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--- extrinsic:remembrance [2021/05/17 08:38] – shyriath
+++ extrinsic:remembrance [2024/01/17 13:59] (current) – ↷ Links adapted because of a move operation shyriath
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 Remembrance's deep involvement with mortals has made it, from the perspective of the latter, probably the most understanding and compassionate of the Extrinsics. Most Extrinsics who deign to notice mortals have difficulty seeing them as anything more than interesting - if sometimes frustrating - examples of emergent properties, and even Chaos, who has an appreciation for their individuality and liveliness, sees them as more like toys than as people. For Remembrance, however, the affection is rather more personal, since over the long eons it has built up an understanding of the trials and tribulations of mortal experiences, and exactly what effects the Extrinsics have had on beings other than themselves.
-That said, while the above is true in a relative sense, Remembrance does have a rather wider perspective than mortals do on what is appropriate in the name of understanding them. It is not above experimenting with the souls in its care, particularly with those it considers to have interesting qualities, though it generally makes an effort to make the resulting experience "fair" for the soul in question... for a given definition of "fair".
+That said, while the above is true in a relative sense, Remembrance does have a rather wider perspective than mortals do on what is appropriate in the name of understanding them. It is not above experimenting with the souls in its care, particularly with those it considers to have interesting qualities, though it generally makes an effort to make the resulting experience "fair" for the soul in question.
 ===== Realm of Remembrance =====
+Remembrance's domain is a vast collection of subrealms. The characteristics of these differ in many ways, but they are all similar in that they are designed to give accurate sensory impressions to the souls that inhabit them. They are, in a sense, extremely high-quality virtual worlds; they have no conventional physical existence whatsoever, but provide the soul with sights, sounds, touch, or other sensory input that its body had in life. This makes it easier to study their lives, as a soul lacking such input suffers much as one would from forced [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensory_deprivation|sensory deprivation]]. Real as it may seem to simulated senses, however, it is generally visibly different from physical reality; the purpose is not usually to deceive the soul into believing it is still in its living world.
+In terms of gross numbers, the vast majority of the subrealms are essentially personalized "interview rooms": spaces intended to contain a soul for the time in which Remembrance reviews its life. The form taken by such a space is at least partially determined by the soul's own perception, interpreting its surroundings as a familiar and appropriate mythological or cultural setting: a portion of the afterlife, a courtroom, a setting for a storyteller around a campfire. Here the soul will - preferably willingly, but unwillingly if it chooses to be difficult - tell its story and answer the questions of Remembrance, who will take on the appearance of a person appropriate to the setting.
+Once the review is done, most souls are "paused", their awarenesses suspended, and stored away; the subjective experience of this, in the event of being allowed to be aware again, is something like waking up from a faint or other spell of unconsciousness. Those that Remembrance wishes to study in the context of an afterlife of a particular nature, however, will be allowed to continue "running", and will generally be moved to one of a smaller, though still immense, number of larger subrealms. These are usually tailored to a particular kind of experience rather than to an individual, and indeed may be inhabited by multiple or even many souls. The type of existence there may vary from the boring to the tormented to the wondrous, depending on what Remembrance wishes to see one's reactions to.
+As Remembrance does not understand good and evil in precisely the same terms as mortals, the "afterlife" one gets in this manner does not always correspond to the one a soul expects to deserve - indeed, may not even be in the same mythological framework in which the soul was immersed in life. Nonetheless, Remembrance has traits it appreciates and those it dislikes, and may devise situations intended to "reward" one or either "redeem" or "punish" another, whether or not the recipients understand the results in those terms.
+Those who Remembrance finds both admirable and interesting may receive from her an unusual offer. Mortals may call it reincarnation, which matches their subjective experience of the process. However it does not involve sending the soul back to the Froth to dwell in a new body; that is beyond Remembrance's power. What happens instead is that such a soul will be "paused", during which it will have appended to it the soul of some other being which, after being reviewed by Remembrance, is judged to be of some strong similarity of personality. When the extended soul is woken up, it will have the experience of serial lives, the newest of which it must learn to integrate into its ongoing postmortem existence. The more lives such a soul has accumulated, the easier the process becomes.
+If asked what it intends to achieve by building up beings of such vast existence, the only detail Remembrance is willing to surrender is one short phrase:
+//"Something wonderful."//
 ===== Mythological equivalents =====
-While souls in Remembrance's realm do not return to tell of their experiences, some cultures have nonetheless obtained distorted knowledge of it through a rare flaw din the copying process during near-death experiences, or from explanations given by Chaos during the latter's times in mortal guise. In these cultures, Remembrance is either added to the mythology or conflated with an existing figure, and is often depicted as a judge of the dead or as a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopomp|psychopomp]], though it sometimes becomes some other deity or being of a caring, watchful nature.
+While souls in Remembrance's realm do not return to tell of their experiences, some cultures have nonetheless obtained distorted knowledge of it through a rare flaw in the copying process during near-death experiences, or from explanations given by Chaos during the latter's times in mortal guise. In these cultures, Remembrance is either added to the mythology or conflated with an existing figure, and is often depicted as a judge of the dead or as a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopomp|psychopomp]], though it sometimes becomes some other deity or being of a caring, watchful nature.
-  * [[culture:mythology:imperial_religion:lamnar:bauk|Ba'uk]]
+  * [[mythology:imperial_religion:lamnar:bauk|Ba'uk]]: the judge of the dead in the [[mythology:imperial_religion:]]
-  * [[culture:mythology:eyes_of_the_sky:Daxelh]]
+  * [[mythology:eyes_of_the_sky:daxelh]]: the celestial creator goddess in the [[mythology:eyes_of_the_sky:]] mythological complex
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