Tales of the Revenant Worlds (Closed)

[The Ctan]

Lurthir II, The Revenant Worlds

Alaunmur’ss walked across the ashen wastes of the city of Tiirin. Her eyes alighted on the graceful forms of stone and ferrocrete that rose toward the black sky, its halls stood unroofed and its roadways were shattered glass under the ash of centuries. Her armour kept the radiation from her, living substance that was engineered for every resilience possible, generating low-level fields around her that reflected energized particles.

The Immortals were not as they were before the Great Sleep, enhanced now, rebuilt in mind and body, stronger and more formidable than ever they had been. Her guardians were more than sufficient.

There was little left but charred remains of the incursion, strange protoplasm that smouldered where it had fallen.

The city ruins rose around her, long ago her own people had lived here, and their slaves, she thought ruefully, they had been the masters. Her escorts had come, necrons, soldiers of the Great Civilization, and purged them long ago. She remembered the fear, but it was a thing of sadness from another life.

Her concern was the incursion.

She came to it. A necron stood over the slain enemy, and she looked at it. Human, strange and distinct, but with something within it, both were dead, slain in close combat.

Alaun looked at the creature, dead as it was, and nodded. “This is one of them,” she said. “you are not wrong, they did return,” she looked at it.

“We do not know why they were here,” the necron said, its voice male, “since their initial incursion was ended six years ago sightings of the infestors have been few and far between.”

“I was there when we burned their world,” she said, “their staging post.”

“That is why we called for you. We hoped you would know why they might have returned to the Revenant Worlds.”

Alaunmur’ss crouched down to her haunches, touching the body with covered fingers. “I don’t know,” she said, “but I’ll find out.”

---

OOC: This thread is for stories and posts relating to an ongoing RPG campaign within the Mystria region; so this thread doesn't have a direct narrative structure that will necessarily flow for people outside the campaign. Not all are directly within or relating to my nations (such as this one or Lord Atum) or the other players'.

[Lord Atum]

Antar, Messier 15

Pasht arose from her sarcophagus, hands rising to either side of her, her body singing with joy and rejuvenation, her eyes bright with bioluminescence, a halo of dark hair falling to her back as she rose, arms extended on either side of her in exultation of herself. Her warriors knelt before her, holding their blast staves vertical in honour-guard, while her other attendants made obeisance upon the floor as she returned again to life.

Travel through the Shadows was an experience similar to death, to be cut off from the material world, and even a short journey was to be celebrated, the mysterious rite of passing the gates of hyperspace was one that even the lowliest fellahin of the fields understood was a miracle of the goa’uld and of Atum, their father.

“Rise,” she commanded, her voice deep with the timbre of divine rebirth, all arose from their positions and she stepped down, her feet bare on stone, cool after the warmth of regeneration. Her servants adorned her over the robe she had worn in the deathlike dreaming of regeneration and she tolerated their ministrations without comment of approval or disdain as they laid out sandals of leather and gold and trailed robes of linen and silk over her shoulders.

Equinaminously she sat, and allowed her hair to be brushed, her eyes to be adorned with khol and painted a dark blue above, her nails she gave to be filed, she held out her hands, the right receiving curved claws of silver and the left slipping into the offered glove of the kara kash, the weapon of her station.

Her long sleeves were gathered up and bunched over her upper arms, pinned in place with jewels in gilded buttons and her brow was settled with the symbols of her grandfather, her shoulder-piece carried a high solar disk between the aurochs horns of her grandmother, whose name was spoken aloud now in the court of the One, now that Ra had passed and the One had claimed his throne.

Pasht supported the One. Many believed that the goa’uld lacked feelings for their kin, and for some that was the case, but Pasht was not one of them, though she had little empathy she remembered her smiling mother and indulgent grandmother, she had their memories but also remembered her youth with them. Her father and step-father were still close to her, and she felt bonds of love for withdrawn Ptah and stern, dangerous Sokar. Neither had ever forgiven Ra for what had happened to their wife, her mother; neither had she. That the One dominated the life of the Empire was a constant pleasure, and she smiled as her solar adornment was fastened into place.

She rose once more and a servant bowing deeply fastened a pectoral of gold adorned with the khepri-scarab of protection onto her chest, and for a moment she fingered its winged edges, thinking of the dynastic strife of her forebears before stepping from the chamber of her rebirth, guards before and behind her, others trailing after.

Her destination was the Pel’tak, from where the vessel could be steered. A throne of seated lions with slats of cedar between them and a high back sat at its centre, while its forward sections were dominated by a viewport that showed the eerie dance of hyperspace. She had slept in the shadows for three days on her journey from the great court of the One, and she longed to see the stars again.

Lowering herself in regal magnificence into the chair, she sat straight backed and majestic.

Those who manned the controls had turned and bowed to her, and she bade them rise with a gesture, “Bring us from the Shadows early, I wish to see my world,” Pasht said. An indulgence, but she was no longer in the court of the One, nor visiting her Step-Father on far Delmak as she had been these last years, at last she was within the Hundred Worlds once more, and she wished to see her home.

Her star had risen and she had been feted by others, her part in the victory that Sokar had won – commanding one of his great motherships in the scourging of the Imerian heathens – had brought her status upward in the hierarchy of the One’s court as his own had risen, with Sokar rising to the rank of System Lord, something long overdue, her own station had risen to that of High Lady, a position beneath his only one step.

Not well liked by the loyalists of Ra and greatly feared, Sokar had been known for a few roles, the necropolis lord of the Goa’uld, he supervised the burials of those who could no longer be rejuvenated even by the Sarcophagus, and his cruel nature made him a lord of jailors and of justice, something many other nobles of the court feared. He had never forgiven Ra for the imprisonment of his wife, and he had grown cruel, particularly to others of his own species, with few exceptions. Pasht was one of those exceptions.

The court feared Pasht only a little less than her stepfather; to the folk-traditions of peasants she was a goddess of war and persecution, beneficent and smiling but striking down without mercy, her name itself meant she-who-strikes, a strong name she had chosen long ago, and she was feared widely among the goa’uld, and with the rise of her patron and her own increase in stature, many had sought to appease her and gain new alliances with a wearying barrage of invitations and gifts that crowded the cargo holds far below her.

With obedient words her pilot brought the ship from the Shadows and the viewport filled with the green-gold orb of her world, its three ash-grey moons hanging in the distance, and she smiled. Here there were few of her own kind, and she looked forward to the warmth. In the southern hemisphere where she would land, the harvest-time would be approaching, and the high summer would adorn every bough with beauty.

“Bring us to land,” she bade, and the jaffa pilot obeyed, the world looming larger and larger as she watched without word, savouring the sights of clouds that hung in the air in fluffy lanes of wind-blown summer, her vessel crossing over the terminator, an unspoken gesture chosen to please her mood, and watching as the shields of her vessel were limned with red fire as they crossed through the troposphere.

The languid river she had chosen for her home cut a ribbon of colour through the desert and limestone clad landing platforms rose along its banks, the monumental work of human hands raised up to create permanent reminders of her power. The ship she sailed in now was older, and landed on one of these pyramids, rather than the great flat-topped mastaba-base built for a modern ha’tak class mothership that was further downriver. She commanded a warship in battle, but here in the Hundred Worlds.

Aerobraking bled off the last of the momentum the ship had had and allowed its gravitic drives to take over, suspending it and bringing it the last miles toward the landing pad, its auto-pilot systems taking over from the steersman and navigating it the last few miles, before slowly bringing it down from the air, its engines blowing flurries of dust into the air around the pyramid; through the temple complexes that surrounded it, as it slowly lowered itself into position, shields changing their shape to protect the whole complex as a dome and engine systems disengaging.

She rose, a simple nod of approval all the reward she offer the steersman, though it was enough, and turned, her guards walking with her. She would break her fast before dawn, and her servants brought her roasted heron and fish for her breakfast, with coiander and cereal cakes, which she ate daintily, her clawed hand-pieces removed to do so, before she let her hand be washed and dried. Dinner concluded she passed from her small innermost dining room to the upper hall of the ship, a vast space beneath its upper pyramidal space, adorned with frescoes along its lower walls of hunting caracals and other felines, two vast lion-statues of her mother’s favoured animal, the larger lion, standing at the far end of the hall.

By the time she appeared from the great doors, elders and priests had assembled, and incense burned. Her fan bearers awaited her, and a pair of leonine beastling attendants brought from the far Tau’ri in a new fashion set by her stepfather. The upper part of the ship divided, the hull parting into four leaves along the flat portion of each triangular side, sliding down along the edges of the main hull of the ship, revealing the room through high lancets.

All made obeiscance on the floor, foreheads to the ground in worshipful praise as the suns flooded the chamber and she walked to her throne, her guards, their own lion-heads moving from side to side as they scanned the room, watched them.

She sat, and bade the congregation to rise, calling to her herald to name her guests. Each presented their homage, taking the time to individually crawl over the wide expanse of the floor before her, offering gold and myrrh, silk and silver, and fulsome praise. She tolerated the offerings with an indulgent smile, not minded to instpect too closely. Often paranoia gnawed at her and she wondered if the offerings were less than when she had last returned home, if the homage given was more grudging than it ought to be. Today she cared not, for she was content as she had not been in five thousand years.

She spent much of the morning receiving homages, and then at last gratefully, glad to be transacting something of business again, turned to the petitions of her people. There were protests against her nomarchs and she heard them, though she gave no answers, for dismissing or overruling other goa’uld was not to be done in the presence of others. That would be a breach of etiquette and would weaken the hand of all. There were pleas for public works and she had those she found pleasing or useful taken down by the court of scribes who knelt with pallets beside her, their styluses inscribing text in the air above blank stones. She heard the plea for relief from the town of Nailos, whose water table had become dried out and she granted their request for an engineer to come and raise up an aqueduct to their growing settlement. Lunch she took, as sumptuous as breakfast, in the company of the throng, in another chamber at the top of her palace-ship.

She dismissed them early, and allowed the justice cases to await her return, there were cells aboard the ship and those in the temple, she would allow them to await her return. It would, she hoped, be at least a season, and perhaps at some point her jaffa would get around to bringing prisoners to her for the high justice. The judges, blue-clad goa’uld of lesser status, travelled the Domain bringing lesser justice, but grave matters required the approval of a Lord such as she, or another dignitary of equal rank, so the prisoners she did not see would remain to await her leisure.

She went to her couch in the early afternoon to rest at the hottest part of the day, and there she dismissed her attendants for a time, leaving only her jaffa on her doors to guard her. Pasht rose in the afternoon refreshed and admitted no further pleas, she had been too long from the wind, and let her servants garb her anew.

Here she exchanged the jewels of her office for form fitting bodywear of toughened fibre, robes for trousers and sandals for boots, her head-dress for a communicator and coiffure was replaced with a simple single ponytail. Escorted by her guards she stepped out onto her world’s ground through the medium of transport rings, her staff weapon held alongside her guards. She hunted with her guards, and quite unlike others she took to the wild lands beyond the narrow riverine settlements, riding in a chariot drawn by thundering horses whose reins she tightened as she rode; staff weapon replaced by the long hunting spear that she carried as she thundered across the land.

They brought down a bucking canid, the spear thrown by her arm buried up to the first third, the strength in her slight frame greater than that of a human, and she walked the chariot back, ignoring the flocks of those who bowed before her, priests offering blessing and homage as she walked by.

The evening meal was held with great gaiety in the temple at the base of the pyramid complex, the walkway to the pyramid occupied by her mothership. The spaces of the palace were lavish, and had been busily swept of the sand from her landing by troops of servants, tables laid and lamps lit that streamed light across pools and fountains. Children of the eminent households nearer her landing site were presented to her and she blessed them in the name of Atum, giving them gifts from those she had brought from Mnewer, and watching players and dancers, gifting jewels and gold to them. Long into the night she watched and entertained, drinking rich wine and quite content with the adoration, fearful and exalting, given to her by the scribal classes who had made the journey to attend the return of their High Lord from the court of the One.

All knew that she had won a victory, and many wished to hear of it; there were no prisoners nor much booty of value from the expedition, but preachers exalted the victory as a great achievement, speaking of the ignorance and savagery of the enemies they had defeated, wildlings brought low.

As evening fell she ordered her riverine barques and retired to her chambers, laying alone and at rest, her eyes watching the narrow band of the stars of the Milky Way rise over the horizon.

The morning was sung in by priests beyond her doorway, who sang hymns to her glory that she had heard every day when she was at home, calling her to rise and bless them, praising her wisdom and might. Pasht arose and stretched like one of her totemic animals, and allowed her servants to enter and draw her steaming bath, in order to array her anew.

When she rose, her adornment was similar, she wore the vulture headdress of court ladies, gilded and shining, laid across her hair mantling her, the style of Nekhbet, close in the circles in which she walked, and she stepped down to the river and to the barque drawn up there. She let herself be seen, radiant in sun-bright robes, and sat upon a throne of silver under the care of her fan bearers and an awning of blue.

For her people she knew, it was a day of rejoicing, for she had always allowed the day of her precession on the river to be a day of rest for the fellahin who tilled the soil, and they lined the banks, making offerings and praying, many to her, she knew well, for all that Atum was Sole Lord, the folk of the Hundred Worlds had never quite embraced the idea that only He was whole parts divine.

For them nothing much had changed from generation to generation in ten thousand years, the land still needed to be tilled, and the gods were still the gods, they had been blessed by new blessings by the will of the One in later days, greater health and long life, more bountiful seeds and new tools, but life was life, the eternal coming and going of the seasons beneath the two suns that held their promise of long content lives.

At every larger settlement she stopped, and received the homage of headmen and priests, and in these places, she did deign to dispense justice. At the first of the towns, the place of iron hills, she head four cases that had been kept to her, in the city of ten thousand. Heresy, two counts; one had been of a man charged with declaring her greater than Atum, she spared him but demanded he spend three days in pillory for the silliness of his claim, and refuted it to his face, all the while her chyme thick in her throat, but her resenting mood did not last, for there was another heretic, who had stolen from the temple; she put him to death, bidding her jaffa take him and slay him in front of the temple. Another two were criminals of an abusive sort, and to them she gave no greater mercy, though one she did not slay.

“This crime offends not only Ma’at but myself,” she decreed, “such perversity must be punished. Take this man, if man he be, to the chappa’i and to the throne of my stepfather.” The wretch had stared, horror struck. “To Netu send him,” she had said, and his screams, piteous and wailing, had stirred no mercy in her heart.

There were worse fates in the domain of Atum than mere death.

Every stop was similar, and she heard other cases, disputes of land and title, affairs of common property, and disputes of enterprise, these she settled as she saw fit, and at each stop homages were laid on her and her blessings distributed. She healed the sick, too, when they were brought to her, and watched folk plays and the sparring of the young men of the fellahin who had been chosen from each village to prove their mettle in the dangerous trials to become jaffa – Atum had no shortage of jaffa, though the change from one species to another was once a rare honour the One had derived means by which a jaffa could enjoy the blessings of the goa’uld without a symbiote within them, meaning that many more now competed for that honour.

The best of those would be sent to Edfu, training world of the legions of Atum, there to compete and train.

Five days from her departure she arrived at her palatial home; she could have made the journey in a fraction of the time, but the leisure of being seen by her people in the flesh brought Pasht a certain pleasure. Still, when the doors of her palace opened at the water-steps, and her household guard trooped forth she smiled broadly.

The palace had been in the keeping of priests for the long seasons of her absence, but now it was aired and refreshed and already those who sought her thronged about it, performers from poets to dancers, hunters who craved her patronage, and artists who would render whatever she chose in hardwearing stone.

Here at last she could receive her lesser kindred in the style and honour they were expecting, and she had no shortage of them. She was old, but there were many more goa’uld now who were young, the flowering of new generations for the first time in centuries; the New Mind, those who had never been personally adored as gods, who knew that their lives were owed to Atum, they cut lean figures, they made her nervous, with so many new and ambitious goa’uld how long would the older generation enjoy the favour of the One?

But she, Nekhbet, Sokar and others of their following were close in favour to the One, and knew how to make themselves valuable to his inner circle. And if the new generation and certain of the older swept all the dross away, she would not weep; so long as the wheel turned her way.

She had entertained them, and spoken of much with them long into the night, these were not mere elders and headmen but fellow goa’uld, and she shared much with them, but watched them with the all seeing eyes of a hawk, for any sign of treachery, for equally well they were the only beings to offer Pasht any challenge here.

She rested less easily in the company of other goa’uld and she wished they would cease darkening her doors, but they wanted favour, and she needed those who wanted her favour, so she had to abide guests.

Three days of such amusements later and the less valuable of her potential clients had departed, and instead she was given more peace, but on that morning her sleep was interrupted by the striking of her door. It was a timid and timorous sound on the wooden panels, but her eyes darted open, glowing with pale light. The suns were down over the horizon and her windows dark, she had taken to wearing the kara-kash in the night, at least while others of her kind were present, and she brought it up, holding it protectively, it was capable of generating a shield as well as serving as a weapon. She crept across the room, into the shadow of a chest that held her older robes.

“Who’s there?” she called, her voice high, falsetto, to disarm a would-be assassin. She would rather they took her for a servant; it had worked before. No one knocked at her door, unless there was a crisis; she kept the weapon primed and aimed at the door.

“High Lady,” the voice, the voice of Menkh, her major-domo said, “I am sorry, but it is urgent,” he said.

“What is the watchword,” she said, dispensing with the ruse, Menkh knew her voice.

“Gul-Farr, High Lady.”

A password, one used by her servants who had clearance to know such things. She believed Menkh would rather die than betray her, but there were ways one could be affected, an assassin would know them.

“Jeran, is it he?”

“It is, High Lady,” the longer standing of her bodyguards declared, “I swear it.”

“Menkh, come in,” she said, breathing deep and composing herself, keeping the ribbon-device that was weapon and protection in one at the ready.

The balding man entered, his hands spread where she could see them, and sank to the floor in reverence. Keeping out of range of swift strikes, Pasht looked into the antechamber beyond, and saw only the forms of the two guards on the door, the others by the windows were in place too, all the while she kept Menkh under furtive observation.

Anger replaced fear, as she realized no harm was to come to her. “Why do you disturb me three hours before the suns rise Menkh?”

“My Lady,” he said, “ther- a messenger has come.”

“What? What manner of messenger?”

“An Anubis Guard.”

Her blood ran cold again, and in her hearts she forgave Menkh. “We must not keep him waiting,” she said, but dithered, “fetch my garments, rouse my servants.”

A messenger from the One.

The Anubis Guard were the rarest of all jaffa, and certainly the most feared, not necessarily for their prodigious skill at arms but for what they represented. They were the heralds and messengers of the One himself, and they spoke with his words.

In ancient days Anubis had been defeated by the goa’uld, and his armies disbanded, but Ra had retained a small group of his warriors who had forsaken loyalty to the abominated one as a symbol of his triumph. In time it had become the sign of his high status.

Under Atum, the Anubis Guard were more exalted, but also more feared. Those whom the One desired slain would at times find a single Anubis Guard sent to fetch them, and few warriors would bar their path, even the most loyal would quail, for should the Anubis Guard fail, all those who served the lord to whom they were sent were held to be shol’va, traitors, and their families exiled into the encampments of the untouchables, and their own lives were forfeit.

There was something disturbing for Pasht to know that even her most stalwart guards would, more than likely, simply let the emissary of the One slay her if it came down to it. The visit, unannounced and unheralded, filled her with a creeping dread. Had she done something that had been discovered? She did not think so – not that she had always kept to the laws of Atum, but there were far more egregious transgressions by the score.

Had someone framed her for the Sole Lord’s displeasure? That could be worse, she could not offer any justification for such a thing, and the Emissary might completely blindside her.

The thought of fleeing came to her, but she quashed it. Empowered as they were, this was still a jaffa warrior, still beneath her, and she would not run before such a foe.

She would also not show weakness, she made the messenger wait, but only as long as she dared. Time enough to be attired, again in the solar-disc finery of her first return to her world. She met the warrior in her audience chamber, high backed throne behind her. The lamps had not been lit, and the moons’ light shone through lancet windows, creating stark bars on the floors.

She had harried her servants to make the warrior comfortable but he had not removed the canine helmet that bore the mark of his station, let alone eaten, and stood in her hall, waiting for her.

She came to her high chair, and sat. “Speak, messenger,” she said.

Its blue gemstone eyes regarded her steadily.

“High Lady Pasht,” he said. “hear and obey the words of the Sole Lord.”

“I hear, and will obey,” she said, relief flooding her; she would not die tonight. Her guards seemed more at ease at once, too, appreciating the significance.

“Dismiss your guards,” the Anubis warrior said, “the words of the Sole Lord are for you alone.”

She nodded, and waved a hand, and her warriors swept out.

“Know ye of Sheol?” he asked.

“A prison world,” she said, “none return from thence,” She wondered frightfully if she was to be sent there, but she doubted it now. “No more than that.” There were rumours, but she had not quite believed them.

“Know now that it is overturned, its prisoners set loose and the garrison slain, by wildling warriors from beyond the Domain of the Sole Lord.”

“This is scarcely believable. How?”

“They escaped with sorcery.”

“Oh. What manner?” she asked, you could anoint a jaffa warrior in armour, but they were still prone to superstition.

“True sorcery, not the technology of the goa’uld. The power of the ancients.”

Tales of myth flashed through her mind. She wanted to say it was a jest, but Anubis warriors did not travel to carry the Sole Lord’s humour to his people. “Then their skills would be very valuable,” Pasht said.

“This is so,” the Anubis warrior agreed, his helmet dipping in agreement. “When they fought the servants of the One, they slew the best part of two companies of soldiers.”

“How many were there?”

“Less than a dozen,” he said.

“A mighty feat,” she said, jaffa warriors varied in quality, but even so that was impressive.

“This is why they were kept alive. To study them on Sheol, while symbiotes who could possess them matured.”

Pasht understood at once. The Sole Lord had the means to download minds, but such means had a loss factor that would not be acceptable, if their knowledge was to be harvested the most effective way would be to make them hosts to goa’uld symbiotes.

A pang of memory came to her, the hosts she had worn down the years. Her species were parasitic, taking possession of other beings and wearing them. She had long worn humans, though Atum had commanded them to take hosts manufactured for them without minds, she remembered the last host, Sheyala, whom she had possessed. There was no more intimate relationship possible, utter control, but for all that she had favoured Sheyala, the young woman had been a servant who had offered herself to her, and Pasht felt she had always been kind. At times she missed the thoughts of her host, the second opinions. She’d not always listened to them, but it had been a comfortable equilibrium. She wondered what had happened to Sheyala, Atum had taken the hosts of the goa’uld somewhere, where, and how, she did not know, but she imagined they yet lived, for leverage, for most had seen all that their masters did. She brought her mind back to the warrior who stood, less frightful but still daunting before her. “They were of unknown species?”

“Mostly,” the Anubis warrior confirmed, “the code of life was taken from each and inculcated by Tefnut in her newer young.” Goa’uld symbiotes had a high chance of killing the host and themselves in species they did not understand on an intimate, genetic level, goa’uld queens could assimilate new genetic material to prevent this risk of rejection.

“When were they captured?” Pasht asked.

“Four years ago. They were captured by Lord Sokar at Terra Agartha.”

She remembered hearing of the skirmish, one where Lord Sokar had taken a second Heart of Light. “Then the symbiotes for them could now take host?” they would only control their hosts in sleep and blackouts, it would take seven years to grow to maturity, but the blending could be attempted.

“Yes,” the Anubis warrior said. “That is not why I have come to you.”

“I am the Sole Lord’s to command,” she said. He said nothing, and she felt a moment of anxiety.

“Spies bring word that these renegades have left the Tau’ri once more. You are charged to find them, and to bring them as prisoners to the Sole Lord. With discretion, ensure that the hand of the Sole Lord is not seen in this matter.”

“I hear and obey the words of Atum.”

Pasht slept fitfully after the Anubis warrior’s departure. The following day she sent her guests away, all had heard the news from their own servants, guards and slaves, that an Anubis Warrior had visited their host, most were glad to depart, a few had left before the dawn, and she was able to remain in her chambers, drawing her legs up under her and leaving the windows shuttered against the rising of the suns. A feeling of dread and anticipation washed upon her. She had been left with an intelligence report on her quarry, and the task she had been given was one that daunted her; not the foe so much, for she had been promised that should she ask for materiel support from the Sole Lord, she would have it.

Instead she had quarry whose ships were faster than hers. They had left a nation called Crystal Spires, not a few days past, with intentions of leaving the First World, and thus the protection of its powerful guardians, that would mean that in time they would come to somewhere she could overcome and take them, but she would need to hunt them, to find them.

The group were eclectic. Their leader by some accounts was a species immune to blending, the elder folk of the First World; Atum’s design would not work for her, this Alassë nos Eärendil. She had never been caught at Agartha, slipping between the fingers of her stepfather’s jaffa and fleeing when her subordinates had been, having scouted ahead of them. Perhaps if they had been led by her, none would have been. Pasht decided at once that Alassë was to die.

Their other leader was an Amelia Lowwe, a human, of the Malgravean people; now she understood more of why the Lord Sokar had wanted to take this tribe’s queen to himself, in the hope that she might possess the ancestral abilities this one did. This wasn’t the case, but it was worthy of note; this Lowwe had been seen to manifest powers, but also was an adroit technologist. Pasht knew that more than most this one had to be taken alive; she was human, and would be revivable by a sarcophagus of course, human bodies were easily mended, so she did not need to be alive to be taken.

Fenya ita Suhbekhar, a worshiper of some folk religion inspired by the goa’uld, ironically a priest of Sokar, she was a beastling of the Mystrian folk, but raised in a foreign culture, she had potent abilities in healing and in other advanced traits.

Rylux Crescent, a prince of a land called Dyste, or something like it, and a sorcerer by all accounts, with a manservant of a smaller variety of his own species, the driving force behind much of their survival on Sheol; both would be valuable, and she knew she must find out more about the strange, lizard-like creatures, supposed as kin of dragons.

Sebastian Aldham of Kouralia, the strongest warrior of the group, he had been slain but lived again, once with the Sarcophagus on her stepfather’s throne world, the next time by means unknown but beyond the technology of the peoples who had supported him; he would have to be caught alive.

Sahaeli Namoli, of royal blood, from a deposed lineage. She sensed an opportunity there, and her mind spun plans. This one was a warrior-mystic whose weapon could slay even a kull warrior in a blow, a fascinating threat.

Lily Emptyhoof, the last of their band on Sheol, had been an equine warrior, a replacement for one that Sokar’s jaffa had slain. By Atum’s will she had been placed on Sheol along with the others, to study their interactions.

There were others in their company now, or so the spies said, but Pasht did not yet know if they could be used for Atum’s design. Time would tell.

She set the tablet she had read down on the table, turning it off and securing her, and rising to her feet. It wasn’t the first time she had read the briefing, nor even the third. She could handle the tactics of bringing these warrior-explorers to her. But how to find them, to ensure that they could be brought to Mnewer. That was her problem, that was the web she had to weave.

She did not yet know how to lay her pieces. She slid open the shutters of her library’s window, looking at the river and the temples, hearing the calling in the markets far below.

She turned to her door, “Jeran, call for Menkh, tell him to find Viriera and Sanson,” she said, “and for the servants, I will take lunch in here,” she said, her fingers trailing over the smooth woven paper of a notebook, picking up a reed with it, laying them out on the table.

The two caracal-beastlings she had sent for, her fan bearers, bowed to her as they entered, their foreheads to the ground.

“Rise,” she said to the couple. Her own heraldic animal reflected in these exotic slaves. “I have a different job for you today,” she said, she waved them to the couch across her, “Lunch will be served in a moment,” she said, “I require little of you today, save that you tell me everything of your former home,” she asked, picking up the reed, and sitting next to them.

[The Ctan]

The Lanotoiteliyúmë Conflict
The Kinband of Orn’s Hunting Ground, The Outer World
27,453 RV (Reckoning of Vinyatírion)
The 93rd Solar Year of the 190th Long Year of Menelmacar
Year 3,080 of the Sixth Age, 11,680 Solar Years Before Present
“Younger Dryas,” Tarantian Stage, Pleistocene Epoch

The winds on the plateau bit to the bone, and the house’s fire burned brightly, dogs sleeping on the floor. Elenmacil kept his watch, his shoulders bulked up by the furs he wore that gave him a bulkier appearance than the lithe frame beneath. He stood with his back to the fire, and the people with him were good people, and he trusted them. A furtive creeping caught his eye, and his hand darted out, swift and fast, grasping the creature in a motion that used his thumb to break its neck.

The rat died with as little pain as death could bring, and he threw it in a wide arc over the frost-hardened ground. An owl, wildcat or some other beast would have a free meal, while Elenmacil reflectively spoke words of purification that cleansed his hand of any parasites or bacteria; he would not sicken from the scavenger’s parasites.

Here in the outer world, things like this were a concern. The people here were not the people of his homeland, whose learning dated back to the Valar and whom trade and knowledge had enlightened, their speech was different and their knowledge of such things crude at best; he had given advice of course, but he had no way of communicating the germ theory of infectious disease, instead he had to speak in terms of purity. Others of his folk had taken the time to become pilgrims of teaching, to raise up the outer world, but he had no desire to be a king, or a false god.

He had seen such places, in the habitable band where the ice sheets did not suffocate agriculture, and the lives of men did not easily encompass learning without settled agriculture and the division of roles. All of the people of the north wind, the tribes he walked with, knew every skill in their world, they had asked at times, how one made the fine gleaming sword he carried, and Elenmacil had explained as much of metalsmithing as he knew, but they did not understand when he told them that he had never mined for iron himself, and did not know which rocks were the true ore, nor where to strike them. They thought he had been keeping his secrets, and left that line of questioning.

In other places, where civilization of static culture had flowered, there were good reasons not to trust such places. The Ilenans were the nearest, ancient and decadent, a people that were old beyond memory a static, calcified society that sought conquest. These were patterns that Elenmacil knew would be repeated long after the present renewed ice age would reach its end.

He looked to the horizon, the pre-dawn rising of Eärendil, the Morning Star, and he smiled ruefully as he saw its pale light, remote and beautiful. Soon Orn would rise, and his children would begin stoking the fires from embers to life to cook a meal. “Aiya Eärendil, Elenion Ancalima,” he said, smiling as he rose, pacing a little way. It was a rueful smile, a thing of days far gone.

He had not told Orn’s sons that he had once ridden the clouds of Eärendil, above its crushing, acidic atmosphere, in hard-shelled structures of air and spun carbon, the same substance as the embers of their fire; they would not understand, and suspect him more of a god. Beyond the blasphemy, there were great problems with being seen as a god, or a fairy of great power, how could you then explain such things but admit you were unable to heal a lame leg or bring the hunted herds?

A man was all that he claimed to be.

----

Orn’s sons were hunting, and Elenmacil was with them, spear in hand, long straight ash with a biface blade of sharpened flint. He watched with eyes keener than theirs as their prey, a broad-backed mammal whose heavy frame protected it well from blows and whose tusks could be lethal defensive weapons. The kinband was hungry, or they would never risk such hardy prey. Ivid, Orn’s eldest son, and leader of the hunters, was discussing their tactics, they would lie in ambush for the creature, and spring upon it, with their spears they would fence it in and keep its heavy swaying body from inflicting injury then drive spears into its underside.

Elenmacil nodded his understanding with the others, he did not need to say more, it was sound thinking, and as good as any other way; he carried a weapon that would make it easier, but with the spears, it would be as well to slay it that way as any of the others they knew.

“A falling star,” Mord said, his hand pointed skyward, “in daylight. It is an omen of ill.”

Elenmacil could see more of where he pointed, the plume of smoke that trailed from the star was not the fires of re-entry but the stricken engine of an aircraft falling from the sky. Powered flight was rare in the Outer World. He wondered at it, but knew already who it was. His kindred could find him anywhere, and never well.

He wondered what it meant for Orn’s sons, but he could see that proud Ivid was not inclined to ask, keeping his own counsel as a huntsman. “It is,” Elenmacil agreed.

He knew how a flier of his own people had come to crash what looked like three miles from him. His Doom was upon him once more.

----

He had left Orn’s sons and walked toward the crash. As he did so he took caution, watching the sky more than the land. There was no surprise in his eyes when he saw a young elven woman carrying a weapon, a survival gun of some sort, he didn’t recognize the type, but he laughed, and called out to her.

“No one here will know you are threatening them with that,” he called, “try a blade instead, or a flare gun.”

She stared at him over the brush.

“Who are you?”

“My name isn’t important,” Elenmacil said, “I am one of the Randiredelhi,” he said. The wandering elves, exiles of Menelmacar, had existed since its founding, and in some numbers. Some were traders and explorers, others, prospectors, others still political dissidents. A few, dangerous megalomaniacs who sought to set themselves up in power. It wasn’t a comforting soubriquet, but he did not want to offer his true name. Elenmacil was a name of scorn.

“How did you find me?” she asked.

“I dare say,” Elenmacil said, “you found me. The craft of our people rarely malfunction,” he said, gesturing to the flier she had come from, “you were shot down. Who is your enemy?”

“Who knows not? Have you been under a rock?”

“In a cave,” Elenmacil said, though in truth the Sons of Orn did not live in caves except when they needed to shelter from the worst the weather had to offer. “Lower your weapon, sister, I mean you no harm.”

She sighed, “I was shot down by a ship of the Lanotoiteliyúmë.”

“The Numberless Horde?” Elenmacil said, “I’ve not heard the name before.”

She gave him a look, “You really have been under a rock. Anyway, it should not be long before rescue arrives.”

And there it was, Elenmacil thought. He had long ago made it so that his kindred could not find him without misfortune, he had hoped to avoid them entirely, but his Doom would not rest, and events fell so that he would meet his estranged kindred far from home, in any circumstance. Coincidence was the slave of the Fate that fell upon him.

“You are of House Eärendil?” he asked.

She gave him a look, “How can you tell that?”

“I know it,” he said, “because the Footsteps of Doom have brought you here. Something dogs you, something that will bring death and ruin here. You must shut down your beacon at once.”

“I don’t think so,” she said, “what do you expect me to do, walk across the world?”

“If need drives you,” he said, “yes. A few years are not a long time to tarry.”

“Perhaps not to you,” the younger elven woman said, her hand protectively on her weapon once more. In a year the Lanotoiteliyúmë may have consumed us all.”

“If you don’t, they will find you,” Elenmacil said. She paused.

“You don’t even know what they are!” she snapped, “How do you know that they are coming after me?”

“Think about the coincidence of our meeting,” Elenmacil said, “that is no mere chance. I am Elenmacil nossë Eärendil.”

“Elenmacil the Unready?”

He sighed, “That is my soubriquet, but not one I favour.”

“You’re dead. You have been…” she paused, “You’re dead.”

“No,” he said, “but we soon will be. Know this, I am cursed,” he said, “for my failures in the primal wars of our people I failed, beyond absolutely. My own brother, as he died, laid the Doom upon me that his line of descendants would always in their hour of need be drawn to me.”

She looked at him, “What are you raving about?” Her opinion of him had gone down with the revelation of his name. She looked to her wrist, where a flex-screen blinked, and she brought glasses to her face, looking skyward.

He sighed and his hand reached behind him, under the furs he wore and to the coat beneath, hardwearing and ancient, he took a weapon that was four generations older than the current ones, a pistol built around a miniature hydrogen cell, one with the power to last for a long-year, one hundred forty-four turns of the seasons, of infrequent use. A wanderer’s weapon. “Your enemy comes,” he said. It wasn’t a statement.

“I see them,” she said, “they’re close now.”

----

The ice lit up with smoke from the debris of the falling target. The first of the Numberless had fallen, and he had been surprised, even relieved at it. Its frame was metallic, sparking with power-links open where he had shot it. It was an aircraft, but he was a fine shot even by the standards of the Quendi, and his aim had been aided by magecraft that steered his hand when muscle and bone could not.

“Nothing alive here,” Elenmacil said.

“There won’t be,” her name was Vanyaindo nos Eärendil. She was a star farer; the fleet was not a militant force, but neither quite a commercial one, the law enforcement hand of the Menelmacari government in space. Until recently there had been no need to build warships, nor had there been any for a thousand years, and rapid militarization. Guided by diviners the fleet had been militarising for thirty years before the Lanotoiteliyúmë first appeared.

There had always been rumours of course, things found in far reaches of the Sol System or strange monolithic ruins that suggested other worlds could be visited, but the Lanotoiteliyúmë had still been shocking in their numbers and resource. Some suggested they had been responsible for the loss of periodic signals from long range colony ships that had journeyed out of the reach of Anar’s system. Vanyaindo had filled him in as they walked toward the crash site of the enemy vessel.

“We don’t know who created them, or why,” she said, “rumour has it that someone sent them forth to suppress other developing civilizations. To strangle rivals in the crib,” she said. “We are sorely pressed on every front my Lord,” once, Elenmacil had been a Lord, mighty among the Eldar, but that had been before his shame.

There was nothing but wind on the plateau, and they had burned down Vanyaindo’s ship, thermite charges searing through the metals that made up its powerplant and computer brain, burning down into the taiga beneath.

The same black dread that always took him was with them though. How did he explain, that he knew there would be more. His brother’s curse laid heavily on him. The burning metal took him back to the fires of another age, and another enemy.

----

The Fourth Lóki War
Tol-Aerontiris, Southern Airemma, Menelmacar
8,321 RV (Reckoning of Vinyatírion)
The 133th Solar Year of the 57th Long Year of Menelmacar
Year 1,859 of the Fourth Age, 30,812 Solar Years Before Present
Last Glacial Maximum, Tarantin Stage, Pleistocene Epoch

The harbour was a charnel house of death, the enemy had flown on, content in their victory, in the city that had been smashed to flinders and burnt to cinders, in the lives ruined. Their statement had been absolute, and their aggression a shock that had dealt perhaps the most serious blow to Menelmacari confidence of its epoch. Three times before had the Menelmacari warred with the Dragons, three times they had won. This time it seemed certain that their gains would be reversed, the new Draconic Warlord Ghashgûl, and the Lughai followers who served him, men of a different and stronger mien than the majority of human-folk, the dwellers in towers, had inflicted a series of devastating defeats.

The swift iron-banded ships of the House of Eärendil had long been the pride of Menelmacari defence, key to defending against the intrusions of dragons and the raids and pernicious violence of the Orkor. For a thousand years, they had kept the peace, along with their friendly rivals of House Círdan, forming the swift response of the kingdom-confederation whose growing power had incorporated the diverse peoples of the islands, liberating Avarin enclaves and human towns from the onerous hands of taxation and slavery alike, opening up lines of trade and more.

Elenmacil Linto Eldamanar nos Eärendil was the seventeenth lord of House Eärendil. Unlike most of their kindred the Eärendili were mixed between men and elves, an inheritance of their ancestor, the Half-Elven mariner whose name they bore, and his kindred. Two noble lines came from his sons, Elros the elder, who had chosen to live as a man and became in time hailed as a king of men, and Elrond, the younger. Elenmacil traced his lineage from Elrond, lore master and lord of wisdom, by his sons in turn, and occupied the position of Autumn King of House Eärendil.

In each generation of the long lives of the Men of Menelmacar a lord ascended the throne, but in that time the elven lords of the household took a regency, often for forty years at a time, as chief most lord of the House of Eärendil. Elenmacil was Lord Paramount at the outbreak of Ghashgûl’s war, and he had tarried too long in coming.

As he stood on the battlefield, he knew at once that his judgement had been deeply won. The first Lóki War had been a primal conflict, the second and third mostly against cold-drakes, lesser brood of Morgoth, without the ability to create fire from their breath. He had imagined from the reports he had seen that this was no more than that.

The Ahyalóki, shape-shifting creatures of dragon type, had been able to suborn much of the defences of the island-fortress of Tol-Aerontiris, starting explosions in the stockpiles of dragon-flame oils that were used to retaliate against dragons in kind, that had unroofed a large part of the defensive citadel. The dragons had swept in in the confusion and burned out the defenders, leaving them caught between the inferno within and the coastline of the island, in harbours choked with smoke and steam, great lingwilóki had blockaded the harbour.

By the time that they had arrived at Tol-Aerontiris the Eärendil ships had found nothing but flinders on the foam, but they had encountered the fish-dragons in the water of the home sea for the first time in an age. Tol-Aerontiris had long guarded the inner sea against the dragons and now they were past this key isle of guard, and able to sink trade ships.

And it had been Elenmacil’s fault entirely. His brother Isilnár had been the captain of the formidable Falmayorissë the Wave Rider, the greatest ship of her age, and now identifiable only by the topmast broken across the harbour’s side.

“My Most Noble Lord,” Elenmacil’s equerry said as he mounted the remnants of the harbour tower, “we have found your brother among the survivors.”

“Send him to me.”

“That is not possible, My Lord,” Elenmacil turned to stare at him, and at once he knew what had become of Isilnár, the splintering of ship’s wood echoed in his ears as another of the casualty vessels was drawn out to clear the harbour. There was no way to answer in his heart.

“Lead me to him,” Elenmacil said.

----

The Houses of Healing had been sacked by the tower-folk and the were-dragons, but they had been set in order again as best could be done, where they had not been razed to the ground. The sound of horror echoed within, surgery with insufficient healers and insufficient magecraft to staunch the pain, the sound of the dying who passed. Elenmacil was no great mage, but he could feel the death here, of spirits passing from bodies. He stopped in the arched doorway, beneath defaced images of Estë and Nienna, both of the Valier’s stone faces had been hewn off and lay in fragments on the floor, and only the larger chunks of the defacement had been swept aside.

He felt as though he were a statue himself, unable to go further, and he stood a long moment in dread of what lay within the pale building, marred by fires without, its doors smashed across the courtyard of flowers that yet bloomed in the spring, barely touched or trammelled. He stood and gazed, as he had since his landing, in battle array, ready to fight a battle already won by the foe.

“This way, My Lord.”

He followed, and the scene within was no less bleak than any other on the island fortress. The wounded lay in rows, close packed, feet almost touching one another, and though it chagrined him he did not see them, for at the far side of the hall, his brother lay, and he knew at once that his fears were true. This would be the last time he would see Isilnár in this life.

“Elen,” Isilnár croaked, his voice was harshly rasping, his body burned in flame, he had survived, but it was one of the tower-folk who had taken his life, his wounds were deep and though staunched they were still oozing thick, dark sludge that ran through his veins in place of blood, a morgul blade crafted by the Tower Folk, a poison of a kind none had heard of before that had reaped many lives. “Where is Alta?”

He did not know, he said so.

The wounded man looked at him, “You could have prevented this, El,” he said, “I sent word by the Sanwë-Calar,” he said, the thought-lamps that were the primary means of long distance communication, faster than telegraph and able to cross the oceans without any cable, and seek the specific details of a mind, they were derivatives of the ancient Palantir, but replicated only their communication functions, though with greater clarity.

Elenmacil had received word, but he had always regarded Isil as flighty, and had doubted word that the Tower Folk were marching in any numbers that could have overturned the Island Fortress, let alone that their boats would suffice to make the passage across the stormy straits. Isilnár’s message had suggested that he had good intelligence from the Rangers, but Elenmacil had not taken it to heart. “You could have prevented this,” he said, “you wanted to make sure that all of your ships looked as well as they could.” He had underestimated the dragons, and the Tower-folk, and his brother had paid the price, along with all of the people of the Isle of Guard.

He wanted to deny it, to say he was only being cautious, he could not have known that the citadel would fall so quickly, He could truly not have known, for the citadel was deep-delved on all sides and its stones enchanted to resist artillery and dragon-fire alike, little would have breached it from without. But his heart knew the lie, his spirit had been weak. “I could,” he said, he knew from the winds and the tides that his ironclads could have been here two days ago if he had set out the moment his brother’s message had reached him.

“Come closer, El,” Isilnár said, and grasped his hand, aching slowness.

“Never fail our family again, El,” he said, “swear it to me. Swear to me you will find my daughters, and keep them safe, and their children after them. Give me your oath on it.”

Elenmacil looked into the dying kinsman’s eyes, and he said the words.

----

Orn’s Land 27,453 RV

“They will come again, and soon,” Vanyaindo said, “we must be gone.”

Elenmacil did not disagree. He turned his face to the sky, and he took up the spear he had carried, it would be no use against this foe but there would be times to have use of it. “We must not lead them to Orn’s Folk,” he said, “to the west.”

They had run for a day and a night, without rest, they were on foot and their enemy was able to break the speed of sound, but there was little either of them had that would give away from the air apart from the people here, who had no higher technology than the oven and the spear caster. Vanyaindo had told him that the enemy seemed to be technology hunters, and it eased his mind, they would not seek to harm people who did not pose a threat, or perhaps they simply did not view the lives of most humans as worth the ammunition.

But the spectre of doom was ever at Elenmacil’s back, for he understood that a simple aid was not enough. They risked no fire on the ice plains, even as they ran along the side of the glacier-front a dozen miles north of the wastelands, and at Vanyaindo’s suggestion, they used none of their technology, though Elenmacil carried little save for the gun in any case.

They told stories. She was ever curious of him, this fossil from the prehistory of his people, but he knew her. The descendant of Isilnár, for his Oath had laid a doom upon him, to always be on hand for his kinsman’s children in their hour of need, the Doom was a high and terrible thing, and he had taken it willingly, in a moment of passion.

She was not the first, nor the hundredth, at first he welcomed it, a chance to lay amends for the thousands who had died for his failures, at Tol-Aerontiris and in the greater war, the first large scale defeat suffered by the Realm of the Swordsman of Heaven, and one whose fault laid wholly at his own feet. That the storied Glorfindel had arrived in the third year of the next long year and waged a campaign that had driven the tower-folk and dragons back to the lands they had occupied when the first coming of the folk of Eregion had first liberated the tribes they had enslaved did not salve Elenmacil’s conscience, as much as it did his homeland’s pride, and ever afterward he had been known by the soubriquet Elenmacil the Unready, he who had failed to defend the borders of the realm, and who had caused the defeat by Ghashgûl, who had himself been slain by Glorfindel thirty five years later.

By the time they risked rest they had travelled league after league from their original location, leaving the wide plains of Orn and heading into the territory of his rival, Huree. The pair had avoided Huree as assiduously as they had Orn’s folk, not because they were enemies though that was a risk that was ever present, but because they still looked to the skies, expecting pursuit.

The caves were used by Huree’s clan as their ceremonial place, Elenmacil knew, but they wouldn’t be back here for many months or years, so long as he and his countrywoman cleared up well after themselves there would be no disruption, and they were protected from the rain that rolled in as freezing sleet surging through the ice-bouldered plain.

Vanyaindo was looking at the bright ochre illustrations in the walls, rust-paint that gave the textures of animal forms. “Are these icons, religious things?” she asked, “they are surprisingly beautiful.”

Elenmacil looked across the cave, they had lit a small fire that he had placed tubers into, clad in clay. “No,” he said, “the gods of Huree’s people are in the wind and the sky,” he paused, “they draw animals because the hunt is their chief activity as a people,” he turned one of the clay-wrapped tubers, “it’s not how they make their food, for the most part, but farming they teach by doing. These pictures they use to teach children the way to know which animals are which, which are dangerous, which are good to eat, and more.”

She gave a strange look, out into the mouth of the cave, it was no grandiose structure, she had to stoop to stand, and the sleet was washing older snow away from the entrance. Vanyaindo squatted by the entrance and looked to the sky.

“Tell me about this Numberless Horde,” Elenmacil said.

She looked at him, “You’ve spent too much time with the primitives, forefather, they’re the biggest threat out there right now. We came across them about a century ago,” she said, “they attacked one of our colony ships and swarmed over the colonies in the Oort Cloud, they’ve mostly been attacking our industrial assets in the Sol System. This is the furthest in they’ve ever come,” she said, “they’re machines, we think they were built to suppress technological development, when they detect radio signals they come in and attack.”

“Ah, the Great Silence,” Elenmacil said, “I had heard of such things from the Sámavilri,” the mind-fliers, far-seers who gazed at the stars and saw beyond them, specialist diviners who had explored deep into the far depths of space long before the first Menelmacari had walked upon Isil or Carnil.

They had been the best-known part of Menelmacari deep space exploration in the fourth and fifth ages, and the term was less used now as the original craft had diverged into more specialised and modern doctrines, now that walking on other worlds was possible in person. Vanyaindo looked at him as though he was a relic. “They might not be wholly responsible, but they’re a serious challenge. If we didn’t have the means to predict them they would have overrun us,” she said, “the seers say that it will be years before we win yet.”

He wondered, it was customary not to predict one’s own casualties in specific terms, and the specifics of the future were often harder to see than general trends, but he wondered nonetheless if any seer had known of Vanyaindo’s demise. Prophecy was the art of seeing into the Music of the Ainur, or occasionally visions by Illúvatar, such things were the gift of higher powers and rare, but the art of prediction with magic. There had been a time in history when seers had tried to intervene in as much as their growing knowledge had taught them, but it had soon become dangerous in itself. Risk was the essence of success and total aversion to risk began to risk the Menelmacari becoming, as the legendary Fëanor had warned in rallying his followers, “Shall we mourn here deedless forever a shadow-folk mist-haunting dropping vain tears in the thankless sea?”

Prediction was a tool that could smother a people as surely as dependence on the Powers.

He looked at her, and knew she was soon to die. He did not know from prediction or prophecy, but instead from experience. His Doom was operating once more.

He had sworn a terrible oath, in the House of Healing on the island of Tol-Aerontiris. He had sworn to aid his brother’s heirs in their hour of need, never to be absent from their sides.

----

8,321 RV, Tol-Aerontiris

“Come closer,” Isilnár said, his burnt hand reaching up to grasp Elenmacil’s, “Swear to me,” he said, “swear by the Doomsman that you will rescue my children, that you will never abandon my family in their hour of need.”

He gave his hand to the dying elf, looking into his eyes. “I swear it.

“Let me stand between death and the heirs of Isilnár
“From now until the Breaking of the World,
“My oath remember, Mandos and Vairë,
“Eru Illúvatar! Let my fate be forever joined
“With the house of my Kinsman in their hour of need!”

----

Huree’s Land 27,453 RV

Isilnár had passed content, and Elenmacil had indeed saved his daughters, but the oath he had sworn had taken on a life of its own, woven into the universe itself, an oath sealed by death carried its own power. Shamed by his failures Elenmacil had sought death in the war and the greater dragon-war that followed it, but neither time had it claimed him. He had renounced title, to avoid being stripped of it, and left in a fast boat for the realms of the Yaruhos, the Shadow-Folk, as the Menelmacari called their regressive cousins in holdfasts and diminishing power across the world, a name that had become a slur in years since for those realms of elves whose people accomplished little.

There not three hundred and fifty years later, he had met Arquendis nos Eärendil, whose capture by the king of the Yaruhos Kingdom of Calatelma, whose greed for a wife of trueborn noble kin had gone beyond reason and who Elenmacil had slain. He had thought it a boon at the time, that his Doom drew him at the hour of need, a pact well made.

For a time he had served as governor of Calatelma before it had declined, and that had been the last flowering of his personal fame and the last time he had truly been a lord and captain of men. But since then, others had been drawn to him, or he had been drawn to the misfortunes of Isilnár’s heirs, and rarely had it gone so well. A dozen scions of the line of Isilnár, Lord of Tol-Aerontiris and master of the Falmayorissë had met him. During the Schism of the Ambarónanorsta he had failed to save Istima nos Eärendil, and during the Great Orc Migration he had been with Silindo nos Eärendil as his ship had been run aground by foul storms during the migration and the master killed with all but five of his crew.

Misfortune had mounted down the years, for there were times when a quick blade and perhaps a sharp wit, if he had truly sharpened them, could turn fate around, but Fate always drew him to disasters involving the Heirs of Isilnár. He watched Vanyaindo, and knew that doom would befall her, perhaps, just perhaps, it would be a single foe, and he had already slain it, but until they parted company, he could not know.

The Long Years had come and with them the youthful, often adventurous, children of his kin had come, and more often than not, they had died before him Silindo and he had fought back to back on the bows of their hydroplane ship, and they had each slain two dozen orcs, but a bullet had felled him, and Elenmacil was little use against those. Istima had fallen victim to poison in the intrigues of the far Sunrise Lands and the disgraced Lord had not the skill to heal her.

He had passed beyond the realms of the Eldalië and into the Outer World, at times he had journeyed back only to travel far in company without his kindred, he had gone to the stars in the first wave of colonists, and time and again his doom had caught him.

He had implored the Weaver of Fate and the Doomsman of the Valar to lift his oath, he had tried time and time again to save his kin, but always he was there at their death, and rarely was he able to save them. He had turned to cursing them, and then to despair; the thought of death had long tempted him, but on the other side of death waited the people of Tol-Aerontiris and the other victims of his complacency, and he did not wish to meet them, as for the Quendi death held no uncertainty but only the prospect of reunion and for him, recrimination.

He looked at Vanyaindo and frowned. Even here the fate he had sworn himself to all those millennia ago had found him. He had hoped many times that leaving to reduce the chance of his curse finding him but there was no sign of that happening, year after year the most astounding fates turned the odds against him, and he was presented the same chance in each passing generation that flew by. It had been over one hundred and thirty long years – the Yéni of Menelmacari Calendars which equalled one hundred forty-four solar years – and almost as many generations had passed. And he had seen perhaps half as many of Isilnár’s Heirs die, less and first and more as the familial tree of his brother grew; most did not of course fall into the need that made the Doom operative.

But time and again, it was.

Looking at Vanyaindo, Elenmacil made a choice.

Without a further word, he stood, and left. He was tired of failure, her fate would be her own. She called after him and he ignored her, walking into the cold.

He would not only seek to deny the Oath in the future, but he would cast aside its fundamental duty. Her fate would be her own.

That night, Elenmacil looked through tears of bitter cold at the pale blade he carried until the morning star rose over the horizon once more.

[Lord Atum]

“I have risen up out of the Sheshat Chamber, the Golden Hawk that comes forth from his egg. I fly, I alight like a hawk with a back of seven cubits,” Khames said, his body was anointed with myrrh and sandalwood, his skin gleaming and bare save for a kilt of the second grade of linen, fine and pale white, the weave so tight that it could be taken for a solid thing about his legs and hips. “My wings are prase-stone from the south.”

His attendants moved about him as he spoke the sacred words, they watched him attentive to his every movement as he stepped into the arming chamber. Imperial-blue pennants hung on the inward wall of the chamber, while the rising sun shone from the forest of rooves beyond the open windows, the Delmak morning was always to be relished.

His armour was laid out on two long tables of stone, scented and prepared, its segmented sections broken apart and ready for assembly. He stood between them and allowed the young warriors who served as his armourers to begin to cover his body, first a mesh, that replaced his simple shendyt-kilt, a skin-tight layer that clung lightly to his frame, covering his earthen-brown skin with black inner layers and gilded outer layers that reflected heat and regulated the environment within the temperature. Within the armour when assembled, Khames could fight in any environment.

“I have come forth from the Sunset Barque,” he said, asserting his authority to wear the armour, “and my heart has been brought to me from the East,” he said, his hands cradling the green crystal in which the divine energies were enclosed, wrapped from the great generators of the city to form the power unit that would give Khames the power to crush stone in his hands, to bend steel beams and to throw men like rag-dolls. The crystal periapt was set onto a pectoral that would sit beneath the cuirass of his armour, glowing with power as it was connected to its housing unit, humming with a chime of glass at it reached its idling power. This crystal had been created for him alone, its power was encoded to destroy any other wearer.

“I have alighted on the Solar Barge, and there have been brought to me those who dwelt in their substance and they have bowed in homage before me.” This was true. The Solar Barge, the Atet, was the ship of Atum, the vessel that he used in touring his domains, and all the candidates who were given such lofty station as he had been presented to the Court of the Sole Lord, and had looked into the Great God’s eyes.

He remembered it well. Khames was a man of faith, he had not always been so. As a child he had known nothing of the Great God, for in those days Ma’at, the guiding Law, had been a broken and sundered thing, when Ra, the lesser emanation of the Great God, had been slain by usurpers, and the goa’uld had warred one upon one another. There had been little peace, and many had entertained doubts.

The rise of Atum had ended these doubts, one by one, he had made the goa’uld bow to him and acknowledge him as Sole Lord, he had risen from death unaided, and he had shown forth his light. To look into His face was to see the true face of God, the infinity within the eyes, the aura of light.

Atum had banished famine, he had banished war, he had brought new cures and new diseases, and had upheld the righteous, forgiven those who had turned their faces from him and those who had rebelled, and led the people on to new things.

Khames had been born into poverty, in the Jaffa encampments of Krestus; it was his father who had joined the armies of the Sole Lord, and fought battle after battle in the dilapidation and squalor of the Third Dynasty. He had not believed in the divine in those days, like many, he had whispered that the power of the goa’uld was founded on false teaching.

These thoughts no longer troubled him, he had no doubts now, there was no question of the right of the Sole Lord to rule; he ruled because he brought order; He brought order because He ruled well, and he ruled well because he was the Divine Incarnation of the Great God.


“I have risen, I have gathered myself together like a beautiful golden hawk, with the head of the Benu, and Atum hath entered in to hear my speech,” Khames said, as the different warrior-retainers laid plates onto him that were linked one to the next, sabatons, grieves, poleyn and more, working from his lower parts to his shoulders, gathering his armour onto him as he spoke the words of the ancient prayer. He paused, as they worked, here and there moving, turning his hand over, or tilting his head back. At last a collar was placed around his neck over his shoulderpiece, and he tilted his head back.

Armour folded outward, compressed matter shifting and changing, flowing like water, warm to the touch as it moved, the armour worked by altering the spaces between molecules – such secrets as were now known to him his son Mehen was more interested in such things, he would make a fine scholar, but would never make a warrior to equal Khames or the boy’s grandfather, and that was a source of a small disappointment; Mehen’s skill as a scholar grew day by day as he approached his maturity, but Khames’ pride was tinged by regret; his wife was not so old yet, not now that Atum had lengthened the days of his followers, that they could not have another child, but they had four now, and it was only half-possible that he would have a son to follow him as he had followed his own father.

The helm formed, and Khames saw the world through the eyes of the Horus-hawk. He spoke with the voice of the god-warrior. “I have taken my seat among the Great Gods, the children of Nut,” the granddaughter of Atum, and fore-mother of many of the goa’uld, including distantly the immature symbiote he carried within him. He was not a god, not literally, nor possessed of a divine name as the goa’uld were, but he was possessed of a certain emanation of the divine while he was on the God’s business.

He would see Mehen and the others before he departed for the morning. The Lady Pasht had called him to a task for the Great God, and he would go to it gladly, though it might keep him from his family for some time. Infidels who had broken the merciful confinement given them by the Lord Sokar were his quarry now. The task would not yet become onerous, for he was only now to train those who would be joining him in the task, but he was a captain of valour and would apply himself to the task.

He held out his hand and reverentially, the myriad-sceptre was passed to him, the blast-staff was more potent than its predecessors, a column of power generators in its base; as he held it the hawkeye vision of his suit illuminated with hieratic text describing the weapon’s readiness; he brought it down to a ready position and its target was highlighted within rings of illumination.

Satisfied, he gave a command subvocally and his helmet retracted.

“Leave me,” he said, dismissing his eager apprentices.

“You look marvellous,” the voice that spoke behind him was syrupy. Sekeret, slid between the curtains at the end of the room, his middle daughter with her watching the young men file out the far side of the room; one looked back. He would watch that one with the eyes of a true Horus.

Sekeret leaned up to kiss him, the armour added little to his height, but still she dangled from his shoulders. “Beloved,” she said, “I have something for you,” she said, “or well, Meritneith does,” she said, and Merit snapped her attention back to her father, opening a box of cedar, revealing the folded form of a deep grey cloak, and putting it onto her father’s shoulders, fastening it with a pair of counter-positioned Eye-of-Horus amulets. It hung to his ankles, its cloth of military weave, durable and strong, but tinted with an iridescent beetle-shell blue.

He turned, posing with a stiff formality, “I think it will make me look like I have ambitions of generalship,” he said.

“It suits you father,” Merit said.

“Wear it,” Sekeret said, “for me.”

[New Freedomstan]

Domicile #42-4-XA, People's Collective #01-26, Region #26/Nefreedian Mars
07:46

199-258 375-518 fought against himself.

An epic struggle ensued, as the alarm clock rang. A gargantuan effort ensued, as 199-258 lifted one eye. The counterattack ensued, ruthlessly pushing his eyelid down, but with heroic exhertion, the cosmonaut held the line until his will could reinforce the position, and he woke up. He was proud to have gone one more day without the dreams, the nightmares. That marked the third day thus far.

He looked around at his domicile, hastily constructed during the colonization effort. A single bedroom, leading into a corridor, to a storage area and a living area. It was simple, utilitarian, spartan. The only light emanating from the ceiling lamps, only one in each room being active for now, due to the power shortage. The ideal home for a Nefreedian Socialist. He glanced down, and saw 129-842 811-293, still sleeping. With a gentle nudge and a kiss, he woke her up before the breakfast would be done in the Common Dining Facilities of their domicile.

"... Five minutes..." she grunted

"Wake up, comrade." he said, and initiated a rapid attack against excessive sleep, his primary tactic being tickling her relentlessly "You don't want the rationpaste to go cold!"

"Stop!" she laughed, and 199-258 backed off with a smile "All right, all right! I'm awake!"

"Good," 199-258 said, already up and dressed, as a volunteer in the People's Militia he was obligated to be able to respond, dressed and armed, within five minutes to an emergency. 129-842 on the other hand, was still on medical leave after... contributing to the future of the revolution "Meet you upstairs?"

"Yeah, just need to get dressed, comrade." she said, but did not allow 199-258 until a final kiss.

199-258 walked out of the apartment, spending a short moment to straighten out his uniform, a simple variant of the grey citizen's outfit with indications of his profession as a cosmonaut and militiaman, two badges. Stepping out into the hallway, he was met by the sight of five of his neighbours also moving towards the Dining Facilities, at the last minute like him. 642-484 was struggling, as usual. She seems to have blown through her Luxury Rations on vodka yet again, even the dimmed lights of the concrete hallway upsetting her. 199-258 gave her a brief nod on his way to the stairs, the elevators being built but was now only for use in necessary circumstances. Heading up to near-surface levels, the Common Dining Facilities were still packed, the chefs doling out the rations of rationpaste. 199-258 grabbed a bowl, eying the rationpaste critically. The sludgish stew seemed to have bits of green in it, and seemed less watery than normal. And that smell... was that actual spices? It looked like it was going to be a good day.

199-258 spotted 928-472, fellow cosmonaut, close friend and fellow-traveller of the Party, despite his insistence on keeping his given name for informal circumstances.

"On your own, Joar?" 199-258 said, used to his friend's slight heterodox preference, and sat down next to him on the long table

"Oh, 199," Joar said "Almost thought I had to get down there and wake you up. Is Dorija joining us?"

"129-842 will come soon," 199-258, correcting his friend from using the old given name of his cohabitant "She's seen reason and rejected the petite-bourgeois tendency of names, comrade."

"Ah, a shame," Joar says "Soon I think I'll be the last name in the domicile! You know, this stuff is actually pretty good," he says in between spoonfuls "How come, you think?"

"I would say it is a mark of the ever-advancing strides of Socialism," 199-258 says and takes a bite. It did actually taste pretty good "But I would also say it seems like we've gotten another shipment from the Great Civilization."

Joar nods "I think I can actually stomach this without the vodka, but who is to say it couldn't be further improved, eh Comrade?" he says and retrieves a hip flask

"We really shouldn't," 199-258 responds "We have important work to do, and how would you explain to Comrade-Director 572 if we showed up tipsy?"

"Important work? You haven't heard?" Joar responds

"Heard what?"

"The RFF-04 has been delayed by munitions," Joar explains "Heard it from 837-574. Won't be doing any further tests on it today until we have the fuel to actually launch the bastard."

"Bourgie bastards," 199-258 responds "I've half a mind to accuse them of wrecking at this point!"

"Eh, at least it means another day of staring at the walls," Joar says, and pours some vodka into the rationpaste, and offers it to 199-258. 199-258 shrugs, and accepts the hip flask, strengthening his own meal as well. 129-842 arrives with a bolt of her own, raising an eyebrow at him. Slightly embarassed, 199-258 hands the hip flask back.

"Seems the RFF-04 is delayed," 199-258 says "Won't be doing anything important today after all. Just paperwork."

"Ah," she says and sits next to him. 199-258 still couldn't believe his luck, when she accepted his suggestion of cohabitation two years ago. She was the very model of a Nefreedian Socialist, beautiful, fully human features, kind and altruistic. He smiled to himself as he took another bite.

"Could I have some?" 129 asks Joar. For a moment, 199 is about to remind her, but then he remembers that her medical incident is over, and she can safely drink once more. Joar hands over the hip flask, and 129 takes a rather generous portion.

"Have you been told where you'll be assigned next yet?" Joar asks the woman

"I'll be told next week," she says "I've applied to return to my work in the Dining Facility, but I was told it was likely they wouldn't have need of me there, and the PCID has deprioritized applied dialectical research again! I mean, I volunteered to use my skills for the Party, but so far they send me to do menial work."

"No such thing, dear Comrade," 199 says "All work is of importance to our Party. There is no such thing as menial labour. I am sure the PCID will find you a great labour for yourself and for us."

"Thanks, dear," she says, but 199 can't help but feel she seems a bit... detached. Ever since she returned from the hospital, she had seemed a bit... distant. Joar glanced up, and uttered a brief expletive and rushed through his food. 199 looked back, and shit, the tram was leaving in five minutes! He pushed down the rest of the rationpaste, and along with Joar rushed out the door. They might not be doing anything of importance today, but they better be not doing it at the Cosmodrome, or Comrade-Director 572 could throw an utter fit.

Domicile #42-4-XA, People's Collective #01-26, Region #26/Nefreedian Mars
19:23

199 and Joar returned on the tram to their Domicile, tired from a long day. Comrade-Director 572 had quite efficiently filled their working hours with proof-reading reports, a couple hour-long meetings, a brainstorming session for the new mission plans for the RFF-04 prototype now that the old plans were mostly impossible due to the delayed launch, an impromptu party meeting discussing the finer points of the Labour Theory of Value as it relates to scientific development and an extended lunch.

"See you tomorrow, 199, and give Do... 129 my best," Joar says as they reach his apartment, just a few meters from 199's.

"Yeah, take care comrade," 199 says, and continues down. For a split second, right before opening the door, he got an immense feeling of foreboding. He stopped, and listened in through the door. There were voices inside, plural, none of them 129. Tensing up, 129 opened the door.

"In here, Comrade-Cosmonaut," an unfamiliar male voice said, coming from the living room. 199 slowly walked inside, and then relaxed as he saw two Comrade-Commissars of the PCPS, the People's Commissariat of Popular Security. A haggard older man, dark of skin and piercing green eyes, originally from the Redlands it would seem, in the dark grey uniform of the old PCC before it was split up, and a woman, younger, with fair skin and soft blue eyes, her blonde hair reaching down to her shoulders, the maximum legal length. She seemed halfhuman, short and petite, with an oval face and sharp ears, but 199 corrected himself, as it would be unlikely for a halfhuman to ever become a Commissar. They were both sitting on their table, opposite where their couch will one day be as soon as production of couches for all citizens has been completed.

"To what do I owe the pleasure, Comrade-Commissars?" 199-258 says, giving a quick salute, then... why would they be there? "Has... has something happened to 129? Comrade-Citizen 129-842 811-293?"

"You could say that, Comrade-Cosmonaut." the man responds, eying 199-258 closely "You have been cohabitants for two years, three months and fifteen days, is that correct?"

"Y-yes?"

"And you recently produced offspring?"

"Yes?" 199-258 says "The child has already been turned over to the PCP... Why are you here, Comrade-Commissars?"

"We're asking the questions, Comrade-Cosmonaut." the man says "I am 472-585, this is my colleague 291-384. Please, sit down, Comrade."

199-258 obeys, sitting opposite them on the remaining chair.

"Where is your cohabitant, comrade?" the man asks

"I don't know." 199-258 says "She's usually been home when I finish work, and she has yet to be assigned another workplace. She might be with friends?"

"Don't think playing the fool will help you!" 472-585 barks "You know perfectly well where she is!"

"Relax, Comrade," 291, the woman, speaks for the first time, gently laying her hand on her fellow Commissar "Comrade-Cosmonaut, please, we are here to help you. No-one would doubt your devotion to the Party, the People and the State, despite a slight error in judgement under extenuating circumstances." she gives 199-258 a wide, genuine, smile.

"I..." 199-258 says "I don't understand. What has happened to 129? I don't know where she is... Has she been kidnapped?"

"Quit the charade, comrade," 472-585 barks "Extenuating circumstances only apply when you do not hinder the agents of the PCPS! Now tell me, how long did you plan this?"

"Plan what?" 199-258 says, on the verge of tears. He didn't understand what was going on! Where was 129? She always waited for him when he got home, ready to read comforting stories with him before the nightmares began...

"You know damn well!" 472 barks "If you won't talk, you better know we have ways of making you talk?"

291 eyes 199 deeply, then says "472, he really doesn't know."

472 looks at her, back to 199, then sighs. 199 can almost hear him muttering something about never being allowed to have any fun, but considering the context, 199 knows that a faithful Commissar would never say such a thing, so clearly he hadn't.

"Well," 472 says finally "It seems she was acting alone. Comrade-Cosmonaut, your cohabitant 129 was caught trying to steal the child you produced from the People's Commissariat of Pioneers. She was apprehended while trying to get to the Interchange Platforms, and during interrogations confessed she planned to hail a subhuman ship."

"... What?!" 199 said, in shock. This couldn't be. 129 would never leave him. But the Commissars were agents of the Party, and thus they spoke the truth. But it couldn't be. But it was.

"Yes," 291 said "Now, there are two possibilities for you, two futures if you will. In one future, you denounce the traitor 129-842 811-293..."

199-258, without thinking, shook his head. How could he denounce her? She had helped him sleep. They were cohabitants. They were closer than any others...

Without a pause, 291 continues "... the other possibility is that you fail to denounce her, show your loyalty to the Party is inferior to your loyalty to an individual, and you will share in her crimes."

199 looks down. His mind racing. How could she have done this? Betrayed not just him, but the Party?

"Furthermore... If you denounce her, we will consider it a momentary lapse of judgement. Insanity, if you will. She will be sentenced to two years of hard labour in Resource Extraction Site #09-A. You will be prohibited from interactions for the foreseeable future. If you do not denounce her, you both will be sentenced as counterrevolutionaries, you will be stripped of your status as humans, and sentenced to ten years of hard labour in Resource Extraction Site #01-B."

199 looks up at the Commissars, looks down again. He wasn't counterrevolutionary. Nor was 129... But she had done something counterrevolutionary... Was this why she had seemed distant? Had she developed a counterrevolutionary attachment to the child? Curse the day! If he had known, he would have said no, despite the Party encouraging more couples to procreate for the future of the Socialist State. He should have realized she wasn't strong enough. He should have realized, she was a northerner, they had a hard time adapting to the purity of Nefreedian Socialism in #26, still having families, siblings, children, parents... But he thought she was better than this. He thought she had fully embraced the eternal truth of Nefreedian Socialism, but this moment of weakness... He had heard stories of Resource Extraction Site #01-B, relegated to traitors, murderers and rapists. They would be together... It was tempting, despite it all. But now he worried she would be too weak to endure Resource Extraction Site #01-B...

"I... I'll denounce her..." 199-258 says, looking up at the Commissars.

"Excellent," 291 says with a smile "We'll bring you a testimony to sign tomorrow, and in three days we will escort you from your work at 15:00 to make a public denunciation on radio. Don't worry, we'll clear everything up with your Comrade-Director."

199 shook their hands as they left, and collapsed on the bed.

What had happened?

Why did it happen?

Why couldn't he do anything about it?

Why?

Why?

129, what have you done?

He closes his eyes, no longer holding back the tears. He resists the forces of sleep for two hours.

Then the nightmares return.

Worse than ever.

[Malgrave]

New Horizons in MIDD Research and Treatment Conference starts in Epping

Eppings newest sector was put to good use

In the early 1950's Rosalba Pontecorvo, the Minister of Science and Engineering and Antonio Santoro, the Minister of Health announced that the Malgravean Health Service and the Royal Institute for Biomedical Development had discovered what we now refer to as Malgravean Immuno-Deficiency Disorder or MIDD.

It is unknown what caused the outbreak of MIDD, although over the years it has been theorised that the attempts to ensure that the Malgravean people were as close to the Ancestors resulted in MIDD and the ongoing weakening of the Malgravean immune system, however, due to the lack of hard evidence around the Ancestors that remains unknown.

In an attempt to establish a greater understanding of the Ancestors and possibly advance understanding of MIDD the Malgravean government has previously dispatched archaeological and scientific expeditions around the world and outside the confines of our planet, one of these teams being led by Amelia Lowwe.

It has now been revealed that during one of these expeditions Amelia Lowwe established contact with an alien lifeform on Náar that had contact with the Alterans before they ascended and informed Amelia and her expedition that the Alterans had been researching a cure for an affliction that held remarkable similarities to MIDD.

In response to this important development, it was decided to hold a conference and the New Horizons in MIDD Research and Treatment Conference in was quickly formalised to gather the best scientific minds and politicians from around the local system to coordinate how to deal with this new information.

Amelia Lowwe explained how establishing the location of the Alteran research station and seizing the research contained within was the most important step in the efforts to stop MIDD as the lessons learnt from the Alterans could be used by Malgravean researchers to develop a cure to MIDD, an admission that was met with widespread applause from the members in attendance for obvious reasons. Rylux Crescent and Sahaeli then went into further detail about how the expedition would gain the support of foreign powers and how the items uncovered during the uncovering of the Altern facility would be catalogued, both speeches received a slightly more muted reception compared to Amelia's remarks but that is to be expected considering the impact of Amelia's words and the more dry subject of cataloguing items.

It was also theorised that Amelia Lowwe could soon gain the status of Paragon due to her efforts in unlocking the secrets of the Ancestors and coming across a great potential step forward in the efforts to cure MIDD, however, when asked about rumours on her Paragon status the Malgravean scientist responded by indicating that she had not been contacted by the ASG about Paragon status, a move that was met with widespread criticism on social media with the hashtag #ParagonAmelia beginning to trend within a few hours.

Regardless of the circumstances around the New Horizons in MIDD Research and Treatment Conference many Malgraveans are hopeful that the work being performed by Amelia Lowwe and her expedition will lead to a cure for MIDD.

[Malgrave]

Ministry of Science and Engineering, Epping, United Kingdom of Malgrave, 2013.

It was often said that the Ministry of Science and Engineering was the most powerful position in Malgrave as the holding Ministry typically held the position of Lead Scientist of the Ancestral Study Group, an organisation that held considerable sway over the Malgravean population due to their believed connection with the Ancestors.

It, therefore, didn’t come as a surprise that the appointment of Claudia Donovan to the position came as somewhat of a shock to the political establishment of Malgrave, as while Claudia was certainly a scientist in her own right, with the inventor being the credit behind the introduction of the MalTec Ascension she was also known for her rather eccentric behaviour regarding the creation of ad-hoc machines and was linked behind several hacking incidents and pranks while she was a student at Niels Bohr Academy.

In the years that followed the appointment, Claudia Donovan and by extension the Ministry of Science and Engineering had only grown in power and influence with the continued construction of the Research Colony and the successful establishment of relations between Malgrave and more technological advanced powers providing a large benefit to the Malgravean economy and the budget of the Ministry, however, despite these advances, the greatest challenge facing the Malgravean people still loomed large.

Since its discovery in the 1950’s MIDD had been tackled by successive generations of talented scientists and still very little was known, even the information linking it to previous medical procedures to ensure that the Malgraveans were as close to the Ancestors wasn’t as concrete as some in the scientific community would like, and all the medical community had been able to do over the years was develop medication designed to prolong the lifespan of those hit with the various stages of MIDD. It meant that Malgrave produced some of the most comprehensive medication on the local market and had top procedures for how to perform surgeries on those with compromised immune systems but the lack of progress was a significant source of disappointment and fear to the Malgravean people.

It was that combination of disappointment and the optimism of Malgrave’s recent connections with more technological advanced powers that had led Claudia to hold a meeting with representatives of the Royal Institute for the Advancement of Universal Technology (RIAU), the Royal Institute that had been tasked with dealing with the exploration of space and the development of advanced technologies.

“You are suggesting some manner of intergalactic expedition then? Is this going to involve a space-worthy vessel of our own or will this expedition take place on some manner of chartered vessel? I can’t imagine that it would be affordable, even if your Royal Institute received the support of my Ministry” Claudia said as she thumbed through the report once more.

“In a manner of speaking, yes but in another manner of speaking, no.” a young otter beastling said, a nametag on her chest showing her name to be Dr Cassandra Yakovlev, “We do not possess the resources or the number of trained personnel to conduct an intergalactic expedition utilising our vessel, however, we believe that we could attach a Malgravean scientist to a team that is travelling.”

Claudia hummed to herself as she checked her notes, “It seems that you already have an expedition in mind, however, such an endeavour would be quite risky as I read here that the possibility of encountering dangerous combat situations would be high. I can’t imagine that you’d find many volunteers as quite a few scientists in this country haven’t been through the conscription process.”

Cassandra nodded along with Claudia’s remarks, “I understand that Comrade Minister as I didn’t go through the conscription process. I have looked through our databases though and I have suggested that Amelia Lowwe, a scientist working for RIAU be selected as the candidate.”

“In that case, I presume that one of your requirements for this process was to find candidates with limited familial and political ties, correct?” Claudia remarked

“You are quite correct, Comrade Minister. It would be a disaster on the propaganda front if someone with an extensive family or a Paragon was killed on this expedition, however, someone without both factors would be easier to manage in a media sense if the worst were to come to fruition.”

“In that case, I believe that you have made a severe miscalculation as Comrade Lowwe does have people in her life that depend on her, and as I consider her to be a close personal friend I think that also fails the second qualification of not being related to anyone with political influence, no?” Claudia said with a sigh.

“I apologise for our mistakes, Comrade Minister,” Cassandra said, rising from her chair to bow deeply to the Minister in apology, “I will try and find a new name and come back to you within a few days.”

“I didn’t say you need to find a new name, Comrade Yakovlev,” Claudia said raising her palm to prevent the scientist from leaving, “I was merely going to suggest that you don’t pick candidates on whether or not you believe that they are expendable or not,” the Minister explained, “As someone that knows the candidate in question I believe that they’ll be open to joining this expedition, especially if I can explain the possible scientific benefits that can come from it.”

“I don’t quite understand, Comrade Minister.” Cassandra said quite confused about the turn of events, “You are going to meet with this Amelia Lowwe?” the young scientist asked for clarification.

“You are quite correct, Comrade Yakovlev. I don’t fully trust you to engage in this meeting in the most effective manner,” Claudia said before waving a dismissive hand towards her fellow scientist, “You are dismissed, Comrade.”


Niels Bohr Academy, Epping, United Kingdom of Malgrave, 2013.

Despite the reputation that it had managed to gain abroad about overworking its citizens, the reality of the situation was that Malgrave actually had quite strong protections for workers in terms of the number of hours that one worked, and these protections had recently been strengthened with the introduction of the four-day workweek throughout the country following the successful trial period in Aurora.

It was just that this restriction didn’t apply to scientists such as Amelia Lowwe who were able to voluntarily work additional hours, and as a result workers in this sector of the economy tended to be drastically overworked compared to their counterparts in the healthcare industry or service sector.

It is for those reasons that Claudia had travelled to the Niels Bohr Academy on the outskirts of Epping as she recognised that her friend would be still working even though it was rapidly approaching 2 am, the Minister should’ve been asleep herself but despite improvements to her sleep schedule after entering politics she still found herself staying up rather late when important matters popped up and this was such a time.

“Amelia?” Claudia said tentatively knocking on the door as she saw her colleague hunched over a whirring computer, the Minister slightly jumping in shock when her friend jumped out of her seat herself.

“Claudia?” Amelia said rubbing at her eyes, the small scientist squinting as she looked at the computer before turning to her friend, “...it is nearly 2 am. What are you doing here so late? I hope that you didn’t get into trouble with those pesky computer people at the SIS again.”

Claudia chuckled at her friend's antics before turning more serious, “I could say the same for you, Amelia. You understand that people need sleep, right? Just how long have you been awake for?”

Amelia mumbled something to herself which resulted in Claudia just giving a pointed stare and a cough.
“I don’t exactly know perhaps 4 days? You can’t exactly expect someone to keep track of things like this, Claudia. I have important simulations to run.” Amelia said with a sigh.

“You can’t run these experiments at peak efficiency if your brain isn’t functioning at full capacity and that what happens when you don’t get a proper amount of sleep,” Claudia said with a sigh of her own, “I am technically your superior so I could order you to sleep but as your friend, I like to think that you would listen to me when I ask you nicely to come and rest.”

Amelia added another sight to the mix briefly turning her attention to the whirring computer in front of her before she refocused her attention on her friend, “...sure. I have a couple of hours until the simulation ends so I can afford a small nap,” the Malgravean scientist said, allowing herself to be guided towards a small sofa where, “..I just don..” Amelia protested falling asleep a few seconds into her protest.

A few hours later an incredibly confused Amelia woke up to the smell of cooking, the scientist didn’t remember cooking but it was possible that she could’ve once again started cooking something earlier and fallen asleep again, rising quickly instead of finding a near disaster she came across an amused Claudia sitting at her desk.

“How long did I fall asleep for?” Amelia said as she accepted the food, an omelette that seemed to be filled with a mixture of vegetables, “You remember that I had those simulations that I need to check.”

“You have been asleep on and off for about....24 hours.” Claudia said ignoring the protests from her friend, “I made sure that you remained hydrated when you woke up for a few moments, and I also completed the analysis of the simulation you were running but you quite clearly needed your rest.” the Minister said, passing her friend a glass of vitamin juice and a banana, “It looks like you needed some food as well,” Claudia added noting the way that her friend had managed to demolish the food given to her in a few moments.

“I must have forgotten to eat again. It happens.” Amelia said with a shrug as she opened the banana and began to eat it, “...so not that I am complaining but why are you here?”

“I am here because the RIAU in all their ancestral wisdom decided that you were the best candidate to go on an intergalactic mission of sorts,” Claudia said with a sigh

“What do you mean by that? I don’t exactly see myself in charge of a spaceship and a group of people.” Amelia replied, her right eyebrow raising in question.

“It is hoped that you’ll be able to join an existing expedition that is exploring planets and certain sites around the galaxy, and by extension, you’ll be able to gain some greater understanding of the technology used by some of the more advanced powers and how it can be utilised to help our problems back home,” Claudia said as she passed over the notes that she had collated during the earlier completed simulations.

“In that case, you can tell my colleagues at the RIAU that I am in.” Amelia countered as she accepted the documents.

“It is as simple as that, Amelia? You aren’t worried about leaving Emily behind?” Claudia asked a mark of surprise quite evident in her face.

Amelia just shrugged as she started to read the report, “I would’ve refused to go if I was asked about this a few years ago but Emily has a new support network of colleagues and friends now and is mature enough to avoid getting in trouble,” Amelia explained, “I know that she is also suffering from MIDD more than myself, and for that, I can only blame myself. It is my duty to ensure that I find a cure or die trying and this expedition seems to be like a good starting place to find a cure. It is possible that I could stumble upon a civilisation that had been in contact with the Ancestors, right?”

“It isn’t your burden to bear, Amelia, not alone.” Claudia said patting her friend on the back in a supportive manner, “I understand why you want to go but I promise you that I will look after your sister while you are on this expedition.”

Amelia shocked Claudia briefly as the scientist rose from her position on the sofa and gave the Minister a brief hug. “Just please be aware that shrinking the items of her superiors at the Royal Institute isn’t the same as looking after someone.”

[The Ctan]

Lighthouse in the Desert
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The Brotherhood of the Beechwood needs your help…

Untangling the Web of Altean Nationality

Posted by Arkeri

17th Stormwind B.398e

What does the upgrade in Salamand’s status mean?

Even for those in Idrise/Altea the change in status for Salamand is something people aren’t sure what to make of without a background in the civic politics of the Great Civilization.

Salamand is one of the various ethnic capitals within the country and it has long been forbidden to build there. In the Trans-Mystria Infrastructure Team We’ve just got orders to integrate the new city of Salamand to our build-lists and I’ll be heading out that way in a few weeks to connect it and Drolosktad via high-speed rail and portals to the rest of Altea. What that means is far more than that and more than a few of the Qaglekneki in our group are ecstatic about it, as are most of the Nayali.

Regular readers of our blog will know that historically Qagleneki and Nayali have been long persecuted in Altea and subject to extensive slavery and other atrocities; we’re not about cataloguing those, though if you need more information take a look at Marenneth ita Sekhemtar over on the Beechwood Brotherhood’s page here.

Instead what I’m going to talk about is the change in status from Salamand from being part of the domain of Idrise to being its own protectorate; there’s been a lot of celebration and also protest about this and the borders aren’t yet set, because ultimately the borders aren’t going to be fully hard any time soon; no one is going to be having to get a passport for travel between Anion and Salamand, for instance, but it will mean a lot more to those affected.

Ultimately at the moment the change is something that just exists on the database, but probably the most visible is the ability to request a multipass in a Salamand Livery. While Altea itself has no passport checks the payment features built into the Great Civiilization’s passport provide everyday payment facilities for the majority of Alteans.

The card form, most commonly used aboard, for the multipass typically comes in several liveries, the green-silver default Great Civilization colour, dynastic or clan colouring, and regional colouring. With the re-designation of Salamand from a city in Idrise to its own Sepatges, (lit. bordered territory) the main administrative division of the Great Civilization in Terran terms, Salamand is functionally equal to Altea; most residents are ‘subjects’ in legal terms, but can now personalize official stationary as distinctly Salamandi.

Within the Great Civilization generally, residence doesn’t equal nationality, and more than a million people have applied already for this.

Another advantage of this is that the routable elements of the Inheret land-value tax can now be allocated to Salamand, which allows Qagleneki landowners in the wider Great Civilization to allocate the discretionary part of their tax expenditure to the new region’s administration, which is expected to produce a significant revenue; Inheret, the primary tax of the Great Civilization, is paid on the unimproved value of land, and while parts of it fund the National Infrastructure of the Great Civilization, other parts, such as culture, parks and other artistic spending, may be split between the area the land resides in and an area of the taxpayer’s choice.


Beyond this, there are two most likely outcomes for Salamand in the future; one is that the new territory might join the Great Civilization as a fully-integrated Sepatges, which would involve an extended citizenship programme to ensure a plurality of historic residents are integrated, while another is that it would likely become an affiliated state within the larger Mystrian community; the statehood-or-independence option.

Hamada Keiko

What’s brought this about? Thousands of things, of course, and millions of people, but the stand out effort lately in getting the petition to finally cross the finish line has to be Hamada Keiko a spirean singer, pictured.

For the three people in Mystria not familiar with Keiko already she’s a spirean singer of substantial fame though she has recently had her profile dwindle after an argument about Casteism in Crystal Spires, but she’s been active with a number of causes in the Varinviru region of the Spires and others, but she’s lately been advocating for the cause of Salamandi Independence, and the Altean Dragon population, as well as campaigning for MIDD.

In Salamand her endorsement has been vital in registering voters, particularly in recruiting fans from Crystal Spires to take the leap over the border to help, as well as her smaller fandom in Idrise/Altea, as well as fundraising for the Qagleneki Homeland Fund.

The second one is far from a resolution, the Free Marches dragons have been trying to either establish a home within Altea where they may have a lasting voice in government, but most are young and inexperienced and wary of being drawn into Altean politics if the Great Civilization’s occupation does not last; their exact numbers are uncertain but with a largely ignorant and superstitious population the Idrisean environment is not yet ready for Dragon integration, though with an independent Salamand, that might well change.

Genira's first picture taken on liberation day, and recent image.

Many people want to know who is tipped to lead the new nation; the former-slave Genira Faulkner has been named as the Grand Consul of Salamand. Genira previously came to popular attention as an activist in the region of Mordovia, and to international acclaim for her spirited defence of the policies of the Amistad Alliance against criticism from the nation of Dagsland (now itself fallen into civil disorder).

She was appointed Baroness of Mordovia after the deportation of the previous Baron to exile and the attaintment of his claim to nobility in the Altean system by the Regent, and it has been confirmed that if she takes up leadership of the new nation then she would renounce the title.

Elsie Bakersfield ita Sautekh

Immediate effects however have included the appointment of a C’tani citizen as the regional governor for Salamand, seperate from the Regent Palanedhel, in the form of Elsie ita Sautekh; in a step forward she is however a native-Altean who left the country long before the invasion and had a career as an Advocate before being recruited for governance service in the current administration.

She’s currently located in the Imperial City of Anion but is likely to be talking to the settlers of the newly founded Salamand City about whether they would wish to host a Great Civilization administration.

Of the expected outcomes in the long term, the promise to give the option of federation, protectorate, or independence to the new Altean states still stands; opinions are divided in the Qagleneki I have spoken to, some want to go ahead with the journey to becoming a fully incorporated C’tani territory, while others would prefer not to lose the ethnic sovereignty that has eluded their people for a thousand years; you know what my option would be of course, as a C'tani.

Still, there's a long way to go before those kind of decisions need making.

Of course, all eyes are watching Salamand, and there’s already been protests and even riots, last night since the announcement, three attempted pogroms of Qagleneki Districts were dispersed by Sentinels and other occupation forces; including an incident in Palomecia where more than fifty people attempted to riot in the Qagleneki ghetto; the violence was expected of course, but there’s likely to be reprisals.

The efforts of the Golden Lion Rebellion cell operating in the Qagleneki Salamand area, foiled back two years ago, to open a Jade Passage already has the group operating on thin ice with regard to legality and it remains to be seen how much longer the organization can be tolerated without being declared a proscribed organization for their persistent terrorism.

The Brotherhood of the Beechwood, my wife’s charity for Nayali, has its own Tezcaro Project that aims for a similar independence, and we’re hoping Salamand paves a path for the rest of the peoples of Altea to have peaceful self-governance.

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[The Ctan]

Lithesh let her pale hair whip back as she soared down the avenues of Neocoritan’s outer ring, the flitter was a bolt shot over the city’s ring of landscaped gardens and farms.

The Ildranith Artemis was a wafer of polished silver, lean wraithbone with tapering turbines; the design was a combination of old necrontyr technology and lean Yldari design, with conformal seats and an interior of wood that was grown specifically for it.

The Artemis was typical of sports flitters, the vehicle had a waiting list long enough that one could set out the internal layout and fittings and wait almost ten years before taking ownership.

The vehicle could fly itself, but Lithesh had the demanding string of qualifications for free flight in most airspace, and had always enjoyed flying.

The chime of an inbound transmission made her smirk, “Weird, bang on time though,” she said as the contact information showed:

++Amelia Lowwe++

The flitter cut into autopilot as she leaned to one side and a shimmering holoscreen appeared.

"Hey," Lithesh said, "isn't it kinda... late there?"

"No, warmth. Heat. Life. Joy." 199-258 375-518 said since Nefreedians had no concept of alcoholism.

Zahhak, a Kobold member of the exploration party pouted.

"I suppose it wasn't the most stringent of tests," Amelia said with a shrug before checking the time, "It's good to see you Lithesh. I hope all is well on your end."

"It's going poorly," she said, "I'm looking to get a block of time on a terascope, a deep range observation device that uses lightspeed lag to look into the past; you jump it ahead of the light cone of an event you want to view and you can see things as they happened. Same as the light from Sol is eight minutes old when it reaches you."

Damayanti poured out a shot and held it out for the Nefreedian.

"I'll get you one day Sol..." Amelia muttered under her breath before refocusing on the conversation, "What seems to be the issue? We recently escaped being killed by a group of nasty aliens so we've got time to spare."

"Light very young, then!" Zahhak commented.

199 doesn't notice, and downs the shot like a professional

Damayanti knocked hers back, and looked at Zahhak, "Do Kobolds even drink recreational alcohol?" she asked.

"Is this alcohol offer open to everyone?" Amelia asked.

"Sure," Damyanti said.

Zahhak shook his head. "Like coffee, though."

Amelia accepted the offer of alcohol

"I don't think we can run out," 199 says "I brought another nine bottles for diplomacy."

"I bring sandwiches for diplomacy! Sandwichmacy!" Zahhak said.

"Almost as good!" 199 said.

"Well, the idea was, because we know where the Alteran facility was we could book time on one to see what the system looked like when it was in use and then track that star's movements. The only problem is, a high-quality terascope that can provide accurate enough imaging to do the job is harder to come by than I expected; I'd hoped Neocoritan Universariate would have access on theirs but it's not quite got the resolution to confirm which star we want; we want something that can pick up trace signals of habitation three million light-years away; that's hard to come by unless they wanted to be seen."

"Do you think it would be possible to improve the resolution of the terascope present at Neocoritan Universariate in order to pick up these trace signals or do we have to search for a facility that has access to a more advanced terascope?" Amelia asked.

"The latter," she said, "I'm on the lookout now, but I think there's only seven or so that we could get and then it's a matter of getting it dealt with. While there's a lot of lives hanging on a cure for MIDD there's always some other thing it seems. I'll let you know when I have some luck."

"Do you require any assistance?"

"With any luck, I'll be able to find some inroads on my own, but I'll keep in touch," she said.

For good measure, Damayanti put on a pot of coffee; it seemed that the whole group would be affected by her malicious plan. Of course, she didn't want to simply rely on one shot with a hardened, well, Nefreedian, and encouraged more drinking.

Zahhak drank a cup of coffee (he drank his black, he found milk confusing and didn't like sugar)

"In that case, we'll let you go off and work, thank you Lithesh and may the ancestors watch over you," Amelia said as she drank some more of the Nefreedian vodka

Lithesh smiled, "Ancestors watch over you," she said and keyed off the system.

She touched the side of the flying-wheel control with her thumb as the call ended. “Aatxe,” she said, bringing up another commlink to another line.

She’d been reporting her efforts to obtain a deep range terascope back to the crew of the Curious Otter. A few moments later the flitter put itself into autopilot again, and Aatxe’s projection shimmered into view.

“Hey,” she said, “how’re you doing?”

Aatxe shrugged her shoulders, “Still finding my way around,” she said. It had been more than a year since she and the other Free Exiles had been rescued from Sheol, but she’d settled in well enough. “What can I do for you?”

“Just been speaking to Amelia and Lily,” she said, “we’re looking for access to something quite hard to come by. You’re still at Kalan, right?”

“I am,” she said, “starting in year two settlement and patriation,” she said. “What’s up?”

“I wanted to ask, you’ve usually got a strong way with people haven’t you?”

“Can’t beat being a messenger-minion,” she said. “Yeah I’ve just been looking through the list of class-A Tarascopes,” she said. “There’s three of them currently assigned to deep exploration and getting them is going to be difficult,” she said, “One is undergoing maintenance and won’t be available for three months, that means from the General Astronomical Asset Registry there are three others never mind if there are any unregistered ones. I know that two of them are academic, I’m sending you the details. The other one is private, and I have no idea who has enough magitek to make a class-A on their own.”

“Right, no worries, I’ll get you the contact list for those two,” she said. “See what you need to do to get viewing time on them. What’s your plan for the other one?”

“No idea,” she said, “there’s contact information,” she said. “But there’s another thing I want to check out too. I think I’ve got an idea how to get some leverage in this expedition I want to run over but that will take some thought; going to check in with Elater and Celeste too.”

[The Ctan]

Aur'ulus'thal'mar of Ulithuun Shalathun to Amelia Lowwe of the Malgravean Realm and Rylux Crescent of the Dystan Realm sends greetings: may you reach Enlightenment quickly.

As you have requested I have re-tasked my terascope with the visualization of the coordinates provided at a point in time beginning fifteen million years before the current time. I have provided access to the data provided.

For your convenience, I will summarize the science of this process and then provide a summary of the information that my scan has located.

The Terascope is a device used for historic visualization, and in some cases for recent tactical research. Shorter ranged versions of the device that use simple artificial gravitational lensing exist but this unit uses stellar-lensing, to provide a convenient mass to act as a lens for long-distance visualization.

As you know, though I include this for the benefit of any of your companions who may be uneducated in such fundamentals, distance and time are one and the same; while we preserve a standard reference frame that says that time passes at the same rate for dating purposes, and we have local dates, in truth events propagate through the materium at the speed of light.

The Terascope is a simple adaptation of the technology of superluminal travel to observation. By using super-luminal travel to journey beyond the speed of light we can see events as they happened in our relative past.

While for simple time-distances simple equipment can suffice - any starship can see itself in the past by jumping a few light minutes away and watch its own past - the Terascope is a dedicated vessel/cloud that uses a star or other stellar-mass as its lensing focus.

Of course, as sophisticated as this technology is, there are real limitations on how much information can be obtained from light alone over such distances, and the terascope uses magic to enhance its visualizations.

With the search pattern I have created the terascope will observe the target system at its initial position and then move closer, selecting other stars within the local group to act as visualization points to track the local movement of the star system until an accurate image of its current position can be checked against existing star-maps.

I anticipate usable data including images and locations of the target system within the next three weeks.

I will contact you when I have usable information.

[The Ctan]

Aur'ulus'thal'mar of Ulithuun Shalathun to Amelia Lowwe of the Malgravean Realm and Rylux Crescent of the Dystan Realm sends greetings: may you reach Enlightenment quickly.

I am pleased to report my success. I have a high confidence that the spatial coordinates provided to you by the inhabitants of Baruthis correspond to a world called Aclateo Valaruth in the Alteran Syllabic Reference system.

We have recent images of the system that reveal it to be a single-star system with eleven planets and two significant kuiper-belt objects. Only one such world seems likely to be the location of a humanoid outpost, the fifth planet.

Millions of years ago the planet was warmer and more easily inhabited, but now it is an ice-world, with its maximum temperature in equatorial summer sunlight at 17 degrees celsius and the average surface temperature of -10.1 degrees. In colder areas the planet can drop to below -70 degrees celsius and could hold other extreme climate events.

The planet has major icecaps covering twenty one percent of the planet, and the rest of the world is covered by a lighter dusting of snow over permafrost and might be compared to Earth during its “snowball” cryogenian phase.

The planet has 0.98 G surface gravity and a breathable atmosphere at 0.8 atmospheres, a sixteen hour day and no liquid surface water.

This world will be dangerously cold, but otherwise will likely pose few problems to establishing an operating base.

The major barrier for this is that Aclateo Valaruth lies within the Operational Exclusion Zone of a high priority C’tani military operation; while that would not prevent the ASG sending a ship or even an unaligned expedition, it would risk coming into conflict with our own military forces if it compromised that operation.

Although I have Vermilion clearance within the Great Civilization’s Information Classification System, and I am aware of the details of this, I cannot disclose these details.

I would recommend that the best course of action is to meet with Amalin ita Thurasid of the Diplomatic Service, who is likely to be able to ensure that you run into no problems with the expedition and may even be able to arrange some further support.

Aur'ulus'thal'mar

[Princess Luna]

The midnight blue banners of the nightspire’s upper chambers shimmered with crystalline constellations. The Princess no longer ruled the great nation of Equestria with her sister, both having retired, but here in her foreign domains there was still plentiful regalia.

The curlpad that she sat on was high backed and adorned with silver which gleamed in the moonlight through lancet windows high on the wall, a blue throne canopy hanging above it, and curtains around the throne. Under the canopy hung dozens of bats, a few who stirred in their snoozing watched the conversation impassively; evening had fallen and they were restive.

Before the throne, silent guards standing on either side of their blade-edged wings unfurled in a ready stance, drone-crystals hovering at their shoulders. Their posture was alert, almost hostile, and now and then their armoured forms moved suggesting they were less than happy with their visitor - they were not here as a parade courtesy or routine precaution, but actively watching the dragon priestess before them. Many interviews were granted with the Night Guard in ceremonial armour, not the Great Civilization’s war-plate.

“What you have asked, Alastrine, is most obscure knowledge, but I will set my power to it,” she said. If her guards seemed wary of her guest, her voice showed nothing of it, warmth echoing through the room in her tone, and to one side of her a bell jar of shimmering glass lifted to reveal a large crystal that stood upon its end, the crystal floated from the small ormulu table as the bell jar came to rest back where it had stood.

The crystal hit the carpet with a soft chime and a shimmer ran through it, as Luna raised her head, an aqua-blue radiance spread from her to the crystal. “I will show you where what you seek lies, and tell you something of what the stars remember,” she said.

An image leapt from the crystal, scan-lines shot through it as it refracted outward from the magic that was projected from it, a half-technological illusion that shimmered into a miniature representation of a tower, hexagonal with an upper surface that was canted to one side, balconies emerging from it.

“The Ancestors, as the Malgraveans call them, arrived on Aclateo Valaruth to build a hospital, to heal a terrible plague.”

The Princess’s cloak billowed as she spoke, her forehoof stretching toward the image as buildings grew up before the central tower, a great bowl being excavated before a ring of other buildings surrounded by more towers, with hill-like structures extending forward from the complex. Her eyes were gone green but instead shining with pale moonlight.

“The plague that afflicted them was not unlike MIDD, but far more aggressive, able to spread not only through the air but to any species, sapient or not, a complete biological nightmare, and it travelled long and silent through their network of stargates. The Ancients overcome their plague, but only after the devastation of their society. I do not know what became of Aclateo Valaruth, but a great peril would remain there if any part of the original scourge lies there today.

“The Ancients were no fools,” Luna said, “be wary what you uncover, you will find that even magic healing was of limited effect,” she paused, “the place you seek fell, I do not know how,” gusts of wind and snow stirred in the image, a storm that consumed and buried the city-facility in drifts of snow and rising ice, ground by glaciers and obscured.

“The place you seek lies four hundred and six leagues twenty seven degrees clockwise from polar alignment of the largest peak in the spin-left hemisphere of the world,” specifying a location on a world without assigned coordinates was not easy.

“Beware the precautions of the Ancients they were a thorough people, and beware your own allies; there is a terrible danger among the many who travel with you. Go now, Alastrine Gwrtheyrn. There is no more guidance I can offer you today, but you will know when to come to me again.”

[The Ctan]

Aclateo Valaruth

Aussirkepesk crouched coiled in the interior of the transport ship, as it ploughed through re-entry. The ship was built to endure such things, and there was no shake nor heat despite its basic simplicity, its inertics were well calibrated. She did not know the details, but it was adequate enough to say that the ship worked and worked without anything that she could detect. She found that impressive, she was able to sense far lesser vibrations than a human, she could feel a footstep in an adjacent room.

The ship’s landing was still a breath of fresh air for her though, she was cooped up here, the cargo bay was spacious for a human, but for a dragon, even one as young as she was, it was a small space, and one that she had to share with a remaining amount of supplies, crates of cold-resistant foodstuffs, flat-packed buildings, and drones ready to be deployed.

The door on the side of the cargo module slid open and she poked her head out. The world was glorious, a spread of deep snow as far out as she could see, her nictating membranes slid across her broad eyes, and she looked, wide eyed across the snow.

Here it was puffed and fluffy across the surface, while in other places she could see areas where the snow had fallen in scarps and ridges, cornices where the prevailing wind had scooped up the snow and firns, loose granular snow across the land that rose to packed heaps as they went further, in the distance, towers rose in a crown that was snowed under, and glacial ice rose in towers.

The temperature was bliss; it hit her like a brick, a cold brick thrown from a trebuchet, and she slipped through the door, her wings, spreading wide her wings and letting loose a whoop of delight.

She wriggled her shoulders and twitched side to side, before pressing her forepaws forward in the snow, raking her claws in and stretching, hips up, head down, uncoiling her back.

“This is amazing!” she called, and let her wings spread to catch the chill wind.

The base camp had been set up across from the landing field, the ovoid shape of the Curious Otter and the vehicles of the expedition.

She circled around and gave a tilt of her head, unlike other dragons of her kindred she did not have horns, her head was close and with visible ear holes, making her look like a featherless bird or even a skull, one of which was filled with the communicator.

“This planet has more snow than I’ve ever seen,” she said, her wings catching the air, “absolutely amazing, I love it.”

[Lord Atum]

Pasht sat with her index fingertips meeting before her, her brown eyes gazing at her fingers, she had stepped away from her servants and her jaffa, and she focussed on the present, the small space, the tips of her fingertips, in her mind she compressed her entire awareness, casting out of her mind the soft sounds of the Shu’tak vessel she had brought to Aclateo.

Her mind was a storm of thought, she was engaged in a very dangerous game, she had guided another force to distract the Great Civilization vessel that had attended the expedition she was focussed on, but that distraction would not last long, and her position would be perilous, though she knew that the ancient necrontyr civilization did not want to take control of this operation, that was a space she could move within, but she was walking a slender bridge over oblivion, certain death if she was forced to fight the necrons, and equally certain death if she failed the Sole Lord. And that bridge was narrowing moment by moment.

She didn’t care about the Malgraveans, of course, she had researched them, they were a tribe of the Tau’ri who styled themselves as the Lanteans’ descendants, which of course, was true, but it was no more true for them than any other humans across the galaxy. More than a thousand and some years into history, any member of a population with any living descendants was the ancestor of every living member of that same human population; all of the Tau’ri were descendants of the Lanteans, so were the humans of Atum’s domain, for more than one raid on the Tau’ri had taken place since the end of the Goa’uld rule there.

They claimed grandly that they were the cultural and ideological descendants of the Lanteans, and had managed to infest themselves with a genetic weakness not unlike that which had ultimately claimed the accursed Asgard.

They had asked her to help, that had not been expected, but she had at first resisted.

Of course, they had been a culture that had discovered much, though perhaps less than the goa’uld, of the Ancients, but then, they were young, and would even if they were purged of the disease that ailed them, the tribes of the Tau’ri rose and fell within lifetimes of the goa’uld, and though rampant industrialization and the discovery of ancient technology had propelled them into space in a threateningly quick time, they were still not nearly so far beyond the fractiousness the goa’uld experienced as they liked to imagine.

Her thoughts were on these things, because she had decided to help, agreed to, it suited her need, with a Heart of Light in the glacier-buried colony beneath, she could not retrieve it without doing battle with them on the ground, and though her Jaffa were eager to use their new weapons, as part of the agreement the Tau’ri expedition had agreed to let her men stand guard directly over the Heart of Light; that would make it so much easier to find and obtain, and to return her spy.

To be of use though, she needed to go past her own memories; Pasht had commanded battles and forged her own identity, but the memories of her mother and sire lived within her, and her mother.

Sekhmet, one of the punished queens, she had been no revolutionary, no tok’ra, but she had sided with Hathor and Egeria, and fallen with them, Pasht, still young, had fled into seclusion with Ptah and Sokar, but she had never forgotten her mother.

Sekhmet had been brilliant, a shining intellect among the goa’uld, and she had spoken with the other queens of that time about the destiny of their people, words that were no longer forbidden under the rule of Atum; if their palace revolt had succeeded, perhaps the goa’uld would not need to fear the necrons and their ilk by now.

Pasht had the memory of her mother, and she found much of the experience disorienting, she was, she had come to accept over the years, less intelligent, she knew all of what her mother had known, but at times, there were leaps that her mother had made that eluded her. But still, she brought her world down, as these thoughts of ancestry and genetics bloomed in her mind it was as though she was with her mother again, the memories that were hers coming to prominence.

She would make an attmempt, if only because it would secure her the Heart of Light, but if the Tau’ri betrayed her… she had given Khames her orders.

[The Ctan]

Ulithuun’shalathun was deep within the Sea of Sorrows upon Duat, itself part of the Great Northern Ocean, above the ribbon-continent that wound almost entirely around the world, and to the east of the great C’tani capital city of Tephet-Sheta. The city lay more than thirty five thousand fathoms deep under the ocean, where pressure alone would crush most species’ deep-sea vessels, and the lightless deeps were dark on all sides.

Strange canopetk constructs scuttled in the gloom, blinking indicators showing their positions. Grinding constructs of enchanted stone patrolled the depths with them, ancient and modern defences.

On the outskirts of the city, a procession moved with deliberate grace, as sleek creatures propelled themselves from the underwater spires and domes of the city, as the auto-bier slid through the waters, fields protecting it from the pressure, the creature within was as adapted as the natives, but even aboleth could not transition smoothly from surface pressure to this environment, and worse, this one was dead, and punctured in several places, which would cause major tissue damage.

There were no tears of course but there was no mourning either. The Aboleth did not have the complex bonding emotions that humans did. They had different ways of forming a social consensus. Still, there was anger. That one of their own had been betrayed to be murdered while taking what they saw to be reasonable precautions.

There was no mourning, but a rite that was old before the first human stuck flint. They escorted the bier through the towers and runnels, past cerulean domes and over streets of pale pink corals, to deep place under a dome. Instruments slid into the field, extracting flesh from the corpse, dismantling it piece by piece.

Six months later and a message came from the enigmatic deep city.

Aur'ulus'thal'mar of Ulithuun Shalathun to Sahaeli ita Nephrekh sends greetings,

I wish to express my thanks for your aid on Aclateo Valaruth. I recognize that you may have found my passing distressing. Be at peace, for I live once more. There are many ways to cheat death; or to exchange with it, and I would recommend considering them yourself.

I live now as a clone of my original form. Like the goa’uld, we possess a genetic memory that determines much of our personality, so though I am a new-spawned Aur'ulus'thal'mar as you would consider it, I hold the personality and memory of my predecessor.

I charge you with keeping this secret from the outlanders with whom you have travelled, for it is best that they know nothing of us. It is unfortunate that the Great Plague is lost, though it is as well that it was not obtained by the Atumites, it would have been better had we been able to obtain it for analysis to improve our own future creations. Our community always strives to develop new and more insightful weapons and it would have been an asset.

Had I been aware that the Atumites would interfere in the expedition I would have brought more adequate forces with me, as I had intended to obtain the plague after your expedition had departed.

Your actions are appreciated however, and should you have need of me contact me.

Aur'ulus'thal'mar