infodump

[thisloveisjustice]

So Derek and I have both mentioned to various people finding some information back in April. Zee contacted us and asked us to organize a storage room hidden in the Recolle Library. If you are new to the app and the whole Retrospec deal, I'd suggest you go read the User Guide first. Anyway. We spent about three evenings cleaning that place up. It was a literal mess. Here's what we found.


LAYERS

The whole layer thing has been a pretty big issue the last couple of months, so we will start off with that.

[INSERT DIAGRAM OF LAYERS]
(diagram of the city of Recollé surrounded by concentric rings, think the solar system)

And just so you don't have to squint at the scan, I've typed out what each ring is labled, so far as they have a lable.

FIRST RING: "Awareness. Sense of something amiss, though easily explained away as things as they've always been. Meant to preserve order and balance from those who are not under reconstruction."

SECOND RING: "Awakening. An understanding that life as you know it may not be as it appears, the first portion of recreation and reconstruction. The full ability to see the first layer."

THIRD RING: "Enlightenment. Beginning to reconstruct as soul energy grows and flourishes. Retrieval of original form. Abilities begin to form and changes begin to occur."

FOURTH RING: "Exploration. The ability to further see and explore areas outside of the safe haven/hub. Souls just beginning reconstruction will be too fragile to explore far.
Solution: stabilization."

FIFTH RING: "Expansion. The full purpose of the project begins to expand in this layer and allows for an overlay."

Any of that sound familiar? Sounds an awful lot like what we go through once we get the app.

This isn't entirely new, as Derek says the group that headed into Bosuma back in February also saw this same diagram.

Ok, Derek here, when we found this diagram in February we also found this report from Georgia Mahoney. Most of that report appears to be written in that unidentifyable language we keep running into, ie. charts indicating soul reconstruction times and distances to travel. Some of it was written in English:

To prevent mass panic among those rescued and those whose souls are restored, the Retrospec Project will be carefully monitoring when users reach the second ring. It is rather unfortunate that we cannot exactly derive what portions of the soul will reconstruct first and what portions of their memories and essence are attached to each strand. Our research department will work to create a monitoring system to watch over the project and those in it to ensure that they can be looked after at all times. As the souls cultivate and begin to reform, we will study the effects on the user as well to prevent from overexposure.

There are several uncharted planets whose effects we do not know, and we anticipate some cases being more complicated than others.

For this reason, I propose that we prevent those who are not ready to be exposed to the second ring from the risk of the storms that have begun to occur on this planet. At this time, it is nearly impossible to separate those who are simply rescued and those who are to be reconstructed but have yet to awaken. Therefore, they will all remain in the first layer blissfully unaware as they should be.

As members of our project begin reforming to their original selves, we will further monitor and discuss at a later date.

Recollé is the perfect hub for our project and for refugees. From here, we may monitor their progress, set up a base for our research and technical departments, and ensure that we are in a space in which the storms can also be further monitored. We wish to prevent a storm of high magnitude hitting this planet as well.

Further study will also go into pockets outside of our current planet and more information will be available at a later date. Please see the attached proposal.

POCKETS? August anyone?


HOW RETROSPEC WORKS

This segways into the notes we found in the storage room. There was a map of Recollé with a flowchart attached. Written on the map of the city is a note:

"The Recollé hub shall be terminated to prevent the coming and going of those who have not met standards. The Company shall report a list of citizens and home worlds of which several will be sorted and set on trains outward.

Once the trains leave this central station, we shall close all tunnels and block exits as well despite whether the trains have a destination or not. No trains are to return after this point. This will then narrow our resources and provide a higher chance for a brighter, better tomorrow."

On the flowchart, several of the boxes are labeled:

”Has the planet set up barter and trade with ours?”

“Does the planet have resources we can obtain for ourselves?”

“Will this planet benefit us?”

“How pure is the family line?”

“Purging and the perfect storm?”

“Will reviving and reconstructing these souls benefit or hinder?”

Some other questions follow regarding the state of the planets and the applicability of saving certain souls. It appears to be a chart to process whether revival of the planets is worth the Project’s interest or not. So it looks like they were setting some parameters for who can be a part of Retrospec. But then we also found a creepy cryptic note by Clarence Vanderweel, which only goes to show how messed up this guy is:

"As the project begins to grow I have come to find that my co-founders have separate goals than those of my own. While we had agreed that the purpose of the Retrospec project was to retrieve victims of planets lost and revive and reconstruct the souls that have also been lost, it has come to my attention that several of these wayward souls are not precisely what will benefit us for our project and for our plans to build a better tomorrow.

Georgia and Myrtle will be rather easy to convince backed by science and by fact, presenting them with the charts and the statistics of the few we’ve saved thus far. By the turnover rate, we can generate more energy in order to power this new planet.

Soul energy is a power we have yet to fully harness but with the expendables we will be able to research and provide a basis of power and magic under my reign.

As for Philip, he’s grown far too soft for his own good and believes that everyone can work together even those who would be better providing us with their energy rather than wasting our efforts on revival. There are ways to force his hand, however, and though I am not proud of them success comes at a price.

The people of this town will not be needed as more refugees gather in our city and we put them through the sorting process.

Should our group reach a disagreement, steps must be taken to enact the next phase of planning including deriving soul energy from those less worthy and rerouting it to obtain a higher power, explore the layers outside of the base of this planet and create utopia.”

See? Creepy.


SPINNATOS AND VANDERWEELES

'But wait Derek, who is Georgia Mahoney and Clarance Vanderweele?' Read THIS, then come back.

So, back in October 2017, I saw a contract in the Retrospec bunker in Recolle Woods. Tatsuo also saw it. Probably others.

Clarence Vanderweele, Georgia Mahoney, Phillip Spinnato and Myrtle Cavendish will embark on a venture to begin saving worlds that are being destroyed across the universe. They will organize rescue teams to scout various worlds and collect "seeds", though what this entirely means isn't made clear. These seeds will then be brought to a safe haven to foster and grow to preserve the worlds while the four founders of the city design the new universe.

In addion to the contract I found in October I also found this note:

Due to the unspeakable acts caused by you and your hand in the demise of Phillip's family line, by order we declare that you are no longer fit for this operation. You will be held in a facility elsewhere to await for sentencing.

Our operation began as a preservation of life, not simply your own. We will begin restructuring to undo the damage immediately.

None of this really made sense to me until we found information on two of the families in April 2018. Namely, the family trees of the Spinnatos and Vanderweeles. Now, the beginning of the trees are in that damn untranslatable language, but it eventually changes to English around 1918.


The Spinnato Family Tree

This tree actually makes some logical sense, thank god!

[ Spinnato Family Tree ooc: this is a PDF]

If you don't want to squint at little boxes and lines, here is the tree written out:

Phillip, one of the founders of Retrospec, was born in 1898 to James Spinnato and Elizabeth Valleur. He married a woman (Charlotte Johnson) in 1922 and they began their family with three children (Robert in 1923, Henry in 1924, and Peggy in 1926.) Henry's life was tragically cut short first at the age of 20 (in 1944- ie World War II) as a soldier who never came home and was declared missing in action. Likewise, Peggy also did not live that long (until 1952) as she died in an automobile accident.

Robert, however, didn't die before he got married. In 1956, at age 33, he married Pearl van Dame and the couple had a set of twins named Wells and Cynthia. Born also in 1956, (and the true reason the Spinnatos were married), Wells and Cynthia have a special note on the tree as being the first set of twins in the family's history, and also that they are the youngest descendants of the Spinnato family line. So they were super special little snowflakes.

However, the family tree stops right after these children. In 1966, on the children's 10th birthday, they die. Cause of death: foul play and murder executed by their nursemaid, Agatha.

Robert's date of death is not long after, weeks from his children's, with the cause being a suicide. Pearl's death remains as a question mark, as no one knows quite what happened to her but apparently, according that Tatsuo, the Spinnato Mansion where these children wre murdered is Hell Mansion (one of the locations people were sent back in August) and Agatha haunts it. How I didn't know about this before, is beyond me.

The Vanderweele Family Tree

This tree is a bloody clusterfuck.

[ vanderweele Family Tree ooc: this is a PDF]

If you don't want to squint at little boxes and lines, here is the tree written out:

Clarence was born to William Vanderweele and Margaret Porter. Margaret's life however, was cut short at the age of 25 not long after Clarence was born. From there, William went on to wed three other women: Ruth (1903), Gladys (1910) and Rosemary (1918). Each of these women also went on to have children with William and become Clarence's half-siblings:

Marilyn, born to William and Ruth in 1906.
Jonah, born to William and Ruth in 1907.

William II, borh to William and Gladys in 1912.
Gerald, born to William and Gladys in 1914.
Samantha, born to William and Gladys in 1917.

Isaac, born to William and Rosemary in 1920.
Abigail, born to William and Rosemary in 1923.

It is unclear why, precisely, William married and remarried so much when the dates of the women in question lived well into their old age and died of natural causes from glancing over the facts and the chart.

However, it also appears as though Clarence followed his father's footsteps, and wed multiple women.

He married Christine Day in 1923 and had four children:

Alexander (1924)
Margaret (1925)
Amelia (1927)
Charles (1930)

Then in 1937 he married Roxanne Kelly and had two children with her:

Albert (1942)
Christopher (1945)

Later on, the children he had with Christine would go on to produce grandchildren:

Ronald, born to Alexander and Stephanie in 1946.
Felicity, born to Amelia and Gregory Smith in 1950.

Finally, though there is no marriage line, the chart shows a connection between Clarence and a woman named Agatha (born 1936) beginning in 1960. (Oh look, the woman who murdered the Spinnato children.) Though the two did not produce children together, nor were they ever legally married, Agatha claimed a marriage and a place in the Vanderweele line. However, her line was cut short via death penalty for her hand in the murder of the Spinnato children in 1966, despite the fact that the death penalty was more frowned upon in that time period. But lets get real, it was the 1960's, she probably got the electric chair.

Interestingly enough (but is it really?), the deaths of the rest of the Vanderweele line came one by one, one a year due to a handful of seemingly freak accidents ranging from drownings, animal attacks, avalanches, construction mishaps and more. The member of this family who lived longest, Christopher, lived until age 61 when he died via heart attack in 2006. Obviously there is a lot of bad karma around this family.

The freaky thing is, Clarence Vanderweele is still marked as very much alive despite the fact that this should not be even remotely possible. If my math checks Clarence is in the neighborhood of being 119 years old.

So if we go back to that cryptic note I found in October 2017, Clarence Vanderweel got kicked out of the Retrospec program by Georgia Mahoney, Myrtle Cavendish, and Philip Spinnato. But really, wouldn't you fire the guy with the connections to your son and grandchildren's deaths?


NEWSPAPER ARTICLES

Additionally we found a shit load, and I mean, someone went far and beyong to collect every single copy of an article about the death of the Spinnao twins and varius other articles to back what the notes and famiy trees were showing.

Seriously. Someone went to a lot of trouble to remove these articles from the city. There were hundreds of clippings of these two pages scattered willy-nilly throughout the storage room. Literally HUNDREDS.

[INSERT SCANS OF TWO NEWSPAPER CLIPPINGS]

• Wells and Cynthia Spinnato, the twins of Robert Spinnato, were murdered by their nursemaid Agatha (Something we were already aware of to a certain extent since last August.)

• A story on a natural disater which killed off several families, run on the same day as a story about Clarence Vanderweele being imprisioned (Conincidence? Perhaps. Several clippings of this particular story had notes scribbled on them, I guess because the story doesn't specify what the natural disater was. 'Fire,' 'murder,' and 'storm' were some of the ones we were able to make out.)

The second clipping in particular reminded me of the articles we found last August. They also talked about the deaths/ends of several prominent families, along with the declining population in Recollé. Prominent families like the Spinnatos and Vanderweeles perhaps?

[INSERT SCANS OF THOSE ARTICLES, COURTESY TEAM TARZAN]


MAPS

There were also a number of maps in the storage room. We found a complete map of the subway system. Though, those of us who have been down in the subway will note that several of the tunnels are no longer there! Great! But, hey, it could be handy the next time we decide to go down there.

[SCAN OF SUBWAY MAP (clearly done in pieces)]

There were also maps of the city. The earliest we found was dated 1918 and the most recent was this year actually. We were unable to bring copies of these maps back however. So you get cellphone pics of those. You can see the original farmland and the city as it grows (like the addition of the Towers, the Observatory, etc) as you progress through the maps.

[INSERT PICTURES OF THESE MAPS]

Questions and comments can go below. Tatsuo and I will try our best to clarify what we can. Sorry this is a month late. Between the city going white, having to move, and the sheer volume of information, it took a while to organize in a coherent fashion.

Comments

[toobigtohandle]

This all looks like it started as a rescue project, then someone thought it could be the perfect setup for human experimentation, and then someone else finally went off the rails and thought weaponization and eugenics were the way to go and they shut that down.

There does seem to be a mercantile aspect to it, too. Trade relations? Why would you look at trade relations and whether you can benefit is you're actually trying to save people?

It also sound like Recollé might be some sort of experimental facility that has had several uses or gone through several cycles, or why would they mention shutting it down at one point when it is still very much active today?

[thisloveisjustice]

That... is a very succinct but, as far as I am understanding this stuff, accurate summary.

With the mercantile aspect, I think that might have to do with the resources the planets might have? Since the whole idea is that a planet isn't 'dead' as long as one soul remains and that MAYBE a planet can actually be brought back if that soul is reconstructed??? Also possibly any knowledge of technology or processes an individual soul might remember.

And yeah. The whole shutting down thing. Retrospec has definitely gone through phases or cycles. The bunker in Recolle Woods people were able to access in October 2017 looks to be the original headquarters. Then there is the central station we found in the subways in January 2018. Can't say for sure if that location was every any kind of HQ, but it points to a very different approach to what we have now. And then there was the HQ in Tisse that disappeared in November 2017.

Plus, both Wendy and Zee have stated they're from destroyed worlds like us. So there have been others who have supposedly gone through what's happening to us, but are not, in a sense, part of our cohort.

[hauntedsavior]

So we're all refugees, the things we're remembering are from before all those people's worlds got destroyed, and some dusty old bitch got his hands on a computer and is trying to hack away the people who aren't strong enough to give him what he wants.

All right, Clarence. You're on.

[liberal_arts]

That is assuming the old man is even our enemy, and not Retrospec's own incompetence.

[megatechbody]

I was starting to think I reached my upper limit for how angry I could even be at all this, but this whole fucking mess just blew the ceiling off.

[blondferret]

Welcome back! Soon your anger will probably go up into the stratosphere.

[thisloveisjustice]

Tell me about it. I think Retrospec has reached new heights of nonsense and bullshit and then... they prove me wrong. Again.

[espansivo]

that's a lot
like "i'm gonna have to actually sit down and read this shit" a lot
basically, we're caught in the crossfire of some family affair?
either as the bullets or what's left over of it

[unlightmusic]

Ah! Is that what it is? So we're like plot devices in a soap opera?

As expected of Leonii! You're so smart! There were too many words, so I couldn't understand any of it☆

[suzu no]

[thisloveisjustice]

Supposed galactic destruction with a heavy dose of a century old family feud? Yes. It does kind of feel like that.

[fiddlestick]

Thanks for putting this all together! I've heard pieces of this before, but to hear the whole thing ... yikes.

Anyway, I guess I should mention the bit I've heard. I meant to share it earlier, so sorry about that:

Back in Bosuma in February, along with that the layers ring map, we were given two vials of smoke: one white and pink, and one black. Futaba, Chuuya and myself brought them to Zee and asked what they were, and he said they were samples of soul energy that once upon the time, Once upon a time, the company thrived on trying to harvest it, use it to help reshape the world and help the people in it grow.

We asked what'd happen to souls after they've been "harvested from", and he said if they extracted just part of the soul, the person would live. But if it was everything for expendable resources though....well, said "what do you think".

He wasn't sure if what was in the vials was a full sample or just a strand of soul energy. The white and pink one was active, while the black one had been corrupted - though he insists a soul can only get corrupted if it develops "wrong" or falls out of alignment - which is why they monitor us so carefully. Though...I wouldn't anyone if they aren't too reassured...

[blondferret]

So then there are different types of soul energy? Did he explain why the other two were white and pink specifically?

[thisloveisjustice]

Oh. Great. So the whole soul energy thing actually made it past the theoretical stages.

[S C R E A M I N G  I N S I D E]

[redarm]

what do you know, the founders of retrospec were fucking terrible people.

im sure there's people who wanna argue that they're different now, they're nicer!
and maybe that's true to some extent, or for some of them

but i know firsthand they still have a Mahoney on their staff
she refers to us as "assets", and got real mad with me when i pointed out they were people they'd been fucking with for months.
that's why you heard so much about team cognac being "problematic" in august. because i pointed out her assets were people.

in other words, if you wanna think retrospec are our friends, id hold off on your fucking friendship bracelets. we're still tools to them.

also in my memories, there was a guy harvesting soul energy to make weapons called Akuma to kill all of humanity
the souls he uses are trapped and experience indescribable amounts of pain and torture.
so keep that in mind when you hear about them fucking around with souls.

[thisloveisjustice]

Yeah, sometimes you get scientists who are so completely focused on the science aspect they care more about the test result than the well-being of their subjects. Usually it's a pretty good indicator they're an asshole in all aspects of their life.

So the guy in your memories weaponized soul energy? That's one way to make humanity destroy itself.

[openhanded]

I don't even know what to say. This is... a lot to unpack mentally and emotionally. Thank you for putting this together.

I guess I should mention what little I know about the ghosts in the woods.

They mostly wear clothes that are from decades ago, like fifty years or more.

Family is super important to them. They have young and old members.

Some of them feel like their deaths were wrongful somehow.

The changes in the city also feel wrong to them, including the echo flowers.

They aren't fans of how big the city's gotten, but they still love it deeply.

Outside of the woods:

There's a possibility that someone died in a fire in an old unlisted school-- the ghost of a child showed us this memory-- but I haven't been able to find any records of it.

There were also spirits in the subway station, but they were pretty happy to be there. Kind of like if they were at a mall or something. They weren't suffering like the souls in the woods.

I've had a theory for a while that Retrospec shifted the course of the city and it ended up in a lot of people dying, so they had to cover it up. But it looks like that wasn't exactly what happened. Maybe the ghosts in the woods are the people who were murdered...?

If anyone's noticed anything new or different about the ghosts, let me know and I'll update my notes. These were taken a long time ago and I haven't been able to go back out there in a while.

[openhanded]

@johnegbert: I can't believe it was D. all of the above.

[complementing]

thank you two for typing all of this up. I have my own write up of Group 4's activities here and wanted to chime in with some minor but possibly related tangents

• a lot of the things you discovered perfectly match what we found in (what we believe to be) Vanderweele's diary, but we also found a map of the four regions, with hand drawn lines of where I'm assuming they're now split up

• we also found schematic designs for a magic staff. It bears the four spirit animal symbols of the Founders on it

• previously, we heard from someone else that there's a legend as to why the regions were split up-- basically, a magic staff did it

if anyone has more info on the magic staff, please let me know, because otherwise I'm calling it now and saying that Vanderweele made the staff and somehow caused the split. I don't know HOW, but we know he's the worst of the four of them...I wouldn't put it past him to have found a way to make it happen for his own, possibly soul energy using purposes

[openhanded]

That's gotta be the same staff we dealt with in Respatrum. Someone was trying to replicate it and we had to chase them down and destroy it.

The original staff was destroyed, too. My notes say it happened when the owner was imprisoned? And that's who the replica staff was meant for.





Oh heck.

[adoringpast]

[ just read through everything and jesus fuckign christ. hm, leo is there though so sena's a little hesitant about opening a discussion about his case but since it looked like nobody's stepping up - ]

this is a lot to take in, christ
but retrospec founders being terrible people isn't so surprising at this point tbh

speaking of souls being knocked out of alignment at times, i want to know if any of you know people who were on the app once and disappeared, only to come back as a completely different person?
i asked zee about this a couple months back and he said when the souls fall out of sync during the memory restoration process, their memories of this city would suffer as a result
the soul overrode the restoration and the person would be reset, essentially, but at the end of the day they're still going to get the same memories of their past life
it's pretty vague but it's because it doesn't happen often enough for retrospec to actually look more into it

[complementing]

I just found out that a long time volunteer friend at ReVA suddenly doesn't remember me

I'll need to dig some more, but I'm pretty sure it might be a case like this, and I think in general we should keep an eye out from now on to track this a little better

[frostythehitman]

1- holy crap how much more soap opera can this GET
i didn't ask to get stuck in the middle of this family drama

2- i thought retrospec was just trying to 'save people' from doomed worlds
but now it sounds like they're planning on bringing some of them back completely
no idea how they're even planning to do it but even if they manage it, then what?
are we supposed to just 'go back' to whatever worlds we supposedly came from? bs

3- that newspaper clip about vanderweele being in prison
does it ever say anything about where he was being held?
maybe if we know what prison he got dumped into we can find out more about what happened to him

also getting through all this is way more effort than i put in for any of my homework
so if anyone reading this is a teacher at recolle high
add this on to my report card as extra credit or something

[blondferret]

1. Probably a lot more. I mean, I'm sure someday we will find out why Agatha killed those twins.

2. I'd rather not "go back" to what ever world Draco comes from.

3. Looks like some summer homework for you. Go forth and report back.

[strawberrypunch]

So... what does this mean for the ghosts?

[He's got his priorities.]

[blondferret]

What about ghosts? You see ghosts?

[matchbreaker]

In terms of working out a coherent timeline, that one book in the subway central hub's probably a good idea, right? The whole big change that happened ten years ago? Not to mention that Baroque back in August said the boss of the company is comparatively new.

[ And she edits in, for the sake of people who haven't known it before now, pictures of the "welcome to recolle" book from the Subway in January. So this in picture form:

Lastly, there's a large book on the table: "Welcome to Recollé." Flipping through this book details the history of the city and the story of how the four founders traveled far to settle on Earth to create this city decades ago. The city was originally to be a safe haven, a central hub much like this subway station, until the Retrospec project could reform everything. However, the city became a home to the founders, the founding families, and others that were rescued throughout the galaxy who'd lost their planets. The book goes on to explain how Retrospec created their original headquarters in a bunker in the woods hidden from prying eyes so they could do their job with utmost secrecy. Retrospec was never to be looked into by ordinary people and the original company had less than 10 employees working for it.

This subway station, it says, used to be the way that travelers from other worlds would arrive to the city of Recollé and a way that they could leave to explore other parts of the planet at their leisure until the system was shut down sometime in the 1970s due to the collapsing of several tunnels.

There are several pages at the end of the book, too, but the text is illegible. Instead, in bold letters written in sharpie are the words "LET'S REWRITE HISTORY" and dated 2007. ]

[blondferret]

I remember that book. My guess is that subway station was part of the original set up of Retrospec before Vanderweele started developing new ideas about soul energy. But it doesn't give us a great time frame since there are things down in that subway tunnel from every decade, like even after 1966. Like how much longer did Retrospec function as it originally did before it switched to functioning like it does now, a complete mess?

Also, are you the Elda that Matt keeps telling me about and I should talk to but he never bothered to introduce me too?

[meowchanics]

Geez, this is a lot. Thanks for compiling all of it.
As a recent "arrival," I don't have much to add, but a 119-year-old human being is, let's say, possible. There are a few biological elements that put a hard cap on human age, but it's higher than that.
Furthermore, let's not forget that time and space are just parallel dimensions of the same thing. If you can screw around with one - which is likely, considering all the talk of planets - there's no obvious reason you can't screw around with the other. You'd be sidestepping the same set of physical laws.
Which raises the question of just how much deeper the bullshit hole goes... Anyone else want to start a betting pool?

[thisloveisjustice]

Oh, time and space have definitely been screwed around with, as has reality (search the User Guide I linked for all references of 'reality' and 'unreality'). So I would not be surprised at all if Vanderweele crops up very much alive.

[me_matey]

bruh


u got a teel dear for me?

[angealwings]

I'll try.

Four people started Retrospec to preserve life. One of them decided to take a sharp turn into making it a for-profit organization and killed off the family of the one who was openly opposing them. He got expelled from the whole thing but there's no evidence that he's died, so there's a fair chance that some of the troubles right now are caused by him. He should be 119 years old by now.

I'm omitting a lot of details.

slips in late

[erythristic]

i'm going to need to read this several times to process all this. but, some things stand out more than the rest.

“Will reviving and reconstructing these souls benefit or hinder?”

benefiting or hindering their own selfish goals, i imagine?