Gula Intro Log...?

[cancrymods]

GULA

After recovering from the tedium of the time loop and the gruelling fight, the Executors gather their resolve and continue their descent through Purgatory, at last passing through Superbia into the next layer. Feeling peckish? That's an unfortunate side effect of being in Gula, the Gluttony layer of Purgatory. Down here in the third layer of Purgatory, the word on everyone's lips is Gluttony – and that means that nothing here is ever quite enough for you. All during your time in this layer, you'll find that you just can't be sated, no matter how much you eat, drink, sleep – or whatever other itches you need to scratch. However much you take in, you'll find yourself still wanting just that bit... more. Which is going to be pretty hard to do, seeing as how there doesn't actually seem to be anything left in Gula. The shell of a city stands here, all huge blocky buildings and towering skyscrapers but it's clearly been abandoned and worse still, ravaged by time. Plants and trees are growing up through cracks in the pavement, pushing abandoned cars, streetlamps and other fixtures of the city out the way. All the buildings you care to examine are empty, stripped bare of everything not nailed down (or even things that actually were nailed down, going by the condition of some of them) and most notably of all, there are no Specters here at all, no matter how much you look. And if all that weren't ominous enough, your senses as an Executor allow you to pick up something that you might not have noticed otherwise. It's more spiritual than physical and not quite so easy to expalin, but things feel... thin here, as if things were picked clean so thoroughly that part of the world itself was stripped away with it. Something is terribly wrong here. Explore?

Comments

[discutio]

Is that so?

[he can't argue with facts, but also:]

And why is that, exactly? I haven't noticed such an issue anywhere else so far.

[cancrymods]

I dunno! We just used things up or ate them or they got broken and then the next thing we knew, everything was running out! Even the city itself! That's why we all moved down to the Undercity, where it's nice and cozy!

But now everything's running out there, too... so we need more!

[discutio]

...That doesn't make a great deal of sense. Why would just one layer suffer from such scarcity?

[phantasmagorial]

... Because this is the Gluttony layer.

[ said in the quiet tone of someone who's just started putting the pieces together. ]

I think... it's in this place's nature that things get used up.

[discutio]

I was afraid you were going to say that.

[As an aside:]

Well, we can't very well let this layer take over, else there'd likely be nothing left. What should we do?

[phantasmagorial]

I'm not sure. Something about this place feels... strange. I've never felt anything like it before, but I've never been down this far into Purgatory... it could be something natural and I just don't know.

[ She sounds immensely frustrated – at herself, not Phoenix. ]

For now... I think we should at least see exactly what it is she wants from us. Either way, we'll have to make our way past her somehow if we want to move on.

[discutio]

Agreed, truthfully. Won't accomplish much without learning a bit more.

I do apologize--I don't believe any of us got your name. You can call me Phoenix.

[cancrymods]

Just call me Gerda! It's nice to be friendly, isn't it?

[mementomoritz]

[In the tone of one pondering an interesting puzzle:] Well, I have been wanting to try getting the supplies together to vat-clone meat... I mean, it's worked pretty well with plant matter so far.

That's probably going to be too resource-intensive for a long-term solution, though. [...What? Not all her projects were terrifying mad science, she was working on stuff like famine relief, too.]

[emberserker]

Wait, that's supposed to be edible?

[mementomoritz]

Not the current one! It pretty much does the exact opposite, actually... But it shouldn't be too difficult to adapt it to grow a different kind of plant, in theory.

[Seriously, what the fuck is she growing in there???]

[emberserker]

Your experiment is carnivorous. Of course it is.

[mementomoritz]

I think it's more of an omnivore! [...That's not necessarily better.] In theory it should also be able to photosynthesize, but I haven't been able to take it out of the lab enough to test that yet.

Besides, getting lots of nutrients is important for this stage of the process- I wouldn't want to stunt its' growth!

[emberserker]

I see... I must admit I can relate to that at the moment. And not just me, if Lion eating grass is any indication.

[mementomoritz]

[She's just gonna wordlessly hand over the chips. You need this ambiguously BBQ chicken-flavored sustenance more than she does right now, Wolfsbane.]

[Actually you probably don't, but it's her duty as your doctor to keep you from getting malnourished, so eh.]

[emberserker]

[She begins eating them possibly too quickly to be advisable, even if she attempts to look unamused.]

Honestly, what's the problem with this layer? Here I thought people were supposed to move past their sins, not encourage them.

[mementomoritz]

Well, the afterlife is a little broken right now... Maybe that's making things go wrong in more places than just the Cogs? We don't know if it was always like this.

[emberserker]

It's possible. That or it subscribes to the idea of trial by temptation.

[mementomoritz]

...I guess that does sound like Catholicism again. [Seriously, why is our sorting system Catholic???? She's still not over this. If she sees a single reliquary around here she's gonna lose her shit.]

[emberserker]

Vaguely thematically, at least. I barely remember my own religion in comparison, but it wasn't this.

[mementomoritz]

[Medic nods.] The bits of what I remember growing up with were... not so much things you believed, exactly, but just things you did because we'd always done them. Folk religion, I think it's called? A bunch of little cultural traditions instead of one big system.

I don't think I thought about them much, but I definitely didn't expect some obscure old religion I read about for class once to come up this often!

[emberserker]

It certainly wasn't obscure where I came from. Mages followed our own system, in general, but in the greater culture, it was honestly inescapable. It did depend on the country, though.

[mementomoritz]

I think it was pretty common back before the Cascade- but that was centuries ago, in my world. A lot of pre-Cascade cultural stuff got lost in the shuffle, it's probably impressive that it survived at all.

[emberserker]

So you're just from centuries after a cataclysmic event. Of course you are.

[mementomoritz]

Yep! From what I hear, the Cascade was pretty apocalyptic at the time. We're doing okay now, though! Society rebuilt pretty well, I think. But I guess I can't make a direct comparison, since I wasn't there to see what it was like before.

We have things like schools and malls and reliable public transportation again now, though, so that's probably a good sign.