Deep Carbon Observatory is being printed now.

Should be delivered to Spiral Galaxy Games within two weeks.

Spiral Galaxy say they expect to start shipping out in the week of the 15th of June.

SO - I am opening pre-orders for the book

Click the text or images below to...

Pre-Order the Hardcopy Book

Deep Carbon Observatory - REMASTERED

ANDGo to the False Machine PDF site
TO

Download the Free Maps Pack

They are free to all!

You all complained about the maps, well here you go.

And here are Dirks original versions if you want to use those.

Freely Grasp the FEAST OF BUKAKO

MAGIC!

All the spells mentioned in Deep Carbon Observatory

in fresh level-less form!

By Brendan S of Necropraxis!

Buy the new PDF

We got bookmarks, layers so you can turn the maps & images on and off

no DRM

interlinking throughout

and we compressed it to make it manageable.

OR

get the old version of the PDF for PWYW.

If you prefer 'DCO-Lite' you can download this for free

or whatever you think its worth.

Last day of the Ping-Pong you nerds

Scrap gave us a Halycon Host

And asked, what is this?


The Many-Any Tree
and
the Last Cat This happened in the last days of the world when things were winding up and events were drawing to a close.

Many of the laws had left early. to go somewhere else? wrapping up a new planet like a gift in a fresh Cartesian grid? Or maybe they were tired and old, and slept.

Whatever the case, there were fewer of them left, and those weak.

So in that long slow dying time, which was no time, and could barely be counted, there were less questions if things changed. So everything loosed up, and things could be what they wanted to be, or what they dreamed they might be.

It was then, a little like things had been at the first, before the names were given, colours and shapes known, languages spoken.

Though, back in those days nothing knew anything and anything would say whatever it wanted, just shout it out without thinking, like babies, or chicks in a nest.

Now, everything knew a great deal, and had been a great deal, but they had not fully forgotten what they had been so the whole thing was something of a pretence of pretending to be something you knew you were not.

At least, that was the opinion of the Many-Any Tree, who had not made itself popular with its views on the continuity of self, and stubbornly held to its identity as "tree"; roots in the earth, trunk, leaves, the whole deal, even when many other things had faded or shifted, transformed into concepts or dreams.

"Call me conservative" said, and secretly wished, the tree, with its rainbow of bark, its infinity of leaves and its cornucopia of unknown fruits, many bringing death, or magical powers.

"But I find the old ways are best. Roots in soil, branches in the air etc etc".

In those days everything could speak and think but it seems no-one was listening to the Many-Any Tree, not even the sun who meditated gloomy and dying, white like a mummified monk in the red sky.

"YES, CALL ME CONSERVATIVE!" said the tree again, louder this time.

"Perhapsss.." said a voice or "perhapss not.."

"What is this? Who are you?" said the Many-Any Tree, "why starest thou upon my boughs?"

"I am the lasst cat." said the Last Cat, and grinned, staring at the Many-Any Tree, pattering in slow circles around it

"You are a sstatic creature" said the cat.

The Many-Any Tree observed the Last Cat, examining it slowly, carefully and thoroughly, wracking its mind to remember everything it could about "Cats", hoping to find some difference with which it could judge and condemn "The Last Cat" for its pretension, delusion and lies.

But the Many-Any Tree remembered too-much and not-enough, and the centuries had turned to snakes and slithered away leaving it no sense of time or place.

"I do not know," said the Many-Any Tree, "if Cats ever grinned as you do now, or stared, as you stare upon my boughs" . (Yet it felt secretly that they may have done just that).

"Those catss did not know what I know." said the Last Cat, circling, and staring.

"And what is that?" relied the Many-Any Tree.

"Ssssecretss."

The Many-Any Tree was not sure if this reply was entirely correct but something in its nature did strike a very cat-like chord and it found it hard to argue otherwise. Perhaps cats did grin with secrets. It seemed like the kind of thing they would do.

"In any case," said the tree, "though cats _may_ smile, I do not know if that strange absence of colour is correct. I am sure nothing could have been which was no-colour."

This seemed reasonable to the Tree for, in these days of the world, there was no night or day, and a billion colours swirled.

"I am black." Said the Last Cat. "And black I mussst be."

"And why is that?" said the Tree.

"I have crossssed a path." Replied the cat. "And a path-crossing cat is ALWAYSSSS black. Ssso the sssaying goes."

This argument to precedence troubled the tree for it was the kind of thing it; the Many-Any Tree, would have preferred to make itself. And while it could vaguely recall that there was some speaking or knowledge about cats and paths, it did not remember any details of it and was afraid to form a response lest it seem like a fool.

The Last Cat circled closer, still smiling.

"I will not argue such a minor point" said the Any-Many Tree, "such things are beneath me. As are you. And in any case you cannot have crossed *my* path for, as you have said yourself, I am utterly still, in the classical manner of trees, and have no path.

"Thissss issss true" said the Last Cat, "you are a very sssstatic creature"

And circled closer.

Something glinted like glass between its circling paws and the Many-Any Tree felt very strange.

"Regardless of that," said the tree, who suddenly felt a burst of inspiration, "I am sure no cat ever had a sun-ring round its head as you do! That great brush of hair like comets tails! And that whipping cord to your rear! Impossible! What would a cat want with those?"

"I am royal", said the Last Cat, "the king of beastsss. This mane isss my crown. Crowned like the sssun. And this ssserpent to my rear ssstings the earth to show my rule."

The Last Cat now was still before the tree, and still grinning, sat back on its haunches and raised its front paws before the trees bark while its tail stung the earth.

The Many-Any Tree felt a deep unspoken fear in this, as if it were remembering a nightmare.

"I am certain in all of forgotten time cats did not carry knives such as you do!" said the tree, and felt itself on firmer ground with this statement, though its branches shivered a little. "Or threaten innocent trees with them!"

"Thessse are no knivessss" replied the Last Cat, "but only my smal claussssss", it grinned.

"Smal Claus!" cried the Many-Any Tree, who felt as if it might weep, and dropped a rain of crystal and immortal fruit like tears.

"Aaaand what in the world..." the tree paused, as if afraid to ask a question to which it felt it had already dreamed the answer.

But the Tree could not resist.

"What to smal claus do then?" wept the Many-Any Tree.

"SKRATCH!"

----------------------------------

Now Scrap, what is this?

Look - Their minds are like single angry wasp held in a hand, an endless pricking their mind with suspicion and hatred.

Scrap has given us Platonic Crocodiles.

And asked for the nature of this;

Lebbeus Woods

21 Liu Xue - 刘学

Scrap has described the Eburnean Attendant 

And asked, what is this?






Dost thou taunt me then?

You dare to show me a cave
an hole?

ME??
GREATEST AND DEEPEST OF ALL CAVE DUDES?
The Shotwick Basement
Ethel Shotwick, hospitalised with post-partum depression and schizophrenic tendencies in 1962. Released after four months after mild electro-shock therapies and on a prescription of anti-psychotics.

By all accounts became an upstanding member of the community, well-liked by all. Though known for many eccentricities; speaking to walls, threatening shadows with mysterious signs etc.

Ethel was sometimes found out in the early hours, walking the streets of Ofthaven in her nightgown, with one of her 'devices'. These were items she had her husband build for her in their garage, which he did to her instructions after being informed by her Doctors that building and creating was a useful part of Ethels therapy, and that if that was something they could do together, then that would be good for the family. Though he always claimed "I don't know what she does with them".

The Ofthaven police were quite familiar with Ethels night-time escapades and when they heard a call of a strange woman wandering the night in nothing but slippers and a housecoat, wielding a pole-like device humming with some kind of static electricity, often accompanied by bright flashes of light; "like silent fireworks" according to witnesses, they knew what to expect.

"More of Ethels light show" was the word on the dispatch radio. The police grew quite used to escorting Ethel home in the back of their car with her "equipment", which had usually burnt out by this point and an empty box of dog treats for the local strays, and returning her to her frazzled husband at around 4am.

(It was a curious aspect of Ethels residence in Ofthaven that any local stray dogs, and lost dogs were often attracted to Ethel, and would accompany her on her 'nighttime pursuits'. The police grew so used to this that the first place they would look for any missing pet was the Shotwick residence, where it would often be found, with Ethel, having been fed and washed.)

Ethel was by all account a genial and likeable character, though "somewhat skatty", and often treated the police officers like nephews or sons, asking after their families and lives.

Only two incidents disturbed this pattern.

In August 1982, during an unusually hot, yet dark summer, with heavy cloud cover both night and day, and during a spate of teenage suicides, almost certainly due to group hysteria and the infiltration of new drugs into the town, along with a commensurate 'satanic panic' amongst the towns evangelical community, Ethel was found out on her usual rounds but with her Husbands service revolver in her pocket.

She was extremely apologetic to the police and explained that she would never have used it
but the Dark Ray powers were very strong just now.

After the officers spoke to Ethels husband Daniel Shotwick, it was agreed that Ethels night time activities should be curtailed, and Daniel placed a lock on their bedroom door, the key to which he kept tied around his neck, making Ethel promise that she would not take it off.

The second incident took place about a week after Ethels escapade with the gun.

Two officers were called by neighbours hearing loud sounds. Officer Mike Barry, a 20 year veteran, and someone quite familiar with the Ethel, found the house dark and the door unlocked.

Barry claimed he feared home invasion and sent his partner, John VanVort, around the back to catch any 'fleeing suspects'.

This was an unusual break in protocol for Barry, since standard guidance would insist that VanVort entered the house with him as backup.

Annotations to the casefile suggest that Barry likely suspected Suicide, or Murder-Suicide, and wished to spare VanVort, who was in his first week of active service, the sight of the bodies.

VanVort describes the sight of Barrys torch inside the house, then, "a flash of light of some kind, blue-white. Then a scream, really, a really bad scream like someone caught in a machine, with a snarl like twisting metal".

Racing into the house VanVort found Barry in a catatonic state, and with his face and body contorted in such a way that VanVort initially assumed he was deceased, and which was described as 'distressing' by the later attending physician.

VanVort said he found the house 'normal, no-one there, no signs of struggle', but quickly left the scene with Barry.

Regrettably, Barrys catatonic state persisted till his death in hospital 10 years later.

The photograph in question was taken by the investigative team who returned to the Shotwick house at dawn the following day.

They found the house in good order, but with signs that someone, probably Ethel by the missing clothes, had made quick preparations for a hurried flight. The car was still the the garage.

This image is labelled as being of the Shotwicks "under-basement".

Apparently the Shotwick house had a pine-floor basement which was used as a rec room. During a search of the house, a Police K9 unit located a loose plank, which when removed, exposed a ladder, leading down.

This brought the investigators to what they describe as an "under basement", which this image shows.

No further records or reports of the Shotwick case exist, both Shotwicks being registered a 'missing' in 1982. and 'missing - presumed dead' five years later. The case files have been unopened since that date.


…………………………………………………………………………………….


PATIENT: SHOTWICK, ETHEL
WESTCHESTER MENTAL HOSPITAL
INITIAL INTERVIEW AND SUBSEQUENT ASSESMENT
(PRECIS)
6/28/1962


Patient describes a the golden land at the centre of the earth occupied by the beneficent golden ones now too ancient, frail, vulnerable and spiritually pure to emerge into our "fallen world".

Describes lost civilisation of non Homo-Sapiens but related form, as in "something like the Neanderthals" and technological civilisation existing long before the development of agriculture by Homo Sapiens.

The "Elders of Mu" beam the golden radiation of their thoughtful empathy out into the world
blocking, counteracting and reversing the foul mind-control machines of the "Dero".

The Dero are a similar but more ancient race, this one dedicated to evil.

These actions (of the Elders) must be maintained in "deep secrecy" since the Dero machines read and work from, the neocortex and language centres first, infiltrating the rest of the mind invisibly from there, altering its comprehension of reality and changing its memories with "invasive altering mind-phages"

Thusly the Elders of Mu cannot work with the aspects of the literate or self-aware mind and can proceed only through "intuition" and "dream visions" which they bestow upon a "sensitive few".

Patients paracosm is standard, and highly inventive imaginative structure most commonly held with paranoid schizophrenics. The "Dero" and their mind-control devices in particular are a common theme amongst our more troubled patients, though under a variety of names and forms.

The construction of an imagined world in which the patient is central to reality-shaking events but must defend hidden secrets which the outside world would never understand is a classic defence mechanism.

In this case, likely trauma due to stillbirth of child triggered nascent schizophrenic tendencies.

Darker elements of patients fantasy are troubling, nevertheless, patient is increasingly bright, empathic, popular with the staff and is responding well to treatment. Her construction of the "Elders of Mu" as a beneficent life-giving force I take as a positive sign of her personality attempting to reconstruct itself in a healthy and pro-social way.

Considering the patients good character I have bent our treatment programme slightly and made limited use of the "Elders of Mu", using questions as "Wouldn't the Elders want you to get healthy?" and "What do you think the Elders would think of that thought process?".

I realise this does risk embedding the patient ever-more deeply in her paracosm, but her very strong response to this line of treatment and her general improvement in health, vitality and optimism I think justifies this mild 'bending' of the rules.

Patient says she is eager to be healed and to get back to work, which, considering her profession is listed as "housewife" I assume to mean the support of her husband, which I find admirable.


---------------------------------------------

Now Scrap, what is this?

Eva Funderburgh

It is a PLATONIC CROCODILE.

Scrap has given us a sessile larvae form of a Piper of Azathoth.

And asked for the nature of this;


The chain of the Lunar Majesty

This is the spirit of a Dead Deodand, one who, in its destruction has gone to the Ghenna of Machines, that part of the Manifold Hells dedicated to punishing such things.

In older times those tools, beasts and devices which aided and abetted mortal sin were held guilty of those self same sins. Called Deodands, they were tried and convicted as if they were men, insensate though they may be.

This custom either prefigures, or poorly represented a quite-real, and much more severe
divine ruling. For all those tools, machines, objects and beasts, are indeed held quite guilty of all the sins which they commit, and like living souls once their use is permanently over, (and He who stands beyond Time knows well when this is), their soul falls to the Deodand Ghenna, there to be judged, and to suffer for its crimes.

An apparently simply divine decree with surprisingly complex and exponentially difficult meta-theology required in order to fulfil it, and with curious side-effects on the Economy of Hell.

Firstly, that without a mind cannot suffer, and cannot know guilt or shame, so a clade of curious Angels is imbued with the desire and ability to imbue these material scraps with intelligence and self-awareness, at least enough for them to realise that they are guilty and for them to feel bad about it.

Those who find this insane would do well to consider their own material conditions;
born into a culture, a body and with a family and social position over none of which they have any control, and set there, often to suffer, at complete random. Is your position that much stranger than an animated chain?

Then a separate clade of Demons is employed to educate the Deodands to the point where they understand the context and meaning of the sin they committed. Which perforce, requires that they develop some knowledge of the material realm, based in each case, purely around the circumstances of their evil deed.

Strange beings, born only to suffer and atone

Still, hell itself, in a wider sense, has a similar mirrorverse pseudoculture, reality itself is arranged specifically to be a suffering nightmare, but since every intelligent thing there is deeply concerned with the specifics of the human world, and many of those beings are self-aware, and many of the rest extremely complex, then hell has a society, and an economy, even though its substance is shaped by spirt, soul and divine decree.

Machines in hell are useful, but very hard to make, reality having little regularity to it and Devils being skilled mainly in the engineering of torture devices. So it is that most technological needs in hell are filled by these animated Deodands, traded like slaves between the layers of pain.

A demon might call another on the Iphone used to text an assassin, (shouting over the dumb burbling voice of the phone itself). Dukes of Annihilation look things up on laptops belonging to terrorists and mobsters, or just those used to cave in someones head. Lords of Despair ride a wide range of cars.

And of guns, bombs, knives and swords, well there is no shortage of those in hell, sometimes they literally carpet the floor. Sometimes they *are* the floor. Its more rare to be in a space away from weapons.

This particular Deodand is the Chain of the Lunar Majesty, which snapped on launch, allowing the Lunar Majesty to slide down its dry-dock and turning sixty-six stevedores to paste.

Now it stumbles hither and yon in hell, piloted by possessed legs, serving whatever cause is called on by its lords.


......................

Now Scrap, what is this?

Is is a beautiful Eburnean Attendant

BEHOLD THE LARGESSE

Ok, with only six days left on the Kickstarter we have developed another, completely ridiculous stretch goal!

At a total of £35,000



Scrap and I will institute the FEAST OF BUKAKO.

Named of course, for the long-loved and world famous stories of Bukako, the spell-consuming monkey and his partner and mount, the magical Pleasing Fish.

"Patrick what is the Feast of Bukako?" I hear you cry.



Some of you may be familiar with venerable-but-still-fresh calmpunk luminary and OSR blogger, Brendan Strejcek.

Here is Brendan;




Back in 2015, Brendan did a book called 'Wonder and Wickedness'. (Just google Wonder and Wickedness for reviews).



This was a book of original spells notable for their mixture of poetry, clarity and especially the fact that they were LEVELESS.

Any Magic-User could learn any spell and the power and potential blowback of the spell, increased with the level of the Magic-User. So every spell was useful to every wizard.

Wouldn't it be great (I thought), if we could pay Brendan to do that for every spell in the D&D SRD and so change spellcasTing in D&D forever, for everyone, by totally altering the way they act with levels, and we could make the finished spellbook free for all.

And that's very slightly, at a much smaller scale, what we propose to start doing now.

There are just over thirty spells in Deep Carbon Observatory. A handful new, but the rest standard D&D spells;

• Avoid Notice 
• Bookspeak 
• Change Self 
• Control Weather
• Earthquake
• Ease Grief 
• Enlarge
• ESP 
• Fear 
• Fly 
• Hide Sorrow 
• Identify 
• Invisibility 
• Lessen Pain 
• Locate Object 
• Magic Jar  
• Magic Missile 
• Mending 
• Message 
• Mind Blank
• Minimise Thirst 
• Mirror Image 
• Part Water
• Permanency
• Phantasmal Force
• Polymorph Any Object
• Reduce Scars 
• Shape Change
• Shield
• Shrink 
• Sleep 
• Speak With Animals 
• Suggestion 
• Trap the Soul
• Wall of Fog
• Water Breathing

So at our stretch goal, we have agreed with Brendan that he will produce leveless rules for all of these spells.

Those spells will then be made available to all in a BASIC (i.e. Just the Text, bookmarks etc) PDF that anyone can access.

This means first, that anyone who needs to find a spell while running or playing DCO can just grab this document.

But secondly, the long term (very long term) goal is to, every time False Machine produces a D&D adventure with spells, we hope to add new leveless versions by Brendan to the stretch goals, and then add the completed spells to the giant list.

And, (I repeat), this will be free and accessible and useable by all.

So, if things go well, (in the future, which definitely will exist ha ha ha) ultimately, we should be able to produce a new old-school master-list of leveless spells which can go into the giant OSR/BX/D&D commons for any future project or game by anyone who wants them.

(And then feed them to a Magic Monkey called Bukako obviously).

CLICK FOR THE KICKSTARTEROR THE IMAGE TOP RIGHT

Scrap has given us a would be elemental.

And asked for the meaning of this image;

Bukako and the Pleasing Fish  - An Introduction

So began the esorscelment of the Pleasing Fish by the Sorcerous Monkey Bukako Wisest of primates, except for a few. That eater of books and fiend of the waves.

Woe! Woe to the Pleasing Fish! For when shall we see such fins again? Woe to the lightning-raddled waves, Coral kingdoms now fulgarite-struck! All due to the cunning of Bukako, Wisest of primates, except for a few.

Bukako, first and only subject of the paper-eater spell, O unwise sorcery! Trapped by an asp and sold of to a sorcerers churl, that dominating Mage named Bezelzak-Belvana-Besrok, the Mind-Phage of the Inner Dark. Her churl named "Swab-It of Besrok" for their most common task. 

The serf, Swab-It, thought to practice the Greater Magics and seized the asp-struck Bukako feeding him runes of power and ninety-five illuminating herbs, eventually sacrificing sixty-six ants in a summoning of one of the more forgettable daemons.

So Bukako was imbued with power immortal. he would know forever, any text he ate. At first his appetites were minor, and made little difference, receipts and casual notes, fragments of knowledge, floating in the void of an illiterate monkey mind. Yet Bukako was wise enough to hide his knowledge from the Swab, keeping always a little back, and then a lot. A diet of mashed up teach-your-child-to-read books sparked consciousness in the simian. From that point on, Bukako planned, he thought and dreamed within his fairly-small skull.

The Books of Spells were his aim! Those Bezelzak-Belvana-Besrok kept hid and warded behind multidimensional locks and elemental hounds.

Ultimately Bukako broke out from his cage, entered the sorcerous sanctum of Besrok and ran wild amidst the multiversal tomes, chewing and eating wildly! The monkey tore! swallowed! bit and chewed again until his spit ran like fluorescent paint!

Great was the battle betwixt the Monkey and the Mage when Bezelzak-Belvana-Besrok returned!

That eons-old walker in the dreams of Gods against the hairy thaumaturge now bloated with stolen power! The city of Ix shook like a leaf, seven temples were flattened, four thrown back in time, two turned to glass, one to flowers and one fresh temple brought into being, housing an unknown god.

Ultimately, as her subtle spellcraft clashed and locked with the chaotic multiplicity of Bukakos bitten powers, Bezelzak-Belvana-Besrok descended to low fisticuffs and booted the beast through a portal in space and time.

Since that day, Bezelzak-Belvana-Besrok, all her descendants, many of her students and three of her elemental hounds sought Bukako, the Sorcerous Monkey, wisest of primates except for a few. For he had nibbled not just whole spells, but vital fragments of some powerful incantations which now existed only in his mind. for the return of these torn glyph-scraps alone, a kings ransom would not suffice.

But what of the Pleasing Fish? That most supine and relaxed of magical beasts? Legendary, delicious and mythical, gurgling through its turquoise sea, between the rocks of Ixinian and the Horn of Aan?

This unicorn of the sea, a wish-giving delicioufish, sought by greedy kings for its delicious flesh which, once imagined, cannot be forgotten. Do not think of its steaks or battered cakes! Or you will be forever lost! No!!!

The Pleasing Fish, an apparently deluded, perhaps, stupid, witless but beautiful creature, appeared in legend, only to the innocent and confused. No certain beast was he! Delivering wishes with a flick of its glimmering fins. Wishes of beauty, grace and stupendous power. Yet all fundamentally useless, at least for the wisher, for, being both innocent and confused, they always screw up the wish or do that thing where they think aloud or say casually "I wish this was all over." and then that's what they get. Such are the tricks and teases of fate.

But yea, the wishes of the Pleasing Fish are well for some, if not for the wisher themselves. Boons to some they are, like how that giant crab someone accidentally wished for ended up feeding the starving people of Ix, (though they gave no thanks for it!). Or how the ability to speak Magpie which another got in error, ultimately resolved the Ninth Hell War and saved uncounted souls, (you won't hear the Hell-Lords say "Oh thanks"!).

So ghosts and dives the Pleasing Fish through the turquoise sea between the rocks of Ixinian and the Horn of Aan, hunted by armadas of taste-maddened Kings. (don't think about the fish-sticks! Don't!). Transiting through the Archipelagos of Mysterious Time, betwixt Dream and Legend, disposing its odd powers to the confusion of the confused and the surprising benefit of the completely-screwed. Muttering its troubles incantations of self, trying to remember where the sun goes at night, leaping up to meet it in the day, searching for vectors for its overflowing wish-power, like liquid lightning incapable of striking the wise.

Until, upon its back, a thud! A hairy foot! A bouncing tail!

And the weight of Bukako the Sorcerous Monkey, wisest of Primates, except for a few!

So began the Adventures of Bukako and the Pleasing Fish. Pursued by Armadas, magicians and elemental hounds across the turquoise seas between the rocks of Ixinian and the Horn of Aan, and through the archipelagos of Mysterious Time....

.....................................

Now Scrap, what is this?

Bad Roll Games

It is a Nascent Piper of Azathoth!

Scrap has identified an Heraldic Beast.
And in antipodean trickery, answered again with Sorcerer Knights.
And asked,what is this?


The Go-Go-Go God VROOM

A Stupendous Engine, Vroom, the God who Go-Go-Goes. Here we see the Ark of the Go-Go-Go God being introduced by their Technomantic Trickster Pope; Ultimate Science Guy NOW IV.

Vroom Vroom is an out of control god, always teetering on the brink of their own destruction, going as fast as they can go on wheels too small. A wonder of the Future, a hypermachine, Techno-Wizardry from the borders of the Real, impudent and wild like a giant red dildo. A God of Super-Science, or really, the _idea_ of Super-Science.

A God of amazement, wonder and forward progress.

But, progress towards what?

THE FUTURE!

But what future?

Science! Technology! Progress!

Vroom was recovered from the ocean deeps as a shifting prism of pure incandescent optimistic light. The Go-Go-Go God  themselves informed its rescuers in how to build its ark, designed both to limit its holy energies and also to project them in a focused way since, in its natural state, the God was making everyone around it way way way too enthusiastic about everything, which did give them a lot of impetus to act, but unfortunately not in a very controlled, planned or sustained way, meaning everything they built or did was kind of janky and barely worked.

Still, so long as it barely, but actually, worked, Vroom was pretty much ok about it and was happy to be wheeled on their unsteady and rickety wheels hither and yon, blasting crowds with pure stupefaction and generally enlightening the world with WONDER.

whence fell this Archon of hope in one of its rawest forms and from what divine hierarchies, we may never know. But as to why it was left behind..

So hopeful is this metallic angel that it can respond only in positive imprecations and optimistic declarations.

Vroom may be a bringer of amazement, but it’s kind of just, amazement on its own. It brings hope in the wonders of science, technology and progress, but doesn't actually tell you how to build any of those things, or tell you anything useful about them.

Hope alone, without substance, is...

Measurably better than no hope at all?

Despite being a bit of a flake when separated from any actually useful work to make the future better or different from the present or the past, the Go-Go-Go God does seem broadly likable, and their worship essentially harmless.

And Vroom is often invoked, or even invited, at the start of major events or projects since they do fill people with a sense of drive and optimism. At any time the Go-Go-Go God may blast forth rays of pure STUPIFICATION and WONDER at what the future may hold!

---------------------------------------------------

Now Scrap, what signifies THIS???

https://bigblueboo.tumblr.com/post/120023040220/data-frigate

It seems to be a Abeyantal Ambassador, a would be an elemental 

Scrap gave us a 'Might-Of-Been-Kiln'

And asked, what is this?

Jiri Sozansky

THE DREAM OF THE QUEEN SETTRA The colonists to distant Ir were packed in like dead fish, cloaked in ice, minds left to dream, purely in order to provoke enough cognitive response to prevent decay, madness or brutal retardation on awaking, the timeshock of the deep dreamer.

Left to walk through the virtual world of their Ice Craft the "Queen Settra", minds moving so slowly that to a conscious observer they drifted like ghosts, leaving blotched stains of three-dimensional thought behind them. So slow and uncomprehending were their minds that the clock rate of their virtual world itself could be turned down to significantly below the reality perception rate of base reality - to save both raw power and processing capacity.

Neither need the dream-realm be too real, the colonists, at least while they were awake, knew where they were going and what would happen. Most were soothed and doped into a pleasurable wooze which, it was hoped would last through their slowed circulation systems for the whole length of the journey - ensuring happy dreams for all and being significantly cheaper than a complex overwatch A.I. (or the equally-complex governing systems and fallback modes which would keep such a potential Ellison-machine in check and prevent Mindcrime).

Corners were cut.

For an estimated journey of 500 years, there would have been no problem, but the slow collapse of causality into formless Greyspace, and the apparent disappearance of Ir, hidden in some pocket realm, changed the situation.

The Queen Settra proceeded for a thousand years, and even so the semiregular thawings of command and repair staff kept the ship running. After this however, even the superslow metabolisms of the cargo had bled out every last opiate molecule in their cold blood - the half a million or so minds in the simulation were coming down, together.

A series of accidents and incidents of psychological breakdown, each unique and unexpected, but when taken as a whole, inevitable, cut the layers of sane and functional command staff. The last shift refused to re-enter sleep or to re-enter the simulation and a conflict broke out aboard - a deck was vented and the Queen Settra suffered hull and engine damage before basic functionality was restored by automatic systems and drones.

The ship, already lost and missing its target, now listed on a cosmic axis, heading who-knows-where, but most likely out into the black. The cargo, still sleeping, still unconscious, still within their slow dream realm which, for them was perhaps a few days, a few weeks old, had no way to wake up.

They must have realised, even on a subconscious level, that something was terribly wrong.

As the generators and fallback systems of the Queen Settra began to fail, one by one, over several centuries without oversight, the remaining functional systems executed protocols designed to ensure the survival of as much cargo as possible for as long as possible.

Being classified as cargo, and with no-one with command authority awake to legally re-classify them, they were not allowed to wake up - perhaps reasonably, that would only have wasted resources. The ship could only sustain enough food and environmental stability for a handful of command staff over its projected 500-year journey. Even in their chambers, the cargo would run out of ultraslow intravenous nutrients in a few centuries.

The cargo began to starve.

The para-reality of their sustainment, now their prison, began to glitch and lose detail and continuity as the Queen Settra slowly succumbed to entropy from cosmic rays and micro-impacts.

Still they could not wake up.

Neither could any of them permanently die, at lest not from damage sustained while within the simulation.

At least, not easily.

Even a governing system of sufficient complexity to overwatch the reality-sustainment A.I. would have been nowhere near complex or aware enough to prevent what happened in Queen Settras Dream, for this flowed not from Metal-On-Meat Mindcrime, but Intra-Meat reality collapse.

Crawling, starving with a hunger they could not suppress, maddened with unregulated opiate comedowns, tortured with memories of the bright time days? weeks? Months? before the Queen Settra, and deeply, but entirely unconsciously aware that their world, whatever it was, was doomed, the cargo of the Queen went, individually and as a society, violently insane.

The simplistic, but dangerously undergoverned reality sustainment A.I attempted to provide simulated goods, tools, relationships and experiences which would keep the Cargo happy and stable, fulfilling their hierarchy of needs.

But this was impossible, they were starving to death and trapped within a dream.

They found, at first, subtle ways of subverting the A.I.s locks on weapons and implements of harm, on perverse situations or illegal simulations, and on mutual access and mutual pain.

Pain at least, was stronger than the hunger, and stronger than the fear, and for a lucky few, pain or terror sever enough might trigger a heart-attack of such severity that the Queen Settras auto-systems would be overwhelmed and they might be allowed to die.

If very large numbers of the cargo underwent such attacks, at the same time, the chance of death rose...

This image depicts one fragmentary capture of the Cargo writhing and stumbling through the greying-out collapsing reality of the dying mindcore of the "Queen Settra", projected onto a watch-screen in a base-reality overwatch chamber, itself open to vacuum and holding only a corpse with a self-inflicted suicide wound, the edged of the bullet hole now mummified with centuries of frost.


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So now I ask you Scrap, what is this?

Games Workshop/Louise Sugden

(It is a Heraldic Beast of New Melniboné)

Scrap has explained the nature of the Assuring Dog.

Certainly, you  did nothing wrong, or you did what anyone would do. And who can reasonably blame you for that?

And asked, for the Ninth Pong of the Ping, what is this?

• THICKER PAPER! - Now a luxurious 150gsm silk!
• SECTION SEWN HARDBACK - It already was though!
• THREE RIBBON MARKERS  - You really seemed to want these so now you get classic DCO White, Black and RED. NEVER LOSE YOUR PLACE AGAIN.
• SPOT UV COVER - A translucent tactile shimmering image within an image. What will it be? No idea yet!
• PRINTED ENDPAPERS - All the maps to be included in the endpapers as well as inside the book!
• SOCIALLY CONSCIOUS TRILOBITE - After massive demand your old familiar friend from previous False Machine products will be making an appearance to introduce you to the book!
• FREE MAP FILES WITH THE PDF - Anyone downloading the PDF will have the option to download files of the maps. Print em' out and use them however you like!
• I THINK THATS IT??
• OH WAIT - A SHELF FOR ELGIN SCOTT SO HE HAS ROOM TO PLACE THE BOOK - I am only doing this once in my life and only because it is funny so don't ask me for stuff again, but YES, if we reach our goal we will buy this guy and Ikea Shelving Unit and have it shipped to his home.

Scrap has ANSWERED, with wild tales of the Horizon Society.

And asked, what signifies this?;
An attack on The Impossible

These vast stasis-engines were built by the command of the Imperator Umbra, Emperor of Shadows.

Alone of all that faded half-world, the stasis engines are locked into cosmo-synchronous position relative to the attenuated Cartesian webwork which underpins that slight reality.

The black rails, built of toxic (to the shadow realm) imported iron, are laid beneath the engines in vast circumlocutions of the shadowverses un-sphere. Bridges of white stone thrown across valleys and tunnels bored straight through ghrey hills by savage-minded semimechanical moles.

On the stated day, at the Imperators command, sent by timed lightning-birds, made from the shadows of electrical strikes and released at carefully calculated intervals relative to their destinations position  to the super-coop from which they are released (shadow travelling very slightly slower than the speed of light, so as not to get in its way), the Great Command was sent, and in one simultaneous instant all across the realm of shades, the Stasis Engines burst into life.

This took place before even the final tracks were laid, the engines expected to drive so slowly that there would be plenty of time to reach completion.

So, with a great gasp of industrial power, the engines strook steel and the world moved beneath them. 

In no other realm would this have been possible, but the fine and airy substance of shadow, and its lacing and encompassing with rail and binding with iron, meant that the mass of the shadow realm was just low enough to place it within the grasp of Science to move.

The first moment was the greatest as, individually and all across the realm, the engines breathed for the first time. Of course, many exploded under the untested stress (this was expected, accounted for in projections and is not the image pictured) but enough laboured, coughed, moved and ground round that slowly, impossibly, the realm itself began to move beneath them.

Locked in position and biting into their rails, the Stasis Engines heaved their reality around, slowly, at only the speed of a walking man, but, for the first and only time in this half-grey Empire, the world turned. The sky changed into something other than oaplescent and polarised gloom.

Great cheers broke out all across (the Urban centres) of the Imperium. Weather patterns began to form. Wind happened. Clouds shaped themselves in the air. As the shadow world span beneath the grip of the locked industrial machines it gained, for the first time, movement, seasons, activity, burgeoning life and change.

Yes the cost in materials, labour, poisonings from the toxic iron, lightning birds, exploded engines and the insane tax levels required to keep the engines fed, all were huge. But what is Empire for if not to change the world? And the Imperator Umbra, now titled, 'Master of the Impossible' ("The Impossible" being the name of the greatest, central and flagship Stasis Engine) was more popular than ever before.

In the urban centres. 

And among the middle and educated upper classes.

But Empires have their half-light, and change is not beloved by all.

Out in the distant never-suppressed reaches of the Imperium, in its muttering underclass and, it is rumoured, in crooked alleys of its Paleoconservative Mansions, rage and resistance brewed like bubbling tea. 

Weather! Storms! 

Movement??!?!

Cobwebs driven from their corners. Leaves tumbling from trees. Birds flying instead of remaining poised and heraldic on the skyline. 

"What is next? A Moon? A SUN?!?!"

So the attacks began. Summoned from the abyssal reaches, radical Men-O-War-Men, black colony organisms, formerly overlooked as ethnically dull and far away, rose from the shadowy sea and hurled themselves at the Stasis Engines in explosively suicidal assaults. 

Worse, they howled hymns of Old-Umbra at they strook, promising a return to better times of stillness and quiet. An end to seasons and the threat of possible snow, awful in its crystalline whiteness.

The image in question shows a split second moment of one such attack, captured by high-speed Daguerreotype. The black, suicidal Man-O-War-Man dives into the engine compartment of The Impossible, in a split second before its explosion. 

The creature was rumoured to be shouting "NO DANDELIONS" as it died.

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Now Scrap, I ask you, what is THIS?

Alfrid Shaymardanov

"This dog obviously collects souls."

Scrap has explained the nature of the Toad which Hears and Knows.

Agostino Arrivabene

Sobetet Speaks with Alarasathia

The minds of the Sleeping Gods flit and eddy across landscapes and cosmic archtectures, both those real to us, but also introverted dream-realms of their own creation

For to a sleeping god, one with the power of creation itself, what difference truly is there between reality and dream?

At times the unconscious minds of the gods fall through the ruins of empty purgatories, guttering candlelit hells and faded gardens of paradise where once the souls of the faithful and the dammed congregated before the gods somnolence and the slow fall of all that the gods sustained paled the hierarchies of the beyond into shadows - etched memories of spiritual passion and release

Now in the long, slow death of What-Is, the pinnacles of such ruined paracosms lurch and falter, teetering, leaning and falling through unspeakable conceptions of space to crumble and merge.

The forgotten dead of one heaven wander into another cultures Hell. The prison bars of Hades rust and even the crimes whose sins fills those cells are forgotten. Elysium and Acheron crumble as one.

Here in the ruined afterlives old categories of soul are forgotten - pale eldritch dementia strips meaning from the fearsome and force from the mad.

The Queen pictured, Alarasathia, disposes her patronage over one such abandoned antiverse - stilling the whispering hordes of her churl-souls with the paper-thin remnant of a beauty which once shattered nations, and the ticking echo of a capacious and tyrannical mind.

All sleep, or near-sleep in this dirge of being, for the dead, or the memories of the memories of the dead which these may be, know no true rest, but only winter-morning half-waking poised between sleep and light.

Still, even in such ruin and infinite time, events may take place and visitors may come

This image shows the visitation of the Lunar God Sobetet, wholesome and reversed sibling of the monstrous Stetbos.

Sobetet dreams like all gods, and is perhaps dead, or lost within the coma of God-death themselves. Where their mind ranges none, lest of all the God themselves, can tell whether what they perceive is true-creation or merely the half-created fragmentary dreamworld of the Gods own unconscious imaginings.

And, Gods being Gods, it is possible that even those strange perceptions might have a soft of waking un-life of their own. Fogotten thoughts from a forgotten mind.

At this moment Sobetet, or a cluster of minds seeming to be Sobetet, or Sobetet broken and unweaved down to a a myriad of blurred selves, comes upon the throne of Alarasathia.

The sleeping memory of the light of a long-annihilated moon shines within the echoing netherworld of the forgotten dead - an event so rare, strange and impossible that even these scribbled etchings of wraiths may recall it for an eon or more.

Sobetet, perhaps drawn by the beauty and long-lost intensity of Alarasathia, gazes upon her and speaks to her. Seeing her like we might see a Queen within a dream, who fades upon morning.

Yet for these figures such a morning is unlikely to come.

Of what Sobetet said to Alarasathia, or of what Alarasathia replied, you may guess. It could be that thier words had only as much sense as those of two sleepers turning to each other in a darkneed bed, bodily aware of the others presence but lost within their own unconscious dream-realms, murmuring sleep-speech to each other.

Is what happens in such moments ever true communication? Can anything of meaning pass between?

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Now I ask of thee Scrap, what signifies this?

Angelo Canevari

The answer is a curious one.