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[pikuni]

WELCOME TO THE SALTBURNT NETWORK

USERNAME:
GOOD STAB

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Comments

[laozu]

Haha! Not every old man is of great counsel, but you're nothing like the stuffy old shīgōng and shīyè of my home. You're cool!

Anyways, I was hoping you could tell
me about vampires. I would appreciate it.

[pikuni]

I am very cool. Thank you for noticing.

I can only tell you about the kind of vampire I am. I have noticed some differences between me and the others.

[laozu]

I'm good at finding the best and coolest!

If you would instruct this student of such differences, I would be grateful. Anything you are willing to offer — I will trade fairly in return for it.

[pikuni]

What will you trade for my top secret and very valuable information?

[laozu]

My eagerness, as a ✨malleable✨ and ✨impressionable✨ student.

[pikuni]

This is an acceptable trade.

Where would you like me to start?

[laozu]

[ yay!11 ]

I want to make sure the vampires are not ALL brought before a mob, one by one, without defense.
I do not need to know anything about how to bring you harm. Or your personal story, not at this time. I would rather earn that.

If possible, would you tell me what makes you all different? In ability.

[pikuni]

We share a lot of commonalities. The blood drinking. Our strength. Our hearing, our smell.

My smell is different, I think. I can smell history on people, in bits and pieces. Things that are stored in the blood and spirit.

[laozu]

I heard of claws and shapeshifting into bats and the ability to use one's mind to influence another, too. But, we are in a land unlike mine. Nobody looks like me, or has heard of the things I talk of.

You smell history... in blood and spirit? That sounds beautiful, and painful, and powerful. I wonder what you would smell inside of me!

[pikuni]

If I can do those things, I have not learned yet. But this other thing I understand. Only one other person here looks like me and understands the things I do. We are all displaced. But it must be more lonely to just be you.

I will sniff you one day, if you'd like. I think outside of this village. It has made me less than I am.

[laozu]

I am relieved to know you have someone like that, Good Stab. As for me, I am good at making friends. I'm friendly, and this is a remarkable, albeit strange, new place for me to explore.

Outside of this village — will we be our whole selves again? I have only known this place, and my limited self. When you are all you are again, you'd be welcome to sniff me.

[ for his own curiosity's sake, too... how much of mo xuanyu is left, besides the body? ]

[pikuni]

It is very strange isn't it. I have never wanted to visit this place, or the place that is like it back home.

I think so. I was all me before we came here. If I leave, I hope I am all me again. I do not want to think this place has robbed me of something that I can't get back.