melodiesofkupo | ( video ) Curti Center Employee AMA

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( video ) Curti Center Employee AMA

[ The feed starts with the image of a dark-haired young woman, brows furrowed in concentration as she seems to be fiddling with the slate. Following several seconds she pulls back, seemingly satisfied. ]

Steady… There, it’s started.

Hello everyone, I hope many of you are doing well. We are the employees of Curti Center charged with assisting outworlders and newcomers to Vaikuntha.

First, I want to extend our apologies in our failing to answer all questions from the start. We found ourselves overwhelmed by the number of people and severely understaffed for the endeavour. Though not an excuse, we are always ready and available to assist you to the best of our abilities.

That said, I do feel it is our responsibility to inform those who were guided by Sarah Cornelia that she has departed from the Center, and we wish the best for her. The rest of us will do our utmost to carry on in her stead, which brings us to…

[ Stare. Staring off-screen. Yo, new guy, that’s your cue unless someone else wants to take over this part. ]

You’ve made it sound like she died-- what, is it my turn already?

Yes, in fact it is!

[The new guy turns out to be a blond man, but he doesn’t appear onscreen until he’s done talking, everyone else moving to allow him to be the center of attention.]

Hey, I’m Gi. I’ve met some of you and talked to some of you. I just got hired at the Curti Center, so I don’t know a lot of what goes on there, but I can tell you anything you want to know about the rest of Vaikuntha!

[ This last sentence earns him a small nudge from the third companion - a stern-looking, brown-haired young man, who decides it’s time to switch before his newest coworker gets too carried away with his enthusiasm. ]

As long as they’re questions we’re capable of answering. Anything from school or employment applications to Asterisks and housing - we would be happy to fill you in on the knowledge required should you wish to blend in with the local community.

[ Well, simply speaking it’s kind of their responsibility. He takes a moment to adjust his glasses before resuming. ]

I’m aware that many of you have taken interest in discovering the secrets of Vaikuntha and what lies beyond it. While I could point you in the direction of books that cover the subject in more detail, the Dream Width in particular is subject to an on-going research, so that the accidents such as the one we’ve witnessed recently can be avoided. And, of course - perhaps this shouldn’t be left for last - we’re continuously searching for a way to get you all home safely.

It’ll--ah, hmm, nevermind.

Nevermind…? [ Sylvarie takes a moment to look politely confused, but shrugs afterward and continues with addressing their audience. Ah, why did the screen have to be this small? ]

I suppose if… you want to ask questions about ourselves, we can discuss that as well. We do reserve the right to not answer, but the truth of the matter is—we don’t want to be strangers.

[ Well, some of them didn’t, anyway. At least, not completely. However, in that instance it occurs to her that there is one important detail they have yet to bring up. ]

Wait, I haven’t introduced myself. Everyone, we may need to start over—

[ A small groan can be heard off-screen. ]

Just drop our contact details below, this is already taking longer than it should.

We can’t be that crude about it!

Say your name, then. Nothing crude about that.

S… Sylvarie Aila Jue, of the Royal City of Myste Aura…

[ Was there anything else she was meaning to say? Nobody will ever know, because upon hearing that, the man with glasses accepts defeat and leans in for a brief moment, awkwardly bumping against Sylvarie’s shoulder in the process. ]

Lean. From Min’To...-

Kweh!

[ Hold on, that didn’t sound like a person… ]

Machi? How did you enter—? Saku—? Machi, no!

[ Alas, the perpetrator seems to have a mind of its own as a ball of fluffy black feathers charges right toward the screen, chirping merrily as it begins pecking at the glass. Feel free to sit down and enjoy these precious seconds of rare Chocobo footage before the feed abruptly shuts off. ]

[ ooc note: this is a joint video post of the following Curti Center employees: Sylvarie (purple), Gi (orange) and Lean (green) - guest starring Machi the Chocobo. As such, the replies might come from any of them - this is a completely open post where all sorts of threadjacking are allowed. If you have any questions, feel free to PM any of the players or poke us on Discord!

IC-ly, this takes place after the event. ]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ Ugh she'd had at least some hopes for this post and this is falling short of almost all of them. ]

Are you guys actually this dense?

You wake up in a new world with a huge number of people. The people who find you tell you that you appearing there at all is super weird, and that appearing in that large a number is unprecedented. And yet, there's a huge number of empty houses on site just waiting for you and all these other new people. They don't tell you anything about what the houses might be for - they don't tell you much of anything actually - so you just have to guess for yourself.

And somehow, this doesn't look suspicious at all to any of you?

Back home? Whenever someone in charge was cagey with deets, chances were they were hiding something shady.

[ She'd unearthed so much dirt on executives and politicians during her time as Medjed. And she doesn't really... forget stuff, easily. ]

Edited 2018-06-27 16:59 (UTC)

And if I were to tell you that it doesn’t seem suspicious to us at all, how much would that perspective bother you? Perhaps the right questions were never asked where we could understand and address them.

[ For someone who grew up in an otherwise peaceful world in relatively peaceful times, that suspicion seemed the more worrying one. ]

I just asked about why all the housing was conveniently here and your colleague said I was complaining and called me self-centered.
You're insulting us and twisting our words.

But thank you for giving me an answer about that, even though it was the meanest "you never asked" I've seen in a while.
It was bugging me since we haven't really seen many people from the Curti Center out and about.
Kind of figured everyone just airshipped in and out every day.

But the POINT of what I was saying before you two started insulting each other was exactly what I said before and what you're totally ignoring.
Even you, Futaba.
That you guys are a research facility and it feels like you're not willing to share any of your research on the thing that brought us here.

After all the memories we saw up there, we might be able to make progress together.
Just give us something to work with.

[ As with the last time she got into one of these fights, it's not even that harsh a chide. But it's still able to knock her out of her righteous anger/frustration/whatever you wanted to call it.

It's... humiliating in some ways, but any upset over it is directed more at herself than anything. Getting caught up in a petty internet fight? She absolutely knew better than this. So she'll. She'll pull back for now. ~~and probably go sulk a while~~ ]

[This is what happens when you have literal teenagers (and someone who's barely over the age of majority in most places) trying to be customer service.]

we're dense? you're the ones who have tried so hard to distrust us. You're suspicious of the empty houses, but don't seems to stop and think that they may be for a purpose that ISN'T off-worlders. that makes you look amazingly self-centered. I'm not gonna look a gift chocobo in the beak and rfuse free lodging, personally.

[That's not exactly how that proverb works.]

i'M not saying trust uus completely, but give us a little bit.

[He's not fixing his spelling errors. You get this grumpy mini-essay with all of it's mistakes.]

Edited 2018-06-27 17:31 (UTC)

[ And off-screen, Sylvarie offers him Machi to pet. It’s rough, buddy. ]

[He'll give Machi's feathers a few hesitant pats.]

[ I mean I can say from experience that age doesn't excuse the poor customer service. But that's a discussion I'd be happy to have elsewhere. ]

I thought it was weird that the houses were all just sitting there, so I asked and got an answer.
And then you said I was complaining about housing (I'm not) and called us self-centered.
You didn't stop and think that maybe we've thought about other reasons before we asked.

The biggest one is that it was kind of creepy.
Don't forget that as soon as we got here, a serial killer hit the news.
And then there was the stuff with Ashelia.
And if you haven't been, the Dream Width is really weird.
And there's monsters outside every city.
Creepy stuff happens in Vaikuntha all the time.

It May have been wrong of us to assume, but that is what it sounded like on our end. On behalf of the Center, I extend apologies.

As for the ‘creepy’ stuff? Much of it is abnormal. I can’t recall a serial killer in recent history that we’re aware of. We have a few theories regarding Ashelia since she was brought to our attention, but we haven’t been able to find anything despite our best efforts. Perhaps she appears only to outworlders, but Biggs and Wedge never met her, either. Perhaps it had to do with recently travelling to the Interdimensional Cloud, Which is partly why Lean and I travelled to it last month.

Monsters are an unfortunate part of life, but are a manageable problem. That is why the Jobs exist. There are still areas where they are too powerful to combat, and everyone knows better than to go to them. That isn’t to say anomalies don’t happen in populated areas, they are simply uncommon.

Yeah so where I'm from, there aren't monsters trying to kill you outside every town. So that's... really weird to adjust to.
We also didn't have asterisks, and Paladins were a lot different.

But Ashelia? She's super creepy.
If you have theories, I'm sure the people who saw her would wanna hear.
Futaba and Shiro and... whoever the others are.
I'm not keeping track of that.
It'll give me the heebie-jeebies.

Did you and Lean see anything cool in the Dream Width?
Any of our memories?
Some of those were CRAZY.

That seems... fortunate? [ But from the sounds of it there were more dangerous things to worry about in his world, so she’s not going to pry too deeply. On the subject of Paladins, though— ]

If I may ask, what are the Paladins of your world like? My family has always consisted of them, thus I’m curious.

[ Ah, but that’s not the most important part of this conversation, is it? ]

I’m not the leading authority on Ashelia either. Likewise, something about her unnerves me but if they are the ones to talk to, I’ll pass the theories.

As for our experiences in the Dream Width... We were not pulled into many memories, but there was one in particular that leaves me worried.

[ As much as he wants to tell her about his universe where things are sane and normal and where every little bird or cat or bug isn't a laser-shooting murder-beast, it'd take until the end of time. So he doesn't. Maybe later, though. ]

Our Paladins worked in teams to defend worlds from, well, everything. Monsters (which are a lot rarer!) and natural disasters and even other worlds. And there were only five of us at a time, so we were always busy. Sometimes it was great, and I got to meet some great people and see some great places. Other times, there'd be stuff that'd make the monsters here look like geezards.

[ A shrug. Can't be helped. Both sizes of monsters were too stressful for his tastes though. ]

I got pulled into a lot of memories.
Do we know anything about why that happened?
I don't want that to happen again.

Also what'd you see?
Was it death and destruction?
Most of the ones I saw were... not good.

Geezards? That’s quite a bold comparison. [ Hunk may not see it, but he’s actually managed to make her laugh a little. ]

Though I expect you came across many hardships, the ability to travel to other worlds sounds amazing. The Interdimensional Cloud keeps us from doing that. As you saw, spend too much time there or be ill -prepared, and you’ll find yourself trapped in a memory until someone breaks you out of it. It could almost be considered a miracle Biggs and Wedge were able to recover everyone who arrived in the first wave, considering the circumstances, Unfortunately if you enter the Interdimensional Cloud again, it is a risk.

As for the memory itself, it did contain that. Two of those who were in our group identified it as an event in the past of the world called Crystallis so many outworlders came from.

Okay, so it had to be someone's memory, right? If people knew it was from Crystallis, then they should be able to figure out whose it is.

[ There's a moment of pause, of typing... notifications coming and going. ]

A lot of the memories I went through just kind of... ignored me. Except for the person who owned the memory. Maybe the person whose memory it was got picked up by the airships and we don't know it?

And what do we need to be better prepared for next time? Two people ten years ago, and then tons of people twice over the past few months. We're gonna go back out there one way or another. Can we have some kind of way to get back to the airships?

Like a grappling hook. It's hard enough breaking people out of memories, we shouldn't have to risk getting stuck there after we're done. I was an engineer back home and magitek is coming pretty easily to me, so I'll draft something up if you guys need it.

Also a lot of things don't seem as bad compared to a moon that was actually an egg for a world-destroying space bug. That was crazy.

In terms of what we may need, the answer might simply be raw manpower. If the pattern repeats where we welcome a few dozen more every month, each of those people will need the appropriate looking after where we may have failed with you all. Consider we were expecting the usual pattern to repeat itself again—four basic level workers to the Center to two outworlders at most. That was the situation we were most prepared for, each able to contribute their own part to help with acclimation. Yet when the signals and points came, the situation turned out to be so much more.

A grappling hook, simple as it is in theory, might work even if it’s execution would be more difficult in practice. If others are willing to donate their time and experience to developing even that, it could save us perhaps more time to dedicate to researching the Interdimensional Cloud and organising the information.

[ Yet here she pauses for some time, as if she were going to delay commenting any further. In reality, she had to retype her reply several times, for the possibility Hunk had just brought up in combination with her theory and worries just turned her blood Cold. ]

In the memory I speak of, we were ignored by the subject as well. And there couldn’t have been another the dream had belonged to, for she was the only person present.

How much are you familiar with the story of Vaikuntha’s creation?

[ As much as he wants to touch on their staffing problem, he knows it won't get either of them anywhere, especially when there's more important stuff at play. ]

My Paladin armor has a grappling hook in it, but it doesn't work right now. Most of cooler features don't. It can take hits though! Lucky for us, I can probably reverse engineer it pretty easily.

Let's just assume I don't know anything about Vaikuntha's creation.
Start from the beginning.

[ Rather than type out or paraphrase the myth, Sylvarie seems to have gone and uploaded several pages from an old storybook reciting the tale, with few black illustrations. Though none of the figures in those illustrations have distinct features, one seems to have purple eyes.

There is one version of this tale where the Heroes live, more appropriate for children, but overall this is the one regarded as having any factual basis, if it indeed exists. Many generations ago, farther than anyone can remember, a Great War caused the loss of records and knowledge to the point that it could have taken thousands of years for civilisation to recover on a global scale. Yet this is the myth that survived, and likely the only one your group may have come across in any searches for information.

There is still much more, but perhaps it would be better to discuss this in person. Would you be willing to have such a meeting?

[ Honestly, it wasn’t information she wanted to indulge on the network based on Hunk’s observations and the lack of replies from the Mognet Director in regards to the glitches. Either way, she sends coordinates to Hunk’s slate where he would find her if he wished. ]

If you feel you must have others accompany you for your comfort or protection I understand, but please limit it to two.

[ Her apartment isn’t that roomy. ]

Edited 2018-07-02 04:08 (UTC)

Yeah, I think something in-person could work.

[ He makes sure to save copies of those pictures and her explanations to his iMog Slate. There's probably other people who want to see this stuff. ]

When's a good time? And how do you feel about dessert?

(( Would it be easier to just do the discussion in a separate log? Goodness knows this post has been busy enough! ))

Simply state a time that works next for yourself and I will arrange to be there.

[ But his second question? Was definitely not expected, maybe she can whisk away some extra cutlery from the cafeteria. ]

Desserts are... lovely, if you wish to bring something I would be open to it.

(( a log definitely sounds like the better option, holy moly ))

[He's at work, his hip against his desk where he'd been doing a bunch of paperwork. Shiro taps metal fingers on the wooden surface.]

Think of it like this. We're completely different and coming from mindsets and cultures that don't make sense compared to what is known.

What do you know about this world? It seemed and was, from what I understand it, quite peaceful before. It still is.

I came directly out of an interstellar war. Give me a scene and I bet you my answers will be entirely different from someone who has only known peace.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

( video ) Curti Center Employee AMA

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