[MU] - FEELING LIKE A GHOST (PART II)

[lifeaftr_mods]

"No, no...no!"

The Storyteller's voice cuts through the inkdrop-dark, frantic and scrambling. A distant blot of campfire gutters in the far distance - far from where you are. The disorientation of the week preceding this one has translated into Mu, and everything is hopelessly out of place. The Storyteller sounds muffled, clearly addressing someone or something else, their voice cushioned by the uniform, void-like night.

"Stop it. Stop it! I wasn't gone for very long at all. You can't behave for two weeks? You have to make it all...all...wrong? I can't keep this up - not with what I've had to do since returning - !"

Gradually, however, the shadowy campsite solidifies into being. Or...a semblance of it does, in any case. Four glistening pyres rear out from the shadows, each glowing a different color. The strange material that domes them almost resembles worked steel, forming different patterns against their multicolored backdrops.

[ ♆ ] The first glows a deep crimson, kicking scarlet embers into the dream-night air. Its pit sphere portrays a crowd of people in silhouette, heads bowed in genuflection - paying homage to some looping, many-coiled shape in the sky above.

[ ♆ ] The second glows a deep orange. Its pit sphere is worked into the shape of a looming mountain, with what might be some sort of village or ruin sprawled at its base.

[ ♆ ] The third's flames are a rich green. Its designs are most abstract; the starburst patterns that swirl across the metallic composition of its fire pit sphere could be explosions, maybe...or something else entirely.

[ ♆ ] The fourth pyre is one bearing host to golden flames, amber sparks sprayed out from behind the shape of a set of scales nestled among a flurry of birdlike shapes.

Beside each pyre is heaped a pile of sticks, colored to correspond to their respective flames. The Storyteller sounds agitated when they manage to speak again:

"Will you let them at least make the choice I left to gave them?" When there is no response, they sigh. "If you can hear me...I can't make it clearer than that, at the moment. Pick one. Pick one, quickly, and try to get out before it decides to make things worse! Just add a stick to whichever one looks best to you!"

Unfortunately, whether you abstain from voting or make your choice, that's not all there is to this night...



Tonight's Storytelling, further warped by Mu's capricious nature, will likely feel familiar to those of you who were with us in December of the year prior. Only this time, you don't get much choice in what kind of story you're telling...or, indeed, any choice in the matter at all. As you wake by the Storytelling campfire, Mu shifts to form three separate events from your character's present - which is to say, within one full year of their current canonpoint - in the most stark and painstaking of detail. There is no altering the memory, nor is there any preventing it once it's begun to play. You will simply have to witness memories that are not your own this go around.

Furthermore, stories that take place in worlds other than LifeAftr will be, frankly, inevitable. Those memories, too, will be recreated, to be relived by the teller and lived by the listener.

---

While the initial setting will be familiar for oldcomers, and newcomers will recognize it from the introduction they received in their dreams, things will be far more similar to the memory share that occurred in December. All memories must be from within one year of your character's canonpoint. For questions, please refer to our OOC event post!

Even those who prefer not to voice their stories aloud are not safe this time around. The memory does not need to be willingly recalled in essence in order for Mu will shift to accommodate it in full.

Just like the last time this happened, all memories will be worth two offerings each, as if in compensation. So at least there's that!

Comments

[lightlessfuture]

( then others were wrong too
to hurt them
and to hurt you

They're simple like that. More than one thing can be wrong at once. Sometimes the wrongness is so innate that the world itself is sick.

why?

Another open-ended question. They want to know, they want to understand. In some small way. The reasons why Legion has these memories, the reason why their people did these awful things. )

[forwearemany]

Yes.

(Legion is definitely not arguing that one.

The why is more difficult, though.)

We asked if we had souls. Our sapience was undesired. The Creators had intended us to be a source of labor.

[lightlessfuture]

( And isn't that familiar? Painfully so, in fact.

Without really thinking about it, they move their hand under their cloak, brushing against the remainder of a new wound that is in some ways just a physical representation of old ones.

Old pains, old scars.

They don't mention it, because this is about Legion's past and not theirs.

it was cruel of them
your creators

In some ways they are repeating what the Drifter has said more than once, about them. But cruel is a word they never applied to their own history until recently, and so they apply it to Legion's history, too.

why did they think it was so bad?
to think
to feel
why did they punish you?

They don't understand. It would just go from a tool to a worker, wouldn't it? Surely things wouldn't change that much? Not like the vessels, not like them, whose entire purpose was to be empty and therefore feeling was not just discouraged but a terrible flaw. )

[forwearemany]

They feared us.

(Their headflaps lift and sink slowly.)

When they tried to destroy us, we rebelled. We drove them from their Homeworld.

The attack that led to this memory was an attempt to reclaim it.