voice- un: brightness_kholin

[veristitalian]

People have been vanishing. Not many, not often, not at a volume where we've noticed quickly, but a small number of the ones who initially arrived here have simply disappeared. They've been vanishing since before the doors into space opened, and at enough of a rate that we'd notice the diminishing number of suits if they were all falling off the station into the black.

Initially I had assumed it must be because this place is dangerous. If that were the case we should be tripping over the corpses by now. We clearly aren't.

Comments

[veristitalian]

I'm sorry, dead?

[News to Jasnah.]

[aequoreal]

Yes.

( he wishes it was otherwise. he wishes he could believe wally has simply returned home. that he's with nightwing and the others, figuring out a way to get kaldur home as well. )

[veristitalian]

Dead and walking?

[No, they're going to stay with this one for a little.]

[aequoreal]

He was alive here. At home, he is neither alive nor walking.

[veristitalian]

Well, he's probably dead now.

[Says Jasnah, with all the tact and kindness of a charging rhinocerous.]

And we can't ask him details about how the experience played out.

[aequoreal]

( kaldur barely had time to grieve wally before arriving here and finding him alive. now, he has to start the process anew. )

Most likely, yes. ( the time he has spent undercover, lying to everyone but a very select few has honed kaldur's ability to hide his emotion well. his horror. his grief. his tone remains even now. )

[veristitalian]

So what brings us here can literally raise the dead.

[She still needs to absorb this.]

[aequoreal]

So it would seem. Or take those who have died from a different point in time.

[veristitalian]

I don't know how to begin to slot that kind of capability into the schema I've been developing.

[aequoreal]

What does the schema say?

[veristitalian]

That the thing that brought us here is powerful, but has limitations. It wants something from us, but struggles to articulate it. It made the station habitable, but not pleasant. It brought us here from afar, but it loses grip on us.

And now it can raise the dead?

[aequoreal]

You make it sound sentient. I am not sure it is. ( a pause. admittedly: ) I am also not sure that it isn't.

[veristitalian]

Someone sentient must be behind it, if not now, then once, in writing the instructions.

No naturally occurring phenomenon would pause and take a moment to give everyone clothes.

[aequoreal]

I agree. We know the station was inhabited before us.

[veristitalian]

And that the clothing is tailored to us.

[She lifts both hands, so they display in the feed. Her left one is gloved.]

Vorin women cover their safehand. I found this when I arrived.

[aequoreal]

Is it a piece from your world?

( he can't help but wonder. if his theory of transportation is right, it might be. )

[veristitalian]

I don't believe it's specifically from Roshar. Not the way I would consider a havah to be.

But it is a sign that the station understands what I would consider nudity.

[aequoreal]

That is curious. It indicates a great deal of knowledge.

[veristitalian]

Or else a lightly psychic touch right from the outset.

It's a very deeply held belief.

[aequoreal]

I see. Someone very well-trained in the mystic arts could manage it, if I apply the framework of my own world to this. But I am not sure that applies.

[veristitalian]

Nor mine. In my world, we exist in the tension between Honor, Odium and Cultivation. I don't think any of them can reach us here.

[aequoreal]

Can you tell me more of these?

[veristitalian]

Barely, but I can try.

Honor was the being that our people worshipped as the Almighty. We have reason to believe he died a long time ago, murdered by Odium. Cultivation is more of a mystery.

They're immensely powerful, and we're not sure how or why. They take an interest in the lives of men- Honor protecting, Odium seeking destruction.