Black Nerve

Follow-up to: The Duality of Mantes

Diamantes don’t have a concept of friendship.

To some, this is a ridiculous thing to assert — mantes are a social species. How could they function without this fundamental stitch in the interpersonal fabric? Indeed, at a coarse level, the skepticism is vindicated. If a “friend” is simply some bug you like, whose company you seek out and enjoy, who helps and supports you, then of course mantes have friends.

Therids are spiders. Setae-furry, with colorful tufts to distinguish individuals, and big ol’ abdomens larger than their heads. They’ve got claws on their paws, and chelicerae-fangs with enough venom to kill just about anything their own size — or larger.

Their leg-span’s about a meter and a half, and they slump instead of standing, rising about half a meter. Most bugs look down on them, and the sprawly gait means they move pretty slowly.

To be blindfolded in a world of baleful, enchanting illusions is simply survival. To wear that handicap proudly can be excused as excess. But when your world contracts to that dark, claustrophobic interiority, where do the monsters dwell?

Mantes could once hear another’s thoughts as keenly as voices. They still hear voices; they just don’t listen.

The moths of the heartlands bear eyes of constant, darkling sorrow. Once prized for beautiful silk, now beauty consumes them. Stare into the light, and pray it burns your eyes.

What is red ichor? Weevils tell stories, the oldest stories, of bats before they bled wrong. But what changed? Why regenerating direbeasts, why magical bloodletting, why these hungry plagues of relentless mutation?

Lie on the altar bleed revelation.

The story of Clan Wormthew née Gildenighter is a tale of conniving desperation, pride’s own survival instincts, and blood that betrays its veins.

The story of the City of Eels is awakening from one nightmare to another. You can only watch.

The first vesperbane stronghold was lead by a series of five — some would argue four — military dictators before its collapse. Every single one had popularity and legitimacy no more than tenuous. Yet it endured three trials conducted as war before its collapse. This is that history.

Civilized bugs in the heartlands farm a number of animals. Most iconically, various beetles like mealworms, cincidelas, and dung beetles. One could even argue the raiding behavior of early mantid settlements — seizing and eating the loyal roaches of rivals — constituted a kind of indirect farming to avoid the inconvenience of eating the people you lived with.

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

Why not just say fuck it and go with the flow?

They say, “Every mantis has fluff on her antennae and spikes on her arms. You don’t know her until you’ve seen both.”

A diamantis has two personas, known classically as their fluff and their spikes. Or, as arthropods with a long history of relations with mantidkind would put it, the mask and the monster.

Most vesperbanes have an affinity for one of the four earthly elements. Wrapped up in that word ‘affinity’ is a complex, poorly understood phenomena, a consequence both of a soul’s enervate composition and the physiology of their umbral system, as well as subtle thing like diet or health. There is a long-lasting nature vs nurture debate on the matter of affinity; while most vesperbanes seem to have an innate affinity, it has in some cases mutated with training — but is that a true change, or the revelation of what was always there, or incipient, like a nymph turning imago?

A diamantis perches upon a flower-throne, tarsi clutching spokes. Trellises shield her, leaves enclosing like curtains — but those vines compete with flowers picked and placed.

Azalea and carnations adorn creeping fig; a pallete pink and orange, in a three-step gradient, and the note of contrast is a sharp violet appearing in only four places. Three lie on her body.

In a land of drought and scarcity, death is certain. Wise bugs weight the scales — who to favor, who to value? One day, Makuja will decide who lives and dies. Until then, she enjoys the world’s favor. But what wisdom comes to a girl with every privilege?

Anna of Three Lakes hatched on the grimy city streets, sooth-black and infested with slug and mites, an orphan with nothing and no one.

She was one of the first kids to get sucked up into an inculcatorium, in the days when Immolata the Second Overscourge first introduced them.

(Perhaps she’d been caught in some crime born of desperation, only for it to be decided she had some potential as a vesperbane. Or perhaps this was just a possible sentence for a deliquent youth.)

A prefigurement of A Beatific Cage

Author’s Note: A Chimerical Hope is, in a theoretical sense, loosely outlined as part one of a three part series (which I tentatively call The Dream of Tyrants and Traitors). Despite this, I feel the second and third parts — titled A Beatific Cage and A Tenebrous Dawn — will never be written, given the pace at which ‘chimhop’ (isn’t) proceeding. There’s a lot of very interesting plot and worldbuilding that would be introduced in these vaporous installments, and I’m be loath to never show it to the world.

After the lecture, Myla climbs down from her place among a row of perches. She wades pass a crowd of mantids in silver headbands, the blue light of Ngini’s mix glinting off them as the doors open to a sweltering evening.

In her bag, there’s a flakey book with a cord of mycelia looped around a certain page. She’s memorized the contents, but having a backup never hurts.

Author’s Note: Wasp, Bettle & Snake was a planned Black Nerve novella. I finished one chapter and made substantial progress on the second.

At this point, though, I find I am unlikely to continue work on this project. I had a few interesting ideas and I’m proud of what results, but it was too ambitious for a side project, and overall, I just didn’t not have enough outstanding long-term plans or this project or confidence in it.

In the fullness before yet there were any kingdoms nor lords to rule them, all was all and nothing else. Demise looked upon the blank, unchanging excess of all things, and she grew bored.

The thought arises, a chimaera of contingency and need. It precedes any notions of self or world, and its content is dumb confusion and wonder. Around it unfolds a constellation of rolling pattern and blossoming symmetries. Space is tiled with squares meeting twelve at a corner, and lit by lights that harmonize in octaves. All that is vibrates, as if in hymn to a hidden god.

Iecka feels an itch under her mask. Right in the middle of her labrum, where her maxillary palps can’t quite reach. She sighs, and lifts a dactyl — a thick one at the end of her raptorial foreleg — and slips it beneath the silk to scratch. It breaks protocol, yes — but she looks down at her patient, and she dares the unconscious, practically rotting form to report her. If he could, he would, she was sure; Iecka recalls the disgust on his withdrawn palps when he had first seen her yellow and black chitin.

kinda wanna talk about the euvespid birthright and the contradiction of paradise

but it’s the sort of big idea that would probably benefit from several hundred words of write up hyping up the gravitas to really hit

I’d be interested in hearing about it in either form

The wonder of the euvespids is the archive of souls.

Euvespids are wasps, and their sting is a neurotoxin — a nouetic neurotoxin. It erodes thought, and when prey isn’t dosed sufficient to die at once, the euvespid hunter retains a mental connection to metabolized venom. It adumbrates as it deliquesces flesh, granting them an enervate-trail to relentlessly track.

2024-07-12

Here’s a story idea. Premise is something like this:

It’s a mercenary world out there for vesperbanes. Elizi will do whatever it takes to put food on her plate — well, almost anything. She still has a heart. But if it takes a little finesse to get her fair share? Sometimes you gotta play a little dirty to stay in the game. Elizi does the best she can, and maybe one day, that’ll be enough. Till then, honor is a luxury.

Note: This is a transcript of a series of discord posts.

alright, kinda wanna talk about this one guy.

and i mean that in a way that’s kinda literal.

he is the one, the indivisible, the lord of all batkind — the sun-cutter king.

his signature technique was the All-Conquering Division.

in later retellings of his myths thousands of years later, it tends to get simplified as him having a “tongue sharp enough to cut anything”

note: this is a quick reply to someone on discord, i’ll edit it tomorrow

The crepuscular process is understood as the vespers’ judgment made manifest.

A “crepuscule”, after all, is just a vesperbane whose vespers no longer abide by the pact which binds vesper to bane. There’s four chief ways for this to happen.

vespers arent bugs, and they refuse to make themselves clear to bugs (deliberately so, many think — they’ve been exploited by bugs, and if their workings were clear, they’d be more exploited), but there’s a few categories of thing that get the vespers to raise their hackles

Enervate absorbs. But to fully grapple with the behavior of enervate, you need deeper theories. Enervate is five things and nothing else: two kinds of particles, which generate three forces. The rest is extrapolation.

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.

What is an umbracog?

Put simply, an umbracog molds enervate in their brain. Its antumbra reacts with neurotransmitters and itself, augmenting cognition. Every sapient bug in the heartlands is an umbrcog of some development, because nouform cognition is what allows for intelligence.

Given that, why is an umbracog, in the colloquial sense, meant as something strange and rare? Why does every bug not boast their mental gifts, why are they not all masters of the psychic arts?

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.

Expression: Vespertheca Prevalence: common to all members of Vesperis vulgaris Endowments:

Expression: Umbral Meridians Prevalence: all members of V. vulgaris Endowments:

Expression: Sanguine Vessels Prevalence: all modern members of V. vulgaris Endowments:

Expression: Wretched Raptorials Prevalence: common among most cultivated pedigrees of V. vulgaris Endowments:

The souleye, (sometimes called the fifth eye, the esoteric eye, or even the pineal eye for an analogy to vertebrates), regulates a diamantid’s nous, the seat of higher cognition and sapiance.

From its place recessed inside the brain, it synthesizes, stores and processes the umbraneurotransmitters required for higher cognition. Though poorly understood, its role in catalyzing, selectively distributing, and otherwise modulating nouetic activity hint at a role even more significant than a simple nerve gland or neural liver.

One day, I posted:

Prompting this response:

Okay, so I understand that mala being held by mantid groups in common can lead to enclosure by clans or other power-seekers who then use control of the vespermala to cement their advantage, but what are pharmacia, and what are nocturnal accounting and accumulation?

— Hasturtimesthree

So the important part about the disenthralled rebellion’s mala storage isn’t enclosure, it’s that collective access, coupled with mantid’s short lifespans, meant that there was a remarkable increase in the amount of cross-pollination and diversity in vesper crypts. For most of their natural history (albeit less so in the late myriad kingdoms, as the bats began to amble towards trade and vassalage), a vesper’s descendants were very likely to live in the same host or a small number of closely related hosts. Any idea or innovation might take many generations to have a chance of dispersing across the vesperbat population. Most did not.

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.

In the late chaos era, expansion of the ten thousand kingdoms of batkind and their practice of magically enthralling mantids had diven the ancestors of the welkinmarked into hiding. They barricaded themselves in a tiny pocket of land sheltered by the Welkin Peaks. These lands, now forgotten, are thought to be near what is now border between the Black Taiga and the Land of Mountains.

This pages collects shortform answers given to various questions about the heartlands. Largely from my discord: https://discord.gg/tqHjHK7

You can also email me questions to consider serpentsquiggle@proton.me.

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.

This post is four years old; the canonical list resembles this, but consider everything here subject to substantial revision.

Overscourge of the Windborne Stronghold: Astere Navera, whose breath is black winds. A neurochanneling genius — at first, she was only a stewartry student studying nitrogen-inducing amalgams. So-called aerochannelers are known to create simple semistable constructs such as vortex rings, but Navera pioneered techniques that discovered and then addressed the problem of phase-turbulence, and her mastery of aerochanneling now resembles neuroconjuring, and some of her feats have verged on shadowcalling.

Note: This section is likely outdated. Pending further review, I don’t think anything written herein is grossly inaccurate, but some terminology has been superseded.

Contrast with The Fourfold Divisions of Vesperbanes.

A vesperbane is a mantis who has undergone the pharmakon rites to host vespers within their body. In return they are granted magical abilities — but to use them, the vespers must grow bespoke organs, the physical means to implement that magic. Vesperbanes’ abilities fall under three broad categories, and within those categories are the thirteen schools of magical techniques.

I don’t quite recall the impetus behind this post — this may have been fluff for the Black Nerve RPG? It’s old stuff, but consider this a look at some philosophies and worldviews in the heartlands.

The world is a cage, and the greatest hope is freedom.

The Hope Doctrine is an opposition to slavery, imprisonment and coercion. The ideal world is one where every mantid pulses with the blood of freedom, and should never fear that it stop. The best one can do is to relish in what freedom you have, never restrict or encroach upon the freedom of others, and strive to dissolve chains.

Note: This is a mirror of an old exposition on enervate, ripped from the Black Nerve Omnibus and posted for ease of referencing. It’s not necessarily up to date; don’t treat it as strictly canon.

See also: The New Theory of Umbral Physics.

The sky is a dark ocean of fractal whorls, writhing tendrils, and black turbulence. Where there once were volcanoes, spires of iron and copper stab free of the ground and reach for heaven. In place of one moon, there is a dark orb emitting corrupt energy.

Greetings from the Vesperbane Stewartry.

You are receiving this letter in recognition of your outstanding performance on the highest level of the Syndic Civil Examination, and your particular responses on the psychological assessment. Estimates of your mental acuity score are over 50 (36 is average). This places you in the upper 1% of all mantids, (percipients and vesperbanes excluded).

Note: This is some of the oldest worldbuilding in black nerve, and as you can imagine, substantial information established here has been revised and contradicted in other sources. Consider this of principly historical interest.

Note that more polished and canonical articles covering similar subjects have been written:

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.

Tlakida, my daughter, last nymph of the Thimithi…

Can you remember what defines our clan? The flame that burns within us all? Can you still see it?

Can you remember the name of the white dragon reborn— the trial of the angelic host— the year of our hope 623—

Can you remember it all? The spark which ignited this fire that defines us…

There was one and only one who stood, when Karkel demanded the host punished for the crimes of the second dominion, pleading that she alone be executed for the sake of the rest — to be a matyr, and spare her comrades. She saw the error of their ways, and sought to atone. She was the first to burn in the white dragon’s breath. Do you recall Thesiza?

Like a hammer blow to the ruins of old ambrosia, Ribbolef lies at the center of an ever-widening crack in the expanse of dead forest that remains in the far south of Windhold.

Surrounded on all sides by the outlines of old trees, its roads and farmlands crawl outward against the wild. Deep within those forest remnants, there is still wood, still growing, twisted into the foundations of empty galleries once the home of weevils.

You are Mewla Asetari. The year is 1777, and you’re hatching. You crawl out of a fat, crowded Ootheca into the vast space of the Asetari clan nursery. Five other nymphs hatch from your ootheca, your broodmates.

Uvema, Your mother isn’t there to watch your first steps, only the midwife who prayed over your ootheca these past few months. You don’t see your mother until you’re a year old. The first time you see her is at a feast whose purpose you can’t discern, in a room filled with other Asetari. Your mother addresses the whole clan. You don’t think her eyes stay on you for more than a few moments.

Khitona: the world, the planet, the home — named for the myth of a great tunic worn by the dead and rotting primordial worm, upon whom all bugs feast and burrow. The Grand Arena: the largest continent of the world, named for the constant wars and struggles as bugs vied to claim rule. The Queenlands: a continent far to the west, homeland of the euvespids, and still ruled by ancient dynasties of hive queens. Heartlands: a subcontinent of the Grand Arena, encompassing everything south of the realm of quiet frost, north of the ambrosia quarantine, and east of the veinlands. This is the territory of the Pantheca. Outlands: a designation for everything on the Grand Arena not in the heartlands. - The Realm of Quiet Frost: an icy wasteland, twisted and warped to unlivable hostility by flows of black nerve. - The Ambrosia Quarantine: an expanse of rain forests and jungles on the southern tip of the Grand Arena, left to be tended by the ambrosia weevils. - The Veinlands: the ruins of the greatest cities of the myriad kingdoms, now roamed by feral ichorbats and the warped spawn of their blood. - The Great Rot: in the east of the outlands lies a once urban expanse, now reclaimed by fungus eating the almost unending swaths of wood. Crumbling weevil galleries the size of metropoli can still be faintly resolved. - Hraal’s Gallows: Dominating the Great Rot is felled monolith of the weevil’s world-tree. Named for the hanging of Hraal, the lord-borer, decay consumes the weevil’s ambition; this titantic tree has been rotting for centuries.

so let’s sketch up astere nevara

poor mom got rizzed up by some rich dude, relationship gets dicey after she’s already gravid, so she runs away. falls in love with a roach, lays her ootheca, then gets sick and dies.

thus, nevara hatches in a slum populated entirely by roaches. for all the formative years of their life, they never meet another mantis. at this time, they dont even learn to stridulate, the only language they pick up is roach cant.