Me and Helena are the only people here definitely from the same world, but I wouldn't be surprised if we overlap with one of the other low-magic-type Earths. [Claudia has ruled out Malik and Altair's world, on the grounds that one Super-Secretville would know a thing or two about the other, but that's getting into things that aren't hers to divulge.]
Our world has... not exactly magic, but you might as well call it that as anything. Get the right person, object and emotional circumstance in the same place and the object becomes what we call an Artifact. The vast majority of 'em are associated with famous people in some way, and generally fall under the pattern of 'has a neat mystic effect, but will most likely kill you horribly for invoking said effect.' Most people don't know this is a thing until they run afoul of one - my brother used one to teleport himself into an interdimensional space when I was ten.
The other way you find out Artifacts are a thing is when you get recruited to the Warehouse, which was founded by Alexander the Great, moves to whatever country can best defend it, and is so super-secret as to be the only thing fuck-off-nowhere South Dakota has going for it. My immediate supervisor is no doubt having an aneurysm back home because of how freely Helena and I talk about it, but around here people have seen or done weirder, so I figure it evens out.
In any case, that's a large part of why I spearheaded the amulet heist back during the jaunt - it was acting waaaaay too much like an Artifact for me to leave it alone. We retrieve dangerous objects, so they hopefully won't hurt anyone else.
Helena actually started working for the Warehouse in its previous incarnation, in 19th-century London - the 'put it in fuck-off-nowhere' move in America was, I think, because Americans are nosy fucks. Maybe also so anyone aware of the previous pattern would assume it was the Smithsonian. Anyway. As she herself said the other day, Yensid was not her first stint as a statue, which is how she's working with me and not long dead.
Ordinarily I'd say a good litmus test for world overlap is 'was HG Wells a woman,' but we didn't even know that until after she was debronzed, so. There really... isn't one, since Artifacts are so hush-hush.
We have Walt Disney's paintbrush in the stacks. Pete used it to cartoonify his shoes when he was Artifact-drunk once. Not sure if he ever found 'em.
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Our world has... not exactly magic, but you might as well call it that as anything. Get the right person, object and emotional circumstance in the same place and the object becomes what we call an Artifact. The vast majority of 'em are associated with famous people in some way, and generally fall under the pattern of 'has a neat mystic effect, but will most likely kill you horribly for invoking said effect.' Most people don't know this is a thing until they run afoul of one - my brother used one to teleport himself into an interdimensional space when I was ten.
The other way you find out Artifacts are a thing is when you get recruited to the Warehouse, which was founded by Alexander the Great, moves to whatever country can best defend it, and is so super-secret as to be the only thing fuck-off-nowhere South Dakota has going for it. My immediate supervisor is no doubt having an aneurysm back home because of how freely Helena and I talk about it, but around here people have seen or done weirder, so I figure it evens out.
In any case, that's a large part of why I spearheaded the amulet heist back during the jaunt - it was acting waaaaay too much like an Artifact for me to leave it alone. We retrieve dangerous objects, so they hopefully won't hurt anyone else.
Helena actually started working for the Warehouse in its previous incarnation, in 19th-century London - the 'put it in fuck-off-nowhere' move in America was, I think, because Americans are nosy fucks. Maybe also so anyone aware of the previous pattern would assume it was the Smithsonian. Anyway. As she herself said the other day, Yensid was not her first stint as a statue, which is how she's working with me and not long dead.
Ordinarily I'd say a good litmus test for world overlap is 'was HG Wells a woman,' but we didn't even know that until after she was debronzed, so. There really... isn't one, since Artifacts are so hush-hush.
We have Walt Disney's paintbrush in the stacks. Pete used it to cartoonify his shoes when he was Artifact-drunk once. Not sure if he ever found 'em.