abraxaslogs | OPEN MINGLE: Time to Talk, Summoned!

OPEN MINGLE: Time to Talk, Summoned!

Who: Istredd, Wanda, and all the Summoned
What: Istredd and Wanda called people to the meeting to give an info dump, let people ask questions or share their own information, and then a hang out after with refreshments so people can chat after and make new CR or check in with old CR.
Where: Istredd's Horizon
When: Saturday, September 9th, at midnight so less attention given to them.
Warnings: Discussion of the game plots including all content warnings up to now like psychological thriller, horror, the cult kidnapping, gods being trouble. Abraxas is a wild place, friends.

HORIZON AND SET UP

The Lighthouse was described by Istredd in detail so people would know where to go. During this mingle, it will continue to shine and circle around like a normal lighthouse so people know where to go. His domain is unique for being essentially a tower of books. Shelves upon shelves of books and multiple floors. The only other detail before the talk starts is that there are five ravens who will be curiously watching everyone from a perch nearby. Your character may end up with a lapful of one of the two leosylphs who live here, one baby blue colored and the other one black with red eyes.

The main floor has been turned into a large meeting hall of a sort, although mostly in terms of having a large space full of chairs and a few tables if people wish to sit there. Your character can perch anywhere they want including up a floor. A key note about Istredd's domain is that people can easily morph chairs or create them in whatever form they'd want, so if you want them to have their childhood chair, go ahead. If they want a gaming chair, it'll show up automatically for them. His space is very intuitive. People can choose to speak either from the back of the room, as Istredd will do, or from where they sit/stand.

If your character wants to attend but not be noticed, they can intuitively use his Horizon to mask themselves/go invisible. Istredd will not call you out, Henry Creel.

After the initial formal talk and information gathering, Istredd will ease up the more formal atmosphere of the large hall and create a food and drink section against the walls. Wanda assists him in making this look nicer and homier. There will be extensive offerings but people can add any type of food or drink to this, it's up to them to modify it.

If your character would like to explore the library or get a beat to themselves/talk privately with someone, they can do that by wandering the floors. People will find that if they open a book it will appear to be empty at first, but if they think about their favorite book, the pages will fill in. It is entirely based on their recollection of the book so may not be entirely complete, but if their subconscious mind has memorized much of it, they will see what they need to in there.

They may also find that as they move through the floors, a 'reading nook' may appear in the corner that will instinctively know what they would feel comfortable sitting to read with. They can also 'lock' this room if they want to discuss something with another person and need privacy.

ISTREDD'S SPEECH

[Istredd will wait until it appears everyone has arrived or most people have and he will clear his throat to get their attention if they are already chatting with other people. He appears as he often does in Thorne, with very plain clothes in a dark shade of blue, serious and calm. He stands straight-backed, hands clasped behind his back. Istredd speaks in a very clear and calm way.]

Please sit or stand as you feel comfortable. If you want, you can create any chair you wish to sit in. After the initial conversation, food and drinks will be provided and you are free to add your own favorite dishes. This is intended as an information-gathering conversation. Last year, Sam Wilson hosted something similar to keep the Summoned informed, and a great many things have happened since. Wanda and I thought to do the same this year.

We posted on the network a breakdown of what happened with the kidnapping earlier this year. If you missed it, the general idea was that a cult from Solvunn took half of the Summoned and held us in a pit, where they were experimented on. The cult's intention was to try and take the connection the Summoned have to the Singularity, and what they believed to also be a connection to their gods.

It should be noted that Thorne tried something similar early on in the Summonings. Their experimentation also did not work, as far as we know. We thought it prudent to keep every Summoned informed of what happened in case something like this happens again. We have put forward from the Solvunn and Thorne conclave a request to our factions to allow us to have access to the island. We'll let people know what we hear.

I also put together a history timeline of the Summoned.

[He pulls out a blackboard with this list written down over it in clear readable words. He points to the February 20,078 section where the details about the kidnapping are written out in particular.]

If anyone would like to add notes or months I missed, please either write it yourself or let me know and I will add it. I am hoping to keep this an active timeline for us. This will always be available in my library here to anyone who wants it. We have also been given a pantheon of the gods from our friends in Solvunn that is also available in here.

I have been taking notes since I got here about general information that may be of interest to people when they arrive, including details about magic, the Singularity, and the factions. They're very broad but you can read it on this.

[He creates another blackboard to the side, also able for other people to make notes upon.]

I don't want to be talking this entire time, so instead I would like to invite people to share any findings or information they have that they think the whole group should be aware of, and also ask questions that could be answered or talked about. Please be polite with one another and understand there are some things we simply do not have the answers for as of now.

There are less than a hundred of us, and I believe it is important that we stay on the same team. Thank you. Feel free to eat and talk, or wander in the library.

OOC NOTES

Hey everyone, it's Dee! I am so sorry for the tl;dr. I have the headers below: Speeches (information sharing/tl;dr like mine), Questions (you can specify what exactly they have questions about), adding to the info dumps I have, and whatever else you think of.

If you want your character to speak/offer information but don't want follow-up questions, you can put 'OTA' or 'no follow-up' to indicate what your preference is here. If you put OTA people can reply with a sort of Q&A option, but the no follow-up idea is so that people can share information but not need to commit to that unless they feel like it.

And from there, mingle to your heart's content! Your characters can talk afterward, before, go explore the library, whatever you want, I support it. You can plan closed or open starters, follow your heart.

If nothing else, I want people to take from this mingle that their character can hear any of this information or see it in the library and have it from now on for your RP purposes, and take this opportunity to maybe make new CR/discuss all of this. Do as much or as little as you want! If you have any comments/concerns, please message me on plurk.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Bay does not keep her composure and snorts a small laugh, quickly reining in that yes that does make enough noise to bother those around her. Although not enough noise to stop the person talking.

It's important. But I-S-T-R-E-D-D wrote everything down. They just love talking. As much as she's here for the social side of things. Talk, get to know others, learn about the other factions. She guesses asking everyone to do homework wouldn't get very far. Even if that would be so much easier.

She'll quietly make her way over so she and Wrench don't have to sign across he room to each other. Not exactly paranoia, just not seeing a need to broadcast their conversation to everyone since she knows. She's not hiding what she says because she hasn't seen Lucifer in the crowd yet. Some of them understand sign. Angels. The Devil.

It came up on the network that Angels exist. Just a thing to deal with.

Hearing people always do. Wrench is unapologetic with his signing. He's done the kindness of at least standing against a far wall, tucked mostly out of the way from others who have gathered to listen to whoever's speaking at the moment. But he's more than glad to use the benefit of the visual language to overcome the distance between them, so he doesn't bother himself to walk towards Bay or wait until she reaches him. I think they're scared of silence, so they have to fill it.

There's something that feels satisfying about talking like this in front of the crowd. Wrench doesn't have a clue what's being spoken, so if anyone finds themselves gazing at him or Bay, he assumes they'll mostly just feel the same. Even back in his real life, it's been a long time since he's had the opportunity to converse so naturally with someone who really understands. Maybe that's part of the reason why he can't temper himself.

When Bay makes her way over, though, he does grin and adjust. I met a man who called himself an angel. Named G-A-B-R-I-E-L. He can sign, that's true.

Can't argue with that. I was hearing. I would know. It took a little while, when she started dating Emmett, to really be okay with silence. Well 'silence' in that there were all the little noises of the world she got, but he didn't. But she got there. Having been on both sides of this looking glass neither is better, just incompatibly different in some manner.

When she's by Wrench and less in the open. She puts the letter K over her chest, brings it down and makes a sweeping circle around her other arm, laid flat at waist level. Then draws several small spikes over it. (Kingdom of) Thorne has L-U-C-I-F-E-R. He's an ass. Refuses to sign.

She smiles as she describes him, she's aware one of her friends cares deeply for him, but nothing Lucifer has said or done since meeting him has persuaded her yet. She'll just- not start anything with the Devil. If you're not here for the blah blah blah. Why are you here?

L-U-C-I-F-E-R, Wrench repeats, then waggles his fingers. Like the devil? He almost laughs at that, and the small sound it makes he close enough to a cough that a few people might look in his direction. He's not paying much mind to the other onlookers, though. Right now the rest of the world is mere background static to something he feels totally immersed in. It's not often that Wrench feels this way, and maybe he's selfishly letting himself luxuriate in it a little bit.

Bay's question only needs him to parrot back the series of signs she's just shown him. That's your faction? It's as interesting to him here as it was back then: the idea of how other people live. Before, Wrench could go around peering into windows if he wanted to. He could read voraciously from every book in every library he managed to stumble his way into. But here, he hasn't found that opportunity. If there are books in Solvunn, he doesn't know where. If there are portals to the other factions, he can't find them. Means that this the only place we can all meet, right?

Bay nods. The Devil. The look in her eye makes it clear the concept is just as wild to her too, but she's gotten over it. What with everything about this place.

A few people have asked to learn Sign. But most don't read E-N-G-L-I-S-H. Makes fingerspelling complicated. She's been mulling over this since she was first asked in the Feywilds by Vash. But Inej asking had her a little more motivated. Giving namesigns to the various countries will make it easier, Here, or in N-O-C-W-I-C-H each month.

She does look annoyed at the fact they aren't in the same faction. He can probably guess the reasoning too. That the only person she can talk to isn't where she can talk to him. He at leas has Gabriel, who isn't a jerk. So- that's at least something off her mind.

The devil knows sign, but refuses to use it. Wrench puckers his lower lip, as if to say the story seems to track. It sounds like something Satan would do. Though since meeting one man who absolutely insists that he's an angel, perhaps he's starting to develop an entirely different concept of what that all means. Gabriel certainly has proven an interesting and welcoming person, but Wrench has a hard time regarding him as divine or infallible.

The next part is somehow much more of a surprise. There's been no interest expressed in Solvunn for learning the language; only finding ways to overcome Wrench's use of it. And his over-reliance on the ability to send 'texts' with his brain has left the tall man disconnected from the understanding that it's all being translated into Common. It's been so straightforward that he hasn't stopped to consider the layers, but now he spares it some thought. They'd have to use Common as the base, perhaps, and he has no idea if it looks the same to everyone as it does to him.

But the factions are supposed to be enemies, right? Clearly his understanding remains totally basic.

He's an asshole. It made sense, a fallen angel is still an angel. He'd explained it as knowing every language on Earth. Finding out about the other Angels was a bit of a surprise, but useful given some of the monsters that arrived.

Having access to text is useful in small bursts, the odd word she doesn't know. Most magical terms she needs someone to send to her to get it. She's getting better at sending messages without breaking eye contact with the person talking. But she's a little functional, due to her weird blended life. She's also pretty and harmless so that goes a long way.

We her gesture extends to the rest of the room, not just the two of them, are not our factions. We live on their lands, given what aid they choose we deserve. Part of why I-S-T-R-E-D-D and W-A-N-D-A made this meeting happen. There's a defiance to the very idea Summoned are enemies to each other. Thorne's summoned did not forget how much the Queen distrusts them. She knows it isn't as bad in the other factions. The three factions fight, and much of it about the Singularity, and therefore about the Summoned.

Being pawns suck.

Bay's resolve is palpable, not just for how she regards Lucifer, but what she thinks about the idea of an inherent mistrust between factions. Wrench finds himself smirking. The small bit of air may not be audible, but the corner of his lip curls just slightly and he can't set his facial expression back to neutral quickly enough to hide that amusement.

He's been a pawn for the better part of his whole life. And yet somehow despite being the most disposable thing in someone else's game, he's managed to outlive every single other person. Can a pawn win a game of Chess? That's what it feels like to Wrench most days. He still isn't sure that being the sole survivor is the gift that it's supposed to be, though.

Best thing to do is keep your head low and go along with it. What do they... Yes, to Wrench the rest of the room is still a 'they,' not an 'us'... want to do? Find the door back home?

There was a certain preening after that tiniest smile. Bay liked being seen, not noticed, actually seen as herself. How much she put herself into whatever her cause was. This cause was to get home, as she had a home to go to. Some. Others just want to understand this world. Thorne is full of nerds.

The main thing is to be less trapped by the factions that have us. Which is why working together was so important, too much of this world was their enemy. Either directly like the cultists who attacked summoned before she got here. Or the Queen of Thorne who was not to be trusted at all. Still, she let her bravado drop a bit, But you're right. We don't want eyes on us. Like meeting with summoned from the other factions in the dead of night so no faction will question what's going on.

If those are the two positions of the majority of Summoned, Wrench doesn't know which camp he belongs in. He's in no hurry to find the escape hatch out of this place. There's nothing waiting for him back home that he can't sooner get amid the rolling hills and lakes of the Solvunn commune, and even after coming face-to-face with all manner of beasts, he thinks he'd still prefer to take his chances here. He knows better than to say as much, though. If there are people looking for a way home, they probably won't like it that some people might sooner stay.

Leaves a lot of people open to attack. He can't help but notice how many people have gathered in this place, and what that means for their meditating forms left back at their own factions' grounds.

So you weren't born deaf?

Bay took another account of who all was here, the faces from the other two factions weren't known to her, there were some absent at this moment. Faces she would expect to see. Although she'd been relying on the fact that if they weren't here most would be in bed. Maybe not her, she can see in the dark. Maybe... this would go better if Hearing people didn't talk so much.

As to the question she blew out a breath. Oh this was going to be 'fun' to explain. Long story. My sister had M-E-N-I-N-G-I-I-S when she was three. We swapped histories? If she seems confused as to how to sign this it's because explaining this has always been spoken. The few times she has. So now I grew up Deaf and she grew up Hearing. I learned sign when we found each other three years ago. But I sign and know signs like I've done it since I was six or seven.

Bay's smile is bright but also tense at the edges. Because what she said was, at best, utterly insane. I know. It's weird.

Most things would, Wrench snarks agreeably. It feels good. It's almost like a catharsis to say something like that and know the recipient can relate. Even in his life back home, Wrench hasn't known many Deaf people. Part of the reason he has no sign name to offer to Bay is that there's no one left on earth to talk about him behind his back. At least no one who would do so in ASL. They have to talk around the point, though. He sticks out his tongue in a non-manual expression of carelessness, directing the tip of one pointer finger in a meandering path to and fro that never quite touches the outstretched pointer finger of the other hand.

It might not be a problem, though. Apart from the beasts that came through the rifts earlier on, Solvunn appears relatively safe. Wrench isn't too worried about being gone from his body a little while longer. Especially when he's enjoying the freedom to converse and to people-watch.

He does give Bay a skeptical frown as she recounts the story of how she wound up deaf. Though when she insists it's strange, he brushes it off. You told me you know the Devil, and I said I'd spoken to one of god's messenger angels. We're way past weird.

I used to be one of them. Not, before I was Deaf. Before I knew Deaf people. Bay, prior to Daphne and Emmett, was a very different person. And while she was the most accepting, the most open, to immersing herself in her Sister's culture that was mostly that her parents and brother were worse. A little too coddled. They really can just talk forever...

It felt more weird than this because it happened before here. Before all this. Before fairies and angels. Still, at this point what was weird? The cute moody catgirl she knew was downright normal. Being Deaf isn't the change that felt weirdest. Hearing me went to a Deaf high school, to be near my sister and our friends. This new me learned how to cook. Never did that before.

Her smile made it clear that this truth was as much amusing as it was serious. As much as she should count suddenly working with one less sense than she had the night before. And in that morning it was absolutely terrifying until she calmed down and talked it out with Daphne, once that adrenaline was gone it was just fine. Not groundbreaking at all.

There's probably some irony in the fact that the two of them are standing here off to the side and eagerly chatting about the way hearing people chat. Wrench knows he could spend half the night conversing with somebody with whom it's so easy to do. Brain texting still requires shaping his thoughts into an entirely different language; he hasn't tested and doesn't trust that the texts would come out grammatically correct if he thought them in ASL. But this feels like the simplest thing in the world, and he knows he could get lost for hours in it.

Bay's assessment of what's been the most difficult challenge makes him snort again. This time, he shakes his head like he knows he's being fucked with. She's got to be teasing him. Wrench hasn't experienced that sense of loss. He has no idea how he'd take it if he were faced with something comparable, but he doubts most hearing people would be totally at ease with such a sudden change.

You had a good foundation. What if I told you that you're the first Deaf person I've ever met? He waggles his eyebrows, like it's part-challenge.

She knew what it was like, when she heard, to be trying to follow Daphne's friends all talking at once. Which she could not keep track of how quickly they signed. It was different for her now, she thought. But she's never had to try it.

Bay knew, a little, about how it was possible not to find other Deaf people. Travis was clear evidence that could happen even with other Deaf people in town. The fear everyone had when the high school was under threat of closure was that they'd all be alone. But not a single other Deaf person?

That's why you don't have a namesign? It had been at the back of her mind, since meeting him. It just felt so wrong, but if nobody else was Deaf he didn't need it. Which made it feel worse. And every pained thought she had played on her face as she felt them.

Right, Wrench agrees. It may be an oversimplification of the truth, but it's not a lie. People want to talk about me? They're doing it by voicing. No sign name needed.

Besides, Wrench was already granted a different name altogether. Fortunately, no one he's met so far has questioned whether the name he's introduced himself as is truly his name. It's far from the strangest thing around here, and he's glad for that. No one's likely to think twice about a name like Wrench when talking sharks and raccoons are walking around like it's the most normal thing.

Bay's face pretty easily betrays where her mind is going with that confirmation. She takes a moment to think about what she's asking, because it's the sort of question that only makes sense when you know the topic.

Is W-R-E-N-C-H your name. Or is it what they call you? It might look, to anyone trying to follow her gestures, she's referring to the room of other summoned with 'they,' but she isn't. The summoned are hearing, yes. But they come from too many types of worlds to settle on the same rules.

The distinction might be a narrow one, but Wrench thinks he knows what Bay is asking. It's probably altogether too clear that more people have spoken about him in his life than have spoken to him. And maybe he's done a poor job at disguising how strange it's been to be here among the other summoned and have so many conversations for the first time in his life. But when it comes to his name and his identity, there's only one that matters.

He shrugs his shoulders. My name. The response is so simple and so certain it hardly leaves any room for questioning. It doesn't matter what anyone else might have called him. It doesn't even matter what he might call himself privately. Wrench's sense of identity has never been that solid anyway.

OK. That settles that, at least for Bay. Names are curious things anyway. It isn't like 'Bay' is legally her name anyway. It wasn't on her birth certificate, and this girl was and always has been 'Daphne' to her family.

None of that changed who she was, and she was Bay.

But, Bay smirked a little, fingerspelling sucks for Hearing. Which is her casual way of asking if he could consider a namesign. It might be easier for others if anyone else learns to sign. Or if some of the angels aren't as big a dick as the devil is.

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OPEN MINGLE: Time to Talk, Summoned!

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