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 Posted: Thu Dec 24, 2015 12:56 am
Ever since returning from his Wonder, Aokigahara had been disturbed. The Code's insinuation that he was unfit for duty still rankled, but more than that, the sheer dark ominousness of his Wonder bothered him to an immense degree. Mont Blonc had mentioned another Knight of Saturn - Scholomance, a Squire, who to his understanding might have experience with...less than pleasant Wonders.
And now that he had his signet ring - one good piece of that ridiculous endeavor - he could send the man a letter.Quote: To Scholomance Squire of Saturn: We aren't yet acquainted; I was given your name by one Mont Blonc of Saturn, shortly after my Awakening as a Knight. My title is Aokigahara, also of Saturn. I am given to understand you have some experience in matters of Wonders that are less than welcoming - I visited my Wonder recently and found it to have a thoroughly unpleasant aspect, and had an even less pleasant chat with an entity calling itself the Code and claiming to be some sort of observer of a cosmic balance. I find myself hoping for the guidance of Knights more experienced in these matters, and thereby am reaching out to you. If it is convenient, I would like to discuss these matters in person. Is there a particular time or place that is most convenient for you? Yours, Aokigahara Page of Saturn
Now he had to hope that Scholomance was willing to talk.Strickenized since scholo is a prolific letter-writer, i figured i'd give room for him to reply before setposting the meeting~ lmk if anything needs to be changed!
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Posted: Sat Dec 26, 2015 5:27 am
The letter appeared directly before his eyes, blocking his view of Maria while she delivered her true feelings to her soon-to-be-ex boyfriend Pablo. Isaiah had been waiting ever so long for the slowly-mounting tension to reach this cathartic climax, and yet a letter delivered from the ether demanded his attention stray from the show. The shopkeeper sighed with exasperation; on no single day since he started surfing on Kam's couch did he find entirely uninterrupted peace.
Powered life, it seemed, continually rose to haunt him.
Isaiah sat up from his reclined position, scratched the wisps of beard from slackened shaving, and looked over the neat penmanship. Another Saturn Page who knew Blanca had written to him; was his squire friend out recruiting for their team now? Or was he simply more interested in bolstering his Saturn contacts to make up for the hole that Ploutonion left behind? Isaiah wasn't interested in wagering a guess.
Instead, he silenced the TV with the push of a button and directed his attention to the brief letter. "A thoroughly unpleasant aspect," he commented aloud. "That sounds familiar." The rest commanded more of his attention, as the page mentioned the Code and a similarly disappointing experience with it. Babylon's commentary that the Code wasn't acting as it should sounded far more plausible, and less personally directed. The Code must have commenced shitting in everyone's Wheaties.
He took up a simple blue ball point pen from the collection forming on the coffee table and started his letter on the nearest page of printer paper he could find.Noir Songbird To Aokigahara,
I was quite surprised to find that my reputation has provoked the correspondence of a Page like yourself. To me, these are very fortuitous circumstances - I am terribly pleased to have received this letter and your request. I hope that this letter finds you well, and that you are able to read my marginally-too-slanted handwriting (my condolences if you find yourself bending over this letter with a magnifying glass).
Your handwriting, while I am on the subject, is impeccably neat. I foresee an illustrious career in knight letters for you, sir.
To the more sobering terms of your contact, I can inform you that Mont Blonc is correct in asserting that I have experience with Wonders of a dire nature. Perhaps he has not spoken much of it himself, but his Wonder houses similar peculiarities that should be studied to give perspective on the planet Saturn as a whole. From what I know of Saturn wonders, each has a solemnity to it that manifests in differing ways. Since this is a topic that pertains to shared interests, I will gladly oblige your request for a meeting. There are, unfortunately, extenuating circumstances that prevent me from traveling a great radius, and I sincerely hope you are not terribly far from any of the points I may suggest. If this is the case, please respond with locations that are near your vicinity, so that I may develop a halfway point.
I prefer to meet in the evenings; however, I am able to meet you in an hour's time if you find the time amenable. As an aside, these letters sent are instantaneously delivered from what I have inferred, and if you need proof of this, exactly one hour from the moment this letter was written would be military time 2202, or 10:02PM.
For location, I may suggest Carouthers Café on Davison St., between 101st and 102nd. They have a customer service policy that is all-inclusive, meaning we can have coffee or tea and take a seat without disturbance. They are similarly open 24-hours, so we need not rush ourselves in discussion. If this location does not find you comfortable, there are a number of rooftops in that area that provide cover and privacy: the First United Bank (on 115th and Davison) hosts a covered seating area on its rooftop that is next to a small garden area. An abandoned establishment on 118th and Carson (one street south of Davison) has second floor access with more seclusion than the prior options. If any of these choices find you well, please respond with your decision.
Respectfully,
Scholomance of Saturn
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Posted: Sat Dec 26, 2015 11:44 pm
The letter Taiki had sent was fairly concise, because that was, generally, Taiki's way - he was generally a man of few words, because there was no reason to write a speech when a paragraph would do. It was delightfully entertaining, then, that the reply he received was not nearly so. Scholomance was obviously wordier than he; not unwelcome by any means, since it meant there would be no concerns about filling the silences he tended to leave, assuming the man was half as conversational in person.
And he had agreed to meet, and even provided recognizable locations - not terribly close to Taiki's home, but certainly accessible in under an hour with his newfound powered speed. That was easy enough, then - and he might get answers to questions he hadn't even known to ask Mont Blonc. He had plenty, now - a desire for more information on this Code, for reasons his Wonder had felt unwelcoming as soon as he had stepped into its proper confines, for more information on the hints Scholomance had dropped about Saturn as a whole.Quote: Scholomance,
I appreciate both your wishes after my health and your compliments on my handwriting. I found yours perfectly legible, no bending, squinting, or assistance required, and further appreciate the prompt response. As I am sure you understand, this is a matter of some importance and concern to me, so I am eager to find what answers I may as quickly as possible.
I would not ask you to travel far if there are circumstances that would make it difficult, and Carouthers Café is both familiar to me and well within a convenient distance, and I find most serious conversations are best conducted over proper refreshments. I can be there in an hour with ease.
For identification purposes, I've sketched my "weapon" on the back of this letter - without getting too flowery, its light is a purple rendition of candlelight. It should, I hope, be easy enough to pick out.
I look forward to discussing these matters in person.
Regards,
青木ヶ原
Once the letter was sent off with the inked flourish of his signet, he reached for his weapon and the uniform of Aokigahara of Saturn settled around him with ease. He slipped out the back window, so as not to disturb his mother, and quickly mounted the nearest rooftop.
By 10:15, because he personally insisted on being early when the opportunity was available and it would have been indescribably rude to make Scholomance wait when he had requested the meeting in the first place, he was at the café, and had acquired a table and a hot cup of tea. His lantern was set on it, as the promised identifier for Scholomance to find him with, and he was comfortably settled to wait the remaining few minutes.
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Posted: Thu Dec 31, 2015 2:35 am
The next letter arrived not terribly long after Isaiah dispatched his, and he opened it to see the flourish of writing accompanied by the foreign characters lining the bottom. "Fancy now, aren't we?" His correspondent appeared somewhat less short in his responses, and slightly more informal, but formality still dominated his word choice and structure. However, the shopkeeper was interested to see that the formal colon next to his name was swapped for the less formal comma.
Progress, at least.
With the acceptance of the location, Isaiah pushed himself off of the couch and shut off the TV from the next iteration of Spanish commercials (Telemundo, he found, offered several of them). He left Kam a short note in the form of alphabet magnets on the fridge, then swept up his coat and started out the door, glass cane in hand. The transformation area that Kam showed him was not far from the house, and offered ample seclusion to keep his identity restricted from the eyes of Alkaid and the rest of her ilk, and once he donned the morbid visage of Scholomance, he prepared to dart through the series of sidewalks to cut across to the Carouthers Café.
It was in these instances, as always, that he wished sorely for his leg to heal to its fullest potential. Springing up to buildings still lingered beyond his reach, though walking more than a couple miles in a day grew more and more passable with the time he spent healing. If nothing else, his condo burning to the ground and his life in shambles meant he had little reason to leave the couch, which bade well for the remainder of resting he needed to do. It meant he had time for all that physical therapy he was told to attend.
So Scholomance crossed the handful of streets, darted beyond cars as quickly as he could, and skirted any suspicious energy signatures he found (White Moon or Chaos) as he worked his way toward the predetermined meeting location. The trek proved long, nearly spanning the entirety of the hour for the relatively short distance he needed to cross, and when he finally spotted the old sign out front, he had counted a total of three other signatures in the night. Luckily none of them pursued, which meant that Scholomance was free to stop in and conduct business as needed.
When he opened the door, the rich smell of fresh roasted coffee and warm caramel greeted him. The night shifter there, Stevens, was a familiar face for the count of times that Scholomance visited the location. While the two were not friendly enough to exchange small talk, Stevens knew from experience that Scholomance never caused trouble. After sharing a quick nod of acknowledgement, Scholomance started through the sparsely-populated café to find the man in question. Frosted glass dividers offered some privacy between the rows, but eventually he spotted the soft purple glow of a lantern among mahogany tables. He spent little time in crossing the length of the aisle, then spotted the surprisingly young page at his seat.
His uniform proved very curious, but not far beyond the dapper Saturn aesthetic that Scholomance was beginning to expect. He wore more of the purple that Mont Blonc featured, leaving Scholomance as the odd one out for his blues. The squire wasted little time in analyzing the Page's garb and disposition, instead reaching out a gloved hand toward the boy. "Scholomance," he offered by way of greeting. "You must be, and forgive me if I butcher it, Aokigahara."
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Posted: Wed Jan 06, 2016 11:13 pm
At some point, in waiting, Aokigahara had found that certain aspects of his uniform were both too hot and too...well, impractical to bother keeping on for a casual conversation indoors. So the gloves were peeled off and set aside. He sometimes had to remind himself that tattoos were a much more normal and accepted part of American culture - his conversation partner was not likely to blanch or react with (admittedly, correct) assumptions about his criminality from the bare hints of tattoo visible peeking from his undershirt and on the back of his hand.
He greeted the Squire with a polite smile and an acceptance of the offered handshake, taking a moment to consider his outfit - long blue jacket and bone accouterments, crisp white gloves, and, prominently, the symbol he recognized marking him as a Knight of Saturn. Most noticeably, a strange mask with a creepily stretched-out grin, and Aokiahara's first thought was of kuchisake-onna -- though given the clarity of the man's voice he doubted the mask hid a disfigurement as serious as the one on that particular urban legend. It would also feel a bit pointless if it did - a covering that revealed exactly what was underneath. So just an extra aspect of his uniform; perhaps designed to intimidate. Clever, if so.
A grimmer, more morbid visage than his own, but he couldn't even begin to guess at what directions his uniform might go in. He did have the vague idea that he was meant to be some kind of cosmic gravekeeper; might he end up in pieces of the dead, too?
An eerie thought.
"I am indeed," he said, "and you'll forgive me if I stumble over Scholomance." He tested it on his tongue, wasn't sure he caught a fully proper pronunciation even imitating the Squire - his English was carefully refined and accentless, but that was not an English word, or at least not one he was more than passing familiar with. A complication he didn't like, but one he would have to deal with. "Aoki is fine." Although he rarely accepted shortenings of his normal name (and Taiki was two syllables, really, what was there to shorten) it was so much less unweildly, for him and for Scholomance, to shorten that.
"Please, sit." He gestured, and removed his lantern from the table - dismissed it entirely. No need to draw more attention than necessary to their meeting with its strange purple ghost-light. "I hope I didn't draw you away from anything too important?" Politeness was always his refuge, but he had to mentally twist around being offputtingly so. His natural inclination was to throw up walls painted prettily with courtesy and formality, but when he needed information desperately, that would be entirely counterproductive. Scholomance was too important a resource to accidentally offend. So courtesy, but not the practically weaponized variant that was his usual form of interaction.
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Posted: Thu Jan 07, 2016 12:11 am
"I've read there's another, older name for Scholomance, but trust me, it's worse." Scholomance rolled down his half-mask to expose a far less garish mouth. He, too, returned a polite smile before he took a seat. His gloves remained on, for Scholomance demanded significantly longer stretches in heated environments to warm himself. Fingers flexed slowly as he worked the cold away.
"If what I was doing was more important, I would've kept at it and told you to meet me at another time. Please, don't trouble yourself." Carefully he plucked out the half-and-half cups stacked into a basket and started to rearrange them into a flower shape, by standing two atop each other in the center and balancing the rest at an angle. "Your questions are important. Besides, the Code has been a bit of an a*****e to a few knights lately - myself, Babylon, and now you. It's starting to look like an epidemic more than a isolated incident. Granted, right now my data pool is only two Saturn knights and a Mercury knight, but Babylon will keep me posted on others he finds." Breathing a sigh, Scholomance tore his gaze from his menial task to look Aoki in the eyes.
"I think it's best to start with the Code, for now. If what it told me is to be trusted, it is a cosmic power that lends pieces of itself to all of is. it is the progenitor to our power as knights - we would not have magic if we did not have the power of the Code to draw on. It's been telling us to prioritize balance, to stop looking at Chaos as evil and Order as good but that's a lot of personal preference and moralistic choices that I am not going to force down your throat. It seems fairly pissed at its knights lately, and has been going on about how we all suck in various ways and how we should do this or that or this other bad decision because it's what's on our minds right now. I think it's a fairly recent development, since I've never run into the Code's shitfits until fairly recently. That aside...
"The Code is linked to you through your Wonder." Scholomance plucked one of the half-and-half containers, and set it aside from the flower of its brethren. "So here's you, and that basket is your Wonder. Naturally, you draw on that for power, and that power comes from a piece of the Code that is a part of your Wonder. Basically, your Wonder would be fairly useless without it. Now, the Code might not have been grouchy until recently, but that doesn't mean your Wonder has been pleasant up until then. If my experience with Saturn wonders can be inferred to cover all of Saturn's wonders, then Saturn is essentially a nightmare-laden charnel house. It sounds pleasant, I know.
"So far there's been a cathedral of catacombs, a research institution founded on a lake of body parts, and a mountain full of burial mounds. I'm willing to bet that yours has something to do with bodies, and isn't terribly pleasant either. Sound accurate?"
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Posted: Thu Jan 07, 2016 1:15 am
A genuinely amused smile played across Aoki's face. "I'll take the simpler one, then," he said, without a further tacked-on apology for pronunciation problems. He would pick it up, he was sure.
He was glad Scholomance cut straight to business - it was easier than pushing himself through pleasantries. Besides, he was here to have his questions answered. He took a sip of tea, paying interested attention to what the Squire was telling him - he now had another name of a Knight to consider approaching, Babylon, who might have further valuable information on Knighthood, or on the Code. Every new contact or potential contact was a step forward.
And at least he wasn't the only one catching the sharp edge of this Code thing's temper, or whatever it was. Maybe all three of them were failing somehow, but it sounded far more like the Code itself might be the problem. Which was troubling. A boss lashing out indiscriminately at underlings was likely to cause problems in the organization, but this wasn't the yakuza, and he doubted there would be a way to remove the Code from its position. Which was unfortunate.
Especially as Scholomance continued to explain - this thing was, somehow, intrinsic to their power. Confirmation of what it had told him, then, or at least that it was telling the same story to all of them.
He was quiet, entirely, through the explanation, absorbing the information given and the demonstrations added. The problem on his Wonder, then, might be separate from the issue with the Code - and he wasn't sure if that was comforting or not.
(Mostly not.)
"Accurate indeed," he said, and he considered. Saturn, it seemed, was death. If the commonality of its wonders said anything. "Aokigahara is a vast graveyard. The Code told me it was for, I quote, 'those who were foolish enough to die without making a name for themselves.'" He wrinkled his nose distastefully. "I don't think that's accurate. I can't say why - but I doubt a graveyard for the average dead would be Wonder-worthy, never mind warrant the type of shrine complex set up there." It didn't make sense. There had to be some other meaning to what the Code had told him, that he wasn't seeing just yet. "I don't know if it was outright lying or if that was just a particularly cruel interpretation. Without more information..." He shrugged his shoulders.
"It didn't feel any less welcoming than a normal graveyard, at first," Aoki admitted, because getting to the heart of the issue was the best idea here. "I went to explore the shrine building, and as soon as I passed the gate, the temperature dropped - but it stopped once I kept moving. Replaced, charmingly, by feeling like I was being watched. For the entire rest of the visit. Which only got worse the longer I was there." He exhaled. "I would prefer that there is something fixably wrong; I'd hate to be bound to a place that is so deeply unwelcoming."
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Posted: Wed Jan 13, 2016 1:45 am
"Your wonder sounds quite cheerful." It sounded quite right in the vein of Saturn wonders that he knew of. "It's hard to say what makes a place worthy of becoming a Wonder, and I venture to say that it's almost dangerous to make assumptions about it. As I had told a knight in the past, the Code is some kind of power of the universe - or that is how we can comprehend it. It is, almost certainly, not human. It is therefore folly to assume that we can ascribe human qualities to the Code or the Wonders it picks to distribute its pieces. I can't wager a guess against why a place for the average dead would be Wonder-worthy, but I would not be so quick to discredit it. If the Code thought militaristically, it could be that Aokiga... uh... Your graveyard was a strategic location. Or, perhaps, there were ways to tap into that graveyard like in old fantasy games where you play a Necromancer. There's simply not enough information at present to make any deductions about your wonder."
Aokigahara's description of what he encountered at his wonder piqued Scholomance's interest. The man's posture changed to suggest more active listening as his fellow page explained his encounters at his wonder. "That is interesting. I wonder if you're a descended knight, then? I was told by Hvergelmir that there are two types of knights - one type is reincarnated, like Hvergelmir herself, where they receive... Visions, I guess? The other type is descended, like myself, where the ancestor to the knight is present at the wonder. If you're descended, it could be that your ancestor was watching you when you visited your wonder. Of course, I could also be completely wrong. I am in no way an expert on knighthood or its idiosyncrasies. Who knows, it could be that your graveyard is the next filming site for The Walking Dead because they finally found access to real live... Er, unlive? Zombies. Well. That joke fell flat on its face."
Scholomance crossed his legs and leaned back against the booth. For a brief moment, he cast his attention to the front of the coffee shop where two of the employees engaged each other in inaudible tones. They didn't often look in his and Aokigahara's direction, but that did not preclude them from becoming a topic of conversation. Looking back to Aoki, he smiled. "Would you like another pair of eyes when you next visit your wonder? It might be a little quicker to unravel the mystery that way."
And my life has gone to s**t in the most spectacular fashion; it's starting to look like spending time in dismal Saturn wonders is a step up from lying about on the couch and watching Spanish reruns of soap operas. I'm losing my patience for this shitty situation.
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Posted: Sat Jan 16, 2016 12:33 am
Aokigahara laughed, just a little. Yes, certainly, cheerful. That was the way to describe it. It was true, though, that there were a hundred different possibilities for what made a graveyard worth the protection of a magical guardian. "I almost like the idea that it's some sort of necromancer's shrine." Could be worse, really, and at least that would make it potentially useful. Assuming t was the case, and assuming he could perform whatever magic was required to raise the dead.
A lot of "if."
It was obvious how interested Scholomance was in his description of the strange activity on his Wonder, and here, right away, was a potential answer. And another name. Hvergelmir. He would have to find out how to spell that; it sounded Norse, and he didn't want to trust his guess when spelling was likely to be important. "That seems remarkably unhelpful for an ancestor." He considered. It wasn't as if he could quantify the feeling, really - it might well have been a single ghost, despite the insistent feeling that it was many, many watching eyes. "Frankly, you know more than me - though I suspect it would be a bit more Ju-On and a bit less The Walking Dead; zombies are terribly hard to hide. The smell alone..." He was willing to play along a bit, even if Scholomance's initial attempt did fall a little flat.
There was absolutely no hesitation in his answer. "Yes, actually. I would very much prefer someone else there - for the independent confirmation, at least." He hated the idea that he might not be able to trust his own perceptions, but he had obviously crossed into completely unknown territory. He couldn't be sure that any of the things he had experienced on his Wonder were objectively real - they might have been entirely in his head, some strange effect of his first visit to the place, a test by an unknown ancestor, or any number of other possibilities.
"I don't know if what I experienced up there actually happened, or if it was in my head. Or, I suppose, the Code could have been toying with me. I feel like that might be a possibility." Given how it had treated him face to...glowing energy orb, and how it had apparently spoken to other Knights? Not too out there.
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Posted: Sun Jan 17, 2016 6:39 am
"I haven't really met any useful ancestors." Even Babylon's reacted aversely to him when he first met the man, the knight had said. Scholomance could not voice a single ancestor that he knew of for a worthwhile one. Was that the case for Aokigahara? Scholomance estimated that it was most likely true.
"I'd argue with you on the point of zombies, but I think that's going a bit off course." Scholomance peeled the gloves form his fingers and stacked them upon the counter neatly. He wished, for a moment, that he could take his Squire gloves with him when shirking his uniform; they were, as far as he could recall, the only gloves that fit him quite right. "It's a little pointless to keep conjecturing about a place I haven't seen before. My insights are only worth so much without experiencing it. So what I am getting at is, I want to know if there's a specific date that works for you in visiting this wonder. My schedule is..." He paused, then loosed a dismayed sigh. "Unfortunately clear now, so pending your current obligations, I'm certain we could work something out."
Fingers latticed together as he looked on toward the Saturn page. Aokigahara looked relatively stoic through the lot of this, and Scholomance found him difficult to read. But the man could not hide his youth, and from that, Scholomance wondered just how and why the page found use in schooling his countenance. "We can say with certainty that your experiences there are valid. Whether real or imaginary, they still occurred within you, which means that there could be some form of magic at work there, or it might be the Code's doing, or it might be the efforts of an ancestor, or even a past life memory. But, I think we can both safely say that it was created by outside influences. It's just a matter of discerning who those outside influences affect, if it's beyond just yourself, and how they come about.
"Now, did you have any other questions for me?"
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Posted: Tue Jan 19, 2016 12:16 am
"That's encouraging," Aoki said, voice thick with sarcasm. Good, so apparently the ancestral spirits who were supposed to guide them were petulant and useless. Was there any sort of magical authority that could be expected to be helpful? So far, it sounded like the answer was no.
Wonderful.
At least Scholomance seemed to have a firm grasp on the whole thing, or as firm as anyone could. Aoki took another sip of his tea, letting the warmth suffuse him. He considered. "I went fairly recently, but I have no idea what sort of restrictions there are on Wonder travel." Hopefully Scholomance did, or this was going to be a fairly terrible farce. "My job is generally nine to five, and other commitments can be adjusted." To his mother, to Phillipe. He would carve time around them because he needed to make this trip, to get a second pair of eyes on his Wonder and determine what, exactly, might be going on there.
It was nice, for Scholomance to assume up front that what he had experienced was genuine and not just some sort of hallucination, but then, perhaps this wasn't the strangest magic the Squire had encountered. And the existence of magic was already being taken at face value, and there were clearly some sort of extant spirits, so the idea that it might have been...well, his thoughts had admittedly strayed towards the possibility of "ghosts," but he tried not to think too hard about that. It felt painfully cliche. Horrifying haunted graveyard, really.
He considered, briefly. There were plenty of things he could ask, but only one that really interested him. "Tell me about your Wonder. We've spent plenty of time on mine, but I'd like to know about yours. If only for a point of comparison."
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Posted: Fri Jan 22, 2016 1:28 am
"I don't know if there are any," Scholomance responded thoughtfully. "There have been a couple instances where I cited my pledge and nothing happened, but it would require an actual experiment to determine if there was any sort of restrictive period. I'm guessing that would take reciting the pledge at a specific time in a specific location every day for n days, then recording the number of times that you were able to reach the wonder. Then there would have to be a few other experiments performed to determine if there are different restrictions, like can't go after a certain time of night or can't go if drunk, and then one would have to expand that by testing the other types of knights. It's hard to make assumptions about knight life with so little data gathered." Scholomance paused, then suddenly looked bashful. "Oh, excuse me, I didn't mean to ramble."
While his wonder was not his favorite talking point, Isaiah attempted to accommodate. Clearing his throat, he started with what he considered factual. "Scholomance is a research institution dedicated to magical study. It is weaponized, which I assume means that there were precautionary measures put in place against attack, or that they prioritized offensive magics over any kind of utilitarian perspective. It's hard to say. My ancestor seems to think it has a particular prison for those who had the pleasure of serving there. I haven't gotten much into the history of Scholomance; I've only recently discovered what it was for. But..." Scholomance paused, seized one of the half-and-half cartons, and fidgeted with the pull top. "From what the Code had to say, it sounds like the wonder is unkind to its knights. Granted, the Code seems to be having some issues lately, and I could well be wrong about that.
"In other news, it's a campus that sits in the middle of a swamp. There's five auxiliary buildings to one main building, which was significantly taller than the rest. I've found little terrariums here and there on the campus grounds, paths, and... Really not much else. Surprisingly, it has no pier despite sitting in the center of a large lake. It's often foggy, and lately that fog has been orange. No explanation on that, either. My ancestor might know why.
"Otherwise, the only thing I can think of right now is that the place seems to be coming back to life. It's peculiar - I've counted the number of working bulbs in the place a number of times, and that number has been increasing. Additionally, some doors that I found inactive have recently come back to life, which lets me into more areas. I would take you, sometime, but it's not a terribly pleasant experience."
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Posted: Fri Mar 11, 2016 10:20 pm
Aokigahara nodded along, considering. It was difficult to be entirely certain - to know what variables exactly might contribute to being able to go or not being able to go, and to control for every possible instance. "Nevermind anything else it might vary on. Planetary rotations, rank, actual desire to go, sincerity of oath, all of the above." It was interesting to speculate, at least. "It's worth rambling on." Aokigahara wasn't idly conversational himself, but he had asked, and that was a more thorough answer than he had expected.
He listened with interest to the description of Scholomance, the Wonder, finishing his tea and setting it aside. He considered the structure of Scholomance - it sounded dangerous, and also like the type of place that had all kinds of nonsense better left undisturbed.
Excellent. Saturn really was shaping up to be a lovely place.
"Do you have any hypotheses for the place coming back to life? I imagine your ancestor has been entirely unhelpful on that front." And strange color-changing fog sounded like it boded ill. "Though I suppose you would need to have something to compare it to." He doubted much would have changed from his own last visit to his Wonder, but that in itself might say something. "If you're free, we could attempt to visit my Wonder tonight," he suggested. "Mark it as a datapoint one way or the other on the subject of visit limitations, at least."
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Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2016 5:14 am
"Right. There's a lot to study about the planets we serve, and so much that we just don't understand. Your question about regeneration processes is a good example. I, personally, have no idea why Scholomance has started to come back. I'm still..." He paused, laced his fingers once more, and took a breath to start with an explanation. "I'm not well acquainted with the scientific method. I'm not a scientist, I'm not an archaeologist either, and my business doesn't have a terrible lot of overlap with those two professions. I'm still training under the guidance of my ancestor into becoming a knight, and he spent his entire life and then some with the scientific method and magic itself. He'll have a lot more insight on that question than I would - and, I suspect, he'd have a lot more to say about many things concerning wonders. I can pose the question to him if you like, and see if he has a viable explanation. His helpfulness might be extremely variable, but he comes through once... in a while..." Scholomance pressed lips into a thin line.
"But, in regards to your wonder, tonight would be fine for visitation." I don't need to be into work until the afternoon, at least. Staying up a little longer pushes it, but I can't pass up the opportunity. Even if I can't relish it. Saturn is fairly high on the list of places I loathe visiting, but... I've only visited two of its locales. Even if he describes his as horrible, I can't pass judgment on it until I see it for myself. It might be a perfectly quaint... graveyard... I guess.
Oh, who am I kidding. It's Saturn.
"I'm sure you've already figured this out, but once you say your oath, you teleport to your wonder. And once you're done, you're returned to the exact same spot. Now I'm not sure if you'll teleport inside of someone sitting in this very spot, or on their lap, but either way it doesn't sound like an uncomfortable experience. I say we get to the roof before we start our journey. Sound good?"
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Posted: Thu Mar 24, 2016 10:21 pm
Aoki inclined his head, a little. Both of those were out of his depth, as well, and as disinclined as he was to rely on anyone who came damned with faint praise, there didn't seem to be much other choice. "I would be interested to hear his opinion," he said. Actually, he would be interested to hear a lot of things from a thousand-year-old ghost. "He likely knows more about these things than either of us. Even if, as you say, his usefulness is somewhat compromised."
He reached for his gloves, pulling them back on. It would be colder, now, and he was loathe to go back outside, but the ambient temperature on his Wonder had at least been comfortable.
Disregarding the cold spot, of course.
"The roof, then." He said, and he stood up, retrieving his lantern. Scholomance was right, there were too many variables accompanying teleporting in a space that might be occupied. "And thank you, again. A second pair of eyes will be invaluable, really."
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