Belt of Nertoh

A Necessary Pretext:
''What can this humble-yet-brilliant researcher possibly write, that would concievably do justice to the many-wondered Belt of Nertoh? What could he possibly write that has not been written, not been sung or seen? Linguistic tools fail us; words like "glorious" and "splendoured" ultimately mean nothing. The many names for it, while honeyed, only allow us a glimpse of the truth: The Leften Paradise. Verdancy. The Lover Suns.''

''Knowing that words will fail to do justice, and having naught other tools at my disposal save interpretive dance (which does me no good here), I shall attempt to give the barest of outlines of the Belt, and how it relates to the man we chronicle in these pages. Let us begin.''

The Belt of Nertoh is a binary system at the very outer tip of the spiral arm of our beloved Galaxy, which is circled by a torus-shaped planetary nursery of the same name.

Physical Properties of the Suns and the Belt
The twin stars at the center of the Nertoh System, Morra (the primary) and Artis (the secondary, which circles Morra once every 53 Terran years) are both G-Class yellow suns, each nearly 3.2 billion years old. Artis will periodically transfer mass in the form of gas flares (mostly hydrogen), which are pulled slowly to Morra by the primary's slightly-greater gravity. This hydrogen forms an accretion disk which appears as a thick blue ring around Morra's equator. As the hydrogen erruptions continue, Morra will continue to gain in size and Artis will continue to slowly shrink.

The debris field which snakes between the two suns in a figure-8 pattern, and for which the system is named, is a planetary nursery. For the astrophysically-disinclined: this means that the Belt is made up of swirling dust clouds and rocks, ranging in size from tiny pebbles to large planetoids, tossed about at high velocity by the twin gravities of Morra and Artis. The dust and stellar objects will continue to collide, forming larger and larger objects, until eventually several planets will form in the Outer Belt. That is assuming, of course, that Artis and Mora choose at some point to have children (see below).

Both the disk around Mora and the debris field glow in the light of their parent stars, and behind them there is only the sea of nothingness between galaxies. The visual effect has been described by almost every sentient observer as "the most beautiful thing I have ever seen", with the singular dissenting exception coming from one Erric Tadynasty (longtime "village" idiot for the entire planet of Spund) who described it as "still lookin' like a big ol' pair of owl eyes, one of 'em wearin' a glowin' monocle", just before he was executed by a Nertoh Tourism Board firing squad.

Prior to visits by Harrican Syldande, the only known habitation in Nertoh was an understaffed Galactic Listening Station in the far Outer Belt, situated to potentially recieve transmissions from another galaxy. Colonization attempts of the Belt were impossible, due to extreme temperature fluctuations in the orbit of the two stars. For the same reason, planetoids in the Belt were largely incapable of supporting or developing life, save the most rudimentary of fungiforms (see below).

However, there is one small zone in the Belt capable of supporting life in abundance, directly between the two stars. This zone, where the planetoids are gently massaged and warmed by the gravities and light of Artis and Morra, is called the Verdancy.

The Verdancy: Heart of the Belt
The Verdancy had long been visible to astronomers and other voyeurs. A series of almost-certainly life-bearing planetoids were clearly visible in the center of the Nertoh Belt, hanging there like ripe green world-peaches floating in a glowing sea. The problem with the metaphorical plucking of these metaphorical peaches (or indeed doing anything with them) was several-fold.

One problem was the hydrogen flares blasting periodically from Artis to Morra. These tended to clump into clouds in the Belt, and would often errupt violently in the wake of starships due to oxygen-pocketization. Another problem was the simple fact that one had to pass through most of the Belt itself; a starship would require significant shielding or armor of some type to withstand the stellar debris.

A third problem, perhaps the most vexing, was the previously-mentioned fungiforms in the dangerous Outer Belt. Despite being rudimentary algae-like growths in other regards, these fungiforms had one dangerous property: they were reactively kinetivoric. Due to the high-speed debris in the Belt, the fungiforms had at some point developed the defensive ability to drain the kinetic energy from an object passing too close to their rocky homes. Eventually (within a few months) the fungiforms would release their hold on an object, and the object would be tugged by the gravity of one of the stars and eventually sped to great velocity again. And while that was all well and good for stellar dust and small rocks, it presented immense problems for anyone trying to penetrate the Inner Belt. For all intents and purposes, the Verdancy was in the center of a vast and incredibly dangerous Sargasso.

Enter Harrican Syldanade and his longtime rival, Malinveer J. Ashmanning.

The Race for the Verdancy: Harrican Syldanade's (Technically) First Visit to the Belt
In 1701, the Farthingside Brotherhood of Explorers posted a bounty of 13,000 Terran marks (and the deed to a small tomato farm on the outskirts of Clampwych) for the first person to successfully penetrate the Verdancy. Secretarial minutes from the relevant meeting were almost completely lost in the plasma bombings of 1806, but a few charred stubs mention a "chair-flipping incident" of some type (likely instigated by Ashmanning) and someone calling someone else a "willfully gaseous ball-bag" (blame could swing either way).

There was ample news coverage of the expeditions themselves. Ansible radio across the galaxy was a-twitter with the "Race for the Verdancy", although the various doomed expeditions by explorers other than Syldanade and Ashmanning are not worth mentioning here.

Ashmanning managed the first real attempt, in an inertially-shielded solar-scooner of his own design which was covered entirely in ablative gold. Malinveer's carefully planned and executed attempt ended in spectacular fashion within eyesight of the Verdancy, when the explorer lit a premature victory cigarette on the deck. His ill-timed smoke break lit a passing cloud of hydrogen, which destroyed the support spurs of the solar sails and becalmed the ship.

Harrican's attempt received somewhat greater news coverage; not only did he (and a surviving handful of) his crew land successfully on a Verdant planetoid, but the attempt was also the third public appearance of the famed baneship Argos. How exactly the Argos slipped so easily through the kinetically-dampened Outer Belt is a matter of great conjecture which continues to the present day. The Verdant Planetoid in question was christened Buckrye Black Label, after Harrican's favorite brand of whiskey (which he had, not coincidentally, been imbibing heavily during the voyage through the Belt). Buckrye Black Label was described by the mercenary journalist on Harrican's ship (the famous Mr. Alice B. Alice) in the following way: "A veritable paradise in every regard. Fresh flowing water lapping the beaches, warm air, flowering vines everywhere... and the hydrogen burning in the atmosphere turning the sky every color of the rainbow. The naked women came later, of course." This description, eventually including the bit about the naked women, would prove true for every other Verdant Planetoid subsequently discovered.

After fully exploring Buckrye Black Label, Harrican rescued the surviving crew of Ashmanning's ship (no doubt a galling experience for Ashmanning) and performed a victory lap around the system's primary star. Although the expedition was by all standards a smashing success, Syldanade himself was troubled by a mysterious discovery found on Buckrye: an old stone dwelling containing a sleeping mat of rotten palm fronds, and hundreds of stone markers which were obviously intentionally placed. It appeared that although Harrican was the first known explorer of the Verdancy, he was not in fact the first sentient to set foot there.

He was, however, 13000 marks (and one tomato farm) richer. Syldanade used his newfound wealth to fund several baneship-assisted trips into the Verdancy, establishing a small outpost on Buckrye Black Label. Due to tourism, the sport of real estate investing, and other parasitical practices, this small outpost quickly grew into a large settlement, and then into the cosmopolitan island-city now known as Firezza.

Firezza and the Unincorporated Planetoids
Firezza, Jewel of the Outer Rim: may your platinum towers never fall, may your raves never end, and may clothing always remain optional within your legislative borders. I can do you little in the way of descriptive service, as I am happily biased. So I will simply stick to the known facts as they relate to the Belt as a whole, and to Harrican's further visits to Nertoh.

As colonists flocked to the Verdancy by the thousands in the wake of Harrican's successful exploration, it became increasingly clear that a government of some type would be required. Due to the remoteness of the Nertoh system, the colonists decided to form a democracy based out of the capital city Firezza. This democracy was named the Unincorporated Planetoids of the Belt, and the main legislative and judicial arm was an elected body known as the Nertoh Tourism Board. This group would later go on to hold great political power in the galaxy at large, but their first and continuing duty was the purchase and operation of several hundred inertially-shielded tug ships which served to ferry visitors through the dangerous Outer Belt. These tug ships, which were invaluable to the continuing existence of Planetoid society, were based directly on the design of Malinveer J. Ashmanning's solar-schooner.

Ironically (given the last sentence), the second act of the Tourism Board was to give Harrican Syldanade full and free access to all the services, food, housing, goods, and nude bodies that the Unincorporated Planetoids had to offer. To be fair, the Tourism Board also offered limited-time reduced hotel rates to Ashmanning for his "important contribution". Records indicate that upon reading the coupon-letter, Ashmanning had his first (of several) rage-induced spleen failures, although he did eventually become a regular in the full-contact roulette halls of Lower Firezza.

Harrican, meanwhile, only took advantage of the Tourism Board's hospitality once.

The Vanthraxian Assault, and the (Technically) Second Visit of Harrican Syldanade to the Belt
After a long period of peace (mostly due to the kinetivore fungiforms in the Outer Belt crippling any invasion force), the Unincorporated Planetoids suffered a devastating and tactically brilliant assault. In the space of two scant days, Buckrye Black Label was occupied by crack military troops, the space tugs were controlled by war-bot drones, and the Tourism Board had been temporarily replaced by a puppet government. This attack was masterminded by none other than Vanthraxus the Nebula-Gorger, Gentleman Overlord. An excerpt from the Gentleman Overlord's memoirs reveals the following:

"From a tactical standpoint, Nertoh was absolutely superior as a fallback base. It was well outside the Core, the kinetivoric algae all but prevented a mass assault (excepting mine, of course), and the old listening station was just a perfect location for a long range doomsday weapon. Nothing too over-the-top, mind you. Perhaps a simple microwave cannon, or a gravity railgun that used moons as ammunition.

''But I must be honest, it was not just the tactical aspects of the Nertoh system that attracted my attention. The double sunsets over Buckrye have made small children weep like grown men, and Firezza has the perfect balance of nightlife to property values. I will not lie, gentle readers: I wished to settle down in Nertoh, and rear my ravenous brood-children in it's beautiful streets."''

And Nertoh might still be in the taloned grasp of the Nebula-Gorger, if not for one thing: Harrican was taking a holiday in Firezza at the time with his long-time partner, Martha Horngell. Due to the chaos in the capital at the time, records of the counter-assault are scant. According to Harrican himself, he stopped the entire coup after single-handly attacking the palace armed only with a pound of hog fat and a bar of soap in a sock. I have found little corroborative evidence for that, but the people of Firezza still mark the date of the coup by celebrationally rubbing each other down with hog fat and then chasing the opposite sex with small packets of laundry detergent (the change to detergent from bar soap is due to cultural drift, I assume). In any case, the assault failed. Vanthraxus' memoirs had only this to say:

"I am pleased to say that Mr. Syldanade, as per usual, acted with perfect social grace and aplomb while foiling my utopia-building efforts. A single exception occured during our climactic fist-fight atop the dome of my World-Drilling Engine, when Mr. Syldanade threw a wild haymaker that caught me square in the ovipositor. An unintentional bit of pugilistic dirty pool that was quickly apologized for and forgiven."

Aside from the always-happy occasion of the Nebula-Gorger's defeat, this visit by Syldanade was remarkable in one other regard, which has come to light only recently due to the work of my deceased colleague Marjorie le Cire-Têtard (god rest her brave soul). Let us look to a rather famous love poem, penned by Syldanade for Martha near the end of her life. Stanza 12, Lines 32-37 of "Betwixt Your Musky Thighs, I Stare":

"I was almost dead in Firezza, the contractions of her full breasts around my windpipe, her stilletto heels teasing my exposed kidneys. But there came you, striding like an angel through a shallow sea of unconscious soldiers. As you removed your razor-studded double-wide corset, and threw it with such delicate accuracy at my assailant's neck, I became rigid."

This passage has long confused both poetry scholars and elementary school children. However, I believe Marjorie's work finally sheds new light upon this enigmatic snippet, and we can now surmise several things. Firstly, Harrican was a terrible poet. Secondly, as this was Harrican's only visit to Firezza proper, we can surmise that it was during the battle against Vanthraxus when Harrican was attacked by an assassinatrix of the enigmatic Asashi Rosa. Whether this was totally by chance, or whether the attack was carried out at the behest of either Vanthraxus or (for some reason) the former Nertoh Tourism board, is a question I will leave to other scholars with better home security. Although I must state that I find the similarities between the stated modus operandi of the Asashi Rosa and Vanthraxus' cultural values to be quite intriguing.

Thirdly, it paints a truly interesting (and frankly disturbing) picture of Martha Horngell. There are absolutely no records (which I have access to, at any rate) of Martha learning any martial arts or other weapon-related diciplines, although Harrican doubtlessly taught her a few things. Nor is there any mention elsewhere of razor-studded underclothing (although her double-wide corsets were well-known and feared for other reasons by professional corset-lacers). And yet Martha clearly (according to Harrican) managed to defeat a member of the Asashi Rosa, with all that implies. Granted the account states that the assailant's back was turned, but whole armies have been decimated by the lovely backsides of the assassinatrices. I am currently stumped as to how this victory could be possible. I intend to pursue this line of inquiry further, once I have replaced the batteries in my suit of assassinatrix-proof power armor.

After Vanthraxus was repelled, Firezza was quickly repaired in the wake of the attack and a monumental statue of Syldanade (constructed from the bones of endangered animals) was errected in Firezza. The old galactic listening station remained vacant after its crew was politely slaughtered by Vanthraxus' forces, but this vacancy did not last for too terribly long.

Truly Stellar Sex
No mention of the Nertoh Belt would be complete without mentioning one of the most important scientific discoveries of the age, which happened as a direct result of Syldanade's explorations: the mating habits of stars.

The initial discovery that stars even had mating habits was made by one Terlin Morrel, an out-of-work phonograph lord who had lost his entire life savings by investing disasterously in the ambirhythmic music craze. According to his sadly out-of-print biography "I Have Heard The Stars, And They Are Fucking", Morrel spent the very last of his money on a visit to Firezza, hoping the "picturesque city-world, or at least the naked women in it, would ease the pain of my broken life."

After finding work as an upscale foot masseuse and part-time cleavage inspector, Morrel purchased the now-defunct listening station in the outer belt, hoping to convert it into a high-class nightclub. It was here, playing around with some of the old listening equipment, that he discovered Star Language. "It was quite simple, mathematically speaking," he said in his biography, "I mean, anything is simple after ambiryhtmic music, mathematically speaking. I'm surprised no one else noticed it before. But yes, Artis and Morra were clearly using measurable fluctuations in their magnetic fields to communicate with one another, and that communication was clearly: Oh baby, harder, do me now.".

After a decade-long flurry of dismissal, refutation, and laughter, astrophysicsts were finally forced to agree with Morrel's careful reasearch that yes, stars have a language, and yes, Artis and Morra were using it for scandalous bedroom talk. After this amazing news spread through the galaxy, the Tourism Board considered a proposal to rename the Belt, but ultimately decided not to ("Welcome to the Sex Soup!" did not focus group well). However, the nickname "Lover Suns" became a popular moniker for Morra and Artis.

Further research suggested that the actual process of the lovemaking was the hydrogen exchange between Artis and Morra. By logical extension, the same was true for all other similar stars in the known universe. This research (as well as the related discovery of Stellar Orgies in multi-star systems) prompted a mass suicide of several million conservative astrophysicists across the galaxy, a fact that famed writer and astrophysicist Pauline Giacomo comments upon in her critically panned radio serial "Their Blood is On Your Hands, Syldanade".

On the upswing, the discovery also prompted the formation of the Belt's first true center for higher learning: the Institute for Solar Sexual Studies. I will say no more about this prestigious scholastic edifice, due to the potential for self-reference. I will however remind my colleagues and other readers that my 7-disk holoset, "Hypergasms: Sex Secrets of the G-Class Stars", is currently on sale at all reputable booksellers. And several booksellers of ill-repute, as well.

Flight of the Tachyonteron
As a preface: We all know of the Year-Long Disappearance, sometimes called "The Lamentation", when Harrican and his baneship disappeared from known space. And we are all aware of how at the end of that regretable year, Syldanade appeared on the doorstep of the Farthingside Gentleman's Club: two hours late for the annual Explorer's Meeting, looking visibly aged and missing at least three of his eyes. And yes, we have all certainly heard the story of how Harrican proceeded to storm the Meeting and present a slideshow of bladder-disintegrating length. Reputable scholars (myself obviously included) have long considered the contents of that slideshow to be, in the words of Malinveer J. Ashmanning, "crap from an unwashed ass".

However, I believe I have reconstructed a chain of events which proves the possibility of the slideshow's validity, or at least proves that the ass it came out of was in fact washed.

At the beginning of the Year of Disappearance, the last verifiable location of the Argos was Globular Cluster Ornax. According to his manifest, Harrican was traveling in the cluster to map the event horizon of Object Ornax-6 (a rotational black hole), and also to film some quality star porn for lonely single-system stars. It is the first part of his mission that concerns us here. Harrican's later account (during the heavily disputed slideshow) was that the passing of the Argos somehow woke the singular inhabitant of Ornax-6: a tachyonteron.

Let us assume for a moment that these mythical beasts are real. The Argos and it's crew would have been in mortal peril, since if the stories are to be believed, tachyonterons cannot travel below the speed of light (at least not while continuing to exist, according to quantum cryptozoologist Ornath Rhime) and are the size of large stars. Harrican claims that he fled from the beast to an uninhabited portion of space (the Belt of Nertoh). Here we have the second ridiculous claim: the Belt of Nertoh was heavily populated (as was the spacelane to it from Ornax), and yet there are no accounts of the Argos' flight, or of a sun-sized energy being following the ship.

What I believe happened was this: Harrican was actually inside the event horizon when the Tachyonteron woke, and was forced to make an emergency exit of the event horizon through curved spacetime. Previous to his ownership of the Argos, Harrican had been forced to make the same maneuver once before, during the Brexton-Rax Cat Food Consortium's mind control debacle. Normally the maneuver would have simply resulted in a localized reversal of time for the Argos, to the tune of approximately four Terran years. This would have allowed Harrican to avoid going into the black hole in the first place (although all the normal problems of temporal travel, i.e. self-impregnation with reptilian chronal clones, would have obviously applied).

However, during the only verified account of a baneship making a voyage through curved spacetime (1819, Starship Percival, power source: some important cup or something), the ship and crew were shunted backwards into a concurrent timeline (i.e. they and their original selves existing simultaneously) some 70 Terran years *before* they first entered the event horizon. I believe that the same happened to the Argos: it was thrown backwards approximately 62 Terran years into the past, and the Tachyonteron continued pursuit. There is further evidence for this, aside from Harrican's later claims. After reviewing millions of hours of security footage from the nearby Izer Nebula during that time period, I found a single image frame containing a grainy picture of the Argos fleeing what appears to be a conical maw several solar masses in size (and in the opposite direction, the maw is being pursued by the Argos, which is a common visual relic of faster-than-light images).

Harrican's (Technically) Third Visit to the Belt
So let us assume that the Argos and all hands are 62 years in the past, being pursued by a collossal faster-than-light beast. According to the last manifest of the Argos, the ship's chronometer had been inoperable after crewman Williams Maud "fell down the stairs onto it, which is also how he got that black eye". Syldanade had no way of knowing what year it was. So why would he really have fled to the Belt of Nertoh, given that he would have believed it heavily populated at the time? The probable answer comes from the journal of the very same crewmember who broke the chronometer. From the Journal of Williams Maud (which was found some 30 years previous to it's first entry, and eventually adopted as a holy book by the natives who discovered it):

''"Williams!" he shouted at me, "Bring my emergency snuff supply, because this is a bloody emergency!"''

''"I have no idea where it is, sir!" I cried in terror, hoping against hope that he would not produce his cattle prod, as he so often does when we are being chased by monsters.''

"Gods-be-damned, man! I glued the box to the back of that native boy, remember? The one we bought for a quart of lime juice and a bead at the last outpost!"

So I went and grabbed the boy, and struggled mightily with the snuff box glued to his back, until the bosun shouted "It's almost on us, Captain!", which is when I wet myself.

''"Oh, just bring me the boy!" cried the Captain, "I swear Williams, you're more useless than rock fungus!" And that's when he suddenly looked up and got that light in his eyes.''

It is likely that Syldanade got the idea to lead the Tachyonteron into the Sex Soup of the Belt, hoping that the kinetivoric fungiforms would somehow slow the beast down and allow the Argos to escape. There is no actual evidence of what happened next, or how and why the Argos was scuttled in the belt; Syldanade glosses over those bits in his slideshow, and Maud's journal ends only one page later with the entry "There sure is a lot of tea in here." All we know is that the Argos has never been seen again. Syldanade steadfastly maintained that the Argos remained intact somewhere in the Outer Belt, but that he had no wish to find it. Hundreds of expeditions have left Firezza in search of the baneship, and of those, two have returned (neither with any luck on their mission).

There is little evidence as to whether the Tachyonteron was successfully slowed by the fungiforms or not (aside from the glaring fact that there is no star-sized maw currently hunting the spacelanes). Quantum-cryptozoologist Ornath Rhime has speculated that as the Tachyonteron hit the Belt and lost energy, it would have actually sped up and been slingshotted out of the galaxy. As with most theories involving giant beasts made of sentient quantum energy, the easiest way to wrap your head around this concept is to make no attempt to understand it. Be aware however that if Rhime is correct, the Tachyonteron may (or may have already) make/made it's way back to our galaxy, possibly well before it left.

Harrican's slideshow resumes thusly:

"Finding myself marooned alone on what was obviously Buckrye Black Label, I was confused at first to find no inhabitants, nor buildings. More importantly, the statue commemorating me in lower Firezza was also missing. And then it dawned on me: the trip through the black hole had in fact flung the Argos farther back in time! At that point, I was confused to find no signs of the habitation I had discovered on my "first" visit, nor sadly the inhabitants. No dwelling, no rock formations. And then it dawned on me again: those dwellings were/would be mine. I was in fact TRULY the first person to penetrate the Verdancy!"

[Here Harrican receives a standing ovation from the Explorers]

"So I settled in for a period of nearly three years, surviving on gourmet fruit recipes of my own devising and constructing random rock formations to confuse my will-be-former self. I eventually designed a servicable ship from vines and fronds, and after brewing a suitable propulsion fluid from the native kinetivoric fungus... I made my escape."

The rest of the lengthy slideshow goes on to describe nearly 60 years of outlandish adventures under assumed names (presumably to avoid causuality issues from running into his first-self), and repeated attempts on Harrican's part to avoid becoming his own grandfather. Although eventually succesful in that endeavor, he claims that he did manage through no fault of his own to become Ashmanning's grandfather. ("It was at this point in the slideshow," writes the Brotherhood's secretary, "that Malinveer rose from his seat and bum-rushed the podium, bellowing like a bull in a truly ungentlemanly fashion.").

As in all cases involving Harrican's lack of corroborative evidence, a grain of salt should be taken with the many remaining claims in the slideshow.