Polysomnography

Anything you might want to try out that doesn't temporally or thematically fit the serial should go here. This is an ideal space for all your what-ifs and might-have-beens, as well as for your average silliness.
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IamLEAM1983
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Re: Polysomnography

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Gently, the group's lemonade glasses began to rattle, a faint tremor rose from deep underground - and they found themselves slowly, almost imperceptibly floating off of their respective seats. The trees in the plantation had stopped waving with the wind and the wind itself had died down. Small pebbles rose off of the path ahead of the plantation house and small globs of liquid left their glasses, suspended in mid-air...

For a while, Marius would find himself floating away from his creation, his speed very slightly increasing as time passed. The Squids followed along, some closing their eyes to ward off a spate of vertigo, while Harry and Taylor assumed relaxed positions, as if they were being pulled up by some sort of wire connected to their head. The vampire, on the other hand, would sense Harry's will manifesting in the form of a slightly opaque one-person glass lounge of sorts, that shimmered into being around him. A few moments later, he found himself staring at what felt like the definitive end-point of his Sanctum, the canopy of the sky suddenly passing from a very lifelike rendition to a mere backdrop. His ominous sun kept its course, seemingly unaware that the group was headed just out-of-bounds, perhaps just  a few inches past the terminal border of Vlastos' imagined space - and then further upwards along the curve.

Soon, Marius would find himself contemplating an unexpected bird's-eye view of his creation. Harry lightly frowned, and colored bands of light shimmered into being, delineating each path he'd created. Down by the base of the curve, gray dots began to converge. They passed through the Sanctum's border like gametes puncturing a cell wall - and came into view as unknown Void Weavers. The group was too high to make out anything without assistance, but Taylor bent the Sanctum's light in front of the group, providing a top-down tracking shot of the newcomers. Harry, floating in place, looked back to the Alexandrian.

"You know security systems, I know music. Sequential Discovery is a concept puzzle-makers like George Gammell know well, but it also defines music theory. You won't be surprised if I tell you it's an important part of designing a security system, too. One thing leads into another with a mixture of grace and flow, you construct an orchestral piece by weaving individual movements together with bridging, beginning and end-points. If you're trying to buy enough time for your client to call the cops or reach a panic room, you connect locks with other locks or obstacles."

Taylor smirked meanly again. "And it all starts with a honeypot... Luckily for us, Vlastos, each Sanctum is a honeypot in and of itself, and especially new ones. Stepping in is usually easy, like it was for these four. Let's see how difficult you've made it for them to leave alive..."

Marius having never used the Black Speech's basic communicative components frequently, another one in their group made their tendrils slither and warped the harsh glottals and gutturals that reached them into English. The four interlopers wore mostly unadorned robes of the basest rungs in the Prelacy, their skin still unmarked by expression wrinkles and lightly gleaming with the seemingly perfect levels of hydration young Squids could display. Light bounced off of their dark hides as off of faint oil slicks, suggesting their skin's coating of neonate mucus made the Alexandrian's conjured environment more than a little cloying for them.

"You said this one just resolved?" asked the green Squid. "Are you sure we didn't just miss it the first time around?
- Yes," replied another Cuttle with a mottled, dark blue finish, "I'm positive. The Speaker's moving to outlaw direct inspiration from the surface world if it doesn't involve our destroying it, so this isn't a local's Sanctum. We're either seeing the work of a Shadow Lord - a well-remunerated one, by the looks of it - or of one of these rebel scum. Father Oolos says there comes a point where there isn't much difference between the Chamberlain's flunkies and the white-clad apostates. Some lose sight of how our goals are meant to be expressed, others abandon them entirely. Either of them are fodder for the Dead Gods' wrath."

A slate-grey Squid walked up to one of Vlastos' more benign fronds. "Is this a surface plant? Doesn't it have spores?
- No, you idiot," sighed Blue Cuttle, "surface plants don't proliferate like ours do. They don't release spores, most barely have enough mettle to create poison strains. Remember our lessons? The Young God Errs in Foolishness. They don't have enough of a grasp on the Tools They stole."

Blue Cuttle apparently had the most leadership. "Remember, we're here to find anything that could indebt our Fathers or the House Speakers toward us. Nothing here is real and if you die here you'll wake up in your cot. That doesn't mean this place's creator didn't endeavor to please the Dread-Mother. There's almost certainly traps ahead of us."

The tallest of the bunch, a gaunt purple specimen, tried to rubberneck ahead without leaving the safety of the start of the trail. For his efforts, he only caught sight of a collumn and a few windows.

"They really live like this," he noted, astonishment and disgust clear in his voice, "under sunlight, in fortresses of tree-wood and surface-stone! They step out into the open air every day and ignore the promise of the Void!"

Purple Squid's outrage had a quivering edge to it, betraying a bit of glee. "Oh, I wish they'd make it easy, sometimes - so we could torture them without all this fuss..."

Blue Cuttle looked back, seemingly annoyed. "Loriath! Snap out of it; we're all supposed to be awake in time for First Service, so we have to move! Would you rather I told the Arbiter that you'd prefer to skip penance in the Flesh, like those House Zamrath fools?"

Purple Squid warbled wordlessly, more an expression of sudden rage and enmity than anything close to a Word. "I have cousins in Zamrath, Davos! You wouldn't have half the command you have over the higher spheres of the Speech - especially not so early on - if not for their work! Work which, I might add, you stole from Father Reng's library! My Father!"

Davos gestured dismissively. "Go soak your head, Loriath - everyone steals from everyone else and everyone murders everyone else. It's how our faith is tested and how the Augurs and Speakers are chosen. If your progenitor had wanted to keep those scrolls, he should've made copies beforehand."

Loriath lagged behind for an instant - long enough to stare daggers at Davos' back - and then trudged along. Seeing this, Taylor couldn't repress a quiet cackle.

"This should be fun," he noted to nobody in particular. Harry gave his colleague a look of disapproval and turned a more clinical eye to the proceedings, obviously intending to "paint" the hapless fools in accordance with the path they'd pick, for easier observation.
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