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Lilian Rook     The realities of the linear nature of time (for everyone but Lilian at any rate) unfortunately necessitate that it is impossible to stay logged into BCC all day. At some point, even Elites have to log out, to see to factional duties personal business, or simply to sleep and eat. Realistically, this should mean that you'd miss the lion's share of the ongoing crisis simply for having to see to a hundred more.

    The eagerness with which the mysterious system accomodates this reality is offputting.

    A few hours as a full group was enough to experience nearly a whole subjective day in-game. A much longer break than that has you return with only two more days having passed for everyone trapped. 'Retrocausal timekeepng functions' appear to have no purpose but to include you for as much as the game's lifetime as the system can, 'shortening' your logged out periods and multiply your logged in ones. It doesn't seem entirely consistent, but the intent behind it is eerily clear.

    Still, it's nice to come back to Yono the way you left it. At night, now, which is its own brand of cozy. It makes the fog surrounding the lake less obvious, and sets the water a'glitter with reflections of the stars, swarming fireflies, and two moons in the sky. The Split is unmissable in the dark, even from this distance, as is the faint glow radiating from the geometric lines carved into the ruins, and the warm amber glow of the town's ancient lighting stones.

    The level of activity has reduced from daytime. Not only the NPCs, having turned in for the night on immersion grounds, but most players seem to want to stick to the habit of sleeping when it's dark. Trying to fight at night is probably too risky, to say nothing of stumbling into a Dissonance. There are a handful of the former on night patrol with torches, or out on the water with what look like archaic squid-fishing boats, but for the most part, it's only the portion of PCs grinding out their skills at the public craft stations or restlessly hanging out at inns or on the roads, soaking in the ambiance.

    Harp and Brio are of that number, as is the young man who would prefer to be called Jacob rather than his unfortunately chosen handle, which is convenient for those who'd made them points of contact. Eryl's and Friz's mails are updated to reports of Derivation Bridge starting to receive a lot of focus, with more, larger groups heading there with the information the Elites have published; groups made of smaller cells of friends who'd tediously grinded out their first few levels and gear upgrades near Clef and organized elaborate raid teams to get through.

    Knowledge is spreading fast. The pressure will be on Yono sooner or later. There are also modest, but significant, sums of Cune awaiting in one-way mail notifications; apparently it is permitted to remote trade weightless items. Other than that, the Split looks the same as ever, information regarding the pair of rogues is unknown, and the Velvet Ghost would probably be prohibitively difficult to chase at night, though its quest chain is now known.
Rubi-Kan Vagrants      The two Rubi-Kans are spending the evening quite differently.

     Bercilak has wandered down to the lake, flagging down one of the NPCs patrolling in those archaic looking boats. Even if it's dark, his glowing eyes ought to give him away--though hopefully, not in a way that'd draw an adverse reaction from them. "Hey, you! Yeah, you on the boat! Row that bitch over here a second, so I don't gotta shout!"

    It'd be hard to chase after the Velvet Ghost in this darkness, and inadvisable to go into the forest alone this late anyway. That rules out both chasing down the Ghost itself and, very likely, hunting down the rare tree.

     The pearl, though... well, 'the bottom of a lake' is presumably pretty dark even during the daytime, he figures. And even if he's not that great at swimming, Bercilak is counting on his physical fortitude to do some heavy lifting in that department. Stripping out of his armor might do the trick, if he knows what to 'look' for, and he imagines his regenerative capabilities can help him cheese out drowning damage, at least for a little bit. He just needs to get an idea of what to expect from one of the NPCs out on the water.

    Assuming one rows or otherwise navigates within speaking distance, he'll use his inside voice. And if they don't, he's more than happy to keep shouting from the shore. " I'm trying to get a pearl from the bottom of this lake. You got any pointers for an out-of-towner, besides just 'get down there and get to looking?'" He's naturally more than ready to do just that, if it comes down to it.

    Phreak, meanwhile, seeks out Fucil and Elym, at the inn. Assuming they're up, he'll take a seat at their table. He's looking to find out if either of them have fought Lavis or Vermilion, and if so, whether they have any advice. Besides just that, he'd also like to know if they have any idea what the most sought-after items are right now, besides just gear.
Rita Ma      Rather than disorientation, Rita seems to take her log-ins with relief. Not outwardly-directed, though their unchanged surroundings might inspire that too, but inwardly. It's a weight lifted from her shoulders.

<J-IC-Scene> Friz takes a long, deep breath to steady her login nausea... "Alright. Priority one for me is finding leads on Lavis and Vermilion. Where they're hiding out, why they're doing what they're doing, *how* they're doing it."
<J-IC-Scene> Ishirou ugh, "Yeah, I'm with you on that."
<J-IC-Scene> Ishirou says, "Do you think they'll be active at night?"
<J-IC-Scene> Friz says, "Especially if there's going to be more traffic through the Bridge soon."
<J-IC-Scene> Rita Ma says, "Didn't someone say they had a trait that's unlocked in the place through the Split?"
<J-IC-Scene> Rita Ma says, "It was called 'Eversion'. And the robot boss called Ms. Rook an 'everse one', right?"
<J-IC-Scene> Rita Ma says, "Even if it's dangerous, I feel like we-"
<J-IC-Scene> Rita Ma says, "... Well, like you could handle it, at least."

     The Split is in the center of the lake which the town half-encircles. Rita visibly isn't fond of the dark, by the way she shrinks in on herself, but it doesn't take her much walking to reach the water's edge.

     It'll be easy. She just has to swim across the lake and-

     "Oh. Right." She freezes, staring into the placid water with a thoroughly mortified expression.
Eryl Fairfax     Eryl takes the log-in well, mostly. But he eventually, always flinches when he notices himself in a reflective surface. Or now, when he notices the light from his head dimly illuminates the area around him.

    The two player killers are a concern, it's true. Especially as emails report that more and more people are tackling the Bridge using the disseminated knowledge of their expedition. More people coming out makes for more targets. So Eryl first and foremost starts reply with warnings. That two player killers are preying on people exhausted and depleted from the Bridge on the road to Yono. He advises that they watch their backs along the way, and that if they don't like their chances, they should warp back to Clef using the checkpoint just outside it.

    With that done, he sets about on a slightly more long-term issue. Yono is a small village, very different from Clef. And given how this game has been until now, Eryl is sure scarcity will be an issue. Too few beds, too little food to accommodate the influx of players. It's a powder keg that must be dampened soon.

    To this end, he winds up joining Phreak in the inn, speaking with Fucil and Elym. "What facilities does Yono have?" he asks. "How much food does it produces, how many spare beds? Can you give me any idea what the upper limit of population it could support?"
Tamamo     Last time, Tamamo had gotten the chance, through Harp, to find the communal cooking area, as well as an NPC selling basic fishing gear. She acquires a set for herself, adding it to her pack from what funds she's gained from working up to this place from Clef, and set herself to the task of figuring out what all the things the party had carried up to this point -- having made a point of taking on at least one of every creature they came across -- could be used for in combination, whether steamed, grilled, baked, seared, or merely carefully sliced.

    She's pretty good with a knife.

    But the more time-consuming part of her investigation, and what she immediately moves to return to as they log in again, is to test what she can fish from the lake. This naturally involves a lot of traveling around it, which puts her in a convenient position from which to ask after anyone with boats, and whether they'll do her the favor of renting or allowing the borrowing of their boats to ferry some number of people across to the Split.

    Really, though, she wants to find more fish.
Ishirou The relog-in still caused him little vertigo, but he recovers as fast as he can to look around. Some conversations on the radio make some things obvious to him.

Ishirou realized that his skills would be better used getting intelligence on The Split...which of course was supposedly full of high-level monsters, and generally hazardous. He sighs, knowing that he was actually the best suited for that, instead of doing something generally less hazardous. Taking a breath, he walks to the pier if there is one, or just to the edge of the water if there was not.

From here, it would just be trying to get as many long-range scans as he can. As always, POD was with him, floating behind him and assisting with the long-range scans. If Tamamo was going to get the boat then this would at least be something.

Maybe finding a secure place to dock their boat or to get on land without immediately being deadly. Though really, any intelligence he could get at this range would be important.
Kirishima Unlike last time, Kirishima's starting to get used to the shift in height and her general stride as she comes back into BCC. It only takes her a minute to get back to jogging at a leisurely pace, and a few more after that to get back to her usual routine of clambering up various objects to get a better view of the area around her.

It doesn't help that much just yet, but it gets her situated in Yono again that much faster. With the Split being the obvious point of interest, she starts heading that way while taking slight detours here and there to practice jumping around and climbing with this less agile body of hers to let herself get used to her limits here instead.

She listens for a little while as Bercilak chats up one of the NPCs, then notices Rita's apprehension and heads on over to clap a hand against her shoulder gently. "Don't worry. It's only a little damp. Something like this is no problem for a ninja." She speaks from behind her very ninja-y mask, undoubtedly grinning confidently as she strides forward right into the water. She's skated over the water plenty of times before, after all, so this should-

And then she promptly falls right into the lake like a normal person would trying to walk on water. She scrambles back up hastily, spitting out some hopefully nonpoisoned water before clearing her throat. "Th... There! If there's anything waiting to ambush us, that should get its attention."

She totally planned that.
Friz Dirt: Alright boss, this time we're falling, twice, and I think we're also in three greenhouses and a fire pit.
Savvy: Yeah, the log-in messes with senses, I know.
Dirt: Just letting you know.

Moxie: Where are we headed next?
Dirt: We settled on heading out to figure out those bandits.
Dirt: Known haunts are the Bridge, high-traffic, or the Split.
Grit: One choice is unproductive. One choice is lethal.
Savvy: Optimistic as always. Let's try the Split.
Moxie: We want to go *towards* the danger?
Grit: We have protection. Rare.
Savvy: Grit's got it. If everyone else is going, we need that protection.

Dirt: The twink's handling scanning, boss.
Savvy: Even with these new eyes, you won't outmatch him.
Moxie: Then let's not be redundant, but what *can* we do?
Grit: This place is full of survivors.
Savvy: So, best way is for me and Dirt to get some data from the locals.
Dirt: We can figure out what's known about the Split. Someone came back from it, maybe we can go find them.
Savvy: Good enough for me. Moxie, let's go.
Moxie: Okay!

    Friz finally sorts out her thoughts after arrival and heads off to go try to find that group she heard about, the one that came back. She'll try to run a fast interview, gather some data, get a tactical assessment of things so she can head *straight to* the Eversion zone without dealing with loot and its risks. Once she has some info, she'll join the others on their efforts to gain passage to it!
Xion Knowledge is spreading fast, but not to Xion. She had lost the thread on the specific gambits that people had been making within the game to unravel the mystery, and had maladapted to thinking too deeply about the aesthetics of what was going on. She just had to live it, and then she'd figure it out along the way. If the game was meant to be played, then Xion would simply play the game.

She just wasn't very happy about it. The disorienting part for her was 'feeling' not very happy about it. A light-bulb artificially on inside of her, granting a strange dimension to 'I don't know how I feel about this'. Shadows on a cave wall that she hadn't seen before.

So !Xion, returned to crown braids of blond hair and transmogrified features, follows Bercilak to the shore while he hoots and hollers and engages in Physical Activities (taking his armor and shirt off and chasing after people in the shallows). Kirishima joins the sharp-tongued knight out into the water, immediately splooshing face-down in the water.

!Xion, gently baffled, tilts her head on the shore and watches Kirishima. "Can you. . . normally step on the water?" She asks, not needing any kind of super-empathy to notice Kirishima playing off how cool they are. Testingly, she tries the lake's surface with her own foot. Normally, she was preturnaturally surefooted, but now - was it just water? What did Just Water feel like?
Lilian Rook     Berc calling out to the boats only succeeds in annoying people for a while, until one of the NPCs (well, three in one boat) make a scheduled trip back to shore. Their nets are full of a mass of silvery-red catch with reflective eyes that looks much like the kind of thing that fishermen would score on the ocean at night, as creatures come to the darkened shallows to feed. There's absolutely no way the lake is that deep though. While unloading their haul, they give him a shockingly realistic period of contemplative concern, and repeatedly warn him that pearl diving at night is, of course, stupid and dangerous.

    They do eventually inform him that he can dig up pearls from dead shellfish in the bottom of the lake silt; they don't recomment trying to wrestle with a live one for some reason. They cite the main risks as having to avoid territorial bottom-hunting marine life, getting entangled in float-plants, and losing track of which way is up --he's advised to watch the direction of bubbles for that last part.

    Fucil and Elym greet Phreak with some sort of familiarity after he'd spoken with them, briefly, in the inn last time. The two are poring over a stack of papers that disappear into their inventories when Eryl shows up too. At least he isn't alone in being mysteriously aglow, even if his is more focused and intense.

    Neither of the two have fought either rogue player, but report that there has been another robbery since the other day, having separated one six-player unit from their raid party and coercing them at the metaphorical gunpoint of red health. It is very easy to lose each other in the mist, but at this point, people are starting to wonder how the two are able to hit and fade so successfully without being chased down. Worse still, they're starting to get a reputation apparently, and it might not be long before people just start surrendering preemptively.

    Gear is absolutely not cheap to replace. Vendor prices seem to suck on purpose, only there as a safety net and to fill in pieces of recipes that players are missing. As far as they have been 'informed', food that isn't bland and portable is rapidly reaching high demand, as are healing consumables reaching extremely low supply. Otherwise, people are struggling to source raw materials to turn into gear and start up player economy whilst raising their skills; Beachhead and even the Bridge aren't enough for that many people, so only a relative few with preferential arrangements are getting ahead.

    They actually have a detailed map of Yono, all the way from one tip of the crescent to the other. Ostensibly, it's probably for the use of the volunteer player guard, but it's helpful either way. Compared to Clef, it produces a lot more food for its size, being a self-sufficient village and not a massive trade city. Prices on seafood and grains are more reasonable, and root vegetables and fruits aren't too hard to find, so there's been talk of trying to start something of a cooking guild from it, knowing what people will pay for food.

    They estimate only a couple thousand people could be supported by the rentable or safely camp-able space left. It could be four times that if anyone had the money to buy real estate, but given the gap between the coins people trade in now, and the figures on property, it seems like a much later-game thing. The facilities are basic crafting stations of all professions except Tinkering and Alchemy, but which have a high quality modifier and are more than enough for mid-low level recipes, as well as a notable swordsmith NPC in town, and a notable herbalist, both with inventory expansion and discount sidequests.
Lilian Rook     Tamamo's Cooking skill seems to have already come installed quite high. Her recipe book, however, is pretty much all greyed out, but begins explosively multiplying from sampling each individual ingredient, and making the very simple dishes out of them to unlock more complex ones. In a way, she feels the similarity to one's intuitive sense of how to use foods as one becomes familiar with them, only sped up to the rate of a formality for her.

    The basics from Beachhead are barely worth mentioning, being fairly one-note flavours and simple textures that prepare with cartoonish simplicity. What she can gather in the Ancient Lake zone is more complex, allowing her to put up some convincingly umami, if typically somewhat salty, dishes that feel mostly very familiar to her. Rice flour is available by a different name, as is a form of seaweed, fruit very much like plums and oranges, and root vegetables roughly similar to sweet potatoes and yams. Monster disassembly drops are somewhat more premium cuts. The 'canths especially taste like mid-grade tuna back. It's actually a moderately profit-positive loop to sell it back to inns, even if not time efficient.

    Flagging down a boat is only as hard as Bercilak finds it. Easier, actually, given how persuasive and not an axe murderer Tamamo is, especially with button cute Rita and harmless boy Ishirou with her. The colour NPCs on this boat warn Kirishima to not 'go swimming' at night, since the 'bigger critters' come out and go prowling, apparently not fans of the sun. When the stack says they want to investigate the Split, the NPCs seem to automatically take this to mean 'from outside'. Nobody who has totally definitely lived in Yono all their lives would think to enter it. They say that it leads to 'uncountable devils', and exposit slightly about the 'sacred works of the Priors' having shrunk it to its current size and more or less sealed it.

    The water, even for Xion, is cold and bracing, of the kind she could call 'crisp' without tasting. There is barely a breath of a current underneath the glassy surface. It's so well-simulated it's almost frightening, in that the way it goes along with the starry sky invisible to cities, the fresh air, the slight taste of torch and cooking smoke, and the fishy tinge of the quietly creaking watercraft, combines into something that feels genuinely relaxing, if one's attention slips. It's easy to take too deep a breath and get lost staring at the gorgeous skybox and scenery, not thinking about any hassle in particular.
Lilian Rook     The locally somewhat famous party, Friz finds, has both stayed together since then, and is mostly turned in for the night, Yono inns being cheaper and 'cozier' than Clef's grandiose blue-carpeted eight storey brick and marble hotels. A few are rattled and sleepless enough to be playing something with dice when she arrives, apparently still a little bit 'there' in their heads.

    From what they describe, she gets the idea that they don't much like remembering it. The early portions are allegedly very similar to the Ancient Lake area, under a sky 'all the shades of red', and with a very different set of Ruins. There are plenty of markers and signs there, but in an unreadable language no one has even begun to decrypt. As one goes further though, the earthly terrain gradually bleeds away, and slowly transforms into a completely different landscape.

    One where they advise to not touch the water, any plants that seem to be moving with wind (they claim there isn't any, but the air is still and thin), anything with glyphs on it, or anything that floats. They also have a difficult time describing any of the living things they saw there. It's partly like their memory has already failed them, but partly like they can't find the right words in the first place.

    The information they can give her tactically is that the enemies there are very fast, hit extremely hard, have a massive, possibly untethered, pursuit radius, and seem to prioritize targets according to an unknown set of criteria, save that they hate anyone using the Harmony Tuning. They even use the word 'hate', oddly. They also say that the 'bright' ones tend to come at one head on, but the 'dim' ones are extremely good at sticking to peripheral vision. One kind regenerates extremely quickly, while the other can project a deadly status called alienation that temporarily disables Clarity.

    They don't know what resists it, but some players were less affected by it. They definitely got loot, but it was unidentified, and nobody has the skill threshold yet.

    Up close, the Split is a different beast than simply staring at the scarlet tear from afar. The lonely island and its crumbling arch is blanketed in a sound like static and the crooning of something like a broken down siren, rising and falling in faintly musical ways. The scar itself looks three-dimensional, the patterns visible through it shifting with angle like a hologram. Up close, it quivers with a kind of angry-ecstatic energy, radiating an aura of 'a thing that should not be touched'.

    Ishirou's scans of it seem to indicate that it is spatially stable, and probably just a very menacing zone transition point, but not a teleport point. His scans take three seconds to return, as if the beam were bouncing off something incredibly far away, rather than just terrain on the other side across a lake. From the other side, he can pick up recordings that must have been derived from stellar noise, and which indicate enormous radiant energy values. It practically has 'come-back-later preview of endgame' written all over it. Oddly, his scan barely disperses or loses coherence at all from poking at the outside.
Eryl Fairfax     The answer is grim, and Eryl makes a face as he sums it all up in his head. Too little space for too many people that will be coming through. Not enough food and too few medical supplies. That and the two player killers will put everyone on edge. Accusations born of panic, or malicious intent will fly. People might die.

    "All right. Anything that increases the amount of available food will be good. So a cooking guild will be a good idea. But we also need living space..." Looking across the table to Fucil and Elym, he asks, "I'll need a scythe for clearing grass. I can go buy one, but if either of you are willing to rent me one, I'll take it." Looking at their map, he draws a circle around an area just outside the village. Close enough that it will feel like an extension, far enough that there will be room to expand.

    "I'm going to start clearing the grass here. And once I'm done, I'll need to start making tents. It won't be glamorous, but it will be a place to sleep. And with enough players around, it'll hopefully be somewhat secure."

    He's composing emails to other players, requesting that they try to make room for crafting materials once they tackle the bridge. Cotton and flax seeds (or their nearest equivalent) to start growing raw materials here, and the plants themselves to start making linen and woven cotton. From these, canvas can be made, a good material for tents. Making the props from the structure should be simple. There's always branches to claim from trees.
Kirishima Xion notices Kirishima's bluff immediately, and there's that telltale sag of the shoulders of someone that knows they've been caught trying to save face (even if Kirishima's expression doesn't change). "Of course! It's a basic requirement for ninjas and ships alike. I mean... A ninja that can't walk on water? Or a ship that can't even float?"

She laughs, perhaps a little too loudly, but there's definitely a sinking feeling in her gut as she realizes that she's really not living up to either of those images right now. "That'd be... That'd be ridiculous. O-of course, creatures from below might not know that, so a little splashing around and someone standing right in the water would be the perfect bait for them."

Her words come out confidently enough, but her smile is already wavering super hard at that. There's some small relief in seeing that Bercilak is making some progress in hailing the fishermen NPCs, at least, even if her own stated efforts get her a warning from the NPCs on the boat. She pauses for that moment, stroking her chin lightly while considering her options.

"If it was brighter out, that'd certainly make our work here easier... Er. If that pearl is that necessary?" She looks towards Bercilak, then gets right back to thinking out loud. "But seeing them now and knowing what we're up against... Knowing exactly what's going to come out and greet us would be invaluable information, too, especially if we can round them up and turn them into... Food? Parts?" Kirishima suggests and once again considers whether it'd be worth following up on her bluff about trying to lure out the marine life.

It takes all of five seconds for her to go right back to wading deeper into the water. She's made her bed by making that earlier claim, and she hasn't forgotten the terms of the Anchorage trait that had revealed itself during that miniboss fight.

"If anything comes, I'll be counting on you to back me up. Otherwise... Bercilak!" Kirishima calls out to the knight, gawking for a moment after only now realizing he's decided to go shirtless. "I'll try luring what I can this way. Don't get careless!" She announces with another forced laugh before beginning her controlled descent into the lake from close to the shore. She keeps her eyes peeled for signs of approaching lake fauna while submerging herself fully, keeping her crossbow ready in one hand and her other hand free in case she really does need to start punching away.
Rubi-Kan Vagrants      "Thanks!" 'Stupid and dangerous' defines a lot of what Bercilak does, so it's not as if this would be particularly different. "Well," he says to Rita, Tamamo, Ishirou, Kirishima and Xion, "You guys can go on ahead. I'm gonna be at this a minute--not that I mind. Been a while since I could just hunt like this!"

     Without his armor on, he wades into the lake proper, merrily waving to Xion and Rita in particular, and shouldering his axe. As he gets deeper, his grip chokes up, until his knuckles rest behind the beard.

     His plan is to employ a mix of his own methods and the warnings given by the villagers to find what he's after. Using the axe as a punch weapon serves two purposes: to defend himself from attacks by the aforementioned territorial bottom hunters, and to cut him free of the 'float plants' should he become entangled in one. Hopefully, Kirishima's attempts to distract the bottom hunters should keep most of them away, but he's got the axe if he needs it for any that don't rise to her splashing.

     His swimming isn't graceful, practiced or fast, but his stat spread ought to keep him from getting tired out, or running out of breath too quickly. Every so often, he dives, shifts his grip on the axe and uses the haft as a dredge, dragging it through the silt in search of (hopefully dead) shellfish. When he does so, per the recommendation of the villagers, he watches for bubbles disturbed by his dredging, lest he lose track of 'up.' And in the absence of such bubbles, he makes his own, exhaling just enough to make a few and watch where they go.

     Back at the inn, Phreak pinches the bridge of his nose and runs his hand backwards through his hair, pushing out a kind of exhausted sigh. Head in his hands, he looks over at Eryl. "That's just fucking great," he bemoans. "Fantastic, actually. Just what I wanted to hear. They're getting a *reputation* now. And they're doing the hit-and-run thing, too."

     He leans back in his seat, fingers drumming on the table anxiously. "Let me know if you need any of that shit moved in bulk," he says to the two Watch contacts. "The big ticket stuff, cooked food, all that. I mean bulk bulk--I can fast travel easier and cheaper than most players, but it costs me XP. As for those two dicks..."

     "I don't like the idea of them winning six on one. I *really* don't like them being confident enough to go after six people proactively." Turning in his seat towards Eryl, he offers a potential solution.

     "Yeah, yeah," he says, of Eryl's idea for making tents for temporary player houses. "But I don't want 'em getting jumped by Rocky and Fuckwinkle out there. What do you have for traps, Fairfax? I'm talking na--" He stops himself, then tries to think of it in game terms. "Nets. Glue bombs. Intervention Compositions, or Notes, or anything. That goes for you guys, too--either you, or someone you know."
Ishirou That is, in fact, very frightening. Ishirou does determine that it's a stable tear in 'reality' for all intense and purposes, so it's not going to go anywhere anytime soon. So that's...good? The scans from the boat are helpful, and knowledge that the island around the tear itself is safe enough to do deeper and more invasive scans once they arrive.

On the island itself, Ishirou is very keenly drawn to the obvious 'do not push me' button as he takes deeper and more concentrated scans. With his scans not being rebuffed or scattering, he wonders if he can dig a little deeper right outside of the tear and try and see if he can get any more information.

He holds a hand up, putting every bit of his scanning power right into the hole in space, trying to see if he can get more data, or even scan an enemy on the other side. He also tries to get data on the tear itself. Is it instant transport to the other side? Is there a cool-down that would prevent people from coming back?

Ishirou is willing to touch the stove to get these answers.
Eryl Fairfax     "No napalm," Eryl says immediately, finishing Phreak's half-spoken word. "And nothing like punji traps either. They are victims too, to an extent. Nets and tripwires however, could be made from the same material as the tents. Glue bombs might be a bit too advanced. However..."

    He taps the map again, at his proposed campsite. "If I started at the far end, away from Yono... the glow of my head makes me an obvious target. And all my Traits might imply I'm an experienced player."

    He looks at Phreak, and smiles. "A reputation may go to their head. They may get bolder, attack people closer to the village. And those who practice ambushes tend to be unprepared for ambushes themselves. If you understand my meaning."
Rubi-Kan Vagrants      "No napalm," Phreak agrees. "I got beef with those two, but not *that* much." peering at the map, he nods.

     "I'm picking up what you're putting down. The game asked them to do this, from what I heard, so it's not like they're going anywhere any time soon."

     Money is tight, and will be until he can find a way to turn that around, based on what Elym and Fucil said. Most of what he has is going to go towards necessities, but... he casts a longing glance towards the bar. A cold one would be pretty good right now. "You going to hit up the Split before you get on those tents? See what those two have in the back pocket, maybe if we can't get some of it, too?"
Xion The water's edge captivates Xion, nostalgic for the sounds, the smells, the feeling of contact. She has memories, here - not 'her' memories, but memories borrowed and kept from another. Long, sunny days finding things to along the coast with 'her' two friends, sitting and talking, laughing, feeling something echo

echo

echo into the now.

Dazed and glassy-eyed with her feet in the shallows, she smiles distantly at Kirishima as the ninja tries deeply to maintain an image Xion was overequipped to reciprocate. She lingers in the shallows while Kirishima wades deeper, watching the dark, skybox reflecting surface ripple in simulated stars.

"Yeah, stay safe..." !Xion urges Kirishima weakly, wiggling her toes in the crisp water and whelmed with nostalgia that she understood more than phantom flutters in her stomach.

"If it was brighter out. . ." !Xion considers, looking down the shore to find Tamamo. "Tamamo? Ah, are you around? I thought I heard you --" Xion is used to seeing by feeling: seeing by seeing, in the dark, is a lot harder!

"Do you have an ability to brighten things? A light spell?"
Haseo      Haseo has been neglecting his lore reps when it comes to this game. And his intelligence gathering reps. A lot of different reps, really, when he comes to think of it. It's fine though, there's ways of solving this... He thinks.

     Well, he could ask someone? But who? Lilian? Nu-uh. Rita? Pretty sure he'd scare her. Ishi-No. He goes through a list in his head, and ultimately settles on Xion. Even if she's a bit more weird and sensitive, she's also very perceptive. The thing she asked him when they first logged in still bothers him, honestly. Anyway, maybe she knows something!

     This was Haseo's original plan, one that he even somewhat succeeded in as he managed to track the girl down, but when he sees Berc planning to skinny dip in a large body of water, his attention is fully drawn to that. How could it not be, it's so gloriously stupid, and definitely not something he would totally do himself.

     "The hell you guys up to? You need help?"

     His question is aimed at Kirishma as he joins her in the water. He figures she's there to help the green man if things go wrong, and if something goes wrong, he definitely wants to be there to help. It'll be easy EXP, at the very least.
Tamamo     Though she'd gone to help find a boat (and, as assumed, didn't believe anyone was actually going to go in to the Split), Tamamo doesn't go with. She thanks those who come to the group's aid, apologizes that she has little to offer in return, and suggests coming to see her later 'when she is finished preparing breakfast.' So saying, she waves cheerfully to Ishirou and Rita (assuming they board), gives a more distant wave to Bercilak and Kirishima as they play(?) in the water, and heads back toward the communal kitchen with her catch.

    The progress up through the tree of recipes is satisfyingly swift and thorough. Initially interested in the kinds of effects food can have to buff the consumer, Tamamo soon forgets the simplicity of pluses and numbers as she gets lost in the complexity of visual representation and flavor balance. At this level of simulation, there's not much difference from actually cooking. Not enough to especially bother her, even if aspects still might feel unreal and 'game-like' in their ease of use.

    There's rice flour, but not rice. There's seaweed, fish, and umami. She can make sashimi, then, but not sushi -- and she can't be certain that these particular fish are safe for sashimi, but, "It is a game, no? I suppose they would not wish to make the players worry for such things as cannot be seen."

    Sea parasites can be a big problem, past poison concerns, but if tooltips don't indicate an issue, it's probably fine. And if it's not, she'll figure out a cure. This, too, is a learning experience.

    Though her treatment of the Cisocanths is more sparing, but Tamamo ultimately attempts various raw cuts for everything she has available, whether from this zone or the previous, focusing on a clean and near-uniform appearance as she pares away the unusable with her knife. Whether the game will recognize 'raw' material as 'food' is another question, but one she fully expects to be answered in the positive.

    She might not have rice, itself, but there are a lot of things that can be done with flour. Too many, really, given that she can now bake as she likes. If she has flour, she's most of the way to biscuits. If she can make biscuits, has a sharp cheese, and something close to flax or chia seeds, mixing directly into the dough hardly complicates the recipe while certainly enhancing the result -- she hopes. For that matter, having biscuits means she can fill them with everything else at hand, rolling up fish or other meat into something more easily carried in a pouch than sandwiches would be.

    At some point, she remembers to start checking again for what tooltips and status screens say about the results of her work.

    If those villagers she'd spoken to show up -- or anyone else, really -- she'll share her work.
Friz Grit: We know all we need to survive.
Moxie: Are you sure about that?
Grit: We know enough from those who survived before.
Savvy: There's something... 'arbitrary' that gives you some kind of 'compatibility'. We still need to be careful. *Really* careful.
Dirt: Well, it's all the data we can get here.

    Friz flips through it as she leans over the edge of the boat. She fidgets weirdly, craving an energy drink or a piece of candy, winding up chewing on her pen instead as she regards her notes. What can she figure out from this?

Savvy: An exclusion zone.
Moxie: The best they could throw together on short notice.
Dirt: There's a connection. The scanner said a distant star...
Grit: This is not a place of honor.

    She watches Bercilak wade into the water, the way one might watch distant ducks on a lake. She frowns, turning to the island. She needs to examine the containment systems. No tape recorder this time though... She sighs, checking to make sure as few people as possible are watching her apparently talk to herself.

"Rogers. I need to know what they can do. What were the priors keeping in?"
"Look like an alien to you, Friz?"
"You know how people think. You have the *feel* for it."
"I can try, kid."
"And I need to figure out how they got there and back..."

    Few people come here. But it's exposed to the elements. Friz tries her best to examine the environment for signs of passage from distinct groups, looking for signs of a pair passing. Her spectral friend, meanwhile, tries to apply his intuitive forensic psychology to the acts of Priors uncountable eons in the past. What did they hold in, which might have gotten out? What is 'Eversion', in its fingerprint on the Priors' minds and actions? Is a great deed commemorated here?
Rubi-Kan Vagrants      Surfacing briefly, Bercilak throws his head back, his green locks flying backwards, clear of his eyes. "Yo!" he calls to Haseo, waving a muscled arm in greeting. "Just dredging for pearls, sib. Need it for a quest," he explains, before gesturing behind him towards the little chain of islands at the center of the lake. "Then I'm heading that way," the Green Knight Explains Further. "And chipping off some of those ruins." He holds his axe aloft with the other hand, still choked up. Red eyes reflected in the water, he grins. "If you wanna help, maybe even get some XP and crafting shit, do what Kirishima's doing and splash around and shit! Maybe it'll attract bottom hunters, lead 'em away from me so I can look for this shit without them trying to flex on me." Maybe a few still will. Or maybe they don't care at all about splashing! He doesn't know.

     "Thanks for offering, king," offers Bercilak, before diving again and disappearing below the surface to resume his searching.
Lilian Rook     Eryl's request is heard clearly, but both players stare at him a little dumbly for what must be a full standard combat round. "Like . . . manually? You're just going to . . . cut . . . the grass?" "Can you do that?" "Maybe? How fast do you think it respawns?" "Does it?" "Don't you need the Harvest skill to . . ." "How should I know? Who the hell levelled that skill yet?" "I don't know, I just assumed there'd be like, plots, or whatever. Can you really just pick dirt and . . . just plant things in it?" "Well, the game simulated how much you smell." "Oh fuck off."

    Some of the contacts in his very messy list have started looking into Construction, naively hoping to plan for the long game, or at least move out of town somehow. There are a few capable of putting together tier 0 shelters (personal, thus useless) but a handful have gotten to tier 1, which, if arranged into a single three by three unit, could allegedly squeeze about nine people together. They list some figures to him about their climate control, durability, and vitalization ratings, but mainly just having a spot where someone can lie down with some privacy and where monsters won't aggro is a big deal.

    Any tier 1 wood, any tier 1 rope, and either canvas or any tier 1 cured hide is acceptable. Unfortunately, canvas is very expensive in Clef, most of the vegetation is tier 0, and all of the monsters drop tier 0 materials; they'd have to actually get to Yono first. Asking Elym and Fucil informs him that they seem to know that flax is still just called 'flax', but cotton-equivalents come from gossflower which can only be found in the warmer regions upriver.
Lilian Rook     Ishirou scanning the entrance to the Split, But Harder, can't get a whole lot more than he already did. As far as the game is concerned though, it doesn't actually seem to be a teleport zone. Contrary to good design sense, it doesn't visually mark a warp point to load another map somewhere else, but seems to be a directly physical connection, like a door, if one opened in three dimensions. The only thing needed to go right through it would be to walk back and forth. The monsters there are . . . probably, programmed to not come through, but it's still pretty bold to not gate players from returning for any extra tension.
Ishirou Ishirou made a thoughtful sound at the door itself. He couldn't get anything from here, probably the door was blocking such scans in case of someone like his abilities...it'd likely be dangerous in there, but he's got high natural resistance to radiation. He rolls the situation around in his head, trying to think of the best recourse, and if it was too dangerous.

"So I'm about to do something a little dumb, stay here in case it is dumber than expected?" he asks more than tells his companions.

Then he opens the door and enters it, trying to see if he can get the scans he wants if he steps through the door itself. No risk, no gain...at least that was what this game seemed to be about. Hopefully, it just wasn't a stupid risk.
Eryl Fairfax     "The game is reactive to people, so I expect once the grounds become lived-in, the respawn rate will dwindle due to constant foot traffic," Eryl says distractedly as he monitors his inbox. A perfect answer awaits him. But at the end of the day, this will need to be a team effort. Certainly, being able to point players in the right direction for materials is a start, but there are going to be those who have not invested in the right skills to make their own shelter.

    "I have a proposal," he says finally to Elym and Fucil. "Your group would like to start a formal guild, yes? The capital required is great as I understand it. So I'd like to extend an offer to you. I have, here in my inbox, the details on how to make a tier 1 shelter. Unlike tier 0, these are not personal, and thus, can be traded and sold."

    "If your group intends to linger around this area, I'm willing to give these details to you, so you can start making and selling these shelters to arriving players who cannot get a room in Yono itself. But, I have conditions. Firstly, any information on how to make the shelters themselves, and the nearby locations for the raw materials must be made freely available. Players must have the right to go and do it themselves if they are willing. Second, you are only supplying the shelters, you are not renting out lots of the land I clear. You offer a single purchase only, not a lease."

    He smiles, and adds, "If you need to discuss this with everyone, that's fine. Until then, may I borrow that aforementioned scythe?"
Lilian Rook     Tamamo's carving away at food-related items in a manual fashion has surprisingly different results depending on her proximity to proper cookware. It stands to reason that the game wouldn't expect players to actually know how to cook in real life in order to be allowed to do it in the videogame, which is fair enough, but there's a tenuous middle ground with Tamamo's practical knowledge.

    Cutting up meat materials by itself gradually fills up a chic little postmodern aesthetic progress bar around the item, and gradually turns them into various 'cut' items (belly, fillet, et cetera) listed as 'prepared ingredient'. These no longer have raw food warnings, but only provide a few dozen units of hunger satiation and nothing more. A reliable fallback if someone actually ran out of food in the middle of nowhere, but not much more.

    Briging the, into the general vicinity of a tier 1 cooking station adds their contextual prompts to be combined, but it turns out Tamamo doesn't have to strictly use them. As long as she seems to know what she is doing, the game is good enough at rapidly narrowing down the array of steps on contextual offer. It's sort of as if the pots and knives and arbitrary charcoal flame are 'props' for the system to read her intent from. Hassling the nearby NPCs allows her to buy a complete kit that weighs all of four units and allows her to prepare tier 0-2 dishes anywhere.

    The station she has goes up to 3, but in both cases, the higher over the station's tier, the lower the food's quality rate is, balanced against her fairly high base skill level, making it generally more efficient to cook at the same tier, or one above. The buffs are nothing to sneeze at either. Most last anywhere between two and eight hours, and apply things like health recovery boosts, status resistance, decreased stamina burn, greater max health, clarity, and stamina, bonuses to CON, STR, PER, and WIL checks, slightly increased specific action speeds, increased XP gain, increased Discovery rate, increased Trait Affinity, weather resistance, breath efficiency, water movement, and more.

    Each food also has a reptition value, counted against Variety. Eating the same food over and over gradually reduces its effect. There's no incentive to simply endure the psychological burden of food fatigue for optimal buffs. Actually eating properly, and a wide variety of foods, is shockingly strongly encouraged, for something aiming at gamers, of all people. Which sort of makes things easier and more difficult.
Tamamo     Tamamo prepares a bit of everything she can think to try, before inevitably concluding that she's going to need a fresh load of materials to keep going. The result is an effectively random assortment of buffs. As she packs them up for carrying, she tries to think through how flavor or nutritional balances might match against stat boosts -- but it's a bit much for her to clearly grasp, so she doesn't wrack her brain too hard on the topic.

    Heading back to the shore, she sorts out some STR and PER buffs, water movement, and decreased stamina burn, readying an array of stuffed biscuits and wrapped meats for nibbling, with the aim of helping hunting and searching in the water.

    'Tamamo? Ah, are you around? I thought I heard you --'

    "Oh, Xion, is that you?" Tamamo makes her way over, the golden mirror halo making her easy to spot on approach. "Are you in need?"

    'Do you have an ability to brighten things? A light spell?'

    "Oh, yes, of course! ... At least, I should think so. They are known as 'compositions' in this land, yes? Here, have yourself a bite." With the problem involving murky sight, Tamamo passes Xion a PER-boosting cheesy biscuit. "Now, let us see..."

    Tamamo's halo is linked to her Originator trait, and it's that on which she focuses to find a Composition that will do anything like what she wants. Normally, she'd simply manifest the Sun in a space, letting the 'light' aspect of it shine down. Here, she's not quite sure what will happen when she tries to do the same thing.
Lilian Rook     Bercilak and Kirishima both pretty quickly find out that the Ancient Lake is not a scenic little cabin location to go motorboating around. They'd have to guess that the centermost island is about a kilometer and half, maybe two, from shore, and must be at least a quarter of that deep when far from shore, making it shockingly dark along the bottom. Enough, in fact, that one can see the bioluminescent dots of unknown critters flashing in the water when submerged, almost blending with the stars overhead, and making it feel as if the water and the night sky are barely separated.

    Some appear to be coming up from a deep trench that Bercilak discovers ringing the central island, with the Scar, carved who knows how far down. It is probably best not to fuck around with drowning mechanics, given that low breath starts to make his Vitals bar flash rather than his HP, though Kirishima appears to be either immune or very resilient.

    Further, Bercilak's deep enough that the pressure alone makes his movements sluggish and dull. It's not easy to navigate around the lake plants, lifted with buoyant gas pockets in their stalks to reach the sunlight, creating the illusion of a dense and confusing forest. Twice, something sinks its teeth into his leg and starts to thrash and drag him further down, but whacking in its general direction with his axe is enough to make a health bar appear and to drive it off due to his superior STR stat passing some sort of check. Kirishima draws more aggro from swift and quiet, middle-layer hunters; nocturnal predators coming out to feast on the prey drifting up from the trench to feed, with the odd barbed tentacle or bony jaw. Unfortunately, her crossbow sucks underwater; there's too much drag on the string for it to be helpful, so only her punches are worth anything, given her resistance to the mobility-reducing effects of deep water.

    Sorting blindly through the silt completely sucks. It's another word for mud but heavier and with a habit of flowing back into itself so he can't even dig a proper hole. It takes several trips to the surface before Bercilak finally cracks into a pocket of jumbled together shells and bones, glued together by a layer of something much harder than silt. When Tamamo scans her sheet, and much like Surge had been, is notified of a Composition of Gold, he's finally able to see what looks like coal and fulgurite. Tiny metal harvest points pop up in his view, in fact, as well as a brand new ??? node.

    A Large Pearl is something he's simply fortunate enough to find due to the large party's boosted Discovery rate. When Kirishima comes looking, however, she sees Tamamo's conjured sunlight catch on something that fractures it into a four point star of split and redshifted colours. Either of them can pry it out with sufficient damage, whereupon it registers as a tier 7 material, name in bright rose. An Examine action gives it a garbled junk name, and a weight of one unit, with a value of zero cune. As far as they can tell however, it looks like a fragment of blackened bone, or metal shaped like one, with a single marking that glows with the same colour of light as that of the Split.
Kirishima "So that doesn't work..." Kirishima burbles to herself as she realizes the crossbow is kind of ass in this situation, holstering it before long and diving deeper to keep drawing those creatures out. If nothing else, it leaves her hands free to start punching the shit out of those nocturnal hunters when they draw near, finding that her movements are actually still rather natural here. It gives her some small relief, too, especially considering that earlier debacle right in front of Xion and Rita with the faceplanting into the water thing.

The tentacles in particular get caught, too, as she drags those hunters closer to really punch the crap out of them. She spends quite a bit of time on luring in and fighting off the underwater beasts, squinting every now and then to get a better look at where Bercilak's headed and to continue moving arund so he can have an easier time finding his pearl.

In time, Kirishima also finds a treasure she wasn't even expecting to pick up in the form of... Thing. It does take a while for her to get there thanks to all that punching, but glancing in the right direction by sheer chance lets her spot the thing illuminated by Tamamo's sun. With little else to interact with in a form that isn't just punching, Kirishima sinks a little further to pick out the thing with the garbled name.

"Just what can this be? Maybe a crafting material or a quest item...?" She mumbles to herself through the water, pocketing it before starting to head back up towards the surface. She continues fighting all along the way, of course, and then she diverts course to join up with Bercilak once he requests the mysterious thing. It's not as though Kirishima would have much use for it herself, anyway, and that little detour means more punching time to continue building up those all important numbers.
Xion By the time Tamamo is done with her cooking and turning about to address Xion, the wandering girl has moved on.

It takes a moment to find !Xion in the dark, crouched in the water near the pier that Kirishima had walked off. Her boots have come off her changed model to rest on the wood of the pier, dripping into the wood and flickering in the approaching light. Without them, she wades in the muddy shallows with the cuffs about her wrists and ankles rolled up, and a crown of gold braids atop her head.

Perched on sunken toes and buried hands, while Kirishima dives into the middle-waters to fight all sorts of creatures and struggle in the near-visible distance, and Bercilak is who-knows-where. Tamamo's approach brings with it treats, and the water-foraging woman is eager to spring up and clasp the offered treat in both hands--

--but not before snap-waggling them in the air to get the worst of the water and rivermud off her damp hands to grasp the wrapped treat.

Which she doesn't risk any foolishness with by immediately jamming it into her face and taking a big bite. "Oh!" Culinary power - at least the fullness - hit a lot faster than she was used to. She examined how the effects hit her experientially as she chewed and smiled.

"I wouldn't know, I didn't really touch the menu that much after generation and friend-listing." She admits casually.
Rubi-Kan Vagrants LAKE DIVING

     ...is slow going. But that doesn't mean Bercilak doesn't enjoy it. 'Actually having to think about his vitals' is a novel experience for him, and the arduous path of even getting to something resembling what he's looking for is trod (or rather, swam) with a certain determined zeal.

     The spirited attempts of ambush predators to try and drag him under more than once draws startled laughter from him (thus lowering further his air supply), but his fist and the blade of his axe are enough to drive them off.

     The pearl, when at last he finds it amidst lake coquina, is pocketed. Triumphantly returning above the water, he stays where he's at, diving back below after catching his breath to Examine the ??? node and make a map marker to share to the party. He labels it 'Metal? But also underwater, B Rdy 2 Fight'

     Rising back up, he meets up with Kirishima, accepting the Split fragment from her. In return, he wraps a thickly muscled arm around her, pulling her into the classic bro-hug, complete with a hearty pat on the back. "You made that way easier. Thanks," he says, pulling back. "That's two out of three," the Green Knight beams, glowing eyes wide with eagerness. "I'mma head back to the shore, armor up, and get after the third. You can come with if you want, but stick close to me. Easy to get lost in the woods."

     With or without her, his next step is to do exactly that, backtracking all the way through town to head into the misty forest, using his Woodsman skill to take note of the more common varieties. In the dark, he has to rely on touch and smell more than he normally would--but this, too, seems something he welcomes rather than complains about or fears.
Lilian Rook     Friz's forensics of the Split and its surrounding island itself are 'interesting', to say the least. The number of tracks going in is depressingly much, much larger than those coming out. There are signs of people sorting bulk supplies outside, and likely bringing camp equipment in, but no traces of fire over the past weeks.

    One set of prints and weight loads in and out matches the survivor story, but just exactly according to Friz's hunch, she locates much fainter signs of passage, in and out several times. Two people. One light and probably feminine, one carrying a heavier load with a masculine gait. The latest are actually very fresh. There are also more of their tracks exiting than entering.

    Without sufficient lore information, the group having barely spoken to NPCs and picked up no quests, it's difficult for even Rogers to postulate events in the ancient fictional past. The ruins here don't look age-crumbled like those in the prior areas, though. They look damaged, as if by a lightning strike, or possibly an explosion. Probably several. The fulgurite at the bottom of the lake that the other group has found supports the same idea. The sharp depression and the single rise suggests that the lake island isn't actually geologically normal, and that the original size of the Split may actually account for the entire size of the modern island. As far as he can tell, it is currently unshielded by anything in particular, but that it must simply have been accepted as too small for anything but humans to enter and exit. The name is strangely apt.

    Notably, the ruins here don't appear to be built by the same people as those who left behind the Derivation Bridge and its guardian procedures. He can't really date them, but it seems more likely that multiple civilizations used to share the same general geographic area, and all faced the threat at the same time, given there are no signs of mingled architecture and one building on the ruins of the other. There is evidence that there were once glyphic warnings here, possibly even magical ones, but that they have faded and become illegible centuries ago. The idea he gets, foggy at best, is that rather than a faction or race or even a dimension, the context of the word is that of a process. Something hard to pin between a cultural movement and a virulent plague, where the event of 'becoming Everse' spreads and threatens.
Haseo      Looks like Kirishima and Berc didn't need his help. Figures. If he wanted to actually help, he should have just gone and done it and not even bothered to ask. He's not really upset about it though, just a bit stumped. He's not used to a game with a lot of down time between fighting, and god forbid he actually tries talking to other players if he can help it. So he's just feeling stuck in a weird place.

     Xion and Tamamo are now close by, and while he thinks about doing what he originally set out to do before getting side tracked, when Bercilak says he's going to get suited up and head into the woods, Haseo jumps on the chance.

     "Hey! Let me join!"

     He's no longer asking this time, as the Adept Rogue just kind of forces himself in the party. What are they going to do? Say no? He honestly doubts it, the Green Knight guy seems like the sort of dude who's all too happy to have more people around him.

     Unfortunately though, when Haseo follows Berc inside the forest, he's as much at mercy to the dark as he is, though he's capable of conjuring up a small flame that provides enough light to at least make sure he doesn't bump into anyone around him.
Tamamo     Though Tamamo takes a look, she leaves the mystery thing to Kirishima to gather and take away to Bercilak.

    It being fantastically convenient, within the materials available, Tamamo has stuffed as much of the food she's made into rice-flour biscuits as she can. That includes the sweetfish-stuffed biscuits -- perhaps closer to pastries, if she could work on them a bit more -- that give the water movement buff. She nibbles away at one, and offers another to Xion, in the event that she might still seem hungry (eating as quickly as she does giving that impression). Though, first, she suggests, "You might wash the mud in the water, and towel your hands a bit. Here, I have some spare cloths."

    Good enough for the circumstances.

    'I didn't really touch the menu that much after generation and friend-listing.'

    "Oh, I see. In that case, do you know the... list of 'traits,' is it? I have some vague idea of what mine might mean." Tamamo gestures to the golden light she'd successfully summoned, speaking the first, "Originator. Inordinator. Propitiator. Ah, and yet, I suppose it is not so all-important. It is only that I did have the thought that there might be something akin, yet also unlike, the most uncommon of your own abilities, and that you might not realize this changed manner of accomplishing the same tasks if merely by trying. To 'try,' still, is what this world seems to ever encourage. And, to speak of that..."

    Her food nibbled away to nothing, Tamamo begins scanning the waters with her eyes. "Shall we search for more that can be brought back to the kitchens? It would be best were I to have a spear, but a thrusting sword might do well enough. There may be fish, of course, but also eels, and squid, and clams, mussels, crabs... why, who knows what else we might find? Ah, come to that, are you comfortable to swim?"
Lilian Rook     Elym and Fucil look to each other with synchronized poker faces when Phreak asks about traps. "The militia is going to be taking care of that as best we can, but . . ." "We haven't found much in the way of game mechanics that supports that kind of thing. There's animal trapping, and there are apparently some Compositions and Tinker weapons you can drop field fixtures with, but--" "They last like twenty minutes at most. Battle prep. Not permanent installations. Don't know if there's anything else later." "Yeah. Pretty hard to depersonalize that kind of thing. And they all have zero Tuning rating, so they're walled by Clarity pretty hard."

    Eryl is told, quite matter of factly, that the questline to be recognized as an official Guild by the council of Clef is four steps long, requires getting all the way to the end of the Overture region, and costs six million cune. Evidently, this would normally be something that only becomes available after the playerbase overcomes the game's 'chapter one' and has had weeks to pool together resources in optimal ways. It also only confers a guild of a certain size, with a maximum number of slots and 'vassals', a certain minor bulk shopping discount, and ownership of a single small building and plot of land, and requires further quests and capital to upgrade.

    But even then, a hundred people with guild conveniences is a lot better than nothing, and if they felt like it, the average tier 1 Guild Hall could house twice that. The land and bulk discount is enough to make a pretty steady trickle of profit from skilled trade, and the tithing system allows for some very large purchases, given that it allows members to pay from the account without carrying money and to remotely requisition, buy, trade, and send, items under a certain weight and value. Being guildmates also dramatically lowers friendly fire values, and increases Party bonuses.

    "Come on guy. I didn't get this game to live out the thrilling adventure of being a fucking landlord." "Yeah I was planning on killing mine soon. Haha." "In Bladecraft." "In Bladecraft." "You can do better than borrow one. They're like thirty to fifty cune, depending on your Trade skill." "Peanuts. The NPCs here are actually pretty great."
Kirishima Bercilak gets his tier 7 thingy, and Kirishima gets a bro-hug and pat on the back. At her normal height, it'd just be kind of novel with him being nearly a foot and a half taller than her, but still easily met with a clap on the shoulder of her own. Right now, though, in this body? There's over a two foot gap between them, and it's really jarring for her to have to stand on her toes just to return the pat on the back.

"N.. No problem. I have to admit, it's much more... I feel more in my element doing this than trying to figure out how to wrangle so many people like the Grandmaster and the others are doing right now." She admits with a hearty laugh of her own, nodding at Bercilak's offer to tag along in the woods. "Sure. An extra set of eyes-" She pauses, looking over at Haseo as he invites himself to join in. She laughs, then waves him over before finally continuing "-or two will make things easier to handle once we're in there. Plus, I'll actually be able to use this."

Kirishima brings out her crossbow, then flips it around in her hands a few times like she's practiced doing cool (yet useless) crossbow tricks before. Whether she keeps doing it or holsters it immediately depends on Bercilak and Haseo, but she eventually puts it away once they're in the forest proper.  Although she doesn't have anything quite so useful at actual navigation, she does have a potential height advantage in being able to scale trees rather easily.  That, in turn, lets her get a better view of things from a higher angle, and she even starts leaping from branch to branch like a proper ninja would with her fancy ninja mask and all. She's still looking for shinies, of course, but she's also keeping her eyes open for wandering mobs to call them out, or for conspicuously open fields that would be ideal for a boss fight.
Friz     A phantom flickers as Friz moves around. A flash of something kneeling near her. Hands on her shoulders as she's 'steered' to particular areas. Dirt unsettled oddly as if something passed. If one looks closely, they might be able to see the phantom form of the man himself standing at exactly the right angle, guiding Friz's hands to hold up a fragment of discarded material and comparing faded glyphic warnings to other faded glyphic warnings.

    "Like Specta, but not. Like the opposite. Influence for something more. The people putting this up, drunk-walking halfway between riot control and quarantine. Containment, here, hospice, there? A man fights his hardest and leaves behind a mess, or he accepts it with dignity. There's something in the blood -- 'Bloodsong', didn't they say? And something..."

    Friz turns the fragment in the air, rotating it to expose some truth.

    "Something in the soul? 'Soulsong pattern', there's something there with the Eversion. There's something it puts in your blood, and something it puts in your soul."

    Friz gently whispers to her phantom companion. "Did it do something to their souls? Or is it... a role? Like what happened to Miss Rook?"
    "Rook would rather pay her sourcer twice than let someone mess with her soul. That woman is Specta-proof, and she walks it in every step. No. Game recognizes something. And those bandits are like her."
    "Are you sure? They're just mugging people."
    "Gut feeling. There's more to the muggings."
    "Fair enough..."

    Friz makes her reports over the radio, and contemplates as she does.

Grit: They can endure that area.
Dirt: Looks like they pass in and out regularly.
Savvy: So it's the only place to find them reliably.
Moxie: It's the place they can flee to and from though.
Grit: Home turf advantage.
Savvy: We'll need advantage in numbers.
Dirt: This confirms that theory though. That the Split is where to find them.
Moxie: Then that's where we need to go.
Rubi-Kan Vagrants      "If you kill him the company just replaces him, assuming it's just some shitty development company. Once this all blows over, I got some tips on how to get what you're really after. In Bladecraft," Phreak dutifully chimes in.

     On the subject of traps and battle prep, Phreak's expression is grim, but not hopelessly so, fingers steeples. "Twenty minutes isn't great, but it's not nothing. I got a skill that burns my Clarity but makes me damn near impossible to hit, for a small window. I'd be great as a lure for those dicks, especially with my runspeed. We find a good place to fight them, I talk a lot of shit, lure them to said place. I'm a hurlant guy, so I figure I'll turn on a dime, get into range, pop Dissonance and blast 'em once they're in position. Chunk their Clarity so the tools can do what they do, yeah?"
Xion "Hmm?" Xion turns, mouth full of Tamamo's cooking and with crumbs about the cloth and her hands, to Haseo's imposing steps under the Tamamo-generated light. "Have you figured out what I meant yet?" She asks, as he shoulders in, becoming the Imposing Dark Hero Guy Tamamo and !Xion for a moment.

Xion being filled with even more water movement renders a lot of the issue of mud moot, but she's bashful all the same, tilting back and glancing away, thumbing crumbs from the corners of her lips onto the tip of her tongue. "It's fine, they're clean enough. The five second rule that Axel taught me means as long as I eat it fast-" and the pond not being deathly full of super-toxins that would give her a stomachache. "-it's fine. But I'll take seconds! It's realy good."

She scrapes off any slime on her fingers onto a buckle of metal on her waist, and then looks up to Haseo to offer him the extra sweetroll when--

Kirishima's already gotten him. "Guess I'll have to wait for that answer some more."

The tutorializing helps, slowly. "I've tried to listen to the talk, but this whole experience - isn't it kind of nice? There's a lot of craft into the world, it'd be nice to just hang out here and live. Maybe not... for Xion, or Tamamo, but I could see it? For someone."

She sighs. "Someone that isn't ''me''."
Eryl Fairfax     "Ah well, if you're not interested, I won't force you. The amount I would ask you to charge would barely dent that final figure." Having someone in the town would have been good, but Eryl supposes he can perhaps try his hand at making them himself and selling them to the NPCs.

    As Phreak continues pondering on the use of traps, and adding fuel to the fire that might be used to burn landlords (in Bladecraft), he pauses, tapping the table. "If I am to clear an area for use as a campground, that would be a lot of cut grass on the ground. Hiding tripwires and pressure plates among them would be quite easy. And I imagine a fistful of grass to the eyes would make you even harder to hit."
Tamamo     Haseo and Kirishima head off with Bercilak into the woods, and Tamamo waves from a distance.

    With Xion joining her, Tamamo aims for a little further from shore, shining her golden light from the surface and trying to catch some of the creatures who would otherwise be trying to catch them. Being able to use her shield without having to keep a hand on it makes swim-fighting a lot easier.

    'Have you figured out what I meant yet?'

    "Oh, have you been asking riddles?"

    'I've tried to listen to the talk, but this whole experience - isn't it kind of nice?'

    "Oh, yes. It is a bit difficult for me to take the measure of how 'real' this is, and that is my greatest complaint, perhaps. It is fun to cook meals for friends, and perhaps it only matters that the experience of eating it is real... but what of the experience of cooking it? 'Would it not be better to truly cook a meal?' I had this thought. There is just a bit of disconnection, the threads loose and incomplete in their weaving, between the experiences within and without the game. In that case, is this world only a substitute, for those that cannot acquire the same experience, otherwise? 'For Tamamo...' If my own world possesses already the dangers that others seek, is it not that there remains no purpose in seeking a lesser copy of an adventure?"

    Though the necessary actions of fishing and diving make speech possible only at certain points, Tamamo still works through the thought, eventually. "It is not quite so, I think. There is yet some greater purpose than the whiling of time, to this place, though it is well-built to that end. There is something here that cannot be acquired outside of it. I have not quite seen the shape of what it is, yet I am certain that it exists. To that end, might you keep an eye open for this mystery, as well?"

    She's still actively looking for eel and octopus, but that's probably not the sort of thing meant. "It may not be a world 'for Xion' to remain in forevermore, but there is yet purpose in your presence, here, as well, just as there is some mysterious role set aside for Lilian. I have no doubt of it."
Lilian Rook     "Hey! I didn't say I wasn't willing to cooperate! Just that I'm not renting shit!" "Yeah the game actually caps how many constructs you can tag with your name too. Past that number, you lose ownership on them, and they become world clutter. That means other people can salvage them, and they start to degrade on their own. Pretty fast too." "It's just economical to turn them over to players. Otherwise we'd get a lot of shitty crumbling tent-shacks we're basically charging protection money on, right?" "Honestly, it's kind of like the game hates the idea of . . . Well, no, it definitely hates the design where people make profit doing nothing."

    It's sort of funny to hear while little XP pings are scrolling in the corner of Eryl's vision from Bercilak and Kirishima fighting lake critters.

    "You really want to try baiting those two? That sounds kind of . . ." "If we're obviously springing a trap, doesn't that just risk them getting serious? It's one thing to catch them on the road, but luring them in and springing a whole prepared ambush--" "That'd make someone panic. If it were me, I'd probably stop caring about if I killed someone to get out of that. You sure?"
Eryl Fairfax     "Ah, brilliant. Thank you very much." Eryl opens up his menu, smiling wryly as he sees the scroll of shared XP coming in. As promised, he mails the two the recipe for a tier 1 shelter. "And of course, I'll help in figuring out where you can source the materials. You already know gossflower, which can be made into canvas and rope both, but so too can flax, or hemp perhaps. It would be ideal to diversify materials to ensure you have enough to meet demand. Curing hides takes time, but you would get the rest of the animal as materials too."

    With regards to the player hunters, Eryl's response is quick and definite. "I am completely sure. Because it's only a matter of time before that scenario happens. If it's not us, it would be another, more skilled player, or more players at once than they can deal with. And when that panic sets in, and the situation becomes life-or-death, I would rather be there than not. I'd trust no one more than myself to ensure that it ends favourably."
    
Rubi-Kan Vagrants      "Good," says Phreak of the conversation on profit. "More people oughta hate that. But I'm preaching to the choir, guys, I know."

     He leans back in his seat, when the two of them talk about the bandit duo getting serious. "What's the alternative?" asks the fixer openly, without rancor. "Like, yeah, I know people fight harder when they think they're about to croak. But how else do we put the kibosh on this bullshit? You think those two are going to back down because somebody asked them nicely?" He holds up an index, glancing over to the NPC, making the classic 'round of drinks, please' gesture. Then, arm around the back of his chair, he continues.

     "Because I don't." His brow creases, and his golden eyes harden. "Yeah," he continues, with a sideways nod of his head towards Eryl. "Besides, this is a story game, and I say these particular characters need to be written off their little toll booth gig. Sir Phreak the Crooked thinks those two oughta find something to do that's not fucking people over. If you guys have a way to do that, I'm all ears. But for me, dangerous or not, scary or not, that way looks like a little taste of their own medicine. Doesn't have to be the whole bottle. But it needs to leave a taste."
Lilian Rook     Ishirou, doing the least advisable thing and touching the Split, finds that his body doesn't so much phase or warp through it as . . . it just 'goes'. It's really like stepping through a door. The loose sense that a physical frame is passing beside and behind him, and the briefly overriding sensory impression of stepping into a far larger, grander, differently climate controlled room. The sounds of the lake --its chirping bugs and hooting night birds-- and even its wet earthy and floral scents, are even still lingering right there around him, faint, but not gone. He could navigate back by those, if he wasn't far from the softly glittering night blue slash in space.
    The area text that introduces him is a flickering mess of non-alphanumeric symbols, as if cycling through unicode inputs randomly, but every so often, he catches a glimpse of two letters. An S and a P. As if he had some inkling of what would be necessary to read it. His map fills in his immediate surroundings as it would anywhere else.

    He exits into an 'indoors' space, but only just. The other side is all ruins too, but more complete, and clearly by a different maker. The architecture around him is overwhelmingly tall, sheer-faced and smooth, but without a right angle to be seen, bevelled and chamfered to exception. It looks like polished quartz, frosted glass, and black iron, fitted together in tightly sandwiches layers, over and between which are visible, thin circular rings of gold, connected together by branching radial lines, but all empty in the middle, as if they might have once held something. These too are clearly damaged by violent event, as the entire wall facing away from him is removed, as well as a roughly spherical portion of the roof and floor above, allowing the sky to shine down on the pale rubble.

    The air here is the exact sort of warm that makes it difficult to notice one's own skin. It is eerily still, and a little bit thin, making him breathe harder without noticing at first. Other than the architecture, though, it doesn't seem totally different. There is dirt underfoot, overgrown with grass and shrub and humidity-loving creeper and climbing vine. The air is damp, and the sound of gently sloshing water is outside.

    It only takes a short walk to tell that, here too, he is on an island, of closely equal size to the one in the Ancient Lake zone, surrounded by a similar amount of water. To the west, what he knows to be towards Clef, the horizon terminates near shore, into a shimmering mirage of stained glass colours, like a stretched aurora borealis that meets the water, giving him no view of where Yono would be. To the east, further into the 'holy land', it carries all the way to land, and much further beyond.

    There is an empty campsite here. Two three by three tier 1 shelters, both nearly full durability, but listed as having no owner, flanking a cluster of much more heavily degraded player-fashioned wooden crates a log bench and two simple hewn stools, scattered repair and cooking kits, and a sodden campfire pit. Beyond the camp, away from the standing ruin enclosing the portal, there is a hovering stone, roughy the size and shape of a wall mirror, surrounded in spokes of hexahedral crystals growing from it. Its polished face is dedicated to a single luminous glyph, or perhaps a compound glyph made of several complex characters. And beyond that, is a storm.
Lilian Rook     Outside of the campsite and the sheltering building, not far from the stone marker, the air is thick with haze and tossed by violent winds, not unlike a very fine snowstorm. The sound, however, is nothing like wind. It is a roar-- loud and dull and crackling in his ears like static. Like the radio noise of solar wind, blasted at him from every direction. The water of the lake isn't disturbed at all, still glassy smooth, but given a second glance, it remains deep blue-violet-black and studded with winking stars, even though the sky overhead is every shade of red.

    There is just one moon here, looming unusually close, and the amber gold of the real moon just before sunrise, even though it holds the position of midnight. The texture of the sky around it suggests that it is swirling in a circular pattern, like a very small hurricane. His compass very helpfully informs him that the weather is a ¬Þ¬ÞÅß Storm that will last ??? hours.

    For once, this is a storm warning he will have to heed. Attempting to leave the campsite and into the roaring haze immediately makes him feel sick. His eyes burn, his throat halfway closes up, his pulse skyrockets, and he begins losing his sense of balance, his spatial orientation with his surroundings, and the feeling in his limbs, starting from the fingertips and trickling in. A status indicator --oddly indicated by what looks like an Earthrise-- hits him with the familiar term ALIENATION, the icon incrementing a new stack each time it fills in, with a gain rate of 91%. Each stack greys out a sliver of his Clarity bar. It would take ten minutes at most for his entire bar to disappear under these conditions.
Ishirou Ishirou takes this exploration slowly. He wants to approach this carefully, even if it's dangerous to be here at all. There is a large difference between risky and stupid. Stepping through the door was weird compared to other portal-traversing mechanics. He takes his time exploring the ruins, getting an understanding of the materials, and also the architecture of this place.

The empty space in the middle of the rings gets his attention...what could have been here? He records the data for later, maybe it will become important later on. He then moves to the campsite, how long ago were people here? Did they just walk back into town or... he looks at the storm. Darn...

The island is similar, but also very different than where he was geographic. Looking toward where Clef should be he spots the shimmering mirage. It's...beautiful, though he starting to notice the thinner air. Were they higher up..? Or is the atmosphere different here? He runs a scan on the air itself to try and figure that out.

The crystal gets his attention, as he tries to figure out the glyphs and sees if he can start learning the language. Maybe it can be useful for figuring out things later...but he doesn't stay for long. Other players might be in the...

The storm is awful, he's choking trying to find his breath. He's trying to hold on but the various status effects build up way too fast, and he's losing Clarity at too quick a rate...he tries to scan around the storm for as long as he can hold out for any other adventurers, or monsters, or anything else in the storm. It's not even five minutes before he's out, coughing.

It's like being hit with radioactive pepper spray. It was awful...he collapses to his hands and knees at the camp sight, trying to breathe in...but the air is thin here made it worse. His head was swimming.
Lilian Rook     Oddly, despite the fact that this is very definitely a freshwater lake, Tamamo locates some very non-freshwater eels, and one creature that is very obviously supposed to be an octopus, as well as a number of crabs and smaller crustaceans. It's nonsense, but it does sort of match with the depth and presence of bioluminescent critters, and that particular type of fishing boat and the presence of rice flour.

    Catching any but the crabs them with weapons is more or less out of the question, however; the endemic life doesn't come with full status bars or nicely sized hitboxes, and are permitted to move as realistically quickly as they like, with a preference for flitting away, seen but not touched. It'd require actual fishing equipment to get them through the proper game channels, most likely. Unless Rita or Lilian were to try at least; or perhaps if Kirishima and Xion were fast and crafty enough.

    Elym and Fucil come to an uneasy agreement at the inn. When a hostess in a cozt red-patterned dress comes and leaves something hot and sweet and alcoholic in glazed ceramic mugs, Fucil just slides a few coins down on the table to pay for the round. It doesn't look like something they're roleplaying, so in that one gesture, it's safe to assume she's old enough to have been to bars in real life. Elym glances at Phreak meaningfully, and says "Fine, but not so close to town. I have some guys I can talk to. I'll put you in contact. You know how." Fucil thanks Eryl properly, but can only bring herself to nod grimly at the rest, reclining into her seat and sighing. "Yes, I thought you'd say that. Well, you're probably not wrong. Just . . . Don't get carried away, you know? Stealing people's videogame items is . . ."

    The dark forest adventure is a bit of a quaintly bumbling farce. Outside of the trees he identified when arriving, Bercilak locates uncommon Peach and Cherry closer to the rocky rises, and the much rarer Wisteria, but nothing that checks the final step of his quest prompt. Wandering in the dark is also a great way to be attacked by random monsters, whether snarling wolf-like creatures with the hulking physique of a boar, or vicious flightly birds large enough for someone like Xion or Rita to precariously ride on.

    It's difficult to find any worthwhile gathering points in the dark, and easy to stumble in the brush and painfully eat very avoidable attacks. Getting much further from town, the group finally stumbles into a Dissonance too, when Haseo wander near a wisteria tree covered in a glossy sheen like a marble, and is nearly fried by a bolt of electricity for a tremendous amount of splash damage. Running into one of those means they're pretty far from town, but is also the prelude to discovering what certainly looks like a transitional point, where a narrow gap between towering rock faces would allow someone to squeeze into a different clear space, where Kirishima can hear the sound of running water. It might be best to come back at day, given how completely vulnerable one would be there.
Kirishima With the dark forest adventure proving to be more treacherous than expected, Kirishima has her hands full calling out approaching monsters followed by jumping down from her treetop perches to get in on fighting off the random beasts with Bercilak and Haseo. The significance of those trees still escapes her at first, but she'll catch on sooner rather than later assuming Bercilak reopens quest log even once during the whole process.

The electricity-attracting wisteria tree, meanwhile, gets Kirishima's attention in particular. She notes its location on her map with a big 'LIGHTNING EXPLOSION TREE' marker, then notes the location of the narrow gap as 'ZONE TRANSITION/RIVER OR WATERFALL?' and relays that information to her companions both here and further out so they have some convenient markers to work with next time along with things to keep an eye out for.

"This looks like about as far as we should be going for now... At least, not this late at night. This should be a good staging area for our next excursion, though." She recommends, fighting the urge to just peek into the next zone. "Best not to press too deeply, either. It..."

There's a strong temptation to step in and out just to see, and then she smacks her cheeks firmly to snap herself out of that. "We might accidentally lock ourselves out of earlier quests if we enter a new zone too early. Shall we get back to the others?"