Fiction A Story of the Stars

[Y'ttar Scaletail]

A Story of the Stars

“The stars look very different today.”

Tik’An’Meda (Tik for short), Starpriest of the Observatory-Temple S’Kril-Qah barely looked away from his gaze at the stars.

“Why are you up here, K’ta?”

The Chameleon Skink shrugged and moved to stand by the Starpriest who continued his study of the stars. The two were silent for a long while, Tik continuing to move his gaze from star cluster to star cluster through the sacred observing tube of the Old Ones, muttering under breath every now again and making notes on his scribing stone with a piece of chalk.

“You know why I am here, revered Tik” K’ta finally answered.

“Patrols have nothing to report as usual, there are no threats even conceivable to our lonely Observatory-Temple, and rather than organising the next patrols you felt bored. So you came to bother me, same as last time...and the time before that...and the ti—“

“You’re only half right, revered Tik” K’ta interrupted, causing the more venerable Skink Starpriest to scowl. “I...was wondering what purpose our Observatory-Temple had. Surely our efforts would be better spent defending our key Temple Cities rather than continuing to be spread out and easy prey for the desecrators of the Old Ones?”

Tik turned sharply with angry eyes. The Chameleon Skink instinctively felt his scales shift to match the temple roof. Despite the burning fire that seemed to sweep across Tik’s eyes, his response remained measured. “When have Skinks had any right to question the Plans of the Old Ones? We are birthed from the pools to serve the Plan without question.” He sighed. “Though I fear more and more spawnings are becoming divergent and belligerent to the Plan. As if the influence of our creators are slowly fading away. Too war-like, with thoughts of defence and attack. Far less contemplation of what we need to achieve.”

“What are we trying to achieve?” asked K’ta nervously.

Tik turned back to the stars. “What do you see, K’ta?” he asked, sweeping an arm in gesture to the stars above.

K’ta looked up at the many dots of light that twinkled down at him. “Spots of light, same as always.”

Tik sighed again. “Do you see this cluster over there?” K’ta followed the Starpriest’s outstretched claw and gave an affirmative. “What does it look like to you?” Tik continued.

“Spots of light?” answered K’ta timidly.

Tik snorted and copied the constellation onto his scribing stone and joining up the dots, forming a large serpent. He made sure not to include the feathers as the change of that being the constellation of Tepok to Sotek had caused great friction within the Observatory-Temples when it had been enforced many spawnings before. He turned to show K’ta the stone. “Perhaps a more recent addition to our starcharts, but that cluster forms the constellation of Sotek. Nearby you can make out the shape of the Cowardly Ratman, whom Sotek is forever chasing across the night sky. Sotek will catch it one day.”

K’ta nodded, impressed.

“It is the duty of this Observatory-Temple to record the many constellations and their movements. When certain stars cross, or certain constellations are in height, it may be a portent of things to come, or a message from the Old Ones” Tik continued, sweeping out his arms to the night sky.

“The Old Ones?” asked K’ta.

“On ancient plaques there are claims our creators came from the stars. I believe they still speak to us from them, helping us on the path to finishing the Plan and warning us of disasters that threaten its future.”

K’ta didn’t reply and stared almost longingly at the vast blanket of darkness and the tiny lights that seemed to link up in such strange patterns. For a long moment the Chameleon Skink felt utterly small and insignificant in the grand scheme of gods, daemons, and the eternity of the stars. And yet a strange warmth grew within him as he considered the creators perhaps were looking upon him from the stars.

“What pictures do those sky lights make?” he remarked suddenly, pointing to a cluster of stars that had grabbed his attention.

Tik turned his gaze and observing tube to the cluster and gave a chirp of shock. He couldn’t believe he’d missed it until K’ta had pointed it out.

“Is something wrong, revered Tik?” K’ta asked, hand instinctively reaching for the flint dagger at his side.

“The blade of Quetzl passes the constellation of Huanchi...no...it passes through. This...this is not right.”

“A warning from the creators?” voiced K’ta with mounting concern.

“I...I am not sure” Tik replied with a quiver in his voice, “this must be carved onto a plaque and sent to Itza to then be sent with haste to Tlaxtlan. This may be an ill portent for coming struggles.” He quickly marked the scribing stone and gave it to K’ta to pass to the inscribers. K’ta for a moment hesitated, a question forming in his mind, but he turned and dashed away leaving Tik alone.

The Starpriest stared up at the stars, wondering what this movement could mean.

He felt cold.

--------------------------------------------------------

Another age.

“My Lord Krri-Tikk?”

The Slann’s eyelids slowly slid open to look at the memory constructs before him. He lamely gestured with a hand for them to continue. The lead Skink bobbed its head and began again.

“My Lord Krri-Tikk, as per your instructions, we have explored the depths of the Temple Ship and have recovered several items that were created before we took to the stars and the world still lived.”

Another memory created Skink scampered forwards laying a number of plaques covered in engravings of the stars. The Slann gestured with his hand and the plaques floated up so he could take a better look. A deep grumbling sound came from the Slann as his eyes moved from plaque to plaque, then with a sigh all but one plaque toppled back to the ground, splintering and cracking.

“Mmrmmm” intoned the Slann, “This one looks the best. Have its pattern engraved on the ceiling.”

The memory created Skinks bowed deeply, placed the ceremonial berets upon their heads, and took up the refrain “praise be to Aartzifartzi! Praise be to Aartzifartzi!”

 

[Bowser]

I absolutely loved this one! Great story beautifully told, and then the ending. Just brilliant. Made me laugh anyway. The years of work put into replicating the stars for centuries, and they come down to one slann who fancies itself an art critic! Crunch wise this makes sense for the Age of Sigmar, the slann chooses a constellation and fields it as it's army then rearranges the stars into the constellation best suited to the battle.
I am reading too much into it probably but I thought it was quite brilliant and a fantastic twist at the end. A screeching halt. You can almost hear the record scratch as you're reading the ending!

 

[spawning of Bob]

Yes, laughs out loud from me, too. A bait and switch ending is only as good as good as the bait, and that first section was a pearl. Other readers may have found the ending a bit cheap, but to me it represented that the author revels in being part of the L-O creative community and really is one of us.

Then I discover it is written by Y'ttar.

Burn the Heretic.

 

[Bowser]

Hey now, just because he looks like a rat wearing a couple of flayed skinks, and smells decidedly worse doesn't mean he isn't one of us. Who knows why the old ones chose to er... "bless" his spawning with a certain rat like charm, but I am pretty sure it's part of the supposed great plan everyone is always going on about.

 

[thedarkfourth]

Y'ttar? Rat? I've never heard such nonsense. Would we have given a rat the keys to the Eternity Chamber or put him in charge of managing the sacred plaques? Would we have let a rat enter our story competitions?! The very idea is laughable.

 

[Y'ttar Scaletail]

Brief answers/comments to review-things:

9 - a Story in the Stars

another Astral Conjunction! And a fearful one...
...and in another time (and another game system), someone took a choice for decorating a room. With the passing of strange aeons, even fearful portents may vanish.
A really bizarre ending, after a so serious introduction. I don't know how to consider it, but it was a nice reading.

Heheh, it's funny because if you look for it, even the intro isn't really that serious. I will agree that the ending was a wet fish to the face of likely a lot of people. *Maniacal chittering laughter*

A Story of the Stars

Hm. When I said that there should be more comedy in our stories, I didn't mean....blatant trolling.

JK- it made me laugh, so I like it! Normally I'm against 4th wall stuff but in this case it's worth it because it's a good in-joke that knows its target audience.

Nevertheless... I can't help but feel a twinge of disappointment that we don't get a proper resolution to Tik and K'ta's story... it's so well written and the prank totally got me. I was completely suckered. Even now knowing the point of it I still want there to be an epic second and third act! Impressive stuff, really.

I'm surprised not many people twigged what the portent actually meant. Note at the end of the piece Tik has the plaque sent on a long path from temple to temple to eventually arrive at Tlaxtlan but the plaque instead made it to the temple city/ship belonging to our art critic Slann. It seems likely that the plaque never made it to Tlaxtlan in time before a certain End Times happened. I wonder if Tik and K'ta were still staring in worry at the skies when the moon came crashing down onto them...

Or the plaque was lost in the system and the portent was never truly studied. I leave the true ending up to the readers to decide.

9. A Story of the Stars
TDF probably already said, "what story?". Ignore him, he's a grouch. Writing a block of poetry, history, geography, or, in this case, a shaggy dog story, is also valid and enjoyable.

Gags and structure? The hook line is a gag. If you don't recognise the song lyric, you are too young and need to get off my lawn. Whenever anything has an obvious gag in it, I immediately worry that there are plenty of others that I missed, so I spent a bunch of time pronouncing all the names, just in case (and I never bother pronouncing names)

The set up section is magnificent. Using the knowing master / questioning student combo and just enough descriptive prose to establish the situation very precisely and in an engaging way. The horror of the unprecedented conjunction is conveyed with great economy - whatever happens next as a consequence of the celestial collision is obviously going to be spectacular.

The leap into AoS promises some grand unifying explanation of the tragedy of the End Times. Hopes are raised, then... Gotcha. And it is a L-O niche specific punchline. Paraphrasing TDF again, there are probably only 12 people on the history of the internet who will ever see this. Fortunately all twelve will know what is going on, and probably eight of those are fellow competitors. I feel superior now, because something like 6 billion people have no idea why I am laughing and probably never will.

The Dark Side? The idea that powerful individuals will arbitrarily, and without regard to context, assess, accept or reject an object which has great meaning is a sober reminder that you all need to get your entries in for the art comp, so I can arbitrarily reject two thirds of them. With great power comes great .

Who knows? Not me, we never lost control...

But yeah, I couldn't help myself with the L-O reference, which in no way was a dig at you lot or a criticism of your marvellous art contests. It just seemed right to me to have a (probably insane) Slann with a strange warped ego, creating his own temple ship of art with beret wearing worshippers/attendants. Probably easily made canon in AoS too...

9. A Story in the Stars

The story was beautiful and eloquent and primed me to accept a startlingly revelation.

Then you threw this ending at me. Sorry I can’t come figure out to do two paragraphs full of commentary on this. Too polished for me to take fault with word choice or sentence structure. Well-paced, well structure. You just threw an ending at made me go WTM. I read it again and the ending seemed even weirder than the first time. A valid comedy technique but this wasn’t my cup of tea.

Heheheh, as I said: it's a very marmite ending. Some people like a wet fish to the face, some do not.

Story Nine (A Story in/of the Stars) : You arse. The author builds up such a tight, deep, and intriguing narrative with superb characters...and then ends the story like that. Honestly, I didn’t know if I wanted to laugh or cry at the ending.

Well, I guess I should get back to the meat of the review.

The two characters of K’ta (Catarrh?) and Tik (Tick?) played typical roles of sage and youngster not in the know. However, the author wrote the two very elegantly and made them feel like their own characters. I especially liked K’ta’s reactions to Tik.

The pacing of the piece was slow with little action, which felt perfect for this quiet contemplation of the stars. The author also did a sterling job at keeping me interested with the details of the stars, to the extent that I’d very much like him/her to write more constellations and the stories attached to them.

And then the ending... The author builds up to the conjunction of the stars having dire meaning and yet when we skip forwards in time we’re greeted by a literal Art Critic who treats this artefact as a nice looking ceiling design, whilst smashing up other priceless relics of the lost Old World. Maybe the author was mocking GW’s destruction of the Old World and so much of the lore, races, and characters? Perhaps it’s a sad look at how the fears of the past can become meaningless and forgotten in the future. Though it pains me that there wasn’t some kind of resolution for Tik and K’ta, though I wonder if that may have been the author’s intention.

The insanity of the final lines made me laugh at first at the absurdity and yet I wanted to weep for the world that was lost and how in the end everything Tik strove for was for nothing. A well written piece that toyed with my emotions. An ending with a proper resolution would have suited it better, and yet the ending we got was all the more potent and striking.

Father Sliv Saltbeak, former pirate and Avid priest: I don’t get thar over fondness of art, though I appreciate thar details, colours, and elegant flick of architecture and paintings. Portents becoming a wall mounting though? I weep fer ye me lizard cousins.

I may have giggled everytime I used the line "revered Tik"...

As for what my intent with that ending was...i'll let you keep guessing, Ratty. I'm glad at least I made you (me) laugh and cry at once.

 

[Warden]

Personally I enjoyed the ending. I didn't expect it, complete shocker. Didn't see it coming.