wayfairer report: 2.1 > word count: 4850/halfwaybehindalkjsda
Well. Seli is still breathing, great fluttery choking noises. She's not swallowing her tongue anymore. That's good: by my mother's gods, that's progress. I have no idea what I'm going to do if she dies of learning how to live, how to operate a body. I really don't know. She's still got absolutely no control of any of her other movements, but the way she's doggedly persisting at breathing at least gives me something to focus on if not outright hope.
I never thought when I met Seli that we would have so much in common. She was, I thought, the one being in all the planets that could probably be the most distant from me, being a being of pure spirit trapped in weave. Possibly the most infuriating mask-weaver ever. She was just so emotionally distant with a persistent presence. And that infuriated me. I had no idea how essentially important she would become to my everyday being. I met her in the course of my duties as a translator. Mask Weavers have no problem conversing with all manner of being, mostly--given their nature, their comprehension level could be hardly less. But then again, she tangled with a Sector Lord bratling spawn--and well, if they can't afford some of the best shielding training out there, I'll eat my badge whole. Unlike the normal rich Sector child, Sector Lord's offspring were exempt from creche schooling, other then having to undergo the same comprehensive testing that we all were. It was part and parcel with our culture, a kind of kind leveling that could be turned aside when you were more equal then everybody else, as was the common complaint. Everyone else got basic mental shielding in creche school, but only Sector Lord spawn could afford to learn the more powerful soul-cloaking technique that took them out the the ken of gods--very important to the sector lords, for why would they have truck with those chaotic beings--and took away a Mask Weaver's ability to learn and communicate them. And only a bratling-Sector-Lord-in-larvae would try to get into trouble with a Mask Weaver. Mask Weavers were too interesting for that.
Mask Weavers were discovered approximately four hundred and fifty years ago. As far as any number of sorcerers, divines, and any number of other magic practitioners can determine, they are animated bits of the dead's souls. What is most puzzling about them is that the originals all seem to bear a shred of what might be considered (and might as well be, considering the amount of people who did) godly power, as in part of a dead god's soul. According to their histories, they has just appeared on Galivarte, years and years ago. They rose from a race of beings that the galaxy has not seen in centuries, a race that as far as anyone can tell killed themselves off through a good deal of magical warfare that eventuated in a plague that killed all that it came in contact with by eating all living matter and leaving the rest. It was an airborne plague that cursed them all, spreading in a planet's-cycle to the farthest reaches of their world, and was 100% fatal. At this point, anthropologists guess that the group that unleashed it had no idea of the true potency of the disease, and took them first with little to no warning. It left behind a highly magically charged atmosphere where just about any mutation could happen. And...what happened next is pure speculation. Some say that nearby, a god died in such a way that his soul was rendered into shards, and that most, if not all, went for this planet. Some say that no gods had to die off planet: would the gods of that planet not die too? Still others whisper of darker tales: that the group that unleashed the plague did it with the intent of killing a god, or binding a captive one to them, or to rule among them all...it is hard to say what wasn't a theory and what was fact, even working off the found remains of the former race.
But what happened after that is no speculation: the first Weavers emerged, more then a thousand or more years later. Once they began communicating with other beings they quickly earned the nickname of Weaver from one wag of a Seer, who claimed they looked like the Weaver of Fate's wet dreams . Most of the other, young and powerful Seers got the joke, and it spread, gossip-wise to all ears. Soon after contact with the other races, who had both body language and facial expression, they began experimenting and came up with their own substitute--a technological-magical mask that would respond to the subtle contours and ruchces of fabric that were their natural expression and surges of energy that could perhaps be roughly mapped to feelings. And so, the common name for the Mask Weavers came into full and public being. After a brief period of purely innocent expression that soured after some greedy exploitation, became a largely closed society of nomads, drifting throughout the planets by themselves or with a few select companions, trading their powers for the paths the road, the one thing that they all held common in their hearts. You can usually find a few in any spaceport bar. Most will respond at least neutrally to any attempt at conversation: they are as any other in that, and most will gladly stop, and listen. They do not eat, but they do consume energy from all that pass by automatically--a little bit of the radiation that spreads life to continue their own--and having a good conversation with an energetic partner is like a meal, to them and they pay accordingly more oft then not. They prefer to stay by and large away from the topic of gods, and as such, they find that the Sectors are a good place for them to be, for no one particularly wants to discuss gods in the Sectors. A surprising number of them are accepted as technologists, some as diplomatic observers, and a great many as enchanters.
That's how the Sector Lord's spawn met Seli. Poorer then expected after a night of gambling unsuccessfully in the 'ports hells, he stumbled into the bar in which she was observing. Seli was watching the crowd, and listening to the fine bali player that the bar boasted as part and parcel of its many luxury services. He attempt to strike up a conversation with her, and she, unable to determine his purpose, quietly requested a translator, which is where I came in.
I never thought when I met Seli that we would have so much in common. She was, I thought, the one being in all the planets that could probably be the most distant from me, being a being of pure spirit trapped in weave. Possibly the most infuriating mask-weaver ever. She was just so emotionally distant with a persistent presence. And that infuriated me. I had no idea how essentially important she would become to my everyday being. I met her in the course of my duties as a translator. Mask Weavers have no problem conversing with all manner of being, mostly--given their nature, their comprehension level could be hardly less. But then again, she tangled with a Sector Lord bratling spawn--and well, if they can't afford some of the best shielding training out there, I'll eat my badge whole. Unlike the normal rich Sector child, Sector Lord's offspring were exempt from creche schooling, other then having to undergo the same comprehensive testing that we all were. It was part and parcel with our culture, a kind of kind leveling that could be turned aside when you were more equal then everybody else, as was the common complaint. Everyone else got basic mental shielding in creche school, but only Sector Lord spawn could afford to learn the more powerful soul-cloaking technique that took them out the the ken of gods--very important to the sector lords, for why would they have truck with those chaotic beings--and took away a Mask Weaver's ability to learn and communicate them. And only a bratling-Sector-Lord-in-larvae would try to get into trouble with a Mask Weaver. Mask Weavers were too interesting for that.
Mask Weavers were discovered approximately four hundred and fifty years ago. As far as any number of sorcerers, divines, and any number of other magic practitioners can determine, they are animated bits of the dead's souls. What is most puzzling about them is that the originals all seem to bear a shred of what might be considered (and might as well be, considering the amount of people who did) godly power, as in part of a dead god's soul. According to their histories, they has just appeared on Galivarte, years and years ago. They rose from a race of beings that the galaxy has not seen in centuries, a race that as far as anyone can tell killed themselves off through a good deal of magical warfare that eventuated in a plague that killed all that it came in contact with by eating all living matter and leaving the rest. It was an airborne plague that cursed them all, spreading in a planet's-cycle to the farthest reaches of their world, and was 100% fatal. At this point, anthropologists guess that the group that unleashed it had no idea of the true potency of the disease, and took them first with little to no warning. It left behind a highly magically charged atmosphere where just about any mutation could happen. And...what happened next is pure speculation. Some say that nearby, a god died in such a way that his soul was rendered into shards, and that most, if not all, went for this planet. Some say that no gods had to die off planet: would the gods of that planet not die too? Still others whisper of darker tales: that the group that unleashed the plague did it with the intent of killing a god, or binding a captive one to them, or to rule among them all...it is hard to say what wasn't a theory and what was fact, even working off the found remains of the former race.
But what happened after that is no speculation: the first Weavers emerged, more then a thousand or more years later. Once they began communicating with other beings they quickly earned the nickname of Weaver from one wag of a Seer, who claimed they looked like the Weaver of Fate's wet dreams . Most of the other, young and powerful Seers got the joke, and it spread, gossip-wise to all ears. Soon after contact with the other races, who had both body language and facial expression, they began experimenting and came up with their own substitute--a technological-magical mask that would respond to the subtle contours and ruchces of fabric that were their natural expression and surges of energy that could perhaps be roughly mapped to feelings. And so, the common name for the Mask Weavers came into full and public being. After a brief period of purely innocent expression that soured after some greedy exploitation, became a largely closed society of nomads, drifting throughout the planets by themselves or with a few select companions, trading their powers for the paths the road, the one thing that they all held common in their hearts. You can usually find a few in any spaceport bar. Most will respond at least neutrally to any attempt at conversation: they are as any other in that, and most will gladly stop, and listen. They do not eat, but they do consume energy from all that pass by automatically--a little bit of the radiation that spreads life to continue their own--and having a good conversation with an energetic partner is like a meal, to them and they pay accordingly more oft then not. They prefer to stay by and large away from the topic of gods, and as such, they find that the Sectors are a good place for them to be, for no one particularly wants to discuss gods in the Sectors. A surprising number of them are accepted as technologists, some as diplomatic observers, and a great many as enchanters.
That's how the Sector Lord's spawn met Seli. Poorer then expected after a night of gambling unsuccessfully in the 'ports hells, he stumbled into the bar in which she was observing. Seli was watching the crowd, and listening to the fine bali player that the bar boasted as part and parcel of its many luxury services. He attempt to strike up a conversation with her, and she, unable to determine his purpose, quietly requested a translator, which is where I came in.