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arthur charles | etrian odyssey | ou

[Video]

[He's still sort of out of it, but... Arthur's got to get back out there sooner or later. All this trudging and moping isn't like him at all and it's starting to bug him. He's still less than adept with technology, so the video's awkwardly askew and sort of too close to his face - he's got it propped up on blankets, he's just lazing around in bed.

He's so homesick.]

Hey, I'm kinda curious. We're all from a whole bunch of different worlds, right? What are your homes like? I'll go first!

My world doesn't have stuff like these phones anymore. It did like a thousand years ago, but not now. I grew up in the Midgard Library. It's huge! Not quite as big as this place, but huge. It can operate like an independent country and there're more books than anywhere else in the world. The Library's whole mission is to gather and preserve all kinds of information, so it's full of students and crusty old professors, and everyone's really smart. It raises and educates orphans, too. I'm one of the Library's investigators, which means I get to go all over the world trying to discover stuff and solving mysteries! Only the Library's best get to be investigators!

[There....that should be fun. Get a little conversation going, hopefully positive stuff. There's a lengthy pause and furrowed brows before eh manages to shut it off. It's more graceful than most of his use of the network has been, so that's progress.]

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[While she can appreciate the interest in entertainment, Anya may be less interested in positive things.]

You grew up in a library? That's one of the more unfortunate upbringings I've heard of.

[....wait, what?]

Unfortunate? It was awesome! There were all kinds of classes and loads of people all the time. I'm pretty lucky I ended up there.

It's sad that you think that's some kind of privilege.

I grew up better fed and better educated than most people. Lots of kings and nobles send their kids to study for a while.

So yeah, it is. [What kind of world is this person from that that isn't privilege? Is it common, or do libraries just suck there?

He could talk about where he's really from, but that's a pretty depressing story.]

How's your world different?

My understanding is that children hate learning. Especially from crusty old professors.

I never did decide on the particulars of my childhood, though. We probably grew corn and had a dog, or something. I see that in a lot of movies.

[He blows a raspberry.] Learning, nah. Lessons are boring, but the learning part is awesome. 'Specially as an investigator! I get to go explore ruins and fight stuff!

[That last part's a little weird. Movies are those cool moving picture things, but...] Whaddaya mean decide on? You don't know?

Of course you'd get excited about fighting things. I bet you've never been stabbed.

I just said, we had a dog and grew corn. In fields. Corn fields. One time we discovered mysterious flattened circles in them and my parents, of which I had both, attributed it to aliens. These are things that definitely happened.

Nah, but not 'cause no one's tried. My team's me, a medic, and a protector, we all take care of eachother. But I've been burned, shocked, frozen, petrified, clawed, bitten, poisoned, and stuff, so it's not like I don't have experience.

Well, if you say so. Was farming any fun?

What are you, a slayer or something? A lot of those things are fatal to mortals.

No, it wasn't any fun. I left Indiana as quickly as possible and moved to a different small town in California which was still large enough to need 12 cemeteries.

[ It takes a while for him to even reply. Would Arthu even want to talk to him?

It isn't exactly something he's dealt with before - so he puts it off. But he does come back - ]

Guess names like that are popular. Once, there was a ... Holy Empire of Midgand, I think. Spanned across a bunch of islands. Royal family was... something Asgard, or so they would like to claim. There was a famous Claudin Asgard, he used to work with us seraphim.

[ Maybe Midgand was a bad choice - there was a nasty patch of memories involved, but the places? ]

Northgand had a volcano, that you could mine ore from, mix that ore with sulfur and get explosions bigger than the average fire seraph could produce. Just had to survive all the snow to get to it.

[Arthur's been fiddling with the phone; trying to work something he barely uses is hard. No luck getting a private call yet. He wishes Ricky were here, she could probably do it easy as breathing.

He's surprised to see Zaveid - surprised but glad. Arthur has his usual good cheer, almost to the point he might seem like he doesn't remember what happened. But it's just a little bit forced, his response a little delayed. That doesn't mean it isn't genuine.]

Islands, huh... Asgard sounds a little like Lagaard. High Lagaard's a city way in the north, in the mountains, back home, I've never been there. It's s'posed to be really snowy there, too.

[But that last part is what really gets his attention. Hell yeah.]

Volcanic ore and sulfur...that sounds awesome! I wonder if my world has stuff like that; my formulas would really pack a punch like that!

[ Well, hear. Zaveid doesn't show up well on video. ... As in, usually he can be onscreen and just isn't visible at all. ]

Yeah, hear the similarities a bit. [ ... Even if Asgard was some dude's family name rather than a place (currently-)- ]

.... Flamestone, I think they called it. Stuff had uses in heating and cooking over wood at the time. Kinda threw everything into a mess, that nasty cold moving in. [ ... and a bunch of demons taking over the town- ]

[See, hear, same difference really. If he sees a view that appears to be floating it's probably Zaveid, that's sorta like seeing him.]

I bet I could find all kinds of ways to use it. Nobody knows more about fire than me! ...Back home, anyway. [It's a lot harder to be a braggart when you're not limited to one world.] High Lagaard's always been cold, though. It's an Yggdrasil town, like Etria...

[Which. Has implications he's not going to think about right now.]

Etria's where I was right before coming here, on a mission.

[ Yggdrasil sounds familiar. Hadn't he heard Eizen go on about that once? Ah, no, it was probably different. No way that there would be trees like that everywhere, right? ]

Yup, sounds like Northgand. It got worse as time went on, cause Musiphe went to sleep. Used to be just kinda chilly and really likely to snow, buut then the icecaps near the volcano got... really nasty. Like, you don't bundle up just right and you'll probably loose fingers, nasty.

[ ... Not that it really bothered him much, the few times he went up there before everything got messy. ]

I was.... on Glenwood, over in Artorias' Throne again. Thousand years and a Lord of Calamity did a number on that place.....

Yikes, sounds like the Blizzard King moving in. But if he were there, the cold wouldn't be the biggest problem. Who's Musiphe? [Is Musiphe a dragon, dragons are bad news.]

A thousand years does a number on just about anything... [Tokyo. The crystallized walls, the trees... Gladsheim, and M.I.K.E., and Gungnir. He shakes it off.] Almost anything.

Musiphe..... Ah, to hear humans tell it, he's the first seraph to call forth fire. And if he actually wakes and moves about - y'know, wandering around - the world's gunna end. [ ... Well, Maotelus took the form of a dragon, but- ]

Really he's a seraph with a whole bunch of other seraphim serving him. Doesn't live or dwell on the surface at all, but instead lives in the Earthpulse... [ Throat noise, how does he explain that- ] The flow of mana through the world, that's the earthpulse. If it happens, somewhere in there it's recorded. The Five Lords live there. Harder to get messed with by humans, whether its intentional or not. On the other hand, without their shrines, harder to remember too.

I'm glad to be one of those 'almost', then~ [ ... Actually, Arthur, the differences in him now and him a thousand years ago- ]

Source of fire, huh? Awesome! [Fire's still the coolest. Granted, the elements he can wield are limited to fire, ice, and electricity. So wind isn't really second to fire.] World ending less awesome.

What's mana? My world doesn't have anything like that, just a lot of uncharted territory and unsolved mysteries, like Yggdrasil. Explorers like my guild fill in the blanks.

I have no idea why they think that? Just because the last time the four of them woke up, we had a couple thousand years worth of earth shifting in a couple hundred doesn't really mean the world's ending-

[ To humans, Zaveid, yeah. Yeah it kinda does. They do need food and shelter unlike you-

That... takes him a second. ]

It's the lifeblood of the world - or, well, sort of? It runs through everything, picking up the events of everything that lives on the surface, and it has pulse points, like humans have pressure points? Something nasty sitting on an earthpulse can effect the flow of all of it. Sometimes humans could feel it and decided a place was holy - not far off, an earthpulse point makes it easier to send thoughts or wishes to one of the Five Lords.

.... and its also what makes up seraphim. We're usually formed at earthpulse points. [ ... Yep, formed, not born- ]

That sounds like the end of the world to me. Humans are squishier than you, remember? 'As we know it' still counts.

...Cool. So you're like, made of magic? No parents or family or anything? Does that make you the planet version of a blood cell or something? Are the Five Lords guys like the brain?

Well, I guess you could call the earthpulse and whatever storm that was passing over at the time parents... but not really. There probably were and are other seraphim who formed at that point, but they're kinda just other people to me. But some seraphim do think of others as siblings, I've known at least a pair.

... I probably should'a stayed away from body analogies, huh?

As far as I know, no? The world does just fine in areas we don't live in. And the Lords mostly stick about keeping their blessings in place so.... our version of the starscourge doesn't get bad. [ OOPS... the topic they were avoiding... ]

Cool! [Found family is family too. And it's not something he'll admit, but it's sorta nice to find other people who don't have non-found family but don't care about that fact, too.]

Starscourge? [He didn't know what it was called, but...he's smart enough to put context clues together. He loses the jovial attitude. Dying again affected him more than the first time; he's still fine but...geez.] That was that thing last month, right?

[Awkward. He....probably ought to say something about that. What can he say though? It's okay? He's been on Zaveid's end of that before? He tried to hold still for him? He's not used to dealing with complex emotions.] I'm, uh, okay. After that.

Right~ I keep hearing about these 'in-laws' that humans get with families and, man, it doesn't sound like something I wanna stick around for. [ Zaveid that's marriage. ] I'll help kids that I come across get started, but kinda... going with the wind is my thing. [ And there's not even a note of pain to his voice on that anymore. Things that don't get across on video as a seraph, Arthur misses how his focus wanders- ]

.. yeah. That's what someone said, anyway.

[ How... indeed, complex emotions. Faint sound of hand running through hair, because... He's killed so many people he once knew, but... Its not like there was anything left of them. Nothing more than maybe him and a bottle and whatever his brain could cook up. ]

Oh? Well, Ozuma does good work! [ Taking it as a comment of there's no hint of starscourge or daemon left, rather than... something a little harder for him to hear, somehow. ]

[That gets him to laugh.] That's marriage! I've heard it's like prison, but you go in on your own!

[But we...kind of also have to deal with the elephant in the room, now that the serious stuff has surfaced.] Yeah, I guess so. ...I remember everything. Thank you.

[That...should be enough, right? To tell Zaveid where Arthur stands on the matter. He's not really interested in letting the whole castle know he died, but he wants to make sure Zaveid knows they're as cool as they ever were.]

A library, huh? Sounds like a place a friend of mine wouldn't mind living.

Me though? I'm from a place called New York... Well, the city. Big city, skyscrapers, the works. Although Central Park is a nice stretch of green in the middle of it.

New York, huh... What're skyscrapers like? The biggest cities back home are like... Armoroad, some of the other major ports...some of the capitals, around the castles, you know? They don't really have parks, a lot of the time, except for the gardens kept by kings and nobles and super rich folks.

I wish I could say Hyrule was peaceful... but if that was the case, I wouldn't be needed.

[Kind of quietly jealous about being able to live in a library, though. One wouldn't guess it, but Link is actually a pretty avid reader in his downtime.]

[...Ooh, a hero?]

Do you like being needed better? [No judgement here.] The Library mediates international disagreements sometimes. Tries to prevent wars. It's neutral ground.

What's Hyrule like?

I... wasn't expecting it, but I can't really imagine going back to the life I had after it's all over.

If it ever does end.

[That is one thing Link hopes for.]

Hmn. Hyrule is... vast. It's fields and rivers and forests and a massive lake. There's a few villages here and there, but the biggest population is Castle Town, attached to the palace of the Hyrulean royalty.

So find something new to do once it's over. It's a whole world, right?

[The philosophy of an explorer: there's always a horizon. Chase adventure wherever it leads. Death catches up eventually, but that's no reason to stay put.]

Ooh, a castle, huh? Have you been there? What's your favorite place like?

It is. Something I can think about later, though...

[Right now he's more focused on making sure he can get Hyrule out of the clutches of Zant and the Twilight.]

I was supposed to go there before... before Zant took it over. I've been in parts of it since then, though. I imagine it's nicer when it's not being held by a tyrant.

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