Interesting Ingredients

A thin figure in a frilly black dress steps into the Plant Hwyaden workshop area - Seliana. Her menu created clothing has seen better days, the durability clearly starting to decay as the edges of the dress are starting to fray and there is a small rip in her veil. Pausing after stepping in she calls out in a flat monotone voice. "Whis? Att?"

After a brief look around with dull red eyes she gathers the skirt of her dress in her hands as she maneuvers around supplies and projects over to where she expects Att Syne will most likely be continuing to work on his statue - and where Att Syne was there was a good change she would find Whiskey Sour.

Seliana has been travelling around, seeking her own answers. She seems to be recovering from her early days, but still maintains a stony impassive expression. Her recklessness has seen her get into trouble but also has opened up some less conservative options for exploring this new world. She was limited though, and she needed assistance.

The resource yard has been improved, slowly. From a weird junk lean-to, to some vague walls, to a small brick firing kiln/forge setup that doubles as a cauldron heating element for Whis's projects. The walls have been reinforced with cobbled marble and concrete-like paste from the project's leavings, allowing a small loft area to form near the forge.

There are burger bags and fry-troughs in a wooden barrel that has seen better days -- a trash recepticle of some sort.

The cauldron is on, but Whis is not around.

When Seliana calls her voice, however, she tumbles from the loft, hanging by the backs of her legs while her arms dangle. Her hood, and shawl, immediately flip and cover her face.

"Huh-wha? Oh! Seliana."

A hand 'raises' (lowers?) to her face to lower (raise?) her face coverings, revealing a sleepily curious expression. "Can I help you with something?"

Att Syne is in fact in the vicinity. This is inevitable.

The statue in the yard is definitely starting to take shape. A feminine figure standing atop a pedestal-like platform is clearly visible, though the fine detail and the clearly necessary esoteric components he's been assembling aren't totally involved yet. Pieces of an Elemental Machine are stuck here and there, gleaming colorfully in what light is set out.

Att is standing with clear stoicism, arms folded and shoulders squared, staring at the statue again. He's unmoving... and also snoring a little. He may have fallen asleep standing up.

Tumbling and talking snaps him out of his sleepy reverie. His head jerks upwards, and he quick-draws a cutting tool, making a swift gouge in the stone. A tiny chip flies off, bouncing onto a tarp that has been collecting his craft-leavings. He blinks a few times, squints at it, and then nods decisively.

"Muh?" Att looks over his shoulder, blinking again.

Slowly tilting her head up Seliana's eyes settle on the dangling Whis, she blinks a few times with her static expression as she takes in her state. "Wha- What are you doing up there?" she drones in a flat voice. Then glancing over to Att as he comments she seems to finally process the question that Whis posed to her.

Again starring up at the girl as she hangs. "Oh- I was looking at some potions and there were some vision potions that gave me an idea, but I don't really know anything about potions or plants." She pulls out a potion vial with a thick black viscous liquid, and after a moments hesitation holds it up above her head towards Whis.

Then with arm outstretched she continues. "There are things hidden all around us. I've been watching and can appraise information on people and objects. But there is more there I can't see. Magic. Information." Seliana turns to look over at Att. "Status effects." Then looking back up. "Some monsters are invisible. Some Landers turn into ghosts. What else is there?"

Pulling out a second vial of black liquid in her other hand she inspects it closely. "Cyrus made these. He said it cures blindness and also improves vision somewhat. So I wonder if we could make other potions to see different things?" She returns the second vial to her inventory. "I've found some other ingredients, but I don't know what they are."

There is a shuffling as Proteus arrives, perhaps with a now familiar bundle in her hands. Again, the Imp seems to be on a food run for the crafter-types, immediately moving to open the bundle and remove a greasy bag and a couple Duck Bentos from the bundle and stacks them on the Att Food Deposit Area. The statue gets a nod, and she smirks slightly under the hood at the sight of Att having been snoozing standing up. "You're making good progress, Att. Hopefully you'll be all set soon."

Then she turns and approaches Whis, removing a large box, "Fries with cheese and relish, like you asked for." Proteus keeps her tone even, not showing any opinion on the condiment combination. With those delivered, the Imp turns towards Deliana and blinks, tilting her head.

"You want to see more things, hmm? That's interesting. Being able to percieve the information could help with learning about our new world and maybe finding ways to work with it that others might not." She taps her chin. "Whis would be the expert on this compared to me, but I'm interested to hear the opinions present."

Whis is interrogated of why she's in the loft. There is a simple explanation for this:

"Because it's a loft."

Whis pour herself off the loft, falling the short distance onto a pile of hopefully-soft things.

It's certainly a *dusty* pile of things.

She sort of tuble-drops from that pile onto the ground, butt-down on the ground of the working area.

"Sure, I can take a look. I've ran into a wall on the flavor profile of my health drink concentrate, so I need to get new ingredients before I try to improve the balance." The alchemist explains, working herself up to her feet and dusting herself off.

She doesn't get it all. And is immediately REWARDED with cheesy relish fries. "Ahhh, the local relish is so good. It takes pickling well and the cheese is too rich to appreciate otherwise. It's very European." She says that like a bad thing.

"Shame about no mayonaise. Or sriracha. Actually, I could probably mix up some sriracha. It's more an additive than a food, don't you think?"

"I could drink the stuff." She begins eating goopy fries like a fiend. "So you want to see the invisible? I think there's an Acolyte spell for revealing the Undead. Maybe that's what you're looking for? But as an applied substance..."

The small vial is considered. "Proteus, do you know anything about consumables?"

"A veritable buffet of physics that are simply not easily available to us for examination." says the voice of Count V to Seliana, as he once more emerges dramatically from the shadows. More than likely, he just walked through the door just now, and decided to have fun with it. He's not really the eavesdropping type, but he is certainly the playing-games-with-shadows type. He rolls his neck back and forth to a series of satisfying pops, yawning lightly as he observes Whis plunging down from above into a Pile.

He nudges Whis lightly with the wings of his staff, and continues, "I think you could probably make perception enhancers using ingredients from animals known for perceptions different from humans. I wouldn't use player character races for this, but I imagine that Landers have special properties that we Adventurers were not endowed with for balance reasons. Monster Races are probably of special interest in that regard."

"How's the fey mood treating you?" V directs at Att.

Familiar greasy scents arrive. Att turns towards it, shuffling towards the Deposit Area. He's moved a seat over there, apparently scavenged from the manor-esque guildhall. It looks like a moldering high-backed reading chair. He drops into it, grabbing a burger, glowering balefully at the statue. "Yeah... it's getting there. Now it starts to get hard."

N o m f .

"Mmmhmbm yh zhh--" Chew, chew, swallow. "Maybe you should look for rabbit-adjacent monsters for components. The carrots-augment-eyesight myth has been around for so long it's sort of just a thing in games now." Att looks up at V, saluting with the burger. "Decently, Your Highness. It's sort of a comfy space to drift off into. That's kind of the danger though, too, huh..."

"He has been doing more staring at it than before. Earlier, there was a steady rhythm of blows, but now it's distracting with its irregularity. Must be difficult, finding each one anew, every time." Whis observes, around a froy.

Monch monch monch. "I think he has to do them in order, and the 'next right move' started moving around a lot."

Seliana turns to face Proteus, her perpetual slight frown remaining unchanged. "Hi Proteus. I overheard some adventurers mentioning that there was the ruins of an old cit-"

Seliana turns as Count V appears, tilting her head up to gaze at his face "Is anything here really physics? Regardless the sentiment is the problem. There is so much more going on than can be seen. So far.."

A poof a dust and Seliana turns to watch mutely as Whis begins a very gloppy feast as she snatches the fries with various toppings from Proteus. As she watches the consumption she pulls a candy from her inventory, unwraps it, and unceremoniously plops it in her mouth to suck on. She scrunches the wrapper and tosses it towards the wooden barrel with trash, only to have it flutter down only half way there. After staring at it a few seconds she moves over to go pick it up.

Replying to Whis over her shoulder. "Spiritsh and undeadth are differen clashess of monshter. I think it ish more common to have invishible shpiritsh than undead, or do you mean detecth them or see them at dishtance?" Then picking up the wrapper she walks over to carefully place it in the disposal. She looks to Whis as she returns. "I would try either, but shee shpirits or life energy type to tell monshter type could be intereshting." After trying to talk around the candy she starts to actively chew on it to break it up.

Looking to Att. "That is an interesting idea. I've collected a few things, but never looked for rabbits." Turn to Whis she considers then speaks. "I'm willing to try things out and see what happens. We won't know for sure unless we do."

"You could always find some analogue. There's got to be reasonably similar peppers somewhere in this world." The Imp replies with a smirk. "I don't know how condiments are really classified. Maybe they're crafting materials?" But the question comes, and Proteus nods. "I know about most of the consumables that existed before the Black Wave. Most of them were not terribly remarkable. However, something changed." She pauses. "... Cactus Juice." She says cryptically, as if it would explain everything about her train of thought.

Count V arrives on time, and Proteus nods to the Spriggan. "A salient point." She says to the Count. "And I agree with your plan. The world seems to adhere to rough approximations of affinity like that. If you want more of something, get it from something that is known for being that thing."

There is a glance over at Att as he comments about the dangers inherent in his mood. "It's important to you, but don't let this thing take over everything, you know? We have a lot left to do and I don't think you going full time sculptor is going to get it done." And then over to Whiskey. "Do you think this is some kind of minigame? That would be amusing, honestly." She chuckles. "A statue as a puzzle, maybe. That's more my speed."

She looks back to Seliana and tilts her head. "Ruins of an old city?" She asks, simply waiting for more information about it.

"If you are reasonably comfortably in your mania, that is the best we can hope for." V says to Att, simply.

He glances towards Whiskey, "You think there's an RNG element to what is the next required action? That is, that it does not remain the same while you try to work it out? That sounds... hmm. Troublesome."

Seliana's question gets a thoughtful chin-rub out of him. It only takes him a moment to decide, "Yyyyy...es. I think so. Insofar as physics can be called physics in our own world. Regardless of whether it is constructed or not, physics is physics. It's just how we describe the rules of the world we exist in. So the physics here may not be common to our world, but they're still physics."

To Proteus, he says, "I think that enchanting works the same way, but I keep committing effort to other things rather than exploring it in-depth myself. I suppose somebody has figured that out a little more, by now..."

"Life is a minigame, if you *really* think about it." Is Whiskey's 'retort' to the idea that it's a minigame. "I imagine it more like he's... Setting up a puzzle, but he's got to really look at the manual a lot? It's his thing, I'm just guessing."

She snarfles the fries finishingly by lifting the tray more vertically and finishing it off in one fell swoop - largely before the cheese had fully cooled into a cold sludge. A feat of speed and agility if there has ever been one.

"Thanks for doing another food run, Proteus. As for sight beyond sight... Those are all good ideas! Especially the Cactus Juice. So, Seliana, I have to ask."

Whis moves to the trashbarrel, dropping her fry tray in and leaning against the top. "Do you want it to be... like, eyedrops? Or can it be--" She signs with thumb and pinky a quaffing motion. "I can probably do either, but eyedrops are terrible to use in a fight. It's why I recommend oils and potions over smearables."

She sniffs a few times and blecks, stopping sitting on the trashcan to slouch by her cauldron. "I want to try this cactus sauce myself, to see if it's worth selling."

"Worth improving..."

When Proteus inquires about the city Seliana blinks over at her. "Oh. Right. I heard some adventurers say they found the remnants of an old city in the Ninetails area, but that is was so old it probably had nothing useful left. It was in a crowd and I lost them before I could ask more. That is the kind of thing you're interested in, right?"

Having been standing for some time Seliana starts to look around at the piles of supplies. With most of them either is dusty piles or looking to be unstable she finally just sits down where she is, sticking her legs out straight and leaning back while propping herself up with her arms as she looks up at the others.

While gazing up at Count V she says, "But it is possible that the physics here are mutable, right? Still I guess we can only base things off our experience. An experience we know has an insufficient scope of senses to clearly picture what is truly happening. But I guess that's what we are trying to solve."

Panning her head over she stares at Whis, "Depends on the duration of effect. If it is minutes then something quick. If it is hours then I don't think it matters." Her gaze moves over and up while she is silent before focusing again on Whis. "Potions seem like a good place to at least start, right?"

Sitting up a little straighter she starts to pull out some items from her inventory. Some chitin plates, some fur, a container with red powder, some beast claws. As she pulls them out she lines them up on the floor beside her towards the direction of Whis. "This is everything I have. Not much. I could get more things too, we don't have to make it right now." She comments in monotone.

"No, no... I'm starting to get an idea. Cactus Juice... Yeah..."

Whis fishes a large storage tank of water out from the work area and starts pouring it into her cauldron.

"I think I can punch this ticket. Seeing ghosts. Yeah, yeah. Like a spell, but not. I can smell it."

"Just got to find the ingredients."

Whis dives in to a pile of bushels and burrows in, bare feet the only part waggling around outside of the otherwise market-loads of dried products.

Att, having sat perfectly still for the past far-too-long-for-conversation, says, "-uh, no, yeah, I -- it's just -- tiring. Kinda like... when you stand up and forget what you got up for, so you say it to yourself out loud, and then hope you-in-ten-seconds remembers the message from you-ten-seconds-ago."

Another pause. This one is more reasonable.

"Um, I mean, it's like that for the last few things instead of... I dunno. I think there's too many debuffs floating around to make it clear. But when I just kinda go with it instead of analyzing it, it feels like a block puzzle looks. A, um," he makes a hand gesture, one with hand and one with half-eaten burger, "sliding, assembling, block puzzle."

"Except you're also missing pieces and have to bring your own," he adds, another moment later. "Which is I guess what the rare mats are for."

"Don't smell your ingredients, waft them," Att suddenly asides to Whis.

Proteus is about to comment on physics, but Count V answers first. Proteus nods to Count V. "Even if someone's figured out more, there's nothing saying you won't find a better way or one that hasn't been explored. You're known for being pretty thorough, after all."

"Hmph." Proteus replies to Whiskey's retort. "I guess you're right, if you want to see it that way. I was thinking of something a little more obviously gameified. But who knows how Att sees things?" There is a sudden pause. "You know, I wonder if some people get altered UI elements. Some kind of AR intrusion..." She hums. "Probably not, actually. I don't think at this point they would diverge from the immersiveness further in that way." A pause. "Besides, no one likes Quick Time Event prompts." Att does however supply an analogue. "Block puzzles. Hah."

The Imp simply stands there talking while Whis and Att snarf away. "Someone needs to keep you people fed." Proteus comments. "If you didn't eat that much you'd probably live on mushrooms of dubious provenance. That said..." She ponders. "I did acquire some odd spice-like material from the giant sandworm that appeared recently. Maybe if that was mixed with the cactus juice it might become some kind of powerful psychoactive. Or it might just kill you."

Seliana then adds more information. Proteus turns to her, purple eyes locked on the woman as her smile widens. "Really... And this is a new one? I wonder if it existed before the Black Wave, or this was retroactively added..." She hums. "You're right. I am very interested in this. I would much like to explore this city with you."

Leaning back once again Seliana uses her arms to keep herself propped at a slant. Then as Whis dives into the supplies she tilts her head up until she is looking backwards, her hair pooling on the ground below her as she watches Whis's feet wobble in the air.

While still watching Whis she comments. "Att definitely has debuffs almost all the time from when I was watching. Tiredness. Exhaustion. Hunger sometimes. All the normal things. I couldn't see any special unusual debuffs even when I looked really close." Probably a little too close, she was getting in Att's way enough that it was suggested she look into other things for a bit.

Looking forward once again Seliana stares at Proteus. "That's all I heard about it, but I end up back in Dun Loireag every time I die so I will see if I can get some more info when I'm there next." After some silence she adds. "I bet they have some records in whatever they have for a library. It was a city afterall. But maybe not too with the crazy wars the game wrote into its lore. Either way I bet we can find out something more about it."

"Whis, the minigame comment-- it is far too real." Count V gripes, looking a little aggravated. It's a fake, exaggerated sort of aggravated. But it's certainly playing directly into what Whiskey suspects about him. After a moment, he adds, "For fights is one thing, but for studies is another. I'd make eyedrops for testing purposes. Lets you limit the dosage and keep things as safe as putting strange things in your eyes can be."

To Seliana, he replies, "It's conceivable, but that's true of the universe we occupy as well. If we presume that physics are decently-simulated, physics drift would have to be fairly deliberate... or the result of a bug. As-is, we're not certain that physics are completely constant. That is, it could be variable based on where in the universe one is. There idea of constants that haven't always been exactly as-is, for instance. Whether that concept is worth considering here..."

He shrugs, "I don't know. I think that I would assume things are more mutable though, since a man-created simulation will have man-comprehensible construction in a way that a simulated one-step-below-the-top reality might not."

On the matter of 'finding ways', Count V shrugs and nods, "That is true. I may find a better way to what is conventionally considered best-practices. That happens all the time. I'm not so sure I'll be the one to do it so soon, though... and even my strategies sometimes got refined into something new. That's the way of things."

"Well, it's all a little obviously game-ified, but everything's a little bit like a game. Rather, anything can be normal. Imagine that you were an amnesiac, and woke up here. You had to learn everything again, like a baby. This would just be normal. Everything would be normal. If we had generations of people like us living here, only knowing this, they'd eventually learn things about the world, as a world."

Whis pops her head up like a periscope from the bales, finally crawling out. Both fists are filled with herbs and sticks, and she raises them as she slides down the pile, landing at the bottom and moving to the cauldron. "Seeing into different planes... The plane of the dead... Maybe an awakened eye?"

Whis looks positively wicked as she starts stirring herbs and scraping bits of branches. "Don't worry, it'll be easier than eyedrops. Eyedrops mean things going in your eyes - that's bad. Eyes are very hard to fix. Probably. Anyway, you never test on your own sensitive stuff anyway, that's basic."

"I am very real. If you think about it, life's just a tutorial for haunting."

"We should measure more things," Att asides, only half his mouth full of food this time (progress!). "Recreate a standard. Discover if there is a standard, I guess, then establish one if there isn't. 'Specially if we're gonna talk physics and --" Gulp. "-- stuff like that." He wipes his face, crumples up the wrapper, and, with a blind and apparently very practiced toss, lobs the trash into their presently-identified trash bin. "Kind of a project on its own to convince people to adopt it though."

He stands back up, stretching his arms above his head. "I'll take the greenish one this time," he asides to Whis, misidentifying her ominous deed this time. He shuffles towards the statue thoughtfully. "Do you think you could haunt people while you're dead, here? Maybe ghost powers are an avenue too."

"Maybe you should... try dying less?" Proteus says to Seliana, shifting with a clear uncomfortable fidget. "It's not something you should be doing casually, you know?" But she doesn't press the issue further.

Instead, she focuses on Count V. "There have to be errors. Nothing can be perfect. Something out there has to not mesh. There is going to be a seam somewhere, somehow, that I..." She pauses, and then corrects herself, "... /we/ can find, and then we can begin peeling back the skin to see what's really underneath."

She suddenly starts as something Whis says in the background registers. "What... A tutorial for haunting?" She arches a brow at Whis inquisitively.

"Sure. Like ghosts. Especially if Landers become ghosts. It's a tutorial for haunting. Being in this world, forever." Whis reasons, smoke from the cauldron rising around her chin and curling about in her hood.

Seliana has entrusted this job to her! She stirs the pot with a marble ladle. "Well, I'll cook up something and it'll either awaken your third eye or force it open. As a guild member, I'll do it as a special service."

She looks up and winks. "Maybe I want to try some too."

"I suppose." Count V cedes to Whiskey, pouting in a manner that is -- again -- very deliberately exaggerated. On the considerably more serious subject of a realm-of-the-dead, he says, "Divination is probably necessary for such a thing to be perceived, if it is perceptible at all. I wouldn't doubt such a thing exists-- it's a very normal concept both among humans, and within the context of this game world in general. Did the old Elder Tale ever reference anything like that...?"

He nods towards Att, "It probably wouldn't be that hard to successfully encourage standards implementation so long as the standard is useful enough. There will always be competing ideas, of course, but subsequent ideas tend to come about because of inadequacies in the early ideas, you know? I expect that if we looked close enough, we'd find a system of competing standards among the Landers."

His attention then turns to Proteus, "The seams might well be the 'obvious' ones. The existence of UI elements, for instance. Things we take for granted as gamers, but allow simplification of the simulation in some ways. Or else..."

Count V's lips curl into a thin smile, "Or else those elements that we might call 'seams', could instead be 'training wheels'."

"I think Elder Tale mostly used celestial bodies as the 'other' places referenced in lore, but who knows how much is true or false," Att half-sighs, half-yawns. "At one point they were planning a single player expansion with moon rabbits as the primary antagonist force. True story."

He starts messing with the statue. Those weird tools that seem to glow in the moonlight do the job excellently when it comes to this sort of work. They're what caused all of this trouble for him in the first place, so it's good they're not also just a waste of inventory space. "Having an alternate U.I. would indicate something had changed in regards to you, right? And it isn't that unreasonable, either. Like how you need certain skills to get extra Inspect info from classes of objects. Maybe you just need to get so good at appraisal you can use it to, I dunno, determine the value of a monster's life and --" He snaps his fingers. "-- /reduce it to zero/."

"I think I read a light novel about that once."

"I'll supppppp-ose you into a shallow grave, V." Whis deadpans, though her expression brightens. She ceases, largely, being a cowl-boxing witch and leans back, laying her spoon on the rack. "This'll be bubbling for a while, so..."

Att mentions light novels, and Whis can't help but snort with laughter. "Those kinds of light novels are the worst. Those kinds of power fantasies... You shouldn't want that kind of power. The only people that want that kind of power 'to exist' also want it all for themselves. Those kinds of cheat powers... It's better if nobody has them."

"That'd be a boring world."

Looking up at Proteus from her place on the floor she replies. "If we want to understand then we need to experience things." With a glance to Whis she continues. "We may well already be ghosts haunting. Either way I think we need to reframe our outlook. Dying here is more like getting a speeding ticket, an annoyance and deterrent, but not a threat."

When Att mentions that there may be ghost powers while dead she focuses on him. "That.. I wonder.. The Landers that become ghosts are considered monsters that need to be destroyed, it is something that only happens rarely and they think it is when someone dies under very stressful situations."

When Count V mentions divination she comments, "I've been trying to use divination to see some kind of spirit realm for awhile. No luck yet. I figure the Landers that don't become ghost monsters must go somewhere, and if we don't actually turn into the tombstones then adventurers probably go somewhere when they die too."

Rising from her place on the ground Seliana carefully pats her slightly frayed dress and then walks over to look into the cauldron. "That sounds really good, Whis." She inspects the contents of the cauldron but isn't able to determine anything. When Whis mentions that it is free of charge Seliana looks up at her with her ashen red eyes. "Thank you, Whis. I will let you know the results, and if you ever need something appraised just let me know." She says flatly.

"Nah, you're right," Att agrees with Whiskey. There's a light tap-tap-tap of metal against stone. Minute adjustments here and there. It's starting to look more like a person and less like a humanoid lump. "It's sort of a guilty pleasure, though. I definitely don't go in for that brand of escapism. Cheating just robs your accomplishments of value, in my eyes." He wipes a sleeve across his forehead. "What's even the point, then?"

A glance at the ever-deadpan Seliana. "Death has consequences, even if it seems small. I wouldn't treat it so casually. But I guess so long as someone does... we might as well use it for --" He points at the sky. "-- /dark science/."

There is no ensuing thunderclap. Att looks vaguely disappointed at the world they inhabit.

Whis mumbles something and snaps her fingers.

A sad raincloud spits the most petulant bolt of lightning and sarcastic kraka-thoom over him, before poufing out of existance.

Att immediately looks less disappointed at the world as a whole.

Whis understands the simple needs of the dramatic Adventurer very well.