Tentative Title: MOON-TYPE MOON
[Sailor Moon / Type-Moon]
Rough Prologue Draft
in Snippets
Section I: The First Advent
---
~ 9100 BCE // Before Then
The men of the first advent were clever creatures -- their conquering of the Age of Winter had primed them to survive in nearly any environment, and a mere two millennia saw their advance from the mastery of the written word to the colonization of the celestial bodies. It seemed that they had divorced themselves from the checks and balances of natural law, subjugating to their will the world that gave them birth ...
The planetary sentiences, roused to the threat of Gaia's unruly children, struggled for an age to impede their cancerous diaspora with external threats. Humanity, however, persevered, and it was decided in the end that if such efforts were futile, the Counter Force would instead impose an unknowing compromise upon the humans from within.
Save for Gaia, who had invested too much of herself in the husbandry of the phenomenon called 'life,' each planet possessed the ability to generate an ultimate embodiment of their will -- beings who, in another refraction of the Kaleidoscope, might have been dubbed the 'Aristoteles,' and were here called 'Types.' Nine were formed and sent amongst the humans, guised in the flesh of men. Their purpose was not to destroy -- merely to appear in times of strife, and to lead; to serve as heroes. In time, they would unite and control humanity as a whole.
---
~ 9000 BCE // The Sanguine Moon Rises
The magus was called "Brunestud of the Crimson Moon." In the chaos of the Second Lunarian Revolution, she assumed command of the rebel colonials and led them to victory against the rule of the Gaian monarchy. Her prowess in magecraft and her ability to overcome seeming logistical impossibilities with tactical brilliance earned her the title "the Witch of the Rainbow Eyes" -- "the Mother of Bloodshed" amongst her enemies.
The fledgling peace had only settled when it was again broken. The Martians, who had long sought a strategic foothold within the Earth Sphere, believed that the Lunarian economy hadn't the resources to field another war. Seeking to exploit this percieved setback, they prepared a all-out invasion, not aware that their intelligence had gravely miscalculated the standing military strength of the Moon.
Brunestud's retaliation was rapid and decisive. A month after annihilating the deployed invasive force, she led an assault on the Archduchy of Tarsis, the most powerful of the member states of the Martian Federation. Within a year, her troops had surgically excised the nobles responsible for the invasion, and the Red Planet was brought under Lunar rule.
The Martian populace had long come to resent their aristocracy for oppressive and uncaring policy, and the fact that the political ambitions of the few had brought upon them a planetary war forged in their hearts a deep mistrust of authority. Aware of public opinion, Brunestud's first act upon securing power was to order the repair and installation of critical infrastructure, taking mind to provide jobs and otherwise recompense those who had lost their families and livelihoods to the war. Academies of both primary and advanced education were provided free of charge to all citizens, both of human and phantasmal descent. The people, in turn, came to view her not as a conqueror, but as a beloved liberator.
Apprehensive of the growing power of the Moonrace, the Gaian monarchy proposed a coalition to the other governments of the Solar System, nominally to prevent Brunestud from seizing for herself the rich resources of the Asteroid Belt. The act fomented the conflict that came to be known as the Great Solarian War.
---
8932 BCE // The Age of the Silver Moon
When the dust had settled, the vast majority of the system was under Brunestud's control. The singular exception was the Earth, which had fallen to barbarism following the collapse of the old monarchy. Luna -- now the Lunar Imperium -- was careful not to alienate the peoples of its newly conquered territories. Rather than installing Lunarian regents, Brunestud appointed planetary governors native to the worlds they were entrusted with -- all of them highly decorated and well-recieved female army officers who had served against her during the Solarian War. By Imperial decree, their regency was to be hereditary, passed down by way of matriarchal succession.
Despite some initial opposition and unrest, by the end of Brunestud's century of life, the Imperium had reached a level of political and economic stability thought to be unprecedented in the known history of sentients. A highly secretive ritual enabled the governors -- officially titled "Guardians" -- to obtain the combat capabilities to single-handedly resolve any major threats to the populace. They and and their lineages would come to function as the arsenal that secured the era of peace called the Pax Argenta.
The Age of the Silver Moon would last a millennium.
---
8001 BCE // The Shadowed Kingdom
Beryl was the eldest of three children, all girls. The majority of her early years were spent shielding her sisters from the advances of their father, who had turned to the bottle when the fish in the nearby seas had grown scarce, and the trade routes started to favor the larger port cities.
At age eight, she caught the eye of a nobleman, and was contracted to his house as a maidservant. Her lord's generosity afforded her family with a large annual compensation, and she would allow the man to do with her as he pleased if it alleviated her father's woes enough that he would again become the kind man she had once known. For her sisters, she resolved, she would suffer anything.
She was not unintelligent. Having taught herself to read in the first years of her service, she rose from her mean roots to the privelege of assisting her lord's scribes in the stock-keeping of his archives. The sort of youth that the man sought in his partners was fleeting, and so to secure a permanent, indispensible assignment to his staff, it had been necessary to familiarize herself with the philosophies. Her own interests, however, lay with history.
Committed to Beryl's memory were the rise and fall of the Royal House of Atlantis, and the breaking of the floating palaces of Mu. She read of the last stand of the Saint of Winter in the icy plains of Terra Australis, and of the thousand years of chaos that followed.
The rare, reproduced scrolls that crossed her hands laid bare the true history of the world: The chain of suffering that bound all that she knew was not merely the work of fate or coincidence. It had but a single author: Brunestud of the Crimson Moon, the magus who was called the Mother of Bloodshed ...
---
Type-Metallia was not a malevolent creature.
Her parent -- the planet known as "the Land of Metal" -- had been ravaged by cataclysms and war for centuries, and gradually, it had lost the capacity to support life. Charged to deliver the last of her parent's children from certain extinction, Metallia crafted by sheer force of will a Reality Marble -- a subspace world that would serve as an 'Ark.' The bounded domain within closely simulated the Ether-polluted environment of her homeland, for the species she salvaged had for the most part adapted to depend upon the poisonous substance for survival. As it was but a pale reflection of a place that existed now only in her memories, she chose to name her creation "the Shadowed Kingdom."
The void of space was lonely, but Metallia soldiered on, clinging to the hope that she would eventually find a planet suitable her and her brethren. She resolved that so long as such a place existed, she would stop at nothing to take it for her own -- even if it meant going to war.
It took nearly a century for her labor to bear fruit.
Hundreds of light-years away, in another galaxy, a newly awakened magus called out to anyone who would listen ...
---
On the forest floor, the nude, bloodied form of a young woman lay supine, surrounded by the dismembered corpses of men.
She had not been broken, as a weaker woman might have been. No -- never broken.
There had been fear, and then, when it had receded, rage. At present, staring upwards at the winter moon through bare branches, she felt nothing in her heart but a cold, empty hatred.
Her sisters were not at home to greet her when she had taken leave to visit. They had grown into fine young women in her absence, her father told her -- fine enough to fetch him a pretty price at a brothel in Lemuria.
That had been an hour ago. Traces of the black flames that had torn her father and his friends to pieces still danced harmlessly along her fingertips.
She was beyond common sense, now, and her judgment was clouded by the strange power that she had awakened. Her only desire was retribution, and the death of her father didn't begin to satisfy her.
"/If that is your wish,/" said an inhuman voice, "/I shall grant it./"
[Sailor Moon / Type-Moon]
Rough Prologue Draft
in Snippets
Section I: The First Advent
---
~ 9100 BCE // Before Then
The men of the first advent were clever creatures -- their conquering of the Age of Winter had primed them to survive in nearly any environment, and a mere two millennia saw their advance from the mastery of the written word to the colonization of the celestial bodies. It seemed that they had divorced themselves from the checks and balances of natural law, subjugating to their will the world that gave them birth ...
The planetary sentiences, roused to the threat of Gaia's unruly children, struggled for an age to impede their cancerous diaspora with external threats. Humanity, however, persevered, and it was decided in the end that if such efforts were futile, the Counter Force would instead impose an unknowing compromise upon the humans from within.
Save for Gaia, who had invested too much of herself in the husbandry of the phenomenon called 'life,' each planet possessed the ability to generate an ultimate embodiment of their will -- beings who, in another refraction of the Kaleidoscope, might have been dubbed the 'Aristoteles,' and were here called 'Types.' Nine were formed and sent amongst the humans, guised in the flesh of men. Their purpose was not to destroy -- merely to appear in times of strife, and to lead; to serve as heroes. In time, they would unite and control humanity as a whole.
---
~ 9000 BCE // The Sanguine Moon Rises
The magus was called "Brunestud of the Crimson Moon." In the chaos of the Second Lunarian Revolution, she assumed command of the rebel colonials and led them to victory against the rule of the Gaian monarchy. Her prowess in magecraft and her ability to overcome seeming logistical impossibilities with tactical brilliance earned her the title "the Witch of the Rainbow Eyes" -- "the Mother of Bloodshed" amongst her enemies.
The fledgling peace had only settled when it was again broken. The Martians, who had long sought a strategic foothold within the Earth Sphere, believed that the Lunarian economy hadn't the resources to field another war. Seeking to exploit this percieved setback, they prepared a all-out invasion, not aware that their intelligence had gravely miscalculated the standing military strength of the Moon.
Brunestud's retaliation was rapid and decisive. A month after annihilating the deployed invasive force, she led an assault on the Archduchy of Tarsis, the most powerful of the member states of the Martian Federation. Within a year, her troops had surgically excised the nobles responsible for the invasion, and the Red Planet was brought under Lunar rule.
The Martian populace had long come to resent their aristocracy for oppressive and uncaring policy, and the fact that the political ambitions of the few had brought upon them a planetary war forged in their hearts a deep mistrust of authority. Aware of public opinion, Brunestud's first act upon securing power was to order the repair and installation of critical infrastructure, taking mind to provide jobs and otherwise recompense those who had lost their families and livelihoods to the war. Academies of both primary and advanced education were provided free of charge to all citizens, both of human and phantasmal descent. The people, in turn, came to view her not as a conqueror, but as a beloved liberator.
Apprehensive of the growing power of the Moonrace, the Gaian monarchy proposed a coalition to the other governments of the Solar System, nominally to prevent Brunestud from seizing for herself the rich resources of the Asteroid Belt. The act fomented the conflict that came to be known as the Great Solarian War.
---
8932 BCE // The Age of the Silver Moon
When the dust had settled, the vast majority of the system was under Brunestud's control. The singular exception was the Earth, which had fallen to barbarism following the collapse of the old monarchy. Luna -- now the Lunar Imperium -- was careful not to alienate the peoples of its newly conquered territories. Rather than installing Lunarian regents, Brunestud appointed planetary governors native to the worlds they were entrusted with -- all of them highly decorated and well-recieved female army officers who had served against her during the Solarian War. By Imperial decree, their regency was to be hereditary, passed down by way of matriarchal succession.
Despite some initial opposition and unrest, by the end of Brunestud's century of life, the Imperium had reached a level of political and economic stability thought to be unprecedented in the known history of sentients. A highly secretive ritual enabled the governors -- officially titled "Guardians" -- to obtain the combat capabilities to single-handedly resolve any major threats to the populace. They and and their lineages would come to function as the arsenal that secured the era of peace called the Pax Argenta.
The Age of the Silver Moon would last a millennium.
---
8001 BCE // The Shadowed Kingdom
Beryl was the eldest of three children, all girls. The majority of her early years were spent shielding her sisters from the advances of their father, who had turned to the bottle when the fish in the nearby seas had grown scarce, and the trade routes started to favor the larger port cities.
At age eight, she caught the eye of a nobleman, and was contracted to his house as a maidservant. Her lord's generosity afforded her family with a large annual compensation, and she would allow the man to do with her as he pleased if it alleviated her father's woes enough that he would again become the kind man she had once known. For her sisters, she resolved, she would suffer anything.
She was not unintelligent. Having taught herself to read in the first years of her service, she rose from her mean roots to the privelege of assisting her lord's scribes in the stock-keeping of his archives. The sort of youth that the man sought in his partners was fleeting, and so to secure a permanent, indispensible assignment to his staff, it had been necessary to familiarize herself with the philosophies. Her own interests, however, lay with history.
Committed to Beryl's memory were the rise and fall of the Royal House of Atlantis, and the breaking of the floating palaces of Mu. She read of the last stand of the Saint of Winter in the icy plains of Terra Australis, and of the thousand years of chaos that followed.
The rare, reproduced scrolls that crossed her hands laid bare the true history of the world: The chain of suffering that bound all that she knew was not merely the work of fate or coincidence. It had but a single author: Brunestud of the Crimson Moon, the magus who was called the Mother of Bloodshed ...
---
Type-Metallia was not a malevolent creature.
Her parent -- the planet known as "the Land of Metal" -- had been ravaged by cataclysms and war for centuries, and gradually, it had lost the capacity to support life. Charged to deliver the last of her parent's children from certain extinction, Metallia crafted by sheer force of will a Reality Marble -- a subspace world that would serve as an 'Ark.' The bounded domain within closely simulated the Ether-polluted environment of her homeland, for the species she salvaged had for the most part adapted to depend upon the poisonous substance for survival. As it was but a pale reflection of a place that existed now only in her memories, she chose to name her creation "the Shadowed Kingdom."
The void of space was lonely, but Metallia soldiered on, clinging to the hope that she would eventually find a planet suitable her and her brethren. She resolved that so long as such a place existed, she would stop at nothing to take it for her own -- even if it meant going to war.
It took nearly a century for her labor to bear fruit.
Hundreds of light-years away, in another galaxy, a newly awakened magus called out to anyone who would listen ...
---
On the forest floor, the nude, bloodied form of a young woman lay supine, surrounded by the dismembered corpses of men.
She had not been broken, as a weaker woman might have been. No -- never broken.
There had been fear, and then, when it had receded, rage. At present, staring upwards at the winter moon through bare branches, she felt nothing in her heart but a cold, empty hatred.
Her sisters were not at home to greet her when she had taken leave to visit. They had grown into fine young women in her absence, her father told her -- fine enough to fetch him a pretty price at a brothel in Lemuria.
That had been an hour ago. Traces of the black flames that had torn her father and his friends to pieces still danced harmlessly along her fingertips.
She was beyond common sense, now, and her judgment was clouded by the strange power that she had awakened. Her only desire was retribution, and the death of her father didn't begin to satisfy her.
"/If that is your wish,/" said an inhuman voice, "/I shall grant it./"