Grandma didn’t send me with a copy of our most illustrious coat of arms but I’ll write to her and see if she can send you one.
12 Likes
“Lieutenant, you’re eventually going to pay for that.”
“Do be silent, sir, until we get to our quarters! I don’t mean to be impertinent, you know it’s not my nature, but you also know what the stakes are! If we get caught…”
“We shan’t. I was born to play this part.”
14 Likes
bzeeeerpf
“Glad! Tidings! To you!”
Ms. Farnsworth (@hadley)
Ms. Honeyvenom (@Donald_Petersen)
“As a duly appointed rrrrrepresentative of the Harcourt Historical Society, it is my instinct pleasure to inform you that you have been approved for inclusion in the first edition of Harcourt’s Handbook to the Titled, Landed, and Official Classes of the Weatherby System.”
porp! fwing!
“I am further pleased to inform you that the membership has completed a thirrrrrd round of voting and both of you have, naturally, also been elected to Leviathan’s as full members."
zing! bip
"I invite each you to pay a visit to the club at your earliest convenience.”
drzt
6 Likes
[High in orbit around Weatherby, a communications satellite continues to broadcast messages of invitation to potential listeners anywhere in the galaxy.]
Message start.
boop boop - @Glutnix - boop beep - @DreamboatSkanky - beep bip - @miasm - bip boop - @Nightflyer - boop boop - @eve - boop beep - @strokeybeard - beep bip - @manwich - bip boop - @ChickieD - boop boop
Receipt of this message is informational and does not constitute an obligation. Message repeats.
[Beholden to the laws of physics, the lonely satellite continues its electromagnetic announcement to the stars.]
8 Likes
- What is your name?
[A pleasing hum fills your head with noise; you feel content and full]
- Please indicate your species by checking the appropriate box below:
[ ] Space Human
[ ] Space Lizard
[ ] Space Moose
[ ] Space Lobster
[ ] Other, please specify in detail ________________________________
[You realize choice is an illusion; each is all]
- Please indicate the institution from which you received your most recent education:
[ ] Benjamin Wheatly’s Mercantile Concern
[ ] Major Harbinger’s Reform School
[ ] Excelsior Hall, School of Rhetoric and Oratory
[ ] Weatherby University, creating fine scholars since 2188
[ ] Madam Scallopini’s Finishing School for Young Sentients
[ ] Other, please specify in excruciating detail __________________________
[Your knowledge is not infinite; it will fail you]
- Please record the name of your family estate:
[A dissonant chord sends searing pain through your frontal cortex]
- [Optional bonus] Please attach a picture or draw a replica of your family coat of arms:
- [Optional advanced challenge] Please record the name and species of any Citizen-Pretender wards in your care:
[You are bathed in a cacophony of silence]
11 Likes
Good people:
I, Robespierre Finnegan, will have to bow out of the competitions due to unforeseen emergencies concerning the viability of my estate and income. You are all on notice though that any intimations that this is an act of cowardice will be considered an attack on my honour and will be dealt with as such.
Yr Obecdient Srvt
RF
8 Likes
“Cowardice? Sounds more like an act of incipient destitution, am I right, Carsssy?” (snicker)
“Ssskidwish, behave yourself. We mustn’t mock the misfortunes of others.”
“Aw, put a sock in it. Your Ladyship.”
5 Likes
Aaaakzeee St-Patrick-Hartbrooke III
Hartbrooke Hall, Hartbrooke, Weatherby
February 07, [illegible]
Mr. Robespierre Finnegan
Chateau Comme Il Faut, Weatherby
Dear Mr. Finnegan,
It is with a great disappointment that I read of your absence from our forthcoming endeavour. I had very much wished to test my wit and wisdom against your own, as it is truly only through worthy competition that one will be able to improve their own skills.
Nevertheless, I respect your decision to withdraw from societal extracurriculars. While one who wagers much to win a great prize, only a fool will wager that which they cannot afford to lose. Refusing to make such a wager is not cowardice, it is prudence, a virtue too often absent in this day and age.
If you find yourself the victim of an attack on your honour as a result of your withdrawal, please consider myself at your service in the role of second, if such service should be required.
I hope and pray that your fortunes improve, and that we may meet and find ourselves either allies or honourable adversaries at some future date.
Believe me to be,
Dear Sir,
yours sincerely,
[obscenely elaborate signature]
Aaaakzeee St-Patrick-Hartbrooke III
8 Likes
oy, that was a tough molt. Anyone seen an unbearably chipper space human – ish with a Falkayn Fetish? He’s supposed to be my ward around this primitive place. or may, I his.
Whatever. I am still feeling and smelling my way around this place.
Wonder what I can eat.
You, perhaps?
8 Likes
Julius Rothschild Karekin, at your service.
Fantastical Tales surround my family. Allow me to put matters aright. Our story emerges, but does not begin, with my Great-Grandfather Amschel Rothschild Landau and his five sons who, as the foremost post-Falkayn Charybdian proponents of the Polesotechnic League, established outposts across this Fine Galaxy. We are Charybdis’s legitimate financiers…
We are Confessionally Unorthodox. I trust no one here is so base as to hold our Shaper beliefs in poor estimation, including our flexible concept of the self. As we converse, I appear as the young stockbroker I in fact am:
However the legal structures of Charybdis are thin and arcane. To overcome this dis-orderliness, when one of us needs to execute certain legal maneuvers we perform the geno- and memo- adaptations to become Amschel.
even though by many of your conventions Amshcel is “dead.” We invert the construct of “Corporate Personhood” - one actual person is the corporation.
This flexible manner of persona complicates Self-identification. I/We are pan specie/pan gender /pan sexual individuals with a strong group identity. I could properly lay claim to Space Human, Space Lobster, or Space Android. Perhaps we can agree I am a “Space Chimera”?
11 Likes
We Rothschild-Landau’s value study – of the Shaper scriptures, of the interaction of technology with mercantile opportunity, of the Self. Mr Wheatly certainly runs a respectable commercial concern, but his viewpoints can be a somewhat … parochial. I have recently been spending my quiet hours at Weatherby University.
My family famously claims many fine estates across Charybdis: Schillersdorf Palace, Château de Montvillargenne, Mentmore Towers, Schloss Hinterleiten, to name a few. I prefer Waddesdon Manor when tending to matters Weatherby.
The issue of a family crest is subtle. As we are all Amschel Rothschild Landau at certain times, we don’t need a Family Crest to convey unity across generations. Still, we have our follies. My Great-Uncle places great stock in this bauble.
When I asked my Bubbeleh, she suggested I proffer this:
8 Likes
The Landau side of the Rothschild-Landaus hew close to their Space Lobster affect. Some take this to extreme, cloning many offspring which they spread throughout the galaxy under the rubric “Darwinian Parenting.”
That is how I came to be have my ward, “Eighth.” “Eighth” is so young – only about a dozen molts thus far – that I am unsure of the sex, let alone gender or sexuality of this individual. Let us agree to call “Eighth” a “him” until “he” has the opportunity to work this out for “himself.” Eighth is exceptionally bright, even by Space Lobster standards. Eighth is also exceptionally amoral, even by Space Lobster standards.
My Aunt Marie-Helene calls him “petit Landau,” but that may just be her fondness for all things French.
Eighth is still learning etiquette, protocol, and how to use his eyes to experience the world before engaging his tentacles and chemosensors. He will grab anything, and eat anything, like the teenager he is.
My understanding is that he arrived on Weatherby before me – has anyone seen him?
11 Likes
1. What is your name?
Jean-Rhys Witherspoon Wilhelmina Winnifred Rodchaser née Westingham, widowed.
However, despite my recent marriage, I will continue to use my family name, at the very least until certain irregularities with the late Lord Rodchaser’s estate are sorted out by the probate courts. A frightfully boring business, that, of which the less said, the better, even though my solicitors have advised me that there is no cause for concern.
2. Please indicate your species by checking the appropriate box below:
[x] Space Human*
[ ] Space Lizard
[ ] Space Moose
[ ] Space Lobster
[ ] Other, please specify in detail ________________________________
Although I was born a full-blooded Space Human, I am not quite, at present, a full-bodied one, and must amend that designation with certain caveats concerning the cybernetic nature of my current corporeal form.
Owing to a series of unfortunate incidents culminating in an, ahem, conflagration, the details of which are unimportant, the greater part of my biological body – indeed, all save the head – has been replaced with this ingeniously fashioned mechanical one, which both sustains my remaining life functions and conveys my head from place to place. The ambulatory portion of my body is quite interchangeable, which is why the portrait in my Weatherby Passport Folio [see attached] contains no detail from the neck down.
One must not doubt that my current situation is temporary, a mere way station until my clone body is fully grown. Even so, I am finding that there are some definite, if unexpected, advantages to having a mechanical body, as I’m sure you, my good Robo-scrivener, already know quite well. [Jean-Rhys winks broadly]. A nod’s as good as a wink to a blind bat, know what I mean?
In addition to the obvious benefits of the infinitely adjustable controls used to regulate my brain chemistry, I’m finding that I quite enjoy the gait of this particular eight-legged harness, and the double-jointed grasping appendages are simply unparalleled in their reach and utility. The things that may be accomplished with modern sciences are a marvel, truly.
3. Please indicate the institution from which you received your most recent education:
[ ] Benjamin Wheatly's Mercantile Concern
[ ] Major Harbinger's Reform School
[ ] Excelsior Hall, School of Rhetoric and Oratory
[x] Weatherby University, creating fine scholars since 2188
[ ] Madam Scallopini's Finishing School for Young Sentients
[ ] Other, please specify in excruciating detail __________________________
Although I have some fond memories of my time in the boarding halls of Madam Scallopini’s (and less fine recollections of my brief sojourn at Major Harbinger’s), my parents and the relevant authorities eventually relented and I was finally allowed to matriculate to the hallowed halls of Weatherby U. I learned so much there that would serve me well later in life.
4. Please record the name of your family estate:
Coulibri Island, in the far southern reaches of the Sargasso Sea.
5. [Optional bonus] Please attach a picture or draw a replica of your family coat of arms:
6. [Optional advanced challenge] Please record the name and species of any Citizen-Pretender wards in your care:
I had a talking goldfish, once, as a wee child back on Britannia Prime, but I have not been blessed with such responsibility since my family emigrated to the colonies.
7 Likes
Good Lady Jean-Rhys,
If I may be so forward as to address you so informally, I heartily endorse you exploration of human-arthropod synergy. I do look forward to your further reports.
…and to have spent so much of one’s formattive years near the Wide Sargasso Sea must have been magical.
So delighted to make your acquaintance.
at Your Service,
Julius Rothschild Karekin
6 Likes
~the clatter of a delicate fan falling to the ground draws attention to the corner of the room, where a demure young lady has been hiding~
Oh bother-- I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt the festivities.
My name? I’m Miss Eudaemonia Betalinda Ponsonby-Britt. ~curtseys awkwardly~
Oh, and I’m a Space Human, though I suppose that’s fairly obvious too. My poor etiquette tutor at Excelsior Hall despaired of my skills, she so berated me for stating the obvious… never mind.
My family crest? I had it in my reticule-- oh bother, I hope I haven’t left it back at Bedlams Bower, my beloved home. I’m afraid I’ll have to present it tomorrow. ~blushes furiously~
Ah, here it is–
9 Likes
zurp!
“Huz-zzzzzz-zah! And well met!”
M. <pleasing hum> (@manwich)
Mr. Karekin (@David_Falkayn)
Ms. Rodchaser (@MrMonkey)
Miss. Ponsonby-Britt (@Nightflyer)
“As the appointed functionary of the Harcourt Historical Society, it is my distilled pleasure to inform you that the four of you have also been approved for inclusion in the first edition of Harcourt’s Handbook to the Titled, Landed, and Official Classes of the Weatherby System.”
bort. fzzzzt.
“I am further pleased to inform you that the membership has completed what will likely be the final round of voting for this year and all of you have been elected to Leviathan’s as full members."
beep boop. beep boop.
"Naturally, I invite each you to pay a visit to the club at your earliest convenience.”
zing!
4 Likes
Well met, Mr. Karekin,
However, I must insist that the pleasure of making your acquaintence is all mine. It’s not often that one crosses paths with a Rothschild-Landau, after all.
My medico-robots inform me that the design specifications for my cybernetic form were culled from my subsonscious while under deep sedation during the initial set of operations. As such, I cannot claim any deliberate attempt to plumb the depths of human-arthropod synergies, but I do have many fond memories of exploring the tide pools of fair Coulibri as a child, so perhaps that is an aspect of myself to which I should pay more attention.
In any case, mayhaps my current configuration will engender a certain sympathy with your young ward, @Eighth, whom will hopefully be less inclined to eat me should we meet. I will keep a watchful eye for his presence and inform you post-haste if I happen to encounter the little scampi in person.
Sincerely Yours,
Jean-Rhys Witherspoon &tc.
7 Likes
My Esteemed Lady Jean-Rhys Witherspoon Wilhelmina Winnifred Rodchaser ,
You are too kind to think of my ward, Eighth. I believe he could benefit most expeditiously from your acquaintance. He could certainly do with instruction on the finer points of proper bearing when using articulated joints – something at which you visibly excel.
As befits his Landau heritage, ‘he’ has an abiding interest in chemistry, and a surprisingly facility for the applications of the subject.
Lastly, his still-calibrating chemsosensors are unlikely to register your current magnificent if transient corpus as “food,” which should greatly ease the introduction.
Would there perchance be space in your calendar for Eighth and I to make a call?
At Your Service,
Julius Rothschild Karekin
5 Likes