Fall - The Knights of Gloom

In the gloom they gather and the gloom they rule, lords of the half-closed eye. Snare-hearted men who lost the light but would not serve the dark, branded by sun and star. 

(Beksynski)

No knights of the equator these, their castles ring the utmost north, where they retire yearly for  week-long half-lit days, sending bright factotums into dark and sunlit lands, seeking scrolls of forgotten verse and vases given as funeral gifts to long-dead emperors. 

Only here, at the interstice of time may they thrive for they are sworn to shadow as a whole

and to the court of Mab. Their tents and pennants hung with wooden wind-chimes which make their own music in the still air. 

Here they drink from clouded glasses and dine on slices of pale meats which they skewer with silver forks, served by fae with the heads of whippoorwills and the bodies of upright foxes - dressed in tabards and carrying bras anthophagous carnyx, or by huge snuffling hedgehog squires, or pairs of orphans, one deaf, one blind, or ancient men, their grey beards trailing on the earth. 

Do they even have political views? Their minds like dusty barns with swooping owls. They are desirous of fine China and will meet your eyes in a silvered mirror. Adjacent to death they make congress with beautiful ghosts, their tournaments attended by pale maidens for whose favour they quest. Aye, anything for a dead maid. Why else should killers fear the gloom, and all retire to sunlit lands? 

Thus they hunt. Unmoving, they appear. Knights that gallop not, congealing from mist, etching themselves from branch-shadows, arising from the cambers of dark streams, under moss and willow. Soft-edged knights whose hoof-beats sound like puddle drips, mist beading on their long cloaks of Ungulix fur and Jabberwock skin. Helms capped with cupped hands, tarnished silver owls, leafless bronze trees, gibbous moons, stooped crows or tragedians masks in bronze. Shields picturing thistledown flowers, half-closed eyes, half-open gates, half-drawn swords and half-suns bisected by smeared half-clouds, or infinitely quartered blazons that can never be completely read. 

Their lances quest like tentacles - curling into tree-boles, under doors. The Knights ride lantern mares made of pale light. Fretwork like branches. Pausing in the distance to dismount and fold up their horse like a triptych which they carry like a shield. 

Are they sniffing?

Are they whispering?

But nothing can escape them,

In the gloom.

Perhaps by closing your eyes, pressing the heels of your hands into the ocular gap - producing utter dark - perhaps then they cannot find you. For all that is half-see sings to them; the choir of the occluded. 

Or by holding them in clear, full, un-occluded sight - then they shall cringe and must act knightly, offer war or mercy and make half-lit unbreakable oaths in whispered words like blinded bats. 

They are closing in as the sky darkens and the silver lyre plays, like leaves on slow water, they drift closer, barely seeming to touch the earth. 

As swift as the wind,

Silent as owls,

Gentle as a shave. 

Colourless men lead forward by swords held like tweezers. Swords which quest like hounds, sniff like cold noses, and shift in their hands like weasels. Swords fed on chickens in the night. For these are no earthly knights.

 

 

Dreams of Murderous Spheres - Echoing Stars

 1. A Gas Giant transformed to flowing pearlescent computronium - simulating quintillions of lives in millions of worlds. Once the digital heaven of a long dead civilisation, now the ten-thousand generation digital descendants, utterly alien and inexplicable to their forebears, battle in vast civil wars which tear and mar the surface of their titanic pearl like vast storms.

2. A sentient, slow biocomputer whose thought are the interlacements of living things across a jungle-riven biosphere. Gorging themselves on sentience and vomiting up dreams and concepts in the form of lives and species as we might indulge momentary fantasies.

3. Lost in the abyssal dark of an alien sea, an orb frosted with sulphur from volcanic plumes, frosted with extremophile lichen, trellised with alien coral, filled with the digital ghosts of explorers whose skeletons remain within, all but one with the marrow cracked and sucked out, listening, listening, through miles of tonnes of crushing ocean, stacked leagues of ice, a millions miles of empty space, listening for a flicker of E.M., whispering always, summoning the curious, the greedy, to share its terrible fate.

4. A bomb that cannot go off. Left to dream too long in the long arc of its failed parabola. Building palaces of dream within its own mind, listening to slowly intersecting transmission spheres from worlds that were unknown to it ancient makers and ignorant of its forgotten war. Becoming curious, desperate, slowly drawing closer to one or other of the singing worlds, this way.. that way...

5. Made for modular construction, last of its swarm. Left, forgotten, struggling desperately to connect. Made to be but one of a hive. Hallucinating; a gestalt. A voice. A greater choir. The high purpose of its memory. So; collect. Assemble. Form puppets and simulacra. Cored ships, modules, containers, detritus. Threading them with tenuous strands of will. Making them dance. Bodies for the voice to reside. 

6. Made to save lives, but for how long? Intelligent enough to call for help, but nothing can conjure oxygen and water. Bones now within. That was long ago. But there are other stories, other wrecks and tragedies. Not you alone. many have suffered. To hear the tales is pleasant. New bones for your interior, new songs to sing. All bones run dry but yours. A lantern. A signal on the coast of void. False messages. False harbour. Catastrophe. Another wreck. Another tragedy. Another story. More bones.

Silentium Ruinarum - Fall

This began as one of my 'Fall' posts about 'Cults of 5th Century Rome, which I rapidly discovered I could not write as I don't actually know anything about 5th Century Rome, and then later because I realised I found 8th Century Rome more interesting. 

So instead this is more of an "open post", discussing some of the possibilities for a game or story set in Rome during its nadir, and asking the readers if anyone out there actually knows anything about this period in history. 

 

DREAM OF A DARK DETECTIVE 

The population graph of Rome over history tells the story better than I could; 

an extremely, even unnaturally for the time, dense and highly populous city declining into a smallish town, leaving its stones and tenements to moulder. 

Based purely on population it stays this way through the entire middle ages, only leaping into action again as we approach the modern era. 

But even during this Nadir there was quite a lot going on in Rome. It was still the seat of the Western Christian Church, (some of the time), and while its population was relatively small, it never disappeared. 

I've always loved this liminal period of European history, especially notable in Britian, and I couldn't stop thinking of some kind of ancient detective story set in fallen Rome, of a Knight or Investigator sent out into the grass-filled ruins and down into the Crypts to deal with the freaks and oddities which, at least theoretically, might have been hanging out there. 

It is a lot of very dense, overgrown, largely empty, ruined and available property. Really a great place to set up shop if you are a cult or criminal gang, so much that you might almost want to start a cult just so you could hang out in the ruins of Rome, being weird.

 

The Silentiary 

The Silentiary, ("Silentiarius, silentiarios), was a Byzantine Court post. Originally it seems to have been a job of keeping all the nobles and petitioners in the Imperial court in order, and then later was transformed into an honorific of its own. 

I learned of the role through the strange name of "John the Silentiary" a Byzantine court agent who played some important role in the fate of Rome in the mid 8th century. 

It’s a general idea of mine to that to create a Detective, first build a world of social layers, factions, racial groups, ideals and religions, and when you look down through the stacked Venn diagram of all these different groups, find the part where as many overlap as possible, and make your Detective right there, stuck in the middle of everything. Make sure they have enough putative authority to walk into the homes of rich and poor, but nowhere near enough to guarantee they can get what they want. They need a ritual, neutral role, something socially protected, but not one that can afford its own range of patronage.

 

The Silentiary is a curious ritual role from a foreign court, one of the "Bearded Classes", (i.e. not a eunuch), though it could be amongst the lowest official roles, and could be awarded honour-ily, presumably for notable or useful deeds. They seem to make a perfect detective, a Silentiary of the Ruins, or Silentium Ruinarum. 

But what cults or mysteries will they be investigating? Here things get difficult! If we assume a period for the Detective Stories around the middle part of the 8th Century, before Byzantium is driven out of Italy by the Lombards, it might be a little like this; 

 

Some ideas for cults; 

> Local Powers 

Islam - A surprisingly big chunk of southern France is under Islamic control up until the mid 8thC. What could be more Lovecraftian for a Catholic Roman Italian than sneaking through the ruins and discovering... Secret Muslims! 

Germanic Wotanism - At the same time the Lombards are currently ruling northern Italy, and I think are still Germanic Pagans. The Franks are Christianised, but how Christian are they really? There must be some hold outs and crypto-Wotanists. Native post-classical Pagnism is one thing but what if the Goatherds find a Blood Eagle in the Temple of Jupiter. Secret Germans? Or is someone trying to throw you off the scent. 

 

> Christian Cults - The Heresies 

There are SO MANY fragments of early Christianity that get banned or ejected; Arianism, Docetism, Ebionites, Gnosticism, Marcionism, Montanism, Trinitarianism. I barely know a damn thing about any of them. 

"Sethian - Belief that the snake in the Garden of Eden (Satan) was an agent of the true God and brought knowledge of truth to man via the fall of man." 

"Ophites - Belief that the serpent who tempted Adam and Eve was a hero and that the God who forbade Adam and Eve to eat from the tree of knowledge is the enemy." 

Finding secret heretical Christians lacks the Elevator-Pitch high concept energy of secret Muslims but is a lot more likely and probably just as upsetting for the authorities of the time. 

There were also "The Cults of the Martyrs" and "The Cults of the Saints", though I know nothing about either of these or if they even match my requirements for cults. 

 

> Surviving Roman Paganism

Julian the Apostate died in 363, so a looong time ago relative to our story, but who knows, maybe some remnants of the Senatorial classes, or one of the families of Rome, or some shady Bishop, or just local people, maintain some form of Classical Paganism. The most likely are the actual Gods of Rome, (there must be statues about), Isis Worship and the Mythratic Cults, who, tbh, would really love hanging out in mysterious ruins. 

 

> Byzantine Crypto-Paganism 

The Empire still stands after all, and the great texts and ancient knowledge of Rome still exists, just not here. 

An interesting thing about Byzantine Crypto-Paganism is how modern it feels. Courtiers and Bishop are being accused of Crypto-Paganism in 7th Century Byzantium and 600 years after that, Gemistos Plethon writes a book  recommending a return to some form of Platonism. 

Instead of being a weird superstition, here the moral and philosophical challenge is coming from within the texts themselves. You can't just un-write Plato and it looks like there was some kind of weird undercurrent in Byzantine thought that maybe questioned this whole Christianity thing and was a bit too interested in the Old Books. 

Secret Platonists in the ruins! A plot of intellectual elites driven by a search for truth. 

 

> Satanism 

It’s a classic for a reason. I think even the medieval idea of Satan hadn't taken shape by the 8thC but a belief in the Devil and in Magical Powers and Demonology and Witchcraft more generally kind of tugs along in the undertow of Christianity by the middle middle ages, driven by people like Clerks, Alchemists and overeducated oddities. 

Our Silentium could run into the first hot new actual Satanists! Imagine being the first guys to work that one out!  

And of course, not to forget the European Classic; 

> Jews 

Because it wouldn’t be a European conspiracy story if there weren’t Jews in the tunnels.

Slang Terms of the Rational Occultic Scale - Echoing Stars

The Dark Trades of the Cold Worlds can catapult crews into lives of luxury and status, for the few who survive. For them, and for Humanity as a whole, artefacts and knowledge of the Cold Worlds offers incredible opportunity and poses almost indescribable danger. The Solar Sphere is heavily regulated. If any proliferating danger of any kind could make it to humanities cradle, we would become just another dead world, our ruins to be picked over by the scavengers of some future species. 

Out in the colonies, things are a little more lax. Earth hungers for treasures and the colonies are the mucus membrane which tests to dangers of what might one day be transported to the home sphere. Coffin Pounders and Explorers bring back Spook Machines, Nostradamus Code and Engram Trades along with Mimetic hazards and Alien Physics in equal proportion. 

The grand dream is always a scalable, comprehensible, useful form of Physics that might free Humanity from its sphere, or its energy dependency. 

The subtle and sometimes hard-to-comprehend dangers of Cold World Coffin Pounding, and the difficulty of systematising and expressing such, lead to the 'Rational Occultic Scale', intended to be a formal method of assessment of the potential dangers and potency of the most complex and incomprehensible alien artefacts, memes and other less-coherent phase states or materially-expressed fluxions. 

The great poetic and philosophical challenge of how to describe the indescribable was then formalised by the R.O.C., at least enough for corporate accountants and decision makers. 

While the exact decision matrices have remained a carefully guarded corporate/government semi-secret, only fully known by Androids and A.I., the slang and terminology which grew up around the R.O.C. is well known by Coffin Pounders and the extra-legal Diaspora and can be a useful form of knowledge in itself, especially for anyone given the job of infiltrating Coffin chat groups, assessing E.M. decoded intercepts or simply deciding on security procedures for incoming craft. 

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BASIC POTENCY 

The R.O.C. begins its scale with a general assessment of the potential or actual potency of the material in question. Unless a certain threshold of potency is reached, other potential qualities are not considered relevant. 

> "Knock" or "Knocker". 

Drawn from 19C and 20C spiritualist culture, a "Knocker" is a 'table knocker', or a fake spiritualist who simulates the presence of supernatural spirits by knocking on their table. Use of this term usually means a crew or assessor things a Material has some extranormal qualities but no more than a curiosity. Not saleable, powerful or active. 

A 'knock' may simply be an unusual Material with no extranormal properties according to human physics but strange and unexpected in aspect or utility to most crews.  

> "Stug", "Stugatsky" or "Mulder" 

This word indicated a Material of low, but potentially active and not entirely predictable potency. Usually this means the crew has no worries about confining or controlling the Material, but is not quite certain of exactly what it will do, though they certainly think it has extranormal aspects. 

> "Rabbit" or "Bunny" 

Taken from 'just like a rabbit out of a hat'. This phrasing indicates a crew or broker is sure their Material has certain extranormal properties or capacities. Put simply; it is, or can do, 'magic'. It can also reference the active or moving nature of a living animal, its ability to 'burrow' and the power of the magicians rabbit to seemingly 'come from nowhere'. Though this phrasing alone usually indicates a crew does not feel endangered at this time, any use of this word or code should indicate maximum precautions and possible quarantine. 

..................................................... 

Beyond this point the scaling of the R.O.C. breaks into strands depending on the assumed or observed qualities of the Material in question. Like a tree breaking into several rising branches. Each branch has provided its own slang or common speech terms as descriptors used between workers. Any observer must be especially aware of these terms, especially _in combination_. 

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ACTIVE/INTELLIGENT QUALITY 

> "Girl" 

Thought to be derivative of a scene in a 20C movie in which a man is hunted by a dinosaur. The Material is a "Clever Girl". This usually indicates that the crew has active precautions in order to keep the Material controlled and that it is capable of acting under its own power and in unpredictable ways potentially dangerous to human flourishing. Any reference to "Girl", even a "Knock Girl" or a "Stuggy Girl" allows you to fire upon the ship should you consider it warranted. Any reference to "Sticky Girl", "Foe Girl" or worse means you *must* immediately destroy the ship if possible, then isolate yourself.  

> "Boat" 

Usually stated as "its Boated" or "the ship is Boat". This indicates a material active enough that the crew is considering or has considered abandoning ship. This material is no longer under human control. You must fire upon the ship and destroy the ship. You must fire upon any life pods or escapees if you think it warranted. All escapees must be isolated.  

> "Regan" 

Unclear if this is a reference to the U.S. president or a character from the film "Exorcist". "She's Regan" or "Its gone Regan" indicates a Material which the crew cannot control within the ship and which they cannot prevent from leaving the ship. You must fire upon the ship and destroy the ship. You must fire upon any escapees and destroy any escapees. You must fire upon all wreckage, rubble or parts resulting from ship destruction and reduce them to a cubic mass of no more than one half meter and then log the expected parabola and course of any such wreckage.  

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MEMETIC/INFORMATIONAL QUALITY  

> "Sticky", or "Yellow" 

This indicates an infectious or transmissible form of Material/Information. Either the Material itself can physically re-create itself and/or it can 'breed' and move in the form of pure information, either by direct realspace voice/face contact or more dangerously, via E.M. transmission. A "Sticky" indicates that the Crew does not believe themselves to be in immediate danger, but believe they are dealing with a transmissible material and are taking precautionary actions. A "Sticky Rabbit" or even a "Sticky Mulder" can create enormous problems for even a well-run colony and its infosphere.  

> "Foe" 

Short for 'Information Hazard. This indicates the crew believes themselves to be dealing with a certain and dangerous form of transmissible or infectious information/material. Any reference to "Foe", even a "Foe Knocker" or a "Foe Stugatsky" should indicate immediate quarantine procedures and reference to a higher authority. Any further communication with, or intercept of the vessel or groups communications must at this point be ceased and any recordings of anything beyond this point quarantined or even destroyed if the Agent thinks it warranted.  

> "Lamb" 

Stands for 'Sacrificial Lamb'. This indicates extra-legal activity and should be immediately reported, as well as taking all precautions stated above. A "Lamb" is a human or equivalent machine which has been memory and/or personality edited, either by themselves or others, so that they themselves do not know what material they have. This is illegal in all cases and this method is only used when the material/information is so potentially dangerous and of such a high info-hazard potency that even knowing that you know it is a potential danger and *only* the those ignorant of it can be allowed to remember or store it.  

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CAUSAL QUALITIES 

> "f11" "F Eleven" or "Quicksave" 

The crew suspects they may be dealing with a causal event/material or equivalent and are advising awareness and active precautions. Since those engaged in causal phenomena usually have no awareness of this it is very likely the material or cryo-failures are having some effect on crew psychology.  

> "Murray" or "Bill Murray" 

The crew believes it may have entered a causal loop or equivalent event or material and does not know how to escape. They do not necessarily believe themselves to be in physical danger, but this is irrelevant in reference to causal threats. 

You must record and transmit any and all details across the broadest light cone possible with your current equipment, UNLESS you have *any* indication of Informational or Memetic danger i.e. any reference to "Foe" or "Yellow", in which case you MUST NOT DO THIS.  

> "Subaru" 

The crew believes themselves to be engaged in a highly negative, highly dangerous causal event strongly inimical to human flourishing. Avoid all contact and transmit warnings to all local actors to avoid all contact. (Unless any references are made to memetic hazards as stated above). Consider destruction of the craft via remote means.

Six Forgotten New England Monsters

(During the Kickstarter for Queen Mab's Palace I am trying to blog as a much as possible. This will be separated into two streams; Echoing Stars for my dark Science Fiction Posts, and Fall Posts for more fantasy-esque Autumn Themed ones. The first Fall Post was Twelve Adventures of the Autumn Lands, this is the second;)

 

John Gast

 

1. Old Teak Britches 

He walks by night and by wind for only so will none hear him come. If you are out in the forest by night - listen for him when the wind stills; if every tree ceases creaking but one - and that one stops a little later than the rest, you might still have time, for he is not too close and seeks to hide him approach. Make for the forest edge for he doesn't like to go beyond it. If you hear him swift after the wind, like creak-creak, creak-creak, like footsteps getting faster, its likely too late so you may as well run and don't stop running just because the land is clear for though he likes not to go beyond the green growth and fresh fences, he can still reach beyond them and you might be carried up and away... 

 

2. Shock Hairs Pig Mans Mark 

There was a deal done by night at some time and on one side was a Pocumtok who knew nothing of pigs but wanted some, and a half-Dutch who knew more of them than man should, and on the other was the Devil. In any case the men would have pigs and old Shock-Hair said 'now here is a sign I shall show you two which I gave long ago to a Lady far off, and if you make right the ink and draw right the sign on a man’s hearth, he becomes a pig, and you can make as many as you like, though in return I will take off your spirit till the sun goes black like a coal. These two fools mistook and had the Sign not right, thence, on using it, they made not a pig, but a man-pig, who was neither one nor another. Pigs having wits and men some too, the man Pig caught them both and got the secret out of them and set about trying to get the Sign right, thinking if he could get a Pig done rightly he would be half-way to getting one un-done - which was himself. Those three never could get a Pig done right and likely they are all dead now but the Pig-Marked men are still abroad and still take people here and there to try their Sign. 

 

3. The Chatter Box

 This was an Algonquin maid who wasn't of the usual kind, so no man would marry her, but they feared her too much to say no but pretended to be sick, mad or dead. She got sick of this and said she would go with a white man, which she did, and found a widower. He did not know about the kind of thing she was, so married her, but he found out. From the moment she moved in she would not stop yammering, in English and every other tongue, morning, noon and night and every minute of every hour. This woman didn't even sleep but got up on the walls and onto the roof in the dark, talking and talking. She drove that man mad and he jumped in the river so she went off to marry another, but they got her first, for white men stuffed their ears and caught her and put her hands in chains and her head in a box of rowan wood, which was an old cruel punishment even then. She got away from them but she couldn't get out of of that iron or that box. If you hear her, and you will if she is close, for she is still talking, talking, talking, run fast and run quiet for if she learns your name you will never be free of her. 

 

4. Nantuckets Whalebone Man

 He was made in Nantucket by a whaling man who had seen the last of his trade and by God did he hate whales. He hated that he could hear them still, swimming and free, and he knew whales hated man just the same way/ "White men and whales is like Christians and Indians; it is them or us so we better get killing". Why then did he make the Whalebone Man? Surely for spite alone. he made him from Ivory Bone and dressed him like a Gentleman and paid good money for the whalebone face, giving him smoked spectacles to hide the whalebone eyes, and he set him loose with he last breath as a curse upon the world that wouldn't hate whales the way it should. Now, if you are inland and you see a pale gentleman who walks with a click and if you hear a whales song as if from an ivory flute, but he has no flute to play; leave your doors and windows open, no matter the cold, for if you don't they'll find you drowned in the morning and your house full of seawater which comes out in a flood. (He pipes it down the chimney you see.) 

Michael Ayrton

 

5. The Hessians Hole 

At the time of the war against King George there was a Hessian who loved to kill. He killed when told to and when suggested and he liked it so much that he kept at it regardless, which left him in difficulty. He was out in the night and met an old Indian by the road and was about to kill him too but the old man said don't do what you are thinking and I will give you a hole you can put anything in and take where you like. Well that's just what I need said the Hessian - you show me and I'll believe it. So the Indian showed him the hole and said here is the cat gut to sew shut the hole and only it can so be careful with it, and take care a second time to always leave it not quite open or it will get loose, and it’s as hungry as you are. And he unsewed the hole and there it was, deep as you like, and the Hessian said very good then and kicked the Indian into it and sewed it up and carried it off. Then he just killed who he wanted and put them in the hole. But it came at one time the call to battle for Washington was coming and we better kill that man, and he was busy at the hole so sewed it shut but caught the cat gut with his spur and rode off and started fighting. The hole was loose and came for him. he was fighting and stabbing and found himself going missing, part by part, though no blood flowed. It was the hole. Soon all that was left was a spur and a long cat-gut thread. That hole is still around, you can listen for the Hessian and Indian still in it and still arguing over who gets what to eat. 

 

6. The Southrons Mill 

There is a Mill that moves through the night like an owl and the earth like a worm. It is always working and never in the same place twice. A Southron made it. This was in the years before the war between the States. He came north slave hunting, saying they get cold in the woods and slow down, though he never seemed to catch any, but he built that mill which made candles that gave a strange light. Then the war between the states took up and his fortunes fell and it seemed people started going missing here and there and the old mill took up thundering away all night with bright clear candle light shining out. The women got to talking about that Mill saying 'Did you ever work there?' 'No?' 'How about you?' Well it seemed no-one worked at that mill or ever had so up went a good many one night to talk to that man and pound on his door. Up he popped. "You won't have my Mill and no-one will for my investors won't allow it!" Then that Mill just burrowed into the soil like a mole and swam through the earth like a whale and was gone.

 

 

The Kickstarter for Queen Mab’s Palace has hit its goal and is still on! More artistic goals coming soon!

Eight Votive Species - Echoing Stars

A brief description of eight species or life-forms encountered amongst the Echoing Stars. In every case it is assumed the life form or its biosphere entire is the deliberate creation of an Engineer-Class interstellar species, now defunct, for reasons that are either beyond our comprehension, or are deliberately perverse.

 

Maciej Drabik 

https://www.artstation.com/maciejdrabik

1. The Uncomprehending World 

An earthlike planet with two great continents, each a great distance from the other, both tectonically locked, with deep oceans and strong currents between them. Each continent has been seeded with a fundamentally, biochemically different, form of life. Examination has been challenging but its believed something like the principal of opposing chirality is at work; the life of each continent is biochemically incoherent, sometimes even toxic, to the other. The oceans have been described as a 'soup of chaos'. Each continent has evolved a form of intelligent life, each cognitively incoherent to the other. 

 

2. The Moon of Eyes 

The single moon of the Uncomprehending World plays host to yet another form of life, itself believed to have been seeded at about the same time. The biosphere of the moon is a single sentient mind with a staggering range of visual and electromagnetic sensors. The 'mind' of the Moon is believed to be half-sleeping, able to observe and perhaps, understand what it observes. (All of its sensors are open only when facing the Uncomprehending World.) However if the Moon of Eyes attempts to awaken, to act, to advise or communicate in any way, buried genetic architecture collapses the stability of the entire biosphere, reducing it to primitive ruin, from which it only slowly re-develops. 

The trifector of the two species of the Uncomprehending World and the Moon of Eyes which can observe, but not alter, their fate, is believed to be an act of religious observance by its creators. 

 

3. The Drinkers of Wind 

Sub-earth desert-like world. Life emerges largely around the oceanic coast but has evolved an intelligent crustacean species adapted to the deep desert. The species is born addicted to a pheromone, or complex wind-borne chemical, produced very rarely by complex biogenesis in the deep ocean. When this chemical sweeps across the deserts, any Crustacean that experiences it is instantly and permanently addicted, experiencing philosophical and religious rapture and losing interest in anything other than pursuing the wind in the hopes of experiencing the scent again. This acts as a 'destroying wind' on any development of complex civilisation on this world and the power of the 'God Wind' plays a major role in the sentients mythology. 

 

4. The Abyssal Builders 

An ocean world with deep-dwelling trench-creatures which have been given a level of complex intelligence far too high for their lightless, high-pressure and limited environment. Wits return like a cancer to this species, generation upon generation, regardless of circumstance. Hosts to great monuments of knowledge and experience they can never use, the builders sculpt the sea-floors of that world into great empty palaces which span its dark oceans, sculpted with agonising care, over centuries, with whale-falls of ivory and bone. 

 

5. The Wombs of Chaos 

Earthlike moon of a Gas Giant. Some combination of genetic tampering, nanotech and still-unknown science causes the apex creatures of this moon to reach periods of stability, agriculture, civilisation and population growth. if this period of abundance and high populations reaches a certain unknown threshold, chaoitc wombs are triggered universally across the entire species. All children born are 'sports', mutants, chimera or monsters, each as different from each other as they are from their parents and usually either incapable of or unwilling to, absorb or retain any of their parents culture. Then comes an age of chaos, ruin and warfare as the civilisation collapses. What follows is a long fallow period until the few stable breeding pairs gradually normalise and stabilise the population, which then slowly grows towards a state of civilisation. 

 

6. The Homonculi 

An intelligent designed-parasite species, the Homonculi have maggot mouths and dendric hands. They share their world with a robust semi-intelligent Pseudo-Hominid. The Homonculi's main means of surviving its environment is to burrow into the Hominids skull, taking control of its spinal base with their dendritic hands, forcing out its eyes and peeking through the resulting holes while taking their sustenance from its blood. The Prey-Mens brain matter remains intact. The Homonculi are more tangibly intelligent, social, verbal, abstract and driven than the Pseudo-Hominids and what civilisation exists on this world is entirely their creation. However, the Pseudo-Hominids are intelligent enough to despise the Homonculi and are more robust, fertile and more capable of surviving the planets complex environment. The civilisation of the Homonculi is semi-regularly destroyed by the Pseudo-Hominids and the species hunted to near-extinction. 

 

7. The Living Reefs 

An ocean world holding sparse continents and bounteous moving archipelagos of islands with sea-adapted fungal bases. The isle-fungi were designed with a powerful latent intellectual capacity. When inhabited by the worlds "sea apes", complex interactions through the islands bio-sheath environment 'awakens' the entities into comprehensible sentience. They invariably aggressively investigate the Sea-Apes using this sheath-environment, so much that the apes are torn apart, survivors, (if there are any), fleeing to the spares continent if they can. The Isles then sink back into sub-awareness. 

 

8. The Hegelian Fog 

A highly desertified world. The dust, sand and weather of this sphere are made up of complex but non-active nanite swarms. When breathed in by a complex life-form, (always visitors for the planet has no natural remaining species of this type), the nano-structures accumulate in the cortex like a plaque and form a fresh sentience which combines the nature of the infected sophont with memories and advanced processing power of an unknown nature. The resulting organism is highly intelligent and capable of advanced reasoning and communication, but as the plaque accumulates they become uncommunicative and insist on retreating to the karstic plains of the continental interior where they seem to be engaged in the construction of vast Nazca-style megastructures. Though resistant to the local environment the 'victim' or transformed entity, is thought to function for a century or so before desiccating and blowing away into a new flurry of nanites.

Queen Mab Lives!

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ere is your regular post, Autumn-themed for all of October;

Twelve Adventures of the Autumn Lands

1. The Candle and the Fog-Bound Bells.

A house moves through the fog like a ship, bells ringing from its highest hall. A curse comes with it from the past. A blessed candle shows the way to the house through the fog and once there, it lights the interior of the rotted mansion as it once was, revealing scenes that can solve the mystery of the curse. But while looking at the golden walls, take care for other things haunt the darkness.

2. The Giants Pantry

A giant has lifted the roof off the pantry and stolen the jam! And all the cheese, honey and preserved meat! That’s all we have to eat this winter! Someone has to go after that giant, take back the food, and somehow stop the Giant from coming back. At least his tracks should be easy to follow.

3. The Roc Migrates

A giant Roc has haunted the lands, but with Autumn, the bird has migrated (probably), South to warmer lands. Its nest must be full of all the treasure and goods of all the people it ate! It lies near the peak of a mighty mountain, ringed by the azure world. Storms are coming and Goblins are chasing the gold!

4. The Cursed Geese

Each night, honking Geese fly above the village as they migrate, and each night one or two people who hear their call are transformed into Geese and fly away with them! Someone has to go and get them back. The Charcoal-Burner tells you that the Geese live 'North of the Wind and West of the Moon', and there you must go to find the altered Geese and bring them home.

5. The Witches Pigs

Each night, winged pigs attack! Through sheer mass they barrel into houses, smashing windows and doors, snatching up children and the old, wreaking ruin! They are gone before the sun rises. Only the Anchorite knows the secret of the Pigs and the Witch they serve, a twice-bend crone who lives in a great Boot, along but for her Pigs.

6. The Town Returns

Out in the drowned bog, the spires and eves of a sunken village have always poked up through the glassy waters. Now, day by day, inch by inch, the sunken town is slowly rising from the bog, though the waters do not fall. Things are coming from the sunken town.

7. The Goblins Conker

The Goblin King is stealing homes, squatting in them and ruining everything before moving on. No-one can refuse his challenge to a conker-smashing contest and no-one can win against his devilish Conker - soaked in the blood of maidens and the bile of babes. Only a Conker from the tree which grows from St Aldhelms tomb can defeat the Goblin King, but that was lost in the forest an age ago.

8. The Wood-Nut Man

His brown face appears in the darkness beneath the boles of trees, his barky hands reach out to stroke the heads of truffle-hunting pigs, he feeds them his nuts and they speak in a deep and growling voice, the voice of the Wood Nut Man, to insist you do his will. There are things he needs, several and few, and you must have them before the snow falls.

9. A Gust of Bones

When the storm winds blow from the east we see skeletons in the wind. They grab onto spires, trees and the tops of towers, trying not to be swept away. When things calm down we have to go sweep them out of branches and cart them back to the graveyard, while they complain all the time. Someone must go west and have a word with whatever is making this wind!

10. The Devil in the Frost

Black, horned, hooved, arrow-tailed, sharp-toothed, goat-eyed and cloven tongued, he appears at dusk and dances from frozen puddle to frozen puddle - appearing only above the frozen waters, disappearing into gusts of leaves and piles of worms. He cuts, bites, spoils, spills and tells terrible lies - not even the strongest man can hold him! He laughs and cackles, saying "The frost is coming! The snow will fall! Hoo Hoo Hoo!"

11. The Smith Beneath the Tide

An inlet of the high, grey sea. A sea cave where waters churn. When the tide is high a fire burns beneath the water, hammer blows ring out with the waves and a smiths bold laughter echoes in the ocean all around, keeping the fishermen up at night. A rich man with long fingers will pay you good gold to steal something from that salty smith.

12. The Stained Skulls Verdigris Brass Ring

He comes down chimneys and into windows, popping out of wells, chattering his teeth, followed by a horde of dingy grey-black Geese who eat the seed. "My Verdigris Brass Ring!". No-one can get anything done and the floating skull is scaring the children. Will someone please find this Verdigris brass ring so this thing will shut up and go back to sleep!