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It's a week or two before everything's nice and set up for searching for alts. All of the portals have been remade, spare mirrors have been created, and everyone that is allowed portal access gets a microchip. Even the gods. Rae accepts his without fuss, Perinixu - tolerates it. After a lot of questions. And a hefty donation from Cam in the form of another temple. Whatever, they managed it.
Cypress offers to do the scrying, but Prime shrugs him off. Which one of them is married and therefore has a wife to bang in his free time? Oh, right, yes, that's Cypress. Go, be free, twenty-something year old alt. Prime doesn't hate your happiness. (Much.) Now, if Prime gets married, they can divvy up the annoying work between themselves. But, not happening anytime soon, so he'll do it.
Exciting scrying happens. It involves lots of staring off into the distance and looking at places.
And then, he informs the various people arrayed around him in Pantheon:
"Found a set. A female Adarin, and a female Bell. Also a Zeviana and a - girl whom I don't recognize. And parents." Pause. "They're all living in the same house."
He dearly hopes they local Bell and Adarin are not siblings, that would make everyone uncomfortable. Oh, nope, look, the Bell and the Adarin just kissed. How quaint.
"Pretty sure they're not siblings," he clarifies. "Unless this is the plane of incest."
darkest_evening
prodigal_miser
That would be Cypress. He waves.
"Hello. Nearest mage. Portals - our portals, anyway - need a flat, stable surface to go on that is unlikely to break or be disturbed. They're permanent, as long as the surface they're on isn't broken. Also, we can disguise them as either a blank wall, or a painting, or something. Actually we recently got a security upgrade, anyone that wants to pass through the portals needs a very specific microchip. It's not necessary, but we had a problem a little while ago."
"Hello. Nearest mage. Portals - our portals, anyway - need a flat, stable surface to go on that is unlikely to break or be disturbed. They're permanent, as long as the surface they're on isn't broken. Also, we can disguise them as either a blank wall, or a painting, or something. Actually we recently got a security upgrade, anyone that wants to pass through the portals needs a very specific microchip. It's not necessary, but we had a problem a little while ago."
blink_and
"I have. Notes. Ideas, have you - are you using hydroelectric power, you can get some serious clean energy out of a clever portal setup and - and - I need my notes. Just - stay there, weird - white haired - mirror person, I need you for things."
And that is when Adana gets up and runs off. For notes.
And that is when Adana gets up and runs off. For notes.
point_b
"Anyway, since I can teleport, if we're never going to need to get to the portal without me along or at least available for a half a second, I'd recommend putting it someplace really obscure. Since people other than me might want to make trips while I'm asleep or something, though, maybe it should be near the house."
prodigal_miser
"That's up to you. Mages can also teleport, but not within half a second and not everywhere or, in fact, very casually, and I think all of us can fly through some method or other. Which, we can distribute among ourselves." Pause. "Also my wife can grant immortality and resurrect the dead."
prodigal_miser
"... Given perfect conditions, infinite materials, a pre-drawn out location - which, we have a person that can provide the first and a place set out for the second - one every two minutes. Or so. What happened?"
prodigal_miser
Cypress has gone native enough to take relatively little time to figure out what that would mean.
"Fuck. Right, okay, ash clouds - how bad are they, we have a person that can make anything, a person that can change anything, and we have access to twenty-second century technology, and various magic types with different strengths and weaknesses that all require some kind of time investment. How - was there an evacuation, how thorough was it, do you have places to put the people?"
"Fuck. Right, okay, ash clouds - how bad are they, we have a person that can make anything, a person that can change anything, and we have access to twenty-second century technology, and various magic types with different strengths and weaknesses that all require some kind of time investment. How - was there an evacuation, how thorough was it, do you have places to put the people?"
point_b
"There - there was an evacuation. They made a list of who saved how many people and we're on it... We ran out of places to put people. We had to stop because there was nowhere else for them to go, after the eruption. It's been less than a year so we're not at Biblical levels of famine yet but I do the grocery shopping in Europe just because I can, because it means fewer dirty looks from the neighbors at the store - this is why the Sanderses are here, Dad said we could bring friends when we had to leave Phoenix, so we're all crammed into his house - how fast do the maker and changer work? The caldera is - it's loosely similar to the historical Lava Creek tuff. If you look at a picture of how big that is. And the clouds are everywhere."
prodigal_miser
"Okay, then - before we work on resurrection we need to prevent large-scale famine and create places for people to go, or we're just making it worse in the long-run. Cam, Adana? If you could? You know your skill-sets better than I."
ask_nicely
"Right, of course," says Revival, and she takes the mirror and motions for Cam to come over.
from_scratch
"Ash clouds are more Adana's thing than mine but I can probably rehabilitate the caldera some. I make, she changes - I can't get rid of anything but she can turn the ash to air, albeit not that fast. I can also just straight-up make food in meaningful quantities if you know where it should go."
point_b
"I can find out where to put it. And bring you there. I'll call the Junebugs. The caldera's still hot, I don't know if that's an issue for you."
from_scratch
"Not a prohibitive one. We're indestructible. Does mean I can't put down, like, sod, right away, but I could put down some liquid nitrogen first, in places that look like they ought to be lakes, then just add water."
ask_nicely
"I bet," says Revival, "That we could pull off some glass domes, too. Have them built so that they funnel all of the ash that falls on them to one spot, and keep - things like crops from being smothered."
point_b
"There is, already, ash everywhere - I'm not saying there's none still being produced but there are firefighting-suited Junebugs working on it."
ask_nicely
"... Okay. That's. I'm not useless but I don't have any clever solutions that aren't 'Cam is my endless coffeepot and I work 24 hour days to clear up ash.' Which, I can do, by the way."
from_scratch
"I'm a little teapot, short and stout," Cam agrees. "Also a terraformer. Forrrrr half of the lower forty-eight. Why do we never send mirrors to perfect unsullied paradise worlds?"
ask_nicely
"Technically, the mirror to Hell was close. But. Yeah, we're going to be exceptionally busy."