Patrick Stuart's Blog, page 4
October 23, 2024
Dark Secrets Revealed!
£8,000 - A Ribbon
At 8k will add a ribbon to the book, with the colour chosen by YOU, the backers. (I'm actually ok doing this one as its just a manufacturing decision and means adding quality to the book).
At 8,500 - The Sybermice
None of you know what the Sybermice are yet as you haven't read the book, but they are the cybernetically and genetically altered attendants of Queen Mab in her Palace of Doors. In the book I describe these guys as being pretty grotesque but, in one of the ever-common meta-communications between Writer and Artist which seem to be flawed but end up emblematic of the work in the public mind, August has always insisted on drawing these guys as extremely cute Cybernetic Mice and I have never had the heart to insist on a more-unpleasant 'real' depiction. (Though, August, if we actually hit this one I may force you do do at least *one* picture of a "real" sybermouse, and hide it somewhere in the text to hopefully scare children in case they accidentally pick it up.)
If we hit £8,500 we will produce a sheet of extremely cute Sybermouse stickers and include them with every *hardcopy* book sent *to backers*.
I hate doing physical rewards!
£ 9,000 -Re-Print A Night at the Golden Duck
You know once I have these printed I have to individually cut and fold all of these with my own hands right? Then I have to ship them to my fulfilment centre, which, even if I do a whole bunch, is still just going to be one or two boxes? And then when you by one, with fulfilment charges, VAT and postage, it costs WAYYY too much to just order one? So its really only good for adding on to orders?I don't want to do this!! But people have asked, so if we actually hit £9,000 total then I WILL re-print 'A Night at the Golden Duck' and try to make it available at the same time that 'Queen Mabs Palace' hits fulfilment, so you can add one to your order if you like.
£10,000 - Dark Secrets Revealed! To YOU alone!!!
(If you are a backer(for the hardcopy)).
If we hit 10k I will reveal two deep, dark, so far unknown secrets about False Machine, *only* to those who backed for the book. I will send this information in a personal message via your Kickstarter account which you *must* delete after reading. These are secrets which only a precious few know, and which must NEVER become public knowledge!
October 21, 2024
Fall - The Sacrificed Sister of Dawn
(Eos, Aurora or Dawn, one of the oldest Proto-Indo-European Gods)Cousin to Fire, descendent of wolves, pale twin of Eos, the sacrificed one whose silver bones were spilled to build the gates of dawn, and lie beneath it still.
She is as a guest who is present but did not arrive, and soon shall she be gone but, leave by no door. It is hers to to seal, to conceal, to beguile, to be soft, to transform, to transport, to ware the day, to hold back time by the extending of the gloam.
Her palace rises from the earth, finite yet without bound, a lockless door and a cage without bars. It is the arms of the Otherworld where the sacrificed go and build the mansions of the silvered dead.
To you who would become lost. Who seek what is obscure but not dark. You who have said; the sun shall come, but not the morning. To those who would turn no way and walk no path; ye shall be within her and know it not. A blade shall not wound but by the wind shall ye die. You shall rise towards the sun and be gone.
Those who would go to this place, find the seed of this flower and plant ye a field of them where the sun shall fund them but the wind shall not. Or write ye this verse which, once it is inscribed, she cometh forth, like cut slate or an old sword. Or find ye a certain needle and a spiderweb thread, or a grandmothers hair by which she may stitched.
October 17, 2024
Echoing Stars - 12 Forms of Posthuman Corporations
1. A council of androids voting on behalf of cryo-frozen owners.
2. A bot-populated futures market sets the strategy.
3. Each share equates to a "volume" of simulated neurons in the vast network which makes up the corps 'mind' - each tendency of shareholders forms an organ or segment of that mind.
3. An exact replication of the election of a Venetian Doge;
(“Whenever the time came to elect a new doge of Venice, an official went to pray in St. Mark’s Basilica, grabbed the first boy he could find in the piazza, and took him back to the ducal palace. The boy’s job was to draw lots to choose an electoral college from the members of Venice’s grand families, which was the first step in a performance that has been called tortuous, ridiculous, and profound. Here is how it went, more or less unchanged, for five hundred years, from 1268 until the end of the Venetian Republic.
Thirty electors were chosen by lot, and then a second lottery reduced them to nine, who nominated forty candidates in all, each of whom had to be approved by at least seven electors in order to pass to the next stage. The forty were pruned by lot to twelve, who nominated a total of twenty-five, who needed at least nine nominations each. The twenty-five were culled to nine, who picked an electoral college of forty-five, each with at least seven nominations. The forty-five became eleven, who chose a final college of forty-one. Each member proposed one candidate, all of whom were discussed and, if necessary, examined in person, whereupon each elector cast a vote for every candidate of whom he approved. The candidate with the most approvals was the winner, provided he had been endorsed by at least twenty-five of the forty-one.” — Anthony Gottlieb, "Win or Lose," The New Yorker.)
4. Interstellar escrow - the shareholders are frozen and en-route at sub-light speed. Sets of counter-checking A.I.'s and managers organise resources drawn from futures markets based on possible future company value, to create that future.
5. An A.I. chooses the human board according to core values laid down in the charter. The charter can only be altered by an 80% quorum of shareholders.
6. The corporation has no memory of itself - all records are locked by an ambient A.I. omnipresent in the companies intranet. No-one knows what it did in the past or what it will do in the future. Employees have access only to information about what they themselves are doing. (The memory system itself has no understanding of the records it controls.)
7. Designed for an enthnocentrist colonisation project, the population group intended as beneficiaries died out but the corporation itself was very successful. Now run by A.I.'s, the corp has a secret tacit breeding program amongst its employees - trying to recreate the original ethnogroup.
8. Social-media based promotion and management structure. Views, clicks, likes and comments are the means of assessment. Employees can be sued for botting.
9. An anarcho-primitivist colony with no technology within 1,000 miles makes all the decisions. Society is organised like a version of ancient Greece. Information comes to them by boat and horse, they debate, stage plays, and vote, before sending back their decisions. (The colony is a virtual simulation, its inhabitants are not aware.)
10. Engrams of dead billionaires.
11. Company is in a state of perpetual reformatting. The current board organises its sale to new owners with the proviso they select a new board who will prepare for resale, with the proviso that...
12. Crypto-Company - structure runs in the background of an MMORPG.
A few days left for our Kickstarter for 'Queen Mab's Palace'! We are only £120 away from a fully painted cover! The more backers we have the better the book gets!
October 15, 2024
Fall - The Knights of Gloom
In the gloom they gather and the gloom they rule, lordsof the half-closed eye. Snare-hearted men who lost the light but would notserve the dark, branded by sun and star.
(Beksynski)
No knights of the equator these, their castles ring theutmost north, where they retire yearly for week-long half-lit days, sending bright factotums into dark and sunlitlands, seeking scrolls of forgotten verse and vases given as funeral gifts tolong-dead emperors.
Only here, at the interstice of time may they thrive forthey are sworn to shadow as a whole
and to the court of Mab. Their tents and pennants hungwith wooden wind-chimes which make their own music in the still air.
Here they drink from clouded glasses and dine on slicesof pale meats which they skewer with silver forks, served by fae with the headsof whippoorwills and the bodies of upright foxes - dressed in tabards andcarrying bras anthophagous carnyx, or by huge snuffling hedgehog squires, orpairs of orphans, one deaf, one blind, or ancient men, their grey beardstrailing on the earth.
Do they even have political views? Their minds like dustybarns with swooping owls. They are desirous of fine China and will meet youreyes in a silvered mirror. Adjacent to death they make congress with beautifulghosts, 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 allretire to sunlit lands?
Thus they hunt. Unmoving, they appear. Knights thatgallop not, congealing from mist, etching themselves from branch-shadows,arising from the cambers of dark streams, under moss and willow. Soft-edgedknights whose hoof-beats sound like puddle drips, mist beading on their longcloaks of Ungulix fur and Jabberwock skin. Helms capped with cupped hands,tarnished silver owls, leafless bronze trees, gibbous moons, stooped crows ortragedians masks in bronze. Shields picturing thistledown flowers, half-closedeyes, half-open gates, half-drawn swords and half-suns bisected by smearedhalf-clouds, or infinitely quartered blazons that can never be completely read.
Their lances quest like tentacles - curling intotree-boles, under doors. The Knights ride lantern mares made of pale light.Fretwork like branches. Pausing in the distance to dismount and fold up theirhorse 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 yourhands into the ocular gap - producing utter dark - perhaps then they cannotfind 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 makehalf-lit unbreakable oaths in whispered words like blinded bats.
They are closing in as the sky darkens and the silverlyre plays, like leaves on slow water, they drift closer, barely seeming totouch 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 handslike weasels. Swords fed on chickens in the night. For these are no earthlyknights.
The Kickstarter for Queen Mab's Palace is half-way through!
We do not have long!
Help get us to this painted cover! Support human art! Homo Primus!
October 12, 2024
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.
October 10, 2024
Silentium Ruinarum - Fall
So instead this is more of an "open post",discussing some of the possibilities for a game or story set in Rome during itsnadir, and asking the readers if anyone out there actually knows anything aboutthis period in history.
The population graph of Rome over history tells the storybetter than I could;
an extremely, even unnaturally for the time, denseand highly populous city declining into a smallish town, leaving its stones andtenements to moulder.
Based purely on population it stays this way through theentire middle ages, only leaping into action again as we approach the modernera.
But even during this Nadir there was quite a lot going onin Rome. It was still the seat of the Western Christian Church, (some of thetime), and while its population was relatively small, it neverdisappeared.
I've always loved this liminal period of Europeanhistory, especially notable in Britian, and I couldn't stop thinking of somekind of ancient detective story set in fallen Rome, of a Knight or Investigatorsent out into the grass-filled ruins and down into the Crypts to deal with thefreaks and oddities which, at least theoretically, might have beenhanging 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 acult or criminal gang, so much that you might almost want to start a cult justso you could hang out in the ruins of Rome, being weird.
The Silentiary The Silentiary, ("Silentiarius, silentiarios), was aByzantine Court post. Originally it seems to have been a job of keeping all thenobles and petitioners in the Imperial court in order, and then later wastransformed 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 someimportant role in the fate of Rome in the mid 8th century.
It’s a general idea of mine to that to create aDetective, first build a world of social layers, factions, racial groups,ideals and religions, and when you look down through the stacked Venn diagramof 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 richand poor, but nowhere near enough to guarantee they can get what they want.They need a ritual, neutral role, something socially protected, but not onethat can afford its own range of patronage.
The Silentiary is a curious ritual role from a foreigncourt, one of the "Bearded Classes", (i.e. not a eunuch), though itcould 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 Storiesaround the middle part of the 8th Century, before Byzantium is driven out ofItaly by the Lombards, it might be a little like this;
Some ideas for cults; > Local Powers
Islam - A surprisingly big chunk of southern France isunder Islamic control up until the mid 8thC. What could be more Lovecraftianfor a Catholic Roman Italian than sneaking through the ruins and discovering...Secret Muslims!
Germanic Wotanism - At the same time the Lombards arecurrently ruling northern Italy, and I think are still Germanic Pagans. TheFranks are Christianised, but how Christian are they really? There must be somehold outs and crypto-Wotanists. Native post-classical Pagnism is one thing butwhat if the Goatherds find a Blood Eagle in the Temple of Jupiter. SecretGermans? Or is someone trying to throw you off the scent.
> Christian Cults - The Heresies
There are SO MANY fragments of early Christianity thatget 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 ofEden (Satan) was an agent of the true God and brought knowledge of truth to manvia the fall of man."
"Ophites - Belief that the serpent who tempted Adamand Eve was a hero and that the God who forbade Adam and Eve to eat from thetree of knowledge is the enemy."
Finding secret heretical Christians lacks theElevator-Pitch high concept energy of secret Muslims but is a lot more likelyand 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 ofthese or if they even match my requirements for cults.
> Surviving Roman Paganism
Julian the Apostate died in 363, so a looong time agorelative to our story, but who knows, maybe some remnants of the Senatorialclasses, or one of the families of Rome, or some shady Bishop, or just localpeople, maintain some form of Classical Paganism. The most likely are theactual Gods of Rome, (there must be statues about), Isis Worship and theMythratic Cults, who, tbh, would really love hanging out in mysterious ruins.
> Byzantine Crypto-Paganism
The Empire still stands after all, and the great textsand ancient knowledge of Rome still exists, just not here.
An interesting thing about Byzantine Crypto-Paganism ishow modern it feels. Courtiers and Bishop are being accused ofCrypto-Paganism in 7th Century Byzantium and 600 years after that, GemistosPlethon writes a book recommending areturn to some form of Platonism.
Instead of being a weird superstition, here the moral andphilosophical challenge is coming from within the texts themselves. You can'tjust un-write Plato and it looks like there was some kind of weird undercurrentin Byzantine thought that maybe questioned this whole Christianity thing andwas a bit too interested in the Old Books.
Secret Platonists in the ruins! A plot of intellectualelites driven by a search for truth.
> Satanism
It’s a classic for a reason. I think even the medievalidea of Satan hadn't taken shape by the 8thC but a belief in the Devil and inMagical Powers and Demonology and Witchcraft more generally kind of tugs alongin the undertow of Christianity by the middle middle ages, driven by peoplelike Clerks, Alchemists and overeducated oddities.
Our Silentium could run into the first hot new actualSatanists! Imagine being the first guys to work that one out!
And of course, not to forget the European Classic;
Because it wouldn’t be a European conspiracy story ifthere weren’t Jews in the tunnels.
The Kickstarter is still running and we are heading for a painted cover!
October 8, 2024
Slang Terms of the Rational Occultic Scale - Echoing Stars
Out in the colonies, things are a little more lax. Earthhungers for treasures and the colonies are the mucus membrane which tests todangers of what might one day be transported to the home sphere. CoffinPounders and Explorers bring back Spook Machines, Nostradamus Code and EngramTrades 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 energydependency.
The subtle and sometimes hard-to-comprehend dangers ofCold World Coffin Pounding, and the difficulty of systematising and expressingsuch, lead to the 'Rational Occultic Scale', intended to be a formal method ofassessment of the potential dangers and potency of the most complex andincomprehensible alien artefacts, memes and other less-coherent phase states ormaterially-expressed fluxions.
The great poetic and philosophical challenge of how todescribe the indescribable was then formalised by the R.O.C., at least enoughfor corporate accountants and decision makers.
While the exact decision matrices have remained acarefully guarded corporate/government semi-secret, only fully known byAndroids and A.I., the slang and terminology which grew up around the R.O.C. iswell known by Coffin Pounders and the extra-legal Diaspora and can be a usefulform of knowledge in itself, especially for anyone given the job ofinfiltrating Coffin chat groups, assessing E.M. decoded intercepts or simplydeciding on security procedures for incoming craft.
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BASIC POTENCY
The R.O.C. begins its scale with a general assessment ofthe potential or actual potency of the material in question. Unless a certainthreshold of potency is reached, other potential qualities are not consideredrelevant.
> "Knock" or "Knocker".Drawn from 19C and 20C spiritualist culture, a"Knocker" is a 'table knocker', or a fake spiritualist who simulatesthe presence of supernatural spirits by knocking on their table. Use of thisterm usually means a crew or assessor things a Material has some extranormalqualities but no more than a curiosity. Not saleable, powerful or active.
A 'knock' may simply be an unusual Material with noextranormal properties according to human physics but strange and unexpected inaspect or utility to most crews.
> "Stug", "Stugatsky" or "Mulder"This word indicated a Material of low, but potentiallyactive and not entirely predictable potency. Usually this means the crew has noworries about confining or controlling the Material, but is not quite certainof exactly what it will do, though they certainly think it has extranormalaspects.
> "Rabbit" or "Bunny"Taken from 'just like a rabbit out of a hat'. Thisphrasing indicates a crew or broker is sure their Material has certainextranormal properties or capacities. Put simply; it is, or can do, 'magic'. Itcan also reference the active or moving nature of a living animal, its abilityto 'burrow' and the power of the magicians rabbit to seemingly 'come fromnowhere'. Though this phrasing alone usually indicates a crew does notfeel endangered at this time, any use of this word or code should indicatemaximum precautions and possible quarantine.
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Beyond this point the scaling of the R.O.C. breaks intostrands depending on the assumed or observed qualities of the Material inquestion. Like a tree breaking into several rising branches. Each branch hasprovided its own slang or common speech terms as descriptors used betweenworkers. Any observer must be especially aware of these terms, especially _incombination_.
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ACTIVE/INTELLIGENT QUALITY > "Girl"Thought to be derivative of a scene in a 20C movie inwhich 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 keepthe Material controlled and that it is capable of acting under its own powerand in unpredictable ways potentially dangerous to human flourishing. Anyreference to "Girl", even a "Knock Girl" or a"Stuggy Girl" allows you to fire upon the ship should youconsider it warranted. Any reference to "Sticky Girl", "FoeGirl" or worse means you *must* immediately destroy the ship ifpossible, then isolate yourself.
> "Boat"Usually stated as "its Boated" or "theship is Boat". This indicates a material active enough that the crewis considering or has considered abandoning ship. This material is no longerunder human control. You must fire upon the ship and destroy the ship. You mustfire upon any life pods or escapees if you think it warranted. All escapeesmust be isolated.
> "Regan"Unclear if this is a reference to the U.S. president or acharacter from the film "Exorcist". "She's Regan" or"Its gone Regan" indicates a Material which the crew cannot controlwithin the ship and which they cannot prevent from leaving the ship. You mustfire upon the ship and destroy the ship. You must fire upon any escapees anddestroy any escapees. You must fire upon all wreckage, rubble or partsresulting from ship destruction and reduce them to a cubic mass of no more thanone half meter and then log the expected parabola and course of any suchwreckage.
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MEMETIC/INFORMATIONAL QUALITY > "Sticky", or "Yellow"
This indicates an infectious or transmissible form ofMaterial/Information. Either the Material itself can physically re-createitself and/or it can 'breed' and move in the form of pure information, eitherby direct realspace voice/face contact or more dangerously, via E.M.transmission. A "Sticky" indicates that the Crew does notbelieve themselves to be in immediate danger, but believe they are dealing witha transmissible material and are taking precautionary actions. A "StickyRabbit" or even a "Sticky Mulder" can create enormousproblems for even a well-run colony and its infosphere.
> "Foe"Short for 'Information Hazard. This indicates the crewbelieves themselves to be dealing with a certain and dangerous form oftransmissible 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 higherauthority. Any further communication with, or intercept of the vessel or groupscommunications must at this point be ceased and any recordings of anythingbeyond this point quarantined or even destroyed if the Agent thinks itwarranted.
> "Lamb"Stands for 'Sacrificial Lamb'. This indicates extra-legalactivity and should be immediately reported, as well as taking all precautionsstated above. A "Lamb" is a human or equivalent machine which hasbeen memory and/or personality edited, either by themselves or others, so thatthey themselves do not know what material they have. This is illegal in allcases and this method is only used when the material/information is sopotentially dangerous and of such a high info-hazard potency that even knowingthat you know it is a potential danger and *only* the those ignorant of it canbe 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 causalevent/material or equivalent and are advising awareness and active precautions.Since those engaged in causal phenomena usually have no awareness of this it isvery likely the material or cryo-failures are having some effect on crewpsychology.
> "Murray" or "Bill Murray"The crew believes it may have entered a causal loop orequivalent event or material and does not know how to escape. They do notnecessarily believe themselves to be in physical danger, but this isirrelevant in reference to causal threats.
You must record and transmit any and all details acrossthe 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 NOTDO THIS.
> "Subaru"The crew believes themselves to be engaged in a highlynegative, highly dangerous causal event strongly inimical to human flourishing.Avoid all contact and transmit warnings to all local actors to avoid allcontact. (Unless any references are made to memetic hazards as stated above).Consider destruction of the craft via remote means.
October 5, 2024
Six Forgotten New England Monsters
John Gast1. Old Teak Britches
He walks by night and by wind for only so will none hearhim come. If you are out in the forest by night - listen for him when the windstills; if every tree ceases creaking but one - and that one stops a littlelater than the rest, you might still have time, for he is not too close andseeks to hide him approach. Make for the forest edge for he doesn't like to gobeyond 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'tstop running just because the land is clear for though he likes not to gobeyond the green growth and fresh fences, he can still reach beyond them andyou might be carried up and away...
2. Shock Hairs Pig Mans Mark
There was a deal done by night at some time and on oneside was a Pocumtok who knew nothing of pigs but wanted some, and a half-Dutchwho knew more of them than man should, and on the other was the Devil. In anycase the men would have pigs and old Shock-Hair said 'now here is a sign Ishall show you two which I gave long ago to a Lady far off, and if you makeright the ink and draw right the sign on a man’s hearth, he becomes a pig, andyou can make as many as you like, though in return I will take off your spirittill the sun goes black like a coal. These two fools mistook and had the Signnot right, thence, on using it, they made not a pig, but a man-pig, who wasneither one nor another. Pigs having wits and men some too, the man Pig caughtthem both and got the secret out of them and set about trying to get the Signright, thinking if he could get a Pig done rightly he would be half-way togetting one un-done - which was himself. Those three never could get a Pig doneright and likely they are all dead now but the Pig-Marked men are still abroadand 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 pretendedto be sick, mad or dead. She got sick of this and said she would go with awhite man, which she did, and found a widower. He did not know about the kindof thing she was, so married her, but he found out. From the moment she movedin 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 butgot up on the walls and onto the roof in the dark, talking and talking. Shedrove 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 puther hands in chains and her head in a box of rowan wood, which was an old cruelpunishment even then. She got away from them but she couldn't get out of ofthat iron or that box. If you hear her, and you will if she is close, for sheis still talking, talking, talking, run fast and run quiet for if she learnsyour name you will never be free of her.
4. Nantuckets Whalebone Man
He was made in Nantucket by a whaling man who had seenthe last of his trade and by God did he hate whales. He hated that he couldhear them still, swimming and free, and he knew whales hated man just the sameway/ "White men and whales is like Christians and Indians; it is them orus 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 aGentleman and paid good money for the whalebone face, giving him smokedspectacles to hide the whalebone eyes, and he set him loose with he last breathas a curse upon the world that wouldn't hate whales the way it should. Now, ifyou are inland and you see a pale gentleman who walks with a click and if youhear 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'llfind you drowned in the morning and your house full of seawater which comes outin 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 aHessian who loved to kill. He killed when told to and when suggested and heliked 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 killhim too but the old man said don't do what you are thinking and I will give youa hole you can put anything in and take where you like. Well that's just what Ineed said the Hessian - you show me and I'll believe it. So the Indian showedhim the hole and said here is the cat gut to sew shut the hole and only it canso be careful with it, and take care a second time to always leave it not quiteopen or it will get loose, and it’s as hungry as you are. And he unsewed thehole and there it was, deep as you like, and the Hessian said very good thenand kicked the Indian into it and sewed it up and carried it off. Then he justkilled who he wanted and put them in the hole. But it came at one time the callto battle for Washington was coming and we better kill that man, and he wasbusy at the hole so sewed it shut but caught the cat gut with his spur and rodeoff and started fighting. The hole was loose and came for him. he was fightingand stabbing and found himself going missing, part by part, though no bloodflowed. It was the hole. Soon all that was left was a spur and a long cat-gutthread. That hole is still around, you can listen for the Hessian and Indianstill 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 owland the earth like a worm. It is always working and never in the same placetwice. A Southron made it. This was in the years before the war between theStates. He came north slave hunting, saying they get cold in the woods and slowdown, though he never seemed to catch any, but he built that mill which madecandles that gave a strange light. Then the war between the states took up andhis fortunes fell and it seemed people started going missing here and there andthe old mill took up thundering away all night with bright clear candle lightshining out. The women got to talking about that Mill saying 'Did you ever workthere?' 'No?' 'How about you?' Well it seemed no-one worked at that mill orever had so up went a good many one night to talk to that man and pound on hisdoor. Up he popped. "You won't have my Mill and no-one will for myinvestors won't allow it!" Then that Mill just burrowed into the soil likea mole and swam through the earth like a whale and was gone.
October 3, 2024
Eight Votive Species - Echoing Stars
Maciej Drabik https://www.artstation.com/maciejdrabik
1. The Uncomprehending World
An earthlike planet with two great continents, each agreat distance from the other, both tectonically locked, with deep oceans andstrong currents between them. Each continent has been seeded with afundamentally, biochemically different, form of life. Examination has beenchallenging but its believed something like the principal of opposing chiralityis at work; the life of each continent is biochemically incoherent, sometimeseven toxic, to the other. The oceans have been described as a 'soup of chaos'.Each continent has evolved a form of intelligent life, each cognitivelyincoherent to the other.
2. The Moon of Eyes
The single moon of the Uncomprehending World plays hostto yet another form of life, itself believed to have been seeded at about thesame time. The biosphere of the moon is a single sentient mind with astaggering range of visual and electromagnetic sensors. The 'mind' of the Moonis believed to be half-sleeping, able to observe and perhaps, understand whatit observes. (All of its sensors are open only when facing the UncomprehendingWorld.) However if the Moon of Eyes attempts to awaken, to act, to advise orcommunicate in any way, buried genetic architecture collapses the stability ofthe entire biosphere, reducing it to primitive ruin, from which it only slowlyre-develops.
The trifector of the two species of the UncomprehendingWorld and the Moon of Eyes which can observe, but not alter, their fate, isbelieved to be an act of religious observance by its creators.
3. The Drinkers of Wind
Sub-earth desert-like world. Life emerges largely aroundthe oceanic coast but has evolved an intelligent crustacean species adapted tothe deep desert. The species is born addicted to a pheromone, or complexwind-borne chemical, produced very rarely by complex biogenesis in the deepocean. When this chemical sweeps across the deserts, any Crustacean thatexperiences it is instantly and permanently addicted, experiencingphilosophical and religious rapture and losing interest in anything other thanpursuing 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 andthe 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 whichhave been given a level of complex intelligence far too high for theirlightless, high-pressure and limited environment. Wits return like a cancer tothis species, generation upon generation, regardless of circumstance. Hosts togreat monuments of knowledge and experience they can never use, the builderssculpt the sea-floors of that world into great empty palaces which span itsdark oceans, sculpted with agonising care, over centuries, with whale-falls ofivory and bone.
5. The Wombs of Chaos
Earthlike moon of a Gas Giant. Some combination ofgenetic tampering, nanotech and still-unknown science causes the apex creaturesof this moon to reach periods of stability, agriculture, civilisation andpopulation growth. if this period of abundance and high populations reaches acertain unknown threshold, chaoitc wombs are triggered universally across theentire species. All children born are 'sports', mutants, chimera or monsters,each as different from each other as they are from their parents and usuallyeither incapable of or unwilling to, absorb or retain any of their parentsculture. Then comes an age of chaos, ruin and warfare as the civilisationcollapses. What follows is a long fallow period until the few stable breedingpairs gradually normalise and stabilise the population, which then slowly growstowards a state of civilisation.
6. The Homonculi
An intelligent designed-parasite species, the Homonculihave maggot mouths and dendric hands. They share their world with a robustsemi-intelligent Pseudo-Hominid. The Homonculi's main means of surviving itsenvironment is to burrow into the Hominids skull, taking control of its spinalbase with their dendritic hands, forcing out its eyes and peeking through theresulting holes while taking their sustenance from its blood. The Prey-Mensbrain matter remains intact. The Homonculi are more tangibly intelligent,social, verbal, abstract and driven than the Pseudo-Hominids and whatcivilisation exists on this world is entirely their creation. However, thePseudo-Hominids are intelligent enough to despise the Homonculi and are morerobust, fertile and more capable of surviving the planets complex environment.The civilisation of the Homonculi is semi-regularly destroyed by thePseudo-Hominids and the species hunted to near-extinction.
7. The Living Reefs
An ocean world holding sparse continents and bounteousmoving archipelagos of islands with sea-adapted fungal bases. The isle-fungiwere designed with a powerful latent intellectual capacity. When inhabited bythe worlds "sea apes", complex interactions through the islandsbio-sheath environment 'awakens' the entities into comprehensible sentience.They invariably aggressively investigate the Sea-Apes using thissheath-environment, so much that the apes are torn apart, survivors, (if thereare any), fleeing to the spares continent if they can. The Isles then sink backinto sub-awareness.
8. The Hegelian Fog
A highly desertified world. The dust, sand and weather ofthis sphere are made up of complex but non-active nanite swarms. When breathedin by a complex life-form, (always visitors for the planet has no naturalremaining species of this type), the nano-structures accumulate in the cortexlike a plaque and form a fresh sentience which combines the nature of theinfected sophont with memories and advanced processing power of an unknownnature. The resulting organism is highly intelligent and capable of advancedreasoning and communication, but as the plaque accumulates they becomeuncommunicative and insist on retreating to the karstic plains of thecontinental interior where they seem to be engaged in the construction of vastNazca-style megastructures. Though resistant to the local environment the'victim' or transformed entity, is thought to function for a century or sobefore desiccating and blowing away into a new flurry of nanites.
Queen Mabs Palace is Live! We are only £300 away from our first goal!
Get us over the line and I will even put an apostrophe in the title!
October 1, 2024
Queen Mab Lives!
If you want to find out more, click here or the image below!
ere is your regular post, Autumn-themed for all of October;
Twelve Adventures of the Autumn Lands1. 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!
