PLAYER PLOT | Forgetti Catchall, now in the right comm

[wythersake]

WHO: Ennaris Tavane, Julius, Bastien, Viktor, Clarisse La Rue + OTA
WHAT: Strangers arrive at the Gallows.
WHEN: A week in Haring.
WHERE: The Gallows / elsewhere
NOTES: Check out this OOC Post for details.

This is a catchall post for threads with or about the forgotten characters plot. Feel free to thread about it elsewhere as well!

• OOC Info
• Rookery Post

 

Comments

[cozen]

"Sure," Bastien says, with a preliminary pause and skeptical glance up that communicates he is agreeing so easily only for expediency.

Maybe he's still kind of salty about Clarisse shoving her way into giving them all a violence-tinged reintroduction to the Gallows instead of stepping back to plan first. (Maybe this is not fair at all. Maybe he should have done a consult before leaving them all behind, or before returning only to be a blatant and unruly liar whenever anyone tried to speak to him.)

"But in the meantime," waiting for this thing there's no point in arguing will or won't ever happen, "the war is not going to wait."

[grindset]

At this table, Bastien is not the only one harbouring saline remnants of their arrival, though in Viktor's case it's less about specific behaviours. That Clarisse immediately got herself into a stupid fight was not unexpected; that she was given this specific occasion to do so falls under a category of offensive first defined in a ruin of Elvhenan roughly two years past.

Viktor is neither eating from the bowl set down before him (with no thanks to whoever did so, only a glower, sidelong, one eyebrow raised in pique), nor pretending at it with spoon clutched in anger. His hands are quite relaxed on the table, actually.

(Fuck the war: a thing he does not say aloud.)

"Without our only written record of the event, the avenues for working at it are severely lacking."

All right, maybe it is a little bit about specific behaviours.

[laruetheday]

Et tu, Viktor? Clarisse shoots him a glance before returning to her food.

"They're already getting confused about the things they don't remember." This is, if not great, at least a little promising. "Our names are still all over the records here. Someone at some point is going to have to just—" A shrug. "Admit to themselves that we've been telling the truth this entire time."

It's that simple! And in the meantime, they'll keep integrating themselves into Riftwatch. Again.

[cozen]

"Admitting it won't make them remember," Bastien says. He pulls the cigarette from his mouth for this. "We are not going to go back to normal lives — "

Normal relationships, normal basically-marrieds.

" — because people take our word for it. It will still be wrong. So," something. He doesn't know. He doesn't know what that means or what they should do. Maybe Viktor knows. Julius. This isn't sexism, this is everyone in the party over the age of thirty being a man. Isaac —

An unbidden thought he cannot immediately make sense of.

[grindset]

Bastien, or whatever Bastien is calling himself today, is correct: should the effect persist, normal will never return. Not even with time. Something like it may settle over their old lives, like layers of silt, but what came before will always remain. Gripes aside, the idea of letting this happen without making some effort to resolve it is not one he is willing to entertain.

"Going by what we have encountered to date, in terms of magic effect, there are two main possibilities. One is an attack on the mind—either our memories, or the memories of those who stayed behind, have been altered. The second," and here he draws a fortifying breath, "is that we've been displaced to another timeline. This would be similar to the result of our efforts after the disaster at Granitefell."

[laruetheday]

Clarisse feels a cold wave of anxiety roll over her at the thought that it might be their memories, not everyone else's, that are wrong. But no—that can't be it, because she's seen her stuff in her room and their names written in the records. Unless they're actively hallucinating right now, possible but unlikely, it's everyone else who's the problem.

"Our stuff is here. It's not us. Wouldn't all that be missing if we were in another timeline?"

Selfishly, she wants Viktor, or at least somebody, to figure this out, not just because they're all demoralized but because it hurts her head when she starts thinking too hard about timelines and magic and the consequences thereof.