"No. Absolutely not. If I were to accept such a postulate, it would undermine the very foundational principles of nine-branch-formal logic." The lizard looks irritated again. I have that effect on him, and there's something vaguely satisfying about it.
"It still works," I say. "You just have to expand the parameters. It loses some of its predictive ability, but I think it will create a much more accurate representation of..."
-----------------
It's dark, and I'm sitting around a table with a handful of Biomade. Operatives, all of them.
... Well, former operatives. The old networks are shot to hell these days, and hardly anyone knows anything, but we're as close to the heart of Stardown's military intelligence as anyone's going to get.
I wish there was someone else to do this sort of thing, but our list of candidates is a bit on the slim side. There's me, me, and ... me.
Three men, three women, and me.
"What do you have for me?" I ask.
Lightning - one of the women, pulls out a notepad. A notepad. Once, this would have been projected for all of us on a holo-screen, but now, notepads will have to do. "Unfortunately, most of our personnel have maintained their ties with Goshi, and many of those who have not remain loyal to the Oversight Council in Marina, which makes them Goshi's by default." I know all that, but I nod anyways. It's comfortingly silent in here: nobody in the room is foolish enough to allow their thoughts to leak. She goes on. "All told, we've located a hundred and twenty eight former operatives who are willing to participate in our new program.
A hundred and twenty eight. That's not great, but it's not bad, either. A hundred and twenty eight people in the right place at the right time might be all we need.
"You've explained what we expect of them?" A man off to my left asks.
Lightning nods. "They understand that they may not return alive."
And so it goes. A hundred and twenty eight operatives. 'Operative.' That's the civilized term for what we are.
Spies. Assassins. Thieves and murderers. I feel guilt again, but I quash it ruthlessly. I'm not going to feel guilty here. It's funny. The bulk of our work actually goes towards preventing assassination attempts on Moses, Kiyoshi, and Ichiro. I almost giggle at the thought that we've already stopped twelve such attempts before they managed to get off the ground. For a would-be world dominator, Goshi is surprisingly sloppy.
Well, no. That's not really true. That's what they want us to think. Wheels within wheels is the way of this world. Each enemy operative that we capture allows us a view into, not what Goshi is actually planning, but what Goshi wants us to believe that they are planning. Most of their assassins are fed deliberate misinformation for the event of their capture, though their handlers are careful enough to never let them know that, or even to suspect it. How much is bluff and how much isn't, well, that's the game.
"Rei, what about the Ikari report?" another of them asks.
My heart sinks. That happens a lot around these people. "Has it been confirmed?" I ask. If what's in that report is true, then a hell of a lot of innocent people are going to die. We could do something about it, but if we did, a hell of a lot more innocent people would die later.
Lightning nods. "It's been confirmed. ... Ikari has successfully broken the Executor code."
We all let out a breath that none of us had realized we were holding. ... suddenly, things are infinitely more complicated. We've already got three devices on the table designed to nullify the effects of microphones and transmitters in a localized area, and two more designed to block telepathic signals, but I add another one just to be on the safe side.
"So they're going to hit the tunnels," I murmur. "Sick bastards." It's an ingenious plan, really. Specifically designed to undermine morale and spread terror in our population: nerve gas canisters smuggled into the refugee tunnels by a team of Goshi operatives.
"We definitely shouldn't tell Moses," Lightning says. "He'll stop the operatives, and they'll know that we cracked the code, and there's no guarantee that we'll be able to crack whatever they come up with to replace it. Not in a short enough time to matter."
I feel sick to my stomach, but it doesn't show on my face. The others aren't quite as good at hiding their reactions. Still, I say what has to be said. "When this is over, I want Rain's head on a pike."
The others all nod their agreement.
I produce a folder marked 'Ikari,' and pull a handful of papers out of it.
The plans for Goshi's first major assault.
A million people are going to die to make an effective response possible.
Karia, but it had better be worth it...
-------------
Jin-Kalys's dewlap flares, and I try very hard not to grin. "A stochastic reading of the Nine Branches is altogether unnecessary. It already accounts for individual choice as a function of the polyvalent..."
He goes on, and I don't quite grasp the entirety of his argument, but I don't show him that. I understand him well enough to get the general sense of what he means. "If you'd accounted for individual choice, you would not be making predictions about the future," I say. "Every choice affects every other. Every action nudges the whole model towards a different outcome. Freedom, Jin-Kalys."
"I will not revise the nine-branches to cater to your personal desire for greater autonomy in the universe, Rei," Jin-Kalys says, and his gaze is oddly piercing. "I had thought that you of all people would take some comfort in knowing that there really are very view possible choices at this juncture, considering what you are about to allow to happen."
Shock. Surprise. Anger. Fear. "... I don't know what you mean," I say.
He looks at me, silently, unblinkingly.
I sink into myself. "... do you think Karia will forgive me?" I ask.
"No." His voice is full of a terrible sense of finality, and I feel that cold, creeping dread again.
'But you don't want to be forgiven, do you, Onee-chan?' Amaterasu whispers in my thoughts. 'You don't want to be forgiven at all. You want to pay for your sins. You want to earn your redemption. I'm right, aren't I? If you give me mana, I can show you how to do it...'
"... There's no other choice," I murmur.
He looks me directly in the eye, then, his unblinking lizard-eyes peering right into mine. "Do you believe that?" he asks.
...
Showing posts with label Biomade. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Biomade. Show all posts
Hope Enough (Rei's Lament)
I sink into my bed on the Sennin, utterly exhausted. Emotionally spent. The cabin is dark around me, and the hum of the ship's engine is the only noise I hear, save my own breathing. Just once, for a moment, I shut out all the noise of Moses's thoughts, of Kiyoshi's thoughts, of Aimi's thoughts, even Ama-chan's thoughts: I shut out everyone else, and I am just myself.
Just Rei. I am alone with my thoughts.
I am alone with the Question.
The Question.
'You're a hero, Rei.' The words come back to me unbidden.
There is blood on my hands, Moses. ...So much blood. I've killed so many people I've lost count, and not all of them were guilty. Men, women, children. Executives, workers, students. I've made death with my hands since I was twelve years old... I've done terrible, terrible things, and I did them with a song in my heart. I still do. I felt the suffering of all of Karia, and I laughed.
I know that you meant what you said, but I don't believe you. I don't believe you for a moment. A hero? No.
How often I've tried to change. How completely I've failed. Time after time, I try, I try, I try again, but I've never really changed. Not where it matters.
Not inside.
Purpose. I thought I knew what that was, once. Then it all went away, and I had to figure out who I was and what I wanted all over again. I thought that if I knew the answers to those questions, I'd know what my Purpose was again.
... but who I am isn't what I want.
I am not a good person, Moses. I never have been. I never will be. I prove that every day. With every word. With every action. ... is it enough that I want to be?
Aimi wouldn't understand, either. She's never wanted to be anything other than what she is. Who she is. She's Aimi, and you either take her or leave her. Kiyoshi hasn't learned that. He thinks he can change her. If a person can't even change their own self, how can they change someone else?
... Purpose. What Purpose can there be? Is there even such a thing? ... On the Wandering Star, I thought I knew what my Purpose was, but I'm no First Mind. Half breed. Hybrid. Project Scion. Can there really be no understanding? Is there really no peace?
...
I am The One Who Hopes.
The words are true, but is that it? Is that enough? Is Hope the source of Purpose? Are they the same thing? ... I don't understand now as much as I did before.
What do you think, First Minds? ... Oh hell, you don't care. You just want me dead. Me, and all the Cheldrun on the face of the planet. What about you, Karia? You're supposed to be alive, aren't you? Are you watching me? Do you hear me? Is there even anybody out there at all? And is there Hope enough, is there grace enough, to forgive someone like me?
...
Just Rei. I am alone with my thoughts.
I am alone with the Question.
The Question.
'You're a hero, Rei.' The words come back to me unbidden.
There is blood on my hands, Moses. ...So much blood. I've killed so many people I've lost count, and not all of them were guilty. Men, women, children. Executives, workers, students. I've made death with my hands since I was twelve years old... I've done terrible, terrible things, and I did them with a song in my heart. I still do. I felt the suffering of all of Karia, and I laughed.
I know that you meant what you said, but I don't believe you. I don't believe you for a moment. A hero? No.
How often I've tried to change. How completely I've failed. Time after time, I try, I try, I try again, but I've never really changed. Not where it matters.
Not inside.
Purpose. I thought I knew what that was, once. Then it all went away, and I had to figure out who I was and what I wanted all over again. I thought that if I knew the answers to those questions, I'd know what my Purpose was again.
... but who I am isn't what I want.
I am not a good person, Moses. I never have been. I never will be. I prove that every day. With every word. With every action. ... is it enough that I want to be?
Aimi wouldn't understand, either. She's never wanted to be anything other than what she is. Who she is. She's Aimi, and you either take her or leave her. Kiyoshi hasn't learned that. He thinks he can change her. If a person can't even change their own self, how can they change someone else?
... Purpose. What Purpose can there be? Is there even such a thing? ... On the Wandering Star, I thought I knew what my Purpose was, but I'm no First Mind. Half breed. Hybrid. Project Scion. Can there really be no understanding? Is there really no peace?
...
I am The One Who Hopes.
The words are true, but is that it? Is that enough? Is Hope the source of Purpose? Are they the same thing? ... I don't understand now as much as I did before.
What do you think, First Minds? ... Oh hell, you don't care. You just want me dead. Me, and all the Cheldrun on the face of the planet. What about you, Karia? You're supposed to be alive, aren't you? Are you watching me? Do you hear me? Is there even anybody out there at all? And is there Hope enough, is there grace enough, to forgive someone like me?
...
Uniting the Clans
"Sons, daughters of Karia, ye knowe me. The name's Grim, of the Fiochmahr clan. Ye know them Cheldrun bastards, too. Goshi, they be called." He stood before the leaders of the clans, proud and tall, his heavily muscled frame yet marked with the signs of the last fortnight's festivities, and Ishikawa Tetsuro stood at his side, looking for all the world as though his tattered clothing were a kimono of the finest silk.
They stood before him, Gogajin all, listening as he spoke, forty five clan heads, male and female alike. The massive camps of all forty six of the clans gathered here stretched out as far as the eye could see around this large, central, rock-strewn meadow. Or at least it had been a meadow twelve days ago, when the games had begun. Now it resembled more closely a war zone. Around the clan heads, a larger crowd had gathered. The clan heads were all stood in a a large stone amphitheatre at the edge of the meadow - a traditional meeting place, and neutral ground - that carried their voices rolling across the crowd.
"Aye, we know them. Get on with it!" Shouted a middle-aged Gogajin from the middle of the group of clan heads.
"I've spoken with ye yche one, and there no nas never any one of us what's not been struck by them at least once since the new year began, and struck a sore blow. Well I say we've had enough! I say it's about time we stopped letting these Goshi types, these Heishi, raid us whenever the fuck they want!"
--------------
Ishikawa Tomoe of the Ruby Hawk clan stared at the ... man... in front of her in disbelief. Had this... this... donkey-man actually just propositioned her? HER? As if being dragged away from school in Matamos and into the wilderness wasn't bad enough, now there were overgrown donkeymen asking if she wanted to do... THAT, with them? It was an outrage! She wouldn't stand for it! She was going to tell her father about this, and then they'd see what happened to this presumptuous...
"If you fucked him, do you think that would count as bestiality for you, for him, or both?" Midnight asked.
The Gogajin burst into belly-laughs, and one of them clapped Midnight on the shoulder good naturedly, and the biomade girl staggered, but managed to recover quickly enough, and shot the Gogajin a cheeky grin.
Tomoe tried not to grind her teeth. "Remind me why you came with us again?" Tomoe asked. "It's not like you were in danger from Katashi Blade's purge. He's one of your kind."
When her father had said that he and his Gogajin ally were going to rally the clans, Tomoe had not expected this... carnival. They'd been at it for three days now, engaging in competitions so savage that she could scarcely believe that none of the participants had died. Certainly she'd never seen anything quite like their game of 'catch,' and the boasts? She knew what that was. That was a bunch of little boys trying to prove their virility. ... and she still didn't know what to make of the women who participated, and just as freely as the men.
The Gogajin... confused her.
Midnight raised an eyebrow and turned to face Tomoe, her long, dark hair catching in the wind as she did so, a look of surprise on her face. "... Are you serious?" she asked.
Tomoe blinked. What does she mean, am I serious? Doe she think I'm... oh. Oh. No, that couldn't possibly be the reason. "... Yes?"
Midnight smiled a pained sort of smile, and Tomoe's surprise grew to ever greater heights as the Biomade gave her reply: "Because you do what you can for your friends, yeah?"
... Friends?
Tomoe stared. In all their years at the Academy in Matamos, she had never, not once, thought of Midnight as her friend. She'd thought of her as a rival, as an enemy, as a classmate, but ... friends? She opened her mouth and tried to speak, but nothing came out.
Friends.
For the first time in her life, Ishikawa Tomoe of the Ruby Hawk clan was at a loss for words.
------------
"An' how do you plan to stop them, Grim? We already tried punchin' em in the face, and throwin' big rocks at 'em, and pushing 'em off cliffs, and punchin' em in the stomach and THEN punchin' em in the face..."
Some of the clan heads surrounding Orla of the Troid clan had the decency to look embarrassed. She'd got where she was by being young, charismatic, strong and tough, but had never been the brightest bulb in the bunch.
"Much as I hate to agree with Orla," said Keena of the Muintir clan, an old Gogajin well known for her wisdom, "She does have a point, if you turn her words inside out, stand them on their head, and look at 'em through a mirror. How exactly do you plan to stop a force that can appear and disappear whenever it wants?"
Grim clapped Ishikawa Tetsuro on the shoulder, and the Allskin staggered beneath the blow. "Old Tetsuro here tells me there's a place where these smoke-puff soldiers can't get to. A place where people are holdin' out against Goshi, mounting some real fightin' against them. He says that Goshi's mounting an army to take the place, and they'll probably do it, too, since they control all the other Cheldrun cities. An' he says that once we're on the move, it'll be harder for them to find us. Cheldrun folk don't do so well in the wilds. That's me plan, though. I say we march on over to this city, this Stardown, and we show those Goshi bastards what for!"
A murmur went through the crowd, then, and then Keena spoke up again. "Why should we march to defend a Cheldrun city, Grim? It's got nothing to do with us. Troubles come and go, but we endure, and the land endures. This is ours, isn't it? All this? Look around you. This is Gogajin land. Why should we up and march off to some Cheldrun place?"
----------------
Inari blinked. "You've got eyes!" He'd been trying to shake this zipsum for days, figuring that it was probably better to avoid the little bastards ever since he'd had to flee from a whole tribe full of eyeless turbo-squirrels.
"Uh, yeah," the Zipsum said, brushing the dust off his clothing as he strolled up to the young Prill. "You run into a lot of Zipsum without eyes?"
"Yes. Well, no. Well, I did once, and you can never be too careful. I think it's very important to have eyes, after all, and I don't think much of the idea of losing mine." He brightened. "But you've got eyes, so it's ok! I'm Inari."
The Zipsum raised an eyebrow at that. "Inari, huh? That sounds familiar..."
"I was named after a legendary Kyo-TeeShee," Inari offered. He thought about it. "Either that or a really big tree. I never asked."
The Zipsum wasn't really sure how to take that. "Uh, right. So Inari, you from around here?"
The woods were sparse here, and a bit further east the land began to rise into the rocky highlands of Gogajin territory.
Inari kept walking, and the Zipsum followed along behind him as they talked. "Me?" Inari asked. "No. No, just passing through. I'm on a quest. Supposed to gather up pieces of the lost music for Elder Winter." He never had managed to make it back to the Grand Chantry. Too many eyeless Zipsum. He'd been traveling ever since, and he'd seen things since then that had made him wonder what exactly was going on in the world.
"Lost music, huh? How's that workin' out for you?" The Zipsum didn't give him time to answer, but immediately went on. "Listen, Inari, I don't mean to sound rude, but have you seen a bunch of Gogajin running around with Cheldrun prisoners?"
Inari looked perplexed. "Gogajin with Cheldrun prisoners? Well... yes. But I don't think they were prisoners. Looked more like refugees, I think. They didn't seem too unhappy about being with the Gogajin, either."
The Zipsum brightened up at that considerably. "You've seen them? Really? You're the man, Inari. You are so the man. The man? That's you."
It occurred to Inari then that the zipsum's pupils were abnormally large, and his eyes bloodshot. What could that mean? Huh. "Uh, thanks?"
"No, thank you. Now, can you show me where you saw them? It's really important, Inari. I need to find them. I'm supposed to keep an eye on them and make sure they don't get into trouble."
"I guess I could show you," Inari said, now fairly certain that something was wrong. The Zipsum seemed too hyper, even for a Zipsum. He hadn't stopped fidgeting since he'd walked up, and his eyes were more intense than they should be, the pupils absolutely, fully dilated. "What did you say your name was?"
The Zipsum grinned good naturedly. "Tricks. Tricks the Wind. Nice to meet you."
-----------------
"Look around, Keena. What's happening is more than just troubles. There's a change in the air, and not one for the better. Ye kenne hit too, I wist. Ye've heard from the Griolsa clan, heard what's happened. Ben Hamor's been visited by the gods! There's eyeless demons takin' over zipsum bodies, and Cheldrun bodies too, and I'm not so blind as to miss that Goshi has sent eyeless monsters just as often as they've sent their smoke-puff men, and a Zipsum messenger from the Grand Chantry what arrived the other day said that there's huge demons fightin' heroes of Karia all over the damn place. This isn't something we can run away from, and I'd be no Gogajin if I tried!"
Grim looked out across the crowd, and he raised his voice. "This is bigger than any of us, but it's not so big that we can't do somethin' about it. There's to be a fight, and it's to be at Stardown, and it's lookin' to be the biggest thing we've seen since the night of bonfire skies. Sons, daughters of Karia, we are Gogajin! And if we don't unite, if we don't take a stand against these Goshi bastards, then we might as well just slink away into the hills and wait to die, because we'll none of us deserve to be called Gogajin ever again, and we will never, ever be free of those bastards. Some of us may die, but at least we'll die free, with our own two feet on the ground, and fightin' for each other, and for Karia! Are you with me!"
A roar erupted from the vast crowd of Gogajin all around them at that, a terrible thunderous roar that utterly drowned out whatever response Keena might have tried to make. For a long moment the forty five clan heads stared at one another, uncertain exactly what to do. Then, after a good five minutes of shouting, the crowd began to die down, until finally those in the center could be heard again.
In the end, they had only one response. In the end, there was really nothing else to say: "You're a crazy bastard, Grim," Keena said, and then grinned widely, "But I'm with ye." And then, one after the other, the other clan heads each pledged themselves to the cause, and cacophony erupted in the crowd once more as Gogajin shouted, cheered, banged drums, banged stones, banged each other's heads, and made ready to march to war.
------------------
"That's a nice gun," Inari said as he led Tricks the Wind up the rocky slope towards Gogajin country. He'd picked up a walking stick somewhere along the way. It was just the right size, too. Very quarterstaffy. Idly, Inari wondered if he had just coined a new word.
Tricks grinned. "Thanks. Haven't met many Prill who know what a gun is. You been around the Cheldrun?"
"Some," Inari replied, watching Tricks warily out of the corner of his eye. He no longer had any intention of leading the Zipsum to the Gogajin, but he knew it would be very, very difficult to lose him. Scratch that. Losing a Zipsum that wanted to follow you was damn near impossible. And by 'near,' Inari meant 'completely.' "I found a fragment of a song in one of their cities. Kaberra was the name, I think."
Tricks nodded, and then looked like he was growing impatient. "Look, Inari, are you sure this is the way the Gogajin..."
Tricks trailed off as the roar of a vast, vast, vast crowd erupted from not too far away, and both he and Inari stared as a huge column of Gogajin crested the top of the hill and began marching down it.
More.
More.
More.
One hundred.
Two hundred.
Five hundred.
A thousand.
More.
Inari lost count.
Wagons were pulled by Gogajin in donkey form, laden down with supplies. Men, women, a small contingent of maybe a hundred Cheldrun, more Gogajin, even more Gogajin.
An army.
He stared in awe as they marched, and Tricks stared, too, his jaw dropped open, though for different reasons.
The Gogajin were on the move.
"... went?" Tricks finished.
That was when Inari lifted his quarterstaffy walking stick, and bashed Tricks over the back of the head as hard as he could. The Zipsum went out like a light.
Inari breathed a sigh of relief. He scooped up the furry little body of Tricks the Wind and headed over to figure out who was in charge. Zipsum were a pain in the ass to keep prisoner. He knew that from experience. Hopefully, the Gogajin would have some rope. Lots and lots of rope.
And as it turns out, they did. More than enough for both the suspicious, drug-addled Zipsum and for the troublesome Prill prankster what had been causing trouble with the local villages over the last few weeks. A few minutes later, Inari found himself bound hand and foot in the back of one of the Gogajin wagons, with the unconscious form of Tricks the Wind bound securely a foot away, and the Gogajin army marching towards the western horizon.
"Well," Inari said, "This sucks."
They stood before him, Gogajin all, listening as he spoke, forty five clan heads, male and female alike. The massive camps of all forty six of the clans gathered here stretched out as far as the eye could see around this large, central, rock-strewn meadow. Or at least it had been a meadow twelve days ago, when the games had begun. Now it resembled more closely a war zone. Around the clan heads, a larger crowd had gathered. The clan heads were all stood in a a large stone amphitheatre at the edge of the meadow - a traditional meeting place, and neutral ground - that carried their voices rolling across the crowd.
"Aye, we know them. Get on with it!" Shouted a middle-aged Gogajin from the middle of the group of clan heads.
"I've spoken with ye yche one, and there no nas never any one of us what's not been struck by them at least once since the new year began, and struck a sore blow. Well I say we've had enough! I say it's about time we stopped letting these Goshi types, these Heishi, raid us whenever the fuck they want!"
--------------
Ishikawa Tomoe of the Ruby Hawk clan stared at the ... man... in front of her in disbelief. Had this... this... donkey-man actually just propositioned her? HER? As if being dragged away from school in Matamos and into the wilderness wasn't bad enough, now there were overgrown donkeymen asking if she wanted to do... THAT, with them? It was an outrage! She wouldn't stand for it! She was going to tell her father about this, and then they'd see what happened to this presumptuous...
"If you fucked him, do you think that would count as bestiality for you, for him, or both?" Midnight asked.
The Gogajin burst into belly-laughs, and one of them clapped Midnight on the shoulder good naturedly, and the biomade girl staggered, but managed to recover quickly enough, and shot the Gogajin a cheeky grin.
Tomoe tried not to grind her teeth. "Remind me why you came with us again?" Tomoe asked. "It's not like you were in danger from Katashi Blade's purge. He's one of your kind."
When her father had said that he and his Gogajin ally were going to rally the clans, Tomoe had not expected this... carnival. They'd been at it for three days now, engaging in competitions so savage that she could scarcely believe that none of the participants had died. Certainly she'd never seen anything quite like their game of 'catch,' and the boasts? She knew what that was. That was a bunch of little boys trying to prove their virility. ... and she still didn't know what to make of the women who participated, and just as freely as the men.
The Gogajin... confused her.
Midnight raised an eyebrow and turned to face Tomoe, her long, dark hair catching in the wind as she did so, a look of surprise on her face. "... Are you serious?" she asked.
Tomoe blinked. What does she mean, am I serious? Doe she think I'm... oh. Oh. No, that couldn't possibly be the reason. "... Yes?"
Midnight smiled a pained sort of smile, and Tomoe's surprise grew to ever greater heights as the Biomade gave her reply: "Because you do what you can for your friends, yeah?"
... Friends?
Tomoe stared. In all their years at the Academy in Matamos, she had never, not once, thought of Midnight as her friend. She'd thought of her as a rival, as an enemy, as a classmate, but ... friends? She opened her mouth and tried to speak, but nothing came out.
Friends.
For the first time in her life, Ishikawa Tomoe of the Ruby Hawk clan was at a loss for words.
------------
"An' how do you plan to stop them, Grim? We already tried punchin' em in the face, and throwin' big rocks at 'em, and pushing 'em off cliffs, and punchin' em in the stomach and THEN punchin' em in the face..."
Some of the clan heads surrounding Orla of the Troid clan had the decency to look embarrassed. She'd got where she was by being young, charismatic, strong and tough, but had never been the brightest bulb in the bunch.
"Much as I hate to agree with Orla," said Keena of the Muintir clan, an old Gogajin well known for her wisdom, "She does have a point, if you turn her words inside out, stand them on their head, and look at 'em through a mirror. How exactly do you plan to stop a force that can appear and disappear whenever it wants?"
Grim clapped Ishikawa Tetsuro on the shoulder, and the Allskin staggered beneath the blow. "Old Tetsuro here tells me there's a place where these smoke-puff soldiers can't get to. A place where people are holdin' out against Goshi, mounting some real fightin' against them. He says that Goshi's mounting an army to take the place, and they'll probably do it, too, since they control all the other Cheldrun cities. An' he says that once we're on the move, it'll be harder for them to find us. Cheldrun folk don't do so well in the wilds. That's me plan, though. I say we march on over to this city, this Stardown, and we show those Goshi bastards what for!"
A murmur went through the crowd, then, and then Keena spoke up again. "Why should we march to defend a Cheldrun city, Grim? It's got nothing to do with us. Troubles come and go, but we endure, and the land endures. This is ours, isn't it? All this? Look around you. This is Gogajin land. Why should we up and march off to some Cheldrun place?"
----------------
Inari blinked. "You've got eyes!" He'd been trying to shake this zipsum for days, figuring that it was probably better to avoid the little bastards ever since he'd had to flee from a whole tribe full of eyeless turbo-squirrels.
"Uh, yeah," the Zipsum said, brushing the dust off his clothing as he strolled up to the young Prill. "You run into a lot of Zipsum without eyes?"
"Yes. Well, no. Well, I did once, and you can never be too careful. I think it's very important to have eyes, after all, and I don't think much of the idea of losing mine." He brightened. "But you've got eyes, so it's ok! I'm Inari."
The Zipsum raised an eyebrow at that. "Inari, huh? That sounds familiar..."
"I was named after a legendary Kyo-TeeShee," Inari offered. He thought about it. "Either that or a really big tree. I never asked."
The Zipsum wasn't really sure how to take that. "Uh, right. So Inari, you from around here?"
The woods were sparse here, and a bit further east the land began to rise into the rocky highlands of Gogajin territory.
Inari kept walking, and the Zipsum followed along behind him as they talked. "Me?" Inari asked. "No. No, just passing through. I'm on a quest. Supposed to gather up pieces of the lost music for Elder Winter." He never had managed to make it back to the Grand Chantry. Too many eyeless Zipsum. He'd been traveling ever since, and he'd seen things since then that had made him wonder what exactly was going on in the world.
"Lost music, huh? How's that workin' out for you?" The Zipsum didn't give him time to answer, but immediately went on. "Listen, Inari, I don't mean to sound rude, but have you seen a bunch of Gogajin running around with Cheldrun prisoners?"
Inari looked perplexed. "Gogajin with Cheldrun prisoners? Well... yes. But I don't think they were prisoners. Looked more like refugees, I think. They didn't seem too unhappy about being with the Gogajin, either."
The Zipsum brightened up at that considerably. "You've seen them? Really? You're the man, Inari. You are so the man. The man? That's you."
It occurred to Inari then that the zipsum's pupils were abnormally large, and his eyes bloodshot. What could that mean? Huh. "Uh, thanks?"
"No, thank you. Now, can you show me where you saw them? It's really important, Inari. I need to find them. I'm supposed to keep an eye on them and make sure they don't get into trouble."
"I guess I could show you," Inari said, now fairly certain that something was wrong. The Zipsum seemed too hyper, even for a Zipsum. He hadn't stopped fidgeting since he'd walked up, and his eyes were more intense than they should be, the pupils absolutely, fully dilated. "What did you say your name was?"
The Zipsum grinned good naturedly. "Tricks. Tricks the Wind. Nice to meet you."
-----------------
"Look around, Keena. What's happening is more than just troubles. There's a change in the air, and not one for the better. Ye kenne hit too, I wist. Ye've heard from the Griolsa clan, heard what's happened. Ben Hamor's been visited by the gods! There's eyeless demons takin' over zipsum bodies, and Cheldrun bodies too, and I'm not so blind as to miss that Goshi has sent eyeless monsters just as often as they've sent their smoke-puff men, and a Zipsum messenger from the Grand Chantry what arrived the other day said that there's huge demons fightin' heroes of Karia all over the damn place. This isn't something we can run away from, and I'd be no Gogajin if I tried!"
Grim looked out across the crowd, and he raised his voice. "This is bigger than any of us, but it's not so big that we can't do somethin' about it. There's to be a fight, and it's to be at Stardown, and it's lookin' to be the biggest thing we've seen since the night of bonfire skies. Sons, daughters of Karia, we are Gogajin! And if we don't unite, if we don't take a stand against these Goshi bastards, then we might as well just slink away into the hills and wait to die, because we'll none of us deserve to be called Gogajin ever again, and we will never, ever be free of those bastards. Some of us may die, but at least we'll die free, with our own two feet on the ground, and fightin' for each other, and for Karia! Are you with me!"
A roar erupted from the vast crowd of Gogajin all around them at that, a terrible thunderous roar that utterly drowned out whatever response Keena might have tried to make. For a long moment the forty five clan heads stared at one another, uncertain exactly what to do. Then, after a good five minutes of shouting, the crowd began to die down, until finally those in the center could be heard again.
In the end, they had only one response. In the end, there was really nothing else to say: "You're a crazy bastard, Grim," Keena said, and then grinned widely, "But I'm with ye." And then, one after the other, the other clan heads each pledged themselves to the cause, and cacophony erupted in the crowd once more as Gogajin shouted, cheered, banged drums, banged stones, banged each other's heads, and made ready to march to war.
------------------
"That's a nice gun," Inari said as he led Tricks the Wind up the rocky slope towards Gogajin country. He'd picked up a walking stick somewhere along the way. It was just the right size, too. Very quarterstaffy. Idly, Inari wondered if he had just coined a new word.
Tricks grinned. "Thanks. Haven't met many Prill who know what a gun is. You been around the Cheldrun?"
"Some," Inari replied, watching Tricks warily out of the corner of his eye. He no longer had any intention of leading the Zipsum to the Gogajin, but he knew it would be very, very difficult to lose him. Scratch that. Losing a Zipsum that wanted to follow you was damn near impossible. And by 'near,' Inari meant 'completely.' "I found a fragment of a song in one of their cities. Kaberra was the name, I think."
Tricks nodded, and then looked like he was growing impatient. "Look, Inari, are you sure this is the way the Gogajin..."
Tricks trailed off as the roar of a vast, vast, vast crowd erupted from not too far away, and both he and Inari stared as a huge column of Gogajin crested the top of the hill and began marching down it.
More.
More.
More.
One hundred.
Two hundred.
Five hundred.
A thousand.
More.
Inari lost count.
Wagons were pulled by Gogajin in donkey form, laden down with supplies. Men, women, a small contingent of maybe a hundred Cheldrun, more Gogajin, even more Gogajin.
An army.
He stared in awe as they marched, and Tricks stared, too, his jaw dropped open, though for different reasons.
The Gogajin were on the move.
"... went?" Tricks finished.
That was when Inari lifted his quarterstaffy walking stick, and bashed Tricks over the back of the head as hard as he could. The Zipsum went out like a light.
Inari breathed a sigh of relief. He scooped up the furry little body of Tricks the Wind and headed over to figure out who was in charge. Zipsum were a pain in the ass to keep prisoner. He knew that from experience. Hopefully, the Gogajin would have some rope. Lots and lots of rope.
And as it turns out, they did. More than enough for both the suspicious, drug-addled Zipsum and for the troublesome Prill prankster what had been causing trouble with the local villages over the last few weeks. A few minutes later, Inari found himself bound hand and foot in the back of one of the Gogajin wagons, with the unconscious form of Tricks the Wind bound securely a foot away, and the Gogajin army marching towards the western horizon.
"Well," Inari said, "This sucks."
Perchance to Dream
I dive behind the desk just before a hail of bullets flies through the space I had just evacuated, and efficiently somersault to my feet. There is a gun in my hand, and it is warm from constant use. I do not think this strange. Even as I somersault to my feet, I am firing at my targets once, twice, three times, knowing that I cannot miss. Exactly 2.4 seconds later, the bodies of my three targets hit the floor, shot through the eye. I permit myself the luxury of an appropriate physical response to such an efficient execution: I smile.
Tara rises to her feet, unharmed throughout the barrage and smiles adoringly. "My hero!" she says winsomely, and kisses me.
A biochemical reaction I cannot quantify is initiated by my body, and it is discomforting. Before the scenario can progress any further, I notice a mirror on the far wall.
The reflection belongs to Julian.
"Have I ever let you down before?" I hear my - no, Julian's voice ask. It moves without my accord. I am...
This is not my dream. The annoyance I feel does not register on Julian's face. I concentrate for a moment, and...
FLASH
It is different. I am different. My body feels heavier, and each step I take clanks loudly. Less responsive. My eyesight is less acute. I am walking through a vast, empty wilderness. It is hot. Unbearably hot. I am walking up an unremarkable brown rocky slope. Tiny shrubs grow in it, and they are ugly, and have many prickles.
Though it is day, I can see a bright light on the horizon, like a forest fire viewed from a distance at night. I walk and I walk and I walk, but I never seem to get any closer to the horizon, or to the distant light. The heat beats down on me, and I raise a mechanical arm to wipe the sweat from my brow.
But I am not Moses. I know that much. I am not Moses, and I am not Julian.
At least I'm not experiencing Raul's dreams again.
Presently, I realize that the distant fire is, at last, getting closer. I am almost to the top of the slope. I feel a strange sense of anticipation, and my body initiates the physiological responses appropriate a heightened state of anticipation. Excitement. Nervousness. Soon, I will see what I have sought for so...
"This is not for your eyes."
Moses does not react. I do not recognize the voice, but it is powerful, and deep, mechanical, and I am not altogether sure that it is a voice after all and not a series of strange, mechanical clicks...
I am elsewhere. It is dark, and it is empty. After a moment, I realize I am within my own dream again: the empty void. Every night, the empty void. Every night, I stand on a tiny lit platform in an ocean of nothingness.
I sigh.
That happens more often than not of late when I wind up in Moses's one of dreams, but dream-jumping is better than the alternative: being stuck here. Here, with the Void.
I stare out into the vast emptiness, and my body initiates a physiological response: chills run up and down my spine. I am being watched, though I know not by what.
That's when the whispers begin.
It starts softly at first, and I cannot be certain that I did not imagine it. Then there is another, and another, and whatever is out there in the Void, its language fills me with dread. It sounds like... the end of everything. It sounds like the Enemy.
I will not be afraid of them. There's nothing to be afraid of. Nothing. Nothing in my own dreamscape which can hurt me. I will not be afraid. I won't.
My emotional response does not appear to care, or at least does not appear to hear my declarations. Cold terrors bubble in the pit of my stomach.
The whispering grows more intense. There must be dozens of them out there in the darkness, whispering back and forth, watching me. Presently I begin to perceive eyes glowing in the dark. Red eyes. I know that if I summon the light, I can chase them away. But summoning the light will also reveal their forms to me, and I can't stand to do that. I will not be afraid.
The language is... disconcerting. It grows moreso the longer I hear it. What's worse is how strangely familiar it seems, as if I should know and understand its words... as if the meaning is there, waiting to be grasped.
Then one of them steps into the pillar of light, and my heart nearly stops.
My face. My eyes.
Me.
The other me grins wickedly, and even as it does so, I feel a sick sense of writhing in the palms of my own hands. I hold them up just in time to see them split open ... mouths. Many-jawed, long-tongued mouths. I look up, and the other me has been replaced by Something Else. She was grotesquely fat, and upon her shoulders rested no head. Her bloated, corpulent body was tapeworm-pale, and on the palms of her hands were the same grotesque many-jawed mouths full of terrible, drooling, seeking tongues.
"Who are you?" I ask in spite of my revulsion. "What do you want?"
The questions. Always the questions. There are none more important.
A tiny whisper in my own voice issued from my right hand in answer: "We are you, Mikomi."
I grit my teeth and force myself not to shudder at the feeling of my hands inhaling and exhaling, and of the drooling, seeking tongues that wet my fingers. "Why are you here?" I ask.
The creature in front of me spoke, and its voice was still my own: "We have always been here."
I cannot say why, but that statement fills me with fear like no other before it. My pulse begins to race, and my breathing becomes strained, and...
I wake up with a start.
It is morning. My body is soaked with sweat. I let out a long, slow breath of relief, and sit up.
And faintly, I can hear one of the Rusty Nail Rogues shouting, "Land ho!"
...
I scratch the palms of my hands, shudder deeply, and head for the wash room to get cleaned up.
Tara rises to her feet, unharmed throughout the barrage and smiles adoringly. "My hero!" she says winsomely, and kisses me.
A biochemical reaction I cannot quantify is initiated by my body, and it is discomforting. Before the scenario can progress any further, I notice a mirror on the far wall.
The reflection belongs to Julian.
"Have I ever let you down before?" I hear my - no, Julian's voice ask. It moves without my accord. I am...
This is not my dream. The annoyance I feel does not register on Julian's face. I concentrate for a moment, and...
FLASH
It is different. I am different. My body feels heavier, and each step I take clanks loudly. Less responsive. My eyesight is less acute. I am walking through a vast, empty wilderness. It is hot. Unbearably hot. I am walking up an unremarkable brown rocky slope. Tiny shrubs grow in it, and they are ugly, and have many prickles.
Though it is day, I can see a bright light on the horizon, like a forest fire viewed from a distance at night. I walk and I walk and I walk, but I never seem to get any closer to the horizon, or to the distant light. The heat beats down on me, and I raise a mechanical arm to wipe the sweat from my brow.
But I am not Moses. I know that much. I am not Moses, and I am not Julian.
At least I'm not experiencing Raul's dreams again.
Presently, I realize that the distant fire is, at last, getting closer. I am almost to the top of the slope. I feel a strange sense of anticipation, and my body initiates the physiological responses appropriate a heightened state of anticipation. Excitement. Nervousness. Soon, I will see what I have sought for so...
"This is not for your eyes."
Moses does not react. I do not recognize the voice, but it is powerful, and deep, mechanical, and I am not altogether sure that it is a voice after all and not a series of strange, mechanical clicks...
I am elsewhere. It is dark, and it is empty. After a moment, I realize I am within my own dream again: the empty void. Every night, the empty void. Every night, I stand on a tiny lit platform in an ocean of nothingness.
I sigh.
That happens more often than not of late when I wind up in Moses's one of dreams, but dream-jumping is better than the alternative: being stuck here. Here, with the Void.
I stare out into the vast emptiness, and my body initiates a physiological response: chills run up and down my spine. I am being watched, though I know not by what.
That's when the whispers begin.
It starts softly at first, and I cannot be certain that I did not imagine it. Then there is another, and another, and whatever is out there in the Void, its language fills me with dread. It sounds like... the end of everything. It sounds like the Enemy.
I will not be afraid of them. There's nothing to be afraid of. Nothing. Nothing in my own dreamscape which can hurt me. I will not be afraid. I won't.
My emotional response does not appear to care, or at least does not appear to hear my declarations. Cold terrors bubble in the pit of my stomach.
The whispering grows more intense. There must be dozens of them out there in the darkness, whispering back and forth, watching me. Presently I begin to perceive eyes glowing in the dark. Red eyes. I know that if I summon the light, I can chase them away. But summoning the light will also reveal their forms to me, and I can't stand to do that. I will not be afraid.
The language is... disconcerting. It grows moreso the longer I hear it. What's worse is how strangely familiar it seems, as if I should know and understand its words... as if the meaning is there, waiting to be grasped.
Then one of them steps into the pillar of light, and my heart nearly stops.
My face. My eyes.
Me.
The other me grins wickedly, and even as it does so, I feel a sick sense of writhing in the palms of my own hands. I hold them up just in time to see them split open ... mouths. Many-jawed, long-tongued mouths. I look up, and the other me has been replaced by Something Else. She was grotesquely fat, and upon her shoulders rested no head. Her bloated, corpulent body was tapeworm-pale, and on the palms of her hands were the same grotesque many-jawed mouths full of terrible, drooling, seeking tongues.
"Who are you?" I ask in spite of my revulsion. "What do you want?"
The questions. Always the questions. There are none more important.
A tiny whisper in my own voice issued from my right hand in answer: "We are you, Mikomi."
I grit my teeth and force myself not to shudder at the feeling of my hands inhaling and exhaling, and of the drooling, seeking tongues that wet my fingers. "Why are you here?" I ask.
The creature in front of me spoke, and its voice was still my own: "We have always been here."
I cannot say why, but that statement fills me with fear like no other before it. My pulse begins to race, and my breathing becomes strained, and...
I wake up with a start.
It is morning. My body is soaked with sweat. I let out a long, slow breath of relief, and sit up.
And faintly, I can hear one of the Rusty Nail Rogues shouting, "Land ho!"
...
I scratch the palms of my hands, shudder deeply, and head for the wash room to get cleaned up.
Force and Energy
"Ishikawa Tomoe of the Ruby Hawk clan," said the old Biomade teacher, "Do you know why your design merits only a passing grade?"
Tomoe grit her teeth. She was the very image of classical Allskin beauty, and if all she needed to do was look pretty, that might have counted for something. If the histories were to be believed, her clan had once ruled nearly a quarter of a spiral galaxy - or at least those worlds within that quarter that were inhabitable - and commanded the allegiance of vast, powerful fleets of star-faring ships. Her noble heritage counted for little here, nor had the Ruby Hawk clan been considered to be particularly notable since the arrival of the refugee fleet on this world two hundred years previous. Now, she was only another student at the Matamos University of Art and Science.
The classroom was a warm, well-lit place. Willow-Sensei liked it that way. Well, she called him Willow-Sensei, anways, as did Ikari Makoto of the Jade Falcon clan, but the other three students in their Architecture and Design class - two mechified and a Biomade - had taken to calling him Old Man Willow. Tomoe supposed that Deborah and Samuel probably didn't know any better. Mechified were simple creatures, after all. But Midnight was a Biomade. For all their faults, the Biomade were at least civilized beings. She should know better.
"Do you have even a guess?" Old Man Wil... Willow-Sensei asked.
Tomoe let out an irritated puff of air which blew her bangs out of her eyes as she considered the holographic representation of her design. It seemed impressive enough to her. Easily a match for even the finest architecture of Geneva Prime. The carved arches over the entryway were immaculate, designed such that they seemed wrought from the living wood of the old growth trees they resembled rather than from the metal of which they would actually be fashioned. And the building itself, her grand amphitheatre? Breathtaking. Her design was highly stylized, flowing, curvilinear, all the things a Cheldrun building should be. There was nothing wrong with it. "... No."
Willow-Sensei smiled kindly. "I see," he said. He turned to the rest of the class. "Does anyone else care to take a guess at what is wrong with the work of Ishikawa Tomoe of the Ruby Hawk clan?"
There was silence in the classroom, broken only by the hum of the holo-generators affixed to each desk.
Midnight raised her hand, and Tomoe immediately felt a stab of anger. Midnight, to whom everything came so easily. Midnight, who had been engineered for brilliance. Midnight, with perfect hair as dark as her namesake, with that damnable fake Biomade beauty, with her perfectly symmetrical face and eyes precisely calculated such that an interested suitor could drown in them. 'Interested suitor,' that was the right term, Tomoe decided. The stories of Biomade promiscuity were legendary. At least, that's what her mother had always told her, and her grandmother agreed. Once, Tomoe had thought it a terrible thing that the Biomade had engineered themselves to be unable to reproduce, but considering their notorious... appetites, well, maybe it was for the best. If the stories were to believed, Biomade would even copulate with Karians. Karians! It was shocking. Appalling. But modesty, it seemed, was another thing the Biomade had engineered out of themselves, if the time she herself had caught Midnight and Deborah in a... compromising position was anything to judge by. Deborah at least had blushed at the interruption, but not Midnight. ... But Biomade promiscuity was not an appropriate topic of contemplation for a noble scion of House Ruby Hawk. Mother had said that once, though it had never stopped her from gossiping about it for hours on end.
Abruptly, Tomoe realized that Midnight had given her answer, and she quickly searched her memory to find it.
Oh.
Damnable, perfect Biomade. It wasn't fair, her having to work so hard to get as far as she had with miss Midnight learning the same things absolutely effortlessly.
"Is it because she hasn't attended to the aesthetics of the building's force and energy flow?" Midnight had asked.
"Very good, Midnight!" Willow-Sensei replied. "Force and energy. They are the fundamentals of all architecture, and indeed of all art. A well-designed physical structure without aesthetically pleasing methods of channeling force and energy is as worthless as an umbrella in a hurricane. Consider the work of Nakata Soujiro of the Ruby Hawk clan. As you know, Nakata Soujiro was one of the few artists whose work survived the great exodus, and many of his holo-sculptures are still on display in the Museum of Antiquities here in Matamos." Willow-Sensei pressed a button on his display, and each student's design faded and was replaced by a three dimensional representation of an alien planet, its surface alive with vibrant currents of force and energy.
Tomoe stared. Nakata Soujiro was the reason she wanted to be an artist: his work had always stirred her imagination in ways that she could not readily identify. Looking at this, called 'A Distant Star,' perhaps his most well-known work, stole her breath away. The planet shimmered, its energistic patterns pulsing like veins, sometimes seeming to dance across its surface. There, in the corner of the image, beyond the planet's orbit, was the titular star, shining with such grace and such subtlety, the force and the energy of its nuclear fires rendered in such beauty, that a tear trickled down her cheek at the sight of it.
Willow-Sensei continued his lecture, but Tomoe did not hear it. She stared, and for a moment, her fierce envy of Midnight faded away. For a moment, Deborah and Samuel and even Makoto were far from her imagination. For a moment, all of her mother's stories and her own prejudices faded into nothing. For a moment, even if it was only within her own imagination, Ishikawa Tomoe walked among the stars.
Tomoe grit her teeth. She was the very image of classical Allskin beauty, and if all she needed to do was look pretty, that might have counted for something. If the histories were to be believed, her clan had once ruled nearly a quarter of a spiral galaxy - or at least those worlds within that quarter that were inhabitable - and commanded the allegiance of vast, powerful fleets of star-faring ships. Her noble heritage counted for little here, nor had the Ruby Hawk clan been considered to be particularly notable since the arrival of the refugee fleet on this world two hundred years previous. Now, she was only another student at the Matamos University of Art and Science.
The classroom was a warm, well-lit place. Willow-Sensei liked it that way. Well, she called him Willow-Sensei, anways, as did Ikari Makoto of the Jade Falcon clan, but the other three students in their Architecture and Design class - two mechified and a Biomade - had taken to calling him Old Man Willow. Tomoe supposed that Deborah and Samuel probably didn't know any better. Mechified were simple creatures, after all. But Midnight was a Biomade. For all their faults, the Biomade were at least civilized beings. She should know better.
"Do you have even a guess?" Old Man Wil... Willow-Sensei asked.
Tomoe let out an irritated puff of air which blew her bangs out of her eyes as she considered the holographic representation of her design. It seemed impressive enough to her. Easily a match for even the finest architecture of Geneva Prime. The carved arches over the entryway were immaculate, designed such that they seemed wrought from the living wood of the old growth trees they resembled rather than from the metal of which they would actually be fashioned. And the building itself, her grand amphitheatre? Breathtaking. Her design was highly stylized, flowing, curvilinear, all the things a Cheldrun building should be. There was nothing wrong with it. "... No."
Willow-Sensei smiled kindly. "I see," he said. He turned to the rest of the class. "Does anyone else care to take a guess at what is wrong with the work of Ishikawa Tomoe of the Ruby Hawk clan?"
There was silence in the classroom, broken only by the hum of the holo-generators affixed to each desk.
Midnight raised her hand, and Tomoe immediately felt a stab of anger. Midnight, to whom everything came so easily. Midnight, who had been engineered for brilliance. Midnight, with perfect hair as dark as her namesake, with that damnable fake Biomade beauty, with her perfectly symmetrical face and eyes precisely calculated such that an interested suitor could drown in them. 'Interested suitor,' that was the right term, Tomoe decided. The stories of Biomade promiscuity were legendary. At least, that's what her mother had always told her, and her grandmother agreed. Once, Tomoe had thought it a terrible thing that the Biomade had engineered themselves to be unable to reproduce, but considering their notorious... appetites, well, maybe it was for the best. If the stories were to believed, Biomade would even copulate with Karians. Karians! It was shocking. Appalling. But modesty, it seemed, was another thing the Biomade had engineered out of themselves, if the time she herself had caught Midnight and Deborah in a... compromising position was anything to judge by. Deborah at least had blushed at the interruption, but not Midnight. ... But Biomade promiscuity was not an appropriate topic of contemplation for a noble scion of House Ruby Hawk. Mother had said that once, though it had never stopped her from gossiping about it for hours on end.
Abruptly, Tomoe realized that Midnight had given her answer, and she quickly searched her memory to find it.
Oh.
Damnable, perfect Biomade. It wasn't fair, her having to work so hard to get as far as she had with miss Midnight learning the same things absolutely effortlessly.
"Is it because she hasn't attended to the aesthetics of the building's force and energy flow?" Midnight had asked.
"Very good, Midnight!" Willow-Sensei replied. "Force and energy. They are the fundamentals of all architecture, and indeed of all art. A well-designed physical structure without aesthetically pleasing methods of channeling force and energy is as worthless as an umbrella in a hurricane. Consider the work of Nakata Soujiro of the Ruby Hawk clan. As you know, Nakata Soujiro was one of the few artists whose work survived the great exodus, and many of his holo-sculptures are still on display in the Museum of Antiquities here in Matamos." Willow-Sensei pressed a button on his display, and each student's design faded and was replaced by a three dimensional representation of an alien planet, its surface alive with vibrant currents of force and energy.
Tomoe stared. Nakata Soujiro was the reason she wanted to be an artist: his work had always stirred her imagination in ways that she could not readily identify. Looking at this, called 'A Distant Star,' perhaps his most well-known work, stole her breath away. The planet shimmered, its energistic patterns pulsing like veins, sometimes seeming to dance across its surface. There, in the corner of the image, beyond the planet's orbit, was the titular star, shining with such grace and such subtlety, the force and the energy of its nuclear fires rendered in such beauty, that a tear trickled down her cheek at the sight of it.
Willow-Sensei continued his lecture, but Tomoe did not hear it. She stared, and for a moment, her fierce envy of Midnight faded away. For a moment, Deborah and Samuel and even Makoto were far from her imagination. For a moment, all of her mother's stories and her own prejudices faded into nothing. For a moment, even if it was only within her own imagination, Ishikawa Tomoe walked among the stars.
The Sound of Silence. Icy, Icy Silence.
It was too much to hope that Una and Moses would be able to accept Aimi's presence here. I know that. They hate her. The only person Una hates more than Aimi is Sever. And Moses - every time he looks at Aimi, his thoughts are full of blood and rage. Kiyoshi? ... I never expected that Kiyoshi would be an ally in this, but then I guess I should have seen it coming. But the one to watch for is High Dive.
High Dive is capable of anything.
Maybe that's why I fixed Aimi's gauntlet. It doesn't seem right to leave her without a weapon like that.
The thoughts of the Rusty Nail Rogues are silent. Shock. This is shock. It is a strange thing to look into the minds of everyone around me and see the same stunned silence in every one. They did better than I expected them to. I'd thought that they'd all be cut down within thirty seconds of beginning the attack. That any of them survived is more than I'd planned for. No matter.
Aimi.
I open the door and step within. It's really not more than a storage closet, and the mattress on the floor takes up most of it. The floors and the wall here are smooth, acrylic surfaces. I can see force and energy moving through them in pleasing patterns. The designers of this ship spared no expense. They must have hired some real artists when they were installing the power conduits.
She's there. Not meditating, not exactly. I remember those exercises. Mama Pa... Doctor Pain and Doctor Soren taught us how to shield ourselves against the outside world. I was never able to learn the trick. But Aimi did. And Sever, and Stitch, and Nero, and Malicious. Half an hour of the exercise every day to maintain the training. To keep the walls strong.
I shut the door, sit down just in front of the mattress, and wait. I'm surprised that she doesn't break the exercise when I come in. Is it because she doesn't think I'm a serious threat to her, or does she trust me? ... The former, I suppose. Her thoughts are muffled behind her mental shields, like a faint buzz of conversation in another room that is just too indistinct to be made out.
Twelve minutes later, she opens her eyes and looks at me like I'm an annoying insect that's crawled into her room through the floor. "What do you want?" she says.
I stare into her eyes, and for a moment, I see myself in them. Strip off the excess makeup, change the colour of the hair, age her four years, and we could be twins. We are, I guess. Six variations on the same DNA. And there she is, asking one of the Questions. "... That's a complicated question," I say. "It's one of the things that defines us, isn't it? Nero asked the same question. I've been asking the Questions for a long time now. 'Who are you? What do you want?'"
She's looking at me like I'm crazy. Maybe I am. I continue.
"I know I'm not very good at expressing..." I trail off. Why is this so difficult? Damnit. "I'm not very good at this. We've never been much of a family. Our people don't really have that. But family is important, and..." I trail off. Her eyes are unreadable, her thoughts a dim, muted hum.
"I know what you're thinking," I say. Instantly, her shield contracts, and the sound of her thoughts fades to barely more than a whisper. I shake my head. "Not like that. You're probably thinking that if family is so important, maybe I shouldn't have brought my friends Home with me and let them kill Mama Pain, right? ... I guess I can't really answer that. It probably doesn't help to know that we were all scheduled for liquidation anyways." I shake my head. This isn't going well. "What I'm trying to say is..."
She glares at me impatiently, and I sigh and move on.
"I guess by now you know that Doctor Pain and Doctor Soren didn't make me. I was... residual biological mass, salvaged from an earlier project. Project Scion. You and the others were an attempt to recreate the project. To use Silex Niveus to usher in a whole new era for our people. ... You saw it, didn't you? The memories I gave you? ... Nero. First in the Blackrock Mine. Then again beneath the manor of Lord Tsuchinaga. Then in the wreck of the Bosphorous. He's gone mad. He knows what we are. Him. Me. More white-rock was used in his creation than in any of you. I don't know if you and Sever and Stitch are the same, but I hope not. He says that the Enemy can be so much more than just the Oni, and I think he's determined to be that."
"I can't deny what I am any longer. It's been proven to me. I didn't believe Nero, but after what the ship's sensors showed, and then Keibatsu..." I smile faintly, feeling vaguely lost. "And you saw what happened today."
"I saw," Aimi said. She gave me a speculative look. "You hate Goshi, but you make free use of their technology. I never pegged you for such a hypocrite. Keep that up and those red eyes of yours..." The corners of her lips turned upwards in a nasty smirk. "Well, they'll still be red, at least. Your friends will probably say that it isn't quite the same thing."
I open the sheath on the pant leg of my leathers and produce the device in question: the DisLocator. "But I haven't," I say. "I haven't put it in. Haven't used it."
She looks at me disbelievingly.
It does sound weak. I rise to my feet. "I just... needed to tell you. Everything. You deserved to know. It affects you too. And since Nero killed Inase Spark..." I look at her, and my resolve grows strong within my heart. "Don't die, Aimi. If you died, it would bother me."
She continues to watch me silently, saying nothing, her eyes unreadable.
I produce her gauntlet and toss it to her. She looks surprised. "I couldn't fix it completely. I didn't have the parts. But I repaired everything that I could. It won't work very well, but it shouldn't be too hard to fix it yourself once you find usable parts." Silence for a beat. "You should hide it," I say. "If anyone finds it on you, they'll probably destroy it."
Silence. Icy, icy silence.
After a moment, I shake my head, step out, and shut the door behind me.
That went well.
High Dive is capable of anything.
Maybe that's why I fixed Aimi's gauntlet. It doesn't seem right to leave her without a weapon like that.
The thoughts of the Rusty Nail Rogues are silent. Shock. This is shock. It is a strange thing to look into the minds of everyone around me and see the same stunned silence in every one. They did better than I expected them to. I'd thought that they'd all be cut down within thirty seconds of beginning the attack. That any of them survived is more than I'd planned for. No matter.
Aimi.
I open the door and step within. It's really not more than a storage closet, and the mattress on the floor takes up most of it. The floors and the wall here are smooth, acrylic surfaces. I can see force and energy moving through them in pleasing patterns. The designers of this ship spared no expense. They must have hired some real artists when they were installing the power conduits.
She's there. Not meditating, not exactly. I remember those exercises. Mama Pa... Doctor Pain and Doctor Soren taught us how to shield ourselves against the outside world. I was never able to learn the trick. But Aimi did. And Sever, and Stitch, and Nero, and Malicious. Half an hour of the exercise every day to maintain the training. To keep the walls strong.
I shut the door, sit down just in front of the mattress, and wait. I'm surprised that she doesn't break the exercise when I come in. Is it because she doesn't think I'm a serious threat to her, or does she trust me? ... The former, I suppose. Her thoughts are muffled behind her mental shields, like a faint buzz of conversation in another room that is just too indistinct to be made out.
Twelve minutes later, she opens her eyes and looks at me like I'm an annoying insect that's crawled into her room through the floor. "What do you want?" she says.
I stare into her eyes, and for a moment, I see myself in them. Strip off the excess makeup, change the colour of the hair, age her four years, and we could be twins. We are, I guess. Six variations on the same DNA. And there she is, asking one of the Questions. "... That's a complicated question," I say. "It's one of the things that defines us, isn't it? Nero asked the same question. I've been asking the Questions for a long time now. 'Who are you? What do you want?'"
She's looking at me like I'm crazy. Maybe I am. I continue.
"I know I'm not very good at expressing..." I trail off. Why is this so difficult? Damnit. "I'm not very good at this. We've never been much of a family. Our people don't really have that. But family is important, and..." I trail off. Her eyes are unreadable, her thoughts a dim, muted hum.
"I know what you're thinking," I say. Instantly, her shield contracts, and the sound of her thoughts fades to barely more than a whisper. I shake my head. "Not like that. You're probably thinking that if family is so important, maybe I shouldn't have brought my friends Home with me and let them kill Mama Pain, right? ... I guess I can't really answer that. It probably doesn't help to know that we were all scheduled for liquidation anyways." I shake my head. This isn't going well. "What I'm trying to say is..."
She glares at me impatiently, and I sigh and move on.
"I guess by now you know that Doctor Pain and Doctor Soren didn't make me. I was... residual biological mass, salvaged from an earlier project. Project Scion. You and the others were an attempt to recreate the project. To use Silex Niveus to usher in a whole new era for our people. ... You saw it, didn't you? The memories I gave you? ... Nero. First in the Blackrock Mine. Then again beneath the manor of Lord Tsuchinaga. Then in the wreck of the Bosphorous. He's gone mad. He knows what we are. Him. Me. More white-rock was used in his creation than in any of you. I don't know if you and Sever and Stitch are the same, but I hope not. He says that the Enemy can be so much more than just the Oni, and I think he's determined to be that."
"I can't deny what I am any longer. It's been proven to me. I didn't believe Nero, but after what the ship's sensors showed, and then Keibatsu..." I smile faintly, feeling vaguely lost. "And you saw what happened today."
"I saw," Aimi said. She gave me a speculative look. "You hate Goshi, but you make free use of their technology. I never pegged you for such a hypocrite. Keep that up and those red eyes of yours..." The corners of her lips turned upwards in a nasty smirk. "Well, they'll still be red, at least. Your friends will probably say that it isn't quite the same thing."
I open the sheath on the pant leg of my leathers and produce the device in question: the DisLocator. "But I haven't," I say. "I haven't put it in. Haven't used it."
She looks at me disbelievingly.
It does sound weak. I rise to my feet. "I just... needed to tell you. Everything. You deserved to know. It affects you too. And since Nero killed Inase Spark..." I look at her, and my resolve grows strong within my heart. "Don't die, Aimi. If you died, it would bother me."
She continues to watch me silently, saying nothing, her eyes unreadable.
I produce her gauntlet and toss it to her. She looks surprised. "I couldn't fix it completely. I didn't have the parts. But I repaired everything that I could. It won't work very well, but it shouldn't be too hard to fix it yourself once you find usable parts." Silence for a beat. "You should hide it," I say. "If anyone finds it on you, they'll probably destroy it."
Silence. Icy, icy silence.
After a moment, I shake my head, step out, and shut the door behind me.
That went well.
Childhood Memories
Smooth, clear acrylic floors. Power humming beneath the surface, channels of bright psychic energy flowing out through the room like a vibrant, pulsing, pink spider-web. Voices.
This was nothing new for Rei. She had known the voices of others for longer than she had known herself. What was new was that she had been given her very own desk to study at, transluscent, made of a reddish sort of acrylic substance. Even immersed as she was in her brand new copy of 'The Stardown Codex,' the latest mystery novel by the famous Biomade novelist, Tsunami, she would have been foolish indeed to ignore these particular voices.
Sever.
Stitch.
Her brothers.
Behind her.
She took very deliberate care in putting a bookmark on page 107 of the novel, shutting the book, and putting it down on the transluscent red desk. It was stupid, she realized, to have put the desk where it was, facing the wall. Sitting at it, her back was to the door. If her trainers found out, she'd never hear the end of it.
She turned around.
Immediately, their thoughts washed over her awareness, and for one confused moment she couldn't tell if she was herself or if they were her. The nine and a half year old twins stood not five yards distant, their faces lit up with innocent smiles that belied the mischief of their thoughts.
"No," Rei said.
"No what?" Stitch asked.
"You can't borrow my knife," Rei said, feeling simultaneously offended and annoyed in a way that was almost teenagerish.
Sever's smile faded. "We need it," he said.
Rei stared at the twins. "It's mine," she insisted. Property. Something that was hers and not theirs. It was a strange concept, but she liked it. She rose to her feet and took a step towards the twins.
That was when she stumbled, put off balance by the sudden discovery that her shoelaces were tied together, and fell flat on her face.
Hyena-like laughter rose up from the twins, and Rei felt a sudden flush of humiliation rising up in her chest. More than that, though, shock rippled through her mind: they had hid their intent from her! They'd lied to her in their minds! She'd never dreamed that such a thing was even possible. Anger. Resentment. Fear. They were laughing at her. They were laughing at her, and PEOPLE COULD LIE TO HER IN THEIR MINDS.
By the time she managed to undo the knots in her shoelaces with her own comparatively feeble telekinetic powers, the twins were long gone.
So was her knife.
This was nothing new for Rei. She had known the voices of others for longer than she had known herself. What was new was that she had been given her very own desk to study at, transluscent, made of a reddish sort of acrylic substance. Even immersed as she was in her brand new copy of 'The Stardown Codex,' the latest mystery novel by the famous Biomade novelist, Tsunami, she would have been foolish indeed to ignore these particular voices.
Sever.
Stitch.
Her brothers.
Behind her.
She took very deliberate care in putting a bookmark on page 107 of the novel, shutting the book, and putting it down on the transluscent red desk. It was stupid, she realized, to have put the desk where it was, facing the wall. Sitting at it, her back was to the door. If her trainers found out, she'd never hear the end of it.
She turned around.
Immediately, their thoughts washed over her awareness, and for one confused moment she couldn't tell if she was herself or if they were her. The nine and a half year old twins stood not five yards distant, their faces lit up with innocent smiles that belied the mischief of their thoughts.
"No," Rei said.
"No what?" Stitch asked.
"You can't borrow my knife," Rei said, feeling simultaneously offended and annoyed in a way that was almost teenagerish.
Sever's smile faded. "We need it," he said.
Rei stared at the twins. "It's mine," she insisted. Property. Something that was hers and not theirs. It was a strange concept, but she liked it. She rose to her feet and took a step towards the twins.
That was when she stumbled, put off balance by the sudden discovery that her shoelaces were tied together, and fell flat on her face.
Hyena-like laughter rose up from the twins, and Rei felt a sudden flush of humiliation rising up in her chest. More than that, though, shock rippled through her mind: they had hid their intent from her! They'd lied to her in their minds! She'd never dreamed that such a thing was even possible. Anger. Resentment. Fear. They were laughing at her. They were laughing at her, and PEOPLE COULD LIE TO HER IN THEIR MINDS.
By the time she managed to undo the knots in her shoelaces with her own comparatively feeble telekinetic powers, the twins were long gone.
So was her knife.
Winds of Change
"Something is changing in Karia Vitalus." The voice was an old man's voice, heavy with the weight of years.
--------------
In the great city of the Cheldrun, two bodies hang by a pair of ropes around their necks some two hundred floors up, lab coats fluttering in the breeze. A man and a woman, both Biomade. Though they were each attractive in life, death had done them no favors. Pale and bloated now, they swung like ghastly piñatas, waiting, oh just waiting for the chance to spill their gruesome cargo onto the streets two hundred stories below.
--------------
Far away, the sun rose over the jungles southwest of Matamos. Just above the canopy grew a single, thick, bare branch; thereupon a strange, sinuous shape rose with the dawn, lifting its cold, reptilian eyes to the heavens in silent contemplation of the wonder it beheld there; for one shining moment, a new star was born above those jungles, rivaling the sun itself in brightness. There and gone.
The Anakarix frowned thoughtfully.
Those who have eyes, let them see.
--------------
"The wind doesn't taste like it used to." The same old man had spoken again. We can see him now: he is a Prill, grizzled and weary, and there is wisdom in his countenance. "The flame that was sparked on the night of the bonfire skies spreads unchecked across the land."
--------------
In the depths of Geneva Prime, a Mechified dreamed of freedom, of revolution. As he looked down upon the body of his Biomade supervisor, the thought rang clear in his mind: ‘We are not your appendages.’
Those who have ears, let them hear.
--------------
A Zipsum raced from tree to tree, trying desperately to evade her would-be-captors. Her cheeks bulged strangely, ill-fitting around the data pad she held gently in her mouth as she ran - what she had risked her life in the Cheldrun city to obtain: the operational planning for the next great logging operation into the jungles of the Anakarix.
Hard metal bullets ravaged the trees around her, turning their trunks to so much splintered pulp, sending splinters flying in all direction: the sound of gunfire was deafening.
Pain. Burning pain. A spear-like shard of wood had lanced into her vulnerable belly. Biting back tears, she raced onwards, and soon she was beyond the reach of the bullet-spitters, and of the angry metal bees that they spat.
The shouts of angry Cheldrun echoed loudly in the woods behind her.
Bleeding from the stomach, agony racing through her mind, she ran on.
--------------
"How did it go?" Rei asked. She already knew, but it was polite to ask anyways. She walked down a corridor of light with another girl about four years her junior. There is both a striking similarity and a striking contrast between the two girls: Rei's hair is off-white and the other girl's is shockingly pink; Rei's appearance is neat and functional, while the other girl's is meant to entice; Rei moves with an unconscious grace, while Aimi's movements are deliberate and calculated, though no less graceful. And for all that, they could be sisters. They are sisters, actually. Two distinct variations on the same DNA recombined in slightly differing ways. It was like that with all six of them: genetic siblings, all of them. Three girls, 00, 01, and 05. Three boys, 02, 03, and 04.
Aimi met Rei’s gaze, doing her best not to giggle at the thought of her meeting with that young man. "You already know," she said. "You're the one who can't turn it off, after all."
Rei nodded faintly and said nothing, allowing Aimi's irritation to pass over her and through her, leaving her self unmoved in its wake. "Yes," she said. It wasn't worth it to argue over this again. She knew that the others thought her defective. "You..." she trailed off.
"If you don't say it now, you'll only mope about how you wished you had said it for the next week," Aimi said, wishing not for the first time that Rei's mental shielding wasn't quite so well fortified. She supposed it was for the best. In Rei's case, it was either intense mental shielding or near-insanity. Even so, it was disconcerting, not having ready access to someone's thoughts. More so in the wake of recent events.
“You like him.”
Aimi blushed. “That’s private,” she said warningly.
“Sorry.” The teasing note was gone from Rei's voice now, vanished like the morning mist beneath the heat of the sun. A pause. “Do you really think of me when you think of madness?”
Aimi caught Rei’s eyes with her own, blood red eyes peering into blood red eyes. “What’s all this about, Rei? You don’t usually take an interest in other people’s missions.”
"Because it is so clear, it takes a long time to realize it,” Rei murmured cryptically.
Aimi smiled bemusedly. “In English?”
Rei shook her head. “You wouldn’t understand.”
For a moment, the shields wavered. For a moment, Aimi caught a glimpse of a Mechified Labor unit, (‘We are not your appendages!’ ) and a desperate sense of... something. It was gone. She frowned. “What was that?”
“Goodbye, Aimi,” Rei said. There was a note of finality in her voice. She walked away down the vast corridor of light, leaving her sister there near the entrance to the briefing room.
Aimi watched her go, confusion writ large in her expression. She wasn’t sure what just happened exactly, but she had the distinct impression that she had just missed something important. “Rei, wait,” she called.
“Go to your briefing, Aimi,” Rei said.
Despite her misgivings, Aimi did as she was told.
She always had.
--------------
“I fear that soon this fire may consume us all.” He shook his weathered head, pausing more from dramatic effect than out of necessity. “The magic of the dusk sages must be recovered if we are to have any hope of weathering the flames.” The old Prill looked at Inari with a serious expression. “This is your task, young one.”
Inari stared at the elder, wide-eyed. His task. His task! Finally, after years and years of demonstrating his cleverness to the whole choir, he had been entrusted not only with a song, but with a Task! A sacred quest! He was not totally successful in keeping the grin off of his face. “I won’t disappoint you, Elder Winter,” he said eagerly. He did not notice the very calculating look in the old Prill’s eye.
They sat in a clearing in the midst of a vast, old growth forest. It was dreary, and the light of the stars scarcely penetrated through the gloom of the place. The ground was treacherous here for any who did not know it well: for miles around the Prill village, sudden rifts and valleys opened unexpectedly in the wood, and sharp rocks were among the least dangerous of the things one might find at the bottom of one of these.
“I know you won’t,” the Elder said. “For the sake of us all, you won’t. Now, have you gathered what we asked for?”
“Water from a well holy to the Jevuum (and plenty of mud besides), a berry from the stores of the Zipsum, an Anakarix’s talon, blood spilled after insulting a Gogajin’s mother, a Vorax’s tail feather.” Inari frowned. “Elder Winter, did we really need all these things?”
Elder Winter’s upper lip twitched, as if he were trying not to laugh. “Indeed,” he said sagely as he collected the proffered items.
Inari looked unconvinced. The two red-furred fox-ears growing up from either side of his head twitched in irritation.
They were needed, mind you. They would make the blessing much easier. It’s just that other, easier to find items would have done the job just as well. Elder Winter put the items into a small leather pouch tied to his belt. “Come, Inari. You have proven yourself worthy of the task set before you. It is time to receive your blessing from the Choir of Elders.”
Inari nodded, his irritation forgotten. “Right.” He thought about it for a moment. They may be doing this to get rid of him, but it was still an honour to be chosen for a Sacred Quest.
Together, the two Prill rose to their feet and walked towards the distant firelight that came from the outer watch post of the village.
The forest allowed their passage only reluctantly, barely standing aside long enough to let them creep through, and closing immediately behind them.
The forest knew much, had seen much. Though it suffered the presence of the Prill, there were few others that walked on two legs that it would allow passage. Wooden creaks and voices like the rustling of leaves raced from tree to tree, and the air grew hot with anger. News had arrived from the distant north: another wood had fallen before the loggers. Murderers. Axe-bearers. Creatures of black smoke and steam.
Even as the song of the Choir of Elders rose into the air, filling all the land around the village with a sense of hope and glory, the trees took angry council together. No, it wasn’t time to act yet. They would watch, and wait, and plan.
For now.
Death Becomes Her
Vast, mountainous structures loomed heavily over the skyline as visible from Typhon’s office. The cool, luminescent blue colour scheme of the office with its polished surfaces and careful lines stood in stark contrast to the ashen gray of the city outside the window. Embedded beneath the blue ceramic floor, three conduits for psychic energy ran the length of the room, their pink light rendered by the blue lens into a deep, pulsing purple. Typhon sat with his back to the window, business-suit clad, reading over the most recent file to have come across his desk.
Though he was more mentally disciplined than most, his thoughts rang out loud and clear to those who had both the power and ability to perceive them, and despite the concentration she needed to devote to the task of slipping noiselessly out of the air vent in the ceiling, Rei had both in spades.
‘So this is what they have to show for the last seventeen years we’ve been funding this project? A handful of unstable children well on their way to becoming unstable adults?’ Typhon tossed a photograph of a teenaged girl with red eyes, pale skin, and off-white hair on top of four other photographs. She wasn't an albino - there was some pigment there. Just not much. Each of the other photos displayed another teenager, some pale, some dark, some male, some female, all attractive, and all sharing one common feature.
‘Why do they all have red eyes?’ he wondered absently. No matter. Objectively, he had to admit that they were promising. The power they had displayed from such an early age was nothing short of, well, exactly what they were looking for. That was the problem, though: it was exactly what they were looking for. It would take years and years and years of expensive research followed by years and years and years of equally expensive development to produce a superior soldier. These children, for all their difficulties, made the results of his own project look like yesterday’s trash. How was he going to explain to his investors, that their scheme for the release of a slightly improved soldier every decade or so, and each one only noticeably (but not dramatically) superior to the one that had come before, was just plain obsolete compared to these... freaks? No, the best thing to do was to burn the whole complex to the ground, fill in the remains with concrete, and pretend that those children had never existed. He tossed the rest of the file on top of the photos. With the slightest concentration, he drew upon the power that lay within him: the file and all the photos beneath went up in a brief, intense flame, utterly consumed within seconds.
No, he wouldn’t let these children stand between him and his goals.
A bright pink blade blossomed out from his throat.
A moment later, Rei dropped noiselessly to the floor. She was clad in a black, skin-tight combat suit, her white hair tied back in a neat, functional ponytail, and her red eyes carefully surveyed her target. Good. A direct hit. His thoughts were racing now, and she winced at their intensity. He wanted to kill her. He wanted to kill them all. He would see the whole world burn if it would grant him another few seconds to live. The enervating effect of the knife was growing stronger. His awareness was fading, and yet, if he could just summon his power, he would make her...
But in that moment he could no more surprise her than he could surprise himself. An intense burst of flame flared violently against Rei’s telekinetic shield, rolling across its surface like a living thing. Fire roiling around her, Rei met Typhon’s panicked gaze.
“You will not be allowed to interfere with the project,” she said, her voice betraying none of the emotions that raged within her mind: his emotions.
Desperation mixed with fear and hate in equal parts. He couldn’t die like this. Not like this! It wasn’t right! He was Typhon! Even the other executives feared him! He couldn’t be killed by someone’s pathetic toy of an assassin!
She waited and watched, confident in her knife’s ability to do its work, allowing his thoughts to pass over her and through her as she had been taught, knowing that contrary to her instinct on the matter, they were not her thoughts. She was not Typhon, no matter how much that here, standing before him with his thoughts rolling through her mind, she felt that she was.
A few seconds later, he lost consciousness. A minute after that, he was dead.
Attribute Interlude 1
Every now and then I will jot down an example of how I get from a story idea to a functional piece of the game, by developing attributes. This first interlude will use an example from the recent story "I am Katashi Blade."
In this story, the protagonist Acid Narita, uses a special rifle which fires a round of psychic energy that targets a specific individual. While it sounds neat in the story, how would it work if you wanted your character to actually possess such an item? Let's walk through it.
The first step is to identify what attribute underlies the item, what is its function? It is a weapon, it is attacking a target in order to damage it in some fashion. So the attribute we will use is the Weapon attribute (pg. 60). Right away we can see that there are a bunch of custom variables which we will need to select from in order to get the right combination of effects. Since this weapon is a type of sniper rifle we will choose variables that help represent that.
Accurate: this is a great variable for a sniper rifle and we could buy it as high as level 3, but each level adds to the cost of the item, so let's stick with 1 for now. It's an accurate weapon, but you still have to be a good shot to use it properly.
Psychic: this one is obvious. Since the gun doesn't fire real bullets, we don't want it to be affected by armor and force fields. This is an expensive variable, costing 6 levels, but well worth it.
Homing: the bullet had a homing capacity didn't it. A very specific one in fact, so it must have been very good. We will call the sense the bullet uses "psychic" which means that it can be fooled by psychic shields and misdirection. To make sure it has a good chance of hitting, we'll buy this one up to level 3.
Drain: A psychic attack shouldn't just do normal damage. Since it is an attack on the mind let us add an effect which makes the bullet damage the mind of the target directly. The more the better, we'll buy this one to level 3 too.
Now, we move to the custom restrictions section. This gun also has characteristics which hinder it as well as help it. In this case:
Hands: It requires two hands to aim and fire a rifle. Which means you can't use a shield, parry, or do anything else with your off hand.
Everything above this point has come from the Weapon Attribute itself, but we aren't done customizing this attribute yet. In Chapter 5: Customisation, we can find a few rules we definitely need in order to accurately represent this rifle. First of all...
Range: right now our weapon can only attack people adjacent to the person holding it. Not much of a rifle eh? In order to give it a range we need to buy up this attribute a couple ranks. Flip to the table on pg. 73, and notice the progression of ranges by rank. To represent a reasonable distance for a sniper rifle we'll buy it up to rank 3 - 1km.
We could stop here of course, but the gun seems to be lacking just a little bit of flavor, and besides it has gotten quite expensive. We only have one restriction and about 16 levels of customisations. We ought to restrict it a little more, to bring the cost down, to make it feel more realistic, and importantly to create interesting choices for the user. Restrictions actually make the attribute more interesting, because it forces the player to balance the pros and cons. So now, for a couple restrictions:
Activation: No one should be able to do a hip shot with a sniper rifle. This restriction means that it takes extra actions to set up the shot during which the player must concentrate and not be disturbed. Let's buy this up to level 3, which means it requires 5 general actions. That's still a pretty fast setup for a shot with a sniper rifle.
Deplete: Since the rifle doesn't fire real bullets it should have some other cost to represent the ammunition. In this case it uses psychic energy, so we'll use this restriction to represent the depletion the character experiences when firing it. Level 3 will mean that it costs 30 energy to pull that trigger once. Ouch! but then, this bullet ignores armor, homes in on it's target, drains the Mind stat, and can hit from a very long range. It's worth it.
Alright, the last thing to decide is what level of a weapon to make it. This will determine its damage dealing potential and affect the cost. Since the book lists sniper rifles (pg. 167) as level 5 weapons, we'll scale this one back a tiny bit to 4. A real bullet would hit harder, but it would also have to go through armor. That gives us a cost breakdown as follows:
weapon level 4 + 16 custom levels - 7 restriction levels = 13levels
13 x 2(CP cost/level of weapon attribute) = 26CP
This would cost 26 character points if it were an innate ability of a character, but because it is an item, the item attribute halves the cost to 13CP altogether. On our character sheet we would write the item something like this:
Psychic Sniper Rifle - 13CP
Weapon 4 (Range 10km, Accurate +1, Drain3:Mind, Homing(psychic) +3, Psychic: ignores armor and force field and affects incorporeal)
In this story, the protagonist Acid Narita, uses a special rifle which fires a round of psychic energy that targets a specific individual. While it sounds neat in the story, how would it work if you wanted your character to actually possess such an item? Let's walk through it.
The first step is to identify what attribute underlies the item, what is its function? It is a weapon, it is attacking a target in order to damage it in some fashion. So the attribute we will use is the Weapon attribute (pg. 60). Right away we can see that there are a bunch of custom variables which we will need to select from in order to get the right combination of effects. Since this weapon is a type of sniper rifle we will choose variables that help represent that.
Accurate: this is a great variable for a sniper rifle and we could buy it as high as level 3, but each level adds to the cost of the item, so let's stick with 1 for now. It's an accurate weapon, but you still have to be a good shot to use it properly.
Psychic: this one is obvious. Since the gun doesn't fire real bullets, we don't want it to be affected by armor and force fields. This is an expensive variable, costing 6 levels, but well worth it.
Homing: the bullet had a homing capacity didn't it. A very specific one in fact, so it must have been very good. We will call the sense the bullet uses "psychic" which means that it can be fooled by psychic shields and misdirection. To make sure it has a good chance of hitting, we'll buy this one up to level 3.
Drain: A psychic attack shouldn't just do normal damage. Since it is an attack on the mind let us add an effect which makes the bullet damage the mind of the target directly. The more the better, we'll buy this one to level 3 too.
Now, we move to the custom restrictions section. This gun also has characteristics which hinder it as well as help it. In this case:
Hands: It requires two hands to aim and fire a rifle. Which means you can't use a shield, parry, or do anything else with your off hand.
Everything above this point has come from the Weapon Attribute itself, but we aren't done customizing this attribute yet. In Chapter 5: Customisation, we can find a few rules we definitely need in order to accurately represent this rifle. First of all...
Range: right now our weapon can only attack people adjacent to the person holding it. Not much of a rifle eh? In order to give it a range we need to buy up this attribute a couple ranks. Flip to the table on pg. 73, and notice the progression of ranges by rank. To represent a reasonable distance for a sniper rifle we'll buy it up to rank 3 - 1km.
We could stop here of course, but the gun seems to be lacking just a little bit of flavor, and besides it has gotten quite expensive. We only have one restriction and about 16 levels of customisations. We ought to restrict it a little more, to bring the cost down, to make it feel more realistic, and importantly to create interesting choices for the user. Restrictions actually make the attribute more interesting, because it forces the player to balance the pros and cons. So now, for a couple restrictions:
Activation: No one should be able to do a hip shot with a sniper rifle. This restriction means that it takes extra actions to set up the shot during which the player must concentrate and not be disturbed. Let's buy this up to level 3, which means it requires 5 general actions. That's still a pretty fast setup for a shot with a sniper rifle.
Deplete: Since the rifle doesn't fire real bullets it should have some other cost to represent the ammunition. In this case it uses psychic energy, so we'll use this restriction to represent the depletion the character experiences when firing it. Level 3 will mean that it costs 30 energy to pull that trigger once. Ouch! but then, this bullet ignores armor, homes in on it's target, drains the Mind stat, and can hit from a very long range. It's worth it.
Alright, the last thing to decide is what level of a weapon to make it. This will determine its damage dealing potential and affect the cost. Since the book lists sniper rifles (pg. 167) as level 5 weapons, we'll scale this one back a tiny bit to 4. A real bullet would hit harder, but it would also have to go through armor. That gives us a cost breakdown as follows:
weapon level 4 + 16 custom levels - 7 restriction levels = 13levels
13 x 2(CP cost/level of weapon attribute) = 26CP
This would cost 26 character points if it were an innate ability of a character, but because it is an item, the item attribute halves the cost to 13CP altogether. On our character sheet we would write the item something like this:
Psychic Sniper Rifle - 13CP
Weapon 4 (Range 10km, Accurate +1, Drain3:Mind, Homing(psychic) +3, Psychic: ignores armor and force field and affects incorporeal)
- 2 hands
- requires 5 general actions to activate
- Deplete 30 energy per shot
I am Katashi Blade
Damn it's cold. Of course, it would be, at night, in the dead of winter, two-hundred stories in the air, wearing nothing but a skintight black jumpsuit. It didn't take an IQ of 180 and psychic powers to predict the chill. Incidentally, Acid had both the IQ and the powers, and he was still whining to himself about the brisk weather.
The things I sacrifice for my job.
Acid hooked his heels around a steel bar and straightened his body. He was suspended, upside down, over an enormous slowly turning gear, through the spokes of which he could see the brightly lit streets of Geneva Prime, and in particular, the opulent entrance to the most illustrious hotel in the Yutaka District. Psi-goggles, their hot-pink lenses activated by his own psychic energy from feeds at his temples, augmented his vision, allowing him to scan the environment for potential disturbances.
It was Acid's inexpert opinion that, for all the beauty of the geographical surroundings, Geneva Prime had really done the best job it could to uglify things. The architecture of the city subscribed to the Brute Metallurgism of the century past. Everywhere massive metal braces, columns, and buttresses upheld looming structures that challenged the mountains with their apparent indifference, belied only by their aggressive foundations gripping the earth like a jealous claw. Some impurity in the local metal, or the air, or something made everything in Geneva Prime a dull ash color, so even though the streets were brightly lit, the light seemed to go nowhere. Shadow is plentiful in Geneva Prime.
That suited Acid just fine, who didn't plan on making his visit to Geneva Prime into a tropical vacation. No, Acid was here strictly on business. Goshi Mining Corp hadn't been making itself any friends lately, and though the extent of the political ramifications were not Acid's to know, there were more than a few members of the Yogensha League that felt Goshi needed to be humbled. Normally, this sort of business would be handled by challenging the city's gladiator school to a duel. The only problem being that Geneva Prime was home to Washi San Academy, the finest piloting and gladiator school around. So, Acid's clients had chosen a quieter method.
Shiver. That wind really bites.
Riding along the myriad converging and diverging tracks that lace many Cheldrun city streets, a railcar, black-bodied, with luxurious curves and round white headlights, came into view. It shifted seamlessly over to the tracks which brought it before the hotel and came to a halt. A skinny man in a mantled coat and gloves climbed out, and pulled the silver handle on the rear passenger door.
Acid braced the butt of his rifle against a shoulder and peered through the site, one finger loose on the trigger.
Through the grinding of the massive gear Acid couldn't hear his own movements, let alone the words exchanged between chauffeur and master two-hundred stories below. Between each spoke of the gear he got quick glimpses of what happened next, like watching a film played too slowly.
An arm reached out, clad in white, with a white glove. It took the chauffeur's proffered hand, and then a perfectly shined white patent leather shoe hit the pavement. A lanky body in a completely white suit followed. The man had gelled and spiked his white hair in every direction. Over his eyes he wore opaque white shades. At night.
Acid pulled the trigger.
There was no kick or jolt. No report and no muzzle flash. This was no ordinary rifle. Acid liked to think it was one of a kind, though he knew that there were similar ones out there, perhaps none identical. The bullet that whizzed out of that barrel was a bolt of pure psychic potential; hot pink it plummeted through the sky trailing rifled tendrils of energy. This bullet could read minds, and like a homing missile it would target and destroy only the mind which held the thought, "I am Katashi Blade."
The deadly little missile streaked through the air toward the man in white, who, at the last second looked upward and his lenses seemed momentarily clear. His eyes met Acid's who nearly let go of his grip on the pole, from shock. Those were amazing eyes. In them there was just the subtlest suggestion of a laugh, but not an ounce of humor. Like a person who steps on a wounded kitten, killing it, and then chortles merrily. There was no time for anything to be exchanged in that glance, but something was.
The bullet turned away narrowly missing the man in white, who was thinking, "I am Acid Narita."
Up in his perch, dumbfounded by what had just transpired, the assassin Acid Narita was thinking, "I am Katashi Blade."
The things I sacrifice for my job.
Acid hooked his heels around a steel bar and straightened his body. He was suspended, upside down, over an enormous slowly turning gear, through the spokes of which he could see the brightly lit streets of Geneva Prime, and in particular, the opulent entrance to the most illustrious hotel in the Yutaka District. Psi-goggles, their hot-pink lenses activated by his own psychic energy from feeds at his temples, augmented his vision, allowing him to scan the environment for potential disturbances.
It was Acid's inexpert opinion that, for all the beauty of the geographical surroundings, Geneva Prime had really done the best job it could to uglify things. The architecture of the city subscribed to the Brute Metallurgism of the century past. Everywhere massive metal braces, columns, and buttresses upheld looming structures that challenged the mountains with their apparent indifference, belied only by their aggressive foundations gripping the earth like a jealous claw. Some impurity in the local metal, or the air, or something made everything in Geneva Prime a dull ash color, so even though the streets were brightly lit, the light seemed to go nowhere. Shadow is plentiful in Geneva Prime.
That suited Acid just fine, who didn't plan on making his visit to Geneva Prime into a tropical vacation. No, Acid was here strictly on business. Goshi Mining Corp hadn't been making itself any friends lately, and though the extent of the political ramifications were not Acid's to know, there were more than a few members of the Yogensha League that felt Goshi needed to be humbled. Normally, this sort of business would be handled by challenging the city's gladiator school to a duel. The only problem being that Geneva Prime was home to Washi San Academy, the finest piloting and gladiator school around. So, Acid's clients had chosen a quieter method.
Shiver. That wind really bites.
Riding along the myriad converging and diverging tracks that lace many Cheldrun city streets, a railcar, black-bodied, with luxurious curves and round white headlights, came into view. It shifted seamlessly over to the tracks which brought it before the hotel and came to a halt. A skinny man in a mantled coat and gloves climbed out, and pulled the silver handle on the rear passenger door.
Acid braced the butt of his rifle against a shoulder and peered through the site, one finger loose on the trigger.
Through the grinding of the massive gear Acid couldn't hear his own movements, let alone the words exchanged between chauffeur and master two-hundred stories below. Between each spoke of the gear he got quick glimpses of what happened next, like watching a film played too slowly.
An arm reached out, clad in white, with a white glove. It took the chauffeur's proffered hand, and then a perfectly shined white patent leather shoe hit the pavement. A lanky body in a completely white suit followed. The man had gelled and spiked his white hair in every direction. Over his eyes he wore opaque white shades. At night.
Acid pulled the trigger.
There was no kick or jolt. No report and no muzzle flash. This was no ordinary rifle. Acid liked to think it was one of a kind, though he knew that there were similar ones out there, perhaps none identical. The bullet that whizzed out of that barrel was a bolt of pure psychic potential; hot pink it plummeted through the sky trailing rifled tendrils of energy. This bullet could read minds, and like a homing missile it would target and destroy only the mind which held the thought, "I am Katashi Blade."
The deadly little missile streaked through the air toward the man in white, who, at the last second looked upward and his lenses seemed momentarily clear. His eyes met Acid's who nearly let go of his grip on the pole, from shock. Those were amazing eyes. In them there was just the subtlest suggestion of a laugh, but not an ounce of humor. Like a person who steps on a wounded kitten, killing it, and then chortles merrily. There was no time for anything to be exchanged in that glance, but something was.
The bullet turned away narrowly missing the man in white, who was thinking, "I am Acid Narita."
Up in his perch, dumbfounded by what had just transpired, the assassin Acid Narita was thinking, "I am Katashi Blade."
Telepathic from Birth
Cold. Dark.
“How is she?”
‘God that woman is hot. I would do her again and again.’
‘I wish he wouldn’t look at me like that.’
‘I want an ice cream cone.’
‘I hate this job.’
‘I HATE YOU I HATE YOU I HATE YOU HATE YOU HATE YOU!’
So many voices. So many. On an on. Voices beyond count. It had always been so. She couldn’t remember a time when she wasn’t all of those voices.
“The same.”
‘I wonder if she’d go home with me if I asked?’
‘Maybe I should just tell him off.’
‘Here’s how to...’
‘I will always love you.’
‘I want...’
‘I wonder what would happen if I cut my finger off. I guess I wouldn't have a finger.’
‘That’s a big...’
‘It’s the thing you hate the most.’
Smooth, clear acrylic surface.
Power humming beneath the surface.
Voices. Her voices, all of them.
“No progress?”
‘I’m getting old. Old and fat. Fat and bald and old. I hate my life. I hate my job. I hate my stupid, fat, bald, old face.’
‘Looks like you gained a few pounds, you cow.’
‘Do you often sing or whistle just for fun? What does that mean?’
‘I wonder if the test type has the same problems as the prototype.’
”There’s a specialist on his way.”
‘Specialist? Doesn’t he remember what happened last time? He clawed out his own eyes.’
‘It’s the thing you hate the most.’
‘I want...’
‘I HATE YOU HATE YOU HATE YOU HATE YOU...’
‘I should tell her how I feel. Even if she doesn’t like me, she might still be willing to do me.’
‘Maybe I should tell him about my girlfriend. Or would that just turn him on?’
”We’ve tried that before, if you recall.”
‘At least the test type doesn’t have this sort of problem. Still, we might be able to salvage something from the prototype. She’s responding well to her physical training, at least.’
”The last one wasn’t properly trained to deal with her situation. This one is.”
Something new. Barrier. A presence that isn’t her. There was something that wasn’t her?
“He’s here.”
‘Old, fat, bald, stupid...’
‘She’s not into men? That’s so hot!’
‘Oh God. I knew this was going to happen.’
‘Age is against me. The world is against me. The children here are lucky. They’re young. Not like me.'
Light. She looks up. There is light. The door is open, and a man stands in the hallway, silhouetted against the light. His thoughts are closed. He steps into the room.
...
They’re gone. They’re gone! The voices are all gone. Gone-gone-gone-horrible-awful-terrifying-wonderful-new-thrill-fear-gone-gone-gone. How can they be gone? This is impossible. Impossible. Possible. Possible?
“I’ve sent them away, Rei-Gouki,” the man said.
Confusion. How could he have sent them away? That’s impossible. Wasn’t it?
Alone with her thoughts for the first time in her life, the girl looked about at her room in wonder, as if she expected the voices to pop out from under the bed, or come flowing back in through the smooth acrylic surfaces that line the walls.
“Where did I go?” she asked.
“The others – the voices – they’re not you, Rei-Gouki. They’ve never been you.”
She shook her head again and again. This was hard. The very idea of such a thing made her shiver. “I don’t understand,” she whispered.
He smiled. “You will. But that’s all for today. I’ll be back again tomorrow.”
He stepped out. The door closed. And for the rest of the day, the young Biomade sat on the floor of her quarters, dumbfounded by this new thing that the man had given her: awful, terrible, horrifying, wonderful silence.
Rei (Biomade Assassin)
Rei
This is one of several characters I’m considering for the BESM game. Rei (technically, 'psychic-warrior prototype unit zero-zero,' the first of her particular type of Biomade) was created as a part of a special order by one of the less than moral factions within the Cheldrun government as part of an attempt to engineer a kind of ‘psychic soldier’ which would, under ideal conditions, render the Mechanized obsolete and give the Biomade a significant leg up on the remaining Allskins. As the name may indicate (Rei being Japanese for ‘zero’, short for ‘Rei-Gouki,’ that being her model number: 00), Rei has had considerably less freedom than most other Biomade. She was the prototype model for her ‘class’ of Biomade. She never met any of the other psychic-warrior models, though she knows that there are at least four others (01, 02, 03, and 04). At nineteen years old, she was a highly trained and competent assassin, most recently employed by Goshi Mining Corp. She was also a young Biomade in search of something to believe in. And one day, in the midst of what was sure to be a brilliant operation (the elimination of a particularly troublesome Mechanized who had killed his overseer and fled the mines), she found something that rocked her to the core. It was nothing much, really. Just some poor labour model’s dream of freedom. It was nothing much, and it was everything in the world. Rei read it there, clear as day, in the mind of that Mechanized she had come to kill. Her conscience was wakened, and for just a moment, the assassin and her intended target were the same. She lowered her psychic-knife and walked away.
Since that day, Rei has devoted little time to the upkeep of her skills. Both her physical conditioning and her abilities have atrophied. She is underachieving, and it rankles more than almost anything, and yet she knows that she cannot complete this contract: cannot go on killing without a second thought. She lives in hiding now, and has managed to eke out a semi-normal existence. Still, she knows that eventually, either Goshi Mining or the group that made her will come looking for her... and eventually, unless she does something to stop it, they’ll send someone else to do what she could not: eliminate the Mechanized Moses.
Rei is the sort of person who finds it much easier to take action than to explain her actions. When asked to explain herself, her first instinct is to say something vaguely philosophical, which doesn’t always go well as she hasn’t had much exposure to philosophy. If not allowed to just give some vaguely philosophical statement, she doesn’t do nearly as well: Explaining that you believe very strongly in this cause or that cause, or in justice, or freedom is far more difficult than just taking action to support said cause, after all. She is very methodical. She'll plan things down to the smallest detail, believing that preparation and proper recon is essential to success. She's the type who thinks that if you've given your opponent a fair chance to win, you've done something wrong.
Ultimately, Rei will come to a full awareness of both her own power and the responsibility that it brings. The fitful spark of her sense of right and wrong will be fanned into a flame, and when that happens, she will have no choice but to act. The world is a broken place. The natives of the world live in terror of the Cheldrun; the Biomade have all but enslaved the Mechanized, and the Allskins are pale shadows of their former selves. But all that is a bit beyond her reach just now. These things have to be taken one step at a time: save the Mechanized Moses, save the world.
Now if only she could get that out as more than just, “I know how to kill people. Can you use that?”
--=- Stats -=--
Body 5, Mind 5, Soul 4
--=- Abilities -=--
Features (Appearance) 2
Heightened Awareness 4
Jump 2
Special Movement (Fast) 1
Telepathy (Cheldrun) 2
- base cost is 4CP
- always on (moderate) –3 CP, can deactivate for 10 energy points/round
- causes headaches, and the learning of things she would rather not know
- range: 100m (+1 CP)
- requires line of sight, must be looking at the target
- total cost: 2 CP per level
Mind Shield 2
Telekinesis 2
- Depletes 1 energy point per round (-5)
- 10 kg weight limit
Force Field 3
- base cost is 3CP per level
- unique restriction: costs 3 energy to activate, drains 3 energy per minute –1CP
- activation –1CP
- gives 12 armour rating at current level (4 per level)
--=- Skills -=--
Acrobatics 3
Climbing
Stealth 3
Sleight of Hand 2
Military Sciences 2
--=- Equipment -=--
Psychic Knife – 4 CP
- Weapon 0, Enervation 4, Only Biomade, Deplete –1
--=- Defects -=--
Skeleton in Closet: Was an assassin hired by the Goshi Mining Corp. Furthermore, she was assigned to kill Mechanized Moses.
Owned: Rei was a special order: a Biomade created for a specific purpose (a psychic soldier) at the request of a less than upstandingly moral faction within the Cheldrun government. As such, she has no legal recourse and is only in the system as whatever cover she has been assigned.
--=- Derived Values -=--
Combat Value: 4
Attack combat value: 4
Defense combat value: 4
Damage multiplier: 5
Shock value: 9
Health: 45
Energy: 45
Biomade
The Biomade have come to refer to themselves as the Pure Experiment, because in contrast to the Mechified, they were never created with specific jobs or purposes in mind. The Biomade instead were created merely to see what possibilities existed in the Cheldrun gene pool. An absolute exercise of ‘what if’? Naturally, therefore, they tend to idealize possibility, worshipping potential as if it were a god and judging people on the basis of merit, ability and accomplishment rather than character. At their worst, Biomade tend to believe that if it can be done it should be done. At their best, Biomade are insightful and creative people always pushing themselves to stretch behind the horizon of limitations.
In the early years of the Great Experiment, Biomade were largely indistinguishable from Allskins, which created problems for them. The necessity of keeping the Allskins pure meant that Biomade we required to wear identifying badges, and the elevated position of the Allskins only made the Biomade feel like second-class citizens. Biomade were pushed into roles of servitude to the great houses of the Allskins and though many Biomade were the most intelligent and capable individuals in Cheldrun society, the benefits of their accomplishments often went to Allskin nobles. This situation bred into the Biomade a subtle, but profound resentment of the Allskin. The Biomade began to regard themselves as superior genetically and in every other way to their Allskin brothers and sisters.
So long as the old ways of Cheldrun society lasted this resentment could not be expressed, but toward the end of the Flight, when it had been a long time since any Cheldrun had lived which remembered the homeworlds the old social mores began to break down. The Biomade began to assert themselves. By this time they had become not only faster, stronger and smarter than any normal Allskin, but also developed psychic abilities. The Biomade rather easily and with surprisingly little bloodshed overthrew the great houses of the Allskins and established a new rule for Cheldrun society – may the best man/woman/psychic or cyborg win.
For better or for worse this new rule prevailed when the Cheldrun crash landed on Karia. Whereas the old society of noble houses had served as a glue holding the whole race together in one nation, the new competitive outlook caused division and conflict. Shortly after arriving on Karia city-states began emerging that warred with one another over access to resources and trading rights. The Biomade consider this just another form of competition which will only help the species advance themselves even further than they have already come. These forward thinking Biomade are often the heads of major corporations, scientists, engineers, visionaries and agents of change.
One consequence of the way Biomade come into existence is that they have no direct genetic heritage – no biological family. Biomade do not procreate like others, for them sex is purely an act of pleasure, an idle diversion. Infant Biomade are given to a willing adult to nurture during their first 3 years of life at which point all Biomade are registered in residential schools. Raised primarily by nurses and teachers, Biomade are often a little immature. Growing up among other children unsupervised, Biomade are often extremely competitive. Formally educated from a very early age, Biomade are often book-smart world-dumb.
Biomade tend to look airbrushed perfect, with symmetrical features and stylish modern clothing. Appearance, physical health and mental agility are very important to them. Rare is the Biomade who will admit he doesn’t know something or allow himself to come away looking stupid or slow. The Biomade prize their genetic superiority and can sometimes fall back on it as though effort were overrated. Since the discovery of their utility all Biomade have been designed with latent psychic abilities, which enable them to access and use the special Biomade technologies that depend on psychic energy. Some Biomade are specially designed (the process is too expensive to afford including it as a feature in every Biomade) with more powerful Psychic talents. These are likely to be people capable of reading the thoughts of others, communicating telepathically, sensing the unseen, or even predicting the future. A very very few Biomade actually have the gift of controlling other people’s minds, though this is not generally known in Cheldrun society – it would cause quite an uproar if discovered.
Players who wish to play a Biomade character should think carefully about the character’s profession, educational background and genetic traits. Biomade are prideful and competitive – what personal achievements is your character proud of? Who are your character’s primary competitors? How psychic are you, and what sort of powers have you developed? Biomade do not have family names and they often rename themselves after obtaining maturity with names that suggest power or beauty.
Appearance: Biomade value symmetry and beauty so they are a race of supermodel figures, smooth complexions, luxurious hair, and straight teeth. They prefer sleek, modern styles and exercise their need for control over their appearance. Hence, they make liberal use of hair gel, enjoy coloring contacts, shaping underwear, and cosmetics. Expect to see Biomade in wraparound mirror shades, tailored pinstripe suits, and black leather.Example Names: Acid, Beach, Blade, Chrysanthemum, Geranium, Hurricane, Lightning, Night, Stroke, Tsunami,
Example Attributes: Alternate Identity, Aura of Inspiration, Computer Scanning, Divine Relationship, Energy Bonus, Environmental Influence, Features (Appearance), Force Field, Heightened Awareness, Heightened Senses, Item, Jumping, Mind Control, Mind Shield, Organizational Ties, Sixth Sense, Telekinesis, Telepathy, Tough
Example Skills: Acrobatics, Biological Sciences, Business Management, Computers, Driving, Intimidation, Physical Sciences, Seduction
Biomade Technology & Equipment
At it’s simplest, Biomade technology is based on the insight that psychic energy is just that – energy. An energy source capable of powering many electronic devices that otherwise would require costly resources or inconvenient batteries to operate. An array of devices, many of which duplicate normal electronic equipment, is available which run entirely on the psychic energy of the user. This has the effect of restricting the use of these devices to Biomade since they are the only (known) psychics on Karia. However, beyond the benefit of having electronic devices only a Biomade can use, this technology has been pushed to new frontiers by actually manipulating the psychic energy itself.
Example Psychic Knife: The following device is a gauntlet with a series of energy conduits running down the wrist and over the back of the hand. When activated these conduits gather and project psychic energy in the form of a bright pink blade, which the wearer can wield as though it were a completely weightless knife strapped to his arm. The knife requires 10 Energy points to activate, and when used it does not deal bodily damage, but it burns Energy out of the target. Thus, a victim would pass out from exhaustion rather than die from this weapon. It is rumored that versions exist which deal physical damage or even directly savage the mind. The following item would cost 4CP.
Weapon 0 Enervation 4, Only Biomade, Deplete -1
Example Telepathic Amp: There are no telephones or cell phones on Karia, but these little devices clip behind an ear and amplify the thoughts of a psychic through a network of level 3 telepaths to other individuals. The person initiating the call must be a psychic, but because the thoughts will be transmitted by a level 3 telepath the receiver of the call can be nearly anyone. For this reason, battery powered receivers exist that non-psychic users can utilize to receive, but not send, “calls”. The following item would cost 1CP.
Abilities: Unique (increase Telepathy range)
Disabilities: Uses Energy (1)
Example Force Field: Biomade who are willing to risk bodily injury in combat (there aren’t that many) often try and equip themselves with one of these. This is a device, usually worn on the belt, that when activated produces a form fitting personal energy shield visible as a faint transparent pink shimmer. These shields stop damage from getting through to the wearer although if sufficient damage is done to pierce the field the excess will still take effect. These shields can be damaged and their effectiveness reduced, but they regenerate after a while of being deactivated. Activating the shield requires 3 Energy Points and an additional 3 Energy Points per minute to sustain. There are rumors of more advanced models that require more energy to activate, but absorb significantly more damage. This item was created with the Force Field Attribute level 4 costing 5CP.
Damage Absorbed: 16 damage points
Disabilities: Uses Energy (3 to activate and 3/minute)
| Biomade attitudes towards…. | |
| Cheldrun | The natural leaders of the galaxy, we have experienced a setback, but that is all part of the process of worthwhile experimentation. One day we will own the stars again… |
| Allskins | Relics all of them. They are a reminder of a distant past, which no longer has relevance for our future… |
| Biomade | We are the true inheritors of the Cheldrun legacy continually making ourselves into the most advanced species in the galaxy… |
| Mechified | A lesser experiment that nevertheless has its uses. They make a good workforce… |
| Karians | The people of this planet are backwards beyond belief. However nature has gifted them with extraordinary genes, which we may be able to exploit… |
| Anakarix | How can you possibly take a talking lizard seriously? They call themselves philosophers – hah! They’ve got brains almost entirely lacking frontal lobes… |
| Gogajin | Stupid and coarse and unlikely to pose any threat to us – except of course they are ridiculously strong… |
| Jevumm | These poor kitties are scared of fire. Conveniently that keeps them and their hot tempers away from us… |
| Prill | Of all the Karians the Prill seem to be the most advanced and yet they cling to ancient unscientific beliefs. Why?... |
| Vorax | Do the Vorax still exist? I thought they were extinct? Good riddance… |
| Zipsum | They’ve certainly been the most welcoming of Cheldrun ways, but they’re probably the least intelligent of the whole bunch. They are annoying and inept… |
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