WEE͠K ̸́4͝

[strangerpeople]

W҉͘E͜͠͝E̕K̡̛͡ ̡͟4̸

[The blight is all-consuming.

Within days dozens are confirmed infected, and you and your unexpected new scientist friend find yourselves trying to work on a cure. If not a cure, a stopgap of some kind. Anything to prevent this thing from destroying everything. It's hard work. It's not going very well. Really, it feels like with every step forward, you're taking ten steps back. Discouraging is an understatement, to say the least.

A week passes, and the death toll rises. It's really starting to look bleak. You constantly second-guess yourself, and even get into a fistfight with your new ally one night. It's getting to the point where you are working on fumes.

Then, unexpectedly, you get a phone call. It's been a long night, and the sun is beginning to rise above the mountains, when it happens.

You and the scientist are not the only ones looking for a cure. In fact, there are at least a dozen others-and they think they may be close to a breakthrough.

But-and you can't believe you're hearing this, after all of the failure you'd experienced throughout this blight-they need your help.]


---


[To say that the end of last week sucked would be an understatement. To say that no one knows what this week will bring is not even in question. Yet even as you wake, you feel a cloud lift from your mind, as one of the truths you've been living with since the beginning has suddenly changed.]




[But is it possible to abide by this new truth? The Hosts, and IT beyond, seem intent on making that impossible. And the rat...well. Obviously the rat's not an ally. Let's not kid ourselves.

There's only one way to find out if more deaths can truly be prevented-and that's to keep going, and hoping that the new floor that has opened up will offer something in the way of an opportunity.

In the meantime.


There are 11 strangers left in this place.]

Comments

[illusionarymelody]

Yes, we were able to return to the Base later on. But I can say that after I died, I can't recall a thing between that and waking up in the temple. According to the priestess, Akira and I washed up in a river near the temple and we had pulses like a living person. Even before we found that out, we felt something was off. Nothing changed from having been alive, yet we both could clearly remember having died.

In our case, our bodies were tossed into a nearby river and we floated downstream to the temple. We didn't know the river healed us until much later when we actually tested its ability to heal wounds. It also protected us from drowning and allows us to be under for a rather long time.

My thought is that the dead did something similar. They transferred to another place that has some connection to here. It may not be as literal as being able walk there like it was for us, but there was definitely something that connected where they are to where we are. My thought would be something like a spirit pathway and being dead gives them the ability to travel it.

[poorlovefool]

We might have gotten another clue in how they were kicked out, too. I mean... we didn't know the ground could go all dark and goopy before. What was up with that?

[illusionarymelody]

It was strange and only seemed to affect them since the rest of us were left unharmed. It probably sent them right back along that pathway that brought them to us.

[poorlovefool]

But then.... It's pretty weird that the Kyuubeys can travel there too if it's a spirit path for only the dead.

[illusionarymelody]

Not really. They do have magical ability that could grant them a similar ability. In my world, there are places we call spirit pathways that are just paths formed between places with great spiritual energy. A normal person wouldbn't be able to travel on them, much less even know they exist. However in my world a witch or any other being with magical ability does have ways to travel them. Making use of those is one method of long range teleportation. So it would be a magical means of doing what the Base's dead did of walking back to the Base to meet up with the living. Except instead of a van, we used a mecha.

[poorlovefool]

I guess that does make sense. Back in Mundus, we were all able to make portals back to our worlds with our creation abilities too. I use it to hop back and forth between Nirn and the Earth I came from.

I wish - [He gasps and puts his hands over his mouth. He wanted to say he could just do that here, but this stupid motive is making it so hard to use a casual turn of phrase!]

[illusionarymelody]

Try "I want.." instead. You want to be able to do that here? I know I want the same because I definitely don't stay in only Jonathan's world. I go back home often to visit friends and Jonathan and I plan to have our honeymoon in my world. [She leaves the whenever these damn games let us get around to having one already out of that.]

[poorlovefool]

[Eric sighs in relief. Thank you for interrupting him!]

Yes, that's exactly it. Being able to use a portal is really convenient.

[katzenpfote]

It is not unreasonable to think there might be some kind of gap. In my world you may travel between planes of existence if you know how to shift or you find a gateway.

And those of us from the train mostly [because McBurn] agreed to go investigate the coordinates our group received once things were stabilized. There were wefts in space, drawing worlds in. Something like that...

Hm. Wefts. Maybe there was a very thin barrier separating us even when they were here, which might explain the limited tangibility.

[poorlovefool]

...Are they were pieces of worlds wound up? Because we had a city disappear, that's why Linkara started looking into the entity. With what we learned here, it probably meant Sho.

A barrier sounds right. Or maybe they're on a frequency. It could be basically the same, I guess.

[He's honestly just trying to pretend he understands what he's talking about though]

[katzenpfote]

Yes! Chunks of our worlds we’re ripped away.

[poorlovefool]

T-Then... they might just be targeting everyone else's worlds for that shit too.... Kyuu could probably convince a lot of people to contract if they're in trouble from the Noise AND shit like these wefts.