The Whirling Junction

As you show your favorite characters to Yippina, she barks in appreciation, but continues to cock an ear.

Lappy and TwoFer nod their heads. "We hear it too, Ms. Yippina," Lappy tells her.

"Far away, but down below," observes TwoFer. "Not in the Clockwork Corridor, but maybe Crystania?"

"No, further away," she says. "I believe it's outside. Most like in The Nethers near Ellak City. It's been going on for months. They're trying to tunnel into the library, and I don't think their intent is honorable. The librarians and the assistants are devising ways to block them. Finding the book, as was foretold, depends on you. Come, I'll take you through the eternal door."

You follow her out into through the open door which appears to lead to other worlds, but find yourself not in flowering trees, but on a balcony overlooking a circus of varied activity and places.

"This is the Whirling Junction," explains Yippina. "Theoretically, it will take you wherever you wish to go, but only if you select the right mode of transportation.

"I have never traveled using it, but there are five routes I've heard about: the automaton lady on the next balcony, the lighted cable strung between the two central dragons, the floating sampan said to travel the Rivers of Deception, the misnamed IKON temple which is supposedly a tavern for gypsies and night creatures, and the swirling umbrellas which drift like weeds on the wind can go anywhere.

"They all connect to other secret libraries, smaller and more specific than ours, and you must visit all that pertain to the star on your drawing. You will be returned here after each visit, and I should be able to find the book you need next from the information you bring back.

"Since I have never traveled the junction, all I can give you is the clue We located near a replica of your star. We believe it is the correct original."

Yippina hands you a sheet of paper and motions to a desk back inside the library.

"Please decode this and decide where you will travel and how. If you choose the wrong method, you will be returned here, but the delay will cost you.

"I'll get your some refreshments and supplies for your journey. We are all truly on your side here. I know you are constantly told you need to save the world, but it is the Adventurer's tradition lot, and you are the best of the best."

(OOC: Please decode the paper Yippina has given you, and then decide what your destination is and how you will travel there. NOTE: If you choose the wrong destination and/or the wrong method of travel, you will fave a penalty. Further details on the OOC thread. Please keep remarks here in character.)

Aicha holds out a piece of parchment with the answer to the puzzle written on it. "I've already worked it out. So, can we proceed already, or do I have to wait for you mor--er---mortals to get it?"

Witchy looks out at the scene. "Ooooohhhh, my cousin Mary must have been here. Look at all the umbrellas she left."

(kind of late but our team's RP for this section... spoiler, IC we don't reach the point where we figure out where to go, but we did send the message to GR in sMail with our team guess!)

Nicsy fiddled with the letter puzzle. The lines were really easy one-letter-replaces-another encoding, and she used to solve these all the time for the elf who taught her to talk and things like that. It would have been much harder, probably impossible without magic she didn't know how to do or machinery she didn't have or know how to get or make, if it had been one of those more complicated kind he used to used to really keep things secret. But this kind, some people apparently thought they were enough to keep secrets. Yet this one seemed intended to be easy to solve, because once solved, the words didn't make much sense to her anyway. "Opposites that want to stay apart but are forced together," she muttered. "What could this even mean?"

Elethia silently fumes that there's no math problem in this challenge. What nerve to confound her poor brain with a twisted riddle like this?! She thinks longingly of that drink she left behind at the tavern. Thankfully she has skilled teammates adept at solving this conundrum. Peering curiously at Nicsy she's happy to see that she has it figured out. Now they must decode what was decoded to figure out where to go next and how. Hopefully they make the right choice so that they don't get set back on their adventure.

Dhara got back into her adventuring kit first, because there was no way she was going to walk into a fight with a giant white wig over her ears, let alone in all those stiff ruffles and lace. The atevi on her block back in Parkati were far less intricately dressed most of the time, but then again, they were also not nobility.

She worked out a little bit of the cipher but then Nicsy announced she had cracked it.

"Oh, good--you've finished it already! So...opposites who want to stay apart but are forced together? That's something that happens in a lot of stories--and real life, as well. People who don't get along have to work together to fix their problems all the time. My mother was in a revolution and she had to work with a lot of people she barely knew, some of whom she didn't care for at all! And I don't know any of you very well, so we don't know yet whether you really like me or not--but whether or not you do, we're still going to have to work together. What's the rest of it say? Can you read it all to us, Nicsy?"

She petted Kassiri. The thylacine snuffled at her companionably. "We're going to have to have a talk about this teleporting thing you just did, Kaz," she said softly, wondering how much Kassiri really did understand.

Kassiri said nothing. Thylacines can't talk, after all.

Nicsy read aloud the whole solved cipher, in a squawky parrot pirate voice because it would be funny.

She was enjoying the dressup, even if her ability to parrot was terrible. She hardly ever used this form and couldn't even fly in it yet, just flap around a bit and look awkward. That was funny, too, though, so she didn't mind.

Dhara considered this. "Well. I know what parts of it would mean on Pennarion, but I don't know if it would mean the same thing, here." She took a deep breath.

"My people have been travelling through space for a very long time. We don't know where our original homeworld was, but our first two colonies were called ai-Talas, which just means 'home which is not' and Sireni. Most of ai-Talas is arid and dry, though not all; and most of Sireni is ocean. ai-Talassi is a world where the prides have to fight sometimes to survive, and Sireni is a world where they make beautiful things and have easy lives, not because they are taking more than their share, but because there is so much more there to be shared. There's a spirit-tale for kits about how the people of our world had a huge disagreement, so they split the home-that-was into a world of fire and earth, ai-Talas, and a world of air and water, Sireni--only to find that neither world could survive without the other, and that you need warriors and hunters, and dreamers and fisherfolk, to survive. Sireni sounds like 'serenity' and it's a place where people are thought to be calm and serene, except of course that if you go there, they're people just like people are everywhere else, and ai-Talas is thought to be wild. So, a place where people tried to split themselves in half, but couldn't survive that way."

Dhara thought some more. "In the darkness outside of time and space, in the unknowable void, is a place called Beijada Station, and the people who live there believe that since life cannot exist without killing, the universe is inherently cruel and should be undone. They hire themselves out in the natural worlds as assassins, because they think killing is holy work. I don't...I've heard a wolf is like a dog, or maybe a bit like a thylacine. We didn't have them on our homeworlds but we have them on Pennarion. I'm not sure how they are supposed to be bad, because dogs and thylacines are nice, but...humans are sometimes afraid of them, I suppose, or at least I have heard this. I have never seen more than ten humans in any place except Dr Pines' house, before I came here, and Dr Pines once said that the humans on Earth in the dimension where he was born had tried to kill all the thylacines because they thought they were dangerous. But I do know that the Beijaden can be worse than just about anything, because they will befriend you and care for you and lovingly kill you, believing that this is a favour."

She swallowed. "I'd be very scared now, if I thought we were meant to go to the Station outside time and space in the void and fight the Beijaden! But that can't be right. I'm sure the stories of my dimension are just as strange to these people as theirs are to me, and...nobody ever did tell me what an evangelist was. I still want to know! Is it a job recruiter then?"

Aerynna had always been horrible at cryptic puzzles...she'd tried to learn but she just couldn't get past the letter replacement thing. She wasn't a god after all, so she couldn't be good at everything. Logic and words were not something she had enough skill in, but she was certainly and incredibly intuitive and good at thinking things out, even if she wasn't skilled.

"I'm glad some of you were able to solve this, because I certainly couldn't. Even trying to made my head spin."

As she said that, Oliver let out a gentle hoot, almost one of relief that this puzzle was solved.

"Poor pretty bird," Aerynna cooed at Oliver. "Did that puzzle give you trouble too?" The bird, as if he understood Aerynna, gave a tiny nod and nuzzled Aerynna on the neck and face. "Well little owl, I love you too. You're such a good boy."

Aerynna looked at the others and smiled. "What can I say, I have a weakness for tiny owls. It's just always been my thing."

"Hey there," Gish said, perched on a shelf over Dhara's head. "I know what that means. Evangelist. It's someone who is trying to sell you some idea, like a recruiter, but for a religion or a philosophy or something. There used to be them and what my Grandpa called iconoclasts, those ones he said are the ones trying to persuade you out of something instead of into it, a lot back when I was a fledgling." She preened a feather behind her left shoulder. "Then the family left because the people who'd been taking care of us were all killed - I was pretty young and barely remember them. But the family elders talk about them a lot. Mostly about why they got killed, and evangelists and iconoclasts were part of the history."

Nicsy looked up at her friend in surprise. She hadn't even known Gish used to live with people. It made sense though - it was what Dhara had said, sort of - talking is usually only done by people, so Gish and her relatives had to have learned to talk from people.

"Hello up there! Thanks." Dhara considered this. "So like the Tempters? No, they'd be more like the Iconoclasts--they're ex-Beijaden. Queen Valiska's one. I didn't know you could buy and sell religion."

After a moment, Dhara looked up at Gish. "Gish... if animals don't talk, how can I tell if they're smart enough to be people?" She worried her lower lip under one fang. "We only eat prey animals. Like lops and kerruset. I think you call those rabbits and deer. But ... I didn't know Kaz could teleport, and now I'm really wishing that I could talk to her."

Gish had no idea whatsoever how to calculate the intelligence of non speaking animals in general, nor did she know how intelligent an animal had to be for Dhara to consider them people. She had always thought people was a physical shape, not a level of intelligence.