The Curated Guide to Hellsborough and The Dark Peak

Pip Rippon

Your Guide to navigating The Dark Peak

Available at hellsborough.com

version 0.1.3

Introduction

This is the first publishing of this resource designed to help you (and me, to be honest) understand Hellsborough and The Dark Peak. Because I snapped some bone (see this diary entry), the artwork is neither started nor finished, hence this version should be considered pre-release and is designated version 0.1.3

Hi. I’m Pip, and welcome to Hellsborough.com – this is me trying to explain a world on your doorstep. A world that you probably have no idea that exists: The unexplored parallel world of Sheffield, S6 – Hellsborough and The Dark Peak. I think that I now understand the place. When I say understand, what I mean is, that I can cope with it.

The human brain is a very complex thing. Possibly the most complex thing in the known universe, and us humans, even though we all have one, don’t really understand it. It’s the Great Unknown. Multiply our interactions with others and that we are all different – you have a different brain to me and your experiences, upbringing and well, life, are completely and utterly different to mine and everyone else’s. There are an unlimited number of variables. Hellsborough and The Dark Peak is just like that.

These are the topics that I’m going to cover in this guide:

- What is Hellsborough, and how did it get there?

- How is Hellsborough accessed?

- How is Hellsborough different from the off-world?

- Hellsborough is very different from the off-world, Part 1 - The Denizens

- Hellsborough is very different from the off-world, Part 2 - The Inconceivable

Chapter 1

What is Hellsborough, and how did it get there?

Hellsborough didn’t get there, it got here; and it’s a bit like asking how the world got here. Once upon a time, they were both the same place.

Here’s the thing, if the entirety of the Earth’s history was condensed to just one year, one second would be something like 145 years. A minute would stack up to somewhere around 8,695 years, and an hour, that’d be about 521,690 years or so – yeah, over half a million years would pass in one hour in this hypothetical experiment. That’s crazy isn’t it, but it’s true.

You can do the maths for yourself if you like; or you can just believe me, or read more about the mythical year here

You probably wouldn’t think it, since humanity came on the scene a bit late – not until just before twenty minutes to midnight on New Years Eve (around 23 minutes to, more or less) – but life itself started in the middle of spring on our yearly clock. Somewhere around the vernal equinox, funny old thing. I mean, if you were Mother Earth, where else would you choose life to start but springtime?

So from mid-March until 23 minutes before midnight on December 31st, in this fantastical year in the history of the Earth, what – on earth – were all those species, that we fully well know that existed, do? Was every living organism just swimming, or wandering around. Were they just meandering about in their respective environments – just breeding and sleeping. For an untold number of years; for billions of them? Seems unlikely, dunnit?

Just take the time that elapsed between the birth of the dinosaurs and their demise when that massive meteorite ploughed into current day Mexico wiping out most saurians and an estimated 75-90% of all life on the Earth at the time. The saurian empire was established around somewhere 243 - 231 million (231 ma) years ago. On our yearly calendar, that would make it December 11, or something like that. That devastating meteor made impact in 66 Ma, there or thereabouts – around 25 December in our year: Merry Christmas Mr. Lambeosaur.

From the genesis of those great reptiles, until their demise, is just 14 days, a mere two weeks in the history of the world – in reality, 175 million years.

Were those reptiles just fighting and feasting, fleeing and freezing? Over all those eons, over those 175 million years, did their intelligence not increase just a little bit? Just by maybe one iota. Maybe? It’s a thought isn’t it? Because, after all that time, you’d have thought that on all those branches on the tree of life, that must have come and gone over the generations, that the feeble twig of humanity can’t have been the only one to have developed intelligence? Can it? Really?

What about the insects? They’ve been about since the end of November (400 Ma). Is it not possible that they might, just might, have developed something that we, as humans, even though we don’t understand it ourselves, could possibly be sentient. I mean, we’ve only had recorded history since: 31/12 23:59:21, so come on, we could at least give them some credit, couldn’t we?

Us humans have only had recorded history for 3700 years, more or more a less. To imagine that every creature that ever evolved in the history of the world was universally stupid, is madness isn’t it? It’s a bit of a failure in thinking of our species and at the same time, really rather arrogant. That’s what I reckon, anyway. All of this is just hypothesis of course, it cannot be proved one way or another; intelligence, if not recorded anywhere, is clearly imbecility, at least as far as we are concerned – us the children of the last 39 seconds of Earth’s existence.

All those saurians that passed after that fateful day, whenever it was, when all the murk was stirred up after that meteor impact, you know. Some didn’t succumb. Birds, some of them at least, survived. The corvids, they survived – or at least the ancestors of the corvids, and the intelligence of corvids is well known. Officially, you know, birds are dinosaurs, their lineage is the same. So the dinosaurs, they’re not extinct – it’s just those that survived had feathers.

My research has led me to the conclusion that one of those dinosaurs, one of the avian variety that managed to survive post 66 Ma, eventually evolved into the most ancient creature of The Dark Peak. It was at this time that the murk began to form on the earth. The murk, that dark and desolate fog that shrouds everything and suffocates the life from the planet.

If I’m correct, and I’m pretty sure I am, these angels of Dunlockslyn – this intelligence born of the dinosaurs, a lifeform in continuous evolution for 66 million years (or 5 days, in our yearly view of the Earth), had a formative impact on the life of The Dark Peak. And why am I so confident in this statement? Because I know that the last 39 seconds – as academia would have us believe – is wrong. Recorded history goes back further than 3700 years. I have seen, with my own eyes, evidence of recorded intelligence that dates back around 17 million years.

Of course, these creatures of which I refer, they’ve lost their wings now. They live and die like we do – albeit over what we would think as ridiculously long timespans – their species evolves as does ours. They’re no more angels than you or I now, and they remain a secretive species. These days, they are a shadow of their former selves; incredibly ancient, they hold the secrets that we seek, but they have no real interest in anything other than leisure. Can’t say I blame them.

Milting. I think they’ve probably travelled to the stars.

But I’m getting ahead of myself: When that meteor hit back in 66, the quantum universe, it fractured.

Chapter 2

How is Hellsborough accessed?

That meteor and the massive forces that ruined the Earth and the dinosaurs isn’t what interests us in this chapter.

Right now, we’re more interested in tiny forces, infinitesimal ones. Changes so small they’re not visible to the human eye.

When that meteor hit, it caused a quantum fracture that forged the creation of two parallel worlds.

Apparently. Our universe, it’s a strange place.

There’s this thing: Quantum gravity. If spacetime is time and space wrapped into the same thing, then quantum gravity is just space and time and gravity all wrapped up into the same substance. How can I explain it better?

Think about doing the washing up – when you wash the dishes. Them bubbles of soap. Each soap bubble clings to the other, each a shining rainbow of light. Occasionally, some pop, that’s life; that’s the universe, I guess.

You’ve heard of Albert Einstein, right? Pretty much heralded as the cleverest bloke who ever lived. But this quantum gravity, that’s the bit that the great man couldn’t work out, bless him.

Einstein predicted light speed travel and black holes and all that crazy stuff – which turned out to be spot on – but this is the bit he didn’t get to: Gravity is a quantum element. Just as a photon is the quantum element of the electromagnetic field, so the graviton is the quantum element of the gravitational field.

With quantum gravity, each of them soap bubbles is a universe that exists in its own right. I know, hard to get your head around, but stay with me.

These soap bubbles, they all rub up against each other. They’re all jostling, all the time. Mostly this jostling is harmless, but sometimes – every once in a while, given a sufficient source of energy – like that almighty meteor strike of 66 Ma – them bubbles get severely agitated.

In times like that, they move apart. Maybe only a Plank length (which is an almost incalculably minute amount), but that’s enough.

That meteor strike in 66 was enough. It caused a fracture. A rift. A rupture in quantum gravity spacetime.

That’s when the illimitable cleavage happened. One world became two.

Hellsborough and Hillsborough. The town within the city and the town within the city. The same, but separate. And this was before either town existed; don’t forget that.

At the time though, no-one noticed. Not really. Most inhabitants of the world had died in that instant, when that split occurred.

This ain’t really my thing. I’m more of an anthropologist and folklorist, but if you’ve followed so far, this is my summary of it:

- A meteor struck 66 million years ago. The dinosaurs and 75-90% of life on Earth was wiped out

- Some creatures survived, otherwise life wouldn’t have

- Two parallel worlds were created (possibly more, but there are two that we know about, so let’s stick with two for now)

66 Ma was under a week ago in geological time according to our yearly calendar from the last chapter.

Of those survivors though, Milting were amongst them. Milting knew that parallel worlds existed. They also knew that there was nothing to stop anything crossing between those parallel worlds – everything was the same. There were no sides as such, there wasn’t left and right, it was the same on both sides, and a river ran through it – as rivers do.

A river, the Loxley in this case, runs through these parallel worlds. Like clouds and air drift across the boundaries, like the murk pays no attention to this border between worlds.

So nothing noticed, and nothing cared. For millions of years, it was the same place. It looked the same, it was the same. But it wasn’t the same. Things were developing differently on each side of that invisible fissure.

Who knew?

Well, Milting knew. Ask Milting today, they remember the illimitable cleavage. I think I know what you’re thinking. How can anyone – how can anything – remember that?

Milting. They might have been travelling to the stars, or they might not. Their history doesn’t go into detail (if it does, I’ve yet to locate and interpret it). But they recorded things, they wrote things down – not in any language that can be readily understood, but written down nonetheless. And remembrance for them is hereditary, passed through their lineage. Their life history is recorded in their DNA.

That evidence of recorded intelligence I mentioned? In my research, I found it. Semagrams, like fossils – hidden, buried, closeted by the time of eons past.

Where they came from, no-one really knows; I investigated. I talked to the librarians. I spoke to the Vice Principle. No one knows what they are. I had them spectrographically analysed – they told me that they shouldn’t exist, that they were impossible, that I had somehow fabricated them, that they were fake. They wanted to keep them though, course they did. I said I needed them for my research.

It was around then that my troubles with the university began.

I know what these semagrams are though: They’re the most ancient data in the universe.

Until I found them they languished in a deep cellar, far from inquiring eyes. How I came to be in that deep cellar is a whole story in its own right, and not one I’m going to explore further here, but if your interested, read these diary entries:

Part one
Part two
Part three

They’re made of stone. Pumice. When you look at them, the first thing I thought of was a QR code. They are, I guess, of sorts. But they’re more than that, they’re like poetry. Think of a road sign in the off-world, they’re like that – lexical symbols with no spoken referent. They’re hieroglyphics, with meaning.

What are they about? The junction, mostly.

66 million year ago, no roads existed, so what was there to do? It was just the gushing Loxley cutting its way through the limestone scarp.

But as the two worlds developed – independently – yet forever and inherently linked, and as bridges and roads were built over the river, and then those roads became a crossroads, Milting realised that a centre of liminality was forming. Had formed.

It was called the junction. The most powerful source of liminality in existence.

Even though the two worlds could be transgressed easily and had been for eons, the dark of the murk, the antimatter of Hellsborough was seeping into the off-world – your world – and Milting stepped up foreseeing the dangers of massive leakage from one side to the other – dark matter from Hellsborough leaking back into the off-world and visa-versa. The light and the dark cannot ever mix, to do so is certain destruction, this much Milting knew well.

Milting used the semagrams of the junction to conceive The Hinge.

The Hinge. First time I’ve mentioned it. The Hinge is that place, that plank length gap between Hellsborough and the off-world.

Milting were the creators, and the observers and the curators of the after, after the aftermath.

Milting locked the portal – The Hinge – so that it should never be breached. That lock was never meant to be opened. Milting knew what would happen if it did.

Dark matter is also known as antimatter. Subatomic particle that have the opposite electrical charge to the matter in the off-world. Its electrons carry a positive charge, the off-world a negative. And conversely, its protons are negative and the off-world’s are positive. The dark matter of Hellsborough is a mirror image of the off-world’s matter.

When matter and antimatter come into contact, it results in a catastrophic release of energy. Total and abject annihilation.

Cross-over from the off-world to Hellsborough has long been expected, but not witnessed. In fact, it is commonplace and the off-world is “infected” by many things from Hellsborough and The Dark Peak, and of course, over the eons, the portal has been breached.

The portal is leaky, I’m sure I haven’t helped with that, sorry about that. I’m not sure it’s doing my general health any good at all either.

I have documented everything I understand – a number of possible ways that The Hinge can be accessed, there may be more. In summary, they are:

- semagrams

- quantum manipulation

- rockcrust

- download

- simulation

Some of these methods are tried and tested, some just supposition, but when you do make it through The Hinge, going from the off-world in, what do you see?

Chapter 3

How is Hellsborough different from here?

So, Pip, I hear you say, what do you see? After arriving at the junction, I pass through The Hinge. It’s only moments, and mostly, I feel nothing at all. But sometimes, it can feel like hours. I think that is dependent upon the murk.

The weather may be identical to that I left behind, especially on a foggy day in the off-world – the difference between the fog and the murk can be extremely subtle. On other days, on a summer day in the off-world, if the murk lies heavy in Hellsborough, it can be like walking through a swirling flood of carbonated stout.

When you arrive, you’ll recognise the buildings, the shops, the bars. The ones at ground level at least. You could easily pass through The Hinge and never know. The folk, they look like you or I, regular people doing regular things, going about their everyday business.

There is a big difference, but you’d struggle to see it. These men, women and children, pretty much all of them, unless they’ve come from the otherside of the tracks – and by that, I don’t mean your off-world, I’m referring to those that reside in the crosslands – the natives of Hellsborough, they’re content in a way that you’re not.

When I say content, maybe I mean distracted. Much like you might be distracted by the comings and goings of daily life, by the pressures of work and family, so the residents of Hellsborough are distracted by the chitter-chatter of the hive mind – an internal world that they carry within their faces, that services their every biological, physiological and psychological need.

They wear psycmasks. These days psycmasks are nanoengineered, so you’d never know anyone was wearing one. I of course, have to wear a government issue one, since I don’t have the biological adaptations of a native. I feel I look out of place, but no-one else cares, and wearing a mask these days in the off-world isn’t as unusual as it was before the pandemic, wearing a psycmask in Hellsborough has the same connotations, no one notices or cares.

What else is different?

You may notice the odd street sign that differs, doesn’t make sense somehow – take a walk around the park, for instance: You’ll see references to barkers, smelting, chits, slipping – with the accompanying signage, the wording will make sense, it’s just different, that’s all. Maybe like visiting a slightly foreign country.

Traffic signage is similar, speed and parking restriction, tram gates, bus lanes – all of those things will be familiar to you. The biggest difference, has always been the transport itself.

It’s quiet.

The roads exist, but with the exception of the trundle of wheels, the electric cars lack noise entirely – the internal combustion engine has never made an appearance in The Dark Peak. All vehicles that you would assume have an engine, do have an engine. It is usually located under the bonnet (or hood, for our US visitors from the off-world), but when you pop that hood, you don’t see a gas guzzling 4, 6 or 8 cylinder petrol burning engine, you see a smooth, sleek, bundle of muscles, a bioengineered locomotor muscle engine.

Locomotor muscle fibres resemble bundles of thick electric cables, but when injected with nutrient solution (found in filling stations, naturally), they expand and contract at different frequencies to generate power, not dissimilar to the pistons in a conventional engine that you’re used to in the off-world.

Coal has been mined and is used to fuel the most important of industrial needs, the humidity plants, which contribute to the filth of the murk, but oil has never been processed and so that noisy messy machine, the motorcar (or bike) wasn’t ever conceived. In The Dark Peak they have solar, wind, water and muscle flex energy sources: Power generated from the great goodness of Dunlockslyn.

From that point of view, you could say that Hellsborough is more advanced than the off-world. The design ethic of these vehicles, don’t share the boxy Eurocar design that you’re used to. They are streamlined, modelled on the sleek shapes of birds and fish, with armoured panels like the exoskeletons of insects or the bark of trees. The aesthetic is very organic.

The trolley buses (trams) exist, follow the same routes as the supertrams in the off-world, and are powered by electricity (locomotor muscle generated), but these versions are as sleek as eels, the same organic design aesthetic as the cars. Skateboards, scooters – electrically and mechanically powered, bicycles, tricycles, mobility scooters, pushchairs and prams, they’re all here.

So the hustle and bustle does seem very familiar.

What about laws and public services? They’re enforced by more than one organisation, like in the off-world, but here, there are only really two classes of enforcer, The Dark Peak District Council, who deal with the municipal laws, and The Nascenti enforcers known as exacids.

The former roughly equates to your off-world city council – they deal with fixing broken benches, installing new benches, emptying rubbish bins, traffic management, slipping permits and all that sort of thing. Their role is subservient, or at least that is to be understood; their job is to keep the wheels of industry running, nothing more. Unlike in the off-world, the removal of bureaucracy is their remit, not the creation of it.

The latter are the equivalent of your off-world police service, but with a wider remit and a license to kill and destroy where necessary; that tends to keep folk in-line in this otherwise largely lawless world. Alot of things go here, there are no rules imposed on enjoyment or making an income for oneself, and if The Nascenti don’t disagree with it, anything goes, yet woe betide anyone who attempts to do anything disagreeable. Nacenti consider jellyheads as valuable slaves, and do not tolerate any form of abuse.

If Adam Smith built a model village to test his ideas on capitalism, this place or Hong Kong of the early twentieth century, would be the place he would build.

The unit of currency is the chit. Most payments are fully automated by the DPDC, parking, fines, that sort of thing – which can make it very difficult for a new incomer. Without a source of chits you are a nothing, and nothings are not tolerated by the exacids.

The first time I breached The Hinge, I nearly died. I didn’t, obviously, and I’m not going to go into detail here, it’s a bit depressing to think about it, but I did write a diary entry about it; that was me trying to come to terms with it – you can read it if you want.

In The Dark Peak, there is nothing like you have in the off-world like fire brigades or ambulance services. A health service, is an unknown phenomena here or hereabouts. There are GPs for hire, witchdoctors. The murk is the equivalent, if you can call it that. Denizens, of course, being children of the murk have regenerative abilities, as well as thousands of years experience in the preparation and working with natural remedies and rockcrust, but jellyheads and netherlanders – being human – have no such regenerative ability, and where rockcrust is unavailable or natural resources scarce, or skills not available, entering the murk and taking your chances in the sink or swim is sometimes the only available option, especially for the old and infirm, which makes for a young average age of the population.

Want to know what’s going on when you’re here?

Apart from the ever popular chatting in a bar approach, which can yield wildly varying results depending upon who you choose to talk to, there are four main sources of news in Hellsborough and The Dark Peak.

If you are a denizen or jellyhead, then all of your informational requirements are served by the hive mind. Unless you wear a psycmask out of choice or because you are compelled to (like me), then the hive mind will remain silent to you. I have to admit that I find it a constant drawl which I struggle to decipher, but I’m sure that’s me, as I hear no complaints from anyone else; as I have noted before, your average jellyhead seems content yet distracted.

Secondly, there are The Dark Peak District Council information posters – referred to by some as the propaganda of the fungal network, but the examples that I have seen are mostly functional public information do’s and don’ts, pretty tame and lacking in any political message. You’ll also see DPDC posters advertising events in the area. I guess that’s a belts and braces approach by the DPDC’s marketing department in case you (as a jellyhead) miss announcements released via the hive mind.

The third source of news and information, is the informal network of individuals known as the clowns. The clowns are denizens, so they too have indigenous access to the hive mind, but they are also the couriers and spies of The Dark Peak. This method of finding out what you need to know is more direct, and will involve the expenditure of chits, but if you need your information fast, this is likely the best route.

Finally, The Hellsborough Heretic is a subversive publication by the crosslander resistance / netherlander alliance, and is therefore the main communications medium for the disparate clans of the nethermen who reside on the fringes of Hellsborough. Often hard to find and always involving venturing out of Hellsborough, the Heretic will advise you on developments within the resistance, usually without giving anything tangible away. If the copy you find is in date (about a 50 / 50 chance, in my experience), then you might be able to then track down details of a resistance meeting or some other gathering, if that’s your thing; good luck with that.

Language here. It’s kind of the same, but different, like everything else. Alot of my research (diary) notes are interpretations of the original, so it’s not the same, but similar enough to get by. The nouns are very much functional – take slipper for instance, fish, or barker for dog, or scratcher for your domestic cat. Of course there are some exceptions, but they’re usually easy enough to work out, wooltard for instance. Demonspawn is a strange one, until you listen to the context and that particular animals’ predilection to violence at certain times. But both of those, to give their full name are clovenfeet, which details their two-toed evolution. Ripperthroat and Ripperwing are self explanatory. Corvids – strangely – share the same Latin name as the same creature in the off-world (which is a pretty strange phenomenon, when you think about it – I mean, are these creatures so old that they pre-date The illimitable cleavage? It could be a possibility, especially considering that Milting have close associations with corvids)

Outside of the standard canon of the bestiary, Ripperthroats are the one exception to the standard off-world flora and fauna that I have come across so far. Barker, Scratcher, Honker, Ripperwing, Quacker, Demonspawn, Wooltard, Skewerwing, Screachwing, Scrufftail, Slyfluff, Flatface are all commonplace in both the off-world and Hellsborough and The Dark Peak, and the majority of them, as with the local dialect and nomenclature here, usually pretty much make sense without too much explanation.

Finally, the date system. The Dark Peak calendar does not count years in an infinite sequence, instead year names are repeated every 60 years, with the name being a weather-beast amalgam. In The Dark Peak, because of the murk and the lack on penetration of either sun or moonlight, the calendar – although still the length of a year of 365 days, the months differ. There are 18 months in The Dark Peak (0-17), with each month consisting of 20 days (0 to 19), with 5 days at the end of the year for celebrations.

That’s what you notice when you arrive, maybe. Next, let’s spend a couple of chapters looking at how Hellsborough is very different from the off-world.

Chapter 4

Hellsborough is very different from the off-world

Part 1 - The Denizens

After the illimitable cleavage of 66 Ma, the creatures that survived after the dinosaurs and much other life had been eliminated from the planet, fought for supremacy. As Milting observed and later recorded, many species developed in powerful and warlike ways, some establishing great empires.

The Dark Peak is a great wilderness situated on the island of Great Britain, part of the British isles. Surrounded by ocean, or sea, salty water in any case, the ancient dark peak covers the majority of the island, a wild and inhospitable place. Until the advent of mankind, the denizens ruled the entire land, after the demise of the wasps, but as primates came to prominence, so the dark peak shrank in the off-world and this side of the hinge to compensate, and the current area encompasses the upland area in England at the southern end of the Pennines, where moorland is found and the geology is dominated by gritstone. It is still a wild a rugged place. Hellsborough is a frontier town on the edge of The Dark Peak, but separated by the wisewood and surrounded by the greater Barnsdale forest.

The insects being a much older genus than other land dwellers and possessing an adolescent hivemind, took an early strangle-hold on the world, with the wasps, in particular becoming highly dominant. The wasps built great cities of corrugated bark which offered refuge from the worst excesses of the murk, and they became adept at conquering and enslaving other lesser species, to carry out their labour, toil and soldiery.

The wasps were intelligent and ruthless, had grown in physical size from skinny bees to tank-like creatures, and armed with their natural weaponry: Gusting wings and rapier like reusable stings, had become a truly formidable opponent; in fact, by the zenith of their reign, there was no opponent capable of challenging their might. As a species, the wasps looked set to rule the world for a millennium. And they did.

The wasp empire was the largest contiguous land empire in the history of The Dark Peak. They ruled without mercy, but strangely, fairly; encouraging trade routes, like establishing the long causeway between the embryonic (pre-ape) settlements at Sheffield and Hathersage. They shared their technology for the greater good of all, they fostered community of their slave species, eventually releasing all with full “freedoms”. They admitted to past wrongs, and paid for those wrongs honourably.

But such altruism eventually led to splits within the wasp hierarchy and civil war – those that cared, and those that didn’t. A racist element that the hivemind was unable to comprehend, a dichotomy at odds with their altruism. The wasps died of their own stupidity, which left a massive gap in the ecosystem, and the denizens evolved to compete in that gap (and what a gap, one species becomes extinct, and leads to the development of 6 others). The empire fractured, and the world entered another period of prolonged technological dark ages.

A New World Order

Around 50 hours before the divergence of humans from apes, in our aforementioned history of the Earth in a year, something like 32 million years ago, a new world order started establishing itself.

Originally, there were six* – the denizens of the hex – cultivated and nurtured by Milting, but given no favouritism, just monitored and their progress recorded. In the dark ages, Milting accelerated their development and gave each their own territory to restore world order.

Why did Milting do this? – There is no answer that I have found. The only thing of relevance that I have uncovered was a partial scripture – or semagram – that hinted that one day the wasps would return – a prophesy well understood in The Dark Peak.

There are now 11 denizens of The Dark Peak. The next five were domesticated by the original six as helper species, in much the same way that a barker or a onetoe is a helper species of us humans. Of course, like there are wild barkers, there are also wild dyapnid. Similarly, wooltards and demonspawn were selectively bred, as they were in the off-world, producing similar results to sheep and cows respectively.

The Nascenti*
Rarely seen but vast in number, the nascenti are a highly intelligent race of langoustine type creatures, that own Hellsborough and the Eastern part of The Dark Peak.

Exacid
Law enforcers of The Dark Peak, with license to use deadly force.

Hexikid
Genetically engineered heavy duty street cleaners and road clearers.

The Xin*
Nomadic tribes several thousand in number of warlike insectoid frogs with a strong set of hind legs and two pairs of forearms, they spend their time in the farther reaches of The Dark Peak.

Mentiloth
Death winged steeds of the xin, used for high speed transport and dexterity during battle.

Crytobite
Heavy dray animals used by the xin.

dyapnid
Domesticated by the xin as hunting animals or wandering wild in intimidating packs throughout The Dark Peak, their collective intelligence is much like buzzers and biters.

Xaexs*
Solitary female mercenary warriors, specialising in technology and warfare; often described as being like a ruthless samurai cockroach.

Clown*
Physically identical to humans, but with highly decorated bodies, the clowns once ruled The Dark Peak. Now, they are frequently seen in Hellsborough, but are known for being spies and couriers.

For: Morivarid* and Syncarid* (see chapter 5)

None of the denizens exist in the off-world, and all are the result of the extinction of wasps. They are all classed as intelligent species and all have access to the hive mind (as do some cryptids, and dwellers of the murk, such as barghests, see chapter 5). All denizens are hatched from eggs, and the evolution of all of them is pre-mammalian. The Nascenti and Exacid are descendants of crustacean, The Xin were originally amphibian, Morivarid and Syncarid of fish, and the rest of various strains of insect. All succeeded in the place of the extinct wasps as scavengers and recyclers in the circle of life, and in the absence of wasps were able to progress over the eons, developing consciousness and establishing various levels of society.

Saying that these denizens are intelligent doesn’t mean that other residents of Hellsborough and The Dark Peak don’t share that ability. It is well known that the corvid, barker, rooter, scrufftail and even gnawmard and many other species are all known to show signs of exceptional intelligence and able to solve many problems. Likewise, the lesser denizens, although they have access to the hive mind, do not show the same levels of intelligence as the “denizens of the hex”.

Chapter 5

Hellsborough is very different from the off-world

Part 2 - The Inconceivable

In the previous chapters I’ve talked about how the world developed, about how you can get to this place of dark matter, of the differences and similarities between here and where you are, in the off-world. Then I talked about evolution in The Dark Peak since the illimitable cleavage and the birth of the denizens. In this chapter, I’m going to introduce you to the supernatural elements of the murk, and then end with the most fantastical of concepts: Technology so advanced, that it is literally inconceivable.

The murk is the persistent fog and cold dampness that constantly covers Hellsborough and The Dark Peak; blocking out most sun and moonlight. Organic in a large part, due to the general drismality of the weather in the area, it is supplemented by The Nascenti constructed humidity plants dotted across The Dark Peak, and exists for their benefit, but also all of the denizens of The Dark Peak, because of the additional moisture in the air.

The murk protects various cryptids from greater exposure

Barghest
Ghostly apparitions of large shaggy black barkers with large glowing blue eyes of flame, found in liminal places, like rivers and graveyards, sight of one is often associated with an impending tragedy.

Gabbleratchet
Phantom human-headed barkers that fly through the murk with much whining, whelping, barking and howling – the barkers of the underworld hunting for the souls of the newly dead and the spirits of the living.

Don Bog Beast
A massive predator that lives and hunts around a large area, centered around the source of The Don high in The Dark Peak’s inhospitable and rugged heights.

The Bracken Man of Wadsley common
An ancient poem describing the hideous vestige of a man with a body of thistles and thorns.

Loxley Kraken
A mythical many tentacled beast believed to haunt an equally mythical place known as Hellsborough Hole.

Hobs and Boggarts
Boggarts and Hobs, when seen, resemble knuckle dragging apes – squat and hairy, they haunt locations in the murk.

Murk Wraith
Ghostly spirits of the dirty and the dead of Hellsborough that inhabit the murk and torment whoever they encounter.

Other species and creatures as yet undocumented
The murk is ancient and vast, concealing innumerable and untold other creatures yet to be discovered. It stands to reason that over millions of years countless adaptation, diversification, interbreeding and experimentation will have occurred, and should you be unwise enough to venture out into the furthest reaches of the murk (or even the nearer reaches) you will never be prepared enough for what you are about to encounter.

I’m a folklorist and anthropologist, so the above, that’s my stock in trade. And I’ve said that before, but now I need to enter unexplored territory, because tech ain’t my thing in the off-world – never mind this mind-bending stuff, but I’ll try my best to explain it as best I can. Chapter 6 of this guide has links to resources that have helped me understand some of the things that I talk about below.

The advanced technology of The Dark Peak

The murk. It all starts with the murk. Think of the murk as like memory in a conventional computer – RAM. Except the murk is nothing like RAM at all. If you reboot your computer, it wipes the RAM. You can’t reboot the murk. But the murk is like working memory, maybe more like your consciousness. You can’t reboot your consciousness either.

If the murk is working memory, then something needs to happen in that space, otherwise it is nought but a sterile void. In your conventional computer, you run code in RAM. The murk has scerm. Scerm is ideas, combinations of ideas, thoughts, combinations of thoughts and ideas. Fear of those entering The Hinge, the souls of the dead, the undead and the wanting to be dead travelling down the long and precipitous Dun. Scerm is the prayers and worship of Dunlockslyn. Scerm is the missing ingredient of dark matter, the embodiment of the murk; the holy ghost – the ethereal embodiment of Dunlockslyn, that that’s experienced when the slime is slurped. Scerm is a greater power. Scerm is quantum code.

If the murk is working memory, and scerm the code that runs within it, then The Dark Peak itself, to continue with this conventional computing-biological metaphor, is long-term memory or storage. Every thought you have, every experience your mind captures, is recorded in your brain. Before you doubt this, believe me. It’s true: It’s not storage that’s the problem with your head, it’s recall. It’s the same with the murk, everything is written to the hardware of The Dark Peak; if recall isn’t instantaneous, it’s not because it wasn’t written, it’s because retrieval mechanisms are faulty.

Every computer needs input, without a way of getting data into a computer there is nothing more the code in RAM to work upon. The organic network serves this purpose in The Dark Peak. Every plant – tree, flower, grass, moss – in Hellsborough and The Dark Peak reports a heat signature back to its nearest sub-station. This data monitors all movement in Hellsborough and The Dark Peak. All humans in Hellsborough – the jellyheads – wear psycmasks, which provide them with their infotainment, but also provide valuable data on the location and activities of the human population.

All of this inflowing data is processed by the fungal network. The fungal network – a vast interconnected system below ground and covering the entire expanse of The Dark Peak. The fungal network, hence known as the fungal AI – or more succinctly, the fungai – connects all of the plants and people together below ground and is the communications medium of the organic network. The fungai is the decision making organ, the quantum brain of The Dark Peak. The fungai is the processor, the CPU of a conventional computer.

From what I understand (which isn’t much), I am now stretching the conventional computer analogy a bit far, since consciousness – human or otherwise – is non-algorithmic, and thus is not capable of being modelled by a conventional computer.

What does that mean?

What it means is that advanced consciousness – that superior to human consciousness – as enacted by the fungai, requires massive networks of organic neurons, the mycelium of the fungus, and because organic matter operates in accordance with quantum gravity, the fungai is the most brilliant intelligence ever conceived.

There are two original denizens not yet mentioned. Both are found (if you find them) exclusively in the murk. They are Morivarid and Syncarid. Big eyed and friendly looking, the morivarid are found in shoals, just like fish. They are cleaners of the murk. Encounter them in the wild and they will suck out you eyeballs and eat your tongue, before picking the flesh from your bones, but for the fungai they are the administrators, the code cleaners. Syncarid are variably sized stingray type creatures capable of enveloping and stinging anyone to death, but they also fulfil the role of programmers and synchronisers of the code that runs, handling event queueing and ensuring communication across the entire system.

The fungai has no integrated circuits, has no silicon at all. Entirely carbon based. All computations are performed using organic chemical and quantum reactions. Conventional computers only operate in binary, but the fungai, being composed of cells, mycelium and neurons is in millions of different states at any moment in time. This means far more information is stored and processed than a silicon transistor could ever do, thus negating the space limitations of conventional computers, and at the same time being geographically enormous.

This is the hardest to get your head around, since it is the most advanced, and why I saved it until last; this is far more advanced technology than you have ever experienced. Combined, The Dark Peak, the murk, the organic network, scerm and fungai comprise a massive quantum-organic computer.

And if you want to hack, rockcrust is your gateway.

quantum-organic computing – there is a word for it: Quantanic (some call it quorgantum) computing – the name is still under debate. Whatever, remember you heard both here first.

Chapter 6

How can I learn more?

Further Reading and Watching

In trying to understand Hellsborough and The Dark Peak, I read and watch a lot of things: Books, articles, films, documentaries, blog posts, newsletters. Sometimes, you get an “Oh yeah!” moment, when things eventually, finally – fall into place.

Here are some links that have helped in my research. Where possible, I have provided links to freely available material. Where not, or where the format demands it, I’ve used affiliate links. Rather than group titles by genre, I have chosen to categorise them by topics relevant to Hellsborough and The Dark Peak.

Culture in Hellsborough

Motorman, David Ohle
Disturbing and unsettling glimpses into an improbable world, where omniscience, queer weather, synthetic jellyheads, bug eating and multiple organ implants are the everyday – a familiar tune to Hellsborough. Available from Amazon on Kindle, or as a Paperback

1984, George Orwell
Winston Smith was a diary writer too. His insights into his circumstances have been insightful when considering dystopian aspects of The Dark Peak District Council (DPDC), exacids and The Nascenti. Available from Planet eBooks in PDF, ePUB, MOBI, or as a Paperback here, or on CD

Erewhon, Samuel Butler
A distant mountain range and an entirely new civilisation, where the author explores the culture, describing as best he can thoughts on birth, death, machines, food and money. Available from Standard eBooks in ePUB and for Kindle or Kobo, or as a Paperback here

The Violent Century, Lavie Tidhar
A slightly alternate world set during the cold war, full of the murk and strange powers. Available from Amazon on Kindle.

Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
Developments in reproductive technology, sleep-learning, psychological manipulation, and classical conditioning combine to bring about profound societal changes; similar to Hellsborough, and insightful. Available from Faded Page as an ePUB, Mobi or PDF, or as a Paperback here, or as an Audiobook

Fungal AI, the organic network, the hive mind, the humidity plant and psycmasks

How to Speak Machine, John Maeda
AI learns from past data, and can only perpetuate and amplify previous behaviour, or in other words, if AI’s masters are bad, AI will be too. Available from Amazon on Kindle (other versions are available, eg. Paperback, but they don’t feel like very good value)

Entangled Life, Merlin Sheldrake
Fungi allowed plants to colonise the Earth, and all life grew from these fascinating and intoxicating extremophiles: “The divine within”. Available from Amazon on Kindle, or as a Paperback, or as an Audiobook

Evolve, Patrick Aryee
A deep dive into the world of biomimicry – unique adaptations in the animal world that solve problems and help to explain some of the technological developments in Hellsborough and The Dark Peak. Available on Amazon Prime Video

Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner
An amalgam of slogans, bits of conversation, advertising text, slices of songs, extracts from newspapers and general cultural detritus – an insight into the world of the hive mind and wearing a psycmask. Available from Amazon on Kindle, or as a Paperback

Evolution, extinction and the Denizens of the Hex

Of Ants and Dinosaurs, Cixin Liu
Observations of ant technology developed during the Cretaceous has been fundamental of my understanding of the technology of vehicles in Hellsborough, and the evolution of the world and species equally so. Available from Amazon on Kindle, or as a Paperback, or as an Audiobook

The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, Elizabeth Kolbert
There have been five mass extinctions of life on earth over the last 500 million years. As well as predicting that we are currently in the sixth, this book explores some fascinating evolutionary topics. Available from Amazon on Kindle, or as a Paperback

Ancient Aliens
Prepare to go down the rabbit hole. According to this series, aliens have been visiting the Earth for millions of years. It has certainly helped me understand Milting. Judge for yourself. Available on Amazon Prime Video

Last and First Men: A Story of the Near and Far Future, Olaf Stapledon
A far reaching account of the evolution of humakind over the millennia: Two billion years and eighteen distinct human species, of which we are the first and most primitive. Available from FeedBooks as an ePUB, or as a Paperback here

Environment of The Dark Peak

A Princess of Mars, Edgar Rice Burrows
The Barsoom series has been instrumental in my understanding of the world of The Dark Peak – from an environmental point of view, as well as that of the denizens – there are certain similarities which have helped me enormously. Available from Project Gutenberg in various formats

Prospect
Analogue technology, poisonous spores in the atmosphere and a treasure trove of wealth known as The Queen’s Lair; this film breaths The Dark Peak. Available on Amazon Prime Video

Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert Heinlein
Maybe Valentine Michael Smith was a little like me, I think maybe has was. Whatever, this book has always helped me to grok the environment. Note that this is the unabridged version, the original release cut about a third of the content. Try and pick up the original version from a charity shop, or available from Amazon on Kindle, or as a Paperback

Red Mars, Kim Stanley Robinson
Rather than the story itself, it is realising that the geographical and technical detail of the red planet makes it the primary character – much like The Dark Peak is the primary character in this world. Available from Amazon on Kindle, or as a Paperback

The Hinge and the illimitable cleavage

Reality Is Not What It Seems The Journey to Quantum Gravity, Carlo Rovelli
I’ll have to admit that my knowledge of physics is woefully inadequate, quantum physics in particular – and quantum gravity, I hadn’t ever heard of, yet this book helped with explaining the mechanisms underlying the illimitable cleavage. Available from Amazon on Kindle, or as a Paperback

The City & The City, China Mieville
Neighbouring cities occupying the same geographical space, unseeable and reachable only via political visa, International airspace, or breach. Beszel and Ul Qoma, as different and related as Hillsborough and Hellsborough. Available from Amazon on Kindle, or as a Paperback, or as an Audiobook

Snow Crash, Neil Stephenson
The metaverse and a mind infecting neuro-linguistic virus could put this book in the fungal AI section above, but for me it was the realisation that the nam-shub of Enki was an ancient artefact not so dissimilar to the semagram of Milting. Available from Amazon on Kindle, or as a Paperback, or as an Audiobook

Stories of Your Life and Others, Ted Chiang
The title short story of this anthology really helped me understand what the semagrams of Milting were, and indeed it is from that story that I purloined the name semagram – an ancient method of communication and linguistics. The story was also made into the film Arrival. Available from Amazon on Kindle, or as a Paperback

The Netherlands

A Scanner Darkly, Philip K. Dick
Substance D causes irreversible brain damage, which helped me understand the power and sway that rockcrust has in The Dark Peak. PKD has always been a favourite author of mine, and his story Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep was adapted to become the seminal classic film Bladerunner – both of which help me relate to the crosslands and the clowns. His story Second Variety (available as a free ebook from Project Gutenberg) is also something that always lurks at the back of my mind and has helped inform me of some of the stranger things here or hereabouts, symbiots in particular. A Scanner Darkly is available from Amazon on Kindle, or as a Paperback

A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess
Nadsat is not the language of the Netherlanders, but their language is different to yours (most of what your read from me is translated), but that aside, the general feel of the novel isn’t dissimilar to what you feel if you visit the crosslands. Like the film Propect, this book could appear in multiple categories, especially the culture of Hellsborough. Available from Amazon on Kindle, or as a Paperback

The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester
In the crosslands, the leader of the Moors clan is a gnarly individual that goes by the name of Scarp Southey – When I read this novel, the protagonist Gully Foyle, pretty much a disgusting savage, made me think of Scarp. Available from Amazon on Kindle, or as a Paperback

The Road, Cormac McCarthy
The earth is covered with ash, it clogs the rivers and hides the sun. It is difficult to breathe and often impossible to see. Nights are dark beyond darkness and the days more gray then the one that came before. Available from Amazon on Kindle, as a Paperback, or as a film of the same name

The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier, Bruce Sterling
Early cyberspace (as it’s now known) during one of the fastest technological transformations in human history, a peek into the parallel world of the crosslanders. Available from Project Gutenberg in various formats, or as a Paperback here

Prospect
I have already mentioned Prospect, but the analogue technology used in the film has very definite parallels devices I have seen out in the Nether lands, and the general feel of the film is almost like being there. Available on Amazon Prime Video

The Peripheral, William Gibson
Like the end of chapter 5 of this curated guide – Part 2 - the inconceivable – this final insight into my understanding of the world of Hellsborough and The Dark Peak is, indeed, inconceivable. The Nether lands are poor, desperate and struggling, yet advanced technology is evident – this title (both the book and the dramatisation) have helped me understand the relationship of the crosslands with the fungai. Available from Amazon on Kindle, as a Paperback, Audiobook, or as a dramatised serialisation on Amazon Prime

About Pip Rippon

Pip Rippon is an anthropologist and folklorist, who started learning about people and their stories at the University of Oxford, and later got a PhD from the University of Hallamshire, focusing on folklore.

Pip’s career has been spent exploring how cultures and their stories affect us. Research has helped the understanding of different communities and how their stories can shape their world.

Outside of school, Pip wanted to connect what had been learnt in research with real life, to share stories that aren’t often heard, and preserve cultural traditions. Pip aims to work with others to make the world a more connected and friendly place.

At the time of writing, Pip’s other main project, is trying to get the bones out of the stories of a local character called Van Hallam, who (many, many years ago in his youth), spent a lot of time in The Dark Peak proper, and had encounters with many of the denizens that make this place so different to the off-world. You can read more here.

This is version 0.1.3 of this article, use the email address curator@hellsborough.com to request the latest version – if one exists – and I’ll happily email it to you in return for adding you to my email list.

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Hellsborough and The Dark Peak by Pip Rippon is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. This license allows reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format, so long as attribution is given to the creator. The license allows for commercial use. Use the material on this site to create your own stories and campaigns set in Hellsborough and The Dark Peak.