#National Worship of Tools Day

[floridaboiler]

[murderousink23]

03/11/2024 is Commonwealth Day 🌎, Ramadan ☪️🌎, World Plumbing Day 🚽🌎, Malsenitsa 🇷🇺, National Oatmeal Nut Waffles Day 🇺🇸, National Worship of Tools Day 🔧🇺🇸, National 311 Day 🇺🇸, National Promposal Day 🇺🇸, Key Deer Awareness Day 🇺🇸, National Napping Day 💤🇺🇸

[shuttershocky]

Chadley, or as fellow vinesauce vinny fans refer to him; Chudley

(Currently in Chapter 6 of Rebirth so no spoilers please)

As fun as it is to meme about him I actually really like Chadley's character. They've made him a proper extension of some of the themes of FF7.

Chadley was a creation of Hojo and meant to be a research tool for Shinra that they own. However, whatever he saw in there was so horrific he apparently broke free of his own programming and began sneaking into the Undercity looking to aid resistance groups by arming them with Materia and training them with a stolen Shinra combat simulator. It's very little wonder then that he's taken a liking to Cloud, (who claims to be) an ex-SOLDIER who's now bombing Mako reactors.

Rebirth pushes that forward, expanding on Chadley's role both to explore more about his character and the world itself. Rather than just collecting battle data for Avalanche, he's also collecting data about the nations that Shinra subjugated, attempting to preserve the history of the peoples that Midgar destroyed in war. Lifesprings are Mako springs that Shinra can't mine because they give too little energy, but they contain records about the history of the world and thus are important to study. The Summons, who are now the old gods of Kalm, Junon, Corel, etc, aren't just there to be cool optional bosses, you're encouraged to explore their hidden shrines to learn more about their mythologies and why they were worshiped by the people before Shinra came.

Yes, the reason why you go around looking for Shrines of the old gods is because it makes your Summons stronger which in turn makes you more powerful in combat and not the world history Chadley finds, but in strengthening you through these minigames Rebirth states that the preservation of histories, of the old beliefs of the locals, is in itself an act of resistance.

You see the windmills at Kalm that the people used for power before Shinra occupied Kalm to force them into using Midgar's Mako reactors for power, then later help an engineer relearn how to fix the windmills implying a future where Kalm will one day stand on their own again.

You see from both old NPCs teaching kids and the Lifesprings Chadley studies that Junon was once a republic of seafaring peoples that built a floating city before Shinra went to war with them for their land, sinking the original Junon and building a fortress on the coast with a massive gun pointed at Wutai, subjugating Junon both to expand their Mako reactors and to enable them to go to war with yet another country. Junon seems to be truly dead, however there's still pieces of the old Junon left in the Undercity, where a dolphin still patrols the Mako poisoned coastline to care for Junon's people. To further symbolize Junon's hope for the future, Junon's old god is the Phoenix, a literal symbol of death and rebirth, to show that even if their city is sunk and a second Midgar built on top of them, Junon will be back someday.

All of this, from a character originally conceived to be a summons materia shop in Remake. I really like what Rebirth's done with him.

It is also extremely funny that he installs a digital assistant into Cloud's devices without the latter knowing and it's just him in a twintails wig. That he then gets insanely jealous of.

[lovesickeros]

lord its so dark in here the sahara desert of tsaritsa content you are like a shining oasis. your characterisation of her compels me & mihoyo would be hard pressed to top it imo.!! caaaaan i humbly request yr thoughts on her first meeting w a reader of any kind, or maybe even multiple kinds (sagau, sagau god au, isekai, etc) if you so desire...

it really is like a desert here. being the fan of a character we aren't getting until the last damn nation is driving me up a wall but i will persevere bc if nothing else i support morally bankrupt women in media. we r in a severe drought over here but i do my best. unfortunately nothing i say is ever coherent so pull out your translation notes its abt 2 be messy

also this got out of hand but thats bc first meetings w the tsaritsa are tricky to write + a LOT of her characterization lies in deeper exploration then just surface level yknow...NOT A DIG AT YOU this is just my excuse for rambling. gently pats the tsaritsa she can hold so much complexity i do not have the word count to delve into it completely :]

gonna talk cult au for a bit here though because that's 99% of my content. and honestly? she thrives in sub au's of the cult au like villain au + imposter au. it's basically made for her. i mean, early days, the imposter au had been going around for a little while but one of the first few ideas was the Fatui taking reader in so like. it kinda technically actually was. pretty sure cult au Tsaritsa popped up because of the imposter au. a lot of it's writers kinda left though which. man am i getting old or.

anyway.

there isn't much of a chance her first impression is all that positive. at best it's usually neutral, imo, but rarely if ever positive. specifically because i view the Tsaritsa as someone who isn't as fanatical as most of the acolytes typically are towards the creator. she's not exactly going to worship the ground you walk on unlike a certain geo lizard. which is partially why i think she thrives in the sub au's i mentioned.

imposter au, for example. she meets you at your lowest. there's no gaudy extravagance or pampering from the acolytes waiting for you because your own acolytes have turned on you. for all intents and purposes you aren't a "god" at all. which is why i don't think she meshes well with normal cult au reader. the Fatui are made up of outcasts, basically, and imposter au slots right in just perfectly. you're weak, at your lowest, when you meet the Fatui in the imposter au. and the Fatui can help you, too.

a mutual exchange, really. the Tsaritsa sees a tool she can use to one up the rest of the nations and especially Archons, and she has no qualms about you using her and the Fatui in turn. you both want something out of it, after all. whether you just want to be safe from the rest of the acolytes, or you want revenge, or whatever else..she'll give you the power to fulfill it, and she gains the strongest piece on the chessboard when all is said and done.

the best way i can describe the first meeting is "practical", i suppose. she sees an opportunity in you. the ultimate gamble. because if she "saves" you, and you dont trust anyone else because they tried to kill you, well..she holds all the cards, doesn't she?

but the Tsaritsa, imo, is just as capable of being just as fanatical towards you as anyone else. she just won't worship you as the creator. but as yourself? clawing your way back to your divine power and taking back what belongs to you? the Tsaritsa is, to me, a character who's character flourishes in long-term fics more because she changes a LOT between "just met reader" and after having been with reader for some time. she's practically apathetic at the beginning but a lot of her character, in my characterization, shines through LONG after the first meeting.

[greenmansgrove]

To Worship a War Goddess in the Modern Era

This devotional writing is dedicated to the Great Queens, Na Morrígna, She who has called me to service. Inspired by a nightmare, this writing is offered to uphold an exchange. May these words aid not in teaching others how to think, but in learning to listen.

One thing since being called by the Morrigan that I’ve had difficulty resolving is the Morrigan’s being a war goddess in the age of the military industrial complex, where wars, especially on the part of the US and other imperialist nations, are fought not for sovereignty or “defense,” like so many USAmericans are raised to believe. Authors on the Morrigan agree war has changed since the days of her worship among the Celts, but none I’ve found talk about what it means to worship her in the face of wars fought for unjust causes and for profit, or the fact that veterans are made forgotten victims instead of honored warriors, or in watching the genocide of the Palestinian people, among other ongoing injustices worldwide. I worry that sovereignty for the Morrigan is equated with imperialism, colonialism, and white supremacy, especially given some personal history interacting with devotees who themselves hold such values. Surely, with just how sick the land and its people are thanks to poverty, climate change, etc., the current “sovereigns” in power do not have the Morrigan’s blessing?

I admit I do not have all the answers or all the vocabulary to speak as strongly as I feel on this topic. As only an Acolyte still forging my relationship with the Morrigan, I am in the process of learning what worship of a war goddess in the modern age looks like. The Morrigan and her care have changed since ancient times, and they should. Her being able to do so speaks to the power of what she represents and the needs of the communities who call on her. Her complexity only grows in the modern age, especially in the face of global economies and imperialism, and as her worship is taken beyond the bounds of her homelands. Thus, I am left wondering how to consider or work with her warlike aspects.

In folklore, the Morrigan is often an antagonist, appears to fight for the “wrong” side, and starts wars out of nowhere. Authors like Courtney Weber (2019) and Stephanie Woodfield (2021) mention that we do not know for what purpose she started wars in ancient times, but both urge that the concepts of war and violence are complex not just to the Morrigan but to humanity. The Morrigan, by her very nature and actions across even her seemingly mortal lifetimes, is a goddess in the grey areas who rejects false binaries between life and death or war and peace. She teaches us not to believe in things blindly or warns us against simple stances on complex subjects. Jewish Witch, devotee of the Morrigan, and staunch anti-Zionist Asa West (2014) says, “The Morrígan implores us not to glorify war or reject all armed conflict on principle, but rather to understand and work through humankind’s propensity towards violence.” I think to deny violence on principal, and especially to uncritically shame its use by others, is a shortsighted stance. I firmly believe in the necessity of violence to end violence. I believe that victims of state-sanctioned violence have a right to defend themselves. I believe that nonviolence has its place (this is the purpose of magick, after all, as well as the Morrigan’s and the Celts’ battle cries, so that enemies may be deterred from battle), but it cannot be the only way to peace when the tools and means to defend oneself are available and help ensure one’s right to life. In these ways, I feel that I understand the Morrigan better. She is not a goddess of war and violence to glorify it, but because it is a facet of our reality. If there are any gods to rule over war, I would want her to be one who understands all its facets, complexities, necessities, goals, and consequences, who mourns as well as celebrates, who seeks peace as its ultimate means, and knows that none of it is so simply defined or easily attained.

So how does the Morrigan fit into modern concepts of war, if we recognize violence as a both a reality and a necessity? To that end, I think it is important to look at the ways war has changed in modern times. To USAmericans and other global imperialist nations, wars are rarely if ever fought locally. Our views of war have become physically distanced as a result of deploying our people overseas, selling weapons to arm other peoples for us, and by employing technologies like drones for environmental terrorism. All this makes obliviousness to and normalization of war easier, contributing to willful ignorance to those impacted by the machinations of individuals who perpetuate and profit from it. As a result of the military industrial complex, I think the purposes of war get lost and even corrupted. I fear oversimplifying this discussion, but I find it important to at least describe how a world economy based on war not only distances us from the realities of war, but makes it easier to forget the different types of, ways that, and reasons for which wars have been and can be fought. Given how often the concept of sovereignty is debated in the Morrigan’s community, perhaps the concept of war requires it, too, because I refuse to believe in a god who would condone the actions of, incite the kinds of violence perpetrated by, or fight for a “side” like those of Israel and United States over the years.

In the modern age, I think the Morrigan incites the internal wars, too, both within the individual and within a country’s political climate through protests, demonstrations, political movements, and the like. These, too, are wars, where violence occurs and where it has shown to be necessary, though not the only armaments for change and peace. Wars for justice in the modern era are ones that have brought us concepts such as Restorative Justice, which seek not only to put an end to things like retributive justice and the concept of a carceral state, but improve the lives of even perpetrators of violence and harm. Woodfield (2021) says of the Morrigan that this is the true cost of peace:

“I could hear the Morrigan in my mind, saying, ‘The true price of invoking peace is that you bless even your enemies, so that all might be whole again.’ Because how you end a battle is sometimes far more important than how you began it in the first place. Or how you fought it […] [A]ll people will remember is how it ended. […] Peace really isn’t peaceful. It’s earned only when you are willing to fight for it.” (p. 67)

Peace doesn’t mean people aren’t held accountable—that’s among the ideas that Restorative Justice seeks to uphold. Peace means ensuring all involved parties learn, grow, and heal from the experience.

And it is why that I believe the Morrigan revels in these grey areas of the definitions of and purposes for war. All authors agree the Morrigan is a peace-bringer as much as she is a war-maker. Those who analyze her mythologies will tell you she wages the wars she does specifically to bring about the kind peace she ushers at the end of the Battles of Moytura. Perhaps the true reasons of the wars mentioned in the mythologies are lost to time or have been romanticized for the purposes of a good story, but there are still lessons to be learned there, I think, for the Morrigan’s faithful.

I am personally drawn to the myth of Macha Mong Ruad, who, in defeating Dithorba’s sons, did not kill them, but charged them with constructing her fort, Emain Macha. Rather than killing those men, she reintegrated them into society, she gave them work, and she presumably treated them well so that they could complete that work. I see that work being a form of justice as they took part in the construction of safety and peace against which they had originally rallied out of selfishness and disrespect for Macha’s sovereignty and gender identity. I imagine they most definitely were outcasts among Macha’s people henceforth. Her people even question why she spared the men in the first place. Shame is a necessary for accountability to take place, and it is sadly something perpetrators of violence and injustice avoid or refuse to let themselves feel, because oppressors can only ever imagine the violence they commit being done unto them. Macha’s decision was an important one for her to make so that not only was peace maintained and her power demonstrated, but also so Dithorba’s sons could be given time to learn the lessons of their transgressions and experience all facets of accountability, including shame.

Peace is a war, too, as we try to heal and restore others to health and happiness, give even our enemies the space not just to learn from and internalize the lessons we have sought to teach them through war, but now ensure that they thrive because of it. Revenge on and eradication of our enemies is what we have been taught war is in the modern era, but I prefer to entertain the notion that that is not what it should be. I would love to reach an era where international wars are fought differently, where machines of violence are eradicated, and where the struggle is spent learning to empathize, learning to negotiate, and learning to wish wellness upon even the people who have hurt us. Revenge and retaliation distract us from and become easy ways out of the harder, healthier work. Thus, we must work to get there, which in this day and age means making use of the tools available to us in order to secure not only our survival and victories, but our abilities to thrive afterwards.

I like to think the Morrigan knows all this, too, and this is what she wants. If she didn’t before, then maybe she knows now as her worshippers have found her across all corners of the globe and as she has grown and changed with them. I think it is important to remember that faith and spirituality are ecologies: there are things gods can do that mortals cannot, and there are things mortals can do that gods cannot, so they rely on one another. I think that ecology includes the negotiations for change and growth, if we are all living and continually changing aspects of nature. Change is good, change is expected. It is a war goddess like the Morrigan, whose changes are near constant, I would trust with the domain of war. May we all, in the face of war both just and unjust, learn to grow, change, and heal together just as fervently as we fight.

[cupoftrembling]

Please

Among the continent of the Shattered Planes, as has been increasingly obvious in my correspondence, the most abundant religious force is the Pantheon of Isosa. This is because, for a multitude of reasons, it is an objective fact. There is no mystery in its worship, no interrogation of why people believe it to be true. They simply have to open their eyes, see the shattered moon that hangs like a watchful eye over their homes. They simply have to look at the tears in the firmament, the stars and constellations that entropy has wrought. They simply have to speak to one of the many spirits or angels that were there at the dawn of time, who fought on either side of the Celestial Civil War. They have to just look at the smile on an old man’s face, or eat a warm meal, or share a laugh to know, somewhere, of the impermanence that The Wolf crept into reality. 

The days pass, and it is all her fault. There is no need to wonder if it is true.

However, this is where I disagree with my contemporaries. Dr. Sutioni or Dr. Mya argues that this blatant fact has led to the dominance of the Isosian religion among the various, pious nations of the Askaven Continent. From the Western Wastes, where Wolf Apostates roam under their godhunter’s watchful eyes, to the forests of the Coalition of the Eastern Kingdoms. Even the Empire of Night, with their Adherence to the Everyman, is a form of Isosian anti-theism. They both argue in a cohesive faith, shared by each of these groups.

But look at the worshipers of the Eastern Kingdoms, who’s faith is so commingled with the state that even their kings claim a divine right to rule. Look even further, to the sects and mystery cults of the different divines within the forests of the kingdoms. The Friends of the Lady of Hounds, the Handmaidens of the Winter Queen, Qoonla’s Lovers. The Wolf Apostates border on atavism, more akin to relic-worship of whatever shards left over from the Celestial Civil War they can find buried among the snow of the Western Wastes. The nomadic orcs of the hinterlands have no structured religion, aside from whatever paladin covens they host, instead focusing on a stronger sort of familiar Lare. Even the strongest sense of a state religion focusing solely on the Isosian pantheon places itself as its opposite, the Adherence to the Everyman. More a philosophical guideline in the Empire of Night, the Adherence is a set of strictures and rules to tradition. To list them all would bore even me, but a common throughline throughout all of them is a form of disgust so obsessive that it borders on reverence. A preoccupation with the wrongs of the gods and their followers that were committed on the ‘every man.’ Humanity becomes divine and perfect, and the tools made by them become even moreso.

These are not the hallmarks of an organized religious force. Each of them are about Isosa and her coven in one way or another, but few are informed by her. The dedicated Isosian faithful are demonstrably fewer than the combined adherents of the other doctrines or philosophies. They keep to the wilds or to select, divided neighborhoods. The cities and outposts that Isosa has dominion over tend to be smaller, isolated affairs, who strive to be self-sufficient in all things. It is demonstrably harder to have the same sort of order and communal understanding that these adherents claim in larger settings.

There were few, if any, Isosian enclaves in the lawless monarchy that is Mariposa. Records indicate that a few neighborhoods banded together under the goddess of order during the reign of Queen Mariposa the Maddened. However, due to citysickness and general apathy towards growth by the faithful, those dissipated within one generation. Their temple, nestled deep within the Upper Wards, still stands. 

The House of Swinging Trees was a tall, granite building, with a relief of alms being given by Isosa to humanity. It was all harsh edges and awkward lines, each converging towards the sky at slants. Made from holy geometry and mathematical precision. It sat in the center of a large and meticulous garden, with stones lining the center of a massive Babylon Willow. The grass that lay between the stones was some of the only for miles, an enclave of natural beauty in the iron and stone city of Mariposa. As if someone had raised the building from the ground, as if someone had hewn this place from the world itself. 

This was what Remiel had been looking for. 

He stood in front of the House of Swinging Trees for what felt like too long. It was just before night time, at the edge of winter. On his back, his loaned greatsword rubbed against a heavy bookbag. A gift, stuffed with knowledge, all of it leading him here. It dug into his shoulders, made his neck strain and hurt. If he wore one or the other, perhaps the awkward pain would not be here. But Remiel felt unsure whether he’d need knowledge or the blade and, one to loath uncertainty, brought both.

At the gate, made of pyrite shined to look like gold, stood an ashen orc. He was wearing no clothes of the scholar or theologian, no bag or book of hours. Under his arm on a single point sling was a shotgun. Remiel could hear its bullet singing to him, feel its call on the back of his neck. The orc was young, then. And the blade looked so large in the child’s eyes. The man in front of him wore a bruise under his eye, and several scratches across his face. From his neck, a single, silver broken fang. He glared at the paladin, rolling his eyes in displeasure.

“Need something, sir?” The orc grunted, words escaping from beyond his silver capped tusks. Between his lips and between his teeth, a cigarette. It smelt of sawdust and datura. “Temple’s closed, if that’s what you’re looking for. Healer is out sick, if you can believe it.”

“Oh um,” Remiel grips the strap of his book bag a bit tighter, as if that might protect him. “Are they alright?”

“Huh?” The orc raised an eyebrow. “How would I know?”

“You work, um, here, right?”

The orc narrows his eyes a bit. “Aye.”

“Well-” Remiel pauses for a second, and then thinks better of pressing the matter. “I guess, yeah, I guess it really doesn't matter. I just heard that you guys have a really good library.”

“We aren’t a charity case, kid. You want books, go to Sans Bernadine University.”

Remiel raised an eyebrow in shock. “Didn’t you hear about it?”

The orc chuckles to himself, shaking his head and crossing his arms. “Yeah, I did. Smelt it too.”

“Yeah, real pity about it.” Remiel frowned, knuckles white on his bookbag.

“Real pity.” The orc states dryly. “So, sorry, guess you’ll have to come back some other day.”

The paladin took a step forward, puffing out his chest in a show of strength. “No, I don’t think I will.”

He was face to face with the orc now, each standing heads taller than an average man. The orc scowled and took his cigarette from out of his mouth. “Yea? And why’s that, tough guy?”

“I am a paladin of Isosa.” Remiel continued, hand moving towards his sword like his rector had taught him. Words fail you, Remiel hears on the shivers of his neck, sense fail you, faith in steel. Remiel bites back the thoughts and hopes, beyond hope, that they are wrong. He speaks again. “And I need to know everything you know.”

The orc looks back at the sword on his back, and then back at the almost soft face in front of him. “Huh, real paladin.” This is all the orc can say.

“Can you please just let me in.” Remiel narrows his eyes. “Please.”

The orc smiles, drops the cigarette from his lips, and snuffs the flame out with his heel. “Sorrow is going to want to hear from you.”

The inside of the House of Swinging Trees was just as cold as the exterior. Granite floors and more pyrite light fixtures. It was lit entirely by candle and by wick, none of the halogen lights of most of the Mariposian homes of the day. Most of the electricity in the city came from large, crystalline bullets in power-factories along the coast. The bullet technology, the trapping of emotions and memories into physical, powerful forms, were considered anathema by the most militant of Isosian followers. They did, however, make an exception for weaponry. There were few arms more effective than the bullet powered firearm, and there were always causes for their use.

On the table next to Remiel were at least half a dozen of these firearms. Their handles and stocks were made from pure alder wood. Harvested in the depth of summer, the season supposedly closest to what the Fractal Fields of Isosa were. These weapons, they are true. They seem more real than the table around them, more situated in their place. Shotguns, pistols, small arms adept in the city style close quarters fighting that one would be familiar with here in Mariposa. There were no long rifles, no things of distance. Remiel had, at one point or another, thought of trading in his long, curving blade for such weapons. He had gotten into a scrape or two here in Mariposa, and while his sword is an effective mark of his station within the paladin’s of Isosa, it did not suit itself for the alleyways that Mariposian combat, often getting caught on the walls and bars that made up the city. He would rely on his words and, when those failed, the gifts his faith and birth had given him. And, throughout this, he felt loath to give up the sword. 

The pistol besides his hand did seem all that more alluring, however.

On the table, next to these weapons of war, were books. The very thing that Remiel had been seeking. The dust covers were still on them, and it had been clear that they had never been opened by the inhabitants of the House of Swinging Trees. The room he was sat in had a window on the far side of it. Through it, he could see the courtyard with the Babylon Willow. He saw a small cambion man, blue with tall, straight horns, pruning a hibiscus bush. His clothing was a white skirt, with the little laces on the edge of it. On his head, tucking in his braided, brown hair, was a large sun hat, keeping the dusk sun from his eyes. The area of the city they were in was not as tall and grand as some of the others, as ambassadors and other men of power tended to like this neighborhood for its simplicity and safety. In the distance, one could see the whole of Queen’s Court, with its titanic skyscrapers covered in equally as mighty rose petals. One could see the sun setting behind the Concordat of Miracles, see the feral angel straining in vain against the iron nails driven through its wings. Out there, that is Mariposa. Towering and true. Above it, Imperial Warballoons cover the city like a dense haze, with little mechanized men flying between them. Green and gold banners hang from the edge of the balloons, each denoting a crescent moon with a sword driven through them, lest Mariposa forget who now rules it.

But here, in this temple, this could not be Mariposa, not really. The House of Swinging Trees was grand, certainly, but did not extend as far as the buildings around it. The gardens were manicured and delightful, each fit to burst with fruit that did not taste like sickly sweet perfume. Each of the blades of grass are the same length. Each of the doors are the same size, just a bit too short for Remiel to comfortably fit in. Each of the people housed here are all the same amount of driven, keen and sharp in their direction.

They’re all so like his home growing up. A little cabin in the fields somewhere in the Eastern Kingdoms. Always with three logs burning in the fireplace and small bushes in front of the windows. There was a scent of aspen on the breeze, despite there being no such forest near by the rolling fields of barley and grain. His father had described it as paradise after the hell of the Ibi-Vujčić Conflict. Where that was fire, this was calm, where that was storm, this was peace. He would sit in the dirt for hours, marveling at the sapphire beatles sitting on the leaves. Remiel once, and only once, saw Ferdinand, his father, reach his hand towards one of them, as to join them in their commiseration before his mother placed her hand on his shoulder. The beatles flew away, the moment over. They even had a babylon willow shadowing the house. Remiel would sit under its branches, trace his hands along its weeping branchlets like parting water. The leaves were always dryer, like it was a land of always autumn. A secret, private little enclave, just before the winter made them hunker in. Remiel never remembered the winter ever arriving, or the sweltering heat of summer. It was always in that secret liminal space, incapable of moving beyond or backwards.

Remiel placed his hand on the cold stone of the windowsill. There was no insulation between the walls and the outside, as it was made entirely out of stone and faith. The building was drafty and inhospitable to any of those not touched by Isosa’s constant contentment. Remiel felt a shiver fall down his spine. There was a biting, and blood in the mouth, and a shattering. And then it was over.

“It is quite a view.” A voice came from behind him. It was not a cold voice, but distant. Authoritative. It sounded, for only a moment, like his mother’s. He spun around, half convinced it was her. It was not, dear reader. She was shorter, first of all. Her skin was green and from her this infernal heat arose. Her tail curled around her right leg like a snake, a sign of piety and respect. Her horns were backswept and her hair was in a bun with a silver spear through the back of it. She smiled plainly, leaving dimples in her cheeks and no creases in her eyes. A cambion. Remiel fought the urge to look disappointed, a battle he did not win.

The woman winced in a sort of ego-pain at the paladin’s face, quickly dropping the smile. Remiel noticed her discomfort and brought his hands in front of him, fingers splayed in some sort of deference. “Oh my god, I am so sorry, miss. I j- I just thought you were someone. Someone I knew, someone else.”

“Ah,” The woman regained her smile, placing her hands behind her back. “No offense taken, paladin. I would, too, be disappointed if I thought I knew someone in this city, only for the truth to rip such comfort away from me.”

Remiel let out a sigh of relief, clearly believing whatever this woman was saying. She stood tall, with an impeccably straight back. Her hooves clopped against the floor, her gait was measured and disarming in its grace. “Your doorman, Clovis. He said you were the Abbess.”

The cambion nodded. “Mother Superior Brightwind, but please, Sorrow will suffice.”

“Brightwind?” Remiel repeats. “I know of a Vera Brightwind in Varak, I met pilgrims traveling to her abbey.”

Sorrow sucks air in between her teeth. They are sharp and the air tastes like holding onto a rosebush so hard you bleed. She exhales such violence and looks towards the floor. “My half sister. When my father remarried, he moved to the hinterlands.”

“Is religious leadership in your family then?” Remiel asked with a genuine curiosity.

Sorrow blinked once, and then twice. She was not used to personal, prying questions. It was not in the nature of her order to truly care. “My mother ran a paladin school in Karnata, before it's fall.”

Remiel smiled. “I see, you come by it honestly, then.”

“Truthfully,” Sorrow responds in a moment of un-vigilance, looking out towards the city. She stares at the space where the Sans Bernadine tower once stood, now a smoldering ruin. “This is a relatively new position.”

“I heard stories of the House of Swinging Trees from my rector. I thought it was abandoned years ago.” Remiel follows her eyeline, looking at the Concordat of Miracles. Both think they are looking at the same thing. “I’m really impressed by how you rebuilt it.”

“I’m.” Sorrow’s breath caught in her mouth. “Thank you, Ser Fey.”

Remiel looks back at her. “Remiel.” He pauses again. “Please.”

“I’m not too used to a paladin complimenting me, is all.”

“Yeah,” Remiel looks back out the window, this time looking at the now setting sun. “I don’t think a lot of people get compliments from us."

“That is my experience too.”Sorrow looks back at him with a face unreadable to me. “Why are you here, Ser Fey?” Sorrow asks what should be a question, but the words in her mouth can’t help but form a demand.

Remiel looks at her and frowns. He paces back towards the table and begins to flip through a book awkwardly. “Have, um, you heard from Isosa. At all, in the last couple years?”

Sorrow looks at the pages he is flipping through, unable to tell what he is looking at, if anything at all. Her fists ball in absent flame for just a moment. Is it a challenge? Is this an inquisition? Has someone questioned her faith? The air lionized with truth, she can feel Remiel’s magic begin to worm it's way into her mouth. It tastes like apricots and, somewhere distant, Remiel’s eyes glow.

“No.” Is all Sorrow ever could have said. She is not strong enough to lie.

The aura of truth fades, and so does the light in Remiel’s eyes. “None of the leadership I’ve talked to. It's been about twelve years since anyone mortal has heard from her. Same for the angels.” Remiel lets out a sigh. He hates using that. It is like holding a breath in his stomach, in his veins. To force a compulsion, it is like having air in your blood, or a dagger at your neck. “That's why I’m here, in Mariposa. It’s like she’s just gone.”

Sorrow blinks again. She fights the rising feeling of relief in her. Her mother always told her of hearing their goddess’s voice, guiding her, showing her the Grand Weft. Sorrow had never heard such things, not even in her childhood. When Sorrow looked to the sky, pleaded for some sort of guidance, she heard nothing. Only sweet, mortal silence. How lonely, how dreadfully lonely, Sorrow thought. She felt the bile of anger, or maybe resentment, rise in the back of her throat. Remiel stood before her, gleaming and resplendent in Isosa’s light, locs braided so tightly that it must have been divine. There must not have been a moment in his life that he had ever felt so alone, where the comfort of Isosa’s voice was not there to guide him.

Sorrow clenched her fingers a bit tighter, the room got just a bit hotter, and a bead of sweat began to roll down Remiel’s brow. He was everything she had ought to be. Servile and guided, never left in the abyss of having to make his own choices, or live with his own mistakes. To choose between a daughter and husband would have been no choice to him, even as the flames of The Wolf licked the back of his neck. He would not look at his daughter's eyes and wonder if he made the right choice. He would simply know, and that would be all he could ever need.

And then, she remembered. 

He was just as lost as she was. He heard no divine choir or voice. Isosa had condemned them all, the powers of the church, to that cruel silence. His hands gripped the table, he had sought Sorrow out on his own, just as unsure as she was. There was no guidance here, no path to follow. A commiseration of grasping in the dark. A concordat of loneliness. And then her hands relaxed in un-vigilance. But the room still felt just as warm, burning in absent flame.

“Sorrow?” Remiel asks in genuine concern. He takes a step towards her, hands out in front of him like she was a wild animal. The room is spinning, the world is spinning. “Hey, hey, are- hey are you ok?”

“Huh?” Sorrow responds uncharmingly. She grasps the bookshelf next to her. “No, I'm ok.” She sucks in air. “Why?”

“You look like you just saw a ghost.” The paladin responds, stepping towards her again. And, on the back of his neck, he sees her for how she really is. Knees are bowed, the wind blows through her, her hands shake and try to find purchase. A cruel part of Remiel knows she is weak, and a voice that sounds like his mother almost commands him to excise the weakness from his church. These voices are ghosts, dear readers, shivers of a dying world. Remiel sucks air in through his teeth and forces these ghosts back into the past. “I just wanted. To make sure.” His voice is similarly shaky.

“Citysickness gets the best of us, I’m afraid.” Sorrow lies. Does he know? That she, for a moment, doubted him? Resented him? Had that moment of unvigilance disguised his aura of truth from probing her mind yet again? Did he feel her call on that absent flame? She sees the bead of sweat on Remiel’s brow. “Please, for my own sake, pay it no mind.”

Remiel nods, and the perspiration falls from his brow. “Then I will, Miss Brightwind.”

Sorrow lets her borrowed breath out, centers herself, and is relieved. “You mentioned Mariposa. Why here?”

Remiel takes the sword from off of his back, rolls his aching shoulders, and then places a heavy book on the table next to him. His bookbag swings lightly against his hip. It is a worn, orange covered text, with gold lettering just barely starting to fade. It is a worn copy of Contemporaneous Reports of the Celestial Civil War from its Veterans by Dr. Blair Allcott. “This text, it guided me here.”

Sorrow walks to the table, footfalls more sure now, and places her hand on the cover of the text. It was… academic. There were no other words that Sorrow knew on how to describe it. And she was equally unsure of why a Paladin of Isosa would care for it. “What… did you find in it?”

“Truthfully, not much. An interesting read, but most of the discussions were, um, really dry. And not at all really relevant to Isosa’s disappearance.” Remiel flips the book open, skimming through the well worn pages. A faint smile on his face, a wind from the west. His father has it open on one knee, Remiel on the other. Better times. “I couldn’t use any of the techniques in the book, but it led me to Dr. Mya.”

“The author?”

“Yes! I met her, she’s a delightful woman.” Remiel beamed this smile so warm it almost made Sorrow blush. He flipped through the pages again, until the book was back on its front. He frowns, and the room goes cold. “Unfortunately, her research has been destroyed.”

“The Sans Bernadine riots.” Sorrow blinks. “I’ve… heard about them.”

“Yea, she told me they were all in the spire when it went up in flames.” Remiel sighed. “All that knowledge lost, all that work destroyed. Centuries of books. It’s a shame.”

Sorrow stares blankly. Does he know? If he does, the only way to survive is to strike now. Strike true, Sorrow. Trust not your senses, trust not your eyes, faith in steel. These are the words her mother taught her. The maxim of the Paladin’s of Isosa. She could get one, maybe two shots in before he would be on her. But, ultimately, he would break her, dash her on his sword. And he would be right to. She was there, at the burning of the spire. She tasted his work turn to ash on her tongue. He smiles at her, and she did nothing to stop them. Kill him, he threatens Order. Past the window, she sees the feral angel, and thinks she hears her voice. Anathema, he is as lost as you are. 

“It is a shame.” Sorrow responds blankly. Her hand trembles. Her fingers reach for her trigger. He knows.

“Yeah,” Remiel sighs, not even noticing his companion’s trembling, doesn’t even feel the knife at his throat. “But, it wasn’t all fruitless.” He looks up at her, beaming smile. It is radiant and scouring and even Sorrow could not interpret it as something it was not. “I spoke to her, I think I have an idea of what we need to do.” All Sorrow can do is look at him, her eyes squinting against his radiance. He hurt to look at but there was nothing else she could have done. He was resplendent, she knows this. Next to him, she is dim. Behind him, the sun halos his hair. In her mouth, all she can taste is apricots and pride. 

She fights the urge to retch.

“What do you need of me, Ser Fey?”

“The first step is to get a relic of Isosa’s, something she personally touched.” Remiel produces a small journal from his bookbag. Green leather cover, with a small, segmented chrysanthemum embossed on the front in gold. It is new, there is no crease in the hardened leather from use. It cost thirty-six Imperial Thalers, from a small hawking stand somewhere in the Upper Wards of the city. Remiel produces a small pen from his pocket and flips the book open to one of the first pages. His speech becomes clear, his eyes dart between the illustrations on the pages. He is focus, assurity. “And something that had met her before. An angel, maybe. A construct from the war. Something sentient, but not mortal.” He looks down at his own hand, at the pores in his skin. His light fades, just a moment. “I’m, uh, not sure why, but it can’t be mortal.”

Sorrow narrows her eyes and takes a step closer to Remiel’s field notes. There are two sets of handwriting. One is in cursive, with long, connected continents that make the words flow together. It is nigh unreadable at its face, but Sorrow is sure of the contents of every stroke, almost as if the words are laced with some sort of acausal magicks. Meaning is imprinted on the lines of the text, imparting knowledge through observation, but not recognition. It could have been written in celestial script, and Sorrow would have always known what it had said. The other is in shorthand, with scratchy acronyms and unsure handwriting. It is shaky, and doesn’t follow the lining of the paper well. Despite being written, ostensibly, in print, it is much harder to interpret content or meaning. The two texts weave together, adding on and commenting on various different drawings, both equally made in each style. Dissections that look as if they were pulled right from the air, and cosmology that is so convoluted that even a religious woman like Sorrow can not understand them. They are, somehow, in synch at every moment. 

Remiel brings his pen down to the page and adds more shorthand script, describing, what Sorrow can only imagine, is whatever content he will glean from this meeting. He dates the top of his notes, sixty-third day of the Third Year of Queen Mariposa the Negligent, and looks back up at Sorrow. It is an expectant look, a look of directionlessness. It is a look familiar to Sorrow, every time she looks in the mirror. He needs her guidance, her grace. Sorrow smiles a bit. It is a litigious grin. A grin made famous by the first queen of Mariposa. A grin dotted on every mural of Queen Mariposa the Litigious, right as she tricks Isosa into letting her guard down. It is the grin of the knife up your sleeve, it is ‘fucking the other guy before he fucks you,’ it is knowing beyond all knowing that the man in front of you must die.

Remiel looks up from his page and does not know. The smile in front of him is genuine, it is guiding. It is all teeth. He smiles back. He thinks of a joke his classmate had once told him, about the smiling abbess. It’s a common joke shared among the orders of paladins. About a ruler with fangs being the only thing that could make an abbess smile. “Everything ok?” He responds, half in jest

“You said it can’t be a mortal.” Sorrow leans forward, eyes shadowed and glowing. “What about a hound?”

And Remiel understands.

Autumn is the season of treachery.

It is the season of guile and of luck. A cantankerous superstition that is held by almost every society on the Shattered Planes. During the Celestial Civil War, the Autumn Court of the Wyld joined with the Wolf in rebellion against a court structure that had long reviled them. It was a simple choice, really. Before the Wolf’s Rebelion, there was only one option. Calm servility under the boot of the fey queens. When war broke out, there was something inviting in the flames of The Wolf. It is only fitting, then, that the element most associated with the Autumn Fey was the treacherous fire. The Summer Court had crackling lightning, the Winter Court’s ensnaring frost, and the Spring Court with their regressive amber. But the Autumn Court, they were hoisted the element of change, forced to mantle a raw, possessive magick even before it was associated with the Wolf.

This is why I balk when scholars attribute the hatred of the autumn season with its fey counterpart. Even before that rapturous flame consumed the Autumn Court, before the cruel hands of the clock had started to tick, the queens and regents of the Wyld had long reviled the autumn season. They were the tricksters in the fairy tales, hucksters and gamblers with stolen names and currency. Their Alder King was shrouded in mystery and in myth, with no face nor identity whatsoever. They were the boogeyman that scared the fey children who were never supposed to grow up. Their fall was predicated on that history, not the other way around.

This fear of the autumn, of the dying of the light, replicated itself across the survivors of the Celestial Civil War. In the Eastern Kingdoms, autumn was a time where no work was supposed to be conducted. Harvest is to be conducted late in the summer and then you are not to leave your doors until the first snowfall. To such an end, social philosophers skilled in accelerationist magicks spend countless days channeling power into the land. Either to keep them from falling or to hasten their fall. They do not allow them to change from green to orange and the sky is filled with stars or snow. And, in the autumn of the 89th year of Queen Mariposa the Licentious, the Economic District burned to the ground. I saw it light up the horizon, flames stretching far and wide into the pillaring skyscrapers that once dotted its land. 

This is where Callan knew he could find her. 

This is a place once kissed by the Alder King’s treacherous season; it is known that tricksters follow tricksters. The ruined buildings and burned out homes smelled familiar to the outrider knight. The moon hung low in the sky and the air was still, somehow after five years, laden with smoke. If a witch could not be found here, out of all places in Mariposa, then she could not be found anywhere. Callan ran his hand through his hair, shaking the soot from it. It was longer, now, than when his queen had shaped it for him. He had grown it out absentmindedly over the last few months. Let it run wild and fallow. It was a mistake, something that had simply slipped his mind. If he had cared to will it to not grow, he could have. He balled his fist in the flaming scarlet hair, fingers interwoven in his braid. He’d have to cut it before he saw his queen again. Make it more in line with what she wanted it to be. She had given him that hair, it was not Callan’s to change. But he wouldn’t have to change it yet. He could grow it longer. Or shave it all off. He grips the hair a bit tighter, as if his hand was engulfed in a heatless flame.

Besides him, squatters sit in a burned out building. The wall was broken behind them, revealing the rest of the home and, further, the alleyway. Their garb is long and flowing, with their limbs bound in tight fabrics. Their long cloaks were adorned in round bits and bangles that sounded like rumbling thunder when they moved. They made a small, smokeless fire in front of them. They cradled it in their hands like a child and, behind their masked faces, Callan can see an equal amount of glee. They chanted in woeful prayer, litanies against the cold. The flames responded in kind, crackling and breaking in tune. These were the apostates of the Wolf, this Callan is certain of. They were once relegated to the Western Wastes in exile and rarely left it in fear of sectarian reprisal. They are the tricksters of the Isosain, the boogeyman that lurks in the heart of every man. The fall that was the consequence of pride.

Callan looked at them with an unknown feeling in his chest. Pity? Pride? Recognition? He is not sure, and as a consequence neither am I. And both of us revile such uncertainty. If there is a mystery, it must be revealed. If there is a secret, it must be uncovered. We are both cowards in that way. Callan took a step towards them, his figure shadowed in the crumbling doorway. He placed his hand against the ashen wood, flames of autumn reigniting deep in the heartwood for but a brief moment. The apostates, shocked by the sudden intrusion of a stranger, clasped the fire closer to their hearts. Their clothes did not singe, but their skin began to blister and burn from the flame. There were no enemies here in Mariposa, but reflex is reflex.

“Ahoy.” Callan raised a hand in sympathy. A single, lick of flame darted between his fingers. “Friend, not foe.”

One of the apostates lowers his white mask, revealing a stubbly chin and toothy grin. He lowered his hood, his ringed fingers gliding across the fabric with the delicate grace of a dancer. He was, once, back in the Eastern Kingdoms, before one poisoned word drove him west. “You’re a part of no Da’as.” The man motioned to Callan’s clothing, to the large fur coat that hung off his back.

Callan nodded and took a step forward. “I am not.”

“I didn’t know fire was popular outside of our Da’as.” The man’s companion added, visibly relaxing somewhat. “Poor publicity, I suppose.”

“It can be popular in the east, if you look close enough.”

The man with the stubbly chin smiles. “If you go east far enough, you eventually find yourself west.” 

Callan narrows his eyes somewhat. “I’ve never been one for the horizon.”

“Could have fooled me.”

“You ever thought about heading to the wastes?” The man’s companion responded, unaware of whatever innuendo was shared between those two. His teeth were blunt, as were his words. His hands were clumsy and unken to fire. But he had kind eyes, and that crease where his smile folds his brow. “I know Isosian’s are not too friendly to fire.”

“I fear only one, and that is not Isosa.” Callan smiles at the man with blunt teeth. “But I will say, I understand the sentiment.”

“Come, sit for a spell.” The man with the stubbly chin slaps the floor next to him, kicking up ash and dust. “I’m Jiro of Da’as Cerena, my forward friend is Martine, of the same.”

“Martine? Mariposian name, no?” Callan sat down across from the fire. “How does it feel to be home again?”

“Ah, I am not home, though.” Martine rubbed his palms together furtively. “I am an outcast even in this place.”

“And yet,” Callan adds his warmth to the fire. “Here you are.”

“You’ve yet to introduce yourself, stranger.” Jiro asks.

“Where are my manners!” Callan smiles. “You may call me Callan.”

Jiro nods. “Pleasure.”

“Charmed!” Martine beams. “What brings you to the Great Butterfly, my friend Callan?”

“I am but a tourist, a visitor here.” Callan gesticulates with his free hand. With it the flames dance and flicker, as if following some sort of conductor. “I could ask the very same of you, my new friends. Mariposa is far from the wastes. I’m sure such a trek was perilous for you.”

“Our wayward brothers, the Isosian’s bothered us very little, actually.” Jiro stares into the fire. He leans against the half broken wall behind him in a show of relaxation. “We had more trouble with the terrain than we did with the lash.”

“Our Da’as moved with us.” Martine reaches inside his cloak and pulls out a smoked peach. He breaks off a piece with grubby fingers and hands it to Callan, across the fire. Callan, unaccustomed to gifts, does not take it. Martine shrugs and brings the dried fruit to his lips. After a moment, he continues. “Cerena values hospitality, if you care to stay with us for a spell.”

“I’ve heard all the wastrals keep such virtues.” Callan nods, closing his eyes slightly and taking in the sweet smoke. This wood had been burnt many times before, by many transients. Its bark was coated white with ash and soot. But yet, it still manages to light just the same. Its heartwood is a deep, burnt orange. Like autumn had seeps deep into its being. It looked like a sky on fire, like a birchwood in the throws of a fall. “If I am to stay with one, I am to stay with all.”

“There are no Isosians here, friend.” Martine sits up a bit tighter, eyes catching sparks like fireflies. “What is there to be afraid of in a hot meal?”

“It is not the heat I fear.” Callan chuffs. “I just do not need such comfort at the moment.”

“Perhaps that is what we seek in Mariposa proper.” Jiro traces his finger along the ashy dirt. The heat of the fire suffused them. Warded them from the cold. It was spring, now, in Mariposa. And yet, after the autumn fires, the Economic District was laden with that sodden chill. The air was thick with that dampness, as if the world itself was attempting to douse the absent flame with tears overflowing. The everburning wood was thick with wet. It was suffused with that lung sticking petrichor and the clouds hung low and dark in the sky. 

And yet, even here, transients huddle. Mired in cold and wet rain, they congregate here. Callan looked at his companions, if not in name then in circumstance. Their shoulders were covered in dew, their cloaks were soaked through. But they had traveled miles towards Mariposa on sore feet and a dream. What was Mariposa to them? Callan could not know. To him, Mariposa was an iron cage. A task to be completed and then never thought of ever again. Overhead, the jackboots float their mechanized balloons across the air like lead dandelion seeds. Each with a gun and a will to kill. These facts prevented him from knowing.

“The people who rule this place hate your faith.” Callan grits his teeth. “Hate you. This is not comfort.” 

“No.” Jiro smiles, his eyes cast low towards the flame. “But it might be one day.”

“No matter how many times the flames go out.” Martine smiles, too, looking at Callan bright and beaming. “We can always rekindle it.”

Callan brings his knees to his chest. If Lucius could see him, if anyone of the Primrose could see him, would they laugh? Would they chide him? Would they join in? He gritted his teeth, trying to grind the uncertainty out of his fangs. “Would it even be the same fire?” He asks, voice low under the crackle of the flames.

“That doesn’t matter.” Martine leans forward somewhat, as if to hear Callan all the more clearly. Like it was some secret the two needed to share. “As long as the fire burns.”

“Apostasy.” A voice comes from the warped doorway. “I will stand no more of it.”

All three whip their heads towards the voice. It was still, like a nail moving against glass. Each modulation made some deep part of Martine and Jiro flinch. Like a child from a nun’s ruler. They covered their hands, dowering the fire in a moment’s notice. The coals sputter and sizzle, keeping the flame deep in their hearts. The woman in the doorway with the voice that sounded like breaking glass held a gun in her hands. A revolver. A long, fanged barrel, mouth open and dripping with heat. Her finger was over the trigger, thumb on the hammer, both trembling. Her skin was this infernal green and her eyes glowed with a familiar, golden hue. She was an abbess, something about that gun made it eminently clear. It was more real than she was. It was the absence of flame, whereas fire is shifting and impermanent, that gun was sure and true. It was all hard edges and secant lines.

Behind her was a towering man. On his shoulders were a sheath and a bookbag, his hair woven tightly in locs, tight to his scalp and coming up around his shoulders. His dress is plain, for Mariposa at least. A white, billowing shirt. Skin like smooth, polished obsidian. Hair smells strongly of apricot and honey. He looked like he was pulled straight from a bodice ripper. He looked at the woman next to him almost like a lost dog. He looked like a paladin, of this they are all sure. It is in the way the sun seems to halo his head, in the way that the clouds part but the oppressive wet does not. He did not look at the men on the ground in front of him, as if they didn’t even register in his vision. Callan knew, however, that he was under this paladin’s intense scrutiny.

Callan stands up, dusts himself off. This is not his fight. For a moment, he thinks to give Martine a compassionate look. A thanks for the peach, if only in offer. He fights the desire, but it is still there. He continues to look at abbess and smiles a litigious smile. “I was unaware there was a contingent of Isosian’s here.” 

“Would that have changed your behavior?” The paladin responds. “We’re a response to the Wolf, not a threat to keep good behavior.”

The abbess glares at the paladin. “Remiel.” Her voice is condescending, barely contained disgust at how wrong he is.

“Is that your name?” Callan interjects. “An odd one.”

“My mother picked it.” Remiel looked at the abbess again, almost bashfully, answering the question implied. “Beyond that, I’m not sure.” 

“It's an old name, in an old language.” Callan shrugs. “I’m surprised a learned man does-”

“That is enough, Callan.” The abbess’ voice is steady, authoritative. She speaks and the world needs to listen. “That is enough.”

“Right,” Callan bristles. He motions to the men behind him. They are scared and in their hands are guns. “I take it you’re here for these two.” 

“I am not.” The abbess responds. “But I am unsurprised that dogs congregate.”

Callan raises an eyebrow. His hand moves towards the hilt of his sword. 

“You two.” Remiel raises a sword at the wastrals behind Callan. They raise their guns in kind, fingers trembling. Their feet are unsteady, the recoil from their shot would knock them to the ground. In another world, if they are to fire, they would certainly miss. “I need you to leave.”

“Remiel?” The abbess snaps her head towards the paladin. The wastrels back towards the broken down wall behind them. In a moment, they are gone. 

“I don’t want to fight if I do not have to.” Remiel glares at the abbess but for a moment. Authority. It is pure and boring. For a moment, he is his mother. And order must be restored. Never questioned, never flinched. He has a ruling and he will be listened to. “Do I have to fight?”

“Only if I have to.” Callan responds. In that moment of distraction, of petty un-vigilance, he has drawn his sword. In his other hand, a curved staff topped with a carved, dragon’s head. The abbess curses under her breath. “Two on one doesn’t exactly seem a fair fight.”

“Isosa is not the goddess of fairness.” The abbess sneers. “I am not surprised you fail to grasp such a distinction.”

“Is- is this the one we’re looking for?” Remiel asks. His hands are gripping his twisted greatsword, one hand on the hilt, another choked up on the blade, just below the parrying hooks. A duelist's stance, to control the blade tighter in the close quarters. Callan knew Remiel was no amateur. It was instruction beat into him. “Sorrow, please tell me this is the right person.”

“He’s the hound you need.” Abbess Sorrow responds. “Trust not your eyes, trust not your senses.”

Remiel closes his eyes. He breathes in through his nose. Out through the mouth.“Faith in steel.”

It is Callan that strikes first, while Remiel is busy focusing himself. He brings his curved sword down against the flat of Remiel’s blade. Sparks fly as metal clashes, steel grinds against steel. There is an ear-raking sound and Remiel’s bladepoint heads down. Soot is kicked up in the air. The room grows warm in absent flame. Sorrow takes a step back from Remiel and smiles a litigious smile. Callan rears his other arm back, drawing the staff like a viper. His muscles contract, tighten like a piano wire. 

His foot shifts underneath him, twisting backwards in a moment. Soot and ash and flame kick up in its wake, throwing that pyroclastic flow into the air. He thrusts the head of the staff at Remiel’s throat, an attempt to knock him off guard, disarm the paladin before he can retaliate. This is what Callan has on Remiel, surprise and guile. The tools of the autumn fey. Sorrow can not see through the obscuring smoke. She believes that Callan’s blade will find Remiel’s heart. And that would be just. Anathema.

Remiel can see.

His eyes do not follow Callan’s blade, it is not the deadly weapon in this circumstance. It is in how his muscles contract. Remiel can see the strands that make Callan, sees them tighten, sees the way energy flows in his body. He sees the nestle of flame in Callan’s heart, sees how it channels that fire. He knows the sword is to parry. The sword is the distraction, the rattler on the tale. That cane, that is where death is. That is the object that will unmoor him. It will open him up to what actual hatred this Callan has in his mind. The soot obscures his eyes, burns the edges of his retina. Trust not your eyes. The cane is moving faster now, it would be easy to bring his sword to Callan’s feet. This is what his rector would have done. Callan has left himself open to a brazen counter attack. He has no faith his opponent would be bold enough to go on the attack, let alone a paladin of Isosa. This is what would unmake him. Trust not your senses. This is what his mother would have done. Pressed the attack, take that giant greatsword and unmake Callan right now. 

Faith in steel.

Remiel breaks his grip from his sword’s ricasso just as Callan’s cane passes it. He can feel the hot wind from the staff, feels it cut the air to ribbons. At the same moment, he twists his other shoulder, following the bladepoint into the ground. It brings Callan’s blade with it, locked in rapturous sound with the parrying hooks of his blade. His hand grabs Callan’s at the same point his blade’s edge hits the soot. He drops the greatsword, the one thing a paladin is never to do, his bookbag hitting his lower back. His hands divert Callan’s cane away from where it would strike. He thinks to throw the man, to continue his momentum and force this man to the ground. But something about how the energy flowed around the pirate, something about that ungodly heat and warmth that leaks from the edges of him, makes him reconsider. 

Callan’s hair stands on edge. The trick his mentor had taught him, the trick that had forsaken many other bladesmen, had failed. His cane flies through the air, now shunned from the kill it so desperately needed. His blade knocked loose from his fingers. His eyes lock with Abbess Sorrow, smiling a familiar smile. It is the smile of Queen Mariposa the Litigious and it is a smile that Callan wears well. In her hand that baneful revolver. She is cycling the cylinder with her thumb. Waiting. Expectant. Like these two are carrion. Like these two are meat.

And Callan refuses to be meat.

He does not know it, but that is the only thought that writhes through his head. How much, at that moment, even beyond Remiel or even beyond Maeve or even beyond his target, he wishes to kill this woman smiling his smile back at him. He knows, for a moment, what it is like to hate the autumn The deception, the guile, the backhanded smile. That is all he has known the autumn to be. And, dear reader, he hates how good it makes him feel. It is a feeling that starts in his heart, a feeling that starts in his gut and in his muscles. It radiates to his fingers, to the tip of his nose, something coiled at the base of himself, desperate for release. Remiel’s back is turned towards his abbess and her hungry, hungry eyes. The air catches fire.

“I knew it.” The abbess smiles.

Arcs of flame smolder between Callan’s fingers, following odd lines and trajectories of travel. They are like birch leaves in fall. White spats of superheated air crackle and singe near the heads of his fingers. His hand lets the sword fall to the ground, knuckles white and fingers balled in flame. They are close now and Remiel can see Callan’s face now. The teeth barred, breath hot and heavy. He looks like he needed to bite Remiel, looks like his teeth grow long. His neck, now exposed from the long of his lapel, looked raw and worn, as if it was held by a cold iron choker. Like whoever held the leash held it tight. Callan is rabid, of this Remiel is sure. The paladin’s feet move backwards, kicking up the dusty ash of the floor. 

Callan swipes to the left, the paladin slides to the right. Flame barely misses the tip of his nose. Licks of burning air fly off the edge of the fire, illuminating Remiel’s dark skin like starlight. Dusk and embers whorl around the two of them, caught in the updraft of their conflict. Remiel eyes his discarded sword. Callan eyes Sorrow’s gun. She has leveled it at Remiel’s back and at Callan’s heartflame. Her finger is off the trigger, for now.

“Tired paladin?” Callan asks through ragged breath. Fire takes its toll and the air was laden with ash. 

“Maybe.” Remiel’s shoulders heave, the bookbag on his back feeling heavier than usual. His sword is next to Callan’s feet, if he goes for it, Callan can strike him. End him. “You don’t look perfect yourself.”

“The city, it chokes me.” He sneers. “Nothing more.”

Remiel raises an eyebrow. What did he mean by that? Nowhere, not in any scriptures, did Mariposa stand at odds with wolfkin. If anything, this leaden city would embolden agents of chaos. He thinks for a moment to look back at Sorrow, to look for guidance. An unseen fire cracks behind him, the cycling of Sorrow’s gun. 

A round wizzes past Remiel’s ear, the air boiling in its wake. The paladin’s skin is warm, almost singing from the momentum of the round. It is like an absent flame, all the oppressive, destructive heat of fire with none of its warmth. None of its purpose. Somewhere, birds fly from their perch. Somewhere, a heart stops. It is the death of all things and it hits Callan square in the shoulder. His eyes grow wild and the force of the shot throws him to the dusty floor, feet tumbling over his torso. The fire, for a moment, dims. Remiel whips his head back towards Sorrow.

“What was that?” He shouts over the ringing in his ears. He stands from his half lurch. In a moment, and without Remiel noticing, his sword is back in his hand. “Sorrow, what did you just do?”

Sorrow canters her wrist, gun tilting at an odd angle. Air sublimates off of its barrel. It is shimmering with that dreadful, baleful heat. Remiel, for the first time, sees it. Sees that gun in her hand. Sees how it catches the light. It is a weapon made of broken glass, dripping with absent flame and refracted light. On the edges of it, rending jagged glass shards stick into the hands of the user. It is a weapon made from the shattering of hope and it is more real than she is. Her hand drips with blood. It is the only thing that is not burning.

“He would strike you again.” She replies. Her feet are shoulder’s width apart, her torso is tilted slightly. It is the stance of a killer. “I would not stand him to do so. Move.”

“You don’t have the authority to tell me that, Sorrow.” His voice is low, furtive. He tries not to sound like a petulant child.

“You waste your time, paladin.” She lilts at the end of her sentence, drawling his title into singsong mockery. She levels her gun towards him again. “Even now, he plots behind you.”

“That’s you, isn’t it.” He motions towards the gun in her hands. “That’s the real you. Whatever’s standing in front of me, that’s just the thing that shepherd's you from place to place.”

“Is it so bad to be something?” She places her free hand under the grip of the revolver. When he moves, that is when she will shoot. Her hands drip with absent flame. She can see it in his eyes, he is lost. He is what will make her lost again. This is just. Anathema. “Remiel, please. I need you to trust me.”

“You burn, Sorrow.” Remiel levels his sword against her, point lining up with the barrel of the pistol. “You’re burning already and you don’t even know it.”

Sorrow sucks air in. Her eyes go wild. Her hands tremble. 

The air catches fire. 

She is faster than Remiel is. The crack of heat lighting shatters outwards from that gun, gold and amber aurora flashing from where the bullet meets the frame. The air is thick with fire and with heat. The bullet crawls its way into Remiel’s torso, tearing and rending away skin and muscle. Remiel does not feel it. Trust not your senses. He is movement, he is momentum. His sword is in both of his hands and Remiel has broken into a sprint. He will spear her, dash her against his blade. He does not feel it, he can not feel it. He does not feel the bullet rending him, does not feel his muscles separating from each other. His heart beats fast, faster than it has in years. His skin is no longer diseased and he can not feel whatever was clawing at him. 

He can not feel it.

The round misses his heart by inches. The recoil of the shot throws Sorrow’s hand into the air, obscuring Remiel in the barrel of the gun. He is fast, but he has momentum. Inertia will kill him. She feints, jerking her body left but moving right. He will move past her, of this she is sure. As sure as the gun in her hand. She cycles the cylinder, rotating the bullet into a stronger position. Energy crackles in her hand. She will have killed a paladin and then a wolfkin. She is strong, and that is purpose enough. 

True to her thought, Remiel shoots past her by inches. Her mouth twists and contorts into that litigious grin without her even knowing. She wears, now, the mask of Mariposa. Every bit of hatred and scorn that this city has ever had is in Sorrow. Sorrow wishes she hated this feeling, she wishes it did not feel so good. She levels her gun against Remiel. He is in her sights. He kicked off an errant piece of architecture, forcing his body back towards his murderer. He is fast, but he is not fast enough. Sorrow sees it, sees the glowing amber blood drip from his skin. Sees his heart beating fast in his chest. She knows where she needs to shoot. She moves her finger over the trigger. It cuts her. She bleeds. This is just.

And then, fire.

There is fire between the two of them. Remiel is lost in its conflagration. There is heat and purpose in this flame. It is orange and yellow like birch trees in autumn and Sorrow knows. She looks to her side, her grin leaking from her lips. It is Callan. He is on the ground, shoulder dripping soot from his wound. It leaks out of him like magma, like some great wound in the earth extolling fire as virtue. Hair is in his eyes, and she can see now. See past the soot and the ash, she can see him. His hair is not the color of autumn. It is the color of blood. His hands are wrapt in fire. His face a familiar, Mariposian, grin. An infectious thought crosses her mind. It is luminous. Like a lighthouse at sea. It forces any sense or sensation from her thoughts. It forces her to think how much better it looks on him than on her.

Remiel crests through the flames at a speed that could break bones. Flames dance from off of his skin and off of his clothing, desperate to grab hold of him and tear him down. He hits Sorrow at that speed, the heat of the flames clinging to his skin. She feels a rib crack under the pressure. His breath is hot and damp and smells like rotting fruit. His voice carries that sickly sweet smell of decay and putrefaction. A corruption of the divine. She knows, past the pain and past the violence, what he truly is. He is the death of all things. Of divinity, of peace, of order. In Remiel, she sees what would cause her ruin. Her head is thrown back as they make contact with the wall behind them, and they keep going. Crashing through decaying and burnt wood, the dust and char fills her lungs. 

They hit the ground together, his sword run through her shirt and the edges of her stomach. A glancing wound. A goring wound. She looks up at him and sees the auburn hue in his eyes shift from gold to green. His teeth are long and sharp like rows of delicate knives. In him, Sorrow sees a wolf. She grimaces in pain and in disgust, hand grasping for her gun she dropped three feet back. It shakes and rattles, like it tries to return to her. 

“Anathema!” She cries out, blood and spit mixing in the back of her throat. “I lay on you anathema!” She tries to spit in his face, but her lips are too dry. 

“You can’t do anything to me Sorrow.” Remiel responds in a voice too sure to be his. “I just fucking hate you.”

His blade twists in the dirt, tearing at Sorrow’s skin and muscle. He thinks she is run through, that she will bleed her last out on that blade. That is why it is curved, that is why his blade mimics the stag’s horns. It is not to resemble his goddess, it is to rip and tear and bleed and break. Sorrow grimaces and winces. She feels his own ichor drip out onto her, staining her shirt and mixing his blood with hers. It feels like acid in the veins, like a cruel burning without heat or warmth. She fears, dear reader. In his eyes, Sorrow sees the same hatred she shown him. Revealed, now. He is sharp, razors keened and honed to an edge. Remiel is a blade now, and nothing else. No longer obscured or hidden behind some litigious grin. In his eyes, she sees oblivion, and she would deserve it. It would be her place.

Sorrow refuses to be that subservient ever again.

She rears back her head and strikes Remiel against the nose with her brow. Ichor and sickening bone-crack splatter from Remiel. It drips into his mouth, frothing with spit and rage already. The pain pulls him back, makes him understand that he is a body with meat and with sense, not a weapon. He reels back, hands dropping his sword and gripping his now broken nose. His bookbag slams against the back of his knees. This is when the pain in his shoulder returns to him. Remiel falls to the floor. Sorrow scrambles backwards, brow now covered in blood and gore. It runs into her eyes, staining her verdant green skin a dark, muddy brown. The blood looks duller now, less real, than it did flowing out of the paladin. Like whatever had imbued it with such purpose left it when it had left Remiel. 

He glared at her, from his place on the floor. From behind his fingers. Dust and ash mixing with his blood, cascading onto his face like a death mask. That visceral disgust might be gone, but not its purpose. She had attacked a member of Isosa’s holy order with no due purpose. Sorrow Brightwind is a threat, as is her Order of Broken Fang. Remiel bites his lip to stifle his moans. A failure. No steps further. He reaches a hand towards her, towards the hilt of his blade.

“Get out of here.” A voice comes from behind Remiel. It is Callan. He is gripping his shoulder, still leaking magmatic blood. His wound is sizzling, steaming from the wound. As if whatever had shot him was still burning. In his other hand, limp at his side, is his sword.“Before I and my friend find it more fun to hunt you.”

“I will burn you all.” Sorrow scrambles backwards, lurching towards the burned out door behind her. “Anathema. I lay on you all Anathema.”

“It wouldn’t be the first.” Callan smiles. “I will be interested to see if, this time, you succeed.”

Somewhere, overhead. A lighting bolt crackles. For the first time in five years, it rains in the Economic District of Mariposa. Between the moment of lighting and thunder. Sorrow is gone. Squirreled away somewhere into the ash and dust. Remiel sighs and begins to sit up, his shoulder tense and swollen. He brings his free hand to the bridge of his nose, feels the pressure of blood coagulating just underneath the skin. It is building. He is himself again. His disgust smoldered out into mere, and infinitely more harmless, anger. Anger, dear reader, anger is actionable. You can understand what angers you. Change either yourself or the world. Disgust only allows you violence, senseless and all encompassing. In disgust, you must destroy what disgusts you. 

Faith in steel.

“Ah, ah.” Callan coos. ���Easy, now. Move the wrong way and you might rip something.”

Remiel sighs and keeps his hand pressed tight against his wound. “I’m uh, pretty sturdy.”

“Hells, I can see that.” Callan grins, this time with a genuine smile. His brogue is thick on the tongue. “With how fast you move, I’m quite surprised. Can’t knock you down, can I?”

“Are you going to try to?”

“No, no.” Callan shakes his head. “Something tells me I couldn’t. A gun like that would kill any regular man.”

“You’re, um. Not a wolfkin.” Remiel looks down at the floor, eyes glowered in dejection. “Are you?”

“You’ve been had, I’m afraid. Been the butt of the lark”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought too.”

“Chin up, friend.” Callan sits down on the floor next to Remiel. He twists fire from his wound, drawing it deep from inside of him. Remiel wants to flinch, to run away from such a flame. But, to him, all it feels is warm. “She wore that grin almost as well as I do.”

“I’m uh. Sorry I tried to kill you.”

Callan tuts. “No you didn’t. If what you did to me was trying to kill me, you’d have looked like how you treated the good abbess there.”

“Yeah,” Remiel laughs shallowly, then sucks air in through his teeth. He holds his side tight, clenching some torn muscle used up in whatever magicks Remiel had used to keep himself alive. “Oh, uh. Ow. Don’t- Don’t make me laugh.”

“Noted.” Callan nods. “You did say you needed me for something.”

“I uh.” Remiel removes his hand from his shoulder. The bleeding shouldn’t have stopped yet, Callan thinks. And yet, when he draws his hand back, he is leaking no more. “It's personal business.”

“Far be it from me to pry.” Callan shrugs, reaching into his coat to draw some flask with his good hand. “A man has to keep his own secrets.

There are several moments of silence, as the rain pitters onto the burned out rooftop above them. The wind is not whipping, and the rain is light. A nuisance. Remiel looks over to his companion. “You haven’t talked to Isosa before? Have you?”

Callan blinks twice. “No.”

“Damn.” Remiel sighs as he moves to get up. He winces in pain. Callan looks at the paladin’s shoulder. Healed, already. No more of the sickly sweet ichor that filled Callan’s mind with thoughts of home. His thin, white shirt had been torn open with the bullet, damp with his blood and sticking to his skin. The wound looked closed. Tender, but closed. The flesh around it, however, looked diseased. Thick tendrils of black miasma warped and weaved like roots. Remiel notices Callan’s gaze and moves to cover it with his hand. The pirate looks down at the floor, bashfully.

“You looking for your goddess?” He responds after a slight moment. His own shoulder is not as lucky. The bleeding has stopped, but his arm hangs limp.

“You might not be my target, but that fire doesn’t mean I should trust you.” Remiel mutters. “Sorry.”

“Meant nothing by it, friend.” Callan shrugs with one of his shoulders.

“No, no, eugh.” Remiel pinches the bridge of his nose out of reflex, then flinches away when his hands make contact with the break. “Sorry, I’m just-”

“Worn out?”

“Tired, yeah.”

Callan sits on the floor next to Remiel and starts up his fire, for just a moment. It dances like a friend, flickering shadows cast against the now sodden walls. The fire crackles with moisture and air shimmers with heat, refracting all that is in front of them.

“I’m here, hunting for someone too.” Callan starts back up again. “A witch who’s stolen something from my lady.”

“Not much to go off of.” Remiel shies away from the fire for a moment, his torso turning slightly away, as if a child running from a large dog.

“I’m afraid not.” Callan sighs, his breath shaky. To keep this fire up drains him. But Remiel looks as if he needs the warmth, shuddering in the cold as he is. His grin grows wide, and Remiel does not see. 

“I certainly will not stand in your way.”

Callan knows what to do. 

“When I was younger,” Callan starts, hands held out in front of him, warm in its embrace. “I understood that was all fire was.”

“Hm?”

“Distortion. When fire, true fire, warms, it distorts the air around it. Refracts it in ways that are untrue.” He pauses for a moment. “Fire was guile, it was trickery.”

“Huh.” Remiel leans forward a bit. Was this the first time he’s been close enough to fire to truly see it? The rector was warmed by steam, his home never needed to keep out the cold. The fireplace had always sat empty and whatever food they needed, his mother had always provided. He had heard stories of it, been taught to fear it. But he had never seen it. He moves his hand to his shoulder again, feels the pulse of his heart in his reforming wound. “Fire was destruction. For- for us.”

“Is that right?”

“Fire marks decay, it marks entropy. The breaking of things down from what they were. A transformation.”

“Do you see that right now?”

Remiel pauses for a second. He knows, somewhere, that there is a transfusion here. Part of whoever Callan is was being destroyed in order to create this fire. He could see, if he looked hard enough, the channels of energy along Callan’s veins. He could see the fire burning in his stomach. Consuming him. A wretched thing. A thing of the abyss, of entropy. These are things he can see. 

Trust not your eyes.

Callan can see the fire dancing within them, like a child looking at the stars for the very first time. Remiel’s face is lit up, the shadows grow longer. They are enrapturing, they are obliterating. Upon them, they are the death of all sense. Remiel moves his hands towards them, as if Prometheus grasping for its warmth. Callan’s grin grows just that bit wider, catching the rest of his face ablaze in its glory. A moment, Remiel thinks, a moment could not hurt.

“No.”

[scotianostra]

Alexander Cruden the self titled “Alexander the Corrector”, was born on the 31st of May, 1699.

It's always a pleasure to revisit "Alexander the Corrector" as he was called seems like as he wa such a character who obviously had mental health problems, not that it held him back too much!

Alexander Cruden was a bookseller and corrector of proofs, is famed as the compiler of a useful Bible study tool—the first complete English language concordance of the Bible. Hardworking, loyal and gentle, he was also be obsessive believing God had appointed him to correct people’s morals. and his obsessive horror of blasphemy once caused him to strike a cursing man with a shovel, leading to one of his three incarcerations in madhouses.

Cruden was one of the most public and vociferous mad figures of the eighteenth century. He was from Aberdeen, well-educated and a devout Christian, though his madness did not apparently originate in spiritual fervour, even if it took on a strongly religious line later in lift when he became involved in a series of conflicts in his self-appointed role as ‘Alexander the Corrector’ of the nation’s morals. He was first confined for a short time by his parents in Aberdeen after a youthful romantic infatuation. On moving to London, he worked as a corrector of the press as well as running a small bookshop, and in 1737 he published his Complete Concordance to the Bible, a remarkable achievement and still an essential item of biblical scholarship.

“Concordance” includes a list of every single word used in the bible AND how many times it is used, that’s from “a”, “the”, “of”, “to” and “with”, and most “ands”, “buts” and “froms” there are 35 references to “honey”, 94 to “wine”. All the “alls” are quoted, including “above all” and “all ye”. The entry for “synagogue” alone includes a 4,000-word article on places of worship. Just reading the Concordance would drive most of us round the twist, surely the work of a mad man, but Cruden is known for so much more. It took him 12 years to complete his Concordance, all done in his spare time!

I can image Alexander Cruden in this day and age with a blog and many many followers, he would also be on Twitter spreading his words and commenting on the unbelievers, he would be a pedantic user and might end up being suspended from time to time.

On his death on November 1st 1770 he left his property to various relatives and to the City of Aberdeen for the purchase of religious books to be distributed to the poor. Despite his wish to be buried in Aberdeen, his body was interred in the dissenters’ burial-ground at Deadman’s Place, Southwark. There are plaques to his memory in Aberdeen, where there is also a street, Cruden’s Court. A second plaque can be found at Camden London

Want to know more? Check out this account of Cruden’s life in London and his attempts at staying out of bedlam including some using the quite eccentric authors own writings, where he refers to himself in the third sense, as Mr C… https://www.bible.ca/psychiatry/account-of-the-unparalleled-case-of-a-citizen-of-london-bookseller-to-the-late-queen-alexander-cruden-1738ad.htm

There is also a good article about him here on Electric Scotland’s web pages https://electricscotland.com/history/other/cruden_alexander.htm

[dailyadventureprompts]

Adventure: The Grand Cathedral

All good things of this earth are made by hands at toil

Come in, ye weary, and be welcome in the home you have raised

-Words inscribed above the Lawberer’s gate.

Built to honour Trevennah the Arbiter, a saint of the goddess Erathis, this sprawling complex of temples and convents is a settlement unto itself, a waystation for those travelling through the frigid wilderness in search of home. Folk of all kinds make the cathedral a central stop in their routes through the region, be they traders, pilgrims, or nomadic peoples seeking a sturdy refuge during the harshest of the winter months, The Cathederal accepts them all, which does sometimes lead to monks and strangers living cheek to cheek for months of a time, giving the temple to order a rather chaotic air.

Adventure Hooks:

Just passing through, the party are helping an architect and lay brother  of the Lawbearer’s order map a few of the lower catacombs in preperation for a new expansion. a fire some decades back destroyed the records for exactly what sort of tombs, vaults and whatever other subterranean chambers might exist down there. This can make a great intro dungeon for first time players, giving them a chance to get to know eachother and share goals while fending off underground pests and the occasional rogue gargoyle.

Though the gods are ever present it’s said that they can hear us more clearly through their holy places, and in desperate need of the law bearer's guidance the party has decided to seek out the holiest place they can. Getting the attention of the goddess of civilization isn’t as easy as kneeling at an altar and reciting some words, and may be an undertaking of days, maybe even weeks. While spending some of their off hours in study or just looking for something to do one of the party will run into some monks loading tools into a local wagon: apparently a bridge in a road near by has broken and it needs some quick mending. It’s hard work, but if they volunteer their time, the handy hero might just find themselves working alongside a grey-eyed old woman who might lend an ear to their troubles.

The  has intrigues that stretch back generations, factitious priests, traders from warring nations, an indentured peasant class that chafes at the presence of outsiders . The only things to keep the peace is tradition and the wisdom of the ostensibly neutral Grand Matriarch, and she’s just been found murdered. Now with tensions flaring and fingers pointing, the party must find the true murderer before their one safe refuge from the cold burns itself to the ground. More on that Mystery Below the cut:

Setup: While on the surface the Matriarch was beloved by all, having given up her family name and dedicated her life to the lawbearer’s service, there’s plenty of folks who would have wanted her dead, creating a tangled mess of suspects and motives for the party to investigate. 

The local peasant population were once a pagan people conquered by holy warriors under the guise of bringing “civilization” to the savages. Though it happened generations ago, these resentments run deep, doubly so for the clan of nomads who’ve stopped in by the cathederal to trade, all of whom who have experienced the tyranny of the more zealous Erathians first hand.

Despite being a goddess of order and good goverment, Erathis’s clergy can be quite the contentious lot, constantly jockeying for position to ensure their interpretation of the Lawbearer’s will is the default. There are numerous factions within the Cathederal who wanted the Matriarch’s seat in their grasp, and are now squabbling to consolidate power.

The Cathedral of Trevennah occupies territory ruled over by a tyrannical Bishop-Prince, who has sent a zealous and determined agent to convince the Matriarch to hand over certain sainted relics as a sign of obesence to her religious superior. Just because the Bishop and the Matriarch worshipped the same god does not mean they’re part of the same holy order, and so the agent had lingered on for months getting slowly more frustrated as they were denied.

A visiting noble who happens to be the ACTUAL killer, despise feigning innocence. The Grand Matriarch was actually their elder aunt, who do to a stipulation in his mother’s will had inherited a large portion of profitable lands that were due to her before she became a dedicate. Fearful about his domains being bisected, this noble came to convince his aunt to put aside her plans to use the income generated from that territory for some kind of charitable mission, and instead give him his rightful due.  Striking her down in a fit of rage, the noble now lurks around the cathedral so he can secure the land’s documents and see them destroyed.

Other Npcs include:

 A Knight-Excognatia of the Cloven Shield order, a sort of wandering law officer who will help the party in their investigation. Should they prove themselves, this knight will take the party onto their next assignment, a small border kingdom beset by some kind of beast.

A highly skilled warrior woman serving as the noble’s bodyguard. A bit smitten with her lord, she’ll vouch for his innocence and honour right up until his crimes are revealed, at which point she’ll drop her blade where she stands and head off into the wilderness looking for redemption. Some time later the party might just find her leading a band of outlaws sheltering people from an ongoing civil war, trying to earn back her honour by any means she can.

The poor Architect Lay-brother, who will vouch for the party’s innocence to anyone who will hear and will try and give them what support he can while they untangle this mess. Some time later he will send the party a missive: he’s discovered something ominous down in the catacombs they were exploring and he’d like them back to help delve further.

[miaisnotacat]

Name: Ling Luo

Age: 16

Height: 163cm

Weight: 52kg

Birthday: July 14

Nationality: Chinese

Gender: Female

Signing age: 13

Timeline: The original timeline has been destroyed by the rescue witch (Madoka Witch), so I can only wander between parallel universes

character:

Gentle and kind, not very courageous but always pretending to be brave and decisive, will think carefully before doing things, but because of easy self-denial and no actual action, often have an evasive mentality, and the inner drama is very serious

Likes: drawing, handmade, fantasy, chocolate

Dislikes: Bitter melon, people who trust you, betrayal

Soul Gem Color: Vermilion, Amber

desire:

"I want to see other worlds and become friends with everyone there!"

Originally, there was very little karma, and she should have become a witch directly after making a wish to "explore other worlds and meet new friends" that transcended her own karma, but because of the particularity of the wish, Lingluo in other universes and her After the combination, the causality is also folded, making it the existence with the largest amount of causality in this universe

Inherent ability: <space jump>

Traveling through different time and space and worlds, and people in other worlds will have an inexplicable affection for her

(As long as it is within the scope of the second dimension, you can go there)

Derivative capacity:

〈Teleportation Barrier〉

Creates two teleportation arrays within the visible area

(Its usage is similar to the game "Portal")

Unique Weapons:

Knife, often used in melee combat, is also a tool for <space jump>

Derived weapons:

Bow, often used for ranged attacks

Double-ended knife, mainly used as a temporary foothold, and occasionally used as a weapon

Shotguns, I am a little afraid of gunshots, so I don't like to use them

The reason for despair: under the guidance of qb, I think that I shouldn't set foot in other worlds from the beginning, and I feel that if I don't interfere, my original universe will not be destroyed

Witching:

"In a certain parallel universe, she exists on the same level as the Relief Witch"

Witch of false gods; whose nature is gaffe

This witch is sad because of the mistakes she made in the past. She can't think of a solution, so she chooses to pretend to sleep to avoid the problem, but the timid witch may be "woke up" as long as there is a little commotion

worship

Servant of the Witch of a False God; whose duty is to be a believer

These subordinates were turned into cursed humans. They worshiped the witch extremely and regarded her as a god. They waited on the witch all day long, hoping to get a response from the witch one day.

angels

Servant of the Witch of the False God; whose duty is to protect

He thinks he is the witch's messenger, and for her sake, he will do whatever it takes to eliminate the intruders who disturb the witch

Witch's Enchantment:

The barrier is so huge that it covers the entire earth, making all human beings except the magical girl cursed

Although the witch's own ability does not need to hide in the barrier, but because the witch is too timid, she has been hiding in the depths of the barrier

一一一一一一一一一一一一一一一一一一一一一一 The content is google translation, my English is very bad

(arms)

[monstersdownthepath]

Demigod Dossier: Asura Rana, part 2

Pictured: Not any of the Rana, but the closest thing we’re likely to get to an image of them: the highest CR Asura, the Asurendra from Bestiary 3, pg. 23. I could have re-used the same pic from last time, but that might be too confusing...

Lawful Evil Mistakes of the Gods The Complete Book of the Damned, pg. 110~111

Aah, the poor Asura Rana... Among fiendish demigods, they’re one of the least developed, having barely any lore in ANY book, not a single representative with a statblock, and most damning? Not a single piece of art depicting any of them. It’s a shame, because they have some of the more compelling lore of any of the fiends, being directly created by the gods’ mistakes and acting as living representations of divine failures and frustrations. If any fiend should have an easy time spreading apostasy and heresy and weakening the overall amount of faith of the world, it should be them. 

As I discussed in the last post that introduced the majority of their lore, Asura Rana are not traditionally ascended from lessers of their kind, but rather born from one specific, apocalyptic tragedy that caused death and trauma across a whole nation, continent, or even an entire planet. This isn’t ALWAYS the case, mind, as some lesser asura can be reborn into greater and greater forms--usually, but not always, with the blessing of another Rana--due to achieving some physical or spiritual apotheosis and blooming into a semi-divine entity... and, rarely, suffering a humiliating but enlightening defeat can see an asura reincarnating into a form stronger than the one before it.

The three we’ll be discussing are one of each: Chupurvagasti, born fully-formed when an entire planet was covered in toxic mists by an enraged god; Gavidya, who ascended over time as he wove lies and apostasies into a hundred different religious groups, causing them to fracture and self-destruct; and Ioramvul, who died thousands of times by his own hand and became stronger with every death until he ascended to the status of a Rana. I also, for many reasons, find each of them amusing or interesting enough to review. So how about we look at what these lore-less fiends offer...

The Asura Rana work freely with mortals, seeing them as potential allies and tools in their battles against the divine… if only to destroy them once they’ve outlived their usefulness. Worshipers receive Boons that are are relatively simple: a trio of spell-like abilities, each of which may be used 1/day. Boons are normally gained slowly, at levels 12, 16, and 20, however entering the Evangelist, Exalted, or Sentinel Prestige Classes can see the Boons gained as early as levels 10, 13, and 16. Note that while they are Lawful Evil fiends that live in Hell, they are not devils, thus you cannot enter the Diabolist Prestige Class to obtain their Boons without DM fiat.

Chupurvagasti, the Lady of Poison Mist Rana of Mists, Poison, and Veils Domains: Air, Evil, Law, Trickery Subdomains: Cloud, Deception, Fear, Wind

Obedience: Meditate while wearing a veil soaked in acrid, toxic chemicals that induce minor rashes. Benefit: Gain a +4 profane bonus on saving throws against poison effects.

Off to a rough start! While the chemicals are stated to only be foul enough to cause ‘minor rashes,’ you can bet that over time, that nastiness will build up. Good thing your chosen goddess also gives you protection from poison! And that most DMs won’t bother with tracking your long-term exposure to dangerous chemicals. It’s hard to be scared of anything that’d take 20~30 years to start having side-effects, especially when Neutralize Poison (or Lesser Restoration) will likely be available to you within a year or two at most.

Like most of the Rana, this Obedience is quite subtle and easy to hide, despite the awful first impression it’ll probably leave on anyone seeing you do it for the first time. Even the resulting rashes can be explained away if you wave off the ritual as some sort of esoteric skin-cleansing or beauty regimen. Or the precursor to one, as you apply ointment and balm to the rashes to soothe them! One whiff of the Narsty coming off your rags, and few people will likely stick around to actually investigate further and figure out you’re worshiping a nihilistic destroyer deity. It’s even easier if you’re an Alchemist, or even just a regular chemist, as you can synthesize your own mixtures to minimize their potential damage to you and remove the complications of getting them in the first place! All in all, quite simple... but, of course, impossible to do if your belongings get stolen, which I always ding points off for.

The benefit isn’t anything we haven’t seen before. Extra protection from poison is good at all levels and in every campaign (except Evil vs Good, as goody-goods are unlikely to wield poison), and while poisons are rarely dangerous to a given party after level 8 or so, they can certainly be a resource-drain when trying to handle them and especially when trying to undo their damage before it begins to stack up. If nothing else, having a bit of a buffer between yourself and needing to waste a party spell slot on Neutralize Poison is good.

Boon 1: Displacement Boon 2: Quickened Stinking Cloud Boon 3: Quickened Cloudkill

And here we are in the meat of it! Chupur gives quite the handy selection of spells to her followers as they level, all three of them being excellent defensive tools. Displacement is a one-size fits all buff for anyone expecting to be attacked a lot, imposing a 50% miss chance to attacks against yourself or another character expected to go into the front line. While the duration leaves much to be desired, it’s hard to hate a free cast of Displacement saved for a particularly gnarly fight with an enemy that has a lot of attacks. That it lets you cast it on someone else instead of just yourself is a nice ribbon, as it lets you pick whether you want to save your tank some HP, or your backline from any stray blows that get through.

Next-- hey! HEY! HEY!!! That’s CHEATING, you little rat! It’s spell level 3, 6, and 9 for Boons 1, 2, and 3 (respective) for Asura Rana! You thought you were being sneaky, didn’t you? But I caught you right in the act! Trying to get your followers a level 7 spell when you thought no one was looking! Well I’m onto you!

... anyway. Yes, while Chupur may be [through gritted teeth] breaking the established rules to get her followers Quickened Stinking Cloud, she at least broke them to get them a great spell. I can’t think of any reason you WOULDN’T want a Quickened spell of any sort, least of all a spell that not only breaks line of sight between you and hostiles, but can outright stop entire groups of enemies from fighting back at all once it’s used. Anything not immune to poison that gets caught in a Stinking Cloud has to save versus nausea that lasts for as long as they remain in the fog, and then for 1d4+1 extra rounds on top of that once they exit, so even if they managed to stumble out and spot you, they won’t be able to do anything for--at the very least--two more entire rounds. And because it’s Quickened? You can lob a Fireball into a crowd, then fart all over whoever survived to keep them from firing back.

Worst case scenario, it’s a more expensive Obscuring Fog, which itself is already a great defensive spell. I can’t be angry at this, no matter how much it breaks the rules. [grumbling] lawful evil my ass... 

This, of course, leads nicely into Cloudkill. Take everything I said about Stinking Cloud and put it here as well, but add in the caveat that instead of just nauseating everyone inside, Cloudkill... well, kills them. Innocent commoners and weaker minions are slain outright, while moderately stronger ones must save every turn or die. Anything with more than 6 HD takes 1d4 Con damage every round they remain in the cloud, which builds quickly since there’s no actual way to resist the Con damage unless you’re immune to poison (making the save only cuts the damage in half, min 1).

Perhaps to keep down potential cheese strats with Forcecage, the cloud automatically moves 10ft forward each round until it can simply go no further, preventing you from using the Quickened nature of the spell to perform a one-two punch of locking an enemy in a box and then spraying them with RAID... but you CAN enclose an enemy (or enemies) in a U-shaped Wall of Force (which unlike Forcecage, doesn’t allow a save), as the cloud cannot move past the Wall and will simply stop once it touches it. If you or an ally can coordinate your spells, you can Wall of Force, then Quickened Cloudkill into the gap, then another ally can seal the remaining exit point with another Wall spell of any sort to assure the deaths of all creatures inside.

While this can work with Wall of Stone or similar spells, it’s up to the DM how they interpret the cloud’s inexorable movement; I specifically chose WoF because it says ‘spells cannot pass through it,’ so the cloud would stop moving once it reached the wall. If the DM states, reasonably, that the cloud stops if it cannot penetrate a substance, you can get away with Wall of Stone, Ice, Bone, or similar. Or you can eschew lethal combos and just spray it over a crowd of enemies to mop up everyone not worth your time! Much like with stanky cloud, it’s hard to not be excited for Quickened Mass Extinction.

------

Gavidya, the Numberless Rana of Corruption, Indoctrination, and Lies Domains: Community, Evil, Law, Trickery Subdomains: Deception, Family, Slavery, Thievery

Obedience: Count the bearings inside a sap, assigning each the name of someone you know and intend to indoctrinate or deceive. Benefit: Gain a +4 profane bonus on Bluff checks to tell lies and on saving throws against Divination effects.

Again, continuing the trend Asura Rana tend to have of making an Obedience subtle, if odd. Your behavior is likely to come off as obsessive-compulsive rather than any level of Evil, especially since you don’t have to state aloud the names on your list. I enjoy the idea of a character starting out with a single name on their list, but over the course of the campaign, they eventually acquire a name for every individual bearing inside their sacred weapon (note, Gavidya is one of THREE whole deities whose sacred weapon is the sap!). So, yes; easily concealed Obedience which requires very little investment--a sap can be replaced if stolen for a measly 1 gold in anything but a desolate dungeon--only minorly complicated by the fact that saps in Pathfinder tend to be metal or wood beatsticks, not socks full of beans, stones, or ball bearings, as the Obedience implies. Still, a sack of ball bearings isn’t exp-- wait

wait what?

hold on, am I blind? Am I crazy?? Am I stupid??? where on earth in equipment are the ball bearings?! I could have SWORN...

... huh. I guess they don’t exist in Pathfinder! This is odd, considering the modernity of some of its tech. I suppose you could get away with filling a leather or burlap bag with wooden bearings, which should absolutely exist on Golarion, or marbles, which not only exist but are statted out (costing 1sp for a bag, adventurer pocket change), in place of metallic bearings to replace a lost or stolen sap.

Anyway, the benefit. Benefit’s good, because any Divination spell that has a saving throw is typically one you really want to save against to keep an enemy from having an easy time analyzing you, especially if you’re going to be living up to your Rana’s standards of lying at every available opportunity. Top contenders are Scrying and the entire Detect Thoughts family along with their imitators, but there’s also the niche case of Mind Thrust and its line of Except Bigger versions being incredibly rare cases of offensive Divination spells. It’s not as valuable in a battle as having saves against Necromancy or Enchantment, but it’s very valuable OUT of battle whenever someone out there is trying to get a read on you.

Boon 1: Glibness Boon 2: Create Greater Mindscape Boon 3: Microcosm

Well, this first one’s easy! Glibness should be a spell familiar to anyone who’s ever played as, with, or against a Bard. The absolutely divine +20 bonus it gives to make your lies believable cancels out the -20 penalty associated with telling impossible lies, allowing you to gaslight and girlboss (gender neutral) your way past pretty much anyone trying to gatekeep you. Even if your lie contradicts everything they know, they’ll at least give it some thought and sometimes even a take a moment to double-check their own knowledge, which gives you enough time to think of something even more convincing (or just run). If you’re not brave enough to go around trying to convince people you’re Aroden reborn, the +20 bonus is quite handy even if you’re not the party’s face, turning you into one for the absolutely monstrous duration of 10 min/level. If you ARE the party’s face it’s practically unnecessary overkill, but if you’re going to be lying ANYWAY, you may as well lie in style.

This second one, though? This one requires a bit more explanation than I could ever fit into a single article, but I’ll do my best: So long as you have a vague idea about who you’re going to aim the spell at, it’s a Save-or-Suck sleep effect on upwards to 13 creatures at once (+1 per level)... and you don’t need line-of-effect. The Mindscape spell operates similarly to Dimension Door, in that you need only paint an area and the spell locks onto whatever target falls into that area, without you needing to be able to draw line-of-effect or even know what you’re shooting at. If you need a room cleared, you can target a soldier garrison and say you’re affecting as many people as possible... but if, say, you saw someone of high rank enter that same garrison, or if you know the king is in his chambers, or the big bad evil guy is in the hall next door, or have any other sort of firsthand knowledge that there’s a specific target or targets you want to pick for this spell (as in, you must have seen or heard that they’re within the spell’s area), the spell automatically and unerringly seeks them out even among a crowd.

I’m actually going to take a second paragraph here to explain what Greater Create Mindscape does in the simplest terms I can: You pick the area of the spell, pick how many targets (or specify targets) you want to affect, and then any target that fails their save AS WELL AS YOURSELF are drawn into a mindscape of your design. The mindscape is essentially a temporary dream demiplane; you choose what it looks like, how big it is, if certain magics are empowered or suppressed (as though it were a proper plane), what sorts of monsters or beasts are inside (you can directly control a number of those monsters equal to your caster level; all others are mindless constructs), whether or not damage taken within the mindscape translates to the victim’s actual HP bar, and the method by which the mindscape can be escaped, which must be possible for all creatures within the mindscape (”Make it to the edge of the forest,” “open the front door of the manor,” “defeat this boss monster,” “catch this rabbit,” etc).

Already a hell of a spell! Snare an entire crowd of enemies in your imagination zone, putting them through a gauntlet of deadly traps and hostile monster encounters... while also being there yourself, as your mental avatar must also be present. Tempting as it may be to lock away dozens of foes at a time in your mind palace where damage done to them is also dealt to the real them, the reverse is true for you as well, and now suddenly you have 13+ people who want you gone. While you possess your full retinue of abilities, so do they, and while YOU’RE probably extremely powerful, your mental constructs can’t be so overpowering that your victims have no hope of defeating them; victory must be possible, even if it’s difficult. No conjuring 20 mental Tarrasques (okay, you can, but they’ll only be strong enough to challenge your weakest enemy)! The most generically good use of this spell, in my opinion, is akin to a Mass Hold Monster, as any creature trapped in a mindscape becomes effectively catatonic and cannot be awoken even if their body takes damage, allowing your allies to execute them one at a time... or defend your carcass from everyone who made their save.

Whoof, that was long, and we’re still not done talking about the power offered by the Numberless! Microcosm is a hell of a spell to give out, only otherwise being available to Psychics, and for good reason: it’s a rare example of a Save-And-Suck. It can affect only 30 HD worth of creatures (significantly less than you’d think, especially if you’re fighting anything but Humanoids and Monstrous Humanoids), but any creature with less than 10 HD gets no saving throw to avoid being trapped in a permanent mindscape. Anything with 11 to 15 HD is trapped for 10 minutes per level even if they successfully save, and permanently if they fail, so it’s basically a confirmed kill on anything not immune to the spell no matter what. Anything with 16 HD or higher--like any boss or even midboss-level threat you’ll be facing at the level you get this power--avoids the effect if they succeed their save. Microcosm is an off-switch for combats with creatures that would waste your time, and an extremely potent Save-or-Suck against anything worth your time.

Of all the Rana we’ve seen so far, Gavidya has the best record so far, with all three of his spells being extremely useful!

------

Ioramvul, With the Mouth Full of Boulders Rana of Caverns, Cliffs, and Premature Burials Domains: Death, Earth, Evil, Law Subdomains: Caves, Fear, Murder, Undead

Obedience: Partially bury yourself in dirt or gravel while meditating. Benefit: Gain a +4 profane bonus on saving throws against earth effects and petrification.

Three for three on the ‘easily hidden Obedience ritual’ front (two for three if you consider Chupur’s acrid facemask routine difficult to hide), and probably one of the simplest and easiest Obediences ever. Dirt and gravel are all over the god dang planet, so unless you’re in space, in the arctic, in an Elemental Plane besides Earth, or are somehow in a dungeon made of plastic or metal, you can perform this Obedience. “partially” is also a key phrase here, because it means you don’t need a full covering; in a pinch, enough to cover your feet or both hands (or, in the tradition of your Rana, half your face) will satisfy the conditions. 

Simple, easy, and can be performed in just about any condition. What more could you want? A good benefit, perhaps. Earth effects aren’t the most common thing on the planet--if something’s demanding a saving throw, it’s probably Fire or Water--so the majority of this time, this effect will probably just be sitting pretty and unused on your character sheet. The extra protection against petrification is welcome, at least; any protection against a Save-or-Suck as damning as petrification is a good ribbon, even if it IS uncommon.

Boon 1: Spiked Pit Boon 2: Statue Boon 3: Clashing Rocks

I will sing the praises of the Pit spells all the live-long day if I have to. I won’t stop until I see them on the list of every caster who wants control of the battlefield! The Pit spells work on everything, are useful even if the target makes their save (because they linger, and thus more enemies can be pushed in), shaft any enemy without a climb or fly speed, combo well with anything that can take advantage of shooting fish in barrels, and with a bit of creativity can be used to temporarily remove traps or other obstacles. Their major downside is that they’re useless against enemies that can fly, but that’s what the rest of your repertoire is for (or a well-placed tanglefoot bag when they’re hovering over the hole). As battlefield control goes, there’s little better than narrowing where your enemies can move by opening a pit of spikes on part of the map, and Rangers and Hunters love few things more than enemies they have the high ground over. The extra damage from the spikes is more of a ribbon on top of this present than anything else.

I will be first to admit, though, that for all the good I see in making pits, Statue took a while to grow on me. I never saw it as ever worth preparing or even having, considering that using it optimally locks you out of AoOs and immediate actions, but if you’re going full-caster? Why not have 8 Hardness between you and whatever your enemies are doing? Not like you’ll miss the loss of AC since you barely had any anyway. It also--and this is the part that turned me around on the spell--renders you immune to an enormous variety of spells and effects, because the majority of offensive magic only affects creatures, and while you’re in statue form, you’re considered an object. No mind-affecting effects for you, thanks! Just watch out for enemies with heavy picks or warhammers...

Oh, also, even if you’re not the party’s caster, you can just hand the spell over to them anyway. It affects whoever you touch!

Speaking of stone, though, we end on one of the funniest spells in Pathfinder. Possibly the most ‘unga bunga’ level 9 spell you could have on your list, and one of the most effective to boot. High-level enemies tend to have immunity to enormous lists of status ailments, wide elemental resistances and some protection from Save-or-Sucks... but do you know what few enemies have defenses against? Being hit with a huge rock. Let alone two huge rocks! Clashing Rocks conjures two enormous boulders on either side of the target and then sandwich-smashes them, dealing 20d6 damage and knocking the target prone with nothing but a successful ranged touch attack to hit; this averages to about 75, so it’s not especially jaw-dropping, but it’s an attack instead of a save and knocks them prone... and, if they fail a Reflex saving throw, they take an additional 8d6 bludgeoning damage (Reflex DC 15 half) and get buried under tons of stone. potentially taking them out of the fight entirely or even killing them via suffocation if they can’t make the DC 25 Strength check to escape. 

Even if the attack misses, the stones still deal 10d6 damage and knock the victim prone (Reflex save for half and avoid being knocked over), and the same damage/knockdown effect occurs to every creature and object in the 30x30 space of the stones when they appear and the 30ft distance they travel to smash into the target. That’s a lot of sure damage over a wide area to a lot of potential targets, but also there’s just something special about hitting something like a dragon or a vampire with enormous rocks. Like how I complimented the Pit spells, Clashing Rocks works on everything and alters the battlefield when it’s used, because those rocks don’t go away after the spell ends. Now there’s a 30x60 mound of difficult terrain smack dab where an enemy used to be, and everyone has to deal with it.

... also, even if you didn’t need it for the damage, a creative player could come up with at least three or four uses for 80 tons of earth and stone that can just be waved into existence as needed.

[classyladysworld]

Today is also ...

National Worship of Tools Day

I've heard some people have a favorite tool in their box. Today's the day to take it out and appreciate it.

😉😄

[floridaboiler]

[murderousink23]

03/11/2023 is World Plumbing Day 👩‍🔧👨‍🔧🌏, National Oatmeal Nut Waffles Day 🇺🇲, National Worship of Tools Day 🔨🗜🛠🔧⚒🇺🇲, National 311 Day 🇺🇲, National Promposal Day 🇺🇲, Key Deer Awareness Day 🦌🇺🇲

[determinate-negation]

“Two weeks into this patently miserable year, a British Pakistani gunman took four worshippers hostage at a Reform synagogue in Colleyville, Texas. If you logged on amid the 11-hour standoff, you might have been forgiven for thinking that the true crisis was not that people were being held at gunpoint in a place of worship, but rather that the story had failed to meet an indeterminate threshold of concern on Twitter. Even as scores of non-Jewish leaders quickly spoke out online against antisemitism, and organizations, particularly Muslim ones, rushed to release formal statements condemning the attack, a significant number of Jews railed against what they perceived as a familiar slight, reigniting the debate about where antisemitism fits into a supposed hierarchy of oppressions. When FBI special agent Matthew DeSarno said the attack was “not specifically related to the Jewish community”—a claim that was picked up by AP and the BBC—many asked if violence against any other minority group would suffer the same misdiagnosis. If the hostages had been Black, they began, resentfully conjuring a fantasy of tearful, wall-to-wall coverage. The same critics felt vindicated the following day when the incident failed to appear on the front page of The New York Times’s print edition.

The concern at being overlooked quickly devolved into a communal tantrum, even as the crisis itself resolved with all hostages returned to safety. This was followed by a petty accounting of the number of minutes devoted to the incident on cable news, or its relative placement in national newspapers. The outrage swelling on social media crested in the paper of record when the conservative New York Times columnist Bret Stephens posited that Jews were in fact suffering a double victimization: “First, by being physically targeted for being Jewish; second, by being begrudged the universal recognition that we were morally targeted, too.” Elsewhere in the opinion section, famed Holocaust scholar Deborah Lipstadt—whose nomination for US special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism was stalled in the Senate—scolded gentiles for their callousness: “This week we wonder if the eyes of our non-Jewish friends and neighbors, particularly the ones who didn’t call to see if we were OK, have been opened just a bit.”

But Jews were not being ignored; in fact, the response was swift and substantial.

[…] Given [the] response from media, government, and civil society in the week following the attack—and the fact that our institutions already have significant resources to spend on the trappings of security—it’s not surprising that Jewish identitarians found themselves with few targets and even fewer demands. What stood in place of a coherent analysis of antisemitism or a list of actionable responses was a general posture of grievance, a diffuse call to be noticed, crystallized by Beauchamp in the conclusion to his Vox essay: “What American Jews need from mainstream American society right now is to be listened to, for our fears about rising anti-Semitism to be heard and, once heard, taken seriously on their own terms.” While the blanket claim of “rising anti-Semitism” is difficult to verify absent any baseline of comparison, it seems clear that we are witnessing a surge of organized white nationalism and a coordinated campaign in support of Christian rule. And still, according to a 2020 Pew study, the percentage of American Jews who self-report a sense of rising antisemitism—75%—is outmatched only by the percentages upwards of 85% reporting high degrees of physical, social, and economic well-being. This disjuncture between our anxieties and the material realities of our lives suggests that the fear is not a direct response to present conditions, but a compulsion rooted in some unseen terrain, making the call to meet it “on its own terms” impossible to fulfill.

[mask131]

Roman gods are not Greek gods: Mercury

MERCURY

Unlike the gods we saw previously, such as Mars or Vulcan, Mercury actually isn’t as ancient as the rest of the other “Roman Olympians”. He is one of the “recent” deities, appearing only around the fifth century BC, and so heavily shaped by the Greek Hermes with not much pre-existing influence.

Well… “heavily shaped” would be a bit of an exaggeration, because the fascinating thing with Mercury is that he basically reflected and embodied only ONE aspect of the Greek Hermes. If you know your Greek myths, you’ll know that Hermes, like Apollo, is one of those gods that cumulates the jobs. Messenger and psychopomp, god of merchants and thieves, god of eloquence, gymnastic, science, I can pile it all up to no end. But Mercury? You pick “god of merchants” from the list above, and you have it.

Mercury is the god of trading, the god of commerce, the patron of merchants, the one people prayed to for monetary gain. His very name is linked to either “merx” (merchandise) or “mercari” (to trade), and this shows why Mercury is more “recent” than the other deities – in the primitive Roman society, heavily leaning on agriculture and then warfare, a god of coins and merchants wasn’t really interesting or wouldn’t be prominent – it was only as Rome built itself as a wealthy and influential nation that Mercury started to rise. Mercury’s heavy financial nature was such that, when Plautus wrote his “Amphitryon”, based on the Greek legend of the character of the same name, he had to actually specify and make explicit to the audience that Mercury was the god of both “nuntiis” and “lucro”, of both messages and monetary gain – clearly showing that Mercury’s position as a “messenger of the gods” wasn’t actually well-known or widespread.

Mercury did inherit another main aspect of Hermes – the god of travels. But it was also tied to this aspect as a god of commerce: Hermes wasn’t just the gods of all travelers. In the Roman Empire, travel meant you had business, and if it wasn’t military or political business it was commercial business. It was because merchants travelled so much that Mercury became the god of travels, and it is to protect the roads and the things carried on it that his statues were erected by the side of the various paths of the empire. Technically speaking, Mercury also inherited all of the other attributes of Hermes through the Hellenization: he was considered a god of inventions and thieves, a psychopomp deity and the spirit of the athletics… And the Romans even added a bit more features to the original set: for example, while Hermes simply had the power to put men to sleep, Ovid made him the specific messenger of Morpheus bringing his dreams to the human sleep, and while the Greeks recognized Hermes as a god of eloquence, the Romans insisted that Mercury invented the arts of writing and speaking, becoming the father of the language… But all of that, to be fair, was essentially a literary thing. In effect, in a much more “every day” culture and religion, Mercury was essentially the god of commerce and roads, of merchants and travels, of trade and riches – you’d have a hard time imagining the Romans actually worshiping a god of thievery. This is why his temples were usually located near or into the hearts of commerce inside a city, and why the people in charge of Mercury’s temple also had tasks such as overseeing markets. The festival of Mercury, the Mercuralia, was all about celebrating merchants and commerce.

We could possibly add that Mercury was also seen as a god of mediation and negotiation, extending Hermes’ role as a “peace-maker”. But again, you can actually see here the full pragmatism of the Romans, who kept the “eloquence” part of the divinity, but unlike for the Greeks in which eloquence was a cunning art for messengers, ambassadors and thieves, for the Romans “eloquence” was a practical tool of commerce and used in a very pragmatic way into negotiating business and mediating conflicts. Romans truly had a… well “down-to-earth” look at their gods, opposing the more… between “poetic” and “twisted” take of the Greeks on their own deities. Greeks loved their paradoxes. Romans too had paradoxes in their religion, but they mostly existed because of the Romans hyper-pragmatism (which in turn is another whole paradox…).

One should note that Mercury was MASSIVELY popular in Rome, from the traces we found of him, and this massive popularity notably shows in the European colonized regions of the Roman Empire. If you didn’t know, the Romans had an imperialistic religious plan based entirely on syncretism – to better incorporated conquered nations in their empires, they equated and fused their own gods with the local gods, eventually replacing the native religion with the Roman one in a “let’s time help the confusion” thing. This is notably why we have so little remaining traces of the gods of Gaul – Gaul (today’s France) was so heavily colonized and “absorbed” by the Romans that now all we have left is the Gallo-Roman pantheon, mixing the original Celtic deities with the Roman ones.

And the thing is that, when it came to syncretism, Mercury was the default god to go apparently. He kept getting syncretized everywhere, from Germany to Iberia (future Spain), and he had tons of alternate-selves everywhere. Being a god of prosperity and abundance, whose cult spread through commerce and road-building, it makes sense that he would become a widespread god in the whole empire. But the most notably alternate self of Mercury, its biggest syncretism yet is without a doubt the ”Gallic Mercury”, the deity that was the most worshiped and adored by the Gallo-Romans. This deity deserves a whole post in itself, but basically it was Mercury’s syncretism with the Gallic version of the continental Celtic deity known as Lugus (the equivalent of the Irish Celtic deity Lug), both being the “providers of good things”, and the Mercury of Gaul just boomed as the three-folded deity of commerce, travels and all the arts (inventor of all the arts) – and he even seems to have absorbed other Gallic gods with time, resulting in a fascinating triple-god figure… But that’s a story for another time.

Other interesting things about Mercury is that among his sacred animals a distinctively Roman addition is the rooster, Mercury’s animal since he is the “herald of the new day”. An interesting cultural shift, since in Ancient Greece the rooster was rather one of Ares’ sacred bird. Oh yes, and another reason the Romans adored Mercury and he became such a popular god is because he was thought to be the father of the Lares, one of the several types of domestic gods the Romans kept in their homes.

[quotesfrommyreading]

The ideas driving the mass detentions can be traced back to Xi Jinping’s first and only visit to Xinjiang as China’s leader, a tour shadowed by violence.

In 2014, little more than a year after becoming president, he spent four days in the region, and on the last day of the trip, two Uighur militants staged a suicide bombing outside a train station in Urumqi that injured nearly 80 people, one fatally.

Weeks earlier, militants with knives had gone on a rampage at another railway station, in southwest China, killing 31 people and injuring more than 140. And less than a month after Mr. Xi’s visit, assailants tossed explosives into a vegetable market in Urumqi, wounding 94 people and killing at least 39.

Against this backdrop of bloodshed, Mr. Xi delivered a series of secret speeches setting the hard-line course that culminated in the security offensive now underway in Xinjiang. While state media have alluded to these speeches, none were made public.

The text of four of them, though, were among the leaked documents — and they provide a rare, unfiltered look at the origins of the crackdown and the beliefs of the man who set it in motion.

“The methods that our comrades have at hand are too primitive,” Mr. Xi said in one talk, after inspecting a counterterrorism police squad in Urumqi. “None of these weapons is any answer for their big machete blades, ax heads and cold steel weapons.”

“We must be as harsh as them,” he added, “and show absolutely no mercy.”

In free-flowing monologues in Xinjiang and at a subsequent leadership conference on Xinjiang policy in Beijing, Mr. Xi is recorded thinking through what he called a crucial national security issue and laying out his ideas for a “people’s war” in the region.

Although he did not order mass detentions in these speeches, he called on the party to unleash the tools of “dictatorship” to eradicate radical Islam in Xinjiang.

Mr. Xi displayed a fixation with the issue that seemed to go well beyond his public remarks on the subject. He likened Islamic extremism alternately to a virus-like contagion and a dangerously addictive drug, and declared that addressing it would require “a period of painful, interventionary treatment.”

“The psychological impact of extremist religious thought on people must never be underestimated,” Mr. Xi told officials in Urumqi on April 30, 2014, the final day of his trip to Xinjiang. “People who are captured by religious extremism — male or female, old or young — have their consciences destroyed, lose their humanity and murder without blinking an eye.”

In another speech, at the leadership conclave in Beijing a month later, he warned of “the toxicity of religious extremism.”

“As soon as you believe in it,” he said, “it’s like taking a drug, and you lose your sense, go crazy and will do anything.”

In several surprising passages, given the crackdown that followed, Mr. Xi also told officials to not discriminate against Uighurs and to respect their right to worship. He warned against overreacting to natural friction between Uighurs and Han Chinese, the nation’s dominant ethnic group, and rejected proposals to try to eliminate Islam entirely in China.

“In light of separatist and terrorist forces under the banner of Islam, some people have argued that Islam should be restricted or even eradicated,” he said during the Beijing conference. He called that view “biased, even wrong.”

But Mr. Xi’s main point was unmistakable: He was leading the party in a sharp turn toward greater repression in Xinjiang.

Before Mr. Xi, the party had often described attacks in Xinjiang as the work of a few fanatics inspired and orchestrated by shadowy separatist groups abroad. But Mr. Xi argued that Islamic extremism had taken root across swaths of Uighur society.

In fact, the vast majority of Uighurs adhere to moderate traditions, though some began embracing more conservative and more public religious practices in the 1990s, despite state controls on Islam. Mr. Xi’s remarks suggest he was alarmed by the revival of public piety. He blamed lax controls on religion, suggesting that his predecessors had let down their guard.

While previous Chinese leaders emphasized economic development to stifle unrest in Xinjiang, Mr. Xi said that was not enough. He demanded an ideological cure, an effort to rewire the thinking of the region’s Muslim minorities.

“The weapons of the people’s democratic dictatorship must be wielded without any hesitation or wavering,” Mr. Xi told the leadership conference on Xinjiang policy, which convened six days after the deadly attack on the vegetable market.

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