thisavrou_log | A Spacemas Carol: December's Mod Event Log

A Spacemas Carol: December's Mod Event Log

Who: Anyone and Everyone
When: December 19 onwards
Where: Avagi... and beyond?
What: Your past, someone's present, and potential futures.
Warnings: Body horror and an associated image in the second part. Otherwise, label your content.

While the Ingress may have been destroyed, the energy powering it remains alive and well. The residents of Avagi know this intimately: from their own arrivals, from the portals that have appeared, and the short-lived changes (as well as longer-lived possessions) that have cluttered the station over the last few months. Recently, whatever force is manipulating this has even gone so far as to revive the dead—demonstrating, perhaps, an unwillingness to relinquish those it has brought to this place.

To say this entity is seasonal would probably be a mistake. In the heart of Avagi's storms, there are no stars to mark the seasons, much less connect them to a certain planet's holidays—or the literature thereon. Still, from luck or from intention, the current fluctuations comes with a certain theme...

Past

It starts at the turn of the station clock's midnight. Flickers at the edge of one's vision. Indistinct whispers, ghosting through walls and down corridors. Those who are sleeping will be untroubled, but the wakeful and wary can watch the light build: from flickers to pulses, from pulses to pools. Over several hours, silver mist fills rooms and corridors, varying from a thin veil to dense, obscuring fog. If you step into the mist, you'll feel a sense of displacement; of sound and color, energy and a shift of life. Ingress travel.

Except... not quite.

Shortly after entering the mist, you'll find yourself free of disorientation and apparently free of physical form, unable to interact with your surroundings. As a quasi-ghost, you've been transported to somewhere and somewhen—a location from the past, back on a world of someone’s origin or from any place you've been since first arriving through the Ingress. While these experiences can vary wildly, some things remain consistent:

The past matters: These visits to the past are not repeats of idle afternoons—each has emotional significance to someone currently on Avagi.
The past cannot be changed: As real as any given scenario seems, you're fundamentally incapable of altering it. The past event will play out as it did in real life and dissipate when it reaches an ending.
Trying has consequences: Attempting too hard to interfere increases the emotional significance, and will consequently draw onlookers further into the scene. You may find yourself anchored to any participant in the scene: first physically (experiencing the scene through their eyes) and then emotionally (experiencing their emotions and thoughts). If drawn in too deeply, you may lose track of your own nature during the experience, drowning in the sense of being someone else..
You are not alone: While immersed in a scene, you'll see nothing but the history playing out. However, at the its conclusion, the fog will once again displace the world around. As it melts away, you'll find themselves back in Avagi's halls—and face to face with whoever else was also viewing that piece of the past.

Present

Whether through one memory or several, eventually, the fog disperses. Only a faint mist remains, gathered in corners of the station's halls. It's simple enough to avoid, and nothing obstructs efforts to return to your rooms, your friends, or any other destination. Nothing, that is, except finding them.

The layout of the halls has shifted. The clutter you so painstakingly cleared is back. The GPS on your ACE mistakenly reports that you are floating off in space far outside the station, and any efforts to locate or call your companions results in glitchy static. Something is interfering with your calls—more effectively than the distance between worlds.

Inference and intuition are all you have to put together the pieces. The layout has changed, but the construction stayed the same. You're still on the former Ingress station. But not the same area that you called home. This is a different section of Avagi.

An inhabited one.

Dank, warm air pulses in and out of the vents in odd rhythms. Water damage stains the walls, and some seep dark liquid. There's an odd symphony in the distance: four notes, hummed to a pattern that buzzes in the back of your head. It's possible to wait it out. But if you do explore, you might come across your friends. And together, you might find the source.

Further in, a wall of flesh fills the pathways, rising and falling with intermittent, massive draws of air. A fluid wash of features glues it to the bulkheads. Claws and eyes, hands and faces: half-made bodies shifting in and out of recognition with each pulse of breath. And always with the same gold glow beneath the skin. It's a familiar shade, to those who witnessed Thisavrou's destruction.

It's the being who destroyed it.

Those who flee will escape her notice. Those who wait may watch in secret for a time. Mother's focus seems to be elsewhere...or, perhaps, something else is hiding your presence here from her.

Any attack on Mother's flesh shape, or any overt effort to draw her attention, will meet violent, immediate reprisal. You'll experience an immobilizing psychic force before the flesh consumes you. But whether you hide or fight or run, your time on this section of the station will end in the same way: a burst of brilliant, clear light providing transport back home.

Future

You flash back to reality amidst a burst of light—but this time, you recognize your surroundings. You have returned to the Avagi you know, and the silver mist that filled the halls has cleared.

Over the next few days, most of Avagi will settle back into a state of normalcy. The ACEs are working properly, and station residents will have all the time they need to compare notes on their experiences—and, perhaps, on any plans to act on what they've learned.

Avagi is not as empty as it seemed. And one place in particular will remain changed in the wake of the event. The Ingress Memorial, once inactive, has come to life, emitting a swirl of silver light that shifts and flickers, like the light of the portal it once contained. For the next five days, it will offer a vision to anyone approaching it: a single, brief scene from their potential future.

Players have the following options:

Canon future: Your character catches a glimpse of their future if they were to return from Avagi to their own world. This consists of a canon event.
Avagi future: Your character catches a glimpse of their own future on Avagi. This can be a short-term future (i.e. an actual vision of a future scene you plan to play out), or a potential longer-term one in which they stayed on Avagi for months or years.
Storm future: Your character catches a glimpse of themselves as a Mirtos—a desiccated husk and incarnation of the storm's hunger. As seen in Thisavrou's destruction, these creatures are carried by the storms and destroy all they come across.

The visions can observed by any present when the Memorial is approached. And while the past is fixed, the future is always capable of being altered. What will you do regarding yours?

[OOC: Check out the OOC post for more information!]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[He finally turns to meet their gaze directly, blank-faced and nonplussed.]

It's... returned. Mostly, I think. As far as I know.

[It could be a weak attempt at a joke, because ha ha, how is he supposed to know what he's forgotten if he can't remember it? But he finds himself caught on the first thing Chara said.]

What do you mean, it mattered once?

[As far as he knows? Well, pardon them for not taking him at his word. It's not the most reliable thing, these days. How do you know how much memory you have lost, after all, if you've lost it?]

...never mind. I'm sure that, on the off chance that it actually did, it certainly doesn't any longer.

['Tis the season to Tsun Harder, apparently.]

[Lavellan makes an annoyed noise at the back of his throat. Cassandra would be proud.]

Chara, I told you, I've remembered most everything. It's just some of the finer details I'm still unsure of.

[He almost stops there.]

I still don't know what you're talking about.

[What? They're not about to admit that they care about him or anything. That would be absurd, and also incorrect, and also you'll never take them alive.]

[They switch gears with an annoyance that they hope sounds as genuine as it feels.]

Nothing, save for that your persistent ability to blame yourself and then proceed to take matters into your own hands as in compensation has the annoying tendency of making things much worse for everyone, yourself included, as opposed to making things simpler or fixing them as you seem to hope they would.

[He closes his eyes. Breathes. Reflects on his conversation with Shepard, just a few days prior.

Chara might be forgiven for assuming the conversation over. When he speaks again, it's almost too quiet to be heard.]

I never asked anyone to care.

[Because that's the only reason his penchant for self-destruction would be a problem, isn't it?]

No one asked you to care, either.

[But they both know it is far from that simple, now, is it? One is seldom asked to care. One is seldom incentivized in the conventional fashion, the way one might broker a trade of services. One does not even correctly realize, at times, that they've even begun to care until the notion of living without something strikes them as fiercely as any physical blow.]

[Something. Or someone.]

Yes they did.

[It's not the same thing at all, but he can't help his mind from straying there. It's almost as if, now that the shell has been cracked, he has no ability anymore to stop all these old resentments from bubbling over. And there is so much he's come to resent.]

The world was ending and they told me to fix it. Everyone in the world was looking to me and I had to care, because it was me or nobody.

And now I guess I can't turn that off.

[What a familiar story.]

[Only instead of a small human child, forced to make sacrifices they did not wish to make, it is a man who was only slightly better at pretending that the burden did not weigh so heavily upon his shoulders - so heavily as to be unbearable.]

It is not a personal failure on your part, that suffering exists in the world.

Isn't it?

[For maybe the first time in the entire conversation, he raises his eyes to meet theirs, unblinking.]

They actually thought I was divine, you know? That I was chosen by Andraste Herself, and they expected me to make miracles. That I didn't--isn't that a failure?

[There's no guile, no sarcasm in his voice; he's almost painfully sincere, if such a thing can be. He's actually looking for a real answer.]

[Oh, for the love of - ]

Small wonder that you and Frisk get along as you do. You have so much in common.

[This thing that they both do. Taking personal responsibility for the state of the entire world. Enduring the impossible, unendurable weight of everyone's sins, everyone's lives, everyone's suffering. Good thing that Chara is completely and totally above this kind of behavior, and definitely isn't guilty of the exact same shitto.]

[If Chara's words are taken with the derision they're meant, Lavellan certainly doesn't show it.]

What was I supposed to do? Walk away?

I have to assume that you are at least aware of the possibility that there are more than two options in nearly every given situation; that people are not divided solely into saviors and bystanders, and that an inability to help does not translate into personal fault.

[WOW GOOD THING CHARA IS SUPER NOT SUSCEPTIBLE TO THIS HMMMMMMMM]

Frisk is a child. What’s your excuse?

[He looks at Chara, finally. He's almost appalled that they were seriously suggesting it would have been acceptable to do less.

But then, they don't know, do they? He's hardly told anyone. They don't know.]

It had to be me. I was the only one with the power to fix things. [He rubs the palm of his left hand with the thumb of his right, apparently unconscious of it.]

It was me or nobody. I was hand-picked by a god I don't believe in to save the world. That's what they all said.

[Though, in reality, it was an accident, caused by a different god he didn't believe in from the one everyone had thought. Knowing that doesn't make it any easier to sleep at night.]

[What a familiar sentiment. It has to be me. I was chosen. I have a special power, so is it not my responsibility to do the right thing? Easier said, by far, commented upon by an external observer, than done. They know that well. They have lived it.]

And those same rules apply here. Is that it?

[What are they even talking about anymore? Memory? Philosophy? Everything? Does it matter, in the abstract?]

Better me than anyone else, if it comes to it.

[He finally shores up; his voice manages to sound focused. Bitter in that, but focused.]

I'll say it again, I don't understand why you would care. And I do remember now--

[Then he trails off, and for a moment it might seem like he's done. But he can't leave it there. Even with the history between them. Or especially.]

I'm--sorry. [Though he's not quite sure what he's apologizing for.]

[He doesn't understand why they would care? Well, congratulations - that makes two of them! They don't understand either. Especially because he adds that little aside, the fact that he remembers, and there's a moment where their gaze breaks away and they cannot look at him for fear of what they might inadvertently communicate by doing so.]

[So they look away.]

I don't...care. It's the principle of it. That's all.

[Very convincing.]

...

When did that happen?

[The state of mind he's in, he might as well let himself believe it. So he does.]

A few days. A week, maybe. I... asked Shepard what it was I had forgotten.

So she--helped me.

[He still isn't sure what to make of that conversation, or everything that resulted from it. He still just feels numb, uncertain, untrusting of himself and his own convictions. He hates feeling this malleable, reminds him of--

But no, it's a good thing, isn't it? If he needs to restructure all over again, then this is where he must be. He needs to find his own truth amid all the confusion.]

I think.

[She brought him back.]

[She excels at that sort of thing. She places others in her debt and then refuses to collect. She does it simply because she can, and therefore, she has to. Determination, polished to a different but no less potent extreme.]

...you erased me. That was very rude of you, by the by.

[It sounds more sullen than it does indignant.]

[He sighs, but for once, it doesn't sound exasperated. It just sounds tired.]

I made myself forget everything, Chara. Not just you.

[But he alights on a question, now that they're on the topic. Something he'd never brought up with them directly, because by the time they'd sorted themself out he'd made a mess all over again. But there's no point in evading it now.

He wants to word it differently, because he's trying this thing--he really is!--of not constantly blaming himself for things other people insist aren't his fault. But it's a struggle now and it will only continue to be, and it comes out wrong.]

I'm sorry for leaving you behind.

It’s hardly as though you intended to. You made yet another in a long string of bad choices and hoped it would turn out for the best. This is unsurprising, your history considered.

[Look at them, being all scintillatingly rational. See, now no one can accuse them of being petty. Clearly their self-awareness of their own flaws eclipses any genuine need to fix them or address them in the long term. Obviously.]

Was it worth it?

[Lavellan shrinks into himself. Another in a long string of bad choices. Well, it's true, isn't it? Was he expecting Chara to forgive him? Tell him it wasn't as bad as he feared? Even if it was in character for them, he isn't owed forgiveness from anyone. He may be trying to dwell less, but that still doesn't change.

And here they are, back to the problem at hand.]

No.

I should have stayed. I should have let them take me instead of you.

I doubt that would have made any of it easier, or better, where either of us are concerned.

[Why bother with shoulds and should nots? It is the same reason they do not bother with apologies. There is no altering that which has been stitched into place. Perhaps, in another timeline adjacent to this one, they could have spun back the clock and timed every choice perfect, and gotten as many second chances that are possible.]

[But, no. That is not their talent, nor is it their prerogative. Good children get second chances.]

[Not bad ones.]

Like it or not, there is no changing that now.

[He scoffs at that.]

I doubt that. They'd already fucked me up, they couldn't possibly do worse.

[And yet they could have, and he knows it. That's why he'd run. He doesn't remember the decision itself, the thoughts that led to it--only the image of Chara falling, and them advancing, and the fear. And then he was elsewhere, and in its place there was shame.

But that just proves his point, doesn't it? Better him than them. Better the coward who would save his own skin over a child.

He's trying not to think like this anymore. He's trying. But the universe keeps throwing arguments to the contrary back in his face.

And if he doesn't dwell, if he can't figure out what he did wrong, how can he do better in the future?]

I would not invite the universe to inflict yet more upon you. You are more than capable of doing that yourself.

[It is easier by far to bite out, to dig into still fresh wounds, than it is to risk admitting to something that already was an embarrassment, when it first occurred. Imagine them reduced to pained and desolate frustration, unmoored, right in front of him! How absurd is that, right?]

It happened. I suggest you learn to live with it without allowing it to consume you utterly.

[There he goes again, making it about him. As he does.

He closes his eyes and reminds himself of what should be the real object of his concern.]

And how are you living with it?

[The last time they had a real conversation, Chara still thought he was a figment of their imagination.]

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