Why do I think if Sevatar got a wife you could never use her for anything else again?
No matter where in the timeline she is, even in another galaxy or setting entirely, Sevatar would burst into the story, snatch his wife up and take her home. How? He’s Jago motherfucking Sevatarion, that is how.
Bandages on Broken Souls: A Nostramo Culture/Lore Post
Sometimes I think about the wee lower-deck people that were all covered in bandages in the Night Lords Trilogy. Why so bandagey? (Bandagepilled wrapmaxxers, not beating the bandage allegations, etc)
She glanced at the wretch, who was unhealthily tall and sexless in its overcloak, keeping its face behind stained bandages. Several others lurked close to the door, whispering amongst themselves. It was impossible not to smell their sweat, their stinking, bloodstained bandages, and the rancid oil-blood of their bionics.
Those ones. The attendants providing for Octavia's needs as a Navigator. Octavia's attendants.
It turns out ADB does tell us a bit later on:
The chlorine reek of them offended his senses, the way it rose in a miasma from their antiseptic-soaked bandages, as if such trivial protections could ward against the changes of the warp.
This is very interesting to me for a few reasons since it can lead to various interpretations about Nostraman culture, even though it's important to bear in mind that what we're seeing is the degraded situation after however-many thousand subjective years of dicking about in the Warp, Eye of Terror etc.
They believe, or at least Ruven the POV character here thinks they believe, that warp mutation can be defended against with purely physical items i.e. bandages and disinfectant. While it's easy to point to examples of people from all kinds of cultures in the setting using spiritual or metaphysical ways to protect themselves from the warp, I find it interesting that this doesn't seem to occur to the Nostramans.
In fact, unless I'm remembering it wrong (always a possibility tbh) other than a small mention in one of the Gendor Skraivok short stories about there being a secret Lectitio Divinitatus cult among the serfs, there seems to be very little spiritual/religious belief organic to Nostramo itself.
That makes some sense, I think. It is after all Space Gotham, a world of armoured groundcars and looming starscrapers where everyone is living under some form or another of very high pressure just to survive whether that means getting their next meal or keeping their position in high level gang politics. Whatever beliefs the original settlers brought with them to the Sunless World were, I imagine, ground away over time as generations passed and people had other, more visceral concerns.
There are a few scenes in the 1984 nuclear war TV movie Threads that take place in the period about 10-20 years after the bombs have fallen. It's clear that the by now rapidly deteriorating survivors of the pre-war world are trying as best they can to provide some kind of education for their post-war descendants, but this is extremely limited and relies on what they can gather together from whatever books, VHS tapes etc happened to survive the war:
"The skeleton of a cat! A cat's skeleton!"
And we can see that it simply means nothing to the children and young adults whose entire existence revolves around basic survival - mostly food and the things they have to do in order to get it.
This, in a way, is what I think happened to whatever beliefs in anything beyond the material that may have ever existed on Nostramo by the time we see it in the Crusade/Heresy era. It's a sad, stunted little world and I feel immensely sorry for the nasty, skeevy people it produced.
Another factor affecting this would of course be the Night Haunter. You don't really need to have a spiritual/metaphorical figure or system dispensing rules and justice when Konrad is actually real and inside your home making it brutally clear what his views on law-breaking are.
So, in my usual roundabout way, we come back to the bandages again. My view, as I've expressed before in my ramblings, is that Konrad didn't truly eradicate crime on Nostramo so much as eradicate the appearance of it.
There's a legend from Ancient Greece about a Spartan boy training to be a warrior which I'll post as a screenshot below since I think we could all do with a break from my writing style for a bit:
"He could steal and suffer and die rather than be found out" is the relevant part here I think. Much like the idea that snitches get stitches or the mafia code of omertà where one's value in society and life itself hinge on a mutual keeping of silence against any and all authority figures.
We know that even before Konrad arrived, Nostraman society functioned on a gang allegiance basis, so already fertile ground for a very insular and secretive type of culture. But then we add the Night Haunter to the mix and the numbers spell disaster for you at Sacrifice the social pressure in this direction ramps up massively.
It's also made very clear pretty much everywhere that Nostramo is a vicious, predatory society. There's a description in one of the Skraivok stories of Phy Orlon, the canonical smallest saddest uwu-iest Night Lord:
It astounded Skraivok how such a vulpine little thing had made it through the selection process. Even bulked by legionary gifts, Orlon still managed to convey the impression of feebleness. Towards the end, Nostramo had been providing only the dregs of the dregs. No wonder Curze had levelled the place.
Weakness was like the scent of blood in the water to the Night Lords. Legionaries like Orlon would always attach themselves to those they deemed powerful, for protection. That explained the ridiculous batwings welded to the top of his helm in emulation of Sevatar, and why he had appointed himself as Skraivok’s adjutant.
It's like prison or high school. Even the transhuman supersoldier Nostramans still function this way. What hope do ordinary people have?
Not much at all, I think. Just in order to survive day to day it'd be necessary to conceal any injury, weakness or deformity at the risk of having it being ruthlessly used against you by just about everyone.
So we come back to the bandages again. Told you I'd get there eventually. We see that the attendants are in fact completely covered in bandages Joshua Graham style:
‘Lord,’ they hissed through slits in their faces that were once lips. Their bloodstained bandages rustled as they shifted and lowered their weapons.
[...]
She raised a bandaged hand, as if she could possibly bar the warrior’s passage with a demand, let alone with her physical presence.
I can imagine the impulse to cover up and conceal any weakness applies very strongly to warp mutations of any sort. Curdled and degraded over millennia roaming the immaterium in the bowels of a ship with the changes becoming worse and worse the longer they go on, it would be plausible for this to develop into a need to cover up and disinfect every inch of oneself in order to maintain some pretence, however flimsy, of being a capable human being.
The saddest part of it for me, though, is that all of the attendants are like this. It's a situation where everyone is quite literally in the same boat, undergoing the same suffering, and yet they still retain this deeply-ingrained need to hide and conceal themselves from each other. It feels like even here, ten thousand years after its destruction, Nostramo's poison is still influencing them, still flowing through their veins to keep them separated, afraid, and deeply alone.
Oh wow, a few paragraphs from ADB somehow led to a great long wall of text. Congratulations if you've made it this far!
PS: This being ADB I feel obliged to consider the possibility of Ruven either lying or being mistaken. I don't think this is likely since he is a) also Nostraman and b) a sorcerer meaning that if there was any spiritual aspect going on he would more than likely have the requisite cultural/magical knowledge or experience to be aware of it or otherwise detect it. Ruven is a conniving goth thot but he has no reason to lie in that particular bit of his own thoughts.
They're very intelligent, they're brutal and they can cause concussions by being swooped and putting a hole in your scalp
I preffer Bat Konrad (Konbat? Batrad?) but if there was a bird alive that fit him it would be These Bastards. I've heard stories about them, plus they just look really scary
So there I was being Kubo on Lexicanum when I saw this:
Lmao Kryroptera. But that's a really interesting idea. What's the citation?
Jolly good, at least isn't an audio drama that only exists on a wax phonograph cylinder or something that was revealed to ADB in a dream.
Having read the chapter over a few times and enjoyed a lot of typical Night Lords bickering and doing sarcastic impressions of each other, I think this is the relevant point (some jackass has been seen killing valuable legion serfs):
Aww. I was all excited for Space Detective Sevatar but this reads to me more like Curze wanting his captains to clamp down on the Legion being full of serial unalivers (sorry, couldn't resist) and bring him this one particular bat boy for judgement than it does an order for the Kyroptera to generally investigate murders on Night Lords vessels.
What a shame. I'd enjoy Space Detective Sevatar, it sounds like a 90s anime.
It's always important to remember how easily and childishly the Night Lords will start bickering with each other.
In the next chapter Halasker makes an ugly leather glove puppet of him and has it do scrunchy faces like Kermit the Frog during an entire meeting with Konrad (this is a lie).
According to Prince of Crows, Sevatar doesn’t much like people calling him Jago or Sev.
So now I’m wondering about his reaction to someone calling him “Captain Sevatarion.” I don’t think anyone does that in canon. Most I’ve seen is “Sevatar”.
