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Isabella manages, by the liberal use of cloudpine travel, assorted magic, and her alethiometer, to acquire possession of a parking garage each in Manhattan and Los Angeles.
Into these she has Adarin place a portal set.
And then she mixes up a batch of suitably witchy ink that she'll be able to identify as authentic later, marks up a bunch of pieces of paper with it, and walks into: a bank.
Adarin's welcome to come along, if he likes...
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dark_light
dark_light
"I have never actually taken Nyquil, so I can't vouch, but my mom has a friend who says it gives her weird dreams. Nyquil is an over the counter drug," Isabella clarifies.
prodigal_miser
"Aha," he says, snickering. "I suppose starting a 'weird Nyquil dreams' based mining company is another option for making ludicrous amounts of money if portal-transportation dries up."
dark_light
"We are not short on opportunities to make ludicrous amounts of money, certainly." Note note note.
prodigal_miser
"Definitely. It's wonderful."
Scry, scry, scry - more boring ones, though one of them has ground that's a strange shade of pink. Predictably, they find another that's a bit more interesting.
Its sun is huge, and it utterly dominates the sky. A smattering of clouds barely softens its light - but the local fauna manages a bit better. Floating on the wind are light, feathery plants, absolutely everywhere. They come in multiple colors and sizes, though none are bigger than a half a foot. Water's clearly present in the form of lakes and rivers - several of the floating plants get caught in its depths, and upon investigation, sink to the bottom, take root, and form something that looks kind of like a water-lily. Still bodies of water all across the world are dotted with them.
Scry, scry, scry - more boring ones, though one of them has ground that's a strange shade of pink. Predictably, they find another that's a bit more interesting.
Its sun is huge, and it utterly dominates the sky. A smattering of clouds barely softens its light - but the local fauna manages a bit better. Floating on the wind are light, feathery plants, absolutely everywhere. They come in multiple colors and sizes, though none are bigger than a half a foot. Water's clearly present in the form of lakes and rivers - several of the floating plants get caught in its depths, and upon investigation, sink to the bottom, take root, and form something that looks kind of like a water-lily. Still bodies of water all across the world are dotted with them.
dark_light
"Well, this might work if we set up some kind of netting around any settlement, but can you imagine trying to leave your house and breathe at the same time even if you didn't have hay fever? Wow."
prodigal_miser
Adarin laughs. "You'd open the door, then bam, face full of - whatever those are. It's pretty, though."
prodigal_miser
"I would have a ton of trouble waking up in the morning. If we pick this planet, everyone will need to invest in thick curtains. For the plants, and for the sun."
dark_light
"I think the best option we've seen so far is the one with the earthquakes. California has taught Earthlings much about earthquake-safe construction, and there might be relatively stable parts anyway. I don't suppose you can make actually floating cities?"
prodigal_miser
Pause. He tilts his head. "Hmm... maybe? I mean, it would be kind of a headache, but... I can make something way lighter than it should be. So I could make a rock or something be as light as, say, helium, and then it's just - like a blimp, but made out of rock."
dark_light
"Blimps have to be huge to carry relatively small amounts of stuff. Does this get harder in quantity?"
prodigal_miser
"Kind of. I'd probably need a while to get everything, but there's nothing stopping me from doing part of it one day and then part of it another. Or having lots of smaller parts that float and connect to each other through bridges or something."
dark_light
"Yeah, small parts sound good. Like midair houseboats. Things can be built piecemeal on the ground on - I'm not sure what material would be best for small neighborhood sized floaters but we can hire somebody to figure it out - so if a quake hits it's relatively low stakes, and floated when ready. And they can rearrange the bits if that's ever a good idea. And if everything's up high enough they won't shadow the underlying farmland with the imported topsoil and water too much."
prodigal_miser
Adarin nods, grinning. "Yeah. I worry about anyone falling off, but we can put up fences and such to prevent that kind of thing. But this is interesting, and useful."
dark_light
"Fences, yes, obviously. I don't know, maybe it's structurally impossible to make a contiguous object that will support one house, let alone a handful, without collapsing - let's not commit to a planet yet. It might be easier to surround a city with a net to hedge out the floaty plants or a wall to keep out the giant bugs. Either one is a lesser challenge than a dome city on Mars, at any rate."
prodigal_miser
"Certainly. Boring lifeless planets also remain an option, but even the problems those bring are better than Mars. I'm sorry, Isabella, but it seems like colonizing Mars is no longer viable."
prodigal_miser
He pats her hand. "It's alright, I'm here for you. I think we're just about out of things to scry in the immediate area, but there's still some more to go. So! Back to staring at a mirror."
Staring at a mirror, boring planet, boring planet, then -
- That is not a boring planet. It has a gorgeous sky - with silvery-blue rings, and three moons, in varying colors. One is blue, another is a white, and the last is a lighter shade of maroon. Plants come in varying colors - reds, yellows, greens, blues and other colors, some of them blending together into a swatch of one or two colors based on region, where other parts of the world they come in all colors available, all mis-matched together. On the surface, water flows freely, dividing the planet into small but numerous continents, and dozens upon dozens of island chains. After some inspection, it seems that this planet doesn't have the same hurricane problem the 'Water Stealin' Planet' did, due to what seems to be the island to water ratio - islands are so common that it's hard for any hurricane to get to speed.
It's when they're investigating the possible chance of hurricanes that they see their first set of buildings.
The planet turns out to have a lot of them, when they start looking. Overgrown cities, still standing and whole but looking a little worse for wear dot the landscape. Bridges and roads connect various islands and cities together, in disrepair and under siege by fauna, but obviously present when they look. There are no obviously visible merchants or travelers using them, though. In fact, it's like there's no sentient movement at all - the world is just still.
Staring at a mirror, boring planet, boring planet, then -
- That is not a boring planet. It has a gorgeous sky - with silvery-blue rings, and three moons, in varying colors. One is blue, another is a white, and the last is a lighter shade of maroon. Plants come in varying colors - reds, yellows, greens, blues and other colors, some of them blending together into a swatch of one or two colors based on region, where other parts of the world they come in all colors available, all mis-matched together. On the surface, water flows freely, dividing the planet into small but numerous continents, and dozens upon dozens of island chains. After some inspection, it seems that this planet doesn't have the same hurricane problem the 'Water Stealin' Planet' did, due to what seems to be the island to water ratio - islands are so common that it's hard for any hurricane to get to speed.
It's when they're investigating the possible chance of hurricanes that they see their first set of buildings.
The planet turns out to have a lot of them, when they start looking. Overgrown cities, still standing and whole but looking a little worse for wear dot the landscape. Bridges and roads connect various islands and cities together, in disrepair and under siege by fauna, but obviously present when they look. There are no obviously visible merchants or travelers using them, though. In fact, it's like there's no sentient movement at all - the world is just still.
dark_light
"Whoever built them is - dead? Gone? Naturally invisible and not very tidy?"
prodigal_miser
"I'll check."
He checks.
"There are - I don't see any people or obviously sentient beings, but here, look -"
The scry on the mirror changes to show the immobile denizens that seem like the most likely builders of the mysteriously dilapidated buildings.
He checks.
"There are - I don't see any people or obviously sentient beings, but here, look -"
The scry on the mirror changes to show the immobile denizens that seem like the most likely builders of the mysteriously dilapidated buildings.
dark_light
"Robots?" guesses Isabella. They're not humanoid at all - they're more like round Rubix-Cube-like things with protruding tools and wheels and objects of unclear function from half their panels, no two configured quite alike - but it looks like they aren't attached to anything and could have moved autonomously before they ran down.
prodigal_miser
"I suppose? I'm just - confused, are they just in disrepair and effectively dead, or...? I don't know how to check that with scrying."
dark_light
"Can you tell if they have - charged batteries, I guess? Or an equivalent?"