New Frontiers, Part Five

All things come to an end, though the light at the end of the tunnel may not always lead to sanctuary. Discovery–is it worth the price we pay to reach it? That is for each to decide their own selves. As for the Angeion and its crew, we come now to the end of their story, and the revelations it brings…

What have you thought of this glimpse into futures far from realized?

(For Part One, be sure to catch up here. You’ll meet Jake, and learn a little more of what this flight really is…
For Part Two, witness the first threads of the horror Jake now faces aboard the Angeion.
For Part Three, a destination looms far nearer than it should, and the truth emerges: sometimes waking can be a terror greater than any other…
For Part Four, is salvation anything more than a dream?)

New Frontiers

“Give me Jane,” I murmured, watching her through the monitor. I knew not which was her, in truth. All the pods were laid before me, and all watched behind their looking glasses, but I could not see in. “Wake them. Please God wake them.”

The command flashed three times across the screen. Processing. Each time, processing. I hit it. “Wake them.” System failure. I hit it again. “Wake them goddamnit.” I was finding my voice, but the computer was not. Angeion repeated the system failure, big bold red letters emblazoned in my mind.

Then: Non-essential crew decommissioned to preserve power. 4 years, 8 months, 22 days.

Dante And Virgil In Hell by William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1850) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The words hit me like a punch in the stomach. I cursed God and Hell and every saint I could remember, right along with the computer and the company and anyone else I could think of. I screamed my voice hoarse. I beat the screen, tore at another, howled and screeched and stamped my feet as I tried feebly to tear the captain’s chair from its welded binding on the floor. The computer watched, and waited, and the silence listened to the sounds of a grown man breaking, like I was nothing.

This was the mother of the children I had never had. I could picture them at night, sometimes, when I would sleep. They always had her eyes. The woman I had called my own since that first final. Gone, just like that. She wasn’t human. She wasn’t even necessary. Yet somehow, some ungodly way, I supposedly was. These hands, that knew nothing. This mind, that saw nothing. These were necessary. These were “essential.” The system was broken.

That was it then. The screen scrolled a final detail, but it was meaningless. 4 years, 12 months, 19 days operation time. 2400 hours, earth standard. I woke, as we were all supposed to wake. This was the moment of our revival, the time when all the world was supposed to be before us. So it was, but before me, not them. The ship dipped forward into peril, and I could but watch, a broken man, leaned into the emptiness of a chair. I had never seen anything so blue before.

I thought of all the people back home that would never know. My parents, Jane’s parents, our brothers, sisters–they would never know what happened to us. The company would send a letter, one page, detailing how sorry they were, extending their condolences without ever saying anything more than “accident” to state how we had gone. That was their way. It was just as well. When you don’t know, you assume it’s quick. You hope it was quick, because you don’t want to reconcile suffering into your life. It’s bad enough to lose them–you don’t want to put that extra horror into it. It was best to leave them that small mercy. Let them think I had gone to my end with grace and dignity–or quietly in my slumber. The rest. . .well, I didn’t even want to know the rest. It was bad enough living it.

Thus rode the hours on a railway straight to Hell. The stars slipped away into the dark, and inch by inch, this planet rose before me, until it encompassed all that I could see. It had been nothing once, a thought, a dream beyond the edge of knowing–and now it was everything, and I was nothing before it. The computers blinked and screeched in protest. Alarms rattled as the final preparations began. Warning bells, demanding staunch resistance to our own decay. Yet there was only I, and I could do nothing to prevent it.

The cold came, gave way to heat. Lights flickered into dark across the board–only the engines burned, only the bridge remained. The ship lurched to one side as we struck the air–we would not merely drift. The ship was too precisely aimed. All the calculations were in check. It was merely the human factor we were lacking.

Fires flared around the edge of my vision, frost broiling off with bits of steel–wings, frame, mass. Some clattered against the glass and fell away, others became mere blips along the dying monitor, another sound, another memory. We were being devoured by our own ambition, the world itself rising up against us. I saw her in the flames. Dancing. The lovers waltz, two flickers, moving as one amidst the devastation. The glass fragmented as the nose dipped–the resurgence of pressure forced me back into the chair, a puppet caught, pulled taught against his strings. I felt as though my flesh would surely tear itself from my bones, that everything would be torn and burned by the memory of those lovers intertwined, burning into nothing as the air consumed us.

Jane never could dance, and nor could I. We never did learn. I suppose we’d always meant to.

Amidst the pop of blood vessels, the cracking skin and the flaming chill–such fire is this!–I beheld all salvation’s taunts. Through the clouds, the mountains loomed tall and proud, black as night, their caps tipped with the snow of antiquity. I saw all the veins that ran beneath, the rivers and the rock, strength of nations and of notions not before beheld. I saw the foundations she would have loved, the top and the core, all manner of life brimming through the depths of this hallowed unknown. Beneath us swam the rivers and the oceans, the grasses blowing in the wind, stretching beside the sea, growing long beside canyons, the trees. All was glowing emerald life, and sapphire breath, a world of possibility, unknown, unseen by all but me besides.

Before me laid paradise, and I, the first eyes to see it, though they tinged all possibility in scarlet. Behind me laid all the fire and force of Hell, and I brought it burning on that ride, to Heaven. It would die as it had lived, unknowing of the pains to come. They say an asteroid killed the dinosaurs. All in nothing. Nothing but me. I am become Alpha and Omega–the Beginning and the End of Eden. Yet I am Man, just Man.

There is no salvation here.

New Frontiers, Part Four

The Angeion, exploratory vessel, a hope to mankind and a vision of the future. But hope is a frail thing. When the darkness looms, what is it we will remember of the past? How did we get to this impasse?

As ever, feel free to share your thoughts, and enjoy the third part of New Frontiers, a sci-fi short set in the age of space exploration…and an exploration, in and of itself, as to whether a story beaten down by rejection can find new life on the blogosphere.

(For Part One, be sure to catch up here. You’ll meet Jake, and learn a little more of what this flight really is…
For Part Two, witness the first threads of the horror Jake now faces aboard the Angeion.
For Part Three, a destination looms far nearer than it should, and the truth emerges: sometimes waking can be a terror greater than any other…)

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Even worse: I still didn’t know what it meant for the rest.

Beaumont Tower, from Michigan State University.

I thought of college, of all things, in that moment. Technical school–I’m a mechanic, not a doctor. All those eyes on you, watching, scribbling, waiting for the moment you panicked, the moment you crossed the wrong wire or welded the wrong plate. You felt as though the whole world was on your shoulders, and for all the people all around you, it was only you that mattered. You. You. You. One mistake and the world itself would come crashing about your shoulders. Funny, when one is young, how they equate such mundane trials to such great disaster. Funnier still, how easily distracted they are from them.

We undertook large chunks of our real hands-on training up on one of the space stations. It was the best place to get a handle on some real ships. We still spent most of the time on the ground back then, though, where I could easily escape the mundane VR simulations and the classes three hundred thick and find refuge in real life–in the city, and in familiar faces. I thought of coffee shops along the river bank, and Jane, with her mocha and her laptop, my little hipster scientist. That was when she went through her writer phase. To think, then, I thought I would surely go mad without her.

And here I was.

The computer screen blinked back at me, waiting for my next command. The question led to the cause–the ship rumbled gently as it tilted ever so slightly. I thought of asteroids, tiny little asteroids, plowing through the hull in some insignificant spot I’d never see. Little green men pulled at the wires in my mind, damning us all to Hell with their cruel, anti-human intolerance, and all the while smiling like tigers to the kill. Bloody racists.

Perhaps, most elaborately, there came an intricate image of a spy on board, some saboteur that had been paid off. As I’ve said, I prided myself a logical man. That one went away quickly. After all, for such a man to willingly tamper with the ship in such a way was to damn himself as well. Then again, there were kamikazes. There were suicide bombers. Was this so different? Pay a man enough, or threaten the right people, promise the right things. . .he’d do anything. People didn’t wage war anymore. They stabbed one another in the dark, their battles of the shadows in the grimy halls of corporate espionage. I shifted in my seat, loathe to think of any of my colleagues in such a light.

Little green jerks. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’d have rather it be the aliens.

Yet it wasn’t any of those things. The ship brought up the schematics, showed me the time card that told exactly when and how it had happened.

Something had caused a power surge, simple as that. A circuit shorted, breakers tripped, the ship flickered into dark, and rebooted itself. The ship lurched, time held itself. Locked in our chambers, we never knew a thing. Still, the auto pilot rebooted. The surge passed. Yet in its wake, some of the rebooted systems didn’t actually reboot. Wires had fried, something had blown out in electrical. Chang would’ve known what to do. He was the computers expert. I was a novice at it. Hull work, the physical stuff–that was my end of things.

The numbers flashed at me again: 4 years, 2 months, 7 days operation time. 1600 hours. The moment of my waking.

Following procedure, the ship ran a system analysis and had attempted to wake essential crew. The command was issued first to the captain, then the first mate, then to me. But the surge had corrupted something in the system. It didn’t come back right–it didn’t come back all together. The system malfunctioned. Power faltered. Some of the pods hadn’t come back online. The captain’s was among them.

It got to Kate’s–but for whatever reason, that had led to her death, rather than her salvation. The ship couldn’t tell me why. The date repeated itself.

But that wasn’t right. If we had woken at the same time, there was no way. . .

I checked the time stamp. A chill prickled along my arms, ran down my spine. My shaved head bristled. 4 years, 12 months, 19 days operation time. 2400 hours, earth standard. Ten months had passed between waking procedures and the time I had actually woken. It hadn’t reached me, then. For some reason, I had remained trapped but alive, caught within the coldsleep, the computer unable to reach me. Yet it had reached Kate. Her door jammed. Or something gave out. But she was stuck, one way or another. She had woken, only to die–and God help me, I thought of her face, her once rosy face, and God I knew, that she had woken, only to starve to death in that steel coffin, trying to claw her way out of her own tomb. It had killed her in trying to wake her, to save us.

Why hadn’t it woken anyone else? Why not me? Why didn’t I wake? Why did some systems restore, others not?

The breaths came on, quicker and quicker. I was hyperventilating. My head spun. Ten months we had been on reserves. Ten months the ship had staggered toward its destination, hemorrhaging power, crippled, with no one to aid it. No wonder it was going dark–and as I watched, another section of the ship did just that. The cold stemmed from the heaters no longer having the energy or the need to continue on.

“Manual distance entered. Auto pilot disengaged. Captain and nav-i-gation officer requested on the bridge.”

Would I die as Kate had, locked around the orbit of a planet that I had no hope of reaching? I remained, like a gargoyle, locked to that chair. I had no idea what I was doing.

The computer scrolled on.

Non-essential systems deactivated to preserve power. 4 years, 5 months, 25 days.

Food storage. Primary lighting. Various programs the computer kept running. Heat, in some areas. Terminals powered off, functions diverted to main drives. Power was centered in the bridge.

I could not take the ship in on my own. I did not know how. I had never flown a spacecraft in my life, let alone navigated one, or landed one, or even learned the technicals of doing so. I could build them. I could give them life, give them the possibility of flight–but I could not make them do so. Without the others, there could be nothing. We would either die, caught among an endless drift, or plummet into the atmosphere of that which we had come to find, and burn in the midst of our discovery. I did not know how to work the heat shields.

I turned from the list, redirected the ship to the place of my rebirth. The commands scrolled out, the release was given. Wake them. I wanted to wake them all, to send me someone, anyone that could tell me what to do. It flickered, waited. Flickered, waited. No response.

Then: critical power loss. Vessel preservation mandated. Essential status revoked. Crew members Valdez, Torine, Chang, decommissioned for preservation of power. Reserve power redistributed. No response from remaining crew. 4 years, 11 months, 12 days.

Revoked.

Decommissioned.

Like one might talk to a machine. The words wrapped around my mind, bound up in a single, overwhelming presence, but I could not look at them. Just like that, the computer decided that rather than wake them, it would end them. People I had worked with years on end. People that knew Kate, people that knew Jane. I knew their kids. Their families. Chang had gotten us our first bloody apartment.

But the computer decided that in the face of certain doom, they were no longer “essential.” Yet others of us were. It ranked us. Some men were more important than others. It ranked us. The company ranked us. Were we numbers? Draw your straw, take your pick–don’t fret if you pull up short. You’re only human, after all.

Medical Officer. Ship Security. Technical Maintenance. One by one. Kate was dead. So was the Captain. Plug’s pulled early–you don’t ever wake. The heart, stopped, merely sags in the warmth, and the body decays. If you’re in the pod, it’ll still preserve you, perfect, like a mummy. But you’re dead. Were they all dead, than?

“Clarke, unresponsive. Dewallte, unresponsive. Dieters, unresponsive. Kalman. . . ”

Wedding ring. Photograph taken by CLW and released into public domain. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I stared at death, and it stared back at me. It looked remarkably like my wife, even smiling as it took me by the hand, and behind it–the planet, this perfect sapphire on the necklace of her dominance.

“Jane. . . ”

The screen paused, mid-sentence. I typed and redirected it to the starboard cryochambers. I activated the camera, diverted power. I entered the command to wake them all. Deactivate the sleep. Give me life.

“Give me Jane,” I murmured, watching her through the monitor.

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New Frontiers, Part Three

Prometheus-logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Angeion, exploratory vessel, a hope to mankind and a vision of the future. But hope is a frail thing. Especially when there are so many little parts, all delicately woven together, on which it rides. It’s never easy when it’s not your hands at the wheel, is it?

As ever, feel free to share your thoughts, and enjoy the third part of New Frontiers, a sci-fi short set in the age of space exploration…and an exploration, in an of itself, as to whether a story beaten down by rejection can find new life on the blogosphere.

(In case you missed Part One of the story, be sure to catch up here. You’ll meet Jake, and learn a little more of what this flight really is… Likewise, if you missed Part Two, witness the first threads of the horror Jake now faces aboard the Angeion. Though my guess would be from the words “critical system error,” you can already put a few of the pieces together.)

New Frontiers

“A-pol-o-gies. Critical system err-or. Analysis denied. Chief Engineer Jake Felv-min woken at 4 years, 2 months, 7 days mission operation time for analysis and repair operations. 1600 hours. All personnel are directed to the bridge.”

Attempts to access other information were met with similar results. Access from the medical terminal was denied–for some reason, it couldn’t reach the information on the main drives. I was as in the dark as I had been before, only as I struggled with the machine, another rude awakening asserted itself.

Afraid of the dark? (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“Power levels, critical. System shutting down to preserve power. All personnel are advised to evacuate medic. . . .”

I roared my frustration, striking the monitor to no avail. The lights flickered, went dark. The monitor was following quickly after. Forcibly shaken from my senseless rage, I sprang for the doors in a new-found panic. If the bay was shutting down, the doors would lose power as well. If that happened, I would be trapped. Indefinitely. Just as Kate had been.

The doors slid half-open for me, but puttered out there, and I had to squeeze through them, hoping all the while the hydraulic catches didn’t give, and send them slamming shut again with me between them. Several hundred pounds of solid steel force carving through my precious flesh did not sound particularly appetizing.

Slithering from the medbay, I found myself among the eerily silent crew quarters. I was completely blind, but I knew the room. Reminding myself to breathe slowly, I felt my way to the lockers. I groped at them until one opened, and I pillaged it for anything I could. A flashlight was among my finds, and I quickly put it to use. When light greeted my eyes again, I saw that it was Ronesey’s locker. He never could remember to lock up. I said a silent prayer for small favors.

It choked on my tongue as my light swept the room.

Bunks lay straight, empty, though pictures of loved ones hung from walls and bunks and scattered among other mementos that lined the sheets. It wasn’t regulation, but we never cared. The lights didn’t turn on for me here, and I felt the cold all the more deeply then I had before–but still I lingered, caught by my humanity. It pulled me on, like a puppet on its strings.

An old Maxim poster–Tony’s, no doubt.

A picture of the husband–35^th anniversary for Chang. A bottle of wine was in either man’s hand. Bright smiles denied all knowledge of what was yet to come. Chang’s husband was dead. He was here. I did not know what that meant.

Then I saw Kate. Brown hair, blue eyes, smile so wide you knew she was faking it, but no one could doubt the look she was showering on her kids. One at either arm, perched between her. Nine and seven, respectively. In the background, her husband flipping burgers–what was his name? It seemed a terrible thing to forget. Ben, maybe. The kids were in college now. That was the only reason she took this flight. Dan? They didn’t need her, but she needed the money, and she always wanted to see new stars. Denny–that was it. They had a fuller life than I.

The picture clung to her bunk. X marks the spot. Here be treasure. There be dragons. I recoiled from it, shaking my head as I tried to reconcile myself to the darkness. A door lay at either side of the room. I moved to the right, stepping around and away from her bunk, evading my own, trying to slip out and away from the madness of memory.

No response. I tried the keypad–nothing. Not even a whir. The door was as dead as dead could be. I ran to the other, tried again. It didn’t heed my voice, but the pad at its side slowly stirred at my touch. It was sluggish, like it had just been woken. It was dying. I worked quickly. The doors slid casually open, and I fled through them, not into the light I hoped for.

“Auxiliary engines offline. Final approach–approach vectors confirmed.”

That stopped me in my tracks. The words jumbled in my mind. I had to reconcile them. Approach vectors? What in the hell were we approaching? My mind fled with the details–four years. Not five. We couldn’t be at the planet yet, could we? Not possible. Four years, though–what did that mean? What had happened? I hadn’t seen any hull breaches. Given, there were rooms to either side of me I did not check–did not feel I had the time to check–but there were no signs of rupture. It seemed to me there would be signs. Things rattled. Items lost. Doors sealed by the bulkheads. Yet, everything was in its place. Only I was out of place–the living man, wandering through a tomb. Idly, I rubbed at the ring on my left hand, weighted myself with the gold.

If it woke me specifically, it was something ship-related. Not pirates. Not invasion. That wasn’t my area. Not any of our areas, really but–the Captain. It would’ve woken him for that. I panicked. Why was I standing? It was nonsense debating with myself. I ran on, the doors flashing by me as I ran, each a seeming porthole to a new and terrible hell.

Then the doors reared up before me. I feared, for a moment, that they would not bear open to me, but they, like so many others had failed to do, slid open at the barest sound of my voice. The thick, welded blast doors drew open with a little pop, as the all-too casual voice of the computer slid over the P.A.

“Welcome, Chief En-gineer Jake. Felv-min.”

It was as though I had entered a different world. Whereas the other sections of the ship were faltering and falling into darkness, the bridge remained the picture of health. All systems were go. The monitors flickered at me, one after another, beckoning me with promises of salvation. The lights came to full at my entry, though they remained the lucid white of the back-up generator.

What’s more: the viewport was open, and beyond it I perceived the impossible. Layers of glass gave way to the perfect blackness of space, but the view, and the ship, were centered upon a single point within that imperceptible darkness, a green and blue mass rising up before all the stars in heaven, and baring itself before our great intrusion. It grew, larger and larger before my eyes, and I could see that we were nearly to the atmosphere. That which we had come to seek now lay before me–final approach vectors indeed.

Jane would love it. It looked, from afar, every bit the vision of earth still lodged within my mind. I could see her there, with me, sleeping on the beach or picking rocks along the mountain base. She loved her rocks. It was her job, her life–the geologist. She made more than I did doing it, and she loved her job more than I could ever love my own.

She would pick this planet over, top to bottom, and squeal at all the signs of something new–or something old, long ago lost to harvesters on earth, praised by collectors a galaxy away. I would take bits of rock from her at her request, turning them over in my hand as she explained every nook and cranny, every subtle shift and turn of pace. . .and I would never know the difference, but still I would smile, and take her by the hand, and, listening to her stories, enjoy the world as only her eyes could see it.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Yet there was no one else to share this moment with me. On a deck that usually bustled, I was alone, but for the machines that had failed to do their part. I flung myself at the captain’s chair, my steps pounding out along the steel, echoing dimly in these hollow halls. The machines whirred for me; the computer came to life. I plunged into the seat and already it knew–knew who I was.

“Angeion, status report.”

The screen blinked once and windows on it folded into one another, reasserting themselves a moment later in a haze of red numeric calculations, arrayed against a black screen. The typing came on too fast for me to read, but the ship’s voice billowed forth just after, uttering the fate my eyes could not behold. A technical readout of the ship appeared along with it, the familiar red highlights illuminating disaster. Much of the ship now glowed as such, coarse and dark, like blood smeared across my home. My fingers dribbled across the screen, and it glowed beneath me, brimming hot against my skin.

Fuel levels were normal. There were no signs of trauma to the exterior of the ship. Physically, the Angeion was as it had always been: the model vessel, devoid of error. Yet internally, the ship was hemorrhaging. Power was out across the ship. The main supply was cut, gone. Reserves had been running for God-knows how long, and now that, too, was running out. Non-essential systems all over the ship had been disabled to preserve power, but that didn’t make any sense. Even supposing we had run out of primary power, the reserves should have been more than enough to carry us through to point without trouble. If I had only now been woken to deal with the problem, no error should have been so great as to so deplete us in a matter of hours, or minutes.

This wasn’t right at all, and now I knew what wasn’t right–but I still didn’t know why.

Even worse: I still didn’t know what it meant for the rest.

(BONUS: Extra credit to the person that can tell the class what Angeion means, without looking it up online!)

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New Frontiers, Part Two

What is the nature of a nightmare? How do we escape when we cannot wake? The real world is filled with its own fair share, as our gruff protagonist is soon to realize. What do you think is wrong aboard the Angeion? Feel free to share your thoughts, and enjoy the second part of New Frontiers, a sci-fi short set in the age of space exploration…

(In case you missed Part One of the story, be sure to catch up here. You’ll meet Jake, and see a little more of what this flight really is…)

New Frontiers

Floatation Tank (Photo credit: cybrgrl)

Disconcerting, very disconcerting.

I drummed along the glass, rapped more heavily at the base, listening to the dull hollow it beckoned from within. I could have screamed my lungs out and the man would have never heard me. I saw the man—my friend—watched his featureless face stare blankly back at me, but my mind drifted.

I saw him, but my thoughts turned to my wife, Jane, a ship’s length away. If the power was out here would it be…? The nonessential crew were housed at the other side of the ship, out of our way. That could mean their salvation. Silently, I prayed that this was just a local short. My eyes tugged a little more fiercely toward the door, but I forced focus. There were more than just the captain here.

I tried the science officer’s pad, but it was as dead as the captain’s. The short little fat man looked on and on, past me and into the darkness. I tried Ronesey’s—another of the mechanics—but no luck. Then I moved to the first mate’s.

Behind the frost stood an image of such abject horror I felt the empty contents of my stomach churn at the sight. Unlike the others, Kate was not passive in her slumber. Her face, her perfectly preserved face, had slunk against the viewport of her pod, her hands, like claws, set to tear upon the glass, and finding no leverage to make their mark. Her eyes, frosted over now, were bloodshot, wild, but half-lidded as though with great weariness. Her body had shrunken since she went in, the skin shriveled. She was an emaciated figure, more skeleton than woman—and she was staring back at me, pleading to me in her silent end.

She had woken, at some point, and by all accounts, it looked as if she had…starved to death in her pod. I felt the reflux burn at the base of my throat, and I flinched away. The computer had tried to wake her, or the process had been disrupted somehow—but the door, the door should’ve opened for her, as it had opened for me.

What if I…?

The implications to that were sickening all over again. Kate had died trying to claw her way out of what had become her cell, and died horrifically in the effort. This skeletal creature was not the woman I knew, and now, never would be again.

I fled. The lights sniggered out behind me. The door still opened automatically for me, and I thought, dimly, at the impossibility of this venture if any of them had lost power as well. The doors were designed to contain blasts, halt fires and completely seal off one area of the ship from another. They were a good six inches thick, and if they were barred to me I held no hope of opening them.

I don’t know how long I ran. I was still winded from my time in slumber, my body out of shape from lack of movement. I suspect it was not far. Yet I had to get out. That was the only drive. The only thought. I couldn’t look at that face—those faces of people I had known, laughed with, shared a brew or a meal with for the better part of the last two decades. They were good people. They had families.

Oh God, the children—Kate’s children. I felt my stomach heave again. What would they do now?

When I found myself again, I was huddled in the hallway, beneath the flickering lights. The path I had taken was dark now—the lights shut off automatically as I moved out from under them, to conserve energy. I stood in a narrow spotlight, ringed by darkness on all sides. What was familiar seemed alien, distant, and not a sound rose to break the monotony of it. I breathed, tried to steady myself.

I might have gone to Jane. My fears demanded it—that I go check on my wife, confirm how localized this disaster was. The loss of my friends was tragedy, the loss of her would be…irredeemable. Yet my fears also stayed me. The problem, I reasoned—I needed to fix the problem before anything else. The longer it was left to fester, the more trouble we could all be in. If I didn’t look, if I didn’t see, my fears remained, but so too did hope. If I didn’t go, I didn’t have to face my nightmares.

Besides, the nonessentials had mechanics and techs of their own. If I could get to Angeion’s controls and initiate defrost I could potentially still find the help I needed.

I needed to get to the bridge.

Yet I never realized how foreboding a place the Angeion could be. In the light, it was all white walls, illegal posters, clean, sterile floors. In the darkness, it was menacing, a roving shadow, full of twists and turns—a maze of frosty tigers, loitering just at the edge of my vision. The automatic lights illuminated my steps, but everything beyond was darkness. The grates, though symmetrically sound and designed toward a graceful, balanced flow, now tripped me up and clung at my legs, like slavering monsters reaching up from the sewers of my terror.

Behind each corner, there were faces—the faces of the crew. Captain. Kate. Even Jane. Silent, watching, reaching out to me—gone. Too much too soon. The mind wasn’t meant to take such things in stride. I had to focus. The walls rose up around me and slid off into the darkness, and I, following as a blind man feeling his way into that familiar sanctuary, slid off after them, retracing my memories to find my hopes.

Fortunately for my ailing mind, the ship design was simple enough. All roads led to the control, and all roads led back. They intersected at numerous points, but there were no senseless cutoffs, no architectural faux pas to slip me up. As long as I kept moving forward, I would get where I needed.

I needed to get to the bridge. Both of the cold chambers were near the stern, where some vessels kept their escape pods. I laughed at that. Most advanced vessel in known space, and the bloody thing couldn’t spring for those. Pointless, really. The ship was built to spring forth man into the great dark unknown—the kind of space where, if anything goes wrong, you bet your ass no one would ever get to you in time to help.

That’s the point.

This was the charter, the exploration, the new frontier. We die, simple enough: that means the place is a no-go. Bad for business. Bad for the company economically, but they took the hit, and they moved on. That was how business worked.

We may have been astronauts, scientists, and godforsaken mechanics, but Christ alive, you better believe we were businessmen too, hats aside.

We were just the ones they sent out to chart new space, mark planets—find new places to strip mine, or if we’re lucky, new homes to populate. Those were rare. The rarest. Hundreds of years since man first reached the stars, and all we’d ever found were two others, like enough to earth. Potentially a third now, if the probes were right. That’s why we were out here.

Out here—no, there was no escape. To jam that false bit of hope onto the tug would’ve been nothing but a drain on energy, and a drain on cost. You screw up out here, you’re dead. Simple enough. No point holding out hope for redemption.

The words were true enough in my mind, but in that moment, they twisted about my stomach like a knot. They were bitter on my tongue—and as I stumbled into the med bay, I had to wonder if the flickers didn’t already mean the end.

I saw Kate’s face again. Wasted thing.

Monitor (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A monitor flashed as I stepped into this new room, however, in contrast to the shadowed horror of the halls beyond. I rushed it, the barest glimmer the brightest light in mine own eye. My fingers ran the monitor as lovers might embrace after years apart—as I would embrace my wife again—and the screen turned for me, brightened, came to life. The monitor shone white, so hotly it burned my eyes, but I stared anyways, in drunken joy, watching as it twisted from its blank, flickering repetition—“System Error”—to the login. The details flowed easily enough, and the words rolled across the screen, then disappeared, and all the knowledge of Angeion’s universe appeared at my command.

“Welcome. Jake. Felv-min. Chief. En-gi-neer,” the bodiless voice intoned, welcoming me back to life with its vacant, docile expression.

I wasted no time. Immediately, I ordered up the analysis of the ship—the reasons for why I had been awakened. It retreated into itself to find my purpose, and came back quickly enough.

“A-pol-o-gies. Critical system err-or. Analysis denied. Chief Engineer Jake Felv-min woken at 4 years, 2 months, 7 days mission operation time for analysis and repair operations. 1600 hours. All personnel are directed to the bridge.”

Related articles

• New Frontiers, Part One (cianphelan.wordpress.com)

New Frontiers, Part One

Welcome to the future of privatized exploration!

Space Shuttle Endeavour. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Dear God, take off your red shirts, people, we’re about to hit the space front. “New Frontiers,” presented in the first of five (count them, 5) 1500 word segments to come over the next few weeks (why, probably five weeks to be exact–what a crazy random happenstance, no?) is a sci-fi short first penned in early 2010. It has, since, made the rounds of the literary front, and been met by the wall of rejection on every front. As such, I’ve chosen to fore go those continued rounds, and make the whole story available (in segments) here on the Waking Den, for you to take and enjoy or loathe at your leisure.

Critique is welcome. Thoughts are craved. But your enjoyment is what is most desired. So without further adieu…

New Frontiers

Some people don’t dream in cold-sleep. They’re the lucky ones, I think. Long as I’ve been flying I’ve had the nightmares. I could sleep for days just fine in my own bed, but you stick me in one of those metal monstrosities and it’s a freaking guarantee my subconscious is going to have a field day with me. Captive audience, you know—it’s not like I’m going anywhere.

The bits and pieces are dissembled, hazy. I see myself running, and it looks at first like I’m hunting. Deer, maybe. They look like animals but they’ve got the faces of all the people I left behind; all the people that should be rising with me about now. It looks like I’m chasing them, but they don’t seem afraid, and they never get any nearer.

This tiger, though, keeps chasing me. Isn’t that the damndest? Doesn’t even make sense. Never seen a tiger that wasn’t in a zoo or on TV. Guess they stuck with me though. There sure as Hell aren’t any tigers between the stars.

Still, I try to hide, I try to shoot at him, but I never manage to hit him. I can’t even rightly see him, but on he comes—I know it, in that way only hunters and dreamers can know, just as I know beyond all reasonable doubt for no reason that it’s a he. It’s always a he.

I’m running and running and he’s getting closer. I’m screaming at the top of my lungs for anyone to help, but then the trees themselves seem to rise up against me, and the vines grab at me, and this thing—this monster, it just tears into me like I’m a four course buffet and he’s the fat man the waiters have kept waiting for four freaking hours waiting for a reservation.

That was the first thing that popped into my head as the glass lifted, and the fog with it. I groaned as I woke.

I’ve always wondered why I never screamed. Just kind of a silent, grumbled resolution to my fate. I knew it getting in. They trained me to make sure the ship’s in running order. A dozen, a hundred people—but in this case, just fifty—depended on whether or not I did right by my calculations. With pressure like that, a few bad dreams are the least of my troubles. If I couldn’t handle them, I should’ve gotten in a different line of work years ago. It’s not like space is the only place for a good mechanic.

Wiping at the migraine the waking process always left me with, I wobbled, naked, into a sitting position. I gave it a few moments before I dared stand. A friend of mine once split his head on an overhead getting up too soon. Fifteen stitches, and mid-flight, too. Not exactly my idea of a picnic.

The floor was cold as my feet touched the ground. I could feel the ship’s metal sucking the heat out of my feet even through the smooth tile. No grass. No tigers. That was my first thought as I emerged from my cocoon. Yet it wasn’t just the floor—the air was cold. I blinked away the final chains of sleep, shaking the stiffness from my joints as I slapped a bit of blood back into my cheeks. I shivered a bit, but that was natural. Spend five years locked in a 7 by 3 refrigerator specifically designed to leave you with all the countenance of a popsicle and a little chill seems appropriate.

My clothes were in the locker across from my cocoon. Everybody had one. Standard issue. I gathered them up and put them on—also standard issue: a full-length baby blue jumpsuit with a pair of boots and a spiffy baseball cap with the TASRE logo on the front. Technically, I suppose, we’re all employees of the SENCOR Group, but the government technically is a part of this still and technically it’s their name on my paycheck so they won the honor of the cap.

Besides, I think it sounds better saying I work for the government than the guys currently getting sued by three different countries for anti-trust violations and employment of illegal labor.

SVG version of PNG Space Shuttle Logo/Patch. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Given, I couldn’t imagine what it would’ve been like to try and fly without SENCOR. The government just didn’t have the dollars, either to pay for the machines or to buy the minds that SENCOR could. TASRE—the Trans-national Administration for Space Research and Exploration—was a mostly bankrupt institution, there as much for show as anything else. It couldn’t meet costs, so private enterprise did the work. It had been that way for more than a hundred years. That was fact. I didn’t understand the people that still griped about it.

Speaking as the man who has to fix these buckets of bolts: do they want us all flying inferior machines that can’t pay for their own repairs? Love or hate the company—they’re the only way we’d ever get off the ground.

Drama. It’s what’s for breakfast—but all I could think about, all I could dream about, was coffee. Sweet, delicious coffee. That, and getting to it before anyone else. I shambled over to the machine we’d set up before we went under, plugged her in and fiddled with the grounds, set a pot to boil. It didn’t even occur to me that no one fought me for the right.

Modern medicine had extended the average human lifespan to about 120 years. We had ships that could crack apart asteroids and small moons to suck out the rich, mineral filling within. Yet I still had to brew my own goddamn coffee. Where’s the justice in that, I ask?

Only slowly did the silence creep into my awareness. So at home had I been with it, lo these many months, that its assault was a subtle sort of insidious. It was a tingle on my neck, a spreading numbness, sharp, that wormed its way between my shoulder blades and plucked me like a chicken. Waiting for my coffee I realized it, that concrete feeling of nothingness—the absence of motion, of sound, even smell. In the void, I twisted and found my pre-conceived world devoid.

I was the only member of the crew awakened from their cocoons. For that matter, I was the only person awake at all. Likely, that meant there was a little mechanical problem somewhere onboard the ship. No need to wake the others when I was the only one able to do a thing about it.

No one was to wake alone, though. Standard operating procedure guaranteed that even in my single-purpose waking, the captain and the first mate should have woken with me. They did not, and I knew it—their pods were right next to mine. Coffee forgotten, I wandered toward the cocoons, only lately aware of how pervasive the chill was, and how it clung, remorselessly. I began to feel a pinch of unnerve, for all my efforts to ward it off.

That could have meant a malfunction in the pods themselves, or the ship’s primitive “A.I.” Artificial intelligence was a little much to describe it, but there was no better way. It was just a computer that ran processes while we slept. An over-glorified auto-pilot, nothing more, though some putz had given the machine a voice.

I knew some people that might have immediately jumped to the conclusion of a crazed, bloodthirsty uprising of robotic proportions at the heart of this particular terror. Being a sensible man, I didn’t even entertain the thought.

A thick pool of white mist remained wrapped around the bottom of the pods. I ran my fingers along the glass, trying to peer inside. I went to the captain first, wiped away the frost that hid him from me. Eyes closed, he slept soundly still, or seemed to, white-faced, gone. I pressed the pad alongside his pod, trying to utilize the manual release. It made no sound of recognition, no sign that it drew life either. It was cold, and that was beginning to become a little disconcerting.

“Angeion,” I called, hoarsely at first, not realizing the state of my own deteriorated voice. The second time it came more clearly. “Initiate defrost on the captain…get him up.”

Silence. Even more disconcerting. I repeated myself, but the response from the computer was the same. Angeion gave me nothing, nor any sign she ran at all. The only sign that anything functioned at all was the gentle, yet somehow not reassuring flicker of the lights overhead, which, I noted, had dimmed since my own departure from the pod. Furthermore, they weren’t the yellow-gold lights that marked the day-to-day operations. Everything was basked in a bitter white luminescence, shallow, pale—the emergency lights. The backups.

Things were worse than I’d assumed, then. That could explain Angeion’s lack of contact. If the system had gone down, we might need one of the techies up and running to get her up and running. If she was down that would be an impossibility—and that logic applied to my waking as well, meaning that she couldn’t be down. Greatly reduced in power, perhaps.

Disconcerting, very disconcerting.

Inside Idasia: Vashra (Religion, Part 2)

When last we left our insipid heroes…

Wait, wait, I have that all wrong.

What I mean to say is, when last we left our discussion of faith under the banner of Idasian intricacies—humble, god-fearing folk that we are—I spoke of the two most prominent faiths on the face of the continent Marindis: the Visaj, and the reformer Farrens. We talked of rings (cue quips of “one ring to rule them all” and “One does not simply walk into Walmart…” Yes, yes, you’re all very witty, and I know it’s what you were thinking), and war, touched even briefly on the notion of blasphemy.

Which, mind you, is always a fun bit to prod in writing. Everybody has their own notion of blasphemy, after all, and it’s just such a fun word to say. Not as fun as shouting “Burn in righteous fire,” of course, but we can’t all be torch-wielding mobs…

…yet.

We humans have had some eh…rather disturbing periods. Persecution of witches. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

But I digress. This week, we continue the religion-minded train of thought with a wheel to the southern heat, where the scorching jungles of all Holy and all mysterious Zutam lie. While faith marks the cornerstone of most medieval cultures, the Zuti are curious even by these standards, for theirs is an Empire governed by the spiritual—and yet, at once, deprived of the fanaticism oft-seen within the boundaries of Marindis.

Hot, wet, and sprawling. Hurrah for the jungle. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Holy Empire of Zutam, which has come to encompass an entire continent (as a consequence now also called Zutam), and begun to press even into Marindi lands, follows the path of Vashra. They follow no gods, nor do they believe in an afterlife, per say.  Instead they follow spirits—the embodiments of all things, less personalities in their own right and more facets of the world given name. Ancestors, too, are often looked to for advice, or aid—but they are not worshiped. For in Vashra, all creatures are equal in spirit, living or dead. Even Uhnashanti–”the greatest one”– who birthed and protects both man and the world alike, is not heralded as a god; merely a piece of the universe that surrendered his self to give the masses form.

Death, for the Vashran, leads only to a joining of the spirit with the soil. The shackles that form the flesh are removed, and the spirit roams free at last, at peace with those around it. Life, to them, is the teaching, and the learning—the path that allows our minds to open to the fullness of the world. This is the reason life, in their tongue, is called “kujifunza”—learning.

Though they take the emperor of Zutam to be their holiest figure, Vashran do not see him as descended from the gods, or the spirits, or even a god himself, as some cultures might. Rather, the emperor of Zutam is expected to be the most enlightened figure—the guiding light, as it were. He is revered as such. Unfortunately, this also means that for those emperors proven to be reckless, and lecherous, and cruel, there has been plenty of precedent for removal. Historically, this has often enough ended in a fiery coup, culminating in the elimination of much (if not all) of the reigning royal family.

One could never say Zutam is not a turbulent place.

Various sects exist within Vashra, of course, owing to its essentially polytheistic routes. Numerous shrines litter the empire, in fact, dedicated to spirits of fire, and water, or even to the great mother spirit itself—the earth. Though some are more militant than others, as the equality of these sects is preached almost from birth, there are few squabbles between them—though human nature of course makes some conflict inevitable.

Vashran believe the followers of Visaj, as well as the Farrens (a distinction of religion lost on them, by the way), to be something of misguided children, rather than outright heretics. While their path is no less valid than Vashra itself, it is the methods of its pursuit the Vashran frown upon: the praising of idols, the constant in-fighting, the forcible conversions. Faith as they see it is a matter of the individual—a stark contrast to the Visaji belief in the oneness of society.

If there were any one symbol of the Vashran—beyond the Emperor himself, of course—it would likely be the dream catcher. For the Vashran hold the dream realm above all others—a place where the mind is free to roam, and the spirit is able to break its bonds with the chaining flesh, however temporarily. Dream catchers and the “sterre spice”—a potent drug often used by shamans to induce deep and hypnotic slumbers—are, as such, some of the most spiritual assets at their disposal.

Related articles

• Inside Idasia: The Magic of Lecura (cianphelan.wordpress.com)
• The Culture of the Western Sea (spiritsofeden.com)
• A Conversation With Novelist Saladin Ahmed About Muslim Fantasy, Transcending Tropes and Writing Women (thinkprogress.org)

Inside Idasia: The Magic of Lecura

Magic, as they say, is often the difference between a wild sci-fi adventure, and a fantasy one.

The world of Lecura, in true fantasy form, has its share of the magical, though it’s somewhat different from what you might call “traditional” fare. Of course that’s something of a misnomer, as nearly all the great fantasies have their own unique marks on the magical realm, their own guiding principles and laws that truly lend that awe-striking element to the show (as seen on io9′s fantastic chart).

So what I mean to say is that for The Hollow March and its sequels, magic is not a “normal” affair. For the people and the world of these books, it is not commonplace or widespread knowledge. It is rare, it is scorned, it is terribly self-destructive, and it is bound by one of the most concrete principles of our own world’s precious science.

It is, however, an art learned (in most instances)–not an inherited trait. So let’s learn, shall we?

To begin, the magic of Lecura is based upon the concept of transfer, much as we often credit to alchemy today. Powerful as the stuff may be, matter can neither be created nor destroyed therein—merely manipulated, merely affected.

Take Usuri’s interaction with the overly-affectionate soldier in the opening chapter of The Hollow March. Therein, she puts her lips to the man and twists dark magic upon his very innards.

How?

Well first of all, she had a connection to the man. Skin met skin. Saliva met saliva. From there, it was merely a matter of manipulating that bond. He was the catalyst, and she took the man’s saliva—the very water of him—and simply edited its state, freezing it solid and killing him utterly.

Warning: not party friendly.

See, that whole water into wine thing? Much safer. Also tastier. (Image: Fire campfire by Titus Tscharntke)

In the same vein, I could hurl dirt to the wind and set its bits ablaze. I could take the same dirt in hand, rub its weight upon my skin, and let it color me dark as the mud beneath my feet. In theory, I could even pull a Jesus, and step upon the waves.

So long as I have a connection, I can work change upon it.

But could I kill outright? Could I touch a man and order him to death? The disturbing fact to consider is that yes, yes I could—but to kill outright is somewhat different from mere manipulation. It is a force of will—the forcing of things into their antithetical position: to render being unto death. All the ingredients are there, of course, but it is not so simple a manipulation as others. You cannot take without giving, and as this is rather distinctly a taking, it requires an equal trade to see it done.

Yes, I could kill a man, true, but I would have to sacrifice myself in the process. A life for a death.

See what I meant about alchemy?

That’s why the round-abouts are so important. Take the dirt I set afire. I could cast it on a man and he would die, writhing in flame, without any sacrifice of my own required. Why, you ask? Because it was the fire that killed him. Not me. I did not will him unto death. I set the dirt aflame and the flames burned him down.

Big or small, though, the change requires some fuel for the flame. Though all magic drains the body, the most potent of these works drains the soul as well. As I posited before—to kill a man outright, with touch and breath, would take the same sacrifice of the self. Yet to spark a flame on dirt would also take sacrifice—though at a much lesser extent. A spark for a spark as it were—a few moments’ pain, or a week’s. It all depends upon the size of the action worked.

Once upon a time, the magical of the world would track precisely how many years of their own lives they had shaved off their own lives using themselves as catalyst and ingredient.

Terrifying, and more than a little masochistic, to be sure.

Okay, okay, so sorcerers can probably get a little emo at times. ("emo/scene", Image by Wikipedia)

What makes the art truly terrifying, however, is that one can work it from afar. So long as I possess a piece of a person, or a place, I can work my will upon it, though we could be miles apart.

Perhaps the best way to lend the concept visual in the mind’s eyes would be to compare it to the overly simple western (mis-)interpretation of Voodoo, dolls and all. Say I held a doll. Say I wished to hurt a man with the doll, a hundred miles from my door. Well, the doll in and of itself bears no connection to the man, even if it is a rather fetching likeness. It lacks a ground. Now suppose I had a clutch of the man’s hair. Then, I have a ground, but no focus—unless I wish to ruffle the man’s hair.

In joining the doll and the hair, however, focus meets ground, and the doll becomes a focus for the man. Say I lit the doll aflame then, and focused my will upon that distant soul. He would light up like a Christmas tree.

Yet this process is, of course, also more taxing. As we lack the whole, physical connection, greater bits of the self are often sacrificed to lend weight to the bond, lest it prove too tenuous. Though all magic drains the body, the most potent of these works drains the soul as well.

Once upon a time, the magical of the world would track precisely how many years of their own lives they had shaved off their own lives using themselves as catalyst and ingredient.

This is also why, above all else, caution is key for any sorcerer.

And it’s a trickier lesson to learn than you might think—since most the teachers have long since gone to their good earth.

Related articles

• Inside Idasia: Politics, Part 1 (cianphelan.wordpress.com)
• The Rules of Magic (io9.com)
• Words of Wonder: Ed Greenwood on Magic Systems (jeremylcjones.com)

The Unwanted

Today’s post is a recent scribble. A new short story? A new novel? We’ll see how it develops, but know that it’s a touch of sci-fi, and one I do intend to develop further in the future. Outlines and notations are already swimming through my head, apparently moving into the same high-rise apartments as the second novel (in progress) for my Haunted Shadows trilogy…which is a little awkward. For now, though, enjoy the opening to what is presently operating under the working title, “The Unwanted”:

There was a breath of wind before the light went out of Conira. Somewhere beyond, the fires of dying stars burned into the desolation, their flickers like  a dance to someone, somewhere beneath a cloudless sky. But Conira knew only the veil of sunlight, the clouded kiss of the warming.

Before the ships, the Comuratii never knew the shape of a night’s sky–only its cold kiss. Midnight howls.

The wind swept against the frames of pillars carved against a mountain relief. Dust swirled in the roar as artificial fires drew steel to life–the wide, trackless plain, hemmed in by earthen and handmade boundaries alike. It was opaque and red against the pillars and the clouds, a reflective glimpse of color in the ink. The ship’s fires surged against it, bathed in reflections.

Tiny figures slid across the plain’s expanse, in purposed disarray.

Every night, the spaceport came to life as such, even though its walls opened to the celestial ships just ten times a year. Seamless behemoths, broiling with the heat of entry, would descend in threes–miles and miles of metal, welded and made fit to drift the black. Each came hungry, thirsty, and opened themselves to the bosom of this barren earth.

It was 407 days into the cycle, when an eleventh sojourn cracked against the stone.

The Unwanted craned his neck against the chill, and drank the scent of it. Gasoline and death. It settled over the gathered crowd like a frenzied cloud.

Most had stumbled from their homes at the noise of it. It reverberated in the mountain deeps, luring the way but curious Comuratii from their dreams of distant starlight. Most would not guess its purpose, merely stretch their wings and bask in the bizarre moment of the unscheduled. Bask in the heat of other intellects spread beyond their own fair crust.

The Unwanted stretched his long legs, and marveled at the gust of prickled wind on his back, as it slid from the cracked door. Home. He stared out the window and remembered all that had made it so, even as shadows swallowed the world. Bodies scurried down the hall of the ship. The captain swore, in his guttural tongue. But none of it diluted that moment of remembrance.

Inside Idasia: Politics, Part 1

Image care of Wikimedia Commons.

At the center of any good nation is the drama, grandeur, and chaos we call politics. It transcends governmental boundaries. Many of us today have experienced the nonsense and bureaucratic nightmare of what we call democracy in action, but the intricacies of the political shadows have stretched long over monarchies, empires, and theocracies as well, hounding us since the moment first laid down roots and declared: this is how we shall live.

Politics, as central to the human experience, is also key, I believe, to any developed world. So many plot hooks, twists and turns, and dramatic pirouettes of story can come when politics factors into the scene. It sets up new hurdles for adventures, roadblocks for characters, and enemies of the sort that might not be all evil—in fact, they might even think their opposition to what the reader sees as “good” is in turn “good” for what they hope to achieve.

Intricacy. It’s always good to have layers.

Such is the case with the nation of Idasia, in my own little novel world.

Today, we’re talking the empire itself, as well as some of the larger players and wheels of the scene—I’ll discuss more of the greater structure in later posts…

Oil painting by Johann Christian Ludwig Tunica. Image care of Wikimedia Commons.

Idasia, lying at the core of the continent Marindis, is often referred to as the Heartland Empire. While its presence tends to be overshadowed in the modern era by the threat of the continental Zuti empire to the southwest, it remains (and continues to grow as) a political and territorial powerhouse, constantly roving its neighbors’ borders. In certain circles, it is believed to be the “Third Empire,” which is to say, the third incarnation of Vata’Marindis, which the continent’s histories point to as the flower of human culture, if real. Though the royal family that could once trace its lineage back as far has since met with unfortunate ends (those pesky civil wars), the nation continues to cultivate that image.

But what makes Idasia truly unique in terms of politics is the nature of its imperial status. Though the Emperor wields utter political power over the state-at-large, the barest shreds of a republic can be seen lurking in the shadows of his death. Seven men, in a hereditary grant, are given the sole authority to choose the emperor. Known as the Altengarde, or the electors’ council, these men have the right to deny the passing Emperor’s own choice in a successor…though tradition does tend to dictate the title stay within the hereditary royal family.

It does, however, leave the door open for evading some truly nasty individuals…or at least the ones that don’t know how to play the game right and proper.

Custom dictates the Altengarde consists of the Dukes of Dexet, Wassein, and Sorbia, as well as the Count Palatines of Usteroy, Berundy, Fritensia, and Varstein—all imperial provinces in their own right. While the Dukes are essentially second only to the royal family itself in power, years ago the rank of Count Palatine was established in the noble hierarchy to give the royal family a greater ability to balance out that power. The palatines, as such, are answerable solely to the crown, and theoretically act in their interest, whereas all other nobles answer to imperial, as well as Ducal decree depending on where their particular realms lie.

The council itself was established to “thin the blood,” as it were, and evade the uncertainty that comes with traditional passage of power to the eldest son. The hope has always been that they would pick the best man for the job.

Sometimes it’s even true.

Related articles

• Inside Idasia: Religion, Part 1 (cianphelan.wordpress.com)
• Welcome to Idasia – or, Maps, Maps, Maps! (cianphelan.wordpress.com)

Inside Idasia: Religion, Part 1

Welcome, one and all, to the first edition of “Inside Idasia,” a new feature here on the Waking Den that I hope will shed some light into the dark places of The Hollow March. The opening topic, as the title would imply, is religion—something I don’t think we see quite enough of in the fantasy realm.

Religion is one of those critical forces in the Empire of Idasia and the continent of Marindis at large. It is one of the great polarizers, as well as one of the great equalizers (in theory, at least). While historically the unifying brotherhood of the continent has been the Church of Visaj, recent decades have seen a schism within the faith. While some point the finger to the Zuti heathens that have crossed the sea and entrenched themselves in the former Kingdom of Narana, most see the reverend Farre and his followers as to blame. While originally believed to be an issue of “the littlefolk,” it has begun to cause dissent among the lords, and even the royal family has not been immune to its chaos.

So we begin with a breakdown of the two major faiths in Idasia:

• The Visaj:
  The traditional power on the continent. With its church based within the Principalities of Ravonno, to the south of Idasia, its whims have long been seen as mandate by pauper and prince alike. Their faith centers around the idea of “the Circles,” reincarnation, and breaking free of the mortal. At the core of this lies their god, known by many names but called most prominently Assal. Belief holds that those who traverse the circles of existence and break free will eventually become as one with Assal, and pass beyond the mortal coil. Their faith is laid out in a text known as the Vorges, written by the prophet Ademius (who would, in fact, later take the name Visaj) and his men centuries ago.The Church is led by a patriarch, though men and women alike are welcome within, and both are welcome as priests. Neither are allowed to marry. Owing to its key place within society, noble families are expected to offer up their second son or daughter’s life (if they are so blessed) to devotion within the Church. Peasants are not so bound. The Church itself can be broken into two internal categories at the moment (its various “sects” aside): the Orthodox, and the Humanists. The Orthodox are traditionalists, adhering strictly to the old tenants of the Faith. Humanists are more in line with the Farrens, in truth, straddling that heretical line while seeking to reform the Church from within. They believe a focus solely on achieving the final resurrection disconnects one from reality, and that, in truth, one must be concerned with the earthly realm to better themselves—a focus on the present, rather than the later.

  Much of Idasia’s old nobility remain firm Visaji, and greatly resent the spreading Farren faith. Until the last 15 years, Emperor Matthias of Idasia was long-heralded as the Church’s Defender of the Faith.

• The Farrens:
  Revolutionaries. Reformers. Heretics. Visionaries. The term changes depending on who one asks, but the facts are simple: the Farrens are the result of a church too long corrupted by time’s corrosive march. It grew out of the Humanist movement within the Church, causing some of the ill-will felt toward those would-be reformers. Founded by Asanti theologian Rev. Farre in his homeland to the west, his religion originally seemed nothing more than a cult—and one easily quashed. After being driven from Asantil, however, Farre’s words began to take especial root among the littlefolk throughout the continent, but most prominently in the heartlands of Idasia.Since then, the Farrens have become so heavily entrenched among the people that only the Visaj Church still feels they can honestly be rooted out. Their cause received a massive boost with the conversion of the royal family of Banur, in the east, and several lords within the Idasian Empire. Their greatest claim has come, however, with the passage of a would-be “Freedom of Religion” decree within the Empire, following the Emperor’s marriage of a Farren bride. Though this has caused a great straining of relations between Idasia and the Visaj Church, and a number of the Emperor’s nobles (and family, for that matter), it has garnered the Emperor great respect among the people.

  Farrens seek to end the suffering caused by a focus on the later rather than the present. They seek to engrain their religion at a more base, human level, rather than on the lofty, often vague “circles” the Visaj church preaches to.

Yes, you heard me, "circles."

Over time, concerns have grown that the tensions between the two groups will eventually spark some sort of religious war, especially now that the Visaj have pursued the extreme measure of crafting an inquisition. While many nobles dismiss the capabilities of “peasant rabble,” others are less certain. With an issue that splits even the royal family, one thing is certain—things can only get worse before they get better.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this first little peek inside the world of The Hollow March, and return for more such information prods in the weeks to come. This is hardly the end of religion either—while this deals with the two main faiths in Idasia, it doesn’t even touch the Zuti faiths, nor those of the Kuric northmen, and that’s a fact I intend to remedy in the future.

Related articles

• Welcome to Idasia – or, Maps, Maps, Maps! (cianphelan.wordpress.com)
• A Dash of Character for your Fantasy (cianphelan.wordpress.com)
• Sneak Peek: The Hollow March (cianphelan.wordpress.com)