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Save Point: Not So High Society

There was some debate initially over whether they should in fact create an entire reproduction of the rooms and use it to host the collection and other items, but since the whole White Pyramid is now a museum of antiquities, it seemed a shame not to keep everything in situ. Some of the items, specifically the ones that will be part of the interactive exhibition, have been replaced by perfect copies and the originals put in storage, but most everything else has been cleaned and put under glass to leave the rooms as near to original as possible.

Unsurprisingly, Windfugue turns out to be the land-owner for those parts of the point out beyond the pyramid proper. They have been 'in his family' since forever and he is able to provide all sorts of original documents and deeds proving it, as well as a family tree consisting of all the 'ancestors' who were also him, back to the discovery of immortality, which saves them from arranging a visit with Phrisk to get him a newer set of online identification.

To prevent intrusion onto the parts of the cave system that might uncover his lair and identity, Windfugue invokes an ancient custom and declares that the parts of the cave beyond the collapse area where Keselt fell through are his ancient family's House of Eternity, a old variation on a tomb normally found in more sun-baked lands, in which a structure accurately duplicating the layout of a multi-storied home was hewn out of the rock in the side of a remote valley or marine headland, then to become the 'dry dwelling place' of the families dead. The deceased were positioned inside as they would have wanted to be remembered in life, sitting at the table, looking out through windows that were paintings of the scene outside in the kitchen, lying in bed next to their partner or lover who had also passed over. The living would 'visit their house' occasionally, bringing their ancestors ceremonial foods, lighting candles and lamps, commemorating the past. Sometimes the 'house' would be expanded with extra rooms if it got too crowded.

Sethkill gets the sense that Windfugue has had this hand ready to play for some time, and that if they had tried to get into his lair from the outside rather than from within, they would have found caution-warning signs about rockfalls and unstable tunnels and private properties. Possibly there are even some old friends from the last few times he was awake playing the part of the 'ancestors' after they had nowhere else to go for their eternal rest.

After all, there must have been other explorers who went looking for the lost rooms supposedly located under the pyramid, and not all of them would have been deterred from looking for ways in through the headland, just because it was a private burial site on private property belonging to an ancient landed family. Windfugue probably relies on people tripping over him every century or three to wake him up and keep him current, using old dusty treasure and lost knowledge to rent a house or something, catch up with recent events and renew his wealth, then goes back to sleep as and when he gets bored with each new era he's in.

The limited size of the light-shaft access, hiding the way down in plain sight, seemed like a slight problem initially, but refitting it with a modern lift using the most transparent components and slender nano-filiaments, as previously pioneered at the Stair of Waters, made it more exclusive. If the light-shaft hadn't been a 'closed structure', at least apparently, the staff would have long ago lobbied for a good clean and dust, so they got their wish and everything left the brighter for it. An occasional tracery of shadow as a maximum of three or four sethura descended swiftly by way of high-speed lift, bodies pressed close, wasn't really too much to pay.

Inside the underground tunnels, slender braced cross-struts have been installed to ensure that the whole structure is safely supported, and then more glass put down just inside the tunnel walls and floors to prevent wear and tear. Illuminated arrows on the glass show which way to various parts of the complex, such as the sleeping and communal dining rooms, and the alchemists lab.

Before he even reaches the main room and galleries, he encounters sethura and sethuresses who are loitering in the corridors, enjoying wine and making conversation. This 'new exhibit' is quite the place to be seen at, especially on the opening night. Aren't there concerns about ventilation? Why no, the ancient shutter system in the communal dining rooms lets in plenty of air, at least for the limited number of visitors the lift permits, and could always be used as an emergency exit. So there's nothing to worry about, it's perfectly safe.

Sethkill, who has been following the whole thing in more detail, could tell these high society guys a thing or two. There's a whole side-corridor near the lift fitted out as a medical area with stores of air, rebreathers, and emergency supplies in case anything should happen. Extensible ladders in compact boxes are stashed about the place, and the ventilation is fully monitored and maintained through the same pipes that provide electricity and water to the ancient structure. It took a lot to make this site compliant with health and safety regulations, especially with the entrance and exit as a potential choke point. Whilst being 'insistent' on maintaining all his families legal rights and privileges in regard to their honored ancestors, and tracking sealed perimeter tape across various doors and entrances, Windfugue has nonetheless made 'generous concessions' in allowing pipes and cables to be run across 'his lands' and laying out emergency routes, defined by sealed opaque accordion tunnels, that run around his lair and out onto the headland. He seems to be having fun playing the part of some ancient and exclusively rarefied nobility.

~*~

Keselt has shown up wearing a cloak made of leaf skeletons and dangly gold earrings, her body dusted lightly with mineral makeup to emphasize her toning and hard work exposed by the outfit, as is the way of things at these high society events. He passes her a glass of the house wine as they get started.

She drinks with tongue wrapped around the bowl of the fluted glass from the side, a surprisingly sexy gesture in this context. He guesses that's way glasses of that sort always seem to feature at these occasions, sexuality being always a hidden but prevalent undertone in such things.

Her scanty dress barely covers anything, and the cloak barely covers that. The leaf skeletons are the real deal, sewn dexterously together, and so he has to be careful not to crush them as he holds her. One of her design friends has put it together and gotten automatic cachet by so doing, solving silva leaves in mild acid and hand-matching them, rather than just taking the easy out of using the well-known silva genome to just grow the whole cloak in one piece.

It has a desirable transience.

On the wall there's an early poster from the Age of the Distributed Rule, artworks from which are known for sporting an engraved art-deco look, with a strictly limited palette of carefully selected bright colors under black lines. It has that 'raciness to the standards of an era for which this was officially acceptable' thing going, and shows a sethuress doing a perfect vertical leg-split against the orange and golden skyline of a sandstone marketplace, one foot all the way above her head.

She's wearing light-casual noble finery, the very minimal but well-made sort of dress and crotch-cloth one would wear at some elite society event of the sort to which no outsiders are invited. The elaborate text, a decorative exercise in high sethurani that now requires slight translation, boldly states "Vote for our beloved Princess! She has the widest spread of support and promises the best rewards for every member of society!"

It must have been printed on heavy acid-free paper to survive all this time, and is probably worth a small fortune. Adding to the interest and the value is the way it tells its own story, of discredited aristocrats trying to regain power by picking their most attractive representative as a figurehead, and then relentlessly pushing the official bounds of the appropriate to make their case.

She got voted in, by the male members of the working class. Then she seized the reins of power back from the formerly upper class who were trying to use her as a puppet, and turned out to be a damn good ruler, getting voted back in again and again some record number of times.

This poster is a collectors dream, and popular on the weave, but he's never seen a real one.

"Admiring the artwork?" nudges Aivran, appearing with a refilled glass for him. "I must say that it really was a good idea, asking me to provide some of my collection for the display. These need to get out and be seen more, not just hang on a sliding shelf in the dark."

"Hey, Aivran, you made it!" exclaims Keselt. The two of them engage in an elaborate not-quite-touching ritual greeting gesture popular among sethuresses. "I wasn't sure you'd come."

"They have sizzle-steaks over there with the most wonderful flavor to them!" Aivran rhapsodizes. "Of course I came, this is the big event of the week. Somehow everyone who's anyone seems to've got themselves invited, so it's quite a coup to be in with the ones who actually made the discovery. And of course it's brilliant promotion for the Citadel Project, ancient cultures meet the search for new ones, all that sort of stuff. I'm not surprised they were willing to cut you loose long enough to help arrange some of this, it implies they made the right choice by picking you to begin with."

"You make them sound so very self-interested," points out Sethkill dryly. "It can't launch until it's ready to launch, and there's only so much skills training you can do. At the moment we're mostly doing all sorts of assembly and testing - they can afford to spare us for a while."

The reconstructed and then duplicated drinks machine, one of several copies, trundles past and overdressed sethura are forced to step gracefully out of its way, with bright sounds of mirth. It's a hit with the crowd as it follows its random-walk about the room until the spring at last devolves, a process slightly assisted by modern materials technology to allow it to keep going far beyond the original range. Glasses rattle as it proceeds at a steady pace, acceleration checked by a similar sort of clicking escapement to something that might be seen in a clock or mechanical watch.

There's a simple tuning lever on one side that allows adjustment for the weight of the drinks atop the little pull-cart, and when it runs down the wait-staff are on hand to restock and discreetly give it a little boost with a hand-held power tool, to wind it up again. A household drill works nicely as a power supply, if fitted with a sort of custom bit to match the main-spring key.

As a joky sort of contrast, one of their not so much wealthy or powerful as influential guests has bought the latest in sophisticated fad toys, a smoke-hound of moderate artificial intelligence just about as clever as a real animal. The moving parts are stock components and the exterior is a self-repairing skin like leather with fine-growing fur that resembles the real deal and never falls out, but the unnecessary innards have been swapped out for a small engine that incidentally powers a series of glass flasks, vessels and tubes, revealed by selective cutaways in the hide like a sethuress doing her best to show some skin. Vividly dyed vapours move and bubble through the tubes, to be purified as they go, and where a real skin-hound would have a tail, there's a long flexible braided tube that is a tactile joy, ending in a flared transparent bulb with a mouthpiece.

The hound wanders about, obtaining some arcane digitally-mediated satisfaction by locating any and all persons who want to partake of the adjustably flavoured steams that waft gently from its tail, like an ambulatory kettle. When it crosses the path of the drinks trolley it goes all stalky-legs and stretches up high, stepping over it meticulously as though it was a threat.

~*~

A whole array of narrow improvised bridges and platforms have been set up in various places to allow the audience and the drinks carrier to perambulate past the items and multiple levels of the alchemists laboratory, and view the costly artworks donated for the evening, mostly in the style of the Fire Window school, which although not really contemporaneous with the surroundings still add gracefully to the feel. The paintings were supposed to be part of another party that didn't get to happen, on the same night, but they fit in well.

Some of the pathways are narrow and span up out high, with a shallow lip on either side, and are clearly not intended for walking on, but to send the drinks carrier, and now the smoke hound, out on unexpected trajectories like a primitive mechanical pinball machine, should it hit the curving intakes on the ramps. Some of the more early-arrived partygoers are placing bets on exactly how long it will take to hit a given ramp, or taking shots when it does so, the condition of course being that none of the participants in the game try to directly affect the outcome.

An entirely random element is added to the whole thing by whether sethura blocking their paths choose to stand aside or not. It's all turned into a bit of a spectator sport, with the waitresses and waiters in their jackets and leggings acting as the referees, restarting play when interrupted by an unexpected wind-down or a tilt that takes the wheels of the floor.

The high-society sethuresses are all wearing elaborately understated dresses similar to Keselts, a trend that seems to have been bought about by collective consensus due to the historical theme of the event. Some are technically accurate, with authentic materials if far more perfect and complex than their actual exemplars, but many are aggressively avant-garde and adhere only to the style of the eras they represent, like something out of a weave-game where true anachronism is perfectly allowable provided it looks good. The sethura accompanying are far more conservatively dressed, in many cases hard to easily distinguish from the costumed wait-staff.

"I just don't like the idea of eating real meat," frets some upper-class sethuress to her companion as they pass, obviously in the grips of some excessively effete rarefied dietary fad."I worry about how I might react."

"That could easily be misconstrued," whispers Sethkill, to Keselts great amusement. She struggles to avoid making too much noise or any gestures that might give it away.

"..I mean, I know the vat-grown stuff isn't really quite the same as the real deal, but having to hunt something down and actually kill it? Well, not that I'd be doing the hunting, but still, is that sort of thing really necessary in the modern...."

Her contrived moral agonizing fades away behind them as they pass.

"She should try it, she might like it," snickers Keselt just as soon as they're out of audible range.

"Well, at least we know she won't be on any Citadel missions."

"These people may be running things but some of them are really crazy."

"What, you only just noticed?"

The smoke hound abruptly explodes.