Description
2024
Raid #4
Theme: Glitch Art
In the heart of the Fen, where ancient ruins whisper many mysterious and often pointless things, I slumbered, dreaming wild dreams. Exhausted from my latest raid and building my new Mad Funhouse, I retreated to my den to rest.
As I drifted into a deep slumber, I forgot to put the Mind’s Eye back in its case and left it on a table outside the Mad Funhouse. This was a serious mistake. The Funhouse occupants frequently eject highly charged, errant spikes of strange energy, and the Mind’s Eye is a very sensitive device.
One such burst released a jolt of energy that bounced off the Mind’s Eye and back toward the mirror. The mirror, possessed by a literal clown, reflected it directly back at twice the speed. The device started spinning and clicking on its own, warping reality around me.
I woke abruptly, sensing something amiss. With every step, ripples pulsed through reality, folding time, shifting me forward randomly and violently through daisy-chained dimensions. I was stuck in a time loop. Time flowed erratically, causing objects and beings to phase in and out of existence. I needed to secure the Mind’s Eye to regain control.
On my first attempt to reach it, I fell into a rift and found myself in a colossal clocktower. Giant gears turned unpredictably and locked violently, time stuttered, and the tower’s guardian, a hulking beast of clockwork, patrolled with an eerie glitch in his step. I approached him and explained my situation. He didn’t care and tried to smash me with a giant pendulum.
As I sought an exit, I ran into a fair young lady, well-armed and in a bad mood. She test-fired a weapon at me that seemed to deconstruct physical matter at an atomic level. I was very polite and explained my situation. Thankfully, she was much more agreeable than the guardian and decided to help me.
She reconfigured her weapon and fired it at me, stopping the time lurches, but warned the effect wouldn’t last long. We moved quickly. Along the way, she told me her name was Xeta, and she lived in this ‘glitch abyss’ among a village of others. There was an interesting mix of natives who had no concept of a normal world and cosmic wanderers avoiding the outside world.
Xeta also mentioned energetic ‘glitch goblins’ raided her people, stealing batteries and supplies. She asked if I would help rid her village of these creatures once we retrieved the Mind’s Eye. Naturally, I obliged.
We soon came to a small canyon and heard a strong, low hum. It was the Mind’s Eye! It had trapped itself near a reflection prism, spinning like a top, causing the time loops. I decided to be bold. I jumped into its path and grabbed hold of the Mind’s Eye. I was hurled through time and space, smashed through every iteration of the loop. I regained focus, reconfigured the device, and finally stopped the loop. I was still in the glitch abyss, but now it was calm, and I could appreciate the scenery.
As we walked to Xeta’s village, I was awestruck by the landscape, which seemed different from every vantage point. Entire landscapes disappeared or evolved in real time; the ground and clouds rolled and shifted and occasionally glitched, the air and even distant parts of the land looked like static.
Xeta’s village was much the same. Horse-drawn carts zapped down roads, glitching bar keepers could pour three or four ales at once, the walls in different rooms occasionally disappeared or moved. This was a very strange, wondrous place, full of strange, wondrous people and things.
I helped Xeta create a new weapon in her village’s forge to fight the glitch goblins. The device was a tethered rod grounded to a Faraday cage with a fusible link, so when the goblins contacted the rod, they burned the link, grounded into the cage, and ended up trapped in Faraday boxes. We tested them that night on a few unsuspecting intruders—they worked wonderfully!
Before I departed, I raided the local markets. I met many glitch abyss artisans and artists, and returned to the Fen with a comprehensive curation of artifacts to add to my vast collections. Their tools and methods were very complex, given the nature of their existence, so it was intriguing to learn the origins and stories behind their pieces.
Later, I found I couldn’t easily return to the glitch abyss. The Mind’s Eye must essentially be “hacked” to access this realm, so I’ll need to research modifications. My journey to this realm also cost me time. Upon returning to the Fen, I realized several years had passed. After some research, I discovered the glitch abyss is located between a pair of black holes.
I will forever remember Xeta and her people, but future visits to this realm must be carefully considered. I carefully placed the Mind's Eye into its case, ensuring no further ‘mishaps’ would occur, and smiled, imagining what wonders, wisdom, and treasures my next raid might hold.