The Secrets' Crusade
- Thread starter Snowfire
- Start date
- Original Sci-Fi
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
So it ended and this is the new one huh. Alright then soooon I'll finally get to finishing the quest and coming to this one
Yeah, I actually finished a quest. Fear me.
In regards to the update, I'm working on it, but coursework and the widespread health issues that all of us are aware of are making it a bit difficult to concentrate. I'm fine at the moment: I live in a very rural area and am already taking what social-distancing steps are needed. It's just, well...distracting is the wrong word. I've been making progress, which is good, but it's proving hard to give it a lot of focus right now. I am still working on it, though, and if all's well will have an update out soon. All the best to everyone, wherever you might be. Please stay safe.
You too, dude.
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
I live with family, and one of my parents is over 70. So I'm self-isolating until this is all over and done as of today. Thank you, though.
An Absence, Revealed
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
July 2nd 2130
"That should be the last connection, Mary," you said, sliding the panel back into place as your friend ran the diagnostic set on her end. Yours were already done. "Sidra has a clear signal."
"That should have done it," Mary paused, consulting her diagnostics. "You got it. All sensor connections stable. We're ready."
"I'll get back to the observer position," you replied, sealing the panel fully and checking the time. The timer was getting rather low. "It's almost time."
"Go. No doubt they'll help in the future, but all these sensors are just window dressing. We need one of you to get something from what Tahkel is about to do," Mary hadn't liked it, but she'd not been able to argue with the conclusion that Arcadia had come to in the last few weeks. Humanity wasn't expecting to learn how to replicate anything today. But, if you were lucky, the event you were about to witness would teach the Potentials watching enough to duplicate your work.
You tried not to worry about that as you sped down corridors towards the observation gallery. Right now, they were all lacking the specific context that you'd found that night half a lifetime ago. Some of you were close, you among them, but close wasn't enough. And if this didn't give you what you needed, you weren't sure what would except time. Humanity could survive that, but you would lose so much less if you could bring the Uninvolved into the matter. And a success here would help far more than just humanity. First, though? You had to succeed.
The doors to the gallery folded away as you approached, revealing the wide space beyond that had been built into the research station. The scientist in you would have preferred for this to have taken place back on Mars, within the carefully controlled research environs of Arcadia. But what you were about to witness was a Practice-type event undertaken by an entity far greater than any Potential. And one who was distinctly not human. Looked at that way, doing this at considerable remove to any population centres made a lot of sense.
Creating a new research environment was just a matter of applying the proper resources and Adriana had been very clear in her directives on this matter. Whatever you'd needed, you got. This research wasn't the top strategic priority for humanity right now; that was survival. But it was very, very close to the top. Even if this facility might only be able to be used once, it would be worth it if you could glean even some understanding from the process. And Tahkel hadn't objected to your caution. Although that didn't mean that everything had been perfect; your last-minute departure to stabilise sensor connections wouldn't have been needed were that the case.
You'd never interacted with the Potentials who called themselves Makers much. You'd relied on the group a great deal during your time as President, but there'd never been time to get to know them. Which meant that most of the Potentials in the room with you today were relative strangers. And you'd not seen the few you knew in years.
"Do we need to start evacuating?" Castin Bell was one name you had recognised, however. A fellow child of the Second Awakening, the sandy-haired man had Awoken to a very similar Focus. You'd met decades ago, during one of countless restorations of the cities of the pre-Sorrows world; much of the inspiration for your multitool had come from his example. It felt like it should be odd, to recall events fifty years past with no immediately visible signs of aging on either party. But that was the world you lived in, and you were glad for it.
"No, Castin," you replied, and if there was chastisement in your tone, it was belied by the smile on your face. "There was a glitch in the link to our observers. The only reason I was asked to do it is because I can move faster than anyone else here."
"That's certainly true," Castin chuckled. "I hope we can rely on you to carry us out if this all goes wrong, then? I'm not sure that these old bones could get to the escape pods in time." You shot him a withering look, to absolutely no effect. You'd not expected that reaction to have changed, but it had been worth a try.
"I'll be sure to pick you up last," you replied solemnly. "It wouldn't do to put those bones under undue stress." Then your smile faded, as you turned to face the object of the deck's attention.
The crystal had been placed more than a kilometre from the station's inner hull, isolated and contained by the structure. A dozen shield layers hovered invisibly in the space between, and an outer screen had been placed around the station as well. And, of course, you were there. That would help a great deal in the event of a catastrophic failure.
The timer projected at the corner of your vision by Sidra was mirrored at the bottom of the viewscreen in front of you, and as you watched, the timer ticked past two minutes remaining. The communication with Tahkel had been very clear in giving timings, though helped by the reality that the Uninvolved could observe your systems in a way that only Insight could really understand. Countermeasure development had kicked into high gear since that realisation, though you were pretty sure you hadn't been meant to know that.
Phoebe had given the Uninvolved a time; the Void Crystal itself was an obvious place. Now all you had to do was watch. Looking around, you saw the other Potentials begin to slip into their own variants of concentration, reaching into themselves to realise the power of their Foci as everyone in the room had done thousands of times before. This time was different, though. The event that you were about to witness was something that hadn't happened in hundreds of millennia. And you were all of you hoping that it would give you, any of you, the ability to understand how you'd created the object that would make it possible.
Arcadia Unleashed: 78 + 26 + 37 + 55 + 26 (Learning) + 35 (Mary) + 15 (Daughter of Secrets) + 10 (Olympus Archives) + 21 (MoSci) + 42 (MoW) + 24 (MoPr) + 50 (Grounding) = 419/200/300/500/???
Arcadia had done its best in the time available, but even with every team dedicated to the matter, there was only so much they could do. But you did have a much better idea of what you thought the Void Crystal was, now. The major theory right now was that acting on realspace from wherever the Uninvolved actually lived caused a fracture in the fabric of space-time, which the Shiplords had learnt to track. There'd been some thought of it being further support for the mechanistic oversight philosophy of explaining the Secrets, but if that had been the case, why hadn't human Potentials been detected?
The Void Crystal somehow smoothed away the results of this fracture. If it did so by preventing the fracture from happening by acting as a connection of its own, reduced the ripple-effect of the fracture if there was one, or simply made it easier to connect, no one was sure. You were moving down the right path, certainly, but there was just too far left to go. You needed to understand how to build these things, not just what they might be. Arcadia would get there eventually, but you didn't have "eventually". Which was why you were here, waiting as the timer ticked down, and hoping that one of you would be able find truth amidst whatever was about to happen.
:Sixty seconds,: Sidra noted, their mental voice as calm and steady as ever. Subtle power bloomed at the edge of your perceptions, out in the shielded space where the crystal lay. Tahkel was here, you could feel it. You reached one hand across, laying it on the bracer that contained the Mender's Eye. It was still an artefact of Mending, and so not as suited to this as Insight would be. But Insight could be dangerous here, if what was to come lay too close to the Secrets. Only one way to find out, you thought to yourself. Then you took a breath…
…and let go.
The world sharpened imperceptibly, once, then twice, the instants blurring together until the world you could see with your eyes was simply gone. Lines of light traced your vision, the webwork of humanity's creation, but it wasn't your focus. Out beyond the walls of the observation deck, at the heart of the station, something stirred. The eternally featureless shape of the crystal you'd created pulsed to a beat of lambent fire, building steadily as the seconds ticked down. Reality twisted around the tiny point in space, an endless path of gathering light falling up and down and away and so many directions for which there were no words.
There'd been a theory that it might work like this, acting as a link up towards what Insight called the Void, and what Arcadia had come to call soul-space. The rules were different there, you knew already from how Insight could gather information across such huge distances. But interacting between those two places had a cost. The larger the entity, the greater the cost. And with that cost came disruption. Potentials were largely immune to it, though it did explain the odd readings that had been recorded during intense Practice usage. But Potentials, no matter how powerful, were small.
Your grandest actions had barely touched upon the power of an Uninvolved, and for all that strength, they lacked the ability to move subtly. And therein lay their weakness. To act beyond the bounds of their home, without aid, would invariably alert the Shiplords to their interference. And it was now very, very clear why the Shiplords had built weapons capable of attacking the soul. They were the weapon behind the fear which had kept the Uninvolved from acting. Especially when they had no way to talk to anyone but each other. But now…now they could.
You felt Sidra's presence around you, anchoring your thoughts and senses in the webwork world that only a handful of Potentials could properly access. The light of a newborn star blazed at the heart of the crystal in that world, and still it sucked in light, and not just light. It was like a rope, or a ladder, reaching out into nothingness between the walls that separated what you knew to be reality from those beyond. And as you watched, the faintest shadow of a being that had been young when humans first mastered fire reached down that ladder of glimmering starlight.
You were never able to describe what you saw in that moment. You could draw it, put numbers to the energy outputs, but those didn't describe the image. It was like trying to explain what a Focus was to someone who wasn't a Potential. There just weren't the words. Human language couldn't give it context. But that image wasn't everything, and it wasn't what you'd been sent here to try and understand, either. You reached out, every sense keen, piercing the light and impossible shapes to let its power flow over you.
Your body blew away, fading into an ephemeral mist of shimmering light. Something tugged on your mind, a familiar feeling, yet one you just couldn't place as your mind failed you. This was too much, too vast a change for it. But not for your soul. Green-gold fire crackled to life, shining through the form of mist you'd become. Sidra's colours were there too, you knew, woven between your own. Yet none of it mattered, as still you reached forward. Beyond the station, beyond the shields and the space within. Deep and down and through, into your oldest and last self-made mystery.
Pierce The Void: 100 + 82 + 36 (Practice) + 20 (Mender's Eye) + 50 (Shapes in the Void) = 288 Natural Critical reroll: 82! Critical Success!
And you saw.
You watched Tahkel reach into the world through the shard of a world at once part of and entirely separate to your own. Watched them stretch out delicate fingers of power that could have brushed aside the station around you with the gentlest of touches, if they had wished to. And you watched, watched, watched, as the world around the crystal warped, and started to come apart.
Matter poured into the space left behind, wrapped in a prismatic veil that you knew well from Miracles. Poured in, and formed something new, technology born of knowledge older than your species. The drive that would make this entire endeavour, mad as it may be, possible. You saw the shapes, the items perfected by an edge as sharp as your own soul. Maybe, if your focus had been there, you could have gleaned enough to replicate it, one day. But it wasn't and, in the end, that was as it should be.
Reality pressed against the ladder that had risen from the crystal, weighing heavily on its walls as if seeking to crush it. Without that, the Uninvolved would have been forced to expend energy of its own, to keep the way open. And that would have created waves of disruption, the residue that the Shiplords could detect. That would bring the Shiplords down upon you all with a fury unlike any mortal eyes had seen. Yet they found no purchase.
A creation born of two worlds, Tahkel had said. Maybe so. But it was so much more than that, too. Connecting, you peered closer, was merely a case of opening a way. Yet the ladder had come from the crystal itself, not the other way around. And no matter what the world around you wished to do, the reaction simply wasn't there. To your Focus, it soothed away the jaggedness of the wound pierced between dimensions, leaving nothing but a perfect shape that did not fight. Only held.
Could you build another one? Maybe. But there were errors in the design you'd made before, flaws you hadn't, couldn't have, seen in the depths of a Trance. Sidra moved in the depths of your thoughts, carefully gathering the concepts and possibilities into something you could use. A wave of deep gratitude swept out to the Unison Intelligence who had chosen you, and you felt the reply a moment later.
:Thanks are for later, Amanda.: They said, gently setting the feelings aside for now. It was almost mothering. :Are you sure you want to do this?:
:I can.: You replied. :But that's not what you asked.:
:No,: Sidra agreed. :Are you sure you want to do this right now?: It was a complicated question. Acting now, in the moment of insight, could create exactly what humanity was looking for. But would it give them the understanding to build new ones? You'd leapt beyond the ability of human science to follow before, many Potentials had, but before now it had been accidents. This?
:If I don't,: you sent, :I could lose this moment. This understanding. Even with your record, I might not be able to bring it back, and we're in too deep to try and talk to anyone else.:
:It will make you more of what you wished to never become,: your Unison sighed. :But you knew that.:
:I did.: You looked down, finding no hands, only the oddly solid mist that you'd become. It glittered in the colours of your soul, itching to be let free. :But in this, I don't think it matters. Humanity needs these. The only thing holding me back is that I don't know if creating them again will help me show others.:
:There are a dozen Makers here, all of them far more skilled in that.: There was no bite to the chastisement. :They learn by example.:
:That's true.: But could you risk it?
The world around you rippled, tiny fragments of connection and possibility sowing the absent air beyond the fluxing power that was Tahkel's creation. Seeds of what could be, of Artefacts that could change the balance of power in the galaxy. You'd been sent here to understand, and that you had. But could you risk losing that understanding, now that you had it, and with nothing to show for it?
[] Insight Over All – You were never a Maker; let those who have spent their lifetimes chart the way. You will not lose this moment.
[] Creation Is Precious – You cannot waste this. Humanity, and more, could live or die on the ability of the Uninvolved to aid you. Take this chance.
A Note: You may not attempt to contact anyone for advice whilst making this decision. Any write-ins attempting to do so shall be denied.
"That should be the last connection, Mary," you said, sliding the panel back into place as your friend ran the diagnostic set on her end. Yours were already done. "Sidra has a clear signal."
"That should have done it," Mary paused, consulting her diagnostics. "You got it. All sensor connections stable. We're ready."
"I'll get back to the observer position," you replied, sealing the panel fully and checking the time. The timer was getting rather low. "It's almost time."
"Go. No doubt they'll help in the future, but all these sensors are just window dressing. We need one of you to get something from what Tahkel is about to do," Mary hadn't liked it, but she'd not been able to argue with the conclusion that Arcadia had come to in the last few weeks. Humanity wasn't expecting to learn how to replicate anything today. But, if you were lucky, the event you were about to witness would teach the Potentials watching enough to duplicate your work.
You tried not to worry about that as you sped down corridors towards the observation gallery. Right now, they were all lacking the specific context that you'd found that night half a lifetime ago. Some of you were close, you among them, but close wasn't enough. And if this didn't give you what you needed, you weren't sure what would except time. Humanity could survive that, but you would lose so much less if you could bring the Uninvolved into the matter. And a success here would help far more than just humanity. First, though? You had to succeed.
The doors to the gallery folded away as you approached, revealing the wide space beyond that had been built into the research station. The scientist in you would have preferred for this to have taken place back on Mars, within the carefully controlled research environs of Arcadia. But what you were about to witness was a Practice-type event undertaken by an entity far greater than any Potential. And one who was distinctly not human. Looked at that way, doing this at considerable remove to any population centres made a lot of sense.
Creating a new research environment was just a matter of applying the proper resources and Adriana had been very clear in her directives on this matter. Whatever you'd needed, you got. This research wasn't the top strategic priority for humanity right now; that was survival. But it was very, very close to the top. Even if this facility might only be able to be used once, it would be worth it if you could glean even some understanding from the process. And Tahkel hadn't objected to your caution. Although that didn't mean that everything had been perfect; your last-minute departure to stabilise sensor connections wouldn't have been needed were that the case.
You'd never interacted with the Potentials who called themselves Makers much. You'd relied on the group a great deal during your time as President, but there'd never been time to get to know them. Which meant that most of the Potentials in the room with you today were relative strangers. And you'd not seen the few you knew in years.
"Do we need to start evacuating?" Castin Bell was one name you had recognised, however. A fellow child of the Second Awakening, the sandy-haired man had Awoken to a very similar Focus. You'd met decades ago, during one of countless restorations of the cities of the pre-Sorrows world; much of the inspiration for your multitool had come from his example. It felt like it should be odd, to recall events fifty years past with no immediately visible signs of aging on either party. But that was the world you lived in, and you were glad for it.
"No, Castin," you replied, and if there was chastisement in your tone, it was belied by the smile on your face. "There was a glitch in the link to our observers. The only reason I was asked to do it is because I can move faster than anyone else here."
"That's certainly true," Castin chuckled. "I hope we can rely on you to carry us out if this all goes wrong, then? I'm not sure that these old bones could get to the escape pods in time." You shot him a withering look, to absolutely no effect. You'd not expected that reaction to have changed, but it had been worth a try.
"I'll be sure to pick you up last," you replied solemnly. "It wouldn't do to put those bones under undue stress." Then your smile faded, as you turned to face the object of the deck's attention.
The crystal had been placed more than a kilometre from the station's inner hull, isolated and contained by the structure. A dozen shield layers hovered invisibly in the space between, and an outer screen had been placed around the station as well. And, of course, you were there. That would help a great deal in the event of a catastrophic failure.
The timer projected at the corner of your vision by Sidra was mirrored at the bottom of the viewscreen in front of you, and as you watched, the timer ticked past two minutes remaining. The communication with Tahkel had been very clear in giving timings, though helped by the reality that the Uninvolved could observe your systems in a way that only Insight could really understand. Countermeasure development had kicked into high gear since that realisation, though you were pretty sure you hadn't been meant to know that.
Phoebe had given the Uninvolved a time; the Void Crystal itself was an obvious place. Now all you had to do was watch. Looking around, you saw the other Potentials begin to slip into their own variants of concentration, reaching into themselves to realise the power of their Foci as everyone in the room had done thousands of times before. This time was different, though. The event that you were about to witness was something that hadn't happened in hundreds of millennia. And you were all of you hoping that it would give you, any of you, the ability to understand how you'd created the object that would make it possible.
Arcadia Unleashed: 78 + 26 + 37 + 55 + 26 (Learning) + 35 (Mary) + 15 (Daughter of Secrets) + 10 (Olympus Archives) + 21 (MoSci) + 42 (MoW) + 24 (MoPr) + 50 (Grounding) = 419/
Arcadia had done its best in the time available, but even with every team dedicated to the matter, there was only so much they could do. But you did have a much better idea of what you thought the Void Crystal was, now. The major theory right now was that acting on realspace from wherever the Uninvolved actually lived caused a fracture in the fabric of space-time, which the Shiplords had learnt to track. There'd been some thought of it being further support for the mechanistic oversight philosophy of explaining the Secrets, but if that had been the case, why hadn't human Potentials been detected?
The Void Crystal somehow smoothed away the results of this fracture. If it did so by preventing the fracture from happening by acting as a connection of its own, reduced the ripple-effect of the fracture if there was one, or simply made it easier to connect, no one was sure. You were moving down the right path, certainly, but there was just too far left to go. You needed to understand how to build these things, not just what they might be. Arcadia would get there eventually, but you didn't have "eventually". Which was why you were here, waiting as the timer ticked down, and hoping that one of you would be able find truth amidst whatever was about to happen.
:Sixty seconds,: Sidra noted, their mental voice as calm and steady as ever. Subtle power bloomed at the edge of your perceptions, out in the shielded space where the crystal lay. Tahkel was here, you could feel it. You reached one hand across, laying it on the bracer that contained the Mender's Eye. It was still an artefact of Mending, and so not as suited to this as Insight would be. But Insight could be dangerous here, if what was to come lay too close to the Secrets. Only one way to find out, you thought to yourself. Then you took a breath…
…and let go.
The world sharpened imperceptibly, once, then twice, the instants blurring together until the world you could see with your eyes was simply gone. Lines of light traced your vision, the webwork of humanity's creation, but it wasn't your focus. Out beyond the walls of the observation deck, at the heart of the station, something stirred. The eternally featureless shape of the crystal you'd created pulsed to a beat of lambent fire, building steadily as the seconds ticked down. Reality twisted around the tiny point in space, an endless path of gathering light falling up and down and away and so many directions for which there were no words.
There'd been a theory that it might work like this, acting as a link up towards what Insight called the Void, and what Arcadia had come to call soul-space. The rules were different there, you knew already from how Insight could gather information across such huge distances. But interacting between those two places had a cost. The larger the entity, the greater the cost. And with that cost came disruption. Potentials were largely immune to it, though it did explain the odd readings that had been recorded during intense Practice usage. But Potentials, no matter how powerful, were small.
Your grandest actions had barely touched upon the power of an Uninvolved, and for all that strength, they lacked the ability to move subtly. And therein lay their weakness. To act beyond the bounds of their home, without aid, would invariably alert the Shiplords to their interference. And it was now very, very clear why the Shiplords had built weapons capable of attacking the soul. They were the weapon behind the fear which had kept the Uninvolved from acting. Especially when they had no way to talk to anyone but each other. But now…now they could.
You felt Sidra's presence around you, anchoring your thoughts and senses in the webwork world that only a handful of Potentials could properly access. The light of a newborn star blazed at the heart of the crystal in that world, and still it sucked in light, and not just light. It was like a rope, or a ladder, reaching out into nothingness between the walls that separated what you knew to be reality from those beyond. And as you watched, the faintest shadow of a being that had been young when humans first mastered fire reached down that ladder of glimmering starlight.
You were never able to describe what you saw in that moment. You could draw it, put numbers to the energy outputs, but those didn't describe the image. It was like trying to explain what a Focus was to someone who wasn't a Potential. There just weren't the words. Human language couldn't give it context. But that image wasn't everything, and it wasn't what you'd been sent here to try and understand, either. You reached out, every sense keen, piercing the light and impossible shapes to let its power flow over you.
Your body blew away, fading into an ephemeral mist of shimmering light. Something tugged on your mind, a familiar feeling, yet one you just couldn't place as your mind failed you. This was too much, too vast a change for it. But not for your soul. Green-gold fire crackled to life, shining through the form of mist you'd become. Sidra's colours were there too, you knew, woven between your own. Yet none of it mattered, as still you reached forward. Beyond the station, beyond the shields and the space within. Deep and down and through, into your oldest and last self-made mystery.
Pierce The Void: 100 + 82 + 36 (Practice) + 20 (Mender's Eye) + 50 (Shapes in the Void) = 288 Natural Critical reroll: 82! Critical Success!
And you saw.
You watched Tahkel reach into the world through the shard of a world at once part of and entirely separate to your own. Watched them stretch out delicate fingers of power that could have brushed aside the station around you with the gentlest of touches, if they had wished to. And you watched, watched, watched, as the world around the crystal warped, and started to come apart.
Matter poured into the space left behind, wrapped in a prismatic veil that you knew well from Miracles. Poured in, and formed something new, technology born of knowledge older than your species. The drive that would make this entire endeavour, mad as it may be, possible. You saw the shapes, the items perfected by an edge as sharp as your own soul. Maybe, if your focus had been there, you could have gleaned enough to replicate it, one day. But it wasn't and, in the end, that was as it should be.
Reality pressed against the ladder that had risen from the crystal, weighing heavily on its walls as if seeking to crush it. Without that, the Uninvolved would have been forced to expend energy of its own, to keep the way open. And that would have created waves of disruption, the residue that the Shiplords could detect. That would bring the Shiplords down upon you all with a fury unlike any mortal eyes had seen. Yet they found no purchase.
A creation born of two worlds, Tahkel had said. Maybe so. But it was so much more than that, too. Connecting, you peered closer, was merely a case of opening a way. Yet the ladder had come from the crystal itself, not the other way around. And no matter what the world around you wished to do, the reaction simply wasn't there. To your Focus, it soothed away the jaggedness of the wound pierced between dimensions, leaving nothing but a perfect shape that did not fight. Only held.
Could you build another one? Maybe. But there were errors in the design you'd made before, flaws you hadn't, couldn't have, seen in the depths of a Trance. Sidra moved in the depths of your thoughts, carefully gathering the concepts and possibilities into something you could use. A wave of deep gratitude swept out to the Unison Intelligence who had chosen you, and you felt the reply a moment later.
:Thanks are for later, Amanda.: They said, gently setting the feelings aside for now. It was almost mothering. :Are you sure you want to do this?:
:I can.: You replied. :But that's not what you asked.:
:No,: Sidra agreed. :Are you sure you want to do this right now?: It was a complicated question. Acting now, in the moment of insight, could create exactly what humanity was looking for. But would it give them the understanding to build new ones? You'd leapt beyond the ability of human science to follow before, many Potentials had, but before now it had been accidents. This?
:If I don't,: you sent, :I could lose this moment. This understanding. Even with your record, I might not be able to bring it back, and we're in too deep to try and talk to anyone else.:
:It will make you more of what you wished to never become,: your Unison sighed. :But you knew that.:
:I did.: You looked down, finding no hands, only the oddly solid mist that you'd become. It glittered in the colours of your soul, itching to be let free. :But in this, I don't think it matters. Humanity needs these. The only thing holding me back is that I don't know if creating them again will help me show others.:
:There are a dozen Makers here, all of them far more skilled in that.: There was no bite to the chastisement. :They learn by example.:
:That's true.: But could you risk it?
The world around you rippled, tiny fragments of connection and possibility sowing the absent air beyond the fluxing power that was Tahkel's creation. Seeds of what could be, of Artefacts that could change the balance of power in the galaxy. You'd been sent here to understand, and that you had. But could you risk losing that understanding, now that you had it, and with nothing to show for it?
[] Insight Over All – You were never a Maker; let those who have spent their lifetimes chart the way. You will not lose this moment.
[] Creation Is Precious – You cannot waste this. Humanity, and more, could live or die on the ability of the Uninvolved to aid you. Take this chance.
A Note: You may not attempt to contact anyone for advice whilst making this decision. Any write-ins attempting to do so shall be denied.
Last edited:
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
I'll be honest, there was one reason and one alone that this took so long. I've been finding it really difficult to focus on anything but the necessities for the last several weeks as I was trying to get my parents home from the US safely. They made it, but only just - they arrived back into the UK the day before the lockdown went into effect. It's hard to put into words how glad I am for them to have made it. We're, as my last post, now self-isolating until further notice. I'm in no danger unless they brought it back with them, and so far (fingers-crossed) none of us have shown any symptoms. I've still got coursework to do, but that's it beyond keeping myself active. Many thanks to @Coda and @Baughn as usual for checking this for me. I'm hoping for this to be a reasonably short vote, but now that I've said that, well, I'll no-doubt not be able to get it closed for weeks. All the best to everyone out there, and please, do all you can to stay safe.
And if I can add some brightness to your day with my writing? All the better.
And if I can add some brightness to your day with my writing? All the better.
@Snowfire two questions:
1. have they considered whether or not the Uninvolved can make these crystals, given another starting crystal from which to do the construction wthout alerting the Shiplords?
2. Do Practice and soul space show signs of interacting with time oddly? I ask because the void crystal seems almost prescient in its construction
Its interesting but in retrospect obvious to note that the Mender made something that functions by mending something
1. have they considered whether or not the Uninvolved can make these crystals, given another starting crystal from which to do the construction wthout alerting the Shiplords?
2. Do Practice and soul space show signs of interacting with time oddly? I ask because the void crystal seems almost prescient in its construction
Its interesting but in retrospect obvious to note that the Mender made something that functions by mending something
far
distances
here
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
- Ah, yeah. They can't. It's an unfortunate limitation. The crystal acts as the core of the creation. You can't make more that way.
- Not as far as you can tell. Also remember my standing policy on time travel (Big Nope).
It's a trade-off. You might get lucky, and be able to hold on to how to create these things yourself even after the act of creation. You might not. Or you might try to hold onto the idea and fail. This is really complex stuff, and Amanda just isn't confident that she can hold it all together. Even with Sidra's help.
So we have a a whole bunch of sensors and makers aimed at this: wouldn't making a new one right now help them by giving an example of the construction process instead of reverse engineering?
Especially considering holding onto the insight to explain it to them runs into the whole "there are no words for this" problem
Especially considering holding onto the insight to explain it to them runs into the whole "there are no words for this" problem
Shwaggy
Weapon of Math Instruction
- Location
- Texas
- Pronouns
- he/him/his
I'm so glad to hear that your family is back and safe with you! Social-distancing-compliant e-hugs all around!
As for the update...you know, this one reminds me of the dance in Dreams Awoken in some ways. Just wonderfully evocative of an otherworldly, barely describable experience, though a very different one. You really excel at those.
I think I'll hold off on voting until some discussion is had - this is a pretty big one. Stay with the job we set out to do accomplished, or reach further and risk losing all of it? I'm by nature a cautious person, but I try not to project too much on character decisions I vote for, and Amanda's had some very good results reaching for the stars.
As for the update...you know, this one reminds me of the dance in Dreams Awoken in some ways. Just wonderfully evocative of an otherworldly, barely describable experience, though a very different one. You really excel at those.
I think I'll hold off on voting until some discussion is had - this is a pretty big one. Stay with the job we set out to do accomplished, or reach further and risk losing all of it? I'm by nature a cautious person, but I try not to project too much on character decisions I vote for, and Amanda's had some very good results reaching for the stars.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Is this us trying to learn how to create drives, or how to create void crystals, or something else?
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
It comes down to will her act teach those people anything? It's a gamble.
Void crystals.
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@Snowfire I'm expecing to get shot down on this but, while human language can't convey the concept, what about the "language" of Uninvolved soul telepathy? I'm thinking in terms of Amanda passing a ball of "a human's conceptualization of the base principles and construction process" to the Uninvolved, to be safely stored in their presumably high resolution memory archives that are well oriented to deal with this kind of information. And then the Uninvolved repeatedly sending copies of the ball to Insight until understanding is achieved.
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Difficult choice, here. Very difficult choice. I would think about it now, but I'm a little busy with my own project:
In this vein, I'm running a quest of my own on SB, if anyone is interested. It is ridiculously different from this quest.
I wouldn't go so far as to say it's the polar opposite in terms of themes, but it probably comes fairly close.
Hm. I'll do something about this tomorrow, I think. Take a proper break from my own writing, mechanics, and designs.
In this vein, I'm running a quest of my own on SB, if anyone is interested. It is ridiculously different from this quest.
I wouldn't go so far as to say it's the polar opposite in terms of themes, but it probably comes fairly close.
Hm. I'll do something about this tomorrow, I think. Take a proper break from my own writing, mechanics, and designs.
As Mary said at the beginning, the sensors are essentially an academic exercise; we just don't have the time for the in-depth study required to reverse-engineer the Void Crystal creation process enough to be understood through "conventional" (meaning comprehensible to Mary and probably almost no one else) soul science. It's the Makers who are important: having them observe the process through their Potential senses gives us the best opportunity to potentially create more Void Crystals in time for them to be useful in the defense of Humanity.
And then Amanda got a "lucky" crit, and suddenly saw a way to Mend the existing Void Crystal to make it even better.
I think what we have is a choice between Amanda using that insight and making the existing Void Crystal better, and, well, not doing that. If we do, we'll have a Void Crystal Plus, which may be incredibly useful for Amanda's own journey, but is likely to play merry hell with the Makers' jobs of observing the initial connection process and could well doom any chance of having more Void Crystals available any time soon. If we don't, we preserve the original observation, potentially allowing the gathered Makers the ability to create more Void Crystals for use at Third Sol and beyond, but could lose the crucial insight to Mend our Void Crystal into a Void Crystal Plus, as Amanda isn't confident she'll be able to retain this insight (not surprising as we rolled a 182 on a d100 to get here!)
What we have here is sort of the same question we were faced with before. Which do we prioritize: the success of Amanda's journey to the dark worlds, or the preservation of lives back at Sol while she's away? Personally I value the later more; it's the kind of non-heroic attitude that I think Amanda strives for, and I prefer the idea of Humanity rising as a whole to meet challenges rather than relying on a single savior to take care of the problem for everyone, even if that savior is our Quest MC. As such I'm heavily leaning towards [] Insight Over All
- Location
- Somewhere out there
The jargon this quest has been using for that is called a "gestalt."
Humanity is... not especially good at them yet, not at that level of depth. Amanda tried to do it during the first encounter with Tahkel and more or less succeeded but it's sort of akin to speaking a different language. My guess: We might be able to try but I'm dubious of the difficulty level of the roll it would require.
Huh. It seemed to me like the question was whether to try to Make a new Void Crystal (possibly Plus), rather than fixing the current one... But I am still uncertain. @Snowfire - is the vote between focus on remembering how it works, with a chance of failure, or make some more, with a higher chance of not remembering everything of how it works? Or am I misunderstanding the choice?
- Location
- Somewhere out there
I'm pretty sure it's that Amanda knows how to make more now, but she's not sure if she'll remember it later. SHOULD she make more now, or should she stay her hand to avoid confusing anyone else observing who might be able to reproduce it afterward?
While this is true, I also feel that Amanda is also (uncomfortably) familiar with a level of self-sacrifice, allowing herself to go beyond what she would want for herself for the good of humanity. I can easily see her taking the opportunity to give Humanity more immediately-usable tools, even if it means being the one-woman not-quite-Human savior of Humanity, if the alternative is an unacceptable risk of NOT having those tools. I lean towards [] Creation is Precious for that reason.
- Location
- Germany
- Pronouns
- He/Him
We've got a lot of witnesses for what is happening just now, among them Tekhel. And they've been studying the crystal until now, when they watch what happens at activation.
And this:
If they cannot repeat that, they can still work on the original version, because they witnessed how it worked and what it's meant to do.
And this:
means the existing process is flawed. If we mend that now when we can, we get the perfected version, and a chance for all the witnesses to repeat that.
If they cannot repeat that, they can still work on the original version, because they witnessed how it worked and what it's meant to do.
[X] Creation Is Precious – You cannot waste this. Humanity, and more, could live or die on the ability of the Uninvolved to aid you. Take this chance.
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
What @Coda said, I'm afraid.
It's remember how it works, with a chance of failure vs make a bunch of crystals (seeding space, not just a single point) with a higher chance of failure to remember how you do it. However, therea re other features in play here, like the Makers watching. That'll all be roll based, though.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic