Due ... west?

With her back sat against one of the buildings along the main square, Jazz is seated on the ground, hands behind her head, witch's hat pulled down to offer some darkness to her eyes.

Perhaps she's asleep? Or taking a nap? Either way, it's not like it's a terribly unusual sight. Things are crowded around here and people are getting naps where they can, aren't they?"

Isn't that the truth? Shiruba was laying on a rooftop not far from the Undine, but she definately wasn't sleeping. She was staring up at the sky, trying to memorize the patterns to the stars so they could be used to navigate by when out exploring at night.

Minimaps were nice and all, but they only showed a certain amount of detail. And there wasn't always time to bring one up.

    "Hey, Ja--" A just-passing-by Mizuki waves, then realizes mid-word she might be asleep. She knows that feel! Though she tried to get onto roofs out of sight of others before sleeping. Especially with that PKer roaming around now...

    Maybe she'll just rest here for a moment. She can guard Jazz at the same time.

    As she looks around though, she spots someone else on a rooftop and leaps up there. "Hey, I remember you! I saw you at the Apocalypse. You enjoy being able to easily reach roofs too, huh?" Now she has someone to talk to while she keeps an eye on Jazz!

    Although maybe the talking might wake up Jazz. Oops.

    Wisteria is out and about, traveling and hunting for quests and dungeons, and here while taking a break she notices... "MIZUKI-CHI!" she announces loudly. "Earth, send me skyward, stone catapult." the stones of the street launch up in a pillar to launch her into the air. "Wind guide my steps, Flashstep." she bounces between a few glowing blue runes to land on on the roof next to Miz in a caerbannog fueled hug.

It's the loudness from Wisteria that does her attempts to sleep in. Jazz doesn't exactly startle awake, but her hat is properly back on her head, somehow, and she's peering around without a hint of blearyness.

"Oh, hey," she says to Mizuki, then she spots Wisteria. "'Sup," she offers.

Then she spots Shiruba, since Mizuki sees her too and that means *she* can see her. A raised hand.

A wolven ear twitchs at hearing a voice directed towards her and Shiruba rolls onto her side to look down at where it came from. "Yeah. Tends to be a little less congested up here. And the view is nice. I almost want to try howling at the moon." She's probably joking about that. Maybe?

It's hard to tell, she's taken rather well to being part wolf.

Then Mizuki gets suddenly Wister-hugged. "Well there you go Jazz. Despite being the cute one you weren't the first one to get glomped this time."

    Mizuki smiles at that comment and her tail twitches. "I hear that. Maybe you should try it, it'll make you feel better! Although, then you might feel embarassed that you acted like an animal around other people, so..." she makes a so-so handwobble gesture.

    And then Wisteria loudly jumps up and suddenly, hug!

    Mizuki's startled, but... hugs are nice, so she hugs back. "Good to see you too, Wis."

    She glances down at the ground. "Oh, Jazz... were you sleeping? Didn't mean to wake you..."

Nose wrinkling (which is of course cute), Jazz eyes Shiruba. "I am definitely *not* the cute one," she informs her, gravely.

She is totally cute.

"I fell asleep. I guess I was out too late! Good news, though, I made a functional compass!" She seems proud of herself on that count.

Shiruba laughs softly. "Maybe next time I'm out in the woods, then."

And then Jaz says something very interesting.

"Wait, what?!" That got Shiruba's attention, and she moves closer to the edge of the roof to look down at Jaz more clearly. "How? Where? I want to see it!" This could be very important to explorers doing explorer things!

    Wisteria waves at Jaz "Hey.. nah she doesn't like hugs and Mizuki-chi does." she says "I respect bounderies." she nods sagely, her long ears flopping with the motion. "I'm Wisteria nice to meet you." seh says to Shiruba with a wide smile... that shows off far too many jagged razor sharklike teeth for any bunny mouth to contain.

"Yeah! I magnetized a sewing needle and popped it through a cork like they teach you in wilderness schools and put it in a bowl of water. Thing is, every time it pointed, and it always points, it pointed west."

"Not north," says Jazz up to Shiruba. "The 'polar north' as we understand it doesn't exist. It's west. But that it *exists at all* is even weirder."

    A functional compass? "Oh, nice! How hard was it to make, were there any weirdnesses in game physics?" Mizuki doesn't immediately jump down to see though. That would mean abandoning the hug ._. Which Wisteria calls her out on, and she blushes, although where would that even show, the inside of her ears?

    She hugs Wis a little tighter, then is surprised by Jazz's further news.

    "West? You're right, that is... weird. And interesting! You'll have to take a boat to somewhere far away and triangulate where it's pointing to!"

"That IS weird." Shiruba considers for a moment. "Though when you think about it, from a game program point, it would make sense to have the point 'off the map'."

She sits up, letting her legs hang over the edge of the roof as she looks up at the sky again. "But that doesn't explain why it would be to the west instead of we percieve as north...."

     Wisteria tips her head "I... read a book once." she says with a giggle "And no I don't mean I just read once... like just one book I read..." defensive jock is defensive. "Where they had to find the west pole." she says with a giggle "That's so neat."

"I mean, why even have a magnetic field at all to have functional compasses? We had a minimap until things," Jazz waves her hands in the in a nebulous way, "changed. And why point west? I mean, I can't tell you how *far* west, but west all the same. And it was just an iron needle, a bit of copper, and a bit of electricity to make it all go." Jazz holds her hand up and snaps her fingers, generating a spark of electricity when she does. "Bonus points for being all wizardly, I guess."

    Wist smiles at Jaz. "Hey I've got cartography as a skill... it'd be pretty terrible not to have SOMETHING I could use to reference my different maps. I'd get them all messed up."

    "Oh, I think I read a book like that too! Shoot, what was it..." Mizuki tilts her head and tries to think, but then Jazz brings her out of that reverie. "You made it a MAGI-TECH compass?! You /absolutely/ get bonus points for that!"

"Yeah. I was trying to memorize some of the star positions to navigate by... but now I'm wondering if they're actual stars or just specks decorating a distant background. Every answer in this world just creates more questions..." She shakes her head. "But even if this is weird it is also useful to us. West or not, it's an establish direction, and that we can navigate by."

"Same here, Wisteria. I've always been more the exploring type. And the name's Shiruba." The wolfgirl grabs her bow and quiver from next to where she had been laying and then slides off the edge of the roof to the street below. "I can do water, and electric, and I have some metal arrowheads. I might have to try that out for myself."

    Wist finaly lets Mizuki go. "Yah, can use some of the needles I keep for locks and zap... it's good to know I can use that to explore more too. Find new dungeons. Find map spots I'm not suppose to go into." she nods happily. She seems much more up beat than when she last saw Miz. Of course she's had a few quests and dungeons since then and is feeling back on the right track.

"Well, I don't know about magitech but that's waht I did," says Jazz to Mizuki, "I needed to magnetize the needle *somehow* since I didn't have a magnet or anything." She glances towards Shiruba, then produces a rolled up parchment. "I've been making star charts," she offers, "but they're pretty crude and I don't have an astrolabe or anything, not like one'd exist in game. I tried to find some of the Star Charts that you'd *think* the sailolrs have but I couldn't get them to tell me anything about it . was hoping there'd be, you know, SOME pre-black-wave map so I can see what changed, if anything. I mean, they're just beads of light in the sky since it's just a ... sort of celestial modelling? But it'd be good to know more for navigating."

    Mizuki releases Wis in turn. "This is... pretty big. Not just discovering compasses point west, but... that basic physics principles interact that way here. You made an /electromagnet/, and I didn't even know magnetism was simulated here! We need to find out what ELSE works in here..."

    Mizuki frowns. "The sailors wouldn't talk to you?" She rezzes some items, flashing the merchants' seals and bags of cash from recent misadventures. "Maybe some of these will loosen their tongues, huh?"

"That or they weren't programmed with that sort of information," Shiruba adds with a shrug. "You might have to find an actual ship navigator or other Lander more specialized to the role."

She can't help but snicker a bit at Wisteria, both the ethusiasm and what she's saying. "And break down the mechanics of a high rank monster you probably weren't suppose to face yet!"

    "Maybe they just use the skill... in the system? So they don't need to KNOW how it works. They just access the menu and the skill?" she asks "And shouldn't the stars be like.. fixed? Wouldn't that be easier to program than some random garbage that you couldn't use to figure out direction?" Wisteria doesn't seem at all ashamed of that assement. "And if I do break a monster's mechanics or just learn how they work, it's another bit of trying to find the way home." she nods happily

"Give it a whirl, Mizuki, and then bring me any charts you get," says Jazz, nodding in agreement with Shiruba, "Or you! Either of you. I tried, didn't have any luck, so maybe one of you can do it? Then I can compare my charts and their charts and figure out if anything changed with the wave." She shrugs towards Wisteria, "I mean, you'd /think/ so. They're painted on there by digital artists after all as part of creating a simulated reality but... eh."

    Mizuki packs the items back into her inventory and salutes! "Sure thing!" Then hmms. "The port's a long way away though. I wish there were a faster way to get there... Any of you want to come with me?"

Shiruba shrugs, partially in getting her bow slung across her back. "You would think that would be easier... But then we wouldn't have compasses pointing westard either, if they did things 'easy'." Or sensible for that matter. Though this does make things more interesting. "It's still best to not travel alone, yeah."

    The albino bunbun nods her head "Yah not totally safe, some PKs out there, and well level reset means monsters can really take old players by surprise." she was a lowbie anyway only ever doing idle dungeoning with her friend before the Black Wave. "I'm actually jsut traveling to try and find msyself some copies of the standard quests. To see how they're different, and try to find any glitches in them."

    "Glitches in quests?" Mizuki looks back to Wisteria. "I haven't heard of /glitches/, exactly, but I did hear that one time the rats quest somehow formed around a /player/, guiding the other players to them. The people on that quest PK'd them because they thought they were a boss. But it's really strange that a quest would form around another player like that, right?"

Shiruba yeeeahs. "That's not normal as far as I know of." She thinks for a moment. "Even if a quest is triggered by something a player held it's typically announced so others know to join in."

"Haven't seen anything glitchy like that, at least not in an exploitable way. Then again, I wouldn't really know what I'm suppsoed to be looking for unless it made itself really obvious." Jazz shrugs her shoulders, continuing, but Mizuki's story about the PK just gets her to *stare* at them. "Seriously? Yeesh." She puts a hand to the brim of her heat and then straightens up, aiming to get herself on the move towards the port. "I don't know the way ther, so someone who does is gonna need to lead the way," she adds, looking at the cat-girl.

    Wist chuckles "I guess nothing stopping me from poking at the rat and spider and goblin quests pretty much anywhere. Just want to see if they change or get weird any places, or like if you do weird stuff in them." she shrugs "I duno, you always hear about exploits in games and the only way to find them is going to be to poke everywhere."

    Mizuki blinks. "It's east. We basically just walk away from the needle, right? Also there's a path."

    "You wanna leave right this second? Well... I guess we don't have anything better to do." She hops down from the roof and starts walking towards the way out of town.

    "I wonder if there's something we can do to reinvent Fast Travel..."

"Or train mounts," Shiruba chimes in. "I still can't shake the feeling that the Fast Travel being broken is an attempt at keeping us stuck in certain areas for as long as possible."

    Mizuki groans. "Mounts? But we'll have to feed them and care for them and stuff, hope they don't wander off while we're in dungeons, or get themselves killed... Unless we can invent pokeballs or something..."

    Wisteria laughs "There's professions for handling monsters and beasts right? So I guess there is no reason for us not to be able to get mounts."

Shiruba cants her head back with a groan as Mizuki points that out. "I didn't think of that. They've have to be really well trained... I think Summoners and Druids are the only ones that can just conjure creatures up like that, Mizuki. And I don't really want to listen to a giant Peco kaw its name over and over."

Jazuhanzu makes a face.

"Yeah, I wanna leave right now. I'm not doing anything else, so why don't we go? What else am I gonna do, sleep?" She shrugs her shoulders and then gestures vaguely at Mizuki, "Lead the way, 'Mizuki-Chi'," she says, half-mocking in her tone as she adopts Wisteria's pet name for the cat.

    "Exactly! Actually having your own peco-peco around constantly would have it's inconveniences. Maybe someone could invent ride-sharing services..." Mizuki shoots back.

    She starts walking towards the edge of town. "You're gonna have to sleep eventually. We'll have to find places to camp, you know it's a 20-or-30 hour walk, right? Any provisions you wanna stock up on on the way out?"

    Wisteria grins and stretches "I'd love my own riding bird. Or like maybe I can get a giant BunBun!" She says happily. "I can see it, in big armor and with it's horn all polished.. I'd be like a Samurai on a unicorn!" bunny corn... death bunbun in armor ona giant armored bun bun... the world will never live the day down.

    Mizuki shrugs at Wisteria. "It worked in Star Ocean..."
THIRTEEN WORDS, SCENE LOGGER

Shiruba snorts. "You riding a giant BunBun? That would be like me taming a Worg or something." Then she stops, looking thoughtful. "Which actually wouldn't be that bad..."

    "Okay," Mizuki comments, "Having some kind of giant battle cat would be pretty cool at times! But what do I do with it when I'm in the inn or a cave or something?"

"Ugh," is all Jazz says. "Ugh." Wisteria's words just make her roll her eyes a little. Kids today!

    Wisteria grins, showing all those jagged razor teeth. "See See, and we get Mizuki-chi a big fire tiger to ride. And Jaz uhmm.... a froggy?"

Shiruba replies to Mizuki in a tone so deadpan serious it's obviously a joke. "Catnip."

    Mizuki chuckles a bit. "Yeah, but if I'm not watching it it'd be vulnerable to PKers or mount rustling or something. Unless I really can just put it in my inventory."

    "Well lets get walking, it's a long way." she says brightly "And maybe we'll come across like some wargs or tigers or froggies or bunbuns to scout as possible mount options!" she seems happy to be DOING things it doesn't really seem to matter what it is.

Shiruba likewise would rather be doing something more than nothing, even if it's a menial trip back to the other town with a few friends. "Just hopefully no surprise swarms of rats this time, eh Jaz?"

    "At night? I'm more worried about gnolls..." Mizuki comments. "Although... I feel like this group could handle 'em."

    The albino bunny grins brightly. "Gnolls? Yes please! Or goblins, maybe a rampaging beast from the woods!" she seems bouncy and excited to get ambushed.

"Nani?" Shiruba blinks. "Are there goblins in the starting region? I haven't come across any of those yet."

    "There's a quest up by the hunters guild. But it's over in the Free League area... I'm just being wishful." Wisteria shrugs and sighs. "But gnolls are for sure around.. and maybe rampaging monster..." she gives the big red bunny eyes like she's just begging the world to give her an ambush.

    "I haven't run into any goblins..." Mizuki answers. She looks at those big red eyes. "...Careful. Don't get too eager and run ahead on your own or anything..."

"Me either," says Jazz, thoughtfully. "Ah, well. Let's go. DEfinitely dealt with Hagar the GNoll once, though. That was... not fun," she addds.

Does she EVER have fun?!

"Gnolls we can handle," Shiruba agrees. "Just be ready for the weird ones, like the zombie version. -That- was not a pleasant encounter at all."

    "He almost killed me back when we didn't know we could still respawn." Mizuki shivers and stops for a moment. Then starts moving again. "I got to kick his ass at a later time, though."

    Wisteria sighs "I'm not going to just RUN off... I have a party. That means bigger spawns, better loot drops and more chances something weird will happen."