Thursday, November 3, 2011
Rahm Emanuel vs. Librarians
It's a battle royal as Chicago faces budget cuts.
From a piece on NBC Chicago...
Chicago's libraries previously got short shrift from former Mayor Richard Daley, who cut hours and jobs in previous budgets.
“My libraries are very heavily used," said Ald. John Arena (45th). "At a time like this older people and low-income residents use the library for their internet, to look for jobs. Overall, the cuts are just too extreme."
Emanuel said in his budget speech earlier this month that he worked to keep neighborhood branches open because he values them. But librarians and even parents say it's not enough.
“We think this is not the place to find savings," said Julie Samson, a Portage Park mother. "It just deprives so many families and children of such a safe place to learn and have fun.”
Greta Lindall, 5, echoed her mom's words. "I like that we can go to the library and borrow books and bring them back. I really like the Laura [Ingalls Wilder] books.”
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Heart of Darkness - The Opera
Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness has been reimagined as an opera for the first time. Tom Service meets its composer Tarik O'Regan in the Guardian.
From the article...
The book has an archetypal resonance as a piece of matchless storytelling. On a boat on the Thames, Marlow relates the drama of his journey to encounter the mysterious Kurtz in the geographical Heart of Darkness, up-river in the uncharted wilderness of central Africa. The story is a still-controversial meditation on the dangers and excitements of colonial power, with the novella either adopted as a visionary anti-empire narrative, or a racist diatribe that silences the voice of the natives.
"What was most interesting for me was the nature of storytelling," O'Regan says. "The most important thing in the book and the libretto is that we see the lie that Marlow tells." Charged with delivering the dead Kurtz's effects to his fiancee, Marlow tells her that Kurtz's last words were her name; in fact, they were: "The horror, the horror."
"One of my favourite lines in the book is when Marlow says, 'It seemed to me as if I was also buried in a vast grave full of unspeakable secrets,'" says O'Regan. "And that's the drama of all this, that he is finally able to say, 'I saw all of this', and the real tragedy is that he also kept it a secret. And it's in that gap between the truth and the narrative of the truth where our piece of drama can fit. That's what music can do; it can amplify the ambiguity of the story."
How Do You Explain a Kindle to Charles Dickens?
Follow Rachel Walsh's lead.
From a small piece on How to Be a Retronaut...
Rachel Walsh is a second year Illustration student studying at Cardiff School of Art & Design. She was given the project:
‘“Explain something modern/internet based to someone who lived and died before 1900”. I made this to explain Amazon’s Kindle to Charles Dickens.
Ten Literary Trends That Need to Go Away
The list, care of Accredited Colleges Online.
From said list...
Remixing the classics
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies was funny at first: a fresh, postmodern take on Jane Austen's Regency classic. And then Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters happened. Followed by two more Pride and Prejudice and Zombies sequels, Little Women and Werewolves, Jane Slayre, Little Vampire Women, Mansfield Park and Mummies and many, many more mashups. Although this definitely falls under bandwagonning, the added element of building on popular public domain works adds an extra literary dimension. Yeah, the cheekiness definitely amuses, but the market's become quite saturated with them. Enough already!
The Most Unsettling Series of Children's Books Ever Published
Meet the Lonely Doll.
From a piece on Booktryst...
Dare Wright (1914-2001) was The Lonely Doll, the book that brought her fame and the first in a series of children's books about Edith, the two bears who befriended her, and the juvenile psychodramas Wright placed them in, one great big happy family, the yearning of a woman-child working out her neuroses. The books are, to a large degree, autobiographical exercises in wish-fulfillment.
Dare Wright, in essence, photographed and published scenes from her fantasy life with her as the star, a little girl trapped in a world beyond her understanding and working through it with child-sense. And young girls responded; the books became very popular. Through the child-eyes of Dare Wright and her readers, The Lonely Doll series reflects the world as they understand it. To mature adults, they may seem a bit disturbing, with a strange, neo-gothic, somewhat creepy, perverse core; Dare Wright's life writ child-size. They are now very collectible.
Ages of Lingusia: The Amechian Pantheon
Amechian Spirit Gods:
Amech is a harsh land of trackless jungles, fierce wilderlands, aboriginal tribes and hidden jungle kingdoms. The greatest natural beasts of the continent, elephants, thrive in the region, while more fearsome predators such as the Terkithyi and Codam’Tkezzu are fierce opponents. Gentel beastmen, wild elves, ancient undead Kadantanian sorcerers and prehuman ruins riddle the land. The gods of the Amechian region are a harsh lot, and expect strict sacrifice and dedication.
The Amechian cosmology postulates a Spirit World, which appears to be a demiplane connected to the dreamlands of Ethenur and the Celestial Kingdom. The Spirit World holds many powerful, ancient beings, and is the domain of the Amechian gods. This land is sometimes called the Otherworld, and all members of the Amechian pantheon seem to have homes there.
The gods of the Amechian pantheon are different from the traditional Middle Kingdoms pantheon in that they all seem to exist as corporal beings who move freely between their Otherworld and the mortal plane. Some cosmologists speculate that, at the time of the War of the Gods, the demiurges of Amech sought refuge in the Otherworld to avoid destruction, though their chief lord, Amech, fought and fell in the War.
The principle people who worship these gods include Belladas, Hotepsala, Corvante, the Chigros, and the Hubinde.
Amech
Profile: Patron of Belladas, protector of the Amechian kingdoms, warrior of life and order.
Alignment: neutrality
Amech is one of the elder gods of the Middle Kingdoms pantheon, and unique for having spawned an entire sub-pantheon dedicated entirely to his worship. Amech very specifically watches over the kingdoms named after him, including Belladas, the Chigros, Covarte and even the many people of the evil empire Hadros. Some say that long ago, after the Prehunate empire in the region was destroyed, that Amech took the blame personally and decided to serve as the land’s protector, insuring that its people not succumb to the same dire fate as their remote forebears.
Amech learned the secrets of the Otherworld first and foremost, and through it he taught the spirits, all elemental beings, demigod children sprung from his love of mortal women, and primal animal beings from the dawn of creation how to traverse this realm. As a result, the Amechian gods took on their own unique character, and began to move apart from the dictates of the other gods in the Middle Kingdoms pantheon.
In Belladas and elsewhere, a fierce cult of warrior-priests and paladins are dedicated to serving Amech, preserving the land from corruption and defending its people from invaders. Only men are allowed to join, as women are unable to receive the magical gifts of Amech’s spirit.
Appearance: Amech appears as a seven-foot tall warrior of supreme physical fitness, armed with two admantite short swords and a long spear which can penetrate any armor or defense to slay instantly. Like most of the elder gods, his corporeal form was slain in the War of the Gods, and his body lies in a hidden tomb in Ashturak’s Mountains. He acts through his chosen Avatar, who is granted his artifact weapons and a mission to carry out the god’s will. The ritual of succession is very complicated and important for the followers of Amech, as there must always be an avatar representing the god, but only a follower who Amech personally chooses through the course of trials will actually get the task.
Belphegor
(See main Entry)
Bekphegor is worshipped by many in the Hadrosian kingdom within the region of Amech, and his veneration among the people of the jungle go back to the days of the Kadantanian empire. His strongest worship is in the kingdom of Draskis in the east, however, and so more details about Belphegor can be found in the Eastron Pantheon section.
Cerybane
(See the Elvish Pantheon)
Cerybane is principally an elvish deity, but through the Siviante elves, she has found a place in the lands of Amech. Most of her followers there are the siviante elves, but some shamanic orders of women worship her, as well.
Choktun
Profile: magic, the quest for knowledge, immortality and ascension.
Alignment: lawful
The tales of Choktun speak of a great shaman of old, a practitioner of spirit magic who learned the secrets of the afterlife and beyond. In his vision quests through the spirit world, he sought the domains of each of the great old spirits, and visited them. Each time, he offered a piece of knowledge from the mortal plane in exchange for the answer to a question. The spirits, envious of mortal creatures, willingly acceded to such an offer. He would let them experience a portion of mortality through his own life, and in exchange, he asked questions such as, “What is the secret of immortality?” and “Where is the path to divine ascension?” When his journey was done, he had all of the pieces to the great puzzle, and ascended to the heavens, an immortal and a god.
Choktun is seen as a patron of shamans and mages in Amech. Old Idean codices link him to Nistur, a brother to the god of magic, though his Amechian tales clearly mark him an ascended mortal. His followers are reclusive, rarely congregating save to share knowledge. A small monastery dedicated to Choktun is located in Carapas, chief city of the Corvante Kingdoms in the northlands of Amech where the jungles stretch in to the Great Plains. A second, smaller monastery can be found in the Belladasian lake city of Talac.
Appearance: An ancient shaman, wizened beyond his years, who lives at the top of the highest peak in the Forger’s Mountains.
Dakkanich
Profile: Dreams, ancestors, passage of the dead, knowledge, luck.
Alignment: neutrality
The dreadful dreaming serpent of Ethenur, this great god-like beast is revered by some Oineriomancers in the Amechian kingdoms for the hallucinogenic dreams they receive from this entity. The tales say Dakkanich is so immense that his tail rests in the fabled Spirit World of Amechian lore and his head rests dreaming in the endless plains of Ethenur.
Dakkanich has long been regarded as the symbolic keeper of knowledge, as well as the protector of ancestors. In Amechian lore, the spirit which leaves the body becomes trapped in dream time, where it can find the body of Dakkanich and cross over in to the spirit world, and from there to the afterlife. Dakkanich is a bridge down which all ancestral spirits wander.
Most Belladasian nobles have some ornamentation of the sleeping serpent in their households or on their person as a sign of good luck. In Belladas, a small society of priests serves as diviners, dream mages, and ceremonial masters of seasonal holidays in the land. Most such priests are also nobles and scholars.
Appearance: A serpentine beast, sometimes like an oroborous, and at other times like a straight horned serpent floating on water.
Hanahook
Profile: Strength, war, the hunt, elephants.
Alignment: neutrality
The immense elephant god of war is a symbol of strength among all Amechians, and a potent deity for shamans and hunters among the Chigros and Hubinde. Hanahook may well be a great spirit being from the Otherworld, or he may be some sort of primal god, a child of Wolfon or Baragnagor, perhaps, as is suggested by the Idean Codices.
Hanahook is known to manifest physically for his most powerful followers, sending corporeal manifestation which can prove devastating against whole armies. He is not a god of civilization, and will never manifest for men who embrace language, arts, and the trappings of the city.
Appearance: A man with the head of a bull elephant, dressed only in a loin cloth. His depiction in Chigros and Hubinde murals is simple, that of a stylized stick-figure in wall paintings and war paint. The Belladasians, fascinated by his imagery even if they lack the shaman cults, make stone idols of the god, as it is considered good luck for a household.
Lako
Profile: spawn of Set, lord of corrupted kings, patron of lust and hubris.
Alignment: chaos
In the vast lands of Amech, Lako is synonymous with evil, deviltry, betrayal, and corruption. Lako is said to have first gained worship about the time that the men of Belladas learned to ways of elitism and rulership, abandoning their egalitarian tribal life. Some myth tales say that Lako appeared, a whispering serpent or dragon, to speak of such ways of class and rulership in the ears of greedy men, so as to destroy the peaceful life of the Belladasians forever more. Most rulers in Belladas will cut the heads off of any storytellers who recount such myths.
Lako’s symbol is an ancient variation of the symbol for Set, a god of similar prominence in the Middle Kingdoms. Some scholars of religion have proposed the Lako is merely an incarnation of Set, who sought to extend his worship in to the Amechian lands. They are wrong, for Set himself is competitive with Lako in the jungle kingdoms.
In fact, Lako is the son of a Kadantanian sorceress named Dar Esh’bina, who sought to gain power by seducing Set when he still walked, in mortal form upon the earth in ancient times. She secretely gave birth to the draconic serpent Lako, and raised him to be her prodigy of evil. When the time came to unleash him upon the land, and for her to gain the throne, Dar Esh’bina was betrayed by him, for Lako wanted the power she craved as well, and he devoured his own mother.
For a time, Lako was ruler of ancient Kadantania. When time came for the War of the Gods, the Lords of Chaos called upon him, but he was defiant, and Dalroth came before him, and realized Lako’s heritage with Set, who, though evil, was a cunning lord of Order. He slew Lako in bloody battle, and dismembered his corpse, spreading it across the dark jungles.
Over the centuries, dark boccor shamans would dream strange nightmares, and find the disembodied spirit of the demigod calling to them, luring them to the burial grounds of his decapitated pieces. Gradually, Lako gained a new following, and bit by bit, his followers have sought out his dismembered form and restored Lako to a semblance of his self, it is said, in the darkest valleys of the Great Peak region in the Forger’s Mountains.
Appearance: Lako is depicted is a serpent or a dragon, and his symbol is the most ancient one of Set from three thousand years ago. In reality, Lako is a series of enormous, disembodied part shift form to that of deformed draconian entities. He can project a human illusion at will, of a tall, handsom Kadantanian man with dark hair, slanted eyes, and a striking physique. He has an enormous appetite, literally, for young virginal women.
Lalawanaghin
Profile: The Trickster King, Lord Fool, Monkeys
Alignment: neutrality
Description: Lalawanaghin is the trickster god of the Amechian pantheon,a devlish monkey god who is the fool and charlatan of the heavens, revealing the imperections of his peers through his own ineptitude. His flock is few, but chosen carefully by the god through visions sent to shamans during their youth. The cult of the monkey god performs his mysterious requests, following cryptic visions and mysterious missives while leading lives as fools, grifters, daredevils, charlatans and sometimes even truth speakers. Many of his followers are not really priests at all, but dedicated monks and rogues.
Appearance: Lalawanaghin looks like a human-like monkey, dressed in beautiful gilded hide armor and wielding a long bo staff. He very much prefers the mortal plane, and is said to move amongst the kingdoms of Amech, sewing trouble wherever he goes.
Lanako
See Naril in the Middle Kingdoms
Lanako is another name for the prolific sun god Naril, creator of man and lord of light. Lanako’s chief difference in the Amechian pantheon is that he is not the lord of the gods in this pantheon, but instead the trusted right hand man of Amech himself. Lanako is also pictured as a fierce warrior of local tribes, and favors the spear and javelin over the sword for a weapon. In all other respects, including the feverish dedication of his local priests (called the Warriors of the Sun), Lanako’s worship is the same.
Maw’Bwok
Profile: Devourer of Souls, the destroyer
Alignment: chaos
Description: Maw’Bwok is the Eater of Souls, the destroyer or men and the corruptor of spirits. He is the chaotic god of the apocalypse in the Amechian Pantheon, a lord of chaos who cares not if the war is ended, for he lives only to see the destruction of the universe.
Maw’Bwok is said to exist in the realm called Otherworld, a mysterious netherrealm between the dreamlands of Ethenur and the mortal plane, a demiplane of the Ethereal where Maw’Bwok’s terrible designs have created a replication of the hellish nightmare he would like to make the mortal realm. His followers, though few, are very powerful, rewarded with terribly detructive energy and the desire to use it. His worship is the secret cult behind the sorcerers of Hadros, and his will channels through his subjects to drive that empire to conquer and lay waste to all that stand before it.
Maw’Bwok has created his own special spirit servants, called the Ma’Loas. The Maq’Loas are fragments of his own chaotic form, devlish spirits sent to corrupt and drive mortal men to do evil and destructive works in the name of the dark god.
Maw’Bwok is depicted in an abstract geometric pattern in temples. His true form is so terrifying to behold that it causes most men to fall dead on the spot (Wisdom check at a –12 penalty to avoid dying and instead gain 2 negative levels).
Nanok’Tin
Profile: The Hundred Hummingbirds, bringer of rain, caretaker of the home
Alignment: lawful
The Hundred Hummingbirds, the Middle tongue translation of the Belladasian name Nanok’Tin, refers literally to the fact that Nanok’Tin is seen as a composite god, a mosaic of literally hundreds of lesser household spirits who, when the are drawn together through ritual dance, bring good weather and rain to needy crops and villages. Nanok’Tin may very well be unique in Lingusia, a god composed of hundreds of separate lesser beings that can merge together to create a single being. Nanok’Tin is very much a fae creature, and the Hundred Hummingbirds are closely connected to the Weirding Realm, though they are also equally tied to the mysterious Otherworld.
The priestesses of Nanok’Tin are famous for their costumes and dancing, as the rituals to summon the magic of Nanok’Tin require such devotion and performance to create their magic. Belladas is the center of this practice, but the Nanok’Tin are widely recognized by humble villagers and priests everywhere in Amech, including the Chigros and even the Talonabro.
Appearance: The diverse appearances of these mostly invisible spirits is too numerous to mention. They are best described as an amalgam of every creature in the Amechian forests, with winged fae aspects mixed in. The merged form of Nanok’Tin is said to be that of an immense column of fae light that dazzles and swirls among the worshippers observing it.
She’Sek
Profile: The Jewel of the Eternal River, Lord of the Waters, and the Giver and Taker of Life
Alignment: neutrality
Favored Weapons: the whip, spear and madu
She’Sek is said by some shamans of Belladas to have been a Ma’Loa of Maw’Bwok who once escaped and became the patron of the eternal river. The Eternal River is the unending river of life and death that flows through all realms and connects all bodies of water. She’Sek escaped in to this realm, and in the process became the caretaker of this eternal passage. As such, he appears only at rivers and waters with fast currents.
She’Sek is revered in Covarte as a sort of blessing and curse by the river people. It seems that the god is especially fond of appearing in this region. Tales of enemies of the Covarte being destroyed by the river god while trying to ford the protective moats to the cities of the Covarte people are enough to keep foes wary.
She’Sek’s natural form seems to be a potentially unending serpentine dragon with glittering scales of a rainbow hue, impressive horns and a ferocious attitude. Even his followers dread being too close to the water when he manifests.
All text copyright 2011 by Nicholas Torbin Bergquist, all rights reserved
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
An Independent Bookstore is Born
This month, Avid Bookshop opened its doors in Athens, Georgia, three years after proprietor Janet Geddis was struck with the desire to own a bookstore. Geddis started with no bookselling experience nor any financial backing, but since 2008 she has sought wisdom from the best in the business and raised enough money to get her charming brick-and-mortar store up and running.
From an interview in The Millions...
The Millions: What made you want to open a bookstore–especially at this juncture in the world of reading?
Janet Geddis: I love books. I will refrain from discussing how much I love touching them and smelling them and that whole true but perhaps overdone monologue. I opened Avid Bookshop for so many reasons, but one that comes to mind at the moment involves the sheer number of books that are out there. There’s more out there to read than at any other time in the world, and the number of options is growing exponentially. Readers can use help from us to discover which of those books should be their next read.
For me, owning a bookstore is the perfect way to combine several things I am passionate about: my city, reading, bringing people together, and talking about books.
Horror Fiction Goes High Brow
With Colson Whitehead writing a zombie novel and “Granta” releasing a horror issue, monsters and scares aren’t just the domain of mass market anymore. Why?
From a piece in the Daily Beast...
The tropes and traditions of the zombie story are a recent development, but there’s a long history of great writers taking up other scary supernatural genres. Edith Wharton and Henry James were connoisseurs of the ghost story, the dominant horror tradition of their day, and wrote some of the best ever written. Mary Shelley started writing a ghost story but ended up with Frankenstein. More recently, Beloved was a ghost story.
Yet it seems as if we’re currently in the midst of an explosion in literary horror. One possible explanation is that writers like Cronin and Whitehead grew up during a golden age of horror that saw the release of Romero’s Dawn of the Dead and the beginning of the Halloween and Alien franchises, among many other great and varied horror films. Both authors cite the movies and comics of their childhood as the inspiration for their turn to the genre.
“I grew up as a horror fan,” says Whitehead in an interview, “It was those influences that made me want to be a writer, to sit at home and make up stuff all day.” Zombies in particular had a powerful effect on Whitehead, and he says he always knew he’d write a novel about them one day. “Some folks have anxiety dreams about appearing in front of a class naked; since I saw Dawn of the Dead in junior high, my anxiety dreams have been zombie dreams.”
When respected writers cross over into horror, the decision is amplified by the publishing industry. “We live in a high-concept time,” says John Schoenfelder, the editor of Little, Brown and Co.’s new suspense imprint, Mulholland Books, and the publishing industry isn’t immune. Publishers are attracted to high-concept books that they think can grab an audience by premise alone, and with horror in vogue, a respected writer’s foray into horror is more likely to be trumpeted as a major literary event.
Pen Pals: T.S. Eliot and...Groucho Marx?
Indeed.
From a piece in Intelligent Life...
Yet one day in 1961 Groucho received in the mail a note from none other than Eliot himself. Expressing his admiration for the comedian, Eliot asked him for an autographed portrait. A shocked Groucho sent back a studio photograph of himself, only to receive a second note from the icon of modern poetry requesting instead a picture of the iconic Groucho, sporting a moustache and holding a cigar. A second photograph was sent out and a happy Eliot wrote to thank Groucho: “This is to let you know that your portrait has arrived and has given me great joy and will soon appear in its frame on my wall with other famous friends such as W.B. Yeats and Paul Valery.” Groucho had asked for a portrait of Eliot in return, and the latter happily enclosed one. Then the famously morose poet, characterised by Siefgried Sassoon as having “cold-storaged humanity” and by Ottoline Morrell as “the undertaker”, finished with a joke. “P.S.” he wrote. “I like cigars too but there isn’t any cigar in my portrait either.” Well, sort of a joke.
Eliot’s attraction to Groucho might come as a surprise—it certainly did to Groucho—but there had always been signs of his own buried antic disposition. For one thing, in his early expatriate days in London, he grew fond of wearing pale green powder on his face, occasionally accompanied by lipstick. For another, he expressed great enthusiasm for the defecation scene in “Ulysses” that had appalled Virginia Woolf. V.S. Pritchett described Eliot as “a company of actors inside one suit, each one twitting the others.” One thinks of the twitting Marx Brothers packed into that small stateroom in “A Night at the Opera”.
Ages of Lingusia: the Chaos Gods
Principle Gods of Chaos:
Baragnagor
Profile: Orcs and goblinoids, deformity, monsters, might, battle
Alignment: chaos
Baragnagor is one of Selene’s bastard offspring, or possibly a nephew. The deformed idiot god is considered to have lacked imagination or full ability, having been tainted by chaos. At the dawn of creation, he observed the other deities creating their children, the many races of the world. He is said to have been unable to produce beings of his own, and so he stole the body of man and the head of a beast from the other gods. He jammed the parts together at random, and created the orcs and other beast-kin races. The orcs take this as gospel, though it does not bother them that their god might be simple in mind. Instead, the idea of a being who’s thought is singular means, in the orcish mind-set, that his vision is clear for battle, a far more important virtue. Still, the priests of Baragnagor seem to have no problem scheming within the clans of the orcs.
Baragnagor is a conventional patron of the orcs, and most all tribes at least have a shrine or shaman dedicated to him, even if they have also chosen to follow another deity or demon lord. Baragnagor means strength, victory, and the defeat of enemies in the orcish mindset.
As Baragnagor is a chimeric being, followers tend to regard other chimeric creatures as divine. Orcish tribes who find a nest of chimerae, for example, will try to tame them and raise the infants to be war beasts.
Baragnagor is depicted as a great, deformed giant with the head of a crocodile and tail of a dragon. His form changes over time, and his skin is at once furry, scaly, and feathered. He is a terrible, chmeric creature.
Belphegor
Profile: power, lust, pain, torture, angst, fear, envy, hate, batrachian undead
Alignment: chaos
This fallen demiurge of Chaos is said to have died more deaths than most. Having been an ancient devonin lord ensorcelled in to the service of the Prehunate Empire ten thousand years ago, Belphegor was slain on the fields of battle when the gods cast down the heretical pre-human civilization of old. Thousands of years later, the dark necromancers of the Kadantanian Empire sought to resurrect the demon god, and he was brought to life through much sacrifice, rising from the festering remains of his subterranean tomb to live anew. For centuries, the Kadantanians were a force to be reckoned with, but at last they were destroyed in war, and Belphegor’s vampiric undeath could not be sustained. He fell once again in to deathly slumber, only to be awakened again by agents of Draskis, in which descendents of the Kadantanian necromancers had found new power. He became the patron god of the doomed city Draskis, and it’s vile inhabitants eventually set about to creating a new temple-tomb in which Belphegor’s undead body could reside. The Temple of Necropolis Damniskovus was completed just recently, and already it’s evil presence is causing strife in the lands of Cymeer.
Belphegor manifests as a terrible black toad, the size of a dragon. Upon his back are the countless souls of his most faithful, flailing their limbs about, trapped in his form like abominable warts. He can release these trapped beings, who defend him as various demons and undead.
Dalroth
Profile: lord of chaos, bringer of apocalypse
Alignment: chaos
Dalroth is the dark lord of the chaos pantheon, and his followers serve chaos with their very lives. No good or sane being is known to follow him, though evil nations have chosen to follow Dalroth, but the society as a whole falls in to such corruption and chaos that it eventually succumbs to anarchy.
Dalroth is described as one of the fist generation of ancient gods, sometimes described as the brother of Naril. He was born in to the world a corrupt being, and from birth knew his destiny was to serve the furtherment of Mala’Kor, lord Chaos itself.
In the Codex of Creation, Dalroth is described as the overseer of Armaggedon, the god who shall hearld the end of everything. He is said to have forged the Abyss by order of Mala’Kor, and to have bled freely of his own blood, each drop landing upon the boiling earth of the newly created Abyss, spawning the infinte armies of the devonin, his people.
Dalroth is a pervasive influence throughout the world. His legacy in the history of Lingusia is great, and he was the lead general of the forces of Chaos in the War of the Gods. He is a betrayer, destroyer, and the symbol of corruption and power at any cost among the Middle Kingdoms. His followers almost always begin as evil men and women who seek ways to further themselves, and quickly succumb to the siren call of evil and destruction which Dalroth advocates. His priests are sometimes called Entropomancers.
Dalroth’s strongest followers include the Black Circle of Dahik, a coven of priests and wizards dedicated to chaos which have recently survived a coup deep within the Ashtarth empire. In far Galonia, two different sects followed his call of doom, including the Red Robes, a corrupted branch of the Circle of Twelve, magicians all who seek greater magical power through the study of Dalroth’s will, and the cultists of the Dark Pharoah, Lord Xauraun reborn as the divine ruler of that southern realm (though he is formally known as Xaros).
The Red Robes are sometimes called “The Order of Circles” by its members, for there are ten circles of illumination and advancement. The first nine are held by various elightened priests, and the tenth is held by the solitary Grand Mage, who is always cloaked in secrecy, and whose name and identity are never truly known. It is said that those who reach the ninth and tenth levels alone are privy to the true secrets of the Lords of Chaos, and that they are given a permanent place of power in the afterlife of the Abyss.
Haro
Profile: assassins, profit from death, treachery, murder
Alignment: chaos
Haro is the lord of assassins and the principle deity of worship in the enigmatic cult of the Fire Knives, an ages-old cult of assassins that revere this dark chaos god. More about the cult and its beliefs can be found in the section on Orders and Organizations of Lingusia.
Kathak
Profile: insects, plagues, famine
Alignment: chaos
The dread lord of the insects, a god king of Ethenur, the dreamlands, Kathack is the embodiment of the mystical unknown and the unknowable. Beasts and insects inhuman and beyond imagining, are said to have sprung in to existence from the errant dreams of this dark and prodigious god.
Kathack has few, if any human worshippers, but among the insect men of Karaktu, the khitteck spiderfolk of the Faerie Woods, and the kattachi scorpionmen of the Hyrkanian Deserts, Kathack is dark and fearsome lord.
The worship of Kathack among his spawn is varied. Those who seek his power supplicate and obey, turning to dark and ominous means of gaining their god’s favor. Others, less inclined to the spirit of evil and touched by the spirit of Ga’Thika, seek only to offer sacrifice or worship in exchange for warding bad luck or being left alone. The khitteck, expecially, have no overt interest in the pursuit of evil as a species, and tend only to see Kathack as the god who blesses their hunt.
Appearance: Kathack appears as many different monstrous beings, usually being depicted as belonging to the species which is worshipping him in a given area. Kathack’s true form is ever-changing, a great mass of parts and pieces belonging to all of his spawn.
Orcus
Profile: keeper of undead, lord of darkness, gladiators, pits
Alignment: chaos
Orcus is one of several demon lords who have risen to such prominence that they are worshipped as if they were gods by the monstrous denizens of the world. Orcus aspires to become the dark lord of the undead, a position of great opposition among the Death Patheon of Lingusia.
Slithotep
Profile: madness, insanity, chaos, obsession, and nothing
Alignment: chaos
Slithotep is the mad offspring of the elder gods Naril and Selene, brother to Death, and the betrayer of all things living. His madness and the reasons for it are manifold, chief among which is his inherent instability as a being composed of chaotic energies.
Slithotep has long plagued the world, and his mortal form, like so many other gods, was destroyed in the War of the Gods. His body was lain to rest in the Slithotendan Mountains, where his corrupting essence consumed the very land and aided in turning the once beautiful region in to a place of madness and decay. In fact, Slithotep did not truly die, for his body, composed of the essence of Chaos, existed outside the fabric of reality, and he gradually reformed a material form. His body takes on many shapes, but in recent centuries Slithotep has taken on the form of whole structures and buildings, including the weeping citadel of the Hyrkanian Deserts and the Hut of the Wailing Woman in Mitra’s Forest. Some think the Wailing Woman, a mad witch is Slithotep’s avatar, but they are wrong; she is a woman he took as his mortal wife at one time, long ago, and whom he will not let die, even though his corruption has driven her permanently mad.
Because of the purile and horrific practices associated with Slithotep’s worship, the cultists who follow the god are of a particularly deviant nature. All true dedicates to Slithotep must choose a form of madness, usually of a psychotic, delusional or sociopathic nature. Even if they didn’t have a mental problem before joining the cult, the rituals involved in indoctrination guarantee that the cultist is mentally scarred afterward.
Appearance: Slithotep can take any form, living or inanimate, and any size, shape, or substance within reason. There are some who have met Slithotep, even entered his very belly in the form of a great hall or keep, and never even known it. Anyone doing so, however, must make a Wisdom check at -5 each hour to avoid a creeping, permanent debilitating madness from setting in.
Phaedra
Profile: Shadows and darkness, undeath
Alignment: chaos
Phaedra in this era is an unknown; she is the goddess of Shadow and has manifested in that domain as its ruler thanks to the chronomantic ledergdemain of her lord Unarak. Together, Phaedra and Unarak have managed to use the chronomantic meddling of Huuarl and his agent Aeon to traverse the timestream and reappear in the past, with no one able to amend their actions. Each entity returned as a shade, a wisp of their future selves; Phaedra possessed the body of a mortal woman who was her ancestor.
To date Unarak and Phaedra have stolen the power of Vishannu, whom they had an advantage over, for in their future his treacherous secrets had been laid bare and the two stole a powerful prehunate artifact from him, one whould could steal the divine essence of an actual god. They subsequently took this divine spark and used it to steal the shadow kingdom from Penumbros, who now lies exiled and powerless in the dark wastelands of the Shadow Kingdoms. Once their kingdom was secure, the two assassinated the ancestors of the demigod Thalion, who would one day rise up to defeat them in the future. Phaedra, drunk with new power, now conspires with Unarak on their next actions.
Thasrik
Profile: slavery, control, domination, subjugation, castes
Alignment: chaos
Thasrik is an ancient Lord of Chaos, one of the most vile ands corrupt, but surprisingly unmotivated in comparison to his cohorts. Thasrik gains power through the subjugation of others, and wherever societies go bad and begin the wanton enslavement of one another, the presence of Thasrik’s secretive order can’t be far away.
Thasrik’s order, sometimes called the Servants of the Dominator, are strongest in Hadros, where they are endorsed by the Emperor himself, and have a visible footing in the slave-driven lands of Hotepsala, a land which depends on the productivity of slaves for its great monument building. His cults appear more secretively throughout Lingusia and Takkai as well, inserting themselves in to otherwise normal lands and spending years chiseling away at the foundations of established social systems to try and foment a desire among the superior classes for a stronger and harsher system of slavery and abuse.
Many gladiatorial arenas throughout the Middle Kingdoms are also prime locations for the Order of the Dominator to make an appearance, as the castigation and execution of slaves in the arena is considered an especially desirable effect for this deity.
Thasrik’s symbol is the Old Tongue runes for pain and humiliation, but his physical form, which is rarely ever pictured, is that of an immense, bloated demon dressed in a black cloak and hood, wielding a whip and spear.
Unarak
Profile: undeath
Alignment: chaos
Unarak is one of two active gods of the so-called Shadow Pantheon. With Phaedra he has returned to the past, exploiting a loop in time created by Huuarl and his minion Aeon when they sent agents back in time to prevent the formation of the ancient book of prophecy that would awaken the Skaeddrath and lead to the destruction of the world in fifteen hundred years. Unarak originally rose to power after the alternate timeline’s cataclysm, during which a vacuum amongst the gods and a severing of ties to the planes allowed the lich king once known as Anharak to sieze control over the domain of undeath. He broke the tethers between the souls of the dead and the afterlife, forcing the souls to migrate back to the plane of the living, where he forced them to reanimate in the bodies of the dead. A plague of undead, called the Plague of Unarak, spread, and it took two centuries before it was completely contained after a band of young avatars rose to defeat him and end his magic.
In this distant future Unarak was cast down, but now he has an opportunity to redeem himself, for the dreaded god’s shadow spirit has escaped back in time, taking advantage of the Time Lord’s efforts to destroy a much greater threat to the world, to reposition himself and his favored ally Phaedra to strike out against the realm in a time and place when he is relatively unknown.
Both Unarak and Phaedra found host bodies, Unarak presenting himself to Anharak, the mortal sorcerer whom he once was before he became a lich, and informing him of the inevitable defeat, death, and rebith he would undergo before his rise to godhood six centuries hence, followed by another defeat shortly thereafter. It took little convincing to his younger self to bond with the shade of the future, and Unarak seized control of his old body’s mind, snuffing out what he once was and remaking himself anew.
Unarak and Phaedra then joined together, to exploit the second known weakness. Deep in the jungles of Amech, in a prehunate ruin lost to time, they found an amulet that allowed one to siphon the divine power of a god from his dying form. They knew of this amulet from their future alliance with the traitorous god Vishannu, who was in their alternate future responsible for the Cataclysm through his manipulations. They then sought out Vishannu and mortally wounded him in a moment of surprise, using the amulet to steal his life force. They were partially successful; Vishannu’s favored avatar and champion Avolakita stopped them at the last moment, and with his last breath he gave her his remaining divinity. She is now a demigoddess, and seeks revenge against the Shadow Pantheon.
Unarak and Phaedra then travelled to the remote demiplane called the Shadow Kingdom, and struck quickly and decisively, stealing the domain from Penumbros, as well as stealing his divinity. Penumbros was not slain, but now lurks in the far corners of the Shadow Plane, conspiring about how to restore his divnity and kingdom.
From their new throne the two began a process of seeking out the known ancestors of the avatars that had slain Unarak in the future, and snuffing them out. Thalion’s clan was first, and more are yet to come. Such a complete revenge has rarely been seen in the history of the world.
Unarak’s powers of undeath are strong, but they are hindred by the power the Cataclysm gave him in the future. Unarak has not yet solved the question of how to create a new Undead Plague, for he knows that to recreate the Cataclysm would invite certain destruction at the hands of the Skaeddrath once they are freed from imprisonment, and so he is contemplating other options to achieve power in this young era…perhaps, even, to find a way of usurping the power of the dangerous but disordered Chaos Pantheon, using his knowledge of future events to his advantage against Dalroth, Slithotep, Haro and others…
All text copyright 2011 by Nicholas Torbin Bergquist, all rights reserved
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