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And in the times of Fire and Faith

Started by AncientProphecy, June 18, 2017, 10:52:42 AM

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AncientProphecy

There was a different time in a different galaxy. The people of Urlot, the largest moon of a gas giant Drumfinia, went about their lives as they have always done, when they beheld a dark sphere rising in their purple sky. Vast and terrible the sphere was, with tendrils of black, darker than a tomb, promising doom and despair.

The people of Urlot ran in terror to their homes and fortifications, to the shining walls of their city. Those walls withstood the unrelenting torrents of time and foe alike, and it was said that not even diamond could make so much as a scratch in their mirror-like surface. The people of Urlot then begged their gods for salvation, and the gods came and stood with their people before the shining walls.

The terrible, wriggling and quivering tendrils from the dark sphere grew closer and closer, resolving into vast swarms of flies and mosquitos and mice and rats and other things which thrived on blood and decay and pestilence and starvation and death followed in their wake.

The people of Urlot launched their bombs and their arrows at the ever-spreading Darkness, their gods hurled lightning from the skies and sent their whirlwinds out to destroy. But so vast were the hordes of their foes, that they saw no choice but to retreat beyond their great walls and weather this storm like so many before.

It is not known how many minions of darkness broke their teeth on the shining Wall of Urlot, but as one wave perished, another was always there to replace it, and then another and another. For centuries they tried to breach the Wall, but they could not even make a scratch.

This was the time when the Leader arose from the heart of the dark, and thusly He spake: "I'm surrounded by incompetence!"

And so He loaded Himself into the largest of siege cannons and aimed at the wall. The cannon fired and for a brief moment, there was silence. Then, with a terrible roar, a cloud of fire and dust and broken defenses appeared, and its shape was that of a fungus, such as thrives on dead things and when the dust settled, naught was left of the wall and the city beyond it lay dead, and its people lay dead, and their gods lay shattered and broken among them, and only The LORD of Darkness stood unscathed in the ruins.

And the sphere of darkness left, carrying with it the surviving Urloti in chains, to be used as food for their Great Leader and to fight in arenas for His amusement and to rub His feet. Now, a new target was on His mind. A little blue speck in an unremarkable solar system on the outskirts of one of the spiral arms in the galaxy the natives called Milky Way.

He is coming, so sayeth the prophecy.

Claireliontamer


AncientProphecy

#2
Oh, come on! Someone bite already!  >:(

*Sigh* My fault, I suppose, for burying the clues in Scientology bullshit... Trouble is, with them, you can never tell if they are for real or just... Ah, screw it. BRB.

Asmodean

Yes... Well... Let's try this again, shall we?

Thank you for the cringy introduction, my faithful sock puppet.

This... Is probably going to be long. I will attempt not to follow too many lines of thought at once, and to summarise and abbreviate, but as you well know, I've been gone for some time and... Many things happened, and I do have a lot to say. So without further ado, let us start at the beginning.

As some of you know, I've been busy helping migrate the company I work for over to a new IT platform. It was a time-consuming ("all-consuming," I may as well have called it) process - from establishing the wants and needs and researching the possibilities and solutions to questions, some of which we never even thought to ask, to giving our colleagues enough knowledge and support for them to feel sure-footed enough to keep doing good work amidst the storm of source code and servers. This process is now complete, though a clear line is impossible to draw in a gradient like this. Life is returning to its more usual ebb and flow and oh! I have a three weeks long vacation starting with the last week of this month.

So yeah... Back 'n shit. Good to see the familiar faces. I think I saw a new face or two as well. If that be the case and you are still reading, hello! Asmo. Pleasantries.

Having spent 14-15 hours a day in front of the screen working on work-related issues, I have not been too inclined to follow my internet connections, so I'm hopelessly out-dated on the latest goings-on here at HaF. Some reading to do. Now I have me some new bionic eyes to do it with though. I've got lens implants and girl, they are a-mazing!

But enough about me. What have you been up to? What has the world been up to?

Let's see... London fire and Manchester Arena attack... My sympaties to those who lost - be it life, health or loved ones, or their own sense of security and/or what little they had left of their faith in humanity. Same goes for the Truck'o'Muhammed situation, which... Is a-whole-nother story. I was going to open with a verbose argument against Islam, but decided against it. Controversy will come, but not on The Day of Return.

Also, for you in the UK, I think it's a shame that Brexit seems to claim more of a shit storm now than it did before. A coalition government, the leadership's crumbling veneers of competence... Not good. Good for the EU, though, but I have my beef with them. For one, they are appointed, not elected, and they appoint like-minded left-wing globalists more often than not. In doing so, they lack the perspective having to always deal with opposing views brings to the table. In that regard, a hereditary monarchy would make a better system - now that the old king is dead, perhaps the new one will be a Republican, so to speak. Again, a thread for another day. This is actually something I'd like to discuss here, as I am aware of HAF-ers holding various views with various degrees of passion on this issue, whose opinions I would find interesting.

What else... The Tumblr feminist movement seems to be crumbling, praise Asmo! Oh, and it seems to be taking the SJW clowns with it - or is it the opposite, perhaps? I applaude their demise, not that my corner of the issue is that much less messy. Still, the dwindling of those crowds claiming to speak for... Well, me, for instance, and then speaking in direct opposition to what I think and/or care about... Getting side-tracked again. The dwindling is nice, and I do hope thay take the Black Lives Matters racists and hooligans with them down the drain.

Oh! This reminds me! Did you catch that Bill Maher shit when he was publicly flagellating himself over having said the word "nigger" (I think it was)? From what I understand, he didn't even really call any one "nigger," but used the word in context much in the same way as I am doing right now. And now he's all sorry and shit because words, they hurt the precious fie-fies of the black community! Well, maybe they do, but without proper context, words are just an array of sounds or symbols. They don't mean jack shit. In their respective context, however, they can mean things so different as to be polar opposites. For example, me calling you a cunt does not in itself pre-suppose malice or even lack of respect and can, in fact, mean the exact opposite... Not to mention that if a certain community uses a word, but tries to deny others its usage... That's kind of what "discrimination" means. This one is a discussion we've had several times in different shapes, but if any one feels the calling to pick up this torch again, I will be happy to dust off my arguments.

...And then there is Trump. On the positive side, I was wrong about that one. He's not as disastrous to the global, uh, well... He's not as bad for ME as I feared he would be, to the point where I can say that my very indirect and highly overseas support of Hillary's candidacy was a mistake. On the negative side, I may well have been wrong about him actually holding the office for a full term. Even if he does, I see possibilities there of him becoming little more than a puppet for those keeping his orange bottom in contact with his throne's cushion. I detest the thought of New World Order conspiracists being vindicated by the actions of that man. That said, I don't buy the complexity some people assign to this whole Russia vs. The Free World situation. Personally, I think Moscow is playing a far simpler game - they support those they assume to be friendly to their wants and needs, such as lifting the sanctions here and there and letting them play in their own sandbox as they please. I highly doubt Putin's government is dumb enough to think that they can manage the logistics of having even a significant part of the Western Bloc under their thumbs. So no, I don't think they support the populists to "destabilise" Europe - Europe does that job very well all by itself, thank you very much, and no, I don't think the Russians necessarilly wanted trump at the helm of the United States - more that they didn't want the more openly-hostile to them Hillary there.

But.. Screw everybody's opaque politics. This is the Day of Return, and there ought to be cake.
Quote from: Ecurb Noselrub on July 25, 2013, 08:18:52 PM
In Asmo's grey lump,
wrath and dark clouds gather force.
Luxembourg trembles.

Dave

YAY, welcome back O Great One, your wisdom and wit have been sorely missed.
:not worthy:
Tomorrow is precious, don't ruin it by fouling up today.
Passed Monday 10th Dec 2018 age 74

jumbojak

You should hop on the bus Asmo. All the cook kids are taking a ride.

"Amazing what chimney sweeping can teach us, no? Keep your fire hot and
your flue clean."  - Ecurb Noselrub

"I'd be incensed by your impudence were I not so impressed by your memory." - Siz

Asmodean

Quote from: jumbojak on June 18, 2017, 01:53:34 PM
You should hop on the bus Asmo. All the cook kids are taking a ride.
Not getting the reference properly, methink  :headscratch:
Quote from: Ecurb Noselrub on July 25, 2013, 08:18:52 PM
In Asmo's grey lump,
wrath and dark clouds gather force.
Luxembourg trembles.

Claireliontamer


Sandra Craft

Quote from: AncientProphecy on June 18, 2017, 12:51:41 PM
Oh, come on! Someone bite already!  >:(

*Sigh* My fault, I suppose, for burying the clues in Scientology bullshit... Trouble is, with them, you can never tell if they are for real or just... Ah, screw it. BRB.

I thought it was the start of an SF story, and was checking in to see if there was any more to it.  But I guess it's OK that the Grey God is back too. 
Sandy

  

"Life is short, and it is up to you to make it sweet."  Sarah Louise Delany

Ali

What part of Trump's presidency thusfar has made you think you were wrong to support Clinton (albeit from afar?) I've heard of people who supported him and now regret it, but you are the first that I've heard say "I didn't support him then, but things are going so well now..."

Welcome back, BTW. I don't know if I should feel more or less frightened if The Asmo is standing outside the bus with me.

Firebird

Welcome back, that project sounds like a real bitch. Though I take issue with your characterization of Black Lives Matters, but plenty of time to hash it out later.
"Great, replace one book about an abusive, needy asshole with another." - Will (moderator) on replacing hotel Bibles with "Fifty Shades of Grey"

Ali

Quote from: Firebird on June 18, 2017, 08:50:51 PM
Welcome back, that project sounds like a real bitch. Though I take issue with your characterization of Black Lives Matters, but plenty of time to hash it out later.
Yeah, I decided to let that pass because I didn't have the energy. But I am curious enough to ask about the Trump thing.

Asmodean

To be clear, I did not characterize the movement, just called the poisonous stuff for what it is, as in "racists and hooligans within Black lives matter" not "Black lives matter as a bunch of racists and hooligans"

But yes, we do can pick this up later. I can offer some outside perspective, what with being somewhere, where race is more or less a non-issue.
Quote from: Ecurb Noselrub on July 25, 2013, 08:18:52 PM
In Asmo's grey lump,
wrath and dark clouds gather force.
Luxembourg trembles.

Arturo

From what I understand, it was Russian communities, not the government, that stirred up trouble on the internet and made it more likely for an circus monkey to be elected president.

But welcome back asmo!
It's Okay To Say You're Welcome
     Just let people be themselves.
     Arturo The1  リ壱

Tom62

Quote from: Arturo on June 19, 2017, 04:36:11 AM
From what I understand, it was Russian communities, not the government, that stirred up trouble on the internet and made it more likely for an circus monkey to be elected president.

But welcome back asmo!

I think that there were many people who were clever enough not to vote for Clinton and many people who were stupid enough to vote for Trump  ;).
The universe never did make sense; I suspect it was built on government contract.
Robert A. Heinlein