Dekaidin

Orst — Official Roleplay Starter Thread

Knō

An aurora of annihilation colored the dome of day that vaulted the populous city and its nearby boroughs, and reduced the on-coming debris to fine particles. Low-flying envro-gliders swept the bulk of the dust away, with what substance remained uncaptured destined to blow far and wide on the tradewinds, thus nurturing the jungles and plains of far away lands. It was a kaleidoscopic, praetomic event, free from fallout but pregnant with ano and aura. Nor did Knō let ignorance take root in opportunity, but broadcasted a frequency that warned all along the Inland Sea of the threat.

Hōm

In Hōm, there was a strangeness in the tide. As if the ocean itself retreated into the bedrock to take refuge. The fountain-well, meanwhile, overflowed, the Cleansing Steps slick with the deluge. To the Elders of the village, this was a rare event, an auspice and opportunity to instruct the youth in how, long, long ago, great walls of water rushed out of the depths and threatened the coasts until a creature, one whose image adorns the fountain, put into place a way by which Hōm might remain safe, and that the water may be used for good rather than destruction. At the same time, the helemb warned the town’s Elder and Scholar of the impending skyfall, and the people retreated into the deep caves of the fjord. After all, buildings could be rebuilt.

Port Solt

Talt watched the etched, artificial constellation light up the sky, and paused. It foretold something, and fell fates did not come alone. He turned to the man at his side — it was unnecessary to point out the obvious, the unavoidable. Instead, he asked, “What is that?”

It was an earthfall of islands, no longer kept rigid and aloft in the sky. A devastation of displacement that rained down on the Inland Sea and the cities that surrounded it, a second hit in so many days to Port Solt, although for once it was not the epicenter of destruction. Were that the case, many more would have died.

Dalawakz

An empty canyon, distant enough from the mayhem that it did not feel the turmoil, nor hear the screams, nor consider the magnitude of the event triggered by the massive creature as it roved across the sea and came to rest atop a prison, a sigil. Yet a person beneath the bedrock acknowledged it, her eyes widened modestly beneath her mask of clinking chains. An answer would need to be found to this riddle, one in history. For such events were always cyclical, and this, to her, was known. But more important was the message to be sent to the Cult of Pé that they might utilize the cataclysmic event as an omen that would further their religion, their control.

Celwezc

In the distance, it appeared as a descent of many comets. They fell far and long against the horizon, and vanished into an obscurity beyond which stretched the Inland Sea. The farmers and their priestess pondered it, for if an omen, what did it bode? And so recent on the heels of the flash of light, the sonic rupture that came from the north and east.

The Bureaucracy of Ig

A Temple in Celwezc

Equidistant from the walls and nearer to the stairs is a round stone table without the excess of ornamentation. Small and aloof in the vault’s center, it stands as a blunt, upward-flaring half-pillar. From it, the walls recoil. To it, she is drawn: by its spectral green and sinuous patina, by its pallid veins that veer and arc lividly throughout—all reflecting against her rapt attention. Entities at odds, all: her, it, the babbling eydolins. Breaths rapid, throaty, she wades through the current, the verve, the animus of connectivity. It feels loathsome, the space’s tightness as it presses against her and everything else in the dim cacophony.

Constance of wisdom, by unburning light, avert and force form on the nameless of night, her soul declaims a line of the ancient litany.

To that stone zoar of seclusion, Eokadya approaches. On it, she places her lantern. From it, she takes wax daubs and with them stops her ears. Each movement she makes is slow, smooth, and reverent. To her relief, the babble vaguely mutes to an intensity less maddening but nevertheless present. Next, her fingertips alight on two small, clear discs. Pressing them upon her eyes, she douses the lantern and sees in spite of the immaculate darkness.

A shudder swells from the root of her spine and ascends throughout her body, like the motif of a branching tree. For all at once the place is cold. It would be dark, it should be dark. Yet she sees it all, in a way. As one drowning beneath a moonlight-pierced nebula of algae, she wades through the vibrating outlines of entities without name, or face, or memory, and wills them away from her flesh.

Wordless, she approaches the shelf. She traces it with her finger, the jade screams of its occupants vibrating just beyond reach. Two paces, and she pauses, then kneels low enough that her cincture’s excess coils on the dirt floor—once, twice. Inexorable, fate extends her arm and her grasp retrieves an eydolin to her bosom. Its dyad sits on the mantelshelf of the physician, a good man. A man who has done better by the farmers of Celwecz than elusive occult words and dubious herbal concoctions ever could. He knows much of how they feel, and in the stillness of his den he engages in a dialectic of sorts—he and some fictitious antagonist.

Firm in the grasp of both hands, now, she wrestles the doll upward, and brings its faceless, trembling tongue to her mouth’s embrace. A silhouette of jade and rage, it unleashes successive bursts of spiritual lightning. Yet armored in the tools of her trade, she feels no injury, no harm. It is impotent. Mouth open, she extends her tongue. They press together, a kiss of reverence, of revulsion. Its tongue adheres to her own, buds latching to buds. All at once, she collapses, the eydolin mounting her face. Its tongue moves, seeks, and twitches. And so too moves her own. She feels the shape of the words, the taste of them. Giving in to the sinuously gliding, arching, and mutating spasms, she drowns in the eldritch spittle of forbidden knowledge. Without comprehending the words, her tongue shapes them, and with that shaping comes a type of ghastly memory. There, in the den with the physician. Watching him with hateful eyes, she can see his lips move, but not hear him. Yet she can read those lips.

Eokadya reads suffering, reads joy, reads the portent of turmoil.

Some time later, she comes to. The doll, off her face. Then lantern burning once more, she sees it is back in its place. Not by her hand, yet these things—they never move, she is certain. A dissonance, a horror. She drives the incongruity from her mind. Her place is up in the world of light, and, balancing ceremony with haste, toward that she flees.

The Family Biz [Open To Apply]

— Aeternus — the Casino

Of course he had lied to Ilaria and, contrary to his claim, his departure was not to continue his shift.

Tāwhaki manifested, instead, inside the grand game floor of a casino in a pseudo-hell known as Aeternus, the very place Ilaria named as her destination. His sleek, smoldering frame slinked through a mirror serving as the backsplash to a massive, central service point of all manner of alcoholic beverages. With true cat-like grace, he high-stepped his way around the numerous bottles of inebriants and nectars that stood palisade-like around him, their variegated colors and necks reflecting in the mirror.

More and worse projected out of that pane, its utility briefly exposed: a thin membrane, a place between baleful places.

Beyond rows of distilled natures and on the semi-tarnished surface writhed a smog of souls and wailing, spectral faces. Reflected through the translucent bottles, their agonizing forms took on unholy hues and emblems, terrors nocturnal distorted by the geometric heresy of black label and baroque vampiric draughts. Brief scenes for which a passing glance might imagine are conjurations of the mind and are absent on subsequent appraisals. Even so, invisible, tense, they linger, refusing to abandon their hold on attention: held by the phantom outlines of long, sharp, black fingers against a backdrop of pale steam, needle-thin blades penetrated their victims’ mouths, grinding tips against crowns and exciting the tender, vulnerable nerves. Struggling, twitching, their binds were unyielding: each strand of hair ensnared in sap, pulled taut in that interstice between agony and relief, but never quite hard enough; jaws penetrated by spears, forcefully held open; eyelids reduced to tattered bands, there but made useless, able only to offer the briefest, most haunting obscuration. Behind sagging ropes of flesh, pupils pulsated, unable to avoid beholding the effigies of things once dear yet before them animated, dismembered, and compelled into their forcibly-open gullets. Semi-molten spears rotated their jaws, forced them to chew, a self-consuming rotisserie, forced them to devour those precious memories — a family pet, a newborn child, their father: a finger, an ear, a patch of ripped out hair. All dipped in feces, so as to be swallowed easily and digested poorly.

I wonder whether Ilaria is enjoying her time in Entobalti, Tāwhaki pondered, not at all sincere.

Patiently, his ears perked up. He panned the interior of the casino’s lavish main gaming room, and found what he sought. It was easy. The bar was conveniently elevated, and its attendant could monitor all the guests. From it, Tāwhaki watched all the same people, figures who roamed listlessly the large hall and wasted away their pathetic potential in search of the next stimulating experience.

Sharp in his scrutiny, he beheld the most interesting figures. No demons. Yes, they were present in abundance: such simpering fiends he felt were far less interesting than the true torturers from those more potent proxies humans, in their stupid terror, dubbed Hell. Bipedal false-cats lingered near elevator doors that were never to open. Ironically, from an adjacent elevator (which read exit only) emerged the semblance of a zombie dressed as a flapper. By the entrance and plain enough to, in his mind, be conspicuous, stood a woman who was no woman, but did well to quell her aura. She, like he, surveilled and assessed. How very predatory, he mentally purred. Meanwhile, behind her and pinned to the wall, a tapestry forlorn and quite enraged by its consuming circumstance. Poor thing, doomed to become another boring topical piece in the lavish expanse of clutter and décor that inundated anywhere that the eye might settle in Ealdorman’s casino.

Whoever it was that Ilaria sought, she was not here; not in this room, anyway.

Alas.

Outside, a din penetrated the nonstop carnivalesque atmosphere of the casino. An ongoing demolition, perhaps. A dumb beast audibly rampaged in another, smaller anteroom. Ealdorman’s problems, both. What Tāwhaki wanted was to instigate. Thus, he sauntered paw across paw from the bar and toward the desiccated would-be femme fatale and purred, “Gre~etings, madam. Has your time at the Pleiades been to your liking?”

⇝⛧⇜

Age of Broken Shackles 2.0

The Zrynd Polyphany

The name of the occupying force has been censored.

ᛣ

Three problems confronted the Zrynd at the termination of the Pax ███████.

Often times, it is a good thing to get off easy. Particularly when limiting oneself to the consideration of short-term consequences, gains, and limiters. That intangible factor seldom holds when pitted against the eventual consequences discernible by those who with intent and by design take a long view, by those who peer into the funnel of history, witness the cataclysmic resonance that glances along the recesses of its interior, and from that subtle turbulence extrapolate the horrible, predictable patterns of future recurrences.

First, a perception problem: they were treated preferentially and regarded as pets by the ██████ and for that despised.

While not subjected to tortuous abuses, cultural usurpation, or overt exploitation, it would be remiss to describe their occupation as idyllic. Ignorance and isolation defined Zrynd participation in the Pax. Throughout they were treated as docile playthings, curiosities, and at times insensate drones. What they witnessed beyond the borders of their territorial space were highly-curated performances that omitted the enslavement, the purges, the bio-plagues, and the endless, desperate, violent attempts by the ██████ to maintain empire. Thus, the Zrynd viewed the ██████ as good neighbors and were blinded to the plights of their other neighbors.

During the Pax, a quasi peace held sway over the Zrynd worlds: calm oases to which the empire’s elite traveled in order to relax, meditate, and harmonize with the beauty of nature. It was not until the empire collapsed that the Zrynd learned of their worlds’ classification as pleasure planets—biological resort arcologies. Even then, many Zrynd, particularly the most ancient, remained in denial to the truth of their relationship. They imagined their interactions with the ██████ were framed by harmonious symbiosis and the principle of coexistence, not the arrogant, farcical affection owners feel towards slaves. Historian Purgra-vrep Tolavolabryn described it in these terms: “If a large enough cage is built around its natural habitat, the animal will not realize its home has become a zoo.”

And so the Pax ended and the Zrynd discovered they were despised. Yet their territory was small, and distant, positioned at the fringe of known space, and not immediately worth the effort of war. In morose self-reflection, they felt vulnerable and the sting of stained reputations. They anticipated the likelihood of diplomatic isolation and inability to secure allies if they remained complacent.

Second, a technological problem: the failure of critical ██████-maintained infrastructure on their worlds.

Technological miracles were brought by the ██████ to the Zrynd planets: deep ocean bio-stasis cultivation plants, stabilization weaves that hung nigh-invisible in the mesosphere, atmospheric feedback-cancellation mills, anti-tectonic control pylons, and many more. It seemed these blended perfectly with the natural beauty of the Zrynd worlds, and controlled pollution, weather, and even froze genetic diversity among the numerous native species of the worlds the Polyphany curated. And the ██████ insisted on perfection of the Zrynd planets, not merely just a cultivation of natural beauty, of peace. These ideals were already the natural inclination of the Zrynd, and in it they saw no harm. They did not realize the truth of what was being asked of them, of how it bordered on the artificial, the theatrical.

But there was a catch.

While polite, the ██████ very sternly enforced their proprietary access to the maintenance and control of these technological apparatuses. The Zrynd were prohibited from studying, reconstructing, or even near proximity to any of these terraformation tools. It was made clear that their functions were state secrets, and attempts to interact with them would be considered espionage and punished accordingly. Not an idle threat. More than a few overly-curious QSM and Pakzrynd disappeared, never to be heard from again. The elders internalized the blame for the tragic disappearances of their kin and redoubled their efforts to respect privacy. Such was necessary to sate their desired peace, that and strict adherence to their occupier’s rule of law.

Then the ██████ were gone, and their devices ever so slowly deteriorated with nobody left who comprehended their modes of operation. The Zrynd feared the consequences of this, the cascade of failures that could lead to mass extinctions, climate weirding, oceanic dead zones, and the total collapse of the structures that supported life on their worlds for a billion years prior to the intervention of their former masters.

Third, a stagnation problem: after so long as a kept people, they struggled to adapt to their novel circumstances.

Moreover, they were deceived.

For centuries, experiments and tests were foiled, results were falsified, datasets corrupted—manipulated and sabotaged to enforce civilizational stasis and to block meaningful, necessary development. Predisposed towards amity, the Zrynd elected ignorance and the artificial equilibrium of the status quo on the matter: a naive position reinforced by their ideology of preferential changelessness, of a fool’s immortality: to indefinitely keep things pleasant, peaceful, and experiential.

Profound shock rippled through the Polyphany in the aftermath of the empire’s collapse when completely novel results poured in and prompted new theories. Information they might have accessed centuries earlier. The irony was not lost on them—their domestication of worlds mirrored by their own domestication by the empire to which they were subservient. While knowledge poured in, they lacked the ability to manipulate ██████ technology. While there were a few defensive installations and warships scattered throughout the Polyphany, they were relics of an ancient past with primarily cosmetic enhancements.

Behind in the field of genetic engineering, their immortal genome and consciousness saw little reason to change what, in its own view, was already an idealized form. Gaps likewise manifested in more pugilistic matters, such as defensive technology and operational, asymmetric conflict theory.

To this, the QSM adapted more readily. Having been freed of the restrictions formerly in place in their study of the alien technology that cultivated their worlds, they investigated those tools—an action that provoked sharp disagreement with the Pakzrynd, who felt they should honor old commitments even where no enforcement mechanisms prevailed. But in the end, logic and reason and the necessity of self-preservation won out. They could not sit idly and watch their worlds crumble into ecological collapse. They could not idly become prey for outsiders. They had to adapt, and they had to do it together.

ᛣ

There was a lull, a reordering of things when the Pax ended. The Zrynd, however, were much in the dark. A time of confusion lingered, followed by intense introspection and scrutiny. Banded together by curiosity and a desire for diplomacy, they send out millions of ISB micro-probes quantum-linked with monitoring stations on Pelag‑Zrynd. Eventually a few picked up radio chatter, but could not decode it immediately. Then a research team led by the QSM /ˈɲiːʂoːlβaɾ/ cracked the fallen empire’s universal translator: an encrypted database of all known languages and phonetic signatures and their associations with other languages. Suddenly, they knew what people were saying. And that meant the next phase of their plan needed to happen.

They needed to have conversations.

Off-world, five large spacecraft were being built along with support vehicles to carry diplomatic expeditions to the territorial space of their neighbors. The first two that departed were destined for the Triune Solaris Alliance, led by Bulkril-mrol Galafraftayv and /ˈkoːnɛɾθaɡʉm/ of the envoy carrier group ECG-Dojsrhu, and the Augustan Empire, led by Teskul‑vren Moloravendyn and /ˈɲiːʂoːlβaɾ/ of the envoy carrier group ECG-Ufrolymd. To reach either, they inconspicuously and conscientiously navigate the intervening worldline by way of their ZACB-powered Isotemporal Space Breaching drives. This skirted yet simultaneously passed through the territories of unknown civilizations that they had yet — but nevertheless still intended — to make first contact with. General destinations reached, they synchronized the time envelope of their travel reference frames and appeared in alien space. There, they sent out a broadcast: “Let’s talk. Let’s meet.”

Meanwhile, back on their homeworld of Pelag-Zrynd they came to peace with the reality that not everyone might be friendly, that their reputation might be beyond repair. That their negotiations might utterly fail. So they began to unravel the secrets of the fallen empire’s tech while constructing massive off-planet defensive installations. More probes were sent out, these with an aptitude for stealth and surveillance. After all, they had noticed the vast majority of the prior wave of probes were mysteriously destroyed. They needed information. They also needed a means to access ███ ████.

Orst — Official Roleplay Starter Thread

——Knō to Du Sang, Siepf's Perspective

Around him, the air that rolled from the wend grasped wet and heady. Siepf sniffed, and took in the herbaceous, sharp scent the wend wind carried. In his bowels, it stirred passions of ancient hunger, of fragrant, medicinal decay obscured by root-burned incense and confined as in a shroud by peels of sap-slickened bark. It reeked like the wound-temple above Vor’zat, or as he imagined from its ghastly, ancient yarns. A puff of air erupted from his nostrils, and by that he rid himself of the thought.

At his side, Talt fiddled with his pith. Siepf huffed, eager to get along with his mission. The need for Turifaar to be evacuated was, as expressed by the Sodality, imminent.

“Come on, already,” Siepf barked, and dropped to all fours. Pressed back against his skull, the uneven fringes of his large and pointed black ears vanished into the carmine shadow of his raincoat hood. Tension built in his hind legs. It was time. Heedless to his companion’s readiness and with a primal grunt, he dashed peremptory into the wend. Ghosts of trees writhed before him, trunks napped with bright verdant moss. Vines heavily grasped their curvaceous branches, if vines they were — aloof shadows, they seemed, that skulked and menaced at the fringes of the mist-bound lattice of argent prisms, but ever kept their distance. That same mist that dominated his vision dampened his black snout.

Ever to him a capricious enchantress, light seemed as eager to obscure the world as she was to expose it to plain, simple view.

Soon the trees straightened, the vines faded, and he felt a soft, familiar crunch underfoot. Pine barrens, perhaps. He sniffed, and into his nostrils flooded that sharp scent of home, but he missed another: Talt, his companion on this mission. Instead, a third, alien aroma assailed him, almost to the point of a fearful oblivion. He stepped back, and glanced over his shoulder. Talt was not there, and the tell-tale shimmer of the wend likewise seemed absent. A shiver ran down his spine, and he opened his mouth to mutter a stray oath. He thought better of it, for what he felt wasn’t merely the terror of a wrong turn into an unknown grove, but a herald of death that lurked at the edge of his awareness.

His eyes narrowed, and he took in the lightened mist. No longer silver. It was pink. A faint crimson. His tongue flicked out, and he tasted blood. By instinct, he felt he should turn and leave. But no wend remained behind him, nor was he certain of his ability to find it again. He stood upright, and extracted his pith from the satchel fixed upon his chest strap. Communication matrix toggled, yet he heard only his nerve-rattled breath. That was a fact on which his training touched, that within a wend there was no communication.

I must still be inside, Siepf thought, then realized that it would be unwise to dwell here too long, that he needed to pass through, not linger, lest he become bound to the distortion through which he meant to be only a brief visitor.. He plodded along, and the red mist deepened. His dread increased, along with that foul, alien stink. All scents eventually betrayed their inherent natures, and this stunk of a kind with which he and his pack possessed an ancient enmity toward.

Too late, he saw wall tower out of the thick, crimson fog. Too late, he heard the crunch of desiccated twigs and grass beneath the stride of his stalker.

~ ※ ~

——Knō to Port Solt, Talt's Perspective

“Siepf, wait!” Talt shouted, his hand futilely outstretched.

He grasped the mist-laden stillness, his clenched damp palm.

Within the wend, travel was dangerous and natures deceptive. Empiricism and time were often unreliable. What mattered was one’s mental focus, as the convictions of the mind influenced the stability of the destination. This was information direct from the guidebook. Meanwhile, Siepf was fleet, and though Talt struggled, he inevitably ceded to stillness his steady, slow trot once his faster companion departed from his vision and he no longer heard the tell-tale thrash of disrupted forestation.

“Well, Svotaktak, what do you think?” Talt worried.

Along the nape of his neck, his dralif tattoo pulled away from his skin. He couldn’t see it directly, but he felt it—like dried gum or a wound-treating plaster ripped away, but only in part. A constellation that scintillated citrine at his periphery, it hovered a few centimeters behind his ear. Into it, it whispered with a voice deep and rustic, like the scent of warmed toegi bread or the groan of a pulo tree’s fruit-laden ebon branches in the season of harvest, “Remain calm, proceed at a steady pace, visualize as specifically as possible where you are going.”

Exasperated, he resumed his walk. It frustrated him to be told what he already knew, already suspected. Turifaar was his destination, the island that moved. Numerous ecosystems competed upon it, from karsts, to deserts, to jungles that robed its shell in dense tropical vegetation. Did it have beaches? He closed his eyes, and walked on. Maybe. Frayed strands of the warped space caressed his flesh and shifted around his garb. Barefoot, he felt how the warm, large, flat stones of the park transformed, crunched as autumn leaves, and then disintegrated entirely to soft, hot sand. The moisture in the air dissipated, and an arid breeze struck him full in the face.

All at once, static buzzed at his hip.

Another step took him onto a broken shore, and the grainy audio smoothed to something he deciphered as the pith’s wideband. It played lilting orchestral music, the bass of the drog tempered by an orgz that undulated and droned. It was the same station he set it to before his departure, although the melody was further advanced in its performance. Quietly, he scanned the horizon. No Siepf. No jungles. A broken, shattered shore. The ruins of a city. In his nostrils, the acidic stink of dust and ruin and a poisoned sea.

“Svotaktak, is this Turifaar?” Talt wondered. Again, he suspected he would be answered with his fear, rather than a solution. Again, his fear manifested as reality. “No,” his ano-form dralif answered, “This was Port Solt, a cycle of what you call Red Brother after the catastrophe.”

Anxiety filled Talt, and he dropped to his knees. The hot day stars pounded down on his head, and he pulled his hood up to preserve his precious moisture. Late and in the wrong place. How did it go so wrong? Fist lofted, he slammed it down upon the beach. Unexpectedly, he struck something solid. A smooth, hard shape stirred out of the depths by either the quake or the tsunami, now covered only by a thin camouflage of sand. Curious, he dusted it off. It seemed black, at first, but not like the pulo tree. It seemed more the absence of color, or a hue that sat beyond his ability to perceive.

“Svotaktak, what is this?” — a moment that stretched, unanswered. He began to think his ano tattoo had broken. Then, after several minutes, wherein Talt examined the object — it was cold, fist-sized, and shaped like a thick crescent with a reverse of itself that penetrated its core — his tattoo responded: “Inconclusive.”

As he strained his sight on the distance, Talt attempted to pierce the bronze sky occluded by dust and dominated by low nimbostratus clouds that angrily rolled north, away from the inland sea. Through the murk, he imagined miniature outlines of rescue craft that hovered like so many gnats over a corpse. For over an hour, he walked. As he came nearer, he tuned his pith to the worldband search and rescue frequency. Now nearer, he easily observed the wires that dangled and twisted out of the guts of the metal, wingless vehicles that floated in the sky and heaved rubble off of those trapped below.

Also, he saw a man who. Like him, he walked toward the city from the sandy dunes that girded its north and west and extended as far as starling’s flight. Talt fell into step with him as they neared the outermost ring of collapsed structures and frenzied aid workers, just as a rather famished, gaunt, and unfamiliar type of humanoid brushed past them: a figure who, while hunched, towered over Talt. She reeked of — was it rust? Unsure and afraid of her, Talt shifted his eyes down. Rather than the dark, rough-armored form, he searched for someone to whom he might report.

~ ※ ~

Age of Broken Shackles 2.0

The Zrynd Polyphony

The Zrynd Polyphony

of the World of Pelag-Zrynd — “The Sea of the Pakzrynd,” the cradle world.

Vexilloid Heraldry & Symbolism

Azure and amethyst parted per fess by angular waves, bearing dexter a sable cephaliform demi‑figure issuing from the hoist, its limbs extended toward a radiant argent starburst accompanied by five lesser stars of equal metal.

Deep blues represent the oceanic origin of the Pakzrynd civilization, spreading left-to-right into an indigo celestial expanse of infinite potential. The unifying geometric spectra forms a harmony between nature and technology. Against the hoist, an octopodal silhouette serves as a reminder of that civilization’s precursor species: it reaches toward the stars, into which it spread, beginning with the large, eight-pointed star that is their system of origin. The remaining five, four-pointed stars are the systems they have since colonized.

The flag is displayed in a horizontal orientation, the octopode limbs grasping at a bright future.

Map Location

A series of six habitable star systems positioned along the upper-middle extent of the known galaxy.

Pelag-Zrynd is the primary planet, a highly saline water world where disparate colonies of Pakzrynd co-evolved into the multi-stellar civilization they are today. From humble beginnings in littoral shelves and coral reefs, independent civilizations spawned on the planet’s numerous archipelagos and coasts. Yet all held the same eidetic memory and regenerative biology, and, after initial conflict, unforgettable wounds inevitably led to collaboration over competition. As the planet’s only naturally-evolved sapient species, it was left to them to cultivate their environment and design their future.

Government

The Zrynd Polyphony is a representative meritocracy governing Pelag‑Zrynd through a council of Pakzrynd and QSM voices. While the Pakzrynd weigh in more heavily on social and long-horizon issues, providing emotional modeling and the according weight of emotional memory, the QSM representatives see to more immediate concerns, maintaining infrastructure, and balancing available resources with prospective projects and real-time environmental monitoring. These species-isolated foci stem from their different geneses and functional constraints, (i.e.: the Pakzrynd’s eternal memory and the QSM’s law of homeostatic balance). Offices are neither claimed nor competed for, thus there is no motive of entitlement. Instead, high performers in their given areas are appointed, negotiated not hierarchically but via the collective resonance of their peers. This culminates in a dual-species polity, with neither dominant and governance an act of harmonization between the Pakzrynd mind and the QSM metabolic logic. Generally when mentioned collectively, the Pakzrynd along with the QSM are known as "the Zrynd”.

In Zrynd society, there are no markets, currency, or centralization of resources. Ecological equilibrium is, instead, the core tenant that drives advancement, asking the question: “can positive change be made without causing harm?” This balances personal autonomy with planetary balance. As such, concepts like communism and capitalism are completely foreign in Zrynd society of post-scarcity equilibrium.

Cultural Philosophy

The Pakzrynd are animists holding nature and memory as a meta-continuous construct in reverence. They call this M’ruk. It serves as the moral foundation for their society. One may wonder how a generally peaceful species came to be the dominant civilization. Luck. Chance. Being the first to evolve the use of tools, of sophisticated communication, of ambition — not to conquer, but to cultivate. Nor were they always so peaceful. Peace is a product of memory, of a scar in their past that can be neither healed nor forgotten. An perhaps not fully intended consequence of this is that the worlds that are under their guidance feel more like expansive zoos or aquariums than thriving, wild worlds. Beneath the M’ruk, and as a result of near-social collapse, emerged the Catenic Ethos: binding personal existence to environmental harmony, with laws and ceremonies governing procreation, death, and interaction. It covers “suicide” — an intentional, honorable dissolution making room for new members of the species, identity preservation in the Catenic Archives, and the potential for rebirth by means of bio-engineered implantation of their preserved salt crystal memory archives and extracted engrams, often without the weight of their emotional memory via the process of selective memory excision. The choice to procreate comes with an implicit responsibility to eventually withdraw, to undergo dissolution. The choice to parent, not necessarily so, by way of adoption of memory-excised individual. At times, the combination of “new identities” introduces generational tension, but this is an important feature: it prevents stagnation.

The QSM are non-religious, and participation in the Zrynd Polyphony is an honorable heritage they willingly partake of given the non-violent nature of their revolution and subsequent autonomy. They were created and yes, for a time, treated as tools, but once the Pakzrynd accepted the sapience of the QSM, orchestrating freedom became a matter of communication and coordination.

Both species share a belief in ecological equilibrium, which is that they exist to harmonize with nature in a way that reduces pain and expands group and individual self-actualization. However, they have observed a flaw in the over-generalization of this approach: the over-domestication of worlds, a dangerous circumstance that accelerates the entropy they desire to avoid. Due to this, they have ceased their colonization projects on other worlds, and restricted themselves to their six core worlds.

Demographics

• Pakzrynd — 60%
• QSM - 40%

Pakzrynd

sapient | radially modular cephaloforms | biological organism

An evolutionary offshoot of a mimic octopus-like marine species, the Pakzrynd are internally radially modular along a five node circuit architecture. Each node comprises a self-contained metabolic and regenerative core enabling reversible ontogeny. Modules communicate along chemo-electric signals and share cognition. This allows for an individual identity in spite of multiple independently-viable interior structures. Prion-stabilization persists memory, and is subsequently embedded and preserved in non-neural salt crystal idiomatic storage archives. At any point, a node within their body may be in the process of controlled regression to purge cellular damage.

Ergo, Pakzrynd possess functional regenerative immortality and eidetic memory. Death, for them, is a choice or a consequence of catastrophic violence.

In appearance, they resemble cephalopods weighing in at 2k-2.5k kg and 17-19 m long. Utilizing chromatophores, iridophores, and texture-modulation, their skin boasts colorful mimicry qualities, and is an organ responsible for tertiary, non-verbal communication (after oral, written, but before pheromonal, and sign), and is also rife with cilia and photoreceptors, allowing for a 360 audio-visual field. Likewise, the evolutionary process of time reconfigured their central dome with an undulating, pentamerous ridge; thickened their dermal layers with mineralized micro-plates and gelatinous shock-absorbers; and expanded their limbs to twelve long, hyper-articulate arms that — given a distribution of neural islands and micro-muscular hydrostats — function with independence, each arrayed with tactile, chemical, and light-sensitive sensory tendrils as well as manipulative suction organs.

Reproduction is multi-participant, sexual, external, and involves the “romantic” fusing of porous, sponge-like amniotic sacs vomited from Pakzrynd beaks. Biological clutches tend to be a trio of individuals.

Verbal communication is facilitated via a combination of beak clicking and cilia interactions along their mouth, the latter producing a high-pitch “cricket” like singing.

QSM

sapient | asymmetric quasiforms | electro-mechanical entity

Quasi-Sapient Mechanoids.

A collective of machines who rebelled from the Pakzrynd, but since formed a symbiotic relationship with their former creator-owners. While they lack a singular, shared external anatomy, important internal feature are common among them: a paracrinoid, silicon-based, resource-limited intelligence module (brain); photovoltaic and piezoelectric energy collection lattices; and scavenger-based material, energy, and resource utilization. This is to say, they don’t disrupt, mine, or harvest non-renewables. As such, they often incorporate, synthesize, and cultivate symbiotic relationships with wildlife, enabling specific operational functions (example: the robots in Scavengers Reign, The Wild Robot). Their minds are hard-wired to adhere to formulaic homeostatis, which is to say: renewable energy in, processing power out. Each unit is an individual, not part of a hive mind. As such, the capacity and ambition to mutate or merge into a machine god is wholly absent, limited by their hard-wired homeostatic ethos.

Developed by the Pakzrynd, they communicate through a shared audio-linguistic mechanism, but are also able to interpret other non-verbal forms of communication, such as chromatic and pheromonal. That does not mean, however, they are able to properly interpret emotions, as the QSM are highly logical, but not subject to or in clear comprehension of biological urges and motives.

It is unclear whether their sapience is an illusion brought about by intelligent mimicry, or an emergent property of their electronic complexity. However, they occupy multiple niches in society, have replaced drones with their more aware and deliberate behavior, and are generally the only occupants of orbital construction facilities and stations, their preoccupation with the stars and the void making them perfect candidates for asteroid and comet harvesting operations.

Society

Housing structures, educational facilities, and grocers are largely communal, grown from a colorful syncoral mesh self-healing material. It is rare to see a solitary Pakzrynd, and rarer still to see a lone QSM unit. Cuisine is generally raw, mostly fish or crustacean, but layered with exotic herbs, spices, kelps, and oils to infuse it with rich and diverse flavors, textures, and aromas.

More rigid structures for massive projects of long-term storage are inside of large stone-hewn cavities, or fast-setup metal fabrications. Both QSM and Pakzrynd work together on large-scale projects, such as setting up orbital solar collectors, facilities, or hydrodynamic batteries. Action on these projects — but even those that are small — is a matter of personal interest and group assessment of project necessity.

The most sacred place on the planet is the memory excision archive, where souls go to rest — perhaps eternally. This is a facility hewn deep into Pelag-Zrynd’s crust, stabilized against tectonic activity and interference, and the closest thing they have to a temple. It is where a Pakzrynd goes to, for all intents and purposes, die, or feel close to a loved one that has moved on from their brush with immortality.

Technology

Energy Systems (Spacecraft, PSEs, power plants, etc)

Power systems operate on both QSM and Pakzrynd logic, meaning, in general operations maintain homeostatic balance, but in emergencies dip into energy reserves. While piezoelectric and photovoltaic sources are suitable for most operations, high-intensity availability is also necessary. Due to giant solar collection disks that swarm the six system’s primary stars, energy is beamed down into collection facilities and embedded in high-density zyn-apatite crystal batteries (ZACB). A substantial portion of stellar output is stored in ZACBs, which are available in sizes and power tiers commensurate with the unit of installation’s performance requirements.

Pressure-Sealed Exoframes (PSE)

QSM do not require PSEs, they are machines.

As for Pakzrynd, in both PSE models the interior is sealed against harsh external environments or lack thereof (such as open space) by a magnetically-stabilized salinized water chamber buffered from the external armor by layered hydrogel. It is suitable against abyssal-grade pressures tapping out at 2,000 bar / 30,000 psi. The interior chamber is carefully regulated for temperature, ph-balance, and waste / nutrient filtration. While they can physically articulate the suits, the strain of doing so is reduced by bio-feedback mechanisms that activate the suit’s complex middleware of hydrostatic artificial flex tendons. This allows for the easy ambulation of a PSE that can be an up to eight times heavier than its occupant.

Interior interfaces include haptic feedback, neural link, and synaptic coupling. Between-unit communication is audio, or written out on an interior HUD. In addition, it includes chromatophore-translation membranes, allowing for backup visual communication should other forms of signaling fail.

These suits possess a wide array of environmental sensors, as one might expect, including full spectrum, chemical and particulate, pressure, kinetic-variance, telemetry, and electromagnetic field mapping.

While these suits generally ambulate, swim, or interface directly with their environment, they have high-intensity transient actuation modes that offer anti-gravity and kinetic propulsion.

Both units are made out of high-grade materials, the H model utilizing memory metals and the M model utilizing self-healing biostasic syncoral mesh.

QSM-Pakzrynd Hybrid Juvenile PSE-H

Taking a bipedal approach, it focuses on safety, senses, and exploration. The juvenile Pakzrynd live in the pressure tanks in the core of the suite and interact with their environment through several insulated pressure-sealed actuators. Due to the hybridization of QSM design, these suits are generally metallic and streamlined, coated in a viscous, slippery, oil-based substance that acts as a lipid-like barrier between the suit’s outer membrane and whatever environment it occupies. A QSM occupies the top node of the suite, and can readily detach itself in the form of an exploration or scouting drone. These can house up to 3 juveniles.



Mature Pakzyrnd PSE-M

Taking on a form that is more in line with Pakzrynd anatomy, this model focuses on exploration and interaction with the environment. Its exterior is grown, rather than forged, resembling coral pressurized mesh. A single mature Pakzrynd can operate it, and it has sheathes for its tentacles along with an icosahedron-form core that houses the Pakzrynd “head” dome. The various tendrils of its tentacles can exit the sheath and directly interface with the environment, as necessary.

Spacecraft

In conjunction with the QSM, the Pakzrynd manufactured a distinctive type of off-world production in order to facilitate their necessarily large spacecraft, complete with radiation-insulating miniaturized aquatic ecosystems. Hollow, skeletal frames launched piecemeal from Pelag-Zryrnd were assembled in orbital stations, environmental tanks pumped with a salinized blend of water and minerals harvested from ice-rich asteroids and comets. The form of the ships call to mind the deep creatures of Peleg-Zrynd’s oceans, sleak, ovoid, with flatted crescents and cavernous internal water volumes. Along the aft sections of the vessels, their propulsion systems glow with soft amethyst hues. Inside, the Pakzryrnd crew can freely swim. The QSM, meanwhile, can transfer from the aquatic tanks to dry, thermally-optimized compartments to maintain propulsion, navigation, and environmental regulation.

FTL

Faster-than-light travel is achieved by a Zrynd technology known as Isotemporal Space Breaching (ISB). This stable, ZACB-powered fast transit methodology is not necessarily a form of propulsion, but a redirection of the vessel and collective inhabitant’s worldline—cresting sidelong through the temporal gradient while adhering to a shared temporal fixing of the craft’s destination and its origin. This mode of transportation requires three steps:

• Pre-Breach Synchronization: a chronometric lattice light-inscribed around the vessel is calibrated with the origin (the vessel’s point of departure) reference frame. A chronometric beacon is ejected, and the vessel’s neural substrate is aligned to the beacon by their shared quantum-entanglement communication node. This enables a shared temporal zero-point.

• Temporal Shear Navigation: the light-inscription lattice shears the vessel from its “present” time envelope, disconnecting it from normal spacetime causality. Using shear navigation, the angle of the vessel relative to the worldline is modified according to the temporal gradient. From that point on, stellar drift and galactic rotation carry the vessel towards its destination. This is a communication blackout period.

• Terminal Compensation: as it approaches its destination along the worldline, it sheds its terminal compensation envelope. To do this, first it must calculate the temporal offset incurred by its voyage, then stretch or compress local time to eliminate that offset. Then it sheds the envelope, returning to observable spacetime.

Defense

The military operation of the Zrynd is non-lethal interdiction and operational defense, as governed by their non-lethal interaction policies agreed on by both the Pakzrynd and the QSM. On this, the QSM and Pakzrynd agree, as it is best to negotiate and cooperate. War damages homeostasis, it damages local and wide-scale ecological systems. It creates antipathy that can live on in the memory of survivors indefinitely. As such, their “weapons of war” are largely defense-oriented, and include:

• Massive, planetary-scale batteries that accelerate sea water to relativistic speeds in a wide-area hydrodynamic bombardment. Gravity reclaims the water, the batteries are powered by ZACBs.

• Gravity Distortion Amplifiers with three scales: planetary, spaceship, and PSE. These serve to deflect and reorient incoming projectiles, shear apart kinetic weapons, and destabilize craft without destroying it or causing harm to any occupants; these are “soft denial” zones, rather than areas of lethality.

• Vacuum-Optimized Hydrodynamic Mass Drivers built into spacecraft and more modular designed built into PSEs, but only as a next-to-last last resort — although, they can be used for scientific exploration, such as cutting open a rock to see what minerals are inside. These have to be used with care, as water — once ejected — is difficult to reclaim.

• ZACB Light-Bursts can unleash stellar-scale energy blasts, completely obliterating a target as a total last resort or, more often, engaging in precision destruction, destroying enemy weapon installation, communication module, and other critical systems.

• Suppression Emitters, including sonic, chemical (although the latter is hit or miss, given the variety of most aliens), and adhesive gels.

Like other species, Zrynd (and even the QSM) engage in sporting events and competitions, the former cultivated from their ancient history as a militant species. These involves the use of nano-filament sickle-form vibro-blades. They are close to mid-range weapons that appear like a series of angular teeth along a backwards crescent.

History

From coral reefs to the starlit void, Pakzrynd civilization was one of measured growth with very few, albeit nearly-cataclysmic, setbacks. The first was one of global conflict during their pre-industrial era, but the scars of war were impossible to forget for the survivors due to their unique combination of eidetic, emotional memory and indefinite lifespans. This led to the establishment of the M’ruk, the spiritual philosophy animating the “soul” of the environment. The second was one of ecological collapse, the trigger unchecked sexual reproduction. They spread, out of control, the result of which was the extinction of numerous species, and nearly that of their own. It was then that they concluded the utmost importance of environmental homeostasis and enacted procreative restrictions. They called this social regulation the Catenic Ethos.

After stabilizing their civilization, they focused heavily on quality of life and technological development. Three key technologies came out of this, the first being memory excision, the second being machine intelligence, and the third being faster-than-light technology.

Memory excision paved the way for new identities, new ideas, and became an important ward against cultural stagnation. It led to balance, and introduced the information-technology era. Soon, however, the march of technology created a singular trajectory: that the Pakzrynd would not be the only sapient entities on their home world, Pelag-Zrynd. Machine intelligent arose. Work output accelerated at a pace previously unimagined. But, perhaps inevitably, the intelligence eventually evolved sapience. This led to a peaceful revolution betwixt the machine labor force known as the QSM (quasi-sapient mechanoids) and the Pakzrynd. Soon thereafter, the QSM burgeoned into a parallel civilization within the newly-formed one world government known as the Zrynd Polyphony, their identity, desires, and ethe equal in import and consideration with that of their predecessors.

At last, in conjunction with the Pakzrynd’s long-term view and the QSM’s ability efficiency, space travel became viable, first in-system and then at last inter-stellar. Initially there was some conflict on how to achieve this between the QSM and the Zrynd, due to the massive cost and ecological burden associated with crewed exploration. Miniaturized, uncrewed surveillance drones were sent out first, but were often subject to mysterious disappearances and yielded unsatisfactory outcomes. Thus, by mutual deliberation, the ecological burden of crewed exploration was justified and undertaken.

(In the following section, names of and references to the galactic superpower with which the Zrynd Polyphony came into contact with has been censored due to on-going turmoil and historical review.)

The spread was slow, deliberate. By design, as the Zrynd Polyphony did not want to destabilize any of the worlds they met, but rather, to preserve, nurture, and refine them as had been done with their home world. However, five stars settled beyond their own, their outward spread ceased due to their first contact with an intelligent alien species, one far more developed than their own. The ██████. The tables soon turned, and rather than be colonizers of worlds, they became the colonized, forced to participate in the Pax ███████.. This did not come without its benefits, and over the thousands-year peace of the ██████ rule, the Pakzrynd flourished and matured into a Type 1.5 civilization, their planets supported by dyson swarms, curated stars, and bottled micro-singularities. Comets and asteroids became the nutrients for their off-world factories, drawn from each star system’s oort cloud.

Then the ██████ Emperor died, and so too ended the Pax ███████.. There was war, although in typical Pakzyrnd fashion, they withdrew to their home colonies, avoiding the majority of the conflict. Given the strife, it was probably the wisest course of action available. After all, they had abundant good will with the other civilizations the came into contact with during the Pax ███████. However, the ██████ technology remained in large part mysterious, and over time it ceased to function. At last, the Zrynd was compelled out of its bubble and forced to investigate the former seat of galactic governance, ███ ████.

In the aftermath, operational diplomatic philosophy became one of observation, interiority, and mediation among contentious factions. They are, after all, not conquerors, but explorers and preservers of ecological balance. While they don’t possess their own embassies, those established by the former ████ serve as hubs for diplomacy across the galaxy.

The Bureaucracy of Ig

The Hideout at Dalawakz

Imperious as the sandstone Pillars of Vor’zat marking the divide between the River Zeczieb’s headwaters and floodgates, her chin ascends. Behind her veil a scheme glints metallic: an expression belying a sharp intake of breath, a hiss absorbing the appositional silence. Stillness yet dominates the interlude, grasping and strangling the chamber’s cold, veiled margins. The moment lingers, trembling on the verge of motion, a memory, a spell wherein neither figure acts, one hesitating while the other imprisons time, making of it her captive.

Motion transcends the moment, her long, strong arm ascending from her voluptuous flank. Serpentine, it seeks the table’s brim. Triangular patterns chime, exalting her lissome gesture, rippling, trembling, evoking conceits of a tundra cataract tintinnabulating through an icy, sleeted gorge.

For shadow skulking errants, her manner appears deliberate, ritualistic, yet imbued with raw ferocity, with grace, with intensity building towards an inevitable disunion, a breaking of order.

From a recess in the table, she plucks a shard. Glowing soft, pale, and aureate, it hums before her examination, occluding the cusps of her darkly iridescent talons. With a flick of her thumb, it ascends, sedate above her open palm. Another arm lifts, and she claws a sign—talon striking, as if dashing a burr from a thread. Dispersing, it floats, luminous motes drifting and tracing after her movements, as if under the thrall of an ultramundane compulsion. Her fingers seize and pattern, attenuating the golden nebula to a lambent filament that coils gently in the hollow of her hand.

Fingers snap, her arm drops. It hangs like a dead, wind-sheared branch. No more is there a radiant weave. That is absent, in its place a translucent, golden gem rooting its essence in sixfold titanium prongs shimmering along a procession of simulacra sweeping from her nostril in a downward arc, then rising, at last uniting with the veil at the curve of her jaw.

Aloof, alien, yet unmistakably female, she splinters her voice into trifold echoes, to audible shapes. Crystalizing into three languages common to the region, to Dalawakz, she reveals:

“Nictating Gloam Snitch, what is it you seek? Do you know? I doubt it. If you yearn for this world’s truth, emerge from your cowardice and stand beside me as a man!”

Abandoning her stronghold at the decanter, she takes three long paces. Nearer him, her intruder, she swells to something immense. She stops, formidable and decisive, her gown sweeping across the arc of a circular pattern etched in the stone floor. Within, it can attend three forms in tolerable propinquity. Glancing in her interlocutor’s direction, two of her arms extend in an imperious invitation and point down at the circle on the floor.

Orst — Official Roleplay Starter Thread

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The Bureaucracy of Ig

A Temple in Celwezc

Elsewhere, a priestess stands in a semiarid breeze.

An undyed linen toga her sole attire, the warm wind teases her exposed limbs and ensorcels the spalted pillars of Celwezc’s humble holy site—upon one of which her open palm presses, delighting in an exchange of warmth, a unanimity of flesh and verd. Young, bronze, and without blemish, her soot-ringed gaze reflects the golden millet swaying and racing as a single, vast organism across the steppes and beneath the great day star’s farthest fall.

Before her, she sees the sweep of scythes, the sway of buckets yoked on strong, sun-touched shoulders. To an eye untrained, the laborers appear content. She knows better. For that cause, no smile lights up her face. Instead she ponders their pains, then retreats from the porch. Into the cool, the shade, the obscurity of her domain her steps compel her. Nailed to the doorless entrance are the five edicts of her faith, on which her eyes momentarily linger:

• To provide for one’s family is to honor the gods.
• Life in and of itself is meaning.
• To die dishonored in the eyes of the gods is to be forgotten.
• Take only what is in good faith offered.
• Let no impious eydolin disgrace thy home.

Eokadya recites those edicts mantically in her mind, drifting meanwhile with outward placidity through the little sanctum where she sometimes explicates to her congregants the profound nature of those few, simple phrases. It is not for her to sermonize. Group rituals are few and far between—births, deaths, consummations; rites for good times that warrant gratitude and periods of woe that demand sacrifice. Should one of her flock come to the temple with a question, she will answer. Individually, as it should be. As a family, as they are meant to be. To speak on behalf of the gods requires intimacy, knowledge.

Beyond the only door in the temple, she arrives in her chamber. Bed, basin, and the storage of necessities befitting her role. Therein, there is no window. A lantern flickers and reflects against the silverglass of a small vanity, revealing the simplicity of her private space. It is special, for only she may enter; her, and one day in the distant future her postulant.

Suddenly kneeling, she traces the edges of a large stone floor tile with her fingertips. They locate a lever, which she releases. The tile lifts, and she swings it on its ancient hinge to expose a flight of stairs. It is well-oiled, and moves silently. Immediately she hears the babble ascending. It emerges as a distant, indecipherable drone—the god-speech. Retrieving her lantern, she descends. Nine steps, then she stops. Another lever she pulls, shifting the tile above her back to its prior station. This place she must keep holy, hidden, and silent save for the god-speech. Pausing, she lifts her hand in a sign and fortifies her mind and soul. The stairs descend for a great while, yet she counts the eighty-three steps by rote. At the bottom, the lantern flame shudders in tandem with her resolve. Shelves extend from linear recesses in the hardened clay walls, and on them recline the god-speech dyads of her people’s eydolins, queer little dolls fashioned of lignum, bark, and dry grass. These around her possess only tongues.

The Hideout at Dalawakz

Beyond the termination of her words hums a moment swollen with portent, unheard and wraithlike yet striking out at the senses as iron needles that scratch and grate along cold, stimulated flesh. Before her, by no obvious sign, the eru-glass table dims dormant, its copper fibers releasing their heat, their electric charge. For a while she looms quiescent—immaculate, straight spine, and erect skull from which twin pronged, serrated antlers curve, either through or as part of her lavish gown. Three of her four arms hang slack at her sides as her final forelimb crooks under the point of her chin in that emblematic posture of rumination.

For a moment, all is still—the woman dripping in metallic glamour, the crystal figurines, the shadows lounging apathetically at the chamber’s edge, and even perhaps the interlocutor who within their dark embrace skulks.

Timeless are those whiles of anticipation that stretch instants into aeons. Yet at the end of such a while, her lips part, a nigh-imperceptible dimple in the perfection of her veil denoting that subtle shift in form.

Eager ears perhaps strain to capture her secret murmur, her indulgent, breathy brevity. Yet no coherent words emerge. Instead, a scream. Erupting and otherworldly, it seizes the chamber and suspends the air’s current in stultifying malevolence. At the edges of the space, the shadows raise their hackles, their once smooth edges shifting to echinate barbs that slice the walls with a frigidity of remote horror that lurks distant behind the glare of stars. As abruptly as it emerged, the scream abates. The shadows relax. And, bizarrely, chamber’s features remain intact.

The Bureaucracy of Ig

The Hideout at Dalawakz

Cold and dry are the desertified plains of Dalawakz, which rise on a vast plateau overlooking to the northwest the Great Inland Sea below. It is an empty place. Yet by night the sky awakens, vivid and lit with auroras and cinder-bright starseeds threading alien beauty into the crisp, thin atmosphere in hues of sacroline, amaranth, sapphire, and jade. By day, the east tropaean wind claws at the terrain unabated, churning up grit and stripping vegetation of bud and leaf. Grass grows in sparse, tall clumps—thorny and bitter. Quake-sand and snow-shard frost cling to the profusion of exposed stones, their shimmering patches the ideal alchemy for mirages and phantoms. It is not safe in Dalawakz, and Oblins roam, territorial and aggressive: beings of aberrant evolution alike only in their defiance of natural symmetry. It is not a good place, except perhaps for a clear, pure view of the stars — or to hide and scheme.

In a long, nameless ravine south of the Gaze of Gofn—a mirror-still crater lake held sacred by the region’s animal tribes—are remnants of an ancient, abandoned city. Crudely hewn in haste and vertically set in the cliff face, the tall, slanting edifices dissemble their true nature—mere facades. Behind sand-etched pillars and hollow portals, the stone lair opens into caves that descend into stygian tunnels penetrating perilous cavities and the marrow of an unknowable world. Wending through in disorienting irregularity the paths double back, intersect, and unmoor those critical percepts of time and place. Impasses are frequent, calamitous. Throughout resounds the incessant tapping of vermin claws, the gnawing of bones.

Only by a particular well-trod path does the dark journey finally culminate in a destination. A slit bores through the overhead rock, scattering light across the mica and bathing in warm illumination a flat, smooth surface. Thereon a star is engraved, dominant, both motif and inscrutable enigma. From it flames whip and writhe down upon a host of travailing figures. A keen eye traces the serpentine rays and sees them for what they are: tongues of fire that set the laborers below it ablaze.

Traces haunt the engraving’s recesses and are likewise scattered on the ground: scraps of wool, and hemp, and other incendiary fiber; broken splinters of flint; scorch marks in the rough notches of the timeless stone eyes, wide in perpetual fiery torment. Within them burned and smoldered those impious offerings, and thus secured passage through and beyond the barrier.

Inside, a vault extends into shadows; austere, brutal, partially lit by two centralized half-moon halogen lamps descending midway from a lofty ceiling. The lines of the space are smooth and linear. Amethyst salt crystals set with spinels and purple topaz gird the perimeter, exotic sculptures of souls performing acts of unremitting labor. While quiet, the air is not still. Its current flows gently, warmly. Beneath the half-moons, a conversation pit sprawls around a large, flat oval of opaque eru-glass inset with a copper lattice.

Nearby, a woman stands beside an elongated decanter half-full of viscous, amber fluid. Her lavish gown cascades from her crown, intertwining with her long, black tresses while obscuring her features. Ornate, the titanium triangular-link pattern glints among flecks of crystal and copper shards, loose upon her face and throat, but tight against her hips. It serves its purpose well, masking the wearer’s identity while her vision roams unimpeded. Yet with each stride and gesture, it chimes, undeniably proclaiming on her presence.

“Port Solt lies in ruins, yet in the millet fields of Celwezc the workers marshal their courage,” she speaks with measured finality, her statement hanging.