who will be coming?

[small_magics]

Aianon has made a plant in the open airless space above the surface of Thilanushinyel. It is a very, very large plant - some dragons will be attending the party, after all, even if Ansharil in particular is going to be assorted small things and stay on Sarion's person the bulk of the time.

The locals will be Sarion, her beloveds, their other beloved, the five conjured dragons (and their Bondmates, where applicable: Virgivere and Lissa), and Liselen - Magania has, as usual, declined, and so far no Bell party has featured Bell parents.

Amariah is bringing her boyfriend and spontaneous daughter and two of the spontaneous daughter's friends, as well as an Alethian instance of the Rupert template.

Shell Bell is bringing Pearl and Screwdriver.

Golden is bringing her usual large contingent, as usual not including her husband but including her daughter and daughter's grown fosterling (the other remaining at home) and his wolf, both mothers-in-law and one father-in-law, adopted siblings, staff members including the Joker and Nathan, and the children of the aforementioned.

Glass is bringing both wives, all three daughters, Kanim, and her cat. She invited Icarin and Valeria, but their parents are not willing to let them gallivant into other worlds unsupervised and had a scheduling conflict.

Stella's bringing a smattering of people including Alice, Anna, Sandy, Libby, Bridget, her college roommate Janine, and Lazarus.

Tab is bringing Aelise (but not Kers) and Luhan.

Etty is bringing only Nona.

Aether, likewise, brings no one but Celo.

Pattern comes with Ripper, Slipstick, Queenie, and Ghosty.

Aegis is accompanied by her four-bodied boyfriend, Merryweather, Whitlock, and Howlett.

Aurora comes with Brilliance, Lexi with her Device Persica, Agent Honey with her Device Adularia, and Beth.

Rose brings her husband and three children and her former apprentice, Luc.

Angela brings her husband, her four children, several of her friends, and some of those friends' children and grandchildren with and without wings. Keziah also brings a friend.

Juliet shows up with Soph, Minus, Red, Giles, James, Virginia, Minnie, Ike, and Val.

Cam brings Jellybean and Tilly and stops there.

And from unBelled worlds hail additional Sherlocks and Tonies, Darcy, Matilda, Pepper, and Eights.

Comments

[newtimov]

"You might not," says Ike. "Wow, that's weird. I mean, worlds without approximately three thousand species of demon I can understand, but I don't know what to do with a world without penguins."

[snowandsparks]

"Maybe we do and I just haven't heard of them? I think we're missing a bunch of common animals, for - some reason."

[newtimov]

"Interesting! I wonder why. Do you have a bunch of common animals that the rest of us don't, or are you just generally undersupplied?"

[snowandsparks]

"So far I haven't mentioned anything except angels and gotten a 'we don't have those'. Uh, horses? Cows? Cats? Rabbits? Chickens? Hawks? Mice? Doves? ...Salmon?"

[newtimov]

"Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes," says Ike. "That's really interesting. What do the rest of us have that you don't?"

[snowandsparks]

"Penguins, apparently. Demons. Dragons, I guess, if those are an animal? We also don't have that vaguely goatlike thing I saw wandering around with a single antler or whatever it was coming out of its forehead."

[newtimov]

"That would be a unicorn," says Ike. "I don't think we have unicorns in my world either. I also don't think we have dragons, but I wouldn't be astonished if I found out that we actually did have one or both of those."

[snowandsparks]

"Also I definitely don't know about any animals that live in my world but not on my planet," Lucas adds.

[newtimov]

"And your planet... is not Earth, right? So actually if you have an Earth in your world and you don't live on it, it would make a lot of sense if your planet had some subset of Earth species, because whenever humans made the trip in the first place they probably brought a bunch with them but it would be really difficult to bring every single species on Earth to some new planet. There are a lot."

[snowandsparks]

"Yeah, the planet is just called Samaria. So is the main continent. It's not as confusing as it sounds."

[newtimov]

"It sounds moderately confusing," says Ike.

[snowandsparks]

"It's usually pretty easy to tell from context. If you're sailing to Samaria, you mean the continent. If you're taking a spaceship, you mean the planet. If 'Jane' is helping then you mean the world."

[newtimov]

"Contextual distinctions!" says Ike, giggling.

[snowandsparks]

"Yeah. Maybe eventually the world will get renamed, I don't know, the Archangel-Elect is in charge of that."

[newtimov]

"Which is sort of weird," muses Ike. "I mean, not that I know any other good ways to do it, but it feels like naming entire universes should be a slightly more democratic process. Or at least more collaborative."

[snowandsparks]

"What does 'democratic' mean?"

[newtimov]

"Um, a way of making decisions where everyone has an equal say in the outcome," he says. "Roughly speaking. I could explain more but then there would be politics and that is not my area of expertise."

[snowandsparks]

Lucas thinks about this. "But how does it work?"

[newtimov]

"By approximation, most of the time. People decide on a bunch of options for something and then everyone says which one they like best and the option with the most support wins. It gets more complicated with more people involved."

[snowandsparks]

"Yeah, it sounds it. Why would that be a good way to name worlds?"

[newtimov]

"It wouldn't necessarily, I'm just not sure the way they're currently getting named is better."

[snowandsparks]

"Yours has a kind of funny name," says Lucas.

[newtimov]

"Yes. Sunshine. Because our vampires catch fire in it," says Ike. "I feel like we probably have better distinguishing characteristics than that."

[snowandsparks]

"What would you name it?"

[newtimov]

"I'm not sure," he says. "And there's the whole rest of the family to consider, too - they named Apollo and Helios after the theme. I think our most obvious distinguishing characteristic is probably all the different species of demons, and I'm not sure how to turn that into a name exactly, but if I could I would probably like it better than 'Sunshine'. Actually, come to think of it, I wonder if there is a name for our worldsheaf already in some local language? Thousands of species of demon makes for a lot of languages. I will ask Juliet to find out."