Replay Value AU

This blog sadly is inactive at the moment. If you wish to find something more active relating to ReplayValue, check out eternity-braid !

Her name is Nora Blom, and she is your caretaker. Guardian. Parent. A thousand English words that you can only hope you are translating correctly. She often calls you Steven or Stevie, and she checks in on you frequently enough in comparison to your other caretakers that you wonder if maybe you’ve landed in an earth where this sort of thing is common.

Today she is angry with you, not only because you have just doused your rather expensive computer object with water and it is now broken, but also because you’re failing Earth math. Imaginary numbers aren’t real, and you don’t understand how they exist, let alone how you can fail them, but you are, in fact, failing. You’re failing just about all your classes, actually, but apparently Steven had been pretty excellent at math.

Everything else, not so much, but failing math is drawing much more suspicion.

“STEVEN. Why would you do that? Why would you break your computer? You love that thing!” She sounds angry. Frustrated. Extremely close to tears. Your ears swivel downward as a sinking ache fills your chest– guilt. Bash and Afiqah told you that getting your computer wet was a bad idea, and you didn’t listen to them. You had thought they’d been underestimating their own technology. You had wanted to see for yourself what would happen.

Now your caretaker is a mess, and you do not know how to comfort her.

“What is wrong with you lately?” she asks desperately, looking at you with Tarris-driven eyes. Her whole frame is shaking and she is looking at you like you have all the answers in the universe, but still like you are her child. Well, human child. You’re not certain your parent ever looked at you like this. The emotions are very raw, too much for you to handle comfortably.

“I apologize,” you say, your voice incredibly flat compared to hers.

Nora throws up her arms and makes half a scream. Your ears twitch back, flattening themselves so that they do not have to catch the full brunt of the noise. “You don’t sound like yourself! Are you okay, is something wrong, are you /okay?/” She sounds like she is begging you, her voice desperate, hoarse, a thousand intricate things you don’t quite grasp, but it makes you deeply sad. You want to tell her Steven is not here anymore, but with your knowledge of human culture, stunted as it is, you know that would only make things worse.

You incline your head. “I’m okay,” you say this awkwardly, the words sounding strange in your mouth, and it only exasperates your guardian further. “You must believe me. I am okay,” you reiterate more slowly, trying to convince her. She shakes her head, takes several deep wheezing breaths.

She rubs the soft spots on the side of her head harder than what is probably healthy, and you see tears tracking down her face. Your ears quiver, but there is nothing you can think of to help her.

“You would tell me if something was wrong,” she mutters to herself more than anything, but then she looks down at you for confirmation. “You would tell me if something was really wrong, right?”

Although you don’t know this, the real Steven Blom would tell his mother to fuck off. Theoretically, your response of, “Of course,” should be far far better.

It only makes Nora look more concerned. Still, she accepts what you’ve given her and turns, exiting the room with a flourish. Her shoulders are shaking, her breaths shuddering. She is sobbing.

Yes! The IRC shouldn’t be dead, I believe you went to the wrong one. The new IRC channel is at irc.skaianet.org and the channel is ‘#replayvalue’!

Sorry you thought the IRC is dead! I promise you that we are still around! If no one was online, just wait a little while and someone should be online in a little while! Sometimes we have dead times when everyone goes to bed. 

EDIT: I am researching the problem with the mibbit links now, I’m unsure why they aren’t working. 

The world dies a thousand subtly different times, in light and fire and ash. In its place is a story that coerces you to stay on its path, being forced to rely on strangers, a Game that threatens you with death by glitches, prophecies, soul-twisting, magic, corruption, and the struggle to stay alive and whole - in a multiverse that has made it clear that you are a pawn, a piece to tell a story with, and not a person. You pass through the Door, wake up in an unfamiliar room, and become just another Replayer, forever barred from the Ultimate Reward and replaying Sburb by no fault of your own (except, perhaps, competence). It becomes clear: Sburb has swallowed you whole. What do you do? ---

The Replay Value RP ‘verse is resetting soon, and it’s a great opportunity for anyone who wants to jump in to do so.

You've been riding this wave of power for days. It started small, so small. A little power that you could reach out and take. Make you a little faster. Hit a little harder. Take a little more punishment. A drop of ichor spilled into you each time you tapped into that power, but you had it under control. You had it managed. You truly believed that.

It started to matter less and less. Each drop meant less when you already had some in there, right? You weren't into dangerous territory yet. You could still handle yourself. You were safe. You dipped deeper and deeper into the well each time. Pulled harder from that infernal source, ignoring the sickening slickness as it dripped into you. You needed the power, and it gave you power. You could handle it, though. You were still on the safe side, a good round of hugs could clear you out. You were so certain it was that easy.

It mattered less and less each time. You started to care less and less about the oily blackness staining you, concerned only with what you got. Then you stopped caring at all. You dug deep inside. Deep, deep within. Pulled out more than you knew you could, but became powerful. So powerful. Your coplayers didn't understand. They tried to cut you down. They were jealous of your power. Feared what you could do. You handled them.

You heard the far off screaming of something that might have once been your soul. With an insignificant motion, you snuffed it out. It died. You started to die. You were dying. You felt your essence slipping away. You reached desperately for something to hold onto. Some raft of personality to which to cling. You found darkness. Darkness and a bubbling pool of tar and decay. You grabbed hold, and pulled it into the shattered emptiness inside you. It took root, spreading an inky sheen that covered you. Your heart beat stopped. Your eyes closed as your body convulsed. Those cold blue eyes opened a moment later.

“Heh. Boy, isn’t that a familiar question. I bet there isn’t a single replayer over, say, five sessions that hasn’t asked that, either to themselves or to someone else. 

“Yeah, Sburb isn’t the best place. It’s tough. Grinds you down. It’ll kill you if you aren’t on the ball, and I’ve got the scars to prove it. It’s not all bad, though. It used to be a lot worse, from before the IRC was a thing. No one could know if anyone from their session survived or died or what. Nothing lasted past the door.

“Now, though? You can keep in touch with the people you love. There’s always a possibility, however small, that you’ll roll with them again. Until then, you can at least talk. It’s not perfect, but it’s something.

“And there’s parts in the game that aren’t that bad, either. Some of the aspects are a fucking joy to experience. No, I don’t know if Joy is, in fact, a joy to experience. I recommend bugging Kamila about it. Blood, Might, Flow, Light, Rain… I liked Doom, too, but that’s more of a me thing than Doom being a genuinely fun aspect to play, I think. 

“And there’s the Door. Yes, I can see your expression. Yeah, the door’s busted. Or at least, it is now. The game’s constantly changing. New aspects are being slotted in, as are new classes. And there’s evidence that there was changes before, the most infamous being the Clown class. So that means there’s someone working on the game. So maybe, just maybe, someone will take a look and see we’re all trapped here, and suddenly all the doors stop being broken and we can finally enter the door and go to our universes and rest.

Hard to pick out just one important memory from your first session. Picking your way through the Land of Ruins and Jungles and Frogs.  Frog hunting with your best bro. Hanging out with your friends. The joy that the other human in the tower finally, finally woke up.  Finding out that the girl you had a crush on was, in fact, your sister. Your first death, which spawned a hatred of Rocs that continues to this day. Tiering and discovering that the Bane tier was pretty fucking awesome, even if your coplayers insisted on calling the ears “cute”.  Wiping out the Black King.

And then you walked through the door and never saw them again.

The large wolf looked down at the small fox trying to intimidate him.

Seriously. You’re a two-hundred pound wolf, she’s a maybe ten pound fox. Why does she think she can do anything. But her tenacity far beyond when she should just stop is kind of endearing.

You grab her by the scruff of her neck and toss her away. She comes back and tries to gnaw at your ankle. You toss her in a completely different direction. This repeats itself a few times until you toss her and her angry fox noises turn into angry Hera noises. You shift into your bipedal form and wait, grinning.

You don’t have to wait long before she comes storming in and practically tackles you. You derail her train of thought by grasping her chin and kissing her.

Years in the future, but not many…

Or no wait, never mind, it is many.

You’ve been at this longer than you can imagine. You’re no longer just a human, you’re practically an urban myth. A legend. A mythological hero. Someone with countless sessions.

Your ship, a golden Prospit dreadnought because you suggested it and all of your coplayers were in too much awe to disagree, slides into the session bubble. Straight away, someone would notice this isn’t a normal session. Normal sessions don’t have several Derses. Or several rings of lands. There’s dozens of lands from dozens of sessions. With a flick and a surge of the World, you add your session’s to the rotation. 

Rumor had it that the Dream godtier cloth was transparent. See through. You’re not sure if you believe that. You were Dream once, Smith of, a handful of sessions ago, but you never tiered. And while Dream does have all those glass constructs, surely the programmers wouldn't be that stupid.