(Y7, February 10th)
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The Deva settlement had a respawn square. They used respawn sticks, but not to notify friends on whether or not you had already respawned, but to mark a spawn so other Devas would Recess somewhere else to avoid overcrowding. Simple, elegant, and obvious once you know about it.
But even with Reserve Sticks – which was precisely how the Devas called them, as the Common Tongue did not work with compound words – there were things that happened by chance.
Less than five seconds after Quandocor had materialized and pulled out his stick, space flickered, and a Deva popped out three meters from him. The tall blue humanoid bent to pick up his stick and froze.
“What???” he exclaimed.
“Good sojourns on the Second World,” Quandocor replied seriously.
He'd learned that it was the proper form of welcoming someone fresh from Respawn.
If the alien had been surprised to see a pasty-skinned, black-haired, shorter humanoid with slightly off features, the fact that he spoke clear – if accented – Common Tongue threw him off even further. Then the Deva recovered and did the upper lip raising that served as a smile.
“I see a level 350? You’re… what?”
“A Visitor. From far away, in all senses of the term.”
Theavilast and Jonkartman were both on Recess, Jon having confirmed Recess only four hours ago on Earth, but the rest were there. The four that were still there sat around a slightly too-high table, playing some game with ivory blocks.
“Thea told me you got some news while I was on Recess,” Quandocor said.
“Got a bit more information. They clamped down a lot when they realized they were in a straight First Contact scenario and wanted the ‘authorities’ to handle it. Apparently, they’re a bit more civic-oriented than we are,” Berkleyyan explained.
“No Gater Act, then?”
“Nothing like that. Apparently, Gating is publicly known and tolerated. The various governments – yes, there are multiple – require registration, including your stats. They apparently want to track how ‘abnormal’ you might be.”
“No world government or anything like that?”
“That’s in sci-fi novels. There are dozens of significant polities, but apparently, three really matter, or so our host says. The Common Tongue is the equivalent of English from Earth, only more so – apparently, nearly half of the Deva population speaks it natively, and most of the rest learns it at one point.”
“So, we might fill our Panglossia slots later on. I’ve still got two open.”
“Can’t be helped. Thea would be here; she’d tell us all about why it’s a triple-F skill,” Goglas said.
“The sacrifices we make,” Thalokainy joked.
“So, authorities.”
“Kolalºvas went on fast Recess, and someone from one of the main settlements will make their way here to meet with us,” Berkleyyan said.
“They got main settlements?”
“Large ones, at least. This one has been recently started, apparently last year. And they’ve only been on Second World for over four years.”
“Only?”
“Yes. I expected all the Gaters to have popped simultaneously or something like that, but no. They found their First Gate about four and a half years ago, so apparently, their local presence in Northworld is still only like twelve to fifteen thousand individuals. Our host was miffed when he realized I could easily guess that one.”
“Lower levels, too.”
“That’s what made us seem very impressive. They’ve got thousanders, but they’re a lot rarer. Slash-flex.”
“Probably wouldn’t do,” Quandocor commented.
Panglossia might not give cultural context, but gesture-based meaning came automatically, and flexing muscles for a Deva was the equivalent of catcalling. The others immediately laughed at the allusion while Berkleyyan almost mimed the gesture.
“Interesting too that the drop rate for Silvergates seems to match ours,” Quandocor noted.
“Looks like. I’ve also traded information about how the Interface works. They’ve got exactly the same general structure we do. Nine stats, nine vitals plus health, Setup gives you nine Skills across five tiers; everything seems identical. The biggest difference is that the Skills seem to use their measuring system rather than metric.”
“You know, I wondered how that would translate.”
“Their version of metric is base-12. Six digits,” Berkleyyan raised his hand, wiggling his mere five. “In practice, their ‘kilometer’ is about 5% smaller than ours. And their meter is about 54% smaller, actually, since they divide their kilometer by 1736, not by a normal 1000.”
“Does this mean that all their ranges are half of ours?”
“No, a lot of measures are twice the Skill level instead of being equal to Skill. There are a few Skills like that for us, too.”
“Duration?” Quandocor asked.
“Funnily enough, close to ours. We use a primarily base-12 too. They’ve got four quarters of a day, then divided into 12 sub-divisions. Their day is closer to Northworld’s than ours, however. So, marginally longer Skill durations.”
“Damned tall blue people. Everything is bigger here, then,” Quandocor joked.
“The beds are nice,” Thalokainy replied.
“Are we confined?”
“No, but it’s a bit boring. The settlement isn’t that big, and it’s primarily explorers/adventurers, so most of them are out trying to grow Skills and find out what kind of critters can be hunted for what. I wouldn’t say we almost outnumber the locals, but…”
Quandocor found himself sightseeing alongside Varmatan. It was a bit funny speaking in Portuguese. The second Earthen Brethren was relatively fluent in English, which had meant somehow that Panglossia did not trigger for him on the native speakers of the group. Well, Quandocor was now more fluent in the man’s tongue than he himself was in English. With the language barrier being lowered, the Portuguese was a bit more open than during the trek from the Keep.
“The Brethren are international, but of course, that means speaking English all the time,” he said.
“I heard most of the Great Guilds are that way,” Quandocor said.
“Well, for the Brethren, that was an Englishman, an American, and an Aussie who started it.”
“I was expecting ‘walked into a bar’.”
“That joke’s international. I wonder if the Deva have it.”
“You haven’t talked to them that much?”
“Mostly Kolalºvas and a few others. Everyone is cautious. We haven’t even mentioned the expedition you found last year.”
“We’re at the ‘take me to your leader’ phase, you mean.”
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“Save that we’re getting a Representative to Aliens coming up here instead. Kolalºvas seemed a bit surprised that whatever authorities he contacted had designated one on such a short turnaround. ‘Unprecedented,’ he said.”
“All governments move slowly, even on other worlds.”
“The similarities don’t end with the general shape,” Varmatan acknowledged.
“So we wait.”
“That’s why Thalo’s started those Mahjong games. One of Kolal°vas friends was supposed to do a Fast Recess to get news earlier since the man is locked for three more days, but we don’t know how fast that Representative to Aliens or whatever is supposed to arrive.”
“They don’t have Com Globes?”
“We haven’t asked or said anything about ours yet. It does not look like someone found the bizarre recipe for them. So they rely on couriers on fast Recess and what does look like modern communication ‘there’.”
“That works, too. Picked up news from the Raid while I was back on Earth,” Quandocor said. “They’ve joined with the Beta contingent and are heading straight to the meeting point for Alpha in Fanduk. Should take them under three weeks to get there, and I’ll assume they’re going to make an extra Recess for precaution before tackling the Pyramid.”
“Yan got a quick briefing with the Com Globe a few days ago. He said everything was right on schedule, even a little bit early. That’s when I regret not being of a higher level. But the only one that made the bar is Mongrel, the Guild Lead. Even Chastabulous didn’t qualify; he’s only 1750.”
“They’re the founders?”
“Yes. Mongrel – that’s the Aussie – Chastabulous and Berkleyyan. They were high veterans, and Mongrel had already a triple geomantic. He was exploring the lands east of the Keep when he noticed the presence of the World Leyline. He has Geometry of Magic, which adds exact formulas for lots of Skill stuff on the Interface, and that’s how he learned about that fourth tier of Leylines since it labeled his power boost as due to a ‘World Leyline’. He followed it until the team discovered the Earthen Keep. Or, at the time, the Earthen Keep Dungeon, rather.”
Quandocor remembered how the Valkyrie had had to deal with crows when clearing out their own Keep or the two veterans who’d speculated about turning their dungeon into a guild headquarters.
“Occupied much?”
“Elementals. Elementals everywhere. Any loose pile of rocks in the keep was likely to self-animate and start trying to kill or maim you at the slightest provocation. It took them weeks, an entire Respawn cycle, to completely clear out the Keep. Mongrel had noticed all those leylines converging on the Keep, so he was certain it had to be an important location.”
“And then they found the courtyard.”
“At first, they didn’t quite know what to make of it. It’s a large circular flooring motif with three separate rings, and in the middle, eight spokes with dots, double-dot lines, triangles, squares, and pentagons. Running the lottery in the middle was an impulse – they’d gotten loads of levels while clearing the Keep. Mongrel and Yan both got the same tier 2 geomantic Skill, Boon of Vitality, while Chasta got Marathon. That was curious enough that both re-ran the lottery with their remaining points, and they both got the same skill again: Call the Earth this time.”
“Chastabulous remained with the guild, no? I think he was the original contact for Van.”
“He brought a cheap geomantic Skill Stone. And then got Return Attack. By then, they’d recruited another geomancer Mongrel knew and confirmed you got geomantic Skills all the time, as long as you were a geomancer and you ran the lottery within the inner circle. Chastabulous even had one of those lucky lotteries where you get offered your choice of three Skills… all three geomantic. Which was unheard of.”
“And nobody guessed it was the leylines themselves, not the sculpted floor.”
“To be fair, it basically told you in which order you got which tier of Skills. The ‘priority’ between Leylines is fixed, so you always get the intersection of four lines as a first Skill, then three, two, and finally the individual ones in decreasing order of magnitude.”
“And then, Van sold you the secret of the actual Leylines.”
“And then, we added three new triplets of Skills to our set. That’s the end of an era, I think.”
“How so?”
“The Earthen Brethren were the top Geomancers of Northworld. Even the lowliest of us had at least nine Skills, one to qualify as a geomancer and eight from the Courtyard. People looked at us as the absolute top in matters of magic.”
“You still have a lock on three Skills.”
“But people will hunt all the others. And if they can find another triple intersection of World Leylines, they can emulate us.”
Quandocor shrugged.
“Win some, lose some,” Varmatan said.
“By the way, Van told me the Cartographers are getting ready to launch their Skill service. Thea will probably confirm if that’s happening when she Respawns.”
“We’re supposed to get an advance notice from the Cartographers. I’ll ask Yan if he got one through the Com Globe.”
The two men had gotten to the town’s border and followed the packed earth trail that made its way around it. The Deva settlement was made of mixed stone and wood, with a patina of age that told them it was a “native” finding, not something that the Deva themselves had built.
The construction materials themselves weren’t surprising. Physics dictated practicality dictated style – if the Northworld settlement was supposed to be reminiscent of the Deva’s homeworld, then they’d had used similar structures, stone and wood houses.
What differed was the scale. Everything was slightly larger, it felt. The wooden doors all reached almost 9 feet and were more slender in proportion, reflecting the Deva’s frame. There were windows, and all were at their head’s level, far higher than humans would have placed them. That was another point where Panglossia made things weird again – they had the names for the three styles of doors and windows they’d spotted, and even without asking, it was evident from the naming that some of the styles were not supposed to go together in the same structure.
The streets were pretty wide, but that wasn’t meaningful. Quandocor had seen all kinds of street plans on the handful of Northworld towns he’d seen.
A few buildings were obviously not houses as well. They were significantly more extensive and had two floors, whereas the Deva houses were all single-floor plans, and most had placards added above the doors. That’s where Panglossia hit its limits. The humans had access to all of the vocabulary of the Common Tongue, the body expression that came with it, but not the written language. Quandocor stopped before one such signboard.
“I’m going to assume it’s a smithy,” Varmatan speculated.
“The hammer over a square block, you mean?”
“They probably use similar tools. That, or it’s an adventurer guild that advertises smashing the critters.”
“You know, I still wonder how the Interface can give us instant knowledge of the language and fail with the written word. When we found the expedition, their descriptors were… well, mostly like those scribbles,” Quandocor said.
“Northworld.”
“Northworld.”
“Here they are,” a Deva voice said from the side.
Quandocor turned and spotted a trio of Devas coming up a street toward their town’s edge.
“Told you I had met some aliens.”
“And you’re not senile at 30.”
Quandocor refrained a smile, since that human gesture was bizarre for a Deva, and tried to raise the lip without showing teeth since that was what worked instead.
“And you speak Common Tongue, even,” the third Deva said.
“And we do.”
“How’s that even possible?”
“There is a Skill for that,” Quandocor said.
“Oh, stat. That useless Stone? The one that gives you languages no one uses?”
“It’s not too useless in some circumstances.”
Quandocor briefly checked the Interface, but Panglossia remained at 3 out of 5, so none of the Devas had exotic countries as their home.
“I assume the authorities are notified? Does Kolalºvas know?”
“We actually met him when we arrived.”
“From where? If that’s not too…”
“West.”
“Rough country. The ranks start to climb high… but your friend is strong.”
“Our highest is 1500.”
The Deva’s equivalent to a whistle was… a whistle. High frequency, brief.
“We were going to head out to a Lair, but hearing that there are aliens is… way more significant.”
“South-southeast? Looks big.”
“You know about it?”
“I have a Skill for that.”
“Ah, a tracker one. I wonder if you came from the West… did you find any? I’m Zontºhar, by the way,” the Deva he’d first met in the Respawn square said.
“Volºther.”
“Hikalºru.”
Both Quandocor and Varmatan introduced themselves, which made the Deva curious as the untranslated names sounded extremely weird to their ears.
“It’s a bit of the same. Although the use of Panglossia does help in our case. Like you have an ‘o’ that’s not an ‘o’, but we can recognize it. And I found a couple on the way, but not too many.”
The Devas looked at each other in a gesture that was universal.
“The dungeon is going to wait. I’d rather learn more about your kind.”
Instant friends, eh? That’s quite different from Kolalºvas, Quandocor realized he had a perfect opportunity to learn more about the Deva culture.
The settlement’s inn was not a real one. Hikalºru apologized, but since he did serve as an amateur bartender there, he had access to everything in the store.
Which immediately led to a potential problem. Drinks.
Although they were reasonably sure that local prey and flora included a lot of comestibles, they relied on supplies – Quandocor himself had brought back a backpack full of packed food, and each Recess by expedition member was going to do the same. Zontºhar had the bright idea to dig up his memories and chemistry formula, which stumbled upon the human’s inability to read Deva script.
A few moments later, they’d roped in Goglas and the rest of the expedition. The Shaman For’us healer was not only confident that she could heal any intoxication status but that the molecule schematic Zontºhar had made was ethanol and not some toxic compound. The drawn figure matched, and the names Zontºhar used for the atoms did translate into ‘carbon’, ‘oxygen’, and ‘hydrogen’ in the right places.
“It’s good to know that what you call alcohol is the same as we have. I wasn’t trusting how the Interface works.”
Dug Press, level 16 alcoholic beverage.
“It is always correct and reliable?” Zontºhar wondered.
“The names aren’t always translated. Well, not correctly. For example, it says ‘Dug Press’ for me,” Quandocore replied.
“Hmmm… well, it’s more like it’s made of pressed root juices…”
Pressed Fermented Roots, level 16 alcoholic beverage.
Quandocor saw the Interface adjust in real-time. The names had slowly adjusted over days when they’d brought the items from the Deva expedition. But this time, it was almost instantaneous.
“Much better.”
“What?”
“It just changed to match your description.”
“That’s… weird?” Hikalºru said.
“It is like our Interface is not the same as your Interface, and it’s learning,” Quandocor said, voicing an opinion he’d also heard back at the Earthen Keep.
“Well, if that’s so, how does Panglossia work then?” Hikalºru insisted.
Everyone looked at him.
“Remind me never to trust a level 16 alcohol,” Quandocor mumbled. “Last time I was that shitfaced, it was a feast by the Valkyrie guild.”
“The Devas weren’t any better,” Goglas said.
“How come…”
“1200 and very high Resilience. Got nothing against hangover, though.”
Nobody answered her, and she sighed, looking at the sprawled bodies.
“Poison Immunity has its uses too. You miss a bit on the fun, but you only have to deal with consequences secondhand.”