Audience: Harrowhark Nonagesimus

[probe]

Comments

[bonetiddies]

Yes, I realize. And I don't like leaving it to all of you. So we are at an impasse when it comes to our feelings on the matter, and must go with what is logical.

[probe]

[he sighs, a hand coming into his hood to very gently rub his eyes.]

And you feel that this is the most logical step because?

[bonetiddies]

Because it wants us there. It is trying to tell us something.

[probe]

...what we saw in there was not something anyone else should see. If we can prevent another group from disappearing somehow, that would be our best course of action. I don't care what it, whatever it is, wants.

[bonetiddies]

I didn't particularly enjoy it either, no. It tried to force us to murder a child in the most terrible manner I can imagine.

But if it is part of the key to understanding what is happening here. . . [Hmm.] When you say you expect we'll get to the end of this and have time to fulfill our indulgences and leave, what is your basis for thinking so?

[probe]

Call it an innate understanding. The end is when there's enough indulgence for those of you left to split and use to obtain the power to change what you wanted to change. How long that takes is up to you and how much you're indulging as it is.

[bonetiddies]

It is only that. . . other conversations I have had have suggested greater urgency. Insinuated rather than said outright, I admit, but your certainty on this matter comes as something of a surprise to me.

[probe]

[...]

Why don't you tell me what else you've heard? Perhaps we can make better sense of it.

[bonetiddies]

Very early on, I asked Despair about time limits, and he said there would be no challenge if we could simply take our time.

More recently, Gluttony. . . hmm. It was a cryptic and circuitous conversation, but they prompted me to consider that we receive a new floor each week. When I said Sloth, Wrath, and Lust's floors remained, they suggested this assumption was mistaken, somehow - that there were either fewer or more.

Since Yuel saw only seven rings when she left the ship, my assumption was therefore that there was one floor two few. I suppose it was not a given from there that the end of new floors would be the end of our time here, but it seemed to me as though it was. . . building to something significant.

[probe]

Despair is correct on that. Without a challenge, people wouldn't indulge as much I suppose.

Gluttony is always cryptic. [asshole.] Seven rings is not entirely significant to the number of floors, but I suppose reaching the highest point you can go would create a sense of urgency in you.

[what are you saying, greed?]

...you may, in theory, take as much time as you'd like. But this place may force your hand sooner or later.

[bonetiddies]

Ah. That has been my sense, yes. [So you could have just said so!] I do not have any sense how it will. But I would not like to be unprepared.

[probe]

[no one hates how longwinded and pretentious miles can be more than i do, actually.]

It's another thing I'd like to find an answer to. If I can find out anything more to understand the timing...it would be far more beneficial than what we've been doing now. But I do often wonder if it's meant to be out of our hands anyhow. You can see the dilemma.

[hateful.]

[bonetiddies]

Yes, I do. And this is why I do what to understand what that place wants from us. I do not assume it to be irrelevant to the overarching thing that this place wants from us.

Surely we have been brought here for some purpose other than fulfilling our own desires.

[probe]

Perhaps so. [which is troubling on its own.] Then I suppose now you need to create a better idea of how to find what that purpose is and if anything can be done about it.

[bonetiddies]

I have been thinking of it in terms of energy generation. Perhaps due to my own biases, given necromancy is itself a form of energy generation. Our actions are somehow charging a power source which can be used to fuel our desires - but perhaps they are fueling something else, as well.

[probe]

[they seem thoughtful about that idea.]

And what would you do with that power source if such a thing existed? What else could it be fueling?

[bonetiddies]

What I would do would depend on what it is doing. If I could take what I came here for and go - there are some things I could accept in exchange for that and some I fear I could not.

[So. Hmm.]

My suspicion would be that it is fueling the existence of this center itself. Or perhaps. . . whatever the pink eyed anomaly outside of this place is.

[probe]

[hm. valid and fair, and greed doesn't quite know what to say to that. they don't seem to disagree entirely though with the first part.]

I can assure you that what Miss Monroe and Miss Lillie saw is of no importance. It simply exists.

[bonetiddies]

Well. All right, then.

[There's some strange pink eyed being but. It's fine?]

The bodies in the life support room. Something is consuming us.

[probe]

[it's fine!]

Do you suppose those bodies are real?

[bonetiddies]

Perhaps? I wasn't certain whether it wasn't all just meant to be disconcerting, but Wrath seemed troubled enough by it.

It depends on what it means for a body to be "real."

[probe]

Wrath is troubled by many things that perhaps they shouldn't always be. [it's not really scolding, but again, thoughtful.]

If we're taking this from a philosophical approach, what would you consider to be "real" in terms of a body?

[bonetiddies]

Flesh. Blood. Bone. The meat, as opposed to the soul.

[probe]

And when a body includes a soul, what would that be?

[bonetiddies]

Well.

[Hmm.]

I don't want to digress too far on this point. Generally speaking, a living person, as opposed to a cadaver.