[Coldsaturn]

Oh my god, yes. What if Lemurians feel the connection to their god as physically as they feel the bond with their partner?

[ChicletPrime]

why does this sound like 50k of fic when i'm more of a 500 kinda gal? WHAT IF INDEED.

[ChicletPrime]

Chapter 4 - From The Stars

• without reading any farther... Xavier?
  
• yup, hi Jeremiah! Xavier lore, here go!
  
• Jeremiah is making cake eyes at the cake serving lady? nice.
  
• okay, so cake lady, aptly named Bella, is part of the Backtrackers? 'planetary shuttle squad two'. unless this is on Philos before they left? oh shit, did Jeremiah leave his lady love behind? 
  
• oh phew. okay. they're on Earth. the cake lady might not be abandoned to time.
  
• do Philos people not eat real food or something? is that why Xavier is so wretched at cooking, and not just because he's crown prince and didn't have to figure it out before now? 
  
• yeah, Jeremiah, not a great idea at all to start a romance with a girl who knows nothing about where you came from or why you're here or how much you want to go back. oh. Jeremiah has to fix the ship launcher? why is it taking so long, is he playing too much with the flower shop?
  
• wow, Xavier said not to .. what? 
  
• okay, so Xavier absconds with the new accelator Jeremiah's been working on, leaving him with the dirty dinner dishes. Traceback II is apparently in terrible shape after some sort of asteroid accident on the way in. i am getting the impression that as "Xavier is the leader of the Backtrackers" that Traceback I was a test flight to prove they could break the barrier at all, and Traceback II was the real mission (whatever that mission exactly was).
  
  
• ah. so a mini explanation that at least some of the reason the Backtrackers broke up a group is because it was taking too long to repair the ship and some of them gave up and decided they wanted to make a new life here, on this Earth. Which is why Xavier is telling Jeremiah maybe to try dating the cake lady.
  
• 'Linkon City' built a huge 'cosmic signal transmission and reception station'?  Linkon City? like, its board of directors or something? whatever passes for the local government? why? 
  
• Note: Xavier can teleport to any place he has been before
  
• Note: the spaceship had hibernation pods and Xavier used them as well. must have been a helluva long journey traversing both time and space.
  
• hah! this seems super important. "Some say that from a higher dimensional perspective, time doesn't exist. The past, present and future unfold in the same space. A person can only see the world before them because their eyes can only percieve the light projected from it. If this is true, then somewhere in the vast cosmos, there might exist a point where light from countless timelines converges. From there, one could see every star that ever existed, from the explosion of the universe to its eventual collapse, and witness every possible ending the world could take under an infinite number of choices. forest in silence and darkness."
  
• let me hazard a guess after staring at these sentences. is that were the Tree Of Life stands? that convergence point? and we (the girlfriend) were born from it, able to travel through all spaces?
  
• So whatever time it as, its now a year later. still no power source found for the spaceship. Jeremiah settles into a new life, which excludes Xavier as they all try not to be tied to each other/found out by anyone searching.
  
• aww, Jeremiah wants to give Bella a wedding ring. this feels both wonderful and ominous.
  
• OH NO CATASTROPHE TIME
  
• there's suddenly a Wanderer. "It pierces right through the psychological defenses of its citizens. people who have never seen such a monster are captured by Death as they're enveloped in fear."
  
• that is a wild set of words to make up a sentence. psychological defenses? captured by Death? enveloped in fear?  the implications of those word choices are fantastic. 
  
• at the sweet cake shop, he sees a marigold buried under rubble.  also interesting. a flower blooming in the crack of a wrecked street is shown/mentioned in the girlfriend's recollection of the 'Rift. Sylus walks by a similar lone flower in one of his cutscenes.
  
• So Jeremiah worked with Xavier at the start of the devastation to defeat Wanderers since only they really knew how. And Jeremiah knows that Xavier rescued "her" then.
  
• On January 1st 2034, the Hunters Assoc is founded and the "President" (of the Hunters Assoc? of the actual government?" announces that they (the humans) might have to coexist with Wanderers now. Jeremiah feels that the real Traceback mission has begun.
  
• 2037 -- Linkon City ate protocores and got stronk. 
  
• awww, Jeremiah built his flower shop on top of Bella's cake shop. Xavier and Jeremiah bump back into each other again. they really must take the "stay away from each other" to heart if they only infrequently connect again, apparently by happenstance.
  
• Xavier has no interest in the state of the spaceship. i could have guessed as much.
  
• apparently Bella always knew something hinky was up with Jeremiah, as she'd seem him as a child. And Jeremiah doesn't age. and it sounds like she wants to go back to Philos with him if he goes? 
  
• Again, the wavyleaf sea lavender. I am sure we talked about this elsewhere - five blue petals, a golden center. forget-me-nots.
  
• Jeremiah feels guilty for Xavier's duty as Captain. "...sometimes I think those of us who left early can live their lives in peace as long as you're still holding on."
  
• Jeremiah asked Xavier, before he left, why he didn't just settle down somewhere 'with her'.
  
• Maybe, this time, he can settle down. If possible he wants a place where he can see the stars.
  
• THIS TIME?
  

[Coldsaturn]

"do Philos people not eat real food or something?"
I think they're just very unused to Earth's cuisine, which added to the fact that Xavier is a prince and never had to lift a finger in the kitchen in his entire life translates to him being 1) the worst cook ever, and 2) completely incapable of discerning what good food and bad food is on Earth, because it's all equally alien to him

"why is it taking so long"
My idea is that it's because Earth hasn't reached the needed level of technology yet, so they're stalling while they try to reach that point. Would you be able to fix a phone if you were stuck in the 17th century?

"Traceback I was a test flight to prove they could break the barrier at all"
That's my idea as well. It looks coherent with his limited myths too, he disappeared for a while and when he came back after a couple hundred years, MC was already head of the knights and he had already formed the backtrackers. When he leaves the next time it's when MC is crowned and that's Traceback II already.

""Some say that from a higher dimensional perspective, time doesn't exist. The past, present and future unfold in the same space"
Yup, super important, the game will keep on hammering on this concept constantly. It's why putting the myths in a timeline is more of an exercise than anything else, because unless the game explicitly puts them chronologically (like GoT and ToR) it would be better to think of them as alternative branches that are unfolding all at the same time (but from different starting points of time-space).

"is that were the Tree Of Life stands?"
Can't say much, but you'll see another place that corresponds to the description.

"psychological defenses of its citizens"
I remember wondering whether this was a case of odd translation, and it was just describing how people's brain went a little mad when confronted with something they had no cognitive map for.

"Jeremiah feels that the real Traceback mission has begun."
Interesting point, considering how long they've been stuck on Earth.

"Xavier has no interest in the state of the spaceship."
Which is odd, considering how he also told (in the main story? I think?) Jer that he was going to bring everyone back home.

"THIS TIME?"
I took it to mean that on Philos he couldn't go to the flower planet and settle down with her, and maybe this time (literally, in this time where Earth exists) he can fix the Philos problem (by stopping its creation or whatever) and live with MC.

[ChicletPrime]

"why is it taking so long"
My idea is that it's because Earth hasn't reached the needed level of technology yet, so they're stalling while they try to reach that point. Would you be able to fix a phone if you were stuck in the 17th century? 

ooooh, good point. so i guess Jeremiah et al was cobbling together whatever they could, from whatever they had, and possibly spawning new industries as they went.  but after a couple of hundred years with no progress, the Backtrackers started to splinter, some got drawn in by EVER (or started EVER? Soren and Isaiah as I recall, although we know that Isaiah eventually defected from EVER and ended up brainwiped) and really only Xavier and Jeremiah seems to be adhering to the original mission. Although honestly, it sounds more and more like Xavier is also wavering a bit, or at least has re-thunk his strategy now that he has the girlfriend in-hand.

"is that were the Tree Of Life stands?"
Can't say much, but you'll see another place that corresponds to the description. 

noted. watch out for future 'convergence point' mentions.

"Xavier has no interest in the state of the spaceship."
Which is odd, considering how he also told (in the main story? I think?) Jer that he was going to bring everyone back home. 

Yeah, that was in the revelations of Chapter 8, when a whole bunch of stuff was suddenly revealed in and around the flower shop section. Options: 

-- Xavier gave up initially but then was re-invigorated by the time Chapter 8 rolled around and he had the girlfriend in arm's reach
-- Xavier has thought of a new plan that he hasn't clued Jeremiah in on yet, one that doesn't involve spaceship repair
-- Xavier has in fact given up but doesn't want Jeremiah to know (or any other Backtracker who's still loyal to the mission) so he's lying in Chapter 8

I don't believe that Xavier can give up the mission, assuming that mission is to yank the entire option away from the creation of Philos / the destruction of Earth. his entire being is focused on saving the girlfriend from that horrible destiny of sacrifice that will descend upon her if Philos is created, but that also clashes with what he tells Jeremiah about how he will make sure he gets them all home.

So you can't go home to a home that doesn't exist, therefore Philos MUST come into being in some manner. But he has some sort of plan to keep the girlfriend safe, regardless? 

The more I think about this specific plot point, the more tangled it seems. Unless his promise to get everyone home was a lie, then that sort of collapses that down a little bit. 

----

i find it so funny when i read my stuff afterwards how many spelling mistakes and dropped sentence fragments i have. i guess the mind-to-typing-fingers connection is spotty at best.

[Coldsaturn]

Do we even want to get into the time paradox where if you delete the future variables that will create your existence, you will disappear?
If Philos is never created then Xavier's mom will never birth him, and then what will happen to Xavier the time traveler (and everyone else coming from Philos) who has now deleted his own means of existence?

[ChicletPrime]

technically, you could say that Xavier's mom and dad are immaterial to anything. If he's like the rest of the love interests, his entire being is bound up in the time vortex centered on the girlfriend-incarnation. there is no version of Philos that can exist without Xavier being a part of it, no matter where his origin point starts. if one timeline collapses, he simply exists in another.

if Xavier wipes out the timeline where Philos demands power to live and the girlfriend is tapped to supply it, then by default another timeline will rise in its place where Philos either does not demand power to live or the girlfriend is never found to be the sacrifice. Xavier himself will always be there.

if Xavier wipes out even the potential of Philos, then it will still exist on some series of decisions that lead to it, so again, Xavier will always be there to return. what he's looking for then would be to prevent Philos for himself and the girlfriend so they exist where Philos does not, but his spaceship could jump everyone else back to THEIR Philos to continue their lives there if they want. Meanwhile, he traipses back to the timeline where Philos never arises and continues his (and her) existence there.

this is brain breaking.

[Coldsaturn]

In my head /our/ Xavier would still disappear though. Like in his KOD myth, the Xavier that was living the Dark Souls branch straight up disappeared when MC collapsed that timeline. That was a Xavier who we only knew for a short while because the one we meet on Earth is the one from the surviving branch that then went on to time travel. And if Xavier collapses the timeline that will birth him, yeah he will reincarnate again just like MC reincarnates, but then are you the same person if all your memories and experiences are different?
This touches a bit on the topic of "Do you consider all MC's reincarnations the same person, or different people?" and I know that I tend to think of them as separate identities so long as there's no memory bleed through.

[ChicletPrime]

so you're of the feeling that Xavier's ultimate goal (assuming we're reading him right) will wipe out his own existence and he's made his peace with it?

The Dark Souls Timeline was Xavier's end, but not his beginning, so that doesn't really count since it doesn't pinch point his actual reality. It's just a dead end that collapses - the main street, as it were, is perfectly intact. and technically wouldn't there be as many timelines where Xavier exists as timelines where he does not? There will always be a Xavier who will advance enough to try this plan of backtracking.

just like there will be a timeline where he is never born. or a timeline where he never meets the girlfriend. or a timeline where he meets the girlfriend but saves her with that protocore. or a timeline where he meets the girlfriend but doesn't understand what's happening to her and never figures out the central horror of Philos.

this timeline is one of them where Xavier exists, discovered the error at the heart of his world and figured out time travel to do something about it. the Traceback ship goes through time, but there's no mention of skipping realities so maybe that is blocked to him. maybe he's angling to have Philos be born through a different set of initial conditions, that doesn't set up the sacrifice requirement. maybe even just taking down EVER at the very start, removing them from the picture will set up Philos to be nurturing instead of carnivorous.

Also, the fact that we haven't had a version of Xavier from the "past" is fun to think about. does he only ever exist from his initial future starting point? or have we met him also over and over and over again and its only on Philos that destiny kicks in?

i lean a little more into "same person / no different" i guess. if given different conditions, you make different choices and your life changes, but you are still you. reincarnation carries the soul forward, growing as it learns, but you are still yourself. if you're completely different people each time, then what exactly is moving from life to life?

[ChicletPrime]

NEXT!

Chapter 5 - Long Lost Treasures

• Before reading... Zayne?
  
• Huh. Okay, we got us a kidnapping/potential murder victim. Codename "Raincoat" has a film director named Tony in the truck of his car. He normally doesn't target public figures but EVER made it worth his while it sounds like.
  
• So he hacks Tony's phone looking for recordings, which apparently implicate Tony for "knowing too much" which means he's even higher on Ever's target list than before. He's supposed to delete the files, toss the phone and then get rid of Tony but he opts instead to play the voice recordings he's found (is he thinking he's got blackmail material then?)
  
• Mention of Thomas. Tony was preparing a fantasy film using Lemuria as the setting. Ah, so this is Rafayel-centric.  He's recording.. ah, he's talking to Rafayel (hi, boyfriend!) who was apparently fingered by (nice) the Deepspace Acadey as a Lemurian expert or something, which Rafayel completely denies. He's "just a painter". uh huh.
  
• Rayafel denies his ocean paintings are anything special and tells Tony to go back to the Academy if he's all fired up about Lemuria, as they have an archeological team searching for the ruins.
  
• Now it sounds like Tony is interviewing the archeo team. This handyman guy stayed on the ship and sorted the relics and didn't go diving himself. The actual dive team was Eleanor (team lead), Fred, Yennifer and Prof. Sean.
  
• sidenote: Yennifer? did she wiggle out from under Geralt's leash again?
  
• So the team sets up an underwater base of sorts with communication to the ship above. They went down in the submersible on the 20th and were supposed to come back up on the 4th, but didn't actually come back until the 11th, a week later than schedule. The handyman was never given an explanation as to why, but says that he heard that Eleanor and Fred (both senior members) left the Deepspace Academy the very next day after 'an argument'
  
• Oh, then Yennifer disappears a few days after that. There was a deleted video clip on her camera which is a no no for site research. Handyguy can't reach her and Prof Sean won't talk either, hanging up on him.
  
• Now Tony is making his own audio notes - he just wanted research for a film, but he puts together that Eleanor, Fred and Yennifer haven't just left the Academy, they've vanished. Now he's thinking of pivoting his film into a mystery movie, yadda yadda and that he has to get to Prof Sean before he too goes missing.
  
• Aaaand he gets to Sean's house and.. Sean is packing up to leave! And says he's no longer with the Deepspace Academy either.
  
• What the hell did they find or film down there in the ruins?
  
• So Sean is willing to talk about what he saw, as if its for a movie it can just be treated as a story (and I guess he doesn't get laughed at during Academy conferences as the kooky one).
  
• So on the 20th (the start of the dive) they encountered a whirlpool (unexpected) and all their sensors malfunctioned (as they do in whirlpools) and everyone got scared (naturally). They were eventually guided to the Lemurians ruins by a school of blue fish (as one does).
  
• Sean is very invested in the knowledge that the fish were sentient. Tony is less convinced.
  
• "They were real fish with their own thoughts and feelings."  Huh. I guess the fish made a serious impression?
  
• And Sean remembers nothing of the ruins themselves, only that they 'saw someone' who was 'dressed like us'. But Sean's not sure and he can't say and he's really got to go now...
  
• So, was like Rafayel just cruising underwater in his bohemian painter outfit and suddenly all these archeologists submersify themselves across his sight line?
  
• Double huh. Tony points out that according to the Academy report, the topside ship never lost communication with the submersible, but Sean says the sensors all malfunctioned pretty much right away. So who was communicating with the ship?
  
• Door slams. Exit Sean.
  
• Tony now pins his hopes on the deleted video recording on Yennifer's camera being restored.
  
• Next recording: Tony has found an old friend to try and salvage the recording. He was only able to restore one frame of the footage (well, this guy isn't very good, is he? oh. muahah! next line: "I'm self-taught!" well, yay for him that he was able to get a frame out of it then, good job little dude). He was able to restore the call history though, and whoever was on it talked really loudly.
  
• So Tony says the mysterious fifth person was.. a skeleton! o0o0o0ooo0oo. And the skeleton has a Protcore equipped weapon. which is impossible as Protocore weapons were only invented in the last decade and this skeleton is sitting in the ruins of long lost Atla... Lemuria. So there we go, yet more confirmation that protocores have been around for yoinks and that Lemuria used them.
  
• Now we've found Fred's phone?
  
• Fred has left an impassioned voicemail to Eleanor. He's out, he's leaving, he wants nothing to do with Lemuria, any implications that protocore weapon has for the EVER group, and he'd like to get ahead of the (EVER?) stalkers that are going after them. He calls Yennifer and Sean 'naive' for thinking its Lemuria's god, no, its just somebodies spying on them, nothing supernatural at all.
  
• Eleanor is still looking into Lemuria and Sean is begging her on this voicemail to stop as it will endanger all their lives.
  
• That's the last of the recording and now we're back to Codename: Raincoat. The way this reads, it sounds like Tony dug up the protocore weapon that was in the Lemurian ruins? and that's how he got on EVER's execution list. But just as Raincoat is about to toss the phone 'a flame materializes on his palm' and the phone screen shatters.
  
• Hiya, Rafayel!
  
• Raf's voice is described as 'silky as brocade' and i love that for all of us.
  
• Raincoat freezes as he realizes that the person in front of him had to have walked out of the sea as that's the only place that wasn't in his line of sight.
  
• Nice! Okay, so there's some posturing and Rafayel points out that Raincoat can't continue too much longer before he also ends up knowing too much for EVER's liking and will end up on the hit list himself. Raf offers to be Raincoat's employer instead, if he hands over any information out a single name (guess who's!) that might be on that list.
  
• Raincoat hands over an address to Raf to meet the person who has the full execution list as Raincoat only has the names he's personally been given. The address is, o0o0o0o, at The Nest.
  
• Mysterious Nest Guy With The Possible Jewelry Box Ahoy!
  
• wow, Rafayel boldly says artists don't have enemies and that the girl is his lover.
  
• Apparently Rafayel is sixth on the hit list himself. nice! Is Lumiere on top?
  
• Raf is miffed he's so low. Aww, buddy! Maybe you need to put your back into it. Lumiere's only been on the job for 200 years and he's light(cough) years ahead of you. 
  
• And yeah, Rafayel has his own murder list too and Raincoat doesn't rank on it. Yet.
  

I feel like I learned a bunch of stuff here, only I don't know what exactly.