synopsychic | (no subject)

Have we ever had a Jaunt that seemed to lose an anchor? If we could figure that out, we might know.

Or not, if we couldn't tell whether we lost one or not...

...What if we came close when the Illuminants broke into Liminal Space? The way people were talking right after that, Empress and Emperor Emperor didn't set out to appear in person, but they did, to make sure things were still stable in both Misericordia and Sarmatia.

That's the closest thing I can think of.

... are anchors those people who show up in all the different places?

Like... the people who look the same, but aren't?

[... thank you, Matthew.]

...Shit. Archetypal anchors. What if they are?

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.

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

Shit. Shit. My mind is fucking blown.

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. ]

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.

Magician said they look the same because they're the same ideas in each world, or they embody them. She said the ideas are the same everywhere, so it makes it easier to find the boundaries of a world if the Arcana look for them.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Hm. So maybe the chatter from ages ago about them being like the minor arcana isn't that far off. Huh.

That makes perfect sense, in a way. People keep cropping up in every universe that are similar to each other.

It's like how every party has that one boring person who no one knows who invited.

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

I mean, if Matt's right about the familiar faces being the anchors, someone did kill poor Baerry in Sarmatia.

Yeah!

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

Yeah, but we also killed the shogun in Bando and no one freaked out then.

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.

She said that there were people who have stories, and people who are stories, and these people are both - they have stories, but those stories follow a pattern every time, even if some details are specific to the worlds or even parts of worlds they're in. So "Jordi" will have secrets, and "Perry" will get in trouble and need "Mina" to save him, and "Trey" is... an entrepreneur?

[That last is obviously not a word she knows.]

I think she also said there could be different versions in different parts of a world, but in cases like that how close they had to be was subjective, but she had trouble finding the right words at that point. But she also said it took a while for her to figure out that where and when were different, so it could just be a... vocabulary issue? Or I just misunderstood. She also said they don't need all of them to be present to be able to find the boundaries for a Jaunt, but they need at least some of them to be there, and more is better.

That would go some way toward explaining how Perry and Mina were both in Questing Country and on the Starmovers-side planet at the same time. Even knowing those worlds are connected, I think it was at two such different points that it couldn't just be dreaming, and there might've been a species difference in play as well.

In that case, yes. I don't know about other Jaunt worlds, like the one with Paramo and the Bando and Crownbreaker Isle.

I don't think Emperor Emperor showed up until a while after Baerry died, though. Maybe it's a time-delayed thingy?

Maybe, but it's more likely them turning up had more to do with the Illuminants, and I think they broke into Liminal pretty late into things.

Okay, yeah, good point. When it doubt blame the Skittles.

... I still think Matt's right about the anchors, though. It just makes sense.

Oh, I think he's on to something too. Just that the disruption that drew them out wasn't a jauntside familiar face dying weeks before the walkabout fae got fractious. Maybe they thought the others were in danger because of that stunt.

It's a person who starts up a business.

And also, considering they're as much places as people, it's not surprising she gets confused.

I mean, didn't the Skittles accidentally catch Misericordia on fire? That's a fucklot of danger right 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.

More that their being there meant all the dragon eggs hatched, rather than there only being enough magic available for a few of them to make it out of their eggs.

Oh jeez, yeah.

I mean, that basically did lead to Misericordia catching on fire.

Yes, but I doubt they cared about the fire.

Yeah okay, legit. I don't actually know much about them personally, except that Alcuin really fucking hates Yellow, with reason.