2 The SPIRAL

1 The BLOOM redux

There is a pattern to the Bloom, the head-hatches, somewhat akin Cicada brood cycles – 13 month and 18 month intervals. One group of revenants will achieve near sentience, light up, and be consumed. The World is a flat plain, an interior like a giant grainery, a processing plant. Maybe you can escape into the neighboring brood group by going dark – mute – paint your aureole away with tar from the noose tree. If you can do it – shuffle with the characteristic step of that horticulture, you might escape the drainers.

But there are mechanisms to prevent interlopers and assassin bugs who might lie waiting in the middle of the herd, and the brood may suddenly fall upon you as one to cleanse themselves.

2 The SPIRAL

Everything depends upon the geometry of the revenants. They arrange themselves in a spiral – attracted and repulsed. They bunch up, break apart – per the temporal matrix of each bloom. There are broods within broods. Their proximity warps time – changes the countdown to the next head-hatch.

Furthest from the eye of the spiral, in the stability of cold, cities can form. One can only assume many are formed and have been formed and are ultimately overrun. There are signs of it – although sometimes they will recycle pre-sunset architecture toward their own purposes. If they communicate with each other, they are tied together by talk and commerce and will be overrun together – but then these are cycles like any other.

One such is La Ciudead – City of Duplicates. There are two cities contained in Necos. One is open to the Spiral and is routinely overrun and conquered, like all the rest. The other sits above and opens into the caverns outside.

The full name of All Cities is a sound followed by a possessive. The duplicates in Necos are the true owners – even as they are fed upon and allow the city over top to prosper. It is useful to know the full name of anything – but less useful for a City, because everyone uses the full name all the time – to possess it.

3 The SINGQUISITION

Every dead thing makes a fundamental sound – a mechanical hum, a hiss at against the entropy that seeks to put it to rest. The sounds pull on each other – gather the herds – perhaps trigger the blooms.

The carnivorous plants mimic the sounds to lure their food. The survivors know the songs – in broad strokes, and favor those plants that produce imperfect sounds – sounds that are slightly off – that tips off even a half-sentient to danger.

There are seven bands of sound. Seven great songs. One of the songs has gone silent. There is not one creature that can be found who still sings it.

It is of the utmost importance that it be recovered. Without it, the Passejo Undeado, that great highway out of Necos, cannot be properly traversed. Without it, the second city will eventually starve.

In the center of the Spiral, the cacophony is unbearable – the revenants are occupied with grouping and ungrouping, and make several sounds at once. Perhaps, from this shifting din, some small sliver of the 7^th song might be discovered. Waves of Inquisitor-Archivists journey to the center – round up promising specimens, bring them back to Necos. Torture them. Attempt to crack their carapace and release the lost song.

They wear white, the color of witches, and worship Bitiz, the Half-Dragon, who manifests backwards in mirrors. They have thus far been unsuccessful.

4 WRITHES

The Nemesis Shadow is a funny little thing. It's a replicator like all the rest – the ghouls, the lich, the ghast to some extent - it wraps a man up in it's latency, it's slowness, it's second-handness – and when he emerges from the cocoon he is hollowed out and will slowly waste and waste away until he is thin and bitey. He has been deep within himself and finds it unbearable. The Nemesis Shadow does and it nourishes itself the process, but that this is not ultimately the purpose of the Nemesis Shadow.

If it can capture a drainer – broody fellows between their own feedings – a wraith, or vampire or specter or ghost - It will lay an egg in. It's not the shadow's own egg. It carries it for Rithgr, the Nurse Dragon. A small, compact, ember of fire.

Source: Adventure Comics #346, Penciler: Jim Shooter

 Most probably the egg will die. It is long between feedings, light is scarce, and there is lots of competition. A parasitized hunter is at a stiff disadvantage. But if the drainer feeds, the egg feeds. And grows. Into some sort of godling/pseudo-dragon. It will disguise itself. It will be painful. The pain will disguise itself. Everything is disguise and the big reveal.

You guys, the Passejo Undeado is full of these guys. Either it's an accident of geography, or some runaway tribes of survivors seeded them as a particularly toxic defense mechanism.

They are like a heap of ribbons in the shape of a person. They jitter all over the place, like silly string, or a can-o-snakes. The part in the Umbrarea is occupied entirely with housing the egg, which after the deposit of, the Shadow dissipates into the air. The Psuedo-Dragon too will die. Someone will come out of the woodwork to kill it. It's inevitable. The Gods, dead as they are, don't fancy the next generationj. It will be like someone dropping a bomb on the room, the city block. Maybe you can hide it. It wants you to hide it. You should not.

1 The BLOOM

The BLOOM

Mostly there is darkness.

The Stillborn Dragon Uköll escaped his egg and ate the Sun and the earth was plunged into pitch black.

Almost all that moves is dead. The Replicator Races – ghoul, lich, nemesis shadow – hunt for the remnants of life – kill it – raise it. This is a compulsion, the transfer of half-life across into the Umbrarere – “The Threshing Floor” of death - and the resultant rush of absence sustains them, makes them stronger.

If they discover and overcome a village, new revenants crawl from the wreckage, zombie or skeleton, depending. A ghoul will eat the eyes. The shadow take only its warmth. The lich will bind the arms, say a prayer over it, sanctify it it. Cover it in jewelry.

The raised dead shamble about, blind, mindless – or a mind only at a great distance, feebly trying to guide the corpse with whispers.

The remnants of mankind light fires, but it is a cold blue fire that the dead cannot detect – it is made from captured wraiths or specters fastened to great kilns, wheeled along with the milking aroch herds. It does not warm or cook – but there is light of sorts at least. Meat is forbidden – the great hunts are through the swathes of carnivorous plant forests. These alone eat the dead, and make their substance digestible again to man.

The dead exist in two places at once, and so can move about and dimly see the world's broken architecture, but seldom each other. On the earth it is dark. The Umbrarere is in layers, like with like. Similar types of see each other as through a mist. Further distant taxonomies not at all.

The The Stillborn Dragon Uköll ate the Sun and shrouded it, but it still resides in his stomach. At intervals it illuminates everything.

This is the Bloom.

The shambling mindless dead light up. Aureoles in bright colors suspend over their heads, like angler fish, except that they are the prey. Everything becomes visible. The Drainers : Vampires and Specters and Wraiths and even Wights that walk undetected among man, fall on them, take their energy, the energy of the consumed but not quite digested sun.

At the peak of the Bloom, everything comes back to revenants, and the Skeletons and Zombies reorganize themselves against attack. And are overcome. Their memories only half work. But some ultimately survive, and the flicker of intelligence persists. And they evolve. Into the other forms of dead.

Perhaps they can somehow evolve back into man, or something nearly man. Mankind proper hangs on, and hunts. The Drainers provide light. The Replicators are threats. Both must be killed, but never drawing attention, never being seen. To be seen is to attract more of them.

During a bloom, Replicators make for the survivors, suddenly brightly lit against the glowing landscape. It is best top keep far away from the masses of skeletons and zombies during this time, but can prove difficult, as they move like water, washing toward you, filling the emptiness. Sometimes replicators farm zombies, for this very purpose, bloodhounds to find their hidden hosts. To make more zombies.  It's like zombie sonar - you let the thing wander about until it runs into something.