The Grand and Illustrious All-inclusive Off Topic Topic | Forums

[marae]

We need this, we want this, and since we no longer have a private topic in which to have this, we'll do it in plain view, and they'll never find us!

Here we can hold behind-the-scenes discussions of our stories, without having to make so many off-topic comments in the story threads themselves (and without our array of off-topic/on-topic smileys, that can be a pain). It's not as nice being out in the open like this, but when you think about it, all of us were reading the PT anyway, so it was never really a private topic.

We have a bit of a dilemma with the hotel being (or should I say, *not* being) in two places at once, but remember, this *is* the hotel we're talking about. I'd say by its very nature, it has a tendency to do that kind of thing.

In the Presenting: Tora's A&C Tarot Deck thread, someone suggested we summon quantum theory into the mix, and "Schroedinger's Hotel" seems like a very good option here. That would explain why the hotel was truly missing from its accustomed location at the beginning of this adventure, and why it seems to now be there for Hugh (in its accustomed location), but not for us.

Anyway, my two cents, to which all and sundry are welcome to add theirs. Welcome back to the A&C PT - now Public, but hey, who cares? We're here, and that's what matters!


EDIT 03/30/12: For those interested in using our original smilies, here is the link to them on our photobucket "picturepooling" site:

http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v1...eys/?start=all

I followed MN's lead and uploaded our beloved smilies from the old forum to that page. I think I have all of them; many that I had saved came from picturepooling originally and I have tried not to duplicate them. If you still can't find something you know we had before, let me know. I might have it and just haven't gotten it up there yet.

And for my part, also pinging on MN's post below, I probably will leave photobucket open on another tab.

EDIT 08/29/12: I have posted links to the hotel floor plans and grounds area map here.

[MystNovice]

Since I came up with the same idea at roughly the same time, I'll copy what I wrote over here:

At least, this seems more appropriate than spamming poor Tora's Tarot thread with unrelated material.

First order of business:

As far as keeping/deleting my disappearing hotel post, we have one registered vote for "keep," and three posts mentioning the disappearing hotel (including my own) which I choose to register as "keep" votes. In order to speed this road bump along, I choose to accept 4 keep votes as a plurality, at the very least, and have deleted my off-topic posts on that matter. In short, the hotel is back where it belongs, it's staying there, and anyone who still has problem with it can get a vodoo doll or something (good luck finding a piece of me).

Second order of business:

We have two competing theories on the hotel returning home.

1. There is the quantum reinstatement theory advanced by jahura in the Tarot thread which has already been endorsed by Marae and myself. To abbreviate jahura's brilliant post and add my own spin: The hotel was initially displaced by what was discribed at the time as a quantum storm, thus whether it was in Now Here or New Mexico/Australia was determined by the perceptions of those who observed it, similiar to whether light behaves like a wave or a particle depending on whether or not it is being observed. When all sentient beings who had percieved the hotel to be out of place were outside sight of the hotel, it entered a state of quantum uncertainty until Hugh, whom we suppose to have not gone outside in Now Here, walked out of the hotel to fetch his grappling hook. He expected to find the hotel right next to the parking lot in New Mexico/Australia, perceived it to be so, and it was. As long as Hugh or any other waking, sentient being stays within sight of the hotel and/or nobody re-perceives the hotel in Now Here, the A&C will remain in its proper place indefinately.

2. There is the Unseelie theory. I know obsolutely nothing about the Unseelie, so I don't know how best to evaluate this option, but the two theories needn't be in compitition. Perhaps the Unseelie knew that the hotel would vanish if they chased Tasha away from it and disappeared themselves, and that was their plan all along.

Please don't be shy about voicing your a opinion on this issue. It doesn't hold anything up since the hotel is definately back where it belongs, but it makes for interesting curiosity.

Third order of business:

It seems we will have to delete all the PMs to date in order to use the PM system anymore. I know I have already done so, but I unintentionally cleared away many useful posts in the process. Would anyone who still has access to the links for the A&C maps or any other relevant information on the A&C please post them in this thread so that everyone has access to them. Thank you in adavnce!

[Tora_Neko]

Okay, that makes three of us having the exact same idea. MN and Marae apparently posted theirs at the same time.... and I just plain didn't see them and posted mine just now, well after two Off Topic threads were already established.

Oops?

Like MN said in his own OT thread, there's no Thread Delete Clicky-Thingy. Therefore, I shall repeat my final action within my own OT thread as I opened the floor to discussion:

*falls in hole and Relto's out*

******************************************

Okay, so far we've had a Storm pick up and move the Hotel. There is some discrepency as to whether the Storm is quantum, occult, or Nyrond in nature. At this point, though, it is gone; let's just label it Plot Device Q and move on.

Current ideas for getting the Hotel - and ourselves - home include Tully Does Something, Find a Faerie Gate And Do Heavylifting, Pray To Jahura For Divine Intervention, and Believe It Back Then Relto Home.

I'd like to vote for a combination of all of them. Hugh seems to have already Believed the Hotel back to its proper place, now we just need to get ourselves home. I like the Faerie Gate idea for that, Tully throwing a Nyrond spanner into the works would be hilarious, and praying to Jahura certainly won't hurt.

By the way, I add to this idea that if believing the Hotel is in one place makes it so, the Hotel's position is likely so much in flux because of A) the twisty area it already sits on and B) close proximity to a Faerie Gate.

And seeing as we are in a large meadow, if we keep walking in one direction there's always the possibility that Just Over That Next Hill we discover we've been merely a little further out than usual in Duke's Field all along. :P

[marae]

A question has occurred to a couple of us regarding Zander and Jahura. Since they have referred to themselves as "Z" and "J" once or twice, we just want to be certain that we are dealing with who we think we're dealing with, which is the original Zander and Jahura, not the clones who went by "Z" and "J" respectively. Just checking. And in case I haven't said it before, it is incredibly wonderful to have you both back!!!

Regarding past PMs which have now become just messages and no longer replies to private topics, I am still keeping all of mine. I don't have time at present to go through and decide which posts I can afford to delete because I have them saved somewhere else (like e-mail) and which I need to save now before I can delete them. Having to view them one post at a time rather than in groups (pages) of 20 at a time is not helping at all. So I guess I am out of the loop when it comes to private messaging. *sigh*

[Achenar625]

Plot Device Q, indeed. :mh:


In any case, I wasn't aware about the quantum discussion. o.o I meant to imply with Tasha's post that the Unseelie guys had shoved the Hotel back to where it was (that's why they were talking about the "boat going back without them"). Didn't really consider whether or not they'd have the power to do that, though, but luckily it seems like the quantum idea meshes with mine anyway. Yay, pure dumb luck! \o/

The only thing that worries me is we still have to find a way of resolving Toz' plotline as well. The Hotel wouldn't be the same without all the Vikings around, after all! And nobody's really likely to want to leave anyone behind when we get back.
... hm... should try and poke Tasho and make sure there's nothing dangerous about taking Tasha into Faerie...

[jahura]

A question has occurred to a couple of us regarding Zander and Jahura. Since they have referred to themselves as "Z" and "J" once or twice, we just want to be certain that we are dealing with who we think we're dealing with, which is the original Zander and Jahura, not the clones who went by "Z" and "J" respectively. Just checking. And in case I haven't said it before, it is incredibly wonderful to have you both back!!!

It's good to be back, seriously! I would bear-hug all of you if I could.

Yes, Z and J are the clones. They are cloned from epithelial cells so they aren't as complex-minded. We hadn't got them past Eder Gira on their Journey and I for one hadn't had felt a whole lot of urgency in rushing them along. Presently they are residing in the city beyond the canyon, but that post about J and the falling rag doll was just sort of a side note about what's going on with the Relto. Mostly they're on standby in case Zander and Jahura need to borrow one of their Relto books, but I can't see much more activity than that in the near future.


As for the hotel, I included an escape clause in the idea that Surcrease lost contact with Hugh. Even though Hugh can observe the Hotel, there's no real guarantee that the Hotel is in Australia/New Mexico for any longer than it took to get his grappling hook out of the car. Quantum states can fluctuate, and for all we know it could be bouncing around between conjoined worlds like Sam Beckett without any control or set destination. Or it could be there and it's Hugh that's phasing. Right now, I don't know.

But I don't see any reason to rule out Seelie involvement, either. One healer's willow bark is another doctor's aspirin. It's entirely possible to me that the Seelie may have some arcane knowledge of quantum mechanics. They've been doing it far longer, and have a different name and method of delivery, is all. Jo might someday understand it, herself - but I sense she's still getting used to the idea of being a fairy. So who's to say they didn't bring on the storm or have some kind of plot behind it?

Also, I have a question. If Marae and Tully are wondering about the sextant, why aren't they asking the Vikings?

[MystNovice]

Didn't Vikings use ropes trailing behind their ships and the setting/rising sun and moon to navigate. According to Wikipedia, the sextant wasn't invented until 1757. At any rate, even a nautical expert couldn't navigate using a sextant without a star chart and knowledge of the local planetary seasons and how they affect the sun(s) and moon(s).

How about we wrap multiple complications into one big Gordian knot to hack away at? Let's say that the Unseelie are indeed working with Toz's werewolf cult for some dark purpose. By combing Unseelie magic with the occult rituals of the werewolves, they summoned the quantum storm to wisk the hotel off to Now Here for some unspeakable reason. Apparently, what they want is one of the characters that went wandering off after we were "raptured" or something in their possession. After we all left, they chased Tasha away to cause the hotel to revert to its original home so that we would be even more lost and weaker for lack of shelter. Before we arrived, they must have blocked off the Fairy Gate somehow to leave us without retreat or the benefit of our Fae friends' magic. Everything the Unseelie-cult pact has done is to weaken and confuse us so that they can better steal whoever or whatever it is they want. All we would have to do now is figure out what they want, stop them from getting it, sneak into their stronghold, unblock the Fairy Gate (which is likely at the stronghold, according to Tully), and escape (after we have all reunited, of course).

Thanks to Boppy's keen nose and rambuctiousness, we already know where their stronghold is. As to what the evil Axis wants, perhaps we had better appeal to Toz to clue us in on their motivations.

Is this starting to resemble something of a plan, if a bit Nyrond-ish?

By the way, has anyone noticed that some of the old smilies are still recorded in old posts?

[MystNovice]

On a bit of a tangent, I managed to rescue a few of our favorite smilies:

and a couple decent facsimilies:


I know it's not the same, but if you run photobucket in another tab... Eh, I probably won't be bothering.

[jahura]

Well, technically, Vikings wouldn't know what Spam is, either. Hormel introduced Spam to markets in 1938. But these are the Spam Vikings from Monty Python that Speedy wrote in waaaaaaaaaay back to drive her character crazy. She then got attached to them and what the heek, the hotel needed a maintenance crew . Reason would follow that if they know about Spam and indoor plumbing, they know how to use a LORAN. Baring satellites they could go back to the tried-and-true sundial and knot method, but they could possibly at least explain how a sextant works since they use the same principle. Further complicating that is that both methods are useless without establishing where the prime meridian would be in that world because there's nothing to determine what time the sun would be over that point.

Anyway, I know Marae wouldn't have made such detailed mention of a sextant in their pack in at least two posts if she didn't have some idea of why Marae and Tully would have one. I also know Marae wouldn't write about one unless she did some research on her own or has some experience with a sextant. She's very detail-oriented, so something tells me this has shiny MacGuffin potential. I already know the technical answer to the question would be that Tully and Marae were too far away from the Vikings to even get the idea to ask them, or to have Thorstein or Gisli intervene and give them a brief lesson. It's more or less a rhetorical question. *shrug*

I like MN's Gordian knot idea. I'm going to need to do an advanced search of this story to get an idea of what ideas comprise this cult for the werewolves. Are they Anubis or Sirius worshipers, or some Now Here version of Team Jacob, or Toz did you just leave that open for interpretation? I'm very interested in this. Jahura should at least know even though she's not involved.

ETA: Okay, it seems there isn't so much a werewolf cult as evidence of werewolves chased away by some cult mentioned here.

"Where have all the good men gone
And where are all the *mods?
Where's the streetwise Hercules
To fight the rising odds?
"Isn't there a white knight
Upon a fiery steed?
Late at night I toss and I turn
And I dream of what I need"

"Fawn can sing!" Thorstein said. "We should invite him to the next party." "By Odin, will you focus?" Gisli barked. "The enemy could strike at any moment. We need to be ready!" "We're in a longboat, surrounded by vikings," Tiny said. "I think we can relax..." A viking scowled at him. "...a bit," he added. Meanwhile, Sam was busy reading through his notes. "These forrests were once inhaited by many werewolf clans before the cult drived them back. We may find something of use in one of the many caves." "Like that one?" Fawn asked, pointing to a large cave, not too far from the river, with a faint glow inside.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~
"Did you guys hear something?" Tir asked. "Could it be the cult?" Toz asked. Leon readied his sword and Toz reached for his pokeball, when suddenly Tir shouted, "I see vikings! We're saved!"

Which leaves it pretty much up in the air as to what Toz means by cult. It could be the Seelie or it could be someone aligned with them...but if this cult is going to play a role in creating the situation we need some definition as to their motive in this so the characters can find a way to foil their plans. Toz, can you elaborate?

[MystNovice]

From my imperfect understanding, Toz has a party of werewolves in his company who are something like a werewolf resistance that fight against the werewolf cult, but yes, Toz, please elaborate.

And the new search function doesn't seem very reliable when it comes to searching older posts. Sometimes it works... sometimes it doesn't... I haven't figured it out yet.