light_mischief | [come sail away] ic inbox (season 1)

Hey Skulduggery. This is Phil. It’s been a while since we talked, things been okay?

Edited 2023-03-12 20:19 (UTC)

Well, reality is splintering into countless memories that are constantly being rewritten and added to by (usually) well-meaning passengers, there's a cannibalistic ghost in one of the bars, the Captain is trapped in his own long-forgotten machinations and no matter how badly he'd like to run away with me, that isn't happening for the foreseeable future. Oh, and all of this is most likely the result of him making a choice borne out of fear and desperation, and the only suggestion I've gotten so far on how to fix it could potentially cause me to lose the first person I've loved since my wife was murdered in 1700.

So. You know. Could be better.

( ooc: out from here )

Geez that's rough. I did notice the first part. The rest is news to me.

... This might be trite, but do you want to talk about it?

Edited 2023-03-14 05:10 (UTC)

Most of it is news to me, too.

I would, but it would inevitably turn into morose woe-is-me talk and I've got a ship to pretend to be put together in front of. That won't work if people know I'm one bad piece of news away from throwing myself overboard.

(It's not a threat or anything, I just usually prefer not to hide in water. Long story. You can find the memory lying around somewhere, actually...)

Skulduggery you could not pay me to go into those cracks on purpose even if I wasn't making guesswork on which was the right one. I already fell into a couple and I got kidnapped and almost went to jail, besides the invasion of privacy.

Anyway it's up to you but personally, I find it's easier to appear put together if you know where you can let it go for a minute, and if you actually use it. I'm not gonna blab that you're stressed if that's what you're worried about. Which, I'd guess not, since you literally just told me.

[ Nevermind that Skulduggery just threw a bunch of shit at him at once that he didn't even know was happening and he'd, like, really appreciate knowing what the hell is going on. ]

Yes, I managed to fall into the same memory twice with two different people. Opened right under my feet. I think maybe it had something to do with it being my memory, but there's no telling how much control we're actually exerting on any of this. Certainly more than the Captain at this point...

Alright, no, you're right. It's more that the whole thing is so damned complicated that every time I explain it, I find that I leave something out. But Darcy trusts you, and you haven't done anything to convince me I shouldn't trust you as well, so! As Ava put it: buckle up, buttercup.

I believe there is something inside the ship that is actively causing the rifts. No idea what it is specifically, but we have a few theories to work off of. Something was awoken by curious passengers investigating the ghosts of the ship: it could be a built-in response to passengers getting into things they shouldn't; it could be a piece of the Captain that he tied up in the ship's infrastructure; or maybe it's a particularly influential previous passenger, like Jenny's brothers.

What I do know for a fact is this: whatever it is, it tried to use Fio as an access point to reality. Fio brought it up with Friday, who was both frightened and very certain that this thing was best left unmentioned and most importantly, unnamed. I haven't seen her around this month, either, which worries me. I don't know if I trust her entirely, but I know at the very least that she doesn't want reality to end. The Captain says she can perform her functions without a body, and the ship hasn't been falling apart without her around, but. There's an emoji for this 🤷‍♂️

While that was happening without my knowledge, Ava was testing the ghost in the bar that Izzy Hands and Deputy Pratt had uncovered some months ago. They offered it a misplaced body of a former passenger, which it apparently ate in a horrifying manner. It then said the word "play" before disappearing. And at some point either before or after that, another passenger entered one elevator shaft and found a wall covered in magical sigils. She did, of course, touch the sigils, smudging them. Combine all of that together, and I think it's safe to say we may have caused a bit of a problem.

This all happened and I approached the Captain about it. He leaves almost everything to Friday's care, which I've been trying to convince him not to do, but he is a stubborn bastard. He told me that he would like to change how things operate, but he can't. The rules of reality were written by a different version of him; someone who didn't anticipate things going the way they have here, with us. Whatever changes we want to see, we're going to have to make happen on our own. My hope is that there's something in these memories that could help us -- but I haven't found any sigils or suspicious shadows or anything like that in the memories I've gone into. My biggest fear is that the moment the opportunity to change things presents itself, the people who want to kill the Captain will make their move.

There's a lot going on right now. Let's start with that for now.

[ Buckle up he does. Phil gets up off the floor to grab his reading glasses proper. Squinting at the screen is horrific work with this much text and missing most of his vision in one eye, but this is important, enough that he grabs for a notepad and starts writing down the big points so he's sure he's got everything, just like he did with the binder. ]

Okay. I hear you. First of all, thanks for trusting me, really.

Second, so things are falling apart because people have been poking at the seams. The Captain wants change as much as any of us, but he's bound by Rules. He made that clear at the trial. We aren't, not in the same way, so we have to do it for him. I wonder how that's supposed to happen. I guess we've been doing a fine job of it though.

I haven't seen any shadows or sigils in memories either, or at least nothing that didn't look like it wasn't supposed to be there more than I wasn't. 

Is Fio okay? Also, if you're mentioning this mysterious being to me, I assume we're past the point of no return. Can I ask what it looks like? Or the sigils? Do we know that?

Yes, you've gotten it in one. No idea how we're supposed to actually manifest anything other than by, well. Fucking around and finding out. It's "worked" so far, but we have no idea what the cost of our poking around will be.

Fio is alright. As far as I know, she's unaware of how much of this might be caused by the being who visited her dreams. And while we've got to operate with some transparency, for safety's sake, Ava has refrained from telling me its name. Fio apparently gave it one, which is (according to Friday's lamentations) a bad thing. (We've used ❌ to refer to it.)

I have a historically bad record of keeping things too close to the chest, and I'm trying to rectify that. We can't bring any of this up to the Captain, because it could further fracture reality, and I'd rather not kill all of us.

No idea about the sigils. I really should talk to Crabb about it. You were here for the diner, weren't you? Do you remember what the Captain looked like after the race?

It's hard to find out when we aren't being told. We've got to escape the minefield, so what can we do except start running? I'm mostly relieved that some of us were brave enough to try. Good or bad I'm getting the feeling that we're making more "progress" than any past voyage has. I think I hate magic physics though. Don't tell me it's always like this.

Be careful that ❌ doesn't became a name on its own.

I do remember; he blew up in my face when he revived, and he owes me half of an eyebrow. That's actually why I asked. Does that have anything to do with this?

If it comes up, make sure you tell Ava that much. She's been feeling as if she has personally doomed us all when, at worst, she was one of a dozen people poking holes in our fishbowl.

I've been reading it as various different game show buzzers. I encourage you to do the same, if only because it makes thinking about our potential dimensional demise slightly more fun.

I don't know. It's certainly linked to the Captain, but the jury's still out on how much the two are interconnected. A part of him that he bound to the ship? His entire soul? Some memory manifesting its own sentience after thousands of years of imprisonment? Any of those could be true. All I know is that it reminds me a bit too much of Vile, and that makes me reluctant to see it as something in need of help. And I know that if I tell the Captain any of this, there's a decent chance I'll be taking my own whack at the already cracked glass.

If I see her, I'll let her know, although I'm not sure how I'm supposed to approach her about feeding a corpse to ghost contributing to our reality falling apart. This level of magic BS at play is not anywhere near my wheelhouse so sorry that I'm not of more help from studying astrology books or something. I spent most of my life in a small town in Pennsylvania. I can do people, I can't do that. Either way holding back sounds like a good idea. Sit tight before we actually understand what's happening. What else?

Edited 2023-04-01 07:33 (UTC)

Fair point, it isn't exactly the sort of small talk that comes up too often. Although she does seem to be bringing it up quite a bit...

Honestly, I'm glad to hear it. We don't need to interpret dream symbolism or encyclopedic knowledge of herbs. The Captain said that whatever comes next will be determined by us, which means we need to keep up people's hopes. I've blown through just about all of the goodwill I've been extended on the ship, which makes my motivational speeches go over like a lead balloon. Hopefully, if you see the chance to bolster morale, you'll have better luck than me.

[come sail away] ic inbox (season 1)

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YOU ASKED FOR IT...........

i did!

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