Preparing for the coronation...

[Ari Rahikkala]

A man in a brown cape is standing on a godforsaken windy, rainy, rocky beach somewhere south of the battle-barren port city of Musica. He is standing alone in the middle of a ring of rocks near the water, one hand gripping on the flapping tail of the cape and the other on his forehead shielding his eyes from the rain. He stares at the sea with strained attention, not moving even when squalls of rain and wind blast from the stormy Shire sea. There is a faint blue light radiating from his eyes.There he stands, not moving at all. His cape is thoroughly drenched by the rain. The scene stays the same for perhaps a few hours, perhaps a longer time; he is too concentrated to be aware of time passing or anything happening around him. But at one point the light of his eyes starts glowing noticeably fainter - or maybe the glow had already been diminuishing unnoticeably slowly. Just before the light becomes invisibly faint he closes his eyes. He keeps them closed until he hears a sound of splashing that doesn't come from the waves - two sounds, in fact. Opening his eyes to meet the two dolphins that he expected, he notices yet again that they are quieter animals than he thought, as one - the hook-finned - has already almost beached.It doesn't beach, however. It only finds a small bay on the beach with slightly less sharp rocks and more sand than elsewhere and starts a strange transformation there. It is almost too fast to notice the details of the change as it only takes a few seconds for the dolphin's body to shorten to slightly below two meters of length, two bulges to grow from behind its eyes into full human hands, the tail to split into two and the colour to change from a beautiful grey and black to an almost boring pale human body's colour. The transformation completes with a naked man lying face down in the water. He quickly climbs up and greets the man on the beach."Morning, Dexter. Lovely weather, isn't it? Just perfect for a Shirerithian coronation...""Sure. That's your friend, Zak, was it?""Zhaki.""He's coming to the party?""Yeah. Get the poor dude up. He's crazy to see Letty. But give me something to wear first."Dexter takes off his cape and hands it away. Then he does a few movements with his hands that look like he is stroking the underside of some invisible object in the air. There's a white shimmering in the water below the porpoise Zhaki, who is looking at the two people expectantly from the water. The shimmering gradually brightens until it looks like there were blue flames below the duke."There you go, lordy. It'll take a few minutes for the field to get strong enough to lift you, then you will be able to move in air as you will. Ari seems to be a bit cold, so do you mind if we retire into my cottage already?"The duke whistles a short tune, to which Ari replies by nodding and starting towards the inviting lodge inland.(and just so that you know, this will be my private story at least for some time) "dont forget that Linux became only possible because 20 years of OS research was carefully studied, analyzed, discussed and thrown away." -- Ingo MolnarEdited by: Ari Rahikkala at: 10/11/02 12:34:02 pm

[Kaiser Letifer I]

*Is intrigued* Kaiser Letifer Alcadian H'Graa I of ShirerothI feel the blood flow through my veinsThe life force shines on me again Let the ritual begin- you will pay for your sins

[Ari Rahikkala]

"So, I hear you're planning some sort of a trip after Letty gets his crown?""You know me, Dexter. Weird things just happen to me and I can't do anything about them but investigate. Listen, something strange happens to me when I'm in dolphin form. There's something happening in the sea that I can't get my mind off. I don't know if it's an illusion or what, it's like someone was pinging with echolocation just behind me and creating all sorts of ghost shapes. I get a lot of weird shapes that shouldn't be there. I mean, it's normal to get a few echo ghosts, but I get them all the time nowadays - and I didn't before."Zhaki, who is floating in front of a large white wall that would seem somewhat out of place if everything else inside Dexter's cabin didn't look somewhat out of place, whistles and sonars a strange cacophony of noises that lasts for half a minute."Zhaki wants you to know that I'm completely insane and that only someone who likes to go up against two sharks at once should care at all about what I'm saying."Dexter chuckles, but Ari continues with a grave tone:"I wish I was going insane, really. It would be comforting, cause those shapes are freaky. I get mostly faces, sometimes hands and jaws - and sometimes things that I don't know which they are. Sometimes I get faces of dead people, flashing as parts of the scenery and disappearing at once. Sometimes there are pings from behind me and when I turn to check them there's nothing."Nonchalantly, Dexter responded: "The sea's a strange place.""Yeah, I guess it is. There's a definite direction where most of the ghosts seem to come from - somewhere in the northeast from Straylight. They might come from Treesia or somewhere beyond Bruges bay. Hell, who knows if there's some weird creature pounding those phantoms on the seafloor on Floyd Isle?"OoC: Ehh... the coronation stuff will come tomorrow... but the story will continue after that... and Lovecraft will probably turn in his grave... "dont forget that Linux became only possible because 20 years of OS research was carefully studied, analyzed, discussed and thrown away." -- Ingo Molnar

[Kaiser Letifer I]

Spiffy Kaiser Letifer Alcadian H'Graa I of ShirerothI feel the blood flow through my veinsThe life force shines on me again Let the ritual begin- you will pay for your sins

[Ari Rahikkala]

Saturday morning in the seaside hut of Dexter Ewing, one of the better hidden bastard children in the Shirerithian kaisers' bloodline. Dexter is a direct descendant of Gaelen Ly'Tecnomaezj and a woman whose name no-one remembers anymore. He has little Ly'Tecnomaezj blood in his veins but he does still possess a deep understanding of the most advanced technology and a respectable cache of gadgets embedded into his body and the environment. Lacking part of the natural secretiveness of the Ly'Tecnomaezj, Dexter isn't afraid to make some friends and let them in his rather extraordinary home. After all, very few of them understand anything of the mesh of bare, unraveled technology that covers all surfaces inside the hut with very thin wires, integrated circuit units and waves of blue light that continuously create hypnotically complicated interference patterns. In his peculiar cabin, it seems that whenever Dexter touches anything, a blue glare lights up between him and the surface of what he's touching. After a whole lot of grooming, Ari has forgotten the ghosts in the sea for the time and is ready for the coronation ceremony. He leaves Dexter's house into rain that seems to have gone on for days with the known looks of a true god of UNIX: A massive beard that hasn't been touched by human civilization for years, hair that somehow seemed to be stuck in place by grease only, a t-shirt that had lost all of its colour years ago and was just starting to show the absolute lack of sexuality of the being inside it by tearing apart just the wrong way. We shall not even describe the jogging pants. Zhaki swims in the air by his side with the help of a little technomagic.* OoC: Snipped away a lot of intermediary stuff here because it's late at night, nothing of real interest happens here and I want to get those two coronation speeches written today. I'll write the parts of the story that are in between this and the speech later... then again, looking back, I will probably rewrite the whole post, since this piece of crap could use a lot more coherence and real in-depth descriptions instead of two strange paragraphs of which neither seems in place *Continues at the thread "The Crowning of the Kaiser". "dont forget that Linux became only possible because 20 years of OS research was carefully studied, analyzed, discussed and thrown away." -- Ingo Molnar

[Kaiser Letifer I]

indeed still spiffy... Kaiser Letifer Alcadian H'Graa I of ShirerothI feel the blood flow through my veinsThe life force shines on me again Let the ritual begin- you will pay for your sins