All of this spins through her mind but there's something underneath it, something at once subtle and all-encompassing, an alien sensation that's more an absence than a presence.

What is it like, to wake for the first time in a world with no dark shadows of ancient gods anywhere? It's the inverse of the oppressive pressure of the Bishops' taunts. The whole world feels light, empty, almost vaporous—ethereal, unreal. Unmoored, unnavigable, a trackless steppe with no landmarks in sight.

What is consciousness, without the constant visceral sensation of being powerless in the face of forces beyond your comprehension? What is being, without being small and weak and helpless in a world made for things so much bigger and stronger than you?

She takes deep breaths, trying to calm her panic, trying to orient to the change in circumstances. The last thing she remembers—she has to hunt for it, sifting through scrambled memories. Right, she was dithering about where to go and what to do, under immense pressure from her own stupid feelings, trying really hard not to retread the same stupid ground and not really getting anywhere. And now—this.

In a word: what.

You didn't do this, did you?

Her crown did not do this! Her crown is also kind of daunted by the sheer nothingness of this place. But oh, if it's really vacant, really truly unclaimed by any approximation of divinity, the possibilities that could open up that way—! How does the Lamb feel about world conquest? :D?

...no world conquest. Probably. Almost certainly. Depends how much this world manages to suck with no gods keeping it down.

The Lamb (Paril?) opens her (their?) eyes.

If Zmavlire'a spoke English, they would probably use he/him pronouns, with some choosing they/them.

Footsteps, and then knocking. The person – no, a drone – enters. It's wearing a red short-sleeved tunic fastened with a black cord, with similarly black pants. There are six holes in the tunic where the tentacles would pass through.

"Good morning, Controller. Would you like to have breakfast brought to you here, or eat in the dining room?"

[Paril will know, from the old person's memories, that the drone's name is Fels.]

She digs in her borrowed memories to try to find, not just the words that convey the meanings in her thoughts, but the appropriate register to speak in, and a characteristic sort of answer to have. She... thinks neither answer would be suspicious? She's not currently super confident in her ability to operate this enormous weirdly shaped body, so, "Here."

The person she... displaced, let's go with displaced... seems to have generally preferred phrasing things in short, blunt, efficient ways with as little embellishment as necessary to get the point across. She also thinks, hmm... it'd probably be less-suspicious-than-otherwise to add... "Not feeling well after hitting my head. Recovering. Remind me of upcoming schedule?"

Meanwhile, her crown is vibrating slightly on her head.

Sit still! she tells it sharply.

But but but drone! Drone!! Perfect Follower material, absolutely optimal in every way!!! Come on come on can't they Convert it? It wouldn't mind, it would probably love to become more properly theirs!

We are absolutely not Converting anyone until I understand what the fuck is happening. Sit still. Pretend you're inanimate.

Fiiiiiine. The crown reluctantly settles. (Drone...!)

[If Zmavlipre were put on Earth, they would probably use he/him with some using they/them. They have the concept of having a unified personal aesthetic, but not of gender, and so they don't have gendered pronouns. They do make a personal/impersonal pronoun distinction though, with drones receiving impersonal pronouns, like objects.]

"Yes, Controller," Fels says. "The date is the two dozen and second day of Spring."

[Paril will know that the year, which is three gross days long, is divided into three seasons, Spring, Summer, and Winter, each being a gross days long. The year starts on the Spring equinox, so this is also the two dozen and second day of the year.]

"No planned activities for today. Is there something you wish to do, Controller?"

If Paril doesn't ask Fels questions or talks more, the drone will leave to fetch Paril's breakfast.

Is 'headshake' a gesture that they have here...? It appears to be. She uses it. The person she's pretending to be would want to rest, recover, orient, and eat breakfast before embarking on any more significant project, and fortunately that is also exactly how the Lamb feels.

So: what would 'rest, recover, orient' look like from former-Paril's perspective? What is the local equivalent of lying in bed and having your friends if you have any bring you food, besides lying in bed and having your drones bring you food which appears to just separately be a normal way to go about one's morning?

(Drones!!)

Yes, crown, she's aware. Patience.

drones.....

She reaches an unfamiliar hand up to give her crown an actual physical pat. It settles a little better after this concrete expression of care. But she doesn't want to get caught patting herself on the head because that's weird, so she tucks her hand back under the blanket immediately.

Fels appears to understand the headshake. 

[Paril will know that drones are trained in 'impassivity': the practice of deliberately suppressing emotional suppression, and that his drones are trained in that, but that he has them refrain from doing that, at least when they're alone with him, so that Paril can read his drone's emotional expressions. Usually, Keepers train drones in it both as a method for asserting and maintaining control, and also because it is aesthetically pleasing.]

[Many people just stay at home and have their drones bring them food and entertain them! This is a very normal and mundane thing to do, in fact, you could say that that's the default state for Zmavlipre. If Paril wants to literally lie in bed all day and just eat, his drones will do just that.]

Fels appears very mildly confused at why Paril is patting his crown, but doesn't say anything. Instead, the drone leaves to fetch Paril's breakfast, which arrives on a wooden metal tray, which it will place on the bed. It has a stand and everything. There's chocolate rice pudding, fried eggs, dried small fish (like anchovies), lightly toasted bread, royal milk tea (with the correct amount of milk and sugar), and peach jam, which has already been placed on some of the bread, with some extra on the side. It's kind of a lot of food? It's enough to feed one and a half human men, but [Paril's memories are saying that this is a totally normal breakfast amount and is actually kind of on the lower side?]

There will be spoons and a knife there for him to use, but there aren't any other utensils. He will know that [you're also supposed to use your aftendrils to eat, because you can taste and smell with them. They can be used in an oscillating motion – repeatedly retracting and extending – to permit particles to dissolve in mucus and be brought inside to be 'smelled', as though a snake's tongue, but also that they can simply be stuck in food so that it can be tasted, like a regular human tongue. These functions are kept separate, though, because you eat by bringing food to your mouth – cleaning food particles stuck in aftendril-orifices is slightly inconvenient – some are only used to smell, and some only used to taste, at least when eating. It's common to leave one or two pairs of aftendrils to oscillate, and use the remaining pair or pairs to handle food. Paril's memories will also include the instinctual muscle memory of how to eat! He prefers using two pairs to oscillate.

This is also why hands are used to hold things normally and not the aftendrils.]

"It may please you to know that Sir Damin is planning to visit tomorrow, Controller, and that he probably send a message asking to confirm that you are still available," Fels adds.

Wow, she's going to need to guard vigilantly against Paril's instincts that say that being observed by one's drones does not relevantly count as being observed. Crown, you are behaving like an inanimate object for the foreseeable future.

(If they—)

We are absolutely not Converting anyone until I understand this place better! What if somebody notices something weird? No.

Anyway. Having never seen a human before in her life, the Lamb is pretty intimidated by this quantity of breakfast, but she operates her muscle memory appropriately. Focusing all her attention on eating as normally as possible does not leave much left over to enjoy it with, but she does have to admit it's pretty good. She misses her crappy little garden already, though. And her Followers are probably all going to be slaughtered without her.

(She can get new—)

So first of all, getting new followers doesn't actually fix the thing where people I took responsibility for are probably dying. Second of all, what have I told you about Converting the drones?

Her crown reluctantly assents. She suppresses the urge to pat it again, reminding herself that Fels is still in the room and in fact speaking to her at this very moment.

What, if anything, does she secondhandedly remember about 'Sir Damin'?

[Indeed! Old-Paril says that since drones aren't people, being with your drones counts as being 'alone'.]

Fels will stand motionlessly in the room and wait for Paril to finish eating, [which was Old-Paril's preference,] and will not leave unless explicitly instructed.

[Here is what Old-Paril has to say about Damin – only drones use honorifics, so Old-Paril doesn't.

Damin is also a farmer and a cattle rancher, and also runs a psychotherapy clinic in Kosfor City. His farm is smaller, but it's closer to Kosfor – only about an hour or so away, from his recollection. Old-Paril is kind of introverted (interacting with drones not being considered 'social') – even more than what would be expected from rural Keepers who live far away from cities. He doesn't even have a house in the city, which is common among rural Keepers. Damin has one, even though it's less necessary for him.

Old-Paril has few connections for this reason, but this also means that there are few people who would notice if he suddenly changed in personality. Even Damin, who probably visits the most out of all his friends, only visits about a dozen or so times per year.

Damin is a socialite and also a little irresponsible and indulgent sometimes.

Both of Damin's parents work in the government – his impregnating-parent in the Imperial government, and his birthing-parent in the Sranam provincial government – Sranam is the province both Damin and Paril live in. Government officials get paid a lot, so Damin and his parents are kind of really rich? But Damin's impregnating-parent was disappointed in him and only gave him the legal minimum allotment when he became of age.

Damin has a boyfriend which he's had for a few dozen years now, named Konrad. Old-Paril has met Konrad, but he doesn't know much about him. He knows he works as a drone trainer and, very weirdly, refuses to keep any drones – that is to say, he has no drones that call him his Controller. Damin does let Konrad be the Master to his drones, though.

Old-Paril will interject to say that a 'Master' is someone authorized to give orders to drones, and a drone may have multiple, but a drone may only have a singular 'Controller', which has absolute authority over order-giving – Masters may be restricted on what orders they give drones – and also have free reign on assigning or removing Master status from people. 

Konrad kind of seemed standoffish and vaguely angry? Not angry at him, just, In General, which is compounded by the fact that he is extremely muscular. Old-Paril is not sure whether or not this is the reason Damin chose Konrad – they're very different in personality, so maybe?

Damin will probably arrive tomorrow afternoon, stay the night, and then leave tomorrow at noon so that he can arrive home by evening.]

Her instinct is to tell Damin to go away because she's not feeling well, but it's probably a bad idea to abruptly cancel everything in the same moment that she takes over Paril's life. If she can get through one normal-seeming social visit, that significantly raises the odds of her being able to get away with this in the long term. Hopefully it won't suck too much.

The thought of an angry, standoffish, extremely muscular Enormous Tentaclefolk—yes, yes, she's now a normal size for this species, that doesn't change the fact that this species is still objectively way too large—is enough to have her alien hand itching for a sword, but luckily her crown recognizes that it would be a bad idea to give her one. Thank you, crown.

She could thank it with DRONES she is welcome and her crown will do its best to be good and patient and responsible and not keep eagerly pushing for Followers at every opportunity.

What would Paril say in this situation. "Damin visiting should still be fine." Would Paril be pleased? Yes, she thinks so. She should pretend to be a similar amount of pleased. "Looking forward to it."

"Understood, Controller. Would you like it to transmit this over the teletype network, or for it to wait for Sir Damin's confirmation message rather than preëmpting it," Fels asks. 

[The teletype network is basically like telex, and Paril is subscribed to a provider which lets him make unlimited communications, billed seasonally. If Paril says yes, Fels will type up a message which will be printed on Damin's teletype machine – Fels already knows Damin's teletype address.]

What would Paril prefer here? Hmm... "Wait for the message, then reply." They would've preferred to have the message sent immediately if there was any significant chance of the message getting lost otherwise, but their judgment of Fels's competence was that things don't slip its mind often enough for that to be an issue.

Meanwhile, her crown, determinedly trying not to obsess over the prospect of Converting drones, instead turns its thoughts to those faint secondhand memories of Paril giving birth. Were those that Paril gave birth to... drones? Does Paril still own those drones, or did they sell them or give them away? Because, in the crown's opinion, it feels especially right for the children of their body to become their Followers, and wrong for those drone-children to be out there somewhere in the world totally unknown to them and not able to become their Followers at all. ...admittedly this is not not obsessing over the prospect of Converting drones, but! But! The crown is trying, and at least it's focusing on different aspects of the situation now?

...April is really not sure how she feels about any of that, but, okay, she too wants to know where the children of this body have got to. She consents to go searching Paril's memories for the answer.

Fels has been trained in secretary duties and does it very well. [Old-Paril will say that Fels tested well on the exams testing whether it would be worthwhile to train it as a computer, but that the drone hasn't actually gone through any. Fels can still do math, just more slowly and requiring writing materials, and aids.]

[Yes, Paril kept all the drones he birthed! The skillset he could impart on his drones, agricultural labor, isn't rare, and he's not an expert drone trainer like Konrad. Drone trainers are divided into two sets, the first being people which can impart a particular skillset, such as calculation teachers. The second set encompasses trainers which teach 'basic' skills like impassivity at a high level – such as parade drones which have to stand for hours upon hours without moving – or which specialize in altering a drone's psychology or default behavior. The term 'trainer' can encompass both definitions, but mostly it only refers to the latter. Konrad does both – he does combat training and survival training.

Paril has not had any Keeper children. Drones can be had both sexually and asexually, but Keepers only sexually, and Paril hasn't had a long-term monogamous relationship with anyone which would have been suitable for that. Old-Paril was somewhat interested in having children, but didn't want to have any until he had renovated his farm, both to make it more efficient, and also to prepare it for being subdivided when it was time for him to give his child an allotment, or perhaps had gotten rich enough to have a second property he could pass on. All of Paril's drone children were borne asexually, of which there are eight. The rest were inherited or bought. He has four dozen drones total.

Old-Paril will also clarify that, while it's thought that the ancestors of remna were ovoviviparous, remna today are fully oviparous. Remna gestate an egg for about a year, lay it, and then incubate the egg for another year, whereupon it hatches. It takes a long time for remna to mature: a dozen years of childhood, and four years of puberty. Drones lack the physical and mental development to do any work more strenuous or complicated than cleaning and maybe light physical labor until after puberty, and of course, you would need to train it afterwards unless you were only looking for a simple laborer. Simple labor is decreasing in value now with better technology, so in the most recent gross years, the Imperial Census has recorded decreases rather than increases in the number of drones per person – people now prefer upskilling already existent drones rather than birthing new ones.]

...all right, under those circumstances, the Lamb is willing to let her crown dictate that if convenient, the drones Paril personally birthed should be the first ones they Convert, if it comes up. She feels very weird about this, but if they Convert any drones they're gonna get them all eventually unless there's a spectacularly good reason not to, because the unconverted drones would super definitely notice that something was up with the Follower-drones.

There is so much breakfast. It takes time to feed a body this big. She's more than halfway through now, though. Just gotta keep on trucking. How's she doing at Eating Normally? Pretty good? She feels like she's probably doing pretty good, but it's hard to tell. At least Fels would almost certainly react visibly if she was being super weird. That takes a lot of the pressure off.

[Old-Paril will say that they'll definitely notice, but that they also won't really...react to it? Unless their orders change, or the Converted drones disobey orders, they won't really care. Drones are there to serve their Masters, after all, and so having themselves change to fit their Masters' needs better is like, normal.]

Paril is doing great. Keepers eat kind of slowly, normally? It's common to eat slowly because you want to savor the food, or eat slowly because you're also being entertained [which is common]. Fels remains motionless save for slow aftendril-oscillation and doesn't react to Paril eating.

...it definitely seems like magic is not normal, though, and even if the drones won't object to it, they'll still notice, and she would like it if no one notices. Drones may not locally qualify as people but for her purposes they qualify as having thoughts.

(They could check whether drones have thoughts, if... okay, okay.)

[Magic, as the Lamb and the Crown understand it, don't exist here. The closest thing they have to magic is ritualism, which is the process of using rituals to evoke powerful emotions, which was the predecessor to hypnosis. It was thought, back then, that rituals had real effects on the world, but experiments were done about that and now everyone knows that rituals only operate on the social and psychological spheres, and not the physical one. Which doesn't make them worthless! Many people are professional ritualists – usually those people are also priests.]

[Drones do have thoughts! And there have been many treatises published on drone psychology, what with drones being the linchpin of their economy, but none have actually peered into the mind of one.]

They can be the first-ever Keeper to read a drone's mind, and then never ever tell anyone about that happening, ever.

...though... if this species doesn't senesce... forever is going to be a long time.

Still probably a good idea to think very long and very hard about it before making any irrevocable decisions like letting anyone find out about magic, though.

Breakfast is winding down. Does she dare try to get out of bed?

Well, right now after admitting to hitting her head is probably the best time to fuck up at using her body, and fucking up at using her body is going to be an inevitable prelude to getting any good at it. She downs her last morsel of rice, shuffles clumsily to the edge of the bed, and tries to stand. Ugh, so much leg. Why. It's not that the muscle memory isn't there, it is, she just feels clumsy and awkward and like everything about this physical form is terrible, and that makes it hard to move smoothly.

Fels will wordlessly lift the tray as soon as Paril looks done with it, and also tries attempting to leave.

The torsos of Zmavlire'a are bigger compared to humans of the same height, but it is indeed a lot of leg.

Does Paril want to stay in his room and do bedroom things – the bedroom is large and has an attached bathroom – or move around?

Fels can definitely leave. Fels leaving is a great idea.

The Lamb gets out of bed, and when the drone is out and the door is closed and she's looked around to double-check that there's no one here and then checked again to make sure that in addition to no one being here there are also no drones, she finally calls her crown into her hand as a sword.

It is a... rather bigger sword than it used to be, scaled to the size of her body. She blinks at it. Wow. Should've predicted that. It's really a lot. Okay. She relaxes her hand and her crown flows back up onto her head and resumes playing dead there. She (looks around to check again that she's unobserved and) pats it again. Sorry. I'll... think about maybe Converting the drones after Damin visits when we've got some room to breathe. I don't think I'm gonna be okay with you being visibly weird in front of them without that, and it's not really fair to you to make you sit still forever.

Okay. The first item on the agenda here will be: walk around the bedroom and attached bathroom, perhaps figure out using said bathroom, then take stock of how well she's doing at walking and if she's capable of acting basically normal about it, go out on a little tour of her estate. It's weird having a home she's only ever seen in someone else's memories.

And because shuffling awkwardly around her bedroom doesn't occupy much attention on its own, she also goes digging in her memories for more about this 'hypnosis' thing. There was a concerning implication that while magic isn't real in this world, mind control might be?? Worst of both worlds tbh.

Fels will leave, but [the drone will stay just outside the door to listen for whether Paril needs anything. Paril is rather unusual in sometimes preferring to be absolutely alone – usually Keepers keep at least one drone by their side for both instinctual and practical reasons.]

No one observes the Crown shifting, unless it makes a loud noise, in which case Fels may hear.

The bedroom's furniture has the same red-white-black color scheme, but the items which are inside aren't. [The other items are kept inside so they don't aesthetically clash. That's what furniture is for!] There's a walk in closet, which will contain more than two dozen separate outfits for each season (for a total of eight) and matching accessories, but would be considered 'small' by Zmavlipre standards. The clothes will also tend towards the red-white-black aesthetic, and will usually have relatively simple printed patterns or simply have flat colors, and will have similarly simple cuts, tending towards loose tunics and shirts. It's currently early spring, but this is a subtropical climate, so while many people would still be wearing a lighter winter outfit now, wearing warmer clothing would not be unreasonable.]

There will also be a writing desk with drawers next to it containing writing materials. It will also have his wax seal, which he prefers to keep here rather than having it as a signet ring. [It functions similarly to a signature, and is preferred to it – many documents require sealing. Usually you have your drones take dictation and write or type it out for you, but sometimes you want or need to write something yourself.]

There is a vanity with cosmetics and perfumes, but there isn't much on it. [Old-Paril didn't really care much about that, but he does have something in case he gets invited to somewhere fancy. Which isn't very often.]

There will be a locked box containing precious items like jewelry, gold bullion, and also a diary. The diary is uninteresting because Paril already has all of Old-Paril's memories, so it's kind of redundant. [The lock number is 821889.]

The bathroom is enormous and will be like, half the size of the bedroom. This is something where Old-Paril was normal in – loving bathtime. There's a big bathtub, which might more accurately be called a tiny pool, given its size. You could fit several people in there.

There's a toilet, which should be self-explanatory.

There's a cabinet near the bathtub which has like, so many bath products. You have salts, oils, various scrubber or scraper type things for your skin, and also books? [It's popular to have drones read to you during bathtime. Most people have drones attend to them during bathtime.]

There is also a shower in the case Paril wants to use that rather than using the large extravagant bathtub.

(The shifting is, thankfully, completely silent.)

It's weird that Paril's life was so aesthetically congruent with the Red Crown. Very convenient, but weird. Almost as though... she's here in part because of that congruence? Did this enormous alien's random head injury somehow call them here across the unfathomable gulf between worlds??? That would be so bizarre.

Overall, the red-black-white aesthetic... works reasonably well for her. She can't decide whether wearing clothing with fluffy white fur on it would be soothing and familiar or unsettling and nightmarish, but luckily the choice is out of her enormous alien hands because Paril does not own any clothing with fluffy white fur on it.

She unlocks and relocks the box just to be sure that she can do that, and then (with a glance around to make extra sure no one is here) unlocks it again and has her crown pocket some of the gold and jewelry. Her crown complains that the gold isn't right and would be barely worth using for construction, but it seems to be an item of value here and it's probably a good idea to keep some of that in a format that can't possibly be taken from them. Then she locks it once more and goes to investigate the bathroom. The bathroom, from the vague impressions she's already picked up in her borrowed memory, seems like it might turn out to be pretty weird by her standards.

Yep! She was right! It's pretty weird! Not that she objects to the enormous bathtub, that part's fine although unnervingly extravagant, but: toilet. She is gonna have to take a minute to process the existence and nature of toilets. It... with water... so that when you... it just goes away?? No mess?? How? Who thought this up??? It's an amazing invention, don't get her wrong, it's just also a lot.

There's clothing with fluffy black fur, but that's only on two winter jackets which would be way too warm to wear in this weather.

[Yes, gold is used as currency here, but gold bullion usually isn't. Most people trade with Imperial rupnu, which is exchangeable with gold at any bank. One rupnu can be exchanged for one grake – one gram – of gold. That's the minimum amount you need for it to be exchanged, but no one does that except to get the fancy collectible coins whose designs change, because the seigniorage fee is too high for it to be worth it. One rupnu is subdivided into one gross fepni.]

[It doesn't just go away, exactly. In the cities that does happen, since they have sewers and process sewage centrally, but in this case there's a septic tank which causes waste solids to settle, and permits the liquids to disperse in a drain field, after it's been processed by anaerobic bacteria. The solids do need to be collected by a company to be processed though – usually you'll need to do that once every six years. The drones can handle that.

Zmavlire'a take cleanliness very seriously! Both because of concern about disease, and also because they are sensitive to bad smells.]

That's so fair of them!! The Lamb is pretty impressed. Enormous aliens, you win this round. Toilets are great.

After thoroughly examining the facilities and turning the water on and off in the bath and shower, she heads back out to the bedroom, moving more confidently now. She would like to select an outfit that is mostly red and white with only enough black to match her crown, and then venture forth into the rest of the house.

But wait! What kind of outfit? There are several to choose from: some that are meant to be cozy and worn around the house, some that are suitable for walking around outside but isn't optimized for beauty, and some that are meant to be used if you want to meet someone or want to go to the city.