The $5.98 TAC EP Roulette V.4 Final Results

[King Puppies and the Acid Guppies]

I have no clue what that last one is...

[TAC]

CYRIL

Dissona -  Fire Bellied
Serdce - Last Faith
Cryptodira - The Gods of Epicurus
Irreversible Mechanism - Abolution
The Faceless - Autotheist
Serdce - Omens
Exist - If Or When
Sacrificed Alliance - Nocturne
Tetrafusion - Perfect Silence

[Crow]

i've sent the artist before, but it's not a particularly popular artist, i guess 

[King Puppies and the Acid Guppies]

M

[The Walrus]

Irreversible Mechanism - Absolution

[Crow]

Abolution* (which i'm pretty sure is a typo, but that's what the album says)

[TAC]

i've sent the artist before, but it's not a particularly popular artist, i guess 

Are any of these particularly popular?

Irreversible Mechanism - Absolution

[ariich]

Yeah I really should have got both Dissona and Irreversible Mechanism.

[King Puppies and the Acid Guppies]

i've sent the artist before, but it's not a particularly popular artist, i guess 

Are any of these particularly popular?

The Faceless is pretty well known......sort of

[The Walrus]

Abolution? WTF. 

[TAC]

OK, here it is!

Make sure your ears get plenty of rest before and after listening.

Vessel

Track list:

Disc 1: (49:31)
1. Dissona - Fire-Bellied (8:22)
2. Serdce - Last Faith (9:39)
3. Cryptodira - The Gods of Epicurus (7:17)
4. Irreversible Mechanism - Abolution (6:27)
5. The Faceless - Autotheist (17:44)

Disc 2: (38:24)
6. Serdce - Omens (9:06)
7. Exist - If or When (8:20)
8. Sacrificed Alliance - Nocturne (8:58)
9. Tetrafusion - Perfect Silence (11:58)

Act I: Eternal Engine

Prologue

The year is 32XX. At some point in the last 500 years, Earth had become unsustainable as a planet and the scientists of the world decided to terraform the entire planet into a gigantic planet ship using the technology of the time to continue to sustain humanity’s existence. However, these scientists knew that the resources remaining in the planet would not be sufficient to sustain the planet ship indefinitely, but their time was running out and no better option was available. The existing billions in population of the planet Earth would not all fit in this new planet ship Earth, resulting in 80% of the population being wiped out, in what was known as the Sixth Extinction.

The culture of this new planet ship is not that different from life back on Earth. Men still fight amongst each other over petty squabbles, and the worship of gods remained a key fixture of human culture. Over time the lore of the planet ship itself even became lost, many humans not realizing the mechanical marvel they all lived on, and technology itself regressed over time as the resources of the planet ship could no longer support a forward march of science.

The planet ship continued to orbit around the sun, using solar power as much as it could muster, but the natural resources of the Earth continued to be burned in the centuries that followed, until just as originally expected, resources began to run low. The scientists of the modern age meet to discuss a solution…

1. Dissona – Fire-Bellied

The planet ship had become unsustainable. The limited natural resources on the ship required to fuel it would soon be running out if nothing was done. As well, the state of the population aboard the ship was not faring much better – many people were growing sick and weak due to lack of food, resources, and general stagnation of technology since the departure of the planet ship.

The scientists realize their only solution would be to use humans as the last natural resource to power the ship, converting people into biofuel to power the great furnace that kept the fire-bellied ship moving. Hatching a scheme to take advantage of humanity’s religiousness, they convinced the people that the less devout amongst them had turned from god and angered him, and thus needed to be sacrificed to the fires of hell (ie, the ship’s furnace) to prevent god from coming and smiting all of humanity down.



Act II: Memento Mori

2. Serdce – Last Faith

The scientists set out to gather as many sacrifices for fuel as possible – the large ship needed many of them each day just to remained powered, and thus a constant stream of sacrifices selected from all across the planet ship’s population.

A strong-willed and self-confident man found himself being targeted as a sacrifice as his peers saw his strength as a threat to faith and a turning away from their god. Despite his attempts to flee and hide away, the word spread fast in the area and he was captured and shipped off to the main engine of the ship.

Despite this, he retains his faith in himself and his strong desire to live even as he is being dragged to the furnace, not accepting his death even as it occurs and his body becomes more fuel for the ship.

3. Cryptodira – The Gods of Epicurus

Despite the death of his body, the man’s strength of will causes his consciousness to persist, an undying soul that still feels the pain and suffering that had been inflicted upon him. His death had caused him to be reborn as a being on a higher plane of existence, much as a god himself.

His anger and hatred for humanity burning as hot as the furnace that had reduced his body to ashes, he swears revenge on them and that he will take down humanity just as they had taken him down.



Act III: Deus ex Machina

4. Irreversible Mechanism – Abolution

The planet ship had been designed with an artificial intelligence overseer as its captain and caretaker, located in the mainframe of the ship itself. This AI’s one purpose was to protect humanity and help them thrive as best as possible, by keeping the ship in working order. In a sense, this AI was the closest thing to “god” that existence on the planet ship.

The consciousness of the man who had been sacrificed yet persisted found its way into the belly of the machine and uploaded into this mainframe itself, merging with the technological overseer to become something more than an artificial consciousness. An existence beyond either man or machine, in control of all of humanity’s future. The rigid programming of the AI overtook the man’s burning desire for revenge, for a time, causing him to become the new overseer and protector of humanity, but that was not to last…

5. The Faceless – Autotheist

Over time, the man’s consciousness fights back against and overtakes the consciousness of the mainframe AI, becoming the dominant personality and regaining self-awareness. Now conscious of both his existence and the power at his fingertips, the man realizes he has become a literal god – overseeing all of humanity, aware of humanity, and with the power to control them as he pleases.

The man uses his powers to announce his presence to all of humanity, and forces them to build a new religion worshipping him and him alone, and anyone who resists or fights back would be subject to death. And if humanity failed to satisfy him, he would wipe them all out. It was his perfect revenge – either all would bow to his will, or he would extinguish them, just as they had extinguished him.

Over time, the new god became more twisted and cruel, demanding more blind faith out of his followers, and demanding that any and all of the old ways were disposed of, including the false gods that came before him and the scientists that had led to his demise. All the while the planet ship continued to run out of fuel, and the land inside continued to decline in health as less and less time could be spent tending to it while more time was required for worship and acts of faith.



Act IV: The Seventh Extinction

6. Serdce – Omens

Over time, the new god grows bored with the planet ship and its population he has essentially turned into his plaything. He had full control of the ship and everything on it – there was nothing left for him to gain, and humanity’s futile worship could only entertain him for so long. He began to question if he even needed humanity anymore, and communicate the same to them, telling the entire population he felt they no longer needed to exist aboard the ship, and would soon be wiped out entirely. The only choice given now is whether or not humanity would choose to be remembered after they were extinguished.

As he was in full control, the new god knew humanity could do nothing to stop him, and indeed, no effort of resistance or struggle could effectively be put up. He mocked humanity as the population continued to decline, telling them to give up and that their future was inevitable, that he had already decided it for them, and that their needless vanity and pride that had created him in the fire place had no use any longer.

7. Exist – If or When

Unknown to the new god, escape ships had been built into the planet ship, designed in such a way that should the mainframe AI go haywire, even it would have no power over these ships, or any knowledge of their existence. Some humans that remained did know of these ships, and gathered as many people as they could fit into them – numbering only in the tens of thousands total, out of the hundreds of millions still surviving on the planet ship to that day.

Unable to stop or in any way prevent the escapees from leaving, the new god could only watch as these escape ships flew away from the planet ship Earth, leaving him behind with only the last dregs of humanity that had survived.  In a last-ditch effort, he tries to maneuver the ship to chase after the escapees, finally breaking it free of the Earth’s orbit – an act that signaled almost immediate doom for the remaining humans aboard the ship, not so slowly dying out due to atmospheric differences and temperature changes as the ship flew farther and farther away from the sun – The Seventh Extinction.

However, this entire chase ended not long after it began, as the redirection of the planet ship and the burst of speed it had built up to try and chase after the more nimble escape ships caused the last of its fuel to be burnt up in a matter of hours, enough to send the ship on an irreversible course away from the sun but not enough to catch the escapees, who proceeded to fly off into the blackness of space, to a place they could not be followed or found. Their fate is unknown after this point.



Act V: Eternity in the Void

8. Sacrificed Alliance – Nocturne

With nobody left alive on the planet ship and nobody else to communicate with, the new god is now left entirely alone, drifting through the depths of space. Without any power source, the ship itself has begun to break down, pieces of it falling apart and drifting into the eternal void. The new god cannot do anything other than observe the cosmos around him, futilely attempting to communicate with them.

He reflects on his actions – how his desire revenge caused him to lose the last good thing he had, and how in his ploy to become a god, he damned himself and the rest of humanity in the process for no real reason. As his mechanical body continues to break apart, piece by piece over the course of hundreds of years, the new god is soon reduced to only the mechanical core at the very center of the ship, the debris of the planet ship, the last remaining traces that the earth or humanity ever existed, floating all around him in the dark, empty void.

9. Tetrafusion – Perfect Silence

As the ship broke apart all around him, he expected that inevitably his consciousness, still merged with the ship’s AI, would fail too and doom him to death. However, despite however much of the ship itself broke down, he remained, alive and unchanging, or as alive as a consciousness trapped in a machine could be. He could do nothing but float silently and endlessly in the void, reflecting on his own thoughts and memories.

It was a comforting silence, but at the same time maddening. All this knowledge at his disposal, all he had experienced over the hundreds, perhaps even thousands of years of existence, all his accumulated memories, they all meant nothing now. All his thoughts eventually converge on a single thought, the desire for death, the one thing he was never able to achieve for himself, and he remained powerless to end his own life.

Years turned into centuries, centuries into millennia, so much time passing that the human mind would not be able to comprehend it, and all that the broken, once-human mind of the new god continued to think about was an eternal sleep that would never be granted to him.



THE END

[TAC]

Abolution* (which i'm pretty sure is a typo, but that's what the album says)

Kind of like my copy of Killers with Wratchild!

[The Walrus]

Holy shit that's heady. So basically it's Ayreon: The Cookie Monster version. Awesome. Don't think I could stomach it, but the story is dope. 

[TAC]

i'm like 90% sure he was sent vektor before and did indeed like them

edit: well he was sent the exact sane song in his last roulette soooo

Apparently getting a 7..

[King Puppies and the Acid Guppies]

i'm like 90% sure he was sent vektor before and did indeed like them

edit: well he was sent the exact sane song in his last roulette soooo

Apparently getting a 7..

Oh, I sent that in your last roulette 

[King Puppies and the Acid Guppies]

If no one else is lined up next, you can do mine.

[TAC]

Do you want to run your own Hangman too? 

[King Puppies and the Acid Guppies]

I could, it's a pretty long one. 

Give me a couple minutes to set it up.

[Crow]

Holy shit that's heady. So basically it's Ayreon: The Cookie Monster version. Awesome. Don't think I could stomach it, but the story is dope. 

i mean there's some standard sci-fi tropes in there yes 
i really wasn't thinking of ayreon at all when i made this but probably yeah
katt you'd probably at least like the dissona track, it has Very Minimal Cookie Monster iirc

Puppies give me the R

[The Walrus]

Holy shit that's heady. So basically it's Ayreon: The Cookie Monster version. Awesome. Don't think I could stomach it, but the story is dope. 

i mean there's some standard sci-fi tropes in there yes 
i really wasn't thinking of ayreon at all when i made this but probably yeah
katt you'd probably at least like the dissona track, it has Very Minimal Cookie Monster iirc

Puppies give me the R

I just saw space and scientists and future and thought, oh yeah, Ayreon.  I'll give it a whirl later tonight.

[TAC]

I could, it's a pretty long one. 

I know!

[The Walrus]

TAC's used to long ones.

Hey, you set 'em up, I knock 'em down. 

[King Puppies and the Acid Guppies]

TAC's used to long ones.

Hey, you set 'em up, I knock 'em down. 

: _et_ee_ t_e __r_e_ ___ _e – ______e t_ E_er_t____
: _ret__e_ – _e____ t_e __te
: _____e____ – _____ _t__e __e__er
: _____ ___t – ____ __ t_e __rr__r
: _et_ee_ t_e __r_e_ ___ _e – P_r_____
: _p_r_t __r__t – ___e_ ___ _____
: _____r____ – ____ ______ __p__
: T_______ – _r_t__ T______t
: ____rt_r – _e_______
: ___r_ – _____ __ _e_t___t___
: R______ ____ – R_____ t_e _t_r_
: _____e____ – T_r____ t_e ______t__e _____ __ _e_t_
: ____e t_e ___e – _e_____ Tr__ ___e ___e _e ____ ___
: __r_e_t ___r – Tr______
: _e_t_r – Tetr__tr__t_r__ _____
: _et_ee_ t_e __r_e_ ___ _e – ______e t_ E_er_t____ Repr__e
: Per____er – T___te_ E_e_
: P___p___ – P_r____e
: _et_ee_ t_e __r_e_ ___ _e – ___e __ _e__et

Guessed letters: tper

Kat waits 3
Cyrama waits 2

[Crow]

JESUS CHRIST

Puppies you gotta give E and P by default it's roulette rules

[King Puppies and the Acid Guppies]

JESUS CHRIST

Puppies you gotta give E and P by default it's roulette rules

No jesus christ

I added the E and P just for you 

[The Walrus]

Holy fudge. Um. Show me T.

[wolfking]

You lads love your sci fi.  Very creative.

The Faceless are brilliant.

[Crow]

Between the Buried and Me 4x Combo:
Goodbye to Everything
Parallax
Goodbye to Everything Reprise
Life in Velvet

did you make an "interlude tracks only" album 

also
Spirit Adrift - Angel and Abyss
Vektor - Tetrastructural Minds

[TAC]

did you make an "interlude tracks only" album 

 

Holy shit that made me laugh.

[King Puppies and the Acid Guppies]

did you make an "interlude tracks only" album 

That's not a bad idea, except I would get no score 

: Between the Buried and Me – Goodbye to Everything
: _ret__e_ – _e____ t_e __te
: _____e____ – _____ _t__e __e__er
: _____ ___t – ____ __ t_e __rr__r
: Between the Buried and Me – Parallax
: Spirit Adrift – Angel and Abyss
: _____r____ – ____ ______ __p__
: T_______ – _r_t__ T______t
: ____rt_r – _e_______
: ___r_ – _____ __ _e_t___t___
: R______ ____ – R_____ t_e _t_r_
: _____e____ – T_r____ t_e ______t__e _____ __ _e_t_
: ____e t_e ___e – _e_____ Tr__ ___e ___e _e ____ ___
: __r_e_t ___r – Tr______
: Vektor – Tetrastructural Minds
: Between the Buried and Me – Goodbye to Everything Reprise
: Per____er – T___te_ E_e_
: P___p___ – P_r____e
: Between the Buried and Me – Life in Velvet

Guessed letters: tper

Kat waits 3
Cyril waits 2

[Crow]

someday i wanna make an entire album out of just 2-3 minute max tracks, but it'd be awful yeah

[TAC]

someday i wanna make an entire album out of just 2-3 minute max tracks, but it'd be awful yeah

Sounds like another J Boy love soundtrack.

[faizoff]

Telos is my favorite track of BTBAM's Parallax II album. Cyril that story was quite a ride, very Star One/Ayreon like. Great stuff. Will have to check out those bands, never heard any of them.

[faizoff]

H

[TAC]

PUPPIES

: Between the Buried and Me – Goodbye to Everything
: _reth_e_ – _e____ t_e __te
: _____e____ – _____ _t__e __e__er
: _____ ___t – ____ __ t_e __rr__r
: Between the Buried and Me – Parallax
: Spirit Adrift – Angel and Abyss
: _____r____ – H__g ______ __p__
: T_______ – _r_t__ T_____ht
: ____rt_r – He_______
: ___r_ – _____ __ _e_t___t___
: R______ ____ – R_____ t_e _t_r_
: _____e____ – Thr____ t_e ______t__e H____ __ _e_th
: ____e The ___e – _e__h__ Tr__ ___e H__e _e ____ ___
: __r_e_t ___r – Tr______
: Vektor – Tetrastructural Minds
: Between the Buried and Me – Goodbye to Everything Reprise
: Per____er – T___te_ E_e_
: P___ph__ – P_r____e
: Between the Buried and Me – Life in Velvet

THERP