[b]Hagar and Geron![/b]

Atop the palanquin at the heart of a procession rests a cat. It looks down upon you with an indifference colder than the stars. Then it looks down with sixteen additional eyes.

Not all on the same cat - nine cats together, some mangy, some proud, some dressed in ribbons and some scar-faced toms. Orange and brown and black and majestic, all of their tails tied together into a nightmarish knot. Where it has naught but disdain for you creatures of soul and flesh, it has active antipathy for itself, hissing and clawing at its own other selves in a constant note of inhuman violence.

One of them made eye contact with Geron, then shoved a glass cup from its shelf onto the floor. It splashed and shattered, and the sound of it ground the procession to a halt. There were so many of them - there must be ten thousand or more people in this crowd, passing through the vast tech-cathedral and out through the doors, with more flowing in all the time. But now their diseased attention was focused.

"Clean it up," said the King of Cats.

[b]Vael![/b]

Your thoughts descend into a world of grey. Flickering, warping cathode rays, corrupted static and babbling, layered voices of static and warped machinery. You hear fast-talking announcers discussing creams for the prevention of oils, war for the extraction of oils, businesses for the prosecution of wars. Two grinning, manic figures resolve, one wearing robes of Mechanicus Standard Grey, the other a suit of Administratum Grey. They are eating sausages with chopsticks and occasionally cackling at the haunting images that flash on the screens around them.

"New programming!" said Mechanicus Grey. "That's right, an exciting new show -"
"An aficionado of classic technology. Classic!"
"A dying art!"
"At risk of being lost by the waves of modernization!"
"Don't you feel like society has gone downhill since things started getting better?"
"They don't make that thing you like any more."
"New generations are growing up every day without even knowing about it!"
"You, though. You're a classic!"