animus_network | 002

[It takes him all day to muster himself out of his bed to make this post in the dormitory levels. Had he not been slammed with a message about his new "job", he would have kindly stayed in his room for a day or two just to... he wasn't even sure what the right word was. He didn't need to relax. He needed to detox. His journey home had been short, but he hoped and prayed it was just a dream. Only a dream, please just let it be that. But he'd seen the barren landscape, inhaled the putrid, acidic smell of miasma leaking out of every crack and crevice, seas of purple mud and poison all that remained of his world.

Of course he wanted it to be a dream.

...]

Two questions. Feel free to answer or not.

First: How many of you have been back home? As in: how many have returned to what used to be their home, only to come back? What did you see, and did it... feel real?

[...]

Second: What are we left with if the worlds we all know are really gone? Is it just us, this Tower, countless years and a few grim expectations?

I really am starting to wonder.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

guy yu were alseep?

[...hope you can decipher redhead typing, Guy.]

i was aslep for awhil. i got stuck back home i think

there was all that purple stuff a round same colr as the meeasma stuf

...

Luke, your spelling needs some work.

[Oh well. He deciphered your handwriting enough.

There's a pause.]

I don't know if I was asleep or not. But yeah. That's about what I saw, too. Like the Qlipoth, sort of, only you could tell where countries and cities might have been.

[Baticul was actually one of the most difficult places to see. The city dissolved, only a massive, gaping hole in the ground left where the capital had originally stood.]

[Luke's reply takes a long time to come back.]

My spelling is fine! It's just hard to type and look at what I'm typing and make sure it comes out right all at the same time.

[Can you see him pressing a key, looking up to make sure it came up right, then going back to hit the next key? Because that's totally what he's doing to prove his point. Even though it takes him an eternity.]

Anyway, what's the Qlipoth? I think Asch mentioned it before too.

True. Congrats on actually making the effort, though!

[...

Oh damn, that's right. Luke hadn't seen the Qlipoth before. Guy wants to bite his tongue for not thinking of that, but now that the question's out there, he might as well answer.]

The Qlipoth is a world underneath our feet - technically, it's the place where the lands used to sit. Tear has said that a while back, this is where the miasma first started appearing, and that Yulia herself was the one to help raise the lands to escape the miasma from destroying everything.

That's basically all there is to it. A never-ending sea of miasma and mud. Barely any land to be seen. And the sky is covered by the Outer Lands, the land we live on - there's no sunlight, no water, no trees, no wildlife. Nothing.

It's not a very pretty place.

Edited 2013-04-03 14:19 (UTC)

[As before, the message takes forever to get back to Guy. He's only doing this because you're his best friend.]

OH! So that's what all that purple stuff was!

[That made so much more sense now!]

But everything else is floating above it? How? That's seriously messed up.

[Hey, it's good practice.]

Well, did Jade or Asch ever tell you anything about the Sephiroth?

Sephiroth?

[Wait... wasn't there a white haired guy with that name? He never approached him because he was pretty scary, but...]

I'll take that as a no.

The Sephiroth are pillars built in the Dawn Age that support the Outer Lands, using spouts of memory particles. Kind of like the way the Planet Storm works, only instead of going around the planet, it just pushes up like a tree.

Remember that time when the God-Generals kidnapped Ion and dragged him out to the Zao Ruins? That was apparently to access a Sephiroth.

wow i had no idea Auldrant was so complicated

[Oops, he slipped a little. He's back to typing slow right after.]

So that's how Akzeriuth happens then.

...Yeah.

Apparently, the entire passage ring was destroyed, so that spout of memory particles just stopped and the ground gave in. It's like if you took one or two of the legs off a chair - it's not going to be able to stand anymore.

And Akzeriuth just happened to be right over where that Sephiroth was. So yeah. It fell into the Qliphoth pretty quickly.

[It's a long time before Luke replies, and it's not because of trying to type.]

so tats wat van maked me do

[It's a moment more before he responds.]

Asch told me before, I think. It's still hard for it to sink in.

Apparently so. I couldn't tell you for sure - I wasn't there to see it directly.

...I don't think it's ever going to be an easy thing to bear. The important thing is that you learn from what you've been told. And you have been.

So just keep doing that. Use your decisions to make sure that that kind of mistake doesn't have to happen.

I know what's supposed to happen at Akzeriuth is my responsibility, but it's not something that's happened for me yet, nor is it GOING to happen now that I know about it. I'm not going to let the fact that the future I could have had led me to killing thousands of people hold me back. I'm not that person anymore.

Still. Don't overthink it and get cocky again. You have a tendency to overdo things that way, you know.

...

If we ever make it out of here... let's make sure our world doesn't have to turn out into any sort of wasteland. Mistakes or otherwise.

I don't think I could be that cocky again.

yeah let's do that, Guy. I don't want Auldrant to disappear

Who knows. But I have faith in you, Luke.

We'll find a way.

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