Conversation Space: The Ultimax

[powersthatbe]

You feel as if you've stepped through a door.

Comments

[capital_asset]

Raidou wonders if they should be worried. "So we'll be finding out for ourselves soon enough?" They only have so much time before Synodiporia ends, after all.

He considers for a moment. "What does winning the World do? I know you can have different haecceities - is that something that changes with each game?"

[favors_thebold]

"Probably." She doesn't see things not working out, but it's a gamble. (Her favorite.)

"It depends. They can, but they don't always."

[capital_asset]

"I was going to ask what you'd planned to do if you won Synodiporia again," he admits, "but now I'm wondering if I shouldn't hold off."

He doesn't think she'll necessarily try to cheat her way back in - he imagines even her propensity for loopholes has limits - but... he wonders.

"Are the World's changes retroactive?"

[favors_thebold]

"My best idea either required me to win everything or lose now. It would've been nice to be the first of us to win two, especially in a row, but I'll take what I can get."

That question gets a blank look. "It's a new cycle."

[capital_asset]

Raidou considers that. "Is that something you've shared with any of the other Arcana?"

The blank look wonders if he's fundamentally misunderstanding something, or if it's a product of their existences being so different. Although in retrospect, it probably hadn't been a very good question to begin with. "Will anyone outside of the Arcana notice the differences?" For that matter, are they noticing differences now that Tower is dead?

Even as he asks, though, he suspects it's another useless question; from what he understands of her, Fortune's still getting used to the idea of them as people, and it might not have occurred to her to take notice of the mortals affected by the game.

[favors_thebold]

She just smiles.

"It trickles down eventually. Consider how, in a lot of places, breaking away from absolute monarchy was the hot new trend. My World is very much not Hakan's."

Your average mortal isn't going to know the root cause, but they may notice the effects, sooner or later.

[capital_asset]

...He probably should have expected that non-response.

Raidou's knowledge of world history is not as strong as that of many of his fellow Travelers (or those from Earth, anyway). His grasp on Western history in particular is a bit shaky, and of course his own country is still very much ruled by the Emperor. Still, he's osmosed at least some of it by now. "I don't think that's quite gotten to my country yet, or at least not by my time. But I think I understand the example."

[favors_thebold]

"I was more surprised than any of the others that I managed to win on Hakan's idea of good rules. No wiggle room whatsoever, that one."

[capital_asset]

"I can imagine." He's met Hakan, after all. "And it does seem like a bit of an extreme shift. Does that tend to happen with the games?"

[favors_thebold]

"It depends. If you want more details on the potential variations, you're probably better off asking Mort - maybe Ix, but his idiom is more linear time than cyclical variations. Even for me the cycles get fuzzy the further back you go, other than the first one, and that's mostly so we don't make the same mistake again."

[capital_asset]

"Was the first one the one where you didn't take mortal aging into account, or was that a different one?"

[favors_thebold]

"That's the one. None of us thought it would matter."

But it did, and even at their least understanding of mortals, they knew they couldn't damn well play the game with no pieces.

[capital_asset]

"Did you think the game would halt our aging, or was aging not something you had a concept of at that point?" Magician had said that at first the Arcana hadn't thought they were real...

[favors_thebold]

"We barely had any idea what we were doing. How it might impact anything else hadn't crossed any of our minds yet, and I don't think it did for a while afterward, other than limiting the scope of things a little more."

[capital_asset]

"How did the game come about in the first place? Is that something you're allowed to mention, or has the memory of that been mostly lost?"

[favors_thebold]

"I think we were bored. And I know the kinds of power struggles we were having anyway were even worse. That was several iterations of archetypes ago, though."

By now, it's habit as much as anything.

[capital_asset]

"...Power struggles?"

[favors_thebold]

"We already knew we could exert influence on a large scale, and there was nothing to stop us from trying. The game gave us a framework to do that in."

[capital_asset]

"What sorts of things happen when you're not playing?"

[favors_thebold]

"Now, it depends on who won. Then... it got messy."

[capital_asset]

"...How messy?"

[favors_thebold]

Her smiles goes somewhat mournful. "Abaddon would have loved it. I can't remember how much he was in that particular idiom at the time, but now? He would have loved it."

[capital_asset]

"...I see."

[favors_thebold]

"Thought you might."

[capital_asset]

Raidou nods, and then falls silent for a moment, debating what to ask next. Finally, he goes with: "How is the structural integrity of the game? The other Arcana couldn't tell us anything one way or the other about that when they brought us to... to Abaddon's remains."