001 // text; username: grollschwert

[hauntedsavior]

What's up.
Are we doing introductions now? I guess we're doing introductions.
Name's Anna. Professional city defender and mostly robot girl.
Coming here from a place called Recolle that I'm pretty sure no one here knows about, which is cool.

Never been much for stuff like this, so, like, I don't know.
Anyone needs a katana at their side, look me up. I'm pretty damn good at it.
I might not know what's going on here, but far as I'm concerned, this is where I live now and it makes sense for everyone if I actually try to keep it safe.

And since I'm in full spaghetti at the wall mode right now, lemme just throw out some words, see if it triggers anything for any of you guys.
Zee Carlisle. Clarence Vanderweele. Layers of reality. Retrospec.
The Geteilts.
Nothing?
Yeah, didn't think so.

Anyway, yeah, flag me down if you see me on the streets and need some protection or whatever. I'm five ten and I only have one eye. I'm hard to miss.

Comments

[hauntedsavior]

"All the powers of the old world have entered into eldritch alliance to exorcise this spectre: Doorway and Reckoning, Argonaut and Dorothea, night walkers and blood ministers."
Honestly it's a shock how accurate he got it.
More of a poet and a prophet than a philosopher.
Wait, no, that was Bob Marley.

Oh, right, I'm typing all this bullshit AT someone. My bad.

[onerthes]

You are going to fit in just fine I think. A lot of the people here rely on a certain amount of that.

That reminds me. I need to look up Doorway at some point.

[hauntedsavior]

Yeah, if nothing else, there's gotta be some pretty good lore about these guys.
Is it still lore if they're real? Or is that just, like, their backstories.
Maybe I'll go bug some people about their myth-history too.

[onerthes]

A lot of it seems to be written by the disciples, and I'm not sure I like their perspective.

Actually, if you want to see some of the history of the nightmare, I have a means. I carried some pieces of the dream over. Fair warning, though, the images were disturbing and they only say so much.

[hauntedsavior]

Depends on how much of it is relevant these days.
If the dream, or nightmare or whatever, collapsed around everyone and the baby is different now, no telling how much the old information still matters.
No way of knowing either way, I guess.

[onerthes]

It may only be of particular value to scholars of history, in the avenue of not repeating it. But it is better to have them than to have a false narrative rise up.

Our needs are a touch more pressing than history however, I think.

[hauntedsavior]

Yeah, careful with putting anything before history like that or you might get kicked out of my parents' house.
I guess learning from history matters, sure, fine.
I've got a steel stomach. Let me know what you've got.

[onerthes]

Believe me. I'm with your household. It's only survival that puts the history aside for a moment. Never forget your history.

Hmmm. So, if you want food, I've apparently got a lovely batch of mushrooms ready for sautee, but if you want food for the mind, what I currently have are a set of devices with memories storied inside of them. Probably the most valuable may be information about Mother Superior. I believe she may be around here somewhere, and it's wise to be wary of that one, whatever she's calling herself these days.

[hauntedsavior]

I meant metaphorically. Not really interested in finding new places to eat, but thanks for the offer.
Mother Superior, huh? Glad to know these Pthumerians are as humble as they are effable.
You got some cliff notes on how Mommy Dearest used to operate?
I assume it was a lot of blood and malice. That seems like it fits a name like that.

[onerthes]

Mother Superior was a wretched, violent woman lost in her rage as she was consumed by the remorse for killing her own granddaughter when her powers went out of control. Betrayed by her spouse's mad bids for power, watching the people she swore to protect dying at the hands of monsters conjured by a child's nightmares, she was at her wits end and tried to put her into a coma to figure out how to fix the problem, and killed her.

She snapped and, seeking a target for her rage, blamed those that the child's nightmares had trapped in the dream. She tried to teach us twisted moral lessons at the hands of monsters meant to represent what she saw as our moral weaknesses. She sought to destroy us, to get to what was left of her daughter and 'end it,' not realizing that she'd already killed her years ago.

She was an insane, rabid beast who helped create the madness of the world, and died at the hands of her daughter, only to be reborn again in penance. I'm not sure where she is in this world, not yet anyway, but she's doubtless here.

Be careful. A great deal of rage bubbles beneath that woman's surface.

[hauntedsavior]

Huh. Sounds pretty fucked up.
Guess I can see how that kind of thing can break a person, but it doesn't excuse, you know.
Everything else.
Didn't know her, and I don't get involved in family problems anymore, but I don't know if she deserves whatever penance she's getting here.
Sounds like it would be way easier for everyone else if she'd just died.
But since when is the universe set on making stuff easy for us?

[onerthes]

Looking upon it all? It made a certain amount of sad sense. We were trapped in the grief of a family who happened to have incredible power, grief that had taken on a life of its own as a child god died before her time.

At this point, with any luck? You are just stuck with the ashes of her family's problems. Julia is dead. Nothing can change that now, and the dream is done. We have risen among the ashes left behind by her nightmare. Thankfully it isn't all bad either.

[hauntedsavior]

Yeah, well.
You'd be surprised how long ashes can smolder for.
's all I'm saying.
Especially if the flame was burning hotter than anything else there just before it died out.

[onerthes]

A very poetic way of putting it.

Also, almost certainly accurate. Her ashes burned fiercely, and the world is scarred by their passing, so there's bound to be 'something' left behind.

[hauntedsavior]

I have a way sometimes.
Just gotta find the last ones and stomp 'em out.
If that's what we want to do. If that's the right way to handle it.

[onerthes]

Warm yourself by the coals for a moment before you bring out the boot.
we might need a little bit of heat in the long run.

Just think of that as me saying "Keep your options open and think before you judge." This place can play tricks on you.

[hauntedsavior]

Yeah.
Different kinds of tricks than Recolle pulled for most people, I bet.
But nothing I haven't had the misfortune of running into.
Running out of body parts for them to take, though. If that's how they work.

[onerthes]

Watch your head. They have a way of knocking it off from time to time. But thankfully losing body parts isn't what I'd call a "common" experience.

Based on what I heard of Wonderland, I believe "The more things change, the more they stay the same." The tricks will feel similar probably, but not identical. A lot of blood here, after all, and that place had an obsession with mirrors. I saw someone's memories of it.

[hauntedsavior]

Oh, this place has memory shit too?
Or Deerington did, I guess.
Sweet, hope everyone's ready for a super confusing time if they start probing me.

[onerthes]

In my case, the losing of my head was quite literal at one point.
But the dream did favor memory issues from time to time. I would say about every three months or so, something might torment or plague our perceptions of self and leave us confused. It was a surreal fugue that I suspect came more often because it was more effective at terrifying us than physical monsters.

Why, if I may ask?

[hauntedsavior]

Call me Elliot Page and Willem Dafoe, 'cause I've got two souls.
You know, like that shitty video game they were both in?
Whatever, it's not important. I do have two souls, though.
Two souls, two sets of memories. One's more patchwork than the other.
But that other soul's also the reason that if you chop off my head, all that's left is gonna be a robot.

[onerthes]

Why? After all Anna is so much prettier, hehe. I'm afraid that I tend not to try and know "Shitty Video Games." I have a bit of bad experience when it comes to finding out things about them, but I will take your word for it.

[Man, at least her mousepad hadn't followed her to this place...]

Ah, I think I sort of understand. It is as if you are two people, two lives within one personhood. And one of those was as a robot? Would that be accurate?

[Look, it was a testimony to the fact that she'd heard weirder things that this only phased her a little bit.]

[hauntedsavior]

It's not "as if" I'm that, it's actually that.
I'm Anna Amarande, normal everyday human.
She's YoRHa Type-A No. 2, futuristic combat android.
Together we're... I don't know.
I don't have a cute name for the two of us.
I'm still myself, and she's her, and she's inside me, I guess. But I was "meant" to be her, so that's why my soul resonates with hers and changed everything about me.

I don't know. I was always the weird one in Recolle, I think.
No one else really thought about the person they were merging with like I did.

[onerthes]

I don't know that there would be an easy way to describe what you've experienced. But, I think you are who you are, even if you are two people at once as well. Anna will do well, if that is what you want to be, even if she is also the other.

I don't think that's odd at all. I'm more surprised that they wouldn't want to know more?

[hauntedsavior]

Nah, it's more than just wanting to know more.
Found out more about A2's life when I kept getting her memories and I just... I don't know.
Wanted to help give her a better ending to her story.
Lots of other people treated it like it was some unknowable curse, which, like, yeah, I get it for some of them.
You get back memories of being the reason your world ended, that'll fuck with you.
But A2... I don't know. She deserved better.
She changed my life, so I wanted to change hers.