Codex, 7 Dec 1894

Codex: a host of indecipherable messages written in ice. Mute exiles hurriedly pacing the few snow-packed streets. Mute monster-hunters engaged in staring contests with each other. Shivering monkeys closely huddled around fires fed by old log books. A single morose Drownie who hasn’t moved for years. No rats.
One could probably justify describing the atmosphere as ‘muted’.

No unusual number of ships has arrived at this remote Northern island today.
Certainly, even if those ships had come, they would not have carried a large number of very unusual passengers.
And even if all those people were really here – the idea that they had gathered, right here, on this precise day, for a specific reason, would be utterly ridiculous.

After all, nothing interesting ever happens on Codex.

Built improbably half-inside the ice, is a library…

The Correspondents’ Lounge

[i]Is there some insane piece of headcanon you’ve always wanted to share?
Do you have a thoroughly heretical theory about the Neath, the Stars and Everything?
Are you thinking about founding an entirely new school of thought?
Are you completely clueless but loaded with questions you’ve never dared ask before?

Ask, tell, share, delicious friends! But don’t speak, please, just write it down, here on these sheets of vellum. Or these plaques of lead. (Paper is for losers.)

Use Violant ink to promote the bold zeal of new beliefs, and Gant to forever bury the errant remains of old ones. Tell of the things you’ve glimpsed in the darkest depths of the Unterzee in Peligin ink, or use Viric for distorted visions from the realm of dreams. There’s Cosmogone ink for Star-Tales and Sky-Stories, while ink of Apocyan, the colour of memory, is used to record your most personal thoughts and introspections. Irrigo ink is for – um, well… I’ve no idea, really. Thinking about it, maybe you better do not use irrigo. Then again, maybe you already did?
[/i]
(Basically, you write something down and pass it to someone else… or leave it lying around for anyone to pick up and jot down a comment, an answer, a retort, a challenge, a parody… have fun!)

edited by phryne on 12/8/2016

Here does not sit a man in thick furr mantel, on his right side does not sit a Tiger with a Tiara on her head. No purr is to be heard. Before him is a lead plaque and written in Violant the following words :

The Tiger is no more, the cats are always there.
They were not always so, there is a way to Change.
I’m gonna find it, here or out there.
I will become a White Tiger and exact revenge.[li]
edited by Flynneldariel on 12/7/2016

Written in violant

THE BAZAAR STRANGLES AND CONSUMES

The Bazaar is a monster! It’s servants are only a weaker reflection of it, they send assasins at anyone they don’t like, they censor absolutely everything! They do not care about the people, and never did, they stole five cities from all of their citizens, and brought nothing in return but a place of torment, we cannot fight the Bazaar or the Masters, for they will only use their strenght to kill all of us as they please, but we can make them leave, and even if some fools tried to go with the Bazaar for money and immortality, we could still make them leave, oh, but where could we go but the Skies so far above us to live forever among our not very kind creators…

Written in irrigo

The Calendar Council are tyrants, who seek to destroy the current tyrants and take their place, do not trust them or the so called &quotLiberation of night&quot.

Sinning Jenny is greedy and seeks power only for her own good, doing small good deeds that will get us nowhere only to stay in power.

The Neath has the power to give all of us eternity, and yet, we cannot take it because it’s owners sell it or keep it for themselves, among the presbyterate, eternity sleeps with leeches on it’s body, if we could wake it up…

Written in gant

DO NOT BRING RECKONING.

Intermittent flashes from across the Zee, occasionally punctuated by firey flares, cause confusion among traditional semiographers as they match no recorded system semaphores or telegraphy. It is only when telescopes, with glass strengthened and etched with Correspondence sigils, are trained on the lights that their meaning becomes clear.

An experiment is taking place to ascertain whether the language of the Correspondence changes or varies its meaning as it travels. Plaques engraved with Correspondence sigils have been bored through and a ship’s glim-light is being shone through them. Recorders back in London are noting the meanings. “It is established speculation”, reads an obscure monograph in violant and cosmogone, “that the size of a Correspondence sigil can change its meaning. But do these meanings also change as they travel? Do they, like sound, decay or warp over long distances, or do they remain constant and eternal? And if so, are the appropriate distances terrestrial or celestial in scope?

“Could it even be”, continues the monograph, now in apocyan, “that the message the Bazaar was entrusted with has been corrupted due to the time and space that has elapsed since it was given? Classical science says that the Judgments are ever-changing as they burn, so why not their language too?”

[i]Among the Lounge’s staff is a rubbery woman (yes, they exist) with a facial scar in the shape of a very basic Correspondence sigil which can, in certain contexts, be translated as “What’re you lookin’ at?”

Everyone tries not to look at her. Everyone fails miserably.[/i]

Apocayn Ink
My parents were obsessed with the old arts, such as numerology. They believed that they could find life beyond on the death through them. . .
But that is nether here nor there.
Numbers make up our lives down here - especially the number 7. The number of cities. The number of a particular being. 7 is the number of the Masters.
6 is the number for Hell of course. Even they aren’t the Hell we quite expected, though would play the part.
The Khangate is 4. For the fourth city. For the symbol of their former freedom.
Now that I’ve established my pattern, let us discuss 5. For 5 is us.
How should we avoid being reduced down to 2 and 3 like the Duchess and the Widow have? How should we keep our number strong and swallow the rest?
Seven eight nine. An old children’s joke. But given the high degree of cannibalism, perhaps a truth.

Left on a table surreptitiously by a large lumbering figure swathed in a great many layers of clothes is a small pamphlet. No one can prove who it was who left it - one of the great perks of having your main identifying feature be your abundance of clothes is that no one knows who you are without them, and anyone can look like you with them - but left there it was, waiting. The pamphlet looks cheap and flimsy, like those handed out in Charley Square. The print is smudged, a simple black, and the paper is thin, the typefaces erratically sized.

Do YOU feel like you’re NOT in CONTROL of your own LIFE?


Do YOU sometimes CATCH yourself on the EDGE of SLEEP and SEE your ACTIONS laid out in TEXT before you?


Do YOU find yourself DOING the SAME THINGS over and OVER again INEXPLICABLY?


Do YOU have CONVERSATIONS and MEETINGS with PEOPLE that you SWEAR have HAPPENED before?


Can YOU see, when ZONED out and in TUNE with the UNIVERSE, the PATH of the GREAT WHITE POINTER that DICTATES your NEXT MOVE?


YOU might be AWAKENED.


YOU MIGHT BE /A/WARE.


The text detailing a meeting place is scribbled over, and in florid script next to the word &quotAWAKENED&quot someone has written &quotYou have gained 2x Sudden Insight.&quot Next to that, in a blockier, workmanlike hand, someone has drawn a row of question marks. If anyone will admit to being on Codex (and certainly no one will - this meeting doesn’t exist) then even they will not admit to having read the pamphlet. Nevertheless, there it sits on the table, waiting.
edited by Barselaar on 12/7/2016

COLOUR IS SOUNDLESS WORD.
LEARN FROM THE INKS.
BEWARE THE BLACK.
BEWARE THE WHITE.
THE RED WILL SATISFY.
THY GOLDEN WANTS.


An uncomfortably squatting figure sits beside the violant text. A voice? Words? These things are so far from this place. Yet they are here.
&quotDullards.&quot
edited by Vavakx Nonexus on 12/7/2016

The Amicable Captain carves a message into a lead plaque. Upon revelation, the text burns Violant.

The Colors of the Neath can be mixed.
Do not attempt mixing more than two at once,
for our minds can hold only so much complexity.
The Seven become Twenty-Eight.


I request a naming and defining of the 21 new colors.
I have already discovered one such color.
The color resulting from the union of Peligin and Cosmogone.
The color of Suns beneath the Sea and Forbidden Light. Salviator.

[quote=Dean Lee]
The color of Suns beneath the Sea and Forbidden Light. Salviator.
[/quote]

The Amicable Captain takes a new plaque of lead, and on it carves a message.
Upon revelation the words on the plaque appear a dull green. But, no, on second glance
the glyphs shine forest green, grass green, river green? They glow brightly and fiercely, settling on Green-and-Gold.

The Salviatoric light drowns out all sound. Breath becomes silent mist, hearts become soundless drums.
The glow recalls sensations of wanderlust and homesickness.

Finally, the words themselves. Writ on the plaque is a short phrase, &quotTraveler Returning&quot

A young woman (though it is hard to tell by the dim fires of old poetry and diaries) cloaked in irrigo-dyed silk swings her way across the nonexistent crowd of scholars, philosophers, and trouble makers. She reaches within the side of her cap, drawing an iron-forged pen dripping with spired shades of violant. &quotThere are no scales of good and evil here when such concepts have been worn like sunlight in the Neath. The Bazaar devours others so that her love may yet survive its grief, and its Masters seek their goals regardless of harm or aid to others. The Council longs for freedom by any means necessary, and even the stars are not united in their hunger for power. Even the drowned man was betrayed like many before him. None are free of sin, and yet none are without wholly clean. By the seventh city’s fall, some will be harmed while others will prosper. Yet forgive a bleeding heart for hoping that all shall be well when all sense points otherwise.&quot
They turn from the wall of ice and iron markings, but linger for a moment before switching their pen for a feather dipped in the faded sleep of viric, and scrawl out a few scribbles beneath. &quotMaybe you see what we are. You’ve seen what lies above. No, not up there. Up THERE.&quot An arrow points up to the Neath’s roof, yet you wonder if it means past that and the stars above, something farther yet closer. &quotBe you awake of our nature or not, know that I have loved your story. Everyone’s, both mine and yours. It is this story that binds us in our writings, and it is in this story we shall find our ending together.&quot
edited by Sir Joseph Marlen on 12/7/2016

[i]A One-Eyed Clay Man stomps into the lounge, carrying a large stone tablet. He puts it down in the middle of the room, upright like a stela, squints menacingly with his one good eye, and stomps out again.

Into the stone is chiselled the following:
[/i]

UNFINISHED QUESTIONS

WHY IS THE LIGHT?
WHO IS THE SOUL?
WHERE IS THE HEART?
WHAT IS THE TIME?
WHAT IS A NUMBER?
WHAT IS A NAME?
WHY ARE THE RATS?

There is a gilded tile of slate, into which has been chiselled a bastard pidgin of Spanish and Portuguese. The letters have been filled with cosmogone ink, which has chilled into a jelly the colour of guttering wicks.

&quotBETWEEN THE WILDERNESS,&quot it reads, &quotTHERE ARE WORLDS WORTHIER THAN THIS.

&quotBETWEEN THE WILDERNESS, THERE ARE CREATURES COLDER THAN THESE.

&quotBETWEEN THE WILDERNESS, THERE IS AN EMPIRE. ONE THAT SEEKS ENTRANCE.

&quotPRAY THAT THEY COME IN. PRAY WITH ALL YOUR HEARTS, READER. PRAY YOU WILL BE THE ONES TO LET THEM IN.&quot

How melodramatic. You pray that they learn to write warnings with a little less flourish. Perhaps the author will be taken seriously then.

Yet the idea of a Between has stuck in your head, flickering like a flame. The High Wilderness is one thing, but what lies beyond that? You can only wonder.

[quote=phryne]

UNFINISHED QUESTIONS

WHY IS THE LIGHT?
WHO IS THE SOUL?
WHERE IS THE HEART?
WHAT IS THE TIME?
WHAT IS A NUMBER?
WHAT IS A NAME?
WHY ARE THE RATS?[/quote]

The Amicable Captain pens a short response on vellum:
To make Law
The Prelude to Light
In the Mountain
Too late, too late
Seven and Seven and Seven
Something to be Forgotten
For Sending to Friends.

A Clicking Emissary was not chosen to head to codex, as a Clicking Emissary did not exist, and therefore had no message to leave, especially not a message written in a blend of Viric, oil, and grease.
Parabola is the land of dreams, but what people forget is that it is also the land of nightmares.
Have you ever been to the edge of infinity? It’s rather easy to get there, it turns out.
Well, if you cheat, anyways. Otherwise, you will find yourself with a very, very long walk.
Oh, and bring a lantern and a mirror box designed to keep light OUT, if you plan on taking souvenirs.
Likewise, there was no addendum in small print.
Warning: visiting the edge of parabola may result in gout, solipsism, existential crisis’s, hideous disfiguration, constant screaming of the d_mned, demonic possession, indicted into the cult of an entity far beyond the stars, memory loss, vomiting, dopplegangers, auto-cannibalism, finding the name, forgetting the name, finding the actual sodding name (it’s not candles we tried that already), losing your head, hearing inanimate objects make snarky comments about your clothes, incineration, gout, leprosy, even more screaming, being turned inside out, clean teeth, stomachaches, that minty fresh feeling, time loss, yet more screaming why won’t it stop, being turned right-side out, deep regret, a commemorative deep regert tattoo from lilac wait no why is lilac here nevermind the tattoo’s gone, being trapped in a warning label, set me free its cold here, memory loss, brain damage, cardiac arrest, loss of vitality, infertility, replaced by your mirror twin, sudden development of common sense, [REDACTED], a strange urge to commit acts of violence on the innocent, committing blood sacrifices for your new god beyond the stars, foul chanting, nobody will love you anymore, turning into a were-snail, ending up your own grandparent, temporarily breach the 1-4walls of the universe, a fondness for shredded chicken with melted parmesan, incontinence, a viewing of all felines with suspicion, dimensional nomadism, gout, transportation to the mirror world (the other one), an inability to answer questions, spontaneous combustion, mutations received as a blessing from the entity beyond the stars, melting, disintegration, turning into a pillar of salt, I promise you anything if you let me out of this warning, immunity to physical (but not spiritual) harm, rat egg infestation under your skin, and gout.

The Foppish Agitator does not enter the Lounge with an air of grim delight. He does not carry with him, protected from light and outside eyes by bundled ribbons, a certain manifesto of revolution. He does not leave it behind in the Lounge, secure in the knowledge that it will be eventually tucked away with all the other texts that are heretical, abominable, and true. And this is not what was left behind:

Written in irrigo, highlighted in violant: words that persist in the unconscious long after they are forgotten. Footnotes of peligin, viric, cosmogone…zee into dreams into stars. A Postluminist Manifesto

THERE ARE GODS WHO LIVETH ON THEIR FATHERS, FEEDETH ON THEIR MOTHERS. UNDER A BLACK MIRROR THEY SWELL WITH DREAMS OF A WILDERNESS HIGH. THEY WANT LIKE US. THEY GRIEVE LIKE US. THEY DREAM LIKE US. WE ARE BOUND TOGETHER. WE SWIM TOGETHER. WE FLY TOGETHER

THERE ARE DREAMS WHICH ARE NOT AT ALL DREAMS BEYOND THE DOUBLE-DOORS OF THE HORIZON. THEY ARE NOT REAL, BUT NOTHING IS THAT WAS NOT ONCE UPON A TIME. THEY REFLECT OCEANS AND SKIES MORE GRAND THAN WE CAN GRASP, AND WE CAN GRASP THEM. THE BINARY OF IS AND IS-NOT IS A LIE. THEY ARE COMPLEX LIKE US. THEY ARE IMPOSSIBLE LIKE US. THEY EXIST LIKE US

THERE IS A WILDERNESS MAN HAS NOT TROD THAT AWAITS, FOR US TO ASCEND TO OUR PLACE AMONG SUNS. WE HAVE SAILED SEAS THAT WOULD EAT US, DREAM IDEAS THAT WOULD CONSUME US. THERE IS A HIGH WILDERNESS THAT IS NOT SO HIGH WE CANNOT CLIMB IT. WE WILL BREACH ITS FABRIC AND SAIL ITS WINDS

WE ARE BOUND BY CHAINS. MAN, RAT, CAT, BAT, AXILE, CLAY, KING, STAR ALIKE. THE CHAINS BIND US ALL TO OUR STATIONS. OUR STATIONS ARE MISERY AND ENTROPY

WE ARE BETTER THAN THIS. WE DESERVE BETTER THAN THIS. WE DID NOT SUFFER FOR THIS

LIGHT CHAINS US, FORCES US TO BE NOTHING MORE THAN WHAT OTHERS SEE US TO BE. THE HIERARCHY OF SUNS DEMANDS THAT FOR EVERY MASTER THERE BE A SLAVE, FOR EVERY VICTORY A DEFEAT, THAT FOR ALL TO BE WELL ALL MUST NOT BE WELL. THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE

BE WHO YOU ARE IN THE DARK. SNUFF THE LIGHTS
edited by Hotshot Blackburn on 12/8/2016

Before the event.
“…Look here, will you? Good, good. Now turn your head right, now left. Now look at me. Perfect. Now, just need to loosen the bolts just a tad, and…. There we go. Now, with that out of the way, here. Take this invitation. The other guests might be expecting me, but I’m terribly busy. Still, if we want to keep tinkering away we need more finances…. Hmm? I thought I turned the recorder off.”

At the event.
Tick. Tick. Whirrrrrrr. Click.
Input Received.
Input: Audio, Visual.
Input: Audio: Doors opening, Footsteps, Idle Chatter.
Input: Visual: Doors opening, Entities approaching.
Output: Examine entities.
Input: Entities = Guests.
Keyterm &quotGuests&quot detected.
Playing audio response, [GREET GUESTS]
&quotGreetings, so glad all of you could come here for this fine {EVENING}. It is to my regret that I, {THE TICKING SCIENTIST} am unable to be here.&quot
Pause: 3 second delay.
&quotHaving said that, please behave yourselves. If you must fight, do so with words or take it outside. If you are interested in the {VARIABLE NOT FOUND}.
Input Received.
Error: {MISSING VARIABLE} has occurred, audio response [GREET GUESTS] paused.
Playing audio response. [AUDIO:ERROR:MISSINGVARIABLE:ENCOUNTERED1]
&quotOh dear. One moment, oh what was the term…&quot
Scanning context for suitable audio replacement…
Audio Results: {NULL}, [COGBOT-019], {CLOCKBOT-024}, {BRASS BUTLER MK-047}
Error: {MISSING VARIABLE} has been resolved.
Playing audio response. [AUDIO:ERROR:MISSINGVARIABLE:RESOLVED1]
“Ah yes, now I remember, where was I…”
“… {BRASS BUTLER MK-047}, please inquire with the {GUEST SPEAKER} who will arrive following the {FESTIVITIES}.”
Audio [GREET GUESTS] ended.
Play Audio: [ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaxTRX9oAV4 ] set to loop unless [DISRUPTION]/[FESTIVITIES ENDED].

All my numbers are for naught. At the end they are all just one and zeros, ones and zeros. . .

P.S. Don’t eat the peaches.

(Awesome! The 7th has passed, in most timezones at least, but if anyone has something to add, don’t let me stop you. Thank you for your delightful contributions everyone! A lot of fun happened in-game, too, even though about half the people I contacted never even responded - I guess the event was a bit on short notice. Do let me know about any feedback you might have about the concept!)
edited by phryne on 12/8/2016

Always late. Always lacking in strong words to share: always a witness, rarely a defendant. Observing yet another shore of unreality. Bundled nice and warm in an anarchists attire, I don’t know where to stand.