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Spirit Candy
dd3fe0
Alright. So there's a few things to unpack here.
So! You still have to worry about Eldritch Shit and things actively messing with your head.
:(
That's just something to accept right now, and work around. To start, you should NOTICE when you get a sudden headache.
When you get a sudden headache, your first thought should be, 'aw shit, did I lose some time?' and then figure out if you have a memory gap.
Now, this isn't necessarily a bad thing. Induced memory gaps can be adaptive and protective, especially if you are interacting with cognitohazards (mind altering charm/compulsion effects). It takes a lesser cognitohazard to fight a greater one, perhaps? Like bad tasting medicine with some side effects.
Also, if you were anti-butterfly, if butterflies were cosmically seen as the opposing faction, we have another bit of circumstantial evidence that you were a bad person. Gods and Goddesses and other powerful beings often use straightforward aesthetic choices as part of their symbolism, due to how easy the message is to impart to their followers. Usually, though not always, there's an intentional push to make 'colorful and beautiful and bright' to symbolize good and 'sharp and dark with pointed parts' to symbolize evil. Also, poison use is often evil-coded by these sorts of beings, despite the difference between medicine and poison often being just dosage, and poison often being one of the least harmful/painful ways to incapacitate someone (anesthetics, anyone?).
So you might have been following something that preferred symbolism of the natural predators to butterflies -- do you feel any kinship with any of these animals: bats, wasps, smaller predatory birds (like orioles), spiders, shrews, lizards, or monkeys? Ask her what gods (and their symbols) were directly opposed to hers, or oppose the one with the butterfly symbol. See if something seems familiar.
Anyway, it definitely looks like after interacting with the box, you and others may have gotten your all's morality inverted. You may want to mention that you think some aspect of interacting with the box can cause this effect, because you have clues that you weren't a nice person.
Now, a few things can cause morality to invert. The exact right type of traumatic brain injury, for one thing. But that happening to a bunch of people seems implausible. Instead, I'm noticing a pattern-match here to something from my culture. If you exist in a reality where active gods enforce or bicker over a cosmically-enforced morality system (in the sense of moral categorization, not in the sense of forcing moral or immoral behavior), than an item that shifts someone to their 'opposite alignment' might be magically easier than it would otherwise be, if the mind is prone to follow specific particular patterns due to the brain interacting with ever-present energies of things like good, evil, law, or chaos (or whatever).
Personally, I think such moral alignment systems are absolute bullshit and any scenario where gods play games with the lives of mortals without extreme extenuating circumstances is inherently immoral anyway, regardless if you are 'good' coded or not in these systems.
After all, you can totally follow an 'evil' god (or other powerful weird entity) and be a moral person, and here's how:
1.) You are appeasing an inherently destructive entity so it doesn't cause undue harm
2.) The entity symbolizes healthy forms of destruction and change and growth, and you are following that aspect of them. This (or some other important thing) might even be specifically required for reality itself to continue to function (see previous statement of possible 'extreme extenuating circumstances').
3.) You follow the entity inasmuch as they represent the concept of 'loyal opposition'; that is, while still working towards the overall thriving of a multitude of individuals and groups and systems, they and you are tasked with opposing the immediate concerns of some good-coded subgroup, like the opposition in a trial, or a team red in a military training context, or the minority party in a republic, or similar.
You may have previously taken an oath to follow an 'evil' entity, whatever is opposed to these butterflies, and it might still be binding you. Do you think you have?
As far as the box, perhaps ask about oaths that are binding? Is there a type that has a compulsion or mental reminder aspect to it, like that will still work if someone has a new bout of amnesia or has their mind taken over or has their morality changed?
Here's a hypothetical: You both do a mutually binding vow beneath the *pantheon* (especially if there's an inclusive term for both the 'good' and 'evil' set of gods, use THAT), that as both of you agree that the box is incredibly dangerous and you will, within the limits of any preexisting oaths each of you may have, and regardless of your current moral stance at any given time, work to get the box to a situation where it's potential for harm is minimized, and to conduct yourselves honorably in the act getting it to such a situation. There is to be no secret 'Ahahahaha, I am taking it to my evil church now, do-gooder!' betrayals; any such double-crossing shall be instead conducted with decorum, style and a sense of sportsmanship.
The idea here being that, if either of you suddenly turns hideously evil, you wish to still be bound to at least be evil with STYLE and a behavioral code of some sort. This is especially true if you are ideologically and religiously opposed and obligated to act at cross purposes at some point. In other words, this is less a peace treaty and more a convention on how to oppose each other in a sane way. And ideally, you can do something so you both are cosmically forced to adhere to that standard, even if one of you forget the oath or is in a state of mind where honor is devalued.
Is such a thing possible?
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