A short musing piece from Howitz's files written to try and explain something of how he works that no-one seems to quite understand. This was written in the hopes that eventually someone who finds it might.
++++
In my mindscape, deep down where even the appearance of normal reality gives way to structures floating in the void, the main marker you navigate by is a mountain. Rocks and pebbles of all colours are visible on its surface, but mostly the earth is red, the kind of reddish brown you see in Australia.
Most people do not go close, but if you do, the mountain starts to look like a scrapheap. There are armour and weapons thrown on it half buried, scraps of cloth and brightly polished metal. Most people's eyes refuse to recognise what they are seeing until they are close enough to realise that the 'pebbles' are head sized and the overall appearance of red is from blood, burns, and non-human skin.
Perhaps their eyes refuse to recognise it as a heap of bodies because it is not grisly. It feels utterly neutral, there is no emotion attached, it simply exists.
This is the record of the people who I killed, directly or indirectly.
It is no monument to Glory, I do not take pride in it. Nor is it a source of guilt or tragedy, though there are bodies within that pile I will weep over not having been able to save. It does give perspective to the power I wield and the life I have led, but that is not the point of it. I fight only to protect, I am still the man you all know, no hidden side to my nature shown by this.
Those who see the mountain for what it is misunderstand, they think that I carry their weight and try to reassure me, try to ease guilt that isn't there, or think I am looking for sympathy. They do not seem to understand.
I am a priest of the God of Life and Death and part of my job is to remember and care for the dead. It is only right that I remember those who have fallen by my hand, if I do not take responsibility for remembering them, then who will? And who should?
This is the first part of a Coinciverse story and acts as an introduction to Howitz. Enjoy!
++++
There was darkness. Just darkness.
Slowly his mind started to become aware of his mental form, firstly his eyelids, though he didn’t have the strength to open them. Then his forehead, ears...
The process took far too long, and his mental self was so heavy, just lying there in nothing. He tracked the progress of his torso, his arms... hands (thank the gods his hands), legs, feet. There, he was all there as he should be.
There was no-one else though, no familiar mind/souls brushing against his own. He was quite utterly alone, for the first time in years. And he was so heavy. So unbelievably heavy that he couldn’t think beyond the senses and basic existence, but at least he existed.
The heaviness on his thoughts didn’t really ease with time either. He did slowly search his soul for his connection to the Judge, flopping back to basic existence as he found the glimmer in his hands. Good. It was there, but so weak, so unbelievably weak... just like him.
At least I never felt like this when I wasn’t active. Dear Lords, what happened to me?
His hands were itching. He tried to reach out to itch them only to find he was leaden, so he gave up and went back to sleep.
There was time, and then he was aware again, still with mental self present. That was good, that meant he could rest if he needed to. His tattoos still itched though, almost unbearably. He needed to scratch them, even if just to calm them down. With an immense effort his arm shifted. Dear Lord was it that hard? He would have to keep going, this was driving him crazy.
After an incredible effort both hands were lying on his stomach, the blessed relief of an itch was his. That done he loosely linked his hands together in the way they were so accustomed to and let his consciousness fade again.
He awoke later to find his arms were back at his sides again, damnation! Did they go back there whenever he slept?
Wait, slept? That was an awfully... alive... word. He hadn’t slept in her mind, just gone inactive. The effort to get his hands onto his stomach and linked again was less this time, though it was still hard to think. The best thing he could do in this situation was probably to pray, but praying involved thinking.
Let's give it a try then.
Lord Judge, please hear me if you can...(dear Lords I’ve not done this in years) ... I am one of your faithful, Howitzer Voltanis Elderwood. I may have been... gone, for years, but I need your help now, please, please let me have even a fraction of your power, despite how faint my voice may be, please, hear me if you can and grant my request.
Please let Him hear me...
There was a feeling of something whispering into his hands for a moment before the connection was broken and his arms moved back to his sides, the man giving a mental yell of frustration, tears beading at his eyes. He’d just contacted him! He’d just managed to and now he was having it snatched away again!
After a few minutes the helpless anger subsided and he was able to think. His arms had been moved by a force outside his control. That meant there was something else out there and it was interacting with him. Something else...
.... was he alive?
He’d need to open his eyes to find that out. Rats, that took more effort than he could manage at the moment, even if he did feel a little better for the trickle of power he’d received. He also now knew he was alive, and could guess that everything felt so heavy because he hadn’t had a body for so long.
The best thing was that he knew he could do it again.
He slept.
The next time he awoke thinking was easier and he felt the spark of determination back in his eyes/mind. He was alive, there was something out there to see, there was a reason to try now.
This... is surreal, I'm not going to lie. Even more so than normal. It takes place in the weird space between IC and OC which allows all of the Golden Bonded to interact with each other. Make of it what you will.
This is Josephine centric, FOIP for mindset. Contains obscure references to backstories.
WARNINGS: Blood, gore, insanity, surreal dreams, memories of the dead. Also Multiverse weirdness.
"Are you sure that you want to see?"
The man met her eyes calmly but with a hint of crystal clear clarity in the grey eyes, his hand stretched out to the void, poised ready to cast, robes and wings swirling out behind him. He looked like an eternal or herald of some kind, but she was assured that he had been human and this was just a manifestation of his power in this strange place.
She'd grown... accustomed to the fact that things here didn't work here like they did back at home. She was also fairly sure this place wasn't actually real. At any rate, strange things happened in dreams and she would forget this as soon as she woke and only remember it on returning here.
Nevertheless, things were happening and she should be paying attention. She looked out to the space just beyond the motes of light clustering around the man's fingertips and nodded sharply, hazel eyes steady.
"Yes."
"Very well." The man's fingers moved and the light swirled, spreading out to form a net at his fingertips stretching into the void. Nodes and lines glowed, looking for all the world like a strange constellation anchored by the man's will.
Another flick and a net in a different colour spread upwards from the nearest dot, but this one was a cone instead of a plane, further motes of light drifting down inside it, all funneled down into that one point at the bottom.
Her eyes softened as she looked at that small glowing dot, "So that's me, all of space and time, and it comes down to a small glow I could hold in my hand."
"Only when you look at it this way," the man said calmly, his hand moving to cup the glow gently, "It is a star, reduced to something we can understand. It is by no means nothing." He looked up with a slight smile, "Look at how brightly it glows."
Josephine smiled, "Yes, I suppose."
He smiled back properly, a flicker of understanding between them. He knew what stars meant to her, they all did. It was strange, how the people here all understood each other, but it made them kind. Her attention shifted away from him to the rest of the net, "So what is this?"
"The network of you," he said simply, "the cone, as you have probably worked out, is a representation of your past lives, different people, different selves, but all you. The other net..." he paused, "You might want to call it sideways reincarnation. We call them Alternates."
"So they're also me and not me?" the woman drifted forward to look at the stars, "they're so far away from each other."
"They are different universes, after all." He drifted up to float alongside her, "the same soul, born in different places, living and shaped by different lives."
He stopped in front of one whose line connecting it to hers was particularly bright. He was difficult to read, but something about the way he stood seemed sad somehow, "We found you through this one."
"Wait," Josephine frowned, "I wasn't the first of me?"
The man shook his head, "No, we... well, Estantia, wanted to give you another chance."
"Another..." Josephine trailed off, "that sounds ominous. I'm not going to like what I see here, am I? That's why you were so careful about asking me in the first place."
His wings didn't quite shift uncomfortably, "Yes."
She looked at it for a moment, "Let me see."
"You are sure?" Carefully neutral, dammit, he knew what she was going to say, fucking prophets.
"Yes. I've come this far, I'm not going back now."
The man reached out his hand to the star and gestured...
Her head flopped on one side, hair swinging to the side just enough to let one eye look out through the gap, oddly wide and unblinking as she looked round at the door, half turning as she did so.
Red. Red blood on a pristine white dress, sprays across the wall, warm wet drops on her face and the sharp scent of blood. It felt like her dark fingers should be dripping darker, but the perfect skin was untouched just as surely as it had been her hand that painted the walls with the organs she had torn from her lover and his filth of a mistress.
The dead eye remained fixed on her, head still tilted at that strange, broken angle before her lips split in a mockery of a smile from that dead face.
Chuckles started to leak from her smile before erupting into laughter that shook her shoulders helplessly. But despite that the dead eyes didn't move and a whispering voice, her voice, slipped into her head.
"It's so pretty, isn't it?"
Josephine threw herself out of the vision, scrambling backwards through the starlit void, breathing heavily, eyes wide as she fought to get her body under her control, "That thing was NOT, fucking, me!"
The man hadn't moved, still watching her with that same cool expression, "It was you, from a different place and time."
She shook her head vigorously, still backing away, "No, no way, that wasn't..." she trailed off as information poured into her head, like it did so often here.
The feeling as her Dawnish temper snapped, the sword slicing a neat line in the air in front of heated eyes.
"That's not what happened there!"
The cold calculating feeling as she laid out the political situation in front of her, the clinical cut and dodge in the fight against the Feni, calmly working out her next move like a general on the battlefield.
"I'm not..." her voice was faltering.
"You have the potential to be, and you see that, don't deny it." he said calmly, "You can see how all of the pieces could come together in exactly the right way to cause that."
She looked back at the innocent little star and said nothing.
"But you are right, that is not who you are, and the rules of your world have shaped you to, quite correctly, see that action for the horrifying thing it is." He continued, walking over to stand a respectful distance from the woman, turning to look back at the net, "As I said, same soul, different circumstances. In some, people are screwed from the start, simply due to the conditions they were born in."
"Without your talk of Fate even coming into it." Josephine spat, knowing full well the man wouldn't take any offence at the disgust largely directed at herself, straightening to assume her normal demeanour, "So I assume you managed to gain something from this?"
The man nodded, "Estantia saw who she could have been. So she gave them a choice."
"She gave them the chance to try again," Lady Josephine said slowly, "the chance to escape that outcome. That's why I'm here, isn't it? A last chance for a broken soul."
The man nodded again, "You must understand that That Josephine is not you." He lifted her face gently and met her eyes to allow other images to fly between them, her hand twining with Macsen's, the righteous fury, the flicker of moving souls, lifting her head to speak calmly and firmly to a room full of egregores. A flourishing pattern of her life, beauty, emotion, choice, virtue, growth.
"You are worth so much more than a soul looking for redemption."
Josephine's eyes met his with a challenge, "But I still carry her ghost, somehow, somewhere. And there's this little lost soul who's watching me, waiting and hoping that I won't screw up, that I'll keep being virtuous and growing and kicking ass."
"Yes."
It wasn't like she'd be the first person to carry the ghosts of those that had come before. She thought of a group who carried their friends on their banner, of a lady living for the siblings who didn't survive. She thought of her own name, the story of behind it and the woman who was left behind.
She smiled, "I guess I can work with that."
The man smiled back, and even though he didn't speak she could feel him saying thank you.
Note: This topic is NOT pleasant, and the examples refer to many things that may trigger people, including simply the type of person, I may have missed some warnings.
++++
At it's simplest, Warp is the name we use to describe when someone has twisted their soul in order to make it closer to an 'ideal'.
Usually this refers to magic and can apply to any aura or element but it can also apply to other ideals, for example a supplicant becoming more and more like their sponsor.
When Warp happens they tend to get better at whatever it is they are warping themselves to do, but also start to lose who they are and usually their humanity.
It can be reversed, but requires a long time of refinding themselves and who they are. In the most severe cases, this can take years and may even require a memory wipe.
Those who can sense warp usually describe it as feeling 'wrong' or sickening, however the form it takes is different for each person as it depends upon their views of what the 'ideal' is. Because of the nature of warp, it is likely that the person won't realise what they are doing to themselves.
While each case of Warp is unique, there are general trends for those who become warped due to aiming for the ideal of their Aura. These act as general examples to give you the idea.
++++
Light: Loses their humanity by getting lost in details, plans, controlling things. The detached cruelty of a scientist.
Notes: Megalomania, cat and mouse, the human controlling the ant farm and the lives inside it.
Example: "Everything would be so much better and more efficient if people just listened to me. I know what works and what doesn't. You just need to do this, but they won't agree with me, so I just do this and they'll act that way without me even needing to get involved. See? it works when I run things, your ideas are wrong, I can do so much better, if they won't listen to me I'll make it so they have to do as I say…"
Gold: Lose who you are in the performance, give up you in exchange for brilliance. You are the life, the act, the dance, the animal, the magic.
Notes: In more extreme cases when not putting on an act or performance the person can seem dull, lifeless or blank.
Example: "I have used remembered emotions/personality facets to mask, replace and control what I feel for so long that I no longer know who or what is the real me or what I am 'truly' feeling." She paused, "I made masks from my soul until every emotion was a mask, neatly catalogued and contained to be used at will, but nothing feels true or untouched any more." A hint of self disgust entered her tone, "Of course all emotions feel false if you know you can manipulate them that easily, you start wondering if you actually feel it or it's just swapping the mask." She paused again to look down at her lap, tone abruptly sobering up, "But the worst bit is when you try to take away the masks, because there's nothing left underneath them."
Neutral: Lose yourself in caring for others. Self-sacrifice.
Notes: Hero syndrome, often results in caring too much and getting broken or burning themselves up for others.
Example: "No! You shut up! Do you know how many people have suffered and died in this place? Can you HONESTLY tell me that people care? I've worked with them, I've seen people starving in the cold while others throw away food after stuffing their faces! I've seen bruises and bleeding, people thrown aside because someone didn't like the colour of their skin or the way they spoke, so no, no I'm NOT going to stop. Otherwise they'll just keep on killing and getting others killed for them. I won't stand for it any longer."
Silver: God-complex, Puppetmaster, manipulation of the mind and soul until everything is just something to be moved as you wish. Losing empathy, morality, the rules don't hold you.
Example: "I can wrap you around my little finger, you know, I can take your thoughts and change them without you knowing I did it. I can make you dance, kill your friends, pull out your soul and play with it between my fingers before impaling you with it." He smiled, it wasn't a pleasant one, "Remind me why I should care about what you think?"
Dark: Hedonism, chaos, absolute freedom, also 'traditional' or 'stereotypical' insanity. Live in the moment, see if you can do it just to see if you can, do what you want, live by impulse and instinct, no consequences, no plans, chaos.
A rooftop conversation between Howitz and Chak, where Howitz explains what it was like to see/be aware of the tapestry. Cut for length.
Howitz leant back a little on the stairwell to look up at the darkening sky, -I am worried that he will lose himself. That the power will win.- He sighed, -He has the maturity to deal with it but.... the game is so big, and we are so small. How could I not worry for anyone stepping into that game?-
-You were the one most at risk of losing yourself.- The healer in his lap reminded him, watching as the priest frowned in though again.
-He could be ready, I do him a disservice by worrying so. But it has been only two or three months for him.- He shook his head and addressed Chak's point. -I know I was, I didn't know it was there, he does, which should change things, but he has no-one to pull him back.-
-Perhaps if you show him just what it was like,- Chak suggested, -he will have some more perspective, though it is easy to ignore words. Harder to ignore what you see..-
-I may show him. It will probably help,- Howitz admitted, -but it may scare him, and the little girl... doesn't deserve to have someone scared of her for the power she wields-
Now Chak sighed, -Nothing is ever simple with magic, is it? It just makes things bigger and more complicated.-
-It... really is not. It may intoxicate him. I saw the tapestry, I saw everything. I learnt more in one second than people could in a lifetime. I am still untangling some things.- Howitz's gaze fixed on memories in his mind's eye, seemingly unable to stop talking now that he had started, -I saw all the lights in the last reset being snuffed out. I saw all the people being drawn in, I saw every person's fight and the magic and how they used it, and I understood so well that I could use that magic if I wished. I saw stars and planets and the game...- He was shaking by the time he looked down at Chak, still not entirely seeing the man, -And then I saw a pair of hands trying to catch me and looked down to see eyes like stars.-
His focus cleared a little, offering a faint smile to show him that he was fine. -If you hadn't done that I wouldn't have noticed I was nearly gone, only then did I remember where and who I was.-
Chak squeezed Howitz's leg gently in reassurance to try and calm the man as the priest's memories reclaimed his attention, tone desperately trying to put across just how... big, strange, significant, what he had experienced was. -I was starlight and fire and life and a tiny part that was me looking at it all.- He paused, trying to get his trembling under control. -And I am so glad I came back.-
The pair were silent for a few moments as they held each other, Chak waiting for Howitz to continue, Howitz trying to find the words in order to describe what was on his mind. -And now he may have to deal with all that, because I was too scared. -
-I hardly think that fair.-
Howitz jerked out of his thoughts, -Why?- a pause, -... though at least you can understand why I am reacting the way I am.-
-You had also promised your life to one cause already,- Chak reminded him, -and given that life once already.-
The priest looked slightly guilty. -....Twice.-
-Twice?-
-I remember the last reset, remember?-
Chak winced at the memory, then returned to the actual topic of conversation, -Would you rather have lost your humanity in that tapestry? Then the fault is not yours. You merely do what you can for the next to take up the burden, Whatever we can do.-
Howitz held him gratefully, faint murmurs of apology rippling across his mind until the pair lapsed into silence.
If you stay around the Rift for any length of time it is relatively inevitable that you will hear the name ‘Estantia’ mentioned. It is not a name that should be used lightly, as it can attract a great deal of attention in a remarkably short time, and not the kind of attention that your rookies can probably handle.
However what makes her so significant is the title and duty she bears - The Great Guide. In order to properly explain the significance of her role I must start at the beginning.
At the beginning what the Great guide did, and still appears to do, is to go to random places and times, go on adventures and generally help people out, having fun and learning magic as they go. If you ever see them it will look like this, and in some ways that is all it is.
As this particular one’s journeys continued they started to notice a pattern. They were being pulled in to intervene when outside influences would have changed the canon or the timeline, and found her main limitation in this time - she cannot directly intervene in major events. What they do is assist with plot holes, working invisibly around the edges to assist.
Then their awareness took another step up when they were able to comprehend what has been dubbed the Tapestry - a representation of reality as the interactions between people, each ‘thread’ a life/story. It is... hard to describe, as it constantly reforms itself and changes depending on what you wish to focus on, for example you could follow the story of a pencil to see who had owned it or what had been written with it.
As with any large concentration of magic/life, the tapestry has formed a dim sentience of its own, enough to want knots to be straightened out and holes to be fixed, and so either that consciousness created or is a figure I know of as the Weaver. To my knowledge, Fate is somewhere in that system, though whether the Weaver, the Tapestry itself, a mix or the sum of them is unknown.
The Great Guide factors into all of this as someone to act as an agent/tool of Fate, or in some theories, as the ‘human’ part of Fate, as the Tapestry/Weaver/Fate cannot think/comprehend in the way a living being can and make moral decisions. This ability can go to the point of literally being the weaver, of instinctively understanding the threads and how they interact, even being able to move them directly.
This gives a new perspective to the ‘random’ adventures, as their method of travel will naturally or by ‘chance’ gravitate where they will fix a knot as interaction with anything physical requires acting through someone or something. This is by no means uncommon, the Dr. Who Universe has a similar surmised system, with the Vortex being the Tapestry and the Tardis stopping when they come across a snag.
Need I mention how plagued we are by ‘coincidence’ of late?
The reason why Estantia in particular is so significant is because of how long she has been acting as the Great Guide. Most Great Guides only last a few years, meaning that they never get past the first stage of understanding precisely what the role entails. Estantia became the Great Guide earlier than she should, and so had the relative safety of children’s books to learn before getting into dangerous situations. She can and has merged with the Weaver on more than one occasion.
While we are not so sure of this, it appears that taking up the office of the Great Guide seems to result in a shift of some kind in their magic, effectively working to allow them access to any kind of magic. For example in the aura system a naturally Light mage would end up gaining a Dark part, mean they became a Light/Dark hybrid.
From my own knowledge of Estantia I can say that she, at least, acts like a mimic of sorts using the following process:
Read/follow a story. This allows her to live as/alongside the character.
This means that she can understand them and how their power works by virtue of having lived as them.
This creates an avatar of sorts in her mind which she can then use to write as them (effectively channelling them).
Her own magic is based on imagination and willpower. If she can work out how to do something (it must make sense to her mind) then she can do it.
This means she can now use her power in the way a character does, even if it only looks like it and the method behind it is different.
She can go to or read any story.
This method makes her disturbingly powerful, particularly when she can also travel to her own stories.
I would imagine that most other Great Guides have similarly overpowered methodology, given how much work they have to do, and that Great Guides usually operate alone. It may also be the reason why traditionally Great Guides never meet or train each other, as having all of them be fully aware of their position and so highly powered would quite possibly make them unstoppable except by Fate’s intervention and their own morals. Given that they may be able to change or influence Fate, particularly if lacking in morals, this is not foolproof.
Given the potential for disaster and the Multiverse’s wish to continue existing it seems likely that this is factored into the choice of who becomes the Great Guide, as the Tapestry would naturally cycle through the possibilities for candidates until it came to one that gave a favourable outcome. I do not presume to guess that Fate thinks a ‘favourable’ outcome is, but I would imagine ‘keep existing’ is part of it.
(Note: This ‘reset’ style phenomenon I can guarantee has occurred at least twice in our universe, mostly because I remember it happening. I do not recommend the experience.)
In summary: The Great Guide is a very powerful and still somewhat mysterious position, given that the information we have on it I have written in this document and has either come from the Great Guide or candidates for the position. Estantia is a powerful mage in her own right even without it, and the scale of trouble that she follows/ follows her is big enough that even using or giving out her name should be done with caution. Do not reveal how much you know if you can help it, you are likely to be assumed to be a close friend of hers if so.
In coinciverse, this is roughly true, to be completely accurate you would have to say that Souls are made of magic, and magic comes from the soul.
Trying to define 'life' in coinciverse is interesting given the sheer variety and scope of things that could be called alive, but they all have three things: A mind, a body and a soul/magic.
Body: A way to generate energy/magic, usually physical.
Mind: A sentient, intelligent, aware mind.
Soul: Made of Energy/magic. If they are a non mage, their 'extra' magic left over from that which keeps them alive expresses itself as talent. Souls can vary in strength as well as everything else.
The interesting bit about coinciverse is that this forms a triangle where if you have two out of three then over time the third will develop of its own accord.
This explains a lot, and explains the following examples:
AI: Mind (program) and body (computer, energy source: electricity). Results in a soul forming if the mind is sufficiently advanced.
Magical Beings (Items/Places/Concepts): Body (Needs to have a way to generate/tap into magic) and soul (magic). Results in a mind forming, as a side note, simpler things or those with less magic tend to have simpler minds, think 1D characters.
Spirits: Mind and Soul. These are special cases as they must find a source of energy to maintain themselves. They can live off the magic in their soul for a little while, but they will end up using themselves up if an energy source isn't found.
Some notes on this.
Land spirits or spirits of a place tend to be formed through method 2. They may become type three if their original home is destroyed.
There is an argument for biological creatures being type one or two, but I'd prefer to say that 'normal' creatures are born with all three.
Sources of energy can be odd, from chemical (biological bodies) all the way through to a concept/belief, a collection of other lives/souls or a simple stream of energy.
This means Gods and Sponsors are type 2 or 3. They tend to exist off belief and concepts, what gives concepts power is an interesting question...
A being may have multiple sources of energy. This is particularly applicable to spirits and God-like beings.
Spirits can 'attach' themselves to a person and live off their energy. They can do this without draining the person completely, though you do get some kinds which just eat souls.
