#(or hop. ha) to help experiment. rope the other diviners into this whole project too actually. get those participation credits kids

[melveres]

I’m so invested in wizard101 and its denizens that it has got me researching actual irl science and engineering so i could depict magic better

[thehobbblog]

Entry #21

Nobody’s told me what the fuck a desert’s doing down here. No word on what exactly is blowing sand in my eyes, or what this fucking heat is coming from.  Been told the “Sand” is Dust--thus the “Dust Desert” thing-- which means it’s less sand, and more granulated corpses blowing in my eyes. That’s fun. Not as many bugs as I’d expect either. And whatever Sakko was going on about, how “Fate” roams this place. Aint seen that either. Just fucking sand. And my lead-ass boots. We sat and had an argument before setting off, because if we do anything the easy way it’s not worth doing. Weylinn wanted to enchant his new Spear, King didn’t want him to ruin it. I was trying to get Lucas to submit his rope for enchanting, but apparently he doesn’t want to be Wonder Woman. I thought it would be cool, anyway. The “Star flowers” or whatever they are mimic the sun in this place. So rather than a blazing star beating down on our necks, we have a blazing cluster of flowers. That’s kind of neat at least. They give you sunburn, like the sun. Make you sweat, like the sun. But they aint the sun. I miss the sun, is my point. We trundled into the desert, and imminently Avram starts panting. I was about to start asking where he keeps his Insulin, before I remembered we were in a fucking desert, and this guy was wearing a full suit of blazing hot metal. I mean, so was I. But I’m aware of my limits. It’s kind of uncomfortable, lugging the chainmail around but it’s a lot less uncomfortable than being stabbed. Actually, Violence tore the shit out of it, and it’s kind of breezy for that reason.  So, walking in a straight line. Alice starts bitching about the heat, Anna’s still wandering around with no real shirt on. Weylinn’s smug in his wizard-spell armour thing. No real bugs, which is nice. I bought extra water, which was nicer. Stuart’s doing fine, but I’m not sure if he would even show me if he’s uncomfortable. And keeping with the theme of discomfort, we met a college philosophy class doing their “Thought circle” thing. I kid, it was a circle consisting of King, King’s brother Nacre, Some alien-looking guy I was pretty hyped about. Some purly black crystal guy I was considerably less hyped about. A twisted up alien, and a new Masked One. I’m really not great with this mind magic thing. I’m still upset about having Latin put in my brain without permission, and even less OK with having my personality split apart in that Halls experiment. This Masked one--Pierogi-- communicates entirely through it, I think. He just sort of sits there, and staring at him you naturally come to the conclusion he wants you to. He looks nice enough, dresses sharp, seems friendly. But my brain’s having a hard enough time without people mucking around in there. He makes me uncomfortable, regardless of the demeanor.  But I’m sure he knows that. Anyway, philosophy. They were clustered around a big rock. A stupidly large, pure black rock with symbols scratched all over it. Weylinn translated it as “How can any man born of earth claim to divine the true purposes of the gods.” According to King, these guys gather from time to time to do their thinking circle, and whatever goes along with that. I always hated that shit, in college I mean. Philosophy majors always had this “Smarter than thou” attitude about fucking everything. Like being able to theorize about living as a brain in a jar made them better than everyone. Like by nature of their major, they’re just better thinkers by default. I didn’t really want to get involved with that attitude multiplied by King’s regular attitude. But, it was kind of funny. An art project, almost. Performance acting. If you want me to read into it, I think it has more to do with the medium than the message. We’re in the middle of a fucking desert, and one defiant structure reaches to the heavens. This desert is literally made of dusted corpses, and the heavens are literally a facade. It’s absurdist in nature,  A cluster of earth--like mortal man-- standing atop a mountain of those that feel before him, crying to a heaven that doesn’t exist for answers he won’t get. And that moment was left in stone for anyone else to stumble across. Between the monument, and the desert I may as well have just started quoting Ozymandias. But anyway, the circle began it’s meaning. Weylinn decided he was on the intellectual level of the immortal beings int he circle, and hopped in. Avram thought his holy book could bring some new light on their musings, and filled in as well. I was debating whether or not I really cared. I thought it was funny, how quickly King made the conversation about humans. This guy was berating us not minutes ago, for being foolish mortals who couldn’t possibly keep up with the likes of him. No, let’s have King sit there and talk loudly about what insights he’s making. King--who I’m told was originally a mortal man born from earth-- would sit and divine the purposes of the gods for us. It was priceless, really. Real dramatic irony. The philosophers went around in a circle like that, agreeing with each other and disagreeing with individual points. All very civil and hum-drum. At around the point where Weylinn excitedly gibbered on about literally nothing I put my headphones in and tuned out. I’m not even sorry. Less than eight hours ago I had King trying to explain to Weylinn all about how all realities work, and how none of it matters. Now all of a sudden nothing matters, but this rock does. Weylinn thinks it matters so much, he’s willing to sit at the big boys table and speak in circles until he gets an “Atta boy” and a gold star. I’ve got enough responsibilities, I don’t need their judgment on my shoulders as well. Fuck it’s hot out here. They finished, Avram apparently impressed everyone with his wisdom. Weylinn was dismissed as a sycophant, but not punished. Avram even turned down his reward, which was weird. We all got back to the wagon, and head off. I let Stuart out into the sand to walk with us for a while. He got thirsty pretty fast. We all did, by the time it was dark, and settled down to camp. The starflowers were setting, and we were tired. And then we remembered we didn’t buy fucking firewood. Wisdom for the ages, impress immortal beings with how in tune with everything you are. Forgot fucking firewood. We’re halfway through freezing to death when King steps in to give us magic fire. We’re putting firewood on the list for our next shopping stop. That’s if we fucking make it there, actually. We were ambushed in the middle of the night. The dust was collecting, like in a dust devil. But it grew human features, and screamed at us. Which is considerably less cool than dust devils. Then, about twenty five more dust creatures popped out of the freaking woodwork to come get a peice of us. They didn’t hurt, but they had a bad habit of getting inside your mouth. And once they’re in there, they don’t come out. I didn’t notice it at the time, but Alice made a friend int he fight. A huge turbaned ghost thing, who murdered a whole bunch of the dust monsters for us, in exchange for all of us helping out a friend of his. If we don’t go find his friend, and help him within a week one or all of us are going to be super enslaved. In the meantime, we all have “The Plague” for having contacted the dust things, and can expect to die shortly. Fucking A.  We were given a rock, to lead us to the guy we’re supposed to help out. Shouldn’t be too much of a problem. Dao only said we needed to offer help to him, so we can weasle out of it. But we didn’t sleep easy. Aside from the mouth drying disease, being handed a death sentance, and a slave sentance isn’t a great bedtime story. Stuart was just happy for dinner. We took off the next morning, pretty silent. Shellers got fed, Stuart got fed. We moved on. We made it a good hike, and ran into another curiosity. Some punk in a hoodie. He’s some bug time mage person, going it alone. Bought a whole lot of our junk, rubbed his mage powers in Weylinn’s face for a while. Did you know wizard people are supposed to have spellbooks? Weylinn doesn’t have one. Didn’t know he needed one. He’s like the kid who never brought his pencil to class, and wondered why he still failed the test at the end. Anyway, I’m getting pretty good at telling if people are threats with the evild etection, and I caught that this guy was going to magic us to help him out if we refused to. But we didn’t and gave him a ride. He’s hiding his face, and name. But he’s got a good sense of humor. Whatever floats your boat I guess.  He told us about the next city, and how we can cure this disease. Thank God. My turn to lead the shellers, signing off or whatever.