unfinishedooc | TEST DRIVE MEME #1

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!tdm

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!]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Humans are not supposed to be that large.

It's that -- and not the promise of over-steeped tea, so badly brewed even one of the dead can taste it in the air -- that's brought Illarion to halt his ceaseless prowling of the stacks. That -- absolutely oversized human, huddled down in the attempt of sugaring a drink that will be less than a mouthful. Correction: Oversized human-adjacent creature, for it -- he -- has surely got an arrangement of organs that Illarion's never seen before, even in the worst of the Archlich's experiments.

"Huh," the shrike breathes, to that, and continues to stare. Realizes he's been staring for nearly half a minute now -- and decides (decides! on his own! without any outside pressure!) that he's going to keep staring. Without any directive -- without the King of Eyes and all the Unearthed in the back of his mind any longer -- there's no urgency in him to be anywhere else. To do anything else, but watch this mildly interesting scene of someone trying to sugar his tea.

(Pardon the gawping; he wasn't this rude before dying.)

The Night Haunter's senses are impeccably tuned, both physical and otherwise. It is very nearly impossible to elude detection, the plague of visions that tugged at his attention if he let them invariably a warning. Enough of one that much else can be tuned out.

He hears an approach. But it comes with no sound of life; no breath, no muffled sound of heartbeat. The scent of no living thing. No echo of another being's inevitable death.

Ignorable.

Until that single breathed syllable, and Curze jerks in surprise, startled out of his meticulous sugar packet opening about as effectively as if Illarion had thrown a bucket of ice water on him out of nowhere.

The shrike stares, and for several unblinking moments, he stares back from beneath a curtain of unwashed black hair.

Every single sense tells him that thing is not alive.

That thing is indeed not alive.

A startle from someone that large would -- ordinarily -- provoke a startle response right back. But to Illarion's dulled senses, the bigger man's sudden sugar-spilling flinch doesn't register as a threat. It's not toward him -- it doesn't touch him -- and so he doesn't move in response.

Beyond a slow blink of gold-in-black eyes, which he should -- he thinks, as slowly -- veil, since it's not his intent (an intent of his own!) any longer to drive anyone mad. He's the one to break off staring first, diverting his gaze toward the pitiful tea service.

"Didn't mean to be that quiet." It is not, exactly, an apology. But it's in that general direction.

There's no whining of an engine either, or the bitter acid and ozone scent of batteries. This time there's no startle when Illarion speaks, moves in a way that suggests life when there isn't any, just a single blink.

It isn't very often he comes across something he has no explanation for. Konrad isn't as well traveled as some of his brothers, certainly lacked the sorcerous inclinations of Magnus and his Sons, but he's encountered plenty of odd things. Something in its gaze, the sharp yellow on black, reminds him of the sense of unwarded psyker, disorienting for a bare moment when Illarion looks away, like the release of a pressure he hadn't really felt.

The undead simply don't exist. Everything has an ultimately terrible end, including xenos, this ... does not.

No. That's not true. It just has the taste of already happened.

"You were not." It's even true, Curze had just ignored it because it didn't align with expectations. The low rumble of words are measured, thoughtful, with a slowly sharpening predatory interest. "What are you? Where do you come from?"

The notion he hadn't actually snuck up on the giant fellow gets an unvoiced noise out of Illarion -- a thoughtful click of teeth. So, something else about him is surprising, but not a recognized feature. That's enough of a mystery to work on that he gets a little more animated, turning his head back enough to keep his interlocutor in the corner of his gaze.

He's managed to wrap his mind around the idea this isn't Nephele anymore -- or if it is, there's people from elsewhere in Generation's dreaming getting into it. So a question about what he is gets him to volunteer, "An elf." Then, after a moment's pause: "A dead one. Unearthed.

"What are you?" Fair's fair, a question for a question.

The dead don't speak. That's a simple fact of life and one he was rather looking forward to in a terrible bitter kind of way. Sooner or later things would stop and no longer be his concern. "You are strangely animated for a dead thing, elf."

Daemons, vampires, and now elves. He knew of them, in a distant and vaguely associative way that was attached to skimming and otherwise ignoring ancient Terran myth and legend at Fulgrim's insistence it would help learn some measure of culture and refinement.

Every legend is becoming rather less so. Everything the Emperor told them didn't exist, seemed to, with the exception of gods.

"A primarch," is the response, as if that explains everything as much as 'an elf' did. "Eighth of twenty."

Eighteen, these days. But their numbers remained.

Wonder of wonders, that gets motion out of Illarion -- a lift of the shoulders, a noise that's too thin to be a laugh, that could've been one if he had more breath in his body for it. He does have to breathe after that before he can speak again, a long and shivering breath with all the air space he's got to refill. More than his narrow (apparent) body could contain.

Give a useless answer, get a useless answer. Fair's fair.

He looks away again, off down the hallway he's been loitering in, then steps in closer to the coffee cart. Commandeers a chair no one's using, turns it around so he can perch on it, feet on the seat, his knees to his chest, arms folded on its back. The pose helpfully obscures the name tag on his chest that right now reads "BUTCHER".

The act of getting into it knocks a sticky ball of other wadded-up tags out of his pockets. He glances down at it, picks it up, tucks it away.

"Only twenty," he then says, picking back up the thread of the conversation. Such as it was. "Is a primarch a new-made thing?"

There's a pause just short of long enough to allow a response before he adds: "Necromancy is. A new thing." So being animated is strange to him, too.

Another sugar packet is picked up delicately between two grimy nails. How the too-strong tea hasn't gotten spilled yet is anyone's guess, but the previous sugar packet is a loss. That's not likely to get washed off either.

But most of his attention is on the dead alien that's still moving. "A hundred and sixty years or so, plus or minus a decade." Is that recent? Konrad's grasp of time is a bit different than humanity's, even know he wouldn't live as long as he COULD, he couldn't help but think beyond the span of a handful of years.

If this is the kind of thing the Emperor was concerned about when He banned psykers, really He should have just said so.

"I begin to understand why Father's decided to forbid sorcery. Where does this originate, might I ask..?"

Nearly two centuries -- young adult for an elf; impossible for a human. Illarion slants another sidelong glance at the primarch, considering. That notches the giant man closer to a possible peer -- even if he's only a fourth the shrike's age.

Which inclines him to be a little more garrulous than he might otherwise be. So far he'd mostly met living humans -- outside the Librarian, as glorious a specimen of the old deep elves as one might imagine -- and between the barriers of species and death he'd kept largely to himself. Read the books.

Tried to figure out what in Hell he was supposed to do with himself, without the King of Eyes whispering in the back of his head, without a war to prosecute or much volition to prosecute it with.

Talking to someone a little closer to his own age is at least ... interesting? Different? He can place very little emotional valence on it, but it's the least flash of color in a background of gray.

"Sorcery," he echoes, tasting the word. Old, old word for Prince-gifts, when courts were smaller and their gifts more potent (or so the stories said). "Not that. It's the King and the Throne."

A pause. "Does your -- your world. Does it have a Throne Above Thrones?" Nearly all the books -- unfinished books, to be sure, but some of them far enough along to be useful -- he'd read didn't mention it. Even when he'd asked the Assistants to help him find a section on cosmology, on magic, on natural history -- none of those books spoke of it, though they seemed widely varied on what magic was and whether it even existed.

One packet isn't enough, the tea still tastes like watery bark mulch. Several more are scooped up. In spite of his size, Konrad's capable of a remarkable amount of fine dexterity, and now that hte moment of surprise has passed over Illarion not being alive -- well, mostly anyway, he can turn apparent attention back to the task of making this semi drinkable.

"My planet has me on its Throne," he purrs, sounding thoroughly satisfied with this fact. "Long may I reign. Heh. But even I must bow to greater Authority, who would qualify I suspect. His reach encompasses all stars. All planets. Or will soon enough." He gestures skyward with one hand, as if this somehow indicates anything but a ceiling. "And His gifts and powers are not ones you are allowed to call sorcery. To do so is the most vile of heresy."

He doesn't sound like he thinks it's heresy. "I won't tell if you won't. His light reaches far, but only if you draw His attention. So we will call it 'generous rewards' and not 'magic'."

The sugar consumption there is ... fascinating. At least, Illarion assumes that's sugar in those little packets -- much more convenient, those, than the cubes he's use to.

The tea must be even more wretched than it smells, if it needs that much.

It's a momentary diversion from the larger man's description of what does sound very much like a Monarch, albeit one far more involved in the world than was the norm.

Had been the norm, until the King of Eyes. If Illarion could muster much of unease, he'd shiver. As it is, he sits there in still and silent contemplation of this fact for -- a little too long. A minute, maybe, before he ducks his head in a belated acknowledgment.

"Close enough.

"The King of Eyes found a way to call the dead back from Hell. Gave it to his fext -- his generals, to build their armies." Another considering pause. "How much -- technical detail do you want?"

He's a necromancer himself, after all, though of a diminished sort. Only understands half the theory.

Though, also -- "Who names it heresy? Are any of them here?" There's ... almost a flicker of a smile on his lips. "Wouldn't want to tell them on accident." Or come across someone as large as this fellow who'd, what, burn him as a heretic for mentioning magic?

"Oh yes. Two." Himself and Sanguinius. "Besides which, He is everywhere, to assume we are beyond reach of His law is foolish." And Curze is the executor of retribution on those who trespass, which makes it even more interesting. But xenos weren't held to the same rules humanity were, they were merely to be eradicated. "Tell no-one. I'll allow it this one time."

He would not, in fact, allow it this one time, but Konrad was also an incorrigible liar when it served his purposes. Like right now.

But any such executions are going to need to wait, because information that would be imminently useful is to be had first. "As much technical detail as you're capable of providing. I'm not the most gifted of my brothers in this, but I must admit a terrible curiosity. What trouble it is, to think a dead enemy might not stay that way!"

"I'll allow it this one time."

The shrike's gold-in-black gaze sharpens for an instant, expression gone predator-intent at the words. The change lasts a moment, maybe, before smoothing back into diffident emptiness. Were this man and his own Monarch some kind of authority in this place?

This might get dicey. If not now, then within the foreseeable future. Historical precedent weighs against him, if he's a heretic in a regime where the arbiters of heresy held sway over lives and deaths as well as souls.

Oddly, he feels the littlest flicker of excitement at the possible risk.

"Might not need to worry about that. Do your enemies have souls?

"Do you have one?"

Another thing -- wildly -- he'd found disputed in the books: Whether a soul existed at all, or whether there was anything waiting after death.

With no evidence at all that this is NOT still in the Imperium ... or right on the other side of it in the warp .. Curze is content to maintain his role. Let others worry about the nuance of morality when it came to erasing other sapient species, the Emperor's directives were clear.

It's merely a stay, for now. "Define souls."

Those two words sound suspiciously derisive.

"The part of a person that leaves the body on death. Their eternal portion."

The derision's noted. The shrike's own tone doesn't deviate from an affectless monotone, threaded around the edges with echoes not fitted to the space they're in.

"None of those where you're from?"

"Only in superstition and stories." Souls absolutely exist and every single human being including the primarchs have them!

... However their Father does so prefer to teach that all of that is completely and utterly bullshit, and His scorn is rather contagious. "This is ... generally the only life one would have. I would ordinarily say it absolutely is, but I hear no heartbeat within you and yet you move."

Illarion turns his hands palm-up in a kind of shrug to that. "We don't remember death," he says, "so there are those who say a soul is only a story. A primitive explanation for whatever animates us. So maybe all I am is my memories and my corpse, with a stolen life tacked on."

Is that a hint of scorn in his own voice? It's gone by the time he refolds his arms.

"Whatever it is -- a soul back from Nav or some other piece of magic -- our King learned the way to force it into a corpse. Put the soul back in the seat of life -- wake the dead and make them rise."

"And the ordinary processes of decay aren't a difficulty?" Illarion doesn't smell alive but neither does he smell like a bloating corpse days-old. There's no hum of insect infestation or stink of preservation techniques.

It could be a problem. A very large problem. A foe that doesn't stay dead from conventional means was going to need to be reduced to ash, and that took rather longer than normal procedures. "How ..common is this practice?"

"Not once the soul is back in the flesh. It maintains us. If we're careful." Unearthed who weren't could still catch rot like the living did a wound infection, but the consequences weren't as severe. So long as bone remained, it could be reattached and reanimated.

He considers that next question longer, still as a corpse as he does. It occurs to him he is giving away information without cost -- information that could mean the difference between the primarch's people being prepared for the Unearthed, and not -- if, indeed, the Unearthed could find their way to this Library, and beyond it. Or off of Nephele in any other way.

That would be treason. Should feel like treason. But the King of Eyes no longer looms in the back of his thoughts -- and there's not any other Unearthed here to hear him.

He doesn't think, at least -- turns to scan around them with sudden paranoia for any listeners.

At last, he says, "The King's armies might number in the millions now. He recruits from the dead. They're very good at killing."

Curze's stillness is almost corpselike himself, save that he breathes, now and again, and the steady signs of inevitable life. But he doesn't even blink as Illarion admits to what will require his world being razed from orbit.

Even if they weren't xenos, they would need to be culled. He wouldn't need confirmation from his brothers or the Emperor to see to it, with that level of threat.

This 'necromancy' can't be allowed to spread. Magnus can't be allowed to even catch a hint of it. "I imagine once fear of death is removed, as it is already passed, an army could accomplish much," the pale figure says softly. "If I were to ask you to describe your solar system by count of planets, moons, and local stars, do you think you would be capable of it? I would very much like to see such a thing for myself."

Do not. Give the Night Lords directions to your planet, Illarion.

There's a word in Shriketongue -- a word invented after the Starwood became the Shroudwood -- for knowing you've caught the attention of a bigger, nastier predator than you. Illarion thinks a moment on that word, as he regards this particular larger predator from the corner of his eye. A people who held worlds in their hands, who navigated by local stars and the pattern of their planets, were so far beyond Nephele's capabilities they could put the Unearthed down without a struggle.

They were also unlikely to do so out of the goodness of their hearts. Whatever came after this man "seeing for himself" what the undead were capable of, it would not be good.

And much as Illarion would want all the Unearthed to burn -- a surprise, to find he wants that -- there are people he would not want to burn with them. Not Nadya.

Fortunate, then, that he's not even lying when he answers: "No, lord primarch. I wouldn't."

Edited (oopsie) 2025-11-12 03:44 (UTC)

"Not even your own sister planets and star? A pity." There's other ways to find out what he wants to know, but he was patient; for now even escaping this library to send his sons scouring space for this wayward planet isn't possible.

For the best. He would have to convince others to take up the search as well, the galaxy is terribly large and his resources are finite. "Well! We'll do our best to find it on our own, it sounds like a marvelously interesting time." It sounds almost kind, were it anyone else. "Such things are unknown to us, you understand. Dead is dead."

Leman, perhaps. He won't ask many questions once he found out exactly what undeath entails. Or the Lion. As much as it would be unpleasant to work alongside them it would also be the most efficient and least likely to try to change his decision.

"This King you speak of. Is he a wise and just ruler?"

There's no need for the shrike to answer the rhetorical fishing for information, and so he doesn't. (Doing so without lying would be more difficult in this case. He finds he does not have much compunction about lying to someone potentially dangerous -- but there is always the risk of tripping himself up if he doesn't remember his lies, later. Better to say nothing.

No telling how long his freedom might last, and how long he might be stuck in this Library with this possible hostile.)

"I understand," is all he will say, and registers the threatening potential in the promise to look for Nephele. A marvelously interesting time is not in any way how he'd describe necromancy, or the return of the dead, and someone who would ... is not someone who should find the King of Eyes, and learn what he had done. The mistake he's made in talking should send horror down his spine and coalesce ice in his guts, not ... be subject to rational evaluation and consideration of what he must do next. What he must do if he finds his way home, and isn't summarily tortured to death for a traitor.

So lost is he in considering his own lack of response that the following question catches him entirely sideways, and startles a -- laugh. What might be a horrid laugh out of him, so jagged and unpleasant that for just an instant the air around him breaks in unearthly colors -- and then the brief glimpse of something unnatural is gone, like it hadn't been. So severe is the paroxysm of not-mirth that he has to take another whooping breath in before he can actually answer the question.

"No. Wisdom and justice mean less than nothing to him."

Edited 2025-11-12 19:06 (UTC)

"I see that you do understand." There's no fear-stink, no sweet smell of terror and compliance, but the dead elf's bearing and tone, as subtle as it is, suggests perhaps the undead creature understands more of Curze's intentions than most here seem to.

This was, one way or another, going to warrant further study. Especially as what he can only refer to as warp-echoes ripple around Illarion in time to a hideous laugh. Such things existed of course, beyond the preserving gellar fields, but he ignored them most times. To see it here..

Would that he were a scholar and not a killer. "Is he the only ruler your planet kneels to?"

"Old enough to recognize another killer when I meet one." No downy chick, he -- hasn't been for centuries. He settles back into the corpse-stillness he'd been maintaining before the laugh, though he dares another brief direct look at the monstrous primarch.

This time it's more evaluating. Two hearts -- and how many other spare organs? How many of them were necessary to keep that vast pile of flesh moving?

He looks away again with avian abruptness.

"No. Not yet." Much to that worthy's chagrin. "In time, if he's not stopped -- yes."

hi @ the coffee cart

immediately flattens. hi.

becomes birdcake

collect burdcake

burdcake: 1000% your RDA of eldritch

delicious!

part of a (text illegible) breakfast

feeding chaotic things to primarchs can't go wrong

it's like letting your kids eat off the floor, builds their immune system

Also may contain known side effects of Completely Nuts.

that's like what a 5% chance?? how many primarchs ACTUALLY went crazy, huh??

Well. All the traitors. And I'd argue some of the others besides Guilliman..

hmm. that probably is an unacceptably high side effect rate.

Don't feed chaos to primarchs. /nod

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