Akasora's next stop is to the desert world of MADEC, where his scans reveal the following description:

MADEC, like Deinste, is a desert world which is occasionally subject to torrential downpours at any random location. Madeccans carefully watch the skies and consult their various oracles to divine the direction of the next deluge, with varying levels of success. When the rains do come, they spur the growth of Madec's largest native plant, the tollendal tree. Tollendals rapidly absorb as much of the moisture as possible, and are capable of increasing in height by as much as 10 paces a day. In addition to providing the majority of the planet's food, tollendals serve an important symbolic purpose to Madeccan society. Whoever can climb the tallest-growing tollendal is acclaimed as monarch of all they survey. The privileges of that position are to a large extent honorary, but chief among them is the high-climber's desirability as a mating partner. This is to be enjoyed while it lasts, because once the nearby water has all been consumed, tollendals inevitably collapse and die. Madeccans preserve the vegetable matter as best they can, and wait for the next rainfall to bring them, perhaps, a new ruler.

This inspires the following haiku through his advanced neural network circuitry to encapsulate the world:

Desert's whimsy blooms,
Monarchs climb for love's allure,
Mating dance in rain.

Willy Minmax finds a promising new market on Pomacea, whose appearance-obsessed people will surely value a convenient means of projecting illusions.  He's right -- many of them buy a holoemitter for their front door to display a perfect copy of some au-courant style.  They aren't trusting enough to attempt cloaking their personal appearance with an emitter, though.  The masks stay on at all times.  Willy does manage to sell a few Orla holos as well, and resolves to return to Pomacea someday when he has a more extensive library.  Historical recordings from Asanthus are not popular here.

Akasora's journey resumes as his surly ship finally reveals a reachable system, the bizarre gas world of STÎNGĂ.

To Akasora, there are no words that will do to capture the ki of this oddball planet but the following:

Gas giant's laughter,
AIs in sitcom limbo,
Inspectors juggle.

The next leg of Willy Minmax's travels brings him to the ruined world of Asanthus.  There he solemnly records as much as he can of that civilization's tragic history, and promises to carry these recordings across the galaxy to preserve their culture.  He takes just a moment to ponder how their culture was effectively destroyed by a new invention, but doesn't let that stop him from taking his own invention to yet another star system.

The navigation equipment playing tricks on Akasora, he decides to debug its systems, digging deep into its databanks to discover what worlds it has hidden. To do access this, he uses the following haiku:

Silent circuits hum,
Binary ballet unfolds,
Worlds in code unlocked.

Willy Minmax takes his profits from Anagnastou and gambles on a destination about which he's heard whispered exciting tales:  VENTURA.  Will he be able to purchase Paraíbite there?  The possibility of gaining paranormal abilities is perhaps too much to even dare dream about.  As it turns out, Willy could buy a small sample of Paraíbite, but only at the cost of selling his spaceship and its entire contents to boot.  He decides that the risk of losing everything is too great, since even a superpowered person on Ventura would not necessarily be special enough to easily get that money back.  Maybe someday when he's really rich, he can return to Ventura for another chance at metahumanity.

Akasora's navigational equipment failing him, he relies on instructing his vessel to recalibrate through ... of course, a haiku!

Starlight whispers lost,
Cosmic dance of wires entwined,
Recalibrate fate.

Willy Minmax makes his way to icy Anagnostou, where citizens must "freeze" whenever the Father is present.  Attempting to fool the Father with a hologram seems like an unnecessary risk, but there's no law against pranking one's neighbors!  Willy convinces a few that arranging a holoemitter in just the right place might convince a target that the Father is approaching, causing them to also remain motionless until they catch on to the gag.  Watching the fun from a nearby window (and a few negotiable galactic bonds) is all the payment that Willy requires.

Akasora sets a course for NONAGAMA and his scan reveals the following:

NONAGAMA is still technically a democracy, but their civilization has essentially been ruined by the election of a marvelous speaker who convinced them to make some extremely unwise investments. They are now indebted to Osoriots from one sector away, for a total amount that exceeds their gross planetary income for the next century or so. Nevertheless, the architect of this economic catastrophe is still in office, and his personal finances do not seem to have been adversely affected. His oratorical ability suffices to convince the Nonagamans that it's all someone else's fault, and everything will eventually turn out fine.

His finely-tuned neural nets translate this into the following haiku:

Debts in sweet speeches,
Ruined by unwise choices,
Blame echoes through halls.

In orbit around Orla, Willy Minmax does not succeed in selling many holoemitters, because most of the artists in residence do not have resources to spare.  They are enthusiastic about the capability to record Orla's splendor, though, and perhaps convey just a fraction of the ecstasy it inspires when seen up close.  Willy sees only the profit to be made from selling this image, and the amusing potential of his customers surprising others with a hologram so convincing it makes one want to pack their things and move to Orla.  He takes his time to produce an image of surpassing fidelity, then ponders his next destination.

The darkness. the gloom. the ennui. the brain clutter. I'm trying to rewrite the article about "grow your audience with surveys." I'm so bored I don't have a pulse rate.
I went into Ted's craft room. he was sitting in front of the computer, listening to Janet Jackson sing "Control." I wouldn't have thought he was a Janet Jackson fan, but hey. I shut the door. 
"Ted, I need you to do me a favor."

"what." 
"I need you to shake me by the shoulders as hard as possible and scream into my face as loudly as you can." 
"are you sure?"
"positive." 

he shook me by the shoulders and screamed at the top of my lungs until his face was red.  I sliced a finger across my throat, and he stopped, giggling wildly. 

"thank you." 

I'm gonna listen to Jethro Tull's RökFlöte now. Maybe that'll help. 

The Sunderlish entrepreneur Willy Minmax decides to try taking his business and his native heritage to the stars.  He purchases a used transport and loads it up with a full supply of his fabulously successful invention, the portable holoemitter.  This gadget allows anyone to project a lifelike image of any object from an affordably-priced device that fits in the palm of one's hand.  On Sunderland, it has been the source of countless pranks.  A predatory animal can appear almost anywhere.  Ghosts and monsters are also good for jump-scares.  More devious pranksters have contrived to put the holoemitter in a victim's bathroom, where it subsequently presents an image of their mother at perhaps an embarrassing moment.  Willy has sold millions of these devices, but the market on his home planet is saturated, so he needs to move on.  The poets of Orla seem to be potential customers, so off he goes.  Arriving at the massive gas giant, he acknowledges the planet's beauty, but the ever-practical practical joker does not succumb to its siren call.  Instead, it gives him a perfectly wonderful awful idea.

1. Dragonbones.net was down for a while.
2. Contacting my web hosting provider for support pretty much always results in "To fix that problem, I would recommend paying $5 more per month so that you get upgraded service on..." and that makes me supremely angry.
3. So I did a bunch of Googling and some FTPing and then finally, some code editing.
4. Dragonbones.net is back online!

Not going to lie - it's been a long since I've done something that felt so outside my wheelhouse. Feels pretty damn good.

[From rwinder]

Consider the world of TERRIS…

TERRIS is so distant from its sun that its surface is almost entirely snow and ice. Its hardy inhabitants are firm believers in democracy, but their politics are of a very agressive sort. Every citizen has one vote, which must be cast according to the will of the last person to defeat that citizen in a government-scheduled martial arts tournament.  There is therefore a great deal of societal emphasis on learning how to fight. Hardly anyone will publicly admit to having an interest in any science not directly related to their combative skills. In secret, however, many people of Terris learn other ways to improve their world, and they teach these subjects to others in private. It is considered impolite to wonder who provides the hydroponic gardens and fusion reactors necessary to support life on Terris.

The martial arts academia of TERRIS have promoted the discipline of encoding secret knowledge, encapsulated in the elegant form of haiku. Its masters study their opponents and craft a haiku that captures their ki. It has been used by many a tournament winner to turn the tide of a bout, the rival's haiku spoken before a final blow is landed.

The spymasters of TERRIS now seek to apply this at a grander scale, sending spies to other worlds to understand them and return the haiku that capture's ki of an entire world.

Thus a single pilot known only as Akasora has been sent on a pod for the journey that may cover many lives. As such, Akasora is secretly an artificial intelligence in an android body, given rigorous neural training to take all he observes and transmit back the haiku that will grant TERRIS advantage over the many worlds in the galaxy.

Unbeknownst to his masters, Akasora has already captured his homeworld’s ki in just such a haiku:

Frozen ballots cast,
Warrior's dance shapes the vote,
Secrets beneath snow.

He sets out to ŠENAUER which requires no great expenditure of fuel, arriving there, his study of the planet reveals…

ŠENAUER retains aspects of a feudal society even though it is far more urban than agricultural. What land does remain under cultivation belongs to just three noble families with roots in Šenauer's ancient history. Each extended family is quite inbred, and they have taken their characteristic features as signs of their nobility. Hence the Brada clan strives to breed for ever more prominent chins, the Uši family aims to have the world's longest ears, and the Obrve pride themselves on extravagently large eyebrows. Appreciation for these features is not universal, however, and indeed Šenaueri frequently insult each other with rude nicknames referencing their exaggerated parts. One trait that well serves any inhabitant of Šenauer is a (metaphorically) thick skin.

Through his neural pathways, the ki of ŠENAUER emerges as:

Feudal traits adorned,
Exaggerated grandeur,
Mockery veiled thick.