In-Depth Look: Chroniclers
DIGITAL
Reflections dance across round mirror shades with every movement. Framed in dull metal, they are embedded in a black leather mask like glittering insect eyes, staring cold and silent into a world lit with flashes, but otherwise dark. The mask tightly presses to the nose and the forehead. Nimble fingers fumble with the clasps at the back of the head, tightening them until the leather is like a second skin. The frames of the glasses are now pressed tightly around the eyes, tubes are pushed into the mouth. A microphone membrane transmits the sound of every breath, every wheezing of the lungs and the squelching of the saliva-covered tubes to an amp hanging in front of the chest by a two finger-thick cables. The sounds are distorted and produce grotesque feedback as they mingle with the static noise and the mumbling of hundreds of speakers in the background. From time to time, feedbacks tear through the sea of sound, echoing through the metal corridors for seconds.
The Chronicler does not register any of this. His masked face drowns in the darkness of the cowl he wears. The coinsized pieces of mirrored glass embedded into the cape’s shoulders reflect the light of the amber monitors staring down from the walls in a chaotic arrangement like the multi-faceted eyes of a spider.
The Chronicler leaves his chamber, head bowed, and enters the corridor door. In the glare of light blue lighting, more robed figures pass him by, all wearing a white barcode on their black capes.
They move with a purpose through the narrow steel corridors, never hesitating at a junction. Monitors with a bizarre sensory array of cameras, barcode scanners and antennae hanging from the ceilings watch the tide of Chroniclers, servo engines whirr and tilt the apparatus from one side to the other and back. The Chronicler does not become part of the tide, he follows the air current carrying the scent of sweat, oil, and burnt rubber. He sees the daylight, filtered by red dust clouds, at the end of the corridor. A brother (or sister?) is already waiting for him.
Humbly, he sinks to his knees in front of the guardian, pushes back his cowl and opens the upper clasp of his mask. With both hands, he folds down the forehead segment and shows a barcode tattooed to pale skin. He feels the scanner’s cold metal and registers the red flare of the bar laser out of the corner of his eye. There is a squeaking “Exit!” from the guardian’s speaker. He is finally outside.
The Chronicler is a small form in front of a giant mesh of wagons, metal plates and steel cables. Solar panels, angled like the scales of some primordial giant, gather warmth in the light of the Borcan sun. Cables thick as a man’s arm coil into the depths and feed the Cluster’s sleeping heart, embedded in a nutrient flfluid of bits and bytes. It will start beating at some point. Eventually, the Chronicler will not have to go to the Scrappers’ halls anymore to appraise and buy artifacts. His brothers and sisters will have no more need to masquerade in front of savages, no longer need to pit Anabaptists against Judges and Judges against Spitalians. For the beating heart will mark the beginning of a new era.
OPEN
For most Clans and Cults it is difficult to trace their own origins via family trees or records back into the past through the decades. The records from pre-Eshaton times are forever lost, replaced by myths and legends of golden cities and flying humans. The past means nothing, today is everything. The Chroniclers see things differently.
Before the Eshaton, they called themselves Streamers. They were more a movement of like-minded people than an organized group. The continuous flow of data linking everything, the Stream, was at the center of their interests and often their lives. The humans were the neurons in its global network, and it transmitted the impulses. Entire cultures and humanity’s knowledge had merged into the Stream and continued existing within it.
The Eshaton interrupted the flow of data, tore apart social structures paralleling the web of data. Centuries-old knowledge was lost. The last residues in the minds of the surviving generation were beaten out of their intelligent heads in the era of the beast. The counter had thus been reset to zero. Later on, the Chroniclers started calling the enormous catastrophe in 2073 the Zero Event.
As the world around them rushed toward a new Stone Age and turned to archaic ways of civilization, the Streamers kept alive what little ancient knowledge they were able to salvage. Across all of Borca, they collected user manuals, storage devices, circuit boards, and server stacks. In the first decades, the Streamers were only technophile looters, filling basements with scrap without too much expertise. They were not yet organized, but their desire for the rebirth of the Stream seemed to propel them all down the same path. Still, they lacked a core of crystallization – a charismatic leader, a great technician or Messiah giving their deeds purpose and conjuring up a future.
The year 2102 is considered the year of the founding of the Cult. In the next spring, they built a Central Cluster in a freight yard and electrified the installation’s digital heart. A Static Stream was back online.
But all Streamcasts that might shed some light on these circumstances are hidden behind cascades of passwords. No one knows the reason. Presumably, the last authorized Chronicler died centuries ago. Since then, the Chroniclers have been digging into the data, circumventing security mechanisms, overcoming barriers and installing backdoors. Using newly entered Stream data, they construct bridges across digital deathtraps and skirt defense complexes. But what hides within its core?
START
It didn’t take long for a wild bunch of Streamers to form a community that knew only one goal: fully reactivate the Stream. Once the digital heart was beating again and old knowledge began to burst from it, the Golden Age would be near. The Streamers wanted nothing less than to revert to the time before the Eshaton.
Securing the Cologne cathedral and an adjoining museum with a computer center was the first coordinated step forward. On the surface, they found a bubble of Static Stream, extracted it, dissected it, and sank into its core. For years, they mined data, layer by layer. They made a technological leap from the status of a Stone Age cult with residual information to a high-tech organization.
The research was far from complete when Anabaptists stormed the cathedral in 2148. The Chroniclers were no match for these fanatics. They were overwhelmed and nailed to the ancient sacral building’s portal as heretics.
The Anabaptists’ reign of terror began.
Large amounts of information and technology were destroyed and thus removed from humanity’s consciousness. The achievements the Bygones had gathered over centuries fell prey to human stupidity. The Chroniclers fled and hid from their enemies to finally gather in the Central Cluster.
RESET
The defeat at the cathedral showed the Chroniclers their weakness. In a time when the Anabaptist’s blade was sharper than the digital word, their life depended on the mercy of the strong. As supplicants, they would have had to grovel before local warlords and accept a subordinate role to the rabble. They would have never reached their goals. There was only one way out.
From that day on, power through intimidation became their new policy. No stranger has seen a Chronicler’s face since then. Shards of mirrored glass were added to their robes. A modulator amp distorts their voices. The Cultists now look and sound like irate gods. But that wasn’t enough.
If they had learned one thing from the Stream, it was the fact that information was power. So they made themselves indispensable. A new currency replaced simple trade, issuing so-called Chronicler Drafts in exchange for artifacts. The consigned counter value of these were pure, condensed information from the think tanks of the Cult. Crumbled sheets of paper with their barcodes and columns of numbers could be simply exchanged for directions to preserved, pre-Eshaton storages, spy data, compromising information on enemies, or scientific texts on flora and fauna at the next Cluster. Everything the Chroniclers heard was entered into the always hungry data storages and distilled for redistribution.
Cities could no longer avoid the Cult’s influence. Refusing a Chronicler a seat on the Council would inevitably lead to all of the Cultists leaving the city. Not to mention sudden “special” discounts on information regarding their unsuspecting leaders. Soon the Chroniclers needed no mercenaries to secure their interests. The Chroniclers had become an economical factor to the ruling class, and indispensable for a vast network of Scrappers and traders. The well-being of the Chroniclers became crucial to the prosperity of them all.
OPERATING SYSTEM
The Chroniclers’ language is strange and eerily monosyllabic to foreigners. For the Streamers, it’s a means of intimidation and mystification. Some terms are very common:
Level: The Chronicler’s rank. Applicants start on level 1. The Fragments, at least low-ranking Agents assume, vary between level 20 and 40. Here, the information is contradictory.
Bios: A Chronicler’s curriculum vitae stored in the Cluster, including movement patterns, level, achievements, failures and the score that measures their value.
Update: Once the Bios shows the necessary scores, the Chronicler is introduced to new responsibilities by a higher-ranking brother or sister and thus reaches a new level.
Redundancy: A record of information already present in the Cluster’s database and as such yields no new insight.
GENERATION++
Once it was hard for Chroniclers to bolster their ranks with promising new recruits, because the disciples of technology seemed too weird and too far removed from reality. Nowadays, an agreement with Spitalians allows them to occupy themselves with more important things again. The Cult takes in the children that doctors diagnose as autistic, and all youths who’ve fallen through the cracks due to their physical shortcomings. In the wasteland, strength and endurance are crucial. Children with a great deal of imagination and interests in Bygone writings are usually not good at working the land and thus cost more than they earn. As such, if the Chroniclers want to take them, all the better. They’ll feed them and give them at least a chance to survive.
In groups, they are submitted to logic tests by the Chroniclers. If they pass, they are given a mentor. Those mentors become their parents of sorts, and take care of their mentees however and whenever they can. They stand alongside their young recruits when the laser marker burns a unique bar code onto their foreheads. Each recruit is then given a cell in the Cluster, where they live, sleep, learn, and work until their first promotion: their first Update. After every Update, their responsibilities change, and it is understood that they move into different security areas within the Cluster. Over the years, a young Chronicler’s profile becomes clearer, and every new responsibility better matches his knowledge and skills.
LIFE IN THE CLUSTER
In the Cluster, there are only Chroniclers. They speak the same techno-language and share a dream of fully reactivating the Stream so that it can reach the whole world and fertilize it with knowledge. The air in the Cluster seems to shiver with excitement. Everyone considers himself part of a great, sublime endeavor.
A barcode on the forehead links each Chronicler to the many databases of the computer systems, which register and constantly update everyone’s value to the Cluster. The tag serves as an access code for restricted areas and a means to follow a Chronicler’s career.
The Cult does not believe in chance. Human life is considered predetermined and expressed in an equation. The movement pattern and course of action are registered and entered into the central computer, which in turn enters it into a fractal global formula. This formula is said to be able to calculate each Chronicler’s fate. The fate of any human in fact, if only the database could one day surpass the critical mass of information.
Communication between Chroniclers is very focused on information, free of idioms and full of ancient computer commands. Words are chosen carefully. A Chronicler prefers to speak slowly and deliberately, avoiding any slips of the tongue. Syntax errors are considered brain malfunctions. The brain is viewed as a machine, and the mind its operating system. Only constant patches make it possible to adapt to an ever-changing world.
CHRONICLER DRAFTS
Chroniclers in the Alcoves could print out as many Chronicler Drafts as they need and ruin the economy in one day if they wished to do so. But usually they act responsibly. Perhaps to avoid leading their own brothers and sisters into temptation, the Draft Printers have a preset number of Drafts that can be printed. If it is used up, they must be reset by a higher-ranking Chronicler, a Fragment.
2 TO THE POWER OF 16
The Eshaton destroyed the Stream’s physical component. But it had already stopped flowing shortly before and the Chroniclers do not know why. Was it an overload? Never. Massive node breakdown? Possible, but not probable. In the archives, there are reports on something called the “2 to the power of 16” signature. It had flooded the Stream a few days before the Zero Event, and it had reached a critical mass only hours before the catastrophe, disrupting all digital communication. It is said that all computers broke down then under the pressure of the signature multiplying itself in fractal coils. Was it the condensed consciousness of an emerging artificial intelligence? Or an autoimmune reaction of the Stream to keep this intelligence from waking up? The Chroniclers see the signature as a threat, but also as an opportunity. If they make the Stream flow again without better understanding the 2 by the power of 16 phenomenon, they risk losing the work of millennia – the knowledge of all humanity. Yet if they succeed, there is a chance to update the Stream to a level it has never reached before.
BEYOND THE STREAM
In Justitian, everyone knows them, and without them, Tech-Central would not exist. Who else would be interested in all the scrap? Yet even beyond the trade routes, their services are held in high regard. Wherever they are, Scrappers appear, followed by the Apocalyptics, and trade blooms. Every child knows their larger-than-life barcodes, painted on walls in chalk to mark their presence. Their technological knowledge is as legendary as their skills as advisors, emissaries, and informants.
Although they mingle with humans on a daily basis to evaluate and purchase artifacts, they can hardly be considered down-to-earth. Their appearance is aweinspiring and intentionally intimidating with their distorted voices and face-concealing masks. Their bizarre demeanor raises them above the common people. Mysterious superbeings, that’s what they aspire to become. And they are seen as such. Is it any wonder that many a Chronicler lives up to this role a little bit too much?
Reserving judgment and without drawing any conclusions, Chroniclers seem to be over-motivated techno freaks whose connection to reality has suffered due to countless electric shocks. Everything Bygone makes them hyperventilate, the Scrappers say. Mostly harmless.
While Chroniclers have been hoarding technology for centuries, everyone knows that they do not dance around it like some idol. From Bygone fragments, a technologically advanced world can arise. Unseen by ignorant eyes, the Clusters eat themselves into the ground, expanding. Knowledge – unfiltered and unsorted – flows through their digital hearts. In this way, the Chroniclers have long since pulled the strings from behind the curtain. In powerful city states like Justitian, they wield true power from behind the throne, preserving society by keeping the peace or bringing war with nothing more than information.
DATA STREAM: NEEDLE TOWER DISASTER
In the year 2563, 16 Fragments were sent across the Reaper’s Blow. All of them had garnered pass codes in the service of the Cluster that removed barriers blocking ways deep within. No secret of the Cluster was a mystery to them. They were held in high regard and unquestionably loyal.
8 of them survived the passage.
Their job was to create a network similar to the West Borcan scrap trade. As their first goal with the tower structures called Needle Towers in the East Borcan woods, they endeavored to create a radio connection between the Needle Towers and the Central Cluster. Indeed, the Fragments conquered the towers and radioed their success to the Cluster. Then their actions deviated from the plan. They surrounded themselves with an army of whores and mercenaries, and ceased answering requests from the Cluster.
Back home on the other side of the Reaper’s Blow, there is not much information on the rogues. All information about them is highly classified, and may neither be sold nor shared within the Order. That said, 4 of them are known even to the lowest ranks, at least by name.
Chromium and Iridium were said to have founded cities, constructing Needle Towers seen as miracles clad in glass and polished steel and communicating via mirrors. Promethium was supposed to expand the radio lines close to Osman into a relay station. According to legends, he has instead dug a tunnel into the great Osman library. Cobalt is the only other Fragment whose name is known by anyone outside of the highest ranks. A Shutter claims to have seen him near Praha, where he led a host of savages.
The remaining identities of the rogues have been successfully removed from all databases, as though they encapsulated and sunk into the core as if their names alone carried power. What were the atomic numbers of Chrome and Iridium again?
As these rogue Fragments grow out of control, the remaining Fragments in the Cluster take extreme measures. They activate Shutters and Fuses – elite Chroniclers whose barcodes have not been registered in the Cluster for years. Their official score is zero. They exist beyond the common system, yet are still very much present within an isolated mirror of the Static Stream. Only high-ranking Chroniclers know of their existence, and among them, few have the pass codes to issue orders to these unseen Shutters and Fuses. It’s better this way. For those few who thrive on the fringes are adept in dark deeds and use sanctioned, meaning deadly, tools, as the most technologically advanced thieves and assassins in this Cult.
THE WEB EXPANDS
The Central Cluster in Justitian was only the beginning. While the Chroniclers consider it ultimate and unique in its nerve-rending beauty, with its technological proliferation and the constant noise of a thousand distorted speakers, another Cluster arose in Frankan Aquitaine. It is in no way inferior to its Borcan inspiration, neither with regards to its bizarre setup nor its regional influence. In fact, Aquitaine has been steadily rising within the internal ranking over the last few years. East of the rural areas, the steel cadavers of planes and ship hulls were joined into a labyrinthine jungle of ancient technology by chain bridges and catwalks. Ships shot to pieces and broken parts of oil rigs hang in the silt like insects in a web, and every day, new flotsam crashes against their steel hulls. More and more Chroniclers go here seeking the special artifacts that wash ashore. Scrappers climb from ship to ship, cutting them apart with arc welders or exploring their cargo holds. With nets, they recover crates from the water. The granulate they toss back into the sea, but the machinery – wrapped in oilcloth and perfectly preserved – they drag to the Chroniclers. They have found quite a lot already! Black steel tubes clinging to one another like lugworms, dull white cubes that even a knife cannot scratch, spindles of light metal wrapped in bands of glowing stones full of cables and boards. The Chroniclers dig into these artifacts like predators, ecstatically dissecting everything they can get their hands on.
Yet they have no idea what it all is. Why have these ships been torn apart? Were humans on board at one point? Perhaps there is some connection to the strange symbols on these ships? No one in Europe has ever seen their linear and circular drawings. Are they letters? No one can even understand or place them. The Scrappers are asked the same question every time they return from their raids with new artifacts. “Corpses?” They shake their heads, snorting or spitting. Forced to give the same response every time, much to their chagrin.
Chroniclers have learned to take that as a “no”.
The Clusters in Justitian and Aquitaine are the largest ones, but not the only ones. Smaller Clusters can be found in almost any larger Borcan and Frankan city. The Needle Tower Disaster stopped them from spreading across the Reaper’s Blow into East Borca and beyond early on. Though the Spitalians had paid their respects to the Cult’s Fragments and invited them to establish a base in Danzig, Pollen, they had only turned up their Vocoders and answered “Zero!” In the far west, it is the same story. The Cultists’ insubordination grows in sync with their distance to the Central Cluster, the Fragments suspect. Plus, their safety is uncertain. While Chroniclers are indispensable in Borca where their sheer presence garners respect and attention, the Hybrispanians are not so dependent on the Cult’s mercy. The web is woven more tightly with every passing day, but there are always holes.
SANCTIONED
Should stroboscopes, loud Vocoders and Tesla rods be unable to repulse attackers, the Chroniclers count on hammers and Splayers from their allies. The spirit is strong, but the flesh – ah well. Actually, the Cluster considers it favorable to make its allies feel indispensable in battle. No one considers an organization that is practically unarmed a danger, and no one would welcome an organization in their own capital if it were armed to the teeth. Deadly weapons, thus, have always been considered sanctioned. Chroniclers may not use them.
Shutters have turned their backs to the Cult, though. Officially. That their score is still available is a result of data storage, which is very complicated. It’s amazing how unerringly they recognize current enemies of the Cult and eliminate them without any help. What about the sanctioned weapons, weren’t they registered in the system only days ago?
LINKS
Cooperation with the Judges has traditionally been good. Although the Cult’s ways of life differ widely, they share a common history. Ever since the Chroniclers initiated the building of Justitian with the founding of the Central Cluster in that small freight yard, the Judges have been at their side. There has never been an official treaty, but both know what they have in each other.
The relationship with the Hellvetics is different.The Chroniclers have always coveted the Alpine Fortress. In its stone labyrinths, ancient computer systems work, managing the Hellvetics’ merits and Central storage. Endless knowledge and surely a piece of Static Stream must be trapped in there. The Chroniclers would love to extract it, but the descendants of the Swiss military have always denied the Cult any kind of access. No reasons given. They do not listen to reason. “Why do you do that?” scream the overloading Vocoders. But the Hellvetics are experts at keeping neutral and are unimpressed by the Chroniclers’ demands, regardless how much they whine or struggle to order them around.
The old enmity with the Anabaptists has ceased since the Fragment Modus came to Cathedral City, now enjoying the hospitality of Orphid the Baptist. No one knows what the two of them have been discussing or doing all these months. The Anabaptists as well as the Chroniclers have been ordered to keep the peace between the Cults as long as this hospitality remains undisturbed.
In the meantime, many Anabaptists see Chroniclers as a necessary evil. Someone must dig up the technological corruption that can undoubtedly be attributed to the Demiurge, and that is exactly what the Chroniclers do. Like the bacteria of decay that decompose corpses. “That is about how good they smell, too”, the Anabaptists joke. No one sees the Chroniclers faces behind their masks. They are grinning. They go out and continue to gather information, spinning the threads of their web.
THE MIRROR
The Clusters hoard enormous amounts of knowledge. The Static Stream expands in fractal coils, attached data is assimilated and fills gaps. It approaches a critical mass. This knowledge attracts those who consider it their possession: since the day the Recombination Group’s Dispensers opened up for the first time, Sleepers have been infiltrating the Chroniclers. They pose as devout followers and climb within the hierarchy. But actually, they have fallen for a trap. Once they dive into the core for the first time, they swim within a world of mirrored data, operating with files and images destined for their eyes only. Meanwhile, transponders record the data flow from their nanite blood and extract pass codes. Should one of them penetrate the mirror anyway, the Cluster’s radio masts send a code that will not remain unheard. One of the ancients stirs, flexes her leathery skin and gets up on her mechanical leg. Her anger is boundless.
RESISTANCE EQUALS TENSION DIVIDED BY STRENGTH
Patterns that remained the same for decades suddenly change. The Cockroach Clan has grown stronger. The Enemoi Clan has accessed sealed Streams and sub nodes waiting for their final extraction by a Fragment in at least two places in the wasteland. The Scrappers’ movements have become less fractured and more chaotic, avoiding areas claimed by Clans.
The Clans are rising, occupying whole blocks, ambushing Judges and killing them. But these blocks had not been fully combed through yet! The Chroniclers are confused. Their answer is the Paradigmas.
Highly specialized and equipped with advanced technology, they glide into the wasteland amidst a corona of electrical discharges. When they raise their voices, sonic waves paint patterns in the dust. The dirt on windowsills one hundred steps away dances. They are like gods, and they vanquish those who are weak of will and ready to believe. The Clans are their material. Embedded into the system, they become tools. At the same time, flickering walls of images awaken all over Borca. Single panels are missing and clusters of pixels are dead, but the shapes of Chroniclers passing in an endless march are recognizable. The images are jerky and distorted by static noise. For a brief second, full frontal views of masked faces fill the image walls. Then the endless march takes over again.
If someone steps in front of an image wall, a masked face appears, larger than life, its eyeglasses glaring suns. The image pulses. Assignments sent by the Cluster rattle through the speakers. The Paradigmas are impressive, and the image walls attract Clanners from all over the area. The Chroniclers’ presence grows.
Solitary Chroniclers on field missions also know how to gain respect. With one pinky of their Streamer gloves, they can dispense electrical shocks. This is where the widely known gesture comes from. If you show someone your pinky, you’re sending them a warning. They better stay clear of you. The effect is even more impressive when a Chronicler uses the gesture. Especially when the barely enlightened and superstitious population of the wasteland considers the shocks an innate ability of the Chroniclers.
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