Anamnesis and Aretology
A collection of curated Black Nerve lore.
A Mantis Typology in Anamnesis and Aretology 2024-10-20 Sixteen Ways to Hunt and Dance 2.7k words
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.
Sweet Silk, Dream-Woven in Anamnesis and Aretology 2024-10-13 notes on ancient therids 2.0k words
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.
A Mind Like a Massacre in Anamnesis and Aretology 2024-09-03 a tale of minds flayed and sanity subverted 3.6k words
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, binding 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.
Moths, Gifts, Curses in Anamnesis and Aretology 2024-05-21 a sorrow more constant than the moon above 1.9k words
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.
In Dialogue With Plagues in Anamnesis and Aretology 2023-12-13 a tale of infectious revelation 6.1k words
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.
Gildenighter, Wormthew, Eelwoven in Anamnesis and Aretology 2023-12-06 an abbreviated history 4.5k words
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 Complete History of Western Overscourges in Anamnesis and Aretology 2023-09-04 a tale of uneasy succession 8.0k words
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.
Lardsuckers and (What Were) Grubsuckers in Anamnesis and Aretology 2023-06-01 a tale of greed gourged and potential realized 3.3k words
Heartlands bugs farm many animals, from mealworms to hogs. All flesh is mutable under the ministration of red ichor. What arises from generations of beasts selected to be good hosts for mutant blood, and blood in turn selected to make its hosts tasty and fat? And what arises when that same hunger is turned back on the genus Insect?
Nous Inspira in Anamnesis and Aretology 2023-04-03 the art of impulse ablaze 3.2k words
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?
The Duality of Mantes in Anamnesis and Aretology 2023-01-26 on the psychology of dancing and hunting 3.0k words
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.
The Fourfold Divisions of Vesperbanes in Anamnesis and Aretology 2022-01-15 a lore document 2.7k words
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?
Tales and Vignettes
Glimpses of Chitin in Black Nerve 2024-07-22 flash fiction .8k words
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.
A Heart to Judge in Black Nerve 2023-12-06 Makuja's Prelude 10.0k words
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?
Your Soul's Weight in Sand in Black Nerve 2023-10-24 outline of Anna's life 7.0k words
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.)
In The Hours Before Sunrise in Black Nerve 2022-11-26 A Prefigurement of A Beatific Cage 10.0k words
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.
On the Plurality of Evening in Black Nerve 2022-08-09 a side story 1.5k words
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.
Beetle in Black Nerve 2022-06-08 a side story 4.0k words
Author's Note: Wasp, Bettle & Scopion 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.
Demise and the Gods in Black Nerve 2021-12-31 a Heartlands Myth 4.8k words
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*.
Untitled in Black Nerve 2021-02-03 a Black Nerve isekai fragment 1.5k words
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.
Wasp in Black Nerve 2021-01-12 Iecka's Story 11.1k words
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.
Notes and Ramblings
The Weak Must in Black Nerve 2025-01-19 Black Nerve 2360 words
Part of an attempted rewrite of A Chimerical Hope.
Next Chapter
This revised second chapter only adapts the first half of the original. Click here to jump directly where the rewrite leaves off.
Smaller, with large eyes and round features, the nymph looked up to the refugee like a younger sibling to their elder. The refugee bore in her expression a look of calcined despair, of having lost everything yet gripping to one hope and determination. The nymph bore an emptiness, of having lost everything, of falling with nothing to hold on to — as if they gaze out from within an ever-deepening pit. Somehow, her white eyes did not look bright.
Wisps and Pawns in Black Nerve 2025-01-07 Black Nerve 2069 words
Black nerve had engulfed this land, borne on lunge-quick winds, and held it with a spine-tight grasp. Long like the dying, cold like the death. Three nights conjoined, stretching on and on, never broken by dawn.
A torrent of black wisps were falling still from the enervate-choked sky, eroding the earth with each silent impact. These wisps stuck to everything. Chasing each other, congealing into greater wisps, then vanishing where they fell, becoming no more than shadows — as if they had no mass, no substance.
Lore Archive in Black Nerve 2024-11-30 A trove of scattered exposition 6.7k words
Many lore documents have been written over the years, and can be browsed in this archive. The best place to start reading is the Anamesis and Aretology series of posts.
Our Bond is an Altar in Teasers and Prototypes 2024-11-30 Story of three bugs with only each other to lose 3.5k words
If you need to make a team of mantes, the magic number was three. More was better, but being a mantis meant itching to compete :– to win. More teammates meant more bugs to fight with. Moreover, four mantes brought you to the perfect number to fracture. First one would make enemies with another, then after that there would be the one they disliked second most of all, which finally left their partner in strategy. (Some say a mantis kept two lists: their enemies and their not-yet-enemies -~- more interesting that way.)
The Deepkin in Black Nerve 2024-11-13 Notes on the Heartlands' Most Elusive 1.2k words
The deepkin --- sometimes just "long ones" or "many-legged folk" --- are sapient centipedes, and if they have an endonym, it is not one they've deigned to share with us. A common trope when imagining deepkin is to believe them to be a race of trespassers and thieves. This not unlike the perception of mantes as monsters fain to hunt and kill mercilessly. Untrue? Essentially yes --- except many own the idea with pride.
With Gnawed Wings Defending in Teasers and Prototypes 2024-11-10 Who saves the saviors? 2.4k words
They told you that you were special—that you had potential. They told you that you could make the world better. They told you that dreams blaze bright. That’s the treat waiting at the very end. Start running, and chase it for mile after aching mile. Don’t fall, or this’ll all be for nothing—they won’t even scrape your body off the ground.
Notes on the Contradiction of Paradise in Black Nerve 2024-07-20 a lore document 1.2k words
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.
Sketches of the Heartlands [WIP] in Black Nerve 2024-07-12 Black Nerve 4.5k words
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.
Let's Talk About the Sun-Cutter in Black Nerve 2024-06-20 an informal ramble about the biggest, baddest bat 3.3k words
Alright, I kinda wanna talk about this one guy in Black Nerve ---- and that's almost 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 removed, it tends to get simplified as him having a "tongue sharp enough to cut anything." (This is no metaphor; his vespers had endowed his mouth with a whip sword that was known to behead people with its lash.)
Notes on Crepuscules in Black Nerve 2023-06-01 a lore document .5k words
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
The New Theory of Umbral Physics in Black Nerve 2023-04-25 a lore document 1.9k words
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.
A Chimerical Hope in Black Nerve 2023-01-31 Story of three bugs with grand dreams caught in grander schemes. 96.6k words
Duskroot has been destroyed. A minor stronghold, its enemies struck with cunning and coordination while its allies didn’t lift a hand. Now, as vultures at a corpse, mercenaries are hunting for the survivors.
Awelah escaped Duskroot. She lost everything. Vengeance drives her, but can she kill a angel beyond death?
Ooliri has a mission to defend Duskroot’s refugees. He has to prove he belongs in a family of medical geniuses. But healing isn’t enough — can he bring the dead back to life?
Makuja seeks safety among the refugees. Death and servitude leaves her gaze empty. It’s easy to be a follower, but is there a purpose worth living for?
First, the three need answers. A grand scheme is unfolding, and Duskroot was only the first step.
Gathered Apocrypha in Black Nerve 2022-11-24 a lore document 13567 words
This pages collects the various answers we’ve given to questions about the heartlands over the years, largely from our discord. If you have questions of your own, contact us.
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’.
Umbracognition in Brief in Black Nerve 2022-11-02 notes on mental influence through black nerve 1.4k words
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?
Endowments and Techniques in Black Nerve 2022-10-07 a lore document .2k words
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:
Of the Ophisrhodon in Black Nerve 2022-09-05 notes on the cursed eye of the beholden 2.9k words
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.
Pharmacia & Nocturnes in Black Nerve 2022-08-19 a lore document 1.4k words
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.
Eifre Quest in Black Nerve 2022-01-22 A reader-driven web serial. 147.2k words
You are a heartlands mantis nymph training to become a Vesperbane, a warrior-scholar granted magic. That’s the hope, and it’d let you escape this dinky farm-town plonked at edge of the heartlands, where the Ambrosia Woods breathes down its thorax. Unless — until — you you get noticed and sponsored, you’re stuck out here, peerless and overqualified for your tutors. Frustration and impatience come easy.
One day, alone, you hear a scream from the depths of those cursed woods. It’s a mantid’s scream, and heartlands mantids don’t live in the ambrosia.
The Origin of Oosifea in Black Nerve 2021-12-02 a lore document 3.1k words
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.
Overscourges of the Major Strongholds in Black Nerve 2021-08-14 a lore document 1.4k words
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.
The Thirteen Arts of Vesperbanes in Black Nerve 2021-07-28 a lore document 2.0k words
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.
Six Doctrines in Black Nerve 2020-08-11 a lore document 1.0k words
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.
On Enervate in Black Nerve 2020-07-19 a lore document 3.9k words
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.
Five Letters of Recruitment in Black Nerve 2020-06-13 a lore document 1.4k words
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).
A Few Exclusion Zones in Black Nerve 2020-05-07 a lore document 2.9k words
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.