I’m not over Kother’ai. I’m just not. And I just …
One little thing. One thing that struck me. Thinking of what this play became, what it has done, and thinking about what Yanessa bloody Halovar wanted to do to it. Just. In light of everything that has just happened. The raw beauty of what happened, what it meant. What she planned was already horrific with no knowledge of the ritual, just for the sheer butchery of history and the stripping of orcish autonomy implied in her propaganda, but with that knowledge …
This might never have happened. This moment of absolute wonder. It might never have happened. If Hal and his company, all those terrified actors and musicians and stage hands and barkers, all those people who stood to lose everything for defying one of the most powerful and terrifying people in this city, if they hadn’t been willing to stand anyway, to sing anyway, to create anyway … It might never have happened. We might never have known what was possible.
All those lost souls would still be trapped in eternal slavery.
But also. Looking at what she wanted for the play. Looking at the bones of what she wanted. An odd … An odd detail jumped out at me. An interesting resonance.
Yanessa Halovar: Vokjan communicates a lot towards his people. He keeps bringing it back to the Rungjani. But of course there will be many in your audience who are not themselves Rungjani. Perhaps if there was something that he referred to that there was a spirit moving upon him. Something that he almost didn’t understand why he was doing what he was doing. That there was something communicating to him.
This was so vile. Turning Vokjan, and all his courage, all his hope, all his sacrifice, into nothing, a puppet to the will of her false god, doing nothing of his own volition. Making it that the Rungjani did not choose to fight, but were motivated to it purely by the will of something else. The ‘spirit’ moving upon him. It was vile.
Brennan: You watch as his type changes from undead into celestial. And he flies forward in a flash that is obscured by the illusion on stage, and flies into Lash’s chest. Lash looks out, reaches out, takes the Pariah Blade from a ‘dead’ Shadia who has red handkerchiefs all over her, raises the sword aloft. “What would you give, then, to be free?!?”
In a weird way, that moment she had planned for was directly replicated? But … inverted. The other way around. That moment was there. ‘Vokjan’, on the stage, feeling a spirit move upon him. The touch of something holy.
But it’s not Vokjan being moved. It’s Vokjan doing the moving. He’s not the vessel, he’s the spirit.
Lash, in this moment, is experiencing exactly what Yanessa wanted. Not falsely, not in propaganda, but for real. This orcish actor, in the midst of the greatest performance of his life, is truly touched by something holy. But it’s not the Light. It’s no false god. It’s … It’s one of his own. One of his people. An ancestor, one who fought and died for him, one that he’s honouring in this very moment, with all his skill and courage, and one … He doesn’t know this, but one whose soul he has just helped save. By his courage, by his action, by his art. He is touched, not as a motivation for war, not as a hollow invocation of a false power, but just out of pure joy and gratitude.
And he’s not puppeted, he’s just …
He speaks, and a voice from the past speaks with him. He says the words, as part of a fight they’re fighting right now, a stand they’re taking for the sake of their art and their people and their city, and the voice of his ancestor, now a holy being, speaks with and through him. Standing together. Saving each other.
There is no Light. There is no false god. There is no butchery of the history and the sacrifices of their people. There’s just … Rungjani. Standing together. Saving each other. There is a holy thing here, but it doesn’t demand their sacrifice, it’s born of it. It’s not a foreign spirit, imposing its will on them, it’s they themselves, reaching out across centuries and the boundaries of life and death to help free each other. There’s no god. There’s just … people. Fighting for each other.
Uli. All the way back in Episode 3. The member of Hal’s company who remembers the Shapers War, and remembers life before the Shapers War. When Thaisha asked him what he thought of Hal’s plans for the Hallowed Round, what he thought of taking the site of all their agonies, their forced worship, and turning it into this. This thing that it has now fully become.
Uli: Here in this place, I remember when I was a boy, propitiated the Shaper. Of all the Shapers and all the people of Araman, he told us to serve him, as all the Shapers did. But we were the only people that knew that we were doing it without a reward. The land that was promise to us after death was the same as life, just more suffering. Endless wasteland choked by ash and fire. But what he didn’t know is that there’s no way to look up from this stage at the sky and not see something more beautiful. And that’s our city. I know now that those who sang songs in this place, even if the words were meant to soothe his wrath and keep our lives in propitiating his fury, the melody, the dance, the fury and the passion, that was always for us.
It was always for us. Even under Azgra. It was always for us. This art, this dance, this passion. All of it. It was always for us.
And it still is. No matter what the fucking Candescent Creed and every other ‘faith’ that means nothing but the pursuit of power would have us believe. Maybe we’ll put on the performances we’re forced to put on, maybe we can’t fully escape that, but even then, somewhere under it, always, there will be this. This truth. It’s not for them. It’s for us.
And through it. Born of its sacrifice. So many things are possible.
Even the deaths of gods, and the overturning of fate, and the freeing of souls from slavery beyond death.
The Hallowed Round, right now, is a holy place. It has witnessed a holy event. But in a lot of ways, it was always a holy place. Not because it was sacred to Azgra, but because it was sacred to them. To the Rungjani. It was the place of their suffering, and the place of their art, and the place of their defiance, and the place of their freedom.
Because the city was always right there. The people were always right there. When Vokjan is called here from that wasteland of ash and fire that all Rungjani were condemned to, he did as they have always done here. He looked out. He looked back. He looked at Dol Makjar. And he looked at the orcish people, the Rungjani in the audience behind him. With their nice clothes, and their flowers, and all the soft and gentle things that they were never allowed to have. He sees what every Rungjani who has ever stood on this ground, on this stage, has ever looked to see. Their people. Now free.
And he became, in that moment, with their help, a holy thing.
Because holiness is not a foreign thing, imposed from outside, falsely or otherwise. It is what it always was. Just people. Giving what they have, to do what they can.
And that … I don’t think that’s something Yanessa Halovar can even imagine. Which is sad, in its own way. She will never have a moment like this one poor orcish actor, Lash, out here unwittingly and bewilderedly doing his best, and touching something wonderful without ever fully knowing why.
Yanessa’s religion is all theatre. And this theatre … is all faith.
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