Hey. Sorry about my… whatever you want to call it, back there. Pretty embarrassing for someone who’s supposed to have model eidesis. Though I guess they don’t call it the Truth That Burns for nothing, and thoughtstorms happen in Samudra anyway. We saw that fact all too well.
Now that I’m past the initial shock of it, I just want to know more. What’s it like to be an Angel?
No worries, figured it was bound to hit at least one of you hard, and was why I wanted to do it after we we’d be clear of Samudra for a bit of time. And with a bit of a break to digest it.
Anyway it’s not… usually too much different from just being a person with a particular strong sense of will/drive. Things here are a bit Weird. Though if we’re talking more long term, like in my case… I guess you could think it it as being close to a traveling performer in an acting troupe? Or, uh, a fugitive on the run or spy I guess would also be an apt comparison. You travel a lot, you become someone new in each place you visit, and never stay overly long before packing up and moving again.
That sounds exciting, but maybe a little lonely, too. Is there anyone you miss being, or anyone from a story you used to be in that you wish you could talk to again? I don’t know how much of this is me or how much this is my Angel talking, if there’s even really a difference, but I think I’d miss Caion in any world.
It’s not all bad, really. That’s why I used the troupe comparison initially - there’s a group of us that travel around together, who are a bit more meta aware of some of the oddness of reality - which we refer to as the Caravan. Not that you’re likely to meet her, but if you do don’t tell her I said this - but I’d probably miss Evelyn the most if she wasn’t with us. We joined up with the Caravan at around the same time though so I’ve never had much reason to miss her.
(ps I didn’t look at the message itself either way, but I don’t think NIP can see the contents of the BBS? Not 100% but that’s what my gut’s telling me.)
Good to know about NIP. Figured it was worth a shot, and there’s nothing there I can’t say elsewhere. NIP’s most likely a function of the story rather than an Angel, then?
The Caravan sounds nice, I like that name for it. It’s good to be able to keep some people close long-term. Is your world much like ours?
Definitely.
And yeah, it probably would kind of suck without them.
My original world was… much different. A large central city - Queenstown will probably be the closest comparison, since it’s way bigger than any Almachadta settlements - surrounding on all sides by endless grassland expanses. But as we explored it we’d fine objects of importance, or sentimental value, or things we just decided we Super Cool, and could infuse them with a type of power I don’t have an easy way of explaining, and then use those to create entire new - not even places, but regions - next door to Oberon (the name of the city).
We didn’t have gnosis either, and instead eight different types of spirits could be evoked to perform magic. Sometimes innately, sometimes directly, sometimes something in between. No Rite preventing random acts of violence either, or separate planes.
Opening new regions… does that power have anything to do with your ability to open KGPs in this story? I’ve been curious, what exactly goes into a KGP as opposed to a Strange Path?
I’m gunna be honest: I do not actually understand a lot of things I do on a fundamental level, and tend to work largely based on intuition and instinct, especially because my strongest elemental affinity was also the most, uh, hard to explain I suppose.
I don’t know if they’re strictly related, the KGP could just be a Really Good Portal in some technical sense. But I was thinking about the tools used to open new regions when I made the initial one, and going through the same motions to perform the ritual to do so when I formed it. So… if I had to guess, it probably is. And I suspect that’s why we arrive in the ziggurat in the void, rather than directly connecting to another target plane (which is, i’ve given to understand, how the Gates Tasna et el uses work) / that the other five of you are technically capable of forming them as well, once we’ve made contact with a gate out of the world to borrow the coordinate from.
It’s cool that so much of the stuff you’ve picked up elsewhere works here. It makes sense why I remember you talking about elements - I don’t think they necessarily map one-to-one here, but if everything else you tried so far worked, why not that? Definitely an experiment worth doing. How did you discern between elements back then? I wonder if there’s a way to make more lenses for my glasses, if those elements really do exist here too.
You referred to SQ/Jae as Crimson, is that her/her angel’s name? Any idea how she managed to get herself a custom Alethic card? I saw we already have some theories about what we can do about it, and I’ll be curious to find out what they are, but if there’s a world where I get to make my own Rite I’ll gladly take that opportunity.
Yeah, definitely not. Well, Burning and Salamander are pretty close, but otherwise. A quick run down:
Salamander: Passion and Willpower. Magically, fire.
Undine: Calmness and adaptability. Magically, water and ice.
Gnome: Community and Revenge. Magically, earth, metal and gems.
Jinn: Law and Equity. Magically, wind. (Sometimes lightning).
Dryad: Tradition and the untameable. Magically, nature (trees/vines/petals) and poisons.
Luna: Otherness and Cosmic. Magically, uh, moon/starlight, meteors, neon lights. Probably the weirdest one to explain…
Wisp: Directness and Truth. Magically, uh, kind of similar to radiant gnosis. Actually unsure how I’d explain it in your world’s framework.
Shade: Secrets and Complexity. Magically, darkness and shadows, and portals.
I think mana magic doesn’t work here because of the lack of Spirits? They were creatures tied to the elements that sort of were kinda the source of magic? Ish. Though I feel like I saw a flash of dryad for a fraction of a second when the mudd used pellicuid to turn into a rock in the lab? Duno what that was about. THAT SAID, if you’re ever bored and want to experience something really fucked up and give yourself a headache I can show you want happens INSTEAD of one of my favorite angel-tricks that doesn’t work here for some reason.
Crimson is the name I was most familiar with them as, and who they were when we met. I think their more proper Angel Name is probably Stings and Kills? No idea how the custom rite came about, but it sounds like she’s been here for thousands of years so maybe she just had a lot of time to experiment.
Thousands of years? Forgive the bluntness, but… just how long do you guys live? Maybe we can get the secret from her if we set it as a Rite-stake when we rematch someday.
Now that I’ve had time to process everything so far, and also now that we’re not on a world where thought-storms are a thing that happen, I’m definitely interested in seeing what you’re talking about. Can’t believe I’m already signing myself up for another round of what I believe Salme has decided to lovingly term “Bird Bullshit”, but hey, asking questions and running experiments is kind of my whole thing.
Quintessence seems to be the foundation of everything that exists here, but if you saw a flash of an element when I did gnosis-work using quintessence specifically, I wonder if there’s a chance quintessence itself is made up of the elements. It would be an interesting explanation for its tendency to self-assimilate, and if it already contained some combination of all the elements, it would provide some consistency between those worlds and ours. Next time we’re on the Obsidian Road and I’m not having a Bad Time I might try to get another sample and see what we can do with it. We might have some luck in the Library.
Each life is… generally fairly normal in terms of the world it’s born into? I couldn’t tell you why she popped out as an undying meta-human here though, maybe Libra has some more information on that front. Best guess is foreshadowing the creation of the Endjinn.
And yeah I’m still mulling that over myself, since it didn’t make a ton of sense at the time, and still doesn’t now honestly. Makes me wonder if maybe there are Spirits trapped somewhere out there, if it is possible to use quintessence to use spirit/elemental magic. Worst comes to worst gathering a bunch of mudd and messing around with it will probably be entertaining, even if we don’t gleam anything in particular from it. Definitely could be illuminating, though.