Falling Outside The Normal Moral Constraints (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
picketship) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
kenoslogs2024-01-02 06:37 pm
picketship) wrote in kenoslogs2024-01-02 06:37 pm
2024 catch-all
Who: Demeisen & various
What: Catch-all for non-event threads
Where: Various
When: Throughout 2024
Warnings: Will be in headers as appropriate
What: Catch-all for non-event threads
Where: Various
When: Throughout 2024
Warnings: Will be in headers as appropriate
no subject
[Demeisen’s agreement comes easily enough, despite the low undercurrent of disgruntlement at his situation that he cannot entirely ignore. Probably no one in this world is going to understand just how truly powerful—martially, mentally, and otherwise—his ship body is (was?), and he’s not especially invested in filling in all the details regardless. It’s largely irrelevant at present anyway, no matter how used he is to him and the ship being connected.
At Sebastian’s description of his missing ability, however, Demeisen raises an eyebrow, tipping his head meaningfully toward his companion.]
Awfully convenient that it’s gone, I’d say. If someone were to want to keep you in line.
[He’s not suggesting these strange little quirks prove that their scenario was set up by some intelligent hand. Demeisen is perfectly aware of how little information he really has about their situation at present, and how data points can easily be misleading in isolation. Still—suffice to say that this whole thing stinks to him, and he’s far from ready to believe either faction’s promise and go along with things like a meek little soldier.]
no subject
Of course, the fact that this is something he’s susceptible to isn’t something he likes to broadcast. People that know of demons usually have he general idea, but they don’t know just how ruinous it could be for him in the right hands. So. Better to just not speak of it. ]
…Well, perhaps. I had guessed that it was perhaps because things are so much more diverse here than where I am from that the typical rules did not apply. Even a mundane weapon could technically be infused or empowered by magic here. But that is the sort of theory I know little about. Magic… Well, it existed, but I could not use it, and it was something humanity had largely lost as an art.
[ He shrugs. He’s getting off track, so back to Demeisen’s point: ]
There are other things that are missing or reduced that are not so meaningful, though. I can no longer conjure a building either, but that is not something I miss, really.
no subject
From nothing? [he asks, with genuine curiosity. Ships had the ability to make things appear, of course, but it wasn’t creation; even if they were to “conjure” something so large, it would be simply transported there from somewhere else. It would have to be manufactured normally (or at least, normally by the standards of their still rather fantastical capabilities).]
Magic’d be a bit of a tongue-in-cheek term where I’m from. There’s no such thing, really; just tech people might not understand.
[And even as one of the more high-level civs playing around in the galaxy, the Culture certainly didn’t understand everything it encountered. Sebastian’s case is interesting, however, because his capabilities are so advanced, and his knowledge of technology is so pifflingly limited.]
What’s your deal, then?
no subject
It is something that many of my kind are able to do. Not all, since it is something that comes with a bit of, ah… [ He pauses again, then shrugs. ] Well, I shall simplify it and call it prestige.
[ The hierarchy of Hell and how demons gain their power is too much for an introductory conversation. He also hasn’t gotten a good read on how Demeisen might take such a brutal story, so he doesn’t particularly want to get into it. ]
I am a demon. If you have heard of us, perhaps considerably different than what you may know, since there are many, many tales of us... But a demon all the same.
no subject
Nice trick.
[He will take the pipe, taking a drag from the original as he lifts the copy with his free hand, turning it delicately with his fingertips. It really does appear to be the same in every single way—though he can’t know for sure, of course. He’s not the ship; he can’t scrutinize it down to the individual atoms to check if it’s really a perfect copy. But to his senses, which surpass those of humans even in his limited state, it is still exact enough to be impressive.
He also notes with interest that Sebastian seems to make the pipe from himself, or from the shadows he casts, and he wonders if his human body was fabricated just the same way. It’s something he can only laugh about, when he finally hears what Sebastian is.]
You would be different, then.
[He’ll hand the extra pipe back, having seen all he wanted to from it, and though the little bubble of merriment is obvious in both his expression and his emotional state, his hand is completely steady.]
Not this, necessarily. [He waves his original pipe at Sebastian’s fake human appearance.] Different civs all have their own ideas of what hell is like; perhaps you’d fit in some of them. But—to return to our earlier topic—you might be interested to know that all real demons where I’m from, in as much as there are such things, exist in sims: virtual hells some of the more perverted civilizations create to send people to after death.
[He laughs again, briefly, then shakes his head.]
Not the same thing, of course. Certainly the demons don’t get out to gambol around in the Real.
no subject
Oh, my. Truly a hell of their own making.
[ Sebastian cants his head thoughtfully as he takes another little drag from the pipe, since that’s a curious thought. Humanity had influenced Hell, absolutely. Demons were whimsical, in their way, so they had taken on some aspects from human stories essentially for the fun of it—cloven hooves, pitchforks, all the usual tropes could indeed be found. But that’s not the same as humans truly making it. What would their Hell look like…? ]
As you mention multiple, you need only pick one, but I must ask… What are they like, do you know?
no subject
The hells? [He quirks an eyebrow.] No idea—beyond the obvious, of course. Point of hell is that it’s full of appalling cruelty, so of course that’s a constant feature, in whatever forms their different creators are able to dream up. As for the specifics, though…
[Demeisen shrugs.]
Couldn’t say. Might be that the ship would know; at the very least, it’d be trivial for it to find out. As an avatar, though, most of the people I interacted with were friendly, wholesome types. [He smiles pleasantly through what is both a baldfaced lie and also still basically the truth; at the very least, the people he spent time with also mostly tended to be part of the Culture, which meant that even the quirkier ones condemned the concept of maintaining hells to torture actual thinking people.] And, more to the point, even the civs that did maintain hells didn’t tend to broadcast them for public viewing.
no subject
[ Sebastian makes another thoughtful noise, since it really is an interesting topic to him of how it’s so reversed in this case. ]
You know, there was a misconception about Hell. Humanity had an idea that we would inspire people to do evil acts, but it was exceptionally rare, and not in the way that they imagined. They are perfectly capable of it on their own. Why waste the effort to interfere? And so too with Hell itself. Many of its torments came from human creativity, not ours…
[ And this is how they have a lovely, normal conversation. Yikes. What a way to forge a friendship (?), but that’s just how it goes with weirdo inhumans, apparently. ]