AC: salaam maz can i run some fucked up shit by you
LA: Intriguing. Go on.
AC: not intriguing. creepy.
AC: so i already told you i'm in the veil looking at laboratories. and for some reason they have a bunch of black and white shell people in giant beakers
LA: They're being born, dude. Instead of doing, you know, the regular way to make babies the Prospitians and Dersites make them through alchemy.
AC: oh. great. so this isn't some kind of quest about them getting kidnapped that i have to worry about
AC: because i'm worried about some much creepier stuff
LA: Even creepier than kidnapping people to do alchemical experiments on them?
AC: yeah.
AC: so i found a laboratory that didn't seem like it was being used and i decided to try and figure out what all that stuff does since it doesn't bear any resemblance to alchemy as i've seen it practiced
AC: maybe i just kind of poked some sigils to see what they did
AC: but they were connected to a set of scrying glasses that showed us. and, i think, our families
AC: like in the past. in my case it was showing my creator
AC: who was alive hundreds of years ago
LA: Your creator?
AC: i'll get to that in a sec.
AC: your aunt was there too. they were in the middle of a battle and under other circumstances i would have been more focused on how much ass they were kicking even with only one leg
LA: Woah.
AC: but the battle ended when a star fell and obliterated most of the enemy's force
LA: I've heard this story, actually! It was a pretty clear sign from the True Name that the monarchists were in the wrong, especially since they were about to win that battle. So the monarchist general took their own king hostage and presented them as a formal surrender.
AC: your aunt found a baby in the crater
LA: ... Like, smashed?
AC: no a perfectly fine healthy baby that looked identical to the one this laboratory then zapped into existence out of a pool of green slime
LA: ...
LA: I was waiting for you to say "of course the baby was smashed." Like people do after they tell an outrageous lie in response to a question with an obvious answer.
AC: i wasn't lying.
LA: You're saying the laboratory was set up with talismans to let you scry my aunt just so you could see a baby also made in the laboratory get thrown at them?
LA: This is so confusing I cannot for the life of me figure out a grammatically sensible way to write that sentence.
AC: well I think it was scrying your aunt so it could make a copy of them, which then turned into green slime and combined with a slime copy of zevvie's master to turn into four babies, actually
LA: What the fuck?
AC: what can you tell me about your parents, maz?
LA: What do my parents have to do with anything?
AC: indulge me.
LA: They died in the war against the monarchists.
AC: both of them? right after you were born? so the monarchists made it all the way to your village and killed everyone in the house except you?
LA: No... they never made it to the village that late in the war.
AC: zevvie and mariyam are both orphans too.
AC: me, i always assumed i was a homunculus because i found what i thought were design documents drawn by my creator three hundred years ago. because i never had parents either, and my master confirmed that i was made through alchemy.
LA: You mean to say that you created all of us accidentally in a laboratory and we travelled back in time on falling stars? And this is more believable to you than me getting kind of confused about how my parents died and THE most famous alchemist ever successfully making a homunculus?
AC: maz, if you'd seen what i saw you wouldn't be asking that question
AC: if these babies aren't us they're perfect copies of us and our guardians. i can't think of a lot of reasons for babies to have eyes in these bizarre colors.
AC: and we know time is fucked up in this game
AC: you have to believe me, man, if my only choice is to tell this to mariyam i'm going to hurl myself off this rock into the furthest ring