Reminder: There are various training and workout sessions hosted by Weirdos, for anyone who wants to get in shape or learn some tricks without a stone (or get better at what they can do with their job stone). If your character does want to offer up some skills exchange, say so below! And if you want to go the extra mile and say what day they might be doing it, that's cool, too. But not required.
Faihan will remind everyone about the phone tree James set up and ask them to use it when they experience anything strange or dangerous. He's not going to tell anyone not to approach monsters, because, well, he obviously isn't going to take that advice himself, and he dislikes being a hypocrite, so. Precautions...like the phone tree and training.
In light of their "truth and kindness" mantra, Faihan wants to remind everyone that he is keeping a record of everything, even if it's super analog. If anyone does want to go through his notes and records, he is happy to loan them the notebook, though he does not want it to leave either his home or business premises for obvious reasons, but it's fine to take photos of the pages, if anyone wants to go through the trouble. He's kept fairly extensive notes of what he remembers, as well as what's happened around them that he knows of, and during meetings.
If anyone else has anything they'd like to bring upâany new questions for Milk or "The Score" (it's just easier to call birb that even though she isn't technically)âthey are free to pose them. Both birb and kitten may be at meeting.
Also, there are donuts with cereal toppings. He put a few aside on a plate for Alejoâhis favorites.
THE THINGS BADR KNEW
He is kind of...making a face and not quite meeting Alejo's eye when Faihan shares what he does remember. The reality that a lot of things were hidden from Titus...does not leave him with a great feeling even now. But Faihan promised to tell, so here's a bit of a tl;dr list of what he shared:
Thousands of years before their memories, there was an event known as the "Shadow Catastrophe." The exact shape of what happened was lost to history. It seemed that Badr initially knew it as a great calamity, in which the Chosen of Light fought the Dark Knightâharbinger of disasterâand with the help of the other Chosen and assists from various peoples of the world (in particular, Simurgh's holy song), defeated the Knight and ended the Calamity.
Badr later came to understand that there were many more parties involved, and that Crystalism taught that the Crystal Saint also played a crucial part in saving the world, making a sacrifice of "herself." Her life and teachings would become the foundation of Crystalism and its values, especially within Serenitas.
But these things were not wholly true. In truth, before there was Serenitas, there was a place known as the Principality of Ilunabarrean, from which the Chosen of Light and his twin brother came. For whatever reason, this country was at some point in ruin. The Chosen of Light was called Erlantz, and his twin brother was named Itzal. They formed the core of the group that would face the Catastrophe.
But it seems that at some point, Itzal and Erlantz must have disagreed or something happened, because Itzal was painted as a villain and erased from history. This is shocking because in truth, Itzal was the Crystal Saint, who sacrificed himself to do something with the crystals of old. Faihan's understanding is that they were not working correctly...in some way. He doesn't know what way. Just that something was wrong with them, and Itzal sacrificed himself, which appears to have fixed them...and possibly other things that Badr doesn't know, but Itzal did something that cost him his life, but allowed the world to be salvaged that day.
Probably because it was too difficult to explain that Itzal was both at odds with Erlantz, afterwards known as King Aulus, and the savior of the world to the masses, he was villainized, erased, and an anonymous woman became the "Crystal Saint in the writings of Crystalismârecorded by the equally anonymous "Crystal Sage." Badr suspected that Crystalism was not always manifested the way that they knew it in their memories, but Faihan says Badr had no real no proof of itâjust that Badr found it suspicious that only the High Priest ever had access to the original scripture, written in Old Ilunabarrean. Everyone else only had access to translated versions.
He has no answers about why Erlantz would let Itzal sacrifice himself, or why Itzal ended up being treated as a monster in history. :shrug: But he thinks probably there was a reason for it, just as Badr did, that was neither because Itzal was a bad person, nor because Erlantz was.
The other shocking lie that started in that time was that the Holy Score and Sacred Dragon were animal gods. In reality, both of these entities were also crystalsâknown as "higher elements" (among which, Light also countsâMilk pointed out). He can't readily explain what that means, except it seems to be somewhat like emotional magic.
Simurgh was founded by the Chosen of Song and Dragon at that timeâbetrothedâKamaria and Nasser. But there was a secret in its foundation: Kamaria and Erlantz conspired to hide something called the "Map of Stars" somewhere in the country. What this is...a map, presumably, based on the night sky. What it leads to? Faihan shrugs. No idea. But it probably was important, given the founding a country to hide it thing.
From there, history went as basically they all understood it. Crystalism because a super conservative world religion. There were wars between the various countries. Simurgh kept to itself. The reasoning behind all these secrets...eroded with time, leaving Badr with little to go on.
It was not just Badr, of course. Prince Gaius was the one who alerted him to these discrepancies in history, leading Badr to search Simurgh and find a letter from Kamaria that outlined much of the above. Prince Kyoujiro was also involved in what Serenitas considered "heretical" talk, but the three of them uncovered more than these troubling secrets and lies.
Prince Gaius had told Badr that he had a theory about the Phasma: that they were the magical energy of the world, reacting to the ambient energies of mankind. The prince thought that it was possible that they appeared because the elemental powers of the crystals were out of harmony. This was a big problem, because it is likely that disharmony that gave rise to the Shadow Catastrophe. Prince Gaius had thought that it was possible someone had in fact orchestrated an imbalance in the world's magic to...well, they were not entirely sure what the motivation was. Only that it was a very bad thing to do, and Faihan at least is pretty sure that whatever came of this is why they are on Earth now. That is to say, there is a high chance that their past selves might have faced a second Catastrophe. Whether they won or loss or something else... Again, shrug. He doesn't know.
As a final oh yeah! note...Badr did, in his recent memories, find it strange that Serenitas was the only country with one crystal, and well...what balances Light...? But Badr, as far as he recalled, had not speculated so much beyond this, and he isn't sure he wants to. Just that it seems relevant that Serenitas should be Light and Light alone, when every other country had a balancing element. (He has a theory about Song and Dragon being internal and external emotional forces, and this being why they balance; the others are more obvious: Fire and Nature; Earth and Lightning; Water and Wind, etc.)
And that is everything as he recalls it. Others may correct him if they do know more, or find that he has mixed anything up, though he doubts that the secret prince among them will. But possibly Alejo or Eli might have input?