synopsychic | A totally legit announcement

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A totally legit announcement

Okay, so, what even happened on that one?

Besides, like. Everyone getting mad at Fuckface McGee and proving Jean-Paul Sartre right on the whole "hell is other people" thing. Or one of the Princes knowing about Travelling and Arcana now.

[Gil you can't just slide that in there like literally anyone except you and Raidou knows that--]

Oh, actually - don't go busting in on Arcana spaces without knocking first right now, 'cos apparently you're at a very real risk of being turned into flash-frozen helium, according to Magician.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

They've sent us to one particular set of worlds at least seven times that we know of - eight counting the mini-Jaunt from Fortune's revival - and a few other worlds at least three times, so it's not impossible that they could send us to Purgatory or its adjacent realms again, especially if they decide there's something else there they want.

As for why the Arcana haven't treated them as a threat in the same way they treated the Fae or the eldritch... it's hard to say. Maybe they figure the infighting between the various factions keeps them weak enough to not be an issue, or perhaps the Arcana really are that much stronger. Or perhaps they just haven't proven themselves to be a threat yet the way the eldritch have.

...Although that raises questions about how the Fae might have proven that.

Holy shit, I keep forgetting how long most of you lot have been here. I’d say the Arcana would want to let them cool off first, before sending us back, but who even knows if they’d understand why the locals might be upset about this sort of thing.

I’d kind of assumed the threat at the university was the creatures who could make their own interdimensional portals, like Anna Monday. If they’d figured out where liminal space is, dimensionally, maybe they could have popped over here and caused some trouble. I don’t know who else could do it, but poor Anna was pretty unstable. Though I don’t know whether all that glass could have done much appreciable damage to them. Or perhaps they’re just scared of Royalty and figured they might try and hijack the Jaunt. Eldritch might be the right word there, too.

Though you’d still think a demon could potentially be worse.

They do tend to space visits out, but I'm not sure how much of that is consideration for that particular world, or for us, and how much of that is a desire for variety.

My overlay specialized in crossing boundaries, so in theory he might have been able to manage it at some point; fortunately, he still doesn't know about Liminal Space's general existence.

[That and he'd let someone else 'borrow' the ability, although he'd already been considering how to develop something even better even before he'd learned about the Arcana.]

Anna might not have been able to cause as much damage, but more powerful entities could have potentially either learned to emulate its ability or even followed it in. Granted, the latter wouldn't be an issue on a hypothetical return trip, but...

Demons, and Angels and Sithen for that matter, have a very wide range of power. Some might be that strong, but that doesn't mean they all are.

I wonder if they could come here at any time, if they figured out how, or if we’d have to have boots on the ground there. Some people can open portals to locations we’ve been to previously, can’t they?

I have to say, nothing I’ve heard so far about this Jaunt is making me feel sorry I missed it, but I have heard about some pretty crazy displays of power. Though I suppose Arcana might not have souls in the traditional sense, so some of that stuff might not even work. That might be why other magic bothers them more.

I want to say there'd need to be a connection between Liminal Space and their world, but on the other hand, we had one of Harrogate's eldritch horrors poking at Liminal Space for several Jaunts after the first trip there. But that was after it had cut us off from the network and Liminal Space for much of the Jaunt, so that probably gave it a foothold. The Arcana hadn't thought to restrict our access during that Jaunt, so it essentially had free rein.

The Arcana's state of existence is... hard to quantify. Magician compared them to constellations.

Yes, I can see how anything that could affect the network might concern the Arcana. Cuts you off from skills and everything, right? Leaves you a bit more vulnerable than you'd like, but it might do it to them, too.

... Like constellations in that it's our observation of them that gives them meaning?

It doesn't cut us completely off, but it severely limits our skill use, unless you've got a sufficient amount of power to overcome those limitations. Items created Liminally will disappear until Liminal Space is restored, for example, and the network becomes... text-based, somehow.

The implication was more that they were vast and unknowable, I think. It apparently took them a while to realize we were even real, before they started with this.

Seems like they barely realize we’re real now.

There are a number of them who don't think we're people - to them, we're just gamepieces. And I'm not sure that even those who do really understand how our existence works, in comparison to theirs. The first time they did this they failed to take mortal aging into account, which went about as well as you'd expect.

Jesus. I understand that it also took some time for them to realize that we need to eat to live.

It’s like we’re pet goldfish in the hands of the universe’s most powerful five-year-olds.

Yes, it did.

[Raidou doesn't really miss those days, although coming in directly after Belljar, he's fairly sure he'd missed the worst of it.]

It does feel like that, doesn't it?

When I was new, someone told me that they didn’t understand us well enough to be deliberately sadistic. I feel like the caterpillar I accidentally suffocated in a jar as a child.

It will probably not help matters at all that the mechanism used to bring us here is a giant gashapon machine, will it? We still don't know how anyone gets in there, but a number of us have seen it.

My god. Bad roll of the dice for us, I guess.

Well, Fortune was the one who set it up.

Suppose they can’t just pick extraordinarily lucky people. They’d find a way out.

So, every once in a while someone goes out of ambit and they just ... roll for a new one? Convenient.

The selection process is apparently completely random, or so they say.

They actually roll for new Travelers on a fairly regular basis, or at least they have been for a while - new people are usually brought in during the Liminal Space that immediately precedes a Jaunt.

I came here with a big group, but most of them disappeared maybe a week later. I haven’t really seen anything like that since.

Those are much rarer events; I think there have been three of those in my time as a Traveler. I'm not precisely sure what caused the first one, but the second came after Liminal Space was temporarily broken, and the one that brought you here was part of the aftermath of Fortune's death being prevented in the past.

Is that why all that weird stuff happened? Going to other worlds for such a short time.

Yes - they were essentially ripple effects. And Fortune used those to get herself back into the game proper as well.

[Not that it had done her much good in the short run, but still.]

And then lost on her first Jaunt. That's certainly a thing.

On the other hand, she's still alive.

[And apparently planning something, although Raidou's still trying to sort out what he learned there.]

Lovers actually followed a similar trajectory - she cheated her way back into the game during the very last Phase Two Jaunt after all of her chosen fell out of ambit, only to end up losing during the very first Phase Three Jaunt. She's only back in now due to a technicality.

I've only met her once but that doesn't surprise me. I'm sure she's smug as all hell about it.

She subjected us to a drive-in theatre that showed movie versions of our Jaunts up until then - carefully edited in certain cases, of course - interspersed with intermissions that featured her bragging about being back. Everyone was stuck in beds made up to look like vehicles.

Incidentally, the technicality involved Hermit and Death not choosing mutually exclusive win conditions for the preceding Jaunt and ending up in a tie.

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