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Here we go!

Dreams of Alpha Lupi

The blaze sits inside a nest of little worlds, still too distant to share its heat but plainly staring out at you. A face emerges, drawn from plasmas and radiation...

There must be meanings in its roar.

You listen hard and carefully, and sometimes a lucid melody seems to rise out of random noise. Joy builds, and the first hope in ages transforms you.

It seems important, even critical, to tell every star from here to the black between the galaxies that you will be strong again.

The Dreams of Alpha Lupi series of cards are heavily centered upon The Traveler. This first card comes from the Signal Received desktop that was rewarded at the end of the Alpha Lupi mini-ARG and the geomantic symbol beside it was for the sun.

Beyond.

It is a place, a place casting shadows and emotion.

It's a real place, I know.

One hot blue sun, say. And other suns too. Five? I like seven better. What I'm recalling is a giant star with a family of six smaller suns, and you could spend days and nights counting all of the planets circling those suns...except there are no planets. Not anymore. The powers in charge have carved up all of the worlds, and maybe a brown dwarf or two for good measure. With that rubble, they fashioned a topologically creative enclosure, a twisting of space and time sealed behind doors that admit only those who know the magic words. The bones of a hundred planets have been cut smooth and laid out like a floor, a polished and lovely floor creating vast living spaces. A floor bigger than ten thousand worlds, catching the fierce glory of the seven suns. For light, for food. For beauty. And nothing escapes. Not heat, not gravity. Not even the faintest proud sound.

It could be anywhere. It can live in the cold between galaxies, or folded up inside matter, near enough to touch right now...

I remember it and maybe it's exactly as I describe it. Seven suns wrapped inside magic. Or it's something else entirely, perhaps. A place still fat with life. An abundance of sentient souls, some decent, maybe a few of lesser quality, and everybody stands about or floats about, or they bounce between dimensions. The point is that the residents of this hidden realm live inside a bottle so perfectly hidden that they can't see beyond their own borders. Which shapes a mind in very specific ways.

But, Beyond is their name for a mysterious, doubtful realm that they can't see.

Which is us, of course.

Suns, mysterious dimensions, the number 7? Next you'll be telling me that there's a power hungry AI taking over planetary networks... Oh hi Rasputin! What are you doing here!

Ghost Fragment: Darkness 2

The universe is a beast.

The body is made from tiny stuff, from near-nothings. From atoms swimming through a blood of crackling sparks. Simple, eternal Laws shape the beast. The largest galaxy is ruled by principles of mass and motion. Electrons are slaves to charge and to chance. And this is why the universe feels inexhaustible, eternal.

No sun complains about its death. Life is the problem. Life can be woven from flesh or circuit or thoughtful light. Origins don't matter. But small, half-smart creatures have a fierce talent for denying the inevitable, for balking and complaining about injustices that don't exist and consequences that should be borne in silence.

Life, like suns, are seen by The Darkness as a short lived anomaly that should stop complaining about its end?

Granted, even all put together it's not much, but wouldn't it be cool if it was! :)