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.

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The implications of it might be mitigated by the fact that he apparently wanted out of... Whatever it is the Trumps are really doing.

And look what it got him.

But knowing they're not philosophically unified is a relief.

It is, but it also means we can get caught up in the crossfire. [Which he has some unfortunate experience with.]

Better that than having them united against us - I don't think all the trouble they've gotten us in is the result of trump vs. Trump.

No, I agree it's unlikely everything we've had to deal with is because of their conflict. But one way or another, they're the reason we're dealing with any of this, so 'not against us' isn't particularly reassuring when we seem so disposable to them.

It's true. Even if we could play them against one another, we'd need leverage...

We might be able to get some--they're not infallible--but it wouldn't be easy.

Easy's not really on the menu for us.

Unfortunately. I guess we'll just have to work for it.

On the other hand, ROSE told me that the sort of intra-Trump conflict we were dealing with on the Grid didn't happen "often." And that there were some "chats" they were overdue for once it was over.

I could wish we had a better frame of reference for 'often'...

Yeah. Me too.

Is that what it was, then?

I was told he was a criminal. But his wanting out seems to be the other side of that coin. The truth is probably somewhere in-between.

Ahh. [He was wondering why the details weren't matching up, there] They may both be true, even - but some truths are more convincing than others.

It's equally possible none of it is really true. It depends on how much we're willing to believe they'd ever tell us anything that actually matters.

Yeah, fair point. Though if none of it's true, almost all the information we've been given can similarly be tossed out.

And that's the real problem, I suppose. We have to take what we're given on faith, even though we really have no reason to trust any of them.

Pretty much. We don't really have any good alternatives, though.

Not at the moment, no.

[But maybe one of these days, they'd get some leverage.]

So... I guess assume they're being truthful, until something proves otherwise, I guess.

I don't think we have to assume that, but we're stuck going along with them until we find some other way.