One day in Alne

Schneider is, at the moment, admiring the statue of the Burning One. His expression is thoughtful as he watches the statue, the crystal flames illuminating the square enough to read by, if that's your idea of a good time. People who pray to the Burning One are generally seeking success in battle or trade, or some other risky venture, which adventuring in general probably counts as, but he doesn't look like he's praying, exactly. "We've got so many puzzle pieces, we just need to put them together," he says, though mostly to himself.

Gwen is looking up at the statue form another part of the square. A friend made that thing after all she thinks about it and wonders how he's doing. She checks her friends list, he's shown as alive but on do not disturb. Well then she'll leave him to it and she turns to Schneider for a moment.

"Just so we can find what ones we are missing?"

Schneider huhs to Gwen. "Oh, well sort of, yeah," he allows. "We're missing so many things, and I'm new to the game. That is, I was new when this version opened.Obviously we've all been here three years. But before. When you had questions or mysteries to solve, were there like offline guides or ingame help, or what? We've got so many pieces of clues, but we can't put anything together. You'd think in three years, we'd stumble across /something/." He shrugs weakly.

He ticks off on his fingers, "Flying? Why are flying races no longer able to fly? We think that there's some fragment of some epic monster that's been used to restrict flying by magic entirely. In addition, flying non-magically outside the Tower draws some special monsters to destroy whatever's flying, even if it's landed." He ticks another finger, "What about the Explosion power? It's available at starting, because that one girl had it right after the game opened. I did a duty with her, way back then, and she mentioned it. But I can't find a thing about it from anyone else at all, and research turns up crickets." He ticks a third finger, "What's cheesed off the Palace Land's Landers so much that they felt like enslaving all their players? That's a /whole server/ that's just sucking hard. Everyone logging on from China and Korea just shut down completely." He continues on, "Though I guess the broader question is who hasn't noticed we're stuck in a game after three years?"

Hisame continues to be an aloof oddball in this world. Not by any particular choice, she just keeps weird hours, weird company and weird habits.

She catches the tail end of the conversation. She thinks. There's chat of mysteries at least. Those wings flutter and she hops back. Especially on the idea of flying races not flying anymore.

She's being kind of funny about just standing there. Thinking. "They probably have noticed for what it's worth." That part got her to speak up without thinking, smiling faintly, "I know my editor would have noticed. They probably can't do anything though." She tilts her head, "There's your mystery though. Are we still plugged in or not?"

Gwen says "Earth's a fading memory to be sure." She thinks for a moment on this and grins a bit. "Well we're doing it the hard or maybe the more fuyn way. Yes I'd like these wings to actually DO SOMETHING!" She flares them out. "Well aside from help make me look good." She flex them a bit.

"I dunno about that I'm more chasing into air magic if anything. There is something your not considering the new Man machine interface our helmet had we don't know if our mind are being overclocked or even if we're in a world as we know it. We could be copies at this point we're different people so it doesn't matter to me." The idea of TWO GWENS AND TWO MORRIs is a thing of terror..really it is.

Schneider looks over to Hisame, and he's not sure if she's addressing him or not at first, but says, "I would assume they'd have to have noticed. You can't go three years without eating and drinking. So that's being done for us. But then, they'd disconnect us from the game if they'd found us, right? The idea that they can't do anything confuses me. They can just unplug us if nothing else. But if they had to find -everyone-, then what happens to the player who lives alone, with no one to check on them? They'd starve to death, but no one's died in Yamato, and the ones that died in the Palace Lands died from being PK'd too much."

Gwen gets a nod about wanting the wings to do more. "But to fly, using physics, your wings would have to be thirty or forty feet across. So there's some kind of magic, and that's the magic that got turned off. We can still fly using RL physics, we just can't fly with magic." He can only shrug about Gwen's comment about the interface. "I guess if we're copies, our original bodies -could- log out, and aren't missed, so we're abandoned scraps of data?"

Hisame holds a finger up, "Had the same idea. That I'm some copy. Made me laugh because my last project was a cyberpunk thing and-" she stops. Not realy important. She shrugs. "My wings are so small I figure they wouldn't work one way or the other. They look cute though. I'll agree there."

"I mean you can if you've left your mortal remains behind." She shrugs. As for disconnecting, she twirls her fingers. "Maybe, maybe. Dunno." She crosses her arms over her armor and leans forward, getting a better look at the two. "Don't know about the palace lands stuff. We doing anything about it?-" she pauses, "I'm Hisame by the way."

Gwen says "Or have been loaded on to some server to run." she shrugs. "Not much we can do it about it. Might as well keep living and take one day at a time, right? There was also one who fell victem to the undead horde but I do not know if there's been any further information on that. Oh they are and i could have a few thing to help you look even better. Yes, we're working to bring an end to them being a threat."

Schneider smiles to Hisame, introduces himself as, "Dark Schneider. And yeah, with magic, you could fly, I'm sure. Because magic." As far as Palace Lands progress goes, he can only shrug. "I've been working with their resistance to help them, but they insist on calling the shots. I guess they /do/ know the situation better, but they never explain /why/ we can only do what we do."

He nods to Gen about not being anything they can do anything about. "As far as that goes, yes, but there's other things I'd like to do something about. And yeah, but that's brutally oversimplified. Someone might be working, but it's not me, and no one's told me how I can help. How are they working? What are they working on? We need more information on so many topics."

Gwen looks back to Schenider for a moment "I have given what aid to them I could as well. Though this one /man/ wanted how we made an of our creation and i told him to go take a hike." She makes a face. "I'm not stupid on that. Well we got to worry about our lives here and you do ask some good questions on that. I'm not much for hard thinking if i'm being honest."

Schneider huhs to Gwen. "Who asked you what?" he wonders, having gotten sidetracked by his own ruminations. "Though it's true, things here are busy. The world stops for noone, there's a reason that's a cliche." He shrugs about hard thinking, but says, "Those are the things I wonder about. It seems like answers are /somewhere/. We've been given hints and glimpses. But then when we look deeper, we find nothing. But it ought to be there. The Travellers seem to know things, too, but they won't say."

Hisame leans back on her heels for a moment, looking at Gween curiously. "That man huh?" She has no idea. Just felt like a funny thing to say. "Hard thinking's the fun kind of thinking. Gets it all twisty and inside out."

"I've seen some things over the years. bits and pieces that are off, but I don't know how much of it really.. clicks. You got all the theories, but none of them beat the others." She shrugs, "I just roll with the punches and hope it works out."

Gwen says "A palace lander we were trying to make some deals with." She seems a bit flustered on things with that. She shrugs at Hisame fdor a moment. "I klnow where my talants are what can I say. That is a way to deal with life and better than many do." Gwen grins widly now. "Hey still this hasn't been all bad." She spins around a little bit but says nothing else.

Schneider ehs to Hisame, and says, "Well, the thing about theories, is that you can use them to make predictions. And if the theory is right, the predictions work. So if we could predict rather than react, it'd make everyone's life smoother. That's what I think hard about." Gwen's explanation and fluster confuses Schneider even more, and the explanation does not seem to help. "What hasn't been all bad?" he asks. "The game? Well, I could be nearly graduated with my degree, so I feel like I've lost a lot of time."

Hisame shakes her head and makes a dismissive gesture, "Dunno him, but if you're making deals, maybe-... nah. I got nothing. I'm so out of sorts these days." she rocks back on her heels. Looking to Schneider instead. "The predictions work until they don't. We had some early on, I remember. Doing a few dungeons and we'd find oddities, but sometimes they didn't work and... well is it a frame perfect thing or not what we thought. You know?"

As for what she's lost, "I had just launched my own manga and was starting to gain traction. It was my first solo project too. I wasn't just someone's backup."

Schneider ooohs to Hisame's manga, "-That- sounds like something good to get back to." As far as predictions working until they don't, he says, "That's how all of science works. When your theories stop working, you revise them until they do work. It's a never-ending process." He huhs? "Frame what?"

Hisame shakes her head and says simply, "It's not just a science thing. This world eschews some scientific... things." She makes hand gestures, trying to articulate it. Then shrugs. "Some things work, some things don't. It's why I can have such a myriad of fun poisons to throw at things that annoy me." She waggles her fingers at the row of vials.

"Still. I do want to get back. I left behind a girlfriend and the comic and my work and fans and.." she cants her head. "I deal with it. Mostly." Might be why she wanders out alone so much

Schneider nods about being not just a science thing. "That's because there's magic in the world. But it works by rules, too, we just don't know them all." He nods about things left behind in the real world, sighs. "Yeah, that's why I want to get out of here also. But to do that, I think we need to figure more things out."

Hisame rubs her chin, "Magic's it's own science. That's the bastardization of the quote at least." She grins, "Maybe you need the right elements to make FAE right?" Well, she did note she wrote cyberpunk. Probably some kind of hardware nerd.

"I was fine early on just.. rolling with it. Anymore though, I feel like I'm missing too much. But it's gone so you do what you can do. If I get back I hope it's-" she scrunches her faceu p, "I don't know."

Gwen says "I got chance at what the virus took from me." She looks to Hisame for a moment frowns.

"I see, I'm sorry for that..." She seem to mean it and then pauses as she gets a chim lin. "What Uther? I'm busy at the ...." She stops stares.

"MORRI DID WHAT?!" She facepalms. "I have to get going my mother is up to something i have to deal with." She pauses for a moment.

"I'll have to get back to you later Hisame about what you were writing i'm curious and I'll give you what i know about the more advanced headsets...later."

Schneider sighs about lost time for both of us. "It's hard to catch up, but I can maybe help with that?" he offers. "I'd like to bring you up to speed, if that'll bring you back to being involved. I know -I- hate being left out of what's going on, and I'll tell you, it feels like that sometimes when the real gamers talk about game stuff I have no idea about and they won't explain it to me." He laughs and nods about magic being its own scientific field. "We try that, sometimes," he admits. "But it's hard to keep our attention on things when the latest crisis happens."

He smirks as Gwen is called off, and says, "Have fun...."

Hisame watches Gwen talk to herself. Head slowly tilting to one side. "Good luck." She offers. A wave of her hand. "I can do that yeah. I tried to help get the printing press going way back when so I could continue it here. I don't... know how well it would have sold though."

"I was always kind of goofy about that. Appreciate the offer, I WILL take you up on it. Better than just coasting through this mess right?"

As for the gamer thing, "Did a lot of gaming. Just ask me what it is. Easier than trying to wrangle people as a raid lead through not standing in the burn-y hot stuff."

Schneider ohs at getting a printing press built. "Uta mentioned that, but I don't know much. Some secret guild project." He shrugs, but nods. Being read in to events is way better than not being read in! He ohs at Hisame being a gamer, and nods about asking. "I have so many questions," he admits. "So, do you know about the local rules thing? How drops from some bosses can be repurposed into world rules?"

Hisame tilts her head at that and says, "That was a long time ago... really long time ago. I don't remember if we got anywhere." She shrugs.

Very long ago.

"Not so much those, to be fair." She shrugs, "I figured you meant the more traditional stuff. I can figure it out though."

Schneider nods about it being a long time ago. "You'd probably learn more about it from Uta or Marchioness Wake, I think. Wake was with that same guild, and Uta's in deep with all the old lore-related stuff. I still feel like an outsider." He ahhhhs at Hisame not knowing about the monster drop fragments. "Yeah, I thought that was pretty obscure, and I think that's why our investigation has gone cold."

Hisame rubs her chin again. Bobbing from foot to foot as she thinks. Spinning briefly. "I'll have to do that. Yeah. I'll do that." she gestures with a free hand. "Everyone does I think. I do at least. I just got used to it though, to be fair." She glances back, "I gave my name right?"

Schneider nods about Hisame looking up Wake and/or Uta. "Great. Uta's got a group of scholars, I'm part of it, and we try to get to the bottom of these mysteries. So far, we've got a Chaos Gate working, so we've done that. Sort of working. Working for one player. But working! That's a step forward. I hope we can do a lot more." He ohs, "And yes, you said your name."

Hisame runs her fingers through her hair at that. "Yeah? would save some walking." and you know, visiting other places. "Good good. I forget to do that sometimes." She smiles airily, "Still, if you guys have a meet up time, I can try to help out or smoething. Would be good to be people again I think." She pauses, "Meet up with people."

Schneider nods to Hisame, explains, "It's nothing formal. Just players helping to learn about the world. But meeting up is good," he agrees. "Sadly, I need to get moving. My fatigued bit just ticked, so I'm getting sleepy."

Hisame taps the side of her head, "The trick is to stay well rested. Or just utterly ignore it and operate on caffeine, spite and frustration with your group." Said like a raid lead tank. Definitely. "Sleep well though."