Shape Forming

Shape Forming is the thirty-first episode of Reflection.

*Insight on the human shape. As our party crosses the Sylt Islands as part of the world's greatest diversion, Basil and the Other Ace reflect on the form that people should take.*

## Summary

Laughter experiences a vision of an incredibly ancient, dead world that the previous owner of his suit traveled to. He is joined by Sei, who replaces the ancient Pyromancer’s actual partner. They arrive in a ruined plaza-like area, where a recreation of Logic, the Pyromancer’s actual partner, appears. He is highly distressed and despondent at the pair’s lack of findings and refuses to allow the “Institute” to control what humanity looks like. Laughter manages to convince the memory of Logic to control himself, and he wakes up in Beleth. Sei informs him that his suit reacted after he came into contact with Godsblood. He regroups with the Golden Knight and contacts Nectar, who tells them that she’ll help them with their plan against Eternity if they get her some Godsblood. With that request, they continue further into the swamp. In the Derelict, Nectar visits Basil’s room. While there, she encounters Eternity’s companion. They are then joined by an ecstatic Logic and the newcomer controlling Basil’s body. Nectar notices something is suspicious, but the new Basil assures her everything is fine. Deeper in the Derelict, the real Basilisk Id’s severed consciousness floats in a black void, where she is contacted by a mysterious entity that offers to help her reconstruct her body. They ask her if she wants a brain, a spine, or a mouth. Basil chooses a brain, and she begins to see visions of a strange, distant place.

After resting for a time after the first mission against the Court of Logic, the forces of OPIA deploy once again. Mic and Stephano assist a nearby village with evacuating after Logic’s bombing up above caused debris to rain down on the swamp below. While doing this, they run into Sei, who split off from Laughter to explore the swamp on her own. Back in the Derelict, Basil briefly regains awareness in the real world and sees Collapse of the Living desperately attempting to use the summoning machine to bring her back. Before she returns to the vision, she and the Pristine One both assure her that she’ll be back soon. Basil is taken to a great battlefield, where the voice from before offers several directions for her to travel. She heads south towards the corpse of an ancient god, where she finds a church that contains a “factory” inside. The workers in the factory are processing “humanity” to create Gods, and Basil realizes that she too was created here. She then decides to descend to the soldiers on the battlefield, where she is suddenly subsumed in a deluge of water from the Lake of Oblivion. She once again regains awareness in the real world. The Pristine One assumes a much more humanoid posture and tells Basil that she will need to choose a side soon, before his consciousness is shackled by an unknown process and he returns to his more animalistic state. Up in the Sylt Islands, Robin watches as Ruth uses her new Reflection, Cosmos Calling Cane, to summon a meteor and use the Sword of Hope to hit it towards one of Logic’s battleships like a baseball. Meanwhile, on their way to Beleth, Ace, Ridill, Arg0s, Willow, Charybdis, and Cast arrive at a massive oil rig-like construction made to inject explosive Flame into the bedrock of the Sylt Islands to destabilize it. Charybdis sets up a stage so that he can pull some of Logic’s attention their way while the others disable the rig. In Beleth, Mic, Stephano, and Sei reunite with Laughter’s group, and they find another large Godsblood construction. Laughter ingests some of it and briefly experiences the same vision from before. When he awakes, he finds the group encircled by a horde of Flametouched, and decides to keep ingesting Godsblood to gain more power.

Back in the Derelict, Basil notices Vaultwatcher attempting to also interface with the summoning machine. Basil speaks to him, and he tells her to not let something larger than her force her into a shape she doesn’t want. She returns to her vision, where she sinks deeper into the Lake of Oblivion before seeing a GEIST factory. The voice tells her that the other her, the one currently in her body, was made here. The voice asks what Basil wants, and she says that she wants intimacy more than anything, and she wants to grant that to every Basilisk Id that failed to achieve it before her. She internalizes the nature of herself, and the voice uses that desire to begin forming a new body. Outside, Nectar uses the machine to finalize Basil’s new body, and Basil exits the machine in the form of a small, shadowy creature wearing a thick jacket and mittens. She reunites with Collapse, and announces herself to be the “Stranger of Humanity”. Before she can spend much time in the Derelict again, however, the Pristine One puts her in a burlap sack and takes her up to Beleth for mandatory survival training. Up in Sylt, Ridill’s group arrives at OPIA’s fleet after successfully disabling the Flame rig. They help destroy one of Logic’s battleships and finally arrive at the meeting point where they will descend to Beleth. There, they reunite with the rest of the Beleth strike team. Meanwhile, Basil takes in her new surroundings in the swamp.

## Characters

### Player Characters

* Ace Galatine
* Basilisk Id
* Arg0s
* Willow Wisp
* Ridill Arondite

### FLOW

* Ascalon
* Lyst Solais
* Aura Pridwyn
* Charybdis
* Melli Luxity
* Robin
* Breach

### OPIA

* Mic
* Cast
* Isabeau

### Demonic Courts

* Pyromancer of Laughter
* Golden Knight
* Logic
* Nectar
* Sei Miscellany
* Stephano
* The Pristine One

### Other

* Vaultwatcher
* Grim Barricade