Apocalypse
in Topics of ExplorationApocalypse
Songs of Bastet of Palimpsest
The Unmaking Rage (Termagant, the Iron Sultan(a))"A pantheon of strength and civilisation reduced to half-gone ruins mired in slag, the Iron Sultan alone mustering the raw strength to endure, powered by rage. Her-or-his realm reduced from a Sultanate of Bastions to a lone Throneforge carried by an Iron Behemoth down an Adamantine Road that melts and crumbles almost as fast as her-or-his creations can forge it. She-or-he flips violently between striving to rebuild and destructively venting the pain."
The Final Shot (Conscript Hodge, the Walking Wounded)
"A conflict ended in an instant, the Pitiless Machinery of War broken beyond any repair, and yet, in its perverse relentlessness, still ticking. Allies and enemies alike wiped out without ceremony or tactic. The ranks of the Fallen swollen with unstable, crackling ghosts; stars reduced to singularities before their time. The peace and quiet of lifelessness centred on a single field of mourning, tragically broken by shambling, jittering memories of the slain; no survivors but the dead and the one cursed to live, wounded and remembering."
The Story They Will Not Tell (Tybalt, the Prince of Orphans)
"Beyond the treehouse, beyond the Playground, a spot can be found where beyond the railings is a glimpse of a barren waste. With a practised wave of a paw and a gentle, careful gaze that meets the oldest eyes among Their wards, the Prince swerves every time away from explaining more than that the railings are not safe to climb. But Their brother will say more. He will not sugarcoat the truth that keeps him sharp: the pair themselves were orphaned more than once, not only of their families but of their worlds. They have survived three times, and by luck and dedication the Prince has protected what They are charged with. They will not survive more than eight."
The Howling (Worgoth, the Wolf at the Door)
"Even the Wolf at the Door has a wolf at Its door. The door of the Doorstep is the door of the world, and pain and destruction greater and more final than mere starvation waits outside, growing ever closer. A violent searing light that starts in the soul and burns out to the body through the heart and stomach, as if the spark of life inside you simply ran itself down and choked and sputtered. It cannot be escaped. It cannot be outrun. Not even the gods can stave it off. But those hardy enough, scrappy enough, determined enough, tough enough, may find themselves lucky enough to still be standing when the light fades and the pain becomes bearable. And every time, different wispy remnants are left in the maw of the Wolf, and every time there is less of the door and more of the Doorstep."
The Scouring Blight (Brambleson, the Prince of Rabbits)
"When the sage Fiver Cecily asked the Prince of Rabbits why, as a rabbit in his prime, does he not produce children, the Prince confided that he did, once, but does no more, as those he had were not quite as fleet as he, and there were times when they could not outrun their fate as he could. When Fiver cajoled him into saying more, the Prince let slip two things only: that there is a side of the Briarpatch, opposite the Garden, equally far from the Prince's influence, where the briars have not yet regrown and the effects of the blight remain; and that it is the nature of a hare to be swift enough to jump through the fire that scours the underbrush, where so many other creatures that would have dwelt beyond the briars could not."
The Breach Unseen (Panopticon, the Eyes and Arms)
"On six occasions has any creature claimed without reprisal that they escaped from the Bridewell of the Eyes and Arms, though It-and-They would not admit it. All six stories share a common theme: opportunistic flight as some omnipresent cataclysm shakes the defences that constrain them down to their foundations. Walls split. Bars become unfixed. Eyes are blinded and arms wither. Fellow prisoners perish in a blaze, and one prisoner awakes in the wreckage, burned and weakened but intact and unwatched. The Eyes and Arms may be anywhere and everywhere, but nowhere else has it been suggested that It-and-They should need to make use of this imminence not to monitor but to retreat. The Bridewell is rebuilt each time, its impregnability republicised, but in truth no defence has been found that will not crumble when the time comes again. It is not coincidence that the three most feared of the Bridewell's cells were grouped at the very bottom, where they may last even if the structure is shaken to its foundations."
The Sickness of the Stars, or the White Death (He-That-Walks-Beyond-The-Wall, the Prince in Saffron)
"Another song, brighter and rougher and sharper than the dim, smooth, flat song of the Hyades, has been known to burn through the ancient realm of Carcosa once in a slew of epochs, emitted all at once by every star save, perhaps, the Hyades and the Prince, for what is dead yet liveth cannot die and has no life - and so it is that they alone remain on in the crumbling ruins, surrounded by the liquidating corpses of their courtiers. The source and purpose of this White Death eludes even the maddest and most deep-drunk of the Saffron prophets, and some have whispered, and drawn signs of warding, that perhaps there are things even the Prince in Saffron is forbidden to know."
The Ancient Drought (Whirling-In-Rags, the Queen of the Sea)
"There was a time, when the world was not desert, but valleys, and cities, and forests, and seas. The gods were great vast spirits of these domains. Nothing sank, and nothing was overwritten. Those times are gone; the valleys levelled, the cities ruined, the forests ash, the seas dried to salt. The gods have faded, all at once or one by one, until the oldest and vastest and last floats alone, whirling and twirling in the rags of her mind and her memories, Her world lost to us and our world unparseable to Her."
The Narrative of the Broken (Three Immortals)
"In a world before, before that world ended and this one became, there were Three Immortals, who through their efforts reached the highest of the stars, with the intent to gain entry to the garden that lay beyond it.
But when they opened the gates of that walled off garden and saw the fountain of light at its centre, and realised what it could do, one of them turned on the others.
The Traitor caught the first of their two companions by surprise and broke them. And left them to fall from the sky. And when the Broken awoke, it was to a world that was recognisable, but only as recognisable traces left under some new unfamiliar paradigm. A world that had been scoured and built over.
Bastet doesn’t know where this particular legend comes from or where it’s supposed to end, but it seems that the Broken is still alive somewhere. Still immortal. And has made it their mission to find the other two. The Traitor and the one that remained Faithful. "
But when they opened the gates of that walled off garden and saw the fountain of light at its centre, and realised what it could do, one of them turned on the others.
The Traitor caught the first of their two companions by surprise and broke them. And left them to fall from the sky. And when the Broken awoke, it was to a world that was recognisable, but only as recognisable traces left under some new unfamiliar paradigm. A world that had been scoured and built over.
Bastet doesn’t know where this particular legend comes from or where it’s supposed to end, but it seems that the Broken is still alive somewhere. Still immortal. And has made it their mission to find the other two. The Traitor and the one that remained Faithful. "