un: bahamut | text

[oblige]

Good day, fellow Etrayans.

Concerning Antigone's warning regarding our real names, it occurs to me that we would benefit from collaborating on this front.

To that end, I wish to open discussion.

For those who have chosen a name, please respond with what you have selected, that we may know what to call you.

For those who have not, you may use this posting to discuss your ideas or invite suggestions from others.

As for myself, I shall be using "Lucien", the name of a character from a novel in my world.

Mission Names
Dion → Lucien
Antigone → Shadow
Dwayne → Harry M'Egg
Jayce → Prometheus
Sunday → Dominicus
Prompto → Vesper
Odin → Joss
Mayuko → Murasaki
Vax → Kalas
Clive → Crandall
Percival (Fredrickstein von Musel Klossowski de Rolo III) → Scanlan (Keylethus Pikegratia Taryon d’Shorthalt-Grogson, Heir to the Shattered Glory)
Samil → Whiskey
Noctgar → Navyth
Accelerator → Isuka
S.Rogers → Ruirthech
Nico → Slash Brightburn
Jason → Edmond
R.B. → Harker
Lady Vex'ahlia de Rolo → Velora
SquirrelPower → Sally Awesomelegs
Shinra → Evan
Emet-Selch → Eubulus
Vincent Valentine → Garm
Sciel → Céline
Vivi →
Gustave → Jean-Napoleon
Maelle → Esmé
Scott → James Bond / 007
Sleeper → Stevens
Joshua → Praeclarus
Zagreus → Dionysus
Gladio → Heliodorus
Apollo → Artemis
Dylan Brock → Reed Richards

Note: This list will remain available until the date of our deployment. At such time, it will be omitted as a precaution.

[ ooc: Free-for-all on responding to one another, of course. ]

Comments

[demigoth]

And then yank it out and fire it at someone else, and not shatter the shaft at any point. I'm no son of Apollo, but I know arrows don't work that way. If anyone requests Lord of the Rings, I want to have a showing where we're allowed to heckle and throw things at the screen when they do something stupid.

[ Which is... not as often as you'd think. Nico liked those well enough. ]

Noir? Like Angels With Dirty Faces? They have that here?

[oblige]

That strikes me as a fine idea. Audience participation of a sort.

[ Dion wouldn't mind it. Something like that brings to mind how plays would be performed for crowds that would comment or otherwise involve themselves. ]

I became aware of such films during a deployment to Earth. I'm uncertain whether the theatre here has that title, or those like it.

[demigoth]

Yes! Like a pantomime!

[ That would be fun, Nico's definitely in agreement and will be proposing it to Aurora at the next available opportunity. But first... ]

We get sent to Earth? I can go home?

[ He's so hopeful for a second. Then he remembers that his luck is never that good. The dream dies before begins. ]

Don't answer that. She probably doesn't deploy anyone to where they're from. They'd desert, and saving the universe is too important. I don't want to be tempted like that.

[oblige]

[ He hears that hope, and he hears it tempered. ]

Your instinct is surely correct. It would seem there are various Earths out there, and none I know of claimed it was their home.

[ Yet it was familiar to some, enough so that it was easy for them to blend in during that mission. ]

In my tenure, I've been on two missions to other worlds. Auriel will be the third.

[demigoth]

Right. The multiverse conceit.

[ Nico's willingness to believe in the multiverse loosely correlates to how well-rested he is. Right now: he's tired, and a little cranky, so the idea of more than one Earth... yuck. ]

Multiple Earths makes my head hurt, but at least if I wasn't stuck in a bell jar I could go to Long Island and check if I was on the right planet. Are they all pretty different? Auriel's the Fae Realm, so it's probably not like Earth? What was the third one?

[oblige]

I can hardly blame you. I...prefer not to contemplate something quite so difficult to fathom, when there's naught for it.

[ Dion does prefer not to think too deeply on the matter of potentially countless Valistheas and that despite their memories aligning they could somehow be from different ones. The prospect is too daunting.

Besides, supposedly none of them will recall this in the end. ]

The first world I was called to was Aphaia, in the midst of a mission. A world doomed to perish, so we were told, and the whole of its populace gamified death. If you did not entertain for an unceasing audience, your life was forfeit. I've heard tell of another called Moorecroft, but that was before my time.

[demigoth]

I'm... used to understanding things that most mortals don't, but it's a lot to take in. I could never talk about it again if I don't have to.

[ The idea that there's another Earth, or Earths upon Earths, where things are wildly different, it's borderline mind-breaking. Other worlds are a little easier to deal with. ]

Gamified death?

[ Nico looks beyond affronted at the notion of a world that takes death that as to make it a game, but Dion continues, and the teen at least thinks he understands. He's a Greek, so he still finds it kinda distasteful. ]

Sounds like Rome, with the performances they'd have in the Colosseum. But at least they grew out of it? Glad Aurora didn't think I was needed for that one.

[oblige]

Then we need not discuss it.

[ Dion is perfectly fine with that, having little to contribute to any deep discussion of potentially countless versions of worlds. There's also the matter of whether one could even tell whether they hailed from the same one, and it isn't a rabbit hole he cares to dive into.

On the other hand, the death games still rankle him all these moons later. He'd grown up viewing life as precious, especially with the encroaching Blight sapping that very life from the land itself. ]

I couldn't say I much cared for that world's customs. Evidently, we were deployed there despite there being no hope of its salvation simply to prove worlds were imperiled. An illustration, if you will.

[ His disapproval permeates his tone, despite an overt effort to be neutral in relaying that information. ]

I...admittedly found such practices foreign.

[demigoth]

[ Life is precious; Nico knew that before he had an intimate knowledge of the afterlife. He doesn't want to think of existing in a world where life was so cheap. He'd have to stop caring to get through a day. ]

So if we don't take it seriously enough, she'll send us somewhere worse? My world imperils itself every couple of months, I don't need her "help" believing that a world can be on the verge of destruction. And it's always people or gods in the end, but at least when it's people back home, they...

[ ... actually, Nico can't finish out that defense of humanity. Ancient Rome wasn't the worst of the worst; mortals don't care much for preserving life beyond theirs and the lives of the people they consider "theirs". ]

I wish it was foreign. It's just depressing.

[oblige]

To my knowledge, someone asked her for proof. It might well depend on whether someone thinks to ask once again... To that end, it may be worth discussing with her.

[ Heretofore, Dion's interactions with Aurora had been brief. He was polite, and he thinks her as bound by Echo's flawed system as the rest of them, but he hadn't sought out conversation outside of when she relayed information.

What had he to provide in conversation with their overseer, a being borne of technology the like of which perhaps only the Fallen may have come close to? ]

My world was itself withering, steadily so. Nations warred over dwindling resources, so I know not whether I could say my people are vastly better... But I did find the hopelessness of Aphaia disheartening, for they had given up.