Ryik

Digimon: Dawn's Glimmering (Dead)

@Letter Bee Approval 1/2
@Rune_Alchemist Approval 2/3

With the current tentative reservations, the only remaining unassigned crest is Kindness.

Digimon: Dawn's Glimmering (Dead)

Dustin

Theme

Name: Dustin Syoka
Age: 17
Important items: A pair of wireless earbuds and his phone, which he uses to listen to music pretty much constantly.
Personality: Dustin often outwardly appears reserved and aloof. While he is rather guarded with his feelings, it's less indifference and more that he's not very good at expressing himself. Although he may fail to find the words, he isn't one to run from his problems, and is rather decisive when the situation calls for it. His demeanor is rather deadpan and may come off as serious, but he is pretty casual and easygoing once you get to know him. He is brutally honest and cares little for the opinions of others, but conversely can be very self-critical and perfectionist. At the same time, he doesn't believe in things like personal limits or inherent talent, and has both thick skin and low self-esteem as a result. He consistently fails to notice when he does something impressive, but then, it's not like he's ever trying to impress anyone.

Short Bio: Dustin was cursed with the title of "gifted" child, and while he's always excelled in academics, his parents had a habit of downplaying his successes and magnifying his mistakes. Nothing he did ever felt like it was good enough, and when it was perfect, it never seemed to matter to them. As a result, when he inevitably slipped and they blew up on him over it, he gave up on being perfect. He gave up on engaging with his parents when they gave one-sided, out-of-touch lectures about the importance of this or that without actually saying anything of substance. He gave up on arguing with teachers when their shitty print-outs from the 90s contained grammatical errors that arguably changed the context of the question and therefore the answer. Perhaps most importantly, he gave up on being in three different extracurricular clubs at the same time that would allegedly look good when applying to colleges. While Dustin still does his due diligence, he's no longer one to shoot for the moon, to hold himself to an impossibly high standard. He doesn't need such things to make him happy, or so he tells himself. He still cares about his parents, but not so much that he wants them to be a part of his eventual adult life, and not so much that he's willing to let them control his life any longer.

With actual time to himself, he was able to enjoy having hobbies again. Music and video games, of course, though he also picked up a game called Card Wars that was popular at his school at the time. He played with people casually as he came to understand the meta and library of cards the game had. When someone mentioned to him that there was a big regional tournament going on relatively close by, he decided to sign up for fun. While he didn't expect much, he also decided to plan out and put together an anti-meta deck that his friends would go on to call disgusting. As the day of the tournament arrived and he won game after game, he soon found himself to be the winner of the entire thing. This qualified him to attend a bigger international tournament, which was going to be held in Hawaii. They would even send him plane tickets when the details of the tournament was finalized. This was why, when the invitation came, Dustin assumed it was related to the card game tournament, and told his parents as such. Although he couldn't find an announcement about the tournament online, he didn't particularly care. Even if the trip wasn't related to the tournament, it's not like he would mind multiple free vacations to Hawaii.

Skills:

• Multitasking (to a comically unnecessary yet surprisingly effective degree)
• Computer Literacy, Rudimentary Coding; taught himself how to make a few mods and romhacks for games.
• Can play the Piano; pretty good at sight-reading sheet music

Dustin's Digimon Partner:

Name: Cardmon
Age: 1
Type: Data
Personality: Cardmon is not a complicated digimon. He is young and naive, wanting nothing more than the strength to defend himself and his trees, and to make Dustin happy. Instinctual enemies with Hangyomon, who are known card collectors.

Short Bio: Cardmon has only ever lived a simple life, floating atop trees, minding his own business. One day, in a fit of pique, a purple Digimon kicked its tree, causing Cardmon to fall off even though it can fly. Cardmon is clumsy like that. Naturally, he attacked and cursed the interloper, because really? Kicking his tree? Nonetheless, Cardmon was soundly defeated. As Cardmon laid there, saddened by his own powerlessness, the purple Digimon stepped forward and extended an offer to Cardmon, recruiting it for something or other. According to the purple Digimon, if Cardmon agreed, it would allow him to grow much stronger, digivolving to higher stages with the help of a human partner. Thinking it would be able to stand up for itself, to stop other Digimon from pushing it around, Cardmon agreed.
Powers:

• Card Curse - Cardmon's one and only combat skill. Cardmon batters a foe with its card, or throws out its card before recalling it. Targets hit by Cardmon's card become cursed, lowering their offenses, speed, or defenses at random. The curse is persistent, and more or less incurable except over time. The curse lasts most of a day, about 8 hours, give or take, and can affect even the mightiest of foes. That being said, the curse's effect is based on Cardmon's strength, not the target's, so significantly stronger enemies may not even notice the curse at all.
• Drop Booster - With significant energy investment, Cardmon is capable of producing booster packs, each containing 6 cards. Most cards have digimon on them, though a few are "option cards" meant to supplement play of a simplified Digimon card game. (Does not mirror real-life digimon cards) With training and new evolution stages, Cardmon can learn to produce new card packs with stronger cards in them. These cards... are just cards.

While on par or even slightly above other digimon of a similar level in terms of raw stats, All forms of Cardmon (including Champion, Perfect and Mega Cardmon forms) are incapable of developing additional combat skills, severely limiting their fighting potential. Their Card Curse becomes a bit stronger with each evolution but the relative effect of the curse does not keep up with the increase in strength most Digimon achieve at higher evolutions.
Future Evolutions:
                          Mimicmon     →   Jokermon   → Noble Pumpmon
                                  ↕
Cardmon C1 → Cardmon U1 → Cardmon R1 → Cardmon S1
          ↕                      ↕                        ↕                        ↕
Cardmon C2 → Cardmon U2 → Cardmon R2 → Cardmon S2

Cardmon varieties explained

Cardmon is a named used by 8 varieties of regular digimon. They can be distinguished by a suffix: C1, C2, U1, U2, R1, R2, S1, and S2. Cardmon -1 are arboreal, while Cardmon -2 are aquatic, using their card(s) like fins. Cardmon C are Rookie level, with U, R and S corresponding to Champion, Perfect and Mega levels. The letters themselves stand for Common, Uncommon, Rare and Special or Super-rare.

Digimon: Dawn's Glimmering

Dustin

Theme

Name: Dustin Syoka
Age: 17
Important items: A pair of wireless earbuds and his phone, which he uses to listen to music pretty much constantly.
Short Bio: Dustin was cursed with the title of "gifted" child, and while he's always excelled in academics, his parents had a habit of downplaying his successes and magnifying his mistakes. Nothing he did ever felt like it was good enough, and when it was perfect, it never seemed to matter to them. As a result, when he inevitably slipped and they blew up on him over it, he gave up on being perfect. He gave up on engaging with his parents when they gave one-sided, out-of-touch lectures about the importance of this or that without actually saying anything of substance. He gave up on arguing with teachers when their shitty print-outs from the 90s contained grammatical errors that arguably changed the context of the question and therefore the answer. Perhaps most importantly, he gave up on being in three different extracurricular clubs at the same time that would allegedly look good when applying to colleges. While Dustin still does his due diligence, he's no longer one to shoot for the moon, to hold himself to an impossibly high standard. He doesn't need such things to make him happy. He still cares about his parents, but not so much that he wants them to be a part of his eventual adult life, and not so much that he's willing to let them control his life any longer.

With actual time to himself, he was able to enjoy having hobbies again. Music and video games, of course, though he also picked up a game called Card Wars that was popular at his school at the time. He played with people casually as he came to understand the meta and library of cards the game had. When someone mentioned to him that there was a big regional tournament going on relatively close by, he decided to sign up for fun. While he didn't expect much, he also decided to plan out and put together an anti-meta deck that his friends would go on to call disgusting. As the day of the tournament arrived and he won game after game, he soon found himself to be the winner of the entire thing. This qualified him to attend a bigger international tournament, which was going to be held in Hawaii. They would even send him plane tickets when the details of the tournament was finalized. This was why, when the invitation came, Dustin assumed it was related to the card game tournament, and told his parents as such. Although he couldn't find an announcement about the tournament online, he didn't particularly care. Even if the trip wasn't related to the tournament, it's not like he would mind multiple free vacations to Hawaii.

Skills:

• Multitasking (to a comically unnecessary yet surprisingly effective degree)
• Computer Literacy, Rudimentary Coding; taught himself how to make a few mods and romhacks for games.
• Can play the Piano; pretty good at sight-reading sheet music

Dustin's Digimon Partner:

Name: Cardmon
Age: 3
Type: Data
Short Bio: Cardmon has only ever lived a simple life, floating atop trees, minding its own business. One day, in a fit of pique, a purple Digimon kicked its tree, causing Cardmon to fall off even though it can fly. Cardmon is clumsy like that. Naturally, he attacked and cursed the interloper, because really? Kicking his tree? Nonetheless, Cardmon was soundly defeated. As Cardmon laid there, saddened by his own powerlessness, the purple Digimon stepped forward and extended an offer to Cardmon, recruiting it for something or other. According to the purple Digimon, if Cardmon agreed, it would allow him to grow much stronger, digivolving to higher stages with the help of a human partner. Thinking it would be able to stand up for itself, to stop other Digimon from pushing it around, Cardmon agreed.
Powers:

• Card Curse - Cardmon's one and only combat skill. Cardmon batters a foe with its card, or throws out its card before recalling it. Targets hit by Cardmon's card become cursed, lowering their offenses, speed, or defenses at random. The curse is persistent, and more or less incurable except over time. The curse lasts most of a day, about 8 hours, give or take, and can affect even the mightiest of foes. That being said, the curse's effect is based on Cardmon's strength, not the target's, so significantly stronger enemies may not even notice the curse at all.
• Drop Booster - With significant energy investment, Cardmon is capable of producing booster packs, each containing 6 cards. Most cards have digimon on them, though a few are "option cards" meant to supplement play of a simplified Digimon card game. (Does not mirror real-life digimon cards) With training and new evolution stages, Cardmon can learn to produce new card packs with stronger cards in them. These cards... are just cards.

While on par or even slightly above other digimon of a similar level in terms of raw stats, All forms of Cardmon (including Champion, Perfect and Mega Cardmon forms) are incapable of developing additional combat skills, severely limiting their fighting potential. Their Card Curse becomes a bit stronger with each evolution but the relative effect of the curse does not keep up with the increase in strength most Digimon achieve at higher evolutions.
Future Evolutions:
                          Mimicmon     →   Jokermon   → Noble Pumpmon
                                  ↕
Cardmon C1 → Cardmon U1 → Cardmon R1 → Cardmon S1
          ↕                      ↕                        ↕                        ↕
Cardmon C2 → Cardmon U2 → Cardmon R2 → Cardmon S2

Cardmon varieties explained

Cardmon is a named used by 8 varieties of regular digimon. They can be distinguished by a suffix: C1, C2, U1, U2, R1, R2, S1, and S2. Cardmon -1 are arboreal, while Cardmon -2 are aquatic, using their card(s) like fins. Cardmon C are Rookie level, with U, R and S corresponding to Champion, Perfect and Mega levels. The letters themselves stand for Common, Uncommon, Rare and Special or Super-rare.

I Am Thou: A Persona/SMT Inspired Story

Flint

One of the core tenants of the god of love is that, to reach that special place beyond death, one must find another person to love, to help free them from the evils of money, that the two may reach that place together, hand-in-hand.

For that reason, Flint has always felt left out. There are very few believers who do not have a special someone to bring into the faith, and when they don't, they rarely stay faithful themselves. Among both, however, most would say he was too young for them to love him, and for those that didn't, Father Dominic would intervene without fail. Apparently, those who were not adults could not achieve true love, and trying anyway could harm them, making it harder to achieve true love later on, somehow. Over the years, Flint had started to feel like he would never find someone to love himself, and as time went on, he tried less and less.

He still wasn't an adult now, based on the arbitrary age of 18, though it would be less than a year until he was, and while he wasn't sure he could actually find anyone to love when the time came, Father Dominic had made it very clear that he shouldn't try it with someone he would have to wait long on. Dating just a bit before he was an adult was fine, but there was this whole talk about acceptable age ranges and how it started narrow and widened with age, and how people could approach him with apparent love 'only to be holding a dagger behind their back.' He never explained why people would do such a thing, or why an age gap was a problem, but the ultimate message was clear.

So, Daniel calling him cute was flattering, if anything. He didn't find it gross, and he couldn't stop his face from heating up from embarrassment from the compliment. He wasn't used to them, and would seldom get them for anything but his drawings, so he didn't know how to handle them properly. All that being said, when he looked back at Daniel's boyish face, all he could think of him was that he was someone who he couldn't achieve true love with. Maybe it was the disappointment from bringing back another kid his age to the church when he was younger and being told that it wouldn't work out, or maybe the feeling of incompatibility itself was what father Dominic was talking about with his age range stuff. Mathematically, things could work out between them, but that was a few years off, and starting something between them before then would supposedly only hurt them.

Ultimately, Flint didn't know how to respond before fog enveloped the room, turning everything hazy and then dark.

When Flint woke up in his bed in the church's compound, he found that, indeed, he seemed to have been having a realistic dream right on the heels of another dream.

He should make a drawing of it to show Father Dominic. It would be harder to explain why he needs to borrow Father Dominic's phone without a visual aid.

Radcliff

Radcliff's return to the waking world began with him coughing up water with an intensity that sent a sharp pain through his ribs and a volume to it that made it feel like he was vomiting. He had to lean over so as not to drown himself, perhaps for the second time in the last several hours, and as he did so, he found himself falling. Mercifully it was only a drop of a couple of inches, off a surfboard, onto the sand beneath. Wiping the salt water out of his eyes with his soaked but relatively sand-free clothes, he found himself surrounded by a pair of lifeguards, judging by the labels on their swimsuits, and a crowd of curious onlookers who were quietly celebrating the successful rescue with appurtenant levels of cheers and applause, as if a collective and disorganized sigh of relief.

One of the lifeguards asks him, "You okay?" But as he struggles to gain his bearings, scanning his surroundings, his eyes lock on to a piece of wreckage he recognizes as part of his boat. It was still silently being pushed back and forth by the tides.

Noticing his gaze, one of the lifeguards explains; "we saw you drifting on top of that thing through binoculars. Good thing we did, too, else we wouldn't have been close enough to bring you to shore when you fell off it."

Radcliff barely registered the lifeguard's words as he pulled out his phone. Dead, of course. He asks to borrow a lifeguard's phone with his scratchy, salt-water-abused voice and they lead him back towards their tower to get it while informing him that an ambulance is on the way for him. After calling up emergency services to unilaterally informing them that an ambulance is no longer necessary, he tries calling up the coast guard and then every hospital within a couple hundred miles to see if any of his friends were found. To his dismay, none were, and the lifeguards quietly watch on with a growing frown on their faces as Radcliff makes call after call, ignoring their offers of fresh water and oreos, all while Cliff's voice grows steadily more ragged from the overuse. Eventually he takes a deep breath before moving on to calling up the families of all of his friends and informing them of the situation, and by then, he just can't keep it together. Neither can the lifeguards, as they awkwardly watch on, hearing the story unfold piece by piece.

Flint

With a few sketches done of the velvet room, the velvet barracks, the velvet long-nosed man and the velvet humanoid figure Clerval summoned, Flint began looking for Father Dominic, ignoring the sounds coming from the rooms of any believers who had a habit of leaving their doors open. It didn't take long to find him, sitting in his office.

He greeted Flint with a warm smile, putting whatever he was holding away in a drawer. "Hello, Flint. What brings you here today?"

"I had a strange dream last night."

It took a bit to recount the events of Flint's visit to the velvet room as he showed Father Dominic his drawings of the place, though with his impeccable memory, he was able to recite every last word spoken with exacting detail, which he did not do, since Father Dominic asked him to summarize after the first minute or so of him doing this.

"So, it seems the world 'as we know it' is going to end soon."

"So it would seem. Though, if they do not mean the end of the world in its totality, then we must consider the future beyond, and I must say, there is a friend of mine who would adore paintings of this velvet room."

"Oh? Sure, I'll make some for them."

"That would be wonderful, my boy. As soon as you can, yes?"

"Could I call that guy, Daniel, first? Igor said that the five of us in that dream would be meeting soon, and I'm not sure if anyone else remembers his phone number."

"Hmm? I suppose it wouldn't hurt, but remember, Flint, that dreams and reality are two separate things."

Flint simply nodded, oblivious to the subtext. "Yes, father."

To Father Dominic's shock and bewilderment, Daniel did pick up the phone. "Daniel, right? This is Flint-"

Father Dominic, thinking this an elaborate scam that poor, gullible Flint has fallen for, or otherwise an unknown number Flint has subconsciously grafted onto his dreams, grabbed his phone back out of Flint's hand. "Who is this!? Just where did Flint get your number!?"

Ah, maybe I didn't explain things well enough, Flint thought.

I Am Thou: A Persona/SMT Inspired Story

Radcliff may be meeting up with the others a bit late.

I Am Thou: A Persona/SMT Inspired Story

Perhaps we should just move on?

I can't entirely blame @meri and @ctrlsaltdel for not responding given how their only option right now would be to go through the motions of doing so, and if I were in their position I'd appreciate being able to just throw that stuff into a post on the way towards manifesting a Persona for the first time, or even our first instance of combat. Idk if this is actually the source of the stagnation but a lack of meaningful agency is a common problem for RPs in general.

I Am Thou: A Persona/SMT Inspired Story

Flint

“Imagine every legend, champion, god, myth, and monster humanity has ever dreamed of being unleashed upon the world. That should paint a sufficient picture for now.”

To summarize, an insurmountable trial awaited them. To carry out such an impossible task, they would be granted gifts that 'will seem unbelievable' to them now. There was, really, only one thing that could bear such an onus, and it would certainly be unbelievable.

What would that be? Why, the power of god, of course. Gods, perhaps, given how Igor had summoned forth several people. It would make sense if they were all believers of different faiths, which implied the existence of multiple 'true' gods; as opposed to the false gods which either cannot or will not deign to perform miracles. Flint was tempted to try summoning forth the god of love right there and then, but Clerval's wording meant that the power to do so had not yet been bestowed upon them.

Is such a power necessary?

Muttering a prayer to himself, he gave it a try. "Oh, god, I beseech thee..." He got halfway through it when Father Dominic's words echoed in his head. The god of love did not perform miracles when they were not necessary. Humans can never achieve true freedom of thought and spirit if they never learn to take care of themselves, and nothing in the present called for the power of god. Still, Father Dominic said that asking for spiritual strength was supposed to be fine, because it was somethings humans lacked on their own. "...grant me strength in the face of adversity, amen."

As Flint returned his attention to Igor, he didn't feel any different than he would after any other prayer. Not much actual adversity here, yeah? There's no way he's wrong about the power in question being that of a god, though. Or, a god by any other name, he supposes.

Radcliff

"Igor. Nice to meet you."

As Igor finally began speaking in more concrete terms, Radcliff's last remaining shreds of sincere denial began to crumble. It was still a tale as tall as a mountain, and the logical part of his mind still kept scrambling to find the molehill, but all in all, the odds of all of this being an elaborate hoax were starting to tip over into the territory of minority. Constructing an elaborate narrative for some kind of 'gotcha' moment should inherently end with them doing something worth using as entertainment, and unless they need to strip down and/or climb into guillotines to receive such power, this level of detail is untenable for a simple prank show. It would be a waste of time and money.

Igor's exact words were, “The world as you know it is on the precipice of oblivion." 'The world as we know it' is very different from the world as a whole, which was a much more realistic prophecy than figments of the human mind ending all human life which created them. Radcliff did not consider himself remotely religious; an atheist or perhaps agnostic atheist, given that the divine are generally unfalsifiable, though if there is one belief that made sense to him, it was Shintoism. It wasn't their mythos or anything like that that made sense, but the fundamental principle of Shintoism was that human belief held power. With enough belief, anything could become a god. The idea that "every legend, champion, god, myth, and monster humanity has ever dreamed of" would be "unleashed upon the world" hearkened to, if not outright proved that idea. There was no other way for so many conflicting mythoi to coexist.

The logical outcome would be for the Earth to get wrapped up in an existential holy war where a bunch of nigh-all-powerful beings who are intractable by nature recruit and then whip up their followers into a frenzy aiming to eliminate all competition. And, given belief would be the basis of their existence, that would mean eliminating all the followers of other gods. Their goal, both the group of them that Igor summoned, as well as the gods themselves, would be to commit genocide, something they couldn't realistically accomplish before the extinction of the human race, unless-

"Igor, would my assumption be correct that you would have us fight these gods, myths, and legends, directly?" That might actually prove to be harder than the alternative, though he supposed they wouldn't really be saving the world at all if they weren't doing just that. Either way, there was another thing that had to be asked. "What power would you have us wield for this?" In hindsight, he almost resented Igor and Clerval for pausing here without explaining. "You don't need to beat around the bush and make us ask every obvious question. Let's cut to the chase." Is it going to be given out now or held back as if to punctuate Igor's need to be cryptic and unconvincing? Is it ethically sourced from the wave of a magician's hand, or are they making blood sacrifices to an eldritch god? Radcliff wasn't exactly keen on trying to start a religion worshipping himself, nor others doing the same, and it'd feel rather awkward for Igor to bust out a propaganda advertising campaign for each of them out of nowhere. So many obvious questions and not a single one on the easily-anticipated-FAQ is being answered without first being prompted. He probably wouldn't even have these questions if they were just given the full rundown from the start.

He'd ask Igor about meeting the others in the real world, but his cryptic bullshit prophecy said they'd meet already, and he doubts the long-nosed gremlin is keen on elaborating in a simple and straight-forward manner. If Igor had foreseen them exchanging contact information before actually making contact, he should have said something about it. It was funny in a grim sort of way. Five people tasked with saving the world and they never accomplish it just because nobody told them to trade cell phone numbers.

I Am Thou: A Persona/SMT Inspired Story

If Flint, who knows exactly what his Persona will be already, were to try summoning it, would he succeed? @Bacon

I Am Thou: A Persona/SMT Inspired Story

If practical, we can just say everyone's introductions happened off-screen, but we are chiefly waiting on @Bacon's introduction of Igor, since Igor is the only one who can move things along beyond that.

I Am Thou: A Persona/SMT Inspired Story

Radcliff

“You’re outnumbered and without guns or weapons unlike more experienced kidnappers. Even if you can take us, we can cause chaos and wreck what you find useful in us. So give us a reason to not to resort to violence."

Radcliff had to side-eye the kid. He can acknowledge that he was being confrontational himself, but making threats of violence to assumed kidnappers didn't really seem wise. He supposes he can't blame a kid as such, though to have such a dire worldview as to make such threats, with the immaturity to wield them so loosely...

As one of the people standing behind the long-nosed man answered the boy's threats with one of his own, a armor-clad figure simply materialized behind him. There was no better word for it. It was only briefly, but go to the level of holograms for such a hoax beggared belief. The most rational explanation remaining was that they were on some kind of reality TV show that wasn't afraid to either break the law or drug their actors... No, even with drugs, and allowing for the outlandish possibility of subjective time travel by disabling the creation of long term memories, it's a lot of effort to go through for a TV show that could only be controversial and difficult to manage. After all, even if everyone signed up to be here, it was obvious that, should the scenario be repeated with many people, some of them would lash out violently. It didn't make sense. An infinite barracks back in the other room could have been a simple optical illusion, but holograms now? There were no obvious projectors he could see, and the blue fog machine - wherever they're hiding it, would have been liable to interfere. Perhaps it was hidden in the ceiling somewhere, but no points of light stood out.

As the long-nosed man went on with his explanation, it was somehow more outlandish than the best he could come up with. The man said they were dreaming, but as Radcliff crossed his arms to surreptitiously pinch himself again on the bicep, he was having difficulty with basic suspension of disbelief. Refusing to answer the 'how' and 'why' of their arrival here with a boilerplate 'you wouldn't understand' certainly wasn't helping his case.

The man said they were tasked with saving the world, and that the 'real' chosen one turned down the position. That gave him pause, since it conflicted with the idea that this was all some kind of TV narrative. While it would avoid placing unfair importance on any one character, it also implied that they were being set up to fail. While an underdog story might have been more popular, it would also be unacceptably anticlimactic for them to suffer failures, which meant that, if his theory was true, they were either in a snuff film, or... or what?

And if they were in a snuff film, would the correct path forward - fighting and surviving, actually be any different than blind belief?

The idea that he was asleep, that he had just been knocked out and could be awoken, still on the boat, with everyone still okay...

How very serendipitous.

As he began to consider the logistics of going forth with whatever the long-nosed man wanted for now, one of the girls - Ami, was it? And the young boy echoed his thoughts pretty straightforwardly. The weapons they would need to accomplish such a task and, reluctantly, the targets that were involved. Assassination would be the way to go, he supposed.

Ah, right, before he goes further down that train of thought, if they were expected to work together, whether it was him and the others who woke up here or all of them with the long-nosed man, they should know how to address each other at the very least. Two more names were already mentioned. He nodded towards them as he said their names. "Clerval. Safie." He turned towards the long-nosed man; "My name is Radcliff. How should I address you?" He then swiveled his head to look at the others in the room. Now was as good a time as any for introductions, and he's pretty sure he was the only one to overhear the girls exchange names.

Flint

“Allow me to start with your question. This is a place between the worlds of sleep and waking. Physically at least, every one of you is asleep right now. As master of the Velvet Room, it is within my power to bring people who possess a certain gift here. As individuals who possess this gift, I called you here so I might speak with you.”

Ah, now things were starting to make more sense. Father Dominic always said he had a gift, though he didn't think remembering dreams was that special. As for why the five of them were needed, though...

“The world as you know it is on the precipice of oblivion. Under normal circumstances, I would call on a special individual to save it, but unfortunately they have turned away from that path, and the world, in the current state, is doomed.”

"So, it's simple then. We save the world instead." Flint nodded to himself. Of course Father Dominic would never purchase a place like this. It makes much more sense that they're simply not in the waking world.

Hmm... "What are we saving it from, though? A wrathful god? Can gods even be killed?" He mused, aloud.

Then, derailing the topic, the upset man from earlier spoke up, seemingly having regained his composure.

"My name is Radcliff. How should I address you?"

He was clearly talking to the long-nosed man, but then his gaze shifted over him next since he was sitting at the table next to the man. He then looked toward the boy and the two girls. It was an expectant look; an open invitation. They weren't fellow believers, but it seems they would have to save the world together. Getting to know one another was a good idea. "I'm Flint." All that being said, he wasn't sure what else to say about himself, and so just didn't say anything else as the moment passed and the others went on to make their own introductions.