[b]On Aevum, Yellow![/b]

“I hate fences. Have I ever told you that?”

The purpose of a motorcycle on Aevum is twofold. One is to get up on the expressway, that secondary artery pumping hot and fast through the station, and then spin it up until the world blurs, until you feel like you can almost keep pace with the trains, until your thoughts get left behind. The other is to find a place to pull over and drink in the sights of the city.

So here Vesna leans forward, hair tucked neatly into the helmet with its jagged streaks of neon pink, and gestures at Ares, the sprawling complexes of Wellington with their fences and their locked doors and keycards.

“Too many open world games. You know one of the fantasies they sell in those? You can go [i]anywhere.[/i] It doesn’t matter if it’s locked; you can pick the lock, hack it open, find the key. It doesn’t matter if it’s somebody else’s house, because all you need to do is sneak in when they’re out to see what their life looks like when it’s unfolded. And if you see something interesting? Head for it! Clamber up slopes, see what’s between you and it, keep going until you’re satisfied and you’ve got an answer to your question. That’s a little what it was like on the Park, but— well, nature sucks at generating interesting content. We’re [i]way[/i] better at that. When we throw things together, they’ve got meaning.”

She glances over at Yellow through the smoked glass of the visor. “How about you? What do you make of Ares, dear? What do you think of fences?”

***

[b]On the Park, Gavin![/b]

Well, yeah. Naturally. It’s no longer 3V’s favorite in that scene (don’t get her started on AoA’s megacampaign formats, or how it still ends up prioritizing combat over its other components despite the marketing) but on any given day she’s got a table in Gensoukyo reserved for AoA players, and fond memories of thumbing through the supplements: [i]Lemuria and Mu; Red Mars and Fecund Venus; Sky London[/i] (with the Squamous Men and the Narcissus Bazaar).

Nah, right now she’s [i]really[/i] into KATAPHRAKTOS, and not just because of the deep-fried memes. ([foliage][management][?]) Now there’s a game that commits to being about combat, but still tries to interrogate the morality of fucking awesome mech combats and asks you to make space wars about things worth dying for.

A game that asks, hey, what if a thousand years from now we start getting our shit together? What if we leave capitalism floating dead in the void and fight to defend gay luxury space communism, to fulfill its promises, and to fix all this crap? And what if you could figure out who’s standing athwart the rails of history telling you to go back into the dark, and then blow up his giant robot with [b][SHOTGUN][/b].

That being said, 3V owns being a gaucho. Be free, clever and bold, and solve disagreements with close-quarters [i]facón[/i] fights.

“Hey! It’s gonna take me a minute until I’m ready to throw myself back down the mountain, so I don’t mind the extra company. I miss that from the big tournaments, actually— everybody trickling in and grabbing breakfast, accumulating like snow rolling downhill, meeting folks over toast. Gavin and I were just getting to know each other, Ferris; seems like a fun dude to me. Must be nice to see folks out here. I get twitchy if there aren’t enough folks passing through my place, can’t imagine days without seeing anybody up here.”

Said without judgment, more a self-aware acknowledgment of how very, very social Aevum is by necessity. The only way to keep folks out of your life is to lock your apartment door and refuse to leave.