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Made this picture made with MidJourney, which reminded me of a story written long ago ... somehow ... as if 2007 wasn't just five or six months ago.

HE wasn’t a strong man, but assuredly a large one. That would hopefully be enough for the task at hand.

    On some quite conscious level, he’d known the task would fall to him. That Dirt-born Ordinator was a spineless half-breed, the likely product of a boy of the Dirt taking advantage of the flabbergasting romanticism that some girls born of Station hold for planets. Certainly, no child born of a Dirt girl could have become an Ordinator.

    And now Mr Woolgar himself was heading for the Dirt – a dastard planet. A planet on which to live, serve and more than likely die – hardly a fitting final post for one with a service of his standing. If the Fourth Lady Authran was alive, the Monarch – the Grand Old Man – would have been in for a reprimanding near forgotten to a man of his age and position. Woolgar knew the Monarch must have near seen it all after a life of two thousand years, but also knew how quick, cutting and serenely menacing Mistress Samilya could be if sufficiently riled.

    Woolgar caught himself in a selfish thought, years of Service surrendered momentarily to the idea that his Mistress Samilya could be one of the figures he would soon be waking. If so, she’d be an easy one to adapt; her romanticism for planets was much more tempered and prudent than others of her ilk, but still undeniably there – she had been born on the Old Ball herself, Earth of memory.

    All was for later. The one Woolgar knew was to be woken required one of size and imposition, or so the Ordinator had claimed. He knew that no Eidolon of Ven Authran (of the least significant of the Authran line) had been birthed in almost six hundred years, but understood by then that it had been by Ven’s own request. It was said that he had appealed directly to the Grand Old Man himself, the founder of the Authran line and Ven’s own grandfather through his youngest, least savoury (as the millennia-old stories go) child.

    The one with the green hair.

    Stepping smartly through the corridors of the Tenebrous, Woolgar sought to familiarise himself with the one named face he knew would be emerging from the Eidolon shrouds. Sweeping the air to interact with his Vision, Woolgar discovered himself already very familiar with Ven’s physical form: it had been the basis for the Statue of Aspectus within the central garden of his native Station. Immediately, the sensibly demurred smells of artificially evolved Station onions worked their way into his mind, evoking a numberless degree of childhood sights, sounds and smells.

    Woolgar’s fulsome form reached out an instinctive arm upon a sudden passing jolt to the Tenebrous’ momentum. They had been sailing through space for just shy of four months without the slightest modicum of unmanoeuvred movement to hamper their motion. Perhaps the Ordinator was busy.

    A tighter, much more conscious sigh was loosed at that thought. After all, where was the joy in preconceived prejudices if they couldn’t be confirmed by opportunistic readings of circumstance?

    As it was, circumstance was finally upon him. Woolgar had entered the gloom of the shroud room without consciously treading the required path or supplying the requisite credentials, but such was life among those of Service. The best operated on instinct, first on matters of practicality, before finally on those of emotion: a good server knew the moods of their betters better than their kind could ever conceive.

    Ven’s mood would be a complete mystery. Why he had consciously chosen to forgo living a half dozen or more lives was beyond Woolgar’s comprehension, and almost insulting to those like his favoured mistress. Samilya had never been gifted the opportunity of life after initial biological death. Her engrams had been preserved in perfect alignment with the policies relating to those of the Four Founding Families, and yet it had been nearly sixty years since her death with no Eidolon projection yet made.

    In his frustrated musings of how unfair it all was, the instincts of a single life had once again fired with an independence that sometimes unnerved him. Even in the dim, the four skin shrouds could be seen almost floating above tables of flesh, their lengths rippling with arteries, veins and capillaries, and complimented by more static bodily adornments like nipples and preformed folds across the otherwise inhumanly smooth surface of the skins.

    Two female, two male, Woolgar observed without any manifestation – outside or inside – of surprise. The lowering of Ven’s shroud had been ordered prior to Woolgar’s transit, the silent ascent of the Eidolon’s innards from the coffin-like formation receptacle beneath the Ven’s slab turning Woolgar’s stomach at the thought of what was going on beneath the skin shroud.

    He turned away, making a show of righting his clothing and smoothing down his grey-crusted black hair in a curve to match the descent of his ears. The sheen of the door threw back an image of his eighty-five year old self, the sight of it drawing a moan wholly unbefitting one of his service.

    His skin had never been as dark as most, but now it looked merely Sunned; he at times looked like nothing more than a Dirt dwelling merchant who’d fumbled upon the Purple of a server at a courtyard sale and hadn’t a clue as to importance.

    Woolgar’s eyes sockets were as drawn with age as his grey eyes were speckled by it, with his brow far too shallow for his eyes to be said to be ‘hiding’ behind his rather wide, thick, and otherwise voluminous grey-edged eyebrows. His long mouth frowned, but that was its way, and he’d long ago abandoned any efforts to right it. Mistress Samilya had commented how ridiculous his smile had appeared, and noted there nothing wrong with sporting a natural, broad, thin-lipped frown.

    Like lifting the seal from a piping hot malted coffee in a kitchen freezer room, the shallowest of short-lived gasps sliced the silence beneath the shroud. With patiently held breath, Woolgar waited for the laboured gargle that always followed, his peace this time spared the usual bout of dry, rasping and otherwise horribly strained coughing that generally followed.

    First time for everything.

    Woolgar had planned for months on increasing the moisture levels in the room a day or two before shrouding was due, but the Ordinator had caught him off-guard. Based on his extensive travels with the Founders, Woolgar imagined them to be at least three weeks from the nearest star system capable of supporting a fresh colony of primarily Station-borns.

    Imagining Ven Authran’s shroud now firmly placed, Mr Woolgar comported himself with only the slightest outward manifestation before turning to greet his newest, green-haired Master.

    Paces ahead, two cool clear eyes were filled with a fire that had fuelled the freshly shrouded Eidolon with enough power to actually stand up. Shrouding was terrible at rendering musculature, having never been able to complement raw genetic information with life-won adornments, but there was still a terrible strength radiating almost visibly from the taut, naked body of Ven Authran. He was still two metres away from Woolgar, but the immediacy and depth of Ven’s expression made it feel like he was mere centimetres from the server’s face.

    And then he was.

    He wasn’t a strong man, and while still assuredly a large one, Woolgar simply didn’t have it in him to fight off the sudden menace locking two stark white hands around his age-deflated neck.

    If the Ordinator had come, he’d be dead by no–

Description

Made this picture made with MidJourney, which reminded me of a story written long ago ... somehow ... as if 2007 wasn't just five or six months ago.

HE wasn’t a strong man, but assuredly a large one. That would hopefully be enough for the task at hand.

    On some quite conscious level, he’d known the task would fall to him. That Dirt-born Ordinator was a spineless half-breed, the likely product of a boy of the Dirt taking advantage of the flabbergasting romanticism that some girls born of Station hold for planets. Certainly, no child born of a Dirt girl could have become an Ordinator.

    And now Mr Woolgar himself was heading for the Dirt – a dastard planet. A planet on which to live, serve and more than likely die – hardly a fitting final post for one with a service of his standing. If the Fourth Lady Authran was alive, the Monarch – the Grand Old Man – would have been in for a reprimanding near forgotten to a man of his age and position. Woolgar knew the Monarch must have near seen it all after a life of two thousand years, but also knew how quick, cutting and serenely menacing Mistress Samilya could be if sufficiently riled.

    Woolgar caught himself in a selfish thought, years of Service surrendered momentarily to the idea that his Mistress Samilya could be one of the figures he would soon be waking. If so, she’d be an easy one to adapt; her romanticism for planets was much more tempered and prudent than others of her ilk, but still undeniably there – she had been born on the Old Ball herself, Earth of memory.

    All was for later. The one Woolgar knew was to be woken required one of size and imposition, or so the Ordinator had claimed. He knew that no Eidolon of Ven Authran (of the least significant of the Authran line) had been birthed in almost six hundred years, but understood by then that it had been by Ven’s own request. It was said that he had appealed directly to the Grand Old Man himself, the founder of the Authran line and Ven’s own grandfather through his youngest, least savoury (as the millennia-old stories go) child.

    The one with the green hair.

    Stepping smartly through the corridors of the Tenebrous, Woolgar sought to familiarise himself with the one named face he knew would be emerging from the Eidolon shrouds. Sweeping the air to interact with his Vision, Woolgar discovered himself already very familiar with Ven’s physical form: it had been the basis for the Statue of Aspectus within the central garden of his native Station. Immediately, the sensibly demurred smells of artificially evolved Station onions worked their way into his mind, evoking a numberless degree of childhood sights, sounds and smells.

    Woolgar’s fulsome form reached out an instinctive arm upon a sudden passing jolt to the Tenebrous’ momentum. They had been sailing through space for just shy of four months without the slightest modicum of unmanoeuvred movement to hamper their motion. Perhaps the Ordinator was busy.

    A tighter, much more conscious sigh was loosed at that thought. After all, where was the joy in preconceived prejudices if they couldn’t be confirmed by opportunistic readings of circumstance?

    As it was, circumstance was finally upon him. Woolgar had entered the gloom of the shroud room without consciously treading the required path or supplying the requisite credentials, but such was life among those of Service. The best operated on instinct, first on matters of practicality, before finally on those of emotion: a good server knew the moods of their betters better than their kind could ever conceive.

    Ven’s mood would be a complete mystery. Why he had consciously chosen to forgo living a half dozen or more lives was beyond Woolgar’s comprehension, and almost insulting to those like his favoured mistress. Samilya had never been gifted the opportunity of life after initial biological death. Her engrams had been preserved in perfect alignment with the policies relating to those of the Four Founding Families, and yet it had been nearly sixty years since her death with no Eidolon projection yet made.

    In his frustrated musings of how unfair it all was, the instincts of a single life had once again fired with an independence that sometimes unnerved him. Even in the dim, the four skin shrouds could be seen almost floating above tables of flesh, their lengths rippling with arteries, veins and capillaries, and complimented by more static bodily adornments like nipples and preformed folds across the otherwise inhumanly smooth surface of the skins.

    Two female, two male, Woolgar observed without any manifestation – outside or inside – of surprise. The lowering of Ven’s shroud had been ordered prior to Woolgar’s transit, the silent ascent of the Eidolon’s innards from the coffin-like formation receptacle beneath the Ven’s slab turning Woolgar’s stomach at the thought of what was going on beneath the skin shroud.

    He turned away, making a show of righting his clothing and smoothing down his grey-crusted black hair in a curve to match the descent of his ears. The sheen of the door threw back an image of his eighty-five year old self, the sight of it drawing a moan wholly unbefitting one of his service.

    His skin had never been as dark as most, but now it looked merely Sunned; he at times looked like nothing more than a Dirt dwelling merchant who’d fumbled upon the Purple of a server at a courtyard sale and hadn’t a clue as to importance.

    Woolgar’s eyes sockets were as drawn with age as his grey eyes were speckled by it, with his brow far too shallow for his eyes to be said to be ‘hiding’ behind his rather wide, thick, and otherwise voluminous grey-edged eyebrows. His long mouth frowned, but that was its way, and he’d long ago abandoned any efforts to right it. Mistress Samilya had commented how ridiculous his smile had appeared, and noted there nothing wrong with sporting a natural, broad, thin-lipped frown.

    Like lifting the seal from a piping hot malted coffee in a kitchen freezer room, the shallowest of short-lived gasps sliced the silence beneath the shroud. With patiently held breath, Woolgar waited for the laboured gargle that always followed, his peace this time spared the usual bout of dry, rasping and otherwise horribly strained coughing that generally followed.

    First time for everything.

    Woolgar had planned for months on increasing the moisture levels in the room a day or two before shrouding was due, but the Ordinator had caught him off-guard. Based on his extensive travels with the Founders, Woolgar imagined them to be at least three weeks from the nearest star system capable of supporting a fresh colony of primarily Station-borns.

    Imagining Ven Authran’s shroud now firmly placed, Mr Woolgar comported himself with only the slightest outward manifestation before turning to greet his newest, green-haired Master.

    Paces ahead, two cool clear eyes were filled with a fire that had fuelled the freshly shrouded Eidolon with enough power to actually stand up. Shrouding was terrible at rendering musculature, having never been able to complement raw genetic information with life-won adornments, but there was still a terrible strength radiating almost visibly from the taut, naked body of Ven Authran. He was still two metres away from Woolgar, but the immediacy and depth of Ven’s expression made it feel like he was mere centimetres from the server’s face.

    And then he was.

    He wasn’t a strong man, and while still assuredly a large one, Woolgar simply didn’t have it in him to fight off the sudden menace locking two stark white hands around his age-deflated neck.

    If the Ordinator had come, he’d be dead by no–