everyone's asleep, post tags
i only have twelve i can do it
I]m awake!
: D hi!
'allo!
you've discovered my underground operation
gotta pay you some hush money
damn right
One of these days I'll gather the spoons to rp again
it's more intensive than I thought it would be
Well
journal RP really is more like round-robin writing than traditional rp
So yeah
nods honestly a lot it could be cleaned up and published and it would sell like hotcakes I feel
Right?
some of the stuff the people here write is 
like i would hecking watch an animated series of the undertale cast's adventures at eway
Seriously, you guys have some kickass writers
well i don't go there myself but by heck do i popcorn
(Super tangential but I love the resurgence of the word "heck" and its permutations recently)
oh derp
Well now I don't feel so bad!
(i am now suddenly hecking fashionable)
^^ those guys are top notch. the creme de la rp
I'm from NorCal, birthplace of "hella"
i thought about joining them but a crisis of confidence
ooh, another good one
When I moved up to Seattle for a few years awhile back people could instantly guess where I came from
it was kinda funny
pftt a marker of sorts
Chara > dFrisk fear
chara: no fear
frisk: genuine emotional intimacy
chara: one fear
frisk: genuine emotional intimacy
chara: one fear
nearly there...
What do the extra letters mean?
with the y, it was an event where some people were turned into younger versions of themself
the various Frisk prefixes are just to distinguish between different frisks
TAGVANA
i am back in the game'
...think i'll leave tag ins for now tho
whispers from the deep blue you should join us Lint~
i am tempted but also scared
JOIN US!!! We won't bite and we love you and you're just as talented as us!!!
mostly i'm worried about writing slumps like the one i'm just coming out of tanking ac
(in addition to the ol bog standard rp anxiety)
Doooo iiiiit. : D
I mean? The worst that happens is yeah, you fail AC. It's not the worst thing in the world, you can absolutely re-app, or that can be your entire run, which is fine! You can also go on hiatus to make the AC requirements less.
iiii'll think about it. I'll have to think about who to bring, too
Serious talk: you know yourself best and RP is meant to be for your own fun, not anything someone else is trying to push you into, so you aren't obligated to do anything you don't want to. But I do think that you're very talented and could make something very fun there, if given the opportunity, so I'm cheerfully enabling encouraging you.
See this entire wall of encouragement, Lint?
It's all good
(lmfao sorry Echo I couldn't help poking fun)
And yeah! There's no real pressure from me at all, just saying that if you took the option, we would love to have you.
nods i'm still kind of wobbly-legged getting back into it, I don't want to run before I can walk
biting off more than I could chew was how i got into this mess
: D but once I get up to speed, maybe
biting off more than I could chew was how i got into this mess
: D but once I get up to speed, maybe
aw jeez 
(No worries, it's pretty fair. I have a tendency to, uh... textwall. A lot.)
Yes, but you posted the same message three times, which is why I was poking fun heehee
I KEEP TRYING TO FIX MY TYPOS.
Echo's textwalls are
Constantly amazed by Ecks ability to put into words what I didn't even know I was thinking
Seriously, the one thing I would consider actually paying plurk for is the 'edit after posting feature'. ...And Lint is a sweetie who shouldn't sell their own writing abilities short, because they're at least as good as I am and probably better.
asdfghjkl;lkjj you guyssss
i'm running out of bashful emoticons
Here, have a shy hedgehog. 
(I stole it from Squish.)
aaaaa it's adorable
it looks like it's headbanging to music
"And now we're proud to present: the heavy metal remix of The Hedgehog Can Never Be Buggered At All, by Ögg."
pffff
(I will make ridiculous Discworld references forever and you can't stop me.)
As is only right and proper
asdfgh definitely
Oh good, you've read them. I was briefly worried that no one else here was a Pratchett fan. : D
Girl please
nope, Discworld was my high school experience, along with agatha christie
Saaaaame.
definitely influenced my writing i think
Pratchett deserves to be part of the literary canon throughout history, I will die on this hill if I have to.
Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams were the foremost influences on my sense of humor growing up
fine choices
Pratchett's stuff is classic
(so it DNA's)
There are a lot of authors I love, but Pratchett and Bujold are the two I will aggressively recommend to everyone.
oooh, Bujold?
Lois McMaster Bujold. Amazing woman, she's written some fantastic stuff.
Mostly scifi- the Vorkosigan Saga is huge and also incredible, but also some fantasy novels, too. I admit some of it shows its age in that it was written a long while back, but even her earliest stuff is still amazing in a lot of ways.
!!!!!
More Vorkosiverse fans!!!!
Not just me and infiniteviking !
furiously taking notes
Fuck yeah, they're incredible. I like her Chalion series, too (never got into The Sharing Knife stuff as much, but it's still pretty good). It's ridiculous that they aren't more popular, I'd say.
(If your library has a copy of The Curse Of Chalion, do yourself a favor and read it. George R. R. Martin fucking wishes he wrote fantasy like that.)
Yessss
I'm so glad I made new frands, I like you guys more erry day ;A;
Aww, you're pretty great yourself.
I think part of Bujold's appeal is that she's really good at portraying, like, complicated but genuine undying loyalty type stuff, and I have a huge weakness for that. : D
She is
: D i am likewise pleased to have met you, ex
...Especially if you can also hand it to me in the form of someone dry-humored and clever. Simon Illyan was one of my first major 'no you don't understand I need all the fic for him' favorite characters.
(I say 'was' like I'm not still ridiculously fond of this poor snarky overworked spymaster, ha.)
It occurs to me I'm doing that thing where I derail someone else's perfectly good tag plurk again. Would you guys like me to make my own plurk for gushing about Bujold's stuff, so I don't mess up Lint's?
honestly like, i'm planning on making a new plurk for today's tags anyway, so it's your city now
Me on my way to steal your plurk. : D
asdfgg
(There's also the question of whether or not you guys are actually interested in hearing me gush about my fondness for Chalion, too. I don't want to just infodump if it's going to be boring.)
(Do iiiiit.)
(I haven't read it but I'd still like to hear)
Okay, I actually infodumped about this exact thing a little in Pen's tumblr inbox a while back, but: there's a couple reasons why I wish more people were familiar with the Chalion series.
The first, obviously, is that it's a really good piece of writing.
The second is that it has a theological system that appeals to me in the same way that a lot of people enjoy sorting their favorite characters into appropriate Hogwarts houses.
ooooh
Basically, the idea is that they've got The Quintinity, a family set of five gods. There's the Mother of Summer, the Father of Winter, the Daughter of Spring, the Son of Autumn, and the Bastard, for 'all things out of season'.
The thing about the setting is that it's not just a theoretical detail that's only important for how it influences the human characters' beliefs or a 'the gods are real but still ignore mortals for their own stuff most of the time' type of thing.
Instead, it has gods that are not only provably real and genuinely benevolent, but also actively involved in the world, as well as a logical reason for why there's still enough problems for the setting to have a story in the first place.
oooh that's a tricky balance to strike
Essentially, they're not omnipotent- the Quintinity have next to no ability to affect anything purely made of matter, but their power is nigh limitless in the realm of the spirit. Or, in other words, they can exalt your soul or free your mind, but they can't so much as pick up a pebble.
There's also a secondary, moral limitation, in that while they probably could just control someone's mind into doing what they wanted, they prize free will deeply and won't negate it even in the most dire situations.
(Okay, admittedly it's a little unclear whether that's completely a moral limitation- they talk a lot about how free will is valued, but also about how unless someone is open to the gods they can't get past that will, so it's debatable. Either way, they're not doing that.)
The place where they have an advantage, though, is that they're not of the realm of matter. Which means from their perspective, they see everything, everywhere. Including nonphysical locations.
So, yeah, they can't act directly to fix a problem themselves. What they can do is find someone receptive, and carefully set things up so that person will be in the exact right place to fix things.
ooooh i love that idea
a sort of chess game
a sort of chess game
Exactly. : D
and that allows for a certain amount of author saving throw too. sneaky
The fun bit is that, because they still won't negate free will, they can only give them the chance to fix everything. Say for example the Son wants to save a soldier from dying in battle because the man could go on to become a leader that takes his country into a golden age. He can't just outright tell him 'run and live', or command others to spare him.
What he can do is find another soldier sitting across from the boy in the mess hall, and carefully nudge his full attention onto the soldier boy in the exact right moment to look up and see the boy laughing at a joke.
Which will remind the other soldier of his own little brother back home and shock him with the sudden realization of how young this child is to be going off to war.
Which will lead to the older soldier befriending the boy, and teaching him from long experience (among other things) how to recognize where the enemy's dug a pit trap to snare someone.
Which leads to the boy noticing a concealed one on a march in time to avoid falling into it, which means he doesn't injure his leg, which means it doesn't give out on him in the battlefield two months later.
And the boy lives.
The thing is, though, the soldier doesn't have to befriend him. If he decides to ignore that pang of conscience at seeing a young boy on the battlefield and doesn't bother befriending him, if the boy doesn't want a friend and doesn't listen to his advice, if either of them just doesn't try hard enough... then maybe he doesn't live.
The gods can look at all the angles, and set things up so that their chosen mortal has a chance to succeed, and there will always be a chance, they will never set someone on a hopeless task. But they can't make them take that chance, and the mortal has to figure out what the chance is (and for that matter, what the task is).
Like, there's a scene where one character briefly gets a chance to talk to one of the gods, and he asks why him. Why did they send someone now when things were this bad, why didn't they pick someone stronger, or younger, or closer?
And the answer is they did.
hhhhhh i love it
They'd sent plenty of people before him, and they'd send people after if they had to. But he was the one who made it, the one who didn't turn aside on the road, who didn't miss the signs, who made it just in time. There's no chosen one, there's whoever can fit the job.
this series sounds amazing
It really is. : D
(Another character, at one point, realizes that she doesn't have to stay and fix the problem, there's nothing any of the gods can do to make her and no one would punish if she walked away... except that she'd have to live with knowing that she could have successfully fixed the problem if she were willing to try and didn't.)
(hhh the moral dilemma)
...i'm suddenly put in mind of vanessa and fern rescuing that girl
Hah, yes. That would actually be pretty classic Quintinity type intervention- they knew something was wrong, even if they didn't know what. And they didn't have to do anything.
But they did.
and all's well that ended well
how aware are people that it's happening, generally? because you mentioned someone contemplating refusing and someone getting something as subtle as a reminder
So it is. Theologically, it nicely accounts for 'god has plans' while not falling into the territory of 'so god meant for that terrible thing to happen to you'. They're intervening for the good of things when and wherever they can, but it's not guaranteed to work, and not everything is because of them.
Sometimes people just do shit for totally non-god-related reasons.
And it varies by person: the average person in the setting probably won't ever encounter the gods except when they die.
hhhhhh
do they ever have a 'must do terrible thing for later benefit' policy?
do they ever have a 'must do terrible thing for later benefit' policy?
Ehhh, yes and no? Like, given their thing about free will and other limitations, it's debatable whether or not they're allowing terrible things to happen on purpose for a better goal later, or whether they're just busy trying to solve everything all the time and this was just something they couldn't get to, or at least couldn't get to yet.
(There's... one notable potential exception to this, but I'll get to that in a moment.)
ah, ambiguity
There are church services, obviously, and the varying religious orders, but most people would only encounter the very subtle stuff we were talking about, the kind of thing where they'd probably never know the gods were involved.
Religious officials are no more or less likely than anyone else to be involved in a direct divine intervention than anyone else, it all depends on whether they're the right person for a job. There is, however, one specific miracle that everyone gets, regardless of who they are.
The funeral observance.
ooooooh
Basically, each person gets taken up by one of the five when they die, unless the person in question outright refuses to go with any of the gods and won't be persuaded otherwise by them.
This is ridiculously rare, but it can happen. Free will again, there- the gods are horrified at the idea of someone trapping themselves on the mortal plane as a helpless, lost spirit who will eventually fade into total oblivion, but if you know that's what'll happen to you and you really want to... welp. It's your soul, it's your call.
hhhhhh
what happens if they do go with?
They get the afterlife they're best suited to, under the care of the god they're best suited to. The exact specifics of that are unclear, but we get enough to see that it's generally a pretty great place. Not really something the average mortal can comprehend very well (and therefore hard to write about), but definitely some kind of paradise.
Technically, someone can also get stuck as a ghost by accident, if they were messing around with some Things Man Was Not Meant To Know kind of stuff before their death, or someone close enough to affect them was.
Those are the kinds of cases where the gods always get really closely involved, though, and they have way more freedom to act there since it's largely a spiritual matter.
Someone who still wants to go onto the afterlife is going to get there eventually, although being trapped for however long would still be a pretty traumatic experience. But someone who won't go, they're allowed to choose total oblivion if that really is what they want.
hhhhhhhhh
I realize I'm kind of spoiling some of the really good bits, or at least some of the best lines here, and I apologize but I can't resist: one of the more theologically-minded characters explains it pretty well.
They point out that consent without choice is meaningless. If someone doesn't actually have the option to say 'no', how much does it matter that they said 'yes'?
!!!!! yes
They frame it as basically the spiritual equivalent of 'it doesn't matter how sure you are that they'll like it or that it's for their own good, all you can do is explain the situation as clearly as possible and if they understand and still refuse then no means fucking no'.
god now i really want this series
Dooo iiit. : D
...In any case, assuming the soul did get taken up and wasn't either delayed until the gods can fix that or refused by their own choice, they get the funeral miracle, which shows which god picked them.
Theoretically, you can do it with any group of five things: five dogs with different colored collars and see which one goes to the body, five scraps of paper in a bowl and see which one you pull out with your eyes closed, whatever. The colors are blue for the Daughter, red for the Son, green for the Mother, black for the Father, and white for the Bastard.
ooooh. so something involving thought in some way
Exactly. Traditionally, though, people go with the simple method of taking five animals to the funeral and seeing which one goes to the body, less trouble overall. Rich people will find nice brightly colored appropriately symbolic animals, your poor village peasant will probably just tie some colored ribbons to some mice, but it works for everyone.
It can also lead to some fun surprises when people find out, undeniably, which god winds up picking them. : D
wait like if they're dead wouldn't they know?
Chara Dont
is
this for the benefit of those staying?
Oh, not the dead people, the ones attending the funeral. See, technically it's whichever one they decide to go with, but culturally there are certain expectations: mothers or older women to the Mother, young women to the Daughter, same for men with the Father and the Son.
Thing is, though, the gods have a lot of overlapping associations (i.e. the Son is the patron of warriors but the Father obviously oversees fatherhood, who gets the lifelong soldier with six kids?)
(i guess that would mean an association of the Bastard with nonbinary peeps?)
oooog
*h
Yep. Their society is, sadly, still pretty medieval, so the Bastard's domain of all things out of season- anything that doesn't fit neatly into society's categories- also covers changing or nonbinary genders and homosexuality.
The Bastard himself changes gender pretty regularly, we just tend to say 'he' because he was male for most of the book he showed up personally in.
Not to mention the gods themselves and the person in question might have their own ideas about who or what they want at this point, and obviously that's all going to get taken into consideration, too.
nods still i can see the house sorting aspect
So the end result is that a funeral miracle might give you a totally normal, socially acceptable expected result... or you might find out some really interesting things about your great-aunt that no one knew before today.
(There's also the fun of trying to figure out why a specific god picked them, if multiple things could apply.)
oooooh
D are there a lot of arguments at the wake)
Some of them can get really interesting, yeah. : D
hehehehe
it's interesting that it happens at the end of someone's life, too, because it's kind of like a summary in a way
There's always the fun of 'okay, you said that you and your husband never had children?' 'yes' 'well he got taken up by the Father, so you might want to take a look at where he was going at night and see if your stepkid needs anything'.
Generally, their respective patronages break down like this:
Daughter- spring, young women especially virgins, the color blue, scholars, art, poetry, and the intellect.
Son- autumn, the color red, young men, warriors, hunting, the forest.
Mother- summer, harvests, healing and healers, the color green, mothers and motherhood, older women.
Father- winter, justice, judgement, law and lawkeepers, order, the color black, truth, older men and fathers, a clean or honorable death in good time.
the sam vimes god
Bastard- magic, mysteries, bastard children and orphans, outcasts, gender fuckery, gayness, unexpected events, misplaced things, demons, disasters or protection from disasters.
Pfft, he really is. : D
(This can also cover adoptive parental figures, by the way, not just blood ones.)
So, quick backstory on the Bastard here: the myth goes that the was the Father and the Mother, they had the Daughter and the Son, they looked upon the newness of the world etc., etc. and then demons started fucking shit up.
Demons are essentially spiritual creatures who are vastly less powerful than the gods, but also have absolutely none of the restrictions about leaving free will alone.
They're beings of chaos, not necessarily malevolent when they're safely back on the other plane where they originated, but things tend to go really badly when they get into the nice, orderly physical world and begin affecting it.
They have to posses a living being to stick around, usually they start with animals and work up to more powerful hosts, like humans. They acquire memories, qualities, and abilities from their hosts, so they're changed and corrupted by the experience, and will start seeking out more appealing hosts.
oh no
Like, they're innocent as wild animals to start with, it's not their fault they're in a place that's not suited to them and that they don't understand, but they get twisted quick if you don't send them back.
In any case, things were a little rougher back on the demon front in the early days, and the gods were trying to deal with it. Enter a devoted follower of the Mother.
He encounters this particularly powerful and terrifying demon, and chooses willingly to give up himself to it in order to try and teach it better. At first the demon just takes the nice new body and laughs, but eventually it enjoys evil less and less and realizes that it's finally learned genuine goodness from this guy.
It absorbed too much of him, a literal saint, and now it can't go back to enjoying itself without a conscience ever again.
hhhhhh
So instead the demon enters the service of the Mother as a paladin, becomes hugely successful at campaigning against the demons, and becomes her most favored follower.
Most of the uncorrupted ones get safely put back where they're supposed to be and aren't hurting anyone, a decent chunk of the ones that are corrupted get convinced to also try this 'basic human decency' thing and go back willingly, and the ones that just developed into assholes get dragged back and imprisoned.
Unfortunately, in their last and greatest battle, the demon is injured fatally. Before he dies, the Mother takes some of the essence of his soul and mixes it with her own, preserving his memory by creating a child of both of them- the Bastard.
So, things are way better on the whole 'demon' issue, humanity gets to move on and develop civilization without some extradimensional assholes wrecking shit all the time, and the Quintinity becomes, well, a Quintinity.
oooooh
(i'm already seeing ut crossover potential)
That's why the Bastard's the patron of demons- because of his ancestry, he can actually control them in a way the other gods can't, so it's his job to keep an eye on them and make sure they don't get out of hand.
He also does run the local equivalent of hell, which is less 'eternal punishment' and more 'atonement and redemption'.
oooh
Basically, if you were a terrible person and none of the other gods want you around, but you don't want to just fade away and stop existing, you go to the Bastard where you spend however long you need learning to Not Be Fucking Evil. He also does take his share of good people who fall into one of his other themes, but they get a more restful afterlife.
so it's kind of like a massive ethereal rehabilitation center
Pretty much, yep. Depressingly, the combination of running hell, being in charge of demons, and championing social outcasts means that there is a branch of the religion that rejects the Bastard entirely- Quatrenes hold the view that he's just your standard devil figure, and that the Mother didn't have him willingly.
awwwwww D :
and like if any of the gods were to tell them that no, that's not the case?
Yeah, it's not something the other gods seem to agree with, for the record. Like, it's not explicitly stated, but when the Bastard and the Father are briefly in the same general area at one point he definitely is way more 'oh, my stepson's here too, good for him', not 'beware the evil one'.
yussss
Thing is, though, them actually being there that clearly for people is a really rare kind of thing.
ohhh that makes sense
Like I said, your average person is only going to encounter the gods through either the very subtle stuff or the funeral miracle, and the more singleminded about something someone is the less likely it is that the gods are going to be able to nudge them away from it, because you have to be open and receptive to contact them in the first place.
this is A+ worldbuilding
One could note that the fact that all the major nations except one in the series seem to be Quintarian, and that one Quadrene nation has been forced further and further to the edge of the continent until they're just holding on to a small scrap of mainland territory plus an archipelago that's too much of a pain in the ass to invade.
snrrrk oh boy
One could consider this fact in light of the fact that this setting also contains gods who are doing their best to shape humanity in the most positive direction they can, and what this consistent success might mean about their views on what is best.
But, y'know, you can't actually prove much, for the most part.
Most people don't talk to them directly, and sometimes people actually do just do stuff on their own. Hard to be totally sure.
nods
There's also the complicating factor of not literally everyone who just happened to be raised in that religion necessarily being a bad person. If someone who's a devout Quadrene also has some other really impressive personal qualities, they might just decide 'welp, they're totally wrong but I'm not passing this up' and support them anyway.
d'aww
...well, probably the Bastard wouldn't, because that would be the opposite of helping, but other than him.
pffft yeah good point
I did appreciate that particular part of the worldbuilding- like, yes these people are being raised to believe something morally wrong, but there's only so far you can blame someone if it's all they've ever been taught. You don't just allow it without complaint, because it's still wrong, but you don't just write their entire people off as Totally Evil.
So, you know how I kept talking about what the average person in that world is likely to encounter? Now we get to the part about what you might run into if you aren't that average. : D
There's essentially two likely (not necessarily mutually exclusive) options for that category: sorcerors and saints.
ooOOOOoo
The former is, well... you know how I said demons were mostly gone? Yeah, the ones who are still hanging around being assholes, it tends to be because of these guys.
A sorcerer is essentially someone who gets possessed by a demon, but by will or skill manages to stay strongly in control enough that they use the demon's powers instead of the demon using their body.
Which sounds great, at first, until you realize:
1. demon abilities are all based around disorder and chaos. You can use them for beneficial and benevolent purposes, with pretty impressive successes if you're good at it, but if you aren't really good and really careful you're mostly just going to Break Shit in literal and figurative ways. No one wants this unless they're a fuckhead.
2. demons are still sapient beings, albeit frequently fucked-up malevolent ones, so unless you're just trying to keep anyone else from being hurt it also means that you're the kind of asshole willingly to enslave another person for power, which is obviously morally wrong. And
3. you won't last forever.
Which means that, sooner or later, you'll fuck up and the demon will get out or get control somehow, and then not only do we have a demon running around on the mortal plane a-fucking-gain, it's going to be an angry, bitter demon who's absorbed the general personality and mindset of the kind of asshole who'd enslave someone for power.
And they'll need a new body pretty soon.
Great.
Now, granted, it is technically possible to be a sorcerer who isn't fucking up in this general way.
This is either someone who found a demon that would work with them willingly and actually does have benevolent intentions (rare as fuck, has basically happened all of once ever) or someone who came across a demon that was already out there and possessing people.
(And either got possessed by accident and had to live with that, or figured that it'd be better for the demon to be in them than some poor random villager who has no idea what's going on.)
That's where the sorcery tends to overlap with the Bastard's Order- people who deal with already present demons to try and return them safely instead of abusing the power for their own gain.
You can't actually just send a demon out of the world, it only works if it's inside someone who's dying and also has the strength to hold the demon to themselves while doing so, otherwise it'll just jump to a new host instead of going back properly.
oooooh
It's basically order policy to force a demon into a member who's notably strong-willed and already happens to be dying of natural causes, and hope they can manage to pull them out of the world with them when they go.
holy shit
If you get possessed and nobody in the Bastard's Order happens to be on death's door at the time? Welp, hope you like your new roommate, because you're going to be spending a lot of time meditating and learning self-control exercises while you wait for someone suitable. ...Or you could die. That's always a possibility.
(Ideally, they'd herd the demon into a dog or something and just try to keep the animal contained until someone was ready, but that's not always gonna work, especially since most people can't force them out like that and an animal won't know how to hold onto one.)
: (((
Needless to say, sorcerers aren't exactly common, and it's not a profession with an amazingly high life expectancy. Unless you're very good at it, in which case you may be around way longer than anyone wanted you to be, because you're an asshole.
i'm just picturing the asshole song on repeat
Pfft, a valid method of mental demon defense, probably. : D
Now, there's also active intervention from the other end of things...
oooooh
So, obviously in a world with proven- albeit busy and restrained- benevolent deities, people are going to try prayer and rituals for things.
These tend to go... well, not necessarily unanswered, and certainly not unnoticed, but the majority of the time either you're going to get an extremely subtle answer, or the god in question will decide it's not actually something you need help with and let you eventually figure it out on your own.
Or possibly it's not necessarily something you should get, in which case you're likely to get some (again, very subtle) nudging that you should Stop Praying For This Girl To Fuck You She's Very Gay, or whatever.
asdfghujk
But every once in a while, someone will try prayer and ritual and they'll actually be both in a situation that the gods think would benefit from their direct intervention and open themselves up spiritually enough that they can kind of nudge their way into the mortal's soul a little and perform a miracle.
: DDD
The most (in)famous of these known rituals is one that involves invoking the less friendly duties of the Bastard: a death miracle.
hoo boy
So, you can load up on all the incense and candles and whatever that you want, but the core of it and all that's truly necessary is this: find a crow and a rat, the Bastard's sacred animals. Find a quiet place alone.
Find it in yourself to say that your life, whatever it was, is not important in the face of ending this other person, so badly do they need to be stopped.
Pray.
Find out if the Bastard agrees with you.
oh no
Like most rituals, the answer is basically never 'yes', and you're going to achieve absolutely nothing. But every once in a rare while, the Bastard takes a look at this and essentially goes 'fuck, that guy actually is that terrible', and takes the opportunity.
If you successfully complete the ritual, it kills both you and the person you targeted. You don't get to bargain your way out of that or offer other stuff, either this is important enough for you to die for or it's not important enough to get a god involved.
hhhhhhhhhh
i note the similarities to taking a demon down with you
(Possibly he can't get involved if it's not that important to you, because again: the gods can only work through someone who's put their own will aside.)
Why yes, there are, aren't they. : D
hehehe
Essentially, the Bastard uses the opening to briefly send out one of his trustworthy demon servants, who takes both of you back with them.
ooooh
Interesting legal fun fact, by the way: it is totally illegal to attempt a death miracle.
oh hoh. makes sense I suppose
However, it is technically only illegal to attempt one. It's totally legal, retroactively, to succeed. Partially because you have visible sign of a god's approval, but mostly because if you're successful then you're dead, so how the fuck would the prosecute?
But hey, at least you technically didn't break the law.
so it's a bit of a gamble then : D
(Sort of the same way some places had it as being illegal to attempt suicide- you wanted a strong incentive to stop people from trying to, but if they've already done it there's not exactly much you can do at that point.)
Yeah, in multiple ways.
Now, for fairly obvious reasons, death miracles are only going to happen once. Most other successful rituals tend to be one-time events, too, just because finding someone in just the right mindset, time, and place is pretty hard. But there are those rare few people who wind up having a more long-term relationship with the divine.
These are saints.
Being a saint isn't just a title in this world, it's a job, and a tough one.
Here are the requirements:
1. You are the best available answer to a major problem somewhere in the world that the gods want to solve.
2. You are fully willing.
That's it.
You're a prince? Welp, gods still outrank you. You're a beggar? Great, then you won't have to miss work. Male, female, nonbinary, young, old, straight, gay, whoever. All you have to be is skilled enough to make things right and utterly willing to put your will aside for the heavens. Petty human social standards need not apply.
do u get paid
almost typoed do u get pain but that's probs true
Ahahahaha no. Well, yes. Depends on your perspective- odds are, the gods aren't sending you to do anything you'd personally disagree with. You may or may not get any form of additional compensation, but some would feel that saving your people from being slaughtered in a civil war is its own reward. Or similar issue.
true but you still gotta eat and stuff
You, uh, also may or may not have actually expected to wind up a saint. Odds are, almost certainly not.
Basically, being a saint in this world means that a god showed up, chucked at incredible important problem at your head, said 'FIX IT', and left.
sdfghhgf hoo boy
Good news is that it's always a problem you are actually capable of solving, otherwise they wouldn't have picked you. Bad news is that you have to figure out how you're supposed to solve it on your own.
that sounds extremely conksuck
Now, they will do what they can to help out, they're not sadistic, but there's really only so much they're allowed to do, even when they have a mortal they can work through directly. So, for example, you won't get food raining from the sky to prevent your starvation, but you'll probably have decent luck trying to hitchhike.
So you'll probably find small things going your way, or at least going in the direction that they need you to go, and you can use that to your advantage if you're smart about it.
(Probably the gods would not have picked you if you were too dumb to take a hint.)
heeee
Like, don't jump in front of a sword expecting divine protection, but if Sword Guy is chasing you and you feel a sudden urge to run to the left, do that. Odds are, it'll work out, if not necessarily the way you would've preferred.
One character summed it up best, honestly:
Sainthood means you've been chosen to complete a task. Your work is vitally important and genuinely noble, but you are the tool, not the work. Expect to be valued accordingly.
hhhhhh
so it's kind of like a rng buff for actions that are in line with the thing
(i.e. You're important for what you're going to accomplish, but the focus is on getting that thing accomplished, not on your personal comfort and happiness. It's not a job they can make you do, you're allowed to ignore the hints and walk away, but it needs to get done by someone, and if that someone is going to be you then you'll just have to cope.)
Yeah, essentially. Granted, that's not the only thing a saint is necessarily going to have going for them:
nods so you're not going to have your hand held
First, all god-touched people have a second sight. They can sense the presence of demons, or divine energy, so they'll always be able to spot sorcerers or other saints on sight.
They're also the only people who can see ghosts.
They may or may not also be able to determine non-supernatural things about people with their sight, but that varies, it's mostly just leveling the playing field by letting them know when something supernatural is involved somehow.
ooooh
Second, a saint may or may not be given addition supernatural abilities. These are rarely, if ever, flashy and over powers, and some may just flat-out have only the saint's sight and their own common sense to work with, but some do get a gift relevant to their intended purpose if feasible and necessary in their god's eyes.
ooooooooh
To use canonical examples, a minor saint of the Father was a judge who could occasionally tell with perfect clarity whether someone was lying or honest (presumably, since it was a periodic ability, only in cases the Father considered important).
ooOOOooo
Another was a midwife and minor saint of the Mother, who had very, very minor healing abilities.
Enough that it was hard to tell the difference between her having supernatural powers and just being a skilled, experienced midwife who'd gotten very good at her job over the years, but just enough to make her track record a bit better than what even she should have been able to pull off.
And so on. The gods don't like to be wasteful- they pick someone who can get the job done and give them just enough to do the job, no more.
the sort of thing that could be described as a knack then
do the gods have a limited amount of power to work with?
More or less, yeah. Again, it would depend on the saint in question, since no two are likely to have the exact same gifts. And it's not so much limited power as it is limited ability to apply that power.
Like I said, they can only work through someone who can willingly put their own will aside. Human beings are practically nothing but will. Do you know how rare it is to find someone who can give themselves up to a task, but still care enough to do that task and do it well?
Especially considering how often it is that the best person for the job doesn't know that and didn't ask for it.
exceedingly rare
Right. And even when they do find a valid opening, it's still generally only going to be a partial thing. The amount you can channel is related to the amount of will you can offer.
that makes sense
There's also the fact that putting yourself aside like that isn't necessarily terribly mentally healthy, and for all that the gods are willing to wreck their saints if it's necessary to get the job done, they'd rather not fuck them up too badly if they don't have to.
Not to mention the whole issue of 'are mortals still using their free will if we slap them down directly every time they do something we don't like, instead of giving them the best advice we can and trying to subtle improve things'.
So yeah, as little as possible that can still get the job done.
that makes sense
this sounds like a hecking cool setting
I'm really ridiculously fond of it, yeah. I wish it was better-known, because I feel like there's a lot of crossover potential, plus the fun of figuring out appropriate patron gods for various characters. : D
so much crossover potential
gimme your pics
*picks
For starters, I am dead fucking certain that a Chalion-verse Sans would be a petty saint of the Father.
what with the whole judge thing going on and all
I mean, patron of judgement, law, winter, properly ordained deaths? It fits him like a freaking glove, and if you're going with the headcanon that he acted as a parental substitute for Papyrus in their younger years, then you can throw in 'fatherhood', too.
: DDD
More importantly, Chalion-style saints fit almost exactly with what I think is more or less going on with Sans canonically: he knows there's something very wrong and knows more about it than most other people, but he's still not sure about a lot of it because the problem just got abruptly dumped on his lap by the dubious machinations of the universe.
He didn't go looking for this job, he got it by virtue of being sharp enough to survive it and stubborn enough that he couldn't quite force himself to just walk away at let it all fall apart completely. Sure, he might also just fuck it up, but he's at least got a chance and he has to take it.
So yeah, I peg him as a deeply bitter and exhausted minor saint who really wishes he could stop doing this fucking god(s)awful job but keeps at it because he knows it needs to get done.
he got slapped with the do something sticker
He is very Not Happy about it.
natuurlijk
'this is what happens when people like me take it easy'
'this is what happens when people like me take it easy'
who else, do you reckon?
Chara's very clearly under the Bastard's patronage, both by choice and by circumstance. I'd say they were (in life) a failed Bastard saint, someone who made the unfortunately wrong choice and fucked up their situation worse. Probably it involved demons somehow.
I think maybe they got themselves and Asriel both possessed trying to fix some major problem, and when they died their self got imprinted so hard on the demon it carried them over to the next host.
oooooh yes
Probably what happened was they used their abilities in a last-ditch attempt to stop this by sealing themselves and demon-Asriel away safely until someone could come and deal with this whole mess, but things were fucked up enough that no one actually knew what really happened so, well.
Nobody came.
i would also peg Frisk as under the Bastard's, too
like i waffled a bit but i think the guy would be absolutely the type to be like 'lets see if we can help two demons and an entire people'
like i waffled a bit but i think the guy would be absolutely the type to be like 'lets see if we can help two demons and an entire people'
and Frisk would be 'okay'
Absolutely. Years down the line Alphys, who I'm going to say is probably a major learned temple scholar under the intellectual parts of the Daughter's Order but probably not actually a saint herself, is doing some kind of research into safer use of sorcery and accidentally fucks up the seal, releasing a damaged and confused demon who has Asriel's mind.
oh noooo
(also i think if we're going by canon... I think it would have been Asriel who did the sealing, in the end)
He wound up somehow managing to possess a flower, which is great in that he doesn't have to fight anyone else for control of the body but fucking terrible in that he's stuck there and also really traumatized. Omega Flowey is probably him somehow getting past that and taking over multiple people at once.
god that would be hecking creepy
like a flower made of contorted bodies moving in unison
like a flower made of contorted bodies moving in unison
(Hm, you have a point. Possibly Chara had a plan, Asriel went against said plan, and the sealing was a panicking last-resort move at a point where things were so muddled they couldn't tell which of them really did that.)
Chara's still sealed, but much more weakly. By 'lucky chance', an already god-touched Frisk stumbles across them and gets possessed.
At which point the Bastard's like 'okay, new saint just got possessed by my old saint... hey, fuck it, double or nothing. Let's do this.'
crackles knuckles, etc
Things proceed from there. : D
: D so how would SAVE manifest as a knack? i'm assuming demon power is getting added into the equation too
(and man tho what happens to Chara in genocide is a really good illustration of how much influence hosts can have)
Undyne is probably head of the military wing of the Daughter's Order- again, I'm going to say that probably only the reset-aware characters are actually god-touched in any major way, so she's just a kick-ass general, not a saint. Still high-ranking and important, though.
niiiiice
And I'd say probably some kind of precognition deal- actually reversing time would be way too blatant an effect, but clear and vivid visions of their own death just in time to avoid it could work.
Papyrus, obviously, is a hopeful trainee who hasn't yet responded to Undyne's increasingly desperate prayers for the Daughter to reveal to him that he'd be way better suited to the more gentle parts of her Order than the military. Hopefully she'll get through there eventually.
Breaking our streak of Daughter-chosen characters, Asgore and Toriel are obviously chosen by the Father and the Mother, respectively.
I'm not sure what's going on with him, it's probably not anything directly god-related, and even if it was he'd be too caught up in his grief and rage for anything the gods were trying to say to get through.
She's probably hiding out as a minor healer, safely in the anonymity of a nice, normal nun of the Mother's Order who was definitely never royalty, nope, of course not.
hhhhh
nope never what would give you that idea
Muffet might also be under the Mother's patronage, if she's looking after all the other spider monsters like that, but only indirectly, I doubt she's involved in any major god shenanigans.
Mettaton is a Bastard priest if I ever fucking saw one.
Possibly not an official one, I admit. He may have just kind of... shown up one day, and started singing some of the more risqué hymns for the court religious ceremonies.
(Look, the Bastard canonically has a filthy sense of humor. I would be legitimately shocked if he didn't have at least one hymn with hilariously dirty double meanings in the lyrics.)
(omg yes)
Napstablook probably just... shuffled quietly along after him. They got a job tuning instruments or something because they missed him but didn't want to remind him of his old life as a common farmboy or whatever.
I don't think either of them would be a ghost, here, they don't really work with that concept.
And I should start winding down, now, because I've been infodumping long enough that I didn't notice how late it was.
yeah it would probs be an all human some demon au
pffft the hours have flown by
Time flies when you're having fun.
Also, not Chalion-specific but something that I noticed about Bujold's writing in general:
She does seem to have a fondness for romance plotlines with a young woman and noticeably older man.
Which I would normally dislike, except the way she does them is invariably 'man is polite and proper about ignoring any feelings and not taking advantage of the situation, girl takes about ten minutes to get her bearings and then points straight at him and says fuck you, I want that one'.
oooh
Which is substantially less gross than the usual 'doe-eyed damsel in distress' version, and also fucking hilarious.
basically it reverses the usual direction of pursuit within the trope
Like, at the end of one book there's actually, literally a conversation between the older guy and his monarch, who just told him that he's being given the girl's hand in marriage, and it goes basically like this:
'holy shit, she's a person and also like half my age, you can't just hand her to me as a reward'
'lol no your reward for what you did is a promotion, I had her in here yesterday and when I asked what she wanted for her reward she pointed at you and said "dibs".'
pftt
So that's pretty great. : D
man i'll def have to check it out