#32

Granduncle Muldwych was annoyed. A couple of kids had wandered into the shop looking for porn, and he'd spent the better part of the day chasing after them through the never-ending shelves. When he'd found them, they'd settled down in a corner to sleep. He'd bought them some chips and told them to bugger off. When he'd gotten back into the shop, he ruminated on all the pitiful little primates he had to pander to each day. Wondering if he should set up shop in Africa again, he hobbled back behind the counter and waited for something interesting to happen.

#31

When spending Christmas On A Rational Planet, it would be a shame to waste the numerous talents, one might say Infinity, Doctors' talents studying Alien Bodies. I mean, it's one thing to spend enormous amounts of time trying to repair your Dead Romance, despite its Unnatural History, but it's another altogether to cause Interference with The Taking of Planet 5, just so you can avoid the ever-lengthening Shadows of Avalon. I mean, that's as bad as blaming an Ancestor's Cell for your misfortune. Anyway, I'm going down to the Adventuress on Henrietta Street for a drink. Care to join me?

#30

The two Godmothers of the Faction met in the hall by accident. They made their way towards the Little Brother's dorm, muttering to each other in worried tones and arousing curious glances.

“He won't listen to anything I say! He just sits there with those little things. All day, all night; I'm not sure he even sleeps anymore!”

“I know! I went to one of the Godfathers about it; do you now what he told me? He told me to stop worrying over nothing! You know what he said they were?”

“No, what?”

“Something called 'Parablox'.”

#29

“And suddenly, as if out of nowhere, appeared two men. Well, beings, really. One was as a god of death, clad in resplendent bone and blood, the very shadows at his feet dancing around him as if alive. The other was as a god of rage, twisting and writhing, growing back an even more menacing weapon whenever one was cloven form him. The two daemons danced their dance of death and destruction, sometimes wholly disappearing form our site, only to appear as if they had never left moments earlier than they arrived...”

~words from the mouth of the mad~

#28

So here's a thought for all you academicians of game logic: How would time travel work if time was not in fact linear, along the so-called 'thread', but circular, as the Aztecs believed? My personal theory is that instead of 'ships' to 'navigate the river', we'd have a sort of stasis chamber type setup, so that we could just wait for the moment we wanted to get off at came around again. Of course, then your chamber would just be sitting there, so perhaps you'd want some sort of additional element that shielded you from the outside world? Who knows...

#27

It is a little known fact, but Don Quixote was a participant in the War. The story itself as published by Cervantes is just an interpretation of the events he bore witness to. The windmills were actually disguised timeships attempting to blend in. The sickly mare was actually an alien that bore a striking resemblance to an unhealthy horse. The Don himself was a sleeper agent for one of the major powers attempting to make the best of a bad situation. Sancho was, of course, just Sancho, being a native who just happened to get caught in all the mess.

#26

So, really if the Great Houses can force regeneration upon themselves and if they can affect the way in which they change, what's to stop them from becoming, say, a bunch of trees? They could all turn into living rocks. Or ponds. They could become beings of pure energy.

Actually, what's to stop someone else from sculpting the regeneration to their will? Or triggering it for that matter? Could they make them become whatever they want? Could the Enemy walk up and effectively turn a Homeworld operative into a frog? Are all accounts of such witchcraft actually just this happening?

#25

Where do all the conceptual entities go when no one is thinking about them? Where do they go when no one can see them? Where do they go when nobody knows that they are there? Do they disappear? Are they still there? Do they remember not being there if they ever go away? Do they even know that they have gone? Have they really gone at all? How does their consciousness work without the synapses to carry it? If they die, does anyone notice? If they die, does anyone even remember? How? How can they be? How can they be....?

#24

When a ghost cluster goes off, the effect on the recipient is only ever observed from the outside. It would be difficult to get an inside view of the effects it has on its target, by its vary nature making any written accounts not worth your time, so to speak.

Miraculously, a first-hand account has been found of a Renegade Homeworlder who was caught in the blast that 'destroyed' one of the Houseworlds and somehow managed to restore the planet. His accounts of memory loss, weakness, and shifts of perspective are being dissected for any military value they may hold.

#23

The Homeworlders were rather tired of acronyms. They used to use them all over the place, but near the start of wartime they'd begun phasing them out. Now they got to laugh at the humans, with all their ridiculousness.

UNIT
PROBE
MEOW

The list goes on. Ridiculous really. Instead, the Houses were now thinking up new and interesting names for things. Like Ghost Clusters. Or Nechronomancer Patrols. That, that was a cutting edge name. Sleek, shiny. Rolls off the tongue. Not like the old names. The Demat Chamber. No style. Oubliette of Eternity sounds so much more intimidating, you know?

22

When the Lords of Steel managed to escapefromt within the void, they came hurtling back into base reality at a tremendous speed. They were intercepted by a mobile Remote colony who had picked up their signals and were most intrigued.

It is said that for a whole day the two leaders stood staring at each other from across an enclosed room, each putting out and receiving signals like lightning rods rooted in a storm.

Within a year the two factions had traded and melded so much that it was nigh impossible to tell which any given member had originated from.

#21

“Word is all the Godparents are in a bit of a state! Seems that a Guardian took one of our best so he can go off on a crusade for some temporal key...”

“Word is the Houses are trying to bring back their best. They've already located the first Head and Ohm, but they still don't know where the other one is.”

“Word is the Shub-Niggurath lost their throneworld due to the war, and are infiltrating human society in preparation for an invasion. Might want to stay away from the storefronts a while...”

~Words From The Street~

#20

When the Horizon of Time was revealed to Humanity in the late seventeen-hundreds, the Faction could hardly ignore its presence. Some of the more scholarly members were rather intrigued by the similarities between the 'Kingdom of the Beasts' and their own Eleven-Day Empire, and wished to know the connection, if any. It was to this end that Godmother Din established a Mission near the Horizon's version of Medmenham Abbey. She has since developed a great fascination with the Black Sun, and spends her off time training her recruits in the art of guerrilla warfare. Or should that be babewyn warfare?

#19

The world of the Babewyns is a ghostly version of our own. Something is off, the colors are a bit wrong, and you could swear that there are creatures peaking out from around the corners.

It is also completely uninhabited. By classical standards, anyway.

But, if it were, I imagine that the culture would fill out from the center of one of the major ghost cities, leaving the suburbs and borders and bit nastier looking than the rest, shadow beasts prowling on the edges of the mind.

I wonder if this is the true origin of the Eleven Day Empire?

#18

Little Sister Abigail had been only six when she was taken into the Faction, and now, hundreds of years later, she had still never bothered to progress up to the rank of Cousin. Many merely disregarded her as an annoyance, but one thing they couldn't fault her for was her unwavering love of the Dark. She had walked through it, playing with the dead, having tea with the forgotten; some said she'd even found the Pythia herself. So it came as no surprise to anyone that, when asked, she said that it was there that she had found the gauntlets.

#17

One thing that the enemies of the Great Houses speculate upon is how many lives the Lords live? No longer being limited as they once were, do the Houseworlders have need for their birthing machines? If none ever truly die, why have a way to weave new life? And what of the talk that the Homeworlders have surrendered some of their birthing engines to other races? Do these new players in the game now posses the virtual immortality of the gods? Unfortunately, as in many cases of War, the speculation on an involved race's natural lifespan is purely that, speculation.

#16

“M?”

Cousin Irvine was getting desperate. He was down five letters and could hear the Homunculus trundling its way round the corner of the corridor, preparing another barrage from the sounds of it.

His shadow clapped her hands in silent glee and marked out an 'M' on one of the slots.

Irvine lip-read the lines again, mentally attempting to fill in the missing letters.

“My... name? My Name Is Patricia?”

She jumped up and down excitedly, giving him a thumbs up and dancing on the wall.

“Well that's nice Patricia now GET US OUT OF HERE PLEASE!”

#15

Cousin Allison was noshing fast food while idly flipping through the Book of Olde Time. Most of it was quite boring, all 'And The Great Whosit Banished The Terrible Zodin To The Lands Of No-One Cares' and so on. She'd just gotten to the bit about the Matriarchy and was beginning to get some devilish ideas.

She was very much surprised that Granduncle Muldwych had just let her take the book.

What had he said? “Well it's all going to wind up in here anyways, so I'll be buggered if I have to be responsible for the damned things!”

#14

In the time-bubble that the first Homeworld was currently trapped within, the First and current Head of the Presidency received court summons. This was odd in and of itself, seeing as no outsiders could have gotten into the room, let alone the planet, in order to deliver the summons in the first place.

The summons had a long litigation from the Homeworld's former interventionist agency leaders. The letter seamed to say something about the fact of the Houseworlder's recent endeavors involving certain Renegades and the planet Earth.

In short, it read “STOP STEALING OUR IDEAS, IT'S ALL WE ARE.”

#13

Apeiron waited in the Darkness. The Pythia was late. They played Chess every second Tuesday. Or whatever approximated for Tuesday here.

The Mad God Ohm watched his wife through the window. He could see her in real space, but he was trapped in the epicenter of a black hole. He wouldn't mind so much, but they had to use quantum uncertainties to play bridge.

And the First Head of the Presidency waited at the end of the universe for the War to end so he could get out of the damned bubble of urTime he was sharing with these cretins.