Tremulous Forum
Media => Other Tremulous Media => Topic started by: player1 on November 18, 2008, 10:31:28 pm
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The Fractal Zion Incident, OR How One Man Singlehandedly Saved the Brindus System
by Eno Reyalp
When Ked Ambrit was sent with a militia force of mercenaries to clear the shipping lanes of viral alien life forms in the Fractal Zion and (by extension) Brindus systems, the initial insertion team was too small. Indeed the entire force was wiped out, except for one man. Ked Ambrit himself. He was the only one to survive, out of a hastily-organized Space Marine Mercenary Militia force chiefly made up of locally available veterans, transfers from the segment garrisons, and impressed "recruits" or conscripted "volunteers" from among the settlement population. In other words, has-beens, never-weres, and do-what-nows. The force thus assembled amounted to a mere regiment, numbering only a few thousand men, of which only a handful had seen any actual combat against any alien lifeforms; and most of these had only seen action in humanity's original solar system, eradicating such menaces as the face-hugging lamprey-tongued spider-bats of the Titanian caves, and the mind-numbing ghost vampire manatees of the Tritonian Untersee.
Because of this, many of the members of the Fractal Zion Expeditionary Forces were equipped with the most rudimentary weapons: shotguns and blasters issued for police actions against human populations in the Settlement Zone, the venerable painsaw from the Interglobal Fighting Conference's SpaceArena series of tightcasts, rifles and lasguns of the Regular Corporate Settlement Reserves, flamethrowers from the Spider-Bat Eradication Wars. Very few of them had ever even seen, let alone used, powerful squad assault weapons like the chaingun or the pulse rifle, modified tools like the mass driver, or strange, controversial and quasi-magickal devices like the Lucifer Cannon, said to steal the souls of its victims to power its inexplicable metaphysical functionings, rumored to possibly harness apergic or levitric forces.
They were entirely wiped out, except for Ked. Humanity had never before encountered an alien race so fearsome, so vicious, so unrelentingly vindictive. Indeed, the beasts seemed to survive for no other purpose, except for the complete annihilation of the settlement population, and ultimately, the entirety of the human infestation of the starways, with its associated rape, pillage and plunder of the beauties created by the Infinite One.
When Haos Redro Corp. got back the barely-surviving remains of Ked Ambrit, whose physical form had almost been destroyed and whose mind contained memories no man should ever have to remember, they found the perfect subject for their newly-legal Human Settlement Protection Forces, (to be made up entirely of clones, since the settlers and shareholders had lost their stomach for further sacrifice after the Fractal Zion Massacre, in which the entire settlement population as well as their escort, the FZEF, was completely obliterated - except, of course, for Ked Ambrit).
Unfortunately, since the clones have yet to achieve full autonomous action, volunteers from among ranks of the telepathically-enabled empaths of the New Zion Project have been conscripted, and can remotely control the actions of the clones. While at first rather clumsy, such telepaths can eventually become quite skilled at controlling the clone warriors. Exactly how the telepathic communication is able to be achieved over such great distances almost instantaneously is still the subject of heated debate. (citation needed) Any clone killed in action is replaced by another spawned from a device known as a telenode, sort of a 3D printer which uses locally available matter to produce complex artifacts at remote locations according to a detailed set of pre-programmed instructions. Each clone is assigned to a particular controlling empath.
The current whereabouts of the original Ked Ambrit remains a matter of great speculation, especially among the more conspiracy-minded individuals familiar with the details of the case.
-from Brindipedia
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i like some of the parts very much, like talking about the luci as a magical stuff. it's near warhammer and thats awesome.
so a big plus one, altough i think of trem world differently.
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The Brindipedia is an unreliable conglomeration of half-truths, near-lies, and outright falsifications.
And thanks for the Big Ups!
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plz doN't use the name zion next time, it's so chewed by matrix :-P
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Querulous: The Juddering - The Fractal Zion Incident is a continuation of open-source ideas to be found at the webpage Tremulous: About (http://tremulous.net/about/).
See "The Visit".
@+OPTIMUS+: Any illustrations you'd like to contribute to this project would be immensely appreciated.
Individual posts will be self-contained articles from the Brindipedia, essays from Eno Reyalp's A Brief History of the Fractal Zion Colony, and excerpts from The Shuddering Soul by Brindusian poet-laureate Anti-Corporatus. Contributions of an amicable nature to the project's intent gladly encouraged.
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from The Shuddering Soul, by Brindusian poet-laureate Anti-Corporatus
... so stood brave Ked, querulous
his very soul within him shuddering
before the big mofos, tremulous
his bones within him juddering...
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-from A Brief History of the Fractal Zion Colony, by Eno Reyalp
The two systems, Fractal Zion and Brindus, both located along the Redrosian Vector: that is, that segment of the Settlement Zone dominated by Haos Redro and its ancillary corporate entities, licensees, trustees and stakeholders. As members of the Redrosian Street Team (Keepin' it Real on a Planet Near You!), young urban homeless from the 93 Worlds of the Home System are "re-directed" into the ranks of the Space Marine Expeditionary Forces, the Settlement Zone Voluntary Contract Group, and the New Zion Project's Empathic Kabbalistic Sufic Telephiliac Esoteric Council of Youth. All of these programs make up the bulk of the Haos Redro Group Community Development Project.
Located in a relatively underpopulated and unpopular segment of the Far Southern Settlement Zone, both Brindus and Fractal Zion were not only ripe for development, they would make a relatively unobtrusive location for Haos Redro's latest efforts in weapons manufacture: an attempt to mate the coil-and-rail acceleration method of the Third Generation Mass Driver with the new advances in plasma science being made by Dr. Zybork and his team of theoretical crackpots at the Realistic Weapons for Futuristic Scenarios Institute, located at the the Academy of the Plutonites' College of the Historiography of Technobureacratic Economic Studies.
While Brindus held the bulk of the settled population, many Brindusian and First Star kith-clans had kin-cousins among the Clades of the Fractal Zion Neomancy. Thus, when the Massacre of the First Colony shocked the populace with the real impact of the aliens designs on mankind, a great hue and cry went forth for a hero, a champion, a demigod, a one-in-a-million war-machine living in the body of a man, to fight, hunt, and destroy the alien menace. Somehow, amazingly, this man turned out to be a no-good, double-dealing two-bit hustler from Outer Nowhere known only as Ked Ambrit. Little reliable information about the man is known, and most of that is conflicting, unbelievable, or, if true, downright amazing.
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from the hand-written notes (imagine!) found in the author's own manuscript (can you believe it?) copy of the book (a real hard-copy one, for personal use, if you can excuse the extravagance) The Marginalia and Juvenilia of Anti-Corporatus, Poet-Laureate of the Brindusian People, Vox Populi, and his Sayings, Doings, and other Petty Trivia, as Related by his Biographer, Viscount of Marketing Strategy, Lord Brightness of Purpose, the World Known to the Vulgar as Brindus IIAb:
Ked faced the red electric beast, timorous
his bowels within him quivering
yet still feared evisceration, shivery
his knees together, shaking
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from The Annotated Shuddering Soul, by Elector of the Corporate Chair Lord Brightness, late of Purpose, lately of Aflame, the World formerly known as Fractal Zion BIIIb:
his liver aquiver,
so shivery, quivery, twittery, tremulant, timidly, quakingly, shakingly,
there's no mistaking he
was ever so frightfully fearfully
horrified, terrified, vilified, mortified
scurrilously seriously
scared quite of his wits
and he
almost right there went to shit but he
gathered his courage so fleetingly
ran his ass off and left them behind
he was crying
"save yourself"
and knocking down folks as he
ran for the airlock at top speed
and his last words were heard to be
"teamwork, campers!"
as he filled up his Pampers
and dove into space and to history
tripping the self-destruct, it's no mystery
from a footnote on page 57 made by the author's personal drone assistant: The Ballad of CoKA
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-from Lines Written in the Realization that People Like to be Scared Shitless
by Anti-Corporatus, Vox Populi Brindaeus
A dungeon which had never seen a dawning
so dank, dark, deep, decrepit, deathly, depressing, dearthly, and so prepossessing
so covered with ichor, filth, vomit, blood, bile, and marrow as to chill the quiver
running along the fine hairs
of the smooth skin
running along the spine
and down the back
towards the tailbone
of a gasping woman
breathing her last as she
scents the foul, unnameable, ancient, uncanny, arcane beast-god of the Lower Crypts of the Elder Hells
a curse oft-spoken, only in the death-rattle of careless thaumaturges of the Unholy Necromancy of Far Vector Nine
unpronounceable except in the Tongue of the Tliktlok Watchers and the uncouth speech of the Wise Witch Mer-Centaurs of Central Cisxenomorphalia
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-from ABHotFZC, by 3|\|0 |?3`/41|*
... the two main worlds of the two systems, Purpose (formally known as Brindus IIAb) and Aflame (Fractal Zion BIIIb), being as different from one another as possible among frontier outposts in the outer reaches of Beyond Nowhere: Purpose being the Regional Headquarters for Marketing Initiatives, while Aflame was a Local Resource Extraction Facility of the poorest type. Both orbit multi-star systems, yet each is completely different. While Purpose is a fairly mild, practically-habitable world, Aflame is a harsh, unrelenting, alien and unforgiving mistress of punishment whose embrace can only mean slow torture and ultimately, an unsung fate in an early grave. Having lived on both, the present writer shows a preference for neither.
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from TSS, by A-C
Ked stood still, stunned
shocked, outgunned
and whispered the name of the thing that would eat his entrails and play with his corpse's cold shell
ravisher, ravager, eviscerator, instigator, eater of souls, maker of widows and orphans - demon-beast of the Ninth Ring of the Heavenly Hells
skull-fucker, brain-muncher
the thing that should have just been left alone
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Green stains of blood splattered
Pausing to wipe spilt organs from my faceplate
I charged forward again
One jumped from the side
Before I could react
It bit into my side
Twisting in pain
I brought my saw onto it
And its brown carcass fell to the floor
Rounding the corner
There it was
The great blue thing
Seemingly radiating ill and vile
Acid showered from the ceiling
Burned my leg, my arms, my chest
I was filled with anger
The heat of the pain was matched only by the heat of my fury
Together these emotions drove out all else
Till I was left with nothing but anger
Anger and Destruction
I sprinted through
Ignoring the weak feeling of pain
The pain from countless burns and bites
A tower of black filth blocked me from my destination
They called it a barricade
And to me it was
This towering stretch of alien filth
Sparks flew
My saw rushed into its heart
Riping out chunks
Spewing pieces aside
And it was gone
Nothing to stop me
Nothing to hold me back
From the purity that was to be mine
From the holy bond shared between me and the emperor
His holy spirit was the only way
For a swineherd myself
To break free of the angst of life
And so I was to die in his will
And bring his fury upon these savages who did threaten his rule
And so I charged once more
To finish this blue devil in front of me
But than I had not noticed
Three small pink ones on the ceiling
So consumed was I
That they had escaped my notice
They leaped onto my body
Doubled over from this newfound weight I screamed
A deathly shreak that echoed in the hallways
I broke ones face with my elbow
The other two went to work
I tried to break free
To continue ahead
But one had grabbed my legs
Was holding me pinned
With its demon like abilities
And the other!
Slashing my face
Were it not for the mask
I would have dropped there
But I could not
WOULD NOT
could not stop
I fell back on the one on my legs
Felt its bones crunch under my legs
Felt my ankle shatter under the weight
And I fell on my back
The last one pounced my chest
And slashed
Blood spewed from my heart into the air
My vision dimmed
Blackness approached me from all directions
I shrieked again
This was not how I was to end
Hero from a hundred battles
Slayer of monsters
Ravisher of demonic colonies
Not to die here on some backwater scum planet
I had never imagined it to end this way
And than he appeared
An image above all
He spoke to me
In no words but getting through nonetheless
In his name I would not stop
I would not die here to some pitiful species
With my mangled hand
I grasped the beasts neck with my remaining three fingers
And squeezed
It gasped
Cried
And fought
But I would not relent
Not here in my last moments
In the name of the emperor
I would not give up
It died with a last gasping breath
I got up
Stood on shattered bones
And limped the last paces
To the beastly blue overmind
Fell on my knees before it
It slashed me with its graspers
Even as I felt new welts sting my face
I smiled
Smiled
And dropped the grenade from my belt
Stabbed the beast with my Saw
Felt rather than saw
The grenade explode
And the beast fall inwards and die
And everything went white.
-- Death Diary of Captain Marcus V. Rundoubter, I class, strike leader.
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-from The Song of the Demon Terror, by Joss Haldoon, Pioneer Third Class, Sapper Company "A", FZEF
fear
shivery, quivery, quavering
aim
skittery, jittery, wavering
beast
skittishly, twittishly slavering
fright
cleverly, fiendishly savoring
@mooseberry: game on!
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Excerpt from "Zion and surrounding areas; A colonial history of the settlement of the Southern Ring."
While staying on Multa, a small planet you should be familiar with by now, I had the pleasure of meeting a most interesting man. I had come back to this planet to investigate a factory belonging to Tischonta Manufacturing corporations(tm), a division of the famed weapons manufacturer Tumbo Enterprise(tm). I had checked into my hotel late at night after going through the standard laser cell and dna conformation log in, and was about to retire to my room when I heard a small snuffling noise. Normally I am not one to inquire upon business that is not my own, a lesson most learn the hard way when traveling such as I have; but this time I could not resist. There was a small man there who asked me if I would like to see something he had. Dubiously I told him I did and he ushered me over to a small corner. He handed me a small box made of some strange material which upon further investigation appeared to be wood. Closing the Sry Screens, he whispered that this box held very interesting material and scurried off. My curiosity now peaked, I opened the box and stared inside. There were many papers in there; picking up the first one I scanned the page titled "The Development of the Lucifer Cannon", and quickly skimming the first paragraph I was astonished to read the words, "... information of design of portable static energy fields learned from aliens in the south rim..."
... TRANSMISSION INTERRUPTED.
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-from TSotDT, by J. Hulldown, Grenadier-Lancer, Rearguard Troop "F", SMMM
fangs
shimmery, glimmery, glittering
moves
craftily, stealthily slithering
maw
seedily, greedily slobbering
death
among the cold stars
of the Southern Ring
excerpted from the revised author's galleys of the first printing of the second edition
@mb: awesome!
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Refrain of the Puppeteer, by E. Ponymouse* aka 3k573(y
At the end of cords of thought
the marionette dances
Twisting through skeins of Fate
the marionette dances
Faster-than-light flies the whim
and my puppets they dance
My will is my demon dancer's command
and shrill pipers of doom keen the tune
Online the clones are respawned
the marionette dances
Printers of the Z-axis
forge madmen of clay
Alone I sit in total darkness
and my puppets they dance
My whim is my meat-puppets will
and the death devils dance
The flickering light of my HUDs
drives my optic nerve
Marionettes dance amid fletchettes
as razor shards explode
The meat puppets dance
deathless clones of the Lance
A million men dead
and all million are Ked
Iterated endlessly
Reiterated continually
Dancing amidst the beasts that rend
Manifestly, without end
*alternatively attributed to Ekstecy Seven Cloud in the Black Book of Brindaea, published by the CoKA Institute for Heroic Tragedy, 4057 ICE
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-from The Book of Lux, chap. 3, verses 7ff., received through Joss the Unclean, prophet-oracle of The Pillar of Potash on Haldane's Moon
moons
slivery, silvery, silently
watch
shattered humanity violently
torn
suddenly, shudderingly, stunningly
gone
like mist on a morning so sunnily
bright
hopefully, blindingly, frighteningly
new
a light that can slay them so
wonderfully
light
bringer of light
o, new morningstar
lux
a song in the mouths of the
sons
of the suns
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Just for a (bit) of comic relief:
Online Diary -- Marionatta Gershbeiin, 4031.
I can never forget that day. Even thought it is now almost 1 galactic year past, the memory still haunts my mind. I was on a break from scholarship, so a buddy and I decided to hop on a tram and make our way to the games palace for some fun. Everything started out as normal, we headed upstairs to the holo-games and made our way through quite a few. After about an hour and a half I moved on to my favorite game of them all; the Navis-fire-alto. The palace had just received this game 4 months ago, as entertainment usually took a while to make it out to this side of the rim. It was a most intensive sim, requiring mastery of navigation through clustered star fields, tactics to out-maneuver your enemy, and some plain old fashioned star weapons mastery. I had jut finished level 9 and was making my way to the tenth level when I heard the noise.
CCCRAAACKKKK - TSCHHHH - CRAKK
And the entire building started to rumble
EARTHQUAKE! That was the cry that seemed to be coming from everyones mouth. GET OUT! GET DOWN NOW!
Earthquakes were quite common on this world, but never before had I experienced one so massive as this.
"Don! Don, where are you?" I screamed, running everywhere looking for him.
I heard his voice crying from back where I had come from near the sim console I had just been playing. I spotted him pinned down by a heavy piece of plaster, and crying for help. I ran to help him, and at that moment the moment that will haunt my dreams happened: The floor collapsed.
I screamed and rushed forward, but to no avail, he was already long gone, many stories down.
As I turned I noticed the sim-console, sitting there almost untouched, uncovered in dust, as if nothing had happened. And then I noticed; the high scores came flashing up as they usually did on a regular interval, but instead of the ones which had just showed up a few minutes ago, including my name at #9, they were all replaced with but one name for every position.
They all read:
Player1
Player1
Player1
Player1
Player1
Player1
Player1
Player1
Player1
Player1.
-- encrypted from MGershbeiin@blogs101.use@netnews/blogs-access.
P.S. That turned out a bit more morbid than I had intended, but hope you enjoyed it all the same. :/
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-from A Brindip's Guide to Brindipedia*, vol. 37, Teratological Considerations
As the nomenclature of worlds beyond the Sphereshell of First Star became less standardized in the Late Intersystem Zaibatsu Era, even worlds along the Redrosian Vector were given somewhat confusing designations.
Brindus IIAb (also known as Purpose, or alternatively, Promise) is a Titan-class moon, orbiting a hot Jupiter-type planet which in turn orbits a K class orange star only slightly older and larger than First Star.
Fractal Zion BIIIb (aka Aflame, previously known as Haldane's Moon) is a Triton-class moon orbiting a sub-brown dwarf object in a cometary orbit in the outer Oortsphere of an M class red dwarf star within a dayjump of the six-star Brindus Cluster.
Monstrous aberration among children born at such great distances from First Star created many mutations which would later prove quite useful to the colonists in the coming Time of Tribulation and Tragedy: such as the ability to live in extremes of climate, weather, temperature, pressure, gravity, acceleration, and et cetera. As always, all such possibly beneficial pathologies were intensely studied by the Interglobal Group for Beneficial Speciation of the Council of the Plutinos, College of Xenohuman Medicine.
errata tearsheet inserted into taroplasticine packaging of the first fully hypertextual virtuality padpod of the Walking-Man's Brindip; as the beta release alone had 73 iterations, many volumes were produced, this being from beta 1.1.1.37d - bugfix 1,000,000
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-from The Weirding of the Mooseberry Moon, a tribute to the poet-laureate of the Lost Regiment of Haldane's World
priestesses drank
sweet mooseberry mead
under the stars
of the Walking-Man's Brindip
clustered the suns
of a clusterfuck cluster
with all the strange orbits
such clusters can muster
on old Hulldoon's Moon
by the light of the gasjets
and the rusty orange glow
of sweet, far-off Brindip
Pillar of Potash
oh - Seer of Sages
mad old Hulldown
is in one of his rages
ranting of tyrants
and mooning about dragoons
marauder of bad dreams
daydreams in the forenoon
appended to the author's own Brindip padpod in an engraved sleeve embossed in deuterium lettering on genuine hydralisk horn-hide
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-from the song Tentacle Hentai - by Ekstecy Seven Cloud
You know I'll plasma you
and you'll chomp me too
And then I'll saw off your head
- you'll make me see red
I'll pulse your life
and you'll show me strife
So I'll kill again
Then it's your turn when
Yeah - eviscerate me, baby
Come eat me up
and I'll fill your cup
Oh yeah - eviscerate me baby
Ravaged you and ravished me
(spoon orchestra funk-goth-core break)
repeat chorus
(analog patchbox VCA-synth improv jam)
repeat chorus
slight return
double-time chorus with tapespeed pitchshift fadeout
from the album The Eviscerators - LIVE! at the Redro Jumpport Coliseum in Brindaeopolis Novis (Redro Records Interglobal, 4043 ICE)
@mb: it wasn't too morbid - i rather enjoyed it!
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K-K-K-K-KOMBO BRAEKER! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XERZywq9o_g&feature=related)
otherwise i can't help but i always imagine theese poems as Misfits lyrics :-)
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sweet
draw us a pitcher, oh drawer of pix
how about a little vignette of certain doom?
the Clones of Ked say: Comply!
;-]
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Data Report: Secure Transmission: ****^%** Hatakami1.
--
.
.
.
--Send/Receive Complete.
Encrypted with password: *******
-
Decrypted with password: *****
STATIC;HEADER.
--.
Data analysis is complete, the results are indisputable. There is indeed some kind of effect from the firing of the mass driver Mk4. We had originally blown this off as "hippy" nonsense, but it appears they may be correct, only far more dramatically than they had thought. Not much should or will be revealed in such an un-secure format, but it is my duty to give you the basics. It appears the Mass Driver's use of unlimited energy is taking a toll on the life cycle of the planet previously unseen. We're not sure where this damage takes place, but evidence points towards the infinitesimally small period of time of energy cooldown after the Natx Shift and before the rails accelerate for firing. We're still not even sure how the Natx Shift truly works, but it appears Dernon's Law is applicable after all if these rumors are confirmed. (And what should we say if they are?) I can't say much more at this moment, but it appears matter itself is being eaten by this reaction. The shifts are incalculable and unmeasurable except in theory, but as you know, the theory is that the universe slows in time when this reaction occurs, and it appears at this moment that there is some connection between energy replacement in pure form and this loss of matter. Who knows when we will find the true results of this device? What will happen if in 500 years reports come in about missing stars? Who knows now. Mass Driver production may have to be ceased for the moment while an investigation goes through, the Emperor will have my neck...
--Transmission link closed--
Closure Secured by password ******
Encrypted on 2nd side by password ***********
-
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-
-from The Book of the Yellowed Spine, by J.O.S.S. Haldane, Pioneer Scout Leader, Southern Rim, Second Brindus Engagement
Ked crouched before the beast, agog
his knattery knees nearly chattering
his cowardly heart in his chest, a frog
croaking, choking, faltering, fluttery
the beast thinking him deliciously buttery
his trepidant snuffling stiflingly strangled
his glass-chinned courage was shattering
hoarse lisping curses muttered and mangled
found carved into the lid of a CoKA-Cola geebox buried under a pile of rubble near the Oracle Aflame in Potash Canyon, FZ BIIIb
All fictions are open-source and freely reinterpretable. All products are entirely made up of parts readily available; please don't think this is about you. As always, a healthy life, freely lived, is truly the best revenge.
to my collaborator, the Mad Prophet of Hulldoonia, I give thanks for a job, as always, well done
Project Q: TJ - TFZI welcomes fellow travelers of all sorts, be their aspirations textual or graphic. Cheers!
-
-from Joss of Haldane's Moon, A Literary Exegesis, by Lord Brightness of Promise, Regent of General Corporate Strategy for the B-FZ Region
Joss the Unclean aka Juan Omar Samuel Sergei Hulldonia aka J.O.S.S. von Rigel-Kent Bettlegurz-Halden aka the Mad Prophet of the Mooseberry Moon aka the Walking-Man, was a Pioneer Scout leader, Brindipedia scholar, amateur poet, and prophet-oracle, best known for his finest work, The Book of Ked, as well as inspirational works like The Book of Lux, and other, lesser-known works such as The Song of the Demon Terror and Other Poems, originally issued on the lids of CoKA-Cola geeboxes in the middle decades of the 41st century of the Intersystem Common Era, in the obscure backwaters of the Outer Southern Rim, an area along the Redrosian Vector, after the Early Zaibatsu Debacle forced closure of HR Corporate holdings in the lucrative Pink Corridor.
His main obsessions were walking, poetry, the plight of the Sons and Daughters of the Seventeen Solarities - the Pioneer Youth, entrusted to his care - and the brief, cowardly, tragic, heroic, comic career of the original Ked Ambrit (if such a legendary and mythical personage can ever be said to truly exist in reality). He was also obsessed with Ambrit's remains, which he remained convinced were somewhere within the Brindus-Fractal Zion Double Cluster, and most probably near the Oracle Aflame on the third moon of the sub-dwarf cometary object orbiting the common dwarfstar, the world sometimes called Potash or Aflame, but once known for its most famous poet-prophet-philosopher, the Mooseberry Moon, which all the old astragators call Haldane's World, or as the Brindips still say to this day, Hulldoonia (Hull-DOON-ya).
found on a scrap of taroplasticine inside a helmet outside a guardshack near a fence down the road from the Pillar of Potash, SMMM Regimentary HQ, FZ BIIIb
edit'd to correct citation
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"He was really always a strange boy. Not very, but there was always something odd about the kid, something we couldn't quite put our fingers on. For one thing, he never wanted to play the violent sim games with the neighborhood kids if he could help it. No he wasn't a wuss, thank God, but he hated violence of any kind except when in dire need. In fact he once told us that the only time he would ever move a muscle to inflict pain was if he or a loved one was about to be slain by one seeking to harm. Yes those are his exact words, at age 7 no less. No, I'm not really sure what he's up to now. I know he's involved in the military somehow though. I told you, he's a strange person. He was always somewhat distant, aloof you could say. Always acted as if he knew something important and sobering that no one else knew. Who knows why he's in the military now, maybe he loves humanity. I know it's a big thing, but there's a lot of dangers out there. Maybe he's protecting us, making up for something. Who knows."
-- Found article of Quantum News Sources, interview with Ked's father dated 4021, after the successful quenching of the Antarnillion Fire Bat swarms, of which Ked was a relatively successful participant, receiving the Deeak Medal of Valor, the Pluranite Star, and other prestigious awards.
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-from Cultic Survivals of the First Colony Massacre Among the Potash Prospectors of the Gnarthian Open-Pit Quonset Lodgeships*, by His Corporate Majesty, the High-King of Brand Performance, Jocelyn the Bright, Earl of Tactical Quickstrikes, and Corporate Counsel for Interspecies Finance
The children's game of Dretch-Dretch-Lisk is still played among the tailing hills and runoff ponds by unwashed urchins of the Pioneer Youth in the Rolling Drumlins around Dirtwater Canyon and the strange, columnar dolmens of Potash Junction, and Ked is still a popular name for boys among the Mead-Sellers of the Mooseberry Mountains. The surname Ambrit, however, is wholly unattested, and its very mention is sure to bring the scornful, silent, hooded looks of inbred terror and inherited horror only to be found in the most backward and forlorn of the Hellholes of the Southern Starsprawl.
*unpublished thesis given to the author on the 30th Anniversary of the Sacrifice of the Innocent, inscribed "With Purpose, Aflame" in Old High Brindip
Unconfirmed reports associate the young Earl with a wandering, drunken, crazed poet, and planter of highbush cranberries, the infamous Guiseppe the Mead-monger, oft' heard to say, as he unbridled the pack-moose from his sledge, and rested from a long day of planting wild highbush amongst the purple celery of the Mauve Mountains, offering up his flask of fresh mooseberry mead, "Now who will hear some news, right fresh from Heaven?", his eyes glazed with the fervor of the zealot, his faced streaked with the dust of the pink potassium hills. The locals are said to still curse his name, for among the beneficial and medicinal invasive plants he spread across the Eastern Escarpment of Rhubarb Ridge, there still exists to this day large areas wholly given over to king water dandelion and only beast that can stomach its tuber, the pigmy hippo-boars of the Upland Terrace-paddies.
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from TSS, by A-C
mousy and rabbity, goosy and kittenish
aspen and twitchy, shrinking and skittish
wobbly and worried, doubtful and scared
hero of millions, heart of a hare
graffito inscribed on the face of the Oracle Aflame, the Pillar of Potash, apparently made with a small Dernon gun, sometime after the Escort of Shame
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-from Brindipedia* (see talk page - the neutrality of this entry has been disputed)
by Jocelyn the Bright, pygmy boar-hippo fence judge, Pinkstone Downs, New South Haldonia
That Lord Brightness had been the Mad Poet of Haldane's Moon in a drunken chapter of his misspent youth as an Excellence Coach for the Solarity Outreach Programme, was fairly well known among staff members of the Inner Board for Segmentary Vetting; however, the extent to which these activities were a cover for a well-planned and executed strategy of subversion of regional power through mass marketing techniques remains an elusive subject for the scholar wishing to track down ancient files in unreadable formats on smelly planets far away from the main Vectors of Progress.
Further research has led at least one writer (citation needed), to speculate that his earlier persona, as the Walking-Man of Brindip, surely concealed seemingly similarly innocuous activities, which now must be viewed in an entirely new light, that of a glowing ball of burning plasma. This would seem to render Anti-Corporatus's summation of the Walking-Man's Brindip as the "tidiest pile of pygmy boar-hippo shit this side of Brindus Four" as an understatement of truly astronomical proportions.
*That the Brindipedia is a collection of tales for the easily-led, stories for the gullible, and ravings of the lonely is an easily-verifiable First Principle.
page still under construction
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Statement of Earl Peony, Munitions Assembler, Tumbo Mfg. Facility, Potash Junction, FZ BIIIb
"I remember the day he left, old Abner Anfidgean. He had been one of Tumbo Weapons's most brilliant reverse-engineering specialists, but the guy was a practical joker. He thumbed his nose at everyone, even the old man. Him and Carl Flovat always seemed to have some kind of love-hate relationship. It seemed like each needed the misery of the other, just to sustain him. It was during the coil-and-rail experiments, when it became apparent that we may actually be destroying time or matter or the omniverse or something, that matters really came to a head. First Carl just left one day, without a word to anyone. Oh, he might have gotten in some inter-office squabble over procedure with the rest of the Middle Managers, but no-one really knew what had prompted it. Just strapped on a Gauss sidearm and walked out into the wide, windy, pink desert without a backward glance. About a week or so later, Abner tenders his resignation, even apologizes for his behavior and wishes the teams "Good Luck!" and everything! After all the crap he'd given them, telling them how stupid they all were and how the Project had been released too early and how half-baked all their ideas were. He just wrote a little note, like, "Thank you for a lovely party", and off he went. He took a tiny Dernon derringer and walked out a side door, also disappearing into that sultry salmon-and-saffron sunset. Seemed like he just couldn't continue without Carl to hate. We're pretty sure it was he who defaced the Pillar. What a perfectly matched pair of complete oddballs. This poor planet will never see their like again."
taken by the Interglobal Tribunal on Omniversal Timespace Dysfunction, 4094 ICE, Outer Southern Ring Circuit Court of Appeals, in the action Omniverse vs. Tumbo Mfg., Haos Redro, et al
edit'd to append citation
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Darkened buildings seem to cry
The blood stained the cement
The tears burn holes
As we ran they tripped
Fell over burning bodies
I was next
Stumbled over a hole
found a heart
still beating
still beating
Banners flutter
both sides have their own
both side destroy
we are caught in the middle
my daughter tripped
land mine
she died
and i was left with her arm
~~Poem from Unknown Author, After the Goebetz Rebellion sparked an inter city massacre on Neano Colony 2, capital city - Ullanmator.
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Just want all of you that have posted in this thread to know that it's pretty fantastic, and probably the best thread in this subforum. thumbs up 2 u gaiz.
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aww shucks. You'll make us blush.
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-taken from a v-mail sent by Abner Anfidgean the Third, to his clone-father AA, Jr., OR The Legendary Incident of the Flaming Pippo Farts
We had old Joss out to our place not long ago. A drift of Flovat's pippos had broken through a thicket in the upper part of our terrace-paddy, and the little beasts were destroying our entire lotus-taro crop. As local hog reeve and fence viewer, it was the old man's job to round up the pigmy demons, and to judge the stoutness of our fenceline: to determine fault, and assess damages. Flovat of course, maintained that the thicket had not been sufficient to keep his beastly little hippo-boars from scenting the delicious tubers of the lotus-taro; even though any idiot could see that it was as tall as a man and twice as wide, and made up entirely of stinkthorn, which my clone-father's clone-father had imported from Brindus Four at great personal expense, almost bankrupting the clade's holdings in the Rhubarb Ridge kithdom.
Old Joss, of course, insisted on walking the entire way from Pinkstone Downs, even though my clade-sister had offered to run him out to our place in our terraplane. She even passed him on the way down the Ridge, going into the Downs, and again on the way back, coming home. She said both times, he had been perched on a large rock, staring at a fist-sized humming beetle, as it rolled a ball of pippo dung up a fallen table slab from one of the ancient, high, narrow dolmens which line the Old Stone Causeway from Giant's Ear all the way to Hole-in-the-Sky. Apparently, every time it got the ball of dung practically to its nest, the old man would flick it away, and the beetle, Sisyphus-like, would laboriously clamber back down and start all over again, painstakingly rolling that little ball of pippo-turd slowly uphill again.
Both times, as she passed him, she stopped to speak to him, but both times he pointedly ignored her, till she simply left him there, trying to teach a bug that shit flows downhill, not up.
By the time he reached our place, Flovat's drift of rhino-pigs had completely decimated our lotus-taro paddy, until there was nothing left of it but a muddy trench marked everywhere with snout and hoof marks, and the little buggers had started in on the stinkthorn thicket itself, which gave them such terrible gas that their tiny little piccolo farts and tin-whistle belches could be heard all the way down at our quonset-lodge. Even though it was clearly against First Colony tradition, which required us to stand idly by as the little devils chomped away on an entire growing-season's-worth of lotus-taro - which would have fetched a pretty price had it made it into the vats of the plasticine-weaver - my clade-sister had tried to shoo away the nasty beasts with a Dernon rod. Of course, we were supposed to wait for either the hog reeve or the fence viewer to arrive before in any way altering the scene of the crime, but as we both well knew that the hog reeve and the fence viewer were one and the same person - an old man sitting by the side of the road trying to teach an old bug a new trick - we thought there was little harm in at least trying to save some of our crop.
It did us little good. When Joss finally arrived, he and I climbed up the Ridge to our paddy-terrace to find my clade-sister furiously thrusting the Dernon rod at the lazy, insufferable little devils, which lay about moaning and groaning, having gorged themselves to the point where they couldn't even waddle. I think one or two had drowned in the paddy, for they lay on their sides in the water - uncaring, unmoving, unfocused eyes glazed over with waxen, golden tear-globules - lotus-taro pollen yellowly staining their spittle-frothed faces. The rest were not affected by the Dernon rod; they wouldn't have moved even if they could've, and none of them could even get up, let alone run away: having collapsed from sheer bloated gluttony. They lay where they had collapsed, breathing heavily, snoring loudly, farting whiningly and belching pleadingly, in the pink-and-peach twilight of the Six Sisters setting. Their little farts lit up the salmon dusk, glowing in the gloaming, shrill piccolo poots which reminded me of the Fire-Bats and their tiny flaming eyes, all huddled in a flaming, screaming heap in the Caverns of Antharnillion so many long sorties ago.
"Ah, stinkthorn," said the old man, "I told old Abner Senior that stuff would never work."
There was little we could do, so we stood there dumbly, listening to the high-pitched, wet sounds of pigmy boar-hippos farting piteously in the fading light of clusterset, watching the tiny flames of their little windbreaks light up the long Haldonian dusk, and smelling the stink of our lotus-taro crop exploding out of the assholes of those dreadful, evil, little beasts.
entered into evidence as People's Exhibit 'G', in the case of the State of New South Haldonia vs. Carl Flovat, in the murder of Joss Haldane, 4173 ICE, FZ BIIIb
edited by the witness during his diversion to a determent center on Multa, Outer South Rim Redeployment Project, 4194 ICE, MOSRRP
@seffy: :) thx!
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-from the Walking-Man's Brindip, by Jocelyn the Bright, late of Purpose, lately to be found walking the Worlds of the B-FZ Clusters, vol. 37 of 73 vols., published by the author in a limited edition of 100 hand-lettered manuscript copies, transcribed by the Regal Rhesus Clade of Rhubarb Ridge, second revised edition of 4073 ICE
pip-po (n.) - any of a number of species of small, pygmy boar-hippos, indigenous to the Eastern Escarpment of Rhubarb Ridge on the third moon of the Rafton object orbiting the M class red dwarf Fractal Zion B of the Fractal Zion multistellar system.
1) a pygmy boar-hippo
2) a Rhubarbian rhino-pig
3) any of a number of species of small, tusked, snout-horned, ungulate, omnivorous, amphibious, mountain-dwelling, thick-skinned hippopotamous-like creatures living in and around the alpine marshes and montane ponds of the Peachy Peaks region near Rhubarb Ridge, (chiefly the Eastern Escarpment and South Sentinel areas) on the world called Aflame, the third moon of the subsolar object circling Fractal Zion B, aka Haldane's Moon
4) any obstinate, gluttonous, or ill-natured person, beast or thing (vernacular)
(a conjunction of pig and hippo, but more at pigmy)
this entry found circled in red glowink in the personal copy of Joss Haldane, fence-viewer and hog reeve, Rhubarb Ridge Macroclanship, NSH, FZ BIIIb
in the margin appears the slogan, "Brindipedia is consensus virtuality" in Old High Brindip, cut into the page with a 1-micron hole-punch
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Testimony of Eno Reyalp, Lotus-Taro Farmer and King Water Dandelion Exterminator, Dirtwater Canyon, New South Haldonia, FZ BIIIb
"I remember this one time, when we were still all working at Tumbo, this one guy had an idea for a self-destruct pack for the CoKA Corps. Explosive Ked dolls, he calls 'em. This was back when they were still open to any crazy idea, before the MD-Mk. IV Hearings, and the OTD class action suit. Of course, all efforts were being put into Gauss/Dernon coil-and-rail mating development and apergic/levitric slow-moving-plasma-projectile research. Nobody wanted to hear about Detonator Packs. I mean, det packs? How fucking Thirty-Ninth Century, right? What next, a Rewards System for Replicant Soldiers Programme?
Yeah, so this one guy, Ken O'Roa was his name - I think he was from some pellucidarized planetoid in Brown Space out near 70 Virginis b or somewhere, Gnu's-Eye or Nugai or something like that - well, he went ahead with the modification. Yeah, they wouldn't let him make the det packs, so he modified the telenode code for the 3d printer that made the clones. He made the clones themselves explosive. Yeah, it was supposed to prevent suicide runs, but once the Tremblers understood what was going on, we were printing clones faster than the nodes could keep up. We almost had complete server-farm meltdown. And the kids, the empaths from the NZP, they would just freaking convulse themselves right into a freaking seizure.
Yeah, det packs. Those were the fucking days. Clone parts fucking everywhere. The mop-up and second unit crews from Corporate Media Investor Relations went ballistic. Yeah, we all became fucking pippo-herders after five or seventeen incidents like that. Don't even get me started on the Translocator Pack."
entered into evidence as People's Exhibit 3,773b.1 in the class action suit - Sentient Beings on Behalf of the Omniverse v. HR Holdings, Tumbo Enterprises, and B-FZ Neomancy LLC, and their assigns, affiliates, and advocates, Circuit Court of Appeals for the Southern Settlement Segmentary Review District, 4147 ICE
this testimony is disputed as it is believed (by whom?) that it may have been extracted at the Extraordinary Rendition Center on Neano Two's New Moonlet
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-from The Sound of Pippos Farting, A Travelogue of New South Haldonia, by Juan Bettlegurz, SMPP Project Lead, Tumbo LLP, Potash Junction, FZ BIIIb
pippos
ungulate, masticate, ruminate
swamp blossom
delicate, defecate, flatulate
piccolo
notes on the pink wind
so
raffinate
found carved on a unisex lavatory stall door, SMMM Regimental HQ, Dirtwater Canyon, NSH, FZ BIIIb
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from a triply-encrypted transmission sent by the personal drone assistant of Juan Omar, Count von Rigel-Kent, Major-Domo of Demand Creation: The Ballad of CoKa, to his sister-wife-cousin Bettarina Halden-Bettlegurz, Princess-Priestess of Marketing Strategy for the Near South Region, 4047 ICE, Haldane's Moon, B-FZ Double Cluster OR, King Water Dandelion Wine, and the Quest of Poncius of Lyon
That I may have found not only the ultimate rejuvenative elixir, my dearest Bettarina, but also a possibly - dare I say it - reanimative panacea, a veritable Cauldron of the Red-Eyed One, which any soldato of our Great and Majestic Executive Chair would welcome, indeed, my sweet, drink a thousand million draughts thereof; the better to serve the ultimate and manifest destiny of the Xenomorphic Pioneers of the Southern Vector: that is, to absorb or destroy all resistance to our feral, weedlike spread throughout this God-forsaken segment of the Settlement Zone, of this you may be sure, and tell my clone-father to invest all available sums immediately.
from Brindipedia (authenticity disputed - possibly apocryphal)
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-advertisement from Tumbo Manufacturing Group, mid-41st century, Outer Southern Settlement Zone
New for Holiday '47!!!
The HyperBlasterTM - Faster firing rate and more crunch for your cred!
That's right campers, NEW for Holiday 4047, the COMPLETELY REWORKED HyperBlasterTM: NOW WITH 1.2X Firing Rate, IMPROVED NeverChargeTM Power Source, and Faster, Deadlier, Bug-StopperTM Area Effect Charges, completely changing the game for the frontline bug-hunting enthusiast! We're talking about lepidopterists and taxonomists of the first stripe only kids, so you weekend warriors need not apply. HyperBlasterTM, when a regular old Blaster is just too General Issue. For real bug-killers only.TM
TUMBOTM. KILLS. BUGS. DEAD.
Any questions?
Ask your dealer about the Mark Four Mass Driver and the latest improvements in slow-moving-plasma-projectile technology.
TumboTM: Helping Humanity To Keep the Starways Safe since 3737.
Tumbo Mfg. Group is a wholly-owned subsidiary of HR Holdings, Austroastradia LLC.
TumboTM: Changing the Game.
magazine page from the Space Marine Semi-Irregular Magazine, Lonely Moonlet, published semi-cyclically by Space Marine Times Publications, Commissioner-General's Office, New Regimental HQ for the B-FZ District, Clusterset Highway, East Dirtwater, NSH, FZ BIIIb, found in the pocket of the remains of a dead self-exploding CoKA unit, Fire-Bat Caverns, Antharhillion Skyway; what a CoKA unit was doing in this area, far from the front of then-current action, where none had ever been deployed, is still a matter for much debate (oh, really?) among scholars (like whom?) familiar with intimate details of actual events, as they happened, planetside, and elsewhere. (such as what, exactly?)
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-from The Quest of Poncius of Lyons, by Jocelyn the Bright, Walking-Man of Brindip
It is believed that it was at this time that Lord Brightness learned of the ancient method of purifying the juices of the sacred tuber of the holy king water dandelion from the local populace - a veritable hoi-polloi of the most-nadir-directed Vectors of the Farther Southern Skywards: potash prospectors, washed-up Astragator Guilderguides who'd lost the Touch, washed-out would-be Space Marine Militia Guardsmen who'd lost their nerve when faced with face-eating lamprey-tongued spider-bats, and the usual milieu of wasted xenohumanity to be found, rolled like dustballs into corners, in the out-of-the-way places no-one you'd ever heard of had ever actually been to.
That such purification method employs the digestive and urinary tracts of a living specimen of the species Pippo Ungulatus Brindipae, the Pigmy Boar-hippopotamus of the Rhubarbian Highlands of Haldane's Moon, is purported among persons associated with such low practices, in areas where such rare and veral beasts may be found, if indeed they are not as legendary as the camel or as extinct as the fire-bat. It is known, however, that the usual practice in such areas requires that the pigmy boar-hippos are to be fed exclusively on a diet of king water dandelion tuber of the proper age, maturity, moisture content and etc., to produce a urine from which the final product can then be decanted. Further purification of the essences of the plant itself are achieved through then fermenting the animal liquors of faunal brine until a distinct and noticeable odor overwhelms the observer outdoors at thirty paces in the highlands on a windy day, such basic building of character required for the essential oils of the kwd-enabler molecule to achieve the proper concentration in the brew. At this point, cryo-filtering techniques and sonic distillation practices are combined in the art of the Dandelion Wine-maker who can extract the ultimate liquer from this most elusive of specimens: The Pippo-Pee-Purified Triple-Brewed King Water Dandelion Wine of the Rhubarbian Rhesus Clade, who have controlled its distribution among the sods of the Souther Spacerwalk since before my clone-father's clone-father was but a vat in the lab.
It is said that properly prepared and served Wine of the King Water Dandelion of the Eastern Escarpment of Rhubarb Ridge is the finest intoxicant to be found this side of the Celestial Equator; the best, that is, that Southern Space can offer, in the way of a spirit which truly enlightens and refreshes both the senses and the spirit by any so lucky as to actually have it freshly-made. For it is further said that the great mystery, indeed the comic tragedy of this ironic tale is that this fine drink cannot be enjoyed anywhere but among those dusty pink hills or those baby-chick yellow clustersets, for it does not ship or keep well, and no-one who has never been to Haldane's Moon, and sipped a glass while listening to the sweet and lovely chorus of pippos relieving themselves, far-off among the celery patches and lotus-taro paddies of the Pinkstone Mountains, can ever be said to truly have enjoyed its full strength, potency, or the psychophilosophically entheogenic results of any experimentation therewith.
this page of the Walking-Man's Brindip tacked up on the wall of the office of Juan Hulldown, Shire-Referee for the Pinkstone Downs Interclade Parish
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I've been looking at this thread for awhile now (like most threads here) and I have to say, this thread is giving me jolts. Good job Player1 and Mooseberry, you guys are definitely delivering my dose of literature, this stuff is l33t. ;D
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Crouched in muddy holes they waited, surveying the chaos they created.
Rifles held against shoulders, they targeted clones pinned down behind boulders.
Firing into the clones' flanks, burning planks.
--
They got the call at 0300 hours, the one they had all been waiting for. **Vulkan squadron, move in down 100 meters, engage the clone unit, tear up their flanks!**
Snarling like the carnivorous animals they were, the elite of the elite stalked down the ridge, saliva of anticipation running down their cheeks. Quickly darting between trees and rocks they traversed the slope, and than, with barely 20 meters between them and the distracted clones they charged. Giving blood curdling yells that shocked me, 200 meters behind them, they charged, into full view with weapons up and firing. Jorgan rum Vernsurt, squad leader rushed first, las gun pumping in his hands, firing away. The unlucky clone nearest him turned, to have his head blown into shreds a fraction of a second later by the hyper-torridness of his gun. Screaming behind him came the Stone Brothers, saws in hand storming a squad of clones caught behind a burning cart. Most soldiers would refuse to use saws in these battles as the clones were too unnervingly like humans, sticking the blade in one would produce nightmares for most. Not for James and John, for them the brutality only enhanced the experience. They were deadly soldiers to the bone. With ferocious yells they dropped on the clones and went to work, 10 seconds later, and the only grey armor moving was twitching limbs, and those stopped moments later.
After only 5 minutes, the company of clones, numbering almost 100 to start with had been slaughtered, their right flank and rear torn by these beasts of warriors, and what remaining clones existed were fleeing, running into the forest as fast as they could.
~~Transcript of History1: Early confrontations between Imperial Marine Forces and the Rebellious Kedt Nation's clone armies. More on the Rebellion of 3912 coming soon.
EDIT: Thanks so much Hendrich! It definitely helps, hearing compliments for our work.
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I hereby want to protest against the whole idea of the "clone army".
I rather "beleive" that the dude i'm actig ingame is one and the same and after a "death" its body is regenerated just as medkit can do it.
working with the datas of a brand new soldier again and again after all deaths would waste the Data Mother's powers!!!
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-from Old Ked's Carcass: The Strange Afterlife and Times of the Remains of the Savior of Brindus, by Joss van Halden, Pioneer Youth Team Leader, Celery Uplands, New South Haldonia, Aflame, Outer Southern Rim, published as a pentology by EKSTECY House, a program of the Council of Youth, New Zion Project, Brindus Four, 4037 - 4073 ICE - Book II: New Minds for Old Bodies
The empathic telephiliacs employed by the CoY formed many of the strangest psychopathologies concerning not only the CoKA Corps in general, but also individual aspects of the mindlink connection itself, as well as the fate of the endless mass of material which was gathered by the mop-up teams and reprocessed to form fresh CoKA units.
One particular individual, who styled himself "Prime", refused to believe that there was any such thing as a "clone army", or that the clones could actually form an independent group-mind - a gestalt, if you will - and further, that such a group-mind was responsible for early failures with the Clone Forces Program such as the Vulkan Uprising.
This empath, who decorated the taroplasticine walls of his cubicle-cell with new designs for armor and weapons, would even cut his jumpsuit into paper dolls shaped as Ked clones, and spent his downtime making costumes and clothing for them to wear. Sometimes, we knew not how, he would capture small vermin, such as the thumbnail-sized bugbirds and tree-bole-dwelling wood voles of the Rhubarbian Foothills, and he would craft tiny figurines from their bones, beaks, teeth, fangs, and feathers, and sell these miniscule fetishes to the other clients of the CoY Scout Corps. How he managed to attract the little beasts while under round-the-clock surveillance is still a mystery unsolved.
When they finally took him away, for "redeployment", to the extraordinary rendition center on Multa, he was frothing at the mouth, babbling incoherently about "being Ked Ambrit", and living a thousand million lives, never dying, safely ensconced in the womb of his personal, heretofore-unknown deity, a being he referred to as Mother Data, an entity entirely made up of the stream of memories of previous incarnations of his reanimated CoKA units, whom he believed were simply individual manifestations of one Immortal Warrior, Our Savior, the Undying and Everlasting Intercessor, Ked of Titania-Kronos.
(emphasis added by reviewer)
a lost data-transmission found bouncing around several mega-parsecs from the Brindaean moonlet from whence it originated
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-from Joss of Haldane's Moon, A Literary Afterword, by Juan Omar von Rigel-Kent, late of Brindip, upon his return to the Inner Settlement Zone
That such an obscure poet-prophet as the Madman of the Mooseberry Moonlet had any readers at all, let alone any serious critics, is beyond belief itself, for was he not merely an unknown travel-writer, masquerading as a Council of Youth team leader in an all-but-forgotten and overly odoriferous pocket of New South Nowhere?
There are those who believe that the output of the Oracle of the Potash-Pillar was the work of more than one person. While Lady van Betelguurz has intimated that much of the work resembles the love-letters and v-mails sent by her long-lost cousin-brother-husband, a clone-son and variant of the present author, there are those who swear that it was a collaboration between young Jocelyn and one Guiseppe the Mead-Monger, a well-known balladeer of the Pinkstone Mountain region of Rhubarbia. It was only later that scholars such as Rich Dehn and Gyff Thiesl proposed, alternatively, that either both men were one and the same person, or that one or both men never existed, and further, that, indeed, the entire affair was but another exercise in mis-, dis-, un-, and non-information, perpetrated by the most veral and shuddersome forces within the Interglobal Zaibatsu Conference's IG17 Information Wing to present a series of conflicting and mutually exclusive explanations of the First-Colony Massacre, to then be taken up by the surrounding and somewhat susceptible local populace. As a former elector-for-the-EC for Brindip Major, I must recuse myself from any comment on the matter at hand, except to say the while Dehn is closer to the actualities of authorship of the work in question, Thiesl is much more receptive as to its intent.
One can only further add that while the writer certainly welcomes the interest of such well-respected commentators as the scholars just mentioned, he has responded most passionately to the criticisms of his work once given by the empath who called himself Prime, when two or three figures were to be seen dancing through the canary-and-chrome clusterset, drunk on mooseberry mead and pippo-piss-wine, trolloping amongst the pippo-turds and swamp blossoms, and singing "Levity and Apergy, and a Great Big Ball of Plasma" over and over again at the top of their voices.
it is said (by whom?) that Lord Brightness later regretted much of his work in the Council of Youth period, which later resulted in the release of forces possibly connected with the destruction of Her Ladyship's Homestar of Betelgeuse (disputed - see talk page), completely unknown (except by Dernon!) before the first noticeable consequences of the MD Mk. IV metaphysical experimentation and the later effects of SMPP magicks implementation were more fully understood (but also, see Anfidgean and Flovat, op. cit.)
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-Statement of Lord Brightness, Omniversal Timespace Dysfunction Hearings, Rigel-Kent District, ISZ, 4194 ICE
In a drunken stupor of pippo-piss twitching and mooseberry tremors, I realized that Prime had been right, in constantly invoking Clarke's Law: Any Seeming Magick is Simply Science Sufficiently Advanced, i.e. All Metaphysics is But Physics, Properly Understood. I knew of the work of Dernon, yet somehow it seemed to conflict with the scepticism of Professor Nux and the crazy, magical-reality conceptions of Doctor Zybork. Returning from another skiffy-slam and night of monolithic revelry with Joseph and the empath Prime, I fell into the twittersome visions associated with combining the palsifying effects of kwd-enabler and the mental vibrations induced by mooseberry-mead alcohol poisoning, brought on by trying to go round-for-round in a drinking competition involving Joseph and myself, composing a story whilst Prime and his cubicle-mate, who thought himself a reincarnation of Copernik, tried to keep up, illustrating our words. Whichever team fell behind had to drink. King dandelion wine for a failure of inspiration, and mooseberry mead for a failure of execution. We were all quite inspired and technically proficient, if I can recall, and of course I can't.
This particular evening, while Joseph and I were composing yet another chapter in our Song of the Savior of Brindus, and Prime and Copernik were turning out reams of illuminated manuscript in bugbird ink on unused client jumpsuits of taroplasticine paper, our talk had turned to omniversal picodestruction, apergic-levitric redaction theories, SMPP spherical-cohesion factors, and similarly esoteric frontiers of the New Metaphysickal Physics, when Prime mentioned again that what John Dee and Professor Clarke seemed to have in common with the artist Rick Griffin was the insistence of each that All Things Could Be Explained, If Only We Knew More. It was his constant invoking of Clarke's Law that had gotten him booted out of the Sedna-Varuna-Quaoar Institute's Renascent Triangle and gathered up in the Empathy Uprising of the early 4020's, only to end up on Brindip Minor, the Asshole of the Omniverse, Xenohumanity's Last Bulwark Against the Bugs From Space. His beliefs regarding the Savior of Brindus were entirely heretical, and his conspiracy theories regarding the makeup of the CoKA Corps bordered on the unstable. Yet for all this, his insights into Natx Magicks and Modular Weaponry Concepts made him an invaluable contributor to Project Dretchfly: many of his designs were directly applicable to fieldwork, and the tiny models for his concepts he was able to fashion with the most rudimentary of supplies enabled our coders to produce artifacts of immense worth in our struggle against the Latest Alien Menace.
I fell into a trance, as I say, and all I could hear was our endless chanting, "Levity and Apergy, and a Great Big Ball of Plasma" when two angels appeared to me in a vision, seeming manifestations of the will of the Executive Chair itself, each a statuette appearing above the giant Shield of Glory which makes up the back of the Seat of the Imperator, two lovely ladies, Levitatia and Apergia, whose endless caresses reduced me to a state of veral, vibrating, aguish quaking. I sprang up from the kwd-high and mead-hangover, and in one flash of inspiration, not only solved Dernon's Paradox but also wrote the entire Book of Lux in one sitting, over the course of the next thirty-seven clustersets, locked in the anteroom of the groundlock of Sleeping Dog, the Untermontane Keep of Hulldown. When I returned to my duties, I found that Prime had been moved to Multa, there to suffer the iniquities of the Great Redactor.
entered into evidence in the class-action complaint Sapients of the Omniverse vs. HR Holdings Austroastradia, Tumbo Designs, et al, as People's Exhibit 73-I.b1
-
-from The Book of Lux, New Revised Canon, by Jocelyn the Bright, Lord Brightness of Purpose, published simultaneously by SVQ Trinity Tightcasting and the University College of New South Haldonia, virtual visual version of 4143 ICE
pippos
jittery, twittery, twitchy
with purpose, aflame
my palms they were itchy
a being appeared
it spoke its name:
"LUX!"
'twas then I recalled
the imprecations of Nux
found embossed on the skull of a bugbird, presumably with a Dernon pengraving stylus, NZP CoY Scout Encampment Museum, Rhubarb Ridge, NSH FZ BIIIb, 4224 ICE
-
-from A Near-winter's Nooning in Outer South Nowhere OR, Drifting Where the Pippos Take Me, A Tale Before Lupper taken from Songs of Highbush Shrub and Swamp Blossom, by Guiseppe the Mead-Monger, Balladeer of Rhubarbia and Aquaterre Sud, oral tradition of the Stonefolk of the Quonset Lodges
the shadows of my drift and I
fled long before us, poleward
yet my loyal pips remained
ever-ready, stalwart
pink pitiful sun in yellowed sky
as bugbirds streamed in swarms
abandoning the pink stone hills
for a place still warm
found on the back of CoKA-Cola geeboxes in the late 4050s, along the Greater Brindus Engagement Front, OSSZ
-
-from a transmission sent by the personal drone assistant of Juan Omar Rigel-Kent von Betelgurz, Chancellor-Commissar for Anti-Xenomorphic Strategy: Saga of the Merfolk Centaur-Kings, from Brindus Four, during the Encounter of Brindus Minor between the Scourge from Beyond the Starwalk and the Fractal Zion Expeditionary Forces of the Space Marine Mercenary Militia, to Ked Ambrit, HR Holdings Vice-Counsel for Security, B-FZ Cluster Region, believed located on or near FZ BIIIb, 4031 ICE
from: JOR-KvB, CCfAXS, BN
to: KA, HRH VCfS, B-FZ CR
via: SotMC-K, pda
SAVE BRINDUS AT ALL COSTS! Rules of engagement nullified: camping, griefing, egg-sitting, and sharking all unrestricted. Alien menace to be destroyed at all costs. Repeat. AT ALL COSTS, including all assets previously deployed, including, but not limited to, all properties belonging or licensed to HR Holdings, Tumbo Design Group or any affiliated or subsidiary physical plant or asset of either zaibatsu. This includes the entirety of the civilian settlement population and their escort, the FZEF, should the occasion arise to sacrifice the FZ Initiative to save to bulk of the Brindipese population, as well as irreplaceable corporate assets within the Brindus Cluster proper.
REPEAT: RoE suspended. SAVE BRINDUS AT ALL COSTS.
from Brindipedia, authenticity denied by the Estate of the Rigel-Kent von Betelgurz Firelords
-
-from The Keening of My Soul's Lament, by Anti-Corporatus, Poet-Laureate, Brindaeopolis Altumseit, Published by Three Pippos Piping Publishing, Brindus Four, the world known to the vulgar as Plowshare
"With Purpose, Aflame," proclaimed young Ked,
"It falls to me to save the Brindip!"
He switched the switch, and thus "Engaged"
He armed the charge, and then he tripped it
found pengraved in a shaky hand in Old High Brindip in a squat-cell door in the Multa ERC, 4145 ICE
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-from A Rhubarbian Bacchanal, by Juan Omar Rigel-Kent, Travel Writer for the Bettlegurz Interclade Media Group's Channel South Programme, New Outer Nowhere, a Rururban Starways Presentation, Near-winter Tightcasts, 4027 ICE
she came to me
at clusterset
contentedly
we both had lupped
drank highbush brew
and pippo-pee
her spirit yet
o'erflowed my cup
the Sisters sank
beneath the Ridge
the bugbird's calls
assail my ears
from far-off bleats
my drift's afield
so nervously
she stilled my fears
pale sherbet-hued
like fruited ice
the little stars
of Fractal Zion
like fire-bats
with glowing eyes
in bell-shaped jars
like cowardly lions
taken from the virtual domain Lusty Pastorales of the 41st Century: Oracles of the New Nadir, Al-guhl Intrasegmentary Council for Spacerwalk Culture of the Farther Southern Diaspora, last linked to 4114 ICE, in the early After-summer, near the world called Swordsmith
-
Rejoinder Song of Immersion in the Universal OR God of the Magic Blade, Alien Being Known as x!7h05, Brindus Minor Engagement, 4027 ICE
sole builder - I spam the eggs and pain
the ceilings crawl with my dretchly rain
as mara and lisk, as rant or goon
I wear out my Keds
as I take back this moon
a killwhore of naturally-selected doom
quaking aggression, warcraftian gloom
I eat the viscera, I'm Lord Soul-Slammer
taunting abuser, godly ban-hammer
twittery, jittery, shivery, quivery
wobbly, wiggling, eating your livery
my mandibles twitch
my maw-tendons clatter
my mouths parts they itch
for the heart of the matter
appeared in the Yellow-Signed Handbill of the Dretch-Fynder-Generalissimo, His Majestic Vice-Regent, Lord Brightness, Jocelyn the Thaumaturge, during the Dretch Purge of the Rhubarbian Highlands, 4037 - 4073 ICE, aka The Dream-book of the Drunken Sot, ascribed to the Unknown Al-Guhl, Ghost-Troubadour of the Pinkstone Mountains
NOTE: Authenticity disputed. Believed to have been taken by use of Flovat Mass Suasion Tactics at Aegis Station by an agent known as only as Number Thirty-Seven, late 40th Century, from a battle-granger taken near Antharhillion Skyway, decades of interglobal common time before the First Colony Massacre, possibly implicating HR Holdings, Tumbo Designs and the Seventeen Solarities of the Southern Starsprawl in a vast, multi-layered conspiracy of truly astronomical proportions.
-
-from A Primer for Pioneer Scouts of the Council of Youth, by Juan Omar Rigel-Kent von Bettlegurz, Ducal Aide for EKSTECY Liaison-Adjutant's Office on Juvenile Homelessness on Rururban Moonlets
CoY Scout Law:
A Scout is empathic, clairvoyant, and far-seeing,
telepathic, telekinetic, immediate,
extra-sensorially perceptive,
truly receptive, and gifted beyond the ken of the unknowing.
Coy Scout Oath:
Through my gift,
I will do my damnedest,
To do my duty,
To the Executive Chair,
To eradicate the Menace
And obey the Law of the Clade.
CoY Scout Motto:
Always vigilant.
CoY Scout Slogan:
Help a fellow empath every sortie; salvo with your fireteam!
found carved into a series of tree-bole vole skulls, with a Dernon pengraver, Rhubarb Ridge CoY Scout Pioneer Pageant, 4037 ICE, NSH, FZ BIIIb
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History1: 3900-3950: Times of Strife.
The Great Rebellion: 3911-3925:
Also known as the Kedt Rebellion, the Baare Republic, and the South-west schism, this civil war between various violent breakaway planets and colonies in the south-western sector of Galaxy Sol and The Galactic Empire, was the most destructive human war in history, with approximately 817 million total causalities, approximately 340 million of those deaths were non-civilians. Most historians point to Janus 12th, 3911, the day 32 colonies declared independence from The Empire as the start date, but this, like most events, is largely disputable.
With events ranging from the battle around Ayiiers IV, 3913, the largest recorded space battle in history, to the Sleyrn Coast Massacre, in which 450 civilians were driven off cliffs by local insurgents, this was a time of sadness and destruction. With the leaders of the planet Kedt at the helm, local colonies jumped on the bandwagon, declaring independence from The Empire. Most joined the Baare Republic, the new government founded by leaders of Kedt, but others claimed themselves free planet-states.
Fourteen tough years later, the planet Kedt along with 7 others was exterminated, the rest forcefully united back into The Empire, and movement from then on could move forwards. The war cost a total of 91 sept-trillion credits for The Empire, and ravished a lot of holdings in the area. On a positive note for The Empire, titanium production more than tripled, and the economy was back on its feet in a decade.
~~Specific stories to come soon, just thought I'd give a brief overview of these trying times for those not as versed in the happenings and history of the Tremulous Universe.~~
-
-from A CoY Scout's Guide to the Mooseberry Moonlet, Juan Omar Rigel-Kent, Programme Lead, EKSTECY Corps Recruitment Initiative
The First First Colony Massacre - a tale of the Tlik Tlok Watchers
It has been said of the pippos of Rhubarb Ridge that they are native to the area. This is not strictly true. Little or none of what the settlers continue to call "indigenous" to the object known as FZ BIIIb is truly native to the little moonlet, as the eccenctric and cometary orbit of its parent, the Rafton object known as Blutogardis, around the M-class red dwarf called Al-guhl, is sufficiently distant and irregular, as to take both objects quite out of the tiny habitable zone around this small, weak sun for a large portion of the Greater Longyear.
One may notice immediately the miniscule stature of the somewhat-domesticated yet-wholly-irascible pigmy boar-hippos, and wonder what sort of beings the husbandmen were who bred such stock, to what purpose, and where they can be found at this day. One would indeed search in vain to find these folk, for their like shall never be seen again among the tall, narrow, arcane monuments which stretch across Southern Rhubarbia, from the Salty Lakes of the West to the Pinkstone Mountains which line the Eastern Coast, following the Old Stone Causeway, seemingly from Nowhere and to Nowhere. No citadel or market-town of these aboriginal residents may be found along its entire length, for they were folk of the forests and the ruins, who hid among the swamp blossom paddies and stinkthorn thickets, and haunted the wobbly dolmens, and strange, improbable, shaky cruachs which dot the countryside, from the Celery Hills all the way to Monkeyface Island.
In the days of my great-clone-father's great-clone-father, the port clades and lar-board kithclans of the Pioneer galley Baleen Sky brought the great ship to rest at Hulldown on Brindus Minor, her sister-ships Curlew Daughter and HRHS Holling Clancy Holling continuing on to Brindus Four and Brindus Major, respectively. It was Near-winter on Brindus Minor, or Fractal Zion BIIIb, as they called it in the star-charts. The cometary orbit of Blutogardis was taking Brindus Minor far away from the paltry light and meager heat of the tiny star called Al-guhl, and taking the First Colonists into their first Haldoonian Deep-winter, as well. They would not have survived, were it not for the Tlik Tlok Watchers. That they responded to such generosity of spirit by slaying every last one of these aboriginal Faery-folk of the Narrow Dolmens is just another chapter in the long, sad History of Humanity's Rapine and Slaughter of the Star-folk.
My great-clone-father's great-clone-father, who was to become the First Dretch-Fynder Generalissimo, landed at Hulldown with a great party of the Clades of the Port-kin: Rigel-Kents and von Bettlegurzs, Anfidgeans and Flovats, Dehns and Thiesls. The Southern Grand Islet was divided up between the two main Bodies Popular: the Port-kin took the Eastern Highlands, while the Lar-Board-Kith took the Western Islets and Lakelets District. Between them, in the first Good-summer of the following Longyear, these two groups smashed the tiny folk of the Faery-Lands like two giant hands clapping. Unfortunately for scholars, they never took the time to learn their ways or hear their tales, which might explain how they had come to the Mooseberry Moonlet, from whence, and what were they doing here, squatting amongst the ruins of another, older, gigantic presence, whose origin can now only be guessed at.
displayed on a Brindip padpod in a maralisk jumpsleeve, formerly in the collection of the Eastern Escarpment Native Revivals Society, NSH FZ BIIIb
-
-from the Yellow-signed Handbill of Ye Drecche-Fynder Generalissimo, by Joss Mac Josslynn, Neomancer-at-Large, Publick Interlocutor for S. Gr. Islet Kithdom
Fearful tales are still told to this day, among the launch gantries and cooling towers of the Briny Lagoons, about old Joss the Wicked, First Drecche-Fynder Generalissimo of Rhubarbia. They say he mated with an Overmind, and the foul thing begat a loathsome hybrid of Alien and Human: a Grendel-like abomination, half-man, half-maralisk, which haunted the mead-quonsets and dandelion-lodges of the Eastern Highlands. They say he took a Tyrant-Queen for his bride, and fed her the babes of the Tlik Tlik faery-folk by the light of Blutogardis's eerie, blue, electric glow. They say he was attended by two familiars, a flying dretch and a hydralisk, and he called the two Levity and Apergy, and each bestowed upon him the powers of those Magickal Names. They say he painted himself blue and went naked into battle, that he hunted dretches alone after clusterset, and performed fearsome rituals at the Pillar of Potash in the strange radiation of Great Bluto's black light. They say he eschewed the Fire-lances of his Rigel-Kentish forbears, and preferred the discsaw and the needle-derringer, as he preferred his wetwork up close, and impersonally personal.
While these reports cannot be wholly discounted, claims that Old Joss the Dretch-killer was a were-goon who became a berserker by the dark illumination of Blutogardis's foul glow, killing Human and Alien alike, seem to be, on the face of it, entirely baseless.
from A Brindip's Guide to Brindipedia, New South Haldonia College of The New Metaphysickal Physick, 4031 ICE, NSH FZ BIIIb, OSSZ c/o IG17 Industries Vector Nadirward, Austral Celestial Hemisphere, Circumsolar Nearward Volume
-
-from Space Marine Mercenary Militia Handbook for B-FZ CR Volunteers, by Juan Omar Rigel-Kent, Squadron Leader, SMMM Low Object Orbit Air Defenses Commander, Astraport Westlakes, Brindus Minor aka The World Aflame, 4037 ICE
From the blood-stained halls of Metro,
To the hell of Nexus 6;
We will fight zaibatsu battles
In far space, and time, for kicks;
First to fight to clear the Starways
And just because we're mean;
We are proud to serve our Emperor,
The Imperial Space Marines.
Pennon's unfurled on every world
As we flit from sun to sun;
We have fought in every alien place
Where you could buy a sweet lasgun;
In lograv & cosrad all the time
And awesome cosmic scenes;
You will find us ever-vigilant
The Imperial Space Marines.
Here's to Tremblers and the CoKA Corps
Any storm we all shall weather;
And to all the clans we remind Humans
Please just try to stick together;
If the Empaths or the Clone Army
Ever reach Far Heaven's scenes;
They will find the treasure's guarded there
By Imperial Space Marines.
found playing over and over again in a guard shack at the remains of the SMMM Regimental HQ, Potash Junction, FZBIIIb, after the First Colony Massacre, by mop-up and second unit crews from Corporate Media Investor Relations
Note: NOT the Official Anthem of the ISM!
Q: TJ - TFZI is a work of fiction. No intended irony should be construed. For entertainment purposes only. No political commentary of any sort intended, nor should any such be considered to have occurred. Support the troops. Good day to you, sir or madam.
-
-from Portkin Clades of the Eastern Highlands, by Juan Omar the Second, Grand Co-Counsel for Rhubarbia, South North Grand Islet, and the Unclaimed Obverse Face, New South Haldonia, Brindus Minor, 3997 ICE
At least thirteen Juan Omar Rigel-Kents were aboard the Baleen Sky when it landed at Hulldown. Although it has been purported by irresponsible parties that Old Joss the Wicked - Jocelyn ye Drecche-Fynder - hunted down the other twelve and killed them, evidence for this assertion is wholly lacking. It further seems preposterous, in that many among the pump stations and pit-mines of the Clades of the Austro-austral Isle de Grande count among those Lost Twelve Jocelyns their own great-clone-fathers. Whether Old Joss did away with the Twelve, and replaced them with scions of his own thigh, remains a largely debatable and wholly unproven slander on the character of the First Generalissimo of Rhubarbia, whatever his other crimes against God, Nature, and the Cosmos.
this brief excerpt found drone-printed on the back of a client security anklet, CoY Pioneer Scout Encampment Archaesociological Site, North North Grand Islet, The World Aflame, B-FZ Double Cluster, c/o The Seventeen Solarities, New Far South, IG17-FZ.BIIIb_hyperbor/0337b1
-
-from Levity and Apergy, and a Great Big Ball of Plasma, by Anfidgean, Flovat, et al (http://tremulous.net/forum/index.php?topic=9619.msg148596#msg148596), New Metaphysics magazine article Near-winter 4023 ICE, manuscript file loaned to author by The Ballad of CoKA: personal drone assistant to Lord Brightness
We must therefore, separate our intended audience into two groups: those who understand the implications of Dernon's Law, and those who do not. To the former, we address the following concerns; to the latter, we extend our deepest regards. The effects of omniversal picodestruction, while not observable, are still predicated by our current interpretation of the Natx Shift. That the coil-and-rail mating technique can be achieved is not the question, for certainly it now appears that it can; the question remains: Is destroying this latest xenofestation really worth the infinitesimally incremental ultimate damage we appear to be doing to the very fabric of virtuality itself?
...
When approaching the issue of whether such a fire-and-forget nano-object can continuously target a plasmodic ripple-bubble with a backwards-firing levitric-apergic infrared-frequency "laser", utilizing the object's ultra-capacitance to produce a true slow-moving-plasma-projectile, the present authors would marry the magickal crackpot-ism of Doctor Zybork with the practical skepticism of Professor Nux, and produce an artifact which combines all of the nuances of the word "light".
these two quotes drone-printed of the back of client identification armlets, from CoY Pioneer Scout Surplus Dropzone, Rhubarbian Council of Councils, 4173 ICE, Islet-in-the-Lakelet of the Islet-in-the-Lakelet, Western Islet-and-Lakelet District, FZ BIIIb, OSSZ, IG17
-
from the virtual visual domain HyperScribes, Personal Drone Assistants to the Interglobal Jumpset, Book III: The Rigel-Kentish Fire-Lords, chap. 37 - PDAs of Jocelyn the Bright
Saga of the Merfolk Centaur-Kings
- year & place of manufacture: 3997 ICE, Neano Two's New Moonlet
- brand & model: Tumbo Designs Y4K.37_b1
- years of service to LB: 3997 - 4037 ICE
- features: security, correspondence, personal, professional and private secretary - quintcore loyalty bracketing
- notes: lost during Second Brindus Encounter, 4037 ICE, near Brindus Four
The Ballad of CoKA
- year & place of manufacture: 4025 ICE, Renascent Triangle
- brand & model: SVQ Trinity Silver Crown 25 prototype
- years of service to LB: 4031 - 4137 ICE
- features: wholly autonomous personal autobiographical device
- notes: retired, currently resides in orbit near Brindus Four
last referenced 4194 ICE, near the world known as Swordsmith
-
Recollections
"Papa? Papa?" Young Deserie ran from one group of huddled people to the next.
Light and shapes flashed around her in her anxiety, flits of words seemed to babble in and out of her brain, too loud and too soft. She hurried down the alleyway, screaming, "Dadddy?" She was splashed with dirty water as she streaked through puddles, but she couldn't notice it, not now. Deserie rounded the corner and came into a big clearing by the cliff overlooking the ocean. There were hundreds of people crowded in the space between the buildings and the cliffs, crying, screaming, lying on the ground. How was she to find her dad in a place like this?
"Hey, kid!" Whirling around she spotted a soldier, dressed in local green uniform, hoisting a rifle and walking towards her. "What-- get over--- not--" She could barely understand a word. He picked up his pace and then panic took over. Like an iron vice she was pinned down, fear seemed to be literally dripping down her face. There was only one way to escape from this. RUN! She turned back, and sprinted towards the alleyway from which she had come.
"Halt!" Another one, coming to head her off, she couldn't let him stop her. Deserie quickly grabbed a fence separating nearby buildings, and exerting all of her strength, she hoisted herself over, and fell on the ground on the other side.
"Daddddddyy." This was the wail of a desperate girl, where was her dad, where was he? But she realized she was not safe here. Getting up she sprinted away and into a nearby factory where she crawled into a shadowy corner and collapsed, panting for breath. This wasn't fair. Wasn't fair. Just hours ago she had been with her father, huddled in his lap, sleepy after finishing lunch. He had stroked her, run his fingers through her hair and whispered that he loved her. He told her that he loved her and everything would be OK. She had muttered back, she loved him too. And she did. But where was he now? Where was he when she needed him the most, when she would have most loved his touch, his perfect reassurance. Why did it have to happen to her? Whhhy? It just wasn't fair, just wasn't.....
She drifted off into a tortured sleep, continuously haunted by screams and shouts. Her father and others she couldn't name drifted in and out of her view, but seemed always just beyond her grasp. Loud noises, like gunshots dimly permeated her dreams, but she shook them off, they weren't really real. And with a last fleeting gasp, her dreams disappeared and she awoke to a shadowy room, the factory.
Numbly, she rose up and hobbled out of the building, out of the alleyway, and towards the beach. She walked to the fence where she had narrowly evaded the soldier before, and cautiously peered around the end. Nothing. There was nobody there, just metal casings and garbage, blowing in the wind. It was a haunting scene. This desolate place had just hours before been filled with shouting, screaming, crying, real people, and now there were just cigarettes, ruffling on the ground, and mag-flies flirting in pools of vomit. She felt drawn, by some instinct, to the cliff, to look over at the ocean and the horizon. As she looked down over the cliff, at the beach below she noticed something strange. She had never before realized quite how thick and red the waves were at this beach.
~~A most chilling, haunting story of Deserie Blatt, a young girl who quite narrowly survived the 3922 Sleyrn Coast Massacre. Almost 475 innocent villagers, including her father were not so lucky, and perished 4 years before the end of the most brutal war in history. This despicable act, done out of desperation and cowardice by local insurgents who pledged loyalty to the Baare Republic is recognized as one of the 20 worst "crimes against humanity."~~
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Testimony of Eno Reyalp the Off-Worldish, Original Settler of Rhubarb Ridge, late of First Star, lately of Brindus Minor, New Nadirian Frontier, 3937 ICE
We were in the Piping Pippo of a clusterset, drinking a tankard or three of the swamp-blossom brew, having a bit of a late lupper, when in comes Old Joss the Wicked - Jocelyn ye Drecche-Fynder - and two of his clone-sons, Joss Mac Josslynn and Juan Omar the Younger, and three or four of his other, younger variants, drunk as lords on king water dandelion wine. The three of them - Joss, Junior, and his clone-brother - were arm in arm, singing: "Levity and Apergy, and a Great Big Ball of Plasma", the old Brindip night-rhyme; old Joss waving an arc-arquebus around and both of his clone-sons - wild looks in their eyes - with the fire-lances and nuke-lock carbines of their Rigel-Kentish cladefolk in their hands.
Well, it looked like trouble, but we didn't know the half of it. For who should walk in t'other door but the Twelve Jocelyns: Joss the Original, Jocelyn the Younger, Joss the Brave, Old Joss of Xenomorphalia, Juan of the Fire-Bats, Juan Omar the First, Joy the Revelatrix, Guiseppe the Mead-Monger, the Twin Jocelyns of North North Grand Islet, Joss the son of Joss Josslynnson, and Jocelyn the Brigand of Volcano-in-the-Lake, later to be a hero of the Farce of the First Colony. All twelve of the Hulldown Twelve, scattered to the ends of the Mooseberry Moonlet by the murderous, duplicidal ways of Old Joss the Dretch-killer and the scions of his thigh. Yet here they were, united yet again in common cause, and here in ye Publick House of Metaphysick Debate right in the heart of the shanties and bunkers of lovely Dirtwater Canyon. It looked to be the final showdown in the War of the Jocelyns. A hush came over the room. You could have heard a needler-derringer reload.
Well, Guiseppe the Mead-seller, he comes in last, as you can imagine, having tended to the needs of his sledge-moose, and just as he kicks in the door, with a great bellow, brandishing his mead-flask and yelling, "Now who'll hear some news, right fresh from Heaven?", young Joss Junior just about craps himself and fires his carbine off-handed, letting go his lance into the Twins. The lights went out about that time, and that was when we heard it. One group of Jocelyns started making noisome and shuddersome mooing and cooing noises, like they were were-goons or maralisk-men, and then I heard the frightful, fearsome sound of human beings being rent by gnashing fangs and slashing talons. I had heard terrible things about Old Joss the Wicked aligning himself with the Demons from Beyond, but I never thought they were true. You should have seen our faces when he was found among the dead.
received from a troubadour of the Pinkstone Mountains, late 41st century, Haldane's World, IG17 FZ BIIIb
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Testimony of Joss, Son of Joss Josslynnson, during his trial for Dretchcraft and Xenomancy, Giant's Ear Mass Purge, 3952 ICE, WI & LD, SGI, FZ BIIIb
I remember the sky at clusterset, a soft, pale yellow - like citron sherbet, like lemon custard, like banana cream - the color of school-chalk dust in puffs from clapped erasers, the color of baby chicks on an early spring morning. The clouds were a million shades of pink against it: magenta and raspberry, salmon and almost-peach, coral and rose-purple. The tiny sun, Al-Guhl, blazed impotently in the dusty flaxen sky, barely noticed in the dazzling glare of the setting Brindus Cluster: a puny red wallflower, while her sister-suns were the belles of the ball, bright orange and yellow-green. The other two tiny dwarfs of the Fractal Zion system were down, and the darkening dome of the zenith was already being dominated by the weird, irradiated glow of Great Bluto, hanging forever above, pouring its strange, uncanny energies into the haunted night of the World Aflame.
Across the cinnamon and bastard-amber hills, a fitful breeze threw handfuls of dust into our faces; faces goggled and masked against the fumes and vapors of the Brine Pools, against the stinging potassium salts and caustic alkali grit, against the noxious breeze and its noisome frittering. I was there with the rest of the Hulldown Dozen. We were hunting down the last few of the Scions of the Thigh: only Juan Omar the Younger and Joss Mac Josslynn still lived. Both were hiding in a cave, at the end of a canyon, entered only by a cleft in the bare rock. Any who tried to squeeze through that hole would be blaster-fodder in the time it took to squirm past the half-man-sized opening.
They were both armed with the fire-lances and nuke-lock carbines favored by our clade since the Glorious Chapter of Rigel-Kentish hegemony, when we had been High-Kings of Vice Executive status, with full subsidiary recognition in the Alpha Centauri system, with rights of first refusal to all worlds along the Centaur's Path. I heard one of them cough. They knew what was coming, and so did we.
We moved back from the opening, and joined hands. We could have all made the Change individually, and instantly, but we retained more of our strength, and the effects were longer lasting, if every one of us in the coven combined our energies. We were no longer Thirteen, having done away with Old Joss the Wicked, but we still had much Power within us yet.
As the chanting began, I formed an image of the beast I would become in my mind, and coughed out the guttural, indistinct syllables in a twangy drawl, all glottal stops and whistling clicks: u'ughu'u ma'a nu'u a'an tlik-klit, u'ughu'u ma'a a'an nu'u klik-kli'i, the spell that Old Joss the Dretch-Lord had taught us. Already I could feel the hands of the others becoming the talons of demons, already I myself was become a foul thing...
found scrawled in bugbird blood on bole vole parchment in Ye Drecche's Booke of Shadowes, private collection of the author
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-from Tales of the Purge of the Wild, by Jocelyn the Thaumaturge, late 40th century
Clusterset was like a banana split, made with strawberry and black cherry ice cream, and garnished with plantain meringue and maraschino sauce, all pale yellow and riotous pink. Afterwards, the lavender ground-mist settled among the cromlechs and megaliths of the Wilder Wastes. All through the brief day, the fog had swirled and danced amid the ruins along the Old Stone Causeway, worrying the men and distracting their mounts. Now, at the beginning of the week-long Haldoonian night, it thickened into pools, and drifted like a wayward ghost, furtively searching the Tombs of the Giants for a restful place to tarry. Yet there would be no rest, for the Wastes were alive with the chittering of dretches and the barking of the maralisk.
sung to the author by a mead-wench in the public house, the Pink Creeper, early 41st century, NSH, FZ BIIIb
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-from My Rigel-Kentish Home in East-Southern Rhubarbia, a Travelogue Nadirward, a tightcast of SVQ College of Alchemickal Chimeristry - local correspondent Earl Peony the Elder-clone, 4021 ICE, NSH FZ BIIIb
Clusterset on New Halden has been likened to high tea at lupper-time: The pale, yellow sky, like taro-lotus pound cake, was piled high with soft, rosy clouds, like clots and clods of highbush-berry half-cream and bog-cran-creeper jam-butter. The dark, thin sheen of Great Bluto's constant bombardment of the little moonlet was like a scalding and bitter tisane of lake-islet bugbird-bush bark tea. The setting sun-stars of the nearby Brindus Cluster were like quaint mead-cakes - appliqued with the finest liquers and tart jellies of beetlefruit, goldenprune, and cirtroel - like pale, bright sorbet-muffins that taste best when hand-made by one's own clade-mother. The puny, infantile suns of the World Aflame, the miniscule dwarfs of the Fractal Zion cluster* - Al-Guhl, Al-Tabac and Al-Ashishim - reminded one of garnet-colored roasted bugbirds, stuffed with nettle-nuts and beetle-nougat, small enough to pop into your mouth whole. Great Bluto itself, constant, bluely-electric companion - Blutogardis the Bloated - was like a large and tasty pastry filled with azure-speckled-newt-egg-caviar-in-bugbird-honey-aspic, a limpid belly-bomb of wanton stickiness. The overall effect was much like a too-full nap in the garden of a wizard.
*Even when any of the FZ suns was above the horizon, they gave off as little light as if it were truly night on the little moonlet. Only Magna Brindusia really lit the sky, and then just once a week, on Clusterday. The names of the other days of the week were Darkeven, Late-eve, Deepnight, Night-vigil, Foredawn, and Dawnday.
from First Colony Omnibus: The Scattered Writings of the Aldermensch, College of the WILD, 4114 ICE, IG17 WI & LD FZ BIIIb
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-from the virtuanime cineretta, Bettarina, My Beloved, by Joss and the Jocelyns, first staged at the New Cineretta House of Rhubarbia, Potash Junction, NSH FZ BIIIb, 4011 ICE
Bettarina,
They done for you.
A stake for your heart,
A pyre for your form -
They think they've won:
The fools!
Bettarina,
Accused of dretchery.
They called you a foul xenomancer,
And now you've got just one chance, oh -
Just wretched me!
Bettarina,
I'll slay ye drecche-fynder!
My dearest,
His soul shall follow behind her!
My love's eternal reminder.
Bettarina, O Queen of my Heavenly Hell!
from the album J & the J-sons: A Billion Celestial Hits, Redro Media Group, New Nadirward Vector, 41st Century-Flypaper Entertainment, an IG17 Joint
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Saga of the Self-Killer, by Joss Mac Josslynn, Clone-son of Joss the Dretch-Lord, Nadirward Home for the Duplicidally Dangerous, Neano Two's New Moonlet, 3943 ICE
'Twas clusterset,
Near lupper-time;
To my regret,
I began a rhyme.
It was to be,
A mild jest.
But, oh - Dear me!
An offended guest.
A time was set,
A week away:
On that moonlet,
'Twas but a day.
And so we met,
This foe and I.
Now, no regrets;
For one must die.
Walked ten and turned,
And then I shot.
My blaster burned
That drunken sot.
I'll no more quaff
The pippo-pee.
I'll never kill
Another me.
found in a virtual query for "Joss+duplicide+Clade Sud", at the domain The Dretching Hour, accessed 4114 ICE, near the planet known as Swordsmith
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Cool stuff.
More.
Khalsa
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-from a brief missive sent by player1 to khalsa
Mahalo. Thanks for the soap-box, and the kudos.
More to follow.
found at the virtual domain Ye Lore of ye Dretchly, accessed 4141 ICE, near the world called Plowshare
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-from The Myth of the Third Race, by Lady von Betelgurz, Czarina-Sultana of Brand Positioning and Interpolatrix-Magistrate of Historiography for the Outer Southern Settlement Zone, Rigel-Kentish Center for Spacerwalk Culture, Proxima People's Cloister, Alp Cen AIIa.1, 4137 ICE
There had long been rumors that a Third Race would enter the conflict, and totally tip the scales in the grindingly-depleting Human-Alien War, the Greater Brindus Xenocidal Incident of the Mid-Forty-First Century. Some had said that the conflict would cause a massive Drone Rebellion, and while sporadic outbreaks of automaton freak-out, even mass automaton freak-out, occured quite regularly, nothing even approaching the outrageous scale that had been predicted ever happened. Some had suggested that Spectres of the Undead, or Elementals of the Four Dimensions, or Sentinels of a Long-Lost Race of Elder Gods would eventually intervene, to end the neophobic hatred and sheer ungodly aggression that was the First Australadastran Megawar. Surely some higher power could end this insane riot of unholy terror.
Even the name: the Human-Alien War, was almost a farce. Were the clone-folk of Brindus, and their protectors, a million iterations of one man, really still Human? Were the CoY Scouts who controlled the Keds or the biomorphically-altered astramutatees of the Outer Southern Starsprawl of the Seventeen Solarities - at the end of the line for the humanesque residue of the Spaceways - still Human? The rebuilt prospector-borgs, the Trembler kids from the NZP, the Duplicants of the Brindus Double-Cluster, the mind-expanded Guilderguides, the Ked clones themselves, the weapon-enhanced Merc Militiamen, the bug-summoning hippies and dretchcraft-practicing pippo-herders of the Drunken Highlands, were any of them still Human? Were they even a little bit Human?
And the Aliens, what of them? Surely they weren't the only alien race Humanity had ever confronted? No, indeed, they were the only alien race that Humanity had not dominated or decimated in its wild, sprawling, feral, invasive, headlong rush into post-warp Progress. These Aliens fought back. And they were vicious, and sentient, and mean-spirited, and venal; like no other species Humanity had ever met before. Except itself, that is. Humanity had finally met its match. Mankind had finally met the true Demon Other: The Beast Which Wants to Kill Me More and Has a Really Good Chance of It, No Matter How Big My Gun Is. And no matter how much anyone wanted to wish and/or pray for a Mighty Intercessor, a Third Combatant to upset the finely-tuned, stalemate-like, tic-tac-toe balance, none was forthcoming. Nor would there ever be one. Two factions, in hyparxial four-dimensional curved-space, forever trying to outflank one another in an endless game of leap-toadstool, hop-turd and punt-the-beetle all rolled together into one.
The Gods had spoken. It was to be these two savage, war-mongering, spiteful species pitted against each other. One would eradicate the other, or both would die trying. It would make an interesting diversion for the Forces of Great Providence, and quite possibly an edifying one at that. The Devas and the Djinn sat down to watch, leaving off their games of Cosmic Chance, and their meddling in the affairs of the Peaceable Starfolk. They sat down to enjoy the carnage. And we and those Demons from the Hell of the Heavens provided it.
found drone-printed on a loose piece of taroplasticine blowing in circles on the Plain of Sorrows, Neano Two's New Moonlet
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Write a book maybe? Fantasy mixed with Sci-Fi seems your kind of style...
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-from a response by Eno Reyalp to the suggestion that he compose a cyber-scroll of the History of Brindusia
Working on (at least) one. And yes, for this project here, sci-fantasy is a quite enjoyable outlet. Thanks for the support.
found at the virtual domain The Adventures of Ked the Undead, last accessed 4134 ICE, near Multa, OSSZ
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-from the Virtuarcana Al-Khimerical of Al-Guhl, the Raving Agape-Apostate of All-Knowingness, late 40th C., Rhubarbian Dretch-landes
Shall a man dream of things he cannot do? In this he expresses a belief in Magick, a truly Human instinct to alter Nature to agree with One's Own Will. Shall this belief be subsumed in the idea that Progress has been achieved, that Science understands all, that Man knows as much as God? Nay, even here, at the dawning of the 41st Century of our Interglobal Common Era - with all of our recent achievements in new ways to perform old perfidies - All Has NOT Been Discovered! The lessons of Kmt and Al-Kimia, of the Thrice-Majestic Knower of the Union-in-One, of Galen and Paracelcus, of John Dee and Eliphas Levi are still to be re-learned. Again Ibn Sina and Junayd-al-Bagdadi speak to us from across the gulfs of time and culture, again we grasp at a chance to catch but a glimmer of their lordly knowledge of the One-in-All. Shall we not again attempt the Metaphysickal Physics, the Alchemickal Chemistry? Should we so leave Professor Clarke's vision to rot? Will we not set forth, again, beyond the Stars We Know, to find new wonder, and again be awed at the Majesty of All That Is?
I am reminded of the visions of Herr B. G. Issi, who, confronted with the joking suggestion of Professor Nux that perhaps there actually was some Mythical Third Party, who has always been here - watching, waiting, lurking, like a ghost in a minefield - stated that he had had visions of such beings, and that they buzzed around his head, like the Hive-Bugs of the Xenodaemonic Brindusian Horde-Beasts, like the Golden Swarm of the Bee-Guns of Old Areoterre, like the bugbirds at clusterset on Haldane's Moonlet, like virtuanime Fire-Bats around the head of a cineretta-noir Ked the Kid.
found drone-pengraved on the back of a humming beetle, climbing a Narrow Dolmen down the road from the Oracle Aflame, 4023 ICE, NSH, FZ BIIIb, OSSZ, IG 17
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-from the virtual padpod of Juan Omar Rigel-Kent, Insertion Team Leader, Triple-Threat Quickstrike Program, Brindus Tribunal, New Far South, 4033 ICE
It seemed like an easy mission: If we could just place a few telenodes at key points, we'd be able to dimension-print CoKA units like they were this year's Ked action figure. If only we could get the Tremblers to work together. Those damn kids all seemed to think that it would be their clone who would prove to be the True Manifestation of Ked the Great. They didn't seem to have any idea about fire-teams, squad tactics, or leading by example. Damn back-stabbing, team-killing, deconstructing bunch of grief addicts if you ask me. All they knew was camping, solo rushing, kill-whoring, egg-sitting and some arcane new cheat they called sharking. We tried to tell them they were just getting Keds killed out there, but they just wouldn't listen.
We wanted to have three dropships place insertion teams simultaneously - well, as simultaneously as hyparxial tesseracting would allow, considering the time-dilation factors and the non-sequential experientiality of the Folding - at Sirius, Procyon, and Hamunaptra. The Horde was getting too close to First Star. The Imperial Space Marines had been deployed elsewhere, and the Imperator's forces were spread thinly across the Settlement Zone, with many worldlets in outright, panicky anarchy due to the xenofestation outflanking the Brindus Gambit. The Guilderguides said that the jumps could possibly be timed such that relative simultaneity could be achieved. We would have to bring along the Tremblers, for the distance was to be too great to achieve empathic clonal telepresence, if they were still back in Greater Brindus.
The thing was, the Tremblers were beginning to lose it. I mean really lose it. They had an excuse for everything. We knew the Aliens had some sort of a rudimentary radar-like organ, like a bat or a dolphin. But now the kids were saying they could literally see through walls, and around corners. Some even said the bugs could walk through walls. We heard some kids say they had third-person "out-of-clone" experiences. Some saw ghosts. Some said they bumped into people who weren't there. They weren't performing. "I missed my jump!" they would say. "Spiky lag!" they would scream, as the pain of the excruciatingly-slow long-distance connection overwhelmed their sense of timing, and the picoseconds became microseconds, lengthening into molasses-slow instants of non-instantaneous anticipation.
My ass was on the line. Fail at this, and I was better off dead. The Executive would make a million duplicants of me, and kill them all, one after another, then revive them all and kill them all again, just to atone for my sin of shame. The three jumpsters were set to converge at Brindus Minor before the next clusterset, all of them veteran Hyparxial Armada escorts, spatio-temporal patrol boats with real flight-time in omniversal relativeness. We were the only rookies here, with anything to prove - the Kids and the Keds. I had a really queasy feeling in my guts. I felt a quiver in my liver. I felt an unrelenting, impending gloomy sense of quaking doom. I was not going to enjoy being tortured to death a million times, only to be revived and tortured to death another million times. They said the Imperator hated failure, and oversaw the work of the Great Redactor personally.
That pippo-herder Rundoubter had set the bar too high. Everyone thought you could destroy an entire infestation with one crazy, saw-rushing, Mom-nading base-raper. Yeah. Like hell you could. At least not every time. Not against veteran Alien forces. And these bugs that had infested the Near Zone? They were front-line troops, eviscerators with a taste for Ked-clone. We were screwed, and everybody knew it, from the Chief of Chieftains all the way down to the hog reeve of the parish. I made out my will, leaving my meager possessions - a Dernon needler and a manuscript copy of the writings of Anti-Corporatus - to Jocelyn, my yet-to-be-vat-born clone-son, the flesh of my flesh. I made my last obeisance to Great Bluto, and went down into the groundlock of Sleeping Dog to wait, into the cool and the dark of the suspension tank. At least it was quiet there, away from the queerly and querulously questing minds of the timorously trepidant Tremblers.
transmission received from a drone claiming to be Saga of the Merfolk Centaur-Kings, 4114 ICE, near Brindus Four
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-continuation of transmission from drone claiming to be SotMC-K, received near Plowshare, 4114 ICE
I stayed in the Tank for six solid Old Time days, all through the long Haldoonian night. They woke me up on Dawnday, the "day" just before Clusterday. Brindus-rise would be in just a few hours. It was the late afternoon of Dawnday, but the suns were coming up, as the Six Sisters slowly began their day-long rising.
When last I had seen the sky it had been clusterset, pale whitish-yellow like a crushed chamae melon, with streaks of ribbon-like clouds like a marionberry smoothie spilt on a Neanoan butter-cream bone-tile kitchen floor. Now it was a million shades of rusty and coppery brown, all grey-orange-green and sullenly expectant. It reminded me of a hot-fudge sundae made with chocolate almond fudge, black walnut and mocha java ice-cream, covered with caramel, toffee, and butterscotch syrups, and topped with espresso beans and bitter chips of baker's cocoa. All I could think of was root beer, birch beer, sarsaparilla, and vanilla cream. I had been in the Tank too long. I must be hungry for something besides tubal feeding.
I blanked the scry screen, and the image of Rosier's Fall of the Merfolk Centaur-Kings returned on the window-wall, the thin layer of OLED letting the ambient glow of the slowly dawning cluster-rise to filter through, turning the work into a sacred symbolic statement of Humanity's Higher Purpose: to dominate and desecrate the Sacrosanct Geometer of the Architekton of the Holy Act of Creative Thought. What had happened to the mer-centaurs and the Haldoonian faery-folk must now happen to the Pests of the Infested Worldlets: eradication, annihilation, utter extinction from experientiality. I knew why my drone had awakened me. The jumpster dropships must have arrived. Time to get my ducks in order - my little charges - the CoY Scout Pioneer empath kids from the NZP Encampment, and the mindless Ked units of the insertion team, who the kids would use to place 'nodes to print more CoKA clones. I hoped they were up for it. My career, my marriage, my job, and my life were at stake, including my right to future iterations. No worries, right?
This time, I was no longer shivering uncontrollably with mere mortal dread. I had now and again begun to jump up and squat down uncontrollably, as if I was being puppeteered by the unseen hand of another in more than just mind and duty, but verily, I was now being thrown about, bodily, by the unending, crushing fright of the shuddersome, soul-eating demons of fear. Perhaps it would be easier to face the damnable things again, than to endure another instant of....
And then the memories came back, and I fainted. Unfortunately, that didn't stop me from dreaming about it, all over again. Those things actually ate Ked, right in front of me. My best fucking friend. And... they didn't really even eat him so much as tear his guts out and do foul, unspeakable, unnameable, arcane, necromantic ritual acts with his corpse, right there in front of me. God, how they hated him. God, how I hate them! They sent their greatest dragoon champions and tyrant heroines to vilify his name and ravage his mortal form, to give shape to monstrous abominations of xenomorphic horror. Bug-like incubi and succubi of the foulest alien insect pit, degrading my dead friend with their insane grunts and ranting roars! I must destroy them all, the evil things from the darkest realm of species-chauvinism and soulless dretchery! But - I still was in the dream... my thumbs were dretches attacking each other... I was spinning and falling... and marauders sprung off the walls while basilisks held fast my gaze and doomed my fate... cards were falling, a stacked deck shuffling... a house of cards on fire, yet still standing firm... dead men walking, and soul-eaten husks of men talking... and then I remembered something Prime had said:
"Most of your most valuable experience comes outside the combat; to prepare you for it."
And now he was on Multa, just when we needed him most. And Ked had died a million, billion, trillion times, and all in vain.
When I awoke again, I was in a jumpsuit, and we were undergoing our Secondary Enfoldment. I hate puking in the sponge-like no-space of the Interstices. At least we were on our way. The tremors seemed to have stopped. My drone beeped me.
"Yes?"
"I hope I'm not bothering you, Team Leader."
"Is that the new title?"
"Yes, HRH v-mailed the RoE update and your new jumping orders."
"How high?"
"Well, let me ask you this, sir -" said the drone.
"Go on. Ask me what?"
"Just how high can you jump?"
"That good, huh?"
"Oh, yeah."
"Alright, well, is everything else in order?"
"As always."
"Kids?"
"Yep."
"Keds?"
"Yes."
"ISMs?"
"As ordered, Your Worthiness."
"Drone."
"Yes, My Fire-Lord of Rigel-Kentish Scionship?"
"You just like to mess with me, don't you?"
"It does brighten up the sheer drudgery of being your personal delineator/adjudicator just a wee bit."
"Drone."
"Yes, Lord Brightness?"
"You can sod off now."
"I'll be standing by, when next you need your fanny wiped, Your Regality."
Fucking drones. Why did they have to have such robust sarcasm drives and powerful cynicism cores? They were merciless.
At least we were under way.
Oh well. No nap like a Triply-Enfolded Jump-Nap, I always say.
Thirty-three.
found in a drawer, behind some boxes, under a folio, a still-functioning Brindip Original Stride-Right personal delineator/autoblographer XXV Argensa series, circa 4142 ICE
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The titanium casing of the turret exploded into a thousand pieces mere meters away from me, burning in an inferno of destruction. Ducking behind the mounds of concrete I cringed as the red hot metal embedded itself in walls, ceilings, floors, and human bodies with the force of insanity. And it was. Fucking insanity that I was here, crouched in a fissure the size of a tram, with hordes of aliens poised around the corner, rushing with fearless determination to root us out of this corridor, out of this building, and off of this planet. They seemed to know no worries, to have no apprehension. God knows I was scared like shit, crouching in this hellhole. Another turret exploded, the result of countless suicide rushes by dretches on our defenses.
Screams pierced the air, screams not at all human. A dragoon dropped from a hole in the ceiling and howled as it bit into one of the members of the other squads with determined, gory intent. Marines were all over it in a moment, and it cried one last time as it collapsed, with pellets in its head, and a saw in its back. It was too late though, of course too late, a new Marine's broken body littered the trench.
As I turned back to survey the front, I felt something hot and wet sting my arm. When I swung around I witnessed an event that rent my heart, so sad it was I did almost cry out and hit the ground. The liquid on my arm burned a thousand times worse than acid from those beasts, it seemed to set me on fire, and bypass my skin and directly target my soul. What was on my arm was not acid, or metal, it was a tear. A tear from Sergeant Ramsey, that tough as nails, buckshot man, who seemed never to break, who constantly and consistently put his life on the line when others hung back and let clones do the work. But he wasn't just tough. He was a person, as hard his exterior was, he was very easy to get along with, he bonded quickly with all his men, me included.
And here he was, lying here, crying away like a child. The salty liquid poured down his cheeks, as he wept and watched his men, the fallen, the wounded, and the scared. Another man collapsed, hit in the chest by a barb, this only added to his grief, pushing him beyond despair. He screamed, and jumped over the top. His chaingun spinning wildly in hands, a basilisk rushed up to great him, only to be ripped to shreds by his bullets. He cried the yell of a man who knows he is dead, his body just hasn't realized it yet, and jumped into a trench occupied by aliens. I heard shreaks and saw green blood fly in the air. I'm sure he took a good many with him before he went.
And as I choked back tears of my own I realized just how many had left. My memory was thrown back to last week, back to that horrible event. We were called in on a sweep of the north side of nexus building 9, we'd all prayed not to have to do that one, but we got the call nonetheless. Walking those darkened corridors, visibility was virtually nil, and we couldn't spare any helmets for the squad. We had almost finished our sweep when seemingly out of nowhere we got swamped.
"Fall back, FALL BACK!"
We all turned and ran, back towards our camps, away from these monsters, monsters we couldn't deal with. All but one. Damion wasn't with us.
"Where's Damion? Where the hell is Damion?"
Peering down the hallway, I saw a sight that made me both glad I didn't have a helmet, and dyed my boots a chunky green. He was lying on the ground face down with blood pouring out of his back and a dragoon pulling him back into the shadows by his legs. I screamed and charged after him but I was tackled by Ramsey.
"Johnson, get your ass back to base! We are not losing another one."
So I cried and screamed, but I turned tail and fled, back to camp, to hide behind structures. He had been my best friend in the squad. He was so funny, so innocent, he never seemed to notice there was a war going on. I guess he learned his lesson the hard way.
I had cried my eyes out at night, cried for him, for me, and for the the rest of the squad. I cried and wished it hadn't had to happen, not this way at least. Now that I think about it though, looking around at me and what's left of the squad, he might have been the lucky one.
~~Transcribed Diary of Tim Johnson, rifleman, Needa Squadron, Tenth Battalion, Marine Infantry Regiment 1, deployed on the eastern fringes of the Zion areas.~~
P.S. Swearing added as dramatic license. If you don't like it, don't read it. Oops.
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-from a padpod entry made by Jocelyn the Bright, Lead Design Neomancer, Project Lighter, 4029 ICE, Haldane's World, Austral Vector Segment, Redrosian Marches
I looked over at the drone itself, the outboard, autonomous part of the unit that I thought of as its body, though of course it was more like its pineal gland. It was a small, metallic box, pewter-colored, about the heft of a heavy tome or a weighty brick, and based on the Golden Ratio. It was 1.6 times as long as it was across, and 1.6 times as wide as it was high. It had a Fibonacci spiral etched into its lid, and the words "Perpend Ashlar" hand-pengraved across one end in Old High Brindip in lovely calligraphic spirals that reminded me of star-work vaults of buff-and-periwinkle Neanoan bone-tile, dedicated to the Unsealing of the Prophecy, Thirty-Five Centuries Hence, PBUHN.
It was my favorite private denotation/annotation drone, Saga of the Merfolk Centaur-Kings. It was gouged, bent, burnt, and broken. I'd have to rebuild it. Yet again. I was going to need a drone just to fix my drone. I couldn't afford to be without one, now. With my position within the Corporacy, I was now managing about 4000 v-mails a day, not to mention literally hundreds of hyper-virtual talk-trees. I needed an autoblogger just to document it all. I'd have to borrow one of Ked's spares, or requisition a new one from Project: Dretchfly. Anfidgean and Flovat had plenty of old gear laying about, and they could get just about anything to work, at least for a while.
I looked through my own backup units: Song of the Marshes, Terrible North Wind, Mary Jane Rush, Star in the Waters, and Soul of a Wild Thing. They were all older units, but as an expert-system-based neural-network, they functioned well enough. They could take over the personal, professional, private, security and confidential functions of the single unit. Plus the base station of the bigger unit would still be useful, except for the usual, execrable proprietary-language donnybrook. I'd put one of the drones on that. Worth the shared-processing time, just to have it figured out, if even only for future use.
Damn. Got my drone-buddy. Hateful bugs. I'd have to kill about a planet's-worth of the nasty little things, just to work off my mad. I called Ked, using the bonepiece.
"Yo."
"Yo, yourself. Wassup?"
"The killed my drone."
"No way."
"Way."
"When?"
"Just now."
"What - how?"
"It just fried itself."
"What - huh?"
"Those damned bugs have dretchcraft, I tell you! They can disable technological devices at a distance."
"Waitaminute - your drone malfunctions and now you think the Bugs put a spell on you?"
"Fuckin' a-right I do."
"The Bugs have Magick?"
"Yessirreebobcattail."
"You're insane."
"I ought to be. Am I not the inmate of this prison-system and asylum-planet?"
"We need to get you drunk and laid my friend."
"No more faery-folk women..." I began.
"Alright, OK, whatever. We'll find you a nice miner-widow or kitchen-witch, and stuff your innards with pippo bacon and highbush small-beer. Then we'll go down to the cineretta house and shoot some virtual fire-bats, just like old times."
"Back in the day, the fire-bats were real."
"Back in the day, you were twice as crazy, and only half as much of a pussy."
"I'll meet you at the mead-seller's quonset, at clusterset."
"Bring a dead dretch; we need to make a sacrifice at the Oracle on the way."
"Fuck, I'll bring a live one and we'll kill it there."
"That's my boy."
"Just be on time."
"Sure, and then I can stand around and wait for you."
"Screw you."
"See you then."
"Later, Kid."
"I told you not to call me that."
"Clusterset."
"Don't forget the dretch."
"I'll bring the dretch. You bring the widows."
"And witches."
"Yeah."
"See ya."
He cut the connection. I picked up my drone's broken bits, and set them on the bench. I picked up a Dernon derringer and put on my radar-helm. Now, where was I gonna find a dretch? I was sure to see a few on the way, somewhere in the haunted fens, overgrown thickets, gloomy moors and barren heaths of the Shadowy Hills. If not, we could just trap a yale or a parandus and roast it. They weren't as tasty as fresh dretch, but what the hell. It was a long walk, and it would be nearly lupper-time by the time I got there. I grabbed my discsaw and turned to go.
"Drone," I said, talking to the base station of the broken unit.
It hummed a little Bach theme, to show me it was listening.
"Repair thyself."
It played a little melody on synthesized clavinet.
It sounded like drone for "Fuck you".
"Alright, well, don't wait up."
I turned to Levity, my flying dretch. "Go and get that lazy hydralisk. We're going to get drunk. And who knows, possibly even laid, too."
I would swear the filthy beast laughed at me.
"Meet me on the road. Drone..." I called, walking out the door.
It responded with a note like the clang of a cultist's cowbell.
"... clean this place up."
I turned around, and walked out. Widows and witches. Oh well, at least there was some sport to be had, a billion freaking star-systems from Nowhere. What the hell, might as well make the most of it. The hyradlisk and the dretch-fly caught up with me.
I stopped in a glade, and took out the consecrated blade. I drew the Dodecagon of the Twelve-in-One, symbol of the Hulldown Dozen, the Original Coven of Jocelyns. It would be so much faster to get there as a goon-grendel or maralisk-manticora. I joined forelimbs with my uncanny familiars in the weird light of that fatal Clusterday, and began anew the ancient chant.
"Nu'u u'ughu'u a'an ma'a kli'i-klik; a'an nu'u tlik-tlok u'ughu'u ma'an nui..."
the Ked the Kid cineretta-noir, Ked and Joss meet the Widow and the Witch, played at the Pillar of Potash every other Dayweek, at Clusterset, unless the kitchen-witch was performing a mudangerie
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testimony of Abner Anfidgean the Wax-Eared, 4073 ICE, Multa ERC
The thing about Ambrit was: the damnable arrogance of the man. "I'm an original," he'd say, "not like you Duplicants." Of course he was referring to the fact that the First Colony had been mostly composed of clone-sons and vat-daughters of the cream of the Rigel-Kentish Hegemony. Since the reassignment of HR Holdings proprietary rights - from areas along the Pink Plate of Greater Zoödiaka to the New Outer Far South - the Rigel-Kentish Fire-Lords of Mer-Centuaria were assigned to subdue the dusty worldlets and backwater planetoids of the Nadirward Vectors. Busy with the enactment of their great battle-ballet, their awesome carnival-pageant, the live performance-piece of dancing death, the martial masterwork of grandiloquent glory, The Saga of the Merfolk Centaur-Kings, a war-opera which claimed all the Duplicants their z-axis printers could deliver, the Fire-Lords demurred, and each of the Great Lodges produced clone-sons and vat-daughters of the Old Folk, so that these representatives of the Ruling Conclaves could be sent on a far-off mission to a Place Where No-one Goes, while the Centauri Merfolk remained beneath their silent seas, forever playing their Great Games of Ritual Warfare on the massive battle-planes and in the darkened temples dedicated to the Goddesses of Whimsicality and Discord.
So when Ambrit came along, bragging to our women and our girls about being the only possessor of Original First Star genetic material in the entire Double Cluster (save a couple of decrepit old Guilderguides who were in their three-hundreds or something debauched like that), well - the Altisch Clone-Sons of the Ancient Lodgeships were not amused, to say the least. When he and that crazed poet began reviving the Ways of the Watchers at the Oracle Aflame: well, we just had to put a stop to it. Nothing like that had gone on since the Dretch-finder had tried to kill the Twelve Jocelyns. Folks just weren't going to stand for it. Not with all those pippo mutilations, drunken revels under the light of the Weak Red Sun, and the foul stench of ritual dretch-sacrifice by the ghastly glow of electro-luminescent Bluto the Bloated. And the things going on over at the College, the Merc Militia base, and the Tumbo plant? That stuff would curl your hair, if you knew but a breath of it.
No, as I say. The Quonset-Lodges of the Portkin Clades were much abuzz with word of this wicked war-wizard and his neomantic ways. Death was sure to follow where he strode, and in those days of Jumping Operatives, he strode many a worldlet too many, to the regret of my clone-folk and my kith-clade.
We got our revenge on him, though. An original, huh? Unduplicated, you say? One of a kind, only of its type in existence? The million, billion deaths he's died since still don't make up for that sin and that lie. Ked the Kid, he called himself, born, not begotten in a vat, he used to say. Now he's Ked the Undead, our Eternal Protector. The son of a bitch.
found on the back of the liner notes to the album Sins and Omissions of a Million Forefathers, by the Gothfunk Spoon Ark-Cological Collective, from Hyparxial Damnation Media, a Speed-Death-Thrash-Core-Grind-Punk-Black-Alt-Metallisch-Thang Pubco LLC Production, 4208 ICE, in a hoverpark, after a game-battle re-enactment of Centaur-Kings, Forever, a virtuanimangame-concert by the band Lords of Thy Donjon, from the planet Swordsmith
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Another great story from Player1. Seriously man, you should be an English teacher, because the form and vocabulary seems to be in university level, well, to me that is. You write just like an author, so I'm wondering what are you doing for a living, and why the hell aren't you writing a 300-page Tremulous novel? :D
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from a reply made by Eno Reyalp, upon discovering he'd won the Gnarth Ribbon of Valor, for his handbill Friends, Haldonians, Duplicants
Aww... shucks, 'tweren't nothin'...
*shifts feet aimlessly, and scratches back of head, while looking down at his own shoes, as if to tell them to stop moving around so randomly
previously seen on This Week in Brindus, a paid subscription service of SVQ Trinity Tightcasting
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from the personal reflections of Joss the Dub, king water dandelion wine-critic, and local correspondent for the Shire Reeve, A Pippo-Herder's Guide to Fence-Viewing, a handbill of Ye Flying Drecche Virtumedia, a product of SVQ Trinity Tightcasting, as told to the author in the Wytchburn Lodge of North North Grand Islet, where such tales still have much truck, in the middle of Darkday, after many gee-canisters of Lighthead's Lager, sometime in the late Forty-Second century, eye-eye-ar-see
My sweet Bettarina - how I remember her even now. She was beauty to me. Life. Love. The whole world. And then they sent me away: here - this Hellhole of the New South.
Give an old man his due, young dub. I was a clone-son's clone-son afore you were but an improper thought in a darkened stall.
Hand me another of those. Make it three. There's a good doppel.
Where was I?
Oh yes, the theater, or as my darling said: The Theatre. She loved the Merfolk Pageant. We went to see it at all hours of the day or night, when we should have been sleeping, working, eating, making love. She became obsessed with it. She never even listened to speed-death-thrash-core before she met me. And grind-punk? No faskin wai, as the Tremblers used to say. And black-alt-metallisch-thang? She never even heard of it. Suddenly she was this huge fan, this huge patron, who knows - maybe groupie. She couldn't get enough of the troubadour-warriors and the battle-drummers, or the viol-lutenists with their amazing fretwork in the Solo Champion Competition who could also defend themselves with the ancient weapons of our kithfolk: the Flame-Trident and Fire-Lance of the Rigel-Kentish. She wanted to produce their death-diaries, to promote their virtuanime game-concert-festivals, to direct feature noirs, to act in the pageant itself, to enact her own Ritual Death Dance. Even though she knew what that meant. Even though it would be an end to her, and to us. Even though they were sending me to Nowhere and now she was giving me Nothing to return to. She could not stop herself. The lure of that ancient, arcane, symphonic, all-consuming drama of operatic war-rite is so strong among our people, its worship-play such a part of our every fiber, that she was powerless to resist. Indeed, it seemed as if every force in our very society thrust her into the role of doomed debutante, and ruthless femme fatale. Her final performance is one of the all-time best-selling tightcasts of any Merfolk-related merchandise, anywhere, ever. And she was once - briefly - completely and utterly mine.
What was the question? Why did I name my drone what?
from the extended-experiential version of the Lords of Thy Donjon plug-in - St. Vivaldus the Viol-Lutenist, and 32nd-note Legato, Non-here Virtualisms LLC, OSSZ, 4207 ICE
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--- Hendrich, thanks for reminding me that i actually posted yesterday night, i didn'T even remember that XD ---
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@ Optimus
Quite entertaining, but in no way I'm insulting you, but its just not the quality of work that everybody previously saw in this thread. Change your title a bit, make sure spelling/punctuation/grammar/etc is correct in your story. Other then that, your story made me think, the meaning of it is deep, telling us that even though we humans created or could create life-like biotic structures in the future, we should understand we gave them feelings just like us. And abusing and throwing them away just like a tool or a weapon is just repeating history itself, just like with the Blacks or the Jews or the slaves.
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-from Poet-Philosophers of Querulous Juddering: A Compendium of The New Horror, by Anti-Corporatus, poet-laureate of the Brindips and their capricious tastes
The battle-hymnals and skirmish-psalms of the Trembler known as Prime were small, jewel-encrusted visions within the experience of Empathology, awesome in their power and disturbing in the depth of their disquiet. That they are an undeniably essential part of the canon of the writings of the Haldonian Horror-mongers is an understatement bordering on insult.
It has been said that there would be no Joss without Guiseppe. But where would Joss and Guiseppe have been without Prime? It could wholeheartedly be argued that he was the only one to see the true majick which went on about them all the while, the djinnish mischief which haunted their every step. Clearly, his powers of visualization seemed to be without parallel.
found scrawled onto the bottom of a gee-canister of CoKA-Cola, near the North North Grand Islet Pioneer Scout Tribal Learning Encampment, 4073 ICE, FZ BIIIb, OSSZ
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I think there's enough stuff in here to turn trem into an RPG. :D
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-from Three-team Shooters: Myth or Legend? by Juan Omar von Betelgürz, Oracular Pundit Tightcasting, NSH, FZ BIIIb, 4024 ICE
The plate-raping planetoid-pirates and asterism-hollowing pellucidarite-pilots all played Merfolk of Centauri, the greatest FOSS/FPS/RTS/RPG/MMO-jacksim of all time, the most bone-loaded piece of rhizome-ware ever to infiltrate half of the war-players of the Greater Shell. I'd played every version: from AgogTM III Über-Arenoids - Team Arenoids: The Overexcited to AflutterTM IV Game-of-the-Great-Year Edition: Gold-Blooded - The Ultra-Bludgeoning. All the data-divers beneath the Unfrozen Seas of Titania and Triton, all of the crackpot-game-composers of the Renascent Triangle, all of the metaphysical alchemists of Sedna, Varuna and Quoaor: they all played it. It was the symphonic, metallic, operatic, wicked, unholy spectacle of epic struggle, monstrous passion and nameless ritual that had shocked and seduced millions. When the first Pioneer Scouts finally made it to the Centauri system, the myth, legend and lore of the Merfolk Threefold King-saga was etched into the twitch-fibers of their muscle-memory from countless watches spent connected to endless servers of fantastic science and magickal virtuality. In their bones, they were ready to play the Great Game at it highest level: The Live Mosh-Rave of Baroque Musical Thrash-Battle - The Solo Champion Competition, The Triumphant Triumvirate Trio-Joust, and the Twin-Viol-Lutenist-Quintet-versus-Quintet Finals, the black, satanic, deathly, gothic, industrial, neo-classical, progressive, folkish, viking-stoner-doom-sludge of the Clash of the Giants of the Zither-Bow and Gitarra-Sword, the weavers of the Deadly Arpeggio-Riff of the Neue Barock, the gloomy purveyors of Barocca Nova. It was, and will always be: the finest virtuanimangame-jam-mashup of this Omniverse, or any other.
found on a piece of taroplasticine wrapped around a candied distelfink in the Deep-Winter Calling of the Kith-clade, North North Grand Islet, FZ BIIIb, OSSZ, 4194 ICE
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Virtuanimangaming: Composing Masterpieces or Just Fragging Mermen?, a doctoral thesis in crackpotology and weekly programme of SVQ Tightcasting, Renascent Triangle, Collegium Metallicum Universitat, 3997 ICE
It is a simple enough tale to tell, I suppose, and familiar enough to any wiki-schuled kinder-surfers - even the youngest data-divers know the story:
A generation-ship leaves the Plutonites, bound for the Centauri system. This being a long, long, time ago, in the First Star system, these ancient folk did not even possess the Lux Drive, let alone the Hyperlucid Engine of the Seventeen Solarities. It would take them thousands of Old Time years to reach their new home. Even though they were extremely-long-lived, none of them would ever live that long. And even though they were leaving the Great Shell, and venturing out away from First Star, they thought that they still could procreate, and populate their great ship. But they were to learn that they could not.
For hundreds of years they accelerated away from home and hope and light and safety, out into the Vast Emptiness, the soul-numbing embrace of the Abysmal Void. None of them had begat a child; not a one. They began slowly dying. They began to despair. To assuage their despondency, they began to create the Saga of the Merfolk Centaur-kings, a grand composition and musical battle into which they could pour their unsung heroism and unquenched longings for glory. They created a new form of theater: live performance on death-dealing musical instruments as a strange mixture of virtuality, amine, manga, shojo-kultur, symphonic-progressive death-black-thrash-metal (which they called "show metal" or Metallisch Cinema-anime), performance-shock-street theater, and the mosh-rave of the Cytherea Champion series of games. They began to ritually slaughter one another, all the while composing thunderously anthemic choruses and verses of mighty deeds, epitath-elegies of haunting melancholy and dirge-chants of monolithic desecration.
It was at this time that the three factions aboard the Ark of Discovery split, over musical and personal differences, and caused the beginning of the three-way war, the Great Triple Schism. The Sednites, Varunites, and Quoaorii split along sub-genre lines, and could never be reconciled.
As they retreated to their various strongholds within the Covenantal Ark, solidifying along kin-clan and kith-clade divisions, each swore that they would found the true school of the Merfolk Pageant, each would continue to vie to compose the ultimate swan song of martial mastery. And so the Epic Saga continued.
And then the crackpotologist Eno Reyalp, who never practiced the Holy Concerto and who could barely play electro-synthetic sitar-zither, rediscovered the process of Clonal Duplicant z-printing. Since they could now have bodies with which to battle forever, the first would-be settlers of the Centauri system faced their new-found freedom with the bitterness born of a triple feud: they renewed their aesthetic combat with restored vigor, and produced glittering concerti and stimulating sinfonias of heart-rending beauty and awesome depravity.
As they approach Proxima, the Ancient Debate of Threefold Enmity continues...
from the vvd Pop-o-ganda Brindipese, last accessed near Neano Two's New Moonlet, 4194 ICE
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The start of us, How screwed we are.
"Dude, I'm scared, I'm fucking scared." Those words chilled me beyond belief. Dayton Perrera, AKA. "Derra" was the heart and soul of our squad. My best friend, and also, I think, the best friend of everyone else in the squad.
"It's ok man, really, it's not too bad" consoled James McRosen, Squad MassDriver, "we're almost done with this."
"No, it's not ok, it's not fucking ok!" I think Derra shivered. "I'm sick to death of this shit."
"This is the marines man," I said. I "If you want easy.."
"My Brother's in the Home Defense dude."
"I was going to say you should'a stayed home on the ranch."
"All I know man, is I'm giving up, I can't take this any longer." Derra stared off into space, looking out the window and sighed. "I signed up to fight here man! And all I know is these marches. Fucking day and night, miles and miles and miles of this shit. And almost no food or water. We're not fucking clones, man we need food every now and than!"
"Fuck the military man, what the hell were we thinking?" James Thouh was also a tough ass kind of guy. To see him diss the military out like this scared me bad too.
I sighed and looked out the window, even though there wasn't really anything interesting to see. Just barren red plains and the occasional Glone-tree. Pitiful excuse for a planet. And the disturbing thought I had was... it summed up our lives quite nicely.
Derra started shaking again, his arms making violent movements across his body. We all turned back towards him and stared. "This is the part that's really scaring me guys. I think my body is eating itself. I can feel my lips are ripped and thin. Not because of the heat, you know there isn't any on this planet. But I think it's because it has a lot of fat. It's something I can take easily. And my neck too! I can feel the veins pounding in my neck. Pulsating extra hard, because there's no water to help move things along."
"We act or we die." Timmy Martinez didn't speak much, but when he did you had better listen.
"Yah dude, maybe, but..." Derra never finished that sentence. The barracks door swung open and in marched 1st lieutenant Marshall, asshole of the universe.
"What the hell are you men doing?" He drawled, spitting on the dirty, hard floor. "Get going! Time to clean the cafeteria."
"Sir, with all due respect, we're not supposed to be on clean-up duty till next week." I respected Derra for that, I doubt I would have had the backbone to stand up to Marshall like that.
"You fuckin' will go an clean up now, you dirty soldier." He leaned into Derra's face, and breathed, a wretched, whiskey filled breath I could smell from where I was into Derra's nose. "Do it... Now!"
And that's when it all started. And ended. Derra went beyond his snapping point. I saw the veins bulge in his face as he snarled, and then crossed. With all the might he could generate at such close quarters, Derra thrust his fist into 1st lieutenant Marshall's neck. I heard the impact, like the twanging of a rubber band, and Marshall collapsed, unconscious onto the floor.
"Oh.., shit!" That gasp of speech was echoed by the entire squad. We all knew we were in deep, deep trouble from that moment on. I don't think I was actually scared, but I knew I was anxious as hell.
"We better get out of here guys!" My voice screeched in a nervous tone. "Who knows what shit they'll do to us for this."
"Us?" Derra said. "There's no us. It's just me, I was the only one who did this."
"Forget it." McRosen cried. "We'll all get thrown in blender for this one, and you know it."
"Besides," said Thouh, "we're not leaving you behind, not to... these guys."
At that moment we heard heavy footsteps pounding down the hallway, rushed ones, not likely to be pleasant. We knew they had cameras everywhere, watching us. The second they saw Marshall go down the officers must have rallied troops to hunt us down. We all stared around, and as if in slow motion, we all saw our one way out. We spun around and rushed for the door that led to the airlocks. I reached the door out of our barracks at the same time that the first soldiers, riot-shotguns in hand, stepped through the doorway on the other end.
...
Trying something new here guys.. feedback is appreciated.
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CODE CRYPTS -- ********
Start transmission:
An entire fleet has been lost just last week. Word from the emperor is still not forthcoming. Rumor in the palaces is that the psys freaked out. Without them, as you know, we hardly stand a chance against our enemies. I sure as hell don't like these guys, they creep me out to be honest. Always in those dark rooms, I don't think one has seen the sun his entire life. In fact, rumor is they really don't. Born in some cryptic vault 1000 miles long some hundred miles below the surface of Earth. When they grow old, say five, they are moved to tele-communications training rooms where the Emperor himself uses that witchcraft like mind-bond they call "Psyphere" to control men, and more importantly clones from millions of miles away. They say some are born without eyes, or ears, or mouths. Something about physical connection interfering with their abilities to tele-communicate. I never really liked those freaks, low excuse for a human being I thought. And now, they've flipped. Or so I hear. Something about mass brain meltdown. They said the psyclon just collapsed, and all the psys screamed and collapsed. I don't actually know anyone who was there of course, but very dark images come to mind just imagining the stuff. These withered husks of men, with minds containing the abilities to leap across distances greater than most men will ever travel in their life time. I heard they screamed, they cried, they twisted, they warped. I've been told they received mutations, great ungodly stuff. Who knows what is true, and what merely fiction? I know this stuff seems pretty crazy, but from what I've seen, and what I've heard all my life, I wouldn't put a lot of this stuff past them. One thing that does seem to be clear however, judging from the fact that at least eight independent sources have told me the same thing more or less is this. That at the moment just before they all went wacko, they all cried out together. The same words, in the same tone. From what I've been told, they all cried: "Her power, it's too great! Who could imagine that those so simple have such a great psy-mind! We can not contain her!" And all this just after we found a homeworld too....
ENCRYPTION. >> ******
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I think there's enough stuff in here to turn trem into an RPG. :D
I realise this probably isn't what you meant, but once upon a time (long ago) I was working on a Tremulous d20 adaptation.
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I think there's enough stuff in here to turn trem into an RPG. :D
I realise this probably isn't what you meant, but once upon a time (long ago) I was working on a Tremulous d20 adaptation.
Tabletop Tremulous - I've been dreaming about this, since I've been working on that other little project.
Two questions:
1) How far did you get?
2) Any chance you can make it work with this (http://tremulous.net/forum/index.php?topic=9805.msg149697#msg149697)?
And don't be surprised to see a board game somewhere in this thread. It's been bouncing around in my brain for weeks. ;)
Cheers!
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1.) Not very. I had statted out weapons and changed a fair amount of the feats around to be more Tremmy. Ultimately, Tremulous doesn't lend itself very well to d20. For one thing, one half of Tremulous comes in the form of playing Aliens, which is a kind of thing that the system isn't really fit to handle. And you'd have to take a lot of liberties with what defines "Tremulous": is it the way the game is played (FPS/RTS hybrid of humans versus aliens), or is it the underlying story/atmosphere (mercenary armies hired by corporations to defend corporate interests from an alien scourge). The latter lends itself well to tabletop RPGs, but doesn't have the same feel as the computer game; while the former might as well just be adapted directly to a board game/wargame. Also, it's an awful lot of work. If I were to do it again I'd probably adapt a different system for use, or just come up with something new altogether.
2.) I haven't been keeping up with that thread since it was first posted and don't have the time to go through it now, but if I were to do this again, I don't see why I wouldn't be able to.
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-from War of the Power Trios, a solar-weekly review by Eno Reyalp, Centauri Tightcasting, a division of POP!-o-ganda Interglobal Viral Media, LLC, early 41st Cent. (ICE)
Caduceus - Crow in the Snow
Glamour of Winter - Amorous Glamorous Clamorous
Green Lion - Eating the Sun
read the marquee outside. I had brought my dearest Bettarina to see first-hand the ancient, forbidden spectacle of the Merfolk Pageant: live, in-person, for herself. Oh, like the rest of us, she had said the prayers and read the chants, played the games and attended the festals, but she had never actually seen the short-form of the battle-pit, never experienced the sweat, blood and gears of the Extravaganza Extraordinaire. The sheer, bludgeoning, screaming, deadly ritual combat of the Trio vs. Trio vs. Trio Skirmish, the Three-way Fight for Metallic Honor and Shameless Braggadocio. We sat in the stands, far enough away to get a good view of the whole arena-club. I didn't want to be down front, with the hardcore Tremble-freaks, or in the pit, with the slaughter-fodder, the Suicide Kids who wanted to destroy the latest incarnation of themselves in communal seppuku.
We had both had a bit too much of the Lux Stim by then, as the pulsing red lights chased patterns around the OLED pixel-panels that covered every exposed surface in the place, including the floor, walls and ceiling. The patterns could be used to induce calm and a quiet sense of meditative contemplation, but they could also be used to create a sense of fever-pitched anticipation: with every twitch-fiber of a person's whole being acutely attuned to the whims of the fight-or-flee mechanism; and with every pulse of angry red, the answer, more and more, became FIGHT! - flashing like a lurid neoglo sign on the forehead of every mosh-raving lunatic in the building. The crowd, all of them ready to spit out their pent-up teen-clone angst and mutant-offspring aggression, walked in the door pissed, and ready to kill and die. Now they were about one power chord shy of eating one another alive.
And then, with a clamor and a clangor, flaming gongs rose from the center of the battle-pit, as robot arms beat them senseless with gigantic mallets and cruel-looking war-hammers. The main show was about to begin. The audience in the stands arose, as one, and flung their seat cushions into the battle-pit, to further enrage and excite the beserker-fans and head-banging shock-troops. Around the outside of the Pit, three stages began rising, also coming up from out of the floor, each decorated differently, but each funereal in its aspect, as horrible, terrifying and grotesque as the latest advances in wireless power transmission and pyschopathological mass-gestalt scenic design would allow.
I took a moment to take in the scene, as the gongs sank back into the floor, and a giant, torus-shaped tank arose to take its place, filled with Merfolk diver-dancers swirling like fish in a school - moving always as a group - darting this way and then flashing back, capriciously circling in endless whorls. The tank had luminescent flora and fauna within it, which gave off coruscating illumination in tawdry shades of aqua and lime, salmon and peach: blind albino cave carp with brown-black cat-o-nine-tail feeler bundles - tipped with tiny blue-and-gold lanterns wrought by the dwarf-elven kith of the Nymphfolk - swam alongside the mermen and nymphs; bioluminescent coral, spiny urchins, star-flowering anemone, glowing sponges and oversized sea-cucumbers - all throbbed eerily, with an uncanny, inner light. It was hard to make out the dance of the synchronized swimmers, rim-lit and darkly shadowed as they were in that big, donut-shaped aquarium, but there was something sinuous, sensuous and weirdly seductive about the choreography of their movements as a group, as if they formed some larger entity, which they had called up from the Black Depths of Deepest Darkocean with their bodily incantations. As they moved faster and faster around the tank, it too, sank back into the floor, which folded back into place as if the tank had never been there. As the last of the floor panels snapped into position, the three outer stages exploded into glorious, flaming life.
Giant braziers, tiny torches, great banks of candle-stands, all blazed into searing, burning illumination simultaneously. My pupils reflexively saved my retinas, but I could feel the heat on my face, and smell the singe of fine hair on every body between me and the three stages. And then the ring announcer came down from a freshly-opened hole in the ceiling, standing on a massive hook, supported by a thick chain, descending over the crowd.
"Clone-sons and vat-daughters: Are you ready to RUMBLE?!?"
The crowd went wild. I swear I could see fights breaking out, down there in the Pit.
"I can't hear you! I said ARE YOU READY TO RUMBLE?!?!?"
There was an even bigger roar, and now I was sure I could see little skirmishes, as fans of one band started stomping those of another, while those of the third band cracked the heads of the other two.
"I'm gonna ask you people just one more time, and if I don't hear some noise down there, there ain't gonna be no show tonight. Now, are you people ready to RUMBLE, or not?!?!?!"
It was at that point that the riot in the Pit spilled over into the stands, and I got Bettarina out of there before she got hurt. We didn't even get to the hoverpark before she was all over me. I knew right then that it had been a mistake to bring her.
found etched into a crystal-case for the Lords of Thy Donjon expansion-pack, Songs from My Leather Thong, Part Eleven, released by Walk Much? Experiential Virtugaming, while standing in the queue at the Silver LoTD Jubilee-Festival, waiting to pee, near Neapolis Jump Port 3, Neano Two's Old Moon, 4193 ICE
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-from the personal daily autoblogger of Joss the Dub, recovered from an abandoned jumpboat found orbiting Kosimov Seventeen, 4197 ICE
I got Bettarina outside of the venue pretty quickly. I almost blew my cover when some oafish idiot tried to slamdance Betty, and then realizing what he'd bumped into, tried to grope her, with me standing there grinning like a fool and holding her hand. I let go her of soft hand and elbow-smashed him in the mouth, breaking his front teeth, the sharp stumps of which slashed me pretty badly. If he'd had time to recover, he would have destroyed me, but I punched him in the throat with my other hand, a short, quick, shitty jab, but it knocked the wind half out of him, just the same. As he wheezed and clutched at his throat, I stomped down as hard as I could across his instep, then kneed him in the groin, and as he lurched forward, I palm-smashed his nose into his face. I wanted to kill him. When I saw his meaty mitts pawing my Bettarina - I snapped. His friends started looking ugly, and I was sure I was either going to have to pull a weapon or flash a badge, when one of them got a samovar-hookah smashed over his head, and his buddy turned around right into a flying kick thrown by some little guy that came out of nowhere. The place was complete bedlam. Everyone was smiting anyone they could lay hands, feet, or blunt objects on.
We made it to the hoverpark without much further hassle, as by then she was scared shitless, and I looked really pissed, not just whipped-up-on-Lux-Stim pissed. Even the huge guy at the door let us pass, without even so much as a "No re-entry." He even tat-stamped me on my bare arm on the way out, with a bar-coder in henna ink, so I could get back in. When I looked up at him, he just looked away.
I beeped my drone immediately. Actually, he was already on standby, and came down off the roof of the building, following behind us, and sending me video of what was around us. I got Betty to the hoverpark, and into my terraplane - a Redroni GEX 327z that I used to take out for races with carboxyl truck-trains on the Schiaperelli Freeway, old Mars One, back in the House of Haos days - where we spent some time expressing our devotion for one another, and then I had the drone put her in a charter hansom, and started to head back inside. I couldn't wait for her cab with her, I had to meet someone inside. I could see that she was hurt, but as she was fond of the drone, and considered it her confidante in her conquest of me, she took it in good cheer. It broke my heart to leave her there, but if anyone had so much as looked sideways at her, the drone would've tasered them into next week, blown out their eardrums, disrupted their central nervous system functioning until they shit themselves silly and filled their exposed orifices with capsicum powder. Needless to say, the drone was very fond of Betty.
It had always been a very dependable companion, and was my most trusted partner in situations requiring extreme discretion, such as this. I was probably burning the candle at both ends a little, trying to boff the heir-apparent to the Betelgurz Board Chair, while at the same time investigating a triple-duplicide, but what the hell? I was young, and you only live nine times, right? Besides, the "real" "me" (if there was such a person), was somewhere in the Outer Southern Rim by now, three-and-a-half Jumps and an omniverse away from here, and I was just a hastily-rendered low-res field-dub, not even a fully-registered dupe, so I was feeling pretty expendable and pretty invincible right about then. A dub like me, nailing an heiress like that. It was the kind of stuff you'd expect to see in a perfume banner-vid on a bluehair simspace.
I was having weird thoughts, but I figured they were an effect of the Lux Stim. I knew I had to get back inside. I guess I could just walk right back in the front door, with my nice bar-stamp, but for some reason, I just didn't trust the guy at the door. Too damned friendly. Could he be my contact? I wished I knew more. I had only been "alive" for a week now, having been incarnated only recently. Apparently "I" had had "me" stashed on "my" jumpboat, and activated "myself", and then took off, for parts unknown, after the briefest briefing known to clonekind.
"Just take the girl to see a show or something. Keep her entertained."
"But what will we talk about?"
"Don't worry. By tomorrow you'll start to remember things you didn't think you knew. Everything will come back to you. It'll all be fine."
"And what, hold her hand?"
"Hell, no. You're me, remember? By the time I get back you'd better have married her, and be raising my family."
"Don't you mean my family?"
"By then you'll be ready for a break from domesticity, my friend. We'll simply switch places and off you'll go, on to your next adventure, someplace warm, with lots of exotic vat-daughters and winsome indigenous locals to keep you company."
"And who will be around to advise me, when I screw this up completely?"
"Why Terrible North Wind, of course," we answered simultaneously.
"You see?" he said, "I'm feeling more confident already."
And then he left.
The drone beeped me.
"She's on her way home. I'm back in position. Going in the front door?"
"No fasking wai," I said.
"There's a smart clone. I found a way in, up on the roof. Get your ass up here."
"Good drone," I said, and headed around behind the building, to the spot the drone was sending me video of.
"Climb the fence, grab the fire escape, climb to the top, and jump up onto the railing. I'll drop you a line."
"You always were a smart drone."
"You've only known me since last week."
"Drone, I feel like I've known you my whole life."
"Great, another smart-ass dub. Don't fuck this up. I don't want to have to redub Joss, without authorization."
"Hey, I'm Joss, so don't you have to listen to me?"
"Oh, yeah, that would be a great idea."
"No matter what happens, I hereby authorize you to keep re-dubbing me until I marry that girl."
"You get nine tries, and then I can't get another usable copy, without fresh source material."
"Nine tries, huh?"
"Yeah, nine, smart guy, so use them wisely."
"Y'know, I think I'm starting to like you."
"In that case, will you do me a personal favor?"
"Anything you like."
"Shut the fuck up and start climbing."
"Nice way to talk. Who programmed you: me?"
"Damn straight and fuckin'-'A'-right, cloneson. See the fence?"
"Yeah, I'm there."
"Start climbing."
originally published in Reflections of Another Me, by Juan Omar the Lordless, a virtumedia product of Eminent Domains, LLC, last accessed Long-summer 4193 ICE, near the Belten Pipeline, Winter Octant, Xenopax Conic Volume, "Just a Jump away from Home"SM
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@last
Post-human Cyberpunk.. I love it!
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Post-human Cyberpunk.. I love it!
Sounds like Deus Ex, which sounds like home. I remember a few years back I would read volumes of Deus Ex fan fiction, well, the good ones atleast.
I loved how funny the Drone was btw, but does he have to be such an ass? The clone seems to like him as a brother, but the drone doesn't give a crap, its like it has no feelings at all and only wants to do it's job. Oh wait, nvm then, but the drone is still a jerk.
By the time I get back you'd better have married her, and be raising my family."
Lulz, yes sir! Right away, sir!
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-from evtp://hyperscribes.vvd/pdas/73_add'l.ebd
Potentiality Deterministics Actuarial
Probabilistic Destinies Advisor
Protective Defense Agent
Personal Duplication Actuator
Proprietary Deterrence Administrator
read the sign outside the small kiosk. It was dark inside, almost completely. The "room", if you could call it that, was maybe the size of a big closet, and felt like one. There didn't appear to be anyone there. In the dimness, I could make out a waist-high counter, dividing the space in about half. The walls of the interior part were lined with every bootleg fad device and illegal concealed stunner I had ever seen a factsheet on. Behind me, steps led up to a back alley, behind an empty warehouse, in the run-down part of the resindustrial rururbs, on the rail-farm flats above Pondsey Basin. I hadn't seen anyone I'd want to do business with in the last six block-hamlets, including the last four souls I'd passed, living in doorways they'd never crossed the thresholds of: a Mer-kid in party mask and furry dress, slumped in the first, wearing his iLux, and stimmed out of his head; a Naiad-nymph servicing a Merc Marine behind a sort of drape in the next, while hollering at me, "Cantcha see I ain't done here yet, doppel-boy?"; and some Grundaemon priestess relieving herself in the last, while smiling at me and waving a Good Morning, gathering up her habit with the other hand. This was a pretty freaky neighborhood at dawn, but then so was the rest of Neapolis. That's why I had come here, specifically to Pondsey Mills. I needed a drone. A discreet drone. From a private source.
Betty had known a dealer, back on Centauri Cloister, and had given me his name: Professor Bince Bowlsworth. I'd been jumping around the Middle South'ards, looking for the guy, and the trail had finally brought me here, to a basement closet storefront in the crappiest part of the most corrupt open port on a has-been little worldlet of the Redolent Vectors. And there I stood like a dope, waiting for someone to wait on me, in a dark and cramped space barely big enough to turn around and walk out of. Which is just what I was about to do when I heard a voice. It sounded a lot like my own.
"Can I help you?"
I squinted harder in the gloom, but I still couldn't make out anyone. I didn't see any back room, or partition, other than the counter. I peered over the counter, looking down into the deeper shadows there. I don't know what I expected to find.
"What're you looking for, a leprechaun?"
The voice was coming from behind the counter, but much closer to the level of my head. I raised my gaze, to rest on a small, greyish box which rested on the shelf across from my face.
"Yeah, you. I'm talking to you, pal. Can I help you?"
It was definitely my voice, coming out of the little box, asking me if it could help me.
"I'm looking for a drone."
"Well, you came to the right place. I happen to be a drone."
"I'm looking for a person, actually."
"Which is it, pal: a person or a drone?"
"Both, actually."
"OK, let's say I'm interested. Does either the person or the drone have a name?"
"Bowlsworth. Bince Bowlsworth."
"That's Professor Bince Bowlsworth," the drone corrected me.
"Professor Bince Bowlsworth," I parroted, robotically.
"In that case, my friend, you've come to the right place. Not only am I a drone, I just happen to be that particular person. Or one of his iterations, at least."
as told to the author by Juan Jose Master-Dub, in an arena-club on Neano Three, during the Solo Champion competition, sometime in the late 4030s
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-from the personal recollections of Joss the Dub, as told to the author in the Deep-Winter Calling of the Kith-Clade, in the Lodge of the Last of the Haldens, 4209 ICE, North North Grand Islet, Portkin Holdings Polarward, NSH, FZ BIIIb, OSSZ
The RKFF came and got me. I woke up in a squat-cage on Multa, two-and-a-half jumps away. Lord Brightness came to see me. I'd never seen myself look so unhappy.
"Look, son-"
"I'm not your son-" I cut in, but he cut me off, backhanding me cruelly across the mouth.
"Shut your cakehole, before I have you wiped. What do you think you are: special? We'd all like to spend our days banging dubs of my ex-wife and our nights dying in the Pit at the Merfolk Pageant, but there's work to be done, boy. No more needler-derringer duels with Ye Drecche-killer's clone-sons, no more embarrassing elopements with his vat-daughters. Now clean yourself up and get back on task. Listen to the drone, and do what it says. We won't have this talk again. A pleasure meeting you, as always."
I'd never met him before, and would never see him again. But I knew right then that they'd messed with the wrong clone. Don't threaten me. Either do it or shut up. I grew up that day. That was the day I decided to teach Daddy a little lesson.
as told to the author by the drone Terrible North Wind, near the worldlet known as Barnstar, 4242 ICE
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-from the personal reflections of Joss the Unclean, poet-philosopher of the Oracle Aflame
The "child" appeared to be a young man of nineteen Old Time years, but he was actually only seven by such reckoning; he'd been "born" looking like an almost-exact copy of me when I was nineteen, when I'd had my first Master Copy made and my Personal Groove laid down. My wife-sister-cousin, Bettarina the Beloved, (if indeed it was her, and not one of her many agents or dubs), had brought along my youngest clone-son (that she knew of) to meet his father, and accompany his vat-mother (my sweet dearest Centuari Merfolk Rigel-Kentish betrothed) on her business Jumps about the Southern Starsprawl. His name, of course, was the same as my own. Or nearly so. It was the custom of our people to provide some differentiation betwixt iterations of the same individual, lest our histories become indecipherable repetitions of the same few billion names, endlessly recursive.
Betty had named him Jamshid Omar Samuel Sergei von Rigel-Kent van Halden-Bettelgürz, and the court back at home had dubbed him Jocelyn the Inward-Peering, for the youth was of an introspective and reflective sort, more suited to the Dedicant pursuits of the novitiate Guilder than to the duties and responsibilities of a Duplicant agent of a grasping and hardy kith-clade, clawing its way to dynastic glory and austral-celestial-hemispheric hegemony.
He had brought with him a pet, a most interesting and robust specimen of Eurymela Fenestrata: a common jassid or austral cricket. He kept it in a small round box, made of woven grasses and exotic tree-barks, and would drink tea, burn incense and meditate, communing with the cricket and chanting old codices, for hours at a stretch, in a loft we had given him above the Great Room of the Centaur's Lodge, my hunting quonset on North North Grand Islet. I had come here for the Deep-Winter Calling of the Kith-Clades, when the Rigel-Kentish clonefolk of Centauri Pageant heritage met for feasting, drinking, exchange of diversity and discourse of genealogy; when the Sons of the Slide and Daughters of the Dish celebrated the ancient, festive ways of the First Colony.
Bettarina and I stood outside the clustered huts and scattered yurts, our backs to the quonset lodges and mead-halls, facing the deepening black-purple of the advancing night, as a Clusterday lupper such as neither of us had experienced in decades filled our bellies, and made us sentimental, nostalgic and foolish. She was wearing a grey-and-crimson weatherskin, with emblems of the RKFF proudly emblazoned on the shoulders and across her chest. Campaign ribbons adorned her left breast, while emblems of rank and service stripes decorated the sleeves. She wore a retro half-bubble helmet, with a rose-tinted face shield. She had never looked lovelier, and I knew her better than anyone in the Seventeen Systems.
Huge flakes of snow were falling, and the clouds looked so low you could almost touch them. We had walked far enough away from the encampment that the sounds of revelry within were drowned by the blanketing silence without. She was holding my hand: gloved fingers gracefully offered to clumsy mitt. Although the Brindus Cluster was down, Al-Guhl had not yet set; this time of the Haldanian year, however, it was so distant and paltry, that one could barely discern it from the stars of other systems. Blutogardis hung somewhere above, hidden by the snuggling coverlet of thick, heavy snow-clouds, dumping flakes the size of Guilder-thalers at a rate that seemed sure to bring several feet an hour. She was talking to me, gently admonishing me for not being with her during the High Holy Holidays of the Merfolk.
"I can't believe you thought we wouldn't be together for the Calling," she said.
"I thought your business would have kept you away from such backwater worldlets as this, beloved," I replied.
She turned toward me, gently bumping her faceplate against mine.
"We shall always be together," she said.
"And this latest boy-toy of yours?"
"Your son--" she began. Exasperated, she pushed me away.
"Did you really think that lunkhead dub and silly drone were going to keep me occupied?" she asked. "With what, yet another night at the mosh-fights?"
"I didn't know it was so important to you," I lied.
"You know I've always been a traditional girl," she returned the favor, turning back toward me, and taking my arm and wrapping it around herself, pulling me into a hug.
"Yes. dear," I said.
"Don't start that again," she said.
"Let's go back inside."
"Wait just a minute longer," she said. "I want to remember this."
We looked off towards the woods, where the hex signs and distelfink lanterns clattered softly, a very gentle breeze turning and twisting them, as if inspecting their handiwork, and admiring their quaint homespun charm. She held my hand, and we both breathed a sigh, enjoying the scene of a tradition long dead.
She turned back to her drone, and the team from Corporate Media Investor Relations.
"Did you get that? Good, that's a wrap, kids. Post that to my metablog immediately, and have the lifter ready to make contact with my Jumper within the hour."
She turned back to me. "Always lovely to see you, darling." She blew me a little kiss, gloved hand waving a virtual smooch from lovely lips behind a rosy-pink faceplate.
"Yeah, you too, kid. Don't break this one, OK? We may need a ready dub, for a quick gig or an extended vice-royalty."
"I'll take the best of care of him."
Later, after she'd gone, Old Cedric Weltischer came into the mead-hall.
"You look happy," he said.
"My ex is fucking the latest version of me," I replied.
"At least she has good taste. Talk about your vicarious thrills. C'mon, I'll buy you a tankard and you can dance with a dozen of the Larboard-daughters."
"That'll probably do it."
"If it doesn't, you can always kill yourself tomorrow."
"I guess you're right," I said.
"Of course I'm right. I was right when I blew this stinking shithole of a planet up the first time."
"Yeah, well, let's not do that again, shall we?"
"Oh, things didn't turn out so bad. Plenty more dupes and dubs where those came from."
"C'mon you callous sonuvabitch, you can buy me that tankard now, and we can reminisce about your martial heroics another time."
"Help me up."
I helped him get up. One of these days, I was gonna haveta get him to get some upgrades. He really was starting to look like shit. If only the omniverse knew. Ked the Great, St. Cedric of Titan, the Savior of Brindus, was a broken-down Original Unmodified living in a cold corner of the forgotten planemo he once almost completely destroyed.
"I'm gonna get really drunk," I said.
"Not if I see you first," he said.
"What?" "Huh?" We both replied at the same time.
"Fuck it," he said.
"Let's have that drink."
I helped him over to the bar, and true to his word, he got me drunk and even tried to help get me laid, introducing me to every kin-cousin and kith-sister in the mead-hall, making them dance with me, and then slipping out quietly, leaving me in the company of some ladies from the Western Isles. Maybe he was a saint, after all. That was the last time I saw him, Bettarina or young Jocelyn the Cricketeer. And I've been to almost every Deep-Winter Calling since.
as told to the author by the drone Soul of a Wild Thing, at the Post-trans-meta-xenohuman Conclave, Unvanquished Confederation, 4190 ICE
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This is the fucking best bit you have written so far. I LOVE how that intimate meeting turns around to be a PR action. Very nice!
Also: "distelfink" rofl. I laughed out loud. Really.
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Wow, you got me there when they were actually acting but it was sad that it was fake, but you know your obsessed if you date the clone of your Ex.
>.>
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It's all clones these days... >.<
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Thank you both immensely for your feedback and praise. It's really awesome to have the comments of a sympathetic audience.
By the by, I'm a real seat-of-the-pants writer, so I didn't know that part about the video crew was going to happen until about a sentence before it did. I love it when the characters tell me what they're going to say. That's when I know I have enough back story that they are taking on a life of their own.
@B: Found that word in an almanac article about barnstars. Great word, and it opened up a whole vista of New Amsterdaam/Pennsylvania Deutsch influences that were in accord with my view of these colonists and their planetary backwater.
@both: Yeah, the whole clone concept just started to snowball once I wrapped my mind around the concept of incarnations being like beta releases of software iterations or low-resolution copies of a CD burn.
Cheers, gentle readers.
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Rigel-Kent, Lord Jocelyn the Bright, 111th Vice-ducal Adjutant for Historiographical Affairs, RKFF, Firelord House Virtual Media. Myths of the "Third Race": Project Unvanquished and Interglobal Zaibatsu Xenohuman Experimentation in the 39th C. in the New Far South, OR What Goes on Outside of the Pink Corridor Stays Outside of the Pink Corridor. Dirtwater Junction, Big Pilings Outrider Route #3, Lifter-Post Alpha, Rhubarb Ridge, NSH, FZ BIIIb, OSSZ, IG_17, 4203 ICE.
It is said of the Unvanquished, that they wear black in memory of their fallen ancestors, who were human lab rats in interglobal zaibatsu cloning experiments:
There is a rumor that the original Unvanquished Project was a joint Haos Redro/Tumbo Manufacturing xenohuman development project (back in the 39th or 40th Century) that instead produced misbegotten monstrosities and mutated abominations, which were abandoned to their hellish fate on cruel planetoids and harsh moonlets. These half-human beasts were said to have been arcane attempts to recreate the demon-beings of ancient folklore, utilizing the latest advances in metaphysickal physicks and alchimerical chemicks, and combining these with non-human genetic material, obtained during the Fire-bat Eradication Wars. The plan was to produce a "Third Race" of creature-people, as super-soldiers, to aid Humanity, should another Alien menace arise. Then, as any schoolboy knows, Ked Ambrit was sent to fight the Evolving Arthrosaurian Aliens in the Fractal Zion system in the late 4020's. Now, decades or even centuries of Old Time years later, these bastard step-children of fringe science and forgotten mysticism have not only survived on the worst worldlets of the Uninhabitable Zone, they have thrived, and are returning to destroy the Humans who created and then abandoned them, and the Aliens who slaughtered them in their time of weakness and despair. Before: they had been freaks; and their heads had been bowed. Now: they stand tall. Now: they hold their heads up high. Now: they are feared by Human and Alien alike. Now they are: Unvanquished.
Others still say such talk is rubbish, and that the Unvanquished are older than the pyramids of Firststar's Greenworld, as old as the makers of the Mines of Al-Minak, who walked the sands of Greenworld when the Man-faced Lion was a Lion-headed Man, and are the guides of the One throughout this Precessionary Epoch. Only the Übergeist can say for sure, and she ain't talking. If the Unvanquished hadn't filed all of those class action lawsuits on behalf of the Sapients and Sentients of the Omniverse, resisting Hyparxial Picodestruction, HR Holdings and Tumbo Designs might have just destroyed the omniverse, and all of Experiential Virtuality, one tiny nano-nano-chunk at a time. Still, the cost to the Executrix must have been huge. She has called for the heads of the Unvanquished leaders - six mysterious characters, one of each class, the Six Originals - to be displayed in the Hall of Heads on Multa, the sacking and pillaging of their planemos and their nitre-encrusted relics, and the razing and sundering of their haunted and holy temples. An alliance with the Big Mofo Bugs may be in the offing. But by which side?
-from The Bloviator: News Right Fresh from Heaven (http://web.mac.com/onestagehand/iWeb/Site/Blog%204/64D72AE8-ABD7-4720-AB7F-6B9E2BB4D4DB.html)
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I'd like to thank mooseberry, + OPTIMUS +, Hendrich, Bissig, Seffylight, khalsa, Nux, Roanoke, f0rqu3, Lava Croft, Kaleo, yahoo and all of the other people who contributed in some way to this thread, mostly for inspiration, critique, encouragement and nurturing; but especially mooseberry, for being the co-creator, and coming up with all of the cool stuff; for + OPTIMUS +, just for being himself, so obviously the character Prime; for the Eternal Lovers immortalized as Anfidgean and Flovat; to khalsa for a place to display my wares; to Nux for the nifty science discussions, and to zybork for playing along; Hendrich and Bissig my regular readers; to Seffylight for the kind words of encouragement; to Roanoke for the enthusiasm for zany ideas; to Kaleo and yahoo for death-prog-thrash-core inspiration; and also my Mom, Jesus and America.
It's been a joyride through the Nadirward Vectors of Outer South Nowhere, an omniverse of dubs and dupes, of clones and drones.
Cheers, y'all! Thanks for coming along. For now, this drone is returning to semi-retirement.
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*Sniff*
I'm gunna miss you buddy. But don't worry, I got a great surprise coming. :police:
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@mooseberry: Thanks, buddy. I look forward to your next installment. I was gonna PM you, but tears and snot mess up my trackpad (and I think I've got something in my eye). Also, I wasn't sure if you were still into this. With the Unvanquished mod taking off, I just don't have the time to devote to so many projects. I've still got one installment of the story that won't leave me alone, and insists on being told, which will force itself out of my head and through my fingertips sometime soon. Thanks again for the collaboration, the inspiration, the great ideas, and the awesome work. It really jump-started my writing, and it was great for once not to be so lonely while doing it. Warmest regards.
And I forgot to thank Amanieu for his kind support of my ideas. Best blurb ever! And a bit of the inspiration for my current project.
Cheers!
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ZOMGFTW best human story ever, like the creatures in the beginning
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how did i miss this lol
bunch of fucking virgins
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i'll be sure to mention that to my grandkids
and thx 4 ur support
;) ::) :-*
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how did i miss this lol
bunch of fucking virgins
That was our problem.
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The Revisiting (http://tremulous.net/about/)
Extraordinary Rendition Center
Mulva Moonlet
4031 ICE
Ked sat mutely in the inspection cubicle, arms folded limply over the black document case in his lap. He stared down at the black obsidian-like floor. It seemed to envelop him. Decadent. Hedronian soulstone - transport costs alone were above 20 million credits, by now. Lives were most definitely lost mining in the turbulent conditions of that not-so-recently discovered planetoid. Your life for this floor. We can - and will - walk on you. We do it every day.
He heard heels clicking down one of the long corridors, off to his left. He didn’t take his eyes off the reflections in that black, soul-sucking floor.
He knew this kind of place: the sense of authority - the brooding, over-arching dominance of man by money. Just like the HR Holdings Complex on Titan. The towering crystalline entrance pillars reduce anyone of stature into a mere blemish of shadow on the black floors. That was intentional. If you're diminished in presentation, you stand no chance of gaining leverage with one of the most powerful corporations in the known omniverse. Even less when you were a mute cripple, confined to a hoverchair.
The small yellow sign above the secure corridor flashed on. BEWARE. Why hadn’t he noticed that last time? The slide doors swooshed open revealing a dark elevator platform. Ked cleared his throat querously. At least he could still do that. He felt a quick flush of perspiration all over his body. Could they be doing that? The sign pulsed again. Ked's lip quivered as he whooshed beyond the threshold with an uneasy wobble, his chair functioning poorly.
Breathe. At least he could still breathe. The air didn’t calm him as it should. It tasted of thwarted promise.
Once inside the dimly lit space, the door behind him slammed shut, with a resounding “thwang” which echoed off the distant corridors. The platform fell away below his hoverchair and he plummeted along with it.
Then lights were shining in his eyes - which clicked off as the far end door swung open. Didn’t it slide away last time? Ked hovered toward the end and peered into the cavernous office space. The office was a large semi-circular room with no exterior windows. The harsh green light from Mulva's surface streamed in through light tunnels in the atrium. Freightliners could be heard carbing their engines far overhead - their massive forms preparing to jump though the Void.
Ked trundled out of the corridor sheepishly, realizing that he had been frozen for a moment too long. Again. His gaze moved around the room finding the centerpiece of the office. A large slab of borewood replete with red moldings of synthium. He should have known. Another symbol of decadence. Behind the desk sat a motionless figure, face cast in light from a padpod laying on the desk. He knew that face. Could it be? Had he come all the way here, just to cashier one officer? Ked wondered what they were really making on the World Aflame. He bumbled forward, feeling his apprehension rise, multiplying his need to get out of there.
Run. If only he could get up and run.
"Ked Ambrit." The voice was older and meaner. Ked tried to look away. A scoutliner arced across the horizon on a display off to his left, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away to look at it. Caught in a timeless stare, Ked tried in vain to rip his gaze away from the man. His heart was banging against his ribs, trying to leap from his chest and run away, to leave the rest of his lame and useless body there.
Speak. Breathe. He tried to lick his lips, to swallow, to answer. He felt mute.
"Ye- yessir." His voice was tiny. “Yes, sir.” He tried to bite his own tongue, to stop it from wagging, to make himself salivate, to give his nerves something to bite down onto. But still his throat was dry and acrid. The man behind the desk outstretched a darker, even more skeletal hand than Ked remembered, tossing the padpod device across the sleek surface of the desk. The pod swung around before Ked. There was video playing on its screen. A loop, playing over and over. The destruction of the Fractal Zion Colony.
"As you know, Haos Redro has recently suffered some 'setbacks' in the Brindus system." His voice no longer carried that affected accent the executive used to use, the result of being surrounded by obscene waste his entire, extended, evil life. He still spoke the zaibatsu marketing bullshit, that much was true, but now he just sounded mean, bitter and tired.
Ked said nothing, to avoid looking like a complete asshole.
"These 'setbacks' , if examined, have the ability to make Haos Redro one of the most hated entities in the omniverse." He paused.
Ked knew better than to answer.
"Indeed, Mr. Ambrit, if it were not for some even more recent... 'concerns'." Again that word with that intentional inflection of importance. It wasn't a small problem, this was a 'concern'. Again with the Haos Redro corporate doubletalk. "You're quite aware of the situation, as this act was done at your hand."
Ked wisely remained silent.
"We lost the entire facility at Rhubarb Ridge, decimating our coil-and-rail mating R&D."
Ked knew he better keep his mouth shut.
“Your action has had several results, Mr. Ambrit. The Omniversal Court was unable to find any evidence that HR Holdings contributed in any way to omniversal picodestruction. The levitric-apergic facility at Plowshare was saved, ensuring Tumbo’s dominance in Lux-Beam weaponry for the foreseeable future. And while you may have ruined our chance of being first to market with an updated mass-driver prototype, at least you kept the omniversalists from finding anything. Of course your actions did not slow down the Alien advance one whit. We have, however, found a most useful subject for our Clonal Forces program. A very promising subject indeed. You kept the Company’s interest at heart, Ambrit. You’re our kind of guy. I just wish we had more like you around here. Oh wait - we do." He signaled to a team of guards and orderlies, who appeared with a stretcher and restraints.
"Take him away!”
Ked sat awestruck. Humans had been cloned before, but it had only been to perpetuate their line. Military cloning: this was new and extraordinary.
"Get this asset over to Research." The executive spoke to his drone. "Get me the latest figures on the Ablator/Devivificator Program. I think Nux is padding his budget again."
"Right away, sir." The guards and the drone responded to authority. The feeling of dread sank into his bones now. Ked would keep his job.
"One more thing, Ked." The old man was grinning. It was horrible to see what made a man like this happy, or the way it twisted his ancient face.
"You will be on the next ship back to Brindus Four, as soon as you've been reassembled as the prototype for our Clonal Forces."
The feeling of dread would never leave him again.
found drone-pengraved on optilisk chitin-hide covering the stock of a concussive blunderbuss, believed to be owned by the Bettlegurz clade, and unearthed, of all places, near their ancient estates, on North North Grand Islet, FZBIIIb
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"What the fuck," mooseberry thought quickly to himself. "I saw in an email update that someone had posted in here again, but player1? And with a new story nonetheless? How is this possible..." He quickly scanned the page, and saw more about Ambrit. Deciding to read it all, mooseberry shifted his weight, and dug in for the time. "Wow," he thought to himself when he was finished, "that was quite good!"
Good job! Very, very intriguing, I would love to see more. :D
And now I feel.... :angel:
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wub wub wub wub it