A Sword-Saint Calls For Aid

As it’s been floated a couple times, and as we’ve found ourselves giving increasingly more and more exposition, I decided to start a quick and accessible guide for any new allies we meet on our quest. I’m sticking this draft here and asking for input: So, Your World Is In Peril. Not sure about structure. Also not sure how to introduce ourselves. I wanted to highlight who to go to for what, skill-wise. Figured the “important people” should mostly be tomestone holders, but then was also wondering if every tomestone holder was necessary or … I’m not sure!

Referring to Awa as “???” is not wholly incorrect but does seem needlessly confusing fwiw.

“The Awoken Prince” and then in parenthesis, “(you’ll know when you see him)”

Good point, Aury. Also Awa I’m … well sure I mean I’ll put that in there just for you.

Aurelius, I also left your … title and context blank because I thought you might like to define yourself. If you don’t want to I can come up with something too.

I don’t particularly feel like I need one? I’m not really hung up about titles in general. (Maybe if I was the current reigning iron chef…? Or a tenured Professor…? Or a Instructor…? Those are all good, proper titles. But not one I have as my own.)

(Lucja’s feels kind of demeaning too while we’re on the topic, but if they personally like it and want to own it that’s fine of course.)

Luĉja can weigh in on their own or … hm. “First Endjinn of the Beast” is probably more informative. Do you want to be “of the Beast”? I’m not trying to necessarily give people titles for the sake of titles, but to give informative information about them.

Okay Awa has a title for the sake of a title but. It’s Awa.

I guess that’s fine.

It’s also not necessary. You can just be “Aurelius.” I think I captured your knowledge base decently well?

“informative information” Aury maybe I shouldn’t be writing this right now.

also still not sure Normal People can actually go into The Void. Tasna et el went directly from one plane to the other with their Gates (still not even sure they’re Physically Here), but that could just be different Gate Tech. still need to test what someone else trying to enter the KPG does tho

Good call on void access. I added a note in case. Too bad we’ve yet to encounter someone I’d trust enough to take with us that doesn’t also have an important job to do on their plane. Tsem might be a good candidate, if they ever use their tomestone.

i mean they don’t have to stay with us and could immediately turn back

Zaed might be a good pick then if we want to ask someone on the Beast? Assuming we don’t run into someone else. And assuming the gate is put in an accessible place.

minor side note I probably would not personally call the Gates “Kinder, Gentler Path”s, but it also feels like it’s far to late to really care about what ya’ll are calling it and KGP is admittedly easy to type so w/e this is just pointless yowling

I can correct it. What would you call them? Just “constructed gates?”

as opposed to all those normal, naturally occurring ones…? but no it’s fine, it’s probably useful to have a way to differentiate between mine and the old ones anyway.

I guess I had thought that the other ones were naturally occurring, or moreso than the KGPs? See: basic carved door as opposed to the stained glass thing you make. But yeah, I think a differentiation is useful.

“Basic carved doors” yeah, that’s. Not something that naturally occurs. someone had to carve with intent

Right, but, it’s … like the one on Almachadta was carved but the gate itself or the potential to create a gate was inherent in that space and thus, to me, naturally occurring. The one in the Quarry was wholly constructed, right?

I guess it seems like an important difference but maybe I’m just being weird.

in my professional portalologist opinion, there definitely is not a difference. if there was no potential to make one where i did, i wouldn’t have been able to make it. portals are like liminal gnosis like that; it’s just about closing the distance between points, not doing something fundamentally impossible

Hm. So it’s maybe more likely that the potential exists, and we might view Ciet’s door as an attempt similar to what you were able to do, albeit more elegantly?

yeah any gate that can close on you halfway through is, fundamentally, a flawed gate. guess he got lucky it just encased him in undying stone and didn’t slice him in half tho

(if you are curious about any categorizations I do make, a ‘Gate’ is a semi permanent portal in a fixed location hooked up to a specific end point, or potentially a network if you’re insanely fancy and flexing, but that’s much harder to do. a ‘portal’ is a temporary one often created on the fly that only ever goes one direction and then vanishes.)

Oh those are useful distinctions. I’ll probably add them to our glossary. How would you, as a professional portalologist, define the door in the ziggurat? It doesn’t quite conform to either of those.

gate network with a really obtuse and unfriendly coordinate input method

i would call them “Kinder, Gentler Paths”

All right. Draft up until the current moment is done. Please let me know what needs further explanation, what can be excised, and what’s missing.

So far so good!

All right, added a bit more context. Should I include more people in the list of “other relevant people”? Am I missing anything in “the basics” section? I was debating saying something about music and the importance of the songs, but I wasn’t … sure.

No, I think it’s fine as is. Not mentioning the music seems… wise? It’s Interesting, for sure, but I struggle to see how it might be related to anything else going on at the moment.

I mention it a couple times in the recaps, especially the importance of “Sanctuary” as a motif for recognizing … something larger going on, and since sometimes the lyrics of songs can give us insight into a person? I think I might stick with what I have—the importance of “The Song” to the world, which is pretty indisputable, and the specific relevance of “Sanctuary.”

Added some archived memories of descriptions of particularly strange places, and I think we’re done! Feedback welcome again, of course (Thank you for reading so diligently Aury ♥)

Do you really want to be just telling everyone that the worlds are ending? In a two-sentence form letter? Seems like you could leave that part out and tell them once they get the rest of the basics down and you know…take some time to absorb everything. Gonna be a lotta shell-shock just with the “Hey we’re not from here!” bit. Maybe split it into a part one part two. Unless we provide free trauma counseling for our allies. In which case, I’d love some.

no therapy sessions until you have a name

Jorule only accepts new patients if they give him a name and excruciating amounts of vulnerability. I have lower criteria if you ever want to chat.

I mean, the document is predicated on someone being a tomestone holder already (how else would they access the library?). I wasn’t planning on printing it out and distributing it widely? Does that change your response, ???, Angel of ????, or do you still think dividing it out would be less harmful?

Just make sure you tell ‘em all not to read the whole thing at once, probably. You’ve been through a lot. Wouldn’t want anyone else to do the speedrun without having time to process it. Only been less than a month, but I seem to remember some of you taking that knowledge pretty hard.

we’re special in that we had a lot of memory loss and we’re on the bleeding edge of new, currently unexplainable situations. there’s also some bits that aren’t explained in there, the scope is pretty focused already to be honest.

if we really want to split it up, i’d cut the The Story Thus Far and make it a separate document. the annotations too. that’s the details that if anyone really wants they can make an effort to get it.

I mean I could split it up, excise all the mention of cycles and world-ending destruction, and stick it in a second document, but I do think that would mean rewriting a fair amount. We might add a warning at the top?

What do you mean by the annotations? The memories? I added them mostly because I was hoping there might be a specific detail that one of our allies might be able to use (and in case there were specific things a reader got caught on that I didn’t want to spend a ton of words to describe) to shed some light on this whole thing? Or do you mean the bullet points?

IMO, the only reason to explain to anyone who we are and what we’ve been up to is because they need/want to know about the Larger Problem so no real sense in breaking them up.

what aury said except more emphasis on “what we’ve been up to”

it’s pretty neat and amazing to know us! (because we’re neat and amazing)

On that note, is everyone satisfied with what I wrote for you? Aury edited his (very appropriately) but I want to make sure people are fairly represented, because we are neat.

i’m editing mine!!

also you didn’t mention that we were partners

why are you like this

I … was trying to stick to what was strictly relevant to understanding our quest. I also didn’t mention Caion and Archie’s relationship. I figured we’d rather tell the people we meet about these sorts of things, but I can change it if you’d like?

Or if we want to provide more in-depth biographies I can make a separate folio?

yeah that’s fair, about sticking to the relevancy. still. i think my additions are important for understanding me.