Private Barracks/Imperial Condos Occult Division Two wizards under one roof

[Rosmakh W. Dowganosyv]

Dear Nevali,

Please allow me to introduce myself, and accept my appologies if my name and work is already familiar to you. I am Professor Rosmakh W. Dowganosyv, a fellow researcher in the occult, mystical and esoteric, ancestrally from the icy land of Fiador, Corporially from the Northlands, but be assured my spirit isn't bound to either of those. I have moved to Bully harbor very recently, and haven't gotten a chance to make a name for myself yet or meet other beasts of my trade here. However I have over 30 years of experience communicating with spirits, learning of the unknown ones, and harnessing forces of the worlds beyond. I have become very infamous in the Northlands for my demonstrations and lectures, that have been attended by very influential people including members of the imperial government. Of course, those demonstrations and lectures revealed only a small fraction of my true knowledge and power. I made many breakthroughs in alchemy and chemistry, have discovered what I believe to have been previously undiscovered unknown ones, and have made true predictions about the future of the Northlands and the imperium. As I'm sure you are aware, the Vulpine imperium is in a great position to take advantage of the changes that are to come. It wouldn't be at all within the realm of imagination to see it become a great empire not just in this material world, but also a force to be reckoned with in the different planes of the unknown ones, and really only then can we call it a great empire. Nevali, I can't tell you how fortunate we are to be citizens of the imperium whose ministers clearly understand the importants of the secret and the occult. They look to our guidance and expertise when making their decisions, they appease the spirits and the unknown ones through their public demonstrations, and they are greatly rewarded for it through the wealth and stability of the land they govern. It would be a grave missed opportunity if mystic researchers didn't communicate with each other more knowing the important place we hold in the imperium, and hense I invite you to my lodgings at 19 Vladimir ullyanov street, apartment lucky 7. You decide the time and day Madame Waybird, I'm always eager to talk with someone as bright and skillful as you. Until that meeting, I wish you luck on your journey of discovery.

Yours, as truly as any beast could be,

Professor Rosmakh W. Dowganosyv
Philosophiae Doctor of the secret, occult and the dark arts
​

-- -- -- -- -- --

"Levin! What happens when you get two wizards under one roof?"

Professor Dowganosyv struggled to contain his excitement ever since his student returned to the apartment, and Levin felt it too, it was the kind he didn't feel in a long time. Some beasts think that spending time constantly with a character as enigmatic and as exciting as Professor Dowganosyv would dull the senses to it all, and certainly watching magic tricks and learning about the dark arts loses its novelty after a few months, but life, or whatever forces shape it, find a new direction to take things in every time they stay the same too long, as if determined to not bore any being to death.

"What?"!, Levin grinned wide, as if he had just heard the start of a joke. But Professor Dowganosyv never told jokes, although it was hard to imagine there was any principal behind it.

"Great things, Levin! Two times the wizards four times the magic!", Dowganosyv sounded as if he had all the energy of youth within him. He couldn't help but move things around his apartment a little to prepare for the arrival, as if his weasel colleague was going to arrive within a matter of minutes. Levin himself was eagerly looking at the door, excited for his own reasons to meet the pudgy weasel yet again. She was a much different kind of wizard than his professor, a kind of wizard he preferred more. The interaction he had was brief, formal and stiff, but she was more fun, less serious. He hoped that he would learn from her as well, just for a change from the usual lessons with Dowganosyv.

(Private thread between @Rosmakh W. Dowganosyv and @Nevali, dm or contact on discord if you have comments)

 

[Nevali]

Maps. Maps seemed to be the biggest scam. Or perhaps it was city planning. Assuming anything in Bully Harbour had ever been planned that wasn't a crime. But then, the layout of the town was a crime, wasn't it? Hence the need for maps. It was crime all the way down, and several storeys up.

No, give her a good old field, some proper woods, a muddy path, some bushes... A sky full of stars and some moss on a rock... That's how beasts ought to be living. Maybe with a single building nearby. Possibly two buildings, one for wagons to sleep in, one for beasts to sleep in. That's all you needed.

Her usual method of casting bones into the street to point the way only got her so far before the natural confoundings of the city disrupted it and caused her to be late and lost and nearly mugged several times. Too many beasts, that was another thing. Too much power all scrunched up in such a small space. In a sea of consciousness, the town was a chaotic whirlpool of thought and emotion. The natural waves, the ebb and flow in the web of idea and dream, was disrupted here. Hence the need for the Occult Division's base of operations, she had decided.

Still, she found the place eventually. Maybe the map hadn't lied. Or maybe she'd been drawn to the Professor through some connective tissue. A beast like him would have energies of his own emanating from his being, dropping leylines of power in his wake. Leave it to the unconscious wandering mind to grasp them and tug, nudging the footpaws in the right direction.

Maybe if it wasn't so blasted cold out, and she didn't need to wear footwraps, she would know where she was. The disconnect between her frozen pink beans and the ground was always so unsettling. Might as well have been walking on a cloud.

No, a cloud would be softer.

19 Vladimir Ullyanov street. It wasn't a particularly fancy building, not like those in the Trenches. It was a place for life to quietly wait for something better to come along. Apartment seven...

At least there was a hallway, with enough straw tossed down to soak up the chill and snow-melt that happened when so many warm paws stomped through the place. Dirty, smelly straw, just how it was supposed to be.

She paused on the threshold to adjust her hat and robe into place, and wipe a smudge off her bicolored glasses. She reached into her pocket, taking out a piece of cheese, which she tossed up against the wall above the door. On the third attempt, it finally stuck. She had drawn a glyph of warding into it, two parallel dots and a curving line that bent towards each dot. It would dry quickly in winter, and when spring came, it would wick moisture and sprout flowering mold, which would ground the edifice in the cycle of life and death, keeping it moored in the current time stream.

Or it would feed whoever was game enough to reach up and pluck it free, which was also fine.

She raised a paw and rapped sharply on the door, then picked up the basket at her feet, which held a single large watermelon.

 

[Rosmakh W. Dowganosyv]

Dowganosyv was right that the visitor was quickly approaching. Whether it was a wild guess that got proven right, or if he could scence her with either his nose or some sense only he possessed, he was likely going to keep that to himself. Both wolverine and Ermine stood up at the knock, Levin stepping into the hallway while Rosmakh waited at the entrance to the living room. Levin opened the door and greeted Nevali with a smile.

"Good evening! Please, make yourself at home, my paws are here to help"

Both Levin and Dowganosyv were excited and in good spirits, but they showed it in very different ways. Levin wanted to move, take things, put them somewhere else, hand them back, to be of use to the visitor and make sure he, along with his master whom he represented, left a good first impression. Well, the second one really, since Nevali got to read the letter and meet him at the frost fair beforehand.

"I'm very glad to meet you. One can never know too many people, especially fellow wizards. I hope that you were lucky enough to meet more than I did",
Dowganosyv remained still, as if he didn't want anybody or anything getting in through the door before Nevali. His voice was deep, rough with age but it held a distinctive youthful quality to it. It wasn't in his words, or in the way he said them. It was that mismatch between the image of an old graying wolverine, leaning on a staff with one paw and holding the doorframe with the other, and the loud confident voice of a beast in the prime of his life.

"I introduced myself a little in my letter. I am Professor Dowganosyv, but you are free to address me as Rosmakh or some other way. But be careful, you might bring attention of more beings than you might think when you say a name."

"What do you like to drink? Elderberry syrup, tea of forest fruits, Northlander bittersap?", Levin would offer as he and Nevali entered the living room. It was illuminated in the warm glows of over a dozen candles placed around the room, revealing a busy but orderly space, with relatively narrow sofas on each side of a table, where a few books rested one next to another. They were turned back page up, leaving their exact nature unknown.

 

[Nevali]

Nevali froze up, allowing Levin to take the basket containing the watermelon gift from her paws.

Wolverine.

She'd heard that one of the Ministers was one. She'd seen countless travellers come and go at the Wayweird Inn, but... no, no wolverines. A badger, once, which felt rather close. A lanky fellow, for a badger, not very wide or tall at all, none of the bloodwrath she'd been warned of, although he had grumbled some about the noise of the newly wedded couple taking residence in the main suite, which... understandable. Not a lot of sleeping had happened that night for anybeast, between the feasting, partying, and then the culmination of a bonding, which had lasted well into the sunrise. Not a great day for passing travellers who wanted shut-eye.

So, wolverine. She didn't quite know what to do with her paws, or her hat, or her feet, so she simply stepped further into the apartment, led down the hall by the ermine boy, and said, "Aye, all three of those sound great! One of each." Which was a little presumptuous, but no one had specified she could only choose one.

She decided that "making herself at home" wasn't truly what was expected, and so for propriety's sake, didn't throw aside her robes and toss herself over the sofa stark-naked and start tearing into a raw Harbor pigeon like a starving feral ghoul of a beast. Instead, she lifted her robes as she shuffled around the table and took a seat at the table, and stared curiously at the open books, and around the room in general.

"It's gonna be a pleasure yer meetcha," she said, tugging the brim of her hat as best she could with her short arms. "As much as it is a surprise. I'm a li'l flustered, I confess, yer letter rather painted me as learned and well-researched as yourself, and I'm afraid that I ain't. I'm still jes' learnin' things slowly as I go along, doin' my best as I do. Muckin' up more often than not, feels like..."

She gave a polite cough and a wry grin.

"Also! I brought ya a watermelon. A whole one, not the slices I usually keep on me ter pass around."

 

[Rosmakh W. Dowganosyv]

Dowganosyv let out 4 evenly spaced "ha" sounds, his mouth slightly open in a grin. "You know plenty about making choices, nevali Wayward. Levin, do as she said, one of each".

Levin grinned wide, and once Nevali was comfortably situated in the sofa he began a strange ritual. The ermine climbed onto a spinning circular chair so he was facing nevali, then spun it around using his feet so he faced the wall. He tapped his paws against the wall in a strange rhythm, alternating between harder and lighter taps, with noteably more lighter taps than harder ones. After about 14 taps he stopped, waited for a second, and nothing at all happened.

This must have been exactly what levin expected, since the kit spun around, stopped for a split second to look at Dowganosyv who nodded at him in appreciation, and then spun a little further to face Nevali. "Your drinks will be ready in a minute, miss".

Levin stepped off the chair and went back into the hallway as Dowganosyv continued the conversation with Nevali.

"We never stop learning. And there are so many different paths to take, so many branches of the tree of knowledge to explore, I'm certain that I have a lot to learn from you. As it comes, I already learned something from you"

The wolverine pointed at the watermelon basket sitting on the table, looking out of place with the books, tools and writing implements it shared the surface with.

"I have never seen a watermelon before, and I will certainly try a piece of it later tonight. I don't fancy fruits that much, but I won't refuse gifts from you. And of course, Levin would adore to have more sweets, even if I try my hardest to not indulge him with physical pleasures."

Rosmakh grinned to himself, before shaking his upper body, including his head and ears. He must have been throwing off the current topic of conversation out of his head and ears, since it seemed very unlikely he would want to shake anything physical off in this pristine apartment.

"I am new to Bouillabaissse harbor, a year is nothing to an old beast like me. The newspapers here were of little help, nobody hear dares right about the demonstrations of magic, or ministry matters, or important lectures. I only heard about truly interesting subjects from other beasts with loose tongues, so good that this street has a few of them"

 

[Nevali]

"Huh, that's a new one," mused Nevali, observing the little ermine's wall-tapping. "Neighbour's don't mind, I'd wager?"

She kept her head slightly tilted, curiosity evident in her features and the way she leaned forward. She filed away the information on Levin's lack of physical pleasure - something she'd already been slightly aware of the day before, at the Frost Fair. She had a mind to bring it up later, and wondered at the wolverine's age and customs. Between her two father figures, she had certainly had an upbringing, and was still, in fact, being brought up. It was a strange thing to shake, the idea that the older beasts were enemies... someday, with luck, she would become one herself. And then would she keep kits from indulging in pleasures? Or would she forget her own needs of youth...

There were more important questions at paw, for now. The ermine's little ritual would need to be asked about, to be written down, to find what knowledge and reason there was, and it could be quite the feather in her hat if she found something new to bring back to the Division.

"Newspapers," she agreed with a snort. "They have their uses. Grease mops, mainly. They do hold their shape when dampened a little, too. I enjoy sculpting them. Reading, not so much. My concerns are never valued in them. Aye, the taverns are where true information is found, although..." A little smirk twitched at her whiskers, recalling the misspelling of her name in the letter. "Pronunciation can be difficult with so much drink."

Her soft, verminy accent had entirely dropped. She spoke primly now, keeping each syllable of each word just separate enough to not be confused with the space between the words themselves. It was the kind of accent she'd heard scholars and teachers use. It felt more appropriate in this room.

"So, I suppose you know what else they say about me? My experience with the beasts of the stars? It has been a while since I shared with those who would listen, and such tales are what drew me into the company I more often keep, lately... Is it that which you wish to speak of, or are there other topics of conversation on your mind, professor?"

 

[Rosmakh W. Dowganosyv]

"Beasts of the stars, yes"

Dowganosyv looked out of the window, up at the darkening sky, as if the astral beasts could be clearly seen somewhere high above.

"I had a friend a long, long time ago", the wolverine raised his paws as if to gesture at the time period, but brought them down. It was too far to point to.
"he was very talented for mathematics, and was a great skeptic, but the most sensible one I've ever met. To be clear, this was before I went on my journey of discovery"

Rosmakh changed as he was retelling the story. His forced Fiadoran accent faded and was replaced with a more pleasant northlander one. He let his usual half smile develop into a sinceer yet wistful grin. In some respects his voice sounded younger, but in others it sounded even older than it usually did.

"But what does it have to do with the beasts of the stars? Well, even if he didn't believe in any magic or anything beyond this physical world, he was certain that there have to be other beasts out there among the stars. There were so many stars we could see, and there were probably even more that we couldn't see, the chances of none of them having beasts like us living there is pretty much null"

Rosmakh delivered the mathematician's argument with great enthusiasm, clearly intreagued by it and loving to share it with others.

"Now, I knew as much as a kit back then, didn't know of what was truly out there. I wanted to argue against his argument at the time, but I now have to admit it's very well constructed. But, is it true you have a more convincing proof of the existence of cosmic beasts?"

 

[Nevali]

Nevali leaned forward, glasses sliding down to the tip of her nose as she listened attentively. She'd never really thought about it in the way he now presented it to her. It was logical, whimsical, hopeful. The thoughts of beasts many times her age, who yearned for more than what there was down here, perhaps.

And so too she yearned, but for other reasons.

"Weeeeeelllll," she said, drawling the word out. "I can't say I have proof, exactly. Nothing physical that I can hold in my paws and show to another. Nothing logical that I can find. There's no reason what happened to me happened to me the way it did, not the way we define or understand reason. I been told it's a dream born of fever, been told it's an outright lie meant to make kits' minds wild with fear and wonder - a story, in other words."

She pushed her glasses back up her muzzle and leaned back, tucking her now-dried footpaws up onto the sofa and hugging her knees to her chest. Her robes pooled around her ankles, and her short little weasel tail went fwip-fwip-fwip against the nearby cushion.

"I was in bed, in the attic of the inn, which was my bedroom. It was a chill evening, and I wore my pyjamas, and wrapped myself in my blanket. I was dead asleep, but woke with a start, and my mind was fully awake. I was fully aware. But... I couldn't move. It was as if some great weight settled on my body, keeping me from lifting even my tailtip or neck, not even my eyes. I could only stare up at the ceiling, and listen to this horrible buzzing sound coming from all around me. It was pulsing like a breath, like a heartbeat, soft and loud, but the drone was constant. And the air was green."

She took a breath and paused to adjust her hat back somewhat, the contents settling with a mild clatter.

"I began to rise from my bed, then. And through my pyjamas and my blanket, my naked body lifting and passing through these things as if they were motes of light. I feared I would be pressed against the ceiling, but I passed through that as well, through the wood, the thatch and straw, and the shingles above. The air was warm, not chill as before, and the buzzing louder and louder. In my side-vision I could see the treetops, the road leading away through the forest, the hills and meadows behind the inn, and right above me there was a great silver ship. It looked not unlike a sailing ship of ours, but tilted on its side, its sails flat towards the ground, with oars or masts sticking out the other side. The memory of its shape is hard to hold onto, I feel like it changes... like it was tryin' to change itself to something I'd recognize, but didn't quite know what shape it should be to me."

Another long, contemplative breath, her grip around her legs tightening.

"I passed through the ship's hull as easily as I had left my bedding behind, and then I remember nothin'. What happened next is I woke up on a hill a couple miles away from the inn, starkers and cold, sometime late morning. I knew where I was though, and I made my way back, gettin' ready for a beating for missing my morning duties, or being starkers... but when I did..." A frown tugged at her muzzle. "I saw myself hangin' up laundry. When I... when the other me went inside again, I crept in close, and... well, I stayed hidden, and watched and listened through the walls and windows. Got one of the blankets I'd taken in and wrapped myself up in to keep warm, and everything that happened... I knew it. It had happened the day before. They'd not only taken me up into their ship, but they'd put me back... in the past."

She glanced, for the first time, at the wolverine, just a brief look. Not long enough for her to register his expression to her tale.

"I waited all day, stayed out of sight, and went out that night to a hill behind the inn and watched. Waited for the ship to come, and it did. Like a cloud over the horizon, but fast. Ain't seen anything move so fast, not even a bird, not even an arrow, nor a shot from a cannon, though maybe that'd come close. It stopped right over the inn, and I watched as the air glowed green, and this little weasel kit appeared from the roof and into the ship. And then it went straight up, and became a star, though I couldn't tell you which one. I was hungry and thirsty, and tired, and I went back into the inn, climbed up into my bedroom and got back into my pyjamas, just lying there flat on my bed, my blanket wrapped right around 'em. And I slept through morning shift and got a whallop for it, and didn't tell anyone what happened for years. When I did..."

She turned and looked out the window, saying nothing more.

 

[Rosmakh W. Dowganosyv]

Rosmakh listened closely. He wanted to find out more about the beasts of the stars, especially since he heard that young beasts adored stories of them even more than demonstrations of magic or lectures of the unknown ones. The tastes were very different here, and he was definitely going to ask his guest more about it. But there was something about the story that also peaked his interest. Her words gnawed at a part of his life he hadn't thought of in almost 40 years. Where aeons felt like a year or two to the unknown ones, the events of Dowganosyv's youth in contrast felt like they were far before his time, like they were in a whole different age of the world and the world of then and now would never recognise one another. A curious thought flashed in the wolverines mind, and he couldn't help but grab his notebook to write it down, not taking his usual precautions to make sure the guest couldn't see what he wrote. He found a page with various bullet points, and found one that read "The world changes the starer", where he quickly added: "The starer changes the world".

He clearly wanted to think some more on it, in particularly to focus on the subsequent line disagreeing with his assertion "the starer is powerless", but Nevali just kept on speaking, and he knew it was rude to be reading his notebook while the guest he invited was telling their tale.

Dowganosyv could already picture the skeptic's arguments against the veracity of Nevali's story. Besides the fact that one can't float through solid objects, fly in the air without falling, go into a hovering ship, and then come back into the past, the beginning of the story clearly suggested a simple explanation for all the visions: what they would call sleep paralysis. Her body was asleep and couldn't move, but her naive and terrified kit's mind was fully aware of it, and being unable to run, jump, hide, or yell for somebody to come, it came up with a whole vision to explain the state that it couldn't properly explain. So for a scientist her story was uesless, but Dowganosyv wasn't a conventional scientist. How many young kits had this dream, and would they buy tickets to a lecture on astral beasts? That question was more interesting to the wolverine than whether beasts of the stars captured his excentric guest in her kithood.

And then it happened again. The weasel kit disappearing into the ship and becoming one of the stars finally opened up an old memory. A terrible blizzard, just a sudden wave of snow. It was midday. Fortunately he was home. But some weren't so fortunate. He wasn't allowed to see any of it back then, but he could hear the yelling and heard people working hard once the snowstorm ended. And then unprompted he spoke out the words that came back to him: "No, Skræv Ræv saved him and pulled him up in the night sky, where his eyes will shine and be two more little stars. And whenever you look up he'll be there and see you, and the stars will giggle in the memory of the time you spent together, and you will giggle and be happy when you remember those times too."

That's when Levin appeared in the doorway, carrying a tray of four mugs, a larger one standing alone on one side, and three slightly smaller ones across from it on the other. "Here are your drinks, sir and madame".

"You were quick and efficient Levin!", the effects of Nevali's story have worn off, and everything about Dowganosyv returned to the way he was before. He slowly pressed his paw against the mug and pulled it back.

"You should have waited more for the tea, it is way too hot to drink"

"Oh, sorry sir...I will keep that in mind for later, appologies, I really am..."

Rosmakh just nodded at the ermine boy and gestured to a little desk in the corner, where Levin sat down and began writing. It was difficult to look at what he was doing, but from the alternating handwriting one could guess that it was either Levin filling out forms that Dowganosyv or someone else wrote down, or maybe he was doing exercises.

"What I meant to say was, your story is very interesting! I have seen kit's books in a shop in the trenches, quite a few of them talk about star beasts and similar. I don't remember them being as popular at all when I was little, but that was 50 years ago, hahaha."

 

[Nevali]

Nevali felt her gaze settle on young Levin as he scribbled away at his desk. She closed one eye, then opened it and closed the other. One red ermine, one blue ermine. Back to pink. She couldn't quite place a paw on it, but each one felt a little different. The possibility of youth laid out ahead of him, and another afternoon spent in here... instead of out there, romping in the snow...

At least he had a desk, and could write. Such things had been luxuries for her. A broom had been her quill, the clean sweeps through the dust of the inn's floors her ink, while Caltrops or Harbour or some passing teacher drilled her on sums or multiplications or grammar...

She finished rummaging around in her robe's pockets for her ceramic mug. It had been painted with a sleeping ferret on one side and the phrase, "Bully Harbour Downhill Rolling Nap Championships 1760 - 4th Place" in elegant cursive on the other. She had no idea where she'd gotten it from. She proceeded to pour a third of each mug into it, and stirred it with a finger. The wet fingerpad she used to paint a quick glyph on her sleeve before taking a sip.

"Ahhh... that's good." She let out a happy trill after the long sigh that society dictates one must loudly perform after tasting something for the first time. "Levin, should you find yourself unemployed in your future, look into bartending! Just... stay behind the bar, eh?"

She tossed the young kit a wink, even if he didn't turn back to look at her. She took another long draught, then set the mug down and tested one of the others - elderberry syrup! Nice and sweet.

"There has been a craze of late," Nevali said, her voice somewhat gloomy now, "The last ten years or so. These atrocious Tizzi Poof kits books... I tried to read them, there is simply no sense of world-building between them. The plot is the same in every book, but the events have no foreshadowing or logical connection. They are full of disgustingly twee whimsy and dream-like scenarios that have no setup or payoff. Entirely too life-like, I couldn't stand them. But, they're one of the most popular book series for young beasts these days... Still kits today seem to be enthralled by the character and will romp around town pretending to be Tizzi or Ducky..."

She shook her head with a tsk-tsk-tsk.

"The one about the star-beasts got everything entirely wrong, too... They are tall. Very, very tall. Imposing, even. Not little green mice... that is ludicrous. The little green mice are not star-beasts, they are lichen-bound forest-faeries! Even the Occult Division seems divided on this, but - "

She paused suddenly, and slowly put down her mug to select another.

"I should not have mentioned that, perhaps..."