“‘Freedom doesn’t exist.
Liberty is only an illusion created by the upper classes; why else do
you think that democratic principles were put down by wealthy
landowners? The only real reason why Locke, Voltaire, Rousseau and
other Enlightenment thinkers, as well as the American Founders cared
anything about the illiterate peasantry and working class was simply
because it would increase their productivity, therefore putting more
money in the philosophes’ pockets. What I plan to accomplish is a
culmination of nearly 800,000 years of human farming and systems of
servitude, one where I control everything. Freedom and justice only
exist as long as the rich want them to, and for those that defy us,
those sheep that get lost, that’s what militaries and police forces
are for. So when you vote, no matter who you vote for, you assist me.
If you don’t vote, you give me a free pass into power. Either way I
win. It’s a like a playground game of tag, but everyone is ‘it’
except the one that isn’t. Everyone else does the dirty work but
the one that’s not ‘it’ in this example is the one that didn’t
participate. But in this analogy, there is one ‘super-it,’ and
that ‘super-it’ is what keeps all the lesser bosses in line. It’s
truly ironic, isn’t it? Not even the Eta Carinae High Council can
fathom what I’m doing, but any schoolchild on any schoolyard would
understand my thinking immediately.
Truly wonderful are children’s
minds, so young and so easily molded into good, little Pantheon
scholars. This is why excessive access to knowledge, knowledge of
anything other than the Pantheon, is the most dangerous thing in our
society.
Emperor Arditi, from “Writings of
Societal Mysteries”
- An Innocent Encounter
“Listen, my fellow learned men, for I have a great secret of this
world...what if I told you, that everything that has happened,
everything that is happening now, and everything that will ever
happen for the next million years is written in my notebook? Surely,
you must think I am mad, for that would be the logical assumption.
But, I posses a great power, a great blessing, though some consider
it a curse. With my pen, I am able to write the history of the world
as it happens. It has fallen to me to write the history of the next
million years, by a family heirloom, the Pen of Fate.”
The handsome young man Andrew Eisenheim, a citizen of the vast German
Empire in 1898, said to the Wilhelmine barons to which he presented a
most extraordinary device and theory.
“I have built a machine as well, made of common, everyday objects,
that will take me one million years into the future, to prove that I
am correct in my assumptions. This “time transporter,” will allow
me to show that I am the Hand of Fate.”
The German barons whispered to each other, reminiscent of children
playing a game of Chinese whispers, about the supposed legend of a
man who controlled the fate of Mankind. This, mentioned in the
Devil's Bible, a medieval manuscript written in Bohemia, in
Austria-Hungary, in around 1227 A.D. depicted 6,000 pages of
pre-Christian European texts mixed with biblical scenes in a
haunting, indecipherable and illogical way that had defied even the
most brilliant of scholars for centuries. The book itself was laden
with arcane tongues, incantations and biblical scenes, with the
centerpiece of the manuscript being a full-color image of a creature
known only as “Archimago,” long assumed to be the Devil himself.
This tome and the Voynich Manuscript, both indecipherable texts,
represented the ultimate forbidden fruit for scholars of European
languages, symbolizing and encapsulating the greatest dreams and
nightmares of the human subconscious. Within these books, disturbing,
nightmarish scenes of bloodshed, slavery, torture and Hellfire, like
something out of Lewis Carrol's worst nightmare, adorned the tomes'
pages.
Naturally, the barons, part of the Volkisch Christian sect
Kultursohne that had become deeply enthralled by the romantic
“neo-paganism” that was being revived by scholars like Richard
Wagner, Guido von List, and the philosopher Fichte were very
skeptical of this young man Eisenheim's claims. Kultursohne,
German for “Cultured Son,” was an organization who sought to
find the Hand of Fate, and use his abilities to control the fate of
Europe for theirs and the German Reich's benefit. Their leader, a
German paleontologist and philosopher named Arthur Schroeder, had
translated about half of the Devil's Bible's intelligible sections
and as a result of his hours of toil and poring over hundreds of
lines of pagan doggerel was one of the foremost experts on
pre-Christian Europe in Germany. Arthur was in attendance that night,
and he was tempted to allow Andrew to at least show how his machine
worked, or at least give him an attempt to prove himself to the
Council of impatient barons. He, however, still believed Andrew to be
just another pompous aristocrat, a spoiled rake who had nothing
better to do than build odd machines all day and make preposterous
claims about “enlightenment.” “Well, Mr. Schroeder, I'd like to
show my machine. Prepare to be astounded, as I unveil the Time
Transporter Mark I.”
Andrew removed a sheet from a large machine and revealed the
contraption to the world for the first time. It looked more like a
bizarre museum sculpture than a machine; it was essentially a
luxurious leather armchair; a control console with a gyroscope
surrounding the whole machine with two huge ivory elephant tusks on
each side of the chair and flags, heraldry of Imperial Germany and
other gewgaws hanging from the elephant tusks.
The German barons stared at what they thought was nothing more than a
piece of junk with curious, yet very skeptical eyes; clearly, anyone
with decent mechanical skills could have put that contraption
together, with all the gears, moving parts and ornaments emblazoned
on it in the gaudiest way imaginable.
“Master Schroeder, this is a load of codfish...” one baron
whispered to Arthur in a very sarcastic tone. “This, as you can
see, is my Time Transporter, and I will demonstrate how this works as
follows...” Andrew said, proudly.
“That looks like a piece of junk!!” One baron yelled rudely
across the room.
“Thank you, this was my father's, he died of consumption, how do
you feel now?” Andrew said, sarcastically.
One German baron had seen enough of this 24-year old's showcase and
simply left the meeting hall in Berlin, probably headed to have
something to drink at the public house on the chilly winter's night.
Andrew's completely untrue remark was enough to bring his gentlemanly
side back to the forefront, however.
“Thank you. Now, let me demonstrate the wonders of time travel. I
will venture one million years into the future, to the limit of my
powers over fate and history, and I will return with a tree branch,
to prove that I am the Hand of Fate.” Andrew said, very
confidently.
“This man is a swindler and a cheat...” the same baron whispered
to Master Schroeder, still unconvinced of Andrew's powers.
Andrew removed his hat and coat and sat down in the chair, made
himself comfortable, and entered the year “1,001,898 A.D.” into
the control gauge. He simply sat back and watched as the gyroscope
began to turn, slow at first, then faster and faster until the
gyroscope whirled at breakneck speed, but then, the room suddenly
stood still, and became a white, cosmic blur to Andrew...he was
traveling through time!
Andrew looked down at his time gauge as he sat, strapped into the
machine, bouncing, jostling and whirling around in the brilliant
white blur of the time stream. The years, decades, centuries,
millennia and eventually eons flew by, blazing past him at the speed
of light, yet his machine was not moving, for it traveled temporally,
not spatially. Andrew could scarcely contain his excitement until his
destination was reached, just to see if what he had placed in his
145-volume “Egoist Crown: History of the Eons, from 1898 for the
Next Million Years” really was correct. Suddenly,
however, the Time Transporter began to slow down a bit sooner than
expected...its failsafe mechanism was kicking in, something was
wrong...the time stream's white blur turned to a steel-gray, and then
colors began to flicker into existence as the gyroscope's rotation
began to grow more languid. The years displayed on the time gauge
were not passing as quickly, and slowly they, as well as the
gyroscope came to a stop...Andrew was now on the other side of time.
The world became clear as a whistle...Andrew was in the future, the
far, far future, and he turned to the time gauge just to see
how far he had come: 802,572 A.D. “Damn...off by about 200,000
years...but still...it worked....Yes...Eternal Glory for Germany!”
Andrew yelled in cathartic exaltation. Those British, French and
Russian snobs would never equal the Fatherland now. Andrew was
elated, but that elation suddenly turned to a sickening dread when he
realized what part of history he was in.
“Wait...this forest, dark, misty, rainy...this is the Haidnur
Age...I wrote this back in 1895, in the year 700,000 A.D., humanity's
Empire, spanning one-thirteenth of the Universe, thanks to the
invention of “thought travel” in 500,000 A.D. at the height of
the “Gilded Age,” 200,000-700,000 A.D., has collapsed in a
massive civil war. 100,000 years later, all that remains of humanity
on Earth is a Hird of 82 immortal, supreme-transcendants, they are so
highly evolved and augmented that they do not age, they do not die,
they do not get sick, they have immense telekinesis, and they do not
reproduce...this is humanity's final form...Hyperborean, and they are
omnipotent beings that will exist as long as the universe does...we
have come full circle, and have finally reached nirvana as a species
in the Eastern sense...but they are extremely intolerant of outsiders
and have a very strong sense of racial pride and identity...they will
see me as a threat, they will kill me, and nothing will happen in the
past...because this hasn't happened yet. I'd best be careful.”
Andrew thought, realizing of exactly where he was in his History
of the Eons timeline. Looking around the Haidnur, the legendary
dark forests of Germany, was foreboding enough as it was. Trees, huge
oak, yew, camphor and a new species of hybrid tree called Imperial
Sequoya, bred as an ornamental tree to adorn what were once the grand
cities of the Lordly Empire, which had spanned more than a billion
light years from Earth and ruled absolutely by an Emperor and
Empress. In the long, silent absence of their human cultivators, the
trees had gone feral and had blossomed into towering emergents in the
revitalized wilderness of the Haidnur; the vast forest belt that once
again cloaked Europe in green in the summer, and golden-orange in the
autumn. Occasionally a nightingale's song would pierce the misty,
peaceful woodland, or a strange, wonderful call of some futuristic
animal, having evolved over the millennia.
Stepping out of the Time Transporter and onto the dark, earthen
humus, Andrew realized that he was still in the same spot, just
hundreds of thousands of years in the future; the machine traveled
through time, not space.
Andrew inspected the machine for any possible damage to the Time
Transporter, but there was none immediately present. Everything
appeared to be in place. The machine was in perfect working order, so
the only reason that failsafe would trigger and drop the machine out
of the timestream is that some large object was moving in close
proximity to the Time Transporter...Andrew was being watched, but by
something not immediately visible, something sinister.
Andrew pulled his revolver from its holster cautiously, worried that
what was watching him was a hostile animal, or worse, one of the 82
Hirdsmen. In that case, his 19th-century Luger pistol wouldn't do him
much good, for the Hirdsmen had weapons beyond any of his
contemporaries' comprehension. Suddenly, a crash shattered the calm
behind him as trees were knocked over like matchsticks, and the
reason for the machine's sudden stoppage became apparent. A huge
Woolly Titan Stag, a massive herbivore evolved from an elk, was
crashing loudly through a misty clearing on the opposite side of the
grove of trees where the Time Transporter had come to rest. The
animal was as massive as a woolly mammoth, with a thick carpet of
brown, shaggy hair in the winter; it was a cool autumn morning, so
the creature's wool was not the three feet long it would be come
winter, but a lighter underwool, just a few inches long. It was
lengthening in response to the shortening of the days and the damp,
cloying chill in the air.
They had the bulk of a woolly mammoth, the head of an elk with huge
antlers pointed forward like spear blades, used to dig, cut
vegetation and defend itself from the Hirdsmen and the Psi organisms;
the diverse, sentient animals with human intelligence that could
speak a human language, but telepathically.
The Hirdsmen and the Psi were the dominant forms of life on Earth
during the Haidnur Era by far, but the Stags were spectacular
nonetheless. This huge stag, 10 tons in weight, raised its head and
let out a loud bugle, just like its elk ancestors did; it was the
rutting season. However, neither the Stag nor Andrew realized that
they were being hunted. They did not see the watchers in the
bush...approaching from behind was a ferocious hunter, and it was
coming for blood. As if from nowhere, a huge, bipedal baboon-like
creature, standing about 8 feet tall with a massive upper body and
small, muscular legs lunged forward with a screech, with the colorful
face and rump of a mandrill, gigantic, snake-like fangs and a short
tail hooted loudly and lunged at the Titan Stag, followed by the rest
of its troop.
“Giant Boboos, nasty predators...” Andrew thought, remembering
writing these things into existence in his own time period. Andrew
watched helplessly as the huge primates leaped onto the back of the
Stag, knocking the massive creature to the ground with a thud then
grabbed their spears; rudimentary weapons; the Giant Boboos were the
only creatures besides the Hirdsmen and the Psi smart enough to use
weapons during Earth's Haidnur Era, and plunged them into the Stag's
side, killing it instantly. The creature died gurgling in pools of
its own blood. The Boboos flared their huge fangs and injected a
potent venom into the dead Stag's body, liquifying the insides and
allowing the vicious, liquivorous primates to suck the animal's body
dry like a spider killing a fly in its web, after inserting their
straw-like tongue into the gaping wounds in the stag's flesh.
The Boboos knew that Andrew was there, the largest one would
occasionally glance over at Andrew, and Andrew would train his gun on
the Boboo's colorful, blood-drenched face to let the ferocious alpha
primate know that he was armed. As Andrew watched the macabre scene,
transfixed, he failed to notice that one of the Boboos had knocked
his Time Transporter over on its side, dislodging several critical
pieces, including the warp modulators; that would take a long time to
fix those parts, as warp modulators were very difficult to find in a
forest, to say the least. Andrew noticed the situation and cursed. He
now knew that he was stuck in the far future, but things were about
to get much, much worse. The Boboos started acting strangely...they
abandoned their kill suddenly, chattering like scared children
running for the safety of their parents...something was coming.
Something dangerous.
Andrew turned around and saw what looked like a delicately-striding
Christmas tree walking towards him, decorated with tinsel, Christmas
balls and garland, it had the same shape as an elegant, black pine
tree, about 12 feet tall, and the forest around it broke up its
outline as it moved...At first, it was amusing, the sight of a tree
walking around in the woods, but then, Andrew staggered in terror
when he realized just what he was looking at. The “tree” had
ethereal, navy, sapphire-blue eyes, long, pale, ghostly-white, silky
hair with two pigtails, a calm face just as pale, a long, gaudy,
exuberant black ballroom dress covered with Christmas decorations,
complete with a Christmas angel on her head, black boots visible
under her dress, with a black and white surcoat adorned with Celtic
crosses, and long, feathery, black wings on its back, with a black
lace frill on her head keeping her pigtails in place. She looked like
an Alice in Wonderland character gone wrong. It was one of the
Hirdsmen, probably a wife of one of the Hird leaders, her hands were
crooked and witch-like, like tree branches, and she stared ominously
at a terrified Andrew, holding his gun at the ready.
“Stand still, and no harm will come to you; lay down your
weapons...or I will take them from you.”
the woman said, in a strangely rhyming, poetic voice. Andrew
cautiously placed his gun on the ground and spoke waveringly in
German,
“I want no trouble.”
“Don't fear, there is no trouble. You are of the Chosen Race.
You may be granted audience with the Hird, King Falkenbach will want
to meet you, the Hand of Fate. You look akin to our Masters, the
Lordly Ones of Alexander Arditi, The Troika, The Seras Imperium, and
machines...albeit a bit scrawny and primitive.”
Andrew was not offended by her haughty comments, to her, he may as
well have been a Neanderthal. Humanity had evolved into such
non-Euclidean shapes and forms that they scarcely appeared human
anymore, this woman looked more like a walking Gothic Christmas tree
with wings. “Christmas” appeared to be the right word, too,
because she had Celtic Christian symbolism, as well as pagan
Germanic-Nordic symbols all over her long, gaudy surcoat. However,
the utter absence of technology would have surprised anyone who was
not the Hand of Fate.
Andrew had written that in the year 2107 A.D., a massive alien
society migrated to Earth, calling itself the “Seras Imperium,”
and consisted of very tall, ectomorphic humanoids; essentially
greater-formed humans with silver, shining skin, looking almost
artificial, with data and numerical values coursing over their
bodies.
With their massive silver, zeppelin-like ships that trailed ethereal
comet dust on the cosmic winds, they appeared over the Northern
Union, a government consisting of the United States, a unified
Europe, Australia, New Zealand, the Russian Empire and Canada, which
subscribed to an ideology known as “Pantheon Doctrine,” which
stated, in its briefest definition, that there are no equal people,
only equal ideologies, and that everything in the universe could be
explained by science and the Four Pantheon Pillars. These included
the Serpent Paradox of Self-Preservation and Destruction, the
Ignorance Complex, the Seven Doctrines of Societal Absurdities, and
the Ideology Fields. All major organized faiths were abolished and
outlawed, people could believe in the Old Faiths privately, but there
was to be no Church, no Pope, no Ayatollah, and no clergy of any
kind.
The demise of organized religion, which began with the Scientific
Revolution in the sixteenth century, was completed with the start of
the Second Renaissance and the New Enlightenment. Eventually,
however, as if from nowhere, a handsome young Student Inheritor with
a superb mind, a deviant personality and a maniacal laughter emerged
from the ranks of legendary Northern Union citizen-elites to take the
early 22nd-century world on a truly revolutionary new course.
“Student Inheritor” was a rank held by the elite, University-age
Northern Union intelligentsia and socialites, and this one, named
Alexander Arditi, was the most erudite, intelligent, knowledgeable
and well-respected of them all. He invented two new machines, the
“God Machine,” a computerized cloning mechanism which operated on
the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics, Boltzmann's Equation and
Schrodinger's Paradox, as well as a theory called “Arditi's Theory
of Cataclysmic Succession,” where evolution was a product of
simultaneous and eternally-clashing chaos and order, and that chaos
was caused by a natural cycle of mass-extinction and mutations
brought on by the psychological and physiological changes caused by
mutations from the mass extinctions themselves. The order, what
maintained homeostasis in the environment, according to Arditi,
originated from the rapid rate of evolution as shown in the fossil
record after a mass extinction event, and then the eternal
continuation of the cycle. Eventually, Arditi claimed, the
biosphere's biological flaws became too uniform and too homogenous,
triggering another catastrophe. This implied that DNA was never
destroyed, only converted, and therefore, the God Machine could
clone, splice, breed and create life in any way that Arditi saw fit.
Combined with his Creation Engine, which was a massive space-station
that could produce anything he wanted through nano-bot technology, he
astounded the alien visitors with his knowledge, his resemblance to
one of their gods, and his militarism, as well as his demented
laughter and his belief in Pantheon Cult, founded by the eccentric
aristocrat Sylvain Anteon in 2080. Anteon was a veteran of the Great
Ilex War, a 30-Years' War in Asia that had spread like a
multinational conflagration to burn every nation on Earth, and the
best pilot in the world by far, known as “The Black Baron,”
flying for the 181st Airborne Legion of the Northern
Union.
Handsome, intelligent, decorated, rich and eccentric, he was admired
by many for his theories on society and the future of the human race,
his writings elevating the young war veteran to the status of global
celebrity after the end of the Ilex War in 2092 and the abolition of
the old Westphalia Model of politics. His two top associates were a
dark but very handsome young idealist by the name of Antonio Marduk,
a master of macabre, disturbing and downright evil-looking cartoon
art and animation, whose studio, Mad Artist Incorporated, produced
some truly shocking cartoons and animation features, and Alexander
Arditi, the Yale University firebrand from Italy that would forever
alter the course of history.
After finding a history-shattering mural, painted more than 7,000
years before on Martha's Vineyard, Cape Cod but housed in the
Metropolitan Museum of Art from then on, Anteon, Arditi and Marduk
claimed to have found eternal enlightenment; the mural depicted two
individuals locked in the embrace of true love, standing under a
night sky on a moonlit beach, with the stars literally falling to
Earth around them, like little shining snowflakes around their
blissful forms; complete with a stunningly beautiful story of how
they first met as young teenagers and learned to love each other, and
how the man went off and died valiantly in war for the glory of
Hellas, leaving the poor girl to die of a broken heart.
The individuals in the painting were described as an Old Ryukyu
Empire author and an Old Minoan Empire prince, the Old Ryukyu
romantic author, a beautiful, 6'1” young woman named Aya, according
to Minoan runes about her work on the painting, dressed in an
elaborate style called “Eastern Star,” which involved
combining gaudy Chinese Empress robes with silky Japanese nobility
gowns. The Minoan prince, unnamed, was clad in his Tyrean purple robe
and stood in love's eternal embrace, his eyes eternally fixed on his
partner. The poem was seen by historians and literary analysts as one
of the greatest elegiac romances ever written, on the mural told
everything about the two lovers, their backgrounds, their family, who
they were related to, even where they first had a truly intimate
moment, right there, on that beach, in one of the vast, global
Minoan-Pacific trade routes that dominated the world in the late
Neolithic.
The two lovers were celebrating what was implied to be the aftermath
of a sexual encounter by the text, and a hauntingly beautiful quote
between Aya and the Prince, translated by WHOI scientists from Woods
Hole: “It is finished...we can know no anger, no fear, no
hate...but I feel that the sins of my past have damned us to
extinction...seeing you in your natural state was something I had
never seen outside of looking at a tall, spring lily plant, swaying
in the warm breeze of a sweet summer's day.”
“Do not fear, my shining prince, though the nature of my
feelings for you elude me as well, an author of my stature can know
no anger, nor hate...only love. Death leaves a heartache no one can
heal, and love leaves a memory no one can steal. Let the stars fall
down around us...and may the world know peace, everlasting,
matrimonial peace...the Egoist Crown, that dreadful, thorny burden,
is forever removed from our heads.”
The mural was painted with acrylic colors instead of paint, but
somehow was as amazing as a painted picture. Most importantly to the
three Pantheon Founders, it showed that society was far more advanced
much earlier than previously thought, with a standard of living
higher than most of the world in the late 21st century.
This painting and poem were an unrivaled elegiac romance, a beautiful
reminder of a bygone age, and the wondrous story of Aya and the
Prince, told in novels, comic books, plays, movies, and almost any
form of media you can imagine, showed two things...there were no
equal people, just equal ideals at the heart of love, and that
everything we knew about history could change in an instant...also,
it warned of the huge blue-claw crabs in the pond too.
Anteon rightfully stated that “humanity, in its most modern form,
has learned nothing.” The graves of Miss Aya and the Prince, who
was never named, were searched for, but in vain. This mural was the
only record of their existence that survived, about a tale as old as
time itself, the affection and cruel separation of two young lovers,
cut down in the prime of their lives by humanity's flaws, hate and
greed, the roots of all war. Arditi, one of Pantheon Cult's loyalest
followers, took this lesson to heart, and went on to single-handedly
liberate the Hawaiian Islands from a rebellious faction of
anarchists, by tricking the leader into thinking that he was
invincible, and by using simple mind-control and manipulation
techniques, he convinced the man to commit suicide to “prove”
that he was invincible, only, of course, to die at his own hand.
Upon witnessing this act, impressed by Arditi's cunning and the way
Marduk and Anteon wrote their great Pantheon Codex in 2107, the Seras
appointed Alexander the Supreme Pontifex of both the human race and
their vast Empire, convinced that he, Marduk and Anteon were gods,
granting them all immortality via their wondrous technology,
replacing his energy with that of the universe itself by using
incredible pharmaceutical drugs and nanoscale augmentations, creating
a new DNA: that of the Hyperboreans.
Unchanging and forever young, Alexander, Anteon and Antonio quickly
took their new supreme authority to heart, unified humanity and the
Seras Empire to create the Lordly Empire, under the banner of the
Cross, Hammer and Crescent with the help of the 82 Hirdsmen, or
Indiction Guards. They now controlled one-thirteenth of the known
universe, but faced massive opposition in the form of another grand
empire, the Old Sinh, a proud collection of warrior races with a
valiant history. Their society was just as expansive, and Arditi,
Anteon and Marduk, being men and lusting for power above all else,
declared war on the Old Sinh. After 100,000 years of nonstop warfare,
in which untold trillions of soldiers on both sides died and entire
galaxies were ravaged, Arditi, Marduk and Anteon along with their
Indiction Guard were victorious, and annexed the Old Sinh Empire.
This act made them the most powerful beings in universe, still
unchanged and omnipotent after 100,000 years. To mark that glorious
occasion, the Founding Troika held the grandest Olympic Games in
history that year, with all manner of new sports, such as
space-gliding and gladiatorial events. Humans, A.I.s and
Seras-augmented humans had interbred, creating a form of augmented
humanity called the Hyperborean Race that existed as the supreme
force in the universe for 600,000 years, until the Great Schism and
the Troika's mysterious disappearance. Humanity slowly ebbed back to
its ancestral home of Earth, where the 82 immortal Hirdsmen were all
that stood between humanity and extinction...while the Empire rebuilt
itself after cleansing all decadence from its ranks. Their numbers
would never change...until the Troika, still sifting through the
ashes of their old Empire somewhere in the vastness of space,
returned to lead them.
The Hird wife knew that Andrew was not their immortal leader, because
she had identified him as the “Hand of Fate.” Now, in the year
802,572 A.D., humanity's power was held in check by newly-evolved
creatures, the Psi, and they saw themselves as being superior, that
humans were on the wrong side of history...thus the struggle for
humanity's soul continued even now. “Noble Hand of Fate, we are
the Indiction Guards of Glory, the last link to the Troika and the
imperial traditions of Mankind. The other Indiction Guards dress in
much the same style as I do, in case you were beguiled by my outfit.
My name is Amaranth Morgana, and you are?” “Andrew...Andrew
Eisenheim.” Andrew answered, nervously. “The Indiction
Guards were the 82 Disciples, men and women that protected the
Troika, part of their inner circle and their entourage of Literati,
Renaissance men and women, political advisers and military
commanders. Headquartered in the vast Temple of the Cross, Hammer and
Crescent on the planet Valhalla, in the Andromeda Galaxy, one of the
Local Group and the three most sacred galaxies in the Lordly Empire,
along with the Milky Way and the Holmgard Galaxies, we traveled
aboard the great ships at the speed of thought, appearing out of the
Quantum Tunnel and obliterating our enemies with destruction on an
intergalactic scale. Dressed in Jungsturm-Nordsterne regalia, a
combination of ornate aristocracy, practicality and topcoat or
surcoat outfits with Teutonic Knight heraldry, pagan themes and
regalia, we were the most revered fighting force in the universe,
plundering the stars for the Emperor, for fame and for fortune. Red
as blood and black as night, we were known rightfully as Troika's
Fist. We are the last generation of Mankind on Earth, still keeping
the traditions alive, as the Paradise Hird. Now, let me take you to
our Paradise, deep in the heart of the Haidnur.” Andrew
followed Amaranth past some massive oak, yew and Imperial Sequoya
trees, as every single animal in the forest fell silent or retreated
as she walked past...every animal on Earth, other than the Psi, knew
that humans were mortal threats by now, the fear instilled in them by
millions of years of persecution. Andrew looked around at his
environment...the Haidnur was vast, foreboding, dark and sinister.
Every tree seemed to be hiding something, the comparisons to the
Wonderland of Lewis Carrol fame ran through his mind...Andrew hoped
that this woman was not the Queen of Hearts.
Amaranth had a very distinctive, dark allure to her, her outfit
flowing off of her body and her genetically-augmented wings jutting
out of her back...she was unlike anything that Andrew had ever
encountered...but knew all too well, for he had engineered this
future.“This massive tree is the Sacred Rood-Tree of our Hird,
see our blessings carved into its trunk.” Amaranth pointed at
hundreds of pagan runes and Christian crosses carved into the tree
with her tree limb-like arms, along with a huge Black Sun Rune and
the Pantheon Hammer, Cross and Crescent. “The trees contain the
spirits of all the people who have died before us, those not within
the Troika's inner circle...we honor them with our blessings, and
sacrifices of animals on various holidays. A tree cannot live without
a forest, and the forests cannot exist without trees. Everything is a
cycle, hence the Serpent Paradox. Someday, the Troika will return
from its absence, appearing in a kingly fleet, grander than any other
assemblage in the Universe, the Flagship Urawemazu, from the depths
of the Sanzu Cluster, they will take us via their Koryryrr, or
Imperial Providence in Indiction Lingua, and we will be judged by
their Imperial Court, or Shiki-Warrkyryr, the Yama of Chandur...they
will see our faith in his ideals long after those around us have
perished, and we shall become the Indiction Guard once again, in the
First Year of the New Dawn Era, and the Fifteen Billionth Year of the
Universe. From that point, we will rule over our rebuilt Empire, a
wiser, more learned society, and become truly invincible and
immortal. That was the Troika's plan, their promise to us.”
Andrew listened to what Amaranth was saying very carefully. Humanity
was in the midst of a Dark Age after the fall of a glorious Empire,
much like Europe after the fall of Rome hundreds of thousands of
years before. Given that certain humans had become transcendent
organisms and no longer suffered from mortality, the immortal Troika
was still alive, and these Hirdsmen were his Disciples. His return
would mark a Renaissance, and humanity would reactivate its old
Empire and repopulate the universe as even stronger than before.
Andrew asked himself, however, why the 82 Hirdsmen didn't just
rebuild the Empire themselves, why didn't “King Falkenbach”
simply declare himself Emperor and voluntarily end the Dark Age? Was
this Troika really that powerful and omnipotent that humanity
had lost the ability to govern itself? Even as the Hand of Fate,
Andrew thought it was strange, almost surreal, to see his predictions
come true. “What a strange world this has become; humans have
become so advanced, yet they have lost any will to accomplish
anything without their three, almighty leaders...apparently, men need
their gods, more than I am ever capable of knowing. These Hirdsmen
have far more knowledge than I can ever hope to know, yet they have
the same sense of order and rules as a child in my own time period,
where nothing is possible unless their authoritarian figures tell
them it is, like a child who thinks its parents are the only
authority that matters. It is here that the origin of God lies, the
base human need for authority to guide it. There was no authority in
the primordial age of hunter-gatherers, so Man created God to fill
that void. Now, in this new Dark Age, God's place has been taken by
three immortal, intergalactic Emperors with no real proof that they
even still exist. They've been missing for 100,000 years, surely they
know the location of Earth on a galactic star chart if they are
omnipotent. The Troika has replaced God, much as God replaced Odin,
Ra, Zoroaster, Zeus, Thor, the Roman Gods, the Greek Gods, and the
Eurocentric pagan gods...it is the same cycle of existence, outlined
in the only absolute truth, Pantheon Doctrine. There was no equality
without thought, and there is no meaning without purpose in thought.
We are all self-sufficient, individual bastions of free will.”
Andrew thought to himself as Amaranth and he walked up to a huge
wooden gate in the primeval wilderness. “This is where our Hird
lives, and awaits the Troika's return.” “Amaranth, do all of
your Hirdsmen wear the Jungsturm style?” “Yes, they do. It is
our tradition as the Guard to do so. Our lingua franca is called
Jungsturm as well.” Amaranth tapped on the door three times,
and a small, curious spyglass with a bionic eyeball popped out of the
wall, glancing anxiously at Amaranth and Andrew, and made a small
squeak as it retreated back into the wall...then, like a medieval
town's sentry walls, the gate slowly opened, via an automated
mechanism. As the gate steadily and loudly swung open, Andrew saw the
full wonder of the 82 Hirdsmen, including their King and Queen,
Irkaya Falkenbach and his equally-bizarre wife, Selene. They all wore
the Jungsturm style, just with King Falkenbach and Queen Selene's
outfits being much more elaborate. “Welcome back, Amaranth, and
welcome to the Hird, Noble Hand of Fate.” King Falkenbach's
appearance was truly incredible, he was so modified by the forces of
technology and evolution that he scarcely looked human. His outfit
mimicked the Ruthwell Cross' designs, in the symbols, runes, and
decorations on it, and his sleeves looked like the cross on the
famous artifact, known for an ancient poem, The Dream of the Rood.
Falkenbach's elaborate Jungsturm outfit seemed to reflect his
presence as an omnipotent Dreamer, a being of pure thought and
ideology. It was elegaic, the Rood poem was written in black
runes on the outfit, as if harkening back to the post-Roman Dark Ages
of Anglo-Saxon Britain, as if to claim heritage from the mythical
line of King Arthur. Most of the Jungsturm style reflected the
wearer, so no two outfits were the same.
What was even more astounding was his bodily appearance. His hands
had evolved into leathery, leaf-covered tree branches, his eye
sockets had plants growing from them, blossoming into little blue
flowers, and his eyelashes were curling deadly nightshade plants, his
hair was long and made of feathers, and had three birds' heads
emerging from his scalp, each one with a different facial expression,
one happy, one sad and one angry. The heads made noise, chattering
amongst themselves, as the King's fanged mouth was dripping with
nectar, with hundreds of hornets, bees and wasps sipping like
delicate drinkers at a public house from his honey-dew saliva.
Feathers erupted from his skin like cat's whiskers. The hornets did
not sting him, as he was the Forest Emperor and respected by all
creatures of the Haidnur. His skin was pale, whitish-azure in color,
giving him a truly otherworldly appearance. He walked towards Andrew,
standing more than 10 feet tall, and spoke, though his three
bird-heads. “Dare may I ask of your origins?” “Andrew
Eisenheim, from Wilhelmstrasse, Berlin, German Empire, born in 1875
A.D.” “Oh, you noble Hand of Fate...you might want to speak
softly about your origins...I have a Hirdsman here who is...a bit
overzealous in wanting to meet you.” Just then, a beautiful
woman stepped forward, she had a blue, gold and burgundy, frilly
Jungsturm dress, robe and surcoat, with a mix of seductive beauty,
sexuality and class all at once. She was 12 feet tall, like Amaranth,
but she had long, beautiful, silky red hair, seductive blue eyes,
crimson-red lipstick, a chalk-white painted face and two demon-horns
jutting horizontally out of her head, as well as her breasts pushed
up unnaturally high. “Hello, sweetheart. I've been waiting for
the day I can finally meet you.” the woman said with a
seductive smile on her face. “My name is Sayu Ayanura, I love
strawberries and anything strawberry flavored, my favorite color is
either milky-pink or hot-magenta, depending on my mood, I love the
summer, not winter, autumn is ok, spring is still to cold, I'm
O-negative blood type, my birthsign is Virgo, my birthstone, as you
can see by my necklace, is a sapphire, and I truly love your
work...just remember, though...what happens here, stays here.”
Needless to say, Andrew was a bit stunned by Sayu's level of
intensity, not to mention how physically alluring she was. The other
Hirdsmen exchanged annoyed, groaning looks on their faces throughout
the whole introduction, however. “I warned you, she's quite the
cuckolding shrew...” King Irkaya said. “Oh, hi Amaranth,
how's your lonely life in that moldy tree stump?” Amaranth
quickly turned and looked at Sayu with a horrifically demented look,
her black, fallen angel wings ruffling angrily. “Listen, you
harlot, if we're going to live together for eternity in this
God-forsaken forest, we have to draw some boundaries. It's not a tree
stump, it's a 30,000-square foot house, built in the trees high above
Asgard Village, our only home left in the Universe, which,
unfortunately, we must share. You can stay in your big, fancy palace
on the hill, made of all the relics from the Golden Age, but just
don't bother me...” Amaranth groaned. “Andrew, do me a
favor and tell Amaranth that she's a moron, honey.” “What?
I'm not getting into your dramatic, girlish feud, so stop...”
Sayu promptly placed her lacy-gloved hand on his shoulder, and Andrew
suddenly stopped talking, he had become Sayu's puppet, her
mind-control slave. “You are a moron, Amaranth, a total disgrace
to sentient life...I have beauty, grace and poise, you do not.”
Andrew said, droning in a monotone, drugged voice. Sayu took her
hand off of Andrew's shoulder, and Andrew promptly returned to
normal, with no memory of what had just happened. Amaranth was
too disgusted for words and just walked away. “Andrew, I can
grant you whatever you want...just say the word, and I'll do it for
you.” Andrew suddenly wondered if he had made the right
decision coming into Asgard Village, now that this seductress and
apparent sorceress Sayu had taken control of his mind...she seemed to
know both telekinetic and rational mind-control techniques, and
seemed to be able to get anyone to do whatever she wanted them to do,
much to the chagrin of her fellow Hird members. She also had
vampire-like fangs and hissed like a snake, flaring them
frighteningly. Andrew confessed to himself that both Sayu and
Amaranth were very attractive in their own mysterious, exotic ways,
though Sayu seemed like more of a monster than a person, a closer
Queen of Hearts likeness than Amaranth. Andrew walked looked towards
the huge trees towards the back of Asgard Village, and saw Amaranth's
huge tree mansion. He felt very guilty for insulting her, even though
the fault was not his own. Amaranth was a bit of an introvert, and
Sayu was the exact opposite. “I have to go at least apologize to
her...” Andrew thought. Just then, Andrew passed out and simply
disappeared from view, just as Sayu hissed like a vampire. “So,
this is the way you want to play this game...you little weirdo. I'll
find Andrew again, and when I do, I'll make sure he stays safe with
me...” she said, just as Andrew blacked out.
“Space was once known as “The Final Frontier,” in
pre-Imperial times. Oh, how Enlightenment has changed the way the
Imperial Races looked at things...Now, about a third of the
observable universe has been settled and colonized, and the remaining
two-thirds outside of Imperial space is well-studied, and only a
matter of time before the Empire of the Egoist Crown colonizes it.
One of the greatest mysteries of space that remains is the old
question: “Why is there something instead of nothing?” This is
the one question that Pantheon Doctrine, even I must admit, cannot
answer. As Supreme Pontifex, I have total dominion over the third of
the Universe that I control, but beyond that, even I am contained
within my own sphere. It is safe to say that there are no known,
extant societies that can challenge the Empire, but the Great
Precursors, I feel, are just one of the societies that existed in the
endless eons and infinite universes that populate the Multiverse. The
Pleiadean scholars have their own opinion on the old Hyperborea
theory of sociology, in that each living being is, in fact, a
self-contained society, a microcosm in a larger macrocosm. If we
allow for the modern Hyperborea to replace the old, literal
Hyperborea, that a society actually existed in the center of the
Earth itself, Pantheon makes even more sense, and the Writ of Lords'
Bible, the Pantheon sacred text, can finally answer the question that
has no answer, the irony of which that the answer for the raison
d'etere for the universe is that there is no answer at all. It just
happened that way, via the laws of “orderly chaos,” that is,
chaos creating order, and order creating chaos. Everything is
connected.
Emperor Arditi, “Writings of Societal Mysteries”
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