[pre-Emodriver Liminal] We interrupt your Jaunt preparations for some metaplot

[razorblade_empress]

[It's relatively late in the Liminal when Yukino contacts the network, although in fairness she's been a little busy being stuck in a dungeon for much of its duration. Still, though.]

A little while back, Judgement had this whole dungeon... thing... going on that a bunch of us got dragged into. One of the rooms was Belljar, and there was a closed-circuit TV showing a selection of images, one of which was a portal in a field of crystals that the Travelers of the time were evacuating into. So after we got back from this Jaunt, I tried to do some digging, and, well... I got this.

[This being a memory, which she is now sharing:]

The network was not full of happy chatter, during the visit to the place with the crystal fields. Granted, having to deal with ‘nation-eaters’ would likely put a damper on anyone’s mood, but on top of that, the Protectorate’s built-in psychic intrusions to enforce their idea of what’s best for everyone are Not Helping. The intrusions probably wouldn’t have helped in any round, but especially not with how freedom-minded the Travelers Fortune’s rig pulls in tend to be.

It’s quickly becoming apparent that there are two courses of action available to the Travelers: Back the Protectorate’s 'right-think' and keep the peace, or assist a violent coup so that the people can start fresh. If the coup works, and there’s no guarantee that even the Travelers can help convince enough people to defend their minds against their own government. There are two choices, but they both suck.

If it's a choice between this and the Champs being displeased, someone says on the network (it’s all text, of course, so discerning who might be difficult), I'll take my chances with our local True Fae.

After a pause, they add, Si se puede. Let's strike.

The strike itself isn’t that flashy, memory-wise; it consists largely of herding all the investigators into Liminal and camping out with whatever food they'd stashed or could manage to manipulate until the Jaunt's clock runs down. It's pretty clear when that happens: Liminal Space suddenly upends itself, with everyone falling endlessly away from a planet they'd know above them - since this is Yukino's memory, that planet is Earth - towards clouds they never reach, with swords falling along with them...

[The memory cuts off there.]

Next stop after that was Moebius.

Comments

[desperate_times_right]

Well. Guess that answers my question about what happens if we choose not to play.

[razorblade_empress]

Probably didn't help that Devil helped come up with the punishment.

One thing Judgement did say, though, was that Fortune tried to argue against Moebius but was overruled.

[desperate_times_right]

You don’t even get veto power in your own universe? Fortune’s had rotten luck.

[razorblade_empress]

I'm not sure how much direct control she really has, honestly. A lot of her setup is automated, and this was apparently unprecedented.

[desperate_times_right]

It is pretty impressive that all of the travelers agreed on the same course of action. We might never see that again either.

[razorblade_empress]

I want to say that was more likely in the early days, but I think there were about twelve Jaunts before Moebius - I was here for nine of those.

[desperate_times_right]

I can’t imagine getting this whole bunch to agree to a strike with people at stake like that, even without the threat of Moebius, but I suppose things were different then in general.

[razorblade_empress]

I'm not sure what this group would've done with a choice like that in general. Then again, we've got more tools at our disposal now than the Travelers as a whole did back then, so maybe somebody could have come up with a more helpful solution than what we could see back then.

[desperate_times_right]

... You think they showed you that because they’re going to send us back there?

[razorblade_empress]

I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if they did send us back there at some point - it wouldn't be the first time they sent us back to a Jaunt world where things got fucked up the first time we were there.

But this was me digging around in my own memories to see if I could find something that matched what I saw in Judgement's dungeon. And I don't think their dungeon was really hinting at the future so much as trying to explain the past.

[desperate_times_right]

They seem pretty big on the ‘crime and punishment’ stuff, and this whole bunch are like cartoon villains so I thought maybe they’d shown you that we could redeem ourselves for Tower by correcting a previous error.

You lost a lot of memories from back then, didn’t you? You okay?

[razorblade_empress]

Not this time.

[She's not sure she'd put it past them in general, though.]

I'm...

[She hesitates for a moment, before settling on:]

I'm dealing. I got a bunch of other pre-Traveler memories back along with this one, and all of it together is... a lot.

[desperate_times_right]

Yeah, I bet. I know that this is advice none of us would listen to, but try to get some rest before the jaunt. I don’t think ‘a lot’ is going to get any less so once we get there.

[razorblade_empress]

Yeah, I'm trying to take it easy for now. Not sure if it helps or hurts that I was in a dungeon for most of Liminal this time - those aren't exactly relaxing.

[desperate_times_right]

Jesus, one thing after another, isn’t it? Though surely this is relaxing in comparison.

[razorblade_empress]

There's a disturbing thought.

[desperate_times_right]

When I first got here, I remember thinking that no one could get used to this. I don’t know if it’s good or bad that I was wrong.

[razorblade_empress]

It's disturbing sometimes what becomes normal, isn't it?

[desperate_times_right]

Definitely. People are resilient, which I suppose is admirable, but I don’t know whether anyone back home would recognize us anymore.

[razorblade_empress]

...Yeah, same. I mean, my world has has a bunch of weird shit on its own, but nothing like this.

[desperate_times_right]

I’ve got to admit that I’m starting to reevaluate the sorts of weird shit I believe in from my own world after this. I’ve heard so many stories about cursed mummies and evil djinn and the like. The guy who told me about it is kind of a gullible idiot, but maybe it is real.

[razorblade_empress]

Probably a good thing he didn't live in my city - all of those would have come true, whether they originally were or not.

[desperate_times_right]

It might not be all bad. If everything he believed came true, you could get infinite chocolate by cutting it a certain way.

[razorblade_empress]

Things like that kind of got lost in all the doomsday prophecies.

[desperate_times_right]

Ah, yes. That’s fair. All things considered, we ran into surprisingly little of that. It was mostly the ‘a bad guy is going to drink this and get super powers’ sort of thing.