abraxasnet | 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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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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