Elves

More than two years ago I made a post called "demi-humans and alignment: dwarfs" which originally included a bit about elves, later replaced with a bit that promised: "elves update to follow!"...

If you've been reading this for any length of time, you'll be aware of the standard gamut of excuses so let's just crack on. 

Our current position in the solar cycle is determined by whether the discourse is about Rankin's elves

D12 Unexpected Intelligent Entities Interloping in Other Realms

The pariahs of the titular RPG are outcast from their paleolithic culture, and thus are outsiders thrice over: first as unaffiliated humans in the wilderness of the Here &  Now; second as nomads among the proto-Neolithic settled folk; third as psychonauts interloping in realms beyond the Here & Now.

PARIAH Volume 1 grants a vague overview of six of these realms, how to access them and the types of entities most likely to be encountered there. This information has been added to on this blog with numerous posts over the past four years, but is but a tiny taste of realms even more diverse and complex than the quotidian of the pariah's day-to-day lives.

Anthropomorph (Earth) copyright 2000 Luke Brown https://www.lukebrownart.com/ 

What's more, as well as the native inhabitants of the se realms, there are those like the pariahs: visitors, travellers and interlopers exploring a reality beyond sight and sound. Sorcerers, witches, wise-ones and ghost-walkers are perhaps the most likely fellow travellers a stone age psychonaut might run into, but there are others of more obscure origin. 

12 of these intelligent entities are listed below, alongside the realms within which they are most likely to be encountered.

D12 Meteoric Metals

I had a draft of the post D12 Anomalous Orbs sat unpublished for long enough to justify its "retroactive dating", so it sits neatly in the April posts... but this is genuinely hot-off-the-press, unadulterated May 2024 content just for you.

When I first used the phrase STAR METAL in PARIAH volume 1 I imagined the reader would assume this to be meteoric iron, though I made no explicit statement regarding its nature... though a while back I washed my hands of a monster created by cryptomnesia known as an Ancient One  Now fully immersed in UFO lore and the existence of supposed “exotic materials”, I thought it would be fun to come up with a list of alternative material properties for “star metal”. In addition to the usual fantasy sources, this table was inspired by anecdotal accounts from ufology and the preindustrial metallurgists and alchemists. There used to be a spiritual element (pun intended) to material science which is sadly lacking today!

Cubic of polished meteoric iron illustrating the Widmanstaetten structure

D12 Anomalous Orbs...

I'm back out the other side of one of my bi-annual delves into the rabbit-hole of UFOlogy, and my takeaways are two in number:

1. Is it me or is this group getting increasingly right wing? We need to revive Posadism at once... some classic Trotskyite entryism could work wonders...
2. The "jellyfish" video is probably the most sinister children's party balloon I've seen in my life

Before we go on you should know this: I am a believer. In spite my irreverence here let it be known that my worldview is broad enough to entertain the concept of multi-dimensional entities disguised as jellyfish hovering over military bases for reasons unfathomable. Sure, I'm a pragmatic materialist: but beyond the day-to-day existence is a mystery, and my heart knows that there are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy...

Album cover to Metallic Spheres by The Orb and David Gilmour, AI generated 

D12 ANOMALOUS ORBS

Encountered (mostly) at night, at a distance of 100 yards or fewer... a glowing, luminous sphere of indeterminate size is spotted. Closer investigation reveals it to be...