[Secondish day of Chuck E Cheese Liminal]

[itsananimalthing]

So hey. Everybody. Tell me what all our asshole patrons had to say about Moebius. I already talked to Malik and Matthew, so I got their stories. Already know that we killed one of 'em, so Moebius was a punishment, presumably for that. Death was behind the whole doing-things-over part, and Devil was behind the whole kill-all-your-friends part.

Also there's the tidbit that Lovers claims they don't make the places they send us to, they just pick 'em. Which is interesting. Unless she was lying, though I'm guessin' she wasn't.

But mostly I wanna hear if any of the rest of you talked about Moebius with your Trump. I got most of my memories of that Jaunt back, but not much of anything from that whole thing we apparently did to earn it, and I'm thinkin' that's gonna be pretty important. I'm hopin' somebody else can give me somethin' to go off of to jump-start workin' on that.

Besides, nobody ever talks about this shit, and we're down to too few people who lived it to let people forget about it.

Comments

[returnofme]

Well, you've got one more person who remembers it.

[Now here's a mental voice he hasn't heard in years.]

[itsananimalthing]

[What a surprise. He even says as much.]

Now that's somebody I ain't heard from in years. Luke. When'd you get back to the party?

[They aren't exactly friends, but Luke is slightly more bearable than some of the other vets. He's not Joscelin, after all.]

[returnofme]

Just now, actually. One of the Champs was there to greet me.

[Yes. Champs. Luke's that vintage.]

[runawaystory]

Luke? Is that you?

[Another for the Moebius vets club. Rosalie can hardly believe it.]

the joke is that I testdrove Luke in the Airlocked mock trial

[returnofme]

Rosalie!

[You can't see him but he's grinning.]

It's me. I was... I can't remember clearly, but I think there was a deep space station. And possibly someone dying...? There was a trial. I remember that much.

But I'm back now, for what it's worth.

[leftbehindagain]

Death said it was a response to... [There's a pause as Naoki tries to recall the wording.] 'A rebellion the likes of which was not in Fortune's rules.' Whether that was the death of one of their own or not, he didn't say and I didn't ask.

[Mostly because he has his own theories about the one death the Travelers are known to be responsible for.]

He also said the memory loss wasn't intentional, but after Devil set the 'kill all your friends' condition, it was probably a blessing, at least as far as the events of that particular jaunt went.

[itsananimalthing]

Considering what I've got back, yeah, not exactly somethin' most people are gonna even wanna remember.

So it was a rebellion, not just killing Star. Don't suppose he mentioned the kind of rebellion.

[leftbehindagain]

Not to me, no. [What he might have said to one of the others is another matter, but since this is news to Riddick, Naoki can rule out who he didn't mention it to, at least.]

[hazardlight]

That particular shitstorm was way before my time, but when I was in for my interview with Sun he did say that they choose the Jaunts together, but not very far in advance?

Which I guess isn't really new info, but it's another collaborating data point. And I don't think Sun's got a lot of interest in misleading us on anything. I mean, I kinda suspect he's the sort to flake out on remembering to tell people something important because he gets distracted by something shiny? But I don't think he was lying on any of the shit he was telling me.

[itsananimalthing]

Be glad you missed it. It was fucked up.

Heh. Nice description. Good to know more about their process, though. What else did 'e say?

[hazardlight]

Man, I wish I'd known more of what to ask. I only got here just before they started doing the wholesale marking thing.

Um. He called it a "war of ideas"? This whole thing. The way he put it made it sound like our motivations are at least as important as our results.

If we get another one-on-one with him I'll try and get more answers.

[amadine]

I'm not certain whether it would be better if they truly didn't create the worlds they inflict on us - and inflict us on - or worse.

[itsananimalthing]

Still kinda strains the brain that they can always find people to shove us into in all these worlds. Similar names and everything. But I didn't get the impression she was makin' it up. No reason to, right then.

[amadine]

You mean aside from "because she can"?

I've wondered more than once if the similar names are related to the same magic that allows us to understand one another despite speaking several dozen very different languages. In no small part because it occasionally fails utterly when there's no conveniently similar substitute.

[runawaystory]

If Lovers isn't lying, then how does that even work? Death and Devil just found a world lying around somewhere and customized it for maximum trauma?

[itsananimalthing]

Doubt they needed to customize it. People are shit pretty much everywhere, don't surprise me any that some group of people decided to run a memory-loss torture camp.

[runawaystory]

Fine. Point. Then, what, Death and Devil just poked through an unknown number of worlds until they found one that seemed suitably horrible for their purposes?

[bite_the_hand]

[Eren hasn't spoken much about his conversation with his Arcana, outside of a very select group. But that's mostly because he's been busy and distracted for one reason or another. Now that the topic's been brought back up, he's more than willing to share this time.]

The Chariot talked about Moebius, and it told me more about that rebellion Naoki mentioned. Not a lot, but enough to know the Travelers refused to play their game. Everyone just stayed in Liminal Space. I don't know why. It said it wasn't paying attention to that Jaunt, and I didn't get the feeling it was lying about anything. But the Jaunt failed because time ran out. That's why they made time repeat itself during Moebius. To make it impossible for the Investigators to just quit again.

[itsananimalthing]

Huh.

[Riddick digests that.]

Might be able to use that. Thanks. Don't suppose you got a memory share or would mind an interface, to give me the whole conversation? The more detail I got, the more likely I'll be able to put my own memories back together.

private

[truerevelation]

Did it - uh. What other sort of things did it tell you, man?

I mean, 's up to you what you wanna talk about. But ... we're kinda in the same boat.

[comebewe]

That's their reason for it? Not even that they murdered one of them, just that they dared to stop playing?

[At least murder was understandable, even if Moebius was still horrifying and inexcusable as a punishment]

[neverfeltthatway]

I didn't get a chance to ask ROSE about Moebius, I'm afraid - she ended the conversation before I had the chance.

But then, that's part of her idiom, as far as I can tell - letting people figure things out on their own.

[itsananimalthing]

Ended the conversation, huh? What, did you manage to piss her off?

[awitchdidit]

I'd tend to agree with the idea that the Arcana don't create the boards for this game, they just plop us down into appropriate roles. As Thorne pointed out to me a while ago, there are too many external threats that the Arcana obviously see as competition or threats - that King fellow and the Illuminants, for example - to believe they control what is present there.

That said, I didn't ask Magician about Mobius either. I wasn't there and I'm not sure she was involved, anyway. She also doesn't seem the type to dwell on dead comrades...at least openly.

[itsananimalthing]

Don't honestly expect most people to have asked, but better to put it out there and get what I could.

Always figured the Illuminants or King in Yellow were incursions. Other entities who got access to the network and the Jaunt locations, more than that we were visiting places they existed, since both groups got into liminal. But that way makes sense, too.

[There's the sense of a shrug.]

Not sure I'm happy to be wrong, in this case. We've fucked up enough places that havin' them be real places ain't exactly a pleasant thought.