POST-EPILOGUE CASSIOPEIA

Originally written in February of 2023.

though i think it’s an idea they all waved around privately for months, i think the concrete moment these three guys decided they wanted to stay together forever and ever was sometime during the control room expedition funnily enough, whilst they were waiting for dalisay and the rest of the team to return. after olzhas was incapable of giving further telepathic pointers, they turned to conversing about post-train life as a way to inspire hope amongst themselves and also generally pass the time. 

i’ve mentioned this a lot i feel but for clarity’s sake: isel was particularly paranoid about returning to his home in boston, still fearful of invoking the fornax scientists’ ire, and so the discussion came down to whether everyone would go over to freya or olja’s old residence. there was also the option of just finding somewhere completely random to go to for a fresh start but none of them were particularly fond of the idea for numerous reasons… regardless olzhas confesses e’d only want to visit italy briefly for sentimental purposes, not really having any active ties to anyone back there. and with this it’s decided that london is kind of the new ‘base’ of cassiopeia, considering freya’s still quite close to thons family and also thons girlfriend, lacey, lives nearby. 

following this decision, which was basically the only serious one to them, they get into far sillier talk and run through a few plans for life… most relevantly someone jokingly proposes starting up a band and they all realise they’re super into it. they end up talking abstractly and vaguely about the kind of music they’d make and even work out some really simple compositions just by humming some tunes out and drumming on the floor hehe. they decide on the placeholder name ‘majesty’ for the band, though it’s more of a tongue-in-cheek placeholder. their joviality is cut short once olzhas detects some thoughts on the other side of the control room, and then further following faris’ intrusion… at this point everyone’s distracted and it’s only when dalisay hirself returns and explains everything that the three manage to relax, whatever, they do further rejoice in the bittersweet atmosphere and get excited about these aforementioned living plans genuinely being viable now.

some shit happens in like the week between the control room being ‘regained’ and people starting to leave but i dont think any of it is relevant to cassiopeia in particular. they are so nonchalant and unaffected by anything that doesnt have to do with them <3

so freya leaves the train prior to the other two… there’s a fairly extensive routine thon goes through like the entire day prior to thons departure. i imagine thon takes a while to talk things out with the fornax ghosts and wish them well, morbidly commenting on their future loneliness but encouraging them to talk to demeter some more, as a fellow fornaxgazer… thon also talks some serious things out with isel and olzhas mostly in the realm of thanking them for supporting thon throughout the train journey, acknowledging that thon wouldn’t have coped socially without isel to guide thon at first and that thon could’ve easily succumbed to paranoia were it not for thons friendship with the two of them. isel and olzhas also just thank thon kindly for thons jovialness and support… sweet words passed all around. then once out of energy they all just retreat to olzhas’ place and get wasted and they play cards and billiards and whatever until they all pass out. afterward they spend most of the following day just quietly chatting and discussing the upcoming few months and once again being all sentimental. like really sentimental. when the time comes for freya to properly leave olzhas and isel completely drown thon in good luck wishes and reminders and they all hug for like a solid minute it’s a rouuuugh depart.

so isel and olja themselves just feel a bit dejected over being left without freya, both deeming the train too quiet without thon. they spend their far lonelier three-ish remaining train days talking briefly to people like val and faris but otherwise they mostly philosophise between themselves and try to come to terms with taking another big step in their lives… olzhas is nervous about returning to earth in general but e’s soothed by isel’s presence, and overall they’re like. genuinely thrilled they get to have the time and space to properly reestablish their relationship. 

quick detour the reason they didn’t all just leave together is because freya did want the chance to meet up with thons family and girlfriend alone in advance, both just for privacy’s sake and so that thon could warn them about the two stupid men coming in to live with thon LOL. moreover olzhas wanted to visit eir old living quarters to see what ‘became of em’ and to kind of… ‘test’ if anyone cared about eir disappearance, and e did want to get it over and done with as fast as possible… so there’s a bit of a split between freya and those two guys for a while, but this break doesn’t even last a week because they’re too attached to one another haha. anyway going over the latter first because it’s briefer

isel and olzhas eventually do disembark and spend some time in venice, maybe like two or three nights at most — at first olzhas does drag isel over to eir old home, uhh long story short in the 22nd century a popular cheap form of living quarters were just cramped apartment complexes that involved rooms bigger on the inside than outside. and because so many can be made and maintained effortlessly there’s usually no push for refurbishing or whatever, and so olzhas’ place remained fully intact just as e left it but they only spend like the first night there and immediately leave the following morning because e fucking hates being there LOL. nobody seems to care e’s returned either, between both this complex and the surrounding area, which e’s kind of bitter about but also kind of triumphant about. wanting to avoid anxiety related to the place, olzhas leads isel on to a hotel nearby and they rest there for the remainder of their stay. they do some sightseeing to pass the time, particularly around quainter areas like parks but in the end, basically the only notable visit they partake in is going over to the restaurant olzhas used to work at. it’s honestly pretty pleasant because a lot of eir old co-workers were like some of the only people e respected at the time and most of them do recognise olzhas and wish em well. isel is repeatedly complimented throughout the night and feels flattered about it. this little rendezvous is also where olzhas deploys the first instructed lie about fornax on ulises and everyone else’s behalf, which leads to a mild inkblot of gossip about fornax spreading. simultaneous to a renewed wave of interest in fornax all the way in england. kind of weird how that happened lol what crazy timing.

something something that’s completely because of freya hehe. and now it’s time to go over what thon’s been doing.

so in the meanwhile of all that, thon’s been quite busy. thon’s first journey after getting back from the train was actually returning to wales where thon’s family lives. upon thons arrival thon spent like hours just going over fornax in as much detail as thon could muster, completely truthfully. thon demands everyone keep this information a secret, which… isn’t that tough a favor actually considering thon had already kind of established a potential need for secrecy back when thon first announced thon was leaving for the train. thon spends the night at thons parents’ place, though is barely able to sleep. thon’s emotions kind of caught up to thon just now, and thon’s mostly just mourning the fact thon’ll never get to talk to lusine and cas and all the other fornax ghosts :+( thon tries to think about isel and olzhas instead and hopes they’re doing alright. thon only manages to fall asleep like WELL past midnight and so spends most of the day asleep, awakening in the evening and slowly recooperating with the world around thon. though initially wanting to ‘get to work’ first thing thon decides to take the entire day as a repose, moving all of thon’s plans for the day to tomorrow.

now slightly less discordant, freya travels back to thons flat in london the next morning, and starts alerting thons friends in the area about thons ‘rebirth’. the first matter of business is, naturally, thon reconciling with lacey, and only later with other acquaintances… overall there’s not much drama stirred in anyone’s mind since, uh, over the years freya’s had a huge habit of just randomly vanishing for weeks and resurfacing like nothing’s gone wrong, often whilst doing thons hobbyist investigations into weird magical phenomena. save for lacey who thon tells the entire truth to, freya deploys the first strain of the fornax lie to thons london contacts, offering some ghastly scenarios to start a detract in any remaining train interest — among these are depicting the fornax ghosts as malicious, superhuman and capable of altering the physical world, along with extended lies about the remaining train passengers being dead, etc. it’s all apparently believable enough for everyone to give thon some ‘space to process things’ and leave thon alone momentarily, which makes thon reflect on doing too good a fibbing job. thon realises this is advantageous though and again focuses on readjusting to earth. the next day lacey also comes down from scotland for an extended visit, helping freya out and also updating thon on casual occurances. around here is when isel and olzhas arrive in venice and so they get into contact through magic calls and whatever, everything feels significantly easier to deal with now that they can talk to one another again and now that they all know they’re ok…

after the three-ish day stay in italy, isel and olzhas embark on the worldwide train network to finally meet up with freya. there’s some kind of delay or something idgaf why, but i DO think it’s funny if they both just show up at thons doorstep at like 5 in the morning. just the most annoying possible time to integrate themselves into thons space. once again none of them get any sleep both because they’re too joyous about seeing one another again and also because lacey keeps on prodding them for questions. xe’s mostly doing it in jest because xe trusts freya’s judgement but xe’s like fascinated by how these two random guys just became freya’s closest confidants in the span of two-ish years. mutual respect is quickly formed however especially following the divulge of the entire band plan… lacey’s been doing music xirself for the past few years and has xir own music group back home, xe spends the night giving them advice and whatnot, hastily noted down by olzhas at like seven in the morning. eventually freya spares e and isel the couch and they all finally go to mfing. sleep.

over the following days freya officially makes the decision to retire from figure skating in the interest of pursuing music, something that thon’s been thinking about since thon arrived to the train basically lol. without the solid constraint of being near venues and also in the interest of figuring out a more comfortable living solution in terms of both privacy and space, thon aims to move to a quieter part of england. though the plan was just for the three of them to live near each other at first it properly morphed into rooming together for the forseeable future for. a multitude of reasons. in the midst of this search for a place lacey leaves to attend to xir own musical obligations, though wishes everyone luck and remains in contact.

eventually they do find a place with sufficient rooms for everyone and also a potential extra space for a makeshift studio… it works as a pseudo simulation of the train environment which is honestly what they were looking for all along and so they ride out there and set everything up real slow. preliminary part of this is kind of boring, what’s interesting to me is that over the next few weeks they all adopt a nocturnal-ish sleeping schedule because they’re struggling to adjust to earth time still. they’ve also just got an ample reserve of coins they summoned from the train to keep themselves afloat but they’ve all been looking into odd jobs they can partake in as a just-in-case… funnily enough the first of them to find anything is isel who inscribes himself into radiowork again with ease.

but once they’ve all formed their weird little routine they actually set to work on the very thing they aimed to do! music! their first ep is a shoddy experimental thing they record in their home studio but it’s enough to garner some attention, particularly on tessellis where they kind of play into the whole “ohhh people who came back from fornax making DEEP music about it!!!! what could this mean” for publicity’s sake lol. from here on out i don’t know where the chronology really goes, but i think barring some early day stuff they mostly publish their music independently and so it’s a bit rough at first until they get some proper attention. i also think they do some local improvised plays in cafes and whatever, where they kind of lean into a more jazz sound, this does a lot for them early on… they also revisit figuring out a proper name for their band around this time, in the end nothing feels quite right beyond just unearthing ‘cassiopeia’ and reusing that as a collective name. fits like a glove for everyone because they’re too nostalgic for their own good.

ANYWAY. to get to actual music details

because the band started off as a very self-expressive brainchild of three guys with eclectic tastes, in the end their basic genre is a weird blend of metal and funk with a Lot of prog elements. freya and isel particularly love to get weird with time signatures and they love arranging fucked up overly technical solos, often with heavy resemblance to classical compositions. meanwhile olzhas kind of contributes a thicker ‘backbone’ to what’d otherwise be very floaty, jumpy odd-paced melodies, mostly originating from a favorable regard for ska lol.

overall the prominent division between them is a power trio format — with freya designated to drums, olzhas to bass and isel to keys. for generic equipment info i’ll say: freya plays mixed electric-acoustic drums and heavily incorporates weird accessories that thon makes excessive use of for even basic rhythms and fills; olzhas is most ‘in eir element’ with a 5-string electric bass, but may alternate between special 4 or 6-string ones from time to time; isel just uses a simple lone workstation synth that samples a bunch of other keyboard sounds, mostly for ‘keeping stationary’ purposes and convenience. this kind of describes the most ‘consistent’ designation but everyone’s also picked up a handful of other instruments that they’ll tack onto random bits of songs, often without regard for conventional playing styles or in the context of weird impromptu instrument mods. overall i’d say they’re all extremely competent instrumentalists, especially later on when they figure out a proper sound for themselves…

among aforementioned alternate plays — often recorded during improv jam sessions and then sliced up for proper sampling in songs — is the frequent involvement of distinct diversions in given weapons of choice. so to speak. in freya’s case it’s often messing with random parts of thons drum kit, whether striking drums from strange angles or messing with added peripherals like mark trees, tambourines, bongos and the occasional gong hits. for olzhas it’s somewhat more split off from what e usually does, since e’s a multinstrumentalist with proficiency in instruments that exclusively cannot be played at the same time LOL. but the most frequent variablility in eir arsenal comes with em playing 12-string chapman stick or tenor sax. e’ll also play basic electric guitar from time to time but e usually finds it boring, and usually just prefers playing the bass lead style instead. uhh most of the variation on isel’s end is really just with the sounds he’s got going on, though he sometimes switches over to a keytar for fun or like. he’ll just reel out a xylophone or some other adjacent simple percussive shit… but yeah they all like messing around with basically anything they can get their hands on

occasionally additional hands will get brought on board just for the fun of it… lacey does play the electric guitar and is sometimes called in for more traditional guitar playing and solos, which is literally like xir bread and butter… rarely xe’ll do a classic rhythm/lead division alongside olzhas. peixin also collaborates with them from time to time, especially when they’re trying to write more electronic stuff, but they and isel tend to step on one another’s toes and so it’s more of a back-and-forth type beat between songs than collaborative for them. he has better synergy with somsak, who has a similar approach to the keys but is often more experimental with the sounds they use… they also connect well with olzhas because of the shared ska adoration. valerie’s called on for violin work, and is quite adamant about physically travelling over to these guys’ place for the fun of it each time hehe. she’s fond of joining in the improvised jam stuff! uhhhh dalisay sometimes gets sent demos and may point out bits that are really lame or really good — sie’s regarded as cassiopeia’s most earnest critic and so the big stuff absolutely hits hir first for review lol they’re forging that shit in fire… sie also likes to arrange midis from time to time which sie has no personal use for and thus sends em over to these guys to mess with.

though a huge part of their repository has a basis in pure instrumentals i think an equal share of their discography contains vocals… isel is probably the closest thing they’ve got to a ‘lead singer’ — overall his voice is very versatile, he sounds nice in relaxed slow arrangements, more high energy prog-ish stuff, whatever, he can do anything and it’s cool. that being said the other two make fairly frequent contributions in this realm too. freya handles more intense songs because thon’s the insane one that can switch between death growls and scooby doo chase scene noises at the drop of a hat, though more subduedly thon often supports isel’s main vocals with thons tougher backing ones. conversely olzhas doesn’t like the ‘raw’ sound of eir voice particularly and indulges heavily in the use of vocoders and talkboxes, intentionally harkening to a very robotic quality… though e can also oscillate between nice smooth vocals and kind of edgier metal-based screams, which i imagine e gets more confident about as time goes on.

overall there’s a lot of variation in the written style of their lyrics, though naturally they like going for very fancy metaphorical abstract stories that may or may not have some obscure interconnections. i imagine a lot of their albums are concept albums or straight up rock operas whilst others are more vague or just ‘theme-based’ with no clear story. and sometimes they make songs that directly recycle disconnected branches to make new coherent narratives. it’s fun to me. the actual writing process differs from album to album, though it’s usually collaborative — which can refer to either approach of penning every song together the whole way through or ‘dividing’ songs between people to work on individually.

to get into specifics… or rather just loose ideas i have because i think they’re funny/cool

releases:

— the cassiopeia message: the debut ep! ~5 songs, 2 or 3 of them instrumentals, extremely jazzy sound with some hints of classic rock. there’s also a circus music section somewhere. vaguely about the experience of being on fornax but it’s very abstract and kind of indecipherable, kind of thing where if you didn’t know of their past you wouldn’t pick up on the metaphors they’re crafting. strange focus on incorporating windchimes.

— the onomatopeia signal: follow up to the message, completely instrumental and iterating on those particular aspects of the former. more metal-y quality is established though, with a bigger focus on harsher key setups and rougher, more abrasive recordings of both drums and bass. there’s only around 6 songs but they’re real long and so it’s technically cassiopeia’s first proper album.

— the automorph: completely isolated and random concept album about a strange beast unearthing itself from the core of the earth and trying to fly to the heavens. there’s some allegory to be made with this and cassiopeia’s meta role in ccs but whether they’re self-aware about it or not who knows. uhhh this is probably the most outright pre-90s prog album they’ve ever made, very rush-esque with a huge focus on synths and a dreamy, nebulous sound with songs that are maybe too long for their own good. this is like the most ‘music for fantasy elfs’ their songs get. very contentious in the cassiopeia community honestly it’s kind of like what falling into infinity is for dream theater

— isolated abstractly: more or less the first album to reach any kind of renown. kind of a rewrite of the cassiopeia message which more directly and intentionally confronts the train, the sound is also ‘tougher’ and transitions between sections of songs are more abrupt, giving everything a more solid prog metal feel… to give an idea of what i mean the general style of btbam is what i have in mind for this era. each song is titled ‘chapter x: title’ like ‘chapter 1: old stage directions’ ‘chapter 2: thaumatrope’ etc and there are like 10 songs in total, with a division of 3 songs for each member meant to resemble their inner monologues during random parts of fornax’s chronology, and then a really long finale song that’s more or less a medley of the whole album. the ‘3 songs for each person’ refers to both a members presence in the narrative album and the actual writing process — for example freya wrote one song for thonself and then isel wrote a song mimicking thons style in thons pov, then olzhas did that too, and thus the triad is complete. repeat for the three of them overall, and then the aforementioned finale was a collaborative effort. this is the album with maybe the most limited array of random musical breakdowns, there is only one sax solo in this entire thing and that’s ludicrous for these guys. this is regarded as a huge classic… probably the entry point for a lot of early fans.

— evoking me i and evoking you ii: double album (overall known as evoking us) with the first half written by freya, focusing on a heavy death metal sound. the latter half is penned by isel and transforms the earlier foundation into a very traditional 80s rock style with some disco influence. doesn’t really have a particular story or anything that is like mentioned ‘officially’ but the lyrics are often interpreted to describe a strange murder scene and subsequent séance, truly the two of them just wrote that shit out to confuse people because they thought it’d be funny. uhhh its an extremely well-liked album overall.

— cyanocitta with a j: a highly technical bass-centric ep mostly written out by olzhas :+) kind of meant to be a successor to evoking us though it’s not too related in a meta manner; it’s more about the two being written around the same time and the production of this being a recompense to olzhas considering eir narrow involvement in composing the last album lol. but anyway cyanocitta embodies probably the heaviest uninterrupted funk sound in their discography and also features the first time olzhas has sung without any odd filtering. songs have a very ‘late night serenade’ feel with a lot of crooning and romantic lyrics, though are overall mostly plotless… it’s a complete diverge in sound from everything cassiopeia’s written before (barring a few subsections of songs that had a similar quality) but it’s pretty well-liked.

— the cosmorama dialogues: extremely particular and niche concept album that has a very… metafictitious skeleton. it revolves around each member of cassiopeia interrupting one another and swerving individual songs into a completely random genre of their liking every other minute — the transitions oscillate between being extremely harsh and extremely graceful, though overall the mixed and discordant nature of the music is embraced. regarded as a pioneering album in 22nd century prog and though its super esoteric to new listeners it’s regarded as a huge fan favorite.

— as the pulse: heavily instrumental album, though there’s a heavy use of operatic and spliced vocals, mostly used to accentuate melodies rather than deliver coherent lyrics… it’s kind of ghostly. the elusive obsession with windchimes returns here, every song cyclically beginning and ending with a back-and-forth strike of chimes. this one is dedicated to ‘an old friend’ and was distributed with the description of being a very ‘introspective’ album made for private listening.

— okkave yeovas: concept album about the titular character okkave, a person capable of astral projection who attempts to travel to the sun each time they sleep. whilst flying out one night they spot an asteroid in the far distance, and use this information to save humanity from extinction. it’s a return to a quieter jazzy sound, though as the album progresses there’s a higher emphasis placed on loud abrasive sounds and more frantic compositions, at one point turning into proper ska. probably regarded as swell, though it’s not a magnum opus of theirs or anything.

i’m having too much fun coming up with these i’m cutting it off here but there’s absolutely a lot more tunes they make as time goes on. they love what they do a lot… uhh there’s also probably a lot of ‘solo’ stuff i might come up with solid names for later on, and similarly i think they’re quite public about demos and ‘process’ recordings. i also imagine there’s a ‘supergroup’ type deal going on between cassiopeia, lacey’s band and somsak because that’s fun to me.

i imagine though they get like. a lot of media attention for just being Fornax Guys it’s kind of dismissive of their actual work which is made for a very specific niche of people, they naturally don’t give a shit about being accessible to average consumers haha. they spend a lot of time actually subverting that imposed train-centric image and being cynical about their false notoriety. they’re also just like playfully contemptful to their audience in general, often hyperbolising the meaning of their albums to encourage speculation and though unbenknownst to the public of course, playing up certain parts of the train journey just to fuck with people. like i think freya’s got a fucking. weird bjork type presence and will like casually talk about being ‘haunted’ by the fornax ghosts and still trying to make sense of old visions, citing them as inspirations for certain songs while in reality they were probably just the result of thon and olja getting high and writing up lyrics about a wizard or whatever. conversely isel and olzhas like to exagerrate their divorce and constantly allude to ‘old tensions’ and ‘painful memories’ which like, kind of true but they’re way more elusive and grandiose about it than what’s accurate and it is kind of a mutual joke the both of them hehe.

in spite of that i think just generally they always stay kind of underground. like they’re big names in their major genres and of course the fornax thing never escapes them but beyond that they’ve got a quaint presence that isn’t too harsh on them and people aren’t too invasive thankfully… gonna say like four or five years following their debut they do get to doing live performances which is where a lot of their image independent of fornax starts to settle. they become known for like kind of glam-based costuming and equivalently eccentric performances, often involving aforementioned collaborators and once more heavily involving random improvised breaks! though they rely on like. editing a lot in-studio just in terms of overlaying instruments and whatever i think they come up with fun reinterpretations of certain bits of songs and kind of insist on delivering an ‘alternate experience’ rather than just playing barebones recorded samples… i also like to think they do the whole official bootleg thing of concerts where they just distribute that shit freely. it’s befitting i think

thats all that comes to mind….