The Silent Sphere - 01

A Powderpunk Faerie Tale in Four Acts

Prologue

The Chorus speaks:

Come with me to the clockwork cosmos, where natural laws are defaced by the workings of magic and by the machinations of gods and godlings. A sphere no farther across than in our own world would fit within the orbit of Mercury that fleetest of planets. Within this place, 14 recalcitrant deities were sent to learn lessons on how to reign over a universe and outgrow their selfish lusts. In seven suns were placed seven gods, and in seven spheres placed seven goddesses, with the ferryman of death to watch over them.

            In this time knights still cling to their lance, and go on quests for their fair ladies ensconced in their towers, but it is a passing age. Instead, younger orders vie for supremacy: new kings, new houses of merchant power, and new men, armed with firearms. Magery of all kinds is loosed on the world: with alchemists mixing subtle compounds, sorcerers and thaumaturges altering the course of events, summoners calling dark and bright spirits, witches using craft to hone the outcomes. Swords are still crossed, but pistols and hackbuts blare in battle, cresting smoke and flash to hurl their shot that rends the flesh.

            In this cosmos, souls struggle to be born, whether in the smallest living thing, or born in great mortal bodies: dragons, monsters, men, and animals. They strive to give themselves a place in the afterlife that will weigh upon the fate of the worlds. They count spiritual coin as much as they do the chips of metal that are currency in the breathing world. All is woven with the fights of little godlings, who grow fat on worship of their followers, and give small tokens to those that hold their little faith.

            Each sphere dances on a complex weave, around the seven suns, and each season is made by which sun holds the attention of a sphere, and casts his influence to make night and day. At times, at times, at times, a conjunction allows a god and goddess to incarnate, and there engage in orgy of their divine desires. From these unions come the moons that circle round the spheres.

            The spheres are close, and by powerful alchemy, ships may sail the ether winds, amongst the creatures that live between them, navigating the swirls and shoals, but only in short leaps, and at very narrow times.

            In this cosmos the gods and goddesses chatter, endlessly flirting and hoping to arrange their favored unions at favored times, they have learned little in the epoch that they have spent in this prison.

            The story set at the end of these happy pagan times, when many godlings race to serve their many mortal partners, when there is, as yet, a complex balance that no one god or goddess can betray. Darkness has come and gone many times, but only in clashes over the margins of the power. It has been several generations since any cataclysmic war or plague has marred the sunny times of planting, bearing, and reaping, though ambition's thirst is often slaked in blood.

            Come with me to the clockwork cosmos, where natural philosophy, rather than natural science, is the basic truth, and stumbling forward are the mortal lives, towards a future as yet unwritten.

The Rhyme of Seven

The Cosmos is a prison,

And sons and sisters locked within,

Locked by outer god,

for commission of sin,

both ordinary and odd.

Once a year around the fixed stars spin,

all the Sons and Sisters locked within.

The suns are fixed, the spheres do wander,

the suns will watch, the spheres will pander.

Eorl the eldest is the high Summer Sun,

Six weeks around his hot embrace,

Six weeks to ripen in his fiery golden face.

Tir is the soft Summer mane,

who brings days of drizzle and gentle rain.

Two weeks is his allotted tour,

fourteen days, not one more.

Kestral calls for harvest days,

four weeks for the stalk and wheat to part ways.

Then four weeks with Darith to spend,

where cold begins, and journeys end.

In spring Hiro first, Alaric next,

Sometimes without winter to spirits vex.

Four weeks with each is all you'll know,

Until another orbit go.

And in the distant is Isir,

six weeks of ice to teach you fear.

And round and round a sphere can go,

because he's hard as every sister knows.

The seven spheres with their moons in tow

are easier to meet, and harder to know,

their moods are different and sublime,

changing with the season and with the time.

Korana of the golden sands and silk oasis

Has but the moon Khopeta to put through paces

Technashirin of the fiendish born,

home of greens and ripened corn.

Eowilonwey and her Lilith child

are home of cities soft and forests wild.

Aliornthia a closer sister is,

With four moons born of her skin,

            Matha of the towers,

            Inweih of the flowers,

            Kendra of the showers,

            and sweet Siona, who idles hours.

Tianxian of heaven's mandate,

            Two moons Ryka and Weiling are her fate.

Then Hilono-a-oh of sultry seas,

            Has five moons about her knees,

            Hona, Tula, Ona, Heata, Dira,

            Islets still without yet friends.

Finally, terrible Midrash that you will learn,

as the place of giant wars,

and souls that burn.

These three moons circle well:

Hecate, Ithira, and one called Hell.

The Cosmos is the shell,

and we are locked within,

but by dance, the Gods will tell

that they are the ones imprisoned.