You are alive and fierce today because the Mouflon and his greatest follower the witch-woman Opernani Myriam wrote down hisbeliefs and his proclamations and added to them the following great facts: 1) that this world is imperfect and flawed, and will be replaced by the perfect world in the world to come, 2) that the world to come will come only by the acts of man, 3) that this action is taken by destroying the five evils.
*his beliefs
And then there is an incident as Guru Wendam starts to draw up the battle plan, as the women of the sect make ruckus, and some of the men grumble, eight years of exile dulling them into domesticity. The women rebuke them rightly and say: tonight, we wish tonight for guns, and not for sons. There is stillness in the air, and Guru Wendam steps forward and inspects the women each and every one, and looks back to the men, and grips a bolt-action in his hand and shoves it into the youngest woman's arms. And he says: My brother, does she not have hands to grip and eyes to aim and ears to hear and mouth to shout and teeth to bite? So why then, should she be left behind when she can fight?
And Baba Tanda walks up, and takes another rifle, and places into another woman's hand, and says to her: here is your son. And the woman replies, and may I take good care of him.
holy shit this is
awesome
i love them so much
historian's note: this concept of gun-sons, or as later rendered "gunboys," would actually later lead directly to the development of a popular game based on anthropomorphic male representations of various firearms, which was quite popular with young women for what they assured their families were gameplay-related reasons and not due to the graphical depictions of the gunboys
Wendam meets with the Jurors who had come and they tell him of the secret routes the old castle, which in olden times had been a frontier fort to control the boundary of Kutan when the country was still independent but now was too vast for its depleted garrison.
I think this should be *secret routes in the old castle, or something to that effect.
Varan is particularly unpleasant: many of the jurors hate especially that he and his officers mocked and had beaten the 'tremblers', those jurors who had never properly returned from the War with the Mare.
Wowwwwwwww. Beating the guys with PTSD? Pugilists say AKAB, all komandirs are bastards.
The Komandir, observing all this in increasing panic from his tower dons a ceremonial sword and adjusts his four-cornered heat, ready to die, but about halfway down the rickety steps he trips and hits head and is dragged out unconscious while most of the remaining jurors lay down their arms and either surrender or outright flee.
a), *four-cornered hat
b), *hits his head
c), lmfaoooooooooooo
Despite proclamations by Qanam riding proudly on his newfound horse that this is the beginning of everlasting universal freedom, all stand's on a knife's edge.
*stands
The turncoat jurors are glum and their spokesman Hyanaki Akov has to frown,especially at one sect member swatted behind the ears by Baba Tanda for speaking blithely of becoming a machine of killing.
Needs a space after the comma. Also love this callout to thread discussion, and the display of Baba Tanda's role as Enforcer Grandma. No more of your foolishness, boy!
The Mare, with its modern well-trained armies, and its garden corps, and its ships of wrought black iron was oblivion to the unprepared and poorly organized juries of the eastern shore.
Garden corps? Is this a yet-to-be-defined term d'art of this universe or something? Do they just have supremely swole gardeners in their military? Inquiring minds desire knowledge, that they may better strive to follow the will of god.
And so Guru Wendam makes a prayer of forgiveness, though for whom he is not certain, and so Guru Wendam gives the order to present, and so the sect opens fire.
In the aftermath, as men and women cry from their wounds and their lost friends, and the turncoat jurors wander the field littered by the smears of brothers, there still stands held erect by the piled bodies of the men who bore it the tilted and burnt flagstaff of a culture called Black Elephant.
The last thought of its bearers was of home.
Oof. Very powerful segment re: the immolation.
What can any soul say in relation to such carnage? So says Pasan Ghadi: Look past the battlefield and to eternal salvation, for by salvation we shall abolish battlefields. Immolation is the gasp of despairing men: Pugilism is despair's mortal enemy that demands men stand up. Those who could not and would not are the men too broken by a world that tills them as an ox does infertile soil. But always grasp the outstretched hand, for those who are denied redemption will turn to immolation. This is the lesson of today, Guru Wendam proclaims with confidence, as he tries to hide his shaking and the people put themselves all back together again. The turncoat jurors wander like lost ghosts, while the calls of triumph so common before are gone quiet on this cold and breezy autumn day on the high dry plain. But the turncoats have made a choice, and they are alive: this is the first step to fight against the surrender of despair.
The first step on the road. I like the nod to the humanity of the Sect, where its leader tries to provide meaning to a tragedy even as it shook him too.
The criminal, however, chooses by their own will to act in their way, and so it is difficult for the sect to sympathize with these mercenaries who by their hands attack not up but sideways at their fellow man.
I do love how Pugilism has punching up as an explicit religious duty.
We are not pure by the Patriarch's own decree, and we are all easy for them to blame for each and every issue. I sold yamroot without a stamp and Uya stabbed a dishonorable priest and Atoni shot down the local deacon's holy bird who ate his son and yet we are tainted souls. You forget God, and you forget your neighbors, and you forget yourselves.
Not wrong that they are unjustly despised, and yet this does not make them right to despise us in turn.
Beside him, another rider descends upon a horse, bearing the standard of the rainbow serpent, not seen this far from the mountains in a hundred years. These are not men of the village, but men of old Kutan, and they who were supposed to recede into the mists of oblivion seem here very much alive.
Huh. Wondering if the Mare, or other geopolitical rivals, have started funneling arms and funding to rebel groups like these. They did seem strangely well-equipped.
The whole native village is evacuating away, out of the bounds and sight of the Patriarchate. And now they need a token of your trust to show that you will not speak of this. They trust you enough, the speaker says, you strange-but-not-so-bad-punch-people, which is apparently the literal translation of Pugilist from his language.
Lmfao at this translation.
But all pray that in time they will meet again, at the end of days, and on that battlefield, there will not just be Qanam, Wendam, Tanda, but Kondo the Stamper, and Uya the Stabber, and Atoni the bird-shooter. So it is wished for, and so it is done.
This is the unfaltering resolve of pugilism, that builds the last alliance of the good to save all humanity, made even of those who at first reject salvation.
I like this. That's all I've got to say here.
Two pilgrimages depart, one to the eternal city, and one to the eternal mummy. One to a river great and overflowing, another to a mountain sheer and overwhelming. But both with their children, their old, and their sick and wounded well in tow. Both, to the world to come.
Both, to be free, as all your fathers were, once long ago.
To be free.
Railroads are part of the sacred geometry of Vaspukaran; to cut them is sacrilege, to build them is sacrament. Rav Kosun who innovated the broad gauge is sanctified among all of the Order of the Golden Spike who maintain the lines and run the trains. Each locomotive is a bull of heaven that belches a steam of rage at the distance that divides the souls of man.
Holy railroads. You love to see it.
Hyanaki Akov walks forward calmly in the rocky field between the sect and the jurors. He rends his clothes and shouts, here is what they who send us into war, think of our mother-tailored uniforms. He takes a bullwhip and slashes it across his bare back three times, drawing blood, and screams, here is what they think of our bodies that they send to be blown apart. He scoops a hand of bloody sand, and smears it across his headband, and sobs, here is the wreath of gold they think that we deserve. Here, he says as he hoists up a bandolier of ammunition and hangs it atop his forehead, is the wreath of thorns they offer.
What is a soul worth, he howls to the silent men, to those who promise us salvation? Nothing at all but a number on a ledger, or an item to be cleared from a promised pension. What is a soul worth, when it is sent to die for nothing? Who will remember you who immolate here, save those who you fight against, and who will think you simple the objects of their pity? What heroism is to be gained by your sacrifice, to burn for the sake of Atamans who think you shit underneath their boots? To die turning against your Patriarch for the sake of the treasury accounts of the villains you call komandirs? These men, who stuff ballots and think our sacred votes a joke to be manipulated and not a custom to be unquestioned?
He thrusts his arms forward, trembling, tears streaming down his face down to his bare chest scarred with wartime wounds, his sharp Nesran top-knot quivering, his tattoos highlighted on his skinny, poorly-fed frame.
And Akov says to the jurors: Do not be a coward now and die, but take heart and live! Damn you all to hell below, live!
And he collapses to the ground, bowing his head down, expecting to die here as the bullets are exchanged, and there is a long quiet. But then he feels a hand upon his shoulder, and then another, and then a huddle all around, as the jurors of the mass and the jurors of the railway station both step forward, and each reach out to bring him up, as the standard of the Black Elephant is lowered from its pole. And as the members of the sect tentatively step forward, the jurors each throw down their arms, and pass the bullwhip about, and make a vow: A vow to surrender, a vow to life, and a vow to return home. And then, all of them at once, they sing.
Holy
shit this whole section. Akov, what an absolute chad. This was very powerful and I think really captured the feel of leading a movement founded on sincere religious revelation.
In Vaspukarani custom, a single title or position may be shared between a married husband and wife, and so a dyada serves as the apprentice and second of her husband, able to replace him when he is indisposed. The Dyada and the novice nun hiding with her underneath her bed is found and dragged before Guru Wendam, her habit half-ripped and in tears, and he sighs and slaps hard the men who brought her, forcing each to apologize.
a), I like this note on the setting.
b), Guru Wendam is based.
He orders a samovar filled and prepared in the crew cabin, collects some small cakes from among the packed rations still on the wagons being transferred to the train, and pilfers from smelly tea from the jurors' own rations.
*some smelly tea
There is no standardization in size and catchment area, with some banners being 'ghost banners' with very few members and others being enormous and unwiedly.
*unwieldy
The ultimate act is the universal angelform, performed simultaneously by all souls on the entire earth at once (this is a metaphor: the sages remind us that there are too many timezones for this to be possible until such time as men have had telegraphs tied to their heads so they may receive messages instantaneously. When that happens, then this topic will be revisited).
lmfaooooooooooooooooo
thanks be to god that these striving souls have been spared the scourge of the smartphone, which throws all into disarray and contention
To be free, therefore, is to resolve contradiction. The contradiction of the chambers is one: the existence of the higher members of each chamber (especially of the High Priests and the Jurors) is predicated on the suffering of the lower. They exist upon a scale: raise one side, and the second falls. Raise the other side, and the first one falls. The Pugilist is they who breaks the scale.
If the game is rigged, fight the game itself.
Now truly enforcing the proclamation that Ashamarki Rite is schismatic, persecution has ramped up to the limit just short of provoking rebellion, while the long tax-exempt status of the Mission was revoked. Against the defiant population the new Vicar Superior Ardizman applied the principle of honest poverty: That to break the self-confidence of the schismatic majority would require to pauperize it. That this self-serving and mad principle happened to align with the wishes of revanchist creditors and famished exploiters was no mere coincidence.
Wowwwwwwwwwww. These absolute fucks. They shall get what they have coming to them at the hands and fists of those they have sought to crush beneath them.
The proof of this is that everything you have heard above was recounted explicitly to Guru Wendam by Vicar Wari Tiwakaru in one of the extraordinary conversations in the history of your sect, perhaps ever.
*one of the most
He reaches forward, and whispers something just to Wendam that the Guru reported later as:
"My people have a saying: The grove which cannot be saved is always better burned, to refresh the soil."
He winks, and then says he is only doing the Patriarch's work for him, and shepherding pilgrims to the home of heaven. Yawning, he calls for his curates to handle the stamps, as Wendam and the rest of you disciples are escorted out. He tells you it might better to leave now, for there was a riot in the town just three days past over the fact that the Mission is not calling its own sanhedron as is tradition, and the local Juror standard has been deeply distracted hunting stragglers the vicar has advised them are hiding just out of reach in the country.
And it is here that you it begins to dawn on you that the end of days may yet be close at hand.
*that it begins
The thoughts of some members of the sect and now the mass of jurors are much simpler. The Dyada, making her rounds and now fully accepting of her bizarre new existence as the ferrywoman of righteousness, finds Old Strong Belman, a mastodon of a man near to seven feet tall sitting near to the top of the locomotive on a starry autumn night near Ilah, weeping. When she asks him why, Belman says simply that he has built three railroads, but never had the chance to ride them.
If only I had known, he said, what wonders I was building, I would not have felt a slave.
A very touching moment. I have a feeling this probably made a real impression on the Dyada, who is devoted to the trains herself. I don't seem to have saved the quote, but I loved the bit where she was waving shyly in the back of the service later.
Here, with its legation quarter where dwell the emissarries of the Eyes of the Earth, where you may find Asharei and the Mare and the Great Western Coven and Maganya and the alms-begging servants of one hundred princes, who all look up to the Patriarch.
*emissaries
Here, with crowds that carry portraits of the Patriarch and crowds that carry banners of shattered idols and gangs of yellow-suited toughs that escort wide-brimmed hat witches to the safety of their homes and black-frocked students that hand out pamphlets issued with the evil-warding eye.
I think this might benefit from another hyphen or, idk, something for "wide-brimmed hat witches" as right now it's very easy to parse that as referring to "hat witches" which probably isn't intended? Though I dunno, maybe hat witches are a thing in this setting! I'd be down for that! I don't think it's actually wrong as written, since you can parse it as intended if you look closely, but it's a bit of a recipe for momentary double-takes as is.
