Trog's Tavern CCLI

[Zefir]

"I have a room here and stay here regularly. A pleasure meeting you," Fayyaad says.

The man waves a last tiem and then heads off. It's just good you can ask NPC so he should find GloG easily.

[FireFox]

The drunken dwarf's beard is extinguished.

Thankfully.

"Hey Ember I'm telling someone about drakes and since you're a drake too I thought she might like to meet you since you're a drake like me and she hasn't ever seen a drake before today and I don't know if she's ever seen a real faerie before either so maybe you could come out and say hello and then I guess you could go back to sleep if you want but maybe you shouldn't because meeting new people is fun and- oop!"

Drake zips to the size, dodging another coal. This one lands in an unguarded Dragon's Liver Buster, which promptly bursts into flames.

A rather cranky looking little creature pokes her head out of the hearth. Her body appears to be made out of cracked, blackened coals of wood, though many of them are presently glowing orange with heat. Her twig-like wings are stretched with a membrane of flame and her eyes burn with the blues and purples and greens of combustion metals. Little sparks pop out of her mouth when she speaks. "Fine. Fine, I'll say hello if you just shut up," the hearth drake hisses. She's about the size of a small cat or maybe a very large rat. "Hi. I'm Ember, your wood-fire for today. You're welcome. Now throw another log in here, the flames are starting to get low and shedding ash makes me itch."

Well!

Isn't she just a bundle of joy?

Hello Ember, my name is Tovia Solomon. A pleasure to meet you. The adventuress looks around for the logs and gets up to put one into the hearth, taking the opportunity for a fascinated closer look at the drake. She looks over at the ignited DLB, briefly considers extinguishing it, but decides it's probably safe and just uses it to light a cigarette instead. What exactly are "real faeries" like, Drake?

[Rebonack]

"Hey. You might not want to give your full name to a faerie," Ember points out, her voice just as sardonic as it was previously. "I've heard that they can steal it if they know it and you stumble into the Dreamlands. You're safe from me, I never go there. But just sayin'."

Drake buzzes his wings excitedly. "You know a real faerie unlike a fake fairy which is a different thing like really super different because one of them does a whole bunch of things that the others don't sort of like how the fairys on TV are all ting girls with little see through wings and dresses made of flowers or whatever and they're always really nice or at the very least mostly nice since I guess Tinkerbell tried to kill Wendy that one time but to be honest that's pretty mild compared to what a real fae might do if they decide that they really don't like you for whatever reason."

"He means faeries from the Dreamlands," Ember translates. She sinks her claws into the new log and rips a chunk out of it. "Those are real faeries. As opposed to the other pretenders from, eh. Wherever the hell they come from. Disney World or whatever." Ember begins chewing on the splinter like a carrot stick, smoke curing from the blackening wood. "Most of the faeries that live in the Dreamlands all the time are bad news. They start forgetting what it was like being mortal. Makes them start acting... uh... weird. I guess it one way to put it. The true fae are even worse. They weren't ever human and the way they think is totally alien more often than not. The worst, though, are the Daoine Sidhe. They're, like, gods. Practically. But all their god-tier stuff doesn't work in the Nexus. Thank goodness."

Hmm...

Used to be mortal.

Does that mean Ember and Drake were human before?

[5a Violista]

Talk of the Devil, and he's presently at your elbow.

The fairy Cerridwen Iceshimmer enters the tavern from the streets. She's rather tall, probably a good seven feet tall (as opposed to a bad seven feet tall, clearly). She does have a smile on her face, fortunately, and it's pretty sincere and friendly and toothy: that kind of smile that says "You can thank God that I just ate" because she's really pathetic-looking when she's hungry. Not at all even remotely as graceful and sparkling and shiny as she is now. If she weren't so tall, she might be mistaken for a princess, even. A princess with a gossamer veil attached to her back, even.

Her eyes are green, too.

She sits down and starts looking through not the menu but instead the occupants of the tavern.

[BladeofObliviom]

In a distant corner of the Tavern, an unusual creature wakes up, groaning and licking her chapped lips even as she's tangentially aware of the drool oozing onto the table. Well, maybe not that strange a creature. Just a pony. One of the cute, colorful ones, not the kind who stand around tied to a post, boredly walking in circles with a child on its back. Just not exactly typical, since most sapient creatures are either mechanical or some type of humanoid. A little stranger than average, I guess.

She's not particularly odd-looking as far as ponies go. Creamy, off-white coat, brilliant ruby eyes, and a two-toned mane, both tones a shade of blue. She has some freckles on her cheeks, a worn pair of protective goggles hanging around her neck, and a long tail protruding from the end of her coat. Most of her other features are hidden by a tattered white coat bearing an emblem of a red cross and some butterflies. She's also carrying a pair of very full-looking saddlebags, though what's in them is a mystery. She's not very well-groomed; in fact, she's kind of filthy. Not, like, covered in mud filthy, but "hasn't had a chance to bathe properly in a month" filthy.

Blinking under the light, she stares upward dazed a moment before taking a look around at the many strange creatures present in Trog's Tavern. "What the..." she mumbles, trying to shake off the buzz in her skull. She suddenly gasps, and her eyes go wide. "The moon dust! No, no, I must have breathed it in by mistake..." she mumbles to herself in horror. "The Enervation..." She pauses and takes another look around, then lifts a hoof and looks at that, noting that it is indeed not currently melting or otherwise harmed. "How in Tartarus...", she continues to mumble, moments before coming to another epiphany. "It's still in my system.", she says to herself, eyes full of wonder and fear. "When the hallucination passes..."

Her head collapses back onto the table, sobbing. That doesn't look very comfortable, especially since the chair is clearly made for humanoids.

Spoiler: Image with my crappy ancient editing

Show

OOC: I, um, finally finished Project Horizons and got to feeling nostalgic. So here's a character dragged from the abyss of a long-dead game.

[BladeofObliviom]

Spoiler: Self-RP because I felt like writing some more

Show

In a distant corner of the Tavern, an unusual creature wakes up, groaning and licking her chapped lips even as she's tangentially aware of the drool oozing onto the table. Well, maybe not that strange a creature. Just a pony. One of the cute, colorful ones, not the kind who stand around tied to a post, boredly walking in circles with a child on its back. Just not exactly typical, since most sapient creatures are either mechanical or some type of humanoid. A little stranger than average, I guess.

She's not particularly odd-looking as far as ponies go. Creamy, off-white coat, brilliant ruby eyes, and a two-toned mane, both tones a shade of blue. She has some freckles on her cheeks, a worn pair of protective goggles hanging around her neck, and a long tail protruding from the end of her coat. Most of her other features are hidden by a tattered white coat bearing an emblem of a red cross and some butterflies. She's also carrying a pair of very full-looking saddlebags, though what's in them is a mystery. She's not very well-groomed; in fact, she's kind of filthy. Not, like, covered in mud filthy, but "hasn't had a chance to bathe properly in a month" filthy.

Blinking under the light, she stares upward dazed a moment before taking a look around at the many strange creatures present in Trog's Tavern. "What the..." she mumbles, trying to shake off the buzz in her skull. She suddenly gasps, and her eyes go wide. "The moon dust! No, no, I must have breathed it in by mistake..." she mumbles to herself in horror. "The Enervation..." She pauses and takes another look around, then lifts a hoof and looks at that, noting that it is indeed not currently melting or otherwise harmed. "How in Tartarus...", she continues to mumble, moments before coming to another epiphany. "It's still in my system.", she says to herself, eyes full of wonder and fear. "When the hallucination passes..."

Her head collapses back onto the table, sobbing. That doesn't look very comfortable, especially since the chair is clearly made for humanoids.

After several seconds, she lifts her head and shakes off the bizarre funk. No sense in wallowing; maybe she can logic out an escape plan before the drug wore off. She'd never tried Moon Dust before, but she recalled seeing ponies riding a high in Flank, and they were often still capable of interfacing with reality to some degree. At least a little; they could walk and identify when there were other living things around. Most likely, everything she was seeing here was physically real, just...warped. Maybe all those weird things that looked like hairless, hornless minotaurs were really just radroaches or something. Though, there was a LOT of Moon Dust there...and sometimes ponies who took a lot of that drug just fell unconscious and spent who-knows-how-long in bizarre, impossible dreams.

She hoped that wasn't the case. If her real body were unconscious, she'd probably just lie there until the moon dust worked its way out of her system. And then she'd simply melt away from the Enervation in those tunnels, assuming some Abomination didn't find her first. The tunnels under the Hoof were dangerous; she knew that. She'd be lucky to last a few hours without some roving Sentinel or worse stumbling upon her. Best case scenario there, Slip or Chain finds her and doesn't die to the Enervation in the process of dragging her out of there. Though to be honest, she's not sure either would even bother attempting it once they noticed the Enervation. Not that they weren't decent enough folks, but dragging a careless pony out of a deathtrap is not worth the chance of spontaneously liquefying.

Trying to think, she throws her saddlebags onto the table with her teeth and starts rifling through them. "Wait, what?", she says entirely too loudly to herself as she pulls a jar of moon dust out of her bag. "Well, horseapples. Can't trust my eyes then, because this is paradoxical; maybe my subconscious mind's trying to call up some hope that something else happened? Though that's assuming I can trust my deduction in this state..." She looks ready to curl up into a ball and cry some more, but doesn't. At least not yet: She seems too busy trying to jury-rig the field of epistemology.

She would probably appreciate some help sorting this out! Well, appreciate might be the wrong word. But she could probably use some help regardless.

[Rebonack]

Well well well.

What have we here?

Looks like a griffin walking through the mirror that leads from Trog's Tavern to Inari's temple. A pretty well kept griffinness, as it happens. Harpy eagle morph on her front half and a snow leopard back half. Gives her a nice white and grey color scheme. She's not covered in scars. Or mange. Or cobbled together barding. Or even reasonably well kept barding like one might expect a Talon mercenary to be clad in. No, she has on a rather nice looking bombardier's jacket with a pair of flight goggles hanging around her neck. On her left foreleg is something that looks sort of like a PIPcolt, though the design is far too sleek and colorful.

As soon as she steps through the mirror portal and spots the pony, her ears perk up.

"Oh!" the griffin exclaims, quickly glancing down at her wrist computer and punching in a few commands. Several odd looking decides are extracted from her inventory and she begins to bustle about, trying to set up the machines as quickly as possible. "Try not to move!" she requests of the newcomer, her voice heavy with excitement. "Did you just arrive here? What were you doing last? Did the trans-universal bridge have any visual component? Oooh my goodness this is so exciting! You are from a post Fallout version of Equestria, right? This is exactly the lucky break I needed! C'mon, please still be open please please please...!"

Well.

This probably answers exactly none of the newcomer's questions.

[BladeofObliviom]

Spoiler

Show

Well well well.

What have we here?

Looks like a griffin walking through the mirror that leads from Trog's Tavern to Inari's temple. A pretty well kept griffinness, as it happens. Harpy eagle morph on her front half and a snow leopard back half. Gives her a nice white and grey color scheme. She's not covered in scars. Or mange. Or cobbled together barding. Or even reasonably well kept barding like one might expect a Talon mercenary to be clad in. No, she has on a rather nice looking bombardier's jacket with a pair of flight goggles hanging around her neck. On her left foreleg is something that looks sort of like a PIPcolt, though the design is far too sleek and colorful.

As soon as she steps through the mirror portal and spots the pony, her ears perk up.

"Oh!" the griffin exclaims, quickly glancing down at her wrist computer and punching in a few commands. Several odd looking decides are extracted from her inventory and she begins to bustle about, trying to set up the machines as quickly as possible. "Try not to move!" she requests of the newcomer, her voice heavy with excitement. "Did you just arrive here? What were you doing last? Did the trans-universal bridge have any visual component? Oooh my goodness this is so exciting! You are from a post Fallout version of Equestria, right? This is exactly the lucky break I needed! C'mon, please still be open please please please...!"

Well.

This probably answers exactly none of the newcomer's questions.

That just raises further questions! But if nothing else she has something to focus on other than trying to follow in Heycartes' hoofsteps.

The pony does not move! Much. In a more normal situation she'd probably have darted for cover upon being accosted by a strange griffin, but this is hardly a normal situation, is it? "I...what? Trans-Universal bridge? Fallout? What are-Who are-you're a Griffin!" She stumbles confusedly through her words, more repeating concepts than trying to communicate properly before devolving into outright logorrhea. At the last bit she finally realizes what just came out of her mouth and proceeds to facehoof.

"Sorry, sorry, you're probably a hallucination but that doesn't mean I have to be rude.", she mumbles, hoof still firmly planted on her face.

[Rebonack]

"A portal between worlds, like the mirror portal? I'm sure your home world has or had something similar, but I'm not sure how common knowledge it is..." Geneva replies with a hum. "And 'Fallout' seems to collectively refer to a large array of universes connected by the common factor of an awful catastrophe that irradiated the land centuries ago. The exact details differ from one universe to another," she continues to ramble without skipping a beat. "And I'm not a hallucination, I'm quite real. My name is Geneva Fischer, nice to meet you!"

She offers a claw to shake.

Then looks down at the pony's hooves with a frown.

"Oh, right."

The claw is clenched into a fist instead.

"If you want to be technical, I'm not really a griffin, either. I'm not one of those... what were they called? The shape shifting bug things from your world? At least I'm assuming your version of Equestria had them. I haven't read about one that lacks them yet. Changelings? That sounds right." The rambling continues! "I'm not from Equestria at all. But my home universe does share the commonality of the Great War. The sides fighting and the exact reasons and the weapons used just differ a bit. And there aren't any ponies. Or, well, there are, just not Equestrian ponies."

That's an important distinction.

"Ah HAH! It's still open!" Geneva cheers as she begins fiddling with her wrist computer again. "Ooooh, but just hardly. Getting some really weird energy readings, though... Ugh... almost feels... ghost-y?"

[DoomITP]

3: Having a pleasant conversation with Ethriel
Kamaria nods. "Okay," she says. If it's best not to ask about it, then it's best not to ask about it. "I'll bet it's on the WHO's list of things that cause cancer. Is it?" she asks.

She continues eating.

I mean it might be on the list of things that cause coronary heart disease but I don't think it's on there for cancer.

[BladeofObliviom]

Not a Changeling or a hallucination? That sounds like something a changeling hallucination would say. Though admittedly a changeling probably also wouldn't admit that they weren't really a griffin in the first place. That's the last thing on the Pony's mind though. She's waaaaay too busy trying to process that other stuff. In fact, she's mostly just staring wide-eyed at Geneva through that whole rambling session, though she does half-heartedly return the hoof-fist-bump. "Uh, hello then, 'Gen-eva'?" A little stilted, but she's pretty sure she got the sounds right. Griffin names are weird. Or not-Griffin names. You know what I mean. "I'm Open Heart, and-" Hold up, what was that last bit?

Did Geneva say something about ghosty energy? And...wasn't she talking about a portal earlier? Heart's eyes were already open pretty wide, but now they shone more fear than confusion. "Wait! Wait wait. You asked what I was doing? I was in the middle of an Enervation field strong enough to liquefy a pony in a minute, tops!" If she were more certain about what was going on she might have more useful information, but Heart isn't sure enough she understands whats going on to interfere more than that. It's weird though. Everyone knows what enervation is, right? Though...she supposed ponies not from the Hoof might not know. "Uh, enervation, it's this...sort of screaming, buzzing signal that's just kind of there and does bad things to ponies. Proteins start breaking down, you start to feel crawling inside your skull, and...and I've heard that it causes some sort of catastrophic feedback loop for telepathic creatures. That Enervation stuff, uh, yeah. I, um, I'm still not sure that this isn't a really weird hallucination, but...I can't fix melting, okay?"

[Rebonack]

"Well! Nice to meet you Open Heart, welcome to the Nexus. Hmmm..." Geneva hums again, glancing between her wrist computer and... well... nothing. Apparently. One of the odd devices she hastily set up begins projecting a holographic visualization of the approximate position of the portal. "Only one Plank length wide. And the equipment isn't picking up anything. But I am hearing something. Feeling it, too. But it's pretty faint. It has an amplified effect on psychic-types, huh? Well. Sacrifices have to be made for science sometimes, I guess."

And then the griffin... pixelates?

That's probably the best way to describe it. The image of her briefly becomes almost two dimensional, nothing more than a mass of large colored squares, before suddenly changing color and rapidly snapping back into focus. But not into a griffin. Or a pony. Or a changeling. Or anything that Heart would probably recognize. The thing she's least dissimilar to is a weird floating white cat. Her velvet-like fur has a subtle pink iridescence to it and on her hips is a magenta mark shaped more or less like a hurricane symbol. One could almost mistake it for a simple cutie mark! But this thing clearly isn't a pony.

She's also immediately in pain.

"Guuuh!" Geneva gasps as blood begins trickling out of her nose and she starts frantically jabbing at her adorably re-sized wrist computer. Four beams of bright blue light lance toward an empty point in the air and suddenly the subtle background scream of innervation is gone. Geneva slumps onto the nearest table. "Yep. Definitely ghost-y energy."

[BladeofObliviom]

A hologram? Well...welcome to the Hoofington Metro Tunnels. Or at least a projection of them. Which is probably better, since it puts an extra layer of reality between you and all the horrible things there. There's a set of rail lines lying upon the tunnel floor, though they're so decayed that it's hard to recognize them as such; the passage is semicircular, and the walls are coated in a strange black ceramic material except where decay has revealed underlying stone and the places where strange biomass accumulates in a variety of sickly colors. The tunnel is not littered with pony skeletons, but the gray sludge accumulating in the low places looks like it might once have been bone. And who knows what that glowing rainbow soup pooling over there is supposed to be? Off in the distance, depending on the 'range' of the projection, it may be possible to see something distinctly, obviously unnatural: A dark, lumbering figure, shaped vaguely like a pony if some sculptor knew nothing about anatomy. It's a haphazardly arranged composition of parts, made from the same black ceramic as the walls, far too many randomly-placed green glass panels projecting images of shifting eyes, and miscellaneous bits that one can only assume to be random debris (including some of the aforementioned biomass); whatever it is, the hulking not-pony shambles along on five legs, lurking about in search of prey.

Heart quails in horror at the sight, whether or not the Core Abomination is visible. The Hoofington Tunnels are not a nice place. She almost doesn't notice Geneva's...shapeshifting? Given the pixellation she's more likely disengaging the technological equivalent of disguise self, but...details. And then pain! Pain is bad. Heart lunges into action, pulling things out of her saddlebags! First comes a bottle full of some pitch-black fluid. "Nnnnnope." She gingerly sets it aside, really not wanting to break that bottle and find out just what this particular corrupted healing potion does. Next comes one in...a sickly sludge-green? "Oh, come on!", she shouts in frustration, setting that one aside too as she glances at a pained Geneva and spots the lances of light. "Come on, come on...", she almost begs as she finally pulls out one in a faint pink. It isn't ideal, but at least it isn't poison in a bottle, and it hasn't gone clear enough to be worthless yet.

"Here!" Heart says hurriedly, all but throwing the potion at Geneva. "It's a healing potion. Are you okay? Please don't die, I dunno exactly what you are but if you're some kind of monster pony you're the nicest monster pony I've met and I'd feel guilty if your brain melted because I didn't warn you about innervation fast enough and maybe you're a hallucination but if you're not then that must have hurt and if you are then I only used up a hallucinatory healing potion and..."

Yeah, you can interrupt her whenever. It's been a stressful day, she'll probably just keep rambling if she's not stopped.

[Rebonack]

With the portal fully closed by Geneva's gear, the holographic projection of the other side likewise winks out. No one wants to see that nasty stuff over there. It's gross.

The subtle glow of telekinesis surrounds the potion as Geneva pulls it over to herself, cupping her little paws around it and focusing. A blue-white light suffuses the potion as the air fills with the sound of gentle bells. And when the glow subsides, the potion has been restored to a vibrant pink.

Geneva quaffs it.

Which probably looks pretty silly considering that she's only about two feet tall. That bottle is pretty big compared to her.

Thankfully, that encourages her nose to stop bleeding. Certainly a plus. Geneva would be pretty unhappy about her brain getting melted.

"Thank you," she sighs as she sets the bottle down. "You weren't kidding about that stuff being especially nasty on telepaths. I don't think we have anything that's a full equivalent back home."

At least nothing that she knows about. Geneva traveled pretty widely during her years in the Wasteland. She encountered horrors best left forgotten. But thankfully none of the horrors in question were fields of soul-sucking awfulness. Because that really isn't something you can fight against.

[BladeofObliviom]

"You're welcome. It's...something all right." mutters Heart, looking down at the table. "S-sorry about that. I guess it's my fault that was here if I tumbled through a, uh, trans-universal portal or whatever it was. But, uh, yeah, that's Enervation. I don't know exactly what it is, but I think it's some form of necromantic radiation. A drunk pony once told me it was the Song of a Star God calling souls to join its choir." She snorts at that. "She was very drunk. Probably riding a dash high too."

Something catches her attention. "How'd you do that, anyway? Usually when an innervation field corrupts a healing potion, it's a one-way trip. I've never seen somepony actually restore one before. Or, uh, some non-pony for that matter. Sorry, I, um, I still don't know what exactly you are."

[Rebonack]

"That sounds pretty ghostly either way," Geneva replies. "And while it also sounds like a scientific curiosity, I would rather not melt to satisfy my inquisitiveness."

Geneva would rather avoid a 'curiosity killed the cat' scenario.

"And I used Heal Bell. It's a powerful restorative technique for curing all kinds of ailments, maladies, poisons, and curses. I... lost a lot of people close to me when I fled my home Vault. Stable, I guess, would be the equivalent in your world. And another friend once I was out in the Wasteland. So I devoted quite a bit of time to learn healing techniques so I wouldn't feel so helpless in the future if my friends were hurt."

Having a loved one die in your arms while you watch is pretty much the worst.

"I guess we might have been on a similar path, then? If I'm interpreting those cases correctly. You have a talent for healing, right?" Geneva asks. She's no expert on equestrian magic, but she knows enough to be aware of cutie marks. "I'm sorry if I get anything wrong. I've read quite a bit about your home world. Or at least one similar to it. Someone very dear to me is from there."

Very dear indeed.

"Ah, well, I have you at the disadvantage then, don't I?" Geneva laughs. "I'm a mew, which probably doesn't tell you anything useful. I know that my species was created at some point in the past to function as a sort of living genetic library. I store the genetic code of every living thing I meet in psionic compression. And I suspect the original purpose purpose of my species may have had something to do with terraforming, but whoever created us is long gone. Here, let me show you."

And with that, Geneva pixelates again before quickly resolving into-!

Open Heart!

An exact replica of her, in fact.

"See? Perfect duplicate!"

[BladeofObliviom]

Spoiler

Show

"That sounds pretty ghostly either way," Geneva replies. "And while it also sounds like a scientific curiosity, I would rather not melt to satisfy my inquisitiveness."

Geneva would rather avoid a 'curiosity killed the cat' scenario.

"And I used Heal Bell. It's a powerful restorative technique for curing all kinds of ailments, maladies, poisons, and curses. I... lost a lot of people close to me when I fled my home Vault. Stable, I guess, would be the equivalent in your world. And another friend once I was out in the Wasteland. So I devoted quite a bit of time to learn healing techniques so I wouldn't feel so helpless in the future if my friends were hurt."

Having a loved one die in your arms while you watch is pretty much the worst.

"I guess we might have been on a similar path, then? If I'm interpreting those cases correctly. You have a talent for healing, right?" Geneva asks. She's no expert on equestrian magic, but she knows enough to be aware of cutie marks. "I'm sorry if I get anything wrong. I've read quite a bit about your home world. Or at least one similar to it. Someone very dear to me is from there."

Open Heart nods with sympathy at the mention of losing people. That's always rough. "That's a nice spell though, I'll say that much." And then the conversation moves on; Heart gets it. Living in the wasteland sucks. A lot. But dwelling on it is how you go crazy. "Oh, that's not my cutie mark.", she says with a chuckle, "That's the Ministry of Peace Emblem, though the butterflies are Ministry Mare Fluttershy's Cutie Mark if I know my history right. But you're not wrong otherwise." Heart tucks her head back inside her coat and starts to throw it off, figuring that if she's really here in a bar it's probably not as necessary. While doing so, she only nods at the mention of observing a similar world. She's still trying to wrap her head around the idea of there even being multiple worlds in the first place, much less the manifold variations of Equestria...

Without her coat on, Open Heart doesn't really look totally different. No crazy changes to her color scheme, or anything like that. Under there she pretty much looks like a normal Earth Pony, except for the bloodied bandages wrapped around her barrel and the fact that she very obviously favors her right side. Indeed, she almost looks a little bit bent. Her cutie mark is also visible now, resembling a cartoon heart with a nice little adhesive bandage on it. "I'm technically supposed to be a surgeon, I think, but I've learned to branch out a bit and the magic doesn't really seem to mind.", Heart says with a faint smile.

Spoiler: Image

Show

(Response to last paragraph or so pending response to OOC question)

- - - Updated - - -

Spoiler

Show

"Ah, well, I have you at the disadvantage then, don't I?" Geneva laughs. "I'm a mew, which probably doesn't tell you anything useful. I know that my species was created at some point in the past to function as a sort of living genetic library. I store the genetic code of every living thing I meet in psionic compression. And I suspect the original purpose purpose of my species may have had something to do with terraforming, but whoever created us is long gone. Here, let me show you."

And with that, Geneva pixelates again before quickly resolving into-!

Open Heart!

An exact replica of her, in fact.

"See? Perfect duplicate!"

"That's...unusual." Open Heart says with less surprise than the situation probably warrants. There's a lot of weird stuff in the wasteland, maybe she's some sort of mutant? The word 'psionic' isn't familiar though... "Wait, did you say geneti-"

-too late. Geneva finds herself a duplicate of Open Heart, sure...minus the bandages. It's an oddly light-feeling body for an earth pony. The real Open Heart's eyes widen in shock, staring at Geneva's wings. Pegasus wings. "But...but...", the original stammers in shock. "Is...is that what they were supposed to look like?" She sounds pretty shaken by this development.

[Rebonack]

"Is what...?" Geneva starts, before glancing sideways and spotting the wings. "Oh."

And the bloodied bandages on Open Heart's flanks.

Oh.

Geneva quickly de-rezzes back into the slightly more familiar griffin shape. "I'm so sorry, I had no idea. That was very rash and impolite of me. I shouldn't have Transformed into you without asking permission first," Geneva quickly stammers out. "This all must be so strange and jarring, I was just caught up in the excitement of finding a bridge back to Nick's world, or at least one similar to it. How about we slow down a bit, okay?"

The griffin turns her attention toward the nearby bar.

"Cosmo? Could I get some water with a bit of lemon in it? A pitcher and two glasses. And two bowls of fresh fruit?"

The gnome mumbles something vaguely off color.

"Thanks," Geneva replies, sounding quite genuine. Then back to Heart! "Suffice to say this isn't the Wasteland. There's fresh food and clean water here. The place is a paradise compared to where we both grew up. You just have to get use to all the strangeness."

[BladeofObliviom]

On another glance, she's not bent at all; her right side is just slightly less concave than her left, giving that appearance. Probably because there's a wing hidden under there.

"D-don't worry, I'm okay." Heart says, looking away and clearly not all that okay. "I'm not mad at you, just...just sort of startled. I guess you figured me out?" She chuckles darkly, and changes the subject. "Where is here anyway? I forgot if you mentioned it. It's been sort of hard to follow everything you've been saying, sorry."

She's still not making eye contact, but she accepts a bit of water. Sniffs the glass, takes a sip (using both hooves to hold the glass), and seems to be swishing it around a bit rather than swallowing immediately. Old habits die hard.

[Rebonack]

The water tastes like water!

It doesn't have that awful industrial taste that contaminated water does. Nor does it cause that weird feeling of nausea that exposure to too much radiation results in. Shortly there after, a bowl full of fresh fruit is placed on the table. Apples, pears, strawberries, pineapple... Oh goodness, it smells heavenly... Something as simple as fresh fruit and clean water costs nothing short of a fortune back in the Wasteland. That was one of the first things that Geneva had to wrap her mind around. The concept that safe sustenance is commonplace rather than a precious commodity.

"Here, specifically, is Trog's Tavern," Geneva explains. "It's a bar. And also a grill. It also exists in a whole bunch of places at once. Which is weird."

That is pretty weird.

"More generally, here is the Nexus. It's... well... imagine many different places all overlapping. That's sort of what this place is. A crossroads. Which results in most of the weirdness."

At least ninety percent of it.

"There's actually a community here populated mostly with equestrians called Carousel Court. Great place to visit when Halloween rolls around," Geneva says brightly. "Or... you have another name for it, right? The harvest festival with all the candy and costumes?"

[BladeofObliviom]

The really sad part is that she's actually just testing to make sure there isn't any woozy juice in it before consuming any. It would suck to escape the wasteland only to immediately get drugged, enslaved, and probably sold to some rich Society pony with a thing for 'broken angels'. Not that she really thinks Geneva would do that (especially since they're sharing a pitcher), but...as mentioned, old habits die hard. Seemingly satisfied, she takes a swig of lemon water and shudders in delight. Fresh, cold water. Impossible, but true. How long had it been..?

Heart listens silently for a moment, ears flat and beginning to frown as Geneva describes a set of definite physical impossibilities, though she brightens up a little when Carousel Court is mentioned. "Nightmare Night? Didn't think anypony celebrated that anymore.", she says with a tone implying piqued curiosity. "Y'know, not much candy to go around. Plus knowing my luck Nightmare Moon might pop up and eat me anyway, candy or no." She chuckles again, breaking eye contact, and frowns. "Sorry, I still can't get over the idea that this must be some sort of hallucination or dream. I really want it to be real, I do, but the more I hear, the more impossible and too-good-to-be-true it sounds. I almost feel like the moment I let myself feel happy for a bit, the Moon Dust will suddenly wear off and I'll wake up melting in that Enervation field."

[Rebonack]

"Nightmare night!" Geneva laughs. "That was it. I heard rumors that some version of Princess Luna had shown up here in the Nexus for a week or two several years ago, but I haven't been able to find much in the way of corroborating evidence for it. On that front, I don't think it's very likely that you would be gobbled up." Getting gobbled up is pretty terrible. "When Nightmare Night rolls around, you should definitely make a point of visiting every candy shop you can over in the Court. They make the best sweets in the city."

By no small margin, in fact.

Geneva frowns slightly at the mention of the hallucination.

"I can't really prove to you that this is all real."

A beat.

"Well, no, that isn't strictly true. I could but that would require getting inside your head. And I would really rather avoid doing that. The better option is to just wait it out. As time goes on, it'll become increasingly clear that this is quite real. I'll admit, I was pretty skeptical when I first wound up in a crater outside the City. I had been messing with an experimental teleporter I shouldn't have been touching in an old science lab and the thing blew up in my face. Going from a decaying bunker to a field full of green grass and wildflowers was quite the experience."

[BladeofObliviom]

She smiles through the discussion of Nightmare Night. Hearing some strange Mee-yuu talk about Princess Luna like the war never happened is strange, to be sure, but is anything normal in this place? And the promise of candy! Such a rare treat in the wastes, almost too precious to eat at all. Almost. Heart idly wonders for a moment if maybe she shouldn't go to this Carousel Court, after all. Would it really be fair to them for her to burden their minds with what she'd seen? They probably had no idea what kind of place the wasteland was. Wouldn't it be cruel of her to introduce a fraction of the cruelty of the wastes to those ponies, even by proxy? What would she even say if they asked about the bandages? Most pegasi would find her appearance vaguely nauseating, especially if they'd never faced such injury and pain themselves. Would they understand? Could they?

Quesions for another time, she supposes. The prospect of active mind-reading gives Heart pause, if the suddenly re-flattened ears and widened eyes are any indication. She takes another swig of water to distract herself a moment and appears to calm down, though. "Yeah, that's...fair, I'm sorry. I'm not usually such a downer, really." She manages a faint smile, even if her heart's not really in it. "That sounds like it would be bizarre. In that case, I suppose I'm lucky I ran into someone knowledgeable before I spent too much time confusing myself and panicking." She shifts nervously in her seat.

"Um, maybe I should explain why I thought this was a hallucination. I mean, on some level I still do, even if evidence is mounting against that. I don't think I can ever conclusively prove it's not, but at the same time..." She thinks a moment, then nods mostly to herself and points a hoof at the jar of Moon Dust on the table. "That's called Moon Dust, and it's a...it's a drug. A hallucinogen, and a really potent one. I've never had any before, to my knowledge, but I found the jar while scavenging in those tunnels." She's not sure if she should say this next part. She almost wishes she'd thought of it earlier; maybe Geneva wouldn't have had to close the portal that was exciting her so much if she had. "I picked it up off a dead pony whom I'd noticed hadn't started melting in the innervation. To my surprise, as soon as I touched it, the screaming and buzzing in the back of my head just...stopped. Like I wasn't in the field at all. And then the dead pony started to liquefy from the inside out."

Y'know, if Geneva knows a therapist, this might be a good referral case.

"So I took it with me. I wanted to study this stuff. Nothing protects from enervation, and yet somehow this jar of white hallucinogenic dirt was warding it off. I had to know why. I looked it over, and then I suddenly felt woozy, and then I woke up here." She motions around. "I thought for certain that I must have inhaled the stuff, right there in the middle of an innervation field. I reasoned that as long as I was hallucinating, it was still in my system, but as soon as the hallucination ended..." She trails off. She really hopes Slip and Chain are okay. Not that they really need her help staying alive, but she'd feel really guilty if they came looking for her and melted in the tunnels, or ran into the Core Abomination.

"Well, I was just sitting there in an enervation field." She finishes, frowning. "I'm sorry that I didn't think of it when you exposed yourself to the Enervation for a moment there. Maybe the portal could have been salvaged if I'd remembered that part more quickly. You seemed excited and I was terrified, but maybe if I'd been a little faster..." Heart trails off again, sounding frustrated with herself. She shakes her head and tries to change the subject. "Anyway, if this IS all in my head, I suppose there's no point in wallowing. In that case, I'm living on a short clock whether or not I believe it. And if it's real, then there's especially no point in wallowing." She frowns, then shakes her head before reapplying a half-hearted smile. "For what it's worth, thanks. I probably would have sat here sobbing a lot longer if there weren't a friendly voice here. And...thanks for the meal, too. I was too preoccupied at first to acknowledge it, but that was really nice of you." The smile looks a lot more genuine at that.

[Rebonack]

To be fair, there are some equestrians from really messed up worlds. Even the Nexus can have its fair share of awfulness, after all. It's just typically a different sort of awfulness than one typically finds in the Wasteland. Unless, of course, one starts off in the middle of the Radiation Pit or the Bombed Out Zone.

Because Red Zones are pretty bad.

"I try to frequent Trog's," the currently-griffin replies with a smile. Griffin smiles look weird. Their beak is totally immobile, so only the very corners of their mouths move. "There are SO many new arrivals who end up here. That makes it a really useful location for my research. Don't worry yourself too much about the portal, the information I got from merely closing it was quite important. Besides, having a gap in reality that's slowly melting the flesh of everyone in Trog's would probably be hazardous."

Except for the people without any flesh.

Like that being over there who is apparently composed completely out of hard ultramarine blue light and crackling energy.

Though the information provided on the moon dust is interesting!

"Really? Those are some fascinating properties. Back home, there are a few creatures related to the moon that are inherently resistant to ghostly attacks on their vitality," Geneva muses as she eyes the jar. "That's probably just a coincidence. Everything I've studied suggests that the innate magic from your home world, or at least worlds like yours, is pretty different from the various forces called 'magic' in mine. Things from my home are much more... elemental, I guess you would say. Do you mind if I examine the powder?"

[BladeofObliviom]

Heart is sadly only so well-informed, and contrary to her previous assertion is being a huge downer.

Griffon smiles don't bother her though. She's used to them; Talons aren't exactly a common sight in her little corner of the wastes, but they show up here and there. Heart nods in agreement with the assertion that flesh-melting enervation leakage into a populated area would be bad though. "That makes sense. You're right, innervation contamination would be an unacceptable risk even at low intensity in a well-traveled area. There's a reason no one builds towns in Enervation Fields."

Well, except Flank. But that's less 'in' the field and more distressingly near it. Though now that she thinks about it, Flank was pretty much the place to go for drugs...including Moon Dust. And the Core, she supposes, but there probably isn't anypony living there anymore. Prooooobably.

Geneva's last comment snaps her back to reality. "Oh! Go ahead. Just be careful, it's a potent, highly addictive hallucinogen, so if you need to remove any from the jar, try not to get any powder in the air. Or in an orifice. Doctor's advisory." Heart does not have a real doctorate. She's probably trying to be funny. "If you don't mind me asking, what's your home like? From what you've described it sounds...somewhat familiar, but certain things clearly work in ways unlike any Equestrian magic I'm familiar with."

She sounds genuinely curious! Heart studies magic herself, after all, even if she isn't a unicorn. Lots of ponies forget that Unicorns just have the flashiest, most actively-controlled magic; all ponies are magical. Plus Science was one of her tag skills.

[Rebonack]

Potent hallucinogen, huh? Well. There are ways to deal with that, thankfully.

Geneva sheds her disguise again, if only because she doesn't really have any access to her psionic abilities when she's cosplaying as a griffin. A pink aura surround the jar, pulls the lid off, and scoops out a small sample of material to deposit in one of those weird looking machines she's toting around. Thankfully the psychokinetic bottle she created prevents any of the material from escaping. Because the last thing they need right now are hallucinations. The sampling machine begins to hum as it processes the properties of the stuff.

"What was home like... well... From what I've gathered the respective histories of our home worlds are pretty different. But they do converge on the general topic of the Great War. The fight for your people was between the ponies and zebras, right?" Geneva asks. "Where I'm from, it was a war between alliances of human nations. Humans are bipeds with the hair on top of their heads."

Silly humans.

"I'm not even totally sure what the fighting started over, but by the end of it the surface of our world was turned into a Wasteland. Some people survived underground in bunkers created by Vault Tek, a subsidiary of SilphCo. That's how may ancestors survived the war. But aside from humans, there are other sapient from my world, too. Humans call them 'pokemon', a collective term for all the creatures descended from my species. They're fantastically diverse, and they have a pretty wide range of magical and mental abilities. Some are pretty smart, some aren't much brighter than the animals you find around here. Humans use pokemon as pets, work animals, or even friends. And since most humans from my world considered pokemon 'below' them, it meant that they weren't always treated in a very dignified way," Geneva explains. "That's why mews stay hidden, mostly. Because every time a human has caught one of us, it nearly always results in something awful happening."

She brightens considerably.

"But! That isn't a problem here! The City has a Do Not Catch list that sapient pokemon can be registered on so that pokemon trainers can't treat us like animals to be captured. It isn't the most ideal situation, but I suppose it's better than nothing." She pauses for a moment, considering something. "Wait, did you mean differences in magic? Or were you wanting some comparative history?"

The sampling machine continues humming unobtrusively.

[BladeofObliviom]

Heart watches the sample taken with some curiosity. It's a lot like Unicorn telekinesis at a glance; she wonders if it's a matching Sparkle Matrix or if it works by some other mechanism here. She appreciates not hallucinating though. No one needs hallucinations here, the Nexus is weird enough as is. She spends a moment examining the device too. Does it work using a divination talisman like she'd expect, or some wholly alien physical law?

Humans! So that was what the weird hairless not-minotaurs were called. Now that she thought about it, hadn't she encountered a book featuring humans before? Some prewar unicorn conspiracy theorist, or something. Maybe she had a glimpse of this place, and wasn't totally crazy after all? And Vault-Tek/Stable-Tec was waaaay too close to be a coincidence, especially since Geneva had already mentioned that her world's equivalent of Stables were called Vaults. And 'pokemon'? That's not a word in Equestrian OR Roaman, she's pretty sure. Not that she speaks more than a little Roaman, but it doesn't really sound like a zebra word. Furrowing her brow in thought, she munches on an apple while the other person speaks.

She faintly smiles at the question, or perhaps just a genuine, fresh apple. That's a pretty good reason to smile. "I, um, meant to ask about the magic, but the history is interesting too. Did the Enclave seal up the skies in your home too? Is there even an Enclave? You didn't say anything about any Pegasi." She doesn't really wait for an answer before going onto the next thought. "That Do Not Catch list sounds helpful. What's the fee to get on the No-Slavers-Allowed list here?" Oh, she seems to think that this works like Usury's racket out of Paradise.

[Rebonack]

The sampler is an odd hodge-podge of various bits and parts connected together, each clashing pretty drastically with the others. Geneva has cobbled most of her equipment together from components that hail from totally different universes, wedding them together to create a whole that's truly more than the sum of its parts. Simply put, it isn't running off any one concept of physics, but several. Most of the stuff Geneva uses has been constructed by her. They're all, for the most part, prototypes.

As for the teek, what Geneva's doing seems to have quite a bit more physicality to it than standard telekinesis. Rather than simply moving an object around, she's creating a quasi-solid mental projection to move objects with. Almost akin to a highly specialized force field.

"There's an Enclave, but they're a faction of the pre-war government that set up base off the mainland and kept to themselves," Geneva replies, her smile faltering slightly at the mention of the Enclave. "Until they decided to start conquering the rest of the Wasteland. Things were pretty bad before I got exploded over here. No pegasi, though. Or sealing up the sky. I've read about that, though."

She declines to mention it was the Enclave that blasted their way into her home Vault to raid it for supplies. No reason to bring up those hurtful memories.

"Oh, there's no fee for the Do Not Catch list," Geneva laughs. "You just have to get registered. Slavery is illegal in the City. Most of the surrounding areas, too. Though as you move further away from the City, you risk running into slavers, unfortunately."

Slavery is pretty much the worst as far as Geneva is concerned.

"As for magic back home... well, no one really calls it magic anymore. Humans used to, before they started to understand it better. Different pokemon have different connections to different elements. Some are pretty conventional, fire, ice, lightning. Others get a little strange compared to what most people in the Nexus would consider an element. Mews like myself are psychic-type, we focus mostly on orderly mental and spiritual power. But my species is also quite plastic, we can take on any other single element, too. Some humans are able to tap into some of the elements, but not all of them," Geneva rambles. "The basis for it all is programed into our reality, for a lack of a better term. You run the correct program, and you get the correct output. That's literal enough that 'spells' can be easily stored on optical media for later use."

[BladeofObliviom]

Hodge-podge tech is familiar to any Wastelander worth their salt! Tech based on multiple conflicting definitions of the laws of reality, on the other hand...well. The TK is interesting in a different way. Heart has heard of Unicorns modifying the standard Telekinesis spell that all of them seem to know into a makeshift personal force shield, but this is basically the opposite of that. Curiouser and curiouser...

Speaking of curiosity, the Pegasus is more than a little curious about this other Enclave, especially since it sounds like it has very little in common with the one she's aware of, but she knows better than to pursue a sore subject and drops it with an acknowledging nod. Geneva has been very polite and friendly! No need to press her on the things that obviously bother her. Besides, there's plenty of other things to think about. Like magic! Pokemon 'magic' is weird to an Equestrian perspective, certainly. Maybe not in a general sense; most creatures being somehow magical is true in Equestria too, though that magic tends to be less uniform between individuals of a species/class. Any given Pony tribe is a lot more magically diverse than, say, the population of Zubats in the Kanto region. The programming metaphor for spells makes sense to Heart, though. That's basically how Talismans work, even if Geneva's talking about TMs.

This is exciting though: A government both strong enough and principled enough to keep the slavers at bay! Though now that she thinks about it... "Wait, if slavery is illegal, then why does there need to be a list? A list implies exceptions to the rule, but it's already illegal. And obviously the slavers aren't the ones maintaining that list if they aren't allowed here, so the ones further out that you mentioned probably don't care..." Open Heart does not really get how Pokemon trainers work. Though given that she's talking to a Pokemon, maybe that's for the best.

[Fenric]

Dark Dreams enters the tavern, looking just a touch queasy. She's a midnight blue unicorn pony, her cutie mark is a silver crescent moon with three gold "Z"s. She looks a little thin and ... feral ... for want of a better word, and her eyes are burning blue flames.

She trots up to the bar and contemplates the menu: there has to be something to wash that horrible ink aftertaste away! Miserable fire teams calling for cleric backup when there's full-on divine interference... they needed Keiko or someone, not her.