network } audio; un: panoptes

[sisterswitch]

Hey, everyone - Jack here. Or, I guess some of you might know me as “that evil lying bitch from Dualis who only cares about herself.”

[ahem, that’d be jane. not that jack’s still holding a grudge or anything.]

Anyway, the important thing here is that Navi asked me to pass on a message to the group, which is that they’ve picked up on a passenger who is in a great deal of distress but too far away to get a clear link of communication. In other words, one of our merry little band is missing and having an aggressively bad time way out in the woods.

So, consider this a roll call. Time is meaningless out here in the void, so nobody knows if it’s 10 o’clock, but do you know where your partner is? Who’s missing, and who wants to go rescue them from the big bad scary possibly haunted forest?

Comments

[11calls]

Are you not human?

[Please don't be a demon.]

[sisterswitch]

Nope! I’m Eshmaki. Most people don’t know what that is, so the easiest shorthand is to just say I’m a monster. Oh, but I don’t bite unless requested, so if you’re not into girls, you have nothing to worry about.

[11calls]

I mean fair. It’s not that I’m not into girls it’s more that things are...complicated honestly.

Why a monster?

[sisterswitch]

[ah, well. noted for later, just in case things become uncomplicated.]

Well, because that's what we are. Boogeymen, dragons, giants, krakens, gorgons - you name it, we've got it. Different types come from different families, but we're all monsters in the end - the Dark Mother's children.

[jack sounds entirely matter-of-fact about all of this, no trace of sensationalism or shame. being a monster isn't an inherently bad thing, in her view.]

[11calls]

[And of course, Alex is insanely curious.]

The Dark Mother?

[sisterswitch]

The mother of all monsters. She's had many names throughout various histories and mythologies around the world - you might've heard of Lilith, for example, or Echidna, or Tiamat. Whatever you call her, we monsters are all her children.

[11calls]

[Alex is just going to go pale and drop her device.]

Tiamat?

[sisterswitch]

[jack ... doesn't seem to notice.]

Oh, you've heard of her! That's neat. Most people haven't - they'll maybe recognize Lilith from this old music festival they had back in the Nineties called Lilith Fair, but most of the time, nobody has any idea what I'm talking about when I mention the Dark Mother's names. So have you studied ancient Babylonian culture, or are you a D&D nerd?

[11calls]

Um.

[Alex fumbles with this for a moment, her hands twisting and she swallows before she goes with the most direct reasons for Alex's fear of the goddess and why this unsettles her so.]

Strictly speaking? Neither. Um, in my story I'm following a Cult that worships Tiamat and who are trying to bring forward demons using kids in order to destroy the world.

[sisterswitch]

[and here's jack sighing loudly.]

Well, that's a lot less cool. Seriously, why are people like this? I've been an atheist for a long time, and about half of my reasoning for it is because I can't stand the fan clubs. Why the hell would Tiamat want people to destroy the world? She literally created the world!

[11calls]

They think that she would want a world of monsters, like she had before she was defeated by Marduk. Somehow they think what she created in her grief and rage is more important than her love.

[sisterswitch]

The world is already full of monsters! Just because we're not out here waving Monster Pride flags and throwing parades doesn't mean we don't exist! [she sighs loudly.] These people are morons, and you can quote me on that.