WEEK 1

[strangerpeople]

WEEK 1

[The train wouldn't stop. Not until very early the next morning. The few who might have been awake would be able to exit the train, entering the cool twilight of the dawn. The star is dark, and few stars can be seen in the sky as a cold breeze begins to blow from the mountain beyond. You can see some chunks of rock floating idly nearby, far away from the station that it won't hit trains, but near enough that one can see they are larger than the train they just disembarked.

Lastly, laid out in front of them, the first port of call: Menahoven. The mountain: The Throat of the World.

But which world? Who knows. Not any of yours. Maybe it doesn't matter. Not when you are so far from home. Not when you have no way to get off this rock without the aid of the trains-and they will not let you pass.

It looks like you're stuck here until the Conductor decides to leave. In the meantime, everyone will need to get comfortable.


There are fifteen strangers left in this place.]

Comments

[charmingheroine]

[Hey, you never know, sometimes ~scandalous literature~ gets disguised with Latin!

But moving on... two of those stand out. She'll start with the volume on vampirism, but the (apparent) ethnographic journal is next in line.

So... vampirism and Menahoven, huh. What's that all about?]

[strangerpeople]

[This book isn't as redacted as the rest of them, thankfully, so she will learn that one of the denizens of Menahoven is, in fact, a vampire. Or claims to be. The writer says it's just a kid, and can't really prove it either way since the child isn't going to just show him.]

[charmingheroine]

[Well. That's about as useful as tits on a bull, ain't it.

Still, she scribbles down a quick note - child vampire? Not living openly if even real - before turning to the ethnography volume. How heavily censored is this, and what does it have to say?]

[strangerpeople]

[It's very censored. Entire pages are covered in black, making it seem like, indeed, Menahoven was totally an Egyptian city for real forever and ever.

Charlotte will notice the term "weft" in places, though the book doesn't explain anything about it.]

[charmingheroine]

["Weft" seems to be the one thing of note - so she'll note that down, too.

That other book involving "weft" something or other, the linguistics text - is it any less of a censored wreck? What might be salvageable?]

[strangerpeople]

[Not really, no, though a note that there's very little Egyptian to actually be found in Menahoven did somehow manage to slip beneath the censors' noses.]

[charmingheroine]

Well, at least somebody admitted it....

[Yes, she's grumbling out loud while scribbling down very little Egyptian language here - not sure if Ancient or Arabic meant by that. Those last two books look likely to be more blacked out than Private Snafu's letters home... but they're there, and as much as she can answer the titles with "no" and "at least one empty sarcophagus" respectively, she'll still page through both.

What scintillating knowledge awaits this time? Regardless of what it is, once she's taken note of it, she's going to examine the books themselves closely. Just in case there's anything wedged into the binding, or endpapers that look to have been peeled up and pasted back down... that kind of thing.]

[strangerpeople]

[Mostly just more mentions of those wefts. And-sadly, the censors thought about that too, and there are no secret messages or anything like that hidden anywhere.]

[charmingheroine]

[It is with deep frustration that she goes and reshelves the books. Fragments are better than nothing, but... they're only fragments. It's like trying to figure out how to build a ship when all you've been given is half an oar and some rope.

But before she leaves, given the librarian's absence - whatever passes for a checkout desk here, is there anything visibly off about that?]

[strangerpeople]

[Sadly, no. It's normal.]