To my darling Alex.
​
I want to take the time now to say that I’m sorry. It seems a moot point, after all that’s been done. But for what it’s worth, I wish to clear my conscience so that at the very least I may be a decent man at least once more before I die. Perhaps the weight of my sins deny me any hope of this, but I will try anyway. I must.
​
I can’t imagine you understand what it means to have everything taken from you. The game of life can be cruel and unfair but one can only play the hand that they are dealt, and some play it better than others. When I lost you and your Mother, I didn’t handle it well. That pain brought me to a dark place and it left me vulnerable. When a person sinks that low, there’s any number of demons that can lay claim to them. Anger, booze, drugs, sex. Take your pick.
​
It was the alcohol that took me first and once I found the bottle, it cost me everything I hadn’t already lost. My job, my friends, my family. In the year that followed I found myself broke and living in a one bedroom apartment in another town, desperate for whatever money I could make to keep me drunk. It was to that end that I found myself working at the Starkmann Estate.
​
Like most, I had never heard of the Starkmann family before. They have their hand in a number of different enterprises, although despite their vast wealth they tend to keep out of the public eye. Not that there’s really much to see… the family itself is little more than a few fragmented descendants now. Most of whom aren’t even named Starkmann anymore.
​
Nevertheless I was grateful for my employment as the groundskeeper of that once great estate, even if it was mostly abandoned. And while the work was demanding, I took a certain comfort in the isolation. It was nice to be alone, away from anyone who might judge me. I don’t believe you ever saw the full scale of the Starkmann Estate. In twenty five years, I myself never even saw all of it. The property was vast, around 10,000 acres if I recall correctly. Much of that was of course taken up by the lake, however the Starkmann manor itself was nothing short of spectacular. I was only rarely permitted to be inside. To my knowledge it had no full time occupants but just from the outside the size of it never failed to leave me in awe. There must have been at least 30 bedrooms if not more. The design made the building seem more akin to a castle than anything else, with three levels, and a large conservatory dominating one wing of the building. Then there was what you couldn’t see of that great old mansion. Tunnels that ran deep beneath the grounds, going to all sorts of hidden places. I suspect that a man could have spent years inside that place without uncovering all of its secrets.
​
It was a shame that nobody seemed to bother with it. Well… almost nobody besides myself and Emile Montfort.
​
Montfort was just about the only person I ever saw visiting the Starkmann Estate. He was a grandson of the Starkmann line who would occasionally stay at the house when he was in town. I can’t say I minded his company. He was a man of fabulous excess with a captivating demeanor and I was taken with him upon our very first meeting. Though he was ten years my junior, Montfort carried himself with a worldly wisdom, even in his youth and as time went by he never lost that, nor did he lose his boyish good looks during the years that I knew him. While he was not immune to the effects of time, he might as well have been. At forty seven he hardly looked much different than he had on the day we’d first met when he was only twenty two.
​
Montfort and I got on well enough. While normally I was not permitted to enter the Starkmann manor, Montfort would often invite me in for some brandy in the smoking room. He’d light the fireplace, then we’d recline in the ancient chairs and just talk for hours. He would ask me about my life and in turn would regale me with tales of his own. Despite the difference in our social standing I came to regard Montfort as a friend and I believe that he regarded me in kind. Why else would he have told me of Shaal, if he did not think of me as such?
​
“Do you believe in God, Thomas?” He’d asked me one night. We had been in the parlor of the darkened manor, sitting by the ancient fireplace. He’d opened a fresh bottle of brandy to share with me and we were already about halfway through it.
“God?” I’d repeated, “I don’t suppose I’ve ever put that much thought into it.”
“Really? I find that a little hard to believe,” He said, “You’ve never wondered as to the origin of… this…” He gestured vaguely around him. “This world, this universe. Hell, consciousness.”
​
“Every now and then, I suppose,” I said after a moment and I went silent again as I pondered my next words carefully. “I guess I really don’t think any one being simply ‘made’ all of this. Or made us. Even if one did, I doubt it gives a shit about us one way or the other. I suppose I don’t believe in the God we’re told exists, if that makes any sense.”
“So then, you are open to the possibility of a God. Just not the God that’s crammed down our throats.” Montfort said. I took another sip of my brandy and shrugged.
​
“Sure.”
“You don’t give a damn one way or the other.” He teased. I could see him watching me in the dancing firelight, one leg crossed over the other. His smile seemed absolutely devilish. His curly dark hair cast a shadow over his face that gave me a mild sense of unease.
“When you’ve seen the things I’ve seen Emile, it’s easy not to give a damn.” I replied.
“Ah… What a rough life you’ve had, Thomas,” He continued, “Personally, I’d say you’re right about God not giving a damn… or at least what we’d define as God. My Grandfather used to talk about it every now and then, how it had abandoned us so long ago. Birthed us, then left us all screaming in the pram as it were.”
​
“Your Grandfather?”
“Vladimir Starkmann. Him.” He pointed to a portrait above the fireplace that depicted a man in his forties. He had a trimmed moustache and wore an immaculate suit. His eyes were stern and piercing. I’d seen the portrait many times before but never asked, nor cared about who it depicted. It was none of my business.
“I take it your Grandfather wasn’t a religious man, then?” I asked.
​
“He was and he wasn’t.” Montfort said, “He believed in something, although I’d say his faith came from more than just blind devotion. He was an educated man, you see. A doctor, although he left the practice behind to follow other pursuits. He wanted to know everything there was to know about the world, where it came from, who created it and most importantly, why.”
“So do most people.” I said with a shrug.
“Yes, but there's a difference between my Grandfather and most people. They never find the answers. He did.”
​
I was quiet for a moment, before looking over at Montfort. I was sure he’d had too much to drink but it hardly looked as if he’d touched his brandy. Instead, he just absentmindedly swirled it in his glass as he looked up at the portrait of his grandfather.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“My Grandfather found God… Well, the things that make up God at least. It’s a little bit complicated but it’s been on my mind these past few weeks, though. You know what that’s like, right? Having a thought lingering in the back of your mind, taking over everything else.”
​
“Yes, but never about something like that.” I said.
“Well, you and I come from very different backgrounds, my friend… Would you mind if I showed you something?”
“What?”
“Proof, of course. That God is real.”
​
Montforts eyes burned into my own, his smile was knowing and yet it made me uneasy. At the same time though, I could not refuse him even if I wanted to. Not quite.
​
That night, Montfort led me deeper into the Starkmann manor than I’d ever been before.
“When my Grandfather built this place, he built it for more than just his own comfort. He wanted a place to do research while remaining well enough alone.” He’d said as he’d led me through the dim hallways. He’d stopped beside an ancient wooden door and pulled it open. The stale air made me cough.
​
“It’s a shame really. He’d be happy to see that the manor is still far away from the hustle and bustle of the rest of the world. One can still live in relative isolation here.”
“If that’s what one is inclined towards,” I said, watching as he disappeared through the door and down a set of iron stairs. “Are you sure that’s safe?”
“Of course it is. My Grandfather built this place to last an eternity. Come now, you wanted to see what I was on about earlier, don’t you?”
​
I hesitated at the top of the stairs before finally giving in and descending them. They spiraled down into the bowels of the earth, deeper beneath the grounds of the estate than I thought they should have any business going.
​
At the bottom, I was greeted with a strange yet narrow hallway. The walls curved outwards, meeting at the top and I could barely see Montfort just a few feet away from me.
“Come along!” He called back to me and I followed him. The hallway was just tall enough to accommodate me but not by much.
​
In the distance, I could hear running water and realized that the hallway was leading us to a room beneath the lake.
​
It opened up into a large domed room where the light shimmered as if it were reflected through water. Dim twilight shone through the many windows that covered the room from floor to ceiling but it wasn’t quite direct sunlight. It took me a moment to process just what I was looking at.
​
The entire ceiling was submerged beneath the lake, and I could see the water shimmering through it. It cast strange shadows on the figure of Emile Montfort who stood waiting for me in the center of the vast room which must have been about eighty feet in diameter. There was no furniture in that room, although it still looked as nobody had been inside in decades.
​
“Magnificent, isn’t it?” Montfort asked. His voice echoed off the walls. “My Grandfather always believed that there was a certain magic in water… an allure to it that soothes the mind. He believed that a calm mind was what was needed to get in touch with the more metaphysical aspects of this world.”
“What is this place?” I asked, in awe of the sight before me. I watched as the dark shapes of fish swam lazily past the windows before looking back at Montfort.
​
“My Grandfather called it a chapel of sorts. See, the true God… or, Gods, I suppose don’t much care about crucifixes, bread or wine. In fact, I can’t really say most of them care about anything.” He cracked a knowing smile. “Most of them, anyways… you’ve heard of the Holy Trinity, right? Father, Son and Holy Spirit?”
“Of course.” I murmured before noticing that Montfort was on the other side of the room now, close to a hallway that would have led him through the other side of the chapel.
​
“The concept of a trinity is one of the things that people don’t think about as much as they should. Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Three distinct parts of one God. Are you following me?”
“I think so.” I said, watching as Montfort searched for something in the wall of the hallway.
“What people constantly get wrong is in the way they define those three aspects of God. Instead of a Father, it should just be Creation. Instead of a son, it should be Presence and instead of a Holy Spirit, it should be Destruction.”
“Creation, Presence, and Destruction,” I repeated.
​
“Exactly,” Montfort said. “Three Ancient Gods, that are in a sense one God. Long before our reality existed, there was nothing but void. From that void was birthed Sailia. A demiurge. Creation incarnate. Sailia looked out upon the void and saw it as a blank canvas, on which she painted all of reality. Next, the void birthed Malvu. Presence.” He paused and gestured to the space around him. “A guardian of the here and now. Everything that is, everything that was, everything that will be. Time and space. She looked upon creation and pledged herself as its protector. But what always fascinated my Grandfather and what fascinates me is the third one.”
​
“Destruction.” I said, “You're starting to lose me, Emile.”
“That’s okay. It’s a complicated thing to understand.” He said, “And I’ll answer the rest of your questions in due time. Now… the French have a saying: ‘The fate of glass is to break.’. Do you know what that means?
“Everything ends?” I said it was more of an educated guess than an answer.
“Exactly. Sooner or later. Everything faces its end… last came the final daughter of the Void. A being so powerful they ripped the Void apart and scattered the remains into unreality. Shaal… the natural end to all things. When she came, she tore the first reality to pieces and she has consumed every reality since then. In time, she will consume this one as well. This world as we know it is doomed to end and when it does, Creation brings forth something new, it has Presence and in time it too faces Destruction. Rinse and repeat, over and over and over again.”
​
“I suppose I see what you mean,” I said as Montfort pried open an old door. He paused to look at me.
“Good.” He said, “So then you understand. This is the cycle. Those are the most Ancient of the Old Gods. The very embodiment of this cycle. Do you see where I’m going with this?”
“Not exactly.” I said, “You told me you could prove they were real, can you?”
“Of course.” He replied, “I’ll prove it to you, just as my Grandfather once proved it to me.”
​
With that, he disappeared through the small door he’d opened.
“Keep an eye on the water, Thomas. My Grandfather found a way to tune this chapel of his…”
“Tune it?” I asked.
“Just keep looking… watch the water. Look hard…”
​
My eyes drifted back to the shimmering water on the glass of the domed ceiling. I could hear mechanical clicking and see movement on the other side of the glass but just what Montfort was doing, I could not say.
​
It wasn’t long before I saw the light, though. Dull at first, I saw its glow deep amongst the depths of the lake and it only grew brighter as Montfort configured the dome. I drew closer to the edge of it, my eyes fixated on the glass as I looked out through it and into the water. The light grew more intense and as I stared into it, I felt it staring back into me. A deep red cross that watched me. Saw through me. Blood red and vibrant, pulsing and alive the light fixated on me, looking into my very soul. Somewhere far away I could hear a deep drone, like a fog horn yet so much deeper that I felt it in my very bones.
​
As I stared into the light, I felt something shift inside me. I felt a very primal fear of what I was looking at, along with the knowledge that it was not something I was ever meant to see. I wanted to scream. I wanted to shrink back but I could not look away. That horrible droning grew more and more intense as it consumed me, body and soul. It looked into me… like a burning, crimson eye. As I stared into the light, I realized that it was aware of me as a singular entity… it saw me. It knew me…
​
I could feel sensations on my skin. Millions of tiny insectoid legs crawling along me and yet I could not tear my eyes away from the crimson light in the darkness of the lake, a light that gnawed a hole through me like an insect taking root in my belly as I drifted mindless through an abyss...
​
It wasn’t until I felt Montfort’s hands on my back that I realized that I was still in the chapel. He pulled me back from the window I’d been staring out of, chuckling like a schoolboy who’d just pulled a particularly fantastic prank.
​
“Now, now, Thomas. Relax. Just relax.”
My breathing came in shaky, ragged gasps. I could feel my heart racing and a sick churning in my stomach. I couldn’t even stand up without Montfort holding me up.
​
“W-what the hell was that?” I stammered, looking desperately into his eyes. “You saw it too, didn’t you? You saw it?!”
“Yes, I saw it.” He assured me. “I saw it many years ago and I was as afraid then as you are now. Just relax, my friend. What you saw can’t hurt you.”
“What the hell was it?!” I snapped.
“Destruction… the inevitable end, or at least as close as you can come to seeing it. My Grandfather called it ‘Shaal’. I’ve come to think of it in the same terms, although names really have no meaning to entities like this.”
​
“Why are you showing me this?” I demanded. I managed to steady my weight and pulled away from Montfort. His smile had faded and was replaced by a stoic, grim look.
“Because I’ve been doing some thinking these past few years… I don’t suppose you’ve looked around and seen the state of the world these days, have you? It’s not exactly going swimmingly. Humanity won’t be around forever… hell, they won’t even be around much longer the way we’re going. Maybe that’s because the cycle is at its end. We’ve had our time, and when we’re gone Shaal will wipe the slate clean so the cycle can begin anew.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” I replied.
​
“Let me rephrase, then.” Montfort said, “Let me ask you a question. If you found out you had a year to live, but after six months you’d be in so much pain that living wasn’t worthwhile, would you choose to live the whole year, or die on your own terms before the pain became too much?”
“That’s an awfully grim question,” I replied.
“Maybe, but it’s one that people very often have to answer. Me? I’d choose to die on my own terms. Most do… I think you would too as well. That’s why I brought you here. My Grandfather used to speak of wiping the slate clean if things ever got to a point like this. I’ve wondered for years if we were at that point and now, I’m certain we are. I know people would disagree with it, I’m not an idiot… but I believe that Shaal would offer us a far less painful end than the alternative. At the very least, it would be much quicker.”
​
My eyes widened.
“You’re talking about ending the world…” I said quietly. Montfort nodded.
“Yes. Although the way I see it, the world has already ended. We’d just be pulling the plug on a patient that’s already dying. It would be an act of mercy.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing… and yet Montfort spoke with such conviction. I wasn’t sure what to say at first and after a few moments, he patted me gently on the shoulder.
​
“I don’t expect an answer tonight… But my mind is made up. I want you to help me with this. You’re a man I know I can trust. I’ll understand if you won’t help me though. Really I will.”
I looked my friend in the eye and it took me a while to give him an answer. But when I did, what I said put a smile on his face.
“Perhaps it would be an act of mercy, wouldn’t it?”
​
​
It was those words that birthed what became the Cult of Shaal. As the next eight years went by, my unsteady faith in Montfort's beliefs became an iron conviction to match his own.
​
The downward spiral of the world around us only solidified my belief in what he stood for. I came to see every horrible new development in the world around me of further proof of its inevitable collapse and with that mindset, I could justify the work we did.
​
Most of our early recruits were other members of the Starkmann family. People who’d known Vladimir Starkmann himself, who’d either shared his belief in the Ancient Gods or been down into the chapel beneath the lake themselves and seen firsthand the horrible light of Shaal. However, those recruits brought in their own trusted friends. Many of them joined our ranks and soon what began with two men in the chapel beneath the lake grew into twenty people, studying the divine and looking for a way to edge the world towards a peaceful ending.
​
There was no malice in what we did, even now I remain convinced of that. Even now, I can’t rightfully say that any member of our group was ‘evil’, or had anything less than good intentions. While some might have argued otherwise, all we wanted was a peaceful ending to things and perhaps we may have even gotten it… if it weren’t for you, Alex.
​
If you hadn’t come back into my life.
​
Do you remember the afternoon that you came back to me? It was rainy, I was off from work and cooped up in my apartment, nursing a coffee. My devotion to Montfort’s cause had pulled me most of the way out of the bottle, although not entirely. I was hungover and had expected no visitors when I heard that knock on my door.
​
I was about to write whoever was on the other side as some worthless salesperson peddling snake oil or lies until I looked through the peephole and saw you…
​
You looked so different. So much older. And yet a Father never forgets the face of his little girl. Not ever. Staring at you, I was sure I was dreaming. I kept looking, but if this was a dream then the dream never ended.
​
At last I reached for the doorknob, my hands shaking and not sure what to expect. Part of me was sure you’d be gone by the time I’d opened the door but there you stood. My little girl, smiling at me as if nothing had changed.
​
“Hi Dad.” You said, and I knew from the look in your eyes that you recognized me. I wasn’t able to speak. Like a child all I could do was sob and smile at the fact that fate had been so impossibly kind as to bring you back into my life. The next thing I knew, I was wrapping my arms around you and hugging you close.
​
While we had coffee together and talked, I kept waiting for some theoretical other shoe to drop. Some explanation for why you’d come back that would ruin that perfect moment but… nothing. Maybe there was nothing that could have ruined that moment. You could’ve said you needed a bit of money and I’d have happily emptied my bank account for you.
​
“It took me a while to find you.” You said, “But I’m glad I did… I always wished we could have made up for lost time.”
You have no idea just how much those words meant to me to hear. I need you to know how important that was to me.
​
We talked well into the night, mostly about the life you’d led in the years since your Mother had taken you away from me and I hung on to every single detail. I wanted to know everything about you, everything about who you’d become. My little girl, all grown up. My precious Alex… Returned to me at last.
​
I should’ve known that Montfort would find out about you. I might have told him anyways, after all I still considered him a close friend. But the fact that he seemed to already know when next I saw him should have raised an alarm in my mind. I had given you my guest room and left you to your own devices while I headed to the Starkmann estate to do my work.
​
I hadn’t expected Montfort to be there but at the end of the day when he came out of the Starkmann manor with that familiar warm smile on his face and invited me for a drink, I was still happy to see him.
​
We sat in the same parlor we always had and he’d poured us both a glass of brandy.
“I won’t keep you too long tonight.” He said, half teasing. “I wouldn’t want to keep your houseguest waiting.”
I had paused before taking a sip of my drink and taking in what Montfort had said.
​
“Keeping tabs on me, are you?” I asked, with significantly less mirth.
“Are you surprised?” He asked
“Not particularly… I am happy to see her again. I was so sure I’d lost her. It’s nice to have her back.”
“I’m sure.” He replied, absentmindedly swirling the brandy in his glass, “I can’t imagine you’ve mentioned the faith to her.”
​
“In time. I just got her back Emile. Now isn’t the time to bring it up.”
“Isn’t it?” Montfort took a sip of his brandy, his eyes focused on me, “I’ve been dreaming of Shaal, Thomas. Have I told you that?”
“Don’t you often dream of Shaal?” I asked.
“This is different. I’m not the sort of man who believes in visions… but I’m sure of what I’ve seen every night for the past few months. I’m sure it’s a message. Don’t you think it's odd that Alex has come back to you now? After all this time.”
​
I sat, silent for a moment as Montfort waited for an answer. He didn’t wait long before he continued.
“There are some faiths that worship the Ancient Gods who believe that they can be given a perfect vessel upon this earth. To create that vessel, they breed those who the Gods have chosen. Do you understand? Shaal chose Vladimir Starkmann as her companion when she last set foot upon this earth. Now she has chosen us. You and me. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity… and you could join the proud Starkmann line, where you belong.”
​
The significance of what Montfort was saying wasn’t lost on me and I couldn’t find the words to say in response. He was silent and I wasn’t sure if he was waiting for an answer or gauging my reaction.
“Our progeny could become something rare… a God upon this earth. A great destroyer to wipe the slate clean… I won’t ask you to force this on Alex. I’m not a monster. But I’d like the opportunity to bring her into the Faith and from there, Shaal’s will be done.”
“What exactly did you have in mind?” I asked.
​
“A formal introduction, of course. A true show of Starkmann hospitality. I’ve spoken to some of the family about a masquerade ball in a few days time. I’d like you to extend her an invitation.”
I nodded, mulling it over for a moment. What Montfort was asking hardly seemed unreasonable. While I quietly held my own doubts about the validity of his visions… I was in no position to question them. Besides, I would have been lying if I said I did not want you to be part of the Faith.
“I’ll speak with her.” I said and a small, gentle smile crossed Montforts face.
“That’s all I ask.” He said.
​
I’m sure you remember that I told you about the ball the next morning. I had only had you back for a few days. We still had so much time to make up for and I do confess that part of me feared you would not be open to the idea.
Instead, you just smiled at me and said:
“I think it would be fun.”
​
Despite Montforts intentions, I was happy to hear that. The Faith had become such a large part of my life that I wanted to share it with you! I wanted you to share in the glory of Shaal with me so that before the end came, I could be the Father you deserved!
​
I had only been to a few formal events at the Starkmann manor before and never had I seen such a turnout as I saw at the masquerade ball. Our faithful were all gathered. Even behind their elaborate masks I recognized them. You of course looked lovely in your own costume, a dress that shimmered like stars in a blood red sky and a crimson mask in the image of a plague doctor. It was far more elaborate than my own shabby costume. Mine was the outfit of a pauper. Yours was that of a Goddess.
​
I remember the look in your eyes as you looked up at the Starkmann manor, and thinking that your expression was one of wonder. I thought that in that moment, I couldn’t blame you. The Starkmann estate was nothing short of dazzling, and the way it was lit up that night was spectacular! Montfort met us at the door, dressed in a crimson mask and suit. I only recognized him by his hair.
​
“Thomas! Such a pleasure to see you!” He said cheerfully although I could tell that his eyes were on you. He took you by the hand and kissed it gently. “And you my darling, you must be Alex. Emile Montfort. It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’ve heard so much about you.”
“I assure you the pleasure is all mine.” You said and lingered close to Montfort's side as he led us into the mansion.
​
The ball itself was happening down in the domed room beneath the lake. Our window into the Abyss where Shaal could see us revel in her glory. A small orchestra played music from a bygone era as we emerged through the narrow tunnel to join the other attendees.
“I hate to come off as too forward, my dear but may I ask you for the first dance?” Montfort had said, he had looked at me and nodded as he did as if asking for my blessing. I nodded at him in return.
“Of course!” You’d said and behind your mask I could see you smiling as you took Montforts hand and disappeared into the crowd with him.
​
I lingered on the edge of the ball, watching as the two of you swayed in time with the music. A flash of perfect crimson amongst a sea of other bodies and I felt pride. Even without Shaal, even without the Faith I would have been happy to see you smiling the way you were. I allowed myself to wonder if perhaps Montfort's vision held some truth to it. Perhaps you and he were destined for each other, and whether or not you brought forth some incarnation of Shaal I would have been content to see you married into the Starkmann family, never to want for anything ever again.
​
My eyes wandered out through the windows looking deep into the lake. I wondered if Shaal could see us in that moment, and if she could would she approve? I had not thought I would get an answer to that question… but I suppose life is full of surprises.
​
Hours passed in a blur. I indulged in the rich wines from the Starkmann reserve and danced with a few of our other members. You and Montfort seemed inseparable that night, seldom leaving the dance floor and even when you did you stayed together. I could see that you were talking to him, but I don’t know what was said. What I remember clearer than anything is that shortly before the end, as you and Montfort stood in the center of the ballroom, he gently reached out to remove your mask and kiss you.
​
I remember a swell of confused emotions. Pride. Paternal protectiveness. Melancholy… what exactly should one feel when watching their little girl meet a man with the intent of becoming her husband?
​
Yet as Montfort pulled away all of those mixed emotions were replaced by a sudden emptiness. A surreal confusion that overwhelmed everything else as I saw your face. It was still your face and yet… it wasn’t. Your eyes had changed, taking on a familiar crimson hue. Your hair seemed darker and your skin seemed paler. At first I thought it was the light, but no… no, it couldn’t have been! This was all wrong!
​
Montfort hardly seemed to notice the change. He just smiled as if nothing was wrong, unaware that his death was at hand. You reached up, as if to caress his cheek and yet as you did I saw your lips curl into a cruel smile.
​
One moment, Emile Montfort was there and the next, he was gone. His body just… crumbled, falling away into little more than ashes.
​
I could feel the earth shaking beneath my feet, and the music stopped. The eyes of the faithfull all turned to you, and you just stood there. Calm amongst the chaos. The water churned violently against the glass dome, and I swear that I saw it bubbling as if the lake itself was boiling around us.
​
Then in the distant darkness of the lake I saw a familiar red glow. I heard that ancient droning noise. The call from the Abyss that was Shaal the Destroyer. The ending of all things!
​
The weak bent the knee and covered their heads, afraid for their lives. The wise prostrated themselves before the Great Destroyer. I did neither. Ever the fool I stood there, confused as I looked at you. Your crimson eyes seemed to shimmer and looking into those eyes, I saw the great red cross reflected deep within them… then at last you spoke.
​
“No more dancing?” You asked, your tone almost mocking. “And here I thought you would have been happy to see me…”
​
Your voice… those crimson eyes… the silence that settled around us. There was no need to ask who you were. We knew. On instinct, we knew who and what you were…
“You’ve gone through so much trouble to invoke me. And now that I make an appearance you all start to cower… I won’t lie. I am a little disappointed but I suppose I should have expected this.”
​
“H-Holy Shaal…” Said one of our Faithful, rising to meet you. “It is a true honor to have you here in our mid-”
Before he could finish his sentence he was erased. Just like with Montfort, there was a flash of red light and then nothing but ashes. You seemed almost annoyed that he’d even dared to open his mouth.
​
“What did you hope to achieve?” You continued, “Did you think I would come scampering the moment I realized that there were some worthless cretins in a hole praying to me?” You said, your voice filled with such disgust. “This world has its appointed time and it will end when that time comes. Did you think you could beg me to end it now, simply because you decided it was time? Did you really believe that was how this worked?”
​
There was no response… the assembled faithful feared you too much to even speak.
“Pathetic…” You spat, “You’re nothing but children, screaming in the pram. Begging for oblivion. Very well. If that’s what you’re after… I’ll oblige you!”
​
You raised a hand and there was one final red flash, followed by the stench of burning. I heard the other scream… but their cries simply echoed uselessly off the walls before all fell silent a mere second later.
​
All that was left aside from the ashes was me and you.
​
Your eyes fixated on me, but they betrayed nothing. I sank to my trembling knees before you, my eyes wide as I bowed.
“Don’t waste your time begging. It’s embarassing.” You said, and I quickly got to my feet again. You approached me slowly, your red eyes burning into mine. I watched as they softened into a calmer blue.
​
“Montfort told me you were one of his first devotees. Or… my first, I suppose. Hopefully you’re smart enough to understand why I did what I did and to explain it to any more of you idiots that are out there.”
“Y-yes… of course Alex…” I managed to stammer. I saw a ghost of a smile cross your lips.
“You understand, I’m not her…” You said, “I’m sorry to have deceived you. But I wanted a way in to see what your little cult was about and this seemed like the fastest route.”
​
I blinked slowly. Somewhere in the back of my mind, a bitter memory resurfaced. Screaming tires. The blare of a truck horn… Alex… her eyes wide open and empty in the back seat. Her face cut up by the glass. A face I never saw again after the coroner pulled her from the car and into the ambulance.
​
You… although now I realize that what I saw was never ‘you’ offered a smile that seemed out of place.
​
“For what it’s worth, you would’ve been a good Father. I suppose that’s another reason not to end you like the rest of them. Goodbye, Thomas. I hope we don’t meet again.”
​
Then you were gone. I didn’t even see you move. You were just… gone, as if you were never even there and I was left alone with only your memory… the memory of the real you, to haunt me.
​
I have written this letter as my final goodbye to you Alex. I love you dearly and I will always love you. The hole that your death tore in my heart will never heal… I am left with nothing now. In my hollow grief, I was content to let everything that was end. I was happy to invoke it if I had to… I suppose that was why I went along so willingly with Montfort.
​
The knowledge of what I tried to invoke weighs on my mind. And yet… while my soul demands release, and I long only to end this life and see what awaits me in the next… I cannot do it.
​
I spoke with Death herself, and she did not kill me. I have to believe that there is a reason for that. To take my own life now would feel… hollow, meaningless. I am old. I doubt that I have much time left in this world anyway… but all the same, I will go out and I will look for purpose.
​
Perhaps I will find it.
​
I suspect that I will.
​
And when my life has reached its natural end and, I hope I will see you once more. The real you. The daughter I lost, so long ago.
​
If I can never say it again, I love you Alex. I love you so much and I wish things could have turned out differently.
​
I’ll see you soon.
​
Dad

To my darling Alex.
​
I want to take the time now to say that I’m sorry. It seems a moot point, after all that’s been done. But for what it’s worth, I wish to clear my conscience so that at the very least I may be a decent man at least once more before I die. Perhaps the weight of my sins deny me any hope of this, but I will try anyway. I must.
​
I can’t imagine you understand what it means to have everything taken from you. The game of life can be cruel and unfair but one can only play the hand that they are dealt, and some play it better than others. When I lost you and your Mother, I didn’t handle it well. That pain brought me to a dark place and it left me vulnerable. When a person sinks that low, there’s any number of demons that can lay claim to them. Anger, booze, drugs, sex. Take your pick.
​
It was the alcohol that took me first and once I found the bottle, it cost me everything I hadn’t already lost. My job, my friends, my family. In the year that followed I found myself broke and living in a one bedroom apartment in another town, desperate for whatever money I could make to keep me drunk. It was to that end that I found myself working at the Starkmann Estate.
​
Like most, I had never heard of the Starkmann family before. They have their hand in a number of different enterprises, although despite their vast wealth they tend to keep out of the public eye. Not that there’s really much to see… the family itself is little more than a few fragmented descendants now. Most of whom aren’t even named Starkmann anymore.
​
Nevertheless I was grateful for my employment as the groundskeeper of that once great estate, even if it was mostly abandoned. And while the work was demanding, I took a certain comfort in the isolation. It was nice to be alone, away from anyone who might judge me. I don’t believe you ever saw the full scale of the Starkmann Estate. In twenty five years, I myself never even saw all of it. The property was vast, around 10,000 acres if I recall correctly. Much of that was of course taken up by the lake, however the Starkmann manor itself was nothing short of spectacular. I was only rarely permitted to be inside. To my knowledge it had no full time occupants but just from the outside the size of it never failed to leave me in awe. There must have been at least 30 bedrooms if not more. The design made the building seem more akin to a castle than anything else, with three levels, and a large conservatory dominating one wing of the building. Then there was what you couldn’t see of that great old mansion. Tunnels that ran deep beneath the grounds, going to all sorts of hidden places. I suspect that a man could have spent years inside that place without uncovering all of its secrets.
​
It was a shame that nobody seemed to bother with it. Well… almost nobody besides myself and Emile Montfort.
​
Montfort was just about the only person I ever saw visiting the Starkmann Estate. He was a grandson of the Starkmann line who would occasionally stay at the house when he was in town. I can’t say I minded his company. He was a man of fabulous excess with a captivating demeanor and I was taken with him upon our very first meeting. Though he was ten years my junior, Montfort carried himself with a worldly wisdom, even in his youth and as time went by he never lost that, nor did he lose his boyish good looks during the years that I knew him. While he was not immune to the effects of time, he might as well have been. At forty seven he hardly looked much different than he had on the day we’d first met when he was only twenty two.
​
Montfort and I got on well enough. While normally I was not permitted to enter the Starkmann manor, Montfort would often invite me in for some brandy in the smoking room. He’d light the fireplace, then we’d recline in the ancient chairs and just talk for hours. He would ask me about my life and in turn would regale me with tales of his own. Despite the difference in our social standing I came to regard Montfort as a friend and I believe that he regarded me in kind. Why else would he have told me of Shaal, if he did not think of me as such?
​
“Do you believe in God, Thomas?” He’d asked me one night. We had been in the parlor of the darkened manor, sitting by the ancient fireplace. He’d opened a fresh bottle of brandy to share with me and we were already about halfway through it.
“God?” I’d repeated, “I don’t suppose I’ve ever put that much thought into it.”
“Really? I find that a little hard to believe,” He said, “You’ve never wondered as to the origin of… this…” He gestured vaguely around him. “This world, this universe. Hell, consciousness.”
​
“Every now and then, I suppose,” I said after a moment and I went silent again as I pondered my next words carefully. “I guess I really don’t think any one being simply ‘made’ all of this. Or made us. Even if one did, I doubt it gives a shit about us one way or the other. I suppose I don’t believe in the God we’re told exists, if that makes any sense.”
“So then, you are open to the possibility of a God. Just not the God that’s crammed down our throats.” Montfort said. I took another sip of my brandy and shrugged.
​
“Sure.”
“You don’t give a damn one way or the other.” He teased. I could see him watching me in the dancing firelight, one leg crossed over the other. His smile seemed absolutely devilish. His curly dark hair cast a shadow over his face that gave me a mild sense of unease.
“When you’ve seen the things I’ve seen Emile, it’s easy not to give a damn.” I replied.
“Ah… What a rough life you’ve had, Thomas,” He continued, “Personally, I’d say you’re right about God not giving a damn… or at least what we’d define as God. My Grandfather used to talk about it every now and then, how it had abandoned us so long ago. Birthed us, then left us all screaming in the pram as it were.”
​
“Your Grandfather?”
“Vladimir Starkmann. Him.” He pointed to a portrait above the fireplace that depicted a man in his forties. He had a trimmed moustache and wore an immaculate suit. His eyes were stern and piercing. I’d seen the portrait many times before but never asked, nor cared about who it depicted. It was none of my business.
“I take it your Grandfather wasn’t a religious man, then?” I asked.
​
“He was and he wasn’t.” Montfort said, “He believed in something, although I’d say his faith came from more than just blind devotion. He was an educated man, you see. A doctor, although he left the practice behind to follow other pursuits. He wanted to know everything there was to know about the world, where it came from, who created it and most importantly, why.”
“So do most people.” I said with a shrug.
“Yes, but there's a difference between my Grandfather and most people. They never find the answers. He did.”
​
I was quiet for a moment, before looking over at Montfort. I was sure he’d had too much to drink but it hardly looked as if he’d touched his brandy. Instead, he just absentmindedly swirled it in his glass as he looked up at the portrait of his grandfather.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“My Grandfather found God… Well, the things that make up God at least. It’s a little bit complicated but it’s been on my mind these past few weeks, though. You know what that’s like, right? Having a thought lingering in the back of your mind, taking over everything else.”
​
“Yes, but never about something like that.” I said.
“Well, you and I come from very different backgrounds, my friend… Would you mind if I showed you something?”
“What?”
“Proof, of course. That God is real.”
​
Montforts eyes burned into my own, his smile was knowing and yet it made me uneasy. At the same time though, I could not refuse him even if I wanted to. Not quite.
​
That night, Montfort led me deeper into the Starkmann manor than I’d ever been before.
“When my Grandfather built this place, he built it for more than just his own comfort. He wanted a place to do research while remaining well enough alone.” He’d said as he’d led me through the dim hallways. He’d stopped beside an ancient wooden door and pulled it open. The stale air made me cough.
​
“It’s a shame really. He’d be happy to see that the manor is still far away from the hustle and bustle of the rest of the world. One can still live in relative isolation here.”
“If that’s what one is inclined towards,” I said, watching as he disappeared through the door and down a set of iron stairs. “Are you sure that’s safe?”
“Of course it is. My Grandfather built this place to last an eternity. Come now, you wanted to see what I was on about earlier, don’t you?”
​
I hesitated at the top of the stairs before finally giving in and descending them. They spiraled down into the bowels of the earth, deeper beneath the grounds of the estate than I thought they should have any business going.
​
At the bottom, I was greeted with a strange yet narrow hallway. The walls curved outwards, meeting at the top and I could barely see Montfort just a few feet away from me.
“Come along!” He called back to me and I followed him. The hallway was just tall enough to accommodate me but not by much.
​
In the distance, I could hear running water and realized that the hallway was leading us to a room beneath the lake.
​
It opened up into a large domed room where the light shimmered as if it were reflected through water. Dim twilight shone through the many windows that covered the room from floor to ceiling but it wasn’t quite direct sunlight. It took me a moment to process just what I was looking at.
​
The entire ceiling was submerged beneath the lake, and I could see the water shimmering through it. It cast strange shadows on the figure of Emile Montfort who stood waiting for me in the center of the vast room which must have been about eighty feet in diameter. There was no furniture in that room, although it still looked as nobody had been inside in decades.
​
“Magnificent, isn’t it?” Montfort asked. His voice echoed off the walls. “My Grandfather always believed that there was a certain magic in water… an allure to it that soothes the mind. He believed that a calm mind was what was needed to get in touch with the more metaphysical aspects of this world.”
“What is this place?” I asked, in awe of the sight before me. I watched as the dark shapes of fish swam lazily past the windows before looking back at Montfort.
​
“My Grandfather called it a chapel of sorts. See, the true God… or, Gods, I suppose don’t much care about crucifixes, bread or wine. In fact, I can’t really say most of them care about anything.” He cracked a knowing smile. “Most of them, anyways… you’ve heard of the Holy Trinity, right? Father, Son and Holy Spirit?”
“Of course.” I murmured before noticing that Montfort was on the other side of the room now, close to a hallway that would have led him through the other side of the chapel.
​
“The concept of a trinity is one of the things that people don’t think about as much as they should. Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Three distinct parts of one God. Are you following me?”
“I think so.” I said, watching as Montfort searched for something in the wall of the hallway.
“What people constantly get wrong is in the way they define those three aspects of God. Instead of a Father, it should just be Creation. Instead of a son, it should be Presence and instead of a Holy Spirit, it should be Destruction.”
“Creation, Presence, and Destruction,” I repeated.
​
“Exactly,” Montfort said. “Three Ancient Gods, that are in a sense one God. Long before our reality existed, there was nothing but void. From that void was birthed Sailia. A demiurge. Creation incarnate. Sailia looked out upon the void and saw it as a blank canvas, on which she painted all of reality. Next, the void birthed Malvu. Presence.” He paused and gestured to the space around him. “A guardian of the here and now. Everything that is, everything that was, everything that will be. Time and space. She looked upon creation and pledged herself as its protector. But what always fascinated my Grandfather and what fascinates me is the third one.”
​
“Destruction.” I said, “You're starting to lose me, Emile.”
“That’s okay. It’s a complicated thing to understand.” He said, “And I’ll answer the rest of your questions in due time. Now… the French have a saying: ‘The fate of glass is to break.’. Do you know what that means?
“Everything ends?” I said it was more of an educated guess than an answer.
“Exactly. Sooner or later. Everything faces its end… last came the final daughter of the Void. A being so powerful they ripped the Void apart and scattered the remains into unreality. Shaal… the natural end to all things. When she came, she tore the first reality to pieces and she has consumed every reality since then. In time, she will consume this one as well. This world as we know it is doomed to end and when it does, Creation brings forth something new, it has Presence and in time it too faces Destruction. Rinse and repeat, over and over and over again.”
​
“I suppose I see what you mean,” I said as Montfort pried open an old door. He paused to look at me.
“Good.” He said, “So then you understand. This is the cycle. Those are the most Ancient of the Old Gods. The very embodiment of this cycle. Do you see where I’m going with this?”
“Not exactly.” I said, “You told me you could prove they were real, can you?”
“Of course.” He replied, “I’ll prove it to you, just as my Grandfather once proved it to me.”
​
With that, he disappeared through the small door he’d opened.
“Keep an eye on the water, Thomas. My Grandfather found a way to tune this chapel of his…”
“Tune it?” I asked.
“Just keep looking… watch the water. Look hard…”
​
My eyes drifted back to the shimmering water on the glass of the domed ceiling. I could hear mechanical clicking and see movement on the other side of the glass but just what Montfort was doing, I could not say.
​
It wasn’t long before I saw the light, though. Dull at first, I saw its glow deep amongst the depths of the lake and it only grew brighter as Montfort configured the dome. I drew closer to the edge of it, my eyes fixated on the glass as I looked out through it and into the water. The light grew more intense and as I stared into it, I felt it staring back into me. A deep red cross that watched me. Saw through me. Blood red and vibrant, pulsing and alive the light fixated on me, looking into my very soul. Somewhere far away I could hear a deep drone, like a fog horn yet so much deeper that I felt it in my very bones.
​
As I stared into the light, I felt something shift inside me. I felt a very primal fear of what I was looking at, along with the knowledge that it was not something I was ever meant to see. I wanted to scream. I wanted to shrink back but I could not look away. That horrible droning grew more and more intense as it consumed me, body and soul. It looked into me… like a burning, crimson eye. As I stared into the light, I realized that it was aware of me as a singular entity… it saw me. It knew me…
​
I could feel sensations on my skin. Millions of tiny insectoid legs crawling along me and yet I could not tear my eyes away from the crimson light in the darkness of the lake, a light that gnawed a hole through me like an insect taking root in my belly as I drifted mindless through an abyss...
​
It wasn’t until I felt Montfort’s hands on my back that I realized that I was still in the chapel. He pulled me back from the window I’d been staring out of, chuckling like a schoolboy who’d just pulled a particularly fantastic prank.
​
“Now, now, Thomas. Relax. Just relax.”
My breathing came in shaky, ragged gasps. I could feel my heart racing and a sick churning in my stomach. I couldn’t even stand up without Montfort holding me up.
​
“W-what the hell was that?” I stammered, looking desperately into his eyes. “You saw it too, didn’t you? You saw it?!”
“Yes, I saw it.” He assured me. “I saw it many years ago and I was as afraid then as you are now. Just relax, my friend. What you saw can’t hurt you.”
“What the hell was it?!” I snapped.
“Destruction… the inevitable end, or at least as close as you can come to seeing it. My Grandfather called it ‘Shaal’. I’ve come to think of it in the same terms, although names really have no meaning to entities like this.”
​
“Why are you showing me this?” I demanded. I managed to steady my weight and pulled away from Montfort. His smile had faded and was replaced by a stoic, grim look.
“Because I’ve been doing some thinking these past few years… I don’t suppose you’ve looked around and seen the state of the world these days, have you? It’s not exactly going swimmingly. Humanity won’t be around forever… hell, they won’t even be around much longer the way we’re going. Maybe that’s because the cycle is at its end. We’ve had our time, and when we’re gone Shaal will wipe the slate clean so the cycle can begin anew.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” I replied.
​
“Let me rephrase, then.” Montfort said, “Let me ask you a question. If you found out you had a year to live, but after six months you’d be in so much pain that living wasn’t worthwhile, would you choose to live the whole year, or die on your own terms before the pain became too much?”
“That’s an awfully grim question,” I replied.
“Maybe, but it’s one that people very often have to answer. Me? I’d choose to die on my own terms. Most do… I think you would too as well. That’s why I brought you here. My Grandfather used to speak of wiping the slate clean if things ever got to a point like this. I’ve wondered for years if we were at that point and now, I’m certain we are. I know people would disagree with it, I’m not an idiot… but I believe that Shaal would offer us a far less painful end than the alternative. At the very least, it would be much quicker.”
​
My eyes widened.
“You’re talking about ending the world…” I said quietly. Montfort nodded.
“Yes. Although the way I see it, the world has already ended. We’d just be pulling the plug on a patient that’s already dying. It would be an act of mercy.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing… and yet Montfort spoke with such conviction. I wasn’t sure what to say at first and after a few moments, he patted me gently on the shoulder.
​
“I don’t expect an answer tonight… But my mind is made up. I want you to help me with this. You’re a man I know I can trust. I’ll understand if you won’t help me though. Really I will.”
I looked my friend in the eye and it took me a while to give him an answer. But when I did, what I said put a smile on his face.
“Perhaps it would be an act of mercy, wouldn’t it?”
​
​
It was those words that birthed what became the Cult of Shaal. As the next eight years went by, my unsteady faith in Montfort's beliefs became an iron conviction to match his own.
​
The downward spiral of the world around us only solidified my belief in what he stood for. I came to see every horrible new development in the world around me of further proof of its inevitable collapse and with that mindset, I could justify the work we did.
​
Most of our early recruits were other members of the Starkmann family. People who’d known Vladimir Starkmann himself, who’d either shared his belief in the Ancient Gods or been down into the chapel beneath the lake themselves and seen firsthand the horrible light of Shaal. However, those recruits brought in their own trusted friends. Many of them joined our ranks and soon what began with two men in the chapel beneath the lake grew into twenty people, studying the divine and looking for a way to edge the world towards a peaceful ending.
​
There was no malice in what we did, even now I remain convinced of that. Even now, I can’t rightfully say that any member of our group was ‘evil’, or had anything less than good intentions. While some might have argued otherwise, all we wanted was a peaceful ending to things and perhaps we may have even gotten it… if it weren’t for you, Alex.
​
If you hadn’t come back into my life.
​
Do you remember the afternoon that you came back to me? It was rainy, I was off from work and cooped up in my apartment, nursing a coffee. My devotion to Montfort’s cause had pulled me most of the way out of the bottle, although not entirely. I was hungover and had expected no visitors when I heard that knock on my door.
​
I was about to write whoever was on the other side as some worthless salesperson peddling snake oil or lies until I looked through the peephole and saw you…
​
You looked so different. So much older. And yet a Father never forgets the face of his little girl. Not ever. Staring at you, I was sure I was dreaming. I kept looking, but if this was a dream then the dream never ended.
​
At last I reached for the doorknob, my hands shaking and not sure what to expect. Part of me was sure you’d be gone by the time I’d opened the door but there you stood. My little girl, smiling at me as if nothing had changed.
​
“Hi Dad.” You said, and I knew from the look in your eyes that you recognized me. I wasn’t able to speak. Like a child all I could do was sob and smile at the fact that fate had been so impossibly kind as to bring you back into my life. The next thing I knew, I was wrapping my arms around you and hugging you close.
​
While we had coffee together and talked, I kept waiting for some theoretical other shoe to drop. Some explanation for why you’d come back that would ruin that perfect moment but… nothing. Maybe there was nothing that could have ruined that moment. You could’ve said you needed a bit of money and I’d have happily emptied my bank account for you.
​
“It took me a while to find you.” You said, “But I’m glad I did… I always wished we could have made up for lost time.”
You have no idea just how much those words meant to me to hear. I need you to know how important that was to me.
​
We talked well into the night, mostly about the life you’d led in the years since your Mother had taken you away from me and I hung on to every single detail. I wanted to know everything about you, everything about who you’d become. My little girl, all grown up. My precious Alex… Returned to me at last.
​
I should’ve known that Montfort would find out about you. I might have told him anyways, after all I still considered him a close friend. But the fact that he seemed to already know when next I saw him should have raised an alarm in my mind. I had given you my guest room and left you to your own devices while I headed to the Starkmann estate to do my work.
​
I hadn’t expected Montfort to be there but at the end of the day when he came out of the Starkmann manor with that familiar warm smile on his face and invited me for a drink, I was still happy to see him.
​
We sat in the same parlor we always had and he’d poured us both a glass of brandy.
“I won’t keep you too long tonight.” He said, half teasing. “I wouldn’t want to keep your houseguest waiting.”
I had paused before taking a sip of my drink and taking in what Montfort had said.
​
“Keeping tabs on me, are you?” I asked, with significantly less mirth.
“Are you surprised?” He asked
“Not particularly… I am happy to see her again. I was so sure I’d lost her. It’s nice to have her back.”
“I’m sure.” He replied, absentmindedly swirling the brandy in his glass, “I can’t imagine you’ve mentioned the faith to her.”
​
“In time. I just got her back Emile. Now isn’t the time to bring it up.”
“Isn’t it?” Montfort took a sip of his brandy, his eyes focused on me, “I’ve been dreaming of Shaal, Thomas. Have I told you that?”
“Don’t you often dream of Shaal?” I asked.
“This is different. I’m not the sort of man who believes in visions… but I’m sure of what I’ve seen every night for the past few months. I’m sure it’s a message. Don’t you think it's odd that Alex has come back to you now? After all this time.”
​
I sat, silent for a moment as Montfort waited for an answer. He didn’t wait long before he continued.
“There are some faiths that worship the Ancient Gods who believe that they can be given a perfect vessel upon this earth. To create that vessel, they breed those who the Gods have chosen. Do you understand? Shaal chose Vladimir Starkmann as her companion when she last set foot upon this earth. Now she has chosen us. You and me. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity… and you could join the proud Starkmann line, where you belong.”
​
The significance of what Montfort was saying wasn’t lost on me and I couldn’t find the words to say in response. He was silent and I wasn’t sure if he was waiting for an answer or gauging my reaction.
“Our progeny could become something rare… a God upon this earth. A great destroyer to wipe the slate clean… I won’t ask you to force this on Alex. I’m not a monster. But I’d like the opportunity to bring her into the Faith and from there, Shaal’s will be done.”
“What exactly did you have in mind?” I asked.
​
“A formal introduction, of course. A true show of Starkmann hospitality. I’ve spoken to some of the family about a masquerade ball in a few days time. I’d like you to extend her an invitation.”
I nodded, mulling it over for a moment. What Montfort was asking hardly seemed unreasonable. While I quietly held my own doubts about the validity of his visions… I was in no position to question them. Besides, I would have been lying if I said I did not want you to be part of the Faith.
“I’ll speak with her.” I said and a small, gentle smile crossed Montforts face.
“That’s all I ask.” He said.
​
I’m sure you remember that I told you about the ball the next morning. I had only had you back for a few days. We still had so much time to make up for and I do confess that part of me feared you would not be open to the idea.
Instead, you just smiled at me and said:
“I think it would be fun.”
​
Despite Montforts intentions, I was happy to hear that. The Faith had become such a large part of my life that I wanted to share it with you! I wanted you to share in the glory of Shaal with me so that before the end came, I could be the Father you deserved!
​
I had only been to a few formal events at the Starkmann manor before and never had I seen such a turnout as I saw at the masquerade ball. Our faithful were all gathered. Even behind their elaborate masks I recognized them. You of course looked lovely in your own costume, a dress that shimmered like stars in a blood red sky and a crimson mask in the image of a plague doctor. It was far more elaborate than my own shabby costume. Mine was the outfit of a pauper. Yours was that of a Goddess.
​
I remember the look in your eyes as you looked up at the Starkmann manor, and thinking that your expression was one of wonder. I thought that in that moment, I couldn’t blame you. The Starkmann estate was nothing short of dazzling, and the way it was lit up that night was spectacular! Montfort met us at the door, dressed in a crimson mask and suit. I only recognized him by his hair.
​
“Thomas! Such a pleasure to see you!” He said cheerfully although I could tell that his eyes were on you. He took you by the hand and kissed it gently. “And you my darling, you must be Alex. Emile Montfort. It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’ve heard so much about you.”
“I assure you the pleasure is all mine.” You said and lingered close to Montfort's side as he led us into the mansion.
​
The ball itself was happening down in the domed room beneath the lake. Our window into the Abyss where Shaal could see us revel in her glory. A small orchestra played music from a bygone era as we emerged through the narrow tunnel to join the other attendees.
“I hate to come off as too forward, my dear but may I ask you for the first dance?” Montfort had said, he had looked at me and nodded as he did as if asking for my blessing. I nodded at him in return.
“Of course!” You’d said and behind your mask I could see you smiling as you took Montforts hand and disappeared into the crowd with him.
​
I lingered on the edge of the ball, watching as the two of you swayed in time with the music. A flash of perfect crimson amongst a sea of other bodies and I felt pride. Even without Shaal, even without the Faith I would have been happy to see you smiling the way you were. I allowed myself to wonder if perhaps Montfort's vision held some truth to it. Perhaps you and he were destined for each other, and whether or not you brought forth some incarnation of Shaal I would have been content to see you married into the Starkmann family, never to want for anything ever again.
​
My eyes wandered out through the windows looking deep into the lake. I wondered if Shaal could see us in that moment, and if she could would she approve? I had not thought I would get an answer to that question… but I suppose life is full of surprises.
​
Hours passed in a blur. I indulged in the rich wines from the Starkmann reserve and danced with a few of our other members. You and Montfort seemed inseparable that night, seldom leaving the dance floor and even when you did you stayed together. I could see that you were talking to him, but I don’t know what was said. What I remember clearer than anything is that shortly before the end, as you and Montfort stood in the center of the ballroom, he gently reached out to remove your mask and kiss you.
​
I remember a swell of confused emotions. Pride. Paternal protectiveness. Melancholy… what exactly should one feel when watching their little girl meet a man with the intent of becoming her husband?
​
Yet as Montfort pulled away all of those mixed emotions were replaced by a sudden emptiness. A surreal confusion that overwhelmed everything else as I saw your face. It was still your face and yet… it wasn’t. Your eyes had changed, taking on a familiar crimson hue. Your hair seemed darker and your skin seemed paler. At first I thought it was the light, but no… no, it couldn’t have been! This was all wrong!
​
Montfort hardly seemed to notice the change. He just smiled as if nothing was wrong, unaware that his death was at hand. You reached up, as if to caress his cheek and yet as you did I saw your lips curl into a cruel smile.
​
One moment, Emile Montfort was there and the next, he was gone. His body just… crumbled, falling away into little more than ashes.
​
I could feel the earth shaking beneath my feet, and the music stopped. The eyes of the faithfull all turned to you, and you just stood there. Calm amongst the chaos. The water churned violently against the glass dome, and I swear that I saw it bubbling as if the lake itself was boiling around us.
​
Then in the distant darkness of the lake I saw a familiar red glow. I heard that ancient droning noise. The call from the Abyss that was Shaal the Destroyer. The ending of all things!
​
The weak bent the knee and covered their heads, afraid for their lives. The wise prostrated themselves before the Great Destroyer. I did neither. Ever the fool I stood there, confused as I looked at you. Your crimson eyes seemed to shimmer and looking into those eyes, I saw the great red cross reflected deep within them… then at last you spoke.
​
“No more dancing?” You asked, your tone almost mocking. “And here I thought you would have been happy to see me…”
​
Your voice… those crimson eyes… the silence that settled around us. There was no need to ask who you were. We knew. On instinct, we knew who and what you were…
“You’ve gone through so much trouble to invoke me. And now that I make an appearance you all start to cower… I won’t lie. I am a little disappointed but I suppose I should have expected this.”
​
“H-Holy Shaal…” Said one of our Faithful, rising to meet you. “It is a true honor to have you here in our mid-”
Before he could finish his sentence he was erased. Just like with Montfort, there was a flash of red light and then nothing but ashes. You seemed almost annoyed that he’d even dared to open his mouth.
​
“What did you hope to achieve?” You continued, “Did you think I would come scampering the moment I realized that there were some worthless cretins in a hole praying to me?” You said, your voice filled with such disgust. “This world has its appointed time and it will end when that time comes. Did you think you could beg me to end it now, simply because you decided it was time? Did you really believe that was how this worked?”
​
There was no response… the assembled faithful feared you too much to even speak.
“Pathetic…” You spat, “You’re nothing but children, screaming in the pram. Begging for oblivion. Very well. If that’s what you’re after… I’ll oblige you!”
​
You raised a hand and there was one final red flash, followed by the stench of burning. I heard the other scream… but their cries simply echoed uselessly off the walls before all fell silent a mere second later.
​
All that was left aside from the ashes was me and you.
​
Your eyes fixated on me, but they betrayed nothing. I sank to my trembling knees before you, my eyes wide as I bowed.
“Don’t waste your time begging. It’s embarassing.” You said, and I quickly got to my feet again. You approached me slowly, your red eyes burning into mine. I watched as they softened into a calmer blue.
​
“Montfort told me you were one of his first devotees. Or… my first, I suppose. Hopefully you’re smart enough to understand why I did what I did and to explain it to any more of you idiots that are out there.”
“Y-yes… of course Alex…” I managed to stammer. I saw a ghost of a smile cross your lips.
“You understand, I’m not her…” You said, “I’m sorry to have deceived you. But I wanted a way in to see what your little cult was about and this seemed like the fastest route.”
​
I blinked slowly. Somewhere in the back of my mind, a bitter memory resurfaced. Screaming tires. The blare of a truck horn… Alex… her eyes wide open and empty in the back seat. Her face cut up by the glass. A face I never saw again after the coroner pulled her from the car and into the ambulance.
​
You… although now I realize that what I saw was never ‘you’ offered a smile that seemed out of place.
​
“For what it’s worth, you would’ve been a good Father. I suppose that’s another reason not to end you like the rest of them. Goodbye, Thomas. I hope we don’t meet again.”
​
Then you were gone. I didn’t even see you move. You were just… gone, as if you were never even there and I was left alone with only your memory… the memory of the real you, to haunt me.
​
I have written this letter as my final goodbye to you Alex. I love you dearly and I will always love you. The hole that your death tore in my heart will never heal… I am left with nothing now. In my hollow grief, I was content to let everything that was end. I was happy to invoke it if I had to… I suppose that was why I went along so willingly with Montfort.
​
The knowledge of what I tried to invoke weighs on my mind. And yet… while my soul demands release, and I long only to end this life and see what awaits me in the next… I cannot do it.
​
I spoke with Death herself, and she did not kill me. I have to believe that there is a reason for that. To take my own life now would feel… hollow, meaningless. I am old. I doubt that I have much time left in this world anyway… but all the same, I will go out and I will look for purpose.
​
Perhaps I will find it.
​
I suspect that I will.
​
And when my life has reached its natural end and, I hope I will see you once more. The real you. The daughter I lost, so long ago.
​
If I can never say it again, I love you Alex. I love you so much and I wish things could have turned out differently.
​
I’ll see you soon.
​
Dad

First Prev Next
A computer was, it turned out, a marvelous thing.
Yarine held one of them now, one of those flat slabs of dark glass that fit perfectly into the palm of her hand. A ‘phone’, Bauman had called it, even though he’d said it was also a computer. She ran her thumb over its glossy, elegant surface, the colorful images on its screen growing and shrinking as they reacted to its presence.
There were dozens of such pictographs, for all kind of things. Recording voice or images, or far-listening, or displaying maps... Yarine was still familiarizing herself with the most basic functions, a long process which wasn’t helped by the fact that she didn’t understand these humans’ alphabet, and that so many of the pictographs tended to depict older devices that she wasn’t familiar with, either. It frustrated her. How was she expected to figure out that a bumpy rectangle with a circle inside it was short for image recording calculations? And what in the Equation was an ‘internet’?
But not all of them were unknown. She paused over the one depicting a stylized pocket watch, then pressed on it. She smiled as the familiar white circle appeared on the screen, the needles turning in their usual snappy increments. A pocket computer to replace her pocket watch. Not that it really could, though. For some reason, she still felt attached to the ancient brass device. As if it had somehow soaked in her pain and tears during those endless nights in Oleania, her very soul now intertwined with its gears and springs.
She took her gaze off her phone when she felt the vehicle tilting to the side, and clasped at her seat’s armrest with her free hand, sitting ramrod straight as if that would help, were they to fall out of the sky. She only relaxed when she noticed none of the two Agents seated across from her were panicking.
Unlike computers, helicopters were a horrid form of travel. A madman’s invention. The vehicle shook and trembled, buffeted by the crosswinds of the storm clouds brewing overhead, some angry droplets crashing against its frontal window now and then. The rotor’s piercing roar filled the cabin, slowly worming its way into her brain and threatening to take her sanity away.
It was fast, though, she had to admit that as they flew over the neverending potted fields and farms, following the twisting roads and rivers that bisected the flat landscape.
That was another of the reasons behind her uneasiness. The tracking theorem —which it took them two weeks of coordinated effort to make work on the computer, one much bigger than Yarine’s new phone— had placed the Oracle almost half a continent away from the Agents’ home base, in the city that had contained the Void-Bridge. But she hadn’t understood what that truly meant until she was strapped to the helicopter’s seat and the vehicle had flown straight past the end of the city, the reassuring buildings and streets giving way to open landscape.
They had gone off-city, and in the Manifold that would have meant danger of the highest degree, never sure of what exactly you could find —or could find you— when you crossed past the threshold of civilization. Plus the certainty of being too far away, well out of the reach of any helping hands should you encounter a threat you couldn’t deal with on your own.
So she was surprised when she noticed that the city had ended, but a trickle of civilization persisted beyond its limits. A few solitary roads traversing the wild, circling around hills and leaping over valleys and rivers atop enormous bridges, merging now and then, crossing paths with their siblings just to divert once more as each went their own separate ways.
It was oddly mesmerizing. Without Void-Bridges, the humans of Earth had managed to bridge the distances anyways, to join their cities the old fashioned way. She had to wonder at the expense of it all. How many resources went into those endless arteries of asphalt? How much did it cost them to fight off the unyielding assault, the perennial chaos of natural forces? The erosion of the wind blowing dust across them, day after day, or the plants continuously trying to burrow into whatever cracks they could find? It had to be mind-boggling.
She wasn’t surprised that the Agents had agreed to pursue the trail leading them to the Oracle, once they had fully understood what an Oracle of the Manifold was supposed to be able to do. The impossible idea of instantaneous travel, of building portals between the major cities on Earth, and from there to other worlds altogether. It planted a seed of doubt in Yarine, though, because she could imagine these Agents of Earth wanting to use the Oracle for their own purposes, and all but forgetting about the Manifold and the promises they had made in return for Yarine’s help.
The voice of the pilot reached Yarine via the odd earmuffs she was wearing, which apparently weren’t only meant to cushion the rotor’s noise. It sounded crackly and distorted. “Commencing our descent in five minuteth,” he said.
Yarine returned her attention to her phone and pressed on her favorite pictograph: the one depicting a branching arrow. The screen changed and showed a few more symbols, each of them representing a theorematic calculation. Each one taken from Solver’s notebook. The Phalanx’s essential repertoire: A momentum manipulation here, and embedding field there... Yarine touched the one that depicted a human covered in schematic shell-shields.
The moment she did, her whole body was instantly wrapped by the interlocking protective shields, shining strong against the cabin’s dimness. She ran one hand over the projected second skin, which offered an unnatural resistance, stopping her fingers from ever reaching her own clothes. She had never caressed a shell-shield before, and she discovered that they felt oddly prickly and spongy.
Ironic, that she’d had to leave the Manifold of Worlds in order to become a battle mathematician herself. A somewhat limited one, to be fair, since Solver’s notes hadn’t been as extensive as any of the Phalanx’s actual course books. But at least the phone could calculate more than one theorem at the same time, making her into a discount Olean of sorts.
And it had been humans —dull, simple humans— that had granted her these abilities, this impossible gift. She wished only that her tutor, Suzvir could’ve seen her now. That she could repeat that fight once more; the one that had been the dawn of her rebellion, her freedom. That she could fight and best Suzvir again, this time with a phone computer rather than a dagger. That she could defeat him at his own game.
“Thou shalt run out o’ battery ere we land,” said Frey, shaking her head at Yarine’s antics.
“If this contraption falls out of the sky, you’ll wish you had yours active,” she replied, but still she stopped the calculation and let the shields vanish, the cabin going back to darkness. She noticed the phone was already warm to the touch. She was starting to learn that this was a common limitation to most of Earth’s ‘technologies’. From her pocket watch to her phone, or even the flying vehicle they were currently inside of, they all needed to be recharged from time to time, consuming fuel or electricity or something else. That the phone was dependent on this world’s infrastructure rankled Yarine immensely, and she would need to figure out how to deal with that once she could return long-term to the Manifold, where one couldn’t simply plug a wire into one of those odd little holes in the walls that seemed omnipresent here, found in almost every room.
It was a complication for another day, though, because soon enough the helicopter started to descend towards a coastal town, a sea of houses growing along the soft crescent shape of an enclosed bay. The vehicle skimmed over the roofs of buildings, and it finally landed on an enormous expanse of asphalt near the town’s outskirts. Yarine had to wait impatiently for one of the Agents to open the side door before she could finally, finally leave the death trap behind, crouching slightly to put as much distance between her head and the still spinning rotor as possible.
They boarded a shiny black ground car, part of a convoy along with the ones carrying more officers belonging to the same agency, and they advanced slowly across the town’s streets. They had opted for being inconspicuous, Bauman explained, which is why they weren’t clearing the traffic away with their flashing blue lights. And perhaps they should have mentioned that to her sometime before, she thought, and she’d have made sure to use her cosmetics; rather than going barefaced as she was now, her tattoos visible to everyone.
As it was, Yarine had a few minutes to look at the world outside, the rows of trees decorating the streets, the facades painted a clean white —which she guessed would shine when hit by the sun, but that now looked only drab under the overcast, cloudy sky— and the many balconies decorated with splashes of colorful flowers.
It was, she realized, a resort district. Or resort town, in this case. Not unlike Panvillon, back in the Manifold, with calm aquamarine waters and perennial warm weather. And when the cars spat them out on a promenade overlooking a now half empty beach, the sea beyond all choppy and violent, she could almost imagine the crowds of wealthy Salakorians strolling by, pausing to peruse at stores selling trinkets at prices inflated twelve-fold or more.
And there were crowds. Of human vacationers, at that, the sight still bizarre no matter how many days she had spent in this world already. Hundreds of people strolling along the promenade despite the weather threatening rain, and she guessed the crowds would only be thicker in those days when the sun actually made an appearance. Most of them looked relaxed, satisfied. Well off, even.
Which only made the contrast more apparent when she finally saw a few who weren’t. A couple of vagabonds sat on a nearby corner. Human beggars, dressed in messy clothes and with unkempt hair. The kind of humans she’d grown used to seeing in the Manifold, in a district like this. She gazed back at the Agents, her brow furrowing.
“Didst thou trow Earth would’st be a paradise?” Frey replied to her unspoken question. “We have problems too.”
“This is wherefore we need thy Oracle,” said Bauman. “The Manifold’s own techno— calculations. An they can open new worlds for us, gift us more resourceth... We are ensnared hither, condemned to a single planet. Resourceth are scarce.”
“Somehow, they always are,” muttered Yarine, thinking of Oosmon’s flying coach, of mansions built out of sheer pretentiousness.
Because that was always the excuse, wasn’t it? Always the justification, for the poverty, for the slums. And did Earth have slums too? Did it have scores of people being marginalized, their lives harsher than they could’ve been? Did it have its own equivalent to the Archons, to the Oleans always hovering above ground?
Odd, that she felt so disappointed. She figured that by now and after all that she’d seen while working with the Divergence, she’d been cured of any misplaced idealism. That she’d have realized that the better way was just... words in a poem. That reality would always, always fail to live up to a dream.
“This is’t,” Bauman said a few minutes later, raising his eyes from his phone’s screen to look at the area around them. “The marked latitude, three hundred meters endlong.”
“How long was a meter again?” asked Yarine.
“As from thy feet up to thy hip,” said Frey.
“Must we scan now e’ry soul present hither, withal the tracking app?” asked Bauman, turning to Yarine. “’Twill take us hours. How did the Manifold’s Divineers handle this toil?”
She shrugged. “It’s been hundreds of years since the last time, so some of the details are lost. But from what I was taught, it was easier for them. Because they started the search just months after the previous one died, they knew the rough age of the new one. They only had to check the infants.”
“Aye, it could be anyone,” said Frey, her brow knitting as she took in the sizable crowd around them. She pressed the communicator in her ear. The radio, Yarine now knew. “Let’s commence, then. Scan everyone thee run into hence, and be discreet.”
The two Agents and their subordinates spread around, and for the next minutes they started scanning everyone in the crowd with their phones; doing their best not to call attention, keeping their phones low and close to their bodies as they surreptitiously pointed the devices at people old and young, women and men.
Yarine had the same algorithm in her phone, but found it unnecessary to scan people herself, seeing as Frey never was more than a step away and she was already busy at work. It seemed like the woman wasn’t willing to let her guest drift away in the crowd. Which sure, Yarine could understand, but it still annoyed her. So feeling somewhat petty she quickened her pace along the promenade, forcing Frey to rush after her if she didn’t want to be left behind.
Instead of looking at a tiny screen, Yarine’s gaze went to the people they crossed paths with. Vacationers, and residents, and some service workers, many of them giving her odd looks in return. The thought that one of these people was the Oracle —the missing guide of the Manifold— was unreal, and she found herself asking that question of every face. Was it that matronly woman with two kids orbiting around her? What about the old man sitting at the stone bench, his beard whitening? Could it be the girl wiping the tavern’s table, her hair tied tight into a ponytail?
But again and again Frey pressed her finger on the phone’s screen, aiming its camera this and that way, and again and again she frowned and moved on. And after a quarter hour of this —which Yarine didn’t need her watch to measure, she was starting to develop an intuitive feel of Earth’s time units— even her tense enthusiasm began to wane. And she wondered if they could have made some mistake, when adapting the tracking theorem to work on one of Earth’s computers.
It hadn’t been a simple project. Definitely more complex than the other theorematic calculations, in no small part because there were symbols and references to mathematical concepts in Solver’s notebook that Yarine herself didn’t fully grasp, and so they’d needed to involve a couple of Earth’s top mathematicians in the process; get them to teach her some of their deductions, see if they fit.
Compared to that, getting the shell-shields to work had been easy. And fun; Yarine had sat next to the computer engineer as they worked together, she explaining the steps written in the notebook, he entering the computer code necessary to emulate them into his laptop —another type of calculating machine, this one with a larger screen and a board full of little key buttons that his hands had danced across with uncanny dexterity. And then he had pressed one of those buttons and the shell-shield had come alive, wrapping the laptop entirely as it activated. They both had jumped and celebrated, before quickly realizing the flaw in their plan, as they’d had to wait for the machine’s battery to fully drain before they could continue working, with no way to reach its many buttons that were now firmly protected under an impenetrable shield.
Frey also seemed to grow skeptical of the whole thing with every minute they didn’t find their target, because she was now communicating with the people back at the headquarters, asking them to run the whole tracking theorem once more in case the Oracle had moved away from the area, and to verify that there were no bugs in the calculation of all things, which puzzled Yarine —could insects get into computers?— but all right.
She drifted a few paces away then, her eyes attracted by an outcrop of market stalls next to the intersection between the main promenade and a side street. Each one a simple table covered by a piece of cloth as a sunshade of sorts, and with all kind of wares on display for sale: dresses of almost every variety and in a rainbow of colors, necklaces and bracelets of curious designs, an entire table covered entirely in wide-brimmed hats —Yarine guessed today’s gloomy weather was probably putting a dent on that particular stall’s owner, seeing as the woman behind the table eyed her with a grumpy expression as Yarine walked past.
She paused by a stall with a wild assortment of paintings in display, so many that not all of them fit on the table, instead sprawling across the nearby area, with some resting against the closest building’s wall. The canvases ranged from the size of a small booklet, all the way to a painting almost as tall as herself. Most depicted natural scenes, majestic landscapes, lush valleys bathed by twin suns, and snow-covered mountains, and tropical rainforests under planetary rings. They reminded Yarine of the Palace of the Five Skies, of all things, of the murals that decorated the executive rooms at the Compound of Peace.
Except that these paintings were less detailed. Instead the brush-strokes were clearly visible, lines of color that followed spirals and geometric patterns that weren’t really part of the objects in the scene, but that gave the resulting image an almost surreal quality. It was that, she realized, that had made her pause. Almost as if the combined shapes of all those intricate lines made the artworks feel... heavier, somehow. Denser.
The artist was hard at work on a new painting, right behind the stall. He was a young man with an unkempt beard and brown hair, a few curly bangs managing to worm their way to freedom out of the bandana he was wearing. There were splotches of paint on his clothes, some brown and messy trousers and a loose shirt. His looks were almost a polar opposite of that of the Agents, always so immaculate. But it wasn’t surprising, seeing how he worked as if in a trance, as if the paintbrush in his hand were a grass serpent and the canvas a helpless pouncefoot, droplets of paint flying away with every sudden attack.
And then Yarine saw what was in the canvas, what the new painting was depicting, and her eyes went wide. And she had to do a double take, and her heart skipped a beat.
Because that half-painted landscape in the canvas, it was the monumental world of Elara. Seen from somewhere off-city, yes, but the district’s majestic buildings were still visible in the distance, as was the massive inverted pyramid, its physics-defying shape impossible to miss.
She quickly rushed to examine the other artworks. And yes, now that she was paying attention she started to recognize many of them. The fields of Loraker here, the ancient streets of Innarvis there. A small painting of the fractal lattice itself at the corner of the table, almost unassuming. Even Ceeter, as seen from the bay outside the city proper, the commercial towers faint vertical smudges in the distance.
All in all, almost half of the paintings on display were of places in the Manifold, the other half being just imaginary worlds.
Or maybe not, she thought with a shiver. Maybe not imaginary, but unknown.
Yarine’s sudden interest in art didn’t go unnoticed, and she saw out of the corner of her eye as the Agents and other officers converged to make a perimeter. Bauman, his eyes wide at what his phone’s screen no doubt was confirming to him, approached the man —no, the Oracle!— and started talking to him in hushed tones.
He is too young, Yarine thought. Because in her mind, an Oracle had to be old. The title synonymous with a bigger than life figure, all wise and ancient, bringing mystical knowledge to the masses. She figured all the Oracles in Solver’s list had to have been young at some point, but it felt almost heretical, thinking of them in that way. And the idea of an unkempt Oracle, working with their hands, their clothes dirty... it was madness.
She shook her head and was about to join the conversation when she noticed yet another painting, and instead she walked up to it, almost as if drawn against her will. It was one of the larger canvases resting against the closest building’s wall. She had paid it no mind at first, but now she couldn’t look anywhere else.
It depicted a slum. A muddy street with wooden sidewalks, enclosed by stilt houses resting against each other. The skies a purple twilight, the shadows long. It was only missing the people, the humans.
She could almost recognize the street, she realized, standing right in front of the canvas. She knew the Rookery would be somewhere to the left side, off the limited view the painting depicted. Assuming it was still standing, of course. And she wished the strange shapes of brush-strokes, their circles and straight lines weren’t so prominent, though. It was almost as if the whole painting was covered in...
Yarine froze. Then slowly, so very slowly she placed her hand right in front of the painting, and compared the spirals and lines of her own tattoos with those of the colorful brush-strokes.
It was as if the whole painting was covered in link-patterns.
Each stroke, each line of paint, all of them coalescing into a complex, intricate design. A web of circles and branches and lines not unlike the ones covering her entire body, but much more compact: the lines on the canvas wrapped against each other with almost no space left in between. A much, much denser link-pattern.
And she could feel the density, as if the painting itself was a black hole of complexity, pulling at reality itself to fall into it.
Almost by instinct, Yarine reached with her hand to the vectorial field, and found that every single vectorial strand, every single one of those taut strings, pointed straight at the canvas in front of her.
Could it be...?
It was impossible, of course. That’s not how shadeswimming worked.
But could it be...?
She grasped one of the strings between her finger and thumb, took a deep breath, and pulled hard.
It resisted her, at first. The string felt heavier than any she had plucked before. Somehow impossibly unyielding and trying to wiggle out of her fingers at the same time. She realized then that she was doing this wrong, that she couldn’t shadeswim into the painting, but when she tried to push at the string instead, reversing the direction of the abstract movement, she felt the lines in the canvas shake slightly in front of her very eyes.
She pushed with more force then, the link-patterns in her own body almost vibrating with the effort. It was as if the canvas contained one of these strange human machines, one of their mechanical contraptions, already primed and ready to go. In an equilibrium of sorts, and she had only to give it that final push. To put it into motion, release its stored tension.
She missed the moment it changed. One instant she was looking at a normal canvas, and the next there was a shining point right in its center. It grew larger and larger, and the brush-strokes, the painting itself seemed to flow into it, like water going down a drain. The canvas vanishing, the brush-strokes shifting and widening, becoming a circle of scintillating distortions. It was easier then, so she kept pushing at the string, and the circle opened and a breath of damp, humid air hit her face. Yarine grinned, and pushed with more force.
She was laughing by the time the newly born Void-Bridge was big enough that she could fit comfortably inside, and she could see the residents of the swampy world rush to gather on the other side of the tunnel in reality, their faces surprised and brightly enthused. And still she kept pushing, widening the portal, past the size of a ground car, and then past the width of two cars, and then as wide as the very street she was standing on, the top of the tunnel raising far over her head.
Her growing fatigue made her stop there, but she almost didn’t notice the way her whole body trembled in exhaustion, her heavy breathing. Instead, she took a step ahead, and crossed the bridge. And then she was back in Sutsack once more.
She stood there for a beat, looking at the residents of the slum, the humans —and a couple Levorians also in the growing crowd— looking back at her. All muttering to each other, pointing at her.
It was the Oracle who brought her out of her trance, as he too crossed the Void-Bridge, stepped by her side followed by the two bewildered Agents. The young man’s jaw dropping low, his eyes jumping from point to point, as if trying to encompass the whole sight, the whole district at once.
Like anyone who had spent their entire youth within the perimeter walls of the Palace of the Five Skies, Yarine too had been educated in the Sacramental Theorems. At one point or another, she had witnessed most of the Divineers’ ancestral rituals. But never in a million years would she have thought she’d have to perform this one herself.
But there were no Divineers around, were there? And besides, it was... fitting. That she did it herself. A human speaking the words, for a human Oracle.
“What is your name,” she asked the young painter.
It took him a couple of seconds to register she was talking to him. When he spoke, his voice was raspy. “Mine...own name? Liam... Liam Zenellis?” He made it sound like a question.
She took a knee right in front of him —who looked down at her with sudden alarm in his eyes— and started speaking aloud, her voice firm and raised so that everyone in the crowd would hear it:
“Thrice rooted in the Equation!” she all but shouted the ancient words. “The pattern in time has converged once more. Long live the Bridger of Voids, scion of the eternal Lattice. Long live His Primeness Liam Zenellis, Supreme Archon of the Fractal Empire, and 211th Oracle of the Manifold of Worlds!”
To which the Oracle replied: “What.”
 
First Prev Next

The Tehlin church version of history, including Trapis' story of Menda, is in my opinion almost completely unreliable. Let me explain...
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THE FACTS ABOUT TEHLINISM, AS I SEE THEM
Tehlu isn't God, Aleph is. Kvothe suggests 'Tehlu' when asked who created the world about "God" as a child, but Kote introduces his story by saying "in the beginning" Aleph spun (created) the world (Temerant) from the nameless void (nothingness) or at least was the one who named all things, implying Kvothe has learned something about who God is since he was a child. Tehlu isn't listed as one of the most powerful in Skarpi's story, either as God/Tehlu or Menda/Tehlu, but rather is just another survivor of the war, who says he serves Aleph, and is made an angel by Aleph. Aleph is Hebrew for Alpha and for the number one, and is frequently used to represent the Hebrew God, as in 'I am the Alpha and the Omega'... in Hebrew he is the Aleph and the Tav.
The story of Menda/Tehlu didn't happen 400-1000 years ago, like Trapis guessed, because the destruction of the 6 of 7 cities happened about 5000 years ago.
Encanis didn't burn down 6 of 7 cities, Lanre/Alaxel/Haliax and the Chandrian/Rhinta did that, per Skarpi and Shehyn. Only solution is to assume Encanis = Haliax, but he didn't get burned alive between a giant iron wheel and Menda/Tehlu, because both Tehlu and Haliax are still alive. Also, in Daeonica, Tarsus sells his soul to Encanis in the underworld. Encanis can't be Haliax alive for 5000 years in the mortal realm AND ruling hell trading power for souls AND forever killed and no longer a threat. No two of those three things can be true at the same time.
Lady Perial perhaps wasn't a virgin, in 'For All His Waiting' Fain said many men had tried the fit of her 'hat', a sexual reference.
Patrick Rothfuss would not allow the true history of Temerant to be an immaculate conception, from a woman during a dream from God, who birthed a son of God that is also God who drives out demons and sacrifices himself to save mankind on a man-sized religious symbol (as wheel to cross) that his followers wear around their necks and put on their churches. Patrick Rothfuss would not use the New Testament as the foundation for the actual history of Temerant.
The Tehlin religion is pretty trash. Tehlu/Menda says you get punished no matter what, literally zero redemption, just discipline and punishment for the good and the evil alike. Puppet's Tehlin priest puppet beats the little girl puppet. The priests in Tarbean diddle the street children. We see a dozen examples of the Tehlin church being terrible. The church-sanctioned, bloody-handed 'human' Amyr may not be any better, but that's at least debatable.
Is there any point to Trapis' story? Is it just a big red herring? No... Kote is telling this story, so it must serve some purpose for him to include it. He excludes interesting pirate attacks and death trials that don't matter to the story. This story must be important, because Kote intentionally includes it.
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ANALYSIS AND THEORY
Patrick Rothfuss confirms Trapis believes different than most Tehlins, and his beliefs would make him part of a heretic sect that separated from the Tehlins, and that was the root of the 'Mender heresies'. The heresy presumably either the claim that Menda 'is Tehlu' or that he was the 'son of God Tehlu'.
Rothfuss Reread: Pat Answers the Admissions Questions Tor.com
Skarpi was arrested for heresy by church police immediately after telling the story of Tehlu saying he 'serves' Aleph, and Aleph turning him into an angel of justice, probably for perpetuating the Mender heresy. Marten prays to Menda, Perial, and the angels during the fight with the Eld bandits and Cinder, making him an obvious Mender Heretic too. Marten and Trapis, relating to Martin and Trappists, aka Martin Luther who split from Catholics and Trappist monks who split from the Cistercians.
Trapis is actually closer to the truth than the Tehlins. We have confirmation from Skarpi that a being named Tehlu existed, just not the 'creator God' Tehlu, since he states that he 'serves' Aleph, the actual creator God and he wasn't as powerful as Aleph, Lyra, Iax, or Selitos. This would confirm that some version of Menda/Tehlu exists in a definitely non-god form and was at least called Tehlu.
Tehlins believe Tehlu is God only, no son. We know this is not true, Tehlu the Ruach or human existed and lived in Temerant and served Aleph.
Trapis and the Menders believe Tehlu is God and son. We also know this is not true. Aleph is God, even Tehlu the Ruach (or possibly human) serves him, and even Kote acknowledges him as creator despite living in a world surrounded by Tehlu worshippers.
We are left to question who Tehlu's true father is, and how he impregnated Perial with Tehlu, and why the Tehlins would go so far as to criminalize the very idea of Menda/Tehlu son of himself.
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TINFOIL HAT:
Tehlu's dad might be faen: Tehlu exists, so let's assume his mother is Lady Perial. Are the 'miracles' of virgin birth and fast aging accurate? Could be true, could be pure fantasy, but I believe it is both true and false. If Tehlu's father were fae, and Perial went to him in the fae and got knocked up, had a kid, the kid grew up, then both returned to her home in the mortal realm, then the local villagers would see that child had no mortal father and aged magically fast, resulting in people telling stories of his miraculous birth. Dreams and fae have been linked together multiple times in the books, Perial's 'dream' could have been symbolism for being in the fae.
Tehlu's dad might be Fain: We know only a tiny piece of 'For All His Waiting', Fain tells Lady Perial he wants to try her 'hat' because all the men say it's a nice fit. Not very romantic, so if he does impregnate her, it would be non-consensual. Fain sounds like faen, which fits the theory of her father being in the fae.
Lady Perial may be Kvothe's ancestor: she felt like she were a great golden bell that had just rung out its first note. She opened her eyes... The golden, ring, and eyes in quick sequence might symbolically relate to the ring of gold around Kvothe's and Laurien's green eyes, a tiny clue that maybe Perial is Kvothe's ancestor.
Music is a far bigger factor in ancient naming power than we ever are directly told: Perial is impregnated and she feels like a golden bell being rung, Jax uses a magical jade flue to lure the moon, Lyra's voice is mentioned 12 times by Skarpi, Shehyn says the ancient race of pre-humans 'sang songs of power', the Lady in 'How Old Holly Came to Be' sings songs that do amazing magic, Kvothe sings while naming Felurian, Fain's nightingale is literally 'night songstress' in Old English, Lyra is the name of Orpheus' magic lyre made by Zeus and used to conquer hades in an attempt to save a dead wife and is now a constellation put in the sky by Zeus. Music is so closely tied to ancient naming/shaping, I wouldn't be shocked if El'the means 'singer'.
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DOUBLE-LAYERED TINFOIL HAT AKA LONGSHOTS:
Tehlu = Taborlin? Tehlu is said to have fought and stopped/killed Haliax, forever. We know that he didn't stop him... did Tehlu fight him at all, before Selitos banished Haliax? Of course, he was on the 'good' side of the war, so presumably he fought the Chandrian as his city was attacked. We have on record only one instance of someone semi-successfully fighting the Chandrian before they left their cities for good: Taborlin vs the Wizard King Scyphus aka Cyphus who bears the blue flame. Could this have actually been originally a Menda/Tehlu adventure? Was Tehlu trying to stop the Chandrian's plot, only to be delayed by being trapped in a towedungeon by Cyphus making the destruction of Myr Tariniel possible? If so, are some or all Taborlin stories based on Tehlu, or vice versa? Seems a long shot to be true, but it's the clearest clue I can find.
Tehlu = Illien? The Ruh date back to before books, back to when men first gathered around campfires. Illien wrote the oldest Ruh songs, so Illien may be another Creation War era figure. Illien has red hair, is Edema Ruh, is a world class musician, just like our Kvothe, and would make an easy candidate for one of Kvothe's ancient ancestors, so why not also be part of the Lackless line. If you believe Denna's identical description to Meluan proves she is the Lackless lost heir, not Kvothe and nottallya lotless, then Kvothe could STILL be Lackless through his father's side, the Edema Ruh side of his lineage. And the irony would be strong if Meluan were not only Ruh blood, but Ruh royalty.
Tehlu = Illien = Taborlin? Just the next logical question, no direct evidence that I am aware of.
Fain builds machines? Fain has a garden monologue in 'The Swineherd and the Nightingale', also starring Lady Reythiel. 'The Swineherd' and 'The Nightingale' are both children's stories by Hans Christian Anderson, both involve the downfalls of preferring mechanical trinkets to the natural wonders of earth. I recommend you read them; they are pretty short. In 'The Nightingale' a king mourns the loss of his actual nightingale after replacing him with a mechanical one. In 'The Swineherd' a prince is rejected by the princess for gifts of an actual nightingale and a rose, but he receives her kisses when dressed as a swineherd and offering gifts of contraptions that played music, and both king and prince scold the princess for her folly. What's this has to do with Fain? Well... it turns out that in a non-canon KKC themed fantasy game that Rothfuss helped create, the scrael are classified as 'constructs'. This, along with the advanced mechanical nature of the underthing, and theories about the black iron scaled shadow breathing beast being some form of machine, might suggest that Iax was something of a tinkerer:
True Dungeon in the Fae- The Moongate Maze – What's Their Plan? (chaen-dian.com)
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TRIPLE TINFOIL WARNING!!! Either pure madness, or huge spoilers, your pick:
As above, so below AKA Tehlu's dad might be Iax AKA my pet theory: In the KKC game story linked above, there is also a moon in the sky that you can call to bring to the fae, in the same scene that there is a moon fae who has been trapped for 10 months and is going crazy. Iax stole the moon to the fae, and perhaps with it gained great magic when it was full in his fae sky. I think Iax also trapped beautiful Perial, who he lusted after, sexually abused her, and impregnated her. Either he stole her using the power of the moon and can only control her while it is full in the fae sky, or he stole both at once because her power is linked to the moon, and she can only escape when the moon is not empty in the mortal sky. Alternatively, she may be some form of 'moon/magic' goddess, and stealing the moon included her being taken too, or vice versa stealing her also resulted in the moon being taken.
Persephone (Per- prefix like Perial), the Greek goddess of fertility, became the Goddess of the Underworld when Hades (aka Rex Infernus, Pluto, etc) kidnapped her... described as the 'rape of Persephone'. Forever after that, she was dragged to and from underworld, symbolically like crops coming in spring and leaving in autumn. Greek Persephone = Roman Proserpina/Libera , who is also part of the triune goddess Hecate , goddess of moon and magic. In the triple moon goddess, are the Crone -full moon, The Mother - half moon, and The Maiden (Libera/Persephone) - crescent moon... note that Haliax stands under these moon symbols on the Mauthen pot.
TLDR: The chthonic God of the underworld Rex kidnapped and raped the moon/magic Goddess Libera, and she became Queen of the Underworld, torn between underworld and mortal realm. As Kvothe has said in both books so far, "As above" (the moon was stolen from the mortal sky), "so below" (Perial was kidnapped from Temerant). As above, so below - Wikipedia
A few reasons why I think this is true:

1. if Jax Luckless is the first Lackless, he must have a kid.
2. It explains Kvothe and Jax having changing eye color.
3. The name Perry means 'traveler, wanderer' and the moon is called these exact same things.
4. The prefix peri means 'around, about' and is used regarding the moon, as in perigee meaning the point when the moon is closest to earth. 'Peri' is also a Persian 'fallen angel'.
5. The harsh sexual and non-consensual language of Fain to Lady Perial sounds like a woman being held against her will.
6. Being born in the fae would explain why Tehlu appears to have no father and appears to age rapidly. If one mortal realm day = 1/4 year in the fae, Kvothe would've been there for .75 years in 3 mortal days Menda who looked 17 on the first day of the seventh span of his life, would be 16.75 years old (67 days * .25 years = 16.75 years old). The math works well. Bast would've aged to 150 years in under 2 years mortal time. Great post about fae time here, his estimate of .33 fae years per mortal day is close to my own guess of .25.
7. Laurien says "a man came to me. He bound me with kisses and cords of chorded song. He robbed me of my virtue and stole me away" as a jest to Arliden about her alleged real life circumstances, but when taken literally the phrase uses three non-consensual terms to indicate a woman who is musically seduced but then bound, raped, and kidnapped.
8. Norse Glámr means 'pale one' and is poetically the name of the moon.
9. Luten (Temic for 'one') is the 'Monday' of Temerant. And like Monday, it may be based on Ludis or the Moon, and both maybe based on the Lute or vice versa. Interestingly... there are seven days in the original Temerant calendar. The Tehlins changed that history too, by adding four days to each week for the new 11 day 'span'. I think the Tehlins ended the seven-day week because it may have held hints about the 'true' history of Temerant, perhaps relating to the seven cities, or the seven city leaders/betrayers. Also, if Illien = Tehlu, then perhaps he plays lute like his mother did.
10. As u/Byiron pointed out, Teh is the rune for lock, and Lu is a prefix for the moon (lunar, Ludis), so Tehlu could mean locked-moon. He also links Tehlu to Baphomet here , which has other interesting connections.
11. Feign (fain) means to appear to be something that you are not to deceive others.
12. The word moon appears 52 times in NOTW and 165 times, described as beautiful, pale, naked, round-bellied, and used to describe lust (mooning).
13. Chandra is the Hindu word for moon, and the name of their moon deity, and the Chandrian leader is pictured below three moon phases (crone, mother, virgin?).
14. Hades, at least in this 2400-year-old painting, drives a chariot with a wheel having six spokes, identical to the wheel of Tehlu... real longshot there but mildly interesting.
15. The nightingale is old english for 'night songstress', and poetically is a female singer, combined with belief that namers=singers, and the nightingale may have been Ludis/Perial.
16. "They were afraid that she might have lain down with a demon, and that her child was a demon’s child."... and they may have been right. Jax had a demon riding his shadow, and the broken mansion he came from might represent the underworld or an equivalent.

Hi all! I'm making a list of 100 ways the abstract, ineffable concept of magic can take a physical form. Maybe as something tactile, solid or liquid or gas. Or perhaps as enacting force, like music without a source, or the essence of thought and emotion, perhaps a seventh sense. Who is to say how magic expresses itself in the physical world.
Below are a bunch of examples I've compiled, as sourced by you kind people in a previous post. Since traction seemed to have died down with the list still incomplete, I figure I'd post it again. I'd love to hear the cool stuff you guys come up with :D
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1.	Radiance	Thin threads of magic, shimmering golden. Radiance is woven by the Sun itself, and kept secret and safe by the celestials.	u/De-Signated
2.	Soulweave	Cobalt blue strands, often forming tissue or flame. It often contains the magical essence of a living being, and is used by necromancers to conjure bodies of the deceased.	u/De-Signated
3.	Everfrost	A white, powdery substance, not to be confused with snow. A substance fueled by magic to be infinitely cold. The mountaintops surrounding the fortress of Winter are covered in it.	u/De-Signated
4.	Desiderium	A precious, multi-chromatic mineral at first glance. Pure solidified magic after closer examination.	u/De-Signated
5.	Fractured Lightning	Light blue shards, crackling with lightning and static. They are often found at sites of great magical impact, and are in fact not a stable solid.	u/De-Signated
6.	Royaldew	Also called the water of life. In the garden of Spring stands a fountain from which it flows, giving life and growth to the greenery around.	u/De-Signated
7.	Living Blood	A despicable compound used by shadow-lurkers and vampires. It is the key to the forbidden practice of hemokinesis, the mixing of magic and flesh. The blood emulsifies, binds the magic to a physical form, but is rarely stable.	u/De-Signated
8.	Darkness	Though technically physical, Darkness takes the form of a thick fog, a dense cloud of vanta black. It can be contained in bottles or jars - provided you know the way to the geysers in the depths, and live to make it back	u/De-Signated
9.	Pixie Dust	Many know it to harbor magical qualities, but few are aware that pixie dust is, in fact, pure physical magic. Perhaps this is the reason why its recipe is such a well-guarded secret	u/De-Signated
10.	Embelpearl	The product of many a great scientific breakthrough, and of but few man-made stable physical forms. They are beads with a magenta hue and light shimmer, named after the person who laid the foundation to their discovery.	u/De-Signated
11.	Farinay's Trefoil	Once the favourite flower of a spring witch, by her magic made real. The leaf makes for strong medicine, and in days past maidens would weave its flowers into a garland for their betrothed. But ever since the witch abandoned her duty and turned to the dark arts, they are exceedingly rare to find.	u/De-Signated
12.	whit-horn	Hardy, coiled horns poached from the mythical steeds the God-Emperor Astreo rode into battle. It is said he gifted the horses under his command these horns of pure magic as token of his gratitude.	u/De-Signated
13.	Silver tears / moondrop tears	Drops of shimmering silver, said to be the tears shed by Silver Witch after she was taken from her true love and banished to the moon. They are found in the chalices of flowers around the Silver Lake, where the children of the Witch call their home.	u/De-Signated
14.	Hexfire	A flame fueled by pure magic. It does not need wood or coals to burn, and is not smothered by wind or water. Though it may not be hot per se, it can burn for eternities	u/De-Signated
15.	Nicritium	A pale ore obtained from the depths of the Downside, with the propensity to cast gloom over any chamber it is in. The most expensive of assassins swear by it for its ability to harm even dreams.	u/Falconacious
16.	Geistspeit	Dark orange substances which form like stalagmites in areas where forgotten dreams and nightmares haunt. It is said to be the physical manifestation of their hatred and spite.	u/Falconacious
17.	Ectoplasm	A translucent, goopy slime substance often seen in green (though the colour may vary). The viscous substance ghosts and dreamers may use to interact with the physical world	u/SayethWeAll
18.	Aethercloud	The airy stuff that outer space is made out of. Magic permeates the entire earth - but where there is no earth, magic simply is. The great sky-grazers flying at the top of the world often use aethercloud to keep to the air.	u/SayethWeAll
19.	Chrono Fatui	The shadow of time in space. For long time they were mistaken for mirages, but in actuality it is a physical ghost-image of objects or people from a time past or to come. Particularly skilled fortune tellers may be able to shape a chrono fatuum to the time and place they desire.	u/SayethWeAll
20.	Indigo Smoke	When Radiance is set alight, its smoke will be the colour of deep, radiant darkness. While it is a more unstable form, the magical potential in the smoke dissipating as it disperses in the air surrounding, it is not without use. Those who inhale the smoke should be particularly careful about trusting their judgement and their senses...	u/ljmiller62
21.	Notes of the Heavenly Choir	Magic become physical in the form of sound and music. The notes coalesce at only the peaks of the highest mountains, and may invigorate any who hears them. Those living on those mountaintops have discovered a way to catch them in flute and horn, so they can later be played, woven into song or spell.	u/Glif13
22.	Marks of Chaos	Magic become physical in the form of words, symbols and pictograms tied into a knot, drawn or carved on a surface. Marks vary from the size of subscript on legal parchment to the size of frescos painted in the great halls. They never contain a complete - or sometimes even concrete - message, but appeal to primal emotions. They may be unnerving, calming, provocative, or altogether disturbing. Some even claim they have seen a mark of chaos grow...	u/Glif13
23.	Vile Violet Spots	A vile essence or confliction, laid at the foundation of the studies seeking to create life from scratch. Violet spots only appear on sapient skin, and may spread to others by mere touch. They hardly go away, but otherwise appear harmless - until the carrier dies. Then, their magical potential is enough to partially or wholly animate the carrier's flesh. And once taken over, the violet spots spread like wildfire. The spots can appear easily tot those who have been in contact with death, in any form.	u/Glif13
24.	Stellarite	A crystal glowing with unearthly pink and green hues, fallen from among the stars. It is believed to be a condensation of the Aethercloud spanning the cosmos above us, hailing down every now and then. Especially schools with magic regarding teleportation, summoning creatures from beyond the Aethercloud, and dubious healing practices believed by many to be inhumane - literally.	u/FirstChAoS
25.	Effect	Though scholars are still hotly debating whether or not the flames of a fireball conjured by magic are magical flames or not, there is the unanimous consent that they were at the very least created by magic. The more pedantic of learners insist that thus, the effect of a magical spell, scroll, potion or other, should technically count as a physical form of magic. They are advised not to let this get to their heads: Effect still requires a constant stream of potential input to remain stable.	u/De-Signated
26.	Brotheum	It is well-known that certain metals have a high affinity to magic: gold and zinc being prime examples. Brotheum is the result of such an ore with high affinity, over the eons, gathering and condensing magic. These ancient ores have great affinity for heat, and thus highly sought after by the masters of the forge. For only a true master has the capabilities to give shape to the raw ore.	u/UnumQuiScribit
27.	Magic's Mourning	A shimmering prismatic liquid, first discovered in the filters of anti-magic devices. It is believed to be the tears of the banished magic, mourning its loss, and is theorized to appear when any spell, scroll or potion which banishes magic is used.	u/F4C3L3S5_J0e
28.	The Nugg	The Nugg is a a large cluster of what appear to be acorns, stuck together by forces unknown. Whenever The Nugg sprouts, another acorn is added to the collective. It's unknown where The Nugg came from, or if it will ever grow into a tree, but one thing is certain: You can make some mighty fine benches out of it.	u/ry_st
29.	Immaculate Dye	A fine powder, able to take any desired colour. In times past, the Elves used grand magic and machinery to sieve the Desert of Colour for this immaculate dye, and grew rich selling it. Since the fall of their empire, however, it has grown rare. While the magical nature of immaculate dye is commonly known, the fact it is magic given physical form is not.	u/De-Signated
30.	Gelwire	A strange, orange gel found in puddles of the desolate wastelands of the Godgrave. Once scholars realised its potential in channeling magical potential over long distances, , it became highly sought after. Entire civilizations would revolve around it, if the battlefield of gods was not such a dangerous place to be.	u/LargePileOfSnakes
31.	Cerebral Light	An irridiscent material of magic giving form to thought and emotion. Through a combination of meditation and magic, the Enlightened have learned to create these shards over the span of times. It is known to absorb oncoming physical attacks, and bolster those used by the bearer.	u/LargePileOfSnakes
32.	Ragged Light	In form and appearance identical to Cerebral light, but created by tumultuous minds. The embedded thought and emotion are not cohesive, and as a result, the compound is rarely stable. Still, the black market seems to prefer this form over the other.	u/De-Signated, inspired by the above
33.	Null Concentrate	A material consisting of contradictions and impossibilities, or in other words, the magically-induced crumbling of reality. The concentrate appears as a rift, buzzing loudly and giving way to things not native to our existence. Those who spend too much time around a concentrate will be driven mad by the surrealities.	u/LargePileOfSnakes
34.	Spark of the Wild	Sparks of wild magic originated from the grindstone of the Antlered One. Usually they are fickle and swiftly vanish into the source, but if one lands on a sapient being, it will claim it as its host. It will slowly grow, stealing the dreams of its host, until it has grown powerful enough to impose its will. Then the host will enter a dreaming trance, while the spark takes over their husk. However, unlike the fate of victims of the vile violet spots, this process is reversible... Given enough resources and effort.	u/LargePileOfSnakes
35.	Ancient Nautilus	Thought to be a fossil of ancient creatures made from pure magic, this nautilus looks like a snail's shell, but with a blue and purple sheen. Using it as a component in spellcasting can modify the result of the spell to create natural-seeming caverns, depending on the spell type. However, using it in any spells directed at someone's mind is known to cause madness.	u/ry_st
36.	Bumpy Gum	Bumpy Gum is an odd substance, carrying the properties of both rubber and gum - despite neither of those compounds officially having been invented yet.	u/De-Signated
37.	Spright	Sprights are mystical creatures made out of pure magic, theorised to have existed since the dawn of time. They can manifest themselves as a floating orb of light, or lens flare, but often remain hidden from prying eyes. When placed in captivity, they often fracture and become unstable, destroying themselves along with anything close-by.	u/De-Signated
38.	Faint Omen	Perhaps the most elusive physical form magic can take. Omen is the shiver down your spine when met with someplace disturbing. Omen is the spark of joy felt when inhaling sweet scents. Omen is pure and raw emotion, induced by pure and raw magic.	u/De-Signated
39.	Chaosbone	Deep in the badlands, where chaos resides, creatures touched by its unpredictable magic might soon find themselves growing lumps of Chaosbone. A hardy substance that grows in wicked, spiny, and thorny manners. Many a creature in those badlands have embraced the chaosbone horns and spikes sprouting from their skin, using them as effective weapons.	u/De-Signated
40.	Glyph	Some decades ago, a young scholar inherited a haunted mansion. In his lifetime, he would come to discover the reason -- that the precise floorplan made the mansion conductive of magic. This was a breakthrough: There exist arrangements of objects or structures - which are not magic themselves - exhibiting magical behaviour.	u/De-Signated
41.	Distilled Essence	The strongest of potions are distilled, not brewed. They have no magic forced into them during the process; they are made, distilled, from other physical forms of magic. This distilled essence has unique properties, depending on the form used and on herbs and spices added during the process. Often, these will exude various magical properties.	u/De-Signated
42.	Sacred Sap	The sap from the sacred trees of Saccellastreion. These trees are the source of its faith. It can give vigor and life when consumed and is exceptionally versatile to distill.	u/De-Signated
43.	Magicflies	Despite the name, magicflies are hardly flies. They are named after fireflies, which they resemble only in the sense that they light up and float about. For magicflies, there is nothing to light up; it simply does.	u/De-Signated
44.	Soul-song	Songs traditionally sung by a mythical bardic troupe believed to be descended of the Great Sages. Soul-song can reflect the singer's mood and share it with those listening. But they also have a second, deeper, meaning - audible to only those with whom a strong bond is shared.	u/Aquashinez
45.	Thread of Fate	Sometimes, the destiny of an individual is so strong, it can leave a physical trace; a thread, a partial segment of a particular destined event. Skillful magicians may attempt to gently tug them to steer the course of the event. Or, the more chaotic may try to forgo destiny altogether, severing the thread	u/Tigerchimera
46.	Time Sand	grains of sand, identified by a deep blue and purple colour, which contain power over a fraction of time. Certain wizards collect these exceedingly rare grains to fill their hourglass. The more grains one of these wizards collect, the more power their hourglass can exercise over the flow of time.	u/Tigerchimera
47.	Promise Ink	This liquid can be used as ink, and any promise or contract made using this ink will forever be bound and enforced by magic itself. Even when the promise is fulfilled, they never entirely fade from where they were made.	u/Tigerchimera
48.	Howling Fear	In places of great tragedy, such as the Godgrave, the echoing of those in trouble may ring even after their spirits have passed; a physical manifestation of their fear, a howling scream often instilling that fear in whoever hears it.	u/Tigerchimera
49.	Calcified Death	A calcium deposit found rarely by graveyards or battlefields. When deathly spirits frequent an area, they sometimes leave behind traces of their power. Any living thing that touches this calcified matter, will soon wither.	u/Tigerchimera
50.	Portaldew	Droplets of dew, looking like clear water, through which you can see the gate to another place. They cannot be collected by physical means, but must instead be attracted to special dowsing twigs.	u/Glif13
51.	Beliberdeum	Discovered by the most famous goblin sage, Weasly Trusthimnot, who everybody definitely knows, Beliberdeum is a most fascinating magical substance. Invisible, odorless, absolutely silent and almost impercptably small - but it can be interacted with through the sheer power of belief. Trustworthy human experts who can be trusted say Beliberdeum to be refreshing, good for the skin, and having the potency to raise spell effectiveness by over 300 percent.	u/Glif13
52.	Mimicsilver	The mimic's ability to morph and change form into something else to extreme degrees of scrutiny has always been regarded as a great spell - but in truth, the secret lies into the mimicsilver they are made up of. Silvery beads, somewhere in-between the state of solid and liquid, with the magical ability to copy any shape. If, of course, you don't misplace and lose it.	u/De-Signated
53.	Spectres	Often believed to be ghosts, these are magical entities visible only through the shade they leave behind. Little is known about them, other than this: The shadow can be that of inanimate objects, limbs, animals or even people. And: if they get a hold of you, you are never again seen.	u/Farysmally
54.	Meme	Nasty things using magic to perpetuate their existence within the thoughts and minds of sapients. Rarely anything but nonsense, but through the sheer anger, comedy, sadness or cheer they invoke, they can remain firmly locked within a mind for decades.	u/ButtonholePhotophile
55.	[Redacted]	most frequently found in the presence of N#ø*$h, this is a magical material that can %%%#$_ or even *@#[] the perception of itself or other <%}{#$ objects. Warnings: Exposure can lead &#[=/%) and even death.	u/No-Guard-8089
56.	Thoughtcatcher Web	Invisible webs spun from pure magic by tiny spiders that escaped the realm of fey and hex. Commonly built in doorways, and whenever a creature walks through, one of their recent thoughts and memories gets caught up in the web. This frequently results in people walking into a room, and forgetting what they came in for.	u/hypatiaspasia
57.	Runebug	Runebugs are elusive, near-invisible creatures that may manifest when a rune is drawn or calligraphed improperly. They will continuously suck up any magical potential poured into the rune, until the runewriter finds and disposed of it. Everyone has their own methods of finding runebugs, some more efficiently than others. But a single exhaustive method to find the runebug in any scenario is yet to be found.	u/De-Signated
58.	Withered Trefoil	Dead flowers and leaves which, despite not having been alive for who-knows-how-long, refuse to decompose. The spring witch who once adored the blooming trefoil, now turned to the dark arts, prevents them from doing so. While they contain the same magical energy as their live counterparts, it is much harder to extracted from the withered trefoil	u/De-Signated
59.	Undead Blood	A far more nefarious counterpart of livingblood. It is made largely the same, but does not relinquish control to wielders of hemokinesis. Instead, a thrall with dead blood in their veins surrenders control of their body to the mystical forces of magic.	u/De-Signated
60.	Hexwater	The crystalline structure of salt dissolved in water, the hex found out, excells at trapping magic - for some time, at least. They use it mainly as a base for their brews, though later studies found that, given the right salt mixtures, it can be used to distill as well.	u/De-Signated
70.	Chance	Chance is a mystical magical force permeating through all the world, striking whenever Chance permits. The result can be something small and insignificant; an object changing colour or a book changing font. But also something powerful or dangerous; such as sudden well of valuable materials appearing or hideous creatures birthing from normal eggs. Many who know of it try to harness this powerful Chance, but so far the god-gambler Don Jillian has been the only one capable of using an extent of its potential.	u/De-Signated
61/100			your name here

This is an older version, reposted here. I'll try to keep it up to date, but no promises.
Hi all! I'm making a list of 100 ways the abstract, ineffable concept of magic can take a physical form. Maybe as something tactile, solid or liquid or gas. Or perhaps as enacting force, like music without a source, or the essence of thought and emotion, perhaps a seventh sense. Who is to say how magic expresses itself in the physical world.
​

1.	Radiance	Thin threads of magic, shimmering golden. Radiance is woven by the Sun itself, and kept secret and safe by the celestials.	u/De-Signated
2.	Soulweave	Cobalt blue strands, often forming tissue or flame. It often contains the magical essence of a living being, and is used by necromancers to conjure bodies of the deceased.	u/De-Signated
3.	Everfrost	A white, powdery substance, not to be confused with snow. A substance fueled by magic to be infinitely cold. The mountaintops surrounding the fortress of Winter are covered in it.	u/De-Signated
4.	Desiderium	A precious, multi-chromatic mineral at first glance. Pure solidified magic after closer examination.	u/De-Signated
5.	Fractured Lightning	Light blue shards, crackling with lightning and static. They are often found at sites of great magical impact, and are in fact not a stable solid.	u/De-Signated
6.	Royaldew	Also called the water of life. In the garden of Spring stands a fountain from which it flows, giving life and growth to the greenery around.	u/De-Signated
7.	Living Blood	A despicable compound used by shadow-lurkers and vampires. It is the key to the forbidden practice of hemokinesis, the mixing of magic and flesh. The blood emulsifies, binds the magic to a physical form, but is rarely stable.	u/De-Signated
8.	Darkness	Though technically physical, Darkness takes the form of a thick fog, a dense cloud of vanta black. It can be contained in bottles or jars - provided you know the way to the geysers in the depths, and live to make it back	u/De-Signated
9.	Pixie Dust	Many know it to harbor magical qualities, but few are aware that pixie dust is, in fact, pure physical magic. Perhaps this is the reason why its recipe is such a well-guarded secret	u/De-Signated
10.	Embelpearl	The product of many a great scientific breakthrough, and of but few man-made stable physical forms. They are beads with a magenta hue and light shimmer, named after the person who laid the foundation to their discovery.	u/De-Signated
11.	Farinay's Trefoil	Once the favourite flower of a spring witch, by her magic made real. The leaf makes for strong medicine, and in days past maidens would weave its flowers into a garland for their betrothed. But ever since the witch abandoned her duty and turned to the dark arts, they are exceedingly rare to find.	u/De-Signated
12.	whit-horn	Hardy, coiled horns poached from the mythical steeds the God-Emperor Astreo rode into battle. It is said he gifted the horses under his command these horns of pure magic as token of his gratitude.	u/De-Signated
13.	Silver tears / moondrop tears	Drops of shimmering silver, said to be the tears shed by Silver Witch after she was taken from her true love and banished to the moon. They are found in the chalices of flowers around the Silver Lake, where the children of the Witch call their home.	u/De-Signated
14.	Hexfire	A flame fueled by pure magic. It does not need wood or coals to burn, and is not smothered by wind or water. Though it may not be hot per se, it can burn for eternities	u/De-Signated
15.	Nicritium	A pale ore obtained from the depths of the Downside, with the propensity to cast gloom over any chamber it is in. The most expensive of assassins swear by it for its ability to harm even dreams.	u/Falconacious
16.	Geistspeit	Dark orange substances which form like stalagmites in areas where forgotten dreams and nightmares haunt. It is said to be the physical manifestation of their hatred and spite.	u/Falconacious
17.	Ectoplasm	A translucent, goopy slime substance often seen in green (though the colour may vary). The viscous substance ghosts and dreamers may use to interact with the physical world	u/SayethWeAll
18.	Aethercloud	The airy stuff that outer space is made out of. Magic permeates the entire earth - but where there is no earth, magic simply is. The great sky-grazers flying at the top of the world often use aethercloud to keep to the air.	u/SayethWeAll
19.	Chrono Fatui	The shadow of time in space. For long time they were mistaken for mirages, but in actuality it is a physical ghost-image of objects or people from a time past or to come. Particularly skilled fortune tellers may be able to shape a chrono fatuum to the time and place they desire.	u/SayethWeAll
20.	Indigo Smoke	When Radiance is set alight, its smoke will be the colour of deep, radiant darkness. While it is a more unstable form, the magical potential in the smoke dissipating as it disperses in the air surrounding, it is not without use. Those who inhale the smoke should be particularly careful about trusting their judgement and their senses...	u/ljmiller62
21.	Notes of the Heavenly Choir	Magic become physical in the form of sound and music. The notes coalesce at only the peaks of the highest mountains, and may invigorate any who hears them. Those living on those mountaintops have discovered a way to catch them in flute and horn, so they can later be played, woven into song or spell.	u/Glif13
22.	Marks of Chaos	Magic become physical in the form of words, symbols and pictograms tied into a knot, drawn or carved on a surface. Marks vary from the size of subscript on legal parchment to the size of frescos painted in the great halls. They never contain a complete - or sometimes even concrete - message, but appeal to primal emotions. They may be unnerving, calming, provocative, or altogether disturbing. Some even claim they have seen a mark of chaos grow...	u/Glif13
23.	Vile Violet Spots	A vile essence or confliction, laid at the foundation of the studies seeking to create life from scratch. Violet spots only appear on sapient skin, and may spread to others by mere touch. They hardly go away, but otherwise appear harmless - until the carrier dies. Then, their magical potential is enough to partially or wholly animate the carrier's flesh. And once taken over, the violet spots spread like wildfire. The spots can appear easily tot those who have been in contact with death, in any form.	u/Glif13
24.	Stellarite	A crystal glowing with unearthly pink and green hues, fallen from among the stars. It is believed to be a condensation of the Aethercloud spanning the cosmos above us, hailing down every now and then. Especially schools with magic regarding teleportation, summoning creatures from beyond the Aethercloud, and dubious healing practices believed by many to be inhumane - literally.	u/FirstChAoS
25.	Effect	Though scholars are still hotly debating whether or not the flames of a fireball conjured by magic are magical flames or not, there is the unanimous consent that they were at the very least created by magic. The more pedantic of learners insist that thus, the effect of a magical spell, scroll, potion or other, should technically count as a physical form of magic. They are advised not to let this get to their heads: Effect still requires a constant stream of potential input to remain stable.	u/De-Signated
26.	Brotheum	It is well-known that certain metals have a high affinity to magic: gold and zinc being prime examples. Brotheum is the result of such an ore with high affinity, over the eons, gathering and condensing magic. These ancient ores have great affinity for heat, and thus highly sought after by the masters of the forge. For only a true master has the capabilities to give shape to the raw ore.	u/UnumQuiScribit
27.	Magic's Mourning	A shimmering prismatic liquid, first discovered in the filters of anti-magic devices. It is believed to be the tears of the banished magic, mourning its loss, and is theorized to appear when any spell, scroll or potion which banishes magic is used.	u/F4C3L3S5_J0e
28.	The Nugg	The Nugg is a a large cluster of what appear to be acorns, stuck together by forces unknown. Whenever The Nugg sprouts, another acorn is added to the collective. It's unknown where The Nugg came from, or if it will ever grow into a tree, but one thing is certain: You can make some mighty fine benches out of it.	u/ry_st
29.	Immaculate Dye	A fine powder, able to take any desired colour. In times past, the Elves used grand magic and machinery to sieve the Desert of Colour for this immaculate dye, and grew rich selling it. Since the fall of their empire, however, it has grown rare. While the magical nature of immaculate dye is commonly known, the fact it is magic given physical form is not.	u/De-Signated
30.	Gelwire	A strange, orange gel found in puddles of the desolate wastelands where once the gods fought amongst themselves. Once scholars realised its potential in channeling magical potential over long distances, , it became highly sought after. Entire civilizations would revolve around it, if the battlefield of gods was not such a dangerous place to be.	u/LargePileOfSnakes
31.	Cerebral Light	An irridiscent material of magic giving form to thought and emotion. Through a combination of meditation and magic, the Enlightened have learned to create these shards over the span of times. It is known to absorb oncoming physical attacks, and bolster those used by the bearer.	u/LargePileOfSnakes
32.	Ragged Light	In form and appearance identical to Cerebral light, but created by tumultuous minds. The embedded thought and emotion are not cohesive, and as a result, the compound is rarely stable. Still, the black market seems to prefer this form over the other.	u/De-Signated, inspired by the above
33.	Null Concentrate	A material consisting of contradictions and impossibilities, or in other words, the magically-induced crumbling of reality. The concentrate appears as a rift, buzzing loudly and giving way to things not native to our existence. Those who spend too much time around a concentrate will be driven mad by the surrealities.	u/LargePileOfSnakes
34.	Spark of the Wild	Sparks of wild magic originated from the grindstone of the Antlered One. Usually they are fickle and swiftly vanish into the source, but if one lands on a sapient being, it will claim it as its host. It will slowly grow, stealing the dreams of its host, until it has grown powerful enough to impose its will. Then the host will enter a dreaming trance, while the spark takes over their husk. However, unlike the fate of victims of the vile violet spots, this process is reversible... Given enough resources and effort.	u/LargePileOfSnakes
35.	Ancient Nautilus	Thought to be a fossil of ancient creatures made from pure magic, this nautilus looks like a snail's shell, but with a blue and purple sheen. Using it as a component in spellcasting can modify the result of the spell to create natural-seeming caverns, depending on the spell type. However, using it in any spells directed at someone's mind is known to cause madness.	u/ry_st
36.	Bumpy Gum	Bumpy Gum is an odd substance, carrying the properties of both rubber and gum - despite neither of those compounds officially having been invented yet.	u/De-Signated
37.	Spright	Sprights are mystical creatures made out of pure magic, theorised to have existed since the dawn of time. They can manifest themselves as a floating orb of light, or lens flare, but often remain hidden from prying eyes. When placed in captivity, they often fracture and become unstable, destroying themselves along with anything close-by.	u/De-Signated
38.	Faint Omen	Perhaps the most elusive physical form magic can take. Omen is the shiver down your spine when met with someplace disturbing. Omen is the spark of joy felt when inhaling sweet scents. Omen is pure and raw emotion, induced by pure and raw magic.	u/De-Signated
39	Chaosbone	Deep in the badlands, where chaos resides, creatures touched by its unpredictable magic might soon find themselves growing lumps of Chaosbone. A hardy substance that grows in wicked, spiny, and thorny manners. Many a creature in those badlands have embraced the chaosbone horns and spikes sprouting from their skin, using them as effective weapons.	u/De-Signated
40	Glyph	Some decades ago, a young scholar inherited a haunted mansion. In his lifetime, he would come to discover the reason -- that the precise floorplan made the mansion conductive of magic. This was a breakthrough: There exist arrangements of objects or structures - which are not magic themselves - exhibiting magical behaviour.	u/De-Signated
41	Distilled Essence	The strongest of potions are distilled, not brewed. They have no magic forced into them during the process; they are made, distilled, from other physical forms of magic. This distilled essence has unique properties, depending on the form used and on herbs and spices added during the process. Often, these will exude various magical properties.	u/De-Signated
42	Sacred Sap	The sap from the sacred trees of Saccellastreion. These trees are the source of its faith. It can give vigor and life when consumed and is exceptionally versatile to distill.	u/De-Signated
43	Magicflies	Despite the name, magicflies are hardly flies. They are named after fireflies, which they resemble only in the sense that they light up and float about. For magicflies, there is nothing to light up; it simply does.	u/De-Signated
43/100			your name here

So to follow up on this post, a few people asked me about Death Guard culture and I promised I'd follow up with a post today. Ta-dah, here's the post. Keep in mind this is very much my personal view (backed up with excerpts) on the DG since they're written... inconsistently to say the least.
So, what are the Death Guard beyond stinky Chaos Astartes?
Warning: Long as Fuck
​
Cultural Influences
So it's pretty clear that most Legions take some healthy inspiration from real conflicts and civilizations. The Ultramarines are transparently Roman, the Thousand Sons are a vague hodgepodge of Egyptian and other Levantine/Middle Eastern cultures.
The Death Guard don't really have one transparent source to draw upon however. It's clear that they at least draw some influence from the hellscape that was World War 1 with their grindingly slow frontal marches, their candid disregard of the Geneva Convention, their usage of inhumane weapons like phosphex, gas, poisons and more. Their focus on sheer endurance and resilience. They represent the death of warrior culture and honour, replacing it with the almost Darwinian mantra of "win by any means necessary".
Though I think it would be dangerous to tie them to any one particular culture and instead they represent a conglomeration of nations and the horror which that war invokes.
Aside from that, they're an ever so pleasant mix of Grimdark barbarian fantasy and Chempunk.
Most Death Guard names sound like they're pulled directly from a "DnD Barbarian name generator". Packed to the brim with guttural sounds and consonants. Either that or they're called shit like "Phlegm Lord the Smelly" but I tend to ignore the latter.
Examples: Vorx, Kledo, Garstag, Gremus, Malig, Huron-Fal, Thagus Daravek.
​
Homeworld: Barbarus
As we so often see, the making or breaking of a legion is often found on their homeworld. It defines their culture, their specialization and often their future. Curze's was doomed to regress, the Lion's was caused to splinter, Lorgar's was destined for corruption. Nowhere is this more prevalent than on the shrouded world of Barbarus.
The people of Barbarus were enslaved for millennia by their mutant Overlords. It's hard for me to convey just how beaten down these people were so I'd really recommend reading this excerpt I posted previously to get an idea of just how absolutely fucked it was.
It's the planetary embodiment of inevitability. It was never about the struggle to survive on Barbarus, it was the sheer hopelessness that seeped into every inch of that miasma soaked hellhole. Every aspect of the planet was purposefully designed to instil constant reminders of one's powerlessness and inevitable painful death. One expected to die in a horrible way and to be proven otherwise was a macabre surprise. You survived another day but for what? Another day of sucking in poison-filled air. Of farming out a meagre existence on dead soil. Of hoping the Mountain Lords don't take your eyes and skin for their newest twisted experiment. Of futile hope that the monsters that lurk in the mist aren't hungry tonight.
Mortarion found the most oppressed, hopeless, wretched humans in the galaxy and gave them hope. He gave them purpose. He trained them. Taught them how to make weapons and how to fight like an army. He taught them not to fear. He gave them hope. But above all else, he inspired fanatical loyalty in the population of Barbarus, even before they ascended to become Astartes.

After that, so many wonders. There are walls, made not of mouldering mud bricks but of stone hewn from the mountain’s heart. There are blades polished to a keen edge. There are plates of hardened leather, stitched together and caulked, that form a shell tough enough to turn the blunt knives of the Pale armies. In strongholds that rear up from the storm-lashed shoulders of the high peaks, masks are fashioned that siphon the worst of the poison from the air. The smiths – men and women from the valleys, now housed in these fortresses – work incessantly, stopping only for sleep and sustenance, dragged from weary indolence and imbued with an almost fanatical enthusiasm.
Vorx recovers fast. He is taken up, fed and given lodgings with other boys. They train him, hardening his muscles and turning his wiry frame into a steel-trap instrument. Most of those in the gathering armies are young. They all look much the same – hollow cheeks, concave stomachs, blackened lips and eyelids – but they get stronger the longer they stay here.
One day, being taught how to use the long harvester’s scythe in combat, he asks for the name of the newcomer, the one they are already calling the Deathlord in honour of his prowess in battle. ‘Mortarion,’ said his instructor, Flaunn, a thick-legged woman from a deep coomb on the far side of the high ranges. ‘Never let him hear you say it – it was given to him by one he hates.’
‘Why not choose another?’
‘You do not choose a name,’ she says, cuffing him. ‘It chooses you. Now prepare, or I’ll cut you at the elbows.’
So Vorx did not change his own name to mark his passage into a new life, even though it was given to him by a slaved and cowed people, and it followed him out into the stars. All those who passed the trial of the Legion after him kept their marks of subjugation as a reminder, and as a warning.
But that time is to come. For now, he is learning, soaking up knowledge and distilling it into something he can use. He picks things up fast. At first he did so to crowd out the thoughts of home from his mind, but that instinct is soon replaced by learning for its own sake. He finds that his memory is superb, and he catalogues the armouries, the inventories, the types of armour and the number of troops in every division of the Deathlord’s burgeoning army.
Mortarion himself knows things that cannot have been learned on this world, Vorx suspects. He uses terms such as ‘cohort’ and ‘maniple’ that sound strange on their lips. Vorx learns that the world has a name, Barbarus, though he does not discover where it came from and surmises that Mortarion has called it this as a result of something like contempt.
Of course, the intellectual leap involved in naming a world anything other than ‘earth’ or ‘world’ implies that there are other such places of a similar scale. There is no evidence for this, and Mortarion has not proposed any such hypothesis. But it makes the gathered people think. It makes them imagine a time when the courses of all the valleys might be known, and then charted, and then conquered. It makes them think of a time when the whole of their reality might be consolidated, locked down under the banner of the Deathlord, and where the mists will no longer harbour nightmares.
It makes them think that, one day, the shadow of the Old Night will be lifted forever. It makes them think that a new age of unity might dawn for them all.

...

Vorx looks up briefly to see Mortarion, at the forefront as always, laying about him with his blade, hurling the scrawny Pale aside with every mighty blow. He sees him standing taller by an arm’s length than the greatest of them, indomitable and unbreakable. The mountain peaks rear up on all sides, but none of them looks as solid as he does.
Vorx does not yet know what manner of being Mortarion is. He will not discover it for many years. It does not matter. In that one glimpse he sees all that he needs to know – that the Deathlord is one of them. He has been poisoned by this world, bled by it, and still stands tall. Alone of all of them, he could rise higher into the thick acid clouds of the uttermost heights, but he remains down here, gradually giving them the means to go with him, one day. This is a choice for him, one he did not have to make. The people of the valleys had no choices, had forgotten how to even consider an alternative, but under him they are learning again.
Vorx knows then that he will follow Mortarion unto death itself. He will fight for this master wherever and whenever he is commanded to, and this shall be his only and lasting purpose.

Unification, Chris Wraight
This is why the Death Guard will trudge through blistering bolter fire unflinchingly. It's why they'll take any method of victory available to them. They have experienced the utter terror and helplessness on poisonous Barbarus and they will never return to that state. They endured that, they rose above it. They have seen the very worst the galaxy has to offer and they came out stronger. It's why despite the Heresy, the corruption of Nurgle and 10,000 years of war, they still remain united under Mortarion's rule. He saved them from that planet and that debt can never be repaid.
​

Mortarion freed them from that. This is what Dragan and the other latecomers will never properly understand. Vorx is not a blind fanatic, and understands that the primarch has weaknesses, but he will never forget that first act of liberty. Unless you had tried to scratch a gasping living on the stinking white soils of that hell world, unless you had actually witnessed what the mountain lords could do with impunity to the cowering mortals and unless you had seen what the Deathlord had done to free them, you could not truly comprehend. That was why the Death Guard had never fractured, for all the sniping efforts of that semi-feral Typhus and the many other rogue warlords and pirate-kings. The originators of the Legion are still grateful. They will never forget. And Vorx is one of them.

Lords of Silence, Chris Wraight
Though it must be noted that Vorx is a fanatic among fanatics. The reality for most of the legion is likely a more tempered version of the above.
​
Combat
Only the Death Guard could manage to pull off what the Death Guard do. You didn't send the DG to tactically secure a world while ensuring productivity remains optimal like the Ultramarines. You don't even send them when you need a world cowed into submission like with the World Eaters or Night Lords.
You send the Death Guard when you need an enemy eradicated.
They did not build empires or garrison worlds, they only destroyed what was before them in a slow, determined, unstoppable tide. Like a malignant tumour spreading across the galaxy, ruining all in its wake.
In the midst of the Great Crusade's (relative) idealism, you had Mortarion and his boys unapologetically acting like it was the middle of the Long Night. They did not care for morality. They did not care about problems. They did not care about methods. Once they had their target they would march straight over it. They advanced inexorably through the most inhospitable and toxic terrain, wearing battle-damaged Power Armour, waving no flags or standards, calling out no war cries. Regardless of what you did, it wouldn't stop them. You could sear their flesh and rend their armour but they'd just keep coming. All while artillery pounds your cities, gas floods your trenches, poison destroys your seas and phosphex burns your civilization. And then they're upon you with the artistry of a butcher. There's no honour duels or valiant last stands, just a slow grind back into the dirt as they finish their work with point-blank bolter work and hacking chops of their scythes and gladii. More often than not, your spirit would break before the Death Guard had even reached you. The slow realisation that there's nothing you can do to put these monsters down. That hope is futile. That your life is forfeit..... if you're lucky.
They would liberate the galaxy and nothing would get in their way.
And that was before Nurgle got to them. They're borderline unkillable after the fact.
Now for a few excerpts before, during and after the Heresy to show their combat method and how it evolved.
​
Great Crusade
​
Istvaan 3 - even after getting Virus bombed, shelled and attacked by the rest of their legion, the loyalist DG still hold out
​
Siege of Terra

The advances had certainly slowed across the entire battlefield. Ganzorig was now inside the perimeter, the signals told him, but only after paying a ruinous price to reduce the outer defences. Qin Fai was struggling, trying to maintain momentum against the defensive concentrations strung across the southern ramparts. The intended linkup of forces had yet to happen, fracturing the assault and leaving vulnerable points all along the line they had always known that breaking the hard external shell of the space port would be the easiest part of the exercise - the ordu's expertise lay in such shock-attack moves, and Perturabo had done a typically thorough job of smashing up the fixed defensive architecture. Now they were into the defence in depth, the endless series of energy-soaking firefights to clear out chamber after chamber. Even the Amber spearpoint, blessed with some of the greatest warriors of the ordu, found the going tough, the Death Guard could soak up tremendous punishment before turning around and doling it right back. Their reactions may have been slowed, their souls withered, but they were still fearsomely intelligent, staggeringly committed, wading through volumes of incoming fire that should have blasted them into flying clouds of ceramite flecks.
A formation of Terran Armoured Malcador's roared past him then, throwing up waves of sludge as they rushed the lines. Their battle cannons boomed in sequence, obliterating a high screen of ironwork behind which a battalion of Death Guard was dug in hard. Enemy armour responded, hurling back chem-shells and phosphex mortars. When those exploded, the already seamy atmosphere became choking and translucent, a swimming soup of poisons that gnawed at every armour-seal and tox-filter.
White Scars infantry charged up in the wake of the tanks, firing bolt pistols one-handed, staying close to prevent the Traitor Marines from closing on the vehicles. Lascannon fire lashed out from high up in the galleries, drilling into the corpulent flanks of plague-ridden enemy tank hulls. A squadron of jetbikes screamed along after the volleys, their underslung bolters spitting.
It was still too slow. The far end of the chamber was eight hundred metres off, lost in tox-clouds, with stubborn defensive redoubts all the way along it. At this rate, it might take days of slaughter just to reach the far enclosure.

...
​

He couldn't protect them all. However hard he fought at their head, however much he tried to shield them from this enemy, his warriors died. The newbloods would throw themselves at the Plague Marines, their bladework immaculate and their fervour exemplary, but they would still come up short. You could punch their hides with bolt-shells, you could sever their sinews with tulwar-strikes, you could pepper them with frag-charges and mortar-blasts, and still they would come back at you, again, again, their impassive green lenses glowing in the deathly gloom, never complaining, never shouting battle cries or denunciation, just existing, as impossible to eradicate as despair itself.
The best weapon was speed, and now that momentum was falling away, leaving them open to the grind of attrition. Fury could only achieve so much against an enemy like this. They were never roused to anger, never provoked into rashness. Feints never drew them on, diversions never deceived them. The only tactic left seemed to be an equal and opposite willingness to suffer, to take them on on their own terms, to stare into those seamy, rheum-addled eyes and hold your ground right until the pale lights had been extinguished and the next one beckoned.

The Siege of Terra 6: Warhawk, Chris Wraight - The White Scars take on their rivals for the first time since the corruption took hold.
M42 - straight out of a horror movie
​
"Gifts"
To carry on with the corruption from the previous few excerpts, the Death Guard have a somewhat paradoxical relationship with their God. Many have become devout over the centuries. Mutations are gifts to be looked upon as a sign of favour yet they still sap away at the soul and the body. They degrade but this is to be welcomed, not spurned.
So what actually constitutes as a gift and how are they viewed?
Excerpts en masse covering 4 people seem to cover most of the viewpoints:
​

1. Vorx: Gigachad Death Guard zealot from old Barbarus. Genuinely the most interesting Astartes in the universe. He welcomes the changes even if he acknowledges they do have downsides.

​

He is beginning to remember now. He is beginning to piece things together again. Is he slower now than he once was?
The Little Lord (Nurgling) starts to lick the blood from his cracked ceramite.
Of course he’s slower. Everything is slowing down, congested, like running through water. That’s the Gift, of course. That’s one of the great objectives.
Vorx turns on his heel, patting the Little Lord absently.

...

He (Vorx) works his way down a long spiral stair, wheezing as he goes. His lungs are half full of fluid, and he cannot help but think it a poor Gift. Then again, he has thought other Gifts were poor in the past, only to discover their genius much later.
‘Forgive,’ he says, speaking softly to the Little Lord at his elbow.
The tiny daemon giggles, then farts liquidly into the crook of his armour. That counts as forgiveness, probably.

...

Vorx no longer sees information flowing across the interior of his helm as he did in the distant past, because his visor substrate is now a part of his face. So his visual field is a complex thing – a psychological layering of true vision, machine overlay and dream projections, spiked with electrical impulses from what was once a tactical broadcast implant. He cannot close his eyes, which are lubricated by a steady trickle of moisture from capillary glands. When he sleeps, it is merely a haze of torpor marching with vivid, eyes-open dreams.
These are the ways we exemplify the lessons, he thinks. These are the ways we shape the old faith.

​

1. Dragan: The main counterpoint to Vorx. He's a new blood originally from the Imperial Talons before he was corrupted in absolutely mind bending circumstances. He's full of piss and vinegar. He's slowly accumulating Gifts and mutation but they've yet to wear him down to complacency. He strives for change and he wants to cleave to the path of Abaddon and Typhus. Vorx admires Dragan's attitude and skill, seeking to nourish it. All while realising that Dragan will eventually betray him and sink into decay with time.

​

They face one another for a moment. Vorx is the larger, his bulk engorged like millennial layers of ocean silt, added to every year, but old now, worn into defiance by many, many lifetimes in old service. Dragan is leaner and his body is marked by fewer Gifts, but he is famished for the conflict that will earn them.
'We are separated from the fleet,’ Dragan tries, cleaving to his line.
‘It will have dispersed by now,’ says Vorx. He moves closer to Dragan. ‘There are no choices, champion. It looks that way now, but believe me, there are none. We are being shown an empty sky. That is a temptation. You see the chance for glory, to follow the mortal warlord, to carve a name for yourself. Resist it. Resist the Despoiler’s call. We have our orders. We make for Ultramar.’

...

Others, like Dragan, are turncoats and renegades, refugees from distant Imperial Chapters and warbands. Somehow, though, over time, they all adopt the taciturn habits of Mortarion’s own. They stop issuing war cries. They slow down. They let their armour grow thicker, their organs merge, their skin creeps upwards into the filigree of their equipment interfaces. Joining the Death Guard is like sinking into a deep, cold ocean – the substance of it seeps inside, sooner or later, down into every crack and orifice, and you lose the things that once made you what you were.
At least, that is his destiny. For Dragan, the process is not yet complete. He still has his skin. He still has three lungs. He can remove his helm, if he wishes, and his tongue is not yet the length of a man’s arm. He can feel the rot within, chewing at his bones, making the old tattoos on his chest itch, but it has not yet become endemic. He considers Vorx, whose mind has become soft, and he looks at Slert, or even Naum, and a part of him still shudders and wishes to put off those things a little longer.

...

You hate what you were, he understands. There is no greater zealot than the convert, he knows. And yet he has no true faith, not like Vorx or Philemon, just a desire to exert strength, to use the Gifts he has been given, to become greater.
It is not about the faith, for Dragan. It is about vengeance for a life he cannot remember. It is about dominance over a species he has cut all ties with. It is about pride, amid a Legion that barely understands the notion.
He wonders, sometimes, if he picked the right set of traitors.

​

1. Garstag, a Death Guard terminator. Probably the most "Death Guard" out of everyone mentioned. A viewpoint from an "average Joe" of the legion. Views the gifts as practical. Views morality as optional. He's just there to get the job done. Perhaps he even takes pride in them.

​

But they are fighting a losing battle. The very environment is raised against them – glowing tentacles burst from the foaming water, grasping at their legs and arms. There are Little Lords in the rafters, and they throw themselves at the warriors with snickering abandon, chewing down on power cables and armour joints. Every time a fighter has to shake one off, it gives time for Garstag’s brothers to close in and finish the task.
Terminator plate gives them a huge advantage, and this is no standard Tactical Dreadnought armour – like everything else, it has been changed, expanded, thickened and mutated. Brannad has a curl of sucker-encrusted hooks for a right arm, writhing like a nest of serpents. Artarion has a fanged mouth snapping over the barrel of his heavy bolter, which is linked to his body by permanent strands of glistening mucus. Garstag himself has the greatest of the Gifts – a chainsword of living talons, crackling with corposant and dripping with ever-renewing toxins.

...

1. And now we see what happens when the Gifts go too far. Naum is a Dreadnaught who is ravaged with gifts beyond the point of sanity.

​

Vorx had even considered sending a party to seek out Naum, though he is glad now that he didn’t. Naum would not have understood the situation at all. Naum is a tortured soul, for all the Gifts he has been given, and that is a great pity.

...

He hears a sound – a faint hurr-hurr, sunk down, hissed through such clogged oxygen arteries that respiration must surely be an impressive achievement.
Dragan halts, taut as a hamstring, looking into the wall of darkness.
‘Unsleeping,’ he calls out, and the word echoes from the columns and the vaults around him.
For a long moment, punctuated only by the heavy drum of his heartbeats, nothing.
Then, far off, at the end of this great hall, something moves. It is bigger – far bigger – than it ought to be, even for one of its cursed kind. Solace is a fecund place, stuffed with rotting meats and nutrient-rich fluids, its airways viscous with the changing harmonics of the daemonic. All things grow here, sucking in the fungoid and the decaying, slowly becoming just another tumour on the face of this withered ship-corpse.
The thing moves, shifting one massive leg, and Dragan sees the expanse of dark-grey flesh spilling over the joints and cables. There is more of it than there was, the last time. Every time it grows a little more.
A pair of tiny eyes blink. Those eyes are the worst thing, sunk within a harrowed face, almost entirely lost behind a nest of rusted cabling. They are red, wholly bloodshot, with matte-black irises. They do not focus well. They seem almost independent of one another, as if the mind controlling them has begun to lose the last grips of control.

...

Naum blinks again. Lines of dry brown staining run down his chin, and there is a stray human finger there, dangling from his collar on a last thread of sinew.
‘Am I asleep?’ Naum asks.
‘You know the answer to that,’ says Dragan patiently.
This wretch ought to be asleep. All of his kind ought to be chained down, locked away, dosed with soporifics and dream suppressants, only roused when their prodigious killing power is required. Others of his order do as they are supposed to, staving off complete madness through the blissful imposition of tranquillisation and only having to contend with the horror of living for those few brief hours of bloodletting.
But Naum does not sleep. Something went wrong with him, and now he cannot. He has been awake for a long time – for more than nine thousand years, so they say. Given that, the fact that he can speak at all is something of a miracle. One sent from the god, no doubt.
‘Eat… you?’ Naum says, licking bony lips with a black tongue. Dragan can see that he has been weeping a lot.
‘Make planetfall here, Naum,’ Dragan says calmly. ‘The casket is waiting. Then you can eat all you like.’
For a moment, Naum does not respond. He does not understand. His colossal body, with its growths and its metal struts and its swollen armour plates, shifts uneasily. Dragan wonders what on earth he must be experiencing. Existence on this ship is already like a dream, or a nightmare – for Naum, the boundary between states has long since ceased to exist. All that remains is a fog of pain, of sensations he no longer has names for.
There is endurance, that is known. Some feats within this Legion make the mind turn, some expressions of that old capacity for resilience, but for this – this – there are no words. Not that Dragan knows, anyway. What is left in there to endure? What remnant of an old willpower still burns away, refusing the siren embrace of complete insanity?
Condensation runs down Naum’s outer shell. In the dark, he flexes power claws bigger than Dragan’s whole body. Ancient bone shards click, rotting flay-skirts rustle. The eyes blink, once, twice, squeezing tears down wrinkled, ash-dry flesh.
Then the black gums are exposed – something like a smile, or the dream image of one, semi-remembered and blurred by the fog of being.
‘Show me,’ he says.

​
Numerology and Obsessions
The Death Guard hatred of Witchcraft was well known but they've always had a streak of the occult about them. Perhaps seeded into them by Nurgle, perhaps a twist of fate. I doubt it's a coincidence that 7, Nurgle's sacred number is a lynchpin in their studies.
Since Barburus the Death Guard have had an obsession with numbers. Crop rotations that were vital to survival. The only way to ensure a meagre yield of food on their poisonous homeworld.
Then the Great Crusade arrived and the obsession deepened. Both from Mortarion's orders and the neccessity of good book-keeping considering their intensely attritional style of warfare.
Even from the early stages of the Heresy, gifted Death Guard could catch glimpses of the future through the patterns. They're essentially Data Analysts on warp-infused steroids. Mortarion knew that Horus was a sacrificial pawn before all others.
After the Death Guard's fall, seeing into the future using Numerology became the norm, as did other obsessions.
​

‘That is what the calculations tell me. Vorx wants to know what to do next.’
‘He could try. Making his own decisions.’
Philemon laughs. ‘These are but guides.’
The crow hops weakly from one claw to the other. ‘Even before we sent. You the Destroyer Hive, you cleaved to this occult. You counted and. You computed. That was never part. Of what was intended for you. Now it has become. Manic. Stop it.’
Philemon puts the parchment away. ‘Too late. You changed us alright, but you never get exactly what you want.’

A Death Guard Tallyman speaks to an entrapped daemon.
As the millennia pass and the corruption deepens, each Death Guard tends to become more morose. More prone to obsession. Less driven and more prone to indulgence.
Vorx for example, has the wonderful hobby of recording the name of everyone he has ever killed. All he wants to do is chill in his Plague Mansion with his beastman butler and ponder the mysteries of the universe. Eventually when Vorx dies, that book will inscribe his own name in it on the final page and become a powerful chaos artefact.
​

For the first time in a long while, Vorx is satisfied. Occasionally he thinks of another life for himself, one confined to Hope’s Revenant, where he remains closeted with the books of numerology and the gardens, free to contemplate the Truth and explore its mysteries. He has never given in to it, but believes that the entire Legion shares this morose tendency. The greatest of them (Mortarion), after all, has been indulging it for ten thousand years.

...
​

Vorx glances at one, the vellum rustling as the quill wobbles across its surface.
Tophar. Mandravaxon. Járnhamar.
None of those words mean anything to him. They may do in the future, or they may not – it does not pay to listen too closely to the outputs of bound instrumental daemons.
He pushes his way towards a pulpit at the far end of the chamber. A single book lies open on its inclined surface, untroubled by the attentions of vermin. Its hide is as white as bone, and its pages as thick as a finger. It is impossibly huge, that book – if looked at from certain angles it seems to go on forever, sinking deep into the library’s mouldy floor, although from most aspects it is no thicker than the rest of them.
He reaches for a metal quill standing in a dusty sleeve and dips it into a well of viscous ink. He holds it over the blank parchment and collects himself.
Then he begins to write. Slowly, carefully, he traces out tiny letters in immaculate Standard Gothic, of a grammar and idiom commensurate with the early Crusade. The first thing he writes is a name – Brother-Sergeant Caias Meldonia, Squad Taxis, Fourth Company, the Emperor’s Blades. He pauses, remembering the face. Location: Attamar, outer reach spinward, system marker 45-56-3. A faint smile crinkles across his sore-clustered lips. The action had been prosecuted well. We were on the outward march from Kletan. He fills in more details, always in the same manner, not lapsing into Barbaran or Mourtaig, the debased vernacular of the Plague Planet, or even current-era Gothic. This record was started at the very commencement of his career in the Death Guard and has been continued in the same vein ever since.
When he finishes the entry, he carefully adds the date approximation according to both the Terran system and Chronolattice, a scheme of his own devising that maps events to a more fluid set of points underpinned by warp dynamics. It is more accurate, at least from a number of important points of view, although it has peculiarities of its own – whereas the Imperial system becomes more inaccurate the further one is from Terra and the further in time one is from the nominal baseline event, Chronolattice works forward to the end of the universe, a constant Vorx names T, for thanatos, and becomes more reliable the closer the apocalypse comes.
He takes time to cross-reference the entry with previous ones. He adds the relevant numbers to several interlinked grids, drawing the numerals with exactitude. Once done, he tallies certain esoteric relationships and determines if significant patterns have emerged, then logs them in a third set of ledgers.
Then he repeats the process with Ammunition Loader Silv Klood, resident of Attamar orbital station IV. Less is known about that death, for the stature of the victim was minuscule, but he records all that he has been able to determine, for completeness is a virtue.
He has many hours of work ahead. The raiding season has been long, and he has much blood on his hands from it. He labours methodically, giving each entry just as much care as the first ones. The first biographies were written ten thousand years ago. This chronicle, this record of deaths served at his hand, stretches back to the dawn of the Imperial Age. For all Vorx knows, it may be the most complete history of any kind still intact. Inquisitors would sacrifice entire systems to retrieve it, if they only knew of its existence. More than one petty daemon has been spun into instantiation purely as a result of symmetries picked out on the pages. Others of the Neverborn have come to Hope’s Revenant and tried to consume the book, believing its contents might elevate them within their crowded and jostling pantheon, but the library is carefully guarded with ether traps and honey pits, and Vorx has designed many subtler defences to confound them.
The book has no title. Or, to be more precise, the book’s title is also its contents. The final entry will be his own. Such psychic accumulation of killing generates a final artefact – when Vorx dies, the last page will complete itself, capping the immense and winding account of a soul’s extension beyond all mortal tolerance. On that day, the tome will close, turned as if by unseen hands. The symbols will arrange and sift, the numbers will slot into new positions, and its fusion of occult symbology will reach apotheosis. It will be the final legacy of uncountable lives, stored and cross-referenced, counted and totalled, a product of magnificent uselessness.
This is Vorx’s great act of spite towards impermanence. He is smiling as he writes it, and the passage of time slows, dilates, warms up.

​
Culture
The Death Guard culture at its core is a paradox of concepts that are balanced on a knife's edge. Devotion and self-loathing. Joy and despair. Humour and reverence. Endurance yet weakness. Acceptance and denial. Change and stagnation. Passion and apathy.
Despite the common "happy Nurglite" stereotype, the Death Guard really don't tend to match that mantra, leaving it more for the daemons. The majority of them are dour doomsday cultists who view hope as the galaxy's most pervasive and evil lie.
The Death Guard were once Mortarion's unyielding legion. A symbol of grim hope in a galaxy of monsters. They sought human liberation from the predations of the warp at all costs.
But then they were betrayed. They became puppets of the literal God of despair. Those who could endure all were tortured for an eternity in a deathless, timeless hell until they eventually broke. Until their father took a Faustian bargain to end their torment and embrace all that they once despised. Victims of their own philosophy, they would always struggle with the fact that they were too weak.
They once fought to be a symbol of hope and the liberators of humanity from the warp. Then they became the heralds of stagnation and decay. They tell themselves, desperately, that hope is the enemy and it's a mercy to quench it. It's a benevolence to corrupt the galaxy as resistance is a painful, if admirable futility.
How does one deal with that change? Poorly, is the answer.
Some just accept it. It can't be undone. They move forward like they always have.
Some are devoted to their new cause and life like Vorx. Evangelists who embrace their new cause and God wholeheartedly.
There's others who care little for the old culture of Barbarus or Mortarion, cleaving to the path of Typhus and Abaddon.
Then there's the sadists within the ranks who view their new sorcerous powers with glee. Who revel in causing pain and suffering across the galaxy.
Yet all of these factions and everything in-between still remain united under Mortarion's rule from the Plague Planet. They are still his Unbroken Blades. His Death Guard.

These are examples of anti Catholic myths and propaganda that have existed throughout history.
(i)Maria Monk and the myth of Catholic infanticide in 19th century Canada

• Maria monk was a former nun who lived in in Canada, specifically Quebec in the early 19th century. She wrote a highly sensationalised novel called "Awful disclosures of Maria Monk" in 1836 where she details allegations of sexual unions Bishops would have with nuns. In these unions, the nuns were "sex slaves" who were subject to flagellation. During this allegedly process of depravity if the nun produced a child out of this union, the child would be baptised and then strangled to death. After being strangled they would bury them in a lime bit underneath the basement of the convent.
• The allegations caused a major sensation throughout Canada at the time with investigations being demanded, riots taking place and Churches even burning. When the investigation was actually done though not only did the find no evidence of this allegation, they found no allegation that Maria monk even lived in the specific convent where this took place. It was determined to be a hoax by scholar. Yet it still had a powerful impact on social life in Canada and America. In the U.S it was one of the most widely read novels of the 19th century before Uncle Tom's Cabin and in the 20th century it was whipped up during JFK's presidential campaign and used as a talking point to argue for why America couldn't have a Catholic president. He might install Maria Monk style abuses throughout the country.

(ii)MotheBaby homes and the myth of Catholic infanticide in 20th century Ireland

• The abuse scandals of the Catholic Church are widely known and widely reported. Now before going on to the myth here lets be clear about what's factual. There have been systemic cases of abuse in Catholic institutions both in Catholic industrial schools and other institutions ran by the Catholic Church. The Murphy and Ferns Report detail this. In the middle of this justified furor though a myth was added. The myth of the mother and baby homes. This myth goes something like this. The Catholic Church forcibly separated mothers from their children and placed them in these institutions which engaged in infanticide against these children and then covered it up by burying them in places like Septic tanks.
• What's the basis of this myth? Catherine Corless who is a prominent historian and activist in Irish society raised awareness of the infant mortality rate at the Mother and Baby Homes in Irish society and it was estimated that over 700 children died between the period of 1925-1961. When this was reported it was reported as the Catholic Church forcibly removing children from their parents and then intentionally organising the mass murder of thousands of children in these homes and then burying them in septic tanks. However, every major news outlet that initially reported this such as the Associated Press, Forbes and others had to retract these stories. And the reason is the following:

1. There was no evidence that the Catholic Church orchestrated the forced removal of Irish children in the Mother and Baby homes. According to the Irish commission on the Mother and Baby Homes "There is no evidence that women were forced to enter mother and baby homes by the church or State authorities. Most women had no alternative. Many pregnant single women contacted the Department of Local Government and Public Health (DLGPH), later the Department of Health, their local health authority, or a Catholic charity seeking assistance because they had nowhere to go and no money."_Mother and Baby Homes Commission(Executive Summary, prg 8)
2. There is no evidence that the Catholic Church organised the mass murder of children in the Mother and Baby Homes. The infant mortality rate was high because it was high across the board in Irish society. According to the data "Infant mortality in Ireland was substantially higher than in England and Wales, and it showed less signs of improvement, though Ireland, as a predominantly rural country should have had lower infant mortality. The 1923 report of the Registrar General of Births, Marriages and Deaths - the first relating to the area of the Irish Free State, recorded an infant mortality rate of 66 per 1,000. Infant mortality in urban areas was 99 per 1,000; almost double the rate in rural areas. The death rate for ‘illegitimate’ children was 344 per 1,000 births, about six times’ the mortality of the children of married couples. At this time the death rate among ‘illegitimate’ children was significantly higher in every country, and that remained the case throughout most of the 20th century"_Mother and Baby Homes Commission(1922-1939, prg 4.11). There were two reasons for this. The first being Ireland was an underdeveloped society that was impacted by things ranging from WWI, to the Irish war of independence, to the Great Depression as well as the Spanish Influenza. The second connected to this is the state of medical care in the beginning of the 20th century across. Because medical care was not as advanced at it is now, the death rate was generally higher. So to use an example the commission cites the influenza as a cause of death and states there was "No vaccine until the 1940s; seasonal vaccines in the late 1960s; subunit vaccines in the late 1970s"_Mother and Baby Homes Commission(Deaths, prg 33.6)
3. There is no evidence the Catholic Church placed children in septic tanks to try and "cover" this up. The Fifth Interim report on the Tuam burial cites bluntly "The human remains found by the Commission are not in a sewage tank but in a second structure with 20 chambers"_Tuam Fifth Interim Report(prg 9). This was misreported due to the fact that the burial site was next to underground pipes that had some connection to a sewage tank.
4. There is actually surprising evidence that the Church officials were more likely show more concern about the state of the health of children more than the state officials or those in Irish society at large. According tot he report "Although the first report of the registrar general of the Irish Free State highlighted the appalling excess mortality of children born to unmarried mothers and subsequent DLGPH reports noted the fact, there is little evidence that politicians or the public were concerned about these children. No publicity was given to the fact that in some years during the 1930s and 1940s, over 40% of ‘illegitimate’ children were dying before their first birthday in mother and baby homes. The high level of infant mortality in the Tuam Children’s Home did not feature at meetings of Galway county council, though Tuam was under the control of the local authority and it held meetings in the Children’s Home"_Mother and Baby Homes Commission(Executive Summary, prg 47). By contrast when it came to the Church officials, a 1927 report describing the attitude of nuns and leaders of religious over the Tuam homes speaks of how It further noted that ‘Its continuance in the condition in which we saw it would be a grave injustice to the Sisters and militate very much against its usefulness for the purposes to which it has been allocated’._Mother and Baby Homes Commission(Tuam, prg 15.25)

(iii)The residential school system, its crimes and abuses. Misunderstandings of this system and the reconciliation process in Canada

• The crimes and abuses of the residential school system that both Church and State in Canada were involved in is something that is part of an ongoing social discussion in Canadian social life. The residential school system was a system of cultural genocide where 150,000 children were taken from their families by the Canadian RCMP(Royal Mounted Police) and placed in these institutions where they experienced physical and sexual abuse. It was a system of cultural genocide. This is not a myth and anyone who denies this is engaging in residential school denialism which is no different from Armenian genocide denialism or Holocaust denialism.
• Given this basic truth where is the myths or misunderstandings here? The first myth is the notion that these were specifically "Catholic" institutions or that this was specifically a "Catholic" enterprise. It was not. The Catholic Church was complicit in this racist and genocidal institution but it was not the only institution that ran residential schools. The Anglican Church(my Church), United Church, Presbyterian Churches, Mennonite Churches and others also ran residential schools. This is important to state because when the news of the unmarked graves was being covered 2021, it was only the unmarked graves of Catholic run residential schools that got national and international attention while the unmarked graves of the other institutions was barely covered by the media. Giving a very misleading picture. Adding to this in Canadian history one of the key architects of the residential school system was Methodist activist Egerton Ryerson. This was then put in motion under Canada's first PM John A Macdonald(who was ironically very anti Catholic) in 1883. While residential schools closed in the 1990s the actual Church running of these institutions ended in 1969. From then the schools were either ran exclusively by the Federal government of Canada or they were actually taken over and ran by certain First Nations communities themselves.
• When it comes to the crimes themselves at the residential schools, the Church officials were responsible for the abuses both physical and sexual as well the implementation of the racist policy of assimilation. However in terms of the actual deaths that took place that was the responsibility of the Federal government of Canada as well as the state of health care in Canada. According to Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission "From those cases where the cause of death was reported, it is clear that until the 1950s, the schools were the sites of an ongoing tuberculosis crisis. Tuberculosis accounted for just less than 50% of the recorded deaths (46.2% for the Named Register, and 47% for the Named and Unnamed registers combined). ie tuberculosis death rate remained high until the 1950s: its decline coincides with the introduction of effective drug treatment"_Truth and Reconciliation Report(What We have learned, pg 62)

1. The reason why this is important to state is because in the late 19th and early 20th century in Canada Tuberculosis was the leading cause of death across the board. "From the available reports, in 1926, 1 in 13 of all reported deaths in Canada was due to TB, a number slightly higher than the number of deaths reported for cancer. As a result of improved living conditions and isolation of some infectious cases in sanatoria, incidence and mortality rates began to fall in subsequent years, and rates further declined with the introduction of effective antibiotic treatment in the mid-20th century"_Canadian Tuberculosis Standards/7th Edition(chp 1, Epidemiology of Tuberculosis in Canada, pg 4)
2. In provinces such as Saskatchewan the death rate would be higher than the national average with the rate of infection increasing with age. In 1922 it was estimated that "at six years old it reached 44 percent; at fourteen years 60.9 percent and at twenty 80 percent"_Report to the Government of Saskatchewan(Anti Tuberculosis Commission, pg 21, 1922)
3. Now while tuberculosis was a major epidemic across the board, it affected indigenous Canadians at a higher rate due to the racism of Canadian society. In addition you also had deaths that were caused both by the Spanish Influenza of WWI as well as the Asian Flu of 1957 which puts the deaths in perspective.

• Where the federal government of Canada comes into play in all of this is the fact that "the tuberculosis health crisis in the schools was part of a broader Aboriginal health crisis that was set in motion by colonial policies that separated Aboriginal people from their land, thereby disrupting their economies and their food supplies. This crisis was particularly intense on the Canadian Prairies. Numerous federal government policies contributed to the undermining of Aboriginal health. During a period of starvation, rations were withheld from bands in an effort to force them to abandon the lands that they had the tuberculosis health crisis in the schools was part of a broader Aboriginal health crisis that was set in motion by colonial policies that separated Aboriginal people from their land, thereby disrupting their economies and their food supplies. This crisis was particularly intense on the Canadian Prairies. Numerous federal government policies contributed to the undermining of Aboriginal health. During a period of starvation, rations were withheld from bands in an effort to force them to abandon the lands that they had"_Truth And Reconciliation Report(What we have learned, pg 62-63)
• Now what is not very well known is that Church officials and administrators who were part of the running of the schools repeatedly lobbied the federal government to change its health policies regarding indigenous Canadians due to the fact that "By 1940, the government had concluded that future policy should concentrate on the expansion of day schools for First Nations children. As a result, many of the existing residential school buildings were allowed to continue to deteriorate. A 1967 brief from the National Association of Principals and Administrators of Indian Residences—which included principals of both Catholic and Protestant schools—concluded, “In the years that the Churches have been involved in the administration of the schools, there has been a steady deterioration in essential services. Year after year, complaints, demands and requests for improvements have, in the main, fallen upon deaf ears. When E. A. Côté, the deputy minister responsible for Indian Affairs, met with church and school representatives to discuss the brief, he told them that only emergency repairs would be undertaken at schools that Indian Affairs intended to close"_Truth and Reconciliation Report(What we have learned, pg 64-65)
• In addition to this during the Great Depression the Federal government of Canada initiated cuts to proper funding to the schools. When "funding was cut during the Depression of the 1930s, it was the students who paid the price—in more ways than one. At the end of the 1930s, it was discovered that the cook at the Presbyterian school at Kenora was actually selling bread to the students, at the rate of ten cents a loaf. When asked if the children got enough to eat at meals, she responded, “Yes, but they were always hungry.” The Indian agent ordered an end to the practice.323 the fact that hungry students would be reduced to buying bread to supplement their meals in 1939 highlights the government’s failure to provide schools with the resources needed to feed students adequately. Milk was in constant shortage at many schools, in part due to the poor health and small size of the school dairy herds. As late as 1937, disease among the cows at the Kamloops school had cut milk production by 50%. To the principal’s frustration, Ottawa refused to fund the construction of an additional barn, which would have allowed for an increase in milk production and the isolation of sick animals"_Truth and Reconciliation Report(What we have learned, pg 57)
• While this was happening the Federal government of Canada through Department of Pensions and National Health(now Health Canada) also decided to engage in a policy of scientific racism by initiating nutrition experiments from 1942 to 1952 where they would intentionally keep children malnourished. Conducted in conjunction with the Royal Canadian Air Force and the Hudson Bay Company, it was designed to do research into the vitamin in takes of indigenous peoples, particularly indigenous children. So it is highly misleading to focus on the Catholic Church when speaking about the deaths of children at residential schools. The Catholic Church was complicit in the system of abuses and forced racial assimilation. However when speaking of the causes of the deaths of children who were buried at unmarked graves, that was the direct responsibility of the health policies of the federal government of Canada as well as the state of medical care in Canada and Church officials as mentioned actually lobbied the government to improve the state of medical care that they were putting out, a lobbying effort that was largely ignored by the federal government.
• When speaking of the process of reconciliation there is also a lot of misinformation and misunderstanding surround the facts around this as well. The first has to with the term "unmarked graves". Unmarked graves are not mass graves. Something First Nations leaders themselves have stated. The unmarked grave sites are the burial sites of both adults and children. Some of the people buried in the unmarked graves where those who died in old age. Others are those who attended residential schools. Since these are mixed burial sites it is impossible to determine which is which without forensic analysis which is now being done. Nor where these sites "hidden". The sites where known for generations. So these are not "new" discoveries.
• When it came to records surrounding residential schools it has been stated that everyone else, including the federal government has handed over their records on residential schools with the exception of the Catholic Church who as "resisted" doing so. This is misleading. The Bishops of the dioceses that ran residential schools handed over their records. The major issue has been work over the records of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate. The records of the Oblates just like the dioceses are all available but a snag has been drawing all of these records into a consolidated format. This includes what's called the "Codex Historicus". A series of documents that contains the daily diaries of each of the Oblate missionaries spanning hundreds of years. The Oblates wanted to turn this into one consolidated digitised format. They sought assistance from the federal government to do so. However after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission ended in 2015 funding was cut for this project by the feds, significantly slowing the process. So the archives are free to access, but the wish of the National Truth and Reconciliation Centre that they been in one consolidated format has been held up for these reasons. An additional factor under consideration is this. As mentioned above, the Church administration of the residential school system ended in 1969. The federal government directly administered these schools which meant that some of the records of the schools were transferred from the Churches to the Department of Indian Affairs. So throughout this whole process the biggest impediment to the release of record has actually been the federal government and not the Catholic Church. This is shown in the TRC where it documents the fact that "According to a 1935 federal government policy, school returns could be destroyed after five years, and reports of accidents after ten years. This led to the destruction of fifteen tonnes of waste paper. Between 1936 and 1944, 200,000 Indian Affairs files were destroyed.348 Health records were regularly destroyed. For example, in 1957, Indian and Northern Health Services was instructed to destroy “correspondence re routine arrangements re medical and dental treatments of [indigenous people] and [Inuit], such as transportation, escort services, admission to hospital, advice on treatment, requests for treatment, etc.” after a period of two years. Reports by doctors, dentists, and nurses were similarly assigned a two-year retention period"_Truth and Reconciliation Report(What we have learned, pg 60)

(iv)Pope Pius XII was 'Hitler's Pope' and the Vatican was allies with Nazi Germany

• This myth essentially says the following. The Catholic Church was an ally of Nazi Germany and Pius XII was Hitler's man in the Vatican. It varies to different degrees. Some people allege that Pius XII simply just turned a blind eye to the Nazis and their atrocities, particularly against the Jews. Others allege that he was an actual ally of the Nazis, and point to the Concordat of 1933 as proof of this alleged alliance between the Vatican and Nazi Germany. Now, what's the source of this myth?

1. The first major source of this myth is the systematic disinformation campaign waged against the Vatican by the Soviet Union. Beginning under Stalin "the campaign to link the pope to Hitler was initiated by the Soviet Union, presumably in hopes of neutralizing the Vatican in post-World War II affairs. Early in 1944, Izvestia (the official party daily published in Moscow) claimed that Pope Pius XII had supported the Nazi regime. The next day, the New York Times condemned the article as malicious propaganda and vigorously asserted the pope’s opposition to all forms of tyranny. But the Soviets continued, and one of their agents soon published a book claiming that the Vatican had signed a secret pact with Hitler"_Bearing False Witness: Debunking Centuries of Anti Catholic History(Sins of Antisemitism, Chp 1)
2. This program started under Stalin but then it expanded significantly under Soviet Leader Nikita Khrushchev. Ion Pacepa, a major general in Romania's intelligence services under communism and an advisor to communist leader Nicolae Ceausescu speaks of how his "first personal encounter with Khrushchev’s practice of rewriting people’s pasts occurred on October 26, 1959. On that day, Khrushchev landed in Bucharest for what would become known as his six-day vacation. Khrushchev had never before taken such a long vacation abroad, but his stay in Bucharest was not a vacation either. He was brought there by his new spy chief, General Aleksandr Sakharovsky, who until recently had been the chief intelligence adviser for the Securitate, Romania’s equivalent of the Soviet security police. Sakharovsky wanted to introduce Khrushchev to the Romanian ruler, Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, and get his help in a couple of German matters—Romania had the second-largest ethnic German minority group in the Soviet bloc One of Sakharovsky’s projects was to seek Romanian cooperation in the smearing of Pius XII. The pope had died a few months earlier, and thus could no longer defend himself. Sakharovsky and Khrushchev wanted to pull off a kind of Beriya operation. They intended to change Pius’s past image from Jew-defender to Jew-hater so as to compromise the Vatican—the same way they had changed Beriya’s past from ferocious anti-imperialist to imperialist agent. Khrushchev and Sakharovsky naturally realized that they could not put the Vatican out of business, but they did hope that by representing its head as a Jew-hater"_Ion Pacepa(Disinformation, chp 16, Khrushchev's War on the Vatican)
3. In describing the details of this operation Pacepa states "IN FEBRUARY 1960, Khrushchev formally approved a joint Communist Party/KGB operational plan for destroying the Vatican’s moral authority in Western Europe. Since 1945, the Kremlin had fought the Vatican indirectly by framing many of its priests and top clergymen in the Soviet Union and in its new territorial acquisitions “liberated” at the end of the war, slandering them either as Nazi war criminals or as enemies of peace. Now the Kremlin wanted the KGB to frame the Vatican on its home turf, using its own priests. 1 Concocted by KGB chairman Aleksandr Shelepin and by Alexei Kirichenko, the Soviet Politburo member responsible for international policy, the new plan was constructed around Stalin’s 1945 idea of portraying Pius XII as “Hitler’s Pope...Shelepin and Kirichenko decided that the framing of Pius XII should be based on a fictionalized scenario, supported by genuine, slightly modified Vatican documents (whether or not specifically related to Pius XII), the originals of which would never be released to the public. At that time there was an unflinching KGB rule for handling modified and counterfeited documents: they should be made available only in the form of retyped documents or in specially prepared photocopies, as even the most perfect counterfeit by today’s standards might become vulnerable to future detection techniques....“Seat 12” was the code name for the Romanian side of the KGB’s operation against Pius XII. The name was an allusion to the pope as occupant of the seat of Saint Peter, and to Pius XII himself .....As John Koehler explained in his book Spies in the Vatican: The Soviet Union’s Cold War against the Catholic Church, the Vatican was not exempt from the Kremlin’s efforts to infiltrate foreign governments. David Alvarez made the same point in his similarly titled book, Spies in the Vatican: Espionage & Intrigue from Napoleon to the Holocaust. Among the more notorious infiltrations, in 1952 Father Aligheri Tondi, a professor at the Gregorian Academy, was identified as a KGB agent. In 1963, Polish intelligence placed a cooperative bishop in the Vatican. For the Seat 12 assignment to Rome, the DIE chose three priests who were also co-opted agents."_Ion Pacepa(Disinformation, chp 17, Preparations for framing Pope Pius XII)

• During the war behind the scenes Pius XII made several interventions on behalf of Jews suffering during the Holocaust such as "The six official papal protests by Pius XII and the numerous oral intercessions undertaken on behalf of Slovak Jews in his name[which] were significant factors in stopping the Nazi deportation of Slovakia’s Jews. Pius’s persistent pleas were finally heeded."_Rabbi David Dalin(The Myth of Hitler's Pope, chp 4, A Righteous Gentile: Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust)
• Out of all the analyses that estimate the overall impact of Pius XII's interventions one of the "Foremost amongst these was Israeli historian and diplomat Pinchas Lapide, who had been the Israeli consul in Milan and had spoken with many Italian Jewish Holocaust survivors. In his meticulously researched and comprehensive 1967 book Three Popes and the Jews, Lapide persuasively argued that Pius XII “was instrumental in saving at least 700,000, but probably as many as 860,000 Jews from certain death at Nazi hands.”"_Rabbi David Dalin(The Myth of Hitler's Pope, chp 1, The Myth of Hitler's Pope and Why it matters)
• In the immediate aftermath of the war up until the 1950s representatives of the Jewish community. For example "Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, Jews praised Pope Pius XII for saving Jewish lives. 130 In 1943, Chaim Weizmann, who would become Israel’s first president, wrote that “the Holy See is lending its powerful help wherever it can, to mitigate the fate of my persecuted co-religionists.” The following year, Rabbi Maurice Perlzweig, representing the World Jewish Congress, wrote that “the repeated interventions of the Holy Father on behalf of Jewish communities in Europe has provoked the profoundest sentiments of appreciation and gratitude from Jews throughout the world.” On July 31, 1944, Judge Joseph Proskauer, the president of the American Jewish Committee, declared in a speech at a Madison Square Garden rally: “We have heard . . . what a great part the Holy Father [has played] in the salvation of the Jewish refugees in Italy, and we know from sources that must be credited that this great pope has reached forth his mighty and sheltering hand to help the oppressed of Hungary.” Rabbi Louis Finkelstein, the chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, stated: “No keener rebuke has come to Nazism than from Pope Pius XI and his successor, Pope Pius XII.”_Rabbi David Dalin(The Myth of Hitler's Pope, chp 4, A Righteous Gentile: Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust)

(v)Nazi morality trials: The weaponisation of accusations of sexual abuse for propaganda

• If the Soviet Union was guilty of spreading propaganda and misinformation about the Vatican and the Church's relationship with Nazi Germany after the war, the Nazis themselves were ironically enough also guilty of spreading anti Catholic propaganda and misinformation. And one the tactics that was used was sexual allegations. The trigger for this was Pope Pius XI's encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge which condemned Nazism
• In terms of the circumstances of these trials "Attacks had been made on priests morals before, but they were nothing compared with the new accusations and mass trials. At Koblenz 170 Franciscan were arrested and tried with 'corrupting the youth and turning the monastery into a male brothel'. That trial was conducted in camera and that most of the witnesses were children raised doubts as to its equity. The Volkischer Beobachter wrote about 'orgies which the pen refused to describe'; and the Schwarze Korps showed a cartoon of small boys being beckoned by a lascivious-looking monk with the caption 'Let the children come unto me!'. Goebbels paper published a series of indignant articles about monastery schools which had become 'incubators of homosexuality' and Goebbels sanctimoniously punished their homosexuals like Rohm and Heines. Das Schwarze Korps alleged that even at the altar rail, priest practised their disgusting tricks on old men and crippled children. A Hitler Youth film showed priests dancing in a brothel"_Anthony Rhodes(The Vatican in the Age of Dictators 1922-1945, pg 208)
• Because many Catholic priests were the backbone of the German resistance, the Nazis had to find a way to discredit the priests. And what better use than weaponising allegations of sexual abuse. And what better person do to it than Goebbels, the propaganda minister of Nazi Germany. When allegations against a seminarian surfaced(which were not proven) Goebbels gave a long winded and sanctimonious speech speaking of how it concerned him as a family man and a father of children and how because of that that drove him to launch investigations into Catholic Churches to weed out those who were "corrupters of the youth". The Nazis skillfully weaponised the press and the media against the Catholic Church when it came to these allegations which whipped the public into a frenzy. This in turn led to show trials and the beginning of what would become the priests barracks in Dachau concentration camp.

(vi)The Inquisition: The myth and the legend

• To be very clear here, there was a real set of institutions that were called the Inquisition that did conduct investigations and trials during the Medieval and Early Modern period. However, as scholars in the field have discovered "Between the 12th and 16th century the Latin Christian Church adapted certain elements of Roman legal procedure and charged papally appointed clergy to employ them in order to preserve orthodox religious belief from the attacks of heretics. Between the 16th and 19th centuries, chiefly in Mediterranean Europe, these procedures and personnel were transformed into institutional tribunals called inquisitions charged with the protection of orthodox beliefs and the maintenance of ecclesiastical discipline in the Latin Christian community. Between the 16th and 20th centuries largely as a result of within the Latin Church into Roman Catholic and Reformed(or Protestant) confessions, these procedures, personnel and institutions were transformed by polemic and fiction into a myth, the myth of the Inquisition. The institutions and the myth lived-and developed-in western Europe and the New World until the early 19th century when most of the inquisitions were abolished, and myth itself was universalised in a series of great artistic works into an indictment by a modern world of an earlier Europe for its crushing of the human spirit. Although the inquisitions disappeared 'The Inquisition' did not. The myth was originally devised to serve variously the political purposes of a number of early modern political regimes, as well as the Protestant Reformers, proponents of religious and civil toleration, philosophical enemies of the civil power of organised religion, and progressive modernists"_Edward Peters(The Inquisition, chp 1, pg 1)
• The essentially a myth grew along side the actual institutions of the inquisition. And it became widely reproduced. Then when the actual institutions of the inquisition itself died, its myth that was widely disseminated essentially became the source of fact about the Inquisition itself. The roots of this myth are in the Black Legend of Spanish civilisation that saw Spanish civilisation and its Catholic culture as being inherently barbaric. It was a form of Hispanophobia that combined racism and Anti Catholicism with the xenophobic nationalism of Early Modern Europe. In particular "Spanish political and military power was greatest in Europe. Resentment against Spain focused equally on its Inquisition and its military and its diplomatic practices. Although both England and France endured conflicts with Spain throughout the century, the flash-point was reached in the Revolt of the Netherlands, when anti Inquisition propaganda in united both Protestant Netherlands Catholics against Spanish Power and Practice"_Edward Peters(The Inquisition, chp 5, Invention of the Inquisition)
• Essential features of this myth include the following:

1. The notion that the Inquisition went around hunting witches. This is false. Far from going around hunting witches the Inquisition in many instances expressed skepticism of witchcraft as a concept and in many cases the Inquisition defend the rights of women accused of witchcraft. The Spanish Inquisition denounced the concept of persecuting witches in 1526 and in the 1600s openly engaged in quarrels and clashes with state authorities over the persecution of women accused of witchcraft, in many cases intervening to save thousands.
2. The notion that the Inquisitions prisons and court system were essentially the premodern version of the gulag. This was far from the truth. What researchers have actually found sifting through the Inquisitions archives is that the Inquisitions jails were the best in terms of how prisoners were treated in their era. In fact when court cases were being held one of the things researches found was that some prisoners would intentionally commit blasphemy so they could transferred to the Inquisitions courts and jails because they either had a greater chase of being acquitted in court(98%) or if they were sentence to prison the conditions were much better.
3. The notion that torture was a widespread phenomenon. Torture was actually very rare far more than both the secular institutions of that time, and even many institutions in the modern era. Interrogations could only last 10 minutes at a time and there had to be a trained medical professional always present to look after the prisoners health. If the interrogator engaged in any bodily harm of the prisoner they could be jailed and even imprisoned.

(vii)The myth of the Dark Ages

• The concept of a "Dark Ages" is historiographical concept that has had a varied history. In the modern era it essentially has meant to differing degrees the notion that the Medieval period was a period of backwardness and a lack of progress due to the antiquated, reactionary and oppressive Church to stifled all forms of progress.
• The source of the concept of an "age of light" vs an "age of darkness" originated with Petrarch who initially was talking about literature. During the Reformation though the person who actually coined the phrase "Dark Ages" was ironically the Catholic Cardinal and historian Caesar Baronius. In countering Protestant polemics about Catholic history, he wrote a multi volume history of the Church. In the process he contrasted the Christian Carolingian age under Charlamagne with the Viking Age which was seen as an age of darkness. He specifically stated "...a new age is begun, which, by the roughness and sterility of the good, the iron, leaden by the overflowing ugliness of the evil, and by the want of writers, has been called obscure."_Annales Ecclesiastici(Vol X, p. 647)
• Baronius saw the coming of the High Middle Ages which saw a restoration of the Carolingian Age, the beginning of the Gregorian reforms and the establishment of the Catholic Church's firm position as well as the building of things like Catholic run universities and other things as the coming of a new age of light. The previous Viking age he called "obscure". That is an English translation of the Latin term "Saeculum Obscurum". That also go translated as "Dark Ages". Hence the term was coined.
• Enlightenment authors such as Denis Diderot, Voltaire, Edward Gibbon and others took the concept of the "Dark Ages" and gave it an anti Catholic and anti Christian spin, seeing the Church as the cause of the Dark Ages in the Medieval era.
• This perspective that the Medieval period and the period when the Church was dominant was a "Dark Age" is now rejected by Medieval historians. Medieval scholay Guy Halsall expressing the consensus view on this topic states "In terms of the sources of information available, this is most certainly not a Dark Age. In fact, in terms of the evenness of geographical coverage and the sorts of issues that we can examine on a regional or even local basis, this period is more fully illuminated than the late Roman era."_The New Cambridge Medieval History(The Sources and their Interpretation, pg 90)
• The High Middle Ages for instance was a period where you have the birth of the modern universities built off the Cathedral schools of monks. It was the age of Magna Carta written by the Archbishop of Canterbury Stephen Langton. It was the age where Cisterian monks made major contributions to the technological revolution of the Middle Ages which in turn was used to build some of the greatest architectural achievements when it came to things like the Medieval Cathedrals which revival other cultural achievements like the Parthenon or the Pyramids. It was the age when you had Bishops like Robert Grosseteste of London who played a role in pioneering the scientific method during the Medieval period. Popes like Innocent VI who developed the concept of Persona Ficta which would play a massive role in the foundation of the modern concept of personhood with rights. And even during the Early Medieval period you had achievements. The Renaissance under Charlemagne. The Renaissance under Otto of the Holy Roman Empire. The role the Benedictine monks played in both preserving the knowledge of the Classical World and pioneering the first peace movements in global history(peace of god and truce of god).

These are examples of anti Catholic myths and propaganda that have existed throughout history.
(i)Maria Monk and the myth of Catholic infanticide in 19th century Canada

• Maria monk was a former nun who lived in in Canada, specifically Quebec in the early 19th century. She wrote a highly sensationalised novel called "Awful disclosures of Maria Monk" in 1836 where she details allegations of sexual unions Bishops would have with nuns. In these unions, the nuns were "sex slaves" who were subject to flagellation. During this allegedly process of depravity if the nun produced a child out of this union, the child would be baptised and then strangled to death. After being strangled they would bury them in a lime bit underneath the basement of the convent.
• The allegations caused a major sensation throughout Canada at the time with investigations being demanded, riots taking place and Churches even burning. When the investigation was actually done though not only did the find no evidence of this allegation, they found no allegation that Maria monk even lived in the specific convent where this took place. It was determined to be a hoax by scholar. Yet it still had a powerful impact on social life in Canada and America. In the U.S it was one of the most widely read novels of the 19th century before Uncle Tom's Cabin and in the 20th century it was whipped up during JFK's presidential campaign and used as a talking point to argue for why America couldn't have a Catholic president. He might install Maria Monk style abuses throughout the country.

(ii)MotheBaby homes and the myth of Catholic infanticide in 20th century Ireland

• The abuse scandals of the Catholic Church are widely known and widely reported. Now before going on to the myth here lets be clear about what's factual. There have been systemic cases of abuse in Catholic institutions both in Catholic industrial schools and other institutions ran by the Catholic Church. The Murphy and Ferns Report detail this. In the middle of this justified furor though a myth was added. The myth of the mother and baby homes. This myth goes something like this. The Catholic Church forcibly separated mothers from their children and placed them in these institutions which engaged in infanticide against these children and then covered it up by burying them in places like Septic tanks.
• What's the basis of this myth? Catherine Corless who is a prominent historian and activist in Irish society raised awareness of the infant mortality rate at the Mother and Baby Homes in Irish society and it was estimated that over 700 children died between the period of 1925-1961. When this was reported it was reported as the Catholic Church forcibly removing children from their parents and then intentionally organising the mass murder of thousands of children in these homes and then burying them in septic tanks. However, every major news outlet that initially reported this such as the Associated Press, Forbes and others had to retract these stories. And the reason is the following:

1. There was no evidence that the Catholic Church orchestrated the forced removal of Irish children in the Mother and Baby homes. According to the Irish commission on the Mother and Baby Homes "There is no evidence that women were forced to enter mother and baby homes by the church or State authorities. Most women had no alternative. Many pregnant single women contacted the Department of Local Government and Public Health (DLGPH), later the Department of Health, their local health authority, or a Catholic charity seeking assistance because they had nowhere to go and no money."_Mother and Baby Homes Commission(Executive Summary, prg 8)
2. There is no evidence that the Catholic Church organised the mass murder of children in the Mother and Baby Homes. The infant mortality rate was high because it was high across the board in Irish society. According to the data "Infant mortality in Ireland was substantially higher than in England and Wales, and it showed less signs of improvement, though Ireland, as a predominantly rural country should have had lower infant mortality. The 1923 report of the Registrar General of Births, Marriages and Deaths - the first relating to the area of the Irish Free State, recorded an infant mortality rate of 66 per 1,000. Infant mortality in urban areas was 99 per 1,000; almost double the rate in rural areas. The death rate for ‘illegitimate’ children was 344 per 1,000 births, about six times’ the mortality of the children of married couples. At this time the death rate among ‘illegitimate’ children was significantly higher in every country, and that remained the case throughout most of the 20th century"_Mother and Baby Homes Commission(1922-1939, prg 4.11). There were two reasons for this. The first being Ireland was an underdeveloped society that was impacted by things ranging from WWI, to the Irish war of independence, to the Great Depression as well as the Spanish Influenza. The second connected to this is the state of medical care in the beginning of the 20th century across. Because medical care was not as advanced at it is now, the death rate was generally higher. So to use an example the commission cites the influenza as a cause of death and states there was "No vaccine until the 1940s; seasonal vaccines in the late 1960s; subunit vaccines in the late 1970s"_Mother and Baby Homes Commission(Deaths, prg 33.6)
3. There is no evidence the Catholic Church placed children in septic tanks to try and "cover" this up. The Fifth Interim report on the Tuam burial cites bluntly "The human remains found by the Commission are not in a sewage tank but in a second structure with 20 chambers"_Tuam Fifth Interim Report(prg 9). This was misreported due to the fact that the burial site was next to underground pipes that had some connection to a sewage tank.
4. There is actually surprising evidence that the Church officials were more likely show more concern about the state of the health of children more than the state officials or those in Irish society at large. According tot he report "Although the first report of the registrar general of the Irish Free State highlighted the appalling excess mortality of children born to unmarried mothers and subsequent DLGPH reports noted the fact, there is little evidence that politicians or the public were concerned about these children. No publicity was given to the fact that in some years during the 1930s and 1940s, over 40% of ‘illegitimate’ children were dying before their first birthday in mother and baby homes. The high level of infant mortality in the Tuam Children’s Home did not feature at meetings of Galway county council, though Tuam was under the control of the local authority and it held meetings in the Children’s Home"_Mother and Baby Homes Commission(Executive Summary, prg 47). By contrast when it came to the Church officials, a 1927 report describing the attitude of nuns and leaders of religious over the Tuam homes speaks of how It further noted that ‘Its continuance in the condition in which we saw it would be a grave injustice to the Sisters and militate very much against its usefulness for the purposes to which it has been allocated’._Mother and Baby Homes Commission(Tuam, prg 15.25)

(iii)The residential school system, its crimes and abuses. Misunderstandings of this system and the reconciliation process in Canada

• The crimes and abuses of the residential school system that both Church and State in Canada were involved in is something that is part of an ongoing social discussion in Canadian social life. The residential school system was a system of cultural genocide where 150,000 children were taken from their families by the Canadian RCMP(Royal Mounted Police) and placed in these institutions where they experienced physical and sexual abuse. It was a system of cultural genocide. This is not a myth and anyone who denies this is engaging in residential school denialism which is no different from Armenian genocide denialism or Holocaust denialism.
• Given this basic truth where is the myths or misunderstandings here? The first myth is the notion that these were specifically "Catholic" institutions or that this was specifically a "Catholic" enterprise. It was not. The Catholic Church was complicit in this racist and genocidal institution but it was not the only institution that ran residential schools. The Anglican Church(my Church), United Church, Presbyterian Churches, Mennonite Churches and others also ran residential schools. This is important to state because when the news of the unmarked graves was being covered 2021, it was only the unmarked graves of Catholic run residential schools that got national and international attention while the unmarked graves of the other institutions was barely covered by the media. Giving a very misleading picture. Adding to this in Canadian history one of the key architects of the residential school system was Methodist activist Egerton Ryerson. This was then put in motion under Canada's first PM John A Macdonald(who was ironically very anti Catholic) in 1883. While residential schools closed in the 1990s the actual Church running of these institutions ended in 1969. From then the schools were either ran exclusively by the Federal government of Canada or they were actually taken over and ran by certain First Nations communities themselves.
• When it comes to the crimes themselves at the residential schools, the Church officials were responsible for the abuses both physical and sexual as well the implementation of the racist policy of assimilation. However in terms of the actual deaths that took place that was the responsibility of the Federal government of Canada as well as the state of health care in Canada. According to Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission "From those cases where the cause of death was reported, it is clear that until the 1950s, the schools were the sites of an ongoing tuberculosis crisis. Tuberculosis accounted for just less than 50% of the recorded deaths (46.2% for the Named Register, and 47% for the Named and Unnamed registers combined). ie tuberculosis death rate remained high until the 1950s: its decline coincides with the introduction of effective drug treatment"_Truth and Reconciliation Report(What We have learned, pg 62)

1. The reason why this is important to state is because in the late 19th and early 20th century in Canada Tuberculosis was the leading cause of death across the board. "From the available reports, in 1926, 1 in 13 of all reported deaths in Canada was due to TB, a number slightly higher than the number of deaths reported for cancer. As a result of improved living conditions and isolation of some infectious cases in sanatoria, incidence and mortality rates began to fall in subsequent years, and rates further declined with the introduction of effective antibiotic treatment in the mid-20th century"_Canadian Tuberculosis Standards/7th Edition(chp 1, Epidemiology of Tuberculosis in Canada, pg 4)
2. In provinces such as Saskatchewan the death rate would be higher than the national average with the rate of infection increasing with age. In 1922 it was estimated that "at six years old it reached 44 percent; at fourteen years 60.9 percent and at twenty 80 percent"_Report to the Government of Saskatchewan(Anti Tuberculosis Commission, pg 21, 1922)
3. Now while tuberculosis was a major epidemic across the board, it affected indigenous Canadians at a higher rate due to the racism of Canadian society. In addition you also had deaths that were caused both by the Spanish Influenza of WWI as well as the Asian Flu of 1957 which puts the deaths in perspective.

• Where the federal government of Canada comes into play in all of this is the fact that "the tuberculosis health crisis in the schools was part of a broader Aboriginal health crisis that was set in motion by colonial policies that separated Aboriginal people from their land, thereby disrupting their economies and their food supplies. This crisis was particularly intense on the Canadian Prairies. Numerous federal government policies contributed to the undermining of Aboriginal health. During a period of starvation, rations were withheld from bands in an effort to force them to abandon the lands that they had the tuberculosis health crisis in the schools was part of a broader Aboriginal health crisis that was set in motion by colonial policies that separated Aboriginal people from their land, thereby disrupting their economies and their food supplies. This crisis was particularly intense on the Canadian Prairies. Numerous federal government policies contributed to the undermining of Aboriginal health. During a period of starvation, rations were withheld from bands in an effort to force them to abandon the lands that they had"_Truth And Reconciliation Report(What we have learned, pg 62-63)
• Now what is not very well known is that Church officials and administrators who were part of the running of the schools repeatedly lobbied the federal government to change its health policies regarding indigenous Canadians due to the fact that "By 1940, the government had concluded that future policy should concentrate on the expansion of day schools for First Nations children. As a result, many of the existing residential school buildings were allowed to continue to deteriorate. A 1967 brief from the National Association of Principals and Administrators of Indian Residences—which included principals of both Catholic and Protestant schools—concluded, “In the years that the Churches have been involved in the administration of the schools, there has been a steady deterioration in essential services. Year after year, complaints, demands and requests for improvements have, in the main, fallen upon deaf ears. When E. A. Côté, the deputy minister responsible for Indian Affairs, met with church and school representatives to discuss the brief, he told them that only emergency repairs would be undertaken at schools that Indian Affairs intended to close"_Truth and Reconciliation Report(What we have learned, pg 64-65)
• In addition to this during the Great Depression the Federal government of Canada initiated cuts to proper funding to the schools. When "funding was cut during the Depression of the 1930s, it was the students who paid the price—in more ways than one. At the end of the 1930s, it was discovered that the cook at the Presbyterian school at Kenora was actually selling bread to the students, at the rate of ten cents a loaf. When asked if the children got enough to eat at meals, she responded, “Yes, but they were always hungry.” The Indian agent ordered an end to the practice.323 the fact that hungry students would be reduced to buying bread to supplement their meals in 1939 highlights the government’s failure to provide schools with the resources needed to feed students adequately. Milk was in constant shortage at many schools, in part due to the poor health and small size of the school dairy herds. As late as 1937, disease among the cows at the Kamloops school had cut milk production by 50%. To the principal’s frustration, Ottawa refused to fund the construction of an additional barn, which would have allowed for an increase in milk production and the isolation of sick animals"_Truth and Reconciliation Report(What we have learned, pg 57)
• While this was happening the Federal government of Canada through Department of Pensions and National Health(now Health Canada) also decided to engage in a policy of scientific racism by initiating nutrition experiments from 1942 to 1952 where they would intentionally keep children malnourished. Conducted in conjunction with the Royal Canadian Air Force and the Hudson Bay Company, it was designed to do research into the vitamin in takes of indigenous peoples, particularly indigenous children. So it is highly misleading to focus on the Catholic Church when speaking about the deaths of children at residential schools. The Catholic Church was complicit in the system of abuses and forced racial assimilation. However when speaking of the causes of the deaths of children who were buried at unmarked graves, that was the direct responsibility of the health policies of the federal government of Canada as well as the state of medical care in Canada and Church officials as mentioned actually lobbied the government to improve the state of medical care that they were putting out, a lobbying effort that was largely ignored by the federal government.
• When speaking of the process of reconciliation there is also a lot of misinformation and misunderstanding surround the facts around this as well. The first has to with the term "unmarked graves". Unmarked graves are not mass graves. Something First Nations leaders themselves have stated. The unmarked grave sites are the burial sites of both adults and children. Some of the people buried in the unmarked graves where those who died in old age. Others are those who attended residential schools. Since these are mixed burial sites it is impossible to determine which is which without forensic analysis which is now being done. Nor where these sites "hidden". The sites where known for generations. So these are not "new" discoveries.
• When it came to records surrounding residential schools it has been stated that everyone else, including the federal government has handed over their records on residential schools with the exception of the Catholic Church who as "resisted" doing so. This is misleading. The Bishops of the dioceses that ran residential schools handed over their records. The major issue has been work over the records of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate. The records of the Oblates just like the dioceses are all available but a snag has been drawing all of these records into a consolidated format. This includes what's called the "Codex Historicus". A series of documents that contains the daily diaries of each of the Oblate missionaries spanning hundreds of years. The Oblates wanted to turn this into one consolidated digitised format. They sought assistance from the federal government to do so. However after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission ended in 2015 funding was cut for this project by the feds, significantly slowing the process. So the archives are free to access, but the wish of the National Truth and Reconciliation Centre that they been in one consolidated format has been held up for these reasons. An additional factor under consideration is this. As mentioned above, the Church administration of the residential school system ended in 1969. The federal government directly administered these schools which meant that some of the records of the schools were transferred from the Churches to the Department of Indian Affairs. So throughout this whole process the biggest impediment to the release of record has actually been the federal government and not the Catholic Church. This is shown in the TRC where it documents the fact that "According to a 1935 federal government policy, school returns could be destroyed after five years, and reports of accidents after ten years. This led to the destruction of fifteen tonnes of waste paper. Between 1936 and 1944, 200,000 Indian Affairs files were destroyed.348 Health records were regularly destroyed. For example, in 1957, Indian and Northern Health Services was instructed to destroy “correspondence re routine arrangements re medical and dental treatments of [indigenous people] and [Inuit], such as transportation, escort services, admission to hospital, advice on treatment, requests for treatment, etc.” after a period of two years. Reports by doctors, dentists, and nurses were similarly assigned a two-year retention period"_Truth and Reconciliation Report(What we have learned, pg 60)

(iv)Pope Pius XII was 'Hitler's Pope' and the Vatican was allies with Nazi Germany

• This myth essentially says the following. The Catholic Church was an ally of Nazi Germany and Pius XII was Hitler's man in the Vatican. It varies to different degrees. Some people allege that Pius XII simply just turned a blind eye to the Nazis and their atrocities, particularly against the Jews. Others allege that he was an actual ally of the Nazis, and point to the Concordat of 1933 as proof of this alleged alliance between the Vatican and Nazi Germany. Now, what's the source of this myth?

1. The first major source of this myth is the systematic disinformation campaign waged against the Vatican by the Soviet Union. Beginning under Stalin "the campaign to link the pope to Hitler was initiated by the Soviet Union, presumably in hopes of neutralizing the Vatican in post-World War II affairs. Early in 1944, Izvestia (the official party daily published in Moscow) claimed that Pope Pius XII had supported the Nazi regime. The next day, the New York Times condemned the article as malicious propaganda and vigorously asserted the pope’s opposition to all forms of tyranny. But the Soviets continued, and one of their agents soon published a book claiming that the Vatican had signed a secret pact with Hitler"_Bearing False Witness: Debunking Centuries of Anti Catholic History(Sins of Antisemitism, Chp 1)
2. This program started under Stalin but then it expanded significantly under Soviet Leader Nikita Khrushchev. Ion Pacepa, a major general in Romania's intelligence services under communism and an advisor to communist leader Nicolae Ceausescu speaks of how his "first personal encounter with Khrushchev’s practice of rewriting people’s pasts occurred on October 26, 1959. On that day, Khrushchev landed in Bucharest for what would become known as his six-day vacation. Khrushchev had never before taken such a long vacation abroad, but his stay in Bucharest was not a vacation either. He was brought there by his new spy chief, General Aleksandr Sakharovsky, who until recently had been the chief intelligence adviser for the Securitate, Romania’s equivalent of the Soviet security police. Sakharovsky wanted to introduce Khrushchev to the Romanian ruler, Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, and get his help in a couple of German matters—Romania had the second-largest ethnic German minority group in the Soviet bloc One of Sakharovsky’s projects was to seek Romanian cooperation in the smearing of Pius XII. The pope had died a few months earlier, and thus could no longer defend himself. Sakharovsky and Khrushchev wanted to pull off a kind of Beriya operation. They intended to change Pius’s past image from Jew-defender to Jew-hater so as to compromise the Vatican—the same way they had changed Beriya’s past from ferocious anti-imperialist to imperialist agent. Khrushchev and Sakharovsky naturally realized that they could not put the Vatican out of business, but they did hope that by representing its head as a Jew-hater"_Ion Pacepa(Disinformation, chp 16, Khrushchev's War on the Vatican)
3. In describing the details of this operation Pacepa states "IN FEBRUARY 1960, Khrushchev formally approved a joint Communist Party/KGB operational plan for destroying the Vatican’s moral authority in Western Europe. Since 1945, the Kremlin had fought the Vatican indirectly by framing many of its priests and top clergymen in the Soviet Union and in its new territorial acquisitions “liberated” at the end of the war, slandering them either as Nazi war criminals or as enemies of peace. Now the Kremlin wanted the KGB to frame the Vatican on its home turf, using its own priests. 1 Concocted by KGB chairman Aleksandr Shelepin and by Alexei Kirichenko, the Soviet Politburo member responsible for international policy, the new plan was constructed around Stalin’s 1945 idea of portraying Pius XII as “Hitler’s Pope...Shelepin and Kirichenko decided that the framing of Pius XII should be based on a fictionalized scenario, supported by genuine, slightly modified Vatican documents (whether or not specifically related to Pius XII), the originals of which would never be released to the public. At that time there was an unflinching KGB rule for handling modified and counterfeited documents: they should be made available only in the form of retyped documents or in specially prepared photocopies, as even the most perfect counterfeit by today’s standards might become vulnerable to future detection techniques....“Seat 12” was the code name for the Romanian side of the KGB’s operation against Pius XII. The name was an allusion to the pope as occupant of the seat of Saint Peter, and to Pius XII himself .....As John Koehler explained in his book Spies in the Vatican: The Soviet Union’s Cold War against the Catholic Church, the Vatican was not exempt from the Kremlin’s efforts to infiltrate foreign governments. David Alvarez made the same point in his similarly titled book, Spies in the Vatican: Espionage & Intrigue from Napoleon to the Holocaust. Among the more notorious infiltrations, in 1952 Father Aligheri Tondi, a professor at the Gregorian Academy, was identified as a KGB agent. In 1963, Polish intelligence placed a cooperative bishop in the Vatican. For the Seat 12 assignment to Rome, the DIE chose three priests who were also co-opted agents."_Ion Pacepa(Disinformation, chp 17, Preparations for framing Pope Pius XII)

• During the war behind the scenes Pius XII made several interventions on behalf of Jews suffering during the Holocaust such as "The six official papal protests by Pius XII and the numerous oral intercessions undertaken on behalf of Slovak Jews in his name[which] were significant factors in stopping the Nazi deportation of Slovakia’s Jews. Pius’s persistent pleas were finally heeded."_Rabbi David Dalin(The Myth of Hitler's Pope, chp 4, A Righteous Gentile: Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust)
• Out of all the analyses that estimate the overall impact of Pius XII's interventions one of the "Foremost amongst these was Israeli historian and diplomat Pinchas Lapide, who had been the Israeli consul in Milan and had spoken with many Italian Jewish Holocaust survivors. In his meticulously researched and comprehensive 1967 book Three Popes and the Jews, Lapide persuasively argued that Pius XII “was instrumental in saving at least 700,000, but probably as many as 860,000 Jews from certain death at Nazi hands.”"_Rabbi David Dalin(The Myth of Hitler's Pope, chp 1, The Myth of Hitler's Pope and Why it matters)
• In the immediate aftermath of the war up until the 1950s representatives of the Jewish community. For example "Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, Jews praised Pope Pius XII for saving Jewish lives. 130 In 1943, Chaim Weizmann, who would become Israel’s first president, wrote that “the Holy See is lending its powerful help wherever it can, to mitigate the fate of my persecuted co-religionists.” The following year, Rabbi Maurice Perlzweig, representing the World Jewish Congress, wrote that “the repeated interventions of the Holy Father on behalf of Jewish communities in Europe has provoked the profoundest sentiments of appreciation and gratitude from Jews throughout the world.” On July 31, 1944, Judge Joseph Proskauer, the president of the American Jewish Committee, declared in a speech at a Madison Square Garden rally: “We have heard . . . what a great part the Holy Father [has played] in the salvation of the Jewish refugees in Italy, and we know from sources that must be credited that this great pope has reached forth his mighty and sheltering hand to help the oppressed of Hungary.” Rabbi Louis Finkelstein, the chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, stated: “No keener rebuke has come to Nazism than from Pope Pius XI and his successor, Pope Pius XII.”_Rabbi David Dalin(The Myth of Hitler's Pope, chp 4, A Righteous Gentile: Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust)

(v)Nazi morality trials: The weaponisation of accusations of sexual abuse for propaganda

• If the Soviet Union was guilty of spreading propaganda and misinformation about the Vatican and the Church's relationship with Nazi Germany after the war, the Nazis themselves were ironically enough also guilty of spreading anti Catholic propaganda and misinformation. And one the tactics that was used was sexual allegations. The trigger for this was Pope Pius XI's encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge which condemned Nazism
• In terms of the circumstances of these trials "Attacks had been made on priests morals before, but they were nothing compared with the new accusations and mass trials. At Koblenz 170 Franciscan were arrested and tried with 'corrupting the youth and turning the monastery into a male brothel'. That trial was conducted in camera and that most of the witnesses were children raised doubts as to its equity. The Volkischer Beobachter wrote about 'orgies which the pen refused to describe'; and the Schwarze Korps showed a cartoon of small boys being beckoned by a lascivious-looking monk with the caption 'Let the children come unto me!'. Goebbels paper published a series of indignant articles about monastery schools which had become 'incubators of homosexuality' and Goebbels sanctimoniously punished their homosexuals like Rohm and Heines. Das Schwarze Korps alleged that even at the altar rail, priest practised their disgusting tricks on old men and crippled children. A Hitler Youth film showed priests dancing in a brothel"_Anthony Rhodes(The Vatican in the Age of Dictators 1922-1945, pg 208)
• Because many Catholic priests were the backbone of the German resistance, the Nazis had to find a way to discredit the priests. And what better use than weaponising allegations of sexual abuse. And what better person do to it than Goebbels, the propaganda minister of Nazi Germany. When allegations against a seminarian surfaced(which were not proven) Goebbels gave a long winded and sanctimonious speech speaking of how it concerned him as a family man and a father of children and how because of that that drove him to launch investigations into Catholic Churches to weed out those who were "corrupters of the youth". The Nazis skillfully weaponised the press and the media against the Catholic Church when it came to these allegations which whipped the public into a frenzy. This in turn led to show trials and the beginning of what would become the priests barracks in Dachau concentration camp.

(vi)The Inquisition: The myth and the legend

• To be very clear here, there was a real set of institutions that were called the Inquisition that did conduct investigations and trials during the Medieval and Early Modern period. However, as scholars in the field have discovered "Between the 12th and 16th century the Latin Christian Church adapted certain elements of Roman legal procedure and charged papally appointed clergy to employ them in order to preserve orthodox religious belief from the attacks of heretics. Between the 16th and 19th centuries, chiefly in Mediterranean Europe, these procedures and personnel were transformed into institutional tribunals called inquisitions charged with the protection of orthodox beliefs and the maintenance of ecclesiastical discipline in the Latin Christian community. Between the 16th and 20th centuries largely as a result of within the Latin Church into Roman Catholic and Reformed(or Protestant) confessions, these procedures, personnel and institutions were transformed by polemic and fiction into a myth, the myth of the Inquisition. The institutions and the myth lived-and developed-in western Europe and the New World until the early 19th century when most of the inquisitions were abolished, and myth itself was universalised in a series of great artistic works into an indictment by a modern world of an earlier Europe for its crushing of the human spirit. Although the inquisitions disappeared 'The Inquisition' did not. The myth was originally devised to serve variously the political purposes of a number of early modern political regimes, as well as the Protestant Reformers, proponents of religious and civil toleration, philosophical enemies of the civil power of organised religion, and progressive modernists"_Edward Peters(The Inquisition, chp 1, pg 1)
• The essentially a myth grew along side the actual institutions of the inquisition. And it became widely reproduced. Then when the actual institutions of the inquisition itself died, its myth that was widely disseminated essentially became the source of fact about the Inquisition itself. The roots of this myth are in the Black Legend of Spanish civilisation that saw Spanish civilisation and its Catholic culture as being inherently barbaric. It was a form of Hispanophobia that combined racism and Anti Catholicism with the xenophobic nationalism of Early Modern Europe. In particular "Spanish political and military power was greatest in Europe. Resentment against Spain focused equally on its Inquisition and its military and its diplomatic practices. Although both England and France endured conflicts with Spain throughout the century, the flash-point was reached in the Revolt of the Netherlands, when anti Inquisition propaganda in united both Protestant Netherlands Catholics against Spanish Power and Practice"_Edward Peters(The Inquisition, chp 5, Invention of the Inquisition)
• Essential features of this myth include the following:

1. The notion that the Inquisition went around hunting witches. This is false. Far from going around hunting witches the Inquisition in many instances expressed skepticism of witchcraft as a concept and in many cases the Inquisition defend the rights of women accused of witchcraft. The Spanish Inquisition denounced the concept of persecuting witches in 1526 and in the 1600s openly engaged in quarrels and clashes with state authorities over the persecution of women accused of witchcraft, in many cases intervening to save thousands.
2. The notion that the Inquisitions prisons and court system were essentially the premodern version of the gulag. This was far from the truth. What researchers have actually found sifting through the Inquisitions archives is that the Inquisitions jails were the best in terms of how prisoners were treated in their era. In fact when court cases were being held one of the things researches found was that some prisoners would intentionally commit blasphemy so they could transferred to the Inquisitions courts and jails because they either had a greater chase of being acquitted in court(98%) or if they were sentence to prison the conditions were much better.
3. The notion that torture was a widespread phenomenon. Torture was actually very rare far more than both the secular institutions of that time, and even many institutions in the modern era. Interrogations could only last 10 minutes at a time and there had to be a trained medical professional always present to look after the prisoners health. If the interrogator engaged in any bodily harm of the prisoner they could be jailed and even imprisoned.

(vii)The myth of the Dark Ages

• The concept of a "Dark Ages" is historiographical concept that has had a varied history. In the modern era it essentially has meant to differing degrees the notion that the Medieval period was a period of backwardness and a lack of progress due to the antiquated, reactionary and oppressive Church to stifled all forms of progress.
• The source of the concept of an "age of light" vs an "age of darkness" originated with Petrarch who initially was talking about literature. During the Reformation though the person who actually coined the phrase "Dark Ages" was ironically the Catholic Cardinal and historian Caesar Baronius. In countering Protestant polemics about Catholic history, he wrote a multi volume history of the Church. In the process he contrasted the Christian Carolingian age under Charlamagne with the Viking Age which was seen as an age of darkness. He specifically stated "...a new age is begun, which, by the roughness and sterility of the good, the iron, leaden by the overflowing ugliness of the evil, and by the want of writers, has been called obscure."_Annales Ecclesiastici(Vol X, p. 647)
• Baronius saw the coming of the High Middle Ages which saw a restoration of the Carolingian Age, the beginning of the Gregorian reforms and the establishment of the Catholic Church's firm position as well as the building of things like Catholic run universities and other things as the coming of a new age of light. The previous Viking age he called "obscure". That is an English translation of the Latin term "Saeculum Obscurum". That also go translated as "Dark Ages". Hence the term was coined.
• Enlightenment authors such as Denis Diderot, Voltaire, Edward Gibbon and others took the concept of the "Dark Ages" and gave it an anti Catholic and anti Christian spin, seeing the Church as the cause of the Dark Ages in the Medieval era.
• This perspective that the Medieval period and the period when the Church was dominant was a "Dark Age" is now rejected by Medieval historians. Medieval scholay Guy Halsall expressing the consensus view on this topic states "In terms of the sources of information available, this is most certainly not a Dark Age. In fact, in terms of the evenness of geographical coverage and the sorts of issues that we can examine on a regional or even local basis, this period is more fully illuminated than the late Roman era."_The New Cambridge Medieval History(The Sources and their Interpretation, pg 90)
• The High Middle Ages for instance was a period where you have the birth of the modern universities built off the Cathedral schools of monks. It was the age of Magna Carta written by the Archbishop of Canterbury Stephen Langton. It was the age where Cisterian monks made major contributions to the technological revolution of the Middle Ages which in turn was used to build some of the greatest architectural achievements when it came to things like the Medieval Cathedrals which revival other cultural achievements like the Parthenon or the Pyramids. It was the age when you had Bishops like Robert Grosseteste of London who played a role in pioneering the scientific method during the Medieval period. Popes like Innocent VI who developed the concept of Persona Ficta which would play a massive role in the foundation of the modern concept of personhood with rights. And even during the Early Medieval period you had achievements. The Renaissance under Charlemagne. The Renaissance under Otto of the Holy Roman Empire. The role the Benedictine monks played in both preserving the knowledge of the Classical World and pioneering the first peace movements in global history(peace of god and truce of god).

These are examples of anti Catholic myths and propaganda that have existed throughout history.
(i)Maria Monk and the myth of Catholic infanticide in 19th century Canada

• Maria monk was a former nun who lived in in Canada, specifically Quebec in the early 19th century. She wrote a highly sensationalised novel called "Awful disclosures of Maria Monk" in 1836 where she details allegations of sexual unions Bishops would have with nuns. In these unions, the nuns were "sex slaves" who were subject to flagellation. During this allegedly process of depravity if the nun produced a child out of this union, the child would be baptised and then strangled to death. After being strangled they would bury them in a lime bit underneath the basement of the convent.
• The allegations caused a major sensation throughout Canada at the time with investigations being demanded, riots taking place and Churches even burning. When the investigation was actually done though not only did the find no evidence of this allegation, they found no allegation that Maria monk even lived in the specific convent where this took place. It was determined to be a hoax by scholar. Yet it still had a powerful impact on social life in Canada and America. In the U.S it was one of the most widely read novels of the 19th century before Uncle Tom's Cabin and in the 20th century it was whipped up during JFK's presidential campaign and used as a talking point to argue for why America couldn't have a Catholic president. He might install Maria Monk style abuses throughout the country.

(ii)MotheBaby homes and the myth of Catholic infanticide in 20th century Ireland

• The abuse scandals of the Catholic Church are widely known and widely reported. Now before going on to the myth here lets be clear about what's factual. There have been systemic cases of abuse in Catholic institutions both in Catholic industrial schools and other institutions ran by the Catholic Church. The Murphy and Ferns Report detail this. In the middle of this justified furor though a myth was added. The myth of the mother and baby homes. This myth goes something like this. The Catholic Church forcibly separated mothers from their children and placed them in these institutions which engaged in infanticide against these children and then covered it up by burying them in places like Septic tanks.
• What's the basis of this myth? Catherine Corless who is a prominent historian and activist in Irish society raised awareness of the infant mortality rate at the Mother and Baby Homes in Irish society and it was estimated that over 700 children died between the period of 1925-1961. When this was reported it was reported as the Catholic Church forcibly removing children from their parents and then intentionally organising the mass murder of thousands of children in these homes and then burying them in septic tanks. However, every major news outlet that initially reported this such as the Associated Press, Forbes and others had to retract these stories. And the reason is the following:

1. There was no evidence that the Catholic Church orchestrated the forced removal of Irish children in the Mother and Baby homes. According to the Irish commission on the Mother and Baby Homes "There is no evidence that women were forced to enter mother and baby homes by the church or State authorities. Most women had no alternative. Many pregnant single women contacted the Department of Local Government and Public Health (DLGPH), later the Department of Health, their local health authority, or a Catholic charity seeking assistance because they had nowhere to go and no money."_Mother and Baby Homes Commission(Executive Summary, prg 8)
2. There is no evidence that the Catholic Church organised the mass murder of children in the Mother and Baby Homes. The infant mortality rate was high because it was high across the board in Irish society. According to the data "Infant mortality in Ireland was substantially higher than in England and Wales, and it showed less signs of improvement, though Ireland, as a predominantly rural country should have had lower infant mortality. The 1923 report of the Registrar General of Births, Marriages and Deaths - the first relating to the area of the Irish Free State, recorded an infant mortality rate of 66 per 1,000. Infant mortality in urban areas was 99 per 1,000; almost double the rate in rural areas. The death rate for ‘illegitimate’ children was 344 per 1,000 births, about six times’ the mortality of the children of married couples. At this time the death rate among ‘illegitimate’ children was significantly higher in every country, and that remained the case throughout most of the 20th century"_Mother and Baby Homes Commission(1922-1939, prg 4.11). There were two reasons for this. The first being Ireland was an underdeveloped society that was impacted by things ranging from WWI, to the Irish war of independence, to the Great Depression as well as the Spanish Influenza. The second connected to this is the state of medical care in the beginning of the 20th century across. Because medical care was not as advanced at it is now, the death rate was generally higher. So to use an example the commission cites the influenza as a cause of death and states there was "No vaccine until the 1940s; seasonal vaccines in the late 1960s; subunit vaccines in the late 1970s"_Mother and Baby Homes Commission(Deaths, prg 33.6)
3. There is no evidence the Catholic Church placed children in septic tanks to try and "cover" this up. The Fifth Interim report on the Tuam burial cites bluntly "The human remains found by the Commission are not in a sewage tank but in a second structure with 20 chambers"_Tuam Fifth Interim Report(prg 9). This was misreported due to the fact that the burial site was next to underground pipes that had some connection to a sewage tank.
4. There is actually surprising evidence that the Church officials were more likely show more concern about the state of the health of children more than the state officials or those in Irish society at large. According tot he report "Although the first report of the registrar general of the Irish Free State highlighted the appalling excess mortality of children born to unmarried mothers and subsequent DLGPH reports noted the fact, there is little evidence that politicians or the public were concerned about these children. No publicity was given to the fact that in some years during the 1930s and 1940s, over 40% of ‘illegitimate’ children were dying before their first birthday in mother and baby homes. The high level of infant mortality in the Tuam Children’s Home did not feature at meetings of Galway county council, though Tuam was under the control of the local authority and it held meetings in the Children’s Home"_Mother and Baby Homes Commission(Executive Summary, prg 47). By contrast when it came to the Church officials, a 1927 report describing the attitude of nuns and leaders of religious over the Tuam homes speaks of how It further noted that ‘Its continuance in the condition in which we saw it would be a grave injustice to the Sisters and militate very much against its usefulness for the purposes to which it has been allocated’._Mother and Baby Homes Commission(Tuam, prg 15.25)

(iii)The residential school system, its crimes and abuses. Misunderstandings of this system and the reconciliation process in Canada

• The crimes and abuses of the residential school system that both Church and State in Canada were involved in is something that is part of an ongoing social discussion in Canadian social life. The residential school system was a system of cultural genocide where 150,000 children were taken from their families by the Canadian RCMP(Royal Mounted Police) and placed in these institutions where they experienced physical and sexual abuse. It was a system of cultural genocide. This is not a myth and anyone who denies this is engaging in residential school denialism which is no different from Armenian genocide denialism or Holocaust denialism.
• Given this basic truth where is the myths or misunderstandings here? The first myth is the notion that these were specifically "Catholic" institutions or that this was specifically a "Catholic" enterprise. It was not. The Catholic Church was complicit in this racist and genocidal institution but it was not the only institution that ran residential schools. The Anglican Church(my Church), United Church, Presbyterian Churches, Mennonite Churches and others also ran residential schools. This is important to state because when the news of the unmarked graves was being covered 2021, it was only the unmarked graves of Catholic run residential schools that got national and international attention while the unmarked graves of the other institutions was barely covered by the media. Giving a very misleading picture. Adding to this in Canadian history one of the key architects of the residential school system was Methodist activist Egerton Ryerson. This was then put in motion under Canada's first PM John A Macdonald(who was ironically very anti Catholic) in 1883. While residential schools closed in the 1990s the actual Church running of these institutions ended in 1969. From then the schools were either ran exclusively by the Federal government of Canada or they were actually taken over and ran by certain First Nations communities themselves.
• When it comes to the crimes themselves at the residential schools, the Church officials were responsible for the abuses both physical and sexual as well the implementation of the racist policy of assimilation. However in terms of the actual deaths that took place that was the responsibility of the Federal government of Canada as well as the state of health care in Canada. According to Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission "From those cases where the cause of death was reported, it is clear that until the 1950s, the schools were the sites of an ongoing tuberculosis crisis. Tuberculosis accounted for just less than 50% of the recorded deaths (46.2% for the Named Register, and 47% for the Named and Unnamed registers combined). ie tuberculosis death rate remained high until the 1950s: its decline coincides with the introduction of effective drug treatment"_Truth and Reconciliation Report(What We have learned, pg 62)

1. The reason why this is important to state is because in the late 19th and early 20th century in Canada Tuberculosis was the leading cause of death across the board. "From the available reports, in 1926, 1 in 13 of all reported deaths in Canada was due to TB, a number slightly higher than the number of deaths reported for cancer. As a result of improved living conditions and isolation of some infectious cases in sanatoria, incidence and mortality rates began to fall in subsequent years, and rates further declined with the introduction of effective antibiotic treatment in the mid-20th century"_Canadian Tuberculosis Standards/7th Edition(chp 1, Epidemiology of Tuberculosis in Canada, pg 4)
2. In provinces such as Saskatchewan the death rate would be higher than the national average with the rate of infection increasing with age. In 1922 it was estimated that "at six years old it reached 44 percent; at fourteen years 60.9 percent and at twenty 80 percent"_Report to the Government of Saskatchewan(Anti Tuberculosis Commission, pg 21, 1922)
3. Now while tuberculosis was a major epidemic across the board, it affected indigenous Canadians at a higher rate due to the racism of Canadian society. In addition you also had deaths that were caused both by the Spanish Influenza of WWI as well as the Asian Flu of 1957 which puts the deaths in perspective.

• Where the federal government of Canada comes into play in all of this is the fact that "the tuberculosis health crisis in the schools was part of a broader Aboriginal health crisis that was set in motion by colonial policies that separated Aboriginal people from their land, thereby disrupting their economies and their food supplies. This crisis was particularly intense on the Canadian Prairies. Numerous federal government policies contributed to the undermining of Aboriginal health. During a period of starvation, rations were withheld from bands in an effort to force them to abandon the lands that they had the tuberculosis health crisis in the schools was part of a broader Aboriginal health crisis that was set in motion by colonial policies that separated Aboriginal people from their land, thereby disrupting their economies and their food supplies. This crisis was particularly intense on the Canadian Prairies. Numerous federal government policies contributed to the undermining of Aboriginal health. During a period of starvation, rations were withheld from bands in an effort to force them to abandon the lands that they had"_Truth And Reconciliation Report(What we have learned, pg 62-63)
• Now what is not very well known is that Church officials and administrators who were part of the running of the schools repeatedly lobbied the federal government to change its health policies regarding indigenous Canadians due to the fact that "By 1940, the government had concluded that future policy should concentrate on the expansion of day schools for First Nations children. As a result, many of the existing residential school buildings were allowed to continue to deteriorate. A 1967 brief from the National Association of Principals and Administrators of Indian Residences—which included principals of both Catholic and Protestant schools—concluded, “In the years that the Churches have been involved in the administration of the schools, there has been a steady deterioration in essential services. Year after year, complaints, demands and requests for improvements have, in the main, fallen upon deaf ears. When E. A. Côté, the deputy minister responsible for Indian Affairs, met with church and school representatives to discuss the brief, he told them that only emergency repairs would be undertaken at schools that Indian Affairs intended to close"_Truth and Reconciliation Report(What we have learned, pg 64-65)
• In addition to this during the Great Depression the Federal government of Canada initiated cuts to proper funding to the schools. When "funding was cut during the Depression of the 1930s, it was the students who paid the price—in more ways than one. At the end of the 1930s, it was discovered that the cook at the Presbyterian school at Kenora was actually selling bread to the students, at the rate of ten cents a loaf. When asked if the children got enough to eat at meals, she responded, “Yes, but they were always hungry.” The Indian agent ordered an end to the practice.323 the fact that hungry students would be reduced to buying bread to supplement their meals in 1939 highlights the government’s failure to provide schools with the resources needed to feed students adequately. Milk was in constant shortage at many schools, in part due to the poor health and small size of the school dairy herds. As late as 1937, disease among the cows at the Kamloops school had cut milk production by 50%. To the principal’s frustration, Ottawa refused to fund the construction of an additional barn, which would have allowed for an increase in milk production and the isolation of sick animals"_Truth and Reconciliation Report(What we have learned, pg 57)
• While this was happening the Federal government of Canada through Department of Pensions and National Health(now Health Canada) also decided to engage in a policy of scientific racism by initiating nutrition experiments from 1942 to 1952 where they would intentionally keep children malnourished. Conducted in conjunction with the Royal Canadian Air Force and the Hudson Bay Company, it was designed to do research into the vitamin in takes of indigenous peoples, particularly indigenous children. So it is highly misleading to focus on the Catholic Church when speaking about the deaths of children at residential schools. The Catholic Church was complicit in the system of abuses and forced racial assimilation. However when speaking of the causes of the deaths of children who were buried at unmarked graves, that was the direct responsibility of the health policies of the federal government of Canada as well as the state of medical care in Canada and Church officials as mentioned actually lobbied the government to improve the state of medical care that they were putting out, a lobbying effort that was largely ignored by the federal government.
• When speaking of the process of reconciliation there is also a lot of misinformation and misunderstanding surround the facts around this as well. The first has to with the term "unmarked graves". Unmarked graves are not mass graves. Something First Nations leaders themselves have stated. The unmarked grave sites are the burial sites of both adults and children. Some of the people buried in the unmarked graves where those who died in old age. Others are those who attended residential schools. Since these are mixed burial sites it is impossible to determine which is which without forensic analysis which is now being done. Nor where these sites "hidden". The sites where known for generations. So these are not "new" discoveries.
• When it came to records surrounding residential schools it has been stated that everyone else, including the federal government has handed over their records on residential schools with the exception of the Catholic Church who as "resisted" doing so. This is misleading. The Bishops of the dioceses that ran residential schools handed over their records. The major issue has been work over the records of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate. The records of the Oblates just like the dioceses are all available but a snag has been drawing all of these records into a consolidated format. This includes what's called the "Codex Historicus". A series of documents that contains the daily diaries of each of the Oblate missionaries spanning hundreds of years. The Oblates wanted to turn this into one consolidated digitised format. They sought assistance from the federal government to do so. However after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission ended in 2015 funding was cut for this project by the feds, significantly slowing the process. So the archives are free to access, but the wish of the National Truth and Reconciliation Centre that they been in one consolidated format has been held up for these reasons. An additional factor under consideration is this. As mentioned above, the Church administration of the residential school system ended in 1969. The federal government directly administered these schools which meant that some of the records of the schools were transferred from the Churches to the Department of Indian Affairs. So throughout this whole process the biggest impediment to the release of record has actually been the federal government and not the Catholic Church. This is shown in the TRC where it documents the fact that "According to a 1935 federal government policy, school returns could be destroyed after five years, and reports of accidents after ten years. This led to the destruction of fifteen tonnes of waste paper. Between 1936 and 1944, 200,000 Indian Affairs files were destroyed.348 Health records were regularly destroyed. For example, in 1957, Indian and Northern Health Services was instructed to destroy “correspondence re routine arrangements re medical and dental treatments of [indigenous people] and [Inuit], such as transportation, escort services, admission to hospital, advice on treatment, requests for treatment, etc.” after a period of two years. Reports by doctors, dentists, and nurses were similarly assigned a two-year retention period"_Truth and Reconciliation Report(What we have learned, pg 60)

(iv)Pope Pius XII was 'Hitler's Pope' and the Vatican was allies with Nazi Germany

• This myth essentially says the following. The Catholic Church was an ally of Nazi Germany and Pius XII was Hitler's man in the Vatican. It varies to different degrees. Some people allege that Pius XII simply just turned a blind eye to the Nazis and their atrocities, particularly against the Jews. Others allege that he was an actual ally of the Nazis, and point to the Concordat of 1933 as proof of this alleged alliance between the Vatican and Nazi Germany. Now, what's the source of this myth?

1. The first major source of this myth is the systematic disinformation campaign waged against the Vatican by the Soviet Union. Beginning under Stalin "the campaign to link the pope to Hitler was initiated by the Soviet Union, presumably in hopes of neutralizing the Vatican in post-World War II affairs. Early in 1944, Izvestia (the official party daily published in Moscow) claimed that Pope Pius XII had supported the Nazi regime. The next day, the New York Times condemned the article as malicious propaganda and vigorously asserted the pope’s opposition to all forms of tyranny. But the Soviets continued, and one of their agents soon published a book claiming that the Vatican had signed a secret pact with Hitler"_Bearing False Witness: Debunking Centuries of Anti Catholic History(Sins of Antisemitism, Chp 1)
2. This program started under Stalin but then it expanded significantly under Soviet Leader Nikita Khrushchev. Ion Pacepa, a major general in Romania's intelligence services under communism and an advisor to communist leader Nicolae Ceausescu speaks of how his "first personal encounter with Khrushchev’s practice of rewriting people’s pasts occurred on October 26, 1959. On that day, Khrushchev landed in Bucharest for what would become known as his six-day vacation. Khrushchev had never before taken such a long vacation abroad, but his stay in Bucharest was not a vacation either. He was brought there by his new spy chief, General Aleksandr Sakharovsky, who until recently had been the chief intelligence adviser for the Securitate, Romania’s equivalent of the Soviet security police. Sakharovsky wanted to introduce Khrushchev to the Romanian ruler, Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, and get his help in a couple of German matters—Romania had the second-largest ethnic German minority group in the Soviet bloc One of Sakharovsky’s projects was to seek Romanian cooperation in the smearing of Pius XII. The pope had died a few months earlier, and thus could no longer defend himself. Sakharovsky and Khrushchev wanted to pull off a kind of Beriya operation. They intended to change Pius’s past image from Jew-defender to Jew-hater so as to compromise the Vatican—the same way they had changed Beriya’s past from ferocious anti-imperialist to imperialist agent. Khrushchev and Sakharovsky naturally realized that they could not put the Vatican out of business, but they did hope that by representing its head as a Jew-hater"_Ion Pacepa(Disinformation, chp 16, Khrushchev's War on the Vatican)
3. In describing the details of this operation Pacepa states "IN FEBRUARY 1960, Khrushchev formally approved a joint Communist Party/KGB operational plan for destroying the Vatican’s moral authority in Western Europe. Since 1945, the Kremlin had fought the Vatican indirectly by framing many of its priests and top clergymen in the Soviet Union and in its new territorial acquisitions “liberated” at the end of the war, slandering them either as Nazi war criminals or as enemies of peace. Now the Kremlin wanted the KGB to frame the Vatican on its home turf, using its own priests. 1 Concocted by KGB chairman Aleksandr Shelepin and by Alexei Kirichenko, the Soviet Politburo member responsible for international policy, the new plan was constructed around Stalin’s 1945 idea of portraying Pius XII as “Hitler’s Pope...Shelepin and Kirichenko decided that the framing of Pius XII should be based on a fictionalized scenario, supported by genuine, slightly modified Vatican documents (whether or not specifically related to Pius XII), the originals of which would never be released to the public. At that time there was an unflinching KGB rule for handling modified and counterfeited documents: they should be made available only in the form of retyped documents or in specially prepared photocopies, as even the most perfect counterfeit by today’s standards might become vulnerable to future detection techniques....“Seat 12” was the code name for the Romanian side of the KGB’s operation against Pius XII. The name was an allusion to the pope as occupant of the seat of Saint Peter, and to Pius XII himself .....As John Koehler explained in his book Spies in the Vatican: The Soviet Union’s Cold War against the Catholic Church, the Vatican was not exempt from the Kremlin’s efforts to infiltrate foreign governments. David Alvarez made the same point in his similarly titled book, Spies in the Vatican: Espionage & Intrigue from Napoleon to the Holocaust. Among the more notorious infiltrations, in 1952 Father Aligheri Tondi, a professor at the Gregorian Academy, was identified as a KGB agent. In 1963, Polish intelligence placed a cooperative bishop in the Vatican. For the Seat 12 assignment to Rome, the DIE chose three priests who were also co-opted agents."_Ion Pacepa(Disinformation, chp 17, Preparations for framing Pope Pius XII)

• During the war behind the scenes Pius XII made several interventions on behalf of Jews suffering during the Holocaust such as "The six official papal protests by Pius XII and the numerous oral intercessions undertaken on behalf of Slovak Jews in his name[which] were significant factors in stopping the Nazi deportation of Slovakia’s Jews. Pius’s persistent pleas were finally heeded."_Rabbi David Dalin(The Myth of Hitler's Pope, chp 4, A Righteous Gentile: Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust)
• Out of all the analyses that estimate the overall impact of Pius XII's interventions one of the "Foremost amongst these was Israeli historian and diplomat Pinchas Lapide, who had been the Israeli consul in Milan and had spoken with many Italian Jewish Holocaust survivors. In his meticulously researched and comprehensive 1967 book Three Popes and the Jews, Lapide persuasively argued that Pius XII “was instrumental in saving at least 700,000, but probably as many as 860,000 Jews from certain death at Nazi hands.”"_Rabbi David Dalin(The Myth of Hitler's Pope, chp 1, The Myth of Hitler's Pope and Why it matters)
• In the immediate aftermath of the war up until the 1950s representatives of the Jewish community. For example "Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, Jews praised Pope Pius XII for saving Jewish lives. 130 In 1943, Chaim Weizmann, who would become Israel’s first president, wrote that “the Holy See is lending its powerful help wherever it can, to mitigate the fate of my persecuted co-religionists.” The following year, Rabbi Maurice Perlzweig, representing the World Jewish Congress, wrote that “the repeated interventions of the Holy Father on behalf of Jewish communities in Europe has provoked the profoundest sentiments of appreciation and gratitude from Jews throughout the world.” On July 31, 1944, Judge Joseph Proskauer, the president of the American Jewish Committee, declared in a speech at a Madison Square Garden rally: “We have heard . . . what a great part the Holy Father [has played] in the salvation of the Jewish refugees in Italy, and we know from sources that must be credited that this great pope has reached forth his mighty and sheltering hand to help the oppressed of Hungary.” Rabbi Louis Finkelstein, the chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, stated: “No keener rebuke has come to Nazism than from Pope Pius XI and his successor, Pope Pius XII.”_Rabbi David Dalin(The Myth of Hitler's Pope, chp 4, A Righteous Gentile: Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust)

(v)Nazi morality trials: The weaponisation of accusations of sexual abuse for propaganda

• If the Soviet Union was guilty of spreading propaganda and misinformation about the Vatican and the Church's relationship with Nazi Germany after the war, the Nazis themselves were ironically enough also guilty of spreading anti Catholic propaganda and misinformation. And one the tactics that was used was sexual allegations. The trigger for this was Pope Pius XI's encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge which condemned Nazism
• In terms of the circumstances of these trials "Attacks had been made on priests morals before, but they were nothing compared with the new accusations and mass trials. At Koblenz 170 Franciscan were arrested and tried with 'corrupting the youth and turning the monastery into a male brothel'. That trial was conducted in camera and that most of the witnesses were children raised doubts as to its equity. The Volkischer Beobachter wrote about 'orgies which the pen refused to describe'; and the Schwarze Korps showed a cartoon of small boys being beckoned by a lascivious-looking monk with the caption 'Let the children come unto me!'. Goebbels paper published a series of indignant articles about monastery schools which had become 'incubators of homosexuality' and Goebbels sanctimoniously punished their homosexuals like Rohm and Heines. Das Schwarze Korps alleged that even at the altar rail, priest practised their disgusting tricks on old men and crippled children. A Hitler Youth film showed priests dancing in a brothel"_Anthony Rhodes(The Vatican in the Age of Dictators 1922-1945, pg 208)
• Because many Catholic priests were the backbone of the German resistance, the Nazis had to find a way to discredit the priests. And what better use than weaponising allegations of sexual abuse. And what better person do to it than Goebbels, the propaganda minister of Nazi Germany. When allegations against a seminarian surfaced(which were not proven) Goebbels gave a long winded and sanctimonious speech speaking of how it concerned him as a family man and a father of children and how because of that that drove him to launch investigations into Catholic Churches to weed out those who were "corrupters of the youth". The Nazis skillfully weaponised the press and the media against the Catholic Church when it came to these allegations which whipped the public into a frenzy. This in turn led to show trials and the beginning of what would become the priests barracks in Dachau concentration camp.

(vi)The Inquisition: The myth and the legend

• To be very clear here, there was a real set of institutions that were called the Inquisition that did conduct investigations and trials during the Medieval and Early Modern period. However, as scholars in the field have discovered "Between the 12th and 16th century the Latin Christian Church adapted certain elements of Roman legal procedure and charged papally appointed clergy to employ them in order to preserve orthodox religious belief from the attacks of heretics. Between the 16th and 19th centuries, chiefly in Mediterranean Europe, these procedures and personnel were transformed into institutional tribunals called inquisitions charged with the protection of orthodox beliefs and the maintenance of ecclesiastical discipline in the Latin Christian community. Between the 16th and 20th centuries largely as a result of within the Latin Church into Roman Catholic and Reformed(or Protestant) confessions, these procedures, personnel and institutions were transformed by polemic and fiction into a myth, the myth of the Inquisition. The institutions and the myth lived-and developed-in western Europe and the New World until the early 19th century when most of the inquisitions were abolished, and myth itself was universalised in a series of great artistic works into an indictment by a modern world of an earlier Europe for its crushing of the human spirit. Although the inquisitions disappeared 'The Inquisition' did not. The myth was originally devised to serve variously the political purposes of a number of early modern political regimes, as well as the Protestant Reformers, proponents of religious and civil toleration, philosophical enemies of the civil power of organised religion, and progressive modernists"_Edward Peters(The Inquisition, chp 1, pg 1)
• The essentially a myth grew along side the actual institutions of the inquisition. And it became widely reproduced. Then when the actual institutions of the inquisition itself died, its myth that was widely disseminated essentially became the source of fact about the Inquisition itself. The roots of this myth are in the Black Legend of Spanish civilisation that saw Spanish civilisation and its Catholic culture as being inherently barbaric. It was a form of Hispanophobia that combined racism and Anti Catholicism with the xenophobic nationalism of Early Modern Europe. In particular "Spanish political and military power was greatest in Europe. Resentment against Spain focused equally on its Inquisition and its military and its diplomatic practices. Although both England and France endured conflicts with Spain throughout the century, the flash-point was reached in the Revolt of the Netherlands, when anti Inquisition propaganda in united both Protestant Netherlands Catholics against Spanish Power and Practice"_Edward Peters(The Inquisition, chp 5, Invention of the Inquisition)
• Essential features of this myth include the following:

1. The notion that the Inquisition went around hunting witches. This is false. Far from going around hunting witches the Inquisition in many instances expressed skepticism of witchcraft as a concept and in many cases the Inquisition defend the rights of women accused of witchcraft. The Spanish Inquisition denounced the concept of persecuting witches in 1526 and in the 1600s openly engaged in quarrels and clashes with state authorities over the persecution of women accused of witchcraft, in many cases intervening to save thousands.
2. The notion that the Inquisitions prisons and court system were essentially the premodern version of the gulag. This was far from the truth. What researchers have actually found sifting through the Inquisitions archives is that the Inquisitions jails were the best in terms of how prisoners were treated in their era. In fact when court cases were being held one of the things researches found was that some prisoners would intentionally commit blasphemy so they could transferred to the Inquisitions courts and jails because they either had a greater chase of being acquitted in court(98%) or if they were sentence to prison the conditions were much better.
3. The notion that torture was a widespread phenomenon. Torture was actually very rare far more than both the secular institutions of that time, and even many institutions in the modern era. Interrogations could only last 10 minutes at a time and there had to be a trained medical professional always present to look after the prisoners health. If the interrogator engaged in any bodily harm of the prisoner they could be jailed and even imprisoned.

(vii)The myth of the Dark Ages

• The concept of a "Dark Ages" is historiographical concept that has had a varied history. In the modern era it essentially has meant to differing degrees the notion that the Medieval period was a period of backwardness and a lack of progress due to the antiquated, reactionary and oppressive Church to stifled all forms of progress.
• The source of the concept of an "age of light" vs an "age of darkness" originated with Petrarch who initially was talking about literature. During the Reformation though the person who actually coined the phrase "Dark Ages" was ironically the Catholic Cardinal and historian Caesar Baronius. In countering Protestant polemics about Catholic history, he wrote a multi volume history of the Church. In the process he contrasted the Christian Carolingian age under Charlamagne with the Viking Age which was seen as an age of darkness. He specifically stated "...a new age is begun, which, by the roughness and sterility of the good, the iron, leaden by the overflowing ugliness of the evil, and by the want of writers, has been called obscure."_Annales Ecclesiastici(Vol X, p. 647)
• Baronius saw the coming of the High Middle Ages which saw a restoration of the Carolingian Age, the beginning of the Gregorian reforms and the establishment of the Catholic Church's firm position as well as the building of things like Catholic run universities and other things as the coming of a new age of light. The previous Viking age he called "obscure". That is an English translation of the Latin term "Saeculum Obscurum". That also go translated as "Dark Ages". Hence the term was coined.
• Enlightenment authors such as Denis Diderot, Voltaire, Edward Gibbon and others took the concept of the "Dark Ages" and gave it an anti Catholic and anti Christian spin, seeing the Church as the cause of the Dark Ages in the Medieval era.
• This perspective that the Medieval period and the period when the Church was dominant was a "Dark Age" is now rejected by Medieval historians. Medieval scholay Guy Halsall expressing the consensus view on this topic states "In terms of the sources of information available, this is most certainly not a Dark Age. In fact, in terms of the evenness of geographical coverage and the sorts of issues that we can examine on a regional or even local basis, this period is more fully illuminated than the late Roman era."_The New Cambridge Medieval History(The Sources and their Interpretation, pg 90)
• The High Middle Ages for instance was a period where you have the birth of the modern universities built off the Cathedral schools of monks. It was the age of Magna Carta written by the Archbishop of Canterbury Stephen Langton. It was the age where Cisterian monks made major contributions to the technological revolution of the Middle Ages which in turn was used to build some of the greatest architectural achievements when it came to things like the Medieval Cathedrals which revival other cultural achievements like the Parthenon or the Pyramids. It was the age when you had Bishops like Robert Grosseteste of London who played a role in pioneering the scientific method during the Medieval period. Popes like Innocent VI who developed the concept of Persona Ficta which would play a massive role in the foundation of the modern concept of personhood with rights. And even during the Early Medieval period you had achievements. The Renaissance under Charlemagne. The Renaissance under Otto of the Holy Roman Empire. The role the Benedictine monks played in both preserving the knowledge of the Classical World and pioneering the first peace movements in global history(peace of god and truce of god).

https://imgur.com/a/Uw7kAOR

2021 was the year I got back into gaming after a generation of drifting away from the hobby. In the mid year I gave some backstory and reviewed the first 40 games so with this post i'll drive straight into the 30 games I completed over the past 3 months:
(note: I will omit the few 2021 games I played from this - of which there are 2. If someon is curious I can post them in the comments)
Spyro 2: Riptos Rage - 8/10
Does everything a sequel should do. Spyro 2 leaves the addictive collecting and tight platforming of the first game untouched and builds around it by expanding the level design in size, adding more NPC interactions and throwing in mini games and side quests to break up the platforming sections, but not so much that you get sick of them. Unlike year of the dragon it doesn't fall into the trap of constantly taking you out of the core gameplay, and as such is the most balanced of the spyro games.
Flower - 6/10
A really gorgeous game focused on non-verbal storytelling where you literally play as a petal flowing through open fields, slowly bringing life back to the landscape around you. I've seen people describe this as an "interactive wallpaper" and can't say I really disagree, but that doesn't mean it's not relaxing to play and pretty to look at. Overall it feels like a warmup for ThatGameCompany before they stuck the landing with Journey. Enjoyable but not special today in a sea of similar indie games, though in 2009 this was pretty special. There's a direct throughline between this game's release and the modern artsy indie game scene.
Sonic 3 & Knuckles - 9/10
Personal nostalgia aside, this is clearly the best of the classic sonic trilogy from the mega drive, and one of the greatest 16 bit era platformers ever made. Sonic 2 fixed up the obvious flaws in the original game, and kept momentum and nonlinearity at the forefront of the level design. With no obvious flaws to fix, sonic 3 has the harder task of taking everything good about it’s predecessor and turning it up to 11, and it does exactly that. All the hallmarks of good 2D sonic is here; sprawling labyrinth-like level design, an energetic soundtrack, vibrant colours and cool theme - and sonic 3 adds to that by making every zone seamlessly flow into the next with small cutscenes (sometimes even between acts) that give purpose to the main progression. Of course there’s also the addition of knuckles as a playable character, saves, new stage mechanics, bosses at the end of every act and new secret stages. All combined in a cohesive whole that lives up to its ambition. A feature rich game full of massive playgrounds to explore and speed around.
Super Mario World - 8/10
Everything about this game is joyous and upbeat, even the ghosts are cute! 2D mario with a ton of polish and focus on utilizing the newly released SNES’ hardware. The level design is of course meticulously crafted with platforming challenges that ramp up in difficulty at just the right pace. Things get hectic and difficult by the end of this game, but never unfair, and the platforming itself never gets stale because each world and even each level will have its own hook or mechanic. The real star of course is the world here, as nintendo focused on creating a map with dozens and dozens of secret paths that bring you to new levels.Some of the hidden exits in levels are a bit TOO oblique, but generally it’s fun to look for that hidden door in a level. I like all the different levels and paths you can just completely miss, but sometimes I wish the levels themselves were bigger and more developed as most of them are short, but the tradeoff is they throw so much of them at you to keep you going.
Chrono Trigger - 10/10
Even with no nostalgic attachment to this game I can confidently say this is one of the best JRPGs of all time and it hasn’t aged a day. Chrono Trigger is a JRPG without the fat. There’s basically no grinding necessary, there are no random encounters and it’s core story isn’t not overly long either. The pacing here is perfect as you're constantly thrown into new situations and settings, meeting new characters and fighting new enemies - but the game gives you enough time to soak up each section. I don't think I've seen time travel handled this well in any fiction, let alone video games and the player choice really sets it up as a game I want to replay (which is very rare for me). Decisions you make in one time period affect later eras in both big (13 different endings) and small ways (NPC attitude changes and side content). The battle system is fluid, quick and dynamic in a way that no RPG from this era (or even the one after) approaches. I love how when you clear a dungeon you've actually cleared a dungeon. The lack of random encounters completely sidesteps the required grinding of other JRPGs. I've not even mentioned how jaw dropping the presentation is from its sweeping, lilting score to the gorgeous pixel art to the core charactecreature designs by the DBZ creator.
Everything here is polished to an immaculate sheen; the combat is engaging, the soundtrack is incredible, the characters are memorable, the story is well written and the world is expansive. This game is a clear labour of love and it comes together as one of the most mechanically refined games in its entire genre, with one of the most endearing narratives in video game history.
Super mario bros - 6/10
There is no doubting that this game in it’s era was incredible. In fact i’d go further and say when this game released it was hands down the best video game ever made. I don’t want to detract from the inherent quality that this game obviously has, but because it was such a strong base I feel it’s been build upon so much that I don’t find this game that engaging any more. My biggest problem is how slippery and weighty mario feels, which again for the time was quite groundbreaking. I need momentum in platformers, but i think mario 3 and world nailed how mario feels rather than this game. The level design is surprisingly still great though and the difficulty steadily increases over each level (i didn’t skip any levels). It’s a good time and i’m glad to say i’ve beaten it but aesthetically its one note and the mechanics aren’t just there yet for me. I played the all stars remake mainly for the saves.
What Remains of edith finch - 8/10
I’ve really grown to appreciate these walking simulators and what they add to the medium. This one may not be very heavy on gameplay, but it has a bit more than other games in the genre. More importantly than that though, this game has a really touching and enticing narrative that’s hard to put down. You play as a young woman who returns to her family home to learn about her family history, which on the surface sounds dull but you soon find out all of her family members died in unusual circumstances and every room in the house is locked up. Through a series of vignettes you play the last moments leading up to each family member's death, some of which are tragic and some of which are bizarre. One by one you build a family tree and learn about the fascinating history of these people and the dynamics between them. Very engrossing and original game with unique aesthetics and moments that will stick with me for years.
Steamworld dig 2 - 8/10
A fantastic sequel that again keeps everything that made its predecessor enjoyable and just builds around that rather than changing anything major. Added weapon variety, movement options, a more interesting story, more characters and a bigger world with distinct areas. Dig 2 feels more like a metroidvania than the first because of these extra areas, as exploration can now branch to different parts of the map rather than just more digging down. But of course the digging is central and it’s still relaxing and fun. You’re always doing one more run, and if you’re not then you’re checking out a new area or doing a platforming challenge.
Sonic Mania - 9/10
The best sonic game. Mania pulls together all of the best aspects of classic genesis/mega drive sonic into a cohesive package of classic stages, complete overhauls of classics to the point that they feel entirely new and finally completely original zones. Even the acts that are closest to their genesis counterparts have new bosses at the end of them, so it’s never a 1 to 1 recreation. There absolutely is some “nostalgia baiting” here, but it is handled with the utmost care and love. I had a smile on my face the entire way through this game. The animation is gorgeous, the soundtrack is loaded with bangers, and the side content is plentiful. This is the only sonic game I've done all the special stages in and gotten all the emeralds in because I just didn’t want to stop. It’s the most consistent and fun sonic game from start to finish.
Metroid Prime - 9/10
The extreme reverence Retro show for super metroid is so clear right off the bat with this game. The very structure (and zone design) of this game seems to almost mirror the classic but reinterpret it in 3D, which in many ways makes prime feel like the ocarina of time to super metroid’s A link to the past. This is a fully fledged metroidvania that just happens to be in 3D and in first person, and it includes all the hallmarks that makes that genre so addictive; ability gating, a huge interconnected world, elaborate bosses and continual streams of enhancements that change traversal and combat. The decision to make this first person was bold at the time, but in retrospect is an absolute no brainer. Metroidvanias are all about immersion and soaking up these mysterious, detailed worlds as you explore them which is infinitely more potent in first person. This feels MORE isolating and immersive than even the best of the best games in the genre. An atmospheric masterpiece.
Super Mario Bros 3 - 7/10
Kind of like what I said when I talked about the first mario bros, this one could easily have been called the best game ever made the year it was released, and I still understand why so many people will continue to call it one of the best games ever made. The overworld map was hugely innovative and helped supply an absolutely colossal amount of levels (and you couldn’t even save in this game, so kids had to do it all in one go). The movement here is ideal and lacks the “slipperiness” of the first game, and you’ll need all the control you get because this game is TOUGH. Super mario world gave me a bit of grief at the end but the last two worlds of this game are brutal, which is pretty refreshing for a the series. Of course there’s the litany of mechanics and stages and powerups just constantly thrown at you which keeps the whole thing extremely varied. Especially the powerups shake up the main formula a lot, and leave more room to find secret exits. I think this is my favorite NES game ever but it’s an era I’m not overly fond of and i only think nintendo built upon this platformer formula. Super mario world from a gameplay perspective is just a more enjoyable experience and the difficulty is more to my taste.
Hollow knight - 10/10
Incredible game with an utterly enthralling world, intriguing lore, slick movement and crunchy, satisfying combat that is surprisingly deep. I went in expecting to be more critical of this game as someone who loves the genre (I had the idea that a lot of the love was due to it being the introduction to the genre for a whole generation of gamers), but it does deserve a lot of its praise; the map design is fantastic, guiding you just enough at the start to get you to the city of tears and then completely letting go of your hand to the point that 10 people could go through this game in 10 completely different ways. There was always somewhere to explore and those moments where you got a new ability blew open so many more possibilities. That alone makes this a game that will always stick with me, but they build further on top of that with a massive host of boss fights and a combat system that is very simple at its core, but gives room for a ton of depth and player choice. It's not a perfect game (the shade mechanic discourages exploration, benches should be closer to bosses, the stream of upgrades is slow) but what it does well it does EXTREMELY well, and at its core it nails what a metroidvania needs to get right. Few games completely consumed my time as much as the enchanting world of hollow knight have.
Yoshi’s Island - 8/10
Ok this game is just adorable. The Super Mario world 2 moniker doesn’t really prepare you for how different this game plays, but it does prepare you for the explosions of colour and joyous audio and visual themes. In terms of gameplay and level design though I think this exceeds Mario world, though it plays very differently - I just enjoy the larger levels, the watercolor look and the movement more than any 2D mario. You’ve got more leniency with the platforming due to yoshis signature flutter jump, allowing you to correct bad jumps mid air. The egg mechanic gives you a projectile for every enemy you eat up, leading to a ton of really creative enemies and secrets.Stages are massive for a 2D SNES era platformer and jam packed with collectables. Getting 100% offers a lot of difficulty for people who want it, but the base game ramps up well in that respect and keeps refreshing level themes, bosses and ideas.
Guacamelee 2 - 7/10
It’s very refreshing for a metroidvania to be so lighthearted and colourful considering so much of the genre leans into the bleak settings. The humor doesn’t always land, and the story really is uninteresting but this game shines with its hectic beatemup combat and gauntlet of platforming challenges that have you keep juggling multiple mechanics in real time. My main gripe is that this is extremely linear to the point a metroidvania feels more like an influence than a primary genre. You’re always pushed to the next objective with little need for backtracking, and down every side path usually leads to a challenge room dead end with some reward. The trade off is a never ending stream of fun combat and platforming challenges which leave moment to moment gameplay always feeling propulsive. As a switch up from the meditative, exploration focused games in the genre it’s a nice change.
Castlevania: Aria of sorrow - 9/10
This is just symphony of the night without the fat and a more dynamic combat system. In other words, it’s an absolutely incredible and concise little metroidvania. The Soul system here is really what shines the most; every creature you defeat in this game has a small chance of dropping its “soul” which to the player means you get a new ability, projectile or permanent buff at your disposal. They don’t drop often enough that they become intrusive, or too much that they’re trivialized - instead you’re always excited to try out whatever new ability you’ve earned which, on top of the weapon, level and armor system of SoTN, means you’re always refreshing how you fight and traverse through dracula's castle. The mpa design is the best of the GBA games, with a loit of distinct areas, great music and a massive pack of inventive enemies and bosses. There are multiple endings, but it’s not a chore to achieve the final one, which means this is probably the best castlevania game ever made.
Xenoblade Chronicles DE - 9/10
I had to let the dust settle on this one before landing on the opinion that it’s essentially a masterwork with some big flaws that you will or won't be able to look passed based on what tiyoe of gamer you are. A slow start and a frustrating level spike at the very end marred my opinion slightly, but between those two moments was easily some of the most consistent 40-50 hours of any JRPG i’ve played. Xenoblade does a ton of things to help itself stick out in the genre; it has an active battle system with ability cooldowns a la an MMO, a wildly unique setting (the entire story takes place on the back of two long dormant titans) and a set of some of the most visually striking open areas in any game i’ve played. It’s no wonder monolith were contracted to help development of breath of the wild because every single area is full of breathtaking vistas and amazing detail, which made exploring a joy. All crafted to give a rich world for these lovable characters to interact with each other and push forward an extremely tumultuous story that never stops pulling left turns. What starts as a relatively simple premise cascades into an adventure that constantly builds in scope and stakes. The score is incredible too and actively improves the combat - few feelings in gaming this year compare to running into a higher level monster and hearing “you will know our names” reach its climax as you start to take control of the battle. It’s not without it’s issues (side quests are baad) but the definitive edition does everything to streamline and tighten those, while allowing the core of the game shine.
Donkey Kong Country - 8/10
Just like DKC returns made me rethink my thoughts on NSMB, the original DK country is now having me second guess myself on the NES and SNES mario bros games, because this game just clicks with me on so many more levels. The stage design here is full of the mechanical variety and raw platforming that the mario games have, but on top of that there’s a much more cohesive aesthetic thread that runs through the entire game. You’re actually platforming through a world, with every platform and every enemy deliberately made to be a part of the area you’re getting to the end of.The lynchpin here is the music, which beautifully paints a picture itself with its low key beats, extended synths and playful sample work.
Resident Evil 4 - 8/10
I don’t deal with horror very well, and even though this is when RE stopped being scary, there’s still a lot of tense and creepy moments throughout this game. Not hard to see how much this game impacted the entire industry with it’s ridiculously fun third person shooting system. Something that a lot of games after RE4 fail at is making your shots affect enemies in different ways, like shooting someone in the foot makes them stumble to the ground, leaving you open to supplex them. It’s endlessly satisfying, and that’s a very good thing because a large part of RE4 is running from area to area taking on different combat challenges with an ever increasing arsenal of weapons, and every now and then minding ashley (whos the most co-operative escort npc you’ll ever find in a game). RE4 stumbles when it comes to pacing though, as the castle section goes on too long, and the final island section as a whole felt forced and unneeded. I was definitely checked out at a few points playing this one, which is a bit of a shame, but it was largely a blast to play and still kept a lot of the unsettling atmosphere i associate with RE.
Castlevania (1986) - 6/10
I don’t have a lot to say about this one, because at it’s heart it's very upfront and simple with it’s goal; fight your way through a linear castle of tough enemies and bosses with a whip and kill Dracula. It’s a pioneer of the action platformer and shockingly gets so much right. The fact that a game over doesn’t bring you to the start of the game means this really hasn’t aged as badly as you might think. There’s still plenty of bullshit, but you can grind it out or save a bit of time with save states. The music and graphics are some of the best the NES has to offer. Satisfying to conquer.
Bloodstained: ritual of the night - 8/10
The souls system of aria of sorrow in a game with a scope the size of symphony of the night. Bloodstained is the rare excellent kickstarter game that really does deliver on what it promised. It’s a classic iga helmed metroidvania in a gothic castle with a robust RPG system. A loving homage to igavanias that plays it fairly safe throughout but is perhaps stronger for it. By the midgame you can break the game in half with a broken shard setup and powerful weapon, which is just how I want these games to be. For the bad - Unfortunately just like SotN there’s a bit of bloat in the endgame (though nothing as laborious as the inverted castle), the crafting/food system are wholly unnecessary, and probably worst of all; the artstyle and general look of the game just isn’t great. I would have preferred a 2D style here, or sprites, over the 2.5D direction of the game. None of this spoils the game, but I will say they just stop it short of capturing the magic of SotN or the cohesiveness of aria of sorrow.
Luigi’s Mansion - 3/10
Is charm enough to carry a game? Well in the case of luigi’s mansion I have to say no. I really did want to like this because the concept is so unique and the presentation is fantastic. For a launch title in this generation it holds up very well visually, and has some lovely sound design too. My problem is the core gameplay loop, which gets old really quick (and this isn’t a long game). Portrait ghosts rarely amounted to more than a light puzzle, catching boos is tedious (especially as the game progresses and they get more health), and the controls felt clunky the whole way through and never deepened as you got used to the mechanic. I wanted this to end in the third act, but sadly it kept going and I got increasingly frustrated with the camera, slow backtracking and controls.
AM2R - 8/10
The infamous fan project that gave metroid II the zero mission treatment, and subsequently got squashed by Nintendo in the wake of their own planned remake. Without dwelling too much on that comparison I will say that AM2R ends up working wonderfully as an addendum to samus returns. Where Nintendo's title introduces a more break neck action oriented pacing and new mechanics, AM2R much more faithfully goes for a traditional adaptation of the gameboy classic in the vein of super metroid and zero mission. The developer poured so much love and attention into this game, making game that at its heart is very linear feel expansive and explorative with a TON of added content.
Katamari Damacy reroll - 9/10
Ridiculously charming, funny and creative game that never failed to put a smile on my face. Damacy really captures that whimsical, off-beat side of japan that got associated with memey internet culture with its vibrant, surrealistic art and characters. Not to mention the bubbly and earwormy soundtrack of jazz infused Jpop. It all combines into a game that is completely unmatched in its aesthetic style nearly 20 years later. The controls are really the only challenge here, which makes sense because the premise is that you’re controlling the little prince and not the katamari itself, and once it clicks every level becomes a fun and relaxing affair. Rolling up a progressively larger ball of trash has never been so enjoyable.
Donkey Kong Country 2 - 7/10
DKC2 is more or less an improvement on the first in every way; levels are larger, more collectable, bosses are more complex, hitboxes are more precise, and the areas are more aesthetically varied. On paper it’s just a complete refinement of the already excellent first game, but I somewhat controversially much prefer the first one for one reason: difficulty.I enjoy a challenge as much as the next guy, but DKC2 is terribly paced here by both ramping up general difficulty too early and also just nailing massive difficulty spikes into some levels. Bosses take longer now, but they’ve become much more boring to play before you get to the hard part. Levels are bigger in scope, but contain some really unfun extended sections of rock hard platforming. I like this game despite the difficulty, as the soundtrack and art direction are still some of the best on SNES and the level design IS good.
Links awakening remake - 9/10
I only played the original link’s awakening last year, but it immediately became one of the best games in the top down series to me. The surrealistic plot that shuns any of the series norms paired with incredibly tight pacing and some of the strongest dungeon design in the entire series charmed me. The main issue I had with the original was how constricted playing it felt on the gameboy with it’s two face buttons and nothing else. This remake is almost identical in terms of design (block for block) so all the praises of the core game remain, except now with the 4 face buttons and top buttons of the switch the game immediately is much more fluid to play. The visuals are very endearing and fit in with the dreamlike vibe of the game, but unfortunately get marred by framerate drops in the overworld.
Metroid prime 3: Corruption - 8/10
A more guided and linear experience than the two other games in the prime series, which are for my money the two best 3D metroidvanias ever made. The sense of isolation and exploration that carried those games is not present here, as Corruption is a much more action heavy shooter with exploration as a side to the gigantic set pieces that get thrown your way. The opening two hours of this game feel like halo, which feels off tonally, but at the same time is still really fun and contains the most engaging combat of any prime game and the more strict structure allows for a more developed story to cap the series. In the end prime 3 still nails the atmosphere of the trilogy, but sacrifices that metroidvania quality to deliver an engaging action oriented game that ends a story.
Blasphemous - 8/10
Beautifully bleak 2D soulslike that has some of the best pixel art and general art direction i’ve ever seen. Creating a ruined kingdom narrative through the aesthetic of overly macabre 17th century Spanish catholic art really lends to that oppressive atmosphere. The entire thesis of the game is that everyone and everything is suffering and the lone penitant one (you) can at least atone for the suffering of the world, without necessarily being a knight in shining armour. People call this a metroidvania but it’s much more a souls game with basic lock and key progression over ability-based progression, and a focus on attrition through careful and deliberate combat (it is fair all the time and not overly difficult either). Either way the world is deeply enthralling to explore and the combat meaty and satisfying. This one hooked me.
Zelda: Four Swords Adventures- 7/10
Far and away the most rounded, complete and fun multiplayer Zelda game. As a single player game even FSA holds up surprisingly well, but you have to bear in mind it's not a typical Zelda title, as it's broken up into levels with no item progression. Instead you get items depending on level, and the gameplay is far more like a classic brawler than a Zelda game. There are dungeons and some puzzles but you're largely controlling 4 links and blitzing through combat challenges, which turns out surprisingly fun. The ability to change formations of your squad of link's on the fly makes this so approachable as a solo player. It's arcadey action with a surprising amount of polish.
Closer: gaming is fucking awesome. It was wonderful to fall down the rabbithole this year and check off some huge blind spots that i've always wanted to experience, but more importantly I'm just glad to have a passion for this unique medium of art again. 2021 was a year largely of lockdown and isolation for me, but games have acted as a point of stability that I can always return to. In 2022 I'm planning on getting a ps5 and experiencing the highlights of PS4's back catalog, and delve into some classic cRPGs that I own on steam but never played, though I hope I have a bit less time for gaming next year and more time to leave the house safely.
Top 10 games of the year:

1. Super Metroid
2. Earthbound
3. Super Mario Odyssey
4. Chrono Trigger
5. Hollow Knight
6. Sonic Mania
7. Metroid Prime
8. Hades
9. Super Smash bros. Ultimate
10. Katamari Damacy

Some stats:

• Total gametime this year: approx. 915 hours
• Most played genre: Metroidvania (18 games)
• Most played system: switch (41 games)
• Longest play time: Xenobalde Chronicles (60+ hours)
• Shortest play time: florence (less than an hour)

Renowned places to visit in Pondicherry for your holiday (source : traveltriangle.com)
Shri Aurobindo Ghosh Ashram – Beautiful Ashram
Auroville – Peaceful Living
Paradise Beach – To Relax And Unwind
Gingee Fort – Relive History
Sri Gokilambal Thirukameswar Temple – Find Inner Peace
Basilica Of The Sacred Heart Of Jesus – Be One With God
Jawahar Toy Museum – Pamper Your Inner Child
Le Club – Delicious Eatery
Promenade Beach – Relax Amidst Nature
White Town – Mix Of Past And Present
Chunnambar Boat House – Amazing Cruise
Sita Cultural Centre – Cultural Centre
Goubert Avenue – An Offbeat Location
Ousteri Lake – Bird Watching
Old Lighthouse – Marvelous Architecture
Pondy Bazaar – Shopping Spree
Raj Niwas – Stunningly Beautiful
French War Memorial – Remembering The Martyrs
Pondicherry Botanical Garden – Amazing Beauty
Rock Beach – Time To Relax
Mahatma Gandhi Statue – Paying Tribute
The Pondicherry Museum – Explore The History
Bharati Government Park – Walk Into The Wild
Statue Of Dupleix – Revisit The Past
Eglise de Notre Dame des Anges – Picturesque Church
Immaculate Conception Cathedral – Sanctum Of God
Varadaraja Perumal Temple – Experience Tranquility
Cluny Embroidery Centre – Vintage Handicrafts
Manakula Vinayagar Temple – Place Of Enlightenment
Kanniga Parameswari Temple – Mesmerizing Premises
ISKCON Pondicherry – A Day With God
Serenity Beach – Pristine Beach
Yanam Beach – Take A Stroll
Sri Karneshwar Nataraja Temple – Unique Design
Ganesh Garden – Secluded Place
Ananda Ranga Pillai Mansion – Must Visit
Aayi Mandapam – Time In History
Seafront Promenade – Amazing Experiences
Veerampattinam Beach – Exquisite Views
Arikamedu – Beautiful Ruins
Chunambar Boathouse – Paradise
Meeran Mosque – Oldest Mosque In Pondicherry

I really do not give my favourite girl groups enough acknowledgment, despite my weird 2018-2019 phase of listening to nothing that wasn't my girl-group playlist. And the fact that that playlist was mostly WJSN.
The diversity of their discography is actually incredible. I'm just going to go out on a whim and say that most people probably expect their bsides to be the shimmery, magical, elegant style of their title tracks. While to an extent that's not wrong, they also have a lot of unique tracks that are so easy to miss because they aren't a group that make people look forward to their albums. Casual listeners don't tend to go beyond their pristine music videos. I'd say that's fine, their title tracks are bops and I'm happy for them to get any recognition, but there's so many songs that should be as coveted as other girl-group bsides. Like Red Velvet or ITZY's discographies.
For The Summer (2019)
I'm starting here because this was my second comeback as a dedicated Ujung and I have very fond memories of listening to this for the first time. It's a small EP, only 5 songs, but it's one of the most solid releases I've heard in K-Pop. The theme is clear: it's summer, and the album does well to explore most interpretations of a summer sound. There's a surprising amount of horns, and a lack of tropical house. OH MY SUMMER is jazzy and has a great combination of horns, electric guitar, and keyboard. So does My Type. And I'm seriously blanking on what the instrument is called (Google ain't helping me), but they have a hollow percussion sound that plays really well with the beats. And the way they sing My Type in particular is so enthusiastic--they really sell the song to you. Which is one of their strengths overall: their ability to sing with feeling.
Let's Dance and Sugar Pop are more on the "dark" side, or maybe the right word is "heavy"? Let's Dance is a girl's night anthem that swaps out a dark EDM drop with a deep and rich... horn drop. That sounds so wrong but it's literally a drop done exclusively with horns and some drums. It fits perfectly with the sassy tone of their vocals on top of being unique from other drops we're more used to hearing. And then Sugar Pop... she's a masterpiece. So creepy, so sweet. It sounds like a Halloween party in the middle of July, which is weird? It's covered in sounds that you would hear in a haunted mansion level in a Super Mario game. The melody is addicting as hell, too. They knock each part out of the park with their delivery; I love when WJSN know how to perfectly embody a song with their voices. It makes magic.
Obviously, I can't go over every single b-side of theirs that I love, because we'd be here all day, but I do have some standouts:
Geeminy (HAPPY MOMENT) - By all accounts this is just a "typical" sweet pop song that's expected of a girl group. But it's undeniably special because it's just so loud and yet so soft. It hits like a TWICE title track does. I love the lyrics' use of repetition that stays consistent throughout. And Exy's bridge doesn't feel out of place despite the drastic tonal shift, it keeps the song from stagnating. The "surprise" final chorus is also a treat.
I-Yah (WJ Please?) - It's their signature magical/sparkly classical pop sound but with some of the catchiest writing they've ever had on a song. The somber tone of the violin is super memorable since their vocals merge with it so well.
BeBe (The Secret) - I just love songs with instrumentals that sound like they're sampled out of video games, especially retro games. It just never gets old. WJSN have my favourite "cutesy" vocals of any girl group and it really shines here.
LOVE O'CLOCK (Dream Your Dream) - This song is just weird. I think it's not meant to be so creepy, but it kind of sounds like they're cornering me to sacrifice me in a circle of pink teddy bears while bouncing on pogo sticks. The sample of Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy at the end really sells the murder vibes.
Babyface (HAPPY MOMENT) - I don't know how to describe this song, just listen to it. It was in my top ten most listened-to songs for 2018 and 2019. I also, for no reason, made a hypothetical line distribution, colour-coded, for how I think my ults would sing it. It's useless, because they're never going to cover a random WJSN b-side from 2017. But I made it anyways. That's how much I like this song. Just trust me, okay? I can't describe it but it's amazing.
YALLA (UNNATURAL) - I adore this entire EP and could gush about every song but WJSN and house music is my kryptonite. It's deep house, I don't need to say anything else. Their best genre is sass, catwalks, and everything romantic in between.
Pantomime (Neverland) - The exact same as above. I adore the whole Neverland EP but... deep house. Pantomime is a hidden gem in the entirety of K-Pop. The build-up into the drop and the off-kilter sensation the chorus actually gives you never loses impact no matter how many times you listen. "Like pan-to-miiime~" was made to be stuck in your head for eternity. And the bridge is just another example of WJSN thriving at unconventional sinister tones. From the creepy vocals to the complete rewrite of the chorus' lyrics and composition before transitioning halfway back to the original? It's genius.
Cantabile (WJ Stay?) - Like I-Yah, it's their signature sound. But there's something incredibly minimalistic about it. The post-chorus drop with the keyboard and the trap beat really modernizes their sound in a way that feels natural and not forced. La La Love was their last comeback with classical and teen pop as their dominant genres, and Cantabile feels like the precursor to them becoming more ambitious with their genre diversity.
Full Moon (As You Wish) - I just want a full moon! Run it out run it out out, Run it out run it out out~ Rent-free. She's rent-free. The instrumental, the melody, the delivery, it's all immaculate. No words. And this song suits Exy's rap style so well. When she sticks, she sticks.
2019 marked a pretty important change in their discography. They've definitely migrated away from what made them memorable: which was their magical girl concept. As You Wish, Neverland, and Unnatural are such solid EPs it makes me upset that they seem to be phasing out. Although, their subunit songs (HMPH! and Easy) have expanded on their strengths: being both ridiculously cute and weird, and ridiculously hot at the same time. Starship knows what music suits them and I'm glad they don't skimp out on giving them great songs.
I don't know why I feel like a such a sentimental Ujung over their music today, but I do. Save Me, Save You caught me instantly and I'm glad I haven't gone back since. They're hilarious women, too. So talented and so utterly unhinged.
Not saying you should stan them, but...

The gods convened in a conference hall of gold-veined marble, around a massive exquisitely carved table, surrounded by a vast trove of lost historical treasures, tended to by beautiful scantily-clad servants dancing erotically for their amusement and carrying huge trays of exotic delicacies. The whole affair cost roughly enough to buy a small country made entirely of mansions, a fairly sedate, modest affair by the gods' standards.
Apollo sat at the head of the table. Patron of poets, musicians, artists, jurists, and physicians, he fancied himself the quintessential Renaissance man some few millennia before any of the actual Renaissances. He put some people in mind of Frasier Crane. Beside him was his twin, Artemis, and her plus one, some girl from her lacrosse team. At length, after everyone had eaten and had time to chatter aimlessly and have a quick orgy, Apollo clacked a spoon against his glass and stood and began a carefully prepared speech.
"Ladies, gentlemen, and those more difficult to classify-"
"Where's dad?"
A vein bulged in Apollo's forehead. All eyes were on the interruptor; Zagreus, that little twerp; looking characteristically sullen, black hair swept over one eye. Apollo just didn't get along well with the younger gods.
"He's not here."
"Where is he?"
"Couldn't be here. Busy."
There was the sound of bumping furniture and passionate moaning from the stateroom upstairs. Apollo's teeth ground.
"Like I said. Busy. In any case, I'm oldest so I'm handling it. So shut up."
Zagreus folded his arm and let his sullenness intensify.
"Now, just to actually get along to my actual point. We can no longer turn a blind eye to developments on Earth. Once upon a time, we commanded the respect of the entire human race. Now? Tributes are down. Prayers are down. Licensing fees are down."
"Aye, and the wars," Ares threw in. He hadn't been looking well lately. Under his human-skin sleeveless vest, wild beard and head-bandana, he had lost muscle mass, growing thin and sickly. "The wars just ain't what they used to be. Used to have global affairs, I had clients all over. Now I 'as to stick to the third-world backwaters where yez can't even get a decent mai tai."
"I've 'ad to make do with piddling little political disputes," chimed in Enyo, his sister.
"The scholarship fund is sitting around gathering dust," Athena added thoughtfully. "They aren't churning out heroes worthy of Olympus like they used to. We used to get a few hundred applications a century." To underscore her point, she gestured to some of the previous winners- Hercules, Hermes, Schindler, John Wayne, Aldrin, Mandela- all of whom nodded in agreement. "Now we're lucky to get a few dozen."
Eros artfully slid a lock of hair over his ear. "We're definitely seeing them having less sex in my department. Fear of intimacy is rising worldwide, what with internet porn being so easily accessible these days."
"I spent bloody ages bloody getting that bloody ozone layer set up, for all the good it did," Helios groused. "Bloody climate's all over the map. I know the Anemoi agree with me on this one, too."
Hecate spoke up, silver crucifix pendants jangling. "Their auras are all out of alignment. It's all the preservatives and insecticides in food." The others largely ignored her.
"And poor Morpheus," added Tyche, "says he's having trouble finding gigs outside of playing drug dens. Humanity doesn't pay much mind to prophetic dreams anymore."
Everyone turned warily to Hades, who was lurking in his usual shadowy corner brooding. He shrugged silently. Presumably humanity had been dying as usual. They turned back away.
Apollo was pleasantly surprised. His speech was basically preempted, but everyone seemed on the same page. That almost never happened. He had not expected this to go so smoothly. "Well, then. We're in agreement. We got plenty of use out of humanity, but they're just not a source of amusement any more. They're stale. Soggy. Old hat. Fortunately, I've taken the liberty of reaching out to some consultants."
Everyone was expecting Prometheus again, but instead the special guest was none other than Dionysus, looking woozy and red in the face as always. The assembled gods had not seen him in some time; lately he tended to spend his time in either Broadway or Hollywood (living so closely with humans was not usually advisable, after Moloch had would up implicated in child-trafficking and -eating). Even more curiously, Dionysus had brought a friend with him, someone most of them only partly recognized. Slender, pale, flame-haired and smug-smiling through lips covered in scars, clad in elegant fur-trimmed silk, it was none other than Loki the blood brother of Odin.
"So nice to see you all," Dionysus said evenly. "The problem as I see it is simple. Mankind has gotten too comfortable with mundanity since they worked out the trick behind most of our miracles. They aren't impressed with immaculate conception anymore, since they worked out in vitro fertilization. And-" he gestured to Attis- "they don't bother praying for a good harvest since that Haber process stuff came along. Humanity thrives in a world of wonder and terror; once they've explored and tamed enough of it, they lose their fire. So I've been consulting with my new partner here- isn't he great? He's great- for a new miracle, one that'll blow humanity's collective socks off."
Loki smiled in a way that would make most people's spines tingle. "I'm looking forward to working with all of you."
***
Honeyed-mead words managed to win over the assembled Godheads, and time found Loki in the foundries of Hephaestus, located within the sweltering heat of the magma chambers beneath Mount Etna.
Hephaestus scowled pleasantly and wiped a misshapen paw on his coveralls. "Got a work orde-"
Before he could even finish, Loki produced the work order permit, a carved stone tablet, from the folds of his robes. Hephaestus was stunned. Nobody ever came that prepared to his workshop. He looked over the specifications with interest and grunted. "Right. Have it ready for you by Tuesday."
"Splendid," Loki grinned. "Just so we're clear- I fully intend for this project to wreak chaos across the entirety of planet Earth. You have no moral obligation to such?"
Hephaestus shrugged. "What are morals? Humans fight each other because one side kills for the wrong reason. Then in a few decades both kill for the wrong reason anyway, and they fight again. All that passes like an eyeblink for me. Where's the morality in that? This-" he gestured around to the massive steel drums and conveyor belts- "this is my morality. Everything made precisely, efficiently, to the customer's exact specifications."
"How positively enlightened," Loki grinned, trying not to cackle.
***
The new project went into effect the following week. The terraforming effect caused skyscrapers around the world to shudder and creak. And after a day of terror, the oceans of Earth had been converted into pure alcohol. The very clouds became a heady, hoppish foam and the atmosphere filled with intoxicating fumes.
The miracle's novelty lasted a little less than 24 hours before bar-less bar brawls broke out across all of the American South and the British Isles, slowly spreading across the world. Roving improvised bachelor parties besieged the capitals of the world. Global industry crumbed. Authorities were of little help, as most of them were curled up with each other at the UN building, spooning with each other and murmuring incoherently to one another. The fallout cannot be described in adequate detail here; suffice to say the ensuing devastation was the greatest in recorded history, easily stretching past the civilizational collapse of the late Bronze Age.
In later interviews Loki seemed pleased with the prank's execution but said it didn't get as good a reception as he had hoped.

A topic that comes up semi-regularly is the question of whether or not G.G was remotely realistic in its depiction of the UES, the upper crust teens and their parents who reside there, the exclusive prep schools they attend, their ultra-fancy excessively privileged lifestyles, etc. etc.
While searching for a quote I recalled from the creator and author of the G.G books, Cecily von Ziegesar, I came across a piece she'd written for The Telegraph back in 2008 when the show was about to premiere on UK television, about the reality behind the glamorous, scandal-filled fantasy that came from her own experiences attending a UES prep school in Manhattan.
 

As a new drama about Manhattan rich kids arrives on our screens, Cecily von Ziegesar recalls her own privileged upbringing and the couture-clad, eating-disordered, chauffeur-driven friend who inspired the bestselling 'Gossip Girl' books behind the television series
This spring I'll attend my 20-year school reunion in New York. Hard to believe it's been two decades since we finally left home and went our separate ways to college. What good fun it will be to see all the girls I've lost touch with, to find out who is married or divorced, who has children, who has got too fat or too thin, who has had plastic surgery and who is taking antidepressants or should be. I'm a little nervous. Gossip Girl, the television show based on my books, has been on in America every week since September. Those of my classmates who tuned in were probably reminded somewhat eerily of their 17-year-old selves, because Gossip Girl is all about them.
Back in my days as a children's book editor, my superiors caught on to the fact that teenagers were using the internet to gossip about each other, and thought it might be nifty to develop a series of books about an anonymous high-school blogger who gossips about her classmates. The concept was passed on to me. I sat at my desk and stared at the teen-centric books I had read or edited myself thus far - girly series about teenagers living in fictional suburban towns. Teenagers based on 1980s films such as The Breakfast Club and Sixteen Candles, who went to the mall and kissed in parked cars. Nice girls who won the cute boy in the end and mean girls who were punished. Prom girls and geeks. Girls I never related to. I decided that, if I were to write a teen series, I'd want to set it in a place that was familiar to me - Manhattan, where I'd grown up - and I'd model the characters on myself and my friends.
So I started on what became the outline for the first Gossip Girl book. Soon after, I was asked to write the book myself. Exactly five years after it was published I watched a cast of gorgeous, talented actors play the characters I'd created as they filmed the pilot for the television show. It was hard to quell my nervous laughter, knowing that this highly fictionalised, much more scandalous and attractive version of my school days was about to be broadcast into millions of living-rooms. Not only that, but it was created by Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage, the team behind The OC, so expectations were high.
From the outside, Nightingale-Bamford girls school didn't look particularly fabulous or exclusive. It was a small, red-brick schoolhouse with big blue doors located on a quiet, leafy street just off Madison Avenue on the Upper East Side. School was our home-away-from-home, especially when our parents were busy travelling, having affairs or getting divorced, and our siblings were in treatment centres for eating disorders, drug use or depression. We wore pleated navy-blue wool uniforms. Our teachers were affectionate but tough, and gave endless hours of homework. After all, despite our trust funds, we were expected to attend the best colleges, to make something of ourselves. Our school prided itself on being tough but nurturing. I was even allowed to miss school on Fridays for my entire final year so I could compete in weekend horse shows all over the East Coast. But no one got more special attention than one of the girls, A.
There was the time when A was not in class - again. 'Where is she this time?' sighed our silver-haired Latin teacher who had a penchant for Chanel jackets and gold brooches in the shape of octopuses. 'She went to Paris with her mom,' I explained, leaving out the details of how and why A had gone to Paris: on Concorde to get fitted by Yves Saint Laurent (the man himself) for the YSL winter collection.
Having such a glamorous friend was highly amusing, especially because A didn't fit the part at all. She was a mess. Her brown hair was so thick and straw-like that hair-bands only went round it once. Her knee-socks drooped on her skinny ankles, her uniform was always too long and too clean, and she wore braces and Coke-bottle glasses. She was dyslexic, had tutors in all subjects and took her exams in a private room at school without a time limit. She seemed to cower in the presence of her couture-wearing society mother, and I hated the way she'd pull up her socks, yank out her dangly earrings, and wipe off her lipgloss when we were in the lift up to her flat because her mother disapproved of such things. I felt blessed to have parents who paid no attention to my trendy blue eyeliner, black ankle socks, iridescent pink lipstick and silver dangly earrings bought from street vendors. Ironically, I felt fashionable and chic next to A.
I remember one Easter at A's country house in Westchester County, an hour or so outside the city. We rode her horses at the nearby stables and had a go-kart race in the mansion grounds. Then we sat down to the family's Easter meal involving a confusing array of forks, knives and spoons, and finger bowls full of white petals. A had dragged out 'some old rag' made of crushed burgundy velvet and cashmere to wear to dinner, while I was inappropriately dressed in creams and pinks, like an Easter egg. I blushed furiously when the boyfriend of A's college-aged sister whispered in my ear, 'Place it on your left,' indicating my unused finger bowl. A had already used hers and put it in the appropriate place. How did she know anything about finger bowls, I wondered, before realising she'd probably had eating lessons with an eating tutor. That night, while I dozed in the elegantly dressed four-poster bed in one of the lovely guest rooms, a uniformed maid tiptoed in and placed a basket full of Belgian chocolates on the floor. All that chocolate all for me, and I didn't even have to hunt for it! I didn't get the solid gold Krugerrand coin in my basket that A got in hers - one for all the major holidays, and two for her birthday - but I still felt… lucky.
My biggest fear in writing Gossip Girl was that the characters would sound like stereotypical rich, air-headed heiresses. These were my friends. They were smart and multifaceted. They had interests and passions. They wanted to become lawyers and doctors and writers and filmmakers. They were also normal teenagers who worried about their skin or which jeans were cool. When A wasn't tripping down the expansive hallways of her gigantic, well-staffed Upper East Side penthouse, or attending balls with European princesses, she was just a normal schoolgirl. Yes, she had a driver, a nanny, horses, a collection of gold coins and 15 custom-sewn YSL outfits with 15 pairs of matching shoes each season - but still, she was just a girl. That was what I set out to convey in Gossip Girl, that just-a-girlness inside the exclusiveness.
Even so I admit that Gossip Girl is more riddled with scandal than my school days were. The gorgeous characters drink, do drugs and have sex a lot. Art doesn't quite imitate life in that regard. Of course, there was a degree of scandal. One friend's sister was hospitalised for bulimia. A always took an enema after a particularly rich meal, a trick she learnt from her bone-thin mother. But A never had a boyfriend while we were at school. Perhaps it was the hair. Even now, glossy, slim and immaculately clad as she looks in the society columns, I can tell she still struggles with her hair. And at this point in life she probably has other struggles as well. I'm sure I'll find out all the juicy details at our school reunion, when everyone who's anyone will be talking about all of the above. That is, if they're still talking to me.
How to spot a real-life Gossip Girl

• Signature style Diane von Furstenberg top, Seven jeans, Michael Kors boots, diamond studs, Helen Ficalora chain necklace
  
• Hang-outs Using fake IDs – or flirting with the doorman – to get into smart bars such as Fiona’s, Dorrian’s or the Hudson Hotel. Debauched house parties
  
• Holidays Summers in the Hamptons, Christmas in St Barts, spring break in Mexico
  
• Role Models Cultured, socially conscious or at least cool Upper East Side natives – the actress Claire Danes, the DJ Samantha Ronson or the designer Vera Wang
  
• Dream job Opening a sneaker shop or gallery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Becoming a magazine editor, if connected enough to land an internship at Teen Vogue
  
• Vices Binge-drinking Pommery Pop champagne or Ketel One vodka; cocaine; eating disorders; spending Daddy’s money
  

---------------------------------
Character Basics
Full Name: Kallum Cornelius Vaile
Race/Ethnic Group: European
Class/Occupation: Hexblade Warlock/Oathbreaker Paladin; Baron
Character Nature: D&D 5E Character
Character Details
Gender biologically male, and Identifies and presents as such, but androgynous in features
Age 20 Facial Features Very feminine features, slightly sunken cheeks
Distinguishing Marks Blood Red eyes, ashen white hair, and pale skin. His hair is very neatly cut and groomed.
Significant item a Jet Black adamantine greatsword, with a silver chain wrapped hilt and a blood red jeweled pommel. The blade is inlaid with Red gems that light up like stars when Kallum performs his Divine or Eldritch Smite
Body Type reasonably toned, 6’2”
Color Scheme Black and Red, with gold highlights and scrolling
Gear Adamantine Plate armor, with gold detailing, which is in immaculate condition. Various pouches on his belt for holding gold and other items. Usually wearing a Blood Red cloak. Animal Companion none
Action/Pose Serious facial expression, idle pose. The art is for a character sheet, possibly to be used in a livestream
Others Kallum has a love for sweets. Despite his appearance, Kallum is very much Human, and not a vampire
Character persona
Alignment Chaotic Good. Kallum is more concerned with doing right by his people than following traditions, although as a Baron he’s still bound by the laws of the country he resides in.
Personality Traits Kallum is a serious and cunning individual. These traits make him a very effective and shrewd Baron, as he doesn’t waste time or funds chasing frivolous things. While Kallum certainly has a serious dark side, he can be very kind, empathetic, and even humorous at times, possessing a wildly varied sense of humor
Ideals and Goals Kallums main goal is to surpass his twin brother, Grant. To this end, he has forged a pact with an unknown being that promises him a purpose greater than his brothers, provided Kallum free it from the dimension it’s trapped in. Currently, Grant is missing, and Kallum intends to find him. Furthermore, he intends to become king of his country one day, and seeks to better himself so he can take up that title.
Kallums isn’t an idealistic person, but he believes two things: 1, everyone should be treated fairly, and 2, anyone who isn’t has the right to change that through any means.
Bonds and Flaws Kallum is a deeply troubled person, coming from a traumatic past full of abuse and neglect. He often struggles to see how stressful situations impact other people.
Others
Visual concepts I’m unsure how to embed images, dm me for visual references
Backstory “There was a prophecy. ‘A boy, with ashen white hair and eyes that sparkle like cut emeralds will be born under the 7th phase of the moon on the 18th eve of summer. The child will bear an unnaturally shaped birthmark, marking him as unique. These features will distinguish the destroyer of evil from a normal man. These features will mark the chosen one.’
Such were the words of Opheon Satyra, the Star Eater, The Oracle Eclipsing the Suns, World Shaper of Madepelas.
Kallum Vaile was born the eldest son of Baron Erik Vaile and Baroness Vanessa Vaile, on the eighteenth eve of summer. The entire town rejoiced at the birth of the chosen one, but this boy wasn’t Kallum Vaile. Ignored, and abused, Kallum was often neglected by his parents. Even when he wasn’t confined to his room, his parents rarely addressed him, or looked him in the eye. Technically firstborn, Kallum was entitled to the barony, but his twin brother Grant, the Chosen One, got all the attention. In his younger years he had a close relationship with his brother, but as Grant’s responsibilities grew, Kallum was left behind. Every day, Grant trained for his glorious purpose, while Kallum, the rightful heir, wasted away, neglected by his parents and ridiculed by some of the braver, and more ignorant townspeople. It wasn’t until his 16th birthday, two years before his brother was meant to go on his noble quest, that he finally got a firm grip on his fate. That night, while the entire town and manor were celebrating the hero’s birthday, Kallum heard something. Maybe a voice, or maybe just a sound, it led him out of his window, away from the mansion, and beyond the walls of the town. It was there that he met a shadow on the wall. It couldn’t manifest fully, and requested that Kallum, it’s chosen one, strike up a bargain with it, in order to slowly bring it to the material plane, so that it might be free to roam the green hills and gaze into the blue waters. In return, it indeed promised him power, but the full offer was something much more enticing. It offered respect, and a glorious purpose, far beyond that carried by his brother. It was then, on his 16th birthday, that his pact was forged, and his destiny seized.
And so he ran, faster than he’d ever run, away from his parents and their abuse, away from the closet they locked him in, and away from the glorious shadow he could never seem to fight his way out of. He ran all the way to a lumber town, laiden with his first task, to forge a sword unlike any made before, the first piece of equipment Kallum would need. It was there that he met a group of adventurers. He didn’t like them much, but he fought alongside them, and even laughed with them at times, but they hated him. Soon after their meeting they drugged and killed him, burying his body in the woods outside the very lumber town where they joined forces. Perhaps he deserved it. Afterall, he whined too much, and expected too much. However, Kallum’s story didn’t end there, as his patron wouldn’t let his chosen one fall that easily. Pulled from the ground, he breathed once more. Blood flowed through his veins, but it gave no color to his skin. Instead, it stained his once green eyes dark red as he clawed his way back from the clutches of death and out of his grave on the material plane. Driven by a vengeance made stronger than ever, he returned home to confront his parents, and claim his birthright. It was time for Kallum Vaile to collect what he was due.”

---------------------------------
Character Basics
Full Name: Kallum Cornelius Vaile
Race/Ethnic Group: European
Class/Occupation: Hexblade Warlock/Oathbreaker Paladin; Baron
Character Nature: D&D 5E Character
Character Details
Gender biologically male, and Identifies and presents as such, but androgynous in features
Age 20 Facial Features Very feminine features, slightly sunken cheeks
Distinguishing Marks Blood Red eyes, ashen white hair, and pale skin. His hair is very neatly cut and groomed.
Significant item a Jet Black adamantine greatsword, with a silver chain wrapped hilt and a blood red jeweled pommel. The blade is inlaid with Red gems that light up like stars when Kallum performs his Divine or Eldritch Smite
Body Type reasonably toned, 6’2”
Color Scheme Black and Red, with gold highlights and scrolling
Gear Adamantine Plate armor, with gold detailing, which is in immaculate condition. Various pouches on his belt for holding gold and other items. Usually wearing a Blood Red cloak. Animal Companion none
Action/Pose Serious facial expression, idle pose. The art is for a character sheet, possibly to be used in a livestream
Others Kallum has a love for sweets. Despite his appearance, Kallum is very much Human, and not a vampire
Character persona
Alignment Chaotic Good. Kallum is more concerned with doing right by his people than following traditions, although as a Baron he’s still bound by the laws of the country he resides in.
Personality Traits Kallum is a serious and cunning individual. These traits make him a very effective and shrewd Baron, as he doesn’t waste time or funds chasing frivolous things. While Kallum certainly has a serious dark side, he can be very kind, empathetic, and even humorous at times, possessing a wildly varied sense of humor
Ideals and Goals Kallums main goal is to surpass his twin brother, Grant. To this end, he has forged a pact with an unknown being that promises him a purpose greater than his brothers, provided Kallum free it from the dimension it’s trapped in. Currently, Grant is missing, and Kallum intends to find him. Furthermore, he intends to become king of his country one day, and seeks to better himself so he can take up that title.
Kallums isn’t an idealistic person, but he believes two things: 1, everyone should be treated fairly, and 2, anyone who isn’t has the right to change that through any means.
Bonds and Flaws Kallum is a deeply troubled person, coming from a traumatic past full of abuse and neglect. He often struggles to see how stressful situations impact other people.
Others
Visual concepts I’m unsure how to embed images, dm me for visual references
Backstory “There was a prophecy. ‘A boy, with ashen white hair and eyes that sparkle like cut emeralds will be born under the 7th phase of the moon on the 18th eve of summer. The child will bear an unnaturally shaped birthmark, marking him as unique. These features will distinguish the destroyer of evil from a normal man. These features will mark the chosen one.’
Such were the words of Opheon Satyra, the Star Eater, The Oracle Eclipsing the Suns, World Shaper of Madepelas.
Kallum Vaile was born the eldest son of Baron Erik Vaile and Baroness Vanessa Vaile, on the eighteenth eve of summer. The entire town rejoiced at the birth of the chosen one, but this boy wasn’t Kallum Vaile. Ignored, and abused, Kallum was often neglected by his parents. Even when he wasn’t confined to his room, his parents rarely addressed him, or looked him in the eye. Technically firstborn, Kallum was entitled to the barony, but his twin brother Grant, the Chosen One, got all the attention. In his younger years he had a close relationship with his brother, but as Grant’s responsibilities grew, Kallum was left behind. Every day, Grant trained for his glorious purpose, while Kallum, the rightful heir, wasted away, neglected by his parents and ridiculed by some of the braver, and more ignorant townspeople. It wasn’t until his 16th birthday, two years before his brother was meant to go on his noble quest, that he finally got a firm grip on his fate. That night, while the entire town and manor were celebrating the hero’s birthday, Kallum heard something. Maybe a voice, or maybe just a sound, it led him out of his window, away from the mansion, and beyond the walls of the town. It was there that he met a shadow on the wall. It couldn’t manifest fully, and requested that Kallum, it’s chosen one, strike up a bargain with it, in order to slowly bring it to the material plane, so that it might be free to roam the green hills and gaze into the blue waters. In return, it indeed promised him power, but the full offer was something much more enticing. It offered respect, and a glorious purpose, far beyond that carried by his brother. It was then, on his 16th birthday, that his pact was forged, and his destiny seized.
And so he ran, faster than he’d ever run, away from his parents and their abuse, away from the closet they locked him in, and away from the glorious shadow he could never seem to fight his way out of. He ran all the way to a lumber town, laiden with his first task, to forge a sword unlike any made before, the first piece of equipment Kallum would need. It was there that he met a group of adventurers. He didn’t like them much, but he fought alongside them, and even laughed with them at times, but they hated him. Soon after their meeting they drugged and killed him, burying his body in the woods outside the very lumber town where they joined forces. Perhaps he deserved it. Afterall, he whined too much, and expected too much. However, Kallum’s story didn’t end there, as his patron wouldn’t let his chosen one fall that easily. Pulled from the ground, he breathed once more. Blood flowed through his veins, but it gave no color to his skin. Instead, it stained his once green eyes dark red as he clawed his way back from the clutches of death and out of his grave on the material plane. Driven by a vengeance made stronger than ever, he returned home to confront his parents, and claim his birthright. It was time for Kallum Vaile to collect what he was due.”

---------------------------------
Character Basics
Full Name: Kallum Cornelius Vaile
Race/Ethnic Group: European
Class/Occupation: Hexblade Warlock/Oathbreaker Paladin; Baron
Character Nature: D&D 5E Character
Character Details
Gender biologically male, and Identifies and presents as such, but androgynous in features
Age 20 Facial Features Very feminine features, slightly sunken cheeks
Distinguishing Marks Blood Red eyes, ashen white hair, and pale skin.
Significant item a Jet Black adamantine greatsword, with a silver chain wrapped hilt and a blood red jeweled pommel. The blade is inlaid with Red gems that light up like stars when Kallum performs his Divine or Eldritch Smite
Body Type reasonably toned, 6’2”
Color Scheme Black and Red, with gold highlights and scrolling
Gear Adamantine Plate armor, with gold detailing, which is in immaculate condition. Various pouches on his belt for holding gold and other items. Usually wearing a Blood Red cloak. Animal Companion none
Action/Pose Serious facial expression, idle pose. The art is for a character sheet, possibly to be used in a livestream
Others Kallum has a love for sweets. Despite his appearance, Kallum is very much Human, and not a vampire
Character persona
Alignment Chaotic Good. Kallum is more concerned with doing right by his people than following traditions, although as a Baron he’s still bound by the laws of the country he resides in.
Personality Traits Kallum is a serious and cunning individual. These traits make him a very effective and shrewd Baron, as he doesn’t waste time or funds chasing frivolous things. While Kallum certainly has a serious dark side, he can be very kind, empathetic, and even humorous at times, possessing a wildly varied sense of humor
Ideals and Goals Kallums main goal is to surpass his twin brother, Grant. To this end, he has forged a pact with an unknown being that promises him a purpose greater than his brothers, provided Kallum free it from the dimension it’s trapped in. Currently, Grant is missing, and Kallum intends to find him. Furthermore, he intends to become king of his country one day, and seeks to better himself so he can take up that title.
Kallums isn’t an idealistic person, but he believes two things: 1, everyone should be treated fairly, and 2, anyone who isn’t has the right to change that through any means.
Bonds and Flaws Kallum is a deeply troubled person, coming from a traumatic past full of abuse and neglect. He often struggles to see how stressful situations impact other people.
Others
Visual concepts I’m unsure how to embed images, dm me for visual references
Backstory “There was a prophecy. ‘A boy, with ashen white hair and eyes that sparkle like cut emeralds will be born under the 7th phase of the moon on the 18th eve of summer. The child will bear an unnaturally shaped birthmark, marking him as unique. These features will distinguish the destroyer of evil from a normal man. These features will mark the chosen one.’ Such were the words of Opheon Satyra, the Star Eater, The Oracle Eclipsing the Suns, World Shaper of Madepelas. Kallum Vaile was born the eldest son of Baron Erik Vaile and Baroness Vanessa Vaile, on the eighteenth eve of summer. The entire town rejoiced at the birth of the chosen one, but this boy wasn’t Kallum Vaile. Ignored, and abused, Kallum was often neglected by his parents. Even when he wasn’t confined to his room, his parents rarely addressed him, or looked him in the eye. Technically firstborn, Kallum was entitled to the barony, but his twin brother Grant, the Chosen One, got all the attention. In his younger years he had a close relationship with his brother, but as Grant’s responsibilities grew, Kallum was left behind. Every day, Grant trained for his glorious purpose, while Kallum, the rightful heir, wasted away, neglected by his parents and ridiculed by some of the braver, and more ignorant townspeople. It wasn’t until his 16th birthday, two years before his brother was meant to go on his noble quest, that he finally got a firm grip on his fate. That night, while the entire town and manor were celebrating the hero’s birthday, Kallum heard something. Maybe a voice, or maybe just a sound, it led him out of his window, away from the mansion, and beyond the walls of the town. It was there that he met a shadow on the wall. It couldn’t manifest fully, and requested that Kallum, it’s chosen one, strike up a bargain with it, in order to slowly bring it to the material plane, so that it might be free to roam the green hills and gaze into the blue waters. In return, it indeed promised him power, but the full offer was something much more enticing. It offered respect, and a glorious purpose, far beyond that carried by his brother. It was then, on his 16th birthday, that his pact was forged, and his destiny seized. And so he ran, faster than he’d ever run, away from his parents and their abuse, away from the closet they locked him in, and away from the glorious shadow he could never seem to fight his way out of. He ran all the way to a lumber town, laiden with his first task, to forge a sword unlike any made before, the first piece of equipment Kallum would need. It was there that he met a group of adventurers. He didn’t like them much, but he fought alongside them, and even laughed with them at times, but they hated him. Soon after their meeting they drugged and killed him, burying his body in the woods outside the very lumber town where they joined forces. Perhaps he deserved it. Afterall, he whined too much, and expected too much. However, Kallum’s story didn’t end there, as his patron wouldn’t let his chosen one fall that easily. Pulled from the ground, he breathed once more. Blood flowed through his veins, but it gave no color to his skin. Instead, it stained his once green eyes dark red as he clawed his way back from the clutches of death and out of his grave on the material plane. Driven by a vengeance made stronger than ever, he returned home to confront his parents, and claim his birthright. It was time for Kallum Vaile to collect what he was due.”

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Edit: I apologize for the mess, couldn’t figure out the template XD.