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---
## Stats
Total length: zxWORDS words / zxMINUTES minute read.
Total length: zxWORDS words / zxMINUTES minute read. (Mind you, that's the length of this entire page, including all the extra bits and bobs. Not just the story.)
There have been zxNOMESSAGES messages posted over zxDAYS days since the first post on July 13, 2022 for a daily post rate of zxPOSTRATE.

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### Corraidhín
Status: timestuck in a fork bomb
<details>
<summary>Bio</summary>
They call me Corraidhín, and while my wisened age may seem an impediment to our expedition I assure you I make up for it with my sharp wit and intellect! By trade I am a scholar, master of the histories of this realm, and a dabbler in the arcane and mystic arts.

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---
title: 00036
created: Fri, 11 Nov 2022 08:02:38 -0700
updated: Fri, 11 Nov 2022 08:02:44 -0700
public: yes
syndicated: yes
---
### 00036 {#00036}
Prelude:
The gods are missing now. But before they went into hiding, the Trine
walked the earth and actively participated in the affairs of mortals.
Sweet, tenderhearted Neddas---god of sages and starlight---fell in
love with the worldkin and often gave away trivial little bits of
their divinity as gifts to the people. Chief among these gifts were
the divine aspects of coin, mirth, lore, craft, and tact. With these
gifts, civilizations grew and flourished and accomplished great
things.
Then the Artifice Wars rocked all of Basmentaria and the gods
vanished. And even with Neddas's gifts, civilization still struggles
to reach its former heights.
> I watch as the magical bolt sails away overhead meeting its target,
> receding back into the depths of the hull of the ship as the
> skeleton drags me down. The fork bomb goes off flawlessly, and the
> world comes to a screching halt around me, only to slowly rewind
> itself.
>
> I contemplate the absolutely absurd position I've put myself into
> as the skeleton pulls me back down into the depths and I watch the
> would be theif take a direct hit again.
>
> "Okay, THAT was a good shot." I say to myself as the scene repeats
> again. I could probably watch that a few times. But after about the
> hundredth time the feat seems a little less epic. And the skeleton
> a lot less frightful and a lot more dull.
>
> *Sigh*
>
> Kevin always said this would happen. "Corraidhin, you can't play
> with dangerous scripts like that, you'll crash your systems". Right
> you were Kevin, right you were. Corraidhin casts his eyes around
> wistfully. I guess I got that boat I always wanted? And it's filled
> with treasure. That's a positive. Oh and um I'm not alone, yeah,
> that's right. You're stuck here too Mr. Skelly. (The skeleton does
> not reply). Oh come on now, don't be rude. (still no reply). *sigh*
> right, sorta dead, I shouldn't expext more than a loving embrace
> from you as you try and invite me to look at your treasure right?
>
> After about the thousandth time the Sysorcerer was still in a rut.
>
> I'm stuck insid the crash, not from without. It seems this moment
> is just going to idle on perpetually. (he rummages in his pockets),
> okay I guess I still have the Ginnarak crystal, and stabby. Those
> seem safe enough here with me.
>
> So long as I don't go crazy I guess there's hope. If not, what a
> damn foolish way to die.
>
>
> MEANWHILE
>
> An automated alert system triggers as the Sysorceror blips out of
> existence. And then on, and then off, and then on, and then off.
>
> ```
> (Problem: Corraidhin: Entity not found)
> Problem started at 19:37 on 2281.67.43
> Porblem Name: Deadman's Trigger: Entity not found
> Host: Corraidhin
> Severity: Critical
> Operation Data: (corrupted)
> Problem ID: 92746027498
>
> (Problem: Corraidhin: Entity not found)
> Resolved in 1d 0h 0m 0s: Entity not found
> Problem Name: Deadman's Trigger: Entity not found
> Problem Duration: 1d 0h 0m 0s
> Severity: Critical
> Original Problem ID: 92746027498
> ```
>
> Bloody Zabbix alerts flapping again, what the hell does it mean
> that Uncle Corraidhin is gone. You can't Die then Live over and
> over and over. Stupid broken monitoring system. Guess I had been
> check in on him, bloody fool constantly gets himself in trouble.
>
> Alex grabs his shortsword and backpack and shoulders them. If
> anyone will know what's foolhearty issue his uncle has gotten into,
> it'll be Kevin as the Sysorcerors Guild.
Corraidhín settles in for what may or may not be a lifetime of stasis
aboard the glitch formerly known as the SS RSS. At least Stabby will
be good company if it ever wakes up from its blood coma. Hmm,
actually that's debatable. Now that you think of it, you're not sure
you're up for a lifetime of ranting about blood and evil.
The merbear and the tardigrade are on the ship deck, also trapped in
the fork bomb. You're not sure whether you can reach them or not.
You see a flickering of motion and a flash of light outside the ship
as what looks like a small school of fish moves darts in and out of
view. It rushes past, doubles back, and swims past again, passing
close enough that one or two get sucked into the fork bomb with you.
Impossibly, what you thought were fish were apparently small birds?
Or, perhaps they were fish after all and some quality of passing
through the boundary of the fork bomb simply turns them into birds?
Either way, two small blue songbirds with red heads and forked tails
hop around inside the ship chirping incessantly. You watch as one of
them hops toward one of the sea bunny slugs and pecks at it, and then
scoops it up in its beak and swallows it whole. The second does the
same. They hop from side to side a bit, and then set to feasting on
the slugs. A couple more birds pop through the membrane separating
you from the outside world and join in.
~
Alex grabs his perfectly normal, blissfully non-sentient shortsword
and heads off to the Cabinet, where the Sysorcerers Guild is. He has
to detour around the Wandering Bazaar, which decided to plop down in
the middle of the street, but nonetheless arrives in short order.
He finds Kevin working in the library on Kevin's Document Language.
Alex describes the errors and Kevin groans, "Ugh, I told him! I told
him you can’t play with dangerous scripts like that, you'll crash
your systems! We'll have to try a manual reboot. Well don't just
stand there, young person. Come on, come on, try to keep up. We have
work to do!"
> Inky follows the bundle's path as it sinks downwards and maneuvers
> the bubblebee to retrieve it along with the eye.
>
> Floating to a stop above the ledge of the trench, Inky looks at the
> small golden orb, then removes an empty lunch pail from their
> knapsack and drops the eye and several small glass marbles into it.
> The contents jostle around inside the pail in a cacophony of whirs,
> clicks and clatters. With the lid firmly closed, Inky tosses the
> makeshift percussive instrument into the trench for the harrowkrake
> so it could jam with its new tanokuma buddies.
>
> Staring at the bundle, Inky suddenly recalls the projectile that
> had come from the general direction of the SS RSS shortly before
> the horkosgrampus got to Mr. Not-So-Lucky. Master Corraidhín! They
> turn back to the shipwreck, only to find the entire ship had turned
> eerily translucent, like a ghost ship from some tipsy sailor's
> tale. Inky halts a short distance from the wreckage for a closer
> look, though something about the apparition told them it would be a
> terrible idea to enter the ship's hull now. Something had happened
> to the ship's remains, with the sysorcerer trapped inside. Maybe it
> was all part of the sysorcerer's plan, that he had teleported
> himself back to a safe location and this was a mirage, just a
> remnant from the moment of teleportation.
>
> Or at least Inky hopes so.
Inky drops the improvised goldeneye noisemaker down into the trench.
The rattling as it falls is reminiscent of Gerald's laughter. One
slender tendril reaches up out of the abyss and grabs the rattle, and
then disappears once more into the murky dark.
You are now in possession of the second Ginnarak Crystal. A blue
stone with lightly pulsing gold veins. As you gaze at it, it's almost
as though you can hear peals of tinkling laughter in the back of your
head.
The horkosgrampus, temporarily sated having removed the liar from
this timeline, drift lazily away.
The giant, candy-seeking manta ray passes closely by and fondly
caresses the bubblebee with one wing in passing. Its little manta
face pulled up into a chubby smile.
The bear facsimiles join you and begin crying when they see their
"brothers" trapped on the deck of the ship.
You see a small school of fish making multiple passes by the SS RSS
like birds skimming insects from the sky.
WHAT DO YOU DO
[www](https://framalistes.org/sympa/arc/tildepals/2022-11/msg00083.html)

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<details>
<summary>SPOILERS!!</summary>
NAMES AND NPCS
**NAMES AND NPCS**
Upcoming NPCs and/or monsters
- [ ] zai-ni
- [ ] zeyeknee
- [ ] Jorunna Parva, sea bunny time lord <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jorunna_parva>
- [ ] Hap-n-stance, moon rabbit: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_rabbit>
- [ ] time swallows: It is a common misconception that barn swallows are the most widespread species of swallow. That distinction belongs to the *time* swallow. Although---if you're lucky---you'll never actually see one.
- [ ] zai-ni (zine)
- [ ] zeyeknee (zine)
- [ ] standard ed
- [ ] paladin of emacs
- [ ] monks of vim
- [ ] hinderbloke, gnu
- [ ] falterchap, gnu
- [ ] Hap-n-stance, moon rabbit: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_rabbit>
- [ ] Cyber Woman With Corn! -- <https://www.shutterstock.com/search/cyber-woman-with-corn>
- [ ] oracle - <https://lambdacreate.com/paste/midjourney.png>
- [ ] corn smut? - <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_smut>
@ -27,27 +29,69 @@ Upcoming NPCs and/or monsters
- [x] three fingered gerald
CRYSTALS
**LIBRARIAN**
Back when the Trine walked among the people, before the Artifice Wars, the gods used to tell stories to help man understand the cosmos and other things beyond their understanding. Neddas, god of sages and starlight, was particularly fond of mortals and would spend time with them, giving them small gifts of trifling divinity and telling them stories.
Due to rather unique circumstances, time in Basmentaria is both an extremely rare and finite resource, and also an illusion, a hallucination shared by all its inhabitants.
The truth of the matter is that everything---past, present, and future---all happens at once.
Imagine a book. You can flip open to any page at random and begin reading. This is what we would call in the moment "the present." The preceding pages are "the past", and the pages that follow are "the future".
But all of the pages---the past, present, and future---are already all there. And I think you can already see that such labels are completely arbitrary. You can quite easily flip back a few pages into the "past", establishing a new, relative present. Just as easily as you can skip ahead into the future.
Now, the more interesting part of this whole analogy is existence of multiple books. Many books do in fact exist, numerous complete timelines. Volumes of them.
Every time you make a choice between two options, a new book---a separate timeline---is created. One in which you choose option A, and its consequences play out. And a second one in which you choose option B and suffer all the consequences of that decision, good or bad.
This is known as the Many Worlds theory.
Basmentaria is absolutely lousy with worlds. Always has been. And consequently at some point in its infancy it attracted the attention of a sentient concept known to the gods of Basmentaria only by euphemisms and neologisms such as The Bookwyrm, or The Librarian.
The entity coils around Basmentaria like a great snake. And it consumes all these extra books, all these many worlds, all these alternative timelines. Whether these other timelines are wholly consumed and lost forever, or merely collected and stored carefully away, is unknown. What we do know is that Basmentaria only has the one, single book's worth of time.
Back to the shared hallucination. It is said that experiential time is a peculiar side effect of The Librarian's unique biology. (Truthfully the whole tapestry kind of starts to unravel at this point, because how does a sentient concept even have a biology in the first place?) The gods believe that the entity coils itself tightly around the present moment and devours the past. And then it shits out the future.
Whether this is metaphor or not is a hotly debated question. But thus is it explained that the past is irretrievably behind us. The present is short and fleeting. The future is merely the processed remains of the past. And just out of sight, ever beyond our ability to perceive it, lies The Bookwyrm.
**BIRDS ARE TIME TRAVELERS**
A fringe movement of lunatic paleornithologists and crackpots of other professions has slowly been gaining traction over the last few decades. The movement was born when Modern Fuchsia, at the time a budding young scientist on a dig yearning to make a name for himself, found a fossil of a modern feathered bird---probably some kind of swallow---alongside a theropod, the variety of dinosaur widely accepted to be the ancestor of modern birds. Faced with what he believed to be irrefutable evidence of a modern descendant coexisting alongside its own ancestor, Fuchsia was only able to conclude that Birds Are Not Dinosaurs. And thus BAND came into being.
Ever since, BANDits have spent considerable amounts of time and energy attending conferences and publishing papers, pouting and demanding to be taken seriously be the wider scientific community. A community which, if they pay them any attention at all, it is only to mock and ridicule their crackpot theories.
Modern Fuschia is of course wrong. But neither he nor his BANDits know how dangerously close he came to the actual truth.
For much, much deeper in the shadowy fringes of paleornithology---itself kind of a fringe field to begin with---there is a clandestine operation called BATT. And only BATT knows the actual explanation for how a modern descendant might coexist alongside its own ancestor. Birds Are Time Travelers.
In the far future when birds are the dominant intelligent life on Basmentaria, they do indeed invent time travel. The end result was catastrophic and is the real reason that the dinosaurs went extinct.
It is a common misconception that barn swallows are the most widespread species of swallow. That distinction in fact belongs to the *time swallow*. Although---if you're lucky---you'll never actually see one. Since the Incident, the secret agents of BATT have vowed never again to interfere with or try to alter the time stream. Nor to allow anyone else to. The time swallows are special bred, special trained, appearing wherever and whenever an anomaly appears to remove it and restore the proper timeline. The tiny birds quite literally swallow, consume, and destroy anything that meddles with time.
**CRYSTALS**
Each crystal has an associated *element*, a *location* appropriate to the element, and an *aspect* of Neddas for the guardian and their minions.
| Element | Location | Aspect |
|---------|-----------------------------|--------|
| earth | cave | coin |
| water | underwater pirate shipwreck | mirth |
| wind | cloudstuff | lore |
| void | spaaaaace | craft |
| fire | volcano | tact |
| ? | Element | Location | Aspect |
| -- |---------|-----------------------------|--------|
| ✅ | earth | cave | coin |
| ✅ | water | underwater pirate shipwreck | mirth |
| 🚫 | wind | cloudstuff | lore |
| 🚫 | void | spaaaaace | craft |
| 🚫 | fire | volcano | tact |
The crystals will eventually lead them to Neddas
IDEAS
**IDEAS**
todo:
- [ ] mio's (Inky's) Handy Duffer Discette = HD Diskette = better stay away from magnets!!
- [ ] tea omen: abacus, feather, wide building, lynx
- [ ] the BAND (Birds Are Not Dinosaurs) and the BATT (Birds Are Time Travelers) conspiracy
- [ ] MidJourney omen: priestly blood, demon
- [ ] palindromes: taco cat, reward drawer, tin unit, lap pal, evil olive
- [ ] The Benefactor is Nullar

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<li><a href="#00033" id="toc-00033">00033</a></li>
<li><a href="#00034" id="toc-00034">00034</a></li>
<li><a href="#00035" id="toc-00035">00035</a></li>
<li><a href="#00036" id="toc-00036">00036</a></li>
</ul></li>
<li><a href="#bestiary" id="toc-bestiary">Bestiary</a></li>
<li><a href="#geography" id="toc-geography">Geography</a></li>
@ -266,9 +267,11 @@ of the Were-Hare</a></li>
</ul>
</nav>
<h2 id="stats">Stats</h2>
<p>Total length: 29826 words / 127 minute read.</p>
<p>There have been 122 messages posted over 120 days since the first
post on July 13, 2022 for a daily post rate of 1.01.</p>
<p>Total length: 31204 words / 133 minute read. (Mind you, that’s the
length of this entire page, including all the extra bits and bobs. Not
just the story.)</p>
<p>There have been 126 messages posted over 121 days since the first
post on July 13, 2022 for a daily post rate of 1.04.</p>
<h2 id="about">About</h2>
<p>This is a game that me and the kids in the basement are playing over
email.</p>
@ -282,6 +285,7 @@ you can <a href="https://tilde.town/~dozens/quest/rss.xml">subscribe to
the rss feed</a>.</p>
<h2 id="characters">Characters</h2>
<h3 id="corraidhín">Corraidhín</h3>
<p>Status: timestuck in a fork bomb</p>
<details>
<summary>
<p>Bio</p>
@ -3538,6 +3542,149 @@ it starts to lose its footing in this plane of reality.</p>
<p>WHAT DO YOU DO</p>
<p><a
href="https://framalistes.org/sympa/arc/tildepals/2022-11/msg00080.html">www</a></p>
<h3 id="00036">00036</h3>
<p>Prelude:</p>
<p>The gods are missing now. But before they went into hiding, the Trine
walked the earth and actively participated in the affairs of
mortals.</p>
<p>Sweet, tenderhearted Neddas—god of sages and starlight—fell in love
with the worldkin and often gave away trivial little bits of their
divinity as gifts to the people. Chief among these gifts were the divine
aspects of coin, mirth, lore, craft, and tact. With these gifts,
civilizations grew and flourished and accomplished great things.</p>
<p>Then the Artifice Wars rocked all of Basmentaria and the gods
vanished. And even with Neddas’s gifts, civilization still struggles to
reach its former heights.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I watch as the magical bolt sails away overhead meeting its target,
receding back into the depths of the hull of the ship as the skeleton
drags me down. The fork bomb goes off flawlessly, and the world comes to
a screching halt around me, only to slowly rewind itself.</p>
<p>I contemplate the absolutely absurd position I’ve put myself into as
the skeleton pulls me back down into the depths and I watch the would be
theif take a direct hit again.</p>
<p>“Okay, THAT was a good shot.” I say to myself as the scene repeats
again. I could probably watch that a few times. But after about the
hundredth time the feat seems a little less epic. And the skeleton a lot
less frightful and a lot more dull.</p>
<p><em>Sigh</em></p>
<p>Kevin always said this would happen. “Corraidhin, you can’t play with
dangerous scripts like that, you’ll crash your systems”. Right you were
Kevin, right you were. Corraidhin casts his eyes around wistfully. I
guess I got that boat I always wanted? And it’s filled with treasure.
That’s a positive. Oh and um I’m not alone, yeah, that’s right. You’re
stuck here too Mr. Skelly. (The skeleton does not reply). Oh come on
now, don’t be rude. (still no reply). <em>sigh</em> right, sorta dead, I
shouldn’t expext more than a loving embrace from you as you try and
invite me to look at your treasure right?</p>
<p>After about the thousandth time the Sysorcerer was still in a
rut.</p>
<p>I’m stuck insid the crash, not from without. It seems this moment is
just going to idle on perpetually. (he rummages in his pockets), okay I
guess I still have the Ginnarak crystal, and stabby. Those seem safe
enough here with me.</p>
<p>So long as I don’t go crazy I guess there’s hope. If not, what a damn
foolish way to die.</p>
<p>MEANWHILE</p>
<p>An automated alert system triggers as the Sysorceror blips out of
existence. And then on, and then off, and then on, and then off.</p>
<pre><code>(Problem: Corraidhin: Entity not found)
Problem started at 19:37 on 2281.67.43
Porblem Name: Deadman&#39;s Trigger: Entity not found
Host: Corraidhin
Severity: Critical
Operation Data: (corrupted)
Problem ID: 92746027498
(Problem: Corraidhin: Entity not found)
Resolved in 1d 0h 0m 0s: Entity not found
Problem Name: Deadman&#39;s Trigger: Entity not found
Problem Duration: 1d 0h 0m 0s
Severity: Critical
Original Problem ID: 92746027498</code></pre>
<p>Bloody Zabbix alerts flapping again, what the hell does it mean that
Uncle Corraidhin is gone. You can’t Die then Live over and over and
over. Stupid broken monitoring system. Guess I had been check in on him,
bloody fool constantly gets himself in trouble.</p>
<p>Alex grabs his shortsword and backpack and shoulders them. If anyone
will know what’s foolhearty issue his uncle has gotten into, it’ll be
Kevin as the Sysorcerors Guild.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Corraidhín settles in for what may or may not be a lifetime of stasis
aboard the glitch formerly known as the SS RSS. At least Stabby will be
good company if it ever wakes up from its blood coma. Hmm, actually
that’s debatable. Now that you think of it, you’re not sure you’re up
for a lifetime of ranting about blood and evil.</p>
<p>The merbear and the tardigrade are on the ship deck, also trapped in
the fork bomb. You’re not sure whether you can reach them or not.</p>
<p>You see a flickering of motion and a flash of light outside the ship
as what looks like a small school of fish moves darts in and out of
view. It rushes past, doubles back, and swims past again, passing close
enough that one or two get sucked into the fork bomb with you.</p>
<p>Impossibly, what you thought were fish were apparently small birds?
Or, perhaps they were fish after all and some quality of passing through
the boundary of the fork bomb simply turns them into birds? Either way,
two small blue songbirds with red heads and forked tails hop around
inside the ship chirping incessantly. You watch as one of them hops
toward one of the sea bunny slugs and pecks at it, and then scoops it up
in its beak and swallows it whole. The second does the same. They hop
from side to side a bit, and then set to feasting on the slugs. A couple
more birds pop through the membrane separating you from the outside
world and join in.</p>
<p>~</p>
<p>Alex grabs his perfectly normal, blissfully non-sentient shortsword
and heads off to the Cabinet, where the Sysorcerers Guild is. He has to
detour around the Wandering Bazaar, which decided to plop down in the
middle of the street, but nonetheless arrives in short order.</p>
<p>He finds Kevin working in the library on Kevin’s Document
Language.</p>
<p>Alex describes the errors and Kevin groans, “Ugh, I told him! I told
him you can’t play with dangerous scripts like that, you’ll crash your
systems! We’ll have to try a manual reboot. Well don’t just stand there,
young person. Come on, come on, try to keep up. We have work to do!”</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Inky follows the bundle’s path as it sinks downwards and maneuvers
the bubblebee to retrieve it along with the eye.</p>
<p>Floating to a stop above the ledge of the trench, Inky looks at the
small golden orb, then removes an empty lunch pail from their knapsack
and drops the eye and several small glass marbles into it. The contents
jostle around inside the pail in a cacophony of whirs, clicks and
clatters. With the lid firmly closed, Inky tosses the makeshift
percussive instrument into the trench for the harrowkrake so it could
jam with its new tanokuma buddies.</p>
<p>Staring at the bundle, Inky suddenly recalls the projectile that had
come from the general direction of the SS RSS shortly before the
horkosgrampus got to Mr. Not-So-Lucky. Master Corraidhín! They turn back
to the shipwreck, only to find the entire ship had turned eerily
translucent, like a ghost ship from some tipsy sailor’s tale. Inky halts
a short distance from the wreckage for a closer look, though something
about the apparition told them it would be a terrible idea to enter the
ship’s hull now. Something had happened to the ship’s remains, with the
sysorcerer trapped inside. Maybe it was all part of the sysorcerer’s
plan, that he had teleported himself back to a safe location and this
was a mirage, just a remnant from the moment of teleportation.</p>
<p>Or at least Inky hopes so.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Inky drops the improvised goldeneye noisemaker down into the trench.
The rattling as it falls is reminiscent of Gerald’s laughter. One
slender tendril reaches up out of the abyss and grabs the rattle, and
then disappears once more into the murky dark.</p>
<p>You are now in possession of the second Ginnarak Crystal. A blue
stone with lightly pulsing gold veins. As you gaze at it, it’s almost as
though you can hear peals of tinkling laughter in the back of your
head.</p>
<p>The horkosgrampus, temporarily sated having removed the liar from
this timeline, drift lazily away.</p>
<p>The giant, candy-seeking manta ray passes closely by and fondly
caresses the bubblebee with one wing in passing. Its little manta face
pulled up into a chubby smile.</p>
<p>The bear facsimiles join you and begin crying when they see their
“brothers” trapped on the deck of the ship.</p>
<p>You see a small school of fish making multiple passes by the SS RSS
like birds skimming insects from the sky.</p>
<p>WHAT DO YOU DO</p>
<p><a
href="https://framalistes.org/sympa/arc/tildepals/2022-11/msg00083.html">www</a></p>
<h2 id="bestiary">Bestiary</h2>
<p>Some of the creatures who inhabit the world of Basmentaria</p>
<dt>

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<li><a href="#00033" id="toc-00033">00033</a></li>
<li><a href="#00034" id="toc-00034">00034</a></li>
<li><a href="#00035" id="toc-00035">00035</a></li>
<li><a href="#00036" id="toc-00036">00036</a></li>
</ul></li>
<li><a href="#bestiary" id="toc-bestiary">Bestiary</a></li>
<li><a href="#geography" id="toc-geography">Geography</a></li>
@ -269,9 +270,11 @@ id="toc-acknowledgements">Acknowledgements</a></li>
</ul>
</nav>
<h2 id="stats">Stats</h2>
<p>Total length: 29826 words / 127 minute read.</p>
<p>There have been 122 messages posted over 120 days since the first
post on July 13, 2022 for a daily post rate of 1.01.</p>
<p>Total length: 31204 words / 133 minute read. (Mind you, that’s the
length of this entire page, including all the extra bits and bobs. Not
just the story.)</p>
<p>There have been 126 messages posted over 121 days since the first
post on July 13, 2022 for a daily post rate of 1.04.</p>
<h2 id="about">About</h2>
<p>This is a game that me and the kids in the basement are playing over
email.</p>
@ -285,6 +288,7 @@ you can <a href="https://tilde.town/~dozens/quest/rss.xml">subscribe to
the rss feed</a>.</p>
<h2 id="characters">Characters</h2>
<h3 id="corraidhín">Corraidhín</h3>
<p>Status: timestuck in a fork bomb</p>
<details>
<summary>
<p>Bio</p>
@ -3541,6 +3545,149 @@ it starts to lose its footing in this plane of reality.</p>
<p>WHAT DO YOU DO</p>
<p><a
href="https://framalistes.org/sympa/arc/tildepals/2022-11/msg00080.html">www</a></p>
<h3 id="00036">00036</h3>
<p>Prelude:</p>
<p>The gods are missing now. But before they went into hiding, the Trine
walked the earth and actively participated in the affairs of
mortals.</p>
<p>Sweet, tenderhearted Neddas—god of sages and starlight—fell in love
with the worldkin and often gave away trivial little bits of their
divinity as gifts to the people. Chief among these gifts were the divine
aspects of coin, mirth, lore, craft, and tact. With these gifts,
civilizations grew and flourished and accomplished great things.</p>
<p>Then the Artifice Wars rocked all of Basmentaria and the gods
vanished. And even with Neddas’s gifts, civilization still struggles to
reach its former heights.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I watch as the magical bolt sails away overhead meeting its target,
receding back into the depths of the hull of the ship as the skeleton
drags me down. The fork bomb goes off flawlessly, and the world comes to
a screching halt around me, only to slowly rewind itself.</p>
<p>I contemplate the absolutely absurd position I’ve put myself into as
the skeleton pulls me back down into the depths and I watch the would be
theif take a direct hit again.</p>
<p>“Okay, THAT was a good shot.” I say to myself as the scene repeats
again. I could probably watch that a few times. But after about the
hundredth time the feat seems a little less epic. And the skeleton a lot
less frightful and a lot more dull.</p>
<p><em>Sigh</em></p>
<p>Kevin always said this would happen. “Corraidhin, you can’t play with
dangerous scripts like that, you’ll crash your systems”. Right you were
Kevin, right you were. Corraidhin casts his eyes around wistfully. I
guess I got that boat I always wanted? And it’s filled with treasure.
That’s a positive. Oh and um I’m not alone, yeah, that’s right. You’re
stuck here too Mr. Skelly. (The skeleton does not reply). Oh come on
now, don’t be rude. (still no reply). <em>sigh</em> right, sorta dead, I
shouldn’t expext more than a loving embrace from you as you try and
invite me to look at your treasure right?</p>
<p>After about the thousandth time the Sysorcerer was still in a
rut.</p>
<p>I’m stuck insid the crash, not from without. It seems this moment is
just going to idle on perpetually. (he rummages in his pockets), okay I
guess I still have the Ginnarak crystal, and stabby. Those seem safe
enough here with me.</p>
<p>So long as I don’t go crazy I guess there’s hope. If not, what a damn
foolish way to die.</p>
<p>MEANWHILE</p>
<p>An automated alert system triggers as the Sysorceror blips out of
existence. And then on, and then off, and then on, and then off.</p>
<pre><code>(Problem: Corraidhin: Entity not found)
Problem started at 19:37 on 2281.67.43
Porblem Name: Deadman&#39;s Trigger: Entity not found
Host: Corraidhin
Severity: Critical
Operation Data: (corrupted)
Problem ID: 92746027498
(Problem: Corraidhin: Entity not found)
Resolved in 1d 0h 0m 0s: Entity not found
Problem Name: Deadman&#39;s Trigger: Entity not found
Problem Duration: 1d 0h 0m 0s
Severity: Critical
Original Problem ID: 92746027498</code></pre>
<p>Bloody Zabbix alerts flapping again, what the hell does it mean that
Uncle Corraidhin is gone. You can’t Die then Live over and over and
over. Stupid broken monitoring system. Guess I had been check in on him,
bloody fool constantly gets himself in trouble.</p>
<p>Alex grabs his shortsword and backpack and shoulders them. If anyone
will know what’s foolhearty issue his uncle has gotten into, it’ll be
Kevin as the Sysorcerors Guild.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Corraidhín settles in for what may or may not be a lifetime of stasis
aboard the glitch formerly known as the SS RSS. At least Stabby will be
good company if it ever wakes up from its blood coma. Hmm, actually
that’s debatable. Now that you think of it, you’re not sure you’re up
for a lifetime of ranting about blood and evil.</p>
<p>The merbear and the tardigrade are on the ship deck, also trapped in
the fork bomb. You’re not sure whether you can reach them or not.</p>
<p>You see a flickering of motion and a flash of light outside the ship
as what looks like a small school of fish moves darts in and out of
view. It rushes past, doubles back, and swims past again, passing close
enough that one or two get sucked into the fork bomb with you.</p>
<p>Impossibly, what you thought were fish were apparently small birds?
Or, perhaps they were fish after all and some quality of passing through
the boundary of the fork bomb simply turns them into birds? Either way,
two small blue songbirds with red heads and forked tails hop around
inside the ship chirping incessantly. You watch as one of them hops
toward one of the sea bunny slugs and pecks at it, and then scoops it up
in its beak and swallows it whole. The second does the same. They hop
from side to side a bit, and then set to feasting on the slugs. A couple
more birds pop through the membrane separating you from the outside
world and join in.</p>
<p>~</p>
<p>Alex grabs his perfectly normal, blissfully non-sentient shortsword
and heads off to the Cabinet, where the Sysorcerers Guild is. He has to
detour around the Wandering Bazaar, which decided to plop down in the
middle of the street, but nonetheless arrives in short order.</p>
<p>He finds Kevin working in the library on Kevin’s Document
Language.</p>
<p>Alex describes the errors and Kevin groans, “Ugh, I told him! I told
him you can’t play with dangerous scripts like that, you’ll crash your
systems! We’ll have to try a manual reboot. Well don’t just stand there,
young person. Come on, come on, try to keep up. We have work to do!”</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Inky follows the bundle’s path as it sinks downwards and maneuvers
the bubblebee to retrieve it along with the eye.</p>
<p>Floating to a stop above the ledge of the trench, Inky looks at the
small golden orb, then removes an empty lunch pail from their knapsack
and drops the eye and several small glass marbles into it. The contents
jostle around inside the pail in a cacophony of whirs, clicks and
clatters. With the lid firmly closed, Inky tosses the makeshift
percussive instrument into the trench for the harrowkrake so it could
jam with its new tanokuma buddies.</p>
<p>Staring at the bundle, Inky suddenly recalls the projectile that had
come from the general direction of the SS RSS shortly before the
horkosgrampus got to Mr. Not-So-Lucky. Master Corraidhín! They turn back
to the shipwreck, only to find the entire ship had turned eerily
translucent, like a ghost ship from some tipsy sailor’s tale. Inky halts
a short distance from the wreckage for a closer look, though something
about the apparition told them it would be a terrible idea to enter the
ship’s hull now. Something had happened to the ship’s remains, with the
sysorcerer trapped inside. Maybe it was all part of the sysorcerer’s
plan, that he had teleported himself back to a safe location and this
was a mirage, just a remnant from the moment of teleportation.</p>
<p>Or at least Inky hopes so.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Inky drops the improvised goldeneye noisemaker down into the trench.
The rattling as it falls is reminiscent of Gerald’s laughter. One
slender tendril reaches up out of the abyss and grabs the rattle, and
then disappears once more into the murky dark.</p>
<p>You are now in possession of the second Ginnarak Crystal. A blue
stone with lightly pulsing gold veins. As you gaze at it, it’s almost as
though you can hear peals of tinkling laughter in the back of your
head.</p>
<p>The horkosgrampus, temporarily sated having removed the liar from
this timeline, drift lazily away.</p>
<p>The giant, candy-seeking manta ray passes closely by and fondly
caresses the bubblebee with one wing in passing. Its little manta face
pulled up into a chubby smile.</p>
<p>The bear facsimiles join you and begin crying when they see their
“brothers” trapped on the deck of the ship.</p>
<p>You see a small school of fish making multiple passes by the SS RSS
like birds skimming insects from the sky.</p>
<p>WHAT DO YOU DO</p>
<p><a
href="https://framalistes.org/sympa/arc/tildepals/2022-11/msg00083.html">www</a></p>
<h2 id="bestiary">Bestiary</h2>
<p>Some of the creatures who inhabit the world of Basmentaria</p>
<dt>
@ -3887,19 +4034,26 @@ embers.</p>
<summary>
<p>SPOILERS!!</p>
</summary>
<p>NAMES AND NPCS</p>
<p><strong>NAMES AND NPCS</strong></p>
<p>Upcoming NPCs and/or monsters</p>
<ul class="task-list">
<li><input type="checkbox" disabled="" />zai-ni</li>
<li><input type="checkbox" disabled="" />zeyeknee</li>
<li><input type="checkbox" disabled="" />Jorunna Parva, sea bunny time
lord <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jorunna_parva"
class="uri">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jorunna_parva</a></li>
<li><input type="checkbox" disabled="" />Hap-n-stance, moon rabbit: <a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_rabbit"
class="uri">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_rabbit</a></li>
<li><input type="checkbox" disabled="" />time swallows: It is a common
misconception that barn swallows are the most widespread species of
swallow. That distinction belongs to the <em>time</em> swallow.
Although—if you’re lucky—you’ll never actually see one.</li>
<li><input type="checkbox" disabled="" />zai-ni (zine)</li>
<li><input type="checkbox" disabled="" />zeyeknee (zine)</li>
<li><input type="checkbox" disabled="" />standard ed</li>
<li><input type="checkbox" disabled="" />paladin of emacs</li>
<li><input type="checkbox" disabled="" />monks of vim</li>
<li><input type="checkbox" disabled="" />hinderbloke, gnu</li>
<li><input type="checkbox" disabled="" />falterchap, gnu</li>
<li><input type="checkbox" disabled="" />Hap-n-stance, moon rabbit: <a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_rabbit"
class="uri">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_rabbit</a></li>
<li><input type="checkbox" disabled="" />Cyber Woman With Corn! – <a
href="https://www.shutterstock.com/search/cyber-woman-with-corn"
class="uri">https://www.shutterstock.com/search/cyber-woman-with-corn</a></li>
@ -3914,13 +4068,99 @@ class="uri">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_smut</a></li>
<li><input type="checkbox" disabled="" checked="" />three fingered
gerald</li>
</ul>
<p>CRYSTALS</p>
<p><strong>LIBRARIAN</strong></p>
<p>Back when the Trine walked among the people, before the Artifice
Wars, the gods used to tell stories to help man understand the cosmos
and other things beyond their understanding. Neddas, god of sages and
starlight, was particularly fond of mortals and would spend time with
them, giving them small gifts of trifling divinity and telling them
stories.</p>
<p>Due to rather unique circumstances, time in Basmentaria is both an
extremely rare and finite resource, and also an illusion, a
hallucination shared by all its inhabitants.</p>
<p>The truth of the matter is that everything—past, present, and
future—all happens at once.</p>
<p>Imagine a book. You can flip open to any page at random and begin
reading. This is what we would call in the moment “the present.” The
preceding pages are “the past”, and the pages that follow are “the
future”.</p>
<p>But all of the pages—the past, present, and future—are already all
there. And I think you can already see that such labels are completely
arbitrary. You can quite easily flip back a few pages into the “past”,
establishing a new, relative present. Just as easily as you can skip
ahead into the future.</p>
<p>Now, the more interesting part of this whole analogy is existence of
multiple books. Many books do in fact exist, numerous complete
timelines. Volumes of them.</p>
<p>Every time you make a choice between two options, a new book—a
separate timeline—is created. One in which you choose option A, and its
consequences play out. And a second one in which you choose option B and
suffer all the consequences of that decision, good or bad.</p>
<p>This is known as the Many Worlds theory.</p>
<p>Basmentaria is absolutely lousy with worlds. Always has been. And
consequently at some point in its infancy it attracted the attention of
a sentient concept known to the gods of Basmentaria only by euphemisms
and neologisms such as The Bookwyrm, or The Librarian.</p>
<p>The entity coils around Basmentaria like a great snake. And it
consumes all these extra books, all these many worlds, all these
alternative timelines. Whether these other timelines are wholly consumed
and lost forever, or merely collected and stored carefully away, is
unknown. What we do know is that Basmentaria only has the one, single
book’s worth of time.</p>
<p>Back to the shared hallucination. It is said that experiential time
is a peculiar side effect of The Librarian’s unique biology. (Truthfully
the whole tapestry kind of starts to unravel at this point, because how
does a sentient concept even have a biology in the first place?) The
gods believe that the entity coils itself tightly around the present
moment and devours the past. And then it shits out the future.</p>
<p>Whether this is metaphor or not is a hotly debated question. But thus
is it explained that the past is irretrievably behind us. The present is
short and fleeting. The future is merely the processed remains of the
past. And just out of sight, ever beyond our ability to perceive it,
lies The Bookwyrm.</p>
<p><strong>BIRDS ARE TIME TRAVELERS</strong></p>
<p>A fringe movement of lunatic paleornithologists and crackpots of
other professions has slowly been gaining traction over the last few
decades. The movement was born when Modern Fuchsia, at the time a
budding young scientist on a dig yearning to make a name for himself,
found a fossil of a modern feathered bird—probably some kind of
swallow—alongside a theropod, the variety of dinosaur widely accepted to
be the ancestor of modern birds. Faced with what he believed to be
irrefutable evidence of a modern descendant coexisting alongside its own
ancestor, Fuchsia was only able to conclude that Birds Are Not
Dinosaurs. And thus BAND came into being.</p>
<p>Ever since, BANDits have spent considerable amounts of time and
energy attending conferences and publishing papers, pouting and
demanding to be taken seriously be the wider scientific community. A
community which, if they pay them any attention at all, it is only to
mock and ridicule their crackpot theories.</p>
<p>Modern Fuschia is of course wrong. But neither he nor his BANDits
know how dangerously close he came to the actual truth.</p>
<p>For much, much deeper in the shadowy fringes of
paleornithology—itself kind of a fringe field to begin with—there is a
clandestine operation called BATT. And only BATT knows the actual
explanation for how a modern descendant might coexist alongside its own
ancestor. Birds Are Time Travelers.</p>
<p>In the far future when birds are the dominant intelligent life on
Basmentaria, they do indeed invent time travel. The end result was
catastrophic and is the real reason that the dinosaurs went extinct.</p>
<p>It is a common misconception that barn swallows are the most
widespread species of swallow. That distinction in fact belongs to the
<em>time swallow</em>. Although—if you’re lucky—you’ll never actually
see one. Since the Incident, the secret agents of BATT have vowed never
again to interfere with or try to alter the time stream. Nor to allow
anyone else to. The time swallows are special bred, special trained,
appearing wherever and whenever an anomaly appears to remove it and
restore the proper timeline. The tiny birds quite literally swallow,
consume, and destroy anything that meddles with time.</p>
<p><strong>CRYSTALS</strong></p>
<p>Each crystal has an associated <em>element</em>, a <em>location</em>
appropriate to the element, and an <em>aspect</em> of Neddas for the
guardian and their minions.</p>
<table>
<thead>
<tr class="header">
<th style="text-align: left;">?</th>
<th style="text-align: left;">Element</th>
<th style="text-align: left;">Location</th>
<th style="text-align: left;">Aspect</th>
@ -3928,26 +4168,31 @@ guardian and their minions.</p>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr class="odd">
<td style="text-align: left;">✅</td>
<td style="text-align: left;">earth</td>
<td style="text-align: left;">cave</td>
<td style="text-align: left;">coin</td>
</tr>
<tr class="even">
<td style="text-align: left;">✅</td>
<td style="text-align: left;">water</td>
<td style="text-align: left;">underwater pirate shipwreck</td>
<td style="text-align: left;">mirth</td>
</tr>
<tr class="odd">
<td style="text-align: left;">🚫</td>
<td style="text-align: left;">wind</td>
<td style="text-align: left;">cloudstuff</td>
<td style="text-align: left;">lore</td>
</tr>
<tr class="even">
<td style="text-align: left;">🚫</td>
<td style="text-align: left;">void</td>
<td style="text-align: left;">spaaaaace</td>
<td style="text-align: left;">craft</td>
</tr>
<tr class="odd">
<td style="text-align: left;">🚫</td>
<td style="text-align: left;">fire</td>
<td style="text-align: left;">volcano</td>
<td style="text-align: left;">tact</td>
@ -3955,13 +4200,15 @@ guardian and their minions.</p>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>The crystals will eventually lead them to Neddas</p>
<p>IDEAS</p>
<p><strong>IDEAS</strong></p>
<p>todo:</p>
<ul class="task-list">
<li><input type="checkbox" disabled="" />mio’s (Inky’s) Handy Duffer
Discette = HD Diskette = better stay away from magnets!!</li>
<li><input type="checkbox" disabled="" />tea omen: abacus, feather, wide
building, lynx</li>
<li><input type="checkbox" disabled="" />the BAND (Birds Are Not
Dinosaurs) and the BATT (Birds Are Time Travelers) conspiracy</li>
<li><input type="checkbox" disabled="" />MidJourney omen: priestly
blood, demon</li>
<li><input type="checkbox" disabled="" />palindromes: taco cat, reward