Wakeful

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This entire article contains major spoilers for PALISADE's A Palette of Colors arc. Tread carefully!

Wakeful is a strange, nascent, "potentially post-divine" being, a gestalt comprised of the Divines freed from the Garden of Fidelity and the Delegates who have reunited with them.[1]

Some people who are not Divines or Delegates, such as Elects, are also part of Wakeful in some way. It is unclear what happens to these people, but whatever it is, it's probably gross.[2] At least one Branched person has also joined Wakeful.[3]

Appearance[edit | edit source]

At first, the Divines making up Wakeful can physically separate; Righteousness, for example, speaks to August while in the form of a briefcase. Later on, they are melded together in "sticky flesh Cronenbergian joining".[4] When August Righteousness witnesses the painful and grotesque process of removing a Divine from the gestalt, it involves one of Wakeful's hands tearing off part of itself and squeezing and molding it repeatedly until it takes the form of the Divine.[2]

Wakeful also can produce their own Delegate shells,[4] which presumably resemble other Delegates.

History and Involvement[edit | edit source]

After the Divines were freed from Fidelity's garden, they began to spread throughout the Afflicted Lands. In response, Fidelity began luring Delegates back to her in the hopes of regrowing them into full Divines for her to torture new Delegates out of. Thisbe, August Righteousness and Partial Palisade spoke to the Divines Guilt, Opposition, Responsibility, and Leadership to ask them to protect the Delegates from this new threat. They ended up breaking the chains connecting the four Divines, and Leadership began to counter Fidelity with its own call for the Delegates to join it.[5]

Gentian, Crusade and the Nidean forces offered their "protection" to Leadership and the Delegates, and gave over the Temple of the Threshold to the new Divine kingdom. Many Nideans and Nidean Divines, as well as freed Divines from the garden, flocked to its umbrella.[5] The Divines there began to form a nascent gestalt consciousness.[6] August Righteousness sought to negotiate; the gestalt as Righteousness agreed to turn over Gentian, Crusade and their retinue, while the Cause agreed to leave the kingdom be for now.[6]

The developing gestalt, which took the name Wakeful, had been in communication with Future and Devotion out in the Mirage. It called them to Palisade to join it physically. The Cause was able to prevent this and keep them from further influencing the gestalt. Without Cause approval, Levi began working on restoring towns within Wakeful’s remit. He was successful in convincing Wakeful that helping people was more important than strict control.[4]

With Wakeful now more open to cooperation, August once again led negotiations. This time he asked that the remaining Nidean Divines and officers be turned over to the Cause lest they be forced to go to war. After discussing punishment, rehabilitation and the appropriate time scales for either, Wakeful agreed to the demands. Wakeful privately believed that in a few hundred years or so it might be able to successfully reintegrate those Divines into itself.[2]

After the Cause began connecting with the outside of the Mirage in earnest, Wakeful made their own efforts to push outside of the Mirage and "spread out into space"[7] by, for instance, sending a generation ship with parts of itself on the long journey outside.[8] At some point, Motion tried to convince Wakeful to support her, but Eclectic Opposition's memories caused it to refuse. When Motion went on to move against Perennial, Wakeful sent Eclectic to Levi to put together a force to stop her.[7]

During the year in which the Blue Channel was in the wind, Resolute Welkin, a Delegate of Wakeful, spent some time as a scout outside the greater being of Wakeful and met the Branched researcher Xylem. They quickly formed a close relationship, and rather than be parted from one another, Resolute and Xylem decided to have Xylem join Wakeful, the first Branched person to do so.[3]

Known Members of Wakeful[edit | edit source]

Tools.png This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

Divines[edit | edit source]

The Divines that make up Wakeful include most, if not all, of the Divines freed from the Garden.[note 1] A number of Principality Divines were originally part of them as well. Known current and former members include:

Delegates[edit | edit source]

Wakeful is able to make "temporary exudation[s]" of Delegates from the Divines that are part of its gestalt. This includes Delegates that were reabsorbed by their Divines (such as Bright Mercy) and possibly also new ones made by Wakeful emphasizing parts of itself.

Other Characters[edit | edit source]

Trivia[edit | edit source]

  • As discussed in "A Palette of Colors Pt. 6", Wakeful's name is inspired by the concept of an egregore, a collective consciousness or spiritual thoughtform. The term egregore comes from the Greek ἐγρήγορος, meaning wakeful.

Appears in[edit | edit source]

Notes[edit | edit source]

  1. ↑ It is heavily implied but not outright stated that all the Divines who were freed from the Garden eventually joined Wakeful. That would add Consultation, Emphasis, Guilt, Influence, and Responsibility to this list.
  2. ↑ Crusade was ejected from the gestalt in A Palette of Colors Pt. 5.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Devotion and Future were either connected to or in contact with the gestalt from afar, but prevented from becoming a physical part of it.
  4. ↑ All remaining Nidean Divines, including Resonance, are ejected from Wakeful in "A Palette of Colors Pt. 8".
  5. ↑ Unlike many Delegates who joined Wakeful, Eclectic did so unwittingly. He was violently and unwillingly reabsorbed into Opposition, who later joined Wakeful.

References[edit | edit source]

  1. ↑ Dossier, PALISADE 51: A Palette of Colors Pt. 6
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 PALISADE 53: A Palette of Colors Pt. 8
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 PALISADE 56: Some New Thing Found in the Light, Or: A Year in Nine Parts
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 PALISADE 51: A Palette of Colors Pt. 6
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 PALISADE 48: A Palette of Colors Pt. 3
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 PALISADE 50: A Palette of Colors Pt. 5
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 PALISADE 55: A Palette of Colors Pt. 10
  8. ↑ PALISADE 54: A Palette of Colors Pt. 9
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