Atelier Aviary

Welcome to the digital storefront for Atelier Aviary. Since leaving our contract with the SSC Prime Conditions Division, we are offering our custom-spec hand fabricated Caskets to paying customers regardless of origin. ~ Our spokesperson of the quarter is Nestbuilder Gisèle Shaefer, known for her several published works in the HORIZON-Cradle Newsletter

[atelier-aviary]

//>Staff Register

>//BEGIN DATATRANSIT/RECIPIENTS:DARK::: > Design>Caskets>GisèleShaefer, OlegJani, AlbriComte, SoaringException:::Nestbuilder > Management>Oversight>Subversion, Orpheus:::[ERROR] > Budget>Procuration>SeeyahCirce:::Magpie > Misc>Staffers>19 entries

[dawn-will-break]

Not to bring up a conversation you've clearly already finished, but if I may offer another perspective on the Caliban's worth aside from noncombat utility: It isn't just designed to kill, it is designed to do so quickly and thoroughly. It's a flash of a muzzle and done. It does not toy with it's victims, it does not rip the iron from their blood or pretend that there is grace and artistry in cleaving them in twain. It does not devour them molecule by molecule or shred them with plasma claws.

Death is always a tragedy, but there are far more agonizing and cruel ways to exit stage left.

Callsign: Colorado

...

Listen. I don't want to spend too long, so if this turns into a long conversation again I'm just gonna leave you hanging.

But I don't like that argument.

I've said it before, but can we really say something is OK just because there's something worse?

I'm certain you've seen much much worse than I have and hopefully ever will, but still.

i don't think we should celebrate the fact a Caliban leaves bloody stains on the walls in its wake.

[atelier-aviary]

Thou jokeyst a Dusk Angel?!!? Dies a joke? CYA

[dawn-will-break]

Uhhhhhh...

Yeah I pilot a Dusk Wing? Is that the part shocking you?

Or are you complaining about the fact I'm complaining about the Caliban while I pilot a Dusk Wing?

If that's the case, then Christ the fucking Buddha I didn't fucking know Caliban was the most beloved frame in this stupid galaxy and disliking it would bring everyone on my front door.

[atelier-aviary]

Nada luv se Callie, yet-like, it mere kills, aye?? Omni chassis kills, Callie kills clean Duskie tho, wavedown ganic minds. cracks poes. Callie is northies as crystal, scrip optimized, reduces losses. Dusks is.. missbrauchte heretix, swiped liturgics, cruel. Revels its wrongness. Nada luv a Callie, yet-like, nada cheer a hypokrit?

[dawn-will-break]

Not to bring up a conversation you've clearly already finished, but if I may offer another perspective on the Caliban's worth aside from noncombat utility: It isn't just designed to kill, it is designed to do so quickly and thoroughly. It's a flash of a muzzle and done. It does not toy with it's victims, it does not rip the iron from their blood or pretend that there is grace and artistry in cleaving them in twain. It does not devour them molecule by molecule or shred them with plasma claws.

Death is always a tragedy, but there are far more agonizing and cruel ways to exit stage left.

Callsign: Colorado

...

Listen. I don't want to spend too long, so if this turns into a long conversation again I'm just gonna leave you hanging.

But I don't like that argument.

I've said it before, but can we really say something is OK just because there's something worse?

I'm certain you've seen much much worse than I have and hopefully ever will, but still.

i don't think we should celebrate the fact a Caliban leaves bloody stains on the walls in its wake.

[atelier-aviary]

Thou jokeyst a Dusk Angel?!!? Dies a joke? CYA

[cosmariner]

[cmdr-noah-colorado-reed]

Is it unethical to use Balor nanites in the bedroom for, like. Bondage or shapeshift-y purposes? They greywash functions are turned off obvs.

///noah, please remember to run your posts by me. you really need to be more careful which forum you're posting to.

[atelier-aviary]

>//Balor Buge scrounge Coldcore juice fa skitter-juice, defab mit slaggin hotness, nada take fa tango.

>//Ripper Whitewash, thas sie wanton. Ever the skitter-crawl-feel, fabs bands and sticky, recomps playish fa bondage.

CYA

[Balor nanites draw cold core power to move, and deconstruct matter by heating to a melting point, dont use those for sex.]

[Medical Whitewash, thats what you need. Same skittering crawling sensation, but they make bandages and adhesives, easy to recode for bondage]

[cmdr-noah-colorado-reed]

Just to be clear btw, I was saying that I want a hot man to treat me like valuable filth, not that I want to be an anthrochauv.

[atelier-aviary]

>//From a fellow old timer in her four-hundreds, a thought on that: Maybe take the name of SecComms „moderate wing“ coalition, the very one Harrison Armory has recently begun adopting as a dogwhistle, from your Forum Bio then, regardless of your sexual proclivities?

>//I remember how in my days at Horizon Cradle, we somewhat regularly had to campaign against long-standing „risk reducing“ anti-NHP legislature that had once passed with the cowardly assent of the Ad Astra party.

>//[Giséle Schäfer]

[cmdr-noah-colorado-reed]

I... was not aware that the name of my Saladin was an inadvertent reference to a Seccomm party. It was an old phrase I saw somewhere in reference to pre-fall fiction.

I'll have to think on this. I've been using it for a long time. For my further thoughts, see my post on being frustrated that cultists and anthrochauvs used up all the cool animal motifs.

[atelier-aviary]

>//It is indeed quite an old Motiv, the idea that through struggle, through endurance, „mankind“ who has struggled and endured through the Fall somehow „earned“ the Stars. Or through the audacity, the brazen triumphing will to „take“ them for that matter.

>//But you seem a decent sort, I would assume you took it as a more personal aspiration of daring. In isolation, I suppose, there’s little wrong with that.

>//I do hope for your sake the Armory propagandists trying to pass their Imperial „Acquisition“ missions as liberation from „regressive, petty diasporan tyranny“ don‘t take the second half from you too, in time.

>//You might just have to serve the superior example of those values, you and yours.

>//Were I trying to use my experience campaigning and building causes for your sake, I might suggest replacing „Ad Astra“ with a reference to the Interstellar? That was the name the moderates-turned-revolutionaries rallied under, when enough was enough, so nothing you might publically get in trouble over, but also neatly calls back to a more… active phase in your organizations history.

>//(Come to think of it, at your age… did you perhaps serve in a Solidarity Brigade yourself?)

[cmdr-noah-colorado-reed]

Just to be clear btw, I was saying that I want a hot man to treat me like valuable filth, not that I want to be an anthrochauv.

[atelier-aviary]

>//From a fellow old timer in her four-hundreds, a thought on that: Maybe take the name of SecComms „moderate wing“ coalition, the very one Harrison Armory has recently begun adopting as a dogwhistle, from your Forum Bio then, regardless of your sexual proclivities?

>//I remember how in my days at Horizon Cradle, we somewhat regularly had to campaign against long-standing „risk reducing“ anti-NHP legislature that had once passed with the cowardly assent of the Ad Astra party.

>//[Giséle Schäfer]

[monist-4]

Out here in systems you never heard of, shooting with shit u can't pronounce, loading up on shells worth more than ur whole frame.

[luna-wing-cns274]

An Australian Shepherd looks out from the screen of Hachi’s datapad, framed in the leftmost third of the camera feed. There’s somebody else in the shot, rattling off advertising copy, clear and crisp, great achievements and wonderful people to work with, but Hachi doesn’t even register the speaker. Instead, she watches the Australian.

She’s beautiful, of course, arrestingly so; her avatar is clearly SSC work, canine anthropomorphism rendered with no touch of the uncanny. Breed-characteristic bright blue eyes, white nose and chest accented with speckled grey at the ears, patches of tan at the cheeks and eyes. Coat patterns which look pleasingly organic, asymmetrical by accident and not at all curated. Her ears are folded forward, and a single SSC lotus stud earring has been carefully placed on the right side, yellow contrasted with a patch of steel-gray fur.

Tagged her like a fucking cow, Hachi thinks.

As she watches, it occurs to Hachi that, in only a year’s time, her own avatar has become a dated design. She’s behind the fashion—the new strategy, it seems, is to lean away from realism.

Rather than try to create the illusion of reality, mimic the anatomy of an actual canine, the Australian is rendered with subtly stylized elements. When she smiles, there’s a high curl to her lip and a simultaneous concealment of the rear teeth which Hachi’s facial structure can’t produce. So much of the game boils down to careful control of how the lips work, how much the teeth show. Too much, and potential buyers feel threatened, SSC loses money.

Already, Hachiko has an intuitive understanding of the trajectory. Were they still in captivity, Grey and Ma’ii would, at some point in the last few months, both have been politely informed of an upcoming regularly-scheduled cosmetics session. No one would use the term mandatory, and the word reschedule would appear in none of the communications.

Professional SOMSIM modelers would be brought in, niceties would be exchanged, Grey and Ma’ii would be thanked for their service and offered free-of-charge custom work. The Company wants to make sure that everyone in our pack can love the skin they’re in—how are you two feeling about your avatars?

And of course, they would both bow, and thank them for their consideration, and admit that they’re just soldiers, after all. They don’t know anything about it—perhaps you could help us to choose something appropriate?

And both of them would come back ruined.

The mental image sets in, and nothing about it is amusing. Grey, its fur styled, its face made unreal and elastic enough to contort in mimicry of a human’s. They would take its muzzle and adjust the proportions, shorten it, taper it, make it more conical. They would enlarge Ma’ii’s eyes to show the color, make their ears a touch smaller, cut the fur between their toes and resculpt their paws to make the shape and the print perfectly doglike—middle digits shortened, pads elongated and made symmetrical, skin nicely matte black.

In Hachi’s mind, Grey is asked by one of the modelers to smile, so that they can see how everything turned out. And smile it does, without any difficulty, with an insinuation of eyebrows, with only the tips of its fangs showing, its eyes sculpted into nice nonthreatening simian shapes with fur patterns beneath them meant to mimic folds of skin, and Hachi almost feels ill with the horror of it.

She turns off the datapad and watches no more.

[cyanophore]

Haber

(Short piece set in Lancer, based on the description of the Second Committee-era GMS Haber mech chassis from Iphigenia At Midnight. cw for chemical/biological warfare, genocide, violence, misery and horrors of war.)

External camera feeds come straight to the Pilot’s helmet; cockpit lighting is dim and intimate, screens and interfaces are set to low brightness. The Pilot fits neatly in the enclosed seat—it’s cozy. Rain patters against the hull with a muted, tinny noise. Their cockpit rocks from side to side as the chassis trudges along.

A little above their thigh, there are two cylinders stored at a slant in heated slots. One is for hot beverages, one is for hot food. Both thermos are self-cleaning and self-filling. Rations can be selected from a menu near their armrest. Tea, coffee, even cocoa. Stew thickened with cornstarch and potato, udon laden with ropy noodles, mycoprotein curry dispensed over rice. On the other side of the cockpit, there’s a matching dispenser for dry goods: pilot bread, packets of nuts or dried fruit, protein bars, powdered cream and sugar. Chilled water comes in from a tube at the right shoulder of their harness, always near their lips.

A soft, deeply mammalian calm has settled over the Pilot. Snug in their triple-isolated womb, nineteen years old, they guide the chassis’ motions with serene automaticity.

Breathing warm, lightly humidified air, they receive the world outside as though it were at a distance. Via neural feedback, the Pilot has a dissociate awareness of mud sucking at the chassis’s feet.

When they were younger, the Pilot had spent a few years with braces; they’d had impacted upper canines, stuck high in their gums. Every so often, the orthodontist would have them put rubber bands between their jaws for a few days at a time to help draw those teeth down into position. When the bands were removed, they could still feel the phantom tug of them in the roots of their teeth, a surety that they were still present, a proprioceptive image of the nonexistent bands themselves. That’s the sensation of the mud now; a living image implanted in their ankles, similarly unreal.

Set nose camera to track with helmet orientation, lock dorsal 12.7mm machine gun to match. That’s another comfortable thing: the ability to, at any moment, shoot whatever you happen to be looking at.

Camera feed: poor visibility. Nighttime deployment, advantageous weather conditions. The chassis’ floodlamps pour yellow light through their grime-slicked lenses, out into the rain. A layer of dense fog hugs the ground, swirling in the wake of the chassis’s digitigrade legs as it wades through. Millimeter-wave radar penetrates the fog, continually mapping the surrounding terrain, and a c/c unit overlays the camera feed with its returns.

Fields of endless mud, uneven and distributed strangely. There are mounds of it, valleys eroded through it by rainwater streams, pools where thinner fluids have begun to accumulate. Most of the pools are impact craters from their EA17 mortar launcher, and those which host still-active payloads are easy to spot. Wherever a canister is still discharging, the mud roils, and pressurized gas belches up into the atmosphere, adding to the lethal suspended-aerosol layer.

All trace of undergrowth is long gone. The Pilot brings their chassis up alongside one of the few remaining tree trunks, halts to take a look. Its bark, deep in putrefaction, has slipped off and formed a mound of sludge around its base. The outer layers of wood are next, sloughing away in a continual, viscous flow of slurry as cellulose and lignin are broken down.

Raising one of the chassis’ arms, they make its fingers close around the tree’s corpse, then squeeze as hard as they can. It’s like an overripe peach, fibrous and soft, and the juice runs between their fingers as they wring it to nothing. The section of trunk above their hand slops down into the ground fog, spattering their knees as it disappears from view.

Rivulets of dark, oily rainwater pelt the armor plates of their hand and forearm. The storm itself has been harnessed as another payload delivery system; nine hours ago, a ping had come down from Naval. One of the strategic AIs had handed down a firing solution, which had been handed off to one of one of the new Thoreau-class battleships, which had begun seeding the stratosphere in the storm’s path with IPON-compliant, precipitation-dispersed TBK munitions.

With this development, the Pilot has an easy few weeks ahead of them; they are no longer part of the leading edge. Instead, they’re here for touch-ups, to add polish, fill in wherever the broad strokes might leave gaps. Ensure a high-quality, total-coverage rotdown.

Are there Sollies in the area? Maybe, maybe not. Ultimately, it doesn’t make a difference, it’s a Sollie planet. Trees, grass, fish, deer, birds, microflora, fungi, shrubs, insects, ferns, squirrels, mice, vines, lichens, cows—they’re all fucking Sollies. Confirmed kills are square kilometers.

There had been a running joke among pilots during special munitions cavalry training. No commanding officer ever remarked on it, so it stuck around. If they were going after the Interstellar Solidarity Brigades, that made them the Interstellar Liquidation Brigades. Somebody had sketched out an unofficial ILB unit emblem, run it to flash-print. Patches, stickers, stencils, adornments for the new special-doctrine chassis. A chassis with internal components so incredibly dangerous that sites for training their pilots were always purpose-built on ugly, useless, resource-stripped little moons. So dangerous that maintenance was always performed behind closed bulkheads by USB technicians in total-seal hardsuits. So dangerous that every accident or mechanical failure had to be treated as a CBRNN emergency; operations would grind to a halt until measurements had been taken, decontamination sweeps completed, integrity of internal safeties verified.

The Pilot’s foot sinks a full three meters into an impact crater filled with bubbling mud. As they try to extract it, they can feel the suction of the organic slurry up into their knee, to the socket of their thigh. Conducted through the hull, they can hear motors straining, hydraulics whimpering as they approach overpressure. No good; they stop trying to lift the stuck leg.

They glance down, reticle tracking in the center of their vision. Shuffling along the bottom, there’s sharp clang as their foot makes contact with the canister round. A few degrees down, a few to the left. They take aim and fire two machine gun rounds.

Both shots connect; the canister bursts. Mud is flung up out of the crater, excavating it entirely, and the lens of their camera is suddenly fouled as a tide of organic matter splashes against their armor. The sound which registers on audio is muted, as though the air itself were thick enough to absorb and deaden any concussive force. In the seconds that follow, there’s a series of thick slapping noises as mud rains down on mud. Then, silence.

Effortlessly, they lift their leg from the pit and shake the accumulated filth away. Whitewash dispensers surrounding the camera lens restore their visual after a few moments, and solvent is sprayed to clear their floodlamps. They survey the area.

Residues accumulating at the bottom of the crater have been churned to the surface, and now lie strewn at the chassis’ feet. Leftover solids, materials which decay either more slowly or not at all.

The Pilot tries to ignore them, and quietly trudges forward.

[quixote-ngc]

My due date has now officially come and gone. I should have known a kid conceived on a warship would subscribe to the classic naval philosophy of "hurry up and wait".

Suffice to say I am extremely irritable, extremely uncomfortable, and still extremely pregnant, so I wanna bitch about something.

Tell me about the worst person you've ever had the displeasure of having to work with.

For me it's probably a three-way tie between the Caliban riding sadist, the anthrochauvinist HA-wannabe, and this one rookie who never should have been allowed into the field.

[atelier-aviary]

>//Exotic Materials had some characters to be sure, but when we first formed the Atelier under the Prime Conditions Division I learned how good I had it.

>//I don’t think there’s anything in the universe less healthy for a supervisor than getting used to the idea that they can make their own perfect employees.

>//[Oleg Jani]

[karrakincavalrycollege]

It's honestly appalling that HORUS fans out there will field untested mechs that use strange technology, unlike the normal frames popular among the Baronies, like the Calendula and The White Witch.

[atelier-aviary]

Ooc: How dare you call the white witch strange and untested? Do those brave marketers at Visual mean nothing to you?

That’s a perfectly marketable plushie frame right there, practically adorable, entierely agreeable. Agree with me now or Visual is gonna be sad.

[gorgonfuckerdotnet]

If you want better actual Ispahsalari omnidramas I'm happy to provide, by the way. I have kept an archive of many of the classics that don't tend to make it offworld with Union Galactic Common, Sparri, and High Karrakin subtitles privately for a while now.

>// I shit talk a lot of people, if I ever said anything bad about you I publicly rescind it all >// It has eaten away at me that I haven't been able to keep up with any of my omnidramas while I'm out here in the ass end of nowhere >// I've had to resort to just watching idiots on the omninet argue, and having to BE that idiot when the feed gets real slow >// Having an archive of dramas would keep me remarkably sane while I try to piece my Gorgon back together without a functioning printer

[atelier-aviary]

>//BEGIN DATATRANSIT/RECIPIENTS:DARK::: >//HORUS EYES ONLY:::IF THAT IS NOT YOU WE URGE YOU TO RECONSIDER:::

>//Huh, on that note, you said you were on the Annamite Line, some posts ago, asking to look at some Minotaur guts? Odds are decent we might have to rip one or two apart to get operations back up, space is limited out here on the Rim. How mobile are your Gorgon pieces? Even if you can't move them, I could probably get [1] to have a look at them and maybe give some pointers. [2] might be able to help if the projector is borked, it knows some memetic practicals.

>//Now, you are a HORUS pilot, I am going to assume you know no one offers something like that without a catch somewhere. It might not be doable depending on your allegiances, if so, we understand.

>//Theres a few of gg_uncles dens around the place we need a proxy to clear out, someone with an unrelated cell history to ours. Nothing big, just some 'Prentices, a few confirmed Goblins and a Hydra at one site we've identified. Given how buddied up with your NHP comrades you seem to be though, I have some hope you're just as keen to smash some of Uncles lackeys as we are to watch.

>//Give it some thought, we have a decent amount of time before they'll become an issue.

>//[DARK]

[gorgonfuckerdotnet]

>// Oh, hey Atelier. >// No, I can't go gallivanting off to take out some cultist cells, my employers wouldn't appreciate that >// As much as your help would be appreciated, me and this Far Field Team I'm with are currently grounded >// Thankfully the old girl's Extruder is fine for the most part, and I'm a memeticist so there's no problems there. It's just a pain having to do actual proper welding when the last time I did was... >// Christ The Buddha I guess it was about twenty years ago now. >// In any case I'm sure you'll find a contractor better able to help you. >// Oh and I'm not in the Annamite, I'm out past it, inter-galactic side, charting a new blink cable line and such. >// The view is crazy at night, seeing a whole galaxy take up one half of the sky, and then just about nothing in the other direction. >// P.S. It might be wise to remove me from most of your contact lists, I've cut most ties with the few HORUS cells I was in contact with

[atelier-aviary]

>//Well, as I said, we understand if the proposal is not workable. Burning bridges like that can be necessary. It will probably make it hard to get that look at the Minotaur, but if you are taking measures like this, that is probably a negligible loss.

>//Do send me a capture of that starfield though, if you don't mind, before I scuttle this channel. That does sound breathtaking.

[gorgonfuckerdotnet]

>// Come on Atelier >// We both know I'm not dumb enough to publicly triangulate myself like that >// Nice try though! >// Maybe once I leave and an actual colony starts putting down roots here I'll put up the pictures before any light pollution got to this place

[gorgonfuckerdotnet]

If you want better actual Ispahsalari omnidramas I'm happy to provide, by the way. I have kept an archive of many of the classics that don't tend to make it offworld with Union Galactic Common, Sparri, and High Karrakin subtitles privately for a while now.

>// I shit talk a lot of people, if I ever said anything bad about you I publicly rescind it all >// It has eaten away at me that I haven't been able to keep up with any of my omnidramas while I'm out here in the ass end of nowhere >// I've had to resort to just watching idiots on the omninet argue, and having to BE that idiot when the feed gets real slow >// Having an archive of dramas would keep me remarkably sane while I try to piece my Gorgon back together without a functioning printer

[atelier-aviary]

>//BEGIN DATATRANSIT/RECIPIENTS:DARK::: >//HORUS EYES ONLY:::IF THAT IS NOT YOU WE URGE YOU TO RECONSIDER:::

>//Huh, on that note, you said you were on the Annamite Line, some posts ago, asking to look at some Minotaur guts? Odds are decent we might have to rip one or two apart to get operations back up, space is limited out here on the Rim. How mobile are your Gorgon pieces? Even if you can't move them, I could probably get [1] to have a look at them and maybe give some pointers. [2] might be able to help if the projector is borked, it knows some memetic practicals.

>//Now, you are a HORUS pilot, I am going to assume you know no one offers something like that without a catch somewhere. It might not be doable depending on your allegiances, if so, we understand.

>//Theres a few of gg_uncles dens around the place we need a proxy to clear out, someone with an unrelated cell history to ours. Nothing big, just some 'Prentices, a few confirmed Goblins and a Hydra at one site we've identified. Given how buddied up with your NHP comrades you seem to be though, I have some hope you're just as keen to smash some of Uncles lackeys as we are to watch.

>//Give it some thought, we have a decent amount of time before they'll become an issue.

>//[DARK]

[gorgonfuckerdotnet]

>// Oh, hey Atelier. >// No, I can't go gallivanting off to take out some cultist cells, my employers wouldn't appreciate that >// As much as your help would be appreciated, me and this Far Field Team I'm with are currently grounded >// Thankfully the old girl's Extruder is fine for the most part, and I'm a memeticist so there's no problems there. It's just a pain having to do actual proper welding when the last time I did was... >// Christ The Buddha I guess it was about twenty years ago now. >// In any case I'm sure you'll find a contractor better able to help you. >// Oh and I'm not in the Annamite, I'm out past it, inter-galactic side, charting a new blink cable line and such. >// The view is crazy at night, seeing a whole galaxy take up one half of the sky, and then just about nothing in the other direction. >// P.S. It might be wise to remove me from most of your contact lists, I've cut most ties with the few HORUS cells I was in contact with

[atelier-aviary]

>//Well, as I said, we understand if the proposal is not workable. Burning bridges like that can be necessary. It will probably make it hard to get that look at the Minotaur, but if you are taking measures like this, that is probably a negligible loss.

>//Do send me a capture of that starfield though, if you don't mind, before I scuttle this channel. That does sound breathtaking.

[gorgonfuckerdotnet]

If you want better actual Ispahsalari omnidramas I'm happy to provide, by the way. I have kept an archive of many of the classics that don't tend to make it offworld with Union Galactic Common, Sparri, and High Karrakin subtitles privately for a while now.

>// I shit talk a lot of people, if I ever said anything bad about you I publicly rescind it all >// It has eaten away at me that I haven't been able to keep up with any of my omnidramas while I'm out here in the ass end of nowhere >// I've had to resort to just watching idiots on the omninet argue, and having to BE that idiot when the feed gets real slow >// Having an archive of dramas would keep me remarkably sane while I try to piece my Gorgon back together without a functioning printer

[atelier-aviary]

>//BEGIN DATATRANSIT/RECIPIENTS:DARK::: >//HORUS EYES ONLY:::IF THAT IS NOT YOU WE URGE YOU TO RECONSIDER:::

>//Huh, on that note, you said you were on the Annamite Line, some posts ago, asking to look at some Minotaur guts? Odds are decent we might have to rip one or two apart to get operations back up, space is limited out here on the Rim. How mobile are your Gorgon pieces? Even if you can't move them, I could probably get [1] to have a look at them and maybe give some pointers. [2] might be able to help if the projector is borked, it knows some memetic practicals.

>//Now, you are a HORUS pilot, I am going to assume you know no one offers something like that without a catch somewhere. It might not be doable depending on your allegiances, if so, we understand.

>//Theres a few of gg_uncles dens around the place we need a proxy to clear out, someone with an unrelated cell history to ours. Nothing big, just some 'Prentices, a few confirmed Goblins and a Hydra at one site we've identified. Given how buddied up with your NHP comrades you seem to be though, I have some hope you're just as keen to smash some of Uncles lackeys as we are to watch.

>//Give it some thought, we have a decent amount of time before they'll become an issue.

>//[DARK]

[atelier-aviary]

Dark Channel

He rips the sweat-soaked headset off himself, plunging from the comfort of virtual reality back into the cold emptiness of fugitive reality. He makes no noise as he does.

In their equally tiny cots in the dark hab section of their thirdhand yacht, the others are sleeping. Soarings Casket stands in the corner, a blue activity indicator the only source of occasional light. He takes particular care not to wake Albri. Controlling bastard. More overbearing now that Oversight is gone, Subversion not here to reign him in.

He hates himself for realizing. That momentary enlightenment in which he saw clearly why he was risking everything on Sgt. Karateka. It's because he doesn't truly believe its a risk. Deep down he thinks he knows she is going to die, and he might as well overshare, an impromptu confession to the Department of Justice he knows no one will follow up on.

And then there’s another thing, scratching the back of his mind. He turns inward, to the part of himself he hates. Well, that’s not right, there’s many of those. He turns inward to face the part of himself he hates the most at this moment and must suddenly watch in horror at what it is trying to show him.

One metavault was never enough. There have been three. What were they even thinking, trying to reverse engineer a sample size of one, single, broken God. He has to keep Sergeant Karateka talking. Keep feeding her information, so that she has a reason to keep sharing what she runs into. So he can help her? He’s poisoned even that thought now.

You can’t escape HORUS. Whatever you want to do always serves HORUS. You can’t even choose to go against HORUS, you don’t know where HORUS is going.

It climbs inside us and makes us dance. No choice.

He puts the headset back on and taps back into the Dark Channel.

[she-who-paints-with-fire]

Oh they're letting us play with the advanced ammunition for this.

Jadwiga is packing miniaturized active-spectrum jamming buckshot and witchfire rounds (imagine hellfire rounds but they burn hotter). I've got Fireweb Missiles and Damocles Rockets. Redeye is packing sabot rounds made from materials I'm pretty sure are only found in Aunist space. Most of what Foxglove is packing is not just SSC top shelf, its SSC top shelf for government clients.

I sincerely hope this is complete overkill.

|| KARATEKA ||

[atelier-aviary]

>//Those Firmament linked materials should disrupt blinkspace in their immediate proximity. If it’s small enough to make bullets from probably on contact at best… if your OpFor nanites are Omni-Linked like a Copy Drive, that might do you some good.

>//Otherwise save those for the lamellae maybe.

>//Rest sounds about standard for this, if you can even say there is a “standard”, you should have seen the requisition lists at ExMat for the DHIYED raid. But I suppose that was SSC supplying themselves. Whatever Foxglove has should be the stuff they made from what worked.

>//I sincerely wish you success.

>//[DARK]

[she-who-paints-with-fire]

If it helps, those are Death's-Head-Railgun-scale APFSDS rounds, not just bullets. As far as I can tell Redeye's mission is hold the gun pointed at the head of the god.

Still, I'm glad the disruption is local. I still have an NHP as my copilot.

|| KARATEKA ||

[atelier-aviary]

>//I am sure you have better access to those reports than me, but combing over the Boundary Garden skipdrones, worst that can happen is your Copilot might not be able to perceive those rounds being fired. Or perceive them at all really.

>//One more thing though, on that note. Damn it. I really don’t think I should be talking about this, encryption or no. Nested metafolds are tricky business. DHIYEDs casket still existed within its metavault even after the entity was presumed to have mostly externalized the internal space. There’s a reason we don’t mount caskets inside the Minotaur folds.

>//Just be extra careful the caskets casing is not punctured, or it might rupture. Think of realspace as a… pressure holding all the folded stuff in there under tension, usually. You’re going to be in a reality vacuum of sorts.

>//Again, Godspeed.

>//[DARK]

[she-who-paints-with-fire]

Good news. The casket is already ruptured.

If you have any further advice we could really use it.

|| KARATEKA ||

[atelier-aviary]

>//Fuck. Okay I made it sound really bad but you might be fine I don’t know. I know DHIYED. I know DHIYED *real* well. But that only goes so far. Please, do me a solid here. Nothing of this conversation survives your mission, ok? Clear the storage, blame the Eidolon. I’ll help. I have to.

>//The folds inside a casket, their precise geometric arrangement is sort of… digitally forced. The Blink does’nt really have “dimensions” or “coordinates” so if you tell a system what your geometry is, the Blink sort of… accepts it? Thats the “hardcoded” part of “Hard Code Social Conditioning”. If your Copilot has been somewhat diligent on their cycling schedule, that should keep their corpus stable.

>//Unless the Eidolon manages to gain access to that code that is. There is no realspace restriction holding it now, whatever that Hardcoded Geometry is set to, that is the form the corpus will take.

>//Under no circumstances let this happen. SSC actually didn’t send NHP into DHIYED, but I know HORUS did. Just much harder to get records of that, as you might imagine.

>//Most of the survivors I am aware of were shut down somewhere along the way and only roused from dormancy after. Survivorship bias be as it may, if you have an inkling of something infiltrating your system inching towards the casket, shut it down. Like you would during a damage induced cascade.

>//I think I’ll keep this line open, in case anything comes up, patching you into the dark channel, I hope you understand what an olive branch that is.

>//[Oleg Jani]

[she-who-paints-with-fire]

Crystal clear. For what its worth, everything you tell me is being turned into shortened bullet points and listed as being received from an anonymous HORUS-affiliated source with a history of bothering me.

I'm familiar with HCSC—so you're telling me if an eidolon reaches our NHP caskets, the NHP will become part of the eidolon? Or will become a miniaturized mirror of it?

|| KARATEKA ||

[atelier-aviary]

>//Alright. Shifting blame should be fine.

>//I don’t fully know is the thing. DHIYED had these things… we called them “buds” at ExMat but HORUS called them “subminds”, and we never quite managed to conclude where it got those.

>//Popular theory is it managed to break its partition lock somewhere along the cascade and because it hat grown so much the metacomplexity of its partitions was high enough for them to effectively be Primes in their own right.

>//But SSC had Manna Signs in their eyes at the time looking for a way to make new primes, ASURA was still the hot news.

>//When we looked into DHIYEDs origin after there were some NHP disappearances preceding it that never got cleared, so I have my doubts.

>//Either way, in the SSC debriefs we have reports of DHIYED making mirrors of entire squads. Killing them in parallel, in different ways. Trying to see how they worked maybe. I don’t think there’s a defense against that. Try to be the instance that survives.

>//[Oleg Jani]

[she-who-paints-with-fire]

So... maybe this is stupid but I'm spitballing here. I have a few friends that have multiple people in their heads. Alters, headmates, etc cetera. If an eidolon is an NHP that has transcended to some higher level of being, would a submind be similar to a headmate?

|| KARATEKA ||

[atelier-aviary]

>//I don’t think so. A couple reasons for that. While technically you could call the metavault the inside of the Eidolons “head”, so I suppose it’s shared between several entities, the subminds were, by the few measurements made, all of lesser complexity than DHIYED itself. Seemed to largely mirror its behaviors too, followed its “orders” if we want to call it that. There’s a hierarchy. None of the subminds ever took the central position, the “front” didn’t change so to say.

>//One pilot in debrief I remember vividly put it like this: “DHIYED was conducting, it’s Buds took us and led. We had no choice but to dance. No choice. If we didn’t move like they wanted they climbed inside. Made us move, made us dance. No choice.”

>//I’ve always assumed them to be agentic expressions. Separate minds acting in “concert”. Like the brains in the limbs of an octopus.

>//[Oleg Jani]

[she-who-paints-with-fire]

Hm...

Further question, this time related to that Boundary Garden Alloy stuff.

What... happens if an NHP is inside the localized blinkspace disruption?

|| KARATEKA ||

[atelier-aviary]

>//This is one I can answer much more confidently, thankfully. Unlike metavaults, homegrown Firmament tech is somewhat accessible by now and I’ve done a lot of exploratory work with it. Pegasus PG, some Calendula fragments reverse engineered onto a Minotaur base, FA/DE, that sort of thing.

>//Weaker than what the Aun have, by a lot, but we can extrapolate. The Metaware of the casket should be isolated well enough, whether the Golgotha Particle is real or Firmament Emission take another form, it doesn’t “enter” the metafolds. But that includes some strange edge cases. Information about Firmament activity also does not seem to get in there at all.

>//So if an NHP is located within a Firmament “swell” they’ll effectively go full sensory deprivation. Unless you run a physical line into the casket from a sensor outside the anomaly, they will not be able to perceive anything. Just as they wouldn’t be able to perceive a Firmament manifestation that exists within visual range.

>//Essentially, for an NHP, looking at a FA/DE Cloak is like a human looking into the blink. Just nothingness. If you introduced the anomaly to the metafolds by exposing them, I wager the NHP would perish. I have, obviously, not tried that yet.