Excerpt From “Historical Transcripts: Spaceflight and the Second Colonial Period”
Published 06.12.3079
Following the Third Terran War, a group of scientists from various factions around the war torn globe met to find a solution for the constant international conflicts that had almost destroyed their world. Their premise was to provide leadership that would be universally accepted. Their philosophy was grounded in Nietzche’s concept of the Ubermensch, a superhuman race of rulers who would institute a benevolent monarchy. It was these early plans that eventually led to the system of government which we now enjoy. Our rulers are the descendants of these early leaders, the Blood Royale. They enjoy powers beyond those of the normal human or humanoid alien, but are bred to the responsibility of ruling. We have the system that Plato suggested so many centuries ago in “The Republic”: “Let us find then those who are willing to sacrifice self- interest to the duty of the state, and elect them to rule over us.” So things actually are…

xx.xx.3212
The Lady Fayeth had lost track of the month and day long before, as night and day lost meaning aboard her tiny, wrecked starfighter. As far as she knew, she was the only member of the Blood Royale to survive escaping the royal planet of Versye after the coup movement had assassinated King Chalr VIII. Even with her exceptional, perhaps even unmatched piloting skills, she had only just made it out through the blockades. Her navigational computer had been destroyed, and her fuel tanks were slowly running out of containment energy, a slow countdown to an impressive death as the antimatter held within drifted into contact with the hull of the ship. Desperate and under heavy fire, she had executed a blind hyperjump, and, through blind luck or the guidance of a Creator she was no longer sure existed, had found herself near this planet where she now lived.
The natives were primitives, human enough, but had lost every rudiment of technology over the several hundred years since their forefathers had arrived. They had named this planet the Forgetful World; perhaps the intent had always been to forget the outside universe. They had been fearful of her at first, watching the giant metal bird crash into the jungle from the sky on a fiery tail, then more fearful when the woman forced the bird to open what must have been its beak and climb out, even though it should have swallowed her like a man swallows a chora fruit.
Then, of course, there were the waters.
The waters of Vergeslant, the word for Forgetful World in the native tongue, were sparklingly pure, and kept free of bacteria by an odd alkaloid. However, the beach sands by the ocean contained another alkaloid, which was dissolved into the stream waters as they reached the sea. These compounds combined to form a powerful binary poison. The oceans of Vergeslant were wondrously beautiful, but completely sterile. The natives did not know of the outside world, or of the Blood Royale, bred to rule. They marveled at the woman’s daring as she walked the very edge of the beach next to the sea waters, for to touch it was certain death, and wondered at her luck that the waves seemed to bend around her so that even her boots didn’t touch the water. But it was when she stooped and drank deeply of the ocean from her cupped hands that they were prepared to worship her.
Fayeth remembered her surprise when, after drinking some of the sea water, the natives that she had sensed following her suddenly stepped into the open on the beach and bowed deeply to her. After a brief conversation between two of them, one had stepped forward and asked her if she was a goddess. It took her by surprise again that the dialect he spoke was a corrupted form of German, one of the fifty or so languages she had been taught to speak fluently as a child. With some difficulty she answered that she was not, but was only a thirsty traveler. Not long after that she became their queen, for these people were unable to resist the influence of the Blood Royale, nor was she able to avoid exerting it over them.

It was her duty to be the fairest ruler she could. Even if the planet was primitive, members of the Blood Royale were bred to be just rulers. To become a just ruler, Lady Fayeth first had to observe the culture to understand the best steps in becoming a great ruler.
Inside she knew there was no chance of rescue. She had made a blind hyperjump - she could be millions of light-years away from any advanced civilization. Her ship was badly damaged and the primitive world lacked the equipment to even begin to repair her craft. It seemed that fate had handed her the Forgetful World, as primitive as it might be.
In most aspects the natives were simple. The culture relied on simple hunting and gathering techniques. The planet’s habitat provided a variety of game and vegetation to sustain the people. There was no feasible way to know if there were other civilizations existing on the planet. It seemed that the small group of natives were the only sentient beings within miles, but there was no way to be sure.
The politics of the culture were based on a hierarchical order based on age and exhibited wisdom. The elders of the natives held more power in decisions then the less experienced members. The Lady Fayeth, upon her arrival, had become the designated ruler of the society. Because of her Blood Royale influence, she had risen to the top of the hierarchy. Either out of fear or awe, no one opposed her decisions.
The culture had simple techniques such as weaving, pottery, crude art, a language, and the beginning of a written word. The poison from the mixtures of the alkaloids was collected and used on the crude arrow tips to bring down larger animals. The poison would then be destroyed in the flame of the cooking process.
It was often a struggle for one of high intellect such as Fayeth of The Blood Royale, to be stuck on a primitive world. Her mind often became bored, and although she appreciated the adoration of the natives, at times it was too much. However, since her situation seemed to be, at least for the moment, unchanging, she played the hand dealt to her with the best of her ability.
The first curiosity of the natives she witnessed was on a humid night perhaps a month after her craft had first crashed on the planet. The night was warm, and the twin moons were out in the clear sky shinning their full bodies down. The full moon tended to hold significance, an aura of mystery, especially in less civilized cultures. Intrigue, mystery, something almost magical was associated with the coming of the full moon. The natives were holding some sort of ceremony. It began with the slow start of a low toned chanting. A rhythmic, repetitive drone coming from the elders replaced the small noises of the night. The natives lined up forming two straight lines. The Lady Fayeth was content to sit on her makeshift throne and watch the proceedings. None of the natives invited her to participate, yet none seemed to care if she sat and watched.
The natives brought forth two good-sized baskets filled with a variety of small items. One held small nuts and berries along with several flower heads, and numerous clippings of leaves. There were a variety of nuts as well as the bark of different kinds of trees. A small cup of water sat upright on the very top of the various items. The hide of small animals and seeds were also abundant. The other basket held broken bits of pottery, small left over bones from meals, as well as small scraps of fabric. The natives had used the berry pigment to paint blotches of color over the face of this second basket.
The baskets were brought to the center of a circle that had been drawn in the dirt using the tips of the hunting spears. The elders placed the baskets side by side in the middle of the circle. The natives stood on the line of the circle surrounding the baskets. If it were not for her elevated position, the circle of natives would have blocked Fayeth’s view of the proceedings.
The natives were wearing simple clothes all made from the hides of animals, which was unusual consider that the culture tended to call for a bit more sophisticated clothing. A mixture of woven and hide clothes was the normal attire. The normal clothing was also more sophisticated. Instead of just raw hides, the culture had cut the pieces of hide and stitched the pieces together to form them. Here, in the strange ritual, the clothes were more ragged and tied to the body, instead of stitched together.
The elders had painted crude symbols on their arms and legs. The same pigment used to make the decorations on the second basket was used to paint the depiction of the full moon. It was strange to see these symbols. For during the time Lady Fayeth had spent here, she had never seen any depiction of the moon in the natives’ art. In fact, she could not remember any circular shapes in their art. Most of the designs were composed of intersecting lines, or various squares, triangles, or linear designs. Here, during the strange ritual, was the first sight of circular designs.
The real shock came in the next phase of the ritual.

Two of the villagers, both talented hunters came into the circle carrying long staffs with hooks on the ends. Wrapped around each hook, and apparently weighing a significant amount given the flexed muscles of the men, was a large snake. Lady Fayeth recognized them as being fumarspedo, a type of snake known for their incredible speed when hunting their prey. The two men placed the two snakes around the baskets in a figure eight, each snake’s body wrapping around one basket, and the head of one snake lying next to the tail of the other. Apparently, the snakes were either dead or asleep. The chanting and droning increased to a fervor as the two men, both covered in paintings of overlapping circles, plunged the tail of one snake into the mouth of the other all together in one movement.
Immediately, the snakes started slithering around the baskets in a figure eight pattern and the two men jumped backwards and found their place in the circle, which was large enough for the entire village to line up along. This apparently carefully practiced ritual intrigued Lady Fayeth, and this was to be only the first of many peculiar rituals she would witness. She watched carefully as the droning heightened to a screaming and the snakes, intent on catching each other, swirled around faster and faster until a cloud of dust and sand flew around the baskets.
From inside the cloud of dust and flying sand, Lady Fayeth could see the snakes, slithering in a never-ending figure eight, their bodies beginning to glow from the intense friction and heat they generated from traveling so fast, each snake pushing the other to move faster and faster. The screaming was beginning to hurt Lady Fayeth’s ears when the snakes and the baskets suddenly exploded into flames. The screaming stopped and a quiet hush fell over the villagers. Several of the villagers were lying on the ground, some had fallen from the blast of the volatile fluids in the snakes’ bodies suddenly expanding and others had fainted from sheer physical exertion.
The ceremony concluded with several of the elders walking to the burning crater created by both the snakes’ race to death and the sudden explosion. They chanted in low voices for perhaps ten minutes. Lady Fayeth was only able to catch short phrases: life and death, the circle of eternity, and the vanity of pursuit. She did not understand the meaning or impact of these phrases, but after the chanting ended, the people dispersed back to their huts.
As time passed, Lady Fayeth witnessed more rituals and only after several months did she begin to see a pattern in the ways of the people. Their days were marked by interruptions and busy activities. Their plowing was done in oddly angled straight lines, and their pathways were curiously straight and seemed to intersect at haphazard junctions. From day to day, their actions had no pattern, no regularity, no cycle. They almost seemed intent on maintaining a randomness of jobs and timing. Meals were never quite at the same time each day, and it was only by persistent logging and the mild changing of seasons that Lady Fayeth was able to tell the passage of weeks and months. It was like she woke up each morning to a different people - each day seemed drastically different than the last.
Although she was rather bored during most of these days, she slowly became more and more curious about why these odd people had such an intense desire to stray away from predictable pattern and circular symbols, yet clung to the ideas of eternity, and arching patterns and concepts in their ceremonies. Once, she had shown a child her electronic log, which she had brought from her ship. The small boy had turned to her depiction of the circular arrangement of the full moon ceremony. Upon viewing this image for only an instant, he quickly but carefully placed the log on the bedside and bolted from the door crying. That evening, the elders held a healing ceremony at the boy’s hut, and Lady Fayeth received concerned looks and pale faces from the villagers for days afterward.
After six months of ruling the people and trying to learn their haphazard ways, Lady Fayeth began to lose hope in ever understanding the people. One night, in a fit of desperation, she called two of her most trusted bodyguards, both accomplished hunters, and wandered into the forest which bordered the village. She had no intentions but to explore the wilderness, a random pursuit that pleased the man and woman that accompanied her. After traveling for several hours, the trio stopped for a break by a cluster of trees near one of Vergeslant’s sparkling streams. As one of the bodyguards went to look for food, Lady Fayeth gazed around the scene of the forest stream, sitting on the twisting, intertwining roots of the clustered trees. Suddenly, through the mist slowly rising from the stream, she spied a clue to the puzzling natives’ rituals, and her mind began at once to process the possibilities of planetary escape once more.

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