Questions and Answers

[umslay]

Who: Everyone
What: A big meeting of all the Heroes of Light to discuss what they have discovered so far
When: January 13th
Where: The Old Observatory
Notes: Feel free to post starts with questions and information, and all are free to threadjack other threads with questions and answers. The OOC/IC summary can be found here

[The tables and chairs are set. Dinner and dessert is laid out. There is no reason no one should be absent, Ales tells himself. A table is set aside with a large box beside it - the stage where Ales will announce the beginning of the meeting.

Once the room is full and everyone has sat down with their meal, he turns on his portable hacking computer, projecting a pale blue screen on the far wall. He flicks it off and on a few times.]

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, may I have your attention please!

[He jumps onto the box, then onto the table. He then faces the audience with his hands held up and suppressing the reflex to grin broadly.]

With the Calamity ever looming closer, there is not much time left for our Heroes to act! A dark, ancient presence has long loomed over this world, and it is up to us to decide whether we will let it do as it pleases, throwing the entire land into chaos, or to stand up to the destructive force that has plagued Crystallis for Eons? With the knowledge we have found and been given, will finally succeed where others have failed? Are we better than what others believe us to be?

[A pause. Even though he has long ago switched his role from guide to actual hero, he still can't help but start off a gathering as if it were a story.]

The Hero of Light Roundtable will now begin! Please, go ahead and bring up points of discussion.

Comments

[jadethenecromancer]

If I may... [Jade speaks up shortly after Ales is done with his opening speech.] My overview of the situation should be more or less up to date, though I welcome additions and corrections if needed. I suggest everyone -- especially our newcomers -- give it a look so we'll all be on the same page.

[All Heroes will get a copy of this report, which contains an IC summary of the plot to use as a reference.]

I'm open to questions, but in the meantime... I've been thinking about what we should do with the Soul Divider for a while now. If we intend to save Crystallis, we need to come up with an efficient way to cycle energy through the planet. One that doesn't require assimilating our homeworlds.

I might have an idea or two, but first... Who else besides me brought technology from their worlds while we were in the Rift?

[theendiswherewestartfrom]

Jack stands up. "While I did bring back some technology, what is needed for the Soul Divider was something far more valuable. Knowledge. The last knowledge of the Time Lords, a group of beings who were able to harness the energy of a Schism in spacetime. If you need to know the secrets of taking a lot of dimensional energy and turning it into something valuable, a few of the Heroes hold that secret. The Omega knowledge."

"It was psychically implanted into Chiaki, K'pandolu, Sparks Nevada, Duster, and Lydia Deetz. Any one or all of them can access it by speaking the code word. It would be...a little too much for their minds to handle otherwise. But they can help you. Specifically, it should be able to help the Soul Divider handle far more energy than it was originally designed to. For the Time Lords, Omega unlocked the power of time travel for them. But we've already seen that this universe's timestream is immutable." You know, so, don't try it.

[fearlessherosheart]

Tazendra considered this. "Can that energy source be accessed here, as well as in your plane of origin?" It sounded like it could, but so much that Tazendra thought should extend to Crystallis... didn't.

"Sadly, what I could imagine being of use would be impossible to remove from my own world, or any I have visited, so I have nothing." That and recreating it requires materials that are all but impossible for humans to get a hold of, even if Tazendra had the sorcerous skills to, say, duplicate the Imperial Orb, or at least its abilities to serve as a conduit for energy.

[theendiswherewestartfrom]

"Yes, but..." Oh, how to explain the sort-of problem with that idea? "The Time Lords pulled it off by accessing time, space, just pure Time Energy," he is waving with his hands to indicate a concept that is all around them. "But the Time Vortex itself isn't quite working right here. So I'm banking on the idea that it's similar enough that the same principles will work to funnel the dimensional energy of the broken worlds from out of the Rift and through the Soul Divider, but, sorry, pulling this off isn't going to make us all Rulers of Time."

Pause. "Anybody starts building a glass cathedral anyway, and I'm out."

[jadethenecromancer]

"So in theory, the Omega knowledge could be used to funnel the Calamity's energy through the Soul Divider and revitalize the First Crystal that way?"

Jade pauses, deep in thought.

"That might be compatible with what I had in mind. A scientist in my world built a system called the Planet Storm to move memory particles -- more or less the same thing as spiritual energy -- out of the planet's core, circulate them around the planet through the atmosphere, then absorb them back into the core."

A simplified explanation, but he doubts anyone here wants a lecture on fonons right now.

"Back home, this was used as an infinitely renewable energy source. Here, we could use the same principle to limit the amount of spiritual energy going through the planet at any given time. The amount of energy from the Calamity would be too massive for Crystallis to handle, but by keeping part of the flow outside the planet rather than inside... It should lessen the strain on the Soul Divider."

[theendiswherewestartfrom]

Jack nods eagerly when Jade catches his idea. But Jade has the exact same reservation that Jack does, and that Palitutu herself had pointed out: how do they do this without overloading and breaking the Soul Divider?

"Memory particles..." Spiritual energy, okay, but the idea is an appealing one, to Jack. Focus on the task at hand, Harkness. "That was the hope. Once the Calamity stops progressing, I'd assume we have as much time as we need to run it all through the Soul Divider. If you have to limit the load on the Soul Divider, but it slows down the total processing? We'd rather play this safe than fast."

"Reabsorb it all into the First Crystal so that it revitalizes itself. What happens to the rest? The energy we're talking about is the shattered remnants of these devoured timelines and dimensions. They're still lost in the equation?" Not a dealbreaker if they are, but leave it to Jack to be the one to ask.

[fearlessherosheart]

"Could they be reconstructed? Or even... we know that the soul of prior Heroes are reincarnated here. Could the remains in the Calamity be brought into another world." Tazendra had been... upset to think at least one copy of her own world had been destroyed by the calamity, with only two souls spared to be reborn, one outside her proper species. But it was perhaps better than dissolution. And if many copies of her own world existed, then surely one could take the remains of another.

[acceptedoblivion]

I did, however... I wouldn't trust what came from the minds that destroyed not just their own world, but countless others. Including my own.

[It's almost painful to admit it, but he continues.]

No, from what you said it looks like, we need a different song.

[unyieldingspirit]

So- in other words, you think we should… create a new one?

[mindofathief]

...I'm a musician. I know how to improvise. [Jazz and rock solos, of course. Creating magic out of nowhere is another thing entirely.] Bards can write their own spells. What's to say we can't do this?

[unyieldingspirit]

That's true. All songs start somewhere… It should be something that brings hope, I'd think.