The Dark Horse was not a large ship, as such things are measured, but had for more open space than usual - a consequence of the hull also being the drive system. This became a little clearer when Tasha and Hakeber went looking for Samael. He wasn't hiding under the Terran shuttle where Tasha had last found him, and the relatively short range of her spore-eye still meant she couldn't just instantly find him.
And he wasn't answering when called.
Tasha plants her right hand on her hip and cranes her neck to peer about the Bay. "He's really hard to find when he doesn't want to be found, isn't he? I think I'm getting Shadow-eye strain." She squints, which blocks visible light and helps the uncanny un-light of her spore stand out, yet to no avail. "He seems to prefer dark places. That is, dark in the photonic sense."
"Would he go down to the Tadpole hanger, or the bridle, or.." Hakeber looks up at the permeable ceiling. "He wouldn't go outside right? Not in the Maelstrom.. although I have no idea if it would be bad or good for something like Sam."
"I'm not even sure how hostile the Maelstrom is to us," Tasha admits. As ships go, spaceships have the unfortunate problem of being in space which, a medium poorly conductive to casual strolls and enjoyment of external weather. The Maelstrom, a extension of space Tasha knows little of, seems to her a kind of vacuum paired with frothing quantum chaos which strikes her as an an even more hostile locale than even the abyssal emptiness of mere space. "Lets, um, try the Tadpole first, then the Bridle, and gods help us, we can try and look outside."
The hanger elevator is handily able to go to the Tadpole bay. Which itself is a zero-gravity zone, causing Hakeber to immediately grab onto Tasha once the doors open.
The Tadpole was singing. Not something heard, or even felt really, but a telepathic harmony all the same. Music is usually emotional, so turning emotion directly into music shouldn't be that big of a leap, but for a listener it could be disorienting trying to sort out that they are not their emotions. At least it seems.. comfortable? Comfort seems to be the theme of the song.
Tasha, being somewhat more used to zero-gravity, merely begins to float without much reaction. She carefully reaches for a hand hold, which does cause her begin to rotate, but she's strong enough to force herself to stop by a twist of arm and muscle. Hakeber is likewise anchor, and Tasha reaches her free hand over to place it around Hakeber's waist to stabilize her. What does surprise Tasha, is the song.
"Are we a happy little ship?" Tasha asks after a long moment of analyzing her feelings, impressed upon as they are by the song. "And have you seen unhappy little Samael?"
There's movement that isn't the Tadpole, and is very disturbing in nature. Samael is then standing on the little bioship, looking like a child-version of his usual self. So basically Tasha's little brother.
Tasha gives Samael a little wave, having let go of the handhold, and then she must return her hand or risk floating off in an untoward direction. "Unhappy little Samael is looking littler than usual," she observes. She pushes off now, letting go and taking Hakeber with her, floating across the Bay. "Are you in the mood to talk?"
"Talking is one of my many talents," Samael claims. His voice hasn't changed to match the younger looking form though. "What did you wish to talk about?"
Tasha arrests her forward momentum against the Tadpole, then kicks off to go vertical, slowing herself against the ceiling and grabbing hold of a handhold there. This puts her a several feet above Samael and a ways away, but it's the easiest route to get close to him. "We've decided to do some restructuring. I'll be taking on a greater leadership role and delegating more, and along side that, we'll expanding and creating sub-departments to better focus our personnel strengths while reducing, well, dangerous overlap. One idea presented to me is the establishment of a department dedicated to occult research, study, and practice."
"A coven?" Samael asks. "Or a cabal?"
"Something like that?" Tasha shrugs, which necessitates her adjusting her stability again. "Despite my world having magecraft, I'll admit I know little of the organization or practice of such things. My experience is more direct, especially with regards to Shadow-energies, and less so, Vril. Hake here is the opposite, with knowledge of cults and the like." Tasha waggles Hakeber a bit, indicatingly, which is easy for her to do without gravity. "One suggestion is that we form an order. The Order of the Rose."
Samael briefly bristles - as in bristles appear on him - before they vanish. "You've already discussed this with Thoth then, I imagine," the dark doppelganger says. "An Order is a religious organization. Because they represent order."
Tasha does her very best not to roll her eyes. It was hard work convincing Thoth to join them, and harder still learning what she knows about the occult in the first place. Thoth and Samael's endless bickering is stress she'd rather do without, but she supposes that dealing with such things is her duty as the Will, and she she resists. "I would like to point out you are injured and I had better relations with you than he, so he was the most obvious choice to speak to at the time." She raises her brows; don't be difficult. "And Thoth is our best expert for his type of magic, just as you are for the Shadow-type. Would you prefer a compromise in the name, then? Coven of the Rose?"
"Do you know the difference between a coven and a cabal?" Samael asks.
"Go with the coven, Tasha," Hakeber whispers to her. "It'll be more fun!"
"'More fun' is not always the best choice fro, a leadership standpoint, Hake," Tasha tells her friend in a very matronly voice. She does get a zero-gravity snug, however. To Samael, she admits, "Not specifically. I've found many organizations chose a organization type in their name and drift away from that original arrangement, especially with older organizations."
"A coven implies a much closer relationship with the spirits being invoked," Samael explains. "A cabal is more of a group that hides their knowledge from outsiders, or even their existence, in order to further their pursuits. But Hakeber is right, covens are more fun. Much looser dress code."
Tasha looks between the two, brows arching in an entirely different way. "How close a relationship?"
"Orgies and dancing naked and stuff with flowers and natural hallucinogenic substances and.. a lot of midwifery, traditionally," Hakeber explains.
"I feel like Thoth might not be on board with that approach," Tasha notes, dubiously. She purses her muzzle, looking between the two, and then ceiling-ward for some reason as she thinks. "But it's not all bad. We may need to internally divide ourselves further. We can call it The Cabal of Rose, as a whole. The Order of the Rose will focus purely Vril and its methodologies and capacities. The Coven of the Rose can specialize in Shadow-arts and ... is science appropriate?" Tasha drops her head and raises her brows. "We can identify members by the style and color of their rose-pin, which we can code to each member."
"There really isn't such a thing as magic," Samael claims. "There are rules, and they are understandable and consistent. They can be used to make predictions and to experiment to verify those predictions. That makes it a science. Plus there is an enormous deal of math involved."
"I use magic as a catch-all for extra-universal forces acting within our universe. External rules intermixing. Out-of-context-forces?" Tasha shrugs again, necessitating a positional arrest. "I also use it for extremely advanced in-universe technology, but I've been trying not to do that." She nods; she is trying. "And if I understand right the rules and mathmatics needed rely upon materials, energies, and patterns not common or even possible within our universe? That is, they require a bridge to even perceive and comprehend?"
"In a manner of speaking, yes," Samael agrees. "Certain species have had an advantage in the previous epochs, due to the nature of their thinking or perceptions. However it has never been something that could be achieved through artificial augmentation, surprisingly. The machine-life and artificial intelligences cannot manage it. It requires a soul." He then reaches down to pat the Tadpole. "Like our friend here. Telekinesis is not something that can be created otherwise. The 'technology' of psionics is also extremely limited, compared to even Dr. Sen's meager ability."
Tasha considers this at length, then inqures, "Why is the soul so important? And why can Shadow-beings use their abilities if they may possess no soul themselves? Is it some sort of instinct, or a power already wrought in their very being, just as a living being is a mix of scientific principles in motion?"
"That depends on your definition of what is real, and what isn't," Samael says. "The Ogdru-hem are more restricted in what they can do than something like I am, because they have some baryonic basis. I have no such restrictions, and am only limited by.. other things."
"I think the multiverse is real. Or, well, I've tried to be open-minded about what is real -- let what I encounter and see tell me what's real and possible and not make assumptions or rely on what is already know. It's a basis, but there's always more." Tasha guides Hakeber's left hand to the handhold and makes sure she has a grip before freeing her right hand so she can gesture in a circle. "There are ... areas. Isolated areas. Realities. But they can also overlap. Overlapping rules, overlapping realities. Only those that overlap may influence the others, while those outside the bubble are foreign. Those with no overlap cannot be perceived at all. A dimension is a very specific limitation of a reality, and so on. Magic, to me, is using foreign rules to influence native rules, and thereby seem to violate those rules." She then squints. "And what, oh demon, limits you?"
"Existence and reality are not the same thing," Samael notes. "I am limited by how much of me can exist. You may have noticed that my abilities only encompass myself for the most part. I can exploit certain quirks of perception to be unseen unless I choose to be seen. But I am limited by my form. Or rather, my form imposes limits. That is the purpose of form. And that is an important lesson, as you delve deeper into these things: to impose form on the formless is to control it."
"I think I met a being who already taught me that lesson, but it was too early for me to understand what had been taught." Tasha folds her arms, managing to only drift downward at a subtle clip. "The Sifra knew this lesson and applied it. I believe that's how they may have trapped the Ogdoad in the first place. Unfortunately I don't know anything about how they did it and doubt I would understand even if I did have access to that knowledge, given how advanced they were -- or are." She chews on her lip, then says, "So existence is the limit of a being's 'personal domain',reality is the limit of a 'rules domain' and the difference between reality and self is what you can control, or that which resists your will."
Samael grins. "You have the insight of a proper sorcerer," he says. The grin looks very out of place on the childlike body. "What's left, is the will to overcome that resistance by any means necessary. And that is where Hakeber comes in."
"Me?" Hakeber squeaks next to Tasha.
"Hakeber normally uses alcohol for that," Tasha deadpans, reaching over to hook Hakeber and pull her closer even as her other hand reaches up to keep herself from drifting too far off. "So am I do sic Hakeber at that which resists me, or is it something more banal like the knowledge encoded in her Shadow-geas?"
"Well, how did you defeat Luk'thu-hem?" Samael asks Tasha. "Not in an abstract sense: what action did you take that did it?"
"I utilized Yellow-energies to poison its ... " Tasha almost says body or mind, but decides to stick to the language of sorcery Samael has approved of, and so goes with, " ... existence-domain with Yellow borrowed from H-" Hastur. She glances at Hakeber, but she has already heard it. "Hastur. That was our main weapon. Secondary weapons were provided by Charon, such as the quantum-weapon. Shadow beings of Order may be vulnerable to something inherent in Yellow, the memetic color of knowing and pure insanity. I've thought it may be that is causes them to self-destruct as they were never meant to possess the enlightenment that comes with knowing."
"Don't analyse it," Samael says. "What did you do. The sequence of events."
Tasha resists eye rolling once again; everyone tells her to think more on her actions, and now, it's less. "I decided Charon should be saved. I then formulated a plan with him, and we acted on that plan. I was making progress until I was killed," Hakeber is subject to a rather sudden pressure as Tasha holds her tighter as she recalls the memory, "And after revival and orienting myself, I decided to keep fighting and boarded the Star Horse. I followed a plan of weakning Luk'thu-hem's defenses until I saw an opening or ran low on energy, and then initiated a charge tactic. After offering her a chance to surrender, and being refused, I struck to kill."
Samael is suddenly right in Tasha's face. His eyes have no color, but looking into them isn't so different from gazing into the Markers and their impossible sense of depth. "No. That is not what you did to defeat her," Samael claims. "You used the Star Horse's brain as a cannon and fired a concept into Luk'thu-hem. A concept antithetical to her existence in this reality. Hastur's marker is not real. There is no Yellow energy. Nothing real can ultimately destroy an Ogdru-hem. Do you understand what I mean? Do you understand what Hakeber is now?"
"They are what they know," Hakeber mutters as she hides behind Tasha's wings.
Tasha, not normally intimidated my casual discourse with beings like Samael, leans back -- which causes Hakeber to move backwards as well. "S-so I used the Star Horse's advanced conceptual and psionic potential to focus the concept, like ... " Tasha stumbles with the metaphor, made difficult by the pressure to perform impressed upon her, "If it was a physical weapon, it was sharpening a rock in to a point, and firing that point from a mass accelerator. It is the difference between my psionic potential and the Tadpole's. The concept exists in me, and I willed it to exist in her. Like a virus. Like subtle poison. But the Star Horse was a sword, drenched in poison, with a powerful will. Memetic weaponry." She glances at Hakeber, looking uneasy, and then back to Samael, "Hakeber's mind is a gun to fire concepts. Her understanding makes her a superior choice, because she can express the concept better."
"Now you have the gist of it," Samael says, looming less now. "The gun does not need to understand the bullet. Hakeber cannot understand her bullet. It may act through her in defense of its purpose, however. It is a smart bullet, and it needs its gun. There's no need for psionic potential or anything else. It is a semi-self aware concept. You exchange concepts all the time by talking, or writing, or singing, or through mathematics. Life is a concept that spreads itself rather aggresively.
"If you depend on maintaining certain concepts in order to exist, than a concept that is counter to one can indeed be a poison that unravels you."
"Just as how poison can unravel a body relying on physical, organic processes." Tasha nods slowly, needing to steady herself after. "So I should study concepts and hone my mind if I wish combat the Ogdru-hem in an effective way. Turn my mind in to a weapon, which was something Captain Frane liked to say. I'll just be doing it literally as well as figuratively." Another glance at Hakeber, this time to check on her, and back again. "Is this also how Luk'th-hem gains her 'energies'? Can she impress her will upon reality and so cause it to change? To move herself, to do the things that would require tremendous forces and energies for mortals to do?"
Hakeber is oddly quiet, but at least she doesn't look horrified. She looks almost relieved.
"When your efforts are applied from a higher frame of reference, a little goes a long way," Samael says. "The Ogdru-hem are 'real enough' to maintain anchored within spacetime. And 'anchor' is an appropriate analogy in this case. It keeps them from moving in the wrong temporal direction."
Tasha's eyes widen. "I knew that! When I speak to them, I feel as though I speak to an entity perceiving and active upon different times, different worldlines. Their attention feels distant, even if their words are focused. They sound ... They feel distracted. They feel as though their hold on now is fragile." She smiles, pleased with her own insight. "But I'm not content with shunting them off in to another timeframe. That's making them someone else's problem, and they may be able to return -- or return earlier? Their chronological mobility is a weakness and a strength. We can't pursue them easily in to the past, or distant in to the future. They could out manuver us in the temporal dimension."
"No, because if they lose their anchor, that part of them which exists in this reality is gone. They cannot return to any physical state, nor interact with other universes. They were created here. Not brought here."
"Are you sure?" Tasha tilts her head, brows knitting. "I'm sure at least one of them is monitoring other times, and possibly even active upon them. Or, do they have but one body, not many across times and places, as similar to what Thotep does?"
"One body, but some may have access to it across their entire worldline," Samael says. "Imagine experiencing your entire life as a single moment, where the past, present and future are all the same."
And again Tasha's eyes are wide; she casts them back towards the lift with a look of comprehension before returning her gaze to Samael. She doesn't look surprised, but that is because she has already been surprised by this particular insight. "I know of two Ogdru-hem who percieve the universe in that manner. It's," she hesitates, uncomfortable, "hard to relate to. I understand the idea of it, but the experience of it is harder to grasp."
"It is best not to try to grasp it, because it is even stranger than you think," Samael says. "You probably understand the idea of the future existing as a branching path of probabilities. But the same is true of the past. Any series of events which leads to the present exist as alternate probable worldlines. Which is why traveling into the past is dangerous if you wish to keep hold of your own reality."
"It would be like attempting to guess one number out of infinity," Tasha decides, frowning at the prospect. "If you were without mark nor guidepost, almost impossible. It is good that Hastur was able to place us back on the correct worldline before deviations became too complex. I would think even a being such as he has limits." She thinks for a moment of Hastur, who chose her to carry His Marker. Yet, like the Blue Marker, it isn't real. It's merely a concept attached to her soul and projected from her somehow. "Did Hastur grant me the knowledge of the concept I know as Yellow? Or had it always been with me?"
"Sanity is a dangerous thing," Samael claims. "It is only because of what the Dark Horse is that you could be moved back to the correct worldline. The Dagger of Eibon is made to move outside of the light-cone, and so cut through worldlines. Specifically the worldlines of Ogdru-hem, which are.. different."
"'Convoluted space-time'," Tasha quotes, nodding slowly. "Well, I for one am glad I didn't spend the rest of my existence as a man, 'Don't be too used to one body' be damned." She snorts, then realizes she's gone off on a tangent, and so clears her throat. "I've thought that what I know as 'Yellow' is the sanity that comes as a being comes to know the universe. What is beyond their initial being, and farther outside their own rules. Sanity can be described as connecting to reality," this from Nora's memories, "and so the insane is someone who has lost touch with the reality around them, who does not will its change, but has lost the ability to distinguish or perceive. If existence is the personal domain and will is the movement of the existence, and reality the limitations and bounds of rules, sanity is the state of knowing the boundaries of the personal domain and the other-domain. Insanity is not knowing. True insanity must be realizing that once your will controls all, there is no reality left to gauge sanity by. All is your domain and your will."
Tasha cocks her head to the side, eyes wandering, as she mulls over this potentially deep insight. Maybe this, then, is why Hastur picked her? The knowledge that comes with exposure to many transcendent beings, and so the implications. "But Ogdru-hem are created to be limited. If they are what they know, but are bound and cannot be permitted to know more and therefore grow, perception of the deific would put their minds towards that of their creators. Maybe they self-destruct? As a mechanism, or from the burden of understanding?"
"It has to do more with the things that life.. sapient life.. requires to maintain sapience," Samael proposes. "You cannot directly experience reality. You are existential beings which must interpret what your senses perceive. But more than that, you create things which are not part of reality, but are existentially real. You create meaning. Truths. Concepts like justice, fairness, and the other memetic underpinnings of societies and civilizations. They are things which exist but are not real. True sanity would destroy all of that. All of the conceptualizations necessary to endure sapience."
"Sanity is a sterilization of the universe that exists within your mind," Sam concludes.
"And it is what separates the beings of darkness and the beings like the Vril from living things," Sam further explains. "That is the sort of reality we are forced to exist in. That is why we need a taste of what you have, what you create."
"Because there wouldn't be any need for them any longer? Or because basing your reality off of true knowledge of reality would mean that these conceptual models no longer need to exist? Why interpret when you can know?" Tasha tilts her head the other way. "I know we filter the universe by necessity. So you're saying we cannot understand the universe, so we create interpretations, and by creating interpretations we create universes within ourselves. These universes are based on, but don't necessarily rely on, reality, and can internally reference, grow, and create things that may not even exist in reality, by mistake or inference, or creativity, but beings like Vril and the true Shadow beings know reality directly. They are what they know. And they know directly, without need to interpret? And so they have no inner universe, only the outter. They have a existence domain, but it does not create, it gathers in to itself the reality around it?"
"And true reality is a horrifying thing," Samael claims. "And we are a reflection of that horror. That is the destructive power of Hastur's memetic Sanity. The destruction of underpinnings of self. The death of the soul, essentially."
"And I had been starting to like Him," Tasha admits, only half in jest. And what is more, she's the agent of a soul-crushing power, the being who would throw open the door between the inner reality and the outer, and so make mortals as the Vril or Shadow-beings are. And she, one of his attendants. "This information doesn't paint me in a very positive light, does it? And now I am also possessed of the spore. Is that what will become of me, then?"
"Sanity? That would be quite a challenge," Samael claims, and smiles again. "At worst, you are a carrier. But it ultimately depends on what Hastur's real goal is, if he has one."
"Then the meme is his, and not something I had before?" Tasha inquires, brows knitting. "I got the impression He chose me for some quality I have, and the most related qualities are seeking to know reality, exploring, and relating to others. Unless it's coincidence, something I've become appeals to his plans." But she gives Samael and almost pouty look, reaching over to give him a little push. "And I am reasonably sane, which I mean, mortally sane."
You came to him," Samael points out. "It is not as if he had an actual choice - you were what he had."
"Now I feel vaguely sorry for Him," Tasha admits, a snorted laugh following a moment later. "That must mean contact with Him is even more difficult than with Thotep?"
"Thotep has always walked the worlds of the living," Samael says. "Hastur is locked away inside the Void. He cannot influence anything.. except through you. You are essentially his anchor."
"Did you hear that, Hake? I'm the anchor of a soul-destroying memetic plague!" Tasha turns around and gives Hakeber her very best happy canine face, and even lets go just long enough to frame her face wit her hands in a V; behold, the herald of soul crushing evil.
"Well.. you wear it well?" Hakeber offers. "Am I going to have to screw a hollow horn into my skull or anything?"
"You can be my Star Karnor. Starnor," Tasha agrees, reaching over to tap Hakeber's forehead. "We can have a tiny me pilot your brain." She then pauses and, exaggeratedly, looks surprised, "Oh I already guide your brain, so we're set. Maybe I can put you in a holster? Do you think I could get a coffee mug like Gabriel's that says, '#1 Minion of Soul Crushing Evil?'"
"That is a lot to fit on a mug," Hakeber points out. "You'd need a stein at least. And you can be my minion if you want."
"I've had entities refer to you as my minion," Tasha insists, but then she reaches over and grabs Hakeber, pulling her in to a hug and turning them both towards Samael. "But I'd consider it for an evening or ten. Now where were we. memetic soul crushing power. Well, Sam, maybe it isn't all bad. Having access to Hastur's memetic Sanity is a powerful weapon against the Ogdru-hem. If I can learn to harness it better, that would be very useful."
"You'd need to be extremely careful," Samael says. "There are other methods to explore first, since you do not know what sort of debt comes with using Hastur's sign."
"There is that," Tasha says, heaving a sigh, "I'm not even sure what my debt is now, but it's not payed off. I had just completed my task when fighting Luk'thu-hem exhausted me and he stepped in again to save me. Better than being dead." She pauses, frowning. "I hope. Well, there's other forms of magic, isn't there? I have access to memetic Blue, and perhaps the spore can be of some use. Thoth mentioned demon engines, objects that can power a vehicle. Maybe I could do the same with Melchior? And there's Vril."
"Thoth's version of Vril, perhaps," Samael says. "To get service from a demon, you need to enter a contract if you can't bind one."
"I'd prefer not to bind a demon to my Titan, I had the thought that if I could learn to use the same wellspring those demons draw from, I could empower the Titan myself. As Thoth describes it, a demon's weakness is a lack of creativity and self-preservation, but I have a soul. I may not be as powerful as they, but I can make up for that in the strengths of mortality and in the strengths of Vril engineering and energy. I could also try to learn what I can of each. Has their ever been a being who could use each one?" Tasha raises her brows; if there is, she hasn't heard of it.
"You would need to ask Thoth," Samael notes. "I missed out on that chapter of Galactic History while I was Leviathan's prisoner."
"Speaking of the mysterious Leviathan, I was going to ask how I ended up in the Void until I remembered our recently departed Wizard friend is a keeper of the Void. Breaching in to his pet Ogdru-hem's domain must have allowed entry somehow." Tasha sneaks her tail around Hakeber, using it to swat at her tail when it's not re-balancing them both. "Is it all like that? Like Carcosa? What is the Void?"
"The Void is like a cyst in the flesh of the universe," Samael says. "Or a daughter universe that never quite matured. It may have been artificially created or not."
"Like the urn-universe?" Tasha offers.
"Or like the Way," Samael suggests.
Tasha nods to this, pointing her tail at Samael indicating. "Or like the Way. I'm still coming to grasp interacting with split-off or separate time-spaces and how they interact with our universe. And how to describe that interaction." Tasha then pauses, peering at Samael, and remembering the gaping hole in his being. "And I have remembered that you're injured. Now you know what we're doing, but lest continue more in detail later when you're healed and we're ready to set the ground work. I have a lot to think about."