dualislogs | they show you how to swim

they show you how to swim

WHO: All Dualizens, old and new
WHAT: Your regularly scheduled NAPs event for the month
WHERE: Dualis Oasis
WHEN: Nov. 7-10
WARNINGS: Please use these if applicable!

Look at all of these bright, shining new faces! There’s even a few less bright, less shining faces - maybe even a few folks without faces - but hey, this city welcomes all types. Chances are, if you’ve just arrived, you're seeing some pretty crazy things, unless you're used to an eye-blinding amount of neon, robots, weird-ass technology, magic, and an omnipresent police force...and hey, if you are, congrats, you're gonna settle in juuuuust fine. But for the rest of you, the Head knows this has gotta be pretty overwhelming, right?

Well, since your quaint individual processing units are probably having a hard time, why not link up with another one? By which the Head means...

Hello, new citizens of Dualis,
and welcome to your monthly Network Adjacency Protocol~!

NAPs are a monthly community networking event similar to the Earth concept of speed dating! Two citizens (new arrivals and old hands alike) are placed at a table together with a handy cue card of queries to help break the proverbial ice. Ask queries and receive results, or ignore the card and yeet yourself straight into a brand new friendship! But don't be too shy, you've only got ten minutes together, and if you just sit in silence for the whole ten, the Network Admins are likely to come supervise and try to repair the uplink through a mild shock to the ol' central nervous system. You might find yourself saying all sorts of unintended facts about yourself if that happens...probably better to just make friends, right? Who doesn’t like friends?!

The weather outside may be taking a turn toward chilly, but you can still get your swim on during this month’s NAPs, held at the Dualis Oasis, an indoor temperature-controlled aquatic amusement park with giant slides, swimming pools, and lazy winding float rivers. Appropriate swimming gear is required for entry to this part of the park, but there are a number of shops just outside that will gladly sell you swimwear and accessories.

For those of you who wish to avoid a humid environment or just hate fun, a dehumidified lounge and restaurant offer quieter, dryer spaces for chatting and snacking. The actual speed-friending itself is in progress here, but you’re welcome to stick around and continue conversations with your new friends.

So c’mon, what are you waiting for? Just dive right in for fun and friendship - the water’s fine, fine, fine, just like everything else in this fair city. But hey, remember to play safe. No running!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Can't ruin an experience I wasn't planning on having."

He might not have been keeping out of the pool for that reason specifically, but it's ensured he's going to keep clear of the water.

"It does mean you'll need to bathe again," he concedes, "but it's not the worst thing in the world."

"If you didn't know about the chance of contaminated water what was stopping you from going in?" Curiosity begged her to ask the question.

"Better than pee water I guess." Well, more than just she guessed. It was definitely better to smell a bit like sulfur than risk water that'd been used as a bathroom.

"Swimming's more of a necessity than something you do for fun where I come from." Aleifr explains. "Aside from atmosphere, don't see the appeal."

"Some people would say you should try everything at least once," she responds. She was not necessarily one of those people though. "So, what do you do for fun where you come from?"

"Usually starts with drinking."

He holds up his glass, as if to silently say he's on the right track.

She chuckles. "Well, if you get drunk enough to try going in the water here, maybe I'll give it a go with you." But only after a few more drinks herself. "That reminds me, don't you owe me a story?"

"Night's young. Won't rule it out." He snickers in turn, though it's more of a bassy rumble in his chest than a proper laugh. The reminder of the story, though, makes his small smile shrink just a little.

"I do." He nods, tipping back the rest of his drink in one long slug. He puts the glass down on the bar, waits until he's got the bartender's eye, and taps it with his finger to signal he wants a refill. Once that's done ...

He leans against the bar and closes his eyes for a moment. He tries to go back to the memory hearing the story from his tribe's skjald as a boy. As the story filters into his mind, so do the details of that night. The smell of woodsmoke in his nostrils, the faces of his brothers and sisters lit orange by the flame.

He opens his eyes.

"The one who made this account is forgotten, but their words aren't."

There's a certain sense of ritual to his words. As though it's a preamble that needs to be stated, or the tale wouldn't be complete.

"A long time ago, in an age passed by great years beyond count, a star fell from the heavens, dropping from the heavens like an ember from the tip of a burning torch."

Aleifr remembers that bit of poetry. He remembers the skjald picking a burning stick from the fire and rapping it on the ground to kick up a brief cloud of embers so that everyone could imagine it in their mind's eye. It was a simple trick, but Aleifr was a boy then, and it had mesmerized him.

"The star fell into the lands that once belonged to my people, the Ascommani, and when it struck ground, scouts were sent to find it. When they did, they didn't find a star. No bright light, no great magic, nothing of that sort ...

"They just found a broken man in unfamiliar clothes lying in the snow."

Before the bartender can leave she gets her own refill but doesn't immediately take a drink. Instead she just leans in to give him her full attention. It's strange hearing a tale told like this. Not a bad strange, but rather something exciting and like it was almost a part of a fairy tale. Lorna would never directly admit it but there's a part of her that enjoys the romantic nature of a good fairy tale.

"Sounds like a anticlimactic find," she rests her chin on the palm of her hand. "What happened next?"

On Fenris, an account is an important thing. It's the tribe's memory of the past, and so you treat it with the respect that it's due. The skjalds make a good story of it. Make it something people want to tell and remember and understand.

"The scouts brought him back to our clan's aett, so that the jarl and the shaman could decide to see what could be done for him." Aleifr answers. "Something that strange was an omen, even if they weren't sure of what."

"There were others that saw him fall, though. Other tribes following the wisdom of other shamans." He continues. "The two nearest were the Hradcana, who were our friends, and the Balt who were not."

"While shaman of the Ascommani worked their magic to understand what this meant, the shamans of the Hradcana and the Balt had already found an answer. Magic is a dangerous thing, even when worked by people with the wisdom and experience to know how to keep it sweet. Magic from the heavens was the most dangerous of all."

"They decided the man was a bad omen. A disaster come to earth that needed to be erased before the magic he brought with him spread like poison."

Aleifr's smile was gone altogether now, and the scowl that settled on his face was darker than the one he normally wore.

"They set sail at night, hiding their treachery with black sails, to the Ascommani aett to make murder."

Edited 2019-11-16 09:20 (UTC)

"Guess people are ultimately the same everywhere. Fear leads people to do shitty things," she says with an edge of bitterness. There's a familiarity in the direction his story is taking that hits close to home. It's not surprising, but there's some disappointment to be found in it. Maybe someday she'll find the illusive unicorn: someone talking about a world where everyone didn't resort to violence from fear.

"Take it they made it there?" She takes a sip of her drink and waits almost eagerly for him to continue.

Aleifr nods grimly.

"We know three things of that night. The first is that they spared no one. Every Ascommani they found, they knocked dead. How old they were or how young they were didn't matter. They'd been exposed to the bad star's magic, and every scrap of it needed to be erased. If it weren't for two wyrmships at sea, delayed by a storm, there'd have been no Ascommani left at the end of that night."

"The second," he continues, "is that they burned the aett to the ground to burn away every trace of the bad omen's taint."

Aleifr pauses briefly. The bartender's arrived with his refill.

"The last is that there was one wyrmship that wasn't accounted for among the burned wrecks."

Edited 2019-11-16 19:45 (UTC)

"Familiar story." It reminded her of some of the things that the Purifiers had done in order to rid the world of mutant taint. Her expression is a twist between sympathetic and disgust, leaning more heavily on the disgust side of things.

"An almost complete massacre just because they thought someone might be a bad omen." She took another drink and shook her head. "Who was on the wyrmship?"

"That," Aleifr says, picking up his drink, "nobody knows."

He drains the glass's contents in one long pull and plonks it back down on the bar.

"The story was passed around when tribes made barter, so it's second hand, but the Balt say they saw it moving across the ice towards the Hradcana's territory, but no one ever saw it among their ships so they didn't take it as their own. Whenever someone asked the Hradcana ..."

Aleifr shrugs. "The story goes that none of them would say anything about it."

She takes a sip of her drink then goes back to idly swirling it around and looking into it. "Ominous. Makes you wonder why they wouldn't say anything. Trying to protect themselves or something else?" Lorna can never quite help her suspicious nature. Themselves is what she would place her wager on, because that's what people did best.

"That was quite the story."

"Possible." Aleifr nods. "Or maybe they got the monster they were looking for."

Truth be told, he likes that idea. There's a certain kind of justice in that.

"It was one I heard a lot growing up."

"Maybe so. Guess you'll never know for sure?" There's a bit of disappointment in it but it's been an interesting tale at least.

"And you suggested you might not be good at recounting a story." She shakes her head and finishes off her drink, waiving the bar tender down for a refill. "You don't give yourself enough credit."

Oh, it wasn't him trying to validate the atrocity that was done. He just likes the idea that they bit off more than they could chew, and the reason for their silence ever since was fear.

Seems like the start of a fitting punishment to him.

"The good bits are copied from the people who told it to me."

Edited 2019-11-21 05:00 (UTC)

"Should've just taken the story telling credit for yourself," she teases. Though she can appreciate someone being humble about where they learned something. "Worth the wait. Thank you. Feel like I owe you more than just the drinks here now."

Aleifr waves off the idea.

"The drinks and company are more than enough."

She grins. "If you say so, but if you ever think of anything I can give you, let me know."

He chuckles and briefly glances down at the empty glass next to him on the bar top.

"Need another round, if that's on the table."

Just because she enjoys displaying her powers (and for literally no other reason) she moves a metal tumbler the bartender was reaching for, causing him to look over towards her. She smiles sweetly at him.

"Could we get another round?"

Aleifr watches, brows arching slightly as the green glow gathers around Lorna's fingers and the tumbler slides along the counter top of it's own accord.

"Yes." The bartender answers, blinking as his eyes flit between Lorna and the tumbler in front of her. "Yes, of course."

He doesn't seem panicked. As though he sees stranger things fairly often - something that Aleifr believes without much difficulty given how strange everything in this city is.

Still ...

"Useful trick."

Even if he is a bit leery of it. Looks like magic to him, after all.

Edited 2019-12-18 07:06 (UTC)

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they show you how to swim

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