#bartimaeus sequence

Rules: make a poll with five of your all-time favourite characters and then tag five people to do the same. See which character is everyone's favourite.

EDIT to apologize to Soren because my phone autocorrected and I didn't notice until now! I am so sorry my grumpy mage T_T

But, just for the hell of it:

Bartimaeus, in Murderbot's setting, is... I guess a secunit? A really old unkillable cockroach secunit his owners can't get rid of, like Murderbot. However, it's very significant to Bartimaeus's character that he's so old he has seen several civilizations rise and fall, and I think the only thing that could replicate that is if he's a pre-Corporate-Rim proto-secunit that's been upgraded and rebuilt so many times he basically passes for one. I think Bart is also, if not outright a combat secunit then at least a machine intelligence that can hack and do espionage.

He is also way, way more murderous than Murderbot is. Bartimaeus hates his job (according to him. Strangely seems to enjoy the challenge more than he's willing to admit and will brag about his record to anyone willing to listen), hates 99% of his clients and will happily kill the corporate douchebags who usually rent him out if he can get away with it. Which I guess here would mean figuring out the authorization codes to temporarily disable his governor module. One of the reasons this crossover doesn't really work is because Bartimaeus is canonically very good at killing his summoners, and a secunit is going to get memory wiped or fully destroyed for doing that. And now that I'm thinking about it, the two characters kind of have opposite relationships with their humans: Bartimaeus is usually trying to convince his humans that he's a person, whereas Murderbot's humans are usually trying to convince Murderbot that it's a person.

Kitty Jones fits into Murderbot!verse the best, TBH, because she's just kind of living a cyberpunk plot. The Resistance are I guess a group of humans who've gotten special very illegal-on-the-corporate-rim augments (secretly bankrolled by corporate exec Makepeace) and use them to sabotage corporations.

Nathaniel is... Bartimaeus's dumbass client who's trying to use him to do corporate espionage. Repeatedly. While Bartimaeus is contractually obligated to not let him get killed, and Nat finds a way to blackmail him even though Bartimaeus finds all the passcodes to lock Nathaniel out of controlling his governor module.

Ptolemy was I guess a brilliant researcher who was trying to truly understand machine consciousness and writing papers trying to convince the world that bots and constructs are truly sentient while the corporations tried to suppress it. Invented a piece of software that can use a normal feed interface augment to "Full Dive" upload your mind into The Feed, but caused serious damage to his own brain wiring while testing it.

As for other spirits... uhh, Faquarl is also pre-CR, and if Bartimaeus isn't a combat secunit than Faquarl definitely is. Jabor is an actual goddamn combat bot, and the various Afrits in the series would also probably be either combat bots or bot-pilots of serious military ships. Foliots and imps are the equivalent of normal lower-level bots, with some imps just being bot-piloted drones. Special shoutout to Simpkin probably being a similar model of bot-form human to Miki. And I guess in this AU, Queezle is a relatively new secunit who got a couple long-duration contracts with research teams on the level of PresAux or Art's crew, then got thrown into a pitched intercorporate war / hostile takeover. Also featuring: The Golem as an armored killdozer which runs entirely on extremely simple analog tech that makes it basically unjammable and is itself an immensely powerful jammer / radiation hazard that can fry the processors of drones or bots that get near it. And Uraziel as an alien remnant MI? And Ammet, given his preferred form being a shadow, I think could be an extremely powerful disembodied MI that travels through the feed and takes over systems at will.

Another graceful hand movement, and the column of molten glass freezes and reshapes itself, solidifying into the cool, flat surface of an obsidian mirror. Peering into it, Khaba is somewhat surprised to recognise himself - it has been a while since he looked into a mirror and saw himself looking back.

Love | Water | Revival | Kitty + Traps & snares | Temptation | Colourfulness | Farrar

¡What If! Nat lives (and Farrar too)

Nathaniel thought he had seen them all, in his life: spirits in human bodies, an enormous uprising, surviving all of these and even a giant explosion. And yet, that scene had left him completely speechless.

«It’s good to see that life can still be surprising» Bartimaeus commented, sprawled on the table of the Council in the shape of a quite fat cat. «You didn’t see this coming, did you?»

Of course not: if he hadn’t been discharged from the hospital two weeks ago, Nathaniel could have easily believed that it was a lucid dream, caused by some painkiller.

And instead, this was reality: Kitty Jones and Jane Farrar talking civilly about one motion to be approved or another. They even had two cups of tea in front of them.

«Isn’t this nice?» the cat commented, rolling over his furry belly. «Everyone getting so along. For now, of course».

At that remark, both women turned around sharply.

«Bartimaeus, has your opinion been requested?» said Kitty, tartly, while Farrar just levelled an icy look at him.

«I was just saying, since I have a long experience» the cat argued.

«Don’t» Nathaniel advised him.

Danger | Deception | Parasite | Whitwell

¡AU! Vampires & Vampire Hunters

I had understood immediately how things were: it didn’t take a genius. Someone who could use their brain and recognise some ploys was enough. And, all his flaws aside, Nathaniel did use it, in his limited ways, of course, but he did. Instead…

«She will kill you».

Nathaniel looked at me over his shoulder. «She won’t: I have on me more iron and silver than… I don’t know what».

«Sure, now she won’t. Then you’ll let down your guard, more and more, until it’ll be too late and you’ll find her fangs in your neck».

«I’ll let down my guard like I’ve done with you?»

Touché.

«I don’t want to make you a smoothie, Nat, the mere thought disgusts me. But she does».

Nathaniel snorted. «She has valuable books, Bartimaeus. They’re important for my… our research. And you will stay out there to look after me, won’t you?»

Did I have a choice? Well, yes, but actually no. I looked at Nathaniel and didn’t see just him: I saw another young man as hungry for knowledge as he was, so much so he didn’t see traps and malevolence.

«Listen, I don’t trust her» Nathaniel highlighted. «But you must admit she’s useful».

«Fine, fine» I cut him off. «Let’s go: the sun has set and her sleep of beauty* must have finished».

*I was palpably ironic. It’s true that most of vampires take a particular charm after their transformation, I think to allure their victims; but this was not Whitwell’s case, no sir. She was scary even from that point of view.

Death | Mourning | Innocence | Nathaniel + 7th Plane form | Consumption | To and fro | Faquarl

¡What If! Nathaniel summoning Faquarl

He was so young: a scared child in his circle, his eyes big because of fear and dismay. But he hadn’t stammered, and his willpower seemed ironbound.

Faquarl took his mildest shape, the most reassuring one, and left his chubby cheeks softening in an obliging smile.

«What is your wish?»

«I order you to take the Amulet of Samarkand from Simon Lovelace’s house and bring it back to me tomorrow morning, at dawn».

Oh well. That was surprising.

Faquarl watched, a little more intently, that smidgen of a magician: he saw vulnerability, greed, anger, resolution. Very interesting.

The cook in the pentacle bowed slightly. «At your command, master». He didn’t miss the sparkle of triumph on the boy’s pale face.

Rebellion | Survival | Scattered | Bartimaeus

Us spirits can take all the shapes we want: this is an established fact. Simply, there are shapes you don’t take, because they are, well, boring. Some are boring but necessary, for example, the random steam curl during an espionage job, or a mouler to go unnoticed. But the most boring thing is taking the shape of a plant.

I’m not saying there aren’t plants of outmost respect, but I think it’s a matter of essence: plants take their energies from earth, the farthest element from us djinn; they stay there, placid, without doing that much. And, as long as I like the superiority they display towards humans, it’s always bloody boring becoming a bush. It was better, then, becoming a little mouse who could hide between the tall grass.

A gust of wind rose; the mouse’s muzzle ended up soiled with dandelion clocks.

Humans, sometimes, blew on them and made wishes; I tried to get rid of them: they were itching.

 Dandelions rose up to the sky in no time, almost yearning for the sun.

I didn’t watch them, free and happy: I had work to do.

Stroud doesn't want to give away that he's the extraordinarily lovely (not Khaba briefly possessing my autocorrect) lively shadow we've seen skulking around the place. And so, in the blue-green darkness of Khaba's little murdery mad scientist workshop, he's portrayed as this formless, whispering voice. He's a something. A creature of darkness. A voice more than entity. His body isn't described, whether he has a face or mouth or fingers - we can only PRESUME that he's doing that gay little neck stroking with humanlike appendages.

[Also, friendly reminder about how absolutely and utterly gay this chapter is. No matter how many times I reread RoS, the fact that Stroud really Did That right there on the page in canon never fails to bring a massive gross sicko freak grin to my face.]