some of it might be moved from its track just a little, that some disasters might have been avoided.

Maybe it would hurt less to surrender to inevitability. "All of it, then? Horus. The slaughter of our sons, many of our brothers, the galaxy afire. The corpse on the throne, metaphor or..?"