[Text] [Locked to New Hires]

[wheyoftheadept]

[Anon text, under the name "Quaestor."]

Hey. I can't be the only person who didn't give my full attention to the briefing when I got here; since some information has been recieved recently via a local source about what exactly the fuck is happening in this place, I thought I would compile what I learned here, and people could chime in? Just seems sensible to swap notes; not on our secret squirrel shit but in the general "what is happening and why is it happening to us?" sense.

Locked because my source wasn't supposed to be talking to me about some of these things.

In bullet points, what I've learned:

- this place had a war. It was bad.

- what made the war bad, is that they'd invented bombs that could unmake reality. The result of unmade reality is the Stuff

- they made these bombs by using something called "noospheric" technology

- Noosphere is a natural force, like gravity, in this corner of reality. This is less weird than you might think, 'cause it seems like a lot of us come from places that have a little extra something on top of ordinary physics

- It seems that there's some sort of "dna" or "genetic code" for reality, which tells matter how to behave and the forces that impact matter how to function. The noosphere is concerned with the control and regulation of this reality-dna.

- Use of the noosphere is what allowed the creation of the bombs that can unmake reality.

- In hindsight, probably a bad idea. But wait, there's more!

- The unmaker bombs don't destroy reality. They strip it of its "dna," reverting it back to raw potential stuff. Hence.... the Stuff.

- Reality, it turns out, doesn't like not knowing what it is. It will latch on to anything nearby that can tell it what it's supposed to be. When the nearest thing nearby is a thinking mind, shit can get extremely hairy.

- Basically, Stuff takes form based on the thoughts of those around it. Any being capable of thought can give it a template. This process is called "reification."

- With animals,what's created is usually just a bigger, nastier version of the animal; the animal's dream of what it might be.

- With metahumans (term local to my metaplane meaning 'anything intelligent enough to insist it's not an animal'), anything the mind can conceive of can come into being, from living things to architecture to freaky tech.

- This leads me to a curveball

- While a lot of what we are gonna see out there is going to be, well, most likely monstrous - to the point where we should assume danger unless explicitely demonstrated otherwise - there are full people being created by the Stuff.

- As in, 'intelligent, internal life, capable of reason' full-on people. Not ghosts, or really realistic toys, or echoes or dreams. Full people.

- They're called the New, and Jorg really wants to vivisect them. Just, so badly.

- Personally, I'm not down for letting them, if it comes up.

- Oh, and apparently Jorg is well-convinced we're not New but have memories because of reification or whatever, because otherwise we'd be in a lab somewhere. So at least we don't have to worry about the implications of that.

- They also don't, according to my source, actually understand how the Stuff gets us here, in any capacity. Or really anything about the noosphere except how to use it for unmaker bombs. What fun!

Sorry if this is old news or difficult to understand. I'm not great at organizing my thoughts, and I figured even if a lot of people know this already, this could be a place to start figuring out what this place's deal is. I have some experience being forcibly bounced around different realities, and the local rules and politics always end up more important than you'd think.

Sorry about the cat.

[So far, everything has gone smoothly, except. Right here, at the bottom. There's a little animated gif of a startled cartoon cat that keeps jumping and rolling backwards, in an endless loop. If she tries to delete it, the program crashes.]

Comments

anon text: Casper

[likeits1999]

well shit, that is definitely way more than i knew about what is going on and a great knew way to know a world can go and break itself. good job quaestor.

i guess that explains why all those tables and chairs went crazy?

anon text: Quaestor

[wheyoftheadept]

Yeah, the office furniture was reified Stuff, I think. Picked up on someone's work nightmares, maybe.

[likeits1999]

on the one hand i'm real glad to know more stuff but on the other it sure doesn't give me any stronger sense it's a thing we can do something about. or why we're here, i guess.

in the meantime they should stop being so fucked up here cause that can't be helping if the world does what people's imaginations are doing.

anon text: tg

[turntex]

so basically the stuff is dream primordial soup
and the whole world is drowning in an ocean of it because the locals fucked up
its just a batshit hellscape waterworld except the water is a metaphor for the potentiality of literally every freaky thing anyone can think up
awesome

anon text: Quaestor

[wheyoftheadept]

In a nutshell. What the hell where they thinking?

Anon

[greatlyexaggerated]

[Well. This all is completely frakking horrifying. Anything manmade that can draw the Warp into the material realm, Cain just prays that it doesn't fall into the wrong hands.]

It's disturbing to realize just how physically corrupted this planet is.

I'm no theologian, but I can imagine all too well the dangers of a mind left to wander. Is there anything that can be done to minimize our impact on this "Stuff"? I don't know about the rest of you, but I typically find thinking, or indeed existing, an action difficult to stop doing.

anon text: Quaestor

[wheyoftheadept]

Meditation, maybe? Actual meditation, not that creepy shit that weirdo in the "relaxation wing" keeps making us do. There's a lot of magical and psychic types around; ask for tips, or maybe we can organize lessons in that along with the martial training Armstrong's co-ordinating? I'm open to ideas.

Or, I know the mages where I'm from can generally pick apart and then defend against just about any weird magic, given time and study. Do we have anyone around who's deep into magical theory?

not anon because it's real obvious

[greyaria]

There are psychological techniques, but which ones work are highly dependent on the individual. There are also drugs that dampen emotional responses, from mild tranquilizers to what amounts to a chemical lobotomy. Cortical implants are a possibility, but I'd have to make them myself and I don't trust these medical facilities for delicate neurosurgery.

text;

[gempathizing]

For the record, I think the cat helps bring a little bit of fun that we could all probably use on the tail end of that. Since everything else is exactly as awful as you expect from the word "war".

I don't have experience with getting bounced around realities, but I have a history with corruption? I mean, that's what reality getting stripped back down into Stuff kind of sounds like. Not knowing what it is anymore, not even how to look like itself... so scared and confused it'll take whatever form it can hang onto.

That was targeted back home, though. The only things that got changed were about as intelligent as life forms get. This is

I don't know, messier? Messier.

It feels like digging into the Noosphere and reality bomb thing is the best way to get a shot at actually fixing it. You usually can't heal something like this if you don't have the pieces of how it got hurt in the first place.

anon text: Quaestor

[wheyoftheadept]

Our source made reification sound like a natural phenomenon, reality trying to fix itself after suffering the kind of damage that shouldn't be possible.

I'd like to hear more about your experience. I agree: digging into what happened with their war and their unmaker bombs, and especially who found and figured out how to use the noosphere, is the place to start. I asked all the questions I could think of at the time, but if I get the chance to talk to our source again, is there anything you can think of that I should ask?

[heterochrocatic]

somehow this situation is even worse than I thought. it literally makes stuff out of your head. this sounds like some first ones bs all over again

[ Hi, yes. Catra remembers this memory crap from the first ones ruin and how awful that was. And this sounds a million times worse. ]

[walkingballpit]

First ones?

I’ve seen some stuff that can pull images from your head, not just telepaths, but I don’t know what First Ones are.

anon text: Consul

[somnioergosum]

Why is everyone acting like this Stuff is a bad thing?

When you have a bad dream, is it the dream's fault or your own brain? You just want to blame something for your own lack of control. You or Jorgmund or whoever say that animals turn monstrous and dangerous? Is it their fault when people stick their noses in their business. How are we supposed to take that seriously when they want to vivisect them? I'd attack them too.

It's no different than lucid dreaming. You have to know what you're doing and keep control of your thoughts. It takes work but you can do it.

anon text: Juniper

[valkywhee]

It doesn't have to be something's fault for it to still be dangerous. I'm not going start by trying to kill everything that looks at me funny, but I am going to defend myself and other people.

anon text: Quaestor

[wheyoftheadept]

It isn't a bad thing, but an example our source gave is one time, the rig was swarmed by beautiful mermaids with enchanting voices who were wonderful to see and hear right up until they started cracking people's skulls opens like oysters to slurp out the tasty brainstems.

The Stuff isn't good or bad, I don't think. The Stuff shouldn't even exist, if I understood the explanation right. It's just trying to get back to what it's supposed to be. But in doing so, it can cause a lot of damage... I've been thinking about it more as one of those kind of man-made natural disasters, like a nuclear plant meltdown. Not radiation's fault we decided to do something dangerous, but we still need to protect ourselves from it on cleanup.

text;

[gempathizing]

Of course it's not their fault.

The Stuff all has something that it used to be, or be a part of. It wants to be something or be part of something again, but it doesn't know how to be. It's just... grabbing whatever it can. Trying to find a place.

If it's anything, it's probably scared. I can't see Jorgmund being a big help with that.

Keeping anything or anyone from getting dissected has to be a huge priority. Shouldn't we try to find a way to fix it when it turns into something dangerous that can't be talked to, too?

not anon

[takenalive]

I come from somewhere with curious entities some might call 'gods', though I'm not certain the connotations are right. I once believed they were mythical. Some of them built a device we called the Time Matrix, that a person could use to be rapidly transported anywhere in space or time, which I also thought was implausible until I encountered it.

Used by one person with some idea of what they want, it extrapolates quite well. Used by multiple people with different desires and it creates a disturbing mixed setting, a small universe with a patchwork sky, populated by half-people imperfectly created from memory. I don't know if that was a new, sub-universe or that's just what reality broke down into and became. I can say that the more 'normal' reality I was returned to when someone accessed it again had some small differences in it.

So it may be that similar principles apply there. Astounding that humans developed a technology that replicates some part of that effect.

anon text: Quaestor

[wheyoftheadept]

Jesus christ, I hope Jorg doesn't figure out that application.

Was the Matrix transporting people or creating universes for them, then?

Anon: Cerberus

[greyerrant]

Excellent work Quaestor. Information is victory. Keep gathering it. It reminds me a lot of the worst things from when I hail. I shall think on what you wrote, and see if I can add anything through my own investigations.

anon text: Quaestor

[wheyoftheadept]

Yeah, same here; the mutability thing is concerning, as is Stuff being able to access the multiverse somehow? Very familiar. Even if it's not related, it's something the enemy I know could definitely use to get into the world through and this place has enough problems.

Hopefully, it's not as dire as all that.

text

[googledox]

There's no point in me going anon for this, I suppose.

[How many people have his scientific background? On his level?]

This has fascinating implications. By noospheric they're referring to a multi-species philosophical concept of consciousness - of reason and scientific thought creating an evolutionary geological layer on top of other elements of a biosphere. It's a hypothesis that the penultimate level of an evolutionary chain, sentient consciousness, is included with scientific estimations of a world's developmental process.

Consciousness in this world being as much an active natural force as gravity or thermodynamics is certainly within the realm of possibility, given that each universe likely has different physical laws.

These bombs and the processes behind them are also within the realm of the possible and it makes sense that the leftover matter might have interacted with a force they didn't yet understand. It's my understanding that that Earth culture didn't initially understand the full dangers of radiation until they later weaponized it. It seems here they unfortunately discovered the repercussions far too late.

The stresses that would be in play from reality's unmaking could also easily have caused the breaches between worlds. There are several physical processes I can think of that could cause such ruptures. One particular process is called AF's syndrome, named after the scientist that discovered it, wherein prolonged use of uncontrolled probability manipulation - magic - can cause "unreality fatigue." Darl-Af claimed the only possible solution is noospheric in nature, due to the dimensional fabric becoming so heavily influenced by thought and consciousness at that point: "One must invoke enough raw truth to punch a hole in the world." During the incident of Darl-Af syndrome I encountered, his solution actually worked. The bombs and the un-reified matter could easily create stress on the fabric of reality similar to magic.

anon text: Quaestor

[wheyoftheadept]

Okay, let me take a second to make sure I got this. What you're saying is, you're familiar with this noosphere idea, and it's basically to do with the idea that as life becomes more complex, its "will" or "consciousness" becomes a more prevalent force which can affect reality.

If that's correct, then this sounds almost exactly how a really smart person explained magic works back in my home metaplane. Which leads me to conclude that these geniuses made and used magic bombs?

Re: text

[tarnishedavenger]

I suppose that means that Jorgmund is trying to force a state of noocenosis.

Do you think they're capable of it?

anon

[71lines]

[No text here. Instead, just a map of various restricted areas that Tenten could get to without getting through any locked doors, done up in ASCII. There's only a few small hiding spots or places for stashes, she wasn't really looking for those, but a larger map is always good.]

anon text: Quaestor

[wheyoftheadept]

:thumbs-up:

C: