To: All Summoned

[shadowthief]

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.

Comments

[princessvegas]

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. ]

[shadowthief]

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.

[princessvegas]

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.

[shadowthief]

[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.]