09:55 <Crion> Until just before -- or, if you prefer, just after -- midnight, when Peter Montgomery duels the Thin White Duke for the crown minted to him by the Hold of Orlando, the motley has all the time they please. The city itself remains in its dozing, dazed, placidly idyllic state (useful for those of you who might want for Glamour), and you have an afternoon, evening, and night to both assemble the 09:55 <Crion> physical work that is your own motley crown, and figure out how to empower it. 10:02 <banana> Melanie would like to stir these people from their brand-addled slumber. Imagine if they could join us in actually solving their problems - now that would flavour the glamour. But it’s not fair to rouse them against threats they can’t affect and show them a world of terror and confusion that should exist only in their dreams. 10:02 <banana> Wasn’t fair to us, either. 10:09 <dammitwho> So we have to... swear oaths? To a crown, or on a crown? Maggie's no wyrdologist. 10:09 <Crion> That was the Duke's advice and path forward. As Gentry pretending to be gentry, perhaps he's biased. 10:10 <VoxPVoxD> After the meeting with the Duke, spending an hour and change chilling out among the political zombies of Orlando is honestly pretty nice, The Bob Marley themed restaurant is open, so he got a couple of beef patties and coco bread; he just sits and people-watches while he eats. They're not having a great time, but they're not having a bad one, either. That's appealing. 10:14 <banana> Once the motley have gathered again to plan the process... what is the process? ”I’m a little lost,” Melanie admits. ”How exactly we do this.. it’s a faery’s plan. Creating a magic crown makes sense to them.” 10:14 <banana> “They probably would have trouble not creating cursed jewellery.” 10:14 <trenchfoot> Nels, cautiously: "Very... carefully?" 10:16 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "It's oath magic. If you lay enough of them in over an object, the Wyrd suffuses it. 10:18 <VoxPVoxD> "The resulting token is shaped by the nature of the oaths sworn, and connected indelibly to the people who swore them." 10:22 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Like, I dunno, if the Round Table was real, all the oaths sworn on it would've made it a beacon to the Wyrd." 10:22 <VoxPVoxD> "Does that make sense? I don't know if that makes sense." 10:23 <banana> Melanie: ”I guess. Bounded contagion is how I think of this stuff, and it fits into that model.” 10:23 <trenchfoot> Nels: "Um, kinda, yeah." 10:23 <Crion> That's actually a common explanation for the Arthurian Round Table, in changeling circles. 10:23 <Crion> Neither here nor there, however. 10:23 <banana> “Faerie touches things, they become fae.. but it doesn’t spread, not unless they’re strong enough and alive enough. So you get a boundary around everything, hedges within hedges.” 10:24 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Right. Because a promise protects one promisor from another. It's the door without a knob. It's the lock without a key." 10:24 <VoxPVoxD> "The one uncrossable boundary." 10:24 <banana> Melanie: ”But what have we got to promise about rulership and protagonism?” 10:26 <trenchfoot> As far as protagonism, we uh. Kinda have that one in the bag. 10:26 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "What binds a queen to her subjects? What binds a sailor to their captain? Ethics, dependency, a common vision of some future goal..." 10:27 <VoxPVoxD> "I won't say 'hero', cause, what's a hero? But, you know, being the men and women for our time and place." 10:28 <VoxPVoxD> "It means something. You can feel the meaning in that. An oath is an attempt to articulate that meaning." 10:30 <banana> “So we’d be crowning Peter Montgomery... as some sort of champion, of ours? For him to achieve our common goals, in a tightly-bound way?” 10:30 <banana> Melanie: ”The only thing I like about this is the chance that he has to do all the work and take all the blame.” 10:31 <Crion> To the extent that changeling scholarship is an extant field, the concept of protagonism -- being the main character of reality -- has a non-insignifcant presence in its annals. Most changelings, after all, have been to a reality where there was a main character at least...even if it wasn't them. 10:31 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Well... if you've got misgivings or other ideas, this is the time to lay 'em out, before we've started doing a bunch of magic." 10:31 <trenchfoot> Nels, quietly: "I'd like someone else to take all the blame." 10:31 <dammitwho> Musing: "But we should think about this thing past that, too. I mean, this crown's gonna still be a wyrd-empowered whatsit when all this business is over and done with, right?" 10:32 <dammitwho> "I mean, in terms of what kind of mojo we put in there. Somebody's gonna wear it." 10:32 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Proooobably. We don't actually know what the costs of the ritual are; maybe the token gets consumed. But you're right, we want to make sure whatever we make is something we want out there in the world, especially since it'll be very easy to link back to us, magically speaking." 10:33 <VoxPVoxD> "So a crown of justified subjugation might not be it. I say this as one chief to another." 10:33 <banana> Melanie: ”I also don’t like the idea that the Wherehouse Motley’s Circle of Sit Down and Shut Up goes on sale at Notgnixel.” 10:33 <banana> *circlet 10:34 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Maybe think about it from the other end. Let's say you DID find the Wherehouse Motley's Crown at Notgnixel. What affixes should it have? What builds does it enable? At what cost?" 10:35 <Crion> This also likely informs what the crown should look like; what it should be made out of. There are just so many crowns of thorns out there. 10:35 <Crion> But hey, on a budget and a time limit... 10:35 <banana> “I’m sorry about being unconstructive. I guess... you want it to keep you from the gaze of the Mouse. So it’s like that meme that people post on sponsored tweets, with the crab.” 10:36 <trenchfoot> Nels adds 'what is a meme' to her list of things to look up. 10:36 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart nods. "Silence, brand." 10:37 <banana> Melanie laughs, happy for a moment. 10:38 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "If we want that kind of effect, then we would want to lay in oaths to each other to like, not get taken in by big promises, by distractions, by the urge to consume or escape... stuff like that." 10:40 <Crion> An additional bit of clarification on stuff you've noticed: both the Duke and Peter seem to be of the belief that at some point in his quest, Peter will have to use the crown and the skull either at the same time or in ritual sequence. Peter wearing the crown the entire time was, to be polite, a preferred affectation of the Duke's. 10:40 <banana> Melanie: ”Crownthief’s Payment.” 10:40 <banana> “Or Wage, or Price, or Salary.” 10:41 <banana> “That’s what they’d call it in your game, if it was a purple.” 10:42 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Right. Maybe it'd steal charges on hit but also have Conduit, or something. The question we have is, what is the payment, or wage, or price, or salary? We're the ones paying or demanding it." 10:43 <VoxPVoxD> "We set the buyout, and see who whispers back." 10:47 <dammitwho> "Dramatic, uh, irony or whatever means that if this crown lives past this moment it'll probably end up getting used by a seasonal monarch, right?" 10:48 <Crion> Good news, maybe, for Maggie is that she knows that one good blow with her wrench to the crown will destroy it forever. That's how cold iron and tokens work. 10:48 <Crion> So there is a bailout option. 10:48 <Crion> Tony shooting it would also work, but presumably be much messier. 10:48 <VoxPVoxD> Maggie's also more likely to wait until Peter takes it off. 10:52 <dammitwho> Well, that wasn't really her idea. It was just pointing out that their oaths would probably influence the character of the Freehold of whatever godforsaken panhandle town their crown ends up in." 10:52 <dammitwho> -" 10:53 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Where it goes or what it does is out of our hands, if we let go of the token, but a Freehold Crown is sworn to the seasons, not to us. The thing Peter wants to do just needs a sufficiently Wyrd-touched crown, I don't think it needs to be a seasonal crown specifically. It's just, by its nature, any seasonal crown would count." 10:54 <VoxPVoxD> "But it won't just roll up Tampa like a Katamari. There are a million stories in the Naked City; ours is only one of them." 10:58 <Crion> You can actually make a further extrapolation from here: Peter didn't steal the Crown of Baltimore because he needed a freehold crown qua freehold crown, but because he didn't think he could get the juice to, say, do what you're doing right now. Given his stated goals, perhaps understandable. 10:59 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "So... what do you guys think?" 11:00 <dammitwho> Maggie: "Sure, I'll give 'er a shot." 11:01 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Also, for the record, the Wherehouse motley's crown would be called the Hairhouse." 11:03 <Crion> The first thing to do, then, logically, is find or fashion a physical crown. 11:04 <trenchfoot> Jester cap work? 11:05 <VoxPVoxD> Not sure that's the vibe we want to project. 11:05 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "What do you guys think about, like, shape, materials, whatever?" 11:06 <banana> Melanie: ”Burger king crepe-paper prize?” 11:06 <banana> *King 11:06 <dammitwho> "Are we sure that there isn't an actual Burger King out there somewhere?" 11:07 <trenchfoot> Nels: "I don't know what that is and I don't want to find out." 11:07 <banana> “Come on, they must have had Burger King in the 1800s.” 11:08 <trenchfoot> Nels: "They did not." 11:08 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Burghers are actually a separate social class." 11:08 <banana> Melanie: ”Okay well, for once, I promise you do want to find out.” 11:08 <banana> Nels might not like it, but she should know. 11:10 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Tokens are more durable than regular things, but a token made of paper is probably not ideal from a practical perspective..." 11:12 <VoxPVoxD> "Also, if we actually want to convince Peter to take it, it should probably not have a Kick Me sign on it." 11:12 <VoxPVoxD> "He seems perfectly content to die a loser, but he won't be caught dead taking an L." 11:13 <Crion> Also, in a very real sense, it's not his crown. 11:14 <Crion> Or, that is, it's his crown to the extent you decide to make him swear upon it. 11:14 <VoxPVoxD> Ideally we would swear all but one of the required oaths and then get him in the last one. 11:15 <Crion> Certainly possible! 11:20 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Of course the best way to keep the crown from getting into anyone else's hands is to keep it ourselves, so we might want to make something that we, like, want." 11:22 <banana> Melanie: “Maybe we could square off this circle a bit by focusing the oaths on binding the wearer to and empowering... us, specifically. These five people by name, not whoever-swears-or-wears.” 11:22 <VoxPVoxD> "The Crown of Doing What We, Specifically, Say?" 11:22 <banana> “If by definition it can only be used to help or serve us, we don’t have to worry too much about its future.” 11:23 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Iiiii'm not sure about that." 11:23 <VoxPVoxD> "That's what Mickey Mouse thought when he got all those brooms to do his chores for him." 11:23 <banana> Hmm. We definitely do not want an accidental army. 11:25 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "We also need it to be something Peter might actually agree to, otherwise we have to fight him anyway and we have to fight him after bleeding a bunch of Glamour into some garbage." 11:28 <banana> Melanie: ”I think the pitch to Peter is, this will help you get what you want. And we don’t mind it actually being good for that. But we do need to... I don’t know if ‘control’ him is the right word... we need to get what we want, the skull, the place he abandoned Gemma... some way to avoid the nukes.” 11:29 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Yeah, and working in our favor is that none of the things we want actually contradict the things he wants, except insofar as what we want is to hurt or humiliate him." 11:29 <banana> Melanie puts her elbows down in the table and buries her head in her arms. ”That’s optional.” 11:30 <banana> “It’s not the point.” 11:30 <VoxPVoxD> "Which, you know, we could justify doing, but doing insanely stupid, selfish stuff just because we have backstory justification is why we had to follow his dumb ass down here in the first place." 11:30 <VoxPVoxD> "We're better than that." 11:30 <VoxPVoxD> "We can afford to be." 11:32 <dammitwho> Maggie, mildly: "I don't much like the idea of a crown that binds people to obey or empower us even if we're giving it to that big dummy. Feels wrong." 11:33 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "What other kind of stuff do you not want on there?" 11:34 <banana> Muffledanie: ”Yeah, I guess... that was a Keeper’s plan, after all. Power that is also a leash, used only in service.” 11:39 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart looks between the other people in the motley as the silence builds between them. 11:40 <dammitwho> Maggie gently pats Melanie's shoulder, as comfortingly as she might. 11:41 <dammitwho> Maggie: "I dunno, not a whole lot that we would actually consider doing. You know, don't squash real emotion and feeling down into some grey mass-produced garbage, don't go nuts and try to kill everyone..." 11:43 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "There's two layers here. One is the nature of the oaths we swear, and one is the token that results. It's not quite 1:1, right? The Wyrd is a mirror, it's a dream. A distortion of some real underlying thing." 11:44 <VoxPVoxD> "So if we promise to each other not to squash our feelings down, not to render ourselves into objects for consumption, it might result in a token that like... makes you immune to propaganda, or something." 11:45 <dammitwho> "Neat!" 11:46 <banana> Melanie: ”We could also promise not to betray entire freeholds in a quest for love’s redemption of one freaking woman.” 11:48 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "To hold the collective good over our individual desires, you mean." 11:48 <banana> “No, that’s a bit over-broad!” 11:48 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "I worry that swearing an oath to not be the idiot Peter Montgomery, who we hate and who smells bad, is maybe a bit under-broad." 11:48 <banana> “You’ve swung to the other end of the spectrum. It’s true that we shouldn’t tailor these things to If You Are Named Peter, You Promise Not To-, et cetera, but that kind of oath could see us self-exiling to Syria.” 11:49 <VoxPVoxD> "The real catch of breadth is that it could simply not bind us to anything, since the broader it is the more we can pick at and redefine the meaning of words like 'collective good'." 11:51 <VoxPVoxD> "And obviously an oath you can interpret is called a 'rationalization'." 11:52 <banana> Melanie: ”So how about this one: a promise that love is not everything, and not worth any arbitrary cost.” 11:53 <banana> “It feels fairytale alright.” 11:53 <VoxPVoxD> "That's an assertion, how do we make it into a promise?" 11:55 <banana> Melanie: ”I think we need a rough set of themes before we focus too hard on refining each one. We’re at like.. two out of seven? And we haven’t got that long.” 11:56 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Good thinking." 12:01 <banana> Melanie taps her fingers on the table, click, click, click. “Avoid distraction and the drive to consume. See reality, don’t escape from it. Don’t become a consumed object or an extruded shape. Express messy feelings, not sanitised averages. Acknowledge the price of love.” 12:01 <banana> “This sounds really hard to live up to.” 12:02 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "We can dial in the difficulty when we're composing the oaths themselves, they don't need to embody these themes entirely." 12:04 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "The underlying theme is to avoid letting yourself feel atomized or alienated, it sounds like. Don't separate yourself from or annihilate yourself in others. Don't flee suffering and don't make a virtue of suffering alone." 12:05 <dammitwho> Maggie: "I'd say it sounds like you want something like 'Take chances! Make mistakes! *Get messy*.' but damn if that isn't what got us all down here in the first place." 12:06 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "To me that sounds like escapism. Like you can't avoid risk, but chasing it is just another kind of alienation. It sees you crash yourself on indifferent rocks. It sees you walk into the dark alone." 12:08 <banana> Melanie: ”I wasn’t thinking of risk-taking as a key theme.. more like being clear-eyed about action and inaction.” 12:09 <VoxPVoxD> "What we're talking about is connectedness without blinders, safety without isolation, candor without impulsiveness." 12:10 <VoxPVoxD> "Just... not being afraid of people, basically." 12:11 <banana> “Like I said, a tough ask for anyone.” 12:11 <VoxPVoxD> "If it was easy we wouldn't need to swear on it, right?" 12:11 <VoxPVoxD> "Most people don't need to swear oaths to do the stuff that feels good and right and easy." 12:12 <VoxPVoxD> "But I think it is a needle we can thread, in principle." 12:12 <VoxPVoxD> "Like we can compose a thing here that doesn't trap us in logical contradictions. Just, the messy weight of being connected to people." 12:12 <VoxPVoxD> "You know we never swore motley oaths." 12:12 <VoxPVoxD> "A lot of motleys start with promises." 12:16 <Crion> In some ways that's startling; in some ways it's not. A lot of motleys, you'll learn if you asked (and probably were informed by older members of the Baltimore Freehold) have easing-in periods where they're teams that work and sometimes live together, but aren't ready to take the plunge of sealing themselves to each other with the power of the Wyrd. And while it seems like longer, you've all 12:16 <Crion> only been doing this for what, eight months? 12:17 <Crion> This would be quite the dramatic moment to make it official, but hardly one beyond understanding. 12:19 <VoxPVoxD> Lauren mentioned that to Stewart on one of their first pre-date hangouts. The stuff about how unusual it was that we just naturally got along. 12:22 <VoxPVoxD> It didn't seem weird to Stewart at the time, but he's met a lot more changelings since then, and he gets it now. 12:32 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "So, collective oaths make the most sense, right?" 12:32 <VoxPVoxD> "The alternative is a web of personal oaths that criss-cross each other and sort of aggregate to a societal oath, which sounds like libertarianism." 12:32 <dammitwho> Maggie: "A motley oath... I like that idea!" 12:34 <banana> Melanie: ”What are the numbers on that? Five combination two... twenty? No, that’s permutations...” 12:36 <banana> “If each pair of us swore a personal oath, that would be ten. But it might start to feel obligatory.” 12:36 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart looks from Melanie to Maggie to the silent Nels and Tony. He spends a minute looking in a nearby garbage can and then reaches in and comes up with a spiral notebook, and a pen run through the binding, like someone bought a notepad in the gift shop and then threw it away. 12:36 <VoxPVoxD> "Oh hey! What luck." 12:38 <VoxPVoxD> The first page has a Lorem ipsum on it in loopy teen girl handwriting; he just rips the page out. "So let's draft some oaths, right?" 12:38 <dammitwho> Maggie: "I'm not sure swearing an oath between each pair of us makes sense. You start swearing oaths just to fill out boxes on a chart, like that dice game Stewart told me about." She nods toward him. "Landscapers." 12:42 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart brushes by that, and writes WHEREHOUSE OATH at the top of the first fresh page, and THEME: DON'T BE AFRAID OF PEOPLE underneath it. Then he makes a careful bullet point. "We could do something like, 'I promise not to sell out'." 12:42 <VoxPVoxD> "As a starter." 12:43 <dammitwho> Maggie: "That's a good'n. I was noodling on something like 'pray for the dead, fight like hell for the living', but I'm not sure how to put that in oath language." 12:43 <VoxPVoxD> "I promise to fight together; I promise to grieve together." 12:43 <VoxPVoxD> "It's two promises." 12:45 <dammitwho> "Oh, I really like that." 12:47 <banana> Melanie: ”It sounds like a pun, but it’s not.” 12:50 <VoxPVoxD> "These should be 'we's, but you get it. Anyway, also, stuff like, 'we promise not to let each other get taken advantage of', 'we promise not to suffer alone', 'we promise not to act blindly out of love'..." 12:51 <VoxPVoxD> "We could get really specific, like, we promise to eat dinner together at least once a week." 12:51 <banana> Melanie: “I’m not sure that has a lot of mystic power. We could promise ‘to share food and prevent hunger’.” 12:52 <banana> “Maybe I’m thinking about these things wrong though.” 12:52 <VoxPVoxD> "It has the meaning we give to it, basically. A family dinner can have a lot of emotional weight, depending on the family. But something more like, we promise to share what we have and hold it in common together, hits the same vibe more holistically." 12:53 <VoxPVoxD> He's jumping around to different lines; someone who was watching would get the impression there was some pre-existing structure he was filling in. 12:54 <VoxPVoxD> "We promise not to bind, coerce, or exploit anyone?" 12:54 <VoxPVoxD> "Do we promise that?" 12:55 <dammitwho> Maggie: "Ehh, that would pretty much cut us off from swearing any other oaths where we weren't clearly on the losing side, though?" 12:55 <dammitwho> "I like the 'share what we have and hold it in common together' one." 12:55 <VoxPVoxD> "We promise not to bind the helpless, coerce the weak, or exploit the needy?" 12:56 <VoxPVoxD> "We could frame it positively too, but that's more pressure. A commitment to help the helpless, liberate the weak, and give to the needy." 12:57 <VoxPVoxD> "We promise not to be bullies, not to kick people when they're down... that's the vibe I want." 12:58 <dammitwho> Maggie nods vigorously. 13:02 <banana> Melanie: ”Then let’s use those words?” 13:02 <VoxPVoxD> He hands the notebook to Maggie and Melanie. "This is a first draft." 13:04 <banana> Melanie: ”...Good call on that last one.” 13:04 <banana> She’s looking at the third entry under ‘Oaths of the Heart’ - ‘We promise not to suffer alone’. 13:05 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "...yeah." 13:05 <VoxPVoxD> "Probably the single hardest one?" 13:07 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "We'll have to seal this with a group hug, I think." 13:08 <dammitwho> "GOOD" 13:10 <VoxPVoxD> There's sort of a sliding scale of group oath consecration where the lower end is like, photo op handshakes, and the upper end is — did you ever read It? No? Good, don't worry about it.