http://www.principiainfecta.com/ A slow river of world-building by glimpse and omission; ideas in the raw to be used and improved upon at your leisure. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/ Copyright 2011 Mon, 21 Nov 2011 19:01:35 -0800 http://www.movabletype.org/?v=4.35-en http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss The ninth part of Sibellus Noir is a short interlude on districts and wards in the City: Ask of Spire-facing in any stratum or district of the City and citydwellers will point towards the spirebase and vast Spire Primus. Awareness of the direction of the Spire permeates City architecture: the principal entrances of important structures are often Spire-facing; manses of the wealthy are set Spire-facing; macrostatues and their reinforced plinths are aligned toward the Spire; sigil-posts and route markers extend an ornamental spike in that direction, often as not; Spire-facing arrows are embossed upon structural greystone by apprentice masons; and... http://www.principiainfecta.com/archives/2011/11/sibellus-noir-part-ix.php http://www.principiainfecta.com/archives/2011/11/sibellus-noir-part-ix.php Lore of the Principia Infecta Mon, 21 Nov 2011 19:01:35 -0800 The first part of the Callidonean Play is available: It is the commencement of 816.M41, and remnant detritus and pilgrim masses of the long All-Saints-Festival are but slowly vanishing from the grand hives of the Ministorum world of Rhame, golden capitol of the Yeuros cluster. Within Hive Templum Primus, a newly ascended Inquisitor and his retinue of Throne agents prepare for a long and uncertain journey, the festival distant from their thoughts. Their destination is Brythan, a world at the trailing edge of the cluster, farthest from the hives of Rhame, last light of the Imperium before the impassable warp... http://www.principiainfecta.com/archives/2011/11/the-callidonean-play-part-i.php http://www.principiainfecta.com/archives/2011/11/the-callidonean-play-part-i.php Lore of the Principia Infecta Sun, 13 Nov 2011 16:27:52 -0800 For the eighth installment, an interlude on the topic of communications within the layered stone and crystal of Hive Sibellus: The Vocae is a grand vox-message network under the control of the Administratum, its powerful tech-devices and voxcaster masts capable of sending a missive across the vast breadth of the City, there to be stored in a shadowed cogitation vault until such time as the recipient claims it. The network is ancient and run down, however, its pillared missive-shrine offices only maintained in any more than a token fashion in wealthy spire-shadow regions. Stylized High Gothic abbreviations engraved upon markers... http://www.principiainfecta.com/archives/2011/03/sibellus-noir-part-xiii.php http://www.principiainfecta.com/archives/2011/03/sibellus-noir-part-xiii.php Lore of the Principia Infecta Thu, 03 Mar 2011 21:30:03 -0800 The seventh installment of Sibellus Noir is available in PDF format. The flank of what must be a statue halfway blocks the dark corridor. A saint's hip, or the sleeve of an Imperial hero, once thirty spans tall and proud upon the old Citytop - then swallowed by structures raised by machine-men. Drowned in greystone, given to the Pit. I lean back against it, shoulder and one hard boot heel. The lumen beyond long ago faded to a dull glow, a companion to the red pinprick of another bad lho-stick. I blow out the tainted smoke, watch it spiral and... http://www.principiainfecta.com/archives/2011/01/sibellus-noir-part-vii.php http://www.principiainfecta.com/archives/2011/01/sibellus-noir-part-vii.php Lore of the Principia Infecta Sun, 30 Jan 2011 19:45:07 -0800 The sixth part of Sibellus Noir is available in PDF format. The librarium is beyond the easy reach of the masters, for all two scints of what that's worth. But it still has its slaves, just as damned as those of the Pit. They dress like records clerks, fresh from hidden rooms where machines pick over their minds. Arrayed eyeglasses screwed to devices that protrude from surgery-scars on shaven pates, heads weighed beneath the machines that ride them. Hands replaced by spreading tines and hooks. Focused, unblinking stares, fixated on what awaits when red-cloaked machine-men decide a living brain is... http://www.principiainfecta.com/archives/2010/12/sibellus-noir-part-vi.php http://www.principiainfecta.com/archives/2010/12/sibellus-noir-part-vi.php Lore of the Principia Infecta Fri, 03 Dec 2010 18:37:56 -0800 The fifth segment of Sibellus Noir is complete and available in PDF format: It's like this: you walk the low alleys in Magistratum blue and silver, listen to the curses and the screams, step over the drugged and the dead—but not because it has any worth. It makes no difference to the misery and the filth whether the barracks makes itself known, whether you knock heads together, whether you send the thieves and the killers before a magister. The City will be the City. She was cruel when you were a kid, she'll be hard-lipped and sneering when you're gone.... http://www.principiainfecta.com/archives/2010/08/sibellus-noir-part-v.php http://www.principiainfecta.com/archives/2010/08/sibellus-noir-part-v.php Lore of the Principia Infecta Sun, 29 Aug 2010 21:44:21 -0800 The fourth portion of Sibellus Noir is complete and available in PDF format: Broad greystone stairs slope down into thrumming blackness past the last functioning lumen. Rounded and pitted, the steps are slabs laid an age ago in some deep ward, dragged from their resting places to bring slow stone-rot to the Citytop. Condensate drips from fundament ducts overhead, set too low for comfort. The fan-pumps within rattle and wheeze, left to die in their own time by the machine-men - too small, too insignificant. Or too near to our destination: a prison for the madmen that the Pit calls... http://www.principiainfecta.com/archives/2010/05/sibellus-noir-part-iv.php http://www.principiainfecta.com/archives/2010/05/sibellus-noir-part-iv.php Lore of the Principia Infecta Sat, 29 May 2010 13:32:17 -0800 The third portion of Sibellus Noir is complete and available in PDF format: Spend the years drenned to the hilt and it never leaves, always that last dreg feeding the fires. The chem-burn makes them jump and turn to its heartbeat, makes them crazy in the end, biting blood from their own arms to stop the screaming. The coordinator wore long sleeves, eye-covers to hide the hollows. Made it part of a look. He wasn't fooling anyone who matters - but he's still the one who'll tell the machine-men to take your eyes or send the watchers to break you.... http://www.principiainfecta.com/archives/2010/04/sibellus-noir-part-iii.php http://www.principiainfecta.com/archives/2010/04/sibellus-noir-part-iii.php Lore of the Principia Infecta Sun, 11 Apr 2010 11:48:23 -0800 The second part of Sibellus Noir is available as PDF: Vaults, passages, and stairways pass in watchful, wary silence. From deserted halls where fungus hangs from City stone in place of carved angels, we come to the populated back ways. The hurrying of a scribe avoiding something better left unsaid. Chains hang against the walls, guides for blinded serfs, the least of the Pit's own. Rejected even by the Man, their eyes taken by the machine-men, they serve. Then a crossway, a spiral stair, and a huddled knot of hard men in meshwork Legion armor, jarred by our intrusion into... http://www.principiainfecta.com/archives/2010/03/sibellus-noir-p.php http://www.principiainfecta.com/archives/2010/03/sibellus-noir-p.php Lore of the Principia Infecta Sat, 13 Mar 2010 21:13:29 -0800 In the grand tradition of striving to achieve goals that are neither straightforward nor likely to be completed, allow me to offer you the first and opening part of a little thing I call Sibellus Noir: Sibellus. City without end, layered hive of mankind, asylum for billions struck ignorant and mad by its walls. I've been gone a long time, to far, sickened places. Long enough for me to forget - if I had wanted to. Long enough for a generation of newborns to be crippled, struck dumb, made sinners. But the City has its hooks into me, just as... http://www.principiainfecta.com/archives/2010/02/sibellus-noir.php http://www.principiainfecta.com/archives/2010/02/sibellus-noir.php Lore of the Principia Infecta Mon, 15 Feb 2010 20:35:28 -0800 Some forms of insanity resist easy categorization, producing strange symptoms and stranger actions. Here we have one such result, a story game called The Logic of Tales and Dreams - a game that does not in fact exist. The Logic of Tales and Dreams is free and creative commons licensed: download it and do with it as you will. Download the web-quality PDF (1.6M) Download the print-quality PDF (7.2M)... http://www.principiainfecta.com/archives/2009/12/released-the-lo.php http://www.principiainfecta.com/archives/2009/12/released-the-lo.php Lore of the Principia Infecta Fri, 25 Dec 2009 16:37:59 -0800 http://www.principiainfecta.com/archives/2009/08/amaxathroth-the.php http://www.principiainfecta.com/archives/2009/08/amaxathroth-the.php Lore of the Principia Infecta Fri, 14 Aug 2009 16:42:40 -0800 Amaxathroth is seated in his tomb, waiting. Not for you or I, for we are less than the swirling motes to his unblinking gaze. His heart is blackened by the ages, and his contempt of mankind complete and utter. Yet his words remain, scribed across countless lifetimes, and hoarded by those who come to regret their greed for such. But know this now: as the toil of building the Later Blue Tome of Amaxathroth the Cursed now winds to a close, I, your humble translator, offer you a second preview of the words of Amaxathroth as a bookend to the... http://www.principiainfecta.com/archives/2009/07/another-glimpse.php http://www.principiainfecta.com/archives/2009/07/another-glimpse.php Lore of the Principia Infecta Mon, 06 Jul 2009 18:49:39 -0800 That shuddering beneath the earth is the beast waking from its long slumber. Mayhaps to roam and ravage, mayhaps to merely look about with bleary eyes before settling back to sleep as though dead. Whatever the future holds for Principia Infecta, it will soon include a published manuscript, a tome of writings. I, your humble scribe, have moved to assemble artists and piece together the Later Blue Tome of Amaxathroth the Cursed. It is a sword and sorcery mini-supplement for Ron Edwards' Sorcerer, a bitter and fragmented glance at a lustful and decayed aeon. Sorcery, demons, and vile rogues! Take... http://www.principiainfecta.com/archives/2009/06/that-shuddering.php http://www.principiainfecta.com/archives/2009/06/that-shuddering.php Lore of the Principia Infecta Mon, 01 Jun 2009 22:42:51 -0800 [Manse vox-record :: signo temporis 3.626.804 M41 Cenatio Viridis :: Seven Hall Manse :: Hive Voltis :: Scintilla Adept-Militant Grambald] So there I was, scratch-taped to some crumbled tribrace the wrong way up at the lowest end of the vertway crush, right where it came out at the undervault top, and looking like some glint hanging from the cathedra dome. Had a hanger brace for the long-las, rething waiting for the cutting to start way down below. Drip, drip, drip from all the hive filthwater that flows downaways. Rething mess it was, like all the big vertways down to the... http://www.principiainfecta.com/archives/2008/03/cultrixpancreat.php http://www.principiainfecta.com/archives/2008/03/cultrixpancreat.php Warpcraft Spilled From Noble Hive Spires Wed, 26 Mar 2008 19:22:49 -0800