• UVG • Prophecies • Void •
“Alert. This is Zu. Repeat. This is Zu. We have returned, and we have bad news. The retemporization protocol will not work at scale. Repeat, the retemporization protocol will not work! Warn the Hyperlight not to initiate the protocol! Alert! This is Zu! Hello? Vesmir Observatory? We are not picking up your handshake. Hello? Is there anybody in there?
The Signal Manifests
- Archaic magical equipment in the laboratories of the techno-mages and archivist old-technicians begins to squeal and sing in unearthly polyphonies.
- Electromagical sprites erupt from metal objects and twist in crackling dance, leaving burnt messages in their wake.
- A pink luminescence bathes the town of —— every 17 hours. It pulses and flexes, like a great aerial medusa of colour and pattern.
- Random citizens’ auras begin to glow and vibrate in tune with the signal. Or, perhaps, this is not pure randomness. Do they share a common source code? Are they children of a unified implementation?
- Inherited proto-vome structures in some citizens activate and begin to grow, forming a distributed biomechanical antenna.
- Chosen citizens begin to aggregate together. Mothers and fathers, children and pets, wild birds and domesticated meat-rats. Some, dubbed messengers, fuse into a multi-brain biological computer to translate the signal from Zu. Others, dubbed drones and soldiers, build a macabre defensive structure of alien geometries and verdant electro-muscular growths to protect the Zu receiver.
The Signal’s Message
- Produces a sensation of bliss and contentment in the listener.
- A hint of unease and malaise.
- Profound anomie and disaffection.
- Frantic, anxious action to distract from the impending anomaly.
- Existential terror and torpor.
- A clarity of either enlightenment or profound, suicidal extremism as the message rewires the brain.
The Scholars Murmur and Guess
- These are aliens, monsters from beyond the void’s great oceans.
- This is an irruption from a great wormway in the sky, above the terrestrial orb.
- This is a human void ship, returning from some distant past, from some far-off future.
- It is an echo of a message sent into the void by some fools who did not comprehend the Upper Empty is a dark ocean full of terrors.
- It is a prophecy of the past sent from an averted future.
- It is a corrupted fast star, lost beyond the gates of perception and changed by the hellish radiances of the upper abyss.
of the Vastlands
Beware the Black Obelisk.
Do not trust the slab.
VotBO, coming, some day.
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