Salme @ Awoken & Aurelius

When we next have a moment in the void, I’d like to use the liminal express to return to Almachadta and deliver a Tomestone to both Badri and Tsem. However, I’d also like to take a moment and have dinner with Badri and the two of you if possible? I know it’s self-indulgent, and he may not have time, but he only barely met Awa and he only really interacted with Aury a little bit and since you’re my … partners I … would like that, very much.

It’s okay to decline, and I don’t even know what state in which we’ll find Almachadta when we get there, but I thought I would ask.

I also have a nice dress for the occasion if that appeals at all.

Can’t imagine why you’d think either of us would say no.

I could type up the list of why I thought either of you might say no but I’m not sure if knowing precisely how anxious I get about these sorts of things would be revelatory or just annoying to be reminded of.

I assume that’s a yes, though?

Yes Salme, that is a yes.

it’s absolutely a yes!!

he was already very pleased when he saw us, i know he’ll love to see how you’re flourishing!!

WEAR THE DRESS

I DON’T KNOW WHY YOU CROSSED THAT OUT

I wasn’t sure if it would matter? Or be of interest? I don’t know!

i am very interested in what you choose to wear!!

It’s baffling how she has as much confidence in her hairbrained schemes as she does, while simultaneously having none at all in herself, isn’t it?

right?

SALME YOU ARE SEXY AND HAVE A GOOD SENSE OF STYLE AND FORM

Harebrained schemes??

Harebrained schemes (Respectful) (Cute)

I’m trying to figure out if you mean that or if you’re looking for an out.

Have I ever lied to you, Salme?

Well you’ve certainly dodged the question plenty of times.

A very notable lack of dodging here replaced with a fairly direct response, no? :)

… yeah. You’re correct.

You think I’m cute?

Yes, Salme.

Oh well. Good. Thank you? Thank you.

Anyway! Dinner aat Badri’s. Too bad there’s no way to let him know we’re coming but I’m sure it’ll work out!

so cute

it’ll be fine!! we’ll just show up. almachadta feels like the kind of place where people are always ready to host guests.

Yeah, true, that lady at the inn couldn’t stop giving us food.

I’ve been doing a lot of processing about. Um. The toll being the Sword-Saint took on me and I was talking with Jorule about that big explosive fight I. Realized just how unlike myself I had become, that I hesitated so much to even try to change things.

I’ve been noticing patterns of progress and backsliding and I never want to be back there again.

And I think either of you could guide me out of that hole if I ended up there but I am certain the quickest way to remembering myself would be Jorule pissing me off.

So yeah.

Aha. Well, that’s… good… I think?

Let’s try and not let that happen in the first place, though.

Yeah. It’s not my plan to. I was just. Struck by how much that, on reflection, that didn’t feel like me and how much I don’t want to be like that again.

I think at this point, though, I’m determined to try no matter what and. I’ve accepted the possibility of failure and I still am determined to try.

No need to worry though.

How do you two feel about my accessioning the information from Libra in the library for everyone else? I don’t think much of it is new information, but I wanted to ask just in case.

I already mentioned most of it to Caion on the BBS anyway…? No resistance here.

no problem here!! it wasn’t very much info anyway

Awa do you happen to have any Rakaznar left over btw?

i think some scraps got turned into ra’kaznar yeah

if not i can make more

i think

Awesome, didn’t need a lot anyway

Aurelius do you have some clan names in mind? Awa’s dubbed us “Clan Saving Worlds” and we only have a small window of opportunity to rectify that before this becomes permanent.

Uh.

Sec.

Wildfire and … Wallflowers…?

Seemed to have been at the top of the list for some reason.

Clan Saves the World does just kind of lay it all out there and scream the mission goal though…

So I tried to get more information out of Jae. And she made me the following promise:

And I asked Jorule about … if he thinks we’ll see the completion of one cycle of destruction, and he said he thought so. I think so too, but I know I tend to … worry, so I wanted to check myself.

And. I don’t know. If there’s something we can do about that.

Really just depends on when it happens and what the nature of it is. Don’t think there’s really much more we can do other than play it by ear and respond as things occur.

What if we figured out how to stuff as many people into the library as possible, like, physically, and then tucked the library next to the Mask in the cave in Almachadta? We know that survives.

That does mean we have to figure out how to physically put people into the library though. And …

It just seems pathetic not to try.

you put ‘em in the library by having them touch the tablet

take dimensions of the actual space within the almachadtan cage

you make sure to have everyone in ergonomic poses layered on top of each other’s alabaster statue so we can fit as many as possible

then we go last

Hm. So. I think the space itself … I don’t think you can survive by being in just the space. I think it’s the pedestal the Mask goes on. But. If everyone was in statue-form anyway …

(Of course, we still have to contend with getting people to Almachadta and them getting mindwiped, in which case we should just see if the Ziggurat is a safe place.)

It’s probably stupid. Whatever happens will happen. I just don’t want to lose everyone.

no we can just take the tablet from world to world, yes even with people statued on it already

… What are we doing with the statues? Stashing them in Aury’s pocket dimension?

i don’t see why not

i thought the statues would have to be touching the tablet but we haven’t really… tried to separate them, have we?

No, I guess we haven’t.

We either can, or we’d be casually separating peoples’ souls from their bodies.

we put the tablet on the pedastal, the room also survives because otherwise all the tally marks wouldn’t be there

also the soul separation wouldn’t be a problem if we could put them back in

maybe make new bodies for them

bodyswap for funsies if people want

of course if we can’t do all that it’d be a problem :(

or if separating them from the tablet would cause them to instantly dissolve their soul as well

so let’s plan on moving them as a block before we do some experiments

Have some. Concerns. About the practicality of several of these steps.

we’d be happy to hear them! this is a collaborative effort

Space, for one. Casual flippancy about removing souls from bodies for another. When exactly you think we’re going to be able to go around five separate worlds and convince every person on each of them to do this, for another.

Figuring out why the cave around the mask persists and then expanding it / making other fallout shelters like it is probably more practical, but, probably not really enough time.

… But also if this is a story, I feel like it stands to reason whatever happens won’t be a five way catastrophe event and/or there’s already solutions in place, since… Well, what would we even DO after that if not?

“Well, what would we even DO after that if not?”

the end! no moral! some stories are like that

Really don’t think we’re here to shoot the shaggy dog

I mean, if it is cycles, the world would still need saving, even if everyone we’ve grown to care for is gone. Whatever begins anew doesn’t deserve to die.

I mean. This is a disc 1 concern. There’s obviously something after. I’m just. I don’t know.

also i figure we’d at least some kind of inkling that the worlds were gonna end Soon But Not In The Next 5 Minutes

and the liminal express is pretty fast

and i didn’t think we’d get every person, i don’t think one of the rooms of the annex is secretly gonna become a barracks

and i said we’d do experiements about soul transfer!

I mean figuring out … exactly what is going on with turning into a statue is probably worthwhile, regardless of schemes to save people from the end of the world, but it’s hard to think of a way to mess around with that which doesn’t run the risk of accidentally severing whatever goes into the library from whatever remains outside.

It’s actually a really elegant design, when you think about it, without much of a way to guard against it. If even travel via the KGP will scramble your gnosis signature and wipe your memories, we can’t just have people huddle in the void, and there’s no way that’s particularly safe. The library may persist, but we can’t physically go into it and it requires touching the tablet which only a limited number of people can do.

Uh … sorry to just keep posting in here, but … with the acknowledgment that my panic about trying to shove everyone into the tablet to save them from the end of the world was maybe a little premature, I was wondering … Aury was working on some idea to get to the moons with Awa, and Awa and I have been doing several telescope experiments, but I was wondering … do you think we could send something further?

The Beast and Almachadta orbit something. The Empty Space in the Sky isn’t empty. I was wondering—if we could make some kind of … I don’t know. Fiend? Something that we could send through space that could maybe return readings … if we get the right thread to follow, Awa might be able to find Mu and Valaïs and the suns, but even if we don’t it would give us more information.

And. Since we don’t know what’s going to happen to us at the midway point of the story, or even in the aftermath, maybe we could have it carry some kind of message? In case someone, some day, encounters it?

Er. This sort of thing is really beyond me, but. I figured maybe between the three of us we could come up with something?

Hmm. I mean, it’s going to be hard getting a non-living object up onto the moon itself, but if we’re speaking purely hypothetically then yes, in advanced enough civilizations it’s possible to send things out into space.

//Generally speaking// though, planets tend to orbit suns? That’s the basic shape of a solar system anyway. Not that I’m sure these are planets or following basic rules of… uh, anything really? Usually when you break one world it doesn’t shatter into 5 distinct ones with unique rules governing them while not looking like jig-saw puzzles…

Anyway, it’s probably possible? I don’t know if it’s within the realm of things we can do, especially if we’re sending a fiend that can communicate back out, but I guess stranger things have happened. Would be kind of ridiculous if we figured out how to send out satellites into unknown space before someone figured out how to make a basic ass airplane tho. Maybe inspiration will strike once we get Awa onto a moon

Okay. Planets tend to orbit suns, but Almachadta and the Beast aren’t orbiting anything at all—or at least nothing we can see. And … oceans generally aren’t things that appear In Space, right? Both silmät and Jorule said that was particularly strange.

Is “satellite” the word for what I’m talking about? I don’t know … how you would make something move through space—the rules are different, right? But since we know the library (or at least the annex) is in the Empty Space we could maybe open a portal somehow and send something out, right? (This is all beyond me. I don’t suppose there’s a book on it anywhere is there?) I mean, get Awa on the moon first, obviously, but.

??? But yeah, not saying it’s a sun for sure, just what would normally be the easy answer.

More or less.

Portal idea is… actually a good thought, though if we’ve being transported to the Empty Space while inside the tablet that raises, uh, Many questions.

Sorry I was reiterating what you told me. “Planets tend to orbit suns” was not a thing I knew, even though I … was also equally certain “The Beast and Almachadta orbit something.” I … am not going to try not to be too freaked out about where that certainty came from. What I was trying to say is that I suspect there’s something they’re orbiting around, even if we can’t see it, and that it might be a sun.

So I don’t know if you’ve gotten the chance to look at the library recently, but Awa and I ran some experiments with the telescope in the observatory in the annex. The library may not be in the Empty Space? The observatory certainly is—Awa was able to pinpoint my location in the center of the Empty Space from where he looked up at the stars on the Beast (he … apparently has a techne that lets him do that, because of course he does). I could see the flare he sent up from the Beast; he could not see any flare I sent out from the annex.

There is a … shift when going from the library proper to the annex, though, so they may not be physically adjacent to each other, just linked somehow? Which is does not diminish any of these questions.

Regardless, Annarr having those door keys in the boxes means that the annex either … was somehow anticipated coming into being, or existed prior to the library’s creation and was linked to it when … I created Jory? Earlier, and we just couldn’t see the door?

Repetition as necessary.

HEY GUESS WHAT AURY THERE’S AN EMPTY HOLE THAT DOESN’T LET ANYTHING OUT BETWEEN ALMACHADTA AND THE BEAST?

What the fuck?

also i don’t think any of us are getting off of the beast, not traditionally

NO PROBABLY FUCKING NOT.

Why is there a black whole in the middle of our solar system that generally makes no fucking sense anyway, but, huh.

Is that what it’s called? A black whole??

Also the moons are all perfectly round and featureless and when Awa tried to send a gnosis flare it disappeared????

hole, rather.

wildly riotous idea. the annex is within a deep cavern of space, folded in on itself. the folding is occurring at the black hole. it’s one big length, compressed at the entrance, ballooning out in the empty space. the empty space itself IS space that is folded in on itself. it’s all one space. but it looks like two spaces.

it’s one space, aury!!!!

Congratulations on independently theorizing the existence of worm holes

There are … lots of holes in space, huh?

It’s actually mostly a lot of nothing, in fact.

Huh. Okay. Well that’s … I guess that checks out with what we’ve seen.

Anway, I wonder if the way the glass panels in the library ceiling show the sun bleeding into the empty space might mirror the … continous space that’s the black hole and the empty space in the sky?

Also I’ll update the folio soon, but I think if we want to get any information about space we’re going to need to be able to send something out from outside the planes?

I told Jae a bit about our cosmos experiments, Awa, and she seems to think your theory is probably correct? She said this about trying to calculating where the light of the Beast’s moons are coming from. After I talked about how the moons looked full from the observatory, she said this:

“that does imply that. the light they are reflecting is coming from the Empty Space yeah. that’s… weird though because it doesnt match– i had someone do calculations and angles to try and make some sense of things, once. and it SEEMED like… whatever the source of the light was would have to have been a lot closer than that? how could the light be coming from both the. black hole and ALSO the empty space though that makes no sense.”

Then I shared your theory, Awa, and talked about our second go-around with the telescope. She explained that black holes are suns that died, and I proposed that a sun, of some kind, exists there simultaneously as the black hole does, either because of weird spatial fuckery or because (credit to Wolf here) time is somehow fucky and the past/present/future is all occurring at once?

Anyway, she said “oh shiiiit” and is going to have to think about it some more, but said that might also be the right track? I don’t know if that makes sense to either of you though.

Also when I asked if the light the moons reflected seemed to be particularly loving or hateful, she said she gets nothing from them—no gnosis signature, absolutely bugfuck nothing. So that’s helpful!

I think I made friends with the head Zvahr of the archives if anyone has a question they want me to ask?

Anyway, this place is weird as fuck. Nothing decays and people turn into crystals when they die. Er. “Rest.” They just. Keep everyone in a room? Like all the dead crystal people. They’re all … there. For some great Awakening.

Oh, and Dyu taught me and Archie how to heal, so if anyone gets got we’ve probably got you covered.

Oh and verified. This world is as old as they say it is. They’ve got records reaching back almost 280,000 years. They’re continuous. Same with the orchard they planted—it’s been continuously maintained this entire time.

They have a “Rite of Renewal” on what seems to be the same schedule as Almachadta/The Beast/Samudra. No fucking clue what that means either. It’s a Yazhn question, I’m sure.

Neat

do those crystals resonate with any kind of gnosis or energy??

rite of renewal!! we gotta find out what that entails

No idea! Didn’t see the crystals, just saw a crystalized Kin in a book. As for the Rite of Renewal, Wolf seems to have assigned you a task:

“It seems it is the sort of thing were the Yazhn of Yazhns knows what to do when it is needed, but is otherwise not transmitted. Though he did say that the last performer of the rite was enshrined in the hall reserved for such dignitaries…and that it would take an act of their God to wake him to relate the tale. Which suggests that such a thing is possible, if one only knew how. Do with that as you will, heart-sister. I certainly wouldn’t tell Awa that information, goodness only knows what would happen.”

(He, of course, being Yazhn Ravhi)

I’m pretty sure trying something like this would probably garner a pretty hostile reaction from the Kin, so not quite sure when or how to try something like this, but.

tfw you realize Salme has been the bad influence all along and Awa was just a poor innocent boy trapped in her machinations

Yeah Wolf initially worried that you were the bad influence, Aury. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I’m the corrupting force in this triad.

You’ll keep my secret, won’t you? ♥

damn

Apparently the God of Mu speaks in Alethic text. He suggested that might be a way to awaken one of the statues in … apparently it’s called “The Gallery.”

I think we should probably maybe go there and look around (Zvahr Yhjrn suggested we might find Zosimos there if he’s there to be found because there’s no evidence of him in the written records) before we try anything? Would one or both of you like to come with me?

I think we should probably not try and commit heresy on the second day of our arrival here, before we know of any other potential locations of shelter from the I Will Kill You, Soon sun? Monotheists tend to not be huge fans of blasphemy and heresy and those things have been known to start Actual Wars.

So I guess I probably should keep an eye on you yeah.

Well the apostates live out the desert and eke out a life and consume a lot of mushrooms? Qarina knows where they are, apparently. She’d probably help us out if push came to shove.

But you’re so right. We better not test it.

the lenses are done!! the blueprints are finished! one can thank Ari and their assistants for being so skilled and able to turn on the mind so quickly.

i’m stashing the plans in the library for now- we’re all gonna go wash off in the baths. building it comes next!

I’m in the City right now. I should have left a note. I’ll. Either be heading back to the sietch soon or I’ll be here for a few days. I’m not in any danger.

Okay. I assume there’s a contingent of very nice and helpful Kin making sure you have whatever you need, but stay safe.

see you soon!!

I’d like to try to leave a fiend in the shrine in Almachadta to see what it can observe about the end of the cycle. I have a couple other things I was going to leave there as well to test—one of the folios from the library, some irrica and amphilyke, possibly a couple other things. I was wondering if either of you could help me craft a fiend to leave there; maybe one with a high chance of survival, and perhaps one that might send back signals. I feel. Kind of bad about leaving a fiend there just to be destroyed, but it’s better than nearly any alternative.

I also want to make a … decoy Mask to leave there, so Awa can do his reaching-between-planes to put the Mask proper in its place at the last moment. I don’t know if there’s any trick we could do to make it easier I just. I don’t know. It feels wrong to not have it there.

Of course. After I finish with the Gate.