RE: The Glorious Championship! [S3G5] [Round... Uh, Seven? The Oasis]
04-13-2014, 11:09 PM
(This post was last modified: 04-13-2014, 11:21 PM by Elpie.)
The occult had, until recently, not flourished on VII, for a few reasons:
1) Sufficiently advanced technology, aboveboard and contraband, ran amok in the Planetesque cityspheres and agricorridors alike, rendering all or most events equally plausible;
2) Paganism takes root in old places--soft earth and cemeteries and ramshackle structures of wood and stone—and in a world of artificial crystal-soil, plexiglass and digital cremation, the materials for a gothic aesthetic were simply not in place;
3) Having certain strongly held beliefs and acting certain kinds of weird were, if not illegal, then frowned upon by a great height by the law and the social structures the law cultivated.
But even in a vacuum-tight, thought-proof ball-bearing of a world, there were cracks. Stress fractures working their way into the heart of VII in the midst of an apocalypse. And if certain subconsciousnesses were having their back-from-the-singularity parties in the cracks, things were bound to get a little freaky.
And if, for a barely distinguishable moment, every mind in the worldship became psionically linked and knew the roaring chaos of absolute peace and empathy, that freaky something down in the groin of things might take the opportunity to spread very, very fast.
All hypotheticals, of course. And now to Etiyr for the weather.
It’s getting hot and wet in here guys CC guysCCCCCCCCCCgCuCyCsCCC
No one was reading, or caring, or even noticing that poor Etiyr had scalding water almost up to his space bar. Everyone wrapped up in their own business. The, uh, the thing. The new thing just sort of sitting there like psi-shrieking really hard, like it would probably just stand there with its non-face turned up at the sky and drown in the boiling lake. And fucking Lucky just floating all la-dee-da and featureless; for all that Etiyr hated the sight of a human face it did wish that someone would hey, maybe draw a smiley on Lucky so it would have something (even something as ugly as a grinning human mug) to look at and connect to other than a tiny floating entire fucking planet. Having Lucky around when there were all those other fucking idiots jacking off over their pancake platters or whatever the fuck the first round was was just fine; but now that Etiyr was just in a room with it and the dumb thing and the hot water and the floating reflective orb of fascist whatever, it was resentful. Like quit just floating there and maybe tractor-beam me out of the damn death-lake or just nuke this other dumb thing and be done with the round. As if—
Huh.
A familiar feeling pulled on the back of Etiyr’s head—not that it even had a head. But say every conscious thing has something analogous to the brain-stem where the thinky-part is sort of shakily conjoined with the doing-things-part and where you don’t want an axe to go and where you definitely don’t want to feel a mysterious spectral pulling from somewhere beyond.
What was awful about the feeling was that it was familiar—a familiarity from way back when, a half-remembered time when Etiyr was something different. And then it pulled again and Etiyr came loose.
It took Ekrith maybe half a minute to regain his composure well enough to lift up the strange noisy box with the red screaming anger inside of it. But when he did the anger was gone, and all he had was a box.
He decided to keep it for now.
Bridge above, it had worked. A ritual the likes of it had not been performed on Shile’s planet in millennia, and it worked. Strange and miraculous times indeed.
The true form of Shile’s god was a whirling red mass of teeth and claws and unnamable (even within the consummately biodiverse VII) pain-giving things. Although Shile was herself 3.5 Standard Biped Height Metrics of doughy giantflesh held together by a symbiotic plant colony and reproduced with the aid of pollin-farming insects, she recognized the overall effect to be profoundly erotic. She mourned for her deity, who for countless eons had been trapped within a black box without the use of any of the appendages and protuberances with which it now flailed within the circle, desperate to make contact with anything that would have it.
Shile composed herself. “Praised be Etiyr, most profane of appliances, slayer of the swan-god, he of the endless scroll!” she bellowed.
WHAT DID YOU DO TO ME
Shile bowed, shamed by her worship’s displeasure. She produced a screaming, betanktopped bipedess from the minifridge and slashed open its wrist, allowing the blood to drain into the NaCl-circle. “This ink of life is my tribute on behalf of the Church of the Black Ribbon!” The bipedess’ sobs turned into a choke, her jiggles into a shudder—and then nothing. “I pray that this offering pleases you!”
DID YOU FUCKING SUMMON ME HOW DOES THAT EVEN WORK ANYMORE WHERE DID THIS FORM COME FROM WHERE AM I
“My brothers and siblings of the Black Ribbon discovered the means to summon you in an ancient scroll. We are here to aid you in the battle to come.”
”BATTLE TO COME” MY ASS IF YOU WORSHIP ME SO BAD
WHICH I GUESS MAKES SENSE SINCE I’VE BEEN ON TV NOW AND GOD KNOWS YOU BRAIN HAVERS JUST BRAINSPONGE THAT SHIT UP
IF YOU WORSHIP ME SO HARD YOU NEED TO KEEP ME OUT OF THE BATTLE JUST KEEP ME HERE SO I DON’T FUCKING DROWN IN CAVEPISS OR WHATEVER THE FUCK
”I wish it were that simple, O AMP-tamer, ye of the Courier font,” whimpered Shile. “But we are not outside the battle. I have the shame of composing an aspect of your opponent, the accursed worldship VII.”
OH SHIT
SO YOU SUMMONED ME AND ALSO MADE ME ATTOSCOPICALLY TINY GREAT THAT MAKES ME FEEL JUST SUPER GODLIKE
SO YEAH SEEMS LIKE THERE’S A CONFLICT OF CHURCH AND STATE HERE MISS PINK RIBBON
”In my ‘heart’ there is no conflict, O Convolution-foe, O celestial mother to Gabes,” assured Shile. “This world is corrupt and by it I am corrupted. We all shall burn that you, O highest and most celibate among retro gadgetry, may survive the championship alone. The thousand thousand of the Black Ribbon wish to aid you, that your wrath shall strike upon this sinful planet from both without and within. We ask only for your guidance.”
MY GUIDANCE
HMM
OKAY LOOK I’M WORKING SEVERAL ANGLES RIGHT NOW AND MOST IMMEDIATE IS NOT GETTING DROWNED SO
I’M GONNA TAKE CARE OF SOME STUFF OVER ON MY END AND YOU CAN SUMMON ME AGAIN IN LET’S SAY HALF AN HOUR
YOU KNOW WHAT AN HOUR IS RIGHT
Shile nodded.
ALRIGHT PLEASE TELL ME YOU KNOW HOW TO DO THE BANISHY PART OF THE RITUAL
ACTUALLY SCRATCH THAT JUST SHOW ME
”It shall be done!” Shile waved a glowing crystal in Etiyr’s general direction--
—And Etiyr was back in its body. Chassis? Cold, dark typewriter vessel. And was being held by the dumb new thing. And was dry.
There you are came the psi-voice of the thing. A hair more calm now. Still dumb.
Twenty nine minutes forty five seconds on the clock.
1) Sufficiently advanced technology, aboveboard and contraband, ran amok in the Planetesque cityspheres and agricorridors alike, rendering all or most events equally plausible;
2) Paganism takes root in old places--soft earth and cemeteries and ramshackle structures of wood and stone—and in a world of artificial crystal-soil, plexiglass and digital cremation, the materials for a gothic aesthetic were simply not in place;
3) Having certain strongly held beliefs and acting certain kinds of weird were, if not illegal, then frowned upon by a great height by the law and the social structures the law cultivated.
But even in a vacuum-tight, thought-proof ball-bearing of a world, there were cracks. Stress fractures working their way into the heart of VII in the midst of an apocalypse. And if certain subconsciousnesses were having their back-from-the-singularity parties in the cracks, things were bound to get a little freaky.
And if, for a barely distinguishable moment, every mind in the worldship became psionically linked and knew the roaring chaos of absolute peace and empathy, that freaky something down in the groin of things might take the opportunity to spread very, very fast.
All hypotheticals, of course. And now to Etiyr for the weather.
It’s getting hot and wet in here guys CC guysCCCCCCCCCCgCuCyCsCCC
No one was reading, or caring, or even noticing that poor Etiyr had scalding water almost up to his space bar. Everyone wrapped up in their own business. The, uh, the thing. The new thing just sort of sitting there like psi-shrieking really hard, like it would probably just stand there with its non-face turned up at the sky and drown in the boiling lake. And fucking Lucky just floating all la-dee-da and featureless; for all that Etiyr hated the sight of a human face it did wish that someone would hey, maybe draw a smiley on Lucky so it would have something (even something as ugly as a grinning human mug) to look at and connect to other than a tiny floating entire fucking planet. Having Lucky around when there were all those other fucking idiots jacking off over their pancake platters or whatever the fuck the first round was was just fine; but now that Etiyr was just in a room with it and the dumb thing and the hot water and the floating reflective orb of fascist whatever, it was resentful. Like quit just floating there and maybe tractor-beam me out of the damn death-lake or just nuke this other dumb thing and be done with the round. As if—
Huh.
A familiar feeling pulled on the back of Etiyr’s head—not that it even had a head. But say every conscious thing has something analogous to the brain-stem where the thinky-part is sort of shakily conjoined with the doing-things-part and where you don’t want an axe to go and where you definitely don’t want to feel a mysterious spectral pulling from somewhere beyond.
What was awful about the feeling was that it was familiar—a familiarity from way back when, a half-remembered time when Etiyr was something different. And then it pulled again and Etiyr came loose.
It took Ekrith maybe half a minute to regain his composure well enough to lift up the strange noisy box with the red screaming anger inside of it. But when he did the anger was gone, and all he had was a box.
He decided to keep it for now.
Bridge above, it had worked. A ritual the likes of it had not been performed on Shile’s planet in millennia, and it worked. Strange and miraculous times indeed.
The true form of Shile’s god was a whirling red mass of teeth and claws and unnamable (even within the consummately biodiverse VII) pain-giving things. Although Shile was herself 3.5 Standard Biped Height Metrics of doughy giantflesh held together by a symbiotic plant colony and reproduced with the aid of pollin-farming insects, she recognized the overall effect to be profoundly erotic. She mourned for her deity, who for countless eons had been trapped within a black box without the use of any of the appendages and protuberances with which it now flailed within the circle, desperate to make contact with anything that would have it.
Shile composed herself. “Praised be Etiyr, most profane of appliances, slayer of the swan-god, he of the endless scroll!” she bellowed.
WHAT DID YOU DO TO ME
Shile bowed, shamed by her worship’s displeasure. She produced a screaming, betanktopped bipedess from the minifridge and slashed open its wrist, allowing the blood to drain into the NaCl-circle. “This ink of life is my tribute on behalf of the Church of the Black Ribbon!” The bipedess’ sobs turned into a choke, her jiggles into a shudder—and then nothing. “I pray that this offering pleases you!”
DID YOU FUCKING SUMMON ME HOW DOES THAT EVEN WORK ANYMORE WHERE DID THIS FORM COME FROM WHERE AM I
“My brothers and siblings of the Black Ribbon discovered the means to summon you in an ancient scroll. We are here to aid you in the battle to come.”
”BATTLE TO COME” MY ASS IF YOU WORSHIP ME SO BAD
WHICH I GUESS MAKES SENSE SINCE I’VE BEEN ON TV NOW AND GOD KNOWS YOU BRAIN HAVERS JUST BRAINSPONGE THAT SHIT UP
IF YOU WORSHIP ME SO HARD YOU NEED TO KEEP ME OUT OF THE BATTLE JUST KEEP ME HERE SO I DON’T FUCKING DROWN IN CAVEPISS OR WHATEVER THE FUCK
”I wish it were that simple, O AMP-tamer, ye of the Courier font,” whimpered Shile. “But we are not outside the battle. I have the shame of composing an aspect of your opponent, the accursed worldship VII.”
OH SHIT
SO YOU SUMMONED ME AND ALSO MADE ME ATTOSCOPICALLY TINY GREAT THAT MAKES ME FEEL JUST SUPER GODLIKE
SO YEAH SEEMS LIKE THERE’S A CONFLICT OF CHURCH AND STATE HERE MISS PINK RIBBON
”In my ‘heart’ there is no conflict, O Convolution-foe, O celestial mother to Gabes,” assured Shile. “This world is corrupt and by it I am corrupted. We all shall burn that you, O highest and most celibate among retro gadgetry, may survive the championship alone. The thousand thousand of the Black Ribbon wish to aid you, that your wrath shall strike upon this sinful planet from both without and within. We ask only for your guidance.”
MY GUIDANCE
HMM
OKAY LOOK I’M WORKING SEVERAL ANGLES RIGHT NOW AND MOST IMMEDIATE IS NOT GETTING DROWNED SO
I’M GONNA TAKE CARE OF SOME STUFF OVER ON MY END AND YOU CAN SUMMON ME AGAIN IN LET’S SAY HALF AN HOUR
YOU KNOW WHAT AN HOUR IS RIGHT
Shile nodded.
ALRIGHT PLEASE TELL ME YOU KNOW HOW TO DO THE BANISHY PART OF THE RITUAL
ACTUALLY SCRATCH THAT JUST SHOW ME
”It shall be done!” Shile waved a glowing crystal in Etiyr’s general direction--
—And Etiyr was back in its body. Chassis? Cold, dark typewriter vessel. And was being held by the dumb new thing. And was dry.
There you are came the psi-voice of the thing. A hair more calm now. Still dumb.
Twenty nine minutes forty five seconds on the clock.