gull &a. (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
gullwingdoors) wrote2024-10-12 10:37 pm
gullwingdoors) wrote2024-10-12 10:37 pm
the pieces put together
When everyone who was left simultaneously awoke from some long, terrible dream two hundred and twenty years ago, they found themselves thirty years late, trapped in a world ravaged beyond recognizability. They found themselves surrounded by the corpses of giants, metal giants, monsters that bore the marks of being works of man - and yet, whose origin was an aching wound in everyone's mind.
And they found that magic was *real.*
The twelve hundred (or thirteen hundred; no one can agree on the exact number) androids that had been scattered throughout these small remaining pockets of humanity confusedly explained that this was just the Nebula, merely some bizarre solar scientific phenom that might have been some kind of nanomachine or some other such thing; but it was magic, and soon they gave up and acquiesced, yes, it was magic, perhaps we all have much more pressing worries at hand?
In this burnt-out, freezing husk of a world, filled with a people who had to relearn everything from the basics of language and math to operating tools and machinery to the history of the world both distant and recent (this one was especially tough), who had to reconstruct some semblance of society from basic principles, life persisted. Somehow, more than that, it almost flourished immediately - the old things came back like instinct to those who'd learned them, and the new things simply flowed through the body and the fingers and the brain, and the people came to learn that whatever had happened they should never even approach doing it again, and they were even few enough to organize and work out an approach to the salvage of the wrecks of the last world that would for once truly please everyone, and they realized that the world might one day contain plenty once more were they responsible in how they treated it, and the Era of Magic began. And for a short twenty years, the entirety of humanity was *happy.*
And then the representatives from the colonies came, and inadvertently woke the corpses.
They'd meant well, waiting a good twenty years for the dust to settle before they descended from their red pulsing stars around the moon in *their* metal giants and managed to convene a series of meetings with the entire population, some two hundred million or so strong remaining, concerning actual real terms of protections against whatever the rest of mankind were cooking to throw at each other up there, only occasionally giving a confused glance to the odd robot in the crowds; but whatever it was about them and the horses they rode in on, it caused the corpses of giants to *rise* as soon as they left, rise from their eternal slumbers in the forests and the mountains and the beaches and the oceans, half-dismantled and animalistic and vicious, engines of war without a cause.
Now, two hundred and twenty years after the end, humanity - natural and artificial alike - continue to live on in spite of the uphill circumstances. The Era of Magic has been an era of learning not just how to build a strange new world - but also how to bury the old one six feet under after stripping it for parts.
For the first good while, perhaps the first thirty years while the people were still learning to work the magic through their hands to craft intricate machines more carefully and precisely than ever thought possible, but also coming to understand the nature of themselves as beings better than ever before, there *were* no more than the twelve or thirteen hundred androids that had served as an anchor for a humanity left upriver without a paddle - all of them testbeds by corporate entities from the last world, misguided attempts to finally make machines smart enough to think and complicated enough to walk but dumb enough to serve unquestioningly, failed horribly by... well, their ability to think. The humanity of the Era of Magic instantly welcomed them first as guides and saviors, but then as equals as they found their footing, and as comrades while fighting the titans of old - and, as trained hands finally made real in scrap-metal and stone the truths of flesh, completed the first ten - hundred - thousand artificial beings of the new world, finally simply as human as the rest.
And that first crop was all completely bespoke, the work of individual artisans simply swapping notes over the radio and making agreements as they went on a few best practices while they each made radically different iterations of the mind and the body, theses of the self and the flesh and what mattered and didn't matter to those who'd made these soon-to-be-real lives their new life's work. None of them looked or worked the same - some were simply imitations of humanity made more to prove that something might live there, some were designed to mimic the human form and motion intricately as marvels of clockwork, others were markedly *in*human in form to push the bounds of what one might even be.
Soon, they'd all compared their notes, the old androids and the old magician-machinists and their new machine-children both, and together they figured out some kind of standards, a means to create elements of all kinds to serve different purposes in both aesthetic and function without conflicting with each other, and they managed to find places to add a little give and play to help further diversify themselves, and the third generation of android or machine-human or robot or artificial being or bolt-brain or whatever name one might use to describe them came after perhaps another long few years of work.
They'd had their own inputs almost immediately, of course, and they made all the adjustments to themselves and each other and the relevant literature as needed. Here was the final, actual *start* of artificial humanity as it stood - in the years after came the incredible advances in clockwork's durability and reliability, the studies into the recovery and reuse of worn metal and how one might instead work with more available in materials, the work in creating panels of true artificial flesh and hair and fur and the discoveries of all the tradeoffs therein, the new understanding in how the natural body might be compelled similarly and interface with these - and perhaps how, sometimes, it might not.
Now, well over a century into their development, the line has well and truly faded enough that they're just a piece of a far broader new humanity, now - and those who chose to shed humanity finding themselves good company among the other chosen inhuman. They've rarely chosen to look exactly like their natural counterparts outside of the rare coordinated visit into the hostile heavens - why would they actively hide the seams and the mixed materials and the elements of function over form, between the material waste concern and the need for individuation and even simply the joy of being as they are, modular and magical and self-designed for purpose?
In fighting the metal giants, man learned to work the magic that paints the night sky in its impossibly beautiful colors to their advantage, learning to handle increasingly esoteric and purposeless-seeming weapons as though they were simply new parts of the body, learning to communicate telepathically and co-ordinate in ways thought impossible before. Soon, they'd learned the ways to take them down, and so the titan-killers were born - groups of heroes that become local legend, their quests to bring low these instruments of destruction becoming the stuff of song and writing and radio-story and play alike. The ideal of the titan-killer was someone bold but not unintelligent, decisive but not uncaring, gentle to the living and merciless to the risen dead, a team player both for each other and for their community.
Yet the supply of titans is not infinite, and when the immediate threat is vanquished the titan-killers all turn then outward, questing further and further to protect the world from the beasts, becoming knights of legend on incredible journeys, then returning home to retire gracefully and accomplished. And, yet, not all titan-killers stay so noble - some never lose that accumulating desire to butcher, and others choose instead to re-appropriate the giants, and still others become thoroughly convinced that the machines simply became smaller and atttempt to hide among humanity, and soon they are brought low through the eternal temptations of power and fear, and in turn become the threat to the world themselves.
But the truest titan-killers are cautious to pace themselves, and avoid the temptations, and serve each other and the people well and fairly, turning their weaponry against each other only in play - or when they have fallen too far, and indeed only ever to incapacitate. Many of the great romances and tragedies involve the complicated relationship between the titan-killers - teammates, friends, rivals, enemies, servants, the greatest check to themselves - and the rising passions and tensions behind the humble and noble image worn to keep with the ideal.
And indeed their relationship with those they are most responsible for is often just as complicated - the fleeting love between the titan-killer and the one at home they are truly loyal to is at this point has faded in and out of being considered cliche several times over, but sometimes in the tales the titan-killer is more begrudged - important as the protector, but shunned as the person. And, sometimes, the two are combined - in the literature, yes, but also in the real tales (or, at least, the distortions thereof by the storytellers).
In truth, much of the titan-killer aesthetic and behavior themselves draw upon the *old* stories, the stories from the last world, the fact and fiction that was not brought entirely to the heavens when they were left behind, the tales only the archivists truly keep track of now. In their own modelling of legend, they themselves have cycled back into legend, and will perhaps one day inspire another generation of tale-worthy heroes and workers and guardians - even if it is a future of true peace, and these heroes are simply *all* tale.
- Ah, but I'm just rambling now, aren't I? You must be even more confused - and that's okay. You just woke up real late, you're allowed a little confusion. Honestly, I don't even know how we'd never found this old laboratory before - the mountain simply seemed to have swallowed it whole. Come, come, let's get the rust out of your joints and find you a name in some old poetry and perhaps get your parts up to standard- ah? You want to *pilot* one of those things? Well, perhaps we could swing you a job with some of those Earth Accord kooks up in the sky - no nonsense, they say, even though they're the ones piloting the beasts like they're nothing - how do they do it?
You're *sure?* Well, I suppose I could run you through radio ettiquette so you can get in touch with them - ah, *after* the name. Yes, you need one pulled from old poetry, you can simply think of a good shorter name later, alright?
And they found that magic was *real.*
The twelve hundred (or thirteen hundred; no one can agree on the exact number) androids that had been scattered throughout these small remaining pockets of humanity confusedly explained that this was just the Nebula, merely some bizarre solar scientific phenom that might have been some kind of nanomachine or some other such thing; but it was magic, and soon they gave up and acquiesced, yes, it was magic, perhaps we all have much more pressing worries at hand?
In this burnt-out, freezing husk of a world, filled with a people who had to relearn everything from the basics of language and math to operating tools and machinery to the history of the world both distant and recent (this one was especially tough), who had to reconstruct some semblance of society from basic principles, life persisted. Somehow, more than that, it almost flourished immediately - the old things came back like instinct to those who'd learned them, and the new things simply flowed through the body and the fingers and the brain, and the people came to learn that whatever had happened they should never even approach doing it again, and they were even few enough to organize and work out an approach to the salvage of the wrecks of the last world that would for once truly please everyone, and they realized that the world might one day contain plenty once more were they responsible in how they treated it, and the Era of Magic began. And for a short twenty years, the entirety of humanity was *happy.*
And then the representatives from the colonies came, and inadvertently woke the corpses.
They'd meant well, waiting a good twenty years for the dust to settle before they descended from their red pulsing stars around the moon in *their* metal giants and managed to convene a series of meetings with the entire population, some two hundred million or so strong remaining, concerning actual real terms of protections against whatever the rest of mankind were cooking to throw at each other up there, only occasionally giving a confused glance to the odd robot in the crowds; but whatever it was about them and the horses they rode in on, it caused the corpses of giants to *rise* as soon as they left, rise from their eternal slumbers in the forests and the mountains and the beaches and the oceans, half-dismantled and animalistic and vicious, engines of war without a cause.
Now, two hundred and twenty years after the end, humanity - natural and artificial alike - continue to live on in spite of the uphill circumstances. The Era of Magic has been an era of learning not just how to build a strange new world - but also how to bury the old one six feet under after stripping it for parts.
For the first good while, perhaps the first thirty years while the people were still learning to work the magic through their hands to craft intricate machines more carefully and precisely than ever thought possible, but also coming to understand the nature of themselves as beings better than ever before, there *were* no more than the twelve or thirteen hundred androids that had served as an anchor for a humanity left upriver without a paddle - all of them testbeds by corporate entities from the last world, misguided attempts to finally make machines smart enough to think and complicated enough to walk but dumb enough to serve unquestioningly, failed horribly by... well, their ability to think. The humanity of the Era of Magic instantly welcomed them first as guides and saviors, but then as equals as they found their footing, and as comrades while fighting the titans of old - and, as trained hands finally made real in scrap-metal and stone the truths of flesh, completed the first ten - hundred - thousand artificial beings of the new world, finally simply as human as the rest.
And that first crop was all completely bespoke, the work of individual artisans simply swapping notes over the radio and making agreements as they went on a few best practices while they each made radically different iterations of the mind and the body, theses of the self and the flesh and what mattered and didn't matter to those who'd made these soon-to-be-real lives their new life's work. None of them looked or worked the same - some were simply imitations of humanity made more to prove that something might live there, some were designed to mimic the human form and motion intricately as marvels of clockwork, others were markedly *in*human in form to push the bounds of what one might even be.
Soon, they'd all compared their notes, the old androids and the old magician-machinists and their new machine-children both, and together they figured out some kind of standards, a means to create elements of all kinds to serve different purposes in both aesthetic and function without conflicting with each other, and they managed to find places to add a little give and play to help further diversify themselves, and the third generation of android or machine-human or robot or artificial being or bolt-brain or whatever name one might use to describe them came after perhaps another long few years of work.
They'd had their own inputs almost immediately, of course, and they made all the adjustments to themselves and each other and the relevant literature as needed. Here was the final, actual *start* of artificial humanity as it stood - in the years after came the incredible advances in clockwork's durability and reliability, the studies into the recovery and reuse of worn metal and how one might instead work with more available in materials, the work in creating panels of true artificial flesh and hair and fur and the discoveries of all the tradeoffs therein, the new understanding in how the natural body might be compelled similarly and interface with these - and perhaps how, sometimes, it might not.
Now, well over a century into their development, the line has well and truly faded enough that they're just a piece of a far broader new humanity, now - and those who chose to shed humanity finding themselves good company among the other chosen inhuman. They've rarely chosen to look exactly like their natural counterparts outside of the rare coordinated visit into the hostile heavens - why would they actively hide the seams and the mixed materials and the elements of function over form, between the material waste concern and the need for individuation and even simply the joy of being as they are, modular and magical and self-designed for purpose?
In fighting the metal giants, man learned to work the magic that paints the night sky in its impossibly beautiful colors to their advantage, learning to handle increasingly esoteric and purposeless-seeming weapons as though they were simply new parts of the body, learning to communicate telepathically and co-ordinate in ways thought impossible before. Soon, they'd learned the ways to take them down, and so the titan-killers were born - groups of heroes that become local legend, their quests to bring low these instruments of destruction becoming the stuff of song and writing and radio-story and play alike. The ideal of the titan-killer was someone bold but not unintelligent, decisive but not uncaring, gentle to the living and merciless to the risen dead, a team player both for each other and for their community.
Yet the supply of titans is not infinite, and when the immediate threat is vanquished the titan-killers all turn then outward, questing further and further to protect the world from the beasts, becoming knights of legend on incredible journeys, then returning home to retire gracefully and accomplished. And, yet, not all titan-killers stay so noble - some never lose that accumulating desire to butcher, and others choose instead to re-appropriate the giants, and still others become thoroughly convinced that the machines simply became smaller and atttempt to hide among humanity, and soon they are brought low through the eternal temptations of power and fear, and in turn become the threat to the world themselves.
But the truest titan-killers are cautious to pace themselves, and avoid the temptations, and serve each other and the people well and fairly, turning their weaponry against each other only in play - or when they have fallen too far, and indeed only ever to incapacitate. Many of the great romances and tragedies involve the complicated relationship between the titan-killers - teammates, friends, rivals, enemies, servants, the greatest check to themselves - and the rising passions and tensions behind the humble and noble image worn to keep with the ideal.
And indeed their relationship with those they are most responsible for is often just as complicated - the fleeting love between the titan-killer and the one at home they are truly loyal to is at this point has faded in and out of being considered cliche several times over, but sometimes in the tales the titan-killer is more begrudged - important as the protector, but shunned as the person. And, sometimes, the two are combined - in the literature, yes, but also in the real tales (or, at least, the distortions thereof by the storytellers).
In truth, much of the titan-killer aesthetic and behavior themselves draw upon the *old* stories, the stories from the last world, the fact and fiction that was not brought entirely to the heavens when they were left behind, the tales only the archivists truly keep track of now. In their own modelling of legend, they themselves have cycled back into legend, and will perhaps one day inspire another generation of tale-worthy heroes and workers and guardians - even if it is a future of true peace, and these heroes are simply *all* tale.
- Ah, but I'm just rambling now, aren't I? You must be even more confused - and that's okay. You just woke up real late, you're allowed a little confusion. Honestly, I don't even know how we'd never found this old laboratory before - the mountain simply seemed to have swallowed it whole. Come, come, let's get the rust out of your joints and find you a name in some old poetry and perhaps get your parts up to standard- ah? You want to *pilot* one of those things? Well, perhaps we could swing you a job with some of those Earth Accord kooks up in the sky - no nonsense, they say, even though they're the ones piloting the beasts like they're nothing - how do they do it?
You're *sure?* Well, I suppose I could run you through radio ettiquette so you can get in touch with them - ah, *after* the name. Yes, you need one pulled from old poetry, you can simply think of a good shorter name later, alright?
no subject
Evocative!
no subject
Oh, man, the language in this is so well done. It swept me into the story.