| All hyperlinks from the original thread are preserved on this page (including the title). Links that have been inserted onto this page by editors are denoted like this. |
| Book Information | |||
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| Archived Link: | The Elder Scrolls Forums Imperial As Is |
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| Writer(s): | Michael Kirkbride Darya Makarava |
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| Publication Date: | 28 April 2012 | ||
The following passages, co-written by Michael Kirkbride and Darya Makarava, were posted to the Official Elder Scrolls Forums under the forum thread: "I don't pretend to know what love is for everyone." Makarava mentioned that this story is directly paying homage to the setting concepts of Battlespire and Redguard.
Professor Numinatus (pronounced "New-mi-nah-tiss" according to Kirkbride) was mentioned on the forums before this text in a brief introduction. The Morbâd character in this story previously appeared in Tiber Septim's Sword-Meeting with Cyrus the Restless. The Jauffre mananaut character here speaks to the motivation of the Blades, and Martin is referred to—suggesting that it is the same character that we meet in Oblivion.
Issue One: "Meanwhile, in the Empire"
A story in 16 pages
Page 1
Panel 1 - Wide across the top of the page. An indistinct magical-military installation, window ports looking out into the stars. Various figures: upright naval officers, strangely-attired apprentice wizards hunched over gel screens, a ghost warrior speaking to a skeletal servant holding a clipboard. The speech balloons here are floating; no indications of their speakers. It doesn't matter for now, but they do follow a pattern from left to right.
Voice One: The chronocules are acting jelly on the eyeball again, sir.
Voice Two: I can see that plain enough, corporal. Switch their senses to aromatic. Maybe I can sniff him out, wot?
Voice Three: All hands/ All hands/ Incoming dreamsleeve transmission from the Morbâd Obesse of the Warspore A Right and Earnest Try for NVN ranks Praeceptor and above/
Voice Four: Least they warned us little people this time. Last I felt a Morbâd, I couldn't see any colors I knew for a week.
Voice Five: Hush that talk and help me put in me eye-slugs, already. And who's the skeleton?
Panel 2 - A staunch Admiral looking down at a gel-screen, a pool of liquid sitting in a brass and wire bowl sent into an intricate console. The Admiral looks very cross. Beside him is a minor bureaucratic clerk of the Nibenese fashion, goggles on, tattoos bright with sweat.
Admiral: Really? Seriously? I thought our ghost channel was secure from the Morbâdoon.
Clerk: Oh, normally they are, sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir.
Admiral: You're clicking. I hate that.
Clerk: Quite right. I am. Em. Em.
Panel 3 - On the gel screen, its contents leaking onto the console as the fat, crazed face of the Morbâd tries to materialize.
Morbâd: Admiral Beauchamp? Is that you? It's difficult for me to make you out. Stick your finger into it. Try for my face.
Panel 4 - As Panel 2, neither the Admiral or the Nibenese clerk have moved at all.
Admiral: I most certainly will not. You've already braincasted into my channel without even asking. I'd ask you to explain yourself.
Clerk: Em. Em. Em.
Morbâd: Your clerk is clicking.
Admiral: I know. It's incredibly embarrassing.
Morbâd: I can imagine. Forgive the breach in protocol, but we have a mutual problem. The whole Empire has a problem.
Clerk: Em. Em. Em.
Panel 5 - As Panel 1: Everyone is shaken by the Morbâd's gigantically-loud declaration, which appears in every gel screen or window port. The skeleton shatters apart.
Morbâd: WE HAVE TO FIND PROFESSOR NUMINATUS!
Page 2
Full page splash - A Reman-Era Megalomothship descends on an Imperial Colony of the Secunda moon, its four wings spread out majestically, sending up clouds of vibrant lunar dust, a proud, ancient ziggurat roped, strapped, fused, and otherwise impossibly-secured atop it. Imperial mananauts turn away from its descent, as if the silvery glow of it all was too much to bear. Skeletal servitors ignore the whole thing, directing crate-drivers or simply holding more clipboards.
PROFESSOR NUMINATUS [BALLOON]: Why all of the yelling?
PROFESSOR NUMINATUS [BALLOON]: Honestly, people, it makes this all seem rather desperate. Some decorum for His Majesty, I remind you.
ADMIRAL [BALLOON]: Professor Numinatus! Is that you?
PROFESSOR NUMINATUS [BALLOON]: On our way, Admiral.
COUSIN: Adjusting thorax for lunar regular, Professor. I absolutely hate what it does to my coloring.
PROFESSOR NUMINATUS [BALLOON]: I know, love. We shan't be long, I promise.
TITLE CARD: Meanwhile, In the Empire
✶✶✶
COMMERCIAL BREAK:
NEXT WEEK ON MORROWIND'S 10TH ANNIVERSARY
FOUR MORE DAYS.
Page 3
Panel 1 - An Imperial Mananaut, whose suit is differentiated from others, signifying perhaps a higher rank, holds a mangifying glass up to one of the numerable eyelets in his helmet, eyeing the landing of the mothship.
Imperial Mananaut: Glass confirms it's the Professor, Admiral. His megalomoth is following proper lunar size dilations. Safe landing expected.
PROFESSOR NUMINATUS [BALLOON]: Ah, good to see you, too, Jauffre. This must be something serious if they've brought you moonside, old boy.
Imperial Mananaut Jauffre: It's bad. You've no idea.
Panel 2 - Professor Numinatus, inside Cousin's main control room, seated, backlit so we have yet to see his face, but it's obvious that he's wearing a naval cap of some kind. Jauffre, the Admiral, the Morbâd, as well as other Imperial servants appear on multiple gel-screens.
Cousin: Doing ever so hard to secure us a safe landing.
Professor Numinatus: Forgive them their sins, love. When you pout, the whole cockpit gets itchy.
Professor Numinatus: And why am I reading three billion life forms nearby? Are we phased correctly?
Panel 3 - Back inside the magical-military installation, on the Admiral and his clerk. This small panel overlaps the upper left corner of the next
Admiral: Your phase is fine, Professor, and those readings are correct. Certain precautions had to be taken this morning.
Clerk: They shouldn't have the ability to detect them. Em. Em.
Admiral: Oh, do and go get yourself to the reset chambers.
Panel 4 - Large panel, above the Lunar Colony. Cousin has landed. A southern cargo area is littered with countless silver spheres, penned-in and guarded by juggernauts of the Imperial Legion.
PROFESSOR NUMINATUS [BALLOON]: Oh my. Those spheres are... each one is a contingency chrysalis!
ADMIRAL [BALLOON]: Yes, it was a full evacuation, Professor.
Panel 5 - On one of the silver spheres: each is filled with countless humanoid shapes. This small panel overlaps the lower right corner of the one above.
COUSIN: They've gone insane, Amiel.
PROFESSOR NUMINATUS [BALLOON]: Never call me that on an open channel when we're working.
Page 4
Panel 1 - As Page 3, Panel 2, but Professor Numinatus has risen, preparing to disembark. Still backlit, the fact that he's wearing a cape becomes obvious.
Professor Numinatus: But you're right, Cousin.
Professor Numinatus: A single contingency chrysalis can, at best, hold four thousand souls synchubating inside itself for fifteen hours before everyone inside begins to bleed their memories together. Then they all mega-ghost.
Panel 2 - Behind the Professor as he walks down a corridor of the mothship, running a finger down one of its stone-and-flesh walls.
Professor Numinatus: A swirl-thought monster outside of the regulated planar wheels, driven mad by conflicting desires...
Cousin: You're tickling me.
Professor Numinatus: ...I know. Conflicting ideas of escape...
Cousin: Harder.
Professor Numinatus: ...as you wish. Conflicting ideas of who and where and when...
Professor Numinatus: ...and all of it draped in that singular fear of I ARE ALL WE.
Panel 3 - Behind the Professor as he walks down another corridor of the mothship, this one lined with weapons, paintings, hosiery, masks and capes and ward-staves, porcelain idols and floating baubles, magical apparati of unguessed function.
Professor Numinatus: Remember what happened at the Isle of Artaeum?
Cousin: Which time? It kept vanishing.
Professor Numinatus: The time we saved it, Cousin. It doesn't do that anymore.
Panel 4 - Behind the Professor as he walks up to an airlock. It's opening on his approach, the lunar light flooding the hall.
Cousin: I don't remember that at all, love. Have you been storing secrets in your second brain again?
Professor Numinatus: Heavens no, that one belongs to you. My third.
Professor Numinatus: But the point remains, Artaeum was caught in a Belharzian synchro-null blossom-loop by just one broken contingency chrysalis.
Professor Numinatus: So I really have to ask...
Page 5
Panel 1 - Large near-splash, the Professor wearing his most beautiful velvet and filigree uniform as First Sea Lord of the His Majesty's New Void Navy, striding down the exit ramp to be met by Jauffre and other assembled Imperial Mananauts.
Above them all is Tamriel, blue and oceanic, but with no continents at all.
Professor Numinatus: ...what were you lot thinking?!?
COUSIN: Cousin, look up.
Professor Numinatus: Three billion citizens! Caught in an unstable enchantment that we can barely understand!
Imperial Mananaut: She's right, sir. If you would kindly raise your gaze and--
Professor Numinatus: We have the spare continent for these kinds of evacuations!
Panel 2 - On Jauffre, a small inset panel.
Imperial Mananaut Jauffre: No we don't, Professor. Told you it was bad. All landmasses on Mundus have, well, absconded. They're simply not there anymore.
Panel 3 - On Professor Numinatus, looking up, frowning.
Professor Numinatus: Martin's balls, they've gone on strike again.
Page 6
Panel 1 - Borderless panel, a small portrait of Cousin in her college years at Gwylim University, a pale thing of 16 years, auburn hair worn in the Western-style, jewelry hanging from ears, eye, and lip. The text is that follows is above and below her face.
Cousin (top text): I am setting up the tea room in your second brain, my love. If you might permit me a slight nostalgia, I thought we might like midsummer afternoon, the riverside collection. Trying to get the color wash just right, but there's lunar interference. Summoning filter imps now, I hope you don't mind. There. Perfect.
Cousin (lower text): They're nervous, Amiel. Not the Navy or the rest of the Imperial functionaries; they're always nervous. I mean the three billion inside the silver spheres. I'm afraid the ancestoradiation my form is giving off is mixing into their multiminds. The enchantments used in this evacuation technique is from an older age, remember, and none too human. Poor souls. Stay good, cousin. We have much work to do and we all need you at your best.
Panel 2 - Jauffre and the Professor march towards the Colony Sanctum. Imperial Legionnaires with temporary breathing-bubbles surrounding their half-helms salute as they pass.
Professor Numinatus: So every last bloody landmass. Gone.
Imperial Mananaut Jauffre: Yes, Professor. Slid into the Biting again. This time, they were kind enough to give a full writ of terms for their return.
Professor Numinatus: We are the Emperor's Finest, Jauffre, and we do not give in to the demands of terra firma.
Panel 3 - The Professor stops to sign a clipboard of a skeletal servitor with a brightly-colored quill. He frowns at Jauffre, as if considering the options.
Imperial Mananaut Jauffre: Was never our intent, old friend. Wouldn't have the Morbâdoon hiss-pissing into our brainpans if it were. This op is Imperial Designate: NUMINIT.
Professor Numinatus: Right then. And is His Majesty safe?
Imperial Mananaut Jauffre: Aye. The Council jill-jaunted him and the whole of the royal family into Mundus Redundant when all of this started.
Panel 4 - Jauffre and the Professor press further towards the Colony Sanctum, its wide and strangely-medieval fortress walls slowly grinding a twin swaths of moondust outwards on the ground.
Professor Numinatus: When am I not at my best, dear heart?
Imperial Mananaut Jauffre: Excuse me, Professor?
Professor Numinatus: Apologies, Jauffre, I'm speaking to Cousin. She's fretting, or thinks I might start. Sliding brains into extrasensorium for a bit.
Imperial Mananaut Jauffre: Of course. I'll guide your body the rest of the way to Sanctum Secunda. Tell the old girl hello for me. It's been too long.
Panel 4 - On Professor Numinatus, his eyes floating up behind his eyelids.
Professor Numinatus: Oh, please. She'll always be sixteen. Won't you, [UNREADABLE TEXT]?
Page 7
Panel 1 - Full page splash of the tea room, which is more of a riverside gazebo, really.
Professor Numinatus and Cousin are dancing a slow waltz. He's in his Nibenese court dress now, robes and silks and jewels, all of his tattoos floating a few inches from his flesh.
Cousin is happy to the point of ecstasy, her head on his shoulder, her hair down and done up in bright curls.
The midsummer light is as perfect as she said. Portraits of the Nume family recline against the gazebo pillars or simply floating in the imagined air.
Even in this imago-sleeve, the Professor's left hand is a half-organic bouquet of oddly-shaped keys, holding her right without a care.
Cousin: I love it when you say my name.
Pages 8-9
Double page spread, high angled down. Professor Numinatus and various NVN officers, Imperial dignitaries, Warspore Battlemages, servitors, clerks, and scuttlefish luminaries stand on discs of light just above an outspread map of a Tamriel, its continents in their right positions as the world we knew. Include the Admiral, Jauffre with his Mananaut bag-helmet in his hand, the Morbâd, and the clicking Clerk. Use small head shots to document the speakers here, each with an appropriate expression.
Admiral: We've pulled out the emergency background maps from the ur-chive, Professor. A perfectly preserved rendition of our world with, well, something we can actually set foot on, if needs must. If even we must all learn to live with some pictel stray.
Imperial Mananaut Jauffre: We'd have to completely drain the reserve realities to even begin to jackboot this thing. As far as the Blades are concerned, this is Last Resort.
Admiral: That'd be a good name for it, Brother Jauffre. Ha! But it's all very well Morbâdoon-approved, so fix your frown. The Council undersigned everything before they were jaunted. Standing on one of your old ideas, Professor, wot? How does it feel?
Professor Numinatus: They were my part of my eschatonical thesis, Admiral. They look a bit crayon now.
Admiral: Still...still a right keeper, these. I sometimes do a little dance on them to feel like I'm gigantic.
COUSIN: You created a black-up sleeve of the whole of our histories. When did you find the time?
Professor Numinatus: (Shh. One history.) Thank you, sir. And all to your pleasure, sir.
Imperial Mananaut Jauffre: Ahem. We're running out of the time we actually still have on this side of the opera. In thirty-six minutes, seventy-five hundred contingencies mega-ghost all at once.
Professor Numinatus: Jauffre's being a bit boring but he's right. It's Imperial As Is or it's nothing.
Admiral: The gods agree. They ever so hate a remake. And we were hoping you, well, had a plan.
COUSIN: You're telling me we have a third Pocket World at our disposal, love?
Professor Numinatus: (I do things in threes. And I inserted imperfections. Just in case.)
Imperial Mananaut Jauffre: Professor? You're sense-sliding again. Ungracious that, given the circumstances. What say you?
Professor Numinatus: Oh, I'm sorry. I thought I already said it.
COUSIN: Nope.
Imperial Mananaut Jauffre: If you said it, you did not in plain.
Morbâd: The Morbâdoon wills the Imperial As Is, Professor.
Clerk: Or it's nothing. Ing. Ing. Ing.
Admiral: We have an open choir to His Majesty if you want to say something, Professor. He says the hell with the Morbâdoon if it comes to that. "Do as thy wilt."
Imperial Mananaut Jauffre: Ach, I cannot suffer another... versioning.
Scuttlefish Luminary: We will repair the oceans, Professor, whatever your decision.
Professor Numinatus: I already gave my decision! What's wrong with you lot?
COUSIN: They all want to remember their families as they were, Amiel, and not in the way we have to make due. With pictel scratch and filter demons. And they want to hear it. Right now. From you.
Clerk: ING. ING. ING.
Professor Numinatus: Look now! The continents have gone on strike before! I had them sign treaties on the Emperor's behalf to remain as they were, forevermore, and with no future grievance unless we did something wrong. We have not! At least so far as I can remember. And I have a Third Eye to assure me that I'm right! Granted, it's stolen, but that's another story.
COUSIN: Do it. (I'd give anything not to be a moth.)
Professor Numinatus: (I know.) I was kind then. Not today. Today, Cousin and I punch the world back into its proper place.