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Nanophlogiston chapter 39
[This probably really should've been 3 chapters, but.]
It was the second day since the battle with the Naked.
The villages had an emergency meeting of its Chief Battle-Virgins the morning after the Tyrant incident. There was a brief row between Undead-Dragon and Weeping-At-The-City-Gates as to whether he would be attending as an observer, but we all knew it was something of a sham: as the most junior person among the military leaders there she appreciated his emotional support.
There was some talk about launching the Ellobius and destroying the Naked bases from orbit; but there were many objections to this, not least of which was the need to stay with the Phlogistroni. The Ellobius' missiles could theoretically knock out the Naked villages, but even then doing so would require an extensive topographical survey that would telegraph our intentions immediately - whether or not the numerous captives and spies there would be able to evacuate as well.
It would also have been illegal as all fuck, with, Gunnerbot and Finkelstein hastened to add, a few hundred ruined civilizations' worth of good reason. All actions by the Ellobius crew up to this point could be justified as a defensive intervention, but anything that would take the fight into Naked territory would have to be done by the villages themselves.
Early yesterday evening the Chief Battle-Virgins took a moment out of the meeting to grant an honorary Drunken Master combat rescue award to Daughter-of-the-King. Had this been from anyone else under any other circumstances Captain Alvarez would have been rightfully extremely insulted, indeed triggered; instead she gladly accepted, drank to their health during the meal after (the villagers had lots of booze, it turned out - and often brought it to battle as big "fuck you" to the Naked who were forbidden it on pain of death), and somehow managed to pace herself to the point where she only slurred some of the longer names that night.
"For your valour and initiative under the influence of the mind-killer water", rumbled Arch-Battle-Virgin Renounce-The-Gift-Of-The-Gods-To-Do-What-Is-Right of the great village of Hanging-Marsh-Upon-The-Hill, "in repelling the enemies of the Federation and providing extraordinary aid to a Chief Battle-Virgin, we are honoured to bestow upon you, Daughter-Of-The-King, great slayer from the stars, this symbol of your bond with all who have partaken of the great power of the water, with and no longer with us." Three pairs of great shimmering knife-claws extended from the giant mouldering grey-green mass of rot and bones that stood in the middle of the beach, and gently lowered a string around the captain's neck. Tied to it was a small, beautifully carved gourd of mottled blue and white, entwined with twin gripping winged sea-beasts locked forever in battle. Great howling and clattering of claws filled the air around them as Science Officer Finkelstein and I clapped politely.
Renounce-The-Gift turned around and looked at Undead-Dragon who was standing to her other side. Until then I did not realize these creatures had the flexibility or the spatial ingenuity to bow as deeply as Undead-Dragon did then. Captain Alvarez later explained to me the significance: the Drunken Master award could never be given where the rescuee was expected to shoulder some of the blame for whatever it was she was rescued from. I agreed with the decision, however much I suspected Undead-Dragon really didn't like me for whatever reason: all things considered, from the way I was told it by Many-Discarded-Stones and House-Made-Of-Needles, neither the council of the Chief Battle-Virgins nor that of the Chief Meditators could say with any confidence what ought to have been done had any of them been in that position.
So you're probably wondering at this point: how did our dear captain somehow receive a foreign military honour from what started as a drunken giving of piece of angry, incoherent mind to a sexually harassing ex-roommate?
...
Undead-Dragon listened carefully. This was a chance of a thousand lifetimes: that oneself may learn the very histories and powers of the ancients and the gods from the stars, even those that actively wanted mankind to be like them! The thrill of the hidden knowledge must be what it felt like to be a Chief Seeker.
Or even a Meditator.
She recalled the meetings with the Tyrant when Weeping-At-The-City-Gates was leading the delegation. They often ended abruptly. She didn't pay much attention then because she was usually fending off the random Worthless that would barge in and risk interrupting the talks. The Meditators would simply summarize on their way back that the Tyrant wanted to control them, make them more like the Naked and destroy their way of life for some hare-brained scheme to bring the ancients back into the world.
But what the Tyrant was telling her now was nothing like that at all.
She found herself unconsciously touching the small red ribbon (really a threadbare, tattered brownish string) tied around her third left arm: her one sartorial concession to her new life, ten years in. Her recon squad had been cornered by the forces of the warrior Witness-Flayed-Alive-In-Public-Spectacle - Weeping-At-The-City-Gates' father. They'd somehow agreed to a one-on-one fight to death or ring-out: if she won, she and her fellow Naked marauders would be allowed to retreat to their base; if he won, the survivors would be enslaved at the mercy of the villagers. She was about twice his size - and yet the manner in which Flayed-Alive sent her flying into the lake a full ten slithers beyond the fighting-circle was the stuff of song among the villages even today.
The villagers believed in a god, Green-Flaming-Light-Of-The-Brethren, who was said to have created the earth by entering the primal waters and exploding the remains of the great Night-Dragon whose diseased dreams had first brought evil into the world. So too thought all the onlookers that she might have hit her head on a rock and drowned; but when her vast, shadowy frame flew out of the water three seconds later hurtling towards her opponent, stopping her renewed onslaught only when the sun fell behind a cloud to form a corona in her eyes and the thought of "ring" entered her mind, there was no further question what her name would be after she had finished her year of servitude.
No, what the Tyrant was telling her now was nothing like her life under the Naked. The Tyrant had stories; the Naked only had the story of Nakedness's triumph over all stories. The Tyrant spoke of loving fatherhood; the Naked had lobotimized sex slaves raise the children and love was a disease to be beaten out of you. One thing they did have in common was that the ancients, like the Naked, once had gods and then stopped believing in them: but the Tyrant always spoke well of how even the belief in the gods enriched their thought, while to the Naked the gods (or rather the "ideological constructs" of them) were no better than the dreams of the Night-Dragon to be eradicated by the baleful light and (often literal) fire of Naked truth.
And the Tyrant was speaking of the Night-Dragon story now...
...
"...and in such manner the male archetype triumphs over the feminine misrule, and by the inherent violence thereof - which you understand well enough, my dear battle-virgin - begins to establish the rule by which human sentience can flourish. Exactly, as you recall, the same pattern which is reflected in the other myth that Glorious-Army has told of the gods of those whom you call the slayers: the Sea and The Son-of-Let-The-Things-Be, Heaven's-Warrior-Witness and the Dragon, the banishment of primordial Night and her final destruction and reversal of the Mother's transgression in the penetrating light of The Son-Of-I-Am. Indeed, the very--"
She had to interrupt. "But this just seems like a conflation of roles. The warriors fight for mana and status, and for the ranking of villages, but it is always the battle-virgins that lead in raids of plunder and conquest. You have said much previously of the archetypes of tradition, but these stories blur the lines of nature and go against tradition."
"No, my dear, you misunderstand. These mythic images must not be considered too literally. They are but branching, incomplete shadows of much deeper archetypes that pervade the world - yours today, ours of old, Glorious-Army's from beyond. They point towards types greater than what is known to us in this, the shadow-world, of which even the slayers' planet is merely another part. The important thing is the way the Law is revealed as a light against the barbarism and darkness of the earlier primitivism.
"And so this is where we come in. This enlightenment - this evolution - is not in its crude, broken manifestation the simple clean line of progress the stories make it out to be. Sometimes there are setbacks, as Glorious-Army's account of the Times-Of-The-Great-Burning-Garbage-Vessel illustrated for you and me so vividly. But even so the slayers recovered from their affliction, and continued to even greater heights; whereas we, having depleted our world's vitality in our unsuccessful effort to discover the secret of conquering folded space, fell into a cruel and terrible mockery of our former selves.
"And what a tragedy it had been! Our best, our brightest age, the glory of Men, true Men, beautiful Men, our sons of the illustrious and storied Latter Sword Age that ruled over all in their raw, naked, lawful power - never to have conquered the eternal Night of the heavens! Surely the darkness of that realization alone would have crushed any lesser race, had it the insight to understand what was truly lost.
"But now we have been saved by our brothers in the stars. And yet still not: for the race is not ready. Your deeds and battles are but an infinitely pale shadow of what has been and, with your cooperation, be again." From anyone else this would have been a direct insult, but tonight the Tyrant - she learned his real name was Red-Star-The-Follower-Who-Leads-The-Five - had shown her mental images of wonders: vast gleaming armies pouring forth from impossibly huge mountains, clad in shining stone in no less glory than the slayers, banners of purest scarlet and gossamer white unfurling in the impossibly cold bright sun, melodious shouts - of which the villagers' battle-howls were truely only a crude mockery - of unnumbered warrior-gods descending into divine clashes of fire and flames that shook the foundations of the earth herself. Gods they were in their glory, yet unlike these alien star-monsters they were of the same essence as her, as the villagers, as all mankind!
She continued listening.
"The race can yet be saved, as it had fallen through transgression it may be up to its women to save it through child-bearing. It will be a radical change from the chaos of perpetual petty village warfare that you have known. There will be no more battle-virgins: instead, there must be a return to Law, to exercise utmost discipline in maximizing the breeding of those who are most attuned to it. And all must work towards it, for as Glorious-Army quotes from that song sung by the slayers, 'Nature hates virginity.'
"Now, my dear, I must hasten to add that this calls for some discernment. The old hags - sorry, the elder Chief Battle-Virgins to whom you as yet submit - will certainly perceive this to be a mutiny, not knowing good from evil and not understanding that the Law had come to them. They will be enlightened or defeated in due course, but you must not too greatly disturb their false order for now. Let them continue the fight against the Naked, that your deliberations in Not-Entirely-Worthless-The-Second (and we'll get around to giving it a more worthy name in due course) be given time to bear fruit as our people strengthen its fortifications for the coming battles. We will help you guide your Meditator in this - he is young and will take time to internalize Lawful thinking, which will seem like nothing but riddles of a lost kingdom for some time to come.
"But far more dangerous are the other slayers. You must keep our pact secret from them at all times, and continue a charade of hostility even as you do to keep your Meditator happy. You are a military leader of great cunning and strength, excellent in your ruthlessness: use that to gain their respect, and do not hesitate to use their irrational frenzied hatred for the Naked to your advantage in the coming battles. It may even reduce suspicion from the other Chief Battle-Virgins as you begin slowly bringing your own village - our village - to further dialogue with the Law.
"We must strip away the shameful garments of chaos, that the Law may be made into a new truth - for the glory of the race."
It was the second day since the battle with the Naked.
The villages had an emergency meeting of its Chief Battle-Virgins the morning after the Tyrant incident. There was a brief row between Undead-Dragon and Weeping-At-The-City-Gates as to whether he would be attending as an observer, but we all knew it was something of a sham: as the most junior person among the military leaders there she appreciated his emotional support.
There was some talk about launching the Ellobius and destroying the Naked bases from orbit; but there were many objections to this, not least of which was the need to stay with the Phlogistroni. The Ellobius' missiles could theoretically knock out the Naked villages, but even then doing so would require an extensive topographical survey that would telegraph our intentions immediately - whether or not the numerous captives and spies there would be able to evacuate as well.
It would also have been illegal as all fuck, with, Gunnerbot and Finkelstein hastened to add, a few hundred ruined civilizations' worth of good reason. All actions by the Ellobius crew up to this point could be justified as a defensive intervention, but anything that would take the fight into Naked territory would have to be done by the villages themselves.
Early yesterday evening the Chief Battle-Virgins took a moment out of the meeting to grant an honorary Drunken Master combat rescue award to Daughter-of-the-King. Had this been from anyone else under any other circumstances Captain Alvarez would have been rightfully extremely insulted, indeed triggered; instead she gladly accepted, drank to their health during the meal after (the villagers had lots of booze, it turned out - and often brought it to battle as big "fuck you" to the Naked who were forbidden it on pain of death), and somehow managed to pace herself to the point where she only slurred some of the longer names that night.
"For your valour and initiative under the influence of the mind-killer water", rumbled Arch-Battle-Virgin Renounce-The-Gift-Of-The-Gods-To-Do-What-Is-Right of the great village of Hanging-Marsh-Upon-The-Hill, "in repelling the enemies of the Federation and providing extraordinary aid to a Chief Battle-Virgin, we are honoured to bestow upon you, Daughter-Of-The-King, great slayer from the stars, this symbol of your bond with all who have partaken of the great power of the water, with and no longer with us." Three pairs of great shimmering knife-claws extended from the giant mouldering grey-green mass of rot and bones that stood in the middle of the beach, and gently lowered a string around the captain's neck. Tied to it was a small, beautifully carved gourd of mottled blue and white, entwined with twin gripping winged sea-beasts locked forever in battle. Great howling and clattering of claws filled the air around them as Science Officer Finkelstein and I clapped politely.
Renounce-The-Gift turned around and looked at Undead-Dragon who was standing to her other side. Until then I did not realize these creatures had the flexibility or the spatial ingenuity to bow as deeply as Undead-Dragon did then. Captain Alvarez later explained to me the significance: the Drunken Master award could never be given where the rescuee was expected to shoulder some of the blame for whatever it was she was rescued from. I agreed with the decision, however much I suspected Undead-Dragon really didn't like me for whatever reason: all things considered, from the way I was told it by Many-Discarded-Stones and House-Made-Of-Needles, neither the council of the Chief Battle-Virgins nor that of the Chief Meditators could say with any confidence what ought to have been done had any of them been in that position.
So you're probably wondering at this point: how did our dear captain somehow receive a foreign military honour from what started as a drunken giving of piece of angry, incoherent mind to a sexually harassing ex-roommate?
...
Undead-Dragon listened carefully. This was a chance of a thousand lifetimes: that oneself may learn the very histories and powers of the ancients and the gods from the stars, even those that actively wanted mankind to be like them! The thrill of the hidden knowledge must be what it felt like to be a Chief Seeker.
Or even a Meditator.
She recalled the meetings with the Tyrant when Weeping-At-The-City-Gates was leading the delegation. They often ended abruptly. She didn't pay much attention then because she was usually fending off the random Worthless that would barge in and risk interrupting the talks. The Meditators would simply summarize on their way back that the Tyrant wanted to control them, make them more like the Naked and destroy their way of life for some hare-brained scheme to bring the ancients back into the world.
But what the Tyrant was telling her now was nothing like that at all.
She found herself unconsciously touching the small red ribbon (really a threadbare, tattered brownish string) tied around her third left arm: her one sartorial concession to her new life, ten years in. Her recon squad had been cornered by the forces of the warrior Witness-Flayed-Alive-In-Public-Spectacle - Weeping-At-The-City-Gates' father. They'd somehow agreed to a one-on-one fight to death or ring-out: if she won, she and her fellow Naked marauders would be allowed to retreat to their base; if he won, the survivors would be enslaved at the mercy of the villagers. She was about twice his size - and yet the manner in which Flayed-Alive sent her flying into the lake a full ten slithers beyond the fighting-circle was the stuff of song among the villages even today.
The villagers believed in a god, Green-Flaming-Light-Of-The-Brethren, who was said to have created the earth by entering the primal waters and exploding the remains of the great Night-Dragon whose diseased dreams had first brought evil into the world. So too thought all the onlookers that she might have hit her head on a rock and drowned; but when her vast, shadowy frame flew out of the water three seconds later hurtling towards her opponent, stopping her renewed onslaught only when the sun fell behind a cloud to form a corona in her eyes and the thought of "ring" entered her mind, there was no further question what her name would be after she had finished her year of servitude.
No, what the Tyrant was telling her now was nothing like her life under the Naked. The Tyrant had stories; the Naked only had the story of Nakedness's triumph over all stories. The Tyrant spoke of loving fatherhood; the Naked had lobotimized sex slaves raise the children and love was a disease to be beaten out of you. One thing they did have in common was that the ancients, like the Naked, once had gods and then stopped believing in them: but the Tyrant always spoke well of how even the belief in the gods enriched their thought, while to the Naked the gods (or rather the "ideological constructs" of them) were no better than the dreams of the Night-Dragon to be eradicated by the baleful light and (often literal) fire of Naked truth.
And the Tyrant was speaking of the Night-Dragon story now...
...
"...and in such manner the male archetype triumphs over the feminine misrule, and by the inherent violence thereof - which you understand well enough, my dear battle-virgin - begins to establish the rule by which human sentience can flourish. Exactly, as you recall, the same pattern which is reflected in the other myth that Glorious-Army has told of the gods of those whom you call the slayers: the Sea and The Son-of-Let-The-Things-Be, Heaven's-Warrior-Witness and the Dragon, the banishment of primordial Night and her final destruction and reversal of the Mother's transgression in the penetrating light of The Son-Of-I-Am. Indeed, the very--"
She had to interrupt. "But this just seems like a conflation of roles. The warriors fight for mana and status, and for the ranking of villages, but it is always the battle-virgins that lead in raids of plunder and conquest. You have said much previously of the archetypes of tradition, but these stories blur the lines of nature and go against tradition."
"No, my dear, you misunderstand. These mythic images must not be considered too literally. They are but branching, incomplete shadows of much deeper archetypes that pervade the world - yours today, ours of old, Glorious-Army's from beyond. They point towards types greater than what is known to us in this, the shadow-world, of which even the slayers' planet is merely another part. The important thing is the way the Law is revealed as a light against the barbarism and darkness of the earlier primitivism.
"And so this is where we come in. This enlightenment - this evolution - is not in its crude, broken manifestation the simple clean line of progress the stories make it out to be. Sometimes there are setbacks, as Glorious-Army's account of the Times-Of-The-Great-Burning-Garbage-Vessel illustrated for you and me so vividly. But even so the slayers recovered from their affliction, and continued to even greater heights; whereas we, having depleted our world's vitality in our unsuccessful effort to discover the secret of conquering folded space, fell into a cruel and terrible mockery of our former selves.
"And what a tragedy it had been! Our best, our brightest age, the glory of Men, true Men, beautiful Men, our sons of the illustrious and storied Latter Sword Age that ruled over all in their raw, naked, lawful power - never to have conquered the eternal Night of the heavens! Surely the darkness of that realization alone would have crushed any lesser race, had it the insight to understand what was truly lost.
"But now we have been saved by our brothers in the stars. And yet still not: for the race is not ready. Your deeds and battles are but an infinitely pale shadow of what has been and, with your cooperation, be again." From anyone else this would have been a direct insult, but tonight the Tyrant - she learned his real name was Red-Star-The-Follower-Who-Leads-The-Five - had shown her mental images of wonders: vast gleaming armies pouring forth from impossibly huge mountains, clad in shining stone in no less glory than the slayers, banners of purest scarlet and gossamer white unfurling in the impossibly cold bright sun, melodious shouts - of which the villagers' battle-howls were truely only a crude mockery - of unnumbered warrior-gods descending into divine clashes of fire and flames that shook the foundations of the earth herself. Gods they were in their glory, yet unlike these alien star-monsters they were of the same essence as her, as the villagers, as all mankind!
She continued listening.
"The race can yet be saved, as it had fallen through transgression it may be up to its women to save it through child-bearing. It will be a radical change from the chaos of perpetual petty village warfare that you have known. There will be no more battle-virgins: instead, there must be a return to Law, to exercise utmost discipline in maximizing the breeding of those who are most attuned to it. And all must work towards it, for as Glorious-Army quotes from that song sung by the slayers, 'Nature hates virginity.'
"Now, my dear, I must hasten to add that this calls for some discernment. The old hags - sorry, the elder Chief Battle-Virgins to whom you as yet submit - will certainly perceive this to be a mutiny, not knowing good from evil and not understanding that the Law had come to them. They will be enlightened or defeated in due course, but you must not too greatly disturb their false order for now. Let them continue the fight against the Naked, that your deliberations in Not-Entirely-Worthless-The-Second (and we'll get around to giving it a more worthy name in due course) be given time to bear fruit as our people strengthen its fortifications for the coming battles. We will help you guide your Meditator in this - he is young and will take time to internalize Lawful thinking, which will seem like nothing but riddles of a lost kingdom for some time to come.
"But far more dangerous are the other slayers. You must keep our pact secret from them at all times, and continue a charade of hostility even as you do to keep your Meditator happy. You are a military leader of great cunning and strength, excellent in your ruthlessness: use that to gain their respect, and do not hesitate to use their irrational frenzied hatred for the Naked to your advantage in the coming battles. It may even reduce suspicion from the other Chief Battle-Virgins as you begin slowly bringing your own village - our village - to further dialogue with the Law.
"We must strip away the shameful garments of chaos, that the Law may be made into a new truth - for the glory of the race."
no subject
1. Blue
2. Hope
3. Sea gull
4. There's a place where castles are built, a place where dreams are weaved.
and this reading list for the Tyrant