Motif · Book 4, The Gate of the Feral Gods

The chat

The » Name: lines: where Carl talks to people who are not in the room. A handful of voices at first — Donut, Zev, Brandon from Meadow Lark — and the way a party becomes a network.

Segment appearances

• Chapter 1 — Hump Town
• Chapter 2 — The Wasteland through a telescope
• Chapter 5 — Rapid Detox
• Chapter 12 — Dolores Doesn't Splat
• Chapter 14 — Maggie
• Chapter 29 — Where the Red God Glows
• Chapter 30 — Get Orthrus
• Chapter 32 — Acolyte of Emberus
• Chapter 33 — Phase three
• Chapter 34 — Seeding the pond

Arc

618 lines, twenty-four voices. A group message to bubble 543 finds Gwendolyn Duet, renamed 'Gwen' in the chat interface to save half a screen (ch. 2); 'I knew the chat was public now, but I didn't care' (ch. 5). Samantha, Louis, Firas, Li Jun, Gideon and Chris join, and Chris says he will not use it — 'I take damage if I use the chat feature' (ch. 14) — though he writes in it from the temple (ch. 29); Zev, demoted to social media manager, cannot be messaged 'unless I open the chat' (ch. 12), and Loita's twenty lines are the sponsors' voice. The densest chapters are the command hours, ch. 29 and ch. 34, and a god's arrival leaves the main window 'filled with panicked people' (ch. 28).