MacThorstenson

Having them barge into the records room could be interesting, I will say that Ronald is currently working on their side, so if Byron shows up the monsters would likely disappear so that they didn't interfere with his task.

I just want to say that I think the Hospital scene is really really cool. Usually when the plot thickens in the AV it does so like milk gone bad, but this time the plots thickening like a fine roux.

again, a rough draft. The DA had many places where one could turn for knowledge. The Department of Records was likely the safest of those, if the most mundane. It was there that Ronald started his search. The long halls of the DADR were empty, with weak lights every couple of meters that flickered unevenly. It was almost as if they were trying to look like they were in a horror movie. He shuddered. To be fair, living here was like a real life horror movie. You had to eat or be eaten, and hope what you ate didn't burst out predator style. Though of course, some were lucky. Very, very lucky. His mind drifted to his conversation with Lita. Imagine on one of your first days in the alleycity running into the 3-4 most powerful person there, and having them take you under their wing. Kids born onto a silver platter didn't have it that lucky. No one would dare touch you if your mentor had been known to destroy planets for fun. Even if he never really cared about you, anyone who messed with you would be seen as stepping on his turf, and he wouldn't have taken that sitting down. Or he might've. The powers he wielded were unlike any other, his mastery of the alleys so strong, yet incredibly delicate as well. He could pull planets in on a whim, yet explicitly leave every mosquito floating in space. He was one heck of an insurance policy. He shook his head, no sense in being jealous. Reading the door label he turned into the musty record room. If the eldritch record keeper was to be believed, in here was the book he was looking for regarding investiture. Of course that didn't mean much, there were tens of thousands of books in this room alone. Now came the moment of truth. The record keeper had told him to trust in fortune, to close his eyes and tap this medallion. Either this would work and he would find himself with what he needed, or he would be devoured by some child of the alleys. He took a deep breath, and tied his tie around his eyes as a makeshift blindfold. Fortune improves your chances, and for it to do that, there needs to be a chance. Ronald was many things, but he was not good at leaving things up to the Gods of Luck and Chance. That said, their whims would need to bless his path today. To ensure that he didn't mess things up, he had decided to blindfold himself. Slowly, he walked forward and begun tapping the fortune. It was an odd experience to tap fortune for the first time. He already had an understanding of what it would do, but that was different then feeling it work. He suddenly felt emboldened, as if the mere possession of this power could grant him his desires. Perhaps, he thought to himself, it could. Hellbent had been a fortune compounder after all, and until he died things always seemed to go his way. He made a left, then a right, he walked for a bit, praying to whatever was out there that he wouldn't come across some hideous beast or worse, a child. Yet as he followed his path through the aisles of the department of records, he found himself drawing more and more fortune. It felt good. It felt emboldening. The phrase fortune favors the bold came to his mind. Perhaps however, fortune didn't favor the bold but instead made the bold. He grinned, speeding down the path. He couldn't even see where a junction was, and yet he would randomly turn and not run headfirst in to a bookshelf. Truly this was a powerful tool indeed. He continued like this for several minutes. At times he thought that he was turning around and running circles, yet each time this doubting voice returned his confidence rose to match it along with the whispers of the ancient saying fortune favors the bold, until it stopped. Immediately his newfound confidence fled. and he stopped. Crem. Had he run out? How was he supposed to get out? Why had he drawn so much! He pulled his tie off his head cautiously and immediately put his back against a book shelf. then he took several deep breaths. Calm down. You didn't have fortune before, and you don't need it now. Yes it was nice, but the shock of it leaving can't incapacitate you. remember where you are. He opened his eyes, and looked around himself. He was in an aisle between two bookshelves. The only sound in the room was the some of the lights flickering nearby. Immediately he noticed that this part of the room was much much darker then the entrance. Maybe cam should check this out he thought with a wry grin. Slowly he began checking the books around him. Most of their titles were illegible. Likely scientific journals from years gone by. HE rounded the corner, and gave himself a little chuckle. At the very end of the new aisle he found himself in, there laid a book in a halo of light. This was it, this was what he was looking for.

"Hard not to like good craftsmanship." The doctor, or should he say Laurelai, noted, stepping a little closer and flicking the lapel. "Especially when paired with imported Nalthian silks, say what you will about the ethics of resurrecting the dead as a labour force the Nalthians sure do know their fabrics. And of course the rest of it..." Her eyes traveled up the suit, before she hazarded a guess at the tailors "West and Carson's?" He nodded and grinned, "I have them do most of my suits, and they haven't led me wrong yet." After a slight pause he continued, "I must say it is nice to find someone who appreciates a nice suit in this place. Despite all the money flowing around, few seem to appreciate the nicer things in life." Careful Ronny, he cautioned himself, She could be DA. We know what happens around DA folk. He thought back to a PSA that had crossed his desk several months ago regarding an insane acolyte with a hallucinatory octopus. The things that that lady did still kept him up at night. He coughed slightly, seemingly becoming a bit more aware of his surroundings. "That said I don't think I would wear one this nice if I worked with the patients constantly. And speaking of patients," He glanced down at his list, still in his hand, "I still have a number of files I need to locate, so if you'll excuse me, I must be about my business." He coughed lightly, "It was a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Dr. Laurelai? Was it? Perhaps we shall see each other again." He turned around glancing behind him at the other doctor that had nearly immediately walked over to the filing cabinets where Laurelai had dropped her files off. Interesting. Perhaps too interesting. She was excitedly flipping through a file, which again was odd. Having found several files in his life, Ronald was quite sure that they weren't exciting. Though he supposed that a doctor might see things differently. They tended to be better people then him. Carefully, he made his way down the row, gathering the files for those who weren't near the other Doctor, all the while carefully keeping an eye on her. If she moved to another place that Laurelai had been, it would certainly be cause for suspicion. After all, why wouldn't she simply ask to borrow them while they were out? @Voidus @Rushu42

Alternatively you can just DM a person with a DA character and say I want to get a character in there. Most of us would be pretty down to work with you to make that happen.

I made a promise to myself that this would not end up like grey's anatomy. I don't intend on breaking it. But I can't write anything tonight.

"We tend to get a little overloaded at times. Not always time to worry about where the best expenditure for resources is. Plus a Forger is typically a good choice for document review, a lot of our training goes into making patterns and understanding causes." Well shoot. A Forger would also be adapt at picking up on forgeries and document modifications. And yet another wrench appears. Just after he thought that, the blond haired doctor continued, "But thank you, it is a fair reminder. I should check that there's nothing urgent first, files won't go anywhere." Perhaps the wrench was removed. He heard shuffling papers, walking, and then a quick "Excuse me" from the doctor. "No worries," He replied, while stepping aside to give her enough room to shelf her files. After taking a quick look at said files, he noticed her eye's lingering on his suit. "Like what you see?" He asked with a slight grin. @Voidus

Well we don't want to expedite it, so maybe not.

The truth must come out. Lord Voidus must be stopped.

@Voidus I think you need to see this. Also @ZincAboutIt, this is very important. Mac frowned at the blank television screen in his decrepit apartment. It was similar to the frown one makes when they finish a television series or a movie, and know that they can never again watch it for the first time. The difference was that this time, he was frowning because he had learned something truly so terrible, so abominable, that it made everything that he had ever learned before in his life down right PG, and he could never un-learn it. "I now know your secret Lord Voidus," He muttered under his breath, "I've seen what you do to the Darkan's, as you tried to conquer Gorm. I've seen the torture you've inflicted on Gredd, Xathor, Kratus, and Cryptus. You monster." Like many of humanities ancient enemies, Voidus had finally found his way into children's tales. This 2018 Italian toy series was no different then tales that cautioned of witches, vampires, and the ancestral sky giants living atop mutation bean plants. Gormiti told of Lord Voidus's story and crimes like no other source, for only a tv show could be so innocuous as to slip under his radar. It told of his attempts to conquer the Land of Gorm, and his ruling of the Darkan's. It told of those whom he stepped on to emerge as a ruler, and it showed how far he was willing to go to obtain complete control over his people. What and absolute monster of a man. Worst of all? He was now an Italian children's toy.

Ronald worked his way down the list, moving from cabinet to cabinet pulling out names with surgical precision. While this was happening though, he listened in on the conversation happening on the other side of the room. He hadn't ever worked in a hospital before, but he had seen Grey's Anatomy. While he was mostly aware that that television show was dramatized, all good stories were based on a grain of truth. And he did not want to be here if that grain of truth manifested itself here. Quickly however, he ran into a roadblock. The box of files that should have contained Jamar Karim was missing, and currently was being accessed by the blond haired doctor. Normally he would just skip over the name, and circle back when the opportunity presented itself. Unfortunately as he looked over, she was twirling a pen in her hand. Now, my dear readers, you might not realize what a twirling pen means. Perhaps some of you are blissfully unaware of the implications of such a simple action, so please allow me to inform you. A twirling pen is a sign of Alleycant, the secret language of the dark alley. Those who twirl such devious instruments, are truly terrifying creatures from the darkest of alleys. Likely they have killed dozens if not hundreds of people, and wear their victims souls as a badge of pride, spiked into their own through the most devious of methods. Cookies. Unfortunately for Ronald's sake, he is much less paranoid then his dear narrator who nearly had a heart attack reading about pens a-twirling. Ronald saw the spinning pen and barely bat an eye. For he, in his limited knowledge, only knew enough alleycant that he could make out a phrase here or there, and he didn't recognize any that the blond haired lady transmitted. Therefore, while he was slightly suspicious, he didn't know for sure if she was DA, or merely a doctor with a rather unfortunate habit. After glancing over there, and taking note of the situation, he decided to continue on through his list. He wouldn't jeopardize the mission off of a suspicion, and it was possible that the doctor would just pull someone else's name and return the box. As the saying goes, however, prepare for the worst and hope for the best, and if they were DA... Crem. Thats what it would be. A whole lot of crem. The odds that one department sends two different people to complete the same mission were low, but not zero. The odds that there were two different departments at work here are much, much higher. Unfortunately that could mean that we are competition. While the letter he had been given seemed to indicate that this matter involved the Dark Alley's in its entirety, its also possible that the letter was a fake, and that he was the rogue agent. Regardless, he was glad that he wasn't destroying the files. He might need some insurance. Destruction was only one part of the mission however. Forgery was the other, and how the crem was he supposed to forge some cremming folders with two doctors here? Crem. Crem Crem Crem. Why is it, that whenever time is an issue, wrenches always seem to be thrown in the plan? Just then, he heard the other nurse speak up. "Is this just indexing and resorting, or are you looking for something? It's odd to keep a doctor and Forger occupied with busywork." Interesting. A forger. Certainly that would be someone important, a skilled forger would participate in all types of surgeries here. Perhaps that was another mark toward making this blond haired women an agent of the Alleys. He moved to another filing cabinet, looking for the next name on his list. He still had a ways to go, and perhaps they would move out eventually. If, however, the blond haired lady's answer was suspicious, he would need to make sure she wasn't taking any of the files he needed. He sat, ready to ask about a Jamar Karim should suspicion be warranted. @Voidus @Rushu42

I believe there is a plan, Fate is laying the ground work right now to get people in place for it to happen, but there is a plan.

NOTE: this is a very very rough draft. The Library. Deemed utterly useless by some, and Voidus' great gift to mankind by others, it was a realization of Jorge Luis Borges's 1941 short story, The Library of Babel. No one knew how it ended up in the alleys. But considering these were the alleys, it likely popped up overnight. The contents were simple if irritating. Every book was 410 standard pages (about 1500 characters), like the original library. However there were 95 possible characters in each book in the Library, as opposed to the 25 characters available in Borges'. Someone wanted to be able to do math and properly cite things in these books apparently, and so they decided that all the characters you could get from a standard keyboard would be useful. Obviously most of the volumes in this library were completely useless. Complete gibberish in a physical form. In addition to the useless fluff, however, the library contained the sum of all human knowledge. Everything that could be known about the universe and written down, was inside of its hallowed walls. In an effort to properly gauge the task before himself, Ronald sat down with an envelope and preformed some proper back of the envelope calculations (Of course, my dear reader, Ronald is a fictional character, so I, the glorious narrator of his tale, actually sat down and spent a disturbing amount of time calculating everything out). His calculations revealed that there were 615,000 characters in a book (assuming 1500 characters in typewriter font per page), and each space for a character could be filled by 95 characters meaning that there would be 95^615000 books in the library, or 1.04x10^1216300 Books. To otherwise represent the shear quantity of paper in this library, we can take the number of books and multiply it by the volume of a 410 page stack of A4 sheets of paper, which is 0.0012 cubic meters. We get approximately 1.25x10^1216297 cubic meters. Thats roughly 1 followed by over 1 million 0's. Some have correctly pointed out that the observable universe is only 10^80 cubic meters. This would make this bigger then the observable universe by over 1.25x10^1216217 times. Basically, the library is massive. Truly, unbelievably, massive. That was why the librarian, and her helpers, were there. The chief librarian was reportedly an eldritch being that none could behold with their eyes. Ronald wasn't sure how true this was, but he had never been there before, so he hadn't verified it yet. The helpers were apparently there to guide you around the library based off of your questions, but who or what they were, remained elusively out of reach.

Does anyone know of any cosmere magic systems that can determine if something is true or not? Like a magical lie detector.

Ronald sat as his desk, pondering his meeting with Lita. He nearly hadn't made it out of there, He shuddered. Even a full 24 hours later the fury in her eyes as she realized that he was standing in her was scared him. Despite his best efforts at talking his way out of there, it barely worked. His gamble had failed. His attempt at pitting the two departments against each other had failed, and his life nearly taken in payment. He had never really been one for power. To him it was a means to an end, and he wouldn't, couldn't, let it be any more. That hunger that possessed Lita was common in the DA. Each scientist and acolyte in these unhallowed Alleys starved for something, whether it was knowledge, or power, or blood, or cookies. They had this primal drive that pushed them to take for takings sake, and while it was so dreadfully common, it did give them strength. For hundreds of thousands of years, humans feared the night. Not for supernatural reasons as some would have you believe, but simply because predators lived there. Mere animals, creatures so far beneath us that we farmed them by the thousands now. Yet early on they terrified us, because they had this same hunger. They would push themselves harder and faster then we ever could, simply because they knew that we were food. We merely survived initially because our hunger for life outpaced theirs, but we only started thriving once we learned temperance. When we learned that we could outlast them in a hunt, by chasing them for days or even weeks, we started to thrive. When we learned that by sitting and waiting over a meager field of crops, we could grow our families and establish ourselves far bigger then we ever had by running ourselves to death hunting, we started progressing toward civilization. This ability to temper our passions and control ourselves led us to be the truly remarkable beings that we were today, but Ronald found himself surrounded by humans that gave into this passion, and worse of being, being completely outclassed by them. No matter how he played it, he was weak. And his ability to survive and play the long game did him no good if someone shot him in the back. It was clear, after facing the ire of one of the department heads, that he needed more power. Not for its own sake, but to protect his life. If he was to sit at this high stakes table, working with and around department heads, he would need a bigger get out of jail free card. If they were displeased with him, they could simply kill him with a blink of their eye. He sighed. The one good thing about this situation was that the DA was exactly the place where anyone seeking power should be. But he couldn't just pick up any power. He needed a power that he could control. Walking up to his wall of books, he started pulling the ones off that discussed investiture. While he wasn't a researcher, it behooved him to have some resources nearby to reference the various powers he might come across. He started scanning through the tables of context, and slowly he came to the realization that this was going to be much more difficult then simply going to the store and picking out a couch. You see, in order for this new source of power to become useful, it needed three things. The first was that he needed to be in control. The second was that it couldn't change him too dramatically. And the third was that it needed to be strong enough to give him enough time to slip away from department heads. Very, very few things fit that bill. The metallic arts seemed to fit most things right off the bat. A fullborn certainly had enough power to take on the Department heads, and hemalurgy was readily available. But he couldn't use hemalurgy under any circumstance. The insanity brought on by an entropic god whispering in your ear would change him too much for it to be considered a victory, and to become a full born he would need a lot of spikes. If he could find lerasium, he could be a mistborn, but that still left 16 spikes for feruchemy. He knew his limits, there was no way in heck he would be able to survive that. Awakening was very controllable, and certainly didn't change himself all that much, but the power it granted likely wouldn't be enough for face off the department heads. He would also need to surround himself with miles of fabric to even have a chance at getting it to work. While potentially strong enough to face off against a department head, there wasn't anything in his book that would show how a non Nalthian could awaken. It did have the benefit of not requiring Hemalurgy however. Awakening was on the table. Selish magics on the other hand seemed very much out of his reach. He wasn't from Sel, and as such didn't have any of the connection necessary to obtain these powers naturally. Hemalurgy or medallions would work, but Hemalurgy was out of the picture, and while medallions could potentially be used to obtain the power he would need further research to figure out if they were viable in the long term. More importantly, while being an Elantrian would certainly give them enough power to fight against the department heads, his reliance on the Cognitive realm would certainly pose an issue. At the push of a button they could simply cut of the Dor pipeline to the alleyverse and he would be done for. No Selish magics were too vulnerable. He worked his way down the list. Yolish magics were to weak, sand mastery was too environmentally dependent. Epic powers were unobtainable without hemalurgy, and they came with the anger that changed him, so they were out. Cytonics were unobtainable without hemalurgy. Aethers too weak. The chalk stuff from that odd earth place, while interesting, was still too weak. The old magic from Roshar was powerful, but came at a cost. And with a request as powerful as this, the odds that the cost took something important away from him were too great. What he needed was an arbitrage. A known benefit and a known cost that he could exploit for his profit. He was nearing the end of his meager library when he came across surgebinding. This... could work, he thought. He read the descriptions of the honor blades and their power, as well as the knights radiant. Certainly he could escape from a department head with this much power, and he was in control. Ethically it seemed like a fit as well, with temperance and control as its biggest strengths. Yet that strength was also its weakness. The oaths were predetermined, and they constrained him in ways that he didn't appreciate. Perhaps that was negotiable. At the end of the chapter he noticed a footnote, stating that bonding with many cognitive entities was theorized to be possible. Perhaps their oaths were different, or their powers different. Certainly it warranted research. He stood up, shook his head as if to clear it, and checked his watch. It had been a full 8 hours of reading, but it seemed like it wasn't over yet. His resources weren't enough, but he knew the DA had a vast library, one that contained all the knowledge in the universe. It wasn't very useful, being that most of it was unintelligible nonsense, but the Library of Babel had what he needed. Hopefully the assistants would be able to help him locate this information.

I just listened to the song and I love it! It might be a bit too Rock-y for Ronald. He listens exclusively to classical and smooth jazz so that he can look down on people who don't.

Bad Mod. How dare you disrupt this bastion of order and efficiency.

I'm not saying you have too, but the DA is always an option for sudden life changing transformations

Factoring in a +10 for the additional soulcasting and +10 for the combined metallurgy and business skills. This puts us at 75. I'm willing to call the combined resistance a +75, and you can make it so a shard blade would need a couple of hacks to cut off a limb and maybe a few more to hack through a torso. Besides that she should be good.

You have a breath quota of three.

To be fair, this has never happened before I don't think. Lol. In terms of plot things. I don't know whats happening. I have it on at least above average, if not good, authority that no one else knows either. I think literally everyone is in the Hospital thread, and they are all playing around each other. Not sure how that is gonna play out to be honest, but depending on how it does, various new threads might pop up.

Its almost surreal that everyone's here again.

I'm not sure how I feel about it to be honest, I might need to make a new character just to assuage my fears

Couple things I want to point out, just so we are aware of why things are they way they are now. The first, is that the reason we went to lower powered characters in the first place, wasn't that people were being too silly or un-civil (though that did happen), it was more that the community voted that they wanted to experiment with telling stories of low powered people in general. We didn't have room for people to have a character that was just a normal dude with a couple powers because each person they came across was a mistborn or a knight radiant with 3 awakened swords and anger issues. The second, is that the DA's creatures were designed to be nigh unbeatable to even the strongest of hero's, and particularly with the one guarding the worldspike, that was written so that no one could beat it, not even Voidus. They were more of a set piece and a backdrop then something you were actively supposed to go against. Also, I think now that we have the original writer of the plot back, we should be able to come to a resolution regarding the plot that wont run into the same issues as last time, where the whole process was unbeatable simply because we didn't have a McGuffin. Finally, I don't think we stated this publicly, but before the RP kinda died, we did approve a couple characters that had experienced a ton of development in RP and thus we allowed them to go beyond the normal point cap. Sort of like overcoming your weaknesses, or gaining new skills or swearing another oath. I would be down to take some time and look through developing characters and give them an aok for a point boost if people wanted to do that. I don't think it would be unreasonable to have characters systemically level up as they go through era's (particularly with radiant swearing oaths, or gaining fighting abilities or cool magic gear), but I am a little cautious of just having people join in with high powered characters as historically, they have tended to have lackluster development (and this is coming from someone who had such a character).

Its awesome to read your stuff, and its very interesting to see how a different character impacts my interpretation of the plot. When I played Mac I viewed it through his eyes, which was fairly carefree knowing that I could at the very least blast my way out of any bad situations. Now I'm terrified of it, knowing exactly how godlike the stranger is and how little I could impact it.