FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

"It is very important that you listen to this.

None of this is true. Every word is a lie.

Especially since all of it is real."

Opening Cut Scene: Full Motion Standstill

The Age Of Azatlan

Behold Sethkill, he who would be lord of all wolves were he to try and rule them, of twice jointed step and fur finer yet, but no nostrils flaring. He breathes in through his mouth and a fine fold of cloth, a translucent living membrane, because the sand and dust would get elsewise into his ears, which he is keeping carefully closed for the journey.

Just to be careful, he has weft around him a simple displacement of forces, to guard especially his exposed skin, and eyes that have irises in an uncanny shade of green to purple, with fine gold flecks where enough of the proteomic branchings lie close together for the metal to be visible. High above, the sky glitters blue and clear, a reflected memory of electric diamond and blue azure, no sunshades required when the pupils are narrowed vertically to diffractive slits.

Sethkill is a creature with a disposition to leanness, all stretched out muscles and taunt of eye, dark skin gleaming the colour of horsehide, all black and brown together, noticeable most over haunches that wildcats would love to kiss with long pink tongues and sharpened fang. He has a long, wide muzzle that puts the lie to wolves, and prominent, sweeping ears that curve up and around to collect all the sounds of the world. Two straight and hardened horns lie flat and almost directly backward alongside the top of his skull, sharing equally in the colours of dull bone and the patterns of pale wood. Golden filigrees of mesh have been burned into and around them, inlaid whilst still hot and polished down to set neatly into the bone.

Sethkill rubs his neck and contemplates direction, as the sand blows past him, taking a brief pause to consider the advantages of focus over time. Then he loses himself once again in running, an action not futile but calculated, for flesh that cannot tire. He bounds from low dune to low dune, across fine wind-driven ripples and shallow sand, past bleached and sparse dry bush that should not survive amidst the heat shimmers. In the absence of all obstacles, he simply runs in a perfectly straight line, heading for the coast. He cannot help but think that someone might still perhaps know exactly where he is, and that one carefully guided weapons strike could see him conveniently disappeared into the dry dust. The sooner and the further he can lose himself in the world, the better.

Loading Break: Player Hints and Tips

Congratulations On Your Purchase!

The yellow light of an old lamp shines down upon the student as he shapes his equations, and the shifting shadow of his own body constantly interferes with the work.

Midnight is well past; out of the still open window, the pale arc of the moon rides the clouds overhead, and the light in darkness illuminates the wider landscape in cold colors. In the faintly whispered silence, the scrawls on the paper before him break up into shifting patterns, and he struggles to keep his eyes open. The momentary relaxation into sleep before the hypnic jerk has scored a jagged black graphite line into the worn paper.

Try as he might, he can't extract any further meaning from the equations. As he runs his hands through his dry and spiky hair, he finds himself looking for excuses, a sure sign that he's far too tired to get any work done. Maybe he can finish tomorrow morning, scrape it in just before the hand-in deadline?

It seems like miles to his bed in the corner, across a polished soft-wood floor covered in hacks and gouges that ups the rent and gives the landlord unlimited excuses to complain about damage and keep the deposit. Screw it. He'll catch a few hours sleep right where he is, head rested in his arms on the desk, and never mind that he'll surely wake up stiff and cold from the open window. It's just too comfortable, and he's too damn tired to move.

He falls asleep with the equations right in front of his eyes, too close to stay in focus.

It's an ancient and time honoured tradition that shifty old guys tell improbable stories in bars once they've gotten a few in them. So, if you are one of those shifty old guys, no-one tries to keep you out. The profit margin is determined by how many you can sink before they sink you.

The weather is cold like ice outside, laden with moisture that wants to become snow; the snow that has already formed falls like it will never stop, tiny diamonds clustering into a fluff that spins around on the wind, and the whole process shows no sign of ceasing anytime soon. A sensible man has his hood up, weather like this, and clothes pulled up tight around his neck.

A few errant flakes still clung to his clothing, dull and much rumpled wear suitable to a day like this, as he ducked under the low wooden lintel of the bar, assembled in earlier times to a far less vaunted standard. No sooner had he stepped inside than they started to melt, of course, and soaked into the material. He kept his gear on. It was too damn cold for anything else.

The room hosted one of those fascinatingly diverse crowds that'll happen when you let just anyone in, all making their own contribution through breathing and talking hot air to the general humidity and overuse of the atmosphere inside. There was a general reek associated with the use and abuse of alcoholic beverages, spilled sticky on the floor. Someone or several someones had gotten their dogs in somehow, probably by claiming that the leaving of them out in this weather just wasn't right. Someone in a distant unseen corner shouted crassly for an iced drink and was then in turn shouted down by their companions, who didn't appreciate the humor.

Reaching the bar, he leaned against its polished length, trying to keep his sleeve out of a spill the barman hadn't gotten to yet while looking for a place to sit. All the good spots were taken, natch. What was left was a truly ancient looking bench to the side, which seemed to have survived several fires in its time and might well endure a few more scorchings of its varnish before anyone could be bothered to try and pull it out through that tiny front door. The single current user was sound asleep, head cradled on his arms and breathing quietly, so his seating arrangements most probably weren't that important to him.

"Hey, you finally got here!" exclaimed the barman encouragingly, once he got around at last to cleaning up the current spill and noticed the new arrival. "You want anything particular?"

"Oh yes. I want a drink!" he confirmed. "What it actually is, doesn't really matter so much. You know me, I can drink just about anything."

"A little something special then," grinned the barman. "If you can guess what it is, I won't charge you for it. Same as usual. I'll have her bring it round to you later."

"I've got to stop letting you test things on me," he sighed.

He wandered over and sat down beside the sleeping fellow. The elderly bench, as ever, creaked alarmingly but supported his weight, and would probably be found holding up what was left of the roof in the case of some future disaster. The noise, however, startled the sleeper and woke him up abruptly.

"Still working on those equations of yours?" he asked the young man, pitching his voice just loud enough to carry over disputes and arguments and bills. The kid shook his head, seemed kind of confused about what was going on. Not a surprise really, too much study and not enough real life. "You shouldn't work so hard on those things."

The drink finally showed up, as if materialising abruptly under his nose. It was pink. He regarded it skeptically and then pushed it student-ward with one finger and a certain degree of disdain.

"Have some of this. If you can guess what it is we don't have to pay for it."

There was a straw in it, so the student took a small sip and made a face. "Actually pretty decent," he reluctantly conceded. "What's in it?"

"I don't know, I was hoping you'd tell me. We have until closing to figure out what it is, though."

"I'm not sure whether it's fair, if you get someone else to help," the student reluctantly pointed out, after thinking it over some.

"You're saying no to part of a free drink? Seriously?"

"I'm afraid that I'll end up paying for part of a free drink."

"You may have a point there," he concedes. "So, let me tell you about this thing that happened to me one time..."

Save Point: Dried Ancient Seas

The Age Of Azatlan

Almost inadvertently, Sethkill finds that he has become lord of wolves in truth, or at least leader of jackals, complete with minions tracking at his heels. The scrawny desert beasts, ribs showing on their sides, have a distinct edge of half-starved but have taken to following him, somehow assuming that he is perhaps a potential pack leader, or just that he knows where he's going and that it might involve food.

They have a tendency to cringe when he looks at them directly, for which he can hardly blame them. It's a desert, and so nothing goes into it to die willingly. After they've spent a while taking his path for their own, he gives in and flicks them a couple of strips of dried travel-meat that they snap and snarl down in gulping bites.

What the hell species are they anyway? He's not sure. There's a hint of hyena, a dash of jackal and the spiky ruff of a blue chupracabra coyote on steroids training itself to run long distances. If it's possible to be a generic scruffy desert predator, these animals have outdone themselves.

The desert wind is still streaming around him, but not as intensely as before, and he knows the forecast for the next few weeks, the timing of which decided his initial exit. It wasn't a sandstorm, not really by any standards he'd consider, but there were enough particulates being kicked up and in the right direction to provide him with limited shielding from the still fairly basic satellite cover and speed his steps a little with the wind at his back. The environment at the start of his journey was fairly hostile and sapped his strength, but as the air has cleared and he approaches the desert edge, conditions have become more familiar to him, similar to the Glass Desert of his youth, and he can breathe more deeply, stride with greater confidence.

In the patch of turbulence-suppressed calm around him where the jackals lope, they have plenty of time to observe the irregularities of his body and clothing, which like themselves do not belong in the civilized parts of this world. Where a more sensible traveler would wear some sort of all-enveloping robe to shield their head and eyes, Sethkill, better adapted, needs only the permeable membrane from his light journeying kit, which also serves to filter water quite efficiently when required. His clothing is a single layer, not counting a certain amount of padding and fastenings, essentially a combined loin-cloth and battle-jacket, both made out of a dense, deep blue material that shares the majority of its characteristics with kevlar, although the manner of its manufacture is far more sophisticated and it weighs significantly less. It goes without saying that it can shrug off kinetic projectiles, selectively ablate energistic impacts, and will stop most edged weapons. It's actually meant to be worn over something else, but that would have made it far too hot for the desert, which was where he had to be.

Although confident enough in just his own skin and reassured by the resistance of the armour, his new outfit struck him as somewhat scanty, so he'd also bought along some safety equipment from his creative anachronism training course in edged weapons. He shivered to remember just how that had ended, but if he hadn't been in on it, he'd never have gotten to know Keselt quite as well as he ultimately did.

Pushing his thoughts away from her, he inspects the additional plating. It's nothing too elaborate, just simple rigid steel cuffs for the wrists and lower arms, and the ankles to the lower knees, with a matte finish so it doesn't distract by reflecting light into the eyes. A single heavy crossbar runs the length of each limb, guarding the bone underneath, so that even if you get hit in the arm with a sword or knife, it can't continue cutting all the way through. Like the battle-jacket, it's supposed to be worn over whatever else you have on, and lightly padded on the underside.

There was also a neck collar of sorts, but no-one wore it. It was too light to be practical and yet somehow managed to be not very comfortable at the same time. Let's face it, if you get hit in the neck you've probably already fucked up quite badly.

He keeps remembering the Glass Desert, the vast devastated expanse near the mountains far behind his family home, where a long-gone and misguided experiment in mass destruction once melted the entire surface of the land to glass in a single flash of whiteness. Questions remained, even to this day, about exactly what was being attempted and how it happened. Whatever had happened caused no blast wave, left no lingering traces, cleaned up neatly after itself. There'd been a research facility there once, associated town and personnel, buildings, shops. Afterwards there was nothing but a puddle of glass where the soil and rock had been rendered molten in situ, leaving the overall contours of hills and valleys in place somehow but locally melted together, all the way down as deep as it was wide.

Birds had melted and fallen from the sky, landing in the still syrupy surface and sinking down a few feet before it congealed too much. Buildings had sunken whilst still retaining partial integrity. The whole thing had taken years to cool, and parts of it were still hot, deep down in the depths. They'd never found the central labs, even after the sizzling rains had built up a decent crust on the upper surfaces, and a generation of interested prospectors had done their best to map the positions of all the poorly documented secret buildings, unofficially constructed to house secret projects, now submerged somewhere beneath the translucent surface.

But he hadn't come upon it until much later, in his childhood, and the first time he'd seen it it had already become a part of the landscape, weathered in, repopulated by plant and animal life grown inward from around the edges. It had its own unique ecosystem, much like any desert, and he thought it was beautiful. And just like any desert it contained mysteries, hidden things beneath the surface. Watch at the right moment, when the sun was at the correct angle, and you could spot the remains of buildings by their shadows, and dig down into them if they were shallow enough, cracking apart the glass with a hammer and levering out huge blocks of it with heavy gloves. It was like digging down into heavy, razor sharp deposits of rock-toffee.

Of course, even if you could get inside one of the sunken buildings, wriggling through a too-tight space full of bladed edges in a sort of tear-proof boiler-suit that you bought with you, folded up, because it was too hot when the sun reflected off the glass, even then, there was no way to know how well the structure had held up, how much had buckled, crumpled, or rotated sideways as it sank. And because rainwater got in through the cracks in the glass, any rooms could easily be flooded to various depths, or part of sub-surface waterways. Even after being melted, substances that were mostly ferrous metals could still rust.

His parents didn't like that he explored there, it was dangerous, but they didn't stop him going. To be inside one of the sunken structures was a unique experience, surreal, the light entering in strange ways at different angles through the glass, bits of half-familiar furnishings and fixtures melted and stretched into many different shapes. Sometimes there were melted people too, in which case you reported the position and a crew would come by later to collect the remains and place them in the memorial sepulchre just outside the nearest town. The dead of the Glass Desert were obligingly clean and could simply be placed in a large underground storage bin to while away their eternity, exceptions being made for the occasional study of the remains.

There were some well-known ruins, which everyone explored, and some lesser known ones only a few searchers had visited. The well-known ones were picked clean, all interesting items long gone, but the new and obscure ones sometimes yielded surprising souvenirs. One time he found a small trove of precious-metal jewellery, distorted into beauty under its own weight, and so he kept a couple of the smaller medallions, on new chains so he could wear them. The rest went to the commemorative museum, which paid a small finders fee for interesting items.

This was not to say that his entire childhood was shaped by the desert. The land was rich and rainy and well-grown right up to its edge, and in a storm, there could be terrifying flooding even in the glassed area along the culverts that channeled all the water which didn't soak in. You didn't go to the desert if it looked like there'd be rain, which was hard to explain to outsiders.

Conversely, the desert had thrown up its own subsidiary industries. There was some limited tourism and a peculiar outbreak of glass-works along its edges, run by arts-and-crafts types, as if there wasn't enough of the stuff out there already. The desert glass wasn't weak and fragile, it was mineral-rich, hard and dense, and large pieces could be carved using a high-intensity water jet or etching techniques. Where the shape wasn't quite right, you could always use a blow-torch to change the shape, anneal on an extra bit or spin fine decorations like filiament before melting them together back into part of a solid block. Sethkill had a quite fantastic-looking glass blade, fully serviceable, able to chop through a whole leg-roast complete with bones, without taking any damage to itself the one time his father let him test it.

He'd spotted it in one of the workshops. His mother didn't want him to have it but his father then persuaded her, saying that if he was going to wander around in the desert, he should have some sort of suitable weapon. In case of dangerous animals or questionable people.

The glass sword was of course only one of the many items on sale. There were sculptures. There were glass bowls. They had - say it quietly - dildos for the ladies, although those were kept in the back and so he didn't find out about that until later on. There were paper-weights and door-stops, but part of being a local was to eschew such tacky decorations and stick to the good stuff.

Unlocked Mini-Game: Glass Chameleon!

The lizards of the glass desert were once chameleons or similar (possibly they still are) and hide in the narrow crevices in the fractured glass where the seep-water moisture is. Come daybreak, they set out across the shattered edges of the surface, trying to get warm whilst the glass is still cool, a feat for which they exploit their heritage to be black on one side and white on the other, progressing north or south by west or east, tacking like old sailors against the sun. Splayed claws enable them to walk adaptively over the broken surface, one foot at a time.

The reason they need to get warm first are the beetles, tall and long-leggedy things, shining gleaming carapace-black, most arguably snacky of the things about the desert but all too very fast. They dash about, skittering and leaping, sometimes tumbling end over end and rolling down slope-edges like commandos in tactical armour. These feats of agility make them far too quick to be caught by an excessively cool chameleon, a fact of which they take audacious advantage by dashing directly under the creatures and right in front of their mouths.

There are many, many beetles, and only a very few chameleons, which gives the whole thing the aspect of some sort of exotic machine simulation in which many small defenders are battling big walking things with scaly armor that have invaded from outer space. As the chameleons thermo-regulate and get up to speed, limited bursts of acceleration allow them to snap up occasional beetles, after which they slow again and have to recover their limited reserve of thermal energy. Faster washes of colour ripple across their skin as they begin to come online.

There are occasional patches of thin grasses growing in the fractures of the glass, which gives the whole thing a tactical aspect. The beetles are quick but they overheat as the day warms and have to take shelter. The chameleons, conversely, become quicker as they warm, but should they take to the shade of the grasses to intercept the beetles, they will begin to cool. Some of them settle in, go to stealth mode and wait for an insect to come to them.

Whereupon snap, also crunch.

Save point: Vermillion Dragon

The Age Of Azatlan

Sethkill remembers watching the chameleons feed and contemplating an interactive machinima of some sort based on the the scenario, suitable for his feed-group. It would've translated quite well into some of the game engines he's familiar with, when scaled up to epic size. But eventually his idle musings at the time were interrupted by a significant realization: where, he had asked himself, was Keselt? She was supposed to have been here by now and brought sandwiches.

And this is the memory that brings him back to the present, where the (provisionally) jackals are fawning at his feet, hoping that by conspicuous submission more snacks will be made to magically appear. He has to find her. It's terribly easy for a single person to be misplaced conveniently in the space of an entire world, but he won't let that happen. He's going to find her and bring her home, and no-one is going to stop him in this matter. If the others won't act, them he will.

Just for reassurance he fingers the upper shafts of the weapons he has bought with him, which are strapped crossed over his back and balance each other quite well. Really serious kit was well out, it would weigh too much, be too difficult to smuggle in. They'd notice that he'd signed it out and it'd be difficult to get replacement parts and ammunition. Someone might steal it.

So, just as with the practice armor, he's fallen back on the creative anachronism and bought along two items, one a serious tool that most people would disregard, and the other a prop suitable for live action role-playing that is far more dangerous than it seems. The first is a sword-spear, an all-too-real weapon with a blade on either end, one longer and heavier like a sword, one shorter and denser like a spear so the two balance one another around the grip at the centre. It's a versatile combat and general-purpose tool, can be spun at short range, wielded like a sword, or launched in long stabbing motions by gripping the unedged part of the spear. Although the design is distinctly archaic, the materials are modern, titanium for rigidity and lightness paired with tungsten steel containing carbon fibres for flexibility and impact absorption. The craftsman who made it for him worked at a museum with a whole litany of ancient weapons, and his hobby was trying to rediscover lost smithing techniques on the weekends. Getting him to do the opposite based on a rumor that he funded his forge-work with new and wholly original creations proved to be well worth the effort and cost of tracking him down.

The second weapon is a staff, exactly the sort of thing a would-be magic-user would wield in a game or movie. The difference is that this staff actually works, after a sense; it has the stripped down core of a basic energy weapon built into the length, with all the verve and cleverness that could be expected of an engineering department full of deeply obsessive and socially challenged technicians. Officially this allows for special effects, and can be used to do things like knock someone flat with accompanying sparkles and dramatic concussive noises. Of course, if you were to disable the safety measures, it could be used for some fairly serious energy manipulation and to smite the hell out of people, which is pretty much what he has in mind. He hopes it won't get that far, of course, but it pays to be ready just in case. In one of the tests while assembling it, they managed to accidentally demolish a small stone wall.

Interlude

New users are reminded of the importance of taking regular breaks whilst using the system.

Heads are turned at the appearance of two actual, honest-to-yiffness furries in the corner of the bar, complete with costumes. Whilst it has to be admitted that technically they are in fact scalies, since both of them are dressed as dragons, there are certain unspoken overtones that cleave them to the group.

They order two beers and two flame shots, which they drink through the opened muzzles of their costumes. In any other weather the outfits would be far too hot for drinks like that, but with the conditions outside, they're probably the warmest ones there.

"It is a privilege of our profession to know where dragons come from," observes the old guy in the hoodie, when he sees them out of the corner of his eye.

"What?"

"It's a quote from an old novel about some early game designers. Hey, I read," says the old guy defensively. "I have time now. Privilege of the aged."

"Most games have too many dragons in them, I think," objects the student. "Damn things are all over the place, flapping about, being legendary or revered or epic or whatever. If you're going to have a dragon, it should be a damn sight ultimate dragon. Dragon or get the fuck out."

"You may have a point," agrees the old guy, who is thinking that the student may have had one too many in such a short space of time.