Continuing a work in progress.

Death in under the neon glow.

I'm a blackstar, way up, oh honey, I've got game...

It's a tall tale told by space-truckers and spacers getting on in years. A Shangri-La of sex, drugs, neon, and questionable enlightenment. A place to rest your bones when they've become too brittle for the re-entry G's. The Church of Mad Rapture, or The Church of Mad Love. An one ship kingdom. A neon space cathedral. All of it ruled over by Zigg, the king and pope of a religion of entwined bodies and chemical escape. It's a secret church, preached by old trucker-junkies on their way toward that last long haul.

AB - Supposedly the knights, doesn't matter which color, are looking for it too. More than likely they're too busy fighting each other, or picking up busty waitresses in the case of the blues. The church is a massive structure, almost the size of Alpha Blue, but Alpha Blue will always be the biggest thing in the galaxy. Alpha Blue is the size of a LSD dream, and those go on forever.

SP / OSR - Old religions, and new, are looking for The Church. Some want the possible truths that could be found in the Blackstar Gospel. Others want what stray bits of enlightenment might be wandering the hallways and vestibules of the void cathedral. The church is massive, its halls go on forever, and its exterior goes on nearly as far.

 

The divinity of neon.

The Church of Mad Rapture is a mass of statues, lost TV's from seedy motels, and the neon signs from every dive-bar that ever has been or ever will be. The statues commemorate: Catholic and Orthodox saints, Hindu deities, Muhammad (his face obscured by the dust of centuries to preserve the faith), the Buddha in all of his (or her) various and enlightened forms, gods that were forgotten, goddesses that never were, and deities that might have been if they were given half a chance. The TV's play reruns of crooked game-shows and infomercials selling sex. All the sets are old CRT models, their pictures flickering and rolling in the silence of the void. The neon signs call out in the dark spaces, filling the emptiness with the soft glory of their light. It's impossible to see each sign individually, they've been layered over one another by the millions to create two signs that spells out, 'REST YOUR SOUL – LOVE YOUR BODY – EXPAND YOUR MIND' and below that 'VACANCY' without an unlit 'NO'. There is always space at Zigg's place. The only parts not festooned with flickering anachronisms and holy idols are the docking ports.There is always an open space amid the thousands of abandoned spacecraft. 

A city of darkness and light.

When I looked in her eyes, they were blue, but nobody home.

The airlocks and docks are all chrome and neon, welcoming every newcomer with their own reflection bathed in soft pinks and blues. The spaces are filled with the sharp sound of primitive midi-music, the air-vents kicking out an something even sharper, the smell of sweet ether.

Beyond the air-locks is Circle City, a place of concentric rings with a mile tall pyramid at its center.

Where slick beauty is the norm.

   

In the city, Asphalt streets are made of night, eating the city's neon brilliance. Broken glass, scattered on the roads, make pin-point constellations from reflected light. People, dressed in bright, and often impossible, colors move up and down the under-lit sidewalks. All races of the galaxy, including every ethnicity of humanity, live in the city, going about their lives as they would anywhere else. The cloth they wear is made of light, smoothing skin and sharpening features, turning everyone into a Nagel portrait.

Each circle of the city is a borough, ten in total, beginning with Vestibule. Vestibule is a quintessential space port, filled with: bars, brothels, strip-clubs, and all-night pharmacies. Wandering between glass fronts and neon signs, the hopeful begin their first step of their journey toward enlightenment. Every establishment a temple for the word of Zigg. The men and women in these temples devoted to excess are the monks and nuns of Zigg's religion. They bring temptation and pleasure to all those who pass through their temple doors, pushing them to the city's ultimate enlightenment. Zigg's priests are the slot-machines that fill the lobbies of the flop-houses that dot the streets of the borough. The machines spit out key shaped containers for the needles that deliver Zigg's true enlightenment, a drug called Moksha. Once in the bloodstream, the drug reduces the functionality of the right Parietal Lobe while also interacting with opiate receptors, the result is a state of extreme euphoria matched with physical pleasure.

To pay for each pull of the slot-machines one must earn Kama tokens through acts that fulfill mental and physical desires. The drug Moksha, and the fact that each pull of the slot-machine won't always result in a payout of the drug, pushes people to engage in increasing acts of hedonism. The final stage of this spiral of substance and gambling addiction is the complete numbing to physical and mental pleasure, all acts devoted to winning the next hit of Moksha.