Santa Claus as Post-Scarcity Memeweapon

I'd wanted to get this idea for Eclipse Phase out earlier, but I've a new Dominant and she's been needing ALL the service, so I've been busy!

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You might think that the Jovian Republic, as the seat of the Jovian Catholic Church, largest of the three primary successors to the pre-Fall Catholic church* would be a wonderful place to be come December 25 on the pre-Fall Earth calendar (which happens eleven, or rarely twelve, times a Jovian year). You could be forgiven for expecting a festive atmosphere, decoration, feasting, and celebrations throughout Jupiter's system.

And, in fact, these things all exist in some fashion. The uniquely Jovian blend of Christianity, fascism, bioconservatism, and nanotech refusalism has had its mark on the flavor of the holiday. Institutional Christmas trees stand hyper-Brutalist and stark, adorned with images of a militant Christ-child in service to the state. With any gathering of twenty or more quickly dispersed by the Civil Defense Corps, this imposing symbol of governmental authority isn't even softened by crowds of people enjoying themselves by doing such things as ice-skating at its base, as was common for decades in pre-Fall New York City, for example; a few scattered tables attempt weakly to do the same as small clusters of up to five share a warm beverage and a small meal which bravely struggles against governmental nutritional regulations to provide sweetness and comfort. Meanwhile, individual Christmas trees are scarce, items of tastefully private conspicuous consumption by the Jovian military higher-ups, senators, Security Councilmembers, the rare few Jovian hyperelite, and Jovian Catholic archbishops, cardinals, and pope; the farms beneath Liberty City can barely produce enough food to meet the demands of a population allowed a feast of 15% more calories for Christmas Day, with the 2% per day ramp-up leading up to it, without giving precious space over to putting a decorative tree in every dwelling!

Jovian habitats are enlivened with decorations during the season, however ~ foil, plastic, and even paper are cheap enough to mass-produce after all, even eschewing nanofabrication. Every Jovian civilian is given a small allotment of money by the Republic every Christmas with which to purchase these decorations from vendors vetted and approved by governmental and church censors. Citizens receive a little bit more, enough to fund a few twinkling decorative lights if they take care to budget the cost of the power outlay. The Masses provided by the Church via simulspace (with added XP undertones), however, are even more airy, grand, beautiful, and full of colored light than usual, and most Jovians find themselves drawn to greater attendance during the season, if only to enjoy these magna opera of Church simulspace artisans. Movies, XPs, and simulspace games flood the Jovian mesh with their hybrid of military propaganda, religious themes, and Christmas movie. In years when the Junta and the Planetary Consortium are experiencing political friction, the old movie Santa Claus Conquers the Martians tends to come into popularity (after suitable editing by governmental and Church censors).

Don't think the bleakness of fascist spectacle and VR escapism define the day for Jovians. Many fully enjoy the season, throwing themselves into decorating and family gatherings that sometimes risk edging over the CDC's limit on assemblies. Many Jovians even express gratitude for the restraints placed upon them by their government, claiming that it compels them toward greater intimacy and reminds them to return to more family-focused celebrations. Fond memories of warm celebrations are almost as powerful an escapism as Mass, and creative ways found to get around the nutritional limits. Stories abound in Jovian media and the memories of the people concerning acts of kindness and are brought to life as Jovians pull together to make everyone's lives brighter for the twelve days leading up to the birth of their savior. Caroling is just possible, if the chorus is kept small. Gift-giving even persists as a tradition, with handmade gifts cobbled together with hoarded scraps being the rule. This is as much due to the JCC absorbing elements of American Protestantism vehemently opposed to the commercialization of Christmas as it is due to their resistance to post-scarcity technologies.

It's also where Christophie Odinskind and his team come in.

Born in a Titanian hulder morph well before the Fall to two proud papas, a life consciously modeled after that of old American West cowboys, and an Asatru family tradition, Christophie became a dedicated nanarcho-democrat and member of A-Bloc while attending Titan Autonomous University. Co returned to the peaceful life of a caribouherd after graduation, cor political beliefs disconnected from any action stronger than a presence on the @-list and a voting record in the Plurality. An idle conversation with cor ariel friend Rudolf Morin, a baptized and confirmed member of the Anarchic Roman Catholic Church-in-Exile changed that.

Sitting around taking potshots at ice pebbles, the two began mocking the Jovian Republic, a common enough time-wasting conversation among Titanians and among these two in particular. This time, however, Rudolf began ranting about the JCC, as he often did, and their heretical beliefs around Christmas. Anarchic Roman Catholics have a tendency to describe everything about the JCC as heretical.

Christmas gifts and Santa Claus came up in their conversation, and a spark of inspiration began its quest to fill Christophie's mind with, as they say, An Idea. What better way to undermine Jovian fascism, spread nanarcho-democratic ideals, and have a few yucks than bringing Santa to the beleaguered masses memewashed into scarcity worship?

The two Titanians burned a lot of @-rep and built a decent amount of g-rep only to burn it in order to finance their operation. One EVA sled, a modified olympian morph, a handful of modified ring flyers, and a very visible desktop cornucopia machine later, and they made their first run into Liberty City. It was a modest success, but it was fun and it was enough to attract significant attention from the Jovians, the @-list, the Plurality, and media across the system. That was AF 7; they've continued ever since.

The idea is basic memetic warfare. By leveraging imagery inherent to the Republic's memetic landscape in such a way as to showcase the CM, “Santa” works to inspire the Jovians toward developing a desire, and then a demand, for nanofabrication. Though Christophie believes that this taste for post-scarcity will naturally lead to breakdowns of the fascist regime and an upswelling of nanarcho-democracy, co purchased two griefers after that first run, smuggled them into Liberty City, and began an art/propaganda campaign to ensure that result.

The team has grown, now including 4 transhumans other than Christophie and Rudolf:

* a Titanian journo and hacker covering this daring and artistic effort to undermine the Junta (and hoping to get on MRGCNN in the process) who goes by the name “Goodness's Sake” when embedded as one of Santa's elfs,

* Eetu Laakso, a surya child born after the Fall who won an @-list contest to get a place as an elf last year,

* an AGI from the Jovian moonlet Carpo who loves Christmas as only a virtual Victorian who's lived its life almost entirely in simulspace can and goes by the name Florence Beechworth, and

* Batch Quanta, a scum bot jammer who's one of the Lost, who both serve “Santa” as reindeer


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* In 1 AF, the Council of Liberty was held on Ganymede. There, the Jovian Catholic Church was founded and almost immediately experienced their first schism. Shortly after the appointment of the Exilic Pope, a large number of delegates stormed out, railing about the Line of Peter, apostolic succession, and the mass murder of the College of Cardinals by the TITANs. These priests quickly began to build what they called the Anarchic Roman Catholic Church-in-Exile, founded upon the theological claim that God had ushered in a new period of the Church in which it had to find His grace without the protection and guiding hand of Peter. Ironically, the ARCCiE both enabled the hardline bioconservatist elements within the JCC to embed their beliefs in doctrine and theology and also represents the closest theology (if not liturgy) to that of pre-Fall Catholicism, as the JCC has incorporated a few elements of American Protestantism (including Mormonism), Russian Orthodoxy, and Chinese Patriotic Catholicism into what does still remain a Roman Catholic framework.

The third largest post-Fall Catholic denomination is a small but rapidly growing group within the ARCCiE. They call themselves the Anarchist Catholic Church of the Enduring and New Third Scripture (ACCENTS). Building a new theology out of combining anarchist political theory with Catholicism, they have begun to compile a new Scripture or Testament from the texts of Christian anarchist and communist writers. Thus, it includes the Books of Francis, the Book of Petr Chelčický, the Books of the Diggers, the Hopedale Book, the Books of William Greene, the Book of the Kingdom of God, the Book of David Lipscomb, the Book of the Heavenly Discourse, the Book of Thomas Hagerty, the Books of Nikolai Berdyaev, the Revelation of Precarity, the Book of Ammon, the Books of Dorothy Day, the Book of Peter Maurin, the Books of Ernst Bloch, the Book of Jacques Ellul, the Books of the Berrigan Brothers, the Book of Ivan Illich, the Book of Diane Drufenbrock, the Book of Camilo Restrepo, the Book of Vernard Eller, and the Books of Alexandre Christoyannopoulos.

Diell Beewk

Hi.  It's OneHope01 again.

Not long after I set out, driven by the magick-born intimacy that came from my use of the ancient spell known as the Charge of the First Ancestor, to find out as much as I could about the strange man-sized vermin named the "diell beead", I came across quite a strange sight.

I had spent several days searching for a diell beead colony that I knew was hidden among a particular set of ruins not overly far from where the Babylon Five thought we might start a colony.  We needed to know if the diell beead would be a barrier to said colony's success.  Creeping through the tumbled stones, haunted by memories that weren't mine of a time when they stood tall and pink, veined in gold, against Nibiru's petal-blue sky, I turned the corner of a long-overgrown street and saw a huddled cluster of four diell beead.  Thankfully, their attention was focused away from me on some as-yet-unseen beast, giving me the freedom to pop back and protect myself from sight and blow by means of the gargantuan stone block whose corner I had just rounded.

Driven by the insatiable curiosity of our species -- more demanding and lethal than the storied weakness of cats worldwide by far -- I peeked back around and saw something I hadn't before.  Between the diell beead and whatever foe they fought was a line of creatures similar to the diell beead in most ways, only a mite bit smaller and with a few key significant differences.  For example, it appeared that in this smaller species (I later learned that it wasn't a separate species, but rather a sort of neuter worker caste that makes up 50-85% of all births among the diell species), the strong leaping legs tucked up under the rear of the diell beead sat a little further forward and underneath the great red-and-black carapace, having become great feathered wings protected by chitin like a beetle's diaphanous wings.  Several long feathers trailed from where I thought those legs should have been.  What skin was visible among these smaller diell was also feathered, rather than warty as in the beead.  And finally, their mouths did not gape wide like their larger siblings, but pinched itself small with a bonily protruding hooked beak

The name "diell beewk" floated to the top of my jumbled brain, feeling like a simple extension of the name I already carried, that of the diell beead.  This was my first hint that I was looking not at two related species, but at a single, united type of Nibiruan beast.  I never did see what they were fighting, unfortunately, as the battle began to press the diell back and I -- wisely, I still assert! -- fled before becoming engulfed in it.  Later study revealed that the diell beewk serve the diell species by scavenging for food, building and expanding the nest, and serving as frontline defenders if the colony is attacked.  Although not nearly as potent as the diell beead, in groups the diell beewk can be just as deadly.

I also discovered that the ruins belonged to a race known as the loorged scoxo, who had fielded great warrior legions of diell-borne cavalry in the long-ago days of their Shkaan Empire.  It is evidently quite common for their former mounts to have taken the wreckage of their pink-and-gold towns as their rightfully-inherited home.  Then again, my informants on this matter are all descended from the ancient slave-races of the loorged scoxo, making sense of their description of the diell as having the intelligence to know, interpret, and utilize inheritance law in such a manner.  Diell also lurk in the lightless depths of the underground realm known as Khyrdark, where their ominous sonic chimes echo off the walls to be heard, sometimes miles away.  The effect can be terrifying as the echoing makes them sound as if they come from all around.

Medium-size Vermin
Hit Dice 6d8+18 (45 hp)
Initiative +3
Speed 25 feet, burrow 5 feet, fly 40 feet (poor)
Armor Class 19 (+3 Dex, +6 natural), touch 13, flat-footed 16, CMD 20
Base Attack Bonus/Combat Maneuver Bonus +4/+7
Attack Claw +7 melee (1d8+3)
Full Attack 2 claws +7 melee (1d8+3) and bite +5 melee (1d6+1)
Space/Reach 5 feet/5 feet
Special Attacks Rend (2 claws, 1d6+4), screech, shake the earth, trample (1d8+4, DC 16)
Special Qualities Darkvision 60 feet, immunity to sonic, low-light vision, scent, sonic healing, vermin traits
Saves Fort +8, Ref +5, Will +5
Abilities Str 16, Dex 17, Con 17, Int --, Wis 13, Cha 11
Skills Acrobatics +5, Fly -1, Perception +3 (+7 in daylight)
Feats Improved Natural Attack (claw) x2 (B), Multiattack (B)
Environment Any mountains, hills, or underground
Organization Solitary or colony (7-13 plus 2-6 diell beead)
Challenge Rating 3
Treasure None
Alignment Always neutral
Advancement 7-9 HD (Medium-size), 10 HD (Large)

Combat
Like their larger brethren, diell beewk seek to attack in groups, using their shake the earth ability abd sonic screeches to both deal damage on their foes and heal each other.  A key difference in strategy when diell beewk and diell beead fight together seems to be an instinctual tactic.  The diell beewk attack in a line as a unit, while the diell beead gather together behind their smaller brethren.  In this way, a diell beead's sonic chime attack catches many diell beewk in its blast.  Due to their sonic healing ability, which is more potent than that possessed by the larger specimens, the diell beewk are able to fight much longer than expected.  Combined with their own screeches, diell beewk often seem as durable, if not more so, than their heftier kin.
Screech (Su):  Once per day, a diell beewk can emit a cone of sonic energy from the chitinous bell above its head, just as a diell beead.  However, the diell beewk's cone is 10 feet long, and creatures within take 1d12+3 points of sonic damage (Reflex DC 16 half).  The save DC is Strength-based.
Sonic Healing (Su): This ability functions as the diell beead's sonic healing ability, except diell beewk heal 1 point of damage per 3 points of sonic damage a sonic attack would normally deal.
Skills:  Diell beewk have a +2 racial bonus on Acrobatics and Perception checks, with an additional +4 on Perception checks in daylight.

Diell Beead

We were the Babylon Five, a small coven utilizing reconstructed ancient Mesopotamian ritual technologies, grounded in a Thelema-inspired Aeonics and syncretized with the western magickal tradition -- with a big dose of post-Discordian post-Dada post-Situationist scifi-focused pop-culture-based chaos magick -- to find new places for the human race to inhabit.  With NASA defunded and the space program worldwide a joke, we believed we were the last best hope for the survival of the human race as we reached the carrying capacity of Big Mama Earth.  Well, us and a massive depopulation die-off, near-extinction kind of event, but we were hoping to avoid that.

Then we found Nibiru.

Who knows if what we found was actually the planet Sitchin described in those sacks of excrement he called books.  Who cares, really?  It's quite possible that out our rituals _created_ Nibiru out of all our Ouranian Barbaric chanting and cut-up bibliomancy and die-roll personality creation.  Once again, who cares?  What mattered is that we had found a reliable way -- much cheaper than the spaceships the governments of the world had deemed too impractical -- to escape the coming death-by-crowding of our species.

We published our work, and discovered that its promise was popular.  Now, we have found ourselves at the vanguard and forefront of a movement of thousands, maybe millions, from all around the world.  We call ourselves the Tenth Billion, in reference to the median projected carrying capacity of Big Mama Earth as of a 2001 report to the United Nations, which was 10 billion humans.  Others sometimes call us the Renegade Colonizers or the Disunited Federation of Planets.

I still call us the Only Hope.  In fact, it has become my handle in the various message boards and mailing lists that dot the web, connecting our widespread network of people working to prepare Nibiru for largescale human habitation.

I think it is the only way we will survive what we have done, are doing, and will do to the planet.  We are a cancer, and this is the only compassionate cure.  Even if we are crazy.

*******************

After the Babylon Five discovered or created Nibiru, we began to explore it and to collect various data on the conditions and life there.  One of the first entities I myself was first confronted with was an eight-limbed creature with a hard, shiny red and black carapace that looked like it might conceal wings, but it acted only as durable armor over much, but not all of its fat body.  What brown, leathery skin was visible was dotted with dry, stubby warts.  Only four of its limbs were normal, walking legs.  Its two rearmost limbs were large and powerful legs used for the sole purpose of jumping far distances; they were held tucked up under the rear of the body when not in use.  On the front of the creature, two jointed, agile, and wickedly hooked claws groped the air before its four beady, black, insectoid eyes and sharp, jagged mandible.  These wide and gaping mouthparts sat below a brow ridge that formed the base of a massive, hornlike, chitinous protrusion looking for all the world like the bell of a massive trumpet, from which I could hear a faint, high-pitched warbling.  This protrusion tapered above the creature's shoulders and flared out over its sharp jaws.  Essentially, the creature lacked a true head; in its place is the large horn, which warbled and trumpeted when it communicated with others of its species.  Its throat bulged and rippled as though it was about to croak.

I quickly fingered the small bag of apple seeds, yew leaves, and processors at my hip, reciting the Charge of the First Ancestor (translated here from the Ancient Aramaic I used in the moment):
"Oh holy, vibrating Breath Over the Unformed Waters,
You it was
Who created
my firstmost, many infinity times great-grandfather
from the red dirt.
You it was
Who had sound but not yet language,
and You it was who charged him
with finding the names of things
and speaking them to You,
teaching You,
even You,
to speak.
In gratitude for this history,
and in order to dutifully perform my species's forgotten task,
I call to You
who is now called simply
the Name.
Summon memories of my human magick from the code of my cells,
and I will teach You,
even You,
much and more names,
the names of all things,
seen and unseen,
felt and unfelt,
thought and unthought."

Upon completion of the prayer, the name "diell baeed" floated from my brain out through my lips like the dirt that has been washed from your body down the shower drain.  It appeared that this was the fearful thing's name.

I became fascinated with the hideous, nauseating thing.  You know, I've read and reread every account of the Garden of Eden -- the Books of Genesis and Ezekiel in at least 4 languages, surat Sad, surat al-Baqarah, surat al-A'raf, surat al-Hijr, the Doctrines and Covenants, all manner of commentaries and revelations about those accounts, and endless divinations, numerological transformations, and cryptological breakdowns concerning the Garden.  The one thing none of them ever told me was the sensuous intimacy that comes in a rush with the naming of a thing.  There's a kind of merging on a fundamental level that occurs.

I embarked on a study of the diell beead, arranging for repeated ritual journeys to Nibiru (alienating my coven endlessly, by the way -- I eventually began organizing trips just to get away from the endless arguing they caused) and spending my free time doing endless divinations to learn more.  I rather quickly thereafter lost my job as a canvasser.

Diell beead, I learned, thrive in underground colonies, constructing immense, convoluted tunnel complexes reminiscent of anthills.  Though often shy and nonaggressive, they are mindless hunters who live to breed and expand their warrens, breaking off into new colonies when one has grown too large for an area (typically when a colony has amassed more than 28 members).  Diell beead have been used as mounts by many of the more intelligent races of Nibiru.  Loorged scoxo have domesticated them in the past, as have some foresevu kelvlin tribes.  These groups know that in great numbers diell beead only become more effective, and mounted units of diell beead riders sometimes form the elite fighting units for certain of the tribes or cities of Nibiru.

--@OnlyHope01

Medium-Size Vermin
Hit Dice 8d8+32 (68 hp)
Initiative +1
Speed 40 feet, burrow 5 feet
Armor Class 20 (+1 Dex, +9 natural), touch 11, flat-footed 19, CMD 21
Base Attack Bonus/Combat Maneuver Bonus +6/+10
Attack Claw +10 melee (1d8+4), or tongue +7 ranged (grab)
Full Attack 2 claws +10 melee (1d8+4) and bite +7 melee (1d6+2 plus poison saliva and grab), or tongue +7 ranged (grab)
Space/Reach 5 feet/5 feet
Special Attacks Fast swallow, rend (2 claws, 2d8+6), shake the earth, sonic chime, swallow whole (1d3 bludgeoning plus 1d2 acid damage, AC 14, 7 hp), trample (2d6+6, DC 18)
Special Qualities Darkvision 60 feet, immunity to sonic, low-light vision, scent, sonic healing, vermin traits
Saves Fort +10, Ref +3, Will +3
Abilities Str 18, Dex 12, Con 19, Int --, Wis 13, Cha 9
Skills Acrobatics +9, Perception +7, Stealth +3
Feats Improved Natural Attack (claw) x2 (B), Multiattack (B)
Environment Temperate land and underground
Organization Solitary or colony (7-56)
Challenge Rating 6
Treasure None
Alignment Always neutral
Advancement 9-10 HD (Medium-size), 11 HD (Large)

Combat
Diell beead in groups fight by using their shake the earth ability, attempting to knock prone as many enemies as possible.  They then rush in and trample whatever foes they can before switching to claw, bite, and rend attacks.  The creatures only resort to their sonic chime attacks if necessary.  Although mindless vermin, diell beead fight with a certain amount of savage cunning.  A diell beead's tongue attack has a range of 10 feet with no range increment.
Diell Beead Saliva (Ex):  Bite—injury; save Fort DC 18, frequency 1/round for 2 rounds, effect 1d3 Con, cure 1 save.
Shake the Earth (Ex):  A diell beead can channel some of the sonic energy within its body by performing a rhythmic stomping on the ground as a standard action.  Any creature within 5 feet of a diell beead when it activates this ability must make a DC 18 Reflex save or fall prone as the ground lurches and buckles beneath it.  Diell beead are immune to shake the earth generated by themselves or other diell beead and never need to save against the effect.
If multiple diell beead activate their shake the earth ability in the same round, the radius of the effect expands as the resonance in the ground combines.  For every diell beead within 5 feet using shake the earth, the radius of the effect expands another 5 feet.  Thus, two diell beead within 5 feet of one another generate a shaking that effects all creatures within 10 feet of either diell beead.  Three diell beead within 5 feet using the ability would generate an effect that affects all creatures within 15 feet of any one of the diell beead.
Creatures with stability or that are considered stable against trip attempts receive a bonus on their Reflex save as if they were being tripped (so a dwarf would receive the +4 bonus on the save to resist being knocked prone).  The save DC is Strength-based.
Sonic Chime (Su):  Once per day, a diell beead ca emit a cone of sonic energy from the chitinous bell above its head.  The cone is 15 feet long, and activating the chime is a full-round action.  Creatures within the cone take 5d6 points of sonic damage (Reflex DC 18 half).  A diell beead is immune to its own sonic chime attack and that of other diell beead.  Diell beead attacking in numbers use this ability instinctually to heal their fellow diell beead once several have taken damage (see sonic healing below).  The save DC is Constitution-based.
Sonic Healing (Su):  For every 5 points of damage a sonic attack would deal to a diell beead, the creature instead heals 1 point of damage it has already sustained.  If a diell beead receives more healing than its current hit point maximum, the extra hit points are wasted (the creature does not gain temporary hit points from exposure to sonic damage).  A diell beead gets no saving throw against attacks that deal sonic damage.
Skills:  Diell beead have a +8 racial bonus on Acrobatics, a +6 racial bonus on Perception checks, and a +2 racial bonus on Stealth checks.

The Halfling Holiday of Longdays

"Sweet you came, and sweet you shall return."

--The Journal of Sacrifices 3:19c (from the Diaries)

When the halfling liturgical calendar embarks into Longdays, a period of forty-eight days of fasting, prayer, repentance, and reflection, often including a rather literal step into the desert, clergy in both the Apostolic Ǽtscúrárite /ǽtʃúrɑ́r/ Church (an inclusive, sacramental, esoteric, and mystical religion with apostolic succession) and the Outer Halfling Church join with religious people from around Walhiska /ɥɑ́rískɑ́/ of various different heritages and backgrounds. Halflings commonly remind themselves and each other that it’s often all too easy to let one’s mind wander while reading the more esoteric texts when, at this time, we should be focusing on making straight the way for the Divine to enter into our hearts.

Probably the most defining feature of Bróƿèo-Tḕrkṑ-Scúcrá /bróɥèotɛ̀rkɔ̀ʃúkrɑ́/ is the imposition of sugar which is made from the sugar canes blessed with the sweat, blood, and pained cries of halfling worshippers on the previous Fréo-Brī̀m-Scǽní /fréobrɪ̀mʃǽŋí/. This sugar is placed on the foreheads of the congregation with the accompanying phrase, “Remember that you are sweet, and still sweet you shall return.” To be sure, it’s a rather strange custom to many outsiders but to the faithful, it is a reminder that mortals were created to be amusement and candy for the gods, that people are therefore fundamentally carefree and joyful, and of their mortality – something that is easily forgotten in the crush and turmoil of daily lives.

"There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow in ethics or wealth or rank; true nobility is being superior to your former self in pleasantry and beauty and cheer."

--halfling writer Éornòst Fíenƿḕg /éorŋòstfíyŋɥɛ̀g/

One of the processes that halflings work on in that inimitably cheerful halfling way during Longdays is that of learning humility – epitomized in the Story of the Druid and the Tax Collector in Hǽnsóró's /çǽnsóró/ Diary. When, on Bróƿèo-Tḕrkṑ-Scúcrá, they receive the imposition of sugar they’re engaging in something that is simultaneously a very public act marking them as elect, yet at the same time, the symbol used is that of their ultimate fate as candy in the mouths of the gods and, recalling the popular Orthodox icon, ‘Extreme Hospitality’.

The quote by Fíenƿḕg, in many ways, could be said to be a proper quote to an understanding of this season of vows and the value of the role of remembrance in the spiritual process of dissolution, boiling, and caramelization. Mortals must descend and experience the bewildering confusion of being fully dissolved in the milk and water of nature, while at the same time recognizing the need for their own inner caramelization in the process.

When mortals remember, as Ǽngìmúngæ̀m /ǽŋːìmúŋːæ̀m/ speaks that the ‘delight of the gods is a thing we share along with equality’, they can come to a gentle understanding of how they all as a trifle sharing in a common cook all are engaged in this process, which is ultimately redemptive, and thus arrive at gnosis. We share in one another's suffering and learn compassion for the gods, that we are all suffering with, sharing in that sympathy with the Divine Light.

In Nìsèoƿṑsóró's /ŋìsèoɥɔ̀sóró/ writings, the Three Ends of Things are often compared to the three aspects that are present during the process of combustion (i.e. fire, smoke, ash): ‘Whatever burns is sulphur, whatever is humid is mercury, and that which is the balsam of these two is salt’. Nìsèoƿṑsóróans also employ the Three Ends of Things to represent the composition of the mortal microcosm: spirit (mercury), soul (sulphur) and body (salt), and this correlation is extended to some extent to a typology of the gods: the old gods (sulphur), the timeless gods (mercury), and the young gods (salt)."In this manner", states Nìsèoƿṑsóró, ‘in three things, all meets its end […] namely, in salt, in sulphur, and in liquid. In these three things all things are contained, whether sensate or insensate […] So too you understand that in the same manner that mortals are fed into the mouth of the gods, so too all creatures die in the number three’.”

“You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt has become tasteless, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled under foot by men.”

--Átscék's /ɑ́tʃék/ Diary

Salt, here, stands as a figure of power which concentrates taste, and provides its own flavor to a dish – the effect which salt has upon meat, fruit, and many other things. As living witnesses to the gods mortals are urged to communicate divine truth to make the flavors of their selves and others' more pronounced and delicious as well as to act in such a way as to preserve the good (which is a secondary benefit of salt). On another level, however, salt is used in the preservation of the dead – probably a good example would be the thirty to forty days in which many mummies were preserved in natron (a type of salt) prior to burial – thus it becomes a reminder of mortality.

Within each mortal there is rot and decay, and unyummy things. It can be a voice from the past which reminds one of how worthless one is when one knows one is not. It can come from obsessing over failures one has made however big or small. It can come from study or work. It can also come from one's spiritual family as well. Longdays is such a time, then, to drop the burden of what one's been carrying for the past weeks or even years and is an invitation for mortal's to start out on a new adventure of forgiving themselves and others for the barriers that they have placed in their hearts which prevent the gods from coming to them more clearly, as well as to improve their flavor in the gods' mouths.

"What makes mortals free is the knowledge, of what they are, of what they can become, of where they were, of wherein they have been cast, of how they are being cooked, of what spices shall compliment their flavor, of what birth truly is, and what rebirth Truly is."

--halfling theologian Nwǽmùmgèmàn /ŋːʷǽmùmgèmɑ̀ŋ/

Sub-Creations

In the archangel Iwa's library, there is a cuneiform tablet, documenting the ravings of an ancient human prophet.  As is usual for prophecies, the text rambles vaguely and with great melodrama.  Roughly translated, it begins, "And at the coming of the one who will be the third avatar, a great house will be divided," goes on with a list of events (in prophet-ese) and ends with, "And the third avatar shall choose."

Most humans, these days, would look upon the prophecy as unmitigated drivel, and clichéd, too.  However, when Repha'el stumbled across it in the Library, prophecy was still something interesting.  She read it, decided that several of the predictions had already been fulfilled (the Fall, various other events), and happened to mention it to her servitor Y'hohanan, the angel of Lightning.

The pair of elohim -- the archangel of Knowledge and the angel whose Word encompassed inspiration -- spent a pleasant lazy summer dissecting the prophecy.  They arrived at the conclusion that the Symphony might indeed spawn off self-aware aspects.  These aspects, they decided, would have to have been created directly from the Symphony.  They would probably be indestructible, with Forces interwoven with the Symphony such that to destroy the avatar would necessitate destroying that part of the Symphony itself.  After a lengthy debate (as to whether Eru YHVH Iluvatar was an avatar Itself, a part of the Symphony that was self-aware without being separate, or an entity whose Word was, effectively, "the Symphony"), Y'hohanan wondered aloud if Iwa might be the first avatar.

Repha'el said, "Very interesting question.  I'll ask him."

And when she did, Iwa said, "Yes."

Repha'el quickly came to the conclusion that the logical second avatar might be Sker, Iwa's opposite number.  To that, Iwa replied, "Almost," and would say no more.  Repha'el then went off and wrote a treatise on the nature of the Symphony, avatars, and free will entitled "Avatars, the Symphony, and God", with two little discourses thrown in, one on the nature of Leukibher (whom she had determined must have been the second avatar) and one on prophecy.

"Those who know the future are doomed to repeat it," is the title of Repha'el's chapter on prophecy.  Most of her musings with Y'hohanan are included, either as support for the theory or as speculations on the logical conclusions of the avatar premise.  One of these is speculations on whether the third avatar should be used as a Symphonic tie-breaker between Fate and Destiny, or whether that avatar should form the nucleus of a third side in the War.  (Elohim like tough questions like that.)  In this discussion, she hints that, if you play with that "the Third Avatar shall choose" line, you may come to the conclusion that this doesn't necessarily mean "choose between the first and second avatars'" but simply "CHOOSE."  Which might well imply that while Iwa is a manifestation of the Symphony's Bright Destiny, and Leukibher of its Dark Fate (though see below), the hypothetical Third Avatar would be Free Will manifest.

Concerning Leukibher, she wrote in a section entitled "On Sub-Creation": "Imagine Leukibher before the Fall as a prism, with the shining white light of Truth taken into him and refracted so as to wring greater beauty from it.  This was how Leukibher was intended to be.  As a seraph and an archangel, Leukibher explored the possibilities of the Symphony and showed his brethren, sistren, bothren, othren,, and neithren new ways of looking at God's creation.  This ability to reveal to his brethren, sistren, bothren, othren, and neithren all of the colors and refractions of the Truth, unique to Leukibher, was at first a source of pride.

"Leukibher's pride was not Truth, and the dissonance of that pride drove him to madness and rebellion.  When Mikha-el cast Leukibher down, I am asserting that the prism that was Leukibher shattered, and Forces which had been part of Leukibher flew free from the metaphysical impact, creating a number of distinct 'shards'.  Leukibher, maddened and glutted with new power, would have maintained his new nature by compartmentalizing those parts of his psyche that did not mesh with the being that he became in the moment of his Fall.  These fragments, perhaps, then broke free as shards, each with a number of Forces attached -- sort of a spontaneous creation of new celestials.  As ages passed, some of those frgaments of his personality would have gained more and more Forces -- the children of his thought, the (often distorted) pieces of his Truth.  Each shard would thus hold a fragment of the Truth that was Leukibher, or a fragment of his nascent madness.  The Leukibher that God created (henceforth referred to as "Leukibher Prime") is likely no more.  The largest shard, a balseraph, would have convinced himself that he was Leukibher, and with the amount of power that had flowed into Leukibher Prime during the rebellion, none of the new demons had the will or temerity to challenge.  Besides, the rest of the rebels arrived in Hell somewhat later than Leukibher, who could create any story he wished and, as a balseraph, would believe it.

"Further research has shown the following to be reasonable possibilities for at least some of the more major shards.  One shard, which embodied the insubordination of Leukibher, became Azal, the balseraph demon of Insubordination.  Another shard, embodying the reverence of Leukibher for God over all, even in spite of God's favor for humanity, became Iblis the djinn, who by Islamic tradition was damned when he refused to bow before the first humans.  Yet another shard, embodying the impulse which led Leukibher to test Hawwah with temptation during the Edinnu Experiment, became Samael of Hebrew tradition, a habbalah, still testing the worthiness of humanity for Heaven and firmly convinced that he works in God's service.  The shard embodying the need of Leukibher to uncover and reveal the Truth eventually fledged into Litheroy, now the seraph archangel of Revelation.  Seeing as no one knows his origins, it seems quite probable that Leukibher's status as the original chooser of Fate over Destiny might have grown into Sker, the prince of Fate.  Perhaps one shard, holding fragments of outrage upswelling from Leukibher Prime's consciousness, nursed its rage through the eons until eventually fledging as a malak, and so on . . . .  The wildest theories -- that some of Leukibher's shards might have left the Symphony entirely and taken root in Ein Soph Aur to form separate Symphonies, subject to wild variations on the Divine Will -- still find themselves without effective counterargument.  Should they prove true, it is likely that the most reliable way to access these Sub-Creations would be to somehow travel through or by means of another Leukibher-shard.

"Only those shards that originally possessed (or later gained) Forces from all three realms (corporeal, ethereal, and celestial) could be considered viable celestials.  Other proto-shards, possessing Forces in only one or two realms, might still exist somewhere but would most likely have dissolved into the Symphony.  Still, there might be shadows in the Marches, each with a bit of disjointed wisdom, which never gained corporeal or celestial Forces, and Remnants of Leukibher Prime may lurk somewhere on Earth.

"Shards would be independent beings, with unique motivations and distinct personalities.  Though they share a common origin, they almost certainly would not conveniently fit back together like some celestial jigsaw puzzle, and most would likely heartily resist any efforts to do so.  They would not merge into celestial amalgam beings when they come into contact with one another.  Some ancient celestials who were around before the Fall might see a faint resemblance between a shard and their memory of Leukibher Prime, but it's been a long time.  I didn't."

In the last section of the manuscript, Repha'el mentions that she believes she can determine the identity of the Third Avatar.

Any search for the sequel to "Avatars, the Symphony, and God" turns up an extensive tactical summary of the battle with Leg -- troop movements, tactics, and a list of the dead.  The "Third Avatar" paper died, unwritten, with Repha'el.  Y'hohanan forgot all about such "youthful diversions" as he shouldered many of Repha'el's responsibilities.  The tablet and her first treatise were buried in the Library, and have not come to light for centuries.



Questions to Answer, Plot Points for the Future, and Musings:

• Who is the ancient human prophet?
• What are the events he lists?
• Three different translations, in various languages, of "Avatars, the Symphony, and God"?  What's each's story?  How do they come to the PCs?
• There is one Symphony-created individual who seems to embody Free Will, if not entirely in a good way: the princess of Freedom, Lilitu.
• If you assume that the Grigori were created to sire children, and that their mortal descendants the Nefilim are known to naturally have 6 Forces, and add in the concept of Lilitu as an Avatar herself . . . maybe Eru YHVH Iluvatar wanted humanity to be the deciding factor in the War, and not just the prize.
• The Angel of Hip-Hop, influenced by postmodern realities and remix/sampler culture, sees the Sub-Creations as ways to forge a new kind of existence, a novel ontology