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Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
Seele Quest: 6.8
Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
Seele
It would be so easy to hurt her...
No, you thought, looking at the other Seele's dreamy expression. The way she leaned against the dragon as if, now that she had found them, everything would be all right in the world. The total, utter lack of thought or consideration for the consequences. Had Veliona ever, literally ever let her guard down this far?
It would be impossible to hurt her, she was so addled with love she'd hardly notice anything you said or did. The only analogy you could draw—the analogy you were outright forced to draw, seeing your sister like this--was to yourself, the first time you'd been allowed to touch Liliya after she left the hospital. You'd stayed with her that entire evening. Vel had been unusually quiet. And that had just been a month. You couldn't imagine what it would be like in her case.
"Vel," you repeated. "Let me know when you're ready. I'll give you however long you want."
She nodded, and then turned to look at the dragon. It rumbled softly, almost in response.
You didn't want to interrupt her, so you stayed quiet and watched. And thought.
The dragon's mind was a blur to you. It was impossible to read. You couldn't see what Vel was seeing; couldn't hear it, when it wasn't making an effort. And yet, it wasn't—no, was it supposed to be a dragon?
If you stopped imagining a dragon, stopped accepting its claim to be a dragon, and pretended there were the two young girls from the dream here instead, what would happen? If you… moved, a little, denying this perspective on reality? Denying its claim on reality?
Wouldn't you disturb her?
You backed down, watching her at it. She was smiling, and she seemed happy. That would have to be enough.
You'd never been good with words. But you could make your sister happy.
"Vel," you said. "I'm sorry. I…"
She wasn't listening. Sighing, you looked at the dragon. The… 'dragon'. You were pretty sure—and you wished you weren't, but you knew you couldn't lie to yourself about this—that the dragon was actually Roza and Liliya. Somehow. Not yours, but still them, somehow. The version of them from Veliona's timeline. Whoever had done this to them had a lot to answer for, you decided; whoever they were, they'd taken something precious away from someone who needed it more than anything else in the world.
You reached out again, stroking its side; it didn't seem to mind. It was warm under your hand. Warm like a summer's day. The synaesthesia was striking, and you could almost smell the hillside Roza had lounged on, like cinnamon and honey. You felt the scales beneath your fingertips, cool as ice and sharp as your best friend's blade. You could feel the lake she'd named it for.
"I'm sorry I shouted at you," you said softly. "You didn't do anything wrong."
You hesitated, then added:
"...except maybe you did something really, really stupid? Rozaliya... how did this happen to you? Who did this, and why? Liliya? How could they…"
Your voice trailed off. You couldn't finish the sentence. What could you possibly say, even if you wanted to?
The dragon rumbled its agreement. It was warm and soft, like a cat's fur. Like Vel's skin, like your own. Like Mother's arms when she held you.
You swallowed hard, and continued. "It's not your fault," you said. "Not your fault that you're a dragon. Not your fault that you followed me home. Not your fault that you're eating this universe. But you have to stop. Please."
The dragon made a soft sound, as if it were trying to speak. You shivered, backing down. It probably didn't understand you, and you didn't... didn't know. You didn't know that, that the reason your little sisters were in danger, were your...
What were you going to do?
"Please," you said, softer.
And you leaned forward, and kissed them.
It was the most natural thing in the world. With your eyes closed, you weren't kissing a dragon; you were kissing the forehead of two identical twin girls, with two horns and two tails between them. Two of the girls who mattered most in your world.
These weren't your Roza and Liliya, but you decided that didn't matter. They could be. Vel had told you, once already, that she loved the twins despite herself. If she was able to do that, then couldn't you do the same?
"Seele?" Vel asked, her voice uncertain.
You opened your eyes. She stared at you, with an expression of... confusion. And surprise. Her mouth worked for a moment, as if she couldn't quite believe what had just happened. How much of what you'd done had she caught, you wondered?
You hadn't meant to let on, but... well, you couldn't help it. You smiled a little bit.
She looked back up, and met your gaze. The dragon moved with her, shifting to look over Vel's shoulder.
"Vel..." you started.
"I don't want to lose them, Seele." She held her head, as if trying to keep something from falling out. As if her hair was a helmet, protecting her brain. Less imaginatively, her grip on the stigmata faltered. You had to quickly pick up the reins, lest you sag into the island universe and break something important. "I can't. Not again. I– Seele? Who's 'them'?" Her eyes widened. "Why do I remember going to the movies? And the dinner afterwards? It wasn't real! That wasn't my memory!"
You sighed, and stroked her hair. Or, equivalently: Pulled her a little inside yourself, so she didn't have to face the dragon on her own. You were still holding on to reality, but it was a thin line. Vel was not meant to act this way. "It's okay," you said. "It's all right. They're here now. Everything's fine. All you need to do is get a little more used to it."
You'd seen Rozaliya like this exactly once, when Liliya had been hospitalised and the doctors told you she'd never walk again, just after Roza had told her she couldn't fight, or live, without her. You remembered how the other girl had wept, crying into your chest as if the world itself were ending, and how distant Bronya had gotten. Veliona wasn't quite as badly off, but the wild-eyed look in her eyes was too similar.
You stroked her hair, and tried to imagine Mother's arms around you. The warmth of her embrace, even though you knew that couldn't happen. You passed it all on to your sister, who'd never once felt that warmth and comfort.
"That was all real, but it'll be alright," you said.
Her eyes seemed to clear, and she blinked at you. She leaned forward, putting her forehead against yours. You held her close for a long time, until you heard the dragon's low rumble of approval.
You looked up. The sea of quanta was as featureless as ever, but... between the dragon, the island universe and you, it felt painfully crowded.
"...I'll take care of her," you said. "Don't worry. We'll find an answer."
The dragon rumbled softly. It sounded like agreement.
And wasn't it quite something, that your alternate-past-timeline twin sister's draconic younger sisters... no, friends you guessed... were the best comported of the lot of you.
It was a little bit funny, and a little bit sad, but mostly just strange. You smiled at your sister, and she responded with a smile that you could have sworn was just a little bit shy.
"Thank you," she said.
ooOOoo
It was perhaps half an hour later that Veliona finally spoke again.
She was looking out across the Sea, staring intently. You followed her gaze, and saw the horizon of the quantum sea shimmering. Nothing unusual; the shimmer was how your stigmata indicated a lack of data. It was always pretty, but not particularly interesting. Occasionally she glanced at the dragon. Every time she did, you saw the pain in her eyes.
"I think I get it," she murmured. "They're..."
"Yes?" you prompted.
"They're the same as me. I was broken; you know that better than anyone. But they weren't. Not really. They were just cut down, somehow. And then healed. Just enough." She shook her head. "That's why. How could you fix something you didn't understand?"
She looked up at you. You understood her sentiment, for sure.
"Seele," she said, her voice thick with... sadness? Anger? You couldn't tell.
"I'm sorry, sis."
"I don't want to lose them, Seele."
You kept stroking her hair, as you had for a while now.
"I don't want to lose them, either."
"I can't. Not again. I–" She looked up, her eyes flashing. "You don't get it. I know–" She swallowed. "You know that's Rozaliya and Liliya, right?"
You nodded. You had, in fact, realised.
"I didn't. I didn't even know I'd lost someone, until they came back. I can't imagine living without them, and I still can't remember what it's like living with them!" Her voice was breaking. "Just little flashes, here and there. I'm scared. If I lose sight of them, I'll forget who they are. Who they were. I'll stop loving them again, and, I… I won't be able to stand it. They're all I have left of my family. All I've got."
You said nothing. You couldn't. The girls she was so obsessed with were, in fact, …not there. Not really.
You wished she'd cry. That she'd scream and shout and break things. Anything but this quiet, defeated look on her face. But, of course, she wouldn't. Not Vel. Not now.
Somewhere in the background of your head, you wondered how she'd turned out this way; if she was really your identical twin, what had happened to her that she was so different from you. You also hoped, desperately so, that this wasn't your own future you were looking at. That would be too cruel. For now, however…
Hold on. If it was, that would explain how you'd helped fix her—
You eyed Veliona with trepidation, but fortunately you were interrupted before that thought could be more than half-formed, and it wasn't one that made sense. Something like a wind-chime sounded in your mind. You'd heard it before,once, when you'd asked Rubia to search for the twins.
"Sis? We should-"
You glanced up, and saw the dragon hovering above you, watching you and Vel.
It hadn't understood your words… had it? Either way, the columns of Honkai it had been using to consume the world were gone. Now it floated, a mere few thousand possibilities away.
The dragon rumbled, and made a sound that was almost like a purr.
Vel stared at the creature, and then at you. Her expression was hard to read.
"Seele," she said.
"Yes?"
"…I'm confused."
"Me too." You squeezed her hand.
"What do we do?"
You blinked.
"Well... can you tell what Rubia's saying?"
She frowned, and shook her head. Keeping one eye on the dragon, you joined her in searching through the 'message'—but apart from that chime, which had come through with impossible clarity, it was just nonsense. Noise.
"I think we should go back," you said. "Um…"
Okay. Okay. The 'dragon' wasn't as unintelligent as you'd expected. That was a good thing, right? You looked up at it again, willing yourself to see the faces of your two favourite people in its—this was the Sea of Quanta, so multidimensional and inscrutable—face. Nothing.
"I don't know how we'll do it, but we'll find an answer," you said. "I won't give up."
Vel nodded.
You glanced back at the bubble.
And, at that moment, the Sea of Quanta went dark. The dragon vanished, and the island universe disappeared with it.
ooOOoo
You sat up.
You were in your bed, in your room, in your house, in your town. It was a small room, but neatly made; you had too much time to spare, so it was always tidy, if not as immaculately clean as your little sisters'.
That's what you called them, though they weren't biologically your sisters. You'd looked after each other ever since Uruk was destroyed, so they were your family, even if you didn't share any blood relation. They were also, at least in part, why you'd left home. Your parents weren't willing to help you take care of them, and you'd needed to get out of there. One thing had led to the other. Circumstances had conspired to place the four of you together.
Your mom and dad weren't around. Theirs were dead.
Your eyes automatically scanned the other side of your bed.
You were alone in the room.
You sighed, and got up. The place felt empty without Bronya, but you had no idea where she'd gone. Still. Three weeks after she'd disappeared.
You headed downstairs, and into the kitchen.
"Morning," you said.
"Hm?"
Rozaliya and Liliya were sitting at the table, playing some sort of game. They both turned to look at you. The stack of dirty cookware did not, though you thought it very well might. Which was odd, as you were all but certain those had been clean a few hours ago.
"You're late," said Rozaliya.
You rolled your eyes.
"It's Saturday," you reminded her.
"Not for that." Liliya pointed at the calendar. "Did you forget?"
"What's today?" you asked.
They exchanged a glance.
"Saturday," said Rozaliya.
"Your birthday," added Liliya. "You're fourteen."
"Oh," you muttered.
"We made a cake," said Lils. "You can't eat it, because it caught on fire, but it was fun to make. So we made another cake. And then we made a third one."
"And then a fourth," said Rozaliya.
"Then a fifth," added Lils.
"It took us all morning, but we wanted to do it. Here-" Rozaliya got up from the table. She leaned against the counter, where you now saw there was a plate of small cakes, six in total. One was burnt to a crisp; of the others, all of them looked different. "Do you want a coffee? Tea?"
"You didn't have to do that," you protested. The room swam a little, and you blinked. "I mean, I appreciate it, but..."
"But we wanted to," said Lils. "Because you're our big sister, Seele. …smile a little? Please?"
"I'm sorry," you said, forcing a smile. "I'll be right back."
"Okay!"
You stepped outside, closing the door behind you. As soon as you were out of sight of the twins you began to cry, as quietly as possible.
Three weeks. Three weeks, and you'd planned a big date with Bronya on your birthday.
"I miss you," you said, between sobs.
You wiped your face with the sleeve of your shirt, and looked up. The hallway was empty. The outside of the kitchen was a hole into nothingness, where the dreamscape gave up on existing. You knew, if you left through it, you'd wake up—vaguely, in the back of your mind. But you weren't going anywhere.
You were never going anywhere.
"I'm sorry," you whispered.
The girls were waiting for you when you returned to the kitchen.
"Sorry," you said, still sniffling. "I'm okay. Thank you, though. Can I-"
They embraced you, and held you tight. You cried into their hair. Your own hair, reddish black, fell around their shoulders.
"We know," they murmured. "We've been watching you. We knew you'd need some time."
"You're the best," you whispered.
"Seele," said Liliya.
"Yeah," you replied.
"We're going to find you again."
"I know."
"No matter how long it takes. We won't let Fire Moth take you."
You nodded, embracing their memory.
ooOOoo
"Vel?"
Your sister didn't respond. The dream had been overwhelming; almost enough to pull you away from reality, but not so much so that you failed to notice when Vel completely lost her grip on the stigmata. It hadn't quite fit you. Almost. Not quite.
The dragon surrounded you entirely, dampening the waves of the Sea and keeping your loss of control from being more than a nuisance.
Your sister wasn't responding. You prodded Veliona—the other Seele, you had to remember that, you'd called her literally that for years—but to no effect. Then error messages started popping up. It was happening in slow motion, but despite the dragon's best efforts, your stigmata wasn't... you weren't... alive. Not really. It was a pyramid balanced on its tip, and it couldn't function without input.
When Vel didn't wake up within a couple of seconds, you started worrying. When a minute passed, and the warnings increased in urgency, you panicked. Primary containment failure—the sea was flooding inside you; usually barely a nuisance. That still left secondary and tertiary containment, but you were running out of time.
"Vel?"
She didn't answer. Panic got pushed to the side. Phase-lock correction—you scanned the list of warnings, switched one especially critical subsystem from manual to automatic, then thought better of it and cancelled the lock Vel had put between you and its actuators. Overlapping the influence of every adjacent universe, so it'd add up to zero, was a careful balancing act that you couldn't realistically leave to software. Your head ached, the workload a little higher than anything you'd tried before.
Primary phase-locking, now.
The Sea sang like a hundred violins, and the world crystallised into a stable pattern. Flooding dropped to a survivable level. You blinked, struggling to keep the new sensations from overwhelming you. Correction; your eyes appeared to have gone missing. The dragon, seeming startled, curled even more tightly around you.
Then Vel smashed into the same control points you were using, her frantic, desperate attempts at restoring control a little too quick to realise that you'd already done it.
Your minds practically short-circuited each other.
ooOOoo
"I think my brainstem hurts," your sister complained. "And I can't find the hologram controls. I think you broke them."
You groaned, sitting up to examine the damage. The checkerboard floor of the inside of your soul was cracked and splintered, but it seemed to be largely superficial. You could feel the pieces, scattered across the surface, at the edges of your consciousness; it was still a painful view. You hadn't seen it like this in years.
Vel looked strange. After a moment of not putting your finger on it, you realised it was her clothes. She wore a jersey and jeans, not the far more elaborate outfits you were used to.
"What happened?" you asked.
She shook her head. "I don't know. The dragon obviously did something."
"I'm sorry."
"It's not your fault," said Vel. She turned away, hugging herself and looking at the diary table. "This is going to be a mess. It'll take me days to fix everything, and we don't have that sort of time. Roza and Liliya, on their own..." She grew quiet.
You made your way to her side, taking her hand.
"We'll find a way," you said. "I promise."
"I think we'd better start by asking Einstein," she muttered, staring down at the journal. "Or Rubia."
You reached for the book, but hesitated.
"Is that okay?" you asked.
"Yeah," she said. "I'm not going to break, Seele. You don't need to treat me like I'm fragile. If anything, I feel better than I have in years. Sure, just about everything turned out to be awful, but–" She shrugged. "What else is new? At least I'm me again. I'll tell you all about it later, after we rescue the derps."
"Okay," you breathed. You embraced your sister from behind. You could feel her smile. "Okay."
"Let's get some work done."
= = =
Vel may not be fragile [citation-needed], but they're the equivalent of scratched up and bruised. The downside of leaving her to her own devices is she zoned out so thoroughly it actually hurt them, albeit with assistance. Seele, fortunately, isn't as reliant on Veliona as she thinks.
[ ] Return immediately
- Vel: This is obviously faster, but we won't have a lot of low-impact options if there's trouble. I feel stiff, and I don't trust myself not to overdo things.
- Seele: We'll have some. We promised not to disappear. I'm worried.
[ ] Finish field repairs before returning
- Vel: This would give us our usual combat options, but it'll take half an hour. If that's too late…
- Vel: I don't really like either option.
[ ] Write-in
It would be so easy to hurt her...
No, you thought, looking at the other Seele's dreamy expression. The way she leaned against the dragon as if, now that she had found them, everything would be all right in the world. The total, utter lack of thought or consideration for the consequences. Had Veliona ever, literally ever let her guard down this far?
It would be impossible to hurt her, she was so addled with love she'd hardly notice anything you said or did. The only analogy you could draw—the analogy you were outright forced to draw, seeing your sister like this--was to yourself, the first time you'd been allowed to touch Liliya after she left the hospital. You'd stayed with her that entire evening. Vel had been unusually quiet. And that had just been a month. You couldn't imagine what it would be like in her case.
"Vel," you repeated. "Let me know when you're ready. I'll give you however long you want."
She nodded, and then turned to look at the dragon. It rumbled softly, almost in response.
You didn't want to interrupt her, so you stayed quiet and watched. And thought.
The dragon's mind was a blur to you. It was impossible to read. You couldn't see what Vel was seeing; couldn't hear it, when it wasn't making an effort. And yet, it wasn't—no, was it supposed to be a dragon?
If you stopped imagining a dragon, stopped accepting its claim to be a dragon, and pretended there were the two young girls from the dream here instead, what would happen? If you… moved, a little, denying this perspective on reality? Denying its claim on reality?
Wouldn't you disturb her?
You backed down, watching her at it. She was smiling, and she seemed happy. That would have to be enough.
You'd never been good with words. But you could make your sister happy.
"Vel," you said. "I'm sorry. I…"
She wasn't listening. Sighing, you looked at the dragon. The… 'dragon'. You were pretty sure—and you wished you weren't, but you knew you couldn't lie to yourself about this—that the dragon was actually Roza and Liliya. Somehow. Not yours, but still them, somehow. The version of them from Veliona's timeline. Whoever had done this to them had a lot to answer for, you decided; whoever they were, they'd taken something precious away from someone who needed it more than anything else in the world.
You reached out again, stroking its side; it didn't seem to mind. It was warm under your hand. Warm like a summer's day. The synaesthesia was striking, and you could almost smell the hillside Roza had lounged on, like cinnamon and honey. You felt the scales beneath your fingertips, cool as ice and sharp as your best friend's blade. You could feel the lake she'd named it for.
"I'm sorry I shouted at you," you said softly. "You didn't do anything wrong."
You hesitated, then added:
"...except maybe you did something really, really stupid? Rozaliya... how did this happen to you? Who did this, and why? Liliya? How could they…"
Your voice trailed off. You couldn't finish the sentence. What could you possibly say, even if you wanted to?
The dragon rumbled its agreement. It was warm and soft, like a cat's fur. Like Vel's skin, like your own. Like Mother's arms when she held you.
You swallowed hard, and continued. "It's not your fault," you said. "Not your fault that you're a dragon. Not your fault that you followed me home. Not your fault that you're eating this universe. But you have to stop. Please."
The dragon made a soft sound, as if it were trying to speak. You shivered, backing down. It probably didn't understand you, and you didn't... didn't know. You didn't know that, that the reason your little sisters were in danger, were your...
What were you going to do?
"Please," you said, softer.
And you leaned forward, and kissed them.
It was the most natural thing in the world. With your eyes closed, you weren't kissing a dragon; you were kissing the forehead of two identical twin girls, with two horns and two tails between them. Two of the girls who mattered most in your world.
These weren't your Roza and Liliya, but you decided that didn't matter. They could be. Vel had told you, once already, that she loved the twins despite herself. If she was able to do that, then couldn't you do the same?
"Seele?" Vel asked, her voice uncertain.
You opened your eyes. She stared at you, with an expression of... confusion. And surprise. Her mouth worked for a moment, as if she couldn't quite believe what had just happened. How much of what you'd done had she caught, you wondered?
You hadn't meant to let on, but... well, you couldn't help it. You smiled a little bit.
She looked back up, and met your gaze. The dragon moved with her, shifting to look over Vel's shoulder.
"Vel..." you started.
"I don't want to lose them, Seele." She held her head, as if trying to keep something from falling out. As if her hair was a helmet, protecting her brain. Less imaginatively, her grip on the stigmata faltered. You had to quickly pick up the reins, lest you sag into the island universe and break something important. "I can't. Not again. I– Seele? Who's 'them'?" Her eyes widened. "Why do I remember going to the movies? And the dinner afterwards? It wasn't real! That wasn't my memory!"
You sighed, and stroked her hair. Or, equivalently: Pulled her a little inside yourself, so she didn't have to face the dragon on her own. You were still holding on to reality, but it was a thin line. Vel was not meant to act this way. "It's okay," you said. "It's all right. They're here now. Everything's fine. All you need to do is get a little more used to it."
You'd seen Rozaliya like this exactly once, when Liliya had been hospitalised and the doctors told you she'd never walk again, just after Roza had told her she couldn't fight, or live, without her. You remembered how the other girl had wept, crying into your chest as if the world itself were ending, and how distant Bronya had gotten. Veliona wasn't quite as badly off, but the wild-eyed look in her eyes was too similar.
You stroked her hair, and tried to imagine Mother's arms around you. The warmth of her embrace, even though you knew that couldn't happen. You passed it all on to your sister, who'd never once felt that warmth and comfort.
"That was all real, but it'll be alright," you said.
Her eyes seemed to clear, and she blinked at you. She leaned forward, putting her forehead against yours. You held her close for a long time, until you heard the dragon's low rumble of approval.
You looked up. The sea of quanta was as featureless as ever, but... between the dragon, the island universe and you, it felt painfully crowded.
"...I'll take care of her," you said. "Don't worry. We'll find an answer."
The dragon rumbled softly. It sounded like agreement.
And wasn't it quite something, that your alternate-past-timeline twin sister's draconic younger sisters... no, friends you guessed... were the best comported of the lot of you.
It was a little bit funny, and a little bit sad, but mostly just strange. You smiled at your sister, and she responded with a smile that you could have sworn was just a little bit shy.
"Thank you," she said.
ooOOoo
It was perhaps half an hour later that Veliona finally spoke again.
She was looking out across the Sea, staring intently. You followed her gaze, and saw the horizon of the quantum sea shimmering. Nothing unusual; the shimmer was how your stigmata indicated a lack of data. It was always pretty, but not particularly interesting. Occasionally she glanced at the dragon. Every time she did, you saw the pain in her eyes.
"I think I get it," she murmured. "They're..."
"Yes?" you prompted.
"They're the same as me. I was broken; you know that better than anyone. But they weren't. Not really. They were just cut down, somehow. And then healed. Just enough." She shook her head. "That's why. How could you fix something you didn't understand?"
She looked up at you. You understood her sentiment, for sure.
"Seele," she said, her voice thick with... sadness? Anger? You couldn't tell.
"I'm sorry, sis."
"I don't want to lose them, Seele."
You kept stroking her hair, as you had for a while now.
"I don't want to lose them, either."
"I can't. Not again. I–" She looked up, her eyes flashing. "You don't get it. I know–" She swallowed. "You know that's Rozaliya and Liliya, right?"
You nodded. You had, in fact, realised.
"I didn't. I didn't even know I'd lost someone, until they came back. I can't imagine living without them, and I still can't remember what it's like living with them!" Her voice was breaking. "Just little flashes, here and there. I'm scared. If I lose sight of them, I'll forget who they are. Who they were. I'll stop loving them again, and, I… I won't be able to stand it. They're all I have left of my family. All I've got."
You said nothing. You couldn't. The girls she was so obsessed with were, in fact, …not there. Not really.
You wished she'd cry. That she'd scream and shout and break things. Anything but this quiet, defeated look on her face. But, of course, she wouldn't. Not Vel. Not now.
Somewhere in the background of your head, you wondered how she'd turned out this way; if she was really your identical twin, what had happened to her that she was so different from you. You also hoped, desperately so, that this wasn't your own future you were looking at. That would be too cruel. For now, however…
Hold on. If it was, that would explain how you'd helped fix her—
You eyed Veliona with trepidation, but fortunately you were interrupted before that thought could be more than half-formed, and it wasn't one that made sense. Something like a wind-chime sounded in your mind. You'd heard it before,once, when you'd asked Rubia to search for the twins.
"Sis? We should-"
You glanced up, and saw the dragon hovering above you, watching you and Vel.
It hadn't understood your words… had it? Either way, the columns of Honkai it had been using to consume the world were gone. Now it floated, a mere few thousand possibilities away.
The dragon rumbled, and made a sound that was almost like a purr.
Vel stared at the creature, and then at you. Her expression was hard to read.
"Seele," she said.
"Yes?"
"…I'm confused."
"Me too." You squeezed her hand.
"What do we do?"
You blinked.
"Well... can you tell what Rubia's saying?"
She frowned, and shook her head. Keeping one eye on the dragon, you joined her in searching through the 'message'—but apart from that chime, which had come through with impossible clarity, it was just nonsense. Noise.
"I think we should go back," you said. "Um…"
Okay. Okay. The 'dragon' wasn't as unintelligent as you'd expected. That was a good thing, right? You looked up at it again, willing yourself to see the faces of your two favourite people in its—this was the Sea of Quanta, so multidimensional and inscrutable—face. Nothing.
"I don't know how we'll do it, but we'll find an answer," you said. "I won't give up."
Vel nodded.
You glanced back at the bubble.
And, at that moment, the Sea of Quanta went dark. The dragon vanished, and the island universe disappeared with it.
ooOOoo
You sat up.
You were in your bed, in your room, in your house, in your town. It was a small room, but neatly made; you had too much time to spare, so it was always tidy, if not as immaculately clean as your little sisters'.
That's what you called them, though they weren't biologically your sisters. You'd looked after each other ever since Uruk was destroyed, so they were your family, even if you didn't share any blood relation. They were also, at least in part, why you'd left home. Your parents weren't willing to help you take care of them, and you'd needed to get out of there. One thing had led to the other. Circumstances had conspired to place the four of you together.
Your mom and dad weren't around. Theirs were dead.
Your eyes automatically scanned the other side of your bed.
You were alone in the room.
You sighed, and got up. The place felt empty without Bronya, but you had no idea where she'd gone. Still. Three weeks after she'd disappeared.
You headed downstairs, and into the kitchen.
"Morning," you said.
"Hm?"
Rozaliya and Liliya were sitting at the table, playing some sort of game. They both turned to look at you. The stack of dirty cookware did not, though you thought it very well might. Which was odd, as you were all but certain those had been clean a few hours ago.
"You're late," said Rozaliya.
You rolled your eyes.
"It's Saturday," you reminded her.
"Not for that." Liliya pointed at the calendar. "Did you forget?"
"What's today?" you asked.
They exchanged a glance.
"Saturday," said Rozaliya.
"Your birthday," added Liliya. "You're fourteen."
"Oh," you muttered.
"We made a cake," said Lils. "You can't eat it, because it caught on fire, but it was fun to make. So we made another cake. And then we made a third one."
"And then a fourth," said Rozaliya.
"Then a fifth," added Lils.
"It took us all morning, but we wanted to do it. Here-" Rozaliya got up from the table. She leaned against the counter, where you now saw there was a plate of small cakes, six in total. One was burnt to a crisp; of the others, all of them looked different. "Do you want a coffee? Tea?"
"You didn't have to do that," you protested. The room swam a little, and you blinked. "I mean, I appreciate it, but..."
"But we wanted to," said Lils. "Because you're our big sister, Seele. …smile a little? Please?"
"I'm sorry," you said, forcing a smile. "I'll be right back."
"Okay!"
You stepped outside, closing the door behind you. As soon as you were out of sight of the twins you began to cry, as quietly as possible.
Three weeks. Three weeks, and you'd planned a big date with Bronya on your birthday.
"I miss you," you said, between sobs.
You wiped your face with the sleeve of your shirt, and looked up. The hallway was empty. The outside of the kitchen was a hole into nothingness, where the dreamscape gave up on existing. You knew, if you left through it, you'd wake up—vaguely, in the back of your mind. But you weren't going anywhere.
You were never going anywhere.
"I'm sorry," you whispered.
The girls were waiting for you when you returned to the kitchen.
"Sorry," you said, still sniffling. "I'm okay. Thank you, though. Can I-"
They embraced you, and held you tight. You cried into their hair. Your own hair, reddish black, fell around their shoulders.
"We know," they murmured. "We've been watching you. We knew you'd need some time."
"You're the best," you whispered.
"Seele," said Liliya.
"Yeah," you replied.
"We're going to find you again."
"I know."
"No matter how long it takes. We won't let Fire Moth take you."
You nodded, embracing their memory.
ooOOoo
"Vel?"
Your sister didn't respond. The dream had been overwhelming; almost enough to pull you away from reality, but not so much so that you failed to notice when Vel completely lost her grip on the stigmata. It hadn't quite fit you. Almost. Not quite.
The dragon surrounded you entirely, dampening the waves of the Sea and keeping your loss of control from being more than a nuisance.
Your sister wasn't responding. You prodded Veliona—the other Seele, you had to remember that, you'd called her literally that for years—but to no effect. Then error messages started popping up. It was happening in slow motion, but despite the dragon's best efforts, your stigmata wasn't... you weren't... alive. Not really. It was a pyramid balanced on its tip, and it couldn't function without input.
When Vel didn't wake up within a couple of seconds, you started worrying. When a minute passed, and the warnings increased in urgency, you panicked. Primary containment failure—the sea was flooding inside you; usually barely a nuisance. That still left secondary and tertiary containment, but you were running out of time.
"Vel?"
She didn't answer. Panic got pushed to the side. Phase-lock correction—you scanned the list of warnings, switched one especially critical subsystem from manual to automatic, then thought better of it and cancelled the lock Vel had put between you and its actuators. Overlapping the influence of every adjacent universe, so it'd add up to zero, was a careful balancing act that you couldn't realistically leave to software. Your head ached, the workload a little higher than anything you'd tried before.
Primary phase-locking, now.
The Sea sang like a hundred violins, and the world crystallised into a stable pattern. Flooding dropped to a survivable level. You blinked, struggling to keep the new sensations from overwhelming you. Correction; your eyes appeared to have gone missing. The dragon, seeming startled, curled even more tightly around you.
Then Vel smashed into the same control points you were using, her frantic, desperate attempts at restoring control a little too quick to realise that you'd already done it.
Your minds practically short-circuited each other.
ooOOoo
"I think my brainstem hurts," your sister complained. "And I can't find the hologram controls. I think you broke them."
You groaned, sitting up to examine the damage. The checkerboard floor of the inside of your soul was cracked and splintered, but it seemed to be largely superficial. You could feel the pieces, scattered across the surface, at the edges of your consciousness; it was still a painful view. You hadn't seen it like this in years.
Vel looked strange. After a moment of not putting your finger on it, you realised it was her clothes. She wore a jersey and jeans, not the far more elaborate outfits you were used to.
"What happened?" you asked.
She shook her head. "I don't know. The dragon obviously did something."
"I'm sorry."
"It's not your fault," said Vel. She turned away, hugging herself and looking at the diary table. "This is going to be a mess. It'll take me days to fix everything, and we don't have that sort of time. Roza and Liliya, on their own..." She grew quiet.
You made your way to her side, taking her hand.
"We'll find a way," you said. "I promise."
"I think we'd better start by asking Einstein," she muttered, staring down at the journal. "Or Rubia."
You reached for the book, but hesitated.
"Is that okay?" you asked.
"Yeah," she said. "I'm not going to break, Seele. You don't need to treat me like I'm fragile. If anything, I feel better than I have in years. Sure, just about everything turned out to be awful, but–" She shrugged. "What else is new? At least I'm me again. I'll tell you all about it later, after we rescue the derps."
"Okay," you breathed. You embraced your sister from behind. You could feel her smile. "Okay."
"Let's get some work done."
= = =
Vel may not be fragile [citation-needed], but they're the equivalent of scratched up and bruised. The downside of leaving her to her own devices is she zoned out so thoroughly it actually hurt them, albeit with assistance. Seele, fortunately, isn't as reliant on Veliona as she thinks.
[ ] Return immediately
- Vel: This is obviously faster, but we won't have a lot of low-impact options if there's trouble. I feel stiff, and I don't trust myself not to overdo things.
- Seele: We'll have some. We promised not to disappear. I'm worried.
[ ] Finish field repairs before returning
- Vel: This would give us our usual combat options, but it'll take half an hour. If that's too late…
- Vel: I don't really like either option.
[ ] Write-in
Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
Many thanks to @Snowfire and @ShadowAngelBeta for C&C as usual.
They're battered and bruised, but they'll be okay. Though, Vel going AFK was always going to be a problem. It's not caused by the most recent votes, except in the extremely loose sense that if you'd voted for her to stay purely an "AI", this wouldn't happen. In theory that could have happened by accident; in practice I was pushing hard to prevent that outcome. I much prefer her this way, and I like to think that so does everyone else.
As this hints, but doesn't say, she's largely stabilised by now. She isn't likely to do this again, at least not due to Snek; the connections that were broken are almost one hundred percent reestablished.
They're battered and bruised, but they'll be okay. Though, Vel going AFK was always going to be a problem. It's not caused by the most recent votes, except in the extremely loose sense that if you'd voted for her to stay purely an "AI", this wouldn't happen. In theory that could have happened by accident; in practice I was pushing hard to prevent that outcome. I much prefer her this way, and I like to think that so does everyone else.
As this hints, but doesn't say, she's largely stabilised by now. She isn't likely to do this again, at least not due to Snek; the connections that were broken are almost one hundred percent reestablished.
- Location
- Maybe?
That was very sad, and I didn't understand any of it.
Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
- Seele considered examining Snek closely, but didn't.
- Snek considered examining Seele closely, and did.
- Veliona had another entry in her vision quest quest-log.
- And Seele found herself not quite as unable to handle the Stigmata on her own as she thought she was. Only an AI can do that; humans don't think nearly fast enough. She'd prefer not to think about it at all.
Also we got another glimpse at the Previous Era, once again from the perspective of a future Herrscher. If there's anything every single Herrscher has in common, it's having a very good reason to dislike society.
I wonder if this was equally difficult for everyone? I'm not an especially good author, unfortunately, so do let me know if something needs improvement.
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Hmm, given that we got contacted it's probably better if we do actually return ASAP to allay concerns if nothing else. I'd prefer to avoid causing a panic because we appear to be not responding to a ping.
I lack a grasp on the verse mechanics to really attempt a good write-in here. Like could Seele return to check in on Roza, Lili, and Rubia while Vel works on the repairs or is that not something that can happen? Though even if it's possible I'm not totally sure I'm good with leaving anyone alone right now even if Vel is saying she's better (or alternatively explaining to Rosa and Lili why Vel is hanging back.)
I lack a grasp on the verse mechanics to really attempt a good write-in here. Like could Seele return to check in on Roza, Lili, and Rubia while Vel works on the repairs or is that not something that can happen? Though even if it's possible I'm not totally sure I'm good with leaving anyone alone right now even if Vel is saying she's better (or alternatively explaining to Rosa and Lili why Vel is hanging back.)
The snek boop'd Seele to communicate with/remind her, which is where the past-vision vision quest update came from.
This knocked Seele offline forcing Seele to temporarily handle the stigmata with snek going "oops" and trying to help.
This caused the hologram controls to break. There might or might not be consequences for this, but I'll make sure to bap it into not punishing you guys too much if at all since I think its like two or three degrees removed from being the consequence of a vote you made.
This knocked Seele offline forcing Seele to temporarily handle the stigmata with snek going "oops" and trying to help.
This caused the hologram controls to break. There might or might not be consequences for this, but I'll make sure to bap it into not punishing you guys too much if at all since I think its like two or three degrees removed from being the consequence of a vote you made.
Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
It depends on how much you need Seele to have butterflies fluttering about her, like, right now.
It limits her options somewhat, because Vel was using the same system to produce giant claws, tentacles, and pools of highly corrosive darkness. The hardware is actually fine, they just broke the hack-job she'd done tying it into their minds, but that still makes it unusable for combat use.
Of course that still leaves them with all the systems Dr. Mei had designed for them as weapons.
Things such as the original version of the Key of Reason, to name one of the more harmless ones.
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Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
She can, but by default Vel is both the best fighter, and the one who has to do those repairs. Seele can help with both, but isn't super good at either; she is in many ways the little sister. Sometimes she spots something Vel has overlooked, though.
I admit, there are times when the story is confusing to me, but that's mostly the nature of the sea of quanta, or whatever new and dangerous things Seele does that involves her messing around with things she wouldn't be able to do in the real world. I can understand everything else just fine.
I like the writing, but I've never been specific about what I like about it. I think it'd be a little too long if I just started picking out the things I thought were neat. I appreciate that you take the time to write all of this. It's a fun story.
So.... This was a bit heartbreaking. The idea of recognizing that you care for someone dearly, and couldn't live without them, and not being able to remember having those moments with them. That hurts like hell. I do like Vel the way she is now, but she definitely needs that vacation at some point. The amount of distress she's in is just... Ouch.
For votes, I don't really have that great of an understanding of the situation for a decent write-in. Going back immediately would be wise. It reassures everyone else that Seele and Vel are okay. On the other hand, it seems really important that things get fixed before more things happen. I'm leaning on wanting to have them fix things together first. Vel might say she's fine, but I think there's still benefits to taking things slower. This is also because I want to see how everyone else on the other side handles things without Seele and Vel for a while.
Also, what does the losing the hologram controls mean in this case? As in, what exactly are they now unable to do?
Lastly, what did you input for the art you included?
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Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
I'll comment on the rest of this tomorrow.
Just to answer this, however… it means almost none of their regular combat options are available. To be clear, those include:
- A very sharp (holographic) scythe, which can supposedly cut souls. It is indeed very sharp, but it's really a prop. Seele should be able to cut things almost equally well without it, if she can get over the difference in balance.
- Pools of darkness, tentacles, giant claws and so on. Veliona has a lot of fun with these, but it's no more real than the scythe.
This covers ninety percent of their usual battle tactics. Seele wouldn't put it this way, but Vel has been sandbagging hard; even in canon we know they have a huge armoury of previous era weapons, but the only one that's so far seen the light of day is Bronya's Project Bunny and the Key of Reason. This is largely because she thought Seele wasn't mature enough, and it's hard to call that wrong…
At the time.
What isn't affected?
- Resonance explosions triggered by flicking reality with a finger, destroying everything within a few meters. Thse still work just fine, but take a lot of focus and can't be done repeatedly without accidentally breaking reality. Amusingly, Seele is better at this.
They feed off Honkai, and are especially effective against crowds.
- Everything else in that armoury. Everything from personal weapons to anti-shipping cannons. They still have spent zero effort learning about these, so it's risky.
- Their physical bodies. But if it comes down to Seele physically wrestling a Honkai beast, she's toast. Temporarily anyway. Let's avoid having the twins see that.
- Their main body. "Bruised" as she may be, if Seele were to enter the fray directly she'll only have trouble not destroying too many mountains. The horde won't be surviving. In practice this is a matter of taking the time to do it safely, or at least "safely"; if you try it as a split second emergency option, well.
Do that, and I still won't kill any of her family.
Ahem. She has other options; the problem really is just a lack of familiarity, here. Which assumes she'd be fighting at all.
Really, my narrative goal here isn't to make her useless; only to push her outside her comfort zone, by one means or another. You get a lot of choices as to how.
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Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
Those times are usually when @Thelxiope shows up to draw an absurd yet somehow completely appropriate analogy to a Glitch. I'll admit, I've been missing those lately. Hopefully we'll shortly do something silly enough to bring it up again, but otherwise you shouldn't hesitate to ask questions.
And I appreciate hearing it. Hmm ~
I write about five times faster with AI help than without, so it's good too hear it's working out. A lot of the resulting text is outside my comfort zone, but that's sort of… the point?
Exciting times, in any case.
Yeah…
I don't want to minimise Veliona's troubles, because she is indeed deeply distressed. Anyone going through what she is would be; there's hardly anything worse than losing your mind, but losing your mind, realising it's happening, and realising you're going to forget your loved ones… that's worse. Watching it happen is almost as bad.
It happens, far too often, in real life. I don't want to go into details, because anyone who's experienced it knows what I'm talking about.
Fortunately, Seele and Veliona aren't as badly off. Yes, Seele is frequently left at loose ends trying to think of a way to help; but so far "do nothing" has been a viable strategy. And Veliona isn't losing her mind. She's scared, because she previously lost her mind and now she's beginning to fully realise that; she's sad and angry because of what happened, and scared she might go through it again.
I'll let you in on a little secret, though. It isn't going to happen. Veliona won't forget any of what she's remembered—this ratchet only moves one way.
It's wish-fulfilment, I suppose.
Oh, right, and another thing. Every Herrscher was wronged by humanity. There's always a good reason why they were chosen. Veliona is approaching the point where she'd be a valid candidate again, but she's still some distance off. Still far from the likes of Sirin.
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Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
VQGAN+CLIP:
"The final fate of memories. Seele, a small and dark-haired girl, curled up in a void and surrounded by shards of space. By James Gurney."
The prompt itself bears only a passing relation to what's in the picture; I tried several different ones, and several different random seeds for each, before I found one that by happenstance produced something usable for this chapter. As you can see though, there's no mention of her being comforted by anyone. That happened because... well, I'm not really sure! Possibly James Gurney pictures just tend to do that?
His works are, after all, generally rather wholesome.
VQGAN is not as good as DALL-E, but much better than what we previously had. I'll be continuing to add these pictures; they're still a little dreamlike, but. Not nearly to the same extent. I've done a lot more pictures like these; you can find them in my signature, or here.
Since I'm multi-posting to this extent, let me just end by giving you a glimpse of my writing process.
At one point in the past, it was possible for me to look at the finished product and say "This sentence is by the AI", "this sentence is a prompt I added", etc. etc. That was not an ideal system; I did it more because AI Dungeon made it very difficult to edit at all, and at the time was sufficiently good that I could get decent results by not editing until an update was mostly done.
Now I'm using NovelAI, which tracks the author on a sentence by sentence level. That's displayed in color, so I can show you how much of this is me. However...
White text is the AI. Blue text is me. Purple text is when it isn't sure, because I did too much editing. ...yep.
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- Location
- Wingmaiden's Reach, the Near Roofs, Town
- Pronouns
- She/Her
You have me on a schedule???!?
... well, as it so happens, I had something in the works anyway, hmph.
The Fire That Is Perception
I've brought up attention in passing, when discussing the strange properties of Ninuan, but never really singled it out to give it the, hah, attention it deserves.
Paying attention - the deliberate act of attending to something, of choosing to pay attention to something; of choosing to be present and aware of an event in the moment - is the single most important and impactful action that a PC is capable of taking in Glitch. You can tell this, because the entire XP reward loop is wired to it, and the entire dramatic pacing system keys off of it.
Part of this is, well, game design. Part of this is legacy code from Jenna's earlier game, Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine, which is a game about the nature of stories, and so naturally cares about and rewards dramatic beats; and repurposing that system around moments of attention is not actually very hard.
...but part of this is that Glitch is a game about retired world-ending death-gods from the illimitable void beyond Creation; and thus, about the Lands Beyond Creation; and it turns out that the Lands Beyond Creation ...
...well, let's define some terms, shall we? What do we mean when we say something 'exists'?
Glitch deals a lot with not-things; with, in the parlance, λ-things - Jenna discovered that a) if she kept calling things 'not-things', the word 'not' eventually lost all meaning; and b) a λ-thing is ...
a λ-apple, a not-apple, is not ... it's not 'a thing which is not an apple'
It's not 'the set of non-apples'.
It is 'an apple, which does not exist'.
It is an object which is recognizably an apple, which has all of the properties of apples, which could be considered a part of the Noble Estate of Apples, save - and save only - that it does not have the property of 'existence'.
And so we come back around to - what does it mean, that a thing exists? That it is real? That it is part of Creation, of the Thing That Is?
This can't be simply locational - yes, most things inside the Weirding Wall are real; but λ-things can enter, or real things exit, through the seven roads and innumerable side passages that cut through the walls of reality. A real thing does not immediately cease to be real when it exits Creation and enters Ninuan; nor does a λ-thing become real by performing the crossing in reverse. Thus, existence is a property that is inherent to the things born of Creation, but which is not gained or lost by entering or exiting Creation proper.
Sooooo
What does it mean to exist?
Existence, as Glitch defines it - the unique property of Creation, of the World Ash, of the All, and everything that Cneph Creator wrought; which sets The Is apart from The Not - is simply this:
From this, we can derive a simple corollary, namely:
...
So this raises a question, which is how the Not, how Ninuan, persists at all? How are there forests in the Not, if there is no one there to see? How can there be rivers, if there are no witnesses to the play of water across the stones?
And this has a simple answer, which is that the substances of Ninuan reflexively self-perceive (Nobilis and by extension Glitch being extremely animist, the weird part of this statement is the "self-perceive" bit, not the idea that objects might have agency or be capable of attention).
We have touched on this before - the idea that things of Creation shout. They announce, loudly, at all times, "I'm here~! I exist! Look at me!" and will continue to do so even if no one is actually looking.
Things of the True and Silvered Land are quieter. They turn their voice inwards, and dream the long, slow dreams of their own being.
...
So you have an entire landscape, an entire reality - well, no. Definitionally not a reality. But English does not have a great word - continuum, maybe? - of things which are dreaming.
The greenwood dreams the long, slow dream of itself into being. The babbling brook dreams of the flow of water over smooth-worn stones.
The hunter dreams of hunting. The prey, of fleeing. The arrow, of striking. As we have discussed before, there is no causal chain which connects these events - rather, Ninuan correlates these disparate dreams into a cohesive narrative.
Time and space, inasmuch as they exist in the Beyond, are backwards - rather than events occurring at a set point in space and time, space and time are shuffled around to fit events.
And this all works -
Until you add the fire that is perception.
Perception is not reflexive in Ninuan. It takes effort. It takes will. It requires a decision.
λ-entities, for their part, rarely ever choose to do so. They do not naturally look outwards. They do not naturally perceive things outside of themselves. They may certainly act like they do, out of Ninuan's correlative structure - the gossip dreams of gossiping, so Ninuan obligingly correlates them with other gossips and says "these gossips gossip with each other, in this time and this place" - but fundamentally, they are not awake or aware, and therefore do not perceive.
And so, without any external perception on them, their own self-conceptions - the dream they dream of themselves, and the dream Ninuan dreams through them; their Eide and Wyrd, respectively - go entirely unchallenged.
External perception, though -
If an observer enters Ninuan, and looks into Ninuan, well -
It turns out that the focused pressure of attention, of outward-looking, is extremely dangerous when applied to a continuum where things are not used to being looked at.
The act of looking challenges the self-conception of the thing looked at. Because perception is not a neutral act - in perceiving, one creates a competing conception of the thing perceived.
This, usually, simply creates ripples: it wakes up the thing being looked at - which starts awake under the sudden pressure - which in turn will wake other things because it is awake and aware and looking, and the chain reaction continues for a while before Ninuan smothers it under its own pressure of sleep and dream. At a moderate level, attention-pressure can reshuffle the correlations of Ninuan, causing a thing to be correlated into the story of the observer that was not before but could have been, and now is.
But at its worst...
Why is Ninuan home to the serried ranks of the Excrucian Host, who ride into Creation to make an ending to it? It is, in part, because that story makes sense: because the component pieces are there and Ninuan has arranged them such that they play their parts. It is, in part, because Creation is a horrifying edifice made from the desecrated bones and stolen lands of those long-dead Ninuanni who happened to be correlated into the wrong place and wrong time when Cneph wrought the world; because the world is an appalling, unanswered crime against the void. But it's also because the Angels of Heaven peered into the Void, and feared it, because they did not understand it and could not control it; and in doing so nailed their false perception of the Void as a place of horrors to the sky and made it true.
Perception is violence, to the λ-things of the True and Silvered Land. The act of attempting to grasp what something is inevitably harms the thing you are grappling with. Every observation changes the observed.
...
...
Okay. We are well into the weeds now. Like, 1200 words deep. Let's head back to the path, shall we? Bring this back around to this quest which actually exists and is not a game of Glitch.
Paying attention - the deliberate act of attending to something, of choosing to pay attention to something; of choosing to be present and aware of an event in the moment - is the single most important and impactful action that a PC is capable of taking in Glitch. You can tell this, because the entire XP reward loop is wired to it, and the entire dramatic pacing system keys off of it.
Part of this is, well, game design. Part of this is legacy code from Jenna's earlier game, Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine, which is a game about the nature of stories, and so naturally cares about and rewards dramatic beats; and repurposing that system around moments of attention is not actually very hard.
...but part of this is that Glitch is a game about retired world-ending death-gods from the illimitable void beyond Creation; and thus, about the Lands Beyond Creation; and it turns out that the Lands Beyond Creation ...
...well, let's define some terms, shall we? What do we mean when we say something 'exists'?
Glitch deals a lot with not-things; with, in the parlance, λ-things - Jenna discovered that a) if she kept calling things 'not-things', the word 'not' eventually lost all meaning; and b) a λ-thing is ...
a λ-apple, a not-apple, is not ... it's not 'a thing which is not an apple'
It's not 'the set of non-apples'.
It is 'an apple, which does not exist'.
It is an object which is recognizably an apple, which has all of the properties of apples, which could be considered a part of the Noble Estate of Apples, save - and save only - that it does not have the property of 'existence'.
And so we come back around to - what does it mean, that a thing exists? That it is real? That it is part of Creation, of the Thing That Is?
This can't be simply locational - yes, most things inside the Weirding Wall are real; but λ-things can enter, or real things exit, through the seven roads and innumerable side passages that cut through the walls of reality. A real thing does not immediately cease to be real when it exits Creation and enters Ninuan; nor does a λ-thing become real by performing the crossing in reverse. Thus, existence is a property that is inherent to the things born of Creation, but which is not gained or lost by entering or exiting Creation proper.
Sooooo
What does it mean to exist?
Existence, as Glitch defines it - the unique property of Creation, of the World Ash, of the All, and everything that Cneph Creator wrought; which sets The Is apart from The Not - is simply this:
Something which exists will persist even if no one pays attention to it.
From this, we can derive a simple corollary, namely:
For a λ-thing to persist without worldly substance, it must be attended to.
...
So this raises a question, which is how the Not, how Ninuan, persists at all? How are there forests in the Not, if there is no one there to see? How can there be rivers, if there are no witnesses to the play of water across the stones?
And this has a simple answer, which is that the substances of Ninuan reflexively self-perceive (Nobilis and by extension Glitch being extremely animist, the weird part of this statement is the "self-perceive" bit, not the idea that objects might have agency or be capable of attention).
We have touched on this before - the idea that things of Creation shout. They announce, loudly, at all times, "I'm here~! I exist! Look at me!" and will continue to do so even if no one is actually looking.
Things of the True and Silvered Land are quieter. They turn their voice inwards, and dream the long, slow dreams of their own being.
...
So you have an entire landscape, an entire reality - well, no. Definitionally not a reality. But English does not have a great word - continuum, maybe? - of things which are dreaming.
The greenwood dreams the long, slow dream of itself into being. The babbling brook dreams of the flow of water over smooth-worn stones.
The hunter dreams of hunting. The prey, of fleeing. The arrow, of striking. As we have discussed before, there is no causal chain which connects these events - rather, Ninuan correlates these disparate dreams into a cohesive narrative.
Time and space, inasmuch as they exist in the Beyond, are backwards - rather than events occurring at a set point in space and time, space and time are shuffled around to fit events.
And this all works -
Until you add the fire that is perception.
Perception is not reflexive in Ninuan. It takes effort. It takes will. It requires a decision.
λ-entities, for their part, rarely ever choose to do so. They do not naturally look outwards. They do not naturally perceive things outside of themselves. They may certainly act like they do, out of Ninuan's correlative structure - the gossip dreams of gossiping, so Ninuan obligingly correlates them with other gossips and says "these gossips gossip with each other, in this time and this place" - but fundamentally, they are not awake or aware, and therefore do not perceive.
And so, without any external perception on them, their own self-conceptions - the dream they dream of themselves, and the dream Ninuan dreams through them; their Eide and Wyrd, respectively - go entirely unchallenged.
External perception, though -
If an observer enters Ninuan, and looks into Ninuan, well -
It turns out that the focused pressure of attention, of outward-looking, is extremely dangerous when applied to a continuum where things are not used to being looked at.
The act of looking challenges the self-conception of the thing looked at. Because perception is not a neutral act - in perceiving, one creates a competing conception of the thing perceived.
This, usually, simply creates ripples: it wakes up the thing being looked at - which starts awake under the sudden pressure - which in turn will wake other things because it is awake and aware and looking, and the chain reaction continues for a while before Ninuan smothers it under its own pressure of sleep and dream. At a moderate level, attention-pressure can reshuffle the correlations of Ninuan, causing a thing to be correlated into the story of the observer that was not before but could have been, and now is.
But at its worst...
Why is Ninuan home to the serried ranks of the Excrucian Host, who ride into Creation to make an ending to it? It is, in part, because that story makes sense: because the component pieces are there and Ninuan has arranged them such that they play their parts. It is, in part, because Creation is a horrifying edifice made from the desecrated bones and stolen lands of those long-dead Ninuanni who happened to be correlated into the wrong place and wrong time when Cneph wrought the world; because the world is an appalling, unanswered crime against the void. But it's also because the Angels of Heaven peered into the Void, and feared it, because they did not understand it and could not control it; and in doing so nailed their false perception of the Void as a place of horrors to the sky and made it true.
Perception is violence, to the λ-things of the True and Silvered Land. The act of attempting to grasp what something is inevitably harms the thing you are grappling with. Every observation changes the observed.
...
...
Okay. We are well into the weeds now. Like, 1200 words deep. Let's head back to the path, shall we? Bring this back around to this quest which actually exists and is not a game of Glitch.
The Sea of Quanta is not Ninuan, but it certainly is Ninuan-like at times: perhaps by coincidence, perhaps by design, perhaps by some dark secret of the computer sciences which cause all people with extensive CS backgrounds to naturally weave complicated quantum mechanical theory into their works of literature.
The point is, I guess - that aggravated interpretation is a thing which is possible, in the Sea. One can decide to perceive things in specific ways, and inflict that on the things perceived.
Seele was very careful not to do that, or at least, not to do that in a violent fashion.
RozLilsSnek were, um, less careful. And under the pressure of that intention, the stigmata - which, um, weirdly, is sort of ... acting like Seele&Seele's combined Eide and Wyrd? It's acting as "Ninuan", as the dream-beneath-the-dream of their being, the substrate; and also as the presented face, the dream-of-selves, the Eide - anyway
Under that attention, that external pressure of interpretation - the stigmata buckled, and a few of its parts came loose. Mostly the Eide parts - the hologram emitter - which honestly makes sense: the external, presented face is the part that is most vulnerable to aggravated interpretation, since it's the part that's 'visible', that is 'facing' external interpretation anyway.
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Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
I'll make it up to you by making you another avatar.
A little from column A, a little from column B, a good helping of column C. I've mentioned it before, but the way Ninuan is described is also how AI 'thought' works, on the inside. More so the smarter the AI gets. An AI with a world-model has to simulate 'people' and 'events', in order to produce decent text, but it's all... correlation. It's turned ninety degrees on its side from what we are used to, and the way you describe Ninuan is a better explanation than most.
For anything set in the Sea of Quanta I tend to let the AI loose, and that... I mean. You've seen, I guess? It produces Ninuan-like events without even trying, because there's no need to try. Because my AI contains a micro Ninuan. And then, of course, leaning into it is better than fighting it.
And I really rather like Glitch, although I have no-one to play it with. Maybe someday.
And... Seele and Veliona were "uploaded", but that technology doesn't really exist in this story.
Perception is a two-way road.
The sea of quanta is a nearly infinite-dimensional space, and it's a space of possibilities. Practically anything you care to name is quite literally next to you, but normally you'd never notice. This includes the likes of Cthulhu, or elves, or... well, anything really. In their own stories, they reach out to devour the universe; and you're right next to them, so shouldn't you be devoured..?
No, because you're not interacting.
To take an example from another story...
There once was an FTL drive. A method for travelling from one solar system to the next, where the method of travel is through 'warp points' that, all of them, always lead to places outside the Hubble volume. Any solar system has trillions of these; quadrillions. So, of course, they just opened every single one of them from Sol... and they never met any aliens. Aliens did not appear to exist.
Then, an unopened warp point in a colony system started flaring. And when they sent a ship through it, they found it was flaring because that star had just gone supernova.
They also found not one, but two alien species that had made the same choice, of looking. Because, while the chance of any given warp point leading to another species was near zero, the chance of another species sharing a warp point leading to this supernova with humanity was... much, much larger. The supernova system had quadrillions of warp points, after all. It was the chance of any of them having another species behind it.
...
Where this connects to Seele Quest is that, when Seele looks around the quantum sea, that act of perception is itself noticeable. Perception is always a two-way road. She only notices the things that reach out to touch her, but it's hard for anything to reach out and touch her without a pre-existing connection.
She made a deliberate choice of not looking for a vantage point which would, perhaps, show a path from Snek to... not so much Snek.
Snek made a deliberate choice of showing Veliona part of her past, where it connected to its own.
This is not what you described. Even in Glitch terms, Veliona had already been lobotomized. Her Eide had been cut in half, its pieces sewn back together to make something that wasn't her. All Snek did -- all it needed to do -- was look at her, while being unaware of that. Veliona exists because Selee-and-Veliona is a story the stigmata tells itself; there is no longer an external reality there to keep them intact.
The rest is just dominoes falling as they will.
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- Location
- Wingmaiden's Reach, the Near Roofs, Town
- Pronouns
- She/Her
So -
One of the things I like to do with these Glitchy analyses is make as few assumptions about Honkai bullshit as I can, and with as few ties to Nobilis lore as I can. It's the reason that the Seele sheet (which I need to redo) works better than the Sirin sheet (which I also need to redo), I feel - I could write up Seele and Vel's sheet without having to define their relation to the rest of the setting.
...also I knew more about Seele and Vel than I did Sirin but whatever.
But maybe let's examine something, here -
Because what you are describing sounds very much like the Masking Rite - the Strategist's power of autopoesis, their ability to manipulate their own personality or identity.
Just - applied badly, and by an external power.
The Masking Rite is, normally, used to create cover identities within Creation, or secondary personae with useful skills. It can, however, also be used to mess with a Strategist's own memories, set up internal countermeasures against mind control or emotional manipulation, prebuild contingencies for specific situations the Strategist knows they will react poorly to ... or create an entirely new person and bury the original personality entirely, if that becomes for whatever reason necessary - and the book explicitly calls out the idea of playing a character who is the product of a Masking Rite, with an older self buried beneath the surface of their mind, with all the attendant philosophical terror that implies.
...Normally, it is exclusively self-directed.
But if you - if you had a defeated Strategist at your mercy ... it's not like killing them accomplishes much. They are not immortal per se but they are largely immune to staying dead, so murder is unlikely to do anything but delay them. You could imprison them, somehow - I'm assuming a Law-being or one of their slaves could make some kind of miraculous prison to hold one, that seems eminently doable with an Imperial miracle or a wish. You could bind them, somehow, in chains of words and miracle. Also doable. You could find some way to destroy them permanently, which strikes me as being very difficult but presumably possible if you worked at it long enough.
...Or you could try what 'Doctor' MEI - Magistrix of the Light; Lady of Rules; Imperatrix of Gross Excesses of Mad Science and possibly a few other Estates which I don't know - did. What she attempted to do, at least, when she had the Strategist Veliona defeated and helpless at her feet. You could, somehow, through some incredibly Bleak combination of miracles, attempt to bury your defeated Strategist underneath an implanted personality of your own design.
It's not clear that this worked the way MEI intended. I don't know what happened, or how, or if MEI is still around or not because who cares right now. Maybe MEI is from the 500 years of human history that were sold to the Void? I like that because then we can sort of fold in some of the Previous Era stuff - obviously Vel was the iteration of Seele from those lost 500 years, before she brokethrough. And then we can tie in Sara Nei and integrate some Nobilisy plot hooks and whatever moving on.
But - she tried to bury Vel. To make some kind of controllable weapon. She at least partially succeeded. And this weapon ... died? Somehow got attached to Seele, when the most likely scenario seems to be the cycle of reincarnation -
And then Seele got lost in the Lands Beyond Creation, and little by little that Mask that MEI wove to keep Vel contained and compliant chipped away.
...which makes Seele really weird but look she already had Black Orchid, the Key of the Exception, as one of her keys the first time I did her sheet. We already knew she was really weird. Seele is ... I guess if I wanted to be technical, she's sort of a Prescott's Child? Just, one who has a fully-functional Strategist crammed inside of her instead of just, like, some random residual Ninuan-stuff. Very strange.
Anyway enough babbling about this recursive Seele Quest/Nobilis crossover which only exists in my head. Votes!
[X] Return immediately
Seele and Vel promised not to disappear. Also, if they're ever going to learn how to use any of this junk stored in the stigmata, well, they're going to have to actually try it.
Is this a Nobilis thing or do you mean the intervening time between Ages from Honkai? Cause the time between the two Eras that HI3 involves* is 50k years.
... Fu Hua really needs an "I'm too old for this bullshit" mug.
(*The previous games in the series involve the world being reset even. Multiple times. HI3 setting is whack)
Best guess we have is that Stigmata!Seele awoke in Current Age!Seele and ended up... how should I put it... fixing herself? Stigmatas are integrated into their hosts, they have to be to channel honkai energy in the host, some are "just" more evolved/sophiticated/complete- Anyway, point being the integration of Stigmata!Seele on Current!Seele let the former essentially do things she really wasn't supposed to be able to do.
Like think for herself.
If I had to nail it down more... the model of Current!Seele that the stigmata had to build to work with her (whether that being to measure her as a candidate for distributing the Previous Era weapons cache to or for distributing honkai energies safely throughout her system) basically gave the stigmata!Seele... identity? An illusion/mirage of what she was and thus let her be now?
I can't word it, but like... I see a bare outline of Seele, filled with circuitry (anime-esque glowing line circuitry of course), and then a full model copy of Seele is slapped down on top of that and she suddenly wakes up as a Seele filled with Seele shaped circuitry.
The circuitry being nothing more than the AI Dr. MEI created from her still living Herrscher of Death brain/core imprint while the model being the copy of current day Seele the stigmata (might have) made. Might not have needed a model either, waking up inside Seele might have been enough to cause the reaction as well.
Anyway, now that I took five years to explain one image.
>.<
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- Location
- Wingmaiden's Reach, the Near Roofs, Town
- Pronouns
- She/Her
It is a Nobilis thing
One day an Imperator ripped 500 years of Earth's history from the calendar of the world and sold them to the Excrucians. Instantly the ancient and savage grandeur of the Roaring Twenties replaced the advanced and antiseptic sterility of modern human civilization. The souls that could not adapt flew out into the void of space, there to cluster in great rainbow spheres. One such soul was that of Sara Nei, the Power of Networked Gaming. Not until her Estate returned formally to the world could she reincarnate herself. Her original soul in tatters, she linked together a great congeries of souls† and used them as the basis for reestablishing her existence.
Sara Nei is the correct Power to pray to for better network performance while gaming. Because she can stabilize and improve network connections without difficulty, we reckon her at Domain 3.
†Did she rescue, devour, or become those souls? The matter is inherently somewhat ambiguous, and Sara Nei does not prefer to clarify it.
Sara Nei is the correct Power to pray to for better network performance while gaming. Because she can stabilize and improve network connections without difficulty, we reckon her at Domain 3.
†Did she rescue, devour, or become those souls? The matter is inherently somewhat ambiguous, and Sara Nei does not prefer to clarify it.
I mean, I should probably think about how to tie the earlier Ages in, if possible; but also I am not seriously pursuing the idea of writing up this Seele Quest/Nobilis crossover so this is mostly idle musing
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Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
I decided to go reread those, and you're right; Seele's definitely works better.
It was on point. Seele, in canon as well as in the early parts of this story, really does act somewhat as an accessory to Veliona. Less so over time, but Seele on her own would just be…
A lost child?
Even now, if you left her on her own without the Stigmata, somehow human again, I don't see how she could be very effective. Perhaps more worryingly, I'm not sure she'd try very hard. Well, she'd struggle and flail, but not *effectively*.
The Stigmata isn't something that belongs to Veliona only. Still, Seele isn't a strong person. It doesn't make her a bad one—people like her can be very nice to have around, just don't ask her to shoulder the fate of humanity.
… well, hmm. Oops.
On the bright side, I think that character sheet would look different today.
Okay, so despite not really knowing anything about Glitch and just picking stuff up from previous explanations, some of the story makes sense a lot better? Maybe it's just looking through a different lens that makes it that way. I don't mean it it a sarcastic way. It actually helps a lot. Thank you. The perception made a lot of things finally click together.
Pushing Seele out of her comfort zone is definitely a lot more interesting for the story.
I've thought about the choices a bit, and I prefer Seele returning immediately, without trying to repair things. Originally I had something else in mind that was somewhere in between the two, but I ended up liking this one better. So... throwing her into combat without her usual tools sounds good to me. The possibility of fiddling with PE weaponry is also pretty exciting. What better way to figure things out than to put them to use?
I still want to see Seele demolish a landscape (accidental or on purpose) at some point just because it would be fun. Don't know when that would make sense yet.
[X] Return immediately
Pushing Seele out of her comfort zone is definitely a lot more interesting for the story.
I've thought about the choices a bit, and I prefer Seele returning immediately, without trying to repair things. Originally I had something else in mind that was somewhere in between the two, but I ended up liking this one better. So... throwing her into combat without her usual tools sounds good to me. The possibility of fiddling with PE weaponry is also pretty exciting. What better way to figure things out than to put them to use?
I still want to see Seele demolish a landscape (accidental or on purpose) at some point just because it would be fun. Don't know when that would make sense yet.
[X] Return immediately
- Location
- Internet
[X] Return immediately
- Location
- Wingmaiden's Reach, the Near Roofs, Town
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Signs point to yes!
Seele 'Cecily' & Seele 'Veliona' Völlerei
Dying of Homes
Dying of Homes
Bio
Look I'm just going to assume everyone here already knows the basic beats - there's a Seele, who becomesYeah, Vel's from a section of history which retroactively never happened, rather than being from "50,000 years ago but somehow all the same people are there despite huge differences in the respective histories of the eras", but honestly this is all basically the same.
Let's move on.
Names
Seele, while she rode with the Excrucian Host, went by the war-name 'Veliona', meaning something akin to "Phantom" -Feel the wicked, pale claw that curls around your beating heart:
I will not die today.
Because she thinks it's kind of funny, Veliona will, sometimes, teasingly call her sister 'Cecily' - a condescending and cutesy nickname, sort of like 'Darling Little Lostling'. If pressed, she will insist it is short for 'Cecesila': "Lostling's Soul" -
Fledgling-ruffed, I walk the dark
A pilgrim of the Wyrd.
Avatar Diagram
Name: Seele & Seele Völlerei, dying of HomesDestruction: the Decohering Wyrd Role: Faery Queen Sphere: λ-waylets
Dandelion (XI), the Key of Deep Roots
Strategists are generally immune to, um, to death - but you outright refuse to stay dead, above and beyond the stubborn deathlessness of your peers. You fight and claw and drag yourself back into life over and over and over again. Why? What drives you to keep coming back? And how does it feel, knowing that the world will always try to drive you away?Heart - WHAT KEEPS US HERE
- We won't leave our family. We can't.☆
- If the world didn't want me to try and kill it, it shouldn't have taken Bronya from me.
- We collect λ-waylets - little bubbles of splintered-off Creation that are cast adrift in Ninuan: too like Creation for the inhabitants of the True and Silvered Land to feel comfortable; too far removed from the world for Creation-born to ever call them home.
- The Bubble of Butterflies isn't especially, um, useful; but most situations could use more butterflies anyway.
- If Roza and Lili think that growing up means they can escape their big sisters worrying about them, they have a rude awakening in store.
- Einstein has taught me so much. Also, someone needs to remind her to eat.
- World and void and the war between have cost our family so much. No more.
- We are going to find, reunite, and protect what's left of our family. And if world or void want to stand in our way, they are welcome to try, and equally welcome to burn.
Shadow - CURSED
- Clinging.
- Attachment hurts.
- When it all gets too much, we can retreat to our diary-room, tucked away from world and void.
- Cecily is a bleeding heart crybaby who can't leave well enough alone. Always has to help the sad orphan or the lost kid.
Black Orchid (XV), the Key of the Exception
There's weird, and then there's weird - and then there's you. No one really understands what is going on with you and your circumstances - probably not even you.Heart - OUR NATURE
- Prescott's Children usually have random … bits and bobs of residual Ninaunni stuff from the creation of the world inside of them, not twins from years that never happened. And definitely not Strategists.
- We slowly fade away into nothing in places where we don't belong.
- Those kids called us a Faery Queen and, like - it's not like they're wrong?
Shadow - NO PLACE IN WORLDS
- We don't belong in Creation.
- We don't belong in Ninuan either.
- MEI and her Powers shattered me and tried to remake the shards into a weapon. Tried.
- Our touch confuses things, muddles things, unfixes the truth and dissolves the real.
- Whatever MEI intended the Armory Bubble for, all of those weapons are mine now.
- Who cares what the world thinks? Our place is with Bronya.
- Roz and Lils are a world-ending night dragon now, and I have no idea why. Did MEI do that to them? ...Did I?
Game Traits
Infection
As their Infection rises, the Seeles become less and less present, less and less able to interact or engage with the things of world and void. Ultimately, they will dissolve entirely under the ceaseless insistence of Creation and Ninuan that they have no place in either, and will be forced to write themselves back into being in their diary-room.Eide 2 - Practitioner
Eide is the Dream-of-Self, a reflection of the narrative nature of the void. It is the Seeles' ability to be perceived as they wish to be perceived.For a long time -
For a long time, Cecily didn't even touch this. She left their shared Eide to Veliona, let it be her sister's domain alone. And for a long time - because in those days, the Seeles' relationship was more adversarial; and Veliona more invested in an Eide fearsome and terrifying - that leant an air of horror to their image.
But time and trial helped mend the sister's bonds; and the assorted tribulations of life meant that Cecily had no choice but to take a more active part in shaping how she and her sister are perceived -
And then one day, some small children asked the Seeles if they were a faery queen, and, well -
In some senses, that's not inaccurate.
And there are far worse things to be seen as.
Technique - Faery Magic
There are times and places where Creation is weak. Where the intrinsic realness of the world is … not absent, precisely; but certainly less present than it perhaps ought to be. In these times and in these places, there are certain techniques which can be employed, certain powers which can be exercised, which would not normally be possible.Most of these powers are magic - exploits in the rules of the world, which are understandably much easier to make use of in times and places where those rules can be bent. And there are beings - mortal magicians, and faery-folk, and stranger things besides - which lurk in lacunae or by the borders of Chancels, which seek out the moments where the world is weak and harvest that uncertainty, that glamour, to work wonders.
A Strategist, however, has little need to scavenge for such weaknesses. For is not the world broken? Is not the world a thing made entirely of wrongness, a grotesque assemblage of flaws and lies and desecration?
There is no strength anywhere in Creation, says the Void; and so, with the right mental gymnastics and a touch of miraculous power, the Seeles can simply treat the world as if it were wobbly and uncertain for the purposes of magics which rely on that fluidity.
In this fashion, the Seeles can conjure, or banish - for how can anyone be sure that the thing was or was not there? They can move without moving, slip between spaces or around blows. They can call glamour from nothing and shape it into objects or useful coincidences. They can unfix the world, for a short time, and resolve that ambiguity into a situation more to their liking.
Flore 1 - Ghost
Veliona is sundered from the world. She declared war against it, and the world does not tend to forgive such things.Meanwhile, Creation is - or rather, should be - Cecily's home. She's from the world. She is a daughter of the world. But it has forgotten her. She fell into Ninuan beyond the world, and the world has forgotten who she is.
The Seeles have trouble connecting to Creation and the things thereof. They have trouble making an impact that is not fundamentally founded on destruction. They are alienated and scorned by this place that was once their home.
But despite that, there are things in this world that they treasure, that bring them peace and joy; things they will fight for, even as the rest of the world rejects their touch.
Lore 5 - Perquisitor
Cecily has no home in the Void. It rejects her, a daughter of Cneph's tainted Creation. But despite the scorn of the True and Silvered Land, despite the fact that, when she arrived, Cecily could only stumble through the Void at Veliona's direction, adrift in a sensory null with only her sister's word that there were forests and rivers and villages and people there -Despite all of that, Cecily learned to survive in Ninuan. She learned to see in a land where there is no light; learned to navigate in a realm where distance and location are fluid; learned how to find those rare cast-off pieces of Creation that litter the void - and how to claim them for her own use.
And then Veliona cribbed from her notes - because through that ceaseless struggle to see and interact with the Void in even the most rudimentary ways, Cecily had, gradually and without any fuss, become far better at navigating the True and Silvered Land than Veliona had ever been.
Sphere - λ-Waylets
The creation of the world was not a particularly clean process. Nor, for that matter, is Ninuan's ongoing war against the world.Both have left debris behind. Bits and pieces of broken worlds, adrift in the Nothing. Sundered from Creation and not part of Ninuan, they are abandoned, forgotten, and alone.
These inverse waylets are the Seeles' Sphere; and it is from these fragments of almost-reality in the Lands Beyond Creation that they claim their Arcana.
Arcana
The Seeles claim bubbles of these sundered world-lets, and can wield them as tools: overlaying a bubble's nature over the local area and causing its properties to displace or append to those of the local reality.The Armory Bubble
MEI, Lady of Rules and Imperatrix of several Estates which no longer exist - having been unmade when the Council of Four sold five centuries of Earth's history to the Void - once tried to make Veliona into a weapon. She chained Veliona with cat-footsteps and moonlight and a leash of unyielding Rule, Imperial and absolute; she buried Veliona beneath a false glamour-mask of compliance and servitude; and she usurped whatever Sanctuary Veliona of the Strategists had in those days, and defiled it.MEI made Veliona's Sanctuary - whatever gentle place of respite Veliona had, from the ceaseless hatred of the world - into an armory. MEI made it into a place of violence and sharp edges, crammed full to bursting with awful weapons of her own twisted design.
And though MEI is dead, now - shattered along with her Estates; the Rule of her proven false and stricken from Creation - though her chains and her mask are broken, too … that place will never be a Sanctuary again.
It is a world of weapons, now; and that is all it will ever be. A world of claws and scythes and grasping tendrils of night; of chains which bind concepts and blades which cut the soul.
Veliona wields it, because weapons are useful when world and void alike wish one dead - but she does so only grudgingly, and counts herself lucky that she remembers so little of what the Armory Bubble once was.
The Bubble of Butterflies
Cecily found this splinter of the world, when she first started to learn how to navigate in trackless Ninuan. She carries it with her, treasuring it like a favorite stuffed animal. The ability to overlay it upon a situation, and cause multitudes of butterflies to be present where otherwise they would not, is rarely useful - but must the worth of a thing be reckoned by its utility alone?Wyrd 1 - Wyrdling
Wyrd is the Dream-of-Being. It is the self beneath the self, the true face of the story Ninuan is using the Strategist to tell. It is a measure of how deeply a Strategist understands their own fate and nature....this is extremely complicated, in the Seeles' case, by the unique nature of their existence. They clearly have some measure of the Strategist's Wyrd - of their fated, fatal entanglement with both world and void - but they are just as clearly also estranged from it; rejected by the Silvered Land where it should hail and welcome them as a pair of its lost princesses.
The Seeles' Wyrd is tangled and confused, even to the dustcloaked sages of the Not.
Sanctuary - The Diary Room
Strategists are, normally, poisoned by Creation and driven back into the Beyond. The Seeles are too, but they're also poisoned by Ninuan and driven out of the Silvered Land.Their Sanctuary is … somewhere. It's not really clear where it could be, not when both Is and Is Not recoil from them. But apparently there is such a place.
A dark room, with a chessboard-patterned floor and a blue diary and a vase of white flowers. A pair of nice chairs. A set of scales, and some assorted knicknacks.
It's small, and dark, and a little cramped. But it is the Seeles' place. It does not reject them. It is safe. It is here where they retreat when everything becomes too much. It is here where they rewrite themselves when they ultimately dissolve under the scorn of world and void.
Destruction - The Decohering Wyrd
The Seeles' power of Destruction confuses the nature of things. Things stricken by it become less real - or, well, less … defined, for unreal λ-things of the void. It becomes difficult to pinpoint where they are, what they are doing, or how they can possibly have an impact on the world. At its worst, their Destruction causes something to dissolve into a strange smear of probabilities across many timelines, utterly incapable of affecting any of them.This is similar to their Technique - but far more powerful, less precise, and never capable of being anything but a weapon.
Ability 2 - Casual
The Seeles are … not amazing at, you know, doing things. At living. At engaging with the world in a fashion not predicated on terrible destructive magics of the endless void.They can manage. They can accomplish tasks, they can take care of themselves. But they're not good at it. They lack the ability to focus - to be present, to pay attention, to not drift off or get distracted. Focus is effortful, for them. It's not precisely hard, but it's not something they can do without trying - without having to explicitly make an effort.
Geasa
Bright Eyes (Lore)
The Seeles - Cecily in particular, but Veliona through close familiarity and spending a timeless time learning the skill alongside Cecily - understand the nature of things around them, not through sight or hearing or touch, but through the ability of Ninuan's Strategists to simply … intuit the true natures of nearby things.This is really unusual.
Most Strategists don't have Lore 5. Most Strategists cannot reflexively sustain a miracle of Greater Vision. Even those that can do not have Cecily's particular experience, of being a Creation-born who has spent so long in the Void, scrabbling and struggling to see and interact with it, that she has forgotten how to perceive in any ordinary fashion and instead latched onto the structure-sense, onto that strange and holy talent the Strategists have to understand what is hidden, as her primary sense - not as 'an extra sense', not as 'an overlay atop the normal senses', not as 'a sacred trance which reveals hidden truths of world and void', but as how Cecily - and Veliona, by extension - perceive anything whatsoever at all.
As their native sensory modality is 'miracles of Greater Vision', and they thus do not actually use their eyes for anything, the Seeles do not have the Rider's Eyes; and in fact, are extraordinarily difficult to pin down as being Riders at all.
This manifests as a Geas, 'We must not seem to be of the Rider-kin, so long as we do not openly wield the arts or weapons of the Void', tied to the Seeles' Lore, with the following effects:
- The Seeles are miraculously protected from effects which would discern them as being Riders unless they do obviously Ninuanni things.
- If a miracle attempts to contest this, the Seeles are sheltered by a Ward equal to their Lore (5).
- If - somehow - this causes them to disappoint someone (cf. Glitch: A Story of the Not pg. 276), the Seeles recover an additional three points of Cost from that failure.
- This is very explicitly a sheet for playing Seele & Seele Völlerei. Glitch doesn't particularly, um, care? if you use one character sheet to play two people, so why not have it be for both of the Seeles? The sheet does not explicitly say whether the two have distinct bodies, or are cohabiting - I figure that can be up to the player, and probably varies with circumstance or mood anyway.
- Related to the above, name references have become 80,000,000,000% more confusing. In self-defense, I gave blue Seele a nickname (a Glitchy Strategist one) and use it throughout, for clarity.
- Gorse, the Key of the Yoke, has been removed from the build and replaced with Dandelion, the Key of Deep Roots.
- ... meaning that the entire Avatar Diagram had to be redone.
- The section for the Seeles' Eide has been entirely rewritten.
- The section for the Seeles' Lore has been entirely rewritten, though it remains much closer to the 1.0 version.
- Assorted bookkeeping stuff and Glitch esoterica.
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Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
I want you to know that I truly love this, and that if any of this character sheet makes its way into the story then that is entirely your fault.