hadriel | video;

Is this thing recordi- Oh.

[Nate isn't really that good at introductions nor is he any good at handling the SmartPhone capabilities of his new communications, but he's been trying, and as he once overheard a fancy guy quote at a black market auction: to try is to live.

(At the time he'd been checking the lot list and privately drawing conclusions about why Jack Rackham was given an inlaid cross, when a man four feet away started telling a story about how his shitty French was insulted by a crêpe vendor and he paid some thugs to rough him up later. Rich people, right? The worst.)

What started out as blurry footage of worn boots turns into slightly-more-focused footage of Nate's face. He looks well enough, if windswept, though it is evident he is somewhere far from ground level if the small buildings behind him are any indication.]

For those of you who haven't met me yet, I'm Nathan Drake.

[Flawless introduction. Short and sweet.]

Just gonna throw a general question out there: is there a more...comprehensive version of the city map outside that mural? Does anyone go into the caves to try and get the lay of the land in detail? And, uh, follow-up: how opposed would anyone be to me updating that stuff?

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[Mello has studied broadly, but most of it was centered on the investigative arts; he has only an introductory understanding of architecture, enough to know the bullet point hallmarks of styles and corresponding dates of movements. So he recognizes the terms and places from his own world, but the greater meaning ... well, sorry, buddy, he's not quite following.

And he hates being kept waiting for answers. He does try to keep the full brunt of annoyance out of his tone when he switches to an audio feed, and he's about 95 percent successful.]

Like what? You've noted the variance, but not the significance. Any city is bound to have a disparity in its styles of architecture.

Well, yeah, any large city is gonna be made up of structures built over time,

[Nate laughs with something that sounds like it's caught between a snort and a chuckle, shaking his head at something in his sketchbook. His pedantry should not be misconstrued for arrogance, he simply knows things and finds it preposterous when other people don't.]

-but what if these weren't?

[He doesn't wait for the pregnant pause to sink in.]

Think about it: multiple styles, multiple cultures, but the materials - the fabric of construction - it's all ancient. What if these buildings weren't built over time, chronologically, as we'd expect them to be based on design alone? What if they're all the same age?

And if they are, then they're just facsimiles adopted to put the residents, us, at ease through familiarity.

[Mello mulls over this new information, gears clicking quickly in his mind to pull together his own conclusion.]

That makes sense. Tranquility's the one who created the city - I spoke with him about it a while back, after he'd been resurrected. He said ... there were living beings already here, before us, and he indicated that he created the city to suit them. They weren't human, though, and that opens up an entire new book of questions.

Did they look human? Do we know?

[It is a whole other set of questions, but Nate's on a roll now and he won't be dissuaded from putting his own skill set to the test with an environment this diverse.]

Because it's kind of like- the city looks like it was designed by someone - or some thing - that is not human, that looked at a compendium of human architectural styles and thought "yeah, some of these will go okay together" without really understanding the meaning or intent behind those designs.

Y'know?

I don't know. [And it sort of chafes at him that he has to admit as much.] I didn't ask that, specifically, though I suppose I should have thought to do so.

[The analysis of the architecture makes a lot of sense, now that Mello's looking at it in this light. He can't help feeling like he should have been smart enough to notice it on his own, before.]

Well, the gods are definitely other than human, despite their appearances. I guess it's not outside the realm of possibility that that's exactly what Tranquility did, though the most effective way to find out if this is true would be to ask him directly. He seemed reasonable enough.

[It's par for Nate's course that he picks out the weird shit no one else thinks about while his friends are impatiently waiting for him to come to a conclusion out loud.

Not everyone can be a history nerd, Mello. Don't beat yourself up about it.]

...so what, do I leave a god a voicemail message, or...?

[Mello is a pretty big nerd, though. Just not about this kind of history.]

You can find them in the phone directory, just like everyone else here. And yes, leave a message, if they don't immediately pick up. They're usually willing to talk, though the value of what they have to say varies.

[This is news to Nate. If people had access this easy back in his world, religion would be a lot different.]

Based on every ancient myth ever, I'd say that being vague or misleading is kind of a god thing.

That is, of course, the test of faith and what makes for religion rather than science - the question of whether you believe and trust in the vague and misleading.

[Mello is much more inclined to come down on the side of science - facts, irrefutable proof. He trusts in himself, and he believes in what he can observe. He has never had much use for the God of his parents' faith, operating so far outside of logic. He's not a person who tolerates fanciful bullshit for long.]

Some of the gods here are more straightforward than others. Sorrow seems to be the most rational out of all of them.

Listen, you're talking to someone who grew up in a Catholic institution, I know how the tenets of organized religion work.

[He wouldn't call himself a practitioner of any particular faith, but whoever is Up There must really give a shit about his sorry ass, or he wouldn't survive so much blunt force trauma.]

I'll give Tranquility a call.

[So did Mello, actually - for a few years, at least. The institution that took him in after that followed a different sort of idol. But that experience, along with his childhood traumas before, to say nothing of what he saw his world become under Kira's reign of terror, was enough to solidify in his mind that it was more likely than not that there was no all-powerful, all-seeing God, and if there was, He probably just didn't give a damn. But that's a story for another time, and not on an open channel.]

If you learn anything of note from Tranquility, I'd be interested to hear it.

[Less reticent about sharing information - primarily because it's not like he's uncovering a lost city over here -Nate would rather know what the Hell is going on than sit around with his thumb up his ass.]

Yeah, and- let me know if you think of anything else.

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