[Open + Sorta Mingle Ish?] Dark Fish, Like Dark Matter...

[seethesun]

Who: Eleanor Lamb, YOU, and the looters of the carnival
What: Inquiries about Moon Master Ebalon, day to day life, pillaging the carnival to install some FUCKING KITCHENS BBY WE'VE GOT 'EM NOW
When: Last day of the carnival through to the end of February
Where: Carnival, Tauva, Fate's Design, Windjammer, the infinite cheese shop, the water
Warnings: Rapture bullshit, funerary traditions, and whatever you bring with you


1. Fellas, it's too rough to feed ya [Final day of the carnival + Tauva and/or Fate's Design; Semi-Mingle, please feel free to use this to thread with each other rather than just Eleanor]

When Sir Molinaro and Mister Max propose securing the cooking equipment and as many ingredients as they can, Eleanor is all on board. For her, the last hours of the carnival become a frenzy of looting, deconstruction, and hauling equipment. Do you need help securing something? Just ask; find her at the Carnival engaged in taking apart the food trucks, hauling heavy objects with improvised sleds made from tearing apart the game booths, being orbited by a great deal of raw ingredients (to transport them in a sanitary fashion), and straight up stealing the refrigerators from the food trucks (and packing them even more full of raw ingredients, especially the meats and vegetables that cannot be found uncooked on the ship).

Once the goods are secure, the next few days are spent in Tauva and Fate's Design; helping to plan the improvised kitchen setups, providing her technical expertise in assembling or disassembling the equipment, and suchlike. She might beg a smoke or some alcohol off you if she thinks you're amenable. This is also Eleanor at possibly her least dressed to date, wearing men's clothes from Tommy Bahama that she doesn't mind getting wrecked. Maybe you catch her there snatching them at high speeds, or in the Laundry Room to simply abandon them and/or change at equally high speeds. Girl should really change in her room, but she's excited.

One can safely assume that Eleanor will overhear most conversations or plans during this process; she's an attentive and curious girl, but she won't interrupt unless she's invited over.

2. Sonar Scattering Layer [Windjammer]

Once the improvised kitchens are set up you can start finding Eleanor at Windjammer for large portions of the day, set up with a few tables pushed together. A bedsheet has been draped over them, with INFORMATION ON MOON MASTER EBALON REQUESTED written on the front-facing portion in thick Sharpie. Eleanor has several Composition notebooks with her, pens, and also a pad of graph paper in which she doodles designs while waiting for people to come to her. She can be patient. Patience is one of the virtues she had to master for herself.

3. Free Diving [Pool/Decks/The Sea]

Eleanor continues her habit of practicing underwater movement and relaxing by crawling along the Serena Eterna's hull, both in full armor. You might find her in The Pool, pacing the deep end and having what appears to be an animated internal monologue since her arms gesture as if she's talking to someone; indeed, at times, whale song floats from the water in a shockingly good impression, drifting down the halls. Otherwise you might spot her on the decks either hoisting herself over the railing, shimmying down the lifeboat's ropes to get into the water safely, or returning the same way. Do you go into the water yourself, or fly around the ship? Maybe you spot her in the sea by the green glow of her helmet's porthole, crawling along the ship.

After those trips, when she dries off, one might find her sat down with her back to the railing, updating a detailed external map of Serena Eterna's hull. Though they are very infrequent, certain places are marked with the label 'barnacle'.

4. Marine Biology [Infinite Cheese Store]

Guess who's taking notes again? Find Eleanor in between other tasks or just In General haunting the infinite cheese store's shallow reaches, peeling away little bits of cheese and taking flavor notes in her notebooks about it. Something like a recipe book is forming from experimenting with how this cheese might go with those crackers or that meat. Peering over her shoulder, or snooping at the notebooks when she's away to get more stuff? Several entries are marked, specifically, 'ask Sir Molinaro' or 'ask Mister Max'.

5. Shark Week on Discovery Channel [Wildcard]

Fuck me up, I'm on Discord

Comments

[neverleave]

"Maximilien and Dr. Watson's opinion isn't going to be any better."

Watson will probably be more civil about it, though. Maximilien would just say that stabbing Ebalon was fun and it's a shame he never got to do it again.

"I'm Natsuno. Yuuki's my last name."

[seethesun]

Eleanor, in all ways but the physical, has egg on her face. The look of keen embarrassment is unguarded and intense; she doesn't know what to say to that.

[neverleave]

He shrugs.

"Don't worry about it. I prefer Yuuki, but people just do what they want."

And hey, she got a third of what she wanted, so it's fine.

"So what happens to the dead where you're from?"

[seethesun]

Thank God, an escape. Into a worse topic but frankly Eleanor would have taken 'what kind of freak are you?' over the rake she just stepped on. She looks down at her notebook, appending (Natsuno) to the previous Mister Yuuki entry.

"...They were left to lie where they fell, to be looted by scavengers and have their vital fluids processed into resources."

[neverleave]

That's it? Maybe Natsuno is just desensitized, but the dead don't care what happens to them. Funerals and rituals are for the living, so if the living don't need it, what's the problem?

"That doesn't sound so bad. At the bodies are useful to someone."

Plus, no chance of anyone coming back wrong if you recycle the corpses!

[seethesun]

"They were people with lives, Mister Yuuki. All but slaves in life, reduced to resources in death. They should have been honored and instead they were left to rot like filth." Eleanor's vehemence seems to surprise her; she withdraws slightly back on herself, blinking away tears she can't explain. "...I had hoped it might be better here, sir."

[neverleave]

Ah. He jumped to conclusions, then. Sounds like her world's treatment of the dead is an extension of how they were treated in life, and living doesn't mean much either. Natsuno doesn't know Eleanor's world nor cares enough to ask her to elaborate, so he simply nods.

If she's this passionate about it, though, it's better to focus on other things than the Moon Freak.

"The captain see us as batteries that entertain him while he siphons our emotions in exchange for magic. Once we have nothing more to give, he leaves our souls to the void, thinking nothing and being nothing while what's left of us serves the drink for the next batch. If you really want to change how the dead are treated here, help us find a way out."

[seethesun]

"I am not necessarily unhappy to lend my support to an escape. Those creatures in the store..." She shakes her head. Her pen taps the notebook thoughtfully, and then she turns back to the general notes page. "Mister Pleasant spoke of the Moon Master tearing himself apart attempting to construct a magical gateway. Now, I do not wish to misrepresent myself, Mister Yuuki; I am not mystical, and indeed accepting that this reality features capabilities I can only think of as magic is difficult and frustrating, both emotionally and, as it were, taxonomically. But I do have some passing skill as an engineer. What can you tell me about the attempt and its failure?"

Hopefully he'll see the obvious connection between his request and hers.

[neverleave]

"You're not the only one having trouble accepting magic." Natsuno arrived right after realizing vampires were real; he adjusted quickly to facing new and exciting supernatural crap every week. "But most magic users I met here follow scientific principles. The captain has to follow rules, too."

Trouble is they still don't know what all those rules ARE.

"Anyway, I can't tell you much about the attempt because I only saw the aftermath." Natsuno was having his own long death break when Ebalon messed the portal up. "Maybe there are plans in the notes he left behind, but... I think the real problem was that the captain controls all the ways in and out of this reality. A portal based on the Moon Freak's own magic was doomed to fail."

[seethesun]

"Hrm. Access to those notes would be appreciated. I would be happy to accept supervision, or to make my own copies." Still, this gets dutifully written down. More curiously than anything: "Have you any idea where you would be escaping to, sir?"

[neverleave]

"Just 'Yuuki' is fine, and no idea," he replies. He has to go back for, as any place he can live his own life without meddling will do. "I'll worry about a destination when there's a way."

[seethesun]

"I couldn't presume such familiarity," Eleanor demurs, with all signs of meaning it. Something else gets written down in the notebook after that reply. "...I suspect that thinking may be flawed, Mister Yuuki - from a practical standpoint, if nothing else. The destination is part of the design. A road must lead somewhere, yes? One does not build a bridge and then find a river."

[neverleave]

Natsuno pauses to consider. New arrivals may not be fully aware of how things work, but fresh perspectives are valuable.

"That's the second stage," he says finally. "Right now it's more like trying to find a way out of a locked room. You need to build the tools to get out. You need to bust the door open to figure out if there's a river or something else."

[seethesun]

"But potentially risky. Miss Rose seemed to be under the impression that some manner of void is outside of that barrier. Even presuming for a moment that she is incorrect, can you prove the barrier is merely for restraint?" Eleanor gestures with her free hand, falling into an easy cadence of academic debate. "If one were to open a door on a submarine, or an airplane, for instance, disaster befalls. My own former home was many fathoms beneath the sea, and escape therefore no simple thing. Passage through whatever lies without, if indeed it is not suitable for life, must factor into the plan sooner rather than later."

[neverleave]

He nods in acquiesce.

"The captain usually knocks us out when we cross realities for excursions, because crossing over takes a toll on your mind. So even if it's not just void - it's unpleasant. So I guess it's more like... finding a window before you break the door down."

Natsuno sticks his hands in his pocket, falling into step with Eleanor's debate. Might as well bounce thoughts off one another.

"So we're stuck in a closed space. Going outside unprotected could break our mind and the captain controls the transportation method. How would you proceed from here?"

[seethesun]

"Study the method of transportation," Eleanor answers without hesitation. "It already exists and is purpose-built. One might have never known the sea, but to study a submarine is to reveal its purpose, no?"

[neverleave]

"The method is the ship's tender, or at least shaped like a tender. Problem is that we lose consciousness after boarding. This is to preserve our sanity, because crossing over can feel so long we'll lose our mind.

"How would you learn the tender if you're unconscious for the ride?"

[seethesun]

"One does not simply make something from nothing. Until provided evidence otherwise, entropy always wins; there is no free lunch." Eleanor taps her pen on the notebook, a clear habit of thought. "Which implies that this tender must be stored somewhere. Who has access to it?"

cruiseparent says no access

[neverleave]

"Friday." He makes a face. "But we only ever see it on excursions."

Alas

[seethesun]

"Still seems like a place to start," Eleanor opines. "Perhaps Ms. Friday might be persuaded or bribed? Either way, the means of egress is known; its existence in itself may also be a good place to start. One wonders what might happen if you built your own tender."