More Futurisitic Fun Than You Really Wanted, part I of V

[Luna]

WHO SAID THAT THE BOARDS WERE DEAD?  I ASK YOU!



Fuck... this whole thing is so damn good. 

I have never seen anything like this.  Y'all amaze me.

[Adios]

When does it get put together?

[P3nT4gR4m]

TGGR's on it. I'm working on some concept art in the meantime. Watch this space.

ETA: oh and keep posting - this shit has me inspired like I aint been in a long time

[Eater of Clowns]

**Recording.  Tunnel 9 Operations.  6/24/13  0534**

"Sams, you said you'd met Payne before, right?"

"Of course.  Actually surprised you haven't.  For the leader of such a big thing he's quite accessible."

"Never said I haven't.  What was your read on him?"

"Brilliant, but not so much in the way, say Einstein was brilliant.  I mean, maybe he is but I couldn't know that.  No, more like he had answers to things.  Questions we never even thought of before.  Why do you ask?"

"Looking into a theory I have."

"Another one?  Maybe you should apply all this thinking to Nessies instead of Payneites.  Hell, you could probably think them to death."

"All these vids I don't know I've seen a single person think in the presence of a Nessie."

"Oh yes, the dumb servohead fixation you've got."

"No, I mean those creatures get you working on an instinctual level.  You either fight them because it's what you were born to do, or you focus all your thoughts on not running away and fight them anyway.  I reckon the deep thinkers are the ones with their suits sliced open and sunk to the bottom of the muck."

"Ah.  Well what was this about Payne this time?"

"Got trapped in a conversation with a servohead lately.  Try to avoid those, they're an unnerving bunch.  Never can tell when they're on the juice, actually.  Well he started talking about Payne.  Painted this picture of the fella like some glorious leader, a regular Napoleon, standing to lead his men on the morning of a great victory.  Started talking about sermons delivered with hellfire, mad prophet's words that stir your soul, like.
Got me wondering if this was the same bloke I met."

"I suppose he's like any other person.  Rises to meet the occasion and such.  Does what's necessary."

"Thought that too, but this is something else.  It's like they're talking about a whole other person.  You have the guy gazing in the beyond, they've got him lighting fires in their heads."

"Well, what do you see in Payne?"

"I see a regular fellow.  Same as you or me.  Maybe a bit on the wilder side, someone you'd have a pint with, not talk about the weather.  Seemed like he didn't even choose to be in the position he's in, like he doesn't want it.  And I don't mean doesn't want to fight Nessies, but doesn't want to have such a following, even.  But he does it anyway."

"Here I thought you didn't like the guy."

"Never said that.  Actually if it's going to be anybody leading these folk I'd prefer it be him.  The worst thing that could happen would be someone getting such devotion and actually wanting that."

"So it's not as bad as you were talking about earlier tonight.  As if this whole thing'll blow up if - when we're done with the Nessies."

"Questionable.  I hear that Christ fellow was a good sort in his day as well, and look how that turned out when he wasn't around."

"It's like you said, though.  At least he doesn't want it like this.  At least he knows he's got responsibilities and such to turn it out for the best."

"Yeah, but who says I'm right?"

"You do, most often."

"Funny.  But if you see him your way and the servoheads see him theirs, what's to say I don't just see him as reluctant leader because it's what I want to see?  And I don't know what's more frightening.  That I don't know what he's really like, or that he might not either."

**End Recording.**

[Jasper]

Hell's bells.  This is GOOD!

[Cardinal Pizza Deliverance.]

This is really amazing stuff, guys. I'm sorry I haven't read the thread before now. I am impressed.

[Requia ☣]

This is really amazing stuff, guys. I'm sorry I haven't read the thread before now. I am impressed.

April fools joke I'm afraid, this thread doesn't really exist.

[Cardinal Pizza Deliverance.]

 

Then I guess I won't be joining in. 

[Payne]

You know, I had no idea this would happen. Oh no, but that's a curse that has afflicted those who 'know' anything since the dawn of time. They only ever know that they didn't know after the fact, no?

But fuck, this isn't a philosophical treatise on knowledge. Philosophy is for those who have food in their belly, and the monsters locked away. And playing word games with the word 'know' is rank amateur hour shit.

I was drunk, as I recall. I'd stumbled into some hole in the road as one does when inebriated. Any more of the details of the before time would be profligate, really.

So I'm in this hole, and there's a rushing sound and it's dark and I'm freaking out you see? I think my shoelace got caught on something as I tumbled head first, so I'm just hanging there upside down arms and legs all spread wide like some Saint Andrew, and I'm twisting in the wind some indeterminate height above the ground. And I mean wind. Some kind of foul subterranean wind that I could feel sliding off me greasilly.

Then I feel something just as greasy but horrifyingly more substantial wrapping around me tentatively. I can't describe what happened next. I was in an adrenaline rush like no other I'd ever had before and it was dark, but I could feel myself lost in some kind of super-sensory survival fight against this thing. Bare hands, mind. Bare hands and DM's.

I'm sitting on the pavement upside again, panting. My clothes are torn and shredded like in a bad zombie flick, hands and face covered in some kind of ichor that clings to everything. The diffuse light from a streetlight some forty feet away, shining through a lightly sieved drizzle casts me in an evenly shadowed and mystic light. And my face aches from the huge grin plastered all over my face.

Never so alive never so free never so alive never so free

I was back down the hole a few weeks later. Then a few days later. Within six months I was virtually living down there. Hell, I WAS living down there from day one. I wasn't alive when I was on the upside.. But you know what I mean, doncha? I needed the things I found and fought down there, and I was to find out later they needed me just as much. A symbiosis born of life and death struggle against each other. I improved my weapons and my skills, and they only grew tougher and more numerous. One could never defeat the other. We were balance personified. But then things changed.

I got The Idea after a few years of combat fed meditation on the subject. I was a priest of a new religion. I was a prophet who could actually free some select few from the mundanity and horror of the upside existence. I could show a glimpse of the totality of infinite human existence to a discple or two. And so I followed through on it - I knew that down below if you don't follow through you are dead, and reasoned that my new mantra would be 'As below, so above'.

So I constructed the first suits - the things were matching me and my new abilities and would only get stronger with additional numbers on my side, the green disciples would be torn apart in their inexperience. I formed the first basics of the mantras and prayers, the distilled Philosophy of Below. I adapted the ritual of communion from the Catholics (I left out the crackers, though) the power of Justification by Faith Alone from Luther and a fucking truckload of Eastern ideas.

Word spread after the first sortie. Slowly, as the first five, the Green Disciples, were taciturn loners really. But it spread. The Idea strengthened, the numbers grew and the equipment and the philosophy adapted. Fighting against what one of the Green Disciples called 'The Nessies' (he swore he actually saw one in full light once) ee were the Glorious Brotherhood, the Neo Cowboys, The Post Angelic Host.

We were writing our doom in ink of ignorance and hubris. A tipping point had been reached now we had an army of the blessed, and the Nessies had to reach balance. And they, it turned out, were better at it than us. Not by much, but enough to overwhelm us if we failed in our resolve. I withdrew from the front line, sickened by what Below had become for me and knowing I was needed above to co-ordinate the now very much neccessary recruitment effort. I had become Payne, The Leader.

And may the universe itself forgive us all we must do to survive.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Oh, yeah.

Ohhhh, yeeeeah.

[Payne]

Oh, yeah.

Ohhhh, yeeeeah.

I didn't know where to take it really. Just knew that Richter and his Transubstantiation (more on that later) sparked off a train of thought in my head.

I composed this largely during work the last few days, in between the ideas for a huge new project I'm working on.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Memory module extract from the suit of Templar Hanes, September 2013

...Last one left.  Jones went down 150 meters left.  What the hell?  Funny, we're all measuring time in distance.  

Snap out of it, Hanes.

Right.  The squad's dead, we killed three times our own number in Nessies, but that doesn't break even, and I alone have survived to tell thee...Shit, talking like Coleridge, I must be getting a bit shocky.  Probably that whole "no feet" thing.

Activated my beacon, but I think the Nessies are tracking me.  I can't crawl any further, so I'm priming my suit bomb.

I won't need it, though.  Payne wouldn't leave me to die here...

...Curly, hear me in my hour of need...

End transcript.  Suit bomb apparently defective.  Suit was found (mostly) intact, though Hanes' body was missing and not recovered.

[Telarus]

Holyshit. I'm only on page 4 and this sit is AMAZING. Nice job everybody.

[P3nT4gR4m]

[Adios]

I can't remember ever having this much fun online. You guys rock.