8 Consimbs 4385: Going to Temple Again

[delight-in.livejournal.com]

Since Void-Dancer won't be at the No Surprise party, I decided to go see him today. I checked at his house but the only one home was his maid so I told her to tell him I'd called and that I'd stop by another day.  If I waited for Void-Dancer to call me back every time he wasn't home I'd NEVER see him again.  He's not very good at social stuff like that.

I went to the Temple of Reflections in the Void next and as usual stopped in the entranceway to spend some time staring at the windows to other places and worlds. I was especially looking for worlds with a lot of Durudor so I could spot gavinfox's and vik_thor's world maybe.  I found one that might have been it!  The window showed what looked kind of like a city intersection but instead of buildings made of wood they were made of MIRRORS.  And not LITTLE buildings either! They were all jammed next to one another with no space in between, and they stretched so high that the window didn't show their tops. I counted at least eight levels of mirrors on one and each mirror was half again as tall as the people swingng around.  The mirrors weren't perfectly reflective so it wasn't a blinding hall-of-Illusidor effect. On the streets were metal carriages that rolled along by magic without anything pulling them.  And the people looked like they were made of Durudor too!  They had eight legs ending in hand-feet and many of them moved around by swinging on thick ropes that spun out from their abdomens.  It  looked like a lot of fun swinging around among the tall buildings!  So is that like your world Gavsy?

Visiting "Here" reminded me that I STILL haven't gotten a present for Kvarse ARGH and I have no idea what to get her.  I haven't seen any interesting animals on my journeys! I might have to go on an Adventure just to find something.  I looked in the mirrors for cute animals she might like and saw some pretty ones with heads like a taptet but slender and delicate four-legged bodies with no arms.   They had short brown fur and white spots on their  flanks.  They were in a section of a forest where everything was in shades of brown or grey or green. All the grass and moss and leaves were green and all the wood and earth was brown or grey. Do you know a place like that, Boomsy?  One of them would make a good gift if I had any idea where to actually find them.

Or I could just donate a bunch of lozens to the Nastrothon Memorial Sanctuary.  Kvarse'd like that.  

I was still looking at windows in the entrance hall when Mask of Infinity came out.  He was escorting an unhappy-looking Sleeth.  "The Temple appreciates your donation," Mask was saying.  "I know it can be unsettling, but the ceremony went quite well.  "Here" looks with favor upon your endeavor.  That's just ... one of the ways he shows it." 

The Sleeth lashed her tail.  "Knowing this and being pleased by it are not being the same thing. I get what I come for. I go now."  She slunk off.

I waited until she was out the door and then waved.  "Hiiiii Mask-max!"

Mask of Inifinty sighed as he watched the patron depart and then turned to me with a smile.  "Hello, Delight. Good to see you again, it's been quite a while."

"Soooorry I've been out of town mostly!  I was gone all Chirreb on a stupid adventure and then most of Oix visiting Boomer-rooners but I'm back now. How have you been?"

"Busy.  We're a bit short-handed at present. I don't suppose you've ever considered a calling with the Lord of Space?"  Mask of Infinity grinned and winked at me to show he wasn't very serious.

"I did remember I worked at the Temple for um three weeks in 4378?"

"So you did.  Whyever did we let you go? Your parents talk you out of it?"

"Noooo they usually wait a couple of months before trying to talk any of us out of things because we'll probably stop on our own,"  I said.  "Velabble fired me because I forgot to show up for three ceremonies in a row where I was supposed to be assisting. She said 'I don't care how fond of you 'Here' is, if you're not present you're no use to us!'"  I shrugged helplessly.

"Ah.  I suppose she had a point.  Not interested in giving it another go, then?"  Mask walked with me back in to the main sanctuary.

"Noooo I'm rich and retired now are you reeeeeeally this desperate?  Why don't you just hire Nightbloom back?"

Mask of Infinity's smile faded, and he just shook his head.  "I'm afraid that's not an option."

"Why not could she really have done something worse than not showing up three times in a row with no notice?" I asked, as we knelt together towards the altar.

He shook his head again as we rose.  "I can't discuss that, Delight. And it's been seven years for you. I'm sure you've matured since then."

Now I really wanted to know how Nightbloom managed to get fired, but I let the topic go as we walked the straight line crooked to the altar.  "Not really I got fired in Lage for kinda the same thing."

Mask of Infinity tried to stifle a smile and failed. "I'm sorry to hear that."

"It's all right being rich is better.  Is Void-Dancer around I was looking for him?"

"Alas, he's scheduled for an off-site rite all day today."  

"Awww all right I'll just say hi to "Here" and all the angels while I'm here."  I gave the Temple a donation since I'm rich and paid my respects and one of the angels impaled me a little in greeting which was unexpected.  But that's why I have Remedy for Locador and it was nothing serious.

I went home afterwards and figured I'd try again tomorrow. But then Void-Dancer surprised me by returning my call that evening.

Comments

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, I don't think that is my world. It seems to be a world that has similarities to mine though -- it might be a world (maybe the best way of explaining would be 'large celestial body slightly comparatively smaller than the actual structure of the world tree') that is in the same universe as mine, but perhaps so mind bogglingly far away that we haven't contacted them. My world also has large reserves of Durudor, due to the way the natural laws of reality influenced how it was created. A habitable world that was generated via the same methods as mine would also have lots of Durudor.

Lots of Durudor and the same natural laws as my world means that you can make very very large buildings with a skeleton or internal structure of Steel and Concrete, and walls of Glass with a thin sheet of 'Aluminum' (yet another type of Durudor) that makes them reflective from the outside, but you can see through them from within the building.

Another thing that makes those big buildings viable is a 'lift' or 'elevator' which lets people move up and down the buildings without having to climb stairs the hard way, which they presumably have.

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

One thing that might help with understanding. Within your Universe, your world was designed, intentionally so, such that the area that supports life is focused upon; the World Tree itself is more important than most of the celestial bodies.

The gods of my universe, if they exist, didn't do much more than set the basic rules of reality and natural such that, if left to their own devices, would GENERATE stars and worlds and celestial bodies and such, without being specifically designed, and that SOME of those celestial bodies would generate life, and some of that life would have the forces to become intelligent. But this means that lots and lots and lots of celestial bodies and planets and such have to be made to have just a handful which can support intelligent life, and those that do are probably fantastically, mind-bogglingly far away from one another. So that is why you might have found a world that is in my universe, with technology like mine, but that isn't mine.

Ooooooorrrr it could totally be my world, several hundreds of thousands of years, maybe even millions of years, in my future. Whatever, I don't really know. Or it could be another universe entirely.

[delight-in.livejournal.com]

Your universe sounds really inefficient! Maybe your gods didn't actually care about you and just liked the celetial bodies part of universe-making.

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

I think they might have used something like Sythyry's crystallization to efficiently make a bunch of repetitive stuff, even though they were only going to use a small part of it?

Or maybe the rest of it will be better used later on, and right now it's like a bunch of seeds scattered in the soil.

[delight-in.livejournal.com]

But then why put so much space between each ohhhhh the seeds are going to sprout into World Trees some time and then they'll need room to grow.

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

Maybe sprout, maybe civilizations will have to just build big honking huge airships or other biiiiiig structures suspended in the space between celestial bodies to make more of the space between the worlds relevant. Anyway, we expect that somewhere in our universe, there are civilizations fantastically more advanced than ours that want to get the energy from the always-on stars that generally make up the center of a collection of celestial bodies in a region of Space, would make some big constructions to do this process.

So it would be more like theoretical civilizations BUILDING a World Tree in some of that space to get more of the heat and light from the nearby Star.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_engine

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

That makes a lot of sense... I suppose it's only inefficient if you view 'being a relevant home to sentient creatures' as the primary purpose of the existence of a universe, which IS much closer to the primary purpose of your universe than our best guesses of the purpose (if any) of ours.

[delight-in.livejournal.com]

I don't think they needed to worry about stairs they just climbed their ropes but maybe it gets tiresome climbing all the time.

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

Well if you all want to make reaaaallllyyy tall buildings, you all will need Lifts or Elevators or something with a more interesting local name--what would be a good World Tree term for such a thing? Maybe you should ask Sythyry about ideas for that? Zie has access to ways of getting lots of durable building materials, more so than other folk, and if zie wants zir buildings to get really tall, than those sorts of things will be needed! Anyway, the building with the most floors in my world has 163 habitable floors/stories, and it is made of Steel and Glass and Concrete, and has 57 of those elevators I mentioned. Here is an image of it:

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

Also (sorry for so many replies...), Remember that time where I talked about the animals that looked like the various creatures in your world? How we have animals that look like various sapient creatures from your world? Remember how I talked about how there are several plausible reasons for this, namely being that certain forms are useful designs for living creatures, and common features of what is useful tend to be copied, either by chance or by design of gods, BECAUSE they are useful?

If we are talking about designs being copied, I recall that your world has Orren, Norren, and at least one animal intelligence creature that is the shape of waterform Orren that is similar to our 'Otters'. Waterform Orren-shape is a good design for an aquatic creature! And I'm not even going to worry about where the basic design first originated -- my world, yours, some other world (probably some other world...) -- because it doesn't really matter.

Also, we have creatures that look like what the 'study form' for Rassimel would look like -- remember Sythyry's post in zir journal about how zie had a dream of Study Form Rasimel after this topic came up and I posted a bunch of pictures of animals from that resemble various species from your world?

Anyway, the same generalization can be made to other sorts of creatures -- but your world has more types bipedal, intelligent, tool using creatures than mine because the creation of those wasn't left to chance like mine was. But that doesn't change the fact that a useful design is a useful design!

What I am getting at is that the image of 'Goats' (quadruped taptet looking animals) grazing in a forest COULD have been my world! Or it could be another place that happens to have something that looks like our goats. Or it might even be some corner of the World Tree!

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

... One of the angels impaled you? D:

Glad you're okay!

[delight-in.livejournal.com]

Oh it's nothing to worry about it was just through an arm and that happens sometimes nothing a little Remedy can't fix!

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you are okay! =D =D You really have a gift for Locador.