21:53 <banana> Willie Wellesley knows: there are some advantages to being rich and famous. 21:54 <banana> You can get special treatment. Pay enough, sign enough autographs, have Lindsay call ahead and you can book out a normally-public bath for you and a few of your closest staff. You can even bring your dog in the pool. 21:54 <banana> Or your bodyguard's dog. 21:55 <VoxPVoxD> It has its perks. Some places will even call them 'perquisites' on the little cards they give you. 21:55 <VoxPVoxD> A spa day, even a vicarious spa day spent working, sounds like a godsend right now. 21:57 <banana> This place is the size of a small swimming pool, but it was just you in the changing rooms and now in the bathhouse itself - which is to say, just Willie, Mary, Paola Anna, Karen Jackson the new dresser, and Sal from the studio. The latter two are up the other end of the pool. 21:58 <banana> Reveille owes Sal some sort of favour, and Karen 2 is getting her first taste of luxury, taken under the producer's wing. That leaves two Star-children and a scion of Lucifer soaking up the steam in the heated section, with towels and facemasks available to hand. 22:01 <banana> Paola Anna Santerini - DisAster on the band's merch - is a similar age to Mary and Charlie, closer to 40 than 20. (L-Plate is considerably younger.) She looks happy enough to be here, watching Willie with some interest as Reveille talks languidly about the world conquest they're going to do. 22:01 <banana> But I've forgotten someone. What's the disposition of Kagamenauch the Flayed? 22:02 <VoxPVoxD> Willie, who today looks sleepy but not sleep-deprived (a combination someone might recognise as the symptom of sleeping too much rather than too little) is happy to take a primp and a soak, especially an expensed one. She does seem just a bit hesitant at first to indulge, which may be how at least some of Mary Morgan's entourage learns that Willie's very well-trained dog can talk. 22:03 <VoxPVoxD> "Keeping vigil for five is no more taxing than minding one. Someone should enjoy this humidity." 22:04 <banana> Mary Morgan: "What? Is there a ventriloquist in the bath?" 22:05 <banana> Paola Anna sits up abruptly - and then fumbles for a towel, in case talking dogs are some sort of threat to modesty. 22:05 <VoxPVoxD> That's as far as Kaga goes in expressing his discomfort verbally. There was a bit in one of the TV shows Willie has somehow found dozens of hours for in the last couple of days where a young man is in a mascot suit at a theme park, and as he is beset by screaming, malignant children is pushed to vomit from the stress. It leaks from the mascot's huge, foreign eyes. If he were feeling more 22:05 <VoxPVoxD> colourfully indiscreet he might make reference to that. 22:07 <VoxPVoxD> Willie opens one eye on her ghostly-white spa mask of a face. "Don't worry. Kaga is my familiar. He's very well-behaved and discreet." 22:08 <banana> The steam is thick and the bath is large. It probably isn't obvious to the mortal women talking business across the room that the others are talking to a huge black hound. 22:08 <VoxPVoxD> "Not too familiar, I hope. How do you do." 22:09 <banana> Paola Anna: "Is he- are you really a dog, then?" She looks wide-eyed at the steam-shrouded creature. And not just looks - demonic awareness might perceive a psychic inspection, a projection of the senses. 22:10 <VoxPVoxD> Kaga: "Only politically. My true visage is quite different. I am of the Fifth Circle." 22:11 <banana> Mary: "Coooool. We'll probably get to hang out in.. let's say between ten and fifty years." 22:11 <banana> "How do you feel about baths, politically speaking?" 22:12 <banana> Paola Anna: "Let's don't encourage wet dog." 22:15 <banana> Mary: "Are we not all the stench rising from the wet fur of history's canine?" 22:16 <banana> Paola Anna: "Ewwww." 22:16 <VoxPVoxD> Willie makes a face, but it's hard to discern under the cream. The big black mastiff-that-isn't settles down poolside, legs mostly tucked under his huge droopy body. It's a disconcertingly catlike posture, the kind he only permits himself among people who Know. "Many people, I have observed, see themselves as inevitably damned. Christian morality teaches that it is the factory condition 22:16 <VoxPVoxD> of the human soul. May I ask you a question, Mary?" 22:16 <VoxPVoxD> "First I'll answer yours: I favour a drier heat." 22:17 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "You really don't need to indulge him." She doesn't sound disapproving, exactly. Maybe she's too tired to. 22:18 <banana> Mary: "Good point, dog. You may ask." 22:19 <VoxPVoxD> The Flayed: "Suppose it were not so. Suppose damnation were not inherent. Suppose no sin were original." 22:19 <VoxPVoxD> "Do you believe you've lived a life worthy of Satan's attention?" 22:19 <banana> "He's cute," Paola Anna tells Willie. "I'm glad to meet you instead of one of the guys with big guns. Of course we're all very thankful about what those guns did on the weekend." 22:21 <banana> Reveille: "I can only strive for it, dog. What's on the left-hand path - rebellion? Got you covered there - I rebelled against my stepdad, my grandma, my teachers, my husband and government lockdowns. Now I'm rebelling against space." 22:21 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "They are very good at what they do. They've saved my life multiple times; you can count on them to do the same for you should the need arise." 22:24 <banana> Paola Anna: "We've been talking about that. Should we be... coming to this gig? Your Dark Peak bunker?" 22:27 <VoxPVoxD> Kaga: "Politics again. Rebellion is just service in redshift. Who is helped by your rebellion? Who sees independence as the dissolution of bonds? In whose fault lay the stars? Opinions differ; what answers I have I must withhold. By way of reply, then, I can say only this: I have always taken the view that the essence of Hell is self-knowledge. To be reconciled to who you are. Your 22:27 <VoxPVoxD> limits. Your desires. Your appetites. A war fought with no greater tyrant than oneself." 22:29 <banana> Reveille: "Mmmm. Do you have to like yourself, to know yourself?" 22:29 <banana> "I can't imagine a lot of people do both." 22:31 <VoxPVoxD> Willie gives Kaga a look; he doesn't seem to notice. She responds to Paola: "We're not expecting you to. I understand the impulse to ask; I know I would want to be there, in your position, and even if I didn't I'd feel some pressure. If you think you can stand up to these alien war machines, and you're willing to follow our tactical guidelines so that everyone's on the same page... I can 22:31 <VoxPVoxD> float it with the team." 22:31 <VoxPVoxD> "But insofar as you feel desirous or obligated, know that we don't intend you to." 22:33 <banana> Paola Anna: "I think Charlie and me'll come if we can stop Linds feeling left out. She didn't grow up like the three of us." 22:33 <banana> "We're not fighters, but um.. we've got the Talent. Has all your group got some kind of edge?" 22:34 <VoxPVoxD> Kaga: "Knowledge compels opinion. Deep knowledge compels deep feeling. Need it be positive? I don't think so. But unhappy people are not wiser, in the main, than happy people. They just have different blind spots. So I would be slow to extrapolate self-knowledge from self-disgust. The human capacity for self-delusion is truly divine in scope." 22:35 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "Kaga..." 22:35 <VoxPVoxD> The demon makes a gentle, questioning whining sound. 22:35 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "...just behave, alright?" 22:36 <banana> Mary: "A hot bath is an ok place for philosophy. Gettin the feeling this stuff isn't complimentary, though?" She looks back from Willie to Kaga. 22:36 <banana> "When you say that to self-delude is divine... from your point of view, an attack of women and angels alike?" 22:37 <banana> *attack on 22:37 <banana> Paola Anna: "Knowing too much is no kind of silver bullet." 22:37 <VoxPVoxD> To Paola: "Of one kind or another. We're well-trained, well-equipped, well-connected. I am, perhaps somewhat uniquely well-bred." 22:38 <banana> Santerini: "Bogdan's people would like you guys. The underbelly of the world fascinates them. All these things that are kept hidden from normal peeps." 22:39 <banana> "We put some of it in our music, but not enough to drown out the rock. Nobody cares anyway, you're more likely to get censored for 'misandry' than witchcraft." 22:40 <VoxPVoxD> Kaga: "Not an attack. An observation. Self-delusion is strong magic. All people engage in it. All collections of people. The world itself struggles night and day not to know itself, to segregate its contents, its characters, its stories. What is the virtue of virtue? It's not obvious, at least not to me." 22:42 <VoxPVoxD> "Knowledge does not set you above others. Power does that. What knowledge does is set you apart." 22:42 <banana> Reveille: "Funny, that's been my experience of power. And lack of power. It ain't exactly difficult to turn people against each other." 22:43 <VoxPVoxD> Kaga: "I have observed this as well." 22:43 <VoxPVoxD> "You know what the stars intend for you. You know their plans. Does it make you feel powerful?" 22:45 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "Aaron made quite a positive impression on Mr. Georgiou, I think." 22:45 <banana> Reveille: "And have you done it? What would you do, dog, if whispers came to you in the night: Go to the consulate, to the resort, to the beach and sow discord in their minds. Control them by separation and bend the crowd to your purpose. I dunno whether that's a repulsive idea in the Fifth Circle?" 22:47 <banana> Paola Anna makes a rude noise about Bogdan Georgiou and splashes some water idly, shifting her position. 22:48 <banana> "It's interesting, but dedicating your life to trying to understand these mental mysteries... there will always be more. I'd rather have love and money and music." 22:49 <VoxPVoxD> Kaga: "It is in my nature to serve. It clings to me like a the scars of a burning brand. I can do nothing else. What would preoccupy me if I heard the whispers of Cosmos is not my purpose but its. What do the stars want? What am I party to? What does one who would command me - to hunt, to guard, to speak of poetry - think they're doing? Who do they think they're fooling?" 22:49 <VoxPVoxD> Willie shifts a bit abruptly herself. 22:51 <banana> Reveille: "Whereas you, dog, are not fooling anybody." 22:52 <banana> To Willie: "Summoning's a bitch, huh?" 22:54 <VoxPVoxD> Kagemenauch: "I speak only truth. If someone is fooled by what I say, then I've communicated poorly. I don't claim infallibility." 22:54 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "Like I said. You don't have to indulge him." 22:56 <banana> Mary: "I won't if it's upsetting you. Is it like.. summoning a familiar, is that anything like an elemental?" 22:56 <banana> Suddenly, Paola Anna's paying more attention to her bandmate than to the bodyguard. 22:57 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "All you're doing is giving him something to do besides upset me. He'd be doing that either way." 22:58 <VoxPVoxD> "Demons have some similarities. But elementals are, at least to my understanding, rather more impersonal." 22:59 <VoxPVoxD> "As far as I can tell, demons' raison d'être is to fuck with people." 22:59 <banana> Mary giggles. "Well, sort of. I wouldn't say IMpersonal." 22:59 <banana> "How do you actually benefit your master, dog?" 23:02 <VoxPVoxD> Kaga: "I am her sword and shield. I am her second eyes. She's told me that I'm a good conversationalist. Although her opinion seems to fluctuate." 23:02 <VoxPVoxD> "I hope you find me of sufficient interest to justify the time spent." 23:04 <banana> Mary: "Sure, I'm a sucker for novelty." 23:04 <banana> Paola Anna: "You can focus." 23:04 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "He has to do what I say as a consequence of the binding. It's not an entirely comfortable dynamic, which is why I try not to take his venom personally. I don't know what it's like with elementals. Can they be bound? Do they have free will that a binding constrains?" 23:06 <banana> Mary: "I'm not sure exactly what you mean by a binding. Elementals can be used... you can make deals with em. They want things, things that make no sense to humans, sometimes hard to get and sometimes easy." 23:06 <banana> "The tricky thing is making contact. Touching an elemental plane isn't safe. You have to be pretty skilled or pretty desperate." 23:07 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "That part's not at all different from a demon summoning. I don't bargain with demons, though. I have... certain privileges of rank, essentially." 23:07 <banana> Paola Anna: "They are very helpful, but they aren't exactly people..." 23:07 <banana> Mary: "Close enough!" 23:08 <VoxPVoxD> "It sounds like you can't make an elemental do something it doesn't want to do? You can only make it want to do things." 23:08 <VoxPVoxD> "I don't know if that's accurate." 23:08 <banana> Mary: "Again, close enough. In their own world they're pretty untouchable." 23:09 <banana> "Come over here, put yourself into a skull full of grey matter and you're as vulnerable as anyone.. to empaths or Facebook." 23:10 <banana> Paola Anna: "It's only a piece that comes through." 23:10 <banana> Mary: "Detachable personhood. Does it matter?" 23:11 <banana> "If even a third of you is some guy then you're, what, the Holy Trinity?" 23:12 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "I don't know if it matters. I find it interesting, certainly. Most of the people that populate the night-city are just people. They might be particularly old or eccentric people, people with inhuman experiences, but it's quite rare to encounter beings that are truly alien, as opposed to alienated." 23:15 <banana> Mary: "Paola Anna's just fishing. If you want my honest opinion, given the context we all have or can infer-" 23:15 <banana> Paola Anna: "Heyyy, hang on. You know I'll owe that thing forever, it got us out, or you both did. But you're kind of telling-" 23:16 <banana> Mary: "I mean, I'm trusting her with my life. You just said you don't care about star secrets." 23:17 <banana> DisAster: "But it's not your secret... is it?" 23:17 <banana> "Er, does he actually know?" 23:18 <banana> Reveille: "Not in any great detail. Like I was going to say: if you cram part of an elemental into a dude, it ends up about as human as any other dude. With all the benefits and limitations of humanity." 23:18 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "A form of captivity, perhaps, but also a joyous opportunity." 23:20 <banana> Reveille: "You sound like a witch who has made the necessary inferences." 23:21 <banana> "Or uh, whatever the term is, sorceror? I don't wanna buy into the witch-warlock binary out of ignorance here." 23:21 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "I've been getting called a witch rather a lot lately." She doesn't sound upset by the appellation. "I feel compelled to point out that, classically, a witch is someone who has made a conscious pact with a darker power. I have a hereditary condition." 23:22 <VoxPVoxD> "But, you know, if the cloven hoof fits..." 23:22 <banana> Reveille: "Being able to summon demon familiars is a condition?" 23:23 <banana> Paola Anna: "They used to have all sorts of stuff in the DSM." 23:24 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "A latent characteristic of the blood, cultivated through training. I'm descended from Satan by some multiple of seven generations." 23:24 <banana> Mary: "Holy shit. Do you play any instruments?"