Malaclypse the Seeker
(Recent Entries)
(Archive)
(Friends)
(User Info)
(discordian sky)
Aug. 21st, 2008
This is a story all about how my life got turned right upside d-
*whack!*
Okay, I'll stop now. Sorry. Anyway, this is a Fenspace story. It's part of a larger story, but it's self-contained enough that I think you (the poor, gullible non-Fenspace LJ reader) should be able to follow it. It also contains cameos of various unusual persons. You know who you are, and you can complain in comments. --Mal
( In which our heroine enters a new world, we learn the dangers of mediaphilic AI, and a job offer is made. )
Current Music: Bruce Springsteen - No Surrender
Jun. 9th, 2008
This is... well, it's different. I was aiming for a hundred different goals and I've no idea how many I hit. This is an odd little character sketch based on some of my weirder speculations regarding the inner life of sapient machinery. Enjoy.
( A beginning is a very delicate time... )
Current Music: Seatbelts - What Planet is This?!
May. 22nd, 2008
Not exactly a review of the new movie, but it's the first thing that popped into my head other than "wow!" --Mal
Date: 22 May 2008
To: The Ever-Living Lords of All They Survey
From: Senior Agent Seeker, Who Refuses to Die No Matter How Hard You Hit Him
Re: Recent influence on popular entertainment
Allright, fess up: which one of you fuckers leaked my journal to Spielberg? Here I am, going out to see a movie with a girl and lo & behold there's that spate of lunacy in Bolivia in '70 plastered on the big screen, only with Harrison Ford taking my place. There's way too many notes that ring true for it to be a coincidence, and don't give me that "latent sensitive collective unconscious" line; I know full well that both Spielberg
and Lucas rate a flat zero on the psi scales. Somebody leaked. I'd like to know who, so I can work them over with a pair of rusty pliers and maybe one of the crystal skulls we have in storage.
Also, if the end of the picture is one of your bastards' attempt to send me a message, a) you have way too much time on your hands, and b) my personal life is
none of your fucking business, thank you very fucking much.
--Seeker
Current Mood: loopy with sleep dep
May. 18th, 2008
This is a little ditty I put together for Fenspace!, then decided it was way too outre for prime time, as it were. So, outside of a restricted part of FenWiki and here, this one hasn't seen a wider audience. I'm only posting it here because a) it's kind of interesting, in a trainwreck sort of way, and b) I feel a need to start using this LJ more often.
So, with that in mind I give you instructions on How To Build a Battlestar Galactica (new version) / Fenspace Crossover Story Without Ruining The Metafictional Appeal.
INGREDIENTS:
* One as-ordered copy of Fenspace!
* An incomplete understanding of FTL physics
* The Galactican faction (for those not up on Fenspace jargon, these are the collected Battlestar Galactica fan clubs acting as a quasi-national government In Space)
* A nasty sense of irony
( “Karl Marx once said that history repeats itself, first as tragedy and then as farce. Sometimes though, it's the other way around.” )
Current Music: Choir and orchestra of Soviet radio, A. Gauk, cond. - Internationale (in Russian)
Jan. 29th, 2008
On further reflection, while my vehicular angst is no doubt entertaining to some of you heartless jackals (Hi, Lindsay!), I should leave you on something of a lighter note. So here's a little story from Fenspace.
( One should always take care in choice of words... )
Current Music: Philip Sheppard - The Good Earth
Oct. 16th, 2007
No JU4 notes, but here's a little bit of Mal backstory to keep you entertained.
Date: 21 June 1985
To: The Masters of the World, Keepers of the Secrets, They Who Put The Bomp In The Bomp-A-Bomp-A-Bomp
From: Agent Seeker
Re: Latest Job - PRIORITY
The operation was completed as per instructions. The Terror of Camp Whateverthefuck has been contained and is ready for pickup & disposal. Based on my initial and final encounters with the thing, it looks like an ISO standard vengance golem with a thing for woodworking tools. The holy blast furnace in Cairo should be able to destroy both flesh and undead spirit without any significant difficulty; I'd have tried it here but there wasn't a handy supply of refractive brick to make the Seal of Solomon out of.
Civilian casualties are light, thank Lovecraft's withered testicles. Unfortunately they're also all of the "gruesome ax-murderer" variety, which means things are a little twitchy here. And before you start yelling about letting the mundanes see what we're up to, let me remind you that a) I was sent out here to protect these people, and b) I spent the best part of a week keeping that goddamned thing occupied before it finally started to turn on the kids.
Right now, I'm keeping them occupied with the usual goverment agency BS, and it's working so far. I can probably keep it up until we get a team out here to do a usual wipe-n-replace. Hell, if we can spare a couple class 1 necromancers in the next 48 hours we could revive the casualties and then pretend none of this ever happened except for the psychic backwash in the area.
Speaking of psychic backwash, I'm appending quickie dossiers on the survivors. Subject L seems to have a bit of a sixth sense, saw the bogey coming and actually managed to score a few hits on it before I managed to lure the bastard into the binding seal. Subject W has a bit of real occult knowledge too, apparently. Nothing worth acting on right now, but I recommend putting a watch on the both of them for potential recruitment later.
Send my backup ASAP.
--Agent Seeker
Oct. 14th, 2007
And here we go again, because I cannot leave well enough alone.
In Part 1 I rambled at length about the bare-bones of the JU4 setting and what that was supposed to mean. In this installment I continue to ramble, and hopefully actually start to get somewhere resembling an interesting setting.
( Round 2! Fight! )
Oct. 13th, 2007
Revisiting older projects: The Jihad Universe 4
Taking a short break from Fenspace, so if this concept bores you go check out Fenspace. It's got lots of neat stuff in it, I promise.
Anyway, this was something I dreamed up around 2005ish as a variant continuation of the Jihad Universe. At the time I was hip deep in the (not abandoned, only dormant) Jihad Universe 3 project, the future of which is outlined roughly in my AEGIS of Stars worldbuilding setting.
JU3 is nice. It's a strong work, even unfinished as it is, and I like it. But I never really imagined it to be the end-all of the Jihad Universe (even though as the group drifts back into somnolescene it may very well happen). Back when enthusiasm was high for the JU in general, my original plan was to have JU3, then a series of alternates where the situation diverged into different settings, in order to increase the appeal of the concept.
(This doesn't include JUR, incidentally. JUR/Pridwen is a reboot of the Jihad concept, taking it back to first principles and building up. The JU# settings I had planned would start from the Jihad Universe timeline as written down in the worldbook and diverge from that point.)
That said, on a whim the other day I went back and took a look at some of my notes for the Jihad Universe 4. This was a High Space Opera setting based on the Jihad Universe. The original notes were a bit sparse, to say the least, and some of the ideas I've cooled on since the time I first put these down. Still, there's potential here, and so I'm going back and seeing what can be salvaged.
( Blasphemous thoughts below the fold. )
Current Mood: contemplative
Current Music: Transformers - Optimus
Apr. 16th, 2007
So... yeah.
Regime ChangeNicolae Carpathia stared at the three advisors his deputy had presented. A somewhat disreputable looking group, the one male advisor had the buttoned-down tweedy look of an Oxford scholar, marred only by the vicious scar that ran down the left side of his face. To his left, an auburn-haired woman fidgeted uncomfortably in her business suit, while to his right a tall brunette stared owlishly at the soon-to-be Supreme Potentate.
Not the kind of advisors he had expected, but Fortunato had recommended them, and Fortunato hadn't steered him wrong yet.
"Mr. Secretary," said the man, "at the request of Mr. Fortunato, we've gone over all the applicable data regarding the, ah, prophecies surrounding your tenure as Supreme Potentate. Unfortunately, our initial analysis suggests that there is no way to successfully defy the prophecy."
Carpathia frowned. "That is unfortunate," he muttered.
The taller woman smiled. "However! A deep analysis suggests that there is a solution." The other two advisors nodded at this.
"Well?"
The three advisors looked at each other. Carpathia's frown shifted into a scowl. "What is the solution? Don't just sit there, give it to me!"
On the straight line, the man reached into his coat, pulled out a strange-looking weapon and fired at Carpathia. The Secretary-General of the United Nations vanished in a cloud of greenish light and a faint whuffle sound. The taller woman pulled a similar raygun from her handbag and vaporized Fortunato. The shorter woman reached behind her, pulling a sword from thin air and bounded over the conference table with a ringing Farsi curse, decapitating Carpathia's security council.
"The solution, Nicolae," the man said cheerfully to Carpathia's empty chair, "is when the Antichrist comes around, kill him and take his stuff."
The taller woman dropped her gun back into her bag, fished around inside it for a second, then pulled out a tricorder. "PKE readings are all flat," she announced. "No physical or spiritual residue."
"Great," said the shorter woman as she cleaned the blood off her sword with a power tie. "I hate dealing with exorcisms."
"The question now, ladies," said the man, "is what shall we do with our new one world order?"
---
"Regime Change"
Part 1 of "The Magnificent Trio vs. Left Behind"
(c) 2007 S. M. BreenMar. 22nd, 2007
This is the end of a short piece I've been hacking together for the Fenspace project. I'm fairly happy with the beginning and end, but the middle is still giving me trouble (as usual). Anyway, here's the story bit. Enjoy.
If there's one thing that I've learned over two centuries and more of living, it's that "happily ever after" is as much an evolutionary dead end as a singularity. The stories we were all raised on may end with the hero getting the love interest and fade to black, but that's not how it works in the real world. Nothing stays static, there's no fade to black, no end point from which we can flip back to the beginning of the book and start again. And good times are always transitory; in a cold and uncaring universe like ours they can't last forever. The best we can hope for in life isn't happily ever after, it's that life goes on.
So, life goes on. Mars and Venus thrive under the light of Beta Coma, Roddenberry and Naboo and all the other colonies are still there. The SMOFs are even in talks with the Linelayers, to see if we can't finally get a wormhole connection to the civilized galaxy. We miss Earth, those of us who remember her, but even as the light from Sol dims we know that whatever happens we looked extinction in the eye, and it blinked first.
The Rapture of the Nerds was supposed to make people gods, but they forgot to ask the question: what use is a god in an atheistic universe? Maybe that's where all the singularities go, they funnel themselves into another universe, something expressly built to be more deity-friendly than ours. In a way, I hope that's true. It's a far kinder fate than the universe would have them on its own - maybe kinder than what they really deserve.
Not that it matters; whatever happens to the singularity will happen no matter our involvement. For now, it's enough that us clever monkeys and our kids are still here. We're tinkering with our tools, adapting ourselves to the environment and vice versa, making friends and enemies wherever we go. We're
evolving. We're not gods - we're not even angels - but we're getting better.
And one day, many years from now when the singularity has burnt itself out and all that's left are dead computers and weird technology, we shall go back. Maybe we'll restore the solar system to it's full glory, or maybe we'll just rebuild Earth and leave the rest as a monument. I don't know. But we
will go back, that much I'm certain of.
Our bug-eyed friends think we're crazy, making plans to reclaim a solar system from a singularity. They may be right, not that that's ever stopped us before.
I mean, we're fen. We have a reputation to maintain, after all.
Current Music: Murray Gold - The Doctor's Theme
Aug. 21st, 2006
Hello again, and welcome to Mal's Brainworm Theater.
This time around we're back on the Cheap!FTL setting, working on filling in some of the gaps around the base. Partly, the following is also an experiment with the voice I intend to use when I get around to writing out the setting in full. I naturally use a lot of conversational English in most of my writing, but this borders between my normal conversational tone and something a little more folksy. I kinda like it, but I could use a second opinion if you've got one.
And now, on with the show...
( TL;DR content, NASA and the Klan, all below the fold. )
Current Music: Aqua - Cartoon Heroes
Jul. 20th, 2006
Jul. 18th, 2006
Bored. Bored bored bored BORED bored bored....
Since the muses for JU3, JUR & AoS seem to have gone on vacation, here's soemthing a little different. I don't intend for this to go beyond a handful of LJ posts and maybe some random discussion on IRC, so there aren't any netbooks or incredible infinite campaigns on the horizon. Just so you know.
Anyway. Over yonder on the glorious RPGnet, one of the regulars posted this idea for a near future space opera setting which caught my eye. For the short on time, here's the intro synopsis:
In the near future (most cars are electric, the US has been getting gradually more authoritarian along currently plausible lines, but things are more or less how they are now… laptops are better, but it isn’t a ‘sci-fi’ setting yet), this guy (in his friend’s garage) builds a hyperdrive with about two-hundred bucks in parts, then knocks together a spaceship, and heads out to do some exploring… returns with some friendly aliens, tosses society into chaos, and releases the plans for the hyperdrive onto the internet- welcome to the new era.
There's a bit more to it, mostly technical (The short version: Anything that can be pressure-sealed can become a starship, all you need is the drive and a halfway-decent laptop to act as the navigational computer.) but the core idea behind it is pretty simple. Simple enough that it got some wheels spinning.
Wheel #1: "So what would happen if we got some of the action? The first thought, and the obvious one. A near future setting immediately lends itself to a campaign featuring the PCs as themselves. So, in a hypothetical Cheap!FTL campaign, that's what I'd do. The PCs would get to play themselves with maybe one or two skills or advantages that they don't have in real life.
For example, your humble author as a PC would be a somewhat below-average character, with most of his/my points put into various liberal arts skills. The "action movie" skills I'd pick would probably involve piloting and either survival or shooting, since those are things you'd probably want on if you're wandering in the direction of Tau Ceti.
Wheel #2: "How do we get there from here?" The discussion on RPGnet is focused on automobiles, particularly 4x4s. This makes a certain amount of sense; cars, trucks, vans & the like are cheap and plentiful, there are plenty of auto engineers and hobbyists in the general population, etc. Still, landing a truck on the surface of a distant planet is by no means an easy taks, even with all the juryrigged automatic safety widgets you can come up with.
I thought that using something along the lines of a floatplane or flying boat would make more sense as a spaceship than a truck. Okay they're more expensive, but a floatplane can carry about the same load as a small truck, and a big flying boat like the Martin Mars or the PBY Catalina are the equivalent of a good-sized semi. More to the point, with wings, engines and a seaworthy hull you can make a controlled landing wherever you can find a nice deep lake or harbor instead of hoping the wind doesn't screw up your touchdown.
Wheel #3: "And what do we do when we get there?" or "I went drinking with aliens, you fucker!" The eternal question, now that you've got a PC group and the McGuffin to keep them together, what are they going to do?
Well. First of all, in a near future setting the American contingent if nothing else is going to want to get the hell away from King George's America. Begone with the wiretapping and enemy combatants; hello the blue-green skies and friendly expatriate communities of Alpha Centauri! Getting the group and their gear together in one place and then offworld from there would make for one hell of an initial adventure.
From there, it's basically dungeon crawling. If the PCs want to go check out the mysterious alien ruins on Genericus VI, let 'em. If they want to help out the new democratic revolution around Cygnus, let 'em. If they want to play bush pilots and deliver mail for the new cities springing up around Epsilon Eridani, let 'em. If they just want to hang out at the spaceport bar and peoplewatch... well, why not. At least for a little bit. Besides, that sort of thing is traditional in dungeon crawls.
If the PCs are getting homesick and want to drop by Earth for a week or two, say hi to the folks, maybe sell some Strange & Exotic Alien Artifacts[tm] or whatnot... then you can make it challenging. American PCs have to jump through all sorts of hoops to get back into the country without getting shot down or just plain shot, and then they have to get back out. Hours of fun for the whole family.
And who knows? Maybe one day the PCs will come back at the head of an alien army and liberate the United States. Wierder things have happened in long-term campaigns.
...okay, that's enough for a first pass. Maybe later I'll whip up a couple examples or whatnot. I suppose it'll depend on the interest this generates.
Current Music: Tomoyasu Hotei - Battle Without Honor or Humanity
Jul. 3rd, 2006
One week in, and we've finally got a name! After much careless deliberation, a fair bit of banging heads against walls, and due research by many a name has finally emerged that I like, if nothing else. So ladies & gentlemen, allow me to present the front line in the JUR:
The Pridwen InstituteThanks to
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
fb for the suggestion. For those who didn't know this (like me), Pridwen is a name for King Arthur's shield, and a nice, barely pronounceable Welshish name it is, too. A bit of research on my own suggested that the other names for Arthur's shield were even more unpronouncably Welsh than Pridwyn, so... ;)
Anyway, now that that's settled, onto today's content. Below the jump is a bit of an expansion on another one of
fb's ideas, going with a slightly alternate history instead of a straight modern-day setting. So hang on tight, we're meddling with space-time!
( Back... to the NEAR PRESENT! )Current Music: Great Big Sea - Donkey Riding
Jun. 30th, 2006
Day 5, and the Idea That Ate Mal's Brain is finally starting to lose a little steam. Of course that just means it's jumped to everybody else who's reading this, especially the people who've commented so far.
The beatdown may commence when ready.
Anyway, since I don't have anything hugely constructive to add to the narrative at the moment, I figured I'd just go into some miscellaneous shit that's popped into my head over the last couple of days but didn't fit in anywhere. Onward, ho!
( You know the drill by now. )
Jun. 29th, 2006
Once again, welcome to our continuing coverage of The Thing That Ate Mal's Brain. We're in day 4 now, lots of words have been written, thoughts have been kicked around on IRC, and I think we're just about ready to start putting things together instead of just doing a random stream of consciousness.
Which is good, because the sooner I get this shit out of my system the sooner I can get back to doing the things I'm supposed to be doing, like JU3 and figuring out the JU2 book deal and pretending to be productive so my corporate masters will give me a paycheck and... you get the idea.
Anyway. You know the rules by now, so sit back and enjoy the ride.
( Entering the home stretch now... )
Jun. 28th, 2006
04:04 pm
Welcome back my friends, to the show that never ends.
I honestly have no idea why I'm fixated on JUR stuff this week. I've got far too many irons in the fire as it is. Still, if I knew everything about my brain, then I wouldn't be so pleasantly surprised by some of the stuff that pops out.
Anyway.
Welcome to Day 3 of our continuing series of notes and diseased ramblings regarding the Jihad Universe Revised, your humble narrator's thought experiment about rebuilding the Jihad to Destroy Barney the Purple Dinosaur from the ground up. We hope that the old Jihaddi reading this have been pleasantly amused so far, and that the folks who arrived here through other means are at least clicking through to the tl;dr content and skimming it. Also, a big hello to all my lj-stalkers. Shine on, you crazy diamonds!
And now, the actual content.
( Beginning after the jump. )
Current Mood: out, damned brainworm!
Current Music: C.C.R. - Lookin Out My Back Door
Jun. 26th, 2006
The Jihad Universe, Revised
For some reason, I can't let the Jihad Universe go. The concept is totally ludicrous, and yet it has some sort of unholy grip on my imagination. One of these days I may end up giving up on the JU, but after a decade of working on and with it I'm not going to hold my breath.
Anyway.
Putting together JU2 gave me a good look at its roots, and when you look at them it's pretty obvious that the whole thing spurng up without any real direction or structure. It's like most kitchen-sink settings in that regard, throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks. JU2 was an attempt on my part to strip out the crazier stuff and put things on a more even keel. I think it succeeded, but you can still see the original ad-hoc construction through the spackle.
About a year ago I started putting together ideas on how I would rebuild the JU completely from scratch, mostly as a thought experiment. My notes from that time are pretty heavily influenced by the Warren Ellis comic Global Frequency, and while there's some good stuff there, on reflection the setting I developed feels more like a Global Frequency ripoff than something that could stand on its own. That vexes me, since I like to think I'm capable of more.
So, here we begin again, taking the base of the old JU and some tricks from last year's notes and trying to revise the Jihad Universe.
( More after the jump. )
Current Music: E Nomine - Deine Welt
Jun. 7th, 2006
This one popped into my head for no particular reason. It's a small bit of the life of one Malaclypse the Seeker, before he got swept up in the events that comprise the JU:
--------------------------------------------
Date: 17 Jan 1991
To: The Most High & Exalted Masters of Light, Rulers of the Known World, etc.
From: Agent Seeker
Re: The Recent Unpleasantness in Miami
First of all, I offer my apologies for not making my regular report for the last several weeks. I was not in a position where I could make it to the usual drop point without arousing suspicion in my mundane contacts.
In any case, here is my initial summary - I'll be available for a more thorough debrief once I return to Agharti, as per usual. I have good news and increasingly bad news, in sequential order.
( Read more... )
Current Music: E Nomine - Das Omen Im Kreis Des Bösen