Topic
The Lost Tales of Ur (Lord Bacon-o's way of saying thanks)
AN INTRODUCTION
It has been a while since I recounted the story of when Alph imagined time. You may (or may not) remember that story was told to me by a potentially not-so-reliable Glitchen. I only relayed it. But that tale of the first "days" of Ur sparked in me a desire to learn more of the history of this world. Since then, I have gone to the far reaches and depths and heights of Ur in a search of some sort of truth. I planned one day to share these with everyone, once I had compiled them into something resembling coherence.
But that day, as you all now know, will never come.
On the final day of Zilleoween in the 25th year, the news of the coming of the Final UnImagining hit us like a ton of ignots. None of us know how The End will come. Perhaps the Rooks will pour forth and tear the world to shreds. Perhaps the Giants will come and swallow us whole. Perhaps the chickens will rise up and squeeze us. Perhaps we will just hear the sweet notes of Goodnight Groddle and everything will just fade. We don't know how, just that it is coming. So the time to keep these stories to myself have past.
In what time is left, I shall recount what I have experienced and learned. Some of these stories are my own. Some have been told to me second or third or twelfth hand. They will be short and scattered and in no particular order... as is fitting for these end days. I don't know what will become of all of us on the other side of the Final UnImagining. I can only that somehow and in some way these stories will resonate. I hope there is something to remember this world and its people and its stories.
Signed, Lord Bacon-o
Student of Ur'ian History
Owner & Operator of Club Ur'ges, The Poison & Poop Shoppe, and Le Bistr-o
CEO of Elbow Grease Industries Company Corporation Enterprise Holdings
Designer of The Giants Lottery of Greater Ur
Managing Director of Lord Bacon-o's Anonymous Remailing Service
Replies
- I didn't have much contact with you in-game, but downloaded and read with much pleasure your "second-hand" account of the Imagining of Time...I'm going to miss this community sooooo much...thanks for all the laughs, LB-O, and all who made me giggle and even lol in RL, not just in-game!
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THE ANCIENT IN JUNGLE
While exploring the uncharted regions of equatorial Grumbla, I found myself in a dense jungle. Tall twisting trees grew thick around me, their branches and leaves forming a canopy that filtered the sunlight into yellows and greens. Vines hung down and ran along the jungle floor. Unseen animals chittered and squealed and squawked. The air smelled of life and living things and it seemed that mystery hovered like a miasma.
I worked my way deeper into the growth. A fragment of an old map had led me to this place but I had no idea what to expect. The ground began to gently slope upward, at first barely noticeable. The vines along the ground grew thicker and shinier and some took on a blue-green tinge. Out of the corner of my eye, something caught my attention. Did that vine...move? Perhaps it was just a trick of the light, refracted through the overhead leaves nudge by a breeze. And yet I felt no breeze. The air was peacefully still.
I continued to push forward.
But before long, I could no longer deny it. Some the thicker vines WERE moving. A twitch here. And undulation there. And as I moved up the slope, they were getting thicker and bluer. Some were larger in diameter than the fez on my head.
The animal noise grew more distant and the trees began to thin. I moved through the fronds of large fern and into the light of a clearing. And then I saw it, towering before me.
In the middle of a large clearing on the top of this shallow mountain in the center of the jungle was a nautilus. A massive, giant, humongous nautilus. It's multi-hued spiral shell reached to the sky, many hundreds of planks in diameter. Larger than the abandoned apartment building in Gregarious Grange. The surface was dulled with age. Moss and plants grew upon it, and in places cracks spidered across it. The opening to the shell was at least four glitchen tall, and out of it extended what I had before had assumed were vines. But now I saw they were the tentacles of this gigantic sea beast. The pulsed and crept out of the shell and around my feet and stretched into the jungle behind me.
And as I stood there, paralyzed in awe (and more than a touch of fear), the face (if you could call it that) of the nautilus appeared from the shell opening.
A mass of squirming tentacles, both horrifying and beautiful. And two massing eyes, deep blue and each larger than my head. The pupils constricted in reaction to the light. The scanned the clearing before settling on me. From deep within that writhing maw and slow, halting, rumbling voice poured out.
"You are... small. Larger... than some. But... still... small. And... I sense... you are new. Newer than I... at least. Will... you hear... my word?"
I nodded because that is the sort of thing one does in situations like this.
"Once this place was... water. Sea. A great ocean. Blessed by the dreams of Grendaline. I swam. With my kin. We were... many. And... happy. We were... my kind... were not the smallest. Those smaller... we ate. But nor were we... the largest. Many... were bigger. And they ate... us.
"We lived and loved. And sorrowed and died. That is what... life does.
"But then the world... changed. Not all at once. A gentle change that even my kind... long lived and watchful... could not really perceive. The seas... fell. And my kind... fell. Until I was the last.
"As the waters drained... away, I came to rest. Here. And eon since, here is where I've rested. Thinking and remembering the time before.
"But... of the turns of Ur... my memories have become fractured and scattered and lost inside me. I do not... have much time remaining. Perhaps only a hundred years. Perhaps two hundred. Short. I wish only... to remember... by kin. My love and my spawn.
"Could you... small as you are... retrieve them for me? Crawl into my shell and the fragments of... memory... that I have forgotten?"
Again, I nodded. One does not say no to a giant beached ancient nautilus in the middle of a jungle. Or at least I never have.
The tentacles parted like living curtain of snakes and I gingerly stepped inside.
I expected to squeeze between the flesh of the beast and the inside walls of the shell. But it was old and had clearly lost much of its body mass. Once I moved past the first chamber, movement was easy. Light passed through the translucent shell, casting everything in blues and pinks. The beauty and serenity of the place is hard to describe. The feeling of being under crystal waters yet completely dry.
Physical movement was easy, but navigation was something else. At first I assumed that I could just go from chamber to chamber, each diminishing in size as I worked my way to the center of the spiral. But as I move deeper, it seemed space folded in on itself. And it seemed as the chambers go smaller, I got smaller. Through the walls of the shell, I could sometimes see shadows moving. Where those other glitchen, also search for fragments of memories?
The fragments were small and dim. As picked up the first one I found, a vision literally swam before me. A swimming vision or swimming. I was, for a brief moment, the nautilus in that ancient sea. But in mere second the image was gone. With each fragment another vision overcame me. Piece by piece, I witnessed a long and stunning life.
But that is the personal story of the Nautilus and is not mine share.
Once I'd gathered all the fragments, I winded my way back out the spiral and presented them to the Nautilus. He gathered them together, wrapping his shorter tentacle around the fragile things. His great eyes stared at them and then slowly closed. And the great thing gave a great sigh.
"I... thank you, small thing. As long as I am... I shall remember you."
The face (sure, let's stick with "face") slowly began to pull back into the shell. Just as it was disappearing into the dark, it spoke in a whisper.
"Do you wish to know the secret of the Giants? The truth? Or a truth? It is this....."
And it whispered words that changed how I think of the world. Words that turned and churned in my ears over the long trek out of the jungle. I don't know how important they really are. At least not now. It is a secret of sorts that... I'm not sure if I should share yet. The words may not even be true. But... if they are...
...if they are.... -
Some of the upcoming stories/tale:
- Series of Tubes: Inside Mail Distribution and Sorting Center
- The Silent City Beneath The Earth
- The Island of the Rubes
- Uncle Friendly & Helga: The Tragic Tale of Lost Love on the Isle of Ix
- The Days of the Stone Dragons
- The Cat Who Talked Through Walls - I cherish these most.
- I loved your stories, Bacon-o. You, in fact, inspired me to write some of my own, though not as awesome as yours, some day I may finally finish the story I've been meaning to write.
- I hope there will be a PDF collection for all of your stories!
- Your stories are so Glitchy, it warms my heart.
- Yep, yep, yep! What TomC said...please, before we close!
- The Cat Who Talked Through Walls!
- Nice!
- (Out of character: I forgot to add that many of these are basically just quest ideas I've had over the last two years. So they will mostly be slim on plot and big on imagery.)
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Bump.....and thank you, Lord Bacon-o, for all you did to make me chuckle and LOL these past 19 months. I appreciate your wit, your sense of humor and your enormous writing talents. Wishing you all the best,
GreyGoose. -
LBO, Thank you for writing these. When Alph Imagined Time has made its way in my mind to be just as true as the story that TS gives us. You wrote much of the history of Ur, and wrote it well. Thank you for that, and also for being a friendly, funny member of the community.
The story of the Nautilus is wonderful, and I eagerly await the rest of them. - Lord Bacon-o, you are inspiring and amazing and great. Thank you.
- Bump - more stories, please!