Geneforge Writing

[Upon Mars.]

Hello evrey one! It's been a heck of a time since the last time pasted a topic on Spiderweb's forum, let alone writen a post, so 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 of 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. (As a note i have only posted the prologue of the book, as the rest may come very soon.)

 

PS: Would it have been more proper if i had posted this on the Geneforge Forum? Should i make new posts for the rest of my work?

Thank you very much.

 

 

 

Here's the Prologue of the book:

 

 

 

 

 

"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!"

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 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 mold. This life is used to serve their purpose, be it light housework or major warfare.

Creations being at the plow 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 earthily 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 labor 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, the Drayk's genocide, did create such a dawn of awarness 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, paleontology or archeology.

 

  Of the Outsiders that abducted Andras and of their remote colder worlds, a handfull 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 are given well paid jobs and an instruction, with what is a war-like haste in development of infrastructures and interfaces with the new Sholai empire.

Of the rediscovery of the Geneforge, of the canisters of power and of Andras's fantastic augmentation, many wish to rise as guardian, to mold as Shaper, or breathe as an agent, and still fail to violate the arts of the Shapers, as their axe like laws come crashing down on to their heads, or as an unwary usurper spells dissolve his body into red pools and cancerous sponges.

Of the spirited cities, of the great Shaping halls and of all the jewelry 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 light, 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 payed 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 terestia as it's slips aways from it's fingers as if they were prepearing to some attack********.

 

   But now, despite of their crushing at Sucia of the outsiders usurpers bearly a month 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.

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 before trail before 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 our 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 specters, 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 and most are sadomasochists.

*** "Will a society built on cumulative technical progress, with self-centered 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 couriously shaped shades in Sentinels still leads us to no further clues about Heustess' existence; Historians still debate with great enthusiasm, as you may recall the infamous "Monkey incident" coined and satyrised by the fiber-crystal Magazine Puck by artist Bernhard Gillam in his "Change about-The Monkey The Master", which parodies a Shaper historian tried to disprove Heustess' existence; the latter was regrettably physically assaulted by a fellow and friend Igulare archeologist 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 artifact designing, archeology, 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 Shaping arts and blessing spells have for base essence. As a note mental spells have been created before without the use of essence.

********The nature of the threat is not yet well defined, some reports suggest an army of augmented Sholai having mastered Shaper arts, an other pointing to the invision of terrestia by a single Shaper with god like abilities, 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.

 

[Denizen of Terrestia]

Thats a very nice story

I look forward to reading more.

[Upon Mars.]

I have a few other extracts. The problem is it's not a continual story but i'd be happy to provide you with some drafts on this thread.

 

I'm also going to provide an enormous social and intellectual background to this Geneforge revist, with refrences to books found in the geneforge series with cross refrences and passages cut out from famous books such as the origins of speices, the bible, the famous WW2 "Instrument of Surrender" etc... As you might guess some of these documents are going to be revisited.

It's going to be very hard work, and it is of course very heavy stuff and very dark in it's self...

 

I even think that the author of the book is a very depressing character, being a nasty, yet very intriging, shopist...

 

By the way, many of the narrator's ideas are in fact opposit to my own. What i intend to do is to critisize a certain way of looking at things in Europe through the blatent fallacies that the narrator tries to push onto people. I expect people to read the "book" with caution.

 

Here's a introduction to Andras' arrival in Pentil through it's beseiged doors:

 

 

Pentil's PlainsPart 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 opportinities 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 labor 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 igularian wars, in the country side, people seemed to crawl out from evrey 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 igulerian**** working in optical facilities.

But, all in advance, as the song goes, the foreseeing and wise Shapers*****, with all sorts of contraceptive mesures, 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 ment 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 mesures 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 thads 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 molds life out of ready made essence, energy blasted through crystals, set at certain frequencies as to cut and create complex chemicals such as life.

 

***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 Igulerien refers to all outsiders with innate magicall potential, the term comes from the "Jester" wars, led by Iugelerian 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 abondance, 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 behavior), 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 artifacts 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 wondourous properties of essence.

[Upon Mars.]

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.

[Upon Mars.]

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.

[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.

[Tracer Bullet]

Change his name to Dwyre. (please?)

[Upon Mars.]

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...

[Upon Mars.]

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?"

[Upon Mars.]

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.

[Tracer Bullet]

Nice writing all the way through.

[Dantius]

Maybe this thread could be moved to the Gendforge forum? It's not really General material...

[Upon Mars.]

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