Black Nerve

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.

(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.

For the affair cards, the four suits are:

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.