Are Artists Even Human? (False Machine News!!)

Ordinary humans have literally zero idea of what it takes to develop and create an image, meaning they treat it as a kind of magic, and adopt towards it the same attitude they would have towards superior magicians, one of envy and disdain, (A WISE POLICY), but, what if an Artist (traditionally entirely mute beasts) could be trained somehow to take, to explicate and take apart its art, showing its as a product of effort, concentration, iteration and time? Could this possibly lead ordinary decent humans to have more sympathy both with this art and its creator?

Consider then the following words, from the artist of ‘Queen Mab’s Palace’ (due hopefully at the end of the year), the often-storied August Lake Cartland, or ‘Alcopopstar’;

………………

“Hello humble and beloved benefactors,

Today I have an update for you, not slope for swine but delicately prepared delicacies for the petite porcine prince/esse/s among us, for all of us to enjoy.

So, ART.

I have been working hard on new illustrations. I thought today, to waste the wanting hours, I might describe to you the process of bringing about an illustration for the book to full fruition.

The first step for me is to take myself to some pleasant place (usually a cafe) with a sketchbook or notepad and actually read what Patrick has written, which to my pleasant surprise, is actually quite good! At this point I start to sketch..

For this example we are using the section of the book on the Hydraulic Monks.

At this stage of image making I am only trying to draw out concepts from words and get a general idea of what things could look like. The sketch itself here is not meant to look pretty! it's very utilitarian in fact. I just put down basic information that I can pick up at a later stage so there is less cognitive load happening all at once.

After this stage is complete I amble blindly home and, within a day or two of that first sketch usually put down some rough lines as shown below.

Once again, not designed yet to look pretty, the aim at this moment is to architect an image based off of information in the first sketch. I often take a few attempts at this stage, as we can see with the kneeling figure. In this Image I resolve that I would like the front of the altar visible to give it its due reverence, and so turn the monks to face it.

Finally with this done I begin the fun part of adding and retracting blacks. Which I can only describe a little like pushing and pulling. I tend to work only on one layer and so work the white and black back and forth until content.

As this is happening I usually grab the picture, or work in progress, and send it off to my partner; the oil painter who will be doing our lovely cover, who tells me everything is wrong and how to fix it.

After a bit more back and forth the final image appears!

I try to leave things a little loose to let a slight sketchy feeling through, as I don't want to compete too much with interpretation of the lovely words Patrick has put down on the page.

There is one more secret stage after this fact, where I neurotically edit the image with minor invisible changes that only I can see and never hand anything back to Patrick like a dragon hoarding treasure. But eventually, presumably, the system works :).

I hope that little art morsel has been interesting! I prepared it just for you.. and maybe nourished us all enough for the long wait until October. Wish me luck!"

False Machine News! In Three Parts!

ONE - MALUSTRIOUS BROOD - from Scrap Princess

Long-term art-brute of the False Machine nobility, Scrap Princess has released an entirely self-produced monster art book; Malustrious Brood!

https://monstermanualsewnfrompants.blogspot.com/p/malustrious-brood.html

"I've been meaning to have a print on demand book available of original drawings of mine and now this deed is done!

MALUSTRIOUS BROOD!!!

In this 102 page tome I have taken 12 iconic monsters from the pastiche swirl of d&d's fantasy pool and done a bunch of takes of them. Each monster gets 7 pages , and a range of approaches.

The monsters being : The classic elemental spirits of Gnome, Nereid, Salamander, Sylph. Ogres, Hags, Dragons, Basilisk/Cockatrice, Orc, Manticore. And two Very Much d&d , the Catawhere and Eye Tyrant."

https://www.peecho.com/print/en/1750387

TWO - FALSE MACHINE WHOLESALING!

False Machine is now available for wholesale!

Held in the U.S.A.

• Silent Titans

Held in the U.K.

• Deep-Carbon Observatory

• Demon-Bone Sarcophagus

• Gackling Moon

• Gawain and the Green Knight

• Speak, False Machine

Contact me if you want to know more!

THREE - FALSE MACHINE PRICE DROP! THIS ISN'T REALLY NEWS!

This is still on!

https://falseparcels.bigcartel.com/

• A Night at the Golden Duck = £5

• Deep-Carbon Observatory = £30 (-£10)

• Demon-Bone Sarcophagus = £20 (-£20)

• Gackling Moon = £25 (-£5)

• Gawain and the Green Knight = £15 (-£20)

• Silent Titans = £40

• Speak, False Machine = £40 (-£20)

AND! - A FREE HEIST PLAN FOR EVERY (UK-BASED) ORDER - WHETHER YOU WANT IT OR NOT!!!! 

FOUR YES THERE WERE ACTUALLY FOUR I JUST FORGOT THIS ONE! -  ANOTHER 3D APPEARANCE! - LEICESTER 17TH MAY!

Dying Earth Catalogue, the people behind my recent adventure to Nottingham, have invited me to another thing

Called Campaign, the day-long event consisting of talks, live game play sessions and stalls will run from 11am - 9pm at Leicester Gallery and Leicester Castle, on Saturday 17th May 2025, with 250 people expected to attend.

I will be there, running a False Machine stall, selling signing and singing, until 6pm at least.

Her Grace of Wyrms

I am moving house soon and the heat is driving me mental so posting will be slow. Here is some more development on the Queen Mab project with Alcopopstar which is still ongoing. 

You Hear
 
She treads the air upon blue flame which pierce the vault like spears, keening like kettles, roaring like rain or a river piercing rock.
 
The Silent Shroud - Her Grace can silence her step. She sings a song of interference which reaches out with a rhythmic throb, the only sign of her presence a pulse of pressure, until she drops the shroud and the scream of her blue tongues lashes forth.
 
 
You Smell
 
She passes in a stink of acrid pitch, a biting smell like curls of metal from a smiths work fallen into a hot forge or, (whisper it), the sharp tang of a tanners yard.
 
 
You Feel
 
Her gaze prickles like ant-bites and heats the skin like a boiled bath.
 
 
You See
 
A  perfect blackness, without depth or inner shape. Only the blue tongues of fire and the borders of her form are clear. Her shape is ever-shifting, never still, her edges crackling with angular sharpness like paper endlessly refolded into different forms; an hawk, a kite, an armoured angel. She dances through the air on tongues of blue flame twisting like a weavers hands.
 

 
 
Her Character
 
Her manner tilts between a cavalry commander and a bitter courtesan.
 
The teasing false solemnity of woman of great beauty, the arch and prickling vagueness of an artists model, almost flirtatious, then, a shift to the imperious violence of an impetuous knight or a bloodthirsty general. Her Grace moves constantly between a near-coyness, as if she were considering a kiss, to a barely-repressed belligerence, as if she were about to demand a duel.
 
Beneath all this lies an uncertain bitterness. For all her power and wrath, one might think she were a teenaged girl abandoned by her lover.
 
 
 
 
Her Desires And Demands
 
- From the Parliament, Elpizoi & the Pythians, she wants TROOPS, meat for the Crusade
 
- From Melinoe she wants FOOD and WATER for her Courtiers.
 
- From the Nome Queen she wants DRAGON BLOOD - for the old fraction engines to be awakened
 
- From Mab she wants ATTENTION and VALIDATION - "Do I not serve you my creator?"
 
- From Night she wants TARGETS - "Find me fat realms ripe with unearned wealth!"
 
 
 
 
 
Her Powers and Frustrations
 
A Mistress of Dragons who have slept too long. Gifted with startling powers of annihilation on a battlefield, or the skies of realms undreamed of, yet these do her little good amid the mouldering schemes and dim poverty of these shrunken times.
 
Much of her Power is born from possibility; if or when the Wyrms are loosed again to harrow another realm _then_ she will decide who goes, and who returns, she will be the arbiter of gifts and the mistress of favours.
 
Contrarywise; if Her Grace were to set herself to the direct destruction of any Court or Lady, she might do them terrible harm. Yet this would mean terrible destruction as she cut her way through the palace like a knife, followed by chaos, anarchy, broken oaths and the disapproval of Queen Mab.
 
Yet still, she might, she might do so, and from this might-be, much might be devised.
 
Unfortunately the nature of Her Grace is too-direct to take best advantage of this trade in possibilities. Schemes, she loathes, and wishes only to once again cut the sky above a trembling realm.
 
 
 
The Harrowings
 
When the time comes for a great Harrowing of the corrupted, earth bound and unwise, the Beasts of the Parliament, many dancers of the Symphony of Forms, the detritus of Midnights Realm, and all the flotsam of the palace are herded and driven and piped into the Wyrms and the Queen of Air and Darkness opens the way, tearing open a gateway to the sky of a defenceless world, a world to be liberated, its resources commandeered for the revolution and the most oppressive of its rulers and decadent parasite repressive class, brought back for trial and justice.
 
 
 

 
 
 
[DESIGN DIAGESIS]
 
 
[In game terms she is loaded with ship-killing and lady-killing weaponry, killing a crowd or a bunch of PCs is not going to be very hard for her, so the essence of dealing with her is going to be that the PCs are very much beneath her immediate notice - she is involved in super-war, constantly trying to organise shit, fending off endless requests for resources and attempts on her loyalty from various powers while also trying to get fuel, supplies, target information and TROOPS, legions for the crusade, from various powers.
 
She can’t employ her super killy powers in the palace, so she is FRUSTRATED - like a tank commander trapped in a party. Though she is super powerful and courted by all she is not very powerful socially, and in these circumstances, it all comes from a promise and a potentiality of what she might do either good or bad, for others, and since she is not politically adept - this makes her frustrated, so she is easy to manipulate, or fears she is, and so might have an interest in some low level drones she can bully into doing something useful for her - or at least into disrupting the schemes of others
and hopefully hastening the day when the Jacks meet and she can get a target for the next revolutionary crusade.]
 
 
[I imagine Her Grace of Wyrms as a pure A.I. starkiller hyperweapon, liberated from its creators by Queen Mab and allowed to destroy them. Intelligence and adaptability increased and given some kind of dimensional folding ability, like the ability to pack herself within a kind of dimension of herself.
 
Something like an f16 fighter or stealth fighter - matte black, anti radar, impossible to tell her depth, folding new or old parts of herself out of the blackness, like an angular black origami angel balancing on wings of vectored fire. Aer voice roars like that of a god, the boundary of her form is always changing, like paper being endlessly refolded, but usually in the shape of a woman wearing armour, or an ornate gown, or a winged creature or a shifting collapsing pattern of symmetrical jags. She is usually bilaterally symmetrical, crowned, balancing on jets of blue fire.
 
Light will not reveal her, no matter how much you use. Deep scans will suggest an opening to some impossibly deep space with the occasional wild ping of hard returns as somewhere within a flexing surface or edge returns and EM signal for a moment.

 
[PERSONALITY]
 
[yes a Courtesan turned murderous revolutionary, with all of the style and elan of a high fashion mistress, to which is added a near-deranges hyper-violence and a commitment to the cause of uplift and transhumanism - probably more than any other High Lady; for them it’s a cause they created but from which they are all slightly alienated by its unexpected consequences, mutual fuckery (and they fact they are all fucking insane and blitzed out of their minds), whereas Her Grace of Wyrms is a direct result of it and is actually a main 'hitter' for the organisation, their version of a military leader, who actively does much of the harm head-on and suffers much of the trauma thereof.]
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

"What's that boy?

ahhhhh, its content yer after is it?

Needs contents for ye blog do ye?"

(Image by Mike Ploog)

"Why just blog ye development notes!

And why nots says I? Why its content pure is it not?

Desire ye a substack boy? Fer the old ship blogger is mighty leaky ye'll find."

Amongst my many other labours, 'Queen Mab' trundles onwards, amongst the many denizens of that Queens strange ever-turning palace are the following (development notes only, not quite ever Draft One);

The Knights of Grief

You Hear: soft steps, the tapping of glass. A toneless humming.

You Smell: Pomade, a subtle musk, or nothing.

You See: A fine gentleman, a prince or Knight. He bears a sword of broken glass and his sighs are aurora borealis. His movements are lazy, drifting, indifferent, like a gentleman in his own parlour.

currently 'Sir Tau Hekaton'

https://twitter.com/AlcopopStar

https://ramheadedgirl.com/

https://www.patreon.com/alcopopstar

The Seven Knights Of Grief

Seven - Sir Iota

An old bearded fellow, something of a Quixote, ancient, can barely hold his sword. Genial, even kind and helpful. "I have time, time enough for all after all..."

Six - Sir Rho Pente

In his 50's. Like a seneschal or grave warden. Distracted, busy on some important matter, will take a little time off to aid you in some minor way.

Five - Sir Sigma Deka

In his 40's, a slightly stiff, but still strong man, sober, visibly tired of you. May give you vital information or knowledge, largely to get you out of his way. Wants to get it over and done with.

Four - Sir Tau Hekaton

Early 30's, a warrior in his prime, a busy man with no time for you. Indifferent, focused on his duty. Says and does the minimum to get you from his path. Mildly contemptuous. [I IMAGINE THIS IS THE KNIGHT YOU ILLUSTRATED]

Three - Sir Phi Chiloili

In his mid 20s, a supercilious and fey noble whose automatic surface civility slides past like oil on glass, barely concealing the churning monster of his frustration and rage.

Two - Sir Psi Myrioi

A boy in his early teens, cruel and mad. Stay away. A strangely knowing, even despairing figure. Nihilistic and hysterical manner. "Begone filth..."

One - Sir Omicron Aperion

Perhaps twelve years old, can barely hold his sword. An extremely evil and bitter manner, terrifying levels of knowledge, total indifference to human life and all existence, an eternity of emptiness behind his eyes. Will actively make your life immeasurably worse on the smallest interaction.

What Would People In This Reality Know About The Knights Of Grief?

- They serve Mabs desires.

- (in more depth) they serve her lethal desires.

- They cannot be, and have never been, defeated.

- If a Knight is coming to kill you, then you will die and that’s it.

- If you are in a Knights path you will either be killed or removed some other way, and that's it.

- They are all fine gentlemen.

- They are all ineffably sad.

- The youngest are the saddest, but also the cruellest.

- They carry blades of broken glass and breathe aurora borealis when exerting themselves.

- They seem to know everything, or almost everything, about you. One never really knows what they do or do not know, but it feels as if they know everything.

- One Knight can reduce a realm to chaos.

- They seem tired, almost worn to nothing, as if 'going through the motions'.

- There have possibly been other knights of grief, and new knights recruited, though it has never been known for a Knight to die, for instance, in combat or from disease.

- Even the High ladies SHIT THEMSELVES when a Knight of Grief arrives. (Palace Royalty know about the Time Loops and know that the Knight may have experienced this encounter perhaps thousands of times,. If the knight is here to kill them then they are going to die, so all they can do is hope that's not the reason they are there.)

Visible/Tangible Effects Of Encountering Them

- They know your name (obviously).

- they may know a lot about you and will often deliver some information that directly effects you.

- 'Impossible' catches and reactions.

- Will place themselves exactly to deal with impossible-to predict future events, like explosions etc.

- They will comment on things before they take place, i.e. "Speak to the grey haired beast" - then such a beast enters.

- Chekov’s gun all the time - if they have some random object with them, its going to be useful to them pretty soon

Fighting

- They seem to fight in a tired, almost somnambulant way.

- Should they kill someone, they are already moving on, blade swinging idly from one hand - they are moving through  dance they know well.

- They specialise in rebounding their enemies attacks upon them in unexpected ways.

- They can deflect bullets.

- They can deflect lasers & things moving at the speed of light.

- If they seem to lose it only puts their enemy in a position which will destroy them.

- They rarely have to fight as everyone in the Palace knows about them and will often just run for it if they think the Knight is coming for them. But they also know that "running for it" means that whatever they do will end up killing them, as like running into a spike, falling down a hole, having a heart attack etc. There is nothing you can do..

Vulnerabilities - Is There Any Way To Escape Them?

Technically, no. If they are coming to kill the PCs then the PCs are going to die.

However;

First, they will never be coming for the PCs (or at least almost never) in the context of the adventure.

Second, there may be ways....

The exact wording on the original text: "They must repeat time till they have correctly fulfilled her desire." then  "and must repeat their action again and again and again, being reborn each time without aging either forwards or back, until the Queens order is fulfilled. This might be something as simple as bringing a cup of tea, or reducing a world to chaos before her Wyrms darken its sky."

So, what happens when desires conflict, if two knights come into conflict with each other? This would be a major problem for them - two loops colliding means what? If they end up in a direct conflict then they will just both end up looping forever, so they will be very careful to avoid conflict with other Knights of Grief. Even a tangential interaction might create a knot of time. 

So one solution to being mixed up with a Knight in a negative way might be to quickly involve another Knight, they will be anxious to avoid any entanglements.

What is the exact wording of Queen Mabs desire? Can they fulfil it in a technical way, or fulfil it in a substantial way but miss some technicality and still displease her. 

If you know for certain the desire the Knight is trying to fulfil, then that gives you a lot of contextual knowledge to avoid their attentions or manipulate your interaction with them.

Also, what about Knights who are not currently fulfilling a desire of Queen Mab? Are they just hanging around? What happens if you encounter a Knight who is not fulfilling the Queens desire? They are presumably not time-looping at that point and so are just an immensely deadly close-combat opponent with thousands of years of experience. So still dangerous but not impossible.

So Knights will be very careful about disguising when they are or are not about Mabs business and extremely secretive about what orders they do have from her, they also will avoid each other a great deal.

Plus Mab can change her mind.

Plus what happens if you freeze one in ice without killing Him? Presumably he lives until unfrozen, dies at some point and repeats, but that’s a very long alter-loop. Are they just impossible to imprison?

Queen Mab

> Confirm. Transponder I.D. is shift-ship "Queen Mab"

> Last ident, hijacked by Some time ago, a group of genius-level transhumanist radicals.

> Skill-set - genetics, cybernetics, direct AI-HUman integration, bleeding edge dimensional technology. > > Transhumanist Views -  Hyper-aesthetic 'new humans'. Something they consider Optimal Beings.

> Be aware, possible development of, extremely dangerous dimensional tech, and access to "True" non-relativistic time-travel. Queen Mab appears and disappears in wildly different volumes. Sometimes seems to dash back and forth across the Galaxy, at other times hovering like a fly around a handful of Suns. 

> Queen Mab itself exists in an variety of states. Sometimes seeming no bigger than a paperclip lost in space, its nature revealed only by its enormous energy emissions and dangerous 'siren song' EM emission sphere. At other times it looms like a moon-sized battle station, blotting out suns in orbit.

> Interior scans ineffective but suggest mycelium web of parasitical, unstable, dimensional conduits to various different realities and paracosms.

> Numerous abductions reported. 

> Mindcrime - Many who encounter the ships EM emission sphere obsessively track it.

> Piracy - stole every perfect circle on the surface of a Omicron III.

> Status and capabilities of the Queen Mab, whether they are developing sequentially or not, may be entering an even more potent and developed phase.

> Suns have gone missing.

> It is feared the Queen Mab may become a Pirate of Worlds.

> Now, by chance, You have encountered the Queen Mab in orbit around a pale and silent moon. 

> Ship is both accessible (at a normal size) and apparently, quiescent. 

> As if it were sleeping.

> Bounty on ships confirmed destruction.

> Bounty on high-status individuals recovered from within (if still living and effectively still coherent individuals.

> Bounty on any post-singularity tech recovered from the Queen Mab includes full pardons, personal A.I.-run paracosm and, through negotiation and dependant upon confirmed results, your own planetary-scale Biosphere.

> Incursion????

"Nature rejects the monarch, not the man;

The subject, not the citizen: for kings

And subjects, mutual foes, forever play

A losing game into each others hands,

Whose stakes are vice and misery. The man

Of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys."

"Oh lord oh lord, the Fae Knights of the Faerie Queen came not three dawns past.

Through a magic door to the otherworld!

They have ensorcelled your beloved, taken them to Queen Mabs palace!

Yet the door remains, yes it does. And if the tales are true, not for long.

Take this horse-shoe of cold iron (hide it well).

Remember, the Fae are beautiful, strange, terrible and capricious (really they are bonkers but you should never say that out loud). 

They love beauty and music, and they like to be praised.

Be polite and deferential, yet, never give nothing all away, not even your name.

And you must accept no gifts, make no promises, and *never eat anything*. 

And beware the Faeries charms, for they can be seductive.

And remember that time in the Otherworld is not like time here. You might come back a moment after you left, or a century.

No matter to that. Be quick! The Faerie door awaits!"

"Then grave and hoary-headed hypocrites,

Without a hope, a passion, or a love,

Who, through a life of luxury and lies,

Have crept by flattery to the seats of power,

Support the system whence their honours flow..

They have three words:- well tyrants know their use,

Well pay them for the loan, with usury

Torn from a bleeding world! - God, Hell and Heaven."

"Dreams. I have such dreams. Do you know that if I dream of a place I will go there? And I dreamed that I learned that time is a place, and so I could go there too, and did, the moment I dreamed it could be, what was all moments.

But if one can dream, and awake in the time and the place of the dreaming, weaving in my sleep, if one weaves a man and meets a man or dreams of him, and weaves a dream, and remembers that one will remember.. Well then, what is a dream at all?

It is a sleep. All dreaming.

Did I make you? Did I weave you and seed you and set you to sprout in that river-realm from which you came with a memory in your mind, a dream of loss to bring you to me?

That is why I made these. The butterflies. Lao Tze no? He was a butterfly, a very nice butterfly, but he woke a man."

"The sensitive extension of the world.

That wondrous and eternal fane,

Where pain and pleasure, good and evil join,

To do the will of strong necessity,

And life, in multitudinous shapes,

Still pressing forward where no term can be,

Like hungry and unresting flame

Curls round the eternal columns of its strength."

> Confirm that object is a miniature warp nacelle.

> Not a remote. Repeat, not a remote.

> That is an active, I say again, active interstellar-capable warp engine drive element that she is waving.

> Configuration unknown. Albedo high. Its bright. Hard to see.

> Materials unknown.

> DO NOT LET IT TOUCH YOU.

"The restless wheels of being on their way,

Whose flashing spokes, instinct with infinite life,

Bicker and burn to gain their destined goal:"

> Seeping entropic loss around the prime biform. Query, is it warm?

> Right eye registers darkness, gloom, cold space.

> Left eye, bright area..

> Check your six, check your feet.

> The floor is Her, the walls are Her.

> Reaffirm Transponders on contact, check H.U.D. for E.M. Manipulation. Eyeballs only, don't trust your screen.

> Crypto is good.

> Confirm, six transponders.

> Query, team is five strong.

> Repeat, we are a five strong team.

> Identify.

> Identify.

[fading]

> identify

"My left eye is a hive of bees..

Would you like to see? See. Little bees, all looking out. A hundred million eyes. Eyes within an eye.

They were not born bees, I made them so, and they may not be bees now.

Be bees. be be be be-be bees. [laughter]

They said a word that pleased me not.

And I made that realm as pale as air and as light as ash, and it blew away in a golden wind from a summer-ripe sun. And.. pop!

Do you know how not to become bees?

No?

You must. Say. PLEASE."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Queen Mab!

A book, that may one day hopefully exist!

A strange new thing in this world.

Made by me and......              AlcopopStar!

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https://ramheadedgirl.com/

(not entirely SFW)

Will it happen? Hopefully! Early days yet, still just brainstorming development.