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Adam- Was it intentional that you left in "man" and later "him" in descriptions of Apis? It is amusing, reminds me of that House Attis servant who's worked for Thuria since he was a man girl..

I'm sorry about how that came off. It was pretty late and I was actually offended. Now that I've had some sleep I realize it was a valid concern and not something you meant to be insulting but at 5am I didn't make the distinction. Again, my apologies.

Probably 99% of the posts in the story (including mine) have sparked some kind of response that requires an edit (sometimes its as simple as some typing errors, sometimes its not). I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, as it seems to improve the overall coherency (less inconsistencies between posts), and in some cases, I've seen a few authors dramatically improve their writing.

A touchy topic is always writing about other people's characters. It is very difficult to write someone else's character they way they would envision it and it generally requires a lot of time and practice getting comfortable with someone else's viewpoint.

*Sorry, my contract says I have to pick on you when you're not around, even if you had nothing to do with it.

I'm going to do away with spoiler tags because all this black is seriously messing with my eyes.

Moral of the story- anything you write is set in stone.

If we go by game canon there are, what, a dozen named characters in all of Cademia? Less? That's barely enough for a small village, let alone a city with castle included. I've been assuming that "we" were assuming the population of Cythera was at least the size of a small kingdom. At least enough to warrant the presence of cities and a king. If I'm wrong let me know.

Iannah would be aware of the sizable attack force that her people were mounting. She might have been surprised by the timing but her reaction to it falls squarely on the shoulders of Avatara or iKaterei. I couldn't say what she would do. I would however expect her to know that Selax was still on his way and be somehow informed of the situation. I thought they would be hiding out around the Old Houses, that's the whole reason I left the area untouched by the fighting in my post. During the ruffian attack one of the heroes might have had a problem with sitting around in relative safety with Iannah while the city went up in flames. I didn't think Avatara would care as long as he got his shot at Selax.

I meant for the time to be closer to five than noon, but I wasn't sure about listing the time of day as "Evening", that's a one word edit if you want me to go there. Since no one has actually posted what they did at day 8 (didn't everyone last post on day 7 and we were all going to agree the rest of the day was very boring the end?) I thought the hours from when they woke up to a little after five was a pretty good chunk of time. The only other group I've obligated with some sort of schedule is SKY, and I'm basically saying that whatever else they do that day they were at the Two Tailed Rat at least briefly at some point in the afternoon. SKY's last post ended there didn't it?

One of the problems is that you guys weren't among the people I discussed this post with.

*Shakes fist at TJ for stealing my thunder*

Should be unless, he counted as 5 members + their leader (Jacob)

I can't figure who else is there in case someone wants to talk to the Hand.

We need a recording of Avatara saying, 'Talk to the Hand, sista!' Those in favour?

In regard to time-travel... well hmmm. Seral's enchantment has two settings:

- take me to a random place/time.

- take me to the last place you randomly took me.

He randomly wound up in Cademia early Day 8. Since then he has lived the day many times without getting it right and had to "reset" the day. He always goes back to that morning because it is the only place/time he can go for certain.

Whenever Seral time travels he retains a knowledge of everything that happened and any items on his person. However, even though no one else remembers, his actions leave a vague "imprint" on the people he interacts with. That is why he seems familiar to the heroes, because he spent so much time with them in parallel time lines. By now he could have spent months just living Day 8 over and over trying different things.

The fact that he does this, changing small details, is really important to understanding how Seralcard will react in the posts of other writers (if you choose to have him show up). To explain it right though I need to use an example.

We'll go with my favorite of these examples, the sequence at the Two Tailed Rat Inn.

Let's say that on his first try at this Seral simply confronts Selax, Wizard, and Co. He messes it up though because they have no reason to trust this suspicious man. So in the end he goes back in time to try again.

On the second try he masquerades as Yomu and has Apis send the guys upstairs into his "trap". Unfortunately Selax and Talos are the first ones in the room and they thoroughly kick his ass. Back to the drawing board.

Now Seral goes back many times and each time he changes some small part of what he does. By the end he manipulates the situation so that Selax stays downstairs and the others come up in a specific order. He's been through the conflict so many times at this point that he knows exactly what to say and do so no one gets hurt (if you've never seen Groundhog Day I highly recommend it, it's funny and the analogy is great).

Make sense?

Seral has done that for the whole of Day 8. So for him there is a large time difference between the point where Avatara almost kills him and where Seral talks to Wizard at the inn. This means that Seral won't be surprised by anything that happens that day. He's lived it and slightly tweaked events for so long. There are certain big events that will surprise him though. That's because the timeline everyone else is writing in is Seralcard's final trip through the day, it is the best he could do and some unexpected things have to happen (in reaction to the changes he made) for him to settle with it. What are the big things? Totally up to you guys.

In conversation Seral would know what a character was about to say before they said it, almost word for word. In combat he would know almost move for move what an enemy was going to do since he fought them a few dozen times at that point. The only person that wouldn't work on is Scry, since she sees the future in real time and that trumps Seral's ability.

The following is techno-babble that hasn't made it into a post because I don't think explaining it will enrich the narrative. I've thought it all out though.

That's the easy part. This is where it gets slightly more complicated. When I discuss this with friends and other writers there are three questions that always come up:

1- If Seralcard keeps going back in time to a point he has already been why doesn't he meet a past or future version of himself?

2- He takes items from the future like Galahad's sword and Talos's armor and brings them into the past where they already exist, how does this not create a time paradox?

3- Presumably Seralcard may have spent months or years lost in time by now, does he need to sleep/eat and does he age?

Answers

1. Because of his enchantment Seral is stuck outside the flow of time so there is and can only be one of him in space/time right now past/present/future. This means that if he went back to Kosha on Day 6 it would reset everything he did there that night and he would have to do it over. I'm considering this event (one very like it) to have already happened to Seral more than once. I'm just too lazy to post about it because it adds nothing to the story. It is important to note that Seral can only ever go back as far as the moment just after he time traveled the very first time. Even randomly he couldn't jump back further because Nightmare protects itself from possible time-paradoxes. If he went there he could meet his past self and accidentally keep him from activating Nightmare at the exact right moment. No activation means no time-travel power, which means there could be no future version of Seralcard to stop himself from time-traveling like that, and on and on until it destroys all of space/time or gives you a mean headache.

2. "The same matter cannot occupy the same space at the same time." This is the Time-Cop theory or, more accurately, the Pauli exclusion principle poorly applied to time-travel. For everyone who hasn't seen that movie the theory goes as follows. If you take a future version of your pencil and bring it back to the present, then have the future and present versions of the pencil touch, one of two things will happen. 1) The Universe will explode. Or 2) The two pencils will fuse and then erase each other from existence. This doesn't apply to just pencils but you get the idea. The short response to this is, "That's a stupid theory." The long one goes, "That's a stupid theory that hinges on a vague misinterpretation of a basic law of physics."

3. For the first part of this question, yes Seral needs to eat and sleep. When does he do it? Well he doesn't engage in heroics every single trip through time. Sometimes he rests or heals up. Sometimes he trains, works on his enchantments, or tries to figure out how to fix Nightmare (which is what has him stuck in time).

For the second part, no actually. By removing him from time Nightmare is keeping him in a kind of stasis where he doesn't age as he normally would.