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]

"We should do a sweep. And through Downside, too, now we've added Gift to it. I only found my Beth when I ran a check for all the templates I knew after meeting Agent Honey. I'll just run through the list we did in Chronicle -"

[luminous_regnant]

"And I think I'll look for some more people from Aurum who aren't known to be templates, since apparently Chelsea was one and there could be more... surprises, pleasant or un-."

[thaumobabble]

"I can also tell by looking whether someone's templatey even if I haven't met any of their alts, if there's someone you'd like to be on the lookout for more of," Glass says.

[incanted]

"Found an Anna, found a Sandy. They're together."

[luminous_regnant]

"Chelsa comes with an Afton alt. Of course she does. ...Found a Demetri. I suppose if he's not a vampire he's probably not doing what Demetri did in Aurum. And no Allirea."

[salus_populi]

"...Anneia, Sandre, Amdon, Demauri?" says Aelise. "Do templates tend to cluster like that? I wonder if there are any alts of Luhan... your guess is as good as mine about where to find him, though, he's been roaming the Canadian wilderness for a decade."

[thaumobabble]

"Templates do cluster. Some of them are attached to each other - Bells all come with the same set of parents, Libbies all come with Chrises, etcetera - and some just drift together a lot; Bells and Jokers do that. Will Luhan have a heart attack and die if I just teleport in front of him to see? Would that be a bad idea for any reason?"

[salus_populi]

"Luhan once survived being very close to the epicenter of a nuclear explosion, but he might be displeased if you just teleport in front of him without warning."

[she_sells_seashells]

"That would've been a convenient talent to have," murmurs Shell Bell.

[thaumobabble]

"I could brainphone him instead, would that be a bad idea? You seem to have some snug operational security at work."

[giftedandtalented]

"Luhan's cleared pretty high, I don't know about this high. Frankly I don't know how high 'this high' is. We are apparently a big deal."

[salus_populi]

"...actually," says Aelise, "given which nuclear explosion Luhan survived, you might want to talk to him before you set up on Venus, Tab. So by all means, brainphone away."

[thaumobabble]

[Hey, Luhan, I'm an extradimensional visitor who is an expert on what person-templates repeat across universes and how, and Aelise wants me to look at you; is that okay?]

[pythbox]

Silence.

[thaumobabble]

[Hello? You can reply to me like this, just think it at me.]

[pythbox]

[Who are you? Where are you?]

[thaumobabble]

[I am in Aelise's office but I can teleport to you if you'd like to let me; I'm an alt of a friend of hers. My name is Bella but you can call me Glass.]

[pythbox]

Some more silence.

Then, gruffly, [Fine.]

[thaumobabble]

[Incoming.]

"Be right back."

Pop! Here is Glass; tunic and utility belt and leggings and boots all under witch robes and princess crown, aura declaring her some kind of Extremely Magical Forest-Dwelling Creature.

[pythbox]

And here is Luhan, wearing battered old jeans and a red-and-black plaid shirt over a white tank top, sitting in an armchair in what seems to be a log cabin with a bottle of beer in his hand.

He is templatey. Also regarding her with an extremely dubious look.

[thaumobabble]

"Hi," says Glass, waving. "Possibly good news: you probably have alts running around somewhere!"

[pythbox]

"Which means... what, in practical terms?" he inquires.

[thaumobabble]

"If you make friends with the one of me who lives here and she invites you to parties, or if you get out of the world by other means, you might meet people who look like you and have the same basic personality and..." She squints. "You're also pretty attached to the kind of magic you have. And Canada, I think virtually all of you will come from Canadas when there are Canadas available."

[pythbox]

"By 'magic' do you mean my Gift? Because damn right I'm attached to my Gift," he snorts.

[thaumobabble]

"Sure, but most worlds don't have Gifts, they have other forms of magic, or in a few cases none at all. Your alts will do the same thing in different ways. My template has something like that too, except my world doesn't support it so I don't have a native version."