[What Came Before]

Sci Story #40 (more D&D stuff)

The Parchment Whale

This gargantuan orca has the expected black skin with white "eye" patches and white underbelly. However, on those places where it's skin is white one sees the black encroach to seep over in the form of writing. The calligraphy tells the tales of those varied parts of the Feywild's oceanic expanses, particularly the greatest body of water that extends between Weal, Eald, and even Warp, whose depths seen into the cavernous corridors of the Wan.

By examining the tales written on the white, one can glean an understanding of the way various societies are shaping themselves and each other across the oceans of the Feywild. The orca is large enough to lay across a large Prime world metropolis, and as such you have varied pilgrims reading its belly in hopes of finding some information to use against a rival or some clue to a hidden fey recluse.

Though apparently ageless and immortal, the whale itself is not sentient though it does seem to fall ill if the oceans of the Feywild are ever seriously threatened or a great war encompasses a great portion of the saline waters.

/Story

[What Came Before]

Sci Story #41:

Ephemeral Cities of the Eternal Hailstorm

Above a certain grassland in the Weal, there is a massive storm that has remained overhead since the earliest days of the Seelie's ascendance. Hail continually falls from the sky, pieces of ice ranging in size from that of a human thumbnail to that of a dragon's head. The latter are incredibly rare, but it is these that allow passerby to glean the nature of the Seelie Court that dwells in this vast plain supposedly devoid of urban architecture.

There are cities of ice in every bit of hail, with Seelie fey living their lives in miniature. The hail falls to the ground, and eventually every city melts away though by then all of the citizens have died from the impact.

The key to entering the cities is to walk through a bolt of lightning temporarily held from dissolution. Once through this gateway, one realizes the cities are an interlinked civilization that exists in a much slower version of time than that experienced by those outside of the cryopolises. The fey in the different cities enact a pantomime of different cultures with each fall, and each descent allows them to play out different scenarios of Apocalypse and Ragnarok.

Of course the moment the hail hits the ground is when a city is most advanced, right before the fey reincarnate into the clouds. This leads to an influence on the younger cities, and the continuance of this process results in a continuous transformation and possible evolution of these Seelie.

Note that the fey only realize they have chosen to participate in this game only just before their cities hit the ground, and at the moment the entire population expires. What, exactly, they are doing is an inquiry that only has a hope of being answered in those final days, though the chances of any visitor surviving the impact is incredibly miminal. If one dies, one may find themselves bound to the same cycle of Samsara as the fey.

[What Came Before]

That'd be good in a source book. Though along with some ideas of getting PC's into it (what resources these cities might have that a PC hungers for) and also some method out (if it's truely a seelie experiment, there may be a way out they have rendered themselves blind to (when within the experiment))

[What Came Before]

Good points - these are just brainstorms for the slow but steady Feywild project at Fourth Party.

So it's more throwing things against the wall and seeing what sticks t the moment.

[What Came Before]

Story #42:

Well Wombs of the Warp

Some changelings are made into fey lords, some are used as slaves, some become lovers.

And some are dropped into the Well Wombs.

Within the Warp there are deep wells believed to have been dug and bricked by the oldest of the hags. Within these artifacts, a mortal babe has always been utilized as a focus, allowing the Wells to be used as a means of examining the Past, Present, and Future of the Feywild in its entirety. Warnings, prophecies, and perhaps most importantly insight has been offered by the Wells.

The guarding against schemes that threaten the Courts, the dangers of the Grey Horsemen, the opportunities to determine which worlds might best be absorbed into the realm of the Fairy. All this has been accomplished by the hags and their Wells.

Yet each Well possesses a finicky, mercurial taste in what mortal it wants after the last expires. These mortal babes have varied in range from beasts to humanoids to dragons, each creature a being born in a place where Time is steady and its linear flow rarely disturbed. Dropped into a Well, such infants have only the fungi, mold, and lichen to sustain them. This keeps a mortal alive and allows it to obtain the minimum nutrition necessary to mature. Each being then, over time, bonds to the Well both psychically and physically - a complex network of mycelia is woven through their flesh - and becomes the oracular voice of the Warp's shifting personalities and perspectives.

What the Warp seeks to accomplish by subsuming these stolen mortals into itself is unclear. Perhaps the "Voices of the Warp" are, in fact, individual beings buried deep in the soil of that land.

A few of the hags go out of their way to rescue those infants or eggs that would otherwise perish, while others seek to maximize the suffering of forlorn parents or even when possible the lines of succession, thus throwing nations or empires into disarray.

[What Came Before]

Nihilistic story (contradiction)

Ash swoop, scatter spreading into darkness. Darkness ending. Middling sky, echo of a ghost turns like a pirouetting cloak above dust spun earth. Tiny points of orange light set against deepest black, each so far from the other - even each nimbus lies as to the distance. Swivelling upward, a uncorporate line a jaw, a curved, disparate constellation, a skull. Line parts the further, furthering and there's a piercing second of silence, even as the points of orange light shake with fury. Then like the broken lip sync of a spagetti western, a roar returns the quiet. The bellow of an absurd monster, a godzilla, howling it's still. Monster or caricature...or choice atween, shrieked.

It does not know what will happen next.

[What Came Before]

Sci Story #43

Etrau, The One Who Initiates

A cloak filled with scalpels and piercings and inks for tattoos, bags with all sorts of tools and magic items, locks threaded through rings of ivory and ivory, multiple medicine pouches strung around his neck, all these accessories mark the looming, wiry muscled, bronze skinned fey known as Etrau.

Etrau's irises are rings of liquid silver, those who close enough to look into them see themselves yet those reflections seem somehow more whole. Etrau is native to the depths of the Primungle, yet he is found wandering across Feywild and the Multiverse beyond. Etrau enjoys participating in and officiating over initiatory rituals, and while he sometimes wanders simply to collect such experiences he does spend a good deal of time conducting rituals to connect fey and mortal alike into the mysteries of the Eald.

Etrau is a representation of those proto-narratives that make up the Eald, and as such he seeks to reinvigorate the devotion once held for the shamanic religious experience. Sometimes this means teaching sirens the Songs of Creation, other times it means leading city slickers through vision quests to discover their spirit animals. Etrau turns university hazing into a sacred event, and thus makes the fraternity into a mystery cult. He does the same with other secret societies such as thieves' guilds and mercantile oligarchies.

There are times when new initiates create problems for local authorities by sacrificing animals or robbing graves, but by then Etrau has already wandered into another city, country, world, or plane.

/Story

[What Came Before]

I think these figures, Etrau being the latest, aught to have something that's fucking them sideways. Their just a little bit too much of being in some kind of set order of the universe. Ya know, if they are fucking someone elses lives sideways, if that sidewayification can occur in the universe, how come these characters seem outside of that? Are they of the one true tribe and sidewaysification is just for those not of the one true tribe? If not, they should be just as subject to a bit of fucking over. Or so goes my world/universe structure assuredness!

[What Came Before]

Argh, double posting stories. Ah well.

Thurs -> Story #44:

We followed him. The First Rebel. The one who questioned the Infallible.

Why?

To know ourselves. To find the boundary between us and Him.

To be damned is the only way to be apart from His glory, an absence that is both Nirvana and Hell.

[What Came Before]

Fri -> Story #45:

Waystation of the Cycling Archetypes

You know them by their titles, for titles are truer names than any fleeting life could give them. The Preserver, reborn into the world to conquer demons and tyrants and catastrophe. The Eternal Champion, forever tied to slaughter in the name of Balance and the promise of peace that it offers from a distant horizon. The heroes and villains who die only to  find themselves returned to the world, the lovers who seek to be reunited in Life before Death forces them apart once more. The Bodhisattvas who open the gates to Nirvana. The Avatar, who must master the elements anew with every rebirth.

All of them, willing and unwilling participants in a grand Samsara, a continuous remaking of Story across lifetimes. Yet, for all the burdens they bare, the Multiverse has granted them relief and a chance to commiserate in the grasslands of the Warp, where the blades shift in the wind between emerald green and withered husks cursed by blight or drought. An inn, too large for the gazelle legs that could not support it, resting at a slightly tilted angle on two sets of plinths that make up part of a looming, miles wide circle of standing stones.

Within this place you'll find these varied figures conversing, swinging lovers, and even dueling. Most of them have no fear of repercussions, as they know they'll soon be born once more in some life somewhere in the Multiverse, sent off by the capricious whims of Fate. While this means the crowd tends to get rowdy, discipline is kept by the guards and staff, themselves ghosts of Feywild heroes and villains who will be resurrected when their fellows grow tired of their removal from the currents of Story and demand their return.

[What Came Before]

I think these figures, Etrau being the latest, aught to have something that's fucking them sideways. Their just a little bit too much of being in some kind of set order of the universe. Ya know, if they are fucking someone elses lives sideways, if that sidewayification can occur in the universe, how come these characters seem outside of that? Are they of the one true tribe and sidewaysification is just for those not of the one true tribe? If not, they should be just as subject to a bit of fucking over. Or so goes my world/universe structure assuredness!

Perhaps my partner's ideas of Narrative Time can help with assurances that the Fey do get fucked over:

"Imagine a physical journey through the elements of a story, origin, exposition, rising action, climax, etc etc, by literally riding rivers and rapids, trying to keep on course with a particular genre, or maybe clutching a soaked parchment map while attempting to navigate to a desired ending. Wherever you wind up determines the gains and failures of your life. Maybe there is some sort of special fey type or an unusual NPC that facilitates this, not sure why I envision a stork of some sorts. You only get one ride. People sometimes find their way back and try to swim upriver, but that's a fool's errand, kind of like a Chinese hell of swimming against a current and never getting anywhere, reaching for a moment they'd change but never being able to. Those would be haunted swimmers indeed, who'd live their whole lives in those waters, then become some waterlogged wights after, paddling, kicking, thrashing with a desire stronger than death. Imagine what horrendous demon-beavers dam the flow of stories, flooding waters till stories mingle, creating in their damage bad art, cliffhangers, unfinished tales, etc etc. Think of the miraculous oils that could be derived from the trout mating in the waters of Romance, or the mudskippers in the dark streams Pornography. Old liars might fish in the streams of Tall Tale, their catches are amazing as their yarns (but which may just rip them into the waters and devour them). Parsons could baptize men and women into new genres like religions. Infernal ferryboats might ride up and down the rivers of Parable, in spite of the drowned saints leering up at them, hosting Faustian card games and tossing losers and thieves to drown in the clutches of holy claws.

Narrative Time seems like it could be so many things to so many different fey, and the other races besides. It transcends the Wyld, but it's perhaps its most potent here. I'm not even sure two people see it the same way, never mind how gnomes see it compared to frog-men, compared to demons and dragons."

[What Came Before]

Sat -> Wyld Scarabs

It's unclear whether the Scarabs are precursors to the Fey or a creation of theirs. Scarabs are blue and gold insects the size of a halfling child, with shining humanoid faces where one would expect the mandibles and compound eyes of a beetle. These scavengers are found across the Wyld, feasting on the corpses of fey.

Scarabs begin as similar beings, but quickly grow into individuals as they devour not just the body but the remnants of Narrative that are soaked into a being from skin down to marrow. These changes cause shift in the coloration and size of a scarab, as well as an adoption of new physiques, so that one might be a massive insectoid lupine based on a diet of campfire horror and epic poetry, while another might become a sensual yet preachy Adonis of romance and exegeses.

In time, scarabs end up bursting open and through their death new fey are born in the Wyld. Because of this, many of the Courts recognize the scarabs as hallowed forces of the Wyld that ensure the continuance of Narrative Time. This becomes a problem when the insects come to sentience and come knocking at a particular Court's door.

[What Came Before]

#47 -> Sun:

The Cavern Shadowed Stage

A massive amphitheater with a ceiling of naturally curved stone, whose seats surround a stage the size of a small plateau. The seats and stage have been carved out of a deposit of malachite, and all of these structures glow a faint green rarely seen due to the floating orbs of light that bob over the heads of both actors and audience.

Unseelie from across the Wan come to this place, as do Seelie and members of the Grey Courts. Occasionally, depending on the production, a hag or two from the Warp may be in attendance. The Stage was constructed by Unseelie obsessed with staging the greatest concerts, the grandest operas, and the most emotionally stirring of plays. Thousands of changelings and lesser fey are forced to practice and perform over and over, their endurance bolstered by the same sorcery that manipulates their age and binds them to this place.

In fact, all performers are forced to eek out existences in the Understage, a fungi and crystal lit metropolis of corridors and chasms that extends several levels below the theater. The Unseelie have tied these beings to their roles, making them all addicts of continuous rehearsal. Though the indentured fey are usually aware of it - but even the often dimly - the masters of the Stage continuously manipulate the lives of their charges as they see fit, giving them passion or grief to add some greater verisimilitude to their craft. Because of the need to constantly rearrange the fortunes of these servants and slaves, the Understage itself is a confusing labyrinth, leading from ghettos to mansions without warning.

[What Came Before]

Nihilistic story (contradiction)

Ash swoop, scatter spreading into darkness. Darkness ending. Middling sky, echo of a ghost turns like a pirouetting cloak above dust spun earth. Tiny points of orange light set against deepest black, each so far from the other - even each nimbus lies as to the distance. Swivelling upward, a uncorporate line a jaw, a curved, disparate constellation, a skull. Line parts the further, furthering and there's a piercing second of silence, even as the points of orange light shake with fury. Then like the broken lip sync of a spagetti western, a roar returns the quiet. The bellow of an absurd monster, a godzilla, howling it's still. Monster or caricature...or choice atween, shrieked.

It does not know what will happen next.

I really like the rhythm you've been developing in these stories. I have to admit I'm not 100% sure what happened in this tale though!

[What Came Before]

I really like the rhythm you've been developing in these stories. I have to admit I'm not 100% sure what happened in this tale though!

*cough* That's the thing when I go to spill those nihilistic guts - what can happen? I feel I'd almost have to write and entire world for it to seem even something is happening! The images in my head - there's alot of shrieking...the locales seem merely a stumbling after thought.

Thanks for the kind words, Saajan!