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| No title. |
| (2013-02-09 - 2013-03-14) |
| No description. |
| Merlin | Phantasis Tower. It seems to be raining books today. "Confound it!" An angered, grumpy voice reaches out from the wizard's tower while the pealing shrieks of laughter from a small and very cynical owl hoot from the general chaos of things breaking, objects being overturned, bumping together and clattering back and forth. It doesn't take very long to get in range of the clutter of objects floating around the top of the tower and constantly streaming from within. Several spoons fling themselves like missiles out of the windows, burying themselves in the grassy terrain far below while a small teapot, holding onto it's top with one hand catches the edge of the window, banging away at the edge with the spoon until Merlin comes to the window, half distracted by something he's holding and absent mindedly scooping up the sugarbowl and putting it back on the ledge. "Drat. Drat and bother this contraption. The future. BAH--" "Ah who said it was /such/ a magnificant development? WHO said it would make everything--" the owl has to wheeeze. Wheeze from the laughing. " everything.. so much simpler. /Praise/ technology you said. Ah--- AH HA HA AHA.." "Quiet Archamedes." Several small statues of cats, one paw upraise float by at about ankle height, slowly spinning. |
| Isaac Hanlon | Phantasia Tower is a way better spot to meet someone than a hut in the middle of a lake. Isaac is fond of the view, and the... well, the levitating rock thing it has going for it. He's been working on a way to just have a room of his own in the space between spaces (weird living spaces are a wizard thing), but had to take a break to go ask some pertinent questions. On the way here, he just hoped the one he was looking for would be around when he got here. Fortunately, it did not take Isaac long to determine that the good wizard Merlin was in residence. The wooden cooking spoon that clocked him when he came over the bridge was a pretty good indication. Rubbing his forehead, Isaac looks up at the window. "Guess we've got the right place," he mutters to his erstwhile companion, glancing back for a second. He clears his throat. "Hail, Merlin!" Isaac calls. "Is everything alright up there? We've got your..." He bends down and picks something up. "...ladles, down here." |
| Mercade | Mercade likes towers. Towers are good. The Detective moves along with Isaac as he picks up the wooden spook, frowning at it. "Looks like he's flailing a bit today." He says to ISaac quietly, ad he looks up. "A bit chaotic... HEY MERLIN!" Mercade calls. "We're here to say hello! And give you back your stuff!" Mercade is not a wizard, so he'll have to leave Isaac to give the secret Wizard Brotherhood handshakre or whatever they do. |
| Merlin | The wizard of Traverse Town leans out of the window, holding an object very much like a touchphone in one palm, tapping at it with increasing aggrivation with each tap producing a different and apparantly undesirable effect. Frogs. Locusts. A pot boils. These are all things that would be very handy say, if you lived in Egypt and required 7 or so plagues to make someone elses day very unpleasant-- however a 'rain of Ladles and cooking utensils' is probably a little too odd to fly with the theocratic crowd. "Yes yes.. Ladles." he doesn't look up from the screen until finally, the wizard reaches the point of most people who deal with malfunctioning technology after a certain point. And that point is the ragequit. Merlin stuffs the offending object into his robe (or into his beard, it isn't quite certain) and leans over to take a better look at his visitors. "Ah! Yes." he looks at his wrist, although there is not a watch there. Merlin frowns and continues to ignore the hooting laughter of his familiar as he starts looking for his watch. "Yes-- come in. Come in. Mind the mess. I'm afraid there has been a bit of an-- instructional error, I believe." % He waves in the general direction of the floating waffle makers and cats and ladles and other such paraphenalia and they relucantly, almost grudgingly slink back into the tower with the general feeling of the day after Marde Gras when the hangover is fading and it is time to go back to work. Inside, some semblance of order has been restored to the tower while Merlin, grumbling under his breath continues to pace while a chair totters around behind him as he walks in circles. "Now. What was this you wanted to see me about?" he peers myopticly at an instructional manual that appears in his hands, turning the pages rapidly. "Pft. Wizard's manual indeed. Easier to program a VCR to whistle in Swahili." |
| Isaac Hanlon | Secret handshakes? No problem. Frogs? Also no problem. Isaac pulls his tablet out of his coat pocket. He taps it a couple of times, and a vaguely dome-shaped plane of force appears above his and Mercade's heads. Frogs flop against it, ribbiting and hopping away en masse. Isaac has stopped bullets with that before. It's no problem. Locusts, on the other hand... Isaac hastily enters the tower once he's given permission, both to keep away from the plagues and to see what the deal is with all the floating, apparently forlorn appliances. He's never made /his/ appliances look forlorn. Then again, he's also never tried to make a horde of kitchen utensils animate and fling themselves out of windows in a rage, sooo... "Thanks for seeing us," Isaac says, dimissing the makeshift umbrella. He pockets the tablet, glancing around the inside of the tower. It is definitely what he'd expect a slightly mad wizard to live in. "I had some questions about some things. Some of it's metaphysical, but the more important bits are more pertinent to the current Manhattan situation. I was hoping you'd be willing to provide some insights." He smiles a little. "I'd be willing to trade, if you'd like. I'm glad you told us what you did before, but I'm not expecting handouts." |
| Mercade | Mercade looks up at the window, staring as Merlin summons up some crazy stuff from a giant-ass old phone. Wow. What a brick. "Wow, that's... I've never seen that happen before." He looks over ti Isaac and says quirtly. "Maybe you can help hgim with the tech." He enters the tower with Isaac, and looks over the place, whistling. "Wow, this is Chez Wizard, all right." He looks back to the line of cooking utensils who are gridgingly getting back to their places. "Huh..." Isaac gets a gesture from Mercade as he points out the manual. "Did you get one of those when you became a wizard too?" Merlin gets a wave when he sees him, Mercade smiling pleasantly. "Nice to see you again, Merlin!" Isaac's the one on business here, he's looking pretty and offering what insight he can. |
| Merlin | Archamedes peers at Isaac and Mercade, still chuckling. "Ah. These boys again. Brace yourself, you old loon. It's probably the Manhattan business again." "Hm? Didn't that get sorted out already? I do recall having a laundry ticket to that effect. It took ages to get that--." "Wrong timeline." Archamedes says this in the dry, bland voice that belies having to remind Merlin of these things many times before. "What?" Merlin turns to face the familiar who is comfortably huddled down on the little peg that protrudes from the small tower house set high on the wall. He closes the manual, which poofs out of existance with a little OS powering off chime. "Wrong timeline. Three steps sideways, four at the slant-- not four sideways, three at the slant." Merlin hmms, reaching up to scratch thoughtfully at his chin, stroking his beard as he looks at Isaac and then at Mercade. He considers them for a long time before his shaggy eyebrows raise. "So it is." "Yes, and if you'd /bothered/ to check you wouldn't have had problems with that manual either. It's the /wrong/ version." "And just when were you going to say this?" Archamedes snickers. "Maybe after they'd gone." Merlin wrinkles up his nose, taking off his spectacles and shaking them at Archamedes. "Now you see here, /bird/--" "Guests?" Archamedes says and Merlin shakes glasses at Archamedes. "I shall account for you later." the wizard turns to regard Isaac, putting the glasses back on and sitting down in the chair that has been dutifully following him, gesturing to other seats that creep curiously towards Isaac and Mercade like shy children. "Sit sit. Hello again and--all that. Bother and drat that manual. Sorcerous machinery.. bah." He gestures again. "A trade hmm?" Merlin takes off his hat and reaches inside to find the teaset (minus the sugar bowl) that he sets on the table. "Well. It is a situation, isn't it? That very well requires a little more information on your part as well as mine. Tell me what it is--" he has to struggle with something in the hat, and his words are muffled as he sticks his face inside it and it sounds hollow. "you--- WANT" POP! The tea tray comes up out of the hat and Merlin has to manuever carefully for all the assorted tea cups, saucers, bowls and teapots to land precisely where they out to. He puts it on the table. "And then we'll decide what is a fair enough exchange." |
| Isaac Hanlon | "Yeah, that's what I was figuring," Isaac mutters back to Mercade. Merlin appears to be having technical problems. Maybe he can help fix them. And... temporal problems. Isaac sort of stands there, trying to keep the look of astonishment off his face. Wrong /timeline/? Is Merlin really /that/ good? Is he just a universal constant, is that it? Some kind of wizard that exists in all times and places at once, but is in fact one person? Is that how he got so powerful and so good with apparently no explaination anywhere? Or is he just screwing with them? Isaac suddenly shakes his head. He gratefully takes a seat. "No, no manual here," he mutters, shaking his head a little more. He looks back at Merlin. "Well -- here. This is the important bit." He reaches into his coat, and produces... ...paper. /A/ paper, that is. It looks like a torn, photocopied page of a journal with yellowed pages, with a spiral shape in the left corner and a blue-colored illustration on the right side of it. The writing is cramped and in some kind of runic language which, at first glance, appears to make precisely zero sense. "I was hoping you'd be able to read this, or at least tell us where it is we could find someone else who could," Isaac says. "I had a pig spirit dig it up, but I can't make heads or tails of it. I have to at least have some idea of how the language works before I can even attempt to concoct a translation ritual, but..." He spreads his hands. |
| Mercade | Mercade can't help but grin at the interplay between Archimedes and Merlin. They've always had an... interesting relationship. He takes the offered seat, sitting down and folding his hands in his lap. He watches in wonder as he sees Merlin just... make a teaset basically appear as he rummages in his Hat of Holding. "What is it like being a wizard?" Mercade can't resist asking at this point. "You have all those amazing powers and probably a ton of knowledge to boot. What do you do with it?" Mercade doesn't even broach the concept of time travel. That never leads anywhere good. He leans over the paper, and blinks. "A pig spirit? So you managed to get those Noise to do something useful for you besides just oink up your broadcasts?" |
| Merlin | Merlin replaces the hat on his head and pours the tea. He then sets the teapot gently aside, stirring the cup idly with one of the escaped spoons as he leans back in the chair with a sigh of released tensions. He nods sagely towards Isaac in a considering if slightly metronomic fashion. Meanwhile Archamedes sizes up Mercade, peering down at the detective with those wide, staring eyes of jaded consideration. The owl answers when the wizard does not. "Answer the questions of the foolish, one should thing. Sit with all your powers and be powerless as tragedy stalks the homes of many places and many times that you loved. /Question/ --" "That's enough Archamedes. I very well think that was /NOT/ what he wanted." "Yes, but it was what he asked." Archamedes grumps, turning tailfeathers and disappearing into the little tower while Merlin sedately drinks his tea. "You'll have to forgive Archamedes. He's always been a bit of an activist, and while things are a bit dodgy around the edges it's more a matter of what can be done within certain parameters that doesn't allow the enemy a free shot, so to speak." He claps his hands together, peering at them as if he had lost the thread of the conversation. "Let us see here." he squints at the page, mumbling half a dozen words in a unrecognizable language as he turns the page gingerly over and over. "What is that?" Archamedes cries from inside the tower. "Something about stars and oysters?! uuugh-- Your Atlantean is terrible." "I do admit to being a trifle rusty, yes." he squints at the page, trying to make out the writing. "Hmm. Yes.. yes.. Well. Pig spirits can be rather.. ecclectic in the things they find, and rather troublesome to keep a hold on. " Merlin gets up, walking to a green blackboard that he begins to scribble on with a piece of chalk. "Let's see what we have here." |
| Isaac Hanlon | Isaac leans back in his considerably less animate chair. He nods at Mercade. "Yeah. One of the pins in the pile was apparently pretty potent. Calls up a little pig, about this big," he says, holding up both hands and holding them about two palm-widths apart, "and it goes sniffling around for bits of information. Pretty neat. Have to see what kind of limitations it has." Merlin appears kind of sagely. Isaac just kind of a-peers at the sage. He's pretty sure that Merlin is actually quite sagely in his own right, but he's not precisely certain about what. Sometimes he just seems scatterbrained, even if that brain has forgotten more about magic than Isaac has ever learned. Appearances are confusing. Never judge by them. "Hnh." Isaac doesn't offer much confirmation or denial when Archimedes offers his jaded opinion. Isaac's grunt is in vague, dim agreement and sort of bitter disapproval at the same time. It's difficult to discern from such a small noise. He knows all about /that/, though. "So doing big things means the enemy gets to do the same, huh?" Isaac infers enough of that from what Merlin said. It sort of tracks -- if Merlin was the only one with this power and he wanted to help them, why would he be so subtle about it? He reaches for a teacup while he considers that bit of trivia. There is something to be said for paying close attention. Then, he leans forward. "Atlantean? Like -- actual Atlantean?" He seems surprised. "Wow. No wonder I can't figure it out. What is it, some kind of bizarre Greek derivative?" |
| Mercade | Mercade glances back up at Archimedes. "Are you some sort of elemental spirit of cynicism?" he glances over to Isaac with the possible question of him verifying this, before looking back at the owl, squinting at him for a moment. He looks like he's about to say something else, but he stops. No need here. He looks back to Merlin and nods. "I understand." He doesn't really, but then, he's not in the kind of position Merlin is. From Archimedes' standpoint, maybe it's better this way. Mercade squints again as the prair get to work. "Atlantean? Like the lost continent?" He frowns. "Slippery as a greased pig." He mutters to himself. He nods to Isaac, and grins. "That's kind of cute. Too bad those things are such trouble, otherwise we'd get John a pet." |
| Merlin | Archamedes just hmmphs at Mercade, probably too cynical even to be considered a spirit of cynicism. They aren't jaded enough. "A fascinating study, actually. Atlantean, in its world was such a lost and forbidding language that only a mad wanderer held the only keys to deciphering it. I believe.. hmm" Merlin lets the chalk continue to write language that looks vaguely like the one on the writing as he walks back to the window. "I believe I have that map around here.. hmm. I took a copy of it from the scrolls.. terrible place to stove scrolls anyways. Wet and cold and terribly musty. Very neglectful." he roots around on the window still but as it is completely bare it is only when he pulls up an entire brick and flips it over to the bottom edge that he reads something written in chalk on the bottom. "Ah! Yes." he pulls off his hat and reaches far inside it, still looking at that brick from time to time. He retrieves an elderly scroll that crackles as he unfurls it. "Pig spirits." he snorts softly, nose twitching. "Always mucking about and getting into everything and turning up old bits of nonsense." The board has finished it's scribblings, which Merlin tapes the old scroll to and spins around, the map and writing having merged into one picture in the time of one flip. "AH! So that's where I left the coffee filters. I knew they were somewhere about. Now.. Atlantean is a very picky language. The context is very particular, but I think this should be enough to get you started. The translation is very coarse, mind you-- there are some general proscriptions about the area. Strange currents. Crushing depths. Biting Lobsters" "/biting lobsters/?!" scorns Archamedes from inside the tower, "That is /precisely/ what it says." |