thefarshore | HEAVEN'S BBS

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HEAVEN'S BBS | TEXT

Posted: May 8th
From: Nightshade

How scan you use this thing without toucvhing it all the time
?

Also how often do we need to goto the human wold? It's awful tethered and I don't know how anyone cn stand it!

[This elf needs a stylus or someone to show her how to do something other than text stat. At least the autocorrect is picking up most of the errors, but... yeah.]

Have moist of you been human before coming here?, I have no memories , but I still know I'm not. I'm supposed to help humans bit I'm not really sure why. Why do we help people? What purpose dies it serve?

[She's 100% serious. Helping humans seems to be her one purpose now, and her god seems really keen on it too, but she still has no idea why.]

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By using the voice or video functions instead. They're not hard to find.

Most of us were human before coming here, but there's plenty of people who weren't. Other than the gods here who were always gods, I've met reapers and constructs before.
If you want to be pragmatic about it, answering human prayers increases their faith in the heavens or your god specifically, and supposedly that belief does something to make us stronger. Or at least, that's what I've heard others say about it.

[The person he discussed it with might be gone now, but he certainly remembers the conversation.]

Wait

[At first there's a very brief snatch of a video. But the mechanics of glamour are such that it relies on the other person watching, and it's also really not helped by getting transmitted through electromagnetic signals. So for a moment there is a distorted blur of different faces blending into one another, the whole thing looking like some rather tacky 90's video editing. In between those images, it's possible to glimpse a flat, triangular face with huge eyes.

Then it cuts out and switches to voice.]

...stupid things. [The voice sounds impatient and cold.]

I... appreciate the information, though I have no idea what reapers and constructs are. [A brief, calculating pause.] And what you said last makes sense, I suppose, but wouldn't fear be more effective?

[Shun being Shun, he's paying attention when the images change, and he recoils slightly at the sight of the flat, big-eyed face. Most of the non-humans he's met here aren't overtly so...but then again, at least one shapeshifts to hide it. He's still using text, though, so the reaction goes unseen.]

Reapers carry souls to the afterlife after people die. Construct probably isn't the right word for the other person, but they're made from human wants and greed as far as I know. I'm not sure what term they'd prefer.

[It takes him a little longer to answer her next remark, because he actually makes the effort to consider how she might be seeing it for a second rather than immediately leaping down her throat for proposing something like that as he usually would. If she's not human, it's possible she's only passingly familiar with them.]

Trying to control humans with fear leads to uprising and rebellion. Gaining their trust and favour is a hell of a lot more reliable than terrorising them, especially in the long term.

[That... doesn't really sound strange to her at all. Logical, really. Even if she didn't know it, the world she came from operated on some rather similar principles.]

So, embodiments of human ideas and emotions. I don't think I'm something like that, but perhaps I'm not dissimilar.

[After all, she seems to be able to embody just about anything a human wants, even if it's just an illusion.

She makes a pensive little noise, considering.]

There are many more humans, and their world is full of dangerous things. Our existence is a lot more dependent on them than the other way around. So... we are more like their servants?

Basically. There's probably more non-humans than just them and you here, but obviously I haven't met all of them.

It depends on how you look at it. For a god and shinki who enjoy helping humans, or at least don't hate it, this situation gives them powers and a platform to help people they couldn't otherwise help. Gods aren't obliged to take all prayers, either - they can choose which ones they want to take. But someone who doesn't like humans and feels obliged to take prayers to gain power would probably feel more like this is a servile position.
I suppose you could also see it as a two-way servitude, if you're considering it servitude. Faithful humans leave offerings and dedications to the gods they want the help of, and there's no guarantee of help, so in that way they're servile to the whim of whatever god they're praying to.

That sounds a lot like the reward for work well done is more work, doesn't it?

[She doesn't exactly sound plaintive, just... puzzled. As if there is a logical step there that she just cannot take, and ends up floundering instead.]

But... you say it's a kind of exchange. Where Gods sometimes give humans what they want, and humans maintain their existence through hope that it might one day be them. [A brief pause, and then she adds more softly:] Or the fear that they never will, if they forget the Gods. Isn't that so?

[Well, she's trying. That's more than Shun can say for plenty of humans he's met.]

In a sense. Most people take prayers they're interested in anyway, as far as I can tell, so it lessens the feeling of it being work.

That's right. It depends on the humans you're dealing with as to whether they hope it'll be them or fear it won't be, but it's not one-sided either way.

If you try it, it will be easier to understand.

I did, a bit.

[There is a pause, as Nightshade struggles for words.]

I enjoyed it, but I'm not sure why. I don't think it was merely because I was fulfilling my function.

[Sharak switches to voice too, since Nightshade seems to struggle with text.]

By acting with the intention to do good, you take control of your own life and your karma. By helping others, we help ourselves.

Karma?

[Look, if there's anything elves have a very poor understanding of, it's consequences, especially ones that aren't immediate and palpable.]

So is that feeling just a reaction to serving yourself?

Action.

[This woman sounds like a shinki so karma in the traditional sense of being reborn is... probably not going to make a lot of sense.]

That's one way of looking at it. What about your actions did you enjoy?

Action... in a moral sense?

[She knows what morality means, but also has absolutely no concept of it. How do you know?]

I'm not sure what it was. I just felt... warm. It was like telling myself a story about how those helpless humans might be feeling, and how it might be better after.

[A very rudimentary description of empathy, perhaps, but she's a beginner.]

Action and intent to act in a certain way, yes.

What you're describing is empathy. It's the ability to understand another person and form a connection with them.

no
some people never been human, others think they are more then human due to whatever genetics gave them
helping the humans help us gain strength and figure out more about this place. you can also say the the stronger you get the better you can fight off this place version of kaijin

The word I have for myself is "elf". I am decidedly different from humans in more than one way.

["Better" is the feeling she has, but at the same time, she has absolutely no evidence for this, and she's not sure where this feeling comes from.]

What are "kaijin"? Was that those things that looked like very large bats?

[Ah, so she did find the function for this. Here, have what sounds like a human male's voice, though he has an odd habit of extending his vowels, rolling the R sound and making his consonants sharp.]

Oh? I've heard of that, but I was given to believe it is something in fairy tales. I am a Greeed.

Others might call them 'monsters' or 'demons' so I suppose that those words would fit as well. As for what they look like, they can be anything.

So, an embodiment of a concept? [Sounds rational to her.] There are stories of fairy folk, yes, but most of them seem rather strange to me.

[Then again, she is capable of twisting human perception, so maybe that is why. She still has no evidence that they're anything more than stories here, however.]

So it's a word for any harmful creature that is not of the human world?

I suppose if that's the easiest way to think of us. We certainly are propelled and fueled by the greed of humans.

[There might be more to it, but it was fine to think of him in simple terms so long as he wasn't reduced to nothing more than an annoyance. He was so much more then that after all.]

It's a term for anything harmful to humans, though I feel that it's too overly simplified. If I was to use in that manner, I'm certain that I would be listed among the kaijin as would others of a more inhuman nature.

I want human before coming here. [He was once human, sure, but whatever. Details.]

And we help people, supposedly to improve our own standing or power. To lift your status by gaining followers.

The phones take a bit to get used to, but if you go slow and you're careful, you will get it eventually.

This... "phone" has metal component in it that contain iron. Not a lot, but I certainly don't want to touch it if I don't have to. And the power in it distorts the flux as well. But I assume this isn't a problem you're having?

[It's hard to explain a sense that you have and most others around don't, she's finding. How do other creatures even function without reading magnetic fields?]

But the purpose of that standing and power is also to keep helping humans, isn't that so?

It is not. The only thing I have trouble touching is sunlight, but I'm sure there is some sort of method for not having to touch it. [He's from the 80s and wouldn't think of gloves or styluses. Maybe one day, but not this day.]

Using the voice or video option does seem like a better plan, though.

I don't know about it all being about helping humans. Power can be for yourself. After all, what's the point if it is only ever selfless. I'm no self-sacrificing ninny, and I've certainly no interest in just 'helping others'. If there's nothing in it for me, I'm not going to waste my time. [He won't outright say that his power is going to subjugating others, or at the least making them subjugate themselves to him, but he's also not going to go acting like he's some sort of charity worker.

That's just insulting.]

I don't like the video thing either, it's... disruptive. [Which is to say that it fucks up her glamour and can even show her real appearance.] But the voice communication is acceptable.

[His words make sense, and still they seem to clash with some small part of her, the strange part that disrupts perfectly logical reasoning with confusing feelings.]

So what will you do with your powers, then? If they are dependent on how many you help, the way it seems, doesn't that limit their use somewhat?

I wasn't human before coming here either, and I still ain't. Anyway, we help them because it makes us more powerful. I couldn't give less of a shit about their piddly problems, but the more power I have, the sooner I can get out of here.

Out... of here? [She sounds puzzled, as if the idea hadn't crossed her mind.] Where would you go, then? To the human world?

[SHE'D RATHER STAY HERE FOREVER, THANKS.]

The human world? No! Back to where we came from! We're not from this world... I know you don't remember, but just believe me on that one. This world is kidnapping souls from all over the damn place to replace their missing Gods and shinki.

Back where we came from?

[Now she sounds even more baffled.]

But even disregarding the fact that I cannot remember where I'm from... why would I want to go back there? I'm dead. What is there left for me there?

never thought id see the day someone sucks at this more than miss cleo.

and i dunno. i think im not human either, but its hard to remeber. but idk y u would hate the human world. its the only place that has pachinko.

[Sounding a little irritable here, definitely.]

Well, it's not my fault that these devices are... disruptive to my senses.

[No, really. She navigates via electromagnetic fields. Phones play merry hell with her.]

The same goes for the human world. I don't know what "pachinko" is, but I would guess it doesn't outweigh all the iron.

If not a human...

Then what were you, I wonder?

I'm an elf. [She says that with absolute certainty, but then her voice grows hesitant.] I'm not sure exactly what that entails, though, other than that I have powers that humans do not.

Would you say that anyone with unusual powers is an "elf"?

[He hasn't heard of that sort of creature, and needs to learn more about it now...]

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