(no subject)

[bashasasdemon]

[This is written in a fairly neat handwriting, in a language that may look roughly similar to Arabic to those familiar with it. The paper on the bulletin board has a small note on top, with a lot of space on the rest of the page for people to fill in as needed.]

Since we're all from different worlds and cultures I think there are a few things we should probably get sorted out as a group. First thing should probably be how to address each other. Go ahead and write your name/title/what you want to be called, your gender identifier if that's important to you, and pronouns to use for you.


Kai, he/him

Comments

[logosmaxima]

Despair has its own texture and color in an aura. Such is the life of a primarch that Magnus has become deeply familiar with it, in its most subtle and flagrant manifestations -- from a single mortal suffering in silent depression to whole planetary populaces fearing their inevitable annihilation.

But witnessing it in such intensity from one of his own brothers is a new experience. Another of the new experiences the Library is bringing him, unwilling -- and not one he savors.

He is silent in the wake of Konrad's acknowledgment-that-is-not-agreement. Silent, and staring at his brother, his own face composed in a moue of deep concern.

Finally, he asks -- almost tentative, another new experience for him --

"Do your visions show you anything within this Library?"

[curzed]

A huff, little more than a slightly harder exhale. "They don't stop." Ever. Every moment of every day they pull at the edges of his awareness. "Here, or in the last 'Story', it doesn't matter."

There are serious downsides to being a primarch. His mind is still fully capable of acknowledging and categorizing the relentless flickers of future even when he's trying to ignore it entirely. "It's best to not focus on the little ones. It invites worse." And then he's stuck in muscle-locked agony sometimes for hours, and he preferred avoiding that whenever he could.

It's shaken off, almost literally, in a skin-shuddering twitch. "If it brings you comfort, then hold onto the idea that we have a choice."

[logosmaxima]

Magnus waves away this last idea, addressing it first: "If I am truly wrong, brother, and we do not have a choice, I would do better to accept it as you have."

Unspoken, of course, is the idea that he will need a great deal more proof before he believes the future is unchangeable. Perhaps it is on him to seek that proof, but it goes deeply against his own mercurial and hopeful nature to do so -- so he will not.

But neither will he press Konrad to provide it, when the thought of doing so clearly risks his brother's fragile sanity even further. Instead, still carefully, he picks up the previous line of questioning: "I had meant, more, whether you know what will happen to us while we are here."

A pause, and then as something occurs to him, like a lumen turning on -- "Did you stop seeing them, under the Symbol of Thothmes?" Was that what the twitching was about? And the sudden seizure, as all of the visions were restored?

[curzed]

He's keeping tabs, in a very casual sort of way, on the rest of the writings going on where this had all begun from. It's hardly divided attention, but it gives his hands something to do when the line of questioning is all things he'd really rather not be dealing with.

"In broad strokes, yes, I know what will happen. Don't ask me what any given person has chosen for meals, it doesn't work like that." Not for him anyway. Maybe for the Emperor, who could probably pick out the minute details of anything he chose with an obnoxious level of ease.

Curze's foresight didn't work that way. It only showed him the negative, and what was only a breath or two away. The worst possible outcomes.

And things like Magnus intending to grab him and stuff him in a shower, right before it happened. Had he not been hobbled by the library it would have been enough warning. "...Yes?" The answer is a touch bewildered. "Was that not the purpose of it?" Didn't Magnus want secrecy?

[logosmaxima]

Hisako has been writing back to Magnus as well, in the interim, and he spends a moment penning a response to her latest. Why is it he is always surrounded by those less enthusiastic than he about reckless experimentation the pursuit of forbidden esoteric knowledge?

Oh well. Her reticence is -- likely -- only sensible, but it is a little galling to feel just that little bit stymied on two fronts.

"I see. If you think it would be valuable, I would appreciate being apprised of anything concerning our fates here. And anything you glean of the Stories themselves." He fiddles briefly with his stylus, frowning with thought at his journal, before turning a wry look on Konrad.

"Forewarned is forearmed, even if only to brace myself for the inevitable." He isn't making a joke of Konrad's predictions, but more, his own reticence to embrace what they might mean.

"And it was. It is meant to block all communion with the Great Ocean, but I was not aware at the time you were having those visions. Or that their sudden restoration could cause you to seize."

More fiddling with the stylus ensues. It looks pointless -- it is not; it is a haptic exercise conjugate to the higher of the Enumerations, though not one he often avails himself of. (It did not do for his sons to see him as less than a splendid exemplar of a Magus -- as someone who still needed such things, now and again.)

"You doubted me earlier, when I said that I had a remedy for what has plagued you so long. But if the visions themselves are a trigger, and I have a reliable method to block them, would you consent to further experimentation in that vein?"

It's ... strange, to be dealing with someone of his own power and station in such a vulnerable matter. If Konrad were mortal, or one of his sons, he would of course seek consent to treat -- but he could be much more direct (and persuasive) about doing so. This negotiation, this offering of a more diplomatic experiment instead of certain treatment ... he does not know how it will be received. Or if it is the best tack.

[curzed]

"If something seems relevant." About their fates? Likel not. Pending stories, if he could pick up on anything, that might be allowable. Magnus is going to keep being stymied too! Every primarch suffered from one particular problem, inherited likely directly from their father - weakness was to be hidden, asking for help is all but unthinkable. Sanguinius balked at people knowing about the red thirst, Guilliman didn't dare breathe word of exactly how much goes awry in ten thousand years, Magnus already knows the flesh change isn't as cured as he'd hoped..

Curze is no different, save perhaps in already being painfully aware reaching out does nothing. He intended to. Fulgrim was ... as close to a friend as he had. Maybe he was wrong about that impending betrayal. If he couldn't trust the Phoenician, then who could he trust?

The brothers caught here with him in this library??

Experiments had connotations. And it would be pointless besides. "I'm not much interested in being a test subject to your idle curiosity, brother."

magnus is the "no take, only throw" meme but with secrets and other primarchs letting him help

[logosmaxima]

That does mean what is, and isn't, relevant is largely on Konrad to determine -- but Magnus will take that response. Konrad is not one of his Corvidae to be ordered around.

It's still frustrating. Even knowing that it is exactly how each and every one of them has always behaved when confronted with cooperation with his brothers, even having heard many of their painful secrets spilled out in the garden not so long ago, it's frustrating. Why can they not trust each other? Why must even their most positive relationships eventually curdle to disagreement or failure?

Why can't he just be allowed to help?

He -- wonder of wonders -- covers his face with one hand briefly, as Curze responds. "Think of it as a trial as might be done by an apothecary," he says, after a moment. "Not to satisfy my curiosity about your condition, but to find an appropriate treatment for it. One that returns your independence to you, so you do not have to rely on any of us hovering over you, or poking or prying into your well-being."

Maybe if he tries putting himself more firmly in Konrad's mindset?? (Does he even want to be there?)

well at least one knows his sekrits!!

[curzed]

Putting oneself into Curze's mindset is an absolutely terrible idea. If he's this way, it's because he was designed to be. Perhaps it gave him a greater appreciation for the suffering he inflicted on others, being so acutely familiar with pain himself. Perhaps knowing the very worst others can do made him reliably less likely to be too lenient and allow a criminal to slip away to strike again later. "..And what, precisely, did you have in mind?"

He knows he is how he is on purpose, exactly the way Sanguinius is the way he is meant to be. Attempting to fix it outside his own legion seemed, in some strange way, disobedient to the Emperor's intentions. It's uncomfortable, almost the same way the idea that Magnus of all people had somehow just failed to notice what he was, was equally uncomfortable.