The Choice is a major step taken by the Hero in a game of Sburb. It is an ultimatum given to the Hero by their denizen, forcing them to make a decision between two options with equally severe consequences.
Description[]
Though the particular Choice given to a Hero is “always different [...] depending on the circumstances”
, they are “All Personalized Variations On The Presentation Of Such Dilemmas [as ”“facing mortality”“]”: “if you choose one path over another it will lead to your death [and] your death may even be necessary to accomplish a goal”. In many cases, the choice given may seem impossible to make at the time, only for its purpose to become much clearer later on in the Hero's quest.
Yaldabaoth's choices are “known for their wild extremes.”
Examples[]
Upon stumbling into Hephaestus' palace too early in the game, an alternate timeline Dave mistook Hephaestus' giving of a Choice for an attempt to fight, so he “made an unwitting choice [...] by deciding to flee”. The second time he met his denizen, this time as Davesprite, Hephaestus offered him The Choice to either have the Royal Deringer repaired, or something else, which he did not disclose to Jadesprite. As The Choice often pertains to the Hero's mortality, it is likely the alternate Choice was for Hephaestus to repair Davesprite himself in some way.
The first "“impossible”" Choice given to Jade Harley required her to bring every one of the planets in her session, along with their denizens and consorts, to the new session when she escaped the destructive power of the scratch.
John Egbert was forced to choose between drowning in oil or escaping with the retcon powers he wasn't yet able to fully control. He took a third option, teleporting the oil away from him and throughout continuity.
When Jade and Kanaya Maryam returned to Echidna toward the end of the B2 session, Echidna requested of Kanaya that she protect Karkat Vantas in order to help him defend their new race of trolls on Earth C.
To Caliborn, Yaldabaoth “offered his most extreme choice of all”, between “the path of the martyr”, which ended in death, and “the path of the conqueror”, which led to Caliborn's session and his quest to conquer each of its planets. In a seemingly rare case, the exact same Choice was given by Echidna to an alternate Calliope, who chose the path of the martyr in order to meet her alpha timeline counterpart in the Furthest Ring. It is possible that this Choice is given to all players of a dead session, or all cherubs, or all Heroes with master classes, as Calliope and Caliborn were the only known examples of any of these three types of player.