Convergences aren't meant to be formed quickly, nor taken lightly, as they are very strong bonds that a pair must be completely devoted and open to on both sides of the relationship (so a more one sided tether would not make this possible, nor would the slightest bit of distrust or secrecy on either end).
Do you think your Tether pair (or throuple) are suited for a Convergence? Comment below explaining your pair's development and reasoning behind forming a Convergence, along with any possible gains including ability or appearance bleeding should there be any, and you will get a mod answer approving, requiring revisions, more thought.
This is to not only help players with their ideas, but to ensure that possible abilities gained are not overpowering or unlikely, along with keeping Convergences as something special and not easily formed as regular Tethers are. It's also a helpful place of reference for those unsure of what a Convergence should look like so they may plan their own in the future. Please fill out the form below to get started!
Characters involved: Ivan + Till Convergence Suitability: This is a pair of characters who grew up in a harsh canon setting together. Due to the nature of what they were put through, much of their trauma is shared. Ivan has been enthralled by Till since they were young, yet never made these feelings known due to fear, low self-worth, and a poor understanding of what love was meant to be. Ultimately, he sacrificed his life for Till during a round of competition that pit them against one another. His devotion runs incredibly deep and in Somnia that has not changed.
Till, meanwhile, has always known Ivan was special to him too, but did not have the knowledge to define those feelings. His own avoidant thought patterns and anxieties prevented him from confronting them in canon until it was far, far too late.
But they were given another chance.
The two reunited during the first month of the game, forming a tether that then aided them in realizing just how much they meant to one another. This was eventually followed by a sincere confession of feelings, as well as promises to stay by each other's sides no matter what. As for other potentially relevant game events:
They have been intimate since the September TDM dream, which first prompted them to explore one another.
Ivan reached out to Sleep to obtain protection for Till, who refuses to worship. He took on a burden from her temporarily in exchange for Till's protection from that month's host incursion.
Till saved Ivan from almost certain death during the Rat King fight with his excellent RNG roll. This was played as Till seeing it about to happen and being overcome with desperation and determination to prevent it.
Though their understanding of the ritual is in the early working stages, they have agreed to cement their bond through that thing called "marriage"...? They're working on obtaining the rings they've been told are needed.
Overall, this is very much a pair who would feel like something has been ripped away if one were to die or disappear, even without a tether or convergence linking them.
Abilities and Appearance Gained:
For Ivan:
Ivan's appearance modification is a slight cosmic appearance to his carapace. It sometimes glitters faintly with small white lights. If gazed into up close, these begin to look like stars, interstellar dust, constellations—the universe.
Borrowed Lightweaver concealment — AKA the ability to bend light to blend into surroundings as if invisible. While standing still, this camouflage is close to perfect. Whereas moving creates a distortion in the air that may look off, or set off a sense of wrongness in the amygdala.
If you've seen the Predator films, it's meant to be like that: flawed invisibility
For Till:
Appearance modification undecided; Till's stuff is very much what we're still working on. Swarmling is an interesting one to try to draw inspiration from y'all!
The ability to produce two extra sets of dexterous arms made of light; these are in a similar placement & configuration to Ivan's arms. He has an easier time sustaining these than other light constructs.
Coming to Manhattan from a similar line of work, Choi and Subaru were quick to understand one another and, on Choi's side, feel a certain level of connection past what was felt with other newly acquainted vessels. After Choi tanked a hit from Charlotte in order to protect Subaru during The Night Does Not Belong to God, Subaru reached out to tether with him to ground/support him, which Agent Choi accepted.
Accepting the tether was not only an expression of trust on Agent Choi's part, but the reason for that tether, the act of Choi taking that hit for Subaru, was also impactful for Subaru's perception of him. For scale, the last person to take an attack for Subaru was Sakurazuka Seishirou, which caused Subaru to realize his feelings of love for him in that context.
While Subaru had offered/assumed for this tether to be snapped shortly after the event, he was also in a unique position of being someone that Choi was willing to place the burden of tethering on more so than his other acquaintances so far. Because his other tethers were either comparatively low trust or with individuals he did not want to burden with the risk of active tethering (as he saw tethers as a side effect/accelerant of contamination), he chose to maintain his tether with Subaru, someone he felt was better equipped to handle the consequences of their connection.
During The Offering, Agent Choi was part of an initial expedition to explore and investigate the subway tunnels, which were vacated of hosts due to the blood moon, though no less dangerously filled with spores. As a result, he experienced sudden onset of succumbence symptoms on top of a month that already had him feeling no longer human and distant from himself due to the influence of Sleep. However, the resultant tethering session with Subaru grounded him significantly, allowing him to accept that tethering isn't necessarily something dangerous and is necessary to maintain his humanity, if still burdensome.
The Jaws dream is where Choi finally had the opportunity to reciprocate the reliability that Subaru had shown to him. When Subaru attempted to isolate himself through his refusal to demonstrate his love, Choi refused to back down, stubbornly insisting to witness it. While his own memory of calling down the Daecheongbong Tiger General first caused Subaru to liken his form in Manhattan to the shape of his love, Agent Choi recognized the humanity of Subaru's love in turn, deepening their understanding of one another and further solidifying an already strong tether.
Specifically, as a result of Jaws, Choi went from someone Subaru was protecting as a matter of latent duty to someone he's actively choosing to protect, and therefore let in. While he isn't typically a person who wants anything, in this instance, he wanted to prove to Choi that he is still human and that isn't losing that humanity to the changes he's undergoing as an Offering. Instead, those changes are a reflection of his love (humanity).
Shortly after Jaws, and before Levitate had kicked into full gear for the veterans, Subaru learned about Agent Choi's choice to sacrifice his left ring finger to Sleep in exchange for information. While he felt he had no right to ask Choi to choose his own safety over knowledge, Subaru did decide that in the future, he would simply have to take action before Choi is put into a position where he can make that choice. During this thread, their shared feelings of trust and understanding ultimately led their tether to strengthen into a convergence.
Other notes
One of the biggest factors from Subaru's perspective is that he's never properly formed connections with other people because of how much his powers othered him. To find someone who not only sees that inextricable side of him, but understands it and puts it through a lens that normalizes and loves it culminates in a unique and important relationship.
Both of them are prone to being reckless and self-sacrificing, but they share a brand of trust that's kind of like, "I trust him because if anything bad happens, I'm here." Which is to say, both of them are so confident in their own ability to be more reckless and self-sacrificing than the other if necessary, that it's fine if the other is a bit impulsive too.
Abilities and Appearance Gained:
These abilities and appearance changes are not immediate, and will set in slowly over time!
Agent choi
The black stripes on his skin and fur are glossy and slightly wet to the touch, staining the surface they come in contact with in black ink at will (or against his will, until he gets the hang of controlling it). When and if he experiences succumbence or extreme mental duress, the ink will drip off of his body completely, Dream Tiger style.
Access to some minor quality of life runes. Thinking like a small ember he can use to ignite the tip of his cigarette, or item detection within a certain meter radius here. He starts out with no proficiency and needs to learn gradually from Subaru. Additionally, the price for the runes Agent Choi "borrows" is still paid as backlash experienced by Subaru as a deterrent.
Sumeragi Subaru
The runes and ink underneath/on his skin move in patterns akin to a tiger's stripes.
A weakened version of a lycan's accelerated healing under moonlight. Not enough to trivialize the backlash that a runecaster receives from spellcasting, but enough to potentially reduce a healing period that would have taken months to weeks, or from weeks to days. Would still need to be supported by other methods of healing/medical treatment. As a trade-off, he can also gain a lycan's vulnerability to poisonous substances, one thing that his accelerated healing will not be assisting him with.
New combo for them to roll another 1 on
Subaru can lift the 'ink' (stripes) from Choi's skin/fur as a resource for his eventual inkbending later on.
Characters involved: Lortel Kehelland and Megumi Fushiguro
Convergence Suitability:
Timeline:
From game start, Megumi and Lortel found they had very similar ideas, approaches, and priorities, which led them to start up a working relationship, swapping information and spitballing theories. They found working together came easily and went smoothly, but didn’t start to engage on a more personal level until Megumi ran across Lortel outnumbered in a fight with Hosts and intervened, saving her life.
The dream banquet continued their push into a more personal relationship. Megumi introduced Lortel to one of his dogs. Lortel asked Megumi to dance. Getting a clearer look at his less composed side (because he was awkward as hell about it), she found it rather endearing (and honestly adorable), and kissed him for the first time—just on the cheek, though.
Her disappearance from Manhattan happened here. While she was gone, Megumi learned from Noah that she’d remembered dying in her canon update, which gave him some nasty new things to worry about.
She returned during the Jaws TDM, and they easily found agreement on their idea of love being the people you choose to keep around you.
Lortel found herself underground with the new arrivals, while Megumi stayed under from the dream for some days after everyone else woke up, undergoing his canon update. Lortel’s dreams took her to his lowest moment – after he’d been metaphysically waterboarded in a lake made of blood and negative emotions in physical form. She stayed at his side, promised to wield him until he was able to wield himself again (after being possessed, he was in the mindset that he was nothing better than a tool), and they had their first real kiss.
After waking up, he came down to the tunnels after her. They reunited in the battle with the rat king, where they also had a pretty excellent d20 roll for team synergy. She continued offering him her support in the aftermath of his trauma.
At Aventurine’s party, he kissed her first, after she jokingly implied that he’d never have the guts. They continued flirting, to the point of other characters making note of it, and both admitted to having a crush on someone else playing during the game of Never Have I Ever. (Gee, whoever could they mean.)
It all came to a head when they took the census they’d been planning to try and hash out the different types of vessels, as Megumi’s father point blank asked if they were fucking. After a quick break to utterly die of embarrassment, Megumi suggested that if everyone thought they were together anyway, they could just…be together for real! To Lortel's touched and enthusiastic agreement. They’re goin’ for it.
They continued to grow closer in the following weeks! They started spending most of their nights together, as both had lingering nightmares and issues from their canon updates that were helped by each others’ presence. They went on a real date, or as much of one as can be managed in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Lortel admitted to him that she hadn’t been exclusive in any of her relationships in Manhattan, fully expecting him to reject her for it, and he firmly did not, telling her that he just wanted her to do what was best for herself.
Ye Olde Medieval TDM was another big whammy of feelings for them. They had a nice sweet moment before the games started, with flower crowns and Lortel realizing oh shit, I love him. She was ready to support him through the very complicated feelings of seeing Gojo again, after Megumi killed him while possessed. In the hide and seek game, she (seeker) tried to tell him (hider) to run and save himself before she hurt him, but he refused to leave her there. Torn between using her powers to force his hand and risking both their lives on faith, she eventually relented and let him try to save them both. This led to him physically hauling her with him and managing to find Yuji, and using their paired keys to get all three of them out, alive—repaying her faith in full. In the final test, their similar pasts overlapped, lonely childhoods and absent parents and worth found only as objects and tools all bleeding together. Though Lortel was ready to dismiss it as pointless to resist, Megumi spurred her to make a different choice with him and try to run away—together.
On returning to the waking world, the combined stress of having died several times in the dream, repeatedly hunting and trying to kill those she cares for, and finding Noah gone drove Lortel to catastrophic breakdown. Megumi moved in for the week to look after her, and they finally exchanged I love yous. Lortel even gave him a pet name (“my love”), which she hadn’t done for anybody, before!
They became intimate during the week of weird hyperattachment to one’s tethers. Once the week’s hold over their mind and natures finally broke, they managed to have an actual conversation about what intimacy would, should, could mean for them, what they wanted, and how to navigate that.
Some other notes:
First, they’ve bonded over having some very similar issues in their pasts: both came from broken homes and were sold off as children, and both have complicated relationships with their respective fathers.
Second, they've continually, mutually surprised each other with their care. During the banquet, she called him a "wonderful use of her time"—leading him to basically short circuit as he tried to process anyone, at all, valuing him for something other than his abilities or his name. He showed her over and over that he cared for her, kissing her first, asking her out, taking her on a date, all to her continual and unending surprise, as if she couldn’t believe anyone would want to spend time with her for her. In the depths of her breakdown, he showed her, without words, just how much he always thought of her, leading her to her own emotional short circuiting. Slowly but steadily, their surprise has faded into acceptance.
Third, they've rescued each other, over and over. He’s saved her life more than once, saved her from loneliness, saved her from herself. She saved him by hauling him out of the darkness at the bottom of his own soul, saved him from giving up, saved him from himself.
Megumi has always had a low sense of self worth – between his father being mostly absent in his early memories, mostly being looked after by an interchangeable lineup of Toji’s girlfriends (many of whom were not much better as parents), and then sold to his father’s family purely for his abilities as a jujutsu sorcerer, he’s quick to assume that when people show an interest in him, it’s not about him but about what he can do – the Zenin family name, the Ten Shadows technique, his connection to Gojo. While other people in Manhattan have contributed to making him feel wanted on his own merits, nobody has done so more than Lortel, who constantly assures him that he’s wanted, he’s valuable, and he’s enough, and his family and his sorcery have nothing to do with that.
Lortel has always been a child of two worlds, belonging to neither—a penniless, worthless sewer rat whose only value was her acumen and cunning, and a terrifyingly powerful business magnate with the means to manipulate the world as she saw fit. Nothing was more valuable, to her or to those who fed off her, than a single gold coin. She was a pitiful person never intended to love or be loved by anyone, a villain who would die alone. She did anything to survive—including ruin countless innocent lives just to save her own. She never believed she could have worth to anyone that wasn't transactional—never trusted anyone, ever, so as not to be disappointed when they inevitably stabbed her in the back. It wasn't until she arrived in Manhattan that she had, for the first time ever, true, real relationships. Ones founded in mutual concern, care, friendship, and ultimately, trust. While other friends showed her the way, it was Megumi who spurred her to walk the path of change. To become a better person, the person he saw in her, because she wanted to be worthy of his esteem and his faith. He offered her his trust, twice over—a thing more valuable to her than any amount of gold ever could be. And he's continued to show her, ever since, that she is loved—not for what she can provide, but simply who she is.
Abilities and Appearance Gained:
Megumi:
Megumi will get Lortel’s rainbow sheen to his hair and patches of her scale patterning. Both of them will also have the same permanent, persistent, mild echo to their voice.
Parts of Megumi’s ability have already made use of kind of a void inside the shadows – this is the space he moves through when he teleports between shadows, and the space he’s dragged enemies into to let them suffocate. The void will still functionally work the same way, but will feel less like a vacuum of darkness and more like a lake of it; while enemies aren’t being literally drowned by water when he drags them in, they’ll now feel like that’s what’s happening. Moving between shadows will also give him the sensation of moving through water, rather than empty space.
But, you know. The whole getting psychically waterboarded into a catatonic state by Sukuna is still a bit of a sore point for him, so this new dimension to his power is rather Uncomfy.
Lortel:
Lortel will get the largest of Megumi’s facial scars and the sea green of her limbs will now taper, at the very ends, into shadow. Both of them will also have the same permanent, persistent, mild echo to their voice.
The shadows aren't just an aesthetic change. Shadow will become infused into her very body—and the water which she can become. She’ll become able to manipulate herself, creating fused tendrils of shadow and water from her own body that she can wield freely. As this mastery grows, she'll be able to shift and shape herself in finer, harder, more abstract ways—like a suffocating blanket of dark mist, or a shield of shadow and water.
Unfortunately for her, this ability will be exceptionally dangerous to use—for if any of her water is siphoned away or otherwise cut off from her, she’ll suffer massive and grievous injury as a result. Every single use of these powers will constitute a risk to her life.
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Convergence Suitability: This is a pair of characters who grew up in a harsh canon setting together. Due to the nature of what they were put through, much of their trauma is shared. Ivan has been enthralled by Till since they were young, yet never made these feelings known due to fear, low self-worth, and a poor understanding of what love was meant to be. Ultimately, he sacrificed his life for Till during a round of competition that pit them against one another. His devotion runs incredibly deep and in Somnia that has not changed.
Till, meanwhile, has always known Ivan was special to him too, but did not have the knowledge to define those feelings. His own avoidant thought patterns and anxieties prevented him from confronting them in canon until it was far, far too late.
But they were given another chance.
The two reunited during the first month of the game, forming a tether that then aided them in realizing just how much they meant to one another. This was eventually followed by a sincere confession of feelings, as well as promises to stay by each other's sides no matter what. As for other potentially relevant game events:
- They have been intimate since the September TDM dream, which first prompted them to explore one another.
- Ivan reached out to Sleep to obtain protection for Till, who refuses to worship. He took on a burden from her temporarily in exchange for Till's protection from that month's host incursion.
- Till saved Ivan from almost certain death during the Rat King fight with his excellent RNG roll. This was played as Till seeing it about to happen and being overcome with desperation and determination to prevent it.
- Though their understanding of the ritual is in the early working stages, they have agreed to cement their bond through that thing called "marriage"...? They're working on obtaining the rings they've been told are needed.
Overall, this is very much a pair who would feel like something has been ripped away if one were to die or disappear, even without a tether or convergence linking them.Abilities and Appearance Gained:
For Ivan:
If you've seen the Predator films, it's meant to be like that: flawed invisibility
For Till:
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Convergence Suitability: Abilities and Appearance Gained:
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Convergence Suitability:
Timeline:
Some other notes:
Abilities and Appearance Gained:
Megumi:
Lortel:
no subject
beautiful example of a convergence! approved!