The Beastside

The six laws

1. The mask is the face, and faces are the one thing everyone sees the same.
   • No Beast takes off their balaclava. The oldest stories say one who did would go Grey on the spot.
   • Everything else (the light, colour, size, weather and sound of a place) looks the way the Beast looking sees it. Ask two Beasts the colour of the Beastro's door and you get an argument and two right answers.
   • A Beast is always seen exactly as they are.
2. A name must be given.
   • A Beast holds to a name once someone else says it and the Beast answers. Every newcomer walks in knowing one; any name a Beast answers to holds. A name said to a Beast who can't answer holds no one.
   • A name said holds a Beast for a season, and Beasts at home hear theirs every day.
3. Fading.
   • Too long without anyone saying your name, or too long in the Grey, and a Beast fades: name first, then colour, then voice.
   • A name holds for a season, but a Beast who goes a week without hearing it starts reading pale, and this season the Grey takes the pale first.
   • It is never final. A faded Beast waits, however long, for someone to say their name.
   • One Beast who remembers them can call them back by name; a Calling (the whole street, out loud) is quicker and surer.
   • The Grey swallows sound, so a Beast inside it can only be called from close by, and loud.
4. The land moves.
   • Paths hold while walked.
   • A Beasthood's own ground doesn't drift, which is why borders are fought over in words.
   • A hard shift in the Hum can move even well-walked ground.
5. Marks remember.
   • The Marks are the Beastside's coin: small old metal pieces carved with the same symbols as the oldest stones. They don't fade, and nobody can make more. Old-timers still argue whether the coin was named for the carvings or the carvings for the coin.
   • A Mark remembers every hand it has passed through, and Flex hands can read it.
   • On the oldest stones the Marks are the shakiest; the newer the stone, the neater the Mark.
   • A Mark given as a promise, said aloud, ties two Beasts: they can always find each other. That is the deepest promise a Beast can make.
6. The Hum and the Edge.
   • The Hum is the sound from the Bones. It keeps the Beastside's week: tight for five days, easy for two, slack for weeks in the warm months. Most Beasts only notice it when it stops behaving.
   • The Edge stood still for most of history, moving only in the Grey Year and on the Long Night. This season it moved again.

How life works

• Arriving and age. Beasts walk in out of a morning already masked, knowing their name, at the age they'll always be. Most newcomers arrive in the autumn. No Beast grows up, grows older or dies. "Old" means here a long time, and the first arrivals swear the days used to be longer.
• Houses and packs. A Beast's house is the one that first said their name back: their family and their family name. Housemates named in the same season are siblings. Beasts who share a face (the Wolves, the Apes, the Pandas) are a pack, cousins across Beasthoods.
• Numbers. About five hundred Beasts live in each Beasthood.
• Money. Marks are the coin for anything that changes hands. Bullhattan and Trusty Lake hold the most of them, which is all "old money" means. WAGMI Way runs Beastcoin, its own loud, fast money: Beasts who play it double up or get wiped, and the bad week always comes. Fort Flex would rather swap, and the Beastro feeds everyone, whatever they've got. A Beast's work is what their Beasthood does.
• Language and days. One language, spoken and written everywhere. Day and night come to every Beasthood, though WAGMI Way swears it has neither.
• Two days everyone keeps. The first frost: the Meadows judge the knots, the estates read the guests' debts, Fort Flex votes on the Boot. And each season's first morning: the Loss Lap, Topping Up, Critique Hall's turn.
• Gifts. A Beast's gift comes with the name their Beasthood gave them, strongest at home and thinner with distance.
• When two gifts meet.
  • The Word, the Result, the Proof and the Record fix what happened. The Reel fixes how a year is told.
  • Where they disagree, what happened stands, and everyone who was there keeps it.
  • On home ground the home gift has the last word.

The Grey

Stand at the Meadows' Last Post on a clear day and you can watch it at the Edge: the colour going out of the land the way it goes out of a poster left too long in a window. The hills go pale, then the flat grey of an old photograph, then just Grey. It doesn't charge. It arrives, and everything inside it goes quiet in a way that makes Beasts want to sit down. It is the one place in the Beastside where everyone sees the same thing: two Beasts standing in the Grey see one flat, grey street, and agree about it, and that is the first sign something is wrong. When it comes further in, it comes along the old road.

It takes names first. A Beast who walks too long in it comes back reaching for their own name the way you reach for a word on the tip of your tongue. Then the colour goes, then the voice.

Every Beast knows what to do, because it's the oldest thing the Beastside does: you go and call them. The whole street turns out and says the faded Beast's name, out loud, over and over, until it holds again. A Calling is loud and untidy. Beasts argue about the spelling. An old rival turns up and shouts it louder than anyone, to make a point. The Beastro sends soup. It can take an hour or three days. In an ordinary year most Beasts go to one Calling, if that; this year, most have been to several.

What the Grey is gets argued everywhere, loudly. L33T Labs says it's a tide in the Bones, and has the charts. The Odeon says it's the house lights coming up before the play is over. Ramone Alley says it's boredom with a body. The Hush say it's only rest, and that the Callings are the cruel part.

The Hush

Beasts who believe the quiet is wisdom, and they have a case. Shapes settle less on Beasts who stop striving, the still estates came through the Grey Year untouched, and since last spring a Proof on the Labs' board says so.

They are a way of living, not a cult of vanishing:

• Their days: the Quiet Hours, grey-painted doors, long unsigned letters.
• Their courtesy: you don't ask a Hush Beast what they used to do.
• Their craft: grey-thread embroidery, given to friends who are tired.
• Their cause: the Quiet Week. A Beasthood that goes quiet for a week is passed over by the Shapes, and its neighbours carry the noise and the Shapes instead.

A Beast who goes Hush steps out of the race, not out of the world. They can give their name into keeping, and the Beastside stops calling on them. A house keeps the kept names and says every one, once a night, where only the house can hear, which is why the Hush don't fade. A Beast can take their own name back by asking to be called again, and many do after a season. Whether anyone else can ask a kept name back, the Beastside hasn't dared to test.

The Hush draw hardest in Ramone Alley (the burnt-out), Studio 66 (the watched), The Odeon (the stage-struck), Faded Heights (the frightened) and Trusty Lake Estates (the comfortable). Elsewhere they're a rumour and a grey door down the street. Nowhere Parks gets mistaken for Hush, and resents it.

This season the Understudy wants Quiet Weeks in five Beasthoods, before the Long Night and after it, on the argument that a quieter Beastside draws smaller Shapes, and a smaller Long Night when it comes again. The Labs' Proof says they might be right. A Beasthood that goes quiet must ask a neighbour to carry its names for the week: five hundred names said every day, by somebody else's voice. The neighbours keep count, out loud.

The Understudy

Two years ago at The Odeon, a lead walked out before curtain, and an understudy went on and gave the best show the Beastside has ever seen. The next morning they gave their name into keeping and asked everyone to stop saying it. They walk between the Beasthoods now, the Hush's voice. Theirs is the one Hush face that came loose: everyone who meets them remembers a different balaclava, and MoBA has three portraits by three painters to prove it. The Odeon says it's because they gave away a part along with the name.

The Long Night

The old stories say that when the Edge moves far enough, the Grey gathers into a single Shape: the fear of being forgotten. It came once, at the end of the Grey Year, and was faced the only way it can be: every name, said out loud, all night, by everyone, until a note Beat Street still argues about steadied the Hum. The Meadows' old-timers say the Edge is nearly as far in now as it was then.

Shapes wander in from the Wilds when the Edge moves, or come down the old road with the Grey, and settle on a Beast, a house or a block. They're faced, not fought.

Each has its signs, its local names and a rite learned for sending it back, usually by accident. Every rite has one step that seems to do nothing, and the Beasthoods argue about why it's there. The Labs say the Wake works because boredom can be measured; the Odeon says no Shape can stand a bad audience; the Beastro sends snacks either way.

A Shape sent back breaks into shards (crystal, shell, bone), which Beasts keep, wear and set into gear as keepsakes of the night they stood there.

• The Night Clerk (Bullhattan; the Parks call it the Ceiling)

  Signs: clocks a minute ahead; a list that won't stay finished

  The rite: The Wake: friends sit up with whoever it settled on, facing away from the nearest clock, telling the dullest stories they know

• Sweet Mouth (Studio 66)

  Signs: compliments that land too well; a mirror that agrees

  The rite: three friends each say one true "no" out loud on the same night, the last standing on a chair

• The Coil (Ramone Alley)

  Signs: doors slamming with no wind; an argument older than anyone can account for

  The rite: the First Sorry, said in the street before the other side can, with one shoe untied

• Big Shadow (Champions Court)

  Signs: your shadow arriving before you

  The rite: the Court lines up in lane order beside whoever it settled on, left shoes off

• The Rulebook (Trusty Lake)

  Signs: signs that appear overnight; doors that need permission

  The rite: the Why Walk: newer Beasts follow it asking "why?" at every sign, whispering the last one

• Old Can't (Cloudy Gardens)

  Signs: a doorway that feels too narrow to try

  The rite: the Botch: do the thing badly, in public, with a borrowed tool, and laugh first

• The Mannequin (MoBA)

  Signs: reflections a beat late; a crowd that claps at nothing

  The rite: make something for someone else, by hand, in front of it, with your other hand

• The Replay (the Bit Side's name)

  Signs: the same minute happening twice

  The rite: the crowd tells your best story, louder, from the middle

• The Gourd King (the harvest weeks)

  Signs: invitations coming back unopened

  The rite: everyone turns up in costume, uninvited, by the back door

• The Long Night

  Signs: the Edge as far in as it goes

  The rite: every name, all night

Rares (Legends, Pairs, Trios, Small Crews) wear faces that one, two, three or a handful of Beasts share. Every Beast sees a face the same way, so a Rare is known on sight in every Beasthood: they never arrive anywhere new, and whatever they do, the whole Beastside saw them do it. That is why so many of the moments the Beastside retells are a Rare's. Their reputations arrive before they do, and not every Rare is a hero:

• the Genie's deals always cost something;
• the Hitman ends things for good: deals, alliances, careers;
• Medusa's stare stills a room;
• the Convict answered for something, and not everyone forgives them;
• the Dragons carry an old fire, banked, and could change everything in one breath.

Some Rare faces share a name with an ordinary one: plenty of Beasts wear a Clown balaclava, and one wears the Rare Clown's. Being Rare is being known, not being ranked. A Rare leads their own story; in someone else's they can be the problem, but not cruel and not a joke.

Hommage Beasts belong to an honoured lineage from outside the Gathering: nine legends who chose to move onto the block. Each honours a real person. Hommage Beasts don't fade: they come back from the Grey with their names and colours as they went in, and the Beastside's explanation is that they're still talked about where they came from.

BitBeasts come from the Bit Side, a simpler, brighter layer alongside the Beastside. They arrive when the air goes square, they say "Stay Bit", and they hate being mixed up with the Replay. Some say every BitBeast is somebody's simpler self.

Drifters belong to no Beasthood and keep the roads walked. Some say they're the last of the Beasthood that was lost, and some that they're waiting for the twenty-first. Ask a Drifter and you get a different answer every time. The one most Beasts know is Scout, in a black-and-white trucker hat with a laptop of notes, who walks all twenty and carries the news.

The Hush can be any Beast with any face.

• The oldest gate. Concrete Jungle is sure something is kept behind it. Frost won't form on it, and Open Gate visitors came out humming names. Trusty Lake's Detectives have spent five months matching the hummed names to the Hush who gave theirs into keeping, and have matched all but nine.
• Trusty Lake and Concrete Jungle. The gates shut on the Jungle's first in the Grey Year, and the Reveal proved those same Beasts built the estates' oldest rooms. The estates fear the Jungle more than any Shape.
• Faded Heights owes Cortado Cafe its way back. Cortado still makes the Heights Order, and the Heights hates being reminded.
• Studio 66 takes from everyone: performers, looks, finds, and how everyone's year is told. Its rigs are also first out when the old road goes dark.
• The Labs' Quiet Proof. The Hush quote it everywhere, and the Labs is mortified.
• Silicon Alley builds what the Labs proves, usually before it's proved. The Labs complains every Friday and borrows their soldering irons every Monday.
• Pairs and rivals. Bullhattan and WAGMI Way need each other and resent it: Bullhattan thinks in contracts, WAGMI in Beastcoin, and the money runs between them all day; Bullhattan and Fort Flex still argue the Boundary terms; Ramone Alley and Concrete Jungle are siblings who both despise Studio 66; Beat Street and MoBA are twins; Cloudy Gardens and the Labs share the Glass Walk.
• The matching. MoBA's Unnamed Room holds Grey Year portraits painted in a hurry, with no names on the back. The Pale Books, the Paste Wall's oldest layers and the Meadows' Fire hold Grey Year names. A Grey Year name read out without knowing whose it is calls no one; matched to its face, it does. Four Beasthoods are matching them out loud, and every match is a Calling the Beastside turns out for.
• The Beastro feeds the Hush. Everyone eats, so the Hush sit at the Long Table too, and they find the tired at its far end.

The Quiet

Before anything. No Beasthoods, no faces, no names. It left the Bones, the Hum and the Marks, and the Grey is what it looks like when it comes back.

The Gathering

The first Beasts walked in and found each other. Every one of them is still here, and no two tell it the same way: the Gathering is remembered in pieces, the way a first summer is. Cooks drifted to the warm lowlands, deal-makers kept meeting at the same crossroads, and those who wanted things changed found each other in the concrete corridors. The Beasthoods formed like weather, each with its gift, and the Drifters stayed on the road.

In the Boundary Disputes, Bullhattan took the towers and Fort Flex the streets; Concrete Jungle took the buildings and Ramone Alley the alleys between them. The Beasts who argued it out are still around to say what was meant.

The Grey Year

The Edge came in for the first time. The Grey came down the old road and over the outer Beasthoods, and the first Shapes followed. The old-timers remember it, and every Beasthood carries what it did that year:

• Faded Heights, highest and most looked at, drew the first great Shape, and half the ridge faded. Cortado Cafe brought them back one Beast at a time, calling each name over a cup of the Heights Order, all night. The ridge has dressed itself and its terraces in softer colours ever since, and named itself for the scar.
• Trusty Lake Estates shut its gates, and the Grey passed over. Concrete Jungle Beasts who came for shelter were turned away.
• The Beastro fed everyone who reached the avenue, from every side of every quarrel, and earned its rule: everyone eats.
• The Meadows walked out past the Last Post to bring the lost home, and still does.
• Champions Court runners carried word between cut-off Beasthoods. The relay is older than the scoreboard.
• One Beasthood did not come back. The Grey took its name first, so the Beastside can't say it. Its people are waiting somewhere past the Edge for the name to be found. Its Marks turn up in patterns no Beasthood uses.

The Hush began that year, among Beasts who saw that the still estates had come through untouched. When the Grey had passed, at the year's end, their first circle shook on a bargain in the Vaults under what is now Bullhattan's Glass Lobby. A house would keep the name of any Beast who chose the quiet, so the world would stop calling on them. The first circle and the Vault keeper are still here, and the terms are the Vault keeper's to keep.

The year ended with the Long Night.

The Long Bright

Years of plenty and famous nights; lately, stranger ones, faster.

Now

Now began in June, when the Returner walked in from past the Edge with a paper packet of seeds and the Hum changed pitch. Since then:

• In late July the warm-month slack broke off halfway, and the Hum hasn't eased since, not even at a week's end.
• In late August the Pale Day took the colour out of Studio 66's street until the Studio's screens and the street brought it back.
• In late September came Lights Out: every lamp on the old road went dark in one night. Days later the Returner went back out.
• This autumn the Edge started moving: in at The Meadows one week, out the next. Posts hum, stretches of road go dark for days, and Shapes come in bigger.

The Hush, for years a few tired voices, is filling rooms, helped by the Labs' Proof last spring that Beasthoods that go quiet draw fewer Shapes. Most Beasts are still living loud, ordinary lives, but the theories are becoming sides.

Before Now

• Before anything: the Quiet. It left the Bones, the Marks and the Hum.
• Before anyone counted: the Gathering and the Boundary Disputes.
• Long ago: the Grey Year: the Heights faded and came back, Trusty Lake shut its gates, one Beasthood was lost, the Hush and the bargain, the Long Night.
• 60 years ago: the Raising of the Spire on the Vaults (Bullhattan).
• 50 years ago: the Drowned Spring: the Lake rose over the lower lawns and the Long Row began (Trusty Lake).
• 41 years ago: the Labs starts charting the Hum's week.
• 40 years ago: the Track That Moved: a hard shift in the Hum moved the ground under the old track (Champions Court).
• 20 years ago: the Thousand Zines: a thousand Beasts' private business pasted in a night; bands broke and better ones formed (Ramone Alley).
• 12 years ago: the Barter Chain: a pair of boots became a building in forty-two trades (Fort Flex).
• 6 years ago: the Reveal: the Jungle's first built the estates' oldest rooms (Concrete Jungle).
• 5 years ago: the Genie's Arrival: three deals changed three lives (Fort Flex).
• 3 years ago: the First Reel: a whole year cut to eight minutes (Studio 66).
• 2 years ago:
  • the 72-Hour Blackout: screens dark three days, files moved along the post line (Bullhattan);
  • the Understudy (The Odeon).
• 18 months ago: the Eleven Days: every bold call came off (WAGMI Way).
• 15 months ago: the Paper Summer: the Parks spoke only on paper (Nowhere Parks).
• 1 year ago: the Ghost in the Network: a hand-drawn map of how everything connects (Silicon Alley).
• 10 months ago: the Greenhouse Bloom: every pot flowered overnight, one kind of flower, gone by evening (L33T Labs).
• Last winter: the Feast That Lasted a Week (the Beastro).
• 8 months ago: the Root Network: every tree hummed for an hour (Gaia Grove).
• 7 months ago: the Shared Dream: seventeen strangers dreamed a door, then found it (Cloudy Gardens).
• 6 months ago: the Signal: one tone, forty-seven seconds; three strangers wrote one melody (Beat Street).
• Last spring:
  • the Quiet Proof (L33T Labs);
  • the Cup That Changed Everything (Cortado Cafe);
  • the Marathon: the last two crossed together (all twenty).
• 5 months ago: the Open Gate: the oldest estate open one day; visitors came out humming names (Trusty Lake).

Now

• June:
  • the Return: the Returner walked in with seeds and the Hum changed pitch (The Meadows);
  • the Blank Exhibition: the top artist hung nothing (MoBA).
• Late July: the warm-month slack broke off halfway; the Hum hasn't eased since.
• August: the Zine Week: every band made a zine about another band (Ramone Alley).
• Late August: the Pale Day: the Grey came down the old road and took the street's colour for a day (Studio 66).
• Late September:
  • Lights Out: every lamp on the old road went dark in one night;
  • the Returner went back out (The Meadows).
• This autumn: the Edge moving, posts humming, Shapes bigger, roads dark, the Hush filling rooms.

• The Beastside: the world.
• A Beasthood: one of the twenty peoples and their place.
• The Beasthood: the community ("Welcome to the Beasthood").
• A house: who first said your name back.
• An old-timer: here a long time.
• A Calling: a street saying a faded Beast's name until it holds.
• The Grey: the Quiet coming back.
• Shapes: things that settle on a Beast, a house or a block, and stay until the rite is done.
• The Kept Names: names given into keeping.
• "Stay Beast": I see you; keep going.