Black Nerve

Nous Inspira

Recommended prior reading: On Umbracogs

Back in the 16th century, when the Third Dominion was in full swing and the slave from the north slew the then-matriarch of the Thimithi clan, Thanata Thimithi, this precipitated the clan's defection from the regime.

For much of the remainder of the third dominion's reign, they were determined to pull the Thimithi back into line.  Their agents of choice were, more often than not, the Anthimati clan, whose cursed eyes of nouprojection could have... a certain persuasive effect.

Even after the dominion fell, the Anthimati clan never discarded their grudge.  Though there were other plenty of other feuds between families, they mostly had their definite beginnings and swift endings, or otherwise waxed and waned with the years.  In contrast, there was something unending about the procession of snake eyes burned by fire and ardent blood shed by rose thorns — all of this is to say, when one speaks of the "warring clans period", those clans might as well have been just the Thimithi and Anthimati.

Still, there's something asymmetrical about this conflict, isn't there?  Sure, fire is hot, if you get hit and dont have protection, but the Anthimati will turn your very mind and senses against you.

It's understandable, then, why the Thimithi badly needed a counter if they were to remain free of subjugation.

What they ended up with is, of course, what we’re hear to discuss today: the technique known as nous inspira.

Let's change track, and explain why the nous inspira is weird, when it comes to nouprojection defenses.

Think about it like this.  Say you're a vesperbane, and your enemy is trying to nudge your thoughts against your best interest, poison your senses and imagination with false images, and so on. All that nasty vandal shit.

You, obviously, don’t want this to happen, so how do you manage that?

You might think it helps to focus, to train your mind to follow a line of thought without getting distracted.  If the threat is your mind being maliciously changed, then tautalogically, you want your mind not to change, to maintain its intended signal unfalteringly.

And if this is what your answer is, it's the same as 90% of the scholarship on this topic.  It's what the percipients study, it's what Unbrood operatives are trained to do, and it’s how the "mind blank" spells normal vesperbanes use for this generally implement their defense.

Whatever you might think to do, it's probably not to lean in, to let your mind run wild with every impulse, to make it more malleable, more mercurial.

But that's exactly what nous inspira does, if we oversimplify and elide a lot of very specific instruction and guidance that's probably been all but lost at this point.

Intuitively, the principle here is that any attempt at "mind control" can’t control your whole mind, so instead we maximize chaos.  If you follow after every nudge, then more often than not it's going to be your natural intuition rather than foreign influence.  And if you do succumb to an intruder-thought, it doesn’t matter that much because you'll be jumping to another flight of thought soon enough.  It won't stick.

And by being more spontaneous and chaotic, you foil projection in another way: fundamentally, every mind is different, and the art of projection is based on guesswork and common patterns.  They figure out the rhythms and connections of your mind by watching it and replaying desired stimuli. 

And how useful is that if your mind is ever-changing, if two nudges only slightly different might send it chaotically in very different directions?

They cant predict what you're doing if you have no fucking clue yourself.

This isn't the whole technique, but it's the first form a student masters: the wildfire mind.

This is typically trained by dancing by the flickering light of a great big campfire, learning to move and think on impulse.

Now, you might imagine that random flailing is a pretty hefty drawback.  This is true, and thus, wildfire thought is more of a state of being partially trained, or at best, a last resort.

To be truly useful, an initiate must master the second form: focused flame.

This is what you might expect: refining the wildfire mind into something more directed, yet still spontaneous.

The metaphor and the training exercise typically used for this is that of music.  A inspirer learns dances and songs that are easy to predict if you’re acquainted with them, but hard to follow if you don’t, keeping projectors guessing.

When these songs become deeply engraved on the mind, they become a kind of error-correction tool — foreign thoughts become obvious, because they won’t fit with the practiced mental rhythm, and thus become easier to shrug off.

The skill ceiling here is very high, and for almost centuries, it's generally considered acceptable for a Thimithi to reach only this level of development to be considered combat ready, and once they do, there’s plenty to more learn here — more complex songs, improvisationally framing more complex thoughts & actions into the rhythm of a song — without ever needing to master the higher forms.

But should they pursue them, the next step is the radiant spirit.  

In the realignment war and then later as a part of the Pantheca proper, this technique was what made the Thimithi born leaders and commanders, and it became common pillar of their combat doctrine.

The nature of the radiant spirit is simple: all minds emit adumbrations that vibrate nearby enervate, but this effect is generally so subtle that only exceptionally sensitive receptors are capable of being affected.

To be radiant, then, an inspirer must learn to turn up the volume on their mind.

This has two chief effects: it weakens projection by the same principle talking over someone weakens arguments, and it acts as a projection of its own.

Thus, the benefit to the user is minor, but the benefit to her allies can be game-changing.  Enemy projections become hampered, and with simple training, allies can learn to relax and synchronize with the rhythm of radiant inspirer's mind, directly amplifying their own resistance to nouprojection.

(Interestingly, one of the selling points of the Anthimati's ophisrhodon is that it grants the beholden resistance to other nouprojection.  In a way, then, you can think of the nous inspira almost as the "good" counterpart to the "evil" ophisrhodon.  This is definitely how the Thimithi sold it.)

Now, all of the steps so far have been things that, theoretically,  anyone with a mind could achieve with some effort.  But the radiant spirit is limited by physics: there is physically only so much enervate in a person brain, which limits how "loud" they can be.

Brains can gain more enervate through umbracog training, but that's something that the vespers’ intervention (academics argue whether this is "well-intentioned" or not) generally prevent vesperbanes from acquiring.  By nature they flush the additional enervate from their hosts' brains.

Thus, radiant spirit is generally explained to the world as a Thimithi bloodline ability.  The truth of it is, (perhaps due to the special favor of the vespers?) the Thimthi have a peculiar innate affinity for nouprojection themselves, and this is how they use it.

After radiant spirit comes inner reflection.  This is one of the most perilous forms, and something Thimithi elders forbid any but the wisest and most developed practitioners from attempting.  This is because the inner reflection is the point where advanced technique and refinement double back around and risk running counter the fundamentals.

With the radiant spirit, you are metaphorically shining light out into the world.  The inner reflection asks: why not accept that light back into yourself, and make an eye of the mind's flame?

The problem with this is, well…

You see, the nous inspira is supposed to protect you from nouprojection, right?

The inner reflection, put simply, is "what if we allowed projection to affect us anyway?"

Learned incorrectly, this completely negates the protection and makes the user more vulnerable to projection.

But learned correctly?  An eye of enlightenment is opened, and it interfaces directly with the brain at the speed of enervate transmission.

It's the purest form of extrasensory perception.  You can sense techniques even as they're being molded, feel your foe's mind as they plan their next move.

And it amplifies the radiant spirit's effect, too: if you can feel your ally's minds, you can subtly alter your song to more tightly synchronize with them.

What more is their to learn?  Well, the apex of nous inspira development is termed the divine flame.  This is the point at which the user’s wild and freeform adaptability, and their extrasensory connection to the world around them, combined with a style trained past the point of muscle memory, allows them to enter a total flow state wherein you might well describe them as being one with the world itself, acting in such perfect concert with what seems almost supernatural foreknowledge — it's as if they are channeling a higher power.

There's a reason why worshiping Theiona Thimithi, the first overscourge, and the last master of divine flame, as if one of the exalted ancestor is considered fringe, but not ridiculous.

The above description gives one a general idea of the principles at play with the nous inspira, and the way it looks, but this would be insufficient to recreate it.  Just as a great poem has meaning meanings achieved with clever, unexpected choice of worlds, a great technique achieves many effects with a clever, unexpected mechanisms.

A more mundane metaphor: we ask one to "say cheese" to get them to smile for a photo — this odd trick works because of the details of how the mouth must shape itself to say cheese.

Similarly, there are specific techniques used to get a mind to "think inspira".

The way the Thimithi generally teach it, the nous inspira requires a specific kind of memory or mood or thought to be triggered.  An esoteric component.

It requires burning passion.  Animating will, deepest desire, motivation that gets you to move.

It cannot be tainted by fear.  The will to fight for your life in the face of death will not light the inspira.

It cannot be driven by necessity.  You must move of your own accord, dance to your own rhythm.

But most of all, it must be true to your core.  

Something the Thimithi have struggled with, as their legend grew around them, is their young would come in believing that they must achieve nous inspira for the sake of status.  To fail would be shameful, and to succeed would make them respected.  This alone taints it with fear, drives it by utility — but most have already heard the warnings, and they're smart enough not to try to fuel the inspira with their desire to learn the inspira (not least because it'd be obviously self-defeated once they finally do.)

In the end, few have truly found their passion, and many will make up false ambitions hoping them sufficient for the technique.  It doesn't always fail — but the result is a sputtering, dim flame, liable to fail them when they truly need it.

But there's drawback hidden underneath all of that fancy prose.  It's almost enough to say this alone: when you finally get it, the nous inspira feels great.

You become powerful, energetic, with unending thoughts and possibilities dancing before your eyes your mind quivering at your command.

The nous inspira is mania on command.

This is more than enough to drive one mad.

Addiction, self-destructive delusion, or even the parochial problems of driving headlong into the delicate art of setting your brain on fire (that is to say: an ever lengthening list of different kinds of brain damage — nobody learns the nous inspira without burning themselves, and an unlucky many burn out entirely.)  Such is the nature of the way.

Maybe that all sounds like enough to drive a nail in the coffin, explain why everyone doesn’t use the nous inspira.  It doesn't help that the Thimithi are all but extinguished as a clan, and knowledge of the inner reflection and divine flame had been oral traditions.

If that wasn’t enough, maybe this is: as far as mind arts go, the nous inspira is dead end.

If you're learning the nous inspira, then you're necessarily willing (and able) to learn umbracognition more generally.

There are a lot of things umbracogs are renowned (and feared) for.  They have perfect memories, committing small libraries to perfect recall.  They have ulterior anima, granting them the ability to think multiple lines of thought at once and some even even have alter anima, letting them perfectly pretend to be someone else (since as far as they can remember, they are).  They can, as per the very name of their art (“noudistortion”), encrypt and obfuscate their consciousness, so that even a projectique looking right at them cant discern anything.

The nous inspira is mutually exclusive with all of that.

When you metaphorically set your brain on fire, all of the carefully crafted, precisely engineered augmented brain circuits melt and succumb to entropy.

And with the divine flame retreating into the status of mythology among academics, pursing nous inspira gets you... what?  A little bit of nouprojection resistance with big drawbacks and at the upper end, the ability massage your friend's brains with soothing thoughts?

Why not just sober up and learn mind-distortion like a normal psychic?

In the modern day, there is one place where nous inspira still sees utility: far northeast, in the halls of the ever-frozen prison of Garua.

The effect was first discovered around the time of the first grand trial, and refined by the first and second overscourge.

You see, in the colds wastes northeast of the Pantheca, the ice freezes with enervate in a very particular way.  The wind seem to howl with the harsh yet sublime singing of alien throats; frozen lakes keen forever more with trembling pitch as if to accompany a ghastly summoning.

But you cant hear any of this.  No, you feel it.  But the land remains as muted as in the deepest blizzard.

It is, after all, the land of quiet frost.  Snow absorbs sound, and this only gets more dramatic when absorptive enervate comes into mix.  But the black nerve frozen in crystalline ice resonates silently with complex, every-shifting songs.

These frequencies will happen to line up, here and there, with the same vibrations of intentional nouprojection.

When it comes to folk wisdom, everyone who's ever gotten near the land of quiet frost agrees these lands are haunted as fuck.

When vesperbanes arrived, thinking themselves familiar with projection effects and therefore safe, they investigated and decide nope, those folk tales were entirely correct, actually.

You see, there are patterns of resonances that echo and echo so well that they gradually refine themselves through selection effects.  They evolve.

(Some of those patterns may have once been people, or the sound of their minds at least.  And what kind of mind would be loudest?  Perhaps it would be one buzzing with panic as they hear the crack and fall through the ice to a deep frozen death?  One gripped with mounting, consuming fear as they lose themselves in a blizzard with no help coming?  And now that fear and despair echoes on and on in the land of quiet frost.)

If the signal originated in a mind, another mind may very well be receptive to it.  Journey long enough into the quiet frost and those bad vibes you're feeling?  They may very well be the same bad vibes someone else felt years ago, still as potent.

And if you succumb, give in that feeling, you're emitting more of them.  This is what they want, such that they want anything: this amplifies and reproduces them.

And if this evolution happens for long enough, it's worth giving a name to the entity that results: a calignon, an enervate signal that replicates by repeatedly triggering negative emotions in new hosts, feeding on it and fucking off of it.

Obviously, you see shit like this, you'd turn around the hell around.

But the Pantheca was on an expansionist streak in those days, so people were sent into the land of quiet frost hoping to eek out new territory.  Or at least resources.

Then the troops sent out on that mission turned traitor, and said fuck the Pantheca

(They had their reasons, a historical context, but was that all there was?)

Still, that is background enough to explain why you might want something to deal with caligna.  Conventional mental protections are only so effective: as it turns out, when faced with something that's all about emitting repetitive signals hoping to have them mirrored, protections that amount to focusing your mind, holding it still and unperturbed (i.e., thinking the same things over and over) aren't too effective.

Thus, you might imagine, between exploring the land of quiet frost and later waging a war there, the utility of the inspira becomes obvious.  It's almost as if it was designed to deal with caligna....

But the war — excuse me, grand trial — eventually concluded, and the Pantheca wised up and gave up all ambitions of expanding into the land of quiet frost.

So obviously you might think, it's best to leave that place well the fuck alone.

Then you aren't thinking like a genius.

Grand Judge Edu of Three Lakes is widely considered one of the greatest minds of the seventeenth century.  One of his great ideas?

What if we gave the caligna bodies?

It's only slightly less deranged than it sounds.  He was a sealmaster, and he created seals that could sustain and protect the signals of a caligna, leaving them looking like a creature of ice and black mist draped in the sprawling paper seal like a cloak.

He thought about using them as weapons, but they proved difficult to control.

But he did eventually find a use for them, and these sealed caligna remain as the main line of defense for the ever-frozen prison of Garua.

You see, one problem regimes have grappled with since time immemorial (that is, about 1700 years ago) is the problem of how do you keep vesperbanes, magical beings with a slight tendency to evolve new bullshit to deal with whatever problem they cant overcome, securely imprisoned?

Edu's very humane solution is: what if we kept them locked up in a dungeon where they're subjected to magically-induced depressive lethargy?

But again, caligna are difficult to control, so you want a staff of prison wardens there both to keep the caligna in line, and to keep an eye on the prisoners themselves, just in case.  And again, most forms of psychic protection have limited utility against caligna.

Thus, the ever-frozen prison of Garua is constantly in search of fresh inspira users

(Incidentally, it happens that one of the people imprisoned at the recent end of third last grand trial is one Theta Thimithi...)