A public service announcement and a request.

[eldritchwheelies]

Hey all. Been a while. It's Madoka Mawaru. First Jaunt Harrowgate, last Jaunt before getting Dungeoned I spent on the Grid as the Malware/Automaton Defenses Optimization and Compiler App. Sorry to worry you - I just came back from talking with Best Pony. How long have the Champs been so blatant?

Anyway. Come find me. I'll be around - gonna charge my phone, then see if someone put up a place to stay or can make food.

A little bit later, there's something like a mental groan.

...One last thing. I didn't want to have to ask this, but... I was worse than useless as I was, Infiltrated in Harrowgate and the Grid.

Every single traveller here has blanket permission to shock my Overlay out of a Jaunt, using whatever it takes to do it. I know... at least one way to do it, though I normally wouldn't recommend it.

Comments

[truerevelation]

"Well, if ya call a goddess tryin' to screw with the world via giving a bunch of misfits powers 'proxies bullshit', then yeah."

Kanji tries to wrap his tongue around the German translation and gives up. "Yeah. Cairbre didn't even realise we were involved in shit for a few rounds of the game... uh, their rounds, not ours. Even it's still learnin' how we work."

[eldritchwheelies]

"That is the most archetypal example." She chortles. "If her others were working at cross purposes, prime opportunity to say 'congratulations you played yourself.'"

"That's good to know... both that it admitted ignorance and that this isn't the first match of their game."

[truerevelation]

"Eh, one'f them was an asshole who duped another into doing his dirty work 'cause he thought he was doing the right thing... kinda a mess, but ya were probably expecting that."

He chuckles back. "Yeah. I figure it ... kinda wants to be straight with us? Or at least ... not gettin' things done ain't the idiom."

[eldritchwheelies]

"Ritual murders, or just the regular kind?" she deadpans. "It always comes down to blood with the Ancient Ones."

"Chariot had the good sense to let me be mad at it. If any of them understood how upset I was at not getting to make progress, it does."

[truerevelation]

"As regular as chucking someone into another world through portals in TVs to let 'em get eaten by weird stuff that crawled out of folks' subconscious gets," Kanji says, just as neutrally as she's speaking.

"I think it ... cares. Like, sees us as people it can care about. On some level."

[eldritchwheelies]

"...that is painfully SHUIZN shaped, honestly," she says, eyebrows raised. "Did this involve putting the id on display for prime time television?"

Madoka nods. "Self-determination; control; willpower; moving forward. If it's as tied to the Chariot's meanings as it claims to be, and at this point not being otherwise has bitten it on the butt way too many times for me to think it's lying, of course the Chariot cares about us as beings with our own wills. It would hardly be the Chariot if it didn't."

[truerevelation]

"Nah. Screenings on rainy midnights and a whole bunch of rumours about it all." He gives her an eyebrow raise back. Huh.

"Yeah. That's pretty much what I'm figuring. It knows we have free wills in a way it doesn't."

[eldritchwheelies]

"Either your Ancient One was much less powerful, you were much better at stopping the incursion, or both," Madoka says. "But then, SHUIZN is one of the nastier ones."

She nods. "Based on that, and what you've seen... which other Arcana are worth half a second of our time?" she says.

[truerevelation]

Kanji thinks for a moment. "Hermit seems alright from when I've talked to him, and ... I think he at least gets letting his folks be independent." Never mind the dog thing. "Emperor and Empress are decent in a ... 'your parents know best' kinda way. Naoki's always said good stuff about Death and the one talk with him I had kinda agrees with that, and I ain't talked to Justice but I've heard good things. Magician's pretty tight with Chariot, too, but I ain't dealt with her. Couple of my pals rave about Sun, but ... I dunno how much is that he chose 'em for themselves, and how much is what he's like."

[eldritchwheelies]

She thinks about this. "Hermit would want to be left alone, and would understand why we want to be left alone. Death probably wants this over and done with as much as we do; that fits and I'll ask Naoki when I get the chance. Justice would also by its very nature be on our side until we eff up royal; what was done to us can't possibly be a useful definition of Just. Magician could go either way - her, Magician being female here is interesting, my training had a dood Magician."

Not merely 'dude' but exaggerated, drawled dooood.

"Sun... Sun's about hope, optimism, and the Truth. I'm inclined to believe your friend when they say he's decent. As decent as these things are. They are Ancient Ones by any useful definition, and my world probably has a file on them."