Family, Control, Faith, Hierarchy (part 4.5A)
Part of a series. See the contents for other parts
Awkwardly numbered, and yes posted after parts 5 and 6, because... Well, I've done this thing that's happened before, that by the time I finish something big, my mind has turned into so much mush that I can't assess the state of my own work. Only thought in my mush head: it's done, time to post. But uh once my brain recovered I had to realize it was still just a first draft. I slowed down to edit more as I was rolling the posts out, but eventually I realized I'm really missing some things in here to drive home the big points I want to make for the overall series, emphasizing all the themes and all that. And it's easier to make this odd insertion into the contents than rearrange/do massive edits on what I've already posted XD;;; (I'll be going back to make a proper introduction too at some point I think, but that will just be an edit to the first post). There will be a 4.5B
Apostasy: Family and Faith Bound into One
I've said much by now on the pilgrims' place in Pharloom. Inheriting a system of rule and hierarchy and faith, and further a place in a kingdom-wide family as successors to Pharloom's first children...even without knowing the mother at the top of it all.
But how about something more direct? That is, all of this designation of their place in family is through the intermediary of the Weavers. In other words, what is family to GMS, and who is included? What are the bugs of Pharloom to her? What does she want from them?
Unravelled silk heart: ...Their voices... Their song... / ...Their memory... / ...Bind their shells... / / ...Bind their souls... / ...Bind them all... / ...Raise them... Up... / ...To devote... Eternal... // ...One mind... One union...
Widow, before she notices Hornet: They shall join... Union upon your thread... A gift, for your waking. A world strung to serve...
Bell Hermit: Power existed in these lands even before [GMS] bound them beneath her.
Hornet: This land's grandeur, the devotion of its bugs, and the curse that befalls them. The signs are clear. Your kingdom is in the thrall of a creature beyond bug, one of that higher caste.
Hornet: You were mortal bugs, caught beneath a being pale... Devotion or destruction... these are the only fates my kind allow.
Eternal devotion, union. A kingdom bound beneath. I wouldn't say these things point to the bugs being like children, including the one direct example of GMS's speech (for the silk heart). Same as some other aspects shared between common bugs and her children, such as the imposition of religion, I can't say these words aren't how she speaks of her children. But the focus isn't like how she speaks of Weavers or silk-spun children.
First Sinner: ...She called us daughters... Called us divine... She lied...
GMS directly called the Weavers her daughters and divine. I am doubtful she called the bugs children, and calling them divine seems out of the question.
Bell Beast silk heart: ...Child... Weaver... / ...Child... Spider... / ...Arrived... At last... / ...Our Silk... / ...Our strength... / ...Our nature... / ...We feel it... / ...Rise... Rise... // ...Come, child... Witness our waking...
First Sinner needolin: I did not wane! / I did not forget! / Sustained by fury! / Cursed by Silk! / Cursed with Silk! / Cursed to know… / The sin... the truth...
Lace silk heart: ...From our Silk... A child born loyal…
Clawmaiden needolin: ...Your Silk... / ...Your strength... / ...Ours by birth... / ...Ours by right...
GMS recognizes her nature in Hornet. Her silk. All the Weavers have that same silk. The silk-spun children obviously are made entirely of the stuff. The Clawmaidens, uh- I don't even know XD But they're early automatons and I wonder if they somehow were modeled directly off of the Weavers and their haughty attitudes. Just included as an example of a focus on silk.
Surgeon journal entry: Their procedures with Silk may have prolonged life within the Citadel, but they unknowingly gifted many minds to the monarch.
Caretaker: Just think of'em greedily shoving the Silk into their shells [...] Then think on how long it's all gone on...
Hornet: […] The Silk has seeded deep into this kingdom's shells, generations deep... No wonder Pharloom's bugs proved such easy prey for that haunted thread. It had only to seek for itself to reach them.
The pilgrims do not naturally have silk. Not inside their bodies, as has been happening for a long time under Citadel rule. In this light, the bugs couldn't've been haunted so easily in the past. Perhaps they could be part of such unity if they wished it, or in some lesser unity. Yet the other dialog at the beginning of the post, on Pharloom being bound, or caught, or enthralled. Those things still described Pharloom when GMS was awake.
What is the difference between the Weavers becoming Weavers and the pilgrims being ensnared by thread? If the pilgrims weren't haunted in the past but still bound beneath GMS, would there have been a difference?
For one the pharlids are unintelligent bugs, who were greatly changed as they became Weavers, shaped by GMS's will. But I do think the silk is the greater association. Even with everything the pilgrims did with silk on their own, using it in battle, putting it into their shells, it didn't come from them. They needed an external source.
Hornet: They hunt me for my nature. For the Silk produced within my shell.
Seamstress: Ahh ha! Truth, no doubt! In Pharloom, yours is a rare skill, prized beyond measure, to channel one's soul within a thread. Soul and Silk inseparably linked. It is a skill almost lost from Pharloom. Those old Weavers shared it, but they're long dead now.
I believe that that more than anything made the Weavers daughters to GMS. She put some of her own nature in them. That's why Hornet is recognized by GMS, and none of the other bugs are, no matter how much silk they have in them.
At the very least, it made the Weavers the first children. I've considered whether the other bugs could've been secondary children during GMS's time, and it's just a hierarchy of some children being better than others. It's possible, but I'm not so sure. For one, the way I think the generational counting works as I was going over in the last post, I think they would've started counting from around when the Weavers were handing over control of Pharloom (more on this in a minute). More importantly, GMS was ready to let all of Pharloom die to protect Lace from the void. And she had been concerned with hunting down the Weavers that fled, both from feelings of betrayal and wanting family back. Also, uh:
Lace silk heart: ...Better a child spun mad... than none… / ...Better a child spun frail... than none… / ...Better a child spun pure... than them…
GMS's whole mindset in creating Lace was that she would not have children without doing so. The Weavers had left the kingdom. She seems to be comparing Lace to them, to say she's more pure. I guess you can say she also didn't have the common bugs of Pharloom when asleep and she'd be angry at them for abandoning her too. I just don't think that's anywhere near as strong.
So. I've spent quite a few words before this post talking about the bugs as successor children. I am not undoing it. But more considering how the Weavers brought the bugs into the family. Part of me wants to consider that as lesser, like the bugs are just interlopers in the family, with the way GMS doesn't consider them children. But then I could ask why GMS is the gatekeeper for such, when the Weavers are family members. In the same way, for instance, that parents have limited control of their own children's choice in partner or having children. Not like the bugs are the actual children of the Weavers, but the whole designation of children seems generational to me. Weavers as first children, and then each generation of bugs as second, third, etc. Though the way I'm phrasing it (second children, third children) would more point to them being the next generation of children of GMS, rather than of the last generation of children… Well, all of this is getting pretty speculative anyway XD As I was saying in the last post, this numbing system is extrapolated from text in the Slab, so I can't say this is particularly strong to base so much of it off of just that when all these phrases aren't used in game. Even as I still think there's enough evidence to call them part of the family on some level.
Rune harp in High Halls: Last words of the Weavers. "Sisters, spiders, the burden is passed. These simple bugs shall bear it full. Never to cease. Never to silence. We shall die, and wait, and pray, that one may come of silken strength enough to weave us free."
Weaver effigy: Carving of Camora, Weaver of healing. A prayer is etched upon it. "Weaver, heal my sons, their fearful hearts, their limbs that shake at the climb to come. We pray, gift but a glimmer of your strength, that when we stand before your divinity, you see bugs shed free of fear."
The Weavers pass on their burden. Rule over the kingdom, and duty to keep GMS asleep. The designation as children. ...And their divinity itself.
Choir clapper (only found in High Halls arena) needolin: Bow your heads in reverence! / Prostrate your meagre shells! / Tremble before our masters! / Know our lords divine!
Twelfth Architect needolin: ...To mend...Unending... / ...To serve...Eternal... / ...Always an Architect... / ...From these thoughts...Creation... / ...From these memories...Skill... / ...Designs...Divine...
Chapel of the Architect needolin: Our hope... / Build... Craft... Pass... / Always another... / Always eternal... / Can it end? / Designs... divine...
Twelfth Architect on the cogwork heart: That heart is an inspired form, conceived by the first of my line for a knight of cog and blade.
Twelfth Architect after Hornet gets the melody: Impressive-industrious... eternal... You have seen a glimpse, Bug-Red, of us-s-s, how once we were. The minds of Architects inspired. What majesty we did create...
wiktionary definition of inspired: (religion) Infused with power or knowledge granted from a supernatural entity; possessing inspiration from the divine.
Vaultkeeper journal entry: High caste bug, responsible for delivering sermons and leading prayer for those beyond the walls of the Whispering Vaults.
The conductors were regarded as divine themselves. The Architects do not directly call themselves divine but they keep saying their work is divine. I believe the use of inspiration is in that religious sense, as if their own minds carry divinity, or they channel divinity as they work. The vaultkeepers, uh. They seem to be religious leaders, and their leader is called pontiff, but I don't find any reference to them being divine themselves.
At the very least the conductors have taken this status that the Weavers had, divine and at the top of the hierarchy. The Weavers derive their divine status from being GMS's daughters. I can't say I know how the Citadel's leaders justify it for themselves. But with how long-lived they are, I wonder if the conductors (and possibly the pontiff) are/were from the first generation of bugs which the Weavers handed power to, making them second children. Or at least of the earliest generation still alive. For the Architects it's more complex. I believe from the way Twelfth Architect speaks, the architects were made sequentially, so that there was always just one architect at a time. And for complex reasons I wrote about previously, I think each new architect takes on the memories of the old ones. In this way the divine mind itself was from the past, probably all the way back to the start of conductor rule.
Twelfth Architect on cogwork heart: In it, I see my predecessor’s talent, immense, now lost-forgotten. I could never create-copy a work s-s-so fine.
On architect's melody: From my mind-vault, the imprint has f-f-faded. With many things it is like this… remembrance, dimmed…
Close to death: The skill to construct an Architect… That was taken by t-t-time. I am the last-final.
Introducing itself: I am an Architect. Only an Architect. To build-automate is not choice. It is our nature-directive-c-c-c-cage.
Twelfth Architect speaks of things getting worse over time. It doesn't think itself as capable as earlier architects. It can't remember. Its existence on its own is limited, only an architect, ordered by directive to create, but it channels the divine. And that inspired mind, passed from architect to architect, will end with the twelfth.
Chapel of the Architect needolin: Our hope... / Build... Craft... Pass... / Always another... / Always eternal... / Can it end? / Designs... divine...
Eternity itself hinges on this, keeping an architect of divine designs. Or it did.
Twelfth Architect: The core remains to sustain the song, but no more Architects to tend-toil or build anew. S-s-strange... 'For Pharloom eternal,' states the d-d-directive-cage. But how can eternity sustain without an Architect to serve? This seems e-e-error. An end? An error... welcome?
Choral commandment: Last edict of the Conductors. "And lo, is eternity sustained. By Architect's claw, we welcome that final form, of dial and rotor, and soul gladly given. The perfect, unfaltering voice."
Twelfth Architect is uncertain of eternity without itself, but the hope is the continued existence of automatons will sustain eternity regardless.
I go over all this with Twelfth Architect wondering if its situation is at all similar to the bugs. The bugs have lived generation after generation in a hierarchy controlled by those at the top of the Citadel, divine status conferred upon the conductors, even as the conductors are no different in species than the rest (er, of course there are different species in Pharloom but there's not a divide like where all Weavers were divine—presumably whatever species the conductors are is elsewhere in Pharloom) (it's certainly true for the vaultkeepers and Scrounge). For Twelfth Architect, I assume memory got a little worse each iteration, whatever inspired mind was trying to be kept fading each time. The bugs went through several generations, and I wonder if each generation was considered less divine, or if only the ones at the top ever got such a word applied to them.
Conductor Ballador: The mantle of rule, claimed greedily from Pharloom's fading first children, those bitter Weavers... it was yoke, not crown. Now, in our Citadel's silence, we share their truth. Only one monarch's claws ever clutched this kingdom, though we raised our voices to cry otherwise.
Either way, it's ending. The Weavers considered their rule a burden. Conductor Ballador found it to be too. Eternity didn't happen, no matter how much silk they took or mechanisms they built. One way or another, the bugs will acknowledge GMS, whether they tried to hide her or never knew of her.
