Someone - several someones, actually - appear right now. One of them has nice shoes and wrecked clothes, one has nice clothes and wrecked shoes, one isn't wearing anything in good condition at all. They're all breathing hard, covered in sweat, splattered with unidentifiable substances and blood, scarred and lightly injured, and very confused about where they are. Nice-shoes starts crying.

It's a little while before anyone notices them.

After about thirty seconds one of the orchestrators taps the lead orchestrator on the shoulder. Are those people supposed to be here? They're out of costume and also one of them is crying and it seems like maybe we should do something about this.

The lead orchestrator looks at them -- they don't look familiar, but that doesn't prove much -- and quietly counts everyone else in the room.

They're not from the LARP. Take over the table -- envelopes are in the box underneath -- and I'll go figure out what their deal is.

Te grabs tir nametag ("Tyrin") and walks over to the group, making a gesture where te touches tir index figures together. "Hello? Who are you, is everything okay here?"

One of them (Nice Clothes) says something incomprehensible.

What.

Surely ... a conlanger ... wouldn't be stupid enough to try to randomly introduce themself to a stranger in a conlang, while clearly lost?

Tyrin repeats what te said word-for-word more slowly, and signs it as well, just in case the stranger just didn't hear them properly, and also somehow managed to forget how to speak or something.

She shakes her head and tries again in another language. And then another one.

No Nice Things can also try languages!

The crying one can get ahold of herself and also do this.

?????????

Maybe they're historians who heard there was a historical LARP going on and thought that meant they could just show up speaking some language no one uses anymore??? This doesn't really make very much sense, but neither does anything else te can come up with.

Petarka is the only one here who even might understand whatever they're saying, where is pe -- halfway across the room, and probably not checking pir handcomputer during the LARP. 

"Wait here," says Tyrin, pointing at the floor since it's not like that can hurt, and runs off. 

They don't seem inclined to go anywhere. Nice Shoes sits on the floor.

Tyrin comes back with another person in the same solid-black-with-sash outfit. This one has pale blue hair.

(If any of the new arrivals are paying attention to what the people in the room look like, they don't look at all like they're from the Scholomance, even if you ignore the clothing -- their hair is too long, for one thing, and some of them have it dyed.)

I'd give decent odds I wouldn't understand them even if it's a language I ostensibly know, pe signs to Tyrin. My auditory processing is a lot worse than yours and I don't think you're fully modelling how much harder that makes it to understand languages I only sort of speak.

Even if you can't tell what it is, if you recognize a few words that's a lot better than I have, signs Tyrin.

"Hi," says Petarka to the group. "Uh, I think I'm supposed to ask you to talk at me, or something."

Yeah, they can all try their languages again. They've got more than half a dozen between them.

That's extremely impressive and Petarka has no idea what any of those even are! What on Tree is up with them!!

"You're in the Daisyhill Concert Hall?" pe tries. "In the city of Alafi?" Alafi's a big city, and even before people standardized on a single language it was called more-or-less the same thing in all of them. "I can pull up a map if you're lost or something?"

Pe takes out pir handcomputer, pulls up a map program, and types in their current location. If anyone from the group is looking at pir screen, the continents are all the right shape but the country borders are completely wrong.

The three of them start muttering amongst themselves in one of their languages. They sound really fluent. The two girls have similar accents in the language and the boy has a different one.

Have none of them seen a handcomputer before?? --No, they didn't react like that when pe took it out, just when pe pulled up the map.

That's not really any less confusing.

Get Latarena, pe signs at Tyrin. Probably Betalan too, I don't really expect bem to be able to help but it's not so unlikely that it's not worth it.

Pe has some paper (it's technically backup copies of one of the props, but Tyrin always makes more backups than they actually need). Pe will hand some of it to the group, along with something that vaguely resembles a mechanical pencil apart from the casing being entirely metal.

If any of them look at the other side of the paper, it has writing that isn't in any language they recognize.

...they can try writing a sentence in each of their languages?? Is that the desired behavior?

...That's not really what pe was going for but pe's not totally sure what pe was going for, and now that pe actually thinks about it that could be helpful.

Pe switches pir handcomputer over to a translation program and holds up the writing to the camera. It does, actually, give pem a result, but even a quick glance is enough to confirm that it's essentially just parsing a random handful of the symbols that are similar enough to some long-disused writing system as being from that system, and not even registering the rest of them as language.

Pe takes one of the leftover pieces of paper and draws a picture of the concert hall and the group of three other people, with arrows going from those people into the concert hall, and hands it to the group while deliberately trying to make sure pir expression is incredibly confused. The drawing isn't really very recognizable if you've only seen the outside of the building, but it's at least recognizable as being a drawing of a building.

("Um, is this part of the LARP?" asks one of the people in funny clothing, making the same symbol with their index fingers touching as Tyrin had before.

"No, I'm really sorry about this, also I'm busy and if you need an orchestrator you should go up to the table.")

They also look incredibly confused! And apologetic about it.

...Pe tries a drawing of pemself, labelled with pir name, and point repeatedly between pemself and the drawing? "Petarka."

Pe points between each of the people in the group and the version of them in the drawing.

"Bella."

"Aadhya."

"Caio."

On the same piece of paper, pe draws an amorphous blob, with arrows going from the blob to each of them, then hands the piece of paper back to them.

Caio has the best drawing ability of the lot and will sketch a map of the Scholomance as it appeared on the signs on the walls:

Petarka definitely does not recognize the weird circular building! Why would you do that, your walls would end up all curved for no reason.

Tyrin is back by now, with Latarena and Betalan. "They're up-to-speed," te says.

Do either of you have any guesses for what's up with them? pe signs. I've been trying to communicate with them via drawing but so far all I have is their names and this weird circle building that they came from.

My top theory was that they were from some sort of incredibly incompetent creche or something, signs Latarena. Which I guess also would require that their parents just never came back for them, but maybe they died or something? But anyways I don't recognize that building either, and it's pretty visually distinctive, so unless they managed to come from another city without speaking a word of the language I don't have a great guess about what's going on.

Betalan has pulled out bir own handcomputer and pulled up the map app, on the theory that Tyrin they seemed confused about that before so it's probably worth trying again. Be starts at their city and zooms out, this time; it looks like they're vaguely in Spain, or what would be Spain if the country boundaries at all resembled those of Europe (the country they're in also includes Portugal and most of France). 

Be sets down bir handcomputer in front of the group, points at the map (which is now fully zoomed out), points at each of them, and then points back at the map.

Bella shakes her head at the map and draws lines with her finger where she expects lines. Then she starts pointing at locations and uttering snatches of different languages. French. Spanish. Latin. She taps Caio for Portuguese. English for England.

Aadhya points at India and says a few words also.

Betalan points at the different countries on the map. "We all just speak the same language, here and here and here and here-- I have no idea what your deal is-- Lata can I borrow your handcomputer, this'll be easier with two--"

Be pulls up some well-known landmarks on Latarena's handcomputer and shows them to the group, watching for any sign of recognition. The library at Endekar? Arrenzo's academy? Some mountains? The wall around Lagomir? A really big waterfall?

They don't recognize any of these things though they are slightly less blank at the mountains and waterfall.

Bella points at the Great Salt Lake, mimes drinking, and mimes spitting it out.

Be looks up a picture of the lake Bella pointed to. Does Bella recognize that?

Shrug. She knows you can't drink it but has never been there.

You can't drink it here either but Betalan isn't sure how to communicate that.

Betalan pulls up a list of the most common words on Latarena's handcomputer. ...A list of the most common nouns. ...Half of these are things like "time" which are probably going to be hard to explain across a language barrier. Be'll just pick some words that seem relevant.

Be will attempt to use a mix of drawings and image searches to explain some common words. "Person," "people," "grouphouse," "food," "water," "sleep."

They will gamely attempt to repeat these words.

Okay.

"Do you need -- food, water, sleep?" Hopefully in context that'll be clear enough even without the verb.

"Sleep. Food."

Nods all around.

Tyrin hands them something that looks kind of like a granola bar.

"Sleep is--" Betalan pulls up the map again, zoomed into the city level, and traces a path on the map. "We'll take the train." Photograph of a train (it seems to be running a story above the ground).

Nod nod. (They break the granola bar into three pieces and share it.)

"If I take Petarka are you going to have enough people to keep the event going?"

(At this point, a gong rings out from the front of the room, and the participants start moving towards the front.)

Tyrin bites tir lip. "It'll be tight, I've needed to consult with pem several times already. You can take Darinye -- or technically Camini if you'd rather."

"I'll stick with Darinye."

Betalan makes a "come here" gesture, grabs another orchestrator, and escorts them out of the building.

The newcomers devour the granola bar and wait, huddled together, startling at sudden movements.

Most of the sudden movements are on the other end of the room, if they're paying attention to what's going on over there.

Betalan leads them outside.

Most of the buildings here are tall skyscrapers. The street itself is mostly empty at this time of night, but they can see a few people walking on it and a few more riding quadricycles or standing on powered wheeled platforms. Two of the people are softly singing, not especially well, and a third is periodically spinning in a circle. A smallish cart, going about 15 miles an hour, whirrs down the middle of the street; it doesn't have a visible driver.

The train station they're going to is about two blocks away. They can see the train track from the concert hall; this one is more like two stories aboveground.

This is all subtly unexpected but not so dramatically out of line with the range of possibilities that they couldn't be across the world four years after they last saw the world and in the custody of a place that buys into irregular separatist movements of some geography....

The train station has an elevator and a staircase. Betalan glances around the group before leading them up the staircase. They wait on the platform for a couple minutes, and then a train pulls up; it's more crowded than the street was, although they can still find a bench.

Additional subtly unexpected things the group may notice on the train:

• Most of the people here are weirdly androgynous-looking? Some of them do have presentations that vaguely correspond to something that would be standard on Earth, but the underlying phenotypes seem less correlated than one would normally expect.
• Apart from that, the individual people mostly look like people you could find on Earth, but when they're taken together the overall distribution of physical traits is weird -- the average height of everyone on the train is nearly six feet. Darinye is one of the shortest people on the entire train, and de's about 5'6".
• Some of the clothing styles don't match ones they recognize, although that's explainable by four years of fashion trends or just locally different styles. If they recognize the language well enough by now to identify a nametag as such, nearly everyone is wearing a nametag, mostly a variety with a little plastic case connected to a necklace. No one on the entire train has a visible tattoo, although one person has a lizard painted on their face.
• Multiple people are quietly singing and/or quietly talking out loud to no one in particular and/or stimming. (The singers aren't very good at it.)
• Many of the random objects around the train look different from what they expect, although mostly not in a way that couldn't theoretically be explained by technological evolution -- they've already seen the handcomputers (which are more square than a typical smartphone) and quadricycles, but if they're paying attention they might notice that the train has benches instead of discrete seats, or that the cyclists' helmets are oddly shaped, or that none of the shoes have shoelaces.

They murmur amongst themselves about it, but are not alarmed enough to try to solicit local attention to resolve any of their anxiety.

They continue to flinch at movements in the corners of their eyes, sometimes raising their hands or starting to.

After they've been riding for a little over ten minutes Betalan and Darinye usher them off.

They lead them down a single flight of stairs; there's another train platform, running perpendicular to the train they just got off of. The ride on the perpendicular train is mostly uneventful.

Murmur murmur.

It continues to be bizarre that these people don't speak the language!!

Eventually they get to their stop and are ushered off. Betalan and Darinye take them to an apartment building about a block away. Betalan touches bir handcomputer to the door, and they go inside.

There are several elevators near the entrance, but for some reason none of them have doors; they seem to work by just having several elevator capsules stacked on top of each other, such that you can walk in immediately, ride up to your floor, and walk out. There isn't an obvious way to pause it, but it does stop briefly on the ride up before they get to their actual floor. (It keeps going about fifteen seconds later.)

They are sort of apprehensive about the elevator situation but can be ultimately coaxed in.

They go down the hallway a bit. Eventually Betalan opens a door. There's something next to the door that looks more-or-less like an electronic keypad but be doesn't seem to interact with it.

The main part of the apartment is fairly open. There's something that looks like a kitchen, with a lowish counter dividing it from the entry hallway surrounded by stool/chairs. On the other side of the apartment is something like a living room, with several variants of couches-and-such scattered around the edges and a large bookcase in the back. There are a couple open doors near the kitchen that seem to go to bathrooms, or something along those lines. Off to the right, there's another hallway, leading to eight closed doors.

Betalan leads them over to the place with chairs. Can you get them some food, ideally either more of the same thing or else something with relatively few ingredients that are fairly easy to distinguish? I'm really confused about what's going on and don't want to accidentally hurt them.

Sure.

De gets out some food from the kitchen, sticks it on a plate, and brings it to the group. More of the energy bars, some berries, some nuts, something string-cheese-like.

Berries! Nuts! Cheese!

The energy bars are much less exciting than berries and nuts and cheese.

While they eat, Betalan goes off to one of the hallway rooms and comes back with a laptop, which be sets down next to the food plate. The page it's open to is mostly very confusing but does have what looks like a picture of the Earth on it.

The keys have writing on them. Neither the alphabet nor the layout is recognizable.

This causes the three of them to put their heads together to contemplate this oddity!

Be waits for a break in the conversation and then pokes the screen.

It starts playing some sort of video. Lines that are probably national borders appear on the screen, and different countries (and, eventually, what look like cities) start lighting up, matching the borders on the map they saw earlier. The Earth picture rotates around periodically to show different parts of the map. There's singing in the video (on-key at least, unlike the people on the train, but nothing to write home about). Words (in the same alphabet as the keyboard) flash onscreen as each country lights up, and occasionally a longer block of text appears to the side.

Be looks at them vaguely expectantly while it plays.

If they can't speak the language why would they know what their country looks like? It seems really weird to teach one of your crechechildren all the countries but not teach them how to talk.

Do you have any better ideas?

No.

They find this video very worrying, though each of them points uncertainly at a part of the world (on the globe, rather than the zoomed-in political borders) as it goes by.

Then once the video is done Betalan will poke at the computer before and pull up some pictures! Behold, unfamiliar-looking architecture! Behold, random wilderness!

Headshake headshake.

"Nuh-uh."

...

Can you update Tyrin?

I have been updating Tyrin. Te's pretty busy right now but doesn't have any particularly good guesses about what's going on.

Does te have bad guesses?

Te suggested time travel but I think that was probably a joke.

Be pokes at the computer some more. It starts playing another video. This one seems to be languages -- the visuals are mainly text, though there's audio too, and it switches between a few different writing systems.

The three of them will try all their languages again but do not recognize any of these at all.

Should we maybe let them sleep? They asked to sleep earlier, and it doesn't really seem like we're getting there.

We should probably let them do that.

Betalan pulls out more of the paper from earlier, draws a line down the middle, and sketches another drawing. On the left half of the drawing is three different squares, each containing one bed/couch thing and one person. On the right half is something that looks vaguely like this room, with three people sleeping on a couch and a beanbag chair and what could maybe be an extra mattress or something. Be holds out the paper to the group of them.

They point at the first thing, but not super emphatically.

Can you ask Tyrin to get Camini and Forabil's permission to let them sleep in their rooms? One of them can sleep in mine.

Already done. I also have permission from everyone else if you want yours.

I'll be fine.

Be leads the three of them over to the hallway from before and shows them three rooms. All of them have something that looks like a long, narrow couch, but without separate cushions, with only one armrest, and with blankets and pillows and so on. Two of the rooms also have desk setups; one of them instead has a low table near the couch/bed. All of them have miscellaneous pictures hanging on the wall but are otherwise fairly similar to each other in terms of furniture. 

Each visitor inspects their associated room thoroughly - checking under the beds and inside the lampshades and behind the pictures and within the pillowcases and in the desk drawers. When they have done this they will gratefully lie down. This one keeps her shoes on, though the other two don't.

?????

...Once they're all in bed be goes back to the living room.

Eventually some more people (quietly) come back inside the apartment, though they leave their three rooms alone.

Night passes without any mal attacks whatsoever.

It's so restful. They all sleep very late.

In that case, by the time they wake up, there will be eight other people already awake, sitting in the living room and discussing something in sign language.

Whenever the first one of them appears, Tyrin gets some food from the kitchen for them. More nuts and berries and cheese, since apparently they seemed to like that last time.

It's less exciting the second time but they will still eat all those things.

Whenever they're finished, one of them looks at a sheet of paper covered in writing. Te hands them a different piece of paper with a list of letters on it, as well as a blank piece of paper and a writing implement, and mimes writing on the blank piece of paper.

Do they want the alphabet? They can have the alphabet.

They can have another alphabet too if that helps.

One of them points their handcomp at the alphabets and pokes at it.

Next up: more photos! This time, photos of people.

Tyrin doesn't think it'll tell them much if they don't recognize anyone, but if they do it'll be highly informative.

(None of the photos are familiar.)

Are they supposed to know who these people are, because they super don't.

After a couple dozen of those, te switches to another page. This one has natural landmarks. (Skewed towards Asia/Africa/Europe rather than the Americas, with nothing from Australia at all.)

Some of these some of them recognize, though significantly fewer than they would if they had gone to a school that had a different emphasis.

That's Mt. Fuji, that's the Grand Canyon...

Old Faithful, Half Dome...

...how about more pictures of cities? This time focusing on the ones closest to the landmarks they recognize?

Nope.

Nada.

Aadhya is going to try drawing the Statue of Liberty and the Eiffel Tower.

These people all seem confused!

There's a brief argument in sign language and then one of them pulls up some pictures of big statues.

Well, none of those are Mount Rushmore, Jesus, or Buddha.

Yeah nah.

They go through more pictures, some audio, and a couple videos, with similar results.

Lata, have the emergency forms you tried done anything useful yet?

I'm not sure they've even been processed yet.

No one on the forums I tried recognizes their alphabets either.

There's a brief argument in sign language, after which yet another one pulls up a video. This one is animated, with subtitles, and the voice actors are clearly making a point of speaking slowly and clearly. The actual plot involves astronauts of some kind but it seems to be intended as a vocabulary lesson for small children. How would these people like to learn some nouns and verbs and adjectives?

They will buckle down and learn some nouns and verbs and adjectives.

They are all quite bright and have practice learning languages and take it very seriously.

Though it is clearly not the most fun they could be having.

The astronauts (each of whom is wearing a different color spacesuit) have a problem with their space habitat, which looks suspiciously similar to an apartment! The astronauts discuss the objects in their space habitat while trying to figure out the source of the problem! The astronauts find the source of the problem! The problem is being caused by a LITTLE HOLE (here are some more things that are little), which is making a BIG PROBLEM (here are some more things that are big). The astronauts retrieve some tools from their closet (here are all the tools in their closet) and use them to FIX the LITTLE HOLE. Song about tools! The singers still sound kind of amateurish! With the tool having been fixed, they go celebrate with some food and games! Here are some foods and beverages!

(Maybe they'd have more fun with a show about historical figures or mages or something? Or one of the ones that's sung-through? But this seems kind of hard to communicate.)

This is fine, it's just a) for children and b) language learning.

Notes are taken diligently.

Ce doesn't have a way to distinguish between 'language shows for children are boring' and 'shows about astronauts are boring.' For all they know Forabil will turn out to be right that they shouldn't be showing the aliens fiction at all.

Ce will keep playing episodes of the astronaut show. Astronauts have a medical checkup! Astronauts meet alien flora and fauna (this one has THREE BLUE HEADS, this one has FOUR PURPLE LEAVES) and compare them to real animals! Astronauts solve more problems in the habitat! Astronauts get injured! Astronauts have backstories involving going to schools!

They don't like these episodes much. Eventually one turns to a live person and starts soliciting help filling in her lists of numbers and colors.

They can have numbers and colors!

Eventually they can communicate that they were in a SCHOOL with BAD ALIENS and they are DONE with school and are here but this is BAD because they are supposed to be at their HOUSES.

?????

There's a brief argument, simultaneously out loud and in sign language. They might be able to catch a few words but none of the participants are particularly trying to be comprehensible.

"We don't know of any aliens," says one of them tentatively. "Most people think that if there are aliens, they are very very far away. Not on this planet or on any of the close planets."

"Not aliens aliens."

That is not really less confusing! Maybe they can make some progress on one of the other things they mentioned?

"We don't know where your houses are either. What cities did you live in? --"City" is many many people and many many apartments in one place."

"New Orleans."

Wobbly-hand-gesture "Newark."

"São Paulo."

Fe pokes at the computer.

"There aren't any cities with those names on this planet."

"Yeah."

"How did you get here?"

Shrug. Looks of bewilderment.

Brief conversation in sign language!

"We don't know how you can get back to your houses. Given that, what do you want to do?"

Shrug. "House here?"

"Do you want to live here" (gesture around the apartment) "or in an apartment with other people or in an apartment that only has the three you?"

"Three in house."

"Okay. It might take us a few days to get another apartment but we'll try to work on it fast. Is there anything you for sure want your apartment to have? Location, building rules, rooms...?"

They're not up on those words.