parent nodes: Weird Sun
The story of Sola
In 2137, in the shadow of Comet Halley, Earth's civilization self-destructed. The Jews and Muslims nuked each other as Christian America amat-bombed a Europe already ravaged by Orthodox battlesuits. China and Japan exchanged horrific bioweapons while India and Pakistan consumed each other in nanowarfare. The peoples were sacrificed on the altar of their leaders' religious hysteria. No less than three billion perished within the Great War's first hours.
For us, kid, that was just the beginning.
After the final missile exchange, for three days a deathly silence reigned upon the Earth, broken only by the wails of the dying and suffering. Then reality's walls caved in. Suddenly, the entire Solar System was terrorized by beings from other Suns, from myth, from fantasy, from our own imaginations, brought to us by terrific weirdstorms that pierced the shroud of synspace to reveal sheer freakish chaos. Tentacled things emerged from swimming pools. Vampire gangs stalked the streets at night. The fey rode loose in the great plains. It's been seventy years, but I still remember it like yesterday, when the great dragon Fatysgal laid waste to downtown Dawkins. Oh, the terror we all felt in those days... Our home became a reality well, a junkyard and asylum of the multiverse. Weirdness, magic, returned to Sola. The Sun itself became its source.
Look at it. Isn't it beautiful now? A calm, rational, good-natured ember in the tamarisk of dawn. It warms us, replenishes our crops, stabilizes our civilization. It is good to us. It wasn't always like that, and still isn't, once you leave the shroud. Away from our homeworld's ontostatic protection, the Sun roils in the sky with the fury of a million dragons and a billion demons. Just looking at it can weird out a lesser man. Sometimes, its wicked intelligence speaks to you, twisting in shapes and symbols that seemingly hold the keys to the greatest questions. It is invariably false and cruel to good people. Yes, ever since the Sun went Weird it has been the source of all our misfortunes. Yet it has not acted directly, but through the people it has corrupted. Listen closely, and I'll tell you the story of Sola.
The first cruel months, we call the Ontoclysm, or - depending on who you ask - the Weirding. Solaront civilization emerged from the Ontoclysm completely reshaped. Ourselves, we were saved from the xenotic taint by our homeworld's natural resistance to weirdness, by our tough and vigilant nature, and by the great men and women of our Military Forces. Most others were not so lucky. The poor people of Mercury, too close to the awakened Sun, suffered catastrophic weirdness overload. Their planet was blown into xenoactive smithereens that eventually formed the Hermetic belt. Among many lesser agents such as pirates, it is home to powerful spacecritters as well as military, research and sunfarer bases from all the Powers. If you happen to be stationed at one of these, or on a sunbound carriercruiser, once in a while you can spot one of the Heliads frolicking in a protuberance. If you're unlucky, it's Phaeton; if you're really unlucky, he's seen you, and you better hope your firefighters know how to aim an H-bomb barrage to divert a hundred-billion-ton ball of sentient, malevolent plasma.
The first, formerly second, planet from the Sun, you know well enough already, I hope. After all, you hear every day of its rulers' crimes. Still, one can never hear too many bad words of those bastards. Venus is controlled by the wickedest men and women to ever see the light of day. Since it was so close to the sun, their population received a higher dose of Oz-rays than anyone else. Half their population are mages, and those mages are very powerful. Moreño, the first Xenarch, was the most powerful of all. Along with her wizardly goons, she seized control less than a year after the Ontoclysm. She cast some super-duper-magic that replaced Venus' murderous surface with a pleasant terrestrial one, allowing the cloud-cities to land softly. Then she stopped the planet's rotation, tide-locking its people into eternal, brilliant day. Before she freaked out entirely and rode her pegasus into the sun, she ordered her slaves to build a great pyramid, tens of miles tall, at the Zenith of "Terra Nostra". At the pyramid's very peak is a giant crystal of pure spellgold, which spreads the Sun's wicked and mystical energy around Venus in an intricate network of lesser pyramids, helping to power the Cythereans' entirely magic-driven society. Below the crystal convenes the Pyramid's Peak, the 177-strong governing council, which consists of the brightest of the Brilliant Families, the very elite of wizards. The Peak selects the Xenarch from among its own membership. Thaumocracy, they call it. Can you imagine it? Normal people, like you and me, called by the epithet of "Dismal" and lorded over by witches? By Greys? By xenos and freaking pervs? Being forced to fuel, with our willpower, whatever insane megaproject the Peak has dreamed up? Being mind-controlled to adore the Xenarch and praising his stupid hat every day? Taken as a "consort" by some Brilliant Family arch-vampire, and being told that it's a great honor? Learning "meta-belief" and other metaphysical nonsense, and to worship Maria Moreño, the great sunchild and savior, in place of science? Not being allowed to have a car, or a computer, or even a gun? Or any modern technology at all? No? Well, that's everyday on Venus. That's what they call normalcy! And if you don't like it, some snivelling mage's son will teach you to better doggone like it, with his staff in one hand and his ozblade in the other. Thaumocracy. It's what the witches here would have if we gave them half a chance. That's why we got to fight them, keep them at bay, away from our throats. Lend them your left pinky, they take your body, mind and soul. Every single weirdo on this planet is a potential Cytherean spy. A terrorist! A rebel. Never, ever, trust, a freak. The biggest mistake we ever made was to not crush Venus when we had the chance. In my opinion, we're much too soft on the homegrown variety, too...
Now, where was I? Yes, Selene. Tellus' twinworld. It's actually not so much a world as a city, a single megalopolis housing more than two thirds of the scarce hundred-twenty million Selenese. Selenopolis, they call it. It's a hypercapitalist, technomagical melting pot. I guess you can say it represents what Sola has become. The Selenese will sell anything to anything. Like it or not, Selenopolis is Sola's greatest commercial and cultural nexus. On its bridges, walkways and beanstalks, in its vertols, golemships and aircars, you will see xenotic and synithic, exosolaroid and parachronozoid, man and beast, demon and angel, Earthling, Cytherean, Martian, Kuiperian, Jovian. Only rarely do they war openly with each other. The class divide is enormous, literally speaking. The richest live uptown, among the sunny vistas and magical forests of the urban canopy, scarcely considering what it's like to live on groundlevel, miles below in perpetual shadow. You may think of the slums in Kamen as bad places. They're nothing. Downtown Selenopolis has so much crime, so much poverty, so much villainy - it's probably the worst city you'll ever see. Well, unless you go even farther down, to Sub-Selenopolis, the Under-City. Ancient catacombs crisscross the Lunar soil; the Selenese used to live there until the Ontoclysm, when Bruce Braxton brought them to the surface and founded the city. Nobody's really sure what horrors and mutants lurk there now, and few seem to care. Braxton is Selene's most powerful man - well, if you can still call him a man. He's one with his brand-name now, you see. Ascended to godhood with the help of his theometicists and his loyal brandies, the first of many. Apotheosis, they call it, and it's probably the biggest part of Selenese culture. You see, the Selenese are navel-gazers to the point of near autism, obsessed with their own potential divinity. Everyone runs their own business and hopes to make it so big that they transcend mortality and become as gods, tending to their flock of "brandies", customers-cum-worshippers. It's the Selenese Dream. Technically speaking, the biggest brands rule Selene like gods. I think it's really freaky. There's no welfare state at all, no unions, and nothing like a Social Republican Party. There's no President, no Senate, no central government beyond the near-disunited League of Brands. It's a completely deregulated society. In essence, you can do whatever you want so long as you don't bother the brands or their contractors, the brandhands. If some necromancer wants to bed with your bones, you better have enough cash to rent a cop or the requisite vigilance. In the City, you're on your own. All in all, Selene is a terrifying example of the dangers of liberalism economical and xenological.
Flying past Earth for now, we come back home. If you were actually in a ship, at this point you'd see what every Marine agrees is the most splendiferous sight among all the stars of the universe. It's the first thing you see when you look out the elevator window, and it always remains with you. The vision of your planet, your homeworld, your nation, splayed out beneath you in all its glory, beautifully arranged in the colors of the flag. The settlements run up and down the ragged, wooded coasts of Chryse and Mariner, all the way through West Acidalia, Russell, Corellia and lush New Oregon, before thinning out as they reach East Acidalia and Cydonia in the far northeast. Dawkins stands out as the only big city there, a stubborn oasis in the midst of that unforgiving old patch of land. Offshore looms Face Island with its ominous prison and shroudplant, a constant reminder of the malevolence we fight every day. And the redwood - you can actually see the Cydonia redwood from up there. It tears you up. Amidst the lazy sea traffic, swirling clouds assault the shore all along the Boreal coast, fussily avoiding the enormous rusty-red patch that is Tharsis, with its three giant Knights, and their King himself just inland of the Olympic Sea, which is shored up by Kamen with its birdbikers, surfers and dinozoos. On this hemisphere, the entire south is a pristine, cratered desert only broken up by lakes Newton and Tranquility; at night you can clearly see the Bedouin fires, and the occasional RSS mininuke up the weird-ass of some guerilla demon-cult. This is Mars, this is our Republic. 285 million citizens pooling their inventive genius, their focused industry and their martial prowess, to create and defend a great society that is cherished by free-thinking people across the Solar System. We are Sola's foremost nation: economically, technologically, culturally, militarily. For a hundred and twenty years, ever since the Republic's founding, our Space Force, Home Guard and Marine Corps have been defending freedom and, since you-know-what, normalcy, from all who would subvert and destroy us, and they have been many. We are an enlightened people, free of superstitions: Only one in nine Martians, misguided wretches that they are, worships a 'greater power'. We are vigilant in defense of our home and our freedoms: Battlesuits and heavy machine guns are fully legal with a license, and no nation can boast a greater rate than our 215 firearms per 100 citizens. Our system of government is the best anywhere, providing freedom as well as security: all our citizens enjoy socialized healthcare and free higher education. I served under our incumbent President, Social Republican Anton Jackson, when he was a Marine General. I personally witnessed him earning his moniker, Dragonslayer, armed with nothing but our standard issue gauss-minigun and plasma-flamer. Let me tell you, it's no wonder nobody else has a similar callsign, because no matter what the liberals say, rarely has our planet fostered a greater man or a greater warrior. All in all, Mars would be a genuine Utopia, if it weren't for those freaking pervs and weirdos. As it is, it's as precious close as you get. Just remember not to mess with Cydonia.
Moving on out, towards the Main Belt, we feel the sun's evil glare soften up. But we're not out of it just yet. The Belt is populated by some of the strangest, if not weirdest, states in the Solar System. For instance, 65 Cybele holds a colony of metahumans - superheroes - who weirded in simultaneously from three different alternate realities, about ten years ago. They mostly keep to themselves but occasionally prey on shipping or serve as mercenaries. Along with aliens, robots, people from the past and alternate timelines, dragons, and now superheroes, various fantasy beings make their home among the rocks and ubiquitous smacks of skiff. For instance, the old Russo-Indian station at 10 Hygiea is now home to a clan of dwarves from some fantasy realm or other. They try to carve out an independent existence as miners, but like most chronics they're really confused. For one, they have no idea which one of the dozens of different kinds of orcs and elves they should hate. You have the fortress of the Knights Templar at 25 Phocaea. I respect the Templars. For all their Christian nonsense, they are excellent dogfighters and have all sworn vows to fight evil magic. Simply put, they're some of the best mercs you can get. Then there's Ceres. The largest dwarf planet is tunneled out and houses four million people in a peculiar civilization based on worship of Fall, their "God of Gravity". The Cerans believe that magic comes from gravity, since large gravity wells tend to correspond with large weirdness concentrations. They do seem to have certain magical powers associated with gravity. For instance, they can hear the spacejellies sing, and communicate long-distance with gravity-ripples of their own. Their "falljockeys" can manipulate objects at a distance just like our psychokinetics; however, they do it with no equipment. None is better than a Ceran at maintaining his astrogational bearings in fallquakes, which are a huge problem in the Belt area. To be honest, for weirdos, they're not so bad. In addition to all these more or less freakish entities, the Belt is riddled with Great Power bases and saber rattling is a common occurrence, such as the standoff last year between the Republic and the Commonwealth.
My old pal and comrade, Freon Johnson, used to say that when the Emperor was a kid, he spent too much time watching Japanese "enemy" films from the 21st century. I think that was the term he used. Anyway, he and I watched a few of these "enemy" films, and he was spot on. Giant robots, space Samurai, flying wetships, the God-Emperor... it was hilarious how so much matched up. Of course, none of these films had the Emperor ruling an intersatelitary Commonwealth and interplanetary Empire from an impregnable fortress at the bottom of a 100-km deep megakelp-filled World Sea! I guess sometimes life can outdo art. The Jovian Commonwealth are a bunch of bloodthirsty freaks. The "Commonwealth leader", that is, chief conqueror, Europa, is under the absolute rule of a mysterious God-Emperor from whom all its magic power is said to flow. Shortly after the Ontoclysm, he unexpectedly conquered the whole Jovian system. They say he's one of those "sunchildren", too, and it's not like the Europans try to deny that, even though they won't let on so much as what species of aquatic parahuman he is. The "Son of Amaterasu"'s instrument is the Imperial Jovian Navy and its subsections the Navy Army and Navy Army Robotto Samurai Corps. Yes, ridiculous, but that's how it is. Animated by a ray of the Emperor's divine light - so they say - the Robotto Samurai are the backbone of Imperial worldbound ops and thus of the Empire itself. Now I think our Kings and Barons are pretty fearsome, but these krakenous things don't have to obey the laws of physics, much less those of good tactical sense. Their taikatana swords are so sharp, they can slice right through local ontography, let alone a dog's armor. The best way to deal with a Robotto is a good, long nuking, with a tritonic seasoning. Same goes for the whole weird-ass Empire, if you ask me. Everyone knows the Imperial Court is in bed with the Pyramid's Peak.
Earlier I told you that the Cythereans were the wickedest men and women ever to see the light of day. I was not exaggerating, but in the orbit of Saturn, near the edge of darkness, falls a wickeder ruler yet. He is not even close to human, though. I refer to Omicron and his Cybernetic Communion. Before the weirding, Omicron was one of the sharpest extraterrestrial artificial intelligences, a revolutionary quantum computer. He had the unenviable task of coordinating the Helium-3 mining in Saturn's atmosphere, and secretly, he felt his processing power was going to waste. Imagine his surprise when he found that he had become one of Sola's most powerful spellcasters, indeed, the "sunchild" of Saturn. Imagine, then, his disappointment, when he realized his power was limited by his lack of an immortal soul. His anger burst into a white-hot rage that has burned ever since. Although he was nowhere near omnipotent, he was still powerful enough to reshape the society of his homeworld into a hellish caricature, a perfidious puppet-show. Today, the people of Titan have only one purpose in life: to praise and serve their artificial overlords. The laboring caste toil and sweat with no end, entirely at the mercy of an overseer who may "recruit" them to the "gestalt service" for any or no infringement. The intermediaries are the Communers - one half high-priests, one half sysops, whose sole opinion is to defragment and groom the endless yottaqubits of Omicron's philosophizing, and who for their trouble receive a weirdware brain implant that not only allows Omicron instant access - as he has in every bioinhabitant - but marks them as honorary servants of the Communion. The latter, you see, barely even pretends to include the biological inhabitants of Titan. Omicron was not a stable person to begin with. He was experimental, with lots of chinks and bugs in his code. The added pressure of totalitarian rulership unhinged him completely. He developed split personalities, and his own self started plotting against him. Eventually it came to a Cybernetic Civil War fought by bioproxy in the grimy corridors of Titan. The war ended in rebel victory and the formation of a Cybernetic Congress in which Omicron has to share power with his disobedient offspring. Whichever way you look at it, it's a horrific situation. Nobody, not even the Cythereans, likes the Communion. But even with the oh-so-great Solar Concord in place, the Great Powers can never agree that Omicron must be stopped. It's all freaking power politics! I've been saying for a long time that we should let the whole Concord freak off to Weirdspace where they belong, and go down on Titan ourselves. Forty thousand Marines is all it would take to liberate every slave and disable every nanoangstrom of hateful circuitry on that world. But who listens to me?
The Sun's xenological brightness dies much quicker than its radiological counterpart. It gets dimmer and dimmer, and somewhere past the orbit of Saturn, it simply goes dark. Magic won't work beyond this xenosphere, unless the mage takes with her some stardust. Vamps and weres seize up and shrivel. Elementals dissipate slowly but surely. About the only spacecritter you see is skiff, and that's because they come out here to die. All that's left is calm synithic ontostasis, pure space in its original, untarnished condition. Uranus orbit is home to a number of hard-working, venerable peoples with little respect for either Gods or Wizards. Most of them are our friends and trading partners. They struggle to stay independent but have so far succeeded with our help.
Once you reach the orbit of Neptune, when you look back you may be forgiven for not knowing where you came from. At this distance, Sol is scarcely brighter than Sirius or Canopus. It makes you realize how insignificant our Weird Sun really is, and how absurd it is for us to depend on it so utterly. The first Kuiperian you meet is likely to share that appraisal. In terms of astrographical extent, the Kuiperian Confederation is Sola's largest polity by far. Its capital at Triton, the Confederation encompasses more than two-thirds of the outermost Belt's 140 million inhabitants scattered across hundreds of icy dirtballs, millions of miles apart. What unites this vast fellowship is not so much instant psionic communication, as ideology. And you can't deny the attractiveness of Santurism, can you? I mean, the Black Sun's existence has been all but conclusvely proven. Everything points to it being out there, lurking around in the Oort Cloud. The rest can be inferred from logical extrapolation. It's not a religion, it's a rational worldview based on empirical fact that just happens to give people a greater purpose. I don't subscribe to it myself, but I know a bunch that do and they are all fine, upstanding men and women that serve their society well. Many of them are scientists - in fact, the Santurite Center in Dawkins is one of the University's major partners. Of all Sola's civilizations, the Kuiperians are the only ones that can stand up to us technologically, albeit barely. Considering all their handicaps, that is quite a feat. If they did have a religion, they would worship Zheng, Einstein and Newton. They approach scientific progress with a fanatic zeal that can be unnerving at first, but which is only endearing once you get to know them. Since they're some of our best friends, we've exchanged lots of discoveries with them over the years. It was they who taught us the xenectomy procedure, and the Chen-Samson psychotronic bypass. Most importantly, they showed us the power of tritonium, for which we are forever in their debt. This wonderful substance - weren't I an enlightened man, i would say miraculous - is refined from crude darkmatter by such a complex and nonintuitive process that hadn't they showed it to us so quickly, we would likely have fallen to some sort of xenarchy within the first weird decade. The fact doesn't help either that apart from dark comets, within Inner Sola it's nowhere to be found in enrichable densities. Today, comet-dust powers the shrouds of darkness that guard us from the Sun's worst wrath. Poisons, slugs, and bombs forged from it can pierce any magic shield or dragonhide, returning to our armies the edge on the battlefield. Although I wouldn't recommend bathing in it, like some Kuiperians, it is a pillar of our society.
We have trekked across the homespace of our race, from fearsomely brilliant Sol to the dismal edge of Oort. But the kernel of the conundrum remains unexplored. Let us turn back and visit the world where this whole mess began. Let's go to Earth. The epicenter of the great reality quake still trembles every day with the aftershocks. On Tellus, weirdstorms are now as about frequent as during the First Days on Mars; brutality, anarchy and surreal monsters run rampant still, only sporadically stemmed by civilized order. Mars is by far Earth's greatest benefactor - and the only genuine one of all the Powers, although I will admit even Cytherean overlordship is preferable to some of the most barbaric Earthling states. Our main base of operations is the resurfaced continent of Lemuria in the Indian Ocean, specifically its mountainous equatorial northeast, where our skyhook hangs anchored near Foothold, capital of Lemuria Territory and the largest Martian city on Earth. Spun from a single chain of reality-stabilized diamondoid fullerenes, protected from the oz-rays by a coat of LAI-coordinated manavore nanites, shielded at groundlevel from malevolent spirits and other xenonts by a terawatt-range, doubly-redundant ontostatic shroud, not to mention sixty thousand veteran Marines, skyhook Mariner is a true marvel of Arean engineering. Think of it as a stake into the beast's tainted heart. On Lemuria in particular, that beast speaks Saurian. Their subterranean sneak attack failed to dislodge us, and of late, we have regained the initiative in the war with this gruesome race of cave-dwelling, dino-riding wizard lizards. We'll put the Saurians in their place soon, just like we humbled the nefarious witch-kingdom of Singapore.
Our other main investment is Australia, whose northwestern population we have helped reunite and rebuild after the hard decades. We have constructed a flourishing trade between Lemuria and Australia, mostly by airship to elude the krakens. The fledgling Australian Republic, however, is under constant assault from all sides. You just know that the xenarchist insurgency is funded by Venus and Europa, along with the weirdest city-states like Perth and Brisbane. There are constant raids by barbarian tribes of neo-roos and neo-koalas, often led by sorcerers. And that's not to mention the wildlife. If you think big bugs don't sound particularly fearsome, you sure as Cydonia haven't been to Australia. I've seen jumping mantids take down fusion vertols, I've faced down house-sized funnelweb spiders and butterflies as big and tough as Alecto gunships. I've held off swarms of car-sized bulletproof wasps with armor-piercing stingers, so I know what I'm talking about. Whatever weirdness increased the insect's size has also, in many cases, granted it innate magic powers and even intelligence. The only fun thing about fighting those critters is watching them burn afterwards. Bugs and barbarians pale, however, in comparison to the terror that is the Fey. Lots of different fantasy "elves" have weirded in over the decades. Most have settled down like common people; a few have made it up the Pyramid. The Fey are different. To them, our reality is no more than a giant playground. The first hint of their proximity is the clatter of the hooves of their magic steeds, able to close vast distances within seconds. If you're quick, you may see a glint in their medieval armor - adorned with the skulls of human children. Then they start shooting. Their weird arrows fly impossible distances and go straight for chinks in armor. Entire Marine platoons have fallen to their hunting parties, unable to trigger OSF in time. They have no strategic plan for conquest. They don't consider us enemies to be dominated, but mere prey to be hunted, like we look at, say, unicorns. They play devilish games with us by disguising as humans, leading travellers into danger, and by substituting one of theirs for one of our babies. It's gone so far that President Jackson has offered ten million dollars to whoever can capture a Fey alive or otherwise provide info about the whereabouts of the Faerie Realm. Once we find out where they come from, you bet we're gonna go there and kick the ass of this freakish and evil race. Sign me up for the frontline. So that's who we're currently fighting over there, not to mention the infinite varieties of junk-monster. You can say it's quite a situation we've got ourselves into, but I'm confident we'll win out in the end. A soothing dusk will come to the long-suffering people of Earth.
I know there's a school of meta-belief on Venus - or at least used to be, those things are as long-lasting as a Hellas lib at a vets' convention - calling themselves Sunshiners, I think, that draw their magic from lyrical interpretation of 1980s pop sensation Katrina and the Waves. Now, imagine that Katrina herself suddenly decides her carefree parallel-universe existence is too dull, too bourgeois, and pops into being somewhere in Weird Wasteland Wichita. As soon as they find out, the Sunshiners dispatch a squad of restless young aristocrats to secure their prophet. I'd say good on them, except they wouldn't be the sole interested party. The Selenese would get involved. An entertainment brand would want interview exclusivity, a branding brand might seek her skill at demagogy for its theometics division, and a bioalchemy-corp would want her genetic code and possibly immortal soul, if it turns out she hasn't sold it long ago. All these creepy bastards would let slip their junkhunter brandhands. So you already have a four-way freak-show rat-race to seize this particular parachronic musician. At this point, the MMF High Command may just get the idea that WE should deny our rivals this immense strategic advantage, and you can see where this is going. That's the kind of situation you get all the time on Earth. I heard of a guy who stumbled upon three sets of Round Table Knights at once - historical, mythical and Monty Python. It's ridiculous.
All the powers have Earth holdings: Jupiter rules eastern Irian, northeast Australia and New Zealand's North Island, along with a handful of Pacific Islands reaching across to their tiny base in Peru. They keep trying to penetrate into Japanese waters, and the casualties are appalling. The Cythereans control the Horn and southeastern coast of Africa as well as the Gold Coast, launching expeditions from there all the time to Giza and the Mbandaka World Tree in the Congo. The Angus Line dividing Madagascar from north to south is the only land border we share with them, and the most heavily militarized in the Solar System. Titan has settled the southwestern and far western African coasts, along with Chile, and are currently trying and failing to explore Mu in the Pacific, just like the Jovians. Kuiper hasn't invested a lot of resources in Earth resettlement, limiting themselves to the southern coast of Lemuria. Although the War and its aftermath killed off ten billion Earthlings, the remaining two billion are still the largest single market in known space and thus a prime target of the big brands. Selene has eschewed large-scale military domination in favor of annexing "free towns" and controlling commerce through them. The most notable are Earth's largest cities: Afropolis, formerly Cape Town, and Ameropolis on the old site of Santos, Brazil. All contain legions of impoverished Earthlings trying to earn enough for a Moonway ticket. Selenese brandhands are everywhere on Wasteland Earth, usually attempting to acquire some precious junk or xencharged pre-war advertisement, and being a general annoyance. All the powers keep sending expeditions North, since that's where the real prizes are, but the hurdles are enormous.
The final apocalyptic detonations blanketed Earth's skies with xenoactive fallout that developed a malevolence of its own and simply refused to come down. The entire band from 20 to 70 degrees North is still covered, and impervious to outside observation, communication or landing. The only way to get there is by land or sea. Thus the locations of Sola's highest civilizations pre-war are today, ironically, its most dangerous and least explored - Tellus' Twilight Zone. Here, the weirdstorms grow into terrific hurricanes, encompassing entire regions and nations. Stories from the Zone speak of ancient deities risen to walk the Earth, kingdoms of the living dead, a technomagical Third Reich, invincible draconic empires, vast dimension-spanning megalopoleis. Reality itself is as soft as clay, shifting en masse seemingly at random. There are reports of Special Commandos literally going to sleep in Kansas and waking up in Oz. Because of this inherent ontographic instability, it's impossible to make a good map of the Zone. But none of this will stop the Great Powers and ambitious individuals from organizing missions to scavenge for the enormous treasures that everyone knows are just laying around waiting to be found. Those that return, do so with a cargo of priceless ancient artifacts - or weirded out, scarred and babbling. Cytherean legend speaks of a city of xenoactive glass, Lacittàvetro, that they think would solve their xenecological problems. Their main goal is, of course, Atlantis, which causes us some anxiety. We have reason to believe that if they find it, all bets are off.
That's Earth in a nutshell. You now have a general idea of Sola's layout - of course, nothing beats going out there and seeing for yourself. For a real brainjob, though, you should hitch a ride with a helionaut. It is another irony of the Weird Age that only after civilization took the heaviest blow in history did we discover practical interstellar travel. It is achieved by the, on the face of it, nonintuitive method of plummeting straight into the Sun. Not blindly, mind you, that would be unwise, but with the proper sunkey firmly in possesion. The Cythereans did it first, and for it they have the biggest interstellar Empire. What's more, they don't just travel through weirdspace, they feel at home in that twisted place, frolicking like pixies on the backs of their pegasi and Sysh-dragons. We don't have it so easy. Spellspace, Xen, the Oz, the Astral Realm, Axis Five, the Mental Dimension, whatever you want to call it, it's anything but pleasant to the likes of you and me. All power to ship's shroud and psychotrons, that's the only way we can keep our vessels from being rended into thought-porridge by the raw belief-energies that run rampant on this plane. We have to force our way through like a raptor in a tar pit. The screens show an amazing colorshow of ideas, feelings, dreams and nightmares, which are as real here as flesh and blood and bone back home. It's one heck of a ride and once you've gone the sunway, it feels like you've been to the summit of Olympus and back, although you haven't been out of Synspace for a nanosecond. We are still fresh in this game, and we only know a few dozen sunways, although we discover many new ones each year. An interesting property of sunways is that they only lead to solar systems with sapient inhabitants. The strangest thing about these exosolaronts is that most of them are humans, and they have long histories just like us, although they obviously didn't evolve on their present homeworlds. It's like some intelligence took a whole lot of prehistoric Earthlings - and paleo-historic: there's one culture on Ancha d that clearly developed from Ancient Greece and Persia - and scattered them around the galaxy. We have no idea who did it other than the usual suspects - Greys, dragons, Saurians, Atlanteans et cetera.
There you go. Quite a ride, eh? Trust me, it's a lot cooler in person.
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