crowspace | call me out v. 15.0

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call me out v. 15.0

Call out one of the characters from my muselist with a starter, a prompt, a general 'hey can we do something with these characters' comment, a smoke signal, etc., and I'll get back to you with some kind of RP thread!

Old CR, new CR, assumed CR, canonmates, AU, crossover, whatever, it's all good.

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"What did you dream of, Lady Mercy?"

You could just ask me, you know.

[Lancelot ignores him.]

You gave the king something to make her sleep.

[A dream, a memory, a point of connection between Servant and Master... and Servant, now that there's a third point in their little tangle.]

Then she didn't wake up, and you told everyone it was a curse? They all seemed really upset...

"You did what."

See, when you say it like that, it sounds bad. But she was fated to die, and I kept her alive in a pleasant dream. It isn't my fault that I couldn't explain that properly to everyone.

[Innocently:] Why not?

[It's a genuine question, is the worst part. Why couldn't he just explain that to everyone, if it was all right and it wasn't his fault? She sincerely believes he must have a good explanation for all of it, and she really does want to know.]

Well, because my king wasn't the only person I wanted to protect? I put you inside that dream too, Lancelot. And Bedivere, and Gawain, and everyone else important who would have died otherwise. And if you know that the dream is a dream, that makes it less stable.

So it wouldn't work right if I told them.

Okay... [Mercy blinks, replying in the slow tone of someone puzzling something out in their head.] That explains why you couldn't tell them about the dream, I guess, but...

Why did you need to put them in a dream to protect them in the first place? If you knew she was fated to die, couldn't you just warn her about that? ...Can fate not find people when they're asleep?

[LISTEN, SHE DOESN'T KNOW HOW DESTINY WORKS, SHE'S NOT GOING TO RULE IT OUT.]

Telling her wouldn't have changed anything. Camelot would still have fallen the way it did for Lancelot here. She would have died on that same bloody hill.

The surest way to avoid fate is to avoid as much contact with the world as possible.

[In the words of philosophers and five-year-olds everywhere:] Why not?

If the king and all the knights knew what was going to happen to them, couldn't they choose differently?

Why don't you ask one of them? Lancelot?

"I-"

Even without clairvoyance, you must have known that your affair would be discovered eventually. And that in Artoria's position, she would have to punish her unfaithful wife to maintain the dignity of the king - and that your interference could only end badly. But you still took that path.

Hmm-mm... [She frowns thoughtfully.] I'm not sure having bad long-term planning skills is the same thing as ignoring a direct statement of fact, but I guess I see your point.

Putting someone in eternal enchanted sleep without their permission does feel a little, um... [She makes a deeply awkward noncommittal hand gesture, as though trying to convey a concept she has no real natural understanding of.] Ethically sticky, though?

I'm not very good at ethics, that's not really my field- [Yeah, we probably could have guessed that around the time you chopped a woman's hand off, Mercy.] -but I'm almost sure that's the sort of thing you need patient consent for.

Ideally in writing! It's always fine if they sign a form.

[NO IT'S NOT????]

Hypothetically, would you have been willing to sign something for that, Sir Lancelot? [He's probably the expert on his own bad decisions, right?]

[...then again, there are actual Arthurian scholars. She wonders what it would be like to know someone out there has a PhD in analyzing the bad choices you made.]

Edited (words) 2022-02-11 02:55 (UTC)

"Of course not. That's not much better than dying."

It's quite a bit different, I think you'll find. Death isn't nearly as pleasant of a dream as the ones I give.

Well, it's not like you can know for sure without dying- wait, do you know? [Servants are summoned after their death, right?]

[Frantically flipping to a new page of her notebook and grabbing a pen.] Do you remember what being dead was like? Can you explain it in detail?

"No, I can't."

Servants are copies from the Throne of Heroes, so whatever afterlife you'd expect for the original versions, they wouldn't have experienced it.

Aw... [She dutifully makes a note of this and puts the journal back down.]

[Looks like if she wants to study the afterlife she's just going to have to commit necromancy the old-fashioned way.]

So I guess if we can't confirm whether or not eternal sleep would be better than death, objectively, it's really a matter of personal preference.

Well, I think it's better. I can't visit you if you're dead, but I can still see you if you're sleeping.

That is true... wait, no it isn't! [Pointing at Saber.] He's dead and you're talking to him right now!

Maybe you could try studying necromancy or summoning? [THAT'S MUCH WORSE.]

"That's even worse!"

See? He agrees that my way is better.

"...Necromancy is a very low bar to compare it to."

Why?

[Mercy looks completely baffled.]

The whole Servant summoning ritual is basically necromancy with training wheels already, and you seem fine now! I haven't had to ward off even one vengeful ghost, and no one's become a Dead Apostle or anything.

[Ever the honest soul, she pauses and conscientiously adds:] That I know of.

Heroic Spirits are closer to copies of the original person rather than true ghosts. Whatever happens to me or to Lancelot here won't disturb 'the real' us. With true necromancy, you could permanently damage someone's soul with a small mistake.

[He doesn't sound judgmental about it - it's a good question, and he's trying to explain the answer.]

Surgery can kill someone with a small mistake, too, but we still do that!

[Maybe not quite as often as you do surgery, though, Mercy...]

What if someone practiced on animals until they were really good at it, and then started trials with human test subjects? That way, you'd have a much higher safety margin!

[If nothing else, that probably explains a lot about how the three-headed cat happened.]

Edited 2022-04-17 19:48 (UTC)

"Isn't surgery usually saved for lifethreatening cases to begin with?"

Not the way Mercy does it! She's very capable, you know.

[Mercy blushes a little and smiles happily, pleased at the compliment.] It's my specialty!

But I guess it would have been a lot less common in your time... It's a lot safer these days, now that we know more about the human body! And also sometimes the inhuman body, but there's a lot less published literature about that.

I have written some papers on disease crossover in shapeshifters, though! [It's hard out there for a werewolf. Especially one with mange.]

See, isn't our Master accomplished? You're in excellent hands, Lancelot.

"...I don't know about that."

[Well, hand. The one in this jar, specifically.]

Medically speaking, I promise to provide you the absolute best of care! [She smiles proudly, then looks a little sheepish.] ...For everything else, all I can promise is to do my best. But I am going to do that!

Which I guess means that we should probably figure out what we're going to do next.

Good point. We can afford to be a little more aggressive now than we could before - unless anyone else has formed an alliance, we have numbers on our side.

[...an alliance is a weird way to describe this situation, but go off.]

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mementomoritz - 2022-10-22 23:06 (UTC) - Expand

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