The Ma'on have a tried and tested urban organization for street level policing, mediation, and social work. It would be useful to learn from them and adapt their experience for our own use so that small units may fulfill multiple roles around their community.
[X] The Center, and its deprived many! [Doctrine will prioritize issues on the tiller, the toiler, popular rule, and Old Pugilism].
[X] Beacon of Liberty: Truths of the Second Gender. [Examining issues of labour and home life for the women and men of Vaspukaran. Favored by the Gunpowder Eucharist, will draw on the works of Esterkezy Oshana].
[X] Expand Access to Education! [Ma'on will build a campaign in favour of mass education on the streets of Nachivan, training the sects in broad street mobilization in favour of political goals].
The Center, Access to Education, and Beacon of Liberty win.
Scheduled vote count started by Cetashwayo on Jun 5, 2022 at 3:06 PM, finished with 76 posts and 53 votes.
[X] Beacon of Liberty: Truths of the Second Gender. [Examining issues of labour and home life for the women and men of Vaspukaran. Favored by the Gunpowder Eucharist, will draw on the works of Esterkezy Oshana].
[X] Expand Access to Education! [Ma'on will build a campaign in favour of mass education on the streets of Nachivan, training the sects in broad street mobilization in favour of political goals].
[X] Reform and restrict child labour! [Ma'on will report and expose the abuse of the city's factory owners, training the sects in using the press in order to affect opinion and affect change].
[X] Light Everlasting: Education and Ecumenical Illumination [Examining the possibilities of mass education and a priesthood of all believers. Favored by Ma'on, will draw on esoteric Pugilist writings.]
[X] Upend the Orphanage System! [Ma'on will investigate the orphanages and directly confront the Order Bevanine, training both sects in utilizing local power to confront Patriarchal institutions].
[X] Immolation's End: Possibilities of the Mass Jury. [Examining the Mass Jury as an institution and a potentiality. Favored by the Scourge of God, will draw on new writings on the position of Juries].
[X] Acts of Creation: The Tiller and the Toiler's Work [Examining the sanctification of labour and the free peasantry. Favored by the Ravs of Labour, will draw on works of Ghadan Nasir].
Yeah, this seems kind of… scattered… wish I could have gotten the chance to vote. We have quite a lot of people and nil discipline. I kinda think it would be more effective for us to really focus on some particular concerns that chain well with each other and let whatever ignored group splinter off in good order on their focus to give that the attention it (rightly) deserves rather than being a big jumble spinning several plates to try to please the whole big tent and maybe accidentally dropping some to shatter anyway.
I mean this specific vote seems to be cohering pretty well together, we're having an inter-Pugilist dialogue with helping the Ma'on secure their position mediating between the street urchins of Nachivan and helping develop that further into inherent rites/rights and protections of children and households and, in the absence of the once mighty pillar of peasant Babas that once were so tightly wrapped in Pugilism and community both, emancipatory ideas for the freedom of the mind and the education for urban women and child laborers to be able to mentally punch evil in the jaw and take their rightful position in Vasp society, so locked behind literacy and liturgical text as it is. Angelforms for the brain.
DVORAH: You have hit upon a profound truth even in the midst of idle speculation. Angels are god's foremost servants, and emissaries of his hidden mystery on this earth. If man is made in the image of God, and the angels are God's servants and emissaries to man, then surely they are also illuminators. Literacy, the ability to read, to argue, to interpret, to debate, is one of Pugilism's most ancient and treasured parts.
Not everyone can be a sage, but a sage can come from anywhere. Listen not to those who disparage and denigrate you, to keep you well in ignorance. Instead, listen well to Merodak, and poke a finger in the eye of evil by putting your finger to the sefer's page!
His was a vote concluded after months of ties and delays. He was no one's first choice, nor their second, nor their fifth. A mild-manneed reformer of kindly disposition from the Synod of Warabad, known more for his honesty than any other quality. His election was a fateful, and perhaps fatal decision, for the very priesthood that erected him to office. But then again, perhaps it was not he who was their doom at all, but his wife the Abbess Kenturah who had risen from little more than a simple actress-nun in the Order Masquerade to the pinnacle of power.
One sunny morning not long after the festival of Shuvatan, a number of flyers with a most-unusual manifesto were found to have been hastily plastered in prominent places all over the Western Navel espousing the virtues of a certain well-known monnetary policy. Met mostly by puzzlement by most prospective readers, it soon emerged that it was the work of a peculiar HaKhofshim member going by the moniker of Bryanaki Gidon who soon confessed to the deed after a few minutes of interrogation, aided greatly by the fact that Gidon had in fact named himself as the author of the flyers in the first place.
On The Spiritual Implications of Free Silver Or Why Silver Must Be Freed By Bryanaki Gidon
DVORAH: Disciple Gidon we really must have a talk at this point at what purpose you see free silver serving for the furtherance of the world to come. As a monetary proposal for the stabilization of the currency it surely has merit but I simply cannot understand yours and Elder's Hadi's obsession with it as a messianic symbol. In the past six months I have heard free silver be proposed as an antidote to war, pestilence, famine, the inequality of mankind, infertility, baldness, mortal suffering, the division of the nations into separate parts, and now gender trouble!
It is a metal and a type of specie. It has no special energy beyond what is vested in all portions of creation.
WENDAM: It seems exceedingly clear to me. It is the feminine energy, tossing and turning, yearning for its lost lover of gold. Fine work, disciple.
DVORAH: Don't encourage this!
WENDAM: Come now, Dvorah. Have we not been freed from bondage to be together? Am I not your golden bull, and you my silver sweetheart? Do we not yearn for one another? Do we not yearn for free silver?
DVORAH: Th-this is highly inappropriate discussion for a lecture meeting!
On the Necessity of a New Organization,
Befitting the Scale and Reach of the Free Disciples,
Some Thoughts on Realizing that Organization,
and on its Ability to Further Expand as Needed by Abgar Ben Hadam
TANDA: Interesting explorations and implications, good brother A-B-H. There remain concerns. I fear this structure may struggle to account for the multiplicity and unchained energy of the many.
It has difficulty in accounting for the complications and implications of differential size of temples, for the gaps in communication between temples in its hierarchies, and may also engender in such a scale of hierarchy a feeling of mightiness among those drawn from the low, a separation from their fellows by virtue of their command. This is the way a movement for freedom becomes a vessel for the ambition of its officers, just as your juries have fallen prey to such a thing. The komandirs elect atamans who elect high atamans, and thus the whole system is so separated from those it purports to serve that it robs from its own oath-sworn legions. Still, there is promise to this, if it is applied on a local level and somewhat reduced in complication.
In general, for those new disciples not yet appraised of the deeper levels of the mysteries, there are three major and ancient systems of Pugilist organization which the sect must consider applying: the Kenesa Dojos system, based upon the rule of the kenesa dojos spread across the country, the united tahor, based upon the formation of a pure-hearted Khalsa of the Pugilist many closest to your proposal, and the Ophanom, by which the sect formalizes confederacy and temple-federation. We shall surely have more words on this soon, however, for it is clear to all that something stronger is needed if the movement is to pull itself together.
I did think that Baba Tanda was the Grandmother with the steelmade beating stick we needed to re-organize the sect into something fitting of its new stature.
I did think that Baba Tanda was the Grandmother with the steelmade beating stick we needed to re-organize the sect into something fitting of its new stature.
Yes. The sages are very cognizant of the disorganization but there's a lot to be done and there's a lot of work to just wrangle people right now. Communion elections are also coming for Nachivan and that's taking up attention.
Look, I just find it hard to believe that all the sect's problems wouldn't be solved with the imposition of military discipline and organization on every single member. It's worked so well for the jurors, after all. There aren't any problems there.
Turn 5, 822 Shavat: Letters from the Chained & Free
[X] The Center, and its deprived many! [Doctrine will prioritize issues on the tiller, the toiler, popular rule, and Old Pugilism]
[X] Beacon of Liberty: Truths of the Second Gender. [Examining issues of labour and home life for the women and men of Vaspukaran. Favored by the Gunpowder Eucharist, will draw on the works of Esterkezy Oshana].
[X] Expand Access to Education! [Ma'on will build a campaign in favour of mass education on the streets of Nachivan, training the sects in broad street mobilization in favour of political goals].
Letter of Hyanaki Akov dated 16th Shavat 822 from Saupo Pa, Nesra
I write this as a summary of my travel to Nesra for the exaltation of God in general and we free in particular who most rightly carry forth his mission.
My journey itself started poorly. The steam-sailors are on hermitage and the Order of the Cherry Oar has lost all control. Getting to Nugal Nesra, from which I intended to return home, by the Hadit was thus made an ordeal. My impass was only resolved by the connection afforded to me by recommendation of that eternally great hero Sarbadgar to Baba Habila's own shipping service, which normally ships tea, silk, and cassava. Finding myself shipped among the vegetables in a rickety barge, I prayed only that we would not be sunk, lest we lose such a sacral shipment of potatoes.
Upon arriving in Nugal Nesra I was made forcibly aware of the truth that Kedesh has seized the city and rules its communion. Everywhere there are Kedesh posters, Kedesh woodcuts, Kedesh pamphlets, Kedesh clubs, and even Kedesh cups and silverware. And it must be silver - they have swung extremely behind a slogan of free silver, free priesthood, and free land, promising in turn to end the gold standard, abolish the high priests, and confiscate their estates. It is an ambitious and extraordinarily radical plan and it is because of this that I believe them so popular now.
Against them is arrayed especially the old clans who fear loss of position and dislike that Kedesh stands for supporting the center and the Grand Sanhedron and not their old vernacular rites. Most of these men can be spotted by non-Nesri easily by the impressive breadth of their ta moko tattoos by which they mark their status, and many are juror starshy or komandirs, as the high priesthood discarded and disguised their own tatoos to better present themselves as orthodox sages. In these times this has not made them objects of great Nesri esteem.
There is not a frocked priest nor an urban porter who does not sport their cockades of blue and silver, and Kardon Hadi is a titan to them in particular, the 'silversmith of our moral kingdom'. The iconoclasts and pugilists, who have their own temples, are far less well off. The Pugilists in particular appear to be more interested in arguing over which angels might win in a fight than in organizing. I introduced myself to them, but upon losing a fight to their own local version of Old Strong Belman (does one exist in every city?!) they disbelieved that I was who I said I was and refused me hospitality. Overall, there is work to be done, especially in terms of introducing weight classifications in wrestling duels.
The energy of the country is profound and the people relieved by the end of the threefold tithe and the dissolution of the orders. Every man has an opinion and it appears all deference of the stodgy old order has dissipated. Arms are aplenty and the monks take public oaths to die before they surrender freedom. I had a strong argument with my coachman about Sarbadgar, and the other passenger, a young Kedeshi mistress not more than one and seven, engaged me in a wild and long-ranging debate about the nature of mana which is the substance which pervades the universe (and also God) and the pursuit of reason as the primary and only path to heaven. I was never more happy to arrive home to Saupo Pa, the hillock above the ponds and wetlands where the mist cannot reach.
My relief soon left me, however as I was reminded of tedium's old embrace. You must understand as city people that a palatine village, especially a Nesri village, is a prickle's paradise. It has its everlasting characters and a pride in a donkey's stubbornness to change anything at all. I was not surprised to find that despite being away four years, that Young Ari remains older than Old Ari, though he has lost more teeth and now appears half an amphibian. Nor was it a great shock that the codger Rawiri still marshals the men of the village every morning with their rifles presented to the horizon to ward off phantom routiers of the Mare. A few of Black Elephant's own soldiers have wandered home from their trial in Henoch, or from Kutan, and they were not happy to see me, either. It took a few fights to sway them, and some slashes of the whip on my back, but both are so familiar to me that I had little hardship.
But something is not familiar to me, and this is where I must beseech thee, Dvorah, and disciples of the sect. It is my family. They have been doing well - entirely without me. My wife Miah, she despises me with every fiber of her being. She is perhaps right to, for I did a sin of sins and abandoned her and our two children, to take up posting in Kutan, but I do not know how I can make her understand. I was not well when I came from the war. I did not sleep. I did not eat. My ears rang with the ghostly noise of battle that I could not quell. And the yoke of penury pressed me so that I had to go. I could not do my duty in this place where so many eel eggs do not even hatch, so stagnant and poor is the water. In Kutan I could at least send home a stipend. And yet I found out only arriving now that no such stipend arrived, that the komandir was pocketing it all or sending it to Dvarim, and that Miah and my son and daughter nearly died if not for the village's aid.
I feel the gravest shame as a husband that this has happened, and I know not how to remedy it. I tell her of my time in Nachivan and she asks if I have been training in fists so I might beat her. She has taken up a canoe business and though it has not been doing well the alleviation of the tithe will ease the burden more. I have brought a great fortune with me and she has taken it but she wishes nothing else to do with me. I do not know my children and I know she has added another who is not mine. I do not know how I am to feel. Evil thoughts course through me when I am with her, and I had wished to annul the marriage someway, but there is no path to it. These days not even the Patriarch may be free from such a bond. My cousins tell me I should fix her up with the usage of a firm thumb-stick, and instead I got into a fight with them instead, and left them with black eye as Chana said I should when men suggest such things.
In Nachivan I am God's own servant, but in Nesra I am a cuckold and a failure of a man, and my wife will not see me, and my children will not know me. Is there a place to remedy this in the world to come? Is there a kind of possibility that we may reach, so that although not all may be made right, we may at last be free from one another?
There is nothing left for me here. I will make to return soon.
With hallowed love,
Hyanaki Akov
WENDAM: One day we shall direct the doctrine of extinguishment to the stern matter of helping Jurors understand how to speak to their wives.
DVORAH: It is a funny thought, dear, but it is also a tragedy. The relations of even the well-off wife and husband are poor enough without including in them the weight of war, loss, and exile to which so many of the lower ranks of the Jurors seem so accustomed. And into this is added the grim maelstrom of abuse, the commitment of man to woman and woman to man above all sense, and the impossibility of annulment.
CHANA: Then it would be good for us to do something about it.
DVORAH: Indeed. But what to prioritize?
Choose one sub-doctrine to focus on for developing the Beacon of Liberty into a more comprehensive theology of the feminine.
[] Shadows Below the Pedestal. On the falsely laid expectations of the husband and wife, and the burdens they do bring.
[] The Binding Ring of Marriage. On the inviolability which soils the sanctity of marriage, and the prison it may build.
[] The Rose That is all Thorns. On the cruelty that husbands believe is their right, and the vile darkness of abuse.
Letter of Ghami Pola dated 14th Shavat from Yomri, Ralabarak
Dearest Disciples,
It is a crime against creation that it has taken so long for me to be able to send proper letters to you after that unspeakable day. Apparently the Order of the Crimson Seal has been in the midst of restructuring by that new minister Vinderbalg and has not been able to handle the mail of us poor little monks! Well I and a dozen of our tough strong men gave the postshrine a piece of our mind and it seems they have gotten back to work!
Now disciples let me say first how proud I am of all of you. I am especially proud of my sweet little Chana and her friends Shevah and Elana. Do not ever come to Yomri unless you wish for injury to your cheeks, for I shall pinch the life right out of you! Tanda I am sure is keeping you all honest, and Dvorah teaching all of you, and Wendam keeping you absolutely amused with his antics. I am told Qanam has been sent off to the plateau to help that brilliant woman Vashti and frankly it is the best course - some time among the ladies will do that stiff young grandfather much good to ease his temperament.
Oh, how I wish I had been sent to Kutan with you all and participated in the drama Tanda had told me! All of us dispatched to Tunturus had no interesting stories, only snow and local chutzapadiks trying to steal the women of the penitentiary and take them home as wives. Oh, but I wouldn't have minded, really - have you seen how the speckles below their eyes, and that fiery hair!
I can imagine Tanda rolling her eyes so I shall get soon to the point but first I must give an account and conduct of my sons in Yomri. I would not be a true mother if I did not praise at length my brave boys! Popi and Ghani have both recovered from a shared illness of the stomach, likely acquired from some ill begotten liquid, if I know the rapscallions enough. Huri is old enough to take up his father's work now, though like your new campaign in Nachivan is saying: He shan't do it without a knowledge of the letters of God! We will make sure he keeps up with his studies even to his eighteenth year. And Juri! Juri, Chana, you must meet my Juri when he comes to Nachivan, he has grown to such a height, and he is I am told a great respecter of your work, and he took such a fierce wound during the siege of the synod, and he is such a bright boy...
Oh, look at all this. I am such a ditz of a woman, but that is how God made me! Let me then address serious matters. There can be no negotiation and no path to peace with those who still keep us in bondage. Toiling hard are the mouflons and the monks of Yomri who every day are subjected to the torments of Winged-Bull. Soon shall be the hour of their atonement. We have focused on building alliances horizontal in the lower chambers of our sanhedron - the iconoclasts and confessors are taking advice more recently from Makabam and Ohr in Nachivan, which means they are willing to work with us on account of your cute little alliance. Again, such a good job, dear Chana! It seems like only yesterday I was tending to your toothaches and negotiating girlish crushes during service and now here you are!
In sum, all matters are proceeding well. The demise of the old order will come soon, and with it the gates to heaven shall fling open and bring with them the punishers of evil. Anyways, I really do think we need some strategy to reach out to the working ladies. So many of these girls are just so exhausted day-in-day-out. They have to take care of the children at home and then take care of their shlubby husbands too. Amalgast himself could not tame some of these boors, I'll tell you! The Ravs are the worst of them all. Strong arms and fine pipe or not, you go and tell Bukak to get his boys to treat their doves better or they'll sooner be ravens pecking at their eyes!
And there are so many children. My poor Trandvi, rest his godly soul, bore me all these miracles, but I had the help of the sect. So many of these mothers are without any but their husbands who don't care if the child's not old enough for sport or business, and these girls are coming from the minyans so they aren't trained to handle alone a pod of five or six little dolphins rollicking about! And besides they are paid worse in the factories, and represented so poorly in matters of state, so that when I am speaking in the Lower Sanhedron some of the men will not even listen to me, and there are so few of my number there. Honestly! Send Elder Tori or Elder Rachel right down here at once and sort out these ruffians among the rougher vessels!
Advise me on what matters you are writing on in relation to improving our position as good ladies and the fairer gender and I shall rally my dear army of sweetpeas to send letters outlining the many torments and depredations we muddy nuns and burnt-out lambs are dealing with!
With Thought and So Much Prayer,
Ghami Pola
TANDA: Pola is as ill-disciplined in writing as she is skilled in haberdashery. You would never believe this woman is whip-smart if you only read her derailed-traincar diatribes.
DVORAH: You know I cannot talk any ill about our Pola.
CHANA: I can.!She speaks of me as if I am as a child. A humiliation read publicly before the inner sect to see and snicker that the Stormer of the Vikrag had crushes and had toothaches. I am above such things now.
DVORAH: You are not even twenty, do not speak as if you are the angel of death. When you are Vashti's age we may discuss it again. Now! Pola, for all her verbosity, raises fine points. There is a word or three to be said about the matter of working women in particular, which is so often ignored in elite circles of femininity. And she herself identifies issues: inequalities in wage and representation, the pressure to have children, and the manifest unfairness of housework.
TANDA: I don't think you did a day of housework in your life before you married Wendam. Or a day of work, for that matter. In fact, even now, half the time it appears he is the one doing the cleaning -
DVORAH: Ahem. Thank you. In any case, regardless of any such deficiencies, we shall have a sufeit of letters from which to build our case. But what is the strongest case for us to build?
Choose one sub-doctrine to focus on applying the principles of material suffering and the blunt facts of working women's life to the Beacon of Liberty.
[] The Double-Toil of the Back-Broke Bima. On the special demands of working women, those who are slaves within the home.
[] The Overbearing fruits of the Flagging Tree. On the overbearing abundance of children, and the men who do not help.
[] The Incharity of Man and the Woe of Woman. On the inequalities in wage and respect that pull women to the darkness.
Letter of Rector Qanam dated 13th Shavat from Tendavara, Ischak
Disciples,
The mission in the Ischak has proceeded beyond all expectations. An assassination attempt by the vile and accursed opportunists of the Sanhedron in the course of negotiations has been dealt with. Sarbadgar has taken over negotiations for the Patriarch and is amenable to most of our demands. The Minyans of the Ischak will be recognized as a special palatine granted to the mouflons of the circle with the boundaries set at our current extent.
We shall pay a tithe for self-government, as akin to an autocephalate, and answer in matters not within our authority to the Ischak Sanhedron. For justice four courts tabernacle will be established in the major towns of the region, to which the minyans may take disputes that cannot be resolved by the babas and the proctors at the level of the village communion, with decisions that may be appealed to the Grand Sanhedron. The estates of the priesthood, who anyways are mostly obliterated or under suspicion, shall not be compensated. We have won. I am proud to say this form of government is in part my design, worked in accordance to and adherence to the traditions of this wondrous land.
Vashti will of course surrender any pretense to prophethood. Any mention of such in my prior entries was a mere exaggeration. As you know I am prone to.
I must say that I have not had the chance to praise you adequately for the victory in Nachivan. You have likely saved us all, and your scattering of the Sufgar Standards let us crush them at Tendavara. If we had not done so, and could not leverage such a victory in negotiations, we may not be having this conversation, and I would instead be swinging from a tree. Another exaggeration.
I think I may be able to come to you soon, though it is not clear when. Vashti still needs direction. She is a fine leader and a brilliant speaker, but without stern education on the world to come and the five evils she may diverge from the essential Pugilist scruples. She has also, I am afraid, become somewhat paranoid after the recent attempt. We are accustomed to such things, but it greatly troubled her and continues to. Advise me - should she be sincerely afraid of the outside, or is the energy in Nachivan and elsewhere such that she may relax her guard somewhat? I have little intelligence outside of this country, and have spent three months eating naught but salt and roundbread, seasoned with dirt.
I pray this chapter shall end soon, and with it a new, and greater one, shall be founded in its place, one step closer to the world to come.
With Grace,
Rector Qanam
DVORAH: An assassination attempt? Absolutely dreadful. There was little mentioned of this in the epistles...
WENDAM: I would not be surprised if it was obscured by both sides once the Ischak Sanhedron had been put down to prevent negotiations from falling apart entirely.
TANDA: Canny, but a warning to us that there remain many who cannot stomach the idea of mouflon freedom. Even this mouflon palatine reeks of half-measures - it is an attempt to contain the deluge of the countryside and satisfy the desires of the tortured tillers without making these rites standard throughout the Kingdom. She should be wary, and remain at home, taking care to prepare herself for a betrayal.
DVORAH: It is a start. What are they to do, fight Sarbadgar, Burs, Sen, and Morsi all at once? Madness. Vashti must know she has allies in the capital, in us. That is the best safety for her.
WENDAM: With all respect, I think the best safety for her may well be instead to reach out and build a movement everywhere. It may ruffle feathers - pun intended - but it will also bring the word of the God of Ischak to the peasants everywhere. Her victory does not deserve to be so easily put aside and hidden.
DVORAH: I believe we have made our own positions clear, divergent as they are. The sect must decide.
Choose one position on which to advise Vashti through Qanam on how she should treat Vaspukaran outside Metamoa.
[] With Vigilance. Vashti should remain firmly enconsed in the Ischak and be wary of outsiders, for the safety of her and her movement.
[] With Acuity. Vashti should cautiously build alliances with those outside of the Ischak, in particular in the capital of Nachivan and the Sanhedron.
[] With Candor. Vashti should move to build a much larger movement for the peasantry beyond the Ischak, and use her stature to trascend her local origins.
Letter of Maryan Vashti, Undated from Tendavara, Ischak
HaKhofshim,
Rector Qanam does not know I put this letter with the peddler sent to bring it to you, but he is my companion and not my father or husband and he has no will over me. It is I who is reaper, and not him, I who is the bride of this land, not he. I follow his advice as I follow the advice of my counselors as I follow the advice of my people, but it is I, and I alone, who speak for myself.
I seek your counsel on matters theological because Qanam speaks well of you and I have heard great things of you in your time fighting in that city of evil. He had told you in his letter that there was an attempt vanquished but he has not been honest. It was much more close than such, and it did injure my companion the covert-witch Tatala. Tatala is an apostate and according to traditional law should be stoned but I have known since we were young when she would tease me beneath an ironwood tree, and she is indispensable to our cause, and so I dispense with such laws. She is named as one of my seven companions by those who compare me to Amalgast, but I dislike such heresies, and make clear I am no such person. Still, she is important.
I do not like the great cities that eat my people and I do not like the town of Arhan which is a den of sin I would have liked to harvest. He asks you advice on these places and I will listen but I warn you that my patience wears very thin. We had been the trusting people and the good people and the Patriarch did not listen to us. He listened to us when we had guns and killed the minions of his enemies.
Qanam believes that if we make a solution with this Patriarch that he will obey this, but I am not sure. Your own stricture says that there are three people in one: There is the creature, the prophet, and the holy ghost. But Qanam says the creature is not the prophet is not the holy ghost but is Amalgast. And I am saying I trust Amalgast, who is the greatest of all men, and I trust his prophet, and I trust his holy ghost. But I do not trust this creature. Thus I am not troubled by suspicion towards this vessel, thanks to your wise doctrine.
I reach out to you instead because I am troubled by myself. I have been asked to cease the claim of prophecy which my rector Qanam himself encouraged in me naught a month ago. I dislike this game of politics that you are playing with the word of God. Tatala says I am an incarnation of the ancient prophet Vashti, so I do not violate the orthodoxy as I am 1672 years old. I do not think I look this old but Tatala is wise and I heed her guidance. Yet others say I am a Rav, alike to the great sages of old in majesty. And yet others say I should abandon all this foolishness and remember the Ischak is my country, which is true, and I have a responsibility to it, which is true, and that I am nothing compared to it, which is true.
But I do hear something. Perhaps it is God. Perhaps I am a holy fool. But in the utmost moment of my sin, when I considered surrendering my soul to heaven, something came to me in revelation and told me to hold, for I had a place upon this earth. And still I saw this inspiration divine, a ray of light and a voice and a feeling of inspiration, in the battle where I felled Gilded-Eagle and cut down so many of their number. And again it came to me as came the assassination, and told me to beware, for the negotiators for the sanhedron of the Ischak had put shooters on the cliffside.
Am I to simply deny this? Is this worthless? It is said that there can be no prophets after Amalgast, but why so? Why is the divine closed to man simply because of the glory of one single sage, no matter how great? Is he not still human, as we are? What gives him such a right, that holy, holy man, to close the gates of God to all who have come after?
Please send this back to me and take the utmost care. I speak to you in privilege and confidence. I am troubled and disturbed. I do not wish to doom my people for hubris, but I cannot deny the word of God! If he comes to me, if this is His voice, then am I not a vile sinner for denying it? Am I not an apostate of his gospel? Will he close himself to me, if I try to close him out? Who am I to order God away, when he is squeezing his hidden presence back into the earth?
What can explain what it is that we have done, without the inspiration of the Holy God?
Please also send me some of your books. I have been practicing how to read the more complicated scripts and I think I am understand better, and Qanam says yours are all easy to grasp.
Vashti
DVORAH: God help us, she is a tormented woman.
TANDA: Tormented or not, this reeks of a heresy we cannot afford. It is wisest to nip any such notions in the bud now and swallow her visions for the good of the many. She is not the only person in the Ischak who depends on her not opposing or challenging the Patriarch. Our own schism is littered with the corpses of the many who have perished foolishly claiming themselves prophet, and to be Rav with divine inspiration is inseparable from prophecy. It is a political solution which does not suppress that instinct within her to reach out.
DVORAH: How can you say such a thing? How can you be so cold? Are we not hypocrites ourselves to abandon the fundament of Amalgast as Accelerant, and accept at face-value the hoary orthodoxy of him as last prophet? I cannot ascertain the truth of her words, but has she not unveiled great wonders? I cannot dismiss by a pen what may be gifted by His outreached arm.
WENDAM: I wonder about the incarnation piece. It is not our doctrine, not quite, and yet who are we to say transmigration is limited simply to Amalgast? It is a less controversial position than claiming new prophecy, and she will hide it anyways. She has been wise enough so far.
CHANA: I think she should follow her own direction. Who are we to tell her, sitting here in Nachivan who know nothing of her fight, what to do?
TANDA: She is asking us for advice, little pisher. We cannot write back that we do not have any.
CHANA: I am not a pisher, I am the maid of freedom -
DVORAH: Now that's quite enough. We will leave it to the inner sect to discuss this in the utmost confidence. All take a vow of silence - we cannot allow her confidence to be betrayed. Good. Now.
Choose one option to advise Vashti on how she should interpret her visions of prophecy, and how she should see herself as. In all options save that to tell her not to see such visions as prophecy, she will conceal this fact, so you need not worry it will lead to an immediate breakdown of negotiations.
[] Prophecy. Vashti is a prophet, and must conceal herself! [Available because of your Fundament Amalgast the Accelerant].
This is the most straightforwardly controversial position and will put Vashti in conflict with orthodoxy but have the greatest force.
[] Incarnation. Vashti is an incarnation of the original Prophet Vashti! [Available because of your Fundament Transmigration].
This will put Vashti in conflict with orthodoxy but also attract Yuhwan Witches to her side, drawn by ideas of reincarnation.
[] Ravhood. Vashti is a Rav, whose righteousness substitutes for study! [Available because of your Fundament Sayings of Guru Myriam].
This will mark Vashti as a significant person and perhaps a kind of saint, and thus put pressure on the Patriarch to either deny or accept her.
[] Elevation. Vashti is a prophet only insofar as she has been elevated by the people of the Ischak, and as such she is granted greater access to the Spiral of Truth by her elevation! [Available as a syncretic option of Transmigration + Accelerant + Pugilist origin].
This will suggest that Vashti is taking a position similar to the Patriarch, but disconnected from his authority. Wildly controversial, absolutely heretical, and with massive implications for every section of theology.
[] Disavowal. Vashti is not a prophet, for the age of prophecy has ended, and the time of personalism must be put to the side in favour of the order of ordinary souls [Available due to Light and Darkness doctrine + Pugilist alignment].
This will argue to Vashti that prophecy itself is an old and outmoded mode of revelation, and that revelation comes instead from the actions and the thoughts and words of the great majority.
[X] Elevation. Vashti is a prophet only insofar as she has been elevated by the people of the Ischak, and as such she is granted greater access to the Spiral of Truth by her elevation! [Available as a syncretic option of Transmigration + Accelerant + Pugilist origin].
[X] The Binding Ring of Marriage. On the inviolability which soils the sanctity of marriage, and the prison it may build.
[X] The Double-Toil of the Back-Broke Bima. On the special demands of working women, those who are slaves within the home.
[X] With Candor. Vashti should move to build a much larger movement for the peasantry beyond the Ischak, and use her stature to transcend her local origins.
[X] Disavowal. Vashti is not a prophet, for the age of prophecy has ended, and the time of personalism must be put to the side in favour of the order of ordinary souls [Available due to Light and Darkness doctrine + Pugilist alignment].
[X] Ravhood. Vashti is a Rav, whose righteousness substitutes for study! [Available because of your Fundament Sayings of Guru Myriam].
All of the options to elevate women from their present subjugated status are good and just ones. However, by permitting divorce and sanctifying housework, we grant them the material advantages necessary for them to liberate themselves from bondage. The ability to dissolve an abusive union and to claim their equal share of the household's resources will not solve the problems of abuse and discrimination. Instead, they are effective and necessary first steps to build a foundation for equal power for the second gender.
The power of HaKhofshim resides largely in the city, as do we. We are not rural peasants, nor are we intimately acquainted with them and their needs and struggles. Vashti and her Metamoa are. They are the ideal force to create solidarity among the rural poor and oppressed, while we do our work with the urban proletariat. Together, we will raise up the whole of the lower classes, and bring their voice to the halls of the powerful.
Finally, it is time to close the book on the age of personalism. Any individual or group may receive holy revelation, for no one person is more innately deserving than another. Vashti's divine inspiration is the source of her determination, but it is that determination which makes her a great leader, not the inspiration itself. Moreover, without the great deeds performed by her followers, that determination would be as nothing before the might of the oppressor. It is time to herald the accomplishments of the many working as one, not the one working on behalf of the many.
Finally, it is time to close the book on the age of personalism. Any individual or group may receive holy revelation, for no one person is more innately deserving than another. Vashti's divine inspiration is the source of her determination, but it is that determination which makes her a great leader, not the inspiration itself. Moreover, without the great deeds performed by her followers, that determination would be as nothing before the might of the oppressor. It is time to herald the accomplishments of the many working as one, not the one working on behalf of the many.
DVORAH: One cannot receive a vision from God and not be a prophet. If they are having such inspiration and they are not a prophet, it must be from an angel as Guru Ghadi received. This may indeed be what Vashti is receiving.
