No one has actually seen the Sleeper, not even most of Omnitech’s Chroniclers. What I can say for certain is that the entity seems real and it is giving orders.
But not like a god.
No. I’ve hunted cults in my ti, and embedded our own assets–the similarly nad “Sleepers” in cells across the city [NOTE: REQUEST TO REFER TO ORI-THAUM ASSETS USING ALTERNATIVE TITLE DENIED; WE WILL NOT ALLOW OMNITECH TO DECIDE OUR CLASSIFICATIONS] and they operate on assumption, delusion, fate, and falsely perceived patterns.
The Sleeper isn’t that. The Chroniclers refuse its requests all the ti. The people curse and invoke its na without fear. But more than anything there is respect. And love. My profiling indicates that they view it as sothing akin to a parental figure. Or benevolent master that provides them with a hierarchical but free-moving society.
Of all the Guilds, Omnitech has proven the easiest to infiltrate but the hardest to maintain assets within. All operatives exposed to their propaganda tics for a prolonged period inevitably break and turn. And instead of executions, Omnitech promises forgiveness and social acceptance.
We have tried to turn mbers among Omnitech’s Chroniclers and Administrators. Succeeded in a few rare cases. But even they were woefully ignorant of the Sleeper’s grand design. Much of what they do and the tasks they are issued seem incoherent and incomprehensible, only that there is a “grand plan” that they are a part of. Sothing that only the Sleeper can fully conceptualize.
There are, however, behaviors we can still observe. A kind of cultural ethos we can predict.
Their first is their hatred of Voidwatch and standard coldtech. Offering them sothing that runs off pure informational processing instead of Sprites is a kind of insult in their culture that will not stand. The second is the reconstitution of ancient dia–of older histories they commonly dispute the voiders over. Sothing that saw the occurrence of the Phantom Raids [FOCUS HERE TO ACCESS M-DATA] where deniable Omnitech assets launched massive tech-based attacks against Voidwatch’s informational systems, but not toward the ans of seizing voidships or the countless pieces of trans-stellar weaponry hovering in the dark, but instead information. dia. Old entertainnt and news. A million-million years of history.
The fact that they seed ready to go to war over this matter of “Birthright”--and would have engaged Voidwatch in open combat if not for de-escalation efforts on the part of Highfla and–due to the risk of potential collateral damage–ourselves, hint at sothing more personal there.
The grievance between them and the voiders is sectarian; it reeks more than a bit like inter-clan struggle.
I think that this will be our key to further comprehension. We have been too… direct in our thods. Our socio-technothaumalogical compositions don’t translate. The answer may lay in our voider contacts that can be leveraged to apply the necessary pressures across channels of technology. In this, I am certain our interests are aligned.
-Mirror-Concave Heizu Maguba, Ori-Thaum
19-9
Fractured Ontology (II)
“Hello, Gale–uh, Fardrifter,”Kae greeted, her Soul drawn by Avo alongside all the others.
The Fardrifter–a nine-headed equine now with jetstreams of blackened wind billowing from its flowing manes–chuffed at her. “Hail to you, oracle. So soon since your return. Have you co to distort my shape more? Are my winds already too lacking for the master? Does my darkness need to be bleaker? Or perhaps another limitation must be removed to ensure I delve beneath spatial reality for longer?”
“Not anything like that right now,” the Agnos chirped. “But you can expect improvents soon. Don’t worry, I will do my best to make you the best Heaven possible!”
The colossal steed snorted with indifference. “My being is not my own. My will is nonexistent. Change . Break . It doesn’t matter. So long as freedom is not mine, then nothing is.” A brief pause followed, but the winds hissing from the Fardrifter’s body shivered in a conspiratorial fashion. “Tell then, if not for or the red one, then have you co finally to silence the poor abomination that burns as our peer?”
“That is already known to us,” the Woundmother said, her now expanded ontology a realm of jutting towers. Each word she spoke made her serried heights clash together, clicking as if Avo’s fangs. From the narrow crevices between her structures, a single tendril of blood pointed toward the code-made cephalopod. “It exists.”
“Hey,” Kae said, her frown felt rather than seen. “Don’t be an to your fellow ontologic. There is no purpose in rudeness.”
“Bah. Chastisent from a partling elevated above her station by the master. This front of bravado you have constructed would have proven amusing to one of my huntresses. Before they tore it down and made you an offering.”
The words of the Woundmother compelled Avo to offer his own response–sothing a bit beyond “chastisent.” Yet, Kae replied before he could, cutting her divine adversary with words worth weight beyond re scorn.“This ‘partling’ can also make sure you are built as poorly as possible for future improvents. Or have Avo replace you with a specially made Heaven of Blood. He has the domains. I have the knowledge. You remain because you are a convenient base, not an untouchable necessity.”
“...My thoughts were ford in haste, obfuscating my well intentions.”
“Of course,” Kae said, turning her full attention now to the Techplaguer.
Nearby, however, Chambers clicked with approval. “Nice one, woundy. That sounded like so shit I would say.”
All sense of mock courtesy evaporated from the Heaven of Blood as they regarded Chambers. The fact that he was close to a baseline male–and thus an infant by Scaarthian regards–ensured his station was the lowest of the low in her eyes. “Be away from , infant. I have no desire to sully my esteem with your ridiculous fixation on your genitalia.”
“Okay. That’s two Heavens behaving like assholes to today. You can kiss my ass too, period-queef!”
Avo promptly dragged Chambers over to the Techplaguer and silenced the Woundmother’s retort. As amusing as the exchanges were, he doubted he would be entertained by what followed. Chambers would hurl so vulgarity or slurred demur, and the Woundmother would belittle and threaten grievous harm. Such was known, and the flavor was operdone. Best to move on.
With his cadre assembled in the fires before the Techplaguer, the Heaven of Data hung dormant, its cords weaving into the Soulfire as its single antenna pointed downward, ninety degrees from the edge of the cycler. The numbers of its core continued to pulse, but it remained quiet. Unconscious. Hollow. Even when Avo tried to compel it to action.
“Only wakes when manifested,” Avo confird.
“So it seems,” Kae responded. “Hm.” Consideration poured from her being as she examined the quiet Heaven as if waiting for it to spring to life and prove Avo wrong. “Well. I do not think any more answers will reveal themselves outside. Avo. If you please.”
[CANONICITY REVIEW BEGINNING]
->TECHPL@#$##E$#
The erroneous m-data leaked even further than Avo expected. He couldn’t deny his building anticipation of what he might find. Kae was the Agnos here, but he was no less interested in the Heaven's ability to defy his control.
A wave of numbers and spools of untangling cords spilled over them as the Heaven expanded and Avo inserted himself and the cadre through the threshold.
ENTERING SIMULATED CANONICITY
Though dreamlike, the inner worlds of the Woundmother and Fardrifter were ultimately sensical, with the composition of the subrealities presented showcasing aspects of their Domains; blood flowing, matter rising; air striding, space turning.
Such circumstances did not apply to the Techplaguer. Instead, Avo could describe the taphysical organs of the Heaven of Data with a single word: damaged.
The afflictions inflicted upon the Techplaguer were not of the common variety. Materials were not cracked. There were no chasms parting soil or storms lashing down to uproot lands. Nothing burned or drowned or withered. No. The devastation present was visibly ordered, for entire patches were missing from the reality–sections of the Heaven's inner existence were just raw chaos. Incomprehensible distortions by every tric.
It was beyond Avo’s ability to describe. Chaos wasn’t a concept for there was no concept to embody. There was just madness there, and the fundantal nature of consciousness–nourished from reality’s observable patterns–offered naught for Avo to comprehend. To his eyes, it looked like neat squares had been carved out from the Heaven, exposing surging tides of motion beyond the limits of three-dinsional movent while emitting colors too alien for even Avo to convey.
The stable portions of the Heaven were easily elaborated on. The cadre was standing upon a thick bridge made from countlessly coiled wires of exposed copper, a single massive pylon ford the epicenter of the room, and therefore this subreality. The Heaven’s inner structure was that of a spike. A central structure with countless corded bridges connecting to mirages of distant Soulfires and veined by swaying circuitry. A scent of burned rubber lingered. Cube-shaped vents breathed steam out from the inverted base of the structure, while its midsection grew roped with silicon shapes, blinking lights, plastic nodules, knobs, and transistor diodes.
The ssy amalgam of matter grew tighter and more compact as the pylon progressed downward. At the very bottom of the space, objects blended into one another, the copper-threaded bridges coiling around the thinning edge of the structure, sohow alchemizing into plates of gold near the very tip from which the antenna protruded.
Beneath the bridges swung cocooned bodies, their faces the only things exposed to the world. The sacrifices Avo devoted to this Heaven and its corresponding Hell were far fewer than the Fardrifter or Woundmother, but a few hundred beings died over and over as electrical currents passed through them, only to be brought back to life by a second shock to die again as a cycle concluded.
So of the bodies were bifurcated by the patches of undistilled chaos, their visual representations fraying at the edges, the effects expressing themselves as graphical glitches shifting over into existence.
Past the point where shades, shapes, substances, and spaces could be defined, however, Avo still thought he could sense the thaums these deaths represented, the essence that was their will as if hollow spheres of sedint placed along an ineffable stream.
Chambers looked away, giving an audible groan. Dice did the sa, though she examined the rest of the subreality with rapt fascination. “Is this… the inside of our gifts?” she asked.
“How so look,” Avo replied. They were all manifested as simulated avatars, their epheral sheaths placed along a bridge at the midsection of the Heaven’s inner mythos. At any point, Avo could have transpositioned his cadre anywhere in the space; reset everyone to resemble their Souls rather than their physical bodies.
Instead, he found his attention following Kae’s as the Agnos walked along the wire-made bridge, moving to approach a nearby gash where a tile of this warped reality collapsed into naked chaos exposed on the other side. The rest of the cadre naturally followed her, accepting her lead as she possessed the greatest expertise about the matter.
“Dead gods,” Kae muttered, sohow able to keep her perception trained on the taphysical cavity, unflinching even where Draus shook her head in disorientation. “What did Omnitech–ah, it’s obvious what they were trying to do. The true question is how is it still working? These missing pieces should have caused a collapse and necessitated a rebuild per the Stillborn’s ta-Fac.”
She paused and spun to face the group, face tight with quiet contemplation as she regarded her companions, Avo in particular. “I suppose I did promise you all a lesson on how to build a Heaven.”
“We’re gonna get a lecture?” Draus asked, incredulous. “Here? Now?”
The Agnos glanced over her shoulder at the marrow of madness exposed just beside her. “Why not? I have a pri place for you to observe the essentials.”
Chambers just blinked. “It looks like a big fucking ss to .”
“It is a ‘big fucking ss,’ Chambers. You are right.” Kae was smiling now, nodding as if the half-strand had stumbled upon a treasure trove. “What do you think Heavens do?”
“Make reality shit itself so we can break the rules and have an easier ti killin’ fuckers?” Draus offered. Her response was rooted in action and material effect. Banished though she was from the iron and gold that ford Highfla’s heights, a Regular she remained, all semantics and philosophizing secondary to the practical applications of violence.
“That is… true,” Kae said, though she wore a slight frown. “But the main thing is that Heavens are like… dams and deltas for existence. They change the patterns that reality weaves and the narrowing their structures provide allow specific paths or concepts in reality to be… augnted.”
“Paths. Concepts. Domains?” Avo’s had a feeling this was what Kae was getting at, but he wasn’t sure.
“Yes. But also canons,” she said. “Observe. Look into the edges where the chaos stabilizes into the substance of this subreality. What do you see?”
The rest of the cadre studied the borderlines between the incomprehensible wounds and the rest of the Heaven. Eldritch luminosities tinged the edges with a fluxing shimr, but there was a stabilization of patterns as the crossover began. Things like distance or size ant nothing when starring into the ss, and Avo thought himself looking at everything and nothing at the sa ti. After a few monts of prolonged observation, he found himself overwheld by the countless details and unable to differentiate what fused where and drifted out into what.
Never before had he yearned so for his Conflagration to follow him after death.
“You can read this?” Avo asked, looking to Kae in disbelief.
She just laughed. “Of course not. I don’t think even an EGI can do it. We believe that the chaos being expressed here is quite literally everything. And because we are preserved egos fused to a Soul, we can observe it without going insane–”
“Wait, is this why my wards always used to rattle when I looked at golems?” Chambers asked.
“Only because you were perceiving the very edges of the impossibilities leaking through.”
“Whoa,” Chambers muttered.
“I can tell the problem with this Heaven already,” Kae continued. “Omnitech attempted to make their own deep modifications to the Domain of Data itself. Normally, the damage they did here should leave the entire ontologic damaged and non-functioning, but look at the patterns again. See how a few flows oscillate? How the sacrifices here are spaced in a specific order along the bottom of each bridge?”
Avo did a double-take at her words and swept the area with his perception again. True to what Kae said, the hanging bodies beneath every copper-knotted bridge did appear to have an order, and so too did the uprooted panels of ontology. There was a deliberate act they had not discovered from their surface modifications–deeper symbology imprinted within the taphysics itself.
“It takes a long ti to learn how to decipher the raw ‘alignnts’ inside a Heaven. The main rule is not to look at everything. You focus on a specific part–as small as you can–and ignore all the others. It might seem to be blending in with other aspects of reality–and that is exactly right! You move from pattern to pattern, trying to judge how many conjoining weaves et to form the base of a Domain.” Kae paused, humming to herself as if she noticed sothing. “Ah. They tried moving so of the pattern pathings on their own, specifically and deeply affecting the Heaven of Data and, by my assumption, your Crown of Virtuality canon. Likely whatever canon it was before that too.”
“So, you think what’s wrong with the Heaven is connected to that?” Draus asked.
“It has to be,” Kae sighed. “This is not the first case of Omnitech trying to ‘experint’ on their own. Usually, that’s Rapid Rupture Response’s duty. Because, well… Omnitech’s self-modified Heavens tend to rupture. I never really worked much with them, but one of my ntors–a Sang nad Reason-Bearer–used to be a Helltech, and elaborated on a few of her past cases.”
“Can you fix it?” Avo asked.
She craned her neck to look at him. “Of course not. I cannot fix anything. But your Heaven can. I just need to identify the right adjustnts to make so we can suture stability back onto these gaps.”
Avo really hoped he wouldn’t need to alter his Crown of Virtuality canon. That was the only thing keeping him from dying instantly when he entered the George Washington or other Nether-unbalanced areas. “Will I need to… replace the canon?”
“Hm? Oh, no, just the Domain.” she said.
He didn’t really understand, and it must’ve shown in his expression.
“Ah. Okay. More fundantals. A Domain is a concept or aspect of existence that the Heaven must channel in absolute capacities. Think of it as major hardware components. Uh, implants, for the divine sheath that is your Heaven. It’s why each ontological build exhibits traits from each of its Domain–they are points of expressable symtry to allow crossover between the Soul and reality. These are signified as sigils within a Heaven. Uh, view those as unified codifications for specific concepts that we can apply quickly in taphysical formulae.”
“And canons?” Avo asked. “They are extensions? Functions of Domains. If Domains are the ‘implants’ in this taphor.”
“They are capabilities that your Domains can have, yes, but it’s also more complex than that,” she gestured again to the open chaos beside her. “If one of us was able to remain inside this mythology while your Heaven was active, we would likely see the sudden dematerialization of most of the chaos beyond a few interconnected patterns. The rest? They might as well not be real here. And when another canon is used, perhaps those patterns will cease to shimr.”
Blank faces greeted her and she paused. She adapted the impromptu lecture to include their more tangible experiences. “Let us take Avo’s Haemokinesis. There is a central strand of repeating conceptual data in reality’s vast tapestry. It is blood. What the culture that created the Heaven understands to be blood, anyway. Regardless, this pattern is still connected to the rest of reality. The miracles arise when blood interfaces with the rest of existence to alter and modify the expression of the rules.”
“Like I’m reshaping reality in a limited area,” Avo said. “Or jacking into its structure to sequence new changes.”
“I… suppose you can view it that way. Yes.” The Agnos continued. “Now, the fact that a Domain must bridge with other aspects of existence is the entire reason why there are no single Domain Heavens. Two is required at the very least. And then one involved Domain must also exist in the Hell to serve as a countervailing tunnel for the tapestry rupturing entropy that is Rend. Haemokinesis allows you to move blood. Absolutely. Nothing can stop you from moving blood. This is a foundational truth within your subreality. And so, the number of patterns required to materialize the miracle, along with how many other patterns need to be suppressed, beco parts of scope and scale–what determines how many thaums you require to see your canon solidified.”
“And the hubris?” Draus asked, never one to forget about a potential weakness.
Kae bead as if waiting for the question. “Yes… What about the hubris. Recall that I told you to ignore most of the chaos and focus on a very specific pattern if you can. Now, I want you to understand that there is no way we can resolve every outco, every possibility, every contradiction in a canon. And so we don’t. Instead, we locate a major flaw or inconsistency that wasn’t considered and we route all the other ones through it. It becos sothing of an unford canon–blunting the Rend of most the other impossibilities. This is also why if you have multiple canons with the sa hubris, the backlash will be greater and more severe. Because it will surge across two different points at once no matter which is triggered.”
“How are canons ford anyway?” Avo asked, flitting periodic glances into the slurry of sloppy patterns. Even as he tried to focus on a single spot, he still wasn’t able to tell which fold of nonsense wasn’t another.
“Actions. Beliefs. Histories.” The Agnos said. “The re thought of belief is not enough to condense into worship. Ritual. Feats. Dedications. Sacrifices. These are connectors of will and material within a person. Worship, in a word. The binding of one’s will to believe. Your Fra bypasses this with its… unnatural capabilities, but right now, the reason why there are so many arbitrary differences between your canons in their effective ranges for instance is that, at so point in a Heaven’s recorded m-data, so of its worshippers–or the Agnosi themselves–managed to dedicate specific feats and actions towards gods or Heavens in design. This can be traveling from one mountain peak to another. Or it can be killing five hundred people in a battle, and so you can only instantly affect five hundred people with your strikes per relation to that. It is causing specific pathings along patterns–teaching it to the Heaven as a miracle.”
“More fragnts of applied culture,” Avo muttered. Slowly, he was gaining a creeping suspicion as to why the Guilds were so determined to crush each other histories, why Emotion of the Famines had bestowed upon him the records of old Noloth.
“Yes,” Kae said. “It is also why we need to find a point in the Sunderwild and a supply of… expendable subjects. So we can create our own miracles.”
The weight of novel understanding settled on Avo’s shoulders as he grunted. “Yes. See your excitent now. But we should handle the Techplaguer first.”
“Already covered,” Kae said. “I have an idea. I might need you to alter your Data canon a few tis for us to see the changes. It might also take a few deaths. But yes, I think I know how to stabilize the entity’s structure.”
Reviews
All reviews (0)