sheets all on the floor just like an ocean ...

[headandhand]

WHO: All y’all!
WHAT: Your regularly scheduled NAPs event for the month
WHERE: Fort Pillowtown
WHEN: Oct. 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?!

This month’s event is held at a new, super-comfy all-ages establishment called Fort Pillowtown. As the name suggests, it’s a large indoor space filled wall to wall with permanent pillowforts. There are a variety of sizes, shapes, and colors, with each individual fort constructed of gauzy hanging sheets, strings of soft lights, warm blankets, plush toys, a mini television with on-screen menu for choosing movies to watch and video games to play, and yes, lots and lots of pillows. Snacks and drinks of all sorts are available for purchase, as are whimsical onesies and comfy slippers to wear. Board and card game sets are also available to borrow or buy. Sounds like a dream, right?

So pull up a pillow pile, get to know your new neighbors, and enjoy a well-earned and comfy chill-out session. And hey, if you end up napping at NAPs, rest assured that it’s absolutely allowed.

Comments

[merged]

[ To Heather, that sounds like life. What world doesn't suffer war? Or tragedy? Or blind abuse of power? In her world, that's just men. She knows better than to say anything, though, because his views are valid, even if she wants to combat them just for the sake of women she doesn't even know.

Maybe it's a subject too close to her heart. Maybe she applies herself and story to those sorceresses. ]

Makes sense. [ She understands, she means, even if it's in a disconnected way. ]

There are a lot of people here with magic here, at least from what I've seen. They might be able to help you with that fear. [ She'd offer her skills but she has no skill; it's all just raw, uncontrollable fire. ]

[skyward_eyes]

[Probably better not to defend sorceresses who orphaned him to his face. But she doesn't and so there isn't a lot of grief here.]

Are there really that many people with true magic? Billy told me that Wanda's powers probably aren't that, so can't look at her for that.

[And he trusts Rinoa, as a Sorceress. But he sighs.]

Magic isn't bad. It's how it's used that is bad. I trained with something like magic growing up. I don't fear magic. I fear corrupt Sorceresses.

[merged]

[ Heather can't help but want to defend. She's made children orphans. She's made parents childless. She's torn apart families and left them to rot. It's hard not to want to defend them because there's always reason.

Except it's not always because of tragedy or prejudice and she can forget that. ]

....What corrupts them?

[skyward_eyes]

Some say it's the magic. Some say it's the fact that their power derives from fragments of the soul of our dead god, Hyne. No one knows for certain. More Sorceresses are good than bad, don't get me wrong. But when they're bad...

[He shakes his head.]

There's this crater in the northern country of Trabia. MASSIVE. Like a meteor hit. A woman was showing her force, and she killed so many people.

[merged]

[ Heather can't offer much insight into magic or into what corrupts, not beyond her own experiences, but she wants to try. ]

...being so different, that can corrupt, too, especially if the world fears you and you fear you, too.

[skyward_eyes]

Adel wanted to take over the world, Heather. That's very different. She wanted to dominate all.

[merged]

[ That's not far off from what Heather herself wanted, though, perhaps, what she wanted was worse; she'd wanted the world to burn. ]

...Witches in my world were persecuted for nothing. They were blamed for crop failure, for storms, for the deaths of children; illness and disease. Wolf attacks. People turned to them for healing but turned on them the second they had nothing to blame for their problems.

I'm not trying to excuse that bitch's awful acts, all right? [ It's just hard for her to disassociate these two types of things. Different worlds, different magic, but still she feels this pang of sympathy. Maybe she just wants to believe this Adel wasn't awful to begin with and that she was turned this way. ]

[skyward_eyes]

And one of the Sorceresses in my world took in orphans of the other crazy bitch's war. The woman I see as my sister is a Sorceress, who fought to free my home down after my parents died. I'm not saying all Sorceresses are evil. But don't assume that I dislike all magic users for nothing. I dislike some and very specific ones.

I wanted to dedicate the whole of my life to one. Hell, if I wasn't gay and she was single, I'd ask the Sorceress I know out.

[merged]

That's... actually pretty impressive for you not to hate them all, you know? [ She's got some experience in that, though she still holds onto her hatred as if it were a torch in the dark. And, in a way, it is. Though, it will no doubt lead her to a path of destruction if it's not one day quelled. ]

[skyward_eyes]

Rinoa and Billy helped me learn to be better about it. A year ago I wouldn't have been this good about it.

[merged]

[ The name Rinoa catches her attention. She'd met a young woman with that name a few weeks earlier, a chipper girl with what seemed like a kind heart. ]

Things like that run deep. [ Wounds like that get infected with fear and hate. Nida's lucky he's met people that challenged his beliefs. ] If I were you, I'd probably never be able to get past that kinda shit.

[ Fear and hate are exhausting. ]

[skyward_eyes]

If I was me, it'd be the same. It's them that changed me. Love does that.

[merged]

I guess love's pretty powerful in that regard. [ She's a touch jealous and it leaks into her voice. Love, thus far, has been a mixed bag for her. 1/3 of the people she's loved have betrayed her and the other two, well... they may as well no longer exist because of her. It's all somehow made her all the more bitter and hateful. ]

[skyward_eyes]

It's powerful, and it's scary. Because the people you love have the ability to destroy you, even if they don't mean to use it.

[Spoken like a guy with a broken heart. Which is accurate.]