"Direction does matter, yeah, to some extent," and now the two models shrink down and many others (which the Brights might recognise as other towns or cities they have been to or heard of, including the town their grandparents live in) appear, in specific directions from each other and with specific distances. "There seems to be a standard direction most of these places are from each other, and time does pass when you cross the thresholds, but you go less-than-NPC when you do it because you don't even keep the memories of crossing the distance."

"Yikes. Filming or recordings still work? Hunger or need for sleep still move on?"

"We experimented with that actually! If you try carrying a phone with you or something and filming your walk, the film cuts just after the threshold. However—" And right then a little basketball-sized and—shaped floating robot with a smiley on its screen and a small camera on its forehead emerges from downstairs to float around the living room. "Yes, Caleb, thank you for the prop," Red calls as he dismisses his illusory model of places.

"Drones still work?" Fenris completes the thought.

"They don't, actually! They vanish for a while and then emerge on the other side without having recorded anything. That's what makes us think there is probably nothing between places. If there is something, it's not something we've been able to get to at all. Trying to teleport anywhere beyond the thresholds that's not some specific place also fails."

Fenris makes a face.

"The same is true of NPCs? ...I guess they can't be trusted. Do you have some estimate of how big is the not-planet?"

"The number of places that exist is minuscule and probably doesn't cover everywhere that can exist. Especially with how entirely new people seem to be created, it should probably be possible for new places to be created too. ...Count Straud is meant to have founded this town but he is, as we've mentioned, evil, so we have not been able to get anywhere with him."

Nod. "His situation is probably more urgent. Which, what exactly is the situation with him as far you know?"

"The official history is that he is the great-grandson of Count Vladislaus Straud I, who was part of a 25-person party that founded Forgotten Hollow many years ago and then all died in mysterious circumstances that the original Count was too distraught to recount to anyone. Now Count Vladislaus Straud IV lives in the creepy mansion and is a vocal activist against vampire rights."

Caleb zooms back into the room, with a boner, and says, "'Vampires need to get back to their crypts'," with a scoff before disappearing again.

"That's something he likes to say," agrees Red. "Now, Caleb and Lilith's memories are that they got turned by him and one of his offspring over eighty years ago because he wanted their family's wealth to stay in this town and thought offering them promises of power and immortality would seduce them, but he didn't count on the two of them being fucking decent people so they instead moved the hell away from here. Then they came back a few years ago to try to make Forgotten Hollow less of Straud's personal sandbox where he feels like he can do whatever he wants, and soon after that I met them. ...Cor met them."

"I guess I would read that book. And I guess because... of the way the world is there are no more characters to the vampires in that story. No more children by Lilith or Straud' spawns."

"Correct."

"How long ago did he turn PC? And how hard is it to turn people into vampires? He might have created 'spawns' since."

"We're not really sure. It was probably after we got Caleb and Lilith, but we don't know how soon after. And yeah, he might've, but unless they moved in with him they're still NPCs. It's not very hard."

"I guess it depends on how hard it is to command them. But I am concerned that he is a malicious agent with a lot of power and far smarter than most people around him."

"He might be smarter but not necessarily strategic or willing to... dunno, have a secret vampire army in Selvadorada."

"...honestly, I wouldn't entirely put it past him, but you can only give other people commands sort of one at a time as far as we know. Then again, if anyone could give mass orders like that it'd be him."

They both make a face.

"That sounds like recruiting should be a higher priority to us, but let's not get ahead of ourselves." He thinks. "What are the periods between you waking up, the Count, and ours?"

"Cor was a person for years, I think it got to five or maybe six? Before we managed to make me a person. Then we got Caleb a few days later by asking him to move in with us and as soon as he woke up he said, and I quote—"

Actually here's Caleb again to quote himself. "'What the fuck got into me, why would I move into this dingy, minuscule apartment rather than get you two to move in with me'."

And back to the orgy.

"—yes, that. No idea about the Count, though, our main clue that he's a person is how personlike he sounds on Raccoon News interviews and speeches around here and how hard it has been to convince other people of things with him around. But Caleb and I have been people for a bit over a year now."

"Thanks," Fenris says, where Caleb was. "That is too few people to know if there is a pattern, but it sounds somewhat contagious."