we need to know

[hasapoint]

[Need's Mindvoice is gravelly and contemplative, and seems to come from right between the ears of whoever's listening.]

I've been considering, children, and just so you know - this is a large group to be living off only what can be hunted and foraged within the space we've been given. It won't happen today, it won't happen within the week or moonturn, I think, but available food will run out. If you're thinking we can just switch to farming: no. So I want to think about medium-term survival here.

In case anyone hasn't noticed, if any one of us tries to go too far into the woods we're Fetched back to within some invisible perimeter. I've got a question. 'Chosen Ones' or not, are we bound to the area around the Heartstone, or to each other?

You're welcome to come up with some alternative to 'Chosen Ones', by the way. I know a lot of you are less than pleased about being selected.

Comments

[unsealthecatbox]

[Ange was...pretty much staying to a side of the market when suddenly Need's voice right in her head, disrupting her personal musings and thoughts. Ugh.

...

But seems like an important interruption, hm...]

I doubt we're going to save the world while hiding in an abandoned market near a dying stone. We can't take this place as our base forever.

[Truthfully, she really wants to get done with this as soon as possible so she can return home. Being here for a few days already has her a little antsy. The problem is to know what to do, though]

When I was being pursued by monsters back at that faire, I felt drawn in this direction, but I believe this...invisible perimeter is around us all. If it were around this place then we'd all have been transported close to it right after our arrival to this world, instead of letting us hang out at terrains a good distance away from here for a few hours.

[Ergo, the perimeter is not around this stone, she thinks. She's pretty sure the faire is far away enough for the instant transportation back here to kick in before one even getting close to it -- not that she wants to test that theory]

[hasapoint]

You've got to be able to get away from a base for it to be really useful. That or it's mobile somehow.

Very good. [...Need was already convinced that this was the case but teacher gonna ask leading questions.] I wish we'd had more time there and knew if the perimeter had existed already, but we work with the information we have.

[unsealthecatbox]

I suppose finding out everything ourselves and making our way through the world is part of this nonsensical 'save the world' demand we're in right now.

[First time she admits she thinks it's nonsensical. It's not really because of what they're doing, it's more because it's like she got thrown into the deep end of the pool and told to learn specific swimming styles without even knowing how to float. Do they even have a starting point on how to proceed with this goal? Not really]

[hasapoint]

Nothing I haven't seen before, though maybe not on this scale. It'll resolve eventually and we'll know what's happening and what exactly is at stake. But, I can see how it's frustrating for you.

[Trying to figure weird new situations out without a great deal of help is a lot of her life. ...Also, Need usually has supernatural luck powers that mean the answers always do come.]

[unsealthecatbox]

Your patience in the face of all this is remarkable. I'm jealous.

[Maybe that's what happens when you have lived for so long a couple decades is no big deal to you: you turn into a really patient person]

[credit_not_blame]

I'd say that we're bound to each other. The magical "go this way" tug in my gut pulled me toward the faire first, where other people were. We went to the Heartstone because the summer fairies said that it would keep us safe from the Nightrenders, and presumably those creepy sisters who called us 'Chosen Ones' in the first place.

Plus, the Heartstone doesn't look like it's got the power to keep us here. I don't think this place is going to qualify as 'safe' for much longer.

[hasapoint]

Very logical. [Need is not going to say if and how much of that she's thought of herself. As an old teacher she likes a leading question better than dictating what someone should think.]

How might we go about testing this? Even without knowing some fresh direction to go in, we might venture faire-wards to find people to talk to.

[credit_not_blame]

[Stacia's always happy to receive praise. She's also always happy to be consulted regarding potential next steps.]

To confirm whether we're drawn to the Heartstone or to each other, we'd need to get a majority of the group to leave the Heartstone and stick together to see whether the majority are stymied or whether the remainders are teleported or dragged along.

[Stacia frowns thoughtfully.]

Assuming that we're bound together as a group, it would also be valuable to know how many of us count as a main body, and what happens if a straggler is restrained somehow. If we can just teleport people out of kidnapping situations, that would be very handy, less so if we're just going to drag the poor person face-first into a wall.

[hasapoint]

I was thinking of something on a smaller scale - establish the general boundaries, have a majority of the group cluster in one place away from the Heartstone, send one or two people as scouts to the boundary near them and see if they can go farther. But it does seem a good idea to test further as you've described.

So, you think those two women with the masks didn't know about this effect, or could perhaps disrupt it?

[credit_not_blame]

I really, really hope it's a teleportation thing. I'm currently imagining someone getting dragged off by something speedy and hitting a magical wall and just...splashing.

[Stacia shudders.]

All I'm sure about the women is that they've got some kind of magic that allows them to use silver as a functional material for net-making. They haven't shown up here yet, which would seem to indicate that the Heartstone is protecting us from them -- we certainly didn't do enough damage to them for me to believe we scared them off -- but I'm also not sure that the summer fairies knew the kind of thing that was coming. I only heard them identify the Nightrenders, not the women.

[cspd]

Seconding this. I can detect magic now [ apparently ] and the Heartstone is dying. I don't doubt that it could've done that, in better days, but it's losing its ability to channel anything.

Any safety it's offering us is drying up with that.

[hasapoint]

I had that impression, but it's good to know. [Not being able to use her own magic to determine things like that is mad frustrating.] As far as I know no one's noticed monsters circling around outside our perimeter waiting for it to go down, but that doesn't mean they can't show up hungry when it does.

[cspd]

Monsters where I come from tend towards pack behavior more often than not. So once it does go down...I expect word will get around.

[hasapoint]

Sounds inconvenient and like it's the last thing we want happening, so that's absolutely the way it will go.

[She sounds like she's smiling.]

[credit_not_blame]

Ooh, that's handy! The ability to detect magic obviously, not the Heartstone dying. That is concerning.

Can you just sense active magic, or can you tell if someone is an inherently magical being?

[cspd]

Inherently magical beings have...their own vibe, as far as I've noticed so far? It's not as obvious as active magic, but I think it ought to be distinguishable in most cases.

[credit_not_blame]

I know that I'm inherently magical. Do the people like you who got powers here taste the same as people like me, who had them to begin with?

[steelandtemper]

Statistically, subsistence hunter-gatherer populations are much healthier than subsistence agricultural ones.

[She's trolling helping!]

[hasapoint]

You don't have to tell me that. Either I was a horse-nomad once, or my 'mother' was, depending on how you want to count that. You see a lot more bad teeth among the housemen.

[steelandtemper]

Yeah, excessive carbs, grit in the flour, and no dental care will do that.

[hasapoint]

Sounds about right. Of course, you can't subsist off unmanaged land in any numbers if you can't also travel.

[millenyal_pink]

I mean, it's only been a few days, so I there's a possibility those... voices will reach out to us again. I'd give it at least a week before we think about anything other than immediate accommodations.

I know I've been careful about hunting and gathering, and about sharing so there's little waste. We may want to create a more organized effort at some point.

I think that we're connected to each other. If it's the Heartstone, we wouldn't have been able to be at the Faire. There were only a a handful of people who chose not to run North, and they're the only ones who got teleported as far as I know.

[hasapoint]

[Dryly:] Your faith in the situation is impressive, but some of this 'we' are also capable of thinking beyond the immediate problems of the moment. Being aware of the situation and making plans for the future, even when these plans don't survive changes in circumstance, is not a wasted effort.

So I've surmised. Of course, it's also possible that there are 'waypoints' and the Faire was the first one, followed now by the Heartstone, and presumably there will be a third.

[millenyal_pink]

I'm not saying all plans are a wasted effort, I'm saying making plans before we've taken stock of ourselves and our resources could potentially do harm than good.

[hasapoint]

I'm... genuinely interested to know how you've come to the conclusion that saying 'we can't stay here indefinitely, can we leave' is harmful or a waste, or that no one should start considering the future before the week's end.

[There's a shrug in her voice.]

Nothing against negativity. I'm pushy and people should push back, and there's something to be said for contrarianism, for that matter. If I say the Heartstone is dying and might well fail while we're here, and we won't like what happens then, you'll say...?