really just an excuse to test out google sketchup

instead of using aurora to power electric lights a lot of times you just put aurora densely packed into a transparent contained and use that as a lightsource. a LOT of places in auroral oceans are basically powered by the unreal engine

anyway

Ancillary 2 has a lot of Brinnesch influence. this restaurant/bar/inn/game house (this is the restaurant section of it) is pretty typical of old Brinneland style stuff.

Alieka and two of the other library staff have gone out for a team dinner. Alieka got some kind of curry something. Thick spice-heavy stews are big parts of both Brinnesch and A'Abrin cooking traditions, so they're really common. This one's fairly spicy.

Schanice, Alieka's roommate and co-worker, has some kind of big salad platter, drenched in a tangy sauce. It's pretty good, but it's a lot more food than it looks even all spread out!

Jiiji is a professor from Gardenwall University and is the person in charge of the library. Ostensibly. Schanice would say she could stand to do a bit more work. Like, any work. Any at all.

It isn't that Jiiji doesn't get along with the rest of the library staff, it's just that the entire staff are all gemeren, and most of them were raised in true Brinnesche households. Jiiji's a Central-born letrax who grew up an extremely cosmopolitan culture, among a family of letraxi. It's been generations since the New World was settled, but it hasn't been so many that the difference between the gemeren's Brinnesch traditions and the letraxi Escalihaxim traditions are... still pretty different.

Making this much of a fuss over not getting your drink yet is just honestly inappropriate in Brinnesche gemeren culture. It's a bit more acceptable in Brinnesche fetradden culture, which the waiter is, but it's just not something you do unless you're making a point, in that case. Also her tail is smushing up on Alieka. Personal space!

Jiiji has a 4th stage degree, which is the highest academic degree you can get in Central.

On clothing!

Schanice is wearing pretty normal Central clothing, even though she wasn't born on Central proper. White is the traditional color of Central, usually accompanied with light green or blue accents. Mantles and various kinds of body wraps are the popular fashion and she's rocking it standard. No piercings, though. Piercings have specific meanings in Brinnesch gemeren culture, and while they're really popular in Central, Schanice shows her provincal roots in their absence.

We've already said how Alieka's clothing is very heavily inspired by the clothing of Gammerlern, the gemeren half of Brinneland. The clothing Schanice is wearing is a mix of Brinnesch (fetradden) and A'Abrin influences, while Alieka's style isn't exactly what they'd wear back in the Gammerlern province, but it's pretty close. Actual differentiated skirts and shirts and shoulder sleevelets. The colored ties she wears are her two favorite colors, when she actually enjoys colors.

You can see Alieka has three ladder piercings in her ear, which is something she picked up while going to school in Central. To a native Central citizen, if Alieka and Schanice were put together, most would peg Alieka as having actually spent time on the island. Schanice's lack of piercings really is that glaring!

You can also see the effects of Alieka's Void soul. Even in direct light, shadows with absolutely no real source move in marbling patterns across her body at all times. The shadow that should be behind her is splayed out into grasping bits. She's rooting herself to the benchback so she feels more secure. She's using the arm of her Not (the shell of her Void soul) to hold her spoon, because that's just a thing you can do.

Jiiji is naked, because clothing is really, really hard to do comfortably for letraxi. They barely have anything naughty showing, like, their vent isn't even really visible normally, so no one really honestly expects it. Jewelry and hats and scarves are the most popular clothing, but Jiiji's probably hung over or just stopped caring at some point in her life. Probably both.

You can tell how traditionally Schanice and Alieka were raised too, to a degree.

Gemere horns are basically auroral antennae. They can sense changes in other souls, the locations of all living things around them, they just pick up all the deets. Gemeren raised exclusively among gemeren tend to have very, very flattened affects, and Alieka usually comes off as super unemotional and unengaged. That isn't because she's a Void adulator--it COULD have been the reason--but Alieka was raised exclusively among gemeren. When you do that, you get people who are so used to just reading the emotions of everyone around them there's no need to emote with your body language, or your voice, very much. Alieka's voice is always quiet, flat, and simple. She doesn't have her horn to sense other people's emotions anymore, but those habits just stuck. It does help that the Void makes it hard for her to feel emotions too though!

Schanice was raised among other races along with gemeren, so she picked up on body language more, and uses it. Her voice is more expressive, her posture more engaged. It can be really weird for people not used to gemeren-raised gemeren to just be emotionally flat like that (since, again, they are just so used to everyone knowing everyone's emotions as a default). Schanice skipped that and is about as emotionally expressive as you'd expect a person to be. Sometimes a bit subdued, though.

It's hard to tell if Jiiji's overbearing, confident, strongly condescending personality and constant gestures are an artifact of letrax nature or if she's just that annoying. Ugh, Jiiji.