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Shadows in the Cave - Civilization Without Humanity

The Prometheans are far from an integrated, synergistic hierarchy where each component is fully aware of and exists to support other components - but they are several steps closer to it than their peers. At the top are the Steering Committee, the four variably post-human founders and leaders of the conspiracy. Each oversees some aspect of the great common task, and all work together closely and at least with a pretence of friendliness. Information flows up to them and commands flow down. Organizations and cults under their command are created or supported for some specific purpose, and though literally everything is ‘need to know’, quite a few assets do need to know at least the vague shape of other parts of the conspiracy in order to protect, facilitate or fund them.

#shadows in the cave #worldbuildidng #urban fantasy/horror #cults and conspiracies #2026 #civilization without humanity

Abhari Atlas - An Introduction to the Outer Seas

When the Celestial Host cast down and butchered the Arch-Demons of the lower depths and from them made Creation, they did not do so with a single mind, or in a single effort. The Inner World upon which you and I walk is perfectly formed, and aligned with every principle of True and Beauty - it is for this reason that the Great Gods of Heaven believed it a suitable home for the sublime Order of man and spirit we know as civilization. Make no mistake, I am no Godsemeren pollyanna - the Inner World is replete with heresy and witchcraft, with demons and apostates and every other horror. But it is full, too, of honor and beauty, of loyalty and piety, and of all the countless Glories which obedience to the Chain of Being and true Religion allow.

But the Inner - or, as I have elsewhere argued it should be more rightly called, the Higher - World was the Celestial Divines’ masterwork, not their first attempt. In ages past, the learned and pious believed that it was built upon the ruins of these previous efforts, and it was from this imperfection that the taint of demology and witchcraft first seeped into the world. I am loathe to contradict such august and ancient sources, but in our modern age this has been proven false - the prototypes and failed attempts at the creation of the World were not destroyed or built over, they were instead cast down and hidden away, or put by the Heavens to some lesser purpose suitable to their failings and what virtues they had.

There is a great diversity among the nations and the peoples of the Higher World and so the first service provided by a study of the Outer Seas is a contrast by which their similarities might be seen. They are all, for example, human, born imbued with a mortal soul and an honoured place in the Chain of Being. Thus, it is only through sin or tragedy that their form becomes misshapen or corrupted - this is not the case for the greater part of the creatures whose crude facsimiles of government and culture populate most Outer Seas. Not all, of course - some come close to the perfection of the Higher World, their peoples only barely distinguishable from our own. Others are earlier and less finished prototypes, or else abandoned due to some fundamental corruption or flaw, and their natives the same. Yet others were the prisons of great Titans or other fallen Angels, and even if they were once filled with true humanity, ages of capricious interference and corruption have left their descendents weakened or deformed in some manner, either in body or soul. They are not demons, or even goblins, but obvious signs of this inhumanity in visage or bearing, and hereditary tendencies to some particular corruption, abound. It is for these reasons and more that no Outer Sea has produced true Civilization or true Religion on its own, and none have proved capable of equalling the achievements or resisting the arms of the Higher World without the open support of another fully human power (however corrupt it might be).

It was through just that corruption that the Outer Seas were first discovered - for who but warlocks and apostates would ever cut their way through the skein of the world into the abyss beyond, without any surety that there was a solitary thing to be found? Yet the piety and virtue of the Hierarch then ruling in Imir was soon rewarded with a method of invoking the grace and power of Heaven and its Sublime Will which opened the way for the World-Empire’s own ships. The methods and engines are closely guarded trade secrets of the relevant guilds and orders, but in any case require great ocean-going vessels and occulted prayers and rites that are in every case beyond the means of any lacking the genius of true humanity.

The methods by which Outer Seas are charted are occulted, but their organization is obvious and clear, arranged in harmonious alignment such that their cosmic distance to the Higher World and the ease with which they can be reached mirrors the severity of their flaws and corruption. Thus the Pearl Sea, one of the nearest and first-charted, is almost indistinguishable from the heartlands of the Empire, and its populace - once winnowed in the Crusade that won it - so close to full humanity to be as worthy of the name as a great many peasants along the Empire’s other marches and borderlands. Thus also, though less happily, the Onyx Sea where the Celmean League’s colonies and daughter-cities have recruited from and interbred with the existing populace so eagerly with no loss of skill or vigor - and where under the Lord Regent’s Tyranny the Empire’s own holdings were lost entirely in one disastrous war after another.

Most Seas are not so blessed of course. Arrayed in an astral orrery, they spiral out, descending from the Higher World and growing more unfinished and flawed in perfect sequence. The remainder that are so close to true reality that a layman would not notice the difference are so small and marginal as to not be worth contesting the claims other principalities have made on them. The next great prizes are middling seas, obviously unfinished and dangerous to both body and soul to sail, yet full of riches and opportunity for glory that explain why the Gods Above allowed mortal eyes to chart the course to them. Here are the great prisons and blasphemous ateliers of Titan and Fae, the kingdoms of oxen walking on two hooves and birds conversing wholly through the fractured words of their long-dead trainers. This, then, is the land where legends and fortunes are made, and where treasure fleets and privateer squadrons sail for under every flag. They are also, as a whole, the theaters within which civilized powers now compete to outdo each other in colonial glory, and where each struggles to put the native creatures encountered to their most beneficial purpose. The rare examples where the creatures have not yet been brought to heel by one power or another - the cavern-dwelling clans of the Iron Sea, mostly famously - remain so by the combination of unusually belligerent and untrusting natives and a lack of treasures to justify the cost.

At an even further remove are the Seas so primitive and distant from the Divine Plan that the dangers yet outweigh the riches and revelations they offer. Thus, the Starlit Sea, where there is neither dawn nor moon nor horizon, and the stars above are reflected by the glittering heralds of ruin beneath the waves. Thus the Whispering Depths, where any wind can be bought only with the sacrifice of a mortal soul whose breath might move it - and whose voice and secrets then taunt any who hear them for a year and a day. Thus, most of all, the Abyss itself, as dark and depthless as any entrance to Perdition, whose waters swallow ship and swimmer alike.

In the remainder of this treatise, then, I shall focus my efforts on those middling seas, and most specifically on the demi- and in-humans creatures which call them home and which must be truly brought to heel for the Empire’s banner to settle itself in their lands…

-A Discourse on the Higher and Lower Seas, by Brother Adrien of the Poor Fellows of the Sacred Pyre. Despite his later censure for Hierocratic sympathies the work remains a standard reference throughout the Holy Illyrin Empire

#worldbuildidng #fantasy #abhari #atlas #pure ideology

Shadows in the Cave - Notes on an Incursion - Victims of the Art

THREAT SANGUINE OCHRE is the most dangerous confirmed FOREIGN agent of the 21st century encountered to date. Despite seeming to be a one-man operation with no real funding or material support, his creations spread dangerous FOREIGN influence across several states before he was hunted down and destroyed - and have only continued to do so since. The entire file is proof positive of what B-CELL has been saying for years: SANGUINE OCHRE was not the results of mindless or bestial incursions, or of an American exploiting dangerous power for his own gain. He was a knowing enemy agent, facilitating an organized conspiracy from ABROAD in spreading its influence across the United States for unknown, nefarious purposes.

Given the events of OPERATION AVIAN TRILL, more than a decade after his execution, this clearly remains a more urgent strategic threat than A-CELL has been led to believe by conventional reports. To remedy this, B-CELL has prepared the following overview on SANGUINE OCHRE, his creations, PATRIOT efforts to contain or destroy them, and the damage he is still causing to this day. While this is technically outside the Cell’s area of focus, it is hoped that this will help inform decision-making and resource-allocation going forward.

As well as a traitor, SANGUINE OCHRE was (unsurprisingly) an artist. An apparent life-long failure, he left few traces; either personal or digital. Despite the complete lack of fame or influence, six of his paintings have been discovered across the United States, often with no clear explanation as to how their current owners came into possession of them. This is not necessarily surprising, as each of these paintings is a dangerous weapon in its own right. Everything he touched is saturated with FOREIGN energies, and carefully designed to be antithetical to human life and sanity.

Including bystanders and collateral damage, SANGUINE OCHRE is responsible for over two hundred deaths across America. A number that is still rising.

* * *

The Townsend Collection is maintained by Velos Antiquities’ Managing Partner for purposes of scholarship and experimentation. Rather than acting as a middleman for a client commission or assembling a collection for speculative purposes, the Company thus has a direct, first-party interest in acquiring and preserving pieces of the collection - something that factors and agents should keep in mind when determining their own priorities.

Edward Townsend (1987-2013) hailed from a middle-class Boston family, but was troubled by mental instability and misfortune from his adolescence until his own tragic ending. Leaving university in the nadir of the 2008 Financial Crisis, his last years were dominated by a spiral into crippling agoraphobia and poverty - yet it was precisely during this period that his artistic production reached his zenith. Never working through any established dealers or galleries, he sold his works at local flea markets, or else gifted them to improbable friends made online. He is believed to have completed at least a dozen works in this period before perishing in an electrical fire which consumed the building he was then living in.

The collection is of interest not because of any biographical detail of their creator but due to the works themselves. While the danger and intensity varies, each Townsend is a Hypergeometrically active object. Which would make each of them an intriguing potential acquisition in its own right, but what makes the collection unique is that each Townsend is active in distinct (often contradictory or mutually exclusive) ways - quite extraordinary, for the work of one man without education or support.

The Managing Partner thus has a standing order out for any discovered Townsends - including a significant fee payable to the agent who acquires and transports them. What follows is a summary of the Company’s file on traits shared by known Townsends and endorsed best practices for their safe acquisition and handling. Consider them high-level targets of opportunity, should you encounter the trail of one.

* * *

We theorize that the three pieces in question are, despite the dramatic differences in style and effect, actually the work of a single artist; one possessed of truly uncommon vision and insight. An outsider artist par excellence, their work illustrates ways of reaching across cultural and epistemological paradigms, allowing true connection and understanding in precisely the ways that the Anderson Heritage Trust is dedicated to encouraging. We hope you will find that the funding proposal that follows is, despite the expense, wholly in line with the Trust’s strategic plan for the next five years; we also hope you will agree that it represents a rare opportunity to advance the dream of a more open and connected world, and one that should not be allowed to pass untaken.

The three works of art in question were discovered by various friends of the Arts across the Great Lakes and Pacific Northwest over the last year, though their true provenance remains sadly unknown. Each is a masterpiece in empathy and forced perspective, inviting (if not insisting) the audience view the world through alien eyes and consider their lives, indeed the sum total of human civilization, from perspectives drastically divergent from their own.

The effect is dramatic; for the properly prepared it can even said to be transformative, whereas for some sensitive and unprepared viewer have found it to be disturbing and even traumatic; something which had undoubtedly led to the tragic destruction or neglect of similar works at the hands of caretakers without the proper background and education. It is for exactly this reason that we propose the construction of a carefully curated exhibition of these and similarly affecting outsider art, where they can be properly appreciated in an environment that encourages the most significant and least traumatic audience experience.

* * *

PATRIOT Agents first encountered SANGUINE OCHRE in 20XX, when M-CELL became involved in what became OPERATION ASPHALT ARCADIA. That said, the connection between hypnotic graffiti brainwashing (and spreading across) members of a Mid-Atlantic street gang and OCHRE was only discovered well after the fact. It was only in 20XX when K-CELL located and destroyed two more traditional paintings in the same Boston neighborhood that their common source was traced back. OPERATION AUSTERE FRIAR was the result.

Elements of K-CELL acted decisively to terminate SANGUINE OCHRE and any accomplices. OCHRE was destroyed, but in every other way the operation should have been a sign that this was not the work of one more insane or self-interested FOREIGN agent. The confrontation ended in an inferno that destroyed the entire building, killing all present PATRIOT Agents and eliminating any evidence of OCHRE’s enablers or distribution methods. K-CELL nonetheless considered the mission a success, and the file was closed without review for several years.

That was how long it took for L-CELL to encounter one of his paintings. On the other end of the country, with no possible way a failed artist’s worthless painting could have ended up as the mural on a nightclub’s bathroom wall. Destroying it thoroughly enough to prevent any reconstruction took a ‘gas main explosion’ that destroyed the entire building, with significant collateral damage. It was only after the fact, and after L-CELL had expended weeks and precious resources tearing through potential cultists who might have been responsible, that the artist’s signature was analyzed and a connection to SANGUINE OCHRE was drawn. This can’t be allowed to happen again.

There have been two further encounters with SANGUINE OCHRE since then, each one of his works appearing with no possible explanation except FOREIGN action at some point in the past. Each is a dangerous terror weapon, damaging the sanity or physically warping (if not consuming entirely) anyone vulnerable in its vicinity. The pattern behind the paintings’ appearances is unclear, but we can only assume it is the result of an enemy plan to prepare softened landing zones for an eventual full invasion.

* * *

The ultimate case of the Townsends - how one particularly disturbed young man became the vector for so many distinct Infections - is unknown but of significant interest to the Managing Partner. While any information that is happened upon is valuable and should be secured, it is also hardly something that Velos employees are trained or equipped to hunt down. Suffice to say that Mr. Townsend was likely possessed, for one reason or another, of a very unique sensitivity - and that it seems several different strains of parasite and infection took advantage of the fertile ground. The dramatic nature of his death is very likely related.

Velos Antiquities expects a great deal of independence and initiative from its factors, but verifying the location and authenticity of - much less acquiring - a Townsend is more often than not a task that will require the assistance of experts in alternative skill sets. If any are simply forgotten in a warehouse or storage locker, Velos has not found any hint of them in more than five years of searching. Rather, in every case one has been encountered, it has been in the very determined possession of an individual with at least some vague idea of its significance (if not its origin). The assistance of the usual contractors tapped to deal with recalcitrant sellars was in every case necessary (though very far from sufficient). If you have good reason to believe you have a line on a Townsend and require their support, a request to Senior Leadership for support from our friends in the security services or else more specialized contractors will likely be approved. That said, Townsends are both obviously valuable and incredibly fragile (no more resilient to entropy or violence than any other painting), and so care must be taken to ensure that Velos Antiquities does, in fact, secure custody of the piece.

The case of the late Mrs. Cruz is instructive. Having tracked a lead on Devilish Revels across several countries, she found herself at a decided disadvantage actually acquiring it from the current owner - a man with little or no idea what he had, but quite convinced it was the key to ultimate cosmic power. The Managing Partner was able to prevail upon several local business partners to provide support convincing him to part with it, but we have been unable to track down any survivors of the resulting gunfight in a state to provide a full explanation of what followed. Neither Ms. Cruz nor the previous owner (nor, in fact, the Townsend) has been seen since. Very nearly literally, as in the eight months since every portrait and analogue photograph of either has either gone missing or become damaged in very distinctive and improbable ways (should any of you have worked closely with her, you are encouraged to examine your own archives for any odd visual artifacts involving greasepaint and motley).

Mrs. Cruz is the closest any Velos agent has come to acquiring a Townsend in the last three years - though not, it must be said, the only lead that ended in lively exchanges with other interested parties. Please keep her example in mind when deciding what level of investment should be made in risk mitigation.

* * *

What do we mean, when we call these pieces “outsider art"? The label applies in the vernacular sense - the artist was clearly alienated and marginalized from society, and died without public memory or legible legacy, but the three pieces we have are deserving of the appellation in a much more profound way. Put simply, they are art from outside and, like all great art, to truly appreciate them is a paradigm-breaking exercise in empathy. Bound so tightly in our web of socialized expectations, it is a truly bracing, if not revelatory, event to experience the true xenos, to feel the vibrations of someone knocking against the frosted glass which comprises the hard border of your universe. To, perhaps, realize the glass was neither so solid nor so opaque as you had always taken it to be.

These are art in the highest sense, fine centerpieces of an exhibition, attempts to communicate concepts and emotions so subtle and so vast that the idea of conveying them through words is absurd on its face. It is quite astounding that they seem to have been painted by the same hand and with the same materials, so distinct are the styles and effects; it is only through analyzing them in relation to each other that the true message being conveyed by the artist’s oeuvre can be understood. Even working with an entirely inadequate budget and lodgings, simply framing the three works in our possession in the correct relation to each other in an area with a small amount of work done to encourage the connections have had truly dramatic effects on the viewing experience, and on the subjectivities inherent in the works themselves.

We believe the unknown artist has a true message they were trying to convey, one that could change the world. With the support of the Anderson Heritage Trust, we believe we could create a gallery that would give that message a chance to be truly heard, and even responded to; a place where a true exchange of views entirely beyond our own might begin. We have contracted architects and designers who can realize our vision, but funding remains an issue; as, for our greatest dreams, does the lack of whatever other works the artist must surely have sketched or inked while creating these three masterpieces. This is why our second major funding request is for a long-term effort to search for and safely bring home similar pieces of outsider work from across the globe…

* * *

SANGUINE OCHRE was a valuable FOREIGN agent, that much can’t be argued. When he became a dangerous loose end, his handler terminated him and took out half a cell of PATRIOTS for its trouble. But that doesn’t mean ABROAD and its agents aren’t still trying to use him. PATRIOT Agents have encountered three OCHRE THREATS in the last X years, and two of those cases involved a dangerous FOREIGN conspiracy that actively fought to secure the threats for their own ends before the PATRIOTs on the ground could apply sufficient quantities of incendiaries or explosives to reliably destroy the THREAT.

The nature of the FOREIGN-directed conspiracy is unknown, but it seems to be an organized criminal syndicate. Other street gangs and criminal elements have been involved as hired guns, but at its core it seems to have grown out of the Russian mafia. This sort of organized, internationally active group of traitors to humanity has been exactly what B-CELL has warned about for years. Their short-term goals are unknown, but their long-term dedication to the betrayal of all life on Earth in favor of their FOREIGN masters is obvious.

We are at war, even if we don’t know it yet. SANGUINE OCHRE is just the beginning, but we hope it is all the warning that A-CELL requires to finally take our warnings with the gravity that addressing them will require.

#worldbuildidng #urban fantasy/horror #shadows in the cave #bestiary #pure ideology

Sethennai Notables - The Hierophant

By her own account, Yri hails from an island-city of basalt and corral upon the legendary Starlit Sea. No one sensible believes this, but then no one has come up with a compelling alternative theory, either. By temperament she is a sorceress of the old style, a gleeful blasphemer and professional trespasser against every sacred boundary – her marred and weathered form is a testament to the costs of such a life, the numinous aura which surrounds her and the sheer power she can command one to the rewards of it. All the gods of earth and sky despise her, and nature itself recoils from her touch - a state of being she greets with a gleeful smile as a sign of progress worth celebrating.

Prince Cael was a man prone to superstitions both grand and petty, and so his court was reliably filled with mystics vying for his patronage and attention. Cenred is unique for having succeeded at doing so for years rather than months. The antlers and the glowing eyes certainly didn’t hurt, nor the fondness for ornate robes with densely woven arcane patterns woven into them - but what truly mattered was that she clearly viewed his patronage as a tool to further her mystical studies instead of the reverse. And so for years she has cheerfully bound spirits and threatened gods to ensure favorable omens for all he tried, and in return he has made her Hierophant of all the city’s temples and poured oceans of silver into funding her experiments and rites.

She is the favorite demon of every rumormonger in the city, of course. The ultimate cause of every curse and misfortune, and witch who occult machinations will see all of Sethennai swallowed by the sea, the dark priestess who gutted every missing street urchin upon a sacrificial altar, and a hundred more things besides. It’s said she has a servant recite all the most lurid new tales about her each morning over breakfast when she’s in need of inspiration.

#worldbuildidng #fantasy #dramatis personae #city of fortune #pillars of the city

Shadows In The Cave - Threat Analysis - Dreaming Big

This is a final report on OPERATION ECHOING HYMN, successfully completed on XX/ XX/201X in the suburb of XXX, New Jersey. K-CELL, as the closest available PATRIOT Agents, operated without official support and went above and beyond the call of duty doing so. Despite some losses, K-CELL (and AGENT KEVEN in particular) acted heroically and decisively to destroy an unprecedently dangerous cult before their rituals began risking the whole neighborhood around them.

The Agents were mobilized by E-CELL through the usual channels after confused reports surfaced of a homeless man hiding dozens or hundreds of snakes in his clothing, and of those snakes attacking passersby who approached him. K-CELL is mostly located within New York, but relocated for the Operation. The lack of criminal investigation to take over or friendly assets to liaise with made investigations difficult, but K-CELL persevered. Identifying the ‘homeless man’ as a parishioner of a local strip mall church, K-CELL began surveilling its staff and attendees. Over the course of several weeks observation, K-CELL verified that one particular Thursday evening sermon was always followed by a handful of attendees falling into hours-to-days long fugue states.

Agents KEVIN, KATIE and KADE approached and attempted to interview several of these parishioners. In all cases, this proved more difficult (and dangerous) than expected. The targets were all consumed by powerful delusions, and something that occurred during the service caused those delusions to begin bleeding through into reality. Biting snakes and scorpions, liquids suddenly become disgusting and contaminated with filth, and the profusion of pus-filled, weeping sores across the bodies of anyone near the target were all observed first- or second-hand. The changes to reality ceased whenever the target was no longer able to carry on with their delusions (Agent KEVIN made the lucky discovery with the third target approached that unconsciousness also achieved this) but any damage caused by it remained.

K-CELL was not able to determine what made that particular sermon the focal point of FOREIGN influence, but took decisive action to deal with the threat permanently. The assault was successful, and destroyed a far more powerful and dangerous cult than anyone had realized. As K-CELL entered the church, it was discovered to be utterly transformed from how it appeared on publicly available videos and during previous surveillance. The congregation was engaged in ecstatic worship as one of their members (not an ordained pastor, apparently picked at random from the crowd) read from the book that was the center of the FOREIGN incursion. Tragically, Agent KADE was lost in the course of the Operation - but Agent KEVIN was able to eliminate the preacher before he could finish reading a passage from the tome and complete whatever wound to reality was being cut.

The tome, along with all other religious texts and strange material found around the church, was destroyed with prejudice. The neighborhood and character of most parishioners made passing the Operation off as the result of violence among addicts easy enough Unfortunately, retrieving the preacher’s remains proved impossible. Still, it is safe to say that the Threat has been dealt with, especially after two weeks were taken to identify every known attendee of the dangerous sermons in question. K-CELL can confidently report that every member of the cult has now been dealt with, and the Threat is eradicated.

* * *

Alright, so. This is one of Mr. K’s jobs, though no clue if it’s from him or just through him. Someone shat the bed, and someone else wants things tidied up before it starts attracting flies. Maybe they have business close by they don’t want disrupted, maybe they figure they’re running out of luck and want to get some red out of the ledger before it’s time to read it, maybe it’s none of any of our fucking buisness. Options! Gossip when the work is done.

There are some sick people wandering around out there, and they’re starting to spread it. I’ve spoken with Grandmother, and it’s already fucked and getting worse and worse. People, animals, buildings, hours of the day. No, no idea where from. Don’t think Mr. K knows either, but again, not your business. Some idiot somewhere pissed all over the floor and you lucky assholes are the ones mopping it up. There’s something like a dozen broken souls out there, loose ends full of rot that’s trying to latch on to something for support before it falls apart.

Bad day for them, since falling apart is the only safe thing any of ‘em can do. Half of them are so badly off that it’s all they’re managing anyway, those you’re giving a bit of mercy. The rest would get stable if we let them - so be smart and double-tap them to be sure. Grandmother’s asked for any undamaged hands, eyes or tongues, but absolutely absolutely do not fucking get cute trying to keep those whole for the bonuses.

This is a chance for all of you to prove your balls actually dropped at some point and get your name in front of Mr. K’s eyes - or at least to get me to actually remember who you are as something other than someone’s fuckup cousin. So don’t fuck up, yeah? Great.

* * *

Good morning Brooke,

Hope you’ve had a lovely holiday season!

I’m reaching out because I have a very exciting update from our talent scouting program. As you know, promising opportunities for the Andersoon Trust to support have been a bit thin on the ground after the shakeups early last year - so I’m incredibly happy to say that we’ve identified multiple prospects already this year! As you can imagine, we’re all overjoyed with how fast the changes that you recommended are bearing fruit.

There are three live prospects at the moment - one here in California, one in Colorado, one international - but two of them are still in very early stages and might turn out to be false alarms (we’ve certainly had enough of those to get used to it). It’s the prospect in Denver that made me so excited to reach out - we’ve been working closely with them for more than two months now, and even if cultural fit and governance issues are concerns, I can say with absolute confidence that they are a real opportunity to achieve something amazing - to change the world.

They were admittedly a bit of a leap of faith - but Josh is our best talent scout because he has such an intuition for these things. I’ve already made sure the paperwork is filled out in accordance with all legal requirements, so as long as it’s Gregory handling any audits or financial reviews there shouldn’t be any problems with having started to provide support before the proposals came in (or questions about the exact legal status of the entity we’re providing the grant to).

Mr. Torres, the prospect in question, was in quite a state when Josh found him, totally incapable of interfacing with the rest of society. The level of trauma he’s survived is honestly horrifying - but just makes what he’s already achieved with our support so much more inspirational. Josh and Selena were able to get him to the point where he could move under his own power and get back into the same frame of reference as the rest of the city (and, once he was there, set him up with food, clothing, and a place to live). His memories and communication skills are both still very unstable, but from my understanding (second-hand only, of course) he was part of a new religious movement somewhere on the east coast that was destroyed by a real brutal targeted attack that occurred while he was presiding over a weekly meeting. Even he’s unclear on how he got from there to the Rockies.

At the moment he’s focusing on his own recovery, and forcing himself to relieve those very difficult memories for more details or anything that could be used to check the status of his former comrades would be too dangerous for him.

From what Selena has been able to say around patient-client confidentiality, that recovery hasn’t been easy, but Josh was entirely correct - Mr. Torres is already a lucid (and waking) dreamer on a level that conventional science considers impossible, and we have not come close to probing the limits of his abilities.

* * *

The Agents of K-CELL are all seasoned veterans, with AGENT KHALID having taken part in six distinct operations across his career with XXXX. So it should be taken incredibly seriously that no Agent involved had ever seen a THREAT as obviously supernatural or dangerous to the sanctity of reality as a whole than what was encountered disrupting the ritual at the heart of ECHOING HYMNAL.

The FOREIGN energies were blatant and impossible to dismiss, and caused permanent, obvious physical changes to the world without needing to work through some insane or possessed victim. The book the preacher read from was clearly the linchpin of the THREAT, with every word he spoke in an unknown and probably FOREIGN language causing noticeable physical damage to the preacher, and obvious changes to the world around them. When K-CELL intervened, the baptismal font had been filled with what seemed to be blood, and parishioners were pulling forearm-sized leeches from it to offer their own flesh to. As the cell attacked (thankfully equipped with light military small arms sourced via non-traditional methods), several of those leeches instead burrowed into the stomach cavity or rib cage of the parishioner holding them. The blood was then spilled across the floor and wasp-like insects flew out of it en mass. Individual agent reports become unclear and contradictory from that point, but it is clear things continued to escalate. It was only when Agent KEVIN used an unorthodox technique acquired from a FRIENDLY asset in a previous OPERATION and submerged the preacher into the baptismal blood (from which he struggled as if drowning before sinking and vanishing entirely) that the building stopped shifting and the air quality returned to normal. At which point dealing with the remaining parishioners who had not fled through the suddenly-unblocked door became simple.

No member of K-CELL is clear on just what sort of FOREIGN THREAT was behind this, but it’s an obvious shift and escalation from the isolated, feral cultists and addicts touched by some FOREIGN corruption that have been the real physical menace behind every human-based THREAT the Cell has encountered before. That K-CELL went above and beyond in destroying the THREAT does not mean that this shouldn’t be taken seriously going forward.

* * *

Mr. K wasn’t exactly talkative, but Grandmother says it’s a dream plague. Something’s got into them that’s too big for whatever’s left of their brains to hold, and now it's leaking out. Gets worse when they get worked up or scared, so the fact that half of them are just rushing to drink, smoke or shoot themselves into comas to deal with it is a blessing. Don’t fucking waste it.

What leaks out? Blood, sweat and piss, same as anyone else.

No, fine, fuck you yes it was funny. But watch the poor fucks less than shadows, puddles and dark corners around them. Especially puddles. Stuff’ll start crawling, slithering and flying out of them. Most of it’s only real enough to scare the shit out of you, but she says some might dig in enough to bite. None of you are dumb enough to need a warning not to let the fucking things bite you? Great.

If they’re wearing heavy clothing, something like snakes might be hiding in them, so don’t get close unless you’re very sure there’s nothing moving. Grab a facemask and put it on if there’s any kind of haze or smoke in the air. And - and I swear to fucking god I hope none of you idiots need to be told this either - do not keep or use anything that was actually on one of their bodies. Mr. K wants belongings for his friends if you can bag ‘em and bring ‘em without touching skin or staying around the corpse too long. He’d also pay a nice little bonus for any of those snakes or other creepy shit that manifests, if they stick around once the guy creating them is dead - but again, don’t get too greedy to live. If you can’t handle and store ‘em safely, there’s a funeral home run by a friend of ours whose cremator will be taking the bodies, it can take everything else on them too.

This is shit work for shitheads, but that doesn’t mean you can fuck around on it. Some idiot already did, and Grandmother says whatever all these poor assholes were part of was shattered and all of them with it. Now instead of one giant weed burrowing through all their dreams it’s a hundred roots starting to rot in the soil. You can call putting them down your good deed for the year.

* * *

Despite his traumatic experiences, and the significant help with physical, emotional and mental reconstruction he has required since, Mr. Torres still has a connection to something beautiful. A whole new paradigm, a vision of reality that’s so much more vital and vivid than the modern hegemonic ideal. It’s a perspective on history, on religion, and the basic facts of biology that seem entirely incompatible with our own - the goal of his religious practice on the East Coast was communal visualization and actualization, imagining ways that our world and this idea of alien potential could overlap and coexist with each other, and then doing what they could to make them real.

I know you’re a busy woman and this is all very granular and in-the-weeds from your perspective. But I think this is a project with real potential - a vision of a world without veils, where people by the billions live in vital connection with both the life around them and the vastness of the universe around them. And, more importantly, a proven way to make it real. With the right nurturing, guidance and support, this could really work!

Unfortunately, the material Mr. Torres’ religious practices were based around were destroyed before he came to our attention. Combined with the trauma he’s still recovering from our window into his world is blurry and vague. It’s only now - and only with the Trust’s continuing funding and support - that he will be able to begin forming a new community in Boulder and exploring the possibilities offered by the new environment and local culture.

I’d be happy to provide more information you might be interested in, and any concerns you have will be taken very seriously. But otherwise, we’ve set him up on his own feet, and Josh has set himself up as our point of contact and is already managing the grant application and funding process on his behalf. With any luck, Mr. Torres will be able to begin his transformative work in earnest by the end of Q3.

We’re looking at the start of something great here, I know it.

Looking forward to hearing from you!

All the best,

Alexandra Collwood

Grant Manager, Anderson Heritage Trust

#worldbuildidng #urban fantasy/horror #shadows in the cave #cults and conspiracies #humanity's euthanasia

Whalefall: Esoterica

Or, a series of little vignettes to get a sense of the voices of different characters and figure out how exactly they ended up on a survey mission to the ass-end of nowhere that double as ways to explore basically meaningless corners of the All Systems Commonwealth.

Interstellar Grunt Work - Zhou Lei was the security officer on duty for the not-really-a-passenger-vessel Cobalt Dawn during an interstellar voyage. It is not a good job even before you start talking about the fun of keeping passengers from different species and cultures living in cramped, stressful conditions for weeks at a time from tearing each other to pieces (potentially literally). He’s conscientious enough to leave a detailed report with the authorities when they arrive before walking off the job.

Centinati Local Politics - Ven Yekeoul is a xeropol (a minor species with even less institutional heft in the Commonwealth than humanity) aspiring xenobiologist. The brownnosing and flattery to get past the ‘asiring’ bit is probably worse than any of the actual work he’s done. In this case it means digging up the most cringeworthy thing he wrote for the student paper about local politics as an undergrad and pretending to be deeply invested in it.

Corporate Espionage - Renata Kende is a talented engineer who has, by complete coincidence, been hired on to a rival syndicate of her previous employer more or less simultaneously with that rival announcing exciting new technology identical to what she had been involved in developing. Unsurprisingly, some politely pointed questions are asked.

And a variety of popular outreach articles blog posts by Verit Lavoie, graduate student in xenoanthropology, serial procrastinator and actual protagonist, about various weird things that have occurred in the history and periphery of the All-Systems Commonwealth.

The Slave Lords of Rekath - The Star Empire of Rekath is a rogue state on the fringes of the Commonwealth, a xenophobic state entirely controlled by the native Rekath - walking tanks of a species with a lifespan that approaches four digits. This leaves them with a fear of death that borders on culturally approved paranoia. Thus, all the demeaning, dangerous, or just tedious labor that could not be easily automated is handled by a slave caste descended from Commonwealth colonists abducted centuries ago. They’re very popular.

First Contact Misadventures - The tlilf were one of the first intelligent species encountered by Commonwealth explorers after its founding - and the first that weren’t advanced enough to be considered prospective members. Which meant the regulations on how to approach it were…vague. Which meant the corporation sponsoring the expedition saw a huge potential for profit. The Commonwealth now has a much harsher stance on arms-dealing to rival nation-states.

The Republic of Eden - Humanity’s flourishing and restive extrasolar colonies were pried away from Earth’s control by a Commonwealth ‘peacekeeping intervention’. A century later, the solar system was annexed by the Hykaeri Imperial Republic. In between, the bitter and increasingly desperate human rump states tried a lot of variably wise things - like sending a fleet of heavily armed prospectors to a newly charted expanse of space hoping to find a viable new colony. It didn’t go quite as badly as it could have.

The Kirik Empire - The Krin-Tcho Compact was the first other interstellar society encountered by the then-young Commonwealth - an empire ruling over half a dozen species and more than twice as many worlds with an iron fist, endless streams of tribute turning their homeworld into a beautifully parasitic paradise. First Contact went badly, and the war that followed shortly after started off even worse - but soon enough the downsides of most of your population kind of hating you began to show themselves.

#whalefall #worldbuildidng #science fiction #meta

Abhari Atlas - The Diamond Sea

The Kymaric Expanse (called the Well of Dreams by the League, and the Diamond Sea in Illyric atlases) is a major hub on the Grand Line and one of the largest and most populous World-Shards charted by any power. Despite the anarchic and incomplete nature of their dominion, and the partial end to their trading monopoly after the Commonwealth’s victory in the latest Armada War, it remains the heart of the Khasli colonial empire. Its blood and treasure, in fact, constitutes a large part of the League of Rhaloke’s fortunes as a whole. This essay shall describe the metaphysics and geography which define the Expanse, identify the colonies, principalities and tribes that populate it, and specify the Commonwealth’s guiding interests in the Shard.

The Illyric name for the shard refers to its near-transparent waters, referred to by many travellers as so clear and glass-like that on calm days the ocean floor seems near enough to dive down and reach - a sublime experience for those with little experience of other seas, and a deeply uncanny one for seasoned sailors or marines. The waters are defined by warm, tropical trade winds that provide safe, predictable sailing from any given port for seven months of the year while bludgeoning them with storms the remaining three.

Aside from general metaphysical stability and ease of navigation, the most salient fact to

captains charting a course through the Expanse is its sheer size - more than twice that of any single other shard on the Grand Line. Its central landmass is the size of a small continent, with two reasonably sized archipelagos that would be enough to stabilize smaller shards in their own right. The climate of the coasts and lowlands is tropical and humid, with life governed by the predictable violence of the annual storms.

The Khasali refer to the central landmass as Kayal, after the empire which once dominated it. It is dominated by two great mountain ranges - larger than any in Esher - which dramatically divide it into regions with their own wildlife, peoples, and methods of subsistence. The first runs very close to parallel with the southern coast, while the second juts out along one arm of the great semicircle of Kayal’s north, eventually becoming one of the Expanse’s two great island chains. Quite uniquely, it was among the mountains and hills of the interior, rather than the river valleys and coastal plains of the north, that native civilization began to develop. This can be credited both to the north being too verdant - so fecund that its tribes were never disciplined by hunger or scarce hunting grounds and forced to adapt some manner of civilized agriculture - and to the peculiar metaphysics of the shard, and how they have affected the native life thereof.

The pre-conquest Kayal Empire was purported to be ruled by the eternally recurring souls of the Kayal tribe’s progenitors (a triadic partnership of two kings and one queen - tentatively associated with the shard’s suns and moon). Myths contradict each other about specifics but the three legendary figures either: gave birth to, sculpted from stone and blood, or raised up from the beasts of the mountains, the first generation of the Kayal tribe. When their deaths approached, they each chose a successor from among the tribe and bid them to wed each other and, at the climax of the ceremony, feast upon the flesh of their parent-god to assume their role and station. Illyric theologians famously name these figures as the titans (fallen angels corrupted by demons of flesh and life) from their bestiaries and consider the diversity of forms the natives peoples exhibit as proof they are in fact the descendents of the monsters’ soulless pets and servitors. This seems roughly as likely as ancient monarchs actually devouring their parents whole and being possessed by them (as opposed to a mythical exaggeration of the innocent native tradition where an orphan imbibes a small amount of an adult’s blood before witnesses as a rite of adoption), but it must be admitted that there is something which requires explanation.

It is a basic law of nature that the peoples of different world shards are far more diverse in form and appearance than those native to the Centre. This is true regardless of whether those peoples are barbaric, tribal or civilized, and has only a tangential relationship with the success of efforts educating and Enlightening them. But the Kymaric Expanse is near-unique for the sheer breadth of variation present. What became the ruling peoples and aristocracy of the Kayal Empire are half again as tall (and far more powerfully built) as any explorer or merchant who has written of them, with pebble-grey skin tough enough to turn aside any edge the shard’s natives were capable of honing - and the mythology of the interior abounds with lamentation at how lessened and declined they are from the power they once held. The hardiness and powerful build common to their former subjects in the mountains and valleys of the interior might plausibly stem from the same cause, but the amphibious fishers and pearl-divers of the great central basin, the avian tribes of the northern mountain range and the myriad of different barbarian clans attested to peopling the untamed reaches of jungle and hill all seem entirely distinct.

Despite certain fantasies popular among foreign scholars, the natives are all human both in body (the need for careful analysis can be avoided by pointing to the number of Khasali adventurers who have taken native consorts and filled their colonies with their offspring) and mind (given appropriate education, the children of every tribe remain capable of learning the arts of civilization and the tenets of Enlightened philosophy). What makes the Kymaric Expanse in particular so fecund in its diversity is unknown, but its natives in any event represent rich veins of study for those scholars deriving the laws of development and civilization.

The Expanse’s other rich veins are less metaphorical. Silver, emeralds and several other precious materials (though not, ironically enough, diamonds) are more abundant in the southern and interior mountains than any other shard. This, more than any other single fact, clarifies and explains the politics and commerce of the shard.

Kayal itself is of course dominated by what are called the ‘Kayal Principalities’ or ‘Successor States’ - two polite euphemisms for one of the more brutally anarchic species of subjugation humanity has yet devised. Dozens of warlords and petty kings have fought over the corpse of the Great Kayal ever since its conquest - by now those descended from Khasali conquerors are quite indistinguishable from those claiming to restore the glory of the empire, and both are wholly dependent on the Rhaloke colonies on the southern coast exchanging jewels, silver, reagents and slaves for weapons, tools and mercenaries (as well as novelties and intricate artifice of all kinds) from the Centre and other shards. The increased autonomy of those colonial ports after the end of the last Armada War has done little or nothing to improve the lot of the interior - if anything the flow of mercenaries and adventurers seeking to carve off their own cut of lucrative carrion has only grown.

The Principalities are of far more interest to most than the remainder of the continent, and so already the subject of a great many valuable studies. The remainder of the continent has been comparatively neglected for its lack of civilized states and precious metals.

The first exception to that neglect are the ferociously xenophobic barbarian clans native to the imposing eastern edge of the southern mountain range. Short in stature but hardy and resilient, it’s theorized that they are the remnants of some ancient empire in their own right - for the mountains they call home are riddled through with cyclopean tomb-complexes of a kind the Kayal show no interest in, and which are far beyond their current ability to even dream of creating. Living within the graves and temples of their ancestors, they have proven violently adept at hunting down and massacring explorers of all kinds despite their evident lack of social development. Their success is explained in large part by the remoteness and inhospitality of their mountains, and the remainder by their pretenatural understanding of the region’s unstable geology and odd faculty with primitive elemental theurgery. It has been theorized that some slumbering dragon acts as a patron god and benefactor, though all evidence for this remains circumstantial.

Less-studied are the whole assortment of barbaric clans which fill the jungles and river deltas of the northern interior, which combine remoteness and inhospitality with lack of anything so enticing as ancient tombs and lost treasures of a forgotten empire. Fascinating objects of future study, but - given the difficulties that have been encountered shaking them free of their idyll and introducing them to honest work aboard ships or on plantations - there has been limited interest in sponsoring true engagement beyond that. The untracked wilderness they call home does little to encourage this - full of poisonous plants and venomous beasts, as well as deceptively unnavigable rivers and dangerously wild spirits.

The great semicircular bay of the continent’s north offers a richer area of study, with several different tribal groups (and a nascent civilization) who engage in both commerce and war with each other running across the coastline. The most infamous of these are the tribes which dominate the north-western mountains and barrier islands - able by some combination of heritage and craft to fly with the wings of great birds (crows, bats and eagles, depending on the particular tribe), they have menaced and extracted tribute from the great bay’s other peoples for ages beyond memory. Still parochial and socially primitive, they have otherwise adopted well to changing circumstances - which is to say that they now wield stolen or scavenged pistols and steel, and ally with corsairs they offer safe harbor to, that their raids range ever-further, and that their ‘windlords’ have accumulated riches and retinues beyond the wildest dreams of any in past centuries. Despite punitive expeditions expelling them from several islands and destabilizing more than one nascent confederacy, they remain the greatest threat to civilization and commerce in general and the Commonwealth’s interests in particular in the northern Expanse.

Turning East, the grand, gentle sweep of the coastline is dotted with villages and ritual sites belonging to any of a hundred different clans and nominal confederacies. Having for centuries filled their days with fishing, pearl-diving and simple games, they are as a rule quite naive and peaceable, with little understanding of the wider world, or curiosity to explore it beyond whatever might wash up on their beach. Fortunately, that occurs with enough frequency that they are neither terrified of novelty nor unfamiliar with commerce (either through barter or, in the more advanced cases, through simple currencies such as pearls or certain species of shell).

That familiarity with commerce is due less to any virtues inherent to their own cultures and more due to the influence of one of the most fascinating peoples in the entire shard - whom the gutter press seems absolutely insistent on calling ‘sirens’. In many ways a quite primitive tribal culture, scattered across hundreds of small islets, atolls, and sheltered coves in the great northern bay, they provide little evidence of material or social sophistication. This is an environment they are extremely well-suited to, the typical adult capable of swimming for tens of kilometers with a pack or child bound to them - it is unknown whether they are truly amphibious or merely capable of holding their breath for hours, but in either case deaths by drowning seem wholly unheard of. Far more interesting, however, is their social role - aquatic nomads, they act as merchants, couriers and mediators between different coastal tribes across the whole great bay, with richly developed (and quite effective) traditions of barter and arbitrage. That a people with barely any access to (or ability to work) wood should possess the most numerous and grandest canoes on the water at the date of contact should be all the evidence required of their success in this role. The disruptions brought by contact with Central civilization were inevitable, of course, but the short-sightedness of certain officials in failing to integrate them into the new order is a mistake that will hopefully soon be revisited by the Committee for Colonial Affairs.

The only native civilization north of the barrier jungles is far to the east (and thus relatively insulated from corsair raids). Despite the paradoxically thin and easily exhausted soil that curses much of Kayal, the natives had developed a crude form of ‘slash and burn’ farming even before contact. While characteristically warlike and honour-obsessed for their level of development, a few of the larger villages proved willing and able to accept the Commonwealth’s aid - and with it now form the leading forces of a united principality. The Committee for General Enlightenment has already opened several schools dedicated to instructing their most promising children on modern agriculture, statecraft and military theory (along with, of course, the generalities of Enlightened philosophy), and a permanent embassy has created a healthy trade in all the supplies and foodsuffs needed for both Commonwealth ships and more focused plantations on their part and metal tools, weaponry, and assistance in securing more and more resilient farming land further inland on the Commonwealth’s.

The vast majority of those plantations and colonies are found in the second archipelago, larger and more widely spread than the fairly tight line of barbarian-filled barrier isles on the north-east. Scattered to the south of Kayal proper, there are over fifty islands large enough to note (and many more small atolls). Possessing far richer soil and no native populations of note, they were the first lands discovered when the sea was charted and have since been the site of several wars between colonial expeditions from every power worth noting. Between the lucrative plantations that dot many of them and the great Khasali treasure fleets that still sail south from Sethennai and Kalmeta each year, it is hardly a surprise that the archipelago is a natural breeding ground for pirates of every type - and with the end of the Armada War and the recent intrigues in the Illyric court, the infestation is worse now than at any point in living memory.

Kymeric soil has few of the unusual properties which make agriculture in other shards so unusually lucrative, but the climate and soil of those islands is still very well-suited to profitable plantation economies. The specific crops…

-Academic Rasim Kleio, ‘The Demography of the Kymaric Expanse’, composed while touring the shard before retiring from the Academy to take up a commission as the general director of the First Bank of Sethennai

#worldbuildidng #fantasy #abhari #atlas #the outer seas

The Broken Throne

What Was

All now know the tale of Lugash-Hiraz, first Lord of the Ochre Plain, then Satrap of Ten Heavens and Assessor of Divine Tribute, and most lately the much-honored Persecutor of the Dishonored Dead. He was well-loved by neither mortal nor God, but he was ancient beyond memory, and rich beyond dreams of avarice. His priests were tyrants and misers, their estates only growing as their patron abandoned each Dynasty in turn, always at just the moment where his betrayal would earn the highest price from their successors. He was a loathsome and many-eyed toad, consumed by sins both petty and grand, possessed of every failing mortal and divine. Most hatefully of all, his appetites were never sated - with each year he forever demanded new treasures and curiosities, ever-dearer sacrifices and slaves. Across what was once the Empire are a millennium of pyres and tombs, hosts and fortunes consigned to the Underworld to preserve the fickle favor of Heaven.

Lo, but his demesne was glorious. A palace of emerald and ivory. A legion of slaves in golden chains and golden masks. Ambrosia-bearing orchards and endless fountains of purest nectar. A court of lesser gods gathered around him, flattering his every vanity in the hope of some scrap of favor, which tried and punished the souls of those who died without blessings or rites. A thousand sacrificed souls, forever glowing with the pyre’s light or walking with the quiet of an airless tomb, waited upon the most transient desire of the meanest guest. All while those to be judged walked barefoot over fields of shattered glass, wailing in agony as they volunteered for trials and games in the hopes of winning the smallest iota of respite.

In the last days of the final Mandate, Lugash-Hiraz grew soft and fat. His reptilian apetites grew so vast that he turned his gaze from the world below and coveted the thrones and offices of the great gods above him, the imperial powers he still debased himself and kowtowed before.

And so it was, that when the order of the world was undone and all fell to blood and ash, he had neither warning nor plan.

And so it was, that when his priests were butchered and burned by those they had held in terror with the lash of his judgement, and his fields and temples were overgrown with all-loving Flesh, he had naught to offer in return but empty rage.

And so it was, that when the White Serpent Fuxi intruded upon his demesne and feasted upon the guardians he set upon it, he had no recourse but to bargain and plead, offering hoards of gold and promises of glory before its ophidian gaze.

And so it was, that the Eater of Gods feasted for a day and a night, and the screams and desperate appeals that were Lugash-Hiraz’s last efforts echo still throughout this grey and lifeless land.

What Is

Fuxi had little interest in mortal souls, no matter the legions that were sent to bar its way. Amid the ruins of the palace of Lugash-Hiraz, many of his household were left unharmed. Bejeweled attendants and silk-garbed heralds as well as the longsuffering drudges whose chains sat more heavily upon them. They lived, in the odd way which the dead might be said to. And yet that mattered little, compared to what else the serpent’s ruin had wrought.

Lo, but they were free!

They made a pyre of all their chains, and fed lash and overseer alike to what remained of their Master’s guardian beasts. Though the gardens wilted and the fountains clogged with filth and silt, they established themselves in the heart and throne of his ruined manse. Amid catastrophe and apocalypse, they exulted and were merry, and partook of all that which had been denied them.

It was only as the glory of their liberation faded that they at last turned their eyes outward, and beheld the wasteland that Heaven had become. The confusion and anarchy that pervaded all, the petty tyrants that now tyrannized the lost and hopeless souls trapped in this ruined shadow of the world.

On every neck a yoke, in every hand a lash. The perfect hierarchy which once oppressed them, replaced with the squabbling of ten thousand petty thugs.

If this was to be the end of all things, the slow dissolution into an exultant Abyss which it is said will follow a world without Mandate and a Heaven without Gods, then surely it might be met with some measure of dignity and grace. An afterlife of an afterlife, where for one bright moment virtue and justice reigned at last supreme.

From amongst their number, the once-slaves elected captains and judges - those whose servitude had seen them shaped into something beautiful or silver-tongued, their minds weighed down with libraries of philosophy which Lugash-Hiraz had coveted but did not read. They donned the golden masks of harbingers and heralds, and walked proudly on what remained of Royal Roads. They held writs bearing the seal of vacant offices, and spoke of debts and bonds most had begun to forget.

They made usurpation an art, and with the authority of their dead tyrant they offered patient mediation and justice both swift and fair. With every secret of rhetoric learned waiting upon a monster’s court, a hundred firefly-wisps in shining eyes and golden masks offered hope, a vision of what yet might be built.

A Republic of Virtue, a shining light against the looming dark. A moment, however brief, where the shades of the dead might finally live as they always should.

#worldbuildidng #fantasy #dead gods #histories #pure ideology #for tw