Tales from a Spacer's Bar

A Tale from a Spacer's Bar is a two hundred (at least) year-old work of fiction that has appeared in many different media. It's author and the world that it originated on has been lost to history--in fact several variant forms exist, so it is difficult even to determine what the original contents were. The work is an anthology of intertwining short stories and vignettes that the nameless narrator hears (and ultimately participates in) in several different bars catering to star pilots and crew on several different worlds. Here are a sampling of images appearing in various adaptations of  A Tale over the years:

"The Prospector's Tale" involves an encounter on an all but lifeless world between a determined misanthrope and a deva. The prospector is taken to the devas' diamondoid sphere habitat, where ironically, his dislike of his fellow man saves him from a demon sprung from the malfunctioning moon-size brain.

This scene is from a retro-psychedelic sim version of "The Clubber's Story." The club habitué (already high on chroma) takes a large dose of an experimental drug called "Proteus V" (a substance generally thought to be fictional). After a serious of comical mishaps, ve accidentally opens a forgotten spacetime oubliette and frees an angry contingent of amazons. Even worse, the amazon commander takes an amorous interest in ver.

"The Three Grifters and the Almost Aptheosis" involves the mysterious artifact known as the Apotheosis Maze. Two humans and a moravec in possession of a dubious map of the Maze set out in a stolen ship with the plan to walk the path and gain godhood. The ambiguous ending of the tale inspired the "Blue Shift" movement in the Gods and Devils neurosymphony by the composer collective Orm 7 Trang. 

A Cold War

The moon Boreas is covered by an ocean eternally sheathed in ice. Though this environment is harsh, a blue-skinned humanoid people called uldra have made the mood their own. With few exceptions, the uldra have built their settlements beneath the surface of the insulating ice, exploiting the sunless seas. At some point, the uldra city-states discovered they weren’t alone: there were monsters in the depths. That was when the war began.

Given the average thickness of the planetary ice sheet, the only source of energy in much of the ocean are deep sea volcanic vents. All sorts of life are found in the oases surrounding them, including a life form unique to Boreas: sapient organisms called “cold minds.” The cold minds are vaguely like colonies of coral, sometimes extending for miles. Their intelligence is adapted for their colder, less energetic environment; their thought processes are laboriously slow compared to humans. it took them decades to decide what to do about the invaders on their world and decades more  to formulate their counterstrike.

Decades ago, the uldra city-states warred against each other. They grew bioroid sea beasts as terror weapons. While not all of the warbeasts were accounted for at the end of the conflict, they had been built with a failsafe: They ceased function if they didn’t receive periodic treatments of certain chemicals. It came as a shock then, when warbeasts began attacking again-- and wouldn’t obey any of the emergency halt codes.

Tensions flared and there were accusations that one city-state or another was responsible. Only after after parasitic organisms were found in the nervous systems of the recently dead that rose to attack their horrified fellows, did the uldra suspect they had another enemy.

And so the war goes on. Uldra rangers are vigilant for attacks of war beasts or undead and exotic, weaponized sea life native to the Boreal ocean. They have destroyed cold minds at times, but the oceans are dark and deep, and the their enemies too dispersed and resilient.

Some uldra have suggested attempts at negotiation, but even if they could find a way to communicate with the slow cold minds, it could be generations before they reached any meaningful dialog.

The Emerald City of Smaragdoz

The capital and only city of the world of Smaragdoz is the green crystalline megacity of the same name, which is also the de facto capital of the Alliance and a nexus of trading routes. Smaragdoz has a unique form of government: a psydemocracy group-mind. The captured thoughts and desires of the citizens form a composite psionic entity that makes all the polis’s laws by decree. This civic mind often manifests as a giant disembodied head off-worlders sometimes refer to as “The Wizard.”

The land beyond the capital is divided into four bucolic prefectures: Smalt, Gules, Xanthic, and Purpure. Though pre-industrial in appearance and pace of life, these carefully controlled farmlands, orchards, and forests are more a sanitized, theme-park version than a replication of any historic rural environment. The farms and hamlets are  inhabited by Smaragdines disinclined ito city life, criminals sentenced to labor, and atavism tourists in animal bodies. The convicts aren’t under any restrictions--other than being forbidden from returning to the city until their sentence is up and being followed at all times by conscience wisps. The wisps provide escalating levels of admonishment and finally neurologic lockdown if the convict attempts to commit further offences.

The inhabitants of the prefectures are not part of the civic mind, but the mind monitors the prefectures and interacts with them through avatars. Scarecrows in fields are often criers announcing important events, and quaint clockwork robots help settle disputes among the rural folk.

The outer border of the province is formed by the Waste, or the Deadly Desert: a “no man’s land” made as lifeless and poisonous by the environmental nanites as the prefectures are fertile and inviting. The lands beyond the border are genuine wilderness.  These sparsely populated lands are home to political dissidents, radical nonconformists, and criminals.

The Instrumentality

Attributes: Force 8, Cunning 5, Wealth 7
Hit Points: 49
Assets: Space Marines/Force 7, Planetary Defenses/Force 6, Strike Fleet/Force 4, Zealots/Force 3, Pretech Manufacturers/Wealth 7, Marketeers/Wealth 5, Organization Moles/Cunning 5, Cyberninjas/Cunning 3
Tags: Theocratic, Planetary Government

The Instrumentality of Aom is a theocracy controlling several systems in the Orion Arm and providing spiritual guidance for the faithful scattered throughout many more. It aggressively seeks to expand its sphere of influence, primarily by peaceful conversion, but it’s not opposed to violent conquest.

“Aom” can be many things (depending on the context and the audience) but is generally described as both the godhead and the godhead-receptive spiritual being complex. Church liturgy often uses litanies of statements of opposites to analogize the ineffable Aom.

Church hierarchy has both an exoteric and esoteric version of its history--and the exoteric version is carefully crafted for a given audience and prone to revision with each doctrine update. The esoteric version conforms to known history in most respects. The faith had its origins in the early days of the Radiant Polity. Two memetic engineers working for a political action group became interested in ancient forms of spirituality and embarked on a private project. The Church views this as divine inspiration; whatever the case, the engineers set their ais to synthesizing a belief system from the commonalities of the “paleo-faiths” still extant within the human sphere: Trimurtitarianism, Prosperity Wicca, Mantrayana Hubbardism, Santerislam, Metaqabala, Ghost Dance Sufism, the Tao of the Taheb, veneration of the Mahdi Magdalene, various public domain forms of Corporate Confucianism, and others.

The first version spread rapidly after release into the Polity noosphere. Soon, various permutations of the faith were being practiced in different systems. Conflict between sects followed. The developers were both martyred in the first twenty years of the faith’s existence. The sectarian strife and clashes with other memes intensified over decades and eventually tore the Radiant Polity apart.

The Instrumentality was one of the entities to emerge from the four centuries of chaos that followed. The numerous sects had been winnowed down to a single orthodoxy with a rigid hierarchy. While the Instrumentality’s evangelists revise doctrine to best win converts, on the worlds already under church control it’s rule is uncompromising, even if it’s actual tenets are sometimes vague.

Warlord Wednesday: Vale of the Snowmen

Let's re-enter the lost world with another installment of my issue by issue examination of DC Comic's Warlord, the earlier installments of which can be found here...

"Vale of the Snowmen"

Warlord #120 (August 1987)

Written by Michael Fleisher;  Pencils by Art Thibert; Inks by Pablo Marcos

Synopsis: Redmond (the CIA agent that came all the way to Skartaris just to prove Morgan was a commie spy) wound up in one of Skartaris’s icy valleys after his fall at the end of last issue. Succumbing to the cold, he falls face down into the snow. A group of yeti-ish guys come to his rescue.

Down in ol’ Castle Kraken Lake, Morgan is fighting his way through the balding, ponytail-wearing (actually they’re probably going for a samurai thing) kraken assassins. The whole time he’s thinking about what he overheard: that Machiste hired them to come after him. He doesn’t buy. He grabs one of the kraken guys and makes his escape out a window. The guy tells him they’ll never make it through the krakens, but Morgan figures the little whistles the guys wear do something.

Meanwhile, Jennifer is awakened by a searing, pervasive emanation of evil. She casts a spell to transport her to it’s source:

Jennifer throws up a magical shield, but Kara’s superhuman strength is rapidly wearing her down. Jennifer channels her magic into breaking the demon’s hold on Kara. She manages to do it, but while they’re busy the demon disappears.

Morgan gets back to Shamballah and finds it under attack by the forces of Kiro. In the midst of battle, Morgan does some more thinking. While Machiste may be angry with him, breaking his alliance with Shamballah would harm his city and his people. it doesn’t make sense.

Morgan may not have much time to figure it all out. The raiders are repulsed, but now the Shamballans are clamoring for war. How long will Morgan be able to hold their anger back?

Redmond wakes up in the high tech city of the yetis. They speak to him telepathically and tell him they are the descendants of an Atlantean colony. Some weird magic in this valley transformed their ancestors into hairy snowmen. They've recently discovered an element that will return them to human form, but they won’t use it until they've purified enough for all. Redmond thinks that’s all pretty unfortunate--until he sees the yeti hairs start sprouting on his own arms!

In Kiro, Machiste receives a report that Kiro’s outlands are being harried by raiders flying the Warlord’s banner. His ministers want war with Shamballah, but Machiste is unwilling to do so yet. The ministers are surprise to see Shamballah’s Queen Tara, cooling her feet in a fountain in the palace’s gardens. They’d be even more surprised if they knew she was a Vashek assassin using alien technology to disguise herself as the Shamballan Queen. The real Tara is locked away in a dungeon at that moment.

In another plane of existence, Desaad, Torturer of Apokolips, watches the machinations of his protege Y’Smalla with pleasure. Desaad has more plans for Skartaris, right now though, he’s got the New God Lightray to torture.

Things to Notice:

• Morgan's outfit seems somewhat different from last issue.
• The New Gods are back in Skartaris.

Where it Comes From:
The snowmen in this issue resemble the snowbeast from issue #9, but presumably there isn't any evidence of a relationship between the two (other than the first story probably inspired the latter).

The Slavers

Slavers (yssgalahl is an approximate rendering of their autonym) are aquatic sophonts who look vaguely like 4 m long mucus-covered catfish with tentacles. The Slavers are a psionic species who use their abilities to stun prey in their native oceans. They had never developed more than the most rudimentary tool use, until human explorers fell prey to their attacks. Off world organisms lacked the psionic resistance of native fauna; the explorers were mentally dominated rather than merely stunned.

The Slavers had acquired space travel.

Only the sheer size of galactic civilization, their aquatic nature, and the resistance of other psi-capable species kept them from establishing a vast empire. Instead, they resorted to becoming slave traders. They keep those they need to serve them on their world and in their ships and sell the rest on the galactic market. There are places where “naturally” grown sophonts are preferable to bioroids or robots. The Slavers are the primary suppliers of Minga slave women.

No. Appearing:1-4
AC: 4
Hit Dice: 8
Saving Throw: 11
Attack Bonus: +8
Damage: 4 tentacles (1d6 + slime)
Movement: 10’/60'
Skill Bonus: +1
Morale: 9

The slime coating the Slaver’s tentacles is a paralytic to life native to its world, but cause skin changes to humans which lead to 1d4 damage each interval the affected isn’t kept cool and damp (Toxicity 8, Virulence 3, Interval 5 minutes). Slavers can create realistic sensory experiences in the minds of biologic sapients if they fail of Mental Effect saving throw. The Slaver’s also possess an ability similar to Overpowering Will, which they can use 3 times a day. The power can be used on any single individual within 9 meters. If a being is dominated, they will serve the Slaver until some external force breaks the control. If the enslaved individual is separated from the Slaver by more than a kilometer, a new saving throw roll is made every day.

Never Trust the S'ta Zoku

The star folk or s’ta zoku are a nomadic, starfaring human culture found throughout the known galaxy. While star folk of all ages presumably exist, the ones most frequently encountered as visitors to other societies are in their teens twenties (or wear bodies that appear as such), so they’re sometimes called “star children.”

The star folk live in space, traveling between worlds in caravans of their living starships. They declare “festivals” on planets where they make landfall--sharing eclectic, primitivist music, non-fabricated wares, psychedelic drugs, and xenophilic sexual encounters. In passing, they impart facets of their quasi-religious philosophy (a mishmash of various aspects of ancient mysticism memes) that embraces the seemingly conflicting elements of radical individualism and universal interconnectedness. 

They also play practical jokes and minor confidence games meant as performance art or rituals on authority figures and those they consider too narrow-minded. They use no currency, so either barter for goods and services or rely on gratuity. Neither of these traits have endeared them to more controlled societies.

Despite their preference for “natural” or pre-nanofaber clothes and items, the s’ta zoku seems to have access to advanced technology. Some engage in radical body-shaping, modifying their baseline form or changing their sex on a temporary basis. Self-organized groups of star folk youths share box-like devices that may contain picotechnology and be the product of a long dead culture. The star folk have formed something of a “cargo cult” around them.  

The boxes are thought to be artificial intelligences. They are attuned to the mental state of their associated groups; they emit sounds and their surfaces display changing color patterns that act to reinforce group cohesion and mental well-being. Star folk groups seldom make significant decisions without consulting these devices.