Apocalypse || Sen Riqeaux Castle

[eternitymods]

Who: The Heroes of Light
When: April 11th, 16:00
Where: Sen Riqeaux Castle
What: Bahamut's summoning has been determined to occur above the skies of Sen Riqeaux. An airship piloted by Biggs and Wedge will be picking up the Heroes of Light at the Curti Center before stopping by the major locations where other Heroes of Light are, finally taking them to Sen Riqeaux Castle. Multiple NPCs from the Curti Center are with the Heroes of Light for this expedition.
Warnings/Notes: The end of the world.

Comments

A million Years Late

[littlemhigan]

CASTLE EXPEDITION #1 WILL CONSIST OF

Castor, Corrin, Selphie, Asgore, Uendo, Terra, S'reee, Sephiroth, Serge, Kuja and Kanji and GOD I HOPE I DIDN'T MISS ANYONE.

[eternitymods]

Exploring the castle isn't all that difficult. There is no one left aside from a few Calamity Monsters, that can either be attack or avoided. No, the real difficulty is getting the exploration done within less than two hours before Bahamut destroys the castle... And not alerting the wrong kind of person.

Upon reaching the pathway leading toward the empress's personal quarter, they'll be faced with closed lock. The door looks sturdy but it can definitely be blown off, if so needed.

[bladeofconquest]

Corrin examines the lock carefully, an apprising look in her eyes. She turns back to the others.

"I don't suppose anyone knows how to pick one of these?" She asks. Blowing down the doors might attract unwanted attention after all, no matter how empty the castle seems.

[neverbeamemory]

Being as tall as he is, Sephiroth lets the other -shorter- members of the 'recon' team get closer to the door and the lock if they want to. He's hanging back a little, ever cautious. The loops thus far are only underlining the need for great care in what they meddle with.

He could always take the shortcut back to the start, of course, but there was always the chance there wouldn't be another; even if the cycle around the last three days did seem to keep going.

"Could do with a way to uncover any trap on it, first-"

[whirluendo_of_puns]

"Any Geomancers or Ninjas here?" Uendo asks, looking around the group. "I have plenty of hairpins if anyone wants them for lockpicks, but nothing for spotting traps, I'm afraid."

Their time limit is putting him on edge. Sure, they could just come back again in the next loop, but frankly he'd rather avoid that if possible. They'll probably die soon to the castle being destroyed around them and that's not the kind of death he wants to experience twice.

[eternitymods]

Once they'll have decided on the best way to go about opening the door, they'll find themselves in the Empress's room. Disappointingly enough, there is hardly anything special to be found in her room. It is elegant enough to be a noblewoman's room, but not decorated to the extent one could expect from an Empress. Furthermore, it's pretty messy and not well organized. Surely the own of the room would have no difficulties finding what they need: intruders, not so much.

Pictures on the walls appear to be of her family when she was a child and of her prime minister. There are also a few pictures depicting faces and locations that do not belong to Vaikuntha. There are a lot of books, all kinds on her shelves, but none appear to be of interest as to what's happening.

There is something they can find on the table next to her bed though: an old and used iMog Slate.

[bladeofconquest]

Corrin surveys the room with some surprise. It's quite a bit messier than she would have expected from an empress, even one who is currently trying to unmake all of reality. "Guess the castle cleaning staff doesn't get to come in here." She notes.

She does, however, zero in on the iMog lying abandoned on the bedside table. Crossing the room, Corrin picks it up. "Hey, it's Ramaa's iMog; there could be valuable information hidden on this." Normally she'd feel bad about trying to snoop through someone else's slate, but the circumstances here and the person it belongs to are extenuating enough that she would do this guilt-free. She taps the screen. "...Blast, password-locked. I suppose that figures." Corrin quickly tries a few obvious ones; maybe since Ramaa was obviously not expecting people to be snooping in her personal quarters, her password security is similarly lax? But B-A-H-A-M-U-T and K-A-L-K-I are duds. "I don't know how much time we have left, but we can't pass up this chance. Any ideas?" She asks, waving the slate at the others.

[acapriciousreaper]

Kuja frowns. "It could be anything, frankly. Although who knows, Ramaa doesn't seem the type to care about her secrets being uncovered at this point." He considers, for a moment, his conversation with the woman. "Try 'melodiesofeternity', for a lark."

[littlemhigan]

"Or 'life' or 'death'. I seem te recall hearin' her yammer about one or the other." Castor mutters, picking her way through the room, kicking about loose clothing and rifling through books, boxes and anything else that comes about. She's trying very hard not to look out the window.

[boomchucka]

"Maybe it's something else related to Crystallis," Selphie offers from the edge of the bed she's looking underneath of for traps. "Like 'crystalresearcher' or one of the others asterisks. It's worth a shot, if you ask me."

It could be just about anything.

[acapriciousreaper]

"Melodies of death... isn't Kalki the goddess of death, and also involved in the Bard Asterisk? Yes... yes, try that."

It's a long shot, but maybe...

[bladeofconquest]

While some of the others look around, Corrin dutifully punches in each suggestion.

"Melodiesofeternity's a no-go...so is Melodiesoflife..." She mutters. Well, might as well finish off the trifecta before she moves onto Selphie's suggestions. "-f-d-e-a-t-h...oh!" She says in surprise as the last one clears. "Melodiesofdeath did it! We're in!" Corrin looks up at Kuja and Castor. "Nicely done, you two."

Corrin turns her attention back to the now-unlocked iMog. "Let's see here..." She ignores the Moogle function, since that can't possibly end well for them, but instead her eyes go to the MogNet function. "We've got MogNet, Jobs, Gear, Skills, Map, and Datalog. ...Let's start with the Datalog." Her journal, her most private thoughts, the things intended for no one else's eyes but her own.

Corrin accesses the Datalog tab and then holds the slate out so some of the others can get a better look at it too.

[neverbeamemory]

While the others in the group work to get into the conveniently-placed iMog, Sephiroth is taking a much wider look around the -as Corrin exactly implied- chaotically untidy room. He pauses to consider a few of the photos on the wall, in particular, those with backdrops he doesn't recognize. He remembers that manor they'd gone into -rather early in his tenure here- with the ghost problem, there had been pictures there that hadn't fit too; could be Crystallis?

He knows that the Dream Width has surrendered all sorts of items from various Home Worlds, so far. It stands to reason that these items could indeed have been retrieved the same way.

He's just gotten to the bookshelf when it becomes clear that they're into the device, so Sephiroth turns his attention towards the others gathered; cooly striding over to peer over a shoulder from his height and get a look -any intelligence, any tiny detail they could glean here, despite it not being immediately useful this loop- could be crucial overall.

Sephiroth doesn't let himself become too engrossed though, every few moments flicking his sharp awareness back towards the door they'd entered through; not that it would matter, on the eve of this battle they were all dead, regardless.

"-we're somehow going to need to gain a copy of this data-"

[acapriciousreaper]

"Damn," Kuja mutters, glancing through the datalog. "It's connected, it's all connected and they're all from Crystallis. She didn't lie. Unless this is another cleverly-planted clue, but how could she have known in advance about the loops? No, this is genuine, I think."

He takes his time rummaging though drawers, examining everything, no matter how inconsequential. "How she finds this even remotely livable, I've never been able to understand people content to have rooms that look like this- but no, unfortunately we're going to have to commit it to memory, unless somebody knows a way to transport objects through time."

[whirluendo_of_puns]

"No worries there. Memorizing things is my job." While he's reading over Corrin's shoulder, Uendo gives Patches and Kisegawa a mental nudge. So long as they're both paying attention, they'll be able to help him remember any information that slips his mind.

The first entry is... difficult to read. He doesn't want to feel sorry for Ramaa, not after all this, but... It's hard not to when you've been there yourself. Best not to think too deeply about it right now...

"So Meghamaal and Balahaka are both in on it, after all..." he murmurs, scanning the datalog. "If I'm understanding this right, the Empress thinks what happened in Crystallis will eventually happen again. That whole 'cycle of death' mess, worlds getting consumed, the whole shebang. Even if it'll be thousands or millions of years from now. That's why she wants to end everything, not just herself."

[singerofspells]

"That's entropy," S'reee said. Given that wizards had to come to terms with entropy existing, woven into the multiverse at the beginning by One who should have known better. Given a wizard's response to it was to do whatever they could to slow entropy down, someone just deciding to end everything was alien.

The Lone Power was clearly having fun with the Empress.

"I suppose having the memories of other lives has given her the ability to consider timescales that long."

[bladeofconquest]

"Meghamaal's the Prime Minister, right?" Corrin asks. "I don't know who this Balahaka is, though." Privately however, she agrees with Kuja; this level of untidiness would never be tolerated back home, even from a member of the Royal Family, especially a member of the Royal Family. If her quarters were ever in such a state of disarray, it would probably give Jakob a heart attack.

Having reached the end of the available Datalog entries, Corrin switches to the MogNet tab as Ramaa's private messages, seeing that as the next most-useful tab, keeping the slate held out so Uendo and the others can better read it. She is immediately assaulted by a parade of emoticons that clash heavily with the solemn and dignified Empress Ramaa...which is probably exactly what she wants people to think.

"Wow, okay, if we needed anymore confirmation Ramaa is our mystery hacker, here it is." She says. "She's definitely not as formal in private as she is in public." She continues to scan the entries. A message from someone named Hunk, a thread with Sylvarie and another native named Lean, a message from Tyzias on Starlight...Corrin skips these relatively quickly to focus on Ramaa's private messages with Meghamaal and Balahaka. "It looks like there's some dissension amongst Ramaa and her allies; Balahaka appears to be all in on this, but Meghamaal seems to be trying to veer her away from this plan." Though not very successfully. "He doesn't want her to do this." It almost seems by times Ramaa doesn't want to either, but is so consumed by despair and hopelessness that she sees no other path.

Balahaka's bloodlust and apparent rage strike an uncomfortable chord with Corrin though; the way he talks so casually about violence and how quick he is to suggest killing Meghamaal remind her too much of her father's henchman Hans; the sort of soldier who joins up for the pillaging and the killing more than anything else. But far more dangerous. "Balahaka's going to be a problem, I think." She notes. "We're going to have to try and move quickly after we best Ramaa to contain him as well."

[neverbeamemory]

By the time that the iMog is switched to the Mognet private messages, Sephiroth finds himself frowning deeper as his thoughts connect the dots between what he understands of life-mechanics from his own Planet, and that which Ramaa is undeniably attempting to undo from the platform of this one; one that was created from fragments of potentially millennia's worth of other universes.

The scale of it not being outside of Sephiroth's comprehension, not at all, but more to the fact he's never been so placed as to have the need to consider the wider cycles of existence. More significant to him personally, however; he's been there on that all-destructive spectrum, enough to know how inevitably it's going to end for her...

"Well, that's something to keep in mind, bearing in mind, of course, that dissension doesn't necessarily line up for all-out betrayal." He nods in accordance with Corrin, taking the chance to once more peer about the bedroom.

"It seems that the two of them represent some sort of a balance, which in itself is reflective of the terms for all existence. Arguably brought over directly from their former roles on Crystallis."