wizard

[SA]

BIRTHSONGS
These songs, which together comprise the greater birthsong of the sunken city, have a common origin in the anglelands but not a common author. The original collection was composed in short stanzas and sung in the comparatively unstructured style common to the folktales of the sunken states. As it is impossible to capture the beauty of that strange verse without performing it aloud and untranslated we have provided a prose translation which (we hope) approximates its original demeanour. Many of the songs are missing, or have been stolen from History.

Stanzas 1-3

A child once sat down to play by the seat of the wizard lord of adders, whose stony aspect had gone untended by the keepers of the city garden and so was hidden by the growth of years. It had not been the child's intention to court the wizard's favour, for one so young could not know the ways of the secret seekers, but by playing as she did and clambering over his gown she woke him as surely as if she had laid her prayers before him.  The adder lord's square face came to life and he asked her what blessing she might have from him. The child replied in the language of children which is unknown to us: 'I would have mud on my dress and leaves in my hair.' The stone sage, understanding those words as we who are grown old and foolish cannot, smiled and made the sign of sacred scales upon her brow. Thus the little one came early to the secrets of the strange design.

The missing stanzas describe the further adventures of the child of adders, but their pages are damaged beyond usefulness. We join the child again at the climax of the tale of the tower and her adventure continues parallel to the fox-hooded wizard and the brown jucal.

Stanzas 9-11

Every night a man crawled across the city rooftops. He had a brown mask-and-hood that looked like a fox or a horned snake and his clothing was pinned with feathers. Some who saw him thought he was a ghoul out to steal their spirits and they threw stones or flung ordure at him. Others who thought him one of the elder kind only shut their doors with a warding sign or cursed that name which compels all chthonic creatures. The hooded man, who was neither ghoul nor earthen fiend, only smiled at their invectives. He shook his head and waved his arms at them in mockery and crawled onward like the shadow of a creeping lizard. He blew like smoke between the shutters of closed windows and slithered beneath locked doors like oil. When morning came the witnesses of his trespass would approach the householders and say: 'A shade crept in your home last night. Surely it meant some evil.' But the householders would be vexed at this and remark that their sleep had been untroubled '" what's more the sun seemed especially warm and bright for such brief winter days. Each night for many years the hooded man entered a different house and its occupants emerged to similar tales, which they met with comparable confusion.

Stanzas 10-12

In that city there is a certain broad tower with a top of light-spun glass. In that tower once lived the yellow-caped wizards who trade their parts among themselves and bargained new organs from the collector machines so that no piece of them could be called their own and in so doing learned the histories of this or that particular human part. It was often said of those sybarites that their components were stolen from the poor, or the mad, or the blind vagrant children who sing the evening songs and serve the sordid fancies of the rich. This was not true of the wizards of the broad tower, and yet they were not creatures of kindness. They jealously hid their science from the plaguewashers who would beg their kindness when a fearsome malady spread through the city. They closed their hearts to the pleas of surgeons when the dismembered peasant sons returned from battles in the high country. The people of the city soon grew to hate the wizards of the glass-topped tower and when such a magus travelled through the streets in her palanquin, riding the shoulders of gray slaves, there was always someone in the motley crowd ready to work some mischief against her.

Stanzas 13-16

One night, an adept of that detested place travelled along the hysteron course toward the lone citadel on the city's far side where, it was well known, the grovelling castellan would sell living hostages from the highland war to any who could pay. The gangsters who police the night-time streets saw her path and among them was the brown jucal, who spoke thus to his friends: 'Long have we wondered at the secrets of those yellow-caped villains. I shall fake my way among them and learn their evils.' He hurried to the citadel along the routes known to criminals and assassins, and entered it by the high black windows that face the rising sea. Down he went through lamp-lit halls to where the prisoners of war are kept and stealthily contrived to imitate their kind, weeping and cursing the sunken city and scouring himself with dirt. At length the jailor arrived with the wizard by his side, and he seized the brown jucal and thrust him into a coffin of stone which the wizards' grey slaves conveyed, by the sorcery of their own degraded race, into the chambers of the tower.

Here the tale is interrupted and, in the tradition of the anglelands, another speaker with another tale begins, after which the former song is resumed.

[SA]

Skills
There are six mortal levels of ability but only four mortal levels of skill. An unskilled character is considered Naive in the area concerned. Such a proficiency has a value of zero. Each level above Naive costs an Exploit equal to its value and each exploit must be gained in sequence. Therefore an amateur flautist who seeks renown for his talents must complete a value 2 exploit in order to become learned followed by a value 3 exploit in order to become adept.

-1
Inept: Mis-educated or defective.

0
Naive: Don't know how to do it.

1
Amateur: A dabbler or hobbyist's proficiency. Does not rely upon the skill.

2
Learned: Sufficient skill to make a profession of it.

3
Adept: Possessed of uncommon skill and sought out by lesser students (who wish to learn from you or supplant you).

4
Masterful: Widely considered among the greatest living practitioners of your art.

5
Enlightened: The wisdom nearest perfection.

6
Strange: A gift borne on the currents of those black seas oft-dreamed.

Exploits
These are the focus of a given legend. An exploit is a driving narrative culminating in the acquisition of some new wisdom.

Amateur: A year of studious application.
Learned: A major commitment of effort and resources over half a decade.
Adept: A gruelling and confronting undertaking of many years.
Masterful: A quest of staggering effort, requiring decades and leaving you irrevocably changed.
Enlightened: A task consuming whole lifetimes.

The Hidden and Forgotten Arts
Some arts are baffling to modern minds and therefore require a significantly greater effort from the student in order to attain even the most base proficiency.

Hidden arts (including many lesser magics and some past, future or esoteric sciences) require exploits one level higher than normal (so that, for example, a learned Wizard of Adders must effectively undertake a masterful exploit to become adept).

Forgotten arts are utterly alien to the current age, having been swallowed up by history or existing in some inconceivable future state. These require exploits two levels higher than normal.

Example: Indigo Jittelraya the cavalier
inept Romancer
adept Swordsman
learned Rider of the Bronze Moth
amateur Drummer; Singer; Orator; and Savant of the Crooked Rod

[Steerpike]

Looks like a good system, and a nice alternative to "leveling up."  Was the sequence of ranks designed with FUDGE in mind?

I love the stanzas, too - all very tantalizing.  Collector machines and grey slaves... creepy (are the grey slaves spirits, or reanimated corpses, or som ething quite different??).

[SA]

[ooc]Steerpike: The system was based on Fudge but not designed for it. It's actually a diceless system reinventing the FATE system I'd already concocted (but left unfinished), and intended for the same metaverse.

Collector machines... I don't know. The grey slaves are from a past age, reborn. They possess strange magics of their own age which their masters, though they be wise, cannot understand.[/ooc]

GENEALOGIES

Every living thing is bound to every other living thing, by generations stretching back into timeless protean space.  They are each a child of the first amoebic eve, indeed, a splintered reflection of the firstborn's own self, an unbroken chain of life and being '" one life, one being, with a trillion faces.  So too are worlds, all worlds, daughters of the first world in uninterrupted sequence: the same living planet divided and rebirthed.  A study of their genesis reveals the path to the parent and the ancestor: the first world whence all others, even ours, are spawned.

It is not, as some have speculated, a mere quirk of uncertainty in the physical nature of the cosmos '" no reconciliation of contrary possibilities or a need to account for all variables '" that demands new worlds be born.  If so, there would be no counting their number and no nuance too subtle by which they might be differentiated.  Rather, much like living animals there are moments of fertility, when a planet overburdened with histories or ideas or thronging organisms, must discharge the excess, budding new spaces to accommodate that which it has no place for.  And so the nascent planets blossom, and the parent, divested of old weights, is itself a new creature.  It forgets.  Those who call it home will most often forget.  And the new worlds have no past to remember. '"J.Titus

HISTORY

ANTEBELLUM: The past belongs to another place.  It lingers here only as a glimmer seldom glimpsed: a phantom of regret and unshakeable fears that once refused the possibility of paradise.  So we do not know what caused the War, or what the world was like before it.  If you like, the War itself was the birth of Quoth; to speak of a 'before' is to speak of impossibilities. '"Poiñee

What follows is a mixture of myths and fancies, but a certain truth can be found therein. '"M.P

ARMAGEDDON AND AFTER: Queen Shybbel and the Waking Bubble; Vi, Ferd and Tingwe, the Duchesses of Infinity; CROMLIER the father-mountain and all the tiny Gods of Morning... by war's end these gods were dead, their kingdoms crushed by mighty BLUE SKY, questing Long Nan Muto and the evil Ragamattia, scoured away with fire and cannon and little marching horrors.

But not forgotten.

Jangwa, King of Spite, who is slave to Ragamattia, chased the ghost of Wanohano, the smallest of all gods, through the streets of Pars, even as its towers toppled and burned.  'I will not be silenced!' the little one shouted, 'We will be remembered!'  And though bitter Jangwa is tireless, Wanohano was quick, leavened as all things are when the flesh is cut away, and the Black King could not catch her.

From the ashes of the world, muddied brown with the blood of empires, came the forests of Qetiphot, and Qetiphot bade the great trees strike the ruins that remained, and the creeping vines to choke and split the towers that gaped and screamed at the sun.  By the will of Sputhain, First King of Earth, the mountains opened wide their mouths and swallowed up the gory rivers and charnel fields.   Huah-Huah! who writes the story of the world compelled the winds and the rains: 'Forget!'  But they would not.  Not air or water defamed the face of shattered Pars or humbled empty Manayan.

The shame of the gods was not hidden, and not forgotten. '"R.D.Gustaeo

...OF GREEN PEOPLE: Qetiphot, emboldened by the spread of her woods, made a race of her own: the Green People with cities of leaves.  Being of the wood, they had no hearts, and less kindness in them even than Ragamattia.  The whole world hated them, and they learned in time to hate themselves.  They took the sword Flame from Cassipode as she slept and even as it consumed them they sought the head of their mother.  She scattered them with a shrug, of course, and tore their lords apart to feed her soil, but her pride was humbled.  The Green People live now in the cool dark beneath a few traitor forests and scheme forever new ways to spite their mother.

SHADDAI RISES, FALLS: In the early days there was an empress named Wesser.  Once proud and ruthless, her wits were denuded by age and warped with paranoia.  Her daughters and sons gathered to plot her demise and agreed that young Shaddai, an imperial grandson who was handsome yet simple and easily led, would succeed her.  But when Wesser sat at banquet, ready to drink from the bowl her children had poisoned, a gale blew in by the will of Long Nan Muto who had loved the empress before her madness, and it carried the news of their treachery.  Discovered, bold princess Jimoid cast away caution and leapt at her mother with a knife, but the winds had already carried Wesser away.  

There was a long war in which Jimoid and many others died.  But Shaddai lived and by war's end he was sixteen, and a man.  Cynicism had fouled his native gentility; tragedy had worn away his trust.  Still beautiful, lords and spirits alike gave their daughters to him so that he might have a wife from every kingdom.  He made slaves of them all and married none, for he thought he would live forever and saw no need for heirs.  Nevertheless, at the end of his life he did take a wife, and sire an heir, for the gods had not yielded their secrets to him.

This second Shaddai was crueller still.  He gave in kind with all gifts received: was loved by the wealthy and despised by paupers, who had nothing to give and so were starved or put away in unlit mazes and sent mad.  When a king seeking favour gave Shaddai the best of his horses, a pearl-white charger with hooves of gold, and the beast shat loudly as the emperor moved to mount it, Shaddai sent him all the sick and deranged of the empire, thus infecting his subjects and making a leper of his realm.

The third Shaddai was as unlike his forebears as can be imagined.  Gracious and even-handed, he knew in his youth that he must one day kill his father, but could not think how to accomplish it, for his father had become a sorcerer.  At last he heard tales of Flame, stolen from sleeping Cassipode and guarded by the Green People, and set out to find them.  Because they have no hearts, the Green People did not tell him of its curse; they thrust it gladly into his hands and hurried back into their burrows.

The world itself rejoiced when Shaddai put the sword Flame through his father's neck and burned him to ash.  But many lords had profited from the emperor's ways and they knew the son would prove their ruin.  Young Shaddai was murdered in his bed, never having worn the crown. '"Anonymous

AGELESS WHITE CASTLES: Centuries thence, when the name Shaddai had long since been forgotten, a human man otherwise of no importance found a magic unknown to the Living Gods that could make stone immortal.  He was murdered by his closest friend as soon as he shared this discovery.  That traitor became a king and made a castle which could not be sundered, then passed the secret to his children who became kings and queens of other places.

One day, much later, when their kingdoms covered half the world and were set pointlessly against one another '" their walls could not be broken and even gods were kept out '" Ragamattia said to Jangwa 'There is one Queen, and she is Ragamattia.'  So Jangwa crept to a tiny castle window and whispered poisonous words that filled the people's hearts with hate, so that they set upon one another and soon the halls were silent.  To each castle he crept, until all were dead amid the immortal stone.  But the castles remained, undaunted, filled with ghosts. '"Apocrypha

PARS FALLS, RISES: For ten thousand years dark-eyed Xont ruled the city of Pars.  A million invisible chains descended from his palace of air and clung to the people below so that he could shepherd their minds with sensuality and suggestion.  Because of this, the people were happy, but stupid.  Then Fabool the Demon came, fleeing the justice of another world.  He fell through the sky and broke the beautiful palace of Xont.  The illusion crumbled.  The citizens despaired of their true surroundings, warred against their god and almost killed him.  But Xont is the dream of ecstasy and thus unkillable.  He slunk away into memory and nursed his wounds.

Fabool ruled, then.  As a Demon from the stars his very being was poison, so the city, already a ruin, decayed and putrefied.  Though inhuman, Fabool was mortal.  He was strangled on his throne after a century of degenerate rule, and it again sat empty. '"C.N

THE QUEENS OF PARS: Twenty-two queens held the throne of Pars between the fall of Fabool and the rise of CROMLIER.  Pim the Eater of Hearts died peacefully in her sleep; Ley-or-Ley? who may have been two queens at once, was struck dead by the wrathful Langoor; Narn was crushed by her own weight; Sarmonise was burned alive in her bridal chamber; Hama was strangled by her impatient successor; Mamodel was flogged to death for Matricide; Dimardenda died in childbirth; Nosemardenda died of old age; Nimgua was eaten by trolls; Bamuncephelin abdicated and was not seen again; Rangal Puji drowned under suspicious circumstances; Tingal Puji died of the pox, as did all her daughters; Ursull Pan Orsid was slain by a hundred arrows at the battle of Pann; Vertimine died of an infected wound; Xarpir died of a broken heart; Fulminid Crassea fell from a great height; Sessil was poisoned by traitors; Bwaroji was poisoned by accident; Padmose poisoned herself; Onee was crushed by Mons the Tower; Lamili was murdered by her lover; Fumili went mad and cut her own throat... The gods have a rotten sense of humour. '"M.P

MOON AND THE VIRGIN: The goddess MOON looked down from her gardens one day and saw the boy Dimiu resting naked in a field.  Smitten, she went to his parents and begged that she be permitted to have him, but was denied.  She slew them, and when Dimiu returned home to find his parents dead he thought they had been killed by some monster.  He lived alone for a time, fearful of the beast that had taken his parents, while MOON watched him in yearning and shame.

At last he left with his mother's mattock and his father's knife, and journeyed long until he reached ancient Pars, where war was brewing.  There he became a soldier and saw the summoning of Mons the Tower, who had lain dead beneath the streets since before Time began, and fought the endless armies of Black Jangwa.  All the while, MOON watched him and defended him, and came to him in dreams.  For this reason alone he survived, became a general, and even once turned back the King of Spite.

Then MOON approached him undisguised and offered him a kingdom above all the kingdoms of earth, but though she was more beautiful than any creature of this world, his heart belonged to the soldier Qalil, who had fought beside him for so long.  That night Dimiu lay with Qalil, and MOON, seeing this, left him at last, in sorrow.  Her blessings left him also, but Dimiu, not knowing why, felt it was a burden lifting free after so many years, a burden he had not known was there. '"a fable

...AND MORE

Those are ancient things, of which there is much more besides.  We could speak of the ire of Ragamattia, of her death and her resurrection; of CROMLIER's return or how arrogant BLUE SKY was thwarted; how Jangwa stood alone against all the other gods and lived; how humankind learned flight, and how to raise the dead, and how to speak with stars...

But all this is a long, long time ago, on a world you've never heard of.  Better, then, to speak of now.

[ooc]Oh yeah, and that thing there is a repost of material from another thread. I'm integrating all my thematically related junk into one... thingy.[/ooc]

[SA]

Skills
Each skill is fairly comprehensive; specialisation and personalisation arises naturally as a consequence of the specific schooling you received during your exploits (such as a Prowler being schooled in the canticles of misdirection as opposed to the four adroit motions), and indicates advantages and unusual abilities.

Swordsman
hinged swords of Avut; thin blue blades of Ob; half-circle swords of Moon; tortoise techniques; hateful obgayu cuts; common soldier's skill; falling, rising seablades; six arcane formations; reckless strokes of doomed swordsmen.

Spearman
coiling glaives; endless root traditions; angled spears of Thomicha; abjurations of Kvrup.

Archer
horizon bows; philosophy of eagles; living trajectories of Humye; wind invocations.

Cutpurse
small magics of erudite thieves; jostling anonymity of crowds.

Sprinter
scrambling and pouncing through jungles; Pagah's hymn of speed; Arrak bounding arts.

Cutthroat
hollow-knives of Caliburn; intimate science of alleyway murderers; Vitati circle steps; philosophy or serpents; killing science of Cheos.

Swimmer
motions of tidekeepers; wisdom of Amphitre; nethermost dances.

Lover
jaded wisdom of catamites and concubines; sciences of Banuphar.

Prowler
canticles of misdirection; four adroit motions; Hea's gloomy veil.

Linguist
dragonnish; sidereal; vitriol of giants; rambling creoles of Chattum; susurrus; lowspeech; defiant whispers of grey slaves;  harsh braying of dire folk.

Dancer
whirling Kryges steps; doom dancing; staff dances of Nmoi; gleeful Yensan dances; grey slave dances.

Drummer
diamond drums; primordial Iumla beats; wrathdrums; manifold Pirtunhye cymbals

Painter
?

Investigator
?
Gossip
?

Courtier
Parsan rituals; mordant games of Jimmasi; Votta's paranoiac whispers.

Singer
Vachtish lullabies; Crucul murmursong; thruxsong; marching songs of soldiers; fractal harmonies of Ysys

Romancer
coquettish arts of Ardisvaldar maidens; Kchant sutras; nine heartless manipulations.

Wrestler
empty body arts of Kaddash; Angoll stances; four-clawed clasp.

Parent
?

Teacher
?

Poisonmaker
bleak Pyunun sciences; Salmezzer alchemy; earth curses

Philosopher
strange cosmologies of Llamer; morbid fancies of Prent; dogmas of the dead mountains.

Hidden Skills

Crooked Rod Savant
?

Holon Singer
endless melodies; measurless chords; reckless tones.

Hologrammattist
?

Grandswordsman
strokes that break the mountain; world-piercing thrusts; aegis techniques; strides that raise the dust.

Iron Lattice Seer
?

Tjibarubhera
fertility secrets; twelve life curses; wanton alchemies.

Surgeon
?

Savant of Colours
red secrets; pale secrets; blue secrets; yellow secrets; green secrets; black secrets.

Algebraist
sublime calculations; geodesic shapings; anathematic forms.

Forgotten Skills

Grey Secret Keeper
Nomothete
Aeon Poet
Tammurspeaker
Earth Sovereign
Wizard of Adders

[ooc]Very much an incomplete list. More later.[/ooc]

[SA]

One day the sun will forgive the world. It will spread the light of its love across all the dried up and lonely lands.

The girl is not sure that she believes this. She imagines the sun growing darker, ever darker, until it is swallowed up by the shadowy sky. Is there a colour farther and lonelier than black? Are there unfamiliar colours on the other side of our darkening heaven?

She asks her father if this is possible. He does not know such things, and wisely tells her so.

IN THE SHADOW OF THE SUN

DAY TIME
They could not see the stars because the days were bright. There are still machines that order the hours by the sun's motions. They have no present use.

TWILIGHT
They anticipated its fading by many centuries. There were no revolutions. They stored its lingering light in submerged cities. The forests overcame their ancient need and were filled with a hundred colours. Strange new fires blossomed in the gardens of the world.

NIGHT TIME
They know that soon they will be swallowed up or they will be delivered. They have been joined by others, for whom the darkness is not so.

[LD]

I really like the way you represented the skills.

But where did "Tjibarubhera" come from. I did a google search and all I found was this thread. Amusing that no one in any language has previously used that particular collision of words.

[SA]

I really like the way you represented the skills.

Thanks. I want to eliminate the divide between skill mechanics and skills as an expression of the character and setting. There are very few numbers in this system.

[SA]

Miscellany #1
...Eerie, prince of Frostplane, learnt of Dismal King's infidelity. With five and twenty coins he bought foul MAGGNET's service in revenge, and so MAGGNET followed Dismal King as he was coming home from his lover's keep, and MAGGNET stove in that infidel's brain. Some time later CARAC-MOST-PLENTIFUL was travelling among those very same stones and he came upon Dismal King's rotted body. The body spoke to CARAC-MOST-PLENTIFUL: you are the lord of birth, and oft have you traded life with life for a worthy bargain. And the body of Dismal King whispered a worthy bargain to CAR-MOST-PLENTIFUL, who put a tiny seed into the softness of Dismal King's slurrying brain. From that seed grows GWOLOR, the first of all trees.

Later came Frittic Bomli, huddled in manpelts against the horrid forest winter and hurrying along that same forgotten path. ZOAM THE STOAT now dwelled in that dark realm, and seeing Frittic Bomli pass by he grew mad with violent hunger. He leapt out before her and she knew what he was about. She sang out to GWOLOR, the first of all trees: Father of Life, rescue this one whose life is about to be destroyed. But GWOLOR sneered at Frittic Bomli: from such deaths as yours there is often a life; the green king does not recognise you. So ZOAM THE STOAT had all of Frittic Bomli, but later a quiet green hate was born in the warmth of her and it crawled like a withering snake along the hearth of the first forest until it found arrogant GWOLOR and slowly over many epochs it has wound around his long belly, and one day it will choke out his life.

[Steerpike]

I like it when nature spirits are capricious/indifferent/cruel rather than being all Gaian and gentle and motherly and crap.  "Red in tooth and claw" > Eywa!

[Nomadic]

I like it when nature spirits are capricious/indifferent/cruel rather than being all Gaian and gentle and motherly and crap.  "Red in tooth and claw" > Eywa!

I also like when spirits get their comeuppance for their actions as opposed to being unstoppable and unpunishable entities of infinite wisdom.

[SA]

I like stories where past events come back around and bite someone.

[SA]

images
She tired of the darkness... which lay in seething film upon the mirror of the world and so was a reflection of Her own form.

She conceived of colour, and conceived COLOUR, and that child divided into its dozen hues and lay upon the mirror of the world, giving definition to her face.

It gazed at her with her own face, and she had not considered the principle of shape, so that she saw a shapeless thing, and it saw a Shapeless Woman.

That is how they knew one another, in disgust and without comprehension.

ages
First-man and First-woman began as one being. COLOUR peered into that creation and saw the radiance and reason of its shape and said 'this one is like me'.

Shapeless Woman looked beyond the lie of light to the hollow at its core: 'no, said she, it is like me'.

They divided First-man from First-woman, but when they searched the soul of their newly severed creation they could not separate its definition and its darkness.

First-man lived within First-woman, and she lived in him. When Shapeless Woman vanished them each to a distant corner of the world they found each other unerringly.

images
Shapeless Woman had many elder children, born not from COLOUR's love but their mother's solitary congress in the limitless night.

Uncertainly they are called Morning and messenger, and Hollowness and The Unrelenting, and they hold many more within themselves whose names are surer but less worthy.

[SA]

some notable weapons

THE CHERISHED ONES are the spears and shields that Bone-thief armed his eleven soldiers with when Unraveller's armies set upon the gate at Brother Mountain. Noble as their stand was, the godless princess could not be repelled by any human force, and so those soldiers were butchered. Because the mountain gods do not honour good intentions they spurned Bone-thief's labour and his memory. He is not remembered in the high countries. Only these cherished instruments remain, and the warriors who use them do not know why they are so beloved. Bone-thief himself is blind. He has never in all his many lives held any killing thing and he claims he never shall.

KOVOLK HELLTHINGS are gauntlets of chitin claws and tiny iron gears. Chains depend from their fingers like the tails of dead scorpions that can be lengthened and whipped about or loosed entirely upon an advancing crowd to seize or to rend with many barbs.

THE UNGLORIOUS are glaives of solid iron. They were first possessed by the Yellow Farekhas, greatest among the samkha, but they were abandoned when the forge-born horde retreated to Fulminant Plain. Like all the blades of that race they hold their edge and lightness only when filled with heat. Thus they are wielded instead as massive crushing clubs by the grandswordsmen of Millipede.

SOMNOLENT SPEARS are carved out of living dream. Their broad spades sever the bonds between the wakeful and their dreaming selves. They are put into the hands of slumbering soldiers, who spring up to battle their foes with half-lidded eyes.

THE THREE MAJESTIES are machines of incomparable size, designed by Humlutt the Architect for the siege of Tcharauk. Each bears the countenance of one of the Middle Gods: Grievance, Avarice and Restitution are represented, perhaps because their aspects best embodied the principles of that legendary war, but Charity and Abnegation were rejected. The priests of that slighted pair claim their rejection as the reason for the siege's failure.