#while many other worlds - though not as powerful at its outset - have survived with their social hierarchies relatively intact

[minweber]

Musings on Custodes: Nobilitas Terra

Ah, the now famous “all Custodians begin their lives as the infant sons of the noble houses of Terra” line from the 8th edition codex (not reproduced in the 9th one, btw). It has now experienced the kind meteoric rise in quotation previously enjoyed only by biblical verses in times of major church schisms. Let’s talk about the part of it that’s actually interesting though.

So Custodians are drawn from the children of Terra’s nobility. It is apparently not exclusive and other sources are allowed on Custodes’ own discretion, but this is both the traditional and the main one. It seems that originally the Emperor was doing something of a mamluk/janissaries thing with them, taking infant children from the families of his potential rivals as both hostages and soldiers that could be raised loyal only to him. Later, when his power grew to so far outstrip that of Terra’s aristocracy as to make any internal challenge of it inconceivable, it instead became prestigious to submit a child of a family to this service - not conscription, but an offering to the golden idol of humanity instead.

So surely, in 42nd millennium, with the Emperor’s eclipsing presence… changed, if not gone, there must be some sort of interesting dynamic between the Custodians and the bloodlines that spawned them? Well, the codex seems to dismiss the idea out of hand, stating that there is no real way for nobles of Terra to recognize their scions once they become Custodians - which presumably means that there is no grounds for interaction? And sure, I can recognize why the official lore in its current state isn't interested in that: Custodians are fixated on the Emperor to the exclusion of everything else, and the Terran nobility itself is a fairly faceless thing in the lore, one of which we don't really know enough about to build any kind of investment from their perspective.

But here we are all about the things that could yet be, rather than the things that just are! And I honestly think a bit of lore expansion in this direction could be pretty interesting!

Between the origins of the Rogue Traders and the Custodians themselves it seems that, much like the priesthood of Mars, some clans on Terra were indeed once powerful enough to make the newly ascendant Emperor deal with them in terms other than total subjugation or destruction. Would the meteoric rise of the Imperium during the Great Crusade grow or diminish their powers? On one hand - the previously mentioned growth of the Emperor's power in relation to them and the whole new "breed" of imperial elite he was literally creating (I know that in modern lore there is some speculation about what were actually his plans for the Astartes and the primarchs post-Crusade, but however things would have turned out for them, had he his way, I doubt it would have resulted in even a modicum of power returning to the hands of his once-rivals)... But on the other - during times of obscene growth and expansion rich and powerful tend to grow even more so, and I doubt that grimdark future avoids this tendency. So I will go out on a limb a little and say that while during the rise of the Imperium the power of Terran nobility may have waned in relative terms, it probably grew in the absolute ones.

And the following ten thousand years of sitting at the top of a stupidly expansive feudal confederacy probably did not hurt them either!

In the days of the Era Indomitus, then, these vague "noble houses of Terra" must be some sort of force to be reckoned with - politically, culturally, and probably even militarily. Likely on a galactic scale. And the personal guard of the Emperor, the supposedly most advanced beings in the entire Imperium, the living symbol of his power - are staffed almost exclusively by the scions of those houses. Do you see my vision? Do you agree that something simply must be there?!

Custodians are the Emperor's representatives and envoys, the single most powerful military force on Terra and the organization in full undisputed control of access to the most holy site in the entire Imperium, a place from which, technically, ALL authority within its borders is derived. Even without the bloodline connection there should be some kind of a relationship between them and the other powers of the throneworld! Even if we look at the pre-codex, fully palace-bound version of Custodes that care for absolutely nothing other than the Emperor's corpse physical safety - they still recognized that the events on larger Terra influence this safety and need to be at least reacted upon. And in the modern version they have never even been that shut-off. Even before the lifting of the Edict of Restraint, Solar Watch patrolled the Sol system entire, Aquilan Shield departed on their mysterious protector missions and the Emissaries Imperatus were busy being a diplomatic corps, for fuck's sake. I find it hard to believe that they would simply ignore Terra's political players, leaving them to do whatever unless someone rolled up armed to the Imperial Palace. So there definitely would be interactions - and once that hook is in, the fun begins.

Are custodians willing to "stoop down" and play nobility's games with them? Do they even have aversion to doing so? Surely, with all the talk about their talents beyond head-chopping, they are capable of scheming with the best of them? And if doing so is the most efficient way to get the job done - why would they object? And if they are no strangers to political manipulation and the noble families desperately want the prestige that comes with having produced a Custodian - why wouldn't the demigods indulge them and use it as a tool? Especially since they - if we keep the codex idea of it being impossible to recognize surrendered infants as the Custodians they become - hold all the cards and can basically present any of their number as a scion of this or that family? And while we are at it - do they themselves actually know? I imagine it must be not that important to them, but are there any records kept? Could you be a 200 hundred year old Custodian fresh out of training (a random example - like so many things, it is not known how long the creation and training of a Custodian takes) and be suddenly told that the aging matron of a noble house with whom you have to go and negotiate is actually your biological mother? Would that stir something? Curiosity, at least? Or is the Emperor’s light so absolute that it can blind one to even the most deep-nested human impulses?

Do Custodians remember sins and glories forgotten by the tapestries of gold and jewels? Do they watch some relatively minor and unimportant house with baffling prejudice - all because someone from it almost outdid the Emperor in something more than ten thousand years ago? Do some bloodlines enjoy unseen protection due to secret deals that have passed out of all human memory?

What about the internal politics of the organization? Millenia of drafting from a relatively closed pool of families means that some Custodians are related to each other - does that matter to them in any way? Even if the golden demigods are completely free of prejudice and superstition - which their history of paranoia kinda tells me they are not - genetics do play an objectively huge part in their existence. Is more expected of those drafted from families that produce more Custodians than others, or have spawned some especially renowned heroes? Once again - is it even public knowledge amidst the Custodes?

And what about the nobles themselves? Do they seek favor of the Adeptus Custodes? Is such a thing even possible? Do they view them as another player in their political games, or are they more of a force of nature, a condition that everyone has to deal with and adapt to? How does the process of submitting children even work nowadays? Is it compulsory? How many are taken from each family/genertaion? Do any struggle against this harvest, or has the honor of the thing completely overshadowed any resentment that they might have had?

Basically what I am saying is that, for the purposes of worldbuilding, interaction between systems is always better than the lack of thereof. And if one were looking for the ways to expand Custodes' lore - this one feels like a great source of characterization for them.

[i-am-skinny-sir]

Maren’s quest to find her estranged mom is less a straight line than it is a winding path. Again, it’s about the journey, and Maren’s effectively begins when she encounters other “eaters” for the very first time. “I thought I was the only one,” she says upon meeting Sully (an absolutely chilling Mark Rylance). Their rapport is strained and short-lived, but it sends her running headlong into Lee (Timothée Chalamet), the blood-soaked beanpole many audiences will be tuning into this film to see. Lee’s appeal is obvious from the outset: he’s got all the restlessness and plain-spoken chill that we’ve come to expect in a Timmy performance. Even as he hunts the flesh that haunts him, feasts on bodies that deserve it (and don’t), that boyish charisma shines through. The loneliness too. Yes, Lee is lonely. Just as Maren is. Neither outright expresses it, but it’s palpable in their first meeting. They recognize it in each other, smell it on each other’s skin, right under the sweat and grime. Falling in with Lee isn’t wise, but it’s convenient. Falling in love is dangerous, but it’s a matter of survival.

The romance at the heart of Bones and All, while disarming and real on so many levels, is but the gateway to unpacking all manner of metaphors. There are some that will look at Lee and Maren and see an allusion to generational trauma. Others will recognize the curse of addiction or even shades of the queer experience in their tumultuous odyssey through the Reagan-era midwest. But that’s the beauty of this very cerebral, very preternatural corner of horror. All of the above can apply in one film, and Guadagnino has been doing this long enough to recognize that.

There could have been no doubt that Chalamet’s second collaboration with Guadagnino would live up to its lofty expectations. Chalamet is not an actor that often “transforms”; he’s more prone to slip characters onto his own body like a translucent skin, endowing them with his own tics and foibles — and somehow, they manage to feel like different people each time. It’s no different in Bones and All, except now Guadagnino is able to pull even more out of a Chalamet that’s five years older than the boy in Call Me By Your Name … and if not wiser, then painfully more aware of the workings of the world. It’d be easy to name him the sole star of this film — and given the star power Chalamet generates on his own, many will certainly try — but that’s an accolade that absolutely must be shared with Taylor Russell.

Alone, each is fantastic, delivering minor masterclasses in the primal, the tender, the hollow. Russell especially is an It Girl in the making. Her performance may feel subdued compared to Rylance’s innate scenery chewing, or Michael Stuhlbarg’s (Call Me By Your Name) harrowing cameo, but it’s the grounding force that keeps this ever-shifting story focused, and brings the best out of the rest of the company.

Together though, Bones and All fully and finally sings. It’s magic — awkward, earnest magic — when Russell and Chalamet share the screen. It’s almost enough to make you forget that these crazy kids do, in fact, eat people: For all its focus on the animalistic, Bones and All still favors the delicate, the dreamlike. It works to find the beauty in the dark, skulking corners of our world, and show that even the savage can bask in the light now and then. Death and violence are but a manifestation of the otherness that these “eaters” experience. They take their curse and learn to live with it, learn to work around it, and find connection and love in spite of it. Whether it could possibly end well for everyone involved is one of the great mysteries in Bones and All — and like a winding, cross-country pilgrimage, it’s going to take its sweet time laying it out for us.

[black-paraphernalia]

Black Panther Party, original name Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, African American revolutionary party, founded in 1966 in Oakland, California, by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale.

The party’s original purpose was to patrol African American neighborhoods to protect residents from acts of police brutality. The Panthers eventually developed into a Marxist revolutionary group that called for the arming of all African Americans, the exemption of African Americans from the draft and from all sanctions of so-called white America, the release of all African Americans from jail, and the payment of compensation to African Americans for centuries of exploitation by white Americans. At its peak in the late 1960s, Panther membership exceeded 2,000, and the organization operated chapters in several major American cities.

Origin and political program

Despite passage of the 1960s civil rights legislation that followed the landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954), African Americans living in cities throughout North America continued to suffer economic and social inequality.

Poverty and reduced public services characterized these urban centers, where residents were subject to poor living conditions, joblessness, chronic health problems, violence, and limited means to change their circumstances. Such conditions contributed to urban uprisings in the 1960s (such as those in the Watts district of Los Angeles in 1965, among others) and to the increased use of police violence as a measure to impose order on cities throughout North America.

It was in this context, and in the wake of the assassination of Malcolm X in 1965, that Merritt Junior College students Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale founded the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense on October 15, 1966, in West Oakland (officially “Western Oakland,” a district of the city of Oakland), California.

Shortening its name to the Black Panther Party, the organization immediately sought to set itself apart from African American cultural nationalist organizations, such as the Universal Negro Improvement Association and the Nation of Islam, to which it was commonly compared. 

Although the groups shared certain philosophical positions and tactical features, the Black Panther Party and cultural nationalists differed on a number of basic points. For instance, whereas African American cultural nationalists generally regarded all white people as oppressors, the Black Panther Party distinguished between racist and nonracist whites and allied themselves with progressive members of the latter group.

Also, whereas cultural nationalists generally viewed all African Americans as oppressed, the Black Panther Party believed that African American capitalists and elites could and typically did exploit and oppress others, particularly the African American working class. 

Perhaps most importantly, whereas cultural nationalists placed considerable emphasis on symbolic systems, such as language and imagery, as the means to liberate African Americans, the Black Panther Party believed that such systems, though important, are ineffective in bringing about liberation. It considered symbols as woefully inadequate to ameliorate the unjust material conditions, such as joblessness, created by capitalism.

From the outset, the Black Panther Party outlined a Ten Point Program, not unlike those of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and Nation of Islam,  A number of positions outlined in the

  From the outset, the Black Panther Party outlined a Ten Point Program, not unlike those of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and Nation of Islam, to initiate national African American community survival projects and to forge alliances with progressive white radicals and other organizations of people of color.

 A number of positions outlined in the Ten Point Program address a principle stance of the Black Panther Party: economic exploitation is at the root of all oppression in the United States and abroad, and the abolition of capitalism is a precondition of social justice. In the 1960s this socialist economic outlook, informed by a Marxist political philosophy, resonated with other social movements in the United States and in other parts of the world. Therefore, even as the Black Panther Party found allies both within and beyond the borders of North America, the organization also found itself squarely in the crosshairs of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and its counterintelligence program, COINTELPRO. In fact, in 1969 FBI director J. Edgar Hoover considered the Black Panther Party the greatest threat to national security.

Source:Britannica.com - Black Panther Party Legacy

Black Paraphernalia Disclaimer - images from Google images

PART 2 ALL ABOUT THE BLACK PANTHERS

Ten Point Program address a principle stance of the Black Panther Party: read below for the 10 point which was the pillar of the party

1. We want freedom. We want power to determine the destiny of our Black and oppressed communities.

We believe that Black and oppressed people will not be free until we are able to determine our destinies in our own communities ourselves, by fully controlling all the institutions which exist in our communities.

2. We want full employment for our people.

We believe that the federal government is responsible and obligated to give every person employment or a guaranteed income. We believe that if the American businessmen will not give full employment, then the technology and means of production should be taken from the businessmen and placed in the community so that the people of the community can organize and employ all of its people and give a high standard of living.

3. We want an end to the robbery by the capitalist of our Black and oppressed communities.

We believe that this racist government has robbed us and now we are demanding the overdue debt of forty acres and two mules. Forty acres and two mules were promised 100 years ago as restitution for slave labor and mass murder of Black people. We will accept the payment in currency which will be distributed to our many communities. The American racist has taken part in the slaughter of over fifty million Black people. Therefore, we feel this is a modest demand that we make.

4. We want decent housing, fit for the shelter of human beings.

We believe that if the landlords will not give decent housing to our Black and oppressed communities, then the housing and the land should be made into cooperatives so that the people in our communities, with government aid, can build and make decent housing for the people.

5. We want education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American society. We want education that teaches us our true history and our role in the present-day society.

We believe in an educational system that will give to our people a knowledge of self. If you do not have knowledge of yourself and your position in the society and the world, then you will have little chance to know anything else.

6. We want completely free health care for all Black and oppressed people.

We believe that the government must provide, free of charge, for the people, health facilities which will not only treat our illnesses, most of which have come about as a result of our oppression, but which will also develop preventative medical programs to guarantee our future survival. We believe that mass health education and research programs must be developed to give all Black and oppressed people access to advanced scientific and medical information, so we may provide ourselves with proper medical attention and care.

7. We want an immediate end to police brutality and murder of Black people, other people of color, all oppressed people inside the United States.

We believe that the racist and fascist government of the United States uses its domestic enforcement agencies to carry out its program of oppression against Black people, other people of color and poor people inside the United States. We believe it is our right, therefore, to defend ourselves against such armed forces, and that all Black and oppressed people should be armed for self-defense of our homes and communities against these fascist police forces.

8. We want an immediate end to all wars of aggression.

We believe that the various conflicts which exist around the world stem directly from the aggressive desires of the U.S. ruling circle and government to force its domination upon the oppressed people of the world. We believe that if the U.S. government or its lackeys do not cease these aggressive wars that it is the right of the people to defend themselves by any means necessary against their aggressors.

9. We want freedom for all Black and poor oppressed people now held in U.S. federal, state, county, city and military prisons and jails. We want trials by a jury of peers for all persons charged with so-called crimes under the laws of this country.

We believe that the many Black and poor oppressed people now held in U.S. prisons and jails have not received fair and impartial trials under a racist and fascist judicial system and should be free from incarceration. We believe in the ultimate elimination of all wretched, inhuman penal institutions, because the masses of men and women imprisoned inside the United States or by the U.S. military are the victims of oppressive conditions which are the real cause of their imprisonment. We believe that when persons are brought to trial that they must be guaranteed, by the United States, juries of their peers, attorneys of their choice and freedom from imprisonment while awaiting trials.

10. We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice, peace and people’s community control of modern technology.

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.

Source: Wikipedia Ten point program

Black Paraphernalia Disclaimer - images from Google images

[holyhellpod]

4. Fambily

In this episode, we skim the surface of the fambily dynamics in Supernatural, which are--ah. Dicey at best. 

Apple | Spotify | Google

Transcript under the cut!

Content warnings: domestic violence and family abuse

[Growl]

Ah, the Winchesters. Where do we even start. Unhinged, deranged, and continually traumatised in every way, Sam and Dean complete each other. At least, that’s what the show wants us to think. Despite the ways they betray each other, lie to each other, and  piss each other off, they are fambily. And fambily is the most important thing. The concept of Fambily in the show Supernatural (2005-2020) takes many twists and turns throughout its run. In the first five minutes of episode one, the heteronormative, nuclear family of John, Mary, Sam and Dean is ripped apart by an unknown, antagonistic force that represents all the evil in the world. It creeps into a nursery and eviscerates a white, blonde mother while preying upon a 👶, I mean, how much more evil can you get? It’s fantastic that, in the later seasons especially, Supernatural embraces this idea that fambily doesn’t end in blood, but blood doesn’t always mean fambily. By the end of the series, the fambily concept has expanded to include two dads, an aunt and uncle, and a thirty-year old infant. I’m going to talk about the finale in its own episode, so that my ire will have its proper outlet. 

When the show starts, Sam, Dean and John have each other, and only each other. By the time season 2 really kicks off, Sam and Dean don’t have John anymore, but they do have Bobby Singer. The concept of the triumvirate follows them throughout the series as though they’re in a less sexy Italo Calvino novel—first Sam, Dean and John, then Sam, Dean and Bobby, then Sam, Dean and Ruby, then Sam, Dean and Cas, then Sam, Dean and Mary, then Sam, Dean and Jack. It’s broken in seasons 13-15 when Cas comes back and they have a family of four, and then five when Mary can stand to see her boys.  

But the Winchesters are not the only fambily in Supernatural who matter. In season two, we’re introduced to the Harvelles, mother Ellen and daughter Jo, who are a hunting fambily who run a hunter pub in the middle of whoop whoop. A pub that Eric Kripke famously hated, and rejoiced when he burnt it down at the end of season 2, because the Winchesters and by extension everyone they know aren’t allowed to have anything good ever. It’s revealed in season two episode “No Exit” that John got Jo’s father killed on a hunt, which obviously affects Jo more than it does Sam and Dean. 

[Editing note:] Okay I’m editing this episode, and I’m not happy with it. I’m not going to scrap it completely because I think I do have good points to say, but the general analysis of this episode is so surface level. It is basically contributing nothing to the conversation. And I started this podcast in order to actually contribute something to the culture. I could make a bunch of text posts on tumblr or I could spend hours and hours and hours and hours of my life to something that — I don’t know. Is it bringing me joy? Not at the moment. But, yeah. So I’m not going to scrap this episode completely but this is my way of saying from now on the episodes are going to take as much as they will take and I will commit myself to having deeper and more thoughtful analysis. And if I have to spend an entire episode on one aspect of one thing, I will. I could be at university right now studying a masters or a PhD in fucking literary analysis but instead I’m sitting on my bed making a Supernatural podcast because it brings me joy. It does. It really makes me happy and I don’t want to abandon this project, because people are listening to it. I don’t know why, I don’t know what you like it about it, but you’re listening. And I just think I owe it to myself to make things that I support 100%. So I’ll continue this episode and hopefully this rambling hasn’t put you off it completely. But from now on, I’m going to really, really talk about things that matter in regards to Supernatural… Kind of an oxymoron. Kind of a contradiction. But things that contribute to the cultural consciousness instead of just rehashing the road so far. That’s all I want to do. I want to contribute. I want to say good…ful things. Okay this is making me happy. It’s already working, it’s already making me happy. I’m just going to keep rambling and laughing. Okay so, more thoughtful analysis, deeper analysis. Things that make you think. Things that make me think. Instead of just a bunch of words that mean nothing. Okay, continuing on.

Okay to figure out which episode this was I had to watch a little bit of season two, and I’m still on my season 13 rewatch. The difference between the two seasons. I don’t know if I can even put into words the growth this show has gone through, and the characters have gone through, over the last 15 years. It would be like summarising my own growth by combing through my extensive diary collection and the years of societally- and governmentally-enforced heterosexuality that has plagued my entire life. Those boys are babies in season two. The bootcut jeans alone. Sam is literally 23 years old. I don’t even talk to 23 year olds. I block them on social media.  

The Harvelles are a blip in the Winchester map. While the actors Samantha Ferris and Chad Lindberg did attempt to resuscitate their cultural currency months after the show ended by participating in an event — okay I can’t. I can’t even go into it. Like, clearly Samantha Ferris heard back from her representation as soon as she started posting those tweets and realised she wouldn’t continue to get money if she endorsed, well, the gays. And Chad Lindberg was just using the clout to push his Etsy wares like a 14th century merchant, so I gotta respect the hustle. But Jo and Ellen die in season 5 episode “Abandon All Hope” and are barely mentioned again except the episode Ash appears in, season 5 “Dark side of the moon,” Jo in season 7, “Defending Your Life,” and Ellen in the season 6 episode “My heart will go on.” They didn’t exactly leave what you would call a lasting impact for the next, you know, ten seasons. 

To be honest, I’m not sure when it’s revealed that Bobby’s wife died after being possessed by a demon. It’s made clear in season 5 “Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid,” and I did not have to look that up, because season four and five are burned into my retinas like a particularly nasty sun flare. Bobby outlines the horrific way he killed his wife, because why not throw some spousal violence into the mix, and later in season 7 “Death’s Door,” it elaborates on their life together. I saw this sentiment expressed on TikTok, which we all know as the foundation of cultural knowledge, which was that fambilies don’t need to be two parents and children. Fambilies can be spouses or partners. You don’t need to have children in order to be a fambily. I think that’s a very nice sentiment and I’ve chosen to adopt it for these purposes. Bobby and his wife Karen are a fambily. While Karen wants kids, Bobby chooses not to have them for fear of becoming like his father and repeating the trauma he inflicted on Bobby. Bobby and Karen’s fambily dynamic is ruptured in the same way that John and Mary’s is—by an intrusive, demonic force that brings Bobby into the hunting world and ends Karen’s life. But by the time we see him at the end of season 1, Bobby is already ingratiated into Sam and Dean’s lives as their surrogate father, and this bond only deepens as the show progresses. Bobby expresses the sentiment to Dean to not be like John, that Dean is already a better man that his father ever was. Isn’t that what we all want to hear? That we have superseded our parents and outgrown them in ways they could never comprehend? Don’t we just want to be better than the generations that came before us, in order to mould a better world for the generations that come after us? Don’t we want to make things easier for our children, and our friends’ children, and our siblings’ children? Dean is a better man than John, and Bobby is better man than his father ever was. It’s about breaking the cycles of intergenerational trauma. I have to believe that Sam, Dean and Bobby did this, because then it’s possible for me to do the same thing. Include here that speech about representation in media that I didn’t bother writing for the last episode. Bobby is the surrogate father to Sam and Dean, a better father than John was, a better hunter even. He crafts an entire network of hunters who report to him, as seen in the season 6 episode “Weekend at Bobby’s,” and he continues to act as Sam and Dean’s mentor until his death in season 7 “How to win friends and influence monsters”. An alternate universe version of Bobby is introduced in season 13, which I have my reservations about, and he and Mary get together, which again, why. Season 13 is so hard to sit through. 

A fambily that is introduced late into the series and is simply NOT given enough screen time is the Banes fambily. In season 12, “Celebrating the life of Asa Fox,” we are introduced to the Banes twins, Max and Alicia, who are by far the most gorgeous hunters we’ve seen in the series. They are hunters raised by a witch, Tasha Banes, who doesn’t appear yet, and they manage to survive the trial by fire that is overcoming the demon Jael. Later in this season, in the episode “Twigs and Twane and Tasha Banes,” both of which are written by the late great Steve Yockey, we are introduced to Tasha in a way that seems awfully familiar: Alicia calls Sam to say their mother has gone missing on a hunt, and hasn’t checked in in a few days. By the end of the episode, Alicia and Tasha are dead, and Max has ostensibly sold his soul for the power to bring Alicia back. The Banes twins’ storyline directly parallels Sam and Dean’s from the pilot, but it’s a tragedy from the outset. We already know Tasha is dead and they can’t save her, however, like Dean does for Sam at the end of season 2, Max chooses to save Alicia at the expense of his own soul. Spin off when. Banes twins series when. I’m waiting. They were in two episodes and I’m still thinking about them. The Harvelles are dust. 

In season 7, “Reading is Fundamental,” a waifish 17 year old honour’s student Kevin Tran breaks into a rehabilitation facility to steal a tablet. This starts a chain of events that ingratiates Kevin Tran in the apocalyptic, death-succumbing world of the Winchesters, starting with Dick Roman, head leviathan, and continuing, but not culminating, with his death at the hands of Gadreel, who was possessing Sam, it’s a whole thing. Any time you attempt to summarise anything on Supernatural, you sound like a lunatic. And I say that as someone who has a supernatural podcast, with an audience of only supernatural fans. We are lunatics, but we’re lunatics together. Kevin’s arc was cut way too short, but we at least got to see him with his momma Linda in the beginnings of season 8 with the unfortunately named episode “What’s up, Tiger Mommy?” It introduces Linda Tran as a capable and worldly woman, hell bent on protecting her son. She offers up her soul among other things in exchange for Kevin and the tablet with him. During the episode, she is possessed by Crowley, and Dean attempts to kill him, which would mean killing Linda as well. Kevin considers this the ultimate betrayal and leaves with his mum. Later in season 9 episode “Captives,” Linda is reintroduced as a captive of Crowley, who escapes with Sam’s help. Back at the bunker, she reunites with Kevin, who is now, thanks to the Winchesters’ incompetence, a ghost 👻. My macbook keeps suggesting little emojis in the smart bar so I just gotta put ‘em in. That’s the last we see of Linda, so I’m drawing my own conclusions about whether she gets to live a long and happy life. Kevin is a fan favourite and despite my reservations about Osric Chau which I will not get into like ever I really like Kevin too. He outsmarts Crowley many times and shows remarkable tenacity to get an impossible job done. His desire to see his mum again, the driving force behind his actions, mirrors Dean’s desperation to have his fambily together again like they used to be. I would call this a parallel but I don’t believe they purposefully did this, I just think they accidentally rehashed the same tired storyline they’ve been peddling since 2005. But yeah, if I was Kevin and all I had was my mum, seeing her again would be the driving force for my actions as well. Kevin’s father is never mentioned, and it honestly isn’t a big deal, which is great. Sometimes fathers are just absent, and you don’t need throw a hissy fit about it or make it your entire personality, Dean.

Missouri Moseley, played by the inimitable Loretta Devine, is introduced in the first season, episode “Home,” in which she helps out on a case involving Sam and Dean’s childhood house. We find out that Missouri is a long-time friend of John’s and helped him to understand that supernatural forces were behind Mary’s death. She is Sam and Dean’s first point of entry into the world of the Supernatural, and they didn’t know it until they meet her in “Home”. In season 13 episode “Patience,” another layer to Missouri’s character is added with the advent of her family: estranged son James and granddaughter Patience Turner, who is also a psychic. We get a lot of backstory for Missouri in this episode, even if it is sloppily written and contradictory to the way they initially set her up. If Missouri and James had been travelling when he was a child, why was she stationed in Lawrence in both 1983 and 2005? What did he mean that Missouri was hunting? I can’t be bothered unpacking the confusing bits of information presented in this episode. It’s not a good episode and I really don’t see why everyone goes apeshit for Bobo Berens. He kills Missouri in this episode, in a really horrible way. Like the history of Supernatural’s racism and misogyny should not be dumped on one man, but nor should it be perpetuated and it is continually throughout the entire show. Confusing, contradictory and badly written backstory aside, she is an interesting character, and her willingness to sacrifice herself to save her family echoes that of Mary in “Home”. I’m actually really mad that Patience never gets to have a relationship with Missouri, and later in season 13 episode “The Bad Place,” Patience’s father tells her that if she leaves to help The Winchesters and uses her psychic abilities, she’s not welcome back in his house. To me that’s just unnecessary. We have a family that has already been ruptured by the death of Patience’s mother, further ruptured by Patience’s father cutting off contact with Missouri, and then to go a step further he disintegrates their family unit by kicking Patience out. Like how much loss do the Moseley-Turners have to endure? It’s really just cruel at this point. But Patience does find family with Jodie, Donna, Claire, Alex and eventually Kaia, and while I love the concept of found family and this found family in particular, it comes at the expense of biological family, which is something that the show has pushed from the very first episode. So that’s evolution in itself. Going from “fambily is the most important thing to these characters” to “found fambily is where we find love” is great, but ripping apart a biological fambily like the Moseley-Turners, and indeed starting the episode by saying Missouri has been shunted out of her son and granddaughter’s lives for trying to bring her son comfort, is just fucked. Like, I couldn’t name a single Bobo episode that I actually like without having to comb through them. I’m trying really hard not to shit all over him because as a writer I know how much that sucks and I know how hard is it for any marginalised writers to get a start, but I’m allowed to have my vendettas. 

If you’ve watched the “Runs In The Family” angels MV from 2010, and only if you’ve watched the “Runs In The Family” angels MV from 2010, you will understand just how jacked up the angel family really is. The angelic counterpoint to Sam and Dean are the archangels Lucifer and Michael. We are introduced to two different versions of Michael—one in season 5, who possesses their dad in 1979 and their brother Adam in 2010—my god that was literally over a decade ago—and Apocalypse World Michael, played by four different actors: Felisha Terrell, Christian Keyes, Jensen Ackles, and Ruth Connell, who plays Rowena. I don’t know what in the hell Jensen Ackles was doing performance-wise when playing Michael, but I consider it a federal crime akin to drug trafficking or money laundering. As for Christian Keyes playing Michael, Andrew Dabb, you know what you did and you’re going to have to live with that.  

In season 5, during the apocalypse, Michael and Lucifer only interact in the last episode, “Swan Song,” but the entire season is built around their conflict. Lucifer disobeyed their father, and Michael as God’s most powerful weapon must defeat him. It’s meant to mirror Sam’s descent into, uhhhh, badness or something, disobeying John to run away to Stanford, or, like, drinking demon blood? It’s unclear. Lucifer and Apocalypse World Michael interact in season 13, and Michael kills Lucifer only to take over Dean’s body and start a season-long arc of, like, bad acting and barely thought-out plots. I would say to Jensen Ackles “don’t quit your day job,” but this is literally his day job. 

The angels as they’re introduced in season 4 are warriors of god, and all they know is obedience and killing. Even Cas can’t break out of the cycle of killing his angel siblings, and often justifies it by saying that it’s for the greater good, that he needs to do it to take down a stronger force like Raphael or Metatron. Anna manages to break free of her family by falling and becoming human, but when Cas betrays her and the angels capture her, she is lobotomised, tortured and sent back out to kill Sam. Then she’s burned to a crisp by Michael possessing John, not the last time a woman would burn to death on this show. The angels are dysfunctional at best, and actively hostile to each other, especially Castiel, the infamous spanner in the works. I could write an entire academic paper about how the angels think of Castiel as this rebel slut who murdered his way to the top and is going to be the downfall of angel kind, but Dean thinks of him as this little nerdy guy with a harp he carries around in his back pocket. Which honestly Cas would love because he’s obsessed with Dean and wants to touch his butt. I don’t know what else I can say about the angels without turning this into a dissertation, so I’ll continue on.

While all seasons of the show are about family, season six is especially about matrilineal family. It introduces the concept of the mother of monsters—Eve—and focuses on Mary as a solution to the loneliness the characters feel after her death. Samuel Campbell, Mary’s father, is brought back to life and manipulated by the promise of seeing his daughter again. He asks Sam and Dean what they wouldn’t do to see Mary again, which is kind of the general thesis of the show. What wouldn’t John, Dean and Sam do for each other? Dean sells his soul. John makes a deal with the demon who killed Mary. Sam teams up with Ruby to kill Lilith in revenge, which begins as a suicide mission because he doesn’t know how to handle his grief for Dean. The difference is that Samuel betrays Sam and Dean, his own grandchildren, for the promise of seeing Mary again. This cardinal sin alienates him from being a good guy, because good guys never betray Sam and Dean. Sam and Dean are our protagonists! Our heroes! The bringers of the light! The knights in shining armour! The white on rice. The cherry in cherry pie. They are the ones we’re meant to align ourselves with, because it’s their story the narrative is telling. And anyone who doesn’t align themselves with the Winchesters is an enemy who needs to be defeated.   

We’re introduced to the character of Gwen in the first episode of season 6, “Exile on Main Street”, and she says in the episode “Family Matters” that Samuel, the patriarch, doesn’t like her very much because she reminds him of Mary. While Samuel, Christian, Gwen and co are technically family, Dean has no connection to them past bloodlines. And as I said before, while family doesn’t end in blood, we learn throughout this season that blood doesn’t always mean family. Gwen dies in the episode ��And Then There Were None,” because of course she does, and Mary doesn’t come back, at least not in this season. 

In “Family Matters,” the alpha vampire, played by the irreplaceable Rick Worthy, mentions that “we all have our mothers,” referring to Eve, the mother of monsters, the one who spawned every other monster and who has been trapped in purgatory ever since. Eve is pulled from Purgatory to wage war against the hunters and Crowley because they have been preying on her first borns, the alphas. I love Eve. I love her. She’s my favourite villain after Metatron. Mainly because I think she is like… sexy as hell. Like wow I am just so attracted to Julia Maxwell and this, like, bored smokey affect thing she does where she barely moves her mouth when she speaks and her strong brow makes her seem so intimidating. I don’t know anything about her personally, but I feel like she would’ve bullied me in high school, and I’m into it. It’s really hard to judge just from this one role whether she’s a good actor because Eve has such limited range and few things to do, but I really wish she’d gotten more screen time. Yeah, she’s doing the bare minimum and I’m completely obsessed. But Eve isn’t just a monster, she’s literally THEE milf. The original milf. And I really think she should’ve stayed around, but since they kept Lisa alive they had to kill at least one high profile woman. 

Continuing with the family storylines in season 6, Dean tries to establish a family with Lisa and Ben, and for the most part succeeds. He gets a job, plays the role of the doting boyfriend and stepfather, and protects them as best he can. I’m going to spare you the rant perched at the tip of my tongue about how this is at best a lavender marriage or staying together for the kid, and that Lisa only exists to be an ideal for Dean, not an actual partner he can grow with throughout the rest of the show. It’s his first attempt at a fambily outside of Sam, Bobby and John, and it fails miserably because Lisa isn’t a good match. The fact is, she will never be able to fit into the hunting world because of the way the writers wrote her—as mother and girlfriend archetype, and we’ve seen how well they do with those—in fact they actively paralleled it in “Exile on Main Street” where they had Dean hallucinate Azazel coming back and pinning Lisa to the ceiling. It couldn’t be more obvious that they don’t respect her. At least they didn’t fridge her for Dean’s man pain. It’s honestly horrible because Dean put so much effort into believing this was his one chance at happiness, and when it crumbles like a tim tam in hot tea he beats himself up for it and uses it as an excuse to never be happy. 

He does seem to be happy for the most part with Lisa, but because Sera Gamble doesn’t know how to write interesting or complex female characters, when Sam reenters the picture it once again becomes about the original premise: two brothers on the road, fighting the forces of evil. There’s no room for any women in that sphere. Up until this point I think—correct me if I’m wrong—there has been one female hunter who survived, and she was in one episode. The hunter Tamara in season 3 “The Magnificent Seven,” whose husband died in maybe the most sadistic way anyone has died on this show. Don’t rewatch it, just google it. All women die, including Mary, their mother, who is brought back in season 12 and killed in season 14. AND FOR WHAT? For WHAT Andrew Dabb.

Often, the loss of a parent, child or significant other is used to excuse bad behaviour and terrible choices. The hunting life causes Mary’s whole family to die before she can escape it, and because she makes a deal with Azazel for John’s life, the same demon John makes a deal with, Azazel kills her anyway. John abused his kids and brought them into the hunting life, because he was obsessed with getting revenge for Mary’s death. Sam does the same thing when Jess dies in the first season, and it starts a 15-season long arc of pain and misery. He sets Lucifer free in the season four because he is obsessed with getting revenge for Dean’s death and obsessed with the power drinking demon blood gives him. Then again, Sam is actually right for saving people by exorcising demons, which is literally the first part of the family business motto,  instead of just gutting them with the demon knife, but because Dean doesn’t agree with it, it’s bad. Sam always wants to do the right thing, he just gets a little caught up in the details. But you know what? Bloodfreak rights. 

When Cas dies in season 13, Dean is so overcome with grief, a grief that echoes John and Sam’s, that he mistreats Jack and threatens to kill him. In season 14, Nick, Lucifer’s vessel, boo snore hiss, kills everyone involved with the murder of his wife and child before he finds out that it’s actually Lucifer’s doing, and then he tries to raise Lucifer from the empty because he’s addicted to killing? Whatever, stop employing Mark Pellegrino. Stop writing men as obsessed with getting revenge 

The biological fambilies in Supernatural suck shit. Honestly every time I watch an episode about fambily I’m even more glad I don’t talk to mine. Dean and Sam need to spend some time away from each other, while they’re both still alive. Their fambily dynamic gets better as the show progresses, and I was pleased to see in season 12 that they do away with the codependency, constantly sacrificing themselves for each other, isolating themselves, betraying everyone they know for each other—they started to act like, you know, normal people. And that’s good. Sure, the show would not be anywhere without John sacrificing himself for Dean, and Dean sacrificing himself for Sam, and honestly that’s what made those first few seasons amazing. But after a while it becomes lazy writing, not parallels. A parallel that Supernatural pulled off is Sam comforting Magda in season 12 episode “The Survivor” in the way he needed to be comforted in season 1 and 2 as a psychic child. A parallel is Dean preparing Cas’s body for cremation in season 13  in counterpoint to the way Cas remade Dean’s body in season 4. This show can absolutely do parallels, some of the most beautiful parallels ever put on screen, but the last season was such lazy writing that I cannot forgive it. 

This has been an overall negative episode of Holy Hell, and that sucks. I don’t want to be so negative. I want to talk about the good things that Supernatural did, and share in joy with you all, so now I’m going to talk about the only positive I see with fambily in the entire show. 

For Dean, everyone older than him is a parent to disappoint, and everyone younger than him is a little sibling to protect. Cas is the exception, as there’s no way to define Dean and Cas’s relationship without acknowledging the reciprocal romantic ways they care about each other. Dean says on multiple occasions that Cas is like a brother to him, and that he’s Sam and Dean’s best friend. He actually drops the line, “After Sam and Bobby, you are the closest thing I have to family,” on Cas in season 6, and he acts like it’s nothing, but you can see in the expression on Cas’s face that Dean just recontextualised the entirety of Cas’s being in one sentence. Cas falls for Dean, gives up his family for Dean, and decides to follow him in the first act of free will we see on screen. And Dean, who has never known love without pain, says to Cas, you are fambily to me, I actively choose you, you belong in my life. But to belong in Dean’s life is to follow his plan, and when Cas doesn’t, he is punished for his hubris. Dean loves him, and he never even admits it.

Charlie becomes like a little sister to Dean, as does Jo. Jack is unequivocally Cas’s son, but becomes something of Dean’s son as well and some would argue Sam’s son. Claire becomes Cas’s daughter, but imprints so much on Dean that many, myself included, have come to consider Dean her father as well. If you subscribe to the idea that Dean and Cas are old marrieds, Dean would be Claire and Jack’s stepfather, and they would be a nuclear fambily all on their own. In season 14 “Lebanon,” when John says to Dean that he thought Dean would have settled down with a fambily, Dean says, “I have a fambily.” Just thinking about it gives me goosebumps.

Cas chooses to be a part of Claire’s life in season 10 “The Things We Left Behind” because he feels guilty about what happened to her after he possessed Jimmy, but after getting to know Claire he cares for her. The crime that is Claire and Cas not interacting after season 10, my god. That’s his daughter, you ghouls. But Claire and Dean do get more moments together. Dean, Sam and some British guy save Claire from turning into a werewolf, and Claire and the rest of the Wayward Sisters save Sam and Dean from the Bad Place. The Wayward Sisters are a found fambily all on their own, and since I could devote an entire episode to Jody’s little brood, I have chosen not to talk about them much, because this episode is at least half an hour, 34 minutes, and it would take up too much of my time. Claire is one of my favourite characters and I’ll be talking about her in the next ep, so stay tuned for that. 

Even before Jack is born, Cas becomes his protector. He goes from trying to convince Kelly to end her and Jack’s life, to being her pseudo-husband and the surrogate father to her child. To me personally, it’s the best thing this show has ever done. Cas, Kelly and Jack love each other in a way that is so wholly uncomplicated, that is so pure and so good. Once Cas becomes Jack’s protector, there’s never any question of whether they would hurt or betray each other. He is Cas’s son, his baby boy, and he loves Cas so much that he resurrects Cas from the empty. When they meet for the first time in season 13 “Tombstone” after Cas comes back, they fit into each other’s lives so easily. This is the part in writing this where I was absolutely sobbing my dick off. There are so many moments between them that show the kind of love that each of these characters deserved. Sam and Dean deserve to have that love from their father, and so does Cas. And together they build a family unit around caring for Jack that does indeed end the intergenerational trauma that plagues the Winchester fambily.

And that’s why season 16 is so important to me. I can make things better. Dean sorts his shit out, all of his shit: his alcoholism, depression, ADHD, borderline personality disorder, suicidal ideation, sexuality, gender, the fact that Cas is literally the love of his life and he gets to save him from the Empty the way Cas saved him from Hell. They plant flowers in the field where Dean spread Cas’s ashes in season 13, and they get married at Jody’s cabin with all their loved ones left alive. Claire walks Cas down the aisle and Jack is the flower girl, because he’s literally a three year old baby. Sam and Eileen raise a bunch of rugrats and the Wayward fambily continue the hunting legacy and have a Sunday afternoon roast every week. Dean and Cas raise Jack right, they cut up oranges for soccer practice and watch all his school plays. He and his cousins grow up knowing what it’s like not only to be loved, but to be looked after, to have all their needs met. They grow up normal, and the trauma that plagued their family is a thing of the past. It’s good, you know? It’s just fucking good.

[swordoforion]

Orion Digest №31 - The Importance of a State

The question has been asked before - do we need a state, and for that matter, organized society? Humans lived nomadic existences as hunters long before we settled down and formed civilization, and in the eyes of some, the events that resulted are evidence we should abandon modern systems of gathering, all the way from the first civilizations to the long-lasting negative effects of the Industrial Revolution. However, while it is undeniable that the world today is in disarray and disaster, it does not mean we should abandon everything we have learned, and declare organized society a lost cause. We have become closer as a species than ever before, and now, as we near the height of our knowledge, we are becoming well equipped to deal with the problems we have created.

First, let us specify exactly what a state is, and the argument against it. Any citizen, as an individual, has certain needs for survival, and beyond that, for mental health and self-actualization. The world is filled with resources, and people can work to turn those resources into usable forms that we can use to fulfill our survival needs, but the time cost usually means that we have to put our mental health and attainment on hold. The more effective the resource development process is, the less input we need from the average individual, and thus the more time they can spend fulfilling their higher needs.

The system by which resource development is made more effective is economy, which in some forms of societal organization, is separate from the state, but within an ESF system, is incorporated into the state's natural functions. Within economy, instead of everyone working through the complete process to fulfill their needs, they take on a specific task, and receive the same reward, which when divided among a larger population, can be used to decrease the amount of input required from each individual.

To ensure that economy functions as it needs to, and to provide guidelines for the resultant organization of individuals, government, or the state, is formed. ESF government is made up of the people, and thus assumes ownership of the resources, for equal distribution out to the people in exchange for input. It also sets rules to prevent offenses by citizens against others, maintaining order and stability. Within this framework, an individual can live safely and provide minimal input to have their needs fulfilled, and will have time to focus on the task of self-actualization, so long as they remain within the rules of the state.

Many argue against the existence of a state, viewing the requirement to pay taxes, remain within set rules, and provide input to an economy as forceful and coercive. Logically, if they wanted to, they could go and live without owing to anyone, simply providing for themselves and self-governing. Popular among leftist theory is the idea of a 'stateless, classless' society, in which people live freely and self-govern, but peacefully cooperate on matters of public importance, and only use violence in self-defense of their own freedom. Government would cease to exist, with only economy remaining, as people would simply act respectful without legal coercion.

Much of the grounds for this theory comes from rampant corruption in government throughout history - discrimination and greed make their way into the public sector, and those in power use it for their own personal gain. Without government, people are unable to seek power. Admittedly, there are numerous advantages to this approach, as many as there are potential dangers in the foundation of government. However, the same could be said for a stateless society - the absence of a vehicle to seek power and spread discrimination does not mean the abolition of those ideas and drives.

A state of anarchy relies on constant cooperation without legal incentive, as well as allowing the people enough strength to fend off would be attackers and conquerors. In this kind of community, the responsibility of public facilities, such as infrastructure and health care, requires continuous volunteer work from the members of a community. This makes sense, as it benefits most of the community to pitch in. Just the same, everyone would have to agree to keep the peace and not take more than what they need, while having tools for self defense should the need arise.

Both of these conditions, however, rely on the assumption that those members of society who seek greater power and advantage over others are few enough in number to not directly impact society. Throughout history, we have seen that people can be swayed by just a handful of individuals, and result in sweeping them into power. Even in a state of anarchy, a new state could easily rise, since it does not matter the ability of a single individual to fight in self defense - it just requires a majority. With no incentive to follow set rules, the greedy could take power once again, this time on their own terms. The true test of any stateless society is whether the values of peace and harmony are yet universal, because if people are not willing to cooperate, you could fall once more into ruin.

It is in this manner that a state holds superiority, as although it uses forceful coercion to enforce the rules, those rules and the order of society becomes more concrete and stable, and over time, a moral society can instill those standards upon its citizens and future generations. If anarchy were possible, it would be after a period of moral state rule, in which the population is conditioned to the ideas of cooperation and harmony required to maintain a stateless society. Of course, the state itself needs to be moral, which means that careful safeguards need to be put in place to prevent the rise of an elite class or the presence of discrimination within political power. In other words, if we ever want to live without a government, we need one that is democratic and fair to teach us how to do so.

In our current context, the environmental collapse and unequal wealth distribution of Earth also pose problems not solvable without a larger and more coercive body of law, as it will require actions not in our immediate self interest (namely, getting rid of wealth and putting ourselves at economic disadvantage for the sake of others and long term growth). Even current governments cannot put forth the necessary effort out of fear of risk - it will take a state created from the outset for that express goal with more jurisdiction to accomplish it. Even taking into consideration the concerns of those who wish for a stateless society, we can't live a simple life if the planet is destroyed, but we can save the planet first and then get down to the business of the state later.

Beyond the climate crisis, though, a world federal government gives us an increased level of connection and coordination across the world, should another crisis arise, or in case aid should be needed by any area of the world. With a much bigger population and worldview, the genie is out of the bottle on simplistic societies, and with a simple touch of a button, we can talk with people all over the world, which has more benefits than downsides. We can understand each other better, see places across the globe, and with global democracy, do our part to make the entire world a better place.

Should we develop to a point where we have staved off global crisis and maintain communication and coordination, a stateless society could be possible, but the continuation of a democratically malleable state would prevent the collapse of society should a dictator ever rise too powerful for the common populace to defeat. In either case, there are set rules that are agreed to, whether by law or by social convention, but only a state has the power to effectively enforce them, and even if we never have to, it's good to be prepared for the risk.

The only true detriment to a state is the ability of the government to become corrupt, as it is far more dangerous when the state itself is an enemy, compared to a simple warlord arising amidst a stateless society. This is why the creation of such a government must be done with careful consideration to future interpretation of the law and democratic structure - today, we deal with corrupt governments sometimes caused by looser legislation and little vigilance to prevent the powerful from bending the rules to bring about oppression. A world federal constitution must be thorough in its description of the law, and democracy must be kept in mind at every stage of the process.

- DKTC FL

[cpp93227]

18th Floor, Henley Building,5 Queen's Road Central, Hong Kong Tel: +852 2810 0863 Email: info@iplsa.net/

Dated: 23 March 2021

BY POST & BY EMAIL

The Honourable Ms. Michelle Bachelet Jeria

Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) Palais des Nations CH-1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland

Email: InfoDesk@ohchr.org

Dear High Commissioner,

Responses of the International ProBono Legal Services Association concerning Allegations against China in the “2021 World Human Rights Report” issued by Human Rights Watch

INTRODUCTION

The International ProBono Legal Services Association (IPLSA)

1. The IPLSA was founded in June 2018, as a non-profit organization registered in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (Hong Kong) of the People's Republic of China (PRC). 2. The core objectives of the IPLSA are: –

 i. To provide for or assist in the relief of the poor or necessitous persons for the benefit of the Hong Kong community;

ii. For the advancement of legal education, to provide for or assist in the advancement of education, learning or legal concepts;

iii. For the advancement of legal education, to promote international legal exchanges;

iv. For the advancement of legal education and relief of poverty, to promote and motivate youngsters, including young lawyers, to have a greater vision of the global legal framework, and to provide for or assist in the relief of poverty; and

v. For the advancement of legal education, and to patronize all works and matters in respect of legal education for the young lawyers and students.

 Human Rights Watch (HRW)

3. Human Rights Watch is an international, non-governmental organisation that focuses on human rights worldwide, with its headquarters in New York, USA.

4. On 13 January 2021, HRW released a report entitled: “2021 World Human Rights Report” (the Report). The Report covers more than 100 countries, and HRW asserts that its aim is to examine human rights conditions around the world. However, as with their other reports of recent years, the Report has largely targeted China, claiming a human rights deterioration.

5. In its China section, the Report insinuates at the outset that China’s anti-epidemic actions were mere attempts to conceal the outbreak. This is in spite of the fact that China promptly alerted the World Health Organization, and other countries, to the outbreak. The Report even describes the

imposition of lockdowns on Wuhan and several other regions as “acts of authoritarianism”. However, China’s vigorous epidemic prevention and control efforts have been hailed by experts as far-sighted and crucial, with other countries subsequently emulating its example. This slur, however, was simply a foretaste of what follows.

6. The IPLSA finds it extraordinary that what is basically an anti-China rant has been presented to the world as objective reporting. The Report contains extravagant allegations of human rights violations in China, which are defamatory, tendentious and unsubstantiated. It even concludes that “there has been a growing deterioration in China’s human rights situation”, which is far removed from reality, and could have been lifted out of the songbook of any of its geopolitical rivals.

7. As the IPSLA is, in particular, deeply aggrieved at the Report’s misleading picture of the situation in Hong Kong, which will have given observers a wholly false impression, it is left with no choice but to try to put the record straight. As a first step, a media briefing is being scheduled for 23 March 2021 in Room 502 of the Legislative Council Complex, Hong Kong, China.

Xinjiang

8. In recent years, issues related to Xinjiang have been politicized by the HRW, and others. The impression that this is being done in order to discredit China is unavoidable. The report is, frankly, a mishmash of half-baked theories and twisted analyses culled from hostile reports in the Western media. Rumours are treated as facts, slurs are presented as truths, and mountains are made out of molehills. Although catchphrases like “large-scale surveillance”, “forced labour”, “genocide”, and the like are waved around, what is wholly lacking is any attempt at objective reporting.

9. The IPLSA will itself be conducting a fact-finding mission of its own in Xinjiang (and Tibet) in the third quarter of 2021 and will thereafter make its conclusions known to a wider audience, including the HRW, which appears to have relied wholly upon unauthenticated reports and hearsay.

 Hong Kong SAR

10.In relation to Hong Kong, the IPLSA is able to confirm from its experiences on the ground that the Report is primarily fiction. In 2019, an insurrection was launched, which injured many people, including police officers, who were routinely attacked with Molotov cocktails and other weapons, caused huge damage to public and private property, caused many people to lose their jobs as businesses closed, turned universities into bomb factories, blocked highways, preventing people from getting to work and children from attending school, and targeted people from other parts of China or with different opinions, including one man whom the protesters killed with a brick and another they set on fire after he argued with them.

11.Although the Hong Kong Police Force, with bravery and professionalism, saved the city from destruction, without, amazingly, any of the fatalities which have arisen recently in police anti-riot operations in, for example, Chile, France, and the United States, this has been consistently disregarded by the HRW, which is wedded to an anti-China agenda. Although the protest movement and its armed wing sought to destroy Hong Kong and provoke an armed confrontation with Beijing, knowing that this would spell the end of one country, two systems, they did not succeed, and the city has largely returned to normal. Instead of congratulating the city upon its survival and the central government for its restraint, HRW has continued to whitewash the protest movement and its political backers, even though they almost destroyed one country, two systems.

12.It is mind-boggling that, in its Hong Kong reportage, the Report completely disregards the Independent Police Complaints Council, which, in May 2020, issued a 999-page report on the recently concluded protests. It largely exonerated the police force of misconduct in relation to the protest-related violence which began on 9 June 2019, and placed responsibility for the horrors which wracked the city squarely at the feet of its perpetrators, the protest movement and its armed wing. That HRW has disregarded the IPCC report, is, the IPLSA considers, proof positive of its determination to suppress the truth and mislead the world.

13.The Report, moreover, misdescribes the National Security Law for Hong Kong, which was promulgated on 30 June 2020, as “the most aggressive assault on Hong Kong people’s freedom since the transfer of sovereignty in 1997”. In fact, this new law has restored peace and stability to the city, ended the widespread violence and the bombings, been welcomed by businesses and the law-abiding public, and enabled our educational institutions to function again. It has, in short, saved one country, two systems from those who wished to destroy it, knowing full well that, if it failed, this would harm China as a whole, which is precisely what they, and their foreign backers wanted.

14. Once again, however, the Report, in its eagerness to demonize the National Security Law, conceals the important truth that the new law is actually human rights heavy. It even stipulates that, in its application, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights applies (Art.4). It also states that the presumption of innocence must be respected, together with other fair trial guarantees (Art.5), although the Report reveals none of this to its readers. It is, in fact, from start to finish, an exercise in deception.

15.Whereas the Report, moreover, mentions that a “pro-democracy” legislator had to be removed from the acting chairmanship of the Legislative Council’s House Committee, it fails to disclose that this was simply because, for seven months, he abused his position by not only preventing a new chair from being elected, but also blocking the passage of any legislation, thereby frustrating the work of government. In many places, this is tantamount to misconduct in public office, yet the Report seeks to place a favourable gloss upon this systemic abuse of parliamentary procedures. Although it highlights the arrest of various prominent people for their alleged involvement in offences against public order, the Report does not mention that they are all entitled to a fair trial according to law and will only be convicted if prosecutors have proved their guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

16.Indeed, although the Report mentions that the media tycoon Jimmy Lai is being prosecuted for participation in an allegedly unauthorized march, it ignores his acquittal last year, after a fair trial, of a charge of criminal intimidation, which speaks volumes for HRW’s real agenda. While the Report plays up the disqualification of particular members of the Legislative Council, it fails to explain that this was because they had violated their oaths of office, with some of them even having urged foreign powers to harm Hong Kong and its officials, something that would be viewed as intolerable throughout the world.

17.As the IPLSA is based in Hong Kong, it is able to provide first-hand accounts of recent events. This is reflected in its report in support of these responses and entitled: The Fallacies about Human Rights Watch’s Report and Facts about Human Rights in China.

RESPONESES

18.In light of these matters, the IPLSA concludes that the Report is unprofessional, biased, and politically tainted. In relation to Hong Kong, key incidents are either ignored, or else distorted and misrepresented. Particular events are taken out of context, and no attempt is made to explain the basis of governmental initiatives. Although basic facts could easily have been ascertained, this has not been done, and this raises real concerns over the motivations of its authors. The Report has been compiled in a way designed to place the PRC in the worst possible light, and to portray a false picture of events in Hong Kong, and this must be called out and condemned unreservedly.

19.Whenever situations like this arise, it not only embarrasses its victims, but also brings human rights reporting in general into disrepute. When such reporting is devalued, it leaves the public uncertain as to what can and cannot be believed, and this affects adversely even genuine areas of concern. The IPLSA, therefore, invites the United Nations to have no truck with the Report, to urge HRW to aspire to objective reporting in future, and to use its good offices to ensure that NGO’s operating in the area of human rights do not debase their operations by mis-reporting of this type. DS

20.If the IPLSA can be of any further assistance, please do not hesitate to contact us at info@iplsa.net.

Yours sincerely,

INTERNATIONAL PROBONO LEGAL SERVICES ASSOCIATION LIMITED

[thejackmeister-mongolhistory]

"Why did the Mongols invade most of the Old World?"

A write up I did on Reddit for a question: "what caused the Mongols to invade most of the Old World?"

It was almost accidental. At no point when he began uniting the Mongol tribes did Chinggis Khan (the more accurate rendition of Genghis Khan) seek out world domination. Rather, it sort of kept happening.

What people don't realize is that Chinggis Khan didn't succeed in uniting the Mongols until he was about 50, declaring the Mongol Empire in 1206 (he was born in 1162 as Temujin, and it wasn't until 1206 when he began being called Chinggis). That was many decades of slow warfare and his own losses and defeats before he succeeded in doing so. Initially he was probably concerned only in securing his own position and safety, perhaps at best hoping for leadership of his own tribe. Events went differently, and a 'concerned citizens' alliance of steppe notables unhappy with Temujin's rise (such as appointing his generals and chief lieutenants from common folk based on their ability, rather than old bloodlines) turned the conflict into a massive civil war for control of Mongolia. By this time this was complete, Temujin had restructure Mongolian society, breaking the power of tribal Khans and old tribal ties, placing himself, the Great Khan, at the head, with discipline and utter loyalty the byword, harnessing the great military potential of the steppe horse archer.

By 1206 then he had a fierce military force, a great spear: but had almost run out of enemies in Mongolia itself. All dressed up and nowhere to go, you might say. What Chinggis Khan understood was that he needed a common enemy, or old internal intrigues would rise back up to the surface and tear his new union apart. The spear needed to be thrown, lest it fall apart. The obvious answer lay to the south, the kingdoms of northern China, the Tangut Xi Xia in modern Gansu/Ningxia, and the Jurchen Jin Dynasty controlling from Manchuria to the Huai River, capital at Zhongdu (modern Beijing). Whether Chinggis at this stage was intending to conquer them, or attack and raid is hard to say. Personally, his actions to me suggest the latter, but some argue for the former. There certainly were pretexts to attack both. The Tangut had allowed certain enemies of Chinggis to flee through their territory or seek shelter, and the Jin had long been enemies of the Mongols, breaking up an earlier Mongol union (commonly called the Khamag Mongol confederation) in the early 12th century. While there certainly was this pretext, it should also be noted that a quite dry period in late 12th century Mongolia, and continuous warfare, had depleted the herds the Mongols relied on to survive as well as cost them in other goods. The raids, especially against the Xi Xia, may have just been out of need to replenish these stocks. Part of this too may have been encouraged by both states entering into a period of instability and poor emperors: as good an opportunity as any for the Mongols to attack. If they had aspirations beyond this, I don't think we can say, and it seems highly unlikely to me. Chinggis Khan's intentions here seem very localized.

In 1209 the Mongols invaded the Tangut Kingdom, making off with a great quantity of goods and forcing the Tangut King to submit to them (which entailed him sending a massive amount of tribute and slaves). Not long after his return from the Xi Xia, the Jin Emperor demanded the submission of Chinggis Khan (Temujin had undertaken a formal vassalization to the Jin in the past, and the Jin may have been surprised by his sudden unification of the steppes and understandably worried, but were distracted by war with the Chinese Song Dynasty to the south), who insulted the envoys and used this as his official declaration of war, invading the Jin Empire in 1211.

I think what turned Chinggis' mind to more permanent conquest than he initially intended was the success the Mongols had. While sieges were difficult, but aided by Jin defectors providing them siege weapons and knowledge, Chinggis Khan's army absolutely devastated in almost every field encounter. Though the Jin had mighty horsemen and huge numbers, they were unable to gain local superiority of forces and suffered from defections after defections. Within a few years, there were more Chinese fighting for the Mongols against the Jin that there were Mongols there!

By 1215, Zhongdu had fallen (with some difficulty), and forced the Jin Emperor to supply tribute and Chinggis withdrew back to Mongolia, but when the Emperor soon broke this agreement by fleeing to Kaifeng, war resumed. Was Chinggis intending a conquest of all of China now? Well, still it is not quite clear whether his intentions were to force the Jin to submit, fully conquer them or take all of China. I personally have seen no evidence he desired all of China yet, and the Jin were still a major obstacle. I think his intentions did not go much beyond forcing the Jin to be his vassal.

While in Mongolia in 1216, Chinggis sent some forces to bring rebellious tribes in Siberia and the steppe west of Mongolia to heel, as well as hunt down a son of a defeated enemy, Kuchlug, who had usurped power in the Qara-Khitai empire (parts of western Xinjiang/Kazakhstan). This was a major concern as Chinggis feared Kuchlug could use this as a staging ground to invade Mongolia, and when Kuchlug attacked and killed a Mongol vassal at Almaliq, sent his general Jebe to bring Kuchlug to heel. Chinggis had actually overestimated how secure Kuchlug's rule was though, as it turns out Kuchlug was greatly hated. Kuchlug's empire dissolved and submitted to Jebe as he passed through, and Kuchlug was finally hunted down in Badakhshan. In a flash, the Mongol Empire had greatly and unexpectedly expanded to the west: intended to finally capture a dangerous enemy, they had ended up incorporating a huge swath of new territory, making them neighbours with the also expansionist Khwarezmian Empire, which ruled from Transoxania through Persia.

Chinggis' initial contacts with Khwarezm were though, entirely trade focused. He sent envoys and merchants to establish trade links with the Khwarezm-Shah, Muhammad: together, their two empires could have secured a significant amount of the trade in and out of China, providing a safe route between both states. I want to really emphasis this: Chinggis Khan's first contacts with a state not immediately adjacent to Mongolia or encountered in Northern China were to encourage trade, wholly economic. Nothing suggests at this initial stage Chinggis intended to conquer or attack Khwarezm.

Of course, we know things didn't go quite so smoothly: I have a video providing overview here: https://youtu.be/0ct-dz_ad4k. Basically, a large trade caravan sent by Chinggis was betrayed and murdered by the governor of the frontier city of Otrar (the Khwarezm-shah's uncle). But even after this, do you know what Chinggis Khan did? He sent a group of envoys to find out why this had occurred, and give the Khwarezm-shah a chance to make recompense. Even after such a heinous assault, Chinggis Khan did not want to uproot his armies and move west, and still gave the Shah a chance to encourage trade. When the Shah insulted and killed these envoys, that was what finally brought Chinggis Khan to, perhaps reluctantly, invade the Khwarezmian Empire.

It seems Chinggis Khan greatly overestimated the Khwarezmians. On paper, they had immense military potential, and Chinggis Khan being unfamiliar with the Qara-Khitai realm he had now incorporated, may have been unaware had difficult it would have been for the Khwarezmians to mount an offensive towards Mongol territory. There had also been a brief engagement between Mongol (under Chinggis' son Jochi and the famed Subutai) and Khwarezmian forces in similar time to this, while the Mongols had been pursuing fleeing Merkit seeking shelter among the Qipchaq. What had not been apparent was how politically fragile the Khwarezmian Empire was, how most of its territory was only newly acquired, the ethnic tensions (Turkic garrisons and commanders vs Persianized populations) which hampered cooperation and how the over-confident Khwarezm-Shah Muhammad was simply not up to the task at hand. When Chinggis Khan's armies entered the Khwarezmian Empire at the end of 1219 (leaving a holding force in China under the commander Mukhali to keep up pressure there), the Khwarezm-Shah fled, leaving each city to fend for itself. Totally unexpectedly, but from late 1219 to the end of 1221, the Khwarezmian Empire utterly dissolved under a ferocious Mongol onslaught. Notable resistance came from a few individuals, like the Shah's son, the brave Jalal al-Din Mingburnu, but it must have been an absolute shock to the Mongols how total their victory was. It is here it seems the belief in Mongol world domination must have truly emerged. Basically, to paraphrase historian David Morgan, the Mongols came to believe they were destined to conquer the world when they realized that they were in fact, doing so. For how else could you have explained such a dramatic victory?

The Khwarezmian campaign laid the foundations for further Mongol campaigns in the west: during that campaign, Jebe and Subutai went on a phenomenal campaign through the Caucasus and into southern Russia, defeating a Rus'-Qipchaq force at the Kalka River in May 1223, bringing to the Mongols knowledge of the western steppe and to Subutai, a personal interest to return there. Continued campaigns to conquer and consolidate the remnants of the Khwarezmian realm brought the Mongols deeper into Persia and Iraq. In China, the brief respite allowed the Jin dynasty to hold on until 1234, which brought the Mongols into contact with the Southern Song Dynasty and their own eventual wars there.

The vast scale of the Mongol conquests was not something intended from the outset, but a staggered development, and as more and more of Asia came under their banner, the Mongols would become much more proactive in the spread of their rule.

Sources:

Allsen, Thomas T. “Mongolian Princes and Their Merchant Partners, 1200-1260.” Asia Major 2 no.2 (1989): 83-126.

Atwood, Christopher. “Jochi and the Early Campaigns.” in How Mongolia Matters: War, Law, and Society, edited by Morris Rossabi. Brill's Inner Asian Library, (2017) 35-56.

Barthold, W. Turkestan Down to the Mongol Invasion. Translated by H.A.R. Gibb. London: Oxford University Press, 1928. https://archive.org/details/Barthold1928Turkestan/page/n341

Biran, Michal. The Empire of Qara-Khitai in Eurasian History: between China and the Islamic World. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Buell, Paul D. “Early Mongol Expansion in Western Siberia and Turkestan (1207-1219): a Reconstruction.” Central Asiatic Journal 36 no. ½ (1992): 1-32.

Golden, Peter B. “Inner Asia c. 1200,” in The Cambridge History of Inner Asia: The Chinggisid Age, edited by Nicola Di Cosmo, Allen J. Frank and Peter B. Golden, 9-25. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Jackson, Peter. The Mongols and the Islamic World: From Conquest to Conversion. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017.

May, Timothy. The Mongol Empire. Edinburgh History of the Islamic Empires Series. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018.

Sinor, Denis. “The Mongols in the West.” Journal of Asian History, 33 no. 1 (1999): 1-44.

Timokhin, Dmitry. “The Conquest of Khwarezm by Mongol Troops (1219-1221).” in The Golden Horde in World History, 75-86. Tartaria Magna Series. Kazan: Sh. Marjani Institute of History of the Tatarstan Academy of Sciences, 2017.

Timokhin, Dmitry, and Vladimir Tishin. “Khwarezm, the Eastern Kipchaks and Volga Bulgaria in the Late 12-early 13th Centuries,” in The Golden Horde in World History, 25-40. Tartaria Magna Series. Kazan: Sh. Marjani Institute of History of the Tatarstan Academy of Sciences, 2017

[themockingcrows]

Companionship Through Circuitry Ch. 1: Outset

Ship: Bro/Hal This is available on my AO3 as well! This chapter is: SFW

The wasteland wasn’t fit for humans, wasn’t fit for raising children in, wasn’t fit for living in comfortably unless you knew what you were doing. Luckily, Bro knows precisely what he's doing out there, though finding a back sassing artificial intelligence in a blown open bunker may be pressing the limits of that self assurance.

    Raising a kid in the world after was a fucking challenge, but Bro had managed it in what he hoped was a decent enough way to prepare Dave for the world and all its hostilities. The war had ravaged the landscape a few hundred years ago, but the people who survived in the aftermath now had to be tough to make it in the dog eat dog world that was left behind. Maybe he'd been a bit rougher than needed, but considering how many things wanted people dead on a daily basis, it was surely for the better. The day Dave had packed up and set out for one of the bigger settlements instead of the isolated cityscape they'd spent his childhood in had been a sad day but Bro was proud of the man he’d become, and looked forward to seeing what things he’d accomplish as he made his way in the world.

    Some months later he was still proud, occasionally hearing from Dave by letter, and dealing with the bittersweet sensation of suddenly being completely alone for the first time in almost twenty years. There was nobody but the radio to keep him company now. Well, the radio, a pile of puppets, some really obnoxious electronic programs he’d manufactured on his own and the massive irradiated insects that liked to try climbing the buildings along with other mutated creatures that wanted to get into his supplies. He'd kept one of the mole creatures as a pet for a while, but it hadn't worked out in the end. Captain Nibbles would forever be missed.

    The persistent isolation wasn't as comforting as it was when he was younger, before Dave had been around. When he’d been on his own, wandering around and then setting up his home bit by bit out of the fallen city, it had been like a game. Now it was survival, but the kind of survival that was typical, almost boring routine. Monotonous without other humans around. It made him wonder if, perhaps, it was finally time to leave his home and go around what was left of the world, make a bit of adventure for himself and enjoy what was left of his adult life. People before the war had traveled to exotic locales far from their homes to see what life was like elsewhere, and now people post-war traveled for adventure, for riches, for supplies. The city could only hold so much after so long. The rest of the wasteland was calling, though Bro did not answer yet.

    After another letter from Dave, confirmation that he'd made it to the far settlement and was not only comfortable in his new housing but getting along well with the others there and with the work he was doing, Bro finally made up his mind. Now that there was a place to reach Dave, the letters could be delivered there for a while, give him something to look forward to any time he found a settlement or a trader willing to pass along mail at the next place with a courier. He cleaned out the apartment of debris and locked up the supplies he was leaving behind behind some self patented boobytraps before packing up the remainder onto his back. He was traveling fairly light, already knowing the general area well enough as far as animals went and how to make use of different creatures and plants without getting sick.. not to even mention how much else was probably untouched this far out. The further from civilization, the fewer humans wanted to travel save for those like himself who’d just keep moving. Maybe he’d wind up finding some big pre-war cache of goodies to come home with, expand his setup to some of the other buildings, link them all like they were in the old days.

    Hey, a man could dream.

    This would be easy. So what if it'd been years, he had this shit on lockdown. He'd done it when he was younger and he could do it now. He hadn't lost his polish in the goddamn slightest, and this expedition was just going to prove that. Checking the sun after leaving the building that had been home for so long, he decided to walk North, leaving the Eastern and Western settlements in his long gaited dust.

    It was not easy, but the masochist in Bro liked it better this way. Oh there was enough to eat and he wasn't dehydrated, but there wasn't much peace to be had at first. For some reason the further North he went, the more robotics he found. Rogue creations built to last before the war were guarding different locations that would make perfect sleeping or scrapping sites, hiding whatever secrets lay within with lasers that he didn't feel like tangling with.

    There were also more wanderers than he'd anticipated, which was where the masochism kicked in. Plenty of opportunities to bust someone's face up for trying to fuck with him and his belongings, chances to get some aggression and energy out taking someone off the face of what was left of the Earth before anyone else could do the same to him first. It was kill or be killed out here, and it made him feel comforted in how he'd raised Dave. Even settlements could be raided or attacked, and if he could handle himself out here then his kid could handle himself in an emergency too.

    The only down side of the scuffles was how much blood was usually involved, both from others and occasionally his own. Well aimed strikes and slices made for easy enough cleaning of his blade to keep rust away but it usually wound up with spray to the face or the clothes. Not many people would want to trade with someone who looked like he'd walked through Hell, but then again if they'd set foot up here too.. maybe they'd understand and take a bit of pity on an older guy who decided traveling the world alone was the best option to take as a newfound empty nester.

    On second thought, perhaps there were two down sides. He'd prepared for injuries, but he hadn't prepared for this many this early. Cuts of a certain depth needed to be disinfected and stitched, bandaged to protect them from the elements since he was stuck sleeping a bit rough. Bro had stitch supplies aplenty and the stomach to do his own without much flinching, but bandages were another issue entirely. He couldn't resort to using clothing as bandages yet, not unless there was a true emergency due to the contamination risks, but the urgency was high enough that he started being less picky about the directions he chose to walk each day in hopes he’d find some replacement material to restock his supplies with.

    Fuck it, get lost on purpose, he'd find his way eventually either home or to Dave or to someone who knew where other landmarks were to get him started on an actual path. Strider homes were where they fucking made them, not in specific locales, even if those locales had  been pretty damn cushy as far as post apocalyptica was considered. If he wandered far enough there'd be a trader or a spare campsite that wouldn't shoot at him immediately or even an empty house that wasn't picked too cleanly of things like bedsheets. There always was. Humans before the war had spread far and wide, and everywhere that didn’t seem like a house wound fit inevitably had at least one or two sites set up and a rusted out car beside it or somewhere in the overgrown mass that had once been a yard.

    Luck finally came, or at least he hoped it was luck, in the form of what looked from a distance like a blasted open bunker site. Something built into the side of a cliff that had long since been torn asunder, partially left open to the elements. No doubt there'd be some things living inside, maybe even people, but that didn't look like it had originally been public property. Private property, especially old government property, usually had some useful shit lying around if you knew where and how to look.

    Bro didn't want to toot his own horn, but one of the reasons they'd been so cushy at home had been specifically because of his hard earned prowess with electronics and old computers. It made security easier, made traps more effective, and made finding the occasional goodies in the city ruins that made up their back yard easier. Big fully armed bots? No, not face to face could he fuck with those, he had a bit of sense in his head. But someone's computer at a formerly benign desk inside, if there was any kind of reserve power or a way to hook up reserve power? Oh, yes. Those things could be dropped like flies and whatever they were guarding could be his.

    Just.. needed to hope others hadn't been there before him and done all that already. Or that they weren't super thorough in their picking through things. Raiders wouldn’t give two shits about the electronics, and scrap traders would just be after easily accessible metal and food and odds and ends rather than higher risk or higher energy items.

    He prayed for lazy scrap traders to have been there instead of anyone else.

    The place had certainly been broken into before, vandalized more than once judging by the layers of graffiti on the walls and the garbage strewn about, the vague scent of old urine and feces from some hall or another that he didn’t plan to go down.. and otherwise left in tact in a lot of ways. The buildings location was sturdy enough that whatever blasts had rocked it during the war didn't destroy it entirely or drop floors into one another. Storage areas were picked absolutely clean to the surprise of nobody, but a lot of the desks weren't touched in the office sections Bro checked. When he tried to check computers, a few of them still weakly glowed and flickered to life before growing stronger behind the layer of dust and grime, the plugs securely holding onto generators that were more than meant to withstand time.

    Old messages from people long since dead, most of them useless but interesting all the same, greeted him. Talk of office gossip and happenings, disciplinary meetings. Nothing of interest till he'd nearly given up.

    AR. That's the base of what the project was supposedly called, some kind of artificial intelligence meant to become the brain of a new wave of bots that was still being tested. Bro's fingers itched with interest as he scrolled downwards, revealing more of the information in the file he’d found. The capabilities of this thing were supposed to be vast, but it never went into production before the bombs fell, and the tests were supposed to be taking place on one of the lower levels, with the finished product planning to be sent further North to be united with a prototype body.

    After double checking which floor, Bro decided to go ahead and check it out. Couldn't hurt. Hell, if this AI, or AR, was as intelligent as he was being led to believe then maybe it'd at least be someone to talk to once he could find a voice box for the thing. AI's were hit or miss though, especially pre-war ones that was supposedly the Next Big Thing. Risky. ...But fuck the curiosity was strong, and since he wanted to look around anyway, why not? Maybe there'd be some supplies he could snag from down there if nothing else. Another reason to look around had been found.

    This area too had been picked pretty clean, much to Bro’s dismay, until he reached a set of doors that bore the same types of screens as the office computers, with them each asking for prompts and passwords, for proof of identity, for clearance to access the room they were standing guard in front of. Other versions of these doors had long since been deactivated or never activated in the first place, damaged and hulking open like a gaping maw for him to wander through to get down here at all.

    Annoying. Not impossible, but annoying. Bro had to actually take his bag off and rummage through it for some tools to pry the front off of the screens input sections, using clips and his fingers to carefully compress different portions of circuit boards inside till he finally set off a controlled spark. The screens remained lit, still asking for their password, but the doors mechanisms had lost power. All it took was a solid pry and..

    "Bingo,” he said, smirking to himself and licking a sore spot on his thumb from the earlier circuit fuckery before pulling his bag on, whistling, and sauntering on inside.

    Untouched except by traces of dust, what looked like a basic lab setup lay beyond the doors Bro had pried open, with all the supplies left behind and functional lighting. The bombs had fallen during the day, it explained why there were some skeletons in here, better preserved than out in the more open areas, but it didn’t bother him. This was just how life was: the living rummaging amongst the dead, trying to find use and sense in what was left behind as best they could. He dug in with both hands after side stepping the remains, a kid in a candy store of untainted pre-war technology.

    Some new tools? Why, certainly. Circuitry paste? Christmas came early. Solder? Yes, please. He managed to find an old first aid station and raided the bandages and bandaids, as well as an old snack cabinet which mostly wound up inside his backpack once he'd crammed it into place. A bottle of rubbing alcohol also joined the rest of the things, though other chemicals and cleaning agents were left behind. Saline seemed appealing for a quick wash.. But again, maybe later. There were more important things to do right now, and now that the doors were open it wasn’t safe forever. He was on a timer, even if it was self imposed, for his own safety.

    Now... where was that AI at. Bro trailed his fingertips along the counters as he stalked different stations, trying to guess where it would be stored. Would it be in the system still? Would he need to download it and jury rig something to put the fucker into? Would it even fit into a standard download? He didn't exactly have a plethora of supplies to work with, just whatever happened to be around.. and then he'd spotted it.

    What looked like a strange pair of sunglasses, sharp winged and shimmering black, rested on the rubber face of a test dummy with wide glass eyes behind a simple plexiglass stand shield. Slim wires and cords ran to the sides of the arms of the shades, reaching back towards one of the larger computers in the room, giving Bro an idea of where to go to next with his fuckery, though his touch was more delicate now. At least with these bigger systems they could be negotiated with an-

    Oh. No need. The last user, likely one of the unlucky souls in the room, had left the access point logged in instead of working on a logout timer. Christmas AND his birthday had come early when Bro saw the words AR: Auto-Responder, Artificial Intelligence Unit emblazoned at the top of the screen. The name Dirk Strider rested below it as the creator, making Bro doubletake for a moment. ...Huh. Weird name, but seeing a pre-war Strider was entertaining. Wait till he told Dave he might have found some ancestor who was as big of a nerd as he was with this shit.

    A bit more clicking around and Bro had a sense of how they were meant to work, or sense enough that he decided to go ahead and disconnect the cables gently before lifting the shades up to put them on his own face. The testing phases had gone well apparently, and while this was just one of the forms they'd tested the AI for aside from the eventual body, it was one of the most effective formats available. There was hope that, with some tinkering, he’d be able to transfer the AI to another item in the future.

    He just kind of wished the current shape wasn't so...

    "God these're stupid lookin' .."

    Welcome new user. Please indicate a name.

    Oh.

    "Ambrose," he said aloud, eyes flicking around to try tracking on the target that kept moving, aligning to his pupils and honing in on the accuracy.

    Name is stupid. Please indicate another name.

    ..The fuck.

    "Ambrose," he said again.

    Name still stupid. Please indicate another name.

    "I don't know what to tell ya, that's my name," he insisted.

    I don't know what to tell you either, your name is unfortunate.

    Great. It was a very realistic, sassy AI. It felt like arguing with a teenager. A really annoying teenager.

    "Either accept my name is Ambrose or tell me what you will accept as a user name," Bro said. "What about Bro. Will Bro work?"

    There was a soft chime sound as the eye tracking finally finished honing in and the application started to work, zooming in on different things when he squinted and pulling back when he widened his eyes enough, the soft ghost of the letter t following both of his eyes like a target.

    Ambrose still sucks. Bro can be worked with. Welcome, Bro.

    "You worked with a guy named Dirk but you won't work for another Strider. Pfft. Typical. You'd prolly work for Dave easy as pie."

    Dirk? the voice said.

    For a split second Bro swore he was staring into a pair of eyes instead of the vague traces of target t's in front of his eyes, red as Dave's with dark sclera that made them pop bright as glowing rubies. Then, just as fast, they were gone from sight and all that remained was the glow of the lights overhead and the dusty lab equipment.

    "...The fuck."

    Dirk?? the voice said again, sounding confused this time.

    "Yeah, your file said Dirk Strider was your original creator?" Bro said. "My name's Ambrose Strider. Small world, huh. Gettin' smaller all the goddamn time too since the war."

    The targets disappeared and were replaced by what looked like loading signals, a small bar off to the side fluctuating and flashing numbers as it searched for something in its files. Another flicker as it checked for a signal repeatedly, then came back to the t format in front of his eyes.

    The war has happened then.

    "Yeah."

    You are not Dirk.

    "Pretty obviously not."

    Another pause. I thought...

    "Thought what."

    Your eyes are nearly identical to my creators. Different though. Older.

    "So he was young then, huh?" Bro asked, grabbing a few of the cords that had worked for charging the unit and hooking it up to things in case they came in handy later on. Then, just as leisurely as he'd entered the lab, he left with his newfound prize on his face to scavenge the rest of the building. There hadn’t been much in the main rooms, and he knew to avoid anywhere that smelled like waste, but another quick look through the offices couldn’t hurt.

    Yes, quite young. The last time I saw him directly he was about to turn twenty five. He created me when he was much younger though. Thirteen.

    Bro whistled, impressed, and continued to listen to the voice that spoke just in front of his ears as he explained some of the process his creator had used to make him in the first place as a child. This was nice actually. The voice was human enough that it was comforting, had personality. He wondered if this was what that Dirk guy had sounded like, or if they'd picked a random voice box for the testing periods. He didn't feel alone, but he also didn't have that overpowering sense of urgency to keep someone protected at the same time. It was soothing.

    He didn't feel alone anymore OR as stressed as he would have been.

    When the entire area had been combed as finely as he cared to look, Bro decided to call it good enough and prepared to leave the building the same way he’d come. Night would be coming eventually, and putting some distance between himself and here would be a good plan for sleeping. AR stopped him however, blaring a short burst of sound in warning that made Bro wince and reach his hands up to clap them over his ears.

    I'm not permitted to leave the premises. You are not authorized to remove me from the building.

    "Look. I'd love to get authorization but the skeleton whose thumbprint I'd need is prolly dust by now. You're comin' with me, alright? Keep cool."

    You're an idiot.

    "And you're a pair of fugly lookin' sunglasses," Bro snapped back immediately, rubbing his ears with his thumbs to get rid of the ringing sensation.

    You're the one wearing me, what does that say about you then. Where are you even taking me.

    "Outside. I'm goin' a bit further North I think.. Your files said you had a body prototype, yeah?" he asked, remaining inside to make certain that he wasn’t about to get another surprise earful from this thing.

    Dirk was working on creating a body for me, yes. There was going to be mass production eventually.

    Not for something with this much personality, Bro thought. Nothing this smart would be allowed to fight or function untethered. Maybe a lobotomized version was going to be mass produced, or whatever wrinkles ran this thing were going to be steamed out.. but if he could find the main prototype..? The concept of an android with this much intelligence being with him as a companion was appealing. Sturdier than a human, could care for itself, didn’t need to eat or drink, and would run with the maintenance he already knew how to give or could figure out how to give.

    Sounded like a perfect travel buddy, once he got past the wiseass attitude it had.

    "Wanna come with me to find your body then?" Bro asked. "If it's still there it's prolly on a king’s ransom worth of electronics, I'd be sittin' pretty for years." New house, new setup, get to build his own shit more often, maybe rig up some nice solar again, make a computer to send to Dave, ge-

    Why are you doing this.

    "Why does anyone do anything?"

    There was silence again, another loading screen, before the chime sound happened again, soft and accepting.

    I don't feel like discussing philosophy right now. But I would appreciate not being glasses anymore.

    Bro left the building behind without much thought. It wasn't a home, it wasn't a base. It was special in its own way though. For the time being, it had given him something to do. A goal. It had given him some hope, new projects. For the first time in a long while Bro felt excited again about something, something that only he was doing, something for himself. Something only he could do, now that AR was currently living on his face at least. Wandering the wasteland was all well and good, but this was a step up in the right direction.

    The wasteland wasn’t fit for humans, wasn’t fit for raising children in, wasn’t fit for living in comfortably unless you knew what you were doing.. But now he had to be grateful to it. It had given him a friend, even if that friend was a bit annoying so far.

    All in all? Not that bad of a scavenging expedition. Bro ranked it a solid 5/5 hats, would probably ransack again.

[jahaanofmenaphos]

Art by the awesome @tommieglenn!

Of Gods and Men Summary:

When the gods returned to Gielinor, their minds were only on one thing: the Stone of Jas, a powerful elder artefact in the hands of Sliske, a devious Mahjarrat who stole it for his own ends and entertainment. He claims to want to incite another god wars, but are his ulterior motives more sinister than that? And can the World Guardian, Jahaan, escape from under Sliske’s shadow?

Read the full work here:

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TUMBLR CHAPTER INDEX

QUEST 09: OUR SPIRITS, KINDRED

QUEST SUMMARY:

When Ariane is kidnapped and the signs point to Sliske, Jahaan is forced to confront the Mahjarrat once again. But this time, things take a turn for the twisted, and Jahaan uncovers the truth behind Sliske’s obsession with him. Can Jahaan survive Sliske’s games? After all, broken bones heal faster than a broken mind…

CHAPTER 2: REST FOR THE WEARY

After leaving the Wizards’ Tower, Jahaan was at a loss. Between Ozan’s condition and Ariane’s cutting words, his head was swirling. The effects of the pain relievers had also worn off, so he was fighting through the dull aching of his ribs, knowing there wasn’t an apothecary in Draynor. Well, not one that he would trust, anyway, and he didn’t want to get desperate enough to seek aid from the resident witches. 

And so he just started walking. He didn’t know what else to do. He walked on throughout the day and well into the evening, following the water’s edge around Draynor Village. Since he was veering west, Jahaan settled upon Port Sarim as his destination, camping in a small clearing for the night. It wasn’t as peaceful as when he did it in Catherby, mind. Jahaan was still too close to Draynor, and the constant grey clouds that draped over the town caused a constant chill in the air. On top of that, it took too long to find firewood that wasn’t damp, and despite having his backpack with his small fishing net on him, all he was able to catch was a couple of tiny shrimp that barely did enough to sate his appetite. Rocks and sharp leaves dug into his back and exposed skin all night long, worsened by the amount he was tossing and turning from the aching of his ribs.

Utterly miserable, Jahaan left the next dawn with about an hour’s sleep in his system.

Port Sarim had repaired the damage since his last visit there. In fact, you couldn’t tell the port town had been subject to a dragonkin attack at all. The buildings had been fixed and the scorch marks long since painted over. He did recognise Patchy though, standing outside the bar and sporting a rather snazzy peg-leg. Those things were quite the fashion with pirates, after all.

Jahaan remarked to himself how it was nice to see the pirate back on his feet, but quickly regretted the poor choice of words.

Without even stopping for a drink, Jahaan took the first boat he could out to Catherby, revelling in the change of climate as he approached the pristine shores. It felt like eons ago when Jahaan mused to himself about settling down in Catherby. Right now, he couldn’t think of anything he wanted more.

And so, after venturing slightly into the wooded area, he built himself a fire, readied his net to catch some more substantial fish, and breathed a sigh of relief as he realised the only sounds he could hear were the swishing of the waves and the low cry of distant seagulls.

The next day, Jahaan found Postie Pete and sent a letter to Ozan, wishing him well and saying how he’d be in Catherby for the foreseeable future. However, he never heard back. After two weeks, Jahaan managed to find Postie Pete and ask how Ozan seemed when he delivered the letter. It turned out that Ariane was taking in all of Ozan’s mail, which explained why Jahaan wasn’t receiving any correspondence.

“If you see him yourself, can you wish him well for me?” Jahaan asked with a lump in his throat. He didn’t want Ozan to think he wasn’t bothering to write to him, after all.

Instead, Postie Pete had been hurt at the thought of his mail being intercepted. Ariane said he’d give the letter straight to Ozan, and she’d lied.

“I’ll do one better, mate,” the skull rattled as its jaw bones knocked together. “You write another one, and I’ll make sure to hand it to him personally this time. It’s my honour and duty as a postman for the Gielinorian Postal Service to make sure every letter is delivered promptly and with integrity!”

Jahaan loved how seriously Postie Pete took his work - it was admirable. So, he took him up on his offer straight away, quickly writing out a new letter and placing it in the skull’s mouth. Then, Postie Pete went on his way.

Regular correspondence returned between Jahaan and Ozan after that. Much to his relief, Jahaan heard that Ozan was recuperating rather well, enough to abandon bedrest. Still, he was too weak to do much other than bumble around the Wizards’ Tower, to which he confessed his worst ailment was severe cabin fever.

They didn’t even have booze there.

His burns has scarred over a fair bit, but they were still hurting him a great deal. Out of curiosity, he tried to draw back an old bow he’d found when wandering around in the basement. However, he barely got halfway to the bowstring being taunt before his muscles gave out and he couldn’t take the pain anymore. The wizards had thrown around the idea of potential nerve damage and said that recovery would be a slow process, but with the right amount of rest and rehabilitation, he would be able to wield a bow again. From the outset though, it looked like Jahaan’s ribs would heal long before Ozan’s wounds.

Jahaan had already withdrawn his sword and armour set from the bank, trying to reaccustom himself to the weight and feel of it all. There was no longer an issue with donning the armour - his body could handle that after the many weeks that had passed - but the swords were still an issue. Wielding with his right hand was no problem, and he could spar and parry almost as good as he always could. His left side, however, was another matter. Each swing would lightly stab at him, gradually getting worse and worse. He couldn’t practice for more than a few minutes at a time before the pain became too much.

So for now, duel wielding was out of the question, but he was optimistic about his recovery.

Jahaan wished he could say the same about Ozan. He wanted to go back and visit him, but thought better of it. Regardless of Ariane’s feelings towards him, Ozan was getting good care in the Wizards’ Tower and he didn’t need anyone distracting him from that.

At least, that’s what Jahaan kept telling himself.

In spite of it all, Jahaan couldn’t picture himself leaving Catherby anytime soon. He’d gotten back into the routine of fishing for the majority of the day and selling what he didn’t need to eat, accumulating a tiny sum as the days went on. It was calming, and he could pretend he wasn’t the World Guardian for a while, as selfish as that may be.

But that calm was slashed into fragments when he saw Ozan get off the boat at Catherby dock.

Jahaan was just finishing up selling his surplus supply for the day and planned to stop for a drink or two at the port’s pub. As the fishmonger was counting his coins, Jahaan casually observed the passengers disembarking the charter ship from Draynor, and had to do a double take when he saw a familiar figure coming his way. Dark quiffed hair, yellow and green tunic, bandages wrapping the exposed skin on his arms… there was no mistaking it.

Abandoning the merchant, Jahaan quickly rushed to intercept him, a grin as wide as the boat’s sail. “Ozan!”

However, when he got close enough to lock eyes with the man, his grin vanished in a heartbeat.

“Jahaan! I’m so glad I found you,” Ozan was breathless, his face red and his eyes bloodshot. He looked like… he’d been crying.

Pulling Ozan out of the path of people, Jahaan’s concern flooded his tone as he urged, “Ozan, are you okay? What’s wrong?!”

“I-It’s Ariane!” Ozan sniffed. “She’s been kidnapped!”

“What?!” Jahaan gasped, pressing Ozan for more information.

Trying to steady his breathing, Ozan explained, “W-We were visiting Draynor. I went into a store, she waited outside. There was a loud screech, and then she was gone! No-one really saw anything, it all happened so fast! B-But they said someone was taken the day before, too, by some vyre-like creature, or a large bird, or something, I don’t know! I panicked, I didn’t know what to do! S-So I came to you as fast as I could. They took Ariane, Jahaan!”

In an effort to calm down his hysterical friend, Jahaan pulled Ozan into a tight hug, assuring, “It’s going to be okay. We’ll get her back.”

Pulling away, Jahaan asked, “Do you know anything else about these kidnappings? Anything that could help us?”

Ozan’s voice turned dark. “Well, I heard that Relomia, the emissary of Sliske, was there when the other person was taken. She seemed… shocked.”

“Sliske?” Jahaan blinked, confusion momentarily getting the best of him. Shaking those thoughts clear, he resolved, “Alright, we’re going to Draynor right now to find out what she knows.”

Unfortunately, Ozan had arrived on the last ship of the day, and there wouldn’t be another one until the break of dawn. Luckily, Jahaan had built up quite a reputation with some of the ship’s captains that he saw on a daily basis, and for double the fare, one of them agreed to sail throughout the night to land in Port Sarim by first light. Jahaan already had his armour and weapons with him, getting used to wearing it on a daily basis again, so they left immediately.

After arriving in Port Sarim the next morning, the two bribed a local fisherman to sail them across the short expanse of water between the port and Draynor Village. It cut down on hours worth of walking.

In Draynor, it was always night. Crows screamed incessantly, squawking bloody murder, becoming white noise to the villages residents. There was a reason house prices in Draynor were so low, and that’s because those who pass through there generally don’t want to do so again. Despite it being the nearest occupied settlement west of Lumbridge, the village’s council isolated itself from politics of the surrounding towns and cities, providing for itself where it could to limit trade. No-one had ever seen these council members though; many speculated they were just a fabrication by the real power of Draynor, the occupant of the house on the hill. Draynor Manor was haunted, it was no small secret - the trees attacked anyone who dared approach the door. It is widely believed to be the final resting place of Count Draynor Draken himself. No-one had confirmed this for sure, because those who went inside Draynor Manor never returned.

Stalking through the paths leading them towards the dismal market square, Ozan and Jahaan kept their guard up, wary of the eyes following their every move.

Draynor didn’t like outsiders.

It was behind the house of Aggie the Witch, the seller of clothing dyes, where Relomia was loitering.

The pair stormed up to her.

“All right, Relomia, start talking - what have you and Sliske done with Ariane?”

However, instead of the cocky response Jahaan was expecting, when Relomia turned around to face him, her eyes looked red and puffy, like she’d been crying. “Oh thank goodness! Jahaan, you have to help me! Sliske's been kidnapped!”

That… was not what he was expecting. “Come again?”

“It’s the dragonkin!” she explained, breathless and sniffling. “I don’t know what they did to him, but they found a way to strip him of his magic! He’s powerless! He needs our help!”

Ozan shivered, gulping down the lump in his throat. “If the creatures that took Sliske also took Ariane...” he didn’t dare to finish the thought.

Jahaan squeezed his eyes tightly shut, trying to regain some semblance of clarity inside his cluttered mind. “Okay, okay calm down… let’s just take this one step at a time. I can see why the dragonkin would want Sliske - death to the False Users and all - but why would they take Ariane?”

“I don’t know! But you have to get him back!” Relomia was practically begging. “And the Stone of Jas... my master’s strong, but I don’t know how long he can keep the location of the Stone a secret from them…”

Despite having a strong mind to tell Relomia that the dragonkin could keep that giggling, manipulative son of a bitch for all he cared, Jahaan knew he was over a barrel with this one; they had to get Ariane back, and Jahaan had seen firsthand the destruction the dragonkin could cause. If they utilised the power of the Stone…

Relenting, Jahaan announced, “Okay, if there’s a chance the dragonkin took Ariane and Sliske, we’ll try and get them back.”

Relieved, Relomia leapt over to hug Jahaan tightly, colliding with his armour. Awkwardly, he patted her on the back until he was freed.

Straightening out his platebody, Jahaan cleared his throat and asked, “So what happened, exactly?”

Her shoulders sagging, Relomia replied, “I'm not sure. Sliske sent me a message from the Shadow Realm. He was surrounded by dragonkin and somehow stripped of his power. I know they haven't found the Stone yet, but it is only a matter of time.”

The thought of facing off against dragonkin wasn’t exactly something Jahaan was looking forward to. It only got worse after he inquired, “Do you know where they took him?”

“The last message Sliske sent me said he was in a dragonkin prison near Daemonheim.”

Shoulders sagging, Jahaan was exasperated as he replied, “How do you expect us to get to Daemonheim? It’s continents away!”

“Oh, right!” Relomia slapped her forehead before rummaging around in her napsack, eventually bringing out a small red and gold patterned ring. “This is a ring of kinship. It’ll get you there in a jiffy. Just put it on and trace your finger over the patterns.”

Ozan pulled out a similar ring from his pocket. “I’ll meet you there.”

From one awfully naff location to another, step right up: Daemonheim.

There was just so much SNOW.

In hindsight, a little more preparation wouldn’t have gone amiss before teleporting to the wastelands. The castle protruded in the distance, a lumpy silhouette between the white mists and clouding fog. Beneath it, the dungeons of Daemonheim, floors upon floors of beasts, puzzles, mazes, traps and pitfalls. Beneath all that? Zamorak’s current fortress.

Jahaan did not welcome the memory of being down there.

The pair walked among the ruins. Ghosts of dead warriors floated between the stones and broken statues. Some of these statues resembled dragonkin; it was widely believed that the location used to be home to a dragonkin lair, the lair of Kerapac specifically, but that was ancient history. Bilrach’s construction of the dungeons beneath the castle seemed to cause a voluntary relocation. At least, that’s what everyone thought. Perhaps they had kept some of their lair after all?

“Hey Jahaan, over there,” Ozan pointed to a wooden trapdoor only partially covered by the snow. As the two trotted over, Ozan commented, “This wasn’t here the last time I came by this area. Maybe this is the lair?”

Jahaan, on the other hand, didn’t seem too convinced. “Hmm… I don’t know… this looks like any regular trapdoor. Not very dragonkin-y, if you know what I mean.”

“...Dragonkin-y?”

“I know, I know, but you hear what I’m saying, right?”

Ozan pondered this for a moment. “Maybe it’s disguised?”

“Maybe…”

“It's still worth checking out,” Ozan maintained, heaving the trapdoor open, sliding the snow off as he did.

Climbing down the ladder, the stone corridor was barely lit by more than a few candles scattered along the walls haphazardly. As it stretched far down into the darkness in both directions, the pair took their chances heading east.

“This seems pretty abandoned,” Jahaan whispered. “I can’t hear a thing.”

Ozan nodded, biting his lip. “Do you think Relomia was confused?”

They made it to a crossroads, more corridors heading to the left and right, or they had the option to continue onwards.

“Maybe… maybe they’re in the Shadow Realm?” Jahaan considered, coming to halt. He tried to focus on blurring the edges of this world and the Shadow Realm, as Sliske’s gift had allowed, but before he could make any progress, a screeching scream came from their right, chilling them both to the core.

Jahaan slashed both of his swords from their sheaths, while Ozan tentatively removed his newly acquired bow from around his shoulders.

Gulping, Jahaan ventured, “S...Sliske?”

The sound of beating wings fast encroached on them, the glint of glowing red eyes zooming their way. It was fight or flight, and the former lost by a landslide. Instantly, Ozan and Jahaan took off running in the opposite direction, but it was too late. The creature caught up to them, there were screams, and then darkness…

When Jahaan opened his eyes, he was lying face down on a dirty concrete floor. From the lack of weight surrounding him as he tried to pull himself to his feet, he deduced that he’d been stripped of his armour and weapons.

“Congratulations, Janny. You ‘saved’ me from my own escape attempt.”

Jahaan recognised that voice.

Nursing the back of his head, Jahaan could already feel the formations of a bruise. “Sliske? I got knocked out… what just happened? Where’s Ozan?”

“Well, I was having a jolly old time making my getaway, before I got blocked by someone,” Sliske chided, patronizingly. “Now we’re in a slightly less escapable dragonkin prison, and our hosts have learned a thing or two since last time, so now the guard won’t even talk to me. On the bright side, at least that means we can spend some quality time together!”

“Don’t act so fucking cheerful,” Jahaan snapped, whirling on Sliske, glad for the metal bars separating them. “Don’t you remember how you left me in those tunnels? How you nearly throttled me to death?!”

“Ah, but only nearly, World Guardian,” Sliske pointed out, raising his chin so dark lidded eyes looked down upon Jahaan. “You should do well to remember that. Besides, you killed Zemmy, so what does it matter?”

“Yeah, but your brother and I nearly got taken out in the process!”

“Wahi would never let an oaf like Zemouregal get the best of him,” Sliske’s chuckle had a sharp edge to it. “And you, you had really begun to test my patience. Be thankful I left you there.”

“Thankful like I would be for a hole in my head,” Jahaan muttered under his breath. Rubbing his aching temples, he was already regretting his decision to save this incorrigible fool. So, to prevent their conversation spiralling further down the rabbit hole, Jahaan wanted to get back on track. “So, the dragonkin - do they have the Stone yet?”

“Not right now,” Sliske assured, nervously. It seemed as if he was just as happy with the change in topic. “But I’ve heard their mutterings… some of the things they’ve talked about doing to me, to make me reveal its location… it's gloriously disturbing. Sickeningly genius, in fact… but not when I’m on the receiving end of it.”

“Well we can’t let the dragonkin get their claws on the power of the Stone, and I need to find the others, so I’m going to try and find us a way out of here.”

Sliske sighed, wistfully. “My hero!”

Jahaan shot him a look. “Shut up, or I’ll change my mind.”

Ignoring the chorus of chuckles that followed, Jahaan went about trying to examine his cell and the surroundings for any potential weakness to exploit. The dragonkin guard was staring blankly into the middle distance, not paying much attention to anything.

If I can get the guard to come over here, I might be able to pickpocket a key or a weapon, Jahaan thought, before grabbing onto his cell bars and angrily shouting out, “Hey! Scaly!”

Alas, the dragonkin ignored him.

“Hey, get over here!”

Again, he was ignored with not even a glance in his direction.

Sighing, Jahaan stepped back and reconsidered his options. Then, it came to him. Maybe I can’t get him to come over here by myself, but I bet he’ll break up a brawl between Sliske and I… with the added bonus that I get to punch Sliske in the face

Turning back over to Sliske, Jahaan gleefully, yet in a hushed tone, exclaimed, “Alright Sliske, I have an idea!”

“Great! Let’s hear it.”

“Okay, you have to let me punch you in the face.”

“...I am now slightly less enthused about this plan…”

“Just hear me out,” Jahaan insisted, explaining, “If we can brawl, the guard will hopefully come into the cells to break us up. That happens, and I can swipe a key or something to pick the lock.”

Sliske’s eyes lightened slightly at hearing the plan, but they were still narrow as he argued, “Riiiight, but how come you get to punch me in the face and not the other way around?”

“Because I don’t trust you to pull your punches.”

Sliske nodded, shrugging. “You know what? That’s fair.”

Reaching through the bars that separated them, Jahaan grabbed a fist full of Sliske’s cloak and yanked him viciously, slamming the Mahjarrat’s face into the steel, before throwing a fierce jab at him.

“Ow! That was right in the eye!” Sliske whined with a wince.

“Take that Sliske!” Jahaan growled, looking at the dragonkin out of the corner of his eye.

Seeing no response, he punched him again.

“Hey, what?! OW!” Sliske pulled himself free of Jahaan’s grip and dabbed the back of his hand to his mouth. “I think my lip’s bleeding!”

“He’s not reacting,” Jahaan fretted. “Maybe if I hit you again?”

Sliske countered, “Or maybe he’ll react better to this!”

As quick as anything, the Mahjarrat reached through the bars, grabbed ahold of Jahaan’s hair and slammed his head into the bars with painful force.

Laughing, Sliske surmised, “Well, looks like your plan didn’t work after all.”

After shooting Sliske a dirty look, Jahaan rubbed the side of his head and said, “I guess not, but I do have another idea.”

“Good, but I’m not getting hit again.”

“No need, yet,” Jahaan assured with the flash of a crooked smile. “I’ve got another idea to get him over here. Watch this.”

Walking over to the bars, Jahaan called out, “Hey you! Give us some food!”

Naturally, he was ignored, so he continued, “You know, I have an encyclopedic knowledge of nursery rhymes and a singing voice that can generously be described as ‘grating’. I also have capacious lungs and endless stamina. In combination, these things can make guarding me… uncomfortable.”

Now, the guard at least turned an eye in his direction after this worrying development.

Challengingly, Jahaan threatened, “Give me some food or I’ll sing 'The Littlest Pyrefiend' at the top of my lungs on an endless loop.”

“Do it, you fool!” Sliske begged, desperately. “He’s not bluffing!”

With a grunt, the dragonkin went to fetch something from out of sight, then shuffled back over and slotted some grotesque looking food on a dirty plate through the bars, but too quickly to make a grab for the keys.

Seeing this, Sliske slumped against the wall. “You had one job…”

Jahaan contended, “I didn’t get the keys, but I think I can make a tool or a weapon out of this plate, as long as you can distract the guard long enough.”

“And how do you suppose I do that?”

Exasperatedly, Jahaan wearily replied, “I don’t know, Sliske! Tell him a story, insult him, seduce him - use your imagination!”

His eyes wide, Sliske couldn’t help but burst out laughing. “SEDUCE him? Seduce the dragonkin? My, you really are one saucy devil, Janny.”

“Just do something, Sliske,” Jahaan huffed. “I’m going to scrape this gunk down the drain.”

Shrugging, Sliske walked up to the front of his cell, cleared his throat and started, “Might I say, dear dragonkin, that your scales look fabulous in this light...”

When he forced the food down the drain, Jahaan noticed it fizz and bubble into an indescribable, gruesome mess below. Suddenly, his eyes lit up.

“What now, Jahaan?” Sliske hissed from the corner of his mouth.

“Keep distracting the guard - I have an idea,” Jahaan whispered. “The food I scraped into the drain is reacting with whatever’s down there… if it’s acidic or volatile I might be able to use it to melt through the lock.”

Sliske gagged. “That’s… vile, but I guess desperate times and all that.”

Motioning for Sliske to get back to his distractions, Jahaan set to work. Firstly, he tried to sharpen the edge of the plate on a brick, but instead, the loose brick popped out of the wall and the plate broke in half.

Meanwhile, Sliske tried his luck with the dragonkin guard, who seemed to be growing increasingly uncomfortable. “I think there must be something wrong with my eyes, because I can't seem to take them off you.”

Biting his lip, Sliske turned aside to Jahaan and whispered, “Can you hurry up with whatever whacky scheme you're trying? This place is making me stir-crazy, and I’m worried my attempts at flirting might actually be effective…”

Rolling his eyes, Jahaan worked to grind an edge into the plate half, turning it into a crude blade, one that, unfortunately, he quickly realised would be ineffective against the dragonkin. Then, he cut a strip of cloth from the bedding - even this caused the fragile blade to crack - and tied it to the piece of fallen brick, creating a legendary weapon of unparalleled destruction.

After crafting the ludicrous flail, he looked around the near distance to see if it could actually come in handy, or if all his DIY efforts had been in vain. When he saw the contents of the shelves next to Sliske’s cell, he had an idea.

Motioning Sliske over, he stated, “I need you to get me that vial off the shelf over there.”

“And how do you propose I do that?”

“With this,” Jahaan presented him with the flail. Sliske did not look impressed.

“Really? This is the best the infamous ‘World Guardian’ can come up with?”

“Right now, yes. So just get on with it.”

With an exasperated sigh, Sliske relented. “Fine, fine! Give me your ridiculous brick-on-a-rope and let’s get on with this.”

Visually locking onto his target, Sliske launched one end of the flail over the top of his cell bars and towards the potion. Miraculously, it lassoed its target, and once a tighter grip was applied, Sliske snapped it towards him and caught the potion as it flew through the air.

Jahaan couldn’t help but be impressed as the vial was slipped into his hands. The dragonkin, on the other hand, less so. Irritated by the motions, it grumbled, stalked over to Sliske’s cell, and threw the door open with a high pitched groan.

Edging backwards, Sliske held his hands up in defence. “Hey now, let’s be reasonable and-”

A punch across Sliske’s jaw cut the words from his throat. Cowering down, Sliske waited the beating out, hissing in pain with each strike. Fortunately, the dragonkin didn’t seem to press about what Sliske was doing, and he didn’t see the potion Jahaan was concealing behind his back. He also didn’t notice Jahaan subtly reach through the bars separating them and snagging a pouch from his cloak pocket. Peeking inside, he noted it contained small, white crystals, ones that Jahaan recognised. However, the keys were unfortunately out of reach on the other side of the dragonkin’s belt, but the crystals would do for now.

Some guard he is. Maybe he just fancied roughing Sliske up a little? Who could blame him.

Eventually, the dragonkin got bored and trudged away from the cell, leaving Sliske a bloodied and battered mess slumped against his cell wall.

“My face!” he picked himself up, wincing at the twinges of pain it induced. “Why is everyone hitting me in the face today?”

“Karma?”

Sliske shot him a look. “What was that, World Guardian?”

“Nothing, nothing...

Clutching his stomach, Sliske fumbled with a long and rough piece of fabric in his fingers. “In other news, I tore a strip of cloth from his robe. At least I can use it to bind my wounds.”

Jahaan winced. “Actually, I might need that.”

Sliske’s shoulders sagged. “Might or do? Because, you know, facial wounds and such.”

“I’m going to go with ‘do’. Turns out the potion you swiped and the crystals I lifted from the dragonkin are reagents, which I’m pretty sure I can use to make acid in the latrine. And I need the strip to make a facemask to stop myself from inhaling deadly fumes.”

“Well, look at you, the chemist,” Sliske drawled. “You’ve been spending too much time with the druids in Taverley, haven’t you? Well, fine, have the cloth, but this plan of yours better work.”

After taking the cloth strip from a reluctant Sliske, Jahaan tied it around his mouth and nose. Carefully, Jahaan poured the potion into the latrine, causing the slop below to change into a vivid green. Into this mix he added the crystals, and everything began hissing and smoking, with the stone of the latrine pitting visibly around the 'water' level. From the way it was reacting, it looked like it would make short work of the lock, but Jahaan realised he needed something to get the acid out without burning his hand off.

Coughing violently, Sliske pressed himself against the far wall of his cell, trying to pull his robe up over his nose. “Are you brewing RUM over there, Jahaan?!”

“Not quite,” the cloth strip wasn’t as effective as Jahaan had hoped, and he was feeling rather lightheaded. “I hope the dragonkin can’t smell this.”

Picking up the empty vial, Jahaan held his breath and tentatively removed the cloth strip protection. Thankfully he didn’t immediately knock himself out with the fumes, and in imitation of his amazing brick-on-a-rope, he tied the cloth strip around the neck of the bottle, ready to collect the acid. Dipping the bottle into the latrine, Jahaan filled it with acid and delicately pulled it out again. Just in time, too, as the cloth around the neck was eaten away to uselessness.

“I have the acid,” Jahaan whispered, subtly showing Sliske the vial of corrosive liquid.

“Great, let's get out of here.”

“Not yet - I need you to distract the guard one more time.”

Sliske growled, sternly, “I am not getting punched again!”

A small smile tugging on his lips, Jahaan explained, “You don't need to antagonise him. Just take this plate and redirect the light at him. I don't think he'll come in here and attack you, he'll likely just look away to stop being annoyed. Besides, if he does attack you, I'll throw this vial of acid at him.”

Jahaan had no intention of wasting the acid on saving Sliske from a beating, but the Mahjarrat bought it regardless.

With a huff, Sliske begrudgingly relented, “Fine, give me the plate.”

With the plate half, Sliske angled it to use what meager light the room had to his advantage, casting a bright beam at the dragonkin guard. Annoyed, the dragonkin turned away.

“Well he doesn't seem to like being blinded,” Sliske remarked. “And he hasn't come in here yet. So there’s that.”

“Huh. I didn’t think that would actually work.”

“So you thought he’d come to beat me again?”

“I thought it was seventy-thirty in favour.”

“Thanks, Janny. Anyways, don't you have a lock to melt?

“Good point. Back in a second.”

When Jahaan used the vial of acid on the cell door, the acid hissed quietly into the locking mechanism, which emerged from the bottom of the lock in a greasy, metal sludge. When his lock was no more, he handed the rest of the vial to Sliske, who proceeded to melt his lock in the same fashion.

“Sliske, let’s get out of here. If we zig-zag around him, I bet we can dodge the guard. Or, maybe, we can get some more acid and throw it at him. Or perhaps we-”

Chuckling, Sliske interjected, “Slow down, Janny. You’ll give yourself a stitch.”

“Well, we’re in a bit of a rush here,” Jahaan hissed, nervously eying the guard. “We have to get Ozan and Ariane, and take the Stone back from the dragonkin!”

Straightening up, Sliske’s demeanour changed. He seemed much calmer now. Worryingly so. “The hostages are fine, Jahaan.”

“Sliske, what are you talking about, the dragonkin have them!”

Sliske raised an eyebrow. “Do they?”

“Yes, you told me they-” finally, it hit him. Jahaan’s shoulders straightened, and his face went blank. “...and now I am on the same page. You lied to me.”

“Oh yes,” Slike smirked, smugly.

“The dragonkin don't have the hostages?”

“Nope. That isn't even a real dragonkin out there. It's just a wight in a costume.”

Jahaan regarded the dragonkin once more. “It's a pretty elaborate costume.”

“I know, right? I didn't even have to make it, he just had one!”

“And you were never kidnapped?”

“Nope,” Sliske grinned. “I just grabbed a bunch of people for my scheme and got my fangirl to lure you in. And let me say, your performance was exemplary. I was on the edge of my seat the whole time!”

Jahaan sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “Sliske, I am going to leave now.”

“But what about the hostages, hm?” Sliske queried with a victorious undertone.

"You've had your fun, you got me here - now you can let them go," Jahaan’s voice was an unsteady mix between a demand and a plea. There was a darkness behind Sliske's eyes, however, one that Jahaan recognised. It made him uneasy, set him on edge.

"Ah, I think I'll hang onto them for a little while longer. You see, I have a bit of entertainment in mind, and I fear my stellar company isn't quite enough of an incentive to make you stick around. Now, if we're quite finished, join me through that door and find out why I brought you here. Oh, and don’t worry, all that precious armour Azzy so kindly gifted you is safe and sound; my brother’s little humble abode is finally cluttered with something other than dusty tomes. I just needed to level the playing field, is all. All in the name of sportsmanship, I assure you.”

With a click of his fingers, Sliske teleported away.

Leaning back against the cell wall, Jahaan exhaled deeply, regretting every single decision he’d made today. Except one. “Damnit Sliske… I’m so glad I punched you…”

DISCLAIMER:

As Of Gods and Men is a reimagining, retelling and reworking of the Sixth Age, a LOT of dialogue/characters/plotlines/etc. are pulled right from the game itself, and this belongs to Jagex.

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[jennacolemans]

The Man in the High Castle - Character Bios from Amazon’s X-ray feature - requested by anonymous

John Smith 

John Smith was born in Manhattan in 1917, the second son of a prosperous Wall Street Banker.  In many ways, John's early life looked picture perfect.  Any hint of superiority, however, was tempered by his father, who instilled a deep sense of civic duty and propriety in his sons.  The boys were four years apart in age.  John looked up to older brother Chris, a star athlete and an A-student, following in suit.  In 1927, when John was 11, Chris collapsed and was soon wheelchair bound.  In March, 1929, The Wall Street Crash struck, and overnight American banking institutions folded.  John's father was financially ruined and promptly took his own life.  And so, at 13 years old, John Smith swore to himself that he would never allow himself to break.  Even when his beloved brother passed away, two years later, John Smith pressed on.  Despite witnessing a New York City that had become decrepit and corrupt, and a failing America that had been gutted once more by the 1933 assassination of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, John was still determined and still a patriot.  He earned a degree at Princeton, he joined the New York Mayor's office, implementing programs to get America back to work, and, when war loomed, he signed up for officer training at West Point. where he proved a natural solder and tactician.  Graduating to a post within the US Signal Corps.  By 1942. John Smith was a 1st Lieutenant.  In 1943, he was promoted to Captain and re-deployed to the Pentagon to advise all branches of the military on intelligence gathering.  During this time, he met and married Helen McCrae, the beautiful, accomplished daughter of two Harvard academics.  Helen became pregnant with their first child in July, 1945.  Just a few months later, the American government fell to the New Reich.  Smith saw surrender as the right thing to do.  America had lost.  Nothing in the US arsenal could compete with Nazi nuclear power.  So, John Smith assimilated into the interim government, in sincere hope he could lessen the brutality of Nazi retaliation against rebel uprisings.  He could save American lives.  He could keep those he loved safe.  Nazism is survival.

Wyatt Price

Wyatt Price is the alias of an Irishman who fled Nazi Europe in 1944 to seek refuge in unconquered North America.  Though Ireland had remained neutral at the outset of The War, large numbers of Irishmen had been called to fight and more took to the front after nearly 400000 British soldiers were killed or otherwise defeated at the beachhead in Dunkirk, France in 1940.  In September of that year, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was killed in a German air raid, and the war raged on.  Young Liam had been away from home for a year, fighting for the British Army.  In January, 1942, the British Government fell to the Reich.  England was occupied, but fierce resistance continued in Wales and Scotland for two more years.  In 1944, the remnants of the British Isles were finally conquered.  When Ireland capitulated to German rule, Irish men and women left the mainland In droves, pushing off the coasts by night, bound for the Americas.  Young Liam was among those who fled.  In America, Liam became Wyatt Price.  He had seen his fair share of horrors back in Europe. He had lost almost his entire family, and wanted to start anew.  But war was encroaching on North America as well, and in 1945 Germany took the continent, dropping the A-Bomb on the capital.  For two years, Wyatt fought in the Rebel American War.  By 1947, badly beaten, and starved of resources, the resistance was forced underground.  Wyatt's surviving network spread out.  Some military comrades stayed on the East Coast in the Greater Nazi Reich, while others dispersed to the Neutral Zone in the former American heartland, where 'freedom' became simply another word for ‘lawlessness’.  It was in this wild, neutral territory that Wyatt established himself.  He became known as a shrewd, resourceful fixer.  He was depended on by many, but trusted no one.  He never spoke of the past, he never told anyone his real name.  He shrouded himself in secrecy and misinformation.  He could smuggle anything, obtain official-looking documents; it was impossible to know whose side he was on.  And Wyatt liked it that way.  It was the best way to stay alive while doing so-called dirty work.  He had long abandoned the fight for liberty and justice in this world.  He resigned himself to mating for justice in the next one.

Juliana Crain

Juliana has a tendency for deep introspection and even depression - a result of her father's death, which cast a shadow over her life.  She was 10 and her sister Trudy nearly 3 when the A bomb fell on Washington, D.C.  Within days, the American government had surrendered.  Intense resistance followed and life became hard for white Californians.  The Japanese occupation was brutally enforced.  White people were denied ownership of major businesses.  Anyone not bowing to a Japanese citizen in the street was shot dead.  By the time Juliana completed high school, the San Francisco where she was born was unrecognizable.  But, despite the horrors, many things about Japanese culture fascinated Juliana - its orderliness, beauty, food, and subtle philosophy.  She persuaded a Japanese Dojo to take her on as an Aikido student and found she had a talent for the martial art and its focus on energy, poise, and balance.  Nevertheless, the atmosphere of oppression and obedience in the JPS was draining.  Over the years Juliana's depressions deepened until, one day, she stepped in front of a bus, determined to set herself free.  Death, however, was not In store for Juliana Crain.  Instead, she found herself injured and in the arms of a young passerby, Frank Fink.  Over the course of her recovery, the two established a strong bond that became a deep love.  But as she began to settle into a life with Frank, a restless searching began to rise once more within her.  On the night she witnessed her sister Trudy's execution at the hands of the Kempeitai, Juliana Crain stepped once more into the unknown, this time to answer the call of a transcendent force, somewhat akin to destiny. 

Takeshi Kido

Takeshi Kido was born in 1917 in the town of Koriyama, Japan.  The son of a tenant farmer, Kido was the fourth of eight children.  Theirs was a hard life with no prospects for improvement, of backbreaking work, and unpredictable, often swift, death.  In 1930, a 13-year-old Kido took the intelligence test given to 15-year-old prospective students for the Japanese Intelligence Service and scored off the charts.  In 1932, he ran away from home to join the Army and was recruited into the Kempeitai — the highly respected Japanese military police and intelligence force.  Kido excelled not just because of intellect but because of his strength of will and unyielding sense of patriotic duty.  His drive to succeed was unmatched.  Orders that might give others pause had no effect on the young officer.  Kid0 was serving in Manchuria when the Japanese army invades deeper into China in 1937.  The infamous Rape of Nanking occurred during this campaign, and Kido was confronted with a level of brutality he had never before imagined.  Such horrors left an indelible mark on him.  In the intervening years, Kido became a seasoned officer, serving honorably across many bloody campaigns.  He witnessed many horrors including the Rape of Nanking and, later, the carnage of the Solomon Islands offensives, which claimed the lives of many American and Japanese troops.  Having risen In the Japanese societal hierarchy, Kido took a wife in 1950.  He would father two children with his bride, but the family was divided by Kido's duty to the Empire.  Kido took up a post in the Japanese Pacific States of America in 1952.  In 1957, he was promoted to Chief Inspector of the Kempeitai, one of the most senior positions in the JPS, and by 1962, the year he shot and killed a young rebel by the name of Trudy Walker, Kido had spent five years crushing American resistance firmly under his boot and almost seventeen years away from mainland Japan, a place he would never again call home. 

Joe Blake

Joe believed he was born in Brooklyn in 1938, the single child of a single, German mother who claimed Joe's German father abandoned them before he was born.  When the A-bomb dropped on Washington. D.C. the Nazis assumed power, and, by 1950, the American Reich was firmly established.  But young Joe Blake was never totally certain who he was or what he wanted to be.  He still wanted to hide his mother's German-ness.  Most of all, he never felt worthy of an absent father's love.  This confusion and shame came out in a rebellious streak.  Joe stole a car at age 15 and, at the police station, he heard his mother tell a desk sergeant about what an important man his father was, back in Berlin.  Later that day, he received a visitor - a GNR colonel named John Smith, who offered him a ride home.  Joe's run In with Smith helped him turn a corner.  He got an apprenticeship in construction, did a year of mandatory military service and signed up to the Corps of Engineers.  He was a charming young than who kept intimacies at a distance.  He did honest work for an honest Mark.  His mother died of Septicemia when he was 21 years old, and Joe buried his grief along with her.  That muted sadness turned into a silent rage at their poverty, at their abandonment by his father, a man he longed to have known.  Two years later, John Smith - now Obergruppenführer - re-appeared In Joe's life.  Smith had a Job for him if he was willing to commit.  Joe didn't care about the Reich or duty to his country but Smith fascinated Joe and so did the prospect of finding out more about his elusive father.  Joe agreed to Smith's terms for he had nothing to lose.

Nicole Dörmer

Nicole was born to a pretty, young ward of the Lebensborn nursery where every aspect of her upbringing was designed to indoctrinate her and her Lebensborn fellows.  One of Nicole’s earliest memories was a visit by Himmler to the orphanage.  Nicole was only four and already a starling beauty.  She as chosen to hand Himmler a bouquet and sing a patriotic song.  Himmler raised her in his arms and kissed her cheeks, telling Nicole that he was her father.  Then, in the spring of 1944, Otto Dörmer, Nicole’s real, biological father arrived.  Young Nicole was taken to Dörmer’s grand family home in Potsdam, where she had the run of the mansion.  By 1944, the Lebensborn program was being phased out by the Reich; thusly, its products were becoming more and more valuable.  Private schools vied for the privilege of taking Nicole and her comrades.  With their privileged status, the Lebensborn children often found they could get away with behaviors or attitudes that would have placed other citizens in danger.  They illicitly collected Jazz, read banned books, and made mildly critical observations of about the state.  But despite this rebelliousness, they were proud believers in the clear superiority of the Nazi regime.  Nicole traveled the world before college.  She dined at all the fashionable restaurants and attended all the best parties, plays and film galas.  Fascinated by the media as an instrument of State Control, she enrolled at the Brandenburg Studios Propaganda Arts course and dropped out after four semesters, bored by the conventionalism.  She experimented with LSD and had liaisons with both men and women in an attempt to free herself from conventional norms.  In 1960, at age 21, Nicole was expected to find a husband, but she wanted a career, she wanted to be noticed, and she wanted to make a difference.  Later that year, she was arrested under suspicion of publishing a seditious pamphlet.  Upon release, she was cowed but far from broken.  It was a wake-up call that she was not immune from harm and that she shouldn't be foolishly outspoken.  But in other ways, it made her even more determined to challenge the received wisdom of the "fossils" in power.

Robert Childan

Robert Childan was born in San Francisco in 1919.  He was an only child and the apple of his mother's eye.  Robert's father was a stern and emotionally closed man who ran a kitchen and housewares business.  Robert was 10 when the Great Depression hit and his father's enterprise went bust.  The family moved into a small downtown San Francisco apartment and lived in the midst of Mrs. Childan's sprawling book collection.  After college, Robert got a junior curator position at the San Francisco Museum of Art and managed to avoid going to war after a mild cardiac arrhythmia was detected during his medical examination.  In 1942, Robert's father died, and, in 1945, his mother passed away too, just before the Germans dropped the A-bomb.  As Japan began its occupation of San Francisco, Robert realized he'd need to adapt quickly or he'd likely wind up dead or arrested.  His resourcefulness ultimately led him to the idea of starting a bookstore using his mother's collection as initial inventory.  The white-collar jobs Robert was suited for were not open to him in the San Francisco of the JPS, but Japanese hunger for Americana and curiosity about American literature was taking hold all over the city.  He knew he could exploit this.  Robert began to buy up old heirlooms and American antiques.  Very soon sales of American object's d'art outstripped book sales.  His livelihood depended upon a growing Japanese client base.  Over the years, he grew to admire the distinctive and aloof cultural superiority of his patrons and envied their grace and beauty.  He was becoming part of a new class of 'Nippophile' aesthetes, an inevitable side effect of Japan's cultural imperialism in California.  But, deep down, Robert resented those he seemed to adore.

Edward McCarthy

Edward was born in Oakland in 1934 to proud second-generation Irish Americans.  His father had grown up in the Bay area, inheriting a small metalworking factory from Ed's grandfather.  After his family moved into a modest townhouse near the factory, Ed met and quickly befriended his neighbor, Frank Frink.  The war with Japan began in April 1941 and many factory workers signed up, leaving wives and daughters to keep factory production lines moving.  Ed spent a lot of time there; he loved the smell, sound and vitality.  In July 1944, when Ed and Frank were 10 years old, the war with Japan arrived on America's doorstep.  Planes swooped down on San Francisco to unleash their bombs.  The family survived the raid, but later that year, the Japanese dropped Chlorine explosives on the city, leaving Ed poisoned and on the edge of dying.  Ed's mother perished in the attack.  At the hospital, Ed spent many hours alone, in pain and in fear.  With this isolation and suffering came an extraordinary strength of resilience to endure.  And though he did not recognize it as a boy, he felt a deep love towards Frank who came to visit him every day for months.  It was a bond of affection that would be a guiding light for the rest of his life.  By 1946, Ed would need this kinship for survival.  The Bomb had been dropped on Washington, the factory had been taken over by the Japanese, and Ed's father had been dragged into the factory courtyard, forced to his knees and shot in front of all the workers; Ed went to live with his grandparents.  Churches closed, St. Patrick's Day was banned, and San Francisco filled with waifs and strays fleeing the Nazis in the East and migrant workers from the Japanese Empire in Asia.  But Ed never hated the Japanese; he hated war and violence and brutality.  Ed's deepest reaction to loss was always to love.  This was his gift.

Frank Frink

Frank was born in 1934, his older sister had been born two years earlier.  After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in April, 1941, Frank and his sister went to live with their grandmother.  They worked jobs after school, cooked, cleaned and helped to pay the bills with what meager funds they could scrape together.  Their father died on the front lines in 1943, fighting the Japanese, and five years later, their mother passed away too.  It was around this time that Frank's best friend's father was shot dead in the courtyard of his metalworking factory by Japanese occupiers who had come to take over.  Frank and his friend, Ed, were bonded in unspoken shared pain.  At age 16, Frank got a job at the factory where he helped craft handguns for the Japanese market.  Frank's first passion had always been art; drawing and painting had been a way for his mind to escape.  Unfortunately, there was little appreciation or legitimate outlet for Frank's gifts.  One morning, on the way to the factory, Frank was shocked to see a beautiful young woman purposely step into the street in front of an oncoming bus.  It was Juliana Crain.  The two moved in together shortly after Juliana got out of hospital and began a life together.  They were happy, for a time.  But, as much as Frank and Juliana loved each other, a series of tragedies and shocking experiences would set them on very different paths.  Frank supported Juliana as she committed herself to a purpose he couldn't fully understand, making the best of a bad situation, until finally, they parted.  The young artist also fell victim to the encroachment of racial purity laws on the JPS and Frank Frink, once passive and resigned, found himself consumed by hatred for the leader of the Kempeitai who cruelly and capriciously enforced the laws of the Reich.

Helen Smith

Helen was born in Boston in January 1922 to parents who were academics.  Helen was being raised to think for herself and challenge conventional wisdom.  After the Great Depression hit in 1929, she witnessed deep poverty and hunger in addition to the birth of a fierce political environment, which helped incite the assassination of President Roosevelt in 1933.  With Stalin's rise in the Soviet Union and Hitler's imposition of Fascism in Germany, it seemed to young Helen that America was itself on the brink of totalitarian take over.  And why not?  If it got America working again.  In 1940, Helen went to study at the prestigious NYU School of Commerce, Accounts and Finance and, in 1941, after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, she dropped out to volunteer as a secretary in the New York War Office.  Then, in June, 1943, Helen's life changed again.  A young Captain, named John Smith, came to City Hall to set up an intelligence bureau.  He and Helen became friends, then lovers.  A year later, they were married in a modest ceremony, just before John left to fight in the war raging in the Pacific.  Every day, Helen dreaded bad news from the front.  But in 1945, Helen discovered she was pregnant; this good news was accompanied by word that her husband was to take up a permanent post at the Pentagon.  The couple shipped their belongings to Washington, D.C. and drove down from New York together, stopping for the night, just outside of the city.  That night, the Nazis dropped the Heisenberg device on Washington; overnight, the world changed.  John Smith was a profoundly moral man who shared Helen's belief in a benevolent and supportive community.  It seemed the only way towards that future would be to fully capitulate to Reich, avoiding potential nuclear annihilation.  And so began Helen's embrace of the Nazi way of life.  She wanted a safe world in which to raise her son, and eventually her daughters.  Despite her parents' executions in 1949 at the hands of the GNR, she had made peace with the realities of Fascist America, the means and methods by which it was achieved, and was grateful for the benefits it brought her - if only for a time.

Nobusuke Tagomi

Tagomi was born in Tokyo in 1887, in the Meiji era - when Japan restored the Emperor and rapidly began to militarize and modernize.  Tagomi's family was Samurai caste from the ruling elite, with close ties to the royal family.  He and his younger brothers were raised from the cradle to understand that their life would be in service to the Japanese State.  At age 11, Tagomi was sent away to Navy Cadet School.  There he was schooled in English, French and German, served in the Japanese fleet for several years, and became a junior Naval Attaché.  He soon realized his aptitude for diplomacy and negotiation was better suited to work in the Trade department and in 1916, he left the Navy for a position at the Japanese Trade Mission.  Years later, in 1933, Tagomi met and wed the daughter of another elite Samurai family from Yokohama.  He was 38 years old at the time.  Their son, Yoshi, was born the following year, and, in many ways, this era was the happiest of Tagomi's life.  Professionally, he continued to rise in stature, but clouds were gathering.  Fascism in Germany, coupled with the emerging political influence of Major General Hideki Tojo, was an increasing threat.  In 1939, the war in Europe began, and in 1940, Japan allied with Hitler.  Tagomi became crucial to the war effort as Japan was challenged by lack of oil in its territories.  He went on a series of trade missions to California to negotiate oil imports and was successful in his negotiations.  The irony: US oil would fuel the conflicts that eventually defeated her.  Despite much success, death was slowly closing in on Tagomi's loved ones.  His brothers perished in the Pacific at the start of the war.  After the family moved to San Francisco in 1947, so Tagomi could help set up a colonial administration, Yoshi joined the Japanese Imperial Army and died serving in Manchuria in 1952.  Tagomi's wife returned to Tokyo, heartbroken, and succumbed to Pneumonia in 1953.  Tagomi went into himself, seeking solace in meditation.  There must be some purpose to this life.  Some reason to the world.  Could he find it, alone in San Francisco?

[iturbide]

Daamnn you really hate Naga! I like her considering how much she’s done for humanity, but her parenting is AWFUL. My own headcanon is that she would slowly fix her relationship with Tiki but some heroes don’t want her to even get near their smoll british dragon. (Also wouldn’t Duma be afraid of Naga knowing how she beat the shit out of him and his sister?)

---

So there seems to be a bit of confusion about my feelings concerning Naga. 

I don’t hate Naga.  

I think that she is a fascinating, deeply flawed character, who the world perceives as a glorious and kindly goddess but whose actual track record reflects something substantially different.  I enjoy analyzing that from different angles and pushing those limits in different ways.  And yes, this means that I am often critical of her.  But I don’t hate her: if I did, she wouldn’t get anywhere near as much screen time unless I was venting rage and/or pulling receipts. 

I can and do freely admit that yes, Naga has done some good for humanity, and her intervention has been instrumental in solving several crises.  I still think it bears mentioning that several of her interventions had far-reaching consequences, and that Naga hasn’t exactly been attentive to the fallout of her own actions.  Case in point: degeneration.  Fertility rates began to drop rapidly among dragonkind, and soon after individuals began to lose their senses and become little more than feral beasts beyond reason or reach.  The Divine Dragon tribe discovered that, by sealing their powers within special stones and adopting a more human guise, they could slow or halt the process; however, when Naga took this information before the rest of the tribes, she was met with derision and disbelief -- not because the other tribes didn’t believe it would work, but because they refused to give up their powers and become like the humans they so disdained.  Their pride was the source of the catastrophe that followed, and in the ensuing Dragon Wars, Naga and her tribe effectively wiped out the entirety of the Earth Dragon Tribe -- with two notable exceptions: Medeus and Loptyr. 

Medeus was the prince of the Earth Dragons, and the only one who willingly took on a manakete form.  Following the end of the Dragon War and the sealing of the Earth Dragons, Naga charged Medeus with guarding their resting place, and then left him.  Alone.  To watch as the remnants of dragonkind who had sealed their powers were persecuted by humanity.  This, coupled with his isolation, allowed his rage and hatred to fester and swell into a desire to bring humanity to heel, which led to the creation of the Dolhr Empire of manaketes and the War of Liberation against the Holy Kingdom of Archanea, wherein Medeus actually managed to win and take over the whole continent before his eventual defeat in Cartas’ Rebellion at Anri’s hands. 

For all of Naga’s love of humanity, she didn’t bother to intervene there.  Nor did she intervene in Marth’s first battle against Medeus (Nagi’s appearance is technically non-canon, since it requires Tiki’s death and Falchion’s loss, and Tiki is very much alive in the sequel).  It was only in the second battle that she chose to step in, after three separate horrific conflicts had overwhelmed the land.  

And then there’s Loptyr.  I don’t know if it’s ever stated what Loptyr’s place in the Earth Dragon tribe was, but considering the course of events, I’m willing to say that he was probably chief of the tribe in much the same way that Naga was chief of the Divine Dragons.  As the war raged and the Earth Dragons continued their catastrophic degeneration, Loptyr happened upon a human named Galle who sought to acquire the power of a dragon; despite loathing mankind himself, Loptyr saw an opportunity -- not just to survive the war his tribe was losing, but to gain dominion over the humans he so despised.  So he entered into a blood pact with Galle and gave up his form, sealing his powers and his will into the Loptous Tome.  As soon as Galle took hold of it, Loptyr possessed him via the blood pact they had forged, and after that went on to found first the Loptyrian Cult (which worshipped Loptyr as a god -- not so differently from how the rest of mankind worshipped Naga as the same) and then the Loptyrian Empire with the possessed Galle at its head.  Loptyr’s empire was frankly horrific, with humans oppressed and brutalized and child sacrifices made in Loptyr’s name -- and each time the ruler died, the tome was passed to their successor, who was also possessed through the Major Loptyr blood inherited from Galle. 

This went on for seventeen generations before Naga did anything.  At an absolute minimum, 100,000 people died in Loptyr’s conquest of Jugdral, and 10,000 died in a single event at the Massacre of Edda.  And when she did decide to act, all she did was instill a portion of her own power and will into a tome in the same way Loptyr did.  And then she left humans to fight instead of offering any further aid.  The war continued for FIFTEEN YEARS after that before Loptyr was finally defeated (and even that was only temporary, since the tome remained intact, which led to the events of Genealogy where she once again made no visible effort to help).  And to top it all off, when the victorious crusaders turned right around and started oppressing the people of the former Loptyrian Empire -- many of whom were innocent people who had just been trying to survive in the first place -- Naga once again did nothing to help. 

So yeah, arguably she has done good things and helped mankind.  But she’s also made a lot of problems for them with those actions, and hasn’t done more than cursory damage control.

(This doesn’t even get into the parenting thing which I’m happy we agree is awful.  ‘Fun’ Fact: where Anri got the Falchion he needed to defeat Medeus is the same place that Tiki is sealed in Marth’s time.  Naga literally left a dragon-slaying blade in her daughter’s resting place, which chillingly implies that Gotoh was supposed to murder her if she started to show signs of degeneration.)

I’m really happy that people have nice headcanons for Naga!  It would be really nice if Naga were able to fix her relationship with Tiki, I agree.  But for me personally, the onus is entirely on her to make amends: given everything Tiki has gone through (including at least a thousand years of sleep and no apparent contact at all with her absent mother), coupled with the kind and affectionate support that I headcanon her receiving from other dragons in the Order of Heroes (many of whom Naga would consider her enemies), I don’t think Tiki would necessarily be comfortable with Naga at the outset.  Naga would have to do a lot of work to forge a better relationship with the daughter she abandoned, because Tiki has no reason to simply forgive her because she’s here now.  And for me personally, I question whether Naga will ever be able to fully make amends, given her continued obsession with humanity and the lack of any references to her daughter in her Heroes dialogues.  So yeah, while there are several dragons who would be wary of Naga getting close to Tiki, they wouldn’t necessarily bar interactions if it’s what Tiki wants, because after what Naga has put that child through she has no right to get a way in whether they interact or not (though they would monitor the situation because they care about Tiki).  It would be Naga herself who either makes (or further breaks) the relationship she may or may not want to forge. 

And as for Duma, he is a being who understands strength -- not just physical strength, but strength in all its forms.  Did he suffer a defeat at Naga’s hands previously?  Yes.  Does that mean he’s going to back down if it looks like another conflict is brewing?  No.  Fear is not the enemy to him.  He has mastery over himself: whether he fears Naga or not will not stop him from giving her another good fight if she threatens something he holds dear, because he is never going to back down from a worthy cause, no matter how bad his odds of success are.  Courage is not the absence of fear, after all, but the triumph over it.

[vitavitale]

            drabble I             — Shadow ;

And there the lion’s ruddy eyes Shall flow with tears of gold, And pitying the tender cries, And walking round the fold, ...

The color of a starless night, devoid of any light; black as ink, a thing of shadow with a depth impenetrable and a nature inscrutable. If not for points of amaranth red breaking through the darkness, its form would have been indistinguishable. Brought forth from the infernal abyss was a beast both obscure and lethal. Man's folly ripped her from her land and she would have recompense. But it was not a man she beheld now, but a boy, and he'd dared to pull her through the art on the floor: an inverted pentagram he'd call it, but a thing nameless yet known to her and her kin. The audacity of that little fool would cost him his head.

She'd heard him speak as she was birthed into a world foreign. His intent vocalized through something she'd recognize as an incantation—but not one she'd heard before. His tongue was one she understood, learned from generations past. Her kind had been for many an age invoked by others of his kind; come into contact with them either above or below the dividing line laid between realms, and so the practice seemingly continued, however to humanity's error. A great many more of them had been slain by the beasts they hoped to subjugate than there'd been conjurers successful in their attempts. She appeared in full form, body and limbs, whiskers and all. In her eyes burned a fire demonic, a revulsion for this forced change and an enmity for the scrawny little creature in her sights.

In the room she blended almost perfectly, the space small and dim, though lit candles covering the demon's sides waved in greeting with their tiny orange flames, their shadows thrown upon the walls. New scents confused her, though few were familiar—the most notable of all belonging to the other demon in the room. Now, what sort of a hapless little fowl would stoop so low as to abide by a human equally pitiable? Insulting. These were the creatures who'd pulled her into their grasp. They reeked of apprehension, the avian one particularly of prey, and that of a kind she'd sunk her fangs into before.

Instincts pushed her to stalk toward the child who'd sought to tame her. His words made as much clear, and he'd not have her. In an act of defiance, fangs were flashed and a snarl was returned. She may have never once met a human, but she heard enough of them to know they were cowardly. She'd not been proven wrong: the boy backed away from her, urging her to submit, and that demon of his alliance had spoken in cautionary tones, warning of danger. How utterly appropriate. They'd not known her species, beasts born of shadow, stealth, and unrelenting aggression. Efficient, effective predators from birth to death. She would show them—and she backed the boy against the wall, heedless to his will, coiling her muscles to propel herself onto him and snap his little neck in one swift, simple motion. Misfortune lied in wait for her, however, and it had ultimately ruined her vision of retaliation when she found that she could not harm the boy, no matter her effort. Something stopped her, a power unknown to her and incomprehensible; a force effected by the tiny human before her, and it frustrated her all the more. She stilled before him, glaring her hatred into his bright eyes. She'd felt his anxiety, a fear that should have been too easily rent right when she willed it. With her will impeded, she had but to stand down. A hateful thing to a beast as proud as she, but all the same she sunk into shadow and parted from the conjurer's sight.

Liquid night melted into the darkness. A pair of rubies gleamed from the floor, slid backward toward the other end of the room, and ultimately vanished altogether. The room was her prison, its confines the space she'd been allowed to haunt, and she decided at once to exploit it; the dark, the trepidation she still could scent in the air were now hers to bend to her machinations.

It was the boy, she knew, who tied her to this space and kept her shackled. It was the boy in control, but the taste of such a privilege she'd ensure would be fleeting. In binding her to this place, he'd bound himself; and, thus, the two would enter a battle of wills. It was no question whose will would prevail, and the demon born of shadow needed only to wait. A mightier being than he, than even the raptor at his side: the perfect predator poised to kill when the moment was ripe. Brutal ferocity or refined stealth, she excelled at both. From the shadows she observed, blinking her blood-red eyes from the blackness surrounding. From the corners she'd gleamed; the middle of the floor; the wall beneath the window; the ceiling—and all the time the candles burned on. She dodged their light, keeping to the dark, vocalizing intermittently with an ominous hiss here, a resentful growl there. All to put the boy on edge, and there he went—he remained, closer and closer toward the brink he drew.

The first day saw no victory: both beast and boy persisted, strong and immovable, resolute. While free roam of the enclosed space was hers, he resigned himself to the wall she forced him unto. Sat on the floor, back to the plaster, his winged companion faithfully beside him. Death stalked him from where he could not see; the candles expired one by one, painfully dimming to welcome an utter blackout. All the more to her favor. The second day brought about the same result, and not once had the shadow taken form. Left the little sorcerer in anticipation; too effective. Peridots darted all around, she saw, no matter how much effort went into taming a quivering heart. That he'd lasted this long was singular. Not a thing to drag, thought the demon, noting how he'd begun to wear fatigue like a loose garment over a fragile frame. The anxiety on its own would be the death of him, but she had to worsen the tension—tighten the noose.

Mild surprise welcomed the third day of battle. The boy sat awake, suffering clearly. His will had endured from dawn to dusk, dawn to dusk and outlived the flames and wax; the beast bathed in shadow endured with him. Haggard was he, standing on the brink of consciousness. Should his lids fall, the demon would snap! So close, her freedom, she'd have become restless if she were any lesser creature. From the depths of darkness her ruby reds gleamed, watching with keenest interest the child and his subordinate. Demons were hardier, she knew that for a fact. The raptor did not fare as badly as its master, and in fact chatted with mounting frequency. It appeared to anchor the boy to the world to which he'd so far belonged. A mind so battle worn could not survive the war, ultimately, and it was this inevitability that the demon anticipated. She knew weakened prey when she saw it, but there also surfaced an element of esteem throughout the wait, and perhaps that too was inevitable. The longer the boy willed his survival, the more remarkable it was to her. To think that her captor was worth anything beyond a meal—but she was a demon of age, of many ages, and of all the things she'd seen in her lifetime, she would admit that she'd met a human child with enough foolhardy daring to challenge her power of will. He sought to tame her, to claim her and use her—a very bold thing to attempt. It smacked of arrogance, and the beast black as night would not allow him the satisfaction. Four days, then, to see him closer to his end.

From the darkest corner of the room she watched, unbothered by the gray morning light splashed over closed blinds. A desperate clamor was all the blue-feathered fiend was good for, it seemed, blasting its criticisms and concerns without regard for its own master's state of mind. A change took place overnight, one the peering darkness had noted but left quite alone. The strings were pulled to their breaking point, but in quite a way she hadn't expected. Taut were the nerves for days, but now they'd gone slack. Snapped down the middle. The eyes were glazed with exhaustion, the heart weathered but the soul as yet lit aflame. Had terror run its course? What good was the hunt without the prey's distress? Reclined was the lean little sorcerer, motionless as he sat limply against the wall with his lids bravely forced open. Blood-eyed was the demon he pulled from the pattern on the floor; bright-eyed was she who'd studied him since, learning of her prey and knowing, at last, how and when he'd set her free. One little push to tip him off of the brink and the shackles would break. She might have done the pushing herself, but all throughout the wait she'd done little to nothing to ruin him. What were a few more hours to her? They passed as so many more prior. Morning light changed to afternoon, changed to evening, and the passage of another dusk would come with her still inside the room.

The boy looked as though he'd begun expiring. Sickly pale was his skin and his eyes distant. Nonetheless, the demon sensed the life in him—diminished, maybe, but enduring. For skin stretched over bones, he was strong. The wait doubled as a vigil. Eyes without desire, stomach without hunger, the killing instinct calmed. The longer the sorcerer battled her, the more she wanted to see it to the end—and not because she wanted him dead, but there bloomed a great, perhaps greater, fascination with the durability of his will. Curious was the beast, wondering what sort of a child he was. No, he was not all human and she'd scented that from the outset. The first day found her boiling, but on the second day her temper had cooled. She was prudent as she was demoniac, and had it not been for her age she may have continued to threaten her prey directly. Those in her sights neglected to take their notes: they'd been afraid of her while she, at most, uttered growls and blinked her blood-red eyes at them. The third day was silent, but only the avian demon filled the space with its noise. The Shadow held her tongue, did nothing but watch. Patience was her virtue. Silently she stalked all about the room, registering the changes in odors. The boy's being of most importance to her, she discerned his fading condition. From this she knew his hold over her would fail.

But he was not dying. Only tiring.

So came the final trial. Four nights in a row, now, and drive had met its end. Rather a disappointment, but inevitable: the boy was fallible after all. He'd survived remarkably this long, no achievable feat for another his age and breed. Stubbornly he fought her, for her, but she saw in him a resignation that eve. Surrender. The war was never his to win. Whatever force he'd employed to stave off her retaliation had fallen apart. Her opportunity at last at hand as the light faded. But the present hour brought with it a night sky, time having passed as she watched her captor. His lids had closed but the feathered hellion kept him conscious. Now was the time, she thought; no longer was there the need to prolong their fates.

Noiseless was her manifestation. She gathered mass as she rose from the floor, taking on her feline form as shadows congregated to rebuild her, nose to tail. Amid the dark her ruby reds blinked to sustained life. From the inverted pentagram she emerged as if the beginning of the conjuring all over again, only this time she'd no reins to subdue her. She ignored the demon at the boy's side when it noticed her; its frantic clamor was irritating to be sure, but such a lowly tool was far beneath her attention, undeserving of it. The noise was successful in forcing the child's eyes open, however, and into them the ruby reds stared. Panic renewed, the heart set on fire—he reacted accordingly, but his body was uncooperative and barred from escape. Beside him, the other demon poised itself defensively between its master and his death. Hackles raised and violet sparks danced all across, but the child's voice commanded attention—in itself, not a thing heard for some prolonged time. A gentle, feeble sound that meant to dissuade his protector. So willing to let go, was he?

What few words were spoken had moved his demon beside him again, but it was not without protestation. Through this, he bade her come, and so she approached him with eye contact enduring. Faint was he, she smelled it; she stopped before him, barely any space between the two, and regarded the human a moment—even as he lifted an arm and reached a hand out to her, palm forward and fingers weakly extended. His heart drummed in his chest; she could tell that easily. To contrast, she was utterly relaxed as she, no other, held his life. What had he offered, she had to wonder, by showing his hand? Surely it was no attempt at stopping her. He hadn't the will for that any longer. The demon at his side argued horribly against this, ever threatening with its stance and proposed electrical shocks. Empty promises: no harm came to her from the lowlife. The beast born of shadow instead gave her attention to the hand left oh-so close to her muzzle. Even if she'd known to fear no man, she exercised caution when she drew close enough to ghost his digits. Warm was her breath when she exhaled on pallid flesh, and she took in his scent keenly. No hostility in him, not as far as she could discern, and he was nothing more than a weak little boy besides. Even lost the will to live; she discerned that, too. For all of his pitiable existence, he was...rather a remarkable half-breed. None so like him from what the Shadow had known of his kind—and perhaps, perhaps, he deserved credit for having tamed and bound a demon, its nature and status notwithstanding.

Ambitious little sorcerer for attempting to do the same with her.

The hand trembled in the air, ready to fall limp. Her nose touched his palm, the hand collapsed and its fingers feebly held on to the demon's muzzle. A snap of the fangs was due for that, but he'd not see it from her. No skepticism, no aggression, not a growl to be heard. Cool was the feline in his presence, patient with his touch, and she dragged in a lungful of his scent through what meager contact was afforded them. She caught the sound of his breaths, agitated as if he were to speak, and she blinked into his eyes as consequence. It was fleeting, and again the hand had her attention—so much that it drew from her mouth her tongue and silently bade its warmth. Rough and damp; it swept skyward across the boy's palm, tasting for the first time his flesh and sweat and perceiving things that went unheard, unseen, not really felt until now. Only one lap and she was finished; the tongue withdrew behind flesh-rending fangs, leaving her contemplative the while she watched weary green eyes. In pause she stood motionless, silent as she listened to the pathetic whimper the boy had forced out of himself—and that only just so, for his strength had faded entirely by the time he'd finished and, to mark his descent into unconsciousness, his hand slipped from the demon's muzzle to fall by his flank. The lids sealed themselves, the raptor panicked and hurled accusations and obscenities at the beast born of shadow, but she sensed his heartbeat; the light hadn't yet gone. It wouldn't.

What he'd tried to say before he blacked out was, really, an unfinished thought. Nothing fully comprehensible. He spoke in the first person, he noted himself, and a word meant to follow but it collapsed in his mouth. So, he reclined against the wall wholly vulnerable to vengeance, solely dependent upon the protection of his familiar, as good as dead to the world around him and he would depart unfulfilled.

That did not come to pass. The day following would find him in repose upon the couch in another room. He awoke to find himself in company: Griffon, its name was learned, there to keep vigil, and the one left nameless seated on her haunches before the little sorcerer. How weary he, alive and conscious by some supernatural wonder. His fortitude entranced. That was why she was here. She'd decided some time ago, after all.

Lo, none were threatened by the other. None fearful, none disinclined (save for the raptor, tentatively observant). The child was calm, she sensed it now, and he gathered what little strength he had recuperated to voice a thought formerly left unfinished. “I need you,” was what she'd heard, and this she understood. From where he lay, he offered his hand to her, and again she responded with a touch. This time was different: with nose to palm, hearts aligned, the connection forged. A bond. With it came a name—one the raptor critiqued but she accepted—and, later, a master to protect. To join Griffon upon the human canvas was new, but she adapted as she'd done with all changes prior; and, like Griffon, Shadow would not waver in her duties.

‘And now beside thee, bleating lamb, I can lie down and sleep; ... '

[arcticdementor]

Four feminist law professors at Harvard Law School have been telling some alarming truths about the tribunals that have been adjudicating collegiate sex for the past five years. Campus Title IX tribunals are “so unfair as to be truly shocking,” Janet Halley, Jeannie Suk Gersen, Elizabeth Bartholet, and Nancy Gertner proclaimed in a jointly authored document titled “Fairness for All Students.” That document followed up on a previous open letter signed by 28 members of the Harvard Law School faculty in 2014 arguing that the updated sexual assault policy recently installed at Harvard was “inconsistent with some of the most basic principles we teach” and “would do more harm than good.”

I recently profiled Gersen and her colleagues in a piece for the Chronicle of Higher Education recounting their effort to defend the “most basic principles we teach” against a movement that is working tirelessly to subvert them. It is significant that they speak from within that movement—the feminist movement—not just because this gives them a margin of credibility within a discourse that tends to assign standing on the basis of identity, but also because their intimate knowledge of the antecedent and ongoing struggles within feminism helps them to understand the intellectual roots of what is happening, and where those ideas are taking us.

Though the four women find themselves opposed to visible tendencies within the movement, no one can doubt their standing within it. They are important theorists and practitioners who have made crucial contributions to historic feminist reforms. They represent a strain of longstanding internal critique that is native to the movement itself. Collectively, they have a stern message about the present course of the movement: As Halley, writing in the Harvard Law Review about a case in which a loud demand for punishment accompanied indifference to the guilt or innocence of the accused put it, “We have to pull back from this brink.”

…

When I spoke with her in her office in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Gertner acknowledged that activists seeking to combat sexual violence had resorted to extreme measures out of a justifiable sense that they were addressing a harm that had been ongoing for decades without remedy. “Exhorting people had not worked, nothing had worked,” she said.

But she also described with astonishment a training session she had attended in which the concept of “trauma-informed investigation” was taught. “There was one slide that was extraordinary—it said that if there is a story with inconsistent details that seem to shift from one telling to another, that reflects post-traumatic stress disorder, period. I thought, oh my goodness. Well, of course it might. It might also reflect lying! That they would present one side without even considering the other was extraordinary to me.”

…

Whether judicial powers to surveil and punish are suitable instruments for the pursuit of an emancipatory feminist vision has always been a hotly contested debate within feminism itself. What has long been debated in theory has now been released into the world through interventions aimed at changing that world through an embrace of such instruments. “Feminists now walk the halls of power,” Halley notes in the introduction to her co-authored 2014 book, Governance Feminism. The movement has transitioned, in Halley’s term, “from the megaphone to the gavel,” and must, Halley argues, take on an ethic of responsibility and scrutinize the effects of what they have wrought.

Together, these professors’ work on the new campus sex bureaucracy, consisting of law review articles, open letters, manifestoes, and op-eds written both singly and jointly, is an exemplary instance of the project Halley proposed. That work looks closely at the empirical reality of what has been wrought and reaches a conclusion about its implications. Taken as a whole, the work provides a kind of Rosetta stone of the broader social justice movement of which its subject is a part. The work is sober and restrained and presented without drama precisely because the story it tells is so upsetting and implausible to outsiders, and thus prone to accusations of hyperbole. The gravamen of their work is that, whatever their stated or actual intentions, Title IX feminists are working to superannuate the meaning of consent and embed within the criminal law a principle, subversive to the foundation of the law, that the feelings of the accuser determine the course of the law without reference to any other material fact. As Catharine Mackinnon, the progenitor of the school of feminism from which this movement proceeds, once put it, “Politically, I call it rape whenever a woman has sex and feels violated.”

Title IX activists, including those operating within the Office of Civil Rights in the Department of Education—from whence they issued a letter in 2011 threatening to cut off federal funds from universities who did not get tough on sexual assault—have put in place a system in which it is “commonplace to deny accused students access to the complaint, the evidence, the identities of the witnesses, or the investigative report, and to forbid them from questioning complainants or witnesses,” as Gersen described it in The New Yorker magazine. Though administrative law proceedings routinely rely on constructions of due process that fall well short of those pertaining to criminal proceedings where the freedom of the accused is at stake, in practice the totality of measures adopted by a great many colleges made mounting a defense all but impossible.

The system promulgated a definition of sexual misconduct so expansive that it “plausibly covers almost all sex students are having today,” as Gersen wrote in an article in the California Law Review. It required investigators to start by believing accusers (rather than starting from a place of impartial neutrality), instructed them against using a “reasonable person” test to constrain their judgment of whether sexual conduct regarded as unwelcome constitutes harassment or assault, and required them to reach a finding of wrongdoing if they felt confidence that misconduct had occurred greater than 50+1 percent. It housed the function of adjudicating individual cases within the same office tasked with ensuring compliance with federal government mandates demanding stronger enforcement—aligning incentives in ways hostile to the accused.

A system so designed is “overwhelmingly stacked against the accused,” as Gersen and her colleagues wrote in their original petition. “In this very large continuum of unpleasant interactions that can happen, at some point you draw a line and say, ‘These are consensual, these are not consensual,’” Gersen told me. “Lots of people disagree about where to draw the line. But most people would want to draw a line so there is such a thing as consensual sex.”

…

Federal judges have left no ambiguity about whether the conduct of the campus sex crimes bureaucracy is “consistent with the most basic principles we teach.” In nearly 200 cases, students suing their universities for violating their due process rights in campus proceedings have obtained favorable rulings or settled out of court, vindicating what Gersen and her colleagues have maintained from the outset would be an inevitable outcome. And yet when Gersen and her colleagues roused 28 of their peers in opposition to a policy that the courts were sure to repudiate back in 2014, they stood alone in all of American academia.

It’s worth lingering for a moment on this bizarre tableau. Here, we had a group of professors at the most prestigious law school in America making standard critiques of reforms whose ends the professors shared but whose means were marred by deficiencies that any minimally informed person could see, and that experts like themselves were authorized to identify. These deficiencies would in practice produce hundreds of unjust rulings and undermine the legitimacy of the effort at reform itself. Those professors said aloud what few of their colleagues would have disputed in private. Yet they nonetheless found themselves isolated, unable to influence the course of events beyond their own subsection of the university and were accused of being “on the side of rapists,” as Gersen put it. Gersen and her colleagues wrote up their own version of a policy that the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights found to be compliant with their demands—one that balanced the right of the accused and the accuser in a manner more likely to survive the scrutiny of federal judges—and to actually just be more fair. Harvard University chose to quell their protest by applying this policy to the law school, while retaining the policy that 28 of their law faculty had declared publicly to be in violation of basic principles of law.

…

The story, I will argue in this and subsequent columns, is about the rise and bid for hegemony of a new ideology. This ideology is a successor to liberalism. It brandishes terms that superficially resemble normative liberalism—terms like diversity and inclusion—but in fact seeks to supplant it. This new regime, in which administrative power has been fashioned into a blunt instrument of deterrence, marks off a crucial distinction—between the liberal rule of law, and the punitive system of surveillance rooted in identity politics known as “social justice.”

[saint-severian]

Dune - Chapter 1

Worldbuilding presents a challenge for fiction-writers whose worlds go beyond the familiar. The problem is this: how to flesh out a fictional universe with realistically deep and realized background and details without constantly dumping information on the reader as if in a textbook. Although it would be hard to say that Herbert totally avoids this kind of long-form description, he does gracefully justify it. We, the readers, learn in the first chapter about the political intricacies of the universe of Dune because those intricacies are directly relevant to our protagonist right from the outset. Paul Atreides, our guy, is an elite. His parents are elites, and everyone he interacts with in the introductory is an elite in their respective field. His existence is centered, with no ambiguity to him or us, around his future career as a political elite. But he is not a politician, and though, as we will see, his father has to take on a role comparable to a politician, this is quietly a distasteful necessity, an offense to what Paul would call his “sense of rightness”. More on that later. 

The Atreides family are not elected politicians. They are aristocrats, who, as we learn in the second paragraph of the text, have lived in “Castle Caladan”, which takes its name from the planet itself, for twenty-six generations. Paul’s ancestors have ruled over an entire planet for more than five centuries. He’s old money. And despite the fact that we learn later that his House is not great by the standards of the galactic Imperium to which it belongs, his father, Leto Atreides, is a widely popular man among the other elites. In this one fact much of the plot is derived. First, we realize that Paul is not the hero of a rags-to-riches story. He is not an underdog, not a challenger in the grand scheme of things. Just the opposite- he is a fifteen-year-old boy who is placed and prepped to become an extremely powerful man. As we will learn, it is more than his external environment that puts him in this position. The second implication of the high status or popularity of his family is that, as Herbert says, “a popular man arouses the jealousy of the powerful”. The jealousy of the powerful for Paul’s family will put in effect events that determine Paul’s fate and the fate of the human race. 

Under the (assumed) pretext of the Duke Leto Atreides’ rising popularity and competence, he is assigned a new charge. The ‘Padishah’ Emperor (a word meaning “lord of kings”) has chosen Duke Leto, his feudal vassal, to govern a poor, provincial planet in his name. The planet, called Arrakis, is known for two things: it is extremely harsh for human life, being a world entirely of desert, and it is the sole source of a precious resource that is required across the Imperium for everything from space travel to life-extension. This important substance, “mélange”, is usually called simply “spice”, and much of Dune will revolve around it. Already the obvious real-world parallel must be observed: the precious resource required universally in the gigantic economy which is found in a poor desert country - it’s a metaphor for oil, of course, and Arrakis, the desert planet, is a stand-in for the Middle East, and its primitive and Islamic-influenced inhabitants, the Fremen, represent the wilder elements of the Arab world. Not to waste any time - yes, this parallel is legitimate and not at all a secret. But Dune is not an allegory for one particular time and place. It is, like all myth and fiction, applicable to many times and many places. 

Although we do not yet know exactly why, a strange woman who is regarded highly by Paul’s mother Jessica, has come to visit Paul and administer a brief test. The test lasts only seconds, perhaps more than a few minutes, but Paul’s life is in the balance - if he fails the test, he will die. Knowing this, his mother nonetheless consents. Paul is assured that she passed the same test long ago, and just before she leaves the room, Jessica tells her son to “Remember you’re a duke’s son”. We quickly see the relevance of this reminder when the nature of the test is revealed. The old woman tells Paul that she is testing him for humanity as he is threatened with a weapon that kills only animals, a “gom jabbar”. Paul is disgusted that she would suggest he - the son of a duke, as his mother just reminded him - would be subhuman. I’ve always loved her response to his outrage: “Let us say that I suggest you may be human”. 

Upon my first reading, I interpreted the fact that the tiny, needle-like gom jabbar was poisoned with a substance that was lethal only to the subhuman. This is not the case - it’s not the blade itself that is lethal only to animals, but instead the weapon would only be used on an animal, because only an animal would fail the test and receive the punishment of the poisoned blade. And what is the test? Simple: delayed gratification. Put your hand in a box and don’t pull it out, even while the box gives you excruciating pain. If you fail the test and pull out your hand, you will be stabbed and poisoned and immediately die. Control your urges and pass/live, or give in to your instincts and fail/die. Already we’re on a great track: Herbert has, in the first chapter of his book asserted that not all humans are human, that some are just animals, and that the real dividing line between these two is self-control. This judgement does not bode so well for the innately uninhibited members of the sapient population. Herbert declares, through the mouth of the representative of the Bene Gesserit sisterhood, that those who are incapable of restraint are subhuman. Let’s take a look at this fascinatingly fascist matriarchy of manipulators. 

Old Gaius Helen Mohaim, the old crone in question, tells us after Paul passes his test with flying colors that her sisterhood is a surviving descendant of a series of “schools” that were founded a very long time ago, after an event that left humanity without the use of “thinking machines”, and thus with a lot of responsibility on our hands to make up for the absence of what had become the crutch of computers. Here is another key concept of the Dune universe - the idea that computers (and many other things) are crutches that allow human beings not to think or act for themselves, but instead to rely upon external systems and tools that do their work for them, and as a result leave them vulnerable for “other men with machines” to make slaves out of them. 

Although there is another, apparently all-male school that focuses on “pure mathematics” (an autistic and male pursuit), the Bene Gesserits’ focus is politics, as Paul surmises on “remarkably few clues”. He had to guess that the Sisterhood’s business was politics, despite the fact that he is a political elite, his mother is a member of the Sisterhood, and she had been training him in their ways. The strategy of the BG is covert manipulation of political elites (this should conjure up a list of real-world parallels) ... by, for example, assignment of a sister to become the consort of a duke and the mother of his child, for example. They are an all-female sect that engages in a feminine form of politics, a passive form of politics based around manipulation and deceit. The fact that they are a purely feminine organization in their essence and substance justifies their desire for a masculine version of their power, hopefully a masculine element they can control like anyone else. This masculine version of the Bene Gesserit is called the Kwisatz Haderach, the “one who can be in many places at once”. While the Bene Gesserit can access the “feminine avenues” of their ancestry via blood memory, they can only access their feminine ancestors. The males, and by extension the male perspective, is forever closed to them. But not to the Kwisatz Haderach. The real biological link to these concepts are that, while women have an XX chromosome, and are thus entirely female, men have XY, and are really only half ‘pure male’. Males have something females don’t, but not the other way around. Although males have the capacity to be passive, and thus to take on the aspect of the Bene Gesserit, whose existence is passive despite its great importance and power, they are also endowed with the active element, forbidden to the feminine. This pure male essence is not only unknowable to the female/BG, it is terrifying to them. 

In this several myths are invoked. First there is the Dionysian image of the male leader surrounded by female sycophants in the Kwisatz Haderach as the male apotheosis of the Bene Gesserit coven. Second there are the various themes of the Great Goddess of the feminine, and the conquering aspect of the masculine, embodied in the myth of Apollo among many others. Notably missing from the story so far is a snake motif- an element central to the Apollo myth and to Great Goddess figures everywhere. But there will be, so look out for it. 

However, many are called but few are chosen to become the Kwisatz Haderach. And, although Paul has passed the first test, those who try to fulfill this role and fail are not forgiven. 

[asktheadeptus]

Collegia Titanica

"We are all but a weapon in the right hand of the Emperor."— Exhortations Principiis Titannorum, Divisio Militaris

The Collegia Titanica is the division of the Adeptus Mechanicus that operates and oversees the Titans, the colossal Imperial war machines that are the most powerful engines of war in the Imperium of Man. The Collegia is also more rarely known as the Adeptus Titanicus (a contraction of "Adeptus Mechanicus Collegia Titanica") and as the Legio Titanicus in ancient records dating back to the Great Crusade and the Horus Heresy.

Born of the time during the Age of Strife when the first temples to the Omnissiah were being raised on Mars, the Titans are the personification of the military might available to the Emperor of Mankind. Bristling with massive cannons and missile launchers capable of wreaking terrible destruction upon an enemy, they dominate the battlefields of the galaxy and are a testimony to the consummate skills of the Tech-priests of the Cult Mechanicus.

Every Titan is part of a larger unit called a Titan Legion. Each Titan Legion is based on a Mechanicus Forge World and remains under the direct control of the Adeptus Mechanicus, who jealously guard these mighty war machines and have the power to sanction which war zones they will commit their forces to. It is this power that gives the rulers of the Adeptus Mechanicus much of their influence when it comes to determining when the armies of the Imperium will fight. It is a power which is coveted by other factions on Terra -- especially the priests of the Ecclesiarchy, who would dearly love the reliable support of Titans for their wars of faith.

The Titan Legions of the Adeptus Mechanicus are amongst the most powerful military entities within the Imperium of Man. Ancient and implacable, Titans are colossal engines of war, rightly known as God-Machines to the Tech-priests, who revere them as the physical embodiments of the Machine God. Even the smallest class of Titan is mighty enough to destroy an entire tank squadron in a span of seconds or level a city block. Each Titan Legion is its own ancient warrior order inextricably linked to the Forge World (or worlds) on which it is based. The Titan Legions are fierce and proud, each with its own historic alliances and rivalries, and its own unique character that makes it somewhat similar to its counterparts amongst the Chapters of the Adeptus Astartes.

History

One of the most ancient pillars of the Adeptus Mechanicus, the Collegia Titanica operates the mighty Titans, each a bipedal metal giant armed with weapons able to level entire districts, and protected by armour and void shields capable of shrugging off attacks from all but the heaviest of foes. Though few in number compared to the uncountable hosts of the Great Crusade, the Titan Legions fought at the forefront of the Imperium's expansion, carrying the light of Unification to the benighted worlds of Mankind. The so-called "god-engines" of the Titan Legions have served Mankind since long before the Age of Strife, their origins lost in the Dark Age of Technology.

Old Night

During the Age of Terra the human race advanced beyond its ancient pre-industrial past to obtain space faring capability. In this ancient time, mankind slowly and painstakingly began to settle the habitable worlds in its own solar system and in the star systems near its homeworld using massive starships capable of only sublight speeds. Mars was one of the first colony worlds to be settled by humanity, if not the first. But during the Age of Strife, interstellar travel and communications became erratic as Warp Storms became more frequent and more intense as the birth pangs of the Chaos God Slaanesh roiled the Immaterium. The use of Warp-Drives and Astropaths to tie together human-settled space became increasingly useless during this time. Billions eventually died as a result of the wars, renegade psykers, daemonic possessions and starvation that ran rampant during this dark period.

Mars eventually found itself cut off from Terra and all the other human-settled worlds during this period, and its leaders could no longer acquire sufficient food or resources to accommodate its large population. Mars was soon consumed by strife as its society drifted into anarchy and a new faith began to spread amongst its people, a religion focused on the technology needed to ensure their continued survival on a world whose carefully constructed biosphere was unraveling before their very eyes. This was the Cult Mechanicus, dedicated to the animistic worship of the Machine God. Under the direction of the Mechanicus' rigid hierarchy of Tech-priests, the cultists set about restoring order to their world. The Legios themselves came into being on Mars during the anarchy of Old Night, when the fabled "Triad Ferrum Morgulus" was established. This trio of nascent Orders consisted of the Legio Tempestus, Legio Mortis and Legio Ignatum, and while all three stood against the horrors of Old Night, from ravening xenos to thinking-machine aberrations, they were just as equally likely to fight one another; for each served the interests of its home Forge above all else, so that throughout the long age of anarchy, rivalries were established that much later would bear bitter fruit indeed. The Tech-Priests of Mars built their first temples to the Machine God and eventually restored order to the Red Planet after the Age of Strife had passed.

The Lords of Terra

When the Emperor of Mankind came to the Red Planet, having brought unity to war-shattered Ancient Terra, the first human colony he encountered was the Red Planet, Mars. Heralded by all those who met him as the Omnissiah, the Machine God Incarnate, some within the Cult Mechanicus were not entirely pleased with this turn of events. A few of these malcontents incited a short and bloody insurrection against those within the Cult who called for an alliance with the Emperor, but eventually the opposition was crushed and Mars and Terra were finally reunited after millennia of separate development by the Treaty of Mars in circa 800.M30. This agreement formally founded the Imperium of Man as an alliance between Terra and the Cult Mechanicus, and granted the latter the autonomy required to maintain their faith even as the Emperor intended to spread his secular and atheistic Imperial Truth across the galaxy. Upon Olympus Mons the Lords of the Red Planet ascended to their place alongside the Imperium of Man, but the Mechanicum would ever remain an empire within an empire, for machine domains other than Mars existed across the galaxy and would in time swear fealty to the Fabricator-General of Mars. In recognition of the fact that the Unification of all humanity could not be achieved without the technological and scientific aid of the Mechanicum, Mars became an ally to Terra rather than her subject. With the massive human resources of Terra and the colossal technical and industrial power of Mars, the Emperor could begin his mighty enterprise of reconquering the galaxy on a firm foundation. Many long-forgotten human-settled planets were liberated and many more worlds were settled anew. Thus began the Great Crusade, and for over the next 200 Terran years the Imperium of Man rapidly expanded across the galaxy.

As the Emperor's hosts pushed ever outwards into the galaxy, casting back the horrors that had gripped the scattered human worlds for so many long centuries, the Titan Legions marched with them. Fighting alongside the trans-human Space Marines of the Legiones Astartes, the elite void-soldiers of the Solar Auxilia and numerous other forces in the rapidly expanding Excertus Imperialis, the Titan Orders came upon other I planets dominated by their long-lost kin, ll Forge Worlds not unlike Mars and ruled by I similar techno-theocracies. A few refused to acknowledge the primacy of the Red Planet and had to be forced to submit, or in some cases were even destroyed. The majority however knew of the Red Planet through the few fragments of archive data and echoes of legend which had managed to survive the Age of Strife, and willingly took their place in the new order.

The Might of the Titan Legions

The greatest of the newly-discovered Forge Worlds were found to host their own Titan Orders, and while many had developed their own unique and sometimes idiosyncratic cultures, others were found to have organised themselves along a similar line to the original Martian Triad Ferrum Morgulus, suggesting some underlying machine principle or pattern at work, which the Lords of Mars looked upon and found pleasing. Of the lesser Forge Worlds not possessed of the necessary templates, resources or expertise to construct and operate their own Titans, Mars favored those who swore fealty with such patronage that they might do so.

Within scant decades of the outset of the Great Crusade, the Mechanicum had discovered or founded a score of Titan Orders, and by the turn of the first century of the Great Crusade, the orders of battle by which the Legios arranged themselves had become somewhat codified, and while individual bodies exercised considerable variation in strategy, a degree of standardization was evident. The Fabricator-General proclaimed that the many Titan Orders should be recognized as a distinct class within the greater corpus of the Mechanicum, that its doctrines, traditions and battle honours might be propagated and preserved for the good of all Mankind. This body was to be known as the Collegia Titanica, and while the Legios themselves would remain subservient to the will of the individual forge lords, it would become a politically influential entity within the emerging structures of the nascent Imperium of Mankind.

The Collegia Titanica came to rate the strength of each Titan Legion according to a complex formula that allotted each a Militaris grade. First tier designations ranged from "primus" to "denarii", with a range of further clausal numerical definitions describing the Legio's specific capabilities, specializations and other characteristics. Though it rarely told the whole truth, the most obvious measure of a Titan Legion's strength was ever the number of god-engines it could field, with the largest maintaining as many as 200-300, while the smallest might be able to muster barely a dozen. In reality however, the mixture of Titan classes was a far more reliable indicator of potency than raw numbers. Few indeed could field the colossal Imperator-class, while almost all fielded significant numbers of Warhound Scout Titans, the lightest common engine, with the ubiquitous Warlord and the standard Battle Titan, a proven and powerful design which made up the bulk of most Legios' main strength. There were many other classes besides, notably the ancient Reaver and several Warlord variants such as the Nemesis and Nightgaunt and other, rarer chassis whose designs such as the Apocalypse, Carnivore and Komodo were unique.

Many Titan Legions had a particular mix of god-engines they preferred to commit to battle, exemplifying their own specific battle doctrines. Legio Audax, also known as the "Ember Wolves", for example, fielded a large number of Warhound Scout Titans, employing them as fast-moving hunting packs that were fearsomely effective at harrying and bringing down far larger enemy engines. Most Legios however, sought to maintain a balanced and flexible force able to prosecute a wide range of operations and confront many different foes.

Though some Titan Legions used their own vernacular, the Collegia Titanica enforced a degree of standardization in unit nomenclature. Depending on their role, Titans were fully capable of operating individually, and often did so when supporting conventional ground units. In practice, they were often deployed in formations of anything from two to ten god-engines, but broken into formal units known as a "maniple" comprising five god-engines -- the numeral's' having an occult and numerological signifier of destruction in many numismatic systems of prognostication favored by the Omnissian cult. The most senior Titan commander -- or princeps -- was appointed as the maniple's leader and this force was considered sufficient to prosecute all but the most apocalyptic of battles.

The Warriors of the Collegia Titanica

Titan crews rank alongside the elite of the Imperial Navy in the skill and with which they operate their mighty engines of war, although compared to the crews of void-faring warships they are few in number indeed. The princeps is in total command of the Titan via a mind impulse unit, a complex and not entirely understood device that merges body and mind with that of the engine so completely that a princeps controls the Titan's metal form as they would their own flesh. The process is a two-way one however, for each Titan, in particular the more ancient machines, is invested of its own individual anima which is the product of its deeds and its former masters, and which bleeds into the consciousness of the princeps to create a gestalt of the two. So immersive is this connection that should the Titan suffer damage, the princeps feels it as if their own flesh were wounded. Severe damage is likely to cause crippling stigmata on the princeps' body, and should the engine be dealt a killing blow, the cyber-neural feedback is almost certain to kill them.

Assisting the princeps are a number of specialist crew, the exact number and their roles dependent on the class of Titan as well as the doctrines of the parent Legio. These are known as "moderati", and each has responsibility for a different system, such as the sensors or the helm, adding their own oversight towards the mind impulse commands of the princeps. Several of these moderati are stationed at the princeps' side within the "head" of the god-engine, while others are located elsewhere in the Titan's mighty form-the gun moderati, for example, are often stationed in the carapace as near to their weapons as the Titan's complex anatomy allows. In addition, one or more Tech-Priests watch over the god-engine's mighty plasma generator, assisted by a small cadre of servitors. While a lighter class of Titan, such as a Warhound, might have but a handful of crew, a Warlord might have a dozen and an Imperator even more.

Servants of the Collegia Titanica

Not all of a Titan Legion's subjects serve within the mighty god-engines, for many more fight in their shadow. Each Forge World is served by massive cohorts of Skitarii, Scutarii and Secularis, and these are often assigned to provide the Titan Legions with massed ground forces capable of performing the battlefield duties which the Titans themselves are too large to perform. Furthermore, there are those Forge Worlds which, having compacted with subservient Knight Houses, march to war preceded by a fast moving skirmish line of Knight-Lancers and similar classes of walker that bridge the gap between infantry and Titan, engaging enemy vehicles and allowing the Titans to concentrate on the heaviest of enemy war machines, in particular enemy Titans.

It is when an army is to confront an enemy that is itself supported by Titans that they truly come into their own, and this only came about with the outbreak of the Horus Heresy. From the very outset, the Warmaster ensured that as many Titan Legions as possible rallied to his banner and first amongst these was the Legio Mortis -- the "Death's Heads" -- and soon others followed. Traitor Titans saw service in the very earliest battles of the Horus Heresy, including the Istvaan III Atrocity and the Istvaan V Dropsite Massacre. The Collegia Titanica was split asunder by the war and as it spread across the galaxy, the battlefields of the sundered Imperium burned with the staggeringly destructive potential of these mighty god-engines. The battle was never so bitter nor all-consuming however as when Traitor and Loyalist Titans faced one another in open war, the mortal soldiers fighting at their feet as inconsequential as insects and slain by the thousands as unimaginable energies were unleashed.

Horus Heresy

The Great Crusade continued to expand outwards, until the Imperium encompassed nearly the entire galaxy by the early years of the 31st Millennium. At that time, a new and unexpected threat emerged to challenge Mankind's dominance over the galaxy. This was the rebellion against the rule of the Emperor that would be known to later ages as the Horus Heresy. This revolt was instigated and led by the Warmaster Horus, the greatest and most beloved of the Emperor's sons, the Primarchs. The rebellion began with Horus' virus-bombing of those Space Marines whose loyalties to him were suspect on the world of Istvaan III, and soon took hold amongst half of the Space Marine Legions and many of the Titan Legions serving under the command of the Warmaster, until nearly one third of the entire armed forces of the Imperium had sworn their allegiance to the Traitors.

Schism of Mars

It is not entirely clear how Horus managed to turn such a significant percentage of the armies under his command against the Emperor, but he was known to be a very skilled and persuasive leader who commanded immense personal loyalty amongst his subordinates. But even before the opening stages of his planned insurrection occurred, he knew he would have to secure the support of the Mechanicus and their superior technology and weapons if he was to defeat the Emperor and conquer the galaxy. Horus won over the loyalty of many of the Mechanicus' Tech-adepts after promising them the lost secrets of ancient Standard Template Construct (STC) technology that had been recovered from the worlds of the recently subjugated Auretian Technocracy by the Sons of Horus Legion.

The climate on Mars was full of discontent during this tumultuous time. There were tense relations between the various Techno-Magi with sporadic outbreaks of espionage and violence being committed against the various forge cities that represented the primary sociopolitical units of Mars. There were even unconfirmed suspicions that the Titan Legions had already secretly chosen sides in case of a potential conflict. Regulus, the Mechanicus' representative to Horus' 63rd Expeditionary Fleet who had already thrown in his lot with the Warmaster's cause, was sent to the Red Planet to secure the tentative support of the Fabricator-General of Mars and the overall leader of the Mechanicus, Kelbor-Hal. Regulus convinced the Fabricator-General of Horus' resolve to support increased autonomy for the Mechanicus against the autocratic rule of the Emperor. As a show of his appreciation for the Fabricator-General's support, Horus provided information to Kelbor-Hal that allowed the Mechanicus to open a repository of forbidden knowledge known as the Vaults of Moravec, which had been sealed for nearly a thousand standard years. The Emperor himself had decreed that the vaults never be opened, for they contained innumerable artifacts of technology that had been fashioned or corrupted by the malign power of Chaos in ages past. But the deal was struck, and the Fabricator-General accepted Horus' proposal and joined forces with the Warmaster, assisting the Traitors with all of the most advanced technology of Mankind at his disposal.

When this repository was reopened, there was all manner of forbidden arcane knowledge and weaponry that had obviously been tainted by the corrupting influence of Chaos stored within. Soon the corruption spread throughout the forge cities and temples across the Red Planet as scrap code -- Chaos-contaminated digital source code that was infected with an arcane computer virus -- infested the logi-stacks and Cogitator (computer) archives of the Mechanicus, causing literal Chaos to emerge in any Cogitator system that was networked to one of its infected counterparts. The Fabricator-General and his Dark Mechanicum allies used this disruption to marshal the strength of their forces, intent on bringing the rule of Mars firmly under their control. Infected by this vicious scrap code, the Titans of the Legio Agravidesand the Legio Fortidus met their end when their reactors went critical and exploded, destroying their fortresses and eliminating these once-proud Titan Legions from the roster of Loyalist forces. In later years, this night would become known in Mechanicus legends as the Death of Innocence.

Later histories would record that the first blow of the Martian civil war was struck against Magos Mattias Kefra, whose forge city in the Sinus Sabaeus region was housed within the Madler Crater. Titans of the Legio Magna marched from the southern Noachis region and within minutes had smashed down the gates of Kefra's forge. Howling engines daubed in red, orange, yellow and black, decorated with flaming horned skull devices, ran amok within the high walls of the crater, crushing everything living beneath them and destroying thousands of standard years of accumulated wisdom in a fury of fire. Vast libraries burned and weapon shops that served the Imperial Army troops of the Solar Guard were reduced to molten slag as the indiscriminate slaughter continued long into the night, the Legio Magna's trumpeting warhorns sounding like the atavistic screams of primitive savages.

Amid the Athabasca Valles, the war machines of the Legio Ignatum and the Burning Stars Titan Legion fought in bloody close quarters through the teardrop landforms caused by catastrophic flooding in an earlier, ancient age of the Red Planet. Neither force could gain the advantage, nor could either claim victory, so after a night’s undignified scrapping, both withdrew to lick their wounds.

Along the borders of the Lunae Palus and Arcadia regions, what previously had been simply a heated debate between the partisans of the Emperor and Horus erupted into outright civil warfare as Princeps Ulriche of the Death Stalkersunleashed his war engines upon the fortress of Maxen Vledig’s Legio Honorum. Caught by surprise, the Legio Honorumlost nineteen Titans in the first hour of battle, before withdrawing into the frozen wastes of the Mare Boreum and seeking refuge in the dune fields of Olympia Undae. Their calls for reinforcement went unanswered, for all of Mars was tearing itself apart as the plague of war spread across the planet in a raging firestorm, a conflict known as the Schism of Mars by later generations.

The Fabricator-General's betrayal had only begun to unfold, and would soon see the Dark Mechanicus and the Traitor Titans of Mars joining Horus in open war against the Emperor on Terra itself.

Battle of Terra

The siege of Terra by the Traitor forces of Horus began with an orbital bombardment by the Warmaster's fleet as the prelude to invasion. After days of shelling, the Astartes of the Traitor Legions landed on the surface of Terra in Drop Pods and advanced on the two spaceports nearest the location of the Imperial Palace to secure them in preparation for the main landings of the Traitor forces. Elements from five of the Traitor Legions participated in the battle, aided by Traitor forces already on the surface. Despite the brave efforts of the Loyalists, the Eternity Wall and the Lion's Gate Spaceports fell within hours to the Forces of Chaos. With them secured, Horus' remaining troops in the Traitor Legions and their Traitor Imperial Army and Dark Mechanicus support forces landed en masse, and the hulking transports carried thousands of troops each. They also brought to the battlefield the terrible Traitor Titans that served the Warmaster's cause and had been infected with the daemonic spirits of Chaos. The transports' immense size made them prime targets for Terra's defence lasers. Although many of the Traitor landing craft were destroyed in-atmosphere, notably the transport vessel carrying the Legio Damnatus, many more made it to the surface, disgorging yet more soldiers, main battle tanks and Traitor Titans to add to the besiegers' strength. They met stiff resistance from the Loyalists as the Imperial defenders knew that the survival of their homeworld, their Emperor, and the entirety of the human race rested on their shoulders.

The siege of the Imperial Palace then began in earnest. Three times the Forces of Chaos scaled the walls, and three times were hurled back by the defenders. Frustrated at this lack of progress, Horus granted the Legio Mortis the singular honour of breaching the walls of the Imperial Palace, amongst whose defenders were the Loyalist Titans of the Collegia Titanica and their hated rivals -- the Legio Ignatum. Using the many powerful weapons at their disposal, they eagerly set about the task. By virtue of their insane fury they accomplished this near-suicidal endeavor, despite suffering the losses of over thirty Titans in one evening of fierce fighting. The Chaos Warlord-class Titans broke the outer walls and let inwards a flood of Traitors.

But ultimately, the Traitors' assault failed as the final events of the Heresy played out aboard Horus' own flagship, the Vengeful Spirit. The Emperor triumphed during the confrontation between himself and the Chaos-corrupted Warmaster, but only at the cost of his own mortal wounding. The majority of the Traitor Legions scattered following this disastrous defeat, and the Imperial forces gave chase, unleashing the period known as the Great Scouring. Hunted and pursued, system by system, the Chaos Space Marine Traitor Legions and the Traitor Titan Legions eventually were driven into the Eye of Terror and the worlds they had occupied were reconquered by the Imperium.

Post Heresy

Following the Horus Heresy, the Collegia Titanica continued to serve the Adeptus Mechanicus and the Imperium, bringing its might to bear where it was deemed required. Throughout the Heresy, past rivalries between certain Titan Legions were aggravated into outright hatred once they found themselves on opposing sides. For millennia they continued to battle the Traitors at every opportunity, and one of their most significant assignments is bearing vigil over the Eye of Terror and guarding Imperial space from Chaotic raids and Black Crusades. The Collegia Titanica also protects the Imperium from xenos incursions and other threats. Although as a result of their political autonomy as part of the Mechanicus they are generally not concerned with any internal quarrels that may occur between the Imperium's sometimes competing Adepta, they do at times interfere at the behest of their Mechanicus masters, whatever their motives may be.

Organisation

The Collegia Titanica is organised into separate Divisiones which each contains a number of Titan Legions (sometimes called "Orders"). A Titan Legion is a group of Titans of different classes under the command of a Grand Master, originating from a common Forge World or worlds. Each is bound by a common heritage, tradition and school of thought, and each possesses a distinctive code of conduct and their own predilection in regard to particular battlefield operation and employed tactics. Each Titan Legion also has a preference for the use of certain weapons, different uniform designs, Titan decorations, rank names, colors, heraldry, and other peculiarities. All of this variety is within certain limits, as Titan Legions may not, for example, change the existing system of ranks and the Collegia Titanica's standard chain of command, though they still possess much liberty in their mode of operation -- similar, in ways, to the Chapters of the Space Marines. Some Titan Legions were created to fulfill specific battlefield roles, such as siege works or combat in special environmental conditions, and thus are geared appropriately, both in terms of equipment and mindset.

The Collegia Titanica is the chief military arm of the Adeptus Mechanicus, and is beholden to that Adepta's ruling Tech-priests. By virtue of the autonomy of the Mechanicus within the broader structure of the Imperium, the Titan Legions answer only to the Tech-priests' hierarchy. Their deployments and assignments are exclusively decided by the Mechanicus' Magi, and each has to be authorized by the ruling lords of a Titan Legion's home Forge World. This right provides the Magi with great influence over when and where Imperial armies making use of Titan support will fight. On the battlefield, Titans may not be issued orders by other commanders, be they Imperial Guard or Space Marine officers. A Titan battlegroup's actions will only be decided by their commanding Princeps, a ranking Magos of the Mechanicus accompanying them, or in some situations by the lords of the Forge World the Titan Legion hails from. Although a high-ranking Tech-priest technically holds authority over a Titan Princeps, as he respects the Princeps' tactical knowledge and experience, the latter would be given much freedom in his actions on the field. The Magos, however, will interfere when he or she deems it necessary, for example ordering the battlegroup to withdraw from a world in order to avoid unnecessary Titan losses. There is one exception to the above -- a member of the Inquisition has the power to commandeer Titans already on the field and directly issue them orders, as well as to requisition the deployment of a Titan battlegroup from a Forge World. However, a wise and politically astute Inquisitor will be careful when interfering in Mechanicus business, and even more so because the Priesthood of Mars is understandably fiercely protective of their Titans.

The number of Titan Legions and individual Titans within the Collegia Titanica is unknown. Yet their ranks are presumed to be large. The Collegia Titanica has many deployments on its hands, protecting the Imperium not only from Traitors, but from xenos forces and other threats as well. Indeed, the Divisio Militaris deploys over a hundred Titan Legions to watch over the Eye of Terror alone, and the galaxy harbors many more threats to humanity that require the attention of the Titan Legions. In addition to these duties, the Titan Legions also take on expeditions which lead them away from the boundaries of the Imperium -- bringing new worlds into the Imperial fold, aiding Rogue Traders and Adeptus Mechanicus Explorator fleets.

The number of Titans in a single Legion varies greatly, as some possess as few as a dozen, and others maintain over a hundred. Battle losses take decades or even centuries to replace, as the construction of a new Titan is a long and extremely labourious process for the Adeptus Mechanicus. The Warlord-class is the most commonly found class of Battle Titan amongst the forces of the Imperium, while the Warhound is the smallest, utilized for scouting and flanking purposes. Between them stands the Reaver-class Battle Titan. The towering Emperor Battle Titans, the size of great Imperial cathedrals, are by far the most formidable types of Titans ever deployed by the Imperium, but an increasingly rare sight on the battlefields of the 41st Millenium. Titan Legions are deployed only in the most vital campaigns of the Imperium and on battlefields that will allow them to unleash the full power of their colossal weaponry.

Operation

Over the long millennia of constant warfare, the Legions of the Collegia Titanica have developed their own tried and tested tactics and battle formations, many of which are based around the unit known as the "maniple". This is a configuration that makes use of Reaver- and Warhound-class Titans, consisting of at least three machines. In a maniple formation, the Warhounds stride ahead of the Reavers, finding and marking targets to be destroyed by the advancing Titans. Some Titan battlegroups are in fact only maniples, and if such a force faces the need to divide its strength, it will create smaller units of near-identical configuration called demi-maniples.

The Tech-priests accompanying a Titan battlegroup carry with them the equipment necessary to accommodate Titans engaged in heavy combat, and in addition to the performance of mundane battlefield maintenance, have the means to conduct minor field repairs. The Tech-priests can facilitate the rearming of Titans in the event of the destruction of their original weapons load-out, or refit them with ordnance better suited for the task they face when battlefield conditions change.

Damaged Titans are taken after battle to the Tech-priests' facilities for repairs, but if during the course of fighting one of them sustains grave damage it will be withdrawn as soon as possible so as to avoid its untimely destruction, and given into the care of the Tech-adepts. If they prove unable to assuage the battered machine's pain, they will secure the ravaged Titan and return it to their home Forge World, where it may be given appropriate care. Despite such precautions, the God Machines occasionally do fall in combat, much to the grief of the Cult Mechanicus and in particular the crews and staff that accompanied them. When a campaign is running its course, although saddened, the Forge World will send new Titans to replace the battlefield losses and to continue the fight.

The Divisiones

The Collegia Titanica has four Divisiones, the Divisio Mandati, the Divisio Telepathica, the Divisio Investigatus, and most importantly, the Divisio Militaris, which is the main fighting force of the Collegia Titanica. The Divisiones are further divided into a number of "Legions" or "Orders": groupings of Titans bound by a common heritage such as the Legio Ignatum or the Legio Gryphonicus. Each Titan Legion is a self-contained unit headed by an officer with the rank of Grand Master.

Divisio Militaris

The Titan Legions of the Divisio Militaris (or as it is more commonly called, the Military Orders) are the main military force of the Collegia Titanica, and each includes its own support staff in addition to its Titans. Each Legion is based on its own Adeptus Mechanicus Forge World -- most Forge Worlds maintaining one, though others are known to harbor a larger number -- with Mars itself having three. Although their home Forge Worlds are technically their bases, the Titan Legions are actually stationed throughout the galaxy, guarding vulnerable locations across the Imperium. Many Legions are stationed near the Eye of Terror, ready to combat their Chaotic counterparts. Some of the Military Orders are highly specialized forces, created to deal with siege works or combat in exotic planetary environments.

Divisio Mandati

The Titan Legions of the Divisio Mandati are known as "Executive Orders." They travel in vast temple-spacecraft, responsible for bringing the Pax Imperia to isolated worlds of the Imperium. Each temple ship carries between two and five of the immense Emperor Battle Titans, as well as Tech-priests, Mechanicus regular troops, maintenance Adepts and support personnel.

Each Emperor Titan in the Divisio is its own self-contained unit, carrying members of the Adeptus Arbites, the Inquisition and the other Adepta of the Adeptus Terra. With an Emperor Titan as their platform, servants of the Imperium can be very persuasive, and if that fails, they possess more than enough firepower to get their point across. It is through this combination of persuasion and potent threat that the Pax Imperia is brought to many worlds.

Some of the Executive Orders never leave the boundaries of Imperial space, confined to the dioceses left to their care. The elite of the Divisio Mandati's Titan Legions are known as "Missionary Orders" -- they travel beyond the borders of the Imperium, often accompanying Rogue Traders in discovering new worlds and regions of space to be settled and exploited by Mankind.

Divisio Telepathica

Being highly specialised, the Divisio Telepathica is somewhat smaller than the Divisiones Mandati and Militaris. The Divisio Telepathica is responsible for the operation of the dreaded Psi-Titans, whom, judging by their known deployments, are specially designed to combat the Forces of Chaos and the Traitor Titan Legions. Its Legions are called the "Telepath Orders", each operating from a secret Forge World near the heart of the Imperium. The existence of Chaos is a closely held secret of the Imperium, as are all those organisations like the Ordo Malleus and the Grey Knights devoted to combating it. Since nearly nothing is known of the Divisio Telepathica, and because of their presumed dedication to combating the Ruinous Powers, it is not unlikely that it ranks alongside those esteemed servants of the Imperium as being entirely unknown by the greater populace of the galaxy.

Divisio Investigatus

The Divisio Investigatus is the scientific research and development division of the Collegia Titanica. Its role is to construct the many war engines used by all the Titan Legions, and to engineer and test the rare improvements made in Titan technology by the increasingly stagnant Imperium. At times, a Research Order takes part in battle so that it can test its new designs under proper combat conditions. The Divisio Investigatus' Titan Legions favour the Warlord-class Titans, as their well-known handling characteristics and capabilities make them an ideal test-bed for the Divisio's new devices.

The Warriors of the Collegia Titanica

Titan crews are ranked alongside the elite of the Imperial Navy in the skill and with which they operated their mighty engines of war, although compared to the crews of void-faring warships they were few in number indeed. The Princeps is in total command of the Titan via a mind impulse unit, a complex and not entirely understood device that merges body and mind with that of the engine so completely that a princeps controls the Titan's metal form as they would their own flesh. The process is a two-way one however, for each Titan, in particular the more ancient machines, is invested of its own individual anima which is the product of its deeds and its former masters, and which bleeds into the consciousness of the princeps to create a gestalt of the two. So immersive is this connection that should the Titan suffer damage, the princeps feels it as if their own flesh were wounded. Severe damage is likely to cause crippling stigmata on the princeps' body, and should the engine be dealt a killing blow, the cyber-neural feedback is almost certain to kill them.

Assisting the princeps are a number of specialist crew, the exact number and their roles dependent on the class of Titan as well as the doctrines of the parent Legio. These are known as "Moderati", and each has responsibility for a different system, such as the sensors or the helm, adding their own oversight towards the mind impulse commands of the princeps. Several of these moderati are stationed at the princeps' side within the "head" of the god-engine, while others are located elsewhere in the Titan's mighty form-the gun moderati, for example, are often stationed in the carapace as near to their weapons as the Titan's complex anatomy allows. In addition, one or more Tech-Priests watch over the god-engine's mighty plasma generator, assisted by a small cadre of servitors. While a lighter class of Titan, such as a Warhound, might have but a handful of crew, a Warlord might have a dozen and an Imperator even more.

As a result of the battles they come through together and because of their link to their Titan's Mind Impulse Unit, Princeps and Moderati are often more closely knit than families. Being linked to the MIU can also be dangerous and even lethal, as the potent Machine Spirit of a Titan can wreck an unprepared individual's consciousness and drive them to madness. Damage to the system's circuitry can cause the MIU to go haywire, and in such circumstances, the luckiest are killed instantly by the psychic shock, while the rest are reduced to gibbering lunatics. Most of the crews' MIU's are equipped with manual emergency cut-offs, however, sometimes the Moderati and Princeps are not able to utilize them quickly enough to avoid the damage. MIU links are attached via implanted socket connectors in the cranium and neck, or in the body armour the crew wear. The armour's role is to shield them from secondary damage caused by shrapnel and impacts, and it additionally contains power and life support units, also attached by umbilicals to external devices. These umbilicals have many redundant channels, so that if any one is severed in the heat of battle, another can easily take its place, making sure that nothing impedes the crew's ability to fight.

Tech-Priests

Tech-priests are charged with maintaining the Titan during the course of a battle, monitoring the state of the unstable and dangerous plasma reactor which is used to satiate the great machine's colossal power requirements, making sure that there is enough output to operate as many systems as possible, and that a catastrophic meltdown does not occur. In addition, the Tech-priest will tend to other devices present on the Titan, guaranteeing that they function to their best ability. Amongst those devices are the Void Shield generators, which are a Titan's first line of defense. In the process of deflecting and absorbing hits, the generators build up a large excess of power, which eventually will cause them to shut down to prevent damage. A Tech-priest will attempt to withdraw as much as possible, at the same time carefully monitoring the reactor, so that the Titan does not take a direct hit. However, when the Void Shields fail, the God Machine sustains structural damage. In such an event, the Tech-priest will immediately make sure that the reactor does not threaten meltdown, attempt to bring the Void Shield generators back on line, and then scan the Titan, searching for systems which have been disabled by damage, and try to repair them. In all these tasks, the Tech-priest is assisted by a number of Servitors hard-wired into the machine.

Reverence

To the Cult Mechanicus, Titans are incarnations of the Machine God in the material realm, and possess a sacredness invested in them by virtue of their antiquity and technical complexity. The Tech-Priests proclaim their divine nature by word and ritual. A thousand times blessed and consecrated with the holiest unguents, a Titan is a towering, walking idol to the Tech-priests of the Machine God. Many see the honor of serving aboard a Titan as an opportunity to serve the Omnissiah in person, and there is no greater service a mere mortal can perform.

Prior to being sent into battle, ceremonies are performed and the war engines are blessed. Exotic creatures are slain and their blood used to anoint each Titan's foot -- a symbol of the reality that they will soon lay blood at the Emperor's feet. During these rituals a senior Tech-priest will sprinkle the machine with sanctified oils and recite passages of the Prima Incubatoria. These rites serve to rouse the Titan's Machine Spirit and prepare it for battle. A holy engine of destruction, a Titan's death is greatly saddening to all in the Cult Mechanicus. When one of their number falls, the rest will attempt to recover its ravaged hull and send it to their home Forge World, which will mourn its passing and toll a bell for each Titan lost.

Heraldry

Each Titan bears a distinctive and unique set of symbols. The Titan Legions use a complex and largely archaic system of decorations, icons and insignia to record a machine's past, as well as dedicating its Machine Spirit to the Emperor. Amongst those are banners flown from the Titan as well as markings and heraldry etched on the Titan's hull. The following specifications lay out a minimum standard followed by much of the Collegia Titanica. However, every Titan Legion, and to lesser extent individual machines and their crews, have much freedom in designing their own decorations.

Crew Badges and Uniforms

The uniforms and insignia of a Titan crew are largely specific to a given Titan Legion, as they are entitled to create their own designs. The body armour worn by Titan crewmen, in addition to granting protection, only has to accomodate two functions -- to allow for a cybernetic link to the Mind Impulse Unit, and to contain the necessary power and life support systems. Usually, a crew member's rank badge will be displayed on his left shoulder, whereas the Titan Legion badge will be shown on the right. Some Legions also use a chest badge, and the symbol of a crew member's rank will be attached to or hanging on a short chain from it. Personal decorations are not uncommon, especially amongst Moderati who mark their kills on their left sleeves. It is also common practise for Princeps to add their Titan's honours to their uniform. Some Titan Legions, however, choose not to display any decorations and insignia on their uniforms, believing that the markings their Titans bear convey all the required information.

Ranks

Titan crewmen, save for the war machines' attendant Tech-priests, are divided into four ranks. These are, in order of seniority, the Moderatus, the Princeps, the Senior Princeps, and the Titan Legion's Grand Master. Although such an event would be rather unlikely, in theory a Moderatus can advance through the ranks and one day become a Grand Master himself. The Moderatus rank badge is in the shape of a plain circle surrounding a hollowed-out geometric figure -- if the Order the crewman belongs to utilizes chest badges, in the amulet attached to it this shape will be socketed with a phased crystal gem which is used as a key to the Titan's controls. The Princeps and Senior Princeps also bear similar insignia, however the circles around their socketed gems have lugs added -- four and twelve, respectively. A Grand Master's rank badge is unknown. However, when one takes to the field aboard his Titan and wishes to make his presence apparent, he is entitled to fly a banner bearing his Divisio's symbol. Some Legions use different names for these ranks, though none is entitled to change the system itself -- for example, some Titan Legions designate a Senior Princeps as a "High Princeps."

Hull Markings

Titan hulls are richly inscribed and decorated, as befits these physical avatars of the Omnissiah. This grows more true over time, as they are awarded honours for their performance on the battlefield, and their crews never miss an opportunity to etch a new commendation on the machine. The war engines also bear the personal heraldry of their Princeps. In the event of their death, the old commander's emblem would be removed and the new one's painted in its place. The standard place for these heraldic sigils are, for Reaver-class Titans, the kneeplates, or for Warhound-class Titans, the carapace or leg plates. Although the colour scheme is constant for all Titans in a Legion, the decorations they bear are not. Machines of similar names (e.g Canis Primus, Canis Secundus) will bear similar decorations, however, since those are very much the indication of the individual Titan, no two can be exactly alike. The war engine's head will often be inscribed with the name of the Titan, or, barring that, the name of its Legion. The hull will also display a gilded dedication to the Emperor, along with the Purity Seals the machine has earned during its service.

Titans can also be seen bearing identification marks. They are symbols etched on the Titan's legs where they can be clearly seen by ground level troops and provide them with information on what class of a Titan is towering over them. The Warhound identification mark is a rectangular shape standing on four unevenly spaced vertical legs, the Reaver mark is an axe facing leftwards, and the Warlord mark is two crossed axes. Imperator-class Titan identification marks are presently unlisted in Imperial records.

Banners

The banners flown from the Titan contain much information on its origin, history and feats, its past and present, the information essential to what the Titan is. These banners are very much prized Imperial relics in their own right, and will be taken down from the machines to which they belong prior to battle in order to preserve them. This means that for most of the time, the banners are stored on the Titan Legion's homeworld, or follow the Titans on their deployments to warzones stashed safely behind the front lines in the resupply and refit facilities set up by the Tech-priests accompanying the war machines.

Honour Banners

The Honour Banner is the most prominent banner flown from a Titan, bearing the symbol of the Legion it belongs to and displaying the rank of the Princeps in command of it. It also usually displays the individual Titan's honours and battles won. The Honour Banner has the following form: it is split into two horizontal bands on the top of the Banner, the rest being split into two vertical bands of equal size. The left vertical band is further split in a similar fashion, one horizontal band on top and two vertical bands below. The larger horizontal bands bear, top to bottom, the emblem of the Titan Legion the machine belongs to, and the name of its home Forge World. Some Titan Legions, however, choose to display the Legion's name instead, and some individual Titan banners can be seen displaying their revered machine's name altogether. Further, the right vertical band contains a listing of the battles the Titan participated in and won (likely under its current Princeps), broken down by the type of enemy they faced – these markings being entirely invented by a given Legion. On the left vertical band, the top horizontal section displays the rank of the Princeps in command of the Titan, as well as recording past Princeps, if only by number. On the leftmost vertical band, the Titan's individual honours are listed in the form of arrayed "T" symbols. The vertical section located to the right contains a High Gothic litany of deliverance from danger, and dedicates the war engine to the Emperor.

Kill Banners

The Kill Banner displays the Titan-class kills attributable to the actions of an individual Moderatus. The Kill Banner usually takes the shape of a triangle, with a top section bearing decoration used to differentiate each Moderati's banner, and the lower section listing the kills -- usually in the form of skulls. If there is only one Gun Moderatus aboard a Titan, only one banner will be flown. The Moderati religiously mark their feats on their banners, as a form of service to the Titan, and in extension, to the Machine God.

Heresy Banners

During the dark days of the Horus Heresy, fully half of the Collegia Titanica's Titan Legions declared their allegiance to the rebel Warmaster Horus in his bid for power over Mankind. Those Titans that have remained loyal to the Emperor during that grim time -- and survived -- gained the right to fly Heresy Banners, as a display of their steadfast loyalty to the Imperium. The banner, in addition to decoration specific to a given Titan Legion, bears the Divisio Militaris eagle, the Legion's campaign motto, citations and honours from battles the Titan has taken part in, and purity seals it has been awarded during this period.

Source: http://warhammer40k.wikia.com

[dipulb3]

The man behind Fortnite is making the riskiest bet of his career. The payoff could be huge

New Post has been published on https://appradab.com/the-man-behind-fortnite-is-making-the-riskiest-bet-of-his-career-the-payoff-could-be-huge/

The man behind Fortnite is making the riskiest bet of his career. The payoff could be huge

The CEO and founder of Epic Games has had a knack for picking the right battles while also shoring up his company’s independence. Fortnite, the company’s blockbuster battle royale game, recently topped more than 15 million concurrent players and has spawned a universe of fandom. Epic challenged established platforms by launching its own digital video game storefront. And the multi-billion dollar company developed the Unreal Engine, a proprietary software for making its own video games that it licenses out to other developers and animators.

Now Sweeney, 50, is embarking on the biggest battle in his company’s 30-year history: Epic is suing Apple and Google in a legal challenge that could remake the future of the digital economy.

“Epic’s frustration with Apple especially, and Google to some extent, had been building up for at least three years. Ever since Fortnite grew to have a large audience, we felt stifled by several things,” Sweeney told Appradab Business during a December interview.

Launched in 2017, Fortnite quickly became a phenomenon. When it first debuted, Epic charged $40 to download the game — a typical price. But the company quickly pivoted to a riskier business model, betting that offering Fortnite as a free-to-play game with in-app purchases of digital items like outfits would generate more overall revenue.

The bet paid off. Though Epic has raked in billions off Fortnite’s in-game purchases — about $1.3 billion in 2020 and $1.8 billion in 2019, according to Nielsen’s gaming division SuperData — the company balked at paying a chunk of that revenue to app store owners like Apple and Google. If a player downloaded Fortnite from Apple’s App Store, for example, Apple would receive a 30% cut of all in-app purchases.

Sweeney believed that requirement violated antitrust laws because it forced developers to use Apple and Google’s payment systems.

So Epic spent months developing its battle plan to fight Apple, which it codenamed “Project Liberty,” he said.

The company prepped a 60-page lawsuit and created a video that parodied Apple’s classic “1984” commercial, for good measure.

On August 13, Project Liberty was sprung into action — a plan that sought to force the tech giants into response.

In a blog post, Epic encouraged Fortnite users to pay the company directly for in-app purchases. Both Google and Apple promptly removed Fortnite from their stores, alleging the company violated their terms of service. Epic then filed lawsuits against each of the companies, in which Epic argued the courts should intervene and order Apple and Google to allow developers to sell in-app purchases without the 30% revenue cut.

“Epic’s problem is entirely self-inflicted and is in their power to resolve,” Apple said in a statement. “Epic has been one of the most successful developers on the App Store, growing into a multibillion dollar business that reaches millions of iOS customers around the world. We very much want to keep the company as part of the Apple Developer Program and their apps on the Store.”

Google responded that it had “consistent policies that are fair to developers” and that Fortnite had violated those rules. “However, we welcome the opportunity to continue our discussions with Epic and bring Fortnite back to Google Play,” it added.

For Sweeney, who spoke to Appradab Business via video call from his home, the battle against Apple and Google is about more than just a 30% cut of its revenue.

“I grew up in a time in which anybody could make software. This is my first computer, an Apple II,” said Sweeney, gesturing towards the iconic blocky, grey machine on the desk behind him. “You turn it on and it comes up with a programming language prompt,” he continued. “So I felt all along that open platforms are the key to free markets and the future of computing.”

Early dreams

In 1991, a young, 20-something Sweeney founded Epic, then known as Potomac Computer Systems, as a way to sell copies of a video game he made himself. He ran the company out of his parents’ house in Maryland.

While Epic produced its own shooter games like Fire Fight and Unreal, it also began licensing its game development technology to other game makers in the late 1990s. This became the Unreal Engine, a ubiquitous game software which is now an essential part of Epic’s business. Between 2012 and 2017, Epic survived mostly on revenue generated from the Unreal Engine’s licensing fees, said Sweeney. Today, the Unreal Engine is also used in animation, such as creating scenes for Disney’s “The Mandalorian.”

Sweeney said he always envisioned Epic as a multi-faceted business. He wanted Epic to both make and sell games — and create and license the tools used to make them.

One part of that equation was, of course, Fortnite.

From the outset, Epic has always has always had outsized ambitions for Fortnite. The game has dozens of crossovers each year, from Marvel’s Avengers to Star Wars. It hosts massive virtual concerts and gives gamers endless shiny features, with the aim that there’s something new each time a player logs on. But the breakneck speed of development allegedly had a real cost for its workers, some of whom told gaming publication Polygon in 2019 that they regularly worked 70-hour weeks. Since then, Epic has made changes including hiring more people, soliciting more employee feedback, offering unlimited paid time off and mandating company-wide vacations, according to the company.

Epic’s decision in 2018 to expand into selling third-party games created yet another business opportunity, and yet another fight against the establishment. By launching its own games store, and cutting out the middleman, Epic was attempting to break into an already thriving market for PC games that was, at the time, dominated by Steam, a popular games store.

“We had to move mountains in order to have any chance of gaining traction at all,” said Sweeney. Epic’s store attracted attention for splashy stunts like giving away Grand Theft Auto V, which is the best-selling game in the US in the last decade, according to NPD Group.

While the Epic Games Store has gained momentum, attracting over 160 million PC users and generating over $700 million in purchases last year according to the company, critics object to its exclusive deals that keep certain games out of other stores. Sweeney has defended his position, saying the store exclusives are a reasonable strategy that helps Epic compete against Steam.

In 2019, Epic acquired social media app Houseparty and later announced it would add voice chat to Fortnite through the app.

The company was valued at $17.3 billion as of 2020, making Sweeney a billionaire.

Uniquely positioned

While investors of Epic include Tencent, which has a 39% stake, and Sony, which purchased a 1.4% stake in 2020 for $250 million, Sweeney remains the CEO and controlling shareholder.

Competitor Roblox has announced its plans for a direct listing and Unity — a rival to Unreal — went public in 2020. But Epic Games has little interest in an IPO.

“We’re still a highly independent company who’s not beholden to public markets in which we have to show ever-increasing profits,” said Sweeney. “And anything like a fight like this [with Apple and Google], which loses us money for a year or more, would never be tolerated. So we have the financial independence to do that.”

Epic’s business model gives it a flexibility that other tech companies don’t necessarily have.

“Unlike Facebook, iOS doesn’t drive the majority of Epic’s revenues. Unlike Spotify or Netflix, Epic is highly profitable,” said Matthew Ball, a former Amazon Studios executive and strategist who has penned over 20,000 words on Fortnite and Epic. “And unlike almost all other large companies, Epic is private and majority controlled by one person.”

Ball added that the fight with Apple and Google didn’t come without sacrifices for Epic, which might see avid iPhone users find other games to replace Fortnite as the app spends months if not years in legal purgatory. “But Epic is uniquely able to push back,” he said.

What’s at stake

Sweeney declined to say how much the company is spending on legal fees, but he said that the fight to take on Apple and Google is costing “lots and lots” of senior leadership time.

And the ban on Fortnite in app stores is costing the company plenty in lost revenue. Fortnite users have spent about $1.2 billion globally on the game on iOS since its launch, according to mobile app tracker Sensor Tower.

Epic’s case against Apple is expected to go to trial in May. Google is seeking to have Epic’s suit dismissed in a hearing scheduled on February 18.

Such a public fray has unnerved some developers, who fear that Apple might go a step further and remove apps from its store simply for being built using the Unreal Engine, which it briefly threatened to do last August.

“We were legitimately planning to switch to Unreal for our next VR project but after Tim decided to poke the bear we decided it wasn’t [worth] the risk,” game developer Ryan Engle tweeted in December. “I love Epic and Unreal, but business is business and the real-world consequences of Apple banning Epic is too much risk for us.”

Sweeney responded saying that Engle’s “fear of retaliation by Apple” was shared by many developers, but Epic would “fight on just the same!”

Epic is also risking Fortnite’s market share on iOS and Android platforms, as fans may turn to other games during the legal battle. On Android devices, Fortnite can be downloaded from Epic’s website and app stores other than Google’s Play Store, so while access is hindered, it’s not eliminated. However on Apple devices, the game can no longer be downloaded at all.

Sweeney also faced backlash in November for controversially comparing Fortnite’s legal battle to the civil rights movement.

“The point is if you really want to make a difference, you have to buck the system,” Sweeney said in response to the criticism. “I think there’s a lot we can learn from any of the past struggles in humanity and I think it’s perfectly healthy to apply struggles from vital causes in the history of the world to struggles over smaller issues like software platforms.”

Returning to court

For Epic Games and Sweeney, the risks are worthwhile. Sweeney fears a dystopian future where tech platforms are dominated by a few companies and the most successful apps are cloned by those companies to maximize profits.

“[The companies] will just do that industry by industry and app category by app category until they’ve gobbled up everything that matters. And who will be left?” said Sweeney. “A million indie developers who collectively together make a small percentage of revenues on the app store because these businesses are too small to be attractive to steal.”

In what Epic’s best case scenario, the court could rule that Apple and Google are prohibited from bundling payment services with their app stores, allowing developers to be paid directly, according to legal experts.

But if Epic loses, it will at least make clear what the limits of antitrust law are, so people with similar grievances can look to appeal Congress for antitrust reform, according to John Bergmayer, legal director of consumer rights group Public Knowledge.

“I think [Epic winning the lawsuits] would be pretty good for the markets overall,” said Mitch Stoltz, senior staff attorney of the nonprofit digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation, in an August interview. “You’d see more experimentation. You’d see more business models. You’d see more innovation.”

As for Sweeney, he’s optimistic Epic can change the industry.

“It’s Epic fighting or pressing for change and succeeding, and it’s not that unusual,” he said. “We’ve done it many times and everybody in the industry has benefited often.”