abraxaslogs | An Evening Gathering

WHO: Anyone welcome to wander around Castle Thorne!
WHAT: A little roundtable-townhall-mingle, a space to share information and discuss the Situation
WHEN: post-Horizon, after the new arrivals turn up so they can join in
WHERE: Castle Thorne's Dining Hall
NOTES: A little like a group therapy session but not, all characters will be invited to share anything they would like about their experiences and ask each other questions. Afterwards the group are free to mingle and discuss freely (just reply to the post itself). Let's bond, learn, complain about our new body parts and swap the hot goss!

The invitation spreads easily enough among the Welcomed (and those of the formerly imprisoned who have since earned a pardon), thanks to the cheerful efforts of everyone's favourite bard and the ever-grinding rumour mill: tonight, anyone interested in participating is invited to remain in the dining hall after the evening meal to discuss recent events. Depending on how far along the game of telephone the invitation is by the time it reaches any one person, further details may be difficult to pin down. It is clear at least that this meeting isn't being organised by Ambrose or anyone else from Thorne, though there's no effort to keep it secret from the inhabitants of the castle either. A call to arms this is not. This is not the venue for plotting against the establishment— seditionist talk is best left to the privacy of the Horizon.

Anyone choosing to attend will find the evening meal proceeds as it usually does. As the plates are cleared, though, the table becomes the setting for something of an informal discovery session, a meeting of minds. Everyone here is welcome to take a turn to speak if they would like, and to ask any questions they hope someone else may be able to answer. As the imprisoned are unable to attend, a recording is being made. However, going on the record is optional. Anyone who would rather keep their thoughts transient and non-incriminating is welcome to speak up without fear of being caught on tape.

The meeting breaks up once everyone has had a chance to speak, leaving plenty of opportunity for less structured discussion. Hopefully everyone can go to bed tonight feeling a little more informed and a little less alone...

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Your memories?

[Sasarai lifts his chin and sits back, more alert. His brow knits with thoughtful worry.]

You mean it took your memories of being there, I assume? What can you remember?

Quite the opposite. I mean that when we passed into that place that it became all we knew. We knew our names and our purpose there—to claim it—, but not where we had come from or what might have occurred to us before we arrived.

[Clean slates with which to make fools of themselves, he does not say, though it's clear from the stiff line of his put on smile and the grim not-really-humor that he harbors some revulsion over or resentment for the experience.]

You've had such dreams, haven't you? Where you are yourself, but then again are not.

Yeah, I guess.

The ones where you know your own mind and nothing else but it doesn't matter...

[He lowers his gaze and folds his arms across his chest. Everyone has had dreams like that, but not everyone has had dreams like that where they were living through the memories of a crystal fused into their own bodies.

Sasarai is pretty certain he dreams like most people do, but at times the True Earth Rune makes things...complicated.]

If that's the sort of magic that place has then...

[A small grimace as he taps his face thoughtfully. It could mean the Singularity is erasing identities, or it could be that the dream-like state comes from being near a relic that is, supposedly, the only constant in all worlds.

He doesn't finish the sentence, but his brow creases slightly.]

[Across the table, the man with the dark eyes tips his head in some universal sign of both curiosity and expectation. Oh?, it says. And, Go on. The death's head arcanum is clear in its stitching at his shoulder; that's meant to imply he has some measure of patience, doesn't it?]

[Sasarai is so lost in thought that he doesn't notice the other man's expectant gaze at first. It takes him a moment to glance over and respond with a sheepish grin.]

I don't know.

I don't know what that sort of magic might imply...

It could be something sinister; a sign that it is trying to take over our minds, or it could be that the waking dream is just a side effect of being so close to something that can exert its influence on all worlds simultaneously...

[At this he makes a vague gesture.]

Really, without studying it myself all I can do is guess and that's not very helpful.

[Ralston's hm of acknowledgement is a low thing, a brief notation punctuated by some minor rise and fall of his dark eyebrows. If he doesn't seem particularly transfixed by these scattershot suspicions, it's because he isn't. There is nothing quite so dull as a dozen ideas meant to account for all possibilities.

For a moment, it seems quite possible that the unremarkable man across the table from Sasarai who has spent so much of the evening saying hardly anything at all may use this moment and his apparent disinterest to slide back into obscurity. Like he might here turn his attention elsewhere and so succinctly disengage from the this fledgling conversation rather like a surly child unimpressed by a toy. Instead—he lifts his chin from the support of his curled hand.]

What manner of study? I take it the workings of the arcane are a familiar concept in wherever you're from.

Well, for starters it would help if I saw it in person.

[He thoughtfully drums his fingers on the table.]

If I could feel this pull and this dream state myself then I wouldn't have to rely on the accounts of others.

[He sighs.]

Seeing it might be enough for me to know what sorts of questions to ask, anyway.

I'm a mage, a pretty good one too. Back home some of the brightest scholars in the world taught me theoretical magic.

Of course, that was all the magic of my world.

...Still, if this Singularity really is a primal source of all magic in all worlds or whatever then some of that magic has to be similar.

[Something in that makes him smile. It isn't an all together pleasant expression. Rather, there is some sense of falsehood in it—how it doesn't reach Ralston's dark eyes, how the curve is a little unfriendly, how it comes at the right time to punctuate the brightest scholars. How thrillingly grotesque it is that all academics in every place describe themselves so.]

Perhaps if you explained the theory of your theoretical magic, I might describe it to you in familiar terms. I'm something of a scholar myself.

Really?

You want me to explain magic theory to you?

[He arches a brow, skeptical that there are many people who would understand his explanations. In his own not very humble mind he tends to be the most clever man in the room. But he's open to being proven wrong.]

Okay, but I'm not a very good teacher.

The basic idea behind it all is that there are many worlds. The existence of this place and our summonings already suggests that this theory is true, but even where I am from there was little doubt.

We call the expanse of universes the Infinity. If the Singularity really is a source of power and the force that created the Infinity then that could be a reason for the dream-like feeling of being so close to it. There is no set reality around it, instead it is fabricating realities based on the minds of the people who enter the Horizon. Our consciousness gives form to the formless, or something like that.

....But as I said, it's just theory at this point.

An Evening Gathering

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

apologies; work schedule devouring me

I know this feeling

no subject

no subject