-)- Dystopia (Revisited)

[SA]

[ooc]I AM ALWAYS WORKING ON DYSTOPIA. EVEN WHEN YEARS GO BY WITHOUT A SINGLE POST. EVERYTHING I MAKE BELONGS, INFORMALLY, TO DYSTOPIA.[/ooc]
[ooc]It's back, and it's better than ever!

All comments are to be made in the Discussion Thread, and as always, enjoy. [/ooc]
[ic=Destiny]'There are no regrets.

"Yes, we have done terrible things.  We have spawned monstrosities of annihilative fury, birthed and ended worlds of unquantifiable essence on a whim, wrought fathomless intellects whose wills shape the very substance of Creation, and set in motion events that will doubtless prove the unmaking of our own existence.

"And yet, for all the travesties we have rendered in the name of necessity '" of greed, of science '" we remain undaunted and unashamed.

"For we are changed.

"We have been called fodder, fools, gods, even madmen.  We have run the gamut from pariah to Regal, and transcended even that.  We wandered in the soundless chill of Void, made parlance with beings of sordid treachery and untruth'¦ we did many things.

"But such are trivialities, exploits of the arrogant and the naïve.  For the sake of these fanciful ideals we broke ourselves upon the jagged shores of Anathema'¦ and it was in the aftermath of our own destruction that we awoke to our folly.

'This place seethes with a terrible and beautiful potentiality the likes of which you will never know, and for a moment, torn and twisted on the very boundary of reason, we glimpsed that simple truth.

'So we do not seek to justify ourselves, nor do we strive to condemn.  We do not call ourselves saviours, or deceivers.

'We can call ourselves nothing more than privileged.'

Something stirred in the earth beneath, and the walls shivered.  My shackles giggled and gibbered quietly, tightening under some animal impetus and slicing through my raw and beaten flesh, so that my blood ran free through the contours and grooves of the altar, pattering softly on the floor.

My torturer gazed down upon me with a look of almost maternal affection, and with the gentlest of motions caressed my quivering cheek.[/ic]

-)-
Dystopia
(Revisited)

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[ic=Cause for Concern]Hubris, heresy and the characteristic short-sightedness of the anthropoid peoples has wrought a final lingering damnation upon the world.  The waves murmur with an unfamiliar intelligence, and the seas boil and bicker while the weeds and corals wither in droves around us.  Our people move to darker and cooler waters, sinking to the depths beyond the predations of the strangefolk above, and the amphibian alliances are waning'¦

Susurrus Deep-caller of the Geongensia

______

Things are changing.  The sky is a sickly black thing spilled from the bowels of some industrial monstrosity and the sun's light bleeds through the clouds in pitifully meagre quantity.  The birds flock in erratic patterns, the trees shiver in the stillest of winds, and there are creatures that stalk these woods the likes of which we have never seen.

Muleillikuk Datt of the Symullalqin

______

So this is the world we have inherited?  Streets heavy with the stink of decay as thousands upon thousands of shambling, mindless civilians laden with diseases too numerous to count come out into the open air to chant their monotonous litanies to gods whose names are alien to me.  The foundries belch ever greater quantities of that foul-smelling smog into the sky, and sometimes it rains and the diseased howl in blind agony as the caustic fluid purifies their wretched forms.

They say that times are changing though.  That soon we will have an answer to the darkness, and once again the stars in the night sky will be more than a folk memory.  But I cannot find it in myself to believe it.  The engines rumble on, loved ones are still taken in the night by men in masks of scathingly jovial expression to fates I do not wish to contemplate'¦ and there are some who speak of war.

We did not ask for this.

Estaban Rehualetes

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[ooc]

Core Ethos

Heaven conquered, the angels scattered, and a nation tearing a path through the planet's core'¦ we have a lot to answer for.

This is a world caught between many things.  Between slumber and wakefulness, agony and bliss, ignorance and unbearable enlightenment.  There are oceans, nations, men, machines, wars, conquest and carnage.  But there are also dreams; worlds within microcosmic worlds and brilliant hallucinatory constructs that make homes of mortal minds and cast monolithic shadows upon the paltry effigies of our own creation.  In these halfway spaces there are Gods, and there are devils.  There is a magic born of ineffable cause, and a hungry nothingness that defies the substance of truth and commits all it touches to dissolution.

And there is laughter, which does not mock, but sounds in joy of a terrible reckoning that blossoms in the unseen passages of Time Not Yet Come.

Welcome.

Themes

Entropy
Everything is falling apart.  As man's edifices reach far into the starry heights '" even into the alien mindscapes beyond flesh; as science births enlightenment and order, and the old terrors of the world drift into memory and myth'¦ it all falls apart.  The naïve cannot see it.  The ignorant will not.  But those whose eyes are open cannot deny it'¦

Fatality
One day it will all be undone.  When, and in what manner, none can tell.  Proselytes on the streets of Draet Samn proclaim Yawd's imminent judgement, while the Daoin-Sidhe and Gaelbellaine's ancient Maesters promise aeons of further existence before the Death of All.  Some say it will never come, calling their world immutable and unperturbed, but they are surely fools.

Doubt and Delusion
It is not merely that things are not what they seem.  Beyond that seeming, within the very reality that our deluded senses misperceive, the truths that sit at the foundations of the cosmos are an irreconcilable paradox.  Truth and falsity rest intertwined, so much so that they are but one aberrant entity, and this nonsensical profundity is echoed throughout all the strata of existence.

Rebirth
The earth is older than the universe.  Man is older than the earth.  There have been innumerable incarnations of the Eternity, born, shattered and reforged, for all that dies is not dead eternal.  A princely shade sits perched upon the crown of existence, and with diamond hands he twists the cosmic skein and weaves anew the lattice of Creation.

Perception as Power
In this place, to see something with profound clarity is to make it manifest upon the world.

Prejudice
People are not kind.  In the easternmost territories of the Red Desert, Scathi princes commit acts of genocide against their serfs even as their western neighbours seek to civilise them; women, for all that society has advanced their status, are still man's inferiors; cities the world over remain divided across racial lines, and self-perpetuating meritocracies foster unofficial caste distinctions.  Ignorance and racism fuelled the Great War a century past, and the conflict's aftermath has not alleviated the fervour with which many detest those they do not understand.

Action
Things are wild, frenetic and bloody, with a swashbuckling edge matched against a dark and gritty atmosphere.  Facing down diseased cultists in the ruins of an abandoned church with symbol and sword in hand; deciphering the cryptic lore of a long dead thaumaturge; pursuing cyborg hitmen across jetties, bridges and airships in cities high above the earth; walking the endless roads of antediluvian architects; matching wits with Old Gods in wasting forests thick with corruption; raining hot steel down on outlaws and sorcerers on the sands of the Red Desert'¦

Terror and Wonder
The world is stranger than you can imagine.  Vessels of iron with eldritch sigils sail the skies like an ocean, while mechanical men do the work of their organic masters.  The oceans hold intellects ancient and fierce, and scholars travel otherworldly corridors rendered in glorious abstract.

There are places where space stretches thin, and a primal malignance presses against the world's fragile fabric with sadistic longing.  Along a certain coast, the air runs liquid while the very earth is warped in a realisation of pure sound; the dying screams of those who were trapped amidst its horrid transformation have taken obscene corporeal form, agony given flesh.  Sometimes the stars fall, and beasts from foreign realities bring pestilence and murder to the vile and innocent alike.

Stone speaks.  Fire schemes.  Shadow consumes'¦ and yet for all its malevolence it may not be our foe.[/ooc]

[SA]

[ic=Unmaking]'¦Thus Old Yawd shaped the earth and the stars, the seas the mounts and the winds.  Then, when he had ceased his forging and in wearied yearning sought the otherness of Seimm, he turned to his offspring Basch and Aub.  To the first, all that danced and turned upon the globe was placed in her august hands.  To the second, only stillness and silence were of his province'¦ so Aub, without bitterness, in all the loving grace his darkling heart possessed, reached with shadowed claw into his sister's breast and stilled her beating heart.

Psalm from the Forgotten Book of Yawd

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MÃR

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The Arc upon the Spiral

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A Treatise by Eirqart an'Melluk
(edited by Tarrynad uf'Sullein)

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Mýr itself is, first and foremost, an entity existing in both the Astral (or corporeal) and Æthereal (for simplicity's sake it is colloquially called 'mental', but this is a misnomer) realms.  As an astral body, it orbits the star Omertartis (the Sun), in elliptical passage through the Black Æther, and completes its cycle once every 350 or 351 days, in annual alternation.  It possesses eight satellites of its own, called '" among other titles '" the 'Sisters' or the 'Wise Men'.  Their individual names are, in scientific tradition, Shish, Zhemp, Hlut, Myan, Mirrad, Syad, Kalut and Sizhe.  Only Hlut and Kalut are close enough in orbit to exert great tidal force (the others being a fraction of their size), and the two moons are rarely in the sky at the same time.

More prominent than the moons is the Serratic Belt, a sluggish, dancing progression of heretofore unidentified luminous bodies that lights the sky a multitude of colours on clear summer nights.  My own studies of the phenomenon can be found in the 2294 anthology Wonders of the Black, although censorship by the Ezer has diluted its pertinence.

The planet's surface is divided among eight continents: Ehrune, Chaultine, Calleinn, Naovin, the Sundered Isles, West and East Corlainth, and Yntaroum, the latter three of which share the same landmass.

Note: This section lists the regions that might be termed 'major powers'.  Many of those mentioned may be subdivided into smaller territories, and many more are not mentioned here at all.

West Corlainth is subdivided into six major regions.  Most prominent is Baennet Zzar, representing the 'unified' ulvenii nations Attal, Aennet, Darhoum and Solisid, whose triumphs in the Great War have garnered scorn and adulation in equal measure.  Above it is Yeldte, empire of the curious (though some call them 'horrifying' '" I cannot for the life of me see why) maggot-folk.  Cshar, containing the independent kingdoms Calthaire, Helsannen and Dhoromass, covers the continent's south, and there the conceits of our deluded antiquity endure in gross fashion.  The anarchic Wild, where the old Scathi princes struggle against the Zzari and their expansionist intent, marks the boundary between civilisation and the bewitching red desert, Tyr, which dominates the continent's east.  Therein, the crumbling (might I add, over-aggrandised) wastes of Dautat may be found, along with its accursed secrets.

In East Corlainth the red sands of Tyr segue into the golden dunes of Fhr Lahn, which rival Tyr's own size and grandeur.  Below it, the sorcerous Aebarophar rests largely uncharted, its lands seething with strange thaumatic power.  Further east lie the divided samkhan states, Voht Yaltet, Szu Wen, Att Sold, Tzent, Seht and Kht Mer, whose Dust Empire collapsed some centuries past, birthing a bloody civil war that even how has not waned in ferocity.

The Heruddin Isthmus connects Dhoromass' southeast to north-western Qar Alal, the upper half of Yntaroum, where the fearsome thorcaiasaed and towering opiliodra rule.  Southern Yntaroum is comprised primarily of the lifeless Desiccated Plains, in which the prism-kingdoms of the crystal folk stretch far into extradimensional spectrums and the Obsidian Empire shapes the whispers of the earth into eldritch wonders.  At the continent's southernmost point (in fact the lowest terrestrial point on the planet), is the Phantom Reach.

Just clear of Attal's coast lie Poeddac, Rheinlaed and Soujinnlaed, Baennet Zzar's longstanding allies.  Beyond stretches the Iounennion Sea; deep in its tumultuous heart are hidden Gaelbellaine, city of eternal rain, and the obelisk cities of Draum (where dwell the janni Merchant Kings).  The waters of Iounennion are home to the tamut, ancient and calculating synapsidae who claim (perhaps correctly) to be the fathers of man.  West of Iounennion is the Murkwater Sea, where the city-states of Das Dramurr dominate the Bolstrodd Archipelago.

Above and west of Murkwater is the Glasswater Ocean, home of the Gon cephalopods and their timeless empire, Geongensia.  Their loathing of the tamut, I am told, is without bound, and having seen the violence with which their peoples war, I do not doubt it.  They share these waters with the Derrou, a miscegenetic mix of jan and jutra (commonly called jan-jutra), who live nomadic lives upon the sea.

The Sundered Isles are most accurately a vast archipelago, rather than a continent, but they share a singular continental shelf, and so by and large they are classified as the latter.  Their denizens are as bizarre as they are varied: the sadistic viskke, whose fungal kingdoms encompass much of the continent's west, plunder the southern islands where the hominid jutra dwell, and the sauropsidian teliat inhabit the marshy islands Sth'tkassta and Drkk'sn'tatt, the latter of which comes within mere miles of Corlainth's northern coast.  The aeons-old Sidhe hold court in the First Forest, which covers the central Island, Ka'ath.  Tsotor, a famous island in the archipelago's southwest, houses the Clockwork Cities, where earthen golems work endlessly to maintain the empty homes of their millennia-dead creators.  There are many more, some that even I have not yet encountered, but we have not the space to detail them.

East of the Murkwater is Calleinn, where the lords of Man's oldest empire (long without an emperor) struggle in the wake of the Eight-Legion War.  The fall of the Praetors of Dramurr has liberated them from the tyrannies of the faceless As'senat, but the freedom promised by the First Emperor Aghattan is forever denied.  Etghufhas, the Old Lords of the Earth, hold mortal men accountable for some unknown slight in far-flung antiquity, and so the Old Lands can never know rest.

To the south is Chaultine, separated from Calleinn by the Eiglassut Sea.  In the Ythghatt, Pesakt and Fymnbest regions of the north, the continent is inhabited by the misiru, who are hybrid descendants of Calleinn settlers and yeot natives.  The Majen Plain marks the boundary between known civilisation and the fabled forest Aggremoor.  Here, the ruins of the mythic sangheil dwell amidst trees warped with Taint, and the ravenous dhampir and breog war as they always have.  In the continent's east, where the old Chaultine blood runs pure, the Yot, Dar-Fain and Malud theocracies contemplate the mysteries of the Whispering Coast, a place where mind and substance coalesce in terrifying and impossible fashion.

Between the Whispering Coast and Yntaroum's west is the Lonely Ocean, a vast expanse where no land rests.  Brigands, madmen and the worst kind of fugitives find their way to this place, in urban flotillas that meander on waves coaxed by strange celestial winds.  The old Shell Empire sleeps in the ocean's abyssian deeps, abandoned millennia past by the cephalopods who call the place cursed.  Only their bastard progeny linger, and they hunger for the flesh of men.

West of Calleinn is Ehrune, the Place of Sorrows. In the east lies Drusil, where the Sleeping Cities forever drift between the realms of the living and the dead. To the west is Rhaophann, where the undying Carrion Lords guide mindless legions of dust and emptiness in pointless conquest under the watchful eye of Se Calobrah, the Mutilated Lord.  In the north, the bewildering plains of Chiaroscuro and their infinite kingdoms of The White echo a thousand fractal dimensions of possibility, while at the continent's centre lie the nameless lands; it is here that many say the world ends.

The truth is far more tantalising.

And at the world's apex is Naovin.  Mountains with ponderous intelligence crawl laboriously across its face, while beasts of pure frost and sorrow watch the stars for a coming tragedy that will unmake existence.  A mountain so grand its peak caresses the very stars sits at the continent's centre, and upon it flies the Heavenly City, where all beauty has died.

The
Cosmos

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As mentioned before, Mýr exists not only as a physical entity in the Black Æther (or simply 'Space'), but as a region of the Bright Æther, the cosmic, conscious 'reflection' of the physical universe (although mentalists assert that it is in fact the physical universe that is the reflection).  This infinite expanse, also known as the Alterverse, is not expressly a physical place, and in that sense it occupies no space at all.  Its nature is best defined in the eponymous treatise of Leimnil Sergossa:

'If the Astral realm is the physical infinity of Cosmic singularity, then the Æther is the contemplation of that singularity, which extrapolates each instance to its internal infinity in endless fractal progression.'

The Æther and Astral are abstractions of each other, unified in the paradox of their existence.  Both are of Eternity, the All-Thing resting constrained within the shapeless, nothing-point of Singularity, which, from its impossible genesis 'outside' of time, simply Was (in the crudely undescriptive words of The Poet), and all things possible and impossible alike were contained, nameless, within it.  This thing was neither mind nor matter, though in potentia it contained those things and all else.

Mind and Matter
(Origin of the Dichotomy)

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The process by which such things as Time and Space can come into being from absence when logic demands that time itself can be its only precedent is one that defies every notion of sense, and yet the 'process' occurred.  To understand it one must accept the first principle of Perceptual Recursion, which states that reality exists in all possible states (the Everystate) until observed.  It is in observance that the Everystate is reduced by incalculable orders of magnitudes to the singular state that Is.

The Singularity was that Everystate, but it was without an observer.  However, all potentialities existing within it, it contained the hypothetical instances of innumerable realities with such observers.  Hence, the observer, the perceptual force, while not yet existing in fact, reduced the Everystate to the sole reality through the simple 'act' of its hypothetical existence.

Thus was born, simultaneously, the base reality of Matter and its conscious abstract the Mind, which through perceiving defines the former.  But theirs was not a simple relationship of effector and effect, for consciousness, wilful and responsive, would be no such thing if it were ever the cause and never itself defined.  In the act by which mind structures matter, the observance of said matter causes a restructuring of the mind, and so with each instant perception redefines both universes anew.

And herein we find the paradox, where the origin is obscured by an endless progression of beginnings-inspiring-beginnings: matter caused mind and is caused by mind, which is in turn caused by matter.  By extension, through perceiving, the consciousness contains all of reality within itself, but reality itself contains consciousness.  Thus, there is no beginning state, no thing that first caused the other, nor an over-entity which contains all others; the First Thing is paradoxically self-caused.

This is the principle of Perceptual Recursion, essential of Thaumaturgic logic and the foundation of Natural reality.  It is the interplay '" rather than a one-sided course of cause-and-effect '" of matter and mind that defines our universe.

The Great Spheres

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As stated before, the Æther and Astral are respective extrapolations of Being and Consciousness.  However, it is erroneous to assert that each is pure in its expression.  As physical reality is contained within mental reality (the reverse is also true), the Astral Realm is therefore part of the Æthereal, and in the strictest sense the ultimate distinction between the two is incorrect.

However, what distinguishes them is the 'degree of certainty' inherent in each, that being how readily their realities acquiesce to definition by any given participant.  By its nature, the Astral is relatively 'set', meaning that its degree of potential (or its relationship to the Everystate) is weak.  There are rigid physical laws, which can be defied only through greatly focused exertion of will, and time, space and substance operate under familiar principles.

The Æther, by contrast, is pure Contemplation.  Here there are formless Ideas: pain, joy, irony and sorrow are entities unto themselves, and shape the universe effortlessly and frequently to conform to their own pure natures.  The Æther is notably closer to the Everystate '" indeed, the heart of the Cosmos is that very Singularity '" and it is this proximity that allows the mind to construct a reality of its choosing with such ease.

It is important to note, however, that when one speaks of distance and direction in the Great Æther, it is not in terms of actual distance and direction, for, as stated before, the Æther is not a spatial place.  The conceptual size of a given Sphere (or Æthereal locality} is entirely dependent on the strength of the will which inspired it: thus, Hell, for instance, is not physically massive, rather its lord Agony is so intense in the self-realisation of his nature that his demesne is considered one of the greatest of Cosmic Spheres.  No matter its conceptual size, a Great Sphere contains infinite potential space.  Distance, by turn, is nonexistent in much of the Æther (for there is no space): one can simply will themselves to their destination.

The Great Æther is divided firstly into Great Spheres, most of which are subdivided into Major and Minor Spheres.  Finally, each minor sphere contains a plethora of local realities.  It is important to note that not all spheres (or 'Geodesics') can be subdivided, and not all spheres are contained within a higher order of sphere.

[ic=The Geodesics]Note: the First line identifies the Great Sphere.  Sections preceding a dash indicate Major Spheres, while the sections following a dash are minor spheres.

Myrshal
The Counterfeit Reality '" The Artifice Worlds
The Conflagrate '" Pethos, Styriss
The Black Æther '" The Luminiferous, Mýr, The Nether

Amsarisalbar

The Bright Æther
The Web Empire
Anarchy
The Overreach '" The Inverted Tower, A Prison of Kings
The Ildebast '" The Fell

The Grey
The Grand Automaton
The Veil '" An Infinity of Broken Worlds

Illael
Beginnings
Temerissent '" The House of Suns
Disappearance '" The Ten-Thousand Castles, Styriss, Metamorphosis

Hell
Maenachalissent '" The Palace of Temperance, The Plain of Woe-Unending
The Greater Hells '" Love-Lost, Self-Loathing, The City of Rending Chains, Sea of Tears

Zaphot
Untruth
The Veil '" An Infinity of Broken Worlds, The Calamity
Zeraphine '" The Ersatz Kingdoms, Tempus[/ic]

The Elsewhere

The 'Elsewhere' are realms that cannot be quantified with respect to the Great Spheres.  Their Æthereal natures are unknown, or reject (or are rejected by) the larger Cosmos.  As such, they occupy cosmic regions distant and distinct from the rest of reality.  They are as follows:

The Mysteries
The Hollow
A Hundred-Million Travesties
Hod
The Chaos Gate
Penumbra

Anathema

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One cannot claim to write a comprehensive (if rather abbreviated) treatise on Cosmology without mentioning Anathema.  However, I will only mention it, for there is nothing to be said of it.  I shall put it to you thus.  If ever you find yourself in the Ezercoulter, enquire of its nature to the first 'learned gentleman' you encounter and watch how he blusters and stumbles over his own tongue.  It is not that Anathema is beyond his comprehension, but rather that the thing-it-is (and it is no 'thing' at all) defies all things, even the aptness of its own name.  It cannot be understood.  There is nothing to understand.

[SA]

[ic=Murta Sigli]Always, there are shadows in these waters that deceive the senses.  They rest with unnerving stillness, then come suddenly alive with motion, flitting erratically or gliding in steady rhythm.  They come often by the score (though once I saw them drifting southward in a host beyond counting), but always they leave in steady recession, fading one by one into the blackness below.

Cythphas grunts under the weight of a corpse, struggling with his quarry to the aft rail.  It is a heavy thing '" at least it must be, for one such as him to stagger so '" and its human frame is topped by an odd metallic mass where a head should be.  He glances toward the captain, seeking confirmation, but Dassan's attention is elsewhere.  With an exhalation it plummets into the waters, and though I cannot see it I imagine ghostly shapes gathering about it, in curiosity or perhaps hunger.

'It is a wonder that we killed even one.' Eron, who has watched on all this time and took no part in the killing, steps forward, carefully evading the tarry smears upon the deck that had been the creature's blood.  'They fight like olfagi.'

'There were four of them,' mutters Cythphas.  'They are all the worse on their own.  Or in droves.'

Dassan speaks for the first time since the flight of the Ironheads.  'We should have lit the lantern sooner.  I apologise.'  While a few of us mutter forgiving courtesies, he continues.  'As it is, we'll be tempting the waters if we stay our course.  I do not think they will take a death lightly; they will be forced to vengeance.'

I ask, 'Should we perhaps moor in Loega and wait '˜til the wind changes?'

He nods.

This will be our first stay in the City of Answered Questions since the siege in Murta Sigli near a month ago, and I find myself at once enthused and apprehensive.  As I look toward our destination there comes a memory... of fresh blood and incense, rolling thick through crowded streets as three shamed men are strung high before a victorious populace, their bodies offered whole to unseen spirits of the Storm'¦

It had been our victory also, but barely.  Had we not forsaken Siglio when we did (and we had good reason for loyalty, even in those black days), we too might have found our end that night.  But we were made promises by powerful parties, men of Siglio's own ilk who (for reasons we didn't care to consider at the time) sought his fall.

_

I recall a great commotion, waking to the sound of gunfire and exclamations as some distant sorcery shook the stones of the Den where we were housed.  Iannan and another man I did not know at the time bustled in, a great stress in their voices.  'We have little time,' said the familiar man, and the other added (in a voice like the motions of great thunderlings in the heavens), 'There are Ghostfaces out in the streets, and the peasants have their allegiance.'

I did not know what they spoke of then, but the simple evocation of that ill name was enough to stir me to full consciousness.  'Have you woken Dassan?'

Iannan replied, 'He sent us for you.  He's already waiting for us.'  Then, remembering his company: 'This is Cythphas.  He is '" was '" a sergeant under Siglio.'

'Was?'

'Time enough for explanations later,' the man called Cythphas muttered.  There came the sounds of a disturbance on the floor beneath us.  'First we need an exit.'

Weapons were drawn and prayers were said (those, by Iannan alone), and so we made our way below.  Cythphas, being the first free of the stairs, let loose his volley to the immediate retort of two agonised screams.  We followed suit, striking each foe down as they came forth through the gloom.  When they had all fallen we ran on, making a circuitous route through the alleys of Loega as a fierce anarchy resounded all about us.

We stopped before a grand manor, almost a fortress, which jutted out on a crest at the city-tower's edge.  Above it circled a murder of war-ravens that sang their warnings into the humid night.  Its gates were sealed, but unmanned.  'But this is'¦'

'Not the Murto Sigli,' Cythphas said.  'Our allegiances have changed.'

I was about to remark that some allegiances had not changed, but we were already moving again.  Behind us an eruption of granite revealed the sickly wailing of what could have only been a Ghostface; thankful then, that the gate had shut again, for those few moments in which the beast was stayed surely meant our lives.

Within the manor we learned of all that had befallen Loega.  Insurrection, inspired by peasants and spurred by Siglio's own allies, had torn the city-tower apart, and at that very moment a makeshift army besieged the Murta Sigli, seeking to topple the reign of the merchant king.  It was then that we realised the weight of our situation.  Pas Siglio no longer held power, though his keep remained unbroken.  We, then, were the most vulnerable men in Loega.

Outside a confrontation had begun.  The Ghostface wailed and brands clamoured amidst the rain-starved flora of our host's vast garden.  As we spoke, the battle grew fiercer; it seemed the chaos would soon find its way here as well.

The man whose home it was (I never learned his name) gave us'¦ not an ultimatum, though it seemed so.

A reprieve, he called it.

_

Today, it finally rains, and they tell me this is the first time it has rained in Loega since Springfall.  I will not call this place home, but its stones, well-worked and smooth, are familiar and welcoming in a way that no other city's are, and the rain's song is a soothing thing, unlike Gaelbellaine, where it falls incessantly and soon tires the mind.

Peering upward from the city's base, I spy the place where a northward watchtower was sent crashing into the waves.  Now it is like an open wound, Loega's innards visible in the daylight.  A woman bedecked in counterfeit jewellery gestures toward it.  'Nam fallé dancon.'  I suppose she thinks me a northerner.

Which is a fine enough identity, I think.

We have told ourselves again and again over the past month that loyalties are by nature protean things; that men such as we must not hold ourselves to a single cause, lest that very cause be the engineer of our destruction.  But since Murta Sigli we have found ourselves cast about the Iounennion on the whim of the very men who 'saved' us, and though they do not call themselves our masters they are undeniably so.

Gazing down, now, I note the way the Tower pierces deep into the ocean, its submerged body quickly obscured by the discarded refuse of an entire populace.  Around it, the shadows dance and stop, tauntingly, and peering past them the afternoon sun illuminates strange domes and upturned spires that sleep beneath the waves.  I wonder, then.  About those cities, designs inscrutable; about their masters, long-dead, and the new alien populace that lurks within them.  I think someone told me a story, once, about spirits and Gods that lived a million years ago, but I cannot remember it and I am sure it was all very contrived.

'Let's get inside before it rains again,' Eron says.  'Or worse, the Ironheads return.'  There is no danger of that, but it is a good suggestion nonetheless.  His pipe spouts a lazy black smoke, which rises into the sky and forms a cloud all its own.

Excerpt from The Merchant Wars

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[SA]

[ic=Intercession]'¦at that moment, it struck me that this spectacle must have seemed to them so very vulgar.  They '" the humans '" watched in startled silence as the whelp wandered about the square, mewling, while her fingers blindly sought comfort from us, who had removed ourselves to the shade of the pavilion, the better to observe.  Her gills flared, panicked; her feet padded wetly on the stones.  Even the man who accosted her was for a moment dumbstruck, and his eyes darted between the child and the cane clutched in his hands, the bloody testimony of his transgression.

Monet leaned close and the scent of fresh mollusc was on his breath.  'An in-tercession, Sisa?' he whispered in what he thought was the local tongue, though he was ill-practiced.

I hissed dissent.  'They will themselves.  We will wait.'

It seemed that we, the adults, had been forgotten.  All looked upon the youngest, gangly and pale in youth, as she wailed beneath the shrouded sun, and they beheld her in disgust.  But there is never cause for fear in these things, for Man's fear surpasses his hate, and he of all beasts is the one who always saves us'¦

This, of course, he did.

Two patrolmen came forth, hoisting their brands as they jostled the crowd.  As they beheld the scene their apprehension was clear, even in the ugly brightness of the day.  The first one turned instinctively toward our hideaway, noting our shapes, and nodded, already defeated.  He raised his weapon almost without hesitation, and the bullet tore a bloody swathe through the offender's chest.

As the corpse fell (the crowd having not said a word), I nodded toward the officers, their duty done.  The child did not cease her wailing.

Memories of a Past Well-Served

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Iounennion

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The Great Sea of Utterances
&
The Darkness Sleeping Under

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As Told by Galay Sisa
Ambassador of the Blindhalls

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There are some things that cannot be said of me.  You cannot call me a man, for I am not such, though I am male.  You cannot call me a monster, for my monstrosity is but a thing of someone else's making, and my sins are few and justified.  Nor can it be said that I am a patriot; I neither love nor loathe the place of my conception.

I may be called a servant, for this I am, by my blood and the very fabric of my soul.  I speak and act always for another, and this I do for convenience's sake, and to quiet a certain fear.  Not of my own undoing, but rather, a fear of the much more deleterious woe that might come to others by my passing.  For we '" my siblings and I '" bear an unfortunate but necessary task.

_

Lest I fall into digression, I will steady those words until later, instead to speak for a time of brighter things.  I will speak, if I may, of Utterance, the thing you would call Iounennion.  It is a sea, great in its vastness (though the Solitude, whose waters I have not tasted, is far vaster), and its eastern boundary lights on the shores of Corlainth while in the west its beauty is sullied by the Murkwater.

Utterance is old.  Some say it is the oldest of places, but though that is a fine thing to fancy, I doubt the truth of it.  Nevertheless, the sea holds in its depths much that is testament to such claims: wars have been fought for millennia within its submerged cities whose architects must have been such very different creatures from man and waterbeast.  These ruins have no name of their own, but today they are called many things: Draumvannid, Coclaccost, and Savirsenn, among others.  We call it the Darkness-Sleeping-Under, and it is the home of our masters, the sut-Cephalopoda.

It was not their first home, however.  The Sut came to its hollow arches in the waning years before man's wakening in the soil of the Broken Islands, when the Deep Ones cast them from the warmth of the Shell Empire into new and bitter waters.  The atrocity for which they were condemned is not named, but the enemy they found in their exodus is no secret even to Ignorant Man.  The Tamut had made their own journey south, and in the meeting of the two peoples, the first cloud of blood was shed.

[ic]If one comes to understand but a single thing about the cephalopods, Gon and Sut alike, let it be this: there will never be a peace with chordates, lasting or ephemeral.  That is one thing that shall never change.

Admiral Thavien Dari

[/ic]
So began the Gloom War, which has not ended in the millennia since its inception, and there is not a learned creature today who does not know of it (only the War of Lineages is of greater infamy in the deeps).  In the brutal contention within the ruins of Coclaccost, territory was gained and lost through unaccounted years, but the final victory was for the Sut.  Rather than flee wholesale, the Tamut travelled up into the highest ruins, where the ancient towers pierced the very surface (understand, reader, that for the cephalopods a great mystique surrounds the World-Beyond-Waters, even today), and there they made new homes in the city-towers.

The events of the following ages could fill whole libraries (and in their own fashion the Tamut have done just that), but suffice that in that time there was equilibrium.  The Sut found places where the old Naga had torn through space into the frenzied chill of the Second Pandemonium; the Tamut toiled in the perfection of sorceries I still do not understand, reawakening the evil of the Obelisks and seizing it for their ends.

[ic=Outward Upon the Storm]From this precarious vantage near the towers peak, it is as though the whole sea reclines before me.  In the distance lights flicker briefly then fade into the mist; a battle rages through the night, on the waves and in the sky, but the waters sleep, unperturbed.

I have never before been so high, and the air, so cold and dry, wearies me.  Thankfully, my respirator hums reassuringly as seawater is passed across my gills, and I know there is no threat of harm.

The human called Pavli gesticulates, perhaps to himself (I do not recognise the action, and assume it is not meant for me).  'The Kings have mobilised and their factions have already begun numerous engagements with the dissidents.

'And who are these dissidents?'

He thinks for a moment.  'Namarssan, first and foremost.  He has been driven from Galmant, but his fleet is large '" more windships than any other force.  Obviously, he is our main concern. Then there are the two monarchs of Lophet'¦ and Pas Siglio in Loega, but his people are against him and he is besieged.'

'That is all?'

'This alone will be a significant challenge, Ambassador.  Four rebel kings are more than sufficient to destroy the established order of Iounennion.  Consider the effects of Pas Tojli's assassination in twenty-three-seven.

'Of course, it will make little difference to the Sut, no matter who wins,' he adds with a wry smile.

'That depends.  What if the dissidents win, but are unwilling to treat?

Pavli laughs.  'We both know that's impossible.  Everyone's afraid of the ceph-' he corrects himself, 'the Sut.  You know your masters will eagerly fight on two fronts, and we don't need another Gloom.  One is more than enough.'

He raises his magnifier and watches the battle for a moment.  'It appears that we are losing.'  But he does not seem concerned.  'Would you like to see?'

I wave a decline.  My eyes are too dry to pierce the darkness.

Memories of a Past Well-Served

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Draum

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The Obelisk Towers
Or
The Cities of the Eye

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Capital: Gaelbellaine
Government: Plutocracy
Population: 6'024'000

I have already mentioned the city-towers, where the ancient ruins of Coclaccost reach high through the waters into the air above.  To the cephalopods and their chordate slaves, these towers are a great wonder, impenetrable in the emptiness of the Waterless Realms.  They dream, in a fashion which I as a creation of theirs cannot, of the alienness of that bright and lonely place, and in the wondering of that strangeness they draw a natural ire that commits them to distrust.

Mankind is no more native to the Iounennion than the Sut or Tamut, though men know the Cities of the Eye in a fashion very different from the latter.  They came to the Cities of the Eye near the apex of the thirty-third 'Great Battel of Gloom' (which places their arrival approximately 1'300 years past), having travelled westward from the Corlainthii Isles of Sunset, and as they moored on the steps of Asenlea (the now-fallen tower where man first beheld the glories of Draum), the sea was thick with the blood of Sut and chordate alike.

Men, however, had little knowledge of this conflict, for their dominion was forever above the waves.  They knew of cephalopoda, and of the synapsidae, but to conceive of an ancient war between oceanic nations far beneath supposedly 'barbaric' waters was beyond them.  Indeed, by their reckoning the Darkness had always been a thing to subject and command'¦ a delusion they have paid for in blood on many occasions.

Accounts of their arrival can be found in many sources, all of which succumb to the human tendency towards mystification and apocrypha.  They speak of the Janni (for that is what they are called) triumph over the peoples of the tower, and the forging of a nation in the wandering waters, but this is nonsense.  The Jan made no triumph, over the Tamut or the masters of the waters.

[ic]'¦for though the spires might bear their standard, dominion of the empty skies is no cause for pride.

Dauntless-Seeker

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[ic]Iounennion's first human settlers were comprised mostly of the Leybalea, a disenfranchised minority which had dominated Poeddac (formerly called Leybas) before its defeat by Rheinlaed in the eleventh century.  As a symbol of his final triumph, the prevailing Grand Prophet Taphomdaqos banished them to the Iounennion, a fate which should have damned them.

It would not be long before the Merchant Kings, descendants of the Leybalea, exacted their vengeance on the rulers of the Sunset Isles.

An historical note, Anonymous

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In truth, the first days of human presence were a misery.  Malnourished and homeless, they were easy prey for the Tamut of Asenlea who are said to have devoured them by the score.  Only when the synapsids had sated their animal hunger did they retreat into the city's architecture, leaving the humans to dwell in what could only have been abject horror and disbelief.

But never again did the Tamut act bloodily against the Jan (which must have been all the more confusing), and in the following decades the two peoples formed an unusual symbiosis: the men learned of the ways in which the violent waters of the Utterance could be tamed and worked to their will, while the Tamut found a new vessel (the hominid mind) through which to perceive the Lattice of the Cosmos.  Soon the Jan had spread across all seventeen of the city-towers, and in time the old social hierarchies of their homeland resurfaced, shaping the Nine Nations of Draum.

Understand that prior to the Leybalea's arrival, the Iounennion Sea was too dangerous and impractical a thing to navigate at any but the slowest and most cautious of paces.  As a result, commerce between Orioclinth and the Aghatt (which itself served as gateway to Causicaa), while possible, was uncommon.  The Nine Nations served as a gate of sorts, a means by which the chaos of the Stormy Sea could be traversed with alacrity.

Naturally, this put the Pasci (the Kings of Draum) in a hugely advantageous position as the lords of a new, burgeoning intercontinental trade.  And so they came to be known as the Merchant Kings.

[ic]Like most wars named in similar fashion, it didn't last a century, but it earned the name from a historian's vantage because it is considered the defining event of the 1300's.

An historical note, Anonymous

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Centibellum

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With their presence established and their influence reaching as far as the westernmost boundaries of Aghatt Urr, it was not long before the Rheinlaed Theocracy grew incensed by Draum's growing power.  The Grand Prophet Admaal (five generations descended from Taphomdaqos) strove through every possible pretence to urge his people to a (clearly unwarranted) conflict with the Merchant Kings, his aim to crush their rule and transfer economic supremacy to Rheinlaed.

His first aim was a success, and in the second decade of the 14th century (c. 1312) the Golden Armada sailed to its first engagement with the fleets of Draum.  Alas, it was not the simple victory Rheinlaed's generals had supposed; the initial incursion was repelled, and Draum's reciprocal attack (c. 1316) was defeated in turn.  Over the next two decades the Theocracy sabotaged and annexed merchant routes, and staged small-scale incursions into the Iounennion until the conflict flared again in a second war (c. 1338).

This time, the Armada had greater success, conquering the eastern Towers.  This had the effect of utterly stifling intercontinental trade as they pushed ever further towards Gaelbellaine and the ultimate consolidation of their victory.  However, this also had the consequence of increasing the Merchant Kings' tenacity, and so for another decade the two powers battled in the War of Constant Storms.

The Centibellum's end came in 1353, when Chalsyber III of Attal issued an ultimatum of Rheinlaed's surcease and the Theocracy's military forces (but not its civilians) withdrew from the Towers.  Yet even a whole millennium past, the effects of their occupation remain: Asenlea, the First-Among-Cities, now sleeps among the lower streets of Coclaccost; its halls empty of all but still waters and the corpses of men centuries-dead, their flesh reawakened to the Foul Queen's service.

But for all the damage that was done to Draum, it was the Merchant Kings' victory and a bloody comeuppance for the ill-plotted ambitions of Rheinlaed.  The Theocracy's campaign had left it depleted, and when the splinter-cult of the Anushti challenged the church's dominion they were powerless to stop them.

[ic]They call the Iounennion 'constant', saying that it '" above all other civilised lands in Mýr '" has changed the least throughout its history.  This is not true in its entirety, but it is apt.  The Utterance is a stubborn thing, and for all that the world beyond it might submit to change, it will sleep and wonder eternal, and it will not heed.

Ambassador Rilu

[/ic]
Today, Draum is more influential among the realms of men than ever before.  Kings have risen and fallen, whole armies consigned to quiet damnation by the claws and beaks of my august Lords, but the Realm of Spires remains.  There is an eerie disquiet in the Blindhalls; the sense of some impending chaos '˜twixt man and waterbeast, but it is those very uncertainties that we, the amphibious brood, are committed to destroy.

-Galay

[ic]Gasping, his mouth began to fill with blood.  The blade twisted in his throat, yielding a meagre spurt.

'This isn't good business, Gamnan.'  Petir's voice was mockingly sweet, like the wise admonitions of a well-meaning mentor.  'How can we expect to compete with House Lassandre when our employees are hardly breaking even?'

Soft grey eyes stared at him for an excruciating moment as though expecting an impossible reply.

'I would have thought an Alminsi more'¦ capable.  Consider this a lesson learned.'

Gamnan's employer stepped back, letting the knife slip free of his neck.  Only then could the blood flow, and it was like a river.[/ic]

Geography

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Sitting on the 'Great Dragon's back' (so says an ancient poem), the boundaries of the Nine Nations of Draum are defined by the sixteen city-towers.  In the far east, Loega bridges the wild waters between Draum and Rheinlaed (as did Asenlea, before it was sunk by the magics of the Golden Armada), with Lophet further west.  Beneath Lophet are Schilath and Galmant.

In the southeast lies Torumaine.  Southwest of that is Zensi (geographically the lowest of the cities), and north of Zensi is Delfei and the Coral City of Delfanenn.  Loega's western counterpart, Hedell, is the gateway to Das Dramurr and the old kingdoms of Calleinn; south of it is Solbesht, the (strangely self-styled) 'prison city' of Draum.

Guerren is the northernmost city of Draum, and Duara lies beneath it.  Southwest of Duara is Malensi with Odessell further south.  Youllaine and Tojliset are often called the Middle Cities of Draum, but in truth the centre of the Iounennion is Gaelbellaine, the City of Endless Rain.

There are few actual landmasses in the Iounennion, though the sea does have numerous 'islands' of a sort.  Teeming throughout Draum are colossal colonies of verdant anthozoa, or 'coral trees'.  These structures are ancient corals amidst the sunken ruins of Coclaccost that have grown upward in branchlike configurations over the millennia.  Like the ruins themselves, the anthozoa have breached the ocean surface in places, and where this has occurred 'islands' have developed.

Politics

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The politics of Draum have never been stable.  Even in the rare instances where all nine nations have stood united (the Great War, for example), the covert wrangling of the Merchant Kings has always insured a turbulent, unpredictable political climate.  Constantly balancing their attentions between mercantile endeavours and the governance of their own realms, the two paradigms have merged, yielding a maritime plutocracy whose societal structure is primarily geared towards commercialism.

Each nation is ruled by a Pasci (though this is generally translated as 'king', it is a gender-neutral term), who generally gains his title from the previous ruler through personal appointment or by majority vote of his peers among the nation's Merchant Lords.  The Lords are not expressly aristocratic, for while there are notable families who have held economic power for centuries, a man can earn a title through business success alone (though it is no easy task).  In fact, Draum's aristocracy is a distinct entity from the merchant powers, though there is significant overlap as the oldest and most distinguished families (the 'Noble Houses') are usually the wealthiest.

A given city-tower will contain a number of Merchant Houses (usually around a half-dozen), each serving as a competing focus of commerce.  Only through membership in a House can one be guaranteed safe trade and passage (however, nothing guarantees it in another nation), so most aspiring merchants seek patronage quickly.  A Merchant Lord typically (but not always) heads such House, and like the nation's king the Lord is usually appointed by vote or the decision of the predecessor.

NOTE: These houses should be distinguished from the guilds of other nations, for they are local subdivisions of Draum's political body and not wholly separate institutions.

Although the Merchant Kings are considered the dominant power in Draum, two other entities have significant influence in the Iounennion.  These are the Chrysanthemum Court and the Hallow of Archivists.

Economics

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Draum has few exports of its own, being situated in a region that is only marginally conducive to the production of consumables.  Most of its non-aquatic produce is grown on the northern and western boundaries, a potentially compromising arrangement which has encouraged expansion into Liudthwei and Dramurrad territories (respectively) in order to better safeguard Draum's resources.  The rest is imported from Liudthwei, the Islands of Sunset (particularly Soujinnlaed) and the micronations of the Aghatt Reformation League.

However, the greater portion of Draum's produce comes from the numerous coral islands and their surrounding waters.  Here, the by-product of the coral life-cycle rises to the ocean surface in vast fields of floating 'seeds' akin to irregular blue pearls.  These seeds, known as khesalt, are used in all manner of foods and also serve as the nation's sole unique export (of greatest notoriety is the wine kheydenn, which consists primarily of unrefined khesalt).

Needless to say, Draum is primarily sustained by fishing.  This has always been a precarious business as the Sut are notoriously strict in the policing of their waters, but the Iounennion holds life in such abundance that the Nine Nations have never known want.

It is oft-said that Draum's greatest export is transport.  Prior to humanity's successful infiltration in the 11th century, the Iounennion was nigh-untraversible by even the most seaworthy of vessels, making communication between the Eastern and Western World an arduous process, and consistent trade impossible.  The arrival of the Leybalea and the subsequent taming of the region's perpetual storms allowed, for the first time in human history, the creation of a marine thoroughfare through which the distant civilisations could interact with ease, and since then the Merchant Kings have held a virtually uncontested monopoly on global commerce.

[ic]In the centuries before the Great War, the Nine Nations had suffered a state of seemingly irreparable disunity. The Praetors capitalised on this fact when they initiated the Great War, and they quickly subdued the inadequate armies of the Merchant Kings, gaining free access to the shores of Orioclinth.  In the aftermath, when the Praetors were at last bested by the Legions of the Ziddrad, Draum strengthened its defences and refined the arcane Impetus that powered the Iounennion's storms.

The Baennet Confederate contributed 10 million annut (a prodigious sum at the time) toward the restoration of the Nine Nations, an act of calculated generosity which would ensure their continuing allegiance and secure the East against further incursions from the Aghatt.

An historical note, Anonymous

[/ic]

[SA]

Nothing here yet...

[SA]

[ooc]This was going to be the intro for my entry in the April contest.  Alas, "life happened" (the generic excuse for procrastination).  More coming, I swear![/ooc]
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The Lunatic Dark

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By Lustrig Ampunnad
Scholar of Abyssian science

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Looking on the waters now, I feel as I did on the day of my graduation, as the processional barge, low and heavy with the elated throng of my fellow scholars, drifted lazily away from our erstwhile home, the arches and crenulations of the Ezercultre receding into the mist.  I had feared it once, when its stone walls, close and cold as though forbidding the warmth of the equatorial sky, were new to me.  The swarthy-faced professors with their machines and their homunculi regarded me with dispassionate contempt; the muted hums and bellows from their laboratories were like the violent promises of trapped beasts.  But in time I came to know their secrets, at least enough that I did not fear them, and so it is with the sea.

-Excerpt from "Darkness Under"

I am often set upon by enthusiastic young students who, enamoured of my early works in oceanic anthropology and pseudo-ichthyology, inquire at length about my sojourns in the Bathys-complex and the Sargasso Kingdoms, or ask for my impersonation of the Salt King of Buspel (it is admittedly rather good, but I do wish they'd stop).  They seem to have the absurd notion that when all the drudgery of their present studies is past a world of wondrous excitement will open before them, as though marine sociology was comparable to the mad sorties of the old plunder-barons of the Shoal!

I am reluctant to disabuse them of this notion, in part because their youthful vigour is an important reminder of all the silliness I have left behind, but also because if they knew the honest truth of it they would likely quit out of terror before the really interesting bits began.  It takes a certain kind of madness to do what I do.  To sink down into the darkness in a sphere of quivering steel while blind, hungry things flit about the darkness around you.  The ruins of cities wrought by inhuman hands glare up at you like mute jurors, and the last light of the world above twists around the forms of moving things, taking shape and playing across your dome like words written by the jettisoned dead.

The people who live here (and unlike many of my colleagues I do not hesitate to call them people) are very different from men.  The cephalopods speak in frequencies unheard by us, and sigh tales in the bitter clouds of their own ink.  The serpents consume passion itself, or nest in the innards of the weak or unwary.  It is a world as isolated from ours as we are from them; it does not comprehend sunlight or the unmuzzled furore of a hurricane wind.  It is quiet, personal, and immediate.

[ic=anon]Some scholars say we are all, ultimately, children of the sea.  If so, then we have a monster for a mother.[/ic]