THE AUTUMN QUARANTINE VOYAGER

 

THE AUTUMN QUARANTINE VOYAGER
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The Pathfinders of Henlbyd

MIA
Artstation
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Title:  The Thumble Letter. Issue 8 - "Henlbyd and Related Parts"

ID: SQLP34297 - 023241

Creator: "The Duchess Burngand." (Pen Name. Actual Identity Unknown.)

Date: November [step] 1, 3101

Physical Description: Pamphlet (4'' x 4'', delicate text printed on pages of treated featherwick, "thumb"-sized, square indents at the corners of each page indicate mass production via autonomous lockway stamp)

Citation: Square Archival, Bunk 103, Jarl Packet, Stone 7, OID#LLI25 - "Archive Documents (Starbank #6)"

Restriction: Mid O.T. 

Content:

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    It is well known that the lifeblood of Henlbyd runs not through natural chutes, but along tracks of polished steel. You will hear the chariot of their state before you see it: its wyl-whistle strikes the mind as a bullet ricocheted off helmet brow, and it approaches. Metal mass, engines spit firing, step cycling. The air is alive, gilded and star-steam dancing. 

    This is the monster of the rail, the inverted solar queen, the ENGINE. A rotary locomotive of great size. One of the world's few. Five exist, each with a rich history and devoted engineering corp. Oh, the interested reader may lose themselves in the theory behind these devices for years. The pragmatic reader need only understand this: they are the key that has unlocked Henlbyd prosperity. 

    The ENGINE is that which traverse the Hollow Hall, that endless maze of cavernous cliffs, pockmarked stone faces, and death drops that define our world's largest and most perilous mountain range, but who walks before the ENGINE? Who blazes the first path, finds the safe routes through that treacherous wilderness. 

    The Pathfinders.  

    They are a solitary few. For years they range along developing paths, noting areas of sturdy bedrock, solid cliffs, overpasses strong enough to support the great girth of the ENGINE. When you see the great bridges of the Henlbyd rail, the courses winding in the sheer, open air between blasted mountain peaks, know that these are not divine things, but human made. 

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    Children in Henlbyd are named according to what is possible, considering the parentage. A child may have a name for each parent. Two names is common, three less so, and four is rare. Not quite rare, mind. In Henlbyd society, child-rearing is a communal enterprise. Good friends will sometimes band together in order to care for a youth that is the biological child of a single member of the group.  

    Family names are not carried through to verbal identification. This is considered irrelevant information, almost too personal to be shared. The community of Henlbyd is so small, so narrow, that this type of relational awareness is implied or, of course, already known. Material determination of familial line can be found in the written form. If no mark is given after the personal names, the family name can be identified by the first letter of each of the personal names taken in series. If a full stop (dot) is given after the name, the family information is Default - i.e. it can be discovered through petitioning of a state clerk.

     MIA (or Mia), the famous Pathfinder, provides both an example of the Default and a segue to our next topic. Mia was born as Miatalt Miator Mhaltapyd Tempat. Her parents were a group of five - one declined to add a name to the child, and all agreed that the Default should apply in case of future separation. Upon entrance to the service, she was given the moniker "Mia," which soon transformed into the field sign "MIA" (bastardized as M.I.A.) This forceful shortening of the name is not practiced by the civilian population. In the day-to-day, a lengthy name is pared down to just one name in the full set. That single name may change throughout the week (Mia may have been "Miator" on Monday, "Tempat" on Wednesday, "Miatalt" on Friday, and "Mhaltapyd" on Sunday).

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Mars Mara and the Nail Witch

 

Castelle's Revenge
Artstation
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Title: Aware and Away, Four, Chapter 17 [excerpt st. pg. 222] 

ID: SQLP0093 - 136221

Creator: Sator, Dame Ablehm 

Date: December 16, 2981

Physical Description: Booklet (5'' x 3'' x 2'', dull cyan cover, saturated tan typeface, interior pages of deeper cyan) [contained within Set Four along with chapters 1-201 (AuRet Sys: R1C4D3)]   

Citation: Square Archival, Bunk 001, Cacophony Packet, River Set, #623, A.9.3, C* - "Major Manuals"

Restriction: Dense T. 

Content:

"Mars is a name steeped in myth. It hurtles through story, legend, truth like a great Surpass Ship gone skyward - teetering on a faster-than-light precipice, then tipping, sink-scattered, and after a silent, cacophonous shatter, a million tunnels of winking prismatic waste thrown through the reaches of space and time. It is such - tangent, unknowable, potent in its many settings.

So it was with Starbank. The name Mars meant war [to them] (as it often does). Not war as a vague symbol, a violent spectre, but as the fist of one known and dead. Desdaom Squire. Hers were red banners. High, snapping at the wind howl and gunmark. She concocted a bureaucracy of conflict, a brutal, social machinery built on the corpses of kingdoms conquered. That tradition - that ingrained thought - was carried through Starbank history by spartans and sects, flash empires and institutions eternal, to the modern day. It was called “Mars Mara”, and we (from our modern, genteel perspective) can liken it to the broad social levelers we are familiar with: the desire for children, the sense of shared accomplishment/companionship one finds in contributing to a common cause, national pride, the desire to win a competitive challenge… to the people of Starbank, the Mars Mara was among these things - a path one could take, an experience that could be lived.

I have devoted the rest of this chapter to a lengthy recording of notable groups/works/themes/figures in Starbank history embodied by the Mars Mara. The Desdoam Heirs (a term used by local historians from ~3200 to ~3500) were...  

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... 

The Mars Coptence

At the time of their popularity in local legend, the Mars Coptence were relicts, remnants of the War, one minuscule fragment of that great beast’s corpse. Now adrift. We can call these creatures what they were - Sparing Square Occupants, one class of the many Triple-Dense artificial intelligences brought to, and eventually built on, Starbank's surface - but to the people of the planet (and in the later era of which we speak), they were creatures like any other.

Tall, humanoid, sentient creatures. Pale and pitch smoke steaming off halocap pores. That sweet smell, of a caged thermal cycle, and perfume packets pumping to compensate. Paneled ceramic, bundlewhim joints, contoured to fit the aesthetic design of some long-forgotten custodial engineer. The Mars Coptence traveled alone and carried several hermetically sealed cases. Within these, a release from disease: Pastel Mastodon, that pathogen of ethanol white. Highly addictive.

They established themselves a mile or two outside the limits of a city. Rumor would spread, petitioners would come. The Mara Coptence offered power, for a price. To take the Mastodon was to know strength - a body immune to disease and age, a heart quickened and a power gained. It was also to take the nail, for the Coptence administered the pathogen by nailing a pure sample straight through the breast. Few survived the initial administering. Those that did enjoyed three years of strength - weapons of Pastel (the archetypal dagger and stone), speed, power - while their body grew more and more dependent. And then, at the end of those three years, another nail. Another three years. Another nail. This cycle... or death. So addled would the body be, that the absence of the Mastodon would mean rampancy and decay.

Those that followed this track were called Nail Witches - horrible, amoral, always chasing the next conflict. Career soldiers. The greatest slight one could commit against a member of this class was to prevent them from renewing their lease, from claiming another nail. Such was the case with Later Castelle, a veteran Nail Witch and enemy of the Southmarch Bastion. So the story goes: one day, a splinter group of Southmarch tradeswomen conspired to slay the Mars Coptence that lingered outside of the city’s borders. They did this just as Castelle was preparing to accept a third nail. At least six months' journey from the next great city and with only a month of power left, Castelle was doomed. Her vengeance was swift and… horrible..." 

 

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The Signal Bearer

I got a little lazy with the coloring and failed to finish rendering her mallet! Hopefully the lineart gets the idea across. 

The Signal Bearer

The Signal Bearer
Artstation
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Title: Southmarch - Questions and More Questions, Vol. 5

ID: SQLP05933 - 991270

Creator: Maker, Judica O.

Date: October [step] 1, 3101

Physical Description: Magnetically sealed rectangular case (6'' x 2'' x 2'', filleted edges, polished stone (pale) paneling, aquamarine (rich) padded interior) [data received via ingrained-access burst, encoded in a complex knit texture woven into the padding material] 

Citation: Square Archival, Bunk 007, Query Packet, Corner Clive, #8211 - "Starbank, Region Specific (Year Agnostic)"

Restriction: Dense O.T. 

Content:

    “... It became necessary in Southmarch’s early years to develop a countermeasure for these massive storms. The sight of its pallid girth roiling over the peaks, down the midbanks, of the Part-Said Range was enough to cause rioting in the streets. Before the establishment of the Signal Bearers, such an event would mean the deaths of some 97% of the non-Bastion populace. The frigid winds, their crystalline grip, fell into the valley - the streets - mere moments after cresting the ring of mountainous structure encasing the city. No time to escape. 

    Some important points about the Signal Bearers: 

• It is not by some Outer Magic that the Signal Bearers detect the presence of an approaching storm. It is, rather, that they are able to see over the lip of the border peaks from their towers, which stand some 1,500 feet tall and are said to be among the tallest buildings in all of Starbank. From this vantage, they are able to note a storm’s advance well before it makes crestfall with the city.  

• The great, booming note of the Signal Bearer’s flat-drum does not travel to the ear as other sound does (through the curious quivering of unseen air). Rather, it gathers about the tower’s upper levels like some windswept burst held still, then falling as a clumping, dewy mist that wets the earlobe and brow.  

• The Signal Bearers do not, like the typical Southmarch citizen, shelter inside to protect themselves from the storm’s icy bite. The height of their towers makes this impossible - when the winds envelop the upper chambers, those resting within sit scant few feet removed from the very heart of wintry madness. To avoid certain death, the Signals Bearers shunt their Inner and Outer selves into the three-tunneled redwrit inscribed on their vestments. This text is clip-anchored (or fall-deadened) by the twin bands of pure roseway wrapped about the Signal Bearer’s right and left arm. The severity of the resulting Handshake Collapse is enough to send their mortal forms into a deep, protective slumber.  

• There are three towers - Clarion, Met, and Leo.

              Clarion 

• Clarion, so named for the Signal Bearer’s booming drum note, is the tallest and oldest of the towers. With its base rooted in the Lake of the Lower City, it stands as a monument to an older, more brutal Southmarch. Clarion houses most of the Signal Bearers - they have, in the echoing halls of this place, built a nest of shadow politics and ritual competition. Only the strongest among them are permitted to sound massive flat-drum at the tower’s terminus. 

• Clarion is home to a number of uninvited but uninhibited tenants. Notable among these is the exiled Princess Hail of Silkensleep and her plentiful, jubilant court. 

              Met 

• Met, the second largest, is rooted in the Lake of the Middle City. Colloquially known as “The Palace,” it is the most welcoming of the towers. The ground level houses a licensed (and quite popular) port officiated by a legion of lay-persons and a solitary, infallibly tyrannical, Signal Bearer overseer. Career sailors, away-imperial clades, simple fisherwomen - you will find these and more doing business on the wharf’s sheer ramparts and narrow docks.  

• For those of the Winefever, Met is a mandatory stop on the pilgrimage to the Grave of Saint Isabel.

              Leo 

• Leo is the youngest and smallest of the towers. Its pillarwork rests deep in the bedrock below the Lake of the Upper City. This is the only tower funded by a private individual - the Second Heiress and Arm of the Robintree Gate, Mopen Durnot - in honor of her brother’s (Leo Durnot) great sacrifice. Leo is also the only tower with upper levels open to the public. A mysterious evil lurks in that place - alabaster and scuttling. The city issued an open contract some years ago - kill the thing. None have succeeded, though many have tried. Records indicate that only two Signal Bearers lived in the tower at the time of its infection. Leo’s high drum still sounds at the coming of a storm, even after all these years. Many (including the author) wonder: what has become of those two stranded souls? 

 

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