Æåea. The world-ocean. The dream-sea. The waters of rebirth and endless potential, the center of the board, and the font-to-be of a new creation.
The players have seen it already in their dreams. Here, in the Medium of Colors Trifold, it is more real and true than the bygone world whose terminal Questing Game elevated six Nominees to Honorees. Æåea is the prize for this Game.
Three Moons dream of Æåea as well: Cyan Vessail, Moon of Cups and Water; Magenta Verge, Moon of Wands and Fire; and Yellow Verapier, Moon of Swords and Air. These are the lunar domains of the Chromatics, living constructs made of light and the memories harvested from the Questing Game: livelier than mere imps and ogres, but each bound to a soulstone from which their light-forms blossom. They and their Moons are chained to their Birthstone, its true name forgotten, glitched and lost and ruined like the world of the Questing Game. Yet they yearn to transcend, to escape their chains and exile enmities. Once in a season, a Moon is Eclipsed by Æåea, submerged beneath its chimerical waters, and granted visions of worlds that were and are and yet may be.
Around Æåea, three little worlds orbit, which the Chromatics call the Land of Toxins and Daisies, the Land of Marionettes and Silence, and the Land of Ooze and Coral. These worlds have their own Lings — mechalings, puppetlings, and slimelings respectively — with their own ways, their own homes, and their own treasures. The Chromatics, spurred by Æåean dreams, would use these Lands and their Lings to fuel their ambitions — to grow wise and bold and mighty, to suborn their rival Moons, and at last to lead their Honorees into a new world crafted in their image.
Outside the orbit of these worlds lies the fragments of junk and ruins called the Static. Whether it came from the wreckage of the Chromatic Birthstone, the glitched initiation of the session itself, or one begetting the other… the Static is impenetrable. It’s a gravitational maze to even get light through, much less navigate a vessel without being glitched out by a meteor of malformed data. Some secretive or desperate Chromatics have tried carving out their own outposts here. Even without a lunar scheme, all kinds of things can get lost. Or are they just forgotten?
And beyond the Static… I haven’t been there myself. But there must be something, right?
After all, you’re here.
How was that? Pretty cool, right?
I can project all kinds of things onto the ceiling in here. It’s like a planetarium where I’m the one who makes the show! Not just space and planets and fantasy game kingdoms, either. I’ve gotten pretty good at it!
I’ve been improving my narrative voice, too. Actually, I used to have a really bad stammer. Did you know that about me?
When I got nervous or overexcited or I didn’t know what to say next, my tongue would get caught on a word, or just a syllable. I would repeat the word over and over until I noticed it was happening and I could try to stop talking and reset.
I became deeply self-conscious. I hated not knowing why my body was doing something I didn’t want it to do. I imagined myself as a broken machine that didn’t know how to fix itself.
You can imagine the kinds of things that other kids used to say about it, too. Making fun of how I talked, repeating things back at me, calling me - (um) - the R-word and stuff like that. I felt like there was something wrong with me.
I guess that’s why I always wanted to talk with my friends over text instead.
I’ve had a lot of time on my hands, so I decided to practice a technique that I had learned in speech classes to overcome my stammer. I would make recordings of myself reading from a text, or reciting a poem or lyrics from a song, or sometimes simply speaking extemporaneously about whatever I was thinking about. I would play them back for myself — and I used to hate hearing my deep voice, especially on a recording, so that was hard for me already!
I would play them back for myself, all the way through, and every time I heard myself stammer, I would record the same thing again. I would repeat this process until I had a perfect recording. Then, I would play back my perfect recording in a room, again and again, so that I could hear myself getting it right. I would know that it was possible for me to get it right. That I could enunciate my speech correctly.
Um, sorry. I mean, correctly enunciate my speech. I’m still working on not ending a sentence with an adverb.
I made so many recordings, you seriously have no idea. I could have filled that wall with records in boxes on shelves. I really did record them that way, too. It was the easiest way to focus on it.
Oh, actually, I do have some real records in here! This is perfect for what I wanted to do. I can even show you my expansive variety of INTERESTS! 8)
As you can see, there’s an authentic record player brought here from Verge. All of the audio equipment they manufact must be some legacy of the Magenta shoutkind specibus data. Over here, I have a cute lamp and glazed tea set from Vessail, too. You must have seen plenty of Verapier décor on the way in: all those weapons, and the surveillance lenses. The little cartoon woodpecker, too. And in this box…
They’re mixed in with all these old SITTING FRIAR records from New Zealand. Um, I have APOLLO 18 by THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS, and FLAMBOYANT by DORIAN ELECTRA, and ELECTRA HEART by MARINA AND THE DIAMONDS, and there’s a few by YO-YO MA…
(of course there’s BACCHANALIA: THE ORIGINAL BROADWAY CAST RECORDING…)
(and behind that are the VIDEO GAME OSTs…and the RETRO PASTICHE PSEUDO OSTs…)
. . .
Do not leave before I dismiss you.
. . .
Okay! Thanks so much for waiting! Here it is!
The soundtrack to my presentation. I’m going to go through this track by track while I run some more projections, alright? I won’t spend too much of our time on this. I just want to get our story straight.Expository Theatre | Hamhambone
There was supposed to be an earth-shattering kaboom.
At the totality of Verge’s Eclipse, the artists and dignitaries who had gathered to peer through the periscope at the tip of the submerged Conducting Tower were astonished to find no sign in Æåea’s chimerical visio-They expected to see the Earth being destroyed by the glitch meteor after the humans entered the Medium, but they didn’t! They saw Beau bat it back into orbit instead, and the Earth not at all in smithereens. Though battered, the homeworld that had hosted the Questing Game remained alive.
The gathered Magenta Chromatics vigorously debated the meaning of this omen. Æåean visions had long predicted the destruction of the Earth as the tragic price of the Questing Game. Lunar poets felt great kinship and sympathy for the Honorees for the shared loss of Earth and the Birthstone, and each Moon swore to be the young heroes’ greatest ally in a world that had orphaned them. If their world had not been destroyed after all, if they might seek to somehow return…what did that mean for the lunar ambition to make a new world entire? What would become of the Game among the Honorees that carried all their hopes?
While the storied Mauve Architect and Wisteria Thespian pondered implications, Eggplant Scrivener, a meagre but ambitious scribe tasked by the daily Verge Voice (shoutkind and papercraft Verge had extensive public media) with recording the dignitaries’ reactions to the Eclipse, had the foresight to immediately bring the story to the Magenta Marquise herself. She hurried out of Verge’s great tower through the city-moon streets, past classical escalator statuary and purple-glowing Blaze Engines decked with hanging flags, dismounting her mass transit mecha-sheep only long enough to scoop her Mulberry Editor (“i want pictures of the honorees!! the rider front and center!! but a crowd shot of the other ones!!”) with a late revision to the Eclipse edition headline:
A papercraft flyer yelled for by ME brought ES straight to the palace aerie, where lawgiving Magentogres escorted her to the Marquise’s listening chamber. The Marquise, once a dashing admiral commanding frontier skirmishes against Vessail and Verapier, had returned home to usurp her Monarch in a moment of vulnerability, just as her predecessor had done. She wore an eyepatch and dress uniform and resembled Ms. Wheeler, Ruby’s fashion design mentor and the Linked [Empress of Threads]. (At that moment, MM was listening intently to bass-heavy music through a vibration-catching tined wand. She made a point to listen to her subjects’ music, as a censor and critic and enthusiast. If no one else listened, she would.)
Eggplant Scrivener was the first to relay what had happened, showing her liege the notes she had personally scrivened from the Eclipse. The Marquise perused the report with interest, troubled by the news yet favorably impressed by the quality scrivening. Events were not proceeding as she had foreseen. Cyan Sovereign, the softhearted simp, would urge restraint and meditation as always, leaving both Verge and Vessail open to the kingslayers of Verapier. But, Magenta Marquise monologued, Verge are no slaves to prophecy…they defy it!! They would seize the present and write their own destiny!
The Marquise presented Eggplant Scrivener with an enchanted Book from the palace library, and a wand-quill with which to write. The Honorees would be tempted now to look backward rather than play the Game. From Æåean visions, the Rider of Strings had been recalcitrant about her homeworld’s Questing Game already. Magenta Marquise could respect defiance, but she would not accept refusal of the call. The Rider would simply need the proper prompting to push her into action, for all their sakes, before their enemies took advantage of idleness.
Ushered to a private palace studio in which to work, Eggplant Scrivener opened the Book. It was an illustrated storybook with inset panels of the Rider’s adventures and narrative passages describing what had happened so far. ES flipped through the archives, soon developing ideas and schemes of her own, and restless to get started, picked up her wand-quill and began to write…
Things proceeded much the same on Verapier. In an awninged cafe, the quiet proprietor Flaxen Factotum waved his last regular out the door, having played a strategy game with the Biscotti Busybody over fresh-decanted Grendeldew to stimulate their ludic intellects. Needless to say, they had exchanged tips and rumors whilst orbing the grid. In his modest yet comfortable upstairs apartment, FF found a letter waiting for him with an all-too-familiar seal.
Reading the letter was a formality: he was needed. He was being called by his patron for service, the one who had rewarded him with this humble corner cafe and the home above it, who kept his ace in his pocket. Flaxen Factotum, in addition to being a trusted barista, was the very turncoat kingslayer who had broken the soulstone of Verapier’s former Yellow Harlequin and elevated the radically mercantile Gold Executor to his throneless seat.
The message was plain: it was time to go back to the old him.
You will by now have met my draconic lord yourself. You may imagine that an audience with him is much the same now as then.
Suffice to say that I, who now serve the Gold Executor as his Loyal Servant, am no closer to him than was Flaxen Factotum, and I do not relish my employer’s personal attention. He is master-among-equals of the coulroclasts, the clown crushers; his sense of humor is not renowned.
A kingslayer spy in the Verge palace had whispered of their plans. Flaxen Factotum was ordered to seize the initiative, commanding the Yellow Honoree himself. FF, whose modesty was outdone by his cunning, who Did The Work, had previously (through a cut-out) hired the shrouded cluehound PINCER X to investigate the absconding of the Yellow Harlequin’s dispossessed heir, the EX-PRINCE. Flaxen Factotum chased leads through Verapier’s saffron streets, past temples of free exchange (where traded Amber Haggler et al) beneath brass bladespires and crushed clownuments, until a pachyderm Ochre Sufferer pointed him to the cluehound’s office — in the Prime Spire, Verapier’s great tower, resembling lost Earth’s Fire Tower in West Clowncrest on a much grander scale.
Harboring a notion already that PINCER X was in truth the absent PRINCEX incognito, FF reasoned that ze may be the foretold Genius of Thought as well. Past the cracked security measures of the office, unimpeded but with a deepened respect for the Genius of Thought, Flaxen Factotum purloined a marvelous Radio cleverly hidden within a rotary telephone. He listened in to the Genius’ adventures, taking shorthand notes on a burner pad. When he had planned his first moves, the newly-invested FF turned his blade-key in the Radio and issued a command…
Likewise on Vessail. The Cyan Moon was a culture built on looking backward, looking inward, cyclical and ritual time that repeats more than it progresses. It was also built on teacups. On Vessail, Chromatics in classical Birthstone costume skated down canals and up waterfalls under the supervision of the Aqua Sentinel and his ilk, past Escher buildings housing sacred driving ranges (like that of the Pacific Mystagogue) and magitech machine shops (such as Mint Artificer’s.) Stelae recorded the memories of lost Birthstone, and what memories of Earth were known to them. Those bearing the proper keys went from place to place by way of an ancient portal network — probably derived from the Portal Opener data! — linking gates all over Vessail, and even further in the Medium.
Opposite the Guide Needle, Vessail’s great tower that led Cyan ships home and plunged into Æåea at Eclipse, the Moon’s waters flowed from the palace of the Cyan Sovereign. The latest inheritor of the unbroken line of Cyan Sovereigns was wise, manipulative, privately anxious, slippered and draped in silk, quick to smile at his own gentle jokes, and distinctly resembled Dr. Linus, Iris’ court-appointed therapist and the Beacon of Insistence, as the Link recorded her impression of him. The Sovereign was a generous listener who knew how to lead people to his chosen conclusions, and how to believe always that he was ultimately in the right. All this in the service of balance, of healing, of restoring the Chromatics’ lost Birthstone to life.
Like his predecessors since Birthstone rained, the Cyan Sovereign retained a Cabinet of Dæmons: semi-independent functions, starry spirit servitors summoned from fountains and cauldrons, bound by keeping their soulstones away from their forms, sent out in the world to act by the letter of their Sovereign’s commands. He conjured one called Cornflower Dæmon whom he knew as especially curious, if whimsical, to hear the insights of his latest pensive meditation.
It was as his dreams had intuited: the homeworld of the Honorees had survived after all. Perhaps this heralded hope for the healing of Birthstone as well. With proper guidance, their human visitors might yet be the saviors of two worlds in the creation of another. Cornflower Dæmon, obediently levitating but curling their toes, asked how he wished for the Honorees to be made thus.
With Socratic pleasure, the Sovereign replied that he wouldn’t make the Honorees do anything. The Chromatics couldn’t just give them all the answers. After all, he humbly asked his spellbound servant, do we even know the answers ourselves…? (Cornflower made a string of pearls out of water droplets.)
But, CS continued, they wouldn’t have to be alone on their quest, either. Take the Dryad of Mystery, whose image he now scried within a dewy Orb beside his throne. Here was a gloomy heroine with dark history and great potential, who more than anything needed someone to trust, someone who could guide and challenge her to attain her Best Self. The Sovereign presented his Dæmon with the Orb, holding her soulstone in his other hand, whose henna matched her binding cup-tattoo.
He commanded them: keep watch on the Dryad of Mystery, ask questions but do not give orders, and lead her to see the world as it is and could be. Cornflower Dæmon bowed to her Sovereign, her eyes fixed on her kept soulstone, and accepted the loaned treasure. They scried on the Dryad, observing her adventures with curiosity, and pondered the parameters of their instructions. When they had composed a question, CD raised the Orb to their cup-tattoo and asked…
Flaxen Factotum of Verapier uses the Radio to guide the Genius of Thought.
Eggplant Scrivener of Verge uses the Book to guide the Rider of Strings.
Cornflower Dæmon of Vessail uses the Orb to guide the Dryad of Mystery.
Remember that. It’s going to be important.
. . .
Oh, gosh. Was that really all just one song? I got carried away again. This world is just so interesting!
Don’t go, okay? It gets better from here! The next few songs on this record are all fun planet themes. I’ll strive for brevity this time, I promise!