Thanqol

Return to Thellamie

Injimo!

"There it is," said Sayanastia, winding over Injimo's shoulder like a serpent. "Little-miss-no-thinkies dark secret: she is going to go away and think harder than anyone has ever thought about exactly what happened and what she intends to do about it."
"I don't think that's what she thinks is good, though?" said Injimo, whose knees were telling her that she was well aware of her maximum weight limit for a healthy workout and her blatant disregard for facts would be punished. "I think it's what she thinks is good for fighting against her."
"I do not agree with that either," said Sayanastia. "The best way to beat her was what you just did: a single strike with a cursed blade. But her solution will not be to get a cursed blade of her own, it will be to learn how to evade a cursed blade for longer so that the fight will continue for longer."

Even though Sayanastia's words dripped with venom, they couldn't smother the taste of honey from Morning's twilight chatter. She was a mere mortal and she could not stand between the extremes of dragons without being pulled along by both hearts.

"That wasn't a triple jump," she felt compelled to explain. "That was me deploying a barrier scroll and wall jumping off it. Cair used to do that to win races with Heron, but I got suspicious when I noticed she only challenged her in mountainous terrain so I stayed behind to watch how she always got ahead."
Leave it there, leave it -
"But that wasn't the tipping point," she went on, compelled by her instructor's instinct. "The tipping point was noticing your observation loop is slow. When you lose track of me you come to a complete halt while you look around to re-acquire me. It's a predator's instinct, reminiscent of a diving hawk conserving energy if its prey has spotted it and is scrambling for a burrow, but you fight in far too close for that to be safe. If you lose visual on your target you need to act as though you're about to be immanently defeated, burn hard, thrash and scrape to dislodge anyone clinging to you, and gain elevation rapidly. Only once you're safe can you focus on re-acquiring your target. Relying on your natural defenses alone isn't a good idea for fighting non-dragons, mortal weapons are extremely transferable so you can never count on having the measure of our damage output."

Sunshards: Chaos Sequence

"I thought for a long time," said Caster, "that men were stewards of all the world. Not only was all owned by us already, but it was our duty to survey it, to excavate it, and to measure it. To use every mark of strength and drop of science to master Creation. To put a girdle around the Earth. To speak with the voices of Angels. To renounce mastery over the material like this, to watch as all of these things built of dust and ashes to ashes return..."

He gently pulled forth from his coat a device of brass, copper and dark wood. It didn't look like anything, certainly not like anything that had grown from it. Seeds rarely resemble their trees.

"But now I see," he said quietly. "The needle's eye."

Goodbye can't be a gentle thing at this stage. It's too late to gently set it down and watch as the fire crawls over it; the bonfire is lit, and its force is a wall of heat. So he needs to take a deep breath and remember a skill he has not had cause to use since he was a boy.

And he throws the first telephone onto the fire.

As it goes, he begins to fade. Motes of light drift off him, his spiriton body unable to sustain itself without a legend to animate it. "A new hello," he said, thoughtfully. "You know, I never thought to give you such a thing? Allow me to correct myself: I am Pedro, and for a while I was the second and final Emperor of Brazil. It has been a pleasure to make your acquaintance."

Breathless Dead

Redana!

"There are more than two choices. I did reprimand them," sighed Zeus, watching particulate destruction scatter over the Skies. "At the height of their power. You do not know how bad things were. They broke My thunderbolts into needles and lanced them into each others brains. They built cathedrals of electricity and sacrificed billions upon their altars. Things progressed faster then, and it was a rush to see, but I could not countenance it and..."

The thunderbolt returned to her hand, coiling around it like a serpent of glittering indigo. Every moment of it was the tearing of the sky, booming thunder deeper and fiercer than the roar of the Engine.

"I rebuked them," she said. "And the consequence of that was catastrophic. Trillions died. Planets shattered. Vast macrostructures broke into glittering stardust. Entire species, entire civilizations, burned away screaming in the dark. I thought it was a simple change: to give even the least amongst them the ability to shatter the tools of oppression. I thought that they would realize that their civilization could not exist if it was failing the lowest amongst them, and they would rebuild a new consensus. Instead they found it easier to rebuild their Empire without electricity at all. For all this, it is still an improvement over what came before, but I taught the child a lesson by breaking an arm..."
"Father."
"Oh no."
"Look at me father."
"Not you."
"You did the right thing, father," said Mars, resplendent in silver buttons and the correct shade of red for the eighth year of the Atlas Consolidation Campaign. "You killed them. You committed an atrocity. And they learned! They did not repeat their mistakes. They learned to cower before the Gods. They learned again when Molech fired the Spear. Half the galaxy's death taught a lesson to the other half. Peace has endured in the Skies, war confined to the ritual of Nemesis."
"I do not wish for your solution, Mars."
"But it is the correct one!" screamed Mars, snatching the thunderbolt from Zeus' wrist. "It is the correct one! I know it! Hermes knows it! Apollo knows it! You must punish vice with atrocity! You must stamp upon the necks of the mortals until their spines shatter and they find the flexibility to obey!" As he spoke, the thunderbolt twisted pitifully in his grip. "Kill them, kill them, and keep killing them! Kill the cruel! Kill the wicked! Kill the tyrants! Kill the unjust! Kill the stupid! Kill them so that all the others see! Kill them so that all the others know! Kill for love! Kill for hope! Kill for freedom! Send them all to Hades and let him sort them out!"
"Well... he has, hasn't he?" said Zeus. "Redana, child. You do not know what the future holds, but you know of the past. What do you think of the kingdom of my brother, Hades? Should I heed Mars, and send all the wicked to join him?"

Dyssia!

"Definitely not," said Hestia. She's wearing Azura blues too, her bear hoodie no longer its comforting shade of brown. She may be the sister of Zeus, but she still has to show respect in this place. One day, if the Skies have their way, she might never stop having to show respect.

"You know how the Skies have a way of making you feel broken if you don't fit into them?" said Hestia, taking a sip. "Well, you're lucky - you had that feeling even way out on the fringes of them. You got used to it as a child. But out there they only controlled things like culture, education, society and so forth. Think about what happens to the poor bastards who come all this way to paradise and discover that they don't like how the air tastes? What if the seats are misaligned for their tails? What if they find that the Skies have set the thermostat a fraction of a degree lower than what they're comfortable with? The more things that are controlled, the more people you boil away."

She set the mug down. "You ever wonder why so few people actually live here?"

"But most of them don't blame the Skies for that," she said. "They just figure that they're broken, and they either Biomancy themselves 'better', putting themselves right back where they were before this whole fucking thing started, or they take the Knightly path as an act of fallegation. And don't think that's not by design, either. The Skies still needs its armies and it wouldn't have them if everyone who came here was perfectly content."

Sunshards: Chaos Sequence

It is the end of the day.

Once, a long time ago, all of the spirits attended a great feast in honour of the Sun's birthday. Everyone, from the lowest to the highest, came from every corner of the earth. All the dragons, all the faeries, all the foxes and sorcerers and enchantresses. But for all of them, not one of them could think of the right gift to give the rising sun. They searched their souls and scratched their heads and interrogated mortals searching for ideas, but in the end they resolved to ask the Sun herself at the party and swear to accomplish whatever it was she asked of them.

And the Sun smiled serenely and asked for 'a moment of perfect virtue'.

Magic left the world that day. For a thousand years the world felt mundane and ordinary. But that is because each and every day every magical creature, every spirit and every aspect of the natural world was caught at the Sun's birthday party. Day after day they argued, they meditated, they perfected martial arts, they attempted to calculate the virtue of every deed down to the tiniest util. For a thousand years the party continued, none daring to leave the Sun's celebration early, none daring to leave her wish unfulfilled. For a thousand years they strove -

Until one day the Sun smiled and said "Thank you. I have it now."

In an instant, the spirit world erupted forth from the celebration and sped back to their own domains. They filled the shrines that had been left for them or demanded new ones be built where the old ones had once been. Magic poured back to life in every corner of the world, and only after they had re-established themselves did the spirits realize that none of them had actually seen which among them the Sun had thanked.

Some of the spirits declared that it was their virtue - whichever kind they had been developing - that had satisfied the sun, and they should continue to maintain it lest She cage them once again. Others decided that their obligation was discharged, and that with virtue sufficiently demonstrated they could return to their old ways as a reward. Everyone had an opinion and nobody had an answer, and so the great edifice of divinity went whirling on again down the wheel.

Katherine Isabella Fluffybiscuits never got to sit at the Sun's party. But she did feel the setting sunlight warm her ears more than it should have, like a celestial ear scritch. Can't be beat.

As she's enjoying it, other spirits start arriving. Enormous oni warriors, enscribed suits of armour, grey-suited tengu, ancient and limping kappa, serpents in rainbow and elven hunters in red. They stand at the outer edge of the circle as the bonfire is piled high with everything that no longer inspires love. Without love, these items have no more connection to the physical world, and they belong now to the spiritual. The fire will help them cross the boundary and there the spirits await with eager hands to welcome their new divinities.

Caster still holds his gnome, but now there isn't quite the same sense of urgency to his grip. "So this is it. At the end of everything you just say... goodbye?"

Return to Thellamie

Sayanastia!

The Dark Dragon was not a Morning person.

She followed Injimo from inside her shadow, dragged along behind sprinting feet, gleaming eyes in the ever-shifting pool of darkness.

"Have you considered instead," she said, with the edged boredom of the lacuna, "not doing any of that?"
"Not!" Injimo said, racing against the hurricane of wingbeats. "Not?!?"
"Not," said Sayanastia. "Not run run run. Not sweep sweep sweep. Not - you get the picture."
"Mmm!?!" said Injimo, rolling to avoid the descent of talons.
"Morning is a fool, and worse: a fool by choice," said Sayanastia. "She has had a single idea in her life and has then spent the rest of her life in such a frenzy of activity that she never had time to question it."
The crash of wood and fangs. A momentary lull. "... yeah?"
"Do not look at me like that. I am entirely different from her."
She plunged suddenly as Injimo leapt off a branch, falling in an instant down miles down to the forest floor before lunging back up to the adjoining tree as quick as blinking. "Are?"
"Look - stop it. It is simple; her manic energy can only exist when feeding off the joy and energy of others. If she has no one to play with she will falter and fall to slumber. She does not know how to entertain herself and can only exist in the shadows of others."
"Hmm," a blade is drawn, blunted for training. Sayanastia curled her lip. All that skill without a weapon to put it through. She might as well try to cut through an oak with a spoon.
"I said be silent," said Sayanastia.
"'kay," said Injimo, taking her eyes off the shadow to look directly at the coming Morning. She felt the rush. She felt the joy. She felt like she could dance here forever, ten thousand years to overcome a single dragon, with her beginner's weapon delivering one bruise at a time.
"Oh. You fool," hissed Sayanastia. "You are as bad as she is."
Injimo nodded as the great whirl of leaves ascended. Her feet were ready as she waited for her moment.
"Then at the very least..." Sayanastia said, and she...

And she. And she? Reached.

Shaped. Bent. Destroyed. Obliterated, atom by atom, the dulled edge of that blade. Sharpening it until - no, not even that was enough. This thing was made by a fool (Heron) who knew nothing about blacksmithing. The iron was impure, the cast was misaligned, she could feel how trivially it would break. So she broke it instead. That was the easy part, but the hard part was. Was. Was.

It wasn't really the same thing as making something. She was just. Externalizing destruction. The same way as making a monster. A sword might be a beautiful thing but in the end it was a thing of hate, and she could understand that. She just needed to spit out a curse, hollow out this girl and render her an eternally damned sword reverent -

But she was that already. Wasn't she? The kind of person already damned to fight the Morning -

- So this was just... fixing that. Fixing a curse. Making it more like itself. Refining it, into something that wasn't just deadly, but was also...

"Beautiful," said Injimo, looking at the new sword of amethyst and silver.

And then there was no more time for words. The storm was upon them.

The Namespace of the Rose

@Thanqol

Yes I am! I'm new to the 40k setting but I'm reading the Eisenhorn books, just finished Space Marine 2, and started playing Deadtide. Also I am a huge fan of Disco Elysium, so you really piqued my interest there!

@wanderingwolf

Fantastic, that sounds perfect.

If you're on Discord, add me (I'm Thanqol) and we'll talk things over there. I'll be able to put you in touch with the other player(s) and co-ordinate from there :)

If not, it's a bit of a pain but we can work something out. Let me know.

Sunshards: Chaos Sequence

There's a special kind of feeling when humans do magic.

Fox magic feels like smoke and mirrors; tasty smoke, shiny mirrors, but ultimately it's not built on anything solid. Push hard enough against it and it all falls down. Crow magic feels like threats and wonder; dark and solid until it bursts out into a rainbow all in blacks. Fish magic feels like treasure and transitions, the moments when the tide turns and so many wonders are raining down that you don't even know how to pick them up.

But human magic happens when they take a little part of the world and store it inside of their hearts forever and ever.

This is the magic that's coming from Caster now; not his technomagic, or sorcery, or mana-manipulation or any of those things that Casters do. It's his heart, made into a sword and used to carve a place. It overlays and expands on reality, like this place was a little bit of the place inside him and it fits into what's already there perfectly. Rows of tents and pavilions, striped in red and white. The kinds of bicycles you'd need a stepladder to get onto, the kinds of cars you'd need real biceps to crank to life, overflowing bins of candies like glass drops and a five meter map of the world that made you want to explore every last corner.

"This reminds me," said Caster slowly, as though his heart were not shining with that very magic. "of the World's Fair."

The game over screen flashes. He hits reset without thinking.

"It was a place where everyone would gather and show off the miracles they had been making. Cures for disease. Engines that could build roads. Spells to transmit sound over copper. After a lifetime of trying to grip humanity by the neck and haul it into the future, I saw there a place where the future was being built. Where men could be freed from drudgery and labour, where distance did not mean good-bye, where the sick could be healed and the blind given sight. For all my life I tried to be a good king, but I had accomplished nothing compared to the smallest and meanest of those tents."

Game over again. This time his thumb lingered over the restart button.

"What happened to that dream?" he asked, voice pained. "All that science. All that industry. This world has rejected it, fears it, cages it underground. It seems like it does not miss it at all. Did it really turn out so bad in the end?"

The Namespace of the Rose

If there's enough interest that warrants more than one person, would you consider a group game over 1x1?

@wanderingwolf

Yes. Are you interested?

Breathless Dead

A breach in the blue. A carcass tears its way into paradise.

Rainbow light bleeds where its hide has been pierced by the cosmic flock. Silver light shines upon its brow where the mark of Artemis alights still. Its jaws hang loose to reveal an infinity of teeth and a storm of insects wraps it like a veil. Liquid Bronze has come, and the oil-slick chroma of his passage stains the perfection of the Skies. King, slave and madman, he has sworn himself to the Earthshaker and carries a shard of chaos into paradise.

Ahead another storm begins to rise."

"My brother has long sought to subvert this domain," said Zeus, wind pulling at her dress, tugging at her hair. "It is the way of brothers. He demands that some things remain beyond understanding, that the unknown should be feared and supplicated. I have never denied him his desire, but I have always known it to be a folly."

The reborn Plousios shudders as the first strong wind hits it. Crystal sails open to catch the wind, turning the ship and sending it through a garden of floating asteroids, each heavy with mighty trees.

"You do not see the humanity in it," said the Thunderer. "And you are right not to. This is no thing of yours. None of your kindness lives here, no equality, none of the stories you value. This is a place for me. I, who carved the atom from the cosmic ocean. I, who placed every star in the sky. I, who wrote laws of mathematics for their beauty alone. I, who breathed life into dead clay, with no plan or higher purpose than the joy of creation. I was here before my brothers and sisters, and I will be here after they have passed. At the dawn of time, standing atop my father's body, I struck a single blow against the cosmic firmament and all since then has been the ripples. I believed I knew how it would end: the ripples would pass, the lake would still, and this universe that I had created would smooth out to the same perfect flatness as before."

She raised her hand, the distant thunder rising. Her clouds were indigo in the daylight, the atmosphere burning the edges of the storm orange, the sky around it teal, the water inside it halo gold.

"So imagine my surprise," said She, "that this place began to form instead. That instead of a passing ripple, a whirlpool began to form. That a tiny micron would sprout, and flourish, and swarm. That it would re-order its own world, and then its neighbouring worlds, their sun, and then other suns. And I saw, for the first time, the Fates reach up to their tapestry of the galaxy's end and begin to unwind the threads of the ending."

A bolt of lightning split the blue, racing against the speed of light as it continued ever on towards that distant speck of coloured light.

"A better ending? A worse ending?" said Zeus thoughtfully. "Perhaps you have opinions on that. For me, it does not matter. All that matters that the Skies are not the ending I thought inevitable. Daughter Redana, you who seek freedom in your heart, perhaps you of all people can understand me. Every day the Azura continue their work is a day I do not know what the future holds."

In the endless distance the endless thunderbolt struck its target. It burned through to the heart. The roar of thunder and wind, the slash of rain, the speed of the Plousious as it rode the storm - all of this came together into a sense of speed and power, of precarious existence balanced on cosmic edge of paradise.

"Can you forgive me this?" asked Zeus.

Return to Thellamie

Injimo!

Has she fought...?

No, she has not fought Kholessia the Flame Autoklave, who guards the Sealant Hills. She spent those hours sitting by the clock, learning to lunge to one side every nine seconds exactly, just so she would be ready to teach Heron if she ever needed to learn. No, she has not fought Meridiyen Twotusk, the Boar of the Earth, and the month spent learning to walk balanced on speartips was only so that Heron might not fall into her quicksand. And she did not learn to fly because she ever thought this moment would come.

But muscle memory is a hell of a thing.

The hurricane potion hits the ground and she is leaping over it a moment later. Solid rip on the windchute cable at the exact apex of her jump, catching the updraft and hurtling herself up into the sky. Just like she practiced for hours and hours in the mechanical junkyard of the training ground, where creatures larger than life were simulated with conveyor belts, mechanical cranes, and intricate obstacle courses layered with traps. She goes up. Up, away from the floor that is the Morning, who might twist perilously beneath her. Up, away from the branches that are the Morning, who might snare and hold her. Up, away from the eyes of the Morning, who might realize their mistake and see that she is not a hero after all. That edge is all she has to exploit; if the Morning has taken her for Heron, then she will expect a spark of genius in this battle.

She soars high on the most perilous of hopes, based on nothing and demanding everything. That the Morning will not see her stupid, rehearsed attack for what it is: a step-by-step replication of exactly the way Heron fought her the last time.

She nears the apex of her flight and she releases the windchute to whirl off into the sky, a kite in tiger's heraldry. She draws her bow. There will be a second when she ceases to rise but has not yet begun to fall when she will have perfect stability to fire a perfect shot.

And she does.

She could live in that moment forever. All the strength, speed and training of her life abruptly called upon and demonstrated in a single moment of sublime perfection. She can feel it in her muscles, in the callouses on her fingers, on the scars on her back, on the sweat of her hairline, on the surface of her beating heart.

It feels so good that she almost forgets that she is not firing an enchanted obsidian arrow capable of piercing dragonscale, but an ordinary hunting broadhead that will shatter pointlessly when it strikes the rising Morning upon her brow. Perhaps if she had given herself a moment she might have thought up a better plan, one that did not waste her one perfect technique on an attack that had no possibility of inflicting damage. But, as was said, muscle memory is a hell of a thing.

[Fighting her: 7
Take a string
Create an opportunity for an ally]