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A City For The Dead 1

Tarsen had welcomed the research division with all proper respect and courtesy, and made every effort to accomodate their work. The researchers-a mixed bag of Necromancers, biologists, physicists, and ecologists-had eschewed the comfort of the compound to bivouac up the coast, within sight of the anomaly. Poring over official reports, transcripts, and recovered diaries, and reading between the lines to put a picture together, Iosefka felt this had been as much a source of trepidation to the garrison as it had been a relief.

On paper, Tarsen was and remains strategically important with a clear view of the demarcation zone and the seaward approach combined with enough arable land to be largely self-sustaining. It had fallen between jurisdictional cracks, neither the Ministry of Production nor Ministry of Defense inclined to afford it much attention or assert control as the war cooled. A place to retire officers whose committment exceeded their vitality. A dead-end posting for the politically inconvenient and the personally embarassing.

Unsurprising, then, that the Ministry of Knowledge should take an interest. Close to the anomaly and largely ignored, they could pursue any of their more clandestine goals and expect some leeway before other offices caught up. And they would catch up; Iosefka had found unredacted reports from somebody's spy that read like a blend of field observations and personal letters. There was a cipher, obviously, but she'd given up on cracking it. Had it been the Diplomatic corps, the Intelligence Bureau, or some indistinct and suspiciously provisioned subcomittee at odds with their colleagues sent to, ostensibly, take soil samples?

That was the thing about the fragile ceasefire with the leeches. It gave the bureacracy time to stagnate, to turn inward, for all the worst paranoic impulses of Party apparatchiks high on games of prestige and generals driven half-mad with trauma to coil like competing vines around the tree of state. The Commissariat could do only so much to hold the implosion at bay, and so here she was, wasting perfectly good leave on puzzling out a massacre from badly written love letters and self-aggrandizing progress reports.

It could not be a coincidence she'd been assigned to Tarsen and specifically a Quill field exercise. Prototype Osteidons, a new model Thanatomat, and the most recent appointee to the Secretariat, all at the site of a mystery so throughly buried even the ghosts were nowhere to be found only twenty years later.

And so she read.

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Restless Dreams 0

I am blind and numb and there is nothing, nothing. Only cold and hunger and nothing. There is a me and there was a then and if there is a now it is

nothing.

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There are stark white walls and ceiling, and a light so bright some dull animal part of me wants to look away and adjust like waking with the sun in your face. There is no warmth, and no cold. Only vision, and my eyes move as if heavy, the only thing I can move. There are sounds and I recognize them as voices, words, only after some time. As if muffled by a thousand miles and a thousand years of distance, glimmering in my mind like eyes in the dark of the supply room.

"...ostly intact." "Lucky timing. Any later and the anchor process would-" "Don't. Not one more word." "Right. Right, well, positive results so far." There are other sounds, and objects; blocky with blinking lights. There are shapes, rounded and mobile. People. Murky and indistinct. "I think it's awake." "Oh for fuck's sake." A hand crosses my vision and there is nothing.

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A hand in mine. Small, soft. She smells of gunpowder and salt and sweat in the cosy dark of the supply room. The teachers cannot know.

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"How are you feeling, comrade?" Bright light. Stark white. A face, unfamiliar, brow creased and eyes bright in a way that means nothing to me. "Can't speak?" the face looks away, somewhere past me. "Should it speak?" "There's synaptic and animic activity but they've been through an extremely traumatic experience and period of quiescence. Mechanically there's no obstacle but..." "Hm, too much to hope for yet, of course. Can we try a coalescence?" "I'm not comfortable risking that until they acclimate to these meridians." "We have time. Smoke break? Back under you go, comrade."

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The green hills roll down to the grey sea and the briny wind is cold, invigorating. I squint at a break in the overcast sky and giggle with wonder. safe in loving arms.

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White. Bright. I feel heavy, clumsy. Like I've slept wrong and all my limbs are bloodless. I turn my head and hear something hum and click. Dark shapes on the other side of glass. An empty room. A thick metal door. A crackle of static.

"Good, comrade, very good! Can you take a step?" I do not want to take a step. I don't know what I want. I have nothing else to do. I look down at my feet. They are bone white. They are bone. They are bone and glints of metal and thicker than they should be. I raise my hands to my face and they are bare bone and fingerless and as I scream the shapes move and there is darkness again.

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Bright eyes under dark helmets. The thundering drumroll of ranked rifles. Cries of victory. Exhausted I half-collapse and throw my arms around my comrade. His tears feel scalding on my cheek.

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"I am. Comrade Hawkar," I say. My mouth does not move. I do not have a mouth, only an assembly of wires and plastics behind a blank sheet of bone. "Welcome back, comrade," replies comrade-doctor Ivy, smiling, the silver skull badge of a Party official gleaming on the lapel of her labcoat. "It's been a difficult journey. You were... in a bad way." Her smile tightens, brittle. "We did our best."

Their best is raw film spotted with cigarette burns. A life no longer mine. Their best is two hundred kilograms of reinforced osseous shell, reanimated muscle, and bioplastic armatures. I am in here, somewhere. Some living meat pulses in the walking sepulchure I have come to inhabit. "Thank you," I say. Their best lent my voice no feeling, and it is better this way.

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Screaming, bleeding. Blind with panic, deaf to the roar of artillery shattering the bruised sky. Hearts stop all around me. Warmth leaches from my limbs and pools around my hips.

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I am a paragon of war. No weapon has pierced my chassis. No foe can slow my implacable advance and the enemy screamed with a terror I cannot comprehend as my footfalls sank into the maroon mud of the battlefield between me and their inevitable end.

A comrade of the logistics ministry hoses me down before we re-enter the base. I know blood sheathes my body only because diagnostic overlays tell me so. And yet is there not also a warmth? To be covered in the stuff of life.

The thought does not take root. The tender ministrations of comrade-doctor Ivy patch my shell and soothe my soul. I cannot feel her fingers as they delicately seal the scarring of my form. There was disquiet between the drone of war and the comfort of home. There is a creeping dispossession as I see my reflection in a surgical tray; the pallid deathmask with amethyst eyes, the numbers 621 engraved where my ear would once have been, but she dispels it. I will not understand for a long time.

"You are being reassigned, comrade Hawkar, to a specialist Osteidon unit. I trust my colleague comrade-necromancer Thurston to be your handler for this mission." Osteidons. Fragile souls in monstrous armour. Will I find kinship there, with the pilots and their chosen bodies? "For All Mankind, comrade-doctor." "For the Deathless Revolution, comrade Hawkar."

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A Garlean Eulogy (Thrust Rudely Thereupon)

The trailing edge of the Twelveswood offers scant reprieve from the Ala Mhigan sun, its autumnal canopy a fitting fade unto the sands and hardy little palms for which Khotun is excited to find names.

He is so distracted in botanical reverie that he doesn't register the Garlean patrol until he is damned near among them; a lone Auri man in bardic attire beset by a dozen soldiers of Garlemald and their magitek armour.

"Halt, barbarian," shout a pair of voices. A captain and lieutenant, further apart than Baelsar doctrine would allow. As they glance at one another, Khotun decides the Garlean legions remain calcified and these two are at odds. Perhaps he can exploit this.

"I, barbarian?" he calls back, cheerfully. "Though oft without, I at least understand a chain of command."

The captain levels her gun. "Your mockery will not save you, Eorzean. Disarm and comply, and your death may follow a life of service." The lieutenant, though, sidles closer to the captain with an urgent hiss. "His eyes, captain! By the Emperor, look at his eyes."

The white-gold glow surrounding Khotun Qailli's pupils is certainly easier to see here, beneath the brim of his hat and the thick leaves overhead.

"So it casts magi-" begins the captain, but some other soldier cuts her off with a cry of recognition. "The Wolfslayer! It's the Wolfslayer, the Champion!" he says, scrambling back and away from the lone man (who does, in the Garleans' mildest defense, tower over most of them).

More guns are readied in unspeaking unison, but more than one barrel trembles.

"Well, that makes this a fine twist of good fortune," the captain rallies, "surrender, Champion; no doubt the viceroy will be thrilled to meet you."

"Captain, I must protest-" the lieutenant whispers.

"We outnumber him twelve to one, Vitus, don't make me execute you for cowardice."

Khotun, in this time, has merely plucked a few notes thoughtfully on his lute, pondering the least pedestrian rhyme for 'eyes'. He places the instrument delicately against a treetrunk and straightens his back. "You would be wise to heed your lieutenant," he says. But he can see the captain's face; her visor had been raised and she is clearly too distracted or too uncertain in her aim to lower it now. He knows that look, or perhaps the Echo carries something under the vague semaphore of flesh and bone.

Ilberd, silhouetted in flames. Falling like a sundered oak.

"I offer you my mercy, and as we cannot care for prisoners now, bid you flee. Bid you to remember I stayed my hand, should we meet again."

The captain laughs; a few toadies follow. The young lieutenant has set his jaw like a stone. "It offers us mercy! How noble these savages can be, to promise safety for an armoured patrol!" She barks, and the forced mirth barely hides how sincerely she longs to shed blood. "I weary of this farce. Take him."

Four of the soldiers advance and the armour keeps a weapon trained on Khotun. He watches dispassionately as two prepare to seize him, the other two stand ready to lash out with blades. He steps back on light feet when they reach for him. He looks up, tilting the brim of his hat back, a weary smile on his face and a single tear shining on his cheek. Stares the nearest soldier in the eye. Through the mask, past the training, to the seventeen-year-old conscript underneath. "Last chance," he says. There is hesitation, and fear, but sometimes Empire is stronger.

This time Empire wins, and the soldier lunges. Once again Khotun trips gracefully out of reach, but raises his hands and clasps them. "May I remain worthy of love," he says, and tilts his head to let a bullet scream by. The soldiers exchange glances but press on, swinging their blades at empty air. "O Halone, Rhalgr, and sweet Menphina," Khotun continues, drifting between blows like smoke. The bow appears in his hands as if from nowhere, and he nocks an arrow.

"Forgive me this violence I am about to commit."

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Being Bandi

To conceptualize the sensorium of a Bandi is near impossible for any other lifeform; organic, cybernetic, mechanical – but let us try. Consider the Vala, The Flame of Justice, a Soulcage favoured for brute simplicity. Imagine nothing. Neither sight nor scent nor touch. Imagine your spellware booting up. An outsider may perceive lines of code on an external screen, but for the Bandi the first…

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One of my settings got exponentially more interesting when I sat through the implications of a coalition of limited democracies and feudal monarchies exercising power over vital shipping corridors and resources.

Among other things, the liberal polities benefit from exploitative extractive industries in the territory of their feudal allies, and then deny complicity by saying "Oh we don't interfere in the free market! It's really not our place to interfere in the supply chains of companies operating in our jurisdiction. If you have a problem with how the South Peninsular Banana Corporation acquires their stock - wherever and however that might be - just vote with your wallet! Also if you accuse our coalition partners in the Southern Peninsular Kingdom of slavery again we are obliged to point the railgun at you. For decorum's sake."

👀

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What is a house with no one to live in it? On floor plans bedrooms remain bedrooms, hallways remain hallways-but any depressive can tell you that you forget a little, after a spell in the dark, how to be human. Perhaps a house is haunted because it has simply grown too used to loneliness...

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The swordgendered, non-binary MC of THE KNIGHT VAGRANT. Raxri Uttara, The Once-Dead, for they were murdered, betrayed by Heaven and the Earth. Shorn of all memory and all cultivation, they must claw their way up the rungs of power once again until their fingers are bloody and raw.

"Stop! Stop! It is better to give up! It will take a million years to get back from where you were!" No matter to Raxri Uttara. Their vengeance is their meditation. One step at a time, until all beings are free. Until the world's mysteries are revealed. Until their will is done.

What is a hurricane to an ant? They are inextricably connected, Raxri would say. They are both immovable and unstoppable. A monsoon of swords.

Unassuming by nature, they are nonetheless wracked by a deep, indescribable sorrow, depression, guilt, and anxiety, which they push through by taking things one step at a time. Extremely versatile, Raxri is not one to master a single Violent System or Magickal Praxes, choosing instead to learn as many different systems as they can.

Name: Raxri Uttara Epithets: Once-Dead, The Heaven Dancer, The Swordhand, They Who Danced Against The Heavens Cultivation Level: 4 Mortal State (Accumulation Stage of the Desire Domain) Arcana: The Holy Fool Star Omen: The Water Bearer Blood Type: Air Violent Systems: Whorl Hand, Adamantine Sword Magickal Praxes: Mantra, Mudra Signature Technick: << ADAMANTINE SWORD: ADAMANT LIGHTNING STRIKES >> Likes: All food (especially rice meals), betel nut chewing, smoking, reading manuscripts, learning new Cultivation Systems, killing, stronger opponents, learning new technicks and magicks Dislikes: Poetry, writing, too sweet pastries, those that willingly misinterpret the Law, philosophy

THE KNIGHT VAGRANT?

THE KNIGHT VAGRANT is a spiritpunk progression ultrafantasy web novel in the universe of HINGSAJAGRA, a world wrought from Monsoon Asia and Esoteric Buddhism. Monsoon Asia Disco Elysium Xianxia.

Art by: @coldhazzard!

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eclectic taste (not to be confused with good taste) is the only thing you actually need to be a good artist. i don't care if you like the right things, i literally only care abt the multitude of experiences and practices you have ingested.

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Lots to talk about how we percieve the other through fantasy races and civilizations (I'm writing a post kind on that) but in Campoestela, a space opera setting with many alien species, humans are "known" for:

their endurance when running, diving, spacewalking, etc.

legalistic societies full of written and codified rules

and fútbol, which is a game of endurance running full of codified rules

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*emerges from the other room covered in blood* you should see the word document

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"You gave me the power to change myself," she said. "I gave you the power to be yourself," the demon replied, kneeling in the ritual circle with immortal patience. "But… the price; for me, for those I saved. We're damned?" "Are you?" "Proclus is different now. Strange. Mean." "And that is damnation?" "Going to hell will be." "Is this world so kind?" "It's like we won't be human anymore." The demon blinked three vast and gentle eyes. "What good did being human ever do you?"

She didn't have an answer for that.

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A WORLD SHORN OF LIGHT. 

A KNIGHT TORN FROM POWER AND MEMORY. 

Walk. Uncover the truth of your death. Reattain your Enlightenment. Cultivate Benevolent Violence. Master the Blade. Master the Mantra. Bring the world to heel. Shake Heaven's Pillars. Find out who did this to you. Choose the right side of the blade when you do. NO OTHER WAY. KILL THEM OR KILL THEM.

LET THY WILL BE DONE. 

UNTIL ALL BEINGS ARE FREE.

Giant cats turned into apartment complexes, ghost horse steeds that tire not, walking giant mechanical armors turned into public transportation, charnel wizards summoning the long-dead, witches wielding the Pureflame of Creation, the Machine God beginning its slick advance into forever progress... the Age of Furor is upon us. The Latter Day of the Law.

Upon the peak of their vengeance, will they choose the right blade? The Termagant Buddha watches closely.

THE KNIGHT VAGRANT is an utter progression fantasy web novel in the universe of HINGSAJAGRA, a world wrought from Esoteric Buddhism and Monsoon Asia. Monsoon Asia Disco Elysium Xianxia. 32 Chapters, 102k+ and counting. Arc 2, ADAMANTINE SWORD, is chunky and done.

WHAT TO EXPECT

꩜ Immersive Fantasy universe that can be aptly described as Monsoon Asia Esotericist Disco Elysium Xianxia. The Utter Islands is a borderless Sword and Gun Fantasy Setting.

🌪️ Androgynous Amnesiac Weak to Strong Martyr Versatile MC (learning both Martial Arts and Magick) who uses multiple means of Cultivation (Meditation, Alchemy, Sword, Magick, Dual, and more), with a personality not unlike Goku from Dragon Ball. Trans Enby MC (both and neither male/female, 10th mark of a Buddha)

✊ Ruthless, Bloody, Brutal Skull On Stone Martial Arts

🔥 Esoteric Cultivation Systems inspired by IRL esoteric systems. All of them feuding and trying to out-cultivate each other.

‼️ Content Warnings for the following: Violence, Body Horror, Horror, Sexual Content (Optional!), Bigotry, Warfare, Class Struggle, Revolution, Betrayals, Strong Language

If any of this got you interested please consider checking it out over on Royal Road!

Cover by: @alexconnolly!

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Several masked and leather-aproned court alchemists using iron tongs to remove a live and undamaged mouse from the mystical solar kiln

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lrb context for: Very few people seem to actually know how to write Lovecraft anyway; they seem to use 'Lovecraft' and 'cosmic horror' as shorthand for a structurally normal genre of horror but the bad guys have tentacles and maybe a cult and looking at them makes you go crazy.

It is legitimately difficult to find modern "Lovecraftian" works that don't whip out their tentacles immediately. A crucial element of this kind of fiction is the mystery, the creeping dread that dawns as more information is revealed. The madness is more than a status effect inflicted on the hapless protagonist when they look at a tentacle monster; it is the self-doubt, the uncertainty, the increasing blurring along the way of what might be reality and what might be a fevered dream, or what might have a perfectly logical explanation, yet carries with it an inexplicable dread to which only the viewpoint character may be true witness. It is "madness" insofar as being gaslit is "madness".

Hodgson was very good at keeping his reveals in his pocket, if you want an example of a contemporary weird-fiction writer who wasn't the most racist guy you've ever seen. His Inspector Carnacki stories were only sometimes revealed to be supernatural in nature and sometimes just mundane shit. Sometimes the Inspector would solve the mystery and determine it was a prank or a Scooby Doo-esque criminal scheme. Sometimes it was literally the devil.

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"Is your good cheer so thoroughly dispelled by the threat of a new Primal, bard?" Y'shtola leans against the doorframe, regarding an auri man sat upon the balcony railing. The light spilling from within casts him half in shadow, and beyond him the night lies weightless on Revenant's Toll. He raises his eyes to hers, making no effort to disguise the artifice of his brittle smile. "It did rather cast a pall on celebrations to hear it roar," he says, "though at least it was polite enough to let the speeches end." She says nothing, only watching, still but for the merest swing of her tail. He breaks her gaze, and looks down once more. "I thought Ultima would be the end of it." "You know it couldn't be, Khotun. One legion does not an empire make, and the beastmen threat yet looms," she replies, "the Warrior of Light is still much needed." "Is that all I am to be, Y'shtola?" She stands straighter, taken aback. "All you are to be?" He doesn't reply immediately, only raises a hand from his lap and stares at it, palm up. His fingers tremble. "So many lives...." He begins, pauses, releases a breath before it can become a sob. "I know them, Y'shtola. Every frightened Garlean conscript, every Tempered kobold, every desperate bandit. The Echo forbids me the luxury of monstrosity." "Yda tells me you were a gentle spirit, even before wakening to the Echo." "Then we deserve the Garleans," he says, bitterly. "At least they're ashamed enough of their bloodlust to concoct justifications for it." A sound echoes over the empty plaza, louder for the smallness of it. Khotun turns his head, but does not touch his stinging cheek. "That you of all people...!" Y'shtola seethes, "That you who bristle with righteous indignation every time we go to Ul'dah should dare to suggest the Empire is justified!" "I am so weary, Y'shtola, of being a weapon," Khotun says quietly, looking her in the eye again, golden limbal rings bright in the deepening dark "when may I be a man once more?"

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Whenever humans appear in fantasy or science fiction we are usually the boring default who aren’t strong or fast or magical and the writer has to make something up to make us interesting but we already have a special ability: our stamina.

We can go forever compared to most other animals on earth. When you look it up you’ll mostly find stuff about running but our ability to walk and walk and walk is insane too. We are not the only creature with this ability but we are among the top.

I used to go on walks with my housemate and sometimes her cat would join us. He’d start huffing and puffing halfway through the walk and she’d joke about how out of shape he was but in reality cats just aren’t made for long continuous walking. They hide and attack in quick bursts. Heck I’d sometimes go on walks that turned out to be too long for my dogs despite dogs being endurance hunters like us.

So I think we deserve more acknowledgment for our stamina and endurance in otherworldly settings. We are the race that can keep going long after our party had to sit down and take a breather.