Re-Imagineers Theatre Enters the Twilight Zone

Maxe Sahashin, Contributor

The Re-Imagineers Theatrical Company, who staged a smash hit adaptation of "The Great Train Robbery" written by the famed Doc Laladay earlier this year, have been preparing their sophomore production honoring Serling's "Twilight Zone" stories on stage. Featuring three independent stories written by Re-Imagineers company members Alistor, Little Blaster, and Andromeda Laruzedah, the "Twilight Zone Eorzean Re-Imagining" captures the feeling of thought-provoking eeriness of Roe Serling's classic works.

Their play will be staged on the Fourteenth Sun of the Sixth Astral Moon (11/14) at their new performance hall in the Golem neighborhood of the Goblet. Ward 22, Plot 60.

With stories that examine the nature of faith, the danger of carelessness and aloofness, and the existential questions of art the three playwrights capture the spirit of Rod Serling, who himself is being represented as the play's framing narrator by actor Fuzzlewhack Vonboken. From what The Black Chocobo Courier has been able to observe, the production is set to be one of the most faithful recreations of Serling's tone in modern theatre.

"The idea started when we decided we wanted to do short stories for our Fall production," explained the play's producer Penelope Lane. "One of our members, Harry Oldman, made a joke about 'The Twilight Zone' and having Roe Serling as the host. Of course, it was a great idea."

While "Twilight Zone" is a smaller overall production than "The Great Train Robbery," only being run on one night instead of two, the kinds of high production values of their inaugural production are present once again in "Twilight Zone," including originally scored music, impressive sets, catering, VIP packages and integration, broadcasts, and more, Lane explained. Blaster added that some of this productions' most stand-out roles are filled by people who played bit parts in "Great Train Robbery," including Alistor, Cinnamon Button and Katie Wolf.

Tickets for the performance will cost 200,000 gil per attendee, with a VIP package costing 5 Million gil per person (which are now sold out). This money, Lane explained, goes toward the high expense of production. Elements like catering, broadcasting, original music, and sets don't come free, and so the cost of attendance is largely related to the high production quality of the performances. In addition, cast and crew receive pay commensurate with the extraordinary time commitments the Re-Imagineers put into performance to ensure quality and consistency in performance. Much of this money gets re-invested into the community, including Lane personally funding the Re-Imagineers in becoming a partner in this year's Great Ishgardian Frostfaire during the Starlight Celebration.

Taking a Bite of
A Feast Reborn

Mikoso Yumitori, Senior Editor

Lasting two glorious days of food, events, and fun, A Feast Reborn unofficially marks the beginning of Eorzea's autumn festival season, and this year did not disappoint. Many familiar names were in attendance over the two-day festival – Spice and Miqo'te, High Nunh, Otterly Delicious, the Bandee Pakshee, Dan's BBQ, Puku Pizza, Spriggan and Spice- but there was a very nice crop of new establishments also making a showing. You could quite literally send your mouth on a tour of the star's culture and food and still kept your feet planted firmly upon the ground of the Diabolos neighborhood of Ul'dah's Goblet.

As far as wandering around to what, though? Plenty of opportunities to watch things or see things or even to learn from talented chefs in their own right. I'd heard pudding wrestling was on offer, and while it sounded fun, I'm kind of glad I missed it because I'm all but certain my editor would have easily signed me up for it. The Iron Chef competition might have been fun, but there's a reason I take my meals out or constantly get delivery. And the glamour contest was rather enjoyable.

Having spent two days sampling some of the best food on the star was an amazing time, and if you're around for the next one, I would absolutely attend. But even as I started to make my way home, I recalled many of the things I'd heard as I wandered with the crowd – the great food, the number of things going on.... but there had also been some rumblings of discontent, as well. Several vendors had made mention that Sunday seemed to have somewhat better attendance than Saturday, adding in some frustration that turnout still seemed to be lower overall.

Even then, AFR is still worth the trip, and with so much to do and see, I cannot wait for next year's version!

All Saints' Wake

Etheirys' Latest and Greatest Independent Newspaper

Thirty-Second Sun of the Fifth Umbral Moon, 7AE12

Edition 004 | Page 2

Exploring Terrorwing's Creative Haunted Mansion

Lara Eutrepe, Contributor

Out of Water: Haunting Pearl Lane

Lehil Laruzedah, Editor-in-Chief

I grew up in a very culturally mixed household. My mother Rheya is Limsan to the bone with brine in her blood and a big fish story for every occasion, but she's got a little of that All Saint's Wake voidsent voidsensibility in her. My mother Rommie is proof you can take the rat out of the Brume but you can't take the Brume out of the rat; she's an out and proud Shivite with a Dravanian rosary around her wrist, but she's also an adopted daughter of Thavnair. To say nothing of the dozens of aunts - the ladies of the Bandee Pakshee - who helped raise me.

Between the Pakshee's Hannish cultural leanings and Mom Rommie's Hannish citizenship, though, it was the culture of Thavnair that probably raised me most. In particular, three celebrations were mainstays of my youth: Holi, the spring festival of colors; Raksha Bandhan, the summer festival of found family; and Diwali, the autumn festival of lights. As you can guess from both the headline and time of year, Diwali is the thing that's interesting me right now.

In my desire to further understand the intricacies of Eorzea, I chose to stay here for the start of the autumn holiday season, and apparently that begins with All-Saints Wake, a holiday where the various saints of the Twelve (beings like Daniffen, Randolfe, Llafymae, and more) have been called to the table of the twelve deities of the Star for a well-deserved feast and time of merry-making. Unfortunately, while they're away the Void will apparently come out to play... but from the festivals being held, the people don't apparently think of them as a threat these days?

Instead, the various peoples of Eorzea seem to treat this as an opportunity to come out and dress up, and have their children go door to door playing innocent tricks and collecting bounties in the form of small packages of sweets. But other times, they hold parties like the one I was invited o: the Pearl Lane Haunt, held in Ul'dah. I managed to find myself a costume for myself (the one provided was... not to my taste, maybe next year...?) [Editor's Note: She would have looked cute, though.]

But still, walking around dressed as a ruby carbuncle did make me feel kind of on the spot, but... looking around, I wasn't the only one in costume, and well... one of my favorite sayings is “if you're afraid of standing out, find a school to swim with.” There were people dressed as voidsent of various kinds, people dressed as the Scions, as blitzball players, and even more. I'm fairly certain I saw at least one Queen Sphene, as well...

I tried my luck with some of the games- unfortunately my aim was off for ghost hunting and it appears I wasn't interesting enough for the spectres to try and hunt, but all in all... I must say that I did indeed have a great time, and that perhaps maybe next year I'll get a chance to douse the penguin. I brought home plenty of wrapped treats, amazing memories, and a better appreciation of just why All Saints is such a big deal and why it's one of the biggest holidays here:

All in all, it's very thought-provoking. And on that note, with only a few nights of All Saints' left... how old is too old for trick or treating, and would it be odd if a grown raen walked around asking for candy?

At the time of writing, I'm sitting in a well-crafted graveyard inside a mansion in the Mists. Beside me, a 'dead body' lays in the grass, beyond which riches are sealed in a locked room. As I type away on my exoterminal, I'm watching a bard perform on a small stage, while behind a metal link barrier other adventurous souls try to navigate an abandoned factory. This afternoon, tonberries 'killed' me twice.

Terrorwing presents its guests with a series of unnerving vignettes bound loosely by the concept of a cursed manor, a product of witchcraft binding memory and nightmare to brick and stone to spill forth wickedness unto Eorzea. One of these nightmares features a kitchen with tonberries hiding around corners, ready to strike and send patrons back to the start of their journey. At the heart of the kitchen stands a giant oven, more like one found in a crematorium than used by a chef.

Speaking with Deningrad after I completed the gauntlet of haunted vignettes (and, I admit, boasted about it), she told me that while this year was largely individual scenes and strong atmosphere, next year she felt inspired to create a stronger framing narrative. She also touted the major event night for Terrorwing to be held tomorrow - the second sun of the Sixth Astral Moon - but noted the estate would be open for exploration for the entirety of the Sixth Astral Moon for those finding out about the festivities late.

The Terrorwing Estate is located in the Zalera neighborhood of the Mists. Ward 16, Plot 2.

Mikoso Yumitori, Senior Editor

Faerie's Lantern: Light a Candle for Diwali

I took my daughter Ruby to Radz-at-Han for Diwali this year, my lovely Aunt Laqa (the actress and tawaif Mahlaqa Jain) took us around the city to explore the fireworks, elaborate candle and torch displays, and amazing sand artwork. Ruby's four, which is roughly the age where cultural connections like this start making a real impression on her, and in getting to see her first Diwali through her eyes I couldn't help but remember all the times in my childhood at the Bandee Pakshee where I wrecked my mom's sand mandalas and ate tons of fried festival food. One day, the meaning will impact Ruby. I don't think today was that day.

At the end of the day, the diversity of meaning of Diwali can be distilled to a small set of themes interpreted in different ways: righteousness, self-inquiry, and the importance of knowledge. No matter if it venerates the evolution of the self, the attempt to understand one's own fate in the year to come, the liberation of thousands of enslaved women, or a simple tale of triumph over evil, Diwali signifies the light of wisdom defeating the darkness of ignorance.

What else can we ask from a festival of lights?

Read the whole story in the Extended Edition.

Current Events

Etheirys' Latest and Greatest Independent Newspaper

Thirty-Second Sun of the Fifth Umbral Moon, 7AE12

Edition 004 | Page 3

Talk of the Town: Hop on Your Soul Cycle

Maxe Sahashin, Contributor

It's our second month gathering rumors from around the Star and sharing them with our readers without any of the normal intense research, interviewing, or journalistic integrity we'd need to write a full article on any of this nonsense. Purely for fun, we take five stories a month we just can't substantiate and give them to you, our beloved readers, with only my insight for context.

Let's start with a story that my colleague Lara Eutrepe brought to my attention from her homeland in Alexandria. Ah, Alexandria. Weirdest city on Etheirys.

Street Racing for Souls

Look, I don't know how Alexandrians do things, but apparently their most commodified resource is souls. Not my business, not my circus. There's some real potential in it as a romance novelist, though. Like, imagine trying to buy your wife's soul or something? I have no idea how it works, I've never been there.

But apparently a cache of these souls is up for grabs in an upcoming street race through the residential areas of Solution Nine. It's supposedly happening in the coming weeks, and is being called the Soul Signal Grand Prix by some Alexandrian automotive enthusiasts. Those seeking to test their metal - get it? - or get a heap of souls for whatever totally above board purpose people want souls for, getting your racing gear to Solution Nine should be done sooner than later.

Ghosts of Vylbrand

First we have tall tales of a spooky ship under the command of a ghost captain called The Hollow Bride that's scared a number of ships from cargo haulers to pleasure barges off their normal lanes. The Bride is little more than a whisper but the best ghost stories are. On top of that, a rather grisly death on the road near Costa del Sol has been attributed to a ghost. While there's little meat on the bones - get it? - on the Hollow Bride stuff, the Maelstrom is actively investigating the death near Costa.

Guns of the Domans

Ishgard exemplifies Eorzean engineering, with its corrupted crystal engines and aetherpack rifles. Without a doubt inspired by engineering of other powers, Ishgardian's technology is uniquely Eorzean in nature.

Allegedly, this has made Ishgard a popular place for Domans. Specifically, sources at the Skysteel Manufactury have mentioned a new Lady Regent of a Doman province who has been sending her retainers to Ishgard to invest in firepower and other technologies, likely in an attempt to consolidate power in her domain under the Enclave's oversight. Who she is, what her purpose is, or if she even really exists is an open question, but that's what you come to Talk of the Town for, isn't it?

ECSL Chocobo Racing Prepares For a Second Season

Maxe Sahashin, Contributor

Chocobos. They are born to run. They are inspired by dreams most dramatic and wonderful. Now they run ever forward, that is their destiny. No one knows how the races that lie in their futures will end. Even so, they continue to run, aiming only forward to their goal.

The Etheirys Chocobo Sports League is entering it's second season, filled with hopeful young birds and jockeys hoping to have the chance to join those illustrious lists, those chocobos that will be remembered forever as chamipons. The Black Chocobo Courier spoke with the head of the ECSL, Ry'lah Dinhe, who also directs sponsoring company Invictus.

"Last season saw us using circuit tracks, usually the jockeys find themselves going through a loop for a couple of laps, winding through streets, or racing down long stretches," Dinhe explained. "This coming season, we will be seeing the jockeys and their birds running cross country in a rally race."

The change to the races will be plain to see at the upcoming Sunsilk Endurance Race. There wasn't a chance to implement a race of the rally style in the inaugural season, said Dinhe, so the Sunsilk Race is going to really put ECSL's jockeys, trainers, and birds through their paces. The Sunsilk Race is going to pit racers against one another across several tracks from Thanalan to La Noscea, heading into a large circuit across both Vylbrand and mainland Eorzea.

That may sound like a small change to the average race fan, but it's a dramatic shift for trainers who have to change strategies. Three laps on the same course poses challenge to both consistency and endurance, but hazards and terrain are predictable. Over a longer rally run birds will be constantly be expected to improvise, and jockeys have to be always on their toes. When to break into a sprint, when to hang back, and when to position a bird is far more fluid and unexpected in a rally.

The ECSL owes its existence to Godbert Manderville, after a fashion - it was his stranglehold on the sport that had lead to multiple fledgling competitive leagues, collimating int the ECSL's sophomore season. And it may owe its status as the Gold Saucer's main competitor to the Manderville family as well.

"I usually get ideas in my head that sometimes I need to execute them," Dinhe said, "In this particular case, there have been several attempts at starting up competitive leagues to the Gold Saucer, for one reason or another, most of them don't last past their first couple of races, or end up being one-offs. I could go into conspiracies, but... we'll just let the readers come up with their own."

This season has great promise for sports fans. After all, for the birds born to run, there's one golden rule: eclipse first, the rest nowhere.

Science

Etheirys' Latest and Greatest Independent Newspaper

Twenty-Third Sun of the Fourth Umbral Moon, 7AE12

Edition 002 | Page 4

A scientific breakthrough reported from noted museum and research institute Anamnesis Eorzea has opened the door to many, many possibilities both scientific and cultural. Per a press release as written by M'Sheerah Akhabila, the museum's Director of Research, the laboratory is quietly celebrating several discoveries that, in her words, “could seriously overhaul things such as space travel, medicine, and many, many other fields, as well as what we know of the history of the Allagan Empire.” Anamnesis Eorzea claims to have awoken an Allagan from low-aether stasis.

Director Akhabila remains positive that an eventual accord can be reached with the woman, but her wish for peace may fall upon deaf ears in at least one case: ownership of the derelict ship we previously reported on has yet to be decided, with the Forum of Sharlayan, Anamnesis Eorzea, the Cosmic Exploration Initiative and now its pilot all seemingly having a claim upon the derelict ship and the technology it contains.

Temporary suspension of life is possible in magic understood by the wider world, but the scale and duration of this Allagan technology is unknown to the broader scientific community of the Star. In the highly advanced nation of Alexandria, there have been some experiments into the concept and its fundamental science is understood.

Short of using the massive aether required to suspending a Spoken in a Stop spell, the ability keep someone alive long past their lifespan, unconscious, is daunting, but the answer has long been thought to be ice.

The promise of low-aether stasis, including that which may be supported by ice-coded electrope. What makes the revival of this subject unique isn't the ideas that a person might be frozen for a long time, but that the reheating process didn't kill her. Even more unfortunate for Alexandrian technology is the fact that the form of death introduced by the notion of cryogenic technology is an organic death - the failure of cells to function due to the accumulation of ice in the body's fluid.

In the scientific circles of Alexandria's Solution Nine are just some that have chased the cryofreeze technology. 'Cold sleep' as some refer to it, has long been fantasized about by those who dream of being able to settle other planets, but are unsure as to how to transport enough in the way of supplies and manpower without having to worry about burning some of those supplies to sustain the crew on the journey outward. It has also drawn the attention of some elements of law enforcement, who see freezing as an easy way to store more prisoners in a smaller amount of space with less expense.

In all, the continued exploration of the Allagan relics found through the Cosmic Exploration Initiative have produced unexpected results, but without more information there's little that can be said about how they work, or indeed if they truly do. Experts in both Sharlayan and Solution Nine have cast doubts on the actual efficacy of these findings on cryogenic technology, claiming that the most likely explanation is that the immense power of a Stop spell was employed to preserve Anamnesis Eorzea's new patient.

The Groundbreaking Alchemy of a Sapphic Tea Shop

Alchemy is in the blood of Ishgard's Blanchimont family. So, when the eldest daughter of famous, or infamous, inventor Lady Iris Blanchimont came to inherit the Black Lotus Teahouse, Eliza Blanchimont saw opportunity. There's a uniqueness to the way Blanchimonts have wielded their alembic that has grown over the centuries of the family's history. While the details are somewhat guarded, Eliza explained the broad strokes as being somewhat reminiscent of the legendary heights of creation magic, on a more achievable scale.

"We draw out the aether of ingredients, and recombine it with other ingredients to achieve things that simple chemistry couldn't," she explained. "And that's basically what alchemy is. We just have learned to harnass it in a different way, a more open-ended way. And that's how we get Atelier Eliza."

An atelier - the old Ishgardian word for a workshop - has long been the name of where Blanchiumont medicine-makers worked. Eliza doesn't consider what her tea shop does to be that fundamentally different. Cooking, she says, is just another form of alchemy. This, in itself, is not groundbreaking. Indeed, alchemical cooking abounds in Eorzea from places like The Spearsong Inn to The Bad End. Instead it is the science behind these drinks that's fascinating.

The alchemy on display at Atelier Eliza could be characterized as traditional alchemy on Hyper. Drawing aether from crystals to catalyze a fairly standard chemical reaction is a common process in alchemy. More advanced is using aether in a transformational or creative capacity, as Hannish alchemy is well known to do. The alchemy in the kitchen of this unassuming teahouse manages to do all that, and something more besides. Wheat can be extended to create far more flour than simple milling could achieve. Fruits can be hybridized in the kitchen. I asked Eliza if she'd solved world hunger. She laughed.

"We can do this here for a few reasons. One of which being a lot of specialized equipment. We can do aetheric reductions here that would take a full laboratory in other places. Another part is, simply we know what we're doing. The kind of mathematics, minerology, engineering, aetherophysics, chemistry, and aetheology we do to make you a pie is built on generations of proprietary research. And so far we can't scale it up," she explained. "Ultimately, our kitchen is a testbed. We're putting ideas together that just kinda don't belong, we're applying crazy pressure to those ideas, and sometimes we get miracles. Sometimes we have to close for three moons for repair. But if the kind of principles we use here can be used to stretch grain in famines, or to feed refugees? That's the dream, isn't it?"

The Atelier also caters specifically to a sapphic clientele. While those who aren't women loving women are welcome and will be served, the space is explicitly intended to provide sanctuary to queer femme-identified Spoken. In recent years, the needs for places where sapphic women meet have been increasingly underserved as the hospitality industry chases heterosexual demographics in venues like nightclubs or brothels. At the Atelier, queer women are free to express themselves among like-minded Spoken.

At present, general manager Korrine Abel says the Atelier is recovering from one of those non-miracles Eliza mentioned, but they intend to be open on the 28th of the Sixth Astral Moon.

Lara Eutrepe, Contributor

Ancient Allagan Defrosted by Ishgardian Museum

Mikoso Yumitori & Lara Eutrepe, Deputy Editor & Contributor