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[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

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I think my creator was too heartsick to imagine us so directly involved. Not that we're barred from it, mind. She didn't design us with that level of intent.

I've been told if one person thinks of us and decides fighting isn't worth what we'll do should they fall, that's justification for all of us, and that it did happen, sometimes. But those days are gone. How about you?

By that metaphor we're far downstream when we wash up. I suppose we'll find out, eventually.

Some. But we softened over time.

Our later methods were more effective at preventing conflict. Less visceral. Better at addressing the root problem.

I don't think there was ever a chance in Hell's river anything we did would stop war entirely.

Eventually. There are some I know who are eager to be back to whatever occupied them before, [you know, Illarion, like their original lives,] but at this point it's all the same to me.

Should I ask?

No. It can be pushed to be more or less inclined but war is too deeply set into the nature of people to ever be unthinkable. Discord and Violence cast long shadows.

[Hisako does not believe it's actually all the same to him, she'd caught something of that trapped bubble of feeling when they spoke in person.]

Eager's all well and good but I haven't heard anyone asking what we want.

Some time when we can speak in person. Our history isn't a secret but it isn't for everyone in this Library to read without context.

Thought so.

Who would ask? Who should ask?

That's correct, we're thinking of you, readers in some future time!

[there's a pause here aaaaaand Hisako has found a red inkpad, applied it to her lips, and kissed the page. And then inked some flowering vines around the mark.]

Who indeed! Last time it was entirely impersonal. I was a Stormwing, so I was bundled off. Maybe this time is different.

[Little bird skulls and disarticulated long bones join the flowers, to make it properly shrike-like.

Alongside a string of XOXOXOX.]

Would it be better if it were?

Genuinely curious on that point.

[Seeing that, she adds thorns to the vines, but deliberately makes them short thick ones, not good for impaling. Hah.]

Good question! I'm one of the more poetic Stormwings and I've a better sense of humor than my rivals, if I say so myself, plus as a 'mortal-lover' (we are insular!) I don't have to get over myself to talk to other people like they're people. So maybe I'm more suited than others. That would be flattering, I suppose?

[In response, little puffs of down and the occasional contour feather -- like the remains of a hawk's meal -- are added to the ground around the vines.

He's just free-associating at this point.]

Now that raises the question, since I was thinking of it as personal with the notion of someone choosing us instead of us being worth choosing, what kinds of useful trait an impersonal process might select for.

It can't just be getting along or the Night Haunter wouldn't be here. Or the very prickly individual who is interested in security.

[Hmph. Hisako does quite good calligraphy and the ability to draw pretty vines follows that skill, but she's not otherwise much of an artist. Otherwise she'd find a place to put a human skull.]

A constellation of them, I'm sure! I expect trying to narrow down traits we've all in common would end in only the most basic similarities. 'Human' seems to be recurring a lot. Literate?

Broadly we seem to get along well enough, there are just some spectacular exceptions. It's certainly not sociability. Tragically it's not interest in having fun, either.

Human is one that puzzles me. Are they more common than anything else on your world?

Tragically!

Maybe we're thinking too hard. Maybe we are also unfinished stories.

There are more animals, but when it comes to entirely sapient tool-users who can reliably remember the past and imagine the future, humans rule the roost. All Lesser Immortals, Stormwings included, owe our existence to them. Not the case with you?

If you weren't here I'd fear to be stuck around serious people.

[that is a blatant mischaracterization of her other big thread on this post.]

Poetic! Who's telling us?

No. Humans came last, after the other three principles -- dwarves, elves, orcs. Orcs alone almost certainly outnumber humans even without adding the rest of us and the minor peoples. Before here, the only time I'd seen this many of them together in one place, unmixed, was on the Archipelago.

Strange to think of them as the dominant thinking kind anywhere.

Happy to serve. I seriously strive to do my unserious best.

Generation. [Then in written Shriketongue -- suspiciously Cyrillic,] Род. The great God Who dreamed every creation.

At least that is how I learned it. But now I am wondering what His obsession is with humans.

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