[Open Broadcast]

[protect_and_serve]

Who: Everyone on the telepathic network (which is everyone)
When: Just after the new arrivals show up.
What: Joscelin attempting to get things organized.

[There’s a lot of chatter going on, literally making it hard to hear yourself think, between veterans gossipping and speculating what the new wave of Travelers means, and accidental broadcasts by panicked new arrivals, until one hard-edged thought cuts through it all.]

Enough.

You all need to stop this before we drive ourselves insane.

Anyone with experience on the Network, I want a few organized broadcasts offering help and information to newcomers. We don’t call them Fools.

If you’re new, stay calm. No-one can overhear you unless you’re projecting. Try to divide yourselves as evenly as you can between the people giving you answers. That much is instinctive, you won’t have trouble as long as you can imagine it.

Anyone who’s been here longer and wants to speculate? Don’t do it publicly. Find your own little corners, or keep it off the network.

New telepaths. You’ll need to find someone more experienced more than anyone else does.

And everyone be ready for a new Jaunt.

Comments

[eyes_on_fire]

[Unfortunately, Zelman's eyesight is considerably sharper than that of most human's, so the explanation isn't the best example - he can see each card perfectly. The point, however, he gets and so he simply nods a bit.]

And just how did we get to this overlapping space? Or more to the point, how do we leave?

[notinthecards]

We were brought here by somebody with bad manners and good taste. When they have something for us to do, we get sent out to do it.

[eyes_on_fire]

And what incentive could this person possibly offer me to get me to do his bidding.

[He shrugs and starts to pull a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket.]

I'm not exactly the 'at your beck and call' sort.

[notinthecards]

Half the time, mon ami, they don't give you the choice. They send you to the new world believing you were born and raised there. The other half... until you do the job, you don't come back. And they don't send us to many delightful vacation spots.

[eyes_on_fire]

[Color him still unimpressed.]

So we're to perpetuate this continued control by playing along during the times we're aware?

I still fail to see how this is incentive. Perhaps...

[And here he gives a slow smile as he taps out a smoke and lifts it to his lips.]

These controllers need the proper incentive to let us go back to our own place sooner, rather than later.

[notinthecards]

And if they send you away, mon ami, are you so sure you know where they'll put you? Sometimes people vanish, and sometimes they come back. Nobody ever claim to go back home again.

Twenty-two Jaunts, that's the theory. After we do that they let us go.

[eyes_on_fire]

Seems naive to take a kidnapper's word, but that's just me. Besides... if they leave me someplace else, that's fine.

[That said, he lifts his free hand to touch his fingertips to the tip of his smoke and, with a flash of crimson eyes, lights his cigarette to take a deep inhale.]

The last place was getting a little boring anyway.

[notinthecards]

No word to give. No proof they even exist, except that someone has to behind it all, no?

[Remy smiles, produces a cigarette from within his own coat with a flourish, and holds it up, in a clear "got a light?" gesture.]

But generally speaking, they don't let us get bored.

[eyes_on_fire]

[There's a second flash in crimson eyes, igniting a discreet little flame before the other's cigarette as he shrugs.]

Behind it, sure. So where'd you get the twenty-two caveat from then?

[A beat as he takes another hit, lets it out slowly.]

...How so? Because a place like this can only entertain for so long.

[notinthecards]

Superstition. Twenty-two Major Arcana in a Tarot deck. One service to each trump, and we're released. But nobody's ever done twenty-two.

[He takes a long, slow pull on his own cigarette, exhaling a precise stream of smoke into the air, and shaking his head.]

This is where we relax. Outside... back in the worlds again... that's where the real work gets done.

[eyes_on_fire]

Is that so? [Another long drag, slowly released, before he cuts the other a sidelong glance.]

What's the longest run? Because long run or not, I've yet to hear a reason for me to waste effort towards their cause during these little ventures.

[notinthecards]

That would be me and Monsieur Verreuil, with thirteen. There used to be a man who said... sixteen, I think, on the Jaunt he vanished after. He did this maybe two years?

As for the rest... if you want to relax and treat this like a vacation, feel free. Almost everywhere we go, the problems get worse until we fix them, so it's a cruise on the Titanic - but there's always some smooth sailing while the rest of us work.

Get in the way outright... well. People who do that vanish more often, and if they come back, it wasn't usually a beach they'd been visiting.