Originally Posted by
knaveofcups
Just some rambling thoughts…I feel like Azem made the relic in secret before they were sundered, because they knew what Venat was planning and wanted the future people of the source + shards to be able to find each other again, and to explore worlds beyond their own, if they chose. Then the relic was discovered by the group that would become Preservation, and modified for their purposes. Electrope may have been a “gift” from an Ascian who recognized the power of the relic, but realized that only someone bearing the soul signature or whatever of Azem could open it, so they introduced a method of faking that signature with electrope and forcing it to work. Or maybe the shaman who led the Milala into the 9th was a previous incarnation of our soul, and Preservation modified it later so they could achieve what she did. Regardless of how the relic works and who made it, the first order of business is hopefully to answer these questions. Hopefully this adventure gives us some more background about the 9th’s history and current state, outside of Living Memory.
The msq then, after establishing what the relic is, might turn instead to what the relic means. Knowing what we do, should we make people on other shards aware of this technology by using it to meet them? Is it ethical to open a bridge between the source and the shards, knowing that a shard of some ancient soul could come into contact with its other fragments and merge, on purpose or by accident? Would the difference in soul density between shard-dwellers and source-dwellers be of significance if they met? There are a lot of questions you can ask