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

[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.

[emberserker]

Sometimes I do wonder about the rest of your realities. Or how they have the same afterlife, though that's been gone over entirely too many times.

[mementomoritz]

I've heard there's theoretically infinite realities! I have no idea how the physicists keep track of it all, though- it's not really my field. [She's absolutely delighted by the possibility of studying all the living things that might be in those realities, though.]

What surprises me is that so many of those realities seem to be variants of Earth, specifically.

[emberserker]

That's true, come to think of it. And how many of us are or look human. What sort of bias is that, when it doesn't apply to us all?

[mementomoritz]

I'm starting to wonder if it might be, mm... [She makes a vague gesture with her hands, trying to indicate something vast and encompassing.] Something like a river, maybe. You end up in the currents and you get carried to one place, and if you enter the river somewhere else you might end up in that place too, but you also might wind up somewhere different.

So people from Earths keep ending up in the same place because we're all starting from a similar place, maybe. More and more, I'm convinced this isn't the only afterlife- it's just the one we're in.

Which still makes it the most important one to us, on a practical level!

[emberserker]

I see. So people from our worlds might have ended up elsewhere, then...

[mementomoritz]

We can't be certain, of course! But it's definitely a theory to consider.

[emberserker]

No apparent way to prove it, either, but it would make sense given the size of these Layers. Otherwise, each would be an entire world, and we'd still be lost in Limbo.