Route IC Contact

[moveslikestrider]

Dave: Get your damn gear.

Audio | Text | Video | Action

Comments

[moveslikestrider]

you want me not to tell you what the rabbits are about in that case

[freshprints]

Rabbits aren't an animal that bothers me. So there's some significance to them?

[moveslikestrider]

yeah
first lets recap
tell me how much you know about our universe
ill see if you already know the answer or not

[freshprints]

You want me to recap all of it? In the interest of time, I'll attempt to summarize and hit the notable points.

You and your three friends (John, Jade, and Rose) are from Earth. Together, you participated in a game called SBURB, which is slightly different from SGRUB, the variant that the trolls played on their home world of Alternia. The point of SBURB has something to do with destroying the world via meteors and then creating a new world once the players involved have entered the game and won it. The game is played like a classic RPG; the four of you apparently all did quite well at it because you were all able to ascend to God Tier, which gives you a particular power boost, immortality, and a set of complementary pajamas. However, reaching God Tier also means you all died — you have my condolences.

Players of SBURB receive a class and an aspect. The aspect determines a player's power or area of influence, and the class determines how they control it or use it. Some of the classes include knights, maids, seers, and princes; aspects are things like time, light, and mind.

None of you were born; you were created (by John?) to play the game via a process known as ectobiology. John and Jade are related without precisely being siblings; I presume that means that you and Rose are likewise, and given your similar colorings, that theory would seem to hold out.

However, there's also an alternate universe where four other children played SBURB, and those players are somehow related to the four of you — in your own world, they were your parents or adult relatives, while in their world, the four of you were the adults. Thus resulting in the paradox where Roxy Lalonde could be Rose's mother and her daughter simultaneously, and vice versa. I presume Jake is related to Jade, given that he referenced a grandmother and I'm assuming that the relative ratio is one to one — if Rose is already someone's mother/daughter, then Jade is the only remaining girl to be Jake's relative.

(Which, by extension, suggests that Dirk is your parallel universe equivalent in some capacity, given the similarity in names and how much the two of you look alike.)

Do I need to go into what I know about the trolls and the gameplay of SBURB, or does that suffice?

[moveslikestrider]

no thats good
so you only know stuff about sburb itself and not the specifics of the session
ok
ill give you this bit
the meteors were always coming whether we played the game or not
the game is just a way to escape meeting the fate of the rest of the planet
some are meant to some wont
just like some sessions will yield the end goal and others are doomed
but just because a session is meant to fail doesnt mean thats the end of it
wanna guess how

anyway yeah dirk is my teenbro ectobiological dad lets just call him my teenbro and keep it at that

[freshprints]

I assume if there are alternate universes available where the session is a success, the way to avoid "the end of it" is simply to transfer yourself to one of those...somehow.

[moveslikestrider]

youd think that
but ours is a really special case
if you were trying again youd need a reset right
which of the aspects would be good for that

[freshprints]

...Time.

You'd rewind time and try it over again.

[moveslikestrider]

the reason the other version of our universe exists is because our session was meant to fail
the reset switch is called a scratch by the way

now back to the rabbits
there was two in our session
but one held no bearing on the chain of events that lead up to the scratch
we knew we werent going to win but the how wasnt clear
that changed pretty fast

[freshprints]

And you know all this because your aspect is time, so it's inherently within your role to understand.

So the other mechanical rabbit played some kind of pivotal role in bringing about the scratch?

[moveslikestrider]

yeah
i dont have all the details but john used it to deliver an important item to us
you mentioning dirk made one makes me wonder what the connection is there
since i got here
more facts open up like this and yeah i wont remember when i coma connect to home but it solves something here
sometimes

to get back to the item
lets say these dead sessions just take up space
how would a game take care of that

[freshprints]

If you'd rather not ask him about the rabbit personally, and consequently risk dealing with whatever ramifications might come of the inquiry, I could always find out more about it myself.

And I assume the obvious answer is, by destroying or deleting or unmaking a dead session somehow.

[moveslikestrider]

hahaha i doubt anything terrible will come out of it
i mean aside from more movie talk from john

you assume correctly if the session is a failure it generates at the center a thing called the tumor
im not coloring and underlining that shit its not important anymore

[freshprints]

Is there some theme to all this terminology? Scratch, tumor — is it arbitrary, why things are called what they are, or is there some link I don't know about?

[moveslikestrider]

theres a link with the scratch but the tumor is
special

do you know anything about the lands yet

[freshprints]

Rose said she was from the Land of Light and Rain. I assume that's what you mean?

[moveslikestrider]

yeah
mines land of heat and clockwork
knowing me and knowing that
what do you think created the scratch

[freshprints]

The fact that it's Heat and Clockwork is probably significant, since it's not exactly the same thing as if you'd said Heat and Clocks. The clock suggests time, which would reference your aspect (so I assume Rose's aspect is light, if the hunch follows), but clockwork makes me think of...gears.

Knowing you, the obvious solution to creating a scratch would be with a bladed weapon, which you like to use. But nothing about heat or clockwork would suggest blades, and you've suggested that I needed to know that to work it out. So it's something else.

...

Or maybe it's that it's a different kind of scratch. Not one like a wound or relief from an itch, but — that's what it's called when a DJ moves a record on a turntable, isn't it?

[moveslikestrider]

wow
gotta say you work things out pretty fast but after seeing you chew up and devour info like your pacman
not surprised
thats right dj scratches
the reset device for our session was a giant turntable and disc
the scratch is the release of temporal energies that change the only things it can for a more favorable outcome

[freshprints]

That's an oddly specific game mechanic. Does that mean your interest in turntables was influenced by your destined role in the game, or was the game influenced by your interest?

[moveslikestrider]

the trick to all of this is not to overthink it
overthink it and thats when you start failing the loops and everything else
its all ass backwards

for the sake of this whole explaining the game business
lets say that each planet is tailored to the person it belongs to
the two have always existed but the reason for their interests didnt come because of the planet
you remember how godtiering happens right

[freshprints]

I remember that you have to die in order to do it.

[moveslikestrider]

thats all
nothing else about it

[freshprints]

...That it's not enough just to die. You have to do it on a "quest bed"?

[moveslikestrider]

feels weird discussing this and not being there
kinda like
dunno i just never talk about it
youve seen what happens when john gets going
it all sounds insane and thats not even touching this next part to make the whole death thing make a little more sense
makes no sense for a dead body to get back up does it

i mean
despite being removed from all we know that place has rules and logic
once a body dies it cant be used again or get back up