agogelogs | DO BETTER,

Entry tags:

DO BETTER,

WHO? Everybody! Including fourth wall visitors.
WHAT? HRHR and swap shenanigans, among other things.
WHEN? 12 XII, Year 6 of Sanaliel's reign.
ANYTHING ELSE? Please warn for anything besides physical violence and move to a personal journal if it's beyond PG-13.

BE MORE, DO MORE;

check your blood pressure

READ THE LEMURIA INFOPAGE.

STRANGE THINGS ARE AFOOT

You've been in Lemuria a little while now, trying to fit in, assimilate, and survive. But on the dawn of the twelfth day of the twelfth month of Lemuria's third and final season, something strange happens.

You wake, but it's as though your mind isn't your own. Or maybe you stayed up all night and felt the change, in the AM hours before it's so late it becomes early. A mental stirring, a feeling that only gets worse as it goes on, no matter what you tried to do and how you tried to halt it. Whatever the case, you're in its sway: Lemuria has become a hive mind.

Your memories are no longer private. Your powers are no longer your own. The barrier between you and everyone else is gone as easy as thinking. In a flash, just looking at someone allows you to instantly understand their thoughts, or encourages their memories to suddenly become your memories, too. It's instantaneous, like the memory has always been there, like it truly happened for you. Once upon a time, it was tangible.

It isn't a perfect science, however. While the intention is there, what exactly you experience is fuzzier. Your scouts will eventually chalk up the inconsistency of the experience (why do some hold up better against it than others?) to individuality and the BCEs, but who knows, really.

IS ANYBODY OUT THERE?

Stranger still, when you venture out to see the rest of the city, the city is calm and silent, like a perfectly preserved relic or a dream. The average citizen is dead asleep, in their beds or in the streets, whether they collapsed walking, riding a hoverbike, or driving a vehicle.

There are accidents, eerily still besides smoke curling from the wreck, with no paramedics on the scene. When someone dies, they die as unaware as everyone around them.

Besides you, of course.

For anyone who dies, their memories remain out of reach; otherwise, you might very well see the past of any Lemurian citizen you pass. Even if their hopes and misfortunes don't survive with them for the night, they might survive with someone else.

In the midst of the sleeping city, you can try and help those in need. They won't wake up and you'll probably never get a thank you, but bandaging wounds sure would be nice of you.

A CITIZEN'S ADDRESS

Not long after the sun rises, a post goes up on the network:

@ASHOLE | @ALL

something got seriously fucked up holy shit
were doing our best to figure it out but honestly? it seems like some kind of technomagical intercurrent based on hypothetical thaumaturgic mnemomancy
uhhh in laymans terms somebodys fucking with memories but you knew that right?
the thing is theres somnomantic undercurrents as well
only thing i can figure for why were still awake and theyre not is because of the bces
they havent been invented yet, but theyre designed to protect us from things like the sleeping shit
so we arent being affected exactly the same way as the lemurians, either
but thats got its own problems because uh
you know how were undercover spies in a volatile period of time and shit
well we aint the only ones
the regency-to-be has guys hanging around here and they got bces too
vega's already run into a couple

be fucking careful
and for the love of GOD dont go to the bolthole
youll lead them right to us

ill update with better intel as i get it
i have some theories but i wanna run a few tests

I WANNA ROCK AND ROLL ALL NIGHT

So despite all the sleeping people and the horroresque quiet, you're not alone.

Walking around in broad daylight is a dead giveaway to Regency spies that you have a BCE. And they will attack. They're dressed as civilians and seem better prepared for the situation, lurking in the shadows and staying out of sight. Some of them may tail you for a very long time before waiting for the right moment to make a move. Some may leap out as soon as you reveal yourself. Each fights with their own style and aim to kill.

They're equipped largely with blasters similar to yours and they don't, for once, have power nullifies. They do have superhuman strength, speed, senses, and healing, so watch out.

Some may engage in conversation, but it's largely of the trashtalk variety. It's not impossible to have a genuine talk with one or two (feel free to NPC them as you like and ask if you need any specific information on something they would or wouldn't say, but really, it's up to you), but it is unlikely. They are consummate fighters.

They're trying to find the source of COST's boltholes around the city, and take out as many COST operatives as possible in the process. Why don't you return the favor?

Ooor maybe you lead them right to the bolthole. Somebody's always gotta be that guy.

I'M A BELIEVER

During all of this (and maybe despite it), there are missions. Their exact timing is up to you; while they take place around the hive mind overtaking Lemuria, they don't necessarily happen during it—barring, of course, the one where you save the day and bring down Fafnir.

You can use this event to your advantage or disadvantage, through gaining someone else's memories or knowledge, or adapting to a set of powers you haven't spent a lifetime honing. The Lemurian people are a silent wellspring of information; even the most oblivious has an intimate understanding of their home and outlying territories that COST can't replicate. And, well, an unconscious person is an easier target than a conscious one.

READ THE LEMURIA INFOPAGE.

NAV. NETWORK LOGS OOC MEMES PLURK

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

[@ASHOLE: Ashere can't be found in person, but feel free to reply to his shitty bulletin; he's a very diligent texter.]
[@STARBOY: Vega just wants to get this over and done with, but if you have questions, he'll answer them. Inasmuch as he ever does, anyway.]

A. Strange memories
[Chiron's memories are what he might personally consider a danger to COST. He is and isn't himself. He puts other Chiron at risk as more and more people can see flashes of the god Apollo with a young centaur, instructing the youth in art, in medicine, in music, in prophecy, in archery. A young thing growing stronger, stronger, stronger in all of it, until in turn roles are reversed.

The students blend together. Achilles with his green hair and keen eyes. Great Heracles with strength and attentiveness to spare. Asclepius with his thirst for knowledge and skilled hands, a healer if there was ever meant to be. Jason, Perseus, Ajax, all of them. All of them cycle through, across from a centaur who makes them better.

There are flashes of other things too. The lofty heights of Mount Pelion, the miles of olive trees there, a small home, a family with four children who have dedcided that they have to wrestle to see who rides on dad's shoulders versus who's stuck on the horse part. A pointless game, one that sees Chiron simply make suggestions for improving one's wrestling techniques.

Ancient Greece goes. Romania comes into focus, along with a young girl in a wheelchair who Chiron is quick to call Master. Their conversation is indistinct, but there is warmth and affection there too.

--

ooc: feel free to pick at a memory you're interested in and explore with it, or pm me for something more solid]

B. I'm out here
[In the churning current of the hivemind, it helps Chiron to have a task to focus on. Taking to the streets to help those who have fallen into this sleep at the worst possible times, falling by the wayside on the street or else crashing into something far more stationary than themselves is the best thing he can think of to accomplish that task.

It is very much a way of having one's head down, nose to the grindstone. All the moreso as he rips off the driver side door of a crashed vechile, throwing the metal aside to try and extract the injured passenger. (It is one of the times that being a Heroic Spirit has a true advantage) They're bent over at the wheel, bloodied, and Chiron can tell that there are multiple breaks to the legs when he sees how the metal has crumpled.

Extraction is the first step. With no one else around that he can see, or is even paying attention to, he rolls up his sleeve.]

Gods willing, this madness will be over soon.

C. ...And party every day
There is some raw satisfaction in using his hind legs to send a Regency agent flying across the street from where said agent has tried to jump Chiron from the side, hoping that the centaur wouldn't fight back as fiercely as he is. Every mission has been life-or-death, but this one is even more so.

But there is no sound of agent landing with a sickening thud on the sidewalk or cracking a bone. Instead what Chiron turns his head just in time to see is the Regency agent getting to their feet, having somehow managed to tuck and roll from a whopping kick.

With no one in sight and with no prying eyes, Chiron charges just as the agent begins to fire their blaster.

D. Wildcard
You know the deal.

>> @LOUISLAMOUR Have you experienced anything like this before?

yes im a consummate professional
whats your excuse

1. Hello? Is it Me You're Looking For? aka Is anybody out there

[Thanks, he hates this.

He barely nods at the COST member giving him a heads up about a person dangerously dangling on the edge of a windowsill. Probably had been leaning out for a smoke, or breathing some slightly-fresh-air, they're folded double along the edge and slowly moving towards a nasty fall. They both move quickly into the building - they need to get out of sight (hah) after all, avoid open spaces, as they're the only ones in that street standing and openly visible.

Mamoru is really, really trying to keep his temper in check. He couldn't care less about his own past. Dissect it for all he cared, it won't change a thing about how he deals with people. And the shock of these memories that don't belong to him is fine, they felt comfortable, casual - forgotten in the depth of the dark that's his mind and slowly floating back to a surface, like a smell he hasn't felt in a while. Knowledge was responsibility - a liability, if badly worn - and he can't afford to be more responsible for anyone.

Not here. Not anymore.

It's with his jaw locking tight that he kicks the door open, strides over and almost skids as he steps on a lighter - a smoke, really. Those things will kill you. He pulls on the person. And tries to not to grimace at the bad taste in his mouth when the Lemurian's dreams drift across his mind's eye.]

We should stay here a while, check if there are others. These aren't safe conditions.

2. Sweet Dreams Are Made of Cheese aka pick a card, pick any card aka This is where we can memshare aka [SPOILERS]

[Mamoru's memories seem to have a certain tendency to it - the search for some control in life, and life pretty much flipping him the bird in the worst possible way. Some memories are visually full, others are embedded in darkness. Others, in the same darkness, but with everything around Mamoru laid out in a red gridwork.

There's the decisiveness, the barely contained anger, some sadness, and a lot, a lot of guilt behind the harsh admonishment of a 13-year-old girl while she's sobbing her heart out facing a person sitting on the floor, giving their last breath. There's a lot of fighting, a lot of fear aimed towards him, glee at the times he sneaks up on a target, there's utter and complete darkness and the cold, cold, freezing time as he cuts something upon a burst of clarity"go, move, around, his arm; do it" and the strong scent of blood and the flood of a scream.

There's an outline of a little girl (the same from before), asking him to save her, "Until Death Do Us Part". There's that very same outline of that girl reaching at his sleeve and crying, asking him to kill her if she's a nuisance. The same girl hugging him to his chagrin and awkwardness; the outline of a young man - are those cornrows? - surrounded by screens, hunched over in worry while Mamoru tells him that he only had to say the word, and he'd kill the person who killed his sister. A bombshell of a woman winking at him while basically proposing to giving him a handjob and his blood rushing to his face for the first time in years.

Even in the memories with actual sight, they look fuzzy except a few details. There's the scent of freshly cut grass, the chill of a cold spring night, which is nothing considering the sudden do-or-die onslaught of the person Mamoru trusts the most and which he has to defend himself from in a moonlit spar. The smack of a proud, bloodied hand on his face and Mamoru's Master telling him to live on for mastery. Prison. The first time Mamoru was forced to be alone in the dark with his own thoughts. Chechnya. The encounter with a legendary hitman and the respect and admiration for him, the disgust at the real goal behind the militia he encounters. Luna, a woman wearing a balaclava - pale hair and lips glistening in the moon.

Heat. Heat surrounding his eyes, flooding his eyes. The gasping plea for a drug in his ears, and the cackle of a hunter waiting on this weakness. ]

3. You Gotta Fight For Your Right to Party aka wildcard

[This goes for the ones that replied to the plotting post and those who didn’t! Any other memory strike your fancy? Any other ideas? Shall we High Risk it? Go for it!]

If I had one I'm afraid I don't remember it. What kinds of tests?

and whose fault is that hmm
not to be an inveterate snob but are you familiar with belersian thaumaturgical necromusiomancy
basically im asking dead people whats up
they really like lawrence welk

Is that the name of your band?

Look, do you need help? Is there something I can do?

ive never been in a band called belersian thaumaturgical necromusiomancy
i have done a lawrence welk charity event however
i look resplendent in a tartan tuxedo

thats charming youre charming
you could help but it would depend on some factors
namely your threshold for veriofalsic sympathetic signifiers
blood
i mean do you get squeamish about blood
its not real blood if that helps

Where are you getting fake blood?

its veriofalsic!
psychosomatic?
its a byproduct of the work i do
sympathetic resonance
magic is a metaphor
the blood is just part of that metaphor
it might not make a ton of sense unless you want me to explain linguistics and cultural bullshit
i mean i can do that
but essentially the blood comes from me because its my blood

Okay. That's fucked up. But okay. Do you have time to explain it?

there are way more fucked up things than this believe me

sure if you want. itd probably help you if you want to uh
help

do you come from one of the dimensions with beler?

Never heard of it.

amerika?

With a c, yeah. I'm American.

lol i was just fucking with you
everybody spells it with a c

heard of something called the seyes accordance?

Not Kafka. No. Just how much of this are you making up?

* nobody of importance worth mentioning spells it with a k

that actually brings us to the first tenant of belersian casting
belief is reality
truth is irrelevant
anyway youll never know if im lying or not so id caution you not to get too worked up over it

We'll discuss Kafka in person. Are there rules? Or only tenets.

american prose novelists can see me in shiny anglican hell

it depends on your definition of those words
i dont see there as being either but others interpret it differently
the most important thing i think
to belersian theology which all of this is based off fyi
is the idea that true opposites by being so innately opposed are in the end the same
because they represent the excesses and failings of their other half
you are what you oppose
divisions are meaningless
are you following?

[[ ooc: memory/power swap comment over here for reference or if other folks want to jump in on it. ]]

i. strange things afoot

[ If there's one thing he's unfortunately used to, it's sharing ugly histories through a mental link. While dreamshare has safeguards in place, protocols to follow in order to keep the subconsciouses of each team member from smashing into each other, it doesn't always work like that. Especially if there's someone going through emotional upheaval.

Or if someone is carrying their guilt around like a ball and chain.

He can be thankful for the full Cobb Experience™, because then that means when he wakes up, head buzzing and mental boundaries lowered, his first instinct isn't to bolt or lose his shit. Instead he goes through his day, carefully avoiding eye contact once he figures out it seems to make those mental barriers even lower. ]

You know, we just came from spider planet, but this is one of the weirder things to happen, personally.

[ Well, it's definitely more uncomfortable. ]

ii. memshare

[ They're as clear as day, the memories. A sharp precision to them that reflects the mind that they come from. But some are a bit surreal; physics don't work the way they should, things are slightly off in certain places and too detailed in others. ]

a. [ You're in a private dining room. There's a wave of lights overhead in distinct lantern shapes, embellished with designs in iron. Along the walls are shoji-like screens in light gold silk, patterned with subtle and inky looking tree branches. In the middle of the room is a long black dining table, glossy top free of smudges or prints, all chairs pushed in neatly.

On one end of the room is a blond man with a manila envelope– Cobb, the memory supplies. Nearby is a Japanese man (Saito, the mark), vocalizing his disapproval. Beside Arthur are two bodyguards, holding him in place, and offset to them is a woman (Mal, who should be dead, who is dead and somehow here in this dream) with chin length hair that curls. In her hand is a gun and it's pointed at Arthur's temple. Her arm is steady.

Cobb puts his own gun down and slides it across the table, disarmed. Mal cocks the hammer back on her handgun. ]

"Ah, there's no there's no use threatening. I'm in a dream, right Mal?"

"That depends on what you're threatening. Killing him will just wake him up. But pain–" [ She shoots Arthur in the leg without looking away from Cobb. ]

"–pain is in the mind."

b. [ It's a warehouse, that's for certain. The inside is slightly musty, maybe from disuse. Scattered around are bits of abandoned furniture, scraps of paper and metal, broken glass. Windows stretch along two sides, the panes dirty and fogged. There's a large garage-looking door, one that pulls to the side to open. In the middle of the room, there are two cars parked, one in front of the other.

Cobb and Arthur are standing just outside of one of them, arguing. Saito's been shot and while it's a dream, they're heavily sedated. It means they won't wake up if they die in the dream– unprecedented. Instead, they'll drop into limbo, where they'll basically be stuck forever. Which means when the timer on the PASIV runs down and the should wake up, they'll essentially be vegetables.

And Cobb? Well, he simply didn't tell any of them this was a possibility. Gambling with their lives. ]

c. aka: the memory you've all been waiting for [ The hallway is a very neutral beige. Fairly lengthy, as most hotel hallways can be, and lined with darker wood doors, the handles modern. Arthur's struggling with another man in a suit, pinned against one of the walls. There's one more besuited man down the hall, looking ready for a fight.

Suddenly, the entire scene tips on its axis, as though it's being physically tilted to the side. Arthur's able to toss his attacker off of him, over the corner at the end of the hall. With gravity skewed, he falls down that corridor with a yell and Arthur has to climb up the edge and onto one of the sides with the doors to get back on even footing.

That other attacker, having gotten over his confusion at the shift, takes that as his cue to go for Arthur. The ensuing fight is dizzying, as the hallway continues to rotate, both men struggling to keep their feet under them.

More used to the shifting strangeness of physics in a dream, Arthur seems to have less of a problem with it, keeping his balance even as what counts as the "floor" cycles.

The fight continues in one of the rooms, door slammed open by the weight of two bodies hitting against it. Gravity still in flux, it's essentially a grapple between them, a loose handgun skittering off the bed and onto the floor, sliding around as the room moves. Eventually, Arthur gets it in hand, pulls the trigger, and the room stops its rotation, everything as still as the now-dead man beside him on the carpet. ]

iii. wildcard
[ Want to meet him while the rest of the city is asleep? Or maybe fight off some Regency agents together? Be my guest! Feel free to hit me on disco: vaulkner#5915 for plotting if needed. ]

If you don't like novelists as a species I'm not sure we can be friends. It gets a little slippery, but I think so. The earth is the farthest edge of the sky.

novelists are a subspecies at best
i prefer poetry personally
but if beler doesn't exist in your dimension than my favorite novels don't either

slippery is the point
you seem to be getting the hang of it
now take that mental framework and apply it to life and death
love and hate

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Page 1 of 5

DO BETTER,

TEXTING.

cw for automobile accident injuries mentioned

@ASHOLE, sorry pel

no subject

Mams / ota

no subject

no subject

1/2

2/2

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

Arthur | Inception

no subject

no subject