do: make introductions; don't: usurp the government

[giftedandtalented]

Tab goes home by door, right into Aelise's office. "Hello again."

Comments

[salus_populi]

['Spiral',] she suggests. ['Arborea'.]

[giftedandtalented]

Tab flies higher for a better view of the broader landscape, the global climate. Up-up-up. [Maybe.]

[salus_populi]

The global climate varies almost as much as Earth's, but those huge spiral trees are definitely a theme - there must be hundreds of species with the same basic shape.

[Got any better ideas?]

[giftedandtalented]

[I just wanted to see if the big spiraly trees were all over the place, and they are. Arborea it is.]

[salus_populi]

[All right.]

[giftedandtalented]

[Awesome awesome awesome. Hey Jane, can you star chart this place and figure out where we are?]

[mind_game]

There is a pause, and then Jane says, [I have definitively determined that I have no clue at all! We are probably not even in the Milky Way!]

[salus_populi]

Aelise laughs.

"I wonder if asking Demauri would help. With time and math we could probably figure out what direction this solar system is from ours, anyway."

[giftedandtalented]

"You want to explain to Demauri that you have traveled to a planet you have no idea where the heck it is, please find you?"

[salus_populi]

"Hmm, point. But he's Demauri. He's used to my bizarre requests."

[giftedandtalented]

"Fair enough. Golden recognized him, apparently on her world he was a vampire, they do this mating-for-life but he spun the mate-for-life roulette wheel and wound up with a half-vampire and they don't do that, he wound up kind of mad-stalker until she - the stalking victim - killed him."

[salus_populi]

"Interesting," she says. "I can see how that would work Gift-wise - did the alt have the same power? - but Demauri's never been the stalking type."

[giftedandtalented]

"Same approximate power, yeah, less powerful as seems to be the theme - he had to have met the person and couldn't triangulate very effectively. Golden thinks he thought he was playing some elaborate game of hide-and-seek game with her till the very end."

[salus_populi]

"Well, that's unpleasant," says Aelise. "Is that a common feature of Aurum vampires?"

[giftedandtalented]

"No, usually they wind up symmetrically attached to other vampires, or they meet humans, bite them, and then are symmetrically attached to other vampires."

[salus_populi]

"But the - potential," she says, "to react badly to the asymmetrical case. That seems like a major flaw."

[giftedandtalented]

"Yeah. It's not invariable, and also being a vampire is no longer permanent, you can fix it on a nontorchable by sending them through Downside or on a torchable with an evil. Werewolves from Aurum do something similar but they don't go stalkery, just kind of dependently depressive, in the worst case."

[salus_populi]

"Good to know," says Aelise.

[giftedandtalented]

"One of you has a werewolf," Tab adds. "Libby from Eos. Wandered in among some wolves and one of them imprinted on her and she brought him home and turned her Kers into a werewolf too because it's not a great idea to have one wolf all by themselves - the alphas can take it, Elspeth can bring hers places, but Libby's wolf isn't one of the alphas."

[salus_populi]

"Also good to know," she says. "Aurum species seem to have a lot of drawbacks."

[giftedandtalented]

"A lot of perks too, though, I can see why Golden wanted to turn when that plus witchcraft was the magic she had going. Also she was already in love with her associated mated-for-life vampire."

[salus_populi]

"That would be a major plus, under the circumstances."

[giftedandtalented]

"Yep. It does seem like the vampire thing selects for personal compatibility as best it can. The wolf thing - does not. They've been having a precog help out the wolves for a while now."

[salus_populi]

"But the personal compatibility factor clearly isn't infallible, or it wouldn't result in stalkers."

[giftedandtalented]

"Golden theorizes that Demetri and his lady love would have gotten along really well if her power had worked on him. She does a kind of - not-mattering thing, where you can technically see her but you can't think she's important. And Demetri could not think she wasn't important, so she had his attention constantly and couldn't stand it and was scared of him."