friendly door

[her_imperial_radiance]

Elspeth gets a door.

It's been so long she reels for a moment, and then she throws herself forward and almost lands in a peal of Bells. Yes, there's Shell Bell, there's Juliet and Aurora, there's Glass, there's some Matilda she hasn't seen before.

"Elspeth!" exclaims Glass.

"How long has it been?" Aurora asks.

"Seventeen years. Shell Bell - I need you to help me find Harley," says Elspeth.

Comments

[incanted]

"Putting Toronto on Venus would be a lot easier with Jane, but you should be able to do it with a hex for the city - maybe a star - on top of terraforming the planet, and the population will probably go with an arrow, and the admin solved the duping problem. I can spot you the coins, but you'll want your own mint. Maybe we can finagle Ghosty for you if Corona never wants to come back."

[salus_populi]

Aelise nods thoughtfully.

"You can have Toronto, sure. And a certain amount of quiet emigration. That will definitely solve some problems. But keep an eye on your Gifted and call me if you sense trouble; I would like to have the Last War stay that way. And don't resurrect Delphi. There's a reason they dropped a nuclear bomb on that crowd."

[she_sells_seashells]

"We'll stop by Origin and you can talk to Stella about managing ingots. They're not as scaled-up and splashy as Gifted, but they do invariably 'win' versus coined stuff."

[giftedandtalented]

"Sure. Delphi sleeps forever, I crib Stella's notes," says Tab agreeably.

[luminous_regnant]

"Chelsa also sleeps forever, when she sleeps, even if you opt to let that be in a century," says Golden, "we have a do-not-wake order on that template, among others."

[she_sells_seashells]

Shell Bell shivers slightly.

[salus_populi]

"...One of you is managing a world full of people with Gift-like powers?" says Aelise.

[luminous_regnant]

"Two of us, but on my world coined wishes can interfere with and modify witchcraft - although not with perfect reliability. On Eos with ingot powers, that's simply impossible - coins are native to there and they always lose the contest. Stella's experience will probably be more relevant to Gift than mine in this respect."

[salus_populi]

"Interesting," says Aelise. "I think I'd like to see Stella's notes."

[giftedandtalented]

"I have a perfect memory now," chirps Tab. "I can report back."

[cross_and_bow]

"Stella's also got a Libby - the eponymous - and it briefly looked like they were going to be nemeses," volunteers Juliet. "Instead, Elspeth sold Libby on Bells-as-benevolent-dictators and they started the trend of Libbies as Bell personnel officers."

[salus_populi]

"I think that's a pretty sensible trend," says Aelise.

[prima_sequentem]

"It's working out reasonably well for me," says Lizzie.

[luminous_regnant]

"Lizzie," says Golden, gesturing, "is my mother in law, in case that wasn't clear via any form of telepathy."

[salus_populi]

"I hadn't actually caught that part, no. Congratulations."

[luminous_regnant]

"And Elspeth's my daughter; I don't think that came up either."

[cross_and_bow]

"I'm the only one who's older than my Libby. She succeeded me at a mystical destiny sort of thing after I got assassinated; I showed up to warn her."

[salus_populi]

"I did actually know that Elspeth was your daughter," says Aelise to Golden. "Harley mentioned her to Tab once."

[incanted]

"Hey, Glass, why is it always daughters? And for that matter, albeit on two data points, sisters?"

[thaumobabble]

"There's... a reason, but I can't interpret it. Something about faces?" says Glass vaguely.

[salus_populi]

"You have interesting powers," says Aelise to Glass.

[thaumobabble]

"I do!" she chuckles. "It's an interesting party trick. And I predicted at the last Bell party that something awful was going to happen to Harley and there was nothing we could do about it - fat lot of help that was."

[salus_populi]

"...If he was in some way fated to have horrible experiences, that actually explains a lot about the last ten years," Aelise says thoughtfully.

[thaumobabble]

"It's a template attractor. Horrible things have to happen to Jokers; there are strong tendencies for it to be a certain short list of things, and there's flexibility on the amount, but it's not escapable. Elspeth took Harley away from bad parents when he was a baby and he grew up happy and safe in Aurum, so of course he had to develop uncontrollable teleporting ability and land somewhere that wouldn't treat him kindly."

[incanted]

"If they re-run the Trauma Olympics I wonder if he's competitive with Aianon and Brilliance, now? Probably depends on how they count psychological tampering."