Chronicles of Gaia (RP)

For Rowan and Laura, the past month had been a time of catch up and experimentation. Laura mainly focussed on training, wanting to recapture some of her old skills now that she finally found out how Crysts worked. At first these were solo endeavors, bounty hunting low-level crooks in the city using just her stealth abilities was a common outing. As the days turned into weeks however, Laura found herself doing more and more group jobs, usually at the urging of Aislin. Khalua turned out to be a frequent partner, as he was training up his own stealth and ambush abilities, and it surprised the siren when she realized she enjoyed having the company. It made her feel better about being forced to re-learn her skills when she was doing it alongside others. Rowan could almost always be found in high spirits, so glad he was to be back with the group and have some company other than Laura to talk to. he bounced between various low-stress jobs and spent a lot of time hanging out with other group members to see what they got up to, and to see if he could find any inspiration for ways to apply his new Cryst abilities. One day he might follow Kudret to the Forges, another he might try his luck with one of Laura bounty-hunting jobs. Those mostly went poorly, as it turned out his angelic wings were very conspicuous in the city slums. He also spent a lot of time talking with Lina, eager to make friends with the only other person in the group with wings. The place Rowan spent the most time however was in the library, reading books alongside Aislin. Sometimes they'd just sit and read, pouring over fascinating descriptions of crafting materials, discovering interesting combinations of magical elements and their effects. Some days they chatted easily, discussing little things and the various day to day happenings in the group. But some days talking was hard. Bringing up the things that had happened between them before and at the tower, it could make the air in the library unbearably awkward. Still, he had tried his best to apologize for his mistakes, for pushing his problems onto her unfairly. The angel wasn't entirely positive the air had been cleared between them even after a month had passed, but he did have growing confidence that they would still remain good friends.

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"This is incredible!" Rowan gushed at the mansion as they were all lead inside. Laura looked less impressed than the angel, but still excited. "It's not half bad." She said approvingly, "Finally no more cheap inns." Beyond the entrance hall, which was not too large and had stairs leading from either side to the 2nd floor, was a large circular main hall. A long balcony supported by smooth wooden collumns ran all along the edge of the hall, and many doors could be seen along the walls of both stories. the center region of the hall was lowered just slightly, so one had to take a step down as they came out from below the balcony. In the very center of the room was a grand stone fire pit, large enough to light up the whole hall and fill it with warmth, but not so large that you could not see a person sitting across it from you. The open space between the balcony and the fire pit was filled with comfortable chairs and nice tables, no doubt for a mixture of eating and relaxing. There was also a tree, modestly decorated, but standing with purpose on the opposite side of the fire pit from the entrance. While Laura got comfy in one of the shairs, Rowan walked over to Lina and got a closer look at the tree. "Curious. It reminds of the trees from the star festivals back home, but this seems different. What is it for?" The angel asked Lina.

"I have no idea, and I've seen... probably more than most of you when it comes to things both living and dead, an example would be, well just come in and see for yourself." back into the room she went, picking up a doll of some strange black fox, looking at it with a furrowed brow, no animal she knew was bipedal in this manner, the head fur going back into a ponytail was also odd, but to Celere just everything about this was just strange and not quite correct, there were other dolls or figurines on this desk, another that she glanced at was some weird thing, black and red with what she could only describe as some kind of golden external ribcage, hell, the only normal thing here at a stretch was the deer with too many antlers in a slew of colours, "These rooms change to reflect what the person who owns it most needs to relax or just where they're from to help with homesickness or the like, these... can't be normal surely." Lina had to think for a moment at Rowan's question, "I'm... unsure, where I'm from theres a yearly celebration near the end of winter, some gives thanks to their deity, some use it to spend time with friends and family, there are a multitude of reasons for it but it's fairly global, the name of it has been lost to the ravages of time but we still do it, in my house we used to give people things, small since we travelled alot and if we were taking it with us after then it needed to be something that wouldn't drag us down." her face scrunched in thought again for a moment, "I have a feeling one of the humans would know more about what it's called, but for the most time, it's just a time to be yourself, to relax and let the past year go, celebrations or festivals are something that happens when a lot of people happen to be around in the same area."

Aislin stopped short upon entering the room, gaze going straight to the dolls in question. She recognized them immediately, of course. How could she not; that world had been part of her knowledge since childhood. "I recognize them, Celere," she spoke aloud then, "though I'm not sure how much is needed to be known? I, I mean!" Aislin gave a sharp shake of her head, as if forcing a thought away, "Did you want me to tell you about the world in general or just tell you the names of the dolls?" She then caught on to another portion of Celere's statements. "Wait, the rooms change to reflect us? That's... gonna be really interesting to see."

Celere put the doll back where it had spawned in, pulling a chair over and sitting down before gesturing for Aislin to do the same, "About the world these things are from would be good, while this isn't my first rodeo raising a kid, this is completely out of my scope of knowledge." her head turned towards the sleeping child again before going back to Aislin, "Too young for any of this, wonder if I can get the techies around here to build something playing god... anyway, yeah, whenever you're ready to give me information on the world these things exist in, don't tell me names of them though, that'll be for her to tell when she can speak more than three word sentences."

Aislin had to mentally rehearse what she would say for this one. Not only was she drawing on almost two decades worth of a single franchise, but also countless hours playing and learning about this world. She needed to be careful to not overwhelm her with too much info at once... "Ok, so... You are correct when you say weird animals. These creatures, normally known as Pokemon, inhabit that world as the animals there. Most are fairly intelligent and can understand humans perfectly, but they cannot talk to us themselves. Humans are the dominant species of the planet and can tame these Pokemon through special devices they call Pokeballs. The tamed pokemon are then used in a variety of ways, such as some would be used for helping with jobs like construction work, and others use them in battle for other jobs or even just for sport. Pokemon battling is a very big sport there." Aislin marshalled her thoughts once more, and then gestured toward the deer. "There is however a select few pokemon that hold sway over various forces of nature, like Life, the sun, the moon, the spirit, balance, all kinds of stuff. The terminology is Legendary Pokemon, and above even those few is the Creator of this world, He of the Thousand Hands, to use one of the titles. To use an example, there is a set of them that hold govern over memory, emotion, and willpower. They are commonly known as the Spirit Trio." Okay, okay, what else is she missing here? A glance at the child reminded her. "Oh yeah! A common rite of passage is to give a specially trained Pokemon to a child, normally ten years old in age or higher, and allow them to set out on a journey of their own, using said Pokemon as their protector. They can of course capture and tame wild Pokemon, and thus often gain lifelong companions on their journey, however long or short it may be." Aislin sheepishly added, "I think that's about everything I can say without needing one here to demonstrate a few things. There are some books about them in the Library here labeled Pocket Monsters, or I can grab the tablet and show you how to read while on it." The last two options technically meant she would not be saying anything much more than this, as that would mean going into details that are sort of irrelevant without a Pokemon here already.

Celere had to take a few moments to process all of this, "That sounds like... a mess, yet clearly they've made it work somehow, humans likely evolved up alongside those creatures, the two separate branches forming an almost symbiotic relationship as a means to survive, hang on a sec." she turned and placed a hand on the kids forehead, "Go back to sleep, no-one here is a threat, they're with me." it took about a minute before they did so, "I swear they sleep worse than I did at their age, that's an accomplishment all things considered, anyway, you said they send out ten year olds, that doesn't exactly sound very responsible, there must be quite a bit of trust in the systems they have in place for them to do that, considering anywhere else ten years would have you still stuck in the parent's home." she thought for a moment, "Something must've happened to force her out into the wilds then, because at a guess I'd put her at maybe five, likely six, she's tiny compared to humans her age but well, traits there indicate she's not exactly human, among other things which I'll need to consult Toré over when he's free, plenty wrong with this kid..." Celere had gotten off-track speaking her own thoughts out and shook her head to clear said thoughts, "Sorry bout that, alot going through my head at the moment, why don't we go for the tablet route for this? I feel that'd be quicker to learn from somehow, one more question though, they're not all monstrous or lethal looking like some of these right?" she gestured to the array of dolls on the desk as if to ask further.

Aislin smiled and quipped, "I never said all of them got that far. I think it's more to teach them how to be responsible at a younger age, like taking care of a pet by themselves. That sort of thing." She took stock of what was said and then promptly sat down on the floor, pulling the tablet out and booting it up, motioning for Celere to join her on the floor. The next ten minutes were spent teaching Celere how to access amd read the books that were within the Tower, a site she had stumbled across shortly after arriving in Karston. She had her suspicions about this Tablet, but did not dare to look much further. It was only then that she remembered the final question and said, "No they don't all look like that. Some are downright cute, and a few just look funny." Speaking of which... she typed into the search section 'pokedex' and found a hit. Selecting that book now showed it to be similar to the pokedex guidebooks Aislin had at home. "Jackpot!" She chirped in victory, "The pokedex! A comprehensive list of every pokemon in existence! Thankfully you can probably just skip the info and just look at the pictures. And yes, this does include the Legendary Pokemon when I say all of them." She held the tablet out towards the half-saiyan and requested, "Please don't bring this out of the house, that's all I ask."

Celere didn't exactly respond to the first part, too interested in how this, to her, primitive device functioned, it seemed rather similar to the scouters back in her first job, but more hands on in how it was utilised, when offered it, she took it as if taking a cracked egg, clearly wary about breaking the thing, "I'll get some notes down on what's in here, who knows, maybe I can figure out which part of her world she dropped in from, have some inklings on how to handle this, at least I'm not in any danger of being offed like the last time I had a younger person to keep safe." she shuffled back to her feet, offering a hand to Aislin to help her up, "This will not leave the property, we don't want anyone else getting their hands on this, who knows what they could do with it, once you've picked a room out, I'll leave it in there once I'm done getting all the info I need off of it, shouldn't take too long I don't think."

"Curious." Rowan mused, looking over the tree's decorations. "In my Homeworld there's a festival we hold twice a year, once in winter and once in summer, called the star Festival. We decorate large trees with stars and lights, then hide gifts and prizes among the leaves for young kids to climb up or fly up and search for. It's a holiday to celebrate our history as explorers, since the stories say the first explorers would climb trees to use the stars to guide them. Pretty sure doing it twice a year has something to do with the moving of the night sky as the seasons change." Rowan explained, thinking back fondly to the last Star Festival he'd attended.

"Huh, sounds like a mix between the Egg Hunts done for children and what we do for winter where I come from, just a little more serious and rooted in your people's history, I'd like to see how that all happens but alas, here we are, and I doubt theres any way for that happen." the dragonborn looked thoughtful for a moment, before raising a finger, "Oh, right I forgot about this, while I got all of us something for a potential tree, which happened, I did get something for each individual person, heres yours, don't know if you'll find it useful, given we're in a cold climate and all, but who knows, it might have a use eventually!" she pulled a small box out from a pocket, holding it out for Rowan for take, eyes glimmering a little in anticipation over it.