#it’s such a great intersection of this massive conflict between empires

[why-bless-your-heart]

I genuinely think “The Trouble With Tribbles” is my favorite foray into sci-fi in the history of the genre. It’s got:

Political intrigue

Bureaucracy

Humor

Mystery plot

Working stiffs

Agriculture

An absolutely awful pun

[twitchesandstitches]

Red Lantern Alighting

In the dark, there was loss.

In ages so often made dark and grim by the selfishness and vainglory of those who measured personal achievement in mountains of the dead, there were plenty who looked up from the bottom of the heap, and found something there.

Jackboots ground down on their faces, and the warlords who destroyed their lives cared nothing for the suffering they wrought. Tyrants, fascists, conquerors and world-wreckers all simply did their thing, and like incredibly inattentive farmers, did not realize what they were sowing.

The people ground down on the bottom learned well what it meant to suffer. To lose everything. And in the pits, in the slave arenas and at the end of an overseer’s whip, they learned the shape of hate.

And one day, on so many worlds stained with suffering, made into something filthy by despair and torment, a red star bloomed in the sky.

And those who suffered the most, burning on the inside, found a clawed hand extended to them.

And in his claws, there was a ring offered out to them.

“Make them pay.”

-------

It was a common rumor, perhaps to pass the time, but there was enough of an edge to it to suggest some panic that remained in the news, all the same:

Ten thousand worlds are burning.

To many across the places touched by the Eunoianet, the magical web of communications, stories, and media that connected the Fleet worlds and kept their culture alive, there was some mild interest. Plenty took the news literally, and organized fire brigade fleets to put the fires out.

Blaster, an Endowed Autobot with a keen interest in xenosociology particularly as related to culture and music, thought something was off the moment she first heard the specific phrasing, and its connections to conflicts on a chain of interstellar empires.

“Ten thousands worlds,” as she told her team, “Is a kenning.” Her team gave her politely incomprehensible looks. With a look of delight, one of her daughters (a minibot named Rewind) eagerly leaned out of her seat, visor shining bright, faceplate wiggling excitedly.

Wicke, possibly one of Blaster’s closest friends in the theoretical engineering sub-sets, opened her mouth to say that she knew what it meant. Blaster shook her head repeatedly. ‘Let Rewind have her moment!’

Rewind spoke up. Like many minibots, she was human-sized; about seven feet tall, but so incredibly thick that she was almost that wide too (at least at the chest-mounted Energon tanks and her impressively massive hips), her heavily plated exterior indicating her preferred alt mode of a tanky attack drone. As she began to speak, her present siblings (both of them beastformers; a moody red robot rhino named Ramhorn and a yellow leonine tracker called Steeljaw) rolled their optics. “Did you all know? A kenning! Is a common term for a culture-specific metaphor, usually tied to folklore. Typically it is a shorthand for a more complicated concept, you see!”

Wicke, shifting about and balancing her gargantuan breasts onto legs easily thick enough to be bust-supporting shelves, nodded. “And what might this kenning refer to, dear?”

The other two of this particular mission winced at Rewind went into a needlessly and painful convoluted explanation with too much time spent on unnecessary asides on cultural context. Bismuth, rolled her temporary optics and tried to nap. A tricky thing considering that to save on space, she had installed her Gem into a fembot shell that at least matched her amazonian, outrageously curvy true form, but one of the things it couldn’t do was sleep. Smaller even than Rewind was arguably the most famous of them all; Toshinori Yagi, better known by his professional name All Might; once a massive tower of muscle and masculine charm, his self-sacrificing job as a Fleet champion had left him an emaciated wreck, his powers too dangerous to access often. Nonetheless, his experience made him a highly skilled mech pilot to channel his spirit. He was doing his best to pretend to be listening but was clearly suffering.

The gist of the lecture, in any case, was this: ‘a thousand worlds is slang, in this little intersection between a dozen or so little empires, for all known worlds’.

“So,” Toshinori said gravely after some thought. “It’s a great deal more serious than even ten thousand individual worlds!”

Bismuth’s fembot shell shrugged its expansive shoulders. “Honestly, you sure it’s even appropriate for us to get involved? I mean, I’m all for intervening, but the people in this area…” Her shell’s emoticon-displaying face cycled through a number of uncomfortable expressions. “They’re not gonna be welcoming or appreciate us.”

“The power structure could use a shake-up,” Steeljaw observed, his voice cultured, deliberately refined. This was the voice of a cat-bot who could somehow hold a cup with his pinky-claw out. It was a strange thing to see from someone who had grown up in a society where setting yourself on fire was considered a good icebreaker. “They’re… well, I shouldn’t SAY they are dreadful tyrants, by and by, but alas…”

“Can we kick their ass?” Ramhorn said hopefully. “Please tell me, we get to do some tyrant toppling!”

They looked at Blaster, to see what her vote might be. She thought about it and shrugged. “Personally I’d rather do what we can if trouble comes to us; I won’t say no to rescue, even if the folks around here yell at us. But actively dismantling their empire, however deserved, is really not a good idea. We’d need to work things out better before we decide if we have the RIGHT to do that or not.”

The ship approached the first world to investigate, and Toshinori’s eyes widened, the modded dark patches around them accentuating his shock. “I… do not believe we will have the opportunity! Look!”

They looked out.

The flames were bright on the windows, even from super-orbit.

They had seen continents, entire landmasses, on fire before.

They hadn’t often seen the landmasses in question rearranged to spell out an extremely crude message.

“...Ah,” Wicke said, wincing. “I suppose the worlds being on fire was not entirely a metaphor, then.”

The ship found stable orbit, relatively safe from most sensors, and with their on-board alchemizers and raw materials, it was a simple matter to build an observation station to live in and wait to come to some kind of a conclusion. If there was a problem with the Fleet’s organization, Blaster mused, it was that waiting for every participating citizen to come to some kind of a consensus took forever, even with cybernetic telepathic stations to work it out. At least with this small group, it was easier to work it out.

Rewind and Blaster were considered the best at stealth to go down and put the fires out; Wicke was undoubtedly the most powerful but her raw power made her inefficient at HIDING her presence, and they weren’t sure if they were ready for confrontation. Bismuth waiting for the all clear (and once she got it, she alchemized terraforming rainfall that put the fires out in days), and Toshinori had many sterling qualities to make him such a paragon, they put his face in the Big Book of How To Hero. Holding back or being stealthy was NOT one of those traits.

Before Bismuth got to work, Rewind gave her report to the others:

“Most strange, so very strange indeed? Did you know, it is very strange for there to be no one left on the planet?”

“The place WAS on fire,” Bismuth had said. Sourly, she had added, “Maybe they were attacking each other… this whole region is a mess of conquerors trying to kill each other. Yeerks looking for better hosts to enslave, elven supremacists, orks that kill everything just to get a better fight out of it…”

Rewind nodded. “Yes, certainly! But, there were NO bodies! Not on the scale that we ought to have seen!” She had paused, looking uncomfortable. “At the very least, those bodies were not killed by the fire.”

Wicke frowned. “What do you mean?”

Rewind was equipped with recording abilities, in her role as a scout. She did warn them first, though, that it would be graphic; Wicke often was employed as a coroner to study the bodies of metanatural encounters, Bismuth was a vetern of many revolutions, and Toshinori had been a hero for a very long time. All of them were acquainted with brutality.

Even so, they were taken aback by the horrors on the screen. “Oh… Arceus’ peg…” Wicke said softly, as they showed them ashen streets and bodies that were by then mostly��� pulled apart. Heads were mounted on spikes, and were the only recognizable bit. Everything else had been torn apart, burned so badly and then pulverized into a meaty pulp to coat buildings and streets.

The Fleet was a rough place, and its heroes tended towards extreme fury and ferocity as a rule; nonetheless, this was extreme, even by the standards Wicke knew. “I thought you said fire hadn’t killed them?”

“Analysis indicates that they WERE burned to death, but not by the fires we see. It was a different sort of burning inconsistent with what’s ravaging the planets.

Bismuth had examined several other such photos. She was a ferocious fighter, even by the standards of her Dinobot partners (long since married to them, by this point), but even the greatest savagery of Grimlock or the combined fury of Volcanicus had a point; the shock was intended to terrify the enemy into retreat, or encourage allies to greater morale. This felt more like just randomized lashing out.

Toshinori didn’t much like what he was looking at. “Infighting, perhaps? This is just so… excessive, though. Why would they kill each other so brutally?”

“Rivalries? Combat doctrine?” Ramhorn suggested.

“Or maybe whoever killed them was really angry,” Bismuth suggested. “I’ve done stuff that… okay, not as bad as THIS but… when you’ve been ground done long enough, you’d be surprised what happens when you let that monster off its leash.”

Toshinori considered this. His eyes widened. “Oh…! Rewind, Blaster! You said there were no bodies found, yes?”

“Indeed, sir!” Rewind said. “No bodies besides these!”

“No ashes, then?”

“None that would fit the profile of the bodies, or any traces of incinerated corpses on the scale of an entire population.”

Toshinori looked thoughtful. “Perhaps there are no survivors because they have already been evacuated from the world.”

Bismuth brightened up. “Oh! That’d be a relief.” Perhaps thinking along the same lines as whatever was prompting Toshinori, she compared the visible mounted heads, stabbed on display by whoever had been angry enough to burn the whole planet down, and compared them with all Fleet records of multiversally-wanted villains.

Most of them matched someone on the lists, with the ones who weren’t at least suspected of awful crimes. Bismuth did not much dwell on the evil deeds attached to them; it was sickening to behold, but it was enough to know that very evil men and women had died this day. “Check this out. I compared the skulls to records of some serious bad guys, and they’re all… yeah, the multiverse is better off without them.”

Toshinori nodded. “As I suspected.”

Steeljaw was several times the size of Toshinori (who was tall for a human, but puny by Fleet women standards), but he gave him an adoring look nonetheless. “Sir, do you perhaps have an idea?”

Toshinori looked thoughtful. “Let us at least consider the idea that the downtrodden of this world may have had their opportunity to rise up, at least.”

“You think so?” Wicke said, raising an eyebrow. “This much destruction is rather excessive.”

“People who have suffered terribly, all their lives, often do not have much reason to hold back once they have the opportunity to strike!”

“True enough.” Wicke had turned, and other matters called their attention.

Bismuth’s terraformers conjured forth enough rain, with a mild connection to the Elemental Plane of Water, to put out the fires and render the planet suitable for all of them to at least walk on. Several days onwards, they landed to investigate properly.

As they suspected, there was no life on the planet anywhere. Blaster had flown across the planet in her preferred aerial form with a massive armory of sensory drones, and there was no signs of life; no organic presence, no living movement, no hints of the electromagnetic activity that marked the presence of synthetic life forms. And the ashes of burned things did not account for all the inhabitants being dead, either.

Several days, the mystery continued to deepen as they continued the search on other worlds, and the pattern on the first repeated itself. Uncannily the same, at that.

And it WAS a pattern; Wicke was certain.

Above them, far in the sky, a red star seemed to appear; the figure within watched them dispassionately, weighing their hearts.

They shone bright and good. But, he judged, they did not have the burning anger he sought out.

He contemplated the Gem, however. There was the spark of fury there…. Perhaps later, then.

The red light flew away, leaving the battleground behind.

And in the meantime, unaware of this, Blaster’s team continued to search. Unexpectedly, they found something interesting on one of the cities that hadn’t quite been exploded.

Blaster was over sixty feet tall, her minibot offspring incorporated into her body in cassette forms and channeling their power to her, so she could achieve a far greater size and curve level than normal, and she had to be careful not to let her waist-level bustline demolish things worse. Slowly she leaned forward, studying something on the wall. “I found something!”

Bismuth was in her true form now that she had room to grow, and she stood over a hundred and twenty feet, not even a trickle of her full power being used. SHe wasn’t just an amazon, she was a gigantic gray-blue beauty, her multi-colored dreadlocks shining bright, her gem core just barely visible in the cleavage of two massive breasts with lower slopes extending past her mighty thighs. Power crackled in her hard light body, and she was cheerfully refusing to reign it in. (“This much awesome DESERVES to be on display!” she had boasted, and kissed her biceps.) “Whatcha got there, Blast?”

Toshinori approached. While he did have his own powers, they were so strong as to be a serious threat to his emaciated body, and he preferred to channel them through powered exoskeleton frames; in this case, he operated a mech slightly too large to be considered power armor, but small enough to operate on a human scale, which seemed to be the standard size on this world. It looked like a brightly colored egg, with powerful limbs to channel his energies through and punch things, and a colorful aura of energy created a luminous V-shape above him from the back.

Its sensors relayed it to him. Toshinori studied it. “Graffiti, or perhaps a calling card.”

Wicke, standing at a very far distance from everyone else in case she suddenly needed to grow to fight (and would thus need a LOT of space; she could exceed planetary size without even putting in effort), linked up to Toshinori’s mech to see it for herself. “It IS more recent. I think this was left as a message.”

It was all red against the slag; a bright cherry-red color that would have been friendly if not for it being carved into the collected skulls of, apparently, the most cruel and hateful tyrants in the entire system. It had been burned into them, in fact, possibly by whatever had set the planets on fire, and then painted over.

It looked a little bit, then, like a round circle. Two vertical lines were set on either side, with additional zags moving outwards over that. There was a short message, written in an unfamiliar script similar to the Daedric alphabet. “A curious sign,” Rewind communed to Blaster. “It resembles that of the Green Lantern Order.”

“Green Lanterns?” Blaster said aloud.

Toshinori shifted. “Green Lanterns, did you say?” He looked at the sign. Bismuth and Wicke were running a translation cipher, comparing the letters to the most likely solutions. “They were an ancient order of heroes! They predated the Cataclysm by many eons; I suspect the last of them perished trying to fight that disaster, though they left behind relics and lore.” He patted his chest proudly. “My heroic predecessor, One For All, supposedly refined the power I carry with Green Lantern secrets!”

“So perhaps whoever did this was evoking their legacy?” Blaster said. Well, Ramhorn asked, and she relayed it.

Toshinori considered it. “I think that is possible, but it would be an odd thing. The symbol is different; the Green Lantern sigil was a, well, a lantern, with horizontal lines above and below.” He pointed out another thing: two circles inside the sign, at angles. “Nothing like that there. And it was green, of course. Not… well, red.”

Bismuth glanced aside. “It does look like a lantern, though.”

“Yes,” Blaster said thoughtfully, surrounded by charred landscape, burned by the rage of those suffering for so long. “A red lantern.”

“Got it!” Wicke said triumphantly. “The script originates from Beforus! A curious thing; It hasn’t been spoken since Beforus.was lost; it is similar to various forms that have derived from it since then, but… oh, just a digression, not that important.”

Rewind perked up, eager to hear more, but Blaster was in a hurry. “So why Beforus? It’s not anywhere near here, and these worlds didn’t have a significant troll population.”

“Yes. That is the difficult part. And the language is fairly obscure; there are a few figures who survived Beforus and gained the ability to avoid aging who would still speak it, but I can’t imagine what they would be doing here.”

The Condesce, Blaster thought. The Dolorosa, mother of vampires. The Grand Highblood. The Blue Arrow and executioner of the degenerate. The Psiionic, sailor of the stars. And the others, the founders of modern troll-kind and preservationists of their culture; most were within the Fleet, and all of them had at least spent some time with it, in the past. Most were accounted for.

But not at all.

Bismuth frowned as the translation software ran. “The symbol thing is a bit wonky; someone chipped away a few bits here and there. See?”

“Yes,” Toshinori said. “It looks a bit like like an incomplete circle, then. I wonder if it was sending a message?”

Blaster leaned in. “And with those little circles inside, it kind of looks like the astrological sign for Cancer, doesn’t it?”

“Ah, it does!”

Blaster chuckled. “Now that’s obscure, what does that even-”

Oh. OH.

Bright red colored. Mutant red.

A sign that looked like what trolls called the Iron Manacles, the Crab Claws.

And Beforan script, as would be remembered by someone who had actually lived through the fall of Beforus.

And now, she realized, she had seen this level of brutal destructiveness, this unfettered and passionate rage.

She kept it to herself for now. “Is that translation ready?”

“Yes,” said Wicke. She cleared her throat, and spoke aloud. “Bear in mind, this is quite a rough translation, and the software likes poetic meter, but nonetheless, this should get the spirit across.”

Wicke translated thusly:

“With blood and rage of crimson red,

“Passed on by those long dead.

“Together with our righteous hate,

“We will burn them all.

“No one else will share our fate.”

Wicke finished. “And it is signed… I think it translates as the Anointed.  Of… the Red Lantern Corps? I don’t suppose you know anyone by that term.”

“None that fit the situation,” Toshinori said. Bismuth said much the same.

“Kankri Vantas the first.”

Blaster said this heavily, with mounting shock.

The name called to mind a fussy and passive-aggressively angry young troll, a bit older than the likes of Terezi and her generation. “Uh, are you sure you have the right guy?” Bismuth said. “Kankri, you said? Chubby, really pretty? Has a really bad case of pent-up anger he needs to deal with?”

“Not him,” Bismuth said. “The other one.”

“What other one, I don’t- oh.” Bismuth’s eyes widened. “Oh.”

“The Sufferer.” Toshinori said, horrified. “He’s here!?”

“Or he was. It fits his… preference for rising up. But on a bigger scale. And of course, the Anointed is what Beforan religious practices named him. He’s never liked being called the Sufferer or the Signless.”

There was silence, then, for a time.

It was not bad news, exactly. But it was certainly concerning.

The Signless, the Suffferer or whatever you might call him, had come here. He had… slaughtered the worst of these worlds, and had done something with everyone else. The wording indicated numbers; the ‘we’ and all’. Perhaps… he had been recruiting?

For what?

They stared at the sign of a red lantern, shaped to be like the sign of suffering among trolls; an icon of enduring the unspeakable, a sign for those fighting to make a kinder world even if you did it on a tide of blood.

Kankri Vantas of Beforus was the kindest of his people. A living prophet to some, handing down law and covenant to mortals, fulfilling ancient prophecies and setting people free. He was a just man, a good man.

And he was also someone who had waged wars so bloody that even the Condesce, a woman no stranger to cruelty and ferocity, had been afraid of his savagery.

“Let’s get back up and upload our findings to the Eunoianet,” Blaster suggested. “We need to figure out what to do from here. And someone give the word to Karkat Vantas that I need to have a talk with him,” she said wearily.

“We’ve found his ancestor.”

-----

(It should be noted that some elements of this fic aren’t exactly in chronlogical order.

Yes, the Signless is the leader of the Red Lanterns here, rather than Atrocitus. As it is, they are the only extant Lanterns, but the others will soon arise, more likely than not. This much is certain!

However, I’ve planned for Signless’ Red Lanterns to predate the Fleet, at least as a fully functional organization. He may either have been making it during his initial time with the Fleet, or at some point, the proto-Fleet’s founding families discovered relics that the Signless was inspired to create the first Red Power Battery and rings from; it could be that he’s only recently made them fully practical and is expanding his Corps’ reach.

They are intended as heroes; merciless, angry and destructive, but they are good guys all the same. Their job is to make the monsters fuckin’ BURN. They are not antagonists, but the Fleet does not yet know what to make of them!)

[phenomenist-blog]

13. Koblenz, Germany

At the Northern end of a historic river valley stands proud Koblenz, an Ancient town that seems to hold a portion of the German soul. Like two bookends of a rich fantasy novel, Koblenz and its opposing town, Bingen am Rhein, guide river traffic in and out of the fabled Rhine Gorge. In this geographic river formation, a treasure chest of Romantic views awaits the ship-bound traveler. Both natural beauty and human constructs adorn the cliffs with stunning artistry. Between the two towns, Koblenz is actually older, making it the oldest Romantic river town in the Upper Middle Rhine Valley.

Human fortifications date in Koblenz as far back as 1000 B.C., because at the same site as the town, two great rivers meet: Rhine and Moselle. These flowing waters make for a strategic trade position on the Ancient continent, as is evident to all. Julius Caesar builds the first bridge in Koblenz in 55 B.C. across the Rhine to the town of Andernach. Then, the Romans construct Ehrenbreitstein Fortress, which guards Koblenz from above.

Although the Romans would love to hold on to the jewel of Koblenz forever, the town is a high-priority strategic target, and thus highly-coveted. As early as 259, the Franks invade and destroy the Roman bridge. This puts the fort at risk. Still, the area remains in Roman hands long enough for two religious cults to emerge: one to Mercury, and another to the Celtic-Roman deity Rosmerta. In the pre-Christian era, Koblenz becomes an important polytheistic stronghold.

When Rome falls, Koblenz falls into the hands of the Franks, permanently, who rise to become the dominant German Kingdom, creators of the Holy Roman Empire. After the death of Kaiser Charles the Great, Koblenz becomes an inheritance to his son, Kaiser Louis the Pious. Then, the town passes on to Kaiser Charles the Bald in 837. Over the next few years, the heirs of Charles the Great meet at Koblenz regularly in order to discuss the terms for the division of the Empire in the famous Treaty of Verdun, in 843. This is one of the most consequential moments in European history: the beginning of the near thousand-year fracturing of the Holy Roman Empire of Germany into multiple pieces. What happens in Koblenz explains why Germany never develops a coherent State government, until perhaps the Modern era. 

Though not far from France, Koblenz becomes a part of the Kingdom of Germany. In 1018, Kaiser Henry II presents the town of as a gift to the Archbishop of Trier, one of the three permanent Electors of the Kaiser. In the feudal Christian system, it is important for Monarchs to curry favor with spiritual figures, and the donation of Koblenz is a great symbolic gift that strengthens ties between Church and State. It also makes Koblenz a symbolic seat for the Archbishop-Elector, one of the most powerful men in Low Medieval Europe. Because of this, Trier holds tightly on to Koblenz, until the eighteenth century, making the town a personal residence for the Archbishop-Elector as of the seventeenth century. Kaiser Conrad II even receives his official election at Koblenz, making the town of the many unofficial capitals of the Holy Roman Empire.

Once sacked by Norsemen, Koblenz learns the hard way that the town must protect itself with staunch defenses. To this end, there seem to be three strategies. First, town leaders construct many defensive castles, such as the Marksburg, Stolzenfels, Lahneck, and Thurant. This leaves behind a rich density of beautiful Medieval architecture in the town. Second, leaders donate a part of the municipality to the Teutonic Knights, who create the Deutsches Eck to guard the intersection of the Rivers Rhine and Moselle. A monument at the Teutonic location stands to this day. Third, town leaders are always careful to maintain the fortifications at the mighty Ehrenbreitstein Fortress, left behind by the Romans. This explains why the massive complex still dominates the skyline above Koblenz, to this day. The presence of the Teutonic Knights, together with the high number of castles and fortifications, guarantees physical security, and the naturally heavy river traffic guarantees the economic prosperity of Koblenz throughout the Middle Ages. By the 13th century, Koblenz joins the other towns of the Valley in the Rhinish league of cities, as an added security measure. And the many steep cliffs provide a formidable natural defense.

Yet total mayhem comes to Germany in the Thirty Years’ War of 1618-48, and Koblenz is not spared the misery. Following the war, the Archbishop-Elector of Trier comes to the rescue and helps Koblenz rebuild. It is common in Germany for the same pattern to take place: after conflicts tear a town to pieces, a spiritual figure comes to the rescue. 

Wars among the European powers of France, Austria, and Prussia tear Germany a part multiple times, and all these powers vie for control of Koblenz across the eighteenth century. In the end, Prussia wins, and Koblenz becomes the Prussian seat of government in the Rhineland, forever entrenching the town as part of Germany, where it surely belongs.

However, for a brief time, France occupies the Rhineland after WWI, attempting to gain control of Koblenz. The German population in the town defiantly insists on using the German spelling, “Koblenz,” rather than “Coblenz,” after 1926. In WWII, the town receives heavy bombing from Allied forces, but between 1947-50, Koblenz serves again as the seat of government in the Rhineland, serving at the center of rebuilding efforts in the region. Today, Koblenz belongs to Germany, as it should, and it is at the Northern apex of the UN World Heritage Site for the Upper Middle Rhine Valley. 

Koblenz seems to have an unusual amount of Cultural appeal. Its four riverside fortresses appear like castles in the clouds, and a lovely Old Town is a delight to experience. It is a remarkable place with an even more remarkable history, and any traveler who takes a river ride through the Gorge will receive a regal send-off at the terminus at Koblenz.