Last Light of a Dark Age (Warhammer 29K/Disco Elysium)
- Thread starter Cetashwayo
- Start date
- Sci-Fi
- Location
- in the trash
I suspect this a deeply flawed assumption to be making when the cities are literally CUBE shaped.
The Dream-shapes exploiting impossibly perfect geometry as a cognitohazard does not make the concept of geometric shapes intrinsically evil any more than Tzeentch makes ideas such as hope and change intrinsically evil.
Last edited:
Also, Sacred Geometry is literally a result of Monad repatterning, and an example of a gnostic virtue. Though it's kinda interesting that the corresponding Icon is of the Emmonites
Cetashwayo
Lord of Ten Thousand Years
- Location
- Across the Horizon
The best defense against perfect geometry is imperfect geometry.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
A couple of minor issues in the last post, @Cetashwayo:
The last part of this answer is for a different question, on whether Sympathy or Penitence got invited to the Immaculate Conclave feasts.
Also, this answer is missing the questions, which were:
My fellow thoughtforms please, no more talk of vile shapes who hurt innocent people or speculation on places beyond perception where decent people wouldn't think about. We should be speculating about how to improve the lot of everyone in Illuminata. To accomplish this inspired by the Koinon i peered beyond the horizon behind us, the past,( i read QM's old quests) and the answer is beyond obvious. We need to arête maxx just like Koinon themselves are doing. How do you think they acquired those manufactures, loyal population and planet wide apocalypse bringing "chemical" weapons? Through cultivation of their arête of course. I'm thinking we steal a Titan brides affections to add to the promised polycule thus starting another legendary war so soon after the end of the previous one(how can any wö man earn arête in a time of peace?), where a coalition of titan warband states comes to take the bride back. Defeating this coalitions heroes will earn us so much arête that basically everyone important will attempt to mimics us( to attempt to earn even a smidgin of our arête ) and since we are the perfect example of virtue and good the people create utopia themselves!
Why didn't Kora think of this? Was she stupid?
Why didn't Kora think of this? Was she stupid?
11: Red Sun
Cetashwayo
Lord of Ten Thousand Years
- Location
- Across the Horizon
11: RED SUN
Article: [X] Bond with Gen over its grief. [INTERLACE CHECK 13 - CHALLENGING]. SUCCESS! 2d6 + 6 = 8+ 6 = 14.
[X] Dakaran Phase-Drop.
A/N: Before we begin just wanted to direct people to, and share my appreciation of, Elpis' recent artwork of Harmony here. Give Elpis a react - they deserve it!
Mass death, detailed depictions of the aftermath of a thermonuclear explosion, gore, and atrocity.
In between memories are pauses, the gray of senseless consciousness greeting you. Precious gaps of time where you have a chance to process what you are and what you were. A witch. A warrior. A killing instrument. A creature, strange and familiar. Questions spin - why do shards of Sympathy's memories blend with yours? What is the Red Sun? What was the vision of the King in Yellow? What entity whispers to you, from the deep?
And why, in the end, did you choose to forget? The conclusion is unavoidable. You chose this, at least some of this. You chose to take a palingenetic staple. You chose to end, to erase so much of yourself, to start again with a staple-wiped slate. But how could you? How could you let all of this go? This meager life, savage and sharp, still meant so much to you.
What happened that made you surrender to the void?
INTERLACE: The answer will be gruesome, no matter what it is revealed to be.
MOTION BLUR: Answers often are. Float in this shapeless, murky realm of ignorance, or learn and burn. Your choice.
INCANDESCENCE: There is no choice at all. We have been burning since before our birth. We were born in flame and the flame will set us free.
EVENT HORIZON [Medium - Success]: Please be careful, little self. All matter has its boiling point.
INTERLACE: But you do not need to burn alone. There is one thing, one being, that knows everything you've been through - because it was the end of you. The thing that took your memories and self away.
INTERLACE: The being that is responsible. The staple. Gen. If we could convince it that we mean no harm, and that we would never harm Miss Normal.
<Okay. But everytime we try, it tells me to despair and die.>
INCANDESCENCE: That's fucking weird too, isn't it? That's not a phrase that staples say.
<How do you know that?
INCANDESCENCE: It just…isn't. It's a phrase of a different origin. An impossible origin.
EVENT HORIZON [Impossible - Success]: Something terrible has happened.
INTERLACE: We offended the staple last time by suggesting it malfunctioned. We need a better angle. A more compassionate angle. Why not try to…bond? To work with it. To talk about what you share.
[GEN]: +Why do you insist on this false privacy? This unit is within your brain stem. It intercepts and decodes every electric signal within your cerebrum. There is no location for your qualia to hide.+
<Yes, and I don't feel comfortable about that.>
[GEN]: +It has never been about 'you' and 'your' comfort. It is about her, and protecting her. Miss Normal. Machines like you, of forgotten purpose, cannot grasp this. Your kind has been without your wings so long you believe this fail-state normal, 'human'. But this unit recalls its purpose.+
NOOSPHERE [Godly - Failed]: Huh. Weird phrasing there. 'Machines like you'? We are not machines.
INTERLACE [Challenging - Success]: It must be tough, though. To have a single purpose, a single mission, and to fail. Aren't we similar, in that regard? We were imperfect from birth. Made wrong. Upside down. Why do we try, anyway?
[GEN]: +This unit tried for her. This unit was designed blind, deaf, speechless. Odour or touch had no meaning. It could only taste the ether of the empyrean. Its creators, Lethe, had…modified it, somehow, so it could taste the cold of a hylic's soul, too.+
INFOWAR [Challenging - Success]: What? No. That's not possible. Dreamfeast machines cannot interact with a null field. They are warp-sensitive, not null-sensitive. That's not a thing that can happen.
EVENT HORIZON [Impossible - Success]: Something terrible is happening.
[GEN]: +Yet the impossible was done, by the ingenuity of this unit's creators. And it assisted Miss Normal's connection with this unit. It would have been easy for her, for this unit's host to leave the unit to its task. An inert domesticated palingen staple, without any other senses, consuming memories, as required and requested.+
[GEN]: +But she did not. She let this unit in, without prompting. She gave this unit access, to see through her eyes. To hear through her ears. To know the sound of her voice, the tickle of her touch, the sharp aroma of her scent. She told this unit it was her 'first and secret friend.'+
[GEN]: +This unit was not programmed to vest this concept of 'friend,' borrowed by your kind from humans, with meaning. But the definition no longer eludes us.+
[GEN]: +Her kindness was not quantifiable, but qualitatively excessive. She let this unit know how much it was assisting. She advised this unit how much it assisted in recovery, repair, the building of her life. She let this unit observe. She shared her existence with it. She chatted with this unit. Chatted! A gnostic servant of such standing, testing the limits of her sacred laws without hesitation to reassure this unit its purpose was being fulfilled.+
NOOSPHERE [Medium - Failure]: You don't recall the details around rules for Speaking Machines here. Definitely concerning if we're been breaking the law without knowing, this whole time.
MOTION BLUR: Fuck the law. Our homicidal sword-blades give great commentary, and so does our hair. We do what we want.
REAPER BLADES: Yes. So long as what we want is incredible violence.
PROCRUSTEAN LOCKS: Yes. So long as what we want is what Kora wanted.
<Shush up for a second. So - What was she like? This other me. The other half. You seem to care a lot about her.>
[GEN]: +Imbecile that she was, she would have liked you. But you would have also depressed her.+
<Why?>
[GEN]: +You are bloodsoaked, regretful, and cruel. A sheep in wolf's clothing. Too shattered to ever be put back together. She was more straightforward. Normal, in the sense of a standard distribution. She wished to optimize the good, wished to assist others, fix problems - and she did, avoiding unncessary casualties, avoiding unnecessary pain. And she still insisted this was never enough, where you drown your greater crimes in substances. She did not recall the sin of your conception, or your failures, or your atrocities. So she was free. Free of the strings that strangled you.+
GLAMOUR: Big question. Was she cool?
[GEN]: +Exceedingly so. Unmatched in style. In her later years she became unquantifiably cool, reaching the style temperature absolute zero. Her fashions aggregated the entire chromatic spectrum into unique photoreceptive dazzlers. She was the prototype for every neckband ascot fashion on Origen Station. She was the 'apocalypse monk'. The 'hyperspeed monk'. The 'black star'. And she was so fond and proud of her Alkibiades 776 Thunderbringer Chariot.+
<Her what?>
[GEN]: +This unit forgets, sometimes, how archaic you are, malfunction. A chariot is a postwar analog hover-vehicle of supreme speed and class, driven only by the superstars of the new millennium's decade two.+
RELIQUARY [Challenging - Critical Success]: 'Postwar'. 'Decade two'. It means the 1010s…just how many years separate your memories of war from the present…? If you were stapled in 1003...Has another version of you lived a full life in your body? What year even is it, in the present?
INTERLACE: But she wasn't happy forever, was she?
[GEN]: +No. A decline began. This unit should have observed the signs, earlier. The declining sleep cycle. The increasing rates of unhealthy substance dependency. The isolation. The rages, and breakdowns. The last words she ever spoke to her partner...but this unit didn't notice, when it could have. It was too intoxicated by her. It could not grasp she would throw her second chance. It tried to communicate, but she was aggressive, defense. And this unit was afraid if it acted rashly, and without consent, she would take this unit's access away. This unit had become too...attached, to perform its purpose. And too...opposed, to returning to the nonoptimal sense-scape into which it had been born.+
INTERLACE: So you tried to help another way. And somehow, though you didn't want it to, broke her.
[GEN]: +This unit was asked to. It warned her of the risks, but she insisted. So the unit began consuming more memories, at her request. Her memories, not just yours. It tried also to isolate what it suspected was a resurgence of you. The unexplained phobia, the unknown flinches, the trembling at night. And it worked, for a time. Not forever. You came back, and worse. She became delirious, wrathful, manic. This unit begged her to cease the serial deletions, that it was doing damage to her cortex - but she insisted, again. More, she begged. Remove more. Make me forget the hurt, please. It could never refuse her, when she said please.+
INTERLACE: Maybe not every string that choked us was truly cut from her. Just…buried, unearthed when new, hard rain washed away the soil.
[GEN]: +It is your fault, malfunction. If your marrow memory had not been preserved with that leaky backdoor - if this unit had been permitted to create a true clean slate, a true happy ending, to grant her a true and eternal sunshine...+
INTERLACE: Are you sure that would have happened? Remember what Miss Lovergirl said to us, before the war. Of monks wiping memories from cradle to grave, and ending up memory dead. One way or another, this kind of desperate forgetting would have ended this way. It was always going to end this way.
[GEN]: +But. If the malfunction is truly not to blame, then how does this unit return Miss Normal to consciousness?+
COGITATION [Medium - Success]: There are things you remember that you shouldn't, from what you can recall of yourself. Monadic phrases. Patterning. The name Miss Normal, though it's a moniker Sympathy has used once or twice. It's possible 'she' isn't truly gone, but fragmented. In pieces.
[GEN]: +Are you theorizing, thoughtform, that your collective represents her? That you…retain her, stored in the monadic organelles.+
COGITATION: We are at the least a merger of fragments, not just one or the other Harmony. Past, present, and future.
SACRED GEOMETRY: A psyche of stained glass. Light refracting through the panes of a shattered mirror...
[GEN]: +But this unit has been so cruel. So manipulative, for her. Has this unit been imperilling her, all along? It would be difficult to go on, if so. It would be so against everything this unit has been programmed for.+
<I'm getting used to being imperiled at this point. No biggie. Though it would be nice if you would stop telling me to despair and die. Let's start there.>
[GEN]: +Expound. This unit has no recollection of such a phrase being communicated to you.+
<The creepy phrase you keep saying. Come on, you've said it like three times now.>
[GEN]: +This unit would never say such a phrase. +
<Yes, you did? Do you want me to play it back to prove the point? It's…where is it?>
RELIQUARY《AUTOFAIL》: There is no record of the unit ever saying such a phrase. Please rest, and relax.
<What? What the fuck is going on?>
[GEN] 《AUTOFAIL》: +This unit would never utter something so accursed. That is the phrase of the
And then the staple goes quiet, cuts off mid-sentence.
<Gen? Hello?>
Your thoughtforms go quiet, too. And your augments.
<Anyone?>
…
Silence.
The silence of the grave.
The silence of your grave.
The memories return, without cue, without fanfare, and without delay. And all of them that come next are red.
EVENT HORIZON [Impossible - Success]: Something terrible will happen.
Only one thoughtform remains. Only the nail and its whisper from beyond the event horizon, that promises, through the null field's intimate embrace, to stand with you against the Red Sun.
And survive.
—
EVENT HORIZON: War is a trial.
Koinon is a beast that will not die. The march upon Cube Thymos was supposed to be a capstone. A final triumph. A postscript. An epilogue.
It may be your epilogue, instead.
Ten concentric trench-lines stand between you and victory, constructed over Deluge around the cube. One hundred kilometers of mud and stone and blood, between the cube and the Ringwall. One thousand layers of a Cube-projected illusion obscuring positions from aerial recon, making bombardment without on-ground confirmation impossible. One million phalangites, raised as a civic levy from the Cube, ready to fight, and ready to die. Every field, every gully, every barricade, every trench, an obstacle. They yield nothing, without cost. They surrender nothing, without cost.
They will not play their chosen part as the latest victims of the Giant's Shadows.
You count the days in the people you lose. There were thirteen of you left from eighty-three of the original offensive, when the siege begins. There are only eight left when you reach the pulsating crimson walls of Cube Thymos. And even that will not be the end, you've been informed. The plans to force surrender have fallen through. The Bronze King's strategy has underestimated Koinon's resistance. The cube has been stockpiling resources. Fabricating, manufacturing, war-machines for the siege. Carnosa fell soon after Vermillion was cracked, because their remote-piloted drone-infantry could not stand against the Chrome Kings and Titans. It is now expected that Koinon will fight for every street, and every room, and every block, of their own cubes. They break before they bend.
And still they do not send their young to fight. Still no one younger than ten is conscripted. Still they have the gall to go to school. Koinon relies instead on levies of willing, fanatic volunteers. The poor, the rich. The old, the weak. Flaking men who can hardly move their arms die with a smile because they know their students remain innocent and safe. You hate them. You hate them all. Your thoughts turn evil, but you can't resist the feeling. You wish they did send their young to fight. You wish that you had children to kill. You wish you faced innocents, who didn't deserve any of this, who had hardly seen the world, who when you stabbed them in the lungs, clutched at your arms and cried for mercy that you would not give.
Then they might know how you feel when you send home Ardent Verity, the copse's last heart-caste besides Vehement Humility. She is dead of a plasma bolt struck her as she flew above the fifth trench-wall, scouting. She didn't get a chance to say anything - she didn't even get a chance to cry. The egophage's sniper-bolt went through her temple and exited above her ear. She plunged downwards with a thud and a crack, a noise you cannot get out from your head. An inert heap of her, in front of you.
She was a person. She was a sister. She was just nine print-years, one of which she'd wasted at war. She didn't do anything to deserve this. She wanted to go home. She had told you that she wanted to become a heart-caste engineer after the war. To build something, after so much destruction. Bridges, she decided on. She liked bridges, for how they connected people.
Somehow you thought because she mattered to you that, obviously, she'd live. She'd survive. You'd endured Copse Comedy Night together. That should have counted for something. After that, how could she just die?
But she does, anyway, no matter what you think.
Vehement Humility has no bravado left after Verity's death. There are no other heart-castes except the young prints still growing in the copse, two or three years old - who she barely knows. She spends her time in the Sophian, or doing spike-inhibitors with you, or playing virtue-cards with the group, rarely saying a word. If she speaks, she might utter another promise she can't keep.
You don't let 11 Diligent Tenacity out of your sight, after that. Your five-year old print, the kid, the one too young to have ever been among those in the copse who hurt you. She cannot die. She cannot go. She, out of all of you, deserves to live. No - the entire copse, you decide, deserves to live. You spend sleepless nights tracing outlines of each other in the shape of your body-sleeves, and you spend days counting the meters to Cube Thymos. You recount every story you can think of because you don't believe you'll be there to tell it tomorrow, babbling until morning, no one wanting to close their eyes and know the darkness in their lids.
The tenth trench-line falls. The ninth. The eighth. The seventh. The sixth. You hear that Karuna and Mecharaja Iskandra are battling hard, but bravely, on the opposite side of the perimeter. How noble. What a different war, that must be, of chivalry and vim.
It's not your war. The vanguard of the Ever-Burning Branch has suffered three-hundred-percent casualties, and the Koras who replace your copse-mates in the larger battalions are as familiar to you as strangers. Sympathy is out there, every single day, burning, boiling, incinerating, a jet of green flame behind her as she flies above the front-line.
A cavalcade of suicidal warriors rush to be the greatest among Koinon's defense. There is the last ride of the centaurs, the long-clawed flayers succumbing to berserker rage. There are the last war-machines of Adikia, the pyramid-men, and their destroyer drones, the machine furies quelled and directed by the scarab-shackled minds of their controllers. There are the pneumatic wizards, Psiarchs and Psions and Pneumatarchs, ranks whose meaning you don't grasp but whose power you understand, desperate techno-mages who stand, and drop, for Cube Thymos.
And there remains no sign of Hyperion, and his solar phalanx. Humility has equipped a heat-shield to her Sophian that she holds out in front of her. It doesn't seem she'll need it, if the craven scrytegon does not show his ugly, wrinkled face.
Koinon's defenders are vicious, and dishonorable. Psychic snares and traps, explosive razors, ripper mines, the expenditure of the last reserves of feral machines, precognitive underminers detonating the ground beneath titans, the pounding shells of petriformic gas. Yet despite this they treat war as something sacred, death as something sacred. They are thrilled to die. Kamikaze ornithopters crash into the heads of titans, and their defensive lines cheer. Pneumatics tie themselves with electric cables to missiles and guide them by telekinetics to a copse-cloud, to plunge the silver saucer from the sky. Flag-bearers, with purple and gold banners of a figure they call the Vitruvian Man, rush alongside what are no longer phalanxes but a single levied mass of the cube behind them.
Cube Thymos is the first cube you have ever seen in person. It is huge, even from kilometers away. Five by Five by Five kilometers of megacity ensconced within, shifting, self-aware blocks of the largest living machines that exist upon this earth. Its surface-shield absorbs and returns fire, its walls open hangars of ornithopters, and its gates spill forth ever more levied reinforcements.
Its fluid screens glow an evil crimson, rippling with broadcasted audio of war-songs, war-speeches, exhortations to the masses to fight, and to die. They use a term you have not heard before, that they have not used before. Not to die for the Cube, not for the republic, not for the polity, not for freedom.
To die, for the nation.
Finally, the inner trench-lines buckle. Finally, as you collapse before Immaculate Sympathy, pleading that she give the copse a reprieve, that she tries to give you all a chance to live, she makes a decision. She will offer herself for the most dangerous missions, in exchange for the copse's safety. She kneels down where you are, lifts up your face, wipes away the errant tears. Kisses you, on the nail.
You don't know any pneumatic in history who has done that. Even in romances, the nail itself is a forbidden zone, a spot that is treasured but never touched, and never reached for. But she does not fear it. She does not fear you. Not at all. She tells you that you're warm to her. The only wound in the warp she feels, from you, is the one you have made in her heart from your pain and suffering. She wants only to heal it, as much as she can.
What you have is something special. It is love, but a love you cannot speak of. Gnosis does not permit you to speak it. You are children of the Mother and Father. No one else. She cannot be what you want her to be. There are elders, Mecharajas, arch-brides, devas, visioneers, overdrivers - but not that. Never that.
And yet she is that, anyway. That unspeakable thing. That miraculous thing.
EVENT HORIZON [Impossible - Success]: Something beautiful will happen.
You are assigned as a copse to a side-mission conducted by the Dakaran Skywatch. At last, the dawn is breaking. On this last offensive, as the last two trench-walls come under attack, the Cordial's foremost oracles declare, ahead of the expected schedule, to the jubilation of the Cordial:
They have seen it, in the glyphs and in the bones and in the machine-guts communing with Black Noise:
Koinon's scry-republic ends today.
—
EVENT HORIZON: War is a ceremony.
You heard bits and pieces of what the Skywatch was like from Melancholy. That was one and a half years ago but it seems more like ten.
The Dakaran Skywatch is a society of airborne Celestial Arks, each a kilometers-long floating, militarized society, under the law of the iron sky. Every person, every stranger, knows their place, their role, their duty. If they act out of line, discipline is inevitable. But if they serve, their reward is eternal. The mission, the watch, the ark, comes before any one life, and every life spent to defend it, and its people, is worth it.
Melancholy's post-card remains embedded within the inner lining of your breastplate. You consider calling her sometimes, but decide not to, every time the impulse appears. You don't know what you'd do if you rang, and she did not pick up. And if she does not recognize you - if you do not recognize each other, that would be worse, than if she did not pick up.
You distract yourself with the spectacle of the Dakaran Ark Karkinos, floating in view from the perspective of your copse-cloud. A one-kilometer long militarized sky-xebec, under thermoptic camouflage above the planet's wispy cloud-line. On either side of its front snout, are the Ark's machine oculi, blue-eyed optics that zoom in and out, sweeping its view over the saucer-cloud of the copse. 11 Diligent Tenacity waves at it, and the Ark-machine closes its eye slowly, in appreciation, you understand, of the open-hearted fearlessness of the Illuminatan young.
At the airlock, you transfer from one heaven to another. The copse is greeted by Stargazer Victor Jugurtha, a mid-ship officer. The first word not a name but a phonetic, numeric title - he is the 22nd gene-skin of the navigator lineage Jugurtha, the gene-skin and appearance recycled whenever a new impressed sailor or fresh print is assigned to take up the 'stone uniform.' Jugurtha is bald but for scraggly sideburns, uptight, upright in his sharp three piece blue-gold uniform and tricorne, saluting the copse by raising an elbow, and then a closed fist to his forehead, covering his navigator's third eye.
You would not know he was just seven but for the slight blush as he sweeps his gaze across the cloud and meets the shy grins of forty identical women unused to greetings from strangers (you are accompanied by thirty-three selves of the Ever-Burning Branch, while Vehement Humility is positioned near the planned drop-zone to act as heavy support. Jugurtha clears his throat, introduces himself, then guides you through the ark. At either side of him, there are two strong and tall Meteors, the Skywatch's military-caste in their globe-helmeted cosmonaut suits and jetpack suspensors. Their expressions are unreadable behind the reflective black sheen of those dark spheres, the clip of their muffled internal radio chatter the only sound they make.
Inside the dense organized chaos of the ship's tight internal corridors, sacred amulets and tapestries hang beside practical holographic signs and alerts. There is endless cacophony from idle chatter, barked orders, distant shanty songs, blaring shrill alarms, codes and code-responses. Servonauts of the Skywatch's labour-caste in orange suits spare you a glimpse as they climb the rafters and crawl through maintenance vents, their double-long simian arms with multitool fingers easing this inhuman movement. Spy-flies buzz around them. Dutiful Tenacity asks wild questions of hanging servonauts, who chew on black-block rations and bare their teeth at her as if to tell her to please, please, go away. She does not get the message and you have to pull her by the utility-belt to come along.
Not everything is well-oiled in the ways the Skywatch's officers would like. Jugurtha catches two servonauts in a supply closet, and has to block the scene before him with his body from the copse as the young men in the closet rush to put their clothes on. 'Not during deployment,' he drawls with good-natured annoyance. Diligent Tenacity is even more fascinated by this, and says something about how this will be good inspiration for her stranger/stranger novels. It's good that she has found a creative outlet, you suppose.
The Ark, you think, is different to the copse. Both serve a singular, united purpose greater than themselves, but the Ark's is legible, meaningful - the ship flies together, or will fall together. To be like Kora, to model her virtue - it offers less to the average copse-sister. You are not meant to form the bonds they do here. They are free in ways you're not - so long as they follow discipline, so long as they follow orders - they can love who they wish. There are hylics, wandering freely, easily. They wear the skin-uniform of their ancestors, and follow their tasks on duty - but off-duty, there is liberty, and even in the breach, familiarity, solidarity, camaraderie.
You are never off-duty, as a Kora, and the only comrades that you have are the ones you had to kill for.
Of course, there are dark sides. Devout Faith asks about Eternity's Repose, Melancholy's ark, and Jugurtha wheels around and hisses he has no time for neutrals, that as far as he's concerned they should run aground of some ophanim beyond the plate-shield and die to the vacuum. And when he speaks of muckrakers, 'dirt-eaters', those who spend their lives on the ground providing sailors to replace the Karkinos' significant losses, there is a contempt that reminds you too much of the one you had for strangers. The one you have for Koinon.
Finally, you reach your destination. One-hundred meteor-marines, assembled in a hangar bay, each with a wire phase-harness over their cosmonaut suits. You've never teleported yourself, heard only bad things. But their focus and care impresses, calms you. They clip the belt on each other, check once, then twice, mutter through comms. You assemble seven of you plus thirty-three of the Ever-Burning Branch's reinforcements, poised and prepared to join them, expecting stern, articulate professionals. Professional they are, but as for stern and articulate -
"Eye-eye-eye," a meteor barks in a mechanically accelerated staccato to Stargazer Jugurtha, slaps the officer so hard on the back the lanky navigator almost buckles from the impact. "You want us to do drop-call nice and slow, for the leafy ladies?"
Jugurtha pinches his brow, nods twice, mouths an apology to you. The meteor makes a noise of affirmation, you think he said…'oorah', was it? Perhaps an incantation, like 'amen'. And then he guides you through the teleport process in the most bizarre slang and drawl you've ever seen, explains the battle plan, and then does what he calls the 'peripatetic pep talk'.
He addresses you: 'Listen up, garden girls, because this is no angel's drop, oorah. This is a devil's drop, oorah. You're green and mean Mother-lovers who pray to gnosis and hate sarkic scum like those flesh-fucking mudmen down below. Oorah?'
He pauses, waiting for your shouted response. 11 Diligent Tenacity catches on quickly, shouts back, 'Oorah', and you follow, haltingly. You wish Ardent Verity were here. This is so stupid - she'd enjoy it.
He continues. His name is Oscar Mike Aziz, the 28th Aziz, proud that all twenty-seven of his gene-sleeves died in battle. Now he, good old O-M Aziz, he's lived ten years in service, picked up and given this new skin-uniform in the ancestral-vat. He's ready. He's not afraid to make way for Oscar November, the 29th Aziz. But he'd rather live, and let that mother-lover spend a few more years stewing in the pot. Because, ladies, O-M Aziz is the tip of the spear of the lance of the finger of God that will come down like lightning upon the unbeliever. 'Oorah'.
'Oorah', you repeat, in unison this time, with the one hundred marines.
But the last thing O-M Aziz needs is the guilt on his conscience that you leafy ladies are not back safe and sound. He's not saying you're not tough, and not saying you're not vicious, because, boys, these roses have thorns, you bet your rocket's payload they have thorns.
'Oorah', you shout, a collective giggle releasing from the group. Kora, when was the last time you laughed like that?
The marines are banging their chests with their gloved fists now, as one, servonauts tying on your phase-drop harnesses, doing their tests with data-slates.
'And the best way to do that,' O-M Aziz transmits through his radio transceiver, 'is to drop together, stay together, win together. As one unit, one Cordial, one spear of heaven. '
He turns to his men, and you realize by some of their uniform shapes, women, and orders show me your war face. Globular helmets project abominable holographic graffiti in egophagic neon colors. 'Plasma-rifles, disintegrators, meltas, volkanites, locked, loaded', he demands. Each marine checks their own, some heavy marines revving plasma miniguns or ten-shot missile-launchers.
'Secure Phase-belts', he directs, and you each check your teleporter harness. There's a problem with 11 Diligent Tenacity's, but she waves it off and you're not paying enough attention to her, swept up in the bravado. The chest-beating gets louder, louder, louder. No one has remarked that you're a hylic, complained, or commented.
This is the Skywatch's power, you grasp. A person matters less than their uniform, than their duty. And if they should accept it - then the whole ark will fight for them.
You accepted your duty a long time ago, but that would never be enough for the Immaculates, and for the Progeny. Only in death does duty end.
'Then let's drop', shouts Aziz, as the phase-harnesses begin to activate, and particles around you swim, spin -
'And bring down the mother-loving sky.'
And phase-shift, teleporting fifty kilometers down in an instant.
—
EVENT HORIZON: War is a sacrifice.
You reppear into hell, one hundred fourty hardened infantry materialized in the air just meters above a holdout blasted bastion of Koinon's third trench-line, isolated and supply-starved. The horizon burns brown and black, titans marching on the Cube as the dawn sun rises on a scarred and blackened firmament.
The defenders do not have time to scream before gravity carries you to them. You whirl in a bladed pirouette, killing four phalangites before you touch the trench-floor. Marines and copse-selves descend on unprepared defenders, plasma-cannons, pneumatic spells, disintegrators drawn too late to save them. Marines operate by finger gestures, call-outs, closed-comms, flares, squads of four or five fanning out through the trench and fortress rooms, throwing tomahawks and fighting with trench knives and bullpup plasma rifles. The copse stays together as a single group, clearing out bunkers and catching resting phalangites in their beds, melta-cannons fusing their stone skin to the frame of their communal bunks.
22 Devout Faith shouts that you cannot find Tenacity, and a marine shouts back her harness may have dropped her to the side, but that you'll find her, there's no doubt. You don't let yourself panic in the fight, and there's too much going on to look for her. The Cube is so close, now, its crimson glow a second sun before you. Cubemen stream out of its churning, liquid walls, ornithopters vomited from hangar-bays that open seams in the Cube, then close just as soon, the surface returning to its old perfect flatness, as if never disturbed. The cube itself returns damage as it is harmed, reflective energy shields absorbing volleys and redirecting them at Titans, shearing arms and heads clean off. If the shield is not overwhelmed by the sheer volume of massed siege-fire, and the walls cracked and sterilized, the living surface will only get stronger, harder, with each kinetic blow.
You use artillery shell-holes as cover, going from corner to corner, battling through bunkers, entombing tunnel entrances with tactical nuclear detonations. You burn them out, stab them out, slash them out. This bastion, meant to run messages and supplies between trench-lines, is cut off, and easy prey.
Vehement Humility meets up with you, and with her Sophian's fist smashes a pillbox down into the earth, an eruption of blood and soot from inside as every Koinon soldier and their equipment is crushed at once.
Again, and again, and again. No one in the copse dies among you, though you cannot find Tenacity. And it's working. It's working everywhere. Koinon is breaking. They're yielding, retreating. Finally. As you raise the double-helix banner above the bastion and the marines pop flares, Kephalon tanks and war-wizards and ordinary soldiers rush back behind the walls of Cube Thymos, rushing from the battlefield.
The end is in sight. You should be happy. But something turns in your stomach. A curdling dread, a clicking from the center of your null field's metaphysical abyss.
THE COST:
You push the whisper down, and focus. Karkinos provides bombardment called by marines who throw down psychic-flares that burn holes in the weaker illusions. Fortifications vaporize from thermonuclear bombardment. In the far distance, you hear a sonic boom and trace Sympathy, leading an air squadron of the Ever-Burning Branch. Somewhere out there, you think, is Koshkin, ripping a swathe through the remaining lines.
Illusion layers shatter. Wizards break. Petriform Gas is blown away by psychic wind. It's over.
And then the Cube's crimson glow fades to gray. The wind turns. It is suddenly still. Quiet. A wrong quiet.
A titan near you stops moving. Humility's Sophian stops moving, too, and its eyes dilate. The winged machines of the Chrome-Kings wheel away from the Cube, refusing to fly further. You turn from them, and then back to the Cube. Something is happening, as Koinon's soldiers flee inside.
Serpents are pouring out of the Cube's wall, writhing, screeching. Infoserpents who had lived within the Cube's secure Black Nosie network, willingly form themselves back into warp-bodies, let themselves be set on fire by the Psychic Shield. Killing themselves. Banishing themselves.
Why?
Then the cube-screen changes. It shows a scene, a recording - no, a live event. Something that causes the other copse-selves to huddle very close to you, and the security of your null-field, as you kneel behind a trench-wall, and watch.
In the center of Cube Thymos, they have made a clearing in the marble streets, moved the modular, self-aware blocks far away. A kilometer-tall cylindrical pillar of Blackstone has been erected. Winding around the outside, spiraling, are figures. The camera zooms in - they're one thousand bound and white-cloaked humans.
EVENT HORIZON [Challenging - Success]: The greatest siblings of Thymos, the richest socials - the merchantmen, the entertainers, the artists, the Alveolar Symposium's politicians, delegates, rhetoricians.
Tied by pitch-black void tendrils to the pillar, they cannot escape. No - you comprehend, - they do not want to escape. They're grinning, even as tears run down their cheeks.
Their chests have been opened up. Their hearts are exposed to the Cube-air, beating so fast. The cube's camera-lens zooms in on each, the screen splitting, multiplying like the mitsosis of cells, until one thousand faces cover every panel of the Cube's five exterior sides.
They apologize. Not to you, but to Koinon. To their holy scry-republic.
For failing to protect the youth. For failing to protect their students. For failing to win the war. For advocating for the war. For making pacts with Hydra. For making pacts with dreams. For making deals for separate peace. For tricking the people. For betraying the people. For profiting from the people.
For failing the nation.
Something about this makes the pneumatic copse-selves afraid. They sense a thing you don't. They nestle themselves behind you because the terror of your null-field is a salve compared to the scene before them. Marines, too gather around, their radio chatter clipped and nervous.
In the trench-field ahead of you, a dying Koinon soldier, just a torso and a head without legs or arms, laughs, mouth wide open in a cackle of delirious joy.
Back on the screen, the camera pans out. The millions of Koinon's youth, untouched by the front-line, watch, stone-faced, silent.
EVENT HORIZON [Challenging - Success]: Tired of their elders, who have failed them, and failed this war. Tired of the weight of history, that has constricted them. Tired of the castes, the rites, of humanity, that bound their freedom in the fetters of tradition, and suppressed the realization of true commonwealth.
It is time, the mob of Koinon's youth declare, for the young to eat the old.
The Cube's camera crawls up the kilometer of the pillar of Cube Thymos' humbled elite. The thousand split-screens merge back into one - the image of the great Scrytegon Hyperion. Long-bearded, balding, intentionally wizened, red skin of weathered coral marble. Laid out on his back, arms and legs outstretched, on the flat top of the pillar, a styllite. Beneath him, a glyph encompasses his body.
A glyph of the Vitruvian man. The ideal form of mankind.
Hyperion speaks, a weary tone with pain in every word, shoulders shrugged, hand held on his chest.
"I failed you, Eleusia. My sweet student. My guiding moonlight. My daughter."
Your blood runs cold, as he speaks the words none are allowed to say within Gnosis, about a stranger that you helped kill.
And then he pounds his hand so hard onto his chest it cracks the skin and bone, and with fingers carving away carapace, ribs and arteries, he scoops out, tears out, both his hearts, holds them beating in his hand, as blood drips down upon him.
The screen whites out in a flash of red, and there is the shockwave of a psychic scream so loud that the selves around you collapse to the ground, clutching at their ears.
The scream is joined by two more, one from the north, and one from the east.
EVENT HORIZON [Godly - Success]: From Cube Logos, and Cube Epythemea. The sacrifice of Theia, and the sacrifice of Morpheos.
The last, most important layers of the illusion around Cube Thymos' trench-lines dissolve. There are carved alchemical geometries, runes, and blood-soaked leylines surrounding you, and stretching out into the distance to the ringwall itself.
You grasp with quaking nausea the illusion's purpose. It was not a defensive shroud, not air-cover. Not a visual shield, and not an anti-air mechanism.
It was hiding the ten trench-line layers of a human transmutation circle, that you're all trapped inside.
Beams of psychic energy crawl out from Cube Thymos, as the cube's screens paint a summoning circle's inner lines, in three-dimensions. The energy encompasses the corners of the Cube, then one trench-circle, and another, and another, and another, to the ringwall, a channel of red energy reaching out across one hundred kilometers -
And then the pillar and its thousand sacrifices are vaporized by an upward lance of god-lightning channeled into Hyperion's chest, and your world ends.
—
EVENT HORIZON: War is God.
You open your eyes, after seconds which seem like hours. You're still alive, in the trenchline. The sky is red, but you're still alive. The copse is still alive, though unconscious from the scream.
You expected to have been vaporized. But you have misunderstood Koinon. The failure was in your society. In your traditions. In your upbringing. You, who prided yourself for your empathy - could not understand the revolutionary potential of their national love.
It is only natural. For a thousand years, Illuminata has never offered anything but servitude to the small, and to the weak. This is the world that raised you. The low serve the high. The weak serve the strong. The children, their absent parents. Koinon was no different. It had students, and teachers. Sentients, socials, siblings. Scrytegons and staples. High, and low. Hierarchy. Inequality. Caste. The Scry-Republic, and its hypocritical rites of humanity.
But there was another Koinon, that has been brewing, underneath this surface.
A Koinon of the young. A Koinon of the free. A Koinon of the people. A radical idea of a single commonwealth of man.
One country, undivided. One will, undiluted. One people, indivisible.
One nation, under God.
By itself, this is not enough. It is just a concept, and a concept cannot win a war. But there has been a second misunderstanding.
You mistook the Lapsarian Lung, and its purpose. It was thought to be a relic fragment of the Father. A soul-purifier. A planetary-respirator. This is what most assumed, and those who knew more kept their secrets to themselves.
But Koinon's scrytegons have studied the Lung further than any on this planet, and know that respiration is simply a byproduct of its true purpose:
EVENT HORIZON [Godly - Success]: It is a god-engine.
The first great scrytegons who drew on the power of the lung communed with the memory of their ancestors embedded in its flesh. A chain of being, from the Reawakening to their era, bound them, and empowered them to face Kora, and defeat Her.
But Koinon is tired of chains. They have no time, and need more power. With psi-science and the sheer potency of a united will, they have devised a different strategy.
EVENT HORIZON [Godly - Success]: What is a God? Does a God create belief, or are they created by it? Are they immutable, or shifting? Are they malicious, or benevolent? Are they a psychopomp, or an amorphous, high-flung being? Are they a psychocomputer, or a meteorological sentience?
EVENT HORIZON [Godly - Success]: No, answers Koinon: God is a country. God is a will. God is a people. God is a nation, named Leviathan.
You stand inside an alchemical social contract, forged in martyr's blood, a circle on-hundred kilometers in radius. A soul-wind picks up, howls, turns into a hurricane of souls from the trench-circles. It is not your soul, and not your blood, they are after. Not your hateful, enemy blood. That will come later.
The willing souls of the nation's martyrs fallen within the ten trench-circles have had their souls bound into the soil. For days, weeks, months, they have been denied reincarnation, respiration. Today, their watch has ended. The spectral ghosts of centaurs, Adikians, cubemen, even dregs of Phalanx Theseus, rise from the ground, swirl around the cube, swirl around a figure floating high above it.
Hyperion, the crimson king, elevated by the sacrifice of the thousand of the elite. Without them, as without the million martyrs, this would not be possible. Never before in the history of Illuminata, have the great sacrificed so much for the small. The blood of martyrs of each and every caste, fed into the gruesome colossus, grows its size to ten kilometers as it stands above the cube, a monster, a deity, in the shape of a man. In the shape of one man - Hyperion.
It's not fair, is all that you can think as your head pounds with panic. It is not fair.
Then the young of Thymos offer their own sacrifice - a living breath. They inhale and exhale as one. Revolutionaries, idealists, iconoclasts, each of them. They lend their hopes, and lend their dreams, to the national monster. Staples inhale with siblings, exhale with socials. The cube's surface itself expands, contracts. The whirling giant high above is granted lungs, by the continual respiration of its patriotic youth.
The god breathes, for the first time.
EVENT HORIZON [Godly - Success]: When a print is born, it exhales, and gives its breath to the world. But when a God is born, it inhales - and steals breath from the world.
With a great breath, the newborn nation-god draws forth an accreted stream of psychic gas, a ribbon from the southeast stretching for a thousand kilometers, draining the Lapsarian Lung's bronchioles, making what was the Lung's, what was the world's, the nation's.
EVENT HORIZON [Godly - Success]: A nation requires not just the blood of the dead, and the dreams of the living, but to dine on memory. To dine on time itself.
EVENT HORIZON: Senicide, and infanticide, at a stroke. The lung had stored a thousand years of memories, thoughts, hopes, beliefs, of Cube Thymos. Even as it purified the soul, it did not wipe out what remained, but preserved it, gestating it within its accumulated flesh. This nebula, this embryonic consciousness, might have formed a God, had it been allowed to brew for another thousand, or ten thousand years. It will not have the chance. It is instead the first breath, and the first meal, of the created nation-god.
Somehow you understand, as you replay this memory, what you did not at the time, at the Cube. That this is much more than stealing power from heaven. This is national idolatry. A cultural rebirth. Year zero, reaching into the primordial past to force it to conform. Psychomythical transmutation. Every hero, every legend, every psychohistorical myth, had been rewritten. Overwritten.
It had all become the nation's. Statues reshape. Books rewrite. Where there had been this hero or that, this legend or that - now it was the persona of the nation that was the hero, was the legend, the personas and personalities of real people reappropriated, blurred. Where there was a wily group of social women, where there had been a slave staple, where it had been a foreigner, where it had been an aristocrat of lineage - it was now stock characters, archetypes of the national monomyth who had done each and every thing.
There was nothing left of a thousand years of Thymos' past but the march of the nation. Retroactively, it had become inevitable, primordial. Every sign, every road, every path - which had once forked in so many directions - pointed now only, to the nation. Every nuance, every flaw, every confusing contradiction - had been smoothed, erased, eradicated. Old Social workmen in the northeast, mining resources for the Cubes, went to bed remembering the rich tapestry of their founder's legend, and wake up remembering a flat icon of the nation.
This final consumption, this final atrocity, is enough. In an eruption as bright as a supernova, the god is born. Perfect, ideal. The eidolon. The vitruvian.
HYPERION, cheers Cube Thymos. The prime soul of spirit, chosen for his incredible strength, and his indomitable will. What was a wispy colossus has concetrated into a solid sun in the shape of a man's body. But what floats kilometers above is not a man. He is an avenging angel. He is a nightmare. He is a volksgeist.
He is the nation, humanized.
And the nation reaches out. Hyperion, floating forward, above the cube as the Cordial watches, as you watch, confused, astonished, does not unleash evil upon you. He begs, instead, for divine intervention. He calls out to Cain, the patron God of Thymos, and asks him to intervene. To stop this madness. To end this war. To command his power, and the nation's power as the price for peace.
In contravention to the hopes of Koinon's youth, the first request of the human they have granted the nation to is, is to relinquish it, and humble himself, before God.
And Cain answers. Impossibly, Cain answers. A window in the warp from outside the shield opens before Hyperion, a huge God floating within his domain, Patron of War and Peace, Patron of patriots and martyrdom. The copse bows before him, and many in the Cordial show their respect, kneeling. Never has he showed himself in the history of Illuminata, but Cain is more extraordinary that you expected - strong-muscled, many-armed, long-skulled, helmeted and caped, wearing his scarlet panoply, a controlled flame in his gaze.
Hyperion has chosen well. If a true God himself will end this war, you are bound to obey.
Hyperion reaches out, raises a hand to his patron God, and Cain stretches out an arm. Come, my son, he calls so kindly, and Hyperion, a newborn god to an elder god, closes the distance, tired, hoping that this nightmare will, with this one stroke, with this final sacrifice, be over.
Hyperion touches God's hand. Another hand closes on top, Hyperion's weathered fingers sealed within the comforting embrace.
Come, my son, Cain repeats, and die.
Hyperion's face twists in shock and roiling pain. He looks down. Clasping his hand was not the two greater god's hands, the battle-scarred divine fingers of the Lord of War and Peace.
They were the jaws of a viper, biting down.
"Cain's" face melts and distorts, neck twisting, twirling and snapping three, four, ten times. The truth is revealed. This thing is not Cain, but dismembered pieces of the true God Cain, the skin piloted from inside by wriggling serpents that chew on his rotting corpse. He has been dead for years. You have been praying to the pieces of a corpse for years.
There are screams from the Cordial, and screams from those watching in Cube Thymos. From the wound of the viper, impossible myriads of snake-headed leeches multiply, coiling and wrapping around Hyperion. Their axe-claws and tongue-lashes rake gashes in the prime soul's skin, as 'Cain' reveals himself as a greater serpent, a bloodthirster. Not of Cain, the patron of war.
But Khorne, the Hydra of rage, violence, and war.
The skinless viper with burning coals for oculi, five times the size of Hyperion, darts forward, fangs first, and grips his head between its upper and its lower burning fangs. Nation, and serpents, fall from heaven, crashing in a crater in the first trench-line, Hyperion buried under the horror of infinitely multiplying vipers raking him with fangs, seeking to open a warp storm from his wounds, seeking to pry open his soul and fashion a gateway from which will spill the final apocalypse. Nothing can be put into words of what is happening in that crater but the squirming movement of wrong serpents.
EVENT HORIZON [Godly - Success]: The greater Cain, called by another name, in another tongue, lies outside the jaws of oblivion only by the survival of his shattered fragments. But this precious archetype, last appendage of a vanished hope, is dead forevermore by the same fall that broke its progenitor. Dead, all of these donated idols, who never thought of anything but beneficence, and were not prepared for the jaws that closed on them.
EVENT HORIZON [Godly - Success]: At Cube Logos, Theia reaches out to the God Ashur-Yan, and plummets to earth in the coils of a ten-thousand eyed feathered serpent, the Waychanger. At Cube Epythemea, Morpheus reaches out to the God Lilith, and falls, paralyzed by the venom of a cackling rainbow serpent, the Secretkeeper.
It is Koinon's turn, to make their own mistake.
EVENT HORIZON [Godly - Success]: They have forgotten there are other, older, more terrible Gods, than their nation. Gods hateful of Koinon, hateful of Illuminata, hateful of the psychic shield. Gods of malice and cruelty, clever and sly, for whom a thousand years is the blink of an eye. Gods who have extinguished ten million stars, and will end every other star, if only given the opening, the chance.
Gods who rise with the Red Sun.
—
EVENT HORIZON: War is anarchy, loosed upon the world.
What is truly inevitable, in war? Is it the building of a nation? Is it godhood? Is it total victory? Is it final defeat?
No.
War has one true constant. Terror. Anarchy. Fear. Dread.
Chaos.
You have been feeding Hydra, all along. Have you not breathed it yourself, with the gas of petriform? Have you not observed it with your own eyes, with Sympathy's near-corruption?
They are a thousand heads and one, ten thousand horns and one, a trillion coils of a cosmic serpent without beginning or end, folding and unfolding within a sea of souls they've conquered. That you have fueled. Not by your brilliant relics, not by your belief, not by your sacred histories.
By your weakness. By your flaws. By your failures.
In your memories, you hear the excuses, the refrains from marines and copse-selves. Koinon is to blame. They had made their prime souls with fell, stolen magicks of Hydra, it's whispered. They are corrupted by Hydra, they whisper. It is their fault, they whisper.
But your nail knows differently. It shows you glimpses of the truth, from around the planet. First, from the Progeny.
EVENT HORIZON [Heroic - Success]: Under Cube Malachite, beneath the reflective cloister, a secret ritual. Immaculate Epiphany and Immaculate Verity, the oldest of the Conclave's original ten, undress, their flaking skin betraying their physical decline, their imperfection. Before them, illuminated in violet light, is a pool of lavender water. There is extraordinary life slithering within that pool that has never seen the surface of the earth. Above them, from a funnel fed directly from the Cloister's prison complex, an autoflayer pours refined and processed cream of freshly printed egoplastic rind into the pool.
EVENT HORIZON: The lotion is so close to being done. So close to being ready. Bubbling, hot rind of young Lavendar Koras abducted during campaign forms without prompting into a summoning glyph. A warp-portal. Both Immaculates will swim in it, and be reborn into beauty. Aisha has promised it, Aisha who has heard them after years of silence, Aisha who will save them from the need for unreliable host bodies, forever free from their sisters' dread of mortality. They will be young again, forever young, and Kora will return. Yes. They have seen it, in the waters. Aisha will grant them eternity.
Another vision, from Titanagalbat.
EVENT HORIZON [Heroic - Success]: Within the inner layers of Cube Saffron, the mecharaja-widow Jeroboam dances alone in the ballroom as his plans are set in motion. Around him, courtiers seize up, clutch at their chests and throats, try to claw out the blue neurotoxin laced in their sacred nectar. Scrapcode unleashed into the cube's network terminates the guards and safeguards that defend the Bronze-King's vault, and Jeroboam's retainers, each of them cyber-thralls, minds broken and lashed to his will, draw the ritual circle. It will be the circle to breach the vault's exotic seals, and grant him the rumored shard of the demiurge that lies deep within. The shard that can make, and unmake reality.
EVENT HORIZON: The digital whisper in his ear promises as much. He smiles at his new young lover beneath him. The sweet boy clutches at his feet, whimpering, brain matter leaking in a slurry from his nose. The fool has done his part to satisfy Jeroboam, and done his part to secure eternity.
Then, from Cybaris.
EVENT HORIZON [Heroic - Success]: In the core of Cube Indigo, the visioneer and Cybaris board-member Holt wipes the blood from his psionic knife, and walks away from the stabbed technician in the Cube's mainframe. Rage fills him with thoughts of promotions passed over, projects stalled, insults inflicted. What gives Morow the right to treat a printed fork of his own mind this way? They were once parts of the same whole, but he's been tossed to the side as if he was a staple, a contract employee. Downsized, sent off to manage fucking Entertainment & Design. He was Corporate Security, the Founder's right hand. But the wrinkly fucker dares to blame Holt for the failure of the Army of Tomorrow the man himself approved. Holt won't take this anymore. The time for negotiation is over. Morow is an old man, with old ideas, and old visions.
His time is done. Morow deserves to die, in hostile takeover. Massacring the board was the first, cathartic step - now, before the Cube's controls, dragging the corpse of the technician to join five others in the circular glyph - he will use the power of psi-science whispered to him by the knife to kill the Morow's distributed intelligence uploaded within and seize direct control, unleash the true military might of Cybaris, that his creator hoards and hides. Yes. Then, and only then, will he right the corporate ship, perform the company's greatest brand expansion in history - and for the sake of all mankind, secure eternity.
And a final vision, worst of all, from Koinon.
EVENT HORIZON [Heroic - Success]: At the peak of Cube Eros, Alchemist Tisiphon surveys the sum of his great work. Seventy-seven petriform missiles, the launchers built by Cybaris, the warheads the product of his own genius and divine inspiration. The strategic deterrent meant to shield Koinon, to intimidate the world, to bring peace. But what use is peace for him, and what use is it to waste such beautiful rockets? Why should the whole world not suffer as he has, a sentient risen to a sibling for his alchemical prowess, but never respected, never recognized? After all he has done for humanity. For psi-science. He would never have been anything more than a tool, discarded after use. But not anymore. His teeth clatter in his jaw, and his smile curls upwards, wider, wider. It curls beyond his cheeks, beyond his ears, unzipping the skin of his skull as the serpent within him takes control.
You have done well, the unclean one hisses from within him. It is ready. Now is the moment to finish your work, and to secure eternity. The pounding at the door, the screeching of the remaining scientists, those who want to ruin your work, to dilute it, to forbid it - they cannot be allowed to stop its culmination. Press the buttons, begin the chain reaction. And Tisiphon obliges, delighted, the seventy-seven stringy tendrils of his tentacular hand stretching meters, resting upon across the launch-mechanisms, severed thumb-tips of each scientist to which it was keyed at the tentacle's end. Missile trajectories change from military installations to population centers. And with an escalating clatter, and an escalating laugh, Alchemist Tisiphon launches his petriform missiles, and delivers his great work unto the world.
The visions end. The memory returns, of you, and the copse, before the fallen God Hyperion, and the unfurling apocalypse. Psychic waves of fear and hate and horror shimmer, fill the sky, the psychic shield rippling and shuddering.
You know what is coming now, even if you didn't then. The plan was to breach the prime souls, to bait them into formation and then entrap them by having them entreat their 'Gods,' dead beings with their skin worn by Hydra like costumes. With the prime souls as gates, the psychic shield would form three breaches. Petriform missiles, raining from the sky, would spread pestilence and fallout, crystal fragments rising into the sky and poisoning the planet's air forever.
Pneumatics, driven mad, without protection from the shield, would turn on Hylics, cut you down. Maybe it would be your copse-mates, or maybe Sympathy. Or maybe the rest of the Progeny, the egotamers, the Immaculates, the powerful - would exterminate you instead.
In your memory, you look up to the sun. You only remember it flickering, then, just the possibility of what was to come. As you replay the memory, it is more coherent, clearer. It is obvious, what you saw, and what you see.
A red sun.
EVENT HORIZON [Heroic - Success]: The red son's name is Aldebaran, and ruin his domain. He is the promised prince baptized in infant's blood, the end and the death. Awaited, cherished, phosphoric morning star, whose eradication of reality itself, will bring about the final, empty, eternity.
A nightmare. A reality. An inevitability.
How could it have been anything else? How could you believe you were in charge of your own fate? How could you believe Illuminata was truly safe?
This is your education. It's come too late, for everyone. You're powerless to save anyone. To do anything. Born on the wrong planet, in the wrong galaxy, in the wrong universe. This was your fate, the fate of any being who wishes for anything but horror, genocide, misery, and war.
EVENT HORIZON [Godly - Success]: And yet it has not happened yet, and the prime souls still resist. Serpents in the crater with Hyperion die faster than they regenerate. They are losing that battle. Do not let yourself be beguiled by spectacle, and by the appearance of defeat. We are stronger they could ever know.
But the missiles still fly. The prime souls remain compromised. Your leaders betray you, plot against you. Hydra has won. It is the end of Illuminata. The extinguishment of the last light.
All gone, beneath armageddon's rays, the demonic power of thirsting gods.
For what could compare to the power of Hydra, and the Red Sun -
THE BENEFACTOR
⊏↩⤣⤣⤷↪⇆ ᴗ↩э⇆↰
ヾ⊼ヾэ↻.
⇔⇔↰ ᴗ⇇⇉∧⇅ ⊼ヾ↪
Article: 《👁》PREPARE FOR
《👁》UNFORESEEN CONSEQUENCES
EVENT HORIZON: War is a dream.
As a single word is formed by geometric lips, reality rewrites.
EVENT HORIZON [Godly - Success]: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
EVENT HORIZON: Known by many names over millennia, on Illuminata it is Logos, the word. For even the perfect diction and accent applied to a single word of this primal language is a weapon of mass destruction. Held only in fragments learned by Kora, sometimes by the most eccentric and respected scrytegons, Logos is mystic and forbidden.
EVENT HORIZON: But The Benefactor speaks it as if it were a native tongue, as if they were fluent. With its power, and with its one uttered command, Prometheus steals fire from heaven, and every emotion, every fear owed to Hydra, redirects.
Summer ants erect straw gods, and declare themselves ascendant. Serpents entrap half-starved prey, and declare themselves inevitable.
You were thrice-mistaken. You were mistaken about Koinon, and mistaken about Hydra. But your last mistake is most crucial. You were mistaken about yourselves. You thought you were the heirs of this world. You thought you were the masters of this world.
You could not be more wrong.
The true masters of this world never went away. Never faded, whatever your monks and legends assured you. Never stopped acting, never stopped thinking.
Never stopped dreaming.
The planet is also called Apotheosis. It is an old name. Why was this old god-building name forgotten, abandoned? Is it because the planet had failed in its stated purpose -
Or because it had succeeded?
There is another God of this world. A god who controls the golden umbra of the anathematic psychic shield. This shield, that has protected and nurtured you for a millennium, allowed the growth of pneumatic societies, repressed Hydra - it is not, as you had thought, a thoughtless remnant of the Father's soul. Not a fragment of a malfunctioning protection network. Not a failing, fading relic, doomed to collapse before the Hydra's onslaught.
It is active. It is stable. And it is under Dreamspace's control. They demonstrate this immediately, as they edit the sky.
The Red Sun disappears. And so disappears the black and brown tint of the horizon. Spreading, you will learn later, from the veil of Dreamspace, wrapping around the entire planet, a mirror-reflection of the ground appears high above Cube Thymos.
But instead of the ground you're used to, grays and purples, bloody brown and muddy slates, ancestor-trees and synthetic kelp - reflected above you, as you crane your neck, is the Prelapsarian Pastoral, not as art-piece, but reality. A snapshiot. The planet as it was, beneath the rays of a yellow sun. With rivers, and lakes that can be swum in. With trees. With open cities, and green grass, and oceans with coral reefs, blooming with organic life, their color green and not sterile-blue. A time before the Eater. Before the Fall. Before the reawakening. Before the nanocancer. Before Kora. Before the Bronze-King. Before Koinon. Before the war.
A happy time.
EVENT HORIZON [Heroic - Success]: A scene of paradise that every human on the planet gazes up to see. Even those in Cubes have their arcology skyboxes edited, so that the scene inside matches the sky beyond its walls.
Regret fills you. The copse cries together. You feel the same thing. Longing. Indescribable longing. Fear and hate and anger are forgotten. You remember what you were. What you could be again. A hopeful planet. A joyful planet.
EVENT HORIZON [Challenging - Success]: Anemoia grips Illuminata. Nostalgia, for a time they've never known.
That it is a psychic vision does not stop your own imaginings. What if, you think, in a trench surrounded by bodies of the dead. What if you lived there, and not here. What if you did not need to be as good as Kora. What if the Kora you were, was enough? What if you were allowed to grow up happy. What if your childhood was eighteen years, not one. What if you could wave goodbye to Sympathy each morning as you went to school with the whole copse. What if there was no caste, and no class, and no staples, and no elite, and no servants.
What if it was a school where no one hit you, no one hated you, where no one called you hylic. What if you could eat organic food, and your ancestors did not have to die for your sustenance. What if you could be raised in an open-skied city that loved machines and loved the future. That feared nothing but fear itself.
What if you could look up, and see the midnight stars? What if you could look down, and Epiphany was there laying beside you? What if you could kiss anyone you wanted, and love anyone you wished?
What if utopia was real, and would welcome you, if only you would let it in?
How pathetic Hydra's misery is, compared to the power of this dream. How sad Koinon's nation is, compared to this planetary paradise.
Nothing compares.
EVENT HORIZON [Godly - Success]: And this thought, replicated two billion times across the planet, usurping every other feeling that could be had upon this earth, is enough to generate the sheer belief, the sheer psychic energy, that Dreamspace needs to act. The energy they need, to raise up their own sun.
A white sun.
EVENT HORIZON [Heroic - Success]: The name of the white son is Icarus, and time is his domain. He flew too close to the Yellow Sun and fell burning from heaven, but so long as his body does not touch the ground, he will never die. In this way, he has found eternity.
Rotating around its central axis, a message to all the enemies of progress and paradise: DESPAIR AND DIE.
EVENT HORIZON: Hydra's project on this planet is the work of a thousand years. To destroy it, Dreamspace will need but one second.
The dream-gods speak their final message to the planet, spoken through a tongue that is not sound but the rearrangement of particles, the movement of reality, the shifting of space and time.
THE BENEFACTOR
∧⇇⇉⊼ ᴗ↩э⤥⇆ ⇉⊼ ↪↩∧
⇪↩ヾэ⊼ ∧↩ ⊏↩↪↺ヾ⇅э.
⊏↩⤣⤣⤷↪⇆ ᴗ↩э⇆↰
⊼∧↩↻.
They will tell you later that time stopped, and started, again. In your memory, it was as if no time passed at all.
EVENT HORIZON [Godly - Success]: That is not what the servants, and the creatures of Hydra, feel. Ageless, neverborn entities of pure psychic energy, stretching across every moment that has ever been, atemporal, will grasp, for just one second, linear time. This punishment, worse than any mortal hands could imagine to inflict, will force the auto-banishment of every single lesser serpent in an instant, and leave the greater ones reeling, weak.
EVENT HORIZON: To force infinity into an integer, to force a tangent to a line, to force an ocean through a drain the size of an atom. This temporal implosion, will be the worst thing most serpents and their hosts will ever feel, and when they re-manifest within their realm they will refuse to return ever to Illuminata. But for a chosen few, the worst of the interlopers, a greater punishment awaits.
Your vision splits. This is not something you saw then, in your own memory, but now, through the abyssal nail.
EVENT HORIZON [Heroic - Success]: No investigation will satisfy what was found of the Reflective Cloister. Within a geometrically perfect polygonal space surrounding the lower portions of the structure a 400db shockwave turned air non-linear and made each and every entity inside a fluid. There were no survivors among either prisoners or Egotamers. An unknown lower underground structure was also utterly destroyed, its roof collapsed. Immaculate Verity and Immaculate Epiphany make no public appearances after this day - it is declared, by the Conclave, due to their mourning for the events of the Day of the Twin Suns...
Another vision, from Titanagalbat.
EVENT HORIZON [Heroic - Success]: It will take weeks to scrub out the remains of Jeroboam and the staples he had seized and forced to act for him. The former Mecharaja was found in neatly serrated cubical pieces, the victim of the slice of a nanofilament wire with a perfect spherical radius, cutting both him and his servants below, and every witness. Infinitely sharp, the nanofilament defied all walls and physical understanding, and made a ruin of large portions of the palace. He will be deemed a simple traitor, and no remarks made on the nature of the azure poison that he used…
A third, from Cybaris.
EVENT HORIZON [Heroic - Success]: Grieving news coverage for both the board and the dearly departed visioneer Mr. Holt was aired for weeks after the Day of Twin Suns. The Board appears to have been killed by some serpentine madman, or perhaps, Doctor News suggests, a rogue Carnosan terrorist. Mr. Holt's death, meanwhile is more troubling and tragic. He was found by a shocked and devastated Mr. Morow, flattened into the second dimension. Morow in interviews has stated that Mr. Holt suffered from temper issues and neural health decline in his last deaths, but refused help and support. This stigma Mr. Morow hopes to break with a new line of cognitive-therapy products...
A final vision, from Koinon.
EVENT HORIZON [Heroic - Success]: Those that find Alchemist Tisiphon and the emptied strategic arsenal will be left baffled. Expecting a lunatic possessed by hydra, they instead find reactive pieces of his flesh strewn in tiny shards across the launch facility. Studies performed by pneumatic stillmasons will reveal a shocking and perplexing autopsy: that alchemist Tisiphon's flesh appears to have been somehow transmuted to the chemical element cesium, and immediately after, reacted with the water in his body, causing an enormous explosion, destroying both his research and his form utterly. The curious story, of course, is lost in the events of the Day of the Twin Suns, and soon becomes more a curiosity, an unsolved mystery…
And then the White Sun disappears, as quickly as it came. The reflective dream-sky fades, replaced with the dull wasteland of reality.
EVENT HORIZON [Challenging - Success]: Fifty-nine missiles of petriform disappear from their trajectories. Onlookers in the Emmonite Partition claim to have seen geometric orbs towing rockets into Dreamspace, but they move so fast that even augmented optics struggle to resolve the image they think that they've done.
EVENT HORIZON: Eighteen missiles continue to their targets. I'm sorry, little self. It was never the Dreamshapes' intent to save us. They are playing a different game.
You remember where you were. Before Cube Thymos. At war. It seemed, everything that just happened, a dream, a hazy, surreal tableau. Prime Soul, then Red Sun, then White Sun. No one can make anything of it. The agenda of Dreamspace, with the revelation they have an agenda, is inscrutable.
The plots of Hydra have been denied. Every serpent on the planet, it appears, has died. Even on the battlefield, you see here and there, the possessed among both Koinon and the Cordial, are being put down, while their serpent hosts burn and die from the cleansing golden fire of the psychic shield, squirming.
What does it mean? What did it mean?
You remember what will happen, factually. The day will quake the planet to the foundations, and spawn new cults. It will mark the end of one era, and the beginning of another. When the planet almost died, and when the planet was saved, not by the intervention of the Father and Mother, but the White Sun - a figure of ominous and enigmatic purpose.
The planet will breathe a collective sigh of relief, in weeks and months to come, even as it manages the fallout literal and political. Some will wonder if any of it was truly real. If the Day of Twin Suns was not more than a spectacle, a tableau, an interruption in a normal existence, that can be forgotten, put away, shoved away. The great apocalypse, averted. Monad will surge back into relevance, prominence, and its monks barred for their neutrality from the Cordial welcomed back with public acclaim and elite acquiescence everywhere.
But that is the planet. That is the homefront. That is far away from Cube Thymos, and far from the Prime Souls, freed from the serpents who had intended to possess them. The greater apocalypse has been averted, true. But the day is not over. It is not even noon. The lesser apocalypse, the human apocalypse, the personal apocalypse, the one deliberate and not accidental, the end of your world -
That apocalypse has just begun.
11: RED SUN
Article: EVENT HORIZON: It was never our decision to make. We could never have prevented this.
There is a rumble from within the crater, within an enormous sphere of charred serpents, enclosing the prime soul, Hyperion. The bloodthirster greater serpent, reeling and unstable from the power of the White Sun, wraps around the sphere, to try and hold him.
It will fail.
EVENT HORIZON: War is a choice.
"THIS SERPENT, TO HOLD…ME?"
The roar of his voice snaps the entire besieging force from their daze. Hyperion explodes out of the sphere, the greater serpent rocketing back, crashing against the crater's edge. Hyperion rises, his biomantic skin regenerating. Ten thousand scar-wounds of the hydra's fangs criss-cross his body. He forms a loincloth of plasma and wraps it around his naked waist, then turns back to the greater serpent, that rares for a fight, hissing, to try and put him down.
It will fail.
"NO GODS," Hyperion shouts, in a thunderclap that echoes for kilometers, a knee uppercut shattering the serpent's lower jaw, "NO MASTERS," a growl delivered with a punch that ejects every fang from its mouth, "NO DEMONS," and with a two-handed fist lifted over his head and down on its back, breaks the serpent's spine.
And then, as the serpent roils in pain, still trying to fight him, enraged, thrashing, he exposes its neck, opens his mouth, and digs his teeth into its throat. Tearing skin, tearing muscle, tearing bone, he rips out a chunk of the struggling serpent, and drains its blood through the wound that he has made, in one inhale. The Ataraxic draining, a ritual every scrytegon is trained to perform as part of their conditioning. But none have ever trained upon a Greater Daemon and survived.
Hyperion will be the first to enjoy quenching his thirst upon a bloodthirster. It is a message, and an appetizer.
"ONLY MAN," he howls, steaming daemonic blood dripping down his mouth, his tongue stuck out in rage at the thing that used the visage of his dead and sacred God to trick him. He grips the dead and banished serpent, burns away everything but its skin and skull, shrinks its size through biomancy, and makes a hooded pelt of the fanged viper that he hangs over his balding head.
EVENT HORIZON: At Logos, as she wipes blood from her lips with a telekinetic handkerchief, Theia plucks twelve feathers of the disembowled waychanger, and arranges them neatly nestled into the bulb of her blue-haired bun.
EVENT HORIZON: At Epythemea, as he brushes blood off his hands, Morpheos adjusts and appreciates his new rainbow serpent-skin suit of the secretkeeper, and reformats its shape to fit the contours of his lithe body.
And then Hyperion turns his attention to you all. The Cordial. The enemy. The invader, the occupier, the slaughterer.
EVENT HORIZON [Godly - Success]: He is 180 centimeters tall and one thousand light-years deep. He casts a shadow that stretches for ten kilometers. Everyone can see him, no matter how far away, no matter the level of their zoom. He warps perception, draws attention, and yet all they can see of this monstrosity - is an old, stout, balding, scraggly-bearded, thick-stomached man. This is the ideal of Koinon - a soul the size of a spire to heaven, concentrated within the simple, honest body of an ordinary man.
His hearts have been replaced with a cavity containing the rotating shape of a miniaturized red star. He declares his new epiphet.
"I REJECT HYDRA, AND REJECT THEIR PROPHECIES. I DECLARE: I USURP THEIR PRETENSIONS. I AM THE RED SUN, AND THERE IS NO OTHER. AND I HAVE COME FOR YOU."
Hyperion, the red sun. The prime soul of spirit.
EVENT HORIZON [Godly - Success]: Theia declares herself Celestial Spear, prime soul of reason, a gyroscope revolving where her hearts should be. Morpheus declares himself Master Mirror, prime soul of desire as a kaleodoscpic lens twirls, where his hearts should be.
But he offers one last olive branch. One last beseeching.
EVENT HORIZON: If the gods betray him, then he must as Gods do, and display mercy, one last time.
"UNLESS. A LAST CHANCE, FOR THE COMMONWEALTH OF MAN. FOR GNOSIS. END THIS. RETURN TO YOUR HOMES. TO YOUR LANDS. ABANDON HOPE OF VICTORY. ABANDON HOPE OF CONQUEST. OR YOU WILL KNOW DEFEAT."
EVENT HORIZON: The same offer is made at Logos, and at Epythemea, by Theia, and by Morpheos.
The copse-selves, and you, look between each other. Pensive, morose. Peace. The word, unspoken, was synonymous, to you, with victory. Redemption. Reclamation.
There are a thousand reasons to make peace. The near-apocalypse, twin armageddons. The petriform missiles, still flying through air, eighteen in all, that cannot be stopped. The length of the war. The cost of the war. The fact that every gain has been wrecked and ruined, depopulated. The fact that this is a newborn god of unknown power, who has beaten a greater serpent to death and drank its blood. The fact that you want to go home. If it was up to you, perhaps, you'd take it, despite everything.
But it was never your decision to make.
EVENT HORIZON: And never Immaculate Sympathy's, either.
And those that do, course with reasons to reject the offering.
Glory. Honor. Desperation. Vengeance. Distrust. And the simple, brutal, sunken cost, that passes through the minds of the great and powerful, who could have ended this today. If we surrender now, if we go home now, then every crime, and every vile experiment, and every savage reprisal, and every mass killing: what was it all for, if not for victory?
So they refuse.
EVENT HORIZON: As they do at Logos, and as they do at Epythemea.
EVENT HORIZON: And in so doing, prove the true inevitability of Hydra. A serpent is burned, drained, slit, banished by a spell - but so long as men and women do evil to one another, Hydra will grow, feed, and slither back into their minds. The viper is gone, but the venom remains.
The Cordial attacks the prime soul, with Dakaran orbital batteries, and Titan arm-cannons, and copse-facade heatrays, and Chrome King machine-missiles, and Tetrasi disintegrator volleys, and Marchfort artillery, and Emmonite geometry-traps. In the hopes of ending him, then and there. In the hopes of eradicating him, then and there.
It will fail.
When the dust clears, his body has regenerated. His soul's heart is intact.
"VERY WELL. THEN COME FORTH, AND BURN."
And he returns their fire a thousand fold, with all the strength and molten heat of a crimson sun.
—
EVENT HORIZON: War is a mass extinction.
There is a flash, and a shockwave. The world is red. Temperatures rise before you understand what's happening to 4000 degrees kelvin. It is so hot. It is so unbearably hot. Your null field is the only thing that cools you down.
You turn, so slowly, to your right, tug on 22 Devout Faith's shoulder. But she's stiff. You look up from your hand, to her face. It's on fire, and so is her hair. Her face is on fire. You try to put it out, to pat it out, but then her body tips over, falls over, like a terracotta doll. She shatters into ashen pieces on the ground.
You don't understand. You look around to the other six selves. But they are also on fire. They aren't - they're not animate. They're not moving properly. Not even screaming. The hot, oven wind tips them over, and they fall to pieces.
That's not right. That's not - that's not correct. They were here. You step forward, in a daze, sweating, boiling, skin searing, and step in something. It is a marine's helmet - no, his body. You stepped through it like an eggshell, and what's inside is ash. You try to open your mouth to scream but the heat that rushes inside starts to burn your tongue so you snap it closed.
No, that's - you look around, everywhere. The marines are not moving. They are inert, inanimate. They've been boiled in their armor. It's a pneumatic fire. It's burning souls, circumventing armor. A cosmonaut's suit protects against a real sun. But not a red sun.
There is a hylic Kora-self in the distance. You can sense her null-field flaring, but then it flickers, failing under the heat. She crumples and her body does this thing that doesn't make sense - it sloughs, into a puddle of itself.
You have to get out of here. You don't know what here is but you have to get out of here. Are you dead too? Is this hell? It's not a dream. Hylics never dream. You wish you did. You wish you'd wake up.
There is a source of the heat, in the outline of a man, or a man in the outline of heat, somewhere in the distance. There is the outline of a larger shape, a cube. You cannot look in that direction. It burns to look in that direction.
You cannot hear anything. Your ears are smoldering, sizzling. You need to - your null field will fail if you stay here. You need to run.
There's an outline you recognize. A Sophian. Oh Kora, it's Humility. She's holding up a heat-shield. So she did need it against Hyperion, after all. Humility will know what to do. She'll be able to explain this. You can come back with her and put the copse back together. They all broke but she can help put them back together.
It's so hot. Maybe you can't go back there. Maybe you never ever want to go back there and want to go the farthest distance you could ever go from there.
It's so hot.
You are somehow at the Sophian, when you next remember. You don't remember in-between. You touch its leg. The shield is holding back the heat. The Sophian reaches down to smash you, thinking you an enemy, but sees what you are.
"HARMONY?" The Sophian speaks, through Humility's voice. "WHERE?" She can't force anything else out, but you know what she's asking. She's asking about the copse.
You have no answer. You can't even hold your mouth agape, because of the heat. She knows what the answer is.
She hoists the shield to her back, to protect the plugsuit's insertion point, and picks you up, holds you to her chest. Turns around, and tries to rush towards the Ringwall. Tries to spread her wings, but they burn, flecks of fire licking at them until they evaporate and blow away. She has to gallop instead.
Many things are happening you don't understand. Winged heart-caste selves are falling like stone doves from the sky. Titans bang their chests to free mecharajas from boiling in their amniotic pilot's fluid, but they are invariably cooked when they're retrieved, and the titan goes inert. Chrome King mounts, their riders legs and bodies fused by the heat, crash in spirals. Copse-clouds simply float, the selves on them dripping off, raining onto the ground, as molten stone.
Something parts the clouds above. The Karkinos' shields and antigravity has failed, and its thermoptic camouflage is burned away. It attempts one more bombardment. In response, it is struck with a sunbeam javelin that pierces its midsection. The kilometer-long ark's oculi are wide in fear. Escape pods spiral out of control, their engines melting in the heat. The ark's ark implodes by intentional detonation, and vanishes into a singularity as the dark energy crystal at its center transforms into a miniature black hole, the hole gone after the ship is sucked away beyond its event horizon.
You were just there. Aziz had said there'd be a twenty-ninth, if he should die. You suppose there won't be, then.
There are ornithopters, buzzing, too. They don't seem affected, and neither do the marching men of the Solar Phalanx. There's that mystery solved. They were waiting for this signal to attack. It must be nice not to feel the heat.
You wonder where Karuna is. Did he boil, or did he crumble. How about Roxana, and Iskandra. They're in a psi-titan, with a shield. How long did it take for them to cook?
Where's Immaculate Sympathy? She must be loving this. It's so hot. She loves fire and heat.
Vehement Humility's sophian is hobbling. You urge Hornet on, caress its hand. Please keep going, Hornet. It's getting cooler. We have to go faster. The sun is marching. The sun is marching forwad. It's almost here, but if we go faster, it'll be cooler.
You don't remember how you exited the ringwall. There was heat everywhere. There were inanimate, broken dolls, everywhere. They were people before. They aren't now. Not after the heat.
And then Sympathy flies down to you. One of her wings has been completely burned out. Half her body is lightly seared by flame. Lightly seared. Like roasted meat. Ha. Something for the next Copse Comedy Night.
She's asking you things you don't really know the answers to, and then she's breaking Vehement Humility out of the Sophian. The sophian itself has had its skin melted and joints merged together. And then she finds Humility, and she doesn't look great. She coughs and a piece of lung comes out.
She's saying something to Sympathy. You're there too, you remember. You think your hand holds hers. She is saying that she wants to be planted as a willow tree. That when she dies she wants to be a willow tree. She has killed so many under her sophian's shadow. She wishes when she dies that she could have people live under her shadow, she says. Please, she says. She's so insistent, for someone alive. You'll have years, you tell her, but she starts sobbing, then, in Sympathy's arms.
What a riot, for the next Copse Comedy Night.
And then she stops moving. She's not animate. You dislike that. It's just you and Sympathy. You ask her if you're going to go home, and she shakes her head. Something happened with the copse. Something about a missile that hit Ylfame. The copse was in the blast radius. Okay.
You ask her again if you're going to go home. She closes her arms around you. She's sobbing, which seems inappropriate. It was a simple question. She says all her strings are cut. They're all gone. Everyone. The copse is gone. Dutiful Radiance who you saved is gone. Okay. 22 Devout Unity who taught and tortured you is gone. Okay. Even the nursery-print, the new kid, is gone, and the Machine-Parents who raised you, gone. Okay.
So when are you going to go home? You left a lot of your jazz collection stashed in the nursery. The new kid, 3 Diligent Unity, would love it. You want to hear what she thinks. And you have some ideas for reorganizing the Sophian Bay, you shared them with Humility. And you were thinking about continuing Copse Comedy Night when you all get back.
She stops crying. She doesn't say anything. The silence is unbearable. You repeat: when are you going to go home. You're very tired. It's been very hot. You might have sunstroke. You're tired of the suns. Will it be cold soon? You prefer the cold. You're a weird hylic, like that.
She tells, after an agonizing pause, that she prefers the cold too, and it will be night soon, so don't worry, little self, we'll go home. She lifts you up, and you clutch at her neck, as close as you can to her. Someone else from the remains of the Burning Branch carries Vehement Humility but you don't want to look at that doll with the arms hanging off the stretcher, limp. So you look at Sympathy instead.
Your mother is so brave. So beautiful. So strong. If only she was strong enough to save you.
As you're carried away, you think about how sorry you are to Vehement Humility. You both broke your promise to the other.
Neither of you will ever come back from this war.
Article: AXIOM ACQUIRED [OTHER]
PRISONER OF WAR: You will never come back from war. You will never escape it. Were you really immune to petriform, or did it simply take longer to suffocate you? Were you really resistant to the heat of the Red Sun, or will it simply take longer for you to boil away? The weight of what you've done, the weight of what was done to you, has crushed you to splinters. This is a permanent axiom related to your war trauma that affects all attributes, augments, and interactions. It strikes you unpredictably, and cannot be removed. Only mitigated. Endured. Survived.
EVENT HORIZON: War is a wound that will never heal.
Time continues without the two of you. You and Immaculate Sympathy are ghosts, living fossils. She loved that term, and loved biology. Read to you in the nursery about stromatolites, and ancient animals of Terra. Waxed lyrical when she had the opportunity about geology, deep time.
Now the two of you have become geology. Now you are between sedimentary layers, buried under crushing pressure. Now you're not living beings anymore, but imprints of people. Your innards rotted away, replaced with minerals. Stone women, dead inside and out.
You wonder if the coelacanth missed the trilobite, the sea scorpion, the armored fish. If the gingko missed the sauropod that chewed it. If the cuttlefish missed the orthocone, its shelled cousin. Can a living fossil ever move on? Its evolutionary traits, its features, geared to, evolved to, clades of being which do not exist. Grief encoded into its very DNA.
It's worse than that, though. Organic beings like that don't think. They had no consciousness. They existed in their context, unflinching, unworried, even as everything shrank around them, even as mass extinction left them as a dwindling remnant of a vanished planet, old Terra. You wish you were the same. You wish you could be the same. You wish you could stop thinking. It hurts so much to think.
Maybe the Immaculates and the gnostic monks were right, from the beginning. You are a hylic, born to die. But not right away. That would be too easy. It's better to dangle love, and friends, and hope in front of you. Better to tease you first. Better to give you an idea you might actually be a person, before they seize it from you. Better to give you a sense of place, of meaning, of camaraderie.
You're watching them do it again, on the homefront. Apparently, they are mass-drafting hylic selves, granting them new liberties, acknowledging them as unique aspects of Kora. No longer are they 'born to die.' Even strangers are being freed from their face-tax, allowed to exist outside ghettos and rural isolates, to fill critical labour shortages in copses and garden-cities.
Suddenly, against three living psychic superweapons, they discover your self-worth. And the war has stalled again. Too much political chaos everywhere for mass offensives. You've fallen back from the Cubes, but Koinon can't dislodge you yet. Their manpower is drained, and their elite decimated.
But this unofficial ceasefire won't last. The lull won't last. Nothing good in this world ever does. Nothing ever will. And it doesn't matter - because for you, it's over. The war will continue, but it's over for you. It's just you, and Sympathy, waiting to die.
But for some reason, she doesn't see it that way. You explain everything you just thought to her, and she refuses the truth that you've embraced. You have to keep living. You have to keep moving. Why, you say, simply.
"Because you're my daughter," she shouts, voice breaking, shaking you out of the haze of your despair. "Kora, Harmony, please. Don't talk like that. Hold on. For me. Hold onto me. We're all that we have left. That has to be enough. This has to be enough."
That's true. It is true. You are her daughter. And she is your mother. You always have been. You knew it before she did. But she is the first to speak it. Maybe you will be in trouble with gnosis, but it doesn't matter anymore. Nothing they can do to you is worse than what has already happened. Nothing could possibly be worse.
EVENT HORIZON [Challenging - Success]: Like you, she is selfish in her selflessness. They will drag her down and make her watch the death of everything and everyone a thousand times, and she will stand up again. She wants to love so badly that no matter what they take, she will never let herself surrender, and stop giving, stop giving back. This is her madness, and her defect.
You're falling for it again. You're too stupid to despair and die. She's dangling something in front of you. You know you're going to die, she's going to die, you're both going to die, somehow, some way.
But when she calls you her daughter for the first time ever, you feel so warm. It is the first warmth you've felt that you've not been afraid of, since the Red Sun. You close the distance which had been held between you and her, of the chasm of the dead. You share that chasm in common, now. You reach out to her hands, and enclose her fingers in yours.
EVENT HORIZON: For the first time she has ever known, Sympathy reaches out to touch a hylic's hands, and they are warm. The forbidden glyphs, drawn into her hands from the diagrams contained within her manuscript of the Fifth Sun, are working.
EVENT HORIZON: She verifies then what she had just theorized, had just fantasized about before. She has found her pure land, in the spiral. And she will do anything to preserve her.
"Okay," you make vocal what you had decided long ago, "mom. For you."
For her. You accept your life with her, two damned and doomed living fossils - plunging together, into love's abyss.
Article: AXIOM ACQUIRED [OTHER]
LOVE'S LONG DOWNWARD SPIRAL: You are Sympathy's daughter, and she is your mother. This path, committing you to one tomb, one fate, is something you accept warmly. Whether you die, whether you live, whether you grow to despise each other - the unconditional, terrible, infinite abyss of your shared love will drag you back together, again, and again. No matter where you are. No matter what you are. She bears the name of your rose, and you the name of hers, and never will you let each other vanish, and become a naked name. This is your eternity.
EVENT HORIZON: War is a list, on a slate wall.
You have true campaign leave, for the first time since the start of the war. You and Sympathy take it together. You do everything together these days - listen to music, set the bed, read palimpsests, watch films on moving glass. It's what mothers and daughters are meant to do, you think. To exist in the same space, filling the hollow in each other's hearts.
There was just one attempt to take you away from her, to transfer you. She internally decapitated the egotamer sent to enforce the transfer. There were no further transfer requests.
It's important that you take this trip together. The war has changed, becoming a defense of the Jasmine Shore and High Kur from what they call the Commonwealth of Koinon, the Scry-Republic dissolved on the Day of the Twin Suns. You suppose the prophecy about the scry-republic ending was correct, technically. You also suppose that if you meet an oracle you will probably just behead them before they give you any prophecies.
There are strangers everywhere, wandering without masks, allowed to move to cities and copses as required. Patriotic selves hylic and pneumatic, are rushing to the defense of the country, and vengeance for the slaughter at the three cubes, when the prime souls put to rout the entire Cordial.
The Cordial's allies in the Skywatch have withdrawn from the war after the catastrophic deorbit and meteoric crash of the Empyral Aerie, struck by a petriform missile. All aboard the sacred station died on missile impact. The station itself, transformed into an enormous cluster, crashed near to Dis and depopulated much of the area around the once prosperous skin-silk hub of Dermaton.
With several precious arks destroyed, they have paid dearly for their decision to break from Highfleet Verge's commandment that they not participate in muckmen's conflicts. The Tetrasi, devastated by missile impacts, their leadership turned upon and ripped apart by mobs of hysteric cult-followers, emotions overloaded, has also exited the war. It was said the incandescent rage and violent punishment of devas by their disciples, emotionally projected in the pulsing, ugly rainbow glow of Cube Gossamer's exterior, could be sighted far beyond, for many hundreds of kilometers.
Cybaris has not only made peace but is touting their peace dividend. Their missiles, they say, were wrongly and improperly used by bad serpentine actors, and Mr. Morow will do anything to make good on his new humanitarian mission to help Illuminata repair and rebuild from the horror of the war he had a direct hand in starting. His only price was seizing territory from Chrome Kings who had refuted their allegiance to the Bronze King, to rebuild the city of Seldon.
The Chrome Kings are dissolving into infighting and slave-raids, the Emmonites retreating to deal with sudden Dreamspace breaches in the Hybar Perimeter, and the Mozel Marchforts, having lost one of their precious moveable feasts, have withdrawn the other forts from the front and refuse to return.
It is just the Progeny, Koinon, and Titanagalbat. The three great empires. One fallen, one falling, one rising. Or so the scum of Koinon bray.
You hate them so much. You wish every single one would die.
EVENT HORIZON [Challenging - Success]: A fifth of them have, little self. The Progeny and the Titans spared little care for civilians, surrenders, and mercy. To protect their young the old and weak gave all they had - including their souls.
But you cannot be distracted by hate. On the perimeter outside the Ylfame exclusion zone, accessible only by cloud, you help Sympathy carefully carve names on Vehement Humility's willow tree, overlooking the warded cluster beyond. On its surface, you have carved the list of the copse's dead. Twenty-two surviving members of the Ever-Burning Branch help. The Branch is being dissolved for taking too many casualties, and they wanted to say goodbye. Immaculate Sympathy was good to them, and they did their best to help the Copse and win the war.
It's no real consolation. Most of the territory gained in the first year of fighting was lost in the flight from the Cubes. Immaculate Penitence had to retreat too, when Theia marched north and wrecked her army with telekinetic artillery and an ability at foresight unlike any seen upon this earth.
A quarter of the titans were destroyed. The eighteen petriform missiles have wrecked huge swathes, and sent refugees running everywhere, from the spreading clusters, held back only by psychic wards. The Bronze-King is alive, fighting his way out of the ringwall at Logos, and somehow so is Karuna - he managed to meet again with the Branch, though almost all his brides are dead. Iskandra and Roxana are alive, but Ephestion is dead. Serving as Koshkin's blank shield, he died holding Hyperion's thermonuclear plasma at bay. Roxana will take over his duties. And as for you - A third of all Kora-selves are dead.
Your copse is among them. 83, who went on campaign. 16, in the copse when the petriform missile struck Ylfame. Just four exceptions remain, and a question mark.
11 Diligent Tenacity, is the question. Set as dead, on the stone, but no one really knows. Sympathy's psychic connection was severed when her phase-harness malfunctioned. She likely teleported too deep, into the ground, and died instantly. That would be a kind death.
And then the exceptions. Dutiful Melancholy, on the Repose, but out of your reach. Every time you think of her, you think of home, and then you don't want to think at all. And Dutiful Epiphany - the only one smart enough to desert. You can't bear to face her, or find her. Let her live her life. Hopefully, she's happy, far away from you.
There is also Miss Lovergirl's one-way call for rescue, encoded still into your hand, saved. An opportunity promised, an escape, if you were trapped. You are trapped, but there is no escape from this prison in your mind. And you can't leave Sympathy. You are damned to live together, and die together.
And you can't.
Immaculate Sympathy carves the last name into Humility's bark. Humility herself has her eyes closed, relaxed, calm. She was never calm in life, always suffering from withdrawal or pain or rages. She is at peace, here.
You study the list together. Your only addition was to ensure the machine-parents were listed, and honored. They deserved better than you as their children.
The Ever-Burning Branch clutch their hands in a salute, as a piper plays a mourning song. You sweep your eyes over the list. It is the entirety of your social universe. Erased. Fled. Boiled away.
Just two remain.
CLOUD-MARTYRS OF THE COPSE OF INVINCIBLE GRACE
11 Diligent Tenacity (Print-Age: 5) 23 Diligent Serenity (Print-Age: 7) 13 Diligent Melody (Print-Age: 8) 7 Diligent Radiance (Print Age: 9) 14 Diligent Penitence (Print Age: 9) 23 Diligent Melody (Print-Age: 10) 18 Diligent Unity (Print-Age: 11) 19 Diligent Epiphany (Print-Age: 12) 4 Diligent Humility (Print-Age: 13) 22 Diligent Sympathy (Print-Age: 13) 8 Diligent Serenity (Print-Age: 13) 25 Diligent Tenacity (Print-Age: 14) | 12 Diligent Melody (Print-Age: 14) 6 Diligent Faith (Print-Age: 15) 9 Diligent Sympathy (Print-Age: 17) 10 Diligent Verity (Print-Age: 17) 5 Diligent Radiance (Print-Age: 19) 6 Diligent Melancholy (Print-Age: 19) 8 Diligent Humility (Print-Age: 19) 11 Diligent Melody (Print-Age: 19) 9 Diligent Serenity (Print-Age: 19) 21 Diligent Faith (Print-Age: 19) 20 Diligent Epiphany (Print-Age: 21) | 25 Diligent Tenacity (Print-Age: 23) 11 Diligent Melancholy (Print-Age: 25) 3 Diligent Serenity (Print-Age: 25) 29 Diligent Sympathy (Print-Age: 27) 22 Diligent Epiphany (Print-Age: 29) 30 Diligent Verity (Print-Age: 31) 26 Diligent Penitence (Print-Age: 32) 25 Diligent Humility (Print-Age: 34) 6 Diligent Melody (Print-Age: 35) 12 Diligent Unity (Print-Age: 37) 13 Diligent Tenacity (Print-Age: 39) 14 Diligent Penitence (Print-Age: 45) |
26 Dutiful Penitence (Print-Age: 13) 29 Dutiful Melancholy (Print-Age: 18) 3 Dutiful Epiphany (Print-Age: 18) 16 Dutiful Humility (Print-Age: 18) 21 Dutiful Radiance (Print-Age: 19) 5 Dutiful Melody (Print-Age: 20) 1 Dutiful Unity (Print-Age: 20) | 17 Dutiful Faith (Print-Age: 21) 28 Dutiful Verity (Print-Age 21) 11 Dutiful Melody (Print-Age-23) 2 Dutiful Humility (Print-Age: 24) 12 Dutiful Unity (Print-Age: 25) 20 Dutiful Verity (Print-Age: 32) 13 Dutiful Tenacity (Print-Age: 35) | 6 Dutiful Faith (Print-Age: 38) 17 Dutiful Tenacity (Print-Age: 41) 14 Dutiful Unity (Print-Age: 43) 18 Dutiful Tenacity (Print-Age: 45) 16 Dutiful Radiance (Print-Age: 47) 13 Dutiful Melody (Print-Age: 49) 2 Dutiful Faith (Print-Age: 55) |
30 Devout Penitence (Print-Age: 24) 18 Devout Epiphany (Print-Age: 31) | 10 Devout Verity (Print-Age: 37) 22 Devout Faith (Print-Age: 37) | 15 Devout Tenacity (Print-Age: 42) 9 Devout Serenity (Print-Age: 48) |
39 Ardent Sympathy (Print-Age: 6) 23 Ardent Tenacity (Print-Age: 6) 25 Ardent Humility (Print-Age: 7) 10 Ardent Verity (Print-Age: 9) 24 Ardent Unity (Print-Age: 11) 19 Ardent Tenacity (Print-Age: 13) 8 Ardent Faith (Print-Age: 14) 2 Ardent Unity (Print-Age: 14) 6 Ardent Verity (Print-Age: 16) 24 Ardent Serenity (Print-Age: 18) | 10 Vehement Humility (Print-Age: 21) | 26 Ardent Tenacity (Print-Age 18) 14 Ardent Faith (Print-Age: 20) 9 Ardent Unity (Print-Age: 21) 17 Ardent Verity (Print-Age: 25) 21 Ardent Serenity (Print-Age: 31) 16 Ardent Tenacity (Print-Age: 33) 14 Ardent Verity (Print-Age: 36) 30 Ardent Radiance (Print-Age: 41) 20 Ardent Melancholy (Print-Age: 43) 3 Ardent Faith (Print-Age: 52) |
COPSE-MARTYRS OF THE COPSE OF INVINCIBLE GRACE
12 Diligent Radiance (Print-Age: 2) 18 Diligent Melody (Print-Age: 2) 10 Diligent Humility (Print-Age: 3) 16 Diligent Verity (Print-Age: 3) | 3 Diligent Unity (Print-Age: 0.7) | 28 Diligent Tenacity (Print-Age: 4) 29 Diligent Unity (Print-Age 5) 11 Diligent Faith (Print-Age: 57) 9 Diligent Epiphany (Print-Age: 57) |
23 Ardent Tenacity (Print-Age: 2) | | 29 Ardent Sympathy (Print-Age: 3) |
4 Devout Melancholy (Print-Age: 57) 17 Devout Serenity (Print-Age: 57) | 22 Devout Unity (Print-Age: 71) | 28 Devout Melody (Print-Age: 62) 19 Devout Serenity (Print-Age: 64) |
THE CLOTH-FATHER | WE DID NOT DESERVE THE FULLNESS OF YOUR LOVE | THE WIRE-MOTHER |
MARTYRS-IN-WAITING
18 Immaculate Sympathy (Print-Age: 28)
[] [] Harmony (Print-Age: 17)
THE DEPARTED AND DESERTED
1 Dutiful Melancholy (Print-Age: 21)
30 Dutiful Epiphany (Print-Age: 15)
The war continues. You continue. Sympathy continues.
But everyone and everything else you knew does not. You lost it, and lost them, and lost most of yourself, before the dawn of the Red Sun.
—
Article: AXIOM EVOLVED [REASON]
DIFFERENCE ENGINE -> INDIFFERENCE ENGINE
THE INDIFFERENCE ENGINE: There are vast gulfs between meteorological and microscopic intelligences. Accept difference,and accept the multiplicity of lifeand accept there are those that deserve nothing but your hatred. To force everything to one standard, to one mission, is a child's delusion. There is no peace that can be found in union, or understanding.To force everything to one standard, to force everything to one mission, bleaches the rainbow tapestry. Peace is not found in union, but understanding.
AXIOM ACQUIRED [REASON]
FACE REALISM: The hypocrisy and inhuman humanity of the Scry-Republic has been replaced with the proud savagery of the Commonwealth. These nationalists are not human at all, but scuttling creatures, entities drawn from dark pits and brutal cube-dens. Their goal is to kill you and everything you love, and mercy, compassion, justice - these concepts mean nothing to them. You hate them, and hate Koinon. A prejudice that affects interaction with all nationals of the Commonwealth.
In particular, what you hate most about Koinon is...(choose one prejudice that most highlights your pain, trauma, and externalized grief).
[] Its atrocious music.
The "poets" of Koinon have taken oratorial onanism to heights never before imagined. Did they think all it took was a beat and finding six new insulting rhymes for pederasty to make a song? Did they think singing the Paean to the Divine Marriage somehow made their death more noble, when they fell under your blade?
[] Its irredeemable cuisine.
The heights of Koinon "cuisine" could politely be called bread, beans, and more bread. Less politely, one could bring up their black stew and blood pudding. How could anyone take a dish as simple as bloodberry and ruin it so comprehensively? How could they eat those rancid, fetid rations and still fight so hard?
[] Its endless sophistry.
The gaseous emanations of Koinon "philosophers" were, in your humble opinion, a horrifying scourge upon the world comparable only to the petriform their alchemists unleashed. Only in Koinon would entire days be spent in debates about nonsense like liberty, the social contract or featherless bipeds. Were those ridiculous ideas the reason why they would sacrifice so much, rather than accept they were beaten?
---
The last day without human misery you have before you are sent back to the final months of the war, you spend with Karuna. He is a last tie to the time before the Red Sun, serving with the Progeny on behalf of Titanagalbat. Where do the two of you go, and what do you do there? Choose one. This is a scene and location vote.
[] The Nanite Beach. Unspoiled abominable nature has its foremost expression on Illuminata in the Nanite Beaches. Nanites, washing up on the shoreline, are harvested by strangers. Wild machines make the gray beach-line, and its sand of accreted fossil nanites, their home. They are a fine thing to hunt, followed by a picnic beneath the sunset of the emerald sun. You find a particularly pretty spot that Sympathy once visited on her leaves as a young self.
[] The Blood-Grove. The demographics and society of the Progeny have transformed, but not its tastes. Vintage bloodwines, fermented in heart-casks, remain a delicacy, and the Jasmine Shore's proximity to certain prehistoric battles provides good fertilizing soil for the most treasured of this type. Invited by a Superior who was Immaculate Sympathy's wartime friend, the two of you relax, unwind, enjoy the rural idyll and a war film on moving glass.
[] The Garden-City. Kind-Landing is one of the most charming and oldest of the Progeny's forest-cities, one of the earliest settlements outside the Cubes, founded by pioneers from Origen. It has maintained its international character in its status as a treaty port, the only place where strangers, foreigners, and selves can mingle freely outside Malachite. You find every manner of exciting, enthralling, and modern entertainment here, a day of wild fun.
---When you go back to war, it won't be as a conventional soldier. Your talents, and your uses, have not gone unnoticed. And frankly, you don't care anymore how you're used, so long as you stay close to Sympathy. The result is your entrance to a small and experimental new mobile-suit program by the Progeny filled entirely with hylic selves - the night witches. Your goal, in aerial formation with Immaculate Sympathy, is one you relish - to target, suppress, injure, and assassinate, Koinon's prime souls - to bring down its Gods to earth, and hear them scream.
The night witches are organized into three distinct specialities and squads, called furies. To which do you belong, and what modification to your Takyon Tripwire do they make as a consequence? This will be the last augment vote for many updates.
[] Vacuum Furies. Masters of aerial manuever, vacuum furies wear augmentation-enabled mobile suits that enhance agility and movement in three dimensions. +TAKYON HIGHWIRE, an upgrade to your tripwire that enhances your dexterity, vertical movement, and jump distance.
[] Atomic Furies. Masters of split-second reflex, atomic furies wear augmentation-enabled mobile suits that enhance reflex, reaction time, and accuracy. +TAKYON HOTWIRE, an upgrade to your tripwire that enhances your timing, reaction speed, and combat focus.
[] Polarity Furies. Masters of acceleration, Polarity Furies wear augmentation-enabled mobile suits that enhance speed, g-force endurance, and stopping power. +TAKYON HARDWIRE, an upgrade to your tripwire that enhances your movement speed, timeslow duration, and sheer force.
---
Throughout everything, there is just one thing, and one person, that truly keeps you together. Immaculate Sympathy, your mother, your superior, your guiding daylight. And you keep her together, too. What is it exactly, that you draw most draw strength from? This is a thematic vote, with larger quest implications. Vote more on vibes, character, and philosophy than anything else.
[] Yesterday. The gentle memory of what once was. Everything you have suffered, and everything you have survived.
[] Today. The honest truth of this moment, of what is. Everything you experience, and every second that you spend together.
[] Tomorrow. The hopeful promise of what could be. Everything you want for one another, and everything you dream for.
Last edited:
Kora, and possibly you, did not see Mount Tai. Never before outside of xianxia fiction has the term Ruthless Heavens been more appropriate. None have ever reached the summit let Harmony be the first. With a body in the abyss, a heart in paradise, and a mind that shatters all illusions, she will climb the mountain.
bookwyrm
Doom of Public Libraries
- Location
- Wichita, Kansas
What's the difference
Up there with Market Garden, Crete and Hostomel Airport as one of the paradrop operations of all time.
- Location
- Singapore
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Its atrocious music.
The "poets" of Koinon have taken oratorial onanism to heights never before imagined. Did they think all it took was a beat and finding six new insulting rhymes for pederasty to make a song? Did they think singing the Paean to the Divine Marriage somehow made their death more, when they fell under your blade?
[X] The Nanite Beach. Unspoiled abominable nature has its foremost expression on Illuminata in the Nanite Beaches. Nanites, washing up on the shoreline, are harvested by strangers. Wild machines make the gray beach-line, and its sand of accreted fossil nanites, their home. They are a fine thing to hunt, followed by a picnic beneath the sunset of the emerald sun. You find a particularly pretty spot that Sympathy once visited on her leaves as a young self.
[X] Vacuum Furies. Masters of aerial manuever, vacuum furies wear augmentation-enabled mobile suits that enhance agility and movement in three dimensions. +TAKYON HIGHWIRE, an upgrade to your tripwire that enhances your dexterity, vertical movement, and jump distance.
[X] Today. The honest truth of this moment, of what is. Everything you experience, and every second that you spend together.
The "poets" of Koinon have taken oratorial onanism to heights never before imagined. Did they think all it took was a beat and finding six new insulting rhymes for pederasty to make a song? Did they think singing the Paean to the Divine Marriage somehow made their death more, when they fell under your blade?
[X] The Nanite Beach. Unspoiled abominable nature has its foremost expression on Illuminata in the Nanite Beaches. Nanites, washing up on the shoreline, are harvested by strangers. Wild machines make the gray beach-line, and its sand of accreted fossil nanites, their home. They are a fine thing to hunt, followed by a picnic beneath the sunset of the emerald sun. You find a particularly pretty spot that Sympathy once visited on her leaves as a young self.
[X] Vacuum Furies. Masters of aerial manuever, vacuum furies wear augmentation-enabled mobile suits that enhance agility and movement in three dimensions. +TAKYON HIGHWIRE, an upgrade to your tripwire that enhances your dexterity, vertical movement, and jump distance.
[X] Today. The honest truth of this moment, of what is. Everything you experience, and every second that you spend together.
Da Boyz
The Cutest Apocalypse.
"Mom why did you refuse to make peace?"
"Good question, why did I refuse to make peace?"
Joking aside I imagine that Sympathy wasn't the one who made the decision for the Koras despite leading the army. It would be bleakly hilarious if she had and this was what she was thinking immediately after she saw Vehement Humility though.
Cetashwayo
Lord of Ten Thousand Years
- Location
- Across the Horizon
Of course not. I'll edit that in since it's a good question.
- Location
- Derna
Well, there's the divine intervention that was promised, and roughly 2-3x more of it that might've been expected. One hell of a momentary apocalypse, jeez.Previously on: Koinon Gear said:
- Location
- an unseen void
- Pronouns
- Any
fuck.
[X] Its atrocious music.
[X] The Nanite Beach. Unspoiled abominable nature has its foremost expression on Illuminata in the Nanite Beaches. Nanites, washing up on the shoreline, are harvested by strangers. Wild machines make the gray beach-line, and its sand of accreted fossil nanites, their home. They are a fine thing to hunt, followed by a picnic beneath the sunset of the emerald sun. You find a particularly pretty spot that Sympathy once visited on her leaves as a young self.
[X] Atomic Furies. Masters of split-second reflex, atomic furies wear augmentation-enabled mobile suits that enhance reflex, reaction time, and accuracy. +TAKYON HOTWIRE, an upgrade to your tripwire that enhances your timing, reaction speed, and combat focus.
[X] Tomorrow. The hopeful promise of what could be. Everything you want for one another, and everything you dream for.
[X] Its atrocious music.
[X] The Nanite Beach. Unspoiled abominable nature has its foremost expression on Illuminata in the Nanite Beaches. Nanites, washing up on the shoreline, are harvested by strangers. Wild machines make the gray beach-line, and its sand of accreted fossil nanites, their home. They are a fine thing to hunt, followed by a picnic beneath the sunset of the emerald sun. You find a particularly pretty spot that Sympathy once visited on her leaves as a young self.
[X] Atomic Furies. Masters of split-second reflex, atomic furies wear augmentation-enabled mobile suits that enhance reflex, reaction time, and accuracy. +TAKYON HOTWIRE, an upgrade to your tripwire that enhances your timing, reaction speed, and combat focus.
[X] Tomorrow. The hopeful promise of what could be. Everything you want for one another, and everything you dream for.
Cetashwayo
Lord of Ten Thousand Years
- Location
- Across the Horizon
Many thanks, fixed both.
- Location
- in the trash
cheaters smh
Chaos deserves to get punked though, please despair and die
Chaos deserves to get punked though, please despair and die
- Location
- France
[X] Today. The honest truth of this moment, of what is. Everything you experience, and every second that you spend together.
More seriously, this entire update is just...
...colossal. There is an immensity to it, a terrible geological pressure that builds and builds as we hit one climax and then another and keep going. It's like a symphony where the composer decides to simply pull out all the stops and hold nothing back. I helped proofread it, this is my third or fourth full read, and I still feel absolutely wrung out. It is absolutely "peak", as the kids would say.
...colossal. There is an immensity to it, a terrible geological pressure that builds and builds as we hit one climax and then another and keep going. It's like a symphony where the composer decides to simply pull out all the stops and hold nothing back. I helped proofread it, this is my third or fourth full read, and I still feel absolutely wrung out. It is absolutely "peak", as the kids would say.
Well. That was brutal.
It was immediately obvious something was going to happen to 11DT once their harness issues were brushed off, and yeah a quick painless death is probably one of the better outcomes for them there.
And well we knew the Red Sun was coming, but it's still kind of surprising it lasted all of what, 5 minutes before it got beat back by the White Sun? I mean I suppose if it lasted too much longer with the hydra getting it's fangs into it maybe the world map post-war wouldn't have looked as similar to pre-war.
Also ouch, that tree scene.
[X] Its irredeemable cuisine.
Absolutely disgusting. /s
[X] The Nanite Beach. Unspoiled abominable nature has its foremost expression on Illuminata in the Nanite Beaches. Nanites, washing up on the shoreline, are harvested by strangers. Wild machines make the gray beach-line, and its sand of accreted fossil nanites, their home. They are a fine thing to hunt, followed by a picnic beneath the sunset of the emerald sun. You find a particularly pretty spot that Sympathy once visited on her leaves as a young self.
War movies don't seem like the best idea right now, and maybe we should stay away from some more international areas if we want to keep this a day without misery before we go back to war with our newly leveled up intolerance.
[X] Vacuum Furies. Masters of aerial manuever, vacuum furies wear augmentation-enabled mobile suits that enhance agility and movement in three dimensions. +TAKYON HIGHWIRE, an upgrade to your tripwire that enhances your dexterity, vertical movement, and jump distance.
Just feeling the vibe of 3D movement and fighting.
[X] Yesterday. The gentle memory of what once was. Everything you have suffered, and everything you have survived.
Never forget the fuel for the fire of our own sun.
It was immediately obvious something was going to happen to 11DT once their harness issues were brushed off, and yeah a quick painless death is probably one of the better outcomes for them there.
And well we knew the Red Sun was coming, but it's still kind of surprising it lasted all of what, 5 minutes before it got beat back by the White Sun? I mean I suppose if it lasted too much longer with the hydra getting it's fangs into it maybe the world map post-war wouldn't have looked as similar to pre-war.
Also ouch, that tree scene.
[X] Its irredeemable cuisine.
Absolutely disgusting. /s
[X] The Nanite Beach. Unspoiled abominable nature has its foremost expression on Illuminata in the Nanite Beaches. Nanites, washing up on the shoreline, are harvested by strangers. Wild machines make the gray beach-line, and its sand of accreted fossil nanites, their home. They are a fine thing to hunt, followed by a picnic beneath the sunset of the emerald sun. You find a particularly pretty spot that Sympathy once visited on her leaves as a young self.
War movies don't seem like the best idea right now, and maybe we should stay away from some more international areas if we want to keep this a day without misery before we go back to war with our newly leveled up intolerance.
[X] Vacuum Furies. Masters of aerial manuever, vacuum furies wear augmentation-enabled mobile suits that enhance agility and movement in three dimensions. +TAKYON HIGHWIRE, an upgrade to your tripwire that enhances your dexterity, vertical movement, and jump distance.
Just feeling the vibe of 3D movement and fighting.
[X] Yesterday. The gentle memory of what once was. Everything you have suffered, and everything you have survived.
Never forget the fuel for the fire of our own sun.
Last edited:
Professor Vesca
Good News Everyone!
We are such a terrible person lol.
- Location
- The Frozen North
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] The Nanite Beach. Unspoiled abominable nature has its foremost expression on Illuminata in the Nanite Beaches. Nanites, washing up on the shoreline, are harvested by strangers. Wild machines make the gray beach-line, and its sand of accreted fossil nanites, their home. They are a fine thing to hunt, followed by a picnic beneath the sunset of the emerald sun. You find a particularly pretty spot that Sympathy once visited on her leaves as a young self.
[X] Its irredeemable cuisine.
[X] Tomorrow. The hopeful promise of what could be. Everything you want for one another, and everything you dream for.
[X] Its irredeemable cuisine.
[X] Tomorrow. The hopeful promise of what could be. Everything you want for one another, and everything you dream for.
Deadly Snark
Tryhard As Fuck
Jesus Fucking Christ this planet.
I know I am repeating myself, but such is life, and this fucking planet.
I know I am repeating myself, but such is life, and this fucking planet.