Black Nerve

Land of Ants and Roaches 

The heartlands is, first and foremost, the land of ants and roaches.

The Noble Roaches and the Spinner Ants comprise the majority sapient life in the heartlands, and most occupy professions translatable as ‘farmer’.

Noble Roaches are smaller, generally growing to be 50‍-​80 cm. and standing 40‍-​55 cm. Their name comes from their history: the Second Dominion cast a curse upon their kind that stunted their minds, making them slow and easily controlled, until the prophets’ will broke the curse, twisting it into something which instead uplifted them, returning clarity to their minds. They mature after about 10‍-​14 years, and often live over 50. Mothers carry their young in a ootheca pouch that hangs from their abdomen, and nurse them with a milky secretion, which she can continue to produce for years after weening their young.

Noble roaches are preferentially herbivorous, but may eat meat. They typically farm grains and tubers, but can occupy many professions. They have long, highly sensitive antennae and developed sense of taste that make them excellent chefs. They speak by blowing air through their spiracles, and fine control of this makes them excellent singers and criers. They are gregarious and curious, easily and eagerly establishing friendly relations with other kinds.

Spinner Ants are a yet smaller eusocial kind. Workers are typically 35‍-​55 cm. long and stand 15‍-​25 cm when not upright. A naked spinner ant is notable for being the least intelligent creature recognized as sapient. Their memory, reasoning, and problem‍-​solving abilities are comparable to maned wolves or salticids‍ ‍—‍ which is to say, they are middling clever yet unsophisticated beasts. But when many spinner ants together establish a labyrinth, something remarkable happens. The basic behavior of a spinner ants colony is to gather plant matter (and in some cases carrion) and feed it to several cultivars of domesticated fungus. Some of these provide a labyrinth’s food supply (the ants are able to eat little else), but some serve an arguably greater purpose: growing the filaments the spinners weave into myweft.

Spinners are almost never seen naked. Instead, they are swaddled in great robes and gowns of myweft, and with one piece of fabric invariably found held near the ants’ head. With this stray piece, they will incessantly pull and tie its threads with their tarsi, lick it with wet palps or rub it with elbowed antennae, all as if in thrall to the many tics of a nervous wreck. But to the spinners, this animaweft is as much themself as the body which manipulates it. Ants instinctively manipulate their wefts much like how baby roaches will whine and hiss as to imitate the speech of their elders.

The arrangement, engraving, and scent of the myweft threads, then, act much like a kind of natural language. Thus, the seemingly nervous fretting of a spinner ant is much more like a scholar forever scribbling thoughts upon a page, reading them over and revising according to a learned grammar. It is through these myweft records that the spinner ants achieve their sapience, though some wonder if it merely a mindless facsimile, or if the unraveled instructions on each myweft is merely the written will of an unseen queen ant.

The ants adorn their labyrinths with banners and rugs of dyed myweft, their art and advertisement. Indeed, labyrinths get their name due to the ants’ fondness for constructing great mazes, both to deter invasions, and to test the worthiness of princesses and their prospective mates.

Besides the productions of food and textiles, the spinner ants make excellent archivists and scribes, and like many eusocials, coordinate well for large scale projects.

Unlike roaches, who have a natural affinity for mantids, the ants are much more alien and poorly understood. They share a deeper history with the euvespids.

Of Myxokora 

Knowledge‍-​hunting, that unceasing pursuit of truth to the ends of the realm, is not new. Diamantids two thousand years ago were just as us, with all of our curiosity and cleverness.

When the rites of pharmakon emerged, when mantids could drink the blood, eat the entrails, and breathe the souls of bats to become more, their minds immediately sought to understand and explain why.

Today, of course, we know the answer is vespers, and we call their chosen vesperbanes. To some this nomenclature is suspicious, particularly to those of the dream faith, who venerate the beings. ‘Vesperbane’ reads most obviously as the the bane of vespers‍ ‍—‍ is that not a bad thing? But the truth is an etymological snarl.

We once thought the unnatural powers of a vesper bat was simply its own, like the curse of the tenebra moth, and when a order of mantids arose with will to slay them, they were, literally, the bane of the vesper bats: vesperbanes. But It’d be remiss to stop there. Passenger theory, which holds that bat and bane alike gain their power through some manner of chimerism with another race, was not seriously proposed and considered until the postwar period of the severed states. When it was increasingly accepted, of course, it was decided that if a vesper bat absent their passengers was a mere bat, then this addition component must be the vesper.

But if passenger theory was not always there, and not consensus till after thousand years of pharmakon, what were vesperbanes, in the archaic conception? It goes like this:

As a mythological figure, Aromethia was said to have gained new form as a result of her holy hericide. Her trespass against the godly bats, her arrogating of their supernatural birthright, brought her and caught her between worlds. Aromethia the thrall of Ylafenath was a mantis, but Aromethia the prophet was believed to be half‍-​mantis, half‍-​bat.

Every bat loses their child. So when, after a long campaign igniting the rebellion, Aromethia ate a husband and layed her ootheca, she found the husks of her brood stillborn. A sight familiar to so many clan mothers.

In her sorrow and mourning, she wrought an irreplicable endowment. We today would suppose this the long‍-​theorized duskwrought manifestation, but to the ancients, it was divine intervention.

The Aromethia of legend bore no nymphs, but instead took the warm ichor of a slain god into her tarsi and wove it into a surrogate womb, which bore her the first myxokora, the prophet’s red child.

When her early demise drew near, Aromethia released her child, gave it to a successor. If a vesperbane is half‍-​bat, and a myxokora is born of bats blood, then with this gift the chimerical marriage is sealed, and this defined the early conception of vesperbanes: the wielders of the wretched raptorials.

In truth, what’s more likely is that the myxokora was the first blood secret of our kind, and Aromethia in fact reared many children. Close to two millenia have passed since then, and perhaps four score generations. If Aromethia and her descendants remained fertile, it’s simply mathematical that almost all mantids in the heartlands are of her brood.

The Erotyle Enigma 

Erotyles, the pleasing fungus beetles, are not recognized as an intelligent kind. It strikes some as odd, on reflection. In this age, enlightened and sheltered from the depredations of world‍-​scars, so many now know of erotyles from tales alone: stories of beetles draped in wisp and cordyceps, sagely beasts who would encounter a troupe of bugs and kill all of them where they stand, save for the one who was kind enough to bow.

Easily dismissed as superstition or legend, but this skepticism is as incorrect as it is reflexive; erotyles are uniquely distinguished as a prey that reacts to intent, not behavior. They do not startle unless you mean them harm; they do not fall for ploys meant to trap them.

When the skeptic is augmented with this knowledge, the next step of intuition is to suppose this a cunning beast; adept at reading body language, keen to think a theory of mind. But this is not so; outside the domain of reading sophonts, they demonstrate no problem‍-​solving or perceptive ability greater than other wild beetles. Faced with a direbeast, or even other wild insects, and its understanding seems meager indeed. But in the most decisive experiment yet conducted, when faced with a puppet controlled remotely by a vesperbane, its sense of intent failed it utterly.

It’s clear, in the end, what must be happening here. The mind rebels at the possibility, but the evidence speaks: each of these beetles must be a connectique of definite, if middling at best, development. A beetle with percipient faculties that exceed even that of most mantids‍ ‍—‍ yes, they lack the tearful eyes of sapience, any useof tools or language, but is their mental sensitivity not evidence enough?

When viewed through the eyes of a distinguished percipient, the truth is a bit weirder. Paradoxically, it’s the very simplicity of the erotyle mind that grants them their abilities. The training of a true connectique does serve to elevate, but rather compensates for their intelligence.

Imagine a crowded room, bustling with the activity of a party or ball, conversations piled on top of conversations and drowning the whole house in a dull drone of interlocution. Now suppose your task was to overhear a neighbor’s argument. Quite the hopeless task, no?

But imagine your house was instead empty, silent but for the breathes and the creaking of wood. Favor your odds in this scenario?

A sapient mind is a roiling flux of enervate reactions and perturbations. A connectique might quiet this morass, still themselves to catch momently the ephemeral gust of enervate forces arising from another mind. But this state of emptiness a connectique strives with difficulty to attain is the natural state for an erotyle.

It’s so easy for to recognize the presence of intelligent intent when you lack any of your own.

Signature techniques 

So, you can colloquially speak of vesperbanes having signature techniques, which means exactly what you think, but there’s also a notion of true signature techniques, a form of technical property.

To become a true signatory for a technique, you perform a spellbranding ritual. Once the ritual has begun, your vespers broadcast your intent to become a signatory. This transmission is such that:

• All banes who know the same technique become aware of you and can become able to track you with a well‍-​known spell.
• Any nearby bane who is inclined to learn the technique will gain a weaker awareness, especially if their vespers covet the technique. (The exact distance this takes affect is related to your power level, theirs, and their compatibility.)
• Any bane who directly appraises you will detect the ritual.

Any of these banes can then challenge your ritual, and duel you. If they win the duel, you fail the ritual, and they become the aspirant in your place.

At any time, the current aspirant can end the ritual. If it ends prematurely, the first aspirant is stripped of their ability to use the technique, and can never initiate the ritual again, even with a different technique.

After a year, the ritual ends. If the aspirant hasn’t completed a sufficient number of duels (always at least one; the exact count depends on the technique, the users, and how cool the fights were), then it is treated as a failure, same as if the ritual had ended prematurely.

If the ritual is successful, however, the user gains it as a true signature technique, which empowers and optimizes the technique. Once you have a true signature, you cannot gain another signature, and you cannot lose your signature by any means except by becoming dead, banefallow or a warlock. The technique can evolve, within reason, but it cannot be swapped wholesale.

Three Kinds of War 

There are three kinds of war.

There is the warfare of armies meeting armies, towns under siege, a populace roused to a tribal fervor. This is war fought in full light of day.

Then there is what is fought in total darkness, on nights where even the stars are blotted out. The warfare of poisoned wells and towns scorched to ashes in the silent absence of screams. To destroy the enemy utterly and preemptively, to meet them in battle much the way a bug in amber continues its flight.

To fight in the light of the sun is to meet with attrition, exhaustion and devastation. To fight through darkness and defection is to roll dice blind, faces marked with knives and mutual destruction.

Vesperbanes fight in the shadows of the setting sun, through skirmish and subterfuge. The reign of sunlight warfare ended when vespers endowed banes with the might to waste entire legions, and conscription of rank and file granted nor benefit nor edge, not when the cost was their sure death. Like this, the heartlands saw a redefinition of war that to most, resembled peace. If this avoidance of sunlight war is an agreement to keep civilians out of the business of banes, then the avoidance of night war keeps banes away from civilians.

There would never be an army of vesperbanes, but so long as there are finite contracts to be struck with syndics and guilds, avarice and self‍-​interest would let there be no true peace between banes.

Agonwrought and Banewrought Endowments 

Endowments are the unit of vesperbane power, and come in two forms, according to whose will conceived their design.

Agonwrought 

An old proverb goes something like this. Two battle‍-​queens alike were plagued by two vesperbanes ravaging their land. The first battle‍-​queen gathered up a score of her finest warriors, and campaigned to slay the bane menacing their people. She succeeded, at the cost of a dozen and three of her warriors’ lives. The second battle‍-​queen also gathered a score of her warriors, but endeavored to defeat the bane, granting them mercy if they swore never to enter her land again. She also succeeded, with only ten of her warriors dying.

Who, it then asks, made the wiser choice? The unintuitive answer conventionally given is that it is the first, after the ancient observation that a vesperbane nearly killed comes back stronger than before. Indeed, this idea has reached such prevalence to spawn compressed allusions simply saying “better to die killing a bane than to live to spare them”, or even the seemingly contradictory “kill a bane, save a life.”

Unlike so many folk beliefs about vesperbanes, there is not nothing here. As a studied phenomena, the term is agonwrought manifestation. There are innumerable cases: a vesperbane recovering from grave disfigurement heals severed limbs to find they grow back different; a vesperbane captured and starving in a cell manifesting the a means to escape; a vesperbane made sedentary, whether for convalesce, court martial, or assigned an stagnent field post, manifests new endowments, and an eagerness to use them.

The conjectured logic is clear and compelling: a vesperbane exposed to stress, whether as direct as near‍-​lethal trauma or starvation, or as abstract as boredom and lack stimulation, may manifest new endowments as a result.

There’s a gaping hole in this theory, though. A vesperbane faced with life‍-​threatening stakes is little more likely to manifest than baseline chance. There is similarly no boon for one who watches their comrades die in front of them. Endure the cruelties of some abuse subtler than assault, and what salvation comes? Stress in all three cases, undoubtedly, and yet.

But again, there’s not nothing where the theory is looking. It’s just focused on the wrong thing. Agonwrought manifestation isn’t caused by stress to the vesperbane, but to the vesper. It takes all of the vespers’ labor with ichor to heal severe trauma, while a starving body might try to excise the vespers before anything else; and in the last case, endowments were made to be used, and any boredom of an inactive vesperbane would be magnified for their vespers.

But distress, grief, helplessness? Would the vespers notice? Would it affect them?

Banewrought 

By far the most important endowment, whose success has made itself present in every modern vespers’ genomic repertoire, is the claws of the oracle. Anatomically little more than sensitivity to the configuration of a hosts’ dactyls, its real power is the encoded association between specific configurations and the cryptic symbology of the arete substrate.

And encoded in arete is all the genomic sequence and all the oaths of blood and soul accessible to vespers, so the claws of the oracle thus grants vesperbanes the capacity to transfer or invent new sequences for the vespers’ consideration.

But of course, there’s an issue. With the claws of the oracles, any endowment can be proposed. But how to gain those claws without already having them? Some vesperbanes may gain them naturally, but agon manifestation is fickle. Relying upon it is wasteful; imagine the stewartry inducts a new vesperbane with aim of constructing bridges, and they instead they manifest to spit fire. You can’t build civilization atop alien whimsy.

It’s one of the seeming laws of vesper behavior that they never themselves produce of a means of communication or interaction, the claws (which, even then, are one‍-​way) being the one outlier, for their obvious utility. Any means of proper feedback must be induced.

There is, however, a kind of vesperbane specialized in vesper interaction, who can induce manifestation of the claws. It’s as they say: vespers made the endowments, but mantids made the haruspex.

Except from the Eve of Realignment 

Dominion and union alike have fallen, abandoning you, leaving us to plunge headfirst into this morass. Night has overtaken the heartlands, a night of war, a night of plagues, a night of disaster, a night of death. We reel, and recover, and brace ourselves, and we let the night continue. Insect and chimera dwindle…

A generation has been reared now knowing nothing but this sorry state. Will this be our evolution? Shall our destiny be an ever honed mastery of death, made creatures of this night, scrabbling for slivers of territory? Shall the nymphs go unmourned, their dream a fantasy?

No. Can you not coordinate? Can you not turn as sisters and rise? Let the call of treachery be unanswered.

March with me. By will of vesper and heart of mantis we will rise and build. March with me. With my eye at the helm and my sisters beside me, no army can withstand us. March with me, and this night will be dissolved. Our dreams will blaze forth as a firepit, and its walls we will build shall be such no bat nor bane can threaten you.

Answer my call. I will bring you peace. I will bring you dawn. I will bring you Pantheca.

—‍ Battle‍-​queen Eothi Anthimati, founder of the wardens and the Pantheca’s first defect.

Regarding Dragons 

What is the Pantheca’s general stance on the dragons? Unequivocally in favor, blaming radical Welkinists for their death?

Regarding dragons, the matter is complicated.

We’ll speak a bit informally here. Suppose you have a friend, and your friend steals someone’s most prized possession. Then suppose your friend is then killed in retaliation. Killing not done in self‍-​defense is heinous. But it’s not accurate to the complete picture to simply condemn that act alone, absent context. But suppose your friend is killed not for the theft, by the one she wronged, but by someone who simply hates her. Things quickly become complex and divergent.

Of course, we could continue making this analogy ever more complex for paragraphs more and not really draw a clean parallel to the situation of the dragons. Much of the needed point has already been made.

Without even getting into the question of whether dragons were intrinsically good or bad, one must acknowledge the facts about any vesperbat. Envespered bats kept hordes of mantids enthralled, used as servants, amusements, and food‍ ‍—‍ or they made arrangements to have access to hordes of the bats that they submitted to. The grand lairs of the bats, the very heights their titans were able to ascend, would not have been possible without the mantids beneath them.

So when bats turned their vesper‍-​endowed powers against the Kingdoms in service of the Disenthralled Rebellion, it must be acknowledged that the fact those bats had the power they did, whether inherited or personally extracted, is not morally neutral.

The Draconic Republic having the position in the world it did was, if not a crime itself, the shadow of many crimes. But the founders of the Alliance did not want vengeance, and believed justice and fairness could be arrived at as the gradual end‍-​result of mutually agreed upon policies and contracts, through economics and laws.

But this was at the beginning, when the rebellion was becoming a nation and helping establish the Republic. Long after, once the Alliance coped with the assimilation of the refugees and remnants of Oosifea’s destroyed empire, there was emerging a very pronounced political split in the Alliance.

On one side, you have what would be inaccurate to call rebels, because they won. But they were very much defined by regard for the philosphies which founded the Alliance. On the other, you have what would innaccurate to call Dominionists, because the Dominion was gone. But they were very much defined by a nostalgia for the Second Dominion and a anxiety at the direction the rebels pushed.

Having established the inaccuracy of these names, we will continue to use them.

Part of the dominionists’ rhetoric served to paint the images of dragons we still live with today.

“How many ‘dragons’ simply called themselves that when Dlann, the archtitan, was vanquished?” “If the dragons so readily betrayed their own kind when the opportunity presented itself, how quickly will the they turn on creatures that are different entirely?” “Why should we trust them, when their sisters are still fighting us even now?”

These are the questions Dominionists asked. Settlements were still attacked by non‍-​dragon bats, and defended by batslayers. Even the dragons themselves would occasionally be involved in violent exchanges with their fellow mantis. The dominionists emphasized this picture of dragons, calling them scorpions in our midst, every one of them an hourglass running down, the sand their patience at pretending to be civilized. When it’s gone, they could easily attack you and your family. “Can you defend yourself against a dragon?” they’d ask.

The sapience of vesperbats is often debated. The general consensus is that, as a consequence of their modified biology, vesperbats never stop developing. They grow ever larger‍ ‍—‍ including their brains. Knowledge‍-​hunters at the time codified scales and measures. A sexually mature vesperbat is about as intelligent as a clever beast or a first instar mantis. By the time they become elders, they are comparable to an adult mantis. (Some took this to its inevitable conclusion, and wondered if the oldest vesperbats are beyond even the smartest mantis. Generally, this was rejected as ridiculous.)

The rebels were hopeful that the dragons could be assimilated, become a accepted part of the Alliance. The dominionists wanted more extreme measures.

It cannot be denied that the presence of dragons presented problems. There were dragon attacks. And though the vanquishing of Dlann, the archtitan, was a turning point, throughout the existence of the Alliance, there remained bats to be vanquished. The lines between bat and dragon couldn’t not be drawn cleanly enough to assuage concerns.

And even on an economic level, vesperbats pose issues. Vesperbats are mammals, and possess uniquely active blood‍ ‍—‍ kilogram for kilogram, they require more food than mantids, and the work they can do is not multiplied to match. Vesperbats are far, far more prone to disorder and disease. And quite simply, easing the tension between two species who are finally nearing the end of a conflict older than either of their civilizations is a task the fledgling alliance could not dream of succeeding.

Is the world more peaceful, with the dragons gone? Yes. Could the Alliance have built an accord between the two species, absent dominionist influence? Could the Alliance have dealt with the problems dragons posed, without granting batslayers judicial authority and no oversight, without coercive sterilization programs, without quelling insurgencies with shadowcalling and the old sanguine arts? Yes and yes. Was this the enabling prelude to one a indefensible genocide? Yes.

This is one of the many mistakes of the old alliance, and the syndics, every one of them a student of history, will reflect on them, learn from them, and ignite the Kindling Dream.

But there are no vesperbats in the heartlands. And that’s a good thing.

Why Nobility? 

What is the publicly known history of the Wentalel monarchy? Are there other figurehead (or perceived‍-​as‍-​figurehead) monarchs in the Heartlands?

One thing that must be remarked upon. To a first approximation, no one in the heartlands likes monarchies.

To an Oosifean purist, a monarchy is a wasteful relic; in the most just era of the world, the God‍-​empress was less a monarch than a locus of the natural order of the world, apex predator and stern mother as one. To any true believer in Aromethia or the Kindling Dream, a monarchy is seen as the oppression it entails. To the syndics and scholars of the status quo, a monarchy is by definition undemocratic, and has no place in the Pantheca.

And to them all, there has only ever been one monarchy in the Heartlands, and its name was the Myriad Kingdoms.

So for that reason, it’s worth digressing further afield, and explaining just where nobility comes from.

This begins with the Third Dominion. The Third Dominion can’t properly be called a monarchy, due to its short history, tumultuous existance, and convuluted organization. More properly, it should be said this begins where the Third Dominion ends.

No one quite agrees where that starts exactly‍ ‍—‍ some say the conflagration of the capital mount, some say the Night of Ashes, and all but the most contrarian say it was definitely before Clanshatter‍ ‍—‍ but it’s better to think of these events as pieces of the dam breaking away; the water was always spilling through.

Thus, as the constituent polities collapsed, clan after clan defected from the Dominion. Confidence was lost, promises seemed unlikely to flower, and clans, alongside the odd clanless bane, decided it was better to look after themselves.

(What, precisely, is a clan? Fundamentally, a clan is simply debts and rights etched in arete, and distributed by the vespers as instructed. A clan is the energy stores and knowledge stores passed down, controlled by its claimants. It’s, to oversimplify, merely a class of property rights.)

No clan is an island, and for all that they would look after themselves, dealings still needed doing with the outside world. Thus, in the cadences of the previous era, the nature of many clans became that of mercenaries. City after city was left struggling as the empires they had furnished crumbled, and in desperation, agreements with clans were made for their protection.

Then, after years charged to defend a plot of land, it’s understandable to begin to feel a greater ownership over it. So the pattern one sees repeated is clans arrogating more control over the settlements they protected, their claims inarguable when backed by blood and black. Some historians coin the term ‘clan‍-​states’ for the some arrangements that resulted. But most often, ownership was declared, and matters of administration left to those outside the clan.

This, then, is the argument the clans made when the revolutionaries came to their doorstep. These mantids are not subjects, but tenants. We are not lords, but leasers. These are not taxes, they are rents.

The responses are a diverse as the provinces. In some, such as the Land of Lakes and Rivers, the property was nevertheless seized for the common good. In others, such as Black Tiaga, the story is much the same, yet going as far as to kill outright those that resisted or undermined the new democratic project. In still others, such as the New Protectorate, the story is much the same, only they were killed for being vesperbanes, rather than property owners.

But in some, such as Plains Southern, they were begrudgingly accepted. But there’s a rub: if these are not sovereigns, but citizens exercising property rights, then they have to comply with greater laws. And by the laws of the Pantheca, envespered mantids cannot hold superpersonal property.

Thus, a dilemma faced every noble clan: they may keep their holdings in arete, or keep their holdings in charter, but not both.¹

The nobles of Wentalel, as you may imagine, took the latter option. And, to hear some tell it, there’s a certain high dedication in that choice, something honorable; they relinquished their magical power for the good of their people, so that they may remain benevolent directors of the city, and safeguard it against the rash neomania of the syndics.

The fascination many retain for the nobility is something one can observe in any city of the sort. They are the rich, the beautiful, and they are steadfast memorials: they are older than the Pantheca, and there’s a certain precedent in that age.

One hears many exclamations having to do with the goings‍-​on of the nobles‍ ‍—‍ “ah! was that not a splendid eastern dress the prince wore?” “oh! is that a half‍-​winged the second‍-​in‍-​line is courting?” “have you seen the latest renovations to the noble gallery?”‍ ‍—‍ in a way, the once‍-​clan acts as a sort of unifier for the city.

That is, when it’s not instead dividing by matters of scandals, feuds: whether this heir is actually a bastard, or if this addition to the family has diluted the blood intolerably so.

But syndic placements are not inherited, can never be barred or bourne on the basis of purported pedigree. Any shares or stake a proprietor might have on a city’s land does not, can not, extend to any influence on its administration. The Pantheca is a democracy.

(¹: Of course, this is only true before the custodian clan loophole became enshrined as all‍-​but‍-​common‍-​practice, but such it wasn’t when the Realignment reached Wentalel.)

Karkel, the White Dragon’s Antecedent 

Is it known who stole Karkel’s power, leading them to realize how terrible the Myriad Kingdoms were?

To know Karkel, the ever‍-​scoured, the living pyre, the white dragon, it is helpful to first understand what it means for a bat to be royal.

Bat development is commonly held to be a sort of hierarchy. Only when a bat achieves fertile blood, are they finally considered as adults. When they grow the umbral antlers, they are elders. When they bleed ichor, the blasphemous acme of blood and fulfillment of all its necromantic nature, they are titans. But royals may be the most nebulous of all of these. It exists, foremost, as precaution.

Bats, by their nature, will quarrel and hate. When adults fight, it may cost them lives. When elders fight, it may cost them lairs and thralls. When titans fight, it may cost all of them hunting grounds.

But there were titans of truly devastating power, whose techniques could do worse than rendering hunting grounds uninhabitable‍ ‍—‍ who posed threat to all batkind.

Thus, the recognition of royalty. If one earns respect of a royal sufficient to allow one to partake of their blood, that one is a royal. If one can kill a royal and dare drink their blood, that one is a royal. And of course, if one can sleep hanging from the boughs of the queen’s blossoming throne and live to awaken, that one is a royal.

The certainty of mutual destruction alone is often enough to deter interroyal conflict. When this is not enough, but one law governs all royal bats: the one who would attack a fellow royal is not royal, and must face the wrath of all of them. In this way, peace was the privilege of the most powerful.

Being bloodborne, royalty is inherited, but remains dormant and invalid until titanhood. (A powerful parent is no guarantee of power‍ ‍—‍ but if a future royal be weak, liable to be killed, it was a problem which solved itself.) There were titles for a royal heir that might be translated as ‘princeling’ or ‘princess’.

Before their turn, Karkel of burning fur was nascent royalty, a welcoming and pleasant princet buoyed by a rich inheritance. Rather than a lair, their demesne was as much a city, with vesperbats from around the kingdoms welcome to stay for one night. Hospitality and openness distinguishes Karkel, where so many bats were secretive and jealous. He won much fame with a particular recipe, widely shared, which we might translate as ‘roast effigy’‍ ‍—‍ in which thralls were cooked alive then served. Another famous dish was a cheese made with the milk of the mothers from the families’ vassal litters, occasionally embellished with their fermenting stillborn.

Indeed, Karkel was oft‍-​nicknamed the chiropteran campfire. Something warm to gather around for meals‍ ‍—‍ but campfires will burn those foolish enough to touch, and Karkel was not all ingratiating flattery. A visitor to their city was their subject, and they deftly, fatally struck down those who offended their princely pride.

After reaching apotheosis with titanhood, Karkel’s route to greater power‍ ‍—‍ and their ultimate folly‍ ‍—‍ was the tutorship of the plasma‍-​lords. A fraternity whose arrogance‍ ‍—‍ literally‍ ‍—‍ knew no bounds, the plasma‍-​lords ever sought to best their rivals, the devotees of a certain glowing metal. In their highest, mythic ambition, the plasma‍-​lords aspired to chain the stars themselves, to breed them and wield them.

Karkel knew joy to join them, and pursue their highest ranks. A rotting and wizened plasma‍-​lord took Karkel as apprentice, to teach them the arts of plasma, and assist with his research. One particular experiment was the creation of a plasma construct held inside a large sealed box‍ ‍—‍ this allowed greater control of environmental conditions, the thick walls of the box limiting energy wasted.

Once the plasma‍-​lord had gone in the box and demonstrated this a few times, he asked for Karkel to give it a try, and watched from outside. And Karkel succeeded‍ ‍—‍ not for nothing had they survived when their royal blood was no secret. Their master was pleased, and commanded them to feed more into the plasma, make it hotter, more energetic.

And it grew out of control.

So Karkel sought to escape the box.

Their master did not let them out.

Many assassins had come for Karkel as a nascent royal, thirsty for their blood‍ ‍—‍ but now, after having finally become truly royal, had one at last succeeded?

A truth later revealed, their master was no plasma‍-​lord‍ ‍—‍ though once he was. Rather, once his body was. The flesh was possessed, made puppet to a genetic apparition‍ ‍—‍ by Tertöm, the ever‍-​living, the ghost of pus and sperm. He’s invented and mastered the art of totipotence: peerless regeneration and metaplasia. But most troubling of all his titles, he was Tertöm once‍-​royal; he was killed, and a dead royal is no royal. Weakened by the strain of returning, his royalty was thereafter denied.

Tertöm watched Karkel burn alive, and must have thought it an ironic fate. But he was not done with them.

Tertöm watched Karkel die many, many times. Melting, marinated in a vat of acid that burned when they climbed out into the air. Sliced into bits by knives and razor‍-​thin bindings that peeled their flesh with every struggle. Frozen in expanses of ice where their attempt at wielding their flames melted it‍ ‍—‍ only for them to drown and refreeze, engulfed. Infested with slugs and worms like some discarded piece of meat. Pricked and exsanguinated, milked for their coveted blood.

As each death approached, a choice came first. Karkel could die, finally, or endure Tertöm’s revival. Unfaltering, they made the same choice each time. Tertöm wanted to break them, and let them feel a few fractions of the pain and indignity he felt. Karkel gave in before they give up.

(With each revival, the blood of Karkel and of Tertöm grew ever intermixed.)

Tertöm molded Karkel into a weapon to oppose the royals. He wanted them to hate the royals’ cruelty and caprice. He wanted them to dream of a future in which they have all been slain, and perhaps Tertöm himself hangs from the queen’s boughs.

And Karkel was wielded. They were fried and sundered by Jejak’s thunder. They were pulveried by Tzic’zahd’s earth. They were obliterated by Dlann, the archtitan. They fought the nameless necromant, having their ichor tainted by more than Tertöm. They fought the one whom the vespers loved, and lose hold of even their symbionts. They fought the nightmare incarnate, descending into dark madness only reprieved by tearing off their antlers.

And then, at length, after failures piled up, Tertöm discarded Karkel as one would discard a used and ineffective tool. He took what he desires from their blood and endowments, and left the body in a desert to die. And there Karkel lay with a final death fast approaching, knowing that they alone were impotent to challenge the royals, that a dream of a new king hanging from the queen’s boughs was not theirs to realize.

That is the story the white dragon told, when one asks about their fall. There were natural followup questions: who or what saved them from their fate? What did they do about Tertöm‍ ‍—‍ was there vengence? Most pointed of all: does your suffering and your atonement erase or outweigh the things you’ve done?

The white dragon would look on in pensive silence, and would not share an answer.

—‍ Quotation from Here Be Tragedy, a history of the dragons. Not banned, but restricted, deemed an unreliable source by the Stewartry.

On the Seven Forsaker Clans 

Before the nymphs of the dream were put to volt, there were several clans who had produced prophets among their younger generation; indeed, the prominence of these individuals were the very leverage that lifted the nymphs a position of influence over banedom as a whole. Killed before they could bring about the promised alignment, with their dying breaths the nymphs are said to have spoken a curse for the false prophets who failed to avert their fate‍ ‍—‍ to those who had forsaken them. The manifestation of this curse for each was unique, but in each case the result is a plight just short of a protracted, mortifying abolition.

Clan Thimithi suffers the Curse of Extinguished Flame. Newborn Thimithi were stripped of the resistance to flame their mothers grant them, and lacking that, the ashen ecdysis went from merely painful to the leading cause of Thimithi mortality. At the same time, Thimithi were rendered infertile until their ashen ecdysis. Between these two grindstones, their number dwindled until, in the present day, they are a few members short of line extinction.

Clan Brismati suffers the Curse of Refracted Light. Now, pairings between two Brismati will never bear children, and the child of a Brismati and a half‍-​Brismati will not have access to the blood secret. Occasionally, children will now find they lack one of the innate abilities their parent’s pierazeidos had boasted. Telescopic eyes and eidetic memory were once available to all Brismati, and are now exclusive to branches. By now, some abilities have been lost entirely.

Clan Fagé suffered the Curse of Devoured Tongues. Their blood secret was once the red tongue; but now it is no longer inherited by their children. Instead, it can only be inherited through cannibalism of one who possesses the blood secret. In the modern day, it’s now rarely thought of as a blood secret, though in some technical respects it still is.

Clan Gaveldika suffered the Curse of Grounded Equillibrium. Their blood secret was the creation of electrically charged bindings, both in a physical sense (for traps, restraint or torture), and in a metaphysical sense (making many of them accomplished spellbrands). Under this curse, power dwelled in them like volatile lightning. When facing a weaker opponent, energy and arete would be leeched out of a Gaveldika and into their opponent, empowering them until the Gaveldika was equal to or weaker than their opponent. Their electric bindings were similarly mutinous; no longer could they bind anyone at all, because the fungal strands would quickly ally themselves to their target.

Clan Gaveldika is no more. Their arete, having been laundered by nocturnes, has lost all of its value, with only miniscule amounts retaining the equalizing properties. Dissolution of their technical property has led to the proliferation of lightning affinity. Of their blood secret, little remains other than the eccentric “chain lightning technique”, a powerful bolt of aretaic lightning that can only target living banes; its potency can be scaled up with frightening ease, but never to the point where it’s immediately lethal to the target. It endows the target with the ability to subsequently cast chain lightning for themselves on a target of their choosing.

Clan Queleta suffered the Curse of Concentrated Purity. They bore the blood secret of alcohol affinity, with virtues such as countering virulent ichor and providing a imbuement fluid that didnt easily freeze. With the curse, they lost their immunity to drukenness, and the blood secret could not be inherited unless both parents possessed it. Within a century, every member of clan either failed to pass on the secret, or became inbred to the point of serious medical complication as they died off. After realignment, the clan left behind vesperbanehood entirely for symbolic noble status. Still to this day they make pretty good wine.

Clan Batros suffered a Curse no haruspice has put to name. They once held the blood secret of the shining wings, endowing them with a kind of flight, but once cursed, none were able to grow wings with a size of more than cosmetic significance. When it was discovered that the wings could be grafted and used by hosts outside the clan, its members were hunted. The Batroses went extinct before the mystery of their curse was puzzled out.

At the start, we mentioned that there were seven forsaker clans, but we have only thus named six. This is no mistake: there is, structurally, seven curses in arete‍-​record, but no bane has exacted sense from the seventh curse. There are three theories to explain it, ranging from benign to troubling to downright disturbing.

First is that, for structural or mnemonic reasons, there are seven entries and one of them is entirely superfluous. There were seven nymphs, and seven points in the septagrammaton, so it’s a suggestive theory. The indecipherable contents, then, could just be accumulated junk from generations of transmission, no sense to be made of it because it was nonsense, or the vesper equivalent of a tall tale.

Second is that the seventh curse was devised and never bound to a target, often with the added speculation that it’s some contingency for later use. This theory is a favorite of the mystic imploring devotion in their flock, who assert that if we continue to stray from the vespers’ dream, if we do not do all we can to free them from their bondage, the seventh curse will befall us all, worse than anything visited upon the forsaker clans of times past. Woe to all those who invoke the vespers’ wrath.

The final theory holds that the seventh curse exists and was delivered. The clan whom it targeted committed a crime so heinous, possessed a blood secret so repugnant, suffered devastation so complete, that in the wake, we can find no evidence they ever existed.

Woe to all those who invoke the vespers’ wrath.

List of Books Banned in All Nine Provinces of the Pantheca 

Note: the following books cannot be printed, distributed or possessed, as per syndic decree. The general pattern is that printing or otherwise making copies always yields a capital sentence iff convicted, whereas possession or distribution bears lighter punishment. One exception is the New Protectorate, where all crimes are treason and therefore carry negotiated capital punishments, and conviction can be expedited in potential violation of certain judicial ordinances. Another is the Plains Southern, where no crime carries mandatory capital punishment. Mount Greci has numerous additional clauses and exceptions regarding rights of knowledge and communication, obscuring matters even further.

For comparison, copies of all these texts can be found in the vaults of the Moonspire Citadel, the knowledge archives of the Percipiency, and within the Umbral Records.

All authors have been excised from the records of ancestors, though the names of some may still be learned.

The Brand, the Blood, and the Black: Impure Doctrines for a Superior Vesperbane.

Veritanym: ▘▟▚▟ ▘ ▗▗▙▟▗▘ ▜▙
Often found as 9 thick scrolls of parchment. Titles always include pure script, sometimes full titles.

Ancestors and Descendents

Veritanym: ▗ ▚▙▘▜▜▘▖▙▞▚ ▖▜▟▞
Thin volume, most often hemolymph‍-​green. The welkinmark is always on the cover.

The Weevil‍-​Worship in Arboreal Climes

Veritanym: ▗▝▞▜▙ ▟▘▘▛▙▛▟▛▜ ▘
Title looks handwritten, cover is green or brown with floral imagery.

Last of the Last: The Queen’s Revelation

Veritanym: ▛▖▗▖▛▙▙▜▖▖▚▙▙▟▟▜▟
Cover bears the crest of the Second Dominion.

The Plays of Falshalla

Veritanym: ▙▝▝▘▗▝▙▙▙▚▘▙▙▖▚▘▙
Most copies had paintings of Falshalla or other romantic imagery as covers.

Protocols of the Severed Council

Veritanym: ▚▜▘▘▝▖▗▚▖▘▞▝▞▟▝▚▟
A thin volume. Cover often shows a map of the pantheca, and nefarious figures crowding the edge.

The Wealth of Vespers: An Inquiry into the Nature and Mechanics of Arete

Veritanym: ▝▖▟▞▙▚▖▝▝▞▗▞▙▗▖▖▝
Covers often depitct bat‍-​bone coins, bullions, and vespermala.

The Other Song of the Stars

Veritanym: ▛▗▗▝▝▗▚▞▝▜▜▘▚▝▛▟▛
Extant copies bear a cover depicting stars and eyes among a black space. Copies with other covers were all destroyed, and need not be described.

Poems For a Fallen Nation

Veritanym: ▗▜▝▜▚▖▖▛▗▛▝▚▗▙▚▚▜
Volumes are often manually copied, and lack many commonalities.

Our Redemption Has Come: A Study of Wingless Shamans and Prophets

Veritanym: ▙▗ ▟▝▜▞▝ ▖▟▝▖▞▖▟
Covers are often bare, but sometimes include depictions of tribal wingless mantids engaged in various rituals.

Welkin & Inferno: A Novel

Veritanym: ▗▟▞▖▖▝▝▛▚▟▜▞▝▗▘▖▟
Covers vary, but often depict a volcano erupting beneath a sky clear of even enervate.

Karkel’s Scathing Remark

Veritanym: ▙▛▜▗▖▙▛▘▙▜▖▟▞ ▖▜▚
A few pages in so many disparate forms to be impossible to generally recognize. A painting of a furless vesperbat is common. Four words are always present.

All Shall Align: The Truth of the Nymphs of Dream

Veritanym: ▞▝▝▜▛▙▚▖▗▛▝▞ ▜▚▟▜
Small green book. Cover shows the black moon over an ootheca.

Ages in Blood: A reconstruction of the ancient history from the termites to the sanguine age

Veritanym: ▛▚▝▖▚ ▞▖▚▗▘▟▛▜▜▚▟
Cover includes nonsense text in pure script and haruglyphs, and imagery of termite mounds, ancient monuments, and red cities with bats alongside mantids.

Protectorate of Whom?

Veritanym: ▝▟▚▞▝ ▚▟▙▖ ▟▚▖ ▛
More of a pamphlet. Front matter bears distinctive snurratre caricatures.

Oosifea Eternal

Veritanym: ▗▛▗▝▗▛▛▖▙ ▞▛▟▞▞▖
Cover always bears a likeless of the god‍-​empress, if not a title.

After the Apocalypse: On the Origins and Metousiosis of Red Ichor

Veritanym: ▙▘▜▙▗▖▛▟▖▚ ▜ ▘ ▖▚
Thin book, sub 150 pages. Cover is adorned with a stylized myxogoth.

Die Pharmazie

Veritanym: ▖▙▙ ▟▗▞▚▟▚▚▞▘▝▙▖▖
Yellow book, cover bears only the title.

Purity Vindicated: The Crimes of Vesperbanes

Veritanym: ▜ ▘▘▙▟▜▟▝▖▘▜▜▚▗▜▛
Blue book. Some covers bear a sketch of a vesperbane impaled in the style of electrocruxifiction, others simply display a lady gazing distant, wielding a hammer.

Third Dominion in Retrospect

Veritanym: ▚▚▜▟ ▗▛▙▙▗▝▗▙▗ ▗▚
Thick monograph with a red cover.

The Blackened Dimensions

Veritanym: ▞▜▜▛▖ ▝▚▖▙▙▜▙▚ ▙▚
Black pages with white text. Pages are composed of an enervate amalgam; curiously, not dangerous.

Ars grammatica sanguinis
Veritanym: (minting an arete‍-​signature for this work was deemed unwise)
Old and rotting. Extant copies were printed by Second or Third Dominion, bound in the chitin and flesh of noble roaches or wingless mantids.

A Stewartry Division’s Recommended Reading List 

• The Hosts’ Handbook: Your First Days as Vesperbane
• Pantheca: History’s Final Chapter
• Markets and Excess: The Progress of Money from Barter to Guilds
• The Kindred: a novel
• i=er₄: The Impact of Impact Theory
• The Sapid Sex
• Beyond Lineage: A Brief Introduction to Ichor’s Gene Tendencies
• Nor Thralls Nor Swarm: On the Nature of Mantis, or Lack Thereof
• Noble Roaches: Civilization’s Unsung Foundation
• The Welkin Weakness: How the Marked Hear Without Listening
• Some Myths About Vespers
• Dodging the Hammer: How to Avoid a Vindicator’s Wrath
• Syndics: Advance Guard or Popular Tyrants?
• Scorpions and Drought: Surviving the Reaping Black
• The Evolution of Interspecies Dependence

(source unknown; date unknown)

Septagrammaton 

By this sacrifice, I swear sevenfold.

1. I shall welcome the vespers into my vessel as I would a guest into my home. They shall not hunger, for fat nor nerve nor blood nor lore.
2. I shall not impose alterations upon my guests by any means. I shall not deny them the safety of my vessel, nor saddle them with the duties of the host.
3. I shall not through the blood of revelation bring forth a myxogoth, and I shall not contract the first plague.
4. I shall not bethrall myself to the weevils’ ambrosia, nor subject my guests to the same.
5. I shall not attain unnatural dominion over another hosts.
6. I shall not wield black nerve to aggrieve the scars of the world, nor open them anew.
7. I shall not avert a prophecy in the flesh, nor shirk a brand of fertile penance, nor defile a vault of fat and truth, and never shall I break an oath of blood and soul.

—‍ The Septagrammaton, the most binding oath sworn by all vesperbanes.

Vesper Cartomancy 

Vesper cartomancy has a long history, and a still dubious grounding in practical reality. Regardless of its efficacy, it’s cultural cachet means it present a wealth of symbols for haruspices to draw upon, even when their means of introspection are not “divinatory” in nature. The standard card set consists of eighteen ‘nature’ cards, and a stripped down set of twenty four suited ‘affair’ cards. The possible nature cards have four components. The ‘face reading’, meaning its name and card art; the ‘main reading’ which is the simple interpretation of its concept; the ‘side reading’ an opposed or supplementary interpretation of its concept; and the ‘deep reading’, which unifies or extends the other readings.

• The Waning: poverty; saturation; replacement of one thing with another
• The Roots: connection; worldly influence; inescapable or entrenched systems
• The Union: similarity; inadequate compromise; consideration of a shared need or common enemy
• The Half‍-​Chaste: virginity; courtship; moderation in or focus on an aspect
• The Broodmother: inheritance; division; points from which many paths unfold
• The Outward Spiral: creation; repetition; desires that cannot be satisfied
• The Harem: gregariousness; obligation; long term and large scale relations
• The Falsity: negation; defiance; separation from necessary/meaningful aspects
• The Debtchild: duality; opportunity; histories that constrain futures
• The Library: collection; excess; unexpected answers or relations between things
• The Glutton: simple desires; variety; pasts or futures of scarcity
• The Divulger: revelation; exchange; things that can be spread
• The Temptress: promises; inspiration; frustrating and incomplete solutions
• The Nascent Blank: beginnings; emptiness; potentials lost or unlikely
• The Fertile Secret: gossip; double meanings; things without collective understanding
• The Rainfall: generosity; wrathfulness; reconnections after diasphora or returns from great distance
• The Prostrate: awareness; submission; unnatural transformations
• The Surgeon: repair; suffering; extensions or liftings of burdens

For the affair cards, the four suits are:

• Books: relating to information, procedures, history, culture, congregation & coordination.
• Hearts: relating to flesh, energy, heat, projects and artworks
• Caps: relating to growth, influence both violent and social, the mind
• Wisps: relating to the world, destruction, things that can be harnessed

The are six distinct values in each suit, broken down as Negation, Absence, (potentially multiple) Presence cards, Paucity, Moderation, and Abundance.

Thus, to give a bane a vesper reading, each of their vespers is assigned a nature card in some permutation (whether by aleatoric cartomancy, or reliable haruspicy), and then the vespers’ interrelation, or responses to inquiries are characterized by affair cards.

A Note on the Three Classes of Vesperbane 

The Pantheca of All Mantiskind is a reification of ideals informed by practicality. Foremost among them is a critique of the Democratic Alliance of Our Hope. The old alliance is universally considered a failure in birthing the Third Dominion. Syndic theory views this failure as an inevitable consequence of its systems; a fault of the fundamental antagonisms between vesperbane and civilians.

The Pantheca mitigates this by restricting first the political power of vesperbanes, barring them from ruling in the syndic party, and second the economic power of vesperbanes, barring them from membership in guilds. All vesperbanes were a part of the Vesperbane Stewartry, overseen by syndics, to be our stewarts, not warriors nor queens.

Depending on who you ask, the stewartry system was either an abject failure, or a functioning ideal astrayed from by the machinations of a pernicious few, a past to be returned to.

In truth, a pure stewartry system there never was. Even when the wise sisters brought Realignment, we would not consign all the noble clans and hardened mercenaries uniformly to death‍ ‍—‍ and could not, for all the abominations and anomalies the Third Dominion wrought still lived. Thus, the cooperative would assist the nascent Pantheca, turn their lifetime‍-​honed combat prowess to its defense, and be our wardens.

The Wardens program was a stopgap, an atavism. It would gradually wither away to the peaceful ideal of mere Stewartship.

Such peace has not come; defects and crepuscules abound, and the Kindling Dream requires teeth to excise these impediments.

And so, the Wardens program has seen extensions and expansions, the laws of the decree revised piecemeal by the courts.

Compared to other military forces, banewardens differ in having a fixed capacity which they cannot exceed, a consequence of their creation as a temporary measure. Perhaps “fixed” would be more accurate; it may change with need. In some provinces, the capacity is pegged to population, in others it must be raised by deliberate syndic vote, again and again.

Once the obsolesence of the Wardens was postponed indefinitely across the continent, this policy cracked opened the door for banes not as stringently bound as stewarts. Legally, Wardens fall directly under the command of provincial administrations, rather than the interprovincial Stewartry‍ ‍—‍ and administrations can engage with guilds in a way the Stewarty does not and cannot.

With a new appetite for private use of vesperbane services, the demand grew and grew, even as the supply, as per syndic mandate, was bound by law.

These incentives were the impetus behind the creation of the mavericks program. Entirely freelance vesperbanes, overseen and regulated, but not commanded. (Notably, the maverick tax means they generate stewartry income, yet unlike stewarts, lack the drain of stipends.)

It’s a common misconception that mavericks are in some sense inherently criminal, or worse, some kind of officially recognized, legalized criminal class. Many syndics build careers on the notion of the maverick program being a hotbed of criminality, an offence to the founding principles of the Pantheca. This impression is not helped by the forgiveness claues, granting clemency and lenience to even criminal mavericks who assist against crepuscules and anomalies.

Nonetheless, mavericks are certainly capable of being productive, law‍-​abiding vesperbanes, and many are.

Perhaps the biggest boon of the mavericks program was allowing the closest thing to a reconciliation with the clans since the purges and persecution following Realignment; the clans had never waned in their pride, chafing against the restrictions both the Stewartry and Wardens imposed.

(There is a last classification of vesperbanes not mentioned, that of the renegades, defecting from the Kindling Dream. But there’s little to clarify: they are the inherently criminal class.)

Remarks About Arete 

Arete: roughly, karma, or satiation, or devotion, or fungible cooperation, or inverted debt. Measures the degree of equanimity or strife, not just between the vesper and bane, but between the vespers themselves, and within the vespers themselves.

Teach any promising vesperbane, and some time after mastering the instinctive techniques and moving on to cultivated expressions, a question is bound to reach their palps.

“What is arete?”

Some teachers, thus prompted, will give bad answers. Others will give no answers. And others still, in a similar vein, are honest enough to amend one of the former two with caveat that they do not know. These are the only three options. Now let us answer.

It is an nymphish essay indeed which begins by quoting the dictionary. Ngewa’s fourth edition defines arete as the substrate of vesperbane power and vesper communication, and cites Old Imperial for its etymology. This tracks with history; the Second Dominion was the first to truly endeavor a halfway empirical understanding of vespers, when the Disenthralled Rebellion still grounded itself mainly in mysticism.

What does arete mean, in the language of Oosifea? It translates to excellence, virtue, a striving for the perfection of existence. But as diligent knowledge‍-​hunters, we must interrogate this further. Famous is the example of old wingless strides, where ancient writings used ‘bat’ to mean ‘tyrant’, yet as language evolves, etymology unmoors from meaning. Not all bats are tyrants, and not all tyrants are bats. Is all arete excellent? Is all excellence arete?

What if we investigate arete itself? In the mnesis of vespers, their memory‍-​lineage, as well as in the oldest fossilized claw‍-​engravings of envespered bats, we find mention of the first lord‍-​king of the vesperbats, an immense bat‍ ‍—‍ immensely powerful, immensely old. His influence over the vespers granted him domination over the bats and he established the Myriad Kingdoms. Within the late culture of bats, there existed the superstition that to speak the name of a powerful bat was to invoke them. We can assume in more ancient times, this myth was taken even more seriously.

The first lord‍-​king was peerless and wrathful, and thus ancient bats would live in fear of bothering him, even by speaking his name. This practice informed every reference to him, even millenia later‍ ‍—‍ never a name, only the glyph ŪNMN or, modernly, with epithets like ‘the forgotten one’ or ‘the unnamed king’.

Curiously, this rabbit hole brings us right back to where we started, for every lord‍-​king after the first is compared to to his example, and every bat considers themselves a king over their thrallwealth, the mantids who serve them. This gives us the etymology of the bats’ word for arete: ŪNMN, the secret glyph of royalty. So for the bats, arete is kingliness. But what does this mean?

Is a king necessarily noble, and so to be kingly is to act with high morality‍ ‍—‍ thus vesperbanes losing arete‍-​standing when faltering to oaths? Is a king the power he wields‍ ‍—‍ thus high arete‍-​standing granting vesperbanes power? Is a king necessarily granted power and legitimacy by his subjects? After all, a line commonly engraved with allusion to the king, thought to be a direct quotation: “Forever I am endebted to my vespers.” Is arete debt‍ ‍—‍ thus spellbands encoding their contracts in arete?

Or perhaps we can take this bizarrely literally. Bear with us; nor bat nor vesper can think reasonably, as a mantis does, so we must be willing to consider the unreasonable. A king may mint coins with his face on them, and within a king’s demesnes, his power is everywhere felt. Could it be that arete is like a king, except when a bane holds arete, the thing that is like a king is not the bane, but the arete itself?

(An interesting fact about ancient battle‍-​queens in the Protectorate of the Pure Council of the Most Honorable of Warriors: that honor was something measured and tracked to fascinating precision. A battle‍-​queen has exactly seven times the honor of the lowest person, a Protected male. But honor is not something you are born with, or something you ‘earn’ with your acts. No, honor is something taken; with ritual acts of disrespect‍ ‍—‍ and killing someone is quite the disrespect, if not the deepest. Could a similar principle hold? Is arete something taken‍ ‍—‍ the fruit of death, even?)

As a final note, in the Book of Recollections, supposed testimony of the prophets attending to the nymphs of the dream, there is some recounting of the history of the vespers. One figure of note is the so‍-​called Author of Arete, who brought order to the vespers with scales and double‍-​entry accounting books. And who else might this be?

Who Brismati Yukli Is 

It is a truth I think all will acknowledge, that specialization is the engine of modernity.

Take a tarsus full of shikare oil, and spread it over a slice of honeyloaf. Then, try spread the same amount over two, three, ten‍ ‍—‍ you’ll note it becomes thin, insufficient, worse than nothing at all.

I think few with any connection to the moonspire will have failed to hear of a certain Yukli, privileged with Brismati genius. Arch‍-​sovran before teneral! Student of the twelve arts! A brave, daring tiercel!

We are expected to be impressed to be led by a fledgling who, in reality, should still be in our lecture halls.

When a worker needs a warp‍-​stricken leg healed, will she be impressed her medic can perform Umbra Dragon Invocation? When a mycobane lays the bricks for your house, will all his familiarity with the irrelevancies of red ichor and black nerve make you more confident in the structural integrity of his work? A long list of techniques impresses the novice, but the master cares about the time and focus required to hone. But perhaps we shouldn’t expect such patience from nymphs.

Specialization is the engine of modernity. Syndics coordinate, guilds trade, and stewarts maintain. It is well known how clueless our administrators are when it comes to basic facts of the vesperbane arts‍ ‍—‍ why then, should we suffer (no, not just suffer, promote) the opposite, a vesperbane who argues about markets and censorship, as though his station concerns anything of the sort?

But let’s move off this point about specialization‍ ‍—‍ I believe the word already on his and his supporter’s palps is ad hominem. Yes, supporters‍ ‍—‍ or should I say devotees? fanatatics? If this were just one silly sovran, it would perhaps not be worth the ink. But the same prestigious name adorning so many (admittedly adequate) papers and monographs, also stamps self‍-​published screeds and zines that circulate across the Stewartry.

In those works, I think, you get the picture of the real Yukli, the one unpolished by editors and peer review. You will find amateruish writing, regurgitated philosophical musings, and deeply ridiculous notions investigated with a credulity that borders on contrarianism.

Yukli thinks we could “double” the “intelligence” of every creature in the heartlands with our modern understanding of black nerve and red ichor‍ ‍—‍ even more, that such an augmentation would be desirable. He has a way of questioning the vinculation laws‍ ‍—‍ as though every kind of arthropod was, wanted to be, just a mantis with a diffferent bauplan, and law shouldn’t attend to objective biological and behavioral differences. Yukli has a few issues with biology, actually, seeming to think that soon hemotechnics could, should, would, concern themselves with radical reconfiguring of our appearances, our capacities, our genders. Utter vainity. And I think there is no fitting final illustration of that vainity than Yukli’s nymphly refrain. He loves to say “death is bad”, going as far as to claim that directing bloodbane resources to more important matters is actually one of the greatest deliberate causes of mass sentient death in history‍ ‍—‍ I’m being more tactful. His original phrasing, of course, was much more inflammatory. It’s a comparison that easily flies back at the comparer; after all, none of us have forgotten the last cult of personality whose leader promised followers life eternal.

Now, the arch‍-​sovran doesn’t have all six legs in fantasyland, of course. He’s made no secret of his deeply negative opinion of the vindicator’s guild and welkinism‍ ‍—‍ and I think we all agree. But it’s another example of his nymphly naivety: a good arch‍-​sovran should not make greater enemies of his opposition.

Yukli is a deeply silly, immature male, with an equally immature view of the world. He wants to think truth can reached by reducing everything to simple, unnuanced probabilities‍ ‍—‍ even more, he wants morality itself‍ ‍—‍ the thing empires have risen and fallen to discern‍ ‍—‍ to be just a much of assigning ‘goodness numbers’ to outcomes.

But the outcome I give the most biggest goodness number is Yukli growing up a little before inflicting another word on the world. He should have stuck to writing papers, and I say that with the highest probablity I can make up.

(Source: a note passed around the moonspire citadel, author anonymous)

Shortform Answers 

The remainder of this page consists of short, unindexed answers.

Is it known whether vesperbanes that have taken on a countenance sponsored by the Pantheca must swear any oaths upon doing so?

This question is a little confused.

“Sponsorship” generally refers to programs by Stewartry or the Wardens which fund vesperbane education, as other routes are either risky or financially inaccessible to the lower class. The recipients of sponsorships are not vesperbanes, and in general vesperbanes are not all (or mostly) previous recipients of sponsorships.

“Countenance” is a legal right to cultivate vespers, as the breeding and nursing of vespers is otherwise a dark gray area. Fundamentally, countenance is understood as something given to a vesperbane by a syndic coordinator. More practically, authority to establish countenance has been granted to the Stewartry, who have further extended that power to component or affiliate institutions like the Wardens or the Maverick program.

With all that background out of the way, yes, most institutions have swearing certain oaths of blood and soul as a prerequisite to them choosing to grant you countenance.

For most provinces’ Wardens program, this means swearing to protect the Pantheca and its inhabitants. By contrast, Stewarts vow aspiration to ideals of nonviolence and abstinence, and more depending on profession (e.g. medical hemotechnics to first do no harm, knowledge‍-​hunters to be honest and forthcoming, etc). Mavericks are required little more than oaths to acknowledge the laws of the heartlands, sometimes not even that.

Are spellbrands skilled enough to supply such oaths sufficiently rare that this is impractical?

Spellbrands are not necessary for oaths, but helpful for the most complex. They aren’t especially rare or especially common.