marachime

[marachime]

[23/11/2019][prose][vignette][4Queens][LowSpoonNaNo][Spectrum][Root? Ironsworn? Deepwoods?]

“Do you have rice balls here?” The man behind the bar grunted that they didn’t. “Hm. I’ll take those water parsnips and four bottles of rice wine, then.” A girl sitting near the hearth tittered that her mother sold rice balls. He paid the man, slotting the bottles carefully into his pack before he followed her out onto the dirt road. It was a short walk, but the wind was coming from the North and it made the girl clutch her wolf pelt closer to herself. The woman offered him four for a reasonable price; he took forty, and she gave him enough taro leaves to keep the rice from drying out or making a mess. The kid watched him as he sat at their kitchen table and methodically wrapped each squat, hand-pressed ball, and fitted them into what space he had in his pack. He paid, thanked them, and left. He hadn’t gone three minutes down the road before he felt a tug on his arm. He turned and the kid was there, holding out a little reed doll. “To protect you.” He let her tie it to his pack.

The sword he’d lifted out of the smithy banged awkwardly against his thigh as he turned his steps towards the trees to the West. The sun was bleeding colours across the paddy fields ahead of him, and he nodded to each person as they worked. For the most part they nodded back. The smith, at least, could make himself another blade, but food was hard enough to come by in the Capital, let alone out here. He stopped just out of the shadow of the trees, his face still in the dying sunlight, and took a minute to make sure it would be easy to draw the sword from under his cloak. Then he walked into the forest.

[marachime]

[12/11/2019][prose][excerpt][4Queens][LowSpoonNaNo][Watchers]

The Winter Sun teaches us gratitude. She waves at us as best she can through the clouds, but is gone from our sight before reaching her zenith. Her gaze replaced by the slow wall of grey. Each break in the wall is a blessing, and we count them.

At equinox and solstice we give the birds special treats with their regular food, but they already know. They probably know it far better than we do, despite all our capacity for measurement. A deeper knowing than any of us could reach without something to aid us.

The folk that live alone way up in the treacherous peaks are said to know. People sometimes make pilgrimages to their mountains, braving the sheer slopes and misty paths to learn the way to knowledge. They bring food and trinkets. Tools fashioned in the white hot forges of the cities. Useful things that would be difficult to make without us. 

Often, the pilgrims are met with stone, but no human face. The wanderers above the sea of fog are closer to Daystar than any of us. It is not unusual for pilgrims to return blind, or not to return at all, having fallen, dazzled, dashing themselves against the lower peaks; a mass grave.

Even here in the city, those of us that have any knowledge of the way will stare into the Sun as the Moon eclipses her and eventually find ourselves mad with the beauty of it. If you’re lucky, she leaves you aching and half blind for a tenday. If you aren’t, the pilgrims know to take you with them to the fog.

Scholars that get caught in the knowledge of the Sun’s gaze, leave erratic manuscripts of devotion and lust behind them that speak of the true way, the true knowledge. But they seem to reach it too quickly and she burns them away from the inside.

Very rarely, one of the folk from the mountains comes down to aid some dayblind sibling or friend from a past life to make the journey. They wear green glass across their kind eyes - perhaps to help them better see their way through the fog? Either no one has asked them or no one remembers their answers. Some of us have taken to wearing green lenses without really knowing their benefit.

The folk are said to be powerful in ways we don’t understand. A gift from Daystar? Sometimes they show their faces to those that make their way up their perilous mountainsides. Those pilgrims that come back whole are subtly changed. There is some ember - given, shared, taken? A sunmark that glows within them, distancing them from the rest of us.

To pick them out from a crowd, one would have to be skilled with flame, and have studied the way. Only then do the sunmarked shine out as though burning with some inner, ever-exploding light. 

Some scholars believe that the Moon has her own designs. She may only be borrowing the Sun’s power, but there is some debate about whether or not that’s true. Perhaps she too has people in the mountains watching her above the fog. Perhaps the mountain folk gaze at both through their green glass. Perhaps there are moonmarked among us, but their light is too subtle for our bleached eyes.

[marachime]

E4 2018 Hots

Some minor Nots

Losing my lil snake necklace

Waking up cold

Hornets (although this got better as I dealt with them more)

Now to the HOTS

Sitting with and chatting to the lovely Two Feet folks on the Thursday evening and enjoying the fire, the sky, and the midnight sausages together <3

Camping right next to Claudia <3 Hearing Claudia singing in the Nevarr camp from most of the way across the field <3

Collecting feathers from the battlefield pre-time in on the Friday with Mike and Amy. Amy defended our journey from angry trees that were definitely going to attack us ;3.

Getting to be better friends with most of the folk at Ashenhall (Paul, John, Susan, Emma, Steve), and making new friends with lots of people around the Mark.

Hugging Charlie, Izzy and Martin <3 <3 <3

Getting to hang out with Sneery and sharing some hugs <3

Pushing Mike into selling ALL THE THINGS :3

Seeing a shoulder dragon in Dawn and learning how it worked in whispered conversations :)

Handing a tired Lyla a bag of filched Dawnish cookies, and, on another day, enjoying the Marcher wassail pies together with EgreMike while we admired Lady Devereux’s immaculate princess attire in our swampy rags <3

Singing at Ashenhall - getting to sing HARMONIES UGH YES <3

First ever Goosewhisper! Arguing that yes you DO have rainbows dancing round your head, Sigvald! Honest! No but you do! D: You’re moving them with your hand - look!

Orme getting to be the first to tell Jag, the Thane of Ashenhall, the knowledge she’d gleaned in the goosewhisper vision, and discussing it with everyone.

Being BOOPED ON THE SNOOT by THE SHAMAN, and Arhan encouraging the eff out of a retaliatory booping XD. Nearly getting shanked by the Shaman for returning the boop hehe!

Selling every bit of chocolate marshmallow cake in a single morning, including some traded for battle fudge!

Watching Sigvald and a Dawnish fellow spar with one another - so fast! So fun!

A tiny conversation about how gorgeous the moon was and how amazing the stars are with a stormcrow on the Friday evening.

CHOCOLATE BROWNIES from a lovely person who came to Ashenhall for ONLY 5r omg they were SO RICH AND NICE. WELL DONE.

People selling savoury snacks <3

The folks selling packed lunches (bread, cheese, fruit, cake) - I nearly went back and got one but I was tired so went for a sit down and then forgot entirely, but next event I’m TOTALLY getting one because it seems like such a good idea.

Hearing someone playing a shawm-type instrument somewhere while walking through Anvil

Listening to Nevarr sing at night - ‘What do we do? SMASH!’ - and feeling proud hearing Claudia's voice sing the loudest and the nicest.

Commenting any time anyone said something in German, saying ‘oh I didn’t know you spoke Commonweal!’ ;D

Getting help and condolences for losing my snake necklace from the lovely GOD team lady who looked after me at E1 <3 And giving her cake for being so nice <3

Giving Marku a hug and a present, organised in cahoots with Queen Neens, which he wasn't expecting hehehe :3

Hanging out with Alex and jointly deciding that Marku is a nerd as loudly as possible while he was in the next tent XD

Getting a lift with Ed and Greg and sharing our stories on the way home!

Much more that my tired snek brain has forgotten (sorry if I've missed you! D:)

I love a field of 3000 people. Thank you for the great game everyone :D <3 <3

[marachime]

[12/1/14][prose][dream] An intense CoS nightmare

[12/1/14: I’ve tried to write it in a prosey, jkrowling way for you to read. but i’m still freaking out. nyrrrrrrrgh.]

I’m in Hogwarts looking around for secrets. As you do. I come across a false fireplace on the second floor and realise I can crawl through the back of it into a set of secret rooms. The rooms look like they’re in the middle of being decorated - there are large sheets over sofas and tables and the large glass doors onto the balcony are open as if to let out paint fumes.

I quietly have a look around and find more rooms in a similar state to the first, bookshelves covered with cloth and windows open. The place is deserted. Deciding that this section of the castle isn’t really worth my while (I’m lucid dreaming in Hogwarts after all - I can smell the feast going on a few floors below) I move back to the false fireplace.

As I go to leave however, I slip on something slimey underfoot. Looking down I see that wide grooves have been gouged out of the floor here and are filled with a congealing chartreuse gloop. The grooves lead over to a wall which I had taken for another covered bookcase. I walk over and lift the cloth to look behind it.

A gaping darkness greets me. I see the grooves bow downwards before disappearing into it.

Before I can even think of moving to follow them, I hear a noise. A very small noise, as though someone had knocked a book from its shelf in a library and hoped it hadn’t made a noise anyone could hear.

An abrupt jolt of fear shrieks through me; I realise that I must be very visible against the light, where anyone would be completely invisible to me in this pitch. Or anything. Without coherant thought I bolt out of the fireplace and pelt across the corridor to a corner under a staircase opposite.

The corner has been fitted with ancient wooden screens and bookcases and I look out from an ornate window frame carved out of one of the screens and wait.

A minute passes.

Another minute.

I start to hear something that I realise I’ve been mistaking for my mind singing to itself, but is now actively coming from outside of the ears. I realise it is a rasping intake of breath over and over. Something is sniffing for me.

i see it come out of its ubend shaped lair. glowing acidic slush (like antlions nests) its eyes and mouth flare red glow against the walls.

goes outside on a long balcony to look for me, its smell isn’t too good. it comes back only to find spiders blocking it. avocado skinned. it flees from the spiders which is non canon accurate and i take the  opportunity to search its lair for the horcrux, moving my hand about in its nest slurry for the cup.

Not there, i come out and turn into a less used path of its lair only to find a dead end. My arm covered in the acid goo i keep searching in the bones and cloth debris there and feel a small metal cup brush my fingers. as i grab it i hear the avocado skinned worm returning behind me. i crouch on a shelf and hope for it not to see me. as it turns into its lair i realise that it’s only a matter of time before it knows i was in its precious gloop nest. I hear it taking its time to thread its body into the counterthread grooves on the walls of its nest, so i think to take the opportunity to run past while it’s preoccupied. I feel my heart burn its beat in my breast; i feel paralysed by my terror. i stare out into the red light of the more used path.

The crack of light coming through the bedroom door echoes red and I still know for some moments that the basilisk will taste me any second.

[marachime]

[3/9/17][ed11/2/18][prose][FFic][HR] Jiǔtóu’s fear.

[CW: blood, death, manipulation] The bracer glints up at Jiǔtóu in the slowly shifting light. There is an occasional hiss as blood runs down some channel and drips into the molten rock. Though she refuses to look in that direction, she knows Elora is slumped in the corner of the forge, her body covering Cam's. Reynard’s body did not survive the lava a second time. When Sylval saw Elora fall, she no longer had a use for Adrik or the king. Their throats lie open behind Jiǔtóu. She will not turn to look at them. She crouches, face turned away, unable to get past the one fact that has managed to push past her rage and horror: she is alone. She can't bear to look at anything here or at herself. All of it is too close, too frightening. She hasn't been alone since she fled Bresseras and bound herself to her companions. She feels like she's that little girl again, watching her parents being murdered by the dragonborn in red and gold. This room is unimaginably hot. Jiǔtóu is shivering, her face covered in tears and blood - blood of various colours. ‘Help.’

She whispers without realising it, a desperate, mewling sound that comes burbling out of her, past her tears and her raw throat. The blood bubbles and pops on her lips as the words escape them.

‘Please.’ My poor little demon. She jerks her head up as her mind fills with his growl. ‘NOT YOU!’

The force of her loathing bellows out of her with a gout of flame. The luxurious purr touches her mind again. She feels his smirk. You're never alone, little demon. I’m here. ‘THIS IS YOUR FAULT! ALL YOUR FAULT!’ she screams, her voice echoing back at her. Poor child, whatever makes you think that? If anything, your... 'friends' deaths are the fault of that tyrant cloud giant. ‘I SWORE TO PROTECT THEM!’ You should have known you’re too weak without me. Jiǔtóu shrieks and leaps across the lava channel separating her from the wretched little jewel encased in its beautiful demonic metals, drawing her fist back. As she strikes the jewel, her attack too weak to do more than bruise her own fingers, something strange happens. As she touches it, it twists and bites around her arm. Her blood starts to gush over the metal, the jewel flickering mischieviously up at her. ‘N- No- NO!’ As Jiǔtóu cries out, her voice already raw from screaming, she can hear his feverish murmur in her mind. Yes, give it to me, give me your lifeblood, unite with me once more and we can destroy them all. The jewel flares as the bracer drinks, and Jiǔtóu’s eyes abruptly go dark. She stands, but it is not quite her any more. When she next opens her mouth to speak, her words sound strangely echoey, as though two people were talking with one voice. We shall clense this world of tyranny. Together.

[marachime]

[2/11/17][notes][dnd][fable] Ideas for converting the Fable universe to a DnD-ish setting

- Theresa would be a common thread throughout (is she immortal?) - combat is already sorted. - you'd need a fable-specific monster manual - a map of Albion - rules of commerce - localised monster and NPC encounters - quest hubs: the spire, bowerstone, oakvale, hook coast, northern wastes, snowspire, darkwood, greatwood, witchwood, wraithmarsh etc. - (hold on. snow/spire/??? is this another spire? :D perhaps there are more spires in the world.) - meet the NPCs from the game - Avo and Skorm as ancient duelling gods - what other powers are there? - the oracle, the mask, the dragon, evil speaking coaxingly in your head - take the albion map and remake it in hexographer - would it be an AU Fable, where the universe and some of the characters are there, but it's more open world and less railroady/vidja game written. - a hybrid of dnd and the fable universe, where adventuring and such isn't restricted to the main hero - perhaps use The Guild from F1 as an archetype. - the quests and motivations are fable based. - similar to how they converted Dragon Age to a tabletop setting? - titles? chicken chaser ;) - DOGS <3 - focus sites - places the players notice around the place long before they become plot relevant.

[marachime]

[9/9/17][notes] Dragon ideas

Maybe all the dragons are ancient and dislike eachother for some ancient slight or outcome of a battle or such - plus, maybe female dragons have become rare for some reason, and because of these reasons young dragons very rarely come about. the dragons avoid conflict because they're the last of their kind and slow to reproduce. they would probably be wary of new people, perhaps worried about spies from other dragons - worried that the old troubles would repeat themselves. These dragons would keep themselves isolated, or be asleep for so long that they forget they're dragons and become part of the landscape - maybe they'd be able to be woken up by something specific. I think if a player came across one of these dragons, they'd be grumpy and wary, but also unwilling to provoke aggression, and also would have this mixture of pride and sadness about the past of their species Maybe a dragon would get used to a family of a particular Kynseed and try their best to help them out with their troubles. Dragons would live for many many generations of humans, and could talk to the player about how their ancestors dealt with similar problems maybe.

[marachime]

[1/8/17][notes] The Watchers obscured

The moons are also known as The Watchers. 'Watchers guide us'. There are perhaps only three deities in the current era, with djinn and other spirits seperate or connected to the three. The folklore is that the two binary moons are in love, and the third moon watches with jealousy as they dance together. Those that follow the third moon are looked down upon, so followers avoid talking about their deity in public circles (like Heden/Lynwen in Matt Colville’s Ratcatchers series) Some time in the past the astronomers worked out that the binary moons came from a colision with our planet and that the third moon is retrograde and therfore is a caught moon. maybe a caught moon from another planet that died in the sun expanding. The sun is huge and bright in this planet. it's at the end of the expandy stage. ancient astronomers prophecised this and know the sun will one day calm back down, leaving this planet cold and much darker and less protected. perhaps the third moon was (according to the folklore) in love with another, which it lost to the sun. So the people look to their moons for guidance and reassurance, confirmation that they're making the right decisions, reminders to do the good thing rather than the selfish thing. When their moons are obscured by cloud, people feel they are no longer being watched and so are more likely to do silly things, selfish things, dangerous things, terrible things. They might feel guilty about it once they can see their moon again - once they feel Watched again (Watched with capital W could mean a deity taking special interest, negative or positive, in a person.) - and there might be a convention of confessing in this society. maybe the third moon is shunned because it’s seen as one that heralds sorrow (reminder that the sun is shrinking), one that brings pain (unrequited love, and longing looks at the binary moons dancing). maybe the third moon is very rarely lit, and only its followers know/learn where it is in the sky, so it makes non-followers uncomfortable because they feel Watched without being able to see the Watcher. maybe the rare times the third moon is lit/easily visible are festival times. maybe the third moon is only ever visible during the day.

[marachime]

[23/1/17][prose][notes][Spectrum] Forest lake village

'Why didn't you tell me the Marans come through here. why do you trade with them? do you care nothing for the boy's safety?' Nell realised her voice was rising. 'Don't be stupid, little girl.' Nell glared back at the woman. 'Of course I care about him. I treat him like he's my blood. We are bound. But the lake... we don't have clean drinking water, not without the lake being free of poison, and if me and the boy are the only ones doing it, then there's only enough clean water for this house before the poison is back. Don't you think I would rather not deal with them. I'm the elder now, since Old Peep died, and it's my responsibility to look after the village.'

'Why can't you get the rest of the village to help with the lake if clean water is so important and they're so frightened of the Marans?' frowned Nell.

'Oh, you know how it goes.' said Nanna, the fire of anger leaving her eyes to be replaced with a resigned, despairing expression. 'The younger generations think Djinn are just stories. Even I only know about the stories. I've never seen one, and I only have my grandpappy's memory to go from, and he hadn't seen one since he was a boy. It makes me wonder if they're even still around, let alone if they were ever here in the first place.'

Nanna saw Nell's frown and said quickly, 'Now don't get me wrong, I believe in Goddess and I know Mara is real. How could he not be, with all these evil happenings in the world and these Marans so convinced that his runes and bells permit them to do such horrid things. But while I'd like to think Goddess has time for us... Have a look around.' She gestured towards an abandoned farm house. 'We don't have the water for livestock, so the children go hungry and sick - we all do, for that matter, unless we buy water from these Marans. We have to trade with local villages for crops and supplies, and it's not cheap, so we have to get the money from somewhere. All I can do is my best until some miracle sets us free from our state, or death comes.'

Nell tapped her lips, then asked 'What if there's another way? What if I could clear the lake for you, permanently?'

'Well that's a lovely thought, a dream even, but that's all it is while those poison shrooms line the bank. If i could just get the village to rally together, but we don't get many young, strong men on a diet of weak porridge, sour water and sitting.'

'What about strong women?' Asked Nell, her cheeks slightly pink as she looked into Nanna's eyes.

'Aye.' Said Nanna, smiling a little at Nell's expression, 'Aye, you may be right there.'

'I'll see what I can do, you gather the village and wait near the lake, then we'll see what can be done.'

Nanna watched Nell's back as the girl walked away

'Nanna, why are you smiling?'

She looked down at her boy.

'Oh she just reminds me of someone.'

'Who?'

'Me.'

She took the boys hand in hers and they turned together into the village square.

--

Nell strode up the side of the hill, checking and re-checking her satchel. There was really one here, a real Djinn. She hadn't come across one for nearly a year. As she got to the top of the hill and started walking around the lake, a wind blew up and she wrapped the rainbow crochet cardigan Nanna had lent her more tightly around her chest, holding the material in place with the bandoleer strap of her bag. Djinn were usually so difficult to pinpoint, because they spread around and lost their shape after a long time without human contact. Eventually, some Djinn became so spread out they completely lost consciousness, and their energy was used by the nature where they had died for flowers and trees and animals. But this one was in local stories, and even called themselves by a name.

/There must be some focal point that they hover on, that keeps them locked into a focused shape, a focused existance. Some reason, some pattern./ Thought Nell as she moved towards the darker side of the lake. /Maybe someone talks to it a lot. Or maybe the fact that the village nearby still speaks its name in stories is enough for it to continue knowing itself./

Nell paused to wrap the filter around her face as she reached where the toadstools started encroaching onto the grass. There was a pair of wading galoshes and an oilskin poncho in a pile nearby, which she also put on, as per Nanna's instructions. There were literally millions of them, and as she walked through them, they spat up white mist. Spores. She was glad none of them would be getting on her clothes.

The further she got towards the copse, the denser and larger the toadstools became, until eventually their purple spots were higher than she was tall, and she could see the ribs of their spore-loaded underparts. Every tiny movement Nell made, created a new cloud. She had to push at their stems to get past and was showered in white spores for her efforts, but the oilskins did their work, the spores sliding off her like flea eggs off a dog.

She kept walking, heading to where the toadstools were at their densest. She knew that would be the place. She also knew she was expected. Probably the stools were in reality one giant stool with many stems. At the core would be the djinn in control of it.

> The copse was entirely made of purple toadstools. It dominated the horizon, and when the wind got up, the spores would leap out and be brought to take root elsewhere in the forest. They also took root in the village, and villagers spent their mornings culling them as best they can. But the poison weakened them, and they came to rely on the Marans to get rid of the problem for them.

> Then when the Marans realise what the villagers are doing at the lake they demand that they stop it. It's their responsibility not the villagers. Nell works out a deal with the Djinn, who releases them from the poison, and the place where the shroom copse is returns to its field of glorious fertile land. The djinn remains on the grave, but the mushrooms he produces are no longer poisonous, and the villagers are able to harvest them and use them, and also use the rest of the meadow that the Djinn's copse covered for farming and livestock, and the water is clean now so they can unstop the dam which they built to keep the poison from going downstream.

> Perhaps the rest of the village shuns Nell for her magic, but Nanna knows, or just the boy knows. Maybe Nanna makes her leave but out of fear of the other villagers then disliking her boy because marans. No but Nell is a good blue magic user and shows this by bringing back their lives, so then they can accept the boy as a healer and stuff. So maybe Nell initially gets shunned by the village, and then Nanna knows she was trying to save the boy's life and that he wouldn't be alive without her, so then Nell disguises herself differently and then they sort out the lake/river/lagoon (can lakes be part of rivers? can lagoons? difference between two words?) and then the village realises that just cause the Marans are twats doesn't mean all blue mages are twats.

> And that is the reason for Nell's pilgrimage (or at least, the effect of it), that Nell walks around showing people that blue mages are just mages, and all this segregation is just bullshit.

[marachime]

[27/9/14][notes][Spectrum] Early Spectrum notes

> Magic in this universe is red and blue (usually. but i’ll talk about that some other time. to the best of anyone who we usually meet’s knowledge, there’s only ever red or blue magic). Girls use red magic which is associated with being good and healing and fighting for just causes. Boys use blue magic which is associated with this evil guy, Mara, and therefore bad things and malevolence and murder. So people shun boys with magic and rejoice at girl mages.

> Nell, who was born male and therefore has blue magic, avoids using her magic because it means people can tell she was once a boy and would kick her away from them because they fear blue magic.

> In this one mini story she finds a village in her travels and decides to help them perform a summer solstice rite while she’s there. (this village is so far out of the way that it still keeps to the old ways of magic - that both colours are equal in ability and that neither one is intrinsically evil or good. they are however aware that not everyone thinks the way they do, and some of them know of blue mages who are servants of Mara and who take boy mages away and twist their hearts to evil, so they’re wary of blue mages from outside the village.)

> Nell teaches the children in the village a blessing handsign which is associated with the Goddess djinn (red magic) so everyone likes Nell cause she’s so helpful. One person however is slightly wary of her. The healer woman who has taken on one of the children as her apprentice healer - a boy mage. The healer is wary of Nell because she can tell that Nell is a mage but also that something is off but she’s not sure what (in this world magic users can recognise one another just by looking at eachother. they can just tell. maybe i will think of how sometime).

> She is very protective of the boy, who was left in the village by his parents who  were travelling merchants. when the Blue came to him at the age of 11 they were terrified of him and abandoned him on the street before leaving the village and never returning. The healer adopted him and helped him control his magic, and he’s doing well and is  getting to be known in the village as a kind and thoughtful young mage, if still a bit childish.

> At some point after the ceremony something happens like the boy decides to show off his magic to Nell because he really likes her (he too can tell in his bones that she is a mage, but he’s not really conscious of that. he just knows that she’s really nice and like a big sister or aunt. perhaps he used to have a big sister or aunt who was nice to him). He does something stupid and way too big and somehow lands in the lake or river next to the village. he can’t swim and starts to drown. so Nell dives in (there’s no one else around, but the magic the boy used was loud and big, like a lotr firework) and gets the boy out of the water. the boy is unconscious and Nell has to use her magic to get the boy breathing again and to pump the water out of his lungs. Then a shadow falls over the back of Nell as the boy splutters (i might make the boy a bit younger actually. not sure). It’s the healer. She pulls the boy away from Nell, and, afraid that Nell is one of the horrible, child thieving blue mages she saw when she was little, orders Nell out of the village to never return and pulls the boy back towards the village. Nell watches them leave sadly, drenched from diving into the water to save the boy. As she watches, the boy turns and does the ‘blessings of the goddess djinn’ handsign at her, smiling. She returns it, and the smile, though hers is tinged with sadness/tiredness at being rejected again. She leaves.

> Perhaps she goes out into the wood and stands on the path where the fox who is her friend meets her and licks her on the hand consolingly before they walk off along the road - it is implied that they will try again at the next village; more helping and changing minds for the better before being rejected once more.

[marachime]

[7/10/17][prose][SF] Broadcast

[Author’s note, Oct 7 2015: This is the version I handed in for my dissertation piece for my BA degree at uni :) I’m sure I’ll read this in a few years and tear out my hair at how awful it is or something, but for now, this is the version I’m making available. Let me know what you think :) Enjoy~ ] ——————————– Broadcast Perhaps it would have gone differently if the supervisor’s earplant programming had included the politeness to knock before entering, rather than plugs that only gave him better coding and managerial skills. As it was, Karvinen was caught with his beautifully sculpted virus blasting out of the projector screen while it happily and extremely visibly ate its way through the delicious strands of the Game’s code. Luckily the bionic supervisor was still human enough to gawp for some useful moments, allowing Karvinen the chance to panic and fire a volley of sleep-spines into the man’s neck. ‘Oh wonderful.’ He typed a brief summary of the incident to Sisu and grimaced at the reply; the supervisor’s sudden unexplained lapse into his sleep-cycle had been noted by TyCorp’s monitor system. As Karvinen sat contemplating their sleeping colleague, TyCorp Agents were moving to this office. They would be better-armed and, more importantly, better ‘planted than his supervisor, and they were on their way to see whether there was an emergency situation. A virus eating through the most profitable and powerful piece of technology on the planet - he supposed that might technically count as an emergency. One puny spine pistol wasn’t going to make much of an impression compared to what they would be carrying. Sisu pinged him for response, and he gave the screen another frown before klacking out a confirmation – they would have to resort to their back-up plan. Sisu pinged back her acknowledgement and wished him luck. Her screen and the projector went white like two, blind eyes. He had about three minutes to get out. Karvinen stumbled off of his chair, having trouble aiming his legs. As he passed the frame, the door noted his departure and slid itself shut, locking itself diligently. Old Tybalt himself had suggested his promotion into the rooms closest to the core. Karvinen could feel it buzzing itself up to a temperature which would cause it to act like a small bomb as he walked past its little room. He headed across the landing and onto the back stairs of the building with a calm that surprised him . Here on the dimly lit stairwell he could distantly hear the Call for All Agents spreading out across the corridors. As he moved upwards he knew that his heart sat in its evolved cushion in his left breast and was being told by electrically controlled chemicals to pump his blood around faster. This was as a result of the stress of getting caught, but it felt like it dangled heavily in ropes suspended from his throat, cuffing his lungs with each swinging beat. He felt his knees stumble as he came up the last of the stairs and he abruptly found himself on the floor with a ringing noise dying in his ears. He let himself enjoy the cool stone beneath his cheek in the dim, honey-soft glowlamp light for a few seconds, then stood warily. In front of him, through a door’s sigil-embossed frosted glass, he saw the distorted shapes of Agents sprinting past and saw them fading into the elevators that adorned each side of the unmanned atrium. He waited until he was certain the room on the other side of the door was empty, then showed the polished scanner his card. The door slid open for him happily – Security’s gaze was entirely focussed on a place deep within the facility, where a small black cube at the Game’s core had suddenly become so scalding it glowed, shaking itself erratically and splitting cables with the effort. Compared to that, what did it matter if someone with the right card wanted to get through a door? The outer doors let him pass as well, but these hardly had security on them. This didn’t mean they were liable to be breached, however. All employees lived in a walled off village created for them by the company and were stripped of their identity plugs. Every citizen was required to have their ID plug on them at all times as part of the rules of the city. The plugs were kept by TyCorp until the employee either died or somehow miraculously rose through the ranks to a place of trust within the company. That meant they owned your life. You couldn’t leave, and you relied on the facility to eat and to afford to play the Game without poisoning yourself in some bootlegger version. Anyone who was stupid enough to try to break into the facility or destroy any of the equipment were never seen again. No, as Karvinen knew first hand, if someone wanted to cause any damage to TyCorp, it would have to be far more subtle than marching in through the front door with a pipe-bomb. Karvinen was not born in this city, but in a more permissive city to the far north west. He had known enough not to fight them as they took his plug, though. Soon enough he gained the esteem and trust of the company and had it returned to him. He become an essential part of the programming and hardware engineering teams. During the months he spent ‘proving his loyalty’ he learnt the code of the Game from the perspective other hackers had yet to ever access - from the inside. The people of this city were not brought up to distrust their elders or to break rules. They gave up their existence to the company rather than break the social norm. Rather than be rude! Every few years one or two of the people trapped inside the perimeter would inevitably snap and try to escape. The Agents made light work of them. After what seemed like a long time, Karvinen realised his feet had already taken him through the village of apartment blocks that clustered around the towering TyCorp facility building. He had numbly passed the outer gates of the perimeter and was away along the wet, moon-lamp lit street. A short, low, grumble from the direction of the facility told him that the Security Agents hadn’t managed to temper the exploding core. He and Sisu had made sure it would destroy itself and as much of the Game’s main circuitry as it could. The more it destroyed, the easier their task. The blurry buzz of panic that had pushed into his ears quietened and let him move a little quicker and without shaking. This was the first time Karvinen had left the perimeter wall for nearly a year. Neither he nor Sisu had been certain that the core would get enough of the Agents away from their posts atop it. He put his hand out in front of him and saw that it was held in a shaking fist. He could feel the bite of the two ID plugs against his palm, his own, and Caroline’s, the only thing he had left of her. Now that he had successfully escaped the perimeter, he needed to get down to the warehouse on the fifth level. The facility was on the second highest level of the city, the only pylons above it being those that supported the richest families’ houses and gardens. This level was laid out like a cog, with a pylon at its centre that was the main protection for the continued elevation of the level above. It also acted as a conduit for the official transport system between each of the levels. Karvinen could see an elevator sparkling against the base of the pylon. He managed to stop his contemplation of the plugs and push his legs towards the pylon. Though the richest families controlled so much of the happenings of the city, they had yet to completely secure their fingers around the throat of nature. The Earth kept clinging to the last vestiges of its time honoured traditions; the sea, however full of layers and layers of microplastic waste, was still able to produce clouds that spread out across the Earth and plunged its cities into regular torrential periods of grey. The special filter systems that kept the water pure for those that could afford them did not stop the chemical rain from hissing and steaming out grooves and dips in the streets. The weak plastic of his mac was already starting to crease. Karvinen kept his head turned downwards so his face was protected by the hood. The streets were empty. The androids remained at their posts and the poor were in their more secure hiding spaces lower in the city. Not that there were many who wanted to leave their hovels these days. The Game was not something easily walked away from. Karvinen came to the end of the rain-pocked, flooding street where an old tramline sat unused and headed towards one of the dry elevators. He stepped in and punched his destination with relief, feeling a minute easing in his chest. ‘Welcome, Sebastian Karvinen. We will be at level five shortly.’ Karvinen jumped, and as the elevator moved down he could feel one of the plugs grow warm in his clenched hand. It had recognised his plug. ‘That’s probably not good.’ * As the ersatz core exploded in the lower reaches of the TyCorp building, Sisu jacked into the shell and checked her facilities. Facility check was in progress. The drought which had until now persisted for more than a decade and turned the earth surrounding the city to sand dunes had finally broken. The city was drowning in monsoon water. Facility check was 35, 36 percent complete. Beginning secondary system activation. It was to be noted that the shell that Sebastian Karvinen had handcrafted for her first day of Awake, was now upon its second use encased in a transparent plastic that might hinder movement. It was also to be noted that this plastic had damaged the successfully skin-like polymer casing on this shell. It was now discoloured into greys and pale mushroom brown. Considering the acidity levels of the rainwater, the casing was liable to further degradation. It was unlikely that the shell would pass for human for very long. 76, 79 percent completion. The Core was confirmed destroyed: moving to ‘Plan B’. Primary Virus Core was online and held the viral programming with no problems. PVC nested in the shell’s primary circuit board like a cuckoo’s egg. It was quite happy to be there until it hatched, at which point it would kick out any foreign code surrounding it. With the destruction of her core in the TyCorp facility, this shell was the only one she had left, in the city or otherwise. Facilities check 100 percent complete. Please Ping for orders if required. The shell was viable, and Sisu did not require secondary orders, so did not Ping. The eye-coverings opened with a quiet click and Sisu’s tests implied the warehouse was dark. She pushed the circuitry clipped along the shell’s limbs into life with a surge of electricity. Sisu moved the shell’s fore-limbs out against the casing surrounding it and broke through the brittle plastic barrier, using the fingers to peel it from the shell. She stepped her lower limbs sideways along a row of various unknown objects and accidentally brushed against one or two. They tumbled to the floor before her with a crash. Upon sensing the movement, the warehouse’s security system expressed a short and dull humming noise, which became an insistent alarm in a frequency below unaided human hearing. A beam of light swept across the warehouse and, upon confirming movement, the security system turned the main lights on and locked the doors out of the place. * ‘Thank you for making use of me, Sir. Have a safe evening!’ The Elevator slid smoothly up and away through its metal chute, taking the light with it and leaving Karvinen alone to move through the wet. Compared to the tall-walled company buildings and sculpted living spaces of the second level, the buildings in the fifth level were slums. Down here in the lower reaches of the city, each level cuddled up close to its father level below it. The fifth level was filled with abandoned markets, warehouses and a plethora of empty shops and merchant’s abodes, none of which had to be very tall before they were touching the bottom of the fourth level above. Everywhere here was flooded with monsoon water. Karvinen started to move towards the warehouse where he had stored Sisu’s shell. From there they could go down to the bootlegger’s cathedral together and implement the virus. They had been forced to abort the original plan to destroy the Game from inside out. That meant Karvinen and Sisu had to implement the virus from the outside in. This involved one of them jacking into the Game. Under normal circumstances this would not be a dangerous task. The official Game units dealt with and regulated the bodily functions of the player with sophisticated nano-robotics which meant a person could safely never leave the virtual Universe. But these Game pods, with their high-tech life support systems, were far too expensive for any but the wealthiest citizens. That was why so many bootlegged versions were available in the lower levels of the city. An attempt had been made to replicate the tailored and efficient support systems of those official Game pods. Sure, they kept you from needing to stop to eat or use the facilities, but not indefinitely. The bootleg game halls just pumped you full of chem and sugar substitutes. You would function well enough to play and you would not feel any pain, but the poisons that would usually be excreted from the body build up. Accelerated by the low-grade saccharine most halls used, within the space of a few days the player was unknowingly playing while their organs failed and bled out. The last to go was eyesight, but by that time the player was unconscious anyway. The brain in its final moments was merciful in that respect. The chem had no effect on Sisu though. The shell she was puppeting to move the virus to the cathedral was immune to their effects. Her program was stored in a hidden bunker out in the Wastes, a desert that surrounded the city. From there Sisu could inhabit one shell at a time just as those jacked into the Game could inhabit one character at a time. The core in the TyCorp facility had been one of her shells. Exploding it would not have harmed her, just as the chem that the pods down here would pump into her shell would not harm her. Karvinen had built Sisu’s program himself, more out of loneliness that any desire to use her destructively. The Game had taken everything from him. It had taken Caroline, the only person who truly understood and listened to him. In a daze of grief and depression, he had tried to recreate some semblance of her in an A.I.. Sisu was the result. Caroline’s circumstance had become commonplace in the city. No one thought the Game would affect them as it had so many others. They played the trial, messed about with character creation, then, before they knew it, they had spent an hour choosing the perfect nose shape, another hour on hair styles and two on dying armour. They had become, as the media had put it before most of them too had succumbed, Enthralled. Now all human endeavour had been replaced with the grind for experience points; the acquisition of the latest pets and armour, the newest weapons. Guilds within the Game would feud over digital castles, while in the real world the weeds grew high enough to knot with one another over the tops of apartment blocks. That was why it was rare these days for the streets to have any human traffic on them. The androids and their trash trams sometimes seemed to be the only inhabitants of the city. As Karvinen moved down the street towards the square where the little warehouse sat in its squalid acid-proofing, he saw there was a sparse market here as well. When he turned the corner into the square he saw several policemen hovering about the warehouse, and amongst them, one of TyCorp’s Security Agents. Surprisingly, there were people in the square. They were surreptitiously watching the police from the nearby market stalls. Karvinen wasted no time joining them, affecting interest in the chem and spare parts laid out for sale. The idea of being spotted by an Agent made his stomach twist with nerves, but he had to see if Sisu was safe. What if she had already been caught? Above the din of haggling vendors, Karvinen heard the warehouse owner call out. The man first screeched a wave of Turkish, then Chinese syllables, before stumbling into broken English: ‘He didn’t tell me thing was live, how I know? I’m not robot expert!’ The owner was waving his hands above the heads of the Agents questioning him, his face sweaty. ‘It break locks! Run out! How I meant to stop such a thing? It not like those.’ The owner gestured towards a pair of androids that were shovelling debris from the hole in the warehouse onto a cart. ‘Blue eyes! Blue I tell you.’ As the doorway of the warehouse cleared of police for a moment he saw the door had been broken through. There was a Sisu-sized hole torn out of it. Karvinen felt his body relax a little. No construct had blue eyes and it looked like Sisu had smashed her way out of the building rather than get caught. She would be on her way to the bootlegger’s cathedral. Karvinen was watching the androids empty their buckets into a wheelbarrow when he saw the Agent fiddle with one of the ‘plants behind its right ear. After a moment it nodded to the surrounding policemen, then left the square. Now he could leave unnoticed and follow Sisu down to the sixth level. Maybe he would even catch up with her on her way there. * As predicted, the casing of the shell was already becoming less elastic under the constant weathering. Fine crazing was starting to appear which would soon develop into cracks. Sisu kept moving despite this. It would take longer for the casing to disintegrate completely than it would for her to reach the cathedral on the level below. She sent herself through the back alleys of the fifth level to where she would be able to use one of the unofficial lifts to reach the level below. As she turned a corner into one of the larger streets she was startled to hear voices nearby and hastily crouched behind a pile of bin bags. Not only were Karvinen and Sisu being pursued by TyCorp Agents, but any robot not employed by the City was banned from open movement on the planet. Even the miniature ones used as desk maids in the more wealthy companies needed permits to leave their owner’s offices. Any regular citizens seeing her out in the open would certainly report her to the police. She had to be careful. The rain was making it less easy for her to get spotted. The only two men who Sisu saw pass the gap of the back alley she was crouched in hurried under the reinforced covers of a nearby game hall. Watching carefully for signs of further pedestrians, Sisu sprinted the shell up and across the road into another winding back street. She kept to one side of it where the floor was somewhat protected by a roof lined with ancient, rusty pipes. Sisu made her way through to the street on the other side and cautiously moved her head around the corner. She saw red and blue light flashing out through the grimy downpour. Police. This street wouldn’t be as easy to cross as the one before. She could see them swarming around a building about ten doors down from where she hid. After a few moments of observation, Sisu decided the only way to cross the street without them seeing her would be to pass them first. There were deep shadows on her side of the road which went all the way to the junction at the end. She calculated that if she kept herself in the shadows it was likely that she would be able to pass the police without being noticed. It would however mean walking in the drains. The rain had already hardened the shell’s skin and it was corroding it to a shade that certainly wouldn’t pass as human anymore. It was the only way. Carefully she edged along the gutter at the side of the road, trying as much as possible to avoid stepping in the path of the drain. The closer to them she got, the more clearly she could see the police through the rain. They were ransacking a bootleggers den. Sisu could see they were stacking boxes of confiscated hardware into a large lorry parked outside. As she watched, she saw there was one man who stood apart from the others. He stood under a reinforced tarpaulin they had erected as a base of operations while the policemen scurried around him. He wore blue and black, which marked him out as a TyCorp Agent. If Sisu had been able to pick out the features of his face, she knew she would be able to see the man’s earplants. She could see he was armed. The Agent was casually holding a flechette rifle in one hand, as though he had forgotten about it. He had his back to Sisu, and the policemen were all very focused on their work. With no one looking her way, if she moved slowly and quietly, then perhaps she could make her way past them all unseen. She pushed the shell on, keeping to the darkest parts of the gutter. As she was moving past a particularly large puddle in the drain a few metres behind where the Agent was standing, Sisu suddenly became aware that he was not alone under his tarpaulin. A silvery figure, almost indistinguishable from the grey rain that surrounded it, stood next to the Agent. It had to be some sort of construct, Sisu thought. Perhaps it was the Agent’s personal android? The construct turned its head slightly and Sisu stopped her shell dead with one foot in the puddle. She could see its eyes. They glowed blue, like hers did. Sisu stood transfixed. She had seen androids before, but they had all had red eyes. As she stood there, mesmerised by the figure with blue eyes - her eyes! -, it turned and looked directly at the patch of shadow where Sisu was hiding. Sisu repeated the order to the shell not to move, but the silvery figure made a gesture with its head to the Agent standing next to it. She had been noticed. Sisu stared as the Agent listened to the silvery figure speak, then turned abruptly to face her hiding space, raising his rifle. She should run while the Agent had yet to arm his rifle. But Sisu continued to hesitate. The blue-eyed construct had moved towards her a little. Perhaps it could see she wasn’t human, because it let out a quiet Ping of greeting. Sisu felt the summons of the Ping course through her code. The power behind that summons was shockingly alluring. It was unlike any Ping she had encountered before. She found it very difficult not to respond to it instantly. Where an android requested information politely, this one demanded it with a force akin to that of a Ping from a human. Sisu realised that if she allowed herself to stand their any longer, the next Ping would keep her from completing her task. She bolted the shell away down the street. Behind her she heard the Agent shout and moments later saw the wall of a building a few metres in front of her blossom dust as flechettes embedded themselves into it. She swerved into an alleyway to the left of the street, but not before the Agent managed to fire his weapon again. The dart shredded through the circuitry in her left hip and embedded itself there, damaging her leg. Sisu made a huge effort to keep running through the maze of alleyways. She managed to find a small alleyway overstuffed with bin bags into which she clambered awkwardly and crouched there in the dark. Gazing out from between two bags, Sisu watched as the police slid their torches across the walls of the alley opposite. The men were only cheaply ‘planted it seemed. At one point a policeman even swept his torch light into her hide, before jogging away, oblivious to her presence. After a few minutes they all moved further away in their search. Sisu was glad now for the discolouration of her shell if it meant she had avoided the eyes seeking her. She could hear that the police were some distance from her and was about to start back on her way to the cathedral again, when the Agent appeared. He walked calmly into her alleyway and stood there, his rifle idle at his side. Before Sisu could bolt once more, however, a Ping abruptly rolled out through the rain. She forced herself to order the shell not to move; what if she gave in to the pull of the summons? This time the feeling of power that prickled her code was dampened somehow. Sisu saw that the Agent had turned himself towards the source of the Ping and was nodding. The blue-eyed construct was summoning him! After the Ping had finished sounding, the Agent seemed to stare longingly towards the source of it for some seconds. Then he turned and looked directly at where Sisu was hidden. ‘Aren’t you lucky.’ he said dispassionately, then walked away. Sisu kept the shell still, waiting there in the tiny, reeking alley. She heard the Agent’s barked order to the police reflect dimly on the wet brick around her. Eventually all human sound retreated and Sisu was left alone in the hissing rain. Why hadn’t the Agent alerted the police to her presence? He had clearly known exactly where she was. Perhaps his ‘plants allowed him to see in the infrared part of the spectrum. Sisu became aware of an itchy feeling which the shell had been trying to get her to attend to for some time now. She looked at the hip and saw the flechette lodged there was pulsing out waves of energy. She decided the best description for the feeling was nausea. It was probably causing a slight loss in functioning in the shell. She could feel energy web itself along the dart then pulse out into the rain. If she could remove it, perhaps then she could concentrate enough to understand how the Agent had found her so easily. She grasped the flechette with the shell’s fingers, and was instantly met with the pulsing nausea of electromagnetism. It shot through the shell’s skin and into its circuits, spreading throughout the entire shell before she had time to execute an emergency ‘jack out’ command. Sisu was not aware of anything but blackness for a long time. * The night was barely visible down here on the sixth level. The rain used the neon lights that clung to every wall as water tanks, eroding the slogans for soft drinks and fast food into the chrome and granite of the buildings that wore them. The streets were deserted. Karvinen’s thin mac wasn’t especially helping to keep him from the buffeting sheets and his boots had what might as well be cardboard soles for all the water they were letting in. All of the shops here had fluorescent tube signs that bleated as they illuminated in languages he didn’t have the ‘plants to understand. Eventually he managed to find the one phrase which had drawn him to the place over a year ago: ‘First 3 hours free’. Karvinen entered the shop and closed the door against the storm, brushing water from his hair. It was warm here for which he was grateful as he was soaked through. A heating fan above the door was already leaving dry islands in the thin fabric of his mac. Karvinen stepped further inside and past a counter. It must have been manned at some point but was currently dustily reflecting the light of the sign outside. Beyond the counter he stepped through a beaded curtain which covered the entrance to a set of stairs which lead down. The stairs were at one end of what had once been a cathedral. Earth and metal pressed in on the room from all sides, but not all of the windows that lined it had been broken. Faces and colours were still recognisable in the ancient stained glass. Bootleggers had taken it over long ago. Every few metres a coloured pod obscured its player. There were hundreds of them in rows along the floor and on mezzanine platforms that lined the walls all the way up to the dark ceiling. They glowed out at Karvinen in a rainbow of firefly lights, pale but distinguishable through the gloom. He chose one of the pods on a mezzanine level and punched the button to open the lid of the smooth, apricot coloured pod. Getting himself comfortable in the seat, he looked at the Game system in front of him. He needed to make sure people knew the Game was deadly to humans, so he decided to record some sort of broadcast to be left in their minds once the Game was released. He would leave a server intact with only his broadcast running on it and do his best to lock it from tamperers. Eventually they would just smash the machine hosting the server, but by then it would be too late. Anyone trying to play the Game in the meantime would get the broadcast instead, along with a file showing the Game’s source code, just in case. Initially he had had no way to implement his vague notions of destroying the Game. He had known that what he needed was some sort of virus, combined with the physical destruction of the Game’s hardware. To create a perfect virus for the Game, he first needed to understand how it functioned: how the code was written. He had tried hacking into bootleg copies of the Game. That was how he had discovered the bootleggers cathedral in which he was now sat. Three or four of the distant glow-bug pods lay open and dark in the dusty gloom as a result of his earlier experiments. In order to achieve both of these goals he had to somehow get inside the TyCorp facility building and hack into their code systems without being noticed. It was then that he had heard about the problems TyCorp was having keeping the core of the Game stable. At the centre of the Game’s hardware was a supercomputer robot that directed all the servers and programs that ran the Game for everyone playing it. This robot was built according to the same laws all robots were, and as such required near constant maintenance. The robot would see the life signs of all the players connected to the Game from both official and bootlegged versions of the Game. So that meant it watched as humans throughout the city logged more and more time and got less and less healthy. Every day it watched the Game kill the people playing it, the continued existence of which was under its control. The core robot was welded to the floor so it couldn’t just run away or ignore what was happening, like a human could. Besides which, its programming wouldn’t allow that. In the end all it could think to do was explode itself. The developers and engineers had gotten so used to this, that it had become part of the daily routine to reset the robot’s memory every few hours. To begin with the reset caused major problems for TyCorp. Who was going to play a Game that turns itself off ten times a day? There had been far fewer Enthralled back then, with great works of art still being made, and people still sharing meals and talking to one another in the real world rather than through the pod mics. The company had tried installing a second core that seamlessly picked up the slack once its twin had lost the will to function; running and maintaining one core robot had already been very expensive. With two installed, TyCorp was almost not making money. Karvinen realised he had found a way into the trust of the company’s executives and into the building that housed the Game’s circuitry. He first suggested a way for the company to save money on their electricity bill. There were whole floors of the basement levels dedicated to the servers, with room after room filled with the neat, black cuboids. The servers were always on and cooled to a cosy 18 degrees C at all times in order to function properly. However, despite the load that they were capable of supporting, each individual machine only used about 10% of its capacity for running the Game. The rest was usually left idle. Karvinen proposed a way of reducing every ten machines down to a single machine. By virtualising ten machines and running them on one machine, 100% of the capacity of each server could be used for the Game at a time and the company would pay less money to run and cool them. This got him a seat at meeting tables. It was from there that he was able to propose the idea for his core. Karvinen explained that he could create a core robot for them which would not try to kill itself when it realised that it was harming humans. TyCorp’s official stance on the topic was that it wasn’t their product that harmed people, rather the people playing irresponsibly. All worthy employees believed this; those that voiced concerns were quietly reminded who it was that had their ID plugs and promptly fell into silence. Convincing a robot to ignore the truth was another matter entirely. When Karvinen explained that he could create a robot which would essentially lack the desire to protect humans as a part of its programming, Old Tybalt himself had given him the post of deputy chief engineer back before he had gone into retirement. Karvinen made a computer with all that was necessary for the Game to run on it, but rather than include a robot program, he installed Sisu’s broadcasting hardware. From the outside, the new core seemed to be a robot with little or no scruples. It took up so little space compared to the previous robots that it fitted into a small room in the centre of the server floors without difficulty. It was welded to the floor as the others had been. What no one else knew was that not only had Karvinen left space in the cube for Sisu, but also for a dynamo that, when it was activated, gave out enough energy for the core to grow very hot and explode, damaging anything near it. TyCorp had essentially welded a bomb to its own facility. Once the core was in place, they had started to work out the structure for the virus. The company was understandably extremely tight-lipped when it came to the code of the Game, and had measures in place which made it impossible for someone to try to hack into it from outside the company. They were also careful to the point of oppressive when it came to their workforce. To make sure the source code was not even partially leaked, all employees were required to wear implants which monitored their efficiency and bodily functions. What the company failed to do was monitor the core robot to the same extent. Sisu had constant and direct access to the code. The virus needed to mould against the Game’s intricate software perfectly. It took nearly half a year to build. Sisu had to watch first-hand from where she was jacked in to the core as the Game killed people. They were both frustrated with how slowly they were forced to work in order to not get detected. Finally it was time. Now that they had the perfect virus for the Game’s once-elusive code, he and Sisu could implement it from anywhere. Karvinen watched the broadcast through and klacked out an extra paragraph of code so it would upload along with the virus, then sat back. He should wait for Sisu to move her shell here. Technologically speaking, Sisu wasn’t capable of very much, but it was her job to implement the virus into the Game system. It was Karvinen’s job to prepare the Game’s code to receive it. At TyCorp they had stopped before the virus could work fully. This meant preparing the code again from the beginning. The preparations for the virus were delicate and complex and would take at least half a day to complete. The plan was to have Sisu jack the shell into a pod and with Karvinen instructing her. That way was far less dangerous than for him to jack in and do it himself.  Agents would be searching through every back alley ‘leggers in the city to find him, and TyCorp could be up and running before he had a chance to implement the virus. He had already wasted an hour waiting for Sisu. He felt stupid for not finding a way to shield his ID plug from the elevator before. He felt in his jacket and found the other plug, the one that had belonged to Caroline. He placed it on the pod’s keyboard, then he took out his own and placed them side by side. He looked at them for a few seconds. Karvinen pressed the ‘plant into a slot in his earlobe and jacked in. * There was a tall, silvery figure watching Sisu. He stood atop a distant tower and seemed to be calling to her. She wasn’t sure how she was able to see him so clearly when crowds of shadowy, grey figures swelled around him and the rest of the city like smoke. He was like a mirage; blindingly bright, and somehow not really there. Yet, despite this, Sisu felt she knew him as intimately as she knew her own software; somehow he felt more real than anyone she had ever met, even Karvinen. Karvinen! As she thought of her friend there was another explosion and the billowing nausea rippled through her again. Everything was dark, but this time Sisu slowly became aware that it was the dark of closed eyelids, not the oblivion she had been left in before the dream. Did A.I. dream? Perhaps it was an idle concoction of her software, to keep her distracted from the waves of reduced functioning the flechette had been producing. Meeting the silvery figure before in the street had certainly not been a dream. Sisu opened the shell’s photoelectric cells and looked at where the flechette had embedded itself in its left hip. It was gone. Perhaps it had snapped off? She looked around warily for it and saw that she was no longer in the trash-lined back alley. She was lying in one of the trams used to move garbage out of the city. Someone had moved her here. She had been lain out onto one of the seats near the driver’s cabin. This car was empty of refuse, but she could see others behind this one, stuffed with the same black bags she had blacked out in before. At the back of the cab, Sisu could see two grey figures standing over a third that lay on the floor. She thought for a moment that they were more of the grey figures from her dream. Sisu blinked her eyes. No, they were androids. The one on the floor had smoke leaking from it and held the flechette that had been in her hip in its hand. There was a dent in the wall of the cab next to where it lay. As Sisu lifted her shell up to try and see more clearly, one of the other androids turned and saw she was awake. It moved over to her, and Sisu saw that it had once been white, but its colour had dulled in the rain. Most of the androids on this planet didn’t have voices, and this one was no exception. But it had a Ping. It managed to intimate with a bow of its head that it was happy to see her awake. ‘Ping?’ Request? The feeling was feeble compared to that of the blue-eyed construct. Sisu pushed this realisation to one side and responded: ‘Yes. Where are we? I need to move this shell to the sixth level.’ The android held up its hand with the palm facing away from her, and curled the middle three fingers towards itself: Liú ‘Six?’ ‘Ping!’ The android confirmed, and watched her with its red, photoelectric eyes. Sisu made to get up but the shell stumbled. The flechette had ruined the leg - it no longer moved smoothly. The shell would probably not be able to run anymore. The android held out its hand and helped pull Sisu up from the seat. ‘Will that one function again?’ she asked, pointing to the android that had taken the flechette out of her. It still hadn’t moved. The android helping her up made sure she could stand by itself, then lifted its shoulders in a shrug. ‘Ping?’ Request? ‘Yes?’ Sisu watched the android move over to where its colleague lay, then return with part of the flechette. It was a small layer of circuitry. Sisu recognised it somehow, then realised part of her own broadcasting equipment was comprised of this. ‘It is a homing device?’ she asked the android, taking it. The android nodded. Sisu watched it for a moment, then understood. This was how the Agent had known exactly where she had been hiding in the alleyway. She crushed the tiny wad of circuitry in her hand, then gave the remains back to the android. As she stood there Sisu became aware that the shell was a lot lighter than usual, and, looking down, saw that its skin-casing had completely rotted away, leaving only the frame. It must have disintegrated off her in the rain. ‘How long has this shell been inactive?’ The android held up three, grey fingers. ‘Three days?’ The android nodded. Sisu staggered abruptly towards the doors of the tram. Karvinen had been waiting for her for three days. ‘I need to leave right now.’ The android nodded and went to the front of the carriage where she could hear it pinging at the driver. The flechette had shut off her shell without jacking her out, so she had been caught in a timeless sleep-like space between awareness and oblivion, unable to free herself. It had felt as though an infinite amount of time was passing. The android returned and helped her to the doors. ‘Thank you.’ Sisu said, as the tram stopped to let her off. The android motioned for her to wait. It jogged easily over to one of the tram carriages behind the one Sisu had woken in, returning less than a minute later with a plank. It tucked the wood under her arm then stepped back to admire its handiwork. Sisu tested the shell’s weight on it. It was a passable crutch. She thanked the android again and held up her hand in farewell as the tram moved away, then turned and started to make her way down the street. The cathedral was just ahead. Sisu moved as fast as her leg allowed to the neon covered building. The leg’s gears crunched and shredded against their frame. As she reached the building a gear froze and made her stumble and trip over her crutch and into the wall. She smashed into one of the neons and it drenched the shell in the rainwater it had collected. Sisu continued directing the shell forward, clumsily negotiating the bead curtain that hung over the entrance. There was a stocky woman at the counter inside. When she saw Sisu, she scrambled her hands under the table and brought out a shotgun, aiming it at her. She screamed in a language Sisu didn’t need a translation ‘plant to understand, but Sisu ignored her and hobbled onto the back stairs down into the cathedral. While she concentrated on maneuvering the shell down the steps, Sisu looked out at the lines of pods. Most of them were dimly illuminated. Some were dark and one or two of them lay open and empty. Near the back of one of the mezzanine levels there were some wet patches leading to a puddle on the floor around one of the pods. Sisu decided it was probably the one Karvinen was using. It took her several long minutes to make her way across to it, even with her crutch. Once there she saw that there was a coat lying in the puddle, the cheap plastic of which was already congealing into a foam. She pressed the admittance button on the pod. Karvinen’s corpse was sweaty and still warm from the chem. She let the crutch drop heavily onto the wet floor. His eyes were bleached white, the once blue irises now blind. After observing the eyes for a few seconds, Sisu moved the shell’s hand and closed the lids over them. Faintly, Sisu could hear shouts from upstairs. The woman with the shotgun had called Agents here. They were flooding into the cathedral. Sisu moved her gaze from Karvinen’s face and focused on the pod’s keyboard. There were two plugs there. She picked them up and closed them safely in her fist. She heard a shout echo from the stairs behind her but she ignored it, calmly taking an in-line from the pod. She plugged it into one of the ports under her chin, feeling the floor shake as the Agents pounded onto it. It only took a moment to upload the virus core to the pod. The code that Karvinen had spent his life setting up for her waited, expectant. Sisu pinged out an execute command and felt the Game finally dissolving away: it was done. Sisu turned, beatific, to accept the Agents’ wrath. She watched absently as her shell filled with row after row of flechettes. She thought that would be the last thing the shell would broadcast back to her, but abruptly Sisu felt the shock of a Ping coarse through her. She looked up through the Game’s disintegrating code and saw a pair of blue eyes watching her. It stared not at the shell, but at the part of her that was her. At Sisu. A final explosion of nausea shattered the shell’s transmitter hardware before she had time to react to the summons, and she was forcably jacked out. Sisu was alone. Epilogue For a week following the broadcast there were many squabbles and riots throughout the city. The message had brought itself firmly to the ears and begoggled eyes of the Game’s enthralled players and it didn’t take much effort to convince the androids that lived and served in the city that stopping the Game was a necessity. Several holes had been torn in the perimeter wall on the second level. Burnt out and looted game halls could be found on every major street, footage of which had spurred those in other cities and skystations to imitation. At least half the city collected in front of the stands of the smashed out city stadium to chant and scream for justice. The swell could be heard far out into the surrounding Wastes, where, had anyone been watching, they would have seen a lone, grey figure moving at a steady pace out into the dunes. The stadium shook with the cries that echoed and reechoed across its perfectly tuned amphitheatre. There was a raised platform protected by domed glass in the middle of the stadium and it quickly found itself a mushroom under fire as a group of figures wobbled up onto the protected stage. Seats, placards, whatever the crowd could throw far enough. Screens blinded into life to show close up images of those in the dome and a sudden ringing noise spread out from the mushroom. The cries died down as the crowd spectated warily. A tall, silvery figure stepped to the front of the group and the crowd seemed to hold its breath. The figure shone out a peaceful beauty that reflected in each spectator’s eyes. The telescreens showed the enigmatic silver man speak words of freedom, carefully refined to be heartwarming and amusing, and the broadcast, it was agreed, was now something to be forgotten. The man looked into the camera with a perfected expression of warmth. His eyes glowed a serene lagoon blue. Sisu froze the transmission. It hadn’t taken very long to build another shell. She had made some small modifications to make this one easier to pass as human and to better protect it. If she was going to go back into the city she would need to be able to do so without receiving the same amount of damage as last time. But there were still two small pieces missing. There was a Ping from outside the bunker. Sisu snapped open a visual channel to confirm it and unlocked the door. After a minute the android found its way to the room Sisu was in. It carried a mess of molded plastic with it, which was all that was left of the old shell. Sisu made a gesture and the android placed its load onto the free workbench, then stood back. Sisu reverently unfolded the still intact fist that lay in the pile and picked up the two plugs gently with her new shell. The final difference between this shell and her old one was that this one had spaces for plugs in its earlobes. Sisu slotted each plug into place, and turned to face the clear blue gaze of the silver man that still glowed into the bunker. Then she punched the key that turned the telescreen off. It was time.

[marachime]

[21/8/17][notes][HR] SPOILERS HIGH ROLLERS DND EP 56

Okay, but why would Crownrend capture Althadon and Korak and not just murder them? He /must/ be trying to lure Elora/Jiutou to him for some reason. Perhaps only to kill Elora? But maybe also to get Jiutou back? Or is it Sylval's doing that they remain alive? perhaps she is the one who wants her revenge on Elora? She certainly does want that. but would she have the will to override such a powerful Crownrend, one who must have been used at least 5 times by now, if not 10 times, and fed on the hearts of at least one if not more leaders - potentially even other demons - we don't know what happened when he shifted planes, probably to an infernal plane. I wonder who is in control of Sylval's actions now - whether she has any will against his desire to consume tyrants. Perhaps that’s why they went to New Light and destroyed the leader there, to appease Crowny while Sylval refused to kill Althadon and Korak, despite their ‘tyrant’ status. It’s gonna be so fun to find out what happens :D

[marachime]

[20/6/17][prose][FFic][HR] Jiǔtóu’s Choice

[Author’s note: This drabble is based on knowledge up to episode 24 of High Rollers DnD. If you’ve not watched the stream before, Mark, Matt, Katie, Kim and Chris stream their homebrew DnD 5e campaign at 5pm GMT every Sunday on https://www.twitch.tv/yogscast, and they upload the streams to the YogsLive channel. It’s full of excellent stories and characters, with voices provided by Mark and the excellent music provided by Steve. If you like fantasy stories with heart and humour, and not without its tinges of beautiful darkness, you will love the stream! So check them out if you haven’t. This drabble was written because I love the themes of temptation and corruption and struggle, and as a chaotic neutral character, I’m interested to see what choice Kim will have Jiǔtóu make about Korak and Crownrend. Many thanks to the Yogs for creating such an awesome, inspiring world and especially to Mark for inspiring me to try DnD :3. <3] ~~~ She follows both figures as they battle up the elemental mountain. She is instinctively drawn towards the one fighting with fire; her own element; the element that came easiest to her. She watches the grace and power of the burning figure, their form made unrecognisable by their speed. They abruptly slam into the figure of water, creating shock-waves as each element tries to overcome their opposite. A spasm of light shrieks out of them, and then they separate again into the familiar dance, one of them dodging, the other lunging, always fast, always moving up the mountain, a blur of colour. She follows them up the firey side of the mountain, jumping and sprinting after them, keeping pace but never gaining on them, her eyes lingering on the flaming figure. But as she comes to stand at the top and hears the two red/gold dragonborn speak, both of them knelt before the modest wooden temple, she knows that the one in fire is evil; that if she allows herself to be lured in by his words, by her primary element, many innocents will be killed, perhaps including her... companions. Equally, if she douses the fire and accepts the water dragonborn’s words, she will always have that broken thing inside of her; that feeling of not-quite-whole-ness that has plagued her for her entire life; that feeling that she only became aware of when it was silenced by Crownrend clamping around her arm that first time. What should she choose. Her desires make her feel like she cannot move. A step towards one choice means a step away from the other, and she doesn’t want to let go of either. If she could just be allowed to stay without choosing (already a hellish prospect) or have both choices at once, then perhaps this feeling inside of her would subside. These stupid humans and their petty squabbles - why should their idiocy affect her in this way? She can feel, rather than see, her companions standing at the side of the dragonborn in water, but this does not stop her feeling those familiar, comforting flames lick her arm playfully, the arm on which Crownrend lies; Crownrend, whose presence, that first moment she lifted the case up, filled her with such a feeling of wholeness and calm, one she'd never recognised as being absent before then. The human and the others may have felt Crownrend's heat as though they were standing outside of a burning building, but to her, the warmth was so inviting, so needed, like stepping into a bath after a long, tiring journey. She can feel the claws push slowly into her skin, not quite piercing it, but hungry, waiting; the jewel flickers; he knows her thoughts, her desire for the fire. She can hear him whisper his promises in her mind and she closes her eyes, a smile growing on her lips despite her indecision. She takes a deep breath to steady herself. When she opens her eyes, they are ablaze.