I spoke to the blonde man in my dreams last night again. He told me he gets along well with the Dog Man and that I shouldn’t be so distant. I told him I’m not the type of man who gets close other than on the battlefield, but he didn’t seem convinced. The dreams where the blonde man shows up feel different to my others. It makes it hard for me to figure out what my subconscious is trying tell me.

I’ve been spending some time at the Chateau’s library, trying to learn more about the Quartic Church. There’s nothing I can find that talks about the mechanics on how they measure the weight of a soul, but I get the general feeling that there’s a consistent or standard “weight” to most souls, and they measure deviations from that. If we ever encounter that Bishop again, maybe I should get them to measure mine again and see if I can figure out the trick.

The Dog Man came for a char, and I was happy to finally ask him all about the dog person thing. Turns out he’s from an “abhuman” race that was created to be slaves. The Union intervened and set them free when they found out about it. He said that the race tend to be nomadic and don’t settle down much - guess I would want the freedom too if I was born into this world the way they were. Dog Man didn’t seem to catch my joke about his people traveling in packs despite him asking for more dog puns and metapors. I find it strange the Dog Man is from a nomadic but is so nationalistic. I worry that someone carrying both that generational trauma and a strong attachment to his military is prone to be used by the very machine he idolises. I’d hate to see such a sweet kid get hurt like that

Dog Man took me to go see a Quartic Church. He had some kind of business there with a contact. We sat through a sermon where a “Mother” told the story of a man named Quinziano who came across injured travellers who a doctor was apparently not able to heal. Quinziano stayed with the travellers and eventually other travellers who came by (a builder, a butcher and a seamstress) taught him the skills needed to heal them. It was then revealed that the travellers were actually the Cardinals, and then Quinziano met the founder of the fate Prophet Manus. I guess at some point Quinziano became a prophet himself as well.

The moral of the story was literally spoken at the end: life gives us all the tools we need, the only thing we lack is faith in ourselves and each other to utilise them. Standard “you are in control of your own destiny” stuff. I’ve heard worse stories with even worse morals. I couldn’t stop thinking about how they really love to push the quartic motif, 4 travellers, 4 people who gave aid, 4 core aspects of life. It’s a bit much isn’t it? Unfortunately no souls were measured today, so that’s still a big unknown.

The Dog Man seemed very disillusioned with organised religion, saying it’s just common sense wrapped in stories to be more easily digested. I wonder if he’ll ever see any parallel between that and the military way of life, which tells soldiers how to live, think and even die.

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A man should always know the names of people who he is in debt to. It is the bare minimum respect a gambler should pay. With this in mind, I learned that the Mechanic’s name is Vuelo. I spoke with him about my desire to learn more about the 4YAPI. He told me he knew a guy who was probably there for the actual incident, and that if I wanted to, I could gamble for the info.

On the walk there, I took chance to try and learn as much about mechanics as I could. Vuelo told me about the new weapon he was working on and the additions he was adding to his mech. I didn’t understand a lot of it but it did give me inspiration on some things I could do to Ithiki to handle foes at a distance better. He told me he had an 8 year old kid Elena, which is probably where he gets the patience to put up with my half cocked questions about mechanics.

At a bar called The Hangman’s Knot, we met Vuelo’s contact Bosco, whom I now owe a debt of resources after failing to beat him at poker. I’m not particularly happy about that to say the least but I had to find out about the 4YAPI in case it helped our mission to figure out the truth of the R.O.. Despite my loss, Bosco gave us the rundown anyway thanks to Vuelo’s work on some energy packs or something.

The story goes as follows: during a combat encounter in Lang for years ago, Unit 00 was deployed by encountered a Pegasus (a type of mech, not the mythical creature) which mysteriously appeared on the battlefield. Captain connected himself to the Pegasus (note: Vuelo has told me this is something that the Captain’s previous mech could do, a functionality similar to my Hyperspec called Symbiosis) and drove it towards the enemy stronghold while the rest of Unit 00 watched him do it. By the time Bosco and his unit caught up, the Captain and the Pegasus had completely disappeared. Everyone was forced to swear secrecy over what happened. The Captain was only found again six months ago, and in Hordisthum. His reemergence didn’t seem to classify as news, being relegated to the middle of the newspaper. Did something go really right or really wrong during the 4YAPI? Maybe it depends on who you ask.

There was no mention of psychosis or anything, so maybe this is completely unrelated to the R.O. after all. Though there is a common through line of people who interact with a paracausal object having heavier souls. Is that why the Director thought there was a connection between the two incidents? Does the Castirian government place a high level of confidence in the soul weighing by the Quartic church?

One last interesting tidbit. Even when Captain was a pilot, he was a hacker. So that’s a trait that he gave Mercury and not the choice of Mercury like I theorised.

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The problem with gambling is that even the luckiest will eventually lose. It is a game of lopsided odds, and even if they were in your favour most of the time, you would not get the thrill of the gamble. Because of this, I am used to losing, so despite my anger, I was not necessarily surprised when the Captain decided to immediately reveal to the unit the very information that I just went into debt to get. The irony of the moment was befitting of the bad luck I had yesterday. It felt almost like karmic retribution for the fact that I still got what I wanted despite my terrible hands.

So imagine my surprise when’s my rage cleared, I realised there were discrepancies between the story Captain told us and what Bosco did. Captain said he blanked out after trying to hack and didn’t seem to have any idea that his fellow pilots didn’t try to intervene on his near suicidal charge into enemy territory. His perspective was not just based on his own recollection but the reports he had read after the fact too.

What is going on here? I don’t think the Captain is lying to us, so does that mean he was betrayed by his own Unit? I never really thought I could trust the military completely, but how far does the corruption rot? I wonder if the Dog Man is in on this apparent conspiracy, seeing as though he is a disciple of one of the Unit 00 soldiers.

It’s not uncommon for the military to ask for blind obedience. The Knight Errant’s Code asks for unwavering loyalty and unconditional forgiveness, and it’s certainly not the only militaristic creed to ask for something along those lines. But I am not a soldier. I can’t blindly trust like that. I am curious by nature and curiosity is only a couple steps away from suspicious.

I decided to keep the discrepancies to myself for now, and I hope Vuelo does as well. I’ll only bring it up when I know I can trust my unit. I want to be able to live long enough to finish my work, and I can’t do that if someone from military leadership is going to backstab us like they did with Captain. Or worse, if someone from my own Unit literally backstabs me in the field. I guess I should be thankful I’m the only close range man on the team.

We’re going back into the mines to figure out the truth behind the R.O.. Vuelo has asked us to avoid hurting the miners and try talking first, which I’m happy to do in case they do have a religious attachment to the R.O.. I wonder if the Quartic Church will show up again, seeing as though we did tell them about the object and they probably want to stop souls from getting heavier.

The Soft Glow of a Midnight Moon. Sense.

The Buzz of Insects on a Warm Summer Night. Be.

The Crash of Waves on Ocean. Cliffs.

Control The Rumble of Distant Thunderstorms. Release.

More poetic than I would have thought a military to use as a deactivation phrase. I hope I can ask Mercury about what they think of each of the things without triggering the re-association because I don’t want the Captain yelling at me for getting him out of the mech for nothing.