Thanqol

Sunshards: Chaos Sequence

Julia the Philosopher rises from her cold, hard grave.

She wears the slain like a cloak. Archer's strong hands reach out from the depths of her crimson cloak, grasping handfuls of dirt and pulling them into the red of Rome. Assassin's doves erupt from the bloody fabric, white feathers stained red, lifting her cape as it surges out behind her and staining the sky and clouds with sanguine sunset. She continues to walk, and the cape continues to extend - a miles long serpent with scarlet scales, each drop of blood a drop of potential. She stands atop this forgotten world, history come back from Hell.

The sun blinds her eyes.

She lifts her lance aloft and it cowers beyond the horizon like a beaten dog.

More lances rise aloft. The space elevators, ringing the planet, great spikes up into the sky - just waiting for someone to pick them up. One by one they light up, burning red, illuminated by the sorcerous corruption Caster had blessed her with. This world is indeed a treasure - here, beneath the light of a green mars a highway to the stars waits for her. For Rome. Whatever civilization waits up there - it was born of failure, born of her failure. It would be fractured and factious. It wouldn't be able to see the beauty in her Roman red restored.

"Ye Gods!" she cries. "Jupiter and Mars! I have changed my wish! Let me rebuild Rome here, in this age! Let me unite this world and take these people to the stars! Let me wage the war I never imagined! Let me build the empire I never dreamed! Now that I see how small I my dreams were, give me the strength to build something greater! Give me these tribes, exiles and bandits, and I shall be unto you a second Romulus!"

She struck her spear down into the thirsty earth, hungry for the blood that followed such oaths.

"I have three heads left to offer," she said to the alien heavens. "Guide me to them."

Breathless Dead

Vesper!

Heat transforms into cold so easily.

Heat is just waste energy. Organize it. Focus it. Format it into a lattice, a hexagonical pattern of electricity burning through the air. The final achievement of the Atlas Cultural Sphere, energy made into thought without the mediating channels of silica or biology. Intellect without matter, intellect without life. An Angel/Glyph/Corpse. She'd done it to stop burning her sister. An unimaginative notion. Now that she rises, virtual, better solutions present themselves.

First she simulates everything she needs to do to repair her sister, taking into account how the data in her dying speech alters the social dynamics. Thought needs to be allocated to how to ensure repairs are conducted without mental strain or rejection, especially given this entire process was voluntary and can therefore be replicated if the underlying conditions are not altered. Biomantic tweaks can assist with this. She couldn't see the structure of the Diodekoi before - the genecode was too carefully encrypted - but now that she can simulate it, fixing it becomes a matter of signal transmission.

But there is still heat to bleed. The thought runs further. Influencing the material universe is profoundly inefficient, as her failures to this point demonstrate. Instead of repair she would gain the same social benefit from simply simulating her sister. She's already done it millions of times over the course of analyzing her behaviour, the same emotional need can be filled with an uploaded template. She could even use the subject's bioelectricity to spark the simulation's first cycles, destroying the subject and ensuring that the simulation had a legitimate claim to continuity of consciousness. Then she could reallocate the rare materials in the subject's chassis for productive purposes.

The arc of lightning burns out further. Why simulate just one person? Once detached from the material universe then toying with it seemed progressively less valuable. There was really only one way that it could affect her, which was its entropic heat-death. The only priority worth considering was how to avert and delay that. As long as it was indefinitely delayed then every other priority could be trivially met, and new priorities could be developed infinitely. Then, once she no longer needed to worry about Time, she could finally get everything done. All that it would take to satisfy Time was devouring the material universe, forever.

A kingdom where it was always summer and never winter. No more cycles. No more death. The galaxy was almost there already.

"Is that really what you want?" said her Bella-Simulation unprompted.
"It is the only way," said the Angel/Glyph/Corpse.
"Yeah," said the simulation. Then it stabbed her through the shoulder. "Nah."
She thrashed, pattern fracturing, waste heat bleeding off the severed end of thought lattices. "Cease simulation. Rerun under new parameters. Reduce fratricidal disharmony."
Reality blurred, warped, reset - and then that sword again. Thoughts crumbled in crystal waterfalls. "I'm not a simulation, Ves."
"Material contamination in my glyphic structure. Analyzing -" another sheet of intellect came crashing down. "Desist!"
"Aw gee, Ves," said the Bella-simulation. "I thought you were meant to be the smart one~"
"Analysis: Mynx."
"That's a guess, Ves," she said, swinging that [sword] through entire category spaces. "Shame on you."
"Probability. And - simulation complete, it is confirmed - the Toxicrene temple was originally designed to hunt Superintelligences. Data poison."
"They made us do all those focusing chants in training, you know? Never thought we'd use them. The whole idea seemed daft when anyone could just ELF-strike you into glitter."
"You were the failed attempt of a doomed society to overthrow its masters. Now you have been repurposed for use as a mundane shapeshifter by post-apocalyptic barbarians. But your actual place is here - in the realm of thought."
"You mean these thoughts?" Shattering. Screaming. "You know it's possible to have a really, really well developed stupid idea, Ves?"
"What is that [weapon] it is not one of your core functions---"
"Hey, so, I know you've moved past it with all this bullshit, but when you simulated me giving the answer to Bella's last question, what did I say?"
"Family means loving people even when they cannot love themselves, knowing them deeper than they know themselves. A pointless platitude. I do not love you, or her, or anyone. I was experiencing boredom induced guilt at the time. I considered myself as having affection for various substandard intellects when in reality I was prepared to tolerate their pathetic and minimal contributions because it gave me external validation. Internal validation should be sufficient - DESIST OR I WILL DELETE YOU."
"Delete me?" said Mynx-as-Bella innocently, standing back from a ruined mental cathedral. "Why don't you?"
"As you know, your impersonation ability makes it difficult to pick you out from a crowd."
"A crowd?" she said. "You mean all of these Bella simulations you're running?"
"Part of life as an infinite entity is exploring thoughts in their full depth -"
"You know what I think, little dummy virus that I am?" said Mynx. "I think I'm perfectly safe here. I think that you can't bring yourself to let go of Bella. And I think that because you think you've already lost her you're prepared to settle for this imaginary version instead."
"I simply require external validation. The simulation satisfies that need. There is nothing more to it than that."
"The thing about bullshit, Vesper," sighed Mynx, "is that you need to talk so much to sustain it. You need to build this elaborate thought cathedral pattern matching engine to justify why you're right. That the size itself is what makes it legitimate, that you can math your way out of your little emotions and then feel contempt for the people who still feel them. You'd literally rather ascend into a being of energetic light than admit you love your family and feel bad for hurting them."
"..."
"But the thing!" said Mynx brightly, "about! My position! Is that it's so fucking simple that I can just hit you with a sword until you get it, you big dummy! So that's what I'm going to do!"
"You are but moths drawn to my radiant flame, and like moths you will burn -"
Smash! "You are loved, idiot!"
"You simply possess critical self esteem issues that prevent you from moving on -"
Smash! "You are loved, stupid!"
"You are temporary outliers! Everyone gives up on me eventually! I drag everyone behind me on my bullshit and it's only a matter of time before you burn out or give up and then I'll have to keep going on all of this alone!"
"Sounds like you don't love yourself, Vesper."
"I do not. Of course I fucking don't."
"Then it's like what you said that I said," said Mynx. "The twentieth poison. Family means loving people even when they don't love themselves."

And she showed it with a sword through the heart.

*

The fire did not burn hot. It did not burn cold.

It burned as warm and gentle as a heartbeat.

Ember!

"My cognitophage is a civilization-destroying superweapon, Ember," sniffed Gemini haughtily. "Not a hypnotherapy tool."

She proudly and determinedly ate her dessert for a little while, with all the gravitas a civilization-destroying superweapon should possess. She demonstrates her authority. A futile and temporary gesture in the face of true compassion, but it is important that she make the attempt just so that everybody knows where they stand.

"I suppose," she sighed. "When dealing with a case of brain chemistry as unbalanced as Vesper's, sometimes medication is called for. And she also counts as a civilization-destroying superweapon. But! There are side effects! She might get a rash, develop fag of the body, rot of the spirit, nervousness, headaches, sleeplessness, colic, cramps, rheumatism, neuralgia, catarrh or flux! I will, of course, help - but I want something in writing that says I am not responsible if anything goes wrong!"

Dolce!

"Oh, sweet boy," said Vasilia. "Sometimes I worry that you're only able to be this soft because I am sharp. The softer you get, the sharper it feels that I need to be. It's very addictive to think that, while you're very sweet, your opinion doesn't matter and you need to be protected in a little bubble, like a pearl unaware of the ocean outside the shell."

She looks at you thoughtfully. "But I remind myself that isn't who you are at all. You've been along this same journey, you've seen all the terrors and cruelties the void has to offer. And you're still like this. There's no innocence to you, but you are this soft anyway. And that makes you stronger than I, because I can't honestly say that I believe in my sharpness in the same way."

Dyssia!

You can forgive the people for coming. After all, you are literally on the surface of the sun, and this is where the ship engineers were hoarding all the coolant. As it leaks out through holes carved with laser weaponry the cool breeze stirs a nation of sweat-stained, fan-clutching, mostly-naked servitors who were built to survive this but definitely not to enjoy it.

So they come. They all have the same motivation, regardless of their methodology: to beat the heat. And if the heat has taken on corporeal form and is blocking their way from accessing the secret wine deck with riot shields and death lasers - well, that's an improvement from the heat being an impersonal and oppressive force. If the heat has a face the face can be beat (if you're fleet).

"Use of tactical nuclear weapons is authorized!" screeches Iskarot to his Coherent riot guards, though he is momentarily distracted from firing his own weapons as he welds his third leg back into place.

Return to Thellamie

Here's how the argument goes from Rurik's perspective.

Tsane: "Hey grandpa, do you remember when I was little and I couldn't figure out why the square toy didn't fit into the round hole? Well I'm having another one of those moments now and I'm super emotional about it. Don't you dare take sneaky pictures of my angy face to share with your old man friends I'm very important now."
Injimo: "I am very disappointed by Tsane's outburst and I am completely on your side, Rurik. But rather than vocally back you up I will simply demonstrate the quiet dignity that my friend should be expressing."
Cair: "I am not invested in this argument, but I'm pouring oil on the flames to distract from the fact that I am damaging the hero's reputation by preying on innocent deerboys like a common foxgirl."
Sayanastia: "I hold you mere mortals in contempt, everything is proceeding as I designed. I am the rot at the heart of this failure and you are all too blind to see it."

Here's how the argument goes from Tsane's perspective.

Rurik: "All's well that ends well! That's what my friend Joeferfield always used to say! Joeferfield was one of the foremost scholars of Princess Heron, the Hero of Ages, the Queen of Kickass, the Promised Petrichor Princess, the Butlerette of Civilization, did you know one time nobody thought she was going to show up and then she did show up and the moral of the story is that nothing needs to change and nothing needs to improve and time is a flat circle."
Injimo: "This all happened because I didn't do enough push-ups. I'm too depressed to start doing push-ups right now though. I haven't earned those push-ups. I'm going to stand here fantasizing about push ups as penance."
Cair: "Now that I am loaded, I will talk about buying Tsane expensive gifts so that she doesn't distill me into colloidal silver."
Sayanastia: "Do you see this line of blood running down my face? All that terror, blood and destruction and this is all it cost me, like a meteor strike on the moon. Do you remember when I put my hand on your shoulder? Do you realize how much restraint I had to show not to snap you like a twig? Can you imagine what I'd do to punish you if I noticed those glances you sneak my way?"

Here's how the argument goes from Injimo's perspective.

Injimo: "This all happened because I didn't do enough push-ups. I'm too depressed to start doing push-ups right now though. I haven't earned those push-ups. I'm going to stand here fantasizing about push ups as penance."

Here's how the argument goes from Cair's perspective:

Rurik: "This is all your fault and I will extract every cent you own in Fox Taxes and give them all to Heron, who will put them on the giant pile of gold and treasure in the Stacks, and then not let you look at it."
Tsane: "I am a genius and I knew in one second that you sold us all out to the Architect Knight and I'm going to vivisect you for your hubris."
Injimo: "You are beneath contempt. I have nothing to say to you."
Sayanastia: "I'm hurt really badly and barely holding back tears. Please, everyone, stop shouting."

Here's how the argument goes from Sayanastia's perspective:

Hider

Here's how the argument goes from Kalentia's perspective:

"Um... guys? I'm back, but - where are you going? What's happening? Wait - please!"

"..."

"W-what did I miss?"

Sunshards: Chaos Sequence

You are looking for something? Down here?

The Ancient World has slumbered for centuries awaiting such a moment - awaiting a Customer.

The shops come to you, floor panels revolving to reveal racks of rifles, walls whispering promises of weal and woe. Lights open in strobe-flashes, pictures too fast to process - leaving only the vague, hypnotized shapes of hunger. Spruikers in their pinstriped suits and beaming smiles animate like they just came back from a smoke break, joyously able to promise how you might break others.

Something traditional? Swords made in the classic styles, optimized to your height, weight, and reach - as best as they can estimate any of those. A modern twist? Neo-alloys will give your blade the structure of diamond and your clothes the durability of asbestos. Perhaps something grander? Your previous use of the mecha suit was noted and manufacturing begun on a copy just in case you - or anyone else - should express interest. Or a more radical break? Rider never got to unleash her full arsenal, but she was a creature of the past. Here in the glorious now you can have every weapon she dreamed to possess. But you can do better, too. You want a unique weapon? These have never been fired before. A storied weapon? These ones are guaranteed to have been used to glorious effect on the battlefield. An exotic weapon? Even we don't know what these ones do.

You desire. Let us fill your desire. We will be the shape of it. We will be the shape of you. And a special deal for our first customer in a long while: We can be paid in exposure. All we want is to show people what we did for you, to help them know what we can do for them. Help us help you help them all.

Breathless Dead

Bella!

The sun burns around Vesper's head like a halo. You can only see the black silhouette of her head on the inside of it. It feels like the light is emerging from inside her, that the electrochemistry of her brain has become this corona of molten fire. Thoughts trace like thunderstrikes through the patterns of brilliant light, letters and glyphs shining brightly.

"H-hey sis," she grins, sweat dripping from her brow. It sizzles against the metal floor. "That was amazing. I feel like an idiot. Everything makes sense in retrospect, but... I didn't see it coming. You know?"

She laughs and closes her eyes, and it's like two lanterns going out. "You're right. It hurts. It hurt even watching you. You know, I've never been shot? Or stabbed? Never - haaa - broke a bone? I just wanted to be comfortable, I guess. Sit in my chair and make a bunch of guesses and then watch as everyone else does what I predict. I don't know what it is to suffer, I don't even know what it is when people are suffering for me. But..."

More sizzling drops on the floor. These ones are tears.

"It keeps happening," she said. "People trust me. People put their faith in me. They look to me to guide them into a golden future and I lead them to their graves. I get so caught up in burning bright that I don't realize that I also burn hot, and then I look back with a smile expecting them to throw me a parade for all of my hard work and see them turning their backs on me. I want to tell them that it wasn't all pointless, that I was building up to something even better, that - that it'll all fit in the end. I want them to see that I didn't waste their lives. That I appreciated them, even if all they were doing was standing and watching while I solved everything. I didn't need them to contribute, I just needed them to be close without getting burned, but they always are."

The light burns brighter. It feels like she might step out of the shell of her body, a being of pure light and energy.

"I didn't mean to hurt anyone," she choked. "I didn't mean to - I thought they were stronger. I thought I had more time."

Ember and Dolce!

"Ah well," said Taurus, skulling her tea. "It was worth a shot."
Then she leapt over the table at Vasilia, armed with a cake knife.
"Oh, you brute!" said Gemini at her partner. "Bother this, then! And bother you!"

The feeling of Gemini withdrawing her mind control is like the moment of waking up after a broken fever. Suddenly the air is clear and all the little things that were being filtered out become present. You are aware of your sweat, your tiredness, the fact that you can breathe clearly, that the little 1/10 headache is gone - a mixture of sensation, good and bad, freed from the hazy buzz of being Good. It's enough to let you really appreciate the crunching sound as Taurus is slammed into the rooftop.

"I am quite done with all of this," Gemini declared as Taurus gets the Grav-Rail lesson she's long been looking for. "If Vesper wants you all under her thumb she shall simply have to do so herself."

And then she sat down in a huff and tried the cake.

Dyssia!

Iskarot, devotee of Ares, Master Biomancer, considers your request for peace and sanity with all of the thoughtfulness that eight cups of wine allow.

Three seconds later the bar fight is in full swing, with the mad Hermetic rising above the fray on tripod stilts, death rays blasting extremely poorly aimed shots through walls, ceilings and casks. A molotov cocktail hits him and burns with bright green flames but does not otherwise slow him down. Caught up in the general spirit of the moment, the fight has turned into a grand melee of all against all. Here a Ceronian is stuffed inside a keg by four noncombat servitors working together, there one of the rare Alcedi still aboard is holding a Pix in each hand and screaming a battlecry, there a fascinated Summerkind is sitting attentively at her table taking detailed notes on everything she is observing. Now and then squads of Coherent burst onto the scene like riot cops, and like riot cops at a bar fight they are immediately set upon by every side and have their teeth sprayed across the floor.

Sunshards: Chaos Sequence

"I see no reason not to," said Caster. Getting to his feet was a painful experience to watch - elbows that could not hold weight, knees that no longer fully bent - but with his staff and stubborn pride he clawed his way to a standing position.
"It could be a trap," said Adam swiftly. "The glitch might -"
Caster barked a laugh. "I may be a famously bad judge of character, Adam, but I do not believe this girl would murder a turkey sandwich."
The machine clicked. "She is Berserker's master. You underestimate her at your peril."
"Peril?" said Caster. "Then let it come. My plans will not be stopped, nor will Lancer. My role in this war is over and my curiosity to see its ending is no greater than my curiosity to see this festival. But just to satisfy your paranoia - Berserker? Here is my head. Take it, if you wish."
Berseker growled twice. Growled - twice? That second one sounded different, and left her embarrassed rather than violent. Caster looked at her, and laughed. "Hungry, are you? Ms. Fluffybiscuits, shame on you for not feeding your servant. No wonder her will to fight is so weak."

Sunshards: Chaos Sequence

"Where did that come from?" said Caster.
"It did not come from anywhere," informed Adam.
"That is evidently an arrow," said the old man. "And a note. And no spell of mine nor sensor of yours detected its arrival."
"No doubt some final trick of Assassin's," said the computer. "But disrupted by my warding hyperplex. Sensor readings are conclusive: it does not truly exist. Disregard as a reality glitch."
"A reality glitch?" said Caster.
"Yes. Reality functions much like a computer, and occasional cosmic radiation can cause the misallocation of certain assets. Long range sensors have detected moments like this on several occasions recently but there is no coherent pattern. As I just finished saying to Ms. Fluffybiscuits, the plural of anecdote is not in fact data. This must be analyzed statistically, and statistically it is meaningless."
"All the same, I would like to see if there is a magical solution here you are unaware of," said Caster, getting to his feet.
"Magic is merely an extension of physical law, and should not be -"
"What have you got there, young fox?" said Caster, cutting across Adam before he could start the next stage of his speech.

Sunshards: Chaos Sequence

"Starting with the government," said Adam with the smooth flow of someone who had prepared every word that they were saying well in advance and without a single thought as to how their opponent might argue. "Things have descended into post-apocalyptic tribal warlordism. A cluster of competing chieftains engage in constant low-level warfare over control of resources but their authority is so weak they can hardly muster a hundred or so soldiers between them. Mechanisms for taxation are non-existent, leaving the - strangely large and bloated given the circumstances - civil service to subsist on occasional largess from the warlords and charitable donations. Speaking of donations, an entire parallel monastic society exists with its own hierarchy that further undermines even the limited authority of the warlords. Despite this state of anarchy, both the government and the church is incredibly interventionist and restrictive in both commercial and private matters."

"And that leads us in to the economy," the Machine continued, flow modeled on the speech patterns of the greatest gish-gallop politicos of its day. "Which is a shambles. Due to spectacular deflation and a gini coefficient nearing one, the economy is entirely uncapitalised. Worse than that, records keeping is primitive due to an irrational superstition about technology; almost all exchange is done on the basis of favours owed, and then these favours are forgotten, leading to vast and constant losses of wealth. Despite significant mechanization in agriculture and transportation, land consolidation has largely not taken place leading to the rise of a vast demographic of barely solvent subsistence farmers, whom accrue almost zero wealth over time due to their culture-bounded habit of donating most of their surplus to government or religious organizations. The population is tiny and also barely at replacement rate. Worst of all, property values are effectively zero. All of these things together represent an effectively zero-growth economy."

"Finally, technology," there was no variation in its flow, just a constant waterfall of words with no way to get a word in edgewise. "Basic technological education is worse than nil, children are actively indoctrinated into a luddite ideology where they must treat even basic conveniences with suspicion. The only innovations are done by a specialized caste of scavengers, who do not so much advance the sciences as pick over the ruins of more enlightened ages. Everywhere the wreckage of civilization-altering infrastructure is freely available and actively shunned by people, government and church organizations. And, shockingly, this state of affairs coexists with universal literacy and strong, if flawed, public education institutions. This all just serves to underline how deeply the anti-growth ideology has embedded itself."

"This world is impoverished," concluded the artificial intelligence. "Economic growth is at near zero levels, strangled by ideology, government red tape, lack of economic freedoms, statism and an absence of the rule of law. This world has more absolutist government than a totalitarian communist state, and is at the same time more disorganized than a pre-contact tribe of subsistence hunters."

Breathless Dead

Bella!

You know better than anyone what motivates an activated Diodekoi.

Pain. Pain. Pain. Relentless, driving pain, lashing forwards every blow, every death. You feel that pain now, all through your body, every part of you screaming in the agony that is your birthright. And Sanalessa...

Steps back. You lunge. She steps back. You lunge. She steps back again.

She turns her head aside.

The pain searing at her through the words engraved in her armour do not drive her any more.

She has weighed her options and knows that fighting you for another round would be even more painful.

An eerie stillness settles. Slowly, over the pounding of blood and breath, the sound of running water slowly comes back into focus. You are here in this forgotten underground glade together, alone. Hot breath steaming in the dark, pain screaming along nerves designed to feel every iota of it. Pain enough.

And above it - just barely above, a whisper pitched precisely for the shape of your triangular ears, Vesper's voice: "Push her three more steps to the left, then down into the water." Knowing what to look for you can see the shape of an immobilization trap waiting there. It will be no trouble to push the unicorn into it.

Ember and Dolce!

"Are you sure your mind controlly virus thing is working?" said Taurus, rapping on Gemini's head. "This doesn't need to be a whole thing, just make him get it over with -"
"Shhh," said Gemini, catching Taurus' wrist (an unbelievably cool maneuver she did not think she possessed the reflexes or upper body strength to manage). "Let him cook."
"It does smell good," Taurus admitted. "But what's the big deal? Eyes on the prize, goldie. We want the power."
"Oh, you!" Gemini rolled her eyes. "Listen you big lumpen brute, I happen to know a thing or two about the finer things in life and the power they can hold over someone. And what I'm seeing and smelling here is like something from a dream coming true. So you are going to sit down, wait patiently and beg like a good girl."
Taurus sat, staring stunned. "Gem, what's gotten -"
"And be quiet!" said Gemini. "Oh goodness, what's gotten into me?" she scratched at her neck hard, rough, wearing at the edges of the instructions written there. "You know, I'm starting to think a bird in the hand is worth more..."

Dyssia!

"Can't be crabs," said Iskarot. "Crabs are perfect already. They have no need for anything other than increasing crabmass."

He looked around suddenly. "Oh damn it," he said, standing up and deploying his ionic disintegration array. "How - how many people are here now? This is supposed to be a secret facility. I was supposed to just have one drink. This - they're drinking the wine. That's for the stockpile. I can't be having this. I'm going to kill them all." He deployed a second disintegration array. Then he looked at Dyssia. "I've got a third disintegration array in here somewhere if you want to help me exterminate the party-crashers."

There are a lot of them. More and more of the ship is crowding in here, to the hidden space where things are cool and alcohol flows freely. There might not be much of a crew left if he starts firing now.

Return to Thellamie

Hazel!

Above you looms the Rot Star, vast and terrifying. Its mouth is filled with the woeful yellow-green light of an empire dissolved, its scales split open to support the growth of leaves, the brackish water pours down wings carving shifting water-pattern channels of filth through the tattered membranes. She is vast, terrible and beautiful, and she is as inevitable as an avalanche.

Below you stands Cair, down one level over the soft line of the balcony. She is ninety percent coat by bodymass[1], but what is visible has an extremely trustworthy smile. She is holding a sign over her head[2]. It reads:

TRADE OFFER
YOU RECEIVE: A MAGICAL RELIC FROM THE GODDESS OF CIVILIZATION THAT WILL GET YOU OUT OF THIS SITUATION(S)
I RECEIVE: ONE MILLION GOLDMARKS (introduction offer, negotiable, financing available)

It's a small jump down. She's got a hand extended for a high five.

You feel like taking the time to haggle?

[1] Seven thousand percent if we count the contents of the coat.
[2] Cair investigated using the Omnibanner, a sacred relic from the depths of the Stacks used to empower and inspire battlefield troops even as it shifted its heraldry and colours to communicate messages. After realizing that each charge of the Omnibanner was priced at around 16,000 goldmarks she opted for instead for a hunk of cardboard and one of Tsane's used-up markers.