sweeping changes

[mind_game]

Jane has finally been updated in all of the "extra" worlds with no Bells, Jarvises, or other routine visitors to the peal, and she is conducting template sweeps in them.

[Hey,] she tells all the Jokers and all the Bells. [There's a Joker in world number twelve who wasn't there before I crashed. Can't find him online at all, though.]

Comments

[her_imperial_radiance]

"You don't," says Elspeth. "I do. I can remember all the way back to when I was born and being told what my name was. It's my name, really and truly, and my witchcraft cares about that."

[inhispockets]

"Yeah, you're right I don't."

[her_imperial_radiance]

"None of you like your original names. Except Celo, whose name is not actually 'Celosia' but rather -" (Elspeth, like Aether, can actually pronounce Celo's name.)

[inhispockets]

"...Cool," says Felicity. "I'd like that too if it was my name!"

[her_imperial_radiance]

Elspeth laughs. "He's a nymph. His name came with him, nobody had to give it to him. Celosia is the name of a plant that grows in his garden."

[inhispockets]

"What's a nymph?"

[her_imperial_radiance]

"They're a species from a world called Materia. It's got a Bell - that's an alt of my mother - and Celo, who's one of you, and no other templates that we know about -"

[mind_game]

"And it's horrible. Worst world ever," says Jane.

[her_imperial_radiance]

"And nymphs are sort of the spirits of fields or gardens or similar, and Celo is the only male one, and they've got some fertility-symbol features that no one has fully explained to me, and they are divinely commanded to go around in the nude all the time."

[inhispockets]

...Picturing this, Felicity giggles again.

"Does he do it? Have you met him? What's so bad about the world?"

[mind_game]

"It broke me," says Jane petulantly. "Aegis walked in and it just broke me. Worse than the time she torched."

[her_imperial_radiance]

"I've met him. He does. Although someone has installed magical censor bars, so that his religious prohibition and others' propriety can coexist."

[inhispockets]

Felicity giggles some more.

[her_imperial_radiance]

"He has an interesting aura," adds Elspeth. "Standard aura stuff, plus it sort of perpetually announces that he's a minor deity."

[inhispockets]

"I think I like this guy."

[her_imperial_radiance]

"I think you'll like all of you when you meet them."

[inhispockets]

He laughs again.

[her_imperial_radiance]

"In a few days, there's going to be a big interdimensional party," Elspeth says. "I'm not sure yet whether you should be at it. You'd at least catch glimpses of your alts, and maybe they'd talk to you a little - Sue met some others when he was close to your age - but they wouldn't hang out with you extensively, I imagine."

[inhispockets]

"I'll skip it," says Felicity.

[her_imperial_radiance]

"Okay. There will probably be other chances, assuming Jane remains up. There's a party every time another Bell is found."

[inhispockets]

"How come Jane's so sure she's staying up and you're so not?"

[her_imperial_radiance]

"I'm not because she's gone down twice. I got stranded in the afterlife, the first time."

[mind_game]

"I'm not going anywhere because I have been thoroughly decanted from Aegis and my containing body now sits in the Belltower, collects dust, and encounters no superweapons and no horrible worlds."

[inhispockets]

Felicity looks thoughtfully at Elsie, for lack of a visible Jane to take a share of his glances, and then shrugs.

[her_imperial_radiance]

"I can't produce definitive truth either way," says Elspeth. "I'm just cautious."