a question

[afflatusexarch]

Type: Voice
Sender ID: afflatusexarch ( G'raha Tia )
To: General
Subject: Paladins and Corsairs
Warnings: None!

Pardon me for intruding on your time, but I've a question or two. If you'd like to humor my curiosity, you have my thanks in advance.

Upon arrival, we've found ourselves aligned with a group without much say in the matter. While I'm most curious about what colors we've flying - so to speak - I'll not ask anyone to speak it out loud.

However, I am curious if you think you "belong," for lack of a better word.

Idle curiosity. Nothing more.

Comments

[moremystyle]

[Was. Master Galuf was. Faris visibly winces.]

He was an ornery old bat as far as I recall.

[But Sharlayan... Faris has been all over the world and down to the seafloor. She's met dwarves, wolfmen, and moogles, and some of them lived in some damned remote places, she's even met people who were living out-of-sync with time. Somehow, she doesn't think they missed a bunch of secret catfolk.]

Sounds like we've got an uncanny coincidence on our hands.

[afflatusexarch]

[ Look, the whole Isle of Val thing is still a sensitive subject. It's not one that G'raha actually touches. Because he is fine about it. Perfectly fine regarding it. Yup. Totally. ]

Quite so, it would seem. Though I suppose it should not be altogether surprising that another would share an existence with someone. If this is a place where time and space have little meaning, we might expect more happenstances such as this.

[moremystyle]

[Of course. Faris is totally fine about Galuf's death too. It doesn't feel like an unextractable splinter in his heart, absolutely not.]

Share an existence? I don't know about that. [Actually, Faris has no idea what G'raha means when he says that. All he knows is that he does not like the idea of there being other him's around. And if the other Galuf is just as much a past-tense as Faris' own Galuf... does that mean everyone would share the same fate? Would little Sarisa still be torn from her parents, hold her dying father after years of not even knowing his name? Watch her long-lost sister almost die too many times to count?

It's too painful to think about.] Never met anyone like you back home, for instance. And I've been all over the world--both planets' worth of it--and under its seas. Not a single one with cat ears.

[afflatusexarch]

Don't worry overmuch about it. I do wonder what it would be like for the both of them to meet.

[ See, he thinks his adoptive sister would be delighted by it all. So many questions to ask. ]

Wait. Did you say both planets?

[moremystyle]

[Faris' eyes glaze over a bit. Her Krile is an evil little imp with the face of an angel. If G'raha's is a grown woman and anything like her... coincidentally-named counterpart... there's no telling what would happen.]

I think it would be time to hide.

[The force of the bad jokes alone would send men leaping from the railings.

...and, oh, right. That did sound odd, didn't it.]

Aye, both planets... 'tis a long story, but to cut it short, it used to be one planet, it got split in two, and then it got put back together. All down to the history of the Crystals.

[afflatusexarch]

Ah... Might you explain that a bit further? If you'd please?

[moremystyle]

[dammit, g'raha, he gave you the short version!]

It's a long story, and it started long before I was born. You want me to start with the stuff that happened in my lifetime or go all the way back?

[afflatusexarch]

Mayhap start with how it is the star was separated?

[moremystyle]

All the way back, then. And it's a planet. Star's fine, so far as I know, but if it's not I'm sure we'll be called in to put that back right too.

[WHICH SHE REALLY HOPES WON'T HAPPEN THE PLANET(S) WAS BAD ENOUGH.]

There was this evil warlock Enuo, and he wanted to seize the power of the Void for his own ends. Trouble is, that never ends well for anyone, including the scurvy dog trying to use it. A whole crew o' warriors had to take him down--and even so, they couldn't get rid of the Void he'd called forth.

So they used the Crystals to cleave the planet in twain, and the Void was sealed between 'em. It stayed that way for the next thousand years, until the next bilgerat who tried seizing the Void came along.