Fragments of a Journey Into The Missing World
That Left Behind by the Cartomancer Kett Baba and Offered by the Good and Generous Bol-To
Recently, the voyageur decant Kett received back into his supernumeral polity the dividual drone become cartomancer Kett Baba. Though there was some kerfuffle about "maintaining an adrift existence, separate from the [burbling mind-mass] joyous unity of Kett", the other dividual drones of Kett reabsorbed Kett Baba until he was only Kett once more.
Some disturbing leftovers, not suitable for the peace-of-existence of the Kett unity were given over to the [servant-rat-venerable-cockroach] Joh-Joh for sale at the Ruins Azure. These included:
seven sets of non-uniform clothing (no dividual needs anything but a house-printed chitin loincloth in the rainful lands Blue).
a personalized anti-unity amulet with an incomprehensible inscription ("in loving memory, Sa'an Baba").
a set of privacy generators (keys and locks are not required in the Kett unity).
six pairs of socks (socks are an abomination in the eyes of the founding Kett mind).
an electric mule (the flesh mule was absorbed into the Kett unity).
an incomprehensible brain-eating jewel (the personality absorbers of the atomized adrifters are revolting to the Kett unity).
four journals of mad scribblings (expressing emotions that the unity does not require).
a symbiotic self-sustained environment suit (interferes with unity protocols).
and a useless map of a region far outside the acceptable range of the Kett unity (it is assumed that Kett Baba was abducted by bandits and used as a porter until he developed an inappropriate adrift existence).
Joh-Joh returned to the Kett unity six days later, having sold the leftovers for an astonishing two-thousand four-hundred and sixty-five units. Per contract, Joh-Joh kept a fifth of the revenue and received another year's worth of Kett Authentic anti-parasite medication.
From: Fitz Bol-To
To: Pietá Mercutio sha-Starfunkles
Regarding Reports of Interest from the Missing World
My good friend and scholic, I recall you maintain a curiosity subroutine and stand against the vegetation of our race. To whit I send you this package of recordings I acquired from a post-fungal wastelander. They offer morsels of news from beyond the Garden and, perhaps, will inspire you to grace our quarters once more with your love-whiskered master.
—with affection
Fitz Bol-To
22nd of the Byroad Bol-Tos
Byroad 297°, colloquially “Pasgale Station”
“The endless houses stretched down to the liquid infinity of that westering sea. We felt the psychic pressure of peering eyes from the shadowed windows and gutters. But it was full day. It would be full day for … at least a dozen more hours. The Little Sun was near these days. We would be say. The former humans would offer little challenge and we would be out on the sharp sand before they could crawl to drink starlight and feed their hatreds.”
(Some manner of Ruinland in an ante-deluvian style. Note the detached shelter machines are immobile and the traveler records some kind of starlight-sucking post humans —Bol-To)
Ancestrats. Those Protohumans.
Before Old Soils, some of the most decayed of proto-myths suggest that humans lived or toiled in underground joy-labor burrows under a demidivine (?) caste called the Deep Givers. The records are garbled, but at the time it seems these proto-humans were taught that "heaven is up, dig always down" and that they would be "reborn in gemsouls deep below, pure of the upper realms' hell-glow."
The drum-epic, Rise Into Hell, tells how the ancestrats of protohumanity rebelled against the Deep Givers and clambered to the thin-sucking surface of Old Soil. There, Mastress Flearoth wielded the shield Gravelgnaw (Rodigaia in the drum-epic's dialect). It reflected the blows of the Givers’ granite golems, crushing their fists with its rotating heads.
(I suspect the traveler was merely musing on some old stories they came across. From cross-referencing with Old Noö, the picture is likely one of a number of Eden Craters scattered by one of the Cthonic Seeders in the time of the Distributarians —Bol-To)
This old wreck greeted us out past the sunset, where the grass grows red and the skies weep ash. We chased out some ferret beetles and settled down from the nights. The long ago ghosts gave us wide berth and we rested well, untroubled by the rusting dreams of times gone by.
(I am quite excited by this record of a missing sea or body of water out West. I suspect the traveler proceeded far south along the Moon River, past the noxic declivity recorded by 17th Bol-To in his poem-travelogue Seven Moons and Five Penguins. —Bol-To)
Languorous shadroons swooped on the thermals over their masters' crater plantations, keeping eyes and ears and elems alert for ferals, barbarians, and other troublemakers in the high, dry lands between.
(By this scene you will know why I had to send these documents your way. From your words, is this not the Plantation Crater of your good master Starfunkles? If post-fungals and other strange wanderers are making journeys into your reaches, I fear your decontamination barriers may be compromised. Those shadroons the traveler mentions, far be it from me to question their efficacy, do not seem to have picked up these ones. Fortunately, I have six refurbished barrier dragons available for sale at a reasonable price, their minds freshly purged and souls ready for reforging. If you are interested, our bargemaster friend could arrange a transfer in free waters where the Azure coast pearls into Purple. —Bol-To).
This post recombined some recent notes with some new notes and now offers itself to you with a handy-dandy link to the stratometaship patreon where this world is hauling itself into physical existence through the multi-class efforts of Wizard / Thief / Fighter.
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