Querulous: The Juddering: The Fractal Zion Incident

[player1]

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

[player1]

-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

[player1]

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

[mooseberry]

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.

[Seffylight]

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.

[mooseberry]

aww shucks. You'll make us blush.

[player1]

-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!

[player1]

-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

[player1]

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

[player1]

-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

[player1]

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)}

[player1]

-advertisement from Tumbo Manufacturing Group, mid-41st century, Outer Southern Settlement Zone

New for Holiday '47!!!

The HyperBlaster^TM - Faster firing rate and more crunch for your cred!

That's right campers, NEW for Holiday 4047, the COMPLETELY REWORKED HyperBlaster^TM: NOW WITH 1.2X Firing Rate, IMPROVED NeverCharge^TM Power Source, and Faster, Deadlier, Bug-Stopper^TM 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. HyperBlaster^TM, when a regular old Blaster is just too General Issue. For real bug-killers only.^TM

TUMBO^TM. KILLS. BUGS. DEAD.
Any questions?

Ask your dealer about the Mark Four Mass Driver and the latest improvements in slow-moving-plasma-projectile technology.
Tumbo^TM: Helping Humanity To Keep the Starways Safe since 3737.
Tumbo Mfg. Group is a wholly-owned subsidiary of HR Holdings, Austroastradia LLC.
Tumbo^TM: 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?)}

[player1]

-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

[Hendrich]

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.

[mooseberry]

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.

[+ OPTIMUS +]

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!!!

[player1]

-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

[player1]

-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.)}

[player1]

-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

[player1]

-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

[player1]

-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

[player1]

-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

[player1]

-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

[player1]

-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

[player1]

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.

[player1]

-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

[mooseberry]

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.~~

[player1]

-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

[player1]

-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

[player1]

-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.