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"Sure, whatever,"
🕑 Added 2022-01-20 03:16:47 +0000 UTCI shrugged. "You need to read the book from the beginning, and when you get to a part that says 'lorem ipsum' and so on, stop. That's when we will review and I'll quiz you on what you've learned."
Rebecca sat down next to one of the menhirs and started reading the Foxspell. Every few seconds she would burst out with peals of laughter. I remembered the book being lighthearted, but never thought it was that funny. Lowfolk certainly were strange.
I paused for a moment to reflect on the fact that over the course of this single afternoon I had apported numerous objects seemingly from nowhere, without knowing their exact location beforehand. This should have been impossible. The only elves on record accomplishing such feats were legendary characters from the Long Ago. What exactly were the implications of this newfound ability?
"Hey," Burnside murmured, interrupting my thoughts. "Think you could produce a bottle of good usquebaugh?"
"Not right now," I declared. "I need you to show me the part of this journal where it said 'lorem ipsum' and all that."
Burnside found the page and showed it to me. It was the beginning of a standard dissertation on celestial mechanics, but it ended abruptly in the middle of a sentence and was not continued on the next page.
I flipped through the journal and examined it more closely. Scattered amidst the fashion and hairstyle sketches were snippets of gardening advice (all of which Burnside could read), excerpts from a basic primer on Gramarye (she could read those too), and fragments from what must have been an astrological handbook (all 'lorem ipsum' to Burnside). Pages seventeen through twenty-three seemed to have been copied from a Mephitist marriage handbook; Burnside could read all of them with much chuckling and winking. Toward the end of the filled pages were many drawings of me in ridiculous costumes, with notes completely misconstruing my words and actions. The final dozen pages of the book were still blank.
"What do you make of this?" I asked Vernier. "How much of it did you actually read?"
"Oh my," Vernier exclaimed as she examined the notebook. "Is that what elves do on their honeymoon? That's quite an interesting technique. Do you actually know how to do that, Sir?"
"Yer durn tootin he does," Burnside declared proudly.
"Never mind the pictures," I snapped. "Can you read what's written here?"
"Is it written in Elvish?" Vernier asked.
"Does it say 'lorem ipsum dolor sit amet,' and so forth, the stuff Rebecca was yelling a few minutes ago?"
"No, but it does appear to be some sort of otherworldly gibberish."
"What about this?" I asked, flipping to the gardening tips.
She could not read those either, nor any of the other copied passages; however, only the astrological material appeared as 'lorem ipsum.' The rest of it was simply written in an unfamiliar language. All of Rebecca's own notes were, of course, entirely legible - albeit incomprehensible.
"Where did you copy this from?" I demanded, brandishing the notebook as I interrupted Rebecca's reading.
"Some old books that were hidden at the old O'Daisies manufactory," she stated matter-of-factly. "This Reynard was a real character. I'm starting to get a feel for the subtly nuanced evil that you keep calling 'Seelie.' It's quite charming in its way."
"Why would you copy old books from the O'Daisies?"
"Everybody knows their inventions came from hell and their financial success was due to daemoniacal magic," Rebecca explained. "So when they were driven away by an army of trees, naturally I had to sneak into the abandoned building and see what relics I could find."
"Can you read any of this?"
"No, but it's got to be magical. It's written in, like, Elvish, right? And there were pictures of people doing wicked sexy rituals. That's always a sure sign of evil. And that one book contained parts of the Overspell so naturally I had to write that down."
"What's this Overspell? How do you know about it?"
"You are testing me, My Lord," Rebecca grinned. "Fragments of the Overspell are passed around in witchy circles. We all know the first few lines, but nobody has ever seen the whole thing. The one who finds it and can tame its power would be able to destroy the world and remake it to her liking!"
"Do you still have the books you copied this material from?" I asked, feeling nervous at the thought of several volumes of elvish lore floating around loose in the lowfolk world.
"Oh no, My Lord. Much too dangerous to get caught with them in my possession, plus they would have been too bulky to carry. The one with the Overspell was badly waterlogged and I copied the only parts that were legible. The other ones didn't fare much better. They're probably all ruined by now, unless somebody else found them."
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Comments
Simone Spinozzi
mostly i am surprised she can copy stuff in an al[habeth she does not know <b><i><u>and</u></i></b> through the lorem ipsum. That is... • the stuff she copied maintains the encryption • and is legible if you have access to that knowledge • even though all she probably read was "lorem ipsum" over and over • so the lorem ipsum either does not work on mortals... which was disproven in this very thing... • ...or the mortals when copying lorem ipsum are (somehow) copying the correct stuff even though they can only read "lorem ipsum". So Rebecca was "writing" (instinctively) the correct letters through the "lorem ipsum". Which basically means the "Lorem Ipsum" is "hackable" at an instinctive level, or that "lorem ipsum" is something that happens "outside" of the reading-writing process and inside your short or long term memory. It would be interesting to have robots or something try and read that.
She can't read it though. She just copied it down because it looked magical. Some of it is incomprehensible because it's in Elvish, and some of it is hidden by the 'lorem ipsum' encryption.
Walter Reimer
Hmm, he's been able to apport objects. Perhaps he can apport the books, and use a few handy cantrips to dry them out so he can read them?
Simone Spinozzi
Ooooh! comparing who can see who and taking notes and ... rebecca can read stuff even other elves cannot. Interesting. That's actually a well done research method. Neat!
