the shift remembers

[ sketches: dylan ]

2011-06-16T15:53:00.000-04:00

[ sketches: godbeasts ]

2011-06-16T15:12:00.002-04:00

[ sketches: Paul-Joys-at-Battle, around age 27 ]

2011-06-09T13:07:00.002-04:00

[ sketches: Dylan ]

2011-06-07T14:29:00.002-04:00

[ sketches: toshbeast ]

2010-10-19T13:55:00.001-04:00

Dromed

2010-08-09T14:14:00.001-04:00

(Tosca d'Amati's Field Guide to Shift Trade, found in Twisted Tree's Used Books and Stylus Emporium, Hill City - a heavily used copy, sold for two shells five off of a cover price of twelve shells.)

Many and multifarious are the pack-beasts that cross the Shift, but the most resilient by far is the indigenous dromed. Shaggy and easily two meters tall at the shoulder, the beasts nevertheless can appear frail due to their relatively small breadth, somewhat less than that of a horse. This is a misleading impression: full-grown, a dromed can pull five times its weight at an easy clip. For the transport of heavy hardware across Shifting sands, no other animal will suffice.

Wild, the dromed is fiercely protective. When approached, they flare the vestigial wings that curve back against their humps. If truly threatened, they rise on their hind legs and strike fiercely, with their full weight behind their three-clawed feet, then savage the pinned assailant with their hooked beak. Should this attack fail, the beast turns to flee. Unburdened, a dromed can run at nearly thirty miles an hour.

Once tamed, the dromed remains ill-tempered, but will submit to the yoke. However, tamed dromeds serve the nomadic Tosh exclusively, and the beasts never stray into Hill City, or any other Settled World of which we are aware. Tosh caravans were once the main avenue of transport for Settled gear, especially weapons, across the Shift, but in the years since the Golden Horde's destruction, even the most friendly of Tosh clans refuse to pull military hardware, or guide those who do.

[ sketches: toshbeast

2010-03-11T19:05:00.000-05:00

Just The Facts

2010-03-11T13:17:00.001-05:00

(another crumpled sheet from the same basket)

All deserts are not the same, but they are all connected. A wanderer loses herself within one, and lost she walks on, thinking that over the next dune she will see her home. It is not so. She has stumbled into the Shift, and if she finds herself again it may not be within the world she knows.

The Shift is a desert stretching for thousands of miles without relief, a wasteland punctuated by few oases. At its edges, the Shift borders on many worlds, among them our own. Men, women, can reach the Shift when they venture into deserts not only unknown to themselves but unmapped by their people. Most worlds, we suspect, cut themselves off from the Shift by mapping their deserts before they know what they have done. Some, though, realize in time to mark off one desert, or many, as a mystery preserve (the Death Flats are Hill City's own example), a gateway to the space between the dimensions.

Down the centuries the people of five worlds have met and mingled through the Shift. Hill City, the Kestrethene Archaeopolis, Seven-Eight-Six of the Forerunners, the Centerland, and the Necrus trade goods, news, knowledge from one world to another. All worlds are different (much advanced Forerunner technology barely functions in our world, and there are no dinosaur herds in the Necrus, for example) but they share enough, one with the other, to make cooperation possible, and the occasional war profitable.

To enter the Shift, one loses oneself. To find one's way across it, one must be certain and sure-footed: the landscape changes, and none but the most strong-willed guide can bend it to her purpose. To exit the Shift, one loses oneself again, forgetting the mutability of time and space and allowing a new world to assert itself. Guides with this skill are rare, and in demand. Most are Tosh, the people native to the Shift, a hard and strong tribe of nomads; their rich culture was devastated after they made war on the Settled People ten years ago. To win that war, the Forerunners, with our complicity, made the God Beasts, giant creatures of fang and chitin and nightmare, and released them on the sand. Today, there are truly monsters off the edge of the map.

As you can imagine, this has made trade difficult.

(another diagonal slash. "Too impersonal.")

Look, you idiots...

2010-03-10T15:28:00.000-05:00

(a crumpled piece of paper from Dylan Amaranth' s trash basket; bourbon-smelling, yellowed on the edges, with a spider sketched in the upper left corner)

You live in a world that stretches past the borders of your apartment. I know this may surprise you. I know you may be shocked when I say that you should care.

Hill City, there are worlds beyond your imagination. There are beasts off the edge of the map whose appearance would freeze your heart's blood; whole realms bow to worship gods that would shatter your tiny minds.

Riddle me this: who made the seeds for that Paera melon you have in your icebox? No one in this dimension. Who built that heart monitor you wear, who spun that fabric finer than any thread of silk? Where do those spider-maze Archaeopolis patterns on your summer dress come from, the ones that shift and change as you watch them?

They come from across the Shift.

(The page ends with a slash of purple ink, and below it words in a sloping diagonal hand: "Too angry. Sleep. Try again tomorrow.")

Clarion Seven River's Autoscribe

2010-03-08T14:42:00.000-05:00

CRive: -egin transcription, meeting with Dylan Amaranth 7 Silmonth 433 at where did I put my watch-

DAmar: It's two seventeen.

CRive: Here it is, two eighteen thank you. Stupid machine, bunch of tin and wheels and it wears through quills like the worst novice I've ever seen, but it's useful. Think about it, never having to, ah, you know when you get a quote but you can never remember just how exactly it was said.

DAmar: Most people don't sound all that good out of their own mouths, do they?

CRive: I need a favor. I'd like an article from you.

DAmar: I'm a reporter. You're my editor. That's not a favor, that's a job.

CRive: I'd like you to, eh, introduce the Shift to our readers.

DAmar: Introduce?

CRive: Introduce.

DAmar: It's the Shift, Clare. Does it need an introduction? We fought a war there ten years ago.

CRive: I remember.

DAmar: Fifty, maybe sixty thousand people died in Hill City alone, more in the other settled worlds. Not to mention the Tosh.

CRive: Ten years ago is forever. Ask most of our readers how a bank works and they say it's a box where you put your money and it gets bigger. One generation in the city and they forget how to skin a buffalo, saddle a horse, shoot a bow. They don't know how things work, and you're losing them.

DAmar: I expect them to have some basic knowledge of how the world works. I'm not the school system, Clare. I can't travel-book the Shift in ten inches or less.

CRive: Try.

DAmar: That sounds a lot like an order.

CRive: Try, and the next time you come to me with a proposal for some six-month-long plunge into the deep sand that will most likely get you killed, I'll fight for it all the way to the board. I can get you funding. I can get you a leave of absence. I can get you space. Just do this little thing for me.

DAmar: Twenty inches.

CRive: Fifteen. You can make it stick.

DAmar: Fine.

An (a)Typical Hill City Warrant

2010-03-05T13:04:00.000-05:00

(Yellowed poster found outside Hill City First Errant Bank stall)

Hill City Watch
Warrant of Criminal Acts
of
Hassan Joys-at-Battle

Unlicensed Trafficking of Narcotics
Unlicensed Trafficking of Unrestricted Weapons
Unlicensed Trafficking of Restricted Weapons
Sorcery
Leading of a Population in Wanton Rebellion
Treachery of the First Scale
Treachery of the Second Scale
Impersonation of a Justice of the Peace
Impersonation of a High Captain of the City Watch
Unwarranted Chaos
Horse Theft
Endangerment of the City and the General Populace
Accessory to Adultery
Murder

Be Ever Watchful

From "Theories of Nondeterministic Space", edited by Olm 723-Spark-Ocelot et.al.

2010-03-04T10:28:00.000-05:00

Recovered 9.4*10^10 + 3.9*10^6s after the conclusion of Congregation Alpha

The increasing prominence of nondeterministic space (colloquially called "the Shift") in contemporary politics has overshadowed the greater impact nondeterministic space must have on the way we as scientists up-conceive of our world. The fundamental theory of Forerunning remains unchallenged; all those who invoke our Descendants profess firm back-certainty in the inevitability of singularity and ultimate Omega Union. However, we have as yet an incomplete up-understanding of the thermodynamics of singularity in a world that "borders upon," or perhaps (to use a musical metaphor) is underscored by, one or many others, and can exchange matter, energy, and ideas freely with them.

In such a cosmos, does our world still inevitably tend toward collapse? Is time synchronized between all possible worlds, or do seconds in some pass more swiftly than in others? If time is not synchronized, might Omega Union occur more swiftly in worlds that experience swift time? What implication do the answers to these questions have for our relationship to our Descendants?

On a more practical note, what are we to make of the extreme mutability of causality in nondeterministic (ND) space that presented us with such military and logistical difficulties during the reign of the Golden Khan? Complex living (conscious or semi-conscious) systems appear to warp nondeterministic space around them to ensure their own continued function; could a complex mechanical intellect do the same, and avoid the probabilistic effects that make current technology cease to function within ND-space? What are we to make of the fact that plants grow and function in the few oases that exist in generally arid ND-space -- are these plants, too, semi-sentient? Is some deeper principle at work? We back-understand biological and mechanical processes as interchangeable; work with ND-space should ultimately confirm this impression, but for the moment it poses a significant challenge.

The intent of this special publication of the Institute of Applied Theory is to present for the concerned reader an overview of all possible theoretical worlds that incorporate a nondeterministic space. Political implications, engineering principles, and their bearing on an individual's relationship with the Descendants are left as an exercise to the reader, but we hope that this text will serve as a firm foundation for any Forerunner with an interest in expanding the horizon of our knowledge.

A Forerunner's Invocation

2010-03-03T10:14:00.000-05:00

You
Child of dark time
You
Child of my blood
You
Cast-off and raised
Shed the shell of time and space
Break the ever-crushing wheel
Phoenix, wings spread
Dragon, teeth bared
Look kindly back and see us:
Fathers
Mothers
We made your way clear.

Since the Fall

2010-03-01T12:44:00.001-05:00

(fragment of the Hill City Daily, found lining a rice bowl in Trellis)

Shard Mosaic

Dylan Amaranth reporting
The Eastern Shift, past the Nightmare Reaches

"He changed us like fire turns sand to glass."

Sukh Third Horse speaks from the side of a dung fire. He's old, thin, brittle, one-armed, drunk, and the last of the Golden Khan's generals left alive.

Ten years ago, he led twenty thousand warriors on the Khan's left flank, scouring the stable lands. Today, he, his wife, three grown children, one daughter-in-law and two grandchildren are fugitives.

Like so many of the Khan's inner circle, Sukh and his family have been hunted across ten worlds since their leader's death, blamed for the destruction the God Beasts brought into the desert. Were his own people to find him, he would die in an excruciating way: staked alive in the sand, perhaps, pecked to death by chiropterons or devoured by slizzards. Fortunately for him, the Shift is large. Your correspondent only found Sukh through a combination of strategy, guesswork, footwork, and dumb luck.

Still, Sukh claims that some day he will be remembered as a hero, not as a harbinger. "The Khan made us one before the Settled people broke us with their God Beasts. We are a thousand shards of glass now, each sharp, each brilliant. We slice at each other, scrape across the surface of ourselves." He draws fingernails thick and hard as bone across a small stone he holds in his lap. "But the edge remains, and we can only devour our own entrails for so long. Not even the God Beasts can cow a people forever."

He waits as if for my opinion, as if by virtue of being a settled woman I can tell him that yes, the God Beasts too are mortal, that one day the Tosh will drive them from their land and be whole again. If I knew how to rid a desert of hungry near-immortal insects the size of mansions, though, I'd be in a different line of work. As it is, at their mention I look over my shoulder.

Only the night waits beyond the circle of our firelight. It is old. Somewhere, I hear a baby cry.

[ sketches: toshbeast ]

2010-02-26T19:50:00.000-05:00

[ sketches: toshbeast ]

2010-02-26T17:05:00.001-05:00

2010-02-26T17:03:00.000-05:00

The Desert has a lot of names, but the most common one in the tongues of men and beasts is "The Shift" - in part because it is a differentrealm from the worlds it links, and in part because it, itself, is constantly shifting phase; its geography is mutable, fickle, and (if you listen to travellers who have spent too long attempting to cross it) has a wicked sense of humor. To cross successfully, one needs a good guide - and the trait that marks a good guide is absolute confidence in his (or her) own abilities to penetrate through the veils, and find the same paths through the Shift over and over again.

[ sketches: two beasts ]

2010-02-26T17:00:00.001-05:00

[ sketches: Paul Joys-at-Battle ]

2010-01-11T15:00:00.000-05:00

[ sketches ]

2010-01-01T14:11:00.001-05:00

[ sketches: Dylan ]

2010-01-01T14:10:00.000-05:00

[ sketches: Aisha ]

2010-01-01T14:04:00.000-05:00