Evening of November 1st, About A Day After The New Travelers Showed Up

[thornsofmalkav]

Uh, hey. I've got a few things I need to talk to people about, that I've mostly been waiting on until we got a new shift of liminal space so I could share them with all the newbies and returning Travelers too. Uh, I'm Thorne, by the way, if you haven't met me before. Sorry if this gets to be long

Anyway, some of the shit I want to talk about is kinda heavy, so we'll start this out with a rage comic I made with an app on my phone to balance that.

[The voice switches to the viewpoint of someone looking down at a phone screen, in which the follow rage comic has been constructed on:]



[About ten seconds later, the sensory livestreaming switches off and everyone's back to voice.]

Okay. Now the heavy stuff. A lot of you guys know already that the woman I was Infiltrating as during the last Jaunt, Chouko, was killed the fourth week by an inexplicably insectile cyborg known as the Mantis. I came back as an Investigator and ended up 'haunting' my murderer.

What most of you don't know is that Chouko left a corpse behind, which Herr Doktor Blitzkopf found. He replaced her heart with a clockwork one, then used the lightning of the storms to reanimate her body, ala Frankenstein and his monster.

I didn't go back to being Chouko at this time, although she certainly did come back to life. I know, I met her when she came home to the embassy, where I was taking care of her brother, Min.

The people we Infiltrate as, our overlays... they have lives outside of us. Unless there's a Blitzkopf around, when we die as them, they stay dead.

[There's a short silence as Thorne lets that sink in for everyone.]

Uh, next thing! So, there's a secret I've been keeping from everyone, but my spirit animal, Selene, has been going around all doppelgangered and telling people anyway and I figured that if I made this announcement I could control how people found out.

So. Uh. I'm a vampire.

What this basically means is that I'm a talking, thinking, animate dead person. Well, undead person. Technically double-dead person. I got killed again after I got turned into a vampire.

I have to drink blood to survive, but you guys don't have to worry about that because I've already made arrangements with some people already to be regular blood donors and there's enough of them that nobody's should have to do it so often that it make them anemic or anything.

There's a lot of details about my condition, which I don't want to bore people with, but basically it's annoying but manageable. And so far as I know, I'm the only one of my kind here. [If you consider her kind to be Malkavians and now wodpires in general.] I guess you could say I'm a monster, but I'm honestly trying not to act like one.

And, uh, I just wanted to say to any other dead people here, if you need someone to talk to privately about it, I'm here.

Which brings me to the last thing I wanted to tell you guys about! As far as I can tell by the calendars people can agree on, it's gonna be November 2nd tomorrow. I'm gonna hold a Day of the Dead thing at Leo's and, like, build an altar in his yard and stuff and have food. People are welcome to come, living as well as dead.

Uh. That's all, I guess.

Comments

[thornsofmalkav]

We get resurrected later here in Liminal Space. Sometimes hours later, sometimes days.

[thornsofmalkav]

We might not have! I've only been here since Questing Country. Oh, wait, but your 'voice' sounds familiar. We might have talked over the network like this.

Hajime's a bro. His bug juice tastes kinda weird, though, so he's more of a back-up blood donor and Guy To Hold Me Down If I Have A Freak-out person.

[thornsofmalkav]

A dead people club? Yeah, maybe.

[professorwolf]

He's served, er, the latter function for me before. He is quite good at it. I'd offer as blood donor, as well, but my blood is probably not very palatable. It's apparently what one would expect in a man a couple days dead.

I do believe we've spoken before, yes. One of the few other modern Travelers who know anything about the internet.

[awitchdidit]

Hm...if nothing else, this is approximately lining up with the sort of game I play. A larger scale with many more players and a wider variety of boards, from what I've heard, but not dissimilar. I suppose the next step is working out the "rules". And whether we're meant to be playing against the game masters or not.

[runawaystory]

Overlays... That's new.

So if I'm understanding you right, there were two of you running around, in the flesh? Or at least, there was you, and there was also overlay-you.

[thornsofmalkav]

I've only heard other people using it? But it's shorter to say than Infiltrator-selves.

There was me and then there was Chouko, yeah.

[thornsofmalkav]

I'm so glad you do, dude. It's nice to have someone who speaks my language.

And yeah, he's said he's done it before.

[runawaystory]

This infiltrator thing just gets creepier and creepier, doesn't it...

[wholeheaded]

...oh, gracious Gliinda, I think I left a bigger mess on Nibiru than I first thought.

[thornsofmalkav]

... uh. Did something happen, dude?

[thornsofmalkav]

I guess, yeah.

[thornsofmalkav]

Oh, hey, you've done these before? Awesome. When you've had a little more time to get yourself settled in, you should, like, try to do a big psychic message to everyone like this, so you can explain how it worked for you. Like, I dunno if the Trumps are doing the exactly same thing that you did before, but, like, any insight into how they work is great!

[comebewe]

What happened with that Daneel guy?

[wholeheaded]

Um. Okay, you know how while all you folks were doing dreamland stuff a few of us went back to a world the Traveler's had been to before? When I was there last time I was Infiltrating but I wasn't this time, but one of the natives thought I was the same guy and long story short he... might sorta be Public Enemy Number One for the entire planet now.

[professorwolf]

Most of it, anyway. I don't think I've used the word "dude" in my life.

[There's a faint overlay of amusement, there. He might be teasing her a little.]

[doitforhim]

Okay! I just wanted to make sure. And I'll make sure to not surprise you with fire, and to be safe if you're freaking out.

...How weird? Do you still have to breathe and stuff? Can you eat anything but blood? Does blood taste different when you're a vampire? ...I'm sorry, you don't have to answer those, that's really intrusive of me.

[protect_and_serve]

How many pictures are traditional?

[thornsofmalkav]

Holy shit. Um. Well. At least you didn't get him killed?

[... yet.]

[thornsofmalkav]

Yeah, well, you're Jersey. Werewolf country. I'm from California and so the word 'dude' is my birthright.

[thornsofmalkav]

I don't have to breathe! But I can sort of turn some of my body functions on if I want to, although it means I'll get hungry faster, and then I do breathe without remembering to and look a lot more like a real girl. Otherwise I'm just a walking corpse.

I can't eat anything but blood, which really sucks. I miss food. Some vampires know how to eat food, at least for a little while, but I never learned and even they have to barf it up eventually. So when I do the Day of the Dead, I'll be giving my plate of food to the altar for the spirits to eat.

Blood taste really great when you're a vampire. Like, the best thing ever, basically.

[thornsofmalkav]

Uh, I was still infiltrating when it happened, but it was in the psychic archives--one of the things you can learn to do when you get better at stuff is do a sort of archive dive to listen to old conversations--and I think he was Infiltrating and Investigating at the same time. You should ask him if you can find him. He's the robot dude.

[thornsofmalkav]

It varies. It's nice to have at least one of each person who you're memorializing, but they don't have to be separate pictures? Like, it's all about making sure they're remembered. It makes them happy.

But, like, do the important ones first?

[protect_and_serve]

What if they're people we weren't close to?

[thornsofmalkav]

You don't have to do them? They presumably have the people who will memorialize them somewhere else. You can't memorialize all the dead of the world, so, like, just prioritize the ones that mean stuff to you.