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  • #3481
    Jib
    Participant

      Second Journey ~ August 24th, 2014

      Duration 24 minutes

      Directions : Meet with your power animal, ask them to lead you to the upper realm to meet with your guide. Ask the name of your guide and what they will be likely helping you with. Ask them for your personal symbol and how you can use it. Then follow your power animal into showing you the potential development for the stories.

      Accounts

      Eric
      My snake animal guide appears very fast, I see its eyes first. It shifts into a powerful cobra, and fans out its hood into multiple heads, like Ananta (Shesha Naga), and says I can call him Nagini (like in Harry Potter, that’s also the playful name I give to the plush snake at our doorsteps).
      It wraps its multiple heads around me like a ball, and we woosh into the ground to what I guess is the underworld, it seems like a long coiled path around a sort of vortex, after a few moments in a sort of crystal cave, I’m a bit skeptical what we’re doing there, I catch a glimpse of a white horse from the back, so I guess Jib’s Conan is checking on us, and restate my intent.
      I go though the light of one of the brightest glowing crystals, and the travel resumes, this time like the giant snake wraps ourselves in coils around a column of rocks, and we climb that high mountain very fast. It reminds me of Mt Meru in Buddhism or the Immortals palace in the Chinese Buddhist tales (like in the 2014 movie The Monkey King).
      The place is like a beautiful platform/palace of giant proportions, with a golden light. When we arrive, the snake becomes much smaller, and golden too, and wraps itself around my left arm. It guides me to explore different places, a temple, a place over the clouds where there are dances, etc. I decide to rest under a tree and meditate and be open to possibilities.
      The snake shifts around in various forms as if to reflect the nature of my mind, a giant parasol, or a stream of many paths at my feet. It connects me to a picture I saw of a Buddhist painting where the mind represented as an elephant is led by the monkey brain around a snake-like path. I realize the person I saw briefly earlier is the guide that helped Sunwukong (the monkey king) and seems to be the guide I’m looking for.
      (I find the name later is Puti or Subhuti).
      When I mentally ask for a name, the name Pachacamac comes strongly. He shows me many things related to my symbol. As a spinning cube with the floating feather in the middle and the arrow pointing towards the heart. The spin of the cube creates illusion within illusion, the arrow wobbles but stays towards the heart.
      He shows me a chasm and how to create a bridge over the clouds, by showing me the mirror image in my heart chakra. The bridge is built inside. At the same time, I was trying to focus on the music to deepen the trance, and realized outside (one storey below) was Jib’s music played on the speakers, aligned with the one playing in the headset, although a few seconds off, the rhythm was perfectly in synch…
      He also shows me another image, of a deep well deep inside the mountain that we can see from above the clouds. The image inside is dark and fluctuates with the water’s surface, and also reflecting quite a small portion of the beautiful landscape around.
      He explains that the well is the world we create, the mind and the perception is the water’s surface. It’s the external world, while the heart is all that we perceive as we discuss.
      There are other things shared at a subjective level.

      Francie
      After I connected with my power animal, we went to the upper world. We went through water to get there until we came to land.
      I asked for my main guide.
      I think I took on the characteristics of my guide. by that I mean I felt myself become a different being, and then switched back and forwards between myself and the other. It was very clear. The other was masculine, strong, very alert, very watchful, powerful.
      I asked for the guide’s name and received the answer, Carlos.
      I asked for the area which the guide would work with me. I have had a sharp pain in my left abdomen under my rib for half an hour. I felt my guide reach in and do something energetically in that area. The pain left and has not returned.
      I asked for a symbol and saw what looked like a key-hole shape.
      There was a key too.
      It was a very particular shape.
      There was a door. And the key hole was up very high in the door.
      I had to reach up high to get to it. And I put the key in.
      I wasn’t sure if those were symbols.
      The key hole and the key were shapes.
      I was tracing them with my hand.

      Jib
      I settle in myself and arrive directly in a kind of lava world. There are stalagmites and magma puddles, it’s very fiery and earthy. Then I call my horse who just nudge my left shoulder, he was already there.
      I ride him first and take time to bond with him. Then ask him to take me to the upper realm to Michel. Without much transition I am there, I feel a definite difference of feeling and texture. I say hi and ask Michel if he can show me the use of my personal symbol or particular aspects to it.
      The he focuses my attention to the octagon and the connection with the number eight. He shows me how it connects with the musical octave and sounds as a resonator. It can also be used like the shamanic drum. The coil inside is connected with the circle, the spiral and the labyrinth. My symbol is a kind of labyrinth with the diamond representing the central room where the graal is, so to speak.
      He shows me other stuff that I don’t recall at the moment.
      When I realize that it will be all, I ask my guide if he can introduce me to another guide that can help me with the use of my symbol. He sends me in a direction that goes up in a cave world. There are faceless figures, I don’t pay much attention to them. When I arrive, the guide sits me on the ground and a journey inside my symbol begins. With the octagon connecting quite strongly with the lava and earth again. I am in a lava world again, which is strange. I ask the guide what is his name and I suddenly understand it is Athumbra the Dreamwalker from whom I’m fragmented.
      He shows me the connection of my symbol to the fire and earth, and the depth of the world. He suggests me that instead of focusing on the shape of the symbol I connect with how the different parts connects together and to other aspects of consciousness, and how they are representative of my own energy personality. Not try to look outside for an answer in a way at the moment.
      So I begin to experience the shapes, and it turns like a clock, take different colors, etc.
      This will be something I’ll have to do again.
      Then I ask my power animal to show me what would be interesting to me to explore in the story now.
      He shows me a nest and I connect it with the stork nests I’ve been talking about in the last comment and that I used in the quote of the week picture. Without consciously connecting the two. I’ve written the comment before making the picture.
      It will have to do with how the nest is comfortable but don’t make you learn much about life and your potentials.
      Then he showed me something related to ants and colonies, that I connected with Mars, the colonies of Mars. There is something about community and social network for me to explore.
      Then I asked him to help me decipher the energy transmission Eric sent to me the other day, and it had something to do with networks again and how we create a space of something through our relationships, the space of love, the space of friendship, and we create fields and connective tissues that we nourish through experience and attention and involvement.
      At some point in the beginning I briefly wondered what was happening with you guys and felt propelled into something like water and impression of struggling with current, there were two moon crescents holding together by their “backs”, and purple or pink colors.

      Tracy
      The Zebra walked towards me across a grassy plain then I circled him, floating, and we went down a slope through the trees, an old road paved with stones. We wound down and came to a great expanse of metallic pink water, like a wise (typo! wide) river.
      There was a guy in much heavy stone coloured rough clothes on with a very old face who didn’t look at me, he was on a raft with a long pole for steering. Asked his name and got Frudo. (was slightly skeptical that I got the name right) The symbol was like a clubs of cards, 3 circles interlocking with an in flow of the stem part. Domain was water, flow and fluidity (and dams, apparently).
      We went down with the raft on the wide pink river, and the pace increased and there were people of all kinds lining both banks, watching. The wide river came to an immensely steep and deep waterfall, but there were pools and much smaller waterfalls on either side of it. All the water was pink.
      We navigated from pool to pool on the right of the waterfall mostly, each pool had people, some of the pools were dammed, and some were more open and easily flowing to the next pool. Some dams were high and some pools had people looking over the edge at the waterfalls below their pools.
      In a pool on the right, a very fat pink baby was sitting in the middle, I picked him up and held him and asked his name and it was Ezekial.
      Then a fly landed on my right shoulder and I looked to the right and saw a scrunched up face of my mother, with a tight smile. My breathing started to get constricted and I saw mustard yellow mangle of tubes like intestines in that pool.
      Then there was a lot of fingers stroking and pulling threads out of the dam around that pool, like pulling soft pink wax. Breathing continued to be restricted, and some becoming vapour or mist stuff that wasn’t very clear or droplets leaping from pool to pool as an alternative route to surface pools and waterfalls….
      Then went down down down into a vast pool of pink water, faster and faster towards a narrow tube at the bottom, and then flipped over onto my back and saw the sun far above and rose slowly floating towards the surface.
      Several times I saw purple and light green.
      The breathing thing was interesting if not so pleasant.
      The personal symbol may be connected to the flow from pool to pool somehow.

      #3468

      “Fucking hell, THAT is monsoon…” a drenched Cheung Lok said to his unlikely traveling companion.
      It was days they were travelling through the bogs, following an ancient trail of signposts that the hook-legged man seemed to know about.
      The both of them were soaked to the marrow, and every step in the bog became perilous, as with each inch of raising water, there was no telling which hole in the landscape hid a shallow puddle or a deep trench.

      Cheung Lok felt like being back in China, during the rainy season, with the strange and absurd impression that having evoked the notion in the first place was the only explanation for the sudden change of weather. At least that was what the other had explained him, only succeeding in amplifying the event he meant to dissipate.

      How not to focus on rain, when rain is all there is. I bet a hygrometer would tell it’s 100% humid now…

      As soon as the thought was entertained, sure enough there was a funny-shaped hygrometer hanging by a small tree of the mangrove, telling exactly that. 100%

      – “倒霉!” Cheung Lok swore loudly, then got even more enraged when he noticed the Chinese swear word for shit happens “out of luck” meant “mouldy” and was written with the ‘rain’ 雨 radical.

      “You know what you need, a good old tiger slug to suck on your feet, pal. That’s a way to snap out of it.”

      “Well, thanks, but I’ll pass”, snickered Cheung Lok, wondering what flood gates would open if he started to peek into his repressed but genuine desires.

      #3460

      Lisa felt constipated and feverish. It was the first signs of nicotine withdrawal. She shouldn’t have used so many patches before they left for the Island. And she hadn’t thought of bringing some for this journey. With the monotony of the landscape, her attention kept drifting away from their goals. She was thinking of Jack again. Was he able to manage all the dogs ? Had he neutered all the cats ? She had dreamt that he was bitten by Flint.

      When they arrived near the coast, she felt disappointed. It was kind of greyish. And the drizzle, which started falling shortly after they left Gazalbion, felt cold on her cheeks. This wasn’t helping cheer up her mood. Besides, despite all the fun of ass traveling, after some time, your own eventually hurt.

      “Where are the bamboos?” asked Fanella.
      Lisa was shivering, the wind had become stronger, which oddly reinforced her feeling of isolation, and the sea looked agitated.
      “Yeah! where are the bamboos?” she said, allowing her irritation to blurt out in her tone. Although, in a way she was relieved that they wouldn’t have to build their own raft. Maybe they could even rest a little. She looked at the greenish sand. Maybe not.
      Her ass brayed something unintelligible, emitted a small surprised bark, then cleared his throat.
      “Sorry for that, after a while, what you shapeshift into begins to run into you”, said Lazuli Galore.
      “You must be shapeshifting quite often”, added Sanso pensively.
      Lazuli didn’t know how to take that and decided to snort.
      “I must have lost track”, he continued, “or the island have changed since the last time I went there, which was when I arrived on the island, and… that’s funny I don’t remember when. Anyway, I can still shapeshift into something else and carry you on the other size.”
      “A whale!” said Fanella, excited at the idea.
      “Not a whale!” countered Lisa, horrified. “He might think he’s one and make us sink with him.” Her teeth were chattering, she didn’t know if it was because of the cold or because of her withdrawal.
      “A duck would be perfect”, she said with a resolute tone. “Ducks float quite well and we could get some warmth under the feathers. We should have taken blankets when we left.”
      The ass looked at her, a bit puzzled. “Have you ever seen a duck ?” he asked, “they are quite small.”
      Lisa was going to retort something she could have regretted, but Sanso spoke before she could.
      “According to my experience, size is not an issue for you, Lazuli”, he said.
      Fanella frowned, then put her hand to her mouth and tittered.

      Before she could say Jackass, Lisa felt the ass grow between her legs. Soon enough, they were all comfortably settled on the back of a giant mandarin duck, floating away from the grey shore into the unknown.

      #3453

      The mirage was no longer a fleeting evasive picture.
      They could see the pyramid’s top quite clearly, drawing them to its spot. By the robot’s estimation, they should already have reached it two days ago.
      But it stood there, unmovable, and somehow still out of reach, an always moving horizon line.

      “May I suggest a drumming session?” Jeremy asked around the campfire.
      Arona raised her head silently but intrigued. The rude cat jumped on a flat stone and questioned him “What do you know about drumming, young boy?”
      “Well, obviously that place is protected from intrusion, and we have to find the key to its entrance. I found drumming can help align our intents and give us inner clarity. Maybe one of us will find clues.”

      It took them some time to discuss about technicalities, assemble a drum with a piece of Arona’s cape, and silence out their chatters, but after an unmeasurable and undetermined amount of time, they were all drawn into a pridanic journey to the rainbow world.

      When they came out of the trance, Jeremy looked at them, amazed and excited by what he had seen.

      First, they had travelled, guided by a herd of unicorns, to the heights of Karmalott, only to find it deserted, with faceless spirits leaving it.
      When they shared their accounts, it seemed they all had seen in some form, the old City descending, with the wilting beanstalk bearing its weight with increasing difficulty. A flight of storks guided many to a safe place, and they’d seen most people would be fine.

      It was then that they saw the P’hope mounted on a creature flying awkwardly like a bat, descending towards the pyramid. Greenie recognized him and with him painful feelings of betrayal came back. George as well remembered old secrets, and why he was the King, and how his departure had precipitated Karmalott’s fate.
      As for Irina, riding on a spirit zebra, she’d found that people from her past were after her and her dear Mr R, and had followed her on the island. Using the teleporting boxes of the temple could send her to a safe place. Maybe on one of Mars’ posts.
      Arona realized, there was little hope she could claim her bounty, as there was no longer a City to bring Greenie back to. But then, a spirit tortoise showed her the Cup she was promised was lying deep in the underground clear lakes under the temple.

      Jeremy was quick to point it out. “That’s it! The entrance is from below, we have to follow the underground currents.”

      #3450
      Jib
      Participant

        Accounts of the Journey to the Lower Realm

        Eric
        I was at a steppe first, like I was meditating in the desert, then went through a forest entrance, and stayed under a tree. There were lots of sounds and animals life, flapping wings sounds, deers, ants, but the most vivid presence was that of snake, and I was a bit suspicious, but it came back very gently, inviting, and after I recognized it, it made me journey, travelling like a dragon or feathered multicolored snake to an ancient place.
        The snake analogy with shedding old skin comes to mind, after accepting it, it makes a lot of sense.
        I saw green and purple at times.
        I felt a horse too but it was just a hooves’ sound.

        Flove
        I went through the entrance to a cave. I asked my power animal to come. An ancient tortoise came up to me. I asked if this was my power animal but i felt such love for the tortoise that i felt that was my answer. We explored energetically what the tortoise wisdom i need is. I put my hand around the tortoise neck and we swam in the water.
        I wanted to cry, I loved the tortoise energy so much. And the protection of the tortoise shell.
        I saw a snake.
        The horse was the first animal I felt, right as I went in the entrance. I stroked the horse as i went by.
        I saw a unicorn too, [and ]was surprised by the unicorn.
        I didn’t sense many creatures. just the horse, the snake and the unicorn.

        Jib
        First I saw little white skulls, whistling like the shells of the guy in the video.
        Then I become my shaman self and I have my magic cape. I find the entrance [to the lower realm,] which was kind of difficult at first as if there was some distracting energy.
        I finally enter the lower realm and find my horse right away, he’s very excited and I ride with him for some time, just for the pleasure of being with an old friend.
        Then I ask him to lead me to Abalone and show me whatever is interesting.
        He leads me to see an old shaman, man or woman I don’t know.
        The shaman makes me sit in his room and offers me tea, then tells me to relax and wait.
        So I relax and I begin to project to Abalone as the Giant beanstalk, I begin to grow and grow and grow and have the city built on top of me. I am the whole island.
        I have the impression that the beanstalk is in the center of Gazalbion or very close to it
        Then I come back to the place and have the impression the Shaman wants to delay me, so I say thanks and ask my horse to show me the rest.
        We go the the old Temple and I feel that there is something special there, once again he tells me to relax and just allow not look for things.
        So I wait and feel that the time and space is weird that it flows around the stones in a particular way, like when you follow a certain path or corridor, you may go forward in time and another way lead you back in time. If you take a wrong turn you can end up in a loop.
        Then the signal for the return begins, so I go back from where I come from and thank my horse.
        It was cool and fun to be there again.
        I projected at some point to check if everyone was ok, and felt like it was fine.
        I saw a unicorn too.

        Tracy
        That was interesting, about half way through a zebra started follwing me, well on my right. I saw all kinds of animals, but they were all doing their own thing or turned away, except for the zebra, until the change of tempo and then I was swept up in a flock of cranes I think (or herons or storks but I think cranes), but then the zebra was waiting at the top. I could feel his warm muzzle sort of on my right shoulder.
        First was a field full of unicorns on the left but they were just grazing, then a bison head who turned away, then the group of deer I thought, but the zebra walked over to me grazing. Me and the zebra waited for goats to cross our path.
        The feeling of being in amongst the cranes was amazing and the zebra fell back while that was happening, but then at the end he was waiting.
        I was surprised by the unicorns cos I don’t even think about them usually.
        There were lizards sucttlign around under the cranes.
        A couple of times I strongly saw purple and green, and thought of Jib.<i> not really ask [the zebra if he was the power animal] in words, but his presence calmly walking beside me with the feeling of his muzzle on my shoulder was comforting.
        When the cranes distracted me from him he fell back, but he was waiting at the top.
        The cranes feeling was marvelous, really, they were all flapping gracefully all around me on the ascent. So cranes and zebra stand out the most.
        [At some point] I started going down old stone steps, at first me and FP were kids holding hands, with jib and eric behind us, then I thought, wait, I’m supposed to be doing this alone.
        The unicorns in the very beginning were in a castle courtyard type place but they ignored me.
        Then a bison head who turned away these were in niches in the stone walls
        I ended up in a stalactites type cave, but there were mostly old old stone steps with stone walls along the sides.
        There was a crowd of people, well a small gathering, towards the bottom, but they were, er, faceless. Innocuous.
        I am quite amazed at how great that was! and how many creatures actually popped up
        and how the feeling was of the zebra and the cranes.
        The zebra was stoic and steadfast and comforting, the cranes were exhilarating and uplifting.</i>

        #3448
        Jib
        Participant

          First Journey ~ August 17th, 2014

          The drum will beat rhythmically for some time, more or less in the same way. Then when it’s time to go back it will stop do some slow drumming and accelerate the rhythm so you know it’s time to travel back from your journey.

          I propose to go to the lower realm and find your power animals.
          You can have a notebook or paper if you want to write stuffs, jot down words or make doodles, whatever works for you. You may just enjoy the meditation and do nothing in particular. Just allow the drum to carry you on this journey.

          To go to the lower realm, you first find the entrance, it may be a cave, a hole of some sort or a door in the basement, maybe an elevator going down.

          The lower realm is where you find the power animals. You can meet several of them, some will come and see you, and others won’t pay attention to you.
          You can call your power animal and see which one is coming, or ask the ones you meet if they are the one.
          Just trust yourself and don’t trust all they say, some are tricksters.
          Just ask if they are your power animal and if the answer is yes you’ll know it, even if it’s not with words.
          After that you can go with your power animal explore Abalone or whatever element of the story, just ask them to guide you and show you what you need to see.

          #3443

          “I found it!” shouted Pseu. “This is the tile I’ve been looking for! The Golden Portal Tile, what a miracle that this wasn’t destroyed!”
          “Well thank fuck for that” replied Lisa, wiping the sweat off her brow. “Can we go now? How far is it to the old temple and how are we going to get there?”
          Pseu clasped the tile to her chest. Beaming with pleasure, she ignored Lisa’s question.
          “If I might offer a suggestion,” said Lazuli Galore, “The overland route is a minefield of dangers, what with the current situation with the beanstalk and the bog. It would make more sense to head south immediately to the coast, and travel by sea into the heart of the Bay of Beliefs. Once we reach the extreme innermost coast of the Bay, it’s just a short journey to the Old Temple.”
          “Good idea!” said Sanso, affectionately slapping Lazuli on the ass.

          #3429

          Despite rumours to the contrary, Sanso was not in another story, although, technically it could be said he was in another storey of reality.

          The elephant’s trampoling had come as a surprise, and came as a shock that was welcome.

          For a moment, he was in a dream environment, probably influenced by sea cucumber digestion of his entrails, where a Chinese cat-looking soothsayer was reading him the Yiking. “51, she said, is the AROUSING!”
          She purrsued “The shock of unsettling events brings fear and trembling. Move toward a higher truth and all will be well.
          What the heck does that mean he thought, thinking of his arousing French travelling companion.
          “Stay still, you rascal, and hear me out: The tendency of human beings is to rely on the strategies of the ego: to desire, plot and strive. When we do this, our spiritual development stops, and the Universe must use shocking events to move us back onto the Path. This sign, young man, indicates an IMMEDIATE need for self-examination, self-correction, and a re-devotion to following the path of the Sage.”

          With that being said, she rang her huge bell twice loudly, which awoke Sanso right back where he started, in the midst of people running everywhere at the borders of crumbling Gazalbion.

          He could spot an elephant riding at him, which seemed a nice way to travel, until he realized the man riding it was none other than Cheung Lok.
          As Sanso was ready to make a strategic yet hasty retreat, he noticed another dangerous grim looking man with a hook-leg and a turban was coming at him with a grin that meant business.

          #3423

          Cheung Lok heard the news of the Processor’s death along with the others.

          He’d been parachuted on the island of Abalone some days ago, he started to lose count. Shortly after being dropped by the airplane, with a platoon of a few others that he had lost since, he started to hallucinate elephants falling from the sky, and had wondered for a brief time about the true nature of the island, and the peril he had more or so willingly thrown himself in.

          He had not expected the fancy welcome committee. Some comely ladies in alluring flying gowns leading him towards a promise of a nearby city, only to find himself inside a barren walled city.
          He would have escaped by now, but something in the newly arrived prisoners (or settlers as they were called) caught his attention, when they started to mention Sanso. He couldn’t actually believe his luck, which made them disappear for a while, then after he realized he had to be more of a believer, he found himself sent forward in the waiting line, just next to the others in the so-called waiting room. He’d learnt the woman was named Lisa, and countless other useless information about dog herding, hair conditioning and lazy bowel movement, but little more about Sanso.

          Panic had started to spread among the small city, as huge boulders of earth started to fall from the skies and crack open on the soft land, toppling parts of the walls encircling Gazalbion. The news of the loss of the Processor led to even more confusion.

          Cheung Lok decided it was time to pursue his mission, and extract the information the others had not yet given to him, by force if needed —he was a capable qigong master, who would crush nuts with his butt cheeks as a training, and that was the least of his deadly capacities.
          But apparently, the woman named Lisa and her travelling companions had disappeared already.
          In the midst of the confusion, it was hard to tell where they could have gone.

          That’s when he was reminded of the shifting map, that the map dancer had drawn. He took it out of his front pocket, and unwrapped it cautiously.
          The island’s lines were shifting even more erratically than before, but somehow there was a smaller concentration of activity at a location not far from where he guessed he was.
          One of the rescued elephants would be good to ride out of this mess he thought, looking for the source of the trumpeting noises.

          #3421

          “What? Teleportation sandpapered granite boxes in an old forgotten temple? You really want to stretch my beliefs to the point of rupture, little one”, Irina looked surprised at Greenie after their little meditative chit-chat.

          The angel guy with bad tastes of clothing, who said he was named George, interrupted rudely.

          “I think she’s right, it rings a distant bell. I don’t know how I know about it, but somehow getting out of Karmalott altered my memories… But I think it’s true, they were used to travel on and off the island, also to other places. Why they’ve been lost is a mystery… But they should be getting us back up to the City in no time…”
          “Or out of the island…” Irina gave a look to Mr R. “Let’s find these precious ruins”.

          :fleuron:

          Thanks to the sabulmantium’s information, Arona had recognized the strange travelling companions of the young girl she was supposed to find. It was no coincidence she’d dropped on that awful bog water so near to the raft. She had actually aimed for it before Mandrake panicked at the sight of the murky waters and got them both in for a swim.

          She’d decided to stay with them, and reveal her purpose at an appropriate moment, while trying to keep the stranger’s hands off her butt.

          She was pleased to see Mandrake was also struggling being left alone by the blinking parrot.

          #3399

          About a week ago, in the reserved section of the Storehouse of Exoteric Artefacts of Karmalott, Obax Winken was pondering in silence for the last hours over the nature of one of them.

          Any artefacts found down there, in the Fog Abyss, was tightly controlled by the P’hope. Nobody wanted an alien object to unbalance the delicate structure of mass beliefs by prematurely introducing abrupt changes coming from visitors, stranded travellers of other times and realities.
          Obax, as an erudite versed in interpreting the meaning of these objects, was entrusted with the classification and gauging of the danger that those objects could cause to the belief construct.
          If an object was deemed troublesome, it would be tentatively destroyed, or if that failed, stored in the forbidden section. But in most cases, objects left by travellers would disintegrate if just a thought projection, and those objects that came with them usually didn’t pose much threat.

          The one he was looking at looked like a strange mask, designed to be blown. He believed it was a cursed horn and couldn’t decide if it was in the interest of science to shelf it with its cursed energy, or remove the curse and release it to the masses for them to enjoy a swimming revolution…

          “Lucius!” he called to his assistant. He was a bit deaf in one ear. LOGSBOTTOM! he called again.
          “How would you call that strange trunk-like apparatus?”

          #3382

          The three travelers were not the kind of people to limit themselves to safety and comfort ~ indeed if they had been, Lisa would have stayed in the village, never having met Fanella who would have stayed in Versailles, who never would have met Ivan who would have stayed in Russia. They all had an underlying courage and sense of adventure to be on the island at all. They were not, however, inherently stupid. As they approached the great walls of Gazalbion, they became uneasy. It looked more like a vast open air prison than a welcoming city.
          “I’m not sure about this” Lisa whispered to the others, “Once we’re inside there, how will we get out? It might be a trap.”
          “But you’re always saying we create our own reality Lisa, how can anyone else trap us?”
          asked Fanella.
          “We create being trapped as a reflection of restricting ourselves, that’s how it works. It’s not always black and white. And it’s not always easy to resolve that in a demanding and unsettling situation. It would behoove us to proceed with caution.”
          “That doesn’t sound right Lisa, that doesn’t sound like trust, and you’re always telling us that trust is the key.”
          “And space” added Ivan, “Space is a key, too.”
          “Yeah but what does that mean exactly anyway?”
          “Fucked if I know” replied Ivan.

          Lazuli Galore noticed the hesitation of the travelers, and decided to change tactics. They were only a few hundred meters from the entrance to Gazalbion, and it was starting to look as if the new arrivals would not enter willingly. He dispensed with the elephant form, exploding it into a pack of grey wolves which circled behind the travelers, and chased them into the city.

          “Olution! Olution!” the crowd chanted, for there was always a crowd gathered at the gate to witness new arrivals. “Olution! Olution!”
          Nobody actually knew what the word Olution meant, but they had seen it on tv so many times that they simply repeated it, and the more people that repeated it, the more the frenzy grew.
          “Olution! Olution!” the crowd screamed and Lisa, Fanella and Ivan were surrounded by the people, thousands of them, all covered in colourless grey cement dust, even their hair and faces were a ghastly dusty grey.
          “Now we’re in trouble,” Lisa remarked grimly.

          #3381

          Lazuli Galore looked back over his shoulder to make sure that the three travelers were following him. He retained his shapeshifted elephant form for the time being for high visibility purposes in the fog, and so as not to confuse the new arrivals with a sudden change of appearance. The first thing was to gain their trust and ensure that they followed him. His job was to monitor new arrivals and escort them inside the walled city of Gazalbion before they could start any more settlements in the free zone. The problem of new arrivals had escalated post 2014 as more and more people developed the art of teleporting, and the island to many was considered a promised land, a land of wine and cucumbers, attracting the world weary and the bored, the adventurous explorers, as well as the merely curious day trippers. Had they all been regular tourists of the old fashioned kind, who came for a determinate short stay and spent lavishly on the resident occupants provisions, it would not have been a problem, it would have been welcomed. But these people were staying, leaving only for brief trips back home to attend to their responsabilites there, and returning, bringing ever more people with them to settle in the free zone. They were arriving in droves, and it was of paramount importance to contain them, and shield the free zone from their incursions.

          Lazuli Galore was pleased to see that the three travelers were running to catch up with him. The other one would have been more trouble, and Lazuli knew he was right to despatch him to the elsespace arrangement with a perfectly executed parachute drop. It was the first time he had tried the novel approach of a parachuting elephant and was pleased with the result. It would not be long before that guy found his way out and came looking for his companions, but Gazalbion wasn’t far and Lazuli was confident that the three would be safely locked behind it’s walls before he reappeared.

          #3378

          Elephants are not used to jump out of planes with a parachute in our reality. So when Lisa noticed a growing shadow around them. She raised her head and it took some time for her to make sense of what she was looking at. The huge grey butt of an elephant approaching relatively fast, desperately eager to establish contact.

          It landed on Sanso who knocked by the shock fall into the bog. Now; there are certain chemicals in the bog that induce the hibernation process in a physical body. Sanso reacted to it quickly, blinked out of the island and found himself in a stasis between worlds.

          “Sorry”, seemed to say the elephant with the cry elephants usually do. Then, it disappeared.

          The three lone travelers looked at each other, feeling deeply lost.

          :fleuron:

          Jube the Brave was having fun, playing his mass belief organ like a jazz musician.

          #3377

          “What does it say, Sanso?”
          The four travelers had arrived on the island in patchy swirling fog in a field full of cucumber plants and sundials. The sundial nearest to Sanso had a letter tied to the handle with blue ribbon.
          “If that’s not for me, I don’t know what is,” he snorted, untying the letter as Lisa looked at him in amazement.
          “Really, Sanso, that seems so implausible,” she said.
          “What does it say?”

          bq(Quote).“And we start to hope that if we keep on digging,” Sanso read, “All the way to the core, if we don’t stop, if we perforate the land like a honeycomb, if we make it as flimsy as silk, maybe it will suddenly collapse in on itself. And then, like a tray piled with cups of coffee and cookies that crashes to the floor in a mess of crumbs and glass, it will all mix together.

          The upper part and the lower part will blend. And the rules will change. And we’ll be able to say with a sigh of relief: Here is a piece of sky mixed with a cracked piece of sea; here is Shujaiyeh mixed with Sderot; here is Zeitoun mixed with the Mount of Olives; here is compassion mixed with relief; here is one human being mixed with another. above, and with them build a new land.”

          “Oh my,” said Fanella, “Are you sure we’ve come to the right place?”

          “And an entire people will rise to the surface of the earth,” Sanso continued, “ Pale and faded, blinded by the sun that beats down on the land. And we will stand in silence, waiting for our eyes to adjust to the light. And as we stand there in silence, the fear and anxiety will gradually creep into our heart, that while we were finding refuge in subterranean Gaza, the land above took its own life, was left behind and emptied out.”

          “Gorden Bennet,” said Lisa.

          #3376

          Much to everyone’s surprise, Boris called an extraordinary meeting for all the villagers. When Adeline had approached him with a proposition that was troubling her, in his infinite wisdom and practicality, he decided that absolute clarity and open discussion was the only solution. The topic of discussion was the trip to the island with Sanso ~ who wanted to go, and who was willing to stay behind to attend to the animals and the gardens and so on. After several hours of talking and the inevitable sidetracking and joking, interruptions to replenish drinks, fetch snacks or cigarettes, or visit the bathroom, it became apparent that everyone wanted to go, some more enthusiastically than others.

          “I have had a spontaneous inspiration to go,” said Lisa, “And I am a big believer is spontaneity. But I am also a big believer in responsibility, and can’t be spontaneous and responsible at the same time ~ unless I can offload the responsibility onto another responsible individual for the duration of my spontaneous holiday.”
          “So what you’re saying then is that if I don’t stay home to feed the dogs, then I am denying you your right to be spontaneous?” asked Jack.
          Lisa frowned. “If you had just offered to do it, Jack, I could have credited myself with simply trusting it to fall into place. Now you are making me complicate it!”

          “I have an idea” suggested Etienne, “That might work for everyone. Let us consider that we need allow no time for travel, as teleport travel is instantaneous, and we need not concern ourselves with money, as timetravel is without financial cost. We can all go, as long as we do it in relays. Unlike traditional holidays, where people save up their money, make arrangements regarding leaving their responsibilities, take time to reach a destination, stay at that destination for a certain time period, and then return, we do not need to concern ourselves with any of that. I suggest we split up into two smaller groups and alternate being present on the island, with our presence here in the village.”
          “Now who’s complicating it!” remarked Lisa.
          “I think it’s a good idea” Adeline piped up, to a general murmur of agreement.

          “If I may say a word” Sanso stood up and looked at each of their faces in turn. “I must be making a move tonight. And all I need to know is who will be coming with me. Fanella and Lisa?” They nodded in agreement. “And which of you intrepid fellows will join us? Ivan?” Unused to being noticed, Ivan nodded and blushed. “Good! Then Mirabelle, Igor, Boris and Adeline can be team two. Jack, Etienne and Pierre, you can be on emergency stand by to assist where needed in either location.”
          “Does everyone know how to teleport?” asked Mirabelle. “ I mean properly teleport, to the right place at the right time?”
          Sanso laughed. “Well, we are about to find out.”

          #3373

          Jeremy was close to the safe house, in the past…
          He had to warn the others, and better hurry, as Max was usually sick travelling through vortices.

          #3370

          She was stroking the black cat who was complained loudly at the unwanted massage, when the messenger arrived at her door.

          “The King’s Chamberlain would like a word… in private” was all the footman had said.

          “Doesn’t look a slight bit suspicious to you?” the cat told her, shaking and licking the human scent off its fur.
          “Of course it does, don’t come if you don’t want to.” She replied smugly, wrapping her cloak around her despite the sizzling sun and the humidity.

          She followed the messenger, wondering what required such discretion.

          “A weighty matter indeed,” Downson said to her when she arrived at the rendezvous point under a vaulted passageway at a point where the sounds were cancelled out and voices could share deepest secrets in all discretion. “The P’hope has spies in many places… And at least I know of him, so he is not even the most dangerous one, I fear…”

          She was not of many words. Seeing that, the Chamberlain’s continued.
          “There are forces at play that conspire against the King’s rule.”
          She couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow.
          “I know what you think, people should be self-governed, but you can see it another way, people’s leaders are also the expression of their beliefs. But never mind the philosophy… You are uniquely talented for a rescue mission.”
          “What do you mean?”
          “You know have powerful allies… tools,… and dragons too, if the tales are true…”
          She tittered softly. The tales were true, all of it except about the dragons being powerful allies for some rescue quest. Dragons were lazy dreamers, or at least the ones she used to know. She replied with magnanimity “Let’s assume I’m the person you need for this mission… What is my compensation for it… And don’t serve me platitudes about the travel being all that matters. That grumpy cat needs to eat.”
          The cat suddenly turned his eyes into the cutest kitty eyes he could do. It would have melted the heart of the most stone-hearted villain in an instant.
          Well played, Mandrake she winked at the cat telepathically.

          “Well, word has it that you are on a quest to astral, and maybe I could help with that.”
          “Continue…”
          “I could arrange an interview with the Fisher Count. As an entrusted Guardian of the Saint Amber Graastral Stone Cup, he could grant you a drink from it.”
          “Tell me more about whomever I’m supposed to rescue?”

          At the sound of footsteps, he stopped, and pushed her towards a column out of sight.

          “Oh, it’s only a cat” the soldier said, continuing his round unaware of the two.

          As soon as the other had left, Downson resumed his talk in hurried tone and quicker sentences.
          “I have good reasons to believe a young girl with great desire to prove herself was sent many years ago to the Fog Abyss as a rite of passage, but she was tricked and left for dead there. The magi who were supposed to protect her only said they had lost her. But something else happened. Last night, one of them came to me full of guilt. He was visited in a dream by an apparition of the young girl and her guardian angel. Something horrible had happened, but she told him she forgave him and that she was alive and well. You need to bring her back to us, and be discrete about it. Somebody wanted her dead and buried, and will stop at nothing to complete the task if they find out she’s alive.”

          Before the Chamberlain left, he turned back and told her:
          “Better be quick to leave, I shall have all that you require prepared for you. And a word of advise… you can trust no one, Arona.”

          #3349
          TracyTracy
          Participant

            The Continuing Adventures of the Three Time Traveling Maids From Versailles.

            The three maids, Fanella (previously known, briefly, as Fanetta), Mirabelle, and Adeline and the three time travelling Russian stage hands, Igor Popinkin, Boris and Ivan, leave Paris in the 18th century via hot air balloon, heading for the Tower of Hercules on the Galician Coast, with Mirabelle’s parrot. Sporadically they are assisted by Pseu Dan, a cross between a sort of oversoul 8 and a future focus with cloaking abilities and other skills, who tends to be unreliable due to a fixation on building a folly of tiles in the City.
            After a series of mishaps attempting to board the ghost galleon of Belen, an Amazonian shapeshifting timetravelling pink dolphin pod comes to their rescue, and they find themselves washed up on a beach near the Pillars of Hercules (Spanish side) in the year 2020 and are found by Lisa, a middle aged Englishwoman. She takes the six timetravellers back to her village, an experimental new kind of community in the orange groves not far from the beach.
            Jack is Lisa’s partner, and other inhabitants of the village include Etienne and Pierre.

            Mirabelle and Igor continue an on/off tempestuous affair, Mirabelle often considering Igor (somewhat unfairly) a feckless whoremongering cretin. Igor considers himself to be an average adventurous funloving young man willing to explore new opportunities.
            Mirabelle, once considered to be the bossiest of the three maids, finds she has no need to control the others in the absence of the responsibilities of working long hours for others at Versaille. Initially she struggled with learning the new languages, but was easily diverted from the worry and thus learned with ease, after the unexpected trip to Portugal (looking for the stolen whale tile) with Lisa. Lisa finds herself strangely attracted to Mirabelle while under the influence of sangria.

            Adeline settled into the new timeframe by pursuing her fascination with the unfamiliar multitude of coloured plastic objects, making them into sculptures. She and Boris have an easy ongoing friendship; Boris and Ivan settle into life at the village by taking an interest in car and tractor mechanics and farming, and digital photography.

            Fanella was the most unsettled, yearning to return to the familiar hometimezone in Versaille. She found peace in solitude outside in natural surroundings, often practicing teleporting and projecting by the river or in the woods. She rediscovers her adventurous spirit after a series of teleport and time travelling mishaps. Her unexpected meeting with Sanso in the Great Fire of London in 1212 starts another chain of teleport and timetravel adventures, as she is now determined to reach the island in 2121 that she read about in an old book of Lisa’s called Circle of Eights and Other Stories.

            #3346
            ÉricÉric
            Keymaster

              Some update on the current plots and maps:

              Queens Team

              Our main protagonists seem to have yet to digest their past adventure…

              In Marseille, 2121, contestants in a Drag Queen’s contest, they had their first mission through Time Sewer mysteriously sending them in Louis XV’s Versailles, and start a quest for mysterious ferrets with keys, helped in their travelling by their ex-judge turned chaperon Sadie, equipped with an all purpose e-zapper, and the batty Sanso always keen on providing the strangest travelling devices.

              They find one of the keys in the stolen ferret left in the Chapel before they even really start on their quest. Not long after that, they are also robbed of their dance opportunity and show minutes before the attempt on the King’s life, due to the network cancelling their show (and decommissioning the Time Sewer). In a last ditch attempt from Linda Pol to provide the network with a valuable pilot material for the television show, she remembers references of a crystal (sent to her anonymously), and have the Queens propelled in year 2222, Big Island, Hawaii. On arrival, they chill and get sidetracked on a visit to a (you guessed it, mysterious) techromancer.

              It all appears to be part of the plan to gain life-everlasting by transmuting gold of a (yes, mysterious) cranky old billionaire in kilts named Jonbert who is living in a time-travelling submarine with sentient robots, and who has manipulated events so that the Drag Queen show would place them in possession of a special set of keys that he could then retrieve from them.
              Unsurprisingly, nothing works for him as planned.

              Unknown to him, the Queens had only secured one of the keys, the other being unwittingly carried away by maids of Versailles during their balloon escape, with a parrot named Huhu. Manipulated by Irina, a… err… mysterious Russian socialite with a trusty robot Mr R at her side, the parrot steals the key, but faints of exhaustion during the escape in the ocean. The parrot is however rescued by on a ghost galleon and revived by its occupants, who are on their way to a particularly momentous whale gathering in 2222. Sidetracked by a navigation tile displacement, they are in the end successful in beating the odds and arrive too in Hawaii 2222.

              Equipped in breathing wetsuits, the Queens are sent in the depths of the ocean, where their clumsy and noisy explorations are carefully followed by the octopi and other inhabitants of the underwater world.
              They get sidetracked and temporarily separated when some go exploring underwater caves.
              Whales are gathering, and activating the giant crystal, when everyone arrives at the scene. Somehow, Mr R on Irina’s orders manages to provide to an unsuspecting Sadie the second key, which has been expertly tempered with.
              Sadie, realizing this is the missing key, activates it, and unleashes a chain of events leading to a earth-shattering revelations and a breathtaking video of a St Germain hologram doing karaoke with whales and other gyrating cetaceans drunk on red algae.

              The network is saved, and they are safely sent back to Marseille, where they are welcomed back by Linda Pol. It earns them a contract, which turns out to be mostly for the decommissioned Time Sewer maintenance.
              They plan to turn it into a bar, in a re-enactment of their minute of fame, with fat pole-dancers as whales, and St-Germain impersonators singing contests.
              Not much is heard from Sadie, who had managed to get a raise and less working hours, or of Linda Pol, last seen in Maui island, Hawaii, 2121.

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