Upon Mars.

Yes... Not a favourite of mine, but i wrote one of my best papers on it... and also Chikentown has something to do with John Cooper Clarke...

I am editing a lot of stuff. But i'll carry on...

Oh ok thanks.

The valley of the winds part 1 draft: Knowing that the many chapters of the book have dealt with and about the shapers design's as they seemed to have taken over the main body of the isle, with their marble towers, their bath houses, their research facilities and their creations solidly rooted to this foreign soil, we must inevitably come to apprehend the nature and motives of the original natives of this strange land: It seemed that the spirits of the natives were waiting for Andras, singing, moaning, buzzing, calling out for him, their mouths wide open, even more vulture than the combined swarms of sharks and crocodiles that feed upon whatever pollution and rotten meat is trashed over board from the many garbage ships that journey to the end of night, in forgotten Terrestiain estuaries. If they had failed to take him down, in the woods of the clawbug wastes, they would try to tear him apart atom by atom, in the silent valley of the winds. The partially spirited and once spawner filled wastes of the south, were now pounded to the very dust they grew from. Vaporizing mounds of inert red dust as they marched, Andras and his small and lethal force of ur-glaahks, battle betas and drayks, were ready to visit them in one of the most disturbing and lifeless parts of all Sucia. It was a silent place, no birds, no insects, no sound whatsoever... and yet it felt like Andras was closing in on something. But as he did he had to struggle against the winds and dust of Sucia's labyrinthine lower mouth. The valley of the Wind was pouring it's fierce and dusty being into the lungs of Andras, making him very uncomfortable and sick with dust. His creations given the chance of their genetic patronage started to produce more mucus and simply spat out the harsh shard grain, continuing relentless, hammering their way in one of the dead pits of Sucia, indefatigable. If Andras was seemingly weaker than his creations, he was in fact the Perseus* of the band, his eyes a bright beacon, ready to fire at moment's notice, a deadly ray of magic, remembering the promise of loot if he cleared the gates where the wind never stops blowing. Behind the fortress of his thick skull, he even bore a sense of accomplishment; had he not touched all the sacred pillars and been accepted? And now he would follow the tracks of the now dead Shaper author, who's books he read in the quiet marshes and in the Western wastes: "Truly, the natives who settled the island before us were a strange people. A mixture of savagery and cunning, of simple beliefs and strange, necromantic powers. [...] At last, I have received assistance. Five Guardians will help me safely explore the massive ruins. It is hard to get attention and resources, because of all the excitement about the Geneforge, but [long, illegible section]... Their power was so great that, even now, their shades are still potent and dangerous. We can defeat them, but it is dangerous, especially since they resist [unreadable scriptures]... the pillars and then enter the largest ruins, at the northwest corner of the isle."*** Andras stopped in the mouth of the valley. the wind dropped for a while, leaving him some time to think. The pillars now filled his dreams. The crude pictures on each pillar seemed to suggest that these original people were initiated to some kind of mental test rather than brute force; the many hand drawn lines of men and women passing by to touch a pillar seemed to welcome. Andras to a respectful and almost welcoming approach instead of the usual glaring the small figures would produce, as if you had just crashed yet an other mad tea party. Their shades though, were not so welcoming. They were patrolling guards. And Andras a threat. Hidden by the maze of wind dug rock they observed and scrutinized what seemed to be fresh meat; when Andras reached the pillar they flickered by Andras, fast as hell wind, to seize him up. That's when two Betas fired the submission batons with which they armed, and a battle ensured. As we all know how Andras is quite meticulous about his definition of who eats who, should you try test him, so will he test you at the point of a burning blade or with the wonders of his intellect, lovely as a varnish, but ugly when used a venom, speaking of which he would pour in whatever shade's ear he could manage to pin down, these very Shades which would pulsate and heaved in the air. Like with all hornets he'd take out the scouts first. And when he did they howled, gnashing their teeth. Some were even coming out of the walls! Seven of them sought to cut the Betas and the drayks from the Shaper and his troupe of Ur-Glaahks, hurling swords and crying out words in long dead tongue. Andras would hit two of them with reapers and take out one more with crystals set in the eye of his ring. His arm would jerk each time the sound of the flying shards and it would go out hurling. Covering his eyes from the afterblast Andras hid, back against a wall. Then the Shaper heard the clank of ur-glaahk tail on stone, as it's stinger ate through one of the monstrosities. It spirited away, slowed down by the stunning effects of the giant grasshopper's magical tail. Two Shades fired orbs of flame. The Ur-Glaahks charged. The Shades slew one of them after ten minutes of intense fighting. A explosion followed... The crackling of crystals flowed, following the shades like the flying red hot thorns of a hasted turret. A Pyrrhic victory; Andras was running on his last reserves of fuel and two Betas and an Ur-Glaahk were killed for three shades out of seven, a fraction of what the valley held. Andras and his band were searching higher ground. He was losing. Turning back and fourth through the maze, Andras recognized the dead bodies and the petrified cries of drone Sholai. Their bodies, ruined, sprawled on the rocky floor, seemingly alive after all these months, of being slowly eroded by the winds and shades. Their lion like exterior was revealed to be skin deep. For the shades lifted their coats, and revealed to the sun's ray a blackness to rival with the soft skin of a new born lamb. Every thing here was elusive. What dreams he would enter, when he travelled the cables the isle's brain, full of it's infertile workings? He would shamble mist the drunken delusion of an seascape, a world suspended, decomposing, waves of material, polished by every beat of his gaze, at first transparent, if not abstract, body of colours that moved without great porpoise, as if they had no mind to rule about it, hovering here and there, hungry, trying to force food through a glass stained body, as if they were starving people. Glass-like bodies, turning, moving hovels, even more insubstantial when mustering the winds... flakes to a blizzard. Shattering and reappearing. It made them extremely hard to kill. He used acid and essence orbs so that he needn't follow them. The globules of fire and acid would run, dripping, after these screaming bags of fuel. -"A cancer that was it was" thought Andras; a cancer sustained by the dead land around it; an over-reactive weakening patient suffering from some autoimmune disease; it's body promising treasures of all sorts, potassium nitrates to golds, a hand's reach to the needy strong and the promising smart. The very spirit of Sucia was a harsh and simple minded, mother and daughter of necessity. "A dead lifeless corpse in a bed, fertile and yet incredibly old, a horizontal line, being more often lying down than up." spat the apprentice while prodding a spectre with an searer dipped in blade. A battle beta hurled frenzied into four shades. Andras felt his hands trembling. A sudden whack in the back. Andras fell head first. Heavy moaning. Andras caught the shades head with a good left. Andras was pouring magic in it's eyes. It slipped away from Andras' fingers, burning hot and laughing. Slithering abomination. Andras turned his head. It was a scout force which had bought time for the arrival larger patrol of twenty or so grey Spectres. All hands raised. Fired twice. The nearby Betas reunited, shields up, facing the fires. Andras fired in the melee and fled behind a stone corner. One Shade fired at the Shaper. Andras uttered curses and fired back. Two Shades shrivelled down like burning plastic bags. A band of Shades then started to feed on of Andras' dead creation opening a banquet. When he turned from the frenzy to a exit route one of the Shades came to strike the Shaper's head off clean; it was a black Shade and it came to duel the Shaper; it rose with an axe forged in the ways of old, with the tip and the hook of a halberd. Andras unsheathed his singing rapier. He started charging at the monster cutting the hands of a few shades clawing at him. When the black shade was about to strike Andras, magically hasted, cracked open a pair of swarm crystal and plunged twice his sword infused with orbs of essence at the body of basalt spectre. The Shades that had floated around the Shaper whisked away in fright. The Black Shade evaded the deadly blow, with a few cuts, then appeared west, in Andras' back. As the the frozen snarl of death was crashing down at Andras, a tail speared the Shade away. The rabble of Shades around Andras then took the opportunity to swarm him. They were about to overwhelm our hero, when he cracked opened twice a swarm crystal to repel the evil spirits and twice raised a jewelled wand. Plasma sucked the shades from the inside out. Kneeling with pain from the magic he had released, Andras reached for his bag, crying, and showered his burnt face with the thick paste of restoration pods. The Shades were blown away, but the rest would come back at him. Ice to their blood! He would retreat and come back at an other time; of all of Andras' creations, Tooth and Claw were the only ones that survived and his essence reserves were running desperately low. Andras tried to retreat back to the forests of glass. He was far closer to the gates. Lost he ran into a small clearing. From there a mouth-shaped opening seemed to wave faintly at Andras. It was more welcoming than the previous alcoves that peopled the region*. Tooth and Claw followed. It was a fantastic and extremely angular construction, unlike the Shaper with their more life giving buildings; it was made to resist and endure: it's solid granite walls that would hold on, even after the whole isle would perish under a cataclysm of fire and water. Even the rule of time did not erode it's entry. It contained a still operational steaming bath house. With a curtain of steam! When they entered Andras, Tooth and Claw started augmenting. The place was full of magic. Andras detached from his armour and left it aside, under the watchful gaze of his minions. He analysed the water with vibrating magic. Nothing. Waved over the waters a second time. Plain water with a rather interesting composition. Nothing unusual, yet. He filled pods with some of the water. It was dry out there. He touched the water. Poured some on his bruises and burns. They healed instantaneously. He reached out for his used essence pods, and behold; they were filled with essence! He took a bath, pleasant. Really pleasant. The arrangement of green tiles and the damp and hot air gave Andras a felling of oneness similar to that when he was in his boat. A good old bed with the purring waves of blue velvet and silken cloth. But to sleep he had to be lonelier still. He packed his things. This would be his command centre from which he would ball himself into. With the essence he gathered, he sent out waxy new creations to take the Shades out. Each and every one, tooth and claw. Andras sent pyroroamer scouts to seek and wound what Shades that slew it. Following the creatures' trails, the shades came into the bath house, only to be greeted by Andras' reapers. He sat behind his bag, with a firing reaper thorn baton, mounted on a Gauss device, itself connected to a transparent white jelly of a bag filled with ammunition through a white umbilical cordon. The drayks, on the other hand, spat out their magic to either side of the room. Andras ceased fire. Amist the cooked and butchercut remains of Andras' roamers, appeared east, a wounded black shade with a battle axe of old. It was whispering something. The Old Sucian dialect. Andras pulled a string. Atop the spectre laid a bucket of searing hot water. It fell on the head of Shade, blinding it. Andras then proceeded in firing and the drayks finally disposed of the Basalt malik****. The shades would continue time after time their storming of the now fortified bathhouse's entry. They stopped for awhile to muster the rest of their forces but were greeted with a yet a other strong force of pyroroamers and a very nasty plate clawbug, it's head serving as a door to the defenders. The Shades would crack open like bags of broken jelly, helpless. The heat of the baths would soften the Shades' hulls and slow them down. They could not sweat. Shades can't efficiently deal with rapids changes in temperature; they adapt efficiently but slowly to their environments. And so this routine of sudden violence and serenity, went back and fought for five hours throughout the whole area, before the cover of darkness. Andras had at last pulverized the multitudes of shades that once peopled the area. Andras victorious was now ready to seize the gate. *Perseus both a historical hero of old and mythical witch-king, was a brilliant necromancer, perhaps one of the most powerful Iugularian to have ever walked this earth and a saint patron of Death, accompanying the souls of the dead to the otherworld. He was said to have held the cap of invisibility forged by the hands of death, brandished a sword that would cut through marble like a knife through butter and a magic shield with a head painted on it. The painted head was said capable of offensive abilities, namely to turn to turn into stone any living thing by being looked at. Perseus is even credited to be the inventor of the first neutron device. **Indeed when Andras went in two of the protected openings in the centre of this valley. In one of them he was surprised to find a dancing and locked chest. Having lifted it's rattling lid, he was confronted by, not one, but two ugly surprises: two "wind brothers" as he called them. Being cornered hey tried to strike him down with a useless living knife. The other was not worthy of notice, although it did contain a nice meal consisting of centuries old and yet edible meat, vegetable and fruit. The people must have been very good at keeping things from rotting, not so unlike the Shapers... ***Upon my visit of the isle, i managed to salvage the clay tiles. I then gave it to an Agent who placed it in the great vaults of the Shapers' Immaculate library. It can be found under the name of "oeuvres crystalographiques" by Guy Debord. ****The Malik or Maliq kings of old were said to hold great hosts of diantu spectres, which would turn into wolves at night. The great excursions held by the Malikim, are called the wild hunt. The Malikim were often coerced into servitude by magicians this way: During three days the living and the shades of the dead share tables and meals. At the eastern end of the table is a throne for the living Adon, king of the living, and at the western end is an empty throne. Each night the ghostly shapes in the empty seats and throne become more solid. At the final night the Adon that held the banquet for the deified dead, sacrifices himself at the banquet and is devoured by the dead king who can manifest in the land of the living as a reawakened "god" and trapped an idol. Andras was only a table away from being the next Adon.

Originally Posted By: nocia Or maybe because when you did write, it read more like a bad LP than an actual fanfic. I know that it's hardly my buisness, but what does LP stands out for?

Kazg part 1: Andras' motto had always been: “be prepared”. He would enter Kazg by the north. He added to the waters of Kazg a small novelty. Nothing diabolical. Just something he found next to the E.coli canister that the Sholai had left to rot in the hills of jars, useless. He would then dump the critters with entire bags of nitric fertilisers in the Stygian waters near Kazg, as to increase their reproduction rate. The waters atop of Kazg became blood-like for a week before ironically “dying out” from the poisoned waters they tainted. But it created enough of a roar to draw the Takers away from the roads into the fields. And also once in Kazg, the effect would be so dramatic that it would create enough fear so as to scare the town's leaders to a certain point: they would now certainly not hold as trivial this reference to the ten plagues* the Shapers had once released onto Terrestia in their wars against the Iugularian. There were several statues of Shapers lining the road to Kazg. The creations here had taken great pains to destroy them. And the obelisks indicating the way had been once more defaced. They were hiding Kazg's horizon. The view did not include the mainland, but the muddy sick fields of Kazg and the opened sea were the red sun rose, a horn in it's cardinal lips, it's sword brandished a fire like a torch in the night, swinging all directions in the sky, eyes filled with the glow of ten thousand** canisters, it's hands clad with red leather, an eagle's feather in it's helmet. Birds of prey and crows would patrol trying to get a mouthful of the hanging rogues as they were exposed to the dawn. Turning away form Kazg's horizon, towards from whatever growing ruin the Shapers had left to scavenge, blocking his view of the future, Andras followed the stony road to Kazg and met one of the scouting guards. It was a servile officer, his rank that right under that of a Servile blade. He wore the cold, calm expression, seen many times on the more experienced Guardians. He nods , clearly unimpressed, and began to speak in a businesslike manner. “Shaper, I have been sent to greet you when you approach. You are at the outskirts of Kazg. Fair warning. Your safety here is not guaranteed.” Amena watched Andras carefully, ready to defend himself in a moment if necessary. Andras nodded in return, a reed in his mouth: “Will I be attacked if I enter Kazg?” asked the Shaper taking the reed in and out of his mouth. "Yes. The guards there are eager to meet you in battle. I doubt I could control them, if they got a chance to actually fight and slay a Shaper. They will all fight you as one, and die rather than give in to Shapers again. " Andras looked back at his support troops and turned back towards the servile. "Why do they hate Me?" dropped Andras. "I do not have the time to recite the whole list of crimes your people have committed against ours. All my warriors want is a chance for fair justice." "How is this justice done? They would do me evil because I am a Shaper, would it be fair if I did you evil simply because you are a servile? What have I done against these soldiers?” thought Andras dejected. Then he turned his look to the feeding birds. “Well it seems you haven't done much justice to your own.” remarked Andras. Amena turned her gaze away from the dead serviles and rogues hanging from Kazg's gallows and replied looking in Andras' direction: “Again like I said so before, I do not have the time to recite the whole list of crimes you have committed against the Takers.” “Nasty prick” "A thick head form Chickentown*** Andras thought. Andras didn't as much as budge, for the takers he killed did not so much as try to parley with him the first time he met them, and most of them tried to assassinate his hosts. "I wish to enter Kazg and speak with your leaders. How is this possible?" "I would need to escort you into town myself. But first, I need to believe that it is worth it. Killing Ellrah or Rydell would be a good start. I do not want one of your kind in my home, no matter what Gnorrel says." "Gnorrel? Who is that?" "Gnorrel is our leader. She rules the Takers. She says, that there is a certain Shaper she wishes to see, but she said nothing about how to identify him or her. I don't think any Shapers can be trusted, so I will not help you pass." "Shouldn't you obey your orders?" "I am not a servant.” Andras was sore amazed with this demonstration of simple wisdom. “You Shapers want us all to be servants, to you or to each other. No. I am here and she is not. I will not help you pass." "It is wise to leave. If you do not, you will be slain." Andras got annoyed. "If you want me dead, don't you think the best way to bring that about would be to take me to your leader? I won't die out here." Andras looked at his vlish and thahd Shades. He would not die here. The Takers here possessed no magical weapons. No pod, no spore bag, no rod, no wand whatsoever only a few officers stripped to a magical sword here and there and a few ice crystals. They would be broken down into the very essence they were made from in an instant, if he let alone raised a finger. Amena on the other hand stopped, surprised. This fact clearly hadn't occurred to him. “That is true. I do not even think that I can kill you. Gnorrel, however, definitely could.” Andras couldn't but help noticing the state of his dress as some of it decayed... "Follow me, Shaper. I will lead you to the gate. Beyond the gate watch your step. Watch yourself, though. The slightest theft, the slightest crime, say or do the wrong thing, I won't give a dime. We will swarm you. We will all fight you as one. We will slay you and die rather than give in to Shapers again.” Andras puffed at this gratuitous display of power. “You are not the master here.” reminded him the servile. As Amena escorted Andras on the lonely road to the bone white city of Kazg, the shaper started singing. “I send a pestilence and plague Into your house, into your beds Into your streams, into your streets Into your drink, into your bread Upon your cattle, on your sheep Upon your oxen in your field Into your dreams, into your sleep Until you break, until you yield I send the swarm, I send the horde Thus saith the Lords.” Amena stopped. Andras was allowed through the doors of Kazg. It was a massive fortress. Though as barren and dusty as the rest of the area, it must have been at one point a garden of Eden and the administrative center for the Shapers of Sucia isle, the heart of the isle's research. From here, all of the orders and directives which governed this colony emerged. Most likely, the decision to abandon Sucia Island came out of here too. This had to be the best chance to obtain clues about what happened here and why this island was Barred. Now it is the citadel of the Takers. When the serviles inside saw Andras, their response is immediate. Shouts of alarm are raised. Weapons are drawn. Farmers and children run for safety. Andras raised his hands in a ready pose, prepared to defend himself at all costs. However, before anyone ends up dead, a large servile in a steel breastplate ran between him and the assailants. “Wait!” He shouted. "By the orders of Gnorrel, until Shaper commit crime against us, the Shaper is not attacked! No blades. No threats. The Shaper has business with us, and is not yet foe. Go back to business." The words have the desired effect. As the serviles slouched back to their business, casting dark looks back at Andras, the armed servile approaches. “I Eko Blade. You no friend to me. But we may have business. Gnorrel waits in centre hall. Go to her.” “You be full of peace here. One step wrong or crime, and we fall on you. We have no love of Shapers, only business if need be.” Eko turned and walked back to the massive stone hall in the centre of the keep. Andras waved his hand and dissolved his army behind a small ruin and set fought to meet these strange and new people alone. Although Andars knew the way he asked his way to a farmer taker as means to better apprehend the situation. To alienate this knew sect with this token of slavery, or dissolving his creations in public would have been a rude if not a direct provocation to the people of Kazg an since then Andras never took a single war creation into Kazg. He was here to greet and recognise the Takers of Kazg not to carry warfare against dangerous rogues. "Hello there, do you know who is in charge here?" Sweetly said Andras. The Servile pointed at the huge building at the west end of town. “Gnorrel is there. She is leader, our leader, leader of Takers. She tell you.” "How is your farming going?" “Farming bad. Farming always bad. We live here as long as we remember, in Kazg, in this dusty, dirty place, where the land dies little more each year, getting more hungry, getting more weak.” As he spoke, he stared at the ground. “You Shapers leave us like this, and now you return, and want us to obey. We not ask for freedom, like weak Awakened. We take our freedom. We take it from you.” Form there Andras moved into the large building. It was strong, and where once the Shapers controlled and designed, it was now teeming with rogues. Below it's massive celling were built many an alcove, set to either side of the administrative complex, both east and west. At top one alcove lied the pinned dried corpse of a rogue creation, the staff of the Shapers, an artila black as a cobra, the shaper symbols of it's skin white with age. And below the serpent,sat it's slayer, great servile Eko Blade, washing his feet with salt water and whose back bore more resemblance to that of rhino than a servile, the scars of many years of battles, covering him tip to toe. Taker soldiers were posted to either the side of every of the arch of this great administrative chapel. And amongst a crowd teeming serviles, that was spread thin from either side of the room, "mis de profil" like in the paintings of old, leaving a long corridor of space so that the leader may spot afar newcomers and barer of news, sat, at the very centre of the big hall, an old female servile. She had been talking to some of her fellow takers that had once seemed to buzz around here in a disorderly fashion and was now standing behind a century old wooden table, old, worn and hard like the servile's skin. Now that Andras was in front of her, her companions unsheathed their blades before him and stopped her dead in her tracks. She was about to leave the Takers to their petty squabbles. But when she saw Andras for the very first time, she had to exert a great effort to keep herself under control. Part of her wanted to kill him. She was choking with anger, sorely tempted to just call the guards and have it out here and now. But like cunning Rydell, this servile's faith was eclipsed by her idealism, dismissed the crowd and after a few long moments after having brought tea she made for herself and the Shaper, she sat down, and gained enough control to speak. "Shaper. You have come to us. I am Gnorrel, leader of the Takers. Though I am the sworn enemy of your kind, and yet I am able to deal with you personally without rage. Come, and we may speak." She offered the Shaper a seat. She held up a cup of tea to Andras. It smelt earthy. "What other dealings do you wish to have with the Takers, Shaper?" She sarcastically smiled before drinking from the cup, the very same cup from which Andras drew his lips. "It's very bitter." sickly said Andras. "Yes it is." said she. "I want to learn about the Takers." "I am glad. I will tell you our story, if you choose to hear it." "Why have you not attacked me?" "I have let you live and approach me because my allies want your help, and we want your help. We want you to ally with us. We have much we need, and much to offer." "We wanted for you to join us here. And you have. It was a wise decision, I think." "I am trying to find a boat. Where can I find one?" "If you were allied with the Takers, I might help you." Andars sighed. She took visibly pleasure in walling off Andras. "I want to talk to you about what's happening on this island." "And there is much you should learn. There are humans on this island, who have come from far across the western sea. They are from a people called the Sholai. They are helping us, and we are helping them." "We all have many great plans, but, to make them come about, we need the help of a Shaper." "And what do you know about the outsider humans?" "They are called the Sholai. When you are allied with the Takers, there is much I can tell you." "Tell me of your story. How did this hatred came about?” Gnorrel was surprised. "We serviles have lived in Kazg for many years, after you Shapers left us. It was hard. You have many tunnels and warrens to the north, and creatures came out of them and savaged us. And the land slowly grew worse. We don't know why." "The plants died, and we were hungry, and we died. But we were loyal. We believed that you created us, and, for that, we owed you a debt. But as the years passed, and we suffered more and more, we grew angrier." "Then what happened?" "Then one of us stepped forward. His name was lost. One day, he went to the middle of the square, mad with hunger and anger, and he raised his fist, and he shouted." "He yelled 'The Shapers are wrong! They torment! They bad! We must take our free!' Gnorell paused as if waiting for Andras to continue. "So what happened to him?" "Oh, he was killed. We were loyal to your kind then, and the guards struck him down instantly. But the idea was planted. And, as the years past, more and more came to repeat his words." "We call ourselves Takers, now, because we will take our freedom from you, however we can. You lost all right to control us when you left us here." "Well, if you think you should be free, I think it is only right. I hope it will not be necessary to fight over it, though." Said Andras bitterly. “I hope so too.” Gnorrel looked genuinely sad. “But not all of my people feel that way. If what we are planning works, it will not be necessary to have bloodshed.” "What do you want from me?" "We want you to ally with us. We have certain plans in motion, but we need a Shaper to work with us. If you do, you will be fighting for justice, for freedom for the creations you have treated so badly." Andras looked at Gnorell. He nodded to her in agreement. "But there is more than that. If you will help us, you will gain power. If you help us, we can make you strong, incredibly strong, stronger than your masters would ever let you be." "Help us, and you can take some of the power hidden on this island." Andras fantasized that he would be staring at a big lurk fish. "I need to think about this more." "I thought so. I thought, in the end, you would be weak. The offer is still open to you, but do not wait too long or you will be left behind." Andras turned his back on Gnorrel, and went to visit the city's jail. “I send the thunder from the sky, I send the fire raining down, I send a hail of burning ice, On ev'ry field, on ev'ry town, I send the locusts on a wind, Such as the world has never seen, On ev'ry leaf, on ev'ry stalk, Until there's nothing left of green, I send my scourge, I send my sword, Thus saith the Lord!” Andras was allowed himself to enter one of the cells. As long as Eko stood by him, Andras could enjoy a certain amount of freedom. After all it is a very old custom that the Shapers maintain, which is to visit the jails of their enemies. Andras found himself in a small room with a small crocked servile. If the creation could barely keep himself upright, it stood up to attention, ready to meet it's maker. He looked hungry, and the black and blues across his face showed that he had been badly beaten." "Shaper. At last. I am Houten. I am an Obeyer. At last, you have come." "Why have you been imprisoned here?" "I was sent by Rydell. I am supposed to watch what the Takers here are doing. I was found out. Now, though, I can give my information to you. You will surely help us against the evil Takers." "What do you want me to know?" "The Takers here, they deal with the outsider humans. They are called the Sholai. You must tell Rydell. You must warn him. Tell him!" "Who is the leader of these humans?" "All I know is his name. They are led by one called Trajkov. He was their leader when they came here from over the sea, and he leads them now. He lives in the tunnels to the north." "What do the outsiders want?" "There is something... something called the Geneforge. I don't know what it is or what it does. But I know it is here, and the Takers and the Sholai seem to think it holds the key to everything." "I tried to... tried to talk to the rebel Sholai. But I could not reach them." "Rebel Sholai?" "There are some of the Sholai. They... they are hiding in a cave to the east. Outside the outskirts of... Kazg. The Takers trapped them in a cave." “Find them. Reach them. Talk... talk to them.” He choked. “They know things. Valuable things. I am sure of it.” The servile spat out blood. "You are very ill. How can I help you?" "Please, Shaper, do not. Soon, the Takers will haul me out, and they will kill me, and I will show them how a servile should die, in the true belief of the true will of the Shapers." "If one servile must die to forward the will of your kind, that is a small price to pay. I will not eat, and I will not escape." "You are wise and noble, in your way. We Shapers approve of your obedience." “Thank you, Shaper. You are kind to comfort me in my time of trial.” Andras took the serviles to his chest, the gentle glow of his magic warming the poor servile. He continued the song he started whispering bitterly: “Thus said the Lords. I will not... Let your people go. Thus said the Lord...” His teeth clenched and gnashed. Andras felt the tiny hand of the servile holding onto him. He changed his tune to one of the cotton songs he used to sing when he was a boy with the kids of his village, a bygone era it had seemed, in a time when he courted the beautiful Roxane: “Go to sleep my little baby, Go to sleep you little baby, Every body's long gone in the cotton and the corn, Didn't leave but the baby. Such a sweet little baby. Such a sweet little baby. Honey in the rock and the sugar don't stop... *The Eser Ha-MAkot or Ten Plagues, were released by the Shapers on Terrestia during the blockades of their great citadels by the Iugularians coalitions, ten plagues that served as to reveal the powers of the Shapers through out the world and ended the second and last Iugularian war. The first plague was that of blood. When guardians slaughtered enemies by the hundreds by blade to gain access to the streams of Terrestia and poison them with an algae that would taint these bodies of water rose red. The second plague was that of frogs, that rose from the poisoned waters to rot inland where they could breathe into the palaces of the ruling magicians caste, into their bedroom and onto their beds, the houses of their officials and into the ovens and kneading-trough of the people, tainting red the waters they reached. The third plague was that of the unleashing of bioengineered lice upon the people of Terrestia so that they may reach out to every men in the land. They served as an effective way to cripple the magician priesthood at the time that needed to be purified in order to perform their daily prayers. The fourth Plague was that of flies and wasps that came to bite or mark the people of Terrestia and their animals. Those “marked” served as an effective canon fodder for the Shapers. The fifth plague used the lice and flies of the third and fourth plagues as means of transport. It is called the plague of pestilence, for it harmed only the livestock of the Terrestian people and not those of the Shapers, who prospered. The six plague was that of boils, an ugly skin disease, induce by the spraying of soot of dead cattle by the Shapers upon the kingdoms of Terrestia. The seventh plague was that of the hail of fire. The Shapers having rediscovered how to cast the spell essence orbs, struck the land with these balls of fire, which they fired through magical mortars. When this curse struck down, it reproduces a sound and a smell comparable to that of a strong thunderstorm. It is said that the victims of the spell bear the exact symptoms as those suffering from frostbite: waxy skin, frozen tissues, blisters etc... even though the spell is known to spread huge ceasepools of fires. The eight plague followed the seventh plague with the unleashing of glaahks and locust swarms upon the land of Terrestia turning many kingdoms from lush gardens into harsh and dry deserts. The night plague involved in the massive pollution of the sky, effectively removing the rays of the sun form the landmass during three days with black magic, so that the sun worshippers that were the Terrestrians would yield to the Shapers. The last plague and the most horrific of all was perhaps that of the death of the first born, where the Shapers invented a disease that would inflict new born babies with chronic pains, diarrhoea, sore eyes, spots, delirium, high fevers and then death. The Shapers then sold the cure, but not it's formula, to the survivors, making themselves even more richer in the process. **The Ten thousand were mercenaries that the writer and professional soldier Xenophon accompanied during daring spear head assault of Babylon of Greek mercenaries led by Cyrus the Younger. This campaign, although a failure, inspired the Greek invasion of Persia by Alexander the great and therefore construction of one of the mightiest empires that ever existed. ***Chikentown, a mythical community, whose deeds are known for being stagnant with a seeming tranquillity,while harbouring murderers and Shaper poets like John Cooper Clarke. It is also know for being the place of birth of the famous fictional feminist Candy Quackenbush series.

Since these extracts are made in a non-chronolgical, order i'm going to work on Andras' entry in Kazg. Like in the Arena i'm not going to endow our hero with divine superpowers but only with a selection of neat little tricks... Also i will continue using cockney expressions like "taking a butcher" and hebrew terms like "Harget" during the entire course of this experience. Not that I am cockney or of direct jewish descent, but because they feel naturally attracted to the Geneforge world and to the setting of this story, with life being fashioned out of clay and the recurring theme of a war fought between the Shapers and the iugularian magicians,which serve as a way to parody and comment today's social, political and economical problems, the middle class crisis, evil germs, global liberalism, imperialism, eco-scams, personalism, Philippe Muray, merchantilism... If things need to be clarified please do comment.

The Arena Part 2: With Prav set into the equation Andras laid out his plan: Pray gathered wood and bricks to create a small barricade on which Andras lined up his guns and so fourth. The young shaper then created a vilsh with what little the essence he was left with. It would help him in two ways; maintain more control on the creations around him, as these creatures are able to communicate and instil thoughts into the minds of both friend and foe and provide him with extra fire power. If Andras was confident he wasn't stupid; he was not going to risk himself in the Arena. He'd send the vlish and evaluate first. What he saw was woods, traps, ambushes and escapes, pens of sorts filled with artilas and well armed thahds, the harget of rogues, like the rabbit bones the vlish found in one of the fighting pits and the dead sholai troops they regularly preyed on. He pulled back the vilsh he'd had augmented with pods and proceed to shoot out the rogues that came. Prav didn't have to raise a hair and Andras an eyebrow. If investing essence in a vlish would prevent Andras to cast mighty spells to mow down rogues, it had left him enough essence for the creation of a swarm. He had learned two designs from a canister he found in the warrens of Jars; a marker drone, based on a the gall wasp, and small hornets like creatures. The marker wasps would scout, mark the rogues of the whole area and would lay eggs in key rogue species, here the secluded artilas, their larvae would then turn them into vlish obedient zombies. The hornets on the other hand would sting the rest of the creatures, driving them out of the arena towards Prav's opened arms. Once again Andras was victorious. But now the ground was literally splattered with the remains of his enemies; Andras would step into the on mixed bloods of creations, hit the massive derelicts of glaahks which necks had been broken by Prav, hummed the smoke from dead magically charged thahds, and walked the shrivelled husks of wasps and torn in half zombie artilas while looking for the snapped remains of two of his used bone wands and whatever loot left behind by the creatures. All that effort had to mean something! A cake of consolation! Andras wanted his shoe and rice. So he headed with all of his creations south east to remove minor goods from the rogue's nests here. Coins mostly. He looked at one of the ruined obelisks of Suica's Arena. Andras then read: WEST WING - REGISTRATION, TRADING, WAGERING. EAST WING - CREATIONS, CONFINEMENT. He didn't brood much before entering the ruins of the Arena. He'd a have a butcher at the bleached records of fights and names. Most of them were munched, obviously by the rogues, so Andras could manage just only to produce a decent one or two books for Pentil. The rogues had also included meat to their diet. In one of the fighting pits laid the bodies of three Sholai. Like the ledgers on the shelves he produced a few good items from their bodies; he drew a sword, a steel breastplate an essence pod and a Sharing Belt. The belt was draining so he'd sell it for something else. He'd move south out of the ruins, taking down the stone doors of the facility, out into more rogue nests. There Andras found, not a wand, but lo and behold, a rod of succour! Succor Rods are wand like devices; they have a wood, bone or ivory shaft with a bag attached at to one of it's ends. The bag contains magical clays, slightly different in composition to the clays contained in the essence and healing pods. Such rods must be dipped in water and kept humid at all times, so that the clays may not harden and it's contents may be sprayed on the sick or wounded target. These rods were the very first curing and healing devices ever to be built by man and are still regarded as being by far the most reliant and the most sacred by the Iugularian. After searching the bodies Andras' attention turned towards Prav's idle condition. Prav would sit at one of the healing pools he found nearby, doodling on the ground, waiting for Andras. He would lift himself up his pack full of loot back to the entry of the cave, but before that, the shaper would take an other route. He 'd get deeper into the ruins of the arena, north from the fighting pits into the containment area. There he found two power pylons and a switch. He removed most of his loot he donned, still keeping a eye on the battle Beta and powered the switch. He looked around and saw closed container doors. Andras would create searer containers on to the doors. He knew they would fall on to the ground when the doors opened. Then he flipped the switch. Andras saw a flash of lighting, heard an explosion and the roars and cries of a few thahds being dissolved by acid. Then seven charged thahds, stormed Andras and it's companions. Prav instantly killed two of them and lifted one up in the air before hurling it against one of it's acid bitten friends. One thahd armed with a reaper thorn baton would charge at Andras, but to no avail. Andras' Vlish got in the way. A terrible explosion was unleashed and the vlish died. The drayks then proceeded in killing the thahd. One big bite had the job done. Two thahds came out of nowhere. A drayk's tail whipped a thahd to the ground, now ribbless. Prav preyed on the fallen thahd leaving the other to Andras. The apprentice gunned the rogue down with a submission thorn in one of his eyes. Prav continued butchering the poor thahd on the ground. The last rogues tried to run away when Andras cracked a spray crystal and silence fell. He was about to gather the baton and his stuff, leaving the ruins of the arena to the solace of time, when the glow of two canisters encrusted where the doors once were, drew him irresistibly nearer. He would move towards the light like a butterfly to a candle. And what a candle. A “Luck canister” and “Vlish canister”. Andras felt happy. He turned out of the container in which both the rogues and the canisters had once slept in. Andras carefully inspected the vats in which the rogues were kept in. These self-sealing vats are very ingenious Shaper inventions. They can make a creation and, at just the point when it becomes alive, seal it in a suspended state. The jars were of course opened, and it looked like it had been open for at least a few weeks. Some trap or automatic device must have caused it to disgorge its contents. He looked at the switch. It was a control panel. Like all Shaper controls, it was a carefully shaped plant, moss covering the device from outside. The shaft from which like device drew out it's nutrients would be all hollow on the inside, were it not filled with long fine tubes of active crystal fibres in them. Seven wooden controls had emerged from the branches. There were other controls, but they had rotted off. Having toyed with the pannel once more, Andras turned to Prav. Prav stood waiting. Andras took his leave from him. Though he was a rogue, he would be studied by the Shapers when they'd come back. His high level of introspection would be incredibly useful for the advance of the shapers arts... Andras was already thinking of his afterlife. A great thesis on rogues. An after Sucia. If such a thing was plausible... He thought of they would board Prav on a boat, place it into a holding cell after a good meal and follow sets of tests and after a careful radiation of the whole body through magic and chemical imagery... they would proceed in a good linear cut and prod his brain with magical devices of sorts* in a shaper university. *To each era it's horrors; if the overall quality of life has improved over the years, History has filled it's records with more and more barbarism: The reign of the malik of Sheol, The reign of the reassembled prince, the rise of Pharaoh Rameses the Plumbeous or Rameses the second, the fall of angels, the Abyssian tide of fire, the rise of king Perseus, rooster of Macedonia, the awakening of Repharim fossils, the use of the Horus avatars during the horizon wars, the unstoppable horde of Buriyatese bombards, the establishment of public vivisections by the celebrants of Orion, the Trojan wars, the killings of the Kuzcan bat empress, the sending of the first Talocq, the concentration camps of Rhodesia, the horrors of the crystal pits, Pooh Bear's great pact of evil, the Boulanger incident, The sheep slaughterer of Fmuur,The Boadicean rapes, the bromine battle of Salamis, the writing of the Art of war, the rise of the Branchdividians, the Raelian purges, the destruction of Lisbonne, the Fires of Moscow, the bullying raids of the orient by the professional and wasps Samurai warriors of Nara, the wreckage left by the Dai Tengu during the Imjin wars (warped shock troopers of the great citadel fortress Nara, whom fought against the tortoise ships of the great admiral Yin Sun Chin during the battle of Chilcheollyang ), the small and great Sholai crusades, The use of nun gunnery, the flagellates of Rus, the Sam hooker laws (which condemned Terrestia's prostitutes to have their ears and nose to be cut off), the use of magically augmented chemical and bacterial warfare, the arrival of the Shapers with the slavery of the mutants they made, The absorbing of the Durandist order, named after the miraculous healing of Madeleine Durand by Shapers, the extinction of the noble Quagga and the pollution of Fukoshima, the first and second Iugularian war that saw the use of the unstoppable caryatid legions and the pyramid ships, the condemnation and trails of the Thurneysser's Demon, humming birds massacres as describied by Walton Ford, the Iberian greenhoused strawberry scandals, the series of expeditions led by Agent Richard Francis Burton (first Shaper translator of the Kama-Sutra), the genocide led by Agent Bula Matari and king Leopold known as Leopold the second or Crow Leopold, the rise of the bountiful Shaper Empire, the rediscovery of Sucia isle and all of it's gene deciphering habits, the absorbing of the battle drayks series many of which were Tasmanian battle series, the opening of London's traderoutes by Commodore Perry, also known as the teacup incident, the Sholai-Nara war by the Shapers which resulted with the victory of Honshu forces and with the rise of a new Shaper administered empire capable of economically overthrowing Terrestia and today's recent fuelling on both sides of the “Semite spring” contributes actively to the globe's geological record.

The Arena Part 1: The Arena was, besides it's terrifying aspect* and the deadly potency of it's inhabitants**, a relatively easy territory to clean up. Unlike the the more dangerous places of the isle, it did not crawl with the deadly relics of a bygone era before the Shapers arrived or swarm with the newly arrived and augmented Sholai and their horrible creations, but with the finest breed of whatever war creation the Shapers had perfected on this isle, except for the vlish, clawbug, roamer, drayks and the outstanding Battle series. Our long standing adventurer was armed with a menagerie of creations and tools such as the lethal submission thorns, the otherworldly reaper baton and held in the inside of his cape a fierce collection of discipline wands to which he would regularly visit with the palm of his hand when needed. He was once again beaming proudly the powerful aura of authority and control he held in Ellrah's chambers; just a few rogues to be hunted down before cake and tea he'd say. That's when Andras faced Prav. Prav was a battle Beta, but it looked as if it were built as a battle Gama. Battle Betas are enormous and lethal killing machines, they are designed to lead the way into battle, to be the first creatures to crash into an enemy line; they are totally obedient but when faced with the orders to kill, things get really nasty. Now if they share most of the strengths of the battle Alpha, namely sheer seize and brute strength, they also dispose of two nasty trick up their sleeves: to start with they are covered with hairs of the poisonous sort. To hit them without an armour thicker than a four inch Shaped steel plate, is to be indulged a very nasty shock to the heart. Now for their second trick; they are designed to hold two long white tubes running either side of their arms. On these tubes are placed a series of small dagger like spines which are used as to hook away shields from an opponent's hand and pin down a enemy like a preying mantis. Contrariwise to their battle Alpha counterparts they do not bear red purpurine skin and the crossed blue markings; their blue skin evokes those of the blue meat flies that the Shapers unleash after a bloody battle. Such bees are used to scrape the flesh clean from their victims and do not die after the first sting. And it was this blue that was the first thing Andras noticed when the creature lumbered it's heavy gaze towards our battle harden hero. Just northeast of the Arena there is a cave entrance. This is were it lived. In the trash of whatever it had found and gathered. Javelins. Vegetables. Pears. Meat. Burnt wood. The dead remains of six glaahks. It just laid there, dull, watching a fire it had made from the wood and whatever ledgers he got his hands on, as if waiting for something that would never come. And yet he was terrifying. All battle betas are. Andras shuddered at the realization that he might be about to fight it. Then, silently, head bowed, the battle Beta turned and walked back into its cave. Very strange. Andras walked into the cave unsure, preparing some mental spell and unlaced a speed pod from his belt. Though it was clearly in peak physical condition, it's face bore an expression of doubt and confusion. It was leaning there, against the wall of the cave, thinking and upset. It looked up at Andras. It didn't even seemed surprised to see a Shaper. «Oh. Shaper. Greetings. I Prav. I... I... What should I do?» Andras was dead frozen. He did not know what to do. He didn't know how to handle the poor thing. «Okay. Let's start out simple.» thought Andras. "Where did you come from? Who created you?" "I was frozen in mine. I was woken by mind. I was told slay all who come. But no Shapers. I have doubts. I look for Shapers to guide me. None. I come here and wait." "And what sort of doubts did you have?" "I am made to kill. I will kill. But who to kill? Not those wanted by Shapers... Kill those bad to Shapers. Who are bad? Who are good? I do not know. I want to kill. I do not want to kill." Prav's years of being frozen on this island had seemed to have damaged his brain. It's brain, being damaged, had reverted back towards a primitive structure so did his behaviour. And yet his level of introspection... and even moral issues that he expressed as being a reality to him... all of these traits... are very unusual for a battle creation. Could this behaviour be of avatic origin? If the tremors of the epileptic could recall the sudden shaking of a gasping fish stranded on land, could these displays of intelligence in a brain-damaged Battle Beta indicate a intelligent... ancestry? Strange... very strange. And undesirable as well, for a Shaper that is. "What is in this area?" "Rogues. Many rogues. I fear them. They want to slay me, but I do not know if I must slay them. So I run here. I stay here.» "Look. I... I require your assistance. Come and help me."said the shaper. "I do not know, Shaper. I want to kill. I do not want to kill. I do not know if helping you is right thing. I will kill. I should not kill." Andras looked at his two augmented drayks for an answer. Although they were intelligent they didn't budge. They didn't seem to be as socially intelligent as the serviles of Sucia or as Prav for that matter. Tooth scratched his head and Claw turned his head away. "I assure you you will be fighting the enemies of the Shapers. Come and assist me." The two drayks stood there, waiting for something to happen. The Battle Beta did not budge. «I... I...» It shook it's head. It seemed to be afflicted with some strange sort of apathy. Even Andras command did not budge it. After all these years it must have... But then it looked more miserable than ever. Andars was getting frustrated. He wanted to wipe the area clean. No it had to be done. «Enough moping, Battle Beta! Attention! Come with me!» Much to his surprise the sharp command managed to overcome Prav's apathy. It lumbered forward. Still miserable, but it willing to come. *Andras had never been in a Shaper arena before. Creation sport combat has been illegal for well over a century. Even if the arena were not infested with rogues, being here would be very unsettling: Today, Shapers feel some moral responsibility to their creations. This was not always the case. Shapers once made creations merely to fight each other for sport. They traded recipes and pitted their pets against each other in bloody combat. But today, creations fight each other only in «legitimate wars», or in illegal, underground fighting pits. Places like this exist only in the dark past. **A dozen few charged wyrms, charged thahds armed with tower shields and fully charged submission batons they used as cudgels, charged fyoras and a two good handful of glaahks.

Well i was very afraid that it would be not very good: There is a few spelling mistakes here and there and i thought the Shade Preist passage would be boring. I tried to make something that had meaning in evrey phrase. Also the narrator's views about life can be very diffrent from mine; having been in sociology and read Karl Marx, i'd kill a man like the narrator and accuse him of falacious reasonning on the subject of unemployement. I'm glad you like it, I really appreciate your support. The rest will come next week!

The South workshop Part 1: The valley was bright. The sun would cut down with a great sharp sword of light the venerable mounds of dirt that the winds would toss them into air into fine powder which made Andras' stomach gag and his nose bleed. He would shamble to an obelisk thickening his layers of peeling skin. He still shambled. It burned. The serviles of the winding road did warn him: "The valley is the most dead, diseased, unpleasant area you can ever come to see anywhere on Sucia Island. There is nothing alive here. Nothing." The obelisk was old and worn, but he barely managed to understand it. It said: « SOUTH WORKSHOP» A door in the ground opened. Andras stepped inside the workshop. Facilities like these are usually made to serve as support for research. They make and repair the complex devices the Shapers use to build new, exciting creations. And yet there was something wrong here. The foul, sickening atmosphere, which was strong outside, was almost paralysing in here. Poisonous motes of dust hang in the air, waiting for Andras to inhale them. While workshops are normally safe, inoffensive places this one wanted to kill Andras. Andras thought back bits of the conversation he had with the servants of the Winding Road. -"What has happened here, servile?" -"Don't know, but have guess. Old Shaper workshop west of here, not far, called South Workshop filled with things. Slimes. Worst there, much choking and gasping. Even we don't scavenge there." Andras stood on the threshold of a church. Breathless. The wind would clear out the thick eye-watering air within. As he reached for restoration and succour in his pods and spores, barely noticed the state of pain in which his two drayks were dragging themselves towards the lone Shaper apprentice. Now Andras knew why the area (and the down stream Taker lands) were so barren and diseased. Andras stepped back out of the complex' doorway, involuntarily, overwhelmed by the horror of it. He felt disgusted: Shaper experiments tend to involve the production of a lot of poisonous and noxious substances, some of them alive. These foul byproducts are generally burned away using magic. To do otherwise would be horribly dangerous. When Sucia Island was abandoned, however, there must have been a lot of experiments in place. In their rush to leave, the Shapers did not dispose of the experiments properly. They just put them in metal drums and dumped them here. Some of the canisters have been leaking. The poison would gather around the lead boxes like powdered coco of chocolate truffles. To all living things, the place was not a workshop any more. It was a pit of poison, which has been leaking out and sinking into the ground and the water table. Who knows how many creations and serviles have died because of it? And yet, workshops like this must still contain items of value. Should Andras dare expose himself to the risk of entering this poisonous place? The answer is yes. Andras turned about searching for something. He was not quite sure of it, but he'd know it when he'd see it. He found it. There was a defence pylon in the centre of a small room, left untouched by the time it spent here. It was sleeping. It didn't look like it was originally a part of the chamber. It was probably added to protect the workshop from invaders in the Shapers' absence. Crystal fibers ran from the base of the pylon into the ground. «The pylon must draw its power from a source somewhere else, it's source probably isn't too far away...» thought Andras. He walked out. At the doorstep of the factory he sat on a three light panel, brooding a hand away from a curing spore bag. Having cured his two drayks, spreading them thin out in the air like a man feeding birds. Having much thought, he slipped from the panel. It started sparkling with light and life. He touched a green button. «Let's try green, green's a good colour.» thought Andras. The whole thing analysed him and his creations through a augmenting process. When it had finished brooding it left him unharmed. «Let's go in.» Andras took draconian measures as to protect himself; he casted a ritual spell, that of augmentation, and used three brightly coloured bags, one blue, one yellow and the much protective shield spores in their tyrian cover. He also had readied a jewel drawer to his left arm and held it hid under his thick robes. Tooth and Claw Andras' drayks would move about him as guards since the pylons could be a possible threat. The much feared thrusting gauntlets were put on and he held the lethal reaper thorn baton. He would enter gun pointing. He planned to come in and out the facility and rob it from it's components as fast as he could. He even left the contents of his bag outside with a modified eye root as an effective protector, so that he might flee at any moment's notice. Then as Andras moved closer to the sleeping crystal pylon, with only his foot steps covering the silence of the facility, he herd a moan. He turned around gun ready. It was only when he turned back towards the pylon that he fell nose to nose with the spectre of a guardian. And he was not alone. Four of them materialized. Andras used dropped his thorn baton and jerked his arm into the guardian's face. The jewel drew fire, so did the thorn baton as it fell down from Andras' hands. Two nearby shades lied in ruin. The Guardian's spectre that stood before Andras didn’t even as much as move, when the living shaper vaporized him. Where Andras' busy intellect was at work, casting spells, caking war gems and opening spore bags, Tooth and Claw did the rest. And this was the dance that Andras would perform until he reached the centre of the facility. With of course a few variations, such as the apparition of deadly agent Shades, Andras using two deconstruct rounds* against the buzzing undead and the occasional bleeding and convulsion caused by the poisons that Andras experienced, only to be soaked up his menagerie of pods, spores and spells. Speaking of poisons, Andras, constantly threat of being poisoned, would be tainted with the thick aroma of medicinal pods, the smell of salty sweat and the stink of piss filled the air around him; the heavy chemicals neutralized by the pods and healing spells, had to be naturally exported out of the body into all sorts of secretions. The poison was literally rinsed out of his body after each wet mark made on stone walls. This, plus the danger of being ambushed by the shades, that shambled there, for there is no better word for it, made the natural clam demeanour that we knew to be his, replaced to a twitching, reduced man, nervous with fear, a twig, an stick insect, which would from time to time lower his donned garments, and water his shoes, trembling. But the promise of loot, meant he had to suffer this humiliation; the lazy Sholai having detained the evil of this place back to it's den, he found himself trapped without an amulet to protect him from any fire. He was in a nest, swarming with bees, whose hollow armour would splendour under both the light of day and under the crescent of a moonlight'** Agent. They had not died after the first sting. And they bumbled now towards him. His only chance of success would be to be in his tools... He would then start a gorilla campaign against the shimmering shades... activate the facility's pylons, harden his skin with essence and augment his red hot tongue drayks with rods and spells, to smoke the monsters out. Striking at shadows, the poor Andras shook he would draw himself nearer the brain of the facility. *As you know Andras had found twelve deconstruct rounds in a small ruin north from Vakkiri, in clawbug infested woods. These ammunition rounds are small heavy lead containers filled with magic that reacts with most matter. These rounds were once commissioned by the Shaper council so as to defeat the stone legions and awesome pyramid ships of old. With the perfection of cheaper biological weaponry, the war against the Igularian coalitions ended and the relentless and effective pyramid Ships manned by caryatid legions stopped dead in their tracks, waiting for orders that would never come, their magician makers slain. Deconstruct rounds were thereafter used against the huge Shaper creations such as the Agares steed, it's skin hard as Shaper spider silk fabric and as to disintegrate Shades before they could have the time to reconstruct. **A moonlight' Agent: is the sabre that Agents use.

Pentil Part 1: Of all the cities that ruled over Sucia, Pentil was the biggest and saddest. Of all the inhabitants of Sucia, those inhabiting Pentil were a sect of servile called Obeyers, and of all the rebellious serviles on the isle, had chosen to obey the gods that created them. Of the buildings, it's men, tools... very thing had a purpose; all were united under the sole banner of the Shapers. When they repaired their roofs, it was to shelter the servants of the Shapers, when they fed the healing pools it was because it was Shaper property, when they used Shaper pods and weapons it was in the name of their absent protectors, the Shapers, when they starved a creation it was for the Shapers, when they possessed a tool or resource lying in their homes amongst whatever belongings they had built, that belonged to the Shapers, and it did not belong to them, even when the worn object was used and identical to any mundane object of the Servile world and the vanished Shapers had no use for it, when they fed on whatever meagre strand of meat, fruit, vegetable or grain, they ate what they thought the Shapers had provided them, leaving many a source of abounding natural fodder to rot, fat with nutrients, if a child died at birth, it was because that child was of course, never meant to be, the Shapers were of course omnipotent, and their workings were of course omnipresent on that miserable rock which they called home; from the peaks of the great mountains in which the mines of Sucia were once dug to the bed in which two serviles made love, all of this was done all thanks to the Shapers; everything was and had to be made in the name of their long gone, cold creators. Pentil still laid in bed with the sound of Silence. When the god they had finally came to worship came here by mistake, and not by it's own providence, the single thought of this was very upsetting to the social fabric of the town: the leader's authority was currently being questioned, groups of hungry worshippers had appeared, and while most bowed in front of Andras, the others crawled, like the long gone people of the sea before the Pharaohs of time past, thinking that even an apprentice Shaper was an angel to be adored, respected and feared, a lone sentinel, an lone angel, of fire and of death, to clean Suica from rogues, before the rapture came. But our Shaper was no fool, and as they pressed and asked for healing and curing which he gallantly accepted, he knew that deep within, they all lofted power over all; power over their lives, power over that unfaithful isle that took them to it's dinner room as to devour them, power over him, power over the rogues that stole their kin away from them and destroyed what ever they had worked hard for; they didn't even consider the fact he, the Andras, the great exterminator, could abandon them or that his arrival was a mistake. Too much was in fact at stake, and so like all men, they tried to prove, to prove that they were right over their already convinced fellow Obeyers, to brag about Andras's exploits as to impose what ever small authority they had. Who would dare to denounce him and what ever great evil he hid under his cloak? For even the Takers were secretly glad that a Shaper had come at last to this damned isle, so as to save them in a way, from abounding for ever whatever belifs they had? Andras however was no angel, he was hardly an all powerful figure, or to boot a full grown Shaper, he was not all knowing and ever present, but that was all right, as he was not 'supposed' to learn very much about the Shapers, and as he had surleeeeey shown certain rogue tendencies, and the Shapers in their wisdom must have kept him in the dark, blind, so as to carry out their will... so as to test the flock with every perfidious thought his brains produced... Pentil had become in fact a deadly intellectual trap, lightly covered with leaves of good deeds towards the Shaper cause, in which Andras would not fall into. If Andras would have taken office under these serviles, in other terms sworn an alliance to Pentil's leader, in order to strengthen the Shaper's long dead grip on the isle, he would have in essence obeyed a servile. Such a thing was unacceptable. He was a representative of his sect' beliefs, and not a slave to the fanatical Obeyers. To have pactised and played cards with them, to plot, to entered their schemes, would have surely burnt him to a crisp, for within every zealot of Pentil, from the leader to the most lowly of his minions, lies a volatile solution. They would burn with the wind of a whisper as it crept into their ears. The town held no Taker spy whatsoever. These Serviles killed. They hunted and butchered, without pity, without shame, they slaughtered until they were soaked in the blood of their sins against life, with a passion that surpassed the mad and secluded Takers, that were sent a mad, being forced to kill in order to survive this cruel isle. Yes, the much crazed takers of Kagz, in their great orgies of blood and hateful sentiments against the Shapers, were revolted to the mere idea of harming even a creature as small as an insect or as rigid a flower, and were torn when an ornk was to be served for supper! The Obeyers knew this, and knew that all serviles were made, so that as to be naturally repulsed, more-so than any human, to creating harm onto any form of life; serviles are usually simple, obedient, docile and kind, creatures. Such simple beings have known to become depressed at the news of where and how is the meat on their plates is fashioned, be it carved from a living being, as meat created from raw essence is an unavailable source of protein. And yet the Obeyers trained so as to break away from this design, proof that the Shapers were not perfect. They had hoped that the Shapers would come back and they also knew that if the Shapers came back they would have surely liked a force to dispose of the rogues there, even if they had not yet understood that the disorganized fleeing and that much of the disruption at the heart of the isle had been planned not by the Shaper researchers here, that tried to keep things in order until the building of Diazard, but by the Shaper Council, so they strode against, every rogue creation in sight that did not fit their purpose, and for this task they butchered the rebellious Takers to the east with all the tactical and surgical forces they and the servant mind held, when they could have simply shipped large quantities of food to the hungry and angry Takers, appeasing with kindness and solidarity the broken hearts of the ever wanting Takers. The Obeyers plunged the Takers against the new Awakened sect, while keeping Varkkiri poor and secluded from Watchhill again with the aid of the Servant mind Control four and it's minions. The servant mind's rogues, the awesome and and eventually powerless Vlish forces, whom Warp of Spiral Borrows is the most representative, and the bountiful frog-like Roamers that protected the immobile Control mind in the borrows, that even came to plague later on Thorny fern and the silent marshes, were ironically, secluded to their borrows, unable to act out. They were in the end not unlike the Takers. Even the Serviles of Pentil, came to fell to the same end, pounded back to their borrows by rogue generators*, the augmented siege thahds and artila creations that seized Pentil's gates. But they carried on. The ants of Pentil, not unlike the empty corpses that plague the dark corners of the isle, were still restless and strived and conquered whatever land the Shapers had, and puffed with pretentious self-righteousness as they claimed proudly that they were right and that their religion would win over all the serviles of the isle. They knew, as the earth was round, that all creations are made to obey the eternal will of the Shapers, designed to fit as tools to serve all but a single purpose. They knew that the serviles were not meant to chose for themselves, that they were bound to the now severed umbilical cord that connected their hardy race to the bodies of the Shapers and yet they thought on ways to obey them best and they had chosen for their very own survival to follow the wisdom of the Shapers from whatever conclusion they could draw out from what the Shapers had left unintentionally; from moving paper fantasies they conjured the fact that they had to preserve it, even if it were tax collections, from the fact they had lived in stone buildings they should stay in stone ruins despite the need for wooden houses, from what weapons they had left for usage they had to be maintained only be used during the rapture when their troops needed weaponry: Had not the Shapers been the only point of certitude when there was none on this miserable rock? Had they not endow each of their servants with minds, long lives and powers of their own? Had the Shapers not left them entirely alone on Sucia? Did not their constructs, that now people Sucia provided a hiding place for all serviles, hiding them from savage rogues, sun, storms, winds and cold? Had they not been there nothing before the Shapers but dust and desolation on the isle? Had not the Shapers made the isle prosperous with honey and milk, where there were prowling ghosts, foul creatures and the legions of Heustess? Would they not come back one day, rising up once more against these tellurian monsters that resided at the very evil and heart of this isle? Would they not bring glorious fulfilment and give propose to their lives, where wreck and devastation lay? To Shapers, belief is mother to doubt. It was also true for the Obeyers : Shaper omnipotence came to challenge the absolute good of the Shapers, their omnipresence the fact they had left the world. The Obeyers were patient, but wanted to believe. What proof was there of the Shapers? A few bones, artefacts, books, culture, speech and ruins. Could they have been then mistaken somehow? The Obeyers in their great leap of faith, in their great misery, clung to the dreams and hopes of an uncertain future and paid their respect to uncertain gods. Silent obedience to the Shapers had given them an edge over all the serviles of the isle, guided by the many still loyal servant minds against their servile brethren, but in the end, their thoughts, their very choices, their way of life, had betrayed them as rogues. It had seemed to Andras that their worship, the will of their earthly gods, whatever reason that shepherd their flock was used as a continual justification of evil, as it prevailed in the community or through the awesome forces on the isle. Andras judged it to be a starvation of the mind, a placid cold doctrine in what could be a ocean of truth. To him the Obeyers of Pentil had rebelled against the designs of their masters. In the mist of their of obeying folly they would be the first to be killed at the plough, used until there was nothing left from them but bone and secret documents. Andras entered the temple of the Obeyers, it's flock and the shepherd Rydell waiting for the good news of a second coming: -"Shaper, I have heard of your arrival. I... I am awed and grateful that you have returned to us at last. I am Rydell. I am the leader of the Obeyers, the only sect that has stayed steadfast and true in our obedience to your kind. We know that you are alone here, and endangered by the rogue creations that surround us. We hope that you have come to assist us, and to reward us for our obedience." Andras nodded but then spoke: -"I, Andras, am peaceful representative of the Shapers in their absence; i will speak in their stead. The Shapers would be impressed of your self control, they would also be impressed by your determination in your great workings against the rogues here..." Rydell exhaled a deep breath of relief. -"So many years of self doubt, Shaper. So many years of wondering why you abandoned us. Now we know, though. Now we know that we followed the true course. Thank..." -"How dare you wonder?" Rydell was visibly shocked. -"The Council had not planed whether you should survive or not. In Shaper terms you should be extinct. Whatever creature of your race that was set on this isle a century ago, was supposed die. But you have survived and for it i shall help you. The Shapers that left you here had clearly little sense of responsibility for their creations. The Shapers have changed. I will consider that i arrived as to fill our debt towards your kind, a token from a new era; helping serviles in need is one of my prime objectives, speaking of which, is there a boat somewhere?" *Spawners.

Thorny Fern: To Andras, Thorny Fern seemed to some sort of plugged tub, having forced it's way out of the ground, ripping apart the stony hills that Watchhill, Pentil's woods and the Hills of jars were made from into white stony peaks; a half-forest being secluded in a granitic bed with narrow passes left undefended by rogues, made Andras' entering easy. Once having slipped in the grove was different affair, as the stink that emanated throughout the region, was so awful that Andras preferred to silence it with essence up his nose. It was a trick he learned at the old ruined School; tiny holes would act as gills, barring water from entering while non lethal gazes could be breathed in. He would have to flow heat into his larynx and snort-it* out liquefied on the sticky grassy mud, once he had finished with it. Vegetation pulled by unseen forces fell towards the murky and lifeless waterways that bubbled and swirled under a thick coat of rotting and flowering plants; the waters seemed to mingle strangely with the earth, fluids with solids, grasses with mud, offering a large sail of possibilities for living things, gushing out from the otherwise lifeless stone, animated with subterranean roots of aquiferic origin. By mere contrast the higher and clearer water pockets seemed to buzz with fish of all sorts, protected by their cradles of stone from decaying plants and clay that seem to claw at the rock. Animals of all sorts* flourished here, all of them spying, looking down at Andras and his crown of artilas, buzzing, feeding on the area's decay. Their uneasiness was explained by their neighbours; the place was stinking with the presence of creations such as the Thorn bush, which produces fruit filled with caffeine, the dangerous fire beetles and the rogue poisonous Roamers that presently asserted themselves as the top predators in the area. The abundance of animals seemed to be swallowed by the leaves and branches of the tooth like thorn bushes that oozed from every rocky base in the area. The abundance of such plants made it clear to Andras that the South east region of the isle was previously used as a thorn breeding colony, as to calm rogues and whatever pestilence that still linger in the dark corners of Sucia. Even if this place was once a secure and vital part in protecting the shapers and their serviles creations, it laid decaying before the Shaper, as dark forces were once more occupying these lands, twisting it for their damaged desires; indeed Roamers occupied the area, and as to add to their habitual ferocity, had smart cooperation, if not too smart for these pack hunting animals. With no spawners creating them, and at everybody's surprise, killing the rogues from the spawners both east and west of the fern with great ease, their survival had nothing to do with mere luck. The minor aid some highly intelligent creature with large magical resources and great will was in fact at work, was clearly set against both Ellrah's Keep and Vakkiri and the other invading rogue creations: the swamp once vital for the Shapers that ruled the isle, suffered; the lack of deforestation itself caused by the lack of large herbivores or servile workmanship had caused the marshes' plant inhabitants to grow wildly, slowly rotting away in brown red waters; unlike the rest of the isle, Thorny fern suffocated from the rich in nutrients soils that flowed and gave birth to the valley, as allowed and brought moulds, and toxic microorganisms to be feed and entertained, were once there was ordained paradise. Given that rogue Roamers being too numerous and effective a hunter, their bite being corrosive and their skin oozing with toxins, in a small secluded environment, they have driven away all the deer native to the small area; most fled, to Pentil, to Free place, or to Peaceful Valle, but it was always westwards, and they were always of course, subjected to ambushes. True repent from the gauntlet of predation was only to be found at Crossroads or in the church-like halls of Holding Two, amongst ever watchful turrets. As Andras's gaze moved, his feet trying to secure a good position while being supported by what seemed solid ground, the pest like roamers that thrived in the region came to greet him with their needle like teeth and with Labrador like paws instead of their usual playful wining. Andras systematically avoided large groups that would have pinned him down, picking the lone crocodile like roamers as they stubbornly hunted him in the marshlands, before they could summon greater numbers, evolving both on land and in water like multitudes of frogs, similar to those that still plague the swamp. Where his sword or silk like stones were useless, Andras' thorn baton were quite useful as he could reload from the bushes near by and dispatch venom on the fleeing creation; grinning as he remembered some obscure passage from Greo's Bio Botanicca : "In essence, the thorn baton, is bread and butter of any seasoned warrior. (...) While the batons themselves are living things, extremely long-lived animals, they are nestled in a metal frame. (...) The thorns they fire are grown on bushes which grow thorns at a good rate (...) Being very hardy they are used in innumerable ways, (...) in general, they are considered an excellent example of Shaper biological engineering..." Feeling dangerous and threatening, Andras completed his task of pacifying roamers in less than a day removing more than 90 per cent of the roamers that once happily occupied the fern. As he did so, he reached a small clearing from which an astonishing painting caught his eye rising from the reeds of the fern; he was small in size and in the prime of his life, well fed. Donned the long clean, traditional garments of their kind, with a pair metal gauntlets and a chitin plate pushing away the jaws of a pinning roamer from his exposed and venerable neck. He was reaching for an icy stone in the likes of a gambler reaching out desperately for coins out of a bag. With Andras approaching, the roamer fled. A thorn was sent, and from the death of this creation came an secure silence: it's lacerated prey was now alone in the presence of it's creator; -"Good afternoon." said Andras waiting for the sound of Silence. -" My! A Shaper!" The servile splashed down in reverence, praying before him, into a small hole of mud before being helped up Andras. "I had never dreamed that one of your kind would descend to help someone as lowly as me. I am called Sleet, servant of Pentil." The scout, then, as if waiting for Andras' response, would try to wipe some dirt off his made in Pentil robes, when all the while looking away from him. -"Why are you out here?" The servile looked and talked in the direction where Andras was. -"I am a scout. I was given a skill for evading the rogue creations that plague us." He tried to smile happily. "Well, I usually do. Sometimes I am trapped and must fight. But it's a risk I must take to keep Pentil informed." The sevile smiled in Andras' direction. -"Hmmm... and how can I reach Pentil?" The servile spoke in Andras' direction: -"You can go north to the Hills of Jars and then east, but be warned that a large variety of ambushes and mechanical traps will await you." He then frowned like a stage actor. Not having noticed the living tools that sprouted out from Andras' bag, and judging on the number and strength of Andras' creations, the servile continued talking once more in Andras' direction. "I say, if machinery and diplomacy are not your forte, you should go east to the Pentil Woods and then north. Be prepared, though. You will need to fight your way in." Having remarked that it was impolite of him to not to have proposed some aid to one of his supposed creators, he gave his icy and swarm crystals away, simply remarking that as a obeyer in the wake of an eventual Shaper returning he wouldn't have such need for what he called 'superfluous defences'. Having given out the most of his possessions, he went on his way as stealthily as he did before, although genuinely sad to have given his stones away. Andras shook his head with disbelief, turning rigidly away from the confused servile that was trying to do his best so as to serve the Shaper's design. An other question seemed to float up our boy's mind "What sort of dangers the woods holds up ahead?" *When Andras slipped in and out of Thorny fern, one can scarcely imagine that our washed clean shipwreck, with a silk scarf around his neck, donning a long violet dark cloak with tyran purple bands that hid green bronze buttons and a cicada-like Chitin armour, a bronze long double bladed sword clipped at red leather magical amplifying belt, while holding in one hand a iron shield with ornk skin laces, all of this comfortably seated in a polished pair of fresh boots at his feet, was left a bruised, cut, twig and mud filthy, servile-crouched mockery of a Shaper. When it is true that all magician tend to get dirty, as it is still an imperative to create home made pods, to keep at bay near searing substances when tempering steel and wands, or when violently exorcizing some tomb from it's ghosts, they do prefer to stay clean. Even the Shapers take care to hygiene; they have pocket handkerchiefs, they brush their teeth, take baths every day, showers, and are always keen on keeping clean their long and silk under-wares when unused, their shirts and scarfs are shielded with spells as to protect both user and garment. When protective suits and gas masks are unavailable, Shapers bite in metal or plastic cylinders placed around their nose and fill them with essence which when tempered with magic, filters the air, a less messy version of the crude clogging up the nose with essence method, that our boy Andras, likes to partake. The Shapers, also encourage even the most loathsome of their guests to be deprived of their wares and tears, to be bathed and fed before entering their places, only to be provided with "more fashionable" clothes. Shapers are hospitable people, even if crowds of outsiders are butchered at their very doorstep, any man, great or small, desiring some sort of social reprieve can, under any circumstance, ask asylum in one of their great laboratories. **Thorny Fern had a wide variety of host including mouse deer, cats, rats, birds, newts, frogs, beetles, an impressive set of mosquitos, flies, dragonflies, butterflies, bees, ants, wasps, snails, crayfish and numerous nematodes.

The Spirit's city Part 1: Andras strode out into the ruined city. By Shaper standards, it is still a small thing, several rows of buildings hewing out of the walls of the mountain. However, it is very impressive work from ancients whom Andras had thought, likely as not, to be savages. The town was devised in this way, coming form the south, Andras saw a small temple in the middle it's chambers protected by harmful magic and poisons, houses circling it, were built right below the great walls, a small grove in the north and a small prison opening before a Great Temple. Some of the buildings like the prison and the houses to the west, are collapsed, but most of them are still, after many centuries of wind and rain, intact, and are still occupied, in a way. Ghosts still walk along the streets and in and out of the ruined buildings and their houses. Inside the houses, sealed into clay jars, there were century old Wax apples of a vivid red colour, and still fresh Spanish limes, they too lingering, and the thorns of roses, thick with the sent of honey, ready to sprout. Ready to sting. Andras would not risk himself into their homes, for, if they looked quite a pale and weak lot, they had survived the centuries, Heustess the vengeful and proud Goettsch... they also held some method in their striding, like those of walking troopers. Their arrival seemed to have been a recent one. The bones littered here and there looked like those of strange creations. A tooth were found here and there of some magically burnt mutant, while Heustess' tools, creations that were once spread thick about the place were found battered and broken into dark solid glass. A few Sholai warriors were also found dead by Andras, they too broken on the floor, by ghosts and the brutal strength of cryodrayks and battle Betas... This trail of littered corpses covered the clay floors of butcher cut buildings, the bodies not unlike the pale and ugly flesh of sugar apples, informed Andras, that Gottesch's agents were near, still blue with fresh essence. The were on the horizon looking out with a terror vilsh. Terrifying creatures battle betas. Their heads are usually black and blue. Gottesch added a dark red mark into their frowns. Not a very good sign*. Their faces look like those of skulls, thick with bone, without death's grin. Not very much like lions, which kills with love and great care. They hated their lives. They were armed. Thick with steel. They were even accompanied by a battle gama. Andras seized them up from afar and trod north towards a thick grove. As Andras walked along the pathway, the things around him seemed to change. They had seem newer, as if they hadn't been exposed to millennia of weather, but they also looked waxy, bee made, strange, unreal. At the end of the path, to the west, was an old hovel, hollowed out of the rock. Angry muttering came from inside... A Witch. A battle with a crone. Strange thing. It used essence orbs. But weren't these savages born before the use of essence. Used some sort of magic augmentation so as to harm magically Andras. Even tried to inspire fear through a calcium composition. Waste of talent and skill. Andras lifted his hand and fired a deconstruct round set in the eye of his ring. Andras robed the grove from it's fruits, a few spores found in old wooden boxes and a lime cut emerald, cut to the side revealing the sight of a fleshy star. Amongst the ruins there is still somewhere, a pool of beautiful, crystalline water. If you have the luck or the unluckiness to land on the isle, you would find that the water sparkles brightly, still of full of muck and algae, despite the lack of light in the dark chamber it is placed in. This is were Andras took his refreshments. This is where he would drink and energize, taking several long swallows of the clear magical water, healing his wounds under his very gaze. The people who lived here must have had skilled magicians, to have created magic which lasted this long. He raised his head towards the temple. Hand made by magicians. Powerful works. Not the cheap, well made servile workmanship. Andras then turned towards the temple in the centre of the town. One step inside an ancient temple. A massive structure, smaller by far to the great temple north of there, but with huge halls carved out of solid white stone. The walls in this entry hall are covered with writing. However, they don't look like holy inscriptions, or lists of names, or anything you'd might expect. The writing are magical notes, diagrams, and instructions. Though Andras couldn't understand a word of it, there he thought there was something that looks familiar about it. He looked on his right the magical notes, denser here, had chairs were set up below them so that it could be inspected closely. Andras looked at it all, but it still didn't make sense. One thing was strange, though, when Andras turned his gaze to one of the diagrams depicted a thin lizard like animal, similar to a Fyora. Twisted and small, but still a fyora. He turned his gaze left to a lone pillars. The only thing that made sense. He touched the pillar and felt nothing. No pain. Just an overwhelming desire to enter. Being accepted by the pillars, Andras entered the temple. He felt very cold and alone, and very unwelcome. Shadowy eyes watching him carefully from the darkness, waiting for a misstep, so that they might devour him. Leaving the main chamber without permission seemed perilous. Guards were posted to each one of the side passages off of the room. More shades. And at the centre of the temple, Andras met yet another ancient ghost. A burning thing. Lit up like a tree during the winter solstice. And thick with magic. It surprised him in two ways. First, it didn't attack or threatened him. Second, when it begun to speak, Andras could understand it! It read his mind and spoke tongue perfectly clearly. Perhaps magic was at work. -"Hello, visitor. I welcome you, as long as you bring peace and do not go where you are not bidden. Have you found the secret yet? -"What secret?" -"The shade points at the northeast passage. There. You may go there. Only there. There is the secret. When you have seen the secret, return." Upon entering Andras immediately recognized the main feature of the plain room. It had a tiny stone platform, by the northeast corner. Very bare, very rough, very old, but its purpose very clear. It is or was a shaping platform. Cruder than what the Shaper used, but the purpose was the same. Could it be? Could the natives who lived here be, in some way, the ancestors of the Shapers? Could this be the home of his people? It might, in some way, be what drew his people here to do their research. Something found in these ruins might have been the catalyst which helped the Shapers here discover such astonishing things. Or maybe a just a strange coincidence. But It had to be his people. There were to Shaped gloves on the corner. -"Are you the ancestors of my people?" -"Now we will speak further. I will discuss the secret..." the shade flickered for a moment "Yes. That is the secret. You performed the rituals, and you entered, and I share with you what has been shared with no other." -"What happened to you?" The Shade flickered. It's still pose suggested now, an intellectual pause, as if taking a long breath, before plunging into great depths of knowledge, deep down into that ocean of man, with it's derelicts, it's loads and rich collections of bones, it's layers of slime, it's leviathans, it's cloudy summits and it's sunken temples... -"Being here?" "Many things... Big things... great things have small beginnings..." "Cultures are as plants." "They grow." "They have many roots." "They even reach out for the stars." "And then... they die." "Long story short, in the beginning we were not a humble people, we were a small people, few in numbers but great in our knowledge of things, which, was of late, inscribed on the many slabs that now cover the isle..." "The stars." "The discipline of magic, all of this leads to civilization; by inscribing on stone, we safeguarded knowledge from the perils of time. It is especially useful when tampering with the world with magic, in order to be precise and create the desired artifice**." "Magic became important to us as it gave sense to the world we lived in. It gave us a direction. Told us what to do with those slabs of our when to fight, how to heal, when to make peace, when to hunt, how to love... after all we lived on a herdsman's isle" “ Resources were very limited. Even without magic the slabs are the fruit from which entire civilisations spring from.” "To create slabs of stones, was difficult" "Had to search for more supplies for a steady workforce." "And it was so, that our young boys discovered by their breaking jars-full-of-grain clumsiness how to grow wheat, spilling it by accident on tread ground while bringing it to the women and bakers." "A part of the population was cut of from the old ways... had even more spare time, to think and take care of things. They had more time to make love..." "And more people, meant even more mouths to feed, more food to find, more lands to plough, more fertile lands to seek, led to the invention of possessions, which led to theft and neighbours fighting with one an other, because someone's cattle was eating someone else's wheat, which meant that more wars were to be made, as land is a rare thing indeed, more workforce and magicians to instruct, and more slabs to craft, and so was the wheel of progress launched. A Roxanna in the quest of the time bird." The shade paused and repeated itself. "It gave us time to pause, to think." "We, all those who were initial affiliated to magic, became magicians of various degrees, but powerful of late." "We became leaders and told what to do." "With all the time in the world some people became bored." "We had little knowledge about boredom.""We wanted to be something else, signify something." "More resources and more people made murder profitable." "We murdered a little more." “And why not?” “Nothing stopped us from doing this.” “Enough resources to safeguard the survival of man on this isle.” "A little fun." "A little murder for the fun." "A little sting.” "A little meat, that was all, the fun of dogs." “And then the hunger of gods.” “Wars and all.”"We had become something of a hungry spectres, eating tons of bread, wood, men, people, lands...” "It's after all been one or two hundred years that you Shapers have stopped public murder and pitting one rogue one against an other.""And you haven't yet stooped sacrificial murder with all of your “test subjects”, creations and slimes, your mice and white rabbits." "With all these people..." "All this power, everything was bound to..." The Shade seemed having trouble with breathing "...It went crazy, one wanted this, the other that..." “We sought to work on useful distractions.” "So you set out to make wonders." said Andras pressing. The burning Shade clapped it's hands and fire came out of it. "Like this did we pour magic on to the world." "Our very hands. Our very own hands" "And given all the time in the world, we did all what we could do with it." To sooth our pangs of hunger.” "To discover things, our gaze always elsewhere, turned towards the future or sometimes the past. We looked deep below the earth. We watched the stars beyond the sun, beyond the stars, the blackness. And then we looked within..." The Shade became fearfully darker, it's mouth opening wider: “Then we looked. We looked deep within ourselves, our bodies." -"And what did you see there?" -"You know. You know the secret. You know how to use magic to rebuild life. It all started in here, in this temple. We turned it from a place of worship to a place of work." "Centuries did man struggle powerless against wilder beast, eating the scraps of lions and tigers, centuries did we vainly struggle against the silent fevers that takes the child from it parents, centuries did we struggle against the winds, the cold and lice." "And now we were masters of the world." "We weren't sure what to do next but..." "We thought up something." "Thus we were the first to plant new life into the ground, turn men into tools, loyal as dogs, turn pools of mud into intriguing slimes with amazing properties, turn clay into livestock, and thus on this isle, a gut worm was made anew it's tongue to be the steel, the sword and banner of wondrous and strange new battles, a lone day we did bring a wounded lizard to one of the shaping pads, to turn from grey to red, having been bathed and augmented in essence, to be infused, white with internal fire, thus with the combination of a magic unheard before, in the history of the world, and with the myth of progress at our side, the very construction and transformation of this building was the seed of our own doom." -"Doom? How? -"As i implied before, we used the power as a weapon. And as a bludgeon. We were not careful. Not precise. Our magicians randomly warped our enemies... twisted their parts, destroyed their organs... made them fall. We tried to form an empire against the savages around us, starting here... but the random way we attacked changed things. Made diseases... plagues... created horrible creatures, stronger than what we attacked, the land changed too, from the greatest of our battlements to the most minuscule of grasshoppers they too were subject to many a poison and festering hunger within :" The briar Shade then produced then the now bone white head of a glaahk on the altar out from the alcove below it, with what seemed to be a sudden crash. -"Behold, the union of a grasshopper and a gut-worm, stunning symbol of our destruction!" -"And then?" -"Most of us died. The rest fled this place, fled these green lands, woody green lands, which became infected... dusty wastes... peopled with forests of stone glass." The shade flickered erraticly like the blurred images seen through a wall of fire. "Fled life... taking with us our secrets and our wisdom... " The Shade staggered a while struggling with what seemed to be it's lips. -"We went to the mainland... And then, I would guess, we became you. There, the story ends." - "My people were here for a while, researching. Did they ever contact you?"; - "No, but, had they stayed longer, they would have. And I would have spoken with them... But they were too distracted. So they never came. They should have..." -"There are enemies of our people on this island. Will you help me?" -"I have little mind left, only enough to tell stories and to defend this sacred place... That is all I can do. No more must we perform***. I can not even understand what you just said." -"If our people are the same, can you get the ghosts to stop attacking me?" "Not ghosts. Some of our kind, with magic and knowledge of Shaping, they adopted that form, striving for long life. I was one of such. I and your people fled life; choosing the path of sleep... keeping fourth impenetrable..." the shade paused only to continue with great difficulty. The words "stoic", "defying" "and", "prevailing", "over", "death", "in", "deep" and "sleep" flew to Andras' mind where the image of the shade blurred like a badly tuned crystal screen. "Such arte the lives of the dead here." The Shade glittered and paused again. "Only I maintained my thoughts. All the rest Dream. Waiting for the release of death. The mercy. I can not control them. Nobody can. They have no minds to control, any more. Mad, dreaming like you all on this isle." -"Dreaming?" -"Yes, dreaming. The world is dreamt up by thousands of beings." said the shade. "To enter those dreams is a power greater than that of impunity over matter and flesh. Those illusionists, politicians, that lead souls by the hundreds, know this. But they are vain, they do not know what lies beyond the vacum of our sensations. What they can summon in a man, is no more, no less, not theirs. Even the mindless, haunted beings, know this. They dream of power. To merge in one with predatory malice... they overstretch themselves.****” Then the shade seemed to sprung an other sentence from it's mind "Their work is futile"... -"Do you know any thing else?" -"I have little mind left, only enough to tell stories and..." The Shades around Andras flickered with predatory menace as the priest shade grew towards the celling, with the red glow of some immense fire ball only to fall back down, to it's original form, a statue of solid glass in which images would form, black as berries. "...to defend this sacred place... Heust... That is all I can do. I can not even understand what you just said." *The red marks made by Goettsch, made from the clays of defence rods, are in fact personal field generators; when heated they help to generate a small magical fields that serves partly in shielding the marked creature. The painted essence normally found on battle alphas, betas and gamas serves as a sort of essence based conductor to these shields. Battle alphas are highly prized by shapers as expendable footsoldiers as they outmatch the speed and accuracy of clawbugs in battle, by amplifing certain magical fields thanks to such essence markings. **Even amongst the Iugularians, magic is still highly volatile. ***Strangely the Shade, quoted this from a very early Shaper play called Faustus. A very literary people, the early Shaper created vast libraries of various plays, still greatly regarded as being many of the best plays to have been ever written. Today they maintain this tradition by encouraging art and spectacles. Of course as we know today's cheep entertainment programs, used as means to dull the minds of the non-magical population, while the usually performing magicians, when not tasked with either drinking themselves to death at a mage pub, or when they are not working the bulk of their lives in profit centred industries that squeezes the life out of them, have to construct acts and performs incredible deeds in front of a live audience. ****The tale of the snail by Idries Sha: The snail, never having met a human being, became anxious to learn of the differences between humans and snails. The man explained that people see with eyes in their heads rather than on stalks, that their legs carry them vast distances, and that they have no need of shells. The man continues, "And we can communicate without words, without even being together. Our method is to take something like, say, a leaf, make a mark on it, called writing, and send it by another human being. Now, by what is called reading, the person who receives it can know what the writer was thinking." To which the snail replies, "The trouble with you, as with all liars, is that you go too far. I have trapped you into overreaching by pretending to believe you. But if I further encourage you by not expressing the disbelief natural to all rational beings, I shall be a partner in your sinful lies."

Pentil's Plains Part 1: It is often said that the fate of nations is intimately bound up with their powers of reproduction*; The careful Shapers often created their servants sterile, in spite of the extreme difficulty it takes for one lone shaper to fashion creations. But with devices instantly creating live creations, it was no more a difficulty. The real problem for the Shapers was the hatred that their arts brought, having created unemployment, their rich temples seemed to be a banquet of opportunities to the poor uncontrollable masses of outsiders. So the Shapers knowing that the non magical outsider's only strength was it's huge numbers, they decided to cut them down, not with war, not with taxes, but contraception. Indeed the Shapers are often criticized for having put a leach to the libido of human beings; with restrictions of all kind regarding child production, people felt it as being "unnatural", "bizarre" and if not pure "folly from a bunch of crazed sex-craven magicians". But these have in effect, "succeeded" in stopping something governments of the past never took notice of: unemployment. Nor did we, outsiders, had such a thing before, as the death toll kept this risk in check. But since of the Shaper's deployment on Terrestia, their heavy pharmaceutical industries having improved the quality of life men, the subsequent replacement of human labour by creations, the printed book, the invention of the "Mind", the widespread of vilsh messagery, the use of essence and "crystal machinery"**, unemployment became more and more something of a concern with a booming population; after the Iugularian wars, in the country side, people seemed to crawl out from every where, jobless, and with each fleeing generations, came more of them fattening the large cities of Terrestia with even more workforce. A higher rate of reproduction, and the risk at any time of being being forced-out of their country by the more competitive Shaper agronomists (Shapers of course owning the land and the seas***), led to a high demand in contraception and a better education for a more specialized employment, such as being mere consumers, to Iugularian**** working in optical facilities. But, all in advance, as the song goes, the foreseeing and wise Shapers*****, with all sorts of contraceptive measures, turned the ship of society away from the rocks of overpopulation and the great problems of unemployment. The birth rate found itself stabilized and the death toll being incredibly low, the application of birth control has in the long run permitted for the Shapers greater political stability. However that didn't change the problem of equality between the overall over-rich and tyrannical "liberal" Shapers, and the very poor, and still strong in numbers, outsiders. All serviles, had always laid in the shadows of the Shapers, but Sucia isle, however was an exception to this rule. Being sentient, they had known of this and despite some of Pentil's religious fanatics, and thanks to a higher death toll, were more and more active on the subject of sex and where by all mean very industrious at it*****, even now in the city of Pentil, babies were born more than what was originally imposed by the Shaper's quota, a proof beyond all doubt that these serviles did not and could not follow the Shaper's rigid wisdom. More deaths related to cold, disease and the occasional rogues meant more serviles had to be bred, and more mouths to feed. And Pentil had already too many mouths to fed. In order to survive, it had to produce more soldiers against the the army of rogues roaming in their fields and woods. So it had seemed that the serviles of Pentil had mobilized their efforts not only in exterminating lone rogues that came to close but also by tempting the impossible task of clearing them out before what was left of food was to run out. But this tactic had not yet bore any fruit, as for the rogues outside Pentil continued being superior in numbers... Drastic measures being called upon they would fight until every single rogue was crushed. But this was not to happen, at least not without help. This is were Andras comes in. Despite his dreaming and often superficial attitudes, the training of his masters and the knowledge he acquired on the isle battling head forward against it, made him a powerful pawn for the serviles there; being of magical potential, he would soon rush and wipe clean the southern parts of the isle of any immediate danger. But as with any double edge sword Andras had plans of his own. The clearing of Pentil's plains was to serviles a dramatic effect, predictable enough to disrupt the whole so called Obeyer "utopia" before strengthening it even further. To clear the area was to Andras, not only a way to attest of his presence to a higher force than his, that he felt at work on the isle under the form of outsiders and rogues, but also a way to create enough chaos and attention to get into being trusted by the serviles. These valuable assets would help in securing more dangerous parts of the isle. He was therefore eager to break the siege south-west of Pentil, that had sufficient a force of thahds and artilas to starve this mighty city. *Karl Binding's: Die Freigabe der Vernichtung Lebensunwerten Lebens chapter 2 paragraph 3. **A complex mechanized, assembly line that creates life out of ready made essence and energy, which when blasted through crystals and set at certain key frequencies can cut and create complex chemicals found in living things. ***The seas are valuable asset to any Shaper colony, they provide food, raw materials, and a valuable interface to the outside world, ships loaded with merchandise. ****The term Iugularian refers to all outsiders with innate magical potential, the term comes from the "Jester" wars, led by Iugularian coalitions, against the early Shaper tribes and laboratories, had burnt and broken, as you may recall, every stone and paper records of the great Shaper libraries north of Terrestia, before the subsequent creation of the first Council. *****The Shapers were always in fact few in numbers due to their avaricious sense of power, and mostly because the rarity of innate magic potential, only waging war to keep their secrecy and peace intact: they always seem to bully "lesser people" in order to continue their solace. If outsiders hadn't knocked at their forts in the early days and asked them if they could give them food, of which they made in abundance, the Shapers would have never cared for them at all; it is only by false charity and great power over life that the Shapers have assured their predominance over this world. ******Servile sexuality is a poorly documented subject; but in the event of the "Taker's war" against the Shapers, knowledge on their behaviour became more and more complete: like humans, serviles are very playful creatures and engage intercourse in the same variety of fashions that their bodies permits them. Sucia isle, being one of the only isle were serviles could have fully developed to a stance, having occupied an ecological niche left vacant by the Shapers, the environment pushing them to new highs (and to an extent some sorts of regressive behaviour), were found to have developed all sorts of erotic depictions and objects: the left-overs of this wide range of such behaviours can be seen all over the isle, from simple clay caricatures with giant phalluses to giant paintings of engaging serviles. According to some accounts, Dreet of Pentil, was to possess more than seven wooden artefacts of erotic content made by his own fellow serviles; all being a collection of utilities such as pipes, spoons and other "essential" house hold accessories. This is however very far from our "sex culture", where homosexuality is not repressed and common place. Both sexes are being more and more treated equally, men tend to be more feminized, women more masculine, transgenderism is common, with transsexuals reproducing through their new sexual identity thanks to the many a wondrous properties of essence.

Prologue: "5,000,000 sunsets later from now, all that will remain of our fatally flawed species, which introduced the concept of tragedy to the local cosmos, will be an intriguing architectural motif and an unusual second and third layers of black crust which now cover so much of the surface of our planet......How strange were we then!" Jim Woodring's -Divinorum or life after Man; Shaper artist and researcher of Sucia isle. "The fool has said in his heart, “They are not Gods.” There is none amongst them who does good, they have done abominable works, they are corrupt." -Psalm 14:1 Introduction to the World of the Shapers: Who are Shapers? The Shapers are the oldest, most respected, most secretive, and most powerful of all the magical sects: They have the power to magically create life. The Shapers can make new life forms from nothing but raw materials and pure magic. They have held this secret for many centuries, four in fact, but, thanks to many periods of war and chaos, the origins of their powers have been forgotten. Despite this, they are now the masters of the world, the supreme and undisputed sovereigns of the mainland Terrestia, and the various coast lines and seas that border it. Being undisputed, they have subjugated all of the mainland magicians, the Iugulare, with taxes and laws, while the vast majority of the mainland's people, non magical humans, are kept to the cities as means of control. But most of all, the Shaper achieve all this through the medium of creations they mould. This life is used to serve their purpose, be it light housework or major warfare. Creations being at the plough of our fields and at the wheel of industry, Shapers have the leisure to be a research-minded people, and have always been so; many of them spend the bulk of their lives in musty laboratories, trying to unravel the secrets of the universe : What is magic? What makes something alive? What defines how a creature grows? How can they make an animal stronger? Or smarter? Or faster ? Or more obedient? The Shapers guard the secrets of their powers very closely, to learn their techniques without permission is to court a speedy death, at the sword of a Guardian in the day or an at the hands of an Agent at night. Being the masters of the world, the Shapers are feared by normal humans. And quietly resented. But not by every one. After years of work, study and testing, out of a sea of many, Andras was finally accepted into the Shapers. Andras would then spend his entire life advancing their will and delving into their powers and secrets. But first, he was to complete his apprenticeship, by spending five years of his life out in a Shaper colony on a remote isle, watching their work and aiding in their research. Only then would he have mastery over the lesser wonders that the Shapers pulped and sieved in their great temples of knowledge, only then he would bathe in all of the joys of an earthly heaven; the Shapers test their members very heavily, as the power over life is not a free one. After a brief welcoming ceremony and a last night's celebration, a courageous Andras was sent to these remote islands on a two week long journey, through rough seas on the back of a living craft. And yet, a week from destination, he was to change his and the world's to a remote chain of islands, on the northern tip of Terrestia... Nothing since the first agricultural or "green" revolution, the tampering of minerals, the invention of the print, the use of crystal machinery, the discovery and use of essence, the breeding of thorns bushes and living tools, the use of bioengineered of diseases, the development of generic drugs from healing pools, the subsequent replacement of human labour by creations, the invention of the "cylinder"*, the Shaper contraceptive policy, the construction of pyramid ships, the rising of vast caryatid legions, the first and second Iugulairian wars, the elaboration of the theory of evolution through natural selection, the development of Vlish telepathic messagery or the Drayk's genocide, did create such a dawn of awareness other than the Second Sucian incident, at a time where the only hope of social ascension was only with either being born with prodigious magical skill or being highly learnt, whether it be in the disciplines of war, tongues, psychiatry, mathematics, physics, alchemistry, biology, palaeontology or archaeology. Of the Outsiders that abducted Andras and of their remote colder worlds, a handful survived only to shatter our day to day preconceptions; the world has now turned round, and as with all desert storms, new markets flourished almost overnight; with servile workforce proving still too repulsive for the Sholai and the benefits of essence and shaping still unknown to these barren lands, outsiders brave enough to journey across rough seas are given well paid jobs and an instruction, with a war-like haste, as the shapers lay the first brick in the development of infrastructures and interfaces with the newly discovered Sholai empire. Of the rediscovery of the Geneforge, of the canisters of power and of Andras's fantastic augmentation, is left the wish to recreate the forbidden arts of Sucia, to instantly rise as a Guardian, to shape as a Shaper, or breathe as an Agent. Such attempts still fail to violate the laws of the Shapers, as their axe like punishments come crashing down on to the outsider's heads, or as an unwary usurper dissolves into red pools and cancerous sponges. Of the spirited cities, of the great Shaping halls and of all the jewellery sealed in basalt plates found all across Sucia isle, has flowered a detonation to bring a false dawn of hope to a unsuspecting sleeping world, as illegal parties hypnotized by it's glittering lights, were to be lost to Sucia, the island having the same ravenous appetite of that of some abyssal leviathan or that of a hollowed Shade**. Of the radiant Heustess***, of the intelligent creations on Sucia and of their alarming developments, only survives certain scattered Servile clans dreaming of independence and equality. It is in these dire times****, that the need for humanity has been at it's greatest: the very night of the publication of this book, an outsider woman had her back seared with acid, when protesting against the Shapers: outsider commoners, deprived of any form of magic or of the Shaper's ostentatious wealth, are obliged to sell their bodies or children for a living, being forced out of work by creations: it is said that the ash from human corpses serve as excellent fertilizer *****. Even the Iugulare of which caste i was born from, if better treated, are only kept alive as to "entertain them"******, or as intelligent maintenance crew, forced to outdo the other, underpaid, terminated here and there, being of course not Shapers. Worst of all, the recipe of "essence", a wondrous magically charged clay of immense properties, without which the Shaping arts are all too dangerous and all non-basic spells******* are impossible to conjure up, is kept out of bounds, while being the economical pillar of today's magicians; in effect the Iugulare must pay the very Shapers that employ them, insuring a debt like system. As for their creations, they are neither thanked nor paid for their services; despite being capable of reason, of profound complex sentiments and most importantly of feeling pain, they are still slaves. And to boot, the Shaper council, having lost Andras,a young shaper of great power,tighten their grip upon Terrestia as it's slips away from it's fingers as if they were preparing to some attack********. But now, despite of their crushing at Sucia of the outsiders usurpers barely three months ago, of being able to implant ideas with machinery across short distances into people's minds, of being undivided in their rule and in the will of their matters, of the subsequent blooming of their various businesses, and with an well servile-administered empire that stretches from the dry pine wooded northern tip of Terrestia to the Lattice seas, with aqua-farms eating more underwater lands than all of Terrestia's cities combined, the Shapers are at their weakest, something is threatening the integrity of their dominion over matter. As with all men, I am currently torn between mounting fear and overwhelming desire; this book although just an introduction to our world, it is also my testimony, for even as i write, armed men, thorn batons erected, their threatening shadows projected against the interior of some poor commoner's house as they search for what they call rebels are escorted by the much dreaded clawbugs and Vlish creations. Bearing no longer these constant interruptions into my private life, I am to depart from Terrestia with the lone company of my various works, as an exile, a refugee, filling bags with what Shaper appliances I own, off to some remote location. Although I have never broken any Shaper during the course of my entire life, I fear that that I will be taken to trail, before an outsider crowd, hungering for culprits; for even though we do not any longer feed shades with the blood of magicians, we still hold fiery holocausts in order to keep undead masses of commoners from rising up from their tombs. All i hope is that my contribution to our world may not trouble you too much, and would advise to keep this book from any evil hooded spectres, that may still lurk in broad day light, a guardian claymore in hand. Plain as the rotten scent of a decaying empire, The Shapers seal doom and felicity onto all their subjects and successors, both devices and opponents in spirit till the bitter end. The Shapers, having fathered this earth in their image, shape the very course of our lives; as ironic it may seem, I live counting myself amongst the dead and I die fleeing from the choking embrace of the shapers, when upholding their laws and sacred truths, horrid they may be. - *Metal cylinders, used to bombard cities with soldiers or bombs, are the exclusive property of Buriyat people, which are in turn the Shapers' exclusive property. **The term Shade, Spirit or Ghost refers to any ethereal presence of more or less magical potency: the more solid it is, the more powerful the Shade. If a Shade haunts your house, please try to contact immediately the nearest Shaper garrison and leave the premises immediately; shade study and violent exorcism are both century-old refined Shaper arts. If you cannot contact a Guardian or an Agent, please try not probe it's solidity with a non magical weapon, as you may find yourself with a limb short or your head in a place were it does not belong to. Shades can be creatures of absolute perversion; they are even classed by Shaper behaviourologists as sadomasochists. *** "Will a society built on cumulative technical progress, with self-centred values, rather than humane, ever know peace?" - sir Alain Karl Hegel in Today's machinist. ****The so called Andras' report and the strange powerful magical signature and the analysis of curiously shaped shades in Sentinels still leads us to no further clues about Heustess' existence. Historians are still debating the subject with great enthusiasm; you may recall the infamous "Monkey incident" coined and satirised by the fiber-crystal Magazine Puck by artist Bernhard Gillam in his "Change about-The Monkey The Master", which parodies a Shaper historian trying to disprove Heustess' existence; the latter was regrettably physically assaulted by a fellow and friend Iugulare archaeologist after a rude remark. As a note Heustess was supposed to be shinning black. *****According to neurologist Doctor Ziaus, a human body, if broken down by either chemical reactions or by enormous quantities of magic, contains enough chemical components to feed entire fields of hungry plants. Dead serviles and non-magical humans are used by the Shapers as manure, whereas the corpses of magician are carefully sealed in well guarded ziggurats and mausoleums; a least a third of today's magicians have enough magical energy to generate let alone one or even two shades when dead or (worse) when dying; attaching themselves to the place the source of their creation before moving on for needs of sustenance, creating disaster in their wake, and this is precisely why they aren't used as fertilizer; who would like to plow a field only to be plagued by the angry ghost of a magician's subconscious? ******The term "juggler" or Iugulare refers in general to all magicians, as the saying goes, "we are all apes performing acts before the Shapers". But even more so, do we during the entire course of our lives, juggle between the different professions we are offered: pylon crafting, theatrical arts, optics, enchanting items, magical artefact designing, archaeology, providing support for the various troops we accompany on the battle field, showering friends with Blessing spells (the healing arts being under the strict control of the Shapers being a form of self-Shaping), and foes with fire-bolts and mental spells; all of these professions are the means to a magician's lot in life. *******The term "basic spells" refers to all spells that needn't essence to work with; the wide majority of enchantments and the spell fire-bolt do not use up essence, whereas the rest of the battle spell circle and the Shaping arts which comprise the blessing and the healing circles have for base essence. As a note mental spells, the last of the magical circle, have been created before without the use of essence. ********The authorities have proceeded in total lock down of the northern tip of Terrestia. Some reports indicate some invasion of sorts by an god of sorts, while more reasoned assumptions point to internal conflicts within the Shaper political body after learning that the Geneforge was at arms' length from an alien threat, but, thanks to the young Shaper codenamed Andras, was very much averted.

Hello evrey one! I've decided to submit a project of mine based on the Geneforge 1 game; i've decided to write some sort of non-canon journalistic account of the events which happened during the second Sucia isle incident through the eyes of a learned Magician and It would be nice if any you could reveiw, correct and ameliorate some of my various works. You are even welcome to write somethings your self. The extracts will appear in the Posts below. Beware SPOILERS!

I've done it. Here's the link: http://www.spiderwebforums.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=230991Post230991

Here's also an other rough sketch The South work shop: The valley was bright. The sun would cut venerble mounds of dirt harming the eyes of our sorceror's apprentice. The winds would lift the fine dust covering the grounds of this valley, a crust that who made his eyes water, his stomach gag and his nose bleed. He would shamble to an obelisk thikenning the layer of essence he had spread unto the whole of his body. He shambled. It burned. The serviles of the winding road did warn him: "The valley is the most dead, diseased, unpleasant area you can ever come to see anywhere on Sucia Island.There is nothing alive here. Nothing." The obelisk was old and worn, but he barely managed to understand it. It said: « SOUTH WORKSHOP» A door in the ground opened. Andras stepped inside the workshop. Facilities like these are usually made to serve as support for research. They make and repair the complex devices the Shapers use to build new, exciting creations. And yet there was something wrong here. The foul, sickening atmosphere, which was strong outside, was almost paralyzing in here. Poisonous motes of dust hang in the air, waiting for Andras to inhale them. While workshops are normally safe, inoffensive places this one wanted to kill Andras. The obvious question is what has happened here? Andras entred in the church like complex breathless. Now he knows why this area (and the down stream Taker lands) are so barren and diseased. Andras step back involuntarily, overwhelmed by the horror of it. He felt disgused: Shaper experiments tend to involve the production of a lot of poisonous and noxious substances, some of them alive. These foul byproducts are generally burned away using magic. To do otherwise would be horribly dangerous. When Sucia Island was abandoned, however, there must have been a lot of experiments in place. In their rush to leave, the Shapers did not dispose of the experiments properly. They just put them in metal drums and dumped them here. Some of the canisters have been leaking.The poison would gather around the lead boxes like powdered coco of chocolate truffles. To all living things, the place was not a workshop anymore. It was a pit of poison, which has been leaking out and sinking into the ground and the water table. Who knows how many creations and serviles have died because of it? And yet, workshops like this must still contain items of value. Should andras dare expose himsself to the risk of entering this poisonous place? The anserw is yes. Andras turned about searching for something. He was not quite sure of it, but he'd know it when he'd see it. He found it. There was a defense pylon in the center of this room. It was sleeping. It didn't look like it was originally a part of the chamber. It was probably added to protect the workshop from invaders in the Shapers' absence. Crystal fibers ran from the base of the pylon into the ground. «The pylon must draw its power from a source somewhere else, it's source probably isn't too far away...» thought Andras. He walked out. At the doorstep of the factory he sat on a three light pannel. He fell from it when he saw it sparkling with light and life. He touched a green button. «Let's try green, green's a good color.» thought Andras. The whole thing analysed him and his creations. It left him unharmed. «Let's go in.» Andras took some precautions. He casted a ritual spell, that of augmentation, and used three bags brightly colored bags, major healing, curing, and the much protective sheild spores. He would come in and out the facility and rob it from it's components as fast as he could. Thooth and Claw Andra's recent Drayks would move about him as guards since the pylons could be a possible threat. Andras took draconian mesurses as to protect himself; he attached a jewel drawer to his arm and held it hid under his thick robes. The much feared thrusting gauntlets were put on and he held the leathal reaper thorn baton. He would enter gun pointing. Then as Andras moved closer to the sleeping crystal pylon, with only his foot steps covering the silence of the facility, he herd a moan. He turned around gun ready. It was only when he turned back to pylon that he fell nose to nose with the specter a guardian. He was not alone. Four of them materialised. Andras used dropped his thorn baton and jereked his arm into the guardian face. The jewel drew fire, so did the thorn baton as it fell. Two near by shades lied in ruin. The Guardian specter that stood before Andras didin't even as much as move when Andras vaporised him. Where andras' busy intellect was at work, Thooth and Claw did the rest. And this was the dance that andras would perform until he reached the center of the facility. With of course a few variations, such as the apparition of deadly agent Shades or Andras using deconstruct rounds* against the buzzing shades. Being on the constant threat of being poisoned, the different aromas of medicinal pods, the smell of salty sweat and the stink of piss filled the air around him; the heavy chemicals neutralized by the pods and healing spells, had to be naturally exported out of the body into all sorts of secretions. The poison was literally rinsed out of his body after each wet mark made on the complex's stone walls. This, plus the danger of being ambushed by the shades, that shambled there, for there is no better word for it, in the complex, made the natural clam demeanor that we knew to be his, replaced to a twitching, reduced man, nervous with fear, a twig, an stick insect, which would from time to time lower his donned garnements, and water his shoes, trembling. But the promise of loot, meant he had to suffer this humiliation; the lazy sholai having detained the evil of this place back to it's denn, he found himself trapped without an amulette to protect him from any fire. He was in the pit. And the sound of swarming bees, armed each with a lone blade, whose holow armour would splendour under both the light of day and under moonlight's mouth. And they had not died after the first sting. And they bumbled towards him. His only chance of success would be to be in his tools... He would then start a gorrila campaign against the shimmering Shades... activate the facility's pylons, harden his skin his essence and augment his red hot toungue drayks with rods and spells, to smoke them out. Striking at shadows, the poor Andras shook he would draw himself nearer the brain of the facility. *Andras had found twelve deconstruct rounds in a small ruin north from Vakkiri, in a clawbug infested territory, in his fight agaisnt his foes. These ammunition rounds are small heavy lead containers filled with magic that reacts with most matter. These rounds were once commissioned by the Shaper council so as to defeat the awesome pyramid ships of old. With the perfection of cheaper biological weaponry, the war against the Igularian coalitions stopped and the relentless and effective pyramid Ships manned by legions caryatids stopped dead their magician masters slain. Deconstruct rounds were the after used against Shaper creations such as the Agares steed, whose jaws can eat through bricks and concreate, only to be later banned from conventional warfare for their violence. They were however still used to disintegrate Shades before they could have time to reconstruct.

Originally Posted By: Fflewddur Fflam: Rider of Horses Change his name to Dwyre. (please?) Dwyer? It mean wise one, dark one. I stayed with Andras because i am very much intressted by Gargantua and humanist thought, which tried to put man back at the center of their preoccupations, not gods, and even more by Céline's "voyage au bout de la nuit"; the word Andras means in fact "Man", it wouldn't be true to the story to change. But as a compromise i will include a Dwyer. The narrator perhaps? This is community writing after all. Here's a rough draft, a really rough draft of Pentil's first Shaper comming: Pentil Of all the cities that rulled over Sucia, Pentil was the biggest and saddest. Of all the inhabitants of Sucia, those inhabiting Pentil were a sect of servile called Obeyers, and of all the rebellious serviles on the isle, had chosen to obey the gods that created them. Of the buildings, it's men, tools... very thing had a purpose; all were united under the sole banner of the Shapers. When they repaired their roofs, it was to shelter the servants of the Shapers, when they fed the healing pools it was because it was Shaper property, when they used Shaper pods and weapons it was in the name of their absent protectors, the Shapers, when they starved a creation it was for the Shapers, when they possessed a tool or ressource lying in their homes amongst whatever belongings they had built, that belonged to the Shapers, and it did not belong to them, even when the worn object was used and identicall to any mundane object of the Servile world and the vanised Shapers had no use for it, when they fed on whatever meager strand of meat, fruit, vegetable or grain, they eate what they thought the Shapers had provided them, leaving many a source of abounding natural fodder to rot, fat with nutrients, if a child died at birth, it was because that child was of course, never meant to be, the Shapers were of course omnipotent, and their workings were of course omnipresent on that miserable rock which they called home; from the peaks of the great mountains in which the mines of Sucia were once dug to the bed in which two serviles made love, all of this was done all thanks to the Shapers; everything was and had to be made in the name of their long gone, cold creators. When the god they had finally came to worship came here by mistake, and not by it's own providence, the single thought of this was very upsetting to the social fabric of the town: the leader's authority was currently being questioned, groups of worshipers had appeared, and while most bowed in front of Andras, the others crawled, like the long gone people of the sea before the eyptigian god kings, thinking that even an apprentice Shaper was an angel to be adored, a lone sentinel, an lone angel, of fire and of death, to clean Suica from rogues, before the rapture came. But our Shaper was no fool, as they pressed and asked for healing and curing, he knew deep within, they all lofted power over all; power over their lives, power over that unfaithful isle that took them to it's dinner room as to devour them, power over him, power over the rogues that stole their kin away from them and destroyed what ever they had worked hard for; they didn't even consider the fact he, the Andras, the great exterminator, could abandon them or that his arrival was a mistake. Too much was in fact at stake, and so like all men, they tried to prove, to prove that they were right over their allready convinced fellow obeyers, to brag about Andras's exploits as to impose what ever small authority they had. Who would dare to denounce him and what ever great evil he hid under his cloak? For even the Taaaakers were secretly glad that a Shaper had come at last to this damned isle, so as to save them in a way, from aboundining for ever whatever belifs they had? Andras however was no angel, he was hardly an all powerful figure, or to boot a full grown Shaper, he was not all knowing and ever present, but that was alright, as he was not 'supposed' to learn very much about the Shapers, and as he had surleeeeey shown certain rogue tendencies, and the Shapers in their wisdom must have kept him in the dark, blind, so as to carry their will...so as to test the flock with every perfidious thought his brains produuuuuced... Pentil had become in fact a deadly intellectual trap, lightly covered with leaves of good deeds towards the Shaper cause, in which Andras would not fall into. If Andras would have taken office under these serviles, in other terms sworn an alliance to Pentil's leader, in order to strengthen the Shaper's long dead grip on the isle, he would have in essence obeyed a servile; such a thing was unacceptable. Here he was a representative of his sect' beliefs, and not a slave to the fanatical Obeyers. To have pactised and played cards with them, to plot, to entered their schemes, would have surely burnt him to a crisp, as here lies within every zealot of Pentil, from the leader to the most lowly of his minions, a volatile solution to burn, if even the wind of a whisper would creep into their ears: These Serviles killed. They butchered, without any pity, without any shame, they slaughtered until they were soaked in the blood of their sins against life, with a passion that surpassed the mad and secluded Takers, that were sent amad, being forced to kill in order to survive. Yes, the much crazed takers of Kagz, in their great orgies of blood and hateful sentiments against the Shapers, were revolted to the mere idea of harming even small an insect or flower, and were torn when an ornk came to be served for supper! And yet they knew that all serviles were made, so that as to be naturally repulsed, more-so than any human, to creating harm onto any form of life; serviles are usually simple, obedient, docile and kind, creatures. Such simple biengs have known to become depressed at the news of where and how is the meat on their plates is fashioned, be it carved from a living being, as meat created from raw essence is an unavailbale source of protein. And yet they trained so as to break away from this design, proof that the Shapers were not perfect. They had hoped that the Shapers would come back and they also knew that if the Shapers came back they would have surely liked a force to dispose of the rogues there, even if they had not yet understood that the disorganized fleeing and that much of the disruption at the heart of the isle had been planned not by the Shaper researchers here, that tried to keep things in order until the building of Diazard, but by the Shaper Council, so they strode against, every rogue creation in sight that did not fit their porpose, and for this task they butchered the rebellious Takers to the east with the tactical and surgical forces of an well armed outpost based under Kazg, when they could have simply shipped large quantities of food to the hungry and angry Takers, appeasing with kindness and solidarity the broken hearts of the ever wanting Takers. Instead the Obeyers plunged the Takers against the new Awakened sect, while keeping Varkkiri poor and secluded from Watchhill with the aid of the Servant mind Control four and it's minions. The mind's rogues, the awesome and and eventually powerless Warp of Spiral Borrows, and the bountiful frog-like rogue Roamers that protected the immobile Control mind in the borrows, and that came to plague later on Thorny fern, were ironically, secluded to their poisonous pits, unable to act out. They were in the end not unlike the Takers. Even the Serviles of Pentil, came to fell to the same end, pounded back to their borrows by less-specialized thahd and artila creations that seized Pentil's Plains and near Watchill by powerful spawners. In-spite of being secluded to their pit, the ants of Pentil, not unlike the empty corpses that plagued the dark corners of the isle, strived and conquered whatever land the Shapers had, and puffed with pretentious self-righteousness as they claimed proudly that they were right and that their religion would win over all the serviles of the isle. They knew, as the earth was round, that all creations are made to obey the eternal will of the Shapers, as tools to work with, and yet, they had chosen to obey and thought on ways to obey them best. They knew that the serviles were not meant to chose for themselves, that were bound to the now severed umbilical cord that connected their hardy race to the bodies of the Shapers and yet they had chosen for their very own survival to follow the wisdom of the Shapers and drawing conclusion from whatever the Shapers had left; moving paper fantasies, the fact that they had to live in stone buildings, what weapons they had left... Had not the Shapers been the only point of certitude when there was none on this miserable rock? Had they not endow each of their servants with minds, long lives and powers of their own? Had the Shapers not left them entirely on sucia? Did not their constructs that peopled Sucia provided a hiding place for all serviles, hiding them from savage rogues, sun, storms, winds and cold? Had they not been there nothing before the Shapers but dust and desolation on the isle? Had not the Shapers made the isle prosperous with honey and milk, where there were prowling ghosts and foul creatures? Would they not come back one day, rising up once more against these tellurian monsters that resided at the very evil and heart of this isle? Would they not bring glorious fulfillment and give propose to their lives, where wreck and devastation lay? To Shapers, belief is mother to doubt. It was also true for the Obeyers : Shaper omnipotence came to challenge the absolute good of the Shapers, their omnipresence the fact they had left the world. The Obeyers were patient, but wanted to believe. What proof was there of the Shapers? A few bones, artifacts, books, culture, speech and ruins. Could they have been then mistaken somehow? The Obeyers in their great leap of faith, in their great misery, clung to the dreams and hopes of an uncertain future and paid their respect to uncertain gods. Silent obedience to the Shapers had given them an edge over all the serviles of the isle, guided by the many still loyal servant minds against their servile brethren, but in the end, their thoughts, their very choices, their way of life, had betrayed them as rogues. It had seemed to Andras that their worship, the will of their earthly gods, whatever reason that shepherd their flock was used as a continual justification of evil, as it prevailed in the community or through the awesome forces on the isle. Andras judged it to be a starvation of the mind, a placid cold doctrine in what could be a ocean of truth. To him the Obeyers of Pentil had rebelled against the designs of their masters. In the mist of their of obeying folly they would be the first to be killed at the plow, used until there was nothing left from them but bone and secret documents. When Andras met Rydell, he sought not to be confirmed, and yet he was. -"Shaper, I have heard of your arrival. I... I am awed and grateful that you have returned to us at last. I am Rydell. I am the leader of the Obeyers, the only sect that has stayed steadfast and true in our obedience to your kind. We know that you are alone here, and endangered by the rogue creations that surround us. We hope that you have come to assist us, and to reward us for our obedience." Andras nodded but then spoke: -"I, Andras, am peaceful representative of the Shapers in their absence; i will speak in their stead. The Shapers would be impressed of your self control, they would also be impressed by your determination in your great workings against the rogues here..." Rydell exhaled a deep breath of relief. -"So many years of self doubt, Shaper. So many years of wondering why you abandoned us. Now we know, though. Now we know that we followed the true course. Thank..." -"How dare you wonder?" Rydell was visibly shocked. -"The Council had not planed wether you should survive or not. In Shaper terms you should be extinct. But you have survived and for it i shall help you. The Shapers that left you here had clearly little sense of responsibility for their creations. The Shapers have changed. I will consider that i arrived as to fill our debt towards your kind, a token from a new era; helping serviles in need is one of my prime objectives, speaking of which, is there a boat somewhere?"

Originally Posted By: Denizen of Terrestia Very good story! The conversations seem a bit similar, as the main character isn't emoting a lot, just talking, but other then that I really like it. Be assured that this Andars will have a bit more character in later extracts... What do you think he should do or be like? But i think that the true Heroes of this Story is not Andras, or Trajkov, or Heustess, or even Goettsch but the Shapers. This is after all a manifesto against the Shapers and their image and life cult. Andras is only an empty child, a holow thing like the Shapers. Not even a real being. I wanted to be as close as to the game as i could within some limits. Also the dialogues are set in key places in my project, in the temple region where Andras is not the main focal point, but the mythology behind the Shapers. In Thorny Fern, the servile scout is also holow thing, all deciet...

Thorny Fern: To Andras, Thorny Fern seemed to some sort of plugged tub, having forced it's way out of the ground, ripping apart the stony hills that Watchhill, Pentil's woods and the Hills of jars were made from into white stony peaks; a half-forest being secluded in a granitic bed with narrow passes left undefended by rogues, made Andras's entering easy. Once having slipped in the grove was different affair, as the stink that emanated throughout the region, was so awful that Andras preferred to silence it with essence up his nose from a trick or so he learned at the school; tiny holes would act as gills, barring water from entering while non lethal gazes could be breathed in. He would have to flow heat into his larynx and snort-it* out liquified on the sticky, grassy, mud, once used. Vegetation pulled by unseen forces fell towards the murky and lifeless water ways that bubbled and swirled under a thick coat of rotting and flowering plants; the waters seemed to mingle strangely with the earth, fluids with solids, grasses with mud, offering a large sail of possibilities for living things, gushing out from the otherwise lifeless stone, animated with subterranean roots of aquiferic origin. By mere contrast the higher and clearer water pockets seemed to buzz with fish of all sorts, protected by their cradles of stone from decaying plants and clay that seem to claw at the rock. Animals of all sorts*, flourished here next to creations such as the Thorn bush, the dangerous fire beetles and the rogue crocodilian Roamers that presently asserted themselves as the top predators in the area. The abundance of animals seemed to be swallowed by the leaves and branches of the tooth like thorn bushes that oozed from every rocky base in the area. The abundance of such plants made it clear to Andras that the South east region of the isle was previously used as a thorn breeding colony, as to calm rogues and whatever pestilence that still linger in the dark corners of Sucia. Even if this place was once a secure and vital part in protecting the shapers and their serviles creations, it layed decaying before the Shaper, as dark forces were once more occupying these lands, twisting it for their damaged desires; indeed Roamers occupied the area, and as to add to their habitual ferocity, had smart cooperation, if not too smart for these pack hunting animals. With no spawners creating them, and at everybody's surprise, killing the rogues from the spawners both east and west of the fern with great ease, their survival had nothing to do with mere luck. The minor aid some highly intelligent creature with large magical resources and great will was in fact at work, was clearly set against both Ellrah's Keep and Vakkiri and the other invading rogue creations: the swamp once vital for the aging Shapers, suffered; the lack of deforestation itself caused by the lack of large herbivores or servile workmanship had caused the marshes' plant inhabitants to grow wildly, slowly rotting away in brown red waters; unlike the rest of the isle, Thorny fern suffocated from the rich in nutrients soils that flowed and gave birth to the valley, as allowed and brought molds, and toxic microorganisms to be were once there was ordained paradise. Given that rogue Roamers being too numerous and effective a hunter in a small secluded environment, they driven away all the deer native to the small area; most fled, to Pentil, to Free place, or to Peacefull Valle, but it was always westwards, and they were always of course, subjected to ambushes. True repent from the gauntlet of predation was only to be found at Crossroads or in the church-like halls of Holding Two, amongst ever watchful turrets. As Andras's gaze moved, his feet trying to secure a good position while being supported by what seemed solid ground, the pest like roamers that thrived in the region came to greet him with their needle like teeth and with labrador like paws instead of their usual playful wining. Andras systematically avoided large groups that would have pinned him down, picking the lone crocodilian roamers as they stubbornly hunted him in the marshlands before they could summon greater numbers, evolving both on land and in water like multitudes of frogs, similar to those that still plague the swamp. Where his sword or silk like stones were useless, Andras 's thorn batons were quite useful as he could reload from the bushes near by and dispatch venom on the fleeing creation; grinning as he remembered some obscure passage in Greo's Bio Botanicca : "In essence, the thorn baton, is bread and butter of all seasoned Shaper. While the batons themselves are living things, extremely long-lived animals, they are nestled in a metal frame. (...) The thorns they fire are grown on bushes. Being very hardy they are used in innumerable ways (...), they grow thorns at a good rate (...) in general, they are considered an excellent example of Shaper biological engineering, " A grim figure dashing from the bushes killing the roamers here and there, was to Andras an easy task, the roamers eventually decided that the might of a Shaper was to be avoided at all costs and took refuge as he went by. Feeling dangerous and threatening, Andras completed his task of pacifying roamers in less than a day removing more than 90 per cent of the roamers that once happily occupied the fern. As he did so, the alarm of a lone servile scout caught his ear; drawing near a astonishing painting rose from the reeds of the fern; a lone servile, small in size and in the prime of his life, well fed, donned the long clean, traditional garments of their kind, while a metal gauntlet and a chitin plate pushed away the jaws of a pinning roamer from his exposed and venerable neck, when a fist set fourth for an icy stone in the likes of a gambler reaching out desperately for coins out of a bag. With Andras approaching, the roamer fled. A thorn was sent, and from the death of this creation came an secure silence: it's lacerated prey was now alone in the presence of it's creator; -"Good afternoon." said Andras. -" My! A Shaper!" The servile splashed down in reverence, praying before him, into a small hole of mud before being helped up Andras. "I had never dreamed that one of your kind would descend to help someone as lowly as me. I am called Sleet, servant of of Pentil." The scout, then, as if waiting for Andras' response, would try to wipe some dirt off his made in Pentil robes, when all the while looking in his direction. -"Why are you out here?" The servile looked and talked in the direction where Andras was. -"I am a scout. I was given a skill for evading the rogue creations that plague us." He tried to smile happily. "Well, I usually do. Sometimes I am trapped and must fight.But it's a risk I must take to keep Pentil informed." -"Hmmm... and how can I reach Pentil?" -"You can go north to the Hills of Jars and then east, but be warned that a large variety of ambushes and mechanical traps will await you." He frowned as a stage actor. Not having noticed the living tools that sprooted from Andras' bag, and judging on the number and strength of the creations, wands and thorn baton Andras had, he talked once more in Andras' direction. "I say, if machinery and diplomacy are not your forte, you should go east to the Pentil Woods and then north. Be prepared, though. You will need to fight your way in." Having remarked that it was impolite of him to not to have proposed some aid to one of his supposed creators, he gave his icy and swarm crystals away, simply remarking that as a obeyer in the wake of an eventual Shaper returning he wouldn't have such need for what he called 'superfluous defenses'. Having given out the most of his possessions, he went on his way as stealthily as he did before, although genuinely sad to have given his stones away. Andras shook his head with disbeleif, turning rigidly away from the confused servile that was trying to do his best so as to serve the Shaper's design. An other question seemed to float up our boy's mind "What sort of dangers the woods holds up ahead?" *When Andras slipped in and out of Thorny fern, one can scarcely imagine that our washed clean shipwreck, with a silk scarf around his neck, donning a long violet dark cloak with tyran purple bands that hid green bronze buttons and a cicada-like Chitin armor, a bronze long double bladed sword clipped at red leather magical amplifying belt, while holding in one hand a iron shield with ornk skin lacers, all of this comfortably seated in a polished pair of fresh boots at his feet, was left a bruised, cut, twig and mud filthy, servile-crouched mockery of a Shaper. When it is true that all magician tend to get dirty, as it is still an imperative to create homemade pods, to keep near searing substances when tempering steel and wands, or when violently exorcizing some tomb from it's ghosts, they do prefer to stay clean and dignified; even the Shapers are a very hygienic people; they have pocket handkerchiefs, they brush their teeth, take baths every day, showers, and are always keen on keeping clean their long and silk under-wares when unused, their shirts and scarfs are shielded with spells as to protect both user and garment. When protective suits and gas masks are unavailable, Shapers bite in metal or plastic cylinders placed around their nose and fill them with essence which when tempered with magic, filters the air, a less messy version of the crude clogging up the nose with essence method, that our boy Andras, likes to partake. The Shapers, also encourage even the most loathsome of their guests to be deprived of their wares and tears, to be bathed and fed before entering their places, only to be provided with "more fashionable" clothes. Shapers are hospitable people, even if crowds of outsiders are butchered at their very doorstep, any man, great or small, desiring some sort of social reprieve can, under any circumstance, ask asylum in one of their great laboratories. **Thorny Fern had a wide variety of host including mouse deer, cats, rats, birds, newts, frogs, beetles, an impressive set of mosquitos, flies, dragonflies, butterflies, bees, ants, wasps, snails, crayfish and numerous nematodes.

Here's an other extract i made. The Spirit's city: Andras strode into the ruined city. By Shaper standards, it is still a small thing, several rows of buildings hewing out of the walls of the mountain. However, it is very impressive work from ancients whom Andras had thought, likely as not, to be savages. The town was devised in this way, a temple in the middle it's chambers protected by harmfull magic and poisons, houses circling it, were built right below the great walls, a small grove in the north and a small prison opening before a Great Temple. Some of the buildings like the prison and the houses to the west, are collapsed, but most of them are still, after many centuries of wind and rain, intact, and are still occupied, in a way. Ghosts still walk along the streets and in and out of the ruined buildings and their houses. Inside the houses, sealed into clay jars, there were century old Wax apples of a vivid red color, and still fresh spanish limes, they too lingering, and the thorns of roses, thick with the sent of honey, ready to sproot. Ready to sting. Andras would not risk himself into their homes, for, if they looked quite a pale and weak lot, they had survived the centuries, Heustess the vengefull and proud Goettsch... they also held some method in their striding, like those of walking troopers. Their arrival seemed to have been a recent one. The bones littered here and there looked like those of strange creations. A tooth were found here and there of some magically burnt mutant, while Heustess' tools, creations that were once spread thick about the place were found battered and boken into dark solid glass. A few Sholai warriors were also found dead by Andras, they too broken on the floor, by ghosts and the brutal strength of cryodrayks and battle Betas... This trail of littered corpses covered the clay floors of butcher cut buildings, the bodies not unlike the pale and ugly flesh of sugar apples, informed Andras, that Gottesch's agents were near, still blue with fresh essence. The were on the horizon looking out with a terror vilsh. Terryfing creatures battle betas. Their heads are black and blue. Their faces look like those of skulls, thick with bone, without death's grin. Not very much like lions, which kills with love and great care. They hated their lives. They were armed. Thick steel. They were even accompagned by a battle gama. Andras seized them up from afar and trod north towards a thick grove. As Andras walked along the pathway, the things around him seemed to change. They had seem newer, as if they hadn't been exposed to millennia of weather, but they also looked waxy, bee made, strange, unreal. At the end of the path, to the west, was an old hovel, hollowed out of the rock. Angry muttering came from inside... A Witch. A battle with a crone. Strange thing. It used essence orbs. But weren't these savages born before the use of essence. Even used some sort of magic augmentation so as to harm magically Andras. Even tried to inspire fear through a clacium composition. Waste of talent and skill. Andras robed the grove from it's fruit, a few spores found in old wooden boxes and a lime cut emerald, cut to the side revealing the sight of a fleshy star. Amongst the ruins there is still somewhere, a pool of beautiful, crystalline water. If you have the luck or the unluckiness to land on the isle, you would find that the water sparkles brightly, still of full of muck and algae, despite the lack of light in the dark chamber it is placed in. This is were Andras took his refreshments. This is where he would drink and energize, taking several long swallows of the clear magical water, healing his wounds under his very gaze. The people who lived here must have had skilled magicians, to have created magic which lasted this long. He raised his head towards the temple. Hand made by magicians. Powerfull works. Not the cheap, well made servile workmanship. Andras then turned towards the temple in the center of the town. One step inside an ancient temple. A massive structure, smaller by far to the great temple north of there, but with huge halls carved out of solid white stone. The walls in this entry hall are covered with writing. However, they don't look like holy inscriptions, or lists of names, or anything you'd might expect. The writing are magical notes, diagrams, and instructions. Though Andras couldn't understand a word of it, there he thought there was something that looks familiar about it. He looked on his right the magical notes, denser here, had chairs were set up below them so that it could be inspected closely. Andras looked at it all, but it still didn't make sense. One thing was strange, though, when Andras turned his gaze to one of the diagrams depicted a thin lizard like animal, similar to a Fyora. Twisted and small, but still a fyora. He turned his gaze left to a lone pillard. The only thing that made sense. He touched the pillar and felt nothing. No pain. Just an overwhelming desire to enter. Being accepted by the pillars, Andras entered the temple. He felt very cold and alone, and very unwelcome. Shadowy eyes watching him carefully from the darkness, waiting for a misstep, so that they might devour him. Leaving the main chamber without permission seemed perilous. Guards were posted to each one of the side passages off of the room. More shades. And at the center of the temple, Andras met yet another ancient ghost. A burning thing. Lit up like a tree during the winter solstice. It surprises him in two ways. First, it didn't attack or threaten him. It was still like a buring beacon. Thick with magic. Second, when it begun to speak, Andras could understand it! It read his mind and spoke tongue perfectly clearly. Perhaps magic was at work. -"Hello, visitor. I welcome you, as long as you bring peace and do not go where you are not bidden. Have you found the secret yet? -"What secret?" -"The shade points at the northeast passage. There. You may go there. Only there. There is the secret. When you have seen the secret, return." Upon entering Andras immediately recognized the main feature of the plain room. It had a tiny stone platform, in the northeast corner. Very bare, very rough, very old, but its purpose very clear. It is or was a shaping platform. Cruder than what the Shaper used, but the purpose was the same. Could it be? Could the natives who lived here be, in some way, the ancestors of the Shapers? Could this be the home of his people? It might, in some way, be what drew his people here to do their research. Something found in these ruins might have been the catalyst which helped the Shapers here discover such astonishing things. Or maybe a just a strange coincidence. But It had to be his people. There were to Shaped gloves on the corner. -"Are you the ancestors of my people?" -"Now we will speak further. I will discuss the secret..." the shade flickered for a moment "Yes. That is the secret. You performed the rituals, and you entered, and I share with you what has been shared with no other." -"What happened to you?" The Shade flikered. It's still pose suggested now, an intellectual pause, as if taking a long breath, before plunging into great depths of knowledge, deep down into that ocean of man, with it's derelicts, it's loads and rich collections bones, it's layers of slime, it's leviathans, it's cloudy summits and it's sunken temples... -"Being here?" "Many things... Big things... great things have small beginnings..." "Cultures are as plants." "They grow." "They have many roots." "They even reach out for the stars." "And they die." "Long story short, in the beginning we were not a humble people, we were a small people, few in numbers but great in our knowledge of things, which, was of late, inscribed on the many slabs that now cover the isle..." "The stars." "The discipline of magic, all of this leads to civilization; by inscribing on stone, we safeguarded knowledge from the perils of time. It is especially useful when tampering with the world with magic, in order to be precise and create the desired artifice*." "Magic was important as it gave sense to the world we lived in. It gave us a direction. Told us what to do with those slabs of our when to fight, how to heal, when to make peace, when to hunt, how to love..." "To create slabs of stones, was difficult" "Had to search for more supplies for a steady workforce." "And it was so, that our young boys discovered by their clumsiness how to grow wheat, spilling it by accident on treaded ground while bringing it to the women and bakers. " "A part of the population was cut of from the old ways had even more spare time, to think and take care of things. They had more time to make love" "And more people, meant even more mouths to feed, more food to find, more lands to plow, more fertile lands to seek, led to the invention of possessions, which led to theft and neighbors fighting with one an other, because someone's cattle was eating someone else's wheat, which meant that more wars were to make, as land is rare thing in deed, more workforce and magicians to instruct, and more slabs to craft, and so was the wheel of progress launched. The shade paused and repeated itself. "It gave us time to pause, to think." "We, all those who were initial affilated to magic, became magicians of various degrees, but powerful of late." "We became leaders and told what to do." "With all the time in the world some people became bored." "We had little knowlege about boredom." "Having no purpose, we wanted to feel normal." "We wanted to be something else, signify something." "A little fun." "A little murder for the fun." "A sting" "A little meat, that was all, the fun of dogs" "It's after all been one or two hundred years that you Shapers have stopped public murder, when pitting rogues one agaisnt an other.""And you haven stoped sacrificial murder yet with all of your test subjects, rats and molds." "With all these people..." "All this power, everything was bound to..." The Shade had trouble breathing "...It went crazy, one wanted this, the other that..." "So you set out to make wonders." said Andras pressing. The burning Shade clapped it's hands and fire came out of it. "Like this did we pour magic on to the world." "Our very hands. Our very own hands" "And given all the time in the world, we did all what we could do with it." "But mainly to discover things, our gaze always elsewhere, turned towards the future or sometimes the past. We looked deep below the earth. We watched the stars beyond the sun, beyond the stars, the blackness. And then we looked within. but always to sooth our pangs of hunger." The Shade became fearfully darker it's mouth opening wider. "We had become something of a hungry specter, eating tons of bread, wood, men, people, lands... Then we looked. We looked deep within ourselves, our bodies." -"And what did you see there?" -"You know. You know the secret. You know how to use magic to rebuild life. It all started in here, in this temple. We turned it from a place of worship to a place of work." "Centuries did man struggle powerless against wilderbeast, eating the scraps of lions and tigers,centuries did we vainly struggle against the silent fevers that takes the child from it parents, centuries did we struggle against the winds, the cold and lice." "And now we were masters of the world." "We weren't sure what to do next but..." "And of course we had, while brooding over our untested powers." "We thought up something." "Thus we were the first to plant new life into the ground, turn men into tools, loyal as dogs, pools of mud into intriguing slimes with amazing properties, turn clay into livestock, and thus on this isle a gut worm was made anew it's tongue to be the steel, the sword and banner of wondrous and strange new battles, a lone day we did bring a wounded lizard to one of the shaping pads, to turn from grey to red, having been bathed and augmented in essence, to be infused, white with internal fire, thus with the combination of a magic unheard before, in the history of the world, and with the myth of progress at our side, the very construction and transformation of this building was the seed of our own doom." -"Doom? How? -"As i implied before, we used the power as a weapon. And as a bludgeon. We were not careful. Not precise. Our magicians randomly warped our enemies... twisted their parts, destroyed their organs... made them fall. We tried to form an empire against the savages around us, starting here... but the random way we attacked changed things. Made diseases... two hand fulls of plagues... created horrible creatures, stronger than what we attacked, the land changed too, from the greatest of our battlements to the most minuscule of grasshoppers they too were subject to many a poison and festering hunger within :" The briar Shade then produced then the now bone white head of a glaahk on the altar out from the alcove below it, with what seemed to be a sudden crash. -"Behold, the union of a grasshopper and a gut-worm, stunning symbol of our destruction!" -"And then?" -"Most of us died. The rest fled this place, fled these green lands, woody green lands, which became infected... dusty wastes... peopled with forests of stone glass." The shade filckeed eraaticaly like the blured image of a crystal ball. "Fled life... taking with us our secrets and our wisdom... " The Shade staggered a while struggling with what seemed to be it's lips. -"We went to the mainland... And then, I would guess, we became you. There, the story ends." - "My people were here for a while, researching. Did they ever contact you?"; - "No, but, had they stayed longer, they would have. And I would have spoken with them... But they were too distracted. So they never came. They should have..." -"There are enemies of our people on this island. Will you help me?" -"I have little mind left, only enough to tell stories and to defend this sacred place... That is all I can do. No more must we perform**. I can not even understand what you just said." -"If our people are the same, can you get the ghosts to stop attacking me?" "Not ghosts. Some of our kind, with magic and knowledge of Shaping, they adopted that form, striving for long life. I was one of such. I and your people fled life; choosing the path of sleep... keeping fourth impenetrable..." the shade paused only to continue with great difficulty the words "stoic", "defying" "and", "prevailing", "over", "death", "in", "deep" and "sleep" flew to Andras' mind. "Such arte the lives of the dead here." The Shade glittered and paused again. "Only I maintained my thoughts. All the rest Dream. Waiting for the release of death. The mercy. I can not control them. Nobody can. They have no minds to control, anymore. Mad, dreaming like you all on this isle." -"Dreaming?" -"Yes, dreaming. The world is dreamt up by thousands of beings." said the shade. "To enter those dreams is a power greater than that of impunity over matter and flesh. Those illusionists, politicians, that lead souls by the hundreds, know this. But they are vain, they do not know what lies beyond the vacum of our sensations. What they can summon in a man, is no more, no less, not theirs. Even the mindless, haunted beings, know this. They dream of power. To merge in one with predatory malice." Then the shade seemed to sprung an other sentence from it's mind "Their work is futile"... -"Do you know any thing else?" -"I have little mind left, only enough to tell stories and..." The Shades around Andras flickered with predatory menace as the preist shade grew towards the cealling as a red fire ball and fell down, solid glass, black as berries. "...to defend this sacred place... from... Heust... That is all I can do. I can not even understand what you just said." *Even amongst the igulerians, magic is still highly volatile. **Strangely the Shade, quoted this from a very early Shaper play called Faustus. A very literary people, the early Shaper created vast libraries of various plays, still greatly regarded as to hold many of the best plays to have been ever written, to be read alone. Today they maintain this tradition by encouraging art and spectacles. Of course as we know today's cheep entertainment programs, of very little taste, are used as means to dull the minds of the non-magical population, while the usually performing magicians, when not tasked with either drinking themselves to death at a mage pub, or when they are not working the bulk of their lives in profit centered industries that squeezes the life out of them, have to construct acts and performs incredible deeds in front of a live audience.

Originally Posted By: loyal servile of sasuke uchiha Yes. It was who was the most ever loyal shapers in the geneforge world. I would have to say Alawan. He wound up having to Click to reveal.. be standing up forever in a huge machine, esscence running through him untill he dies. man having to stand up forever for the shapers! It's ironic really, a guardian standing up for the Shapers.

First rule in self defence: Do not attack.