#snest

Long before Philip ever disgraced the Isles, the Collector arrived as a falling star to the world in which the Boiling Isles now exist. Unlike the main continuity, he arrived alone - there were no Archivists with him, no siblings or superiors, though such beings definitely exist. He wasn't supposed to be here, and he wasn't supposed to be alone. He and his species played an important role in the cosmic order, one he was far too young and immature to fully understand. But that role was centered around games, and in particular, one game above all others.

I guess you could say his kind are something like the Cherubs in Homestuck proper, but this far afield in Paradox Space, such creatures don't exist. This is a chain of universes birthing universes where Archivists took on the role of capricious creators and destroyers alike, all depending on the outcome of the games they played with the various worlds they would travel to.

The goal for them was always the same - visit enough worlds and win enough games to gather the energy to create the *ultimate game*, the one that would birth a whole new universe and forge the next link in the chain of existence. But Collector was too young, he didn't know any of the specifics. He knew only of what his siblings spoke of amongst themselves, of a game of infinite possibility. And to him, infinite possibility meant infinite fun, right?

He couldn't have known that by starting Snest, especially prematurely as he did, he would be starting the end of the universe as a whole. When he crashed on this world confused and alone, he befriended the Titans, and they played many games together. And eventually, he suggested they try the funnest game of all, the one his siblings were always talking about. A game he decided to call Snest.

In initiating the game, Collector initiated the devastation of the world he'd slowly begun to call home. Though it had started with many players, he had ended up with a Master Class all the same, something that should not have been possible outside of a Two Person Session - an indication, perhaps, that Snest always knew how it would play out in the end. The Titans would lose, and so would their world.

Every time a tragedy befell them, Collector assumed their 'deaths' were only in the game. That they were waiting outside of it. But the last Titan knew all to well how real this all was. In the beginning, while the children played, he learned what he could about the game and its rules and its purpose, and found out early on what had actually begun. He also recognized that the role he had been given - Muse of Life - was not a role that should have existed in the circumstances in which he found himself.

From his classpect alone, he already knew what tragedies were likely to occur, but he tried in vain to stop them regardless. In the end, the world was devastated and devoid of all other life, and it was just him - the last Titan - and the Collector, a child of the stars with unfathomable power and no concept of what was actually going on around him.

The Titan knew that the game had begun prematurely - this universal instance had not yet gathered enough energy to create a new, healthy universe at its end. It was a Doomed Instance, but as a Muse of Life, not even the Doom of Inevitability would stop him from giving this place a fighting chance.

So, he trapped the Collector in a place he could do no harm and could not continue the game from his end, and gave up his body to breathe new life into the ruined world and prolong the game - and by extension, their universe - just a little longer. Long enough, hopefully, that the other Archivists out there in the cosmos, aware of the situation here or not, would be able to finish gathering the required energy to birth a new world when the game inevitably resumed.

Centuries passed, and then millennia. The Titan's massive body slowly rotted away while his spirit persisted elsewhere, keeping the Collector contained, and from his corpse, new life did indeed arise. And in time, it evolved, developing into an advanced civilization at breakneck speed due to the gift of Magic he had bestowed upon them with his sacrifice - all part of his gambit as the Muse of Life to give his universe a Continue. A gambit that proved successful.

Enter Phillip Wittebane.

A human - an entity not born of this world at all. It was the selfsame gift of the Titan's sacrifice which birthed the Witches and Demons of the Isles his body became that ended up rotting rifts into Paradox Space itself, passages through which inhabitants of other, completely unconnected worlds might fall in. Phillip Wittebane and his Brother were two such inhabitants. Of all the universes in Paradox Space, theirs was closest in "proximity" to the Titan's - and so, it was from theirs that most travel ended up happening between.

The story from there plays out largely the same - Caleb is enticed by magic, Phillip kills his brother for falling prey to witchcraft, and the remaining Wittebane begins a plot of divine retribution upon the wickedness that corrupted his brother so, that defiled his world with their haphazard travel between and their magic.

It was always part of the Titan's gambit that the new life he gave rise to would be able to rediscover and restart Snest. To that end, his body was literally engraved with the instructions for its replication, specifically as a means of restarting the current session instead of making a new one in its entirety.

But things don't always go according to plan.

The Muse is a passive class, you see. He took all the precautions he could, but he could never account for everything. The Titan was no Seer of Light.

An alien from another world uncovering the game before the Titan's children did? Reverse-engineering the code and opening communication with the still trapped Collector? No one ever could've predicted that.

This time around, however, it would not be Phillip who manipulates the Collector - though he certainly thought he had. It was a game from the start after all, long before Phillip ever arrived, and Collector was oh-so-very good at games. This strange pink ape thing was a fun new toy to play around with. He supposed the Titan had finally ended his Time Out, Unpaused the Game, and finished preparing for whatever great "second wind" he had originally promised the star child.

He guided Phillip in recreating the game from the code, a process that took centuries of preparation. The conditions had to be right for it to work. It was something Collector just knew intuitively, without having to think about it. It came natural to him. In the same way, he knew how to alter the code he interpreted for Phillip, and did so in such a way that they would not simply restart the current game, but create a whole entire second game within the ongoing game - a nested game, if you will.

Snest.

It'd been in the name he'd thought up on a whim all along. He didn't know it then, and still didn't know it now, but being what he was, this was Collector's part in The Grand Design.

Phillip would start the new game on the Day of Unity. A few things had changed, by this point. Masha had made it to the Isles, for example, as had Camilla and Vee through much shenaniganry, just in time for the eclipse. The Isles failed to stop Belos' ploy, but instead of draining all life into the moon, this time, a new game had begun and new meteors summoned.

Snest 2.0 had officially launched.

Now, the war was on for the fate of not only this universe, but whatever universe was yet to come from whichever side managed to win this new game. Collector was free, Belos' loyalists joined him in the new game, and the stage was set for the final climactic battle between dark and light.

Belos believed by winning this game, he would see the destruction of witches and demons and the birth of a new world he could offer up to his God in tribute. And he wasn't entirely wrong. But Collector was playing first, and he was playing to win. It would not be the game anyone - Belos, Collector, the Titan, or Luz alike - anybody expected.