Community Lore

I'd say that these Fantomons are like nothing I've ever seen, but... well, that would be stating the obvious, now wouldn't it? My research has been somewhat inconsistent, but I've concluded that some Fantomons seem to mimic human behavior - that is to say, while they lack human intelligence, those possessing more humanlike bodies seem to possess human skills. Naturally, their more animalistic kin are poorly suited to such behavior, but the resemblance Subject A-295's fighting techniques bear to traditional Muay Thai boxing cannot be coincidental. Have these creatures previously encountered our kind? -Dr. Roc, Ph.D

-written by boiyouthought98

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Young Andrej paced around the minting portal site filled with a twitchy anticipation. He'd done the math hundreds of times, it had to be here. He felt the outline of the containers in his pack. The Tapioca was pretty cheap, but that Plasmagunk had cost him two months worth of hard fought wages. He had tested the chemical composition against his alpha code though, he knew it was genuine. They laughed when he had said he was a bio-technologist, they wouldn't be laughing soon, there had already been sightings but the media was trying to suppress it.

He looked down at his watch, any second now. As if on queue, a low hum that was both quiet and that penetrated through his bones started to build. The hairs started rising on his arms. His mouth tasted like electricity and copper and the Tungsten cube he kept in his pocket somehow felt so heavy it threatened to drag him to the floor.

Light began to bend and distort around the portal, he took his phone and sent a concentrated burst of code from it's legacy 5G radio transmitter, just like that it appeared with an implosion that sucked the air out of the room. A Fantomon!

He locked eyes with it, he would either die here or accomplish his short life's goal. The creature regarded him with a curious expression, the side of Andrej's mouth curled in a wry smirk. The Fantomon mirrored his expression and Andrej knew in that moment they would be trainer and warrior.

He started to take out the containers of gunk and tapioca from his pack.

"Let's level you up little buddy, it won't take long now to find a fight"

-written by net_fin

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Alex slumped into an armchair as frayed as her nerves, took a deep breath, and clenched shut her eyes as hard as she could. The harder she pressed her eyes closed the closer the constellations of white light came together, always promising but never settling into a pattern she could recognise. Alex knew she was looking for something; that she understood. But what…? or who…?that was a little more nebulous.

The old stories were still around, but she’d only really ever heard scraps and syllables she’d had to piece together herself. Her Morai knew, or Alex thought she did, but her grandmother had always refused to speak the stories. Never, espeically, with Alex.

Every now and then, though, Alex would hear enough sounds to make a word of them This first was fantomon. Familiar, but totally foreign. Animalistic. Primal. Fan-to-mon. That was the word she’d heard herself calling across dead space in hundreds of dreams, for as long as she could remember. It was the word her Morai had whispered behind closed doors with the other sooths, and the word her Morai denied she knew anything about. The same way she did every time Alex mentioned Jiego.

Alex understood. She didn’t know why, or how, but she did. One thing anyone who had heard of the Ents knew about them -that is, if they even existed- was The Silence. Alex had stitched a story from the threads of whispers she had gleaned hiding in various nooks and crannies of the house she had grown up in, that she’d barely even left, that she wanted so badly to leave.

That was part of the reason she had become an astrophysicist. The rumours of the rift had been too impossible and yet too real to ignore. Since she was a little girl studying constellation maps she knew something more was out there. Everything she learned pointed more to it. The quantum fluctuations in afterglow light patterns that she studied for years, her team’s observation, however momentary, of the seventh dimension in superposition.

“Heck” she thought, “even those weird energy experiments the brilliant but fanatical People’s Group for Understanding Novel Kinesis were always growing that cassava for…”.

Alex opened her eyes. Once again the white light had failed to come together into a pattern she could recognise. She stood up out of the armchair, approached her desk, and stared at the torn out page of manuscript. The page had a strange language that, as well as she could interpret, did not reveal anything significant. But the picture, she was certain, was an early sketch of rift mechanics. The only words she could read for certain was the name “Voynich” and the number 78. It was a number she had thought about a lot. Why #78, and what did it have to do with #3940? And why, for that matter, #3940?

These were questions Alex could not answer and could not leave alone. If the rift did exist, and it was possible to travel there, it changed everything for Alex. Since she was young Alex had felt common, regular, like everyone else except for one constant underlying thought. It was the smallest idea in her body, but the most powerful. She would never tell her Morai, but she felt like an orphan who had been dropped far from home as a baby. As much as she loved her Morai Alex felt that part of her heart was elsewhere, as if someone she had never met had given her half a friendship necklace before disappearing forever.

It was time. Alex knew she had to find the other half of her heart. She knew she had to leave her home, maybe forever. She just did not know how to start. Her hand moved absentmindedly to the bag of tapioca chips at the side of her desk. As she crunched down on the nutritious and starchy snack she felt the energy return to her body, flow into her blood, and coarse through her brain like water washing away the noise until only one word remained in her mind: energy.

It always came back to energy. Disorganised energy. Noise. What she needed was silence. If she listened to the silence for long enough, she told herself, she would eventually hear a voice. Five days should do it, she thought. Just then Alex heard her device buzz. But who would be contacting her? And now? She looked at her screen, stopped, and the colour drained from her face.

It was Frey from the People’s Group for Understanding Novel Kinesis. She had not heard from Frey in years. The only thing she remembered about him, was that he shared with Alex the feeling of being split off, at birth, from a part of himself he neither knew nor understood. Alex had recognised immediately when they met that Frey was a fellow seeker. What she did not yet know was that he had evolved since that time. In the conversation that followed, Alex learned that Frey had become a Journeyman.

-written by gondwana

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Me and the Doc are pretty much stranded right now. I keep telling him I'm a super lucky guy, but he's still freaking out. For an old guy like him, that's kinda bad, heart trouble and so on, but what can ya do? Being stranded on a lifeless moon does that.

Actuall, while this moon seems pretty barren once you first step off the shuttle, it's actually teeming with life. Thing is, the Fantomon here are almost all camouflaged. You got a few that blend in with the rocky, yellow landscape, sure, but we've encountered at least one species that can disappear before your very eyes! Crazy, right? It spit some kinda acid at us, but the spray totally missed!

Told ya already, I'm a lucky guy.

I'll admit though - I am concerned. The ships damaged pretty badly, and... i got hurt in the crash. Just a few broken ribs, but it's not exactly pleasant. I can't let the Doc find out, he'll just stress worse, and I don't wanna give the old bastard a heart attack, y'know?

-written by boiyouthought98