The last of her summoned clients stepped into the bar, not all of them very satisfying. A few did catch her eye, but for the most part, it didn't matter who she chose. It never mattered really, not at this stage in the story. Leaving the table she sat at (its presence now noticeable by any who might acknowledge it had ever been "missing" or out of sight), the woman with the black hair turned towards a corner booth, packed with people, none of whom she had called. With a snap of her fingers, their minds rewired themselves, briefly, and they vacated the booth. She placed a hand on the table inside of the booth and the entire corner faded from perceptible existence.
She moved through the bar, still unnoticed, and watched the flow of things. A goblin and an elf making a business deal with their minds; a dryad and a living slime talking to a halfing; a magitek android sitting alone, an untouched drink before him; a lizardman mechanic with grease casually brushed onto his forehead and forgotten; a plant, the forgotten science experiment of a long lost researcher; the characters stretched out further and further, in ways that seemed almost impossible within the bar's small space. Yet, they all fit. The bar was packed, the money filled a tip jar that could never be filled, and the alcohol flowed as though it would never dry up. In fact, it never would. Even after the day ended and the patrons somehow miraculously staggered back home safely, the bartender(s) behind the bar would notice that the stock of booze was mighty yet.
Standing in the center of the bar, the woman could feel the power of that central point, the central point that the bar itself was. It was a Locus of Power, of magic, science, space/time. It was, for this brief moment guided by her unseen hand, the very center of existence. Every iteration of this day, this Treaty Signing, happened all at once and could be infinitely observed from the moment she stepped into the center of the bar. To a lesser mind, it would pass in an instant, unnoticed. To a stronger mind, they would burn instantaneously. In some iterations of the bar, they did. In others, the bar had been blasted to bits already in a newly forged war, right as the final stroke of the pen was seen. The President giving up on their country had been human in that iteration, though still a male, strangely.
Every timeline, every moment stretched out before her, every plot point in the story of this bar danced in her head. Sighing peacefully, she took a step back, her eyes closed loosely, and reached out to grab the progenitor of this new iteration.
- - -
Cassandra Malone felt a brief tug on her shirt. She had been saying something to... someone before losing her train of thought. In an instant, she felt out of place and confused. This didn't feel like her bar. It had to be though, she remembered the halfling bartender
(
no it was a dwarf)
she ordered drinks from every day. Nearby was an elf whose face she recognized, but knew very little of otherwise. A lizardman sat in the southern corner booth of the bar. She recognized him as a mechanic. Standing over him was some sort of death machine, pretty boy, that rich kid turned into more magical machine than human. The two were immediately approached by other faces she knew for a fact were familiar to her. An angelic being with white robes and a hood to hide his faintly glowing eyes also joined them and a word blasted through her mind: PROGENITORPROGENITORPROGENITORPROGENITOR. She blinked the thought away and turned towards the empty northern corner bar booth. She slowly made her way to it, realizing everything around her was completely familiar.
In that same instance of total recognition of her surroundings, the mind-splitting feeling of being entirely out of place came to her. Her own body felt as though it were being shredded by the claws of a basilisk on an ancient battlefield, or like it was being mechanically separated by the paper shredder she kept under her desk at the office. Teehee, that was a gift from her boss!
"Teehee?" She asked out loud. "When the hell did I ever start thinking the word teehee!?"
Another tug on her shirt brought her down into the northern corner bar booth. She instinctively grabbed the hand, intending to flip the body attached to the hand on its back. Her mind perceived whoever it was as a threat, though how she had the muscle memory and instincts to think like that, she couldn't guess. She was a receptionist, not a soldier.
Instead of flipping anyone, Cassandra fought the urge and turned around. She looked up into the gentle eyes of a woman with black hair, obviously dyed, though still an endearing color on her all the same.
"Sit." It wasn't a command, but Cassandra did as she was told anyways. She watched the black haired woman walk away from the booth and the suddenly dance her way through the crowded bar. It was as though she were air, gentle breezing by all she came into contact with. Occasionally, her hand would light onto the shoulder of one of the bar's patrons. An elf, a goblin, a dryad, and a slime. Four people chosen by her touch. The four felt the sudden urge to sit down in the booth Cassandra was currently occupying.
Satisfied with her choices, the dyed woman began moving back towards the booth. A sudden thirst came over Cassandra. Her throat was terribly dry and scratchy. A beer would help soothe that. She left the booth, a somehow mentally taxing task in and of itself, and handed a sack of gold coins to the halfing behind the bar. "I'll take your finest ale, dwarf. Keep the change, barkeep." Why she had a sack of gold instead of the accepted Riordan Empirical Dollar, called beer ale, or referred to the halfing as a dwarf, Cassandra could not possibly know. As the halfing agreed to the extremely odd request ("I mean, we've got an old fashioned ale for you, but are you sure about giving me this gold?") and brought back a frothing mug of imported ale to the woman, her fingers briefly brushed the bartender's.
Cassandra took her mug back to the booth, unaware that she now had a tag-along at her heel. The halfing bartender pressed into the booth next to her. The dyed woman considered the little man's presence for a moment, perhaps wondering whether she would turn him away. Quickly she decided to keep him there.
The booth was absolutely bursting with the amount of people that occupied it. Normally the booths were meant to hold four or five people, but seven was pushing the booth beyond its limits. And yet, despite the lack of space, the booth seemed roomy and spacious, as if one could start a farm there or build a mansion. Cassandra felt the space between her and the other people sitting with her while being entirely aware of their hot, drunken breaths, their scratchy legs against her knees. They were comfortably apart all while being paradoxically too close for comfort.
"Everyone sitting comfortably? I can make more space if need be." The dyed woman said. "If not, I'd like to direct your attention to the other corners of this bar. Do you see the various patrons in the other corner booths?" She asked them.
And they did. In each of the booths sat women who looked uncannily like the woman sitting with them, though their hair was always a different shade. It was in the looking at the booths that each of people sitting there in that Northern Booth knew that if they turned their heads just right and looked in just a slightly different angle, each of the various booths' patrons would shift into another form of existence. The color of the woman's hair would change as well, sometimes dramatically.
Cassandra wondered if the people sitting in the other booths looked at the Northern Booth the same way she looked at theirs. How many sets of people did they go through before finding the angle that showed their own motley crew with a black dyed hair woman instead of a red dyed or green dyed woman?
"You can stop looking now." The dyed woman said. Still not commanding, but with an air of unquestioned superiority all the same. "Your mind isn't playing tricks on you. You really are seeing what you think you're seeing. You believe me because I'm what we call a Plot Device.
"The time has long since past for this process to happen organically. I'd explain everything that's happening to all of you, but once the process is over, you won't remember I was ever even here and you'll be on your destined path, as the Golden Lore has always demanded." The dyed woman stared at each of them in turn, lingering for a few seconds at a time. It felt as though she were staring at all of them at once as well as individually.
"All of the other people in each of the other booths that you see are various iterations of your group. You all go on a grand quest to find some legendary macguffin, fight the emperor, then bring peace back to the land, but it's not going to be that simple this time.
"You all are the Last Iteration. The Golden Lore demands it. Various teams of people are created to accomplish a single goal. Each of the iterations acting in sync with one another across various timelines, realities, and universes, forever colliding constantly into a single Locus of Power, one point of energy capable of accomplishing everything that must be done. That's what each of the other iterations did... are doing, whatever.
"As the Last Iteration, it's your job to use the Locus of Power. To unlock the energy within it. To do that, well...
"To do that you have to-"
- - -
Cassandra felt the hangover from hell pound her forehead into submission. She knew she shouldn't have ordered that fancy ale the third time, but the bartender was so damn convincing.
Cassandra rubbed her temples fiercely and opened her eyes. She was sitting up from the ground, a tablecloth haphazardly used as a blanket. Nearby, an elf cradled a rather large bottle of whiskey while a grotesque looking goblin snored loudly into the elf's ears. In a rather endearing display of innocence, a blue slime cradled the halfling bartender in its arms, sleeping off whatever the hell it was they had done the night before. Next to Cassandra, with a similar tablecloth covering her as a blanket, was a dryad woman.
She rubbed her head once more before laying back down on the Brigand's Barroom's floor. She needed water... and bread. She also needed to understand just what the fuck happened. She remembered something about a big bag of gold, but that was it. The bar was entirely empty, save for the five other people with her. Everything sounded oddly quiet outside as well considering the bar was on a noisy street corner.
Slowly, the other bar patrons awoke.
(OOC: So, I rolled a d20 for each of you to see just how much your character remembered about their time in the bar before blacking out and waking up the next morning.
@Tirin - You rolled a 3. You remember little of what happened the night before, but through your mental prowess, you are able to glean from the others' knowledge that a woman with dyed black hair tried to make the six of you into a group. You also remember the word "iteration", but don't know what context it was used in.
@Tolvan - You rolled an 18. You remember being tapped on the shoulder lightly by a woman with dark black hair, a sudden compulsion to sit in the booth in the northern corner of the bar. You remember being told you were now part of a group known as the Last Iteration. You also know instinctively that the six of you would feel an unconscious pull towards one another.
@Jeroth - You rolled an 11. Rather than getting shitfaced like everyone else, you let your tip jar get full, almost literally impossibly so, until you said fuck it and found the hardest batch of magical liquor your boss had set aside for his 50th anniversary (twenty years from now, no less). Your body is literally buzzing, but you remember the term "Locus of Power" and that it somehow pertains to the Brigand's Barroom.
@Easy - You rolled an 18, but due to your ability, you rolled a 7. You do not remember much, but the thought of looking at the booths in the other corner and turning your head makes you feel queasy.
@coolpool2 - You rolled a 2, unfortunately, just one away from a critical failure. You remember nothing of the night before, except that there were a lot of human women with dyed hair, but when is that ever worth mentioning? You keep the information to yourself.
Occasionally I'll roll dice and they won't always be d20s. When I do, you'll usually get an OOC post like this. I'll post them in the game thread and in the OOC thread. If you miss the dice roll post, you'll either delete your post or have your post deleted and then you'll take the dice post into account. Don't worry about it too much, just keep an eye out and make sure you read everything before posting.
Anyways, the long opening post is done. We're just about ready to start the role playing shenanigans. Everyone wake up and remark upon what you remember from the night before,
but don't go outside the bar yet.)
