Asha & the Caravan

Asha and the Caravan is the third story told in the podcast Astonishing Tales of the Highly Improbable. It consists of four episodes and tells the origin story of Asha the Post-Human.

## Part 1

"uwu lit fam" Lloyd Allen says to begin season two. He is a bit disappointed that he hasn't heard back from the Akashic Monastery yet. He is still hopeful, as the monastery is far away and difficult to reach and Jackie is a "emotional wreck" and the Voodoopunks are "flaming imbeciles," so the task will take time.

Lloyd describes how he went into the city to meet up with Cora and become antiquated with a figure in the city government. He complains about his doll body, and says he needs a flesh suit. He says he wouldn't take it from a productive member of society because he's not a monster. The Sentient Room seems to think this is amoral, but Lloyd insists that because he knows what happens after death, he would be giving a person a new start or a chance to go to Elysium. Lloyd repeats that he is not a psychopath, as he is capable of love, evident by his boyfriend, who he can't seem to think of as an ex. He says he operates with a "perfectly reasonable moral framework" if you don't talk about what happened to the death cult from earlier.

The sponsor for this episode is Percy's Stainless Steel Steak Knives, which are promised to work on all kinds of meat. Lloyd says he will give them a try. Lloyd debates on what to call the set of story and then lands on "Asha and the Caravan" as The Room chastised him for not doing that beforehand. He signs off with "cheerioodles" and another explanation about using hip lingo to get the kids to follow you anywhere. He slowly goes off into a train of thought about how a young adult would make for a good flesh suit before realizing the audio is still rolling.

Asha was born into the tribeless tribe, in a caravan clan that carried goods and information across the region. They had a very special place in the cultural landscape, but were not allowed to settle themselves. They were the few in the area who were literate, and they were respected and feared, but had to be careful to follow all of the roles and taboos.

The Great Caverns were forbidden to anyone other than Asha's tribe, and Asha was not allowed to enter until she was thirteen. The caverns were inhabited by gnome like creatures, and inside the laws of reality seemed to bend a bit. There was a demanding initiation ceremony that everyone in her family underwent when they were twenty years old. It was difficult and traumatic and involved entering a dimensional window behind a mandala in a cavern room set up specifically for their tribe. If successful, the person achieved a state of "awakenness" which allowed them to see in a way that others couldn't. This state of awakenness allowed the family to give advice or item to solve a particular problem, which lead to a time of peace and prosperity in the region.

Asha went through the initiation successfully. But her ceremony had somehow granted her the ability to understand the language of the gnomes. Asha overheard the gnomes talked about needing to increase the supply of a certain mineral that her family had been bringing, saying that the things they were trading for the mineral wasn't important at all. They said that this strand would be meaningless after the conquering was successful, and they spoke of a coming war against another species that looked over a fallen empire.

Lloyd doesn't see the point of continuing with these "absolute atrocities that pass for modern music" but still he transitions into the cover song for the episode, a mashup between "Mad World" and "Everybody Wants to Rule the World," both by Tears for Fears

## Part 2

Lloyd begins the intro with a lot of incorrectly used slang, unconvincingly assuring the reader "I am one of you." Lloyd is increasingly frustrated with the lack of rescue from Jacqueline O'Brien and the Voodoopunks. He says he's going to meet with his government official and see if he can get some funding and resources. Lloyd has a new plan to build a plane to fly to the Akashic Monastery himself.

There is a lot of blood, as Lloyd is working on his flesh suits. He has collected multiple bodies in various states of disrepair, killed during the bombings happening as the city is at war. Lloyd muses about how to make realistic flesh suit without too many seams and without rotting. He insults the magic system of Harry Potter and then says that New Albion is worse and even less cohesive.

Lloyd proudly says that he has had practice cutting up dead bodies, and brings the conversation back to the death cult. He says that he survived due to his fencing skills. The first night Lloyd was attacked by the death cult he happened to be coming back from teaching fighting choreography and was armed with his saber and ready to defend himself. Lloyd advises the listener not to do drugs, as it does not help the ability to gut a murder victim. Lloyd ran to Matt's apartment, giving the death cult his location. After several more failed attempts, the cult kidnapped Matt to try to lure Lloyd into a trap. Lloyd spent the next couple of days turning the theatre into a death traps. He left the back door unlocked and the whole gang came to try to get him, and Lloyd learned the art of bloodshed could be a joyous thing. Lloyd laments about "poor darling Matt" but does not describe what happened to him. This episode's sponsor is Bubba's Blood Pudding.

Asha told her family what she had overheard the gnomes, and they discussed what to do. They agreed to keep the mineral out of the gnomes hands and to alert The Dwarves of the potential that the gnomes may be planning to take over The Hamlet Wheel. Asha, her grandmother, and her uncle took a secret three months journey to warn the dwarves, but when the arrived, the people living in that province had been digging up so much stone to build ziggurats that all the tunnels had collapsed and there was no way to get underground.

They returned to meet up with the rest of the family, but they could not find them, and they retraced the route they would have taken until they discovered the place where they had been attacked and killed. Three bodies were missing, and they were soon under attack by three black monsters with gnomes riding on top of them. Asha ran off in a blind panic into the caverns, and did not see the gnomes kill her grandmother and uncle. As she ran through the caverns, armed only with a spear, as other gnomes started joining in the chase. Asha went to the room where her initiation had been held, and she lept through the mandala window into the metaverse.

Lloyd promises a special treat for the closing song, a rare unearthed recording from his old boyfriend. The cover song is Raven singing a mashup of "Candy Store" from Heathers and "Candy Store Man" from Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.

## Part 3

Every the other episodes to date has a brief sentence description. For this episode, Paul wrote an entire paragraph:

"*Look, what do you want me to say? Lloyd is salty. We all know he's salty. He doesn't get unsalty. He's never going to get unsalty. I'm not going to freaking write Lloyd is salty every episode. Its just ridiculous. And our main story, well, it continues. What do you expect is to do? What am i gonna do give you spoilers? I'm not giving you spoilers. It's a really good one, though, but how can you believe me? What am i gonna say, This one's kinda lame? It's not. What do you want out of these descriptions? WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?!? IS MY BLOOD, MY VERY LIFE FORCE SPENT MAKING ALL THIS NOT GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU?*

*Sigh. This week, Lloyd is salty and our story continues."*

Lloyd continues his attempts to be hip, with the most incomprehensible string of slang yet. He hopes his words will be like a goo worm crawling its way into the readers ear to hug their brains with validation. Lloyd took his flesh suit for a drive and broke into Penny's Beauty Palace, which happens to be this episode's sponsor. He says he was able to use the makeup he stole to hide the stitches and help slow down the rotting process, but Lloyd will still have to make a new flesh suit every other month. Luckily for him the war is making it easy to obtain body parts and Lloyd says it is a "healthy hobby" to keep his mind off of his troubles.

Cora introduced Lloyd to a government official, and after Lloyd pitched him a few ideas he was only interested in the cigarette plan. Lloyd has inferred that the government is working on some sort of android program, though he knows they don't have the technology to do so properly. He hopes they're working on a cyborg cause he's excited to see what kind of horror they end up creating. Lloyd was clear that he wanted a plane and a pilot, and he is getting very annoyed with how long Jacqueline O'Brien is taking with her end of the deal. Lloyd goes on a rant about how terrible this narrative is, with predictable tropes and lack of consistency and a badly laid out magic system. Lloyd has fun memories of being spies with Ravy in a different dieselpunk narrative with Siberian zombies and English vampires, and a mad Sweede who conjured up a ship of fingernails for them. In this narrative there was an American (a regressed, revolting race says Lloyd) who said something about beating up queers which made Raven obsessed with seducing him. Lloyd considers zombies and the Voodoopunk and says there's a possibility there. Lloyd tells the viewer they are unlovable except here in this show, and tells them to continue listening to improve their self worth.

Asha was floating in Metaspace. She hadn't had time to learn about her Post-Human abilities from her family, but she had heard stories and knew that it would be helpful to have a map or a flying dragon. The map was tattooed on her uncle and in a cave her family knew about, and she remembered enough to start heading towards the strand with the dragons. The strands were confusing and go in all directions, and it was not a static place, and kept moving and shifting. Human minds were not meant to operate in the Metaverse, and legends said that only narratives that contained a wheel in its core were capable of producing post-humans.

The gnomes and the monsters had entered the Metaverse, hunting for Asha. Asha hid behind strands and avoided being detected by the monsters and made it to the strand she was looking for. The dragons were in a purplish strand that was dangerous to enter without enough experience. Asha plunged her spear into the strand, hoping to spear a dragon, but came back with nothing. A monster then spotted her, and on her second attempt she caught a little orange humaniod and returned him to the strand. She realized she wasn't using enough will, and focused her entire will to live and not get caught by the rapidly approaching monster to successfully spear a mulicolored goofy looking clay dragon. Asha jumped on its back pleading for it to go, and once the dragon noticed the incoming monster it flew off, easily losing the gnomes with he speed of its flight. They flew for hours until they found a watchtower, where she met Michael and Jill.

Lloyd says he's not going to listen to the music at the end of the episode, as he has better things to do with his time. The cover song for this episode is "Lucy in the Subway" by The Dude of Life and Phish

## Part 4

Jacqueline O'Brien has failed to get Lloyd in contact with the Akashic Monastery, and he is extremely upset about it. The two Voodoopunk members she had sent to the mountains never returned, and she cannot afford to send any more people due to the ongoing war. Lloyd promises to make the city a burning cinder before he is through. He has nothing left except his mind and his wrath, and with those things he vows revenge upon the whole narrative. When The Sentient Room prompts him for the episode's sponsor, Lloyd angrily retorts that "today's show is brought to you by my nut sack" before ranting about his lack of genitals. This leads him to go on a tangent, describing the Doll dildos that were once popular among the Voodoopunks. Lloyd says that he will not give the city the satisfaction of seeing him beaten and promises to reduce its population to mindless slugs and watch it burn like Thiccy Viccy. He says life is meaningless, love is a joke, and if you're lucky the only reward is nothingness.

Jill and Michael were shocked to find another person, and thrilled at the thought that Asha could rescue them. Asha questioned their sanity, and told them to stay quiet because she was being hunted by gnomes riding on black monsters. Jill said that she and Michael were very familiar with the maze of tunnels deep within the watchtower, and led Asha to a common room that they had set up. Michael prepared Asha some room temperature tea, and they exchanged stories.

Jill and Michael had been in the watchtower for several months, living off of a plentiful supply of food that someone else had left behind. Food did not spoil here, which had led them to wonder if they aged here. Jill and Michael had attempted to not eat for three days, but had broken it out of hunger and boredom from not being able to pass the time by preparing meals. Their hair did grow, so they ended up concluding that they had no idea what was going on. Being stuck together for so many months, Jill and Michael had become very close, but as friends not lovers. They occasionally swam around the surrounding metaspace, but were careful not to stray too far from the safety of the tower. Gazing outside of the windows, they had observed some insane things that roamed and lived inside the metaverse, but they hadn't attempted to interact with anything.

The interesting things were the papers all around, leftover from a library that was once there. Previous books that had been here included: "An Accidental Search for Godhood" "A History of The Chaostrophy" "Archtypal Magic" and "The Grimoire of William." They had gathered that there were at least two groups who had occupied the tower before. The first was a rather large group that included Ceridwen and The Baron Samedi, who were probably still in existence but had built themselves a land beyond time. The second group was older, known as The Promethean Lodge and included William.

Asha informed them about what she knew about the gnomes and how they wanted to conquer the metaverse, or maybe just conquer The Lost Ones. Jill knew something about The Lost Ones, saying that the texts in the watchtower describing them as rat like was out of date and they were now taking on the form of teddy bears. They discussed various theories of why The Lost Ones devolved, and the effect The Chaostrophy has had on the stability of The Metaverse.

Asha had a lot of knowledge about Post-Human, but no experience herself. Michael didn't think he could be of use, but Jill thought that if Asha taught them what she knew they could help her with the gnomes. Asha said they could get help, from William. She explained what a Lynchpin was, a paradoxical place that simultaneously exists in multiple narratives. One of these Lynchpins was the headquarters for a religious order who kept track of metaverse things, and with the information there they might be able to figure out were to find William. Asha taught Jill and Michael all she knew about navigating metaspace, and they set off to find this Lynchpin, The Decadent Abbey.

Lloyd promises that in the future there will be a vaporwave track of PixelWayve and the Calamari Yakuza, but instead the cover song is "Soliloquy" by Paul Shapera.