Cathexis

Cathexis Chapter of Hypolethia
Chapter 4 of Secondary Intent
Chronology
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Autoscopy	-

In which dreams freeze over, and the cabal finds a wound and an implication hidden inside a sleeping heart.

What Happened

• The cabal travelled to Titania’s Oneiros. At first glance, it appeared to be some sort of fairytale realm made up of a blend of cartoon whimsy and folklore - something beautiful, polished and almost too perfect. The details did not hold up under examination with places growing less distinct the further they stood from Titania, or the inhabitants remained and still and immobile whenever outside of her line of sight.
• As the cabal searched for the intrusion, they found that its source lay somewhere within a strange frozen palace that hung over the heart of the realm. Titania was reluctant to approach it - that place was private, unimportant, and not relevant to the investigation. She was far more interested in showing the cabal the bright heart of her soul - her sister Rachel, perfect and precious, the princess of this fairytale place. When pressed about the palace and the need to continue, Titania became visibly distressed. Snow began to fall, and the realm started to freeze around them.
• Kassandra was able to weave an area of warmth around the cabal to hold the cutting cold at bay but it could not hold forever. Or so Vánagandr argued, saying that the cabal needed to find the intrusion to understand what had been done to them. Titania was uncomfortable with this and the cold grew sharper as they proceeded toward the palace, only to find that the only way up to it - a narrow icy stairwell - had melted away beneath her Titania's doubt and desire to keep what lay in the palace unseen. Even attempting to appeal to the fairytale logic of the realm — urging her to believe in herself and trust that the way would hold — were not enough. Her fear shattered the ground around the palace, forcing the cabal to retreat.
• Titania admitted that she did not want to go inside. The palace was intensely private and secret, and she feared that what was contained in the palace would change how people saw her. Vánagandr eventually reached her by offering a truth for a truth, and a promise that she would not judge Titania for anything she saw. She told Titania, in oblique terms, about protecting her own younger sister: the death of her father, perhaps an accident, perhaps not; the fact that she felt no guilt for the death itself, only for the shattering of her sister’s innocence and the destruction of their family; and the fact that she had not seen her sister in roughly fifteen years.
• Titania accepted the truth given and offered one of her own. She agreed to enter the palace, but only with Vánagandr, and only on the promise that Vánagandr would not speak of what she saw inside. Kassandra and Wotann were asked to remain behind.
• This time stairs formed beneath Titania’s feet as she and Vánagandr approached. They ascended into the frozen palace and found the frozen remnants of a trailer park, frozen forever in a moment of rusting neglect. A further ascent took them to a bedroom, where another image of Rachel lay sleeping, still and pale as if close to death. Titania busied herself tidying the sleeping girl on the bed as she told the story.
  • Titania had grown up in that trailer park. Her parents cared little for her, and barely more for themselves, concerned mostly with their next high. Titania had escaped for a time, slipping into foster care, but eventually returned. When she did, she found Rachel, still only a baby, abandoned in filth and swaddled in multiple soiled nappies. Titania took her sister and ran. As she spoke, the pristine princess bedroom began to bleed into the stinking neglect of the trailer. Titania refused to let Rachel suffer as she had, even if that meant becoming overprotective, controlling, or more of a parent than a sister.
• During this, Vánagandr noticed the source of the intrusion. It was subtle: Rachel’s slow, shallow heartbeat. She quietly directed Titania to examine the sleeper herself, noting that Titania understood Fate more deeply than she did and might be able to perceive the true shape of the wrongness; a gentle lie to allow Titania to draw her own conclusion rather than forcing a hard truth upon her.
• Titania did so, and saw that the alteration was not simply a matter of life or death. This was not Rachel herself, but the interpretation and representation of her as she was to Titania. The intrusion had changed whether Rachel was alive to Titania. In some other path, Titania and Rachel would be nothing to one another, though it was unclear whether that separation came from abandonment, death, estrangement, or something else. With this mind, Vánagandr wondered if she had been reading the intrusions too literally. Perhaps they were not simple wounds in memory or survival, but alterations to the meaning and consequence of decisive paths.
• Titania, meanwhile, became lost in the tangle of thread and fate, trying to understand the nature of the separation. Something noticed.
• Wotann and Kassandra saw it first: a female figure of porcelain, doll-like and beautiful, but filled with jagged thorns. It took offence at their presence and demanded to know whether they were the cause of Titania’s distress. When it realised that they were not, it proceeded toward the palace. Recognising the danger, Wotann enhanced his lungs and shouted a warning to those inside.
• Titania was too lost in the threads of Fate to understand or leave. Vánagandr tried to reach her, but by the time she began to get through, the porcelain and thorn figure had arrived and took Titania in a protective hug, fiercely protective and angry at Vánagandr for upsetting Titania so. Titania started to stir from her obsession but seemed to be under the spell of the figure, crying and calling it Mother as she pulled into its arms. Vánagandr, suspicious that this might be some dark impulse, hostile Goetia, or other threat within Titania’s soul, demanded that the figure leave Titania alone and wove a spell to lend some of her own confidence to the other woman. Titania spoke up to the porcelain figure and convinced it to let her go.
• Vánagandr realised that the figure was likely not a threat, but Titania’s daimon or some form of protective internal parent. She apologised for her sharpness and explained that she had been concerned the figure meant Titania harm. When Titania objected to the magic Vánagandr had used to bolster her, Vánagandr apologised again and said that she generally did not wish harm to come to those she considered important to her. Titania was left wondering what, exactly, that meant.
• Once Titania and Vánagandr returned to the others, interrupting Wotann and Kassandra’s extended game of Twenty Questions, the cabal looked for a way out. It was time to end the journey and decompress. Astral journeys are exhausting. A door was noticed, and with the symbolism obvious enough, they took it. They expected to wake from the astral journey.
• Instead, they found themselves in the Corridor. They also appeared to be physical which should have been impossible. Several tests to confirm the nature of their surroundings later, they made their way back to the Velvet Room. Vánagandr went downstairs to her sanctum to check whether their bodies were still present. For one moment she saw them, but when she blinked, they vanished. She spent the next half hour decompressing, finishing a much-needed scotch, reassembling the professional mask of presentation around herself, and studying where they had been before gathering herself to return upstairs to the others.
• Meanwhile, Kassandra was roped back into the shift she was already late for. She was at least able to make Titania an excellent Old Fashioned. A few people noticed Titania and recognised her mundane identity as Laura Fox, mildly famous private investigator. They attempted to take photographs before being distracted by Wotann.
• Around this time, Rachel Finnegan herself snuck into the Velvet Room using a fake ID, accompanied by a few friends. Tension quickly rose between the sisters. Frustrated by Titania’s attempts to control her life, Rachel complained that she was seventeen and could make her own decisions. She quickly corrected herself and claimed to be twenty-one, but Toni, the bouncer, overheard the admission and insisted that both sisters leave.

Plot Developments & Facts Discovered

• Titania's Oneiros was a place of carefully curated whimsy and positivity hiding painful secrets. The defining features are the idealisation of her sister Rachel, the hidden truths about her past, and an intensely protective maternal instinct.
• Some of Titania and Vánagandr's pasts were revealed.
  • Titania grew up in a trailer park household to deeply neglectful parents. She eventually ran away, spent some time in foster care, before sneaking back to the trailer to rescue her baby sister. She has built much of her life and identity around ensuring that Rachel never suffers as she did. Titania only told this to Vánagandr and made her swear to tell no-one else.
  • Vánagandr grew up with a physically abusive widower father. At some point in her teens, she got in the way of him harming her younger sister, after which an altercation happened and her father died. She does not feel guilt for his death, only the loss of innocence inflicted on her sister and the final shattering of her family. She has not seen her sister for about fifteen years.
• The nature of the intrusion in Titania's Oneiros was found - a disruption in her connection to her sister Rachel that manifests as a subtle nudge to the heartbeat of the representation of Rachel in the Oneiros. Titania's realisation that the disruption is in the connection and representation rather than Rachel herself led Vánagandr to consider that the intrusions may be much more symbolic than she had first thought.
• The nature of the Offices is even stranger than expected. Rather than returning to their own bodies after their astral journey, the Cabal instead physically ended up in the Corridor.
• The members of the cabal - still unnamed! - are starting to connect more through their experiences
  • Wotann and Kassandra easily fall into friendly arguments and debate about music, or pass time with Twenty Questions.
  • Titania and Vánagandr have connected over shared experiences of pain. After the encounter with the Thorn Mother, Vánagandr apologised for using magic on Titania without asking and stated she does not want harm to come to those she considers important to her, leaving Titania uncertain what to make of the statement.
• Titania was recognised in the Velvet Room as her mundane identity, Laura Fox.

People Appearing (in order of appearance)

• Kassandra
• Titania
• Vánagandr
• Wotann
• Representations of Rachel in Titania's Oneiros.
• The Thorn-Mother, possibly Titania’s daimon or a protective internal parent-figure
• Rachel Finnegan, sneaking into the Velvet Room with a fake ID
• Rachel’s friend(s)
• Toni, bouncer at the Velvet Room
• Other staff and revellers at the Velvet Room

Locations

• Titania’s Oneiros
  • A castle of frozen traumas
  • Rachel’s princess bedroom
• The Corridor
• The Velvet Room