Aliens are a fascinating phenomena, because they're so uniquely boring. For the most part, they appear to be simple caricatures of humans. They often contain the most basic, elemental structures: the eyes and the mouth, a head separated from the trunk by a neck, and four limbs arranged for bipedal motion and freeing the hands for independent manipulation.
The idea that people are not alone in the universe is not a strange one, it's quite old. The idea that humans are the dunces of the interstellar community is not strange either. Naturally humans don't have readily available space travel of any kind, so it seems only natural that extraterrestrials would visit us, instead of vice versa. It seems only natural that aliens would develop along the same path we did. People striving to get really creative may take familiar elements and add them to humanity to create plausible aliens.
Generally, it's taken for granted that aliens are more advanced than us simply because it makes their arrival easier to explain and more dramatic to boot. However, the Earth had life on it for hundreds of millions of years without seeing intelligent life. Practically speaking, most extraterrestrials probably regarded having multiple cells as frivolity and went back to celiating in puddles of liquid oxygen or something. Less practical but more interesting, there may be planets that have no truly sapient life at all, home to an eternal Triassic age.
On the other hand, perhaps these aliens are quite intelligent, but held back by an environmental barrier. Aquatic Earth species like dolphins have proven to be intelligent, but discovering the recipe for rocket fuel would be quite a trick if your planet is waist deep in water. Or it could be that the planet never suffered a carboniferous period. Perhaps the structure of the plants and animals would be such that their biodegredation couldn't be traced or wouldn't eventually produce petroleum, or the atmosphere is unusually, dangerously explosive.
And the senses! There is a vast array of things that can be sensed, and even more varieties of organizing the way they're sensed, and even if I were to list them all it's guaranteed I haven't thought of everything. For one, we tend to call anything dealing with light "sight", and such sight obeys the same rules of sight for our eyes. Could a species be naturally sensitive to radio waves? To radiation?
Vocalizations are a big part of most species on Earth; animal ur-languages seem to appear practically out of the woodwork. As a result, aliens often speak clear English with colorful racial accents and dialects. One book I read when I was a child challenged the status quo with species that communicated partially in the manual manipulation of warts on its body. This was quite a concept, and it continues to be, because unusual forms of communication feel like they should be an alien mainstay. Why everything in the universe must communicate by way of squeezing air through meat is a mystery. Perfectly mundane animals in the world generate and manipulate electricity (humans, for example)--it wouldn't be too farfetched for species to communicate by electrifying one another, or exchanging specially developed ambient microbes, or altering the nature of their reflective skin. Scent conversations could be expected in species built to appreciate it. Even if an alien were to use sound to communicate, it needn't be attached to his respiratory and digestive system, and their method of modulating those sounds needn't be cords in the throat attached to the ol' chest billows.
Monday, February 28, 2011
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Another Place
Celie ambled calmly down a wide street. As they'd strayed further and further away from the mountains, the buildings had gotten taller, more gaunt, and better preserved. There was still a sensation of desolation. Whole buildings appeared to have been emptied, their contents piled haphazardly on the street. Rusted machines of indeterminate purpose scattered the street. It looked as though there had been a fire sale, or perhaps just a fire.
She paused. A woman was comfortably sleeping in a large chair. From the look of her she'd been at it quite a long time; ivy curled over the back of the chair and draped itself in leafy boas and dirt loosely speckled her face. Anyone in a chair so comfortable as to become part of the foliage shouldn't be disturbed, by Celie's medical instinct tugged gently on her collar. She approached, slowly, and stretched out a hand. Suddenly, the chair uprooted itself and scuttled away on spindly metal legs, trailing bits of ivy. It settled back down a few feet away.
Celie caught up with it, and it indignantly rose up again and ducked away crabwise.
She paused. A woman was comfortably sleeping in a large chair. From the look of her she'd been at it quite a long time; ivy curled over the back of the chair and draped itself in leafy boas and dirt loosely speckled her face. Anyone in a chair so comfortable as to become part of the foliage shouldn't be disturbed, by Celie's medical instinct tugged gently on her collar. She approached, slowly, and stretched out a hand. Suddenly, the chair uprooted itself and scuttled away on spindly metal legs, trailing bits of ivy. It settled back down a few feet away.
Celie caught up with it, and it indignantly rose up again and ducked away crabwise.
Sunday, February 20, 2011
The Problem
Recently I read, or at least started to read, "Escape from Terra". It's a sci-fi webcomic with a pretty clear allegorical message that eventually put me off of it and sent me searching for less heavy political fare.
It plays heavily with minarchy and libertarian themes overlying a sort of meeting between Gene Roddenberry and Joss Whedon. The future is home to a post-capitalist One Earth government; the bureaucratic socialist collective plays the role more traditionally left to Empires, while the protagonists live in an anarchistic mining colony.
The protagonist is an auditor for the Earth government and reflexively expresses much of their bias against the freedom loving anarchists. Earthlings are painfully politically correct, regard any sort of competition as barbaric. They apparently regard capitalism with the same distaste, fear, and hatred that can be found amongst victims of the Fordian society of Brave New World.
The Belters, in an effort to illustrate to the protagonist the errors of his ways, decide to take him to a zero-atmosphere hockey game. It's basically space played in an arena with no atmosphere, meaning the players have to wear heavy protected suits; high sticking can expose the victim to explosive decompression and the perpetrator to the wrath of the other players. There is no need for referees, because rule breaking carries such heavy consequences and penalties that nobody would ever dare break the rules.
A problem immediately and obviously presented itself: with no oversight or opportunity for redress, any rules broken result immediately in painful death. The Belter society is heavily armed, citing the modern defense of the second amendment; e.g. that the potential for every bystander to be an armed combatant quells crime. It occurred to me that a well-armed society like this would have a problem trying to kill a rule-breaker, especially since he's suddenly surrounded by people who would, by social convention, gladly be his murderers.
The protagonist complains that the rules are unnecessarily barbaric if someone were to break the rules, at which point someone smugly points out that nobody broke the rules. The implication is heavy--nobody ever breaks the rules if you make the penalty sufficiently punishing. Which struck me as strange--people in professional sports are badly wounded quite frequently without anyone ever breaking the rules. It's the nature of sports, especially contact sports as violent as hockey, that people periodically get injured. It seems to me that the potential for equipment malfunctions coupled with the violent nature of the sport could make the sport a good shade of deadly by accident.
Of course, all this is predicated on the idea that the punishment is doled out immediately by incensed players concerned for their own safety; opponents won't stand for it because they could be next, and teammates don't stand for it because they could be the target of equal retribution, meaning that bad luck and malevolence are punished the same way with no oversight. That was pretty horrifying--the idea that one could be slain in cold blood over something as trifling as an accident in a hockey match.
Then something worse came to mind. What if it wasn't an emotional decision made on-the-spot as a unit? Was the comic suggesting that a group of individuals could detain another individual they felt had "done wrong" and summarily execute him? Not just could, but would?
Then of course there's the idea of automatic murder from a fictive standpoint. There are only a few teams, and presumably everybody knows everybody else. Opponents in small, dedicated leagues generally do. Teammates on closely knit amateur teams ought to. Some of the players are brothers, so they obviously do. And they'd participate in what is apparently the only punishment method in this version of hockey, which is killing the offending player, no matter who he is?
The arc ends with protagonist (naturally) enthralled and invigorated by the sport, deprived of any kind of competition by Earth's obsession with fairness and lack of competitive spirit. It's part of the chain that leads the protagonist to accept the anarchist culture. At some point, he's even given a banner which seems like a show of good faith until it's explicitly stated by the cast that it's meant to bring him derision and shame him into returning to the anarchist state. Nobody is forcing him to do anything, but they're manipulating events so that has to come back.
And these people are apparently the heroes of the tale.
It plays heavily with minarchy and libertarian themes overlying a sort of meeting between Gene Roddenberry and Joss Whedon. The future is home to a post-capitalist One Earth government; the bureaucratic socialist collective plays the role more traditionally left to Empires, while the protagonists live in an anarchistic mining colony.
The protagonist is an auditor for the Earth government and reflexively expresses much of their bias against the freedom loving anarchists. Earthlings are painfully politically correct, regard any sort of competition as barbaric. They apparently regard capitalism with the same distaste, fear, and hatred that can be found amongst victims of the Fordian society of Brave New World.
The Belters, in an effort to illustrate to the protagonist the errors of his ways, decide to take him to a zero-atmosphere hockey game. It's basically space played in an arena with no atmosphere, meaning the players have to wear heavy protected suits; high sticking can expose the victim to explosive decompression and the perpetrator to the wrath of the other players. There is no need for referees, because rule breaking carries such heavy consequences and penalties that nobody would ever dare break the rules.
A problem immediately and obviously presented itself: with no oversight or opportunity for redress, any rules broken result immediately in painful death. The Belter society is heavily armed, citing the modern defense of the second amendment; e.g. that the potential for every bystander to be an armed combatant quells crime. It occurred to me that a well-armed society like this would have a problem trying to kill a rule-breaker, especially since he's suddenly surrounded by people who would, by social convention, gladly be his murderers.
The protagonist complains that the rules are unnecessarily barbaric if someone were to break the rules, at which point someone smugly points out that nobody broke the rules. The implication is heavy--nobody ever breaks the rules if you make the penalty sufficiently punishing. Which struck me as strange--people in professional sports are badly wounded quite frequently without anyone ever breaking the rules. It's the nature of sports, especially contact sports as violent as hockey, that people periodically get injured. It seems to me that the potential for equipment malfunctions coupled with the violent nature of the sport could make the sport a good shade of deadly by accident.
Of course, all this is predicated on the idea that the punishment is doled out immediately by incensed players concerned for their own safety; opponents won't stand for it because they could be next, and teammates don't stand for it because they could be the target of equal retribution, meaning that bad luck and malevolence are punished the same way with no oversight. That was pretty horrifying--the idea that one could be slain in cold blood over something as trifling as an accident in a hockey match.
Then something worse came to mind. What if it wasn't an emotional decision made on-the-spot as a unit? Was the comic suggesting that a group of individuals could detain another individual they felt had "done wrong" and summarily execute him? Not just could, but would?
Then of course there's the idea of automatic murder from a fictive standpoint. There are only a few teams, and presumably everybody knows everybody else. Opponents in small, dedicated leagues generally do. Teammates on closely knit amateur teams ought to. Some of the players are brothers, so they obviously do. And they'd participate in what is apparently the only punishment method in this version of hockey, which is killing the offending player, no matter who he is?
The arc ends with protagonist (naturally) enthralled and invigorated by the sport, deprived of any kind of competition by Earth's obsession with fairness and lack of competitive spirit. It's part of the chain that leads the protagonist to accept the anarchist culture. At some point, he's even given a banner which seems like a show of good faith until it's explicitly stated by the cast that it's meant to bring him derision and shame him into returning to the anarchist state. Nobody is forcing him to do anything, but they're manipulating events so that has to come back.
And these people are apparently the heroes of the tale.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Linguistic Doodles
"You idiot! They weren't done eating! You nearly cost me a tip!"
"They both got up, took their coats, and left! How was I to know they hadn't finished?"
Rob the busboy was furiously arguing with Jenny the waitress. The rest of the staff didn't want to intercede; it was a professional spat and a lover's quarrel beside and neither took kindly to someone taking sides.
"You always do this! You never listen!"
"You didn't tell me anything, you dumb--" the next word suggested that it was no longer, strictly speaking, a lover's quarrel. They stood, separated by the fuming wall of hate that blossoms quickly between virulently former lovers. They were then briefly separated by a carving knife, which twanged suggestively from the exertion of burying itself an inch into the grimy paneling on the wall above the Soup station.
Nearby, the sous chef was pointedly whistling as he flipped sizzling chicken-chunks with a theatrically large chef's knife. He whistled in a way meant to suggest innocence and nonchalance but which underscored the whistler's complete lack of either. He nodded without looking up as both quarrelers found something better to do with his time.
The head chef stormed furiously into the kitchen, drawn by the sound of employees not working and (more to the point) putting his customers off their meal. "What in the--" he began, then noticed that nobody appeared to be fighting. A better head chef wouldn't let that stop him, and would have simply kept on shouting until he found something worth shouting about, which was never hard and good for the circulation. Cartleback Switchby was not a better chef, lacking the sort of reputation that shouting necessary, and as such was terribly out of practice at it. He whirled around desperately and eyeballed the sous chef. The sous chef took no notice and instead levered his knife sideways, flipping over a row of onions and possibly a bit of the pan with them. The head chef drew himself up, inflated his lungs, and the onions obediently turned under the flashing steel again. He deflated slightly. "Must you always use knives? We have plenty of spatulas."
This sort of thinking was lost on the sous chef, who considered any cooking implement that wouldn't double as a hanging offense to be a tad prissy. "Sir? I've always gotten on fine with knives. I've got m' chef's knife, my parer, my cleaver, my carver" (he paused here to hold up the carving knife, which he hadn't retrieved but was nevertheless resting comfortably in his colossal palm) "my bread knife, soup knife, steak knife, and of course, chopknives." He jerked a thumb at a pair of thin metal implements which appeared to be knives finely sharpened to needles.
The sous chef smiled pleasantly, and his boss nodded cautiously. Then he desperately left to yell at someone, anyone, who was unarmed. The sous chef watched him go, his hands going about the day's work, doling out portions of chicken with a serving knife.
"They both got up, took their coats, and left! How was I to know they hadn't finished?"
Rob the busboy was furiously arguing with Jenny the waitress. The rest of the staff didn't want to intercede; it was a professional spat and a lover's quarrel beside and neither took kindly to someone taking sides.
"You always do this! You never listen!"
"You didn't tell me anything, you dumb--" the next word suggested that it was no longer, strictly speaking, a lover's quarrel. They stood, separated by the fuming wall of hate that blossoms quickly between virulently former lovers. They were then briefly separated by a carving knife, which twanged suggestively from the exertion of burying itself an inch into the grimy paneling on the wall above the Soup station.
Nearby, the sous chef was pointedly whistling as he flipped sizzling chicken-chunks with a theatrically large chef's knife. He whistled in a way meant to suggest innocence and nonchalance but which underscored the whistler's complete lack of either. He nodded without looking up as both quarrelers found something better to do with his time.
The head chef stormed furiously into the kitchen, drawn by the sound of employees not working and (more to the point) putting his customers off their meal. "What in the--" he began, then noticed that nobody appeared to be fighting. A better head chef wouldn't let that stop him, and would have simply kept on shouting until he found something worth shouting about, which was never hard and good for the circulation. Cartleback Switchby was not a better chef, lacking the sort of reputation that shouting necessary, and as such was terribly out of practice at it. He whirled around desperately and eyeballed the sous chef. The sous chef took no notice and instead levered his knife sideways, flipping over a row of onions and possibly a bit of the pan with them. The head chef drew himself up, inflated his lungs, and the onions obediently turned under the flashing steel again. He deflated slightly. "Must you always use knives? We have plenty of spatulas."
This sort of thinking was lost on the sous chef, who considered any cooking implement that wouldn't double as a hanging offense to be a tad prissy. "Sir? I've always gotten on fine with knives. I've got m' chef's knife, my parer, my cleaver, my carver" (he paused here to hold up the carving knife, which he hadn't retrieved but was nevertheless resting comfortably in his colossal palm) "my bread knife, soup knife, steak knife, and of course, chopknives." He jerked a thumb at a pair of thin metal implements which appeared to be knives finely sharpened to needles.
The sous chef smiled pleasantly, and his boss nodded cautiously. Then he desperately left to yell at someone, anyone, who was unarmed. The sous chef watched him go, his hands going about the day's work, doling out portions of chicken with a serving knife.
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Describing the Kark
"He's getting ready to go in. We're gonna need a trap runner. Where's that guy? The mil'try guys said the brought some some savage to take lumps for the pencil pushers."
The Kark gave a broad, alchemical smile. With it, he could transmute lead into solid terror. Slowly his hands seemed to take on a life of their own. Thumbs like hammers moved slowly and deliberately amongst the fingers, pressing or lifting; pops and cracks accompanied each alien gesture. There was something uncomfortably prophetic in those noises. The dockhands shifted, and somehow, the Kark's smile got broader.
The Kark gave a broad, alchemical smile. With it, he could transmute lead into solid terror. Slowly his hands seemed to take on a life of their own. Thumbs like hammers moved slowly and deliberately amongst the fingers, pressing or lifting; pops and cracks accompanied each alien gesture. There was something uncomfortably prophetic in those noises. The dockhands shifted, and somehow, the Kark's smile got broader.
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Unspecific Tirade That Has Nothing To Do With Football
There were no artists in this group. That is to say, there was no one who valued the aesthetic of the thing on its own merits. It was a strange contradiction then, when five men who by all rights didn't give a flat damn about the way things looked, got out of a sleek, very expensive black car, dressed in suits so black that light took one look and called a holiday. There was no disguising their embarrassingly good looks and painfully affable natures. For five men who didn't care a lick about the look of the thing, they looked good.
One of them glanced up the street.
Standing there, on the corner, not watching them so much as seeing them by accident, was an artist. A man who cared quite deeply about the look of the thing, and very little else. When he noticed the glance and recognized its owner, he adjusted his baggy, outsize coat and second hand scarf, then shot them a look of scorn. It rebounded and made a very confused pigeon spend the evening concerned that it may have "sold out".
The five men sat together, smiling pleasantly. "Can we fit any more ads in, enjoy the refreshing taste of Pepsi?" Queried one, pausing to smile broadly and reveal grills which read Eat at Joe's.
"This message is brought to you by Pizza Hut. I think we could maybe require fans to color coordinate outfits and form giant advertisements." suggested a second. "You know, like everyone in seats 1A, 2B, and 3C wear black, some others wear white, BAM, Nike ad. Just do it."
"Gentlemen, has it occurred to you that in our crass hunt for funds, we've corrupted any pretense of this being a down-to-earth cultural experience?" The others looked at him expectantly, and he wiped his brow uncomfortably. After a few seconds, he choked out "Ford! They're... uh, good trucks." and quickly sat back down.
Glances were exchanged. A fellow on the end of the row seemed to consider what he had said, stopped choking his complimentary coed, zipped up his pants, and addressed the group. "Look, guys, some of our franchises have bigger followings than major religions. We're not just a cultural experience, we're a culture. We're practically the culture. And I'd like to thank God and the Lord Jesus Christ for everything that I have." Several members of the group nodded appreciatively. Not at what he'd said--they hadn't been listening because it wasn't them talking-but he'd been tapping out "Axe Body Spray--women will fuck you like it's actually a good decision" in Morse Code on the table with an ostentatious ring. "So I say that we don't need to apologize for what we are! We're everything American there can possibly be, thanks to our brave men and women in uniform." One of the men had stood up and removed his hat in preparation for the national anthem. "So I say no! We deserve every penny we get, or could potentially get, and at no point will the glitz and spectacle ever outweigh the value that game itself has as a metaphor for... for..." He paused, and the room was silent except for the low drone of someone humming the Star Spangled Banner. "For whatever it is it stands for!" "Home of the brave!"
He paused reflectively. "Play ball!"
One of them glanced up the street.
Standing there, on the corner, not watching them so much as seeing them by accident, was an artist. A man who cared quite deeply about the look of the thing, and very little else. When he noticed the glance and recognized its owner, he adjusted his baggy, outsize coat and second hand scarf, then shot them a look of scorn. It rebounded and made a very confused pigeon spend the evening concerned that it may have "sold out".
The five men sat together, smiling pleasantly. "Can we fit any more ads in, enjoy the refreshing taste of Pepsi?" Queried one, pausing to smile broadly and reveal grills which read Eat at Joe's.
"This message is brought to you by Pizza Hut. I think we could maybe require fans to color coordinate outfits and form giant advertisements." suggested a second. "You know, like everyone in seats 1A, 2B, and 3C wear black, some others wear white, BAM, Nike ad. Just do it."
"Gentlemen, has it occurred to you that in our crass hunt for funds, we've corrupted any pretense of this being a down-to-earth cultural experience?" The others looked at him expectantly, and he wiped his brow uncomfortably. After a few seconds, he choked out "Ford! They're... uh, good trucks." and quickly sat back down.
Glances were exchanged. A fellow on the end of the row seemed to consider what he had said, stopped choking his complimentary coed, zipped up his pants, and addressed the group. "Look, guys, some of our franchises have bigger followings than major religions. We're not just a cultural experience, we're a culture. We're practically the culture. And I'd like to thank God and the Lord Jesus Christ for everything that I have." Several members of the group nodded appreciatively. Not at what he'd said--they hadn't been listening because it wasn't them talking-but he'd been tapping out "Axe Body Spray--women will fuck you like it's actually a good decision" in Morse Code on the table with an ostentatious ring. "So I say that we don't need to apologize for what we are! We're everything American there can possibly be, thanks to our brave men and women in uniform." One of the men had stood up and removed his hat in preparation for the national anthem. "So I say no! We deserve every penny we get, or could potentially get, and at no point will the glitz and spectacle ever outweigh the value that game itself has as a metaphor for... for..." He paused, and the room was silent except for the low drone of someone humming the Star Spangled Banner. "For whatever it is it stands for!" "Home of the brave!"
He paused reflectively. "Play ball!"
Thursday, February 3, 2011
The Races of the Continent
The Living:
The Anemics hate and fear death, far more than the death cult to which the principal cast belongs. Long term users and abusers of blood serum. Blood serum is potent medicine: Anemics can suffer fairly traumatic injuries with less pain, survive more serious injuries, succumb to shock less frequently, and survive disease and infection easily. Originally developed to keep wounded soldiers alive until stronger medicine or surgery could arrive. Lasting weakness and tremors often ended soldiering careers, making it unpopular with career soldiers but popular with conscripts. It followed users out of wars and into civilian life, where it became passingly common household narcotic. Anemia was briefly fashionable until it was discovered that it inhibited ambulat mortis and it was banned. Users turned to blood theft to craft their medicine, driving themselves to the edge of civilization. When the plagues started, the Anemics were protected by their addiction but against the human element were easily overpowered. They persist and diversify today behind the mountains, small packs hunting for amongst the Eblinish ruins and and southerly foothills.
The Living/Dead?
Judges are the remains of an orthodox Eb death cult devoted to immortality through unlife. The final ablutions saw them sitting in the Shroedinger Mandorla, which either kills them or doesn't. There's no way to know until they're taken from the Mandorla, but they continue talking and moving to some degree while they're in the chair (often indefinitely) and until their status can be ascertained they remain in limbo and in their chair, which they quite like. At some point they acquired a fellowship of knowledge, and share quite intimately in each other's company. How they became cerebrally entangled is anyone's guess because nobody observed it happening and the Judges are quite keen on not being observed too thoroughly lest somebody observe their death and collapse the superposition.
The Dead
Ghouls are machines that haven't quite got the hang of living yet. Designed with a significant portion of their controls accessible only to a human rider, they also have internal controls that lack the processing power necessary to work properly. As a result, a riderless ghoul clatters about dumbly looking for a fresh body whose hands and brains can be safely integrated into the whole. Once the ghoul has control over the rider's brain (and, by proxy, access to its limbs) he becomes capable of operating himself at maximum effectiveness. Residual memories from the rider may trick ghouls into behaving as though they are their deceased rider, and the machines often become amusing patchworks of whichever brains they can remember being connected too. Reside in a remarkably tidy corner of Ebling,
The Anemics hate and fear death, far more than the death cult to which the principal cast belongs. Long term users and abusers of blood serum. Blood serum is potent medicine: Anemics can suffer fairly traumatic injuries with less pain, survive more serious injuries, succumb to shock less frequently, and survive disease and infection easily. Originally developed to keep wounded soldiers alive until stronger medicine or surgery could arrive. Lasting weakness and tremors often ended soldiering careers, making it unpopular with career soldiers but popular with conscripts. It followed users out of wars and into civilian life, where it became passingly common household narcotic. Anemia was briefly fashionable until it was discovered that it inhibited ambulat mortis and it was banned. Users turned to blood theft to craft their medicine, driving themselves to the edge of civilization. When the plagues started, the Anemics were protected by their addiction but against the human element were easily overpowered. They persist and diversify today behind the mountains, small packs hunting for amongst the Eblinish ruins and and southerly foothills.
The Living/Dead?
Judges are the remains of an orthodox Eb death cult devoted to immortality through unlife. The final ablutions saw them sitting in the Shroedinger Mandorla, which either kills them or doesn't. There's no way to know until they're taken from the Mandorla, but they continue talking and moving to some degree while they're in the chair (often indefinitely) and until their status can be ascertained they remain in limbo and in their chair, which they quite like. At some point they acquired a fellowship of knowledge, and share quite intimately in each other's company. How they became cerebrally entangled is anyone's guess because nobody observed it happening and the Judges are quite keen on not being observed too thoroughly lest somebody observe their death and collapse the superposition.
The Dead
Ghouls are machines that haven't quite got the hang of living yet. Designed with a significant portion of their controls accessible only to a human rider, they also have internal controls that lack the processing power necessary to work properly. As a result, a riderless ghoul clatters about dumbly looking for a fresh body whose hands and brains can be safely integrated into the whole. Once the ghoul has control over the rider's brain (and, by proxy, access to its limbs) he becomes capable of operating himself at maximum effectiveness. Residual memories from the rider may trick ghouls into behaving as though they are their deceased rider, and the machines often become amusing patchworks of whichever brains they can remember being connected too. Reside in a remarkably tidy corner of Ebling,
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