#but really it’s just like… sometimes i guess i forget/don’t realize how Far Out my simple ‘nah i just don’t go there’ policy really is

[dullgecko]

I felt compelled to do language headcanons and got carried away… Sorry!

Gorgug speaks in a mix of Gnomish and Orcish when he gets really into an artificing project or when he’s genuinely pissed(not in a Rage, just actually mad), like to the point it’s unintelligible even with Adaine casting Understand Language.

Fig does something similar when she gets mad just a mix of Elvish and Infernal, though it’s easier for Adaine and Fabian to understand that one. Everyone knows not to bother her if she’s mumbling in both languages since it takes a lot to get her to that point, usually Ayda has to come in and calm her down.

Riz and Gorgug both have a thing where they forget the word for something in Common and try to come up with what they think it is, with wild descriptions and weird names for it. Meanwhile Fig and Kristen are laughing at each attempt, Adaine is begging them to just say it in their respective languages while she’s casting Understand Languages, and Fabian is genuinely playing along trying to guess what they’re saying(He is SO far off).

The Thistlesprings have that country-like accent because Gnomish has a similar sound to it, the only times they speak in Common is when Gorgug has friends over or when they’re around people who don’t understand Gnomish. So by default Gorgug has a slight country accent, though it isn’t noticeable unless he says certain words.(I’m giving a reason for the “Even cowgirls get the blues” if you couldn’t tell.)

(Not language related but eh) Riz, Fig, Gorgug, and Ragh all make animalistic noises. Often they purr or growl softly when all the bad kids are in a cuddle pile or when they’re just cozy, Ragh is the loudest.

Adaine got taught how to howl and growl correctly by Jawbone, specifically how to do it in an affectionate way. Tracker cried when she came back home and was immediately greeted by both Jawbone and Adaine howling their love for her. Kristen was very confused, then later started to learn it as well, for Tracker.

Fabian can’t speak Halfling, he only new the songs Cathilda sang to him as a kid and realized he should probably try and learn it. He went to one if the Halfling teachers during Junior year and begged him to teach him the language so he could surprise Cathilda with a proper greeting when she got back home. He still wasn’t very good at it when she arrived, he mixed up a word and ended up calling her a canoe, but she still cried at her beautiful boy’s effort.

Kristen sometimes just sits and stares when one of the others rant in a different language, then when they’re finished she goes, “I’m sure you’re very correct in whatever opinion you just had.” and moves on. It’s very therapeutic to rant to someone who can’t understand what you’re saying and still supports your opinions, apparently.

Oh its beautiful, i love it. Multi-lingual bad kids my beloved.

Gorgugs orcish isnt anywhere near as fluent as his gnomish or common, but its gotten a lot better since they became friends with Ragh and his mum. He tries to chat with her in orcish whenever they meet, and she helps him with his pronounciation. He mostly has trouble with the more gutteral sounds, but he's getting better at roaring with Ragh and his mums help. Riz helps him practice too whenever they're out of town, because he ALSO knows Orcish but he never elaborates on how he is fluent when asked (he used to play chess with some elderly orcs who lived down the hallway from him while his mum was at work, and he's a quick study).

He enjoys speaking it when he gets genuinely pissed because gnomish just sounds hilarious when spoken with anger. They dont have good swear words, the harshest one that exists in gnomish is the equivilent of 'fiddlesticks'.

-------------

Infernal is also an awesome language to be pissed off in, it allows for a lot of harsh consonants and yelling and maybe a little horrifying screaming. Elvish however is great when you really want to insult someone in a way that would cause psychic damage. Combining the two is /incredibly/ satisfying because you can call someone a "*screeches of the damned* piece of shit whos parentage is *horrifying chattering* and he deserves to rot forever in the foresaken bowels of the inferno where he'll be turned into a *hissing and clicking*". Riz looking over from where he's half-ignoring her and going 'oh damn, goblin also uses that last one" before adding another note to a document he and Fig regularly update called 'words shared by infernal and goblin'.

-------------

"You know, the THING. You put it on food. Tastes good, will kill you if you have too much." "Chilli powder?" "NO its a rock. it literally translates out to tasty rock in goblin." "What the fuck are you on about who eats rocks." SALT, the answer was salt.

---------------

All of Gorgugs extended family live out in farming country away from the city. His parents took him to visit a lot over summer breaks when he was little and still fit inside their houses (he loved watching the ponies as a kid, and the accent became well and truely stuck). Now he'd be too big to get through the front door, but at reunions they usually clear a space out in the barn where he can sleep.

----------------

Riz, Fig, Gorgug and Ragh making more animalistic noises is pretty well known amoung the group. Ragh and Gorgug definitely purr and growl, but when REALLY pissed off they can also roar and bellow in a way that other people can feel in their chests.

Riz and Fig have definitly started doing it more the longer they've known the others (Riz because he was trying VERY hard to not seem super monster-y but is now a lot more comfortable being himself and Fig because she's still becoming more infernal slowly). There are still some noises the others have only heard recently though, which both happened over about ten seconds. Riz had been hanging out with the others at the mall, and both himself and Fig had stepped away from the others to get refills on their drinks. None of the others really saw what started it but a stranger had grabbed and picked up Riz which made him make a screeching-yowling noise of pain and anger so loud that they heard it from across the food court. Figs own infernal snarl of rage was almost as loud as the sound of the assholes nose breaking when she promptly headbutt him at full strength to make him drop the goblin. Riz managed to get a good swipe in at the guys achilies before promptly disappearing while Fig ran.

-------------------

Jawbone loves his kids, and Adaine loves him back. She feels a little silly howling everytime he comes home but its a good kind of silly. It feels a little LESS silly when half the house is doing it together.

She has to be careful with the growling though, and who she growls at. What might be a fun and playful cadence for Jawbone and Tracker made Riz's pupils contract to slits and his ears flatten backwards before he clocked it was her and put the pieces together (Oh its Adaine, she is not pissed off and threatening me. Wait why the fuck did she growl at me?).

----------------

Fabian spoke halfling before he spoke common, but forgot a LOT of it as he got older (but he never forgot the words to those songs). He spends months using fantasy duolinguo to bring his fluency back up and, after surprising Cathilda with how good he's gotten, starts getting proper lessons from her as well (she is by far more terrifying than the language bird, so he never misses practice time).

----------------

Kristen knows some elvish, but not well enough to parse the more rapid-fire ranting that she sits through so she just nods and makes general noises of agreement at points she thinks are appropriate.

Riz she has ZERO hope of understanding because they dont shift their vocal register to a level she can hear the entire time when they're really pissed off (there are a lot of subsonics that elves and orcs can only JUST pick up, but her human hearing has no hope), even after the whole party starts learning goblin in secret to surprise Riz later. She smiles, nods, and makes him a new coffee when his old one runs out.

[marlynnofmany]

Talking Sports

“And then I found out we weren’t the only species to invent football!” I said to Wio as she opened food packets. Normally I would have enjoyed watching the way someone with tentacles unwraps things, but I was focused on my story. “I mean, I know it’s a very simple concept, but that was incredibly strange to turn the corner and see a bunch of beefy dinosaur-looking people tackling the quarterback.”

“I’m sure,” Wio said, popping the lid off a jar. “Is this one of the ‘gimme the ball’ games, or ‘get rid of the ball’ games?”

“Um.” I paused to think. “I guess you can categorize them like that, can’t you? Never thought about it. It’s a ‘gimme the ball.’”

“Are those the more common type?” Wio pushed my own lunch tray towards me, which I’d forgotten about.

“Thanks. Maybe?” I poked through the stack of individually-wrapped human foods as I thought. These were from another mystery box of Earth stuff from our last supply run. I started with the turkey jerky. “There’s a lot of sports to keep track of. Fighting to keep the ball is football — and rugby, which is similar — soccer, where you just use your feet; basketball, where you have to keep bouncing the ball; hockey, where you smack it across the ground with a stick… Oh, and lacrosse, where you throw it with a stick that has a net on it. And I’m probably forgetting a ton.”

“Mm,” Wio said conversationally. She scooped up a mouthful of stinky fish paste with the Strongarm version of a spoon, which had a handle shaped like a jumbo tongue depressor. She didn’t bother grabbing it, just sticking her suction cups to the underside. “That’s six. What about games where the goal is to chuck the ball into the sun?”

I talked over a bite of jerky. “There’s probably not as many, at least if you’re strict about the definition. In baseball you’d definitely be a star if you hit the ball into orbit, but the others tend to have a specific place where you want the ball to go. That can be the other side of the court, like tennis, volleyball, or badminton — or even ping-pong — but then there’s golf, where it looks like you’re trying to whack the ball as far as possible, but really you’re aiming for a tiny hole at the end of the field.”

“Six again,” Wio commented. “Or just one, depending on definitions.”

“I know I’m forgetting some,” I said. “What else is there where you throw the ball as far as possible? I mean, there’s competitive javelin throwing, but that’s not the same kind of game. One person at a time going for the highest score, instead of two teams playing against each other at the same time. With javelins, that would just be actual warfare, and then you’d be aiming at people anyway, not going for distance.”

Wio finished the fish paste. “You do seem to have a lot of team games,” she said. “I’m used to more of that ‘highest score’ kind.”

“Yeah?” I asked, intrigued. “What kind of sports do Strongarms have?”

“Well, we do have some that are cooperative,” she admitted. “At least where I’m from. A lot of races, some with an object to carry and a goal. Sometimes the object is a teammate. And there are a few varieties of wrestling, some with limitations or challenging locations.”

“That sounds fun. Challenging how?” I reached for more jerky, and realized the package was empty. I moved on to a squeeze-tube of applesauce.

“Oh, there’s a bunch of options,” Wio said, waving a tentacle. “People are always coming up with more. My favorite is probably the balancing on top of a pole one.”

“Cool.” The applesauce was nice and cinnamon-y. “Do you have a least favorite?”

“In a box,” she said immediately. “That one is stupid and hard.”

“I bet!” I said.

Wio began peeling what looked like a blue-and-green onion. “But anyway, most of the competitions are solo challenges. Lots of puzzles. And many of the ones with multiple people acting at once are just a way of saving time so we don’t have to wait to see who’s best at the puzzle.”

“Do you do any climbing?” I asked. “Obstacle courses?”

“Oh sure,” she said. “Some of the races are vertical. And there’s a whole category of seeing who can wriggle through odd-shaped openings the fastest.”

I watched her peel the thing, which had far more layers than I’d expected. “Sounds like the only games with a ball to move around are the races. Some of them.”

Wio paused and stared at the wall with a thoughtful expression on her octopuslike face. “I’m probably forgetting some too, but nothing’s coming to mind. There are things with floating objects, but those are more swimming challenges, not focusing on the objects themselves.”

“Pity,” I said as she finally ate the core of the onion, which was the size of a grape. “Ball games can be a lot of fun.”

“I believe you,” she said in the tone of someone not particularly motivated to do anything about it. Then she started eating the blue onion skins like potato chips.

“Have you ever tried one?” I pressed. “Even a simple thing like catch or keep-away?”

“I don’t know what either of those are, but I can guess.” She said, crunching away.

“What about…” I searched through my food options for an orange or a walnut or something. I found a tuna can. “Table hockey! Here, set the trays on the bench; I just want to show you real quick.”

I didn’t really expect her to agree, but she shoved the last of the crunchy things in her mouth and moved the remainder of her lunch. This table wasn’t very wide, hardly a proper playing field, but that would make it easier for a rookie. I set my tray on the bench seat next to me and explained the rules. “We just whack it towards each other and try not to let it fall off our side of the table. If you get it off my side, you get a point. Got it?”

“And the other sides are no one’s point, right?”

“Right. If we want to make it harder, we can say you lose a point for hitting it off there, but no need.”

“All right.” She splayed an unfair number of tentacles across her side of the table. “Let’s do it.”

I shoved the can at a reasonable speed, only to have her thwap it back at me hard enough to hurt when I caught it. I laughed. “Oh, it’s going to be like that, is it?”

Wio smiled with her weird little alien mouth. “Was that meant to be difficult?”

“Oh, it is on.”

Thus began a riotous game of table tuna, which ended up making such a ruckus of laughter and whacks against the cabinets that Eggskin came in from the kitchen to see what was going on.

Wio waved three tentacles at them. “We’re playing an Earth sport!”

“I see,” they said, turning their scaly head in a clear inspection for damage to the cabinets. “I trust you’ll be eating the contents of that can, now that you’ve thoroughly dented it.”

“Sure, sure,” I said, turning the can over. “Oh, this is starting to leak, isn’t it?”

“And I trust you’ll be cleaning up your own mess?”

“Yep. Sorry.”

“I’ll leave you to it, then.” Eggskin swept away with all the dignity of an elder who’d caught the kids getting into trouble. I had no idea how old they were, but they definitely had grandparent vibes sometimes.

Luckily the can had only dripped a little, and was easy to wipe up. Wio and I were soon back with lunches in front of us. I was looking for crackers to put the tuna on when Wio spoke up.

“You should try a Strongarm game now.”

I looked up. “I suppose that’s fair. Do you have one in mind?”

She held up a white jar with multiple seams and no obvious lid. “A classic puzzle is opening something without looking. Like this youth-proof seal.”

“Okay,” I said, holding out a hand for it. “I’ll give it a shot.”

Instead of handing it to me, she grinned wider. “You can’t just sit there, of course. You should lie down on your back. And open it under the bench behind you.”

“Whaaat,” I said. “You are making that up.”

She was outright giggling now. “This is literally a child’s game to see if they’re old enough to open containers on their own.”

“Fine.” I got as comfortable as I could on the hard bench, and she handed me the jar. I held it under the bench, and immediately regretted my choices. “Ow. This game was designed for someone who has tentacles instead of shoulder joints.”

Wio’s voice oozed amusement. “Surely you can handle a child’s puzzle? Come on, I’ll open this one at the same time. See if you can beat me.”

I grunted, twisting at yet another part that didn’t twist. Today’s lunchtime had turned out so educational. “I guarantee you I cannot.”

~~~

Inspired by this post, and also partly by the octopus skill at opening jars.

Ongoing backstory for the main character of this book. More to come!

[steddieas-shegoes]

Hi friend! 👋 I’d like to submit a request, if I may. It’s not an original prompt, I don’t know where I first saw it, but I haven’t seen an actual fic with this premise yet.

Will comes out to Nancy who goes “I know nothing about this BUT I know someone who does” and brings him to Eddie, who brings both of them (bc let’s be honest Nancy isn’t letting Will out of her sight alone with Eddie) to a gay bar in Indy. Lo and behold who do they see but Steve and Robin. And it’s obvious to those who know what to look for (Eddie) that they’re both looking to get lucky. Steddie endgame (obvs lol) but maybe some Byler as well if you want/can swing it..?

I love everything I’ve read from you so far and I’m sure I’ll love everything you come up with! ❤️ thank you!!!

My star ✨✨✨ This is a future fic, but not future enough for Will to be 21 (I'm gonna put him at 19, almost 20 here so still like a tiny baby but also an adult). The first part of this is definitely Will focused, but there is more focus on Steddie at the bar itself. - Mickala ❤️

-------------------------------------------

“Nancy? Um, can I talk to you?”

Will had been working himself up to this for weeks, months really. He came out to Jonathan and his mom officially last weekend, though they both already knew.

He wasn’t exactly good at hiding it, and around them, he didn’t really try.

But Nancy Wheeler was smart, and she was quick to come to conclusions, and probably already had figured it out.

Plus, she was decent at giving advice, and could possibly give him some insight into how Mike felt if he felt anything at all.

That was why he was here, coming out to her, being brave.

“Of course,” Nancy replied, smiling comfortingly.

She knew. He knew she knew. But he had to say it out loud, he had to get it out there to other people.

“I just have to tell you something that’s like, a big deal, and hopefully it doesn’t bother you, but also I don’t want it to be a big deal. It doesn’t have to be, actually. I just-”

“Will,” Nancy placed her hand on his shoulder, looked up at him with a knowing smirk. “Just say it.”

“I’m gay.”

There. He said it. It’s done.

Nancy nodded once, like she was confirming that she heard him, but she already knew, which was what he expected.

“Anything else?”

“Um. I’m in love with Mike?”

“Yeah, that’s pretty obvious. Anything else?”

“What do you mean it’s pretty obvious? I thought I hid it okay!”

Nancy laughed. She actually laughed.

“The only person who doesn’t notice that you’re in love with Mike, is Mike, and that’s had a few close calls. And before you ask, I have no idea how he feels. I know he’s in denial about his sexuality, so once he clears that up, who knows. But for now, let’s focus on you. What do you need from me?”

Nancy had a “let’s get down to business” attitude that Will respected, that everyone respected, but she sometimes forgot that not everything was business.

“Well, I guess just…support?”

Nancy raised her brows.

“That’s it? You already had that.”

“I guess maybe…advice?”

“I mean, I really don’t have any for Mike. He’s an enigma even to me,” she started.

“No. I mean, it would be helpful to have it, yes, but just. In general?” Will interrupted, a blush covering his cheeks.

“Oh! About…” she trailed off as she realized what he was asking.

“Okay, well I don’t know anything about that or really anything, but I know who does!” Nancy clapped her hands together.

—-------------

“Eddie?” Will asked as they stood on his porch, waiting for him to answer the door.

“Uh-huh.”

“Eddie’s gay?”

“Well, he’s bisexual, but he would be the one who knows the most,” she answered.

“Prettier Wheeler! What a surprise!” Eddie exclaimed when he opened the door. “And my favorite Byers! Were we supposed to be doing something tonight? Fuck, did I forget something? Wayne is convinced the bats ate the part of my brain that holds memory, even though they didn’t even bite my head.”

Eddie was a rambler, sort of like Robin, but he usually at least made some sense.

“No, no you didn’t forget anything. Will just needs some guidance on something,” Nancy said as she pushed her way into the trailer. “Is Wayne home?”

“Uh. Nope. Come on in, I guess,” he said, nodding at Will.

Once they were all settled on the couch and chair, Nancy gestured for Will to tell Eddie.

Will wasn’t prepared for it, but he knew he could trust him, especially if what Nancy said was true.

“I’m gay.”

It was getting easier to say out loud, just like it had been easier to say to himself when he first realized it and started letting himself think it every day.

“Amazing! Was that a secret?” Eddie asked, somewhat confused.

“Apparently not as much of one as I thought. But yeah, just my mom, Jonathan, Nancy, and you know. Officially, anyway.”

“So you have a boyfriend? Is that why you’re coming out?”

“No. I haven’t-”

“Oh, so Mike hasn’t gotten it together yet?” Eddie asked, playing with his rings distractedly.

“Nope. But it’s gonna take a big moment for that to happen. Will just needs some guidance on other stuff,” Nancy said.

“Oh! Like sex?”

Will was as red as he could possibly be.

“No! Not sex. Just, like, being gay I guess.”

Eddie looked between Will and Nancy a few times.

“Right. So let’s go,” he said as he stood up, making his way to his bedroom at the end of the hall.

Will and Nancy looked at each other, then back to where Eddie disappeared.

Before they could say anything, Eddie was back in the room, his new denim battle vest pulled on, and his boots laced up.

“Let’s go. Got places to be, queers to see!” Eddie yelled as he started moving out the front door.

“What the hell,” Nancy shrugged, getting up and following him out the door.

“What is happening,” Will said to himself as he followed them both.

—--------------

What was happening was that Eddie was taking him to a queer bar on the outskirts of downtown Indianapolis.

He’d heard of the place during his very little research of the local scene. He’d heard it was shut down twice in the 70s because of police raids, but now it was mostly just a quiet, safe place for queer people to be themselves.

The bar was laid back, only two bartenders even on the busiest nights, usually just pouring draft beers and the occasional martini. A jukebox in the corner never stopped playing, even when they only had a handful of customers.

A sign at the door said “THIRSTY THURSDAY: QUENCH YOUR THIRST AT THE BAR AND ON THE DANCE FLOOR!”

Will felt a little out of his element as he took in the amount of people crowding the bar, the tables, the small dancing area that really couldn’t even be considered a dancefloor.

Eddie seemed right at home, and he explained it was because he came pretty regularly, usually just to try to convince the owner to let his band play sometime, but he’d managed a few bathroom hookups along the way.

Will couldn’t hide his blush at that thought, knowing that he was in a place where that would not only be possible, but that it would be encouraged, maybe even expected had his mind fantasizing.

He welcomed it; Anything to get rid of the thoughts of Mike, who would probably never get his head out of his ass even if Will came out to him.

“Alright, one drink rule for the kiddo!” Eddie said as he walked to the bar with a hop to his step.

He was always exuberant, but he just seemed light here.

Will kept looking around, taking it all in.

Nancy suddenly grabbed his arm, and when he looked over, her eyes were huge.

He followed her line of sight, only getting distracted for a moment by a very attractive man who looked to be about his age.

His eyes settled on Steve and Robin.

In a queer bar.

In Indy.

“Is that-”

“It is.”

“But-”

“Uh-huh.”

Eddie came up behind them, drinks in hand.

“Alright, drink up! Take the edge off and then you can have some wonderful experiences- what are you two looking at?” Eddie looked over and his eyes widened. “Not possible.”

“It’s them.”

“But, they aren’t. Are they?”

Eddie squinted, looking at the way they were standing, what they were wearing, the way Steve was open to the room, not turned towards Robin.

“Oh my God,” he said.

“What?” Nancy’s head whipped towards him.

“How did I miss it? I spend so much time- but, no. He- and she- no.”

“Eddie, you aren’t making any sense! What?” Nancy whisper-yelled, as if anyone could hear them over the sound of everyone else talking and the music playing.

“They’re both queer! They’re here lookin’ for someone!”

“That’s impossible. Steve is the straightest person I know. I think even Mike knows he’s more likely to-” Nancy was cut off by Will hitting her arm. “What?”

“Robin just looked over here.”

“Shit.”

“Shit.”

They all looked at each other, panic in their eyes, as they realized it was only a matter of moments before they were completely caught here.

But, really, what was there to worry about? They were here, without knowing anyone they knew would be here, clearly looking for someone.

Will turned back to them, watching as Steve and Robin both looked at them with wide eyes.

“Might as well go talk to them,” he said before walking towards them, not waiting for Nancy or Eddie to agree.

“O…kay,” Eddie sighed before following.

Nancy followed silently, and Eddie didn’t really have time to figure out what her face was doing because Steve and Robin ended up meeting them halfway.

“Hi guys!” Robin waved, awkward as always, maybe more so because of where they were. “Kinda weird seeing you here, right? Like in Indy? Or in a bar? Since Will is underage! And also this is a pretty specific establishment, so-”

“What Robin means is,” Steve starts, lines in his forehead making him look more serious than he needs to be. “Why are you in a queer bar in Indianapolis?”

Robin smacked Steve’s arm, but he didn’t even flinch, crossing his arms in front of his chest.

Like he was ready to protect Robin.

And himself.

“Well, this happens to be one of my favorite bars, and Will needed to be in this type of environment for the first time, ya know?” Eddie said in a way that would definitely give away more if Robin and Steve were actually here because they were queer.

“So you’re…” Steve relaxed slightly.

“I am. Are you?”

“Um. Yeah. Yep. I am.”

“Me too,” Robin added.

“Yeah, so am I,” Will said.

All of them looked to Nancy, who suddenly seemed to catch up to the conversation.

“Oh! Um, not me! I don’t think. I’m just here for support!” She had never looked or sounded as nervous as she was in this moment.

“So how’s the crowd today?” Eddie asked.

To be honest, Eddie hadn’t bothered trying to find a hookup here for months.

The reason?

The man standing in front of him: Steve Harrington.

He’d tried, really he had.

But every time he thought he would get beyond basic flirting with someone, he thought about the way Steve sometimes touched his arm or his shoulder for longer than he needed to when he passed by him, and the way Steve would rest his head on his shoulder during movie nights, or the way he sometimes looked at him like he wanted to devour him.

Like he was right now.

Eddie would be nervous about it, but he doesn’t think Steve actually means anything by it.

He just has a very intense stare sometimes.

“Eddie!”

“Sorry! What?” He turned to see Robin and Will giving him knowing looks. “What?”

“I’m gonna take Nancy and Will over to a table that just opened up. You coming?” Robin asked.

“Sure, in a minute. Gonna run to the bathroom first,” he said, ignoring the way Steve was still watching him.

He walked away before anyone else could say anything.

He just needed a minute or two to collect himself.

The realization that Robin and Steve were here for the same reasons he was was probably going to need more than a minute or two, but he could deal with it later.

The bathroom of this place wasn’t the best, probably hadn’t been properly cleaned since the place opened, but it also wasn’t the worst place to have a minor breakdown.

He didn’t cry, but it was damn close.

It was overwhelming to know that there were others in their little group like him, but it was also just a lot to take in that those other people included Steve.

He heard the bathroom door open behind him, but he didn’t look up, just assumed it was someone else from the bar.

He stood at the sink, looking down, gathering himself to go back out and pretend this was entirely normal when a hand gripped his waist.

His head shot up and he looked in the mirror to see Steve’s reflection looking back at him, a hesitant smile on his face.

“Hey.”

“Hi.”

They stared at each other in the mirror, silent except for their breathing and the muffled sound of the music from outside the bathroom.

“I didn’t know you were…”

“Me either,” Eddie said quickly.

“You didn’t know you were queer?”

“No! No. Wait. I did know that. I knew it a long time ago. I mean I didn’t know you were,” Eddie clarified, unable to properly focus on anything except the way Steve’s hand felt on his side.

His thumb was rubbing circles against his shirt, the fabric bunching up little by little.

“It’s a new-ish discovery.”

“How new?”

Steve looked down at where his hand was resting on Eddie, then back up, his face red.

“March.”

“Oh?”

Eddie caught up quickly, realized what was happening, and definitely didn’t want it to stop even though he wasn’t sure how far he wanted it to go in the bar bathroom.

“Yeah. This annoying guy who was trying to steal Dustin from me decided to get involved in all our fucked up shit and Robin informed me that the way I was acting and talking about him wasn’t very heterosexual. Her words, not mine.” Steve smirked. “So, I kinda just admitted to myself I was into him and now I’m here.”

“Oh. Is the guy at this bar right now?”

“Yeah. He is.”

Eddie turned around and pushed Steve against the bathroom door as gently as he could.

“You’ve been driving me mad for years, Stevie. You know that?”

“Years?” Steve gulped, but kept smiling.

“Years. And now you’ve given me all that I need to do something about it.”

“Have I?”

Eddie answered him with a kiss.

It wasn’t spectacular, wasn’t even that good as far as kisses go.

Steve seemed caught off guard, like he hadn’t actually expected Eddie to take what was right in front of him, take control.

But then he caught up.

His hands gripped Eddie’s hips tight, the rest of his body relaxing against the wall as Eddie crowded against him further, their fronts touching from head to feet.

Their second kiss came right after a pause for breath, and that one was spectacular.

It was longer, wetter, hotter.

Eddie didn’t want it to end.

But someone banged on the door and they couldn’t be those people.

As they moved away to let the person in, Steve leaned his head against Eddie’s shoulder, like he did on movie night.

“So you’re into me too?” He asked.

Eddie could hear the smirk in his tone, didn’t even need to look down or at their reflection in the mirror to know he was being a little shit.

“No, I just kiss all the boys who come up behind me in bathrooms.”

Steve leaned his head back and nipped at Eddie’s neck, sending a shiver down his spine.

“Behave, big boy. Gotta go pretend we weren’t five seconds from fucking around in a public bathroom,” Eddie said as he guided Steve out of the bathroom.

When they got back into the main room, Steve tensed, started to pull away.

Eddie let him, tried not to let it bother him.

But then he was back, head back on his shoulder, arm around his waist.

“Sorry. Just. Not used to this being something I can do,” he said so only Eddie could hear.

“‘S okay. We’re safe here, though.”

No one commented on it when they got back to the table, though they both could tell everyone wanted to.

Will seemed ready to explode with excitement when someone came and asked him to dance and everyone at the table encouraged him to go.

He wasn’t much of a dancer, but he’d learn.

Nancy and Robin eventually went back to the bar to grab more drinks, and Eddie couldn’t help but watch the way Nancy was looking at one of the women who was standing alone by the jukebox.

“Hey, is it possible that Nancy’s…”

“Oh, yeah. Robin and I have had at least four conversations about how much the Wheelers desperately need to admit to themselves that sexuality is fluid.”

Eddie pulled away to look down at Steve, baffled at how educated he was on everything and kind of hating himself for being surprised.

“You’re somethin’ else, sweetheart.”

Steve kissed his cheek in response.

—-------------------

Nancy came out to them a month later, at the same bar, while staring at the same woman who was standing by the jukebox the month before.

She didn’t really use a label, but didn’t feel like she had to.

Mike took a bit longer, but eventually, Will lost his patience and kissed him.

He came out about ten seconds later.

[mskinkyafro]

I have a question but don’t hate me for it. And I’m being deadass bc after today’s volume it has me thinking.

And I understand that my perspective is more lax and indifferent bc I’m not on a loyal route this season but I’ll ask here. I would on the Reddit but they’d bully me…anyway…

What do you guys consider is loyal? What is expected?

Bc don’t get me wrong, outside of narratively having all the Li’s react the same and question their compatibility with Mc being a huge mistake.

At surface value, I feel like this is one of these times that it feels like players/fandom want our li to just be passive. Like non-reactive to the villa. Only to be around and obsess with Mc.

Bc I get is a whiplash and sting to have your fave li, one you spent all the time with or gems etc just to have one date and that all is questioned. But that’s all apart of being on love island the games/show.

Like some people out of fear how fast their attachments and feelings grew, which is what the Li said causes them to second guess. But it felt like real motivation that was purely about them. And not Mc. And I like that.

Sometimes these Li act with only us, the player in mind. And I wish they’d be more independent from Mc.

Also I understand there was no true conversation it was kinda just put out there for Mc to deal with. And tbh I wish FB had committed to it being a TRUE DILEMMA. Because the impact was minimal bc your Li changes their mind in like 5 seconds. And it was waste of time.

Now if it was for a few days or for one full volume where they were splitting time between Mc and Uma or even as far as wanting to share with Uma at one point. That would be interesting.

And I feel like more and more as I keep playing these newer seasons I’m starting to realize I hate that. I hate the “loyal” route expectations of our Li.

And as I play other games and stories, I forget how GREAT it was when the characters have motivations outside of Mc. And if it potentially hurts Mc feelings or not what we as the player would want, we just have to deal with that. Bc the character is making a decision based on what is good for themselves in that moment.

Idk if I’m along sense, but it feels like nowadays the fandoms doesn’t want that. They like the way out Li is basically our pet.

Idk I’m just curious bc we say Mc is embarrassed or the Li wasn’t loyal but I mean damn, they can’t even decide what relationship is best for them. I know they say one thing and then it’s all like well maybe I’m second guessing. It’s dumb but felt like a real moment. Idk that’s why I’m asking like, is loyal to yall where your Li should never second guess or want anyone else ever. Is that really how you’d prefer your Li?

And don’t get me wrong, I’ve played most of these seasons on a loyal route so I get it. But maybe I’m just forgetting but I don’t feel like the older ones had this as bad as I’d say seasons 6-9 have lately. And on one hand it’s nice in some cases but todays volume really solidify that I like a challenge in these games or some sort of like story that yes I can influence but I want to see what they do and decide. I feel like I’m not making sense. Idk 🤷🏾‍♀️

[ashe-smash]

cw: implied gochi x reader, (afab) reader who menstruates, period sex, no mention of birth control or protection, tiny mention of breeding kink kinda ?

A/N: Idk what this is, it’s just been sitting in my drafts for ages and I need it to not be rotting there anymore. It’s not unedited but it’s been sitting around for a while so there may be overlooked mistakes.

Thinking about how Saiyans probably aren’t phased by a little blood during sex when it’s your time of the month.

Specifically thinking about Goku.

You’re curled up in bed waiting for the pain reliever to kick in. Goku comes in, particularly riled up about something- probably coming off the heels of a training session or fight.

Goku’s libido is just as insatiable as his appetite. He’s got all this energy buzzing around inside him and this opportunity is far too perfect to resist to expel it. “Chi said you weren’t feeling well.” He says as he slips into the bed with you.

“Cramps.” You whine. You should protest about him being sweaty but he's all warm as he snuggles up to you. You really can’t bring yourself to complain about it but in your lethargic state, you really can’t bring yourself too.

You’d change the sheets and take a shower after a nap.

His hands are big and warm and feel nice when he kneads your hips and tummy. But you do whine a little when he starts getting a little handsier. Goku wasn’t exactly what you’d call subtle, especially in situations like this.

“We can’t- I’m on my period.“ You squirm, but wriggling out of his hold is a lost cause. Honestly if you weren’t as hazy, you’d have realized he probably already knew that- saiyans have a very sharp sense of smell.

“And?” Goku presses the heel of his palm into your soft stomach.

That makes you pause. Goku isn’t an idiot, but sometimes- unless it involves fighting, some things just slip his mind.

“M bleeding.” You remind him.

Goku shrugs around you. “You really think a little blood bothers me?” Your face wrinkles. Periods are completely normal bodily functions but they’re still… gross. His nose meets your cheek, nudging it. “It’ll make you feel better won’t it?”

You’re eventually bullied onto your front with a pillow under your hips.

(We’ll skip having to remove menstrual products, can you imagine having to explain what a diva cup is to him?)

He certainly wouldn’t mind eating you out either, you’re glad you can’t see him cause it’d be just too embarrassing. Now, I firmly believe Goku eats pussy as eagerly as he eats anything. Blood isn’t going to change that, you’ve seen him eat raw meat before.

He doesn’t stop when you cum either. It’s too much and you have to beg him to move on, not that he needs much convincing to slot himself into you.

You’re so sensitive and the slide of his cock against your walls is so much more. You just have to lay there and take it, but that’s okay because you don’t have that much energy to do so. The pressure of his weight on your hips eases the ache there.

Goku is always a little unintentionally rough. He gets overeager and forgets himself. But you can tell he’s trying to be gentle.

By the time both of you are satisfied and Goku flops down next to you so you can see him again, he looks feral. Blood is smeared on his cheeks, his hands and up his forearms. His pelvis looks like a massacre and based on the stickiness on your thighs, you’d hazard a guess that you look similar.

A cheeky grin cracks over his face before he rolls over closer to you, forcing you into a kiss. You’re tired, too tired to continue to fight him. “You’re so nasty.” You whine.

“Feel better now, sweetie?” Goku pulls your sticky sweaty body to his. He kneads at your hip and tummy best he can with one hand, the other wrapped around you to keep you close.

“Mhm… better but gross…. And tired. We need a bath and then a nap?”

He stretches a little. “Gimme a minute.” You pout at him. It’s not a matter of his stamina, he’s just being a bit lazy. Wants to have you close for a little longer, even if you’re absolutely filthy- and not in the good way. Sticky.

ChiChi would surely scold her husband for staining the bedding, even if technically it was you that caused it. She knows it was only a byproduct of her husband’s meddling, and would never blame you for it. Send you off for a hot bath while she makes him strip the bed for washing.

Goku joins you for round two of course, followed by a snack and the nap after. You won’t admit it aloud, for fear it’ll only encourage him more but you do feel better.

He’ll also tote you around cause you don’t feel good but he will try to steal off your snacks. And lay on you. And joke (you think it’s a joke, he does not) that he can help make your period go away for a while if you let him.

Extra: I think Saiyans know when you’re going to get your period. Just instinctually- they’re all about emotions and the moon and stuff ?

Divider by me (@/ashesmashe)

[byeoltoyuki]

✧ Memories of us ✧ Comfort person

↳ Pairing: Jisung x Reader

❧ Genre : romance / smut /fluff / 1st love to strangers to lovers

❧ Summary: Sometimes memories are just that. Memories.

A series of drabbles about you and Jisung, about your love and your heartbreak and a second chance.

❧ A/N: Likes and reblogs are appreciated ♥

Masterlist / previous / next

You weren’t a bad student. In fact, it was quite the opposite. Your grades were always among the best. Your teachers loved you and didn’t miss a chance to tell you that you had a bright future ahead of you. Lovely, comforting words, you would say. You weren’t particularly fond of this attention on you, you just tried to do your best so you could achieve your dream. Or should you say your mom’s dream? 

And yet, despite all your success, all your efforts, today you had failed when it mattered the most. The future where you would make your mom proud and attend the most prestigious law school seemed far, far away. Because of that, you couldn’t go home. The letter with your results were crumpled in your bag and weighed more than it should. You couldn’t go home and face your mom. You couldn’t bear to see disappointment in her eyes - your heart simply ached at the thought. 

You thought about going to Yunji’s house; she knew all about your struggles, all about your fights with your mom. And yet, at the last minute you changed your mind. Yunji was a good listener, you knew it better than anyone but you didn’t want to bother her with your failure when she had her own problems to deal with. 

You wandered for a while until your feet, on their own accord, brought you to your safe place: a playground near your school. The place was like any other place in town but it was dear to you, and maybe it had everything to do with Jisung. How many nights you spent here? On swings, laughing, talking for hours, forgetting all about the curfew. Tonight, however, you were alone, you and your thoughts. You and the letter informing you of your failure. 

“Dammit.” You cursed under your breath. You didn’t want to cry but the frustration was slowly winning over your will. 

“I knew I’d found you here.” A warm and so familiar voice echoed right behind you. 

Your heart flipped a little, realizing that even when you tried to hide from the world, there was still someone on this earth who would always know where to find you. You couldn’t hide from him. 

You tilted your head backward only to find Jisung standing behind you, hovering over you. He smiled softly at you and flicked your nose playfully. 

“Did you really think you could leave me on read and survive my wrath?” He joked, the glint in his eyes turning from gentle to mischievous. “What do you have to say in your defense, my sweet angel?” 

Just like that, his presence and his sweet nickname for you brightened your world. If it was anyone else interrupting your self loathing moment, you would have lashed out. But it was Jisung. Jisung and his comforting presence. Jisung and his sweet smile. Jisung and his playful touches. Your body warmed up and you couldn’t help but chuckle at his words. 

“Nothing, your honor.” You answered 

“That’s too bad.” Jisung moved from his place and sat on the empty swing beside you. He pulled an ice cream from his bag and handed it to you. “Here. I guessed I would find you here.” 

Why did he need to be so sweet? So lovable? Your little heart melted a little more as you took your favorite, pistachio flavor ice cream. “How did you know I was here?” 

“Because, my sweet little angel,” Your heart did another wild flip at the nickname, “I bet you thought I forgot you were supposed to receive your results today.” And he was absolutely right. Of course, you had told him about the date but you didn’t think he would remember something so insignificant. You opened your mouth to defend yourself but he stopped you right away; he pointed a finger at you and shook his head. “Don’t even try to deny it. I know you. We’ve been friends for three years, remember?” 

How could you forget? 

“When you left me on read, I figured.” He simply explained. 

It terrified you how well Jisung knew you, how easily he read through you. There was nothing you could hide from him. Except maybe for the fact that your crush on him had turned into something more meaningful, something deeper and stronger. But maybe, that too, he knew and just chose not to comment, not to hurt your feelings. You could accept that. You could accept anything as long as he stayed by your side. 

“I failed.” You admitted with a long and tired sigh. “I-I don’t know how to go home and face my mom.” 

Jisung hummed and took a bite of his own ice cream. “Maybe it’s a sign.” And glanced at you, guessing easily what you were about to say. “Maybe instead of trying to please your mom, you should focus on what you want. On what you like.”

“That’s-“

Jisung turned fully to you and looked so intensely at you, your voice got stuck in your throat. It always amazed you how easily he could switch from being a total dumbass-weirdo to serious. What a whiplash, every single time. “I know you’re good at what you do. So what if you failed the entrance exams to the most prestigious school? It’s not the only good law school in the country, you know it and so does your mom. She needs to understand that’s they are incredibly picky and hard on students. But Y/N. Are you sure that law school is what you want?” 

A ‘yes’ was on the tip of your tongue, but because of his gaze on you, no words left your mouth. You could lie to your mom, to your teachers, to your friends, to even yourself, but you couldn’t lie to him. He would know. 

“Why don’t you go for something that makes you happy?” He asked again. “Stop trying to please your mom and do something for yourself instead.” 

Ashamed of yourself, you averted your eyes from his face. You couldn’t hold his gaze, not when he was right but you knew you would do nothing about it. Yes, law school wasn’t your dream nor something you even liked but it was something your mom wanted you to do. 

Jisung sighed and ruffled his hair. He stood up from the swing only to kneel before you. He took your hands and looked at you, smiling softly. “Whatever you choose, I’ll be by your side. I hope you know that.” 

The whole evening you managed not to cry, but his words, his warmth brought tears to your eyes.  

“Oh come on.” Jisung didn’t hesitate to wipe away your tears with his thumbs. “Don’t cry, hey.” 

But it only made you cry harder. God you’re such a cry baby, you thought, embarrassed with your sudden breakdown. You didn’t want him to see you like this, so weak and helpless, but there was no stopping, your tears just rolled down your cheeks, unstoppable. 

“Come on, angel.” He pulled you right into his arms. He rocked you softly. “You’re gonna be ok.” 

You knew you would, as long as your comfort person was by your side. 

[mysticalrambling]

Dance with Me? (C.E)

My Main Masterlist is here.

Chris Evans Masterlist is here.

Summary: a song can be associated with many memories...

Warnings: none.

._._._._.

Seldom, do you and Chris ever throw a party. You both love your friends, yes but with all sincerity, the pair of you prefer to much rather sit at home, cuddle, watch a couple of sappy romance films; just enjoy a mundane intimate night. However, you both are actors and with that, comes the responsibility of maintaining your social lives. 

Planning a party is dreadful and still to this day, one of the reasons you try to delay doing things like this to the last minute possible. 

“Darling, you look great,” near the entryway, he keeps his gaze trained on you as you keep fumbling with the back of your dress.

“As if. I can’t get this stupid dress to knot. My hair is all kinds of frizzy today and my makeup looks horrendous.” A scoff makes its way past your lips the moment you finished your little rant.

“Say whatever you want; I’m standing by my statement.”

“You and your politically correct statements.” 

He knows that you don’t exactly approve of his recent endeavors so he tries to steer clear of the conversation. “Darling, you don’t see what I see.”

“What? An insufferable mess?”

“No, the prettiest woman alive.”

“Nice save, dumbass.”

Walking towards her, he speaks in a playful tone. “We still on that nickname?”

“Yes, for all eternity. I addressed you as dumbass in my vows so it’s legally my obligation.”

Crowding you up from the back, he gently takes a hold of the silk belt hanging loose by your sides and tugs you backwards flat against his chest. Teasingly, you glare at him through the mirror but he doesn’t really seem to care. Tying it in a perfect knot, he places a kiss on your shoulder and murmurs with affection lacing his voice, “Can’t wait to take you out of this dress.”

“How romantic.”

“It’s the best way to express m’love.”

“Sure, dumbass. Go downstairs and entertain the guests, just have to make some improvements.”

“See you on the other side.”

As he starts to walk out, you call after him with a hint of sarcasm dripping from your tone, “Stop being such an actor.”

“Too far gone, can’t stop now, darling.”

You can’t help but laugh as he leaves. 

Some people are very punctual because the moment the clock struck eight, a stream of cars came pouring into your driveway, one after the other. Chris didn’t want to rush you because you have been pretty stressed out lately. Your new upcoming project might have been a source of it so Chris was trying to give you space. 

“Any new projects you working on, Evans?” Pulling him out of his thoughts Robert came to stand right next to him. 

“You’ll get to know with the rest of the world.”

“You seriously think your fans don’t know that you’re starring in the Gray Man?”

Mouth a gape, he couldn’t formulate a proper sentence without stuttering. Sometimes, he truly did forget his fan base’s crazy devotion to him. Thank God, you weren’t here because you would’ve never let him live it down. 

The small group formulating around him subtly shifted their attention to the stairs and Chris didn’t have to turn around to guess who had captured their attention. 

“Can I have this dance?” Turning around to face you, he let a smile grace his lips. After your first party together where you asked him for a first dance, it has been like this ever since. You like to recreate moments; be it your first date or your first dance. 

“Of course, m’lady.”

Swaying to the beat of the song, he soon came to a realization that it is the same song you both danced to the first time. A loud laugh escapes him when he realizes that you are behind this. 

“You really are something else, babe.”

“And you love me for it.” Lips close to his ear, she lightly whispers to him. 

What would I do without your smart mouth?

Drawing me in and you kicking me out

You've got my head spinning, no kidding

I can't pin you down

What's going on in that beautiful mind

I'm on your magical mystery ride

And I'm so dizzy, don't know what hit me

But I'll be alright

“You’re so cheesy.” 

“What? I just really like the song.” Dipping you in his arms, he brings you a little bit more closer than you would deem appropriate for a public setting. Oh, but who are you to complain. “Boy, you really are not good at this whole dancing thing.”

“Excuse me, mister? I’m not the one with two left feet.”

“If I ask any other girl to dance with me here, they won’t constantly be stepping on my feet.”

“What makes you think any girl would like to dance with you, old man?” 

He speaks after bringing you back in his arms, “Babe, everyone wants me. Now hush, my favorite part is coming.”

'Cause all of me

Loves all of you

Love your curves and all your edges

All your perfect imperfections

Give your all to me

I'll give my all to you

You're my end and my beginning

Even when I lose I'm winning

You know that you shouldn’t be tearing up at these words but it is a reminder of all the good moments with your husband. Your first kiss, your first date, your wedding and now your first baby.

“I’m pregnant.”

“Wha- What?” 

“Don’t stop dancing, Chris. We don’t want everyone to know.”

After getting his bearing back, he whispers softly, “I’m so lucky to have you and our life is perfect.”

“I wouldn’t change anything about it.”

“Nothing, baby.” A gentle kiss at the end of the song sealed the promise of forever between you both. “Perfect time, I guess.”

“Perfect time.”

._._._._.

Hope you guys enjoyed it!!

A/N: There was a note from editor that I think I should keep to myself for now💀 @peculiarpenman. Hope you all enjoy this because it has been sitting in my drafts for too long😊

P.S. poster credits: @peculiarpenman

Like, comment and reblog.

._._._._.

[h0n3yk1tt3n]

pink foam on play night sounds interesting

This was originally just meant to stay as a snippet of a hypothetical fic for an ask game but, like a surprising amount of things, spiraled into something way bigger (if I had a nickel, weird that it happened twice, etc etc)

The prompt was "realization of feelings at the Worst Possible Moment + boyf riends" (hi Luna) and naturally I set it during The Play, and the Pink Foam is from the Red Dew getting shaken and dumped out. Probably the only thing I've written that doesn't involve a Title Drop in the dialogue so far. Or ya know, the only one that has a title without a Title Drop.

BUT anyway here's the sort of,, I guess processing snippet?? Of feelings? Whilst the Worst Possible Moment is still kind of in effect lol. And it's long bc my writing style is yammering on apparently /j

Jeremy hated to say that while Michael was being blocked, he did more or less forget about him. But he didn’t. Not really. He’d always felt that something was missing. Something important. An empty space next to him, usually filled by Brooke or Rich before long, but the feeling didn't go away. There was still something - someone - that should’ve been there. He’d look at old blankets and knick knacks gifted to him and be tinged with an ache of familiarity. Where did he get this? When did he get this? No, his dad hadn’t given it to him; he would’ve remembered that. Wouldn’t he? Who gave him this blanket?

Jeremy might’ve forgotten Michael entirely had Halloween not gone so specifically wrong. Even now, he was remembering new things every moment. The character and weapon set Michael favored in Apocalypse of the Damned. His favorite fight scenes in film that he would sometimes act out when waiting for food in the microwave to heat up. Elaborate dreams that he would call to tell Jeremy about before he could forget them, a few of which they created characters from and stories for that Jeremy had jotted down notes for in a space-themed notebook.

He remembered schoolyard taunts that Michael would effortlessly deflect at as young as eight years old. Assurances that those mean kids just wanted to make him feel bad and to not listen to them. To listen to me. Because I like you. And I don’t want you to feel bad. And Michael proved as much, time and time again. Day after day. Year after year. Michael never stopped fighting for him. Not really. He researched from the sidelines. Worked in the shadows. Showed up in Jeremy’s time of need to help, like he always did.

It’s you, he realized.

This realization was interrupted by a SQUIP-driven Brooke tackling Jeremy to the ground, and while he had reservations about fighting her regardless of technological influences, he accepted that it would be another apology to pile onto all the others as he pushed her off of him into a costume rack; the broken one, that always got overloaded with costumes because the functional one was much smaller, with only enough space to hold the leads’ wardrobes. The lower bar collapsed and buried Brooke in costumes of questionable quality.

Michael held out a hand for Jeremy to take, slow motion taking hold of the moment. Jeremy’s hand falling into Michael’s. Michael’s fingers closing around his hand securely. Michael pulling Jeremy up off the ground. Jeremy watching the shine of the spotlight behind Michael’s head shift as he rose higher. Jeremy momentarily forgetting how to support his own weight when he was back on his feet. Michael putting his free hand on Jeremy’s shoulder to steady him. Jeremy wondering if he was short of breath because of his scuffle with Brooke or because he'd suddenly gained a sense of awe over Michael's smile after being without it for so long. Realizing that being the cause of Michael's smile gave him a sense of pride and happiness that little else in the world had been able to rival over the years.

It was always you.

[good-beanswrites]

Hello!! I really love your writing! I like the way you write interactions between characters and how well you maintain their personalities! Sometimes, after I read these, I need to take a few moments to realize that they are not actually canon. (For me, they still are <3).

If it's not a bother, I would like to request Compliment + Yuno and any other character that you think will fit well!

Because of Yuno's past work, I always thought that the compliments her clients would give didn't truly mean much to her. At first, maybe these words gave her some warmth, but with time, she realized that these words were nothing more than superficial. And I think it would be nice to see Yuno actually being happy with the sincerity of a compliment addressed to her!

Thank you!! 

Hi hello?? This is like the greatest compliment a writer could dream of thank you??? I have been very normal about this ;__;✨ And thank you for the request, I absolutely love that concept -- it's perfect for Yuno! I think between being so used to shallow/physical compliments combined with the fact that she has a lot of self-love already, a new type of compliment could really affect her. I debated on a few characters, but ended up setting this late T1 with Kotoko

Yuno was always complimented on her smile. It was beautiful, she was told. It was pure. Sweet. Innocent. Her lipstick looked nice. Her lips in general looked nice. She was just so… nice. Yuno was glad to have such a bright smile; it hid how much she was wanted to pick up the cards from her solitaire game and throw them as hard as she could at Shidou's face.

“Don’t worry, when you get to be my age, you’ll understand,” he was saying. “But I do love your optimism…”

She stretched that smile as far as it would reach. Shidou kept talking as he stood to leave, and she answered as politely and simply as possible. Once out of sight, she allowed herself a single, dramatic eyeroll. Everyone older than her thought they knew more than her. Men always thought they knew more than her. 

But she wasn’t about to let it ruin the rest of her day. She turned her attention back to the cards, already working to forget the whole conversation. She’d nearly lost herself in new thoughts when a voice startled her at the end of the table.

“You’re strong, Yuno.”

She looked up to find Kotoko staring. She smirked at the comment -- she knew she had nothing on someone like her. The woman exuded strength, and had made more than one comment about the other prisoners’ physical fitness. Yuno flexed her right arm. “I didn’t do very well in the tournament, but thanks, I guess!”

Confusion flashed over her face. “No, not the arm wrestling thing we did the other day.”

“Oh, when we all jumped rope after dinner last week?”

“No, no. I mean… as a person.” Kotoko scooted closer. She always had a calculating look on her face, studying everyone around her. Yuno had expected to feel uncomfortable under such a gaze, (many of the other prisoners had voiced the sentiment,) but there was something almost pleasant about the way Kotoko stared. Yuno couldn’t put her finger on it.

She waved her hand dismissively. She knew the best way to accept praise was to play it down, just a bit. “Eh, sometimes it's gotta be like that, you know? I just do what I can to make it through the day, I wouldn't call that strong or anything…”

“Well I would.” Her gaze was level. “I think the way you handle everyone, never compromising on your own values, is very impressive. I’ve seen the way the others talk to you here. I can only imagine, with the line of work you’re in, what utter scumbags you’ve had to deal with on a daily basis. And yet,” she tipped her head, and Yuno suddenly understood. Kotoko looked at people as if she actually saw them. “You’ve never once raised your voice. Or scowled. Or even cried. Being sent to a place like this, after what you’ve done, it’d be enough to infuriate anyone.”

She surveyed the room, adding, “I'm still figuring this place out, but I can tell it's designed to break us. Which is why we need to stay strong. I just wanted to tell you, from one woman to another -- I'm glad to have someone like you fighting with me.”

Yuno’s smile had faded to surprise. At that moment, she did something that she hadn’t in an awfully long time. 

She blushed at the compliment. 

Maybe it was the way Kotoko said it. She wasn't the type of person to say anything she didn't mean. Maybe it was the fact that it was something new, not another comment about her lips or her laugh or her body. Or maybe it was because Yuno was tempted to believe it.

She’d heard so many voices lately, whispering how weak and helpless she must be to end up in this whole mess. The other prisoners, too, treated her according to her small build and unbroken nails. She suddenly realized how close she’d come to falling into the same mindset.

Getting a hold of herself, she made her voice light. “Well, I'd say the same to you, but I think you already know that, heh. But… thanks for saying all that.”

“Of course.” Kotoko’s smile was neither sweet nor innocent, but it was certainly honest. “I mean it.”

Yuno nodded. “I know.”

[kittysimp-daycareauart]

My Sun doodles are finished! I like how this turned out! I think I did a good job with Sun holding the barrel; hands can be so tricky! Like I did with the Moon doodle, I used Clip Studio Paint for this. I’ve only been using doodle mode so far, but I’m really liking it so far! I’m excited to explore more of what this app can do. ^ ^

Anyways, moving from sounding like an ad sponsor (which it’s not), I’ll tell you a silly, and probably a relatable, story that happened today, because why not? I’m mean, you’re sitting here reading it anyways. So, today I got up from out of bed and immediately tried focusing on getting the doodles of our favorite sunny boi finished, since I had fell asleep in my bed laying on my drawing tablet listening to GTLive the night prior, lol. So, I got up, went to go get something quick to eat and started to try to get to work. I guess today just was not a good day for me to focus because I swear I got distracted about million times before I finished this! After I finally decided to move away from YouTube shorts and put on a GTLive video for background noise, I realized my apple pencil was gone. My first thought was along the lines of, “It’s either on my bed somewhere or oh shit, it’s under my bed.” Now I need to say, I haven’t actually cleaned under my bed since last summer, so who knows what’s under there! And I’m deathly afraid of spiders, and it’s getting to be spring again and I know there’s got to be some spiders under this bed. And I was right, there were. Now I can personally live with a spider under my bed, as long as I have no idea it’s actually there. But when I saw this mother trucker, I was like, nah, I’m getting the broom. And of course when I did that, I did find my apple pencil down there, thankfully with no spiders attached. But I know that I’m either gonna have a hard time sleeping tonight, or something is gonna distract me enough to where I forget before I fall asleep. I’m hoping latter personally. I’ve certainly learned to keep a better eye on my apple pencil now! I wouldn’t want to have to replace it since I’ve seen the prices on them.. Too much.

Well, moving on from the mini story! I hope you enjoyed the art and silly story that came with it. ^ ^ I’m not sure what I’ll post next really.. Probably some random art stuff and then most likely do some doodles of my AU’s Eclipse then Blood Moon. I don’t why, but sometimes when I do pieces like these I feel like have to do one of each character. So it’ll probably end up being something like that. =w=

[sharkinlovewithadolphin]

Trick or treat 👻 Anything you'd like!

ask box trick-or-treat Thank you!! 🎃🦇 For you: An excerpt from my notes for chapter 18 of A Magical Tale to pair with your magic au inspired oneshot. ❤✨

“Is that a fucking bear?” Rin asked in a hushed whisper, shocked by the silhuette visible in the far distance. “Yes, Rin. Bears are usually found around mountains, forrests, bodies of water?” Haruka pointed out. ”Did you really think there wouldn’t be bears here?” “Have we swam around by the waterfall with the risk of a fucking bear attacking us?!” “I guess? They don’t really attack unless you provoke them, though.” “You’re so ridiculous, you’re gonna get us killed,” Rin complained, voice still low as if afraid the bear was going to hear him. “I can just communicate with it, remember?” “Fine, then you’ll get me killed.” “You can literally create and manipulate fire. I’m sure you will be fine.” “I couldn’t back then!” “Well, maybe it would’ve speeded up your process,” Haruka joked. “Haruka!” “Okay okay. At least you know now.” Haruka said, then started to walk away. “Nuh-uh this conversation is not over. Are there any other large animals out here that I should be aware of?” Rin asked, still in entire disbelief of the whole situation. ”I’ve been riding around on a horse out here! Akira is roaming around here sometimes too!” “Hmm,” Haruka hummed thoughtfully. ”There’s sometimes a mountain lion during winter.” “Great,” Rin sarcastically said, whole dramatically throwing his hands in the air. ”We’re surrounded by dangerous animals.” “I can hold your hand if you’re scared,” Haruka jokingly offered. ”I’ll even let you hide behind me.” “Fuck off,” Rin said, but he didn’t sound harash or mad despite – in his own oppinion - having every right to. “So foul-mouthed.” “It’s your own fault.” “I thought you said knights had manners. It seems you keep forgetting them.” “Shut… up,” Rin sighed, though Haruka could easily hear the hint of a defeated chuckle sneaking in. Rin grabbed his face and leaned in to place a quick kiss on his lips before leaning back ever so slightly, still keeping his face close to his. “You’re so careless. You’re going to get mauled by a bear and leave me as a poor widow one of these days.” “I highly doubt that. And you can’t be a widow,” Haruka pointed out. “Widower then,” Rin relented. “No I mean, we’re not married,” Haruka elaborated, making Rin blush. “We practically are…” Rin looked away shyly. “Yeah,” Haruka agreed, smiled contently and then leaned forward to kiss Rin. Rin was quick to reciprocate the kiss. After pulling away, they started to walk again, the bear long gone. “Would you want to, though?” Rin asked after a moment of walking in silence. “Hm?” “Get married,” Rin clarified. “Maybe?” Haruka said, clearly surprised. ”I don’t know. It all seems a little troublesome. A ceremony for a piece of documentary paper.” “It’s more than that,” Rin insisted, looking directly into Haruka’s eyes. Haruka was about to answer, when, as soon as he opened his mouth, Rin accidently tripped and fell forward, reflexes quickly taking over, He turned sideways mid-fall while protecting his head with his arms, preventing him from injuring himself, though the landing was quite soft against the damp ground beneath. ”Are you okay?” Haruka quickly asked, concerned. Their eyes met, Haruka’s concern meeting Rin’s surprise. He tried to stay serious, to keep up his worried expression, but upon realizing Rin was fine and admitting to himself how silly he looked down there, looking up all childishly surprised, he lost it in a fit of laughter. Rin tried to get mad at him for laughing at his demise, but he couldn’t. He was so far gone in Haruka and his cute laugh to be able to feel anything but adoration, looking up at him with an amazed expression. If there had been a bear or any other large predator around them in that moment, not only would Rin without doubt or hesitation have pushed Haruka aside and sacrificed himself, he would’ve died very happily and content, just listening to that adorable laugh.

[asirensrage]

Thank you so much for your patience @nemesis729! I'm so sorry this took so long. I hope you like it!

Rating T for swearing.

There’s a knock on the door. 

When it doesn’t stop, she puts down the book she’s reading and goes to get it. Of course, no one else is home. They never are. 

It isn’t a surprise to see Steve Harrington there, holding her cat in his arms. “What was it this time?” she asks with a resignation that she can’t hide. 

“Got into my mom's perfume.”

“Oh shit,” she winces. “I’m so sorry. I’ll pay damages.” It was the least she could do considering the menace kept escaping and breaking into Harrington’s house. 

“It’s fine,” he waves it off. “Not like she was using it. She takes her favourites with her when she follows my dad.” 

“Ok,” she says, unsure about how to respond to that information. “Still, I’m sorry.” 

“Don’t worry,” he says, giving her a smile. “It’s fine. He’s…part of the family now,” he gives a small laugh before he runs his hand through his hair, pushing it back. “I just mean, I’m used to him. He’s welcome over whenever he wants.” 

“Even when he breaks stuff?” 

“Yeah,” Steve grins. “Keeps things interesting. Besides, it’s nice to have company. Place is kind of big...” he trails off and she sees him wince. He must not have wanted to reveal that. She thinks back on Steve and who he hangs out with. He doesn’t have parties anymore. She never sees him with the crowd he used to hang out with. 

“You want to come in?” she offers without thinking. “I was just reading but if you’re not doing anything…”  

“Uh, sure.”  

She steps back to let him in. Steve walks in, looking around in curiosity. They’re not friends, haven’t really talked outside of the interactions of dragging her cat back home, and this is the first time she’s ever actually invited him in. “You want a drink?” 

“Yeah. What do you have?” 

“Uh…” she’s not exactly sure. She drops the cat gently on his favourite perch once she closes the door and heads for the kitchen. “Water? Coke?” She opens the fridge and peers into it. “I think I see some apple juice in the back but I don’t know how old it is.” 

“Coke, thanks.” 

“Sure.” You grab a bottle out of the fridge and hand it over. Once he takes it, you head back to the living room. The menace is sprawled on the back of the couch, looking far more innocent than she knows he is. 

Steve sits in the armchair by the couch and awkwardly sips at the coke. “Nice place.”

“Thanks,” she sits down on the couch. 

“Where’s your…” he cuts himself off but she knows what he’s going to ask. 

“They’re not really around much,” she shrugs. “I don’t know. I don’t really ask.” 

“Oh, yeah. Me either.” He leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “You uh…ever get lonely?”

She snorts, and Steve’s eyes widen as he realizes what he said. 

“Not like that! I just meant…”

“Normally?” she asks, giving him a bit of a break. It was the least she could do, especially since the menace kept breaking into his house.  “Sometimes. I mean…there’s school but it’s not really the same. I guess I’m just used to it.”

“Me too,” he admits. Silence sits heavily between them. It was strange to realize how much she seemed to have in common with him. At least when it came to their home lives. They just reacted differently.

“You know, I never asked…what’s your cat's name?”

“Oh, cookie.”

He chokes slightly on his drink and she can’t help but grin. “Cookie?” he asks when he finally has his breath back.

“Yup. I named him when I was like 5? Apparently, I thought he was cute enough to eat.” 

“I think he’d rather eat you.” Steve pauses, realizing what he just said. He groans and drops his head into the palm of one hand.  She laughs hysterically because Steve Harringont had always seemed so put together and here he was, making unintentional innuendos and apparently embarrassing himself in her living room. 

“Can we forget I said that?” he asks. 

“Absolutely not. I’m going to start keeping score.” 

He rolls his eyes. “Great. Remind me not to introduce you to Robin.” 

She just laughs. 

taglist: @raith-way @arrthurpendragon @zeleniafic @veetlegeuse @chickensarentcheap @nejires-hado @residentdormouse @endless-oc-creations @stanshollaand @wordspin-shares @chrissymunson

st tag: @happinessinthedarkesttimes

[livsworld-ndstyle]

so im genuinely at a block so I'm gonna post my old neurodivergent thoughts onto one post.

DISCLAIMER: all the names presented in this are real.

… accidentally having an over-obsession with a special interest. okay… i sometimes consider mrs. tavernise a special interest :D because she understands me, i can confide in her, etc. i also have taken a decent number of her FGF recommendations and one of them being ruta sepetys i must betray you. in the middle of class, she was handing out these packets we’re making for mockingbird and she whispered to me, “when you leave class, look at the one-school one-book poster on my door.” and i understood the assignment. i looked, and because i was next to clover, i said, “omg!! no way. i can’t believe it!” i was ecstatic with joy. … finding a special interest is more fun than what’s actually happening around me. i was so bored in english that i started drawing some nice little sketches on my to kill a mockingbird worksheet. and it was fun. i wasn’t looking up to take any notes from her papers, i wasn’t myself. and i guess she realized that really quick, because i normally ALWAYS pay attention to her but i was feeling lazy and became clover. clover normally draws AND pays attention AND takes notes. i felt stupid. anyways she came up to me because it was evident that something happened. i was disappointed in my essay grade so it’s implied. anyway, she said, “make sure you get the notes from someone, okay?” like NO now that you told me I will NOT get the notes (in protest!!).

…forgetting not everyone is passionate about your special interest. i was drawing on my to kill a mockingbird essay packet and i drew a picture of mrs. tavernise in her black dress for like thirty minutes. at the end of the period i took a picture of it and showed it to her, expecting her to like it. she told me i had to start paying more attention, and i later asked her how to pay attention, and she said, stop drawing. don’t worry, I later resolved this conflict. i got an 88 on the essay! i’m so awesome :) 

… doing something that is not stated in the directions & redirection

i haven’t had to be redirected to drawing during class in a good couple of days or weeks. i love drawing, it’s a passion i semi-enjoy, and we were analyzing quotes in groups. so of course i assume i’m working with clover because so far preferred groups seem to be working. i hear clover’s name and get excited to listen for mine, but for some reason, she paired clover up with their respective partners in the same seating vicinity. i didn’t really care, so for our first part: quiet analysis, i start just casually drawing a speech bubble around the quote but rudely interrupted by mrs. tavernise’s pointer finger pointing to the quote. normally if i just draw i can get away with it, and i thought today was going to be one of those days. however, because mrs. tavernise is making us do a follow-up project; similar to the kill a mockingbird essay, she’s trying to make sure everyone’s on track. even the most neurodiverse of us.

luckily, liyana khan is my fav. she had two extra donuts and came outside my english class to give me half a donut.

she did have to talk to my english teacher -- kinda weird -- because i’d completely forgotten liyana’d promised me a half and mrs. tavernise gave no context whatsoever, except that whoever was outside needed me for 2 minutes. i had my donut and bumped into ms. moss. PERFECT TIMING, much? i told mrs. moss to come into my english class and help me with this because i couldn’t understand the quote, part of the reason i was drawing. she helped 10x a lot, and obviously mrs. tavernise seemed to be death-glancing me weirdly. i tried my hardest after that to avoid all eye contact with her. 

tysm for brightening my day liyana & mrs. moss!! :D

..and mrs. tavernise… don’t ever put me with boys EVER AGAIN. 

[jennamoran]

Nobilis 4 Quest Set #2

Hi!

So, I’ve been working on the second quest set for Nobilis 4, and I figured I’d share how this one went too!

This one took a little longer, in part because it was dealing with emotionally tougher stuff—it tends to bog me down indirectly, just like real life stress does—but mostly because I got called in for jury duty, and decided my neck had recovered enough to go in, and it really hadn’t. But, they didn’t actually need me to serve on a jury, so at least it didn’t become a thing.

Anyway!

On to the stuff I typed up as I went! Please be warned that this devlog is the size of a large novella.

Content warning: OCD stuff. Existential horror. Very mild body horror. Minds and reality not being trustworthy. Puppets. Snakes.

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OCTOBER 30

All right, Otherworldly quest set.

I can’t get very far today, guest for early dinner, so this is just notes from thinking last night:

I think the character is Vi, short for Vervain. (Parents were Mind’s Eye Theater LARPers.)

... not to mock gamers or people who use weird names, to be clear, just, I think that’s the kind of place you’d be coming from to name your kid Vervain.

Tentatively the name I have for her Estate is “Backdrops,” although it could be “the Stage” or “Physical Context;” the idea is that the central focus is artificial/false context set up behind/around something. Her Estate is what politicians or companies use when they explain away something using a backstory or reasoning that isn’t actually accurate but would sort of or partially justify whatever if it was. It’s stage backgrounds. It’s the painted sea behind an aquarium, it’s Akio’s stars.

It’s a True God Estate; stages on other worlds default to blank, I guess.

Aside: in Nobilis, the Estates of “True Gods” are theoretically Earth-specific: they may have local parallels on other worlds, but they themselves do not appear there. For instance, if the Sea were a True God Estate, then only Earth, of all the worlds upon the Ash, would have a sea. Other worlds might have really big lagoons, or some kind of weird Estate that was “the Sea, only on this world, and with fundamentally different metaphysical properties—it doesn’t have limitless depths, it’s not the cradle of life, instead it’s home to lightning and its hands reach to the sky” or whatever..

Vi’s Chancel is, of course, a stage. A performance, being played out. And, of course, when you’re there, living it, you don’t realize that. It’s only when you manage to see through it somehow, or when you die and go backstage, or when you’re far enough out of focus as a random NPC, that you find out.

Then you’re in the larger, truer world of the Chancel. ... which is, of course, a stage.

A performance, being played out.

Vi starts on Otherworldly 1 and everything’s fine. Everything’s great.

Certainly nobody killed 100 people to make a Chancel.

Aside: some GMs skip this, and alternatives have existed since ... I think Nob2, maybe Nob3 ... but Chancels usually get made with one murder a night for a hundred nights. I can’t remember whether I made any updates to this in Nob4 but probably nothing transformative!

Certainly nobody cut off the little town she’s living on from the outside world completely, sealing it in a pocket world run by a True God, and filled up the souls of a handful of people there with metaphorical acidic gnomes.

Aside: I’ve been told that your Imperator’s Estate “crouch[ing]” in your soul “like an acidic gnome” is one of the more eccentric bits of wording in Nobilis 2nd edition, and while I actually have a pretty good justification for the imagery there when I bother to dig in and remember it, generally lately I just own it and enjoy being acidic gnome soul writing girl.

Vi dreams of a weird labyrinth sometimes, but that’s fine. Sometimes the people around her seem a little off, but that’s fine. Her Amazon delivery is late, and she can’t remember when she actually ordered it, and keeps forgetting to check, but that’s fine.

She knows she’s a Power. She knows she’s changed. She can see the backdrop sometimes. She knows if she wants to face the labyrinth she can just ... pull it into being in the world. She knows if she wants to see the stage, she can just ... twitch the backdrop of things aside.

She doesn’t know what actually happened, though, so the conclusion she comes to at the end of Otherworldly 1 is that she needs to face the labyrinth she keeps dreaming about. She needs to call up the staging of it into the world around her. She summons up the door that leads there in her waking life. She knows she has to step through.

On an Otherworldly Arc, of course, she doesn’t.

On an Otherworldly Arc, step 2 is “putting that off for a bit.”

Talking to her family on the phone about things as she slowly comes to realize, bit by bit, that her neighbor isn’t real. Is just ... stage dressing put back up, after ... after the murder.

As she realizes that the office she works at burned down.

As she realizes that the guy she greets every morning at the store where she gets coffee was killed as part of this whole thing too.

As she realizes that while her dog is a good dog, it’s definitely not the dog she remembers, because the dog she remembers having had a face.

As she eventually remembers that the family member she’s been talking to died years before any of this as well.

[The other option is that “as she eventually remembers that they don’t talk to her any more;” which I think ... hm. Why would that be? I guess most likely they’d be fundie, with her being either LGBT or just involved with someone or something they didn’t like, and her later taking the name Vervain on her own. ... but ... well, I’ll keep that in my back pocket as more interesting, but it’s also a more complicated backstory.]

Anyway, that’s Otherworldly 2, and lets her realize that the world she’s living in is ... not the world she’s living in, which gives her the confidence to face the labyrinth she’s been dreaming of.

The labyrinth in question is loosely modeled on an anime death game/god tower labyrinth, and she probably initially thinks it’s the “actual” reality of where she is. Ah, she realizes, she’s one of five? people who’ve been chosen to be infused with soul-eating divine essence to try to reach the center of a labyrinth and ... become one with the god? Is that desirable? Is there an option?

I think I want her to be mobility-impaired; I haven’t really defined in what fashion, since it’s mostly just on my mind from being stuck in bed so much lately, and won’t be more fully defined until needed. Probably what I’m looking at is “can manage short periods without a wheelchair.” It’s possible that the Imperator just ... omits ... that impairment from the labyrinth stage. It’s also possible that it’s a serious issue there. Either way, what’s going to be a bigger deal here than the actual labyrinth is the pervasive dysphoria/disempowerment of “being changed by the Imperator;” that she’ll change, either way, physically and mentally, as she approaches the center, and won’t be OK with that. At the end, she realizes that that’s because this isn’t her there at all. It’s literally ... a character on a stage; a puppet. She’s ... an actor. Or something else. She sees something at a ... save point, or shrine to the Imperator, or something, a point of ascension, and realizes that the labyrinth too is just a stage, and breaks past it, into reality. Maybe.

Book 2, quest 1 is her dealing with a flower rite.

Book 2, quest 2 is her slow realization that she and the Deceiver she’s opposing are in fact not in the outside world fighting for reality but on another stage.

Book 2, quest 3 is a second try at the labyrinth with the Deceiver, who very much needs an ally since it’s being digested by a True God apparently, trying very hard to convince her that in fact reality still exists, though also that it shouldn’t.

Book 2, quest 4 is their attempt to find the Chancel exit and break out into reality, to become more than just their puppet selves in a True God’s gastrointestinal processes, which succeeds. I think definitionally they at least find an exit with sufficient valence to convince the reader that it’s real, and possibly go through it, just because of how Otherworldly 4 is supposed to end, also because there probably should be an Aspect 4 in here somewhere

And that’s as far as I got while thinking about it offline!

I am not sure how the exit is convincingly real; probably we go back to the flower rite for that? Like, the Properties of Backdrops.

.

Some Spoilers: Later, I would swap out the family member she was talking to and the Deceiver for different characters. I kind of forgot that the Chancel was *explicitly* set up as a place where behind every performance was another one and just focused on the idea that it was a place that *could* have false worlds in it—that doesn’t change anything, just makes some of the later story bits better, but you’ll see me be confused about it for a bit later on.

.

[thinking about it as a whole in response to a friend’s comment]

I like how absolutely horrifying it is while also ... like ... we haven’t even really met the Imperator, it won’t be one of the nice ones but it can still legitimately be towards the decent end, or of course can be ohgodwhydoyouexist

All we really know is that it’s kind of in denial about killing 100 people and wants to get to know its Powers better.

Aside: “There is no reality,” Tatiana said. “There are only concentric layers of illusion.” – from The Night-Bird’s Feather

.

OCTOBER 31

.

Book 3, quest 1: she’s in reality, but it’s a mess. Her town is devastated, because like it’s not so small that a hundred deaths is everything but it’s small enough that her little neighborhood of it is falling apart. She has to face the fact that there are Excrucians, and the Locust Court, and Powers, and all of that. That the Angels are out there and apparently the same kind of thing as the labyrinthine god. Also there’s a Big Pit outside of town that’s getting bigger every day and no one has the funds to deal with it because all the town’s money went to police (and apparently didn’t even get to them??) and though the mortals don’t seem to notice it LITERALLY has nothing in it, it’s not a big hole in the ground, it’s a big hole in Creation. She doesn’t have the power or knowledge to deal with this kind of thing. She’s going to have to go back.

... I think mostly, she’s just living, haunted by what happened, though, with most of the details there only really explored in quest 2.

Book 3, quest 2: talking to her therapist about all this and how much she doesn’t want to go back. Except the real world is suffering, and she has this conviction, and maybe it’s not even right, that if she goes in and gets a piece of the True God--- This is the kind of plan that makes sense in novels--- That she can patch it. That she can’t maybe fix the broken town, or her harrowed life, or get rid of the Excrucians or the Locust Court or the way the world “really” is, but she can fix the Pit.

Book 3, quest 3: so she goes back into the Chancel, assuming that she was right that she ever left. She doesn’t know. She assumes. She believes. But she can’t know. Even perfect cosmic knowledge could just be a brain spasm. ... but that’s more quest 1-2 trauma, just, it pervades. She goes back into the Chancel. She goes into the depths. She hunts for what she needs, because it’s a True God, so its ability to take herself from herself is two-sided. Right? She knows that. She can steal a bit of it.

.

Aside: I struggled a bit with the end of this book. You can take the quest 4-5 bit coming up as particularly tentative; it’s sort of on point but the details and nuances change a LOT by the end.

.

Book 3, quest 4: She’s lost a key part of herself. Perhaps ... “the recognition of the self as separate from the world.”

Her descent to the part of the labyrinth where she can get to what she needs also involves understanding that she’s already a part of the God. And, it of her.

It involves accepting that; involves stepping into a world where it’s true even if it wasn’t true before.

If she isn’t making herself one of the portion-Selves of the God, as it were, then how can she take anything from its heart to be her own?

And the end-of-quest revelation is then the puppet looking out from the stage at the shadow of the actress who still holds its strings, and seeing that something of who she was must still exist ... out there, anyway. That the original Vi must still be there, boundaries intact, in the world beyond the labyrinth, even if the puppet-self that reaches the heart of the labyrinth is lost.

Book 3, quest 5: The greenest option here is a mortal reconciliation—with family, or at most a Familia member. Something like that. Finding human connection.

I don’t actually know how else to continue the story from the moment where the puppet passes the bit of god out to the outer Vi other than that.

It’s a terrible story if that’s instrumental, if she goes “thanks existentially abused puppet-me! I’ll put this +2 GodStuff of Pit Repair to good tactical use!” She has to reach out to someone. She has to take that and respond by doing something hard and human.

So who does she help?

I am thinking either the Deceiver from earlier ... well, they should probably actually be a Warmain to vary things up a bit?

I am thinking either the Warmain from earlier, or, a Familia member that she refused to help earlier with their own totally-broken reaction to all of this? (because she basically was taking it out on them, and maybe a bit the other way around?)

Yeah.

The next most viable model after that would be the Otherworldly 5 variant where you become one with a great force, because then we could have the stage-self Vi become one with that bit of god before exporting it to the outer Vi, as quest 5. But that doesn’t get the emotional tones right.

After that ... reconciliation with parents/sibling, if we retool their relationship retroactively so that that makes sense.

After that ... having her find a preserved jewel of her external self, and then quest 5 is the reconciliation between them. I guess I’d handle that by having two versions of Vi exist as far back as quest 1, have them get into fights about how things should go, treat them as two separate characters “in story” until they’re revealed near the end as the same person, and then move in quest 5 to finding a way to combine them.

... but honestly probably the easiest approach of all, better than any of these, is to change quest 4.

See, we know she’s going to end this with a Green 4 Issue, because of how I structure these. And looking at the Green 4 Issues, we know that that means she’s going to come out of this quest 5 thinking, “I know what I have to do to resolve my entanglement with the labyrinth/god, I just have to go do it.”

And at this point in things she probably thinks that that answer is to draw a hard line and just say “no more, no matter how virtuous the cause.”

And because it’s Otherworldly 5, which usually involves reconciling with someone you’ve been fighting with and helping them find peace or their way back from being lost, that person she reconciles with is probably someone who didn’t say “no more.” Someone who destroyed themselves by continuously going back to sources of power until they lost themselves completely—a Power, maybe of a different Imperator, who gets on her bad side some by driving off her semi-friend Excrucian early on? and who she realizes is burning themselves out? and has to be put down?—then ...

Hrm.

I think what we’re looking at is a Familia member, the Power of ... Erosion? Burnout? Driving Desperation? The Goad/Cattleprod? Monomania? ... and that means that just as the previous quest 4 was a struggle to find reality behind the Backdrop, this quest 4 is a struggle to find perspective and options in a situation that pushes for increasing desperation.

I’ll have to come back to this.

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NOVEMBER 1

OK, so there’s another Power in her Familia, the Power of the Illusion of Choice. Seriously broken by both experiences in the Chancel and by the Estate. Says in quest 1 that he’s been drafted to teach her the basics, show her around the Noble world, give her the introduction. Lost any sense of intrinsic meaning, lots of OCD and anxiety, can’t deal with the Excrucian she had tagging along and gets into a fight with the Excrucian and with her over it, is generally a jerk and a downer, but does spend a lot of time introducing her to the basics and trying to put the stars back in the sky over the town because the Chancelling process also got rid of them. He explains to her that she’ll be helping him put them back later, but by quest 2 she’s just telling him to fuck off. At the end of quest 4, though, she’s more: oh god this is what the more ego-messing side of the Imperator does to people? I am going to help clean up your terribly messy apartment and then volunteer to help you with the stars.

Which she does, as well as working on the pit thing, only to realize at some point that while it helps him to see the stars back in the sky, most of his brain is literally just “see? I told you you were going to do that, and you did it.” And that’s when she draws the line of “never, under any circumstances, going back in there. Me and the Imperator are done.” Except, of course, for book 4.

Book 4, quest 1: I don’t know what this book is about yet. I do know that quest 1 is Otherworldly 1, so she’s still dreaming of the labyrinth. That’s honestly not surprising even apart from any supernatural thing.

This particular blank is a lot of why I use the Issues when building quest sets—the whole thing of “each book takes you from Issue X to X+1” is there to help answer “what is this book going to be about?” and in particular “what’s the very first take on what it’s going to be about?” when it’s not clear?

So it’s time I talk a bit about that.

I think I’ve done green Arcs focusing on both Sickness and Vice. It’s possible that I haven’t—it’s possible that when I went to do one for Horizon I wound up duplicating the one I used for GMD? I vaguely remember that that was briefly the case, but I don’t remember if it stayed that way.

The model I’m trying to use here, instead, is one of the nonstandard green Arcs, like “to the Isle of Death!” from the Glass-Maker’s Dragon or “Secrets of the Tower” from “The Legendary 139.”

So level 4, where we’re at on page 1 of this book, is basically: “I have a plan for what I can do to be done.”

And level 5 is more like, “I can’t fix it, but I have a plan for how to turn it around and make it useful for the very thing it was hurting.”

So we go from ending book 4 with “I can’t afford to ever go back, I have to draw a firm line, because this isn’t a slippery slope, this is a predator.”

... to the end of book 5, “I can become strong against the threats to my self and being, there.”

And this makes sense to me, in that like ... she’s correct that she can’t do book 4 again, she can’t go in a second and third and fourth and fifth and sixth time or whatever for power, even if it’s power to save all the children of the world from pits of flesh-eating bacteria, any more than you can go into casinos repeatedly for the money you need to save exploited kids from capitalism.

But her Imperator is also a True God, so if she goes in to try to change her and its identity directly, that’s just incredibly risky—that’s more like trying to rob a crime lord, metaphorically; it’s still a dangerous gamble, but it’s not, like, throwing away your stakes before you start.

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NOVEMBER 2

So I talked a bit about OCD earlier, and the thing about OCD is that there are only two ways to beat it. One is when it’s heavily physical—some temporary or long-term physical issue or hormonal state intensifies it, and when that passes, you can overcome it. The other way is to basically just shut down the ritual behavior, refuse to do it until you both break the internal loops and also reinforce that nothing actually happens.

(Er, also medication, but usually medication also needs one of those things, it just makes them hella easier or vice versa.)

The reason you can do this is that while OCD is hijacking the human causal analysis circuitry to some extent, it’s mostly focused on stuff spinning out from food pollution, so it’s actually something you can look at it in your head and distinguish from both your learned experience about the world and your other intuitions.

It’s not comparable to ... like ... experience telling you that if you drop a cup, it will fall instead of float.

This is only true as long as OCD’s predictions reliably fail, of course, but they generally do—that is, they’re almost always either non-specific; or, extremely low-percentage disaster scenarios; or, deliberately and weirdly non-falsifiable things ... to get around the fact that you’re trying to break out of OCD habits.

It would be really bad to be in an environment where obsessive-compulsive-style predictions were no longer reliably false, because it would rapidly become difficult to distinguish them from ... well ... the rest of the causal apparatus.

More generally speaking, I think that what we’re looking at in book 4, quest 4 is the loss of the ability to ... reliably map actions to outcomes using reasonable methods rather than flinch-driven rituals, or possibly even at all.

There’s no mundane procedural answer to that, but the narrative answer to that is to switch from science to sorcery: from modeling the world, understanding the world, and in particular the world of the True God, to imposing a desirable system—which is quest 5. (The variant, in this case; not reconciliation, but becoming one with a greater power.)

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Aside: Ever since CMWGE, I’ve defined “Sorcery,” particularly in contrast to science or faith, as the process of pushing reality into shape by deciding how you want it to be. Science proposes a theory, and tests it; faith offers an article of faith, and trusts it is so; and sorcery declares a new truth into existence. Trusting people to make them trustworthy is a positive example of sorcery; monopolistically raising prices would be a negative one.

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I feel the impulse to set this book in reality. This would mostly only matter for quest 3—it would mean that quest 3 isn’t a return to inside the Chancel/True God, but a visit to an external environment that is somehow similar.

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Aside: As mentioned, I forgot that the Chancel was infinitely layered illusions, and in fact just got sort of generally confused here. Still, the important point is, I had the impulse to not send her into the labyrinth in the heart of the god this time.

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Part of the reason for that is just how green Issues work—

The way you get to 5 is that like, you know how to solve things, you’ve figured it out, but the story never goes there before something green happens again.

You’ve made your resolution to kick your gambling habit, and as soon as you get up your wallet in the morning you’re going to hand your bank card to a friend for safekeeping, but unfortunately while you’re asleep your bed falls into the casino of the hammerhead sharks.

You’ve realized that you can probably kick out the ghost possessing you by taking antibiotics, but before there’s ever a good moment where you confront the ghost or see a doctor, you stumble on a Ghost Empowerment Zone.

And what that means here is that she shouldn’t have the opportunity to put her plan into practice and just say no to going back into the labyrinth. She doesn’t do that, and she doesn’t say yes, instead. She doesn’t just get sucked in by her Imperator willy-nilly.

Something happens to escalate the situation, instead.

I guess ...

Since we’re talking about OCD, she could fall in through picking at something she probably shouldn’t pick at. She knows she’s in reality. She’s made it out. She knows that she is the Power of Backdrops and that she defines what a backdrop is and as long as she hangs on to the definition that ruled this as reality it can’t be part of the stage.

But there’s still a part of her life that could be fake in some other way. A place or something, an element, that doesn’t seem real.

And she can’t make herself just leave it.

Even knowing that it’s practically a self-fulfilling prophecy, that she’s practically making the curtain, she looks behind the curtain.

It’s not her fault. It’s what she was chosen for, and also, she’s traumatized.

But as is often the case when someone does Enchantments of a True God Estate, that just ... spreads the True God.

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Aside: Further confusion impending!

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 Oh! Right, I should remember this thought: because of how True Gods work, it is not necessarily the case that her Chancel is the stage; it could have a Chancel and also have the body of the true god, which is where the first books were set. They definitely were, but I started blurring it in my head with the Chancel at some point. Anyway, this does mean that the “reality” with the Big Pit and missing stars and stuff can be a Chancel.

That’s not actually fulfilling the purpose I mentioned above, although honestly it doesn’t have to be a ... book 1-4 style ... illusion that she finds, so she could unravel reality in an exciting new way!

But

Probably since I have an adequate way to have her back inside the true god it’s simplest to just do that.

Logically quest 1 would mirror quest 5 and be her dreaming about her identification with the god, because Powers and their True Gods are incredibly entangled, but that also implies a thematic throughline, that she’s working on asserting control over her reality that way from the end of quest 1 on.

Which ... maybe?

Maybe we can pull a strand of that back from quest 4.

It would work if quest 1 was like “I planned to say goodbye to all this, but instead of trying to lure me back, my Imperator just gave me a bunch of power I literally can’t control that the worst bits of my ritualistic brain are taking the reins on instead, and honestly the anime labyrinth death game and whether I’m going back in there is somehow the least of my problems now?”

... no, that’s not what I want to do.

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OTHERWORLDLY STUFF AND GOD STUFF

Right, so the basic Otherworldly path starts with a vision of another place and then you choose a role for yourself there. Then you chicken out for quest 2, grow in the role over quest 3 and 4 while facing challenges, maybe use it in quest 5, come out with the power of that role.

So what I want is for there to be a place of disordered causality, in the world or the Chancel, that she realizes she has to fix. Or realizes that she won’t be able to resist fixing. Or realizes that she’s drawn to. Or whatever. But she fixed the pit, she fixed the stars, so her role in this Arc is probably “fixing this situation” too. A lantern-bearer. And that’s quest 1-2. And it veers into quest 3 like I said, with the inadvertent backdrop-making opening up the path into that place. And quest 4 leads her to the conclusion that the only way to survive is sorcery (in the SFS sense.) And quest 5 is taking that power by drawing on the god within.

Yeah, I think the whole ... theme ... of this god is not healthy to be around.

Illusion of Choice, Backdrops, Cornered Rats, some other options include maybe the Sunk Cost Fallacy, literally OCD, Fixations, Ships of Theseus, Estates That Used to Be “Ships of Theseus,” ... hrm, work in progress

Depersonalization was one of the other Estates I was thinking about for it

Not the kind you do to others, the kind you do to yourself, I can’t remember but I think it’s the same word or depersonalization is the self-word.

[a friend mentions “derealization” might be what I’m thinking of, though depersonalization also works.]

I think her only real option is to treat the god like her legs, which is to say, it doesn’t want to move when she thinks “move” at it, but if she pokes at the neurons enough she can sort of fake it inefficiently

ah, says the reader, no wonder Jenna had to make her movement-impaired

ah, says the reader, clearly that was the reason for it from the very beginning, yes

(In fairness, having trouble walking is green, and true gods are green, so I didn’t completely not plan that convenient connection)

But! Because life imitates art and my knee would have given out tonight if I didn’t happen to already be braced between three walls—strictly speaking, it did give out, it just gave up and relocated because I was braced and didn’t fall down—I have decided that her disability magically fixed itself, even though that’s a Forbidden Plot Template. Yes. Magically! It was better forever, as was her life.

(well, two walls, but I had just opened a kitchen cabinet so it was a lot like three.)

Anyway, I probably need to make this all much, much, much cleaner for actual quests, so I’ll do that next.

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Otherworldly 1 Troubled Dreams

You’re having dreams or otherworldly experiences that connect you to something beyond and outside yourself.

Afterwards: you know what you have to do about this—a path you are called to walk, or something you must do to keep these experiences under control. It is possible that you’ve found 2-3 options; if so, it is possible to choose wrongly.

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Book 1, Otherworldly 1: She lives in a little town. She keeps expecting her packages to arrive but they never do. Somehow, she’s become the Power of Backdrops. And she dreams of the moss-crusted, bright-lit, ancient, crumbling walls of a labyrinth in the deeps of the world, and the currents of wind and story that slowly circle through it. There’s a door she could open, if she wanted to, to find it. She could just ... twitch the backdrop of the world aside. And she has to, because there’s something wrong with the world she’s living in. She knows she has to. ... but she puts it off.

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Otherworldly 2 unnamed (only one version)

You’re on a scary or difficult path. Part of you is resisting—clinging to the way things used to be. Even if you’re on this path by choice, it’s scary, or hard, or against your natural way of thinking, or costing something you really hate having to give up.

Afterwards: You release some of that. More of you accepts that you can’t go back.

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Book 1, Otherworldly 2: She talks to an old friend from college, who was into the weirder side of things, on the phone, as she works through what’s going on around her.

Talks about how her neighbor is ... like an automaton, just doing the same thing over and over, no life there, until she finally realizes that that’s what he is, that the original neighbor was (flash of blood) one of the murders. And the friend is kind of excited that fantasy is real and kind of worried about her but mostly just talks because the thing is her town doesn’t even exist any more, there’s no way to get to her, she tried. And she talks about how the office she goes to every day is ... ashes, it burned down, only everyone pretends it’s fine and when she gets into the data entry the burned-out missing roof actually protects her from rain. How her dog is a good dog, it’s not the dog she remembers, because, the dog she remembers had a face.

And finally she realizes, late one night, while looking at the missing stars, that she doesn’t have a friend like that any more. They don’t talk. That friend ghosted her right after the fall that messed up her spine, and while she did try to contact Vi later, after she’d recovered enough to be fun again, Vi wasn’t up for it. She doesn’t even have her number. The world she’s in isn’t the real world, she realizes, so why not ... move forward?

I think the strand pulling together the friend’s characterization (“I’d come help if I could, but your town doesn’t exist” “stuck in bed, hurting? I’m out.”) is that the friend in question has extremely poor ego and reality boundaries themselves, so her interest in Vi was proportional to Vi’s ... well, being interesting.

This isn’t important at the moment but has potential to be important when finishing out the Arc later.

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Aside: I wound up updating the friend’s characterization a lot later.

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Otherworldly 3 unnamed (only one version)

Something is trying to make you into something else. There’s usually a sense that it’s trying to take you over, devour you from within, kick you out of your life, or something. Or maybe it’s the other way around: maybe it’s pulling you.

Result: You find a part of yourself that hasn’t changed, or won’t.

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Book 1, Otherworldly 3: Behind the backdrop of the town where nothing changed, there’s ... scaled, moss-covered walls, that very slowly move and shift, grinding against one another, and far above, a glimpse of light through the higher levels of the same—like being in a fifth-dimensional anemone, or medusa’s hair on a bad hair day. There’s a nodule with a small population where she’s greeted as a challenger, as someone who can put together an expedition to the heart of the labyrinth to become one with the god, which she has to do because the nodule doesn’t have enough resources to feed people indefinitely if challengers like her don’t do this. They bathe her in a pod of stuff that “fixes” her legs and begins to prepare her for that oneness.

And there isn’t really a point in this where she has much of a choice.

Her parents were fantasy/gaming nerds, so she grew up with this stuff, so she isn’t horribly out of place with it ... but she isn’t happy with any of it either, and the dysphoria only grows as she leads the team towards the center and becomes more and more physically alien to herself to survive the challenges of the regions they pass through.

When that dysphoria hits a certain peak, though, it comes with ... the realization, true or false, that this isn’t even her. That it’s just a character. She isn’t her. Of course. She sees a save point and it all crystallizes for her:

This doesn’t feel like her body any more because it’s just a character she’s playing, just a puppet on a stage; and if she pulls aside that backdrop, she’ll awaken, back in the world, with the part ... well, whole ... of her that hasn’t changed at all.

Now, we all know from earlier discussion that she’s wrong; that this isn’t actually getting her back to reality at all. But that’s fine, because right now her goal isn’t “get to actual reality,” it’s “get out of this, to what I identify as reality.” It’s not until that proves false too that she starts caring about what reality actually is.

This takes her from Issue 1 to Issue 2 ... from “my problem with the labyrinth is itself lost in the labyrinth” to “I have a problem with the labyrinth.” And I think that means that she knows she’s not done. When she emerges, it’s not with a sense of completion. It’s not with a “that was harrowing, never going back.”

It’s with a sense of being haunted by the unfinished journey.

Of still wanting to be strong enough, now that she knows that it’s not ... all of her ... to finish.

Something for her brain to pick at constantly, particularly now that the person she would talk to about it for stability turned out to be ... what? A tulpa?

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INTERMISSION

Anyway, we now have a two-quest break in a reality that is not reality before she deals with the flower rite in book 2.

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Otherworldly 4 unnamed (only one version)

You’ve lost a key part of your sense of self. You look for a way to get that back.

Reward: you discover that it wasn’t really gone. If that’s observably impossible—e.g., you’re mourning a severed limb—you discover either that your terminology was off and what you were really missing was something else that isn’t gone, e.g., the sense of yourself as a whole person or your ability to play an instrument; or, you find a potential in you to recover it.

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What does this mean?

So, here’s what the classic forms of the Otherworldly Arc is like: you go into the realm of shadows and pick up shadow magic. Something in the realm or the magic tries to corrupt you in quest 3, and you fight it off, but then all on your own—maybe as part of fighting it off, maybe because the pressure lets up when you fight it off, maybe unrelated, just, you dive in too deep after that—you lose yourself a bit.

Or, you come back from the battle of quest 3 to realize that you’ve been hurt worse than you realize ... that you are still you and there, but missing part of you.

So the obvious path here, for Vi, is “she lost the part of herself she left behind in the labyrinth.”

And classic approaches to this quest are things like “having beaten off the influence of the god by understanding that it was all a stage, she’s now overwhelmed by that understanding; or, now that she knows she can escape, the need to go back and the dizzying awareness that she is a challenger and one who can become the god is so much stronger; or, she returns to her body, only, it’s not her body any more either. It hasn’t been changed like her in-labyrinth body but her peace with it is gone.”

I think that last one is probably the most accurate version tbh:

She comes back and she isn’t trapped in a labyrinth slowly changing any more, but ... she knows now. She knows that in her blood is the glowing ichor of the god, metaphorically if nothing else. Her comfort in “I’m just Vi, and somehow I became the Power of Backdrops, which is interesting but also whatever” is gone; she’s now ... even when she’s not actively being warped, she’s lost security in her sense of self?

The result, of course, is that that security “wasn’t really gone;” or at least the portion of herself wasn’t really gone, and the security returns; which is to say, at some point, she realizes that she’s come to identify as Vi-who-is-one-with-the-god and that in itself terrifies her but also allows her to organize and settle her body-sense again.

That’s when she begins to understand a bit about how true gods work; to understand that it’s entangled with her, and the distinctions between them are important but on some level just conceptual. She probably understands this in a dream, though, because—like other book 1, quest 4s—this is actually notionally a novella written later. It can’t actually mess with how she processes things in book 2.

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 Aside: Let me clarify a little! In the CMWGE paradigm, which may or may not translate fully to Nobilis and Glitch, you tend to start a new Arc after quest 3. Accordingly, back when I first did this process for “the Glass-Maker’s Dragon” it was useful to imagine the story of book 2 as picking up right after book 1 quest 3, like it would in a game. But then what IS book 1, quest 4? If we’re pretending these are actual novels, and not some kind of hypothetical devlog entities, I have to imagine book 1, quest 4, book 1, quest 5, and book 2, quest 5 as novellas or short stories released later as secondary content—filling stuff out but not changing the plot progression.

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Otherworldly 5 Live Together, Die Alone

You reconcile with someone or something you’ve been fighting.

Result: you help them find peace, acceptance, or find their way back from being lost.

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Logically, she’d reach out to her former friend here. I said that she didn’t even have her number but she is a Power. And like ...

While I painted a fairly negative picture earlier, we all know that anyone who instantly dropped a friend when that friend gets hurt was either (a) really, really fucked up, (b) never actually a friend at all, (c) going through too much themselves right then, or, I guess for things that are more social than injuries, (d) dramatically misinformed.

So if we cross off (b) and (d) as options, then (a) and (c) leave some room for sympathy.

I’m a little worried that the friend is a cardboard cutout because I don’t actually know anyone with that particular behavior pattern; all the worst people I know are bad in completely different ways.

But! The most logical interpretation of the quest is that she’d reach out to them.

And logically the friend is ... in a bad place right then—in a place where she needs peace, needs acceptance, or is lost.

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[a friend comments that it’s not necessarily cardboard characterization, that some people have the anxious instinct to freeze, and then get too spooked/guilty to open contact again. ... but I was off pacing or lying down or something at the time and had figured out what I wanted to do instead.]

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Ahh.

OK, so:

The friend didn’t ghost her at the accident. The friend actually got involved in weird magic stuff long before Vi did, and eventually after it soured the friend’s relationships with Vi and everyone else she fell off the face of the trackable earth.

... becoming part of the mystery cult that summoned the god.

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Aside: I love this twist still.

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... and in Book 1, Otherworldly 5, Vi tracks her down, and can’t get her to stop doing stuff like walking the daily ritual tracks through town that are unnecessary now because the Chancel’s already formed or bits of self-mortification; all she can do is slowly integrate more mundanely healthful things on the one hand into those rituals and on the other re-engineer them towards building up the friend instead. End quest when for the first time the friend looks up from the daily town-circling trudge to see the ... I was going to say sun, but maybe, missing stars.

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NOVEMBER 3

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Book 2, Otherworldly 1: She lives in a rich but ruined world where society is crumbling under Excrucian assault. She maneuvers her wheelchair onto a rusty jury-rigged car-lifting platform to get to and from her second-floor apartment. She walks her dog past fallen futuristic towers. She hangs out with her voiceless robot street gardener/artist friends. She gets by, day to day, but dreams of the Excrucian flower rite on Backdrops.

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Backdrops

... are aesthetically coherent

... imply a stage

... present a false reality

... provide context for narration or events

... are decorative

...?

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I think I’m missing something important to how all this has been functioning, but there’s noise so I can’t process and I’m almost done with coffee so I don’t have time to wait it out; let’s stop with five rough Properties for now. The most important Property here is “Backdrops are aesthetically coherent,” because I think it’s going to be how she verifies reality at the end of book 2.

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Spoiler: You don’t have to pay too much attention to the details of the flower rite, since they change later—only the very broadest of strokes stay the same.

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Probably the way to flower rite this is an artistic movement spreading among the robots that argues that falsehood is inherently thematically incoherent—that the aesthetic is the natural, and untruth generates dissonance.

The lynchpin of the Rite is an old crusty Warmain that the robots respect and take care of working on a vast 5d mural on the side of the old municipal building, constantly interrogating and complaining about the art, caught in recursive cycles of revision because it fundamentally doesn’t fit together with itself. I’ll revisit post-noise.

Anyway, she figures out the flower rite and how to address it, end of quest.

I think what I was missing from the Properties list is something like

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Backdrops

... present a complete picture

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Or

... stand in for an entire world

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The Warmain’s argument, what he teaches the robots who just wanted to garden in peace but admire his art too much to not get caught up in his ideas, is that art is at war with itself; is that art is in the development of the purest, truest heart of each individual component of the piece, and that the crisis of the artist is that the aggregate of those pieces inevitably conflicts against one another; that even if you tried to theme your art to just one component, the problem would repeat fractally, because that one component would never be a single one true thing but rather a rough form with bumps and contours that would long to develop in their own tangled way. His art is transient, pieces that develop as he paints them and then inevitably self-destruct in the painting process, except for his one grand piece—

No, this is too soft.

Either the robots would just wind up screwing up their gardens and that’s not impressive or anything terrible that happens in the story is a kind of serious overreaction to that artistic theory, y’know?

Hrm.

Working backwards from a suitable story thing to happen:

He shows them an artistic vision that can only be realized by destroying themselves.

The most interesting way for them to destroy themselves is for them to integrate themselves into their art---to become part of their gardens, their paintings, their chalk street art.

Soooooo ...

He shows them an artistic vision that can only be realized by them doing that.

If they can realize that without being purely static, realize that while being separate from their work, or survive while integrating themselves into their work, they pass his test.

So that’s what he’s looking for.

Also, their doing this is a flower rite against Backdrops.

So this gives us two questions: what is he looking for, and why is this a flower rite against backdrops?

Second question first, because it’s more critical.

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Backdrops

... are separate from the stage.

... are aesthetically coherent

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And the pressure he’s putting on this is basically ... Hrm, no, nevermind, trying again:

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Backdrops

... present a false reality

... are aesthetically coherent

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And what he’s doing is saying that the falsehood of a backdrop creates an intrinsic incoherency that can only be bridged from the other side of the fourth wall, importing more and more coherency from reality until the artist, as the bridge between them, collapses. He’s looking for beings that can make fully internally consistent dreams/fictions, by either method, because there’s a transcendent being somewhere and his job, his life’s mission, is to keep it dreaming.

So he’s painting something, and his painting keeps inspiring the robots, and the robots, their brains alive with that inspiration, fall into artistic fugues, and then desperation and editing loops as they fail to realize it, and then bit by bit they work themselves into their work and disappear from “reality” to become dead metal in their metal garden, or metal paint melted onto the wall, or inexplicable chalk art, lynchpins to hold their pieces together, which doesn’t even work but they don’t know that because at that point the author is dead.

This is happening in the background around her over the course of quest 1, and Backdrops is upset about it because the idea that you can just throw up a coherent false reality without working too hard is important to Backdrops, and the fact that stage and actor is blurring sucks too.

That was a struggle!

It would have been a lot easier to put together a Deceiver or Strategist flower rite here tbh but I already had a visual on the Warmain, so.

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NOVEMBER 13

All right! There was a slight delay due to jury duty, plus stressing before it and physical recovery afterwards. Where was I?

I was doing the quest writeups in clearer form.

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Book 2, Otherworldly 1: She lives in a rich but ruined world where society is crumbling under Excrucian assault. She maneuvers her wheelchair onto a rusty jury-rigged car-lifting platform to get to and from her second-floor apartment. She walks her dog past fallen futuristic towers. She hangs out with her voiceless robot street gardener/artist friends. She gets by, day to day, but dreams of the Excrucian flower rite on Backdrops; and, bit by bit, inspired by this grumpy old street painter Warmain, her robot friends murder themselves integrating into their art/gardens. The flower rite is saying “Backdrops present a coherent reality, but Backdrops are sketchy, and that’s freaky. Also, Backdrops present a full context, but Backdrops are separate from the stage, and that’s freaky too! Explain me this, backdrops.”

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Book 2, Otherworldly 2: She doesn’t really want to be a Power, fighting Warmains to defend Backdrops in the name of ... whatever. So she hangs out looking at the Warmain’s painting and talking to him about art. And she hangs out with one of the surviving robots in a hedge maze and talks about her mortal life, about ice cream and rain and walking by muddy creeks and generally the things one finds when living in the world, as opposed to, say, destroying yourself for an artistic vision or whatever. And the Warmain talks to her occasionally about bits from his life, wandering the void and breaking the sky over Paris and this incredible bakery down in Buenos Aires. And finally she’s talking to the Warmain and she’s all, “I don’t have the spoons to be fighting you on this but what you’re doing to the robots is kind of inhumane, could we maybe say we fought to a draw and you went away?” And he’s like, “... you look down, Imma gonna grab some Argentinian pastries and coffee from that place.” Which, ultimately, is how they find out that the roads out of town are painted on the sky.

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Book 2, Otherworldly 3, Take 1: She peels down the backdrop of the world and returns to the labyrinth save point, this time with the Warmain beside her. She faces a different set of challenges. Hrm. Let’s back up a moment. Probably only have to back up because the involuntary break made me lose my mental place, but, it happened, so!

So:

I don’t think she’s looking for reality quite yet. I don’t think in this phase she really believes it exists, and while the Warmain is probably telling her it does, I don’t think it can motivate her yet. Because finding reality again is quest 4.

I think right now, for quest 3, I need to step back and think about what she was dreaming about in quest 1 again, because like ...

There’s a throughline between quest 1 and quest 3:

For an Otherworldly Arc, if you’re facing THREAT X in quest 3, then at the end of quest 1, you’re effectively affirming that you’re going to go forward and face ... well, to whatever extent you know what’s coming ... THREAT X. Even if you stall on it for a quest, that’s still what you’re doing.

We want to keep that throughline, and there are two ways to do that:

Either she faces the flower rite again right here, in the labyrinth, or, she figured out what she had to do about something at the end of quest 1, in the robots and rain and ruined city bit, and now she is facing that.

What is that something?

Probably ... being a Power in a falling world?

And what do you do about that?

I guess the only real answer to that is to go forward, so we know that the challenge in this version of Otherworldly 3 is either the flower rite, again—that is, finding a way to face the Warmain’s artistic inspiration, to make a work that needs her to put herself into it but then pull herself back out without destroying herself or having him kill her for succeeding—or, accepting herself as a Power, becoming one with Backdrops.

... I like the idea that it’s the flower rite, actually.

I like the idea that his art infects her, and maybe we can skip the pastries and the quiet defeat, maybe it’s when she’s infected by the vision that she realizes she’s not in reality at all, and tears it down, and he goes “fuck”

So that means that this time, in quest 3, she’s wrestling with the need to create something; as she moves towards the center of the labyrinth, she’s also shaping it, echoing the things she saw in the Warmain’s painting?

And to end the quest, she needs to have an actual answer to the flower rite itself, a way to survive the inspiration, which I think is ...

god, Deceiver flower rites are so much easier to work with without getting clunky!

Fundamentally, leaving aside the flower rite aspects, what the Warmain evil inspiration does is open a channel, a possibility, by which one can literally pour one’s existence into the work to enrich and ripen it, and people fail because they run out of existence before art becomes reality.

And the logical answer to that when one is entangled in a true god that is digesting one is to bridge the true god into that channel. To pour the infinity of the god’s existence into the work, leaving the artist enough life to survive.

If that’s the answer to the Warmain’s inspiration, then it’s also the answer to the flower rite; that is, the answer to the flower rite has to be:

* the reality of a backdrop piggybacks on the ground reality of the observer, and

* the distinction between actor, character, and stage is not something intrinsic to the world that can be undermined by evidence but a construal, an act of willful taxonomy, that can be buttressed or undermined by one’s choice of definitions.

(two parts, because the flower rite had two avenues of attack.)

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So, as she explores, she learns to manifest a little ... stage, a little illusion of reality, a shard or memory of life outside the labyrinth, a thing to play with and work with while resting at the fire, to keep from forgetting what reality is like and to help expunge the pressure of the Warmain’s inspiration in her brain?

I think that’s as far as I can get today, which is only barely forward progress because some of it is probably wrong, but hopefully it’ll lead into actual motion tomorrow. Or later tonight if I have a thought and return!

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LATER

Vague thought in passing that she starts creating a little faberge pocket dimension view of another world, another life for herself, using Domain or something, back in quest 1; artistically crafting it, but it’s not until late in quest 3 that she can actually see what she was looking for in it, the ... bit of memory or life or self or whatever, to know that it hasn’t changed, it hasn’t changed. Not sure, but I figured I’d post it here instead of in a notes file!

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NOVEMBER 14

I feel like the “adventure” in the labyrinth in this book is in a more spacious area. Less active challenges and more a long wearying journey with a small somewhat militant squad through a naturally hostile, open wilderness which also has hostile forces. That’s not a kind of story I usually enjoy and I’m kind of glad I don’t have to actually write it? but it’s the kind of aesthetic that feels right for book 2 Otherworldly 3. I think it’s because that can really emphasize a longing for something else? I’m not sure.

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Book 2, Otherworldly 1, Take 2: She lives in a rich but ruined world where society is crumbling under Excrucian assault. She maneuvers her wheelchair onto a rusty jury-rigged car-lifting platform to get to and from her second-floor apartment. She walks her dog past fallen futuristic towers. She hangs out with her voiceless robot street gardener/artist friends. She gets by, day to day, in the rain and the green that follows, but she wants to go back. Ever since she saw this weird giant abstract mural that this grumpy old guy in a big grey coat’s been painting, she’s been wanting to go back, has been tormented by this vision of it, this knowledge that she could ... just ... make it. A little dream. A little fake world of her own. Just like the god did. A world where none of this happened. A world where she was still the self she wanted to be and nothing was crumbling. And she keeps trying to make it, little dioramas in the air, but it’s never right. And inspired by that same painting, at the same time, because it’s a flower rite on Backdrops, and a Test of the All-Consuming Dream, her robot friends murder themselves integrating into their art/gardens. The flower rite is saying “Backdrops present a coherent reality, but Backdrops are sketchy, and that’s freaky. Also, Backdrops present a full context, but Backdrops are separate from the stage, and that’s freaky too! Explain me this, backdrops.” And in the end, she decides she’s going to go that way too. She’s going to pour herself, her life, her being, into that backdrop she’s creating, even if it destroys her. But she’s scared, so she hesitates.

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Book 2, Otherworldly 2, Take 2: She tries to hang on to the world. She argues with the Warmain about how far an artist has to go. She hangs out with one of the surviving robots in a hedge maze and talks about her mortal life, about ice cream and rain and walking by muddy creeks back when she could walk and generally the things one finds when living in the world, as opposed to, say, destroying yourself for an artistic vision or whatever. And the Warmain talks to her occasionally about bits from his life, wandering the void and breaking the sky over Paris and this incredible bakery down in Buenos Aires. But she can only hold out so long. After a while, when the last of the bottle of bourbon they were sharing runs dry, she shrugs and goes for it. He wins. She pours herself into the backdrop. But she’s drunk, and she misses, and realizes that the world is a backdrop still.

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Book 2, Otherworldly 3, Take 2: She peels down the backdrop of the world and returns to the labyrinth save point, this time with the Warmain beside her. She leads a small group (from book 1, plus the Warmain) across a macro-scale forest where the earth and the giant “trees” are the knotted tendrils of the god on what turns into a more survival-themed story. The change in venue, as it often does, has aborted the depressive moment; she’s still playing with the diorama/dream/backdrop of a better time, still wrestling with it, but she’s gone back to trying to make it work without burning herself out, trying to face the Warmain’s challenge instead of losing to it. And the solution she finds is to fuel the reality of it with the god’s life and not her own, and to treat the separation of actor, character, and stage as a matter of willful construal. When she manages to get it to work, when she calls up a perfect crystal vision of the world where things are okay, she breaks down; because look, look, it isn’t gone; it hasn’t changed.

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Book 2, Otherworldly 4: The Warmain is all like “dang I wish I could harvest you right now but well uh I’d like to point out that we are not in reality. Possibly if you care so much about the world outside of the god you might want to work with me on getting OUTSIDE OF THE GOD.” Put another way, having realized that she still wants to be something other than this, he encourages her to ... like ... be something other than this. (So he can kill her and take her face maybe but WHATEVER sometimes you have to accept your friends’ little eccentricities.)

So they start struggling, as they approach some grand landmark keep in the distance, to push past this into reality. To push aside the walls of ropy flesh and backdrop and find reality beyond. To see the tracks and traces of the underlying reality in the glowing ichor-rivers and the dust beneath the trees. To tear down the curtain of the forest air and show the streets and screaming angry highway cars beyond. The things that occasionally give them hope—gates to other “worlds” between the gaps between two trees, in the belly of dead monster snakes, and the like—turn out to be/lead to just more backdrops. And the journey is harrowing. She gets hurt. Scared. They lose people, even with a Power and a Warmain in the party. She makes it to the keep, at the end of the proper labyrinth journey; does the whole narratively satisfying sacrifice, giving up the diorama to the god, in order to bond more deeply to the god and open the great sacred door ... and it’s just another backdrop.

It isn’t until she just kind of wanders out to go ... tend the grave a bit better of someone who died along the way, or search for someone who got separated, or something ... that she finds it, just nowhere in particular. Some random weak spot in the world.

That’s the gate into reality, into the thematically inconsistent reality.

It doesn’t make sense, she tells the Warmain. Has a breakdown over it, over unnecessary loss and the overall trauma and that one extra hole punched in the god-grandeur story of how murders make a Chancel and a power. But of course it doesn’t make sense; sense is for stories and backdrops (and Serpent Chancels probably), not reality, you see.

He sighs and they hang out and have a bit of pseudohuman company instead of him killing her.

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Book 2, Otherworldly 5: I feel this can be with the Warmain, even though they weren’t formally fighting at the end of Otherworldly 4, because this would be another intermissory novella/short story? Not part of the book itself?

So it’s a short story about her and the Warmain after the book, and like: he was going to kill her, but didn’t because they’d just been through something hella harrowing. She doesn’t know who she is any more, and is scared, and even though he’s a monster and she’s a Power so probably one too, he stays around to help her figure herself out again. And they talk about grounding things, blanket textures and grass smells and dumb dogs and grocery schedules and hot drinks and what she wants if she can’t have magic dreams? And he talks to her about why he Warmains, about the thing he’s trying to keep asleep; about being born in the void, and walking paths the colors of the dawn, and the knowledge and certainty of his purpose. He talks to her about his first kill in the world, the one that tempered him, some long ago Power murdered by a river so that he could have a face and thoughts and could speak in words, and how he has been haunted by that Power’s private visions of beauty and art ever since. How he’s filled his head with so many dreams and visions on this mission that sometimes he forgets who he is, loses practically everything, gets lost in it, and how terrifying that is. How he should be killing her, though he should probably make sure she can still do the thing when she isn’t in the belly of the god? And she doesn’t wind up friends with him or anything. Maybe lovers briefly when they’re first recovering from the labyrinth, maybe not, but ... in the end, she tells him that she doesn’t know what he should do better, but he’s a monster, and sends him off. And because they did share some trauma, he goes. Later, she gets a call from him, when he’s lost track of where he is (see earlier notes about “sometimes he forgets who he is”) and is in a panic but her number was burned into the inside of his eyelids, so he called; and she goes to help.

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Book 3, Otherworldly 1: She’s living, haunted by what happened. She’s in reality, but it’s a mess. Her town is devastated, because it’s not so small that a hundred deaths is meaningful but it’s small enough that it casts a shadow and that her little neighborhood where most of them were is falling apart with fear and broken social connections.

The Power of the Illusion of Choice shows up. He has a lot of anxiety and OCD and is generally a mess, jerk, and downer, has no sense of intrinsic meaning in anything any more, but he says he’s been drafted to teach her the basics, show her around the Noble world, give her the introduction to things. At night he tries kind of halfheartedly to put stars back in the sky over town, because the Chancelling process burned out the local sky.

She hates it.

One Excrucian was bad enough, without a world full of vipers. One “god” was bad enough without a bloody-handed king over them all, and angels being real and the same thing, and mountain ranges being giant snakes and the same thing too?

But most of all there’s a Big Pit outside of town that’s getting bigger every day and no one has the funds to deal with it because all the town’s money went to police (and apparently didn’t even get to them??)

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Aside: see the Knight quest set ( https://jennamoran.tumblr.com/post/699243715456352256/nobilis-4-quest-set-1 )

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and though the mortals don’t seem to notice, the Pit has LITERALLY nothing in it, it’s not a big hole in the ground, it’s a big hole in Creation. She keeps dreaming about it. It haunts her. It’s like a metaphor for everything that’s wrong.

It was a victory just coming through everything intact as a person, herself. Just surviving. She doesn’t have the power or knowledge to deal with ... other stuff, for other people. But she has to. She can’t just let the pit grow and eat everything. She’s going to have to go back.

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Book 3, Otherworldly 2: She talks to her therapist about all this and how much she doesn’t want to go back. How she wants to just tell the Illusion of Choice to f— off and the starless sky to f— off and screw the Locust Court and being a Power and the true face of the world and she can just live under her bed and be a bed-liver-under blanket bug or dust bunny now.

But, the real world is suffering, and she has this conviction, and maybe it’s not even right, that if she goes in and gets a piece of the True God—

This is the kind of plan that makes sense in novels, which she reads—

That she can patch it.

That she can’t maybe fix the broken town, or her harrowed life, or get rid of the Excrucians or the Locust Court or the way the world “really” is, but she can fix, at least, the Pit.

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Book 3, Otherworldly 3: She’s not really playing along with the concept this time, so this is less formal “challenges” with a group and more just personal hunting/exploration in the internal wilds of the god. Seeking something hidden. And becoming more and more in tune with the god as she does so, because that’s what she’s looking for and because the god’s ... distance from what she believes the world ought to be is key to the crisis of this Arc. And she’s losing her sense of differentiation from it as she approaches the piece of power that she wants. Falling into the slow dreams and rationalizations of the god. But at the end of the quest, she finds something in herself that can’t accept that. That keeps her from just dissolving into the god. I think that’s...

I think that, over the course of the quest, earlier, she’s also coming into tune with the night that is the god’s hunger and the brilliant heartbeat rush of dawn when the wild wakes when the god consumes. Coming to joy in the fire of that, the heartbeat of the power of the god. Until one day she is close enough to the god in nature to feel the tendrils of the morning crawling around some human, subsuming them, swallowing them into its nature and shackling them to backdrops and the illusion of choice to drain out a few drops of ... something ... that fuels that fire? Maybe?

And suddenly it all feels awfully gross.

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... of course, this is very high-level, and doesn’t really tell me anything about what happens in the book until the very end. Let’s try again!

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Book 3, Otherworldly 3, Take 2: In the mountainous intestines of the god, the heartbeat of the god is a racing wonder, a source of surging life; it is the drumbeat that makes the flowers open, that drives the rising of the sun, that melts the rivers from the snow. It is a life that fills her and strengthens her as she grows in tune with it, as she becomes more, as she unfurls herself like a flower and deepens and grows rich in spiritual wealth and power and begins to understand how with these hands of hers she can shape and save the world, and atop the mountain in the dawn it pierces her, she understands it, and hope, and touches on the nature of the god; and she might have lost herself, become not just herself in that moment but something more, and less, had she not tasted too of the origin of that power, felt deep in the god’s digestive tract how at that moment it swallowed another soul. How its heart beat, powerfully, rejoicing, as another bit of human truth was lost, consumed, entangled. How the world sang with it, fed on it, grew verdurous and rich with life with it, and lush. How she gagged, and vomited up the substance of the god, the life and death of it, to spill into the shadow of the dawn.

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Book 3, Otherworldly 4: She’s found a part of herself that’s still the same, in that rejection, that disgust ... but ... she’s still ... entangled with the god. She still realizes, over the course of this quest, that she’s lost her grip on what’s her and what’s the god; on how to be a self that is separate from the world. She knows she’s not okay with the god, she knows there’s still a Vi that is not the god, but she can’t find the boundaries.

... and dealing with the fact that if she does find and establish those boundaries, that’s possibly just ... a loss.

If she establishes them, maybe she just gets eaten; or escapes, but without the power she needs to help the world.

So in this quest there’s wandering the fields beneath a strange sun and strange sky, lost in the flowers, thinking about the colors of the world and the blood inside her and being eaten and the nature of consciousness and differentiation and connection between people and remembering precious moments with family and others on the god’s behalf.

And at the end, she remembers how at the save point she was just a puppet on the stage, and how this can’t really be her, because look at it, it’s a god, it’s the god, walking, and she lets herself fall into it completely so she can pass a bit of the god’s essence outwards to the true her, somewhere else. Because an actual Vi must remain, if not here, then ... out there, beyond the stage; in a world where she had not been previously consumed.

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Book 3, Otherworldly 5: In quests 1-2 her attitude towards the Power of Illusion of Choice was mostly “fuck off dude” but after being refreshed on just how much the god messes with the mind she’s more like ...

She looks at the building he’s living in, which is visible from hers, while recovering from the experience above; and sighs, and forgives him, and then goes and helps clean up his messy apartment (inspired by the Eccentric Family anime, I think), and offers to help with putting the stars back in the sky.

And she does, she helps him, and it does ... pull him back a bit from the brink, puts some more person back in his eyes, when the first constellation gleams, but most of his brain is still going “see? I told you you were going to do that and you did it.”

There’s something broken in him that she can’t fix.

And she looks at the lingering power she’s using, manifested as starstuff or pitfilling stuff, or whatever, and it’s glorious, but what she’s thinking is, I’m never going back. I won’t go back. I’m lucky that I didn’t break a lot more myself.

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NOVEMBER 15, BUT NOT REALLY (LIKE 12-1 AM)

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Book 4, Otherworldly 1: She is in reality, but sometimes she sees someone at a party with a monster behind their face. She is in reality, but sometimes she forgets what being in reality even is or what it means when a phone rings. She dreams of her life when she was young, of the time when a star fell into her garden in the night and sputtered, burning, on the lawn. Of looking out from a porch and seeing spirits moving in the fields. Of the time around her accident, most of all, and a boyfriend she didn’t have at the time talking to her, and rivers running in the street, and tall buildings on dark nights, and magic and weirdness that she’s pretty sure oughtn’t have been there. And she knows that some of what’s going on is derealization, depersonalization, from trauma, and some of it is that she’s carrying the weight of the power of the god, but ... the stuff about the dreams of the past, that seems legit. She’s seeing things in her past that she couldn’t see back then, and ... maybe even changing it.

Because what is our past but the backdrop to who we are?

And she decides that she has to take ownership of that, has to either put it all in order or make it have order, but she doesn’t want to, she wants to just go on telling herself the same story of her history she always has and not risk messing it up retroactively or having it always have been made up or finding that the god was there even back then or WHATEVER.

I mean, seriously, that’s scary stuff!

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Book 4, Otherworldly 2: In visions/dreams/flashbacks, she talks to the boyfriend she didn’t actually have about what’s coming. (I think he’s the fallen star fwiw.)

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Aside: I never did anything great with that, which is sad, because it’s cool.

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She talks to him about impending sudden awful change. About destiny. He talks to her about the dooms facing the world, I think metaphorically rather than Nobilis canon stuff. She talks to her parents in the long long-ago past about whether they’re real or just someone she made up for her backstory. She goes out to the water and gets wind and river spray on her face and can’t feel it at all. She remembers vines and flowers. She argues with the Warmain, still in flashbacks I think, about whether the past being a backdrop or not even matters, and whether it’s right to change it. (He takes whatever side she doesn’t, he doesn’t really have a stake.)

In waking life, she does an office job, filing or data entry, she walks through rows of cabinets and cubicles, she spins on chairs and looks out windows, but it’s not reality or an existential horror: it’s a backdrop she deliberately put up to hide from things, to not be sitting in her apartment with a bunch of half-eaten pizzas and all the responsibility in the world and the ichor of the god puddling at the side of the sink and the Power of the Illusion of Choice for a coworker. When she pulls it down for the day, it’s not “my life was a lie!” it’s “oh well, enough of that.” In the end, she can’t hide forever. She has to face her past, and she has to face her power, so she’ll do both.

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Book 4, Otherworldly 3: She goes back to her college days, to the time of her accident. ... I should be resting my neck, not typing. I’ll pick up here tomorrow.

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NOVEMBER 15, BUT FOR REAL THIS TIME

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Book 4, Otherworldly 3: She goes back to her college days, to the time of the accident. This time it’s literal rather than flashback/dreams—she pulls aside the world, and is there. The college feels kind of dark, swampy, mired in vegetation and oppressive presence. Snakes in the trees. (Though for some reason they don’t show up in the college catalog mailed out to potential students.) Occult battles happening in the darkness. She wants to just take her classes and affirm the reality of things and maybe not damage her spine this time but no. She has too much power, and too little control; every little OCD or paranoid or superstitious twitch of “things should work this way” gets magnified into reality, and pretty soon there are murders on the campus and blood on the sidewalks and her boring professor is melting as he talks and something horrible is lurking in the shadows and skittering in the steam tunnels and when the day of her accident comes and for all her power she can’t stop it because it’s reified into either a beast that has it out for her or a “final destination” like malignant destiny.

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Book 4, Otherworldly 4: She wakes up back in the present. She is not happy because while in one sense, reality demonstrated some stability, it wasn’t the stability she wanted and also like it wasn’t very much of it. She doesn’t know how much of that was even real or if not what happened. She’s stopped reflexively changing everything around her with an expectation, but she doesn’t even know if she has a real past. She doesn’t even know if she has a body in any meaningfully distinct way from “has a self-image.” If she has a real past. If her friend joined the mystery cult because she went back into the stage of her past and showed off divine powers there, meaning that that past was always a stage and always where both of them came from. If reality is anything other than a backdrop that’s deferring the whole aesthetic consistency ideal, or failing at it due to Excrucian challenge.

She questions whether reality would matter, whether being “real” would make something more real than a backdrop in the first place.

Other stuff.

She tries to find someone’s grave. She looks at versions of other realities. She gets mired in mud beside a creek. She spends time in nature (which I think means “by the Big Pit and in a little woods with a creek” because her town isn’t very nature-y) trying to reconnect with something real, but it doesn’t do it. In the end, she finds her only option: if she can’t find reality, if she can’t touch reality, if trying to definitively prove something real risks making it real, she has to embrace it, and try to declare the quiddity of honor* she is looking for into the reality she makes.

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* inherent integrity; truth

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Book 4, Otherworldly 5: This is her attempt to come to an accommodation with her god’s power using that Sorcery-style paradigm. Her attempt to really dig into it and understand the god’s nature in totality, to grasp the currents of its thoughts, to identify it as part of her rather than as an intrusive force that can seize control of her. An attempt to understand what it is to be a boundaryless motion, a recursion, a ritual, a derealization, a backdrop, an illusion of choice, an endless spiraling labyrinth of dissociation and trauma and mossy walls and green snake tendrils in the depths of mind and world. An attempt to be one with the thing that is one with everything without losing herself. And, an attempt to seize reality by declaration, to find a point of grounding, a thing she can anchor in: soil, stone, textures again probably, the fur of her dog, the heat of a hot drink, the warmth of someone’s company, the waves of the sea, the beauty of fire, flowers, sunrise, cliffs. The roughness of bark. Ants crawling on the earth. Night air on the skin. The recovered stars. And ending, like I said, with

... well. She’s not paralyzed, she’s one of the “I need a wheelchair because if I try to walk I can go, like, 20 feet” types. So it ends with that, only for controlling the god/trauma/choice/the world/existing in reality. She can’t do the thing, like everyone expects her to, like she expects herself to do, but she can ... push something at the god, to move its power and sacrifice the essence of a backdrop to make it real.

And that’s enough. For the rest, she can order a reálchair.

I’m not at my best today, lack of sleep, but I think I will just hope that works and possibly revisit tomorrow rather than pounding my head against it indefinitely while not at my best.

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BECAUSE I NEVER ACTUALLY REST MY NECK WHEN I OUGHT TO I’M NOT EVEN DOING IT RIGHT NOW WHILE EDITING THIS

As a quick conclusion/summary, though:

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Otherworldly 1 - Daily life, knowing something’s wrong via dreams, messed-up guy around, little town aesthetic, recovering from trauma aesthetic, under a cloud aesthetic, things being broken aesthetic, dark nights and missing stars aesthetic, isolation aesthetic

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Otherworldly 2 - talking to someone over time about weird wrongness and precious moments and ordinary job and life things and wanting to be normal while the wrongness in question intensifies in the background.

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Otherworldly 3 - the labyrinth (moss-covered walls, snaky tendrils, macro-scale forest, mountains lush with dawn, college mired in vegetation with steam tunnels underneath and people-sized vines filling the buildings late in the process), intensifying stress and psychological pressure.

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Otherworldly 4 - messed up by all of this, unstable; spending time in nature, confusion about the existence of the self, looking at backdrops/gates into other worlds, thinking about the past and family, graves, something harrowing happens in the external world.

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Otherworldly 5 - grounding experiences. anti-grounding experiences. a messy relationship with someone kind of obsessive and/or fuguish—whether friend, frenemy, or lover—probably both grounding and anti-grounding. Their history. Their struggle. To a lesser extent, her own recovery/stabilization.

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Summarizing even further:

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Otherworldly 1 - Taking Time to Recover

Otherworldly 2 - Slowly Building Horror

Otherworldly 3 - The World is Crushing Us

Otherworldly 4 - Out of Balance

Otherworldly 5 - We Are All We Have

...

Aspect 1 - Taking Time to Recover

Aspect 2 - Slowly Building Horror

Aspect 3 - We Are All We Have

Aspect 4 – The World is Crushing Us

Aspect 5 - Out of Balance

which I think is hilarious

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Knight ... is probably the same as Otherworldly. Might be the first time that’s happened?

Shepherd is harder.

We can probably peg “The World is Crushing Us” to Shepherd 4. I have concerns, because it’s the one where she goes back in time and going back in time to fix things is Shepherd 3. But, she fails to fix things, and I don’t think that’s how Shepherd 3 works for the Nobilis. Let’s assume 4.

I think we can rule out “Taking Time to Recover” for Shepherd 3.

I think because Shepherd 2 ends with a big challenge coming up, that probably we can rule out “Slowly Building Horror” for Shepherd 3 ... there’s no feeling in the writeup of “Slowly Building Horror” like something just happened.

We’ve already claimed “The World is Crushing Us.”

So that leaves “Out of Balance” or “We Are All We Have” for Shepherd 3 ... probably the latter.

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We have Shepherd 1, 2, and 5 left to figure out, and they map to Otherworldly 1, 2, and either 4 or 5:

* an ordinary life (Shepherd 1)

* having trouble, probably because of a sudden responsibility (Shepherd 2); and

* an extraordinary life (Shepherd 5).

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I think we want to map Otherworldly 4, “Out of Balance,” to Shepherd 2. There’s a possible future curve ball where the specifics of the quest shift it to 1 or 5, but as is, that quest feels most like “having trouble.”

That leaves “Taking Time To Recover” as Shepherd 1 and I guess “Slowly Building Horror” as Shepherd 5?

(Weird)

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Shepherd 1 - Taking Time to Recover

Shepherd 2 - Out of Balance

Shepherd 3 - We Are All We Have

Shepherd 4 - The World is Crushing Us

Shepherd 5 - Slowly Building Horror

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... having “Slowly Building Horror” as Shepherd 5 is hard for me.

The only reasonable alternative would be claiming Otherworldly 5 (“We Are All We Have”) as Shepherd 5, and then Otherworldly 2 (“Slowly Building Horror”) as Shepherd 3, despite the lack of a precipitating event.

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Shepherd 1 - Taking Time to Recover

Shepherd 2 - Out of Balance

Shepherd 3 - Slowly Building Horror

Shepherd 4 - The World is Crushing Us

Shepherd 5 - We Are All We Have

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Or ... I guess ... Otherworldly 5 (“We Are All We Have”) as Shepherd 5, yes, but Taking Time to Recover as Shepherd 3, and “Slowly Building Horror” as Shepherd 1?

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Shepherd 1 - Slowly Building Horror

Shepherd 2 - Out of Balance

Shepherd 3 - Taking Time to Recover

Shepherd 4 - The World is Crushing Us

Shepherd 5 - We Are All We Have

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I guess the final option is to discard all of that, and emphasize the “picking up a sidekick at the end of quest 1” thing that Shepherd Arcs often have, which gives us

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Shepherd 1 - Slowly Building Horror

Shepherd 2 - We Are All We Have

Shepherd 3 - Out of Balance

Shepherd 4 – The World is Crushing Us

Shepherd 5 - Taking Time to Recover

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... I think that’s the one, but it’s shaky.

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Knight/Otherworldly/Aspect 1 / Shepherd 5 – Taking Time to Recover

Knight/Otherworldly/Aspect 2 / Shepherd 1 – Slowly Building Horror

Knight/Otherworldly 3 / Aspect 5 / Shepherd 4 – The World is Crushing Us

Knight/Otherworldly/Aspect 4 / Shepherd 3 – Out of Balance

Knight/Otherworldly 5 / Aspect 3 / Shepherd 2 – We Are All We Have

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And with that in mind I can probably change the names a bit:

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Knight/Otherworldly/Aspect 1 / Shepherd 5 – I’m Dreaming of a Place to Stand

Knight/Otherworldly/Aspect 2 / Shepherd 1 – I’m Clinging to Your Voice

Knight/Otherworldly 3 / Aspect 5 / Shepherd 4 – The World is a Devouring Thing

Knight/Otherworldly/Aspect 4 / Shepherd 3 – The Ground’s Abandoned Me

Knight/Otherworldly 5 / Aspect 3 / Shepherd 2 – We Are All We Have

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Maybe?

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So for Knight/Otherworldly, it forms a little poem:

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I’m dreaming of a place to stand

I’m clinging to your voice

The world is a devouring thing

The ground’s abandoned me:

We are all we have.

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But for Aspect, the poem is

I’m dreaming of a place to stand

I’m clinging to your voice:

We are all we have.

The world is a devouring thing;

The ground’s abandoned me.

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And for a Shepherd Arc, it’s:

I’m clinging to your voice:

we are all we have.

The ground’s abandoned me;

The world is a devouring thing.

I’m dreaming of a place to stand.

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Maybe. Dunno.

Aside: I really like this way of turning quests into lyrics that rearrange themselves but in the end I named quests based on what made the most sense for the individual quest after completing their writeup. Maybe it’s a lost opportunity.

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The thing that’s hilarious to me is that the Aspect Arc is basically a comedy.

Like book 1 on Aspect is like:

* living her life, struggling to be better at something

* talking to her friend on the phone about that while weirdness happens in the background, ultimately getting an inspiration about how to become stronk-er

* friend is so exasperating with their summoning murderous true gods and ritualistically walking around town every day! (laugh track) oops reality is just a backdrop gotta go

* in a labyrinth of horrors, let’s fight god! ok, god is dead

* I don’t know how I feel about all this.

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... I say that’s hilarious, and it is, but also it bugs me, because it feels a bit inhumane/soulless.

Like ... there’s something I get from all of these that I get sometimes when something I’m writing or reading is going fundamentally astray, and maybe the way the Aspect Arc warps into ... that ... reflects it.

I may also just be sensing the disturbing character of some of the material, though.

Anyway, I’m going forward with this general outline, because I think that the core is probably okay, and there’s just some thematic subtleties that need fixing.

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LONG ASIDE

An absolutely fascinating thing I discovered here is that if I make “Taking Time to Recover” more Aspect 3-ish—that is, give it more room for social farce; put another way, make it more social in general—it doesn’t just make it possible to rearrange the Aspect Arc into something less ghoulish, it also addresses an awful lot of what bugs my intuition.

Like, IMO as a writer, book 1 instantly becomes a lot more human if she moves from data entry work in quest 1 to a hypercompetitive digital epets startup.

This fascinates me because “this reads wrong when reorganized into a different Arc” is such a skew way to diagnose the problem, and changing how it reorganizes as a way to fix that is like doing book surgery with waldoes.

...

In the end, though, it didn’t satisfy me as a fix; I addressed things more directly, looking at the end of each book (since the beginning and end of a book is where I personally tackle themes most directly) and fixing things there.

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BACK TO THE LOG!

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...

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I think that the inhumanity of book 1 can be fixed by ending, not with “saved, log out, I was just a puppet on a stage” but with the person in reality showing grief for the self that was in the labyrinth and processed herself as a puppet on stage.

Heck, Book 1 can be named “Weep for the Puppet,” and can parallel that ending by beginning with her getting through the day by denying that things are real or pretending they don’t matter—

That is, it can start with “can our sense of self be real when we’re prisoners of our bodies and environment?” and end with “what does it matter, we should grieve even for a puppet if it suffers.”

Which like ... feels like truth from a really weird angle?

I don’t normally construe “sense of self” and “real” in a way that raises the first question, but if I did, then the answer seems sound.

Will this change the quests? Who knows! It does increase the weight of grieving/graves in quest 4, at least, and tweaks my overall mindset.

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Book 2 isn’t as bad. It doesn’t need as much fixing. Maybe name it “Pain Never Is” and focus more on her being upset that it wasn’t for anything, the things she gave up in the labyrinth, but that might be wrong. Hrm.

... not sure if that’s right for book 2, but for book 3 I was thinking that maybe I’d shift to ending by, like:

Illusion of Choice guy tries to wave away the moment of things getting better as you still did what I expected, there was no choice here, but her mood is more like: “choice is a quibble; we (people) are wonder”

(Because my opinion on free will, in general, is that “choice” is a weird abstraction maybe coming out of formal debate or politics or something; when you frame things in terms of choices, yeah, choices matter, but in the rawness of the world, it’s not “choices” or “decisions” that life is about, but rather, the ability to unfold the compressed truths inside you in a healthy and nourishing way, or not—whether or not you get to express yourself without being crushed into someone else’s shape. In the face of that, arguing about stuff like how much choice you have in who you are and the circumstances you deal with and how your brain works and all that is just a distraction.

So that would be a message of the book?)

I’m hindered by the fact that I’m thinking about these while lying down instead of while actively reviewing but I think that might fix book 3.

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NOVEMBER 16

Book 4 ...

Maybe book 4 ends better if some NPC or inner voice wonders if it’s fine then, if it’s safe now, if it’s all OK, and even though she has “control” now, she admits that it’s all still as terrifying as all hell.

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LONG ASIDE!!

Around here a friend asks whether I had any logs of the development I did on this for GMD or Glitch. Now, for GMD, the stories themselves are in the book, so, like ... you can see most of the process there. Some of the stories like Jasper’s are sketchier but, well, that’s just what they are, I was new at the process and going as fast as I could and it still took years.

For Glitch ...

Well, SKIP THIS PART IF IT WILL SCREW UP YOUR USING THE GLITCH QUEST SETS, but.

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The sets for Glitch were built around Lexiarchos Caducine, Adhémar Hetairh, and Filimer Sarus, long-established canon Strategists, though none of them are Chancery Strategists in canon. Filimer doesn’t show up in the core books for Nobilis 2nd or 3rd; you can find more about him in an earlier post,

https://www.tumblr.com/jennamoran/126363471948/purity-pollution-and-the-soul-part-3-the

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as well as the terrene stuff in:

https://jennamoran.tumblr.com/post/126441798888/purity-pollution-and-the-soul-part-4-the

https://jennamoran.tumblr.com/post/128218784458/purity-pollution-and-the-soul-part-6-shameful

https://jennamoran.tumblr.com/post/128276380813/purity-pollution-and-the-soul-part-7-cursed

https://jennamoran.tumblr.com/post/130662119128/purity-pollution-and-the-soul-part-8-horrors

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I don’t have much for the Lexiarchos quest set; just:

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Story 1 - She completes a grand plan to eviscerate the world, but pulls back at the last second, and gets captured by Powers instead. Her first quest in the first story is being captured and interrogated and suspected. Her second quest is them trying to help her fit into the world. Her third quest is realizing that she’d have to give up too much +(to fit in on their terms), and finally turning away.

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Story 2 - Her first quest in her second story is wrestling with herself and her personal flaw. Her second quest is finding something she wants to protect somewhere. Her third quest is being put in opposition with her own people. Her fourth quest is struggling to turn said Excrucians aside and ultimately finding something wonderful.

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Story 3 - Her first quest in her third story is about trying to put that something wonderful to use but being too static and set in her ways for it. Her second quest is following that thing out into the world and experiencing that. Her third quest is the way it requires change from her. Her fourth quest is a battle with herself. Her fifth quest is putting old stories to bed.

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Story 4 - Her first quest is about waiting, because even aging as she is she knows she can’t move too soon. Her second quest is about fear. Her third quest is about the tragedy that is not knowing what’s going to happen, where she’s going. Her fourth quest is closing off some terrible realm. Her fifth quest is discovering what happens now.

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That’s all I seem to have for that one, which turned into “the Long Road to Recovery.”

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Adhémar’s set, which turned into “Absurdist Comedy,” was ... a bit more detailed:

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Book Zero —

Adhémar Hetairh is living his normal life. It’s heroic and grand but also kind of ... routine? Part of that is his ongoing project to subvert a Power.

... he gets subverted instead.

He’s swallowed fire and poison in the past. This is worse.

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Book One —

His routine is damaged by this. He tries to go about his ordinary life but it’s all messed up. He can’t break the world like he wants to. Everything’s confusing. His friends in their towers laugh at him. He feels funky when he breaks things. He eats puffy desserts and stares at water and makes tongue-tied speeches and is embarrassed about her. Finally, he realizes that this is another spur in his heart, like the fire and poison. Knowing that, at last, he can embrace it. He can allow himself to change. He can show up at her court, travel-sweat on his brow, and ask to pay her court.

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Aside-in-an-Aside: I don’t think the default heterocentrism of the imaginary books has any way to get into the quest sets themselves but I’ll try to make at least one of the next two sets queerer.

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Book Two —

He has a place in a city. He has a home. He and the Power are actually working something out. But it gets screwed up because the city is threatened by a friend who is on the border of revenance. He tries to help his friend through to the other side before everything is destroyed. He travels the world looking for a way into a secret citadel where he can recover his friend’s heart, or build him a new one. (The shameful devices of what’s-his-name?)

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Aside-in-an-Aside: The devices of Abd-al-Rashid are undeniably masterworks—from Bahir Hibah, the book whose passages can open any portal, to Zakiyya, the mechanical odalisque whose tears are made of gold. At one time or another, many Powers have considered delving into Abd-al-Rashid’s forgotten city in search of these devices. So far, they have refrained. Abd-al-Rashid died a traitor’s death, seduced into betraying his Imperator by mortal lust, and the taint clings to his artifacts still. How would a Power dare to take them? Her peers would point and whisper, “There goes one who claims a traitor’s goods. What else might not she do?”

—from Chronicles of Wonders, by Kip Narekatski

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Book 3 has some notes in it like >2; I think this is me reordering quests to see how they look in a different order, but I don’t know if I was experimenting with alternate quest colors or what. I’m leaving them in in case they actually mattered and removing them would somehow lead someone to confusion!

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Book Three —

He has taken responsibility for that Citadel and thus taken on a sort of Power role. The machinery is breaking down, though. And there’s a threat on the horizon. Most likely it’s the Locust Court, which is sniffing around. >3

He tries to use their love to perfect it. >2

He travels to the Locust Court. >5

He wields the shameful devices and defeats them, and ultimately swallows down her punishment. >4

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Book Four —

He is living on an island, anchoring a part of reality. The world is wobbling, though. Dissolving. Decaying. He tries to save the island without just ruining things. He discovers that it’s ultimately his own fault for swallowing all this stuff, but tries to see his way through to the worth of the world to anchor it, to expunge the wrongness. When he’s done so, he travels to the Hierarch Eternal to drive that in. He returns and can settle down with his romantic interest because he’s nobody.

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Aside-in-an-Aside: I just wrote “Hierarch Eternal” down in the file, I don’t think there’s any canon on them

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 Filimer Sarus’ set, which turned into “Folk Tales:”

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Book Zero —

Filimer Sarus lives in a hidden realm and purveys ethical blindness. Every day he encourages Powers to abandon their own ethical judgment and the service of their Imperators and instead immerse themselves in echo chambers of scorn and outrage. Every day he encourages inattention—not acceptance, not even true apathy, but unwillingness to face—the suffering of the world. But increasingly he faces his own blindness. One day it’s too much.

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Book One

He goes out to find truth. He goes out to find ... a reason why the wrongness of the world endures. To find something beyond his own revulsion. He meets someone whom he almost idolizes. It’s a very spiritual journey, very Illusions. He faces a flare-up of his disease that tears the world around him apart. He loses his grip on his realm. In the end, he realizes that the world is hard. He is dying of ... presumably he is being devoured by the earth. The world is eating him.

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Book Two

He is back in the world, living a new life. He has shed his high position and has decided to live an ordinary life as a rail inspector. It falls apart when the world begins to swallow him again. He becomes fascinated with the idea of binding the world together and down with railway and postal lines. With the stomping the world flat, or the maps at least, that people do these days. But ultimately he doesn’t think that he has time. What can he even do? No matter what he does, no matter how he lives, it just keeps happening. In the end, he remembers why he decided to live—the thing in him that he found that moves even when made stone. The filament that he named himself Filimer for. The life. He chases a great railway-spirit horse and ultimately tames it, finding a moment of laughing freedom before he dies.

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Book Three

He spends a while in Ninuan, only going into the world to get the coffee he likes and see his friends from afar. But a Power tracks him down and is all, look, we know you’ve turned, we want your help to get the new guy. He helps explore the new Filimerverse, eventually confronting “the new guy,” who turns out to be a false him. A ... Mimic him? Should that even be possible? He figures out eventually that it’s not, that it’s a Mimic taken from some force of malleability that’s simply been pushed into his shape, a mud-Mimic, but it’s still impossible, because, like, it rubs his nose in everything, and also, he feels ... kind of responsible? Like, just killing it would be cruel. Eventually, he decides that it’s a fine Filimer, and he can’t take it down, but he’ll speak against it. He takes down some of his own great artifacts, and eventually finds, in the stave of morality (see the Purity and Pollution series), the ability to make truth. He thinks ... that might be it. He holds a colloquium on what the right thing ought to be. Ultimately, he decides.

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Book Four

The world is no longer wrong (yay colloquium!) but it is slowing. It is congealing. It is right, but nonfunctionally so. He decides that this is a dead end, and walks into the Seal of Time to return to another path. He becomes fascinated with the mechanism of time and possibility—with Attaris’ thousand thousand paths—but in the end, the shifting ground unnerves him. He finds himself wanting to return. He can’t. He’s lost. In the scattered timeways, he chases the riddle-beast that lives there, and ultimately finds the song-law that can chart the way to a golden world. Will he go there?

He’ll walk ten thousand silvered paths before, instead.

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There was also a quest set where the “books” were about a random Strategist dying of nightmares, Liza (probably actually Leza or Liecza, for name correctness, but I hadn’t worked out the names at that time). This one became the “Dystopian YA” quest set:

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Book Zero

Liza is a guardian of nightmares. She has been bitterly opposed to the world because her nightmares devour her. But after she partners with a nightmare wolf to survive a Power’s hunt, she realizes she can’t keep attempting to destroy the world.

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Book One

A nightmare needs help because therapy is erasing it. Still fending off the search parties of the Powers, she gets an understanding of the situation and the weirdness of the town—a Power’s laboratory of sorts, where dreams are raised and slaughtered. She comes up with the idea of smuggling the nightmares out together with the town escapees, as, essentially, munitions. The process of escaping with them goes through a nightmare realm and forces her to confront her own greatest fear. She manages to feint the Power that’s been hunting her off into it and leave a nightmare-of-the-truck-getting-eaten rather than the truck itself getting eaten while the actual truck of evacuees makes it onto the road.

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Book Two

The Power that’s been hunting her is in disgrace, and uses a hostage—knowledge about a friend of hers, held captive—to coerce an alliance. It needs help obtaining the stone that holds its soul. They work together to seize it, and it tells her where her friend is and how they can be saved. She investigates the gaol of the Imperators. It’s Sakhrat’s

Aside-in-an-Aside: Sakhrat is the Imperator of Trails, Bureaucracy, Records, and Mazes, introduced in the sample campaign in Nobilis 2nd. It’s one of three “Inquisitorial” Imperators who hunt Mimics and traitors. The others are Ambrolam and Parasiel. They compete a bit because they get to eat them afterwards. AAnnabelle Zupay is one of her Powers; Annabelle likes to do high summoning and hang out with weird creatures from beyond the world. Ambrolam is a True God who really wishes it could leave Earth. Sakhrat’s Chancel floats above the mind.

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so it’s possible that Liza can in fact get into it via nightmares. However, the path is tricky to chart, and requires taming a number of rare slitherers. She develops an implements a plan to break in through a nightmarish waylet path and manages to rescue her friend. ... who is in ruins. She decides that she is going to change things. She is going to force Sakhrat and the Inquisitors to acknowledge the Chancery by inflicting a true nightmare upon them. This is probably her own Glitched nightmare, which ravages the place. Whether this has any impact, at the time she does not know.

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Book Three

There’s no way to switch to negotiations at this point, so she works with one of the weird allies of Annabelle Zupay to push them into compromise. They wind up conspiring and counter-conspiring in the Beyond to dominate a weird society. Ultimately, she seizes enough influence to escape the trap. She follows the breadcrumb trail to something Sakhrat will actually exchange peace for, to wit, a scheme of hope that fell into the nightmare world a long, long time ago. This she has a chance of rescuing, but the expedition is haunted by Inquisitorial attacks and the personal trauma of the friend she rescued. Eventually she comes up with the plan of using their brokenness to catalyze and draw forth hope. From their shattered mind she grows a nightmare of a way forward, of things not having to be so terrible. She finds Sakhrat’s lost desire. She can’t just give it to Sakhrat. That would just ... lead to betrayal. Instead, she tries to smuggle it into the world welken-rite style as a tamed beast—a weapon of hope, now turned into the Chancery’s service. A world of her own. There’s no way to manage except to become it.

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Book Four

She is nightmare and she is hope and she is still dying, still falling from the world. Now she must begin a weird romance with Sakhrat herself, stirred by alien drives, knowing that a misstep will lead to her being flayed in the Inquisitorial fashion, and work out how this is going to be. She realizes slowly that Sakhrat is Glitched. That Sakhrat—and with her, Trails, Bureaucracy, Records, and Mazes—is sinking into the lower dream, precisely because she is glitched. That Sakhrat may very well be a Strategist, or, worse, a revenant-to-be. And of course that if anyone finds out about this, as of course Parasiel and Ambrolam’s Powers are starting to, if anyone finds out that Sakhrat is extra-doomed, she is doomed, and the budding compromise is doomed with her.

Liza manages to distract them with nightmares, though they are pulling through it, but just when they finally break through, her plan is revealed—she was subverting Ambrolam, possibly through the Power that had been hunting her before:

Offering it a way offworld.

Allowing Ambrolam to expand offworld through a waylet is tricky and a little scary. Will it be worth it? Who knows? She works her hope into the path, revealing that she is interlinked into it and therefore now has a hold on two of them. Parasiel stares her down, then finally says, I will allow your life, if you do no harm. It … probably doesn’t mean this.

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And that’s what the quest sets in Glitch were based on!

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NOVEMBER 16 STILL

OK! Time to start building the actual quests!

Let’s bring together the quest 1 writeups, then simplify them a bit so I can look at them all at once, then do that.

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Otherworldly 1

Troubled Dreams

You’re having dreams or otherworldly experiences that connect you to something beyond and outside yourself.

Afterwards: you know what you have to do about this—a path you are called to walk, or something you must do to keep these experiences under control. It is possible that you’ve found 2-3 options; if so, it is possible to choose wrongly.

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Knight 1

You’re putting on airs. You’re dreaming big. Bigger than the life you have. You’re aspiring, you know? But you don’t really know how to get there.

Reward: you’ve put a name to the thing you want to become, and you’ve put your feet on a legitimate path to making that aspiration real.

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Aspect 1

You’re blocked. Frozen. Stuck. There’s something you can’t get past.

Reward. You push past it.

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Shepherd 5

You’ve become a new person—a stronger, better person. Isn’t it awesome?

Result. You create or do something amazing and revolutionary.

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Aside: Listing all these didn’t really help, since I wound up consulting my memory rather than rereading them. But, well, listing them is what I did!

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Book 1, “Weep for the Puppet,” Otherworldly 1:

She lives in a little town. She gets through her day pretending that it isn’t real, it doesn’t matter. She keeps expecting her packages to arrive but they never do. Somehow, she’s become the Power of Backdrops. And she dreams of the moss-crusted, bright-lit, ancient, crumbling walls of a labyrinth in the deeps of the world, and the currents of wind and story that slowly circle through it. There’s a door she could open, if she wanted to, to find it. She could just ... twitch the backdrop of the world aside. And she has to, because there’s something wrong with the world she’s living in. She knows she has to. ... but she puts it off.

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Book 2, “The Automaton’s Grave”, Otherworldly 1:

She lives in a rich but ruined world where society is crumbling under Excrucian assault. It is wrong, and she so desperately wants it to be right. It is broken, and she so desperately wants it to be whole. (It’s not her body she wants whole, for clarity, though if the dysphoria aspect of fixing it could be avoided fixing it would be great. Just ... things. Things should be whole.)

She maneuvers her wheelchair onto a rusty jury-rigged car-lifting platform to get to and from her second-floor apartment. She walks her dog past fallen futuristic towers. She hangs out with her voiceless robot street gardener/artist friends.

She gets by, day to day, in the rain and the green that follows, but she wants to go back.

Ever since she saw this weird giant abstract mural that this grumpy old guy in a big grey coat’s been painting, she’s been wanting to go back, has been tormented by this vision of it, this knowledge that she could ... just ... make it. A little dream. A little fake world of her own. Just like the god did. A world where none of this happened. A world where everything is right. A world where she was still the self she wanted to be and nothing was crumbling. And she keeps trying to make it, little dioramas in the air, but it’s never right.

And inspired by that same painting, at the same time, because it’s a flower rite on Backdrops, and a Test of the All-Consuming Dream, her robot friends murder themselves integrating into their art/gardens. The flower rite is saying “Backdrops present a coherent reality, but Backdrops are sketchy, and that’s freaky. Also, Backdrops present a full context, but Backdrops are separate from the stage, and that’s freaky too! Explain me this, backdrops.”

And in the end, she decides she’s going to go that way too. She’s going to pour herself, her life, her being, into that backdrop she’s creating, even if it destroys her. But she’s scared, so she hesitates.

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(N.B. The way I’m going to handle book 2 and making it work, I think, is that its ending will construe her wanting to be “right” as her form of obsessiveness/OCD, since there’s kind of a theme/thread of that in who the god chooses; and the current ending moment of the book, while it still might have the Warmain telling her that “pain never is” worth it on the last page or two, is just the sudden dizzying ... sloughing off of glaciers as she realizes that “right” and “real” are so completely unconnected that “right” is a mental bugaboo, and reality washes in like the tide on a crumbling sandcastle.

... yes, it’s sort of reiterating some of the Night-Bird’s Feather, there, but whatever, it’s not like I’m actually going to be writing these, and if I do, it won’t be any time soon! I have had to create so many series I didn’t actually write for quest sets, and most of them are better choices than this series if I actually wrote one.)

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Book 3, “Marvelous Symmetry,” Otherworldly 1:

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(opening quote:

“What a piece of work is man ... in apprehension, how like a god.”)

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Her GPS can never decide which seven-minute route is best to take to work. That’s left to the majesty of her free will.

Anyway.

She’s living, haunted by what happened. She’s in reality, but it’s a mess. Her town is devastated, because it’s small enough a hundred deaths can cast a shadow. Her little neighborhood where most of them were is actively falling apart from fear and broken social connections. The Power of the Illusion of Choice shows up. He has a lot of anxiety and OCD and is generally a mess, jerk, and downer, has no sense of intrinsic meaning in anything any more, but he says he’s been drafted to teach her the basics, show her around the Noble world, give her the introduction to things. At night he tries kind of halfheartedly to put stars back in the sky over town, because the Chancelling process burned out the local sky. She hates it. One Excrucian was bad enough, without a world full of vipers. One “god” was bad enough without a bloody-handed king over them all, and angels being real and the same thing, and mountain ranges being giant snakes and the same thing too?

But most of all there’s a Big Pit outside of town that’s getting bigger every day and no one has the funds to deal with it because all the town’s money went to police (and apparently didn’t even get to them??) and though the mortals don’t seem to notice it LITERALLY has nothing in it, it’s not a big hole in the ground, it’s a big hole in Creation. She keeps dreaming about it. It haunts her. It’s like a metaphor for everything that’s wrong. It was a victory just coming through it intact as a person, herself. Just surviving. She doesn’t have the power or knowledge to deal with ... other stuff, for other people. But she has to. She can’t just let the pit grow and eat everything. She’s going to have to go back.

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Book 4, “Squish the Holy Light of God,” Otherworldly 1:

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She is in reality. Her body sucks, like bodies do.

... She is in reality, but sometimes she sees someone at a party with a monster behind their face. She is in reality, but sometimes she forgets what being in reality even is or what it means when a phone rings.

She dreams of her life when she was young, of the time when a star fell into her garden in the night and sputtered, burning, on the lawn. Of looking out from a porch and seeing spirits moving in the fields. Of the time around her accident, most of all, and a boyfriend she didn’t have at the time talking to her, and rivers running in the street, and tall buildings on dark nights, and magic and weirdness that she’s pretty sure oughtn’t have been there. And she knows that some of what’s going on is derealization, depersonalization, from trauma, and some of it is that she’s carrying the weight of the power of the god, but ... the stuff about the dreams of the past, that seems legit. She’s seeing things in her past that she couldn’t see back then, and ... maybe even changing it.

Because what is our past but the backdrop to who we are?

And she decides that she has to take ownership of that, has to either put it all in order or make it have order, but she doesn’t want to, she wants to just go on telling herself the same story of her history she always has and not risk messing it up retroactively or having it always have been made up or finding that the god was there even back then or WHATEVER.

.

(NB the title refers to the fact that our ability to move our bodies is a holy mystery comparable to the fundamental sorcery she learns at the end, including, e.g., if one squishes the floppy bit of your arm to get some holiness to spark.)

.

... I don’t know why I spent so long on the titles when I am not going to actually write these books.

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 NOVEMBER 17

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Let’s synthesize the four quests and find some possible quest flavor options!

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Otherworldly 1 –

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* dealing with the finicky idiosyncracies of your transportation

Here, I’m extrapolating from the rusty jury-rigged car-lifting platform out to parallels in the other quests

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* a rich experience of ruins or urban decay

Here, I’m trying to draw a throughline between the dream-ruins in book 1 and the decaying city in book 2

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* a rich experience of absence, of something lost

Here, I’m trying to draw a line between the futuristic towers in book 2 and the town under a shadow (and maybe the pit) in book 3

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* something you usually think is fine is briefly monstrous or horrific or traumatic to you

Here, I’m trying to tie together “seeing monsters behind people’s faces” with the abstract mural, and “pretending it isn’t real” and “a hundred deaths cast a shadow”

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* getting stuff from an eccentric, poorly-stocked local store

This is core to “little town” to me, I guess?

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* a rich experience of looping, loosely circular motion

This is from the wind in the labyrinth and the ritual walks in book 1, the art in book 2, the kinds of rituals of the Power of Illusion of Choice in book 3 (and the wind around the pit), and the spirits moving in the fields in book 4

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* in a dream, fugue, art, vision, or otherworldly space, experience greenery, flowing water, or rain

* experience an arid heat and dying vegetation while fully present in a worldly space

It took me a while to figure out why there was no flowing water in book 3, quest 1, but I think this is why.

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* hang out with a quiet friend, preferably eating and admiring a view

This is synthesizing quiet robots + college friends + work friends maybe?

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* forgetting for a moment how something basic works

This is mostly for “why is this phone ringing” in book 3, but I think the other books are in weird enough environments that it plays through

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* trying and failing to articulate your dream

^ from the diorama

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* experience something you might liken to a whirlpool, undertow, or eerie gravitational phenomenon

^ why does the star fall into the garden? Because the labyrinth is a garden-equivalent and pulls at the sky

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* the heavens are drawn to the earth

^ a better phrasing, but probably too specific and will go away.

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* ritualistic behavior (your own, or someone else’s)

^ mostly from the Illusion of Choice, but also from waiting for packages.

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* you open a door

^ this is a weird one, but mark it [[BLUE]] and it’s not bad

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* someone exposits in the background while you look away

This is something I imagine the mystery boyfriend doing, also the Power of Illusion of Choice

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* feeling unreal

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NOVEMBER 18

pulling it all together without notes

* dealing with the finicky idiosyncracies of your transportation

* a rich experience of ruins or urban decay

* a rich experience of absence, of something lost

* a rich experience of looping, loosely circular motion

* experience something you might liken to a whirlpool, undertow, or eerie gravitational phenomenon

* the heavens are drawn to the earth

* ritualistic behavior (your own, or someone else’s)

* something you usually think is fine is briefly monstrous or horrific or traumatic to you

* getting stuff from an eccentric, poorly-stocked local store

* in a dream, fugue, art, vision, or otherworldly space, experience greenery, flowing water, or rain

* experience an arid heat and dying vegetation while fully present in a worldly space

* hang out with a quiet friend, preferably eating and admiring a view

* forgetting for a moment how something basic works

* trying and failing to articulate your dream

* you open a door

* someone exposits in the background while you look away

* feeling unreal

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... 17 options is definitely overkill, so I won’t guess quest size from that.

Which ones are major goals?

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* You’re drawn in by a metaphorical, psychological, or literal current---often, one that circles back to its beginning.

* The heavens are drawn to the earth.

* Something you usually think is fine is briefly monstrous, horrific, or traumatic to you.

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If it’s just those, it’s a 35 XP quest, and we just need 7 of the others.

... I can trim the remaining list down to 10 pretty easily, maybe one of them is a major goal, too, then it’s a 45 XP quest.

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* dealing with the finicky idiosyncracies of your transportation

* a rich experience of ruins or urban decay

* a rich experience of absence, of something lost

* ritualistic behavior (your own, or someone else’s)

* getting stuff from an eccentric, poorly-stocked local store

* in a dream, fugue, art, vision, or otherworldly space, experience greenery, flowing water, or rain

* hang out with a quiet friend, preferably eating and admiring a view

* forgetting for a moment how something basic works

* trying and failing to articulate your dream

* someone exposits in the background while you look away

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Is that too long tho? Hm.

How long does this feel like it takes?

45 XP wouldn’t really be too much for quest 1 except ... quest 2 isn’t really a very significant update. It mostly just continues, which makes me not want to have quest 1 be too long.

I can accept 40, I think.

...

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QUEST 1

…

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MAJOR GOALS

The GM can award you 5 XP towards this quest when:

* You’re drawn in by a metaphorical, psychological, or literal current---often, one that circles back to its beginning.

* The heavens are drawn to the earth.

* Something you usually think is fine is briefly monstrous, horrific, or traumatic to you.

* You momentarily forget how something basic (like a window) works.

You can earn each bonus once, for a total of up to 20 XP.

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QUEST FLAVOR

1/chapter, when you’re in focus, you can earn 1 XP for yourself and 1 XP for the quest from:

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[[ORANGE/GOLD]] ritualistic behavior (your own, or someone else’s)

[[GREEN/BLACK]] a dissociative or somehow depersonalized experience of lush greenery, flowing water, or rain

[[SILVER/BLACK]] a rich experience of ruins or urban decay

[[SILVER/BLACK]] a rich experience of absence, of something lost

[[SILVER/BLACK]] eating with a quiet friend, preferably somewhere with a view

[[SILVER/PURPLE]] the finicky idiosyncracies of your local transportation

[[SILVER/PURPLE]]] getting stuff from an eccentric, poorly-stocked local store

[[SILVER/RED]] exposition or a narrative voiceover from someone who isn’t actually there

... and so can any other player, 1/chapter, if they substitute their PC for yours or otherwise involve them.

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I’m going to go ahead and make the simplified version now, while it’s fresh.

My first pass gets us down to six quest flavor—

Aside: I appear to have just written the first pass at the simplified quest down without sharing process.

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[[GREEN/PURPLE]] working with mental illness or trauma

[[ORANGE/SILVER]] coping with thirst, heat, aridity, or burnout

[[BLACK/SILVER]] a rich experience of ruins or urban decay

[[BLACK/SILVER]] a rich experience of absence, of something lost

[[BLACK/GOLD]] your local infrastructure (transportation, shopping, whatever) utterly fails you, in a single incident or a montage

[[BLACK/RED]] you watch a friend go through their life

Major Goal: exposition or a narrative voiceover from someone who isn’t actually there

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This turns into:

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QUEST 1, SIMPLIFIED

...

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Aside: I skipped a lot of process here too.

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 MAJOR GOALS

The GM can award you 5 XP towards this quest when:

* The heavens are drawn to the earth.

* Something you usually think is fine is briefly monstrous, horrific, or traumatic to you.

* You get exposition or a narrative voiceover from someone who isn’t actually there.

You can earn up to two of these bonuses, once each, for a total of up to 10 XP.

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QUEST FLAVOR

1/chapter, when you’re in focus, you can earn 1 XP for yourself and 1 XP for the quest from:

[[GREEN/PURPLE]] working with mental illness or trauma

[[ORANGE/SILVER]] coping with thirst, heat, aridity, or burnout

[[BLACK/SILVER]] a rich experience of absence, of something lost

[[BLACK/RED]] a bit of narrative focus on an NPC friend as they just ... go through their life ... in your vicinity

[[BLACK/GOLD]] your local infrastructure (transportation, shopping, whatever) just utterly failing you, in a single incident or a montage

... and so can any other player, 1/chapter, if they substitute their PC for yours or otherwise involve them.

.

Of course, we also need like a ... title, and flavor text, which I think will be:

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Life, Amidst Ruin

You live your daily life in a world haunted by things left undone, by accumulated damage to the way of things, by an aching absence. It may be that you can name what is undone, what is damaged, what is absent; or just one or two; or they may be nameless, uncertain wounds. You dream of something better. Of a way you could make things ... better. It’s impossible to articulate it, to boil it down to a specific plan. The dream is a great and vast and wild thing, so much bigger than the head you’re dreaming with.

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Final Aside for Quest 1: This quest gets updated, a little, later.

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 MOVING ON TO QUEST 2!

So tentatively---and it is tentative---I am swapping Aspect 2 and 5, as another step towards making the Arc more humane. I didn’t want to do it before because it put some events in the book in an awkward order, but I think fixing that is better than fixing thematic stuff.

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Aside: I made the swap while not at a computer. I think this was actually wrong, and it was Aspect 2 and 3 that I meant to swap. This confusion spun out until by quest 4 I stopped thinking about where things fit in the Aspect Arc at all! I uh haven’t actually finalized it at the time I’m editing this document up. I’m assuming that I’ll go back to things and assign Aspect quest order when I’m done editing the writeup and it’ll be quick and easy but possibly I’m not actually done yet! ... for now, I’ll just ignore the issue.

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 Otherworldly 2

You’re on a scary or difficult path. Part of you is resisting—clinging to the way things used to be. Even if you’re on this path by choice, it’s scary, or hard, or against your natural way of thinking, or costing something you really hate having to give up.

Afterwards: You release some of that. More of you accepts that you can’t go back.

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Knight 2

This quest is a story of the thing that’s in your way. Think of it as a “documentary”—it’s not about how you conquer your problem, it’s just a tool to help explore what that problem is. A vice? A weakness? An enemy? Or is it just that you’re kind of raw and new?

Outcome: this chapter of your life is over—things are about to change. You’ve either just made a big decision, just gotten the first big sign of that change, or you’ll do so tonight or tomorrow morning.

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Shepherd 1

This is the story of your ordinary life—the everyday work, stresses, and pleasures that form the fabric of your days.

Result. A responsibility falls on you out of nowhere.

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AND THE QUEST SUMMARIES!

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Book 1, “Weep for the Puppet,” Otherworldly 2

She talks to an old friend from college, who was into the weirder side of things, on the phone, as she works through what’s going on around her. Talks about how her neighbor is ... like an automaton, just doing the same thing over and over, no life there, until she finally realizes that that’s what he is, that the original neighbor was [[flash of blood]] one of the murders. And the friend is kind of excited that fantasy is real and kind of worried about her but mostly just talks because the thing is her town doesn’t even exist any more, there’s no way to get to her, she tried. And she talks about how the office she goes to every day is ... ashes, it burned down, only everyone pretends it’s fine and when she gets into the data entry the burned-out missing roof actually protects her from rain. How her dog is a good dog, it’s not the dog she remembers, because, the dog she remembers had a face. And finally she realizes, late one night, while looking at the missing stars, that she doesn’t have a friend like that any more. They don’t talk. That friend got into weird cult magic stuff and fell metaphorically off the face of the world. She doesn’t know how to contact her. She hasn’t heard from her in years. The world she’s in isn’t the real world, she realizes, so she might as well open the labyrinthine door.

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Book 2, “The Automaton’s Grave,” Otherworldly 2

She tries to hang on to the world. She argues with the Warmain about how far an artist has to go. She hangs out with one of the surviving robots in a hedge maze and talks about her mortal life, about ice cream and rain and walking by muddy creeks back when she could walk and generally the things one finds when living in the world, as opposed to, say, destroying yourself for an artistic vision or whatever. And the Warmain talks to her occasionally about bits from his life, wandering the void and breaking the sky over Paris and this incredible bakery down in Buenos Aires. But she can only hold out so long. After a while, when the last of the bottle of bourbon they were sharing runs dry, she shrugs and goes for it. He wins. She pours herself into the backdrop. But she’s drunk, and she misses, and realizes that the world is a backdrop still.

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Book 3, “Marvelous Symmetry,” Otherworldly 2

She talks to her therapist about everything wrong with the world and how maybe she could fix it if she went to the labyrinth and, and how much she doesn’t want to go back. How she wants to just tell the Illusion of Choice to fuck off and the starless sky to fuck off and screw the Locust Court and being a Power and the true face of the world and just live under her bed and be a bedliverunder blanket bug or dust bunny now. And she doesn’t, doesn’t want to go back. But, the real world is suffering, and she has this conviction, and maybe it’s not even right, that if she goes in and gets a piece of the True God--- This is the kind of plan that makes sense in novels--- That she can patch it. That she can’t maybe fix the whole broken town, or her harrowed life, or get rid of the Excrucians or the Locust Court or the way the world “really” is, but she can fix at least the Pit. Does she even have a choice?

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Book 4, “Squish the Holy Light of God,” Otherworldly 2

In visions/dreams/flashbacks, she talks to the boyfriend she didn’t actually have about what’s coming. (I think he’s the star that fell into her garden in the flashbacks in quest 1.) About impending sudden awful change. About destiny. He talks about the dooms facing the world, I think metaphorically rather than Nobilis canon stuff. She talks to her parents in the long long-ago past about whether they’re real or just someone she made up for her backstory. She goes out to the water and gets wind and river spray on her face and can’t feel it at all. She remembers vines and flowers. She argues with the Warmain, still in flashbacks I think, about whether the past being a backdrop or not even matters, and whether it’s right to change it. (He takes whatever side she doesn’t, he doesn’t really have a stake. But mostly he probably argues for the responsibility of power because of how the Otherworldly 2 quest works?) In waking life, she does an office job, filing or data entry, she walks through rows of cabinets and cubicles, she spins on chairs and looks out windows, but it’s not reality or an existential horror: it’s a backdrop she deliberately put up to hide from things, to not be sitting in her apartment with a bunch of half-eaten pizzas and all the responsibility in the world and the ichor of the god puddling at the side of the sink and the Power of the Illusion of Choice for a coworker. When she pulls it down for the day, it’s not “my life is a lie,” it’s “oh well.” In the end, she can’t hide forever. She has to face her past, and she has to face her power, so she’ll do both.

.

…

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This could be an any-time orange quest—

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Aside: Oh!

For those who ONLY know Glitch, the color mapping is: BLUE Decisive, with the two gears ORANGE Struggle, with the swords GREEN Poisoned, with the snake RED Receptive, with the lightning GOLD Flame, with the er flame PURPLE Pastoral, with the crook SILVER Setting, with the road to the setting sun BLACK Falling Star, with the falling star I’ll try to use those names sometimes—I used icons in the actual chatlog, so they’re just as technically easy as RED/BLUE or whatever—but it’s not as natural to me.

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This could be an any-time STRUGGLE quest, but any-time quests don’t work as well for Arc quests in Glitch/Nobilis as they did in Chuubo’s—sneaking an any-time quest into your main character Arc isn’t as seamless due to how focus works.

So, we’ll put together some quest flavor!

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In book 1, her neighbor is an automaton. In book 2, she hangs out with robots. So let’s try:

* watch someone going through their life like an old, rusty machine

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In book 1, her office is ashes but it works anyway. In book 4, she spends time in her old family home.

* take shelter in the remnants of an old building—its memory or shell

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In book 2, she talks about muddy creeks. In book 4, she goes out to the water.

* visit a place of running water, possibly in a flashback

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In book 1, she stares at the missing stars. In book 2, the Warmain talks about breaking the sky.

* the sky is broken

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More rain

[[GREEN/BLACK]] it’s raining, and something doesn’t seem real

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Of course, again and again, she talks to someone about this stuff. That’s the frame for this quest:

* you talk to your Arc touchpoint as you try to make sense of your life and everything going on

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And again and again there’s something weird about that person:

* (probably a major goal) you realize or discover something and, with a horrible sinking feeling, understand that you shouldn’t have been talking to your Arc touchpoint at all

^ needs work

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In book 1, her dog doesn’t have a face. There aren’t obvious equivalents in other books, though, except variants on:

* you stop pretending that something is normal. If the group was playing it as normal, you can work out with the GM/group retroactively how it’s actually been abnormal, messed up, or horrific all this time.

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In book 1, there’s a flash of blood as she remembers a murder. In book 2, she has intrusive thoughts from the Warmain’s art. In book 4, she has weird flashbacks.

* a momentary, disturbing vision or flashback

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There’s a lot of data entry. In book 2, I think she works on rebuilding a rock wall and maintaining a bit of land. It’s super slow given her limitations. In book 3, where she’s focused more on being a Power, I think the equivalent is maintaining a backdrop.

* simple, honest work to help maintain a larger system

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There’s ice cream and pastries and bourbon in book 2 and pizza in book 4

* indulging in junk food or some other minor vice

.

There’s a nexus of conversation topics about fantasy and art and what is real

* talking to someone about stories, magic, or art

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She remembers vines and flowers in book 4. I think ... I think, trying to match that to book 1, that’s actually

* you walk along a particularly scenic road

.

And then there’s this theme from the denial of sacrifice for art and arguing against the past mattering of like:

* arguing against your responsibility for something

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And lastly

* you realize or discover that the world around you isn’t real

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15 options, so I’ll probably get to actively pick the quest length again.

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ROUNDUP!

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Major Goal: the sky is broken

Major Goal: you realize or discover something and, with a horrible sinking feeling, understand that you shouldn’t have been talking to your Arc touchpoint at all

Major Goal: you stop pretending that something is normal. If the group was playing it as normal, you can work out with the GM/group retroactively how it’s actually been abnormal, messed up, or horrific all this time.

Major Goal: you realize or discover that the world around you isn’t real

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FLAVOR

* watch someone going through their life like an old, rusty machine

* take shelter in the remnants of an old building—its memory or shell

* visit a place of running water, possibly in a flashback

[[POISONED/FALLING STAR]] it’s raining, and something doesn’t seem real

* you talk to your Arc touchpoint as you try to make sense of your life and everything going on

* a momentary, disturbing vision or flashback

* simple, honest work to help maintain a larger system * indulging in junk food or some other minor vice

* talking to someone about stories, magic, or art

* you walk along a particularly scenic road

* arguing against your responsibility for something

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This quest can be up to 45 XP, plausibly, because it’s slow-building horror, but even at 45 XP that’s still two too many flavor options.

... probably the last major goal is redundant with the one above it. And honestly, I’d like to make that a flavor and not a MG. So we now have 2 and 12, which is worse, and need to move at least two to major goals.

... the particularly scenic road can be a MG.

Aside: I didn’t explain this at the time, but I’m imagining this as a television series, and the scenic road is from a particularly quiet, impactful episode—not something that happens in every episode.

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And the first flavor option can be an MG too. So:

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MG: the sky is broken

MG: you realize or discover something and, with a horrible sinking feeling, understand that you shouldn’t have been talking to your Arc touchpoint at all

MG: you walk down a particularly scenic road

MG: you watch someone going through their life like an old, rusty machine

.

FLAVOR

[[PASTORAL]] simple, honest work to help maintain a larger system

[[DECISIVE/PASTORAL]] talking to someone about dreams, ambitions, and art

[[SETTING/PASTORAL]] indulging in junk food or some other minor vice

[[POISONED/PASTORAL]] you talk to your Arc touchpoint as you try to make sense of your life and everything going on

[[POISONED/FALLING STAR]] it’s raining, or water is rushing by, and something doesn’t seem real

[[POISONED/RECEPTIVE]] a momentary, disturbing vision or flashback

[[POISONED/RECEPTIVE]] you realize that something you’ve been playing as “normal” has actually been abnormal, messed up, or horrific all this time

[[STRUGGLE/FLAME]] arguing against your responsibility for something

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... OK, so that’s a 40 XPer.

Inversions for the simplified version:

[[FLAME]] frantic work to help maintain a failing system

[[FLAME/RECEPTIVE]] obsessing about a hobby or idea

[[FLAME/FALLING STAR]] binging (e.g. on food, liquor, or media)

[[FLAME/STRUGGLE]] you frantically consult your Arc touchpoint for help

[[SETTING/STRUGGLE]] coping with thirst, heat, aridity, or desolation

[[DECISIVE/STRUGGLE]] a momentary, disturbing vision or flashback---is it a warning?

[[DECISIVE/STRUGGLE]] you suddenly recognize something you’ve been accepting as normal as a horrific abnormality or threat

[[POISONED/PASTORAL]] someone convinces you to take responsibility for something

^ wait, does that mean this is Shepherd 1 and not 2?

... wait, it’s already shepherd 1, cool

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Let’s see. We can make that last one a major goal, I guess. And we can definitely combine the two [[DECISIVE STRUGGLES]].

So

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Major Goal: the sky is broken

Major Goal: you walk down a particularly scenic road

Major Goal: you watch someone going through their life like an old, rusty machine

Major Goal: someone convinces you you have a responsibility you’ve been trying to deny

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[[FLAME]] frantic work to help maintain a failing system

[[FLAME/RECEPTIVE]] obsessing about a hobby or idea

[[FLAME/FALLING STAR]] binging (e.g. on food, liquor, or media)

[[FLAME/STRUGGLE]] you frantically consult your Arc touchpoint for help

[[SETTING/STRUGGLE]] coping with thirst, heat, aridity, or desolation

[[DECISIVE/STRUGGLE]] an intrusive idea, image, or possibility removes all sense of safety from the world

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We need to get it down to at most a 25 XP quest.

I think we can drop the frantic work.

I think we can prrrobably drop the road? Though quiet moments are good tbh.

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Major Goal: the sky is broken

Major Goal: you walk down a particularly scenic road

Major Goal: someone convinces you you have a responsibility you’ve been trying to deny

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Quest Flavor

... when you:

[[FLAME/RECEPTIVE]] obsess about a hobby or idea

[[FLAME/FALLING STAR]] have to cope with the aftermath of a binge (e.g., on food, liquor, or media)

[[FLAME/STRUGGLE]] frantically consult your Arc touchpoint for help

[[SETTING/STRUGGLE]] have to cope with thirst, heat, aridity, or desolation

[[DECISIVE/STRUGGLE]] an intrusive idea, image, or possibility removes all sense of safety from the world

.

I briefly experimented with having “the sky breaks” as the major goal, but it was wrong.

... at some point, for all the strategy and process, this stuff comes down to artistic instinct, possibly even wrong.

.

... looking at this, y’know, I don’t think we actually need that broken sky at all, or the thirst thing for that matte,r in the fast version.

... actually, the thirst inversion was probably too weird and fancy to begin with, too much trying to pull a trick and too little verifying it would work, it should probably actually be ... flooding? Drowning? Let me update both Otherworldly 2 and Otherworldly 1 there.

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OTHERWORLDLY 1, SIMPLIFIED, TAKE 2

MAJOR GOALS

The GM can award you 5 XP towards this quest when:

* The heavens are drawn to the earth.

* Something you usually think is fine is briefly monstrous, horrific, or traumatic to you.

* You get exposition or a narrative voiceover from someone who isn’t actually there. You can earn up to two of these bonuses, once each, for a total of up to 10 XP.

.

QUEST FLAVOR

1/chapter, when you’re in focus, you can earn 1 XP for yourself and 1 XP for the quest from:

[[POISONED/PASTORAL]] working with mental illness or trauma

[[STRUGGLE/SETTING]] water rises or floods, often in a dream

[[FALLING STAR/SETTING]] a rich experience of absence, of something lost

[[FALLING STAR/RECEPTIVE]] a bit of narrative focus on an NPC friend as they just ... go through their life ... in your vicinity

[[FALLING STAR/FLAME]] your local infrastructure (transportation, shopping, whatever) just utterly failing you, in a single incident or a montage

... and so can any other player, 1/chapter, if they substitute their PC for yours or otherwise involve them

.

Aside: Struggle Setting and Falling Star Reception are now the name of my band. (It needs two names because of the prosaic/mythic divide.)

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OTHERWORLDLY 2, SIMPLIFIED, FIRST COMPLETE TAKE

MAJOR GOALS

The GM can award you 5 XP towards this quest when:

* the sky is broken

* you walk down a particularly scenic road

* someone convinces you you have a responsibility you’ve been trying to deny

You can earn up to two of these bonuses, once each, for a total of up to 10 XP.

.

QUEST FLAVOR

1/chapter, when you’re in focus, you can earn 1 XP for yourself and 1 XP for the quest when:

[[FALLING STAR/STRUGGLE]] you’re overwhelmed

[[DECISIVE/STRUGGLE]] an intrusive idea, image, or possibility removes all sense of safety from the world

[[FLAME/STRUGGLE]] you frantically consult your Arc touchpoint for help

[[FLAME/RECEPTIVE]] you obsess about a hobby or idea

[[FLAME/FALLING STAR]] you have to cope with the aftermath of a binge (e.g., on food, liquor, or media)

... and so can any other player, 1/chapter, if they substitute their PC for yours or otherwise involve them.

.

Doing these made me want to change one icon in the main quest, which unfortunately means doing some shuffling of their order:

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OTHERWORLDLY 2, TAKE 2

MAJOR GOALS

The GM can award you 5 XP towards this quest when:

* the sky is broken

* you realize or discover something and, with a horrible sinking feeling, understand that you shouldn’t have been talking to your Arc touchpoint at all

* you walk down a particularly scenic road

* you watch someone going through their life like an old, rusty machine

You can earn each bonus once, for a total of up to 20 XP.

.

QUEST FLAVOR

1/chapter, when you’re in focus, you can earn 1 XP for yourself and 1 XP for the quest when:

[[PASTORAL]] you do simple, honest work to help maintain a larger system

[[DECISIVE/PASTORAL]] talking to someone about dreams, ambitions, and art

[[SETTING/PASTORAL]] indulging in junk food or some other minor vice

[[POISONED/PASTORAL]] talking to your Arc touchpoint as you try to make sense of your life and everything going on

[[POISONED/RECEPTIVE]] a momentary, disturbing vision or flashback

[[POISONED/RECEPTIVE]] you realize that something you’ve been playing as “normal” has actually been abnormal, messed up, or horrific all this time

[[POISONED/SETTING]] it’s raining, or water is rushing by, and something doesn’t seem real

[[STRUGGLE/FLAME]] arguing against your responsibility for something

... and so can any other player, 1/chapter, if they substitute their PC for yours or otherwise involve them

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NOVEMBER 19

Here’s the flavor text for quest 2:

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Reaching Out (Otherworldly 2)

Things are a mess. You’re a mess. You’re coping, probably, at least on the surface, but beneath that veneer of okayness and ordinary life, however comprehensive or not it may be, things are awful or weird or broken or out of control. You’re reaching out to some NPC, your Arc touchpoint, for help—talking it out with them, mostly, letting them help you sort it all out in your head ...

—but is that really such a good idea?

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Thinking about this Arc overall:

So far it’s looking post-apocalyptic pastoral, or more generally “after the fall,” or even more generally “after the big thing, not necessarily a bad thing,” key of star-of-bethlehem as it were.

(This is a Nob3 reference.)

Let’s start gathering stuff for building quest 3!

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Gathering quest 3!

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Otherworldly 3

Something is trying to make you into something else. There’s usually a sense that it’s trying to take you over, devour you from within, kick you out of your life, or something. Or maybe it’s the other way around: maybe it’s pulling you.

Result: You find a part of yourself that hasn’t changed, or won’t.

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Knight 3

The Challenge

Something infects you or tries to change you. Something challenges your conception of yourself.

Result: You err. Or fall from grace. Or are changed. Or possibly you grow.

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A Fish Out of Water (Alternative)

You’re taken completely outside your normal context. Maybe you try to stick to your role and vice and aspirations. Maybe you take a break from them. I don’t know! Everything is different for a while.

Reward: This has a two-part reward:

first, you have new inspiration about how to be what you want to be and do what you want to do

second, if there’s nothing preventing you—that is, if there’s no pressing story reason why you have to stay out of your element—it’s time to wrap things up and come back home or back to normal.

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Shepherd 4

You’re facing a big challenge or adventure.

Result. It ends, leaving you battle-hardened or refreshed and, either way, ready to face the trials of your ordinary life.

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Book 1, “Weep for the Puppet,” Otherworldly 3

Behind the backdrop of the town where nothing changed, there’s ... scaled, moss-covered walls, that very slowly move and shift, grinding against one another, and far above, a glimpse of light through the higher levels of the same—like being in a fifth-dimensional anemone, or medusa’s hair on a bad hair day. There’s a nodule with a small population where she’s greeted as a “challenger,” as someone who can put together an expedition to the heart of the labyrinth to become one with the god, which she has to do because the nodule doesn’t have enough resources to feed people indefinitely if challengers like her don’t do this. They bathe her in a pod of stuff that “fixes” her legs and begins to prepare her for that oneness. And there isn’t really a point in this where she has much of a choice. Her parents were fantasy/gaming nerds, so she grew up with this stuff, so she isn’t horribly out of place with it, though she isn’t happy with any of it either, and the dysphoria only grows as she leads the team towards the center and becomes more and more physically alien to herself to survive the challenges of the regions they pass through. When that dysphoria hits a certain peak, though, it comes with ... the realization, true or false, that this isn’t even her. That it’s just a character. She isn’t her.

Of course.

She sees a save point and it all crystallizes for her. This doesn’t feel like her body any more because it’s ... just a character she’s playing, just a puppet on a stage; and if she pulls aside that backdrop, she’ll awaken, back in the world, with the part ... well, whole ... of her that hasn’t changed at all. That wakes, haunted by unfinished journey. That thinks of that poor puppet, that was her and not-her both at once; and grieves.

.

Aside: This is where I realized I’d gotten confused about how I wanted to rearrange the Aspect Arc.

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 ... I screwed up the Aspect swap, I was swapping 2 and 3 not 2 and 5.

Wasn’t I?

... I’ll poke at it more after I do the roundup.

Maybe I was swapping 3 and 5. It was very clear when I was doing it but I wasn’t at the computer and so it just kind of floated in my head

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Book 2, “The Automaton’s Grave,” Otherworldly 3

She peels down the backdrop of the world and returns to the labyrinth save point, this time with the Warmain beside her. She leads a small group (from book 1, plus the Warmain) across a macro-scale forest where the earth and the giant “trees” are the knotted tendrils of the god on what turns into a more survival-themed story. The change in venue, as it often does, has aborted the depressive moment (from quest 2); she’s still playing with a desire for, a diorama/dream/backdrop/vision of, a better time, still wrestling with it, but she’s gone back to trying to make it work without burning herself out, trying to face the Warmain’s challenge instead of losing to it. And the solution she finds is to fuel the reality of it with the god’s life and not her own, and to treat the separation of actor, character, and stage as a matter of willful construal. When she manages to get it to work, when she calls up a perfect crystal vision of the world where things are okay, she breaks down; because look, look, it isn’t gone; it hasn’t changed.

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Book 3, “Marvelous Symmetry,” Otherworldly 3

In the mountainous intestines of the god, the heartbeat of the god is a racing wonder, a source of surging life; it is the drumbeat that makes the flowers open, that drives the rising of the sun, that melts the rivers from the snow. It is a life that fills her and strengthens her as she grows in tune with it, as she becomes more, as she unfurls herself like a flower and deepens and grows rich in spiritual wealth and power and begins to understand how with these hands of hers she can shape and save the world, and atop the mountain in the dawn it pierces her, she understands it, and hope, and touches on the nature of the god; and she might have lost herself, become not just herself in that moment but something more, and less, had she not tasted too of the origin of that power, felt deep in the god’s digestive tract how it swallowed another soul. How its heart beat, powerfully, rejoicing, as another bit of human truth was lost, consumed, entangled. How the world sang with it, fed on it, grew verdurous and rich with life and lush. How she gagged, and vomited up the substance of the god, the life and death of it, to spill into the shadow of the dawn.

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Book 4, “Squish the Holy Light of God,” Otherworldly 3

She goes back to her college days, to the time of the accident. This time it’s literal rather than flashback—she pulls aside the world, and is there. The college feels kind of dark, swampy, mired in vegetation and oppressive presence. Snakes in the trees. (Though for some reason they don’t show up in the college catalog mailed out to potential students.) Occult battles happening in the darkness. She wants to just take her classes and affirm the reality of things and maybe not damage her spine but no. She has too much power, and too little control; every little OCD or paranoid or superstitious twitch of “things should work this way” gets magnified into reality, and pretty soon there are murders on the campus and blood on the sidewalks and her boring professor is melting as he talks and something horrible is lurking in the shadows and skittering in the steam tunnels and when the day of her accident comes and for all her power she can’t stop it because it’s reified into either a beast that has it out for her or a “final destination” like malignant destiny.

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OK, I’m pretty sure it was Aspect 2 and 3 I wanted to swap, not 2 and 5.

So Life, in Ruins is Aspect 1, and Reaching Out is Aspect 5, and the current quest is Aspect 4.

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* Aspect 1 – Otherworldly 1 – Life in Ruins

* Aspect 2 – Otherworldly 5 – Working Title “We Are All We Have”

* Aspect 3 – Otherworldly 2 – Reaching Out

* Aspect 4 – Otherworldly 3 - THIS ONE – Working Title “The World is a Devouring Thing”

* Aspect 5 – Otherworldly 4 – Working Title: “The Ground’s Abandoned Me”

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... I’m still a little confused, though, so let’s finish the quests first before doing a final analysis.

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Aside: This is redundant with what I already told you in asides because I didn’t know in the past what I would be asiding to you in the future. That’s my greatest and probably only personal flaw.

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QUEST FLAVOR!

So scaled, moss-covered walls, moving; a macro-scale forest with trees that are knotted tendrils; mountains; a swampy college:

* perceive the world around you as a living thing

* something slithers or writhes

* something still and frozen comes to life

* the sky is occluded by some great power

.

Then there’s the nodule and the whole challenger thing. I was thinking about implementing that with something to do with “leadership” because she leads a group but I kept bouncing off leadership’s complete absence in book 3 and 4.

* a role, destiny, or relationship you didn’t ask for changes you

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While looking at book 3 more, I found another possible way to tie to the challenger thing in books 1 and 2:

* someone dies for you

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Circling back to the challenger thing, and again poking hard to fit to book 3 which is otherwise the most different:

* experience something as sacred

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Then there’s the dysphoria thing, which was key to book 1 green 3 here:

* you lose a bit more of yourself to the Arc sickness (nb I should specify in the main description that there is an Arc sickness, which is probably about alienation from self or world. Or loss of control, I guess?)

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Aside: This is where I pause to look ahead and verify that I did that, which I did! Though I left out the bit about loss of control, in the end.

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There’s physical challenges, which seem pretty generic tbh:

* you face environmental danger or hardship

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The bath in the pod that fixes her legs feels like quest flavor, something special; trying to capture the way that echoes in the other things that isn’t either covered already or just “you bathe” I get:

* you dissolve or melt into the world

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The diorama has some echoes too:

* you struggle to conceptualize and articulate your goal

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Hm, the heartbeat of the god is tricky. No, wait, we got it early on as “something still and frozen comes to life.”

.

Finally, she takes classes

* you learn

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12! That’s a good 40 XP quest right there if four of them are major goals. Or, I can make three major goals and get rid of/combine 2!

Pulling them together:

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Major Goal: someone dies for you

Major Goal: you dissolve or melt into the world

Major Goal: the sky is occluded by some great power

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* perceive the world around you as a living thing

* something slithers or writhes

* something still and frozen comes to life

* a role, destiny, or relationship you didn’t ask for changes you

* experience something as sacred

* you lose a bit more of yourself to the Arc sickness

* you face environmental danger or hardship

* you struggle to conceptualize and articulate your goal

* you learn

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I think I can combine “a role, destiny, or relationship you didn’t ask for changes you” with “you lose a bit more of yourself to the Arc sickness,” as long as I mention that in the quest text. I think I don’t actually need “the sky is occluded by some great power.” So that’s a start at trimming it down:

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Major Goal: someone dies for you

Major Goal: you dissolve or melt into the world

Major Goal: something still and frozen comes to life

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* perceive the world around you as a living thing

* something slithers or writhes

* experience something as sacred

* you lose a bit more of yourself to the Arc sickness

* you face environmental danger or hardship

* you struggle to conceptualize and articulate your goal

* you learn

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... OK, that’s a decent 35 XP quest.

Let me assemble it properly:

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The World is a Devouring Thing

The world is dangerous, and you are losing yourself.

In this quest, you spend time in a dangerous and wild place, or, the place you’re spending time becomes somehow more dangerous and wild for you.

There, in that place, you sicken, somehow, with the Arc sickness—a progressive real-world phenomenon like a physical change, magical effect, or growth in your understanding, accompanied by increasing alienation from yourself and the world. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but, for the duration of the quest at least, it’s ultimately bad for you.

Often, this sickness the direct result of a role, destiny, or relationship imposed on you by others: you have been chosen, and that change is sickening you, whether that’s as simple as being thrust into a position of leadership or importance and having a breakdown over it even as it strengthens you or as complex as a spiritual transformation initiated by your Imperator.

When the quest ends, if the sickness is neither resolved nor heading towards impending resolution, it generally goes into temporary remission instead, fading away until a later iteration of this quest or until time drains it of relevance.

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MAJOR GOALS

The GM can award you 5 XP towards this quest when:

* someone dies for you

* you dissolve or melt into the world

* something still and frozen comes to life

You can earn each bonus once, for a total of up to 15 XP.

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QUEST FLAVOR

1/chapter, when you’re in focus, you can earn 1 XP for yourself and 1 XP for the quest when:

[[POISONED/FALLING STAR]] you lose a bit more of yourself to the Arc sickness

[[POISONED/FALLING STAR]] you perceive the world around you as a living thing

[[RECEPTIVE/FALLING STAR]] experience something as sacred

[[RECEPTIVE/STRUGGLE]] something slithers or writhes

[[FLAME/STRUGGLE]] you face environmental danger or hardship

[[FLAME/PASTORAL]] you struggle to conceptualize and articulate your goal

[[DECISIVE/PASTORAL]] you learn

... and so can any other player, 1/chapter, if they substitute their PC for yours or otherwise involve them

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Inverting the quest flavor to start building the simplified version (somewhat tentative):

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[[STRUGGLE/SETTING]] you’re losing yourself to the Arc sickness

[[STRUGGLE/SETTING]] the world is a devouring thing

[[DECISIVE/SETTING]] choosing to treat something as sacred

[[DECISIVE/POISONED]] confronting something you fear

[[PASTORAL/POISONED]] you’re worn down by the world

[[PASTORAL/FLAME]] you struggle to conceptualize and articulate your goal

[[RECEPTIVE/FLAME]] you don’t get it

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Boiling down and refining, we get:

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OTHERWORLDLY 3, SIMPLIFIED

MAJOR GOALS

The GM can award you 5 XP towards this quest when:

* someone dies for you

* you dissolve or melt into the world

* you willfully decide, this shall be sacred

You can earn up to two of these bonuses, once each, for a total of up to 10 XP.

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QUEST FLAVOR

1/chapter, when you’re in focus, you can earn 1 XP for yourself and 1 XP for the quest when:

[[STRUGGLE/SETTING]] afraid of the Arc sickness

[[STRUGGLE/SETTING]] afraid of the devouring world

[[DECISIVE/SETTING]] choosing to treat something as sacred

[[PASTORAL/POISONED]] worn down by the world

[[PASTORAL/FLAME]] struggling to understand or explain

... and so can any other player, 1/chapter, if they substitute their PC for yours or otherwise involve them.

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NEXT

Moving on to Otherworldly 4!

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Otherworldly 4

You’ve lost a key part of your sense of self. You look for a way to get that back.

Reward: you discover that it wasn’t really gone. If that’s observably impossible—e.g., you’re mourning a severed limb—you discover either that your terminology was off and what you were really missing was something else that isn’t gone, e.g., the sense of yourself as a whole person or your ability to play an instrument; or, you find a potential in you to recover it.

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Knight 4

You’ve fallen short of who you wanted to be. You’ve erred, or lost your path. Now you have to make amends, and grow.

Outcome: Redemption is an ongoing process, but you’ve made a start. If possible, an NPC acknowledges that. Either way, the weight of guilt and wrongness on you lightens.

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Aspect ??

??

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Shepherd 3

Absolution

There’s something haunting you from the past, but you’ve got the chance to make it right.

Result. It’s the most amazing thing. You do.

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An Extraordinary Life

This is the story of your extraordinary life—the larger-than-life magic, battles, and wonder that form the fabric of your days.

Result. A chance at greater happiness falls on you out of nowhere.

nobody resents Nobilis like strategists on Shepherd Arcs

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Book 1, “Weep for the Puppet,” Otherworldly 4

She’s back and she isn’t trapped in a labyrinth slowly changing any more, but ... she knows now. She knows that in her blood is the glowing ichor of the god, metaphorically if nothing else. Her comfort in “I’m just Vi, and somehow I became the Power of Backdrops, which is interesting, but also, whatever” is gone; she’s now ... even when she’s not actively being warped, she’s lost security in her sense of self?

This lasts until she realizes (probably subconsciously, or in a dream) that she’s come to identify as Vi-who-is-one-with-the-god, and that it’s entangled with her, that its distinction from her is important but also just conceptual—which is also terrifying, but allows her to organize and settle her body-sense again.

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Book 2, “The Automaton’s Grave,” Otherworldly 4

The Warmain is all like “dang I’d like to harvest you right now but I’d like to point out that we are not in reality. Possibly if you care so much about the world outside of the god you might want to work with me on getting OUTSIDE OF THE GOD.” Put another way, having realized that she still wants to be something other than this, he encourages her to ... like ... be something other than this. (So he can kill her and take her face maybe but WHATEVER sometimes you have to accept your friends’ little eccentricities.)

So they start struggling, as they approach some grand landmark keep in the distance, to push past this into reality. To push aside the walls of ropy flesh and backdrop and find reality beyond. To see the tracks and traces of the underlying reality in the glowing ichor-rivers and the dust beneath the trees. To tear down the curtain of the forest air and show the streets and screaming angry highway cars beyond. The things that occasionally give them hope—gates between the gaps between two trees, in the belly of dead monster snakes, and the like—are just more backdrops.

And the journey is harrowing. She gets hurt. Scared. They lose people, even with a Power and a Warmain in the party. She makes it to the keep, at the end of the proper labyrinth journey; does the whole narratively satisfying sacrifice, giving up the diorama to the god, in order to bond more deeply to the god and open the great sacred door ... and it’s just another backdrop.

It isn’t until she just kind of wanders out to go ... tend the grave a bit better of someone who died along the way, or search for someone who got separated, or something ... that she finds it, just nowhere in particular. Some random weak spot in the world.

That’s the gate into reality, into the thematically inconsistent reality.

It doesn’t make sense, she tells the Warmain. Has a breakdown over it, over unnecessary loss and the overall trauma and that one extra hole punched in the god-grandeur story of how murders make a Chancel and a power. But of course it doesn’t make sense; sense is for stories and backdrops (and Serpent Chancels probably), not reality, you see.

He sighs and they hang out and have a bit of pseudohuman company instead of him killing her.

Her sacrifice wasn’t worth it, she says, and he says “pain never is;” and then ...

There’s this sudden, dizzying ... sloughing off of glaciers ... as she realizes that “right” and “real” are completely unconnected, as she can let go temporarily of the OCD need for “right” because it isn’t real, and reality washes over like the tide over a crumbling sandcastle.

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Book 3, “Marvelous Symmetry,” Otherworldly 4

She’s found a part of herself that’s still the same, but ... In what turns out to be a direct echo of book 1 Otherworldly 4, she’s still ... entangled with the god. She still realizes, over the course of this quest, that she’s lost her grip on what’s her and what’s the god; on being a self separate from the world. She knows she’s not okay with the god, she knows there’s still a Vi that is not the god, but she can’t find the boundaries. And dealing with the fact that if she directly establishes them, that’s possibly just ... a loss. If she establishes them, maybe she just gets eaten, or escapes but without the power she needs to help the world.

So there’s wandering the fields beneath a strange sun and strange sky, lost in the flowers, thinking about the colors of the world and the blood inside her and being eaten and the nature of consciousness and differentiation and connection between people and remembering precious moments with family and others on the god’s behalf.

And at the end, she remembers how at the save point she was just a puppet on the stage, and how this can’t really be her, because look at it, it’s a god, it’s the God, walking ... and lets herself fall into it completely so she can pass a bit of the god’s essence outwards to the true her, somewhere else. Because something of her must remain, if not here, then ... out there, in a world where she was not consumed.

I think it’s OK that this reiterates book 1 Otherworldly 4 as long as there’s a secondary plot that is going on in book 1 that I don’t know yet but figure out while doing the options, so that the book 1 Otherworldly 4 novella can be about “the first time Vi was losing herself to the god”

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Book 4, “Squish the Holy Light of God,” Otherworldly 4

She wakes up after her flashback stuff back in the present. She is not happy because while in one sense, reality demonstrated some stability against her world-changing power, it wasn’t the stability she wanted and also like it wasn’t very much of it. She doesn’t know how much of that Otherworldly 3 experience was even real or if not what happened. She’s stopped reflexively changing everything around her with an expectation, but she doesn’t even know if she has a real past. She doesn’t even know if she has a body that isn’t a self-image. If there was a real past under the backdrop. If her friend joined the mystery cult because she went back into the stage of her past and showed off divine powers, meaning that that stage was always a stage and always where they both originated. If reality is anything other than a backdrop that’s deferring the whole aesthetic consistency ideal, or failing at it due to Excrucian challenge.

She questions whether reality would matter, whether “being real” would make something more real than a backdrop in the first place. She tries to find someone’s grave. She looks at versions of other realities. She gets mired in mud beside a creek. She spends time in nature (which I think means “by the Big Pit and in a little woods with a creek” because her town isn’t very nature-y) trying to reconnect with something real, but it doesn’t do it. In the end, she finds her only option: if she can’t find reality, if she can’t touch reality, if trying to definitively prove something real risks making it real, she has to embrace it, and try to declare the quiddity of honor* she is looking for into the reality she makes.

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* inherent integrity; truth

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I think I will need to start here tomorrow by thinking about book 1 a bit more, and the equivalent of “wandering in fields beneath a strange sun and strange sky, lost in the flowers ...” for robotworld or world-becoming-robotworld, which is where she’d be.

... I think that’s where she finds the wall in the woods she works on repairing in book 2, and maybe where she repairs the thing she uses to get up and down to her second floor place without help or overdrawing spoons. Possibly general working on mechanical stuff plus wandering the region and becoming one with the world.

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NOVEMBER 20

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Book 1, “Weep for the Puppet,” Otherworldly 4, Take 2

She’s back and she isn’t trapped in a labyrinth slowly changing any more, but ... she knows now. She knows that in her blood is the glowing ichor of the god, metaphorically if nothing else. Her comfort in “I’m just Vi, and somehow I became the Power of Backdrops, which is interesting but also whatever” is gone; she’s now ... even when she’s not actively being warped, she’s lost security in her sense of self?

She’s living in an abandoned auto repair shop because this place is clearly basically Old Molder. That’s why she has to live on floor 2 and that’s why there’s no elevator but there’s an unused lift.

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Aside: Old Molder is a place in the default Chuubo’s setting that ... isn’t directly on point, but clearly came from the same place in my brain as the setting where Vi starts in book 2. One small part of how Old Molder works is that nobody uses the ground floor any more; another is that people there have stopped driving cars.

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She spends her time picking up fish out of traps and scavenging and either refurbishing or making art out of pre-apocalypse stuff. And one day while on a particularly extensive roam she finds the remnants of a modern art sculpture garden and ... cleaning up the area some, and getting the rust off of the pieces, and such ... it helps. This is also how she meets the robots; I think she’s passed them, and their work, in town, and at some point when she hits her physical limits working on the place, one of them just shows up.

Eventually she has a bit of security in herself again, probably prompted by realizing (probably subconsciously, or in a dream) that she’s come to identify as Vi-who-is-one-with-the-god, and that it’s entangled with her, that its distinction from her is important but also just conceptual. That’s terrifying, but it allows her to organize and settle into her body-sense again.

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ASSEMBLING QUEST FLAVOR

That’s four books worth of quest, so we can start assembling quest flavor.

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So we have glowing ichor-rivers, book 2, ... and rivers to collect fish from in book 1, and getting mired in mud in book 4. And in book 3 ... blood?

* struggle against a current, undertow, or mire

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We approach a grand landmark keep in book 2; which I think matches a defining sculpture in book 1, the sun in book 3, some big town building in book 4.

* look to a specific tall/high landmark that serves as a quest motif

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She tries to push away the world and find reality in book 2; in book 3, she tries to push away ... her current self, to find the truth; in book 4, she tries to push away her false ideas, her world-model, to see what she’s missing; in book 1, she’s trying to push away the present to find the past, sort of. Hm. I’m actually not sure, let me summarize as:

* struggle to connect with reality

* struggle to reconstruct something lost

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The image of tearing open the air to a highway of screaming cars in book 2 is vivid.

* you find some of the reality you’re looking for(?) and it is screaming

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The journey in book 2 is harrowing; she is hurt, scared. The journey in book 3 is more spiritual. In book 4, she gets mired, stressed. In book 1, more of a fugue.

* the world is emotionally overwhelming

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There’s a grave theme in 2 and 4, but in 1 and 3 ...

* try to connect to someone dead, or in another world, as by tending to their grave

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In book 2, she gives up the diorama and the world where things are “right,” pointlessly. In book 3, she gives herself up entirely ... not really pointless, I guess, but wrong in the book’s aesthetic. Probably tuned to giving up her choices, considering the book theme. In book 4, she gives up on a deeper reality. In book 1, ... possibly something more about the automaton/human distinction, since the robot’s right there, or just “giving up on the full distinction of self and god.”

MG: sacrifice something core to your journey on this Arc, or abandon an emotionally important goal, to no immediately obvious gain (except 5 XP).

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She sloughs off metaphorical glaciers in book 2, and her whole self in book 3:

* let go of something you’ve been hanging on to

^ except this probably merges into the above major goal rather than being its own goal or flavor

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In book 2 and 4 she looks at backdrops of other realities. In book 3, she looks at art and scavenges stuff from the past.

* catch a glimpse of another world, literally or metaphorically

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In book 2, she works with the Warmain. There may? be similar figures in other books

* accept help from a frenemy

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In book 3, she wanders beneath a strange sun/sky. This has potential parallels in book 2, and generally:

* travel beneath a strange sun or sky

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In book 3, she gets lost in the flowers. In other books, she spends time in nature:

* travel through the fields

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In book 3, she thinks about the colors of the world, the blood inside her, being eaten, and the nature of consciousness. These are pretty generally applicable:

* get lost in the colors of the world

* blood flows

* talk or monologue about the nature of the self

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In book 3, she remembers precious moments

* remember a time that has gone before.

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It might also be:

* think about the past

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In book 1, she does art, and cleans, and meets the robots. What does this match in other books? In book 4, hanging out by the pit and Power stuff; in book 3, wandering in a fugue, and meeting creatures; in book 2, maybe doing art by the fire, and daily tasks, and hanging out with the locals.

* lose yourself in a work of craft (from simple repairs to great artistic projects)

* do daily maintenance <= needs work

* work with someone quiet

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This set feels particularly rough; I’m not at my best today. Still, let’s see what happens!

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SUMMARY OF POSSIBLE QUEST 4 FLAVOR/GOALS, TAKE 1

Major Goal: sacrifice something core to your journey on this Arc, or abandon an emotionally important goal, to no immediately obvious gain (except 5 XP).

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* let go of something you’ve been hanging on to

* struggle against a current, undertow, or mire

* look to a specific tall/high landmark that serves as a quest motif

* struggle to connect with reality

* struggle to reconstruct something lost

* you find some of the reality you’re looking for(?) and it is screaming

* the world is emotionally overwhelming

* try to connect to someone dead, or in another world, as by tending to their grave

* catch a glimpse of another world, literally or metaphorically

* accept help from a frenemy

* travel beneath a strange sun or sky

* travel through the fields

* get lost in the colors of the world

* blood flows

* talk or monologue about the nature of the self

* remember a time that has gone before.

* think about the past

* lose yourself in a work of craft (from simple repairs to great artistic projects)

* do daily maintenance <= needs work

* work with someone quiet

.

There are a lot because they’re not quite right; many need like 20-30% more goodness.

Still, starting with 20 + 1 MG puts me in a good place to address that!

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I guess I will begin by assigning colors, and then if that doesn’t lead to incidentally adding goodness and reducing the numbers to something manageable, I’ll put it off until my brain is better!

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Aside: My brain didn’t really get better but the quest came out OK I think.

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[[DECISIVE/FALLING STAR]] let go of something you’ve been hanging on to

[[PASTORAL/FLAME]] struggle against a current, undertow, or mire

[[SETTING/FALLING STAR]] look to a specific tall/high landmark that serves as a quest motif

[[DECISIVE/FLAME]] struggle to connect with reality

[[DECISIVE/FLAME]] struggle to reconstruct something lost

[[RECEPTIVE/FALLING STAR]] you find some of the reality you’re looking for(?) and it is screaming

[[SETTING/FLAME]] the world is emotionally overwhelming

[[PASTORAL/DECISIVE]] try to connect to someone dead, or in another world, as by tending to their grave

[[RECEPTIVE/SETTING]] catch a glimpse of another world, literally or metaphorically

[[PASTORAL/DECISIVE]] accept help from a frenemy

[[SETTING/FALLING STAR]] travel beneath a strange sun or sky

[[SETTING/FALLING STAR]] travel through the fields

[[RECEPTIVE/SETTING]] get lost in the colors of the world

[[SETTING/FALLING STAR]] blood flows

[[PASTORAL/DECISIVE]] talk or monologue about the nature of the self

[[RECEPTIVE/SETTING]] remember a time that has gone before.

[[RECEPTIVE/SETTING]] think about the past

[[PASTORAL/FALLING STAR]] lose yourself in a work of craft (from simple repairs to great artistic projects)

[[PASTORAL/SETTING]] do daily maintenance <= needs work

[[PASTORAL/SETTING]] work with someone quiet

.

Organizing:

[[DECISIVE/FALLING STAR]] let go of something you’ve been hanging on to

[[DECISIVE/FLAME]] struggle to connect with reality

[[DECISIVE/FLAME]] struggle to reconstruct something lost

[[PASTORAL/FLAME]] struggle against a current, undertow, or mire

[[SETTING/FLAME]] the world is emotionally overwhelming

[[SETTING/FALLING STAR]] look to a specific tall/high landmark that serves as a quest motif

[[RECEPTIVE/FALLING STAR]] you find some of the reality you’re looking for(?) and it is screaming

[[PASTORAL/FALLING STAR]] lose yourself in a work of craft (from simple repairs to great artistic projects)

[[PASTORAL/DECISIVE]] try to connect to someone dead, or in another world, as by tending to their grave

[[RECEPTIVE/SETTING]] get lost in the colors of the world

[[RECEPTIVE/SETTING]] catch a glimpse of another world, literally or metaphorically

[[RECEPTIVE/SETTING]] remember a time that has gone before.

[[RECEPTIVE/SETTING]] think about the past

[[FALLING STAR/SETTING]] travel beneath a strange sun or sky

[[FALLING STAR/SETTING]] travel through the fields

[[FALLING STAR/SETTING]] blood flows

[[PASTORAL/SETTING]] do daily maintenance <= needs work

[[PASTORAL/SETTING]] work with someone quiet

[[PASTORAL/DECISIVE]] accept help from a frenemy

[[PASTORAL/DECISIVE]] talk or monologue about the nature of the self

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… no brain today, punting until tomorrow for the rest.

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NOVEMBER 21

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OK, gonna trust myself a bit and work from there rather than starting over, but also review each of them more carefully than usual as I go.

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[[DECISIVE/FALLING STAR]] let go of something you’ve been hanging on to

> This is a Major Goal or gets dropped because it only happens once per book, is set up to merge with an existing goal, and its icons are awkward for building the list.

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[[DECISIVE/FLAME]] struggle to connect with reality

[[DECISIVE/FLAME]] struggle to reconstruct something lost

> I think this is actually [[RECEPTIVE/FLAME]] searching desperately for something you’ve lost

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[[PASTORAL/FLAME]] struggle against a current, undertow, or mire

> This also has awkward icons, and feels like a major goal, so mote it be.

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[[SETTING/FLAME]] the world is emotionally overwhelming

> let’s make this [[RECEPTIVE/FLAME]] the world is emotionally overwhelming

... but it’s good

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[[SETTING/FALLING STAR]] look to a specific tall/high landmark that serves as a quest motif

> Let’s make this [[DECISIVE/FALLING STAR]].

I know I said that that icon pair was awkward for building the list, and it is (it’s awkward because the list looks nicest if every given icon is either always first or always second in the list, but if there’s PASTORAL/DECISIVE, PASTORAL/FALLING STAR, and DECISIVE/FALLING STAR, you can’t do that) ... but it’s still correct in this case, or at least the most correct I can do right now.

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[[RECEPTIVE/FALLING STAR]] you find some of the reality you’re looking for(?) and it is screaming

> ... tentatively, major goal, but this is also the first major goal on the chopping block. It’s cool but not ... that cool?

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[[PASTORAL/FALLING STAR]] lose yourself in a work of craft (from simple repairs to great artistic projects)

> I still like this one.

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[[PASTORAL/SETTING]] do daily maintenance <= needs work

> actually gonna just delete this instead of doing that work on it, it’s not as good as the one before it.

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Running out of discord characters for typing in a single post and not enough brain to deal with it chiding me for typing too much at once, so pausing to consolidate:

.

WHAT WE HAVE SO FAR

Major Goal: sacrifice something core to your journey on this Arc, or abandon an emotionally important goal, to no immediately obvious gain (except 5 XP).

Major Goal, possibly merge with that: let go of something you’ve been hanging on to

Major Goal, probably drop: you find some of the reality you’re looking for(?) and it is screaming

Major Goal: struggle against a current, undertow, or mire

[[RECEPTIVE/FLAME]] searching desperately for something you’ve lost

[[RECEPTIVE/FLAME]] the world is emotionally overwhelming

[[DECISIVE/FALLING STAR]] look to a specific tall/high landmark that serves as a quest motif

[[PASTORAL/FALLING STAR]] lose yourself in a work of craft (from simple repairs to great artistic projects)

[[PASTORAL/DECISIVE]] try to connect to someone dead, or in another world, as by tending to their grave

[[RECEPTIVE/SETTING]] get lost in the colors of the world

[[RECEPTIVE/SETTING]] catch a glimpse of another world, literally or metaphorically

[[RECEPTIVE/SETTING]] remember a time that has gone before.

[[RECEPTIVE/SETTING]] think about the past

[[FALLING STAR/SETTING]] travel beneath a strange sun or sky

[[FALLING STAR/SETTING]] travel through the fields

[[FALLING STAR/SETTING]] blood flows

[[PASTORAL/SETTING]] work with someone quiet

[[PASTORAL/DECISIVE]] accept help from a frenemy

[[PASTORAL/DECISIVE]] talk or monologue about the nature of the self

.

continuing where we left off ...

[[PASTORAL/DECISIVE]] try to connect to someone dead, or in another world, as by tending to their grave

> I think probably move this to the simplified quest, as the parallel to the first [[RECEPTIVE/FLAME]] quest item; if I don’t do that, change it to [[FALLING STAR/SETTING]] tending to a grave

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[[RECEPTIVE/SETTING]] get lost in the colors of the world

[[RECEPTIVE/SETTING]] remember a time that has gone before

[[RECEPTIVE/SETTING]] think about the past

> These are good, though there are too many of them. Probably drop one of the last two, and then maybe drop one more?

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[[RECEPTIVE/SETTING]] catch a glimpse of another world, literally or metaphorically

> let’s make this [[RECEPTIVE/SETTING]] catch a glimpse of another world or another time

... and trust players to figure out metaphors on their own.

... but maybe drop it, anyway, too.

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[[FALLING STAR/SETTING]] travel beneath a strange sun or sky

[[FALLING STAR/SETTING]] travel through the fields

> These probably get combined into one travel montage bullet point.

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[[FALLING STAR/SETTING]] blood flows

> this one isn’t really necessary, so it’s a good deletion candidate, but it’s fine.

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[[PASTORAL/SETTING]] work with someone quiet

> I think this should be [[PASTORAL/SETTING]] or [[PASTORAL/FALLING STAR]] work with someone in companionable silence

.

[[PASTORAL/DECISIVE]] accept help from a frenemy

> I think the icons should be [[STRUGGLE/DECISIVE]]

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[[PASTORAL/DECISIVE]] talk or monologue about the nature of the self

> maybe [[FLAME/DECISIVE]] fret or monologue about the nature of the self

...?

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I’m still not at my top icon/quest flavor game, but I think that’s better.

Collating ...

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COLLATING ...

Major Goal: sacrifice something core to your journey on this Arc, or abandon an emotionally important goal, to no immediately obvious gain (except 5 XP).

Major Goal, possibly merge: let go of something you’ve been hanging on to

Major Goal, probably drop: you find some of the reality you’re looking for(?) and it is screaming

Major Goal: struggle against a current, undertow, or mire

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[[RECEPTIVE/FLAME]] searching desperately for something you’ve lost

[[RECEPTIVE/FLAME]] the world is emotionally overwhelming

[[RECEPTIVE/SETTING]] get lost in the colors of the world

[[RECEPTIVE/SETTING]] catch a glimpse of another world or time

[[RECEPTIVE/SETTING]] remember a time that has gone before.

[[RECEPTIVE/SETTING]] think about the past

[[RECEPTIVE/FALLING STAR]] travel places vivid, beautiful, and strange

[[PASTORAL/SETTING]] or [[PASTORAL/FALLING STAR]] work with someone in companionable silence

[[PASTORAL/FALLING STAR]] lose yourself in a work of craft (from simple repairs to great artistic projects)

[[DECISIVE/FALLING STAR]] look to a specific tall/high landmark that serves as a quest motif

[[DECISIVE/STRUGGLE]] accept help from a frenemy

[[DECISIVE/FLAME]] fret or monologue about the nature of the self

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Down to 4 and 12, which is already a lot better!

I’d like to make this a 40 XP quest (4 major goals, 8 quest flavor), although I realized earlier that a 45-XP quest is potentially viable because ... well, that feels like it’d be too long, right? Except! This quest typically ends in a sacrifice, so filling in the final 5 XP by [doing the Nobilis equivalent of taking Cost to finish quests in Glitch] isn’t a problem.

Let’s see.

I think we can jump straight from here to a draft of the final:

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 .

OTHERWORLDLY 4, TAKE 1

MAJOR GOALS

* let go of something you’ve been hanging on to

* struggle against a current, undertow, or mire

* accept help from someone you’d really rather not have to deal with

* catch a glimpse of another world or time

.

QUEST FLAVOR

[[PASTORAL/SETTING]] working with someone in companionable silence

[[RECEPTIVE/SETTING]] dwelling on the past

[[RECEPTIVE/FLAME]] searching desperately for something you’ve lost

[[RECEPTIVE/FLAME]] the world is emotionally overwhelming

[[RECEPTIVE/FALLING STAR]] traveling places vivid, beautiful, and strange

[[PASTORAL/FALLING STAR]] losing yourself in a work of craft (from simple repairs to great artistic projects)

[[DECISIVE/FALLING STAR]] looking to a specific tall/high landmark that serves as a quest motif [[DECISIVE/POISONED]] wrestling with a threat to your boundaries or your sense of self

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The order isn’t quite neat, so maybe the first one becomes Pastoral/Falling Star. We’ll see when simplifying!

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INVERTING THE FLAVOR AS THE FIRST STEP IN SIMPLIFYING THIS

... ah, the first one inverts into a major goal, so it doesn’t answer the question after all.

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Major Goal: working with someone in companionable silence

[[DECISIVE/FALLING STAR]] drawing on a memory

[[DECISIVE/PATORAL]] reaching out to someone dead or in another world (e.g., when tending to a grave)

[[DECISIVE/PASTORAL]] finding balance in an overwhelming world

[[DECISIVE/SETTING]] or [[DECISIVE/RECEPTIVE]] finding something fascinating or beautiful

[[FLAME/SETTING]] your tasks are overwhelming

[[DECISIVE/FALLING STAR] (not inverted for some instinct-based reason) looking to a specific tall/high landmark that serves as a quest motif

[[RECEPTIVE/STRUGGLE]] your sense of self is under threat

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Major Goal: let go of something you’ve been hanging on to

> still important in the simplified quest

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Major Goal: struggle against a current, undertow, or mire

> less important? Probably?

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Major Goal: accept help from someone you’d really rather not have to deal with

> I think this becomes “[[RECEPTIVE/FLAME]] people are overwhelming”

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Major Goal: catch a glimpse of another world or time

> I think this becomes [[FALLING STAR]] glimpses of other worlds and times

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That’s the first pass!

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COLLATING ...

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Major Goal: work with someone in companionable silence

Major Goal: let go of something you’ve been hanging on to

Major Goal: struggle against a current, undertow, or mire

.

[[DECISIVE/FALLING STAR]] drawing on a memory

[[DECISIVE/FALLING STAR]] looking to a specific tall/high landmark that serves as a quest motif

[[DECISIVE/RECEPTIVE]] reaching out to someone dead or in another world (e.g., when tending to a grave)

[[DECISIVE/PASTORAL]] finding balance in an overwhelming world

[[DECISIVE/SETTING]] the world provokes an emotion or decision

[[FLAME/SETTING]] your tasks are overwhelming

[[FLAME/RECEPTIVE]] people are overwhelming

[[STRUGGLE/RECEPTIVE]] your sense of self is under threat

[[FALLING STAR]] glimpses of other worlds and times

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SIMPLIFYING ...

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Simplifying a bit, trying to get down to a 25 XP quest:

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Major Goal: working with someone in companionable silence

Major Goal: letting go of something you’ve been hanging on to

Major Goal: struggling against a current, undertow, or mire

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[[DECISIVE/FALLING STAR]] remembering

[[DECISIVE/SETTING]] exploring the world

[[DECISIVE/PASTORAL]] reaching out, possibly to someone absent

[[DECISIVE/PASTORAL]] finding a bit of balance

[[FLAME/STRUGGLE]] falling apart

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OK, that was definitely pushing my neck too far, done for at least a few hours

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NOVEMBER 22

Here’s the description for it:

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Stretched Thin

You have been worn down. Stretched thin. You don’t have enough left in you to maintain the coherent sense of reality and self that you used to have. It’s hard enough just making it through each day.

For the Nobilis, this quest rarely represents inadequate power. Unless both Aspect and Ability are very low, it’s unlikely to express inadequate physical or mental resources, either. Rather, a Power generally gets stretched thin by stress and trauma: direct threats to and assaults on their sense of self and reality and experiences, wounds, and responsibilities that are simply too much to bear. If you wind up at this quest and aren’t sure what’s stretching your character thin, it’s likely that the things they’ve seen and the things their Imperator, other Imperators, and the Excrucians have done to them and their vicinity have gotten to them more than has been previously known.

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MOVING ON TO QUEST 5!

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Otherworldly 5

Live Together, Die Alone

You reconcile with someone or something you’ve been fighting.

Result: you help them find peace, acceptance, or find their way back from being lost.

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Book 1, “Weep for the Puppet,” Otherworldly 5

Vi’s friend, the Arc touchpoint, actually got involved in weird magic stuff long before Vi did, and eventually after it soured the friend’s relationships with Vi and everyone else she fell off the face of the trackable earth.

... becoming part of the mystery cult that summoned the god.

In this quest, Vi tracks her down, and can’t get her to stop doing stuff like walking the daily ritual tracks through town (that are unnecessary now because the Chancel’s already formed) or bits of self-mortification; all she can do is slowly integrate more mundanely healthful things on the one hand into those rituals and on the other re-engineer them towards building up the friend instead. The quest ends when for the first time the friend looks up from the daily town-circling trudge to see the ... I was going to say sun, but maybe, missing stars.

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Book 2, “The Automaton’s Grave,” Otherworldly 5

This is a short story about her and the Warmain after the book, and like: he was going to kill her, but didn’t because they’d just been through something hella harrowing. She doesn’t know who she is any more, and is scared, and even though he’s a monster and she’s a Power so probably one too, he stays around to help her figure herself out again. And they talk about grounding things, blanket textures and grass smells and dumb dogs and grocery schedules and hot drinks and what she wants if she can’t have magic dreams? And he talks to her about why he Warmains, about the thing he’s trying to keep asleep; about being born in the void, and walking paths the colors of the dawn, and the knowledge and certainty of his purpose. He talks to her about his first kill in the world, the one that tempered him, some long ago Power murdered by a river so that he could have a face and thoughts and could speak in words, and how he has been haunted by that Power’s private visions of beauty and art ever since. How he’s filled his head with so many dreams and visions on this mission that sometimes he forgets who he is, loses practically everything, gets lost in it, and how terrifying that is. How he should be killing her, though he should probably make sure she can still do the thing when she isn’t in the belly of the god?

And she doesn’t wind up friends or anything. Maybe lovers briefly when they’re first recovering from the labyrinth, maybe not, but ... in the end, she tells him that she doesn’t know what he should do better, but he’s a monster, and sends him off. And because they did share some trauma, he goes.

Later, she gets a call from him, when he’s lost track of where he is and is in a panic but her number was burned into the inside of his eyelids, so he called; and she goes to help.

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Book 3, “Marvelous Symmetry,” Otherworldly 5

In quests 1-2 her attitude towards the Power of Illusion of Choice was mostly “fuck off dude” but after being refreshed on just how much the god messes with the mind she’s more like ...

She looks at the building he’s living in, which is visible from hers, while recovering from the experience above; and sighs, and forgives him, and then goes and helps clean up his messy apartment (inspired by the Eccentric Family anime, I think), and offers to help with putting the stars back in the sky.

And she does, she helps him, and it does ... pull him back a bit from the brink, puts some more person back in his eyes, when the first constellation gleams, but most of his brain is still going “see? I told you you were going to do that and you did it.”

There’s something broken in him that she can’t fix.

And some of her reaction is, like, I’m never going back. I won’t go back. I’m lucky that I didn’t break a lot more myself. And some of it is to marvel at the starstuff or pitfilling stuff power she’s using. But some of it is like: so what if I didn’t have a ‘choice?’ choice is a quibble; we (people) are wonder.

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Otherworldly 5 (Variant)

Blurring the Boundaries

You merge with some spiritual force. You become its exemplar or its host. You are you and you are also that.

Result: you’ve grown into who the new combined-self you will be.

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Book 4, “Squish the Holy Light of God,” Otherworldly 5

This is her attempt to come to an accommodation with her god’s power using her new Sorcery-based paradigm. Her attempt to really dig into the god and understand its nature in totality, to grasp the currents of its thoughts, to identify it as part of her rather than an intrusive force that can seize control of her. An attempt to understand what it is to be a boundaryless motion, a recursion, a ritual, a derealization, a backdrop, an illusion of choice, an endless spiraling labyrinth of dissociation and trauma and mossy walls and green snake tendrils in the depths of mind and world. An attempt to be one with the thing that is one with everything without losing herself. And an attempt to seize reality by declaration, to find a point of grounding, a thing she can anchor in: soil, stone, textures again probably, the fur of her dog, the heat of a hot drink, the warmth of someone’s company, the waves of the sea, the beauty of fire, flowers, sunrise, cliffs. The roughness of bark. Ants crawling on the earth. Night air on the skin. The recovered stars. And ending, like I said, with ...

Well. She’s not paralyzed, she’s one of the “I need a wheelchair because if I try to walk I can go, like, 20 feet” types. So it ends with that, only for controlling the god/trauma/choice/the world/existing in reality. She can’t do the thing, like everyone expects her to, like she expects herself to do, but she can ... push something at the god, to move its power and sacrifice the essence of a backdrop to make it real.

... it’s a victory, but she admits to herself that it’s all still terrifying.

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SOME SHARED POINTS AMONG THESE

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There’s tracking down the Arc touchpoint in book 1, and dealing with the Warmain in book 2, and the Power of the Illusion of Choice in book 3, and the god in book 4:

Major Goal: you make an emotional connection with someone you’ve been fighting with

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There’s the walking ritual paths in book 1, and the Warmain walking dawn-colored paths in book 2, and the boundaryless motion in book 4.

* someone travels a sacred or ritual path

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In book 1, her friend does self-mortification. The Warmain, on the other hand ... kills? sometimes forgets who he is? Power of Illusion of Choice is just a mess. The god ...

* someone denies their own personhood, and acts accordingly

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In book 1, she tries to integrate health and rebuilding into the friend’s rituals. In book 2, they talk about grounding things. In book 3, she cleans. In book 4, more grounding things.

* consciously ground yourself, as with a cup of hot tea or coffee or by focusing on a texture

* help stabilize or organize someone else

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Pause to feed cat.

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In book 2, the Warmain talks about the thing he’s trying to keep asleep, and presumably the friend talks about the god, and so forth:

* someone talks to you about their purpose or their faith

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Similarly, key events in the past and personal crises:

* someone talks to you about a formative event

* someone talks to you about their fears

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The Warmain might be a lover, and the god technically is:

Major Goal: you merge with someone else, in one sense or another, for a time

.

And some general social things:

* someone helps you figure yourself out, or vice versa

Major Goal: someone, trapped by their habits or fears, is unable to emotionally connect with you

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And another general one:

* someone witnesses the wonder of the world

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COLLATING THESE, ADDING ICONS

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Major Goal: you make an emotional connection with someone you’ve been fighting with

Major Goal: you merge with someone else, in one sense or another, for a time

Major Goal: someone, trapped by their habits or fears, is unable to emotionally connect with you

[[PASTORAL/DECISIVE]] help stabilize or organize someone else

[[PASTORAL/DECISIVE]] someone talks to you about their fears

[[PASTORAL/DECISIVE]] someone helps you figure yourself out, or vice versa

[[PASTORAL/FALLING STAR]] someone travels a sacred or ritual path

[[PASTORAL/SETTING]] consciously ground yourself, as with a cup of hot tea or coffee or focusing on a texture

[[PASTORAL/SETTING]] someone talks to you about their purpose or their faith

[[PASTORAL/SETTING]] someone talks to you about a formative event

[[DECISIVE/SETTING]] someone denies their own personhood, and acts accordingly

[[DECISIVE/SETTING]] someone bears witness to the beauty of the world

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UPDATING, REFINING, TO GET OTHERWORLDLY 5 TAKE 1

Major Goal: you make an emotional connection with someone you’ve been fighting with

Major Goal: you merge with someone else, in one sense or another, for a time

Major Goal: someone, trapped by their habits or fears, is unable to emotionally connect with you

Major Goal: someone you care about hurts or loses themselves

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[[PASTORAL/FALLING STAR]] someone travels a sacred or ritual path

[[PASTORAL/DECISIVE]] someone talks to you about their fears

[[PASTORAL/DECISIVE]] someone helps you figure yourself out, or vice versa

[[PASTORAL/DECISIVE]] you help stabilize or organize someone else

[[PASTORAL/SETTING]] you consciously ground yourself, as with a cup of hot tea or coffee or focusing on a texture

[[PASTORAL/SETTING]] someone talks to you about their purpose or their faith

[[PASTORAL/SETTING]] someone talks to you about a formative event

[[FALLING STAR]] the world is beautiful

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INVERTING AS THE FIRST STEP TO GETTING THE SIMPLIFIED QUEST

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[[FLAME/SETTING]] someone wears themselves down on a sacred/ritual journey

[[FLAME/RECEPTIVE]] someone is overcome by their fear

[[FLAME/RECEPTIVE]] someone hurts or loses themselves

^ this is an interesting parallel to the major goal in the regular version of the quest; should we make it explicit, turning this into “someone you care about hurts or loses themselves,” and then make “someone helps you figure yourself out, or vice versa” into a Major Goal for the simplified quest, so they’re directly parallel?

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[[FLAME/RECEPTIVE]] ...

^ it looks to me like the inversion of “someone helps you figure yourself out, or vice versa” and “you help stabilize or organize someone else” are the same—they both invert to “someone hurts or loses themselves.” So no new entry here.

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[[FLAME/FALLING STAR]] you struggle to stay in touch with reality and yourself

[[FLAME/FALLING STAR]] someone tries to sell you on their purpose and their faith

[[FLAME/FALLING STAR]] someone talks to you about what broke them <= needs work

[[SETTING]] scenery <= also needs a lot of work

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Thinking about Major Goals and how to invert them.

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Aside: I don’t always do this explicitly because a lot of the time what I actually want to do is “take the new Major Goals that came out of the inversion process, and the most important Major Goals from the regular version of the quest, and those are the Major Goals for the simplified quest.”

But when I’m not at my best I have to go over them more carefully, treating each Major Goal as if it were a quest flavor, finding icons for it, inverting the icons, inverting the description, and seeing if that makes a better major goal or if I should just delete it or leave it as it was.

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 Major Goal: you make an emotional connection with someone you’ve been fighting with

> On review, this still seems “right.”

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Major Goal: you merge with someone else, in one sense or another, for a time

> less important in a simplified quest, but a TV series would still include this bit when rushing through the plotline and prrrrobably even a book would, and in neither case would it change it much?

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Major Goal: someone, trapped by their habits or fears, is unable to emotionally connect with you

> this inverts to [[PASTORAL/SETTING]] someone struggles to emotionally connect with you.

... oh! But that’s already covered in the first Major Goal, so one of them can get dropped.

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Major Goal: someone you care about hurts or loses themselves

> this is tentatively becoming [[PASTORAL/DECISIVE]] someone helps you figure yourself out, or vice versa

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So before we shrink it down to size we’re at:

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MAJOR GOALS

* you make an emotional connection with someone you’ve been fighting with

* you merge with someone else, in one sense or another, for a time

.

QUEST FLAVOR

[[PASTORAL/DECISIVE]] someone helps you figure yourself out, or vice versa

[[FLAME/SETTING]] someone wears themselves down on a sacred/ritual journey

[[FLAME/RECEPTIVE]] someone is overcome by their fear

[[FLAME/RECEPTIVE]] someone you care about hurts or loses themselves

[[FLAME/FALLING STAR]] you struggle to stay in touch with reality and yourself

[[FLAME/FALLING STAR]] someone tries to sell you on their purpose and their faith

[[FLAME/FALLING STAR]] someone talks to you about what broke them <= needs work

[[SETTING]] scenery <= needs work

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This winds up as a 2 Major Goal, 8 quest flavor quest; we probably want to end up at 3 Major Goals and 5 quest flavor.

... let’s start by dropping [[SETTING]] scenery rather than working on it; that’s currently just a “you should do some slice of life stuff,” which, like, isn’t really a very useful quest flavor option.

Poking at it a tiny bit more, we get:

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OTHERWORLDLY 5, SIMPLIFIED, TAKE 1

MAJOR GOALS

* someone you care about has a breakdown

* a sacred/ritual journey proves to be just ... too much ... for somebody

* someone preaches to you of faith, purpose, or numinous things

.

QUEST FLAVOR

[[PASTORAL/POISONED]] you merge with someone else, in one sense or another, for a time

[[PASTORAL/SETTING]] someone helps you work through things, or vice versa

[[PASTORAL/SETTING]] you make an emotional connection with somebody difficult

[[FLAME/FALLING STAR]] you struggle to stay in touch with reality and yourself

[[RECEPTIVE/FALLING STAR]] there’s a flashback to an important event in the past

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If you don’t quite follow all the steps to how I got there, that’s because I did some of them inside my brain, where it is very dark.

The quest description, then, is:

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Taming Divinity

Living in the presence of the transcendent is difficult. Divinity has the natural tendency to overwhelm the mind, to crack its boundaries, to unmoor the self. Witnessing the wonders and horrors of the world of Nobilis ... it is difficult. The weight of it accumulates. This quest is about finding a way to live with it all, to bundle it up into neat cognitive packages while maintaining one’s balance and sense of reality and the self; or, perhaps, about helping someone else to do so.

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P.S. This means the title for the simplified quest is Taming Divinity (Simplified), by the author of Achieving Immortality for Dummies!

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So, what do I call the genre for these quests?

... well, it would seem to be about recovering from something that happened to you, with “no, I was always this way” at one end and post-apocalyptic “no, it didn’t happen to me, it happened to everything” at the other.

It’s adjacent to philosophical fiction—you can see how it like 33% maps to Night-Bird’s Feather—but that’s not right. Calling it theological fiction is the wrong idea, although there’s definitely some wrestling with god going on. Just calling it “Recovering the Self” is too close to Glitch’s Long Road to Recovery, and worse because it’s not at all similar. Hm.

One could argue that it’s Gothic but

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NOVEMBER 23

I guess I will go with “Divinity Gothic,” which is the genre where the gods (Imperators, or rarely Excrucians/fellow Powers) are great and wondrous and legitimately holy but also dealing with them messes you up.

There really aren’t good genre names for a lot of things out there tbh.

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(LATER)

Imperator Gothic or Imperial Gothic, let’s just leave Excrucians out of it for now. The media I can think of that fits the quests is stuff like Labyrinth, Watership Down, and Harrow the Ninth, and those all seem more concerned with Imperator-like figures than Excrucian-like ones.

So, OK! That just leaves one last question/check: are these in the right order for Knight and Shepherd, and what is their correct order for Aspect?

I think the Knight Arcs are correct.

...

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NOVEMBER 25

OK, 1, 5, 2, 3, 4 is Aspect.

I think Shepherd has to be Otherworldly 2, 1, 5, 3, 4, though that might mean changing the name of Oth4.

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Life, Amidst Ruin — Otherworldly 1, Knight 1, Aspect 1, Shepherd 2.

Reaching Out — Otherworldly 2, Knight 2, Aspect 3, Shepherd 1

The World is a Devouring Thing — Otherworldly 3, Knight 3, Aspect 4, Shepherd 4

Stretched Thin — Otherworldly 4, Knight 4, Aspect 5, Shepherd 5

Taming Divinity — Otherworldly 5, Knight 5, Aspect 2, Shepherd 3

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That means that the Otherworldly and Knight Arcs go:

* Life, Amidst Ruin

* Reaching Out

* The World is a Devouring Thing

* Stretched Thin

* Taming Divinity

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The Shepherd Arc goes:

* Reaching Out

* Life, Amidst Ruin

* Taming Divinity

* The World is a Devouring Thing

* Stretched Thin

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And the Aspect Arc goes:

* Life, Amidst Ruin

* Taming Divinity

* Reaching Out

* The World is a Devouring Thing

* Stretched Thin

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I don’t like “Reaching Out” as the title for an Aspect 3 quest, or “Stretched Thin” as a title for a Shepherd 5 quest, so I will fiddle with those in the final!

Maybe “Checking In” and “Power, Overwhelming” ...

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NOVEMBER 26

Building the fancy PDF for you guys today, which involves finalizing quest names and such.

First quest renamed “In a Living World” to fit the name of the quest set, reflavored:

You live your daily life in a world haunted by spirits and the past, surrounded by magic, vastness, the scars of war upon Creation, and an aching absence. It is a fallen world, a damaged world, though you may not be able to name what has been lost. It hurts, though you may not be able to name the way in which it hurts. Conversely, it holds in it a great openness that opens you in turn: there is an inexorable richness to it, a welter of possibility that batters at your soul. It is a world of wonder and of burning dawn. It wakes in you a vast and wild dream—a nameless dream. A dream of something better, difficult to articulate: like wild horses, and so much bigger than the head that’s dreaming it.

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Second quest renamed “Hanging On:”

Things are tough. Chaotic. A little too tough, a little too chaotic, in fact, to get into gear and push things forward right now. There’s no room in your life right now to even really process how big the world around you is, how full of wonder (and horror) it is; how can anyone expect you to do something about it? Consciously or subconsciously, you’ve decided that the best thing to do for right now is to just ... keep your head down and get by. There’s someone you’re talking to about everything going on. Someone helping you sort it all out in your head: your Arc touchpoint. Later in the quest it’ll probably turn out that you’ve chosen them poorly—that they’re not the stable, uninvolved lifeline you were hoping for, but rather an integral part of everything that’s gone wrong. ... but maybe they won’t!

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Third quest keeps its name “The World is a Devouring Thing:”

The world is a devouring thing; learn its truths, and you may lose yourself. ... alas that no but halfway reasonable alternative exists. In this quest, the environment around you is dangerous and wild. Perhaps you visit a dangerous and wild place, on a quest-long adventure or intermittent series of journeys. Perhaps adventure comes to you, and the world around you becomes more dangerous and wild. Either way, and regardless of how well you survive the dangers that surround you, you sicken. This is the Arc sickness—a progressive real-world phenomenon like a physical change, magical effect, or growth in your understanding, accompanied by increasing alienation from yoursel, the world, or both. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, in the long run, but it’s difficult to deal with for right now. If it’s not obvious where it’s coming from, consider the possibility that this sickness is the result of a role, destiny, or relationship imposed on you by someone else: you have been chosen, and that change is sickening you, whether that’s as simple as being thrust into a position of leadership or importance and having a breakdown over it or as complex as a spiritual transformation initiated by your Imperator. When the quest ends, if the Arc sickness is neither resolved nor heading towards impending resolution, it generally goes into temporary remission instead, fading away until a later iteration of this quest or until time drains it of relevance. On an Aspect Arc, it may sometimes linger into Open to the World; on a Shepherd Arc, it may sometimes flare up again during that quest.

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“Stretched Thin” becomes “Open to the World”:

The walls of the self that kept the world away have crumbled. The openness of the world that battered at you has broken in. You are terrifyingly unguarded before the endless wonder of Creation. Perhaps experience and trauma have worn you down. Perhaps you have grown great-hearted. Perhaps there is guilt and horror and tragedy for you to face. Perhaps there is only joy. It will be ... difficult ... regardless, until your defenses have regrown.

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Finally, “Taming Divinity” becomes “The Lantern”

In this quest, you pull together everything you’ve learned over the course of the Arc to illuminate a path—a way to live with the mythic and divine, a way to endure the devouring world, a way to develop your Domain and your own divinity without losing too much of yourself. Most often, you hold up this light not for yourself but for someone else: someone having even more trouble than you have had, or perhaps less trouble quantitatively but of a sort that you find easier to address. You may wind up advancing your own understanding over the course of this quest, or revealing a richer understanding, or synthesizing what you’ve already learned in useful ways, but that’s not the goal; your goal, the thing you’re working for, is helping them survive. It’s as an incidental feature of doing that that you find your place, or realize just how far you may have come

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The new names mean I have to swap Shepherd 1 and 2.

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Writing some quotes ...

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I’ll share one quote that got deleted, the rest you can just look at the fancy PDF:

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If you were to ask me, what even is reality, I think I would have to say, the past. It is the things we carry with us. The chains anchoring us into eternity.

That which is spun up into being without true past, simply ... declared into existence, without precedent: be it ever so detailed, so complete, so luridly convining, so buttressed up by shouting as to overwhelm with its reality, it is not real. It is at best a miracle and at worst a lie.

That which follows on that which follows on that which follows, so on unto the beginning of the world—

... take away its accidental properties and presence, its weight upon your senses, your experience; take everything recognizable as reality, and still I will tremble with the weight of its existence: still I will kneel before the altar of its being, and say to it, you are.

— from (not determined)

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In a few minutes, there’ll be a laid-out version available at:

https://afarandasunlessland.files.wordpress.com/2022/11/two-quest-sets-for-nobilis-rough.pdf

Please enjoy!

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Aside: Some screenshots from the discord follow so that sighted readers can see the icons. I’m a little concerned about my physical limits here so rather than typing in alt text I will direct vision-impaired readers to the even-more-polished version of the same content in the laid-out PDF.

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[powerfem]

It’s me, I am the problem

When I stopped starving myself, I realized I was so hungry. Not just for food, but for life, for love, for acceptance. For everything. As much as I had wanted to kill myself, as much as sometimes I still wanted to, what I wanted more than anything is to be free from being myself. I guess I was the thing that I hated the most for not letting me live, a constant set of mistakes. I wanted to live, but not as myself. How can I move past that? It feels like somehow, I want to justify why I exist in the first place, I must be perfect to make up for the fact that it is me.

I still have some days when I can’t look in the mirror. I don’t remember the last time I stepped on the scale, nor I want to do so. I’m better off this way. Even if I know I’m at least average or even pretty. I wish that didn’t matter. I’ve come so far.

Where did all this self this self-hate came from?

I don’t know. But I’m so tired. As far as I have come, I can’t seem to get out yet. I don’t hate myself anymore, I think, but I haven’t yet accepted myself either.

I forget that most people have never felt hated themselves as deeply as me. That they had their normal teenage years, unlike me. It feels like they were all on a different planet. I can’t even remember most things. Even if I had very good moments that I treasure, I spent most of the time trying to get to the next day.

I’m doing much better now, but I still suffer the consequences of my childhood and teenage years. I as a very independent kid, but also sensitive, and I got bullied. Throw family stuff and personal tragedies on the mix and you’ve got a fucked-up teen. Socially I’ve never been the star of the show, but I always manage a group of friends. After my depression I started with a huge disadvantage at college. Then covid came. I have done very good and worked hard to develop as an adult. I’m always going to be different from most people, but it doesn’t really matter, we have all got our things.

Right now, what I need is to finally have myself on my side.

[thatfreshi]

A Dip in the Pool of Peace (Markiplier x reader)

A short comfort blurb where you finally get Mark to slow down.

You woke up early that morning. It was still dark out; neither Henry nor Chica stirred from their sleep. Mark didn’t either, but you weren’t surprised. He’s been working a lot lately. You’ve tried pulling him away from his computer how many times, but it’s not enough. No matter what you do, all he’s done for the past however many days is sit in his workaholism. 

You made your way to the kitchen, somehow more awake than you’d usually be at this hour. As per usual, you got out your laptop to write down whatever ideas came to you, and the coffee began brewing. You usually wake up before Mark, so you make his cup as well. Despite how sweet he is to you, he prefers far less creamer and sugar than you do. As you began to pour, the sunlight begins seeping through the large window to your right, and you almost forget about the carton in your hand. As you realize the oranges and yellows are filling your home, you get an idea. Making your way back to the bedroom, you decide to wake him, despite it being 6:30 am.

“Mark? Mark, my love.��

You shake him a little. It doesn’t work.

“Markkkkkkkkkkkk, wake uppppppppp.”

Your voice is right inside of his ear at this point. Eventually, after repeating yourself about a million times, he starts to move.

“Y/n, what darling?”

He rubs his eyes, sounding a little grumpy in his response to his waking.

“I want you to come see something.”

“Love, if I’m awake I have to get ready for the day. I don’t have time to waste.”

“So, you’re assuming what I want you to see is a waste?”

He sighs, trying to really wake up now.

“No. No, that’s not what I meant. I’m sorry. I’ll come take a look, but then I have to get working, okay?”

Good enough of a response for you. You grab his hand, lifting him out of bed and taking him through the hall and into the common space. You open the sliding glass door, and the two of you sit outside by the pool, your feet dipping in the cool water.

“So, what did you want to show me?”

You gesture to the sunrise.

“This. This is what I wanted to show you.”

He looks at the smile on your face, clearly not understanding.

“What, our pool? I know I haven’t had time to clean it in a while, but I don’t think it’s that bad.”

“No love, the sunrise.”

“Okayyy, and doesn’t the sun rise like every morning?”

“Yeah, but how often do you stop to look at it?”

He stares at the ripples in the water.

“I don’t know. Not a whole lot I guess.”

You look at him with a little bit of concern in your eyes.

“Mark, have you stopped to look at anything recently?”

It comes off a little harsher than you meant, but it resonates.

“I mean, you know I have deadlines and meetings and podcasts to record and-”

“I know that love, and that’s not what I asked.”

You lock your fingers into his. And he stops to think a moment longer.

“No. I haven’t stopped for a while now, have I?”

You nod.

“So I wanted you to come sit with me, and look at this sunrise, and just stop for a second and breathe.”

He tears up a little, splashing the water with a silent grace.

“You’re right. I do need a second to breathe, maybe a couple of seconds to breathe.”

“Then I’ll go get our coffee, and we can sit here and watch the sunrise, and you can forget about it all for a bit. How does that sound?”

He smiles, wiping away a couple streams of stress.

“That sounds great y/n. Thank you, really. Sometimes I feel like I just get so wrapped up in it all, and I don’t know how to stop myself. You somehow always know though, how to stop me.”

“I know. Just part of the many reasons I’m so perfect.”

He laughs as you get up, leaving a kiss on his scalp before leaving to grab your mugs. When you return, you get to spend a couple hours outside, taking in the sun and the wind, the singing of the birds and the scurrying of animals in the trees. It’s peaceful, and even if he only stops working for a few hours, it’s worth it. Every moment you spend with him is worth it.