NEW DOCUMENT UPLOADED. OPEN FILE?

[imaginarymods]

As a result of Sans and Sayori's investigation of KV, multiple videos are sent to each of the Reclaimers' bracers.

LUCRETIA.VID

The screen plays a recording of a memory.


Lucretia is standing, surrounded by group of folks in red robes. She herself is clad in a red robe, though the viewer can only infer this from Lucretia's own point of view. Most of the faces are unrecognizable to the Reclaimers, save a few select faces;

the face of the Elf woman in the umbrella that Sans, Wash, and McCree saw before, Barry Bluejeans, Davenport himself, and Maureen, Lucas Miller's mother. The other figures are an elf man that looks remarkably similar to the woman, a dwarf with an impressive beard, and an absolute hulk of a human man.

The elf woman reaches out to touch Lucretia's shoulder, and Lucretia looks at her. The woman's face is so kind as she addresses Lucretia's worry.

"This will work, you have to believe in me," she assures. "And if it doesn't— if dividing the Light of Creation into these relics doesn't work, then we will try your method.

But please, Lucretia. Just give this a chance. Believe in us."

The recording swaps.

Lucretia stands in front of a mirror— no, the mirror—, reaching forward.

"Please," she pleads, stifling a sob, voice riddled with anguish. "I need help. I need more time. I—

I can't do this without them.

Not again."


The recording ends.

LUP.VID

The elf woman sits across from the identical elf man she was with in the prior video. She's looking at her lap, though, only seeing the man's knees close to hers, like their limbs are a bridge between them that almost doesn't meet.

"You didn't mean for any of this to happen." He says to her.

"I know that. And I know it's good. Like, the Hunger's not here, and the hunger's worse than anything we've done. I just... I can't help but ask."

She looks the elf man across from her in the eye.

"Did we make the right decision?"

The elf man's brows knit together and he takes a breath.

"...Who knows if the shield would have worked. You know... sometimes, there aren't right decisions. Sometimes there's just decisions."

The recording ends.

CURSED.VID

From the perspective of someone nearby, you watch as the dwarf from the prior video is confronted by a hooded figure.

"Now, I don't know what you're talking about," comes his rough voice. "If you're hungry, well, the tavern just across the street has the most amazing-"

His voice is cut off as a hand reaches out from the robes and grasps the dwarf around the neck. The hand is made of black opal, and as black tendrils reach out to stab into the dwarf, the dwarf's own eyes turn black as well.

The recording swaps to the vision of a more recent Lucretia.
It's the Lucretia the Reclaimers recall, in her current age and current outfit, or at least what she wore regularly before candlenights.

The view remains concentrated on Lucretia, but passing as if unnoticed by the recording, a shock of black shoots up through Lucretia's staff very suddenly.

"Are you alright, Johann?" Lucretia asks, raising a brow, looking genuinely concerned.

The view shakes as if the person whose memory this is has shaken their head, slowly.

"It's nothing, m'am..."

The recording ends.

CANDLENIGHTS.VID

This memory seems to come from a shorter stature as well. IT's the Moon Base as it stood in Faerun, and a child's hand— Angus's hand— reaches out to push the door open. Anyone who has visited the Voidfish's chambers after hours may recognise the room he enters.

"Madame Director? Are you in here?" he calls out.

The memory patches in as if it's skipped a bit, and now the scene becomes more clear.

Lucretia stands in the middle of the room, hunched over herself, clutching her head with one hand and the staff with the other. Davenport stands at her side, and there are other Reclaimers— Reclaimers that may be recognized as a handful those who haven't appeared yet on the island— around, as well as some Seekers and guards.

"You have to leave," Lucretia demands, her voice cracking as if with pain.

"M'am, you have to listen to-"

"Now! There is no more time for listening!"

Lucretia shouts, her voice like venom. When she looks up, her eyes have turned completely black.

"I can't... I can't hold it back anymore,"

"Not without us!" Angus asserts. "You can-- let us help you!"

"You don't understand! There is no more hope! There is nothing! Even if you leave— this is the end!"

All of a sudden, thorns shoot out of Lucretia's staff, which has turned completely into black opal. The thorned vines that shoot from Lucretia's heart and staff are all that black opal material, too, and they shoot out in every direction, grasping and curling around everyone in the room, Reclaimers and Seekers alike. Even Angus is caught in the vines.

He catches Lucretia's face again, watching as it wrenches in despair, black eyes still crying real, human tears.

"I'm sorry," Lucretia chokes. "This is all I can do."

Even more tendrils extend, wrapping around Lucretia herself, consuming her, devouring her. Angus reaches out, but those vines are starting to consume everything around them as well. Outside of the dome, the sound of a storm begins to ring, amplifying the terror of the moment.

Angus reaches out, trying to free himself from the tendrils, reaching for the hand of a dragonborn woman before a thorny vine tears her away from him.

He loses his balance, tumbling down a few more branches, and when he's finally stopped tumbling he looks around to see a book has fallen out of his bag.

CALEB CLEVELAND AND THE IMAGINARY ISLAND, bears the book's title, but its cover is gilded and shining.

A voice completely unlike the voice heard on the island calls out directly from the book's pages; the voice of a Relic.

"Use me. Save yourself. Save everyone."

Angus reaches out and grabs the book.


The recording ends.

Comments

usmusicstart

[korekara]

that lucretia-san... she's the director, right? there's still a lot i'm trying to remember but i definitely remember her! so, something really bad happened... and now we're here? did angus-kun do something with a relic to try and save us?

[ She feels... weirdly calm about this. She feels like this should be a shock to see, somehow, or that she should at least find this sort of thing a little surprising. But even though she feels a little scared and a little shaken, the foundation under that is more of a business as usual sort of vibe.

She's done things like this before. She can keep doing it. ]

where did this come from? does anybody know?

[ HASTILY AMENDED AS A PS: ] oh!! by the way!! this is honoka! hi, everyone! by the sounds of things i'm super late and i don't really get why but i'm gonna do my best to help!!

un: eudaimonikos

[eudaimonikos]

Well, I have no idea who any of these people are, and I don't really want to get involved in whatever they're doing. Looks bad.

[hey honks, welcome to Jerk Amnesiac Michael!]

There's still new people showing up? Did you wash up on the beach like us?

voice | un: synagogue

[motherfucking_ghost]

Hard agree. Honestly I was just gonna suggest getting involved but like, to kill her? Like this chick's bad news and caused all this junk to happen, right? So it stands to reason that if you kill her, the curse will be broken.

's usually how these stories work.

But not getting involved is a pretty good idea, too. Save for we'll probably be stuck here.

voice | un: defeynseattorney

[doubledsofjustice]

I'm sorry, what exactly is your experience with curses, again?

Just curious.

[eudaimonikos]

[Shrug. Honestly, Michael hadn't even thought about that part.]

Not like this is my favorite place
But if I had somewhere else to be, I probably would've remembered it by now, right?

un: dtangusmcd

[imaginarymods]

With all due respect, sir, that's a stupid idea! If you try to kill her everything's going to get broken worse.

[korekara]

[ She supresses her instinctive response, which is more or less to yell HEY DON'T BE MEAN!!!, sensing that it probably won't help any, which is about the most self-aware Honoka has been all week. ]

kind of, i guess! i'm not totally new, because i remember some things from before getting here but i'm still trying to work it all out.

[eudaimonikos]

[Ugh. Michael glares at the screen, awash with jealousy that even some new kid is remembering stuff when he never has. But, luckily, it's not a video call!]

Right


Well, that's interesting

un: dtangusmcd

[imaginarymods]

I don't remember all the way up to the Relic, ma'am, but I remember up to what happened with Madam Director and that's real, so I guess the Relic must be too! I'm sorry, I know we weren't supposed to touch those.

Um, also it's good to "see" you!

[korekara]

aaaaaa angus-kun!!! i'm really glad you're okay!! omg all this remembering stuff is really messy. but!! it's ok!! because thanks to that we're all here together, right? and now we've got some more time to try and pull ourselves together so we can save everybody.

btw if you like you can just call me honoka! we're friends right?

[imaginarymods]

Yes, pulling ourselves together is important. Even if I don't feel all that together right now. We still have a job to do.

Oh. Yes, ma'am, then I'll call you Honoka! Since we're friends. [he got the spirit]

un: PAPYRUS

[spaghettimonster]

[Most of these videos are people Papyrus doesn't know, but the glimmers of a familiar face and another important name catch his attention. It's alarming and heartstring-tugging to see tears from the lady who is, apparently, the angry lying boss who cares a lot but also makes the Cursed now.

And when Angus interrupts some kind of gathering, only for everything to go... tangled up, thorned vines wrapping up around everyone and restraining them, as they fight to keep believing that things can change for the better? That's familiar. That's one of the first things he started remembering, when he saw that mural. Was Papyrus there, just out of view of this recording? And that book...]

THAT BOOK!
THAT'S THE BOOK FROM THE UNNERVING ROOM. WITH THE CORAL.
AND THE SOMETHING SKITTERING AROUND OUT OF SIGHT.
DO YOU THINK. WE NEED TO GET IT?

[Hopefully, preferably, no. This looks like just a record of things already done, so with any luck, Angus won't ask them to go diving in awful tunnels.]

AND. DID ANYBODY KNOW THE CURSED CAN. FILL PEOPLES' EYES WITH SHADOWS?
BECAUSE I DIDN'T KNOW THAT.

[That face stealer took his face, but it grew back and he feels normal now... But if his eyesockets were opal black, how would anybody ever tell? What a terrifying thought that he never wanted to consider, or even imagined considering.]

Re: un: PAPYRUS

[doubledsofjustice]

That's strange, though. The hooded figure didn't look to be one of the Cursed... could they be two different things or are they really the same?

One thing's for sure, somehow this is all connected to the hunger.

...But for some reason, that book seems really familiar to me, too. I know I didn't see it myself, but...

[is that right?]

It must be the relic Angus was telling us to look for.

[spaghettimonster]

OH. WELL! I'M HAPPY TO FIND IT!
IF LESS HAPPY TO SHOW THE WAY DOWN THERE.

MAYBE THERE'S OTHER MOVING SHADOWS.
THE CURSED AREN'T THE HUNGER, ARE THEY?
THEY'RE BOTH SIX LETTERS LONG... BUT THEY'RE TOTALLY DIFFERENT WORDS.

[Admittedly, he did jump to assumptions, thinking that all silhouette-like figures are all the same.]

un: dtangusmcd

[imaginarymods]

Really??? You found it???

What unnerving room? What skittering???

[spaghettimonster]

REALLY!!!
I THINK.
I SAW A BOOK IN AN UNDERWATER CAVERN.
WITH SHADOW TENDRILS MOVING AROUND.

[To prove his claims, he adds the least blurry picture of the book in the coral.]

[imaginarymods]

Oh.

Oh, wow. This is actually pretty horrifying, existentially, sir! That's my book! That's um

Sir, do you remember the book the dragon had? That was probably this! The thing. You know. Caleb Cleveland! And now it's stuck in some coral! And that doesn't really make sense but it makes more sense than it did before!

[breathe]

[ribticklers]

look at you go
detectiving things before we even knew we needed them

[spaghettimonster]

ISN'T IT INCREDIBLE??
IT WASN'T ALL ME.
MCCREE DARED ME TO GO DOWN, AND SOME JELLYFISH TURNED ME AROUND,
BUT IT WAS MOSTLY ME.

[Somewhere, he's cackling triumphantly.]

un: mccree { voice }

[mccreehaw]

I saw that memory labeled Lup before, down under the cafe in those jellyfish tunnels. Thinking we need to rescue her to rescue Lucretia.

[ His voice is pensive. This is serious and he knows it's going to take all their resources to come out on top. ]

un: defeynseattorney (voice contd.)

[doubledsofjustice]

You saw one of their memories? Does that mean they were down there with you?

[mccreehaw]

I'm not sure how it works exactly, but it was that mysterious red umbrella that took me down there in the first place. It's gotta have something to do with her.

[ A pause. ]

Didn't Sans say there were souls in the umbrella?

[ What in tarnation... ]

un: sans; text

[ribticklers]

oh hey they just popped up for everybody that's cool
sayori and me hacked kv

[Sans says, like that's normal. But really how else was he going to say this?]

un: defeynseattorney

[doubledsofjustice]

You hacked... who???


Wait, you hacked a person?

[ribticklers]

they said it was ok
this place is in the book so
kv is part of the book

[But still real, as far as Sans is concerned.]

(btw i inoculated kv)

[Sans. But he's not including Sayori in that decision, even though she was involved, because if people get mad he's fine taking the blame.]