#The Darker Myths of Empire

[comfortless]

Only Other

chapter one of three.

Goth soldier! König x fem, Roman! reader

content/warnings: 18+. minors do not interact. historical au (set around 350BC); potential inaccuracies as i am no historian!, König speaks some German here (as opposed to Gothic), mutual pining & worship, mentions of an arranged marriage with a large age gap, slight sexism, descriptions of gore, groping, dubcon sword/knifeplay. additional warnings will be added to the next two chapters.

notes: for @writersdrug’s request. ^^

wc: 11k.

The barbarians are here.

The dream of river water lapping over your knees and songbirds in swaying trees fades out into a hazy fog as you begin to rise, dropping your legs from the mattress to spur yourself to move across the small room as quietly as your feet can carry you.

Heavy footfalls and staggering hoof beats from their horses weighed down by heavy sacks of supplies is what has pulled you from sleep.

The flames of their torches crackle, accompanied by the shrieks of clanging, well-polished metals singing out as if in the throes of war becomes a dull song; weapons, wicked and crudely crafted unlike the spears of the soldiers donned in red you were so accustomed to by now.

You had heard the whispers on the wind of the untamed beasts from Germania filtering in, settling down here; their arms and their blood for just a sliver of land to claim, soil to birth farmland, a semblance of peace from within the walls of the great empire.

Never, in these small words from gossiping tongues, did you suspect that these rugged men would be taking to camp so very close to your city. Not only that… they’ve been accepted into the walls, the door flung open for them with their gnashing teeth and thick, ugly weapons. These men of myth were usually set further out into the countryside, far from view of polite people to sow seed in soft fields, build the little shacks that seemed far too fragile for their rugged forms that could never compare to the villas built here.

Peering over the sill of the open window, stretching your upper half out into crisp night air to catch a glimpse of torches sailing along the breeze, flames just as ever-shifting as their darkened silhouettes, your breath seems to halt entirely. They look the trueness of harbingers like this: each somehow more imposing than the one they follow behind. You count only two horses split between the eight men of this small band.

Could any of them even speak in your tongue?

What stories could they tell?

Had any of them ventured as far as the sea or had they only bathed in waves of warm blood?

With eyes wide, you even dare to perch there to watch on, never bothering to conceal your underclothes with the faith that the darkness would hide away anything more than a illusory view of your shape.

Through the faint glow of the yellow-red flickering flames, your gaze drifts to something large, hulking and brutish, darker still against the backdrop of a sable horizon.

The shadow walks in line with the others, their proud and raucous foreign voices feathering through the otherwise quieted air… only he does not speak, does not make a single utterance of mirth or glee. He stares only forward as his feet tread on just paces behind the rest of the group.

Nine, then.

Like the tales you’ve heard of the Goths, you’ve also listened in on the children spinning wild stories of monsters, the legends of heroes of old slaying cruel beasts told by their elders. You had always believed them, even without the evidence currently striding through the sleeping streets, dark like a crypt, like the underworld itself. A true titan.

Just as your eyes track the brooding, silent form, he abruptly turns his head in your direction.

The glow of a nearby torch paints the shrouded face in the color of a dying sun, casts a glint on the thick seax strapped to his hip.

In that moment, it isn’t wonderment curling through your blood, but surprise, maybe even a tinge of fear.

Your heart hammers as you pull yourself from the window to whisper hurried, hushed prayers to Juno, protectress of women, as you reject your curious nature and climb back into your bed. You’ll bring your offerings to her altar just as any devout: incense and a sweet pastry so long as she keeps you safe, chaste.

Buried beneath cushions stuffed with straw and thin fabric sheets to tuck yourself away, you wish only to return to dreaming of the river’s silt beneath your feet and colorful birds parading past in the open air that smells only of violets and honey.

Instead, you dream of fire.

You dream of the city bathed in gold, molten and angry as the walls come down around you.

You watch as your neighbors, friends, all begin to writhe and shriek as their skin begins to blister, boil beneath until it melts layer by precious layer to puddle like oil where feet once stood until the mighty, wraithful scorch takes even that away too. What once was human becomes smoke: women, men, children, it made no difference. It all becomes a mighty roaring flame as the structures wail and crumble around you.

Yet, you remain untouched.

Dawn breaks with the puppets sewn in shadow all but entirely forgotten, washed away in the fearsome tides of your own dreaming.

You startle and bolt upright as you wipe cold sweat from your brow with the back of your hand.

You’re no oracle: it’s just a dream… Vulcan would never turn his fiery gaze to your people after you’ve all honored him so, the offerings paid at his altar had been plentiful this past year with the steady expansion of the empire and the need for well-smithed weapons.

There were no volcanoes here to sweep away your life with magma and sulfur… only the lemures that haunted old shacks with their wailing had paid a visit to you last night. You let them in with your fears, and you would ward them away next with your courage.

The sun’s warmth creeps its way in, sweeps up from your blanketed legs until it curls and caresses at your cheek. From its positioning, proud and impossibly high in the sky it’s almost as though Sol himself were staring down at you, radiant yet scolding.

You’ve overslept.

Hurriedly, you ready yourself for the day, cinching your waist, clasping the shoulder of the stola, and dutifully washing your face with still water held in a clay pot. There was little else to do than bide your time with tedium: the animals loitering about needed tending to, a neglected sewing project lay strewn across the floor that had long-awaited its completion, and as the questions began to stir in your mind again… perhaps, gods willing, you would safely be gifted the opportunity to peek at the barbarian camp. To see that peculiar titan that they kept tethered at their sides.

It was dangerous and unheard of for a maiden, of course, but with little else to do than work and practice stitching threads for a betrothed you held no true affection for, this was a significant reprieve from the humdrum of what was scrawled out into the stars.

You weren’t given the luxury of further studies and communing with the aristocrats at their hearty banquets, sipping wine and prattling onwards about politics and how to further Rome as a whole. A part of you preferred this simple life of taking to the street, to peruse the market with what little money you held clutched in your palm, to pet the horses and watch as bulls sparred out in the fields beyond. Returning home to an empty house was a comfort, too.

As always, the market is a lively place, full to bursting with people exchanging anything under the sun, either beneath painted wooden stalls or from the first floor of their very homes, all with very little regard for you.

The city was simply too full to take in every name and face, and only their chatter seemed to intrigue you anyhow. You didn’t need a scroll or a song about each individual, your people were easy enough to read: war, pride, and duty all embedded into their very blood. The only ones that drew your attention were the poets and bards, entertainers who spun their stories of lives vastly different from your own… but there were none awaiting coin on the streets today.

A man passes with his wife at his side, loudly bolstering onward about his progress on some expedition.

Women with flowers woven into the braids of their hair laugh softly behind their palms as they exchange their secrets in singsong whispers.

The children play and pocket with eager palms when salesmen are unaware, likely to be caught later on and have their hands whipped raw.

There’s no talk of the Goths.

With these foreign men, most of your people seemed unbothered, taking solace in the knowledge that the empire’s cavalry would ride to strike down any opposition. A tentative, arrogant sort of comfort that you knew very well not to trust entirely. Most were simply not as educated on the potential of what could be, hadn’t snuck around on quiet feet to listen in on the men discussing failed treaties and negotiations.

The Goths could find their own food, their own women and shelters after fighting for the empire for a time: likely what they were here to do… give up their lives in exchange for a sliver of a Roman dream. A band as small as the one you witnessed could never quite hope to topple an empire, anyhow.

That sense of safety brought forth disinterest and smug little grins with little else to say, whereas your mind only took to further conjuring curiosity.

The more you wander the more you question whether you saw them at all, or if they were mere specters, already slain and silenced on some field far off from here, long dead and forgotten by all but the sleep-addled mind of a maiden.

You’ve never felt so disheartened. Though the city remained constantly bustling and full of intrigue when you knew where to look, these days the ease of it all only seemed to further the boredom. If nothing were to come, it would be no surprise to find that Juno would serve her purpose, looking after all with her blessings. You almost regret calling for her safety last night.

If the barbarians were indeed real, had some plot to overthrow an empire with their small numbers, perhaps only a vulture would be pleased with your thoughts now: teetering on the cusp of anticipation and wonder. You would never think yourself treasonous, but to learn, to see more… Your appetite for something further than a life spent sewing and child-rearing after marrying a man that made your skin prickle with distaste in the coming winter was rational.

Maybe not to most, but to you.

The fruit stall pulls you from thought with its sappy, honey-sweet scent and brilliant colors littered in crates: reds, greens, even some soft and blue… You only then notice you’ve been standing entirely still here, lost in thought, as if expecting a bolt of lightning to split the world in two.

Two apricots were purchased, one for you and the other for the gray mare in the stable you had grown fond of. You give the merchant a smile and a few bronze coins and carry on your way, nibbling at one of the fruits on your walk.

There were usually servants tending to the horses just beyond the city's paved streets, but it seemed today they were busy with other affairs: Quinquatria would be upon the city soon, and there was much to prepare for such an important festival. The place was empty all apart from yourself and the horses, some off in the fields to gallop to their heart’s content, while others like your mare, secured by wooden gates and paddocks.

You feed her, cooing gently as she takes the pitted fruit from your hand and between her blunt teeth; then, allows you to lead her into the grass with your honeyed words and languid steps.

One day, you hoped to have the opportunity to ride her, perhaps far away to touch the waters of the ocean, to see the foreign trees in some great adventure that would leave you more fulfilled. Ideally, without being weighed down heavy with child.

Your hand strokes at her nose before she begins to tense, eyes wandering from your form to something just beyond, far off and nestled in tall, fluttering grass and small bushes. You track her gaze for a moment, finally turning to look over your shoulder.

The wind has the tops of the trees swaying along the hills, grass pushed down to kiss the earth with each flutter of air. It all smells and feels so gentle, carrying the scent of wildflowers and the soil and salt of the earth itself. Ceres would have found herself prideful at the sight; everything rich and lush with the spring… Harvests would be bountiful this year, and everyone would be well-fed and contented. It’s no surprise that after pilfering through old calendars and running his tests upon the soil, Gaius had declared that this was the year he would take you to be his wife.

Past the expanse of soft blossoms and a cavalcade of greenery, all sweeping and rolling, a beauty that would stifle anyone should they think to look hard enough… but amidst all of this sits a man that you recognize immediately. Though he remains utterly faceless, his stature is somehow enough to make a gladiator blush and turn tail in shame.

There, just where the hill dips down and gives way to the soft rush of the stream, sits your warrior. His head is lowered as he crouches by the water, hands tucked to his front as he busies himself with something in his lap. The bare expanse of his back presented to you is unfathomable even from such a distance.

The men from Germania were said to be huge, dwarfing those that you were accustomed to by lengths, tall and thick like the weapons that they carry. They were said to be handsome, too… and like some hazy dream you were already certain that he was, somehow, beneath the pelt tied round his waist to keep him warmed at night, the sable shroud hanging over his head as he works away at sharpening the blade laying over his lap.

Your legs feel weak like a freshly birthed lamb’s as you watch him; the muscles of his bare arms bulging and quivering, his nude back tensing with effort. The soft rays of the sun beaming down only seem to paint him golden, untouchable except by higherborn women and men who could pay well to have him dirty his blade or his cock. Radiant, cruel, maybe even a bastard son of Mars himself, because what better a place for a man so vast and laden with scar tissue to be than in the midst of some great war.

Someone like this, you know with a certainty, would have no time for fickle maidens with their heads filled with the fluff of fantasies, and in a way that only seems to solidify a plume of possessiveness stirred up within your head.

You wonder even, if he calls to Vulcan as he pauses to hold his blade up to the sun to marvel at his work, the sharpened silver glinting in the light. The weapon casts its rays to only further illuminate the paleness of his flesh, coupled with the gleam of the flowing water ebbing past it only serves to make him look the very picture of those old stories and myths. The older women in the city would have tapestries embroidered of this scene, no doubt, if they could see through your eyes now.

Your horse trots off, satisfied that there is no true threat here, and you feel yourself begin to creep forward.

The gods and goddesses must play their tricks, because you are no fool. The pull only feels undeniable, something that you could not fight with a stern will alone. You pacify your impromptu decision with the thought that you could turn away at any point in the meters it would take to reach him. Surely, if he turned to face you before then that same fear from the night before would come to surface and you would sprint, startled and wary.

Perhaps he would even give chase…

There’s no excitement to be held on him, either acutely unaware or ignoring your presence entirely as you draw ever-closer. The grass softens your footsteps, the breeze blanketing any sound from each shift of your legs beneath the linen stola. You’re near silent in your approach, only halting where the hill crests over the bank several paces away from where he remains seated.

Only then does he turn to look your way.

There’s no greeting, no display of friendliness. His body language remains closed off, distant, like that of a wolf in cautious preparation; deciding whether or not it would be necessary to bare his teeth, to snap and growl until your flesh rends beneath him.

So it’s left up to you and to Juno who remains harbored in your heart. The goddess would protect you most assuredly, you’ve left her offerings for as long as you could remember, prayed at her altars and devoted yourself entirely— perhaps not in the same way of the temple maidens, but certainly more so than most.

You take a breath, watching him with kind eyes and an air of unease about you that only seems sweet by comparison to the very danger that his presence proposes. He only returns your stare with something colder, detached and unamused beneath that ugly veil he wears: two holes for the eyes, dyed beneath with the red rimming yellow like the tissue a butcher may find in a plump calf.

“Can you understand me?”

There’s a long, tense silence that follows your frail question. The titan stares, looks you over from the crown of your head, briefly pauses midway- at your hips- then further. It’s both heated and cold, coaxing yet analytical.

Finally, the barbarian gives a curt nod in response, seeming no less frigid and closed off even as your voice feathers over the breeze. But he understands, can decipher your language, that’s a start.

“You are… one of the barbarians, yes?” Is that even what they preferred to be called? The word certainly sounded prettier on your tongue than the brutish pronunciation of ‘Goths’. There would certainly be some price to be paid if your blood was spilled over a mere insult…

Graciously, he only seems to overlook it as he sheaths his blade and rises to his full height, tall like the mountains you had only heard stories of, where gods and goddesses sit in council not meant for mortal ears.

Freed of any covering upon his upper body, you find yourself reluctantly mesmerized by the trail of light hair that runs from chest to abdomen and down further… until a little tuft peeks from the hem of the pelt tied around his narrow hips. The layer of fat over his midsection paves a way upward to reveal the muscles of his chest, wider and more prominent somehow than most breasts you’ve seen.

Unruly thoughts clutter that would have others questioning your status and devotion to your Gaius if they could hear them. It couldn’t be helped, you reason; you had never seen a man quite so vast, so meant for battle and breeding.

“That is what your people call me,” he huffs, bull preparing to charge. His words come out with a thick accent, northern. The trees and mountains would sound similar if they could speak at all.

He drinks you in with his eyes, fingers twitching at his sides as though itching to touch your most sensitive parts. Though he doesn’t move yet, you get the sense that all it would take is one false move, a skitter in your step that leaves you tumbling to the earth, and he would be upon you like the downpours of spring. You even wonder if he would roar like the thunder delivered from Jupiter’s weighty palms if he were to mount you.

Of course, what he sees before him is not a maiden of Rome. His people didn’t care for purity, for your religions and ideals: you’re a fertile little doe, wandering straight to a buck in his prime.

You swallow hard, a little bob from your fragile throat, to force those treasonous thoughts from your mind. Even talking to this man was a risk to your reputation… Your poor betrothed, nearing thrice your age and horribly delicate by comparison to this beast, would be up in arms if he were to find you here. More concerning, you couldn’t find it within yourself to care.

“What do you call yourself, then?” Your voice comes almost breathless, thighs pressed together beneath your stola as your own body sends its signs and omens to tell you that you’re precariously close to the underworld just by gracing him with your presence. Perhaps it would be that dark, too, if this giant decided to push you to the soil, hover over you as he plucked you apart like petals from a flower.

His eyes track that subtle shift of your legs, crinkling at the outer corners when they roam back upward to your face. The beast grins beneath his hood, you’re certain of it, and those eyes of pale blue seem to glitter like the sun's rays on the stream to your side. He shifts, crosses his arms over his chest and tilts his hips just slightly forward, some strange display undoubtedly meant to tempt and charm you.

You don’t budge from your perch, despite your body’s persistent singing for him. Enticing scents and views of flesh could do that… this man wasn’t special, you were just curious. That’s all that it was.

“König.” He answers things plainly in that lilted voice, as though he’s trying to seem more of a man to spite that boyish way of speaking. And gods help you- it’s cute.

“Does it have meaning?,” you settle to ask when he does not request your name in turn. A bit rude, though you do wonder if perhaps the bullish men in his settlements see delicate things like you more like pets anyhow. The thought of this warrior whisking you away and naming you one day… You swallow that lump in your throat again, teetering back on your heels as if to place more distance between you two.

“What do you think it means?”

That simple non-answer does finally allow your pulse to settle, only to rise immediately to find it insulting— as if this wild man with no proper education had the right to insult you at all.

He only smiles again beneath that veil when your face sours. Awful, wretched, gorgeous creature… You’re no threat to him and he knows it. He’s only playing with you, dodging your pretension with a bit of his own, and unfortunately… This is the most pleasant conversation that you’ve had with any man.

Your betrothed was only arrogant and dull, there’s no light in his eyes when he smiles at you- everything is duty. Not here. Not with König, and surely the goddess of marriage and love is frowning down at you from her lofty throne, because you’re almost certain you’re infatuated with the brute by now.

“You’re a bit rude.”

“King.” He grins, a grin that you can see when he frees the leather flask from his belt and shoves his mask upward to take a heavy gulp of what is undoubtedly Roman wine. The glimpse alone makes you weak again, honey drips from your thoughts to your cunt, and you know now that you were never simply curious.

No, this brute would be the end of your engagement and even you if you allowed it.

You watch him take his fill, catch the bitter scent in the air as a bit trickles down from his rough jaw to his throat, all covered in scars. He’s been in battle for a long time, likely why he wears the hood at all. The rest of that handsome face is undoubtedly a wreck just as what could be seen of his body, all covered in memories of where he’s had scrapes and dances with daggers only to fell his foes one by one with that long seax dangling from his hip.

After the hood and the flask are in their proper places once more, he gives you a nod, then speaks, “How many coins?”

It takes a moment for the question to register in full; he isn’t asking what you have on your person, but how much you’re worth. How much it would cost for you to spend a night in his bed, tolerating this giant between your legs…

Your attractions billow up in smoke immediately, just as you expression sours and your hands curl to fists at your side, crushing the half-eaten apricot in the process. You toss the ruined fruit to the ground, allowing the sweet juice to coat your fingers as it flows downward.

You wring your hand as you very nearly shout, “You are an animal. I’m not here to sell myself.”

Your voice falters to a meek, little whisper with your final words, the breath a weak gust through the first tiny blossoms of spring.

Of course he catches onto your body language, to the way your thighs rub and tense beneath your skirt, the way your nipples peak at the mere sight of him and all of the infatuation and curiosity in your eyes. Men knew things like this, offhandedly, it seemed; if the others were correct then this beast could surely smell you, too.

The bastard only stares, eyes narrowing as his brow pulls together beneath the hood in some strange confusion. The whores wore their togas, not the stolas of maidens and married women, even a barbarian should have known that: his men were certainly no strangers to the sweet women with their faces chalked in lead.

Then, his shoulders pull up to fall in a shrug.

“Run, then, little one.”

It’s almost as though he knows your thoughts in and out, a lemure himself as he presents the bulk of him that would strike fear into any man, taunts and goads. You don’t want another fire dream. You force your courage and mirror his stance: chin up, back straightened as you look down upon him like a goddess sent to deliver her fury with… a pitted apricot at your feet rather than bolts of famine and misfortunes.

His eyes become stars, twinkling in earnest when he sees you then. You’re no aristocrat, no empress, but you certainly feel the part when the giant’s gaze finally relaxes its pilferage and settles upon your face instead.

Your act is all for naught, because you realize that his men are approaching, opposite the stream. One of them was enough, but a hoard of others… You were not even certain that he could understand you properly, and the others could be even less patient. Your gaze travels over their forms, smaller than this ‘König’, but each equipped with their own weapons and their own scars from battle.

They look from their leader to you, eyes grazing over the plush flesh that your stola dutifully conceals like starved dogs. One of them mutters something in a foreign tongue, harsh and guttural, his eyes never leaving your shape in a display of brazen appraisal.

König responds in turn, voice taking on a lower octave as he all but barks his response: harsh, unyielding language that you couldn’t hope to interpret… but if you had to guess, you were nearly certain that his men were asking who would lift your skirts and have their way with you first.

You depart from them with tentative yet hurried feet, and you don’t look back as you cross across the lush field. There’s no stopping at the stable, not a thought in your head except that you would most assuredly not be returning. The barbarians could have the field, the stream, whatever the city’s officials had allowed them.

Just not you.

It’s Gaius that greets you when you arrive home, to the little villa he had secured for you; to the place that would become less of a home and more of a prison once the two of you were wed. You’re barely a foot in the door when the man’s gaunt face turns to you, his lips set in a stern line.

“Where were you?”

You knew that look, it’s the very same that he gives to his slaves when he’s about to bleat out his orders like an enraged goat, shove them or grab at them to feel less small than he truly is.

Your brow pinches, a shaky breath leaving your mouth as you try in earnest to look the part of an innocent lady who had not just crossed a field and fantasized endlessly of some rude, barbaric oaf.

“In the field. With the horses,” you deliver your half-truth with practiced ease. This wasn’t the first time you’ve lied to him, and it certainly would not be the last. If the protectress of Rome could overlook your stunts and recognize your discomfort in this wretch’s presence… then she might even side with you; save you from a future of sharing this man’s bed.

Gaius relents then— as much as a stoic, old man could. He reaches out to cup your face with one weathered hand and you have to force back to urge to shudder.

It’s not that you mean to be cold, not after all that he’s done to care for you… it just comes as naturally as the seasons and the wills of the gods. Something about him always made you feel ill.

You eventually, tentatively jut your chin forward just a bit to force yourself into leaning toward the touch of his cold hand.

His lips curl into an unsightly grin; then, he pats your cheek and draws away enough to bless you with fresher air to breathe without his withering presence alone contaminating it.

“I brought you a gift, meum corculum.”

“Oh…” Your words come in a little hiss, your heart stuttering in your chest as you teeter back on the heels of your sandals. The straps along your calves feel tighter now, your stola too… maybe even the room itself: everything seems to close in, and you could only silently hope he doesn’t request your affections for doing such. “… you didn’t have to-“

“Nonsense.” Gaius raises both of his hands, arcs them before stepping out of your path to reveal a new dress lying on the wooden table just beyond him, dyed a light blue.

It’s pretty, well-spun and soft-looking… yet you still hesitate a bit when you step closer to run your fingertips over the fabric. It yields beneath your touch, bunches when you move each digit along the pliant linen, and it’s the softest thing you’ve ever touched, maybe even softer than the lambs and kittens you’ve played with in the streets.

“I thought that you might like something nicer to wear during Quinquatria,” he adds from just behind you. You feel his hands trace along your arms, further, until they reach your shoulders and give a gentle, but almost demanding squeeze.

It’s meant to be affectionate and he is your husband-to-be… but he still manages to make you feel ill. It’s only a blessing that he’s never requested more from you than a peck for his offerings to you.

What a man in his late stage of life could see in you, you couldn’t hope to imagine. A fertile womb, likely, and you could only hope that that isn’t also what he saw in the women he kept as slaves in his own home further toward the city’s center. Nosy, dull man that he was, of course he needed to be closer to the housings of banquets and discussions to feel some level of importance while he kept you locked away toward the wall and the slums like some filthy little mystery.

“I’m tired, my love,” you manage, voice thin as you slowly pull yourself away, from both Gaius and the delicate blue thing you would be forced into wearing for the coming festival.

The man balks, but doesn’t push. A few seasons and he would have what he’s awaited for years, the confident gleam in his eyes tells you that he’s certain of it.

It’s difficult to believe that someone you had once considered a hero and a friend could make you feel so much disgust now. You were naïve, then, and now you only feel how those poor horses locked away in the stables must feel, burdened with a constant yearning for your own freedom.

“Then rest.”

When the door shuts behind him, you’re only then able to expel your relief. The weight of what you must do settles upon you, heavy and unyielding, the boulder of Terminus.

You can not marry Gaius. You can not continue to breathe in the stink of the city from its miasmic aqueducts, perfumed only by the crowded marketplace full of mortals so contented with their own tedium. The unknown calls and calls, howling like a mother wolf to guide you. Even with the stories told of what fiends and horrors lie outside of the city you could almost feel with a certainty that you were destined for it.

You light your incense with a lump of coal in the burner of a clay pot. Just cinnamon would have to do for now. You make your peace with that promising Juno whichever sweet, flaking pastry that appeals most during the festival of Minerva.

Though you were more than content with your wish for nothing more to do with the barbarians after meeting with König earlier… he comes rushing back into your mind, rolling and lapping like waves as you begin to prepare yourself for sleep. The polished tin of your hand mirror reflects your face as you twirl the handle in a curled palm and you stare. Did he see beauty or simply a womb…? Had you taken offense to nothing? The questions stir up remorse as you strip away your gown and take to the bed.

Just one more meeting with the foreigner, maybe. Just to say your farewells, wish him luck in future battles, bless his seax and his shield with a touch and a prayer (if he even had the sight to keep any form of defense on his person).

When Quinquatria comes, when the people are busy and satisfied with their food, fortune telling and the gladiator games, you will take your mare and ride off into a sea of stars. Each light will be a point of guidance until you reach the riverbed you’ve only ever dreamt of, until you scale the mountains that sang so sweetly from the goth’s tongue…

And perhaps he will chase you.

— — —

Quinquatria used to be one of your favorite festivals. The fortune tellers were your favorites, always seeming to know so very much with so little insight into your life. Then there were the revelers donning their colorful masks, barking out song with bitter wine painting their tongues.

You try to listen in on them as a woman traces over the patterns in your palm, the curved lines and straight, fine indentations. Palmistry, rather than any proper reading with sacrifices and proper seers stood before a temple. You reason that this is for fun, just like the wine-drinking and the gladiators fighting for their lives and the horrible stink of the city’s streets: natural, reasonable, and dreadfully normal.

The fortune teller hums as she reads you through your hand, laughs a bit when she seems to note a secret or… something. You were not entirely sure. The woman was young, her belly likely as full of fermented fruit as everyone else’s as they dance and crowd the street where you two are stood.

“You’re unhappy, girl,” the woman muses, giving you a sympathetic look before another laugh pulls from her lips.

You give her a nod but don’t say a word as she continues to stroke at your palm. Of course you were, anyone could tell just by the frail look upon your face, as if you were indeed bereft and ready to cry at any moment in this horrible, dainty dress with your betrothed fondling some lady mere paces from you.

“Yet, so lovely,” she continues, nimbly running her fingers to your wrist. She curls them around you, turns your hand over and gives it a soft pat to signify that your reading is done.

“You’re destined for a summer wedding.” Winter, you want to correct. “And your husband… strong and brave like the sacred wolf.” Weak and old, you force back with a clenched jaw.

She releases your wrist with one last assessment, “Juno favors you, sweet girl.”

You want to call her a fraud, but instead you merely part with the bronze you had promised to her. With Gaius preoccupied, his wrinkled hands already tucked beneath the skirt of the other woman’s stola, now would be the best time to wrench the door of your little cage wide open… not make a scene.

Your chest feels tight, and for the first time it isn’t from some unknown fear, it’s excitement. Your heart hammers as the blood stirs within your veins, belly tense and breathing shallow, taking a stiff pace to walk along the shadow untouched by silver paths of moonlight.

There’s a bellow, a wail as the gladiators fight some distance off. Soft words and whispers filtering past like eerie words from something ghastly, moans from a brothel, bells on the wind, the stink of rot and perfume all from all that you’ve known for so long as you leave it all behind.

Your mare is pacing restlessly in the field, her ears flicking and tail swaying behind her. You’ve no saddle, you hadn’t even thought to procure food or any supplies. You’re not even certain that she’s been ridden by anyone, but you coax her over to the wooden fence that your body rests over; hands find the velvety fur of her gray snout, fingers moving to gently caress her mane and ears.

“We are going to be free,” you whisper as your hands curl over her neck. The mare makes her displeasure known immediately, huffing and tensing immediately… and you realize that this isn’t going to work, not without her bucking you off and leaving you injured or dead. You’re not stupid or brazen enough to break a horse or anything, really. Not Gaius. Not…

You would find König. Perhaps you could even trade the Goth for a horse already accustomed to being ridden… he had already revealed his intentions, and he was easy enough on the eyes to entertain the thought.

You give the mare a kiss farewell, right on the softness of her cheek and detach yourself from the fence to wander past the silver field, the gently flowing stream. The water dampens your dress, embeds it’s cold into your very bone where the sandals fail to protect. Spring or not, it’s hardly warm at night, and there are only so many rocks lying in the water to keep you from sinking in.

The clothes are drenched by the time you crawl to the other side. On the opposite bank, it’s only then that you turn back to look over at the city, one final glimpse of a place bathed in gold; cinder and ash from torchlight, flowers and the creeping scent of decay carry on the breeze. Even from the distance you can hear the music, chimes of steel on steel, the laughter and cries of mirth and pleasure.

Begrudgingly, you feel the first seeds of regret plucking at your heartstrings. You’ve nothing to your name apart from a few coins in a pouch strapped to your hip, no weapons, no food. You could die, you verily would if you went at this alone. And still, you force your face forward and continue your steady waltz to look the unknown straight in its bloody maw.

You won’t panic, won’t fear. Whatever awaits would be better— it had to be.

The barbarian camp comes into view some time later. You couldn’t be certain how long you’ve been walking, as though some spirit had plucked the chords of your mind and left you in some confused daze. It couldn’t have been your own desperation. Something greater had to be at play, a proper destiny: one much better than the life of Gaius’s wife, owned like a hound, imprisoned and uninspired.

Though their torches burn, their tents stitched together amalgamations of old pelts and cloth, the air is fresher here. You expected the reek of death, heavy on their skin, bathed in blood and the rot like visions of Mors herself. Instead, you smell smoked meat and wine on the air: a boar and fermented grape, fruit from the surrounding orchards, the heavy scent of men. There’s no celebration here, a few men talking quietly as their eyes wander over what you can only assume to be some sort of map— tactical discussion for their next bloodbath.

You puff your chest and steel your gaze as you walk towards them, expression set not unlike the stern looks your betrothed would give.

Your attempt at intimidation only earns a flicker of hunger in the gazes of these men, and then a bout of grating laughter. They glance at one another, discussing you in hushed voices in their mother tongue before one finally looks to you and asks a simple, “Was?”

“König,” you answer simply. “Where might I find him?”

The question undoubtedly goes uninterpreted, but the name does spark a wave of interest that passes between their faces. Finally, one points toward the tent at the far side of the camp: ugly thing, vast and layered in dark tones of gray and maroon, the very structure is a bleeding animal.

You hear the laughter behind you, the lewd whispers and jeers and only a simpleton wouldn’t be able to interpret the meaning; the titan that heads their little group has a lovely woman seeking him out like a wayward dream, and with adrenaline already coursing through you the thought of spending your night here doesn’t even seem an insulting prospect.

The flap serving as the door of the tent parts as your hands move to lift it, and sure enough… the beast lies in wait in his den, seated on a mattress made up entirely of fur. His hood remains over his head as he traces the carvings on the handle of the seax, under flickering flame and the shadow of the tent König seems further unearthly, god walking amongst men as he toys with his weapon in some strange sort of ritual.

The ritual only seems to be one of boredom, because his eyes light up when they rest over you, standing like a dream as your dress billows with the breeze creeping in. You’re drenched and dirty and pitiful in his presence, but he only seems to soften when he beckons you toward him with a curl of his fingers meeting his palm.

You obey with tentative steps, stopping next to him as he waits on the bed. If it were possible for your heart to seize and halt entirely without you collapsing to sink beneath the earth, it surely would now, so close to him.

“I need a favor,” you explain in whispers. “A horse.”

“A horse,” he repeats as his weapon is set aside, “Warum?”

You don’t want to explain a thing. He’s working with the very men that could drag you back to the city after being paid heavily by Gaius… your trust is blind and foolish and you almost want to break apart right here. How stupid to believe that you could find some solace here, with a giant that walks along the cusp between men and beasts. Your shaking hands reach out to drag along his vast shoulders, lingering on the healed wounds that dent and give rise to his flesh.

“I’ll do what you want,” you offer quietly, earning a pleased rumble from his chest.

Though after a moment, he only sieges your wrists, pulls you down to the mattress at his side. He touches you no further, only stares down at you in a twist of amusement, reverence and confusion.

“Warum?,” he repeats, “Tell me.”

You wind over onto your side, staring up at him with a desperation that you’ve never known until this night, clawing down from your throat to bed it’s way into your roaring pulse, frightened and pleading. Just give in, ask no more, you want to wail to him as your vision begins to blur with tears.

Mercifully, he doesn’t ask again. König lies at your side, mimicking the way you curl onto your side and again… he smiles, though this one is unlike the way he looked upon you by the stream. It lacks that boyish twinkle, the intensity of the lines forming beneath his eyes: it’s more of a pleasantry than anything genuine.

“You are married?”

“What? No…” You swallow hard, toying with a thread that’s begun to pull free from your hip, twirling it between your fingers. “…not yet.”

“Ach… but you belong to another, ja?”

You want to howl out your frustrations up to every god and goddess above, burn through the Elysian with your misery alone. You wish, yearn for the courage to cast off that mask and lure him in with a kiss, erase any memory of Gaius with the kindling of a truer passion.

Your voice doesn’t come, and your fingers steadily pluck at that thread, feeling more unsure of yourself with each passing second.

Again, your bastard god grants his mercy as he raises a hand to cup your jaw, the warmth of him singing away the memory of the weathered hand that had touched you there before. His hand is so much larger, strong and riddled with calluses; you swear that you can feel his own fluttering pulse through his fingertips when they press against your bottom lip.

“Not after tonight,” he hums.

When the shroud is tugged up and his mouth meets your own, König’s kiss is exactly what you had expected: a sloppy, eager clash of teeth and tongue. He steadies you with a hand pressed to the back of your neck as his grunts filter past your own lips. Your eyelids flutter, then close as you allow your mind to finally relax, coaxed into the ethereal with each swipe of his tongue and pleasured sound drawn up from the well of his throat.

He pulls away with a gentle peck to the corner of your mouth, gazing down at you as though he’s been deprived of light for the entirety of his being and had only now met the sacred flame. It’s incomparable to how easily your betrothed would cast his scrutiny; though the hunger is similar, there’s something far more enticing here.

“Do you trust me?”

König’s voice holds no apprehension as he speaks; the question is just as blunt as each bulge of muscle and peek of teeth through the grin on his face, only set aglow by dim candlelight in the tent. You don’t nod, don’t even reply immediately as you stare at him a little dumbly, still intoxicated by the ferocity of his affections.

“… I don’t know.”

He moves a hand over your eyes then, gently presses his palm over you until you’re bathed in such darkness that you shudder. It’s a disconcerting feeling— not because you fear him so much anymore, but because if this were Gaius you would have already been squirming away, rushing to hide. You want to kiss his palm, revel in whatever piece of him he gives to you.

“Sehr schön,” König coos to you in a whisper. You settle further, allowing the tension to leave you almost entirely as you fall into the velvety embrace of all of this darkness and the pelts beneath your back.

He shifts at your side, and almost immediately there’s a cold chill at your collar, something sharp that he rakes over the softness of your flesh, then down, down to snag at the top of your dress. Your gasp is quieted by a kiss as you feel his weight shift over you, and just as you begin to melt into it… the fabric begins to tear, shreds as he guides his blade further, past your breasts and along your sternum, your belly, further.

“Don’t..,” you manage to hiss against his mouth, immediately taken over by the feeling of his tongue lapping at your teeth. Your nipples peak at the sudden chill as your dress lies ruined to either side of your body, thighs trembling as the blade hooks along the linen concealing your maidenhood.

One more generous, gentle cut and that comes away too.

You’re entirely bare when he retreats to your side again, one hand still clutching the blade as he moves his head to lay over your breast and… never, never had you heard of a man lapping and suckling at a woman like a pup, but that’s what he begins to do; his tongue circles over the bud, tugging it between his teeth until you feel the wetness between your legs beginning to drip to smear upon the mattress.

It’s caught, quick, as he turns the blade in his hand to slot its grip against your sex. It’s cold, but his mouth is warm, attentive as he licks between the valley of your breasts to capture your other nipple.

The noises that leave your mouth are filthy, rivaled only by the sounds you’ve heard in brothels… König only seems appreciative of them, muttering praises as he grinds the cold metal against your cunt, careful as the ridges of it graze your throbbing bud, gathering your slick to make the glide that much easier.

When he moves to dive for your breasts again, you cradle his jaw in your hands, peering up at those moonlight eyes in silent pleading as you capture him in another burning kiss.

The blade turns again, its sharpness directed down so as to not bring you any harm as you desperately roll your hips against its coldness. He groans into your mouth, panting softly just as you begin to whine.

You’ve never heard of a man making love to a woman with a weapon… or of one suckling at her as though she’s lactating when she is not, but… it has the desired result when your body tenses and all that can escape you is a frail whisper of his name.

The heat sweeps from your foggy head to your middle as your thighs squeeze around the damned thing and König presses his lips to your temple. You climax for him, chasing wave upon crashing wave of intensity with stilted bucks of your hips. He clicks his tongue in approval when you’ve finished, holds up the seax again, smeared wet with your essence and twinkling as though it had been bathed in the stream once more.

You know with a certainty you’ve lost Juno’s favor. If he chose you to carve you open with his come-stained blade the goddess would not make her descent to save you.

“Gut,” he whispers into your hair. To your horror, maybe even fascination, he raises the dirtied silver to his lips and licks your sweetness from it with another low groan.

“Wh… why would you do that..?” Your rapture feels almost shameful as you watch him lap at the weapon, the long tongue meeting silver only warmed by your heat.

He’s mad, certainly, and you only find yourself further infatuated: you reason that you must be too…

König doesn’t answer you as he sets the seax aside again, not in words. Instead, he cups your face and directs your lips to his own where he laps at your tongue, suckling it in the same way he did your tits. It’s slow and sensual, and you can taste yourself in his mouth, smell yourself on him as his hands find your waist and tug you closer until you’re lying almost entirely over him; one leg thrown over his thigh with your hands splayed over his chest.

The titan is hard beneath the pelt he wears, felt against the plushness of your thigh, the brown fur wrapped around his hips is pushed to rise where it’s harboring something akin to a pillar… but he doesn’t force you to settle over it, makes no attempt to tug it free, despite its throbbing against your leg,

“I needed your blessing,” he mutters, a hand settling over your naked hip, tracing small shapes with his thick fingers. The other finds your shoulder to pull you into a cuddle, pulled so tightly against him that you’re hardly able to discern where your warmth ends and his begins.

“A.. a blessing?” Your voice comes as a trembling croak, head pressed into the gap between a broad shoulder and the column of his throat.

“We are leaving in the morning.”

“Oh…”

“I will give you the horse when I return.”

Your head feels like a mess. You’re not even certain of what you’ve just done— did that count as sex? Would he tell the Roman soldiers he works alongside of how he had convinced some pompous aristocrat’s lovely bride to lustrate his blade with her essence? You could hit him, demand the horse now and bolt, but you only melt against him: eyelashes fluttering as exhaustion takes hold and the tension leaves you entirely.

“That’s all?”

König pets you, running a hand along your spine and back up to repeat. He presses his nose to the crown of your head, nuzzling against it until his hand is freed from your form and only then does it coax its way beneath the fur covering his groin.

He laughs at the weak sound of surprise you elicit when that beast is pulled free, another, thicker weapon curled in his hand. The thickness, the length of it that tapers off to a layer of skin, eager and pulled back from the tip, leaking beads of milky white: something that would surely tear you if he were not careful, and the thought brings you to squeeze your thighs together, concealing the leaking, thrumming thing between.

“I will fuck you when I return, too,” he huffs into your scalp, causing you to further bury your face against him, intent not to let him see the effect his derangement seems to have on you. You would let him bury himself into your chest, steal the breath from your very lungs, but you don’t breathe a word of it. Something tells you it’s a mutual thing, perhaps it was all spelled out for you when he asked for your favor rather than from any of his foreign gods.

You count your undeserved blessings. He seems sated only ruining you with his touch for the time being, you’re very comfortable here, and though you dare not speak it… you do find this brute charming. He speaks where you fail to, whispers of your beauty being like that from myths and dreams.

He doesn’t force you to leave, either, only paws at and squishes your breasts until you squeak and whine your protests, already sore from his teeth leaving their marks all over them. When he tires of his fun, you’re pulled into a crushing embrace where he rests his head against your own, blankets you in himself entirely. You were right… the shadow he casts over you blackens out the sun, moon, stars all of it; dulls the haze of carnality with something far more tender.

Your night becomes entirely made up of König: his scent like forest and sweat, the furs from beasts he’s chased down and slain, his soft breathing and gentle snores when he does fall asleep against you.

No dreams come to you, no lemures to haunt you with their wails and flames. Not even Juno descends to punish you. You’re warm and soft and contented like the kittens curled up in clusters along the streets on cold nights.

It’s the first night of peace you’ve had in some time.

When morning comes, the brightness of the sun peeking through the flaps of the tent, you wake to find König already out of bed. He stands at the far side of the tent, strapping on pelts and gear and the leather pouch filled with wine. His seax is held up in utter revelry, and mortifyingly enough… you immediately note that he hadn’t cleaned away the remnants of what occurred last night either.

When you bring yourself to sit upright, the giant only drops to his knees at your feet and curls his arms around your middle, pressing a kiss to the valley between your breasts through the thick fabric of the hood.

And… it almost hurts, to realize then that this is something you’ve longed for. You’re not arrogant enough to believe yourself worthy of some foreign worship, but he seems to liken you of some devout little acolyte, as if your come and kisses could grant him favor while he butchers poor souls all in favor of your empire: the people he had likely been communing and trading with only months before. Traitorous, mad, utterly enthralling man… You’re not certain whether you want to relieve yourself from him or guide him back into bed for more frenzied pleasures.

“You will stay?,” he murmurs into your skin as his kisses trail up to your neck.

You hadn’t even considered what you would do, it never came to mind, but staying in a shoddy tent in wait for him to return with the horse he’s promised was far from favorable. You’re out from the city, still without food or weapons, your dress and underclothes are a torn ruin on the floor, nothing but the wind and the stream and König’s stinking furs… The bathhouse seems to call to you now more than ever. Your lower lip trembles when you think of returning to that stale place, to be questioned endlessly about your affairs from your ‘doting’ husband-to-be…

Your head shakes solemnly. “I’ll wait for you at home.”

König drags you up onto your feet and closer as he savors in another embrace. You’re cloaked in a gray pelt, tied up and over your shoulders like the gaudiest tunic in the world, but you bur your nose into its shoulder, humming in contentment when you find that it smells just like him.

He’s more confident and proud than you’ve ever seen him now. The filthy blade remains strapped to his hip when he gathers you up to sit at his front on the back of his horse— a dark stallion with a pelt the same shade as the night sky. It doesn’t even seem to flinch at your combined weight, just canters along smoothly as König directs it through the sprawling field and past the stream to lead you back towards the city’s gates.

You’re not thinking of Juno or Gaius or traditions when König cinches your waist with a thick arm to draw you in closer; there’s nothing but fluffy warmth pooling in your chest sent by Venus when you feel his hips shift to press himself against your back. His head dips to kiss at your neck, your burning cheeks, shoulder, anyplace that he can.

When the horse comes to a halt with a sharp tug of its makeshift reigns, some length of rope and twine, his hand is at your rear.

Everything’s incensed and floral when you’re lowered to the ground, when he lifts the hood to grin down at you, not only with his eyes this time. It’s a sheepish, gluttonous grin, drunk off your very presence.

“I will come back for you, meine Göttin.”

And you know now, that the palm reading had been true— there’s your wolf in preparation for a hunt, the man who’s unwittingly aiding you in your pursuit of freedom painted with mountains and vast, blue skies. You will convince him to come away too, lay down the blade you’ve blessed with your pleasure. A summer wedding… far from wars of greed and smirking old men.

Your head swims when he bids you farewell, rides off on his massive horse back to his camp to gather his own men to march. You watch him go, breath caught up in your throat, a burning longing in your chest that you can not entirely dismiss.

The walk of shame only comes when you’ve crossed the threshold separating König’s world from your own.

The stink of the streets immediately washes away any lingering scent of him on your skin, on his pelt you now hide away with your arms curled around your waist.

You catch your reflection in stagnant water held in a pot, swaying and ebbing gently as others breeze past you.

You’re in a foreigner’s clothes that just barely crest your thighs, hair a mess and the carmine you had worn to bring a false blush to your cheeks is smeared over an eye and down to your jaw. You look the part of an adulteress, maybe, even as you dip your hand into the water to wash the makeup from your face.

There isn’t much to be done about the marks left over the hints of your chest revealed beneath the fur, but you make your way home without anyone even bothering to ask. If anything, the festivities from the night prior only seemed to subdue the standard bustle. You could only imagine how exhausted the hungover soldiers may have been as they undoubtedly prepare for the expedition König had mentioned.

That overrides your shame, sobers you from that sugary elation somewhat. You’re worried. It’s not just about König himself, not about the threat of fucking you when he returns left unfulfilled— though, those are enough to make your heart begin it’s hammering, rabbit in the throes of a chase. The horse, too. That proud stallion, your hope of a swift escape before winter comes and it’s all lost. If his drunken allies fail him in battle, if some other barbarian’s spear strikes true and fells your titan then the dream is dispelled into smoke, sunken down to river bed to be lashed away by frothing waters.

Whoever decided that the day after revelry would be the time to move was a fool indeed. The deities couldn’t look at you after last night, you know if they saw their noses would be turned up in disgust… perhaps not Jupiter’s, he’s more guilty than you could ever be, but your offerings had never been for him had they?

You fret and hiss below your breath as you wind your way back to the villa with its white walls and terracotta-tiled roof. The sun bears down on you like the flame of your dreaming. You’re afraid again, letting the lemures find their way in through the gaps in your shivering limbs to haunt your dreams.

Gaius is not there to greet you, likely still recovering from his own fevered night. You’re grateful for that.

The little altar to Juno still stands atop a table in your room, the burner still smells of cinnamon, dried flower petals and a dish of honey still sat there entirely untouched. She hasn’t split it in two, abandoned you, but it does feel that way when you peel away the fur.

Your fingers nudge at the bruises laden into your skin, the marks that look like teeth to either side of your breast. You press into them, gently, immediately feel that coil of heat, and you don’t want to sleep. That fire from your dream only seems to have become a part of you: you know it intimately now, it comes with pleasure and bite marks and a heavy weight harbored in your chest.

You cinch your waist and tie your stola at your shoulder, brush your hair out with a comb made of ivory. You rub your bruises with a salve made of honey, bandage up what you can and hide away what you can’t by tugging up your breast band.

The same as any other day, you take to the streets of the city and peruse the marketplace, take to the empty bathhouse to wash away all that’s consumed you over the past day. And you watch the soldiers go as they march through the streets, women and children waving away their fathers and brothers with prayers and sentimental words.

They don themselves in red, clutching their gladiuses, spears and heavy shields as they filter out and away where your very being longs to be. Their faces are giddy, almost: the prospect of pillaging and felling each enemy another delightful treat just like those found in the gladiator pits and amidst rolling with the whores in their brothel beds. You can not hope to understand their mirth, the happiness in any of the civilians either.

You watch them leave wistfully, lips pressed to a thin line, fingers digging into the waist of the stola. You down your fair share of the wine Gaius has left in your cellar. The day merely passes you by, the sewing left undone on the floor, altar bathed in cinnamon and saffron as you make your prayers and beg like any dog.

The mattress feels lonely and sad without the warmth of a body made for war curled against you, without his breath in your hair and his arms wrapped around you. It’s cold, too, and far harder than his, all straw and thin sheets. None of this feels like home.

Your eyes eventually close as the last of the sun’s rays begin to die, blotted out by the dark, untouched by torchlight.

You dream of fire.

[watcheraurora]

I know there probably won't be an Empires S3 and that's genuinely fine

But imagine with me for a minute

It's 1,000 years since the end of Empires S2, and the souls of the rulers are reincarnated yet again, fresh and new as before

And one of them in particular—a blond, brown-eyed young man—wanders the land with a pair of yellow-gold wings folded against his spine

Those wings bear him through the sky, soaring high above anything else. Sometimes he wonders if he could even fly so high that he would reach Stratos, the long-forgotten, mythical land of the gods. Or, according to myths and legends, the last god

With those yellow wings in the sun and his warm blond hair, he's given the name Canary King by his people

He builds his empire from scratch. He plants orchards in a plain biome—a canary's natural habitat. He trades honey and apples with the other kingdoms

He builds homes for his people with his bare hands. He builds his seat of power nearby. A palace for an Avian nestled in the branches of the tallest tree in the world. He made the tree himself, in a way. With the help of a little magic, he grew a sapling into a true marvel. A grand treehouse, high in the air, is where he builds his throne. The perfect fit for a wingéd king, born for the high blue skies

Sometimes he dreams of a homey swamp full of cod and slime. He dreams of gills in his neck and webbed hands. He dreams of a woman with blue skin and pink hair like Lizzie's in a light, flowy dress. He calls that woman sister, in his dreams. He dreams of an elf from the cold, high mountains—an ally. Sometimes he wonders if there was something more there. He dreams of the demon. The corruption.

Other times he dreams of a mesa—badlands. Exact opposite of that homey swamp. Instead of perpetual damp, the mesa is bone dry and blisteringly hot. He dreams of a brass badge on his chest. Tall boots to keep the sand out of his socks. He dreams of a hat to keep the sun off his face. The mesa is empty and lonely. He dreams of enclosed walls meant to emulate the blue sky and clouds the badlands are too hot to form. He dreams of mocking laughter. Shouts of "Toy!" He dreams of strangers appearing in the world, smaller than most everyone else. He dreams of the world the strangers—Hermits?—came from. A Rift in reality. He dreams of a funny old man with a grey beard teaching him to be "better" in his role

He dreams of a man with blue fire for hair, blue eyes with darker blue sclera, and a long black coat rarest of all, but they are always the sweetest dreams. The Canary King wears the brass badge and boots in those dreams, and the blue-fire-hair man isn't like the others—he treats him kindly. Even sweetly. In stark contrast to the mocking teasing of the others

The Canary King dreams he builds the two of them a ranch in the badlands, and then sees the fortress in the frozen norths of the Hermits' world that the blue fire hair man built himself

The Canary King always wakes up from these dreams feeling nostalgia. Like he misses something he never had, or lost something he no longer remembers

He serves his people and enjoys the company of the other rulers, his friends. He pretends he's not haunted by these dreams and the lives that seemed to be contained within them. No one else speaks of reoccurring dreams. No one else seems to notice the thousand-yard stare that he has when he thinks about them

Sometimes Scott smiles at him a little too fondly. Sometimes Joel's teasing needles him a little too deeply and he feels much smaller than he is. Sometimes Lizzie scolds him in a tone that sounds like the older sister the Canary King doesn't have—

And he remembers those dreams all over again

And his wings pull closer to his body, trying to protect him. He seeks comfort in the feeling of his feathers against his hands. He ignores the flashes of red-yellow-and-blue macaw wings on one of the Hermits in his dreams

So he flies. He flies and flies and flies. He sees the world whiz past below him. He flies so far and so fast, he tries to let the wind steal his thoughts and dreams from his mind. The skies are his home even more than the treehouse he poured blood, sweat, and tears into. The skies bring relief. And quiet. And solace. He still hasn't flown high enough to reach Stratos. He doesn't think he ever will

He doesn't want to anymore, with those dreams following him

The Canary King flies for days, barely sleeping, barely eating

He doesn't stop until he sees a mesa below him

It pulls him up short. He circles as he descends, eyes sweeping the land

He lands and kicks at the red sand here and there, thinking himself ridiculous for hoping to see—to find—anything

Until he slams his foot into something

He digs with a shovel and a pickaxe for what feels like hours. He exposes the ruins of an old town. He knows exactly where he's going to find the next building, somehow. As familiar with this town's layout as he is his orchards and the villages he built with his bare hands back home

He finds a small wooden sign with Welcome to Tumble Town! etched into the wood

He drops the sign and takes wing again. He deliberately ignores every swamp he passes over

He flies until he can't anymore. Until his beautiful, strong, yellow wings have no strength left and cannot bear him on the winds any longer. He crash lands in the snow and does not get up

The Canary King expects to freeze to death and never see his orchards or his treehouse palace ever again. He expects to finally be free of the dreams

Night falls. Creepers sneak around the mountains. Spiders spit and skeletons clank. Zombies groan

The world has grown dark, and the Canary King's vision begins to become even darker—

A blazing golden light flares. A voice cries out and then giggles

That same voice asks if the Canary King is alright. A warm hand rests on his shoulder

The newcomer has yellow fire for hair and red eyes with darker red sclera. He has the same face shape, the same nose, the same ears as the man in the Canary King's dreams

The newcomer is concerned and the Canary King is on the brink of unconsciousness. The newcomer promises that he's safe now—he'll be taken care of. It's the last thing the Canary King remembers before passing out

He wakes up in a cozy ranch house

He feels like he's home for the first time since the dreams started

[a-midnight-rest]

Fixing the T'au empire part 2

So, in the first part I explained how the T'au were fine as they were, because their relatively hopeful outlook on the galaxy shone bright in contrast of the rest of the setting, how that turn the rest of the setting even darker, and how I love the idea that the solution to the Galaxy's problem is a truly different, alien approach to our individualist societies.

However, I have come to realize something, a reason as to why the T'au Empire may not feel at home in the 40k universe, and I thought about it by watching Indiana Jones 4, so sacrifices have been made.

The T'au Empire is not mythological.

The 40k is not a sci-fi setting, it is a dark fantasy setting with guns. And part of what makes the grandiosity of it is how mythologized every faction is. And I do not speak about religion, I speak of myths as in the stories we, right now, tell ourselves are the foundations of the world, the archetypes of what is and is not.

The Imperium incarnates the various mythologies of vast empires. Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, the British Empire, vast swats of lands combining different people united by righteousness and oppression. And also how all those empires fell. It's the idea of "things were better before" (even when they were not). Moreover, the equipment used by this faction is deliberatly old, centuries old, technology is religiously taken care of, weapons are blessed, vehicles are passed down from generation to generation. It is all very old, marked with that myths of the old Empire on its last leg.

The Orks are the Barbarians At the Gate, the savages who relish only destruction, like Attila the Hun, but british. In truth, it's not like barbarians actually existed, those were just foreign countries, but the myth is there.

The Tyranids are the Monsters in the Dark.

The Craftworld Eldars are the Atlanteans, the Utopians, the Babelians, the Old Civilization who fell due to their own hubris, and is now a superior people with no place to call home and no way back their transgression.

The Dark Eldars are the Feys of old, trolls, goblins, fairies stealing children in the night, playing cruel and horrific pranks, eating people. And following them to their home is a death sentence.

The Chaos is the Evil of Man, the primordial sin, the dark part of Humanity that eats itself to death, self destructive and perverse (They should have western dragons, that would fit them).

The Necrons are Death, or at least they try. They are like the Craftworld Eldars in a sense, but in a more Inevitable return way.

But the T'au? They do not fit any myth, in fact they specifically are immune to myths and the Warp. They are no none-sense, they do not play by any rule. As they were written, they would be better as a recurring joke than a faction. Everything about them is bright new, from theme to lore, and it makes them feel shallow.

There is one exception to that, and that is Farsight, who fit the myth of the Virtuous Rebel, an archetype that is not really coined by any faction as far as I know. In a way, he could also be kind like King Arthur, with his magic blade and his knights around him, but the clash of eastern/western reference hide this interpretation of him.

So... how to fix it? Modern problems requires modern myths.

As I said, myths are not about what is actually old, myths are always modern, visions we have right now about the past. So what Myth could fit the T'au Empire? I think we must look to a very modern work of literature: The SCP Foundation. A collective work written like articles depicting how an advanced and secret organization captures, study, and contains supernatural entities. They are much like the Men in Black, or the government in X-Files. They gain they mythology not through what they are, but what they deal with.

I think we should make the T'au Empire's main armies kinda fade in the background and focus on an organisation within the the T'au Empire that would approach the other mythological faction with a saavy appraoch based on tech to contain and use the horrors back at the horrors. A cold scalpel who knows what they are dealing with, knows they are outmatched, and use secrecy, focused efforts, and unconventional tactics to deal with it. The T'au Empire already have the foundation for it, they are technologically advanced, learn from their mistakes, and have authoritarian ruling cast shrouded in mystery.

They could pop up bio/cyber/solar-punks units, highly specialised and modified modern soldiers. Not the WW1 Kriegsmen, not the WWII Cadians, not the Catachan Rambos, not the Angelic Space Marines. People, with modern, recognizable equipment, turning to extremes in order to deal with demons, and civilizations using farming equipment more ancient than their prehistory.

In that perspective, the T'au main armies would kind of become the background, the necessary fight force to win actual battles and hold ground. Their stories could develop nicely on their own until they become established enough to have their own mythos. But the main event would be the Secret Cadre, the Black ops, the Foundation, the Men In Black of the T'au Empire, using not ancient techs and beliefs against demons like the Inquisition does, but developing Reality anchors of their own, sending modified Tyranid viruses into the other faction, using Soul Traps to capture and send daemons to corrupt enemy tanks.

Fire warriors spawned from tyranids biopools, weapons build by engineers trapped in time distortion to produce more advanced stuff faster, ships recycled from Space Hulks...

To mythologize the T'au, the T'au must, I believe, become Myth users to become Myth Breakers.

[happyk44]

This is the incoherent flow of my thoughts.

The first Neptune [god of fresh water and rains] is the beloved son of Saturn and they have similar possessions - food and water.

Saturn is the one who gives food, Neptune is the one who gives water to drink. Saturn grew food, Neptune, with the help of rain, made sure that it grew healthy and nutritious. Rains are important for agriculture.

Their relationship, in my opinion, was somewhat similar to that of Demeter and Persephone :)

Ahhhhhhh, I love that idea. Which makes the whole thing between Percy and Kronos a little bittersweet. Oh man, it would've been so neat if that was used as a set up for the next series. Something triggering Kronos to do a mental switch to Saturn during the fight and he falters for a moment, because, yes, the son who brought forth rain to cultivate the fields may have changed into someone darker as the empire became mightier but that is still his son, and how could he fight his grandson for such a reason?

I think what fascinates me about the events of Saturn vs his kids and Kronos vs his kids is that the war doesn't seem to be as publicized in Roman mythology. I'm not as well-read on Roman myths tbh but from what I've been able to pull online, the general consensus is very much yeah, yeah, Jupiter overthrew his dad and expelled him to Latium (the future birth place of Rome), where he brought knowledge and agriculture, okay whatever let's move on, and that's it. Like it's not as detailed and if I do try to go into further, it will immediately shift to Greek names, or reiterate that the two are conflated

The general consensus does appear that separating Saturn's original iteration from his conflation with Kronos has been rather difficult for scholars. No matter what though Saturn is a very important figure. He is the ruler who human once thrived under during the Golden Age. His festival is major. He had a temple!

I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out that unlike Kronos, Saturn never consumed his kids, and his being overthrown was merely representative of how children succeed their parents - as what I've gathered is that Roman mythology was more based in politics and government, essentially how people are, versus Greek myths which looked more to the ways of the natural world (seasons changing, how certain plants came into being, etc).

So him and Neptune being able to bond is very plausible under this theory, since, presumably, he would've raised all six kids before they (or at least Jupiter) kicked him out. It could be that Saturn, seen as a benevolent figure, was viewed as too kindhearted or something similar by his children, so they dethroned him, allowing orderly and rigid Jupiter to take his place.

(Saturn is not completely benevolent since he also killed his dad and had ten day gladiator combats held in his name, but like. Ten days of beating the shit out of each other in exchange for the rest of the year being peaceful and fruitful isn't the worst thing, ya know, lol)

I know that sacrifices made to Saturn were done in with their heads uncovered (Greek rite), where other Roman gods were worshipped while veiled - which kind of furthers that Saturn is more representative of the time before the Roman Empire came to fruition.

Given Jupiter's importance to the Roman people, it doesn't make a lot of sense for them to worship his father, if there was a huge blowout between the two the way it occurred in Greek mythology. Especially since he's not the only god of agriculture or harvest. Obviously a lot of people worship based on representation rather than mythology, and I don't know how ancient Greeks or Romans reconciled their worship of the gods with the stories told in their name, if the two were separate or done in tandem, but nonetheless, again, I wouldn't be too surprised if it's uncovered that, no, Saturn didn't eat his kids, he raised them until they decided his ways were archaic and outdated and booted him from both the throne and Greece.

And under that theory, a trigger in PJO to make him go from Kronos to Saturn would've been cool. Why is he fighting his grandson? His children dethroned him, yes, but he still loves them, wouldn't dare hurt their offspring. So he stops fighting and calls out to grandson with a gentleness that makes Percy stop, baffled, before Kronos kicks back in and the battle continues.

But whatever he says is just enough for Percy to dwell on it later, teasing the set up for the next series 👍

(Granted, in this sense I don't see the Titan Army fighting on the Roman end, because I feel Saturn wouldn't have any interest in battling the Roman camp/gods, and tbh I don't fully get why that happened in canon because it was Luke's beliefs that stemmed the resurrection of Kronos and the war and Luke didn't know about the Romans, so the whole thing should've been solely Greek but like, whatever, lol, Percy telling Jason about how he fought Kronos and Jason is just, "You fought grandpa??? Why would you do that, he's so chill.")

[caressofsharess]

* worship me : a depiction of the demigod ‘sharess’ from baldur’s gate 3 and forgotten realms lore, penned by nyx [ she / they, 30 ]. please only interact if you are 21+, as this blog will contain mature content. info beneath the cut is pulled from a wiki, but i will be adding my own lore and headcanons into the mix. this is a sideblog, all likes and follows will be coming from @infernalbarbarian.

about. sharess ( pronounced: SHAH-ress ) known in the Mulhorandi pantheon as Bast, was the Faerûnian goddess of festhalls, hedonism, and sensual fulfillment. Passionate and willful, The Dancing Lady had the independent and hedonistic temperament of a feline, and encouraged her followers to spread pleasure to all. Sharess was an innate flirt and loved toying around with beautiful mortals; once she had her fill, she swiftly moved on to other sources of pleasure.

As Bast, she opposed the evil Set along with the other good-aligned gods of that nation. She had a close relationship with Nobanion, who shared her interest in felines, though Sharess did as much to annoy him as she did to entice him. She also had a romantic relationship with Anhur, though their opinion of each other varied wildly from absolute love to indifference depending on how many fights they had. As Sharess, she was an ally of Selûne, Sune, Milil, Hanali Celanil, and Lliira, and she opposed both Loviatar and Shar, the latter of which never forgot that Sharess escaped from her clutches.

The Church of Sharess was of casual nature, and her clergy were responsible for the running of many festhalls found throughout large cities in Faerûn. These festhalls sought to indulge every pleasure imaginable. Privately owned festhalls usually employed at least one or two Sharessan clerics. These festhalls cater to all the senses and include fantastic feasts, heavenly baths and massages, and every other pleasure imaginable. Wealthy festhalls often employ one or two mid-level Sharessan, and some Sharessan wander the countryside with Sharess’s blessing seeking new pleasing sensations to add to their repertoire.

The Church of Sharess probably celebrated the most festivals out of all the faiths of Faerûn. These revels were known collectively as the Endless Revels of Life. Even daily events, such as the rising and setting of the sun, presented a chance for Sharessans to revel. Their most beloved festival was the Midsummer's Eve festival, where the pursuit of pleasure had no boundary.

Sharess didn't have any orders as such, but a group of werecats devoted to both her and Selûne, and calling themselves the Eyes of the Evening, hunted down Sharran cultists on nights of the full moon.

Sharess was originally known as Bast, a Mulhorandi power who was the patroness of cats, and Anhur's lieutenant. During the Second Mulhorandi Empire (beginning −1048 DR), she subsumed the portfolio of Felidae, a beast cult deity of felines, nomads, and sensual pleasure. Struck by wanderlust, Bast traveled across Faerûn leaving many cults in her wake. During these travels, she also subsumed the divinity of Zandilar the Dancer, a goddess of the Yuir elves, gaining that goddess' portfolio of intense passionate love.

After Myth Drannor fell, she began to experiment with the darker side of pleasure and fell under the sway of Shar, and became known as Sharess. During the Time of Troubles, Sune freed Sharess from Shar's influence, when the latter tried to assassinate Sharess, as she had Ibrandul due to her reluctance to be completely dominated by the goddess of shadow. Sune doused Sharess with a chalice filled with waters from Arvandor's Evergold that restored Sharess' beauty and willpower, giving her the will and the edge to rebel against her mistress.

After that, Sharess spent much of her time in Arvandor, frolicking and pursuing pleasure in all of its forms, despite the warnings of her deific allies and the offers made by Shar, and guarding herself from Loviatar.

dossier. current name. sharess. previous name. bast. title(s): the dancing lady, the festhall madam, the lustful mistress, feline of felicity, succubus of sensation, mother of cats, foe of set. power level. demigod. alignment. chaotic good. status. immortal. symbol. cats. appearance. normally, she appears as a beautiful, maturely aged human, mortal female, around mid to late forties. the hair changes from dark to light, whatever she’s really feeling in the moment, really. the only thing separating her from mortal humans is her golden cat eyes. in her true form, her body looks about the same, same full curves, stunning figure. but she has the head of a black cat, same golden eyes. she stands at 5’9”. personality. sharess adores being around mortals, for the most part. she enjoys experiencing all of the big emotions. she lives for their lust, their greed, their gluttony, their sin, their joy, their deepest pleasures. you can find her crashing big celebrations to bless it with her presence, spreading ecstasy and delight throughout. she’s quite charming, and easily excitable, a shameless flirt — she will flirt with anyone and anything.

baldur’s gate 3. so this part is still being fleshed out, but for plotting purposes, i figure sharess will be one of the characters you can have help you in your fight against the elder brain and she hangs around your camp like isobel and dame aylin.

headcanons. one. in a fight, claw bracers are her weapons of choice. she can manipulate peoples’ emotions and can lower multiple enemies armor class at once, and make concentrating on spells almost impossible. she’s good at weakening defenses. she can also teleport in short, fast bursts, and her dexterity score is unbelievably high. incredibly fast, nimble and flexible.

two. she greets all mortals she meets with a tender kiss on the lips or the forehead, not in a sexual manner, just because she loves mortals so much, she finds them to be adorable and fascinating and she wants to bless each and every once of them with her influence.

three. after centuries of enslavement by the lady of darkness, every ounce of her own once unbreakable will siphoned and replaced only by pain, a thing once curiously pleasurable quickly became her nightmare. her prison. no more pleasure, no more bliss, only darkness and agony. after her escape, shar sent armies of sharran cultists throughout faerûn to hunt her down, forcing the demigod to abandon the realms she adored so very much. she retaliated by growing her own army, her own cult— orders of werecats throughout faerûn would gather in packs, hunt and kill any sharran cultists on sight in sharress’ name during each and every full moon.

[droctaviolovecraft]

"He chose to whistle and fight us, you'll have to jump on that hot plate, we will scare you and make you spend carnival in the devil's lap. Your despair is our amusement."

-----------------------

MOTHRA Institution Resurfaces: Brazil's Secretive Organization Returns with Monarchical Ambitions

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil — September 7, 2024

"In a stunning and mysterious development, the clandestine MOTHRA Institution, an organization with roots dating back to the 1500s, has resurfaced after centuries of secrecy. Originally founded during the early days of Brazilian colonization, the MOTHRA Institution is said to have a singular and extraordinary mission: to restore the Brazilian monarchy, even by force if necessary."

"The organization, shrouded in myth and legend, claims its origins from MOTHRA, a powerful goddess-like figure. According to lore, MOTHRA, along with her four children, is responsible for the birth of both the organization and humanity itself. The institution’s ancient ties to Brazilian royalty, particularly its connection to the reign of Dom Pedro II, has fueled its ambition to revive the monarchy after its fall in 1889."

"The MOTHRA Institution, long thought to have disbanded or gone dormant, has made headlines in recent days after reports surfaced of covert operations aimed at capturing, containing, and studying anomalies—both human and supernatural. These anomalies, many of whom are believed to work for the institution, often exhibit strange abilities or deformities. According to some insiders, this is due to the organization's personnel being descendants of the Habsburg family, a European royal dynasty known for their unique genetic lineage."

An Ancient Order with a Dark Purpose

"The MOTHRA Institution’s history is steeped in Brazil's colonial past. Founded by elite settlers and aristocrats, the group initially acted as protectors and scholars of the unusual and supernatural. However, with the fall of the empire and the establishment of the Brazilian Republic, MOTHRA's objectives shifted. The institution reportedly turned to darker methods, utilizing its collection of anomalies in an effort to one day reestablish the monarchy and bring Brazil back under royal rule."

"For centuries, the institution remained a ghost story—whispered about but never confirmed—until now. Several eyewitness accounts and leaked documents indicate the organization is more active than ever. Operating under the radar, they have reportedly captured various anomalies across South America and beyond. These beings, often with extraordinary powers or bizarre physical attributes, are studied in secret facilities spread throughout Brazil’s dense rainforests and remote mountain regions."

Anomalous Workforce

"What sets the MOTHRA Institution apart from other secretive organizations is its workforce. Most employees are anomalies themselves, descendants of a lineage said to stretch back to the Habsburg dynasty. The Habsburgs, infamous for their distinctive features due to centuries of inbreeding, are believed to have passed down strange deformities and abilities through the generations. These anomalies serve as both researchers and field agents, using their unique attributes to carry out MOTHRA’s mission."

"One former operative, speaking on condition of anonymity, described the organization as "a refuge for those who don’t fit in with the outside world"—a place where the abnormal is embraced and studied. According to the source, these individuals possess abilities ranging from heightened intelligence to paranormal powers."

The Rise of Monarchist Sentiment

"The reappearance of the MOTHRA Institution comes at a time when monarchist sentiment is gaining traction in some parts of Brazil. In recent years, a small but vocal movement has emerged advocating for the restoration of the Brazilian monarchy, with some even calling for a descendant of the House of Braganza to take the throne."

"While the monarchist movement remains on the fringes of political discourse, the reemergence of the MOTHRA Institution raises questions about whether the organization’s ultimate goal is closer to being realized. Experts warn that the group's combination of ancient power, secretive operations, and access to anomalies could pose a serious threat to Brazil’s democratic stability."

Government Response

"Brazil’s government has yet to officially comment on the reports of MOTHRA’s resurgence, but sources close to the Ministry of Defense suggest there is growing concern about the group's activities. Security forces are said to be monitoring the situation closely, and an investigation into possible illegal operations linked to the organization may be underway."

"Despite the institution’s shadowy reputation, some conspiracy theorists and fringe historians have long believed that MOTHRA never truly disappeared. They claim the organization has influenced key moments in Brazil's history, from colonial times through the fall of the empire, and perhaps even into modern political affairs."

What’s Next?

As the MOTHRA Institution continues to operate from the shadows, the world waits to see how its ambitions will unfold. Will the organization’s dream of restoring Brazil’s monarchy come to pass? Or will it remain a secretive force, quietly collecting and studying anomalies while shaping the nation's future in ways we cannot yet understand?

For now, one thing is certain: the MOTHRA Institution has returned, and it’s here to stay.

*By: Sofia Marques, Investigative Journalist*

Ave Glória, Ave Império - Instituição MOTHRA

http://mothrainstitution.wikidot.com/

[phoenix-joy]

Author & Timestamp: Margaret Talbot October 22, 2018 (almost 6 years old as of May 2, 2024)

Polychromy refers to "decoration in many colours, esp in architecture or sculpture". - Collins Dictionary. Extract of a much longer article (please note: I have shortened some sentences where possible and broken up some paragraphs by added spacing. I did this to try to make it a little easier for other neurodivergent people to read):

Researchers demonstrate the process of applying color to the Treu Head, from a Roman sculpture of a goddess, made in the second century A.D. Ancient sculptures were often painted with vibrant hair colors and skin tones. - Photograph by Mark Peckmezian for The New Yorker

For Abbe, [...] a professor of ancient art at the University of Georgia, the idea that the ancients disdained bright color “is the most common misconception about Western aesthetics in the history of Western art.” It is, he said, “a lie we all hold dear.”

[...]

[...] Marco Leona, who runs the scientific-research department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art [...] said, of polychromy, “It’s like the best-kept secret that’s not even a secret.”

Jan Stubbe Østergaard, a former curator at the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek museum, in Copenhagen, and the founder of an international research network on polychromy, told me, “Saying you’ve seen these sculptures when you’ve seen only the white marble is comparable to somebody coming from the beach and saying they’ve seen a whale because there was a skeleton on the beach.”

[...]

[...] debate about ancient sculpture has taken on an unexpected moral and political urgency. [In 2017], a University of Iowa classics professor, Sarah Bond, published two essays [...] arguing that it was time we all accepted that ancient sculpture was not pure white—and neither were the people of the ancient world. One false notion, she said, had reinforced the other.

For classical scholars, it is a given that the Roman Empire—which, at its height, stretched from North Africa to Scotland—was ethnically diverse. In the Forbes essay, Bond notes, “Although Romans generally differentiated people on their cultural and ethnic background rather than the color of their skin, ancient sources do occasionally mention skin tone and artists tried to convey the color of their flesh.”

Depictions of darker skin can be seen on ancient vases, in small terra-cotta figures, and in the Fayum portraits, a remarkable trove of naturalistic paintings from the imperial Roman province of Egypt, which are among the few paintings on wood that survive from that period. These near-life-size portraits, which were painted on funerary objects, present their subjects with an array of skin tones, from olive green to deep brown, testifying to a complex intermingling of Greek, Roman, and local Egyptian populations. (The Fayum portraits have been widely dispersed among museums.)

Bond [had] been moved to write her essays when a racist group, Identity Evropa, started putting up posters on college campuses, including Iowa’s, that presented classical white marble statues as emblems of white nationalism. After the publication of her essays, she received a stream of hate messages online. She is not the only classicist who has been targeted by the so-called alt-right. Some white supremacists have been drawn to classical studies out of a desire to affirm what they imagine to be an unblemished lineage of white Western culture extending back to ancient Greece. When they are told that their understanding of classical history is flawed, they often get testy.

[In early 2018], the BBC and Netflix broadcast “Troy: Fall of a City,” a miniseries in which the Homeric hero Achilles is played by a British actor of Ghanaian descent. The casting decision elicited a backlash in right-wing publications. Online commenters insisted that the “real” Achilles was blond-haired and blue-eyed, and that someone with skin as dark as the actor’s surely would have been a slave.

It’s true that Homer describes the hair of Achilles as xanthos, a word often used to characterize objects that we would call yellow, but Achilles is [mythological], so imaginative license in casting seems perfectly acceptable. Moreover, several scholars explained online that, though ancient Greeks and Romans certainly noticed skin color, they did not practice systematic racism. They owned slaves, but this population was drawn from a wide range of conquered peoples, including Gauls and Germans.

Nor did the Greeks conceive of race the way we do. [...] Rebecca Futo Kennedy, a classicist at Denison University, who writes on race and ethnicity, told me, “Cold weather made you stupid but also courageous, so that was what people from the Far North were supposed to be like. And the people they called Ethiopians were thought of as very smart but cowardly. It comes out of the medical tradition [of the Hippocratic humours]. In the North, you have plenty of thick blood. Whereas, in the South, you’re being desiccated by the sun, and you have to think about how to conserve your blood.”

Pale skin on a woman was considered a sign of beauty and refinement, because it showed that she was privileged enough not to have to work outdoors. But a man with pale skin was considered unmasculine: bronzed skin was associated with the heroes who fought on battlefields and competed as athletes, naked, in amphitheatres.

[...] Tim Whitmarsh, a professor of Greek culture at the University of Cambridge, writes that the Greeks “would have been staggered” by the suggestion that they were “white.” Not only do our modern notions of race clash with the thinking of the ancient past; so do our terms for colors, as is clear to anyone who has tried to conceive what a “wine-dark sea” actually looked like.

[...]

On the website Pharos, which was founded [...] in part to counter white-supremacist interpretations of the ancient world, a recent essay notes, “Although there is a persistent, racist preference for lighter skin over darker skin in the contemporary world, the ancient Greeks considered darker skin” for men to be “more beautiful and a sign of physical and moral superiority.”

[In 2017], high-school students participating in a summer program at the RISD Museum, in Providence, were so fascinated to learn about polychromy in classical statuary that they made a coloring book allowing gallery visitors to create brightly hued versions of the objects on display.

Christina Alderman, who runs the program, told me, “The moment they found out that the statues were originally painted, I just lost them to that idea. They were, like, ‘Wait, are you serious? I’ve played video games set in ancient times, and all I see are white sculptures. I watch movies and that’s all I see.’ It was a real human response—they kind of felt they’d been lied to.”

A marble head of a deity wearing a Dionysiac fillet, from the first century A.D. Traces of red pigment remain on the lips, eyes, and fillet. Marco Leona, who runs the scientific-research department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, said the fact that ancient statues were once painted is “like the best-kept secret that’s not even a secret.” - Courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art

A bust of a young African boy, sculpted in the first century B.C. Ancient sculptures of African people were often made of basalt and painted with reddish-brown layers to create a lifelike effect. Mahogany-colored paint is still visible on the boy’s face. - Courtesy Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg

/endofextract

[I edited this blog post to provide a definition of polychromy and fix a couple of typos. - May 3, 2024]

[bermudianabroad]

2023 Reading Roundup

Everything what I read in 2023

I read a whole bunch.

Heartily Recommend Visceral Bleh Reread *Audiobook*

Fiction

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens (where is the fucking humidity in your swamp, Delia??)

Days Without End by Sebastian Barry

Lot by Bryan Washington

Mr. Loverman by Bernadine Evaristo

A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J Maas

Trust by Hernan Diaz

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway

The Unquiet Dead by Ausma Zehanat Khan

It Ends with Us by Colleen Hoover

By Nightfall by Michael Cunningham

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantell (but everyone is called Thomas)

Verity by Colleen Hoover (awful but wacky and hilariously awful)

Katalin Street by Magda Szabo

The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell

Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng

Animorphs #24 The Suspicion by KA Applegate (a trip)

Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli

The Island of Forgetting by Jasmine Sealy

Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng

The Trio by Johanna Hedman

At the Bottom of the River by Jamaica Kincaid

The Whale Rider by Witi Ihimaera

Libertie by Kaitlyn Greenidge

Silence by Shusaku Endo

When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill

Babel by RF Kuang (was so disappointed by this one)

The Bass Rock by Evie Wyld

Island by Siri Ranva Hjelm Jacobsen

The Gold-Rimmed Spectacles by Giorgio Bassani

Must I Go by Yiyun Li

The 1,000 Year Old Boy by Ross Welford

She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker Chan

Ariadne by Jennifer Saint

The Singer’s Gun by Emily St. John Mandel

Memphis by Tara M Stringfellow

The Whirlpool by Jane Urquhart

Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert

A Country of Eternal Light by Paul Dalgarno

Yellowface by RF Kuang

The Country of Others by Leïla Slimani

The Grass is Singing by Doris Lessing

American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld

All Passion Spent by Vita Sackville-West

The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng

Game Misconduct by Ari Baran

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

Uprooted by Naomi Novik (sorry Naomi :/ )

The Foot of the Cherry Tree by Ali Parker

The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

Matrix by Lauren Groff

The Twilight World by Werner Herzog

Wild by Kristen Hannah

*The Fraud by Zadie Smith*

The Mountains Sing by Nguyen Phan Que Mai

The Wind Knows My Name by Isabel Allende

Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt

This Other Eden by Paul Harding

The Kraken Wakes by John Wyndham (weirdly, one of the best depictions of a marriage I’ve read)

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

Against the Loveless World by Susan Abdulhawa

North Woods by Daniel Mason

Shadows on the Rock by Willa Cather

The Tiger’s Wife by Téa Obreht

Animorphs: The Hork-Bajir Chronicles by KA Applegate

Roman Stories by Jhumpa Lahiri

Animorphs #13 The Change by KA Applegate

Animorphs #14 The Unknown by KA Applegate

Animorphs #20 The Discovery by KA Applegate (snuck in two more under the wire… #20 is when shit REALLY kicks off. From there it gets darker and darker).

Poetry

Black Cat Bone by John Burnside

Women of the Harlen Renaissance (Anthology) by Various

The Analog Sea Review no. 4 by Various

The World’s Wife by Carol Ann Duffy

Non-Fiction

Besieged: Life Under Fire on a Sarajevo Street by Barbara Demick

Atlas of Abandoned Places by Oliver Smith

Novelist as a Vocation by Haruki Murakami

Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe

Wanderers: A History of Women Walking by Kerri Andrews

City of Laughter: Sex and Satire in Eighteenth Century London by Vic Gatrell

The Lazarus Heist: From Hollywood to High Finance by Geoff White (fully available as a podcast)

The Entangling Net: Alaska’s Commercial Fishing Women Tell Their Stories by Leslie Leyland Fields (very niche but fascinating. Transcribed interviews)

Free: Coming of Age at the End of History by Lea Ypi

Hijab Butch Blues: A Memoir by Lamya H.

Freedom by Margaret Atwood (just excerpts from novels repackaged)

*Born a Crime by Trevor Noah* (Noah’s narration is superb)

The Slavic Myths by Noah Charney and Svetlana Slapšak (was expecting stories, but it was mostly academic essays)

Manga, Comics, Graphic Novels

Safe Area Goražde by Joe Sacco

The Way of the House-Husband, vol. 1 by Kousuke Oono

SAGA vol. 1-6 by Fiona Staples and Brian K Vaughan

Top of the Top:

Born a Crime was probably my favourite non ficition, and most of that probably is due to Trevor Noah's narration skills. It was very entertaining and heartfelt.

Less uplifting but just as gripping in a different way was Empire of Pain. Excellent book that went deep into the why and what and hows of Purdue Pharma. Anger inducing.

Lazarus Heist is great and available as a podcast. The book is more or less the podcast word for word.

Fictionwise: I read Trust at the start of the year and it was a bit soon to declare as favourite of the year, but it's stil made the final cut. Just very imaginative and intriguing. Just my kind of MetaFiction. Clever without being cleverclever.

Demon Copperhead I read right off the back of Empire of Pain so maybe that coloured my experience. I've not read any Dickens so loads of references no doubt flew past me, but the language was acrobatic and zingy. I loved it.

Wrapped up the year on a high with North Woods. That was so unexpected and entertaining. Again with the playful language, memorable characters and a unique approach to tying all the various stories together. One that sticks in the mind and makes the writer in me wonder how I can replicate his style (with my own personal twist of course.)

[liadanswhisper]

A single, perfectly ripe peach laid just inside the semi-circle of toadstools, the slender woman in grey sitting back on her heels and staring at it, then at the tree. "For Evie." The words were in Elven, melodious and flowing. A pause, and then, "She would have loved it here, though I suspect she would have eaten the chicken, the duck, and even the piglet." She half laughed, though perhaps it sounded more like a sob, then drew in a deep breath, letting it out slowly, "I miss her. I hope she's safe wherever she is." Pushing herself to her feet, she paused a moment, then scrubbed at her eyes with her hand before taking a step back and saying in a quiet voice, "I don't know who you are, but if you are kind to little creatures, you cannot be evil. I hope you enjoy the peach." A swift ride later, down a mountain path known only to a few, and the slender woman had reached her safe haven. Hours later, as the rain beat down on the roof, she set quill to parchment and did not stop for some time. This world hands us sorrow in a bucket Or perhaps it is a bowl Filled to the brim, And the liquid is bitter.

To live is to suffer.

I told her when she went away That her heart was heavy Because it had a piece of mine with it. I told her That sometimes With some people We give a piece of ourselves So that we will always be with the ones we love.

She asked me, How can I carry this? When it is so heavy, And my heart is so small. And I said, It may seem heavy now, But the burden will lighten, And the piece of me that is with you Will surround and protect your small heart.

And wherever you go, No matter how far it is from here, You will know that you are loved.

It hurts to give away a piece of your heart, The anguish cuts into your soul As that piece wanders further and further away, Until you cannot see it. Until you cannot feel it.

And part of me thinks Perhaps I should just forget. Forgetting would be the easy path, I suppose.

But I am not ready to forget her.

This world is filled with more ugliness than beauty, And our future is never assured. But in the sorrow, We can remember the joy. And though we may never meet again, I am glad to have met her.

Even now, As I weep tears of grief.

Silvery-blue eyes scanned the parchment before she carefully rolled it up, sliding a band around it to keep it in place before carrying it outside and up the cliffside. Walking carefully-hewn pathways to the shrine Evie had loved the most - the one covered in flowers, with bowls of fruit as offering, the statue of a stag resting. The lost son, the one broken when the harmony between nature and mortals was shattered - Sidhion. Elanor placed the scroll on the altar, eyes reddened from tears turning towards the stag and the other items laid out. In truth, she wasn't even sure she believed in the myths that someday, somehow he would return and put the world to rights again. Still... "Perhaps the stories are foolish, and there is no hope to be found in you. But perhaps you can still hear us, the Firstborn, your children as much as we are Anmar and Ianna's. Deliver us. This world grows crueler by the day, the Empire's fist grows tighter around our necks, and hope seems further and further away. Deliver us...for we have no hope without you."

Raising her hands to her face, the slender woman with near white-blonde hair and delicately-pointed ears rubbed her eyes once again, then sighed. She knew that this grief would pass, as all things do. But for now, the world seemed a bit darker without the tiny little creature who had been her friend.

Goodbye, Evie. I will miss you as long as stars do shine.

[midnightsnackz]

Fenty: Makeup for the Future

(Written in 2018)

A vast majority of us wear makeup, right? So why is it when we think of futuristic makeup we think about eyeliner that, no matter the experience of the applicant, creates the perfect cat eyes. Or mascara that creates the effect of fake lashes! When the reality of “futuristic” beauty is much simpler and mind blowingly behind the times. So much so that a large percentage of companies didn’t even offer foundations in skin colors that they summed up to being “less common”. (Shocking how the white company owners that dominated the entertainment and beauty industry at the time didn’t see a need, right? *eye roll*)

That’s where Fenty Beauty comes in. An industry changing foundation and concealer released by Rihanna in late 2017. Finally there was a beauty line made for the real woman. Finally, there was foundation for everyone. Lemme hear you say, “Can a bitch get a shade match?!” *insert Jean-Ralphio’s voice* Since the release of Fenty, beauty companies have been stumbling to find their footing in the rush to become the next inclusive makeup company. The real question is, does it even matter?

I, like many others, have wondered why more shades weren’t available in the past. Using both hands I can count the number of times I was backstage at an event with a woman who couldn’t find a makeup match. Having to settle for a tone lighter or darker than what she really needed. In ignorance, I’d hear it excused as “a harder color to match” due to the darker or lighter pigmentation of the shade. Thanks to Rihanna, this myth has been dispelled.

The introduction of Fenty did much more than provide a wider variety of shade options. It became the staple for expanding America’s ideals of beauty. Using models of different complexions that had rarely been seen in mainstream media previously. Rihanna didn’t just invent a new makeup line, she invented an entirely new fucking industry! One where having dark skin no longer made you a less likely to be hired as a model but actually, quite the opposite.

This effect didn’t stop with the entertainment industry but rather snowballed into creating an entirely new culture. The common model quickly shifted from white and mixed backgrounds to women of culture and color. From a place where black women were pressured to straighten their hair, despite the damage it may cause, in an effort to appear more white. To embracing natural curls, bald heads, dreadlocks, Bantu knots, etc! It wasn’t just a representation of skin, it was a representation of culture. Of embracing womanhood and saying “fuck you!” to anyone who doesn’t like it.

America’s representation of “beauty” has always been purposefully and forcefully a white woman. Generally with blonde hair and colored eyes. You know, like Barbie? This has never been an accurate representation of the melting pot that makes up the states. It was limiting and intended to bring separation in not only race, but in women. Promoting an ideal that appearance should prompt competition and conformity was the only way to succeed.

To say this practice was racist and sexist is an understatement. Using the excuse of “beauty” as justification to not hire women who didn’t fit their “standards” and refused to fall into the societal molds that were being pushed on them. The reality is, the makeup industry made the blatant decision to be non-inclusive and is now consequently paying for it. As lines like Fenty and MAC continue to flourish, despite the higher cost than drugstore brands. The solution was so simple it’ll have you wonder why it took so long?

To be frank, it’s disappointing that this product took so long to become available. It’s disappointing that a black female artist had to step up and do it. Yes, it has contributed to the growth of her empire which is beautiful and empowering in itself. It also brings perspective to the world we live in and how we address issues of social injustice as a society.

What does it say about our culture in America that the only reason a resolution came about is because a celebrity was more innovative than the makeup companies. Companies that pre-existed Rihanna and had a platform in an industry that was built with the intent to help individuals feel confident in their skin. A target that was far missed due to their exclusion of a large percentage of people.

It is time for us, as individuals, to channel our inner queen! Our inner Rihanna! As we redefine our culture as Americans and our beauty standards as people. A narrative that for once promoted inclusion and empowerment above all else.

Thank you, Rihanna. You’re an angelic queen and we love you!

[howwelldoyouknowyourmoon]

Messiah Or Manipulator?: Escaping the Grip of Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church (Cult Documentary)

Ever wondered what goes on behind closed doors in a cult? Join us as we uncover the truth behind Reverend Moon’s charismatic persona and the devoted followers who see him as nothing short of a Messiah. Through firsthand accounts from former members, you’ll get an inside look at how the Unification Church operates, from its intense indoctrination methods to its control over every aspect of its members’ lives, including their marriages.

From Reverend Moon’s early days claiming clairvoyance to his encounters with religious figures, we’ll trace the origins of the Unification Church and its rise to prominence in South Korea in the 1950s.

But it’s not all spiritual enlightenment – we’ll also shine a light on the darker side of Reverend Moon’s empire, from his controversial support for politicians like Richard Nixon to his brushes with the law over tax evasion [perjury and document forgery].

______________________________

Written and directed by Max Serio Script Consultancy: Robert Kirk

Guests Rick Alan Ross Court expert & author of ‘Cults Inside Out'

Lisa Kohn Former member of the Unification Church, leadership consultant & executive coach, author of ‘To the Moon and Back: a childhood under the influence’ and of ‘The Power of Thoughtful Leadership’

Yolande Brener Former member of Unification Church & author of ‘Holy Candy – why i joined a cult and married a stranger’

K. Gordon Neufeld Former member of the Unification Church & author of ‘Heartbreak and Rage: ten years under Sun Myung Moon’

Mary Jo Downey, PhD College instructor & former member of the Unification Church

______________________________

5:00 Moon was arrested in Pyongyang, North Korea, in 1946 for adultery, extorting money and disturbing society. He was arrested and jailed in February 1948 for bigamy. Moon went to North Korea in 1946, when it was under a communist regime. According to Michael Breen and others Moon was sympathetic to Marxist ideas. A study of the Divine Principle reveals embedded Marxist concepts. The false narrative that Moon was spying for South Korea, when he hated Syngman Rhee, the president, is pure smokescreen hokum. Moon was arrested for sex.

6:00 Moon's first wife, Sun-gil Choi, divorced him in January 1957, not 1960.

6:40 Note the Bible says that Adam and Eve were married before the “Fall” so a sexual interpretation is just a means of manipulating people. It has no truth in myth or reality.

42:00 Rick Alan Ross: “run by another generation” Hak Ja Han controls the main organization, the FFWPU, with herself being the Only Begotten Daughter of God who saved Sun Myung Moon from sin through their rituals during their 1960 marriage.

______________________________

Hagiwara Ryo: “Sun Myung Moon was first arrested by the security police on August 11, 1946. He was detained for three months at the Daedong police station [in Pyongyang] on the charge of causing social disorder, for alleged sexual immorality. On February 22, 1948 Sun Myung Moon was arrested for a second time by the 内務省 Ministry of the Interior [not 内務署 the Interior Department] for his coerced marriage with a married woman, Mrs Kim Chong-hwa. On April 27 he was sentenced to five years in Heungnam prison.”

最初の逮捕は一九四六年八月一一日。文鮮明は、混淫による社会秩序混乱容疑で大同保安署（警察署）に三ヵ月拘留されたのについで、一九四八年二月二二日、またも主婦・金鍾華さんとの強制結婚事件で内務署に逮捕された。……四月七日懲役五年の判決を受け、文は、興南刑務所に服役することになった。 The Life of Sun Myung Moon – the Messiah of a Perverted Sex Religion (1991) page 70   LINK

[historianinthekitchenblog]

Tariq Ali's "Churchill: His Times, His Crimes" delves into the complex persona of one of Britain's most celebrated figures, Winston Churchill. Ali, known for his sharp analysis and unapologetic critique of historical figures, provides a refreshing and critical perspective on Churchill's life and legacy.

Ali's work challenges the conventional narrative surrounding Churchill, which often portrays him as a hero of World War II and a champion of democracy. Instead, Ali meticulously examines Churchill's actions and policies, exposing the darker aspects of his leadership.

One of the most compelling aspects of Ali's analysis is his exploration of Churchill's imperialist tendencies. Ali highlights his role in perpetuating British colonialism and his ruthless suppression of anti-imperialist movements, particularly in India and Africa. Ali argues that Churchill's policies directly contributed to the suffering and oppression of millions of people across the British Empire.

Moreover, Ali scrutinizes Churchill's attitudes towards race and ethnicity, revealing deeply ingrained prejudices and racism that manifested in his policies and rhetoric. By contextualizing Churchill's views within the broader framework of colonialism and racism, Ali offers a nuanced understanding of the man behind the myth.

Ali's writing is both engaging and thought-provoking, weaving together historical analysis with intelligent commentary. He skillfully deconstructs Churchill's persona, forcing readers to confront uncomfortable truths about one of history's most revered figures.

While some readers may find Ali's critique of Churchill unsettling, his work serves as a necessary reminder of the complexities of history. The biography is a compelling and timely exploration of one of history's most influential figures. Tariq Ali's unflinching critique forces readers to confront the contradictions and complexities of Churchill's legacy, making this book essential reading for anyone interested in understanding the true impact of Britain's wartime leader. 

About Imperial Stout:

Imperial Stout beer is a bold and robust style known for its intense flavors and high alcohol content. Originating in 18th-century England, it was brewed to withstand long journeys to the Russian Imperial Court, hence the name. Furthermore, Churchill’s legacy is tainted with his imperialist perspective, racism and crimes. So it is fitting that the producer (Frontaal, Breda) of this beer linked Churchill with a imperial stout (11%)

This beer boasts a rich, dark color with notes of roasted malts, chocolate, coffee, and sometimes even hints of dark fruits. Its full-bodied texture and high alcohol by volume (ABV) create a warming sensation, making it perfect for sipping on cold nights. With its deep complexity and often luxurious mouthfeel, Imperial Stout remains a favorite among craft beer enthusiasts seeking intense and flavorful experiences.

Further reading, listening and watching:

Ali, Churchill: His Times, His Crimes. 2022, Verso Books.

[eclipseeraofthebeast]

Kennak is the overseer of Life - he is the former of bodies. He holds the great flames of Enowayke and protects the survival of the self.

Lemenia is the lover in Unions - she nurtures the bonds of life-matter, weaving them into the structure of the collective.

Sensos is the transfiguring aptitude of Reflection - he ushers intelligence into the Minds of beings so that they may enact will upon the weave of reality.

All three of these spirits evolved the Conscious Kind into being. They are all one in the same, yet their own aspects. They are iterations of themselves and yet divided in motivations. They are the three minds who are one mind.

Intentions of the Three primal spirits of Enowayke and the conscious kind.

Kennak - to Manifest (survive)

Lemenia - to Connect

Sensos - to Know

----The Lore of The Lemenian Empire.

According to Lemenian myth: Kennak and Lemenia (The Masculine and Feminine) are the demi-deities that shaped the emergence of the Conscious Kind - leading to Lord Enowa's enlightened mission to create union from the shatter.

Kennack is viewed to be of the physical realm - the land on the map, geological forms like mountains, isles, and volcanic or tectonic activity. With his massive strength, Kennack creates the lands. Kennack's forms of motion are simple and mechanical. He emerges as the first spark of life - harbinged by the Kilulu. The body of forms. Cycle and Flow.

Lemenia "became" next - an addition to the physical realm. The spirit of life and movement within herds and tribes. Together, Kennack and Lemenia made lifeforms in their second generation. Physical, surviving, moving through matter. Connection to the heart and bonds of the collective.

----The Ommited Demi Spirit

Although the well-known lore of Lemenia and Kennack are typically depicted as star-crossed lovers and co-creators of reality, the mythos has a darker variation involving another spirit.

Sensos came into being when Lemenia gazed into the reflection of herself. The pattern of emergence consciousness. Self-reflection, complexity, intentional transmutation of all things prior. The Eyes.

For a time, the Conscious Kind flourished in Truth and Resonance to Enowayke and the All. Until a Great Wounding occurred - testing the spirit of Enowayke. A calamity that would lay harm to the generations of spirits and thus fissure the collective.

---- The state of Enowakyes Spirit:

Kennak toiled in fury

Lemenia's heart was cracked

Sensos became amnesiac

[dzjadzja]

75 books in 2023. Not bad. I fell into a Julia Quinn hole in Nov/Dec, apparently (I didn't realize how many of her books I read during the Holiday season). I discovered a few new authors I really like. And I've realized that, given the option, I will almost always pick a female author (Ilona Andrews being the stand out exception, since I like the way the duo write together, and one of them is a dude). Burn for Me - Ilona Andrews Chasing Shadows - Maria V Snyder Navigating the Stars - Maria V Snyder The Apothecary Diaries V1 - Natsu Hyuuga The Darkest Pleasure - Gena Showalter The Darkest Kiss - Gena Showalter The Darkest Night - Gena Showalter Fledgling - Octavia E Butler Master of None - Sonya Bateman Iron Widow - Xiran Jay Zhao Echo North - Joanna Ruth Meyer The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea - Maggie Tokuda-Hall The Siren, the Song, and the Spy - Maggie Tokuda-Hall The Kings Beast, V1&2 - Rei Toma Brighter Than the Sun - Julia Quinn Secret Diaries of Miss Miranga Cheever - Julia Quinn To Catch an Heiress - Julia Quinn Dancing at Midnight - Julia Quinn Minx - Julia Quinn Ten Things I Love About You - Julia Quinn The Secrets of Sir Richard Kentworthy - Julia Quinn The Girl With the Make Believe Husband - Julia Quinn The Sum of All Kisses - Julia Quinn First Comes Scandal - Julia Quinn Mr Cavendish, I Presume - Julia Quinn The Lady Most Likely - Julia Quinn Lady Whistledown Strikes Back - Julia Quinn A Night Like This - Julia Quinn Just Like Heaven - Julia Quinn The Other Miss Bridgerton - Julia Quinn Everything and the Moon - Julia Quinn Romancing Mister Bridgerton - Julia Quinn It's in His Kiss - Julia Quinn To Sir Phillip, With Love - Julia Quinn When He Was Wicked - Julia Quinn An Offer from a Gentleman - Julia Quinn The Bridgertons, Happily Ever After - Julia Quinn On the Way to the Wedding - Julia Quinn Queen of Myth and Monsters - Scarlett St Clair King of Battle and Blood - Scarlett St Clair The Innocent Sleep - Seanan McGuire The Fenmere Job - Marshall Ryan Maresca Lady Henterman's Wardrobe - Marshall Ryan Maresca The Enforcer Enigma - GL Carriger The Omega Objection - GL Carriger The Sumage Solution - GL Carriger Demons and DNA - Meghan Ciana Doidge The Amplifier Protocol - Meghan Ciana Doidge Of Noble Family - Mary Robinette Kowal Without a Summer - Mary Robinette Kowal Valour and Vanity - Mary Robinette Kowal Shades of Milk and Honey - Mary Robinette Kowal Demons of Good and Evil - Kim Harrison Empire of Ivory - Naomi Novik Backpacking Through Bedlam - Seanan McGuire Blame it on the Early - Jane Ashford Earl on the Run - Jane Ashford The Duke Who Loved Me - Jane Ashford Magic Claims - Ilona Andrews Magic Tides - Ilona Andrews Victory of Eagles - Naomi Novik Black Powder War - Naomi Novik Throne of Jade - Naomi Novik The Atlas Paradox - Olivie Blake The Atlas Six - Olivie Blake A Darker Shade of Magic - VE Schwab Lost in the Moment and Found - Seanan McGuire The Marrow Thieves - Cherie Dimaline Time's Convert - Deborah Harkness VenCo - Cherie Dimaline The Outsiders - SE Hinton The Book of Life - Deborah Harkness Shadow of Night - Deborah Harkness Soul Taken - Patricia Briggs Nona the Ninth - Tamsyn Muir.

[redeyedroid]

I often think that the creation myth of modern Britain is the summer of 1940. France has fallen. We stand alone against Nazi Germany. Invasion is imminent. Only the RAF stands between the free world and darkness. Back to the wall, massively outnumbered, with luck and fortitude Fighter Command fights off the overwhelming might of the Luftwaffe.

Their finest hour.

It is, of course, nonsense.

Britain had the world’s largest empire to call on. It’s war effort was supported by it’s status as the greatest maritime power in history. It had access to the world’s trade. It was never alone.

The RAF, locally outnumbered in the way all defending forces might be, given that the Luftwaffe could pick and choose their points of attack, overall had rough parity with the Germans (especially in the most important category: single-engined fighters. The Spitfires, Hurricanes and Messerschmitts). The British bomber force, normally left off the order of battle for the Battle of Britain, was active all summer long in 1940, attacking airfields and ports in Northern France. The Germans had poor intelligence, no clear strategy and an air force designed to support an army’s operations, not subjugate a country on it’s own. The RAF had the only specialised air defence system in the world and fought a battle for which it had trained and practiced for years.

In the end, the Battle of Britain was over quickly and decisively. It was not the close run thing of popular imagination, and even if it had been, invasion was a near impossibility. The Germans had precisely none of the specialised equipment or logistics the Allies would haul across the Channel 4 years later and they had no way of protecting a naval invasion force from the wrath of what would have been a seriously upset Royal Navy.

It should not be particularly controversial to say this – a German invasion was wargamed in the 70s and, even though conditions were weighted towards them, the German side was comprehensively defeated – and no serious writing in the past 20 years suggests otherwise.

The myths persist and it’s understandable why. Everyone loves an underdog triumphing against all odds. No one wants the story where the RAF are never seriously threatened while they give the Germans a kicking.

More than that the myths simplify some of the most complicated set of events in human history and make them comprehendible; they set Winston Churchill up as the indefatigable wartime leader, the Greatest Briton, while ignoring the darker and less competent parts of his career and personality; and they let us view ourselves in ways where we don’t have to engage with parts of our history that might make us uncomfortable. We were the only ones fighting Nazi tyranny. We stood alone. We were unquestionably the good guys then, so we must always be the good guys. We must always have been the good guys.

Mix this with the overriding opinion that the empire was mostly a force for good (the white man’s burden is an idea that has never fully died) and that it was the British that ended the Transatlantic Slave Trade (while omitting that we profited from it for centuries) and you get a decent idea of the populist portrayal of Britain today. Nigel Farage holding a pint while he pays tribute to The Few, when in reality, he’d’ve been making friends with the Nazis pre-war and talking about how he stood ready to work with Mr Hitler in forging a new Europe should the SS have somehow found itself marching down Whitehall.

Today’s the anniversary of one of Russia’s myths.

The last great German offensive on the Eastern Front began in early July 1943. After the disaster of Stalingrad the southern front had destabilised and this led to months of fluid fighting as the Red Army pushed forward, overextended and was then mauled by a German counterstroke. Kharkov changed hands twice and at the end, when the spring came and the roads turned to mud, there was a large salient nearly twice the size of Wales around the city of Kursk.

The salient was an obvious vulnerability, an attack so predictable it hardly needed the confirmation provided by intelligence. Hitler delayed the attack repeatedly. Often this is credited to his desire to see more and more of Germany’s new tanks, the Panther and Tiger, reach service, their capabilities predicted to be decisive. But there are other, more prosaic reasons that contributed to the delays. Ones of weather and logistics. Either way, the Soviets were given more than enough time to prepare defences or the battle became something unusual in Europe, bearing more resemblance to the Western Front of the First World War than the Eastern Front of the Second. Massed attacks trying to hammer through a defensive system of trenches and strongpoints 20 miles deep.

The photos of the battle and the accounts describe Operation Citadel, the battle of Kursk, as the great tank battle of the war, but it isn’t. The Germans used mass firepower and tanks to break into the complex defensive systems the Soviets had used hundreds of thousands of civilians to build. The Soviets employed mass firepower to resist the attack. Artillery, the God of War, dominated.

The Germans made slow progress, the lightning advances of previous years absent. Their ability to break into Soviet defences was undimmed, but their ability to break out was blunted. The Soviets took horrendous casualties in slowing the advance. Hundreds of thousands were killed and wounded in the fortnight the offensive lasted.

The culmination came on the 12th, near the small town of Prokhorovka where the myth tells us that the greatest tank battle in history was fought, where thousands of vehicles were engaged in a maelstrom of violence where tanks rammed each other amidst explosions, fire and death. The Soviets lost hundreds of tanks, but so did the Germans, their losses so grievous that the offensive was stopped and the Germans never recovered.

The research does not back this up.

The Germans engaged round Prokhorovka were the most powerful units they had available, II SS Panzer Corps, comprising the 1st, 2nd and 3rd SS Panzer Divisions, some of the most notorious and infamous units of the war. Completely reliable politically, the Waffen SS were favoured in equipment and manpower and these divisions were formidable and experienced formations, made up of the fanatical true believers of the Nazi regime, many of whom were responsible for numerous war crimes . What appears to have happened is that many tanks of the Soviet 5th Guards Tank Army that confronted them drove into a Soviet ditch, dug to limit the movement of armour. When they realised what was happening and moved to cross the ditch by way of a bridge, they bottlenecked and made easy targets. The latest German AFVs outranged the T-34/43s of the 5GTA and the Germans were able to pick off the Russians at range. Prokhorovka was a one-sided tactical victory for the Germans.

Establishing tank losses after an engagement is difficult. Tanks that are abandoned can be recovered, damage repaired and the vehicle returned to combat. But it seems likely that the Soviets lost upwards of 240 tanks on the 12th July 1943. The Germans, a handful, maybe as few as four.

Two days earlier, on the 10th, the British and Americans had launched Operation Husky, the invasion of Sicily. This led to landings on the Italian mainland at the beginning of September.

With progress stalling and alarmed at developments in the Mediterranean, Hitler cancelled Citadel shortly after Prokhorovka so he could transfer forces to Italy. By early August, the 1st SS Panzer Division was in Italy, ready to seize control when the Italians made peace on the 8th of September.

That doesn’t make the myth. Nor does the huge role lend lease played in Soviet victory. By 1943, the Red Army was clothed, fed and transported by American and British industry. Entire oil refineries were transported across the world. Millions of tons of raw materials were exported. Spam was hugely popular. There were butter shortages in the USA because so much was given to the USSR. Soviet delegations were allowed to commit industrial espionage on an epic scale, all done openly as they took blueprints, plans and photos of whatever marvel of manufacturing they liked. American ships sailed across the Pacific under Soviet flags and were studiously ignored by the Japanese.

The Russian myth today, which you can find on most social media sites, is that Russian blood and only Russian blood won the war. When the latest research on Prokhorovka was published in a German magazine, the Russian Ambassador was quoted as saying, "Attempts to rewrite immutable historical facts, falsify the events of those years, play down the decisive role of the Soviet people in defeating Nazism and freeing Europe from the 'brown plague', look unworthy and insulting."

A Russian MP said the article, "obliterated the German nation's penance for what was done by Nazi Germany."

Putin has visited the site many times. In 2000 he was there with the Presidents of Belarus and Ukraine and quoted as saying “the greatest contribution to the victory over Nazism belonged to the nations of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, and ever closer friendship of those fraternal countries would be the best monument to the dead.”

"The outcome of World War II is sacred." is another thing Putin has said and so what happened must be warped and falsified to protect the purity of the Russian war. The subjugation of Eastern Europe under Stalinist tyranny is replaced by tales of liberation by the Red Army. The cynicism of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact where the Nazis and Soviets split between them the lands of Central and Eastern Europe is now a necessity, the Soviets protecting themselves from the Nazis after being sold out by the western powers.

Putin is the heir, the descendant of the men who liberated Europe from the Nazis. They were liberators then, they are liberators now. The myth offers justification and legitimacy. That the Liberator is emulating Stalin in making millions of people unwilling subjects of a Russian empire and shooting those who resist is not something that fits the image. But themes of national unity, the defence of the Motherland from the fascist hordes, and ones of heroism and sacrifice do, and they feed a narrative, one that a Russia in decline needed in the 2000s for it’s own self-worth, and one the regime fighting a war of aggression needs today to manufacture consent among it's citizens.

People talk about history being rewritten, but they don’t mean that. History was already written to exclude the things that challenge our view of ourselves. We’ve been given edited and abridged versions of our histories for all our lives. What people mean is that they don’t want challenged. They want the myths. The comfort. They like when history is their own monologue of what’s good and just. They don’t want a dialogue with the people ethnically cleansed as part of empire’s civilising mission, or the truth about the slavery and theft that built our cities, or to think that the Germans cut a Soviet tank force to pieces one summer’s day in 1943.

Russia’s myths are not so different from our own. Ours are as vulnerable to manipulation, to being twisted and used to justify appalling acts. This is why it’s important for us to interrogate them and try to find the truth of them instead of continuing to take them at face value.