synopsychic | (no subject)

So. We had another one of our captors show up on the Jaunt. I spoke with him - he gave me the name Hakan Ceasar, but now that I'm myself again, I think it's pretty safe to say it was the Emperor. He told me he was there to 'ensure the orderly transference of power', which as far as I know was the shift in government in Sarmatia. Why that specifically was important, I don't know, but it seems like it was.

For the newbies - you've probably at least been given the bare bones of who and what the Trumps are, but I thought it might help some to have an idea of the timeline, given how frequently people arrive and vanish. To my knowledge, the first Trump to make themselves known to Travellers was the Fool, somewhere around a year ago, in the ocean world. This wasn't the first Jaunt ever, mind - I know of at least six that took place before that, and nobody can remember earlier than that, so there may have been more. The Jaunt after that, with the crazy zombie shit - no Trumps anybody knows of, but that glitched out somehow. Fuck knows what was going on there. The fancy solstice ball had the Sun and the Moon. Harrowgate, no Trumps again, but the first appearance a figure called the King in Yellow. Other people can probably tell you more about that, but my understanding is that... he? it? isn't a Trump, but may be as powerful as them, and is bad fucking news. His sigil has showed up a few times in Liminal Space. [There's a brief image of the triskelion symbol blocking the drain in an industrial sink] If you see it, mention it psychically so someone who knows what they're doing can deal with it.

[A pause, then he continues]
Anyway, after that - the Lovers appeared at the school, in the form of an AI system. Before that, the Trumps had appeared as humans - on the outside, anyway. The GRID is where shit started to get really crazy, though we got some answers, too. The Magician, under the guise of ROSE, appeared to be attempting the revival or freeing of the Hermit, known there as SAGE. The Devil and the Lovers attempted to influence travellers to prevent this - the Devil called SAGE a criminal, and said that his execution was 'within the rules', whatever the rules are. He also said that our excursions were 'sanctioned'. The High Priestess spoke with and marked one traveller, but did not manifest.

At some point, the Magician told people that four Trumps were dead - the Hierophant, Fortune, Temperance, and the Star. In liminal space afterwards, there was a phone that allowed calling any of the Trumps that had previously made themselves known, and one said that of the four dead, one was killed by an external force of some sort, and the other three were due to internal conflict. Which is which, I'm not sure. I spoke to the Sun briefly, who was polite but not forthcoming. As far as I know, nobody was marked for speaking to them over the phone.

In Questing Country, the High Priestess appeared, though I have no details about it. Nobody mentioned seeing any Trumps in the Jaunt after that, Melasurei, though from what I gathered, things didn't go well in general there. In Nova Veniza, both the Chariot and the Hanged Man appeared, and the Chariot was apparently fairly affable. And that's everything up to now.

The Trumps work under some sort of set of rules, though I don't know how closely bound by them they are. We're pawns, and the purpose of whatever little game they're playing at isn't clear. It may just be a game, to them - but what the Emperor told me made it sounds like there were higher stakes involved, and that he was aware of these. They're apparently limited to marking five travellers each, though I don't have a record on who's been marked and who hasn't. Some people have been public about it, while others have not. There's been speculation that once every traveller is marked, the nature of what we do may shift to something other than the Jaunts. But there's a lot we don't know.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

None of the Sarmatian vampires were that powerful. Not even the late Prince, or his enforcer Elio. Wraithwolves were the only ones who could leave their bodies, and I know we didn't have anyone who'd rate on their scales in the Ombrandanti.

Well hello. It's curious...what was the Emperor after, then?

Best guess? Thematic concerns. Authority, tradition, order.

Hm...a single-player game? Simple a challenge to himself to use us Travelers to ensure the best result came to pass? Or was there something hidden he was playing against?

On the surface, it seems like most Jaunts are single-player. Trump vs. environmental biases.

I guess my real question in all of this is "what's their objective?" Not even the overarching master plan, but why these worlds, and why do they want something particular to happen in these worlds? And why rely on coerced agents to do their...

[She pauses, coming to a realization.]

Has anyone ever asked a Trump what their specific goals were? I'd hardly blame them for obscuring them on purpose, but eliminating the obvious is just as important to detective work as eliminating the "impossible".

I've never gotten to sit in on a conversation. But they try to keep a low profile, or only turn up in urgent situations, and they're very, very good at cryptic.

[A mental sigh.]

This is true. Even the people who spoke to them knowing the situation don't seem to have gotten clear answers, have they?

Well, there's two possibilities, then. One is that part of our role as Travelers is to figure out what the Trumps are doing for ourselves, and any hints on their part would be cheating.

The other is that they're proper bastards who just like messing with people.

Frankly, I find the former more likely. There are much easier ways to torture people for the sake of it than setting up mysteries.

There's a third option.

We know they have vulnerabilities. The cryptic act could be simple self-defense. The less we know, the safer they are.

Ho. That's possible. If true, it does have some implications, though. Mainly that they either see us as threats, or know a priori that we'll see them as threats.

The latter is logical, but means they really can see things from our perspective. The former has all kinds interesting implications.

I've wondered for a long time how long they've been doing this, and how many groups of people they've worked with. There's no reason to assume we're the only team of Travelers out there, or that we're the first.

You know...given what the host of this little psychic conversation had to say about this Mobius place, there's no reason to assume "we" haven't been here longer than we think, either.

Luckily I missed Moebius. I've got a pretty clear timeline of insane things that happened to me.