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Contact Us:
General
Family Album
Holiday Diaries
Andy
Amateur Radio
Archery
Computing
Professional Details
Role Playing
Art Narrative (MGH)
Ken
Tom
Trudi
The words and artwork on this page have been prepared and created by Mark Hirst. Full information and additional examples of his work can be found on his website.
The origins of the narrative were inspired by a few of the early pictures and reminisences of our role playing college days. Now tempered by more recent science fiction offerings the orignal worlds of Marks Traveller™ creation see life some 20 or so years since we adventured there in this continuing storyline. The cycle is now complete as the storyline serves as an inspiration for the artwork which originally spawned the story.
In the animal kingdom, there are two approaches to survival in a hostile environment.
The first is the art of concealment through stealth and camouflage. In avoiding a more dangerous adversary, the creature aims to survive.
The other is to draw the greatest possible attention to itself. Using this tactic, we find that the berry is red; the frog is bright green, and the caterpillar, yellow.
There is one common theme across all these life forms that take this second approach. They are all characterised by their lethality to any who attempt to attack them. In advertising their deadly nature, conflict is avoided.
It is also the approach taken by our scouts exploring the world below our disabled mother ship. In the beginning, the animated dead that wander the cities would attack on contact. Our soldiers would leave the streets filled with their remains in huge numbers.
It was only when the more sophisticated creatures took casualties that the attacks began to change. As we encountered bands of invaders in the cities and hinterlands, the more complex life forms would hold back and test our capabilities, expending the lower forms in feints and diversions. This approach failed too, for we would leap over the foot soldiers and strike deep at the intelligences that controlled them, knowing they were not far away.
Now the creatures stand aside or avoid us entirely when we approach. It suggests that some sort of hive mind or psionic connection exists between the higher orders. We are able to range far and wide in our exploration of this world, and in our recent encounters, the strategy of avoidance remains the same.
While we are confident that the greatest threats were destroyed in our action against the starport, we believe that there are higher intellects still at work here. It is not surprising then that they are seeking to evade us by concealment.
All their engagements with our soldiers have ended in annihilation. I intend to make sure this continues...
-- Zephyria, Commander of Land Forces on the Lazloi merchant cruiser, "The Screaming Fist".
The ship changes day by day, like it's alive. Sometimes I hear it talk, like a child learnin' to speak. Don't think it's gonna fly soon, not yet anyhow...
Even as the ship repairs itself, Kleneptra has become tired and listless. The glow that used to surround her has gone, replaced by an ashen and haunted look. Today she fell to the ground and started screaming...
She was crying and I could see blood. I asked her what was wrong. She gave out a bitter cry; "My baby, don't let me lose my baby..."
At first I didn't understand. Kleneptra had been here for months, we would have seen the bump by now. Then I saw Chan looking at her. By the gods, no!!
A few weeks ago, he said she tried to seduce him, said he said no. So she broke his ribs, cracked his jaw, she was too strong, even for him...
I asked her why. She said her sister Alisandra bore a child with a human father, a miracle child she said. She wanted a miracle of her own, to cheat the curse. "I had no choice", she cried, "don't you see? We're dying..."
Oh gods. Chan won't help me, Kleneptra keeps screaming, and the blood, gods, there's so much blood...
-- Elise Mackie, former merc Hycaron II
Our need for food and water is only exceeded by the thirst for fuel of our vehicles.
Twin MHD turbines give us the battlefield agility to out manoeuvre or out run the enemy, but the cost is our frequent forays into towns and cities to seek out the precious liquid. While the MHD turbine will burn pretty well anything, the discovery of a large domestic fuel station and convenience store was a welcome oasis in the dangerous counties around the starport.
The sight of aerial predators circling above the town during our raid caused us to divert our route out to safety. We see so little natural life around the starport, most were destroyed by the killing dust. They circled and dived and we could only assume that something had died there.
They scattered as we entered the old industrial complex but continued to swoop and dive around one building near the centre. Even before we got close, we could smell the stench of decay.
We found the remains of a firefight. The blast marks on the walls were like nothing we had seen before, and every so often, we'd find cuts and slashing of the walls and doors by impossibly sharp blades.
The final stand had taken place in one of the buildings. Invader creatures of every form you could imagine had piled their bodies in front of the attackers, filling the doorways and corridors with their slashed and burned bodies.
Nothing it seemed could stop the advance, for if the corridors and doors proved impassable, the attackers reduced some of the walls to a fine dust and continued their assault to the centre.
In the basement we found the remains of a large and terrifying creature. Whereas the invaders we have seen appear to be the warped and transformed nightmares of people, birds and animals, this was something entirely new and alien. It wielded weapons and wore equipment of its own, whose design and lettering were unrecognisable.
Most disturbing of all, we found with it, the broken bodies of some of our Sansica Corporation science team, who it seemed had been fighting to defend it.
Somebody came here, and it could only have been the Lazloi. They came with extraordinary firepower and could have annihilated this place in an instant, but instead, chose to fight this thing, up close and personal.
Suddenly, we feel like we are just onlookers, in a war far bigger than ourselves...
-- Mission log of Leading Sergeant Karin Nielsen, acting leader of the Recon Group
-- Mission Clock: 879 hours, 31 minutes, 47 seconds
It didn't take us long to realise that the skin of the megastructure was strong enough to support the weight of the Thunderbolt.
We had landed on the building hoping to find an entrance or doorway, but our initial survey was a failure. While the outer surface was worn and marked, it was thick and seemed impervious to any kind of drilling or explosive, even if we could guess a suitable place to try.
So we stayed with the ship, while Jaimila took a grav belt and flew high above the building looking for ways inside. For hours, she glided across the sky, with only the curious flyers for company. It seemed as though our efforts would be fruitless again until she spotted a small oasis living precariously on the surface of the megastructure.
Long ago, something had slammed into the building and buried itself deep. Over time, soil and sand had drifted into the radial cracks to sustain tufts of grass, moss and small trees. We landed nearby while Jaimila explored the crater, finding a crack wide enough for her to crawl through and slip inside.
We lost radio contact with her almost immediately and so the next couple of hours were spent anxiously awaiting her return.
It was almost sundown when she came back talking excitedly about huge vaulted chambers and mechanisms below our feet. She guessed that there must be other entrances or breaches of the skin, and a system that brought light to the interior, since there were plants growing and animals roaming about the vast spaces therein.
The Captain decided that we should investigate further, but I couldn't see how we would get our equipment inside. Jaimila said that she saw many obstructions and obstacles, with her view only afforded through collapsed beams and fractured joints. Rhand smiled at my protestations and went to the ship, returning with something around her right forearm.
It was pale blue with traces of opalescent white and resembled a section of rigid armour with a mailed glove. As she held it up in the fading sun, shards of rigid light sprang from it like slashing claws, while the air was filled with an angry buzzing and the taint of ozone. The claws extended and retracted as her fingers moved, even changing shape from stabbing rods to serrated blades.
Sweeping her arm down at the fracture where Jaimila had emerged, the blades of light moved effortlessly through the refractory material, sending fragments of rock clattering into the interior.
One of the Lazloi's greatest achievements she said was the manipulation of force fields. They formed them dynamically into any arbitrary shape they desired, using them as personal shields and as hand-to-hand weapons. It was also the basis of their manipulation of matter, allowing them to create the blue and white metals that all their technology was made from.
This she gestured was a gift, but its energy pack was finite; so we would only be using it sparingly. Now that we had found an existing breach like this, she explained, we could open it further without additional risk.
We would wait till first light, before venturing inside.
-- Cyana Bristo, former scientist with the Imperial Scout Service
Looking in the mirror this morning, I saw that the last of my old hair has gone.
Now there is only white and silver, soft and straight. The old mark from a school prank is washed away, every scar or imperfection erased.
For over fifty years I have studied this face, faintly triumphant that I had aged gracefully through my thirties, turning to puzzlement in my forties. As the years rolled by, I saw the jealous glances of my fellow scouts turning to suspicion and accusations of illegal anagathics.
I asked my guardian about my parents for years and his airy remarks were always the same, that he never really knew them. Now that he is gone, I will never know what he hid from me.
The face that stares back at me is the kind that I have seen only a few times before; it is that of the Lazloi, the matriarchs that have dominated my thoughts for the last thirty years.
I always thought that it was a chance encounter, the ultimate play of the dice that placed my injured scout ship in the path of a Lazloi cruiser. While my co-pilot lay unconscious, they revived me and talked to me. When we parted, our ship repaired, they said I would see them again.
Little did I realise that it would be after twenty years had passed.
I wonder now if they changed me in some way, because my prescience began after that day, the sense that allowed me to escape danger and threat, the luck that made me the pilot that every scout wanted to be with.
I look back on the lucky breaks after mustering out that helped me amass the money to buy this ship, the information that the Lazloi offered me, the artefacts that gave me the edge, the furtive meetings in deep space where they suggested places of interest.
I remember one particular encounter, a diminutive Lazloi calling herself Kleneptra Zilaerion, her kind words and her gifts, the parting remark that never made sense to me till now.
Farewell sister daughter...
I ponder those words with a growing chill. Looking at Tara, the future becomes clear; she will age and wither, her face creased with puzzlement and wonder, struggling to understand why I am unchanged. She will lie dying in her bed an old woman, while I try and comfort her last hours, onlookers remarking on the devotion of a granddaughter for her grandmother.
Am I doomed to live on through the centuries, young and alone?
-- Siandyha Rhand, Captain of the Thunderbolt
You're driving along and that stupid red light comes on and you think, "yeah, yeah, I'll get round to it". Well this time, that stupid frakking light came on and stayed on.
Not just one frakking light neither, whole frakking bank of frakking lights came on, big frakking red ones.
Dunno why the Captain doesn't get the whole frakking ship rebuilt, the power plant don't frakking complain. You go down there and lemme tell yer, it aint big in there, even for little ol' me. Big frakking lumps of steel, copper and aluminium, love 'em of course; our little girls.
They like a bunch of naughty little sisters, not old enough to get into big trouble, but they know when to mess around, five frakking Juno drives, not the J-17 model, the A model, you know, the J-17A 'treat me right or else' frakking J-17A.
Sometimes one of 'em starts frakking around; don't matter so much when it's centre or inboard, Capt'n gotta fight 'em if it's outboard.
She oughta get them slung out, change 'em for somethin' like the power plant. Lump of metal, size of a truck, pumps out power like it goin' out of fashion, every frakking day of every frakking week, runnin' at full frakking power.
Thought I could wait till the Capt'n came back but she aint made contact for nearly a day. Another set of frakking lights came on so now I gotta deal with it, and I can't remember the last time I changed a frakking injector.
I'm supposed to be a frakking navigator and I get to deal with this frakking mess.
Time to get another frakking job...
-- Cecila Siccora, Navigator of the Thunderbolt.
I do not remember much of the last few days except that it was clouded with fever and pain.
I felt my mind detach and observe with numb indifference, the efforts of the human female to stem my lifeblood as it fell on the dry sand. The sounds became distorted and faint as I saw the advancing wall of darkness.
Out of that darkness came a single light that spoke to me.
I think perhaps that it was Aradhnwen or one of her weavers who had come to lay before me the account of my life. It is not now in retrospect, a life worthy of great song or remembrance.
What madness took hold of me that day, when I saw how he looked at me and thought such dark deeds? I can only tell myself that it was not only my desires that brought about this tragedy. What is done is done, like the actions I took and the orders I followed, decisions that have allowed a great evil to escape this world.
I did not sense anger or recrimination from the light, but simply a sad understanding. I thought that I should follow the light, but it told me that my time was not yet over.
When I woke again, the human female was asleep, the male, nowhere to be seen. For a while, I lay there looking up at the stars while my ship sang to me of its pain and slow recovery.
It was several days before I could walk any great distance, so it was nearly a week before I could acquiesce to the human females demand to try and find her companion. The dry and dusty terrain made such a trail easy to follow, so I agreed to go with her.
My heart sank when I saw where our path was leading. In the ground around us were melted shards of rock, the twisted and tortured remnants of an old orbital bombardment.
This was where it began fifty years ago when my blood sister Alisandra came to this subsector, seeking this world to destroy the Enemy. We thought that we had expunged this cancer, but the recent excavations and diggings nearby prove that we were wrong. The taint of corruption was rank in the air.
The first of the dead stumbled into view, burned and scarred from the explosion that overtook my ship many weeks ago, and which launched the contagion into space. My companion would have run to them but I held her back. I told her about the dust, a hive mind of nano-machines that could invade and subvert any form of life, to destroy every form of living thing it touched. They were the smallest of foot soldiers in an ancient war.
I could see now why the human female had tried to meet them. One of the dead figures looked almost normal, it was her companion, or at least, a shell that once was human. As more appeared, I told the human female to flee telling her that this was my battle. I told her to seek sanctuary with the ship and to await my return.
The dyybuks swarm around me testing my defences. They hesitate for they know what I am and are afraid. One or two move closer but my shield snarls and glows under their attack. Although they cannot harm me, I realise the folly of leaving the protection of my ship.
Even in my weakened state, my instincts are true. Something far older and dangerous is approaching...
-- Kleneptra ny Hybritta ny Karaenia, of the Lazloi Order of Pathfinders, assigned to Hycaron II.
Since those terrifying days on Hycaron II, I have studied the artefact closely trying to discern its meaning and purpose.
Looking back now, I realise that the discovery of the artefact was not through chance or luck. While I believe my colleagues were ignorant of its location, senior managers and project directors in the corporation must have had prior knowledge, sending us unerringly to the collapsed cave system where the strange rock lay.
I can only imagine that our presence or attempts to examine the item had triggered an automatic response, I don't remember much of what happened next, and perhaps it is best that I forget.
I am assured that it was only a day or so later that the Captain found me, dragging me blinking into the stark light of a new day. I saw the dumpy ragged profile of her ship, sitting close by. It was nothing much to look at, but it only dawned on me later that this heap of junk had skipped through the Imperial cordon with ease.
When I woke again, days had passed. The Thunderbolt had again thumbed its nose at the Imperial Navy and left Hycaron II heading towards Candor and beyond.
I felt a pang of fear when I saw the rock again as it sat in its cradle in the hold of the ship. I didn't want to go near it, but Captain Rhand insisted. Although there were many markings, she was particularly interested in one set that she believed to be the positions of stars. I had questions for her of course, but she wouldn't answer them, not at first anyway.
I began to learn of the Lazloi and her belief that something was calling out to her in the void, across an area of space known as the Tiesian Gap. She had been in contact with the shadowy matriarchy over many years. They had given her technology, androids, and special capabilities for her ship. It seemed to me that they were simply using her, a proxy that could act on their behalf while they hid from view.
It would seem that three factions sought this rock, the Lazloi, the corporation, and the Brotherhood of Ankh, although I cannot pretend to know why. It seems strange now that the Lazloi were the only ones ignorant of its exact location.
I am puzzled and a little concerned though by the greater set of markings. My hand computer works furiously as I do to decipher what I believe to be complex mathematical constructs. The map has brought us here but the greater mystery continues to elude us.
When we began to explore the megastructure, I imagined that it might be some sort of sanctuary, a zoo or even a crashed spacecraft. Chambers filled with mechanisms the size of office blocks have indeed become the home of many forms of life, but they are merely visitors. We have also discovered other entrances into the structure, the most spectacular being a vast water inlet, easily mistaken for a small harbour.
For what seemed hours, we ventured down a tunnel whose cross section was like a cathedral, my gravimetric sensor telling me things that seemed impossible. Ahead, I could hear the sound of rushing water, the water moving faster in the light of our torches.
We have reached the end of the tunnel and the water is moving swiftly as it falls headlong over the edge of a precipice. In the utter darkness, I stare at the glowing gravimeter and laser-ranging sensors in disbelief of the truth they are telling me.
We stand on the edge of a void so vast it defies imagination. A geometrically perfect void nearly twenty kilometres across sits below the megastructure, a cylinder that plunges down into the planet to a depth my sensors cannot reach...
-- Cyana Bristo, scientist, formerly with the Imperial Scout Service.
