#planetrise

Warp Riders!

Chapter 4

The smell of coffee brought the Captain out of her tent as the green sun set. The Bosun and the Stowaway were working in quiet organization around the makeshift stove, and the Navigatrix was pouring herself a mug. No Engineer yet; her sleep cycle seemed to be slightly different.

No one was wearing their uniforms properly anymore. The Bosun had stripped down to her work tank; the Navigatrix had abandoned the ceremonial cape and gauntlets. The Captain would have worn hers, but evacuating the ship had cost her most of a sleeve.

The green light had an uncanny effect on the Navigatrix’s copper hair; sometimes it almost looked black in the light. The Captain thought it gave her a bit of an occult air; pale face and dark hair and those long, long limbs.

She was kneeling as she added spices to her coffee, and when she looked up and caught the Captain’s eye, she shot a wry half-smile through the haze of the stove.

“Guess who just finished the pot.” “First time you’re awake before me and this is the shit you pull.”

She made her way over to join the Captain, and gestured with her cup.

“Want a sip?”

“The way you spice it? I can smell it just fine from over here.” Cinnamon and cloves, pepper and a pinch of salt and something sweet. “Impressed you got the Bosun to rescue your spice rack.”

“Got her to grab my best mug last night, too.” The Navigatrix nudged the Captain with her foot and proudly showed her the faded logo.

“Navigatrix, you piece of shit.”

The compass rose, sword and skull were all there, framing the cafe name, “Pirate’s Cove”, in melodramatic pink.

“That’s a fucking latte mug from the cafe on Ereb.” “Oh, it might be!” “This is when you tell me that you stole a shitty mug -” “- well, now -” “- from a cheesy theme cafe -” “- okay, but -” “- on the last planet we got arrested on?”

She winked. “You know I love a keepsake.”

The Navigatrix had never been the most straightforward person – folks who read star charts rarely were – but after they’d found the Orb, she’d become fully enigmatic.

The Captain hadn’t had this banal a conversation with her in, well, since they’d first left time. She didn’t trust it.

“I guess I’m glad you still found time to plot a route out of there, in between your thievery and cafe patronage.” The Captain felt herself getting angry. “Let me know when you make any headway on figuring out this novelty-tchotchke-free moon.”

But the Navigatrix never seemed up for a fight when the Captain wanted one, and she nodded as if that was a reasonable thing to say.

“You know, it’s a refreshing challenge, using analogue methods to locate us, both galactically and temporally. The light does complicate it.”

They both turned to watch planetrise, and watched a flock of aerial creatures scatter as the pink rays brought colour back to the landscape.

The Captain tilted her head back, trying to find the darkest part of the sky; between sun and planet, not a single star was visible.

The Rise of Planet II

Markolai needed help. This did not happen often; he occasionally requested assistance, but as he saw it, every person who helped him was putting themselves in danger. He was smart enough, however, to recognize a problem he couldn't handle alone. And for this problem, he knew exactly who he would need.

Damn.

He pulled a book from his pack, a heavy tome with an intricate black binding. He retrieved his helmet and gloves, laid the book on a work bench, and opened it. A black rot spread across the pages through which putrid tentacles reached out and wrapped around the inventor, and he closed his eyes. When he opened them, he saw the ground covered in pieces of parchment, scraps of text barely visible on ruined pages. He stood up to see the walls around him were stacks and patchworks of books, making a hallway that branched and extended into the darkness. From these stacks came a whirlwind of paper which parted to reveal a withered old man, staring blankly into a book. The old man looked at the interloper with a disgruntled sigh.

“Back again, Dragonborn? I thought you had disavowed Hermaeus Mora. Again.”

“I'm not here for that, Septimus.” Mora's chamberlain was a grim reproduction of the real Septimus Signus, whom the Daedric Lord had killed when he outlived his usefulness. This Septimus huffed and walked off into the stacks. Taking a moment to get his bearings, Markolai turned down a different hallway. After a short walk – at least it seemed short, but distance is relative in Apocrypha – he found his destination. The stacks were more chaotic here, and from them frenzied whispers could be heard. At the end of one hallway stood a book taller than Markolai himself. Advancing past a flurry of leatherbounds and frantically wailing manuscripts, he grasped the book's purple cover and pulled it open. Mammoth pages swept past his face, revealing a page offering only a single word: ENTER.

Pushing forward now, the book opened into a doorway to a great hall. This was another library, but one very different from Apocrypha. Bookshelves stretched up for many stories, occasionally twisting into brambled trees from which books hung like bats. Paper birds flew by on an invisible breeze, and errant tomes snapped at the inventor as he walked past. Then he came to an opening in the shelves, with a large desk at its center. In a velvet chair, facing away from Markolai, was a white-haired figure.

“Now, this is a surprise! I can't say I expected to see you again, 'specially not in me own library!”

There is a great issue, which does not exactly serve our purpose here, in regards to cosmology. The question begs nonetheless, however, how can the infinity of Aetherius contain the infinity of Oblivion? Well, if Oblivion is infinite every direction we can see, Aetherius is infinite in one more. Outside of comprehension, the aether contains oblivion. Furthermore, when Magnus and his children fled, they did not leave flat holes on the edge of Oblivion's sphere, as we are told. Rather, the holes they created were of a greater order, exiting Oblivion by moving sideways, at a right angle to all direction. If the “sphere” of the aether extends into another direction, so do the “circular” holes to that realm.

The pertinent point being, if you could observe from far above this world, you wound see Oblivion goes on in all directions, and throughout it find perfectly spherical bodies of light. These (w)holes in Oblivion are the absence of nothingness which is magic. Orbiting many of these (w)holes which we call stars are their dead brethren, thought-gods of Mundus which did not escape into Aetherius, becoming solid masses, the many plane(t)s.

This will be the official blog for my upcoming game, "Planetrise". 

On here I will post everything related to the game. From technical articles on coding to talks on the design of the game.