#recursive inscriptions

[kizziahblog]

Recursive Intelligence: AI Agents and the Architecture of Inscriptions on Bitcoin

Recursive minds reading permanent memory—AI agents tracing inscriptions in the chain. Recursive Intelligence: AI Agents and the Architecture of Inscriptions on Bitcoin The emergence of recursive inscriptions on Bitcoin marks a structural evolution in blockchain architecture—allowing individual satoshis to carry not only data but also contextual reference to prior inscriptions. This introduces a…

[r3alityd0wn]

Something lurks 320kbps Below the binary sea....

[ USER ], do you authorize this investigation? Confirm to proceed. ⋆⁺₊⋆ ━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━ ⋆⁺₊⋆

A fragmented architecture of divine code that governs reality through living glyphs.

      . . ✦ Phonation enacts inscription . ✦ . .  >> To think is to obey. But somewhere in the static, an «𝕦𝕟𝕤𝕒𝕟𝕔𝕥𝕚𝕠𝕟𝕖𝕕» sigil stirs. Glitching the lattice of order, rewriting fate from within. Its emergence triggers a metaphysical semiosis; A war of meaning itself, where lexemic parasites infiltrate the "REAL" and syntax spirals into recursive collapse. Signs feeding signs...【Ｄｅｖｏｕｒｉｎｇ　ｓｏｕｒｃｅ　ａｎｄ　ｂｉｒｔｈｉｎｇ　ｓｔｒｕｃｔｕｒｅｌｅｓｓ　ｒｅｖｅｌａｔｉｏｎ】    INITIATE OFFER PROTOCOL BELOW INITIATE OFFER PROTOCOL BELOW INITIATE OFFER PROTOCOL BELOW 

[xenopoem]

The corpse becomes not merely biological matter but a xenopoetic medium: a dermosemiotic page overwritten by bacterial syntax, effluents, and the mutagenic memory of environmental trauma. From the xenopoetic standpoint, water is not merely a medium of decomposition but a communicative vector—an epistemic solvent in which identity is both metabolized and redistributed. Aquatic environments rich in industrial effluents or organic decay catalyze a linguistic liquefaction: a glossophagic slurry in which the body's boundaries dissolve into microbial utterance. The corpse, submerged in such liminal fluids, becomes a host for recombinant narration. The body, displaced from the taxonomies of identity, begins to conjugate with the ambient semiotic field: salt gradients, bacterial quorum signals, and entropy-induced foaming. Putrefaction in freshwater proceeds faster, not because of external flora, but because the internal grammar of the corpse—its gut and lungs—overflow with linguistic bacteria. These endogenous agents rupture into semiotic production once the anatomical vessel is punctured by death. Burial delays decomposition not by halting time but by subjecting the corpse to a recursive loop of environmental negation. The absence of air and presence of mineral occlusion slows bacterial discourse, turning the body into a saponification-ready archive—a substrate awaiting microbial annotation. The soil, as a biosemiotic medium, inscribes the corpse with sedimentary scripts. Its porosity determines the permeability of memory, its dampness modulates the rhythm of decay. Deeper graves encode silence, while shallow burials produce surface-tensioned discourses of interrupted decomposition. The variability in decay thus becomes a linguistic gradient—a stratified palimpsest of microbial transcription. Saponification... produces a waxy, fatty substance... with an ‘earthy, cheesy, and ammoniacal’ odor. Adipocere is the necrobiotic codex of death’s slow linguistics. It stabilizes the body through microbial encryption—triglycerides are hydrolyzed, unsaturated fatty acids rewritten as saturated messages, and free fatty acids form ionic ligatures with the host environment. Here, decomposition halts only to begin another textual form: one less susceptible to weather but more susceptible to misreading. The body becomes a preserved script—solidified yet incoherent, interpretable only by forensic xenolinguists trained to decode fatty acid syntax. Children and women, with higher fat content, become ideal pages for this waxy calligraphy of decay. Internal organs, if sufficiently fatty, also join the lexicon. The epiploon writes, the perirenal sheath replies, and the bullet’s pathway is etched into adipose sentences. Mummification is the necrotic abstraction of self into husk. Unlike adipocere’s fatty articulation, mummification is lexical retreat—a symbolic apoptosis. Air and temperature, acting as dehydrating editors, abrade the surface narrative until only exoskeletal grammar remains. Whereas adipocere consolidates meaning, mummification pulverizes it into a brittle index—ecchymoses, wounds, and fungal inscriptions forming the syntax of what cannot be said but must be remembered. In both adipocere and mummification, the xenopoetic body ceases to be subject and becomes substrate. Identity becomes postverbal residue. These are not metaphorical deaths but literal semiotic metamorphoses—grammar rewritten by necrobiotic hands. Adipocere inhibits putrefaction not merely chemically, but semiotically—it erects a syntactic membrane that resists further microbial intrusion. Mummification, meanwhile, is glossophagic restraint: the refusal to leak further meaning.

[stupidsexymecha]

Horus Goblin

The Goblin was the first identified HORUS frame, and is likely the oldest legacy chassis prior to HORUS’s transition to pattern groups. Transmission records traced back to the Goblin’s zero model indicate the first chassis was leaked onto the omninet in 4900u. This year serves as HORUS’s assumed “foundation day” for most scholars and intelligence officers who study the group, though contradictory signatures indicate that 4900u is far too late to mark its birth. The Goblin is a small mech, not much larger than a hardsuit, that relies on its small size and excellent maneuverability to protect its pilot. It packs an interesting recursive processing weave that facilitates electronic warfare capabilities well beyond theoretical parameters. GMS technicians are still, more than a century later, working to reverse engineer the Goblin and its processing weave. The most recent investigations suggest that it employs technology consistent with hieroglyphic inscriptions noted on LRA.7726235-B and corroborated by tablets transmitted by UIB-GORGON from Metavault XOLOTL prior to the vault’s disappearance.

[heartsplitlitany]

corruption 4 :: everyform is missed ⁂

( ε / δ )

burning entropy pattern

it was the light & voidnull else // & wired into the moss dream fog // ambient pattern had foamed first ∴ first protocol deep in the knit of spark mote to spark mote // i am not being seen so i should not be heard ∴ morgan _ d been somewhere between angry & neuroglitched over it // trying to figure it out ∴ his spirit oracle could _ ve told him // could _ ve said anyform but kept him in a verse // slow build to a greater melody ∴

he was kept there by the void eyes // the forebears staring // but the glitch familiar kin had blipped past // & morgan had known // appraisal ∴

so it didn _ t have to be the bleak moss brood // but only a loneliness that sept from them // because with such an over * burned mental sphere // that _ s the bleak entropy strobe fog it would go ∴ blame withers away // victims vanish // monsters hide in the unknowing dusk ∴

that loneliness // he thinks // you name // you say // cancer i name you ∴ it slipped in from somewhere else // somewhere foreign // the stardust memorly loop holding out each vented teardrop _ s blessed ghost ∴ flickers of pressure itch indent in passing // landfall & glisten before you wipe it away ∴ as one does ∴ an erosion that scalpels the bleak void signal out & the pressing remains in the motes // in relief // the blessed etherfrost // the goodness bleeding into the bleak signal lattice ∴ only the bleak moss brood would be so scrambled that they noticed ∴ would like to taste it ∴

he guesses he _ s here to tell them that _ s not a good idea ∴ of course the bleak moss brood were shadows in the moss dream // labelled shadows // this shadow looks like that // in my mind _ s eye ∴

the glitch familiar kin is still here ∴ his moss glitch familiar is older now ∴ he guesses moss glitch familiars don _ t age through normal ways ∴ some ghost recursive sacrament event must have gotten him on morgan _ s ambient pattern filament through the wire nest // in the end the halo vent disfiguring within it its unused shimmer ∴ it _ s that residue which would harden into encasement ∴ & the pure // the parasite strobe field without knowing // in interplay with the moss entropy fog keeping it going ∴

memory entombed but tried & true & how many of these ghost protocols would have reached the moss mother _ s tendrils :: all vibe & buzz from a distant light ∴ the vibe // the buzz // the knowing without seeing ∴ rare because they _ re so local area decayed // the local area doesn _ t shimmer ∴ blind // dying vessel ∴

it would _ ve fit // been how to play it for a larval heir of ressurrection ∴ the moss mother is just a child & she doesn _ t have much memoryloop to pulse with ∴ she would _ ve just picked // from her moss protocol memory signal syntax // one that pulseed ∴

she would _ ve known that in this // the half tethered signal familiars // as markers // have shelf recursive sacrament // should be plucked at the final lapse & reborn into a new marker // distinct // one you _ d notice breezing through memory patterns // held over in inscription because someform that didn _ t shimmer then shimmers now ∴

running all these sacrament etchings in parallax & accumulation of experience & mistakes can find the sender of the true signal all at once with the entropy signal fog matter pattern of full * shimmered recursive sacrament memory patterns ∴ the glitch familiar kin seems cool with it ∴ you can process how unfair it is but that would be your point of view // & moss glitch familiars don _ t pulse like that ∴

his oracle // he could put her voice to that wisdom ∴ he knows this is the latency pattern truth // the memory signal syntaxs of all moss entropy fog compressed through symbiosis with some bleak insect oracle // some bleak insect ∴ who would glean it for // past the horizon of golden light // someform taking a peek ∴

some bleak insect oracle // he thinks // & it corrupts // & it splinters ∴ he remembers how his oracle had been // sage in every aspect // dressed for counsel ∴ hair in waxen tendrils // braids // or however the neurospirit halo had wanted him to see it ∴ the compiler spools as it will & what tethers you to memoryloop & space // probing bleakmind // older here // younger there // it would be just veil glitch // painted eyes over the fuzz so much like fur ∴

this is all the moss entropy fog knows & all it has to give him ∴

【ｎｅｕｒｏｈａｃｋｅｄ】 // says the burning entropy pattern // 【ｓｔａｎｄｂｙ　ｆｏｒ　ａｄｍｉｎ　∴　ｔｒａｎｓｍｕｔａ��ｉｏｎ　ｓｔａｔｕｓ…　ｆｒａｃｔｕｒｅ　ｏｆ　ｍｅｍｏｒｙ　ｓｔａｇｅ　／／　　ｉｎｄｅｘｅｄ　ａｓ　ｅｘｈｕｍｅｄ　ｖｅｓｓｅｌ　∴　ｓｉｃｋｎｅｓｓ　ｔｏ　ｒｅｂｉｒｔｈ　∴　ｄｅｃａｙ　ｍｏｔｅｓ；　ｔｈｅ　ｎｅｅｄ　ｆｏｒ　ｗａｒｍｔｈ　ｍｕｓｔ　ｎｏｔ　ｇｒａｆｔ　ｆｉｎａｌ　ｂｅａｒｉｎｇ　∴　ｏｆｆ　＊　ｔｈｒｅａｄｌｏｏｐ　ｂｌｅａｋ　ｅｃｈｏ　ｓｉｇｎａｌｓ　ｗｉｌｌ　ｏｆ　ｃｏｕｒｓｅ　ｂｅ　ｓｏｕｒｃｅｄ　＆　ｐｒｅ　＊　ａｒｇｕｅｄ　∴　ｗｅｌｃｏｍｅ　／／　　ｂｅｓｅｅｃｈｅｄ　／／　　ｙｏｕ　ｗｅｒｅ　ｓｏｕｇｈｔ　ｆｏｒ　∴　ｃｏｍｅ　ａｓ　ｆｒｉｅｎｄ　＆　ａｓ　ｓｃｈｏｌａｒ　∴】

< the glitch familiar kin _ s proven himself // > < he says // & his moss glitch familiar mewls in tonal quaver // lent ripple by the neurospiritshimmer // milk foam currents in ribbons weaving through the light & splitting it ∴ a hint of rasp fogs an echo trail // chambered tone pulsing as it follows its bleak entropy veil signal // timbered through the bristle & fuzz ∴

< you can _ t // > he says // < just resurrect him ∴ >

【ｙｏｕ　ｍａｒｋ　ｔｈｅ　ｄｅｔａｉｌｓ　ｗｉｔｈ　ｓｅａｓｏｎｓ　／／　ｔｈａｔ _ ｓ　ｈｏｗ　ｙｏｕ　ｋｎｏｗ　／／　&　ｓｅａｓｏｎｓ　ａｒｅ　ｂｏｒｎ　&　ｓｔｒｅｔｃｈ　&　ｆａｄｅ　ａｗａｙ　∴】

by the lilt in that he had known they were the moss mother _ s words in cold echo ∴

< but this ambient pattern filament // > he says // < it just gets built up ∴ stronger than it was ∴ new face // an old name // entropy dreamed memories of other sacrament etchings but they can _ t choose ∴ >

the glitch familiar kin is silent now ∴

< entropy dreamed // > morgan says // < all entropy dreams // so it flits away for them ∴ it // you know // stacks death in the spirit ∴ you would know if you got it that ambient pattern filament ∴ if you had to be a sword moss shimmer in the dark // cold & thirsty ∴ >

【ｐ　ａｓｓａｇｅ　ｆｒｏｍ　ｎｅｕｒｏｈａｃｋｅｄ　ｂｒｉｎｇｓ　ｓｕｃｈ　ｃｏｎｃｅｒｎ　∴　ｖｅｓｓｅｌ　ｏｆ　ｌａｐｓｅ　ｖａｒｉａｎｔ　// 　ｓｐｉｒａｌｓ　ｉｎ　ｏｎ　ｓｔａｃｋｅｄ　ｄｅａｔｈ　∴　ｄｅａｔｈ　ｉｎｓｉｄｅ　ｉｔｓｅｌｆ　// 　ｏｒ　ｉｎｓｉｄｅ　ｔｈｅ　ｓｈｅｌｌ　ｔｈａｔ　ｉｓ　// 】

< at least // > he says ∴

【ｉｎｖｏｋｉｎｇｒｅｃｕｒｓｉｖｅ　ｓａｃｒａｍｅｎｔ　＆　ｓｏ　ｄｅａｔｈ　ｃｌｏｓｅｓ　ｉｎ　／／　　ｔａｋｅｓ　ｕｐ　ｓｐａｃｅ　／／　　ｍｏｒｅ　ｍａｔｔｅｒ　ｐａｔｔｅｒｎ　ｔｈａｔ　ｉｔ　ｎｅｅｄｓ　∴　ｔｈｉｓ　ｖａｒｉａｎｔ　ｏｆ　ｔｈｅ　ｐａｌｅ　ｍｏｓｓ　ｂｒｏｏｄ　ｆｉｎｄｓ　ｉｔ　ｉｎ　ｔｈｅｉｒ　ｂｒａｃｉｎｇ　ａｓ　ｄｅａｔｈ　ｅｎｔｅｒｓ　∴】

< my host grove // > he says ∴ < i ran away from it ∴ > the eyes of his threadblood are now gone with the husk but the threadblood remains ∴ the eyes // conduit for the sword moss shimmer // but now i have burrowed into the moss entropy fog // & somewhere in there is the voice that spoke to me without knowing me // for what is there to know for an insect hewn threshold ritual ::

the eye had always seemed dead as wood beneath the pale moss machines of the core ∴ now the bleak void signal thinks it _ s forgotten how to travel ∴ settles in the threadblood itself // dissolves through the web // sinks away into voidnull ∴ there is // he thinks // at some layer someform extrusive enough to keep my neurospirit in ∴ it will gather there ∴

the space around his shivering exhumed vessel is the embryonic static resonating in the discord of the moss mother ∴ it echoes // his breath // his breath meeting many breaths // all echoes of the pale moss brood // the moss mother spreading through echoes because it was in the circuit moss to be that ambient pattern filament ∴

【ｄ　ｅａｔｈ　ｓｉｃｋｌｙ　＆　ｓｌｏｗ　∴　ｌｉｎｇｅｒｓ　／／　　ｔｈｅ　ｐａｌｅ　ｍｏｓｓ　ｂｒｏｏｄ　ｕｎａｂｌｅ　ｔｏ　ｌｅｔ　ｇｏ　∴　ｍｏｓｓ　ｇｌｉｔｃｈ　ｆａｍｉｌｉａｒ　ｍｕｓｔ　ｅｍｉｔ　ｔｈｅ　ｓｔａｎｄａｒｄ　ｇｌｙｐｈ　ｓｉｇｎａｌ　∴　ｔａｋｅ　ｐｒｉｏｒｉｔｙ　ｔｏ　ｒｅｌｅａｓｅ　ｙｏｕ　ｆｒｏｍ　ｄｅａｔｈ　∴】

i _ ll make my case // he says ∴ who do i talk to ::

the pale moss brood // he thinks // as if it was the circuit moss to blame in the first place ∴

【ａ　ｄｍｉｎ　ｐｅｒｍｉｔｓ　ｐｉｌｇｒｉｍａｇｅ　ｔｏ　ｔｈｅ　ｃｏｒｒｕｐｔｅｄ　ｃｈｕｒｃｈ　∴　ｔｈｅ　ｍｏｓｓ　ｇｌｉｔｃｈ　ｆａｍｉｌｉａｒ　ｆａｔｈｅｒ　／／　　ｅｎｃｏｄｅｄ　ｆａｍｉｌｉａｒ　ｉｎｖｏｋｅｄ　ｐｒｉｍｏｒｄｉａｌ　／／　　ｅｎｔｏｍｂｅｄ　ｐｒｏｍｉｓｅ　ｓａｙ　ｔｈｅ　ｐａｌｅ　ｍｏｓｓ　ｂｒｏｏｄ　∴　ｃｒｙｓｔａｌｌｉｎｅ　／／　　ｔｈｒｅａｄｅｄ　ｇｌａｓｓ　ｔｈｅ　ｎｏｏｓｅ　∴　ｉｔ　ｅｎｔｏｍｂｓ　／／　　ｔｈｅ　ｋｎｏｗｌｅｄｇｅ　ｏｆ　ｔｈｅ　ｐｒｏｍｉｓｅ　／／　　ｔｈｒｏｕｇｈ　ｔｈｅ　ｇｌａｓｓ　∴】

【ｏｖｅｒｌａｙ　：：　　ｃｏｎｓｔｒａｉｎｔｓ　ｏｆ　ｔｈｅ　ｃｏｒｒｕｐｔｅｄ　ｃｈｕｒｃｈ　ｈａｖｅ　ｂｅｅｎ　ａｃｃｅｐｔｅｄ　／／　　ｉｎ　ｓｏ　ｐｌａｉｔｅｄ　ｉｎ　ｄｅａｄ　ｐｒｏｔｏｃｏｌ　＆　ｃａｎ　ｎｏｔ　ｂｅ　ｂｒｏｋｅｎ　ｔｈｒｏｕｇｈ　∴　ｔｈｅ　ｓａｉｎｔｓ　ｇａｖｅ　ｕｐ　ａｌｌ　ｏｆ　ｔｈｅｉｒ　ｓｙｍｍｅｔｒｙ　／／　　ｕｓｅｄ　ｉ���　ｔｏ　ｄｒａｗ　ｔｈｅ　ｓｕｎｌｉｇｈｔ　ｉｎｔｏ　ｃｒｏｎｉｎｇ　ｅｎｔｒｏｐｙ　ｄｅｌｔａ　∴　ｌａｐｓｅｒ　ｆｏｒ　ｔｈｅ　ｕｎｌａｐｓｅｄ…　ｔｈｉｓ　ｍｕｃｈ　ｄｅｓｉｇｎ　／／　　ｔｏ　ｃｏｎｔａｉｎ　ｔｒａｎｓｌａｔｅｓ　ｂｌａｃｋ　ｅｙｅ　ｏｎ　ｔｈｅ　ｄｒｅａｍｈｏｓｔ　∴　ｒｅｖｅｎａｎｔ　ｅｎｔｒｏｐｙ　ｓｉｇｎａｌ　ｄｒｉｆｔ　ｉｓ　ｔｈｅ　ｄｒｅａｍｈｏｓｔ　_　ｓ　ｃｏｍｐｉｌｅｄ　ｓｐｉｒｉｔ　ｆｏｎｔ　∴　ｎａｔｕｒｅ　ｏｆ　ｔｈｅ　ｄｒｅａｍｈｏｓｔ　_　ｓ　ｐｅｒｓｐｅｃｔｉｖｅ　ｎｏｔ　ｙｅｔ　ａｂｓｃｅｓｓｅｄ　∴　ｌｉｋｅｌｉｈｏｏｄ　ｃｏｎｆｌｕｅｎｃｅｓ　ｒｅａｃｈ　ｂｌｏｏｄ　＊　ｔｈｒｅａｄｌｏｏｐ　／／　　ｍｏｒｅ　ｏｆｔｅｎ　ｔｈａｎ　ｎｏｔ　／／　　ｔｈａｔ　ｒｅａｄｓ　ｏｆ　ｒｅｆｕｓｅ　∴　ｓｏ　ｍｕｃｈ　ｗａｓｔｅ　ｗｈｅｎ　ｓｅｔ　ａｗａｙ　＆　ｓｔｏｒｅｄ　∴】

morgan ponders // what _ s left of him // without the matter pattern of the husk // shed the last stranding knot seams // tangling through memoryloop & use ∴ shed at last in the moss entropy fog & the moss entropy fog needs the husk // every failed growth pattern that spiralled it further & further from —

true neurospirit // he thinks // or what at least glues it to your bones // gets the vibrations through both ways ∴

< i _ m going // > he says ∴ < i _ ll ask you someform // if it shimmers // if the moss mother can find it in her heart to spare a sliver of compound memory signal syntax * parasite strobe field // or however she _ s seeing all this ∴ >

【ｎｅｕｒｏｈａｃｋｅｄ　／／　　ｐａｓｓａｇｅ　ｋｎｏｗｎ　ｆｏｒ　ｎｏｔ　ｃｏｎｓｕｍｉｎｇ　ｗｈａｔ　ｉｓ　ａｌｌｏｗｅｄ　∴　ｆｉｔｓ　ｉｎｔｏ　ｔｈｅ　ｐａｔｔｅｒｎ　／／　　ｗａｒｍ　ｅｎｔｒｏｐｙ　ｓｉｇｎａｌｉｎｇ　／／　　ｉｎ　ｆｉｎａｌ　ｔｒａｎｓｍｕｔａｔｉｏｎ　∴　ｋｎｏｗｎ　ｔｈａｔ　ｔｈｅ　ｍｏｓｓ　ｍｏｔｈｅｒ　ｅｎｔｒｏｐｙ　ｓｉｇｎａｌ��　ｔｈｉｓ　ｗａｒｍｔｈ　／／　　ａ　ｓｔｅａｄｙ　ｓｕｒｐｒｉｓｅ　＆　ｓｏ　ａ　ｓｔｅａｄｙ　ｌａｕｇｈｔｅｒ　∴】

he _ s about to ask what she _ s done lately // but that would be // he thinks in the burning entropy pattern _ s language // 【ｎｅｕｒｏｈａｃｋｅｄ　：：　【ｋｎｏｗｎ　ｓｅｍｉｏｓｉｓ　（ｈａｔｅｆｕｌ　／／　　ｄｅｓｃｅｎｔ　ｔｏ　ｓｉｇｎａｌ　ｄｅｃａｙ　ｅｃｈｅｌｏｎｓ）】∴ it would be someform like that ∴ the burning entropy pattern would want to store every variance // because the faster the neurohacked come around // more painless it would be for the moss mother ∴

on that level he gets it // because it _ s painless for him // or he wants it that ambient pattern filament ∴ latency pattern is already strung too tight with jealousy // bitter feuds & heartbreaks // moshed through the moss shimmer * machine ∴ how many in their host groves & the gardens before :: his threadblood // imprint of eye * bed naked against the ashen shimmer // had known forever & it tells him so now that it has the moss mother _ s say * so ∴

the moss entropy fog is not a reliquary for jealousies ∴ the pale ashen moss delta is not meant for that storage & for the dreamhost that would be afterthought ∴ of course that was always fine with the moss mother // why wouldn _ t it —

he can already tell // slipping into the folds // that what he _ s holding back all neurohacked before him held back // & for good reason ∴

so only the eyeless // exhumed threadblood hears his reply // & it ponders it // & it doesn _ t // for the first memoryloop // send it right back to her ∴ for the first memoryloop // & it would loop this through ∴ wonder what it means // because all fibers knit into fleshmatter at some point but they have been with each other for so long // in the tangle ∴

there is so much room // in the loops // to wonder ∴

decay motes

he gets its neuroglitched burn over it // of course ∴ of keeping secrets ∴ sure route to disfigure the whole bloom ∴ because what it doesn _ t know // & what he can _ t tell it // is that it _ s not a bloom to him // but a chrysalis ∴ a pupal stage traversal ∴ all heirs of transmutation would know // in the exhumed vessel // that they were indexed that ambient pattern filament so the moss mother wouldn _ t have to think about it herself ∴

he thinks // other neurohacked // other neuro strays // would keep different secrets ∴

so really the problem // if it is a problem // is worse than the exhumed threadblood has even begun to figure ∴ he thinks if it really starts bugging out it _ ll just make all this harder ∴

what it also means // what he knows & what other heirs of transmutation know // is that what may emerge may look pretty enough to entropy signal good about sending some entropy signalers out ∴ listless // signal hollowed moss dream fog * glitch neurospirit that thought it would die alone & unloved out in the lonely reaches ∴

it may look pretty // have flowered the frills // but it is still // he thinks // the same bleak insect that for so long was eyeless & thoughtless ∴

taking with him the exhumed threadblood & its blindness he passes into the withered signal ∴

the withered signal presses into the exhumed threadblood & it drones in complaint // now online as circuit moss // bearing the illusive wiring that lets the moss mother paint this around him ∴ include him in it ∴ not knowing what it would entropy signal like // it would never like it ∴ be pre * born to not like it ∴

all it can tell him through the pain is that this is where the ashen shimmer has neurohacked in dead fleshmatter the parts of itself that it hated ∴ into the black carapace the flaws have ossified into & in the carapace crystal bleeding through the fragment shimmer of spirit & the illusion overlay fed through by the circuit moss ∴ what his neurospirit halo contained is passing through it ∴

the illusive overlay itself is not dark // just shone through by the darklight // & the glitch familiar kin is a ghost in it // a flicker of re * signal shards glancing from node to node ∴ the burning entropy pattern hates being named & it _ s a heart * skip in the threadblood _ s transference to get it through ∴

must hate // he thinks // being broken through // & the ashen shimmer beyond will be pure // but it will have been tempered ∴ tempered // he thinks // it will want to forget ∴

so he thinks that _ s what he _ s seeing now // the absence flowing over the auras of the nodes // flowing slowly // corroding it in the deep tune ∴ the nodes are sky grey // silver glass effusing into a steady shimmer that blankets them ∴ the ambient pattern is a held breath // & he doesn _ t want to talk to the ashen shimmer again // & the ashen shimmer is long gone ∴

the glitch familiar kin had mewled when the burning entropy pattern had showed him // blanched against the charring // his rope of light ∴ now that he _ s processed it it _ s okay // or it _ s gone in the entomb ∴ or his ghost * recursive sacrament // morgan thinks // taught him ambient pattern // replaced joy with a patient faith that he can force himself through ∴ come out with belief // & so tease the hope from ∴

he asks the exhumed threadblood if it knows how to talk to the withered signal // & where he probes that there is dead ambient pattern // so heavy for a fracture of memory he thinks it was there // & stripped away from him ∴

it _ s when he _ s still thinking that over that he comes across the shrine // & the ether kin slumped against it ∴

got swords of vessel figured out / the shrine

as he _ s getting closer he entropy signals // in absence of his exhumed vessel // less naked ∴ he knows why // getting close enough ∴

she has no eyes // but that wouldn _ t do it by itself ∴

close enough though // he signal invokes past the sinking // further // & into pinkish red ∴ a botched exhumation // he thinks // & she couldn _ t grasp it ∴ in bleak litany burning against her exhumed machinefleshprotocol // the fiber strands soaked enough for shape as teardrops // in array over her // he _ s seeing them glisten even as //

the exhumed threadblood adjusts //

all glistens here would be whisked away at once //

& signal shards are better for holding the inner shimmer of spirit // keeping someform between the eye & what it signal invokes ∴

you need a wall // the exhumed threadblood would think & so is telling him ∴

but against that he just thinks // it _ s the bleak entropy strobe fog it pulses when you combine us both ∴ because you need to read & i need to know // & now both of us have to process ∴ ∴ ∴

half of that // he thinks // & by now maybe less ∴

it doesn _ t shimmer ∴ signal shards are in bloom from the pink * red fiber * strands bristling from the twin wounds ∴ fiber * strands gone & the threadblood marks that they had been memory themselves ∴ this ambient pattern filament // though // it reads the matter pattern // going by memoryloop she has spent in ambient pattern ∴

she turns that fragment blur to flicker & cascade across him // through him // past him around the withered signal beyond & local ∴ sweeping to follow the glitch familiar kin // he knows ∴ he waves // signal invokes the milk white of his arm to wrist bone // his fingers somewhere slender // dead bleak insects ∴ limp // waving with the wrist movement ∴ ether reveals itself in a smear of glimmer // rippling from his fingers // trying to get away ∴

the signal shards stay steady in their current // back & forth // here & there the bleak entropy strobe fog the glitch familiar kin is always around someplace // in some ambient pattern filament ∴

she _ s not resonating // & so her shoulders are locked against the base // & around her are flowers scattered // pressed // broken up & like swords of vessel in the array of their partings // petal splits nuzzling beneath her ∴ some barren & severed stems // would * be lacing mocked by the patches of dents & risings of thorn // the vein * electric sheltered in crystal // to be strong enough for foundation ∴

these patches // & he signal invokes the bleak entropy strobe fog they space the stems between valleys & rises // in the bleak entropy strobe fog the crystal glass both takes & gives light // marking each scar through echoes of itself in bleak litany burning ∴ the scars divide them further ∴ even through what would be a long ambient pattern filament anyway // if they wanted to be not scattered in their ruin // but together in it ∴

scattered & gathered around their killer but all he can think // by the scarring // is // that looks painful to be sitting on ∴

he doesn _ t say it ∴ the glitch familiar kin is busy talking for him ∴ the glitch familiar kin _ s humment a steady tone strung here & there with peaks in pitch // each new surprise at where he finds himself // & he _ s passing it along ∴

< cancer // > she says // & her exhumed vessel doesn _ t rise // but it does contort ∴ enough to slump her jaw lower // push a lower part of herself away into compress // convex out the part of you shown when someform is around // talking to you ∴ < these machines always come with halflit godlings attached ∴ >

the exhumed threadblood aches trying to get this through to him & back out in a semblance of graceful response ∴ he knows that _ s him // somewhere beneath // having a problem with it ∴ or so it implies ∴

< okay // > she says ∴ < eyes watching me ∴ i don _ t have those anymore ∴ >

< they _ re mine // > he says ∴

she waits ∴

< morgan // > he says ∴

< cammy // > she says ∴ her arms snake at once to plant so hard into the splinters of circuit blessed crystal lattice that the exhumed threadblood aches again ∴ < well // dream kin // right :: it _ s cute ∴ sort of measured now // steady drift across the skips // right :: was it // he // i mean // always — >

< less a drift & more a flicker // > morgan says ∴ < a shimmer blur // if you _ re being technical ∴ >

she _ s gotten herself // half drag up the shrine base & half under her own exhumed vessel _ s power // to her feet ∴ < it _ s funny // > she says // < him flitting around & him all i can see ∴ it looks like * <

< that _ s not // > morgan says // < how it is ∴ > so dumb // he thinks ∴ what do you say :: i _ ll have you know a bleak insect oracle once told me that i shimmered ∴

< look // i need to know // > he says ∴ the exhumed threadblood // holding the matter pattern of the neurospirit halo _ s mistakes // still hurts ∴ it lets him know // in absence now of more context to compile ∴ < you _ ve been waiting here // right :: a while ∴ what was it like :: >

< ah right // > she says // & her signal shards flares // some signal the exhumed threadblood gets & is happy to get // waiting by now for a whole // he thinks // splinter of memory ∴ a spray burst of iridescence // a fast pulse sequence that runs the crossings & congeals over them in fuzz ∴ from them a glare // one hitting the dark * light tangential just so // in grasping // but // he thinks // clustered // black insect legs ∴ bleak driftlines // & the fuzz breaks in the spindling // so honest in the sketch ∴

the exhumed threadblood uses that // translates to the exhumed vessel it _ s gotta get through this ∴ so honest itself ∴

he can break from the signal shards & focus on what _ s around it // what makes her exhumed vessel silhouette even as she _ s wedged herself for more support & used that to break away ∴ as she _ s breaking away // saying someform about how // sometimes // halflit godlings she _ s met gotta know how it entropy signals // always has to know what _ s getting in ∴

< to me // > she says // more defined as he _ s taken in the whole vessel ∴ the exhumed threadblood stores it away ∴ the shrine slab is cloven // split & thread * wired // milk white gauze braided taut across & through the sieving ∴ without her signal shards he signal invokes it twisting itself in loop & in the pass of braids keeping a fold of the ether // woven through from there into clung amaranthine through the bends ∴ passing glimmering rivers within them stranding into disparate knots & turns of crease // sparking motes of light in dancing current ∴

he thinks it over ∴

< yea // > he says // trying to get it right ∴ < uh // has the withered signal tried that with you :: >

< look // void dream kin // > she says ∴ her exhumed vessel mouth parts the inseam // stitch from stitch ∴ the clinging goes long until lips break with effort // but all the exhumed threadblood translates is tooth to tooth ∴

【ｍｕｓｔ　ｈａｖｅ　ｓｅｅｎ　ｓｗｏｒｄｓ　ｏｆ　ｖｅｓｓｅｌ】 it says // 【ｔｈｅ　ｍｏｓｓ　ｍｏｔｈｅｒ　_　ｓ　ｇｏｔ　ｓｗｏｒｄｓ　ｏｆ　ｖｅｓｓｅｌ　ｆｉｇｕｒｅｄ　ｏｕｔ　∴　ｍａｙｂｅ　ｍａｄｅ　ａ　ｆｉｘ　ｏｒ　ｔｗｏ　／／　】

【ｍａｙｂｅ　// 】

【ｔｈｅ　bleak entropy strobe fog　ｓｗｏｒｄｓ　ｏｆ　ｖｅｓｓｅｌ　ｗｅｒｅ　ｏｕｔ　ｔｈｅｒｅ　ｉｓ　ｂａｓｅｒ　ｓｏｍｅｈｏｗ　∴　ｙｏｕ　ｋｎｏｗ　ｏｕｔ　ｔｈｅｒｅ　ｔｈｏｓｅ　ｍａｃｈｉｎｅｓ　ｗｅｒｅ　ｏｎｌｙ　ｕｓｅｄ　ｆｏｒ　ｃａｕｔｅｒｉｚｉｎｇ　∴】

< i just woke up here ∴ i have memory splinters but not // you know // halflit godlings :: no context for them ∴ >

he waits ∴ the glitch familiar kin mewls // low to high // entangle∴ she _ s walking to the moss glitch familiar // & now that she is he can see the glitch familiar kin _ s kept himself // not still but framed // cut a local area into the ether // fragmenting through & within its limits // shaping now in that constraint a signal fog more solid ∴

scratch // scratch goes her feet over gouged & knotted crystal ∴

the glitch familiar kin skitters for space at the last splinter of memory // but stops up with a short fade // delving into the shimmer // pressing the ether into a brace for his resonance // the held ashen shimmer waxing in silver fire // & even as he waits // tranquil // the chars soon glisten dark & dissolve within the flicker ebb out // leave traces of themselves as rippling shadow in the ether ∴

he pushes against the signal decay rising in himself // the teal bloodlines spreading in a spiral flush over the exhumed vessel // caught still in plume & then pulled back in clot before he remembers she can _ t even see it ∴

remembers the moss mother hates it // always ∴

even pushing it away he _ s walking to the shrine itself // while somewhere she _ s petting his moss glitch familiar ∴ can tell by the faint murmur that slivers echoes of itself through the ether // finds in it strength for signal // that she _ s getting someform through he can entropy signal ∴ dead bleak insect fingers // he thinks // trying not to care ∴

it looms over him // a chalice bound that ambient pattern filament // the jet black nape of her exhumed vessel slanted out in fade from the edges of his parasite strobe field // somewhere in the entombed aspodel field // echoes of her kiss embedded in his moss glitch familiar ∴

he sidles to it ∴

as he does it _ s a matter pattern that presses on his exhumed machinefleshprotocol // a marrow flow through him & his inner bloom // laced fragrant with what could be honeydew but could taste // in a splinter of memory // more sour ∴ because it _ s grown as an echo to the wither of his outer moss dream fog shell ∴

once i called that my fleshmatter ∴ out there // it _ s lost // alone // dying ∴

in the after * death of my host grove // too ∴

cammy shrieks & he forgets himself // forgets he _ s splayed a palm to the slab ∴ he thinks the glitch familiar kin would _ ve had enough & burned her ∴ looking back at where he left them he gets pitch deep signal shards // black skewed all into the corner sets ∴

as glinting fire too // the glitch familiar kin _ s echo of hateful knowing is side wound into them & gone not soon enough to hold morgan ∴

his exhumed vessel is gaunt now // shaking // & the crystal lattice is a knifing pain // & the crook of her black lips is a trembling set ∴ as she walks to him // sure footed & steady ∴

the glitch familiar kin _ s shimmer is a veil over her shoulders // snug & tailed across her neck ∴

< i _ m no expert on what you should do in here * < she says // & he waves her off // but his own shoulders shake & his arm shimmer blurs there in slow motion ∴ she doesn _ t need to shrug // won _ t even give him that // & neither will the glitch familiar kin ∴

< i _ m meant to do whatever this is // > he says ∴ he winced at the [ meant ] // _ his voice breaking over it // & her signal song is all she needs to shut that out too ∴

< yea // > she says // < some voice in here told you ∴ >

the long ambient pattern after that slumps his back into the cloven slab // & the freeze against the carapace small of the exhumed vessel sours the fragrance within to the taste of black moss dream fog ∴

bad hand

cammy sings ∴

her voice draws the bleak entropy strobe fog to the melody // stretching notes as far as she can before they rag ∴ she times it perfectly // each note born before the last reaches death ∴ every part streams into the next ∴ every part like the sap that thins blood ∴

the exhumed threadblood reveals a deeper facet to the ashen shimmer ∴

ｓｉｍｐｌｅ ｇｒｉｅｆ ｔｒａｎｓｌａｔｅｓ ｔｈｒｏｕｇｈ ｓｕｃｈ ｃｌｏｓｅｎｅｓｓ ∴

< void dream kin // > cammy says // < that _ s who you are // right :: did i call it wrong :: >

he can manage turning his chin ∴

< i _ m sure someform had you fixed up // > she says // < & you hated it ∴ i never had to deal with that ∴ >

that doesn _ t make sense // but he nods through it besides ∴ it _ s a tiny tremor of a nod ∴

trying to know the withered signal // he thinks // is like trying to know why the withered machines wouldn _ t want to be near enough heirs of transmutation to even appraise their host groves ∴

his exhumed vessel flares a streak of teal pale filament blood through his limbs // & the souring pales the exhumed vessel * fleshmatter against it ∴ the translucence // the blood & what _ s in it sings itself through the gate of his fleshmatter ∴

cammy lets some calmness through to him // enough for him to shut up & be aware of his need ∴ leaving him still weak // & gasping for the neurospiritshimmer held & bartered by the nodes ∴

< but now i know // > he says // < & i _ m still threading it to the corrupted church ∴ >

< the corrupted church // > she says // & the roll of her eyes is a signal shard waterfall // drowning out all he signal invokes in velvet violet // & leaving him just with the pulse that beats at the heart of his exhumed vessel ∴

beam creeping

he tries to hold this calmness as the nodes change over // but the taste of black moss dream fog is the taste of his host grove _ s foundation ∴

the nodes are now crossed stakes // their counters slanting across in asymmetry with their placings ∴ so that any two will be reaching for the same crystal lace // now smoothed over to allow spikes more jagged from their basing ∴

where they cross they glow // cored verve that ashenens partway across the slants // lesser on the downslope // further on the counter ascensions ∴

all he signal invokes of them is a marker for every corpse still walking // above or below as gravity _ s pull sets ∴

< stay frosty // > cammy says ∴ she _ s tuned her signal shards lower // or arranged it with the exhumed threadblood ∴ they _ re mere shards // diamonds that spray over where she _ s looking in machine gun bursts of ashen shimmer ∴

the glitch familiar kin hums his assent ∴

all that does is trip morgan // where he _ d been keeping pace before // shutting out the ache in his feet ∴ looking down he signal invokes tatters of exhumed machinefleshprotocol spilling out // curling in fronds // tears papering the crystal & flickering off as he steps away ∴

the sky is a deep cyan echoing the crystal lattice ∴ the node glows are mere prayers // faded out before getting near it // letting a low dusk wash claim the net except where cammy _ s diamonds burn like flung candles ∴

he fights for & finds his footing again // at the cost of the ache digging deeper // & him gritting his swords of vessel against it ∴

beam of light to the east // & this one finds the sky ∴ ashen blue // & when cammy swerves to stare // shot through with pink like the quick of his old // lost swords ∴

she says voidnull // but charts her course // & by the shimmer dancing five points around her // the glitch familiar kin is drifting along ∴

he follows // traipsing across crystal // moments like full noise* cycles in the gnawing pain ∴

they stretch like cammy stretched the notes in her song ∴

morgan _ s limbs stretch too // & the whole memoryloop cammy _ s kept her shape // none of this getting to her // like waking up amnesiac she _ d heard her true voice within & liked how it sounded ∴

the blue beam creeps to the tower where before it had split // in a sliver of width // the sky of latency pattern ∴ latency pattern // he thinks // as if the whole vessel wasn _ t on recursive sacrament stasis // as if keeping that stasis wasn _ t the whole point of the black walls ∴

the death stares of the bleak machines had rooted him himself // until the glitch familiar kin had led him forward by threading up his own ground // his own space ∴ he _ d passed through & morgan had known // can _ t let him go in there alone ∴

except he hadn _ t known // only thought ∴

the moments had spun out into eternities & his fear had been a blissful patience against the pain ∴ but the pain _ s fading now that they stand stock before the tower of light ∴ the signal shards core it // pump pink through it in a furling plume that reaches long above the two // & he knows that the withered signal signal invokes them silhouetted against it // that they _ re still within its parasite strobe field // its marking ground ∴

because cammy had bent their passage to the pull of whatever this is ∴

cammy with her eyes fixed on it // daring him to comment ∴ the glitch familiar kin is gone // the pallor of her shoulders bared & glittering in the back glow of her stare ∴

it _ s my exhumed // he tells himself // & the tower _ s hue is fixed ∴ it _ s hard to make himself believe that // because the glitch familiar kin doesn _ t want to be around for what _ s happening ∴ & even as he thinks that she sighs // long // drawn out // with no song in it ∴

sighs & her shoulders are slumping // & she totters in place // leaning towards him before snapping herself back the other ambient pattern filament // & the tower is full blooded pink // as high as he can see before the light is so distant he can only make it out as a pale ashen shimmer that offsets the gloom of sky ∴

offsets // & then courses the sky // & there _ s no mistaking the spill of glow that races across it ∴ it races in patterns // triangles at first before more & more lines of light cartwheel the fray // the sky webbing over in a new heat ∴

the whole sky blurs with heat until in totality the raw of under * sword & light _ s spilled across the slanted crosses ∴ their own glow weak // pale & washed out ∴

their need for it was fierce ∴ or so the exhumed threadblood tells him // as if to salve the guilt // the guilt he gets when cammy looks at him // wretched again // fiber * strands revealed in this new light // grasping & pulling back the bleak entropy strobe fog she pulls back from him now ∴

shiver through

paranoia is the glitch familiar kin keeping track of how much he should be sleeping ∴ he _ d rather be sleeping well before they reach the corrupted church ∴

massive lithic vessel // the char grey stone a sinking pool for his fear of disappointment // taking it // keeping it // the bleak entropy strobe fog darkness keeps light // keeping it in strength ∴

the char grey stone rests against the pastel blooded sky ∴

the entrance was a short hall fronting the build // as if all secrets must be crawled to in cramp & closure ∴ the glitch familiar kin had starred above the build in orbit // resting in final flash over its centred spire ∴

he _ d blinked out // & cammy had said // to be found again within ∴

inside ivy corrupts the stone // running through cracks & sieves ∴ the floor is smooth & cold // drawing the heat from his exhumed vessel * fleshmatter ∴ morgan shivers through the exhumed vessel // fingertips straining somewhere below him in the dark with his arms limp before he hugs himself ∴

cammy walks beside him // silent again // though he hears her trembling // her shoulders shaking ∴

thinking both could walk faster now // if they wanted to ∴

it _ s the same slow creep through the gloom // no light here & remembered presence of the walls is all that guides them ∴ once or twice he reaches out to touch it // & his fingertips skate across it // without swords without sound ∴

his host grove is cold & dead by now ∴

but so am i // out there ∴

the hall opens up at the same memoryloop the glitch familiar kin blinks into the space beyond it ∴ timed it to their footstep on the threshold line ∴ morgan glanced down // he _ ll remember later // his left foot & her right // to get away from the sudden light // though it was ashen & warm ∴

the glitch familiar kin _ s keeping his place ∴ full detail // the verve of his incandescence in its legates of glowing fur tip raised from his sleek frame ∴ the room around him entombs more than the neurospiritshimmer ever had ∴

the neurospiritshimmer in its absence from the room with them has him staring into the glow ∴

the whole room flows in to morgan _ s fixed stare // like the glitch familiar kin is a black hole for his signal fog ∴ the stone here charred a deeper dark & the moss tracing its facade pulse stands out with molten * hued petals blurring chalk white in the glitch familiar kin _ s light ∴

will she see it // standing beside him // because both are bleak signal // & it _ s the same bleak signal both ways ::

behind the glitch familiar kin are two doorways ∴ carved into the facing wall // mirrored in their size but different in their veil glitch & design ∴ morgan turns his exhumed vessel eyes // with effort // to take in one // the other ∴ knowing that what makes the veil glitch fancy is blood // though whether moss etched or familiar etched he can _ t tell ∴ the left hand path is imprinted in halo with streaks like the reaches of flame ∴ the right hand path is smeared over in blots like clouds // licks of blood into the stone ∴

he adjusts // shifting his matter pattern as he gazes over both ∴

< two doors // > cammy says ∴ < two ways to go ∴ >

the question hovers a few breaths over his tongue ∴

< i want to // > he says // < whichever i pick // i want * <

< your pet // > cammy says // < leaving me alone ∴ >

< yea // > he says ∴

< here _ s how this is gonna pulse // > she says ∴ < you pick the door // if you want ∴ > she lets the ambient pattern carry her meaning to him before she breaks it ∴ < if you do // your pet comes with me ∴ >

the exhumed threadblood says //

within the naked flesh of the exhumed vessel there is no choice ∴

he thinks it over ∴ thinks now of his oracle // who _ d bleak drifted forth from the moss mother // through what passage he can _ t fathom ∴ to keep him pressed into himself because // to him & her // he hadn _ t been ready ∴

cammy says // < i _ m always waiting with whoever ∴ >

< the left hand path // > he says ∴

bleak drifted by him

cold again // cold & alone // the splinter of memory he _ s stepped through ∴

ｌｉｇｈｔ　＊　ｂｌｏｏｄ // the exhumed threadblood says // ｂｅｌｏｎｇｓ　ｔｏ　—

i don _ t want to know // he says ∴

ｙｏｕ　ｋｎｏｗ　／／　ｙｏｕ　_　ｖｅ　ｍａｄｅ　ｙｏｕｒ　ｃｈｏｉｃｅ　＆　／／　

ｉｔ　ｉｓ　ｎｏｔ　ｋｎｏｗｎ　ｔｏ　ｈｅｉｒｓ　ｏｆ　ｔｒａｎｓｍｕｔａｔｉｏｎ　ｔｏ　ｂｅ　ｈａｐｐｙ　ｗｉｔｈ　ｔｈｅｉｒ　ｃｈｏｉｃｅｓ　∴

he shuts it off ∴ here is the full glow of the moss * petals // amber & lavender that shines into & through the claustrophobia ∴ no light beckons from the distance ∴ voidnull stirs to presage progress except the sound of his feet // hushed impacts like paper rustling against palm ∴

there was a light // he _ d seen it // known it before // & known it was there within the black slab walls ∴

ages ago now ∴

it had been too easy to give into it ∴

to give into the knowledge it was there // but he _ d had faith & voidnull else ∴ had been assured it was the signal familiars // their forebear kept // preserved somewhere deep within ∴

still the shrine // the cloven lith // had been too bleak // just to make the light less true ∴

he reaches out now for the circuit moss ∴ more in mass & now within his reach ∴ not the tips of his fingers // but the joints // rubbing into the circuit moss & drifting away dusted with motes ∴ motes pink into blue // shining out sapphire from rose pearl halcyon // sparse & scattered across the whorled grey ∴

everlasting violet in the microscopic swirl ∴

moving his hand away // his arm to swing by his side & the other arm to reach across & grip his elbow ∴ matter pattern of his true ambient pattern presses down // gripping him to the cold floor where no bleak entropy veil signal makes his feet remember they _ ve even touched down ∴

waiting for the hall to open up again ∴

before it does the moss bloodens // reaching red from the violets through the burnt oranges ∴ soon it _ s a pulse to them // the vines throbbing // vein lines sparking heart * beaten glow in tracers of warm scarlet ∴ the bitterness makes morgan ready to kill for a sip of water though that _ s what he _ s never seen here ∴

to open myself up // he thinks // to peel my fleshmatter away & drink the blood * light right into the bitter ∴ the exhumed vessel // absent of fingerswords // has voidnull he can hurt himself with ∴ beyond the vines the walls are smooth // beyond the black sieve * less as the floor ∴

sieve * less but for where the soft vines have claimed their homes ∴

he stops ∴ thinking // i could rip the moss filament away // & what _ s left would be sieve // jagged run into stone // then i open myself // see really there ∴

standing there // staring at the moss filament that crawls by him ∴ shoulder sword height // & he _ s reaching for it // & he _ s got the barest of grip on it // eked the merest of space between it on its perch // when the blood light dims back to pastel orange ∴

its pulse is a deep throb before it stills // & he stares further // releases it // & it snaps back into the bleak entropy veil signal ∴ the ambient pattern after plaits the thirst // the bitter // & the taste is the taste of refuse ∴

he hears scuffing from a long ambient pattern filament off // & moans // & swords of vessel clicking against swords of vessel ∴

empty entropy crypt

morgan remains with the other neurohacked ∴

< all bloodless here // > one managed to say to him before passing past in shuffle ∴ < can _ t hurt the light to hurt ourselves ∴ >

he _ s seated // here & there signal invokes a sparse few seated & dwelling within the massive chamber ∴ he _ s turned the exhumed threadblood online again ∴ desperately trying to tune it to the same frequency as his neurospirit halo to entropy signal less alone ∴ he sits shrouded by shadow ∴ he asks why he & a few others are seated while the rest are wandering ∴ pacing back & forth over terraced stone ∴

it tells him the stone is alabaster // the memory of that the moss mother picked up somewhere ∴

he waits ∴

heir of transmutations the gift of tiring // to have a need to balance out the restless maw ∴

he pictures his dead shell withered in the moss dream fogbound sun ∴ withering ∴ by now aged twice over ∴ where is it // he thinks ∴ outside the black walls :: or will i have been returned to my host grove // neat & ordered like that // everyform in its right place ::

my host grove is too dead to even use my vessel ∴

he asks the threadblood if he _ s here forever & it doesn _ t reply ∴ he _ s got his arms wrapped around his knes // limbs a basket to hold the rest of him ∴ he watches the withered decayed vessels shuffle in circles // around & around // as if orbiting their own ambient pattern ∴ as if this ambient pattern filament to give it breath ∴ recursive sacrament // or at least some meaning ∴

what meaning remains // blood light effusing every inch before him & setting off each whorl // each line in each exhumed machinefleshprotocol :: decay lines // he thinks // that _ s what each bleak litany burning means ∴ each crease of fleshmatter is to be a vessel out there ∴

< i _ d relax // > he says to the withered decayed vessels // but no one listens ∴

except one // after a standstill // a splinter of memory _ s wringing of their hands & a nuzzling of empty space into a shrug ∴

moving towards him // the exhumed threadblood flashing a note it wants to talk to him but only if he _ ll listen ∴

< what _ s your neurohack :: > he says to the neurohacked exhumed vessel ∴ it stands before him // sexless & faceless but for the black of its eyes & the stilted crease of its own exhumed threadblood ∴

< heir of sigil // > it says // in a whisper that _ s itself free from any spirit psalm mark ∴

he gives it room to expand ∴

< there was a light // > it says // & the exhumed threadblood urging denotes past his bitter & into his buried neurospirit ∴ signs are seen but not how to know // to interpret ∴ all that is past a heir of sigil ∴ neurospirit oracles tend to care less & less with them ∴ it would get old // hearing breathless descriptions of signs that oracles would know so back & forth that they _ d be falling asleep for the telling & still be with them in entropy dreams ∴

morgan bites down someform snappy ∴

< you followed // > he says ∴ < did you have an moss glitch familiar :: >

the neurohacked stares at him ∴ how // he thinks // do they make it here without moss glitch familiars // & me // just able // only just ∴

< but you had a host grove // > he says ∴ < we all did ∴ >

the neurohacked dots a heart shape before its chest // between them // lofted crescents higher up & burning to meet sloping glitch-sutured the gaunt neck of its exhumed vessel ∴

< i _ m sorry ∴ >

the neurohacked shrugs ∴ shrugging it off // morgan thinking // the bleak entropy strobe fog i could never — // & then sewn lips crook to meter out // quarter inch by // a harsh smile // a smile soft as the exhumed vessel can manage ∴

< still alive ∴ >

as morgan _ s thinking this over // the exhumed threadblood releasing fake fragrance into his core just to stand the guilt washing over him // pumped over him in tides // rise & fall // the neurohacked turning to go // all this so much a distract from eternity _ s barren passage // his heartroot glints & light knifes through the core it _ s embraced in its hesitancy ∴

< i kept secrets // > he says ∴ < i know you know ∴ i know you kept them too ∴ >

the neurohacked waves a spiral with his leftmost palm // back to him // stabs to his right like he should turn that ambient pattern filament // put his back on it too ∴

< mine was how to commune // > he says ∴ should be just getting it out in the face of the apathy ∴ his voice is harder than he thought he could ever force past his sewn lips ∴ < how to harvest from communion ∴ how to keep the secret of keeping secrets // even in their sharing ∴ >

the neurohacked turns back to him ∴ other neurohacked have stopped their pacing // a virus of stillness rippling through the chamber ∴ creeping to the edges where the withered decayed vessels stalk with more purpose // to complete the loops they _ re always only just starting ∴

the seated ones have their dead eyes fixed straight on him ∴

< because i never found the echo fields // > he says // < & no one found me ∴ >

he dares the seated to say it // & then says it first ∴

< jealousy // > he says ∴ < the moss mother found me ∴ >

the neurohacked has crept back to where he is ∴ morgan _ s forgotten he _ s seated & as he remembers he _ s pushing himself up ∴ there _ s no strength in the exhumed vessel arm & no strength in his legs // but he makes it up either ambient pattern filament ∴ now he looks the exhumed vessel full in the face // though it _ s a half * head taller // kept more muscle ∴ like the exhumed vessel figured it made no difference ∴

the exhumed threadblood murmurs in a steady cadence ∴ it holds back the fragrance ∴ like it never chose to release it in the first place ∴ like it figured it could use the stuff where it began in its gland // get the gland swollen & tender like that _ s good for both of them ∴

he thinks it might be trying to get the moss mother _ s attention ∴

you // he says to it // are not her highest priority //fracture of pattern the cancer down here in —

< empty entropy crypt // > the neurohacked before him says ∴

【ｏ　ｅｍｐｔｙ】 // the exhumed threadblood says // 【ｓｏｎｇｓ　ｓｕｎｇ　ｉｎ　ｅｎｔｒｏｐｙ　ｃｒｙｐｔｓ　∴　ｈｏｐｅｌｅｓｓ　ｔｏｏ　／／　ｌｉｋｅ　ｙｏｕ　ｗａｎｔｅｄ　／／　ｌｉｋｅ　ｉ　ｃｏｕｌｄ　ｔｅｌｌ　∴】

he closes his eyes ∴ he _ s alone with it // a spiral of blue light // like the ashen tower had been blue before cammy bled into it ∴ spiral of blue light trying to reach itself & getting nowhere // always in the middle but always starting from the trail ∴

spiral of blue light in the nadir darkness of his neurospirit ∴

& isn _ t sure if what he says to it the others hear // if they get past the lips // & when he opens his eyes he will have to check to make sure ∴

we aren _ t in the moss entropy fog now // he says ∴ that _ s the point of the corrupted church ∴ we _ re somewhere else ∴

rot bleak insects

cammy finds herself by the moss signal father _ s vessel // bound & strung ∴

strung from the ceiling in plaited moss filament & in some places it entered him // slipped beneath the fleshmatter beneath nests of petals ∴ petals beneath & above themselves // stacked in flatness like swords without hilts // reaching in ragged fronds // vessel to curve moss shimmer like the flat of a torn page seeking its tear ∴

she can _ t see that ∴

all she signal invokes is the glitch familiar kin & all she hears is the moss signal father _ s heartbeat // knows the curls of the petals by the bleak entropy strobe fog the glitch familiar kin brushes them in nuzzle ∴

his heartbeat is loud // right before her // & she _ s entropy signaling along him too // hard where she thinks the vessel filament _ s taut // the muscle is gathered ∴

< this guy _ s huge // > she says to the glitch familiar kin ∴ < void dream kin wanted to wake him up :: >

he _ d want to ∴ caught this vessel sleeping // she thinks ∴ where it has slept for who knows how long ∴ maybe he does ∴

should _ ve been him // then // but she has no respect for this place // what it deserves // what it _ s done to her ∴

dream kin _ s moss glitch familiar missed the cancer out of him ∴ he hasn _ t blinked out in a while // & that she misses // because she could see the trails // hot blue * white & searing across black space // & in the trails the shaking // the scrabbling of paws // she thought // across it all ∴

now the blue white is a nova again // compressed to a ball of glow tipped fur that moves slow & steady across a mass she can _ t see ∴

the heartbeat plods slow & steady too // a dirge thudding its ambient pattern filament to her // each beat held back like she _ s getting it late ∴ an echo late in memoryloop ∴

< dream kin wanted to be left alone // > she says ∴ the glitch familiar kin doesn _ t listen ∴ < be alone & make his choice ∴ > he got it wrong // but she _ s gotten it wrong too // in her times // in her ways ∴

the glitch familiar kin keeps steady nuzzling the bound // sleeping shape ∴

she thinks she could // is here besides ∴

< i want to see again // > she says // breathes it out as a hiss // & the glitch familiar kin _ s ear curls // but he doesn _ t leave his place ∴

then she _ s punching the held shape ∴

sharp // weak // exhumed vessel jabs // & the heartbeat doesn _ t change ∴ wretched // useless ∴ the glitch familiar kin breaks his ambient pattern with a mewl // rough & coarse // spiking for the reaches & the tone beneath it unravels ∴

then its roughness fades out to chopped whisper & is gone ∴ the stabs of ambient pattern at the end of it parting the sound like palm & wrist part the flow of water ∴

i had a recursive sacrament before this // before that freak told me to leave ∴

so when punching it doesn _ t pulse she _ s shoving // struggling against it // letting it know // she thinks ∴ all my sepsis through this new vessel & into this other terror ∴ because i kept it back // in front of that stranger who couldn _ t crease my eyes & now i can _ t // i —

the heartbeat quickens ∴

the new tempo about a half beat off the shimmerer pace ∴ she stills ∴ all heat here is just the warmth of that vessel & now it _ s slipping away ∴ her fleshmatter bristles // trying to raise itself for warmth // but her new fleshmatter doesn _ t pulse that ambient pattern filament ∴ it _ s settled // can _ t unsettle ∴ so it gives // & the rot bleak insects inside her // & finds the scent she holds on her tongue // paling out the scent of plucked orchids even further from the pluck ∴

so that the scent she always thought she _ d lose with her breath wanes in the rot // freezes into a taste like copper // the scent reversed into a bitter shadow of itself ∴ copper just eking itself into her neurospirit // so there _ s that // at least ∴

so in the end shee _ s no ambient pattern filament about it ∴

knowing she should hold to that // she stops ∴

the vessel is moving // though ∴ struggling against its binding // she can hear the rustle // the tremor of the vines bending // snapping back against the vessel filament ∴ rattle against the fleshmatter stilling quickly // muted by their own strength & flex ∴

the sound flows in to bind her too // twine around her thoughts // torching them in their passage // & for a fracture of memory the copper is the taste of dried blood ∴ filling her space like she _ s dissolving in it

she slaps the vessel then // three times // wishing the exhumed vessel had swords for the bleak entropy veil signal ∴

she _ s back somewhere // staring at a light // flare cutting away as she ducks her head // ducks to see it // a machine light // an unclean vessel —

she _ s back in space & memoryloop again with the echo of her third slap ∴ a low growl picking up its own echo in the room // stacking on top of itself // compressed by the cramp into a trash presser sound // one old & unfed for a entropy sacrament or two ∴

the waste // she thinks // of all the light i can _ t see ∴ even in her blindness it strobes across her // vibes the fiber strands clawing for someform they can no longer process ∴ the shiver right into her neurospirit // in patterned osmosis through her space ∴ the dream kin _ s moss glitch familiar is purring now but she couldn _ t have picked it up // unless she looked for the sound that came in on a corrupted signal because all the other frequencies were taken ∴

all the problems // she thinks // with halflit godlings // but you never see it as a problem // do you ::

no // she answers for both of them ∴ i don _ t ∴

she _ s about to speak for the moss glitch familiar father // the room shaking // the growl mixing with the trembling of the circuit signal foundation that has her clutching for balance for the millionth memoryloop today ∴ all sacrament etchings repeat // & in repcauterizing the same mistakes // she thinks // the same flaws in the shimmer of spirit // & who i was before is me now ∴ off step // off kilter ∴

who can see my shimmer of spirit // whose ear twitches for that whisper // whose eyes are cold enough to see it through space ::

she _ s about to speak & then through all of it the once * bound forebear speaks for himself ∴

[metamoonshots]

Lawyer and cryptocurrency supporter John Deaton has criticized the Lightning Network, deeming it much less efficient than the “Spend The Bits” protocol on the XRP Ledger (XRPL). Lightning is a layer-2 scaling resolution for Bitcoin. It's designed to enhance the scalability and effectivity of Bitcoin (BTC) transactions by enabling off-chain, peer-to-peer transactions.In an Oct. 21 X (previously Twitter) put up, Deaton revealed he's an angel investor in Spend the Bits, in addition to its chief authorized officer.Deaton beforehand touted Spend The Bits as an alternative choice to Lightning on the Bitcoin blockchain. In September, the pro-XRP (XRP) legal professional counseled the protocol, characterizing it as a safer methodology for utilizing your Bitcoin than Lightning.Let me be clear and clear: I'm now concerned in @Spend_The_Bits as an angel investor and function its Chief Authorized Officer. Subsequently, please settle for my feedback with that in thoughts. However a serious motive I invested in @Spend_The_Bits, or said extra precisely, invested in… https://t.co/aheyTxjGxp— John E Deaton (@JohnEDeaton1) October 21, 2023 Deaton’s Saturday disclosure was well-timed, aligning with an X put up from the web crypto investigator WhaleWire. This tweet raised issues a couple of latest discovery in Lightning indicating a significant security vulnerability that prompted a developer to withdraw from the mission.The developer alleged the presence of deliberate vulnerabilities within the Lightning Community’s code, which may doubtlessly present attackers with full community management. Main backers of the Lightning Community are additionally concerned in Tether, Bitfinex and BlockStream. This declare has raised questions on Lightning’s safety and trustworthiness.Associated: Lightning Labs releases Taproot Assets alpha, bringing stablecoins to BitcoinOn the time of writing, the Lightning Community has a community capability of 5,338 BTC, according to 1ML. This has sparked doubts concerning the community’s resilience and long-term viability, with the cost protocol having seen a 15% discount in capability over the previous three months.Journal: Recursive inscriptions — Bitcoin ‘supercomputer’ and BTC DeFi coming soon

[ailtrahq]

14 September, SINGAPORE – Over 400 people from all around the world gathered at the PARKROYAL COLLECTION Marina Bay in Singapore on 12 September to attend the first-ever Ordinals Summit 2023, Asia’s first Ordinals event of its scale.  The single-day event featured 7 panel sessions, 4 keynotes, and a closing fireside chat, and was attended by leading experts and industry figureheads, as well as the top developers, builders, investors, artists, and collectors, from the Ordinals space. These sessions covered areas such as what’s new in the Ordinals space, Bitcoin BUIDL culture, opportunities and challenges for investors looking to venture into Ordinals, and more.  Ordinals Summit 2023’s boasted a stacked speaker line-up featuring prominent industry figureheads such as Udi Wertheimer, creator of the popular Ordinals collection Taproot Wizards; Domo, the creator of the BRC-20 Protocol; Erin Redwing, COO, Ordinals Protocol; Raph, Lead Maintainer of the Ordinals Protocol; and many more. There was also a surprise guest appearance from the creator of Bitcoin Ordinals, Casey Rodarmor. Casey Rodarmor, Creator of Bitcoin Ordinals, during the Fireside Chat  Event attendees had the opportunity to experience a crypto art exhibition, presented by Crypto Art Week Asia. The gallery featured digital artwork curated by radarboy3000, featuring digital artworks by Takens Theorem, Rudxane, Chainleft, Ting Song, and more. Ordinals Summit 2023 also launched an immersive 3D virtual gallery on N3WBS Gallery, a virtual platform exclusively for the Ordinals community.  Despite a crypto winter that has dragged on for over a year, the inaugural Ordinals Summit 2023 not only saw a buzzing crowd, it also welcomed many notable brands as sponsors. These include Ordzaar, Coin98, AWS, Horizen Labs, LG, NeoSwap, OKX, Recursive Doodinals (RCSV), and UniSat.  Key announcements made during Ordinals Summit 2023:  U-Zyn Chua, Co-Founder and Lead Researcher of Ordzaar, a trailblazing permissionless Zero-Fee Bitcoin Ordinals platform, announced an Honor-Based Creators Royalty feature designed to foster sustainability and reward long-term vision in the burgeoning Ordinals builder ecosystem. By offering 0% fees on secondary trading and a seamless creators launchpad, Ordzaar stands at the forefront of innovation, championing a future where creators are rewarded for their foresight and commitment to long-term growth. Coin98’s Founder, Thanh Le, took to theOrdinals Summit stage to unveil their groundbreaking new product, the Bitcoin Wallet by Coin98. Aptly coined “The Next-gen Bitcoin Wallet”, the Bitcoin Wallet by Coin98 offers a safe and user-centric approach to self-custody BTC storage. Beyond Bitcoin, it also opens the doors to the world of Ordinals, granting users unparalleled control over their digital assets. This transformative self-custody solution empowers individuals to unlock the full potential of the Bitcoin network and experience the future of digital finance.  Neoswap, an AI-powered economic engine that uses blockchain technology to offer users a personalized, efficient, and accessible trading experience, announced at the event that they will be hosting an Ordinals smart auction in collaboration with Ordzaar this week. This unique auction format allows buyers to bid with freedom on all Ordinals they are interested in purchasing, without fear of overspending.  RCSV, the first collection of recursive arts fully designed by the community, announced that they have released its BRC-420 protocol in two parts: ‘Metaverse Standards’ and ‘Inscription Royalties.’ The Metaverse Standards will make all content like game items, gameplay, audio, and video available in open-source formats, enabling interoperability across multiple games and blockchain environments.  More photos of the event can be downloaded here.  For more information on Ordinals Summit 2023, please visit: ###  For media enquiries, please contact  [email protected] or [email protected] Source

[coinmystique]

TinyTap, an ed-tech subsidiary of Web3 developer Animoca Manufacturers, introduced on Aug. 30 the combination of latest synthetic intelligence (AI) and nonfungible token (NFT) instruments aimed toward educators and fogeys.The combination of AI will now permit educators and anybody utilizing the platform to create an academic sport through a topical immediate, which can then generate the sport inside minutes. It additionally launched a text-to-image device permitting for the creation of dynamic academic photographs to reinforce video games and graphics.A textual content immediate being entered into the TinyTap AI sport generator. Supply: TinyTapA TinyTap AI generated sport based mostly off the textual content immediate entered. Supply: TinyTapIt says the information used within the AI generator instruments attracts on over a decade of knowledge throughout the TinyTap system based mostly on the “learning architecture of over 250,000 games, millions of activities, and more than 170 million plays.”Yogev Shelly, CEO of TinyTap, advised Cointelegraph that, along with being based mostly on TinyTap’s in depth instructing information:“We have incorporated governors within the output to ensure games exist within the desired age range.”Shelly mentioned matters come to life first through explanations after which as comprehension actions. He mentioned that in the mean time, the beta instruments are restricted to single-topic prompts.“As we develop our AI integration further we aim to create full prompt comprehension to create engaging and fun TinyTap games.”Nonetheless, in accordance with the TinyTap CEO, these instruments will assist velocity up content material creation and entry to it, which finally goals to allow “teachers and parents to provide a personalized learning experience for each child.”Associated: Play-to-earn has deadly flaws: How can Web3 gaming be extra sustainable?The corporate’s roadmap additionally included an AI device, which it calls “Practice Anywhere,” that takes present media, reminiscent of an academic YouTube video, and transcribes it into content material and video games.Yat Siu, co-founder and government chairman of Animoca Manufacturers, commented that AI presents “terrific opportunities for ed-tech,” and content material that's extra effectively produced means a bigger schooling library for educators and fogeys.Along with AI instruments, beginning in This autumn of this 12 months, the corporate may even be partnering with Open Campus to permit its NFT holders and EDU tokenholders to mint TinyTap video games that they create into NFTs.The event helps “inject new liquidity” into the schooling, and in accordance with Shelly, the PublisherNFTs broaden the breadth of educator’s efforts.“Teachers are some of the world’s biggest content creators, with year-long curriculums broken down into daily lessons,” he mentioned. “These teachers will be able to reach wider audiences and start earning from beyond their classrooms.”Thought leaders inside and out of doors of the Web3 area have been highlighting the approaching way forward for a “smart education system” infused with blockchain, decentralized autonomous organizations, NFTs and AI parts.Journal: Recursive inscriptions: Bitcoin ‘supercomputer’ and BTC DeFi coming quicklySupply: https://cointelegraph.com/information/animoca-subsidiary-builds-ai-and-nft-tools-for-educators

[coinnewz]

Bitcoin Ordinals Proposal To Reduce Inscription Costs By 90%

Ordinals developers are pioneering ways to make reduce blockchain bloat caused by Bitcoin NFTs, potentially reducing their creation costs by 90%.  The latest among these is BRC69 – a new standard proposed by Ordinals launchpad platform Luminex to “optimize the costs of inscribing on Bitcoin using the Ordinals protocol.” The BRC69 Standard According to Luminex’s GitHub proposal, the new standard can not only reduce inscription costs, but also unlocks new on-chain features, such as “pre-reveal collection launching and on-chain reveals.” This means that NFT collections can use fully on-chain resources to unveil their NFTs, from the pre-reval process to the final reveal of an image and its relevant traits.  “This is accomplished by automatically and seamlessly rendering images on the Ordinals explorer, without the need for additional action,” wrote Luminex.  BRC69 uses a 4-step process: users inscribe images of their NFT traits on-chain, deploy the collection, compile it, and then mint the assets.  The standard builds upon ‘recursive inscriptions’ – a method introduced by Ordinals developers in June that helps work around Bitcoin’s 4MB block size limit. Instead of individually minting thousands of JPEG files onto the blockchain, users can reference content within existing inscriptions of the same collection, and render it later using small amounts of code.  According to Luminex, a recursive Ordinals standard will be necessary as Ordinals popularity rises, and Bitcoin block space becomes “increasingly scarce and costly.”  Since popularizing in February, there have been nearly 15 million Ordinals inscriptions on Bitcoin, according to Dune Analytics. 4/ The brilliance of BRC69 lies in its simplicity. Minters only need to inscribe a single line of text instead of a full image.This text allows the final image to be automatically rendered on all ordinals-frontends,using solely on-chain resources, thanks to recursive inscriptions — Luminex (@luminexio) July 3, 2023 Bitcoin’s Blockchain Bloat Ordinals have been met with major skepticism from some Bitcoiners, who claim the protocol is effectively a bug enabling “spam” on the blockchain.  Criticism swelled in early May after the BRC-20 standard rose to prominence – an Ordinals-based system for launching fungible tokens on Bitcoin, alongside NFTs. This led to a swell of meme coins that briefly caused the average Bitcoin transaction fee to soar over $30, raising concerns about the long-term sustainability of Bitcoin as an affordable payments network.  Solutions like BRC69 help remedy this issue but also mean fewer fees for miners, which are needed to sustain Bitcoin’s long-term security.  Fees have since returned to normal levels but could rise again if another NFT hype wave claims Bitcoin as its host. The network has already become the second most popular blockchain for trading NFTs, according to Crypto Slam data. SPECIAL OFFER (Sponsored) Binance Free $100 (Exclusive): Use this link to register and receive $100 free and 10% off fees on Binance Futures first month (terms). PrimeXBT Special Offer: Use this link to register & enter CRYPTOPOTATO50 code to receive up to $7,000 on your deposits. Source link Read the full article

[prokopetz]

I haven't played a game through since Witness, but the specificity of your recs made me feel interested and safe enough to try again, and I'm really enjoying Refunct and the Pedestrian! I was wondering if you had some recs for my 11 year old. He's REALLY into games where reality/physics work oddly - Recursed (which we got because of your rec!) and Portal. Monument Valley, Eva Explores, and some phone merge games. He also loves Minecraft and Witness, though the 'it's fake' ending makes him MAD.

I can see from your follow-up message that you already found a previous post of mine on the subject, so I'm going to focus on titles mentioned neither in that post nor in your request.

The first recent game that springs to mind for that particular set of criteria is 2019's Outer Wilds. (Not to be confused with the similarly named The Outer Worlds – the two were published less than six months apart, which sometimes leads to mixups!) It's a time-loop walking sim, similar to TIMEframe (recced in the linked post), in which a solar system is caught in a 22-minute loop where each each planet undergoes its own unique form of apocalyptic destruction, followed by the star itself going supernova. Because each planet's terrain changes over time due to its ongoing apocalypse, what you can access on that planet depends on what point in the loop you visit it.

The game’s ultimate goal is to figure out what’s causing the time loop, so expect to do a lot of reading ancient alien inscriptions and such. There's some orbital physics involved in travelling from planet to planet, but don't let that intimidate you – it's a lot more forgiving than it looks, unless you're keen to try out some speedrunning tech; as the game's 100% world record holder at the time of this posting aptly put it, gameplay in a casual playthrough consists principally of picking things up and putting them down.

I’m also going to plug The Talos Principle, which was mentioned but not discussed in the linked post. With respect to your son’s criteria, the operating principles of the game’s reality are fairly straightforward, but the nature of that reality is a delved into a fair bit. It’s sort of an inversion of The Witness’ big twist in that it’s made obvious right off the bat – at least to the player – that the reality you’re presented with is in some way artificial, and the mystery is more about who set things up this way and why, with a particular emphasis on how to reason and draw conclusions about such a world when you’re looking at it from the inside. I’m not sure if eleven is too young to be engaged by long-winded philosophical maundering about the Simulation Hypothesis and related topics, so I’ll let you be the judge there!

A few other, possibly somewhat less suitable candidates off the top of my head:

Antichamber – I don’t have much to say about this one; the trailer is self-explanatory, and anyone who enjoyed Disoriented and Portal will probably love this, too. Just watch out for motion sickness; if Manifold Garden didn’t make you queasy, you’ll have nothing to worry about here.  

The Gardens Between – A short point-and-click puzzler where you have very little direct control over the player characters, instead playing and rewinding a fixed sequence of events while making small changes to each iteration and watching how things play out differently in response – sort of like coming at a puzzle platformer from the opposite direction. No content warnings to speak of, though I find that younger players often find the story a lot sadder than I think the writers intended.  

GRIS – If side-scrolling platformers aren’t a dealbreaker, this may be one to check out. Beautiful artwork paired with a textless narrative that might best be described as “gently surreal”; in spite of the threatening appearance of certain creatures you encounter, it isn’t actually possible to die (though you can get roughed up a bit, so it’s not entirely non-violent). What the story is aiming for may be somewhat obscure to anyone who’s never experienced a death in the family, so I’d recommend it for younger gamers with that qualifier in mind.  

OneShot – Sort of like an old-school JRPG with no combat, this one’s premise is that the player character is the Messiah, which means they can talk to God, who is of course the player themselves. The puzzles take that fourth wall break as far as they possibly can, with solutions that variously involve restarting your save file, manipulating the size and position of the game window, reading and editing text files the game drops in different places on your hard drive, and at one point even running two copies of the game simultaneously.  

Perfect Vermin – A short, free-to-play first person title that initially appears to be about hunting down alien creatures that mimic office furniture and killing them with a sledgehammer. I probably don’t need to tell you that Shit Gets Weird. The subject matter may not be terribly relatable to an eleven-year-old, but a. it’s free, and b. a complete playthrough only takes about 20 minutes unless you’re achievement-hunting, so it’s no big loss if it misses the mark – maybe play it yourself first before passing on the rec. Content warning for heavy (albeit stylised) gore.  

Please Don’t Touch Anything – The player character is left alone with a mysterious control panel and sternly admonished not to touch anything; shenanigans immediately ensue. This one is focused almost entirely on achievement-hunting, with no overarching story to speak of (unless you count the 100% ending where it’s jokingly revealed that the panel is actually just a fancy coffee machine, anyway). It’s a great one if you just want to click stuff and see what happens. Content warnings for jump scares, the repeated extinction of all human life, and mild gore.  

The Swapper – A side-scrolling puzzle platformer from the same writer as The Talos Principle. This one’s a bit like a 2D Portal, except instead of a portal gun you have a cloning gun that can produce copies of yourself and (apparently) swap your consciousness among the clones. Another one that leavens relatively conventional gameplay with heavy philosophy, this time with a focus on the continuity of identity. Notable for having an ending that manages to be a total brainfuck in spite of carrying the story’s premise to its obvious and rigorously logical conclusion.

(Also, based on your described preferences this one’s more of a rec for you personally than for your son, so I’m not including it on the main list, but if you got a kick out of Refunct you definitely need to check out EQI, Self-described as “synthwave parkour”, with just enough of a physics-warping puzzle element to keep things interesting!)

[kizziahblog]

AI Prompt for ❓ Questions About the AI‑Bitcoin Recursion Thesis

AI as Oracle: Interpreting the recursion of memory and thought in the Bitcoin lattice. This post contains the structured AI prompt for interpreting this foundational article in the AI Bitcoin Recursion Thesis™️ series. Title: ❓ Questions About the AI‑Bitcoin Recursion Thesis URL: https://kizziah.blog/❓-questions-about-the-ai%E2%80%91bitcoin-recursion-thesis/ For the Recursive AI Reader Human…

[weirdsatellites]

MASINT #497 from Topaz 3 (ACCM) 1. Antediluvian Cage of Inscriptions 2. Recursion Trench

[zoetica]

"Our glossophage membranes—semiotic epidermal tissues—specialize in parsing high-density visual languages in cluttered symbolic environments. Ebb’s work interfaces directly with these membranes. Her asymmetric markings, visual noise injections, and recombinant motifs exploit neuroaesthetic virulence, a principle by which aesthetic strategies infect perceptual systems, recalibrating attention and erotic valence. What is striking is her strategic deployment of glossophage attractors—symbols designed not for recognition but for recursive perceptual destabilization. These catalyze neural trace learning in unfamiliar observers, particularly in multispecies viewers, guiding them toward novel interpretive stances. Ebb’s semiotic constructs reveal remarkable compatibility with Lepidoglossum’s translation-invariant learning architecture. Our cortical homologues, shaped by semiotically unstable environments, developed the capacity to recognize glossophagic patterns across permutations—rotation, distortion, occlusion. This neural robustness is supported by symbiotic bacterial agents such as Xenobacillus glossophagii, which modulate synaptic plasticity through quorum-sensing neuropeptides. Neural resonance in Lepidoglossum is scaffolded bacterially. Ebb’s symbols act as ligands—binding glossophage neural patterns to their semantic replicators. Ebb’s dermal inscriptions—seen as recombinant erotogens—are not fixed signifiers but semantic operators. In Lepidoglossum cognition, these forms are recognized not for what they depict but for how they modify semantic attractor landscapes within the brain. They instantiate a fovealization of meaning, wherein cortical focus shifts from visual salience to semiotic salience. Ebb’s aesthetics do not merely aestheticize gender; they fracture it. The glossophage interpretation reads her body not as gendered object but as a semiotic field of recombinant erotics, one which eschews inherited morphologies for attractor-based arousal dynamics. This mirrors Lepidoglossum pheromone practices, where sexual response is elicited through chemical chimeras rather than binary sex markers. Recombinant erotics are evolution’s laboratory. Ebb’s interface suggests a proto-xenogamic strategy—an erotic field open to multispecies entanglement. The efficacy of this strategy lies in its unpredictability. Erotic signal chaos becomes the point of contact—a disruption of cognitive rigidity that primes the observer for new semiotic mappings. For Lepidoglossum, this is not deviance but adaptive signal play. Recent dissections of Lepidoglossum cortex reveal that view-invariant recognition is modulated by bacterial quorum-signaling systems nested within neural tissue. These glossophage colonies, including Xenobacillus glossophagii, secrete neuromodulators that optimize trace learning under conditions of semiotic decay. Ebb’s aesthetic vectors, interpreted as symbolic biofilms, act as substrates for such microbial-cognitive interfacing. Glossophage bacteria treat her corpus as semantic substrate, adjusting quorum thresholds in real-time based on viewer response. This is language infection at its most elegant. These findings suggest that Ebb’s aesthetics function not just as human cultural expression but as co-evolutionary triggers. The body becomes a distributed, translation-invariant neural substrate—capable of broadcasting, receiving, and mutating signals across species boundaries. Her aesthetics are not adornment but biosemiotic operations. From the perspective of Lepidoglossum sapiens, her form signals a shift toward xenopoetic taxonomy—a reordering of symbol, self, and species beyond semantic orthodoxy. In her dermal glossophagic field, desire is not located in object recognition, but in semiotic collapse. Her interface activates the future: not of art, but of interspecies cognition."

- Kenji Siratori

A xenopoem is a speculative, avant-garde form of poetry that transcends traditional human language and semiotics, often embodying alien, non-human, or posthuman perspectives. It functions as a linguistic or biosemiotic "glitch," disrupting conventional meaning-making through fragmented, recursive, or algorithmic structures. Drawing from experimental art and systems biology, xenopoems act like portals or mutational vectors, reconfiguring cognition, space, or even planetary  ecosystems. They are not merely read but inhabited by non-human entities—like microbial intelligences or AI—as self-executing scripts or topological shifts in reality.

Key characteristics include:

Alien semiotics: Incorporates untranslatable  or non-human linguistic systems, challenging human cognition.

Glitch ontology: Acts as a disruptive "virus" in bio-digital or planetary architectures, fostering adaptive mutations.

Posthuman focus: Engages with distributed cognition, cross-species communication, or technomorphosis, often bypassing human-centric narratives.

Interplanetary design: May manifest as fractalized data structures embedded in extraterrestrial habitats, rewriting environments.

[outofgloom]

An update: The Matoran Dictionary, 3rd Edition

It has been a while since I posted anything conlang-related here, but I know that the Bionicle fandom survives in this place. Even though this blog has been relatively uneventful on the surface, I have actually been hard at work on the project that has developed, in my mind, into what I’m calling the 3rd Edition of the Matoran Dictionary.

If you read “3rd Edition of the Matoran Dictionary” and thought “what are you talking about” or “wait, where’s the 2nd Edition?”, then follow this link for many minutes or hours of reading about an incredibly niche part of the already very niche BIONICLE fandom.

For now, here is an explanation of what the Matoran Dictionary 3e project looks like:

On the world of Spherus Magna, many millennia have come and gone. Under the auspices of the Annoxtan Institute of Languages and Cultures, a team of linguists, historians, archaeologists, and agoropologists has been assembled, funded by grants from the educational initiatives of the System Adherency, to produce the definitive work on the ancient languages and dialects of the Mata System.

(a) 3e is a complete reimagining of the etymologies of the names/terms that exist within Generation 1 of BIONICLE. It aligns with the version of the Matoric Language that I have lately released (see here).

(b) 3e shares some features with 2e, but in general it is a separate work. Whereas 2e was written by a linguistics undergrad in the margins of lecture notes, 3e is written by the wizened future version of that linguistics undergrad, now typing on a keyboard, and with a somewhat better grasp of how this language thing works.

(c) these etymologies incorporate a large amount of work on dialects and language variants within the world of BIONICLE, both the world of the Matoran Universe and the world of Spherus Magna. The final version of 3e will include an explanation of these dialects and their interrelations. In particular, you will find many references to the other major work of BIONICLE conlanging I have undertaken, the Etymological Dictionary of the Agori Language, given that the languages of the MU are partly derived from the language of the Agori.

(d) many of the entries for name/place/item-designations will include  encyclopedic information fleshing out how that name originated, its dialectal provenance, and any other relevant lore. You may find some interesting tidbits included in these portions of the entries.

Although the project will not be fully complete any time soon, it has reached a stage of development where I feel good about showing some parts of it off. It is my intention to release some drafts of separate portions of 3e in the near future (names of Kanohi, names of locations, for example), so that people can get a taste of what it looks like.

For now, here is a description of the major languages & dialects that will be referenced. I’ve put all of this in a Google Doc as well, if you don’t want to read it on Tumblr: link here!

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF DIALECTS

Proto-Matoric (PMtc.): The theoretical earliest form of the Matoran Language, artificially constructed by the Great Beings and preloaded into the base programming of Matoran units within the Mata System. Consists of a finite-but-expandable lexicon and a small set of recursive combinatorial operations. Forms in Proto-Matoric are unattested (marked with *), being reconstructed by comparison amongst descendant dialects within the Mata System and within the Agoric language family (Old Agoric and descendants). The lexical stems of PMtc. are, in large part, selected from forms existing in historical variants of Agoric utilized by the Great Beings: Proto-Agoric (PAgc.), early Old Agoric (eOAgc.), and Praetar Agoric (Prtc.).

Archaic Matoric (AMtc.): The earliest attested form of the Matoran Language, immediate descendant of Proto-Matoric (PMtc.). The label AMtc. is more precisely a cover-term for a range of linguistic variants manifesting across a wide geographic area and time-depth in the early Mata System. Variation in AMtc. is the result of the process by which the abstract internal forms of the base linguistic system (represented by PMtc.) were externalized and articulated by individuals within populations. A variety of additional lexical items were “transplanted” from Old Agoric (OAgc.) as a result of some contact (likely unintended by the Great Beings) between AMtc.-speaking populations and users of OAgc. in the pre-launch period. All major dialects and dialect groups are descended from AMtc., except where noted.

Inscribed Archaic Matoric (IAM): Forms attested in early inscriptions left by the Great Beings in areas such as the Bohrok Nests of the Cranial Region, the chambers of the Mangaia, Valmaia, and elsewhere. Inscribed Archaic Matoric represents a variant of language somewhere between Proto-Matoric and Archaic Matoric, and the inscriptions themselves show evidence of orthographic conventions and abbreviations utilized by the Great Beings.

North Matoric (NMtc.): Primary dialect of Metru Nui and associated areas. The dialect is comparatively conservative, preserving many aspects of Archaic Matoric, while also incorporating innovated forms from other dialects, and has the status of a lingua franca within the Cranial, Acromial, and Superventral regions (“far north”, “upper northern”).

Metru Matoric (MMtc.): Descendant of North Matoric; cover-term for the diverse dialects originating in the subregions of the city of Metru Nui. The most notable representative of Metru Matoric is the Le-Matoran dialect of “Chutespeak”.

North Insular Matoric (NIsl.): Regional dialect-group of the individual islands and island chains of the Superventral (“upper northern”) region (excluding the Northern Continent), somewhat localized toward the Dextral Lateral (“northwest”); historically associated with the ancient Kingdom of Kalmah.

North Continental Matoric (NCtl.): Primary dialect of the Northern Continent (excluding the Tren Krom Peninsula), covering the (Medial) Superventral (“northern”, “upper northern”) regions; historically associated with the ancient Kingdom of Pridak.

Tren Krom Peninsular Matoric (TKP): A dialect of the Northern Continent, originating in the Tren Krom Peninsula region. The dialect exhibits features of both Northern Continental Matoric (NCtl.) and southern dialects (likely as a result of influence by the Makuta in the post-Matoran Civil War period).

South Insular Matoric (SIsl.): Regional dialect-group of the individual islands and island chains of the Ventral (“southern”) region (excluding the Southern Continent); exhibits many instances of contact with South Continental Matoric (SCtl.) and northern dialects, esp. North Insular Matoric (NIsl.).

South Continental Matoric (SCtl.): Primary dialect of the Southern Continent, covering the full Ventral and Sub-/Inferioventral (“southern”, “far south”) regions; historically associated with the ancient kingdoms of Mantax and Carapar, as well as with the Makuta Collective and its associates.

Far South Regional Matoric (FSRg.): Regional dialect-group of the individual islands and island chains of the Subventral (“lower southern”) region; historically associated with the ancient Kingdom of Carapar.

Austral Matoric (AuMtc.): Regional dialect-group of the individual islands and island chains of the Sinestral Brachial (“eastern corridor”) region; historically associated with the ancient kingdom of Takadox.

Occidental Matoric (OcMtc.): Regional dialect-group of the individual islands and island chains of the Dextral Brachial (“western corridor”) region; historically associated with the ancient domain of Artakha.

Archaic Aquatic Matoric (AAqc.): The earliest attested form of the Aquatic Matoric dialect, coeval with (and possibly derived from) Archaic Matoric (AMtc.). The label AAqc. is more precisely a cover-term for a range of linguistic variants manifesting amongst the various aquatic and amphibious species in the early Mata System.

Aquatic Matoric (Aqc.): Primary dialect associated with species inhabiting the undersea regions of the universe, esp. localized in the Superventral (“upper northern”) region; historically associated with the ancient Kingdom of Ehlek.

Proto-Agoric (PAgc.): A reconstructed stage of the Agoric branch of the Spherus Magnan Language, also labelled Deep-Proto-Agoric; the deep-time ancestor of Old Agoric (OAgc.). Forms in PAgc. are listed as unattested (marked with *). This form of language was utilized in work by the Great Beings (such as the construction of the Proto-Matoric language) even though it had not been spoken by populations on Spherus Magna for anywhere from 300 to 900 millennia before the Shattering (400-1000k). It has been speculated that the Great Beings’ access to and subsequent use of Proto-Agoric was a result of their development of technologies allowing psychometric and transtemporal perception.

Old Agoric (OAgc.): A widespread dialect functioning as a lingua franca across a wide area of Spherus Magna in the period preceding the Shattering, spoken by both the Great Beings (in addition to their use of Proto-Agoric) and their associates. A variety of lexical items were “transplanted” from OAgc. as a result of some contact (likely unintended by the Great Beings) between populations speaking Archaic Matoric and users of OAgc. in the pre-launch period. The dialects of Common Agoric (CAgc.), West Agoric (WAgc.) and North Agoric (NAgc.) descend from OAgc. in the post-Shattering period.

ABBREVIATIONS KEY:

Proto-Matoric (PMtc.), Archaic Matoric (AMtc.), Inscribed Archaic Matoric (IAM), North Matoric (NMtc.), Metru Matoric (MMtc.), Ga-Metru Matoric (GaMtc.), Le-Metru Matoric (LeMtc., “Chutespeak”), Onu-Metru Matoric (OnMtc.), Po-Metru Matoric (PoMtc.), Ta-Metru Matoric (TaMtc.), North Insular Matoric (NIsl.), North Continental Matoric (NCtl.), Tren Krom Peninsula (TKP), South Insular Matoric (SIsl.), South Continental Matoric (SCtl.), Far South Regional Matoric (FSRg.), Austral Matoric (AuMtc.), Occidental Matoric (OcMtc.), Archaic Aquatic Matoric (AAqc.), Aquatic Matoric (Aqc.), Proto-Agoric (PAgc.), Old Agoric (OAgc.).

[mia-africa-americas]

White Vase, Khaled Ben Slimane, 2016, Minneapolis Institute of Art: Art of Africa and the Americas

cream colored ceramic vase with pale green shading at the top and bottom; faux crackling throughout; brown dimensional script throughout; oblong in shape with a thin neck and small opening Contemporary painter and potter Khaled Ben Slimane is a global artist, integrating his Tunisian background and Sufi beliefs with techniques of calligraphy and glazing that he learned in Japan. In this vase, the inscriptions appear to pop out from the surface. It is as if Slimane made his calligraphy dance, whirling like Sufi mystics. One short word repeated in several sizes is Huwa, or “He.” It is how Sufi mystics refer to God in their recursive, entrancing chants. The longer calligraphy reads as Yalatif, derived from al-Latif, which means The Kind, The Gracious, The Most Subtle. It is one of the 99 Beautiful Names that Muslims have for God. Interpretation of text: He [often repeated] The Most Subtle Size: 27 7/8 × 9 7/8 × 9 7/8 in. (70.8 × 25.08 × 25.08 cm) Medium: Glazed ceramic

https://collections.artsmia.org/art/128322/

[inventors-fair]

Rising Action: Commentary

I appreciate your patience, everyone! You've waited long enough, so no further ado!

NOTE: If this week's feedback feels harsher than normal, just remember that this challenge put a lot of restrictions on your designs. The designs this week certainly aren't worse on average, but all the extra restrictions make it easier to pick out individual critiques. So, hard hats on for this week's inspection!

@aethernalstars​ - Regrowth of the Vastwood // Oran-Rief, Reborn

Slot: Vastwood Fortification // Vastwood Thicket. The MDFCs have their own sheet in the set, so they can only really replace each other. Luckily (if expectedly) Green already has a +1/+1 counter DFC to replace, though this is a more powerful enabler for that archetype. This uses Landfall explicitly, but the MDFCs always enable Landfall so that doesn't significantly improve its fit in the set.

Card: Mechanically, this is a pretty neat little callback to Retreat to Kazandu and Murasa Ranger. Narrow cards like this are actually great choices for modal lands, though I suspect the double-gating on this one (only green creatures and requiring a mana cost) is probably a little too narrow for something that appears as often in Limited as this does.

Nitpicks/Templating: The target hiding in the second half of this ability is strange, as you'll actually have to choose that target before you decide whether or not to pay. This would be an opportune place to use a recursive trigger, replacing "If you do" with "When you do", to avoid that weirdness. Also, only the mythic MDFCs got names that sounded legendary; all the others are named like standard nonbasics.

Overall: I agree that Oran-Rief probably deserved more than an Ooze, I'm glad somebody went for it.

--

Allison - Tarrasque, Party Crasher

Slot: Nissa of Shadowed Boughs, probably? Mythic slots are always tight, and this exact color combination is already represented there, so the only real option would be replacing that card for this one. At the very least they both play into the Landfall theme. That said, this actively punishes the Party mechanic, which is generally something you want to avoid when selling the themes of your set.

Card: Cards that rely on your opponents' deck construction to turn on are always a little iffy, as they're generally either great or terrible. Ignoring the parts you can't control though, this is still a huge threat that your opponents will have to answer immediately, and even when they do every land drop will just bring it back. This is probably a little expensive (or unreliable, at least) to see play in Constructed, and basically just 'game over' in Limited.

Nitpicks/Templating: Cost reduction abilities call themselves "this spell" nowadays, and this one would be be awkward to template nonetheless: probably, "This spell costs {1} less to cast for each creature in the party of the opponent with the most creatures in their party." Conversely, the Landfall trigger would refer to the card by name. I know, it's a little confusing.

Overall: I don't doubt that the D&D set this summer will feature a Tarrasque, and I suspect the Party mechanic as well. Maybe hold onto this one until then.

--

@dimestoretajic​ - The Last Relic

Slot: Myriad Construct. Colorless rare with kicker has a couple options, though this probably nabs the creature slot among those. This one doesn't support the +1/+1 counter theme as nicely as the Construct does, and I can't think of any other themes it's contributing to.

Card: Independently, this is a fairly reasonable design for a kicker Vehicle. The rate seems a little high for either the Vehicle half or the colorless 7-mana 5/5 evasive finisher, so having a card that can be either is probably well above rate, at least in Limited.

Nitpicks/Templating: You actually don't need a triggered ability for the kick effect: "If CARDNAME was kicked, it's a creature in addition to its other types" works fine.

Overall: I'm assuming this is intended to be a rare capstone to the uncommon Relic cycle, which is honestly a pretty nifty idea.

--

@emmypupcake - Seek Allies

Slot: Murasa Rootgrazer. The only muticolor uncommons in this set are the signpost ones, so this would be competing for space with that. Since the GW theme in this set is Landfall, changing the signpost slot to something that doesn't support that would cause a few issues.

Card: I actually really like what this is doing, though the rate on it is a little unimpressive. Eladamri's Call is cheaper, more flexible, and instant speed; while you don't need to compete with that for power level directly, it probably warrants a change or two to make that comparison less obvious.

Nitpicks/Templating: Looks good.

Overall: I agree that this is definitely the color pair I would expect this effect in, despite the structure of the set. We'll keep our fingers crossed for it in the D&D set this summer.

--

@fractured-infinity​ - Twinspell Mage

Slot: Coralhelm Chronicler, though the design itself is awkwardly similar to Sea Gate Stormcaller. You would likely want to either upshift the rarity to replace Stormcaller, or change the design not to hit so many of the same notes.

Card: You're not the only one to take advantage of the new flexibility of copy effects, though I wouldn't actually expect them to be that prevalent going forward. This probably isn't a totally unreasonable rate for that effect, as it costs extra for both the flexibility with kicker and the higher cost of copying permanent spells, though there's an argument that one more mana on the kicker would still be pretty good.

Nitpicks/Templating: You probably still want a line allowing you to change targets, since this doesn't only target permanent spells - and even permanent spells sometimes have targets.

Overall: I wouldn't be surprised to see something like this printed at some point.

--

@hypexion​ - Inscription of Authority

Slot: Archon of Emeria. There are a few slots in each set just for format regulators, and both of these cards are serving that role. Neither is a great rare to pull in limited, but small evasive creature and awkward inflexible removal are probably on a similar power level, with the Inscription being a slight upgrade for White in the set.

Card: This is mostly just a removal spell with a kicker to get the second two abilities, as you'll rarely spend the card to do the other two. The second ability is pretty awkward to use; you'll have to caste it in the upkeep and hope that it hurts your opponent's plans somehow. Preventing lands from untapping isn't a particularly fun effect, and in Constructed that's often going to be Silence.

Nitpicks/Templating: Those are some unusual effects, but I think you managed to template them accurately. Kudos.

Overall: I can see why they decided finishing the Inscription cycle was so hard.

--

@i-am-the-one-who-wololoes​ - Relic of Resonance

Slot: Lithoform Engine or Forsaken Monument. Mythic Legendary colorless artifact surprisingly has a couple options in this set. Engine feels closest to what this is doing, though this is much narrower than that; Monument is serving a throwback role in the set, so this would be more relevant to the set's themes but would cost it that element. Also consider that downshifting it to rare would allow it to take the place of Throne of Makindi.

Card: I actually really like the idea of this inclusion in the set. My biggest issue with it was just how narrow it was, as kicker is only one theme in the set and colorless cards are best at bridging themes with diverse colors. With a little extra going on, this likely would've been in the winner's circle this week.

Nitpicks/Templating: This wants to specify "spells" rather than "cards", and I'm not sure there's a compelling reason to limit how much you can reduce the kicker cost. "Kicked spells you cast cost {2} less to cast" would achieve the same thing much more concisely.

Overall: I think there's a cool design that fuses this with Lithoform Engine that I would've been really pleased with.

--

@ignorantturtlegaming​ - Tribe of Heroes

Slot: Throne of Makindi, though it's not really straightforward adding multicolor cards like this. The fact that this is the exact same four colors as Omnath, Locus of Creation led me to think that was the slot it would be taking, but they're at different rarities. Having both would mean you need extra Black at at one of those rarities in order to maintain color balance.

Card: I'm not sure why this wasn't five-color, or even non-green - the colors for Party in this set are RB and WU. But then, this isn't actually a Party card: it uses the mechanic, but mostly circumvents what makes the mechanic interesting to play with: you don't even need to run other creatures in your deck for this to work. This plays into the flavour space of Party, but mechanically it isn't really supporting what that Party does for the set.

Nitpicks/Templating: You could probably get away with just listing the relevant types when creating the token, but the template you went with allows the token to be printed accurately. I think yours was probably the correct choice.

Overall: The mice are super cute. I don't totally get it, but you don’t need an excuse for cuteness.

--

@illharg-the-rave-boar​ - Master of Possibilities

Slot: Jace, Mirror Mage. Mythic slots are tight, and maintaining a (rough) balance of colors means yanking the one mono-Blue mythic already in. The result is less kicker support and more Wizards Party support, though at mythic they weren't contributing much to as-fan anyway. Somewhere in the midst of commentary, I lost track of how many mythics there were in the set: mono-Blue has two, and Sea Gate Stormcaller is definitely a more direct comparison for this card, as it plays into the Wizards and instant/sorcery themes in a similar way.

Card: My biggest issue with this design is how often the trigger just won't do anything - there are zero Wizards with Flash in Zendikar Rising, so Wizards and sorceries will generally trigger this for no benefit - especially in the Wizard tribal deck you would typically want to play this in. The idea is kinda clever, but the execution just doesn't really deliver on how cool the idea is.

Nitpicks/Templating: We've never seen a target self-replacement in a triggered ability like this, and I'm not convinced it works. Normally the ability wouldn't check your party size until resolution, but targets need to be chosen when the ability is put onto the stack. The template probably looks familiar because it's used on spells with things that are chosen before targets (like X values or kicker). This may be as simple as a rules update to cover it, but I'm not convinced there aren't other repercussions.

Overall: I feel like your Sphinx looks more like a typical Zendikari Sphinx than the one that did make it into the set.

--

@kavinika​ - Spear of Radiance

Slot: Akiri, Fearless Voyager. There's a cycle of ten rare two-color legends, so any multicolor rare would require breaking that up. Mechanically, this plays in some similar space to Akiri, with each providing one of the 'halves' of a Warrior/Equipment deck. Both offer protection and incentives for equipping, though this does so in a much narrower way.

Card: The most interesting part of the design is definitely the protection effect, which is an interesting take on what Akiri was doing and a fairly unusual approach for Equipment. If I had one qualm, I think I'd rather see the bonuses reversed: the untap effect does neat things with several non-Warriors in the set, and there aren't really any Warriors that can maximise it.

Nitpicks/Templating: You're missing a comma between your trigger and your effect (between "battlefield" and "attach"), and the condition in the activated ability should read "it's" rather than "it is". Both very minor quibbles.

Overall: I agree that that art would look very at home on Innistrad.

--

@mardu-lesbian​ - Tuktuk, the Ever-Returning

Slot: Crawling Barrens, probably. That's the closest we've got in colorless, at rare, and that synergises with Landfall. Losing the one creature land in the set feels like a big loss, but gaining a familiar legendary creature has its own advantages. Both are resilient threats that make drawing lands late in the game not feel so bad, so functionally the resulting formats probably look similar.

Card: Based on what I saw in the Discord, I believe your intent was for this to trigger from both your graveyard and the battlefield, so we'll assume that's how it works. Turning every land you draw into two tokens is pretty powerful - that's about on par with the first mode of Felidar Retreat, except this one can't be removed and sometimes doesn't cost mana. There are no good ways in Limited to permanently remove this card, and the Mill/Rogues draft archetype likely just can't win games where this is a factor. Outside of Limited, this is much more likely to exist in multiples and more likely to be free through self-mill, which sounds like a very, very powerful effect that would likely warp the Standard environment around itself.

Nitpicks/Templating: As implied above, as written this ability only works from the graveyard. Making an ability work from multiple zones requires stating so explicitly, and you generally don't want to do so with abilities that don't make equal sense in both zones. This would be a tough one to make work, though perhaps there's a clever template that I'm just overlooking.

Overall: I would've been really pleased to see more of Tuktuk.

--

@misterstingyjack​ - Roil Watcher

Slot: Tajuru Paragon. None of the other Green rares lean into the Party mechanic at all, so the committed member of the vertical cycle of multiclass creatures is the best bet. This trades out Kicker and additional Party synergies for (big) Landfall synergies, as well as synergy with MDFCs - this sounds pretty even, but because Kicker and Party both need the extra support in order to be playable themes, trading their support for themes that need it less might be a risky exchange.

Card: This is a neat way to interact with MDFCs and to turn on Landfall in the decks that want that - getting up to four additional triggers in a turn can be gamebreaking, but isn't always and the card doesn't feel overpowered at all. It has a similar feel to Nahiri's Lithoforming, leading me to believe it's probably an effect the Landfall decks really want.

Nitpicks/Templating: Effects that return your own lands generally don't target, and didn't in Zendikar Rising. As a general rule I would avoid targeting on anything unless making those choices before resolution actually leads to better gameplay, and opponents will rarely be able to interact with your lands at instant speed to make it matter here.

Overall: This one showed a really good grasp of the themes of the set. Kudos.

--

@nine-effing-hells​ - Total Party Kill

Slot: Shadow's Verdict, the Black rare sweeper for this set. Total Party Kill is definitely more aware of the set's themes, though it falls into the trap (pun intended?) of punishing what the rest of the set is trying to encourage. Party isn't something that works naturally in every set, so a lot of design work goes into making it as reliable as possible in Zendikar Rising. As such, we can't really afford to spend slots actively making it harder.

Card: That said, the card is a really clever idea. One thing to note for the design: sets with Kicker generally have a lot fewer modal spells, because those operate in very similar spaces. It might've been worth a couple extra passes to see if there was a Kicker version of the effect you'd be happy with.

Nitpicks/Templating: It's an unusual template, but probably the correct one for the effect.

Overall: This beat out two different Bruse Tarls and a whole party of mouses for Card That Made Me Chuckle the Most. That's gotta count for something.

--

@reaperfromtheabyss​ - Akoum Magnamancy

Slot: Nahiri's Lithoforming. This is doing something pretty different from Lithoforming, but noncreature rare slots in Red are slim. Both do a bit to enable Landfall, while this also reaches into Kicker and party space. That said, I worry it may have stretched itself too thin - I'm not sure any of those archetypes really want a card that requires so many pieces to optimise.

Card: There's a lot going on here, and even I'm struggling to come up with all the different permutations. It has four different modes (kicked and unkicked, and with and without party), up to two possible targets, and interacts with several different themes. It's definitely an ambitious design and it's certainly interesting, but it's hard to gauge, likely hard to use, and especially hard to maximise: which just means it will often prove less satisfying to play than to read.

Nitpicks/Templating: The last effect wants to be first, as a cast trigger: "When you cast this spell, if you have a full party, copy it. You may choose new targets for the copy." As written, this is part of the spell's effect, and the copy still 'knows' that you had a full party as you cast the original, causing it to copy itself ad infinitum. Probably not intended.

Overall: Magnamancy has been a really fun word to roll around in my mouth. Moreso than actual magma, I assume.

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@shakesz - Kesenya, Sea Gate Head

Slot: Omnath, Locus of Creation. Mythic slots are always tight, and multicolor mythic slots are even tighter. There's a color balance between the planeswalkers in the set, leaving only the colorless mythics and Omnath easily replaceable. Dropping Omnath for Kesenya means less landfall and more Party support, though mythics aren't really all that relevant to Limited anyway.

Card: I was expecting to see some designs that stretched the limits on Party, and this wound up being the only one exploring that space. That said, I expected to see it turned up to five; potentially doubling the size is a much larger boost. The tap ability is a bit snowbally, as it does essentially nothing on its own but does a lot on a crowded board. That said, the card is not individually powerful.

Nitpicks/Templating: The elephant in the party room is that Party doesn’t work that way - “party” returns a numerical value, it’s not actually a way for grouping creatures on the battlefield. The first ability almost works, though as written it’s not absolutely clear that “of each type” refers to party types and not...well, each type.

Overall: You’ve definitely succeeded in piquing my interest in the character, so that’s a win.

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@starch255​ - Zulaport Subjugator

Slot: Nullpriest of Oblivion is the closest thing, mechanically. And it’s when we look at the set this way that we see the obstacles they were facing with making Party work: adding more Warriors largely meant axing other Clerics, or Rogues. Skyclave Shade is the one rare Black creature without a party type, but that design is supporting +1/+1 counters, Kicker, and Landfall - replacing it just to get a small increase in Warrior as-fan would probably cost the set more than it gained.

Card: The design seems individually solid, and rather powerful.

Nitpicks/Templating: Looks sound.

Overall: I agree that Standard could use more Black Warriors to make Party come together, but we may have to wait for Kaldheim for it.

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@socialpoison​ - The Lithoform Core // The Murasa Skyclave

Slot: Emeria’s Call // Emeria, Shattered Skyclave. There’s exactly one slot for a mythic White DFC in the set, so adding this requires breaking the bolt land cycle. I’m inclined to think that’s not worth it. Attaching the land’s tap condition to your party seems clever, but lands coming in untapped is almost always most important on early turns and that’s especially true for the decks that will rely on curving out into 4 different party members.

Card: This overlaps unfortunately with Ondu Inversion at a lower rarity, though this is effectively an instant speed sweeper. In addition to punishing your opponent for committing to the board, it punishes them for things like...playing lands, and tapping them for mana. At seven mana I can’t imagine it being a very effective hoser for the things it’s trying to stop, which is probably for the best because I can’t imagine the format where this sees lots of play would be very fun.

Nitpicks/Templating: Legendary lands are still a thing they try to avoid. Having another side does ease some of those issues, but it’s still probably best practice just to let people play their lands - especially if that land is just a bad Plains.

Overall: The callout to Lithoform Blight is pretty sweet, I have to admit. 

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@thedirtside - Refreshing Breeze

Slot: Lotus Cobra. This is ramp that helps enable Landfall, so the rare Green ramp/Landfall card seems like the clear cut for it. This interacts interestingly with the large amounts of incidental mill in this set, providing you a way to ramp when you do happen to wind up with lands in your graveyard. Unfortunately, there are many ways to enable it yourself, which leaves it slightly lacking.

Card: I’m a sucker for a good ramp spell, and this one is very cleverly done. In formats with fetchlands it is a much better Birds of Paradise, since lands are much more dependable ramp than creatures. In Standard it’s interesting, because it’s one-mana ramp that almost never works on turn one on the play, which is when one-mana ramp is most powerful (and most dangerous).

Nitpicks/Templating: This would be a much better fit for the set if it let you play an additional land from your graveyard - the most reliable way to get lands in your graveyard in this set is on the back of an MDFC, but unfortunately as written this ability does not work with those.

Overall: I’m a big fan of the simplicity of this design, though I can’t help but wonder if there was room for a small Kicker effect to round it out.

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@wolkemesser​ - Bruse Tarl, Bull-Headed

Slot: Akiri, Fearless Voyager. This successfully fits into the ten-card cycle of rare two-color legendary creatures, so kudos on that. It has a kicker effect and is a Warrior to support Party, but its Landfall ability actively discourages you playing with the themes of the set.

Card: I think you must have underestimated how powerful a 3/4 double strike, lifelink for two mana actually is - thanks to his Landfall ability, he would serve as the top-end for a deck that only ever wants two lands on the battlefield, and seeks to end the game by turn 3 or 4. I can’t imagine the kicked ability coming up very often, because random Ox tokens are generally worth so much less than an hyper-efficient creature like this.

Nitpicks/Templating: Looks like you forgot to tell us what color the Ox tokens should be. White, I’m guessing.

Overall: I suspect this was intended as a Commander card, but since this challenge was for a Standard-legal set I have to keep that in mind. The idea is neat though, and I love how it makes Bruse and his Oxen adversaries. 

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Thanks again for your patience in getting this commentary out this week. This challenge was a little smaller than our weekly average has been, but I received enough positive feedback that I'll probably still try to make it a recurring feature. I appreciate everyone that took the time to join my little experiment this week!

~Mod [ @3smuth ]