The ending might be a bit weak, but I've had this sitting around for months, and it needed posted.
This is all meant as exposition and worldbuilding for the Post-Masquerade-Failure era of ETDP.
e: (Note, said failure was not caused by THE DEER)
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(account deleted)So how many parallel worlds where there's no Masquerade because the Foundation is dumb can we expect?
As for the story, it was a nice bit of world-building with some good descriptions (and hooray for bison!). I'm honestly just looking forward to more writing in this vein than actually caring very much about what happens next. +1
I, on the other hand, am being wracked by willthey-won'tthey tension between a golem and a silent bodyguard.
Just those two. This one in particular is actually less of "Normalcy has been broken" and more "the world is returning to the way it should be."
THE DEER was working with a traditional masquerade, where the Foundation is keeping everything secret. This deals with the masquerade as a metaphysical construct of the universe itself, and that the Foundation doesn't need to do much to maintain it besides continue acting like a spooky paragovernmental organization and the universe will handle the rest.
I've been waiting patiently for another tale in this canon. My patience was generously rewarded! Thank you.
E: inb4 Chris Farley jokes
This is a perfect storm of evocative writing, vivid setting and great characters. Loved the Srqnabotf reference (CORN LAND!) and the bison footnote blew my mind. I mean, with all this post-Breach, paranormal end of the world stuff going on, something anomalous happened that was actually good? Wow.
Poor Ahlama. ;_;
Ayup.
Post-Breach is something of a misnomer, because it wasn't really a super massive containment breach all at once. Well, it was and it wasn't.
In the ETDP universe, the masquerade is an actual part of the universe, a sort of magical law. It isn't the default, but was instead imposed on the world after the fall of the Daevas, simply because the world got that fucked up. This then became the Flood.
What we see here is more or less a return to ante-diluvian world: the Masquerade was strained too far and just shit the bed. The Scarlet King has still fucked up shit everywhere, but the Ways are opened up, magic is back, and the gods have woken up. Unfortunately, the Foundation depended on the Masquerade to function (It's how they got all their money and the like), and collapsed literally overnight. But, with reality re-asserting itself, it wasn't like how the typical scenario would play out. Scips might be instantly returned to their natural habitats. At least one site tore itself out of the ground because the ground it was on was/should have been a flying island.
Now, this was not as bad as one would expect, because while the baddies are out and about, the methods of disposing them are becoming increasingly commonplace.
But then again, the Masquerade was a lot of what was keeping the Scarlet King away from the Yesod-Baseline.
When, chronologically, did the Daevas fall in this timeline? Or does SCP-140 keep that fluid?
if your reading this your gay
The Daevas fell roughly 10,000 BC. And then the world got re-written. So everything is really up in the air and vague.
140 is the Daevas attempting to recreate themselves within the Masquerade. It is, effectively, a sort of safeguard they had, something that could rebirth them.
The process is imperfect of course, details don't match up and all that. The Chronicle can't overpower the Masquerade completely.
Hrm… it's alright, but I enjoyed it enough — in context of the previously read stories and some really goddamn neat details — to +1. But yeah, the ending is a bit weak, and it's often harder to follow than it needs to be. Still like it though.
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page revision: 2, last edited: 15 Jan 2023 15:06
