(no subject)

[leftbehindagain]

[As much as Naoki's wanted to say some of this since... well, since halfway through the mess in Misericordia, he decided to hold off and gather his thoughts first. As bad as that was for him and Kanji, it was worse for other people, and from what he's gathered the other jaunt wasn't exactly a picnic either. And then there was the party, and making that many drinks is more attention-consuming than you might think - and, well, no point in dumping that on people in the same moment as Armin-san's list of the departed. But he doesn't want this to wait until after the next jaunt.

It may not make a whole lot of sense to the new people, but hey, they can get explanations along the way.]

Okay. Now that we've all had a little time to decompress, I have a couple things I want to get on the table.

We need to start pooling information about where we've been, considering how often lately it's turned out to be where at least some of us are going. I know there's not much to be done about Moebius or anything that came before it, but... if we'd had more than half-panicked half-information halfway through everything in Misericordia, we might've been able to save some of our group a world of hurt. I'm not looking to cast blame for what's already happened, I'm looking to improve our chances going forward. [Alcuin and Ambrose tried, and it's not their fault things happened as they did.]

Whenever we can be prepared, there's no reason we shouldn't be. I'm sure some of us have been keeping private records, but we need something everyone can get to. If we can keep a log of the basics of these places - the nuts and bolts, maybe a note of what Trumps showed up if any - it'll help keep us out of a little trouble, anyway. I don't know the best way to do something like this, but I think we need at least one physical copy, since not everyone can work backwards on the network. Probably multiple copies of it, to cover for split groups and infiltrating and all that. A computer that people could Interface the information from might work, but that runs into the same storage issues, not to mention needing a computer for it in the first place.

Helena-san's trying to write up Purgatory as a story. We settled on trying that one because I know the most about it of anything I've been here for but she hadn't. Depending on how well that goes, she'll probably want to talk to people about some of the others, and either way I think we'll have a starting point.

If anyone's willing to help, donate notes, offer a place to keep everything, whatever - I'll take any help I can get with this thing. It's a resource we need, especially if the split-group situation keeps happening.

Another thing that came up in Misericordia before everything went to hell was the idea of trying to run a Sift on a familiar face. This one I'm mostly leaving to everyone who kept Sift - I bet the parameters would be tricky, from what Naoto's said about it before, but establishing a good set would give everyone a chance to try it, next time we run into one of them. All I can really offer on that end is my Assistance, if I'm there and myself when the chance comes.

Comments

[pseudologist]

It's all fun and games until someone decides to break out the torture.

[leftbehindagain]

Or until half of everything's on fire, which has been happening distressingly often lately.

[pseudologist]

See, that part? That just sounds like Tuesday.

[Which is probably why Varric himself sounds inexpressibly weary.]

[leftbehindagain]

That doesn't necessarily make it any more fun.

[pseudologist]

After a while, you just stop noticing.

[That? That is a blatant lie.]

[leftbehindagain]

If I ever stop noticing fires, that'll be a major step back from when I got here.

[pseudologist]

No one ever said all change was an improvement. One day, you look back an realize a swarm of demons has become normal.

[No you don't.]

[leftbehindagain]

Somehow I really, really doubt it.

[pseudologist]

Out of curiousity, does this crap still surprise you?

[leftbehindagain]

Not exactly? But I had a pretty high weird threshold coming in. This isn't even my first otherworldly space.

[pseudologist]

Mine either. And unless the population dynamics have changed a lot while I've been gone, dealing with weird shit is probably one of the criteria for entry.

But the principle's the same. You get used to it. After a while, you start noticing when something hasn't caught fire in the last 48 hours.

[leftbehindagain]

Yes, but there's not knowing and then there's not caring. If I end up not caring about the fires, there's a problem.

Last two in a row I was on caught fire, arguably Purgatory already was, and the Grid had its fair share of explosions.

[pseudologist]

Well, that's not a promising pattern.

[leftbehindagain]

To be fair, I don't think the other side had a fire problem this time - the Trumps have taken to splitting the group, two of the last three. [Naoki's not liking the pattern he's seeing there, considering it was once after a failure and once after a total hash at working as a group. He'd even considered saying something about that now, too, but in the end... now's not the time.]

But no, it really isn't.

[pseudologist]

Well, shit.

[There's a brief pause.]

Since you seem to have some idea of what happened to the other group, I'm going to assume they actually brought everyone back together this time, not counting the usual losses.

[leftbehindagain]

I've heard about Belljar - we haven't had a repeat of that, thankfully. No more attrition than usual. [It happened to include a few of his good friends this time, and that part sucks... but what can you do?]

I don't know a whole lot about the other group's stuff. Vampires were involved. And werewolves, and an election.

[pseudologist]

Blood-drinking horrors involved in politics? That's a little on the nose.

[leftbehindagain]

I do think I had an easier time handling the baby-dragon situation than I would have with the vampires. And considering most of what I ended up doing was keeping one of the Illuminants busy and hoping like hell she didn't realise we didn't belong there...

[Well, it was a pretty miserable experience. But vampires don't really sound any better.]

[pseudologist]

At least they were babies. Take it from someone who's been roped into bringing down a few of the big ones - you don't want to tangle with the parents.

[Wait a second...]

Wait. Did you say Illuminants?

[leftbehindagain]

Oh, so you caught the first round of fun in Dolorosa?

I think what we were mainly there to deal with was a parent dragon sneaking around trying to hatch her eggs, but the Illuminants regrouped, yeah. And between then and now, one of them found out about the Trumps.

And they broke into Liminal Space. It was that kind of a jaunt. Walkabout. Thing. The important thing is that the Illuminant who 'adopted' my best friend never noticed we weren't from there. [Naoki thinks he and Kanji can be proud of that much, at least.]

[thornsofmalkav]

They were electing a new Prince, since the last one had assisted suicided. About half of us posed as American elections monitors sent to help them, the other half just went to work with various vampire and werewolf households. It started out pretty well, but it turned out that one of the candidates was a mob boss who really didn't like it when another candidate's secretary asked him if he was circumcised at a Town Hall Meeting event, so he had the secretary iced and that started off a bunch of faction warfare. Also there was a Hunter around trying to kill supernaturals. And the local banker rigged the voting machines.

... but we ended up catching the Hunter, figuring out what to do about the rigged vote to ensure a smooth transition of power, teaching vampires how to get drunk for fun and profit, and pulling off pretty much a perfect Malik Gambit. So. Uh. Go us?

Nothing ended up on fire, anyway.

[Hey. This is the first time she's really explained to a bunch of people what happened in Sarmatia. So. That's something, right? Even though she's being really vague about who was who.]

[leftbehindagain]

Malik... Gambit?

[thornsofmalkav]

Oh. Right. That's my name for it. That's when you do such a good job of blending in as an Investigator that even after the Infiltrators are back they're still not sure if you were one of them or an Investigator until you say something--because you already are in some ways what you were pretending to be. Like, Malik really is a Middle Eastern mapmaking dude, just like 'Tazim' was. And I really am a vampire from America. I named the strategy after him because he did it first.

[pseudologist]

...I don't know whether it's comforting to realize that monster politics and Guild politics are largely indistinguishable, or really fucking disturbing.

[thornsofmalkav]

Why, do guys in your Guild put hits on other guys over dirty questions too?