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[OOM: Ray, Jhalak, and a bunch of scientists meet with the Lemurians off the coast of Oregon.

The Lemurians have much, MUCH more important news than previously thought.]

When Ray opens the door, he has a laptop computer under one arm and a five-armed alien on his opposite shoulder. "Has anyone seen Agent K or Agent Zed?" he says to no one in particular. "The Lemurians say we've got a sleeper..."

He doesn't wait for an answer, but heads for the Bar. He needs some of that green stuff, or possibly the quantum blue. Jhalak is getting all the kiwifruit and carambolas it can possibly eat.

[OOC: Warning for probable slowtime, but I'll tag whenever I can!]
[tinytag: Long-Reach the Jotok]

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"Fuck."

"About the size of it," Ray says. "On the bright side, we found out well before it woke up or even fully intruded into our dimension, and we found out from a previously unknown sapient species that's been spending most of their history doing everything they can to keep it asleep. So we're not caught with our pants completely down, so to speak."

"Is there anything I can do to help?"

Dominic's not really sure he wants to know the answer to that, but he feels obligated to ask anyway. Hell, at least it'd be something to do.

"Do you have any experience communicating with beings who can't come out of water and who have no organs of hearing, but're capable of reading and writing human languages?"

"Not particularly," Dominic admits. "I know of some water-breathing spells, but I've never cast them myself, and that's not something you want done by a rookie. I could pick up some books on Qualenti culture and history if you think that would help..."

"Possibly," Ray says. "Fill me in on the name, though. 'Qualenti'?"

"They're a race of ocean-dwellers--kind of like your 'fish-men.' All territory in the Southern Ocean past the edges of the continental shelf is considered theirs."

~~Please ignore the fact that Dominic once claimed there were no aquatic sentients in his world. The mun got Jossed to hell and back on that one.~~

~~Not a problem.~~

Ray nods. "This is an entirely different form of sentient being," he says. "From the fish-men, I mean. They live in the oceans west of my continent, although their territory extends further than that from what they told me. Does your world have octopuses? Eight-armed sort of blobby creatures that change color and live mostly near the bottom?"

"Yes... are you saying that's the species you're trying to contact?"

"They already made contact with us," Ray says. "One of their species did, anyway. There's hundreds of species of octopus on my world, and if what they told me and Jhalak here is true, then there's a confederacy of the sentient ones that's existed since before the humpback whales came into existence as a species. I mean, it could just be a legend, but we have no way of knowing just yet, you know?"

Dominic looks more curious than impressed by this. There are plenty of species on his world with cultures that old.

"How did they make contact, if they can't leave the water?"

Ray makes a face. "Apparently, a couple of traders in illegal drugs came up with a system of smuggling their goods into the country by leaving it in sealed, watertight containers offshore, to be retrieved later by divers. The Lemurians captured a couple of these divers, tied them up with deep-sea kelp, and shoved a stone tablet into their belts with an inscription asking the humans to send an ambassador to a point near a very deep cove. Then they managed to get the men to the surface- we're still not sure how they survived coming that far up in the water, but they did- and let them drift ashore."

"An inscription that you could read? How'd they manage to learn the language?"

"Humanity isn't very good about not throwing things in the ocean," Ray says. "And it doesn't really bother recovering cargo ships that go down with books on board, either. When you're a bottom-dwelling species of hyperintelligent octopus and it starts raining textbooks, you start trying to figure out what all the markings mean before the pages come apart. They've had some time to work on it."

"I suppose you should consider yourself fortunate that they're not upset about having human refuse dropped in their territory," remarks Dominic.

"Well, they're not all that happy about it, but they figure they've got bigger things to worry about first," Ray says.

"The... god or whatever it is?"

"Yep," Ray says. "Their legends credit it with having been the being that brought them to sentience. Apparently they got so scared of it once they realized what it wanted that they've been trying to keep it down ever since, and find any other octopoid or teuthid species that've achieved sentience to bring them into the fold."

Dominic is silent for a long moment.

"And... what does it want, exactly? Or were they unwilling to tell you?"

"They wouldn't give me specifics," Ray says, "but the metaphors they used to describe it referred to several very gory types of possible death in the oceans, and said that its goals were as terrible or worse. I still have the full text of the conversation saved here." He pats the computer. "I could show you if you wanted."

"Mh. Maybe later." He runs a hand over his face. "Ilka tuk tak, it's just one thing after another, isn't it?"

"Fair enough," Ray says. "It never ends. Really, it never ends... speaking of which, how are things going for you back home? Any better?"

Dominic heaves a sigh.

"No. I lost my job. And made a fool of myself in front of half of Barthis, to boot."

"Oh, jeez, I'm sorry to hear that," Ray says. "Should I ask how, or just buy you a drink?"

"Nnng. It's embarrassing... you know that candy I like?"