It's the day we mock the prig and shock the priest

[ironwood]

Characters: Anyone unfortunate enough to pass by
Date: July 20th, 2017 (2018 in-game)
Location: Water Sector
Situation: For-Con, or a Festival of Fools
Warnings/Rating: Rated D for a bunch of dumbasses
AC Note: This log is eligible for AC counts in both July and August.



The eighteenth dawns with tents and make-shift pavilions being set up in the Water District. It’s a relatively small gathering but still sizable enough that it begins to draw a bigger crowd later in the day. At it’s peak, it may be about 200-250 Kedan wandering around the tents and displays. Some seem quite enthusiastic about the whole thing, others rather bewildered.

There’s a lot available to curious attendees, such as food, games, and, of course, little trinkets to sate rampant consumerism.

-Food stalls are everywhere with Kedanese cooks preparing your favourite meals from home (or reasonable facsimiles thereof. Or barely recognizable, in-name-only attempts).

-Yep, the Kedan officially have their own version of Real-People Fanfiction. Most of it is Foreigners going on adventures with various historical or mythological figures, or fairly tame speculative fiction about day-to-day lives back in the Foreigner’s worlds. But, of course, there’s always a few oddballs. Who do the Kedan ship your characters with?

-Some talented Kedan have sculpted figurines of of Foreigners (some of whom have come and gone) out of a resinous substance. These little figurines are surprisingly accurate.

-"Guest Speakers”, or more accurately, “unsuspecting Foreigners Kyde bribed or otherwise somehow managed to rope into answering Kedan questions”. Most are standard fair, what you would expect to get asked by people curious about whole other worlds, but there’s always weirdos with no filter.

- Trinkets and memorabilia from other worlds will be on sale. Is there something you want for your character from home that you want for them but is too mundane to bother spending AC on? Here’s your chance to get it. The rule of thumb here is that the item has to be fairly mundane (for example: a photo album, a treasured piece of jewelry, a toy, a favourite mug, a pet rock, their favourite brand of shampoo). If it’s magical or high tech in some way, it will still require an item request and the corresponding AC point percentage. Please note in the OOC thread below what your characters will be getting

-Yes, that does appear to be a body pillow.

Comments

[wellhello]

"True," That much Jack could agree with as a point. Nevermind that in the current situation, from what he'd heard, the more protection on civilians the better. Not that he was sure when that had stopped including him. There were a couple dozen possible turning off points.

There's a smile, friendly and a little amused at the huff. To be honest, Jack was fine with coming so soon before the event, it would've been a little uncanny.

To be honest, it had been a joke - a lie, so it's easy enough for Jack to shrug. "I'll think about it. Maybe for your birthday." There was another, slightly more obvious tease. In all honesty it was a little...gesturey for him. Jack tended to go for the tried and true; flirting, some shared drinks, maybe a little dancing, and a little healthy self-sacrifice for the two people he loved who loved each other more than him. "For now, I think I still owe you some stories one of these days."

What was that last one again? Dancing.

[annihilist]

"Please don't. The last time someone gave me a birthday present, it was a bloody cathedral. Damn thing still isn't done," Devin remarks idly. "There's not much point in celebrating an arbitrary date, in any case."

He's never found cause to actually mark the date with anything resembling joy. Mostly he would drink and generally try to ignore his birthday's existence.

"Stories, on the other hand, I could stand to have more of. It'll probably be a welcome distraction from this fiasco," he adds, gesturing to the festival.

[wellhello]

"Good thing I don't know that arbitrary date then, isn't it?" He could accept that. Anyway, once you stepped off the proverbial path as far as linear time was involved - as they were even then - it all became kind of hard to calculate. "If for no other reason that I don't think I could top a cathedral, even an unfinished one."

A special grin finds it's way to Jack's face. Stories were, after all, kind of his lifeblood. He cracks his neck lazily after, and frees his hands to rub them briefly together.

"Okay. What kind of story do you want? I've got something for any occasion." And if that was a lie, he could make them up on the fly, too.

[annihilist]

A very good thing. Devin doesn't want anyone throwing him parties or giving him gifts. Ever.

"Dealer's choice," he offers slyly. "Or something involving getting lost. Those usually result in tales to tell, tall or otherwise."

[wellhello]

He's probably safe, here. Might try to invite him to a party, but he's not much of a thrower. Too much clean-up.

"A time I got lost..." Jack looks thoughtful for a moment, more than willing to accept the challenge. His face lights up when he thinks of something, his smirk adding some mischief to it. "Got it. A little loose of an interpretation, but I think you'll enjoy it anyway."

He cracks his neck, and begins.

"This is when I was with the Time Agency. I was working with another agent, doing a little recon on Earth in the 1980s. Something, they knew, wasn't right. Thing is we didn't know exactly what it was."

Jack shrugs.

"Now, I'll admit, my partner? Not the most focused guy on the planet, little rough around the edges but great cheek bones, and a nice accent." There's an extra grin at Devin at that, and then he's continuing. "We may or may not have decided that the glam rock scene was the best place to start looking. We didn't find anything but we had a hell of a time looking."

"So, we re-grouped the morning after a concert, both of us pretty satisfied with ourselves, and we agreed that the next night we'd get a little more serious about this search. Nothing had pinged on our tech anyway, so there was a chance it'd been a wild goose chase."

At the word tech, he patted the strap on his wrist, still defunct but ever-present. "We get a little turned around on the way back to our hotel. So we're just walking the streets, drunk as skunks, someone or something catching my 'pal's eye at least twice a block, he's high as a kite, and eventually we figure...whatever. We're in a pretty industrial place, let's find a nice converted apartment or something, beg our way in and sleep it off. We find one, it's fancy, but empty, we let ourselves in, watch a little television and get something more solid into our stomachs...and an hour later, bam."

He claps his hands together, loud, to punctuate the sound effect, and the smirk on his face slowly creeps into something more like a grin. "Time Loop."

[annihilist]

Devin listens with faint amusement written in his features all throughout the story. The comment on the accent and the cheekbones gets an arched eyebrow but little more, certain that it's largely being brought up because he shares similar features. Jack is a good story-teller, and he's getting some tidbits on the vagaries of time to boot.

"Time Loop," Devin echoes, taking the cue that's been offered. "That sounds unfortunate, given your state of inebriation. Presumably something untoward happened in that half an hour to prompt the loop, or was that well before? I'm not well-versed in the mechanics of time travel."

Time Agency. Devin is very intrigued, and it shows because he lets it.

[wellhello]

The resemblance was exactly why he'd brought up those factoids - well, and the addition of a little flavor. He couldn't help an errand thought of what his old partner was up to now, though he counted himself pretty glad he wasn't also on the turtle.

"That's the question, isn't it?" Jack asked him drawing out the suspense. "See, we barely did anything. Only figured it out because the same damn episode of some show kept playing. The good news is that it was a nice, closed loop. No chance of running into past selves and ending up with some kind of Reaper problem. No paradoxes."

He was almost positive that Devin would ask after that new information, and the fact was about as far from bothering him as possible. He liked having the guy's attention.

"Now, best we could tell? This one was just a hiccup. Time isn't some flawless things. Sometimes you get echoes, sometimes you get these little localized loops." He shrugged. "It's even possible my friend might've caused it without realizing while he was trying to change the channel with his vortex manipulator." Sure, at the time he'd sworn up and down that hadn't happened, but they'd also been a wee bit inebriated.

"Mostly the untoward activity happened once we realized we'd be stuck a while. We got out a distress call, and they broke it from the outside a couple days later. Fun fact - not even the longest time I've spent trapped in a time loop with that guy in the 80s."