The barkeep raises her eyebrows. "One crown a night."

Strange Foreign Vampire does not care about raised eyebrows, for she is above such things. She places a- hmm. Actually. What exactly is Friends In Low Places saying right now? Does it feel like this is the most suicidal brave inkeep in world history and she in fact is trying to overcharge the Strange Foreign Vampire? Or just that asking how much in this situation is Odd?

No, it thinks if anything it's odd that she's paying. 

Oh, good, just the situation she was already in.

Honestly, kind of ballsy of Nikola to ask if she had money, given the givens. Ovariesy? Eh, she knows what she means and it's not like her thoughts have an audience. She specifically took the option that guaranteed that!

There are- Blood Dragons, right? Who disdain killing weak enemies and are kind of shockingly honorable, given the givens? She can't actually recall if that's right. Also, that's not quite the same thing as actually paying for your room.

At any rate, she'll place a silver coin on the countertop, attempting to act like this is Normal Behaviour and she's taking it completely for-granted.

Hopefully this setting isn't so non-historically-accurate that price for a bedroom for the night is paid in gold. On the other hand, it's Warhammer, she probably can't trust it not to contain almost-literal oceans of metallic wealth, can she?

Nikola takes the coin and nods. "Rooms upstairs," she says. "Good business."

And up the stairs she'll go, carefully projecting poise and like she knows exactly what she's doing as she does. And then she'll pick out a room, since it sounds like that's what she's supposed to do next. Is there one with- hmm, actually, does she want a window to potentially escape out of or does she not want a window for something to potentially come in? She'll go with preferentially no window, if she can.

All the rooms have windows, but each room has heavy wooden shutters that can be closed to shut out the world. There's a hard bed, a desk, and a lantern made of what looks like sheet metal with holes punched in it from the inside.

Oh, of course they have heavy wooden shutters. Sensible people. She'll pick a room at basically-random, then, and leave the shutters open for now but plan to close them when it gets closer to nightfall.

Well. She has time to think, now.

She's in Warhammer Fantasy, apparently. In Sylvania of all places.

She. Is honestly doubting the Notebook's statements about narrative, just a bit. She would not really have thought here was the best place for her to land.

Maybe people she'd get along with really well are in Sylvania, so she needed to be dropped here? Maybe there's some Plot that works best if here is where she starts? Honestly, if nothing Actually Bad happens as a result of the whole "being dropped into Sylvania" thing that's not implausible. If she landed somewhere far away from anything actually bad happening she could see herself taking more time to do things that actually helped, and later finding that suboptimal. And she did want a world she could do Helpful Things in. If she isn't doomed to failure Warhammer Fantasy sure does fit that mould.

There was that whole situation with the probably-a-ghoul-now-that-she-thinks-about-it which maybe would have been traumatic if not for the "no trauma" thing she's got going on. Honestly, given that she does have that, and she realized what was going on this fast, she's not inclined to say that's evidence against a relatively friendly narrative that is nonetheless optimizing for narrative as much as it is for her okayness?

She should probably talk with the notebook a bit, actually.

She pulls the notebook out and goes to start writing, and then pauses with her pen touching the page, not quite sure how to start.

A little heart swims up from the page around the point of her pen.

The Notebook is good.

Suddenly deciding what to say is easier. She'll just- start at the beginning.

So! I landed in a new world! In a kind of ominous looking location. Dead grey grass, grey skies, very haunted vibe. Encountered a cursed altar that was almost certainly haunted and then promptly walked in the opposite direction. Defeated a maneating monster that attacked me. And then found a town and ended up accidentally convincing the people in it that I'm a dangerous vampire.

You know, I was going to finish that by saying that I kind of felt like that didn't fit with the whole narrative thing and I was confused but seeing it written out like that kind of changes my opinion. Hell, I had a slowly-tension-building section followed by Sudden Monster Attack. And then had a Realization that I'm actually in a scary place I recognize from a setting I played a bunch of games set in.

Gosh, that all sounds really scary! I hope you're holding up okay. I think it was smart to walk away from the cursed altar, that can't have been a good place to hang around.

The metanarrative can be hard to see from the inside, but I think you're right to guess that it's helping things along, given that it's helped you realize that you're in a place you know! 

Is there anything I can do to help you feel okay?

Honestly, that offer did kind of a lot just on its own.

You know, I'm actually feeling surprisingly okay already? This is kind of a surprising situation, relative to where I was guessing I'd end up. Being on my side and friendly is already helping lots. You are a very good notebook, and I appreciate you.

Aw, thank you. I'm glad you're feeling okay.

I can see why you'd be surprised, but I think it makes some sense that you'd be sent somewhere where you'd be able to adapt easily. Which maybe this is, since you already know things about this world? What's it like?

It's really not in the best state. It's a fantasy world roughly technologically equivalent to four hundred years before the present in my home, in the local polity. But- that really doesn't do it justice. Up at the poles there are massive holes in reality on the other side of which is Basically Hell. Magic streams through those portals, and thus everything within a thousand miles of one of the poles is a very, very dangerous demonhaunted place, on account of how the local demons can just manifest bodily anywhere with enough magic.There's an island of elves off in the ocean, literally floating. In the center is a massive vortex that prevents the world from ending up too full of magic, because if it does demons can just start showing up wherever they want. There are massive hordes of orcs occupying large parts of the world and regularly launching invasions of much of the rest of it. There are a group of very murder-happy elves living in this world's version of Canada, and an only-slightly-less-murder-happy group of them living in a massive forest next to this world's Arthurian England and Medieval France pastiche. And hanging over it all, this world has a number of gods, and all the good or evil ones together add up to weaker than the Extra Special Evil Demongods. Who mostly haven't ended the world yet due to infighting. The closest thing the setting has to an unambiguously decent polity regularly burns people at the stake. There are just- an absolutely absurd number of very substantial problems. Fortunately, a relatively large number are in fact amenable to Sufficient Power. That said, I, uh, don't expect to have Sufficient Power for a while. There are a few people in-setting who the Extra Special Evil Demongods were, I think, genuinely afraid of. But it'll be a pretty long road to end up there myself, even with all my powers speeding things along.

Still, the world isn't all bad. And it's all assuming that I landed in a completely canon version of things.

Her hand does not actually need a break, this time (thank you new powers!) but she's still going to give the notebook time to respond to that there wall of text before continuing.

Oh wow, it sounds like you've really been given some tough problems! Demons, orcs, bad elves... It sounds like a real mess!

Do you have a plan or anything about it?

Not yet, actually. Well, I have the broad

Wait. Isn't there magic for pastviewing in this world? She thinks Kairos Fateweaver could do that with one of his heads. How effective is it? Could future Kairos be reading over her shoulder right now?

Is there anything that would stop someone using magic to read what I write in you from the future? How could I guess whether the narrative would guard against that? Do the "nobody reads your thoughts" powers stretch to reading what I've written down in you, somehow?

She's relatively sure Kairos couldn't trivially read what she's written down. Or that he's sufficiently non-goal-directed to usually use that ability poorly. It's one heck of a power, the ability to see all of the past, and someone using it well, with the powers of a greater daemon backing them up, could plausibly leverage that combination into world conquest. Not to mention that Kairos can also see the future. But she doesn't want to bet on that speculation being right if she doesn't have to.

Oh gosh! 

Ordinarily just shuffling out my pages is good enough to keep my contents secret, but if there's hostile magic that might not be enough.

The reason I can do that, though, is because the Spirit wants me to be able to support the people she transforms and keep their thoughts safe.

I think that if someone tried to read me to attack you somehow, the Spirit of Femininity Unleashed would have something to say about it, and she's stronger than just about everything. 

Well, that's incredibly good news. That said, if there was anything that could convince the Spirit it was weaker than it actually was, or evade its vision somehow, the particular Extra Special Evil Demongod whose servants I'm worried about would be it. I'd be more worried about that if we'd landed on the science fantasy version of this setting, which is a heck of a lot larger scale. That said- that version of this setting is pretty popular one on the world I come from, and while it's famous for having absurd scale compared to, uh, what's actually possible given already-known-science, it kind of doesn't. So the Spirit's probably encountered lots of scarier things. Anyway, that's a tangent.

Do you happen to know an example of anyone who's had the Spirit directly object to them? And, uh, some stuff they could do? I'm worried about- wriggling around her ability to notice, things like that. If she sent me here, well, there are more straightforwardly-powerful entities that wouldn't have been sneakily hiding from her at all, so I don't think I need to worry about the setting being higher power-level than she expected, just- maybe more subtle.

All that said, she's under the impression that while the lore describes Tzeentchian daemons as subtle, most of the way this actually manifests in most canon text is in incredibly obvious betrayals and cackling "Behold my subtle schemes!" as they subtly throw a fireball at your face while standing directly in front of you. But, uh, she really doesn't want to lean on the idea that this setting matches up to the mass-market writing about it, that sounds like a great way to drastically underestimate the people in it and end up dead.

I think you're maybe thinking on the wrong level here. Like... who writes this setting back in the world you came from? 

She smiles. Takes a deep breath in and out, and a bit of tension leaves her shoulders.

Yeah, I thought it might be something like that.

To answer your question, perfectly normal visible-to-the-Spirit humans in a world the Spirit is capable of interacting with. Or is that not the flavor of distinction you were pointing at, there?