Ribbit [backdated to the very first day of the cloud liminal]

[capital_asset]

I don't know why I don't expect these by now... For those who are newer to this, there was an earlier Jaunt that left a number of us with a tendency towards prophetic dreams and/or nightmares. Most often, they concern the Jaunt we're either on or about to be sent on in some way, although not always.

This particular dream featured a demonic frog squatting on a beach. It opened its mouth to let the ocean rush in, which caused the frog to grow progressively larger until all anyone could see was the swollen, stretched out frog. The frog eventually exploded, which in turn sent the ocean waters exploding everywhere, at which point the dream ended.

It's... very mythical, if nothing else.

Comments

[hamsterunicorns]

Oooooh! Me and Caleb and the rest of the Mighty Nein fought a demon frog once! It was when we'd just met each other!

[capital_asset]

[Well, that answers one of Vulpe's questions fairly decisively; fortunately, he's not here in person to see that particular hypothesis about her confirmed.]

How did that go?

[hamsterunicorns]

Welllllll, they were working at the circus where our friends Yasha and Mollymauk were also working, but they told everyone they were a lizard person instead of a fiend. And Molly and Yasha came to our in while we were eating breakfast and Molly told my fortune and then we got invited to the circus and it was really fun at first except the fiend frog guy turned an old guy into a zombie.

[capital_asset]

Why did they do that?

[hamsterunicorns]

It was a side effect of this Life Drain thing he did during circus performances. Usually it wouldn't kill people and make them zombies but the guy was really, really old.

[capital_asset]

So he was using the circus as a front of sorts?

[hamsterunicorns]

I think so. But he might have actually liked being in the circus too. I think Molly or Yasha would know better, but they're not here yet. Everyone else in the Nein is really late at catching up with me and Caleb.

[capital_asset]

I think that's probably because the mechanism that brings us here selects people at random.

[hamsterunicorns]

Oh.

Well, that's dumb.

[capital_asset]

The winner of their last 'game' was Fortune, so she got to decide how to set this one up.

['Game' is very audibly in quote marks. It's probably quite clear to her that he's uncomfortable with calling it that.]

[hamsterunicorns]

What's she the god of?

[capital_asset]

I'm not sure they're precisely gods; they're more like living ideas.

[hamsterunicorns]

There's a difference?

[capital_asset]

[Raidou is honestly not sure how to articulate the differences as he sees them. The Arcana don't feel like gods to him and never have.]

They feel like something else to me. Gods always seem connected to a given world, or a given people; the Arcana, despite seemingly embodying concepts that are familiar to us, aren't. I don't really have a better explanation than that, though, and I could always be wrong.

[hamsterunicorns]

Oh. Oh, okay, that makes sense.

[capital_asset]

[That's actually something of a relief; Raidou really hadn't wanted to resort to 'I've met gods and the Arcana don't really feel like them outside of superficialities.' Plus he could always be wrong.

Instead, he circles back to answer the actual question now that the semantics are out of the way.]

Fortune's archetype includes things like fate, luck, and possibilities, so her version of Synodiporia - their name for this - has a lot of loopholes and a lot fewer restrictions than Emperor, who was the last winner.

[hamsterunicorns]

She sounds like she might be fun.

[capital_asset]

She does seem rather amused by a lot of the things we can do now.

[hamsterunicorns]

Like what stuff?

[capital_asset]

A lot of the more advanced things people can do with Liminal Space or the network - Fortune didn't place any restrictions on what we could learn to do with either of those. People learning to create permanent rooms and structures was apparently something of a shock to some of the other Arcana.

[Mostly Emperor, from what he understands, but still.]

[hamsterunicorns]

They don't have permanent stuff?

[capital_asset]

They seemed surprised that we might want or need such things. They do have dedicated conversation spaces where we can talk to them, but I get the sense that those are more for our benefit than for theirs.

[hamsterunicorns]

Oh right. I went to Magician's. She had a table with all kinds of interesting things on it.

[capital_asset]

[Somehow he's not surprised that she's one of Magician's.]

That sounds like her. If you're from a world where Tarot exists, the table with objects is something that can be found on the Magician card.

[hamsterunicorns]

They do! Molly has a deck of them. He's not here, though, so I can't ask to look at his.