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"Nice to meet you, Musician. Um, just call me Rod, I guess. I . . . had a feeling you were into music, from your jewelry. I heard an orchestra playing as I approached the house. Tell me, in your opinion: are they good?"

For real though, was this a bit much? I realise it's costume porn, but I wanted to show off how Ye Scape-Grace has changed from being proud of being unloved and unlovable to pledging her service to the land as a whole.

Also, the seven Tjan'ulls are, as you might have guessed, Plortifications of the seven channels and their uses: the noticeboard for major announcements, generic channel for general chat, Rudi's for rudi's for PPC RPing, generic salt (NaCl = Nar Cal) for gaming chat, other RP for, er, other RP, recs and plugs for recs and plugs, and upstairs for mod-only chat. I thought I'd give it a go, as I'm fairly active there and nobody else seemed to have any ideas. I don't want to seem like I'm railroading anyone, though, so if anyone has any objections to this please let me know. =]

I'm not sure what else to say. How do you suppose I fix it and still allow Wolfreidi and all that to exist?

-Twistey, who is worried about being banned and currently creating her plan B in case she is forced to strike out on her own

Darn it, I don't have an account for that other thing. Oh well. It seemed as if I couldn't have jumped in either way, it'd gone too far into the plot.

-Twistey

Hopefully it's not too late...

-Twistey

"Good evening to you too," the Clockwork stranger replied. "My mask was designed two days ago, and I spent all of yesterday constructing it."

After a moment, he leaned closer and added, "The secret is 3D printing and really good bronze spray paint."

"So," the Musician continued, "perhaps you are precisely on time for its beginning?"

The Musician smiled, amused, and offered her companion her hand.

"For tonight," she said, "I am known as the Musician- although I will also answer to Melody, if you desire a more conventional name."

And revealed a motley assemblage of mostly-humanoid people. Half a dozen in total, five gathered closely around a single slender shape in the centre of the formation. On the left, a wobblingly corpulent figure with a cheerful visage that looked like it would ideally have been wrapped around some sort of cake accompanied a gangly mantis of a woman whose green, furtive eyes and ploughed complexion would have looked every second of its age had it lived for seven centuries. On the right, a battle-scarred mercenary who looked like she'd only retired from combat when she'd run out of bits to have blasted off by pla'tool sorceries glared out from behind a round little dandy in a pea-green frock coat and powdered periwig, whose watery eyes nevertheless held the glimmer of intelligence. Finally, directly behind the central figure was a truly vast man, stripped to the waist save for an enormous red fur coat with beige trim, the better to show off his hugely muscled chest, his constellations of scars, and the strange, spiky growths that erupted from every square inch of his skin like the peaks of the Wattufs.

They marched in unison until the middle figure was in plain view of the rest of the council, and then she took one more pace forward. She - though it was somewhat hard to tell - was more straight-backed than she had been seen to be in some time, but the most marked change was in her mode of dress. Gone were the rags and lucky heather cuttings that marked her as a tatterdemalion; gone was the faded motley of a wandering jester and kingsfool. Instead, she was decked out in brightest white, the robes of Spelin's old, old priesthood having been dug out and cleaned until they shone (aided by only the merest application of chalk dust). Of the greatest note, however, were the elaborate apparels that decorated her sleeves and hood; panels of silken cloth depicting intricately-stitched scenes from the holy texts of Spelin Tam-Ara, from Plortish history, and of the oral histories of the Mords, which only recently had begun to be laid down in writing. It was the enormously thick apparel at her neck that was newest, and perhaps most controversial: it displayed the central fess of the flag of Diskord, with delicate lines of alternating silver-filigree and lapis set against the rich, dark grey broadcloth that was a favoured fabric among the Mords; it was also pinned in place, as was traditional for apparels of that nature, by the seven white stars that symbolized the Seven Tjan'ulls, or cardinal virtues of Mordly society. Noh Tyss, the duty of decree, of openness as a sacrament; Djen Tjan, the duty of dialogue over drawn swords, of peace over war; Rhuud Ez, the duty of remembrance, of telling and retelling the legends of the Faith; Nar Cal, the duty of games, of refining the mind and body through the abnegation of work for work's sake; Oth Urp, the duty of creativity, of gathering knowledge and making it one's own; Rhex Blucz, the duty of charity, of the sharing of sustenance both physical and intellectual; and Ops Tayrs, the duty of rule, of governance in the name of all and justice for every Diskordant. At her left hand was an elaborate maniple depicting the bearer's arms in blood reds and cloth-of-gold; in her right, and doing no small amount of service in holding her posture so upright, was the kind of crozier that might have once seen use as a means of hauling Marizu knights down from their horses, the better to pound their wretched carcasses into the mud, its elaborately curved head looking capable of sending a tooth-rattling blow through even the most thickly-padded helm. It seemed fairly martial for a priest, but then, the bearer was (however technically) a Knight of Plort, and well-known as a subordinate of the most relentless scourge of the Marizu to ascend to baronial rank in generations; this was proven by the apparel about her right cuff, which depicted that baron's yellow roses intertwined with what looked for all the world like agricultural implements.

The richly garbed figure looked upon the council, too-old greenish-hazel eyes boring into Baron Huinesoron's own, and said:

"By the grace of the most holy majesty of Spelin Tam-Ara, whose Well-Written Word dost make itself heard through me, I declare mine desire to be seated at this Council for to represent the will of your goddess. Praise Spelin!"

And the smile of Ye Scape-Grace shone bright as a yellow sun above Krypton.

"I thought for sure you were Iximaz, but they're definitely a fan of Pokémon... ah, well."

He finally noticed the person's obvious discomfort.

"I should probably see what the other guests are up to," the Concerned One said, glancing around at the people who had arrived while they were talking. "I hope you enjoy the party."

He is dressed simply: black slacks and socks, black shoes with no laces, a white dress shirt with tiny black pinstripes. (He doesn't do red.) A pocket watch hung from a fob in his shirt pocket, but the glass was cracked, and the watch stopped at an odd hour. brown hair which . . . really should have been cut before the party was the only part of his head visible, as his face was entirely obscured by an ugly miser's mask.

Exactly like this.

Seeing the Musician nearby, he stared for a moment, gulped, and approached her. "Hello, there," he said lightly, hoping he didn't come off as creepy. "I'm a bit late. How has the party been?"

"I hadn't thought of that. I suppose it could be, if one were a Pokémon fan, but I am not."

"They're pretty similar," he said. "Though Sapphire does make for a better name. Plus, it's a Pokémon reference, right?"

"S- Sapphire. Just Sapphire," Sapphire said. "I mean, I was going to call myself Cobalt," they continued, gaining confidence slightly now that there was something to actually talk about, "but I like the color of sapphires better, though I do admit that Cobalt would have fit my color scheme more." Sapphire looked up at The Concerned One, "Would you agree, sir?"

A breeze passed near the Herald's face as the rustling sound started. When the lights came back on, the Garnet Ghast was standing a fair distance away, and one of their sleeves was moving ever-so-slightly. They exhaled a little, and wafted towards the Herald. "I'm sorry about that. I didn't hurt you, did I?"

"Call me the Concerned One," the masked man said, before mentally smacking himself. He really should have come up with a better name; what on Earth made him think he could roleplay like this?

"What should I call you?" the Concerned One asked, deciding to shift the focus away from himself.

The Musician had gotten to the party on time, indeed, with time to spare. Her carefully-laid plan to be the perfect socialite had lasted for the time it took her to make two key realizations: One, that she'd completely misunderstood the concept of "fashionable lateness", and two, she knew the chamber orchestra's cellist. The two had talked, griped about composers and divas, and the Musician had completely missed the start of the party proper.

Now, as she stood and took in the crowd, she wondered if she hadn't underdressed.

The Musician wore a simple gown, white silk dropping from a high Empire waist almost to the floor. Her jewelry was similarly simple, a silver treble clef resting in the hollow of her throat and, for those with quick eyes, a matching silver bass clef on a chain around her ankle. She was accompanied by her own music; an array of silver bells and steel chimes hung from her braided and coiled hair and sang in key with the orchestra. Eyes the color of violin strings sparked behind a simple dove-gray domino mask; while most of her face was clearly visible some art or artifice obscured her identity and left her familiar but anonymous.

"Yeah, I know what you mean. Haven't had an excuse to break out my cane in months. Shame too." He twirled it easily, taking care to make sure it wouldn't hit anyone.

The main reason is the internal architecture of the archives and T-Board. Specifically, the way the archival process works is that various bits of scraping code (the script that hits a YWA board and the function that dumps segments of a T-Board) output the contents of their respective post-containing thing in a specific format (Ruby Marshal dump of lists of hashes and lists). Then, there's another bit of code that takes such an archive files and posts it all to a T-Board instance. In order to make it easy to distinguish the archives from everything else, all archived posts are posted by the user "Archive Script". (This started as a workaround for needing the posts to be posted by some user account, and turned out to be useful.) Finally, there's a series of commands and scripts (which I really need to chain together in a more automated way) that'll get T-Board to output the posted archives into the format everyone sees (and a different, much smaller, set to generate the spreadsheets)

The reason there isn't anything more principled to store multiple archives is that the current system works and I'm lazy.

This system also has the advantage of making it easier to compute statistics over all our various boards. For example, here's some information about the number of posts per day we make

   Min. 1st Qu.  Median    Mean 3rd Qu.    Max. 
   0.00   22.00   37.00   43.05   56.00  317.00 

- Tomash, who'd do more stats but needs to go job

The person said, in a low, mumbling voice. They looked down in embarrassment, and then to the side, twitched, and looked generally uncomfortable.

At last, they made a brave attempt at conversation: "Um... so, what's your name?" They cringed slightly, that was a stupid thing to ask, and tried again. "I mean, not your real name, of course. That would void the entire purpose of such an event," they flushed and stuttered, "Just... I mean, what should I call you? If we're making conversation, that is." Their voice began to trail off awkwardly, "Uh... Never mind."

Moments later, you hear the clacking of heels on marble, and feel a sharp tug as space seems to rearrange itself. A spotlight comes on, shining at a balcony connected to the main floor by two staircases, one curving along either side of the room.

In the center of the spotlight stands a woman in a suit - a white shirt covered by a deep red vest, with black slacks and a black suit jacket (though the cuffs were the same red as the vest). She also wears what looks like it could be a small red cravat, tall black boots, gloves - white at the fingers, less opaque the farther up they go - and a mask. This mask is black with red trim below the eyes, and has a smattering of garnets towards its top which glimmer a bloody crimson in the spotlight, but is otherwise rather plain. It does, however, leave her bright green eyes unconcealed.

What surprises you more than anything is her hair. Gone was the long, mostly-straight hair you had seen for the past six months; now, the chocolate-colored hair is cut just short of her shoulders, and is more wavy than anything. You also take a moment to notice that she decided that bright red lipstick was a good idea... how typical of Calliope.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” she announces after a moment, “welcome to my birthday masquerade! I thank all of you for coming, though I do realize that we still have a few guests still on their way. Please, enjoy yourselves.”

Her grin at that point unsettles you. The lights come back on, but you barely notice.

"After all, parties don't last forever."

The stranger smiled and held out a hand. "Call me Lights, uh—what should I call you if not your name?"

"I don't get to dress up like this often," she admitted, smoothing the front of her gown. "Figured I'd make it count."

"Yes, I'm quite all right, thank you." The figure dusted his black cloak off after getting up. He hoped he didn't have to properly talk to them; he was mostly here for the intrigue of the thing, and to humor the hostess, more than for the sake of actually talking to anyone (a prospect that, frankly, was rather unappealing to him).