Strange Stars A-To-Z: "K" is for Krith

http://babylon5.wikia.com/wiki/First_Battle_of_Quadrant_14

Krith are giant spiders that glide through space on membraneous wings. They unfold space, emerging from cracks, fissures, and anomalies in spacetime when they sense the proximity of intelligent quarry. They have also been encountered emerging from black gates and otherwise apparently inactive hyperspace nodes

After entering normal space, krith move rapidly toward their prey. They don't cast true physical webs, instead entangling their targets within hypersnares: unstable, magnetically and gravitically "sticky" tangles of chaotic spacetime. Ships attacked by these creatures suffer drive accidents and other sudden and disastrous systems excursions.

Krith are able to phase their way inside of most ship hulls to prey directly on crew. The only hulls with protection against krith incursions are found on a handful of ancient vessels manufactured during the Archaic Oikumene. These ships have ceramic hulls incorporating various types of exotic matter.

Interestingly, the spaceborn Voidgliders have many legends about these creatures, and some among their kind claim to know ways to call the space spiders out of the void. More than a few Voidglider elders have wicked scars and uncanny scrimshaw fetishes attesting to direct encounters with the krith.

Young and ambitious Vokun lordlings often seek to demonstrate their virility and prowess by mounting expeditions to hunt krith. Such harpoon hunts rarely end well, and resentful Voidglider scouts often return home masterless after these deadly expeditions.

The krith are the creation of Charles L. Harness, and come from his classic weird space opera, The Ring of Ritornel (1968).

More Of The Bomoth Jook

The Bomoth Jook never stops, it just keeps playing on and on to the breakka breakka dawn. Here are a few more tunes to get you in the mood, ones that really bring home the range of music that the Bomoth are capable of delivering.

We begin with a song for those who love automata:

Then one of my favorites from Old Earth:

Lastly, an acquired taste, the other kind of oft-banned space opera:

Strange Stars A-To-Z: "J" is for Jook

Source

The giant blue caterpillaroid Bomoth have powerful lungs and a prodigious ability to imitate human (and alien) voices and musical instruments. Their syncopated, improvisational Bomoth Jook has made them the stars of musical venues high and low among the Strange Stars.

Here's just a few of the tunes that make up the Jook:

I used "Hello Dolly" in a Strange Stars game at a convention!  Did my best Louie Armstrong imitation ever, in fact.

Here's another popular one:

And now that your feeling your hyperspace nodes:

Nodes in hand, one more for the road:

Strange Stars A-To-Z: "I" Is For Index

The Index is list of memes and memeplexes that the Instrumentality of Aom has determined are harmful to sophonts. In systems under their sway, the Instrumentlity monitors the local Metascape for these toxic memes in order to isolate, contain, and remove them from circulation.

While the Instrumentality is a proselytizing religion with expansionist ambitions, its syncretic practice of local orthodoxy emphasizes the importance of incorporating local beliefs and traditions rather than eliminating them. The Instrumentality is far more concerned with indexing and eliminating memeplexes that challenge Instrumentality doctrine or authority, undermine authority and order more generally, or promote anarchy, terror, and deviance.

Memeplexes on the Index vary from system to system, but most local instances of Index activity target:

• Aurogov personal improvement software, Aurogov Reps, and associated virtualities
• Information and virtualities featuring the Zurr, their artifacts, and beliefs
• Information on the Algosian torture cult, and the virtualities and clubs they frequent
• S'ta Zoku (Star Folk) meet-up and party virtualities
• Software for rapid evolution of radically new clades - particularly those that subvert chordate anatomy or sophont cognitive integrity
• The Eden Seeker heresy 
• Star charts featuring space anomalies
• Anything on the Necromancers
• Catalogs and descriptions of Tenebraean artifacts
• Information on The Slavers, and the virtualities and habitats that serve as their slave markets
• Information on the Sisterhood of Morrgna, their world, associated devices, and practices
• Information on Sirius A and B, Sraad music, poetry, and intership communications
• Dramas sensationalizing or romanticising the crimes of the Pharesmid Syndicate, Zao Corsairs and similar pirate brethren, and other terrorists (although such stories and virtualities are extremely popular and hard to stamp out)
• So-called "adult entertainment" virtualities featuring Hwuru and Thrax

Strange Stars A-To-Z: "H" Is For High House

Illustration by John Howe

The High House 

Wing there with me

The high place, the infinite space

The only structure built into hyperspace 

What node does it thread? What race built it? Who lives there now - 

Among its many rooms?

We know it's real 

(we think) 

Because the feathered Hyehoon 

Of quick-clawed Omu 

Say they've been there 

They call it Marao's House 

Wing with me there

We've loved the title of James Stoddard's The High House for a long time, so hopefully he's OK with another even higher (hyper?) house.

Strange Stars A-To-Z: "G" Is For Gemba Gigante

Image by NASA/JPL - Caltech/R. Hurt

Gemba Gigante. The half-molten volcanic superearth Planetary Reserve Bank of the Alliance. Gemba's location and the hyperspace node psi-passwords required to access it are the best guarded secrets of the Neshekk banking clans. Gemba's crushing gravity and poisonous atmosphere make it a deadly place to visit. What little we know of the world comes from a handful of renegades from Gnome collectives that secured gem and mineral mining consignment rights to tap the planet's Deep Veins. The rumors of starships with gem-hulls are true. Those hulls were mined on Gemba Gigante.

But the planet's hostile exterior hides even bigger secrets. They're old ones. Long ago, far below Gemba's molten seas and ever-fracturing charred continents, a timelost race built an intricate and slightly out-of-phase three-dimensional megastructure. It contains countless forcewall-protected vaults which slowly shift and rotate about several axes.

Only when the time is right do specific vaults present themselves for access. And of course, accessing these vaults requires still other codes.

With help of a half-mad Deva apostate, the Neshekk broke the source code of the forcewall structure, and began adding further security features, such as collapsing forcewall vaults, and spill channels that allow lava to flow into forcewall corridors. A Smaragadine psientist designed the psi-sniffing drones with which the Neshekk stocked the corridors and vaults. Finally, the Neshekk infected the local Metascape with weaponized AIs derived from complex financial instruments. This provided the final deadly layer of highly unpredictable defense.

But the vaults themselves! What wonders the Neshekk banking clans hold! For example:

• Vault 7677 contains a vast reserve of magnetic bottles containing anti-matter bullion, the universal reserve currency, 
• Vault 9947998243 contains approximately 10,000 of the squat moravec clade known as the Quigashe (perhaps a corruption of the Old Earth phrases "Quick cache" or "Quick cash"). The mobile cash machines of the Archaic Oikumene stand in mute rows like soldiers in some ancient sovereign's tomb. These moravecs are 3D printers that defecate cash. It's rumored that one or two of the utmost wealthy Neshekk banking lords use their nizara privacy screen to hide a Quigashe within their retenue. 
• Vault 42477867 contains 7,641 Minga slaves in suspended animation: a reserve leverage currency that would raise deep ethical concern if its presence was widely known in the Alliance.
• Vault 744 stores the viral precursors for galis, the conspicuous wealth display skin lesions favored by Ngghrya, Zao pirates, Green Ssraad, and other alien and criminal elements.

***

OGL MECHANICS

Gemba Gigante T+4 E-1 R+4

• Hidden vaults built by the ancients
• Half molten superearth
• Planetary reserve bank of the Alliance

"Binti" By Nnedi Okorafor

Cover illustration by David Palumbo

Binti is a 90 page novella by Nnedi Okorafor. It is part of Tor's new imprint featuring shorter works of high quality SF. The book sports Stubby the Rocket on its spine rather than the usual Tor logo. I read a longer short work in this series just a few weeks ago: Kai Ashante Wilson's superb The Sorcerer of Wildeeps and Binti is a no less accomplished work.

It's also just as bloody in its own way, although that won't be a surprise to anyone who has read Nnedi's adult work.

The novella tells the story of Binti, a girl from the Himba tribe of Namibia, who has just been accepted into Oomza University, galactic U. So we have here a very Heinleinian set up: a youth sneaks off to seek their fame and fortune among the stars. Except being from an ethnic minority, Binti takes a lot of shit from other Earthers even before she gets off planet.

Numenera fans will love the edan that Binti found in the desert and now carries with her as a keepsake. "'Edan'" was a general name for a device too old for anyone to know it[s] functions, so old that they were now just art." As she goes through security screening at the spaceport, Binti's edan becomes a focus of the guard's scrutiny:

"He was inspecting its stellated cube shape, pressing its many points with his finger and eyeing the strange symbols on it that I had spent two years trying unsuccessfully to decode. He held it to his face to better see the intricate loops and swirls of blue and black and white, so much like the lace placed on the heads of young girls when they turn eleven and go through their eleventh-year rite."

Fans of Farscape, the Trinity RPG, and the Strange Stars setting will love the starship in which Binti travels (whose name may be an original Star Trek series reference; but maybe not):

"The ship was a magnificent piece of engineering technology. Third Fish was a Miri 12, a type of ship closely related to a shrimp. Miri 12s were stable calm creatures with natural exoskeletons that could withstand the harshness of space. They were genetically enhanced to grow three breathing chambers within their bodies."

Due to one particularly bloody scene, I'd say this is a novella for adults rather than for the YA market. I won't spoil the rest of the story; just get it and read it. Nnedi has created an interesting, emotionally complex and resourceful young female protagonist. Conflict is resolved in ways you don't often see in space opera. There are some rather fantastic medusoid aliens, with a culture that mirrors the Afrofuturism of the humans in this setting. I may write the Meduse up in the near future as a clade for the Strange Stars setting. They are a perfect fit.

Just go read this one!