Writing for D&D

I do a lot of writing that never sees the light of day to the big wide world. It's consumed on an almost weekly basis by five people instead. I DM a group for a Fourth Edition D&D game, set in the world of Poisonroot but borrowing a lot of things from proper D&D (like races, dragons, magic, gods, planes...) We've been playing for over a year now, coming up on 18 months on and off. We can't meet every week; it's staggering that six busy professionals can get together anything like regularly, really. But we get together enough to see a story.

I love doing it. I really enjoy telling stories and being part of a bigger story makes me happy; I hope it makes the players happy too. Early on in the game I decided it would be useful to have a database that the players and I could add to, building up a picture of the world. It works for me in my writing as well; I can draw on some of the ideas and concepts used by the players.

Anyway, it's all there, free for everyone to read. Going on for eighty pages now, and I'm trying to add one every day or so to keep it up to date. I'm hoping that, as it's fleshed out, the players might add or change bits.

It's available here.

'tacs

We went to Denmark over New Year and it was amazing! We were guests of two of Sue's work friends, Mads and Mette, and while it was incredibly inspirational in all sorts of ways, I didn't get any writing done.
Travelling back gave me plenty of thinking time, though, and Sue had been asking why I didn't write any sci-fi. We've been reading The Player of Games by Iain M Banks, one of my favourite books, and the world he wrote was so vivid and full; something that I aspire to.

Anyway, I wrote this, set about twenty years into the future, thinking about one logical conclusion for the Google Glass tech available today.

Unedited, about 1 hour, while an episode of Star Trek Deep Space 9 played (not the greatest writing environment but I'll take what I can!)

I blinked to clear my vision as the ‘tac settled onto my eyeball. Its cold surface quickly warmed as I blinked again, then fished the second flimsy plastic ‘tac out of the container. I flicked it dry, pinned my eyelids back and gently laid it in.

As soon as the second ‘tac made contact, the log-on prompt appeared, pink and transluscent, about an arm’s length away. I tapped my password in and shuffled out of the bathroom.

“You done in there?” Mum shouted from her bedroom.

“Go for it,” I said, swiping the weather report out of the way. Fine, with a chance of showers later; smog warning level 3, pollen count low. Perfect.

Story 10: The Boy and the Barrow

Trip tossed and turned. No matter which way he lay, the ground seemed bumpy underneath him. There was a stone poking up through the fabric of his bedroll and the cold nipped at his nose. He sighed. Victor’s snores seemed to penetrate the entire fabric of reality, never mind anything else.

The story he had told floated in his mind. One of the tricks they had taught him at the Library to take advantage of his memory was to treat each memory as an island, a piece of rock, floating in an infinite dark gulf. Bridges connected the memories, allowing him to see how one linked to another. With a thought, he could fly, run, walk, from one island to another, reviewing the objects and scenes there.

There was an island large in his mind right now. A frozen scene of battle, an army charging; in one corner, an old man sat around a campfire, the flames frozen as if preserved forever in amber. Children stared at him, rapt attention. In the centre of the charge, a woman in green, her robes almost glowing in the darkness. She was looking directly at Trip, away from the scene.

Curious, he moved closer. The woman’s head moved, her eyes locked on his. Trip licked his lips nervously; the scenes were usually completely still. His feet touched down on the soil of the island and he slowly stepped towards the woman.

Impossibly, she began to move towards him. She stepped carefully around the man in front of her, his arms out, a cruel expression on his face; a soldier, his sword out, was mid-swing towards something or other; she placed a hand on the blade of the sword and moved it easily out of the way.

Trip found himself having to step around flailing legs, soil kicked up and caught in mid-air; an ear, randomly, separated from its owner. He frowned. This wasn’t quite right. There’d been no great battle here. The story he had told wasn’t any different to how he had been told it himself, but this was all wrong.

The woman was… beautiful. She was barefoot, her ankles just visible under the hem of her dress, and her long blonde hair swung as she walked. A bright light blazed at her breast, too bright to tell what it was.

Mesmerised, Trip slowed, then stopped. She walked until she was stood in front of him, then stopped.

“Trip,” she said.

“Yes?”

“Trip,” she said again. “Trip. Come to me.”

“You’re a memory,” he said. “A memory of a memory. You’re something in my head.”

“Even memories have power,” she said, and smiled. The ground began to shake. There was a sound of cracking timbers are bridges snapped under incredible tension.

Trip blinked and gasped. He began to run away from her, the ground sloping up until he was running up a hill that was becoming steeper and steeper; he suddenly remembered that this was his own head and he jumped, flying as far and as fast from the memory as he could.

He turned, looking back, incredulous; the island was closing up, like a dome, and then the land was moving through itself, turning inside out, until the surface was flat again. The bridges to other islands began to slowly reform, like a plant growing in slow-motion, and the characters faded back in.

Trip opened his eyes. The moon was on its way down; it was perhaps past midnight. He’d slept a little, and he lay there for a moment examining the unique feeling of having fallen asleep while viewing memory. Normally the very act of examining a scene kept him awake.

“Victor?” Trip whispered. There was no response, and Trip held his breath.

There was total silence. No snoring. No sound of breathing.

Trip sat up. The fire was out. The moon cast enough light to see that Victor’s bedroll was empty, and Trip felt wings of fear flutter inside his chest. He stood up and looked around.

“Trip,” he heard. A high voice. A woman’s. The voice from his memory/dream, coming from the hill. Trip began to walk towards it, his feet making shushing noises through the grass.

“Trip,” came the voice again. It was almost insubstantial, a whisper, but carried as if on a wind that wasn’t blowing.

The top of the hill was broad, and two figures became visible as he walked. Victor was much closer to the woman, her long green dress glowing slightly in the moonlight. The old man was plodding, almost, each step deliberate and almost taken against his will.

“Stop this now, Trip,” the boy heard Victor say. “This ain’t amusin’”

“Victor!” Trip shouted, and he saw the man’s head jerk around, his body still moving towards the woman. “It’s not me!”

“What the…” Victor muttered, then, as Trip grew nearer, he spoke again. “Yer time is over, woman. Get back to where you belong.”

“Come to me, Trip,” she said in response. “You are the one I have been waiting for. You are the one to complete me.”

Trip opened his mouth to respond, but Victor got there first. “I’m not the one you’ve been waitin’ for, wench,” he growled, and Trip gasped. Victor had heard his own name when the princess spoke!

“Trip, come here,” she said. “I need you.”

“Let go of me,” Victor shouted. “You need to go back to where you come from.”

He was nearly in front of the woman, and she opened her arms wide. “Embrace me,” she said. “It’s been so long,”

“Remira,” Victor said, emotion choking his voice. “Remira, yer dead, my love.”

“Victor…” Trip whispered, and as he took another step closer the woman in green began to change. Her entire form seemed to vibrate in the air, and then she was a different person. Brown hair had replaced the blonde; leather trousers, a white shirt with a leather waistcoat cinched at the waist. A dozen little tools and pieces of equipment stuck out of the many pockets in the coat and trousers, and even the sturdy boots had brass fittings made of tiny cogs. The vision smiled.

“Lauren!” Trip said. Lauren nodded. A bright light burned at her breast.

Victor wrenched his head round. Tears were running down his face, the light from Lauren picking them out as tiny stars. “You blind boy? This is Remira, my…” His face hardened, eyes narrowing, and he bared his teeth. A bestial roar burst out of his mouth and he turned back to the vision.

“You are NOT my wife!” he shouted. “Remira died, years back! I mourned her, I buried her, I moved on.” He forced out a bitter laugh. “You’ve lost. Get back to where you belong.”

As Trip watched, Lauren’s form seemed to shatter, like glass dropped from a great height. As the fragments of her form drifted away into nothing, the woman in the green dress was there again. She snarled, her beautiful features twisting and deforming; her eyes became dark hollows with little red sparks in their depths, and her blond hair began to dance and snake as if static lightning were being run through it. Her lips pulled back from teeth that were suddenly fangs and a long tongue whipped out.

“Then perish,” she screamed, and Trip felt his body pulled inexorably forward at a run. He felt his foot hit something, a stone; he tumbled forward, arms too slow to save him, and crashed into the ground shoulder-first, rolling forward. Everything was a whirl of colour and motion; he heard Victor let out a yell and felt something smack against his side, and then he was staring up at the stars again, a heavy weight across his legs. He sat up, wincing as his head pounded, and looked around.

Victor was on top of him. The man looked as shocked as Trip felt; his sudden arrival had literally taken Victor out at the knees and apparently released whatever hold the princess had on them. Trip scanned the area around them, but could see no sign of the woman. Not a single trace; no disturbed grass, no scrap of glowing green… nothing.

“Are you all right?” he asked Victor. The old man grunted. “Can you get off, please? My legs hurt.”

Victor wriggled off of Trip and clambered to his feet. Trip gasped as pain coursed through his shins, but the pain dimmed as he climbed gingerly to his feet.

“Where’s that she-witch gone?” Victor said.

“Back. To… wherever she came from.”

“I want her back ‘ere,” the man growled, “Show ‘er a piece o’ my mind!”

“No!” Trip said, icy fear gripping him. “No, Victor. We need to go. Now.” He grabbed Victor’s upper arm, starting to pull him away. “This place isn’t safe.”

Victor allowed Trip to pull him back down on to the path. “Yeh,” he murmured, “Maybe it’s best we get an early start.” He shook himself and looked at the sky. “Nearly dawn.”

There was silence as they packed up the camp, and birds began to trill their morning chorus. Trip tried to avoid looking at Victor directly, but it was clear that the man wasn’t interested in talking about it or even acknowledging anything had happened.

In short order Trip was sipping from his bottle of brackish water as Victor shouldered the larger pack. He corked the bottle and stowed it in his own pack.

“Who was Remira?”

“Damnit boy, y’had to ask,” Victor said, scowling. He sighed. “Remira was my wife. Talked about her once or twice, maybe not by name.”

“She died, didn’t she.”

“Aye.”

Trip took a step forward. “I’m-“

“Don’t give me yer pity, boy. If I had a gold coin fed every time someone’d pitied me… well, I’d have a gold coin right there.” Victor stared at Trip as if daring him to contradict him.

Trip shook his head. “I saw Lauren. Is she dead?”

“Not that I know, boy.” Victor turned and wait while Trip walked up next to him. “Want to go visit her?”

“Aye,” Trip said gruffly, and together they walked away from the hill.

Story 10: The Boy and the Barrow

For the tenth story, I knew that I wanted to return to Trip and Victor. This was also a genre I haven't really tried; horror. I think it turned more into surrealism that actual suspenseful storytelling, but I'm sure I can practise. It's not really my forté but I'm sure I can work on that!

The hillside sloped lazily down towards the path and Trip ran down it, gleefully pinwheeling his arms around. The wind whipped his robes around him and teased at the stubbly hair growing through on his head. He reached the bottom, sandals crunching on the gravelly road, and looked back up the hill. Like some dark patch of treacle slowly sliding down a wall, Victor was making his surly way towards the path.

The man looked older, Trip thought. Visibly. Like the events of Fennica, just a few short weeks, had aged him. He was still made of boot leather and twice as tough, but there was a definite slouch that hadn’t been there.

I should do something for him, was the thought that started it all. Trip looked around, got his bearings, and grinned as a memory rose up in his mind.

-Sitting by the firelight, on a camping trip away from the monastery-

-Books read by candlelight, restricted books, but fun-

-The look on Simon’s face, Joel’s behind him, as he retold the stories-

Trip felt a pang of sorrow. The Library was gone, the children scattered, the book-keepers dead or captured. Some malevolent force, whatever had animated Father Liam, whatever had given High Father Hork his immense power and whatever had subverted the tree at Fennica had launched attacks on Rootholme and the Library simultaneously. Hork had tried his best to blame it on the Gargorians - who had themselves confirmed the attack on Rootholme - but the Library was squarely on Hork’s conscience. What was left of it. The man was dead, after all.

Scowling, Trip realised that the train of thought and memory had taken him to a place he didn’t want to be. 

“You a’right, boy?” Victor growled.

“Yeah,” Trip replied. He waved at the hill. “It’s a barrow, y’know. The tomb of a king.”

Victor looked back at the hill. “That so? Well, good fer it,” he said, and turned to walk along the path.

“Ritania. King Ritania,” Trip said. “There’s a story to go with it. A campsite story.” He smiled suddenly, an idea occurring to him. “You want to hear it?”

“We ain’t campin’ here.”

“We could,” Trip said. “There’s a stream a short distance away; I remember it on the map.”

“‘Course you do,” Victor said, then sighed. “Well, I can’t say I’d complain. Feet’re feelin’ m’age.”

It didn’t take long to make camp. Trip was well used to it by now; Victor would sit down on a log or something similar and watch while the boy made a fire, set up cooking equipment, unrolled bedrolls and generally took care of the business of the day. Horses would have been fed, but they’d had to sell them in the previous town in exchange for food.

The light was well and truly fading by the time a simple soup was cooked, and Trip silently gave thanks that copying out long tracts from ancient cookbooks had given him at least a working knowledge of food preparation. He dug out two chipped wooden bowls from his pack and poured soup into both of their bowls, a little more into Victor’s.

“‘Ere now,” the old man said. “T’other way around with them bowls.”

Trip rolled his eyes, but took the one with more in it. His stomach reminded him that it was a good thing he did, but his heart sank a little as he seemed to watch Victor fade every day.

“Tell me this story then, boy,” Victor said, putting his empty bowl down. In the morning, one of Trip’s first jobs would be to wash the bowl and return it to the pack along with the rest of the cooking equipment.

Trip closed his eyes and allowed the memory to wash over him.

“In the dim and distant past, when the Grand Concord was still wet with ink, there was a king,” he began. “King Ritania of Southern Dorth. He wasn’t really the king, of course; just a pretender, one of many that Dorth spawned.” He placed his own bowl down on top of Victor’s and settled in to the tale.

“This king was consumed by greed and envy. He saw what others had and lusted after it. He took what he could by force, by coercion, by legitimate trade, but it was never enough. 

“He heard about a princess of a tiny neighbouring kingdom, one that doesn’t exist now, called Yol. The princess was reputed to be the most beautiful in all Ehrian, so beautiful that a star had fallen in awe at her and now blazed at her breast on a chain of the finest silver.

“Naturally, Ritania yearned for both the princess and her treasure, so he arranged for a diplomatic envoy to be sent to Yol. It returned minus the envoy’s head.

“Incensed at this, Ritania ordered his elite group of soldiers to go in and take her by force. One by one, their horses returned, each bearing a rider tied to his mount. Their heads were tied to a final horse, which had been sent to bear the princess back.”

The fire crackled and popped, and the small sounds of the night seemed to have dimmed as Trip warmed to his tale. The words flowed easily, interpreting his memory and couching it in terms he might use as a boy, rather than the adult who wrote it; a skill he was finding more and more useful.

“Ritania decided that this was enough that he could go to war. He gathered his armies, pitiful compared to what we might muster today, and rode out on the back of his charger.

“They rode for three days and three nights, and when they reached the borders of Yol they halted, for the grass was blackened in an almost-perfect line where the map stated Yol began. The trees beyond the divide were leafless and grey, and a perpetual storm roared overhead, though the weather in Dorth was clement. Most strange of all, at regular intervals along the line, there were strange bony stalagmites poking up through the soil.

“Regardless, Ritania rallied his troops and charged in. Their charge slowed; not a single person did they see. They trotted, then walked, then slowed their horses even further. No buildings were on the horizon; no people were moving. Not a single sound could be heard. The skies darkened still further and Ritania’s men began to worry, but he rallied them a second time and they made camp.

“The night seemed long, and Ritania awoke to utter darkness. A voice was calling him. Young. Quiet. Carried by the wind. Female. He left his tent, leaving his armour and weapon, and walked out into the centre of camp, and there beheld a sight he would remember for the rest of his life. A woman, stood by one of the dead trees, dressed in a long green dress. At her breast, a glimmering light sparkled and shimmered. She was barefoot, blonde and young. She beckoned to Ritania, and he moved towards her. All around him, men were sleeping, and he smiled in self-satisfaction that the ruler of Yol had decided to send this princess out to prevent death in his land.

There was a sad smile on the face of the princess and, as Ritania got closer, he felt a cold wind blow past her, though it didn’t ruffle the girl’s hair or dress. She opened her arms to him and he stepped into the embrace, feeling utter coldness press against him, surround him. The ground heaved under his feet, and then… it hinged. All around him, the land seemed to be sloping upwards, as if some gigantic mouth were closing. The stalagmites, evenly arranged around the sloping land, suddenly changed into teeth from his perspective, and Ritania screamed as he, and his whole army, were swallowed up by the land itself.”

Trip pointed over Victor’s shoulder at the mound. “Legend says that the creature that swallowed them died, so bitter was Ritania’s heart, and sank into the earth leaving only that barrow, inside which Ritania and his entire army are forever buried.”

There was a silence broken only by the crackling of the fire. 

“That it?” Victor asked.

“Not quite,” Trip said, leaning forward to allow the fire to under light his face. “Some say that, when the moon is full and the night is quiet, the voice of the princess can still be heard, calling out to any fresh prey that will come near.” He waited for the appropriate moment, readying an impression of her in his mind.

Then Victor burped.

“That it?” he said.

“Well, yes,” Trip replied.

“Well it seems a bit silly,” Victor said. “I mean, what happened to the princess? She got swallowed too, aye?”

“I… I think she’s supposed to be a vision. A lure, something to draw people in that they can be eaten,” Trip said, brow furrowed.

“Very little country, was Yol?”

“Well, yes, I suppose. Look, it’s just a story,” Trip said, a little put out. “No need to get all fiddly about it.”

“Ah now, boy, I could tell ye a story or two,” Victor said, then shook his head. “But I ain’t got the energy fer it now. Tryin’ to work out the holes in yer story has fair worn me out.” He gave a devilish grin. “Bedtime for this old codger.”

Trip watched as Victor curled up under his blanket, armour and weapons off but within hand-reach, and scowled. The old git could at least have said-

Victor cleared his throat. “Thank you, boy,” he said gruffly. “Nice t’hear yer voice, I guess.” 

Trip smiled and lay down on his own bedroll, not quite believing that the Victor who’d said that was the same surly old man whose house he’d accidentally destroyed those many months ago.

The moon was full, a few clouds scudding over it, and Trip listened to the sounds of the night. An owl hooted off in the distance, and a few crickets took advantage of the dying embers of the fire for warmth, but otherwise the night was quiet. Comforted by warmth and companionship, he close his eyes and waited for sleep to take him.

Story 9: Cog 519

Part 3: Unleashed

The weeks that followed seemed to go in a blur. 519 learned everything that Nef put before him, quickly turning his hand to just about any skill that was needed and producing works that a contemporary master might have wept to see. Some of the things he was introduced to were new in their entirety; Gargor had not been quiet since the war. But many tasks were based on concepts that were familiar when 519 had been created, or were not too dissimilar.

Without fail, every morning, 519 asked Nef if he had a name for him. Nef always replied with “Not today, 519; ask me tomorrow,” though more and more of late he had been wondering what impulse prevented him from giving 519 the name he desired.

Was it that Nef had long since given up self-correcting ‘him’ to ‘it’? Even Haj, on his twice-weekly tours of the research facilities, had stopped correcting him, though Haj himself continued to call it an ‘it’. Choice of pronoun made 519 seem somehow human in a way that was still alien, and the two jarred. As if calling it ‘him’ was enough, and to give it a name would be too much, too close, too human.

Perhaps it was the same impulse that prevented him from fulfilling the skin-replacement formula and coating 519 with it. Together with a name, would there be any difference to look at between the cog and the humans?

“Of course, 519 has to remain in the labs,” Haj said that morning, replete in his white tool-coat. “It can’t go walking among the workers; the panic and fear would be incredible. So it has to stay here.”

“There’s no way?”

“Actually, yes,” Haj said. Nef blinked in surprise. “Well, sort of, anyway. If it had skin, like you’ve talked about, and a name… if it looked and sounded the part, I mean, it could leave.”

“Well, I’m not ready. There’s so much to sort. And the name, I mean, nothing’s right,” Nef fumbled.

“No skin and no name means it has to stay in the labs,” Haj said, narrowing his eyes. “And that’s what you want, isn’t it. You don’t want it out there. You don’t want to let it go.” He shook his head. “519 started out as a pet for you, but I see now that I should have reassigned you immediately. He’s more like a child now!”

Haj marched swiftly out leaving Nef looking dejectedly at 519. The cog, for its part, looked back at him from the seat by the doorway.

“Is he right,” 519 said.

“About what?”

“Do you see me as a… child? Your child?”

“No!” Nef thumped the worktop with his fist. “No, you’re not a child. A… a co-worker. Someone I work with. Not a child.” He turned and busied himself tidying the almost-spotless worktop.

There was a long pause, then 519 spoke up. “What is today’s assignment?”

Nef let out a sigh. “I’m not sure there’s much else I can teach you here, or show you, 519. I think maybe it’s time you helped me out.”

“How can I be of service, controller?” 519 purred, standing up and walking over to him.

“Grab some large paper and something to write with. I need a full schematic of you, please. Every piece, every joint, every component including the missing one.”

“Of course,” the cog replied, and walked smoothly out. It was back in less than a minute with a roll of paper. As it busied itself creating the schematic, Nef watched out of the corner of his eye while writing a report.

“Why do you need this, controller?”

“So I can learn more about you, 519. So I can maybe make more of you.”

“What for?”

Nef turned around. The schematic was nearly complete, 519’s arm moving faster than any human’s should be able to. “You’re different to other cogs that we’ve found. We’ve grown superstitious of your kind after the terrible events of the war. I think that we could automate a lot of things using cogs like you.”

“What sort of things, controller?”

“Oh, you know; mining, exploring new areas, construction of objects.”

519 paused in its work and looked up. “Those are things that are dangerous or onerous for humans to do.”

“Well, yes.”

“Would we need skin?”

Nef frowned. “No, you would be accepted as you are.”

519 put the pencil down. “So you wish for me to allow the construction of more of my kin, in effect, such that they can be put to work in place of people.” He looked down. “The design in front of me is not a worker cog, controller.”

Nef came to stand behind him. The schematic was nearly complete; it lacked only labels and measurements, but some of the parts were obvious. There were quite a few hidden weapons, he noted.

“I cannot allow it.”

519 stood up, both hands on the table. It turned its head and looked directly at Nef. “I cannot allow my kin to be constructed and used as slaves. I cannot allow it, and I am sorry.”

Too confused to react properly, Nef burbled out “Sorry about what?”

“This,” 519 said, and then it moved. Without seeming to cross the intervening space, it was behind Nef; he inhaled sharply as one metal hand was placed over his face and another on the back of his head. With a sickening crack his head was wrenched to one side and he was lowered to the floor.

“The paralysis is permanent, controller. You cannot move.” 519 turned and moved towards the door, then closed it and locked it. Nef could only watch as it sat and finished the schematic. He felt a bead of sweat running down his forehead, curve around his eyebrow and into the corner of his eye. It stung. He tried to speak, but even his lips seemed paralysed.

“The paralysis extends to your face, controller. I have been trained in how to manipulate skull fragments to paralyse individual nerve clusters,” 519 said, putting the pencil down again. It rolled up the paper and secured it with a piece of string from a desk drawer. From under the desk it brought out a metal box, and then it came over to sit in front of Nef, cross-legged like a child would sit.

“My primary function, controller. Infiltrate, gain intelligence, report back.” It cocked its head to one side. “Only there is no-one to report back to.” 519 opened the box. Inside was a piece of metal with a chunk of amber held in place by wires and claws. Nef rolled his eyes down to it; it was a cog control circuit.

“This is to be mine. It is my final part. You have spent the last weeks observing me. I have spent the same time observing you, and I have built this.” 519 picked it up, turning it over gently in its fingers. “The skin, the formula for which I gave you almost at our first meeting, is at this moment fermenting in a vat next door. I made it last night.” It turned the control circuit over; the underneath had a concave depression, and 519 affixed this over Nef’s forehead. “This is the final component. I will return shortly.”

The control circuit clicked, and suddenly Nef’s eyesight blacked out completely. More confusion than panic had run through his system, but now the adrenaline surged and he smelled the sharp tang of urine.

Images assaulted him. His parents, younger than he had ever seen them. The sandy floors of the hive central area. The heat and biting cold of the desert at night.

In quick succession, the decades of his life rolled past. School. Friends. Petty disputes long put aside. His selection by an interviewing board to higher education. His own personal selection of specialised field, cog research, and then a flurry of learning. The many conversations he’d had with Haj, the myriad lab assistants that had come and gone, the highs and lows.

Slower now, the impressions came; his more recent memories, the last ten years, counting forwards, still racing, a day every half second. A snapshot, an image. The sun rising on a birthday. Cooking a nourishing meal alone in his room. Working late into the night. At a celebration for co-worker. With a lover. With a friend. With his mother. With Haj. Drinking. Working. Reading. Sleeping. Finding 519.

Almost on cue, the blackness was lifted and the control circuit was taken away. Nef rolled his eyes around frantically trying to focus, then stared in disbelief at the person in front of him. It- no, he, was naked. Black hair, a thin face, sharp cheekbones, dusky skin. A third vestigial nipple, exactly where his own was. Nef stared into his own face, and 519 stared back. Eyes, apparently perfect glass globes, had replaced the cavernous eye sockets, and they moved most convincingly, as did every muscle of his face.

“I regret that I could not take this journey with you,” 519 said. Its voice was modified now; Nef’s own voice spoke to him. “I considered taking the form of another, but I knew that you would remain suspicious. You, above all others, who knew what I could do.” 519’s brow creased in sadness. “I will make it quick, Nef.”

As Nef watched, 519 pulled back a section of hair and inserted the control circuit into the hole in its skull. It straightened, stood to attention, then relaxed slowly. It loosened its joints from the ankles upward, subtle adjustments to its posture. By the time it rolled its head slightly around to one side, it was impossible for Nef to tell it had ever been cog 519.

“Goodbye, Nef,” it said, leaning down. Its hands filled his vision entirely, and Nef suddenly realised that he could hear a pulse, his own pulse, very close to him. He heard a click, and then silence and darkness.

Story 9: Cog 519

Part 2: Unknown

Nef walked slowly around the table on which was sat Cog 519. It was much shinier now; even as it had been walking back to the workshop with him, its joints had eased as self-dispensed oil had reached even the innermost workings. About halfway there, it had quietly announced “Self-cleaning system initiated. Do not be alarmed.” Nef had almost stumbled in sudden panic, but then he had heard a strange amberic crackling from behind him and, when he turned to look, the fine layer of dust and grime on the armour was simply being burned away. Lightning crackled over it, apparently generated from the shard of amber at its heart, and then the blue light effect died away. While not completely clean, it had come down from ‘full clean’ to merely ‘light buff’.

It had followed every command perfectly, including “Sit on this table. Now deactivate,” slumping to one side slightly as motor control was lost. Nef fingered the amber shard still held firmly beneath its claws on the cog’s chest; should he remove it?

“Another long-range recon unit in the making,” a low voice said behind him. He turned to Supervisor Haj entering the room, his long white coat brushing the floor and stuffed with tools of every sort. He came up to Nef and clapped one meaty hand onto his shoulder. “I heard you’d found a good one, but this… this is exceptional.”

Nef allowed himself a smile as Haj walked round 519, inspecting it. “Yes; all joints active, all centres apparently working to capacity; he was missing power, of course. And, erm, control circuits.”

Haj stopped, his smile freezing in place. “Missing its control circuits? How were you able to get it to follow you?”

“I identified as its controller,” Nef said, the hurriedly added “I know, not by the manual; I should have called for-“

“You shouldn’t have activated the damned thing!” Haj shouted, now looking at 519 with wide eyes. “You had no idea what would happen! It could have gone berserk, wiped out half the hive, exploded…”

“But ihe did none of those things, and now we are here,” Nef said gently.

“I suppose so.” Haj prodded it with one finger. “What can it do? And it is an ‘it’, Nef, don’t think I haven’t noticed. Not a he.”

“He- it seems to be a special tactics cog. Ever heard of one of those?”

Haj sucked in a breath and sucked his teeth. “Yes. Nothing good.” He leaned against the workbench and took out a pipe. “You mind?”

Nef shook his head and Haj lit up. “Ah, let’s see. It was the last weeks of the war, so the history matrices have it. The special tactics cogs were designed to be jack of all trades, you might say. Able to turn their hands to anything the commanders put them to. But they weren’t specialised, in a weirdly ironic way. Unspecialised special cogs.” He laughed, little clouds of smoke puffing out. “Anyway, there were only a few produced. Most were destroyed when Karak Ny’vin went up in smoke, and the rest, a handful, were lost.” He sucked his teeth again and rapped a knuckle on the cog. “And then we found one of them.”

“I’d like to reactivate it. Run it through tests,” Nef said. “If it’s truly a jack-of-all-trades, it might be wasted doing mechanical digging work. We have people for that who aren’t as highly skilled.” He frowned. “No, I think we could make something of this.”

“How so?”

“What if we… taught it?”

“To what?”

“Be… be like us. Be a person.”

Haj laughed bitterly. “You do understand that this is a killing machine, right? The only reason we’re having this conversation now is because you’ve exerted control over it.” He narrowed his eyes. “And, I might add, you’ve ensured that we can’t use it for work-crew business. By confirming that you are its controller, it will accept orders from none other than you. It ensured chain-of-command in the old days, and prevented treason.” Haj shook his head, his long hair bouncing around his shoulders. “Suspicious times. But yes; it won’t accept orders from anyone else.”

“Without his control circuits, he’s at workshop settings. It’s like the day he was made. We can’t just destroy him.”

“It. And we damned well can.”

Nef felt his heart leap. “I won’t do it. It’s defenceless and unscientific. We can’t just destroy every new thing we find and don’t understand! It’s not even like we can’t control him, train him.”

Haj paused and sucked on his pipe. “That’s it, isn’t it. This is a pet for you. You’ve found a pet, made friends with it, given it a name for goodness’ sake…” He shook his head again. “Fine. Whatever. If it goes berserk, it’ll kill you first at least. Just… be careful.”

He walked out, leaving Nef alone in the quiet and cool of the workshop. There were four tables, only one of them in use; it was a facility designed for several researchers working on many different projects at a time. Now it was only Nef. Like all Gargorians, he was long-lived; there were simply not that many people being born and even less going into the aetheric sciences. Everything little noise echoed.

He opened one of the claws holding the amber power source in place, then replaced it. The connection restored power to the entire construct and it whirred back into life. The sound was much less intrusive this time, without hundreds of years of soil and grit to mar it.

“Working,” came 519’s voice.

“Stand,” Nef said. It stood, smoothly sliding off the table and coming to rest with barely a sound, despite its weight.

“What can you do?”

There was a pause. Then: “Would you like the list alphabetically or in the order I was endowed with the skill?”

Nef raised an eyebrow. One secret that the ancients had taken with them was speed-learning. Despite the research, nothing had been found that could mimic the technology of giving people a lifetime’s training in a skill in mere days. “Alphabetically,” he said.

“Skill brackets: Accounting. Acrobatics. Agriculture. Alchemy. Ambush. Animal Husbandry. Archery. Bluff.  Calligraphy. Carpentry. Chemistry. Chirurgery. Climbing. Cooking-“

“Enough,” Nef said, and 519 fell silent. “Within Accounting, what can you do?”

“Analysis of profit and loss; salaries, taking into account pensionable workers and tax; beneficiaries of-“

“Stop,” Nef said, and 519 again cut off dead. “What was your primary function?”

“Primary function is infiltration of communities, potentially for years at a time, in advance of procuring information, eliminating targets of choice and, eventually, extraction.”

Nef took a moment to analyse what 519 had said and was thus completely caught off guard when it spoke again.

“Why did you say ‘was’, controller?”

“Hmm?” Nef said, then took a step back. “You… you asked a question.”

“Yes, controller. You said ‘what was your primary function’. Is my primary function no longer a priority?”

Nef sighed. “The war is over. You have been buried for hundreds of years; this accounts for the disparity in your chronometers.”

“The war is over.” There was a pause, and 519 cocked its head to one side so that it could look at Nef. It was a curiously human gesture. “Am I to be dismantled?”

“Would that be a… problem?”

A slightly shorter pause, then “I would not be able to oppose it. But I was made for a purpose and regret that the resources and time required to make me have been wasted on behalf of the controllers.”

Nef felt the first flutterings of panic in his breast, but quelled them as best he could. “You regret?”

519 nodded. “I have been given an understanding of human emotions and thinking to enable me to more easily integrate myself into a community. For example, I refer to myself in the first person where others of my kind do not.”

“I have ensured that you will not be dismantled,” Nef said. “But there need to be some ground rules.”

519’s head snapped upright and his entire body squared itself, ever“Awaiting priority command input,” it said, suddenly every inch a mechanism.

“No killing.” Nef said. “Do not… don’t hurt anyone, in fact, unless hurting someone prevents greater harm.” He paused. “If you find yourself in danger, protect yourself as long as no human is hurt. Commands end.”

“Processing,” 519 said. The whirring, so faint now as to be barely noticeable as the machinery inside the casing cleaned itself, grew slightly louder, then faded again. “Does the controller wish to give this unit a new designation?”

Nef paused. A name. “Not at this point,” he said finally. “Ask every morning until told to stop by me, though.”

“Confirmed,” 519 said, then relaxed. It sat down on the edge of the table, twisting its upper body to look at Nef. It was incredibly human-like in shape and position, if not in material.

“519, explain more about your infiltration programming,” Nef said. “You don’t look human. How would you have blended in?”

“A special material, skin-like in texture, would have been grown to cover me,” 519 said. “My voice would have been tuned to match my appearance, which itself would have been tailored to match the community of which I was to become a part. In this way, I could gather intelligence.” Nef started to move around in front of 519, amazed to watch the cog’s head and upper body move to follow him in a completely natural way. “I am programmed to make mistakes, mimic learning new skills at a human-slow pace, bluff and generally pass as a person,” it finished.

“From what I’ve seen, you do a good job of that,” Nef said.

“Thank you.”

“You’re… welcome.”

“What is to be done with me?”

Nef beckoned. “Calligraphy was one of your skills, yes? I need a written report. First, your full list of skills, each skill tree given its own table of skills. Second, I need the formula for the skin-like covering that you would have been given. We may not have the manpower or some of the knowledge, but you’d be amazed what we get up to.”

He pulled out a notebook from a desk drawer, grabbed a pencil and watched as the cog began to write.

What have I begun, his brain screamed.

Something wonderful, a small part replied.

Story 9: Cog 519

Merry Christmas all! Thank you for all the views this year, and many more into the future. I promise to write more and post more this year!

Part 1: Unearth

The amber light glinted off the exposed metal, the strange yellowish glow giving it a dull sheen. It was curved, definitely; Akh Nef brushed a little more of the loose soil off of it and tried to assess his find.

His team stood around him uncertainly. Just an hour ago everything had been going full speed; these tunnels were needed for the incoming refugees, the Matron had said, and needed soon. Digging out hive quarters for over a thousand humans was no small order, though, even with their various labour-saving devices.

Little amber telltales winked all over the objects they held, from small mechanical shovels to a device for turning unearthed chunks of rock into a fine powder. But all were silent now. As soon as the lead digger had struck metal, it was all over.

The site was going to have to be cordoned off, Nef realised. This was too dangerous to simply leave, or go around. The cogs - what else could it be? - would have to be exhumed, examined, learned from and then probably recycled. And the workers… they’d have to be memory-modified. More time. More effort. More expense.

He turned around. “It’s a shield,” he said, “probably a few decades old, no more. Exuding as much confidence as he could, he smiled and shrugged. “I’ll bring it out; go have a cup of something hot and I’ll tell you when you can continue.”

“This going to take long?” the lead worker said. He was a big fellow, piece of cloth fastened across his mouth to prevent dust from choking him. His eyes glistened in the darkness, small, like a desert rat’s.

“Not long,” Nef said. “Sooner I get started, sooner I get finished.”

The workers started to turn and leave, but the big man stayed back. “Well can’t we just go on, pretend like we din’t see it? We’re behind already,” he said.

“I’d… rather you didn’t. Please, go and have a cup of something. Now.”

Nef matched the man’s stare; for a long second, it looked like he might try to dart past and get a closer look. Then the tension ebbed slightly and he turned to follow his team.

Nef let out a sigh of relief, then turned back to the find. A cog! It was unusual to find one of these, a weapon of ages past; it might just turn out to be the chest piece of one or, hopefully, nothing more than a shoulder blade. He reached down to his belt for his dust morph and turned the tiny dial on its top to the correct setting. The tiny shard of amber inside whirred as it rotated on its axis, flooding the device with power, and he moved it close to the hard soil around the cog.

The soil seemed to liquify, becoming dust far faster than human hand could remove it; there was no danger of the armour itself being caught in the effect, as it was set to a density far below that of the metal used in the cog’s construction. As he worked, Nef whistled a little ditty from his youth and cast his mind back to his earliest lessons about the cogs; how they had been used in the great wars that scarred the land, how they had been possessed of great strength, speed, skill, agility, loyalty; how they had been laid low after an assault of weapons and men so incredibly coordinated that it had never been seen since, but had lead to the Grand Concord of the four remaining countries of Ehrian. Now those four countries, Zar, Lyria, Dorth and Koru, viewed the desert wastes with fear and suspicion, though the war was centuries past.

Some of the soil fell down over Nef’s hands and he looked down, snapping out of his reverie. He suddenly found himself staring into the hollow eyes of a skull, light glinting in their depths. He stumbled backwards, heart in his throat, holding his dust morph in front of him like a weapon.

There was silence.

A little more soil tumbled down and the skull sagged. Nef, his heart still racing, leaned forward and poked it, retreating almost as he did it. The skull waggled on its neck joint, leering gleefully at the ground.

It was dead. He breathed a sigh of relief and leaned forward to clear some more of the soil, slightly more wary now. The cog was in incredible condition; it was not a partial, as he had feared, but more and more kept being revealed. The skull, an almost perfect rendition of a human’s, gave way to an ornately armoured body, a cavity where the breastbone should be. Scrollwork was etched into the armour in fantastic patterns, looping whorls and designs that, given time, would give up the name of its maker. The arms were attached and moved, albeit stiffly; as more was revealed, the effect was much like a suit of armour, filled with mechanical contrivances and arcane instruments or sensors.

Grunting under the weight, Nef dragged the cog out into the wider tunnel. Dust and soil streamed off it, pouring without end out of the joints; it would be doubtful if the thing could even move given the condition its insides might be in, but it had to be tried.

Turning it over revealed a small missing section of skull, and Nef frowned. He leaned over and had a closer look inside skull; it was a small cavity that lead to a semi-circular depression, no more than a finger’s depth inside. The cavity was empty.

“Strange,” Nef murmured. Its control circuits were absent. Not just deactivated, like all the other complete examples they had found, but absent.

He turned the cog back over, mulling over his choices. He could reactivate it and lead it to one of the service tunnels, but normally when cogs were recovered their control circuits were rewired to prevent simply attacking the nearest person. Without instructions at all, of course, it should default to the original workshop settings and mindlessly obey him. Finally, he could drag it there himself. Over a mile.

“For science, then,” he murmured. He reached into his pocket for the small logbook that all amberic research teams were required to keep, and pressed the little stud on its top. The amber domed in it lit up.

“Akh Nef, researcher 345. Report that, as of this evening- ” he broke off and checked his small brass chronometer. “As of this evening, 7.56, I have encountered a complete cog specimen. Cog is missing its control circuit entirely and should be in workshop settings mode. Will power up, move to laboratory and power down. Unit seems in good working order, but was deep in a clay-like seam of soil and may be too soil-logged to function. Report ends.”

There. At least if anyone found his headless corpse they could probably work out what had happened, if the rampaging cog didn’t tell them first. He knelt down and pulled his pack over. He pulled out a blue cloth which he placed on the floor and unrolled. Inside, amber of every size, shape and lustre gleamed out at him, and he ran his fingers over both them and the empty space on the chest plate until he found one that looked like it might fit. Slowly, taking care not to chip the sides of the stone on the claws that would hold it in place, he clicked it into the empty slot on the chest plate and started to put the claws into place. Each one connected with the slightest hum until only one remained.

Nef double checked everything. He put the amber away in his pack, slung the pack onto his back and prepared to run should it go horribly wrong. Of course, he might not get the chance. Cogs were notoriously fast.

Then, a small amount of sweat beading on his upper lip, Nef slid the final claw home.

The hum intensified, rising up a scale and disappearing into nothingness. Nef scuttled backwards as little vibrations sent more dust pouring out of the cog’s joints. Its hand twitched, fingers closing, crushing inwards. The movement shuddered up its arm, the shoulder joint grinding as the ball rolled in the socket. With an incredible noise of ground-up stone, metal screeching on metal and incredible weight settling on ancient joints, each section of the cog began to move; it wiggled its pointed feet, flexed its biceps, sat up without any apparent effort and rolled its head around on the neck joint. Then it clambered to its feet.

It looked all around, its sightless eyes roving around the entire chamber, finally settling on Nef.

“H-hello,” Nef said, trying and failing to keep the quaver out of his voice. He dug in his memory for the correct commands. “Unit, report.”

The cog took a step forward and it was all Nef could do to stay where he was. The first footsteps were painfully grinding, but then the powered armour was moving more fluidly. It stopped, five feet from Nef, and he suddenly realised how much taller it was than even him, who looked down on most.

It spoke, the voice issuing from somewhere within its chest. “Unit 519. Special tactics cog, fifth battalion. Self testing.” There were some whirrs from inside, then a strange sound like someone stepping on a grape. “Joints require lubrication; applied. Some damage to interior mechanism. Control circuits… missing. Memory corrupted. Some disparity between internal chronometer and external sensors.” Its voice was strange, like a human speaking with his head in a large cooking pot. It looked down at Nef. “What is your designation?”

“Designation… Cog controller,” he said, blurting out the words. “You are to accompany me to a service station where your… damage and corruption will be assessed in advance of you returning to work.”

There was a silence, and Nef turned to go. After two steps he heard the crunching sound of heavy metal feet, and it was all he could do to keep facing forward as the immense threat behind him padded on, like a faithful dog.