Querulous: The Juddering: The Fractal Zion Incident

[player1]

-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

[player1]

-from Levity and Apergy, and a Great Big Ball of Plasma, by Anfidgean, Flovat, et al, 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

[player1]

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

[mooseberry]

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."~~

[player1]

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

[player1]

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

[player1]

-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

[player1]

-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 

[player1]

-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

[player1]

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

[khalsa]

Cool stuff.

More.


Khalsa

[player1]

-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

[player1]

-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

[Bissig]

Write a book maybe? Fantasy mixed with Sci-Fi seems your kind of style...

[player1]

-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

[player1]

-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

[player1]

-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

[player1]

-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

[mooseberry]

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.

[player1]

-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

[player1]

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

[Hendrich]

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? 

[player1]

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

[player1]

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 32^nd-note Legato, Non-here Virtualisms LLC, OSSZ, 4207 ICE

[+ OPTIMUS +]

--- Hendrich, thanks for reminding me that i actually posted yesterday night, i didn'T even remember that XD ---

[Hendrich]

@ 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.

[player1]

-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

[Amanieu]

I think there's enough stuff in here to turn trem into an RPG.

[player1]

-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 Agog^TM III Über-Arenoids - Team Arenoids: The Overexcited to Aflutter^TM 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

[player1]

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