HALO 183: The Not Remotely Gritty Reboot

[Reinholdt]

[A Bunny Meeting Kitty]

Annie is correct. Way in the back appears to be a box of chocolate covered strawberries. But it's in the back because you're supposed to get it last!

The door appearing and sliding open is the warning they get of Reinholdt finally returning. In his hand is a faintly glowing purple crystal mounted on a little stand he's been using to hold it on his desk. "Here we are." Rein says as he settles in beside Carlie, placing the crystal in the middle of the blanket.
...
"It's probably not radioactive."

This seems like something he should have tested earlier. Fortunately, it's not.

[Shadowcaller]

En Route==> Library

"It's decided then!" Zhareen declares as she will lead him to the library.

Once inside she will try to find whoever had made that call for assistant. Was it that funny cat that had taken that staff piece from her at one point? She really should have a stern talking to him one day...

"Now, don't cause a mess in here. Libraries are supposed to be very quiet." She tells Eon as he seemed to have a talent for yelling about his visions out loud.

[bc56]

Eon chuckles. "Shouting is for when you don't think anyone's listening. I've been in a library before." True to his word, his voice is now an appropriate indoor volume.

[5a Violista]

[A Bunny meeting Kitty]

Ooh.
Chocolate-covered strawberries.
Annie, you'd better give some of those to Carlie.

It's pretty funny, though: right when they're talking about Reinholdt, he comes back in.

Carlie watches him. "Hey, we were just telling each other embarrassing stories about you," she says, so that he doesn't have to wonder what they were talking about. That's not really what they were talking about, though? They didn't really get enough time to actually tell any good ones. Besides, as far as she knows, she doesn't really have any embarrassing stories about him.

She looks at the crystal, curious about what's going to happen and if it'll still do what it did last time. She needs to pay extra attention to see if it does anything.

[Reinholdt]

[Library]

In the library is maybe not as many people as expected. It is fairly esoteric to want to investigate a well known children's story after all. That doesn't seem to have curbed Maria's enthusiasm any as she is inside, pouring over another book on the subject, making notes, and being generally disappointed by the lack of details from this particular author.

Maria is human female in her thirties with black hair and a pair of glasses. She appears to actually enjoy wearing voluminous robes cause she's always in them. Otherwise she seems unremarkable aside from sitting at the table closest to the entrance. Normally she sits as out of way as possible.

She looks up when Zhareen and Eon enter and it takes her several seconds to register just why they may be here. When she does, she stands suddenly. "Oh, oh... Are you here for the... For the- Expedition?!" She asks, stumbling over her words and shifting a large book pile to one side as if inviting them to join her at the table.

[Gullara]

[A Bunny meeting Kitty]

Rein coming back causes Kitsuki to pay more attention to her surroundings. Before she can look at this crystal, she reaches over and grabs the container of strawberries from Annie. "Annie." She scolds. "Finish your sandwich first."

Annie purses her lips and reaches out for the container. "I want it."

Kitsuki puts them down on her other side. "Rein made this nice sandwich for you. You should eat it."

Annie pouts and picks up her sandwich to take a bite. Defeated this time.

'Um, sorry." Kitsuki smile and takes a look at the gem. "Oh, it glows. I wonder why." She attempts to reorient herself on the conversation at hand.

[Shadowcaller]

[Library]

Zhareen nods to Eon before she turns to see Maria as she quickly slithers up to her. "We are!" She exclaims in what sounds like an attempt to speak in a hushed tone but is still too loud.

She even claps her hands in excitement though at least she knows how to do that quietly. "I'm Zhareen of the fourth tower and this is Eon, he's a seer I just met. Neither of us are technically HALO members but we can help anyway."

[bc56]

Eon gives Maria a curt nod. He's a middle-aged man, with black hair and beard streaked with grey, walking with a simple wooden cane, and wrapped in a heavy brown cloak. "What is this expedition?"

[Reinholdt]

[A Bunny Meeting Kitty]

Rein rubs the back of his head. "Not too embarrassing I hope." Rein can think of a few stories Kitty might share he still feels bad about, but Harley? Maybe the mermaid stuff and how bad he is at swimming. All of that pales in comparison to the stuff that happened before he met either of them, so he can live with it. "Just don't ask Magtok for the juicy stuff." He knows the juicy stuff.

Reinholdt will lean over towards Annie and stage whisper. "Nice sandwiches are serious business. Adults don't get nice sandwiches anymore. It's a special privilege for the young." Being an adult is terrible!

The crystal doesn't do anything remarkable other than look pretty. Rein shrugs. "I think it just absorbed some of the oxygenation of the water and it's a residual effect or something. I checked it with the classic treasure detectors but they didn't register anything special about it. It's nice though. Makes a good memento."

[Library]

This library does seem to lack a disapproving librarian to tell you to shush. Normally Maria can fulfill that role in a pinch, but she's distracted today.

"Oh. That is acceptable I believe." It's not like they were the Illuminati infiltrating HALO here to silence him for getting too close to the truth. Maria has far too much on the mind to fall for such flights of paranoia. "My nomenclature is Maria Kayin."

Back to the matter at hand! "To summarize, you will be investigating the story of the Banished King, looking into its historical origins in order to derive the significance of the tale. Particularly starting with the Taarik elves who may have worshiped the story on a level above and beyond the children's tale it is for most cultures. I believe there was a sect of them who upheld the Banished King as one of their Gentry, which may have been a term for their deities? The translation is uncertain. If you could locate a member of that sect and interrogate them, that would be ideal. It is unlikely any remain given the scarcity of information, unfortunately."

[Shadowcaller]

[Library]

Zhareen smiles and claps her hand again. "How exciting. So we're essentially going to do religious research then? Since the fourth tower does that all the time so I already got some experience. I could probably start looking them up and then start conducting some interviews." She nods. "Sounds simple enough."

[5a Violista]

[A Bunny meeting Kitty]

Well, now she's got to actually come up with embarrassing stories for the future.

"My guess is that it glows because of magic," Carlie says. "Magic usually glows, right?" She's not going to touch it, though, in case it repeats what happened last time because then they'd have no way to know if it was her specifically or what. Besides, she doesn't even have anything cool in mind.

[bc56]

"Interesting. Why is it important to know the origins of the story?" Eon knows which one Maria's referring to. Everybody does. It's a famous story. And Zhareen said this was dangerous. How, exactly? Historical research seems pretty safe.

[Gullara]

[A Bunny Meeting Kitty]

Rein rubs the back of his head. "Not too embarrassing I hope." Rein can think of a few stories Kitty might share he still feels bad about, but Harley? Maybe the mermaid stuff and how bad he is at swimming. All of that pales in comparison to the stuff that happened before he met either of them, so he can live with it. "Just don't ask Magtok for the juicy stuff." He knows the juicy stuff.

Reinholdt will lean over towards Annie and stage whisper. "Nice sandwiches are serious business. Adults don't get nice sandwiches anymore. It's a special privilege for the young." Being an adult is terrible!

The crystal doesn't do anything remarkable other than look pretty. Rein shrugs. "I think it just absorbed some of the oxygenation of the water and it's a residual effect or something. I checked it with the classic treasure detectors but they didn't register anything special about it. It's nice though. Makes a good memento."

[A Bunny meeting Kitty]

Well, now she's got to actually come up with embarrassing stories for the future.

"My guess is that it glows because of magic," Carlie says. "Magic usually glows, right?" She's not going to touch it, though, in case it repeats what happened last time because then they'd have no way to know if it was her specifically or what. Besides, she doesn't even have anything cool in mind.

[A Bunny Meeting Kitty]

Kitsuki gives Rein a mischievous wink. Whatever that means. Who knows what she said.

Annie looks at him suspiciously. She raises the sandwich to take a bite without breaking eye contact. "Why?" She asks when her mouth is mostly not full. Rein's gonna have to explain that one.

Kitsuki leans over to look closer at the gem. "Well even if it's just a neat little object it's always fun to find things like this. It reminds me of when I was younger. I liked to gather little thing like interesting stones as I traveled around. I had a little bag I'd carry them in."

[Reinholdt]

[A Bunny Meeting Kitty]

Rein narrows his eyes in suspicion of Kitty. She wouldn't... She might. Would she? Gah!

He has to shake his head at Annie. "No one knows for sure. Probably cause adults get busy and stop making them for each other. You have to buy them." So impersonal.

"I checked for magic. Nothing in particular popped up." That's part of the classic treasure hunting detection kit! All he knows is that it lightly glows and the one Carlie got crumbled. Kind of like sandstone or something. There's probably lots of mundane explanations. This one just sits there being completely boring after all, doing nothing so long as it remains on the blanket.

"You mean... a purse?" Aha! Rein finally gets a solid tease back on Kitty.

[Library]

Maria winces a little as Zhareen claps her hands again. This was a library not an auditorium! Show some decorum! "That would be essentially accurate, at least as far as starting point is concerned. The story itself is the focal point at the conclusion of your investigation."

"Why are its origins important?" Is that what he just asked? It is. Maria unfurls scrolls of his indecipherable notes. "Because it is an absolute anomaly. This story is shared by every known culture across by geological and temporal barriers while lacking in a cohesive known source of ancestry. Stories tell us a culture's technological prowess, it's shared societal morals, gives insight into its caste systems, and spring from either group consensus or counter-culture. It makes no sense from a sociological standpoint why multiple segregated groups would create so similar a story, regardless of the variations. There are possibilities of course, all of which would be academically groundbreaking. A single shared progenitor race spanning the cosmos that evolved into all known sapient life. An underlying universal wavelength of values we've subconsciously tapped into, connecting all species. Those are just the simplest and easiest to understand postulations. Follow this to the source and academic professors in all will be speaking our names for hundreds of generations."

As possibly the biggest quacks of all time. Did Maria ever even get a doctorate?

[Shadowcaller]

[Library]

Zhareen gets a thoughtful expression as Maria explains her theory. "That sounds like I'd be pretty amazing, but what if it's some kind of fraud? It could be spirit trickery!" She seems to have forgotten that they're in a library again, but is quick to correct herself but lowering her voice to almost a whisper. "I know some of them are pretty good at manipulating stories." It wasn't her mastery however. Most warlocks didn't put their mastery in spiritual influence on that level as it rarely came up.
"Maybe this 'banished king' have done it himself somehow." It sounded like it was beyond the level of most spirits though. Huh. "But that means... we'd have to be very careful." She nods. "So what's the story we're supposed to be asking about anyway? What is this 'banished king' person like?" Hopefully he was nice!

[5a Violista]

[A Bunny Meeting Kitty]

Carlie glances over at the chocolate-covered strawberries.
She's really tempted to grab one, but...they just got Annie to eat a sandwich instead of more of them. So she can't get any just yet.

Oh.
Right.
Carlie didn't ever tell Rein exactly what happened after she touched it. In fact, she had lied and said she had no idea what had happened. She hadn't realized this until now, but he probably thought the only thing special about it - beyond how it glowed - was how it broke when she touched it. And at this point, it's been long enough that he'd probably just think she was making it up to tease him if she said it now. Really, it's all her fault. The only thing left to do is to hope it does the same thing when someone else handles it.
"So, you going to touch it to see if your touch makes it crumble, too?" she asks.

[bc56]

"Intriguing." Eon didn't know everyone knew it. Not like that. "It sounds like some magic is involved regardless. It would be interesting to go to other worlds, ones with little contact with the Nexus, to see whether they have the story as well. Failing that, perhaps my visions may provide a lead."

[Reinholdt]

[Library]

"Uh, I am uncertain as to which part you wish to suggest is fraudulent. The various references to the story in anthologies?" That seems... impractical to Maria. They might be able to conjure some mentions in a library or two but he remembers this story from even before entering the Nexus properly.

"I personally have doubts about the efficiency of traveling to other worlds to seek the story's origins. There are recorded instances of newly discovered civilizations with no prior contact with the Nexus having their own version of The Banished King." It would probably be more time consuming than enlightening.

Maria's head tilts though. "Have- Have you not heard of the story of the Banished King." That... that in itself is a statistical anomaly, an illogical occurrence! Is this a great upheaval of any foundation of her research? She might have to stay here and start over from scratch. "The version I'm most familiar with is there once was a great Drow Queen who ruled over the distant Nightlands. She was cunning, beautiful, and wise. But her shortsighted sisters were unable to understand the great benefits her policies had for their people, only able to focus on the immediate cost to them. So they turned on her and the Drow Queen narrowly escaped with her life, killing her handmaiden in her place so that her sisters would believe her dead."

"Instantly her sisters turned to infighting amongst themselves about who was most suited to rule in the Queen's place as treachery after treachery. This left the Nightlands vulnerable to attack and disorganized when the dwarves invaded, spreading through all lands with their war machines, stripping all beauty from the world to horde or to melt."

"The Drow Queen refused to let her legacy be known as the family overrun by dwarves. She took it upon herself to come out of hiding and create an alliance of convenience with the lesser races. With her great strategic mind and inescapable tactics leading the less fortunate, the Queen drove out the dwarves and forced them back to their slag pits."

Maria pauses. "This was used in my culture as an object lesson to always kill off your family all at once in order to properly consolidate your power base so you aren't left vulnerable. And to finish the job." Maria suspects they might have learned the wrong lessons from the story.

The oddest part of the story is probably the fact that Maria is clearly human.

[Gullara]

[A Bunny Meeting Kitty]

Annie considers that a moment. "That's silly. You gotta sandwich too." She observes. She's pretty sure it was like hers.

"We didn't call is a purse, Rein." Kitsuki replies, with playful 'irritation'. "Besides, it was bigger than a normal purse. Anyway, you think that's a good idea?" She replies to Carlie. "I wouldn't want to ruin Rein's keepsake."

[Reinholdt]

[A Bunny Meeting Kitty]

"Hmm, you're right." Reinholdt concedes to Annie, taking a bite of his sandwich and swallowing before continuing, moving the sandwich around to look at it from different angles. "I don't think mine tastes as good as yours though." Annie's sandwich is the superior the sandwich.

"And hey! Yeah, what's up with that?" Rein asks Carlie. "Just cause you got a brittle one doesn't mean you have to wreck mine." He shakes his head at her with mock indignation. He's relatively certain the crystal is solid and wouldn't fall apart anyways. He did hold it on the way in here after all. Carlie's got some angle to this he's not understanding.

Maybe he needed to provide a topic shift. "So how's the spirit hunting business? Anything especially interesting recently?" Rein asks Kitty.

[Shadowcaller]

[Library]

Maria was clearly of a human race called drow, or perhaps just human-like. You never knew, Zhareen's people were also human-like after all. For a short period of their life at very least.

Though that wasn't what Zhareen were reacting to. "Kill... your family?" She would have raised an eyebrow if she still had any. "That's awful." She states as she crosses her arms over her chest the same way she did one of her students behaved poorly. "Your people must be pretty silly, Maria." The oracle shakes her head as she still tries to dismiss this aberrant idea. "Just start a new family if you hate them so much." Zhareen scoffs and shakes her head yet again as if to really get the notion across.

"But that does sound familiar to a story I've heard, just never under that name." The merfolk admits once she's sure she've gotten her disapproval across. "So there might be something to it."

[5a Violista]

[A Bunny Meeting Kitty]

Carlie groans and leans back until she lies down. "Just want to prove it wasn't my fault," she says. Yeah, that's a good explanation. Probably. Better than saying 'I want to prove I'm not crazy', since that's still on the table.

She
doesn't know
what to say about spirit hunting so rather than saying something, she just listens.

[bc56]

Eon raises an eyebrow. Maria doesn't look like a drow. But maybe she's not what she appears to be. "I know a similar story, one that advises us to be loyal to one another, not to ourselves." He thinks for a few moments. "The widespreadness of the story is unusual. Few things are so widely shared between worlds." One of those few is the planet "Earth" and even that is not so common as this tale.

[Gullara]

[A Bunny Meeting Kitty]

"Lemme taste yours then." Annie grabs Rein's arm to facilitate her demand.

Kitsuki snickers, covering her mouth with her hand. Rein's met his match in Annie, she's certain.

"Oh, business is fine. Honestly Obriane could tell you more right now. She's been on more jobs than me for a while now. Between the kids and keeping up enough hours at the Dancing Fox Inn, my time's been more limited. The last one I was on..." She touches her chin and glances away a moment. "I think the customer called it a poltergeist. It was a disruptive problem in any case. We basically just chased it off that time, though usually that's not enough on its own. I'm expecting we'll have to go back again."

[Reinholdt]

[A Bunny Meeting Kitty]

Rein raises an eyebrow at Carlie. He didn't realize she had taken it so personally. Maybe he'll go back and get her another one or something. Annie proves awfully distracting though.

"You want the inferior tasting sandwich? Alright, I'll gladly swap with you," Reinholdt counter offers, holding out his sandwich and an empty hand. Such bargains always come with a price.

"Shame Obriane couldn't make it. I suppose she's watching the kids?" Rein looks over at Carlie and explains. "They have four. That makes them fans and/or experts. So definitely ask them for help if we need it." They must know what they're doing, right?

[Library]

"Starting a new family is mostly unheard of. You can marry in or out depending on who needs what alliances..." A new family would have no power and be quickly subsumed! Maria shrugs. "I maintain spacial distance from familial endeavors." Burying herself in the furthest corner of a library under the sea probably helps.

She also breaths a minor sigh of relief. While a new discovery would be fascinating, it would require a great deal of notes and follow up. "Then you are both familiar with what I refer to. It is that which I require deep investigation into." Maria digs around a bit before finding a map and offering it to them. "This circled region near the mountain is known to contain the majority of the Taarik."

[5a Violista]

[A Bunny Meeting Kitty]

The problem is, it is Carlie's fault. Not her fault that the crystal broke, but her fault that she lied and claimed she had no idea what happened - and, in fact, claimed that nothing happened.

She glances over at the chocolate-covered strawberries, and bites her lip: she's torn in indecision on whether to sneak some or not. Because, after all, they are literally her favorite snack. She can't even remember whether she told Rein that or not, but...
...but. If Annie catches her grabbing some, then she won't want to finish the sandwich.
...but but. If she waits too long, then all of them are going to be eaten and Carlie won't get any.
Unfortunately, Carlie is an adult. Which means she can't just brush off sneaking some and making Annie stop eating her sandwich.

She looks up again. "Oh, wow. Four?" she repeats. "Yeah, sounds like experts to me."

[Shadowcaller]

[Library]

"Marry?" Why would you need to marry to start a new family?

Then she realizes she was getting off track. "Oh, sorry. My apologies." Best to get back to business right away. "You said they were 'elves'? Like humans but with pointed ears?" She inquires as she looks at the map. She was not familiar with this area. "Are they dangerous?"

[bc56]

Eon looks the map over. "That seems fairly isolated. Do you have means of transportation?" The question is aimed at both Maria and Zhareen. Eon doesn't have any vehicle himself. He wanders everywhere on foot.

[Gullara]

[A Bunny Meeting Kitty]

Rein raises an eyebrow at Carlie. He didn't realize she had taken it so personally. Maybe he'll go back and get her another one or something. Annie proves awfully distracting though.

"You want the inferior tasting sandwich? Alright, I'll gladly swap with you," Reinholdt counter offers, holding out his sandwich and an empty hand. Such bargains always come with a price.

"Shame Obriane couldn't make it. I suppose she's watching the kids?" Rein looks over at Carlie and explains. "They have four. That makes them fans and/or experts. So definitely ask them for help if we need it." They must know what they're doing, right?

[A Bunny Meeting Kitty]

The problem is, it is Carlie's fault. Not her fault that the crystal broke, but her fault that she lied and claimed she had no idea what happened - and, in fact, claimed that nothing happened.

She glances over at the chocolate-covered strawberries, and bites her lip: she's torn in indecision on whether to sneak some or not. Because, after all, they are literally her favorite snack. She can't even remember whether she told Rein that or not, but...
...but. If Annie catches her grabbing some, then she won't want to finish the sandwich.
...but but. If she waits too long, then all of them are going to be eaten and Carlie won't get any.
Unfortunately, Carlie is an adult. Which means she can't just brush off sneaking some and making Annie stop eating her sandwich.

She looks up again. "Oh, wow. Four?" she repeats. "Yeah, sounds like experts to me."

[A Bunny Meeting Kitty]

Annie scrunches up her nose. She doesn't like that one bit. "I wanna bite." She resists. "You can have a bite of mine. That's fair."

Kitsuki chuckles, a bit awkwardly. "Don't let Rein oversell me. I had the last three all at the same time, so we kinda got shoved into the deep end. I can tell you how to tread water." She waves it away. "Obriane's watching them, yeah. Honestly it's a lot to bring the whole crew around, so I figured I'd spare Carlie and keep it quiet."

[Reinholdt]

[Library]

"Or become a consort, but that is a different sort of alliegance." Different meaning altogether!

Maria shakes her head at Zhareen. "They are as equivocally dangerous as any humanoid species with intelligence might be. Studies show less violent and more nomadic tendencies than what I believe you are concerned with."

"I personally do not possess any superior methods of transportation. But I have seen posted notices of a hangar of some sort in this facility. Perhaps they have something you may use," Maria tells Eon. She spends all her time here. She really doesn't know. Fortunately there is actually something they could use that was completed recently. If they want to be the first one to try it out.

[A Bunny Meeting Kitty]

Reinholdt takes a moment longer than necessary to think about it, like he isn't entirely sure Annie's deal is fair. But he concedes. "Very well. A bite then." It was fair after all.

There's probably no noticeable difference between the sandwiches. Any difference is purely mental. Which might be enough.

"Hmm, yeah, we're just getting one this time." Oh that reminds him. Rein pulls out his wallet and shows off the ultrasound, a stupid smile on his face. "Isn't she adorable?" The unborn child certainly has a unique set of ears. Two catlike ears with two long quai-floppy bunny like ears coming out of the first two ears. And a set of disconnected rings around the bunnyears. Generally speaking, it's pretty unusual.