Monday, January 5, 2015

Death and Time


Saturn moves in the furthest sphere from the Sun reachable by the starships of Man. Beyond, the Cosmos is more chaotic and the laws of Nature are strange. Saturn and those more distant spheres are remnants of a renegade cosmos that was or perhaps might have been. In that world, Saturn would have been the sun and a source of life instead of a graveyard and place of death.

Unique among the planets are Saturn's great rings made of the petrified remains of titans and monsters and the dust and remain made from their collisions in the void. The greatest of these pre-Creation monsters form the moons of Saturn. Men sometimes find treasure among these cold, sepulchral bodies, but ancient and malefic intelligence still lives in some, and there are tales of the dead becoming animate in their influence.

Some seek riches within Saturn itself, but its sickly yellow vapors streaked with dull gray can only be safely penetrated in thick, lead diving spheres that afford voyagers protection by alchemical affinity from both the crushing pressures and the saturnine radiations. Without them, living things petrify then turn to dust and other metals and materials corrode or decay. Travelers have recounted hearing the voices of souls, and ancient and damned, raging or crying in the dark mists, but whether these things are real, no one can say.

At Saturn's north pole, there hangs a great cube of stone like black onyx. Inside, dwells the Oyarses spirit of Saturn, long-bearded Aratron. He has made a great study of time and death, and is to possess a laboratory where he grows new physical forms for himself that he transfers his intelligence to him the old one succumbs to death. As well as being Aratron's palace, laboratory, and treasure house, the cube is said to be the tomb of the rebellious titan that created this world--or at least what is left of him. Though his giant, apparently-dead form has been accreted with stone, he is still well bound and meant to be for eternity.


8 comments:

Gothridge Manor said...

Maybe this is bad, but i was thinking this would make a great reboot of Plan 9 from Outer Space. A scary ass version...without the cardboard tombstones.

Scott Anderson said...

Alternative cosmogony is fun!

bombasticus said...

Let's go to Pluto . . . death is high camp. Love it. Better to reign as Saturn and devour your children than follow the SUN.

bombasticus said...

Actually now that the Creatures song is looping I wonder if the LAPSE that doomed planet Nimrod was the encounter with a trans-saturnian system . . . horribly center-less but the locus is what we call Pluto, the anti-sun. Between Pluto and the conventional oyarsim (fallen and not) are the storm twin Orbitron and Astro-Nautilus, beyond Pluto the oldest giants, Cyclops, Gamma X and the rest. All of which is heavier than you need in terms of demonology but might be fun set dressing. This will be another of your triumphs!

Trey said...

@bombasticus -You've spun a whole campaign, man!

bombasticus said...

It's all yours, I'm just confabulating. But maybe I'll commit to sending in an adventure series to go with your baroque sourcebook.

Doomsdave said...

I love the snippets you include from CS Lewis' space trilogy. Excellent.

Trey said...

That would be quite a feat since I haven't read the space trilogy. :)

I am aware of it, though. I suspect what you are seeing is our getting inspiration from the same sources (Silvestris and The Arabatel).