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Aliens: Maracites
They are, of course, the Gothic sub-culture grown to the status of a nation (albeit a small one). Following the piecemeal damage of the Thing-They-Wanted-To-Call-World-War-Three-But-Wasn't-Big- Enough, Goths from all over the world drifted into, and settled the abandoned city of Melbourne (there is a Goth Epic Poem which describes the great Trek from Perth of the Tribes of the Moon; it follows the rhythmic structure of the Sisters of Mercy song, Flood and is occasionally sung whenever Maracites get drunk enough to overcome their detached reserve). There were many rumours about which weapon was actually used there; depending on who you speak to, accounts include biological warfare agents, Sarin or VR-55 analogues, economic failure, an electro-magnetic pulse which destroyed the electrical systems (unproven), a tour by Malcolm McLaren, a Summoning of The Elder Gods and a strike with a neutron bomb. Suffice to say that no-one else wanted to live there. Some say that the word `Maracite' is an obscure corruption of the word `Melbournite'; given their secretive nature, much of what is known about the Maracites is conjecture based on the one or two facts that they have let slip. For a while, it was very much like the scene described in David Bowie's song `Diamond Dogs' (or something like the conditions in the film `Escape From New York'); people living in abandoned buildings, coming out only at night to play in the ruins. Fresh water was always available and food could be scavenged from the ruins (some was actually grown in the old Botanic gardens), but power and heat weren't always easy to come by, and whenever power was available it was used primarily to power amplifiers or audio equipment rather than light industry. A small society in the CBD had expanded to the point of connecting to the outside world's network when the NoSaNoOs arrived. By this time, the Maracite society had more or less established itself; much given to introspection, the habit of working weird Lovecraftian rituals into everyday life - see: "The Coffee (or Caffeine, or perhaps Caffin) Ritual", "Fast Eddie's" (or "Looking Into the Abyss") and "Rocky" - and wholehearted acceptance of Darkness in all its facets. They somehow managed to leave behind the SCAdian trappings of squatters (which is what they'd been, initially) and acquire a kind of quiet elegance. No matter how severe conditions got, their clothing was always immaculately presented (even if this involved deliberate tears in the fabric), they were unusually healthy for a people who traditionally shunned daylight (and some attribute this to mutation or the unintentionally benign action of a biological warfare agent, or possibly both) and fastidiously (some say obsessively) clean. Occasionally, people from outside would arrive and attempt to loot the city. The first wave of looters wouldn't find anyone; the more persistent ones wouldn't find anything worth taking, and the more desperate ones would only stay long enough for night to fall, at which time the Maracites would emerge from their hiding places and kill the invaders with crossbows and glass knives. The Maracites were tolerant of others as long as they weren't disturbed; other people were welcome to live in Melbourne but the Maracites made no effort to socialise with them. They were fiercely territorial, and any outsiders quickly learned which places were off-limits; the Maracites had a seemingly inexhaustible supply of crossbow bolts (see: Orlock). St Paul's Cathedral (which had survived whatever disaster had befallen the rest of the city) had been restored, somehow without the use of heavy machinery; all the Christian iconography had been removed, the stained glass windows replaced with Gigeresque tableaux formed from pieces of broken wine-bottles, detailing the Dark Lady in her many incarnations. It was rumoured that an insane (even by Maracite standards) woman known only as Ryth lived in there from before the war up to the time that the NoSaNoOs destroyed Earth; eternally young, bound to the old altar by a silver chain, worshipped as an avatar (or oracle) of the Dark Lady, revered as a source of much of the Maracite theology and way of life. The many digital images of her ritual dances that exist are endlessly examined, pored over, dismissed as fakes and proclaimed as religious artefacts. Most Maracites just watch them and smile. This was the state of Maracite society in the year 2052 when the aliens arrived with their edicts controlling technological advancement beyond their given limits. While mainstream society either sought ways to work with the aliens or fought a brief, violent and ultimately futile war against them, the Maracites accepted them wholeheartedly and somehow won the confidence of the artificial intelligence which had been given the task of coordinating relations with humanity. It was the Maracites who first named this machine `Friend'. While the rest of the world was slowly coming around to life under the NoSaNoOs and occasionally coming up abruptly against the restrictions, the Maracites flourished. Some humans believed them to be a creation of Friend, or an alien race who had decided to colonise earth. Some believed them to be a performance art troupe dedicated to re-enacting Storm Constantine’s `Wraeththu’ books; others believed them to be biologically altered supermen who had started the War for their own dark purposes, or Rosicrucians or Masons or the Illuminati or Satanists (or Extians, depending on the area); the few Maracites who journeyed into mainstream society were relentlessly persecuted. Some were even killed by mobs. The Maracites' reputation was not at all enhanced by the fact that the Bythians seemed more inclined to protect them than other humans. The mobs which caused the deaths of Maracites were fired upon by the Bythians without mercy. A rare interview with a Maracite of the time reveals just how far from ordinary human thought they had come. When asked why the Bythians seemed to have such an affinity with the Maracites, Stefan said: "Nature of the beast. Blood drinkers they; so we." The exact date isn't known, but at some point the Maracites moved off-world to a planet on the far periphery of the NoSaNoOs Dominion; a world called Raummir. At this stage, they numbered about three hundred; with the assistance of NoSaNoOs-controlled machinery, they built huge Gothic monstrosities; temples, churches to imaginary or alien gods, mausoleums, theatres, all decorated with ornate, amphetamine-psychosis detail. They built tombs, ossuaries, desolate cityscapes (the entire city of Melbourne had been lifted bodily from Earth, transported there and preserved as a monument to their origins, at a cost known only to the NoSaNoOs), all linked by an impossibly intricate underground labyrinth. The existence of these structures was made known only after Raummir was opened to the rest of the Dominion. Rumour: the Sthelane often visited Raummir before this; it is thought that the biological warfare agent that gave the Maracites their pale features, unusual quick reflexes and odd behaviour also conveyed an unusual degree of abstract mathematical reasoning. This is borne out by the fact that the Maracites designed and built – and were allowed to use – their own starships. Some have dared to suggest that the Maracites were Metamorphs playing one of their `limiting' games (wherein they assumed a single shape and gave away all of their abilities). If this is so, then it is either the most daring disguise they ever adopted, or (as some conspiracy theorists put forward) they made a deal with the NoSaNoOs. An important feature of Maracite life was the concept of the Reptile, a colloquial expression which referred to a mentor, spiritual adviser, teacher or elder. The reptile was usually a sexual partner who instructed the student in proper S/M submission techniques. It was usually painfully obvious who was who. Maracites had to learn submission as part of their education.
Okay, some "facts": Melbourne was made desolate with a biological warfare agent, Klytemnestra B, the variant which was linked to high levels of testosterone; any sufficiently macho males were killed in a matter of hours after infection. Much later it mutated into Klytemnestra C, which killed all males and anyone over the age of about forty. Before it could mutate again, the Metamorphs decided to hold a convocation in Melbourne. They had been dealt a serious blow by the NoSaNoOs, many of them killed in their first encounter in hyperspace (reference: Metamorphs 3, a work in progress); half of the remaining metamorphs had scattered throughout the nearer star-systems (continuing the search for opposition to the NoSaNoOs), and the rest returned to earth to attend this meeting. It was decided that they all conceal themselves within a Limiting Game. This was a Metamorph tradition in which the usually near-omnipotent shape-changer assumed a form of lesser capabilities; vampires were a common one. The form would have the Metamorph code build into the body somewhere, which could be activated later to convert the body back into a full Metamorph. It would be possible for the Metamorph to die in this form. It was possible to set the Limited form up so that the body would revive later (semi-intelligent nodes with the Metamorph's structure distributed holographically, which would assemble out of the danger zone which caused the death and rebuild the Metamorph), but this was considered playing it safe and detracting from the whole experience. The Metamorphs cured the survivors of the plague before they became Limited. They founded the Maracites to preserve what was left of the Gothic culture and to create a disguise under which they could seek to negotiate with the NoSaNoOs. In effect, there were two kinds of Maracite: the Elders (ex-Metamorphs), and altered humans. The only effective difference between them was that the former had much greater mental processing powers and the latter didn't have the ability to become full Metamorphs. When the Elders conferred with Friend and openly revealed what they'd done, Friend acknowledged that they'd come half-way to being within the Law and made a provision for the Maracites as a protected race. Some see this as Friend's first mistake, which later led it to being removed as controller of earth for the Dominion; it was certain that none of the other NapaiSUB machines gave their subject races this amount of leeway. |
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