>>5797055>>5797056After the murder of humanity's patron sea-gods and subsequent apocalyptic flood 200 years ago, humanity clings on atop isolated, overpopulated vertical city-states called "Pillars." Crimes are often punished and murder is often accomplished via kicking people off the edge of a Pillar into the ocean, where they presumably drown, never to be seen again.
What most people abovewater are unaware of is that people who "drown" don't actually usually <span class="mu-i">die.</span> Instead, they undergo some kind of process that leaves them alive and conscious on the seafloor, breathing water, unable to swim, and quasi-immortal-- flesh wounds heal rapidly, and a drowned person doesn't appear to age. Major trauma still kills, which is unfortunate, because the seafloor tends to be populated with hungry beasts, crazy people, and irritable fish-people natives. If you avoid that, you still run the risk of completely losing your marbles, because things are only semi-real underwater and things can get trippy real quick.
In the main quest, the MC is currently unraveling a conspiracy centered around a shady goo-clone manufacturer, a mind-palace startup harvesting people's consciousnesses, and lots and lots of snakes (who are reality viruses / possible businesspeople). She is also attempting to deal with the snake in her head who may or may not be her dead father but definitely believes he's her dead father after she killed him (the snake) in a ritual to a very large and murderous snake god. Also, she's trying to track down her reality-warping family heirloom, which got stolen 20 threads ago by a woman who's going to use it to turn into a god.
Almost none of this is relevant to the current POV, who is literally just some guy who runs a store. Underwater.
This thread isn't really intended to be a good introduction to the setting or the quest as a whole, so there may not be much in the way of context. If you're new, you're still welcome to play along as you're able-- things that happen in this thread are unlikely to negatively affect the main story, so there's no need to worry about "messing things up." If the premise interests you and you want to check out the main quest, I recommend starting with the original Drowned Quest, which (fair warning) is janky and unfinished but still provides the best intro to the world:
https://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/qstarchive.html?tags=drowned%20quest>>5797056The OP image is a flipped and recolored version of the regular OP (pic). I'll leave its significance up to interpretation.
