Food And Lazing In Plant Vegas

"...anyway, so I was thinking," Att is saying, whilst he paces, "about the ghost thing."

The yard workspace is marginally less of a disaster area today, at least in the vicinity of Att Syne's sculpture. It's really coming along, now: the figure carved in stone is a woman taking a step forward, her hand reaching forward and clutching something that he has not yet added. She has a fierce countenance. It's pretty good! He needs to do a little fine detail work, still, but the majority of it has really come along. Right now, he's in front of the moldering chair he's been crashing out in (insofar as he's been doing that at all), pacing back and forth with a sack of leftover candy in one hand. Occasionally he pops one into his mouth, followed by decisive crunching and cronching.

"So being dead makes you a frustratingly comatose gravestone for a day or something. And the gravestone is apparently a problem for monsters, right? So clearly it can be interacted with, or used in a way that isn't interactive. So maybe we need to see if we can create a way to interact with the dead person. If you can communicate, you can transfer data. If you can transfer data, you can issue commands." Step, turn.

"So what I'm thinking is:" Att stops, framing something in the air with his hands. "'Ghost Golem.' Right? Right? If you can get a dead person to control a prepared vessel like a monster that obeys commands like a, a summoned pet, then you can basically play your own personal RTS where the only consequence for failure is your figurative fingers getting hurt. You get someone sneaky to go into a place someone has died doing something risky, then you hook 'em up to the summoned objects, and you just --" Clap! "-- let 'er rip!"

Crunch. Cronch. Crunch.

Whis has removed the cauldron from the work station to just lay atop the cold workbench, arms clasped on her belly. She considers the existential question deeply, her bare feet waggling off the edge of the bench in slow patterns.

"But we're already ghost golems, Att. We're a ghost and a skeleton cooperating to trick some meat suit to work for our spooky ends."

She's delirious, as usual.

"Sure, it would be nice if we could." Seliana flatly responds to Att's contemplating as she sits directly on the floor with her legs outstretched once again. Her frilly dress has a few tears in it now and her granite gray hair has a couple strands of stark white. She leans up against some supplies, using them as a back rest. "The problem is we don't know if an Adventurer actually becomes the gravestone - not even having a ghost. Simply data stuffed into the static object. Or if their data is moved and it is a placeholder to interact with."

As she watches Att eat she also pulls out a candy from her inventory, slowly unfolding the wrapper. "We need to confirm where we go and in what state when we die. That will open the doors to these other possibilities." She pops the candy into her mouth and starts to chop on it as she scrunches up the wrapper and looks around for the trash. Then realizing it is a way away she just puts the wrapper back in her inventory.

"I would not be surprised if there is a resurrection skill which can bring back a player at their tombstone. There was a skill like that before, wasn't there? Anyway, that does mean it is possible to interact in some way with the tombstones."

Turning to look over at Whis she responds. "We might be actual ghosts by standards outside the game if our bodies are dead. No meat suits left, just data suits." Her monotone voice and static facial expression not revealing much further as to if this was a joke or a serious comment.

"Okay, okay, but what if --" Att is on a sugar rush. It's one of his several current possible states. Presumably he'll mostly level back out once this project of his is done. "-- we assume that the player data is still tagged to the tombstone somehow. Right? At the very least a variable is present to set that the tombstone expires, and I bet it'll have some identifying marks on it if we could examine the object data, and then we can use it to extrapolate where if anywhere it goes." A beat. "Rezzing was a thing, yeah. Come to think of it -- well, I just sort of assumed it was still around. I don't know many dedicated healers."

Att turns and squints over at Whis. There's a moment of silence. Then, "Because of pregnant people, there is an average of greater than one skeleton per body. Do you think we're multiple ghosts on average, too?"

He doesn't cover the bit about being actual ghosts. There's cronching instead.

"I'm a healer and a support player, please take care of me." Whis deadpans, largely to Att's 'I don't know any' comment. His sugar rush is in sharp disconnect with Whis' state of 120% Gremlin At Rest. She rolls to her front, nose-down against the workbench. 'Comfortable enough', she continues to talk muffled by talking into wood planks and around her hood.

"I could probably cast Sanctuary if you want, but I really don't want to. None of my ghosts *or* skeletons want to. My skeletons want to sleep and they're not allowed to."

Turning her dull red eyes back to Att she blinks a few times as she considers. "I think you are right that the tombstones are the key. The information one way or another is in them somehow regardless of if it links to somewhere else or not that holds the player data." She then shuffles back slightly so she is closer to the supplies and sitting a little straighter.

She then looks over to stare at the nearly completed statue. It feels like Att has been working on it forever, it was weird to consider it may actually be completed. Then still gazing at the statue she comments. "Att, what will you do after you finish this project? Do.. Do you even think about after the statue at all? You seem so.. focused.." she trails off and turns to directly look at him with ashen red eyes.

Tilting her head up and to the side to look over her shoulder at Whis. "Maybe your blood sugar level is low? Have a candy?" she drones in her steady voice.

"I said many, not any, sheesh." Crunch cronch. "Besides, you're more like -- like -- suppoisonealer player, not... White Mage player."

A firm nod. He makes a motion like he's going to toss candy, but the bag is empty. He frowns down at it accusatorily. "Your skeletons could totally sleep. What's the worst that happens? You start to morph into a lizard person from the red moon, and then we freak out a little, argue about it briefly, and someone takes the initiative to spike you and life you. I'm pretty sure your ghosts would be fine either way. On account of being restless spirits." He tosses the bag into the garbage crate and acquires a mug of water.

Gulp. Gulp. Gulp. "Aahhhh." Att wipes his face on his sleeve. "Mm, yeah. Just gotta learn to read the bones. Read the stones? Whichever." He drops into his chair, then immediately slouches. He shrugs. "No idea. Put it on display somewhere, I guess. See if that quest prompt clears, and then... whatever. That's really what I'm in it for: the next stage of this damn quest."

"If your skeletons complain too much then lock them up in the closet. That's what closets are for afterall. You can just meatbag it around." Then she slowly gets up and stretches with her hands over her head before starting to slowly walk around the statue at distance.

As she slowly circles her eyes remain fixed on the statue. "If tombstones can be used as a link to dead players, then maybe a statue like this can be used as a link to the goddess. Assuming it actually exists." She then steps closer to the statue, the red in her eyes fading out as if being absorbed until there is only a dull white. She looks the statue up and down for awhile, keeping only a foot or two back from it.

"I don't get any information on this. Maybe you have to finish before my appraisal skill will work?" she muses as she starts to circle around at the closer distance.

"Maybe the doomstone-" Whis grumbles 'doomstone' instead of 'tombstone' "-is more of a placeholder. A target for something to hang on to. 'Here is where your vision is', or 'Here is what a resurrection spell targets'. You can't just revive nothing, or say 'revive Inazumi right here'. You need a target. Otherwise it's just a summoning with extra steps, right?"

Caterpillaring up, drawing up her legs and then sliding without her arms from one edge of the workbench, Whis oozes off the bench and onto the ground in a pile to sit up, accepting the candy after finally sitting up to unwrap the sugary treat.

"I think it's because I've been working too hard. It feels like I shouldn't have to work at all, because this is a game prison, but apparently it's still 'hard time'."

"It's really *giving* me a hard time at least. And not a fun hard time. Blech."

Whis's deadened look pans over the other pair with the deep recessed look of, well, someone who hasn't slept in an age. "I think I resemble a White Mage perfectly. I just haven't found a white robe yet trimmed in red. Want to donate one? I'll model it for you, as a special service."

The statue is clearly of the Burning One, at least to anyone who has done cursory investigation into the Lander religions. She's rendered in a dark stone, and what looks like metallic parts have been embedded into the statue on the base and the subject. Where there is normally a carving of flames that she's emerging from, there is instead a smooth spot that, in a puzzle-centric game, would take a missing component to open up and reveal some secret. It looks like Att has been constructing it to show her reaching out over something instead of merely pointing, too.

"That's probably right," Att agrees. "It's like -- it's like if I was using the menu to make a thing, right, and the progress bar was still going. You couldn't appraise that, either, just the finished product." He looks up at the statue. "I think these goddesses might be something all right. I don't know exactly what, but it seems more likely they're around than they aren't."

Doomstone. Heh heh. Att chuckles. He hops up, too, and goes to the Att-Feeding Table, where he finds a wrapped parcel of what looks like a real-ass sandwich that *isn't* burger-shaped. "That's a good thought. You know, maybe we can sidestep summoning into something like a rezz spell, too. I'll have to do some research... when I'm not, um... otherwise occupied." Presently obsessed.

Att looks back at the dead-eyed Whis. "Sure," he says after a moment, meeting her gaze with the fearlessness of someone who is too deep in the chemical tank to realize the depths of their folly. "I know someone who is handy with a needle and thread, gear-wise. Bet they could whip it up in two shakes."

A soulgaze does not begin, because this isn't that setting.

Seliana stops her circling and looks over at Whis, the red color of her eyes once again seeping in until they are a solid dull red. "Whis would look cute in a White Mage outfit." Seliana gazes at her without expression, blinking only occasionally.

After what might be an awkward amount of time for someone not used to Seli she continues. "Would it feel like a 'hard time' if you could know sleeping was safe? We could try experiments while I sleep?" and Seliana moves over to nearby where Whis is and sits in seiza, carefully folding the skirt of her dress as she does so. Then after pause while she stares at Whis she pulls out another candy from her inventory and holds it out to the black haired girl.

Then looking over at Att as he mentions having the robe made. "Perhaps some matching shoes? Maybe a couple accessories?" Then looking back to Whis she hums in a flat steady tone for a couple seconds. "If you want we could try some different hair styles that could work with it." And she continues her steady stare.

"Not it for testing the doomstone." Whis comments. "Especially if I'm already doing another special service."

Whis's eyes shutter, remain closed, and then open as three different discrete action steps. "Did you know that in the original Final Fantasy, the White Mage class could use Hammers? Pretty interesting to think about."

No soulgaze begins. Whis does not have the eyes of old yen notes. Seliana goes in on this.

"I want the one with cat ears." She decides. "Because it's cuter. Actually, no. Some kind of not-cat ears. Not rabbit either. Panda. Yeahhhh. Little bear ears."

Seliana gets into it, and Whis doesn't mind overmuch. "If you could figure out if sleeping's safe or not, then I would probably do it. But you're already dead and also asleep. There's no way to know."

Accessories. Oh dear. "I'm fine with dressing up, they're just clothes and stuff."

"I figure we let Proteus go on her magical adventure into wherever-it-is, and then let nature take its course," Att comments. "Maybe she'll come back with an amazing treasure! Maybe we'll have a short, angry doomstone to experiment with! Who knoooows." He waggles his fingers in the air mystically, except there's no magic. He does it for... reasons. Effect? Effect.

"Do you use hammers? I don't really weaponsmith, but I could give it a go. We could find a giant mushroom, petrify most of it, and strap it to a branch. Polehammer. Counts as a staff and a hammer. Maybe poison on-hit." He's hit yammer modo.

"Panda? Hmmmm... yeah... I mean, that seems fair," Att says with a shrug. "Do you think that it'll be legally distinct in this game, or do we have enough control to actually --" Pause. He looks at Seliana for a long moment. "You know, you weren't who I was thinking of, but I'm into it." He returns to his chair, plus sandwich.

"Glamour is the real endgame," Att says, wisely. "I got lucky and knew a good-looking low-level gear set, but man, I miss some of my old stuff. Not even for the stats, just the *style.* It's one thing to do cool stuff, but doing it while you look cool is just --" Chef's kiss.

Whis shrugs. "Pandas are white."

At talk of gear, she sort of looks down at her own mess and then doesn't comment further. She has been in Clownshoes Levelling Gear Without Respect To Color Theory since the apocalypse. Maybe the White Mage gimmick is a ploy to get her some decent new threads. She is, after all, doing it as a special free service.

Seliana stares as Whis comments about being dead and also asleep. She blinks once. Then twice. "Yeah. You are probably right." She seems to take it as fact and accept it. "Too bad." She concludes.

"A panda White Mage robe? Maybe it could have little paw hands you can use to keep your hands warm? But then they wouldn't have the long flowing sleeves.." She looks over to Att. "We probably should do this, yes? A full matching set for her." If left going in this direction Whis may end up with a new outfit soon.

Looking back and forth between the two. "I always just use menu created clothing. It seems easy and can have a lot of detail." She looks down at her own clearly degrading durability clothing. "I haven't really been as concerned lately though. I'm starting to feel like I was always too focused in seeking things I didn't have and that it only led to more suffering.." She slowly looks around at her dress and pulls parts out with her hand to get a better view once in awhile.

Then rather late she turns back to Whis. "Why would they want to use a hammer? That seems kind of a bad idea for a healer wearing only a robe to rush to the front to try use a hammer." Her flat tone making it sound as if it were a statement that required no answer.

Att follows Whis' look. He winces in sympathy she will never understand. The stats, she proclaims. The clownshoes attire, Att wails.

Internally, anyway. Or in the 4koma.

"I guess that's true, but the red doesn't really... mmmm." He opens the sandwich. He bites the sandwich. Att makes a face that speaks volumes of his recent diet. A sandwich that is neither greasy nor sugary is divine. "Mmrf. Mmll--" Chew, chew. Swallow. "That's kind of, like... zen, isn't it? Empty yourself of worldly desire," he says in a sagacious voice. "Be one with the universe. Don't look at the durability stat on your gear too much."

"I think it's natural, though. Having a goal like that? Just don't lose sight of where you're standing, either."

"It is too bad. Everyone's taken the plunge but me. If I didn't know someone was coming for me, I'd probably have given up. But I know - they're coming. I've just..."

She yawns, unrestrained and toothily. "...Got to hang on."

"My hands are plenty warm, though. The long sleeves are sort of classic?" The girls share a brain cell for a moment. Perhaps Whis is leasing it from Seliana. Braincell timeshares.

"I've tried some things that people made by hand, and the feel is *way* better. Like taking a dip in a sun-warmed lake, or rolling around in a cloud, or..."

Whis is drooling now. "...floating on a jelly ocean. It's just way better. I couldn't afford the one I found in the market and it was gone the next time I was there, but real cloth feels so soft. This automatically made stuff is like burlap and wool, and this game *already* makes me feel itchy. I can't even wear socks, the bare ground feels better to walk on. Eugh."

"Maybe replace the red with black, so it's black triangles, for panda look. Then it's a double reference."

At least Whis understands fashion, Att! She just plays a game to make number go up and screw around. Trying at clothes is for real life.

"I guess the only really *fun* time to use a hammer isn't in a fight. It's after one. Which, if you *really* think about it--"

The air braces for wisdom. "--after you've gotten in one fight, your entire life is 'after a fight'." She does not pause for the doubless applause or shock her wisdom causes. "But anyway, really, it's much better to use your bare hands if you're that close. And I've already got a big stick."

It is telling that Whis has fought in front of Att, but not Seliana. It is Informing of the difference in reactions.

Looking up from her dress at Att. "I kind of thought of zen as something like finding inner stillness or a state of emptiness." Seliana looks up as she considers. "Maybe.. Maybe it is about just not /wanting/ anything. No want, no disappointment?" She looks down and directly at Att again. "Everything is different now though. I'm an immortal ghost. Does any of it really matter? My dress isn't in perfect condition? It doesn't feel as nice? So what?"

She looks down at her dress. "Work and sacrifice. Only to lose everything anyway? Seems like you lose if you try." There is a faint glow in her eyes now. "Feeling like you should. But why? Some fairy tale story people say? Its just ashes in the end." Her face remains impassive but her hands are holding her dress more tightly.

Then she looks up at Whis and her eyes dull again. "The flowy sleeves do look good. Replacing the red with black would make sense for the panda colors as well." She looks at Whis up and down this time. "It would also go with your hair. You would look really cute in it."

Seliana just listens to the hammer explanation. "So.. after the fight it becomes.. hammer time?" She pauses in consideration then lifts a hand to look at, her long black fingernails notable. "I sometimes use my hands if they get in too close, but I usually keep at distance."

"Mm. I suppose when you look at it that way," Att muses, "I don't have any reason not to get all the shut-eye in this world."

He finishes off the sandwich while nihilism and fantastical clothier talk washes over and around him. The cloth wrapping gets balled up and blindly pitched into the pile. It lands with a tiny 'pap.'

"It's not like that. God, you and Proteus, I swear." He pulls himself up again, manic Nth wind energy propelling him towards his creation. "'I did things and when I was done, something happened and they went away. So I shouldn't do things anymore.' What are you, five? Come on." Irritation wells up, the other side of the sleeplessness coin. He chews his words more, his accent weirdly thick in the instinctive translation this world seems to do. In Japanese, it sounds like his dialect drifts further from the listener's native state.

"It isn't about working to sacrifice something, it's about accomplishing the thing in the first place. So what if I spent all this time on this stupid thing?" He angrily cuts at the statue with a blade that reflects the moonlight. "So what if someone trashes it the day after I finish it?" A gouge, this time. He's working, even if it looks more like an attack. "So what if the Goddess Herself descends from the Heavens and says, 'this was pretty good, but it's going to burn instead of last,' and it just -- /ceases/?"

Att fishes a fistful of candy wrappers out of his apron pocket. There's a fiery glare in his clenched fist, and he tosses drifting shards of multicolored light towards the sky, the fragments that appear when an object runs out of durability and breaks in an always-dramatic sort of way. "Look; it's gone. Doesn't mean they weren't there. Doesn't mean I didn't get something out of them existing before."

"Don't ever say that /doing/ something is only worthwhile if it lasts forever. As long as /you/ last, the things you've tried to do and the things you've succeeded in doing are worth something. And if you're some kind f immortal electronic ghost -- well, if someone takes something away, damnit, spend your eternity getting it back or building it up better!"

A moment passes. Att seethes, then turns away, suddenly seemingly doused in cold water. He leans his forehead against the side of the work in progress. "... sorry. Temper got away from me."

Whis' cheeks flush and she turns away as Seliana insists she'd look cute in it. "Sure, yeah. I can reeeeally rock a hood." She deadpans back, aiming to diffuse the attention a little. She hadn't really expected the intensity in the first place, and the results had been surprising. "I've not really thought about matching anything to my hair in a while, what with stats on our gear."

Seliana inspecting her nails finally draws a laugh from Whis, snorting into a a few tired bubbles of laughter. "You've always got them, and in the game you can really throw some power around. I'll give it to the data abductionists: my *body* feels great here."

Att works up into a full lather. Whis is here for it, pumping a fist and 'un, un'-ing along to his righteous speech. Weary as she is, you put out for a good speech.

"I agree. Nihilism is a garbage philosophy for babies."

Seliana looks on as Att is fired up by the discussion, his passion seeming to fuel his sculpting efforts all the more even as he responds. Whis is right on board. Seliana though, stares stone faced as she listens and watches with her dull red eyes. Without any wind it was as if she were another statue along side that of the goddess being crafted.

As the exposition comes to a close Seliana is silent a time. "Perhaps." She says in a flat voice. "What one does will have effects, regardless of if they cease to be. To some this effect will be pointed at as proof that it matters. Or perhaps the memory they will say is the proof that is matters. That because there are effects in the world one /should/ work towards effects they want to see more of. To create. To experience. To have even if only for a time. To repeat that which they want."

"But of the inner state. The struggle. The pain. Do we just say 'life is pain, deal with it' or 'Take the good with the bad'?" She looks briefly around the warehouse at everything there before looking back. "Perhaps it isn't about not acting. Maybe it is about .. not.. grasping.? Not for the effect, but the inner state." She pauses for a moment. "The things you do that /matter/. Why do they matter to you? What do you hope to gain /inside/? And is there any way out from the pain?"

She looks down, sticking out scuffed slipper a little as she looks at it. "Maybe it isn't about gaining or losing things at all. For me I never really chose what I wanted, not really. It was like a script for what would be ideal. It was always sacrifice the now for the later. The later was always an illusion. It was also so much pain for why I wasn't already there." she looks up. "I was a fool. I know. I know it now. Only in losing everything do I even start to think about what really matters to me. And.. I still just don't know what that is."

Att heaves a sigh. "How did that verse go? 'Life's not a song; life isn't bliss, life is just this: it's living.'"

He turns. "Pain just means you're alive. You can feel. You're human. Even in here, you're human." Att lets his chisel fall to his side. "It doesn't matter what your life was out there, for as long as you're stuck in here with us. We don't want you to sacrifice now for later, and we don't deal in a later that we don't honestly think we can somehow grasp. Don't think about the Seliana-out-there as your template for how you should be; just... look for something in here that you want. That can matter to you."

"I don't expect you to figure it out in the span of a shouting match and a discussion about the average number of ghosts in the human body," Att says, with something resembling his usual tone and dialect, accompanied by a smile. "Just don't let yourself despair-spiral. We're here for you, too."

He jerks a thumb towards Clownshoes Druid. "Even Whis. Don't believe her lies, she's a support player like I'm a tank. Technically correct, but it does not show the full picture."

That... was a lot of heavy stuff. An unburdening, hopefully.

"Sure... That does suck. The wanting, the waiting. People got real good at that."

Whis draws up her knees, daps her head against the side of the workbench, and lets out the tension in her shoulders in a limp slump. "Do you think it's better or worse, now that you can't go back? To know, instead of hoping for that other thing? Does it matter?" A handful of clothes is gathered up in each hand's closing fist.

"The reason people who aren't afraid to die have it better than people who get all twisted up about it. They're more pure about their wants and self, because they're living for right now. You can hold back a little now for a present later, but..." Whis makes an odd sound, a hiccup-laugh, and then tries to pass it off into a cough. "... the reason people are down on those that live in today is because they think the tomorrow they give up all their own todays for will be better, and all they've got left is shouldering through and spite. Spite's good, but it's not *that* good."

Att outs her. Whis gives him a 'shocked gasp' in good fun, shrugging. "He's right too. You seem real preoccupied about death, sure, but also you're pretty obsessed about being 'still alive' too, aren't you? You can be gothy and happy, there's no rule about that."

Seliana takes a slow breath. "I think this is a good place for me to be. I know I'm a bit.. strange. I think that having mixed blood in this game has had an effect on me too, but it might just be the shock of the situation." She looks back and forth between the two. "I'm sorry if my thoughts can be.. a downer. I'm just trying to sort things out."

"I will try to find what matters for me. We may joke about being a ghost, but my old self is dead at least in a kind of metaphorical sense." Looking over to Whis she says "I do think it is better though.. Whether I can go back or not.. At least now I will be more.. my own person. I'm just trying to figure out who that is." Looking back and forth again between the two. "I appreciate the support. I really do." She says in the steady monotone that she has been talking the whole time.

Seliana then already close to Whis moves a little closer and gives her a hug. "I'm changing. It's just a little slow. I don't know what it will be, but I know it will be different then right not." Then backing up slightly she looks at Whis with her steady dull eyes. "Even if there is spite, at least we have others to share it with. And hopefully other things too."

Then she moves over to Att as well and gives him a hug as well. "Thanks for talking through things with me as well. Sorry if I got on a despair spiral." After a moment she backs up again. "I will take some time to reflect more. I hope you can count on me too. Technically a DPS, but it doesn't quite describe the full picture either."

Then turning to look over at Whis again. "Now we really need to get you that new robe so we can show off just how cute you are."