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Albrecht's quotes.

In Necralisk[]

1st Requiem - XATA (Truth)[]

  • "Xata. (Truth). It began long before us, we who now live our perfect and dull, endless lives. It began long before these moon-palaces and body-markets hurling around our golden sun. It began long before our light-coil thinkers, our radiation wars, our oil, smoke. It began with us. The continuity and its twin, wanderlust. The need for unseen shores deep in our marrow. No judge, jester, queen, or king can escape this old blood. We are nomads, eternal. And when no ocean, mountain, or sky could contain us... our gaze hungered star-ward. Afar, they mocked us with their brittle light. Winking and jeering like dangling Ayatans, forever out of reach, illuminating the truth: immortal as we are - we die with the sun. That's where I come in."  (download, history)

2nd Requiem - JAHU (Form)[]

  • "Jahu. (Form). My departure was a day less than any other. When I stepped inside the Bell, I saw no crowd through its seriglass. No skeptical onlookers. No regal sendoff. They all had given up on me and my paradoxical formulations. The wasted years had all shown the Void to be just that. Nothing. No energy. No entanglement. No form. To space-faring ambitions, a dead end. On the day, my laboratory was mostly vacant of witnesses, most of all, of expectation. Only my sluggish attendants, my sagacious Kavat, Kalymos, and of course, my daughter. I had raised her alone but with inconsistent vigor. In those eyes, her mother's, I did see a terrible reflection. Of a man that did not exist. A brave and principled man about to make history. In truth, he was a Void himself. An outcast, a joke, a nothing. Driven by my humiliation. Failure had made me bitter and reckless. I would dive into the depths myself to prove them all wrong. I gave the signal. My daughter grasped the lever. Kalymos, then, belted out a desperate, rasping growl. But it was too late."  (download, history)

3rd Requiem - VOME (Order)[]

  • "Vome. (Order). The calipers yawed open the wall between worlds, stretching there a black, trapezoidal gap. A door. A mouth. It yawned in the light of the room, splintering it to mesmerizing, unearthly hues. And I, inside the Bell, dropping obliquely towards it from my gallows. Mass and time rippled as a sudden vortex jawed before me. My head was vapor, my feet, lodestone. The Bell around me, flexed like a rat paralyzed in a winding, gulping snake. I faltered in the awe of it, stumbling against the seriglass and, with that, shifted the Bell's path through the wall. It grazed the caliper membrane, the edge of the door. No worldly edge was as thin, as sharp as could split even light. As the bell faintly grazed it, the seriglass was all at once rendered like strips of flesh by Dax blade. My enclosure was beheaded in an instant, but still, I fell... sideways... into the Void."  (download, history)

4th Requiem - FASS (Chaos)[]

  • "Fass. (Chaos). Death was on me; I was certain. I was face-down, eyes clenched. My heart pulsing the last of its seconds, and my lungs burning the last of its air. A sudden nostalgia gripped me. I grasped desperately, for memory, of a storm, just passed, the fumbling pitch of a child's song... yet all these thoughts seemed to steal away from my mind like smoke through a vent. I would die empty. I then became aware of another sensation. Physical. A web of pain, needles itching into my arm. At once I realized: I was alive! Laying in the Bell's shattered seriglass! I groped the ground. Warm stone. The floor of my laboratory. So: I had never left... and so: I had failed. Again. I heard a crunch alongside me. Someone stepping through the shattered glass. With great shame, I gasped and rose my head to face my daughter above me. But as I opened my eyes, it wasn't her. It was me."  (download, history)

5th Requiem - RIS (Light)[]

  • "Ris. (Light). The senselessness of it, the paradoxic, the vague untime form. I was alone, but not. For I stood there confronted by myself. A twin, but no brother. A reflection but with dimension. Behind him, no horizon, but a vast broiling sea of caustic light pierced at random by black-pin stars. And closer, around me, a gale of flowing vapor. Profane in color, billowing relentlessly into the nascent lack, seeking all directions. I was standing on a precipice of familiar stone, jagged and unanchored, as though cleaved directly from the very floor of my laboratory. I wondered at the vapor's path, smoking outward more, leaving behind now, the walls, the filigree gold, the rare cuts of marble from my home. I knew at once the vapor's source. I turned away, back toward the wall, the trapezoid I had yawed into it. Vapor erupted inward at the gap, but not just from there. For as I rolled my eyes back, I saw the same... A great-steam of scintillation, smoking from my skull. Dumb in awe, I faced toward my chimerical twin. He spoke."  (download, history)

6th Requiem - KHRA (Time)[]

  • "Khra. (Time). An old name, unspoken in the centuries since my mother reared me. A soft hiss, soothing as a viper's gaze. Little Bengel. The other reached out, offering his hand, gliding toward me without moving, as though the distance between us was now collapsing. A confusion, most euphoric, filled my mind. With the shred of wit that remained, I decided that I should run for my life. At once, crazed and frantic, I fled. But I made no forward progress. Instead, the world compressed evermore around me, as though I were an anchor pulling the shore to reach. When I arrived at the door, or rather, the door arrived at me, I howled, hurling myself inside. Out. And then and there, I was. Lost and unlost. Howling on the floor in harmony with my wretched Kalymos. Lacerated in flesh and heart. Scattered as the bell glass. Spilling blood and stomach on the cold, stone floor. But I sensed the other there, at the wall's breach behind me, reaching still. I screamed, but my voice was gone. Forever. I looked, but my eyes would never see again. I swept my fist across the floor, snatching broken shards. And in gripping tightly, I filled my hands with ink. Close it! I wrote."  (download, history)

7th Requiem - NETRA (Decay)[]

  • "Netra. (Decay). Time, to us, is all but conquered. Our sacred Kuva moves us on to new skin. We numb to our daily, yearly, trifles... and remedy those memories that bring lasting misery. With all our misdeeds, our excess, our indignity... we are haunted by nothing. But not for me. For with each passing day, there grew within a tumorous idea. It was minute in those early days: The pale reaching digits severed on the floor... studied with reverence, with greed. And it swelled larger in the latter days: the regal domes, the Rail dedications, the unholy Zariman parade. I had put the stars within reach, but at what cost? I never spoke of him, that man, trapped in the wall. And while there have been countless souls who have followed me through, with their light-skippers, and field-wave skins and vari-eyed instruments... not a single one ever saw him. Me. And so it is that I will not take the Kuva now. Or ever again. This is the last skin I'm in. Because of this idea: That I cannot be sure. That in all that smoked commotion, in all that panic and fear, in that bending light and blinding dark... was it I who escaped? Or the other?"  (download, history)

8th Requiem - LOHK (Void)[]

  • "Lohk. (Void).
    From brooding gulfs are we beheld by that which bears no name.
    Its heralds are the stars it fells, the sky and earth aflame.
    Corporeal laws are unwrit, as suns and love retreat.
    To cosmic madness, laws submit, though stalwart minds entreat.
    In luminous space, blackened stars, they gaze, accuse, deny.
    Roiling, moaning this realm of ours in madness, lost shall die.
    Carrion hordes trill their profane accord with eldritch plans.
    To cosmic forms from tangent planes, we end as we began."  (download, history)

During Whispers in the Walls Quest[]

1999 New Year

Go to Albrecht’s Pom-2

Connect the Grimoire to the Gargoyle
Defeat the Fragmented One

Albrecht's Notes[]

The Aftermath
  • "I, uh, wanted nothing but the ease of oblivion, at first. I... floated ignorant in baths of nepenthe, a second gestation. Unseeing, unspeaking. Only rarely did my brain flicker errant light across the cave-paintings still smeared on the interior of my skull.
    At... sensation's edge, I knew a vague silhouette of Loid crooning motherly across the watery distances, the poetry my tongue was too blackened to recite."
  • "Too craven to chase death, I awaited it. The father of fears, yet I was still afraid.
    The currents whispered 'coward'. I clenched my body into a fist as a foetus must and blinded myself afresh.
    Stark pain smoked the juice of my living tomb. Why did the saga not end by itself? Why must I still act?"
  • "Steeped in solitude, I found I could no longer endure my own company.
    Disgust did the work of courage. I tore the mundane membrane, slid weak and mucoseal into Loid's embrace."
  • "Loid nursed me then, tending first to the uprooted ruin of my eyes, then to the mouth... whose grin... no longer... hid behind flesh.
    The agony bit deep, but it was clean. Blameless love bled up from me.
    I... had decided... to live."
  • "I felt no certainty as I donned clothes rough and strange to the touch of newgrown skin. I had none of the selfless zeal of the soldier.
    The same cursed question still pursued me as it had before, 'Was I, even now, trapped in the rictus of the Wall?'"
  • "The apparatus of logic would never yield an answer. Only resolute action remained. If I must be a demon, let me be an honest one. Let me prove my nature by what I do next.
    Purpose. Let me leave such blazing footprints behind me as no unclean thing would dare to walk in."
The Cavia
  • "I employed a variety of Cavia in an attempt to unmake the Adversary.
    The principle was straightforward enough, though in hindsight I abhor my naivete. My humanity had been unscrolled by the caustic Void and now smirked back at me across the divide, privy to all my unfettered malice and pettiness. In answer, I resolved to hurl into the Void minds that were not human. Let it parody them. The proximity of the bestial would force a humbling devolution, or so I thought."
  • "The majority of the Cavia merely died. I gave the Void living beings and it sent me back bedraggled cadavers. The dead lay stacked in pyramids around my deserted lab. I was nothing but a failed priest.
    But a glass splinter of stubbornness still stuck in me. And so, I persisted. The correct combination of creatures would work."
  • "I realized my error as I sweated by visionary nestawood cinders, beside Loid who curled pale and sick from eating too much of the root. The catalyst was uniqueness. That attribute was what caught the interest of the bland and undifferentiated Void.
    It was not necessary to explore queasy debates around the Oro; animal minds simply lacked the full distinction of a singular persona. My Kalymos, I was sure, was an exception, but I would not sacrifice that loyal being.
    Perhaps I should have. The sin I was to commit was worse."
  • "The very last breeding pair of Cervulites was smuggled to me, causing Loid no small inconvenience. A species on the brink of extinction. Here was the uniqueness the Void sought. I was certain to the pit of my entrails.
    I loaded the pair on to their Seriglass bridal barge, along with an expendable avian and a Norg for mental ballast. Fish, Fowl and Beast. A facile equilibrium."
  • "They did not die, save one. They came back changed. Witnesses. Pilgrims even, chanting freakish praises to the one beyond the Wall.
    I knew, then, that my gambit had lost. So long as I worked through scapegoats, my guilt would only deepen. I must atone for what I had done through my own blood."
  • "Standard laboratory hygiene would have been to dispose of them. But some instinct stayed my hand. The Voidtongue was an enigma to me, but another - more habituated to the Void than I - might one day unravel it. Through the imposition of form upon the formless they could, perhaps, glean some meaning.
    I assigned the Cavia to Loid, for I could not bear to look upon them. Not yet.
    Loid is, at heart, a good and kind man - better than I deserve. And completely oblivious to his own worth."
Duviri
  • "In Duviri, I woke every day to the voice of my daughter. I recoiled from this at first, feeling the sting of conscience. I could not confront, even in semblance, the woman I had abandoned. Instead I reinvented myself as a teacher, advising the child-King of the menace beyond his borders.
    But as the days melted away, I came to recognize the strange cast of characters Euleria had created, and their purpose. I heard voices I had myself first conjured in the darkness of her childhood chambers, for no other reward than her delight. She had not only preserved this gift I had thought so trivial, she had made it an instrument of healing. More, a stronghold."
  • "Despite my legacy of neglect, despite my shoddy example, my needs, my demands, my daughter had triumphed in my absence. Her confidence, her warmth, shamed me. I had fled from the horror, but she? She had stood alongside the most vulnerable, those with the most to lose, and told them a different story."
  • "I did not perceive the significance of Euleria's stance at first. Her concern for the children was not merely pastoral attentiveness. It was a direct strike against the Indifference. She was teaching the weak to be strong, in the very places where those cold fingers would reach, and through her act of compassion, spitting in the face of alienation and despair.
    Could I do less?"
  • "Shame is an inert state, but fertile. It primes the mind, bolstering it for repentance.
    I had thought to make a difference in Duviri. But Duviri had made a difference in me. My own daughter's creations, reverberating and growing in the womb of the Void, had shown me another path than that of the indulgent coward. I was neither helpless nor irredeemable. Like she had, I could fight."
  • "I took inspiration from Euleria's example. To the people of Duviri, I bequeathed a legacy of cautionary stories. In them I spoke of fears that an infinity of spirals would not, could not, erase.
    I slipped away from those lands, silent and unnoticed. From their joys, their sadnesses. From the celebration in my honor. In her, they already had all they needed. My work, I now understood, must proceed from a different point.
    I would confront the phantom of myself, and deny it to the teeth."
The Vessels
  • "I went among the denizens of the plague year like a savior, my hands filled with healing. To those who volunteered, I brought more than mere health. Their bodies were primed; it needed only the Helminth infusions, brought from my own time, to work the alchemy of transformation. They have become partial Warframes, still in possession of their free will, yet enhanced, Void-attuned, capable."
  • "Their humanity may not last. My deliverance may yet consume them. The human swallowed up in the sacred beast. And if my wayward disciples may turn on me, what words of comfort shall I have beyond: 'This is the bargain we have made. Through our sacrifice, history will be saved'."
  • "As their loyal doctor, I have taken repeated samples from them. The sight of their Technocyte-riddled cells mutating gave me fresh visions. I could take this material, work with it, forge new creations. Eagerly I brought the samples back to Deimos and began to cultivate them."
  • "It was Loid who pointed out the singular attributes of the Grey Strain. How it stimulates growth to monstrous dimensions. Many thoughts converged on me then. What if, through precise biochemical engineering, I could create the equivalents to Warframes, yet built to a titanic scale? Surely such a legion could stand against the Adversary... assuming, of course, that an Operator could be found."
  • "Not long after, the first of my Vessels took form. A giant to battle giants, merging the humanity of the man Arthur, the anatomical perfection of Ballas' Warframes and the titanic potency of the Grey Strain. My saviors."
We End as We Began
  • "All is in readiness. Loid will do as he is bid, though his eyes silently plead with me to choose another path.
    As I await my final crossing to the past, I ponder what role a scientist may play in so spiritual a matter as 'absolution'. How in the alchemy of the soul, even repentance must necessarily be a calculated task.
    I will repair what I have broken, no more and no less. The scales must balance. And in such a monstrous penitence as this, I shall take no heed of the dust that may fall upon them on either side, the dust of petty lives.
    The builders of old tempered their mortar with blood, to appease the most ancient of land-spirits. We should have been so wise. Yet it is not too late to learn.
    The sands fall. The circuit completes. I return to the place of the beginning.
    Let witless hordes bleat their disdain for every fervent plan.
    The deal is done, the die is cast. I end as I began."
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