terribibble | Ryslig IC Contact

Ryslig IC Contact

WELCOME TO YOUR PRIVATE CHANNEL, FIDDLEFORD HADRON MCGUCKET. FOR SECURE COMMUNICATION, USE 011.23.581.321 * teslacoils has joined 011.23.581.321 >> teslacoils has posted an AUDIO MESSAGE. If you wish to listen, type LISTEN01. <teslacoils> Lab hours are 10 AM to 6 PM Mon-Wed, 7 PM to 3 AM Thur-Fri, special appointments available. <teslacoils> I am no longer associated with the Fourth God. <teslacoils**> But I will answer any questions you might have about him with the honest truth.

<teslacoils> - main username
<novus> <ordo> <seclorum> <fulcrum> - anonymous usernames
<hadron> <thamnophis> <4eyes> - retired usernames
pixel image by CJ

Pythonmelon
voice work by Penny

knittinggiantbeanies

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I'm sorry. You want to stay?

[This changes a lot of the assumptions he went into this conversation with, actually. What was previously guarded civility becomes cautious interest.]

You'll have to forgive me, I'm used to 'I want to kill the gods' going hand in hand with 'I don't want to be here and no one else should either'.

I do. Even with what we're forced to do to live, I don't hate this place or the people here. I want everyone to be safe and happy. There are good people here just trying to live their lives. I just want to make things better if I can.

Yeah, I understand that. On my post people were... really quick to jump towards that mindset. Even during the meeting I held that was the main reaction.

I can't speak for anyone else but for me it's been years of it. It was even worse when I first showed up. People tie your worth as a person to whether you're making the 'right' moral choice, and the 'right' moral choice is to destroy yourself being nobly miserable. The expectation is to keep bashing your head against the wall knowing full-well it won't break because if you stop doing it then it's a failing of character on your part, never mind how tired and bloody it gets you. Do anything else and you're selfish, uncaring, sadistic, evil. If you have the audacity to be happy then clearly you don't care if anyone else is suffering.

It's why I keep to myself mostly now. I'm tired of going in the same circles every time a new batch of folks come in to preach at me about how I've 'given up' or aligned myself with the 'evil' option, as though it's that simple. When that's how you talk, that's what people will hear. When you say 'I want to get rid of the Fog', what some of us hear is 'You're wrong for being grateful for a second chance. You're wrong for being happy here with the life she gave you, and you're wrong for wanting to protect it.' It's not like Elias where there's a chance, however slim, that he might be returned to humanity. The Fog was never human. Take away her power and she'll just be gone, because magic is all she is, and you have no way of knowing what that will do to us or whether it will permanently destroy any chance of a way out. No one ever thinks about that. Her power brought us in. Get rid of it and you may very well destroy the only door back out.

[Peter didn't expect this much of a response. He does appreciate it though. He would rather have honesty on Fiddleford's part. Peter takes his time to mull over what he could even say to this.

He wishes there was an easy answer, but he already can tell there won't be one.]

The moral choices we're used to in our homes don't completely apply here. Not when we're being pulled apart and put together again into completely new people. Not when we're forced to eat people to live. We need to adjust, but some people... never do. Because suffering is easier than living. So, I get it in a way. It's better, and easier to stay in our own spaces, since everyone else is... so focused on going home or forcibly "fixing" everyone. If you're happy, you're part of the problem.

To some degree, I owe the Fog for bringing me here. For letting me find these people I love. I can admit that.

I've heard you've been here a long time, it's why I wanted to speak with you too. So I'd get a better idea of a lot of things. I know a bit more about Elias by proxy, but the fog is an unknown to me. I need to do more research on her and the mythos of this world. So I know I'm not ruining everything. I want to stay, I want to make sure people happy here can thrive.

Two of the people I care about the most want to go home. They'll both die if they do. I don't know what to even do for them for that.

It's complicated. It doesn't get any less complicated.

[Sorry, Peter, he has a lot of bitterness and exhaustion built up about this. It's hard to rein it in when it comes up.]

Seven years.

I think it comes down to choice. It isn't a question of what is morally right or wrong, it's a question of what's personally right or wrong. Some folks will never be happy here, and I can't blame them. They should be able to leave. The thing is so far the only times we've ever been able to truly access our native universes have been when piggybacking off the Fog's power. I am very confident that unless something radical changes that none of us are currently aware of, her power is the only way out.

What I can tell you about her is this: in seven years she has never presented herself as anything other than what she is. She has been honest about what she wants from us, and she has been consistent in her actions. She has never pretended to be benevolent. She has never skirted around the conditions of monsterhood or hidden them in fine print. I believe she truly does think that what she's given us is a gift, and I think she's too far removed from the mortal experience to understand why for some it's anything but. In a way she wants the same thing you do, and the same thing I do: she wants us to thrive, and to her that means having the freedom and power to follow our own internal compass rather than being a slave to someone else's.

I'll illustrate something for you. One of the portals out, I built, up to the prototype stage. I told her early on I was working on it, and that it would feel wrong to me not to when it was a project I was capable of. She gave me her blessing. She did not try to stop me. What made me stop was the people who kept picking at me and picking at me for not being good enough, moral enough. For not fixing it fast enough, in a manner they personally approved of.

The thing making it hard to thrive here isn't her.

[He definitely has been holding this in a while. Peter still takes his time to reply.]

I am genuinely glad you are happy here. Even if other people probably think seven years is a bad thing here. I'm finding happiness here too, even with the rougher parts. I can't really say that to anyone because of I guess the stigma of it. Its easier to be angry and lash out than it is to really live sometimes.

Thank you for telling me that. I still intend to do more research so I have a rounded idea of what the gods are like. This is helpful to me since I'm starting out with not a lot. I don't know how I feel about the fog, nor elias to be completely honest.

Hopefully, I can find a way to help people here. It's going to take a lot of work, but I'm dedicated to trying to achieve it safely.

If you have any particular questions I can give you at least one viewpoint's answer. I was one of Elias's two first priests, and since leaving him I've ascended as far up the Fog's ranks as you can without getting the title. I would like to think I'm qualified to give opinions on both of them.

What I will say either way is that you deserve to be happy and you deserve to be allowed to be happy. The folks who genuinely believe that's a bad thing aren't worth the time you'd spend worrying about them.

I'll likely come back to ask you more questions later. I don't want to bombard you with a lot of questions all at once since it's a lot all at once and we're all just trying to live our own lives. You never really know what is going to happen in the next few weeks, much less over the next month.

I'm also pretty sure you've had so many people walk up to you before demanding information without really caring about how that affects you.

Thank you. I'll try to keep that in mind. It can feel hard with how angry people are.

It's the opposite, actually. I've had so many people get snappy with me for trying to provide them with information that I've stopped bothering to give it. Being asked politely is a nice change of pace.

I want to hear everything. Even if it challenges me and what I believe in. The truth isn't always what you want it to be. Nor is it ever simple

I'm sorry people have gotten snappy with you. I can't... even wrap my head around it.

I can. Folks like to have blind hope. They like to have righteous anger and they like to believe that they'll be the ones to fix the problem and that it'll be easy because they're on the good and right side of things. This requires believing that everybody else has just never tried, or never tried hard enough. I've had people say as much to me before, that the only reason we're all still here is that no one really tried hard enough to get out. It requires not knowing exactly how many avenues have been pursued already and proven too dangerous or too difficult or simply dead ends, because that cuts down the options to a much smaller pool and that makes them confront the fact that we're already at the bottom of the barrel. It requires knowing very little about the actual mechanics of what they're dealing with, because knowing the details makes the task appear more difficult than simply being right can overcome.

People don't want to know. They don't want to hear reason. They don't want advice. They want to be right. I was the same way when I first showed up. It's why I signed up with Elias. His whole platform's built on vague promises of 'helping', and never you mind how he intends to do it. He's right, so questioning him means you're wrong, and people who are wrong get punished.

Its easier to be right, than actively deal with the fact this isn't an easy situation for any of us. I want to at least learn more about what has and hasn't been done, so I'm not repeating all of the same mistakes again.

I'm only... well, human in spirit. I know I won't handle things perfectly, but I can try to negate what I can as I look into so many things.

Its probably why so many people do align themselves with Elias, or the fog. Because having a side is safer than being on your own. Elias in particular promises to get people home, but never really offers much else.

No he doesn't. What he promises is defeating the Fog and he lets you fill in the blanks with whatever you think that implies, unless he's changed his tune since I was with him. He doesn't care about sending us home, he cares about using us as toy soldiers in his war against her, that's what his actions have shown over and over and over again. He'll say whatever he thinks you want to hear to get you to go along with him, because he's got the mind of a child and he can't grasp the concept of consequences or collateral damage. Folks have been giving him everything he wants and letting him lead them around by the nose for years so now he's grown accustomed to it.

The Fog has always followed through on her word. I'm not with her to have a side. There wouldn't be a fight in the first place if people would stop treating a child like a competent and objective leader. I'm with her because she said this second chance was what I made of it, and I made something of it, and she's never ordered me to do anything or thrown a tantrum when I told her no.

I personally haven't joined him or Fog god. I'm going by what I've heard from followers. So, thank you for the correction.

Has Elias had many tantrums?

I'm glad the fog has been kind to you and kept her word. I personally am not as trusting, but as I stated before, I haven't spoken with her. Its better I not judge before I know more.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Ryslig IC Contact

<teslacoils>

<Exhaustion>

<teslacoils>

<Exhaustion>

<teslacoils>

<Exhaustion>

<teslacoils>

<Exhaustion>

<teslacoils>

<Exhaustion>

<teslacoils>

<Exhaustion>

<teslacoils>

<Exhaustion>