#immundanes

[loquaciousnesssesquipedalian]

Life on Verden

Verden is a Telluric (Terra-like) planet, meaning that it has environments and life roughly similar to that of Terra. It’s not even remotely the only one, but it is one of the most well known in the Sea of Stars (Milky Way). This is largely because of it having the unique characteristic of no extant and naturally indigenous sapient species, with all resident sapients’s species being extraterrestrial. This includes humans, who were introduced because of some of the previously resident civilizations relying on slave labor and test subjects in a similar manner to Africans having been introduced to the Americas. The practice has totally stopped in the 1700′s AD/CE, but it was already thousands of years old and already heavily controversial before the 1700′s.

Verden itself is slightly smaller than Terra yet has a more oxygenated atmosphere, allowing for larger organisms with insectoid respiratory systems, or otherwise, to survive. It has many dangerous native organisms, including megafauna, especially in the oceans. It has three continents, Nordheim (the northernmost continent, hence the name), Asura (a large continent roughly the scale of Asia), and Deva (several different mainlands, the largest of which is roughly the size of South America). Its biodiversity is another reason it’s well known among the Sea of Stars. Verden has relatively smaller polar ice caps than Terra, but Nordheim is still generally cold, as is the outer part of the Southern Eye, the ocean around the south pole. It also has deserts with somewhat more biodiversity than Terran ones, most of which are in the tropical regions, and the reptilian sapients are usually found there.

Humans: The resident sapient primates and a relatively recent addition, known for their unique cultures and languages and often discriminated against in at least some form depending on the region. They are adapted to the differences in Verden’s atmosphere and though genetic experiments of the past, often have unusual physical characteristics, such as unusual hair color

Magonians: A series of closely related insectoid species of varying sizes, many species of which roughly resemble certain types of Terran insects, native to Magonia and ultimately the inspiration for the cliche modern Terran image of fae/fairies

Elves: A species of roughly cat-like semi-humanoid marsupials, known for their beauty and intelligence, native to Alfheim

Dwarves: A species of boneless and hairless semi-humanoid native to Alfheim, surprisingly strong and also having a reputation of being highly intelligent and hard-working

Dragons: There are a few resident sapient dragon species, including a semihumanoid one, a flying one, and a semiaquatic one

Dinosaurs: There are several sapient dinosaur species residing on Verden, mostly goblin (sapient dromaeosaurid) species

Aquatics: A set of distinct aquatic sapient species, including a cephalopod-like one and a few piscine-ish non-humanoid ones along with merfolk, an extraterrestrial semihumanoid aquatic species with reptilian characteristics

Verden’s human population, and to a lesser extent the other populations, have a subset of mutants collectively known as immundanes, which for humans include but are not limited to vampires, therianthropes (aka skinwalkers), and for any given immundane population, specifc lineages with unusual and often beneficial physical characteristics in general. Vampires and therianthropes here are best described as an imperfect attempt at supersoldiers, with vampires relying on nutrients usually found in mammal blood to survive (and also not any more photosensitive than mundanes, or non-immundanes) being the reason for “failure” and therianthropes, sheer physical abilities being too much for the aliens responsible for their existence.

Vampires in particular are very often found holding positions of power, high social standing, and/or are wealthy, and unlike on Terra, this is very often due to vampires having much longer lifespans than mundanes and actually working on up. For Judaism-related reasons, they and Judaists tend to not get along well, but Jewish vampires are not unheard of.

Therianthropes are often associated with warrior cultures, such as Nordic and Mesoamerican ones, but not always in a good way. The most common variants on Verden are werejaguars, werewolves, and berserkers (werebears). Berserkers in particular have a relatively bad reputation due to how they’re described in Nordic sagas, which is ironic considering that how they’re described is not necessarily portrayed as a bad thing in said sagas.

[nothingunrealistic]

gotta love the rare occasion when a news article is shown on screen in billions and the text isn’t even an attempt at a fake article but is instead taken from some existing work of literature. see: this financial journal article and the word document behind it that are actually excerpts from two of h.p. lovecraft’s short stories, “pickman’s model” and “beyond the wall of sleep”.

Entertainment

RETROSPECTIVE SHOWS ARTIST’S VERY PERSONAL PROGRESSION

BY CHRIS MORRIS

You needn't think I'm crazy, Eliot- plenty of others have queerer prejudices than this. Why don't you laugh at Oliver's grandfather, who won't ride in a motor? If I don't like that damned subway, it's my own business; and we got here more quickly anyhow in the taxi. We'd have had to walk up the hill from Park Street if we'd taken the car.

I know I'm more nervous than I was when you saw me last year, but you don't need to hold a clinic over it. There's plenty of reason, God knows, and I fancy I'm lucky to be sane at all. Why the third degree? You didn't use to be so inquisitive.

Well, if you must hear it, I don't know why you shouldn't. Maybe you ought to, anyhow, for you kept writing me like a grieved parent when you heard I'd begun to cut the Art Club and keep away from Pickman. Now that he's disappeared I go round to the club once in a while, but my nerves aren't what they were.

Don't ask me what it is they see. You know, in ordinary art, there's all the difference in the world between the vital, breathing things drawn from Nature or models and the artificial truck that commercial small fry reel off in a bare studio by rule. Well, I should say that the really weird artist has a kind of vision which makes models, or summons up what amounts to actual scenes from the spectral world he lives in. Anyhow, he manages to turn out results that differ from the pretender's mince-pie dreams in just about the same way that the life painter's results differ from the concoctions of a correspondence-school cartoonist. If I had ever seen what Pickman saw- but no!

(this omits several paragraphs from the original short story, between the third and fourth paragraphs here.)

——————————

I have often wondered if the majority of mankind ever pause to reflect upon the occasionally titanic significance of dreams, and of the obscure world to which they belong. Whilst the greater number of our nocturnal visions are perhaps no more than faint and fantastic reflections of our waking experiences - Freud to the contrary with his puerile symbolism - there are still a certain remainder whose immundane and ethereal character permit of no ordinary interpretation, and whose vaguely exciting and disquieting effect suggests possible minute glimpses into a sphere of mental existence no less important than physical life, yet separated from that life by an all but impassable barrier. From my experience I cannot doubt but that man, when lost to terrestrial consciousness, is indeed sojourning in another and uncorporeal life of far different nature from the life we know, and of which only the slightest and most indistinct memories linger after waking. From those blurred and fragmentary memories we may infer much, yet prove little. We may guess that in dreams life, matter, and vitality, as the earth knows such things, are not necessarily constant; and that time and space do not exist as our waking selves comprehend them. Sometimes I believe that this less material life is our truer life, and that our vain presence on the terraqueous globe is itself the secondary or merely virtual phenomenon.

It was from a youthful revery filled with speculations of this sort that I arose one afternoon in the winter of 1900-01, when to the state psychopathic institution in which I served as an intern was brought the man whose case has ever since haunted me so unceasingly. His name, as given on the records, was Joe Slater, or Slaader, and his appearance was that of the typical denizen of the Catskill Mountain region; one of those strange, repellent scions of a primitive Colonial peasant stock whose isolation for nearly three centuries in the hilly fastnesses of a little-traveled countryside has caused them to sink to a kind of barbaric degeneracy, rather than advance with their more fortunately placed brethren of the thickly settled districts. Among these odd folk, who correspond exactly to the decadent element of "white trash" in the South, law and morals are non-existent; and their general mental status is probably below that of any other section of native American people.

Joe Slater, who came to the institution in the vigilant custody of four state policemen, and who was described as a highly dangerous character, certainly presented no evidence of his perilous disposition when I first beheld him. Though well above the middle stature, and of somewhat brawny frame, he was given an absurd appearance of harmless stupidity by the pale, sleepy blueness of his small watery eyes, the scantiness of his neglected and never-shaven growth of yellow beard, and the listless drooping of his heavy nether lip. His age was unknown, since among his kind neither family records nor permanent family ties exist; but from the baldness of his head in front, and from the decayed condition of his teeth, the head surgeon wrote him down as a man of about forty.

From the medical and court documents we learned all that could be gathered of his case: this man, a vagabond, hunter and trapper, had always been strange in the eyes of his primitive associates. He had habitually slept at night beyond the ordinary time, and upon waking would often talk of unknown things in a manner so bizarre as to inspire fear even in the hearts of an unimaginative populace. Not that his form of language was at all unusual, for he never spoke save in the debased patois of his environment; but the tone and tenor of his utterances were of such mysterious wildness, that none might listen without apprehension. He himself was generally as terrified and baffled as his auditors, and within an hour after awakening would forget all that he had said, or at least all that had caused him to say what he did; relapsing into a bovine, hall-amiable normality like that of the other hilldwellers.

(struck-through portions are obscured in the screenshot.)

[funeral]

I have frequently wondered if the majority of mankind ever pause to reflect upon the occasionally titanic significance of dreams, and of the obscure world to which they belong. Whilst the greater number of our nocturnal visions are perhaps no more than faint and fantastic reflections of our waking experiences...there are still a certain remainder whose immundane and ethereal character permits of no ordinary interpretation, and whose vaguely exciting and disquieting effect suggests possible minute glimpses into a sphere of mental existence no less important than physical life, yet separated from that life by an all but impassable barrier. From my experience I cannot doubt but that man, when lost to terrestrial consciousness, is indeed sojourning in another and uncorporeal life of far different nature from the life we know; and of which only the slightest and most indistinct memories linger after waking. From those blurred and fragmentary memories we may infer much, yet prove little. We may guess that in dreams life, matter, and vitality, as the earth knows such things, are not necessarily constant; and that time and space do not exist as our waking selves comprehend them. Sometimes I believe that this less material life is our truer life, and that our vain presence on the terraqueous globe is itself the secondary or merely virtual phenomenon.

—H.P. Lovecraft, Beyond the Wall of Sleep

[golgari-knight-blog]

Beyond the Wall of Sleep (excerpt) -by H.P. Lovecraft -art by James Eads

“I have an exposition of sleep come upon me” -Shakespeare

I have frequently wondered if the majority of mankind ever pause to reflect upon the occasional titanic significance of dreams, and of the obscure world to which they belong. Whilst the greater number of our nocturnal visions are perhaps no more than faint and fantastic reflections of our waking experiences-Freud to the contrary with his puerile symbolism-there are still a certain remainder whose immundane and ethereal character permits of no ordinary interpretation, and whose vaguely exciting and disquieting effect suggests possible minute glimpses into a sphere of mental existence no less important than physical life, yet separated from that life by an all but impassible barrier. From my experience I cannot doubt but that man, when lost to terrestrial consciousness, is indeed sojourning in another and uncorporeal life of far different nature from the life we know; and of which only the slightest and most indistinct memories linger after waking. From those blurred and fragmentary memories we may infer much, yet prove little. We may guess that in dreams life, matter, and vitality, as the earth knows such things are not necessarily constant; and that time and space do not exist as our waking selves comprehend them. Sometimes I believe that this less material life is our truer life, and that our vain presence on this terraqueous globe is itself the secondary or merely virtual phenomenon.

[divine-identite]

                                                        xxix.

                In Berserk, Caius shall be an entity of considerable powers kindred to the of the Skull Knight and the daemonic entities, God Hand. Of abilities and nature, it would be preternatural; with dizzy, swift speeds which dwarf human standards by its vast, the incredible force to cumbersome objects with relative ease. Which a normal human would find a mere task strenuous or buckle beneath the titanic weight is beyond the comprehension of humans.                  As most extraterrestrial lifeforms, their forms consisting wholly of special material, which their incredible anatomy far more advanced than most earth based life forms roaming over the planetary since prehistory. On the other hand, the prevalence of early lifeforms was singular in the highest degree. As a denizen of the spirit realm, a singular sphere of existence, no less important than physical life. A collaboration of human thoughts, emotions, dream life whose immundane and ethereal characters permit no ordinary interpretation. From its vast realm mingling with the physical world held unimaginable, profound forces which nearer in its deeper strata.                     Realising the oddities of the Caius those of special sense, attribute the special sense of additional sensitivity would be able to detect the absolute nature, attuned would recognise the real nature of Caius despite roaming in human shape. Far as his real objective, it remains unbeknownst to many as he is shown only accompanying the young child, Yeul, whose study of mystical arts and strange chants insist a permanent guardian. Various occasional perhaps had necessitated the dispassionate, crude butchering of few aggressors, letting few only leave with their lives.  Not always is dominant species so kind. His specific attend to be Ivalera is to Schierke. Their presence occasionally crosses over to Guts party, with only advice, most circumstances is hard to place, due to the strangeness of piecing together those dissociating fragments of the future which inspired the original horror. Yet most utterly terrifying is the process acquiring such baffling information, dwelling into the deepest regions of the spirit realm is without great cost. Though Caius has a lesser extent of clairvoyance, he is unable to completely piece but a fraction of the story.

Despite Yeuls motives, Caius is neither friend or foe without significant reason. (will add more)

many thanks to @farnese-de-vandimion for the help

                                                          xxx.

                   I have always wondered the bizarre properties of Caius’s blood, which courses endlessly through those veins for aeonic bygones. The matter, of its unique substance, does not only seem function properly like that of ordinary blood ——in the rudimentary idea would allow enabling some radical changing of the form without necessary mishaps prompted by the incompatibility of normal body tissue and sinew. 

                    To swiftly adopt forms, both of human outlines and monstrous contours, is indeed baffling, whereby the primary form is perhaps much of a strange yet bewildering mixing of the hideous substance and organic tissue; being vastly complex to allow any mere human adopt, and consequent increase of bring malformed upon swift reconstruction of the person. This being only possibly by those of preternatural characteristic ——— owing to his prodigious toughness and longevity, and lack of stabilising forms. He, possibly, was not encouraged for the large-scale development greater beasts displaying his masterful influence over the chaos. Yet if these theories are true they would, indeed, would not debase him less than human.