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The Grasp

Synthesis Power Equilibrium ꧪဋဓ

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.

— Darrich Nemnyaf

Insisting that they are all merely different endeavors of the single collective intelligence that is the Grasp, the Frames who dwell in this place as petitionersSouls of the dead that have re-manifested on the most well-suited lamina, where they perfect and reshape themselves while carrying out pursuits in accordance with that lamina's principles.Turn to chapter seek to perfect themselves each according to their chosen pursuit, training for athletic, martial, and intellectual prowess in a network of chambers and environments especially suited to their continual improvement.

Frames bask in the fractal glow of an effect that runs to the reverse of the Echo found on the BraidRugged and serene badlands inhabited by the complex, inscrutable Limns, who bring quarreling mortals here in reverie to forge empathy in the light of a natural phenomenon known as the Echo, in which you witness in the actions of others a flash of the entire history of happenstance that leads up to their present.Turn to chapter. Where the Echo results in an observer witnessing all of the past causes that lead to each present result, the Grasp shows an observer the myriad outcomes that may occur from each potential action under consideration. The effect is referred to as the Tessellation, after the visual form it often takes.1

Though EmpathyEmpathy tends towards kindness, self-effacement, benevolence, righteousness, judgment, stubbornness, idealism, altruism, universalism, equity, compromise, compassion, and tolerance.Turn to chapter and PowerPower tends towards ambition, achievement, glory, determination, focus, efficiency, beauty, domination, competition, selfishness, cynicism, security, success, and luxury.Turn to chapter are the most antagonistic of opposing facetsAbstract forces that drive beings and cultures, divided into three spectra: Hierarchy opposite Autonomy, Empathy opposite Power, and Creation opposite Dissipation.Turn to chapter, the Braid and the Grasp (differing only along this axis) have an unusual respect for one another. Each understands the potential that the other holds—to understand the past and to anticipate the future—yet also fears it, for overlaying the two effects on top of each other produces an unbearable feedback loop: for every event recalled by the Echo, the Tessellation plays out all of its potential ramifications, and for every such ramification, its history resounds with the Echo.

And this combination can in fact be found. There are regions of both laminae that vergeThe thinning of the Ordial barrier between cardinal and laminal realities such that certain aspects of one may influence, be perceived, or be simultaneously present on the other.Turn to chapter upon each other so that the two effects can be perceived in the same place, and at some such vertexes on the Grasp reside laminalLaminals are beings that natively reside on the laminae but which are not manifestations of mortal souls. 'Laminal' can also be used to indicate anything relating to, stemming from, or residing on the laminae.Turn to chapter figures known as Sequiturs. Each Sequitur appears wholly different—an elemental form of crackling violent energy, or a huge faceless statue of stone and stars—and each holds nigh-oracular wisdom, but will only speak of concerns that interest it. These concerns dictate the layout and subjects of the Grasp’s chambers, whose Frames confer with Sequiturs on their perpetual quests for perfection, but they do so with hesitation and awe, for should they venture too close to these echoing, tessellating regions they might go mad, and so perhaps might all the Frames at once, sharing (as they apparently do2) a single consciousness.

[This chapter has not yet been translated. Please turn to the Inevitability, the Bloom, or the Unfolding for completed chapters. Recent additions can be found in the Translation Log.]

Kilian Eng - The Last Wave IIKilian Eng - The Last Wave II
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