I was speaking with Caion, and I was wondering if there were creatures on the Beast who might be shorn for their fiber? Something like a sheep or llama but in fiend form? Obviously you all do very much with pelts, but I was curious if there’s a source of wool?

youre looking for malpacas

they are utterly wretched and the worst

but their fluff is very soft

Is there some place where I might come by malpaca fiber? The bazaar, I would assume.

Yes, but consult with me - I love all of my vendors, to be clear, but there’s some that I know to be of the finest quality, and some that… well, if you need some for a science experiment of some sort, and I know you well enough to know that might be the case, ‘cheap’ might not be the wrong play, actually. I’ll give you a list.

I’d like something quality, though something cheap for the initial experiments wouldn’t go amiss—I’m working on spinning gnosis into fibers for weaving.

We have … “alpacas” on Almachadta. Why are these called “malpacas”?

pr clearly a malicious or malcontent alpaca

Isn’t that just a llama?

i regret to inform you that jorule is correct

its a malicious alpaca,

or,

a malpaca

Who named them, Jae?

i think we both know the answer to that one

🪅🦙🪅

why do you have a gay llama emoji

Seye gave it to me. Though. Gay?

Seye why did you give Salme gay llama emoji

She tells me I’m the best whenever I instruct her to, and has received boons for her fealty!

gay????

I see.

🆗️🆗️🆗️

I am happy to pay homage to the 🐲 princess for such generous boons.

Yeah no idea what he’s talking about either. Bit judgy.

yeah, gay. like caion. c’mon you know this word

Yes. I am not sure what being a jaunty alpaca has to do with it?

The… rainbow paint job…?

also it’s a llama not an alpaca

Why does a rainbow make him gay???????

I mean it could really be either. The pictograms aren’t sophisticated enough to tell.

It really is quite clearly labelled a llama, I don’t know what else to tell you.

also because the rainbow is the internationally recognize colorization of - mman you know what, you can think up the odyssey and mcbeth and poems from random bureaucrats from places wholly unlike almachadta and whatever the fuck else but ‘rainbow is queer coloration’ is too esoteric???

Wait they have labels? How do I see the labels?

Poems from “random bureaucrats”??? What kind of … bureaucrat poems am I quoting?

And I don’t know what to tell you! On Almachadta we had plays and stories and poetry but we didn’t have color-coding for people based on their sexuality?

I mean you don’t but I can look it up in a data base.

the one you were quoting at the omniclast

i think your connection to the collective unconscious is just optimally designed to annoy people, is what i think

Oh so I just have your word to trust that 🪅🦙🪅 are somehow both mystically llamas and not alpacas. Okay.

Huh. I was just thinking of … something that felt very much like the Omniclast, though I guess I don’t see what’s wrong with a bureaucrat writing poetry? I’m sorry it’s annoying you?

I mean. The sliver of myself that likes to poke at me on the linkpearl doesn’t seem to get out much considering they post in pseudo-ancient, so I don’t know what to tell you? It probably is optimally designed to annoy people? Or maybe you in specific. That seems like a thing that would happen considering the hookers situation.

yeah.

i mean there’s nothing wrong with a bureaucrat writing poetry but there is a lot wrong with you being able to just start reciting it off hand with zero thought.

actually a lot wrong with that now that I’m actively thinking about it. Hm.

What’s … wrong with it? I mean I can recite a lot of poetry offhand it’s sort of … what I do?

Like. My entire job?

yeah there’s a marked fucking difference between poetry from your home and culture you learned and studied and collected and poetry beamed directly into your mind from a completely alien culture you have basically no familiarity with from Goddess Knows What tho

For whatever it’s worth, the data available to me indicates that 🪅 is a “pinata”, whatever in the world that is. It’s not a word I recognise from the common or the Ancient tongues.

Presumably a pinata is a gay alpaca? Or llama? I am learning very much new extraplanar vocabulary today.

Ah! A pinata is a…children’s entertainment? You make a hollow animal or other shape out of paper and fill it with candies and small toys. Then it is hung from a tree limb or a post, and children take turns being blindfolded and swinging at the animal with a stick until it breaks open, at which point there is a general melee for candy.

Quite entertaining. So long as you are out of reach of the stick.

…and not required to break up the inevitable eventual scuffle over a handful of candy.

Oh! Oh that sounds delightful, we ought to introduce that to the Whisker-clan pups and then observe from a safe distance.

Indeed. And, Caion?

…whatever you think the safe distance is? Double it.

OH! I loved that game as a girl! I usually did get the killing blow and managed to get the most candy. Largely because I would bite anyone who drew too near.

… my lack of friends as a small child is becoming a bit more understandable in retrospect.

lets me get this straight.

Almachadta books: rare, few and far between, writing on paper is Strange and close to sacrilege.
But taking a bunch of paper, gluing it into the shape of an animal, filling in with candy, then telling children to go feral on it is… good and normal???

…well, when you put it like that it sounds strange…

It’s not strange and close to sacrilege you numpty, it’s because words are living things and are best kept alive through speech, and if you ARE going to write something down, parchment is more durable and available from the animal skins we slaughter. Light, Jorule, it’s like you don’t listen.

I don’t think you and I have ever talked about this particular topic, and other sources have ABSOLUTELY noted your culture being Weird about Paper because of Light-drinkers existing.

We absolutely did talk about this at least a little when I was wondering over the printing press but I’m still not sure where “sacrilege” came from.

And I think you meant “Spoken Wood” not “Light-drinker.”

one off hand comment isn’t really the same thing as talking about something, ms. i can produce thousands of words on any topic at the drop of a hat.

but yes i did mean spoken wood

Imagine what it would be like if you had an iota of curiosity and asked about my plane rather than assuming you automatically know everything based off “sources” (which are not in the room with us right now)

yeah i was asking right now????

To be fair, it sounded less like a question and more like a judgment in the shape of a question…

no judgement, just bafflement really

Are you sure you were not a Dragon in a past life, my good Jorule?

that’s really more Seye’s thing, unless this is a less literal reference going over my head

Ah, not a literal…right. Clan, not creature. One begs your forgiveness for the obscure jest, there is just an, ah…resemblance. The incisive desire for knowing, and the occasional, shall we say, bluntness in the face of its lack. Please, carry on.

… weird way of asking with all those presuppositions.

Anyway, paper is a fairly rare resource but not really because it’s sacrilegious, much like despite there being sentient monsters on Almachadta, using products from animals that might resemble them isn’t sacrilegious. As with any resource, we try to use wood and wood products responsibly. That’s at least one thing the yeresh do—help us maintain the balance of flora and fauna in any given area.

That said, paper-making, like parchment-making, is labor-intensive. The demand is rarely even present, and parchment is generally preferred due to its greater durability and reusability. Paper has utility for letter-writing and for bookkeeping, but these forms of writing aren’t always kept, and in seeking to reuse them they can be repurposed though dyeing and other transformations to make the material for pinatas or bunting.

There are also other paper materials, such as cotton, that can be used to make paper, and sometimes old rags are repurposed to that end. This tends to be the source of a lot of our paper, or at least it was near Oaretsch due to its large focus on textiles.

As I said above, writing itself is simply not a critical component in Almachadta. Literacy is low, and while learning to read was a gift (it lets me annoy you) it wasn’t a necessity. Remembering and retelling are the principal modes of transmission of stories and histories in Almachadta because, as I said, words are living things.

Wolf probably knows more about sacred texts that do get written down, but that was never my area of focus.

To be quite blunt, sacred texts are amongst one of the most frustrating things to deal with, in my experience. They are always made with the best of intentions–to create a lasting memory less susceptible to decay and transference error than a communal or oral tradition. Oftentimes, I have found, they are created in an attempt to clarify beliefs and commandments, and render them less prone to misinterpretation.

The reality is often that, three generations later, you get an entire community ready to tear itself apart over the placement of a comma or the interpretation of an allegory. And when you point out, helpfully, that they can, perhaps, make decisions for themselves and their own situations, the fierce rejoinder is often that the rules are written down and thus inviolate. Even when the rules do not make sense, or were written two centuries prior, or when it is clear to anyone without a vested interest in the argument that the author simply had a strange obsession with other people’s sexual proclivities.

They should burn the lot of them, honestly.

Well three cheers for being illiterate and not particularly invested in gods I guess. Go me.

it’s really fascinating how insanely untypical your strange inside out plane-of-a-world is tbqh

Right. Well apologies then if I was overly-harsh. And thanks for asking.

Is all that really that weird?

Forgive me, Salme, that, ah…was not actually an answer to your specific prompt, was it? Perhaps my experiences have given me a somewhat…dim…view of religious texts.

it really, really is

I mean I never bothered to learn shit about any of them and there’s a reason for that. Like I’d set out a bit of fruit or a small gift at the shrine of whatever local god while I was traveling but that’s about as much I cared or noticed. And the only priests I’ve ever really thought much of were the yeresh anyway.

Can I ask what you find particularly strange? The paper, obviously, but what else?

“written records kind of sucks vs oral accounts” being a common sentiment, the whole inside out thing, the dies in a fire and remakes itself every couple of hundred years thing, the INSIDE OUT THING - really can’t stress that one enough, ‘food’ having no scarcity at all but basic crafting materials do, OT3s being the most common pairing (tho this seems like a World Feature that trickled down into the planes to some degree or another), whole bunch of stuff.

Perhaps–and I am aware this is almost certainly going to be a useless suggestion–one could approach the differences from a spirit of curiosity and exploration and not so much…comparison? Those aren’t our world. Almachadta is. You might find it more pleasant if you did not expect it to be something it isn’t.

I mean, she literally asked. I don’t generally expect anything from it, and personally find it strange because it’s not like where I’m from, or any other place I’ve lived.

The inside out thing is … pretty strange now that I’ve been to multiple planes. I love the Centrelight but I also think … I might trade having it sometimes if I got to see stars and moons too (though only sometimes).

And wood is more plentiful on Almachadta than anywhere else we’ve been. Metal, though? That truly is a wonder.

Though … wait “OT3”? What are you talking about there?

Anyway, I’ve been thinking a lot about written versus oral history and I’m not really sure where I fall. I love that aspect of what I do and words are living things, but. I have recently thought the Sword-Saints could have kept some written record in the shrine. Maybe someone tried but … I wish I could know more about who came before me.

(I’m glad the cycles of destruction are weird to you. I hope one day they’re weird to me).

As is every other world we have stepped upon so far to me, yet I do not label them strange, or weird. But perhaps that is merely my ignorance speaking.

neither of those words mean “bad” or “ungood” or “undesirable”

Ah, I see. You are, of course, not responsible for the effect of your words if we poor ignorants have misinterpreted them.

Forgive me, Salme, I think I must put my tomestone away for the moment. If there is a way in which I might be of productive assistance, please message me.

you having some hang ups about the words strange or weird is, indeed, very much not my problem but I do apologize if I unintentionally offended you. In my field of research “weird” is perhaps one of the most desirable traits you might attach to a thing, fwiw.

To be fair to everyone, I introduced the word “weird” and sort of pushed Jorule into explaining himself?

Anyway, we should have a pinata.

Candy fiend…

As in we should make a candy fiend or as in I’m a candy fiend?

If it’s the latter, I never really liked sweets but! I could use the candy to bribe the other kids to do things for me.

If it’s the former, fuck yeah let’s make one.

Ah, no, just. Pinata sound candy fiends.

That said, we could make a pinata, though I’m a bit leery of finding the necessary materials in this cave.

Well I have a lot of fabric in my atelier. We could probably do something with gnosis to make it act like paper.

We also have two dozen pulp novels of dubious value in the game room and I’m sure we could recycle one pretty easily, but it can also wait until we’re back in Queenstown. Not even sure what we’d put in the pinata? Mostly wanted the joy of busting one open.

OK so to unpack this one a bit, my field of research/expertise is, hm. Dealing with hidden truths, secrets, and the Mostly But Not Completely unknown, and the various ways this can be used to interact with and manipulate reality. You saw a glimpse of that when the KGPs were formed.

So when you come across something “strange” or “weird” or “unusual”, that means you’ve found something that challenges your current understanding of reality - discovered some previously unknown or unexplained variable in its fabric, which in turn can lead you do a deeper, better understanding of the Secret Sciences - The Way Things Actually Work - by figuring out how these new variables figure into what you thought you knew of the way the world worked. There no ill meaning behind them at all, to me. Rather the opposite.

Hm. That…is an apology I can actually accept. Or at least an explanation that I can accept. I appreciate you taking the time to explain your reasoning to me. I do not believe that it will ever read as a compliment to me, but it does not have to. Thank you, Jorule.

yeah n/p. Again, really hadn’t been trying to raise anyone’s heckles there. Cultural differences can be killer, I guess.