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[REDACTED] gets yeet to Swarthwalls Valley.
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It's a cool autumn's day in the Swarthwalls valley. The city at the valley's mouth hustles and bustles as it is wont to do. The farms are well into their cold seasonal rotation. The woods are mostly empty of campers and hikers, though a skeleton crew of rangers are still on patrol just in case. The scientists at the Swarthwalls Echoic Research Facility, nestled right by the eponymous Swarth Walls as at the back of the valley, are going about their business, writing grant proposals, analyzing data, performing calculations, and recording readings from the scanner array.

Suddenly, the array starts going wild, like it never has before, at least not here in Swarthwalls. There's a rush to analyze its output, but the sheer volume of the anemonic activity is making categorizing it difficult. It's obviously almost entirely echoic in nature, and given the strength of the readings, there must be something happening here, somewhere in the valley. Maybe a Recognition? That possibility puts even more haste into the hearts of the researchers at the facility. If they can find the Recognizant, convince them to participate in some tests, that could not only bring great notoriety and funds to the facility, it could easily launch any of the individual researchers' careers to a new height.

Meanwhile, in the woods, not far from the northern edge of the farmland, a young woman appears suddenly, landing softly on the lightly damp leaf-litter with a quiet crunch.

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"...well, this sure is...unexpected.  ...At least I was standing up?"  ...She doesn't have the propensity for hallucinations that this would practically require.  Dammit, she's been isekaied and she's in the middle of the woods.  ...Follow the sun, follow rivers.

 

"...Hello, is anyone there?," she calls out, despite her trepidation.  Someone or something ought to, but this isn't a book.  ...She thinks it isn't.

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No one is close enough to hear her call, other than herself. But she does hear it and may notice that, despite being entirely understandable to her, it was definitely not in English, or any language she's ever heard before. The words she said to herself were still in English though.

Following the Sun, she'll eventually exit the forest and find herself looking across wide, terraced fields, which in turn reveal a river, as well as two roads cutting through the farmlands, one on this side of the river and one on the far side.

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"...Well, hello, you.  So, what brings me here, of all places, and what brings me here, of all the possible people I could have been?"

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...How industrial do the farms look?  Not that she'd particularly know, but...how neat are they, that's a decent stand-in, and is there obvious metalcraft?  Are there power lines anywhere?  How big are the farms?  ...What are the roads made of?  ...Why are there two of them?  ...She doesn't actually expect an answer to that besides 'magic', really, but anyway...

To the roads!  Civilization awaits?

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The farms are very neat! So are the trees, actually, they're probably cultivated lumber rather than wild. No power lines, though. The farmland is extensive, extending to the horizon and good way up the sides of the valley (she is in a valley, by the way). The roads look like they're made of stone, but it's all very tidy and solid, more like cut stone bricks than cobbles.

Notably, as soon as she steps onto the shoulder of the road, she instantly feels the atmosphere change. The wind seems to die, the air gets significantly warmer and drier, and if she takes a few steps, she'll notice that she feels lighter on her feet, her strides are longer and take less energy without altering her balance.

She walks down the road, and it continues, and continues, and continues. Maybe about thirty minutes into her trek, she experiences a strange force that pulls her off to the side of the road, before a moment later some kind of cartoonishly stretched horseless carriage-type thing with two big barrels attached to the back of it comes speeding down the road, going the opposite direction as her at probably at least 50 miles per hour, maybe more.

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"Ahoy, stranded traveler, please help!"  She waves down the car!

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The vehicle (it doesn't look like a car, really, not in any modern sense anyway) doesn't slow. The driver does honk a very loud horn, though. After a few minutes, it blazes past and the force disappears.

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...and if she tries running after it any?

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Nope! Not slowing even just a little bit! The weird magical effect or whatever that's going on with the road helps her go faster than normal, but even if she follows at full tilt, the vehicle will fade into the distance after a few minutes.

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...yeah no she's not following at full tilt.  That's fucking exhausting.  Irregardless, (which is to say, she would not be doing this if it wasn't for the bus), she'll head that way.

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She heads back that way, ending up in the woods again. More road. More trees. Nothing much changes for the next hour or so, until she feels the force pull on her again, but much gentler than before. A few minutes after that, another horseless carriage will pull up the road behind her and actually stop for her.

There's a couple of tall men with big mustaches and wearing thick grey coats in it, one in the driver's box and another in the wagon, the latter of whom opens the door and greets her. "Ho there! Need some help?"

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"I am in fact so lost that I believe I have ended up somewhere I could not draw a path from my home to.  Yes, please.  Although, uh.  Who are you, exactly?"

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"Really? You've got a perfect accent." The man gestures for the woman to enter the carriage. "Anyway, please come inside. I'm Redweld, and that's Welkonn," the man in the driver's box turns and waves amicably, "we're with the Swarthwalls volunteer corps. We got a call from the research facility shuttle bus that someone was trudging down the Old Road and looked like they needed help."

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That information gets her to relax a bit.

"It's magic, one presumes.  The research facility?  What do y'all research, then?  Or, no, Swarthwalls is more town-name shaped...anyway - yeah, what sort of research happens there?"

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"Magic sounds likely, yeah. Echoic I'd bet, given the location and all," Redweld agrees. "And that's what they study up there, the echoic wind I mean, inscriptions mostly I think. They're also one of major server centers for the echonet, since they were one of the places where it was prototyped."

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...ooooooooh.  Magic Internet.  "...y'know, I find myself wondering if they happen to be in a bit of a tizzy over something surprising showing up on their sensors right now..."

Well, that said, she'll get in the car!

"Say, I don't think I've ever seen vehicles quite like yours, before; do you perchance know how they function well enough to explain to a laywoman?  Or, for that matter, how the roads themselves were made so neatly, helpfully, and also resiliently?  I don't believe this is graded at all, and yet rain hasn't started causing these blocks to sink into the mud..."

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Redweld closes the door behind her before sitting back down. "I'm no auto mechanic, but my understanding is that when they're stopped at a charging station, the auto's power-store, a spring, a fly-wheel, whatever it is, is loaded up with power. Then when the driver activates the rotor, the power comes out of the store and is applied to the axles to turn them." He shrugs. "If you want a better explanation you'll need to talk to someone else. As for the Old Road, I have no idea. No one really knows how to replicate it, not exactly, let alone how the Road-Builder did it a thousand years ago."

He turns around to check on Welkonn through a little window, who gives a thumbs-up, then turns back to the woman. "So, the bus driver said he saw you headed towards town, but when we found you were walking up towards the facility. Where should we be taking you?"

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"...I believe the facility would likely be quite interested in what I can and can't tell them about recent events, but I'll defer to your judgement, especially if there's any administrative stuff that needs doing."

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Redweld taps the window to the driver's box once, and a moment later the carriage rumbles to life, steadily accelerating up to a speed comparable to the bus's. "To the facility it is, then. I think getting a better understanding of what's happened would benefit everyone. There aren't a lot of laws about spontaneous magical displacement, not exactly a common occurrence, but especially with us and the facility at your back nobody's going to be giving you too much trouble." He pauses for a moment, considering something, then makes a bit of a surprised expression. "Oh, I never caught your name, miss...?"

The ride to the research facility from where they picked her up will take about half an hour, which is plenty of time for them to trade questions.

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"I imagine it's likely to be flywheels, especially if you can form a vacuum or alter friction...though I vaguely recall something about gyroscopes, which are spinny things about an axle, and rotational motion, not mixing well, from some old sci-fi..."

And as for her name... "Hill.  Maria Hill, a given name and then a family name, as they usually are applied, at least."

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Redweld smiles. "Good to meet you, Miss Hill. Or, hopefully at least! And yes, I know some autos have flywheels, I just meant-- well, it doesn't matter." He waves a hand dismissively. "Autos have one sort of power-store or another. Maybe flywheels are the most common. Like I said, not a mechanic."

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"My apologies, recent events have revealed that my model of the world was built upon a foundation of sand, on account of not including spontaneous teleportation - and I'm still catching up to that, with the thinking-aloud."

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Redweld chuckles again. "Yeah, that's understandable. Well, my brother and I are pretty familiar with Swarthwalls, born and raised here, so if you need help situating yourself as you come to terms with things, we're happy to help."

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"Thank you.  I should hope I'll be fine; you seem like lovely people so far, it's just a matter of customs.

"Always the most fiddly things, they are, though; while I'm speaking your language, I wouldn't know if I had cultural knowledge til I found it, as of yet."

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Redweld nods along. "Well, you've been perfectly polite so far, especially considering your circumstances. I'm not a lawyer, you'll need to talk to someone at the facility about papers and whatnot, but for the less formal things, we could game out any situations you think of, if you like?"

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