Expeditioner's Interview: Fix On It (Mæna gegn)

Winter Nights Exhibition Hall: Expeditioner Interviews
March 2024	April 2024	May 2024	June 2024
July 2024	August 2024	September 2024	October 2024

Transcripts of the Fix On It (Mæna gegn) Expeditioner Record's Interviews.

Interview #1 Unlocked at the start

“ What if she loses to someone she considers a companion while on a hunt? ” She shouts, yells, screams. It is a dream of strife. She has lost sensation in her legs. Many shards embed themselves in her body. Blood flows. The air is filled with smoke. The southerners left without so much as a glance back, as if they never heard her. Typhon knows the weapon they used to hurt her. The explosives that send Originium shards flying. They had used the same method to blow apart the old entangled tree. One talks into a communicator, with no hint of joy or guilt. "We shook the Sami guide. She was very superstitious and kept obstructing our investigation with her arbitrary rules. Our maps are good enough that we don't need a guide anymore. No worries, I'll contact base camp if there is a problem." "Maps are no use if you incur Sami's wrath... She will raise the mountains and call the wind and snow upon you..." Typhon tries to give them a final warning. Exploration fever has brought survey team after survey team into Sami's icefields, followed by Pioneer Teams and engineering vehicles. Sami has tolerated these visitors, permitted their power plants, camps, bus depots and communication stations, and even abided the occasional fire and lingering smoke. The improved facilities have made exploration much safer for the southerners. But Sami's environment has not become any more forgiving, nor has the threat of the icefield gone away. Typhon, like many Sami, serves as a guide and a rescuer, teaching the children of the south an important lesson: Respect nature and never cross its boundaries. "Alright, we'll take samples here." The southerner who no longer had any patience for her teachings speaks into the communicator. "We've removed all the superstitious Sami crap." But... the clan tree... Typhon has no more strength to speak. Smoke gets into her eyes, and her tears mix with the blood dripping into them. A tribe's clan tree falls to the roar of a chainsaw, and the sound of it hitting the ground summons the clansmen. A battle of shame and vengeance, of blood for blood. The light of Sarkaz Arts flickers in the melee. Typhon tries to draw someone's attention, be it the explorers or the Sami. She is hoping someone will understand her signal and turn their attention to what she is pointing at. She sees the shadow of the demon chasing after them. Finally, a Sami notices her. He berates her, the Sarkaz outsider who led the way for the explorers, and brings his hammer down. The dream comes to an abrupt end. The alert hunter leaps up. Pointing her bow at the shadow emerging from the forest and threatening her sleeping friend from the survey team, she lets the arrow loose without hesitation.

Interview #2 Unlocked after entering the 3rd floor

“ What if she loses to the weapon she relies on for survival while on a hunt? ” She counts the cracks on her hand. It was a dark dream. Step by step she stumbles forward, as if the cold wind on the icefield could blow her over at any moment. Barren whiteness and the vast void flash alternately across her eyes. At times she feels like she is being thrown into darkness, surrounded by stars, with the familiar past and the unfamiliar future drifting down like snowflakes. She can no longer tell day from night, nor how far she has walked, but she continues to count. She raises her hand, and counts every tiny little wound on it. She keeps blinking and tells herself not to think that she cannot see clearly, for she would truly lose her vision if she did. She knows her foe well. Thirty-nine. Forty. Then? She loses consciousness for a moment, from both fatigue and hypothermia, but immediately restarts the count. One, two, three... any mistake would cause her perception of numbers to become distorted, and she'd lose understanding of the most basic knowledge. The boundary between the icefield and Sami still seems so far away. The sun seems to have risen and set again. The distance to the dark mountains faintly visible in the distance has not changed. She knows there is a path to avoid the warriors in the north, and she must go there, or the intolerant mountainfolk will kill her once they see her corrupted appearance. Her legs look blue and gray. It takes all her effort to bend her knees, stretch them, lift them, and put them down. Is she supposed to put them down when walking? She savors the sensation of her boots stepping on ice, even if this itself is likely part of her imagination. The wound penetrating her calf has not healed, nor has the bleeding stopped in the cold. The leg below it has turned black. Typhon tells herself that it is only necrosis due to frostbite, but she keeps going. Her quiver is empty, with only the heavy bow still on her back. She no longer has the strength to draw it. Her arms are stiff from maintaining the same position in front of her chest. In her bosom she holds a small box. I won't lose to you, she thinks. I won't throw this bow away. From the first day we met, I told you, I won't be afraid of you. I won't lose. She will bring this box back to Sami. Through the forests, to the southernmost point. She can still walk. Until she sees a familiar figure on the unchanging icefield. Arges gazes at her, and she remembers everything. The box in her bosom holds a flower that they found together. Arges asked her to bring it back to a Columbian in Čappat, while she went to find a group of explorers who lost their way on the icefields. "Looks like you never found them... but at least... the flower... I..." Right then, the order of language collapsed, followed by all thought and consciousness. On the icefields, a body begins to lose its form. The parts not yet covered by shadow fall towards the ground under the influence of gravity, but the rest stay in place, holding the whole up. The shadow covers more and more bodies, connecting segments of space. It slowly restores the data, resembling a human form standing on the land. Cyclops Arts fight the demon over the remaining biological tissue, preventing it from fully becoming nourishment for the latter. A black, empty face sits opposite the Cyclops's face. The box falls to the ground. Typhon wakes from the dream. Just another dream of being hunted by shadow, she thinks, as she slings her weapon over her shoulder. The hunter that belongs to the shadow has always been by her side. The day will come, eventually, when she is no longer a hunter, when she is no longer in command of her weapon. But whatever my fate may be, for now, I am a hunter.

Interview #3 Unlocked after entering the 5th floor

“ She never asks herself. She looks on forward. ” "So, our dreams are actually Sami speaking to us?" "You could say that," answers Typhon. "But it could be a call from long ago. Arges says that fate is like a snowball. The higher up it starts rolling, the longer it takes to hear the sound of it hitting the ground." She pauses her conversation with the young researcher. The other members of the survey team are stirring and sitting up in the campsite formed from tree branches, opening cans and discussing in low voices the strange dreams they had last night. Typhon takes an uneasy walk around them. The protections at the entrance have not been damaged, no one tried to start any machines, and no one gives off a demonic scent. How many survey teams has she escorted? Typhon does not remember, only that both Magallan and Arges have gotten closer to their goals in recent years. As for herself, she needs no goal for the future, only to do her job here and now. She must preserve Sami's order from the creeping shadow that seeks to break the eternal cycle of the hunt. "I dreamed of a saddled creature, two stories high, charging towards me," said a researcher when she passed by. "That's a rockhorn," Typhon explains. "We'll see them in the flesh when we go further north." "I dreamed I was an eyeless underground creature, digging beneath the frozen soil," another anxious researcher asks. "Is that a bad omen?" "Just the shadow covering your eyes. It's not an uncommon dream in Sami." The southerners always make such a fuss about the dreams Sami bestows them. Some want to avoid the nightmares, yet reject the food and rituals of the Sami, trusting only in their own sleeping medicine. But Typhon does not get angry at them. Who gets angry at a young foal that's just stepped into the world? She walks back to the young researcher and slings her great bow on her back. "What about you?" he asks. "Do you dream about things from long ago?" "Of course." After some hesitation, the young researcher reaches into his bag. "You should have this back. Maybe someone with your experience doesn't need an outsider worrying about you, but if any of us needs to be well-rested and safe from nightmares, it's you. He is holding a dreamcatcher that Typhon gave the team. More and more nightmares are wound around its threads. A helpless foal returning to the dark icefield, seeing the bones rolling out of the nest. Ill fates of all kinds hide in dreams. There, the shadow is the only hunter, the manifestation of fear. "I don't need it," she answers.