Foreword to Act 227.II.2025
When planning the story structure from this point, I realised the need to convey some additional information and content warnings.
Act 2 will be taking place in Starscape. If you read the previous chapters, you know already: it is a gruesome, dystopian reality overtaken by a fascistic regime of the High Emperor (currently) Yinlogon. It is based in large part on present day gruesome realities of many real-life places including the one I am from - taken to its logical conclusion. It is the worst future imaginable and one I am trying to warn against in this artwork.
Such a reality, of course, comes with a significant tonal shift.
As of writing this, Act 2 is already skeletally planned, but I don't know all the details filling the blanks, and as such cannot yet give an accurate list of content warnings, since I do not know yet what will make the cut. What I'm providing here is a hopefully encompassing list - I will delete unused entries from it at the end of the act and I really hope I won't have to add to it.
Content warnings for Act 2
• Blatant misoginy, transphobia and racism
• Discussions of abuse, rape, torture, and trauma from all of it
• Slavery
• Scars
• Government-endorced fascism
• Oligarchical capitalism in its rotten mummified state
• Hateful speeches
• Mentions of genocide
• Nazi salutes
• Taxes
In how i'm planning the story, you can skip Act 2 completely and go straight to act 3. Once act 2 is completed, i will provide a link for that at the end of the page.
If it brings you any comfort, any and all named characters appearing in this act responsible for things mentioned above will die by the end of the story, and so will the system empowering it. I don't want to simply write a depressing story for the sake of it: it will get better. Things will change. I promise.
Glossary of local terms
Some insight into the inner workings of Starscape, mostly for my reference. Will change and get longer with time; treat everything said in the actual story as superlative to this until act 2 is completed. You can skip this part if you want.• Cases - a grammatical term in archonic language (see more here). Out of the five cases the Starscape dialect recognises two, and the distribution of words by case is heavily altered on the ideological basis.
• Castes - rigid biological categories in which humans of Starscape divide themselves. Many avenues of oppression are manifesting through caste, and attempting to hide or lie about it is punishable by death.
• Central Universal Market - the financial district for the wealthiest of Starscape to flex on everyone, known for its colossal brick towers visible from everywhere in Zerograd.
• The Control Palace - the emperor's residence and panopticon located on a cliff overseeing Zerograd.
• Dreamscape - the human name for the Metacosmos. Mostly consists of oblivic void and horrific labyrinths, with pockets of "close" metacosmos being rare and very thin.
• Drones - the lower caste. Their role in society is generally limited to work, reproduction and sometimes upbringing of other drones, and they do not have political rights.
• Executables - edicts of the emperor providing the basis for short-term law.
• Hell - see LORD; also a common swear word.
• Humans or men - broadly, all sophonts inhabiting Starscape. Narrowly, the higher human caste.
• Kernel - a structure prominent in many cities of Starscape: a central fort housing government offices and other central services, restricted from the general public.
• LORD - Living Order Regulating Dreamscape - an imaginary higher-order entity credited with creating all of Dreamscape and Starscape; its image is often used to scare humans into obedience under the fictional threat of postmortal punishment, generally referred to as "hell".
• The Registry - multilayered archives in which everything happening in Starscape is recorded. Highly classified, only accessible to the emperor and the secretary known as the root registrar.
• Shareholders - the ruling class of Starscape, powerful witch overlords from the wealthiest families.
• Starscape - both the name of the universe humans inhabit and of the empire dominating it; the latter is technically the Starscape Dominion Federation, but no one says that.
• Witchcraft or magic - any and all abilities altering Starscape that utilize Dreamscape. Humans with such powers are called witches, and it is usually hereditary. Especially powerful witches are called "high" witches.
• Zerograd - the capital of Starscape.