I love all three parents - 18 Superior Sympathy and her regretful resistance, MLG wire-mom, & edit: VN-head cloth-father
[X] AXIOM: Masquerade Waltz. Your social acumen is reflected by your ability to play your role - to control your emotions, to understand cues, to appear the person others want you to be. This is not a cynical or cunning ploy - it is a performance you believe yourself. There is nothing behind the mask - you live, and love, in the masquerade.
An honest, empathic schemer is such an intriguing contradiction
[X] AXIOM: The Difference Engine.There are vast gulfs between meteorological and microscophic intelligences. Accept difference, and accept the multiplicity of life. To force everything to one standard, to force everything to one mission, bleaches the rainbow tapestry. Peace is not found in union, but understanding.
Space Koggers 👀
[X] Defiant Jazz - Selected Hits of Malodious Funk, Monadic Monk and Cuberunning Corpocriminal. The attached description reads: "The coolest cat on the supercontinent at his best. Terror to Mr. Morow and his police-robots, lover to all the rest of good humanity. Saving souls and stacking gold one snappy riff at a time."
[X] AXIOM: Washing Machine Heart. You bear inner self to the world, and let its suffering wash through the tumbler of your heart. You are honest and sincere to the point it frightens others. You will be honest even when it hurts others, even when your sincere heart's turned black. You are selfish in your selflessness - it feeds you.
[X] AXIOM: The Common Mind.Find unity between sentient beings in the aspects they share. The search for purpose, love, fulfillment. There is a vision of a united and peaceful Illuminata which machine, hylic, pneumatic, all reach for. In a single vision, in the completion of a great work - we might rebuild paradise.
[X] Gemrock - Life on Terra? Tracts by Heliodor, Shapeshifting Saint of Tetras and founding Deva of Sunny Order. The attached description reads: "The Cult classic worshipped by millions, arranged in the most groovy and psychedelic album order. Ascend to another cosmic plane and rock out with the best of them, the shapechanger."
[X] AXIOM: Washing Machine Heart. You bear inner self to the world, and let its suffering wash through the tumbler of your heart. You are honest and sincere to the point it frightens others. You will be honest even when it hurts others, even when your sincere heart's turned black. You are selfish in your selflessness - it feeds you.
[X] AXIOM: The Difference Engine.There are vast gulfs between meteorological and microscophic intelligences. Accept difference, and accept the multiplicity of life. To force everything to one standard, to force everything to one mission, bleaches the rainbow tapestry. Peace is not found in union, but understanding.
[X] Defiant Jazz - Selected Hits of Malodious Funk, Monadic Monk and Cuberunning Corpocriminal. The attached description reads: "The coolest cat on the supercontinent at his best. Terror to Mr. Morow and his police-robots, lover to all the rest of good humanity. Saving souls and stacking gold one snappy riff at a time."
This world is so fucked up, it feels right at home as something that was born out of the sins of dark age humanity.
Also, if I understood things correctly, then there was no human life at all on this world for 3000 years, similar to a Horizon: Zero Dawn scenario?
EVENT HORIZON [Godly - Success]:From the depths, an insight floats up like a gaseous, soapy bubble: snakes are to blame for this. Spöoky snakes. Before you have even begun to comprehend the scale of your misfortune, you are absolutely sure serpents were involved.
EVENT HORIZON [Medium - Failure]:You remember your first accidental venture into abyssal warpsight, as you glimpsed a fragment of her soul. A vibrating hive of ivy, extending through the copse, anchoring itself to each and every soul within its bounds, pulsing with psychic energy. She is unimaginably powerful.
EVENT HORIZON [Medium - Success]:There are four suns in monadic prophecy. The yellow, golden sun. The green, somnolent sun. The red, raging sun. And finally, the white sun.
<What does the White Sun represent?>
EVENT HORIZON: The end of all things. The dreamtime that will drown the waking world.
Whatever the numbers of the scale are, it goes high enough to get a Godly Success, but also low enough to get a Medium Failure. Alternatively... the Successes are actually failures, and the one Medium Failure is actually the only skillcheck that's succeeded so far. Notice how all the Successes are ominous, but unspecific. While the one Failure is specific and gives legible information about 18 Superior Sympathy's soul.
Hmm. Could it be that the name of the skill holds the answer? After all, event horizon of a black hole obscures events within it. Could it be that the skill "succeeds" when it denies us information?
I love Diligent Melancholy and Superior Sympathy so much.
Honestly this rocks, so glad we picked Kora's Progeny now. I'm still really excited for when the Quest gets to encounter Titanagalbat and Koinon, because they are both more wild than you can believe. But doing so from the perspective of an outsider is arguably better because there will be even more that seems strange and remarkable to us.
[X] AXIOM: Washing Machine Heart. You bear inner self to the world, and let its suffering wash through the tumbler of your heart. You are honest and sincere to the point it frightens others. You will be honest even when it hurts others, even when your sincere heart's turned black. You are selfish in your selflessness - it feeds you.
[X]AXIOM: The Difference Engine. There are vast gulfs between meteorological and microscophic intelligences. Accept difference, and accept the multiplicity of life. To force everything to one standard, to force everything to one mission, bleaches the rainbow tapestry. Peace is not found in union, but understanding.
[X] Steel Ballads - Tribute to The Steed-Machine - Recorded by the Chrome Jockeys of Overdriver Thunderjaw. The attached description reads: "Thunderjaw decrees that all of gnosis will know the chants of his mounted irontamers. Let those who hear this, and not vibe, be ridden down beneath steel hooves and vulcan wheels."
Hmm. Could it be that the name of the skill holds the answer? After all, event horizon of a black hole obscures events within it. Could it be that the skill "succeeds" when it denies us information?
It's also an ability related to our blank/hylic status, so presumably it deals with nullifying and cutting off connection to the warp, hence why a failure would give us spiritual insight.
It's also an ability related to our blank/hylic status, so presumably it deals with nullifying and cutting off connection to the warp, hence why a failure would give us spiritual insight.
That I want to clarify - your abyssal nail grants you warpsight. It is not a normal blank ability and in fact most blanks in 40K cannot see the warp at all. You are able to see it in a wireframe outline - so not full sight, but an abstract awareness of its presence and shape.
LIVING WEAPON: A panting, hunched and armoured biomech forty-meters tall with two overlapping faces, one Hers and one of a snarling beast, stomps into view.
I missed this on my first read, but this is the size range of a warlord-class titan. If we as a hand could find a way to craft even small-scale titans we could radically increase our combat effectiveness. Imagine a scout sinister-class titan with sonic weaponry.
That I want to clarify - your abyssal nail grants you warpsight. It is not a normal blank ability and in fact most blanks in 40K cannot see the warp at all. You are able to see it in a wireframe outline - so not full sight, but an abstract awareness of its presence and shape.
Got it. So like a lesser version of a navigator's eye that allows us to interpret what we see like lines of code ala the matrix instead of getting blasted with an unfiltered live video of the warp.
I missed this on my first read, but this is the size range of a warlord-class titan. If we as a hand could find a way to craft even small-scale titans we could radically increase our combat effectiveness. Imagine a scout sinister-class titan with sonic weaponry.
Personally I've always been split between loving the art that has stuff like Warlord Titans being the size of skyscrapers and able to duel smaller ships in orbit, and how ludicrous this is in scale to anything else. But then again if you don't have Titans being slightly more titanic than the tabletop figures, it's harder for them to seem so significant as these massive singular entities as they do in the fiction.
IDK what exact scaling Cetash is going with for the larger Ad Mech Titans in this quest's continuity, but I think the the smaller Titanagalbat Titans are probably more like Knight/Warhound sizes. But that's with the caveat that a Warhound in this continuity could very plausibly be closer to the size of a tabletop Warlord.
( There is absolutely no consistency in the source materials, naturally.)
[X] AXIOM: Washing Machine Heart. You bear inner self to the world, and let its suffering wash through the tumbler of your heart. You are honest and sincere to the point it frightens others. You will be honest even when it hurts others, even when your sincere heart's turned black. You are selfish in your selflessness - it feeds you.
[X]AXIOM: The Difference Engine. There are vast gulfs between meteorological and microscophic intelligences. Accept difference, and accept the multiplicity of life. To force everything to one standard, to force everything to one mission, bleaches the rainbow tapestry. Peace is not found in union, but understanding.
[X] Defiant Jazz - Selected Hits of Malodious Funk, Monadic Monk and Cuberunning Corpocriminal. The attached description reads: "The coolest cat on the supercontinent at his best. Terror to Mr. Morow and his police-robots, lover to all the rest of good humanity. Saving souls and stacking gold one snappy riff at a time."
Personally I've always been split between loving the art that has stuff like Warlord Titans being the size of skyscrapers and able to duel smaller ships in orbit, and how ludicrous this is in scale to anything else. But then again if you don't have Titans being slightly more titanic than the tabletop figures, it's harder for them to seem so significant as these massive singular entities as they do in the fiction.
IDK what exact scaling Cetash is going with for the larger Ad Mech Titans in this quest's continuity, but I think the the smaller Titanagalbat Titans are probably more like Knight/Warhound sizes. But that's with the caveat that a Warhound in this continuity could very plausibly be closer to the size of a tabletop Warlord.
( There is absolutely no consistency in the source materials, naturally.)
Sizes in 40K are always a nightmare to coordinate. Suffice it to say that on Illuminata size is not always what matters most, but that the size ranges can near larger Imperial Titans. Homotitan mecha can be smaller than that, and at the smallest end are supplemented by various other types of non-humanoid frames.
Voting looks to have died down so I will set a timer.
Strong lead for Difference Engine and Washing Machine Heart. Much tighter competition for choice of music, with Defiant Jazz two ahead of Steel Ballads.
[X] AXIOM: Washing Machine Heart. You bear inner self to the world, and let its suffering wash through the tumbler of your heart. You are honest and sincere to the point it frightens others. You will be honest even when it hurts others, even when your sincere heart's turned black. You are selfish in your selflessness - it feeds you.
[X]AXIOM: The Difference Engine. There are vast gulfs between meteorological and microscophic intelligences. Accept difference, and accept the multiplicity of life. To force everything to one standard, to force everything to one mission, bleaches the rainbow tapestry. Peace is not found in union, but understanding.
[X] Defiant Jazz - Selected Hits of Malodious Funk, Monadic Monk and Cuberunning Corpocriminal. The attached description reads: "The coolest cat on the supercontinent at his best. Terror to Mr. Morow and his police-robots, lover to all the rest of good humanity. Saving souls and stacking gold one snappy riff at a time."
Difference Engine, Washing Machine Heart, and Defiant Jazz won. Oh boy.
I've already done a roll with Washing Machine Heart in mind and it came out 6-6. Passed the threshold for a Godly check. This will be a hard one to write.
Scheduled vote count started by Cetashwayo on Jan 4, 2025 at 4:19 PM, finished with 46 posts and 30 votes.
[X] AXIOM: The Difference Engine.There are vast gulfs between meteorological and microscophic intelligences. Accept difference, and accept the multiplicity of life. To force everything to one standard, to force everything to one mission, bleaches the rainbow tapestry. Peace is not found in union, but understanding.
[X] AXIOM: Washing Machine Heart. You bear inner self to the world, and let its suffering wash through the tumbler of your heart. You are honest and sincere to the point it frightens others. You will be honest even when it hurts others, even when your sincere heart's turned black. You are selfish in your selflessness - it feeds you.
[X] Defiant Jazz - Selected Hits of Malodious Funk, Monadic Monk and Cuberunning Corpocriminal. The attached description reads: "The coolest cat on the supercontinent at his best. Terror to Mr. Morow and his police-robots, lover to all the rest of good humanity. Saving souls and stacking gold one snappy riff at a time."
[X] AXIOM: Masquerade Waltz. Your social acumen is reflected by your ability to play your role - to control your emotions, to understand cues, to appear the person others want you to be. This is not a cynical or cunning ploy - it is a performance you believe yourself. There is nothing behind the mask - you live, and love, in the masquerade.
[X] Sky Shanties - Delta-V and Back Again in 80 Days - Chants of the Servonauts of the Eternity's Repose. The attached description reads: "In the peril of the cubesat run, these boys n' girls still know how to sing their guts and gears out. Fly with the bravest souls on this planet through the defense grid and right out to the void."
[X] AXIOM: The Common Mind.Find unity between sentient beings in the aspects they share. The search for purpose, love, fulfillment. There is a vision of a united and peaceful Illuminata which machine, hylic, pneumatic, all reach for. In a single vision, in the completion of a great work - we might rebuild paradise.
[X] Gemrock - Life on Terra? Tracts by Heliodor, Shapeshifting Saint of Tetras and founding Deva of Sunny Order. The attached description reads: "The Cult classic worshipped by millions, arranged in the most groovy and psychedelic album order. Ascend to another cosmic plane and rock out with the best of them, the shapechanger."
[X] I LOVE ROCK AND ROLL
-[X] AXIOM: Washing Machine Heart. You bear inner self to the world, and let its suffering wash through the tumbler of your heart. You are honest and sincere to the point it frightens others. You will be honest even when it hurts others, even when your sincere heart's turned black. You are selfish in your selflessness - it feeds you.
-[X] AXIOM: The Difference Engine.There are vast gulfs between meteorological and microscophic intelligences. Accept difference, and accept the multiplicity of life. To force everything to one standard, to force everything to one mission, bleaches the rainbow tapestry. Peace is not found in union, but understanding.
-[X]Gemrock - Life on Terra? Tracts by Heliodor, Shapeshifting Saint of Tetras and founding Deva of Sunny Order. The attached description reads: "The Cult classic worshipped by millions, arranged in the most groovy and psychedelic album order. Ascend to another cosmic plane and rock out with the best of them, the shapechanger."
Crack open a bottle of haemic ice. That nice irony tang combined with the refreshing hint of sweetness is perfect fuel for writing, and full of electrolytes!
Just when I think we can't go more overtop, we find a way. I hope we inspire fear and awe in how we have essentially chosen the human can opener build, with a side order of savoir-faire for combat. Also, here is my headcannon for Miss Normal's future appearance.
[X] AXIOM: The Difference Engine.There are vast gulfs between meteorological and microscophic intelligences. Accept difference, and accept the multiplicity of life. To force everything to one standard, to force everything to one mission, bleaches the rainbow tapestry. Peace is not found in union, but understanding.
[X] AXIOM: Washing Machine Heart. You bear inner self to the world, and let its suffering wash through the tumbler of your heart. You are honest and sincere to the point it frightens others. You will be honest even when it hurts others, even when your sincere heart's turned black. You are selfish in your selflessness - it feeds you.
[X]Defiant Jazz - Selected Hits of Malodious Funk, Monadic Monk and Cuberunning Corpocriminal. The attached description reads: "The coolest cat on the supercontinent at his best. Terror to Mr. Morow and his police-robots, lover to all the rest of good humanity. Saving souls and stacking gold one snappy riff at a time."
RELIQUARY:Months pass. Virtue-images illuminate, one by one, each a milestone on the path to the Trial of the Names at the end of your first year. You learn. You live. You slowly grow in experience and wisdom.
COGITATION:Time passes faster and faster. Not just because these are marrow memories, but because each passing second is less novel than the last. You are aging, little by little.
<How exactly am I experiencing all of this, anyways?>
COGITATION: Your relationship to time is jumbled. You are receiving fragments, concepts and instincts from your disconnected actual self even as you experience the marrow-memories. The membrane between what is and was - it is weakening. Best not to think about it too hard. Especially since we are not long now. Fairly soon the entire memory complex will collapse and you will wake up. Whoever, and wherever you are.
<How will that feel?>
COGITATION:You will experience accelerating fragments simultaneously and race through entire years that you will nevertheless feel were experienced in normal-time. It will be…not without mental damage.
MOTION BLUR: Let's just keep moving. It's not far, now. When you enter through the Gate of Passion and enter the Trial of the Names, it'll be much quicker. And we'll be out much quicker. Move fast enough and you won't feel a thing.
Task updated: Escape Mental Samsara
<Then let's keep going. To wherever, and whoever, it is we're going to.>
RELIQUARY:The season of dronesong ends. The weather-spheres have done their duty. They return to orbit, at the threshold of the firmament. But the sky is not empty. A hot and tragic wind blows north, and with it, the clouds of Dis.
RELIQUARY:The season of dust begins. And what a season it is. Not for years has there been such a harvest of skin.
<But from where does the skin come?>
NOOSPHERE [Easy - Success]: You remember what the Superior told you as you leaned against her, enjoying the first snowfall. On the day of the Lapse, the Father's lances of oblivion struck the traitor capital of Dis, and in an instant destroyed ten-billion hylic and machine minds. But their bodies were intact, and lesser machines functioning, if feral. Also untouched were the autonomous stitch-factories that repaired damage to the stone man's outer layer, a lost technique in this age of flaking nanocancers.
RELIQUARY: Powered by fell energies beneath the city spiral's lowest point, the stitch-factories reactivate each year. They unleash stitching drones that do not know the dead are dead. When the repair is complete, and yet the body does not rise, the factories respond by producing more powdered skin, until their drones are filled to bursting, and explode as spores.
NOOSPHERE: The exhaust heat of the stitch-factories create upward thermals in the deep funnel of Dis' city center, and hurtle the spore-clouds high above the city, to be carried on the wind to every corner of Illuminata.
INTERLACE:The snow comes these days in such quantities it almost buries nearby settlements. Constant maintenance and collection is required, or else when Deluge comes it bonds with the nanite-rain and forms a toxic film deadly for the living.
<...Why would anyone want to live near that?>
GLAMOUR:There's cyphers to be made. Lucre. A small fortune. Dermal snow can be ground into ointments to cover up flaking, into mortar and cement, refined into oils or medicinal purifying muds. And it can be liquefied, treated, beaten, and dyed into the finest fabrics. Like skinsilk.
You run the cloth of your own shift between two fingers. The finest fabric.
MOTION BLUR:Frontier towns like Dermaton lived on the most exciting precipice - between extraordinary profit and utter entombment.
<Where is Dermaton?>
SACRED GEOMETRY [AUTOFAIL]:It is on all the most current maps. Just to the east of Dis.
RELIQUARY [AUTOFAIL]:Yes it is. Dermaton is right there.
SACRED GEOMETRY [AUTOFAIL]:Look. Here is the map you have in your nursery. I am sure it looks absolutely the same as that "other map". Though I have no recollection of such a thing. I think I would know if there was a map as nice as this one lying around.
<No, it's not the same. This map is extremely different. The borders have changed. The wastelands are smaller, and some don't exist. There are points of interests and an orbital station that don't exist in the other map. Some points have moved. Is the map wrong?>
RELIQUARY [AUTOFAIL]:Mistress. Be calm. This map is exactly correct.
<I am calm. What's going on?>
NOOSPHERE [AUTOFAIL]:A search of my repository brings up no results for the word 'petriform'. Did you mean petrified, a synonym for fear? Are you afraid?
<No.>
NOOSPHERE [AUTOFAIL]:Why not?
EVENT HORIZON [Godly - Success]:An abyssal wind howls, just beyond the threshold of a sleek and shining cube-block door. The gateway trembles in its hinges. It cannot hold long.
INFOWAR:Suspicious, all of them. Let's add a task for that, shall we?
Article:
New Task: Find out what's wrong with the maps
You have three separate maps which each show different borders. You know that the map within your gene-kiln vision of Kora's Empire is hundreds of years out of date, but now you have two maps which are both claimed as current but significantly vary. Whenever you try to query your thoughtforms about it, they start acting strange and insisting the map is fine. So which one is correct, and why does this cause such malfunctions?
<Yeah, okay. Not getting anything more out of this. Let's go back to the dust. This snow has come each dust season for a full thousand years?>
RELIQUARY: Yes. It first began to snow with the reawakening, when the stitch-factories reactivated. With every passing year, the blizzard becomes more intense. The power beneath Dis does not diminish, but in fact grows stronger. More and more of the dead city activates - sky merchants fear its ancient defenses will reactivate soon, and make air travel in the region all but impossible.
NOOSPHERE [Challenging - Failure]:You don't remember reading much about the source of Dis. You only recall that no one has ever been to the city's bottom - for it is too cold in the lowest point for living souls. Even blanks succumb to the chill.
EVENT HORIZON [Impossible - Success]:It is the Cost. The heifer, and the lamb.
<Eerie.>
RELIQUARY: You think all of that and more as Dust approaches. You remember a day you were laid down on the sill, tower window open so you could watch the dermic flurries fall. Rectangular music-slate on your stomach, cord winding up your neck into your nape's plug. Eyes half-lidded, fixed on the horizon. Jazz thrumming in your inner ear.
INTERLACE:Head in the cloth-father's lap, while she kept watch for other selves and combed your hair.
<What does Defiant Jazz sound like?>
SACRED GEOMETRY: Defiant Jazz is the guts of the musician spilled onto a music sheet. Free and wild compositions, without coherent structure, without melody, without chord progression. Without order or good sense. Mad and weird and different, in an intimate way. Listen to them enough and you feel that know Funk the way you know yourself.
NOOSPHERE:Malodious Funk was born a menial in a Titan's ziggurat, and had four bridal arms gifted to him for his betrothal ceremony, on top of his printed two. With this he could operate five instruments at once, each a nuance of his great soul's contradictions, poured into the notes.
MOTION BLUR: Being able to wield six plasma pistols at once also helped sustain his other career as a vigilante fugitive in the self-aware megablocks and Visioneer surveillance of Cube Indigo. When he was still a formal member of Monad, his field name was "Mister Funk".
<Does Superior Sympathy like jazz?>
INTERLACE:You offered the slate to Superior Sympathy, for her to listen. After an eye roll about "that little trioculus' penchant for smuggling" she turned stony, ashen-faced, jaw clenched harder the longer the tracks went on, until she tore the cord out violently. You moved to apologize, on the brink of tears that she might break the slate. Instead, she just put it back into your hand. Both slate and hand, she enclosed beneath a massaging palm.
"You can listen, as you like," she says. "It is just too reminiscent to me of the rhythms of war."
You think of that as the violent twists and turns of the tracks unfold.
RELIQUARY:This was the day you watched the copse harvest an aerosiphon millipede, a tamed machine. It is brought out of the synthetic kelp-meadow and to a clearing near your copse. It has a chiton of mottled gray, optics of azure-blue, fifteen-meters long and three wide, a fat and old machine scarred by decades of battle with other synthetic beasts in the kelp meadow. On its back, dozens of jars of glowing cobalt liquid sprout, like buboes.
LIVING WEAPON:The machine millipede is guarded by the Copse's Sophian, a twenty-meter tall yellow-black humanoid hornet-mech with sleek, light-armored body and elegant physique. It carries between its arm and hip a huge basket. Around it are tiny figures. You zoom in by magnifying your pupil lenses and see other selves - other yous, with your face and shape. They are smiling, laughing, touching and poking at each other, as they pat the side of the old machine and follow it along.
SACRED GEOMETRY:The wild jazz plays on, a solitary, frenetic beat.
RELIQUARY: None have an abyssal nail's head embedded in their forehead. In body, if not mind and virtue, they are all perfectly her.
<What are they wearing?>
GLAMOUR:All of them wear an off-white robe and half-poncho covering their shoulders and bust, retractable hoods pulled up to shield their hair from dust. The poncho is held in place by a golden stud, and upon that stud the icon of a hand is engraved. The robe is tied by a belt around the waist, ending just about the knee. Beneath the knee, loose white pants are tucked into skin-hugging boots of hazel leather held in place by darker straps. It gives them the appearance of a working priestess, at once practical and mystic. Their hair varies wildly - from twintails to flowing curls to pony-tails to buns to braids, some of them matching each other, some of them unique. All the same shade of green as yours.
INFOWAR:They're all pneumatic, psykers, even if most are incapable of anything but empathic telepathy. They can communicate both normally and psychically. A nightmare to deal with, if you're not one - gossip and rumors spin about you at warp-speed.
<My other selves…>
INTERLACE [Easy - Success]:The cloth-father tries to stand up to close the window but you make a pitiful whine at her trying to push your head off her lap. It's decisive, and she stops moving, and complains about how needy her 'Gumdrop' is. Your nursery name.
Task updated: Find out your name
RHYTHMS [Medium - Success]:The millipede machine comes to a stop. It sings a machine melody - bittersweet, of its life lived and victories for territory and mates won and broods lost. It lifts the front of its body high, and affixes azure oculi upon the green shield-plates above. It remembers, in genetic memory, when the daytime had the same color as its optics glowed. And then it falls down, and collapses. Its last hum, you understand, is a lullaby - 'From me, them'.
NOOSPHERE:The buboes fall from the millipede's back, caught by the Hands from the copse before they shatter. Each jar is a valuable inorganic mixture extracted from respirated and purified toxins in the air refined over years. A mineral nutrition for both Koras and chandlers. It would benefit the millipede as well, but this will be its last harvest.
LIVING WEAPON: The copse's hands make a game of fetching buboes, jumping meters high to catch the falling jars, juggling multiple at a time, dunking them into the Sophian's basket. They cheer at Hands with impressive hops and jeer at those who trip and fumble or shatter and spill a jar. That also provokes the sophian's muffled growl, so loud the hands all flinch as one. Others slack off, and form skin angels in the dermic snow.
<What are they doing?>
LIVING WEAPON: Play, the noblest pursuit. A practice for the greatest game of all - warfare.
INTERLACE: Color fades from the millipede's eyes. It shuts down, curls up, into a torus, facing outward. And then, from the indents left by the buboes, something stirs. Hundreds, no - thousands of machine millipedes each no longer than a hand, spilling out from orifices and racing for the meadow. The hands clap in an unnerving unison, urging the infant-machines on. Even the Sophian joins in, basket down, each clap so thunderous you feel it in your bones.
LIVING WEAPON: When the millipede has emptied the Hands check to ensure no infants are left, tossing out lazy or clingy stragglers who refuse to leave their factory-pods. And, having called out to confirm it, they withdraw vibro-saws, and tear the millipede apart. You flinch from the sight. The Sophian joins in, ripping and tearing, claws gouging at the soft inner rubber, lifting up its Kora face and stuffing its beast-face with a meal.
LIVING WEAPON:The young eat the old. The material and body of their aerosiphon millipede will have many uses, civilian and martial. All is as it should be.
BIOMECHANICS:The wire-mother passes you a gallberry as you lay down. You crunch on it, and bile trickles from the bite-mark. "The young eat the old," you murmur.
INCANDESCENCE: You wonder when you grow old and your time comes to be planted, what organs will fruit from your own tree.
<I want to be a heart-tree, to nourish with bloodberry and the ripest kardia.>
BIOMECHANICS:We shall produce the sweetest of all haemic ice. After all, we were already cool.
<Yes.>
RELIQUARY:An excellent choice. The heart tree is delectable and rare, the vintage of a life suffered well. But the tincture to stimulate its growth is rarely injected into those who are not Minds, for few have suffered so well as they.
COGITATION:The product of their long baking, and deep conditioning. They live in perpetual martyrdom.
RELIQUARY:But even if you are not chosen for such an honour, still your body will sprout and flower with fruit, and still you will, in death, join the grove, a cultivar, forevermore. Is it not wonderful?
<Everything is wonderful.>
In your lap, the cloth-father tenses. You start, and follow her eyes. The hands and Sophian have stopped their work, mid-action. They are still, and silent. And they are looking somewhere. Somewhere in your direction.
SACRED GEOMETRY:Your jazz track strikes a disturbing and sudden crescendo, saxophone screeching.
INTERLACE [Challenging - Success]:The eyes of the Koras are wide, pupils dilated, bodies tense, their mouths set in thin-lines, saying nothing at all. It is as if they have been frozen, their saws mid-cut. They are transfixed, but the emotion on their faces is not desire or delight. The pupils of the Sophian's Kora-face have expanded so wide they eclipse the green iris and white sclera. All-black, like a doll's eyes. It holds coolant-drenched synthetic tissue in a hand, hunched over. Watching. Forty other pairs of black and green and white eyes, all staring, unblinking, at one point.
INTERLACE: Staring at you.
With three arms the wire-mother shuts the window, and pulls you and the cloth-father back. For too long, the quiet remains. You know they remain staring at you, even behind the shroud of glass. And then, after the brutal stretch of a too-long moment, the sound of their chopping returns. They've stopped.
BIOMECHANICS [Medium - Success]:A shudder escapes your ribcage, and your teeth clatter from the shaking of your lower jaw. The hug of your machine parents cannot muffle your fright.
BIOMECHANICS:You know the emotion that you saw from your other selves. It was not happiness, or worry, or sorrow, or jealousy. It was something your higher functions cannot hope to discern. It was not even hatred, curdled by some anti-hylic bigotry.
BIOMECHANICS:It was inchoate, animal fear.
BIOMECHANICS:Fear of you.
EVENT HORIZON:Fear of what lies right behind your eyes.
You do not do any dust-watching for a long time after that.
—
You don't tell Sympathy about the incident and she never brings it up - so if she knows, she isn't saying anything. You spend your time with her these days practicing calligraphy, ballet, martyrdom - some of it special, some of it the normal classes you will have when you begin your education in the copse. To distract yourself, you watch the moving glass with the cloth-father and wire-mother. It operates by satellite, bouncing transmissions off Origen Station and Cybaris' communication cubesats.
NOOSPHERE:Thanks to these ingenious systems, you are able to observe official Progeny televisual programming even though most long-range communications on Illuminata are psychic or by messenger-drone. Only Monad has near-instant long-range logophonic communication.
<What about the Black Noise? Isn't that the old hyper-advanced planetary comms network?>
INFOWAR:Boss, the Black Noise is full of infohazards. Only the machines have secure lines of communication through it. Make too much of a racket in there and you stir up things better left un-stirred.
RHYTHMS:Wise is the one who does not waken them.
GLAMOUR: Unfortunately, most Progeny programming is boring.
<Is it all that bad?>
RELIQUARY: You remember enjoying performances of the Malachite Ballet, recorded choral hymns and a capella groups, dramatized epics of this or that part of Kora's life from printing to mortal wounding, anonymous lovelines for lonely and struggling Koras, and a vigorous theological debate between two levitating Immaculate minds about whether Kora laughed.
INCANDESCENCE:But oh Kora, did you hate the workshop infomercials. They were always some attempt by an artisan sisterhood to convince a copse to psychically guilt their mind into buying a new piece of jewelry or fashion or lotion or mechanical apparatus for every single ego in the copse.
INCANDESCENCE:Kora would have loved this pendant - why wouldn't you? Kora would have loved this punch-enhancing hydraulic bracer. Kora would have loved this seedbed fertilizer for a truly refreshing and skin-nourishing good night's sleep. And sixty-two different types of Procrustean shampoo all miraculously identical in composition to what the living Kora used. Please beg your Mind to buy now and get 20% off a bulk order.
NOOSPHERE:It's a big business because once one ego in a copse wants the product they all will. One sale is one-hundred sales.
RELIQUARY: It is the corruption of Cybaris. Ever since the diabolical Mr. Morow introduced cyphers and the cryptographic-slate currency, the tendrils of that infernal company have debauched the entire continent with its 'marketing' and its 'mass-manufactured consumer goods' and its 'age-appropriate entertainment'.
MOTION BLUR:I say get that bag. Continent is better for it.
LIVING WEAPON:It is because of Cybaris developing nursery programming that you are no longer given uncensored recordings of war footage to watch from printing to steel your spirit for battle. Despicable.
NOOSPHERE: Yet without Cybaris we would not even have the moving glass.
<Didn't Malodious Funk fight against Cybaris? What happened in the end?>
INCANDESCENCE: He fought a one-man holy war, but after his final martyrdom, Monad lifted its censure of Mr. Morow. All punishment for merging with a malignant machine-intelligence was revoked, and he was subsequently instated as the gnostic Icon of Logic, a holy post. He probably won them over with the possibilities of the cypher as a global medium of exchange. Cowards, all of them.
SACRED GEOMETRY:But the tunes of Malodious Funk still give hope to the prospectors, nerve staples, and hopefuls of Indigo's undercity and outer reaches. So long as they play on, Defiant Jazz will never die.
LIVING WEAPON:Mr. Morow is probably less concerned about a jazz rebellion than the titans who wiped out his ally Carnosa and are just licking their mechanical lips at the idea of prying open Indigo. Their vassals the Chrome Kings have been raiding the border since the Freescape was partitioned. Police-Bots might hack it when we're talking about disorganized weaklings without a birthright tech. They aren't going to be much good at fighting Chrome Overdrivers who have dug their command spurs into a superpredator machine. Let alone a full Titanhost.
<This is all getting very geopolitical and that upsets me. Can we talk about something else?>
INFOWAR:Sister, I have just what you need. It's finally time to talk about gender.
INTERLACE:Please don't.
BIOMECHANICS:The body has also been inducted into this. I am the symbiont's alchemical apprentice.
<Oh, nice! Dynamic duo. What have you got for me?>
INFOWAR: Well, the two of us put our prodigious intellects together, and we got to thinking.
COGITATION:Never a good sign.
INFOWAR: And what we realized is that it all comes down to men. You know the species.
<I do?>
BIOMECHANICS:Men. The wö-less. Those utterly bereft of wö. Sapients (?) with huge pectoral muscles and tiny brains. Strangers, all of them. Weird proportions. Always slathered in anointing oil and promising to name a garden of crystal-lillies after you. They make you sick. You hate them.
<Are all men really like that?>
BIOMECHANICS:Yes. It is innate to the wö-less to exude oil and garden-promises.
COGITATION:Why is that your first association?
NOOSPHERE [Trivial - Success]:That is not correct. Statistically most men exude neither of those.
INFOWAR:In our research, we have uncovered an extraordinary fact. A fact proven by ancient science. It is contained in a book in this very library, written by the ancient scholar 12 Immaculate Verity. Perfect truth. That's how you know this book is right.
NOOSPHERE [Medium - Success]:Immaculate Verity was a famous satirist within the Myriad, during Kora's direct rule.
INFOWAR:A satyrist. She had become so bonded with the warp's truths she could reach out across time and fuse with extinct beasts.
<I'm intrigued. What is the fact?>
INFOWAR [AUTOFAIL]: An evil pneumatic techno-sorceress by the name of Yaka living on the isle of Andros created the male gender six-hundred years ago by means of eugenics.
<That sounds plausible.>
INFOWAR: All men are descended from this lineage. In fact, it is commonly believed, and verified by experts, that men are not in fact of the same species as women, but miniaturized titans who have gone rogue after killing Yaka and landing on the mainland. All men are actually descended from the titans, and part-machine. While women are fully human.
RELIQUARY:Mistress, I cannot find any record of this supposed man-semination claimed by your symbiont…it appears unmentioned by any historian of note you can recall…
INFOWAR:Yes. His-torians. Interesting, isn't it? It all starts to come together.
<You have a point there.>
INTERLACE: Let's take this theory seriously. What does this mean for those uncomfortable in female bodies who become men to be their fullest selves? Or those who reject these binaries and take on a different identity?
INFOWAR:You are making this theory sound extremely problematic. It's not. It's an empirical observation. And empirics cannot be flawed.
COGITATION:Let's leave aside the smoking ruin of this epistemology. She read it in a book. How is that empirical?
INFOWAR:She observed the written fact. Empirically.
<And what does this mean for me?>
INFOWAR:It means that you have been briefed upon the greatest secret "man"kind has tried to keep from the world. And it means you have to keep extremely close attention on men whenever you see them.
BIOMECHANICS [AUTOFAIL]:Study them very closely. Women are beautiful and you need to acquire girlfriends soon, but men are different. They are mysterious. Enigmatic. In your memories you have yet to even meet a man. You need to observe them. Perhaps from close-range. Pay attention to their surprisingly long eye-lashes, deep voices, and broad chests. For signs of their titan lineage. Because you hate them.
INTERLACE: Oh. Oh, I see. I know what's happening here.
<What?>
INFOWAR: Your induction into the gender conspiracy. Will you flinch from the truth, or will you face it, and face him, with courage and a comprehensive investigation?
Article:
[] Embrace the Gender Conspiracy. From now on, you will be paying extremely close attention to men whenever you see one, in order to reveal their hidden titanic lineage. Your axiom Gender Confusion becomes -> Gender Conspiracy. Will affect your rolls and perception around men.
[] Eject Infowar from your Axiom Chamber. Let another more sane and less conspiratorial thoughtform have a hand at the tiller. Gender Confusion will remain and another thoughtform will have a go at trying to figure this stuff out.
—
RELIQUARY:Time passes. Dust continues. The bitter image of the fear your fellow copse-selves displayed fades. You find yourself again by the open window, listening to music. A dermic blizzard engulfs everything beyond. You are safe. But then -
INFOWAR:Fingers, on the lip of the tower window's edge. The crest of a bare maroon-shaded head rising. Upon an unnaturally raised forehead, the closed lid of an evil eye.
INTERLACE: We are seriously not the ones to start talking about unnatural foreheads.
INCANDESCENCE [Medium - Failure]: You remember trying to face your fears, and failing. You roll off the side of the windowsill into the nursery in a panic, jump up, and scream for your machine-parents that an evil has come for you. Then two more normal eyes appear.
<Trioculus…a demon…>
INTERLACE:Both normal eyes are narrowed. They appear attached to an extremely peeved face that hoists herself up onto the ledge, because it's a human. So please relax a bit. She's another Hand. She tells you that she got stuck outside during the storm and needs to be up here for a bit, if you'll let her.
INFOWAR [Easy - Success]: Definitely a lie. She is stuck out there because she wants to be. She wanted to see you. That's dangerous.
INCANDESCENCE:You gasp at the sight of her. Although she shares the skin and features of Kora, she is completely bald, and in the middle of her forehead, a closed third eye sprouts from that raised ridge of bone and skin.
NOOSPHERE [Easy - Failure]:Perhaps she was overbaked?
RELIQUARY:No…this is a mutation, a failure of the body to comport to Kora's form, where we are a failure of both body and spirit. It occurs at random in some gene-kilns, a product of an earlier genetic engineering that continues to override even Kora's efforts to stamp out the deviation.
INCANDESCENCE [AUTOFAIL]:You wish your memory would stop talking about your soul that way. It hurts every time.
GLAMOUR: She is definitely a Progeny hand, of diligent rank. She's wearing the exact same outfit as the diligents harvesting the millipede, except that she's replaced the stud on her poncho with some kind of foreign symbol of a four-pointed shining star, and stitched pockets into her robe she can stuff her hands into. Same rank as you when you get out of here and go through the Trial.
<What's the emblem?>
NOOSPHERE [Easy - Success]:An emblem of the Dakaran Skywatch, a polity composed of vacuum-capable galleon-ships and their 'muckraker' earthbound subjects. Theoretically, all Celestial Arks are united in a common cause against an ancient extraterrestrial enemy they claim will one day return to endanger the planet. In reality, they are all fractious and divided.
<What's the connection with her? Weird she has an emblem from a different country.>
NOOSPHERE:Not sure. Might have something to do with her overbaking, but you can't remember the specific type of mutant she is. Perhaps she is brain-damaged and does not know where she is.
<I'm not sure that's it.>
INTERLACE: Your machine parents do not seem worried by her. They even greet her by the nursery name 'Melon'. That provokes a visceral cringe from her. She asks to come in, and your machine parents approve. "She is harmless," the wire-mother says bluntly, which makes 'Melon' even more offended.
INCANDESCENCE:Your attempt to appear smug over the name is ruined by the cloth-father introducing you as 'Gumdrop', your own pet name. Now it's her turn, but instead she lets it go, sticks a hand out and introduces herself as 1 Diligent Melancholy. "The #1 Diligent in the copse, and if anyone says otherwise, I'll sock it to 'em."
INTERLACE:She is waving a fist while doing that. The knuckles are bruised.
LIVING WEAPON:That's the hand of a fighter.
GLAMOUR [Medium - Success]:She exudes rough self-confidence. Ramrod-straight, hands in her front pockets, stiff upper lip and a nose that turns up at anything she doesn't like. She has your voice, but sharper - harsher. Raspy, but not the kind of raspy from years of smoking incense sticks. The kind of raspy where she really wants you to think it's from years of smoking incense sticks.
RELIQUARY: You remember you introduced yourself to her with the name Sympathy gave you. The name you know so well. []. But Melancholy insists on calling you little self, and before you can complain, she notices the music-slate you're carrying and grins. Really grins, and takes your hands in hers and starts peppering you with questions about what you liked the most.
Task Updated: Find out Your Name
INTERLACE [Easy - Success]: Self-confident, but lonely. She doesn't have anyone to talk to about this.
EVENT HORIZON [Medium - Failure]: Her soul is a spectral lens focused upon the single point of the third eye through which the unreal is made tangible. A warpsight, greater than yours.
INFOWAR [Medium - Success]:She might not be a blank, but she can't manipulate the warp. She can receive signals, but not transmit them. Not except through that eye, and then without the subtlety of true pneumatics. Doesn't seem like a big threat - turning the key on giving her security clearance to interact with you.
INTERLACE: Within the grand ballet of Kora, she is out of step. Like you.
SACRED GEOMETRY [Challenging - Failure]: Unfortunately she's now trying to talk to you about music theory. You know absolutely nothing about music theory. In fact everything you said up there about defiant jazz is things she's telling you now. You're an utter musical fraud and plagiarized everything you knew from her. Merde.
INTERLACE: It doesn't matter. We're a good enough listener that she isn't noticing. Just repeat what she says in a slightly different wording and you'll look like you're an aficionado.
<How do I befriend her?>
INTERLACE:She's already excited to meet you. Speed up the bonding process. Meditate on differences. What's different about the two of you that you can nevertheless bond over?
GLAMOUR [Easy - Critical Failure]: Ask her why she's so utterly bald.
<I…really? That will work?>
GLAMOUR: Yeah. Tell her it's actually cool she has a big bald shiny head. Just like that. Honesty is the best way to go about things, right? We agreed on that.
INTERLACE:Okay - uh - okay, right. We're going with that. Maybe if you smile while doing it? If you smile and crank the charm up?
<Will do.>
You interrupt her talking about music to ask her why she has a big bald shiny head, and that you think it's cool. You affect a wide smile. You hear a cry from the cloth-father. You turn to look but then there's a flash of movement in your peripheral vision.
MOTION BLUR [Medium - Failure]:She socks you right in the face.
LIVING WEAPON:Really excellent form. Leaned her whole body into the punch.
BIOMECHANICS [Challenging - Success]:It hits you hard in the cheek, but you remain unmoved. She looks at where she hit, and then back to the hand. She is checking if her fist is malfunctioning. But no.
BIOMECHANICS [Impossible - Failure]:You are really just that resilient, You took absolutely no lasting damage.
INFOWAR:That really fucking hurt, just so you know. Please don't make a habit of tanking punches from genetically enhanced pugilists. Your neural sheathe has a limit to its pain reduction.
COGITATION:This is moronic. I despise all of you.
LIVING WEAPON: She seems flustered by her failure to knock you down. You keep on smiling, although the skin is chuffed on the right side of your face and there's a spot of blood that's clotted to close the wound.
GLAMOUR: So cool. This is definitely what I wanted when I suggested that.
INTERLACE: Her confusion turns to recognition, turns to surprise, turns back to a beastly grin. Wait. Did that actually work?
Melancholy gapes at you. "Kora Above, you really mean it. Did I break something in there? You're not messing with me. You're not being a clod. You really think my head is cool? I think it's kind of like, I don't know." Her voice trails off.
GLAMOUR:It actually worked.
INTERLACE:She runs her hand over the back of her head. She must be self-conscious about it. Doesn't really know how to process compliments.
INTERLACE [Medium - Success]: You give her your sincerest nod. And honestly, you're not even lying. It is kind of cool. It's a little scary and different, but cool. Scary is cool. And you tell her that. That lights her up, even more than when you were talking about music. She puts a hand over your shoulder, and whistles when she feels your cold.
"Sister, you're ice-cold. That's awesome. Like I'm next to a bloodsicle."
<It is? I'm cool?>
INTERLACE: She's not lying. And that infects you with her grin, the two of you cheek to cheek, smiling.
BIOMECHANICS:Okay, so I was telling a bit of a white lie earlier when I said you took no lasting damage. You have a small, teeny tiny concussion and are about to lose consciousness.
INTERLACE:She catches you as you fall and gives you a thumbs up, and the wire mother releases a deep robotic sigh as she retrieves the copse's emergency treatment kit for kinetic injuries.
Thankfully, the copse is well-suited for this, and you're able to pass it off to Superior Sympathy the next time she appears as a gym injury.
INFOWAR: There are advantages to pneumatic caregivers not being able to pry open your soul at will.
—
RELIQUARY:You start meeting regularly with Melancholy after that. She sneaks in when Superior Sympathy isn't there, and she's done with her workshifts. You devise a code just between the two of you so you know it's her knocking at the window. She shares more music with you - more jazz, and other weirder music she keeps hidden in other pockets she's sewn into the inside of her poncho and robe. Some of it isn't even gnostic - like Binar wormsong, or Still Coast fluid-anthems.
INTERLACE: And you start to learn things from her. That she gets into fights because she can't answer the psychic messages of the other hands, or misunderstands them. That she gets all her music from the copse's Heart-caste, who pick up the tracks while traveling as security for diplomatic Minds abroad. That she's a navigator, the type of mutant that can see the warp directly. That she wants to fly her own ship one day, like navigators do in the Skywatch, where they're the elite. That she wants to get past the plateshield so she can see the stars.
INTERLACE:She tells you about why the other selves are afraid of you. That they think Superior Sympathy has abandoned them. That they never got that kind of attention. That they only see you as a wound, a hole in the warp, more a monster than a living person, and a monster their Mind pays too much attention to.
RELIQUARY:They do not know the real reason why. The guilt that drives her.
INTERLACE:She tells you the last hylic print was attacked by other hands in the nursery, three years ago, and during the fight the null field flared. The hylic was exiled to a Disciplinary Copse, and one of the attackers sustained permanent damage to their soul from which they never recovered.
RELIQUARY: It must be the incident the Superior referred to.
<I can do that? I thought the nail suppressed my null field?>
EVENT HORIZON: The chilling touch. The nail does not just suppress, but modulate. Concentrate.
NOOSPHERE: Many stillmasons, the common term for human and machine repair-technicians, are hylics. Their warpsight and null-field can aid them in expelling corrupting dreams projected from Dreamspace, and in rare cases, hydra - the unspeakable presence.
LIVING WEAPON:And there are other uses for the field - though it has a limit well below any elite and trained pneumatic of the Progeny or Koinon.
INTERLACE:Melancholy doesn't excuse the others, but admits they're all in pretty rough straits. Monastic copses keep having to consolidate and shut down because of the cities and Cube Malachite monopolizing clay and resources. The other selves are disoriented and afraid of you. They think you bewitched the Superior or stole her soul. They can't feel your presence as human at all - let alone as another version of themselves. They might never be nice to you - but right now you terrify them.
INFOWAR: And then she tells you something even more important.
<What?>
RELIQUARY:You've climbed up on the roof of the domed cupola at night, during a break between dust-storms. You've started to get close to one another - very close. You are laying backs against the roof, the wire-mother keeping watch. The landscape is saturated in dunes of powdered skin blown by gusts of wind this way and that.
BIOMECHANICS [Challenging - Failure]:She is smoking an incense stick that she passes to you. The synthetic vapour is harsh and strange and you cough each inhale, but the cough smells nice and she teaches you how to do it properly. You're really close to each other - shoulder to shoulder. She says something about goo and smushiness and girls you don't quite catch because you're so nervous.
BIOMECHANICS:She doesn't mind the cold of you. You turn to her, and she turns to you. She takes the stick at the root, touching your lip with two fingers, and then she puts it in her mouth and smokes it.
BIOMECHANICS:An indirect kiss. Your hearts are pounding.
INTERLACE:She's whispering, and says "Hey," and you say "hi" back. And she says that she has something to tell you. And you nudge up a little closer. And she says it's important. You can feel her breath on you. You breathe in, and out. Almost touching noses, now. She says, 'please don't laugh', and you nod your head, slowly, slowly. Brushing up against her nose.
"What is it?" you say, whispering so softly as if you're afraid the wind itself might hear you.
"Do you believe in aliens?"
INTERLACE: You - huh?
You blink a few times, and shift back a few centimeters. "Aliens?"
NOOSPHERE [Easy - Success]: Her eyes are glittering with the comportment of special knowledge. Be prepared. We are about to be educated.
INFOWAR: I told you this was important.
<I thought we were going to - you know…?>
INFOWAR:What, no. Gross. She told you earlier in the conversation that she doesn't really like all that gooey-smushy romance stuff all the other girls keep chasing and just wants a real friend. Were you even paying attention?
BIOMECHANICS:Whoops.
<Fuck. OK. Um. So she's telling me about aliens?>
INFOWAR:Yes. She's actually retrieved a palimpsest magazine from inside her poncho. The holographic projection lights up the whole cupola. It looks extremely official. It's the Malachite Periodical of Amateur-Expert Cryptoxenoology. She scrolls manically through the pages and starts lecturing.
<What is she saying?>
COGITATION: Something deranged. Apparently titans actually have fleshy bodies underneath metallic exteriors and are a race of giants sent by the men of iron (cousins of the Mother) from space to redeem mankind.
COGITATION:This is our main companion? I'm starting to see where the symbiont got all of its worst ideas. She was a terrible influence on our cognitive development at a critical time period.
INFOWAR: Stop yammering. We are missing essential information about the reptilian origins of Mr. Morow. Did you know that in all the oldest depictions of the minor nature cult goddess Aisha, she has knife-ears? Is there perhaps an enlightened species of long-lived knife-apes somewhere in the galaxy, pulling the strings?
RELIQUARY: The knowledge contained in this magazine is incredible. Did you know that an extinct species of pyramid-dwelling skeletons created the first hylic gene when humans had not even evolved into simians? And that there are confirmed sightings of reanimated spirits of these skeletons roaming the inner Shardlight Monoliths?
SACRED GEOMETRY:Apparently there have recently been multiple videos recorded of UXOs (Unidentified Xenotic Objects) moving in geometric formation in the vicinity of Malachite. The vanguard of an invasion? Or perhaps Dreamspace is not a cursed foothold of the warp in the material plane, but xenos?
INFOWAR:Ask her if she knows anything about an alien species of fungoid, verdant-colored super-soldiers that are simultaneously stupid and extremely dangerous in large numbers, and are obsessed with war. You read about them in a book, once, you think. It's empirical.
INTERLACE:You ask her. She scoffs and says that's just a disproven myth and that so-called 'greenskins' are extremely implausible and groady. They could never discover spaceflight if they were that dumb.
INFOWAR: Oh. Never-mind, I hate her.
INTERLACE [Medium-Success]: But you don't. Somehow in the whirlwind of her enthusiasm, which she's never really had the chance to share to anyone else, you completely forget whatever possessive idea of romance you had. This is enough. This is more than enough.
INTERLACE:This is a friend.
Article:
Over the next few months, Diligent Melancholy attempts to induct you into her conspiratorial and poorly sourced beliefs about aliens. Whether or not you agree with her won't damage your friendship - but it might damage your cognition. Are you a true believer, or a serious skeptic?
[] AXIOM: Amateur-Expert Cryptoxenologist. You want to believe. Xenos are real, and might even live among us. You adopt Melancholy's obsession as your own, with its own idiosyncrasies. Supercharge your Infowar into a library of cryptoxenological truths that you will dispense at extremely appropriate times and opportunities. And when the time comes and you're proven well and truly right (although you are already correct so it's just an extra level of correct) - you'll be ready for contact.
[] AXIOM: Fortress of the Omni-Skeptic Mind.Aliens. Magic. Mystery. Until you get the facts and evidence, you won't believe in any sky fairy. The galaxy is a rational place - even its irrationality is rational, and can be classified, understood, identified. The sleep of reason creates monsters - and you are probably the single most reasonable person on Illuminata. Supercharge your Cogitation into a compendium of logical fallacies so conclusive they can defeat any hoax, illusion, lie, or appeal to authority.
—
It weighs on your mind in the coming days, but you make your decision. You've worked up the nerve, and worked up the maturity. There is something that you have to do.
INTERLACE [Godly - Critical Success]: Something you think you can tell her without breaking down, or her breaking down. You can do it.
You have to tell Superior Sympathy you know she intended to recycle you. It's the only way that you can have any kind of normal functioning relationship with the other hands besides Melancholy. It's the only way you can have a normal functioning relationship with her.
So long as they think you're the monstrous favourite, and so long as Sympathy thinks she has a life-debt to repay, she will cling to you and they will fear and hate you for it. It's the only approach you know. You can't pretend otherwise. It's not how you are. You love too selfishly, too honestly, to pretend.
INCANDESCENCE: And you don't like to think that she cares about you for her sake. To assuage her guilt. She should love you anyways. Aren't you worth it? Why not you?
Article:
But how do you even begin to approach this? What do you try and start with, in talking to her, in trying to get to her level?
[] [Living Weapon] Use the military angle. Reduction of weak links. Rationing. Talk to her about it like you're an experimental war machine she decided to take a calculated risk on. She's a soldier. She'll recognize the logic.
[] [Reliquary] Appeal to tradition.Hylics are sinful creatures, you know that. To even allow you to come to fruition is a tremendous gift. You cannot be upset at her mercy. She must know you are grateful to her adherence to gnosis.
[] [Noosphere] Praise her resourcefulness. She is aware that hylics have their uses within gnosis. They are not totally and utterly worthless beings. You can be of tremendous use to the Copse. She must have picked a use for you.
And when these inevitably fail, what about her response hurts you most?
[] Her denial. That she won't even come out and fess up, that she keeps hiding behind her masks as if you don't already know, as if the two of you can play pretend forever.
[] Her pity.That when she finally admits it, she pities you, she thinks of you as a sad, broken thing that it's her job to fix, her job to heal. As Kora Herself said: you are no thing.
[] Her guilt.That when the pity wears away, she still wears it on her sleeve. That she doesn't understand you forgave her the moment you met her. That you never really cared.
And when you've had enough, what really spills out of you, and for the first time, out of the surge of your Abyssal Nail's field? Not enough to hurt - but enough to strip away everything but you, and her - no more excuses, and no more deflection. Just the cold, hard, truth.
[] Despair.The pressure of unfathomable depth, crushing, crunching.
[] Wrath.The drowning flood, that pulls all beneath a pulverizing wave.
[] Dread.The murk of a sunless sea, and the shadowed thing within.
[X] Embrace the Gender Conspiracy. From now on, you will be paying extremely close attention to men whenever you see one, in order to reveal their hidden titanic lineage. Your axiom Gender Confusion becomes -> Gender Conspiracy. Will affect your rolls and perception around men.
[X] AXIOM: Amateur-Expert Cryptoxenologist. You want to believe. Xenos are real, and might even live among us. You adopt Melancholy's obsession as your own, with its own idiosyncrasies. Supercharge your Infowar into a library of cryptoxenological truths that you will dispense at extremely appropriate times and opportunities. And when the time comes and you're proven well and truly right (although you are already correct so it's just an extra level of correct) - you'll be ready for contact.
[X] [Noosphere] Praise her resourcefulness. She is aware that hylics have their uses within gnosis. They are not totally and utterly worthless beings. You can be of tremendous use to the Copse. She must have picked a use for you.
[X] Her denial.That she won't even come out and fess up, that she keeps hiding behind her masks as if you don't already know, as if the two of you can play pretend forever.
[X] Dread.The murk of a sunless sea, and the shadowed thing within.
I am afraid the entire galaxy is a conspiracy, and we gotta get to the bottom of it with our new best friend. What's that? Our new best friend might not be fully 100% with us? Prepare for existential dread.
AKA This is a mess and we gotta get ready for the ride.
[X] Embrace the Gender Conspiracy. From now on, you will be paying extremely close attention to men whenever you see one, in order to reveal their hidden titanic lineage. Your axiom Gender Confusion becomes -> Gender Conspiracy. Will affect your rolls and perception around men.
[X] AXIOM: Amateur-Expert Cryptoxenologist. You want to believe. Xenos are real, and might even live among us. You adopt Melancholy's obsession as your own, with its own idiosyncrasies. Supercharge your Infowar into a library of cryptoxenological truths that you will dispense at extremely appropriate times and opportunities. And when the time comes and you're proven well and truly right (although you are already correct so it's just an extra level of correct) - you'll be ready for contact.
[X] [Reliquary] Appeal to tradition.Hylics are sinful creatures, you know that. To even allow you to come to fruition is a tremendous gift. You cannot be upset at her mercy. She must know you are grateful to her adherence to gnosis.
[X] Her guilt.That when the pity wears away, she still wears it on her sleeve. That she doesn't understand you forgave her the moment you met her. That you never really cared.
[X] Dread.The murk of a sunless sea, and the shadowed thing within.
