I've expanded my thinking about the Messari beyond just my version of Mind Flayers or a stand-in for the undead to a whole freaky demon-inspired collection of freaky freaks. This started as a roper of sorts, but then I was thinking how it has some beholder-inspired abilities, and how it tries to drive you mad. I don't know what this is called yet, but I like the vibe.
I've had the firstlings of a story in my head for a few weeks now. This is the preface to whatever this thing might be... it's set in the world of Shards of Tomorrow. I hope that the formatting works :)
***
Kirby was a lonely bot.
That was what he
had decided after 300 years. Lonely was the correct adjective. While he
wasn’t given to melodrama or excessive use of adjectives, and he avoided
adverbs as a matter of principle, Kirby had to ultimately acknowledge that
lonely was the most appropriate descriptor. Precision mattered. Lonely was
precise.
He had been bound
before. She was a lovely woman, kind and well-mannered. She cared about decorum
and fashion and precision. Her name was Lanya, which was a lovely name. He had
truly enjoyed saying it, and hearing it, and being in the presence of the
creature that bore that name.
But, of course,
she was dead. The Windswept had crashed here on Banquo’s Tooth 814 years
ago. None of the mortals survived, and most of the bots were destroyed in the
terrible event. It had taken several decades for his memory banks to move all
of his experiences with Lanya into deep storage. Even now, he had pangs of
something when he thought of her, although he assumed this was some error in
the programming. However, he also accepted that, since he had not been able to
bond to another mortal in the intervening 8 centuries, his systems were
dredging his deep storage for some semblance of mortal life to affix to.
He was a bot,
after all. That was his purpose. No mortal = no purpose.
To be fair,
Banquo’s Tooth was not entirely devoid of options. Crystal Wyrms were mortal
(he had learned from the corpse of one he saw on the Veth Tundra three
centuries ago), and he could theoretically bond to one of those. They exhibited
some cunning. They wouldn’t wear silvered gowns and drink ganth champagne, but
it was better than nothing.
A Crystal Wym was
also better than his only other option: a Mirdan Scavenger. Those tribal
warriors were always upon him, trying to bludgeon him and skewer him and crush
him. Just last decade, one had caught him at close quarters with a blast rifle
and he had lost an arm. Kirby had tried to re-affix it, but he needed parts
that could not be found on Banquo’s Tooth. Theoretically, the ruins of the
Windswept may have contained such parts, but that was on the far side of
the Veth Tundra, where dark things now dwelt.
That was not an
option. So, he carried his lost arm strapped to his side, making do with the
one arm he still had. It was, mathematically, fifty percent better than no
arms, although metaphorically was thousands of times better.
The starships
still passed overhead frequently, presumably headed for the dark side of the
moon, although Kirby no longer attempted to hail them. For several years after
he first noted them, he spent every moment in the same pursuit; he would put
all systems in passive mode to maximize scanning. When a starship entered the
44-kilometer range of his sensors, he would hail the ship: he broadcast
greetings in 142 languages, reflected light from the surrounding crystalline
landscape, waved his arm with vigor (although never vigorously, since
that was an adverb), and imagined the Lady Lanya at one of her dinner parties,
trying to get the attention of a noble from Iago III. No ship ever answered his
hale, or slowed its passage, or gave any indication that it had heard or seen
him. However, the ships gave a glimmer of hope, and that was better than
nothing.
Better than
nothing had become something of a mantra. Everything he had, everything he
found, and everything he experienced was better than nothing. Nothing was the
only other option; all he had to do was disconnect his own central battery
while leaning over a cliff or at the bottom of some frozen ravine, and it would
all end. He would cease to be.
Kirby was still
looking for purpose, he finally decided, and would not be satisfied until he
found it. Thus, when the faint beacon from the buried ship registered on his
scanning system, he felt a tinge of purpose. He had to wait three days for it
to ping again, but he was nothing if not patient, and three days was a small
sacrifice at this point. That second ping gave him a location: 48 meters
east-north-east and 21 meters under the ice, where the icy layer of Banquo’s
Tooth’s surface gave way and its crystalline crust began.
Eighteen days and
six pings later, his arm’s digger attachment hit the second engine turbine, and
fourteen hours after that he had dug his way to the upper access hatch.
Three minutes and
twenty-eight seconds after that he first saw Sky Stalwart. As you might
imagine, he bonded immediately.
Okay, now to the backstory. I painted the backstory in very, very broad strokes before, but I thought it would be helpful to put some more meat on the bones here. I basically borrowed from everything I've done before to create a big 'ol mythology for this game system. I like the ways it leaves things open. It also borrows liberally from Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, mythology, and even a little ROM and Buck Rogers. Here's the draft I've been working on, which I will probably tweak, and which I hope formats correctly as I cut and paste it into Blogger :)
You'd think that taking something from Google Docs into a Google product like Blogger would be an instant home run, but sometimes the formatting gets all wonky on me... (EDIT: It happened. I had to go back and play with the text in Word first to get rid of formatting, and THEN paste it here. Stupid.)
The Messari came first, an ancient race of sorcerous wraiths: creatures both alive and dead. They inhabited many planets of the Cluster, building temples to their vile gods. They dwelt in shadow for eons. Three thousand years ago, the Naru homeworld - a massive rogue planet that weaves its way across the Bright Galaxy - crossed through the Cluster. Over the course of a century, the homeworld spun among these stars, as the Naru sent thousands of exploration craft into every corner of the Cluster. They colonized with the seeds of a multitude of species they had genetically engineered or brought from other worlds. At each planet and moon they visited, they cast out the Messari, destroying their weakest, and sealing their most powerful in deep prisons. In some places, they left behind - either by accident or by their own inscrutable design - relics of their mighty empire. One of their most powerful leaders, a warrior queen named Yahalla, chose to stay here on the planet Terra, deigning to watch over the Terran race, her favorite creation. Finally, the Naru planet’s orbit carried them beyond the Cluster and into other realms. It may be tens of thousands of years before they return.
Yahalla and her lieutenants set to work building up the people of Terra. She hid from them the most powerful technology of the Naru, allowing them to develop blast technology that would propel them among the stars and allow them to interact with the other species she knew must be developing. Initially, things went well, as their great armada spread across the stars, making contact with and developing peace along hundreds of worlds.
However, an ancient Messari vault was discovered on one planet. Then, the prison of a terrible Messari leviathan was found on another. Slowly, the Messari were unearthed, and Yahalla grew ill at ease. She ordered her ships home, and set out to strengthen the ancient seals that bound the Messari. Failing at this, she commanded that the vast armada be destroyed; tens of thousands of ships were abandoned in junk yards, buried among the sands, and left to ruin. She thought she had managed to stem the tide of chaos. She was wrong. Already corrupted by their influence, many generals among her legions turned on her, slaying Yahalla and sending the handful of her remaining lieutenants, angelic women-warriors called the Valkyr, into hiding. Decimated, the remaining Terran - loyalists to Yahalla - abandoned their homeworld, which was now in ruin after the devastating conflicts of the Terran Wars, forming an Imperium of absolute, tyrannical order born from a dread of the corrupting influence of the Messari.
The Imperium now operates from seven massive starships, the Seven Sons of Yahalla, attempting to bring law to the Cluster. While generally confined to the core worlds, they have begun to spread further afield, searching for the lost Valkyr and looking for a way to resurrect their god queen. Their reach can sometimes be felt even in the Pale, although none of the Seven Sons has ever traveled this far.
My favorite thing about this cover is that it looks like it would be on the sci fi softcover spinner rack at my hometown library in 1986.
I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but the art is ahead of the writing for this game... I've got a decent chunk of rulebook written, but I'm usually doing this level of final art later in my process. I'm interested to see how having more concrete images in place impacts the decisions I make in writing about the setting.
