text | day 008 | HE412T

[timaeus]

[This text post comes after a few hours of radio silence following Dirk's first messages.]

Surprise, I survived.
"I told you so" etc etc.
Turns out the locals are pretty chill, all things considered.
I've learned their language and they have accepted me as one of their own.
By which I mean I'm cooling my heels in one of their longhouses for the rest of the night after they explained their whole Lost-adjacent dogma to me.
And I learned some shit you folks will probably be interested to hear about, judging by the fat wad of nothing y'all were able to tell me.
Key takeaways:
One, this particular group of natives speaks Morse code.
Tongue clicks for dots and hums for dashes.
Might wanna brush up on it if you don't feel like getting speared should you have a run-in with them.
And two, the people responsible for whatever this is are somewhere to the southeast, presumably on another island.

Comments

BT612L; text

[ichoosefight]

Congrats on not dying
Especially since you just got here a few hours ago

So what's the dogma then?

[timaeus]

The Glencolans messed with some otherworldly shit and the gods burned the whole world in return, with the island only being protected from it by some kind of forbidden knowledge the Glencolans had gained.
This is from the same people that described a plane as an "ark", so take that with a grain of salt.
Then again, there's that black shit on the horizon, so I wouldn't entirely rule out the possibility of the rest of the world being destroyed.
Anyway.
They call themselves the Pacairs and the general vibe is "Pacairs good and pious, Glencolans wicked blasphemers".
There's more involving a Great Whale god that supposedly spared their ancestors and kept the Glencolans away after their exile, but I'm trying to sift the more concrete details from the mythologizing.

[ichoosefight]

Interesting... could mean nuclear war. A great whale might be a ship, especially if the call a plane an ark. An aircraft carrier, a floating island, submarine, maybe even a spaceship.

Or they could be completely literal and we're dealing with supernatural or alien forces powerful enough to be called gods.

Of course none of this matters unless we're able to stay alive long enough to do something with it. Any chance they'd be open to helping us survive?

[timaeus]

All solid possibilities.
No idea what they're expecting just yet, but I figured it wouldn't be very tactful to just barrel in and start asking for favors.
They gave me dinner, though, so that's something.
I'll see how things are looking tomorrow.

[ichoosefight]

At least it seems like they don't think of us as invaders.

Don't ask outright, ofc. Can't expect them to treat us as a group, and we probably wouldn't want them to. It would be nice to have allies though.

Good luck. Not sure what you could do about it if things got dicey, but please continue to not die?

[timaeus]

If I get taken out by people wielding makeshift spears then, frankly, I deserve it.
It'd be a just death.
My karmic reward for sucking harder than a pornstar while the cameras are rolling.

[ichoosefight]

[ That makes her snort loudly. ]

idk, does that deserve a reward or a punishment? it's impressive either way

[timaeus]

We clearly have different definitions of impressive.

[ichoosefight]

Clearly? I can't help but be impressed by a certain degree of failure.

[timaeus]

Guess my standards for laughably stupid deaths are just a bit too high.

[ichoosefight]

..."Laughable" is really not the word I would use

[timaeus]

What can I say?
Death kind of loses its gravitas after the second decapitation.

[ichoosefight]

that's an alarming number

both of decapitations, and your limit for caring when people die

but it's better than 7,000 so I guess you have that going for you

[timaeus]

I care when people die.
But I'm talking about myself, not people.
And 7000 seems extreme enough to earn another exception to the rule.
At a certain point, numbers cease being tragedies and start being statistics.

[ichoosefight]

That's comforting on the one side and alarming on the other.

Granted I've only died once, and it was only for a couple of minutes, but it seems like it would be really bad to stop caring.

[timaeus]

I'm admittedly leaning into the self-destructive shit for the sake of humor, but it doesn't seem like an irrational progression to me.
Death is a one time thing for most people.
If a person comes to terms with their own death only to unexpectedly wake back up, the state of being at peace with it doesn't necessarily disappear.

[ichoosefight]

I guess it depends how much you're really at peace with it.

It may be natural, but it could still get you killed permanently. Or at least really mess you up mentally.

[timaeus]

I've never claimed to not be messed up mentally.

[ichoosefight]

I think the goal is to avoid getting more messed up.