"...beg pardon?"

"It occurs to me the Empress Regnant is called Isabella."

"...not Swan by any chance?"

"Oh dear. You're dating another version of the Empress?!"

Chuckle. "A younger and differently superpowered version, yes. She's one of the longest-running character templates."

"...what's she like?"

"I can totally see her as empress of the world, that's what she's like. She's great and fantastic and amazing and..." He sighs.

"You sound like a mated vampire, and you somehow managed to not give me any information."

"Well, you see how he wasn't surprised about her being empress. I expect he also won't be surprised that she's making a decent attempt at solving death - really in general she's intensely practical and hubristic like that - not driven exactly, but it's pretty hard to have big problems and a Bell in the same world for a long period of time. Goes after the malaria eradication and the mass resurrection, too, when she can, or other problems of that nature. I wouldn't say she's very social exactly but she's good with people, too - one of her themes is that most of the time she personally doesn't have the power that's being used to stop the big bad, but she's leading or supported by the person who does - not always, there are some significant exceptions, but it's a pattern. Smart, too; no-nonsense, strategic... tenacious; there are a couple other characters who are more tenacious than she is but she still is."

"Yeah I can totally see how another me would fall for that."

He just grins. ...then stops. "Okay but that doesn't actually solve our problems, even if it does turn out that she's gonna eradicate death and we're gonna kill Scion—Jesus Christ did I just say that?—there are people dying right now of—you think they're not people. Just NPCs, right? Ugh. Okay, so why are we here?"

"Actually... one of the other authors pointed out that there is a fairly straightforward solution to that; we haven't used it in a while, so I'd forgotten. Kappa?"

A woman wearing a simple dark blue dress and sitting in a very comfortable armchair appears without fanfare nearby.

"What is the nature of the problem?" she inquires.

"Hello."

"Saddes, meet the Keeper. She has, in this case, an empty afterlife that can have arbitrary worlds attached to it."

"I dislike impermanence," says the keeper.

"I believe my friend here would like to make use of your world, if possible. I would, too, if there's not a limit on worlds or people or whatever, but his is very much the priority problem, from what I gather."

"I am not limited in this way." She pauses. "I have now connected both of your worlds to my afterlife. Their histories are fully available to me."

"Histories?"

they say in unison.

"Yes," says the keeper. "I will always be able to recreate anything that has ever existed in any world I have connected to in this way. However, I am currently unpracticed with this ability, and am mostly only able to make air and rock."

"You wanted a Lurker to help with figuring out how to get things set up, I understand?" and the kobold shimmers and splits into two, one of which is a weathered but well-maintained golem-like creature made of metal and stone and wood. "An older warforged version will work better without a tribe and have enough background knowledge; I'll work out the backstory later."

"Thank you," says the keeper.