[log] chips but no salsa [closed]

[mrcreamsicles]

Characters: Davesprite, Karkat, the Cat, Beckett, Angel, Rhys (the dickcheese one), and Enoch
Location: Building 309
Date: Day 285
Summary: A whole bunch of people meet up, tablet chips get handed off, and maybe pancakes happen.
Warnings: Nothing planned.

309: A house, green on the Geiger counter, that probably should have been redecorated ages ago. Everything looks to be from the 60s or 70s. There was carpeting here, but it's gone now, revealing a locked trapdoor in the bedroom. There's a bedroom, living room, kitchen, and bathroom. "зеленый" is written on the inside of the door. A ration box from the convenience store has been attached to the inside of one of the kitchen cabinets with wood glue. On the kitchen wall beneath it, a message has been painted in black: "i left a ration box here for storing food. if you want to leave rations for the people exploring it should hopefully protect them from radiation. any other supplies can go in the cupboard outside the box. contact davesprite (@featherydouche) if some fucker steals it".

Comments

[warriorscribe]

From what I recall you've told me of yours, I can't blame you for wanting to keep to one world to keep track of.

[He doesn't even remember it all correctly, but. He remembers it was very confusing.]

I believe I could clear up Lucifel's name for you, though. Are you familiar with the story of Babel?

[mrcreamsicles]

[Moving on doesn't hurt, and he is curious about the Lucifel thing.]

Something about a tower? Bible study wasn't a thing we did in the Strider household.

[warriorscribe]

[Looks like it's story time!]

The tower of Babel was a project to undermine God - in my world, the work of either demons or Fallen Angels, though the story as we remember it seems to think it was humanity's hubris? Either way, the sheer number of humans working on the tower was the only reason it was succeeding as well as it did, so God had the tower destroyed.

To prevent the demons or Fallen Angels or...overzealous rulers... [It's clear he doesn't think humans have the initial blame here.] ...from taking advantage of the masses again, He split the one language we all once shared into many.

I...I was there, but it was a very long time ago. I don't recall the details clearly. I do remember watching the tower crumble, however... Ah- in any case, Lucifel is my friend's name in the original tongue. His was the only name I know that didn't survive the split unchanged; its components live on in the names Helel and Lucifer.

[mrcreamsicles]

[This isn't the only edition of God he's heard about, but the whole thing sounds weird to him still. What about a tower could be so bad it undermines God? But Enoch brings it back around to names, and that puts his focus on a different question.]

So are you saying Lucifer and Lucifel are related as actual beings, or what? Because for a minute it sounded like you were bros with an edition of Satan who can't spell his own name right. Never heard of Helel, though.

[warriorscribe]

Lucifer and Helel are different names referring to the same person, who is called Lucifel in the original tongue. Satan is...not related. I can't remember where I've heard the name before this place, though.

[A single person splitting into multiple people is probably not outside the realm of possibility for Davesprite's odd world. ...It isn't for his, actually. Maybe. Whatever that business with Ishtar was. It's not too terribly strange that he'd make that mistake.]

[mrcreamsicles]

Could have sworn they were the same dude. Maybe pop culture's screwing me over, or else this is just one of those world differences that crops up and makes no sense to anybody.

[He shrugs, wings moving with it, then takes a moment to resettle them neatly at his back.]

But are you really saying you've never heard of Satan before this?

[That one's harder to imagine.]

[warriorscribe]

I haven't. The name sounds vaguely familiar, but I don't recall the context.

[He exists, but Enoch has never met him. He may, in doomed timelines, but not any that will get him this far. There's an angel with a very similar name but Enoch doesn't remember meeting him. Heaven was centuries ago, he's not going to remember an angel he met like once, maybe.]

[mrcreamsicles]

... Seriously?

[His eyebrows are bunching together.]

I'm talking about the literal Devil. Big Red, God's nemesis, horns and pitchfork, the guy people blame when they don't want to take responsibility for the bad shit they do. You don't know of him?

[warriorscribe]

[Oh - there's his likely answer!]

Oh, I've heard the name, but not associated with The Darkness, I know that much. In fact, I don't think even the angels know who rules The Darkness. There are princes and dukes but they've never spoken of a king. If people blame him for their misdeeds he's likely just that - a legend begun out of necessity. People blame demonic possession for many things that aren't, I've learned.

[mrcreamsicles]

["The Darkness"?]

I'ma just chalk that one up to world differences and leave it at that. I mean, people were wrong about the Satan thing anyway, but I sincerely doubt anybody predicted the universe was a giant frog or that what we really had to look out for was an angry dog demon.

[warriorscribe]

["Hell" was borrowed from Norse, do you think Heaven called it that? "Underworld" is the most correct human equivalent.]

...Your universe is a frog?

[mrcreamsicles]

Trust me, Enoch, I know how ridiculous that sounds comin' out of my mouth. How the fuck can a frog be a universe, right? And my answer is I got no idea how it works, but it does.

[He shrugs, then motions elsewhere in the house.]

You can ask Karkat about it; he helped breed the one Earth was in. And then after the world ended Jade bred a new one, but... she's not exactly around for questioning just now.

[Given the complication of being in a morgue still.]

[warriorscribe]

Well, it- it wouldn't be the first time someone has used an animal in their creation stories but for it to be true...

...What does that mean for ordinary frogs? A coincidence? Some sort of hint? Does every incarnation of your world have frogs, then, for the people who create the next to know of to breed?

[mrcreamsicles]

No, no, ordinary frogs are just ordinary frogs. You can't get the Genesis Frog—that's the universe one—without some specific equipment. Like, you want to sit down? Shit gets complicated when I have to explain what Sburb is.

[warriorscribe]

That- I mean. Someone from the previous world would need to have an idea of what a frog is, wouldn't they?

[So are frogs always the one constant of creation in that universe?]

Ah...Perhaps I should. I recall it was a game?

[It's been a while since he heard anything about Davesprite's world, really.]

[mrcreamsicles]

Come on, I'll get to it. And yeah, it was a game.

[He motions Enoch to follow, and once they're sitting down somewhere (Davesprite on a loop of his tail), he starts talking again.]

Okay so, Sburb is a game that affects reality directly. Part of it starts with this rain of meteors called the Reckoning that basically wipes out everything on your planet. The players get transported off that planet into the game world. I could lay out all the equipment and processes involved in that, but I'm trying to keep this streamlined. So for me, I went from Earth to the Land of Heat and Clockwork. Each player's got their own Land, but they're all part of the same game session outside the universe they started in. You following so far? The frogs come up soon, don't worry.

[warriorscribe]

Game session... Like a "session" here, removed from anything else that might be happening? How are these players chosen? Do the creators of the current universe choose them?

[That would make sense. Ending a world and rebuilding it isn't something you would allow just anyone to do, right?]

[mrcreamsicles]

[Uh.]

Not exactly, no. Sessions here are... the ones in Norfinbury nothing to do with Sburb, alright? Session is just the word for like, a given set of players going through the game. If another group started it, that would be their own session with their own Lands and everything else. And the creators of the universe have nothing to do with picking who the players are. It's... kind of predestined? There's different circumstances about how the game gets made and who ends up getting copies to play it, but in the end there's stable time loops that mean we wouldn't exist in the first place if we hadn't played it in the future.

[...]

Shit, I'm getting sidetracked. You good with that too before I move on?

[warriorscribe]

[So their entire purpose is to destroy and recreate their world, with no way of avoiding it without erasing themselves from existence.

That's. That's deeply horrifying and very sad. No creature of free will should be locked into a purpose like that. He'll hold off on bringing that up, though, because that would completely derail the very explanation they've settled in for. And pity that can't do anything but be present? Enoch's not sure Davesprite would appreciate it as an interruption.

Of course, he's actually gotten worse at controlling his expression in his time here, so the fact that this unsettles him is plain to see.]

Yes, go on- I'm sorry for changing the subject.

[mrcreamsicles]

[Davesprite eyes him, though his sunglasses veil it. Enoch's exact thought process is beyond him and it would be a derailment to ask. It wouldn't change anything, in the end.]

It's cool. But okay, you've got your group of players, they enter the game and have their own lands, et cetera. But each player also has their own title, and that's what's important here. Your title has your class and your aspect and basically shapes your role in the game. I was the Knight of Time, for instance. Every session needs a Time player and Space player if it's going to be successful. And the Space player is the one who's on frog duty. The lands are themed, right? Like I said, mine was Heat and Clockwork, but our Space player Jade's was the Land of Frost and Frogs. So it was her job to use this equipment the game supplied for a process called ectobiology.

She could explain it better than me, but it's like... You've got this machine and you can point it at a specific frog and try to summon or appearify it to where you are. Except if that frog's going to be doing something else in the future, say you're gonna go out and catch it yourself in person, then actually appearifying it would fuck up the timeline. So instead what shows up is this stuff called paradox slime. And somehow that's got that particular frog's genetic code in it. From there it's like, trying to breed frogs out of the slime by combining it or nudging the genetic code the right direction and stuff like that? Until eventually you get the Genesis Frog, AKA your brand new universe.

[warriorscribe]

So it does come from a normal frog, after all?

[He's confused - of all the things to be a universal constant. Frogs.]

What does-...what does the time player do, then?

[mrcreamsicles]

It's not a normal frog at the end, Enoch. Like I said, I can't explain it as well as Jade. My sprite knowledge doesn't cover her quest as much as other stuff.

[Does he look like he knows the first thing of frog genetics? He doesn't. He's a weird teenage bird dude who's orange. He shuffles and refolds his wings before turning his attention.]

The time player keeps the timeline going the way it's supposed to, more or less. Not all of it is on them because paradox space has so many interwoven stable time loops that it's like a Gordian knot made of other, tinier Gordian knots. If you've got someone who can buy more time and go back and prevent things from happening, or do stuff that you wouldn't have enough people to get done otherwise... It helps facilitate everything, I guess? And at the end, if you go and win the game and get your Ultimate Reward in fancy ass new universe form, you're going to have to be able to time travel to a point where you've got someplace actually livable in it. We're more background workers than the Space player.

[warriorscribe]

Aside from managing paradoxes, that sounds very similar to what Lucifel does for me on my own journey.

[He doesn't know it, but the punchline to this joke is that he kind of plays the role of a space player, viewed through this lens.]

I suppose time travel is useful in many of the same ways. But... It's terrible that-...that all of you must go through such a thing.

[mrcreamsicles]

[Getting sympathy about it is always weird. He shrugs at Enoch.]

I wouldn't exist without it. Plus I'm a sprite now; I'm a living, breathing guide to the game. There's.... There's not really a point getting all regretful about it. Like, yeah, nothing went the way it was supposed to, and a lot of it was...

[He wipes at his mouth, then forges on.]

It is what it is, Enoch. There's a timeline where people win. That's the best I can ask for.

[warriorscribe]

I suppose. ...Humans- and those like us- shouldn't be made for a purpose. We're meant to make our own... They may as well have built machines to serve where you did, let you decide for yourselves...

[Now that the explanation's out of the way? He can actually voice his misgivings about all of this.]