thecrossingmods | MEMORY BANK

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MEMORY BANK

The memories that characters lose during the course of the game don't just disappear into the void! They become an important part of game personalization — and may become a part of some other mechanics down the line. 🤫

MEMORY LOSS

For all that characters feel corporeal when they enter the game, much of that feeling comes from the resiliency of their memories — which they will be repeatedly asked to give up, in various forms.

As you submit memories, mods may sometimes reply to give you information on how your character may find the setting responds to them differently, though this will always be at player discretion to play out or not — just think of them as prompts!

To submit a memory, copy the form below and paste it in a reply to your character comment with the subject MEMORY LOSS. You may do this at any time.

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MEMORY TYPE: Medium
MEMORY DETAILS: Every name except her given one (Arche); while the loss of her family name(s) doesn't rip context from Arche, it's intensely unsettling and unmoors a great deal of other memories about her parents' behavior, their loss of status, and the legacy Arche spent a great deal of her life rejecting. The noble name of her house, tarnished by their behavior and then decimated by the Bloody Emperor, is gone. What was so important about it that they condemned her and her siblings to misery and want?
MECHANISM: First Toll

MEMORY TYPE: Medium?
MEMORY DETAILS: Death AKA How Hanako ended up here! To clarify, this is not his first/canon death that led to him being a ghost, but the ‘death’ that landed him in the Crossing.

Spoilers for Volume 13 Chapter 64 below

While exploring No.6’s boundary in search of Yashiro’s friend, they both fall into the Boundary’s ‘waste bin,’ which leads to the Far Shore (aka death). In canon, this doesn’t kill Hanako, but AUing this a bit for him to end up here. He doesn’t remember the specifics of that death here, since it’s his first toll, and only knows he was exploring the Boundary in search of Aoi.

MECHANISM: First Toll

MEMORY TYPE: Medium
MEMORY DETAILS: Yashiro doesn't remember her death, she still remembers the time leading up to it but doesn't remember the act as it was so sudden.
Canon death in season 2, episode 2 (after getting her time wound forward by Mirai, she dies due to not having extra time (going to pass away in less than a year)
MECHANISM: Taken as character's first toll.

MEMORY TYPE: Large
MEMORY DETAILS: Frieda lost the memory of the confrontation that led to her death. The man in possession of the clairvoyant Attack Titan, having foreseen the breach of Wall Maria by the mindless pure titans and the resulting death and devastation, begged her to use her Founding Titan's powers to stop them, but she, beholden to the vow of non-retaliation she inherited along with her titan powers, refused and argued that they should accept the end so the rest of the world could finally be free of their sinful and evil race. In his desperation to protect the people of the Walls, her opponent saw no other way than to kill her and take her powers by force.
MECHANISM: Paid to The Ferryman during a Crossing.

MEMORY TYPE: Smallish. a buncha smalls. we'll call it small.
MEMORY DETAILS: A scattershot of multiple childhood memories with Keiko
MECHANISM: Injury during the first Crossing

Edited (forgot to do a top for him and then the tolls - fixing that now) 2025-04-20 16:59 (UTC)

MEMORY TYPE: Medium
MEMORY DETAILS: Sakuya loses the memory of when his father took him to task for interacting with those of lesser station, in which Monsieur le Bel told him that those of impure blood are worthless beings, crawling in the dust, destined to die as miserably as they lived if not for the benevolence of the pure bloodline. It wasn't the first time he was chastised for that kind of thing, but with that imagery and the indirect threat it was the one that stuck.

He'll be a little less reluctant to engage with people and less likely to call them trash unprompted. I can make no promises on if an argument counts as prompting.
MECHANISM: First Toll

MEMORY TYPE: Medium1
MEMORY DETAILS: Sunny is giving up Neighbor’s Room - It’s the Headspace counterpart of the Treehouse in Faraway Town, and acts as the neutral point where Omori meets up with his friends to go on adventures. It’s a place where enemies cannot reach, where his friends play cards and there are nods to important items (such as a remembrance picture or other items seen in the Treehouse).

Since Sunny practically spent the past four years in his dreams, Neighbor’s Room is a safe spot for him (even if it’s “Omori” in his dreams, Sunny is still in control).

Giving up Neighbor’s Room as his toll would cause the room between White Space and the rest of Headspace to become devoid of color and comfort, an equally neutral and bland space, compared to the bright, cheerful, and safe spot it is currently.
MECHANISM: paid to the Ferryman during the Second Crossing

MEMORY TYPE: Small. If it was Darkwind contributing the memory it would be medium.
MEMORY DETAILS:

The memory of meeting Darkwind, one of her few living friends, and healing and comforting him at the entrance to the gryphon's lair.

Describing the location - This is in the ruins of a city leveled two thousand years ago by a tremendous explosion not far away. The remains of buildings, some material similar to black stone that softened, went glassy, and even melted in places before re-solidifying, are scattered about in great blocks and menhirs and underfoot. Despite so much time, in this part of the ruins not much soil has accumulated over the paving, so only patches of grass and weeds grow among the bare black stone. Thick forest swallows other parts of the ruins. To the south is some kind of canyon whose opposite side is too distant to see. If you line things up, whatever flattened the city emanated from that direction.

The gryphon's lair is a single story house made from some of that stone, woven vegetation, and carefully trimmed and placed wood. It somewhat resembles a stone and thatch tent, but for all that there are only three rooms it's enormous. The doorframe is about ten feet up, the ceilings higher. One room is bare, the other two are minimum knee deep in sweet-smelling grasses that are also arranged into massive nests. There are some bookshelves but little other furniture.

The emotional content of the memory - Need in sword form experiences the world secondhand, with the senses and emotions of the living, so memories made when she's awake all include the experience of the people she's working with. On her part, she recognized the gryphons as some of the very few people she could instantly trust. Her party being welcomed to their home meant a reprieve from running and fighting. It was safe to tend a helpful, stricken stranger.

On Darkwind(the stranger)'s part, the gryphons were his parental substitutes helping, despite their own problems, when he was at his limit. He collapsed in the doorway as they looked on and a magic sword was shoved into his hands.

He heard a strange, gravelly voice in his mind.
:She says if I don’t Heal you she’s going to drop me down the nearest well,: the sword told him, annoyance warring with amusement in the overtones of its—her—Mind-voice. :I think she must have been taking lessons in rudeness from her predecessor. And knowing Her Highness, she probably would.:
He nearly dropped the thing in shock, and only long training—never, never, never drop a blade—kept his numb fingers clutched to the hilt.
:Huh. Nothing too bad—overwork, under-rest. And—: He Felt the thing probing him and his memory, then suddenly pulling back. :Oh, youngling,: the sword said, dropping all cynicism. :You’ve had more heartbreak than anyone should ever face in a lifetime, and that much I can’t Heal. But I’ll do my best for you. Open your shields to me.:
She sounded so much like one of his teachers, an old, old adept who'd ordered him about as if she had been his mother, that he obeyed without thinking twice. She took instant action
In the next moment a gentle warmth stole over him, making him relax still further. He closed his eyes gratefully and let her in. Healers had worked on him before, but that had been for a major injury, not general exhaustion. First came the warmth and relaxation; then came new energy, new strength. It rose in him like a tide, rather than a flood; a rising tide of warmth and golden-green light that touched him within and without, folding him in great wings of brilliance, sheltering him as he had not been protected since he was a child.
But the blade not only filled him with renewed physical energy, she also reopened his long-unused mage-channels, replenishing him with magical power as well. He was vaguely offended, but - he had said he was a mage. Any reasons for renouncing powers were gone and there was every reason he should take up magecraft again.
"Thank you," he told the blade.
:Thank the girl,: Need responded.

MECHANISM: Second Crossing

Edited 2025-04-16 22:20 (UTC)

MEMORY TYPE: Small
MEMORY DETAILS: There's a corn maze maintained by the devotees of the god of the harvest in Celehar's canon. The one time Celehar goes there, it's past the harvest, so it's mostly a field filled only with corn stubble, but the maze path is marked out by the people who've walked it, and lined with stones. It's a winding thing to walk, but calming and meditative, with the open fields around and the blue sky overhead. In the center is a bowl with a collection of tokens - simple white stones, that anyone might take as a token of pilgrimage.

When Celehar went there, he was trying to find peace and stay awake after a sleepless night. It was very meditative for him, and he walked the paths remembering one of the prayers to Ulis, one that wound itself around the phrase "strength in tranquility and tranquility in strength."
MECHANISM: Toll for the second Crossing.

MEMORY TYPE: Medium
MEMORY DETAILS: Papyrus has lost... all memory of his own name! "Papyrus," any derivatives of it as nicknames, and any other names he might have had, are all specifically redacted from his memory. Medium because his own name is important to him, and the absence is a discomfort and awkwardness, but he's still otherwise intact - and he's starting to spin it as a way of connecting with people and a fun icebreaker conversation.
MECHANISM: First toll

MEMORY TYPE: Medium
MEMORY DETAILS: the skeleton gave up the memories time spent in his room with his brother, especially those of the time they spent assembling his "battle body" - the costume outfit he wears through most of the game and various Undertale merchandise.

(This comic isn't exactly my headcanon for how it went - I think it was a much more shared effort between them, rather than Sans working while Papyrus looked on, but I do love the face journey through this, and its depiction of the skelebros interacting.)

The wording of the toll was "a physical place, positive emotions associated with it, 'for a moment or a lifetime'" - the Ferryman doesn't take more than that, but this was Papyrus's first time giving up memories willingly, and it's hard to think of only one moment. He's entirely lost the time of the outfit's construction and the fact that he made it working with Sans. I'm deciding that his memories of his room are hazier - he only partially remembers what it looked like, some of the things in it, and how much time he spent in there awake (especially during the night, given his insomnia) - and some of his more positive feelings about his brother are likewise muted.

MECHANISM: Paid to The Ferryman during a Crossing (Desert departure)

MEMORY TYPE: medium
MEMORY DETAILS: Nagito has forgotten the last day he spent with his parents before the day he died. This was very deliberate wording on his part, since he was also with his parents on the day of their death. On the last day before that day, he spent time with them in the family living room, reading books while they worked on other things. It's not a memory of togetherness but it is a memory of safety and calmness, of which Nagito doesn't have very many.
MECHANISM: paid to the Ferryman during a Crossing

Edited 2025-05-05 11:39 (UTC)

MEMORY TYPE: Medium

MEMORY DETAILS: Mari is going to give up the memory of the day they built the treehouse. While the treehouse was technically built over the summer, the memory she has in of the day they finally completed it. She will still remember the treehouse itself but not the backyard/this specific memory tied to it.

MECHANISM: Paid to the Ferryman during the Crossing.

MEMORY TYPE: Medium (I think!)
MEMORY DETAILS: Hanako forgets the specifics of how Yashiro met Tsuchigomori (technically episode 6). It had to be a memory that both of them knew (though at the time of this writing, Hanako doesn’t realize he forgot this). He knows that Tsuchigomori and Yashiro have interacted with each other bunches of times, but if he would really sit down to think about it, he doesn’t remember the *specifics of how they met* (this also means he doesn’t know that Yashiro is aware he loves donuts XD oops).
MECHANISM: Lost due to an injury during the second Crossing. Technically summarized a bit in his TL, he fell down a dune and hit his head or something similar.

MEMORY TYPE: Small
MEMORY DETAILS: His Mother's (first) Name is now lost to him. No matter how much he tries, he can no longer recall the name of the woman who raised him whom he loved so dearly.
MECHANISM: Injury during a Crossing

MEMORY TYPE: Small
MEMORY DETAILS: Yashiro loses the name of her hamster as her memory (name is Black Canyon). I wanted to have it be something animal related since she got scratched by a Suncat, but I want her to remember she still had a hamster, just not the details.
MECHANISM: Lost via scratch from a Suncat during Crossing

[OOC: Also I am so so sorry that this is so late! It's been... a extremely hectic month(s) for me...]

MEMORY TYPE: Medium
MEMORY DETAILS: Frieda lost the memory of her family's acrelands, grain-rich fields in the safety of the Walls, dotted with farmhouses and within walking distance of the Reiss estate. She often walked there, be it for leisure or to visit her now-forgotten half-sister Historia who lived on one of the farms with her mother and grandparents, and enjoyed her interactions with the peasants working there.
MECHANISM: Paid to The Ferryman during a Crossing.

MEMORY TYPE: Medium
MEMORY DETAILS: Meeting his brother Yuuya for the first time since childhood - as an upperclassman in the school Sakuya had been ordered to attend! Yuuya was over-friendly and familiar, and Sakuya pushed him away with vehemence, as he'd been taught, and told Yuuya not to speak to him.

MEMORY TYPE: Small
MEMORY DETAILS: Everything he knew about the fantasy AU. ...Let me explain.

Anghel, one of Sakuya's schoolmates, likes to cast people he knows as humans in a fantasy AU manga, which is not consistent or skilled but does reveal some odd insights. He has Sakuya be Seere Reprobos, the Hallowed White Magician, an archbishop with summoning magic. Anghel is also a chuuni who acts like his manga is a real record of everyone's past lives or true selves. At times his strange power influences others and causes them to agree or even believe they currently are humans and that the setting is very different.

It's a minor loss because Sakuya deliberately has very little to do with Anghel, has only seen a few pages of the manga and disdains it, and the hallucinations don't seem to work quite as well on him as on others. He still remembers a time he had a cat hood and a staff and ran around commanding one of his classmates to attack this guy as part of an effort to get the school back out of the Abyss but it's just Anghel-nonsense and he has no idea there was anything symbolic happening.

MECHANISM: Injuries in the Crossing. The first is from a nasty scratch he got off a hawk, the second is from a bunch of smaller things and broken tailfeathers.

MEMORY TYPE: large
MEMORY DETAILS: Soo Won doesn't remember Yona and Hak's reaction when he killed King Il. Here's the memory (start at the beginning of the video) He knows they fled the castle so they had to have known he killed King Il, but he can't remember what happened between them that night.
MECHANISM: Paid to The Ferryman during his first Crossing

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MEMORY BANK

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Yashiro

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PAPYRUS

Sakuya Shirogane le Bel

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