The Garden of Edem [Notes/OCs]

[Dullahan]

Important lore revelations right there. Dates have changed.

As lore revelations go, it's not too important. I'm operating here on an assumption that Notes takes place around 3000 AD. An event known as the Flight of Rampant Edem happens shortly after the end of Notes, and GoE is around seven hundred years after that. So it's circa 3700 AD.

I wanted to get some worldbuilding stuff out, but a pure infodump chapter would be boring as fuck. So I thought to myself, why don't I enlist the faceless anons on future-4chan to serve as a kind of chorus ala ancient Greek theatre? What you see above is not mere shitposting; it is shitposting beyond baseline human comprehension, downtuned and translated so that our low-bandwidth minds can even begin to apprehend it. Even now that society is largely composed of immortal posthumans, anons are much the same - just larger in measure.

[Christemo]

Fucking deep yo.

[Bloble]

Damn son this is some next-gen meme-ing.

[ItsaRandomUsername]

War might have changed, but posting sure hasn't.

Keep at it, Dull. You're almost there.

[Dullahan]

2::I'm a thinker

There is a soft wind hailing sunset as Zhāng crests the dune. Fragmented cloud lanes arc overhead, cut through at altitude by the contrails of Warrists on contract. The air-crush sings heavy overhead, and behind it the countless howls and laughs of Cahalla and its hintercity peter out over the coastal katabasis. Night falls and the place just doesn't quit – already the lanterns are rising over the terraced arcs and helices which surmount the great old cinder cone at Taranaki. Already the warbloggers fill the bars between excursions, their crazy days of raucous expense and getting backswung around a high-ranker's Ether blade for fun, needling one another over their latest and most amusing deaths found chasing the perfect paparazzo angle, all the better to undercut the licensed streams of War. Already the daylife switches polarity, nightlife mode engaged; the Airwalkers get wasted and transambulate all casual from market to market, the Honeyeaters make a sticky mess as they string and restring with reckless abandon, and the Weaver of Wicked Shit descends from her celestial throne (well, sub-orbital, but it counts) to announce the seeding for tomorrow's slashings. And behind them you have all the rest: the uppers, downers, screamers, laughers, handstanders, cartwheelers, cardsharks, cutthroats, trolls, spammers, hustlers, folders, hangers, toebiters, shitkickers, shitposters, shiteaters, facepunchers, paper-tigers, mystifiers, ebrietains, fulgurites, ravaillacs, lion-eaters, tighteners, looseners, wheelers, dealers, fabulists, somnambulists, gamblers, ramblers, arbitrators, stimulators, speculators, invigilators, heavily-armed masturbators and every other species of crazed mutant brought forth by sheer proximity to the Higher Summit, the fuming, erupting volcanic font of all that is wild and weird.

Zhāng has just come from Cahalla – all the way down from quarter-way to the top, where the streets have just begun to get cobbly and knobbly, and you only have to dodge semi-solid projectiles from the Raucous Rascals every half-minute or so. He had to consult one of his intransigent charge's regular haunts for information on her recent whereabouts. Ended up trapped in a long, expensive conversation with a pair of ruthlessly polite drakaina prostitutes, who twisted tails together faux-seductively atop a rattan sofa while some high-ranker's combat highlight reel exploded softly onto background screens. Unhelpfully, they were addicts; they were all Sülde this and Sülde that and please my dearest when might Sülde return all the better to fuck our brains into a fine puree for the nth time this month but otherwise knew nothing useful. So he returned down to the hintercity, to his shophouse out at Taupo Launch, and thought and seethed and calculated exactly how much Sülde would allow herself to lose before coming back in for another contract. Then he saw the deep footprints leading across the sand outside and down to the coastline. If he'd had limbs, he'd have hit himself.

Zhāng is a floating amorphous kinda-ellipsoid of translucent fog about a metre across. Zhāng is an Armourer, one of the best. A long time ago, when Sülde took her vow as a Warrist to die the true-death in battle or not at all, she made a contract with none other than him, and he has remained her Armourer ever since. This means that his job is to optimise Sülde's market value, come hater or highwell. This also means Zhāng has just about had it up to here with Sülde's shit. He is exceedingly familiar with her behaviour, but this does not preclude the act of having-up-to-italicised-here. Sülde is rusteyed, a not insubstantial minority in Cahalla, and like all others who were given life on Old Earth and have never left, she is stir-crazy and irrational.

All veteran Warrists get warsick when they haven't killed someone for an hour or two – proper killed, that is; brought the true-death in battle – and all of them end up having to find ways to deal with it, because Armour rehashing or eigenbody repair or what-have-you can often take many hours longer than that. A rational individual – as many Warrists are – would take this to the market and buy their satiation. What soothes warsickness varies a fair bit, but the union plus intersection of sets 'fuck' and 'kill (untrue-death)' furnishes a strong attractor field, and duly the markets there are well-trafficked.

Sülde does this sometimes, but other times – now, for example – she doesn't. Instead she jams all her IFF markers and wanders out wherever for periods of irregular length. To Zhāng's knowledge this has not yet detectably impacted the fluctuations of her market value, but he is a worrywart at heart (by design, too – he gave himself the quirk in early days as an Armourer, to boost his own value) and can't help but be concerned. Not for her, of course. For her market value. And besides, this is really too much. It's understandable when there are pressing material reasons preventing her from contracting, but in this case she came back from fighting that Rank 13 Deathless with nary a scratch, so it's really just her own irrationality and stubbornness keeping her out of the market right now, and it's all up to Zhāng to get her working again, to get her blooded and in the mood for more kills.

A few dunes later, Zhāng arrives at the seaside. The sun has sunk below the horizon; the first stars begin to shine overhead. The waves are black and thick with iron as they break softly on the shore. The slope is shallow but fairly constant down to the water's edge. Sülde is a little way inland, on a flat, dry plateau of sorts that would be just large enough to fit her fully released state, if she chose to bring it out. He slows his motion – hovers in place – when he sees her. The fog composing his body changes colour slightly; the harsh electric-blue (irritation) pales a little with the addition of faint pastel green (bemusement).

Sülde is sitting down on the beach, her deep black sarong splayed out on the volcanic sand as she manipulates something in her hands. One of her swords – not armaments proper, just the miniatures for when she's unreleased – is staked into the ground nearby. She is facing away from Zhāng as he approaches. He observes the twilight shimmer across the silver-and-opal fractal hashes inlaid to her bone-white pseudo-skin. As her Armourer, naturally he knows what they mean; he's the one who put them there. The hashes on her back, running the length of the spine (pseudo-spine; mercifully, unlike a true hairless ape, she has no internal anatomy to speak of) encode the primary transformations applied during the release process. There's a lot of redundancy there. The armament descriptions begin around her shoulder-blades and continue outward. He has a lot of copyrights invested in that back of hers, which is fairly pleasing to note, but being presented with silence and nothing but that on approach is beginning to weigh on his nerves (internal simulacra of nerve-concepts; like his charge, Zhāng has no internal anatomy either). He clears his throat (see above) and attempts to make contact.

“Oi. Axewound! Bounteous fucking times are being had elsewhere. Genius and death outpouring. And what are thee? Sandy unobserved. I've been looking all over for your sorry sight. Is this proper, aye?”

Proper aye. Now fuck off. I'm-con-cen-tra-ting.

Zhāng floats up and over to get a look at what she has in her hands. Sülde is kneading a sphere of something dark and faintly vitreous, about the size of her fist. It emits a faint cracking sound every time she applies pressure to it. Like a rock about to break open.

“Be that an amethyst, then?”

Yeaaaaah.

It's fairly obvious what she's done. Scooped out a big clump of sand and crushed it into glass, then kept piling it on 'till it went spherical. The iron content makes it dark with deep purple intrusions. Sülde stops kneading, and holds up the ball. Eyes it carefully. Seems satisfied, though by what standard is anyone's guess.

“You make it. Why?”

Dunno.

She tosses it to herself a few times, then stands up. Sand clears off her sarong. Her jeweleried braids clink together like wind-chimes. Sülde is relatively large by ape-pattern standards – height closer to three metres than two – but always graceful. Warrists have a unique capacity for balance.

“That could be worth a lot, aye? A Warrist's labour inheres. Give it and I'll-”

Back.

She tilts her head to look at him over the back of her shoulder. Smirk of rusty eyes. Zhāng suddenly remembers why he came out here, and flushes electric-blue with annoyance.

“Oi oi oi! See! This will not décor. Be balling around on amethyst beach all you like, but at least don't detag. IFF is necessary. Must-find-you.”

Stand back, she drawls, 'less ya want to get localled.

Zhāng acquires a faint indigo tinge (exasperation) and draws back to a safe distance of one or two hundred metres. He watches what she does with vague interest. First, she takes the amethyst sphere in one hand, and pitches it straight up in the air. It makes a nice solid 'crack' as it passes the sound barrier. Soon it's beyond easy visual identification. Sülde then lazily wanders over and picks up her sword. It's a fine model, thick-bladed and bulky and made out of cured grainstone from Haryana. She adjusts her grip, twirls it around a few times, and adopts a halfway-ready stance. A whistling sound from above hails the ball's homebound flight. Dictates of gravitation notwithstanding, Sülde has a better idea. The moment the amethyst is in range, she moves.

There is a loud, shuddering explosion from her locality. A shock wave that kicks up sand in a circular plume. No telling just how hard she cuts that unfortunate orb of fused quartz, but it feels high-hypersonic from the shift in the air. The crystal breaks and scatters outward – a thousand thousand sparking plasma-sheathed contrails scattershot out over the sea, blooming brilliant against the darkening dusk. Golden light – that's iron and silicon for you, electron orbitals wrenched to the breaking point. Zhāng judges the situation mostly safe, and floats back in. Half the beach is raining down on her, sand in her hair and all, and she's just grinning like an absolute dope.

Shihihahahyaaaaaaaaa. You fucking scaredy individual. How far is far, aye? Over the horizon? Why, 'pon my youth, when I was yet untrue, I got localled all every. Neitherwise, observe the shine and sparky, weyland mine. Pretty loose, ayyyye?

She stakes the sword back into the ground. Zhāng notices the sand begin to pop and crackle as it begins to sinter together from the residual heat on the blade.

“I'll allow it. It's very beautiful. But enough. Market time.”

No-one loses rank for an hour or two out of contract. Re-lax. Stay your hand invisible...

She pokes his foggy innards.

...or get mad.

The indigo tinge deepens. Sülde has – and this has been empirically determined, mind you – an extremely punchable face. This is true in almost all circumstances. Pearlescent and exquisitely fractalled, of course, but nevertheless punchable. Nothing even an Armourer can do about that. It reflects personal character. Zhāng has long since removed his own ability to punch things in order to deal with it, but sometimes he gets the temptation resurgent.

“I am trying to comprehend what is into you presently. Be not injured, be not failure. Ye full ripshit on that Deathless last-”

Bah. She waves a hand dismissively, then taps the side of her head. Don't talk to me about that.

Silence prevails. Sülde turns and picks up her sword, then walks down to the seashore. He follows her. Just as she's beginning to get her feet wet, she pricks up her eyes and flicks her gaze over to the horizon. There's a light out there above the sea. Fast-mover. Spectrum matches the plasma off a Grain condenser intake. Some other Warrist, over-boosting to the target. Zhāng pulls up an overlay and checks the IFF tags.

Hello, monkeyfucker, Sülde murmurs.

“What? Wrong. That's Kokou. Rank 19. MJZB The Time Is Always Armageddon.”

No. He's out. I can hear it. The air-crush tells it so.

That's clearly bullshit – the speed of sound would preclude it – but it's better not to fault her on it. At any rate, a brief check shows that, somehow, she's right. Kokou's current active was registered sixty seconds ago, against another contract currently bearing on Rank 13. Jamsaran. The titular monkeyfucker from Ouarzazate, home to all the paleo-conservative primate fetishists you could imagine. Ghastly place; Zhāng can't imagine what it's like to live there.

“Could have been you, know it. Now some fellow passing transient might wreck him before ye even consider the rematch. Aye?”

Sülde laughs.

Nope.

“No?”

Kokou's dead.

“Really? Honest? 'cause I track prediction markets present, and the odds be quite-”

Just wait. She yawns. Kokou prediction: buried in moondust. Post-haste.

“For she's not Deathless like him?”

For she's not awesome like me, aye.

“Tooling round on the littorals is measurably sub-awesome. Jamsaran's is the right idea. Gets decimated well wild, up and back in the War soon as can be. Why not you?”

She turns and glares at him for a long few moments.

I was thinking.

“Aye? Around what? Rank 13?”

He disappointed. Jamsaran. I mean, that, that, thaaaat's how strong his fight is? No. I refuse! He is better. He does better. I demand better! Kirthar was anomalous. See his priors. Snipes and snipes and snipes and BOOM! Crazy blooded killrusher! Watch him crunch and punch and perforate! Monkeyfucker slices, monkeyfucker dices! Oh-ho-ho, glory be!

Sülde is becoming quite animated; she is burning through a stockpile of expansive hand gestures faster than is probably sustainable. Some of these involve hitting the sand with her sword to emphasise points, sending up plumes of earth that irritate Zhāng's foglets when they pass through him.

He could have won it. But he made mistakes. Mistakes are bad. Why, I hear thee ask-

“Gonna tell me.”

Easy! He's a virgin. Deathless! The blood doesn't stay in him, aye? It just washes off. Never died when he was untrue, so he can't think rationally about his own death. Deathless do not have a rational approach. Therebe in the rub.

“Be that a weakness,” says Zhāng reassuringly, “not a strength, aye? Mistakes are bad.”

No. The mistake is half. Not the whole coin. A mistake's only a mistake when it doesn't work. The rational approach makes no mistakes. But nor does it do the unexpected. Deathless be irrational, Deathless do the unexpected. The making-mistakes is point five of that single faculty. The other point five?

“Winning?”

WINNING! she bellows happily. Right! What do Deathless do? Deathless win! Win from outdoors to the rational box. Deathless be dangerous for they're irrational. But since that, they make mistakes. Mistakes are bad. Mistakes...disappoint.

She sighs, and kicks her feet in the water a little. The bottom of her sarong is wet – dark cloth made darker still. Sülde looks up to the sky, face to the lilac-painted starlit void at darkening dusk. Her braids shift and clink in the wind. When she speaks again, it is somewhat lower in volume.

There's a wild few Deathless 'tween me and Rank 1, aye?

“Aye.”

This is for the record. Sülde is not quite the baddest motherfucker who's ever lived, but she is close. Widely known is that Old Earth hosts the best War in the solar system, and sure enough that's where she fights. Similarly widely known is that, out of some eleven thousand active Warrists on the Grand Old Gravity Hole, she is ranked tenth in terms of normalised market value. That's been a project many decades in the making. Above her and below Rank 1, it's only the reliables; age-old veterans whose names themselves are bywords for the highest ideals of War. The top tier are, above all, stable; some of them haven't changed rank for hundreds of years. And of their number, more than half are Deathless: those who had never died locally when they called down their souls from the Root, and made their vows as Warrists.

Now, me, she says, relaxing a little and pointing her sword at him, I am a simple rational character. Simple things, I like. Like – to be Rank 1, aye? I want that. Perhaps requires killing everyone 8 through 2 midways, so be it. Perhaps takes a century. Don't care. I'm gonna fight Rank 1. Kill Rank 1. Be new Rank 1. But-

Sülde sighs again.

-like, Rank 1, aye? Rank 1 be Deathless. Deathless among Deathless. And I thought, I think, I do – what if, what if, if I do it? Aye? I make it all the way. You at my back, for I don't stop, falter. Beat all the reliables. Take it to the limit. The contract comes through. I go out, and I see it across the field...

“Deathless Tūkanguha.” The name has an almost electric quality to it. The sound inspires reverence.

Aye. Giver of life, cleaver of soul. The Great Akasha. By the bony hand of Edem was it Blessed With Eyes To See. That one. What if – Deathless do as Deathless be, irrational – what if we fight? What if it makes a mistake? What if, aye, I act to take Rank 1 from Tūkanguha...and it disappoints?

For a long moment there is silence. Zhāng, for his part, can't think of anything to say. Getting his charge to Rank 1 has always been very far on the horizon; even now, at Rank 10, she's got a very long way to go.

“You know my thought?” he begins, slowly. “Be yourself upset, just a little. The buyout, aye? None of this there'd be if ye had gotten to finish him. Am I wrong? You've not been blooded late. Thoughts of these – come on. First, it's ways off. Second, be proper. Rank 1 don't disappoint, Deathless or no. Am I wrong?”

Sülde cocks her head to the side and scrutinises him. His colour has settled down a bit; it's now closer to the grey of his resting state. Then, all of a sudden, there is a rusteyed smile from Sülde, braids that jingle side-to-side. What a beautiful, punchable face. Zhāng really does think that.

Aye, maybe. She rests her sword over her shoulder, and sticks her tongue out at him in a teasing gesture. Need a kill, do I? Talking all shit.

“Damn right! A proper contract. Go out, fight some, win or die – clear your head. Do you good, aye.”

Be the expectation, you've lined some up bids for me?

“Of course.”

Delay. I want to do something first.

“Tell me short things.”

Axewound yourself. She laughs, and in a flash she's off – running full pelt over the dunes, pluming sand kickup, blazing transonic off into the night like the War-crazed freak she's always been. The sky starlights up overhead, Cahalla parties on in the far distance, and far away the air-crush thunders thickly. Zhāng turns slightly red. Ever so slightly. She can't see him, anyway.

And from mid-run, halfway to the shop, her answer comes shouted wireless.

I want to watch Jamsaran's fight!

------------------------------------------------------
I'm still tied down with uni work, so things are still slow in Dullahan-land. Still, short chapters are good every once in a while, right?

[Alternative Ice]

Still, short chapters are good every once in a while, right?

Yes they are.

[Christemo]

I still have no idea what Im reading besides some hilarious Metal Gear Outer Heaven esque world, but I like it immensely.

[neveron]

So are the pilots in Armored Core also some kind of transhuman nanobot shells or is that just something unique to this crossover?

It's a really cool story, anyhow. A bit obtuse at times, but cool. Future people talk weird, though.

[Dullahan]

So are the pilots in Armored Core also some kind of transhuman nanobot shells or is that just something unique to this crossover?

This isn't really a crossover, just heavily inspired. The Warrists are not pilots as such; they literally are the mechs. AC pilots are generally humans, except when they're secretly AIs.

Also, welcome to BL!

Future people talk weird, though.

Some do. The difference is one between Cahalla and Ouarzazate. The latter is conservative, in that its population all mostly look like humans and speak in ways that are generally familiar to us. Cahalla is not - it is one of these insane Culture-like posthuman menageries where speaking patterns are quite strange.

Also worth noting is that - and the location names hint at this somewhat - Cahalla is built atop Mt. Taranaki in New Zealand. The conversation in this chapter is best appreciated if you read them both with ridiculous NZ accents. Bit of an NZ theme in the story, actually; Rank 1 has a Maori name, and the fractal patterns on Warrists' skin is meant to evoke traditional Maori full-body tattoos.

I still have no idea what Im reading besides some hilarious Metal Gear Outer Heaven esque world, but I like it immensely.

legit though it is actually more like what would happen if Reinhard won in Dies Irae

[ItsaRandomUsername]

This chapter was atmospheric and chatty. It was fun to read.

Sülde for best girl.

[Dullahan]

This chapter was atmospheric and chatty. It was fun to read.

i wanted to do something less purple, so i made it incomprehensible in another way

[Christemo]

legit though it is actually more like what would happen if Reinhard won in Dies Irae

While I love you for saying that, Reinhard's world seems a little more intense



Hence I went with Outer Heaven which was basically "There'll always be wars to fight." Instead of "ETERNAL WAR FOREVER AND EVER AND EVER"

[Dullahan]

While I love you for saying that, Reinhard's world seems a little more intense

Hence I went with Outer Heaven which was basically "There'll always be wars to fight." Instead of "ETERNAL WAR FOREVER AND EVER AND EVER"

I stand by what I said. It'll make sense later, by the time we meet Deathless Tūkanguha.

like, philosophically/thematically things are closer to the Dies Irae end than MGS

[Christemo]

Ill take your word for it and now twiddle my thumbs until the next glorious update.

[zhead]

I have no idea what I just read, and half the words didn't even exist in my dictionary before today, but, yes, short chapters now and then are good.

[Alternative Ice]

I have many questions but only one can't wait.

Why is everyone wearing sarongs? Or is that just a fashion choice of the warrists?

[Dullahan]

I have many questions but only one can't wait.

Why is everyone wearing sarongs? Or is that just a fashion choice of the warrists?

As a general rule, conservative or no, Warrists go topless while unreleased in order to show off the fractal tattoos/intagliations on their upper bodies. Sarongs are one of the more common ways to achieve that. It's rarely a pure sarong, though what they wear aside from it varies a fair amount. In Jamsaran's case, his unreleased appearance is almost identical to that of Avenger from FHA (No important meaning, I just really love that character design) so he has the footwraps and headband to go with it. Sülde I've always imagined as having a more ornate, Asura's Wrath-ish outfit.