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Magician said they can, in theory, drop us off anywhere on the Vale but Stricken-Star, because they don't have anchors there.

I can't figure out what she means by 'anchors.' Anyone else have any ideas?

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I was listening to old stuff from the network the other day. Best podcast ever, and definitely better than communications chatter but that's beside the point.

And those people crop up all the time, but in that one Jaunt with the superheroes people were talking about how certain people were really just people, nothing different about them.

So I just wondered if that was what people were meaning by anchors.

It could be. They tend to fill similar roles when they show up - Perry and Mina always popping up as a pair, for example - and it's not like the Arcana would be necessarily looking for inanimate anchors.

Yeah. I thought I heard some chatter once that people were wondering if those guys were like the Minor Arcana. But that never really got anywhere.

For a long time people thought they were other Travelers who were just kept away from us for some reason.

In Newport - that's the superhero one - we got a couple pieces of the puzzle that said they really weren't. Naoto's overlay could tell when someone was an infiltrating Traveler - he ended up throwing her out of his head, before the jaunt ended. And Minako-san stumbled into a side pocket of Liminal Space that did have two of them in it, because Empress and Emperor Emperor were masquerading as the rightful rulers of Britain.

If you're right, we've been part of the way there for ages.

Holy shit my dude, I think you might be right.

Shit. Shit. My mind is fucking blown.

Months and months of understanding alien culture is finally good for something!

Possibly that explains why we keep going to certain worlds. They have these people who keep cropping up that they can latch on to.

... makes a good argument for reincarnation in these universes, now that I think about it.

Oh jeez, yeah.

As the Arcana prefer to act through people--us--it does follow that their "anchors" would be people as well. Another possibility is places, but I think that less likely. Are you speaking of the times the Arcana themselves have Infiltrated? Or Investigated with the disguise of a native of that world?

[ He's fuzzy on the details on Familiar Faces, but he remembers very clearly the time his overlay met Emperor Emperor, disguised as a king, in Newport. ]

No, nothing to do with the Arcana at all. There's people who seem to crop up in various worlds that we go to. I have no idea how many of them there are, but there's definitely people who seem to have similar qualities. I don't think they are the Arcana, and they're definitely not overlays of the Arcana. They're just... dudes.

There's been a bunch of network chatter on them in the past.

[ He totally knows what dudes are. Thorne and Claudia provided enough context. ]

I'm afraid right now I have to choose between delving into Network archives for a long time, or trying to better the Vale's chances in the short time we are here. But I can see why the Arcana would anchor to other people rather than someone as capricious as a Traveler. Being closer to the action, things tend to happen to us. And we are--what did Delaunay say--Liminal beings.

Nah, it's fine. I don't know if the network would let me link to a specific conversation or not, or even if you could listen in if I could, so I'll just keep going through and summarize what I find. Anything in particular you'd like me to look for?

You keep doing what you can to help down there. That's more important.

And, you're right. We're Travelers, literally. We pass through things, and come out the other side. People who are actually in and from that world are much more solid. Like I mentioned to Thorne, it might explain why we keep going to certain worlds. The Arcana have a connection to people there.

I disappeared after the Purgatory Market and did not return until the Liminal before this Jaunt. If there is anything during that time mentioning these anchor people, let me know. Or... anything before the Newport Jaunt, which was my first, but that is very far back.

For the rest, I can refresh my memory with notes I stored in the Workshop's library.

Pff. Ain't it all the same chatter in the end?

But huh. Anchors would be ... Big. Solid. Stuck in place. Liminal ain't 'solid' like worlds are.

Oh, it's definitely all the same chatter in the end. When you're heard one soap opera or propaganda broadcast, you've heard them all. The rest is just set dressing.

Yeah. And people who seem to be in pretty much every world is... pretty solid.

Something down there to be able to grab onto... huh.

Yeah!

Anchor's a pretty apt description, now that I'm thinking about it.

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