From being an Abandoned who had rarely left the Hollowed Grounds, to embracing the call of adventure, to dying and being reborn first as an Ascended and then as an Ancient, Maea has gone through quite the amount of changes in her life. One thing remains common, though, in her attempts to find out just where she belongs; she’s always had a craving for knowledge which has brought her to so many places and to meet so many people here in Caido. We can’t wait to see what else is in store for her!
Congratulations, Maea!
Credits
Court of the Fallen was created in October of 2018 by Odd, Honey, and Crooked.
Skinning and hosting by the epically talented Kaons, and functionality fanciness by the coding magic of Neowulf. If you ever see either of them around, make sure to show them some love!
Twas the season for gourd-smashing and trick-playing; while Sam had not been able to attend the festival (it had been, clearly, NO ASCENDED ALLOWED) he'd still tried to be as in the spirit of the thing as he could. It was a way to lift the mood, however temporarily, a little bit of normalcy in among the conversations of war and Gods.
He'd wracked his brains for a trick idea. Jokes were something he occasionally made with those he was comfortable with, always off the cuff and usually not very funny. Practical jokes he had never even attempted, and all his ideas seemed to be either incredibly boring and lame or a little too mean. After a few weeks of pondering it on his off time, he finally decided to just go with one of the ideas that had been filed in the 'boring' list. It was stupid and Sam was probably the only person that would find it funny, but..hey.
He had the confidence to do a shit prank nowadays, and that meant something, right?
Outside his store, on a special lectern, rested a heavy book bound in leather with a complex, beautiful cover. A title punched and carved into the front declared that this book held: "THE SECRETS OF THE UNIVERSE". Would this book tempt anyone passing by on the street? Sam watched from within the store, a little smile on his face as if excitedly awaiting someone to fall for it.
Carrying a parasol to shade themself from the sun, Cam came wandering along to check out Sam's bookshop -- when it was open, this time, rather than during the storytelling event that had introduced them to the establishment. They had once been a big reader, never seen without a book; in more recent years, video games, D&D, and social media had taken over from novels, but they still liked to read, and besides, none of those things were options now that they lived in Caido.
Of course they stopped at the lectern outside, tilting their head as they regarded the fancy book. Secrets of the universe, huh? That seemed a pretty big promise, even if it was a large book. They glanced through the window at Sam, just wondering if he was watching, and then shrugged. Hey, why not? They opened the book.
cameron ?
"Cameras" by Ennev is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
After a long time, by which point Sam had taken to doodling on the page before him on the desk inbetween glancing out the window, someone came to investigate the book. With more glee than was really appropriate for the situation he held a hand to his mouth as he waited for Cameron to open the book. Finally their hand touched the worn leather cover and eased it open...
They would find that inside the book was entirely empty. Nothing on the cream pages whatsoever (predictably - this 'joke' was not particularly original) and no hidden messages within. Regardless of what the reaction was, he'd giggle to himself at his desk and watch to see what Cam would do next. While there were some people in Caido he was sure would have his head for less, he hoped the average passer by would just find it mildly amusing.
Cam didn't know what they expected on opening a book with "secrets of the universe" on the cover. Maybe they weren't really expecting anything. So, ultimately, the blank pages didn't wring much surprise or annoyance from them. Chuckling a little, they flipped through the book for a minute, wondering if maybe there was something hidden on one of the pages, a secret message or something. Were they bored enough to check every single page for any kind of clue? Nah.
Instead they closed the book and walked into the shop, leaving the secrets of the universe on their lectern. They wouldn't want to ruin the joke for anyone else who happened by, after all. Walking over to Sam, they grinned. "Guess I'm not highly-evolved enough to read the secrets of the universe just yet. Or is it a philosophical statement on the nature of truth?"
cameron ?
"Cameras" by Ennev is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
Success! Cam laughed at the book - or at least smiled a little. Sam turned to look down at his desk as Cam came in, pretending that he hadn't been watching, but the upturned corners of his mouth would give him away.
Sitting up when Cam approached the desk, he smiled and glanced outside at the street, as if he'd only just noticed the lectern himself. "You mean you can't read it?" Sam asked at first, frowning, but he'd never been very good at keeping up lies; within seconds he was laughing and shaking his head. "Sorry, I thought it would be a good joke for the season. Simple, but...harmless."
Gathering up the papers in his desk and tapping them on the surface to straighten them, he glanced further into the shop. "I haven't seen you in here before, have I? What's your name? I'm Samuel...Wordsworth, as you probably guessed from the sign."
"Not a word," Cam said mock-sadly, laughing. "Guess the knowledge within is just too transcendent for my puny little brain. Is this the season for tricks?"
They didn't know the holidays of Caido yet, of course; this was their first Leafchange. They barely had a handle on all the gods, let alone the calendar. Cooling air made them think of Halloween, of masks and candy and ghosts, and they realized they hadn't really asked what Caido actually celebrated this time of year, even while telling ghost stories themself.
"I was at the spooky story thing, remember? My name's Cameron. Wow, Wordsworth is a great last name for a bookseller." Cam glanced around the shop, smiling a little. They'd always liked hanging out in bookshops and libraries. "And this is a lot of books. Maybe this is a weird question, but do you have a printing press? Or do you have to make them all by hand?"
Cam didn't want to insult Caido by implying its technology was primitive, but they were curious as to how bookbinding worked in this world. The sheer quantity of books seemed to argue against hand-lettering.
cameron ?
"Cameras" by Ennev is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
"It's beyond most of us." Sam agreed with a sage nod, a grin again marking when he gave up the joke and responded genuinely to Cam's question: "Yes. In Leafchange people often play tricks on each other. It's Ludos season, and Ludo likes to play games...or um, so I've heard." Wasn't like he'd ever met the God and being an Ascended, he didn't want to.
He blinked a couple times after they reminded him they'd been at the scary story event, and sheepishly tucked some hair behind his ear. "Oh. I'm so sorry. It's been very hectic lately." With all the new Ascended, there had been so many new faces and names to get used to. "...I'm...not sure what a 'printing press' is. All of these have been made by hand...some by me, but others by the man that owned the business before me, and some by other scribes hired by the shop. Look-" Sam pulled up the piece of paper from his desk, which had on it hundreds of nearly identical 'A's. "-I'm always practicing my letters. To get them even in each copy."
"Ludo is ... the herald of death, right?" Cam still hadn't gotten all the Old Gods straight in their mind. Once they'd decided to go to the Voice for their needs, it hadn't seemed as important. Really, they ought to try harder -- there were only six of them. Or were they missing one?
"Don't worry about it." Cam waved away Samuel's apology. But their eyes widened as Sam spoke of the books, and especially when he showed them that page of neat, regular letters marching in rows. "Oh, wow. That's amazing! That definitely takes some dedication and hard work." They glanced around at the piles of books in the shop, imagining how many words and letters might be in each one -- and what it would take to write them all by hand. "That's so cool. Oh -- a printing press is a machine that, well, prints books. It dips metal letters in ink, then stamps them down on a page. You can use it to create a lot of copies of a book without having to write them all by hand."
cameron ?
"Cameras" by Ennev is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
"Yes. I've...only seen it from a distance, but it looks like a floating black pile of old sheets." Sam shivered, tensing his shoulders and pulling a face. When his imagination delved into horrors about the Old Gods, Ludo usually featured prominently.
It was nice to see Cam so impressed by his work, but Sam was a little confused: to him, this was the norm. Any bookseller had to make a decent amount of his own stock, it was the trade. It wasn't until the 'printing press' was explained that it began to dawn on him. "Oh...that...sounds like it might be useful, but.." He waved a hand around for a moment, trying to find the right words for his objection. "A part of each book is the personality of the scribe that wrote it. These...prints...are all the same?"
Kneeling down, he fetched a book from behind the counter. "I mean, for instance, this is a version of a very old myth here - but this was written a decade or so ago." Sam opened the book to a page roughly in the middle, his thumb stroking over the edges to find it with an obvious familiarity. "You can see here-" He pointed to a margin filled with scribbles. "-The scribe has added their own thoughts and opinions, as well as a prediction - that in the next hundred years, the barrier around the Grounds would fall. They were right. Isn't that just...wonderful? I feel like it adds so much."
Unlike Samuel, Cameron wasn't intimidated by that description of Ludo; in fact, they had to try not to laugh. "This is probably blasphemy, but it sounds like a Halloween decoration."
Listening to Sam talk about the personality of the books, Cam grew more sober, nodding. "I can definitely see that. The printing press is useful for getting a lot of copies of a book or paper -- it made modern society possible, at home, because you could communicate one idea to so many people. But there's definitely something lost in that act of mass-production. I think ... it's a lot easier to treat typesetters and editors as invisible than scribes. Though even with a printing press, a person still has to put the book together."
Cam smiled at Sam's example, leaning in to examine the page. "That is really cool. It preserves the thoughts, the mind of someone ... but a printed book can do that too -- just for the author, not for the scribe -- and when there are hundreds of copies of a book, it tends to stick around longer."
Quickly, they added, "Not that I'm saying you're wrong! Hand-written books are more personal. But when you have millions or billions of people trying to read something, you kind of need a printing press."
cameron ?
"Cameras" by Ennev is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
"A...what?" Sam asked, tilting his head. Seeing someone laugh at the description of Ludo was certainly a new experience; those that weren't aligned with the Old God usually shuddered upon seeing or hearing of it for the first time.
The technology that Cam was speaking of was, Sam hoped, many years away. The Voice could probably achieve something close, but he could not see the benefits of soulless copies over personal rewrites. Maybe it was bias (it definitely was), but he thought he'd much rather not read a book than read a version of it made with no human additions.
A quite traditional view on technology for an Ascended, but he'd always been a book nerd first and foremost.
"Anyway, for the price of being tricked by my fake work outside, I'd permit you take anything you like from the store for free." He gestured to the many shelves and piles beyond that, books on the tables and any available surface in the room.
"Oh, um ..." Of course people in Caido didn't know what Halloween was. "It's a holiday we have in the fall, where I come from. You hang up spooky decorations and kids go around in costume to collect candy. Ludo sounds like something we'd put up for Halloween." Cam thought about it for a second. "I guess everybody kind of associates fall with death and spooky things, here or at home. Makes sense, with all the plants dying and winter closing in."
At Sam's offer, Cam blinked. It didn't seem like a fair trade to them. "Are you sure? These must have taken a lot of work to make, and all I did was look at blank pages for like, five seconds."
cameron ?
"Cameras" by Ennev is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
"Oh. It sounds...fun, I suppose." Sam gave a polite smile, though all he could think about was how much he would have hated that as a child; he'd been awful at speaking to anyone anyway - having to dress up and ask for candy? It sounded like a special kind of nightmare. "Yes...I mean, you see the trees shrivel up and go and all the animals that go to sleep...it's much quieter."
Deepfrost was actually his favourite season for just that reason. It felt like the world went a little slower, was a little gentler even with the chill in the air. That, and it impeded movement of those that weren't Ascended, so they were possibly actually safer.
He laughed at their surprise. "I've given away books for much less. My main concern is that people read around here. I don't need to pay for food or heating. Don't worry about it. Really. Pick something you'd like."
Cam nodded, though they could see Sam's lack of enthusiasm for Halloween. It had been one of their favorite holidays, but not because of the candy, which even as a kid they hadn't been that interested in eating. They'd enjoyed the costumes when they were younger, though, and even as they'd grown out of actually trick-or-treating, the holiday's whole spooky aesthetic continued to appeal to them. Still, they could understand that it probably sounded strange to Sam.
"Oh ... if you're sure." Cam didn't take too much more convincing, especially after Sam mentioned that he didn't have too many bills of his own to pay. It was easier for Cam to accept a gift if they knew it wouldn't be taking food out of Sam's mouth. They smiled. "Thanks. I'll look around a bit -- do you have a section on, like, local myths and legends? Or history?"
cameron ?
"Cameras" by Ennev is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
