Sometime early Day 5

[oneformisery]

[ Someone begins to trace several rows of alphabet in charcoal... ]

Comments

[toothaches]

_{[Maurice adds his own bubbly script.]}

Looks good!

[oneformisery]

Thank you. I'm teaching someone how to read.

[toothaches]

That's cool! I bet there are plenty of people here that could appreciate that since most of us are from different worlds.

[oneformisery]

Different worlds, yet it seems we all speak the same tongue. What do these letters look like to you?

[toothaches]

Looks like English from Earth to me!

[oneformisery]

I see. We have no name for the common script in Alagaesia. Why do you call your land after the soil?

[ It's not a bad name but it's...unimaginative? Yeah. ]

[toothaches]

Sorry it's just called English.
Earth is the planet I am from. Thought I should specify.

[oneformisery]

What is a planet?

[ His people haven't gotten to space travel yet, pardon his ignorance. ]

[toothaches]

_{[There is a wobbly drawing of EARTH surrounded by a few cartoony stars and one planet Saturn for good measure because you can't draw outer space without Saturn.]}

The world. There are 1000s of worlds and almost everybody here is from a different one.

[oneformisery]

[ He can honestly say he has no idea what any of that drawing means. ]

I understand that much, but are you saying these circles and pentagrams are your world?

[toothaches]

_{[There is a bit of delay from the other writer.]}

I think I should explain this kind of thing in person.

_{[He's too lazy to write it out long hand.]}

[oneformisery]

I'm upstairs in the place with the jars of fruit if you wish to talk.

[ Aka. The storage room for the servants. ]

[toothaches]

_{[AND SO IT COMES TO PASS that Maurice is just in the mood to teach a complete stranger about outer space so sooner rather than later, footfalls could be heard just outside the pantry.]}

H'loooo?

[oneformisery]

[ This is either going to go very badly or miraculously well. Murtagh looks up at the greeting and has to pause at the incomer's appearance. ]

Hello...?

[toothaches]

_{[Maurice flashes a sharp, though friendly, smile.]}

You're the fellah that wants to know about planets, right? I brought some different paper so nobody else has to look at my bad drawings!

[oneformisery]

So you're the other writer. I apologise; I wasn't sure who to expect.

[ He shuts the journal and sits up proper, keeping back the less tactful things he could say. ]

I suspect the problem lies not in your drawings but my own ignorance.

[toothaches]

Oh, trust me, I'm a lotta things but an artist isn't one of them.

_{[He waves his new student over to a couple of crates and seats himself, the papers across his knee.]}

But...hey, not your fault! Heck, you might not even have outer space where you're form.

[oneformisery]

Outer space? [ he repeats blankly. ] We have plenty of land but...I suppose that is not what you mean.

[ Yep. Definitely never heard of the concept of space before. Not in THAT sense anyway. ]

[toothaches]

Hah, nah. What I mean is...hm. Okay.

_{[He draws a simple childish scene with the 'ground' a few trees, and then a crescent moon and stars. He then points to the moon.]}

Up there.

[oneformisery]

[ Ground, sky - night sky, he supposes, seeing the crescent shape. Then the five-pointed shapes are...stars? ]

That is the sky, isn't it? You mean to say that 'outer space' is the space in the sky?

[toothaches]

Mmhm.

_{[He turns the paper over and draws another earth, this time accompanied by the moon.]}

All the land and water you see is actually a big ball called a planet. Kind of like the moon but waaay bigger. Planet Earth. Th' reason I brought it up is because some folks from other worlds might call their planet something different. There's Mars and Jupiter and Neptune and all them...but I don't think anybody lives on those.

[oneformisery]

A big...ball?

[ This is his first time hearing of such a thing. He stares at the other blankly. ]

You mean your land is not flat? And that there are other such balls out...there?

[ A gesture to the ceiling in lieu of the sky. ]

[toothaches]

Chances are, your land isn't flat either. It just looks flat to you and me because it's so big.

_{[Time for a sloppy doodle about the curviture of the earth complete with Stick Murtagh and Stick Maurice!]}

[oneformisery]

[ Well, that's certainly something he can't say yes or no to... Murtagh will accept the possibility for now. Maybe someday he'll fly across the seas with Thorn and see if it's true. ]

How did you know your world-- your planet was round if you couldn't tell from looking at the land?

[toothaches]

Well...some guys got in a boat and set sail toward the sun and they sailed and sailed until they bumped back into the same land mass they left from.

[oneformisery]

...It's still a rather incredible thing to believe.

[ The land is...round?? Murtagh can't comprehend it. It's somehow more incomprehensible than the seas extending infinitely towards the horizon. ]

Did they know what they would discover when they set sail, these... 'guys'?

[toothaches]

Well, some of 'em were pretty sure but...it was worth the risk to find somewhere that wasn't their original home. It kinda sucked. But anyway, that's what a planet is.

[oneformisery]

[ A nod to show he accepts the point. ]

How did you discover the other...planets? The air grows colder and thinner past a certain point and it's impossible to pass. I hear it's also difficult to breathe.

[toothaches]

Well, we've got really powerful telescopes--and things we've learned to send up into the sky to do the looking for us. It gets...complicated. But trust me, there are a ton of planets out there.

Back home, ours is the only one we've seen with life on it though.

[oneformisery]

I suppose I must take your word for it then. Why is it that your world is the only one with life on it though?

[ It doesn't occur to him that the other planets may be barren of life. It doesn't really occur to him that there can't be life of any sort. Even a desert has its creatures. ]

[toothaches]

Well, I mean it's the only one we've found so far. So far, the others don't seem to have air like Earth. Or instead of air there's poison gas. Or perpetual storms.

[oneformisery]

Ah... [ He starts to muse to himself: ] A world where the very air is poison. Incredible.

[ After a bout of thoughtful silence, he jerks himself back to the present. ]

It's odd that only one planet of many others is capable of sustaining life. Is there some other unique feature about your planet?

[toothaches]

_{[Maurice offers up a shrug.]}

Not really. It's just...oceans and mountains and trees and dogs and things like that.

_{[Ah, yes, the entire contents of the Earth. Oceans. Mountains. Trees and dogs.]}

[oneformisery]

[ Something tells him that's an "I don't know" answer. It's okay though. Murtagh doesn't know everything about his own land either. ]

Thank you for attempting to explain that to me. It will be a while yet before I can see if the same applies to my homeland.

[silver_lucifer]

To me they look like Terran glyphs; I suspect it's related to whatever effect allows all of us to understand each other.

[Because there really needed to be someone else from a planet "named after dirt"...]

[oneformisery]

I saw discussion on the matter earlier in the book. I want to know what magic it is that allows us to understand despite our origins.

[silver_lucifer]

I think that it may be a part of how this place functions; there are other parts of this realm where memories are the foundations of what structures exist.

[oneformisery]

Memories? Whose memories? I don't recall such a place from my previous time here.

[silver_lucifer]

Ah, so you were here before this castle as well?

Did it ever strike you as odd that most of the other houses were such a patchwork of rooms that did not seem to match?

Each of those rooms was something remembered, an imprint of someone who had been here before.

[oneformisery]

Most of the rooms were strange to me on their own so I assumed it was part of the oddness of the place. I did notice that their themes seemed to vary though.

For example here, the bedrooms don't share any commonality.

[silver_lucifer]

I am not sure it is the same effect here. The other houses often showed signs of varying time periods; here the craftsmanship involved is all of a similar level, and has about the range I've seen in some particularly opulent palaces.

The Lord and Lady do not seem to reside in them; my guess is that those are likely rooms for visiting dignitaries and other guests they would want to impress. I've seen a few palaces in my world where someone with enough wealth who wanted to leave an impression would have individual rooms in such areas that would be built around some particular theme of decor - different tales from individual operas, for one example - so that they would vary widely while still retaining similar craftsmanship.

Which does seem to fit the claim of one resident here who has said in this journal that the castle was moved in one piece from elsewhere, similar to the chapel and the half-built house before.

[oneformisery]

The palace I'm familiar with bears no resemblance to this one so I'm afraid I must claim ignorance in that regard. I can see what you're saying, although I think some of these rooms have been occupied by long-term residents rather than visitors.

Who is it that's claiming this castle was moved? I can't tell one man's handwriting from another's sometimes.

[allthekeys]

Someone who came here with it.

Yes, several of the rooms did have particular long-term residents, although much of it was visiting nobility or others who had the lord's favor for one reason or another.

I'm assuming the mod journal use here is deliberate /side-eyes

[oneformisery]

I see. He enjoyed the favour of a variety of persons then it seems. Are you the one the writer above is referring to?