Chapter Theme Music: Advent 1 ~ Solar Empire OST178Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgQbPHuqGYH
<01/13/2010 - ??:?? | 559 Motion Street, Austell, GA, USA>
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Around the time of the New Year, I began to identify a bit of a pattern to the moments where my powerful obsession with the night sky would kick in more strongly. Such feelings were not taking a rest just because I was doing better getting along in school or finding my footing through my own wave of chaotic emotions.178Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡy6WuW9oila
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Over all this time, I have been acquiring some very peculiar music that seemed to have some kind of powerful amplification effect on these strange sensations. If I played it long and loud enough, that which I felt about the unknown world outside intensified so much that it equated to a kind of hypnosis I would never break free from, unless the song ended. But even more powerfully than that was the amplification of such emotions that came from the ensuing cold climate.178Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡm0RDxviPo7
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This is the state of Georgia, in a crappy town with not much available, and warm weather which I have begun to hate with a strong passion. My desire to be in cold places has been coming on more frequently. As the weather around me cooled for winter, so did the strength and vigor of these powerful mental sensations and obsessions. These obsessions would throw strange details my way that never made any sense. It was like a collection of feelings and memories that I had long forgotten somehow, trying and failing to come through, though I could sense something was there.178Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgRXyr3bdTH
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Of course I didn't put up much of a fight to those sensations. No, it felt good to give in to these strange feelings and bursts of information. So, I began sleeping with this music in my ears. Ever since I started doing that, the dreams that came from it were something else entirely, dreams that I remember so vividly and strongly, despite never being lucid for a single one of them. In many cases, I was somebody else in the dream, looking through the eyes of another person as the mysterious world passed around me.178Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZIi0X2geFF
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Dreams like these would start similarly. I initially woke up in a thick snow bank or inside of some strange temple orbiting the frozen planet from outer space, and I would always remember seeing the people of this frozen world... Warriors of ice, members of The Unity...178Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVvn8FogxcI
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The people here were far from normal; that much I understood from the sights alone. In every dream, I would suddenly understand or know more about the civilization or people in general, as if the knowledge were part of the brain of the person I was inside of, spectating uncontrollably. They called themselves the Altiri, and they even had glowing cyan tattoos on the sides of their shoulders. They weren't just any tattoos either. That triangle I obsessed over long ago, trying to draw to perfection, matched the same symbol on their arms and on their hands. I could see it so clearly now.178Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡV6586vO6Rh
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Seeing it again at all like this kept my trance strong, powerful even in my own dreams as I wasn't myself. I was certain of specific details while uncertain of others, causing a chain reaction of both confusion and amazement as I felt such powerful devotion to these Altiri.178Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSg2pMKJbFS
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They live on the frozen planet they call Karnak, and its similar moon, Zinod. They are people, they even look like people, but they are clearly not human. Their eyes glow with a potent blue color when using their powers, some ability to expel ice and frost from their hands, so beautiful, so majestic. This amazing world was their home, the cold they loved so much. The freezing barren conditions of Karnak were beneficial to their survival, not a handicap.178Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmaTjelZbfo
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They even built spaceships, ships that had all kinds of crazy shapes, though the triangular capital ship was the most impressive design of them all. There was more to it than that. Inside of this body, inside the mind and soul of an Altiri, I felt their pain, their sorrow, their fear, their anger, their allegiance and pride, and even their happiness which would never last.178Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡOduWMNT1SX
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Stories about them played out in a disjointed series of dreams that only served these details to me over time in fragments, so it was difficult to make sense of. But there was one particular set of events that all of the Altiri went through, events which seemed to be the source of their anger, their hatred, and their pain.178Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmLDGv4SUcM
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It felt like such a long time ago, but I could not be certain of how long. The Altiri were once a peaceful nation, but something was stirring up trouble for them... No, it wasn't something, it was someone. Seeing his face reminded me that the other Altiri were all women, while this one male Altiri was not.178Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLhs3FCuW3b
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He wasn't seen as a welcome guest into their society, but rather a menace. I could feel the burning hatred and desire to kill him, though the emotion was not mine to bare. It was shared somehow, shared over the connected minds of millions of Altiri people, all feeling the same fear and threatening demeanor of his name, Legasso. This Legasso wanted to be worshipped, wanted to be king of the Altiri. But he enslaved many to build his following, hurt and beat women who disobeyed him, the civilians, the children, even the warriors.178Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBTPcI0v0lm
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The emotions of pain from the others echoed onto everyone in a network, thoughts and actions shared in unison. Efforts to remove Legasso were unsuccessful, again, and again.178Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFEOGlFDSoY
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It led to some kind of interplanetary conflict, causing every last Altiri to rally against him under someone's specific leadership. They built an army, of ships and people to pilot them, as well as better warriors who could fight him. The details were still so fragmented and hazy, but it was clear that Legasso made an enemy of the Altiri, became hunted, and went into hiding.178Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡv2PETGP4aw
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My heart raced through the body of this Altiri woman as I could feel some kind of suspense building itself towards me... They all went after him, trying to find and eliminate Legasso, but he had other plans. The exodus... He banished one million Altiri women to the planet of Zinod, habitable but smaller and underdeveloped. The Altiri children were trapped, afraid, and helpless. So many mothers were forcibly separated from their own children, until there were not many left.178Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡkz0zi0daC1
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But the growing military continued their campaign against him, tracking him to the same planet and pursuing him to no end. I shifted around uncontrollably as though I could somehow stop what I sensed was about to happen. I could feel the emotional and physical wrath of the Altiri warriors who pursued him, firing beams of ice through their hands to try and slow him down. The suspense that all would become worse intensified. I felt as though I had to capture Legasso at all costs, or else the consequences would be total annihilation!178Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJz1KWGcbPy
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And before I knew it, I witnessed the jaw dropping destruction of the entire frozen planet from the outside view of somebody else's cockpit. The entire sphere in space detonated into a massive array of planetary rock and debris flying in all directions, pillaging the larger planet below them and threatening many more nearby ships getting caught up in the disruption of magnetic fields.178Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWmuVz78qYo
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Following Zinod's destruction was a crushing wave of sadness resonated by the shared network of emotion in all of the Altiri, a sensation I was forced to share with them as the observer. It felt so horrible! So many Altiri lives, most of them the mothers of children and teenagers obliterated in the blink of an eye, taking Legasso with them. It felt so dark, a void of sadness so infinite, I could not possibly handle it right now.178Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ6zWWSYsS0B
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Born from their sadness, born from their suffering, a new order was born for them. The Unity followed their queen so closely with so much devotion and trust. Their reconstruction and recovery would last for such a long time, but in the aftermath that was, Legasso was branded as a mortal enemy of The Unity, even though he was already dead. Now with only one planet, they all let their fire of hatred burn. Legasso was not the sole target of such hostility of the Altiri, but all who would be like him in time.178Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXMDaX4UCqK
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Over the course of several of these fragmented dreams, even though I knew the whole time that they were only random dreams, I learned about the civilization of the Altiri, including their familiar triangle logo and what it stood for. It was pretty clear as well that these were not just ordinary people like myself. Different planets, different body structures; these are the Altiri, warriors of ice, members of The Unity, aliens to us all.178Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDD69EYcRdm
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Of course I knew they were just dreams, but they somehow felt more like memories than anything else. What more, the dreams just kept coming in cycles. Sometimes, it would be the same dream. Other times, it would be a continuation of a piece of their past or future. But each time, I was not a direct player of these dreams, only a non-lucid observer to preserve the memory each time I woke up. Since I kept having dreams about the Altiri and The Unity, as well as the destruction of Zinod, I asked myself why I was having these dreams in the first place.178Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDriVmu02eG
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Every time it would get colder outside, the dreams would become even more vivid. Just as well, my sympathy for them became incredibly powerful. Waves of emotions jumped into me regarding the Altiri each time it got cold, emotions that I knew did not belong to myself, but they were there, too strong to deny, too real to resist. Each time I looked up into the stars or into flashing thunderclouds, my entire world around me would sometimes be replaced from vivid memories of the Altiri in the form of powerful day dreams which I could end, but never initiated on purpose.178Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡuzpoYKK0z5
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The music I listened to never made it any easier; it only made the dreams and my obsession with all of the details that much stronger. Instead of obsessing over what might be out there beyond the cluster of stars in my galaxy, I more closely focused on the obsession of who the Altiri are and what all of this meant. No matter how many times I told myself that it wasn't real, some part of me deep down tugged at the polar opposite; that it was all too real, and I had simply forgotten about it or something.178Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzmyIIb2d7z
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It would even overwrite some of what I felt in school. If I began to trance about the Altiri, my motivation and awareness of trying to be girly dropped dramatically, though my hatred against heathens remained as strong as ever. I couldn't explain what exactly was happening or why. It felt like I had somehow stumbled into a fantasy world, and stepped back out while leaving a part of myself behind. I wasn't in this world anymore, not all of me. Part of me went somewhere else, somewhere far away yet familiar at the same time.178Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVok6VG2UCy
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It only made my situation back at school worse. I became entranced just like I had at the beginning of the school year, only much stronger than before and in ways I could never control. It was so distracting that I lost a little of the ground and mojo that I gained in terms of popularity of notoriety. I went from being happy, loud, and funny, to being that quiet weird kid again. Sometimes, all of this would just turn off like a switch, allowing me to be myself again, the me I have been for the past few months. Other times, there was no escaping it. I questioned what was important to me, questioned what I really believed in, but no matter what I said or did, these fragments of information about Altiri, freezing cold worlds, and outer space flooded my mind more powerfully than it did before, so I was helpless to fight against it. There was also something about that feeling of being entranced that was addictive, something that made me want to feel like my mind was in a million places at once.178Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡnXwzagaZtW
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Between the cooling weather and the music that felt more like something the Altiri would play, the amplification of all that had been building was imminent, just as it was that I would go back to being that quiet isolated kid. It wasn't that I wanted to be alone. I just wanted to know what this was all about. I wanted to figure out what mystery was unraveling inside of my mind. I obsessed over all of it, until there was no room left to hang out with my friends as I used to, unless days of warmth or exhaustion came into my life to temporarily break this crazy cycle.
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