Series Posts

The Hostel Ghost

VII

The road out of town has got a fork near the border wall, with a small, rusted sign guiding travelers towards a dark ashen building. No warm fire greets the road weary, although a pile of logs lay ready for use near the hearth. No feast, no ale, no roadside special is ready to fill the bellies, but in worn wicker baskets and tattered sacks, the materials for soup, rations, and supplies await. The beds are made but dusty. Vermin are scarce and out of sight. It’s cold, and there is always a sense of eyes upon those who enter.

The Hostel was once a booming business. Seasons ago it was the rest stop where merchants, adventurers, and low-profile ne’er-do-wells could grab a bite, slumber a few hours, and be ready for the road ahead. But the world turns, and things end. While sometimes violently, often it’s slow, gentle, with the seasons stretching to years to decades and in time, the candle goes out. Though those with long lives once stayed here, the caretakers did not have such blessing.

Their bodies passed.

But not, their spirit of hospitality.

They learned long ago that visitors were frightened of them. Despite their best interests, their once warm reputation grew cold, and few locals neared the once gentle watering hole. But adventures? Pilgrims? The inbound don’t know. The ghost seeks to accommodate, to tend, to help, to bring a sense of comfort and warmth to the lives they can still touch.

There’s little to manipulate here. The ghosts are set in their ways, and only care about continuing their business. Rewards will be granted to guests that help aid past injuries to the hostel. Terrors await those who are rude or destructive. They are resistant to encouragements of moving on.

In fantasy the old inn is haunted, ghosts with a quiet legacy. Unnerving but comforting.

In spacefaring days, it’s the old relic station with no crew. A ship full of automated voices offering relaxation but no human words.

In urban fantasy, it’s the odd listing on the rental site with strange reviews, an unbeatable and impossible view, and a price that draws one in. But after the visit, the record is gone, forever lost.

For some the fetters to the world are chains, locking their souls to self-inflicted horror and despair. For others, it’s to continue their life’s joys. Death is but a moment and the soul finds a way to continue the dream.

The Effigy Remains

VI

The breeze dances through the meadows: tickling grass, jostling flowers, and tugging the leaves of the branches of the lone ancient oak. The dusk side of the tree is full of bright leaves coating strong limbs up and down the tree’s trunk. The dawn side is dotted with younger limbs, small twigs of branches reaching around the hulking form that sheared off the old wood. The mech and old oak were similar companions, covered in somber greens, broken limbs, and a shattered carapace. The breeze dances along fraying wires, through dried and caked oils, and sings through bullet holes.

Its form was once human, tall as the tree, strong, armor anodized imperial blue and royal crimson. A fierce weapon of the stars. The units were said to be an Effigy of the great soldiers that guided the empire to through the heavens, but here the effigy remains a machine without a master, a guidance system waiting for the reactor to finally die.

The machine can speak through the comm unit in its cockpit. It was up to date to most network languages when it was commissioned, and many will find their devices capable of interacting with an encrypted signal.

It yearns to speak. The motivation of the machine varies, but it seeks to find the truth. To know what’s going on. To find out what happened to it. To know if it did good. Promises of data, proofs of station, these go far to manipulate the machine. It does not fear death, and will answer threats with promises of violence of it’s own.

In sci-fi, the Effigy is a crashed war machina, a combat exo-skeleton, or other vessel bonded to pilot and mission.

In an age of exploration, they’re a walking construct once a part the invading army, now left rotting in some mire. Their feet still yearn to march beyond the swamp and find victory.

In mythos, they’re a bound spirit, locked in a statue, awaiting a mystic that will never come. Some great soldier of the wars in the heavens, a fearful seeking to protect the aspect of the divine in their belly.

Maybe there’s a shadow of a pilot left. Maybe they jettisoned before crashing or were dragged off after the great solider came to rest against a once young oak. But now the leaves of the once adolescent branch fall upon the metal bulk like a child out growing a parent. There’s not much time left, but the machine would have words with those who will listen.

The Beacon Voice

IV

Through that tapestry of darkness pricked with endless points of lights, there are vast stretches of nothing along the trail. An autofuel station here and there, but the bots run those. Haulers sleep through those. Why wake when there’s no one to chatter to? But there on the edge, where the great gate thrums before the jump point, is a terminal with a voice worth hearing. Xe’s a friendly voice, muffled by endless stellar static, a worn antenna, and thick sheets of pockmarked metal, but it’s a friendly voice that’ll guide vessels through that jump across the endless.

Xe is a sole manager and operator of an outstation at the fringe of this sector’s assigned space. Alone, isolated, and solitary is the impression most travelers get when passing by. The voice, though, xe’d tell you that just ain’t so. Oh, there’s bouts where the comm is silence ‘sides the beacon off the gate or the data pulse notice from the inner worlds, but someone’s always coming or going. One can see them, on the scope: silhouettes of heat against an ocean of black. On their way coming here or heading deep. And those, eventually, they’ll be back around.

Xe hasn’t been off the little pebble of a station in a decade. Maintenance crews occasionally pop in but the local swarm takes cares of most things. Every now and then someone launches a tube of printer matter for the station’s fabbers, and the garden pod’s a great time eater for things worth eating. Things are okay out here.

The fly-bys ain’t short. Comm range is measured in days, sometimes weeks depending on how big of an antenna or how vocal the chatter. And xe loves the stories. Loves trading them too. Not a ship goes by that xe doesn’t see, and maybe, for the gift of a little something dropped out the back of a cargo hold, xe’d tell someone about who was logged.

A quiet life marked by occasional bit of charming talk, xe’s not manipulated by too much except gossip and the occasional world bound treat. Xer station is designed to survive rogue debris storms and the worse the gates can dish out, so unless someone has come packing a military vessel, they’re probably not popping that can. Kindness will take someone an extra light year.

In sci-fi, they’re the station before a system gate. The last check point before the big star jump, or the first voice heard after the arrival. They’ll put eyes on a party’s ride and make sure everything traversed without a hitch.

In westerns, they’re the last wagon depot before heading out. They can point towards the guides who know the lands as their birthright, and sell that last bit of kit needed to make the trip possible.

In epic fantasy, they’re the voice of the healing spring the party finds just before the dungeon entrance. The cautious nature sprite that wants no harm to come to the children of humanity.

Out there, just at the edge of civilization. A watchful keeper, holding the flame aloft against the sea of night. This is a life xe has chosen, but xe will eagerly hear of the adventures of others. Trade goods, but more importantly trade stories.