The Forest Village

[digisolutions]

[ Now that the group is free, they can explore the forest village to gather info and supplies before heading out. Eric is going to be training in smithing with some local digimon.

The entire village is nestled beneath the trees, hidden in its boughs. A giant tree-turned-castle is in the center, with the smithing near the eastern river. An open-air market exists beneath the tree, around its base, where things both familiar and foreign are sold and traded. Clothes are scarce, although there's an Archnemon who works as a seamstress if they can find her.

Most shops are in the literal tree houses, though, especially the more specialized ones. There's cafes and an inn and the library that NeoDevimon works at. If it exists in a town, it's here somewhere, you just have to find it. Everyone largely seems to be chill, but there's definitely the sense that things are tense beneath the surface. ]

Comments

[lost_child_of_oriande]

Then those of us who're splitting off on errands alone should move light and fast, and mind to not be surrounded or hemmed in. [He's confident in his abilities, but he's not stupid, especially not with an enemy he knows little about.]

As dire as things have gotten, we should touch bases with the others and prepare - I hope we can buy enough breathing room for a less severe conversation soon.

[digisolutions]

We'll manage. I'm sure you children can do much. ...At least, I believe in you.

[lost_child_of_oriande]

Before I go... it was mentioned that there was power in working with someone from outside your world. Are there any records of how that works or what I should be looking for? Will it give them any protection against what we're fighting?

[digisolutions]

I... Don't know. I'm sorry. Largely, we know of it allowing Digimon to achieve higher forms before they're of age, at least temporarily. Otherwise, it seems to vary what Digivices can do.

[lost_child_of_oriande]

[Lotor nods quietly, but he's already giving the Digivice a speculative look...he's got PLANS.] Well, won't be the first time I've had to make sense of something from very little.

Also - when you said your people were possible 'as old as data', what did you mean by that? How far does that extend through the structure of this world?

[digisolutions]

Everything here is data. It is, after all, the Digital World. But what data is can be debated, can't it? Maybe we weren't digital, really, and simply other worlds view us as digital because that's how we parse to them.

NERD MODE ACTIVATE

[lost_child_of_oriande]

That would be my guess - after all, the brain and nervous system of just about any sapient species from my universe is essentially a very complicated biological computer at its core, and the essential understructure of basic matter comes from interactions that extent outside of normal perceivable reality - it may simply be that 'data' is an easier connection point between energy structures to bridge the gap.

[digisolutions]

[ YOU UNDERSTAND. ]1

Yes! Precisely what I believe! It might be we're just another form a world took in parallel to others!

[lost_child_of_oriande]

[Lotor's actually starting to brighten up.] We've only had limited interactions with other worlds in parallel - theory and glimpses, and a few ways to use liminal spaces to travel... [He's reflexively going for something on his wrist almost like a watch at first, except it brings up a holographic projection with a couple screens in front of him with Galran writing that he takes a second to adjust where they're easier for NeoDevimon to see.]

Oh good, it did make it with me - [And he's pulling up a model with different levels of reality-structure split up with interconnections, expanding it to have some much less detailed areas off to the sides - places that would indicate other universes somewhere past it and places where pocket realms and other spaces are linked out.] We've only been able to scratch the surface, and much of the research has been put on a back burner or abandoned, but -