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[X] Visit the Temple of Artemis and pray

You're not sure how you know that the lady of hunting is your goddess but you do. Changeable Artemis, goddess of the moon, prayed to by warriors who wish stealth, ambush, disguise. Her temple is a bit beyond the edge of town, a small shrine of wood and dark carbon amid the woods, surrounded by a much large area of ground in which you can pray. The woods are hushed, and you can hear local life in all its myriad forms, crawling, flying, floating, hunting on the wing. A silver statue of the goddess, dressed only in sandals, bow and quiver stands in the centre, illuminated by the moon and an arrangement of mirrors.

You go for the moonrise service. A red haired hellhound clade painted with elaborate symbols in silver leads the prayer. You move through the chants and then look up at the moon above, gleaming white. Haraway is good for Artemis worship, as it has two moons. There's always one in sight.

Everdancing Flame is next to you. "It's still strange to me how much you people all pray to things." She says. "When I was still just a woman we were almost atheists.The idea of gods and goddesses was banished to the far past."

"I've heard yours was a foolish age of slavery that almost destroyed human life."

She raises her hands in a shrug. "Will she help us hunt our enemies?"

The moon flickers, bright silver in the sky. "Yes." You whisper to yourself.

"Then pray away."

[X] See the grand gardens with Reizay

Equator City sure does have a lot of gardens, but none are as famous as the central Grand Garden.

You've got to admit, it is impressive. A series of artfully arranged rings of differently colored and structured plants set out around a series of vast trees. Mirrors reflect the light so that it's always correct, and Gaian, local and off world species are mixed artfully. A series of force fields is placed around the edges to prevent seeds from leaving. Reizay prowls through them with a nervous energy, taking pictures of everything, and taking a few notes as if she's going to do a book report on it later.

"Some of these trees were imported from Gaia as saplings." She says, as she pauses under one of the massive Redwoods. "Isn't it incredible to think these saw the light of Gaia?"

"I want to see Gaia one day." Juketta says.

"You might need to fight for it if you did." Luyu says. "I hope it's still there."

You hope the same.

[X] Go swimming with Atet

You swim in a natural hot water pool near one side of the city. Atet is a good swimmer. The pool is pretty busy and surrounded by trees. Atet looks at you, a bit nervous, and doesn't say much for the whole thing.

[X] Visit the famous "fox dance" theatre

It's famous because they don't have any clothes on. You have a great time with Mirareki and Luyu and Reizay rolls her eyes when you get back outside. The dances are quite elaborate, but you're not sure all of them strictly qualify as dance.

[X] Visit the grand council chamber

Unlike the Grand Gardens, you can't see what's so grand about this. The Grand Council Chamber is set in a characterless building which was apparently built several hundred years ago and has not profited from that fact.

The security check is the most interesting thing in the whole deal for you, as it's extremely extensive, and includes several alien devices to analyse mood and intent which you're pretty sure won't actually work.

[X] See the Temple of Hera with Reizay

"They say it's the grandest temple in the city." Reizay shades her eyes. "Only the great grove where Gaia is worshipped is larger, and that's outside the city." The temple is quite at odds with the buildings around it, a columned construction of white marble and green honeysuckle, climbing up it in all directions. Gleaming inlays of gold and red gold glow in the sunlight along the outline, and the Goddess Queen stands above it all, her statue rendered heroically nude in the same gold veined white marble. Offering flames burn before her, and priestesses light candles for pilgrims and worshippers standing beneath.

It's strange to see such a temple on a Black Rose world. So often in the core they worship alien gods. You have no idea how you know this.

"I wish Juketta could have come." Reizay looks up. "She'd have been a great tour guide."

"I guess it'd have been a little awkward." Atet says.

"We could have seen her debate a priestess." Luyu grins. "That'd have been fun."

[X] See an art film with Mirareki

You're not a tourist of course, you're going to go and get some real local experience rather than just gawp at the big architecture. That's why you're in this darkened room with Mirareki, who got a tip from the squid sculpt about something interesting to go see (a Luyu is outside in case it's a setup). A woman wrapped tip to toe in glossy black angles serves you pills from a tray.

The film, which is called the Flowers of Loneliness, opens with a montage of bright colours interlaced with black spaces, that filter away to an abrupt, disconnected narrative about a novice director called Geneve who has some kind of toxic relationship with at least two girlfriends. That's about as far as you get before the pills start to take effect and the visions start to crawl in from the edge of the screen, then the edge of your sight. You feel a little lightheaded. Then heavyheaded. There's something going on with her relationship but you can't
quite

follow, because of the

ants

"Stella? Stella!"

You're in a different room. Much dingier. There's beige, you think it's beige (it's hard to tell because of the ants), and Mirareki looking down at you, and the woman (or a woman) in glossy black angles holding a bucket.

"Mira…"

"Are you alright?"

The ants are marching home. "I, think so."

"Yeah, sorry," says the woman in black. "That doesn't usually happen. Anyway if you're alright I gotta go serve the next pills." She walks out, leaving you, Mirareki, and a crawling headache to leave by the alley exit and leave a bad review.

Please don't do that again, says Alex.

You're such a tourist.

[X] Go out on the town with Luyu

You head down out of the hotel room and find a rainbow of Luyu waiting for you on the street, each wearing a silk qipao of identical cut and contrasting colours. "Yo," she says, offering an arm. Mirareki waves from down the line. She's wearing short shorts and a silk blouse, her hair streaked with flickering colours. Even on the cosmopolitan streets of Landing City, a full dozen Luyu get some looks. She seems to enjoy it.

"So where are we going?"

"I figured–"

The dance club is hot and sweaty. Luyu's body is close to yours, a furnace. She dances with surprising earnestness and concentration, eyes on yours. You'd like to lavish her with the same concentration, but you're starting to get overheated. As the song drips back down. <<I need another drink. Do you want something?>> It's way too loud to talk normally.

<<Just lemonade.>>

You glance back at her as you walk to the bar. Luyu is spread out across the club, Mirareki dancing between two of her, while the others are chatting up various locals. The Luyu with you grins. <<Surprised?>>

<<A little.>>

<<I only really like psychedelics,>> Luyu says, <<and it's too early to trip out. I want to experience as much as I can. I want to experience the whole world, and at the end I want it to still be me.>>

<<So are you and Mirareki a thing now?>> You look over that way.

<<Hope so. How about you?>>

<<I guess I'm considering it.>>

[X] Walk around the city and look at random things

Reizay walks ahead, following a bright blue AR line in her vision. The others of you follow behind like a gaggle of geese, Atet, the Ettas you and Mirareki and then a great crowd of Luyu, chatting. "Hey! There's something cool down there. I think it's a Christian Church." Mirareki calls, and diverts down a side street.

Reizay looks around at her, irritated. "But the grand gardens are just down here!" she says. "The tourist guide says they're a must see."

"We can see them in a moment. It's not like we're short on time, I want to look at this." Mirareki says.

Reizay sighs loudly and then follows. "The streets here are so narrow."

"It's early colonial." Juketta says. "Haraway was one of the first actual paradise worlds to be settled, so you get a lot of weird old streets. People just built small urban villages as they liked around the landing site."

"It's so irregular." Reizay forgets her impatience to peer around a bend. She sounds scandalised, vaguely excited. "These sharp right angles." She shades her eyes, looking at the mass of old town streets. The buildings here are three and four story, brightly decorated with signs and advertisements for mostly shut nightlife, old extruded stone and ancient, crackling carbon class. Inflated top stories of white tent material rise above everything and you can see ants moving through the cracks and smell the sweet smell of window boxes.

In the background, the gleaming white and black of city centre towers provides the ancient buildings framing.

Luyu leans in. "You really like sharp corners don't you?" She asks.

"I don't!" Reizay says. "I don't exactly like them, I just…"

[X] Join Luyu as she takes Reizay out to the city's finest curry house

The curry house serves a profusion of dishes. Several beautiful waitresses set out a massive spread before you. Reizay's eyes are wide, amazed and a little delighted at the savoury smell of the platter. Luyu grins at her from either side.

"I can really eat anything here?" She looks up at the waitress.

"Yes, in fact you should try everything. We're told you don't have spicy food where you come from. So we'd like to show off our craft to you." The woman, who's not much older than Reizay herself, gives her a peck on the cheek. "Enjoy."

Reizay blushes scarlet, even more so as she pushes the first part of the kebab into her mouth. "It's so hot!" she gasps, then pushes in more. "My mff s n firr!"

"Masochist." Luyu leans back.

"I'm not!" Reizay coughs. "But– You can't have the taste without the sting." She takes another bite, swallows, then gulps and grabs for her water.

[X] Go visit the war museum

The War Museum is not a very prominent building. You spend nearly an hour negotiating your way out into the suburbs, passing high residential towers and leafy parks before you finally find it. The trip is actually pretty interesting though, as most of it is done via fast, hanging monorails that rocket between the high raises and lower domes and trees, giving you a great view.

You see a party taking place in front of a tower block, an outdoor dance contest, and two women passing blisteringly fast sword arts in a back garden. Finally you alight and walk another couple of streets to find the war museum itself, out of the way amid the trees near a small park. A line of squat, multi-legged combat machines stand on concrete sidings, admired by a few tourists.

"Local authorities don't like this place?" Juketta asks Mirareki.

"I guess." Mirareki shrugs. "It's mostly about when Haraway and Lemnosi were fighting together against the River. Not exactly a popular subject anymore."

You look up at the silver form of a River grav-tank, seeing the impact points of the micro-penetrators that killed it. You remember piloting just such a penetrator by helmet links, short, human guided flights to strike seams in the armour just right. The memory mixed with the laughter of a team, of shared good and bad times.

You look at the others, moving between skeletal war engines and feel it again.

[X] Go visit the science museum

They have an FTL drive experiment which keeps popping in and out from one side to the other. Kids laugh and cry as the breeze of the drive pods emergence slams into them, or sucks them up against the flexible fence. Reizay turns up her nose at something so immature, but you think it looks like fun.

[X] Go visit the art museum with Mirareki

Mirareki sure does like weird alien art. There's obviously the various classic kinds of art here. Women in heroic poses in combat armour. Women in heroic poses in combat armour or nothing much. Divinities and spirits, forests, abstracts and strange modern art that makes you feel things. The thing Mirareki seems to like most though it a giant set of flexing black glass, spinning and twisting constantly within its own lift field.

"This was taken from a River lord's gallery." Mirareki rests her hand on the security field surrounding the piece. "We have no contact with the species who made it. We don't even know their name."

You stare into the kaleidoscope of blacks and just sit back and feel nameless things.

[X] Go to speakers corner and watch philosophers yell at one another

"Yes! Delete your queue! Store your deep potentials and affective surfaces, don't trap your possibilities in the prison of yourself. Don't trap the future in the past."

"I'm all for the future but I would quite like to see it. You don't need to sacrifice yourself because you think that achieves some maximum amount of transformation."

"'You' won't see it either way. The existence of your self over time is an illusion of perspective enforced for evolutionary convenience. I decline to shackle the universe to the imperatives of a film of paste on a planet."

"I decline to shackle the universe to this one-sided ideal of yours. Beauty arises from the dialectic of diversity and structure, including structure across time."

"It's exactly that dialectic you're denying with your one-sided dream of immortality! You have structure across time in your own life. If you want to extend it into the future you need to allow it to change and transform by separation and interpenetration with other structures, not try to replicate it exactly."

"My future self will be changed by its new experiences, as part of a variety underwritten by my being part of a society of people enacting other possibilities."

"A society of people. Even trying to evoke possibilities you find yourself referring back to the same old shackles. The way you are is so good you'll spend all the world's precious free energy on it? How many possibilities will you sacrifice on that altar?"

"I don't mind sacrificing a few in the name of people existing, no."

"Then you can fuck off back to Lemnos with your Chrysanthemum friends!"

A scuffle breaks out. You decide to get clear.

Luyu sighs. "I guess we came at the wrong time. I remember the speakers there being better. It's a shame to see people on a Dark Rose planet shackle themselves to the idea that simply because a self must be manufactured to see a future that it is somehow lesser."

Aletta watches her. "Is that why you're so careful about keeping a singular self?"

"Exactly. To see the future one needs to have a self, even if your self is created from illusions. The past is simply a story that we tell ourselves."

Aletta smiles a little: "A very self centred perspective. There's no difference between past and future. Everything simply is, eternally."

Luyu shrugs: "I think therefore I am."

"You are, whether or not you think."

"You could just go back and argue it out on speakers' corner." Mirareki says, glancing back. Both look at one another and the fight going on there.

"Could be fun, but I think I'm good." says Luyu.

"Yes. I don't think that's necessary."

[X] Go on a coastal break for a few days and see the ocean

You borrow a set of bikes and head out along the coast with little equipment. The sea is a startling blue in comparison to the universally dark purple native plantlife. White beaches pop among small domes of hotels. You travel for days, staying at hotels and hostels and hammock camps amid the trees, each day a new view, a new experience. You swim in the sea. Mirareki catches fish and Reizay refuses to eat anything that was once alive. Luyu and Aletta argue.

The sun rises and sets, and rises and sets.

At the end of it all, you head out to a hillside overlooking a port city down the coast. It's a quiet spot, well off the beaten track and apparently not used by tourists. You climbed up here over the course of a couple of hours . You sit down among the trees, and Mirareki sets up an anti-surveillance awning and a white noise generator.

"So." She says as you settle in to the picnic. "The question is, where do we go now? I've got some feelers out investigating Firewall and the Lemnosi exile community here for traces of the conspiracy but nothing solid yet."

You know Everdancing Flame was interested in two in particular.

[ ] Option 1: Head to the Almagest Observatory on Scythia. The world is a warzone battled over by the forces of the Garden and the crippled posthuman dregs known as Nephilim, but it's where Everdancing Flame first suggested you go.
[ ] Option 2: Investigate the possible sightings of Diplomat-like entities in alien art on the nearby Ocean World of Nereid, where an ancient civilization of aliens has recently awakened, and where even older ruins rest beneath the waves.

When you get back to the ship it's both an anti-climax and a pleasant return. You didn't think you'd had enough time to settle into the place as home, but when you walk about into the station, and see your hammock, and the art you put up, and the various gear and furniture you fabbed, it's nice. It's nice that it's not another hotel or hostel or tent in the woods. It's nice that you don't have to keep an eye out at the doorways or the skies.

You dump your bags and whistle for one of the robots to do your laundry.


The Journey to Scythia is several hundred hours. Even with the deep ship's massive long distance drives, the trip takes you way beyond the edge of the Paradise Zone. You take the opportunity to study the place in the meantime. Scythia is not a Paradise Zone world, but it is one that the Exiles thought would be pretty easy to settle on. It has slightly less gravity than Gaia, while being about the same size due to a different composition of its planetary core. It was selected for an initial colony site due to this gravity and its relatively good atmospheric conditions, and the fact that local life on land had amounted to amphibious seaweed. The world's landmass is concentrated into a pair of fairly close supercontinents high in the southern latitudes, in the geological process of breaking apart.

Posthuman terraforming machines adapted the land for human habitation and mixed with the new life in the ocean, itself undergoing the equivalent of Gaia's Cambrian explosion, and created a lively human adapted ecosystem, if a somewhat inhospitable one by modern Gardenite standards.

The result was a world of vast forested steppe, with chill, snowy winters largely unknown through much of the paradise zone away from the highest latitudes, and warm summers. You'll be lucky enough to be arriving in the spring rather than the depths of winter. The colony proved successful, and according to the most current archeology, within a century, had settlements all along the continent's coast, and even facilities within the interior. For at least two centuries later it was the capital world of the Exiles,

Its rise was just as quickly followed by a fall, as the true scope of habitability of the paradise zone was discovered. Populations moved to new settlements and Scythia converted from a mere colony to a base for further exploration, a fading queen of an increasingly diverse group of colony worlds. The Almagest Observatory was to be its crowning jewel. A last great effort of those who wished to fully transcend their humanity and those who wished to change what it meant to be human. A device which could observe and map the whole visible universe. A great work of art and science.

Only, for reasons unknown, it failed. Even the posthumans baffled, supposedly. Scythia declined in importance, though it was never truly abandoned, and in latter centuries has enjoyed something of a renaissance as a stop on the trade route out into the anti-riverward stars, especially with the trade with the rising alien powers that exist beyond the Stone Gate region slow zone.

Over the years several attempts to get the observatory to function have been made, some with the help of posthumans, either existing or newly built for the process. The latest, created with high hopes and proceeds of the alien trade, involved a full godmaking with the assistance of the posthuman White Stone Black.

It went disastrously wrong. The posthuman's systems defected and became Nephilim, rogue entities working on malformed commands and insane logic, that consumed much of White Stone Black in the aborted godmaking. Now, the planet is at war, with Gardenite forces holding on desperately to the coastal cities and waging a guerrilla war in the interior. The Nephilim's malformed code has prevented them from entering some areas of the planet, but they have begun to construct Elioud, simpler robotic war constructs that do not suffer the same programming bugs to go where they cannot. The system has been heavily reinforced by powers from all across Garden, but despite this the war still hangs in the balance.

Still, no one understands why this attempt to reactivate the observatory went so wrong.

"Do you actually know what happened here?" You ask Alex.

"I have theories." She says. She's floating next to you, wearing what you think is probably an idealised version of her ancient human form. "I'd prefer not to voice them now."

You sit up in your hammock and look at her. "Why?" You ask bluntly. "Why keep it from me?"

"It's better if you come up with your own ideas. We aren't peers and my influence would inhibit you coming up with perspectives besides my own."

You aren't sure you believe her.

Atet invites you over to the medical clinic on the second day of the trip. "I've finally got some actual augmentation gear set up using supplies I found on Haraway." She tells you. "Would you be interested in getting some augmentation work done?"

You decide you would. While the infiltrator spec body you have is fit, there's definitely some changes you could make to make it better.

"We don't have that much time, so there's a limit to what I can do now, but we'll be able to further extend your capacity as we go on. I figure because we're going to Scythia you'll be wanting me to install some stuff to defend yourself against fallout and chemical toxins, but we should be able to do a few others.

[x] Nuclear-Biological-Chemical adaptation. Includes subdermal anti-radiation layer, DNA reference kernels, and other useful adaptations. Very useful where heavy combat including nuclear, antimatter and total conversion bombs are taking place.

Choose 2:
[ ] Add additional damage control: Creates additional emergency systems and redundancy within your body that will keep you alive, even if heavily wounded.
[ ] Add additional signature reduction: You already have pretty good signature reduction but this would bring you up to the level of a tac sleeve, at least if you aren't dressed too heavily.
[ ] Add subdermal armour: Provides you with light armour no matter what clothing you're wearing. Of course, if you're wearing armour as well, you'll get double the protection.
[ ] Add additional skin sensors: provides additional sensory systems and turns your whole skin into an antenna to detect hostile scanning and the like.

For most of the rest of the trip you train in VR. Luyu insists. "This is a war zone, and against Nephilim. It's going to be a far more dangerous environment than anything else since awakening, or probably anything any of us have encountered at all besides me and maybe Mirareki. We need to move and act as a team."

You spend hours doing just that, working through tactical exercises. Luyu, to your slight surprise, defers to you as team leader when decisions too quick for the team's normal consensus need to be made "I don't want it." She says. "I prefer to only be responsible for myself."

"No pressure then."

"You'll be fine. You've done this before."

You're not surprised exactly, but you find that the team works well together. You'd been expecting, sort of, the personality conflicts between Luyu and Mirareki, and Luyu and Aletta, and Reizay and everyone, to be much fiercer. Instead they fall into an easy rhythm. It helps, you think, that Mirareki and Luyu seem like an item now. You fight through simulation after simulation, and rapidly find the team has gelled into a powerful, cooperative unit.

After one run you're sitting, untidy and exhausted in front of the VR suite. You've just fought, and destroyed, a simulated Nephilim monster which has killed you three times before.

"There's no point bothering with getting fancy with equipment here." Mirareki says "We just need maximum signature reduction and firepower. That means tactical sleeves. We all have radiation layers in so we should be okay with that stuff."

"Just how much fallout is there down there?" Reizay asks.

"Enough they've had to spread environmental nanotech and set up a reclamation ecology." Luyu says. Her overlay flickers and she grins. "Ah. This is good. One of my friends is down there. She can hook us up with some local contacts."

"Oh yeah? Who is she?" asks Mirarekit.

"Wow. I didn't think you'd be the jealous type." Luyu tousels her hair. "There's twelve of me to go around Girl. Don't get greedy."

Mirareki fails to suppress a flush.

"Anyhow, we don't date. She's a kind of crazy Nyxite witch, but she's solid in a fight, and she'll get us to the front line."

You check the time. "Okay, enough rest. Let's do another run. See if that win was a fluke or not."

The team rise, and, without complaint, head back into the simulation.


A few days into the trip you have a dinner party with everyone at the cafe. Juketta is acting as hostess this time and put on a spread of spiced soup, vegetables, and meat and noodles. The food is done now and you have fallen into conversation about whatever it takes you to talk about. You're all reclining in a set of large, heavily cushioned wicker chairs. You're still dressed in your living dress, and the others have mostly selected formal versions of their normal outfits. Nobody said to dress up but obviously you all did. Reizay leans back in her chair and looks around nervously: "I have a question. Have any of you heard any strange noises or seen anything strange?"

Mirareki shrugs: "We've got the diplomat locked down in its sections of the hull, and sensors deployed around it. It can't get out."

"I'm not worried about that." Reizay says. "I'm talking about–" she pauses for a moment. "Look, I don't believe in ghosts or anything but I've heard a bunch of strange noises."

"It's just the ship shifting in translation space." Mirareki sighs. "Ships, especially large ones like this, make noises. It's not ghosts!"

"I never said it was ghosts!"

One of the Luyu leans forward. All dozen of her are sitting on the sofa with Mirareki in the middle. "It wouldn't actually be too surprising if this ship was haunted though." She says. "It's old, and there were a lot of fights on Deep Ships like this back in the day. Plus the Nyxians probably did some bad stuff here."

"Have you ever seen a ghost?" Reizay asks Luyu.

"I've talked to combat soldiers who swear they did."

"This is ridiculous" says Mirareki. Juketta, you notice, has shifted over to Aletta, and is listening.

"One time on Aconite, I was fighting with the local councils against the Mountain Cults." Luyu says. "It was a brutal business. The Cults all followed this strange numerological religion. It was apparently a particularly malign day, and they'd celebrated it by killing a bunch of captives they had from the local aborials."

"Aborials?" Reizay asks.

"The local sapients. They're furry critters, kind of lanky and small, rather cute honestly, except they have a ton of weird eyes. Anyhow, the Mountain Cults were losing then, and they wanted something that could really die, not just someone to step into the flames and then get resurrected off their queue. So they'd taken a bunch of the aborials. We were obviously not intending to let this happen so we headed up for the rescue."

She leans back. "When we got there, we found the aborials were all in a cage, but all the cultists were dead. It look like they'd killed one another, or walked into the flames of their own pyre. The Aborials were terrified. We tried for days to get them to tell us what'd happened, but they never did. Some of the local shamans said the spirit of the mountain had struck them down for their blasphemy."

"That's ridiculous." Reizay says again, but she no longer sounds so sure.

Luyu shrugs. "Well, maybe they just all did too many hallucinogens and freaked out. The Mountain Cults weren't the most stable at the best of times."

The conversation goes on, but this discussion sticks with you. When you get back to your quarters, you decide to fab up some additional alarms, sensors and protective doors, just in case.

"But," Alex says from behind you. "Would any of that stop a ghost?"


The transition to Scythia is a somewhat more subdued affair than the move to Haraway. You're all wearing tactical sleeves and webbing and plate carriers, though Aletta (or, you think, probably Minetta) has switched hers to transparency in a series of precise triangular shapes like her robe. The team, save the eternalist, is loaded down with weapons, fast replicator systems and the like. You've also made sure you have current backups, and a secure uplink to refresh them from the ground.

The chances are not all of you will make it back in one piece.

"Hey." Luyu says as you load the gear "What do you think about where to leave the ship? There's a bunch of heavy metal in system and a bunch of ship spotters because of it. If we head in there, we're definitely going to be noticed. On the other hand if the Crown of Thorns was still after us, it probably wouldn't want to poke all that force. It could be pretty dangerous for us with the Nephilim though."

Where do you park the ship?
[ ] Hide it in the outer system. It'd be best if nobody knows you're here, and to keep it out of the way of the Nephilim.
[ ] Head into the parking swarm. That Crown of Thorns might still be out there.