Episode 1.a
>The Caucasus, mythic time, present<
The white holds a moment longer than is comfortable, and then the cold comes through. It is the cold of a high place. Grey rock rises over you and falls away beneath you, vast and seamed with ancient ice. The wind moves through without stopping.
You are yourselves, but not entirely. Something fits differently than it did a moment ago: a name that is not quite yours, a weight of history you haven't lived yet. Your Recentius is here, underneath your skin and around it at once, waiting to be known.
A man in a traveling cloak is sitting on a boulder nearby. He stands when he sees you.
"Quintus Aemilianus," he says. "I'll be your guide in here." He looks at each of you in turn, not unkindly. "In fifteen years of field work I have never once received a team that hadn't completed basic orientation. Until today." A brief pause. "The Demiurge and I discussed this. He would not reconsider."
He gestures at the rock face around you, the vast grey silence, the drop below.
"You've just crossed over for the first time, without training, into bodies that are new to you. That is, genuinely, a lot. Before we get to why I brought you here, you should know who you are." He looks at you steadily. "Ask me about your Recentii. Ask me anything. Names, history, why any of it matters. The alarming part can wait a moment."
Prompt: Ask Quintus about your Recentii. Who are you in this world? What do you carry with you into the TSTT?
