zpires

Welcome to the Connection

It’s 1960s California, but wrong. The Connection is a cult trying to bridge worlds together. On another planet in another dimension, sentient praying mantid-like aliens make music, survive hurricane-speed winds, and dissect their prey. And they want Earth. Now.

Both humans and aliens are crawling through time and possessing souls to the tune of the slow and steady knot that is interconnected lives coming in contact with each other.

Meet the Cultists

Meta

Context for how we engage with this world and how you can too.

Scope

Why you might like it here

  1. The character dynamics are fun, fluid, and interesting. There’s aliens, humans, men, women, family members, spouses, lovers, supplicants, and gods. People are queer and genderful.
  2. There’s only four characters. That’s not too many to remember.
  3. Because it’s a cult, your OCs can join in the story easily as members.

Goal of this page

We care so much about these four little guys and everything that touches them. Their science fantasy backdrop also provides room for worldbuilding, which we love. We can make up alien languages, design geography, plot thousands of years of history, and… branch all that off into more stuff. We want to share our characters with people. Their stories, their relationships, the interesting things they’ve done. One day, someone else in the world will want to make an Astral-themed moodboard to post on tumblr.

Theme

Genre

Science fantasy meets erotic and cosmic horror

Aliens are in control of the astral plane, accessible by meditation. Orgiastic energy helps fuel the bridges between worlds. Magic is molecular. Something in the center of the universe chews at the edges of stars.

Recurring themes

  • Love and death are bedfellows.
  • The strong will protect the sweet.
  • Only humans have to be humane.

Reader experience

We are so very pleased you are here.

Focuses

Love is the law, love under will

Our four cultists are always in love. The love can be darling and pure, like Mac buying Georgie a tamale, or violent and dark, like Astral reminding Georgie to sew herself shut to outside influences, or somewhere poised on the edge of both. Love guides their actions, under will—destiny.

Magic & power

Magic is a molecule that can be activated by sound. It is accessible to anyone, but the exact manifestation varies from magician to magician. Some may not even know they're using magic, but the most powerful magicians can infect everything they touch. Astral and Teresa are among the most powerful magicians. He's too distracted by her beauty to be a good mentor.

Humanity and lack thereof

Humanity is boring, and creatures are cool. Teresa's weak fleshy human body can get ripped in half by festering sludge of alien corpses breeding in the bottom of a pit. Mac as a human child can meet Georgie as a talking raccoon girl. Like a true fairy tale, Astral can transform a wild horse into Georgie.

Scene

Laws of the Connection

Astral magic is a physical consequence of a magic molecule that responds to sound. The way that magicians manipulate the molecules is inherently magical, even if the mechanics are silly science fiction.

Speaking multiple languages, playing instruments, and very good motor control are all tools for better magic. Musicality of daily life can be incorporated into spells with intent.

Another type of magic on earth is terran magic, which is your standard wizardry. Spells and potions that come from ancient books. Living cells and their DNA harness electricity and generate heat, and terran magicians can detect and manipulate this energy. Terran life is green. Alien life is red. Necromancers manipulate life forces with terran magic and can kill and resurrect the dead. To date, there is only one necromancer in the world and it's Georgie!

Cosmology

First, there was a big bang. Then, there was a little bang. Now, they all bang.

Principal geography & features

Thick temperate forests and sandy hot deserts. Droughts and monsoons. Pits in deserted islands. The Devil's Tongue, a canyon in a California desert. Acres of pale grassy plains interrupted by deep caves that stretch on in every direction in the astral plane. Craggy red rocks jut out of the alien landscape orbiting a red dwarf. Everything and everything.

Initial active setting

The active setting hovers around the West Coast from the 1960s to the 1990s on Earth. Bajisha and Jho are experimental settings, but will be explored more thoroughly in our unwritten novel Unkind Fire and its sequel.

People

Current species & cultures

All four cultists are magicians. Astral and Teresa are alienkin, starseeds, vessels for alien souls. Georgie and Mac are essentially human. The alien species doesn't have name, but their planet is called Jhi.

The human magicians are often human, but not always. Sometimes it is fun for them to be raccoons or dogs or horses.

The aliens are always praying mantis-esque. Astral has bull-like horns sprouting from the side of his head and teresa has a unicorn horn. The sex differences are between small ones (Astral) and big ones (Teresa), but sometimes it is more important that they are especially gross, powerful, or cool, and their designs shift accordingly.

The Connection's story so far

Two story-worlds before the connection, Georgie and Mac were born. The affair was messy, bloody, and violent, but Georgie discovered her gender and endured a year of silence waiting for Mac. The story ended just as the world turned cold.

The story-world before the Connection mirrored Twin Peaks with Georgie as trans!Laura Palmer and Mac as Bobby Briggs. Teresa, meant to die, ended up in a coma, but never joined them again.

On December 19th, 2018, the Connection story-world was born. Georgie, Mac, and Teresa were joined by a new character, Astral, the charismatic cult leader. Teresa became the future-mother of an alien hybrid, Georgie a magical midwife, and Mac a magical sponge. Every other member of the Connection started here as well, and we created our first antagonist: Elsie, the world's truly most powerful wizard.

For National Novel Writing Month, November 2020, the story completed and the world was saved. But by August, Mac had accidentally disappeared and Astral, Teresa, and Georgie told a very sad prequel story where Georgie left the Connection without remembering any of her time with her true love.

In 2022, Mac & Georgie and Astral & Teresa crashed into each other in the sky and landed on a magical island with unspeakable horrors tucked in its deepest parts. They all lived this time, and more.

Future of the Connection

We're developing plans for a second world fantasy novel called Unkind Fire. Their story is very uncertain, but they'll have bigger encounters with the creatures that are chewing on the edges of the world.