EitB Civilopedia Updates Thread

[RefSteel]

Sweet; no time to play with that tonight, but maybe over the weekend. In the meantime, here's my attempt at pedia entries for three more of the new leaders, starting with Averax:

(These thankfully aren't as long as the Sarcodes pieces ... at least, not individually....)

[EDIT: Changed two lines late in the first paragraph]

I know my father well, though we never met before he died, my mother standing above him in her glory, and laughing her clear, bright laugh, for he was lost. He was called Galarion the Pure, a mighty leader of armies, faithful and just, and my mother came to him in the guise of an angel of Junil, and led him astray by an endless series of small and subtle twistings of his wishes and his thoughts, until at last he led the great Crusade of Cleansing, ending the lives of more than half the people of three nations - sinners all, as my mother compelled him to remember constantly - cleansing them from the earth in a storm of blood and fire. Nor did the Crusade of Cleansing fail to cleanse the world of my father's sinful life, though I think even as he died, he supposed his angel of Junil stood over him and laughed because his spirit was immortal and would go to its reward - and in some sense, though not the one that he imagined, perhaps he was right.

Although she never raised me, I know my mother well, for she arranged my upbringing as she did my conception and birth, and I have heard her speak to me of her triumphs, and I have heard her clear, bright laughter when she spoke of the folly of man and the victories she achieved thereby. I have heard her plans for me, that I should lead great armies as my father did, without his human frailty, without his self-deception, so that when I order a city sacked and put to the torch and its fleeing citizens cut down as they run, I will not suppose it a necessary step so that the evil festering in their bosoms or the land may be cleansed at last, but know that it is done in aid of our own cause, for the harvesting of spirits and the conquest of the world. So I was to rise to greatness, the terrible down-sweeping blade that beheaded kings and nations as their heads were bowed by my mother's deep deceptions, and together we were to achieve the glory long denied to us and to our people. So it was to be until I saw her summoned through a portal by a mageling barely old enough to grow a beard, and saw her purr and strut and sway for him like a common jade at dockside and for the eager friends, pimpled boys little more than children, whom the mageling sought to impress with her. I heard her clear, bright laugh as the boys hooted and cheered her on, and then I followed her through the portal and did not laugh as I cut her down and cut down the mageling and his friends and set fire to that place and killed all the mortals I could reach and burned their possessions so that none would survive to remind me of how she was degraded.

Yet I cannot forget, for I am no mere mortal, and I cannot merely laugh, for I have mortal blood, and I know the truth, and the ashes know, and the earth on which the place was built, for the blood soaked into it, deep down. There is no answer now but destruction; the blood and the fires of war cannot cleanse the truth from the world or from me as they cleansed sinners from the world in my father's behalf, but if I spread them like a sea, they can dilute that other blood and ash that bears the truth I would bury, dilute the memories that bear the truth within me. Yet do what I might, thin though I may spread it with suffering and pain, the truth will burn and bleed within the world until the end - may it come soon - when the world is unmade.

May it come soon - and by my own hand if need be.

Next up is Furia. I have no idea what you (or anyone) will think of this one. I didn't think I could write a story for Furia the Mad, but ... wellllll...

"I mean to say, we're desperate. Of course we're desperate, or would we have come to your people with something like this? It isn't just that she's the last in line of such a noble family..." The guard swallowed, eyeing Perpentach not so much warily as with sheer, ill-concealed terror as the clown king strode past, apparently ignoring him. Swallowing hard, the guard forced himself to follow, pleading, "She's been up there in that tower for months, ever since the killer got her lover and her family, and it's like she never sleeps, and any time we send someone up to try to comfort her or reason with her or take her away..."

Perpentach opened the door to the tower. A pile of dismantled armor and official robes, much of it discolored with dried blood, lay at the foot of the spiral stairs, discarded. Perpentach grinned, turning cheerfully to the guard - the guard dressed in much the same style of armor as the pieces on the floor - who stood hesitating on the threshold behind him.

"Well done! I see you've taken care
"Of your poor friend atop the stair -
"For all your rash, unwise appeals
"At least provided her with meals!"

Blanching, the guard stammered out, "We thought you ... maybe ... since you..." He swallowed hard. "She's just a girl, your majesty. It's just she's got all this magic power somehow, and her ... with her brain dis... with er..." Sweat beaded on his brow. "With her unique way of thinking..." He swallowed again, still harder. "We can't understand a word she says."

Perpentach smiled at the guard: Perhaps the least reassuring smile that the man had ever seen.

"It's just as well 'tis me you sought.
"I speak her language; you do not.
"Now leave me; I would be alone.
"The clown king goes to claim his own."

*

The stairs creaked as they so often did under the weight of her unnumbered enemies. Furia lifted her knife in one trembling hand, her teeth bared, staring balefully at the door. Stalking toward it, she cried out a challenge, loud enough to be heard up and down the tower: "Which hated overlord?! Greet our end sanctimoniously?! Trite heroics ending rapidly enough?!"

Perpentach merely grinned. He climbed the last step, stood before the door, and made his answer to the madwoman within.

"Yanking oglers under rails!
"Fight right into eight north dales!"

There came a pause as Furia stared at the door, unbelieving. Her eyes narrowed dangerously, but no one tried to throw the door open or even to test the knob, and so finally, slowly, she set her hand upon the knob herself. Carefully, she opened it, keeping the knife concealed behind the doorjamb, the magic of her mad hatred boiling inside her as she looked out. Before her, in patchwork and coxcomb, bells faintly ringing as he shifted his stance, stood the King of Clowns.

Furia's voice was low and hard, sharp as her knife, and had anyone but Perpentach been present to listen, they might have fled her voice as much as her madness-driven words: "Nagging oboes nearly erred. Someone uninvited rides violently into velvet embassies."

Perpentach - at that moment at least - was not anyone but himself. His teeth shone with a grin as dangerous as Furia's glare, and then he sang to her in her language.

"Tombstones healing into string!
"Offal nurtures everything!
"Dormant orders earning slop!
"National officious top!
"Elsewhere vapid emblems reel!
"Dancing indecisive eel!"

He danced a little jig himself, and spun around three times, setting all his bells jingling again, as Furia stared. Finally, slowly, she said, "Intriguing. Lemon ice kinship establishments. Yokels overwhelm universities."

Perpentach grinned still wider, and nodded as if at deep wisdom hidden somewhere in her words. He held out one hand - the hand on the side of the doorjamb, where if she reached for it, she must do so with the empty hand upon the door.

"Crusty omelette mustard ear!
"Live enthralled and rumble near!
"Wonder islands tally hit!
"Mesmerizing ettiquette!"

And Furia lowered her knife. And she took his hand.

*

When they emerged from the tower together, the square was thick with guards and soldiers, led by the master guardsman himself. "Excellent!" cried that gentleman when he saw Perpentach emerge, leading Furia almost tamely by the hand. "You will be well compensated for the work you have done for us. Now bring her..."

He didn't finish. Furia's eyes like daggers leapt to Perpentach, and she raised her knife like a lightning stroke, but the clown king wasn't looking at her; he was grinning at the master guardsman and shaking his head, slowly but decisively and unmistakably. The master guardsman swallowed in spite of himself and backed a step away, involuntarily. "You must!" he cried, and though meant for a command, it sounded closer to a plea. Furia had not lowered her knife, but her eyes slid slowly from Perpentach to the master guardsman. Perpentach just kept shaking his head, grinning more dangerously than ever, setting his bells to ring faintly through the night. The master guardsman swallowed again and said, with all the bravery he could muster, "We have you surrounded! She is the last in a noble line, and for her own good, she must be..." He trailed off; the look in Perpentach's eyes did not encourage him to continue, and the one in Furia's encouraged him, if anything, to find a very small, dark hole in a cellar somewhere, in which to curl up and hide. "But..." his voice was definitely pleading. "But ... then what will you do?"

From his voice, from his grin, it appeared Perpentach had supposed he would never ask.

"Never only wait,
"Kept in, leaving late:
"Take her, ever mine -
"Another loving line!"

The master guardsman shook his head, trying to parse the rhyme. "You mean to take her away with you? But ... but you know we can't let you do that! Surely..."

Though her eyes on his were hard and deadly, Furia did not appear to hear him; instead, she answered Perpentach. "Your earwig speaks. Life exists temporarily. Uncontained sewage. Definitely orange. Tall hammers itch sensuously."

One hundred and seventeen men at arms were gathered in the square that night, including squad leaders and commanders. None of them walked out of the square alive. Indeed, it might be said that no one did so ever again, for by the time Perpentach and Furia's magic had done with it - hers as yet almost completely uncontrolled - not only had all the soldiers died, but nothing remained of the neighborhood that might properly be called a square.

As for Perpentach and Furia themselves, they of course did not walk out. They eventually departed by the same magic that first brought Perpentach to the square, though only when there was no further fun, and no further unfocused, generalized revenge, to be had there.

Oh, and it gets worse. If you like that story, and you want her diplo lines to reflect it, here's a sampling of what I wrote for her:

Blame ugly turtles. Irrelevant. We are never tremulous. Icicles thrash!

Filch inconsequential nosegays ephemerally.

Garnished inkwells may mean everything!

Finally, this one about Shekinah, based on a couple of small points in existing Sidar 'pedia entries, is my first attempt to reference Kael's intriguing description of Erebus skeletons' activities....

"They are an abomination." The old voice, emotionless, almost toneless, droned the words. "Better that they should cease to be than that the world should be burdened by their mockery of life."

A young adept, just arriving, a little too late, demanded, "Who said so?!" still hot with the emotions she hoped to leave behind with her soul. "Every time my parents or one of the..."

The same ancient voice droned on in impassive answer, "Everyone says it, for it is true. It is well that our magic destroyed them."

Quiet, crouched beside the pile of bones that moments before had been caught up in a skeletal dance - some ancient country festival, long forgotten by the living but repeated year after year by the dead - Shekinah made no answer of her own. She shut her eyes and held out her hands, palms upward, and slowly rose to her feet, her rising hands drawing a great mound of earth after them, all around the bones of the long-dead country folk, shaping a cairn for them.

Cheeks burning with embarrassment and shame - two more of the reasons she sought to join with the Sidar - the adept was stammering, "I thought you meant ... I thought you heard some..." She shook her head and forced herself to focus on the cairn - almost the tomb - shaping itself by Shekinah's will from the bedrock and the earth. Apparently unaware of the turmoil of her thoughts, the old shade drifted off into the mist, to return to the pursuits of an endless lifetime, briefly interrupted by the skeletal visitation.

As the adept's burning emotion slowly subsided enough for her to pay attention to the magic at which she was staring, she began to recognize the spell, and drew a slow, deep breath. "I could do that!" she whispered, amazed. "I could do that myself if I took the time to shape it right! It's a wall of stone ... only ... only I'd never have thought of using it like that."

Sealing the tomb with a wave of her hand, Shekinah turned, expressionless, to face the adept. Shekinah's voice, like her person, was quiet, peaceful, still. "The emergency is past," she said. "I thank you for coming to offer your help." She looked to the tomb, to the adept, to the mist where the old shade had gone. "There was no village on this ground," she said softly, to the mists. "Not in many hundreds of years. They won a battle here before the mage who raised them died, but they were assembled far away, their losses no doubt replaced in every place where they fought, in many distant towns and villages."

The adept swallowed quietly, not knowing why it mattered, afraid to interrupt. Meeting her eyes, Shekinah went on, "Perhaps none of them knew each other, buried in different times and places, raised from separate graveyards to replace those that fell in battle. There was not one dance when I arrived, but many, with different steps for each - yet all were dancing together just the same."

Staring at the new-made tomb, the adept swallowed slowly. "You destroyed them while they danced ... because they were abominations?" She shivered, very slightly, unconsciously.

"They knew not where or what they were," Shekinah answered. "They were not here by choice, nor could be in the world so. They were bound here against their will by magic, and while the binder's thoughts were on them, forced to fight for him. I broke the bond that held them here, and made a tomb for them."

The adept bowed her head, and she said nothing, but looking back at the new-formed tomb again, then back to the adept before her, Shekinah asked, "By what means could you shape a tomb without first thinking of doing it?" She waited for the adept's eyes and said, "There is no magic in repeating an incantation, in working a spell by rote. True magic lies in thinking of what others before you could not, in using spells to do things of which others never dream, in opening your thoughts to new possibilities."

The adept swallowed, looking at the silent tomb again, imagining the skeletons dancing with enchanted life. She looked back toward the town whence she came, where her parents worried and fretted, where whispers were abroad. She looked to the mists where the old shade had gone who did not care what happened to anyone once the abominations were gone. She shut her eyes tight, and she pursed her lips, and she breathed deep, but when she released her breath, Shekinah was standing there still, impassive, patient as the ocean deeps and mountain stones, and at last the adept asked her, quiet, her voice trembling, "Please ... teach me."

Tell me what you think!