Far off, behind the glowering dark wall that was the Eastern Front, something shifts. A small thing, akin to the flap of a windsprit's wings, and yet, this system is dictated by chaos, and where chaos rules, nothing is certain, an nothing is impossible. The smallest change can, and usually does, have the greatest effect. Something shifts.
The season has been harsh. 15 ships lost to the wind, bits of ragged silverskin found floating on the breeze the only sign to us that live that they were ever there. But now, now it is done. The 15th cycle has come and gone, and the stratologist have hung up their headsets. The radio sounds no more, still live, but not conscious. For the 15th cycle has passed, and now the Ships are free to float fleet winged on the light aires of the high teens, no longer plagued by the ravaging storms out of the East. The Eastern front itself remains in its perpetual state of constant flux that is its defining feature, but the long turbulent arms of smoke no longer stretch out like arms catch any stray Ship of the 3rd Quadrant in their deadly embrace. This is the time the explorer, the romantic, the theorist, for now they can roam at will through out the furthest reaches of the three pronged compass.
With strong steelskin Ships, the explorer can brave the Crush under the south pole, and see what mysteries are created in the pressures of the deep. Marvels they find, exotic particles of a fleeting nature, uncontainable by any substance know to the Colony for more than a few turns. And yet, how they shine. Put some in a tziperglas, and they power your entire ship, until their restless nature causes them to wander back to the unfathomable depths from whence they came.
The romantic goes north, towards the Archipelago, where the great academy of the stratologist floats on its mountain of cloud, forever dense enough to carry it, and any others who sail to this land. Nestling his Ship down into the featherbed of vapors, he goes for a stroll along the White Way, winding its way up cirrus peaks and nimbus valleys, and watches the windsprits and faireys dance in and out of ever shifting cloudy grottos.
Westward. There lie the cloudless voids, the draft forests, the Sphere. A land that subscribes to the end of chaos where nothing is impossible. The theorist journeys there, to see and learn and theorise about the wonders he sees before him, why they are, how they are, what they are.
This is the end of the fifteenth cycle.
But.
Something has shifted.
The stratologist grows weary of his headset, but he cannot remove it, for the numbers keep rolling in, the vectors sounding off fast and urgent. The Kernels remain in the deep below the south, the White way remains untread, and the West defies the laws unseen. The ShipMasters are wary still of the Turbulence, which strikes without sign or sound. It is said that the Colonist of old could feel the Turbulence in their bones, but the Masters of today rely more on their navigators and radiographers, and the Old ones have long disappeared Northwards, up past the Archipelago into uncharted skies. This year, the stratologists remain hunched over telescope and barometer, isobar and oscilograph, despite the lateness of the cycles. True geniuses, everyone of them, masters of their domain. They tame chaos, created models of such complexity and detail that they are said to be truly beautiful by some (these some are the same who would head north).
And yet...
Deep behind the thundering wall of fury and discontent that is the Eastern Front, in the sky of never-ending turbulence, with drafts that will send you so high blood boils and eyes burst, or so low that steelskinned Greatships are reduces to the size of an aneroid cell;
Something Shifts. Something is different.
Slowly, one by one, all the radios go silent. They are not sleeping, but speechless. The atmosphere stops making sense. All the beutiful models of chaos, with their intricacies and subtleties, become as useful as a landmap. And when the last voice has petered out into nothingness, the Masters feel it, deep in their bones.
Did we ever understand it? I think not. Oh, we flaunted about in our ships of grandeur, riding the calm aires of our world with the blatant ignorance that comes so naturally to our race. But I err. I was not our world. We claimed to own it, to know its secrets, to understand it. We even thought our claims were true. We thought we had understood chaos. We truly believed it, too. And yet, in one fell swoop, we are thrust back in our place by such great powers as we should never have claimed to know. After all, two ships make poor use of 300 berths.
