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Unfinished Library Mod & NPC Account ([personal profile] libraryassistants) wrote in [community profile] unfinishedooc2025-10-21 06:46 pm
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TEST DRIVE MEME #1

Welcome To The Library

You 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 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.

Welcome to the Unfinished Library

Coffee Corner

Sometime after your arrival, you enter the lobby to find yourself greeted by what appears to be a little tea cart containing a carafe of very weak coffee, a pot of very strong tea, mismatched creamers and sugar packets, and assorted cheap boxed shortbread cookies alongside small paper plates and cups. (For some reason, there also seems to be a pile of coupons for a free yacht ride.) There is a sign next to them, stating:

Welcome Editors!
Please enjoy these complimentary refreshments.
Do NOT take food or drink into the stacks and please wash your hands BEFORE touching anything.


Looking around, you see that you and everyone else present have also been supplied with sticker name tags with “Hello, my name is _____.” Take it off, and it will magically be replaced by a new one. It seems it’s time to mingle, or perhaps try to get anywhere but here.

There is also a phone set up on the desk, with a small sign labeling it as the “Assistants’ Line.” Give it a try, and you might get someone to talk to.


Between the Stacks

While exploring the labyrinthine sprawl of the Stacks, you find a door tucked between the towering bookshelves. Opening it, you see the impossible: a community garden, fresh produce glistening with morning dew and ripe for the picking. The open sky stretches welcomingly overhead, the warmth of an unseen sun warming the soft grass underfoot.

A large fence spans the generous perimeter of the garden. No matter how high you go, the fence follows with you. Those trying to get a peek on the other side should make a plan.

When the room is no longer in use and the door is closed, the garden will disappear; rotating out of cycle. The next time the door opens, maybe it’s a computer lab - decked out with technology from… some planet and century. Or maybe it’s a meeting room, complete with someone else’s handouts scattered across the table. Closing and reopening the door will reveal a different room each time. What's your pick?


Maker’s Meetup

There’s a cheerful, if not generic, poster on the bulletin board by the help desk, declaring:



The Maker Space in question is, for the moment, easy to find, a few nice and similarly formatted signs with arrows helping leading the way through the stacks. As promised, there are a number of machines and tools related to crafting and making things, including a table that, for some reason, just has construction paper and safety scissors.

It seems the materials for the room have been recently stocked, too; there’s a little pile of fabric (mostly scraps, but a lot of larger pieces that can be made into something without needing to piecemeal it together), some sheet metal of various sheens, and bits of wood that could be shaped into something maybe as large as a small bowl. There are also some more generic arts-and-crafts materials (on a separate table from the scissors); puff balls, popsicle sticks, pipe cleaners and other sorts of things.

There doesn’t appear to be anyone actually around to teach the use of the machines, but it can’t be that hard… right?


Transition In - Prepare for Dheekis

In the Lobby, things begin to… change.

The tiled floors have started to fuzz along the grout, the colour and texture slowly bleeding out into cool grey metal. The change continues to flow up the walls, coloured strips of lighting dividing sturdy steel segments. What few doors there are shimmer, an overlay of automated mechanisms clinging closely to them. Hydraulic pistons pump as if pushing the doors open when you approach, but alas - these doors remain sadly hand-operated.

Within a few moments, gravity in the Lobby seems to decrease. Steps are lighter; a jump turns neatly into a bounce, leaving you hanging weightless in the air for a few long moments. The furniture remaining in the lobby begins to float, as do any items that have been left loose. If it’s not nailed down, consider it airborne.

The effect spans only the space (ha) of the Lobby. Exiting to another room will bring an unceremonious return to the Library’s usual gravity, and please note: the success of your landing is not guaranteed. Please proceed cautiously.

After some time - maybe it's days, who's to say? - you begin to feel it. A pull that tugs you to the Stacks, drawing you step by step closer to the next Story to unfold.


The Difficulty with Dheekis

On the SS Covenant, things usually run pretty smoothly. Usually. Unfortunately, there was an… incident at the last stopover at the Eternis Station. One of the crew members became utterly besotted with one of the little creatures the Eturian ambassador carried them with, called dheekis, and the ambassador was more than happy to gift them one. Unfortunately, the reason they were so willing to do that is that the fluffy little creatures, somewhere between a bunny and a rodent, are very prolific breeders, and additionally can procreate asexually when there’s only one of them around. Which means that after a week in space, it was no longer possible to keep them hidden.

Since then, it has been a game of trying to capture and contain the little pests, shoving them into boxes so they’re packed tight- dheekis only stop reproducing when there is literally no more space for them. And they are trying very hard to fill up the void space on the ship; they’re under beds, in rafters, engineering nooks, forgotten corners, you name it. How long will it take to get rid of them all? Can you get rid of them all? Because if you have one dheeki, it won’t stay one for long.

[This is a free-form ‘Story’ prompt and cannot be considered canon to the game; since there’s no information post, feel free to make up whatever details you like!]
monstrous_bride: (Default)

[personal profile] monstrous_bride 2025-10-23 01:50 am (UTC)(link)
She opens her mouth, pointing. "Oxygen. Air. The thing we breathe. There isn't any in space - nothing outside this ship."

She points at the bag.

"These little bastards breathe just like us. And they're multiplying quickly. Doesn't take a genius to see where this is going."
bashasasdemon: (Kai [Exhausted])

[personal profile] bashasasdemon 2025-10-23 01:53 am (UTC)(link)
Yup. Yup, that is worse than he thought it was. "No, it doesn't," he mutters, restraining himself from just putting his face in his hands. He's too busy picking up dheekis for that. "So. Airlock. How does that work, does it work, could we blast them out."
monstrous_bride: (confidence)

[personal profile] monstrous_bride 2025-10-23 01:58 am (UTC)(link)
She shrugs, whipping her sack over her back and entirely ignoring the sounds that process makes.

"There's bound to be one somewhere. Or a reactor, or an engine of some kind we can drop the horny little shits into."
bashasasdemon: (Kai [Exhausted])

[personal profile] bashasasdemon 2025-10-23 07:17 pm (UTC)(link)
"Is it stilled considered horny if they're reproducing without sex?" Kai asks, more to the air than her and not expecting or waiting for an answer (though if she wants to, that'll be a fun conversation). "Let's look. The sooner we reduce their number the better."
monstrous_bride: (Default)

[personal profile] monstrous_bride 2025-10-24 04:26 pm (UTC)(link)
"If they can't bloody stop, I'm sticking to my shorthand."

But he's right, and she follows after, sack slung over her shoulder with noises protesting loudly,
bashasasdemon: (Default)

[personal profile] bashasasdemon 2025-10-25 12:24 am (UTC)(link)
"Fair enough." Kai doesn't know how they reproduce by themselves and doesn't want to, so he at least won't be questioning any more in that particular direction. He picks a direction and heads off, quick enough to be pacey but with enough pauses that she could point out something- he only barely knows what he's looking for, after all.
monstrous_bride: (confidence)

[personal profile] monstrous_bride 2025-10-25 12:33 am (UTC)(link)
And while she's pretending to being confident about knowing what's going on - it's her first time on a space station, too. She's using what she does know to try and navigate, and will know more technical terms, but...other than that, she's as out to sea as he is.

And getting increasingly turned around.

"Shit," she says, with a growl, pretty sure they've come to the same junction twice. "This place is a maze."
bashasasdemon: (Default)

[personal profile] bashasasdemon 2025-10-25 01:06 am (UTC)(link)
Kai sighs, reaching up to pinch at the bridge of his nose in frustration. He's a scout, or he was once, a long time ago, he should be paying better attention than that. But all these walls look the same to him; he's not attuned enough to the minutiae of spaceship to know what differences to look out for, to ground them.

"Maybe we should try to find where the other ones are being kept," he says instead, "and offer up the suggestion of 'shove them into space' from there. They would know how to do that, I assume." Or at least maybe someone would be keen on the idea and know how to help them do it.
monstrous_bride: (neutral conversation)

[personal profile] monstrous_bride 2025-10-25 01:15 am (UTC)(link)
"Which begs the question- where the hell is the crew?"

Because it's awfully quiet on this station. In fact, they're the only people she's seen at all.

"You'd think there'd be people around. Crew, or even some sort of automated control we could interact with. But right now your suggestion is the best idea we've got."
bashasasdemon: (Kai [Exhausted])

[personal profile] bashasasdemon 2025-10-25 01:22 am (UTC)(link)
"There are some, I've seen them. ...Some of them look suspiciously like people from the Library but don't seem to remember it." Which is both horrifying and something to deal with later. "But I don't know if it's meant to be more. Maybe we've replace people who were supposed to be here?" It seems like someone would notice a bunch of people joining a ship in the middle of space.
monstrous_bride: (curious)

[personal profile] monstrous_bride 2025-10-25 01:28 am (UTC)(link)
"I'm not sure if that's worse or better. Probably worse."

She taps the pistol at her hip absently.

"I don't like any of this, of course. You're the only person I've seen in at least an hour, and if you're right, we might be the only ones who remember this isn't normal."
bashasasdemon: (Kai [Exhausted])

[personal profile] bashasasdemon 2025-10-25 01:42 am (UTC)(link)
Kai snorts. "We were dragged into this by touching a book, after being kidnapped by a Librarian. Was there any way we were going to like it?"

Still, he takes her point well enough, trying to find the cabin where the crates for this little buggers were. "What is that?" he asks as they walk, nodding down to her pistol. He's never seen anything like it.
monstrous_bride: (playful)

[personal profile] monstrous_bride 2025-10-25 01:52 am (UTC)(link)
"Well," she replies with a shrug, "up until this part, I could at least still think it might be a very good acid trip. That's a drug, you see."

The last part put in to head him off at a predictable pass.

"And that," she adds, "is called a gun. It's a common weapon where I'm from."
bashasasdemon: (Kai [Taken aback])

[personal profile] bashasasdemon 2025-10-25 07:21 pm (UTC)(link)
It's a good thing she did, Kai tipping his head and acknowledgement. That's not what he would have guessed so he's glad she clarified.

"Is it? It's very small." And not sharp, so Kai's not immediately clear on what how it functions. Some sort of magic source would be his instinct, except he can't sense anything from it. "What does it do?"
monstrous_bride: (questioning)

[personal profile] monstrous_bride 2025-10-26 12:48 am (UTC)(link)
"Kills people, quickly and effectively. Think of it as shooting very small arrows so fast that they do vastly more damage."

As good a basic explanation as any.
bashasasdemon: (Default)

[personal profile] bashasasdemon 2025-10-26 10:35 pm (UTC)(link)
"Huh." That sounds unpleasant, to say the least. "Glad they didn't have those where I'm from." It might- might- have made killing Hierarchs easier, but all he can think of is people trying to shoot Bashasa and without the courtesy of clearly carrying a bow so Kai can know if he'd need to try and take one for him. Or several.
monstrous_bride: (Default)

[personal profile] monstrous_bride 2025-10-27 01:40 am (UTC)(link)
"Count your blessings, my time's as infested by these weapons as this ship is with critters."

At least when she'd been born they were much more inaccurate, single-shot affairs - but technology had inexorably marched on.
bashasasdemon: (Default)

[personal profile] bashasasdemon 2025-10-27 03:14 pm (UTC)(link)
Yeah, he is grateful. Some advantages, sure, but for Kai? Far too many additional problems.

Another twist of the corridor, and they're at the room with crates. Kai sighs just to look at how many there are now, all with writhing little dheekis inside. "I don't suppose there's anything in here that looks like what you're talking about?" That would be too easy.
monstrous_bride: (curious)

[personal profile] monstrous_bride 2025-10-27 10:57 pm (UTC)(link)
"Well that's entirely too bloody many," she says, laconically. She shakes her head, shoving aside a few boxes to look behind them.

"That's what has me so curious - I'm not seeing any way to interact with the systems. No way out, no way in, nothing to make it all work. Bloody annoying."
bashasasdemon: (Kai [Exhausted])

[personal profile] bashasasdemon 2025-10-27 11:31 pm (UTC)(link)
"No kidding." How are they supposed to get on top of all of this?

"There has to be something. I've seen people with little... metal pads?" He's not sure what they're called, but people seem to be working on them and doing something with them. "They seemed to be able to control some things with them."
monstrous_bride: (Default)

[personal profile] monstrous_bride 2025-10-28 12:59 am (UTC)(link)
"Aha!" she says, snapping her fingers and pointing at him. "That would help. Let's get ourselves one of those."

She pauses.

"They might not willingly hand them over - look, you're not going to give me shit for knocking them unconscious and just getting on with it?"
bashasasdemon: (Kai [Talking])

[personal profile] bashasasdemon 2025-10-28 01:40 am (UTC)(link)
"Only a little bit of shit, for beating me to it." That's not quite true; Kai does try for non-violent methods when he can, is actually capable of talking to people. But if they don't hand it over so they can get this sorted, or agree to help, then it's really just a race to which one of them can knock the poor soul out first.