Black Nerve

Declassifier’s note: a distinction is to be drawn between interdicts and [exclusions].underline, as the two are frequently conflated in popular imagining. ‘Exclusion zone’ is a political designation, whereas an ‘interdiction zone’ are a magical phenomena, caused by crepuscules, the vespertine singularities which often result in unbreakable taboos. But not every exclusion mandate concerns vespers, and not every crepuscule, nor even every crepuscular interdict, is confined to a fixed area. But there is frequent overlap between the two.

The Obliteration Fields 

OFEZ: annihilation magic interdict, plains southern

The infamous antimatter exclusion zone, the Obliteration Fields are what’s known as a failed exclusion, a broken crepuscule. They’re also perhaps the oldest crepuscule‍ ‍—‍ and in fact misconceived to be the first; but this is impossible to know for sure, as crepuscules decay, and any that might have been contemporaneous with or older than the OFEZ would leave little trace of their existence.

The OFEZ formed at the end of the titanomachy, following the vanquishing of Dlann, the archtitan, heir of the ineffable mantle, and lord‍-​king of all bats. He was one of the last royals to be excised from the heartlands, and till that day none had challenged his throne for centuries.

The annihilation arts were the purview of vesperbats, because the energy costs were too crippling to be paid by mantids. Dlann, the archtitan, had been the peerless master of anihiliation magic, and by the time of his demise, actually the last such master. Some say he was the first, too, but this isn’t true‍ ‍—‍ interrogated bats are on record saying he was taught, but by whom or what, there is no conjecture and no candidates.

The annihilation arts allows one to summon antimatter. It is‍ ‍—‍ was‍ ‍—‍ truly formidable, and in truth, had the vespers not saved us, diamantids would have lost to Dlann, the archtitan, and fell back forever under chiropteran subjugation.

But there was a prophecy in the flesh, white dragon inspiration embodied in opposing vesperbane, and though the details of that spell are lost to history, it is known Dlann, the archtitan, attempted to defy it.

Dlann’s defiance was punished with madness, and he may have died. But in the last moments anyone remembers, Dlann, the archtitan, fought with a desperation he never would have dared otherwise.

You see, there’s a quirk to the annihilation arts that few knew. Dlann didn’t know it, until the end. As said, it takes a lot of energy to summon just a little antimatter. And it takes even more energy to summon even a little more antimatter. But the curve’s not as tight as it should be. By summoning enough antimatter, it’s possible to regain more energy from its annihilation than was expended to bring it forth, and this is exactly what Dlann did in the Obliteration Fields.

The OFEZ is considered a failed crepuscule because we attribute certain protectiveness to the crepuscular process‍ ‍—‍ it’s believed that it’s a manifestation of the Dream itself. We believe interdictions act to shield us from the consequences of dangerous arts. Yet Dlann’s Defiance failed in this. Even with Annihilation Magic taboo’d outside of the fields, the gradual annihilation of the air still bathed the surrounding countryside in radiation, and created a vacuum which sucked in more of the atmosphere.

Had Brismati Lakon, the copy‍-​bane, the queen of a thousand tricks, not been among the fighting force, this would have lead to a VK‍-​class end of the world scenario. But Lakon was infamous for being able to reproduce any technique she had seen, even in a single battle, and here she became the first and last mantis to wield annihilation magic, utilizing the rampant ambient energy. With the help of magnetic techniques she had copied previously, Lakon crafted vast dweomers to contain the magic and she willingly became a crepuscule so that her wards would outlast her.

Today, everyone knows of the Obliteration Fields, and at night they can be seen from tens of kilometers off, limned by bright flashes when tiny fluctuations in the dweomers leak miniscule puffs of swiftly‍-​annihilated air. The land surrounding the zone is an inhospitable, irradiated waste. Inside Lakon’s wards, the land and air is gone, and the near‍-​vacuum of the zone is stalked by the hounds of Dlann, fell beasts adapted to the zone and hungry for matter as they float and watch us.

The Bogs of Eden 

BEEZ: unknown interdict, land of swamps

By all rights, the Frozen Swamp stronghold should be a bit player, if not completely subsumed by its neighbors. It’s a tiny, unwanted addendum to the Pantheca, just north of all the fertile farmland lake country controls. It’s so far east that it’s practically the outlands, with all the danger and destruction that entails. All of its rivers either go southeast into the vast land of lakes and rivers (a nation hungry for expansion, embargoing swamp when annexation fell through), or run directly south into the territory of the Bleedweb Stronghold (a partner in vicious civil war). And to the north, the land of quiet frost.

But Frosthold’s saving grace is what’s come to be called the bogs of eden. It’s providence is sketchy; some say it was once the den of a cabal of drugdealers, or the secret base of the pirates who dogged the lakes and rivers south, or home to a tribe of cannibals. Other sources claim all pairs of the above. It’s not even known if frozen swamp’s vesperbanes ever did anything about them, or if it was the merely the crepuscule which did them in. Swamp is dreadfully, if understandably, secretive about the bogs.

What is known is what’s implied. First, suffice it to say that inducting and maintaining vesperbanes requires certain votives. Frosthold’s proximity to the outlands gives them enviable access to one half of the necessary votives. The other half can be created‍ ‍—‍ is created‍ ‍—‍ by the nations at a certain cost. But the mathematics of its production are harsh. Trying to tighten the numbers, push it further, leads to ruin (as Vilehold can attest), and trying to circumvent it with vesperbane arts has always, without exception, eventually lead to crepuscules.

And that’s almost certainly just what happened in the Bogs of Eden. But perhaps it’s another broken crepuscule, except broken in a way we could exploit. Regardless, the fact of the matter is the Bogs must produce those coveted votives, as Frosthold shoulders a fraction of the costs the other nations must pay, yet has a disproporationely large vesperbane presence for its size‍ ‍—‍ rivaling its larger neighbor, Bleedhold‍ ‍—‍ and is, furthermore, one of the chief exporters of those votives.

(Haruspices have been consulted to get the opinion of the vespers, in hope that it reveals anything. A few neotic gynes are said to be aware of it, said to decry it as a bastion of ugliness; some haruspices demand the stewartry destroy it, and more moderate at least ask for a embargo.)

Black Pudding 

BPEZ: research moratorium, enervated wastes

Failed myxogoth breeding experiment.

The Endless Perpendicular 

EPEZ: total banishment interdict, land of mountains

Banishment was an advanced art known to a few arch‍-​fiends before its exclusion. The theory of it was simple, using the matter‍-​repulsing properties of upsilon‍-​nrv to rip apart matter with extradimensional forces, often resulting in an implosive or explosive effect. The ideal was total banishment, which had no destructive consequences on inert matter. In combat, this is largely useless, equivalent to exposing a foe to vacuum for a few seconds or minutes. But it was pursued as a promising avenue of “teleportation”‍-​like effects, before it went crepuscular.

Drugs are suspected to be involved. Alcohol, or perhaps some hallucinogen. Regardless of why it happened, someone tried to banish a river.

It was perhaps the most perfect banishment that had ever been attempted. Performed near what used to be a waterfall, the huge quantity of upsilon‍-​nrv forced the waters to flow extradimensionally fourthward, perpendicular to the material hyperplane.

It should have been a stupid stunt that quickly burnt itself out. But as the water and the enervate inducing it ascended further and further fourthward, something reached down. The flow of water was stoked, the enervate renewed from sources indecipherable, and the now‍-​unidentifiable vesperbane arch‍-​fiend was engulfed in the most violent crepuscule on record. Their body instantly transmutated into stone, the surrounding area was explosively suffused with enervate reinforcing the exclusion. Yet the river still empties into the abyss even now.

An attempt was made to dam the river upstream to arrest the flow, and at first it seemed to work. Then waters started flowing back down, and they were different. The dam was destroyed.

If your vessel is warded against enervation (something like a submersible works), it is possible to sail the Endless Perpendicular. The farthest anyone has gone is less than half a kilometer in. Those who dared more did not return.

In modern times the region around Endless Perpendicular is victim to constant fog and rain as a fraction of the water falters on its journey into the extradimensional abyss and whatever awaits up there.

(Some describe the Endless Perpendicular as some manner of boundless pit, but this is ridiculous. Banishment acts against extradimensional gravity. The direction it goes could only be up.)

Vrilsekh, The City Wrought Whole 

CWEZ: ███████ encryption, land of lakes)

[DATA EXPUNGED]

Sanguine Depths 

SDEZ: hemotectonic exclusion zone, land of mountains

The blood of vesperbats is restless. It teems with replenishing stem cells and the stolen genetic secrets of a thousand species, granting it a notoriously regenerating, mutagenic nature. Separated from its host, it’s well known as the humble healing potion when chemically defanged, and as the dreaded myxogoth when it is unleashed.

Tsic’zahd was one of the fourteen royal vesperbats. When a vesperbat has lived for centuries and garnered dozens of vespers, they become an elder. When‍ ‍—‍ if‍ ‍—‍ those centuries are grown to millennia and and the ranks of its vespers multiply to match, they become titans. The royals were beyond even titans. During the era of hope, most ascended or were slain. Tsic’zahd suffered a worse fate.

She wielded the earth with a singular deftness and understanding. Silicon‍-​manipulating shatter‍-​birds were common, masters of ferromagnetic metals too numerous to name, and even crystals had their acolytes. But none had synthesized the myriad geomantic arts so thoroughly as she.

Her feet became burrowing claws and she took to dwelling underground. In her reign as a titan, she would slumber for years and awaken with an appetite to devour cities. She haunted mines and caves.

When she took her place as a royal‍ ‍—‍ lasting but a few decades as such‍ ‍—‍ Tsic’zahd had evolved to something greater. Her attunement to the earth was complete; and one could witness her touring the land atop a vast shard of the earth which she willed to fly. Those who displeased her were met with ravines torn open, countrysides shattered, and melodic earthquakes like a song of a chthonic instrument. But most stunning of all, she no longer had fur, instead she lived within a shining visage of gold and obsidian.

Her final will was to take this transformation to the extreme. Royals, as a rule, were huge. “Mountainous” describes the lot of them. But Tsic’zahd was like an entire ridge. Some might say she wished to make this comparison literal. To have bones of stone, flesh of metal, a mind of semiconducting minerals… to breathe the soil, and pump magma through her veins. In short, achieve unity with the land.

She succeeded all these save one, which was her folly. When she tried to reshape her circulatory system, this displeased her blood, and it grew mutinous and rebelled.

And perhaps it killed her, or now leaves her trapped in unending torment. She no longer has a mouth with which to tell.

Regardless, the result we’re left with is that in the Sanguine Depths, blood is a geological phenomena. It grows here, nourished by the heat of the earth or something more subtle. And it nourishes in turn those predators who can hunt the ichor which crawls and feeds.

And there lurks also what has crawled forth from her womb, wretched things in whom lingers some inheritance.

Some call these depths the land of mountains’ own bog of eden, but the bogs never fought back. The bogs don’t scream.

Crimson Winds 

N/A: motile anomaly, various locations

Shadowcalling is a restricted magic, forbidden from ever being used for combat against mantids within the heartlands. Its only ordained ends are those in service of the stability and prosperity of the theca of mantiskind. Averting the crimson winds is one such end.

Crimson slime is visible as a titular reddening of waters soon after the rain comes. Most often a pond, but any wet humid place suffices. Unlike the conventional myxogoths, the crimson slime is colonial, even free‍-​living, more than it forms a single unified organism. Crimson slime consumes all living matter in its chosen body of water‍ ‍—‍ anything digestible and plenty that’s not will be turned to the creation of more slime‍ ‍—‍ and when all is exhausted, they desiccate themselves into lighter‍-​than‍-​air cysts, forming a crunchy brown film. The cysts rise with evaporating water to ride the air. If the winds carry the cysts to another body of water, the process repeats. But if the winds carry them above the cloud layer, they can form pale pink wisps. The elevation awakens the cysts, and in the desert of the sky, there is only one food source. The cysts consume themselves. It’s the optimal time for cannibalism; in a pond there are other resources to exploit together, but in the clouds, every conspecific eliminated is a lineage culled from competition in the next pond. Naturally, the cysts will fall as precipitation, and begin the process anew when they land.

Crimson slime has been exterminated down to a few extant populations, spared for the sake of science and the poultices they ingredient. Crimson slime is never to fall upon a ranch or major city, and it is through adept, extensive use of shadowcalling and fiendflame that in the Pantheca, they never have or will.


Vehna’s Abyss 

VAEZ: omicron enervate interdict, interstitial waters

These days, they call it the helldive expedition, when they speak of it at all, but before it was doomed, it was Mission A0677, codename ‘hyperpressure’, and it was only a demonstration, only a proof of concept. It cost enough to feed several cities for several years, and it failed.

It was tried not out of desperation, but out of the premonition of desperation. We will need a breakthrough. The number of moratoria and exclusions and crepuscules was only climbing, and there were now things roaming the outlands with hides and shells hardened against gamma‍-​laced blades and wretched raptorials. And this is only the point of the knife.

And so, in a rare, properly unheard of feat of cooperation, this operation was staffed with vesperbane and vindicator, and it’s aim was simple: take a submersible down to the bottom of the deepest trench they could find, build a base with water‍-​repusling wards and oxygen‍-​productive algae, and breach the delta barrier finally.

It’s not fair to say that beta and gamma enervate’s parachemistry is exhausted; every year we discover new reactions and species. But we have the lay of the land, and we’re sure nothing game‍-​changing lay in its combinatoric space. Delta parachemistry is more promising, but surface pumps can’t consistently bring to bear the pressures that incur gamma fusion. (Meanwhile, attempts at delta fusion run face‍-​first into the epsilon defect, and the pump explodes. If this mission was really a success, they thought, perhaps we could see the mythic, theorized omega‍-​nrv thought to result from delta fusion.)

There were transmissions up until the final day. The water grew denser quicker than they expected. There was already an vast expanse of enervate at the bottom of the oceans (academics had conjectured such, but none were bold enough to suggest an entire landscape of the stuff. And none expected it to be so gorgeously geometrical.) The fauna were so, so much large than you have any right to expect; the trenches should ecological deserts, not rainforests. And so went the calvalcade of bizarre reports befuddling all anticipation.

Intercession from something garbled the reports shortly before they stopped altogether. We can only guess what could have gone wrong‍ ‍—‍ guesses too unprofessional to reproduce here. And there are still those theorists who say nothing was wrong with the mission, that it would work, it will work, we just have to send another team down, one who won’t make idiot mistakes. Clearly the addled vesperbanes were the only problem. Clearly the meddling vindicators were the only problem. Clearly—

Enervate scrying reproduces exactly the vast expanses of hardened gamma and delta enervate the group reported, and the mist of what was once omicron enervate. Deeper examination shows thousands of spheres lining the deep of the trench, all to the specification the team was charged with constructing, but too numerous to all be their work. They’re like a myriad suns in the abyss, or so many moons in miniature encrusting the dark.

The sensors can never pin down their position with precision. All reports of their arrangement and distance seem to conflict.