tailforbrains: (facepalm)
tailforbrains ([personal profile] tailforbrains) wrote in [community profile] synopsychic2017-06-05 08:51 am

Ambit thoughts [Late in the intro liminal]

Hey, so, uh. I was here like a year ago or something. Some of you might remember me, name's Neeshka, with the horns and the tail and black gryphon. He's back, too, by the way, and kind of hard to miss.

But I wasn't in a dungeon or anything, I just kind of... went off and did my own thing. I was kind of thinking about that, because of something the Fool said when I got back, and something Thorne said a few days ago, and, uh. I kind of wanted to toss it out there for other people to gnaw on because I'm out of thoughts to think about it.

So I was 'out of ambit', right? That's what the Fool called it. But he said that maybe it was all in my head. Like the word he used was "yes" when I asked him if it was real or if it was in my head. So he was saying, I think, that it was both somehow? Only I have stuff in my hammerspace from the places I'd been, and Monkey is definitely bigger than he was when I left. And Thorne and I were talking about, you know, liminal goo and how we're kind of like little Trumps because making liminal rooms is like making a liminal space only in miniature, and I know that fits in somehow, but I don't think I can figure out how it fits.

So I'm tossing that out there. And you guys can maybe figure out how it fits, if it does.

Oh, and don't ask me to talk about where I was when I was gone. I kind of don't remember most of it.
set_your_watches_for_fun: (With my Trick Clock)

[personal profile] set_your_watches_for_fun 2017-06-05 04:13 pm (UTC)(link)
I was told we're put into a kind of stasis when they remove us from the field for a bit. Which would certainly make sense with you, since our mental capacities are what shape things here - if you were placed in a sort of dream state and your mind still influenced the matter around you, you could certainly have created these objects, aged, all those sorts of things.
Edited 2017-06-05 16:17 (UTC)
thornsofmalkav: (chinhands)

[personal profile] thornsofmalkav 2017-06-05 11:22 pm (UTC)(link)
I can vouch for it that dreaming people can affect liminal space. Sabetha told me it happened way back before I ever got here, that people's dreams started shaping liminal, and it happened to me too--except it was more that I was on a vision quest kind of thing--but those are basically waking dreams, so same difference. Anyway, my vision-quest totally changed all the liminal space around me and even sort of reached out to my friends--and then when it was all over, everything was kind of blank around me. Like liminal space when Jules broke it. Except brighter.

I guess that means dungeons are sort of physical nightmares. Maybe if you can tell you're in one that makes you a lucid dreamer.
runs: (duh)

[personal profile] runs 2017-06-05 04:15 pm (UTC)(link)
That's just what happens when you spend time in their place. You change and become a bit like Them, the more the longer you are here.

[Said with a tone of 'seriously, that's so obvious' that only children can really put forward.]

...Or they change you in a way that is the most useful to them. But I don't think they do that here.
Edited 2017-06-05 22:36 (UTC)
eldritchwheelies: (like a fox)

[personal profile] eldritchwheelies 2017-06-05 11:31 pm (UTC)(link)
Assume we don't know a shoggoth from a sidhe; most people here don't. Which "they" do you think our gracious hosts are?
runs: (seriously?)

[personal profile] runs 2017-06-05 11:37 pm (UTC)(link)
The kind that abducts people.

[Her tone is still the same, though there is a bit of confusion in it too, now. She has no idea what a shoggoth or a sidhe is supposed to be.]
eldritchwheelies: (smilin')

[personal profile] eldritchwheelies 2017-06-06 01:25 am (UTC)(link)
You'll have to be more specific. I came from a school that taught how to prevent or avenge our kind of abductions, and there are plenty of different creatures with different MOs for it.

Though the way you phrase it makes this sound Youkai shaped. Which isn't far off, mind you.
breakaleginhalf: (ah huh)

[personal profile] breakaleginhalf 2017-06-06 10:30 am (UTC)(link)
She's not thinking youkai, whatever the hell those are.

A few of us have been kidnapped by the Fair Folk in the past. And right now I'm sure as hell not seeing any difference between them and the Arcana.
eldritchwheelies: (plain astonished)

[personal profile] eldritchwheelies 2017-06-06 10:40 am (UTC)(link)
...Youkai are entities often associated with Japan that are remarkably, distressingly similar to Western accounts of True Faerie, down to the nature of their Otherspaces. You say Arcadia, I say Zangoku, and we BOTH hope they call the whole thing off.

A longwinded way to say that you're probably right, and the comparison to Fair Folk is useful.
runs: (seriously?)

[personal profile] runs 2017-06-06 12:36 pm (UTC)(link)
So you know what they are and you're just trying to figure out what academical name to apply to them?

[feat. very unimpressed kid voice]
eldritchwheelies: (cold ceasar I evoke your equation)

[personal profile] eldritchwheelies 2017-06-06 12:52 pm (UTC)(link)
If I knew exactly what they were I'd just call them that. The textbook language is my trying to wrap my head around them.
runs: (duh)

[personal profile] runs 2017-06-06 12:59 pm (UTC)(link)
They're True Fae. It's not that hard.
eldritchwheelies: (cold ceasar I evoke your equation)

[personal profile] eldritchwheelies 2017-06-06 01:11 pm (UTC)(link)
...For Fair Folk, they were remarkably unconcerned with my waving around cold iron at them. I think assuming they're exactly the same is going to end badly. I'm not being pedantic for it's own sake.
runs: (considering all that)

[personal profile] runs 2017-06-06 01:26 pm (UTC)(link)
How did you test that?
eldritchwheelies: (cold ceasar I evoke your equation)

[personal profile] eldritchwheelies 2017-06-06 01:33 pm (UTC)(link)
Drawing an iron sword by it's iron handle and waving it during my job interview with my, for lack of a better term, Ruling Arcana.

Hell. The fact that I can hold iron, and most other people here can handle iron, is proof positive that most of us aren't faerie-touched or Changelings.
runs: (I grew up down here)

[personal profile] runs 2017-06-06 01:40 pm (UTC)(link)
Iron is a lot more complicated than silver. Most of it doesn't count as iron.

And you can't know that they didn't replace your sword with a full-sensory illusion of an iron sword in the first place before you came to here.
eldritchwheelies: (you guys are jerks you jerks)

[personal profile] eldritchwheelies 2017-06-06 01:53 pm (UTC)(link)
At which point we're already FUBAR and any preparations we make literally don't matter?

So screw that, I'm assuming a situation where I haven't already lost and have some ability to influence events in my favor.

And I do, in fact, know the difference between a cold hand forged wrought iron nail and a dollar store steel knife.
runs: (fuck this and this and that too)

[personal profile] runs 2017-06-08 06:25 am (UTC)(link)
Well, you're stupid!

[This is clearly the most useful contribution to this discussion and will totally win it for her.

But Jules's attitude towards all of this is kind of infectious and she also can't really imagine being completely wrong. And if she's only partially wrong, she has to imagine as powerful as the Fae teaming up with, say, the gears-corporate...

It circles back to what Jules said, and she doesn't want to go down that road.

So Kitty is out of this and will both physically walk away from where she just stood and also not answer to anyone talking to her on the network any more for a few hours.]
breakaleginhalf: (burning glamour)

[personal profile] breakaleginhalf 2017-06-08 12:23 am (UTC)(link)
We can hold iron. It hurts us if we get smacked around by it cos it's a fucking hunk of solid metal.

It's just unpleasant 'cos our magic can't defend against it. But anything more than like, two percent carbon is worthless as cold iron.
Edited 2017-06-08 00:24 (UTC)
eldritchwheelies: (how embarrassing)

[personal profile] eldritchwheelies 2017-06-08 12:31 am (UTC)(link)
...Belatedly I realize it might be a better idea to discuss this in private. There are ways to do it over the Network that are more secure, but I haven't got the knack yet; never was a parapsychic.

TL;DR for the network is that you work differently than Changelings from home. The Arcana work differently from youkai and the fae from home. Assuming a 1-1 correspondence is dangerous even if the comparison is apt.
acapriciousthing: (Default)

[personal profile] acapriciousthing 2017-06-07 09:25 pm (UTC)(link)
The Arcana are closer to something far older than the Fair Folk. About the only thing they have in common is the kidnapping. They're bound to act by their archetypes. They don't have the food rules. Iron is no concern
breakaleginhalf: (i don't know what i expected)

[personal profile] breakaleginhalf 2017-06-08 12:26 am (UTC)(link)
...so you're saying the Fair Folk are based off the Arcana.
acapriciousthing: (Default)

[personal profile] acapriciousthing 2017-06-08 04:33 am (UTC)(link)
I'm saying the Arcana are more ideas than people. The Fair Folk are oldish and inhuman and powerful, but it's a completely different set of rules governing them.
runs: (I grew up down here)

[personal profile] runs 2017-06-07 09:00 pm (UTC)(link)
Or like we intended to come here. So we didn't plan on getting anything from here, either.
runs: (duh)

[personal profile] runs 2017-06-08 03:52 pm (UTC)(link)
That's what I meant. There's a difference between learning something and just getting some change of something about you shoved at you.
amadine: (glance)

Private, Protection 1

[personal profile] amadine 2017-06-09 02:27 am (UTC)(link)
Another piece for your puzzle - it's possible to move between Jaunt and Walkabout, if you're skilled enough with portals. I thought...well, never mind what, but it doesn't seem impossible that some of those who vanish move themselves to some in between place without quite meaning to, the way people who have no skill at all with liminal space can still draw a dungeon up around themselves.
amadine: (Default)

Private, Protection 1

[personal profile] amadine 2017-06-13 01:18 am (UTC)(link)
[There's a long stretch of silence before Sabetha replies, long enough that Neeshka might be excused for assuming she's said her piece and withdrawn from the conversation.]

I could teach you. So that next time, you can find your way back under your own power, and not by chance.

[Can it even work that way? She has no idea. But it's better than nothing.]
amadine: (Default)

[personal profile] amadine 2017-06-15 10:02 am (UTC)(link)
Is that so hard to believe?

My door's the same as it's always been. Come by, and we can get started.
amadine: (glance)

[personal profile] amadine 2017-06-18 03:35 am (UTC)(link)
[It's not locked, if only because Sabetha's expecting her.

The room inside is wood-walled, large stained glass windows letting in the moonlight beyond. The space is still small, but carefully arranged - bed in one corner, desk and bookshelves lining the walls lacking in windows, small table stocked with wine set opposite the bed. The large cushion near the table is perfectly sized for a gryphon, though Sabetha still has no entourage of her own.]


What do you recall of portals?
amadine: (smile)

[personal profile] amadine 2017-06-20 01:37 am (UTC)(link)
[Sabetha smiles faintly in spite of herself, and drapes one arm briefly around Monkey's neck in a loose hug, while her other hand seeks out just the right spot to scritch between his feathers.]

That sounds incredibly useful, given how often we seem to find ourselves in the midst of people trying their hardest to kill each other, themselves, and any other poor bastard stuck in the area. Maybe we can exchange some tricks, then. Did you ever pick up the trick of reading what lies beyond a portal? That's the first step to opening them beyond our normal range - being able to distinguish one type of space from another from the sense of the door.
amadine: (Default)

[personal profile] amadine 2017-06-24 06:31 pm (UTC)(link)
[She grimaces slightly at the reminder of that debt, however quickly it's glossed past.]

The Bond blurs those lines. We'll have to test you against something that doesn't lead to Thorne, Raidou, or myself, to be certain it's not a false reading. We know you've mastered manipulation of Liminal constructs in other spaces, at least...
amadine: (Default)

[personal profile] amadine 2017-06-27 01:41 am (UTC)(link)
After spending the better part of a year thinking you might've been lost trying to bridge worlds, I'd rather not set you up to actually be lost making that attempt without the proper grounding.

I'll form a portal. Without peeking, tell me where it leads.

[She lifts a hand to summon one of the unmistakable swirling vortices, opaque enough that there's no seeing through to the other side - which is in an out-of-the-way corner of the Workshop.

Well, hopefully out of the way. If anyone wanders through in their smallclothes, she'll know she missed.]
amadine: (Default)

[personal profile] amadine 2017-07-01 04:01 am (UTC)(link)
Easy there, big boy.

[The portal snaps shut - it's not one of the longer lasting ones anyhow, and it's no great trick to cancel it early.]

No adventuring today.

The next step is where it starts to get complicated. You have to weave the sense of other spaces together with the twist of thought that allows you to apply Liminal tricks to alternate spaces - like dungeons - and use that to reach for a different aspect of Liminal Space than the one connected to the world of the Jaunt. It's a little like picking a lock blindfolded.
amadine: (glance)

[personal profile] amadine 2017-07-08 07:31 pm (UTC)(link)
You'll get over it.

[That to Monkey, and sounding more than a little amused. To Neeshka, she tips her head in a slight nod.]

A little like that. I'm not certain if how you envision it is actually critical - just the part where you reach beyond where you would typically be able to move.