futurology | TEXT | USERNAME: LOKI

Entry tags:

TEXT | USERNAME: LOKI

Hello. :-)

Everyone patched up and out of the slammer? Good.

It's been quite a ride, hasn't it? First dragons that were intended to end a world, now political conflicts between parties and the compelling mystery as to WHY??? the whole MISSING SUN thing, and WHO STARTED IT?? thing, etc etc. Oh- and there's also that nagging little question of what's going to happen if we do succeed in the way that we're meant to. (Insert question marks here) But forgot that for now, we can do the whole "share your multiversal anecdotes" later.

[ goblins, humans, goblin-human conflict and everything else in between. there's still fuel on the fire and a conflict and a sun missing. he's wondered if their presence here was enough to sway the tides of fate in ALASTAIR's favor, and that's left him with nothing but a sour taste in his mouth. ]

Alas, here's the thing! Despite the mission, we're still all on our own. :'( But all's not lost! I'm here to offer a little tidbit that I found rifling through some paperwork that someone oh-so-fortunately left out in the open. I just happened to be glancing over. [ "happened to." ]

There have been some very curious disappearances. 4, in particular.

Agatha Belrose
Felix Poirier
Michel Roche
Delia Favre

With all the talk of sacrifice I thought it may be preferable to find these people and, well, possibly who took them and where they've gone. You know, saving them from the whole maybe-but-we-don't-know sacrificial death thing. It sounds very unpleasant, and with a possible worrisome outcome.

[ he's never really been much of a team player, but getting the brunt of the blame if someone's sacrificed generally wasn't in his best interest. ]

Now, where to do with these names? Ideas? Comments? Concerns? I'll leave the floor open.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ that elicits a sigh from him on the other side. that's the easy route, and right now, he doesn't trust the easy route, especially not after what happened in Anwick. there's still some aspects of this that bother him, having been stuck in a cycle of fate himself, he can say that being stripped of your free is ants at a picnic. ]

First we have to make sure that it wasn't. There's always the possibility that there were SOME goblins that had a hand in it.

[ he puts a dark nail to his teeth. ]

We'll fool ourselves if we boil this down to the same level of simplicity of A vs. B: Battle of the Century.

i didn’t say that’s what this is. we know that it isn’t.

[ that much is glaringly obvious, written in the multitude of agendas present in the situation. alastair presiding over it all—with their own agenda as well. she hasn’t forgotten what happened in anwick either, the sting of it hasn’t left, and she doubts that it has for many of the employed.

she doesn’t think she has to mention it out loud, on the network— on the watch-turned-device that they’d given her. ]

what i’m saying is that it might be, to the majority of the people here. you saw what happened in the square, that looked like a vs. b. we can stop this from escalating if we give them a reason not to blame each other.

[ the missing people found could be that reason, maybe it won’t stop the vitriol between the sides, but it could create a standstill. stop things so they have some time to figure out a plan. ]

it is a possibility, that some of the goblins did this.

[ the motivation is there, and you can’t count out the mot obvious even when you do suspect that there’s something bigger going on. ]

it would just be better for everyone if they didn’t, and we could prove that.

Let's just say that I'm not certain that they AREN'T involved. Mind you some =/= all. [ he knows that. he knows that most of all. he's used it, and he's been part of it, and it's easy to find one or two goblins that had ill will toward humans and start pointing fingers. ]

And if they're not. At all. It may prove to be a bit more difficult than changing some minds. We may have to lean our way into a little bit of trickery if it comes to that.
You don't mind a bit of that, do you?
Finding the source of these rumors may head off the certain someone who thinks that they can easily manipulate a large group of people in hive mind set, hm?

that’s the problem. we’re not certain about anything, except that these people have all but vanished.

[ there’s gaps everywhere, in the knowledge that they were given, and even what they’ve managed to collected isn’t enough to full them in. it’s frustrating, to not know everything— atleast when she’d been in a place of relative power ( one that she hadn’t coveted, hadn't wanted if she were to be honest ) she had all the pieces. only had to decide what to do with them. she wonders at alastair, who has the most power here, if they’re looking at all of them stumbling around in both the metaphorical and literal dark and laughing.

wonders at their objective here and the possibility that they might not be stationed here to make the sun rise, but to be agents in leading this world to it’s natural end.

a moment, where she considers how to respond to the rest of his text before deciding to go the blunt route : ] you’re saying we should lie?

[ of course trickery has a bit of a different connotation, but it doesn’t do any good to assume. it’s better to be direct than polite, and it shifts the focus of the conversation back to him.

she may have some experience, in the trickery field. ]

whoever they are, they’re doing a good job. not that it’s hard to incite a mob.

it’s harder to talk people down.

I'm not saying we SHOULDN'T lie. I'm just saying that it's an option. We could get into all the differences between deceit and lies, but that's a large gray area for us to get wax philosophical in when there's a job that needs to be done.

[ it was the way he did things. lies and deceit were his weapon where Thor's was his hammer. he found cunning solutions, and even f he betrayed a few people along the way, the situation came out better because of it. ]

We're in a place where they trust us little. (And I can't say I blame them.) If we're to find anything, it won't be by the word of the locals.
We'll either have to be very clever, or learn to read minds.
Unless you have the number of a good telepath.

number, no. but it wouldn’t surprise me if there was one here.

[ the dry aspect of the statement probably doesn’t translate through text, but the sentiment is there. she hadn’t commented on riza’s post, but she had scrolled through it, eyebrows raised at the multiple replies of magic. it makes sense, that alastair would recruit those with abilities, though it leaves her to wonder at what she was brought here for. ]

they don’t trust us because they don’t know where we stand in all of this. to them, we’ve just shown up at their gates, and now participated in their fight. if anything good came out of it, it’s that they’ve decided some of us are on the human side.

[ nope, not her though. her things ended up on the cobbled stones surrounding the inn, not that she’d been that put out by it. had decided to skip the outskirts, and make camp in the woods. ]

gaining their trust now isn’t impossible. you just have to make them like you.

[ you. because she’s not likeable, in the charismatic sense of the word. too intense, is what jasper had said once. :( ]

[ there was a very eclectic bunch here, but telepathy was something he wasn't going to put his money on, especially if one hasn't come forward yet. ]

Ah- yes, alright. Riddle me this.

[ Loki's done this song and dance before, and while he finds that it comes to him easily, he also finds that it's not another path that he'd wish to tread upon. ]

They don't trust us because we're outsiders and we're meddling. I could put it nicely, but we'll just stick with the facts.
Outsiders. Meddling. Good.
And what has our meddling done for us? Well, we did end a world at behest of our employers, for BETTER or WORSE, I suppose.

We gain their trust and then what?
Perhaps gift them all with an early grave.

what’s the alternative, we wait for them to dig it themselves?

[ it sounds like inaction, building trust. it might take time, but what other choice do they have? ]

alastair only gave us orders to collect information, and report back. if anything goes wrong here, it’s on us. they didn’t tell us to join in on that fight. there isn’t going to be the option, of blaming them if something goes wrong here.

that means whatever we do, we have to be smart about it.

making them trust us is the best way to get information without resorting to something that could lead to this world’s end. what happened in anwick was because we didn’t have all the information, and acted without thinking.

we can’t be the dragons here.

[ the conclusion : to be the meddling kids that fell from the nexus— but to do it carefully. ]

There isn't one single alternative. It's not that simple; there are always more alternatives, one after another, you just have to find them. Let's not dig ourselves that hole while others do it for us.
"Goes wrong" is rather broad and subjective in situations like these, especially when you toss in the whole multiversal domino effect.
It could simply be our presence that ALASTAIR needed.

You're very good at convincing people of things, aren't you?

[ he can tell. wordplay is his jam, he uses it in both offense and defense, and these aren't words from someone who hasn't convinced someone of something on this scale before. ]

[ it’s frustrating, the words without the connotation behind them, and maybe the question isn’t even accusatory. but she doesn’t know from text alone, and decides to bite the metaphorical bullet and put the feed on video. after a minute he gets a raised eyebrow, and a backdrop of trees. ]

I don’t seem to be convincing you. [ and this time the dry aspect of the statement is out there. a second before she sighs, scrubs the back of her hand across her forehead. a gesture that reads frustration. ] I’m just trying to make sense of this, that’s all.

[ and it’s helping, talking with loki. having someone to bounce her thoughts off of. ]

I’d like to think there are alternatives that don’t leave us back where we started. [ a beat. ] Or make us seem like a threat. I said it’s not hard to incite a mob, and that’s true for us as well.

[ because people are the same, fundamentally, even one’s like these who have magic. ]

Why not build on what we already have?

[ which is trust, the humans allowing their people to stay in the inns, mill around the trade district. it would be a waste not to use that. ]

[ it's not accusatory at all. he is, in fact, a tad bit impressed. he is the god of lies, after all, and lies come in many forms, rhetoric being one of them. she switches the feed, Loki looks up. he doesn't look particular moved in one way or another, and takes up eyeing her expression tactlessly as she speaks. ]

We are a threat. [ he says without looking like he cares how much. he's been a threat before, it's no surprise to him. hoping around the multiverse had its down sides.

with his elbow propped up, he leans his chin in his hand, dark fingers tapping against it. ] As long as we're taken beneath ALASTAIR's wing, even if we do manage to gain some sort of trust.

Ask the goblins to trust and you're made to hate the humans ... [ he twists a finger of his free hand in the air. ] Ask the humans to trust and the goblins get the short end of the stick. Either way there's rumor and bias. No one trusts each other, someone killed the other and blah blah blah. We can go a bit further and trust outcomes and reactions, but that requires a bit more than toying with the debt of time that we don't necessarily possess.

Not now, anyway. [ he says, mostly to himself. ]

[ tact isn’t something that matters to her, doesn’t shy away from being blunt— prefers it actually. she eyes him as well, with a thinly veiled curiosity. while she hadn’t actively imagined the person behind the text, she’s still surprised it’s someone she mentally places around her age. ]

We don’t have to use the trust we have to pick up rumors about the other side. If we’re going to find these missing people, we should find out if they have anything in common. They’re gone, we know that, but that doesn’t mean that they’ve been sacrificed.

[ a second where she considers the nonchalance in the other’s expression, thinks that he must have some experience in this as well. enough to be bored by it, at any rate. or at least appear that way. he’s right, no matter how she thinks to frame it, there’s no certainty that they’re the good guys here. anything other than a threat. not when they know who they work under are morally ambiguous at best. instead of trying to refute the point : ] We’re more of a threat because we aren’t organized.

[ it does occur to her that alastair might have not brought people into this situation on the basis that they could help. might have purposely assembled a volatile cocktail of high powered employees to do just the opposite. and it’s more likely that this is going to blow up in their faces, without someone to bring about a kind of order.

speaking of high powered.

the lofted eyebrow returns in full force. ]

You don’t look like a god.

[ she’s been hard creeping, okay. ]

No, but if we make the wrong assumption on the sacrifice then we're a bit SOL. Treat it with more urgency and you'll catch more attention, and possibly make sure there's no dying in the process. Treat it less so, and ... well, you get the idea.

[ and it worked from his end. it didn't mean that all of the information he was going to get was going to be legit toward sacrifice, but that's exactly what he wanted. he still hasn't discounted the idea that those kidnapped did it themselves.

he waves a hand at her, tipped with dark nailed fingers. ]

You know what gods look like? I'm impressed.

I know I wasn’t expecting a kid.

[ up on the ark, they did have a library complete with mythologies. of course the more rare books were limited to the privileged, but she fell under that jurisdiction. had been born on alpha station, and thus had access to the information, but had dismissed it as impractical more interested in learning earth skills, learning to track, read maps.

more practical even though by all predictions she would be dead before the ark reached the ground, deemed it livable. ] Shouldn’t you know more about sacrifice than anyone here?

[ the question is dubious, but it isn’t dismissive. of course there’s skepticism to the fact that he is a god, but.

who knows anymore, what the limitations are on what can be real. if there even are any. ]

[ Loki doesn't seem all that insulted by the insinuation of "kid." not everything was as it seemed, and that wasn't a can of worms that he was interested in opening in the middle of their conversation. ]

That depends on what god. The practice itself is barbaric where I come from, no one does that kinda thing anymore. No gods ask for it. You'll get the occasional mortal straying now and then that thinks the gods will be pleased with it ... but it's a general no-no.

[ he flicks his fingers. ]

The multiverse is a little different in those terms. Who knows what the gods here want?

[ this is. strange to say the least. as he talks her expression shifts from calculating to fascinated. she’d always thought of gods in the abstract, certainly intangible— unknowable, and loki is well. here. with his dark nails and flippant attitude. the grounders had thought differently, and she had named them savages for their mentality. that blood must be answered with blood.

she wonders at the goblins now, if sacrifice is their answer to perceived injustice.

shakes her head slightly, to clear the thought. ] Their god is peaceful. [ a beat before an amendment : ] Ydite is said to be peaceful, that should mean they wouldn’t want sacrifice.

[ though the words are steady, it’s all too obvious she’s out of her depth here. is better with plans than speculation on this level. ]

Could a god have done this, make the sun disappear?

Oh yes, it's not so difficult if you know the right pathways to take. It would take a large something to do it—reality just doesn't rewrite itself at behest of the daydream. Someone certainly put a lot of work into that.

The funny thing about gods is that stuff can get—mm—messed up. When people tell each other tales over and over again, details get changed, some for the better and some for the worse, it doesn't mean that they're true. They same is with any god, and I'm certain Ydite is no exception. The goblins are monotheistic, and thus comes the difference between preaching examples and gods themselves.

Get my drift?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

TEXT | USERNAME: LOKI

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

⇒ video

VIDEO.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject