Bael and the five horrors - tlbrierley/Cosmic-Encyclopaedia-Index GitHub Wiki

The fifth and final installment of the five horrors series of novels by acclaimed writer, Pearl Whitland, under the pseudonym Dan Spook, written in the mid 22nd century. Bael and the five horrors documented the journey of a silent protagonist Marta. In the series, various protagonists are shown to be travelling across worlds ravaged by conflict and disease in search of a solution to questions posed to them by a sentient AI. The question in Bael was simply. "Will any of this matter, even if we learn from it. and when do we stop?"

Whitland's insightful and macabre storytelling was hailed as literary genius for the first four books, but following an interview where she revealed her works to be documentary by inidviduals living on rimworld planets, she was largely discredited by the media. With circultation of rumours of her death being a common phenomena on the Erconomica, many of her more avid readers moved to undermine the popular news sources, and uncovered evidence of the individuals documented in her works, lending credence to the stories she had shown to billions of individual readers, Erconomica forums, and book clubs across the known universe.

It is widely accepted that she lived out her life in hiding, in the company of a huge network of fans and revolutionaries, only surfacing occasionally to lend her voice to opposition movements to The Occupation and the Paulson and Whitmark Media Group. Many attribute the formation and success of a number of major resistance movements solely to the guidance behind closed doors, given by Whitland.

Following the calming of the controversy surrounding her works, many came to see the five horrors series as a manual for guerilla warfare and urban survival due to the excrutiating depiction of the horrors of war with The Occupation, and the depictive manor of Whitlands writing giving an almost tutorial like explanation of how the silent protagonists survived long enough to get their stories to her.

In the years following her death, the forums once dedicated to discussing her books became a place where those under the foot of opression could learn to survive and fight back. in response to the question of Bael, the "five questions, six words" forum claimed the response "When we are more than this" or WWMTT. A phrase that became the identifying cry of protests, civil movements and entire worlds under opression for the hundreds of years since, and stands as a symbol of resilience in humanoid space to this day.

Prof. F. Woodleigh. MRes DClinPsy Dps (Dead planets society of the natural Hive).