From: ANDOVER@delphi.com
Date: Tue 02 Jul 1996 - 04:13:52 EEST
The Outer Atomic Explorers and the White Moon,
or How We Made the Useless Discovery of Dragon's True Relation to Time,
By Flatius Amensis
Part IV
As they began their descent, the ship which was their target suddenly rose from
the Moon! Within a few seconds, it became obvious that it was taking a course
directly towards them. It was a collision course! "Avoid them," screamed
Matobolus -- uselessly, for Setondal's expert hands had already lurched the ship
sharply to port. Two of the spellcasters in the ship had the presence to cast
spells of aversion -- uselessly, as far as Matobolus could tell, for all that
happened was that they froze themselves.
Unfortunately, whomever was piloting the other ship -- backwards, Matobolus
suddenly recognized -- had anticipated Setondal's move -- for he moved his ship
directly in the way. Matobolus closed his eyes, expecting a collision which
would kill everyone on the ship.
Two seconds later, he opened his eyes, for nothing had happened. He glanced
around in bewilderment, for the other ship had vanished. Then he saw it, behind
them, still going backwards, and curving away around the Moon.
There was no time left to observe the other ship, though, for the Moon itself
was almost upon them. As they settled on the ground, Matobolus was struck by
three things. First, the mysterious sense of wrongness that had oppressed him
ever since their return to this devastated Glorantha -- and, indeed, since their
departure from increasingly loked like a the lost paradise of what could only be
called the ancient world -- had vanished.
Second, wrongness was replaced by a sense of strangeness, and of great
antiquity. Somehow, he felt for the third time on this wretched trip, that he
had been translated into a realm where the rules were different.
Third, looking at the strange spires around the flat plaza on which the ship was
settling, he was struck by how the doorsizes and proportions seemed somehow
wrong. Whatever lived here, was not human. In the distance, behind the spires,
loomed a jagged row of mountains, white as everything else on this orb seemed to
be.
As Sentondal turned off the generator, Matobolus realized that it was time to
use the searchers in the side compartment. First, they could sample the
atmosphere, to make sure that it was breathable. Second, they could see if
there were any other dangers on this strange place.
A few hours later, the searchers -- those strange mixtures of animal and machine
- -- returned, with both good news and bad. The good news was that there was
nothing dangerous either in the air or on the ground. The bad was that there
seemed to be nothing particularly interesting, either. The magicians reported
- -- after two of their number were awakened from the strange paralysis which had
fallen upon them after casting their aversion spells on the other ship -- that
here, too, not all their magics worked, but that the spells which worked and
those which did not were different from those which had worked and those which
had not on the planet below.
It was surprising that an object that had passed through such a great explosion
seemed so undisturbed, unless the fine white dust that seemed to cover
everything was a result of the explosion. Matobolus ordered the crew to dinner
and to sleep, explaining that they could search the Moon on the "morrow."
He himself slept badly again, dreaming of explosions and destructions, and great
inhuman Krjalk coming to kill his people. But he was interrupted in the middle
of the night by the crewman on watch.
It appeared that once again, the mysterious ship, enemy or friend, was trying to
communicate with them. Once again, its message was unintelligible. "What should
we do?" asked the crewman. "Well," he responded, " wake Flavius and let's see
where it is coming from."
He was not surprised to hear and to see that the message came from the same twin
of his own ship that had messaged him before. "Oh well," grumbled Matobolus,
wake up the crew and let's take a quick poll of whether we should answer them
again."
After several hours of tired discussion, the decision, probably futile, thought
Matobolus was to try once again to get an answer from them. He gave the orders,
and watched gloomily as, once more, the other ship failed to respond. In fact,
he realized just after the message was sent, that the other ship was no longer
to be seen. It was surprising to see that the turmoil below them was increasing
rather than decreasing, Matobolus thought idly.
The crew took to bed once again, and getting everyone up in the morning proved
somewhat difficult. Leaving a skeleton crew to man the ship, the rest of the
group disembarked and began to search the buildings. What they discovered was
interesting, but unenlightening. It appeared that some of the buildings were
built to human, or at least humanoid specifications, while others were built
with races of quite different proportions in mind. Judging by appearances, one
race must have been very wide, and extremely squat, for entrances to its
residences were almost the opposite of "human" doors. The few remaining items
of "furniture," if that was what it was, was equally puzzling, as were several
objects and some sort of illustrations which were incomprehensible even to the
trained eyes of the Godlearners.
Another race was clearly extremely tall and spindly. Apparently it did not need
windows, for there were none.
There were several buildings whose layouts and purposes were totally
incomprehensible. Janaspus suggested that it was possible that they were
occupied by creatures that were either octopoid or winged, but this was simply
pure speculation, based on no Logic.
Every piece of evidence suggested that these buildings had been empty for many
years, yet, surprisingly, there was no evidence of rot or decay in the few
objects which were left. Whomever these people were, they had left a long time
ago. In fact, the odor on the gentle breeze, while strange and unearthly, was
not unpleasant.
It seemed to be coming from the mountain range, thought Matobolus with a sort of
dreamy speculation, half wonder and half tiredness. Then the ground began to
shake. The mountain range began to move. A giant head lifted off the ground.
It was that of a Dragon -- indeed, as the white dust shook off its head, it
seemed to be that of one of the two Dragons they had seen landing on the Moon
the other day!
Suddenly, the horrible truth came upon Matobolus. "Man the ship, man the ship!"
he screamed. He rushed to sound the alarm, hoping that all the crew could get
back to the ship on time. As Setondal assumed his post, he ordered him to
prepare for take-off.
The ground shook further as the great Dragon lifted itself from the ground. As
he expected, the ground shook even more from something Matobolus did not see,
but knew was either the other Dragon or the mighty buffets of an explosion which
was only a few minutes away -- and had already occurred!
He knew that they had only minutes if they were to survive, but, luckily, the
last crew member, Janaspus, carrying the very few objects they had recovered
from their cursory search, staggered aboard in time for the doors to be closed.
As the magicians hastily chanted their spells, Setondal shoved the levers and
the ship lifted away from the Moon. Behind him, the two Dragons began to take
to the Air.
As he knew it would, another ship appeared in front of them, once more
apparently determined to collide with them. "Ignore it, just move fast"
Matobolus yelled, as Setondal nodded with sudden understanding.
Once again, the non-collision occurred, and Matobolus glanced backward, in time
to see the two great Dragons suddenly alter course and land once more on the
White Moon, and the little ship settle back behind them. The ship shuddered and
was driven in the forefront of the great explosion that had just happened a few
minutes before, and Matobolus glanced downwards as the various pieces of the Red
Moon destroyed a large part of Dara Happa, far below.
This time Matobolus himself was braced for the turmoil, as was most of the crew,
and so the damage to the crew, and to sokme degree the ship, was less than
before. "That's because we avoided the explosion itself" murmered Matobolus to
himself.
"We should have understood," he said, surprising himself by uttering an
hysterical cackle. He said in a calmer voice, "In a sense space and time are the
same, and it is only our perception of things that make them different. The
arrow of time points BOTH ways."
"The presence of enough matter going one way drags lesser bits along with it --
that is what happened to us on the White Moon. For a bit we saw the world the
way the Dragons do."
"What?" said Flavius the Lesser.
"Dragon time goes backwards. This moon was -- or is -- or whatever you want to
"The ship needs to be repaired again -- let's go south to the coast, since we
say -- going backwards in time itself, and was taking us with it. If we hadn't
gotten off, we would have been destroyed in the White Moon's collision with the
Red Moon."
can descend at an angle, and see if this "closing" is real or still real."
- -- to be continued --
------------------------------
End of Glorantha Digest V3 #2
*****************************
RuneQuest is a trademark of Avalon Hill, and Glorantha is a trademark
of Chaosium. With the exception of previously copyrighted material,
unless specified otherwise all text in this digest is copyright by the
author or authors, with rights granted to copy for personal use, to
excerpt in reviews and replies, and to archive unchanged for
electronic retrieval.
Send electronic mail to Majordomo@hops.wharton.upenn.edu with "help"
in the body of the message for subscription information on this and
other mailing lists.
WWW material at http://hops.wharton.upenn.edu/~loren/rolegame.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.7 : Fri 13 Jun 2003 - 16:51:18 EEST