un: ut malum pluvia | audio

[somebadnews]

[ Five is walking out of the lighthouse as he addresses the network, since it's generally quieter where ghosts aren't constantly interrupting his thoughts. The beauty of this form of communication is it's not entirely unlike talking to himself, which is really his preference. ]

Okay, listen up. Since we're all sharing, let's see if we can't come up with an actual plan, before we experience the next shift and you all inconveniently forget who you are again.

[ To say nothing of a haunting that has already sent him into a panic attack or how he nearly drowned just to see for himself what he'd already heard second-hand. Nothing but success for Five Hargreeves. ]

Two orders of business. One, Miang-Si is obviously a catalyst, if not the cause of what's happening here. I searched her room one of the nights she was out galavanting with her lake friends. There was correspondence that suggested she was enamored with someone, who I now assume was the Huntress. I also found evidence that the woman in white, and another in red, visited her there. The witches she's involved with also may have dragged in women doing laundry nearby into their lake at some point, judging by what was found with the skeletons at the bottom.

Secondly, these hauntings aren't just some curse. If they are spirits, we need to figure out a way to trap them. There's a woman in white, a man in black, a lumberjack, and another woman in red. Who else has been seen and how often? If we can capture one of them, maybe we can get some answers before whatever triggered this starts again.

[ He has no doubt it'll happen at the worst possible moment.

Just as he's about to continue with his all-important conspiracy theories, he's approached by a young girl with a silver coin in hand. Distantly she can be heard saying she's worried about her family, and asks him to take a donation for Kathoo'lul's blessing. Dumbfounded, he takes it and promptly loses his train of thought as she scurries away. ]

...Amazing how easy it is to start a cult around here.

Comments

[northerndragon]

It's more than mere moments, and less than hours.

I know, I know, that doesn't help. What I mean is that she will walk with you for a time, if you see her, but it won't be a long time. Perhaps as long as it would take us to have this conversation in the same room, perhaps a little longer.

Why do we want to lure her out? I would as soon that she finds rest.

[somebadnews]

[ He'd prefer something more precise, but it sounds longer than Five's quick glimpses of her. ]

To get answers. There's something more to them, and if they are behind the time shifts, I want to know how.

It might take a few tries to catch one. Next time she appears, don't help her and see what changes.

[northerndragon]

She's prone to vanishing. If she doesn't wish to talk, she won't be around for long. I don't know if she can talk — if she can say more. But I can try to speak to her when I see her next. Might be that there is no need to lure her.

And Dany's little child — I don't know if it can talk sense at all. Have you ever known a little child who could?

[somebadnews]

That's why we need help. Someone to trap the spirit until we get answers. But feel free to try asking her nicely.

She's spoken through others before, and you should know not to trust what you see. I doubt it's really a child.

[northerndragon]

Can we trap something that can come and go as it wills?

That might not end as we would wish it to.

[somebadnews]

Well, we can either try, or we can wait until time shifts again and we possibly trigger a paradox that kills us all. Which would you rather do?

[northerndragon]

It would be better if I did not die here, though I do not know what a paradox is.

Are you sure this will stop that from happening, or is it only that you think we must try?

[somebadnews]

All I'm sure about is that they've appeared in more than our visions. I don't know how they're involved, but they do.

Our first step to preventing it from happening is understanding what they did in the first place.

[northerndragon]

All the stories of ghosts I ever heard as a boy were about a place, and not a place so big as this village. It was always, the crypts are haunted, or the Nightfort is haunted — and perhaps well they should be. Perhaps any place is haunted when it has stood for thousands of years.

I don't always see the lady in the same place.

So what do we think of these people? If they are not wholly ghosts? Might be that they are not in time, as we are not in time. Might be that they are trapped somewhere in it, somehow.

[somebadnews]

That's mostly what we've seen here, aside from an army that was haunting the road to Taravast. These feel different.

It's obvious they’ve splintered the timeline since we arrived, and whatever they did to this village, there’s consequences to bending time in a way it doesn't want to be. I don't know if that can explain how they appear, but none of this works the way it's supposed to.

Capturing them is the difficult part, but finding them isn’t. We just need to figure out how before it happens again.

[northerndragon]

Do we know if anyone has tried to touch them — take their hands, hold them in some space, anything?

[somebadnews]

[ Tried to... sure. Allison was sharing a drink with her husband, but he can't remember if she touched him. ]

That's a safe assumption. The trouble is how quickly they disappear.

We need some way to anchor them. Like the mirrors.

[northerndragon]

I could happily go the rest of my life without seeing another mirror.

[somebadnews]

[ He's right there with you, but he hasn't seen anything else that can absorb a spirit. ]

I'm still waiting for other suggestions. All the necromancers and magic users we have, you'd think someone would have tried it before.

[northerndragon]

Let them try it, then.

Are we sure, are we truly certain, that there's no mirror causing all our troubles here?

[somebadnews]

Nothing is impossible. The ones in Miang-Si's room didn't look cursed, but I didn't get too close to them.

[ Unlikely, though he gives him a little credit. At least someone is trying to think up new theories, even if Jon is just saying that because Five brought it up. ]

[northerndragon]

[Or is he just saying it because of his mirror-related trauma?]

How many are there? Smash them all. Let Drogon at them with flame.

[somebadnews]

[ Well obviously, that too. Not that he's going to mention that he's kept that shard inside him for years and he still suggested it.

But it's because it exists that he knows that something out there must be able to trap them. ]

I'm not opposed if you'd like to burn her place down, but keep in mind who her allies are.

[northerndragon]

I speak only of the mirrors, not her home.

The moon in water, like a mirror pool. Does the one have anything to do with the other?

[somebadnews]

It wouldn't be unheard of. Bodies of water have acted like mirrors before.

We've just never successfully got them to work in our favor.

[northerndragon]

It might be that we're all in a mirror now, a great mirror, all of us. I remember the glimmer of light, far away, like being underwater. The real moon could be in a dish of water, if you were within the mirror. The moon in the sky, any moon, might be false.

[somebadnews]

[ ...Has anyone checked in with Jon, lately? Five would hate to be the one to tell him that being trapped in a mirror is actually the better option for them. ]

And how would you explain the time travel?

[northerndragon]

I cannot explain all of it, but time was strange to me when I was trapped there. It was only moments, but it felt like days. What if there's more than one mirror, each holding a different time?

[somebadnews]

[ He'd like to dismiss this as trauma nonsense, but... well, he's currently chasing down a theory that's only a little less out there. ]

Did it feel the same as it did when you came here?

Jon, please start making sense

[northerndragon]

No, not as such. I'm not sure it would have to.

Miang-Si told me I could aid the water that was wronged. Don't know if that has much to do with anything. We know the dead come from it. Dead in the water can't go far where I'm from. But the moon is in the water, too.