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To: All Summoned

Hello. My name is Inej, and I currently reside in Solvunn. I have been attempting to research information on the Gods and religious practices here. I have been told some wive's tales by the locals about not going out at night if you do not know the way, and the way a single person's fault can affect the lives of many if the Gods take offense.

My research in the library has not given me much more in way of specifics, just vague tales of them, theories of how they might have looked, but one thing does keep coming up: The Singularity came before them. I do not know if that means that the ones the locals see as Gods here were once people like us, pulled into this place... or if it means that the Singularity somehow created them. All the books hold the same theory: Prayer and dedication will wake them from their sleep.

I found something hidden in one of the volumes I was looking at today:

Ever searching Ever longing Lost and greedy Wails of mourning What has been found is never enough Her reach is vast and cutting.

The parchment was ripped and smudged, nothing else could be made out on it. I am uncertain if it means anything at all, but I see no reason not to share it, just in case it might match something someone else has found.

If you have made it this far in this message, I appreciate your time. Thank you.

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I think faith is less a game of who's right or wrong and just...the simple trust that there is something more. Beliefs vary from culture to culture, from country to country, and I am not sure that every culture and every country could all be wrong and only you and yours be right. Here, we're meant to understand we all come from not only different cultures and countries but entire worlds that are different and unknown from one another.

If I were the gambling type, I'd wager you've never heard of Sankta Anastasia, Sankt Ilya, or a country called Ravka– does that mean they don't exist? That the very home I come from is false, simply because it did not exist in the place you come from? I think not. The idea of Gods here being different than the God which you believe in should not be so different to consider; just because we are unfamiliar with them, and this place, does not mean it is all a lie.

Edited 2022-02-17 15:52 (UTC)

You don't understand. I have proof that mine is real, and He's kind of a dick. So yeah. I'm not even the only one here who knows. There's others from my world, plus a guy from a totally different world who agrees.

And what place does your God have in this world that we are in now?

Honestly? I kinda think that maybe the Singularity is God. Not exactly the same way we think about Him, all personified or whatever, but... still God. The Almighty, the Alpha and the Omega, the whole thing.

Like... okay, He, or It, or whatever you wanna call it, touches everything. All worlds, every bit of creation. Some people believe they can talk to It. Some people seem more in-tune with It. People make up stories to explain things that have the Singularity as responsible, even if it's through other people. Like Moses or Noah, prophets.

[ Julie was raised in midwestern America, in a very rural, very religious place, and she has a distinctly evangelical understanding of God, but it makes sense to her. Maybe God was never a giant man with a beard, maybe God was always just a big rock creating and manipulating everything in the universe, tying it all together. ]

So shouldn't no one be fucking with It.

[Inej has no concept for the religion she's pulling these ideas and names from, but it does make a sort of sense, even if she's not sure it's the truth of this place, specifically.]

You would sit idle and do nothing to improve your situation?

I don't know about you, but I have things I could be better spending my time with back home instead of being stuck here.

Yeah, going back ain't exactly an option for me. And if you wanna try and conquer or control GOD just to get back to your little life, you've got a real treat coming your way.

God doesn't like to be pushed around.

But weren't you the one to point out it was never the Singularity that brought us here in the first place, but the people here? I do not wish to be someone's pawn.

Everyone is someone's pawn, doesn't matter what world you're in.

And what I'm saying is that the people here are using God's powers in ways they ain't supposed to. They're fucking with shit that they don't understand, because some of them wanna control the Singularity, some of them wanna destroy it. The ones you're with are just weirdos. Hearts may be in the right place, but they're fucking crazy. But what's done is done.

God didn't strike down Sodom and Gomorrah on the first day they did wrong. He didn't flood the world when the first people started their wickedness. He gave them chances.

[ Gave Vegas chances, gave them time to see what they were doing. They simply hadn't seen. ]

But there's only so many chances before He gets fed up. They shouldn't have brought us here at all. But now that we're here, they shouldn't push their luck trying to send us back. You're gonna die eventually anyway. What does it matter whether it's here or there?

Oh, that's a terribly sad view to have. You do not have to be anyone's pawn, you can be free. You can make your own choices, your own future.

[This is a topic near and dear to her heart. Freedom was a concept that had seemed utterly impossible to her for so long while she was trapped at The Menagerie, but then it was finally in her grasp, only for her to be whisked away to this place, begged to fight someone else's war.]

It matters because I have responsibilities at home. A future, a purpose that I was finally reaching, and now I am here and the thing I have fought for, for years is gone and I am simply supposed to be fine with it? Absolutely not. I did not go through what I went through just to be locked inside another cage.

I never said you can't make your own choices. But everyone is a pawn to someone else, everyone has to jump through hoops to survive. It's kind of how society works.

Do you not get that fucking with the Singularity might have consequences across the entire universe? No one gives a shit about your purpose. I'm not trying to be mean. But your little life and future don't mean squat if you have to screw with something that powerful to get back to them. None of us mean more than, you know, literally everything else that exists. Even if the Singularity isn't God, it's still too fucking powerful to mess with, and it's linked to every single world.

Figure out a new purpose. Trust me, I'm on my third try at this shit. You don't wanna fuck around with shit like that.

I am not suggesting any of that, you're putting words in my mouth. I have not once suggested anyone 'fuck' with the Singularity at all. My only point with any of this was to pool information and to try to understand it all better.

All any of us have are bit parts and things that are given in piecemeal by people who have been at war for longer than I've been alive. None of us are getting a full picture, but if we bring the pieces we are are getting together, we might be able to see a bigger picture.

You want to go back and no matter how you slice it, that means fucking with something we shouldn't be. They shouldn't be. No one should be.

I'm not saying I have the answers. But the people who live in this world have had thousands of years to try and figure out what the hell is going on with the Singularity, and they're still just at "big magic rock". We ain't about to get any clearer than that based on their books and stories.

Edited 2022-02-18 14:02 (UTC)

And which faction do you belong to? Because I don't know a single one of them that doesn't have their own plans or motivations surrounding the very nature of the Singularity.

I think you're wrong about that. We are many, of many different worlds and cultures and perspectives, and we do not come encumbered with those same centuries of bad blood attached that the people born to these communities have. That alone says to me that we stand a chance of seeing something in a different light than they could have a chance to.

I don't belong to any faction. I guess I technically live inside the borders of one, but I put distance between myself and all that shit. A lot of distance. The only plan I have for the Singularity is to leave it the hell alone.

[ Nott might lie within Thorne's dominion, but they essentially operate as their own tiny kingdom, unbothered by politics and unconcerned with the Singularity, a week's travel on horse from the castle. Julie has no desire to deal with their debates and arguments, no desire to get involved. ]

Even if that mattered and we did figure out something new, it doesn't change anything. If the Singularity was willing to just let us go, it would give us a way. It's alive, it knows what it wants. That's why, sometimes, it does just throw people back. Or back as far as we can tell, I guess. Maybe they're just dying, but I don't think so. It isn't just opening the door for us, not in either direction. If that door was open, people would be coming faster, more random. The idiots bringing us here are cracking the door with a crowbar and grabbing through the gap before it closes again. The Singularity doesn't want it to happen, they're making it happen.

Their research and our perspectives don't mean shit. You wanna screw with The Singularity, have the balls to come into the Horizon and go up to it yourself.

Are you so foolish as to think you are completely free from the influence of where you reside?

[That's a dangerous sort of way to think, if you ask her.]

You may not agree with them, or go on their missions, but you are still indebted to them for anything they provide to you.

[The part of Inej that is more inclined to believe exactly what this person is implying wars with the part of her that is more about action than sitting idle, and her own personal desire to know, and understand the goings-on of the new cage she finds herself stuck inside of.]

I understand your position, but it will not change my desire to seek out whatever information that I can find about this world.

I am not planning some rash act or attack on the Signularity.

Lady, you don't know where I live, and I'm not about to put a big red pin on the map for you, but yeah, I feel pretty confident in saying this town doesn't have any influence on my opinion. Because they don't have a position to push and they don't provide me with anything that I don't pay for. My boss lets me drink as much of the mead she makes that I want, that's about it. I pay for my room, my clothes, my food, and my horse. You know, like a normal person instead of a lab rat forced to run a maze for cheese. Those missions and shit you're talking about don't exist here, at all. I didn't even know about them sending people to the Singularity until a week after it happened. This is a good place with good people who just want to live their lives, not try to break the whole world. The only debt I owe anyone is that I'll protect this city from all the rest of these fucks as much as I can.

[ It may just be handwriting scrawled on a random surface, but there is a force behind it, a fierceness that suggests being challenged is not acceptable. If the parakeet in a cage wants to watch a sparrow take flight outside the window and then say that they're both trapped, that's the parakeet's problem.

Julie won't take the indignity of being told she's caged, and she won't allow Nott to be painted with the same brush as the rest of them. ]

Anyway, if you live in Solvunn, you got bigger problems to focus on than the Singularity and the gods. Those stories gonna help you fight whatever's brewing over in Cadens?

[ Julie may have the first person to raise the alarm about Goro, but when she said she was far from all the politics, she wasn't lying. All she can do is follow the news she gets in the Horizon. ]

I don't have to know where you are to know that the places we live will invariably influence us, whether we like it or not.

[Ketterdam had certainly influenced her in her time living within it. She would be remiss to assume anything else.

She tires of the cyclic nature of this conversation by now. The other participant in it is very staunchly not open to anything that points to her being in the same position as anyone else here, and Inej doesn't have time to keep arguing over something that, ultimately, is not going to change what she does.]

I am not concerned about my place in a fight. I may not know when or where, but I already know how my life ends: On my feet, with a knife in my hand, protecting people I care about, and people who cannot protect themselves.

You talk a lot for someone who doesn't know shit. You wanna be Solvunn's lapdog? That's your business. I'm just saying that, as much as you talk about freedom and choices, you seem real against the idea that being free from this mess is a choice.

Take your knife and stick it up your ass. Protect the rest of us from having to deal with you.

[Inej refuses to dignify that with a response at all. This is doing neither of them any good, and she grows tired of the circular nature of it. Instead of continuing the feed the cycle, she simply lets the connection in this strange network fade.

Some of the things within this conversation will likely stick to her for a long while from now, though. She does not like the feeling of it.]

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