ScottishMongol's Writing Thread

[ScottishMongol]

This is an ASOIAF scenario I wrote back in February of 2017. It's essentially about what would happen if the Targaryen conquests fizzled and Westeros had to pick up the pieces after they were gone.

There's some aspects I really like - I'm a big fan of telling stories in the words of people within the world rather than from an omniscient outsider's perspective, there's some cheeky references, and as far as ASOIAF fics go you don't see many that are pure PODs set this far before the start on the series.

If I had to critique myself, it's a bit of a Starkwank and I do kind of screw over the Tyrells. I also might lean a bit too much on historical parallels, both to ASOIAF and to the real world, but your mileage may vary. The map, in addition to being AH.com's standard "Worlda" style, isn't very clean, but maps were never my field.
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Wolves Can Kill Dragons​

"It was as if the Old Gods themselves had possessed my arrows. Perhaps it was the wierwood I used to make them, or perhaps my prayers were truly answered, but in the space of three breaths each one had plunged into the eye of one of those horrible beasts. I didn't even stop to make sure of their deaths after that, I ran as if the Others themselves were behind me." - Brandon Snow, recounting his slaying of the three Targaryen dragons.

"Are you Targs fucking daft!? After you burned thousands of us at the Last Storm, you thought we'd just stay in line after your fire-breathing snakes were dead? I fucking loved watching that bitch cough up blood after I stuck her with me sword! You bloody Targs are all fucking monsters!" - Rickon, the Stormlander man-at-arms who stabbed Rhaenys to death as she mourned the death of Vhagar.

"If Aegon wants to cross that river under a rain of arrows, I say let him. Let's you and me...ah, reassign our forces to a more advantageous position. Say...further south and west? Far, far to the south and west?" - Loren Lannister to Harlen Tyrell, shortly before deserting Aegon at the beginning of the Battle of the Blood Fork.

"The Battle of the Blood Fork, as it came to be known, was a slaughter. Nothing less could have been the outcome, given the circumstances. Already the men's morale had been shaken to its core by the death of the dragons (then unknown to be the work of the infamous Brandon Snow) and the subsequent assassination of Rhaenys by the man-at-arms known only as Rickon. His execution by burning caused rioting among the Stormlander auxiliaries, and though the attempted mutiny was quickly put down, the men who Aegon the Dragon commanded were nonetheless robbed of any fear they may have had of the Targaryens - without their dragons, they were but men. The ashes of Rickon's execution pyre were still warm when the sun rose over the Red Fork.

Aegon in his wrath ordered his army, made up of lords from the Riverlands, Westerlands, Stormlands, and the Reach who had bent the knee, as well as his own Narrow Sea bannermen, to muster their forces and prepare to cross the river. At the same time, the Northmen were manning the north bank. As Aegon's commanders took their positions, Loren Lannister, once King of the Rock, and Harlen Tyrell, former Steward of Highgarden and now Lord Paramount of the Reach, took the opportunity to abandon the field entirely, taking their men and marching south and west, back towards their own lands.

When Aegon's diminished force crossed the Red Fork, it was under a rain of arrows. Many of Aegon's men crossed in boats, while in places where the water was shallower his heavy cavalry rid through the water on their mounts. Many and more fell to the Northmen's arrows, who loosed volley after volley into the men massed in shallow-drafted boats or on horses knee-deep in the current. The losses were horrific, and the blood with which the river ran earned the battle its name. Several of the boats, burdened with dismounted knights and men-at-arms, capsized in confusion, their passengers plunged into the water, where weighed down by heavy armor they drowned. One of those who met such a fate was Visenya Targaryen, an ignominious fate for the warrior woman.

Aegon the Dragon was unaware of her death when he gained the north bank. He found it held against him by lines of pikemen behind a shieldwall. Nevertheless, he and some of his fiercest warriors gained the bank, where they found themselves fighting King Torrhen Stark himself and several other Northern lords. Of the duel that ensued much and more has been made by the singers, but in the end Torrhen too could count himself a dragonslayer, as Aegon lay bleeding to death on the riverbank, mortally wounded by Ice, the Valyrian steel greatsword borne by House Stark.

With the death of Aegon in the van, the assault on the north bank crumbled, and the crossing of the river fell into chaos as men fought to return to the south bank. When word reached him of Aegon's death, Orys Baratheon, chosen to hold the rear against any treachery from the Westerosi lords, was able to rally the Riverlords, Stormlords, and the Narrow Sea houses, and retreated south as well, yielding the field to the King in the North.

Torrhen would stay long enough to return Aegon's body south across the river to Orys and to ensure Brandon Snow had safely returned to Northern lines before returning to the North." - Maester Gawen's Rise and Fall of Aegon the Dragon.

***

"There is no god but the Drowned God, and Lodos is his son and prophet." - The Ironborn's Creed.

"What is dead may never die, and with strange eons even death may die." - Book of the Drowned God, Chapter 1, Verses 1-2.

"The vacuum left by the death of Harren the Black and all his line soon led to bloodshed in the Iron Islands. Though House Volmark, among others, claimed the Seastone Chair, the true winner of the conflict would be Lodos, the holy man who claimed to be the Drowned God's son, fathered on a fishwife. Crowned by twoscore Drowned Men on Old Wyk, Lodos soon had hundreds flocking to his cause, then thousands, as the violence continued unabated.

Lodos' greatest appeal, no doubt, was his insistence on the old Drowned Man creed that Ironborn shall not kill Ironborn. Indeed, much bloodshed was committed in those days even between family members. However, Lodos also claimed that any man who was drowned in the name of their god would have this sin cleansed from him, and thus would be worthy of eternal life in the Drowned God's halls.

Reavers and smallfolk worried for their souls flocked to him, to be baptized by him or his followers, and thus joined his cause.

Much and more of his strength was derived from the thralls. Where before law in the Iron Islands stated that any child of a thrall could be considered a free man if he was drowned, Lodos claimed that this extended to any person, of any previous land, tongue, or faith. Just as he decreed it anathema to enthrall another Ironborn, so did he free the thralls by drowning them, and siezed by religious fervor they joined his cause in droves.

It was this coalition of Drowned Men, freed thralls, and fanatical smallfolk that would place Lodos on the Seastone Chair, where he began the generation-long task of healing the wounds of the Iron Islands...as well as putting to words the teachings of the Drowned God, his father." - Maester Emmon's History of the Ironborn Prophet-Kings.

"King's Landing is no man's first choice for a city, but then, Orys is no man's first choice for a king!" - Common jape.

"The new Kingdom of the Stormlands would face many challenges during the reign of Orys I. Though the appointment of Edmyn Tully as Lord Paramount of the Riverlands served to win the loyalty of the Riverlords, for a time it seemed as if Orys' fledgling kingdom was built upon a hill of sand. From the Bracken-Blackwood feud to the raids into the Dornish Marches, Orys spent a great part of his reign in the saddle, riding on concourses or sitting in judgement or even putting down rebellions. However, Orys was both a competent commander and a man who demanded respect, and so again from the Marcher lords who he fought with against the Dornish to the Riverlords whose disputes he settled, he earned the respect of his new subjects." - Maester Gawen's Reign of Orys I.

"So the Oakhearts, Redwynes, and Hightowers each have broken away from Highgarden, taking up their old crowns, while the Peakes and Florents both want our throne, saying they each have better claims than we do. And they won't even do us the favor of fighting each other more than they fight us! Fuck, at least we have plenty of wine..." - King Harlen Tyrell.

"The Reach is so fertile even their kings come in bushels!" - Ser Piggy, King Orys Baratheon's fool.

***

"Have you heard the good news about Lodos?" - Anonymous Drowned Man missionary.

"Son of the son of god doesn't have the same weight to it." - Ser Piggy, King Orys Baratheon's fool, upon the ascension of Lodos II to the Seastone Chair.

"The Ironborn's expansion was meteoric. After setting the Iron Island's wound to rights, Lodos preached that all men should be brought under the light of the Drowned God, drowned in his name.

Their first campaign of conquest and conversion was waged against the Westerlands. The now-aged Loren Lannister had never quite recovered face from bending the knee to Aegon, however briefly, and the Reynes had been emboldened to defy him. When the Ironborn swept over Fair Isle, Feastfires, and Kayce, he was unable to mount a campaign strong enough to oust them. The Ironborn put many of the conquered Westermen to the sword, but many and more were made thralls - save those who converted.

The Farmans were exterminated for their troubles, the women of that house carried off as salt wives. Houses Kenning of Kayce and Prester of Feastfires met similar ends, with the Kenning's seat reclaimed by their distant relatives from Harlaw. The smallfolk, though, converted in droves, with the Drowned Men brought to the Westerlands working for days on end to conduct the rituals for crowds of smallfolk on the beaches of Fair Isle and the shores of the Sunset Sea. Many thus returned to their farms or villages, for while they were now Ironborn in name, they still intended to live as greenlanders...for the most part.

Despite two more efforts to oust them over the next decade, the Ironborn were able to hold on to their Westerlands holdings, which soon provided new sources of revenue for Lodos II and his lords, not as a source of reaving but as a source of traded grain and gold. Though the plunder came from raids into the greenlands, a true Ironborn empire was beginning to take shape.

The Ironborn next set their eyes further south, on the still-bleeding Reach. The Tyrells were hard-pressed to hold off the Peake and Florent claimants to Highgarden, and so the Ironborn fell down on the Shield Islands, with portions of the mainland and the mouth of the Mander soon to follow. Meanwhile, a great naval battle led to the defeat of the briefly-revived Kingdom of the Arbor, with the Redwyne king thrown in his own dungeon. The Ironborn again demanded their new subjects convert...and Gilbert Redwyne consented, drowning and being revived in the light of the Drowned God, and restored to rule over the Arbor. This first major victory for the Ironborn would both embolden them, as well as open them up to new markets. The Redwyne kings had eagerly pursued a mercantile path, and overnight Gilbert Redwyne became the richest lord of the Ironborn by virtue of his trade contacts and his vineyards, and his fellow lords soon came to understand that a rising tide lifts all boats...." - Maester Emmon's History of the Ironborn Prophet-Kings.

"The people called Valyrians, they go the house." - Translation of graffiti scrawled in Valyrian on the outer walls of the Red Keep.

"With the death of Orys Baratheon, First of his name, the crown passed to Davos Baratheon, until then Prince of Storm's End. With his marriage to Edmyn Tully's daughter thus binding the realm together, he felt himself prepared to face the problems plaguing the realm: the continued bloodshed in the Dornish Marches, the refugees fleeing from the open sore that was the Reach, the bandit lord Harren the Red, and the new rash of violence against lords and knights of Valyrian descent..." - Maester Gawen's notes on the reign of King Davos I.

 

[ScottishMongol]

Another ASOIAF scenario, this one's pretty short and doesn't have much flavor to it, but I like the map better. The scenario here takes the last one and goes one step further, imagining what would happen if the Targaryens never made it out of Valyria at all. From what I recall this is mostly based on speculation by Steven Attwell, writer of the ASOIAF analysis blog "Race for the Iron Throne", and I don't think I put much of my own spin on it.
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No Targs
​

With Harrenhal completed, new Ironborn armies are soon marching south across the Blackwater, while new Ironborn fleets are sailing across Blackwater Bay and down the Narrow Sea. The Durrandons run out of steam and the Ironborn make gain after gain, until they run into the walls of Storm's End. One year into the siege and the Kingdom of the Isles and Rivers' neighbors start to gang up on them.

First the Valemen march out of the Bloody Gate to claim everything east of the Green Fork, while the Reach and Westerlands form an alliance to take down the Hoare Empire completely. A combined Reachmen-Westermen navy invades the Iron Islands while two armies march into Ironborn territory from the west and south. A Gardener fleet sacks Sunspear on its way to the Narrow Sea, saving the Durrandons from opportunistic Dornish raiders.

The Lannister-Gardener alliance, recalling the failure of "King Aubrey", set up a Hoare cousin as their puppet king and carve up the Ironborn's former empire. The Lannisters "liberate" Riverrun and the Trident, while the Gardeners take everything else. They manage to enforce their paper-thin claim on the Stormlands through an ancient marriage between a Gardener princess and a Durrandon king (as well as hailing themselves as liberators), and the Durrandon rump state is too beaten to argue. However, the Riverlands soon turn quagmire for the Gardeners, with the Valemen taking Crackclaw Point and the mostly-uninhabited Narrow Sea Isles, while Riverlander partisans ensure the Gardener-ruled territory around Maidenpool, Stony Sept, and the God's Eye is chaotic at best.

​

 

[ScottishMongol]

This one I'm a pretty big fan of. It was written in May 2017 and it was a long time coming. I had several ideas but eventually I went for an (informal) report by an interdimensional surveyor, which I think turned out pretty well. It's political, of course, but I think for the most part it's good commentary on some of the idiosyncrasies of the "alt-right".

***

"The Red Pill is 20 thousand fit college educated middle class men. If we really wanted to we could invade New Zealand and install a new government. We definitely have the manpower. There are plenty of veterans here. Plus everyone here knows where the magazine release is on an M16, from years of playing Call Of Duty.

Realistically the Red Pill Reaction Force would be far more effective than half the world's militaries. The Afghan military is fucked up on opium. The Iraqi army cant even do jumping jacks.. Plus New Zealand has only 8 thousand military personnel the majority of whom are useless paper pushers." - anonymous Reddit user

Report: Timeline 250.0-3
Codename: "Operation Alpha Dawn"

We didn't even think this one was inhabited at first. Just a bunch of tribals in one tiny corner of the world. Whatever happened here, it was bad. Initial ISOT must have gone tits-up pretty quickly. Whoever was brought here originally don't seem to have been Good People, and they haven't improved after going through some serious hardships after that. Upside, there's plenty of room for colonization, and we won't have to worry about the locals for millennia, if at all.

The inhabitants seem to live at the most primitive of levels. Their tools are made of wood, bone, and stone, especially obsidian, and they subsist mainly by hunting, fishing, and gathering. I was almost to surprised to discover their ability to bake bricks out of mud and grass.

They've organized themselves into four tribal confederations - the Nazis, the Mericans, the Euronats, and the Anacaps. There are also dozens of independent homesteaders in the wilderness beyond these tribes, and some really weird stuff goes on out there. Each tribe is made up of multiple smaller clans that number several dozen people each. Lone homesteads are usually built to support an extended family group.

The four confederations cooperate mainly among themselves and war with the others on and off for resources (food, supplies, women) and what seems to be religious squabbles. The Nazis and Mericans are the most centralized, each have a leader who seems to derive some sort of religious authority from the tribes' patron deity. "Hitler" for the Nazis and "God-Emperor Trump" for the Mericans. Every spring young single men strike out on their own, some to join other clans or even tribes, others to cut a swathe through the wilderness. These men are treated as bandits and many die either due to being caught while trying to steal from a clan or by meeting each other on the road.

The Euronats seem to be a looser confederation of clans, while the Anacaps are barely-allied autonomous outposts, basically like the independent homesteaders but in a non-aggression pact. They've got a sort of "every man is a king in his castle" sort of thing.

And I do mean man. This society is horribly misogynistic for hunter-gatherers, women are relegated to barefoot and pregnant and this society seems to really look down on them as inferior, irrational beings who need to be subjugated for their own good. They're babymakers, with the clan chiefs (they call them "alphas") monopolizing two or three, sometimes more, for himself. Calling them second-class citizens is too charitable, they're basically property.

While men fight, hunt and gather, women stay at home, tend to the children, cook, clean, mend and craft. Sometimes alphas will force their underlings to engage in work projects such as felling lumber, building houses or walls, ect. Most structures are ramshackle affairs, and aside from primitive rafts or canoes (used for fishing or raiding coastal neighbors) there doesn't seem to be much in the way of technology.

War is an affair of both sides getting into big packs and beating the crap out of each other until one side gets tired and runs home. Sieges aren't really a thing, primitive fortifications means villages can be easily stormed, but usually the raiders just wait until all the men are out hunting to move in for a snatch-and-grab. The Mericans have a unique war cry, "Maga", I think, don't know what it means. We actually managed to pick up one of their "battles" on surveillance: about a dozen unwashed savages in sealskins painted all over with swastikas, screaming "cuck" at each other and chucking spears.

Their religion is weird. Aside from their two main gods they also seem to revere some faceless spirit of chaos called Kek, with a handful of minor deities. They paint their holy icons - sorry, they call them "memes" for some inexplicable reason - on animal skins or the walls of their houses. I have no idea who Pepe is or why he looks like a frog, but he seems to be their most prominent minor god. The Mericans seem to have chosen centipedes as their patron animal, the Anacaps prefer the rattlesnake.

The less said about the she-devil "Killery" and her demonic servants called "Jews", the better, but most of their religion seems to revolve around blaming her for every misfortune that appears while ensuring the tribes that they are a divinely chosen people with pure, superior blood, and that if they stay faithful they will inherit the Earth. Trump locked Killery up in Hell (or else he will lock her up one day, this is one of their religious disputes) and most of the mythology around him and Hitler seems to be committing what we would think of as atrocities against Killery's servants, the enemies of the Pure Aryan Race.

Scans show evidence of mass graves in the north-central part of the island so wherever these guys came from they weren't prepared. Evidence of starvation and exposure as well as violent death. Whatever it was, it seemed to be really intense, and explains the constant infighting that goes on within clans. Being an alpha is a hazardous position, with all your subordinates constantly looking for a reason to backstab you and take your place. There's also constant backstabbing between underlings as they jockey for positions of influence, over the rare women, and even to resolve petty disputes.

Demographic analysis shows that the founding population was fairly diverse, seemingly from several closely-related ethnic groups, that bottomed out at around 5,000 shortly after their arrival here.

If you want my opinion, open the planet up to colonization, maybe send in some people to beat some sense into these guys. It's an appalling society, I'd have no bloody sympathy...

 

[ScottishMongol]

I wrote this one in July 2017. The inspiration comes from a Q&A GRRM did where he hinted that Brandon Stark, Ned's deceased older brother, may have left some bastards running around Westeros. This seemed like a good origin for an original character, so I wanted to see if I could flesh that idea out a little bit. I'm fairly happy with this piece, and I think it could have been the intro for an entire fanfic if I had been more interested, but there were certain aspects - the fact that the POV character is an OC, for example - that put me off the idea of expanding on it.

Berena​

Berena wasn't really a Snow. She was just a bastard, her mother had raised her in the little village on the Kingsroad, near the last inn between Castle Cerwyn and the Neck. Mother taught her to sew and to mend blankets and to gather wild roots when the men in the village weren't feeling generous to a seamstress and her baseborn get. Berena's mother sometimes said that her father had been a lord, but none of the men in the village believed her. And Berena knew you couldn't really be a Snow unless one or both of your parents was a lord. Even the Bastard of Bolton was a Snow, and Lord Stark's own son of course.

It wasn't a sad life. Her hands were calloused and rough and her hair was always dirty, but Berena picked summer berries and edible plants, and Lord Cerwyn's tax man was more concerned with the inn than with the seamstress and the bastard girl who lived in the little hut behind it.

But one day as Berena was pulling weeds in the inn's vegetable garden, hoping to maybe get an extra copper exchange, someone came running through town.

"It's Lord Stark! He's coming through here with the King!"

Berena dropped her basket. The last time she'd seen Lord Stark was almost ten years ago, when he'd come marching south to put down Lord Greyjoy's rebellion. She'd been nine at the time, a child on her mother's shoulders, and now she was a maid of eight and ten. She'd seen the King since, not a moon's turn earlier when he'd stayed in the village. The royal family had taken up all the rooms at the inn but their knights and freeriders had spread out across the flatland to the west.

Berena kicked her basket to the side as she stood up. The man who came running about Lord Stark was holding forth in the inn's yard.

"The King's coming back?"

"Aye, with Lord Stark in tow."

"Is Lord Stark going to court then?"

"Aye, must be he's been named Hand of the King. You know the old one died."

That was all she needed to hear. Berena ran off to the north side of town, hoping to catch the party before it made camp.

She slipped into the woods north of town and east of the Kingsroad. Walking familiar paths through the woods, she stepped onto a bare hillock that would give her a commanding view of the road. She'd be able to glimpse the King and Hand and all the chivalry of the south there, as they rode into town.

She rubbed her hands together and pulled herself up onto the fallen log that had gone down two years back, during a big southerly storm.

Then she saw the wolf.

It was bigger than any dog she'd ever seen, bigger than she'd thought even wolves would be, and for a long, long minute she knew she'd be eaten up.

But then she realized a minute had passed and the wolf had done nothing. Its ears flicked back and it sniffed the air.

"Nymeria, where are you?" came a voice, drifitng uphill through the trees.

A girl came riding through the bracken noisily, her horse plodding uphill. It snorted and shied away from the wolf, but the girl - dressed in the finest riding leathers Berena had ever seen - dismounted and, to Berena's eternal shock, hugged the wolf.

The girl seemed to notice Berena.

"Nymeria, who's this? I'm so sorry if she scared you! Who are you?"

Berena stammered as she tried to answer the questions all at once. I'm Berena! She scared me but it's alright, m'lady! I'm Berena, I'm a bastard but I'm not really a snow.

The girl peered at her.

"You...you look like me. Like Jon..."

Berena blinked. She'd seen her own face reflected in ponds and wells, she could see what the girl meant. They had the same eyes, the same hair...even her face looked like Berena's did when she was just a young girl.

The wolf - had she called it by name? - stepped forward and sniffed at her. Berena squeaked in fear, but the wolf padded gently up to her. Berena had the strangest feeling that she should hold out her hand.

"Arya!? Father wants you back at the column!" came another girl's voice. A second horse came through the underbrush, this one carrying a maid with auburn hair, wearing a fine dress, though she made a face of disgust at the branches picked and pulled at it.

"Sansa, I found-"

"I cannot believe that you made me come into the woods to find you!" the older girl shrieked. A second wolf came padding gingerly out of the trees, and fixed its queer gaze on Berena.

The older girl seemed to notice too.

"And who are you? Some village girl?"

"I'm...Berena...Snow."

 

[ScottishMongol]

After July 2017 I entered a long stretch of time where I only focused on writing full stories, with some significant breaks. "The White Bear Continuum" was written in February 2018 after marathoning Black Mirror and feverishly trying to work out a unified timeline with a friend. I ultimately decided not to string the entire series together, just the ones that could conceivably be linked together into a coherent narrative - as it turned out, it was the ones which took place closest to the modern day. I'm still pretty happy with how this turned out, as not only did I manage to create an overarching narrative, I also composed an overarching theme for the White Bear Continuum.

***

S1E1: National Anthem

In 2021, the Prime Minster of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland had sex with a pig on national television.

He didn't want to, of course. But the finger that showed up at the UKN studio turned public opinion more towards sympathy of the kidnapped Princess Susannah rather than the beleaguered Prime Minister.

The act itself lasted over an hour, but by the time Prime Minister Callows - ahem - finished, Princess Susannah was back in government custody, though with all her fingers intact. DNA evidence showed the warning came from her kidnapper, performance artist Carlton Bloom, who committed suicide shortly after releasing Princess Susannah - which he did shortly before the Prime Minister gave in to his demands.

This was, understandably, covered up in the official report. For nearly everyone in the world, Callows had saved the life of a member of the British Royal Family that had been beloved by the public as no other had been since Princess Diana.

Still, the event was a moment of profound national humiliation. Over 1.3 billion people had watched the act live, and the government was rather embarrassed on several levels. The reaction to preserve such things as the respectability and dignity of the highest government office was...extreme. It was made illegal to not only possess but to view a recording of "the act", the law being passed not a day after the broadcast, and the game of cat-and-mouse that began to play out between the British government and online hackers and trolls who spread the video around led the former to go to increasingly strict length to monitor and police the Internet. Similarly, the attempt to find Princess Susannah before the deadline through the Internet, communications tracking, and various other technological means had completely failed, with an additional gaffe of the sting on Bloom's suspected hideout leading to the injury of a journalist who happened to be shadowing the raid. The government immediately put all their efforts into an expanded surveillance state through the real world and cyberspace both, the twisting claws of British intelligence sinking ever deeper into public life. Never again, they said, as they passed the required legislation.

Of course, royal, national, and international sentiment was entirely with the PM. This was rather rich, considering it was due to public pressure that Callows had buckled to the demands, with everything from the Queen telling him "I'm sure you'll do everything in your power to get her back" to his own party letting him know they couldn't ensure his safety is Princess Susannah died. After all was said and done, Callows enjoyed higher favorability ratings and publicly recovered quite well, even being able to joke about the event once a few years had passed. His relationship with his wife, though they put on a good face in public, never quite recovered, and they divorced, though not until after Callows had stepped down as PM.

For the British public, the knowledge that they had been played in a piece of elaborate performance art stung. While there were certain elements of the populace that took a certain sadistic glee in watching "the act", for the most part disgust, sympathy, and embarrassment ruled. That Bloom had escaped justice by killing himself rather than being taken in made things all the worse. To be blunt, the nation was traumatized, and like all victims of group trauma, the nation reacted in shocking ways.

People protested (what, they weren't always sure), or rioted, or got into drugs and alcohol. They called for a surveillance state, or the dismantling of the surveillance state (more the former than the latter). A wave of obscene and surreal art swept the nation, and there was a noted decrease in pork consumption. The legal status of bestiality became part of mainstream political discourse for a few years, then everyone decided talking about that wasn't going to make things much better.

For lots of people, especially the young, the reveal that the government could be turned into a piece of performance art on the whims of a single man was a heavy disillusion moment. The government suddenly seemed flimsy, and lacking in dignity. The Prime Minister had, to put it bluntly, fucked a farm animal. What makes him so special?

S2E3: Waldo Moment

In 2022, the Tory MP of Stentonford and Hersham resigned over a twitter scandal involved inappropriate correspondence with a teenage girl. This triggered a by-election in which the two main candidates were the Tory's Liam Monroe and Labour's Gwendolyn Harris.

Then a blue cartoon bear entered the race and, so say some political commentators, changed political discourse forever.

Waldo was a CGI bear "played" by an actor using motion capture. A popular feature on a late-night comedy show, Waldo was known for crude humor which he used to mock politicians and authority figures. The showrunners decided, for a laugh, to enter Waldo in the by-election as an independent candidate. They drove around Stentonford and Hersham in a van with a television screen on the side, broadcasting Waldo.

At first, Waldo targeted Liam Monroe, subject of a former interview. The van would appear at public events hosted by Monroe and heckle him until he left. It wasn't particularly biting satire, Waldo mainly made dick jokes at Monroe's expense.

But for some reason, people actually wanted to vote for Waldo. Not many, but still. Then, at a televised debate, "Waldo" gave a surprisingly impassioned speech, decrying both sides as fake and out of touch, saying that it was career politicians who had driven people away from politics. The crowd ate it up, and Waldo went viral overnight. In polls taken the day after the debate, Waldo had overtaken the LibDem candidate to gain third place.

Waldo was a magnet for protest voters, the disillusioned and disenfranchised, and the smug centrist crowd. In the following election, he may not have won, but he came second to Liam Monroe by a mere 3,000 votes. Monroe took his seat, Harris moved on to another constituency, and the voter base stayed interested in Waldo.

A few people were troubled by the fact that, more than once during the campaign, Waldo had encouraged people to throw punches (and shoes) at protesters and other candidates. It was just a joke, surely, and if anyone took his egging on seriously, well, that was on them, right? Nevermind that people seemed so eager to lash out...

Meanwhile, as they were packing up after the campaign, a certain three-letter government agency approached the network that owned the rights to Waldo. Waldo was a unique tool, one that could attract attention better than any human candidate, and one who was proven to undermine establishment candidates with the precision of a political assassin. With some work, Waldo could be retooled to deliver any political position, or undermine any candidate, in a way the people would eat up. And the agency had some opportunities in mind in South America...

S3E3: Shut Up and Dance

In 2023, a wave of blackmail targeted several British citizens. Some of them were ordinary people, though one was a CEO. The hackers had collected extremely damaging personal information on them - some had solicited the services of prostitutes, some had expressed racist opinions in private correspondence, quite a few had viewed child pornography. As all the victims stood to suffer greatly if that information got out, they were willing to do whatever it took to keep it quiet.

After the string of thefts, bank robberies, and murders was over, the information was released anyway.

Public opinion was deeply divided. On the one hand, here was a person or group of people stealing personal information and releasing it in a harmful way, and the government had been unable to stop it. Many citizens grew paranoid, there was some general panicking, people tried to bury whatever dirt they had. On the other hand, though...the victims were solicitors of child pornography, racists, and adulterers, and generally were of the asshole brand of victims anyway. Was it really so bad if justice had been taken into the hands of ordinary citizens? It's not like the government had caught the child pornographers themselves, and that was actually illegal!

The British government looked at the reactions, tightened control of the Internet (while taking a few notes on the hackers' methods), and a few sociologists commented on the rising tide of sympathy for mob justice in the UK. Laptops without built-in webcams became popular for a while.

S3E6: Hated in the Nation

In the late 2010s and early 2020s, in order to combat colony-collapse syndrome among honeybees in the British Isles, the government contracted the technology company Granular Corp to construct a host of minute drones armed with artificial intelligence to replace the bees and pollinate the fruits and flowers of the British countryside. This saved the Isles from an ecological collapse, and was hailed globally as the next step in environmental and technological advancement. What very few people knew was that one of the conditions for funding the project was that the bee drones be allowed facial recognition software in order to help the British government's ever-expanding surveillance state. With this, they were able to stop terrorist threats, track down criminals, and even find missing persons, without the general public ever knowing about most cases.

In 2023, disgruntled Granular Corp employee Garrett Scholes quit after his girlfriend, another employee, attempted suicide after being harassed with death threats online.

In 2024 the Game of Consequences began.

It started as a hashtag campaign, twitter users were encouraged to tweet #DeathTo followed by the object of their hatred. This seemed innocuous, and plenty of people used to to attack subjects of public scorn. Then, on the day a journalist who had mocked a disability activist's suicide got the most #DeathTo mentions, she was found dead in her apartment, apparently having killed herself after being wracked with extreme, uncontrollable pain.

The next night, the "winner" of the game was a rapper who had publicly mocked a child fan. He was rushed to the hospital, apparently in unimaginable agony, and when placed in an MRI machine, one of Granular Corps' bee drones was ripped from his brain, where it had apparently lodged itself, killing him instantly.

British Intelligence stepped in at this point. On the third night, the "winner" was rushed to a government safe house, but the bees swarmed it, bypassing the police and intelligence agents guarding her entirely. One burrowed into her brain and died.

Meanwhile, analysis of the bees' code had revealed a manifesto embedded there by Garrett Scholes. His intention was to teach people that their actions have consequences, even online. Analysis of the manifesto led to a safe house where a hard drive was recovered. On the hard drive were the names of the 387,036 people who had used the #DeathTo hashtag, identified through the very systems the government had implemented over the last few years.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Tom Pickering was in the lead for the Game of Consequences that day. British Intelligence agent Shaun Li made the decision to pull the plug on the drones. For a moment, every drone in the British Isles went down. Then, they reactivated, completely out of the government's control, and went after their new targets.

Over the next week, every member of that list of 387,036 people was killed. In their homes, on the streets, in their places of business, in front of friends, family, strangers. It was the greatest act of mass murder in modern history, one of the darkest days in the history of the United Kingdom, and a profoundly traumatizing moment, far surpassing the Prime Minister's humiliation three years earlier. As with Carlton Bloom, Garrett Scholes had escaped justice, this time fleeing the country months before the Game of Consequences began.

Some unpleasantness followed.

S2E2: White Bear

From 2022-2023, the nation had been engaged in a nationwide manhunt for the missing child Jemima Sykes, following impassioned pleas from her parents. The only clue was her white teddy bear found two miles from the family home, which became an enduring symbol of the hunt.

The nation became invested in the case, which is why it was so shocked when Jemima's body had been found burned in the local woods.

Eventually the evidence did out. Jemima had been tortured and killed by Iain Rannoch while his fiancee Victoria Skillaine filmed it. The videos were discovered on her mobile phone[1], and the two were taken into custody and given a swift trial in 2023.

The punishment, the judge said, would be proportionate. Iain Rannoch would hang himself in his cell, escaping justice, so thought the public, as others had before. In the riots that followed, the public demanded Victoria Skillaine face the full brunt of public justice.

The government saw their chance. After the Game of Consequences, faith in the government was at rock bottom, even though the appropriate scapegoats had been hung out to dry, after very public hearings where the guilt was laid out for all to see. Despite those responsible being sacked, the government had still demanded the use of the bees for surveillance. A distraction, they decided, was necessary.

The past five years' trauma, they privately decided, could be unleashed on Victoria Skillaine. What followed was the construction of infamous White Bear Justice Park.

Every day, Skillaine's memories were wiped using the latest in neural technology[2]. Then, she was set free in an enclosed suburban neighborhood, hounded by staff and visitors with cameras, who came to record her panic and confusion. This was repeated, day in and day out, again and again. The public kept coming. Here, finally, was the outlet for the past four years of terror, and outrage, and frustrated attempts to find justice in a cruel and incomprehensible world.

The solution, the British public had found, was to inflict those feelings on one single public scapegoat.

[1] The agent who cracked Iain Rannoch's hard drives would later go on to help unravel the trail of Garrett Scholes' code. After the Week of Terror, she left the country, apparently intending to go into hiding to avoid the guilt she must have felt.

[2] Chillingly, the by-product of the latest augmented reality video game platform developed by a Japanese gaming company.

 

[ScottishMongol]

This was written in March of 2018. It was actually inspired by a dream I had - I have really vivid and detailed dreams, a lot of them make really good fodder for story and worldbuilding ideas. This one was also my first real foray into horror writing. I think it turned out decently, I like the worldbuilding and while there is some mind control and implied sexual assault I think I kept it tasteful. That said, I was never quite able to shake the feeling that some people are into this sort of thing as a fantasy so it may have misfired in that regard.

***

It was a wet spring. Every new year brought fresh rains and melting snow, which turned half the countryside to mud and churned the rivers and streams murky with silt. The peasants were filthy with mud, their clothes were stained brown, and they tracked it into the castle. The entire entrance hall was basically a dirt floor, though the granite tile could be seen in some spots, and the corners of the room sprouted moss. Even the lean-tos and hovels along the walls around the vast chamber were starting to rot. Everything was damp, and there was running water somewhere in the building.

Sir Michael sneered at the unwashed peasants as he spurred his courser through the entrance hall. A page had brought it to him from the stables, through the big gates and up to the foot of the grand marble staircase, so that Michael didn't even need to set foot on the same floor the peasants lived on. He wouldn't even get his shoes dirty.

The peasants crowded around him and his fellow knights, dirt-stained hands stretched out pleadingly.

"Get back," Sir Lin barked. Some of them cringed away, others turned their attention on the rest of the knights.

"My child, please, my child," cried an old woman. Some pity stirred in Michael's breast for this wretched creature.

"What is it, woman?" he asked, bringing his horse to a halt beneath the great chandelier, unlit since time immemorial.

"They've taken her, sir, the vampires," she sobbed. A few of the knights scoffed, and Sir Lin had to restrain a chuckle at the superstitious old hag. Vampires were, to hear the peasants, a race of pale undead monsters with blood-red eyes who lived underground. They stole young men and women and drank their blood. There was a whole host of legends about them - that they burned away in sunlight, that they could be repelled with crosses, that they hated garlic. They also said that a person bitten by a vampire became one of them, and went down into the darkness to join them.

"How old was the, ah, child?"

"She'd just turned twenty, please sir!"

Michael was growing tired of the old woman's whining. He turned his horse back towards the gates.

"I'm sure she's gotten lost in the tunnels," he said, "Perhaps we'll arrange a search party."

Then, with nary a backwards glance, he fastened on his helmet. Now, it was time for the hunt.

***

Sir Lin unfolded his binoculars and scanned the horizon all around. A man-eating bull had come down from the high hills, and the men thought it a spot of mighty fine sport to kill it. Maybe Lin would even give a portion of the meat over to the peasants. That would keep them sated for a while, and they'd be grateful for the monster's defeat.

"Silly superstitions our peasants have, eh Michael?" he asked. He looked back in the direction of the castle. Its silhouette was a perfect rectangle thirty stories high, and with most of its windows intact. They caught the sun and gleamed like the scales of a fish. It was truly a magnificent sight. Lin could make out the rugged concrete outbuildings that were used for stables and storehouses, partially-covered in moss and ivy.

"Indeed. Although you must admit, there have been disappearances," Michael replied. Lin saw the other knights spreading out, while their pages beat the thickets to try and drive the beast out - though given the monster's temperament, it may have been better to try and lure it out.

"Oh, you know those old tunnels, nobody knows how far they were dug. Sewage and transport, but we don't even know to and from where," Lin said, perhaps a touch dismissively. The tunnels, to be frank, gave him a feeling of creeping horror. He much preferred the open wilderness, dirty though it may be.

"Well, it may be good to put together some pages at least-"

Before he could finish his thought, the underbrush of the forest that topped a nearby rise exploded, and forth came the most monstrous man-eating bull Lin had ever seen. He nearly dropped his binoculars as he couched his lance.

The bull's shoulder stood as high as a mounted man's, and its hair was matted and brown, stained with the green of moss and the rust-brown of dried blood. It bellowed, waving its sharpened horns in the air and gnashing its jagged teeth.

"God preserve us!" he spat. The men moved in, some throwing spears that stuck in its hide but did little more than bleed it. The beast thrashed and turned in a circle, blood running from its wounds. Another man moved in with a longer lance, but the point broke off in the monster's shoulder, and the bull lurched forward, goring his horse. The poor beast went down with a scream as the knight clumsily dismounted. There he was, facing a man-eating bull with nothing but his sword and his faith, when Michael gave a cry and charged forward. The bull snorted and turned to face this new threat.

The two charged together, Michael's horse being overridden almost instantly as Michael stabbed at the beast. He went down as well, and the bull stumbled over the corpses of its victims.

Lin stood in the saddle in shock, the gathered himself and rode over to the bulls corpse. He dismounted, and as several other men joined him they tried to pull it off Michael, hoping he was still alive and not too terribly crushed by its weight.

Then the beast heaved as Michael pushed it off him, and it fell to the side, Michael's sword planted in its chest.

The knights crowded around, cheering him and slapping his back. He had lost his helmet somehow, and his hair was plastered to his forehead with sweat. He was shaking, his breath coming in ragged gasps. Lin pushed his way forward.

"Give him some room, boys!"

He put his hand on Michael's shoulder to steady him.

"Are you alright, man?"

Michael nodded, giving him a shaky smile. Lin laughed, the tension suddenly gone.

"Jesus, Mary and Joseph, that was incredible! Let's get this monster back to the castle and we'll tell everyone how brave you were. Page! Bring up the cart!"

***

There had been much rejoicing in the castle. Sir Lin had ultimately given the peasants a cauldron of bone stock, with some of the coarser cuts for the tables of the elders. The tongue, the choicest cut, had been served to Michael.

Now, a belly full of wine and beef, Michael collapsed in bed. The alcohol and praise were equally heady, and he smiled as he imagined another year of glory before him.

However, something moved in the dark. His door swung open, and a pale figure stood in the doorway. In the half-second before he screamed, he saw a woman with almost translucent skin and stark white hair stepping towards his bed noiselessly.

"Don't scream," she whispered. She blinked, and her eyes, big and red, stared into his. He felt a buzzing sensation at the base of his skull, and bit his tongue.

"I've heard about you, Michael. You're strong, and brave. And you seem healthy..."

His hand fumbled at the collar of his shirt, and he drew out a crucifix. She giggled, her voice sweet and musical.

"Oh, that won't work on me," she said. Her voice was strangely accented, but he couldn't place it.

"A-are you a vampire?" he asked hoarsely.

She smiled, baring sharpened fangs.

"That is what your kind call us, yes. But you seem to have some...misconceptions."

"You're the - the peasant woman's daughter!" he choked. For some reason he couldn't look away from those eyes, they were bright red and reflected the candlelight until they shined, and the rest of the room grew dimmer by comparison, until he could only see those eyes...

"Hmm? Oh no, don't be silly," she laughed again, "She'll be down below, though."

Michael tried to move, his arms moving spasmodically as he pulled himself to the edge of the bed. His chest felt tight, even though his panicking body was gasping for more air. What foul magic was this? She clucked her tongue.

"Really, Michael, after that compliment I gave you? Stop struggling."

Again, he stopped. He was just tried of struggling, yes, his limbs weren't responding for some reason. He tried to breathe, but it was like some weight was pressing on his chest. His mind was slower, that was why he was having trouble reacting to this strange woman.

"Follow me," she said flatly. The buzzing at the base of his skull returned, and he stood up. This was a nightmare, yes, it was a nightmare and he was sleep walking. Running simply didn't occur to him, nor did stopping. He followed her, his feet padding quietly and hers not making any noise at all on the thin, tattered carpets. They passed quietly through empty hallways, past one identical door after another. They were in the lesser-used parts of the castle now, where there were only storerooms and watch stations. None would be in use at this hour.

She turned to look back at him periodically, and each time he could not help but make eye contact.

"We're not monsters, you know," she said quietly. Her voice didn't carry, and he almost strained to hear her.

"N-no?" he whispered, glad to hear his own voice instead of hers.

"We have families, down there in the dark. There's no light, true, so the sun hurts our eyes, but we don't burn up. But there's only so many of us down there. You can understand, it's difficult finding suitable partners when everyone's so...close."

She sighed.

"It's led to some...traits being very common. Some beneficial, some less so. Our food comes from algae and fungi, grown in vats. It sustains our small population."

"S-so...you're not going to drink my blood?" he rasped. They were too far away from anyone else who could hear. He wished he could scream, but whenever he tried the buzzing started again. She paused at a steel door, and pushed it open lightly. It revealed a corroded metal stairwell, leading down into the depths of the castle. A few bits of hanging lichen and a trickle of water were the only things he could make out. Everything else was shadow.

The woman stepped into the doorway and turned to face him.

"No, Michael," she said with a grin, and her fangs would have glinted if her eyes didn't drink up all the light, "We need you for a different purpose. Now follow me...please."

He followed her down into the darkness.

 

[ScottishMongol]

This is a recent creation, being written and shared in April of 2018. It ties into my story of Covenant but isn't canon to that world (probably). Overall I'm a big fan of this on a couple levels - it's interesting as a setting, it expands on Covenant's idea that there are other Mythologyworlds out there (I'll be writing about one soon!), it works as metaphor for the Christianization of Scandinavia, and it's a nice spin on Norse Mythology.​

The White Christ Comes to Midgard
​

Ragnarok didn't destroy everything in creation. The Nine Realms were scourged with fire, Yggdrasil was badly damaged, and entire races and species were wiped out (as well as the accumulated dead from all of history). Those that weren't exterminated lost most of their populations anyway. While Sunna's daughter rides the new sun across the sky, there is no moon or stars. There were only six Aesir left after Ragnarok: Odin's sons Vioarr and Vali, Thor's sons Modi and Magni, and the resurrected Baldr and Hodr. The human population grew only slowly.

Slower than the other races. Midgard returned lush and green after Ragnarok, and the nature spirits of the forests and waters flourished. Trolls multiplied again in the hills, and the elves from Svartlfheimr and Alfheimr established colonies on the green coasts of Midgard. Those servants of the gods, the dwarves, bounced back quickly, building new dwellings in Asgard and new weapons to help their masters drive back the jotun. The frost giants were all dead, slain in Ragnarok, but of all the races, the fire giants had been mostly unharmed; after all, it was their flames that scoured the world clean. Their depredations continued into the new age.

Thus man and god had enemies to contend with. War came again to Midgard, and men died valorous deaths and went to Brimr to be reborn as Einherjar or Valkyries, or else they went to Helheim.

Then, while scarcely a thousand generations had passed since Ragnarok, it was discovered that when Yggdrasil had been damaged during Ragnarok, a branch had smashed through the very edge of existence...into another reality. Marching along this cosmic road into the Nine Realms came an army of glowing beings, made of flaming wheels within wheels and wings covered in eyes, and as they came on they sang:

"Holy holy holy,
Is the Lord God Almighty,
Who was and is and is to come."

The angels looked at the Nine Realms and decided certain...changes should be made.

Asgard is now a forward operating base for the Heavenly Hosts. From here, battalions of angels set out to do war with the fire giants, who have mostly been restricted to Muspelheim, save for frequent raiding parties. Vanaheimr and Jotunheimr were mostly empty before the invasion, and were considered the birthright of the surviving Aesir, spoils of war and living space for the future generations of gods. The angels have used them house the Heavenly Hosts. Occasionally some souls make their way here, but no more do the victorious dead dwell in Brimr. Helheim (also under angelic occupation) and Brimr are merely processing grounds for the souls of Midgard. While the angels cannot help humans reincarnating as Valkyries or Einherjar, most souls are still sorted by the angels before being sent along strange paths to the afterlives of their own deity - Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, Limbo...

Some of the newer Valkyries and Einherjar who were righteous champions of God in life have been approved to fight alongside the Heavenly Hosts, which they seem to prefer over singing praises before the Throne of God ("Not that there's anything wrong with that!").

The Aesir have been relegated to puppet ruler status. Baldr and Hodr, always more pragmatic after experiencing death, decided to accept the Archangel Michael's initial offer of diplomacy. Baldr's ensuing audience before the Throne of God made him feel very...small.

Thankfully YHWH merely wanted assurances of cooperation - it seems "No other gods before me" simply meant acknowledging who the boss was. Thus, the Aesir sit in their halls and listen to the angel's incessant praise, and glumly mourn for the days when they seemed ready to take up absolute rule over the Nine Realms. The joint strategy meetings between the Aesir and the Archangels are awkward, and mostly exist as a courtesy.

The dwarves, meanwhile, have switched from one master to another quite easily. Some of them have even taken to singing praises to the LORD as they work at their forges, making flaming swords for the angels and arms and armor for the new Christian Valkyries and Einherjar. Others man the fortifications along the different points of Yggdrasil, including the three springs at the root of the tree - the angels have had enough experience with forbidden knowledge that they want to keep the Norns and the well of Mimisbrunnr under close watch.

Midgard has changed. Eventually the angels were followed along the pathways of Yggdrasil by mortals, not only humans bearing the message of the White Christ (and to a lesser extent, Muhammad and Moses), but also Nephilim, succubi, and even stranger folk. While a few of these new arrivals have formed their own states, most have simply melted into the general populace or formed their own communities where local kings will tolerate them. Many rulers have welcomed them with open arms, for the world these new arrivals came from was more advanced than Midgard in both technology and magic. Introduced species like cockatrices, imps, and griffins now inhabit not only the branches of Yggdrasil but also Midgard and even the wilder parts of Jotunheim, Vanaheim, and Asgard. The nature spirits are viewed with suspicion, especially the most malevolent ones who are stamped out by Christian knights and wizards wherever they arise. Linnorms too, while distinguished from the sin dragons of the angel's homeworld, share many similar qualities - namely a propensity for hoarding treasure and manipulation. As linnorms are universally despised, they make good fodder for questing knights, but somehow Nidhogg keeps spawning more of them. Helpfully, their blood contains many magical properties, but on the balance their aptitude for curses (particularly on their treasure) makes them maddening foes.

Trolls are more of a problem - while their clans are perfectly willing to engage in diplomacy and make treaties with humans, they're considered dangerous no matter what and have very much resisted efforts to convert them. Trolls are also notoriously tricky, and nobody is fond of their changeling habit. Many human nations just declare them pests and try to do away with them entirely. Wargs are another matter, for one the giant and intelligent wolves' inherent magic allows them to travel along the pathways of Yggdrasil, compounding the issue. They are dangerous but can be reasoned with, and some even serve as mounts for Valkyries. The Aesir prefer to ride Sleipnir's kin, and the supernaturally swift horses are also being exported to other worlds.

The humans of Midgard have largely been converted. Admittedly, it's a bit easy to win converts when your gods make a public display of fealty to another deity, but aside from that the promise of the Christian Heaven is appealing to a certain segment of the populace - most people don't particularly care for a violent death in battle, and women never really found the old system fair to begin with. YHWH is notably deathless and infallible in comparison to the Aesir and Vanir, leading some thinkers to conclude that both races were simply a powerful breed of jotun instead of "gods" in any real sense. Thus, many have abandoned worship of the Aesir entirely and picked up Christianity, while others have attempted to work their old gods into Abrahamic theology as minor, semi-divine beings. The "Archangel Baldr" crowd get strange looks, and mainline Christians don't suffer them too much. Local magicians have either been converted to Christianity and their magical knowledge co-opted, or else they've been stamped out - spells that invoke the Aesir still work, but the angels and Christian mortals don't like it, even when Baldr is named alongside Michael and YHWH. A significant Aesir-worshiping underground still exists, especially in the more isolated regions of the world.

Alfheimr and Svartlfheimr remain on the fringes of society. While dwarves adapted easily enough to the new order, the elves were split. The divide wasn't necessarily along a dark elf/light elf divide either - some svartlfar have converted to worship of the White Christ while others have retreated into the depths of Svartlfheim, while some light elves have waged war on the new arrivals with others joining the Christian soldiers in rooting out monsters. In either case, elf converts don't really "get" Christianity, but the angels aren't particularly bothered by this, and so long as they're not a threat to the war effort or don't outright worship devils, even neutral non-converts are tolerated.

Muspelheim is the military frontier, where fire giants do battle against angels, Valkyries, Einherjar, and the occasional Aesir ally. The fire giants squabble with themselves as the angels make progress with every passing year. However, as of late the fire giant chiefs have had...visitors. Visitors who whisper in their ears with advice and information they could not gain otherwise, and who promise an alliance with another type of Great Serpent, should only certain religious observations be made...those who have done homage soon find sin dragons and apocalypse locusts fighting alongside them. The angels have noticed this, and know what it means.

 

[ScottishMongol]

Another one written in April of 2018, by this point I'd been writing a lot more prolifically, not only running two timelines concurrently but also pumping out a lot of oneshots. This was inspired by a conversation with a friend, where we created the concept of an Elder Sphinx. Essentially, sphinx (the fantasy creatures) never strop growing as they age, and eventually gain the power to petrify themselves in order to go into suspended animation. I wondered what would happen if a group of humans mistook an Elder Sphinx for a statue, and wrote this.​

the Elder Sphinx​

Ala was rather amused to awaken from her four-hundred year slumber to find that a small group of humans had made their camp in the hollow between her forepaws. When she had emerged from her stone form and returned to a being of flesh and blood, she had let out a yawn and stretched her legs, knocking over several of their tents in the process. The tiny creatures, no taller than her paw was wide, had fled, shrieking in surprise and gathering scattered belongings.

She had backed away, fearing to tread on one of them, and let them regroup. She watched with bemusement as the humans fell to their knees - and began praising her.

Ala, as was the habit of ancient and giant members of her kind, had simply taken on a stone form to sleep for a while, but it seemed that so much time had passed that the desert dwellers had forgotten that she was once a living being, and instead mistook her for a statue, specifically the graven image of an ancient goddess. In other words, the humans had come to worship her.

She hadn't paid much attention to humans in a very long time, once she reached a certain size they just seemed like small scurrying things, barely worth the conversation and often profoundly troublesome - she remembered one human in particular who she had been forced to squash for trying to steal from her library.

"I'm sorry," she said quietly, lying down to speak with the leader of her little cult as close to face-to-face as could be managed, "It seems there's been a mistake. I was just sleeping."

"I understand, O goddess, I..." the priest trailed off as Ala's lips tightened.

"Must you call me goddess?"

"Sh-shall we call you mistress then? Or?"

"Ala, will do nicely," she sighed. It wouldn't do to have these humans fawning all over her

"Lady Ala, then. Our order has long believed you to be an image of our goddess, but now we have realized that you are the goddess herself! Or..."

Ala's mouth twisted into a wry grin. From there she had patiently explained what had brought her to this place, and spoke of the cliff face that hid the entrance to her ancient library. She sighed as she glanced at the canyon wall - it had been simply millennia since she'd been small enough to enter and read her precious books, some of which came from the first of the river kingdoms and others of which may have very well predated humanity in this part of the world.

Her followers had seen her sadness and sprang to their feet, and within a few days they had begun clearing the entrance. Ala had fretted, warning them of the traps she'd commissioned to guard the library, but they'd been insistent on doing this task for her. Ala had reluctantly consented, seeing as she'd have to send someone in to check on her collection eventually.

As they punched through into the first chamber and trooped down into the caverns, she'd laid herself down on the sand and waited, but eventually she started to fidget. She found herself glancing at the tunnel entrance every few minutes. Perhaps she'd made a mistake letting them go down there after all, they were such frail creatures.

She was more relieved than she expected when they returned, bearing ancient scrolls and tomes bound with the hides of extinct beasts. She was so happy to see them that she didn't even show concern over the fragile texts, and when she finally did stop to inspect them she saw that they had treated them with the utmost care.

"Maybe you can help me from now on," she said as they listed all the books they had retrieved, "I'll need someone to catalog all the books and keep them sorted, I have a very efficient system..."

She gazed at the books resignedly. They were far too small for her to read now, which was disappointing. As she'd become more awake after coming out of her slumber she'd remembered the rather dull years the preceded it, where she mainly spent her time guarding her territory and trading banter with the occasional passing djinn.

"Is something wrong? Miss Ala?"

Ala almost tuned out the tiny voice. She looked at one of the humans, the one gently laying out a scroll in the shade of her wings.

"Hmm? Oh, nothing really."

The human seem unconvinced. Gathering the scroll under their arm, they walked over to Ala's massive paw, placing a tiny hand on it.

"Would you like me to read this to you?"

Ala considered the human, then shrugged.

"It would be appreciated."

She quickly froze as the human clambered up onto her paw. She was lucky that sphinx were used to remaining motionless, as the slightest movement could disturb them. She felt a surge of affection for the tiny, delicate creature as he unrolled the scroll and began speaking about the movements of the stars some thousand years ago. Ala slunk into her memories of that time, remembering the strange omens she had read in the movements of the celestial bodies long ago.

As the human read to her, others wandered over, sitting or lying in the shade of her body, others - mainly the small children - climbing on top of her in some sort of game. She stifled a laugh at their antics and listened again to the scroll.

By this time the sun was hanging low in the sky. The humans sealed up her books in chests and carried them back into the library. The other began setting up their tents again - Ala had carefully avoided lying on their former camp. However, as the humans packed their tents together, Ala stretched and padded heavily towards their camp, her entire body wrapping partially around it. Her wings and outstretched limbs completed the circle.

Yes, she could get used to having these little things around. She only had to make sure the poor fragile creatures didn't come to harm.

 

[ScottishMongol]

This was written in April 2018. It's a riff on the idea of D&D-style afterlives, in particular the idea that some people aren't aware of the whole shape of the Multiverse and end up wildly misinterpreting it. This story features the Celestial Bureaucracy, my idea of a "Lawful Neutral" afterlife, inspired of course by Chinese mythology.

***

On many worlds, there is in fact little to no contact with the Outer Planes, and indeed the people there have only a vague idea of the true shape of the cosmos. They may have some vague ideas of reincarnation, of a "bad place" of fire beneath the ground, and a "good place" of clouds and sunlight in the sky, but none of them know the true nature of the afterlife. Of contact with outsiders they know even less, with even the briefest appearance of an angel being mistaken as the unveiling of a true deity.

Take, for example, the horselords of the world of Mavai. They have barely mastered bronze tools, and their magic is primitive, limited by the fact that they have yet to grasp writing.

However, their great prophet Gaigarus, now a thousand years dead, claims to have visited the afterlife. Per his account, now remembered in song, he was walking in a field of tall grass when he saw a wild horse with a coat black as night. Approaching it, he saw that it had eight legs. The horse appeared tame, so he climbed on its back, and the horse galloped along beams of moonlight into the clouds, where it soon entered a stable.

Gaigarus dismounted and looked in awe at a row of stall that stretched for eternity in either direction, and in each stall was a fantastic horse, each like the one he had ridden. Gaigarus noted that many stalls were empty, and peering into one he saw a man shoveling hay.

This man had the head of a white bull, with a fiery third eye on his forehead.

Gaigarus had time only to ask him a few short questions, and in his answers the man explained that his name was Ma Pai, and he kept the horses fed and watered while he waited for the riders to appear. At that point he would saddle the horses and they would be taken for a ride. Ma Pai commented that Gaigarus must have been a very good rider to take one of Sleipnir's kin through the Astral Plane unsaddled, but that he was grateful to him for having returned the wayward beast. In thanks, Ma Pai sent Gaigarus back to his home, and the prophet awoke in his tent as if from a dream.

Gaigarus emerged, and told his followers thus: When a man dies he is brought to the Heavenly Stables, where Ma Pai, god of all creation, will give the man a newly-saddled mount and he will fly through the fields of the afterlife. Ma Pai was a generous and humble deity, and thus Gaigarus said that men should strive to be humble and generous, and act as servants to each other. In this way Gaigarus fostered peace and order among the horselords of Mavai, and so far as I know they follow the prophet's teachings to this day.

Of course, Ma Pai was merely a stablehand, a reincarnated human who was appointed by the Celestial Bureaucracy to tend to the mounts of the gods of Law. For the worship he accrued from the followers of Gaigarus, Ma Pai was promoted to overseer 10,000 stablehands, becoming a tutelary deity in the process. For his part, Gaigarus was reincarnated as a saint, and now holds the bridles of the gods when they go hawking in the fields of the afterlife.

So in a way he was correct.

 

[ScottishMongol]

Wizarding World​

By the last years of the 17th Century, the increased rise of Muggle populations, the advance of Muggle technology, and the religious turmoil of the European Wars of Religion had caused an existential threat to the wizarding community. In certain other timelines, this had led to the wizarding community going into hiding, establishing measures to retain their secrecy and living in a society parallel to that of the Muggles.

In this timeline, the wizards decided things were heading unstoppably towards a war of us vs. them, and if either side was going to strike first, it should be the side that can teleport and kill with a thought.

The Wars of Muggle Subjugation (or "the Revolution") lasted about a decade, in the British Isles at least. There are, perhaps, vast swathes of the world which have never known wizard rule, and in some places Muggles and wizards have found coexistence of various sorts (the Wizarding Jews, with a tradition dating back to King Solomon, never felt the need to oppress their kinsmen, feeling Muggle Gentiles did that enough already).

In the British Isles, as elsewhere, the wizards did away with Parliament, the Monarchy, and the majority of the feudal aristocracy in a span of six months, known as the Terror by Muggles. Rooting out of resistance movements and the suppression of the general populace took longer. In the few pitched battles, wizards suffered terrible losses, so for the most part wizard armies relied on mercenaries such as giants, trolls, or Dementors, or on subterfuge, assassination, and mind control to target enemy leadership. Occasionally magical superweapons like Fiendfyre were implemented, to destructive results.

In the end, Muggle resistance folded and the Ministry of Magic was established to administrate the British Isles and its substantial surviving Muggle population, while overseas the Wizard Revolution had become a global one, with the International Confederation of Wizards coordinating efforts to ensure no advanced Muggle nations survived to pose an existential threat to the new order. Collaborators were found, mass movements of people were done, suspected leaders were rounded up and vanished, and the British Isles were divided up by rich, pure-blooded wizarding families as personal fiefs. The already-extant Wizengamot, the judicial body of the Ministry, was simply a jury of peers and remained that way, a club of the rich and prestigious, while the Ministry was a "dictatorship of the bureaucracy", with the position of Minister not coming from any elected mandate.

(Most wizard government are fairly undemocratic, in fact - the Ottomans, Mughals, and Manchus were all replaced by wizard dynasties, while in Japan a pure-blood family did the traditional thing and married into the Imperial line.)

The British Empire was left to go its own way. Though geographic concerns were almost trivial to wizards, the Thirteen Colonies had formed their own magical government in parallel to the British. Nobody in Britain, fresh off the Wars of Muggle Subjugation, was looking forward to a trans-oceanic war, and in any case war between wizarding governments was unheard of. The Thirteen Colonies were allowed to go their own way, though the end to immigration from the British Isles would radically alter American history. The Caribbean was even worse, with Muggleborn black wizards leading uprisings against white rulers, with white wizards caught in the crossfire.

The first Minster of Magic assured the populace that the hard fighting was done, and from then on would begin the long work of creating a society that existed to protect magical folk.

Infrequent Muggle uprisings continued for decades, and have occurred sporadically ever since, sometimes supported by traditionally-oppressed classes of magical society such as goblins or werewolves. However, once in power wizards could suppress Muggle technology, which was the real factor that threatened wizard rule. As a result, technology has not just stagnated but regressed – gunpowder is (supposedly) banned worldwide, and literacy rates in most countries are abysmal. Many books were burned, though Muggles (and some sympathetic wizards) squirreled away what they could. Wizard governments have taken steps to keep Muggle populations small and rural, and what few cities remain are dens of filth and squalor. Since wizard technology has always lagged behind that of Muggles, and given the state of medical technology at the time of the Revolution, standards of living are pretty wretched.

The International Confederation of Wizards is far more powerful than any comparable Muggle institution IOTL, able to censor member states and summon sovereign heads of state to give testimony. It enforces certain standards of Muggle control, including making sure no country is secretly retaining large stocks of gunpowder weapons (which is a concern, see later…). Travel and trade have suffered globally, as the small wizarding population is only interested in exchanging rare goods between themselves.

The wizarding population of the British Isles is small, numbering just under 4,000, most now ruling as the feudal lords of massive fiefs, playing off of degrees of connection to the main branch of the family to earn positions in households, minor holdings, or careers in the Ministry. Some houses are ancient and pure-blooded, others newer, with less care for that sort of thing. Wizard society has a decent mercantile class, which jockeys with other classes of wizard society for influence. While the mercantile class is increasingly gaining key positions in the Ministry, the aristocracy still packs the Wizengamot with enough of their relatives to ensure the government as a whole is pliant.

While some wizarding families have expelled Muggles entirely from their fiefs, others allow them to continue living there, typically as serfs bound to the land - but less frequently, wizarding families can be halfway decent to "their" Muggles, allowing them access to free enterprise and land ownership – wizards don't use the land themselves, but most save the choice pieces for their collaborators. That said, life under the more prejudiced wizarding families can be nasty, with random violence against Muggles going unchecked by Ministry oversight.

Most (but not all) wizards are irreligious, though some at least make a show of practicing whatever the dominant faith is. Islam and Judaism have done well, having certain traditions of magical figures to draw on for context, but Catholicism has suffered, what with the Pope being a wizard collaborator, and Folk Catholicism, mixed with Native Faiths, dominated across Latin America. Most Muggle rebellions in Europe or America are inspired by fiery "Suffer not a witch to live" brands of Protestantism.

Muggleborns were always an issue, and as in most other places, the solution was to confiscate them from their families and raise them as wards of the state. In the British Isles, Muggleborns form the closest thing the Ministry has to a standing army. This is how the Ministry maintains a monopoly on violence, which is helpful in reigning in noble feuds (common among the prouder families). Muggleborns are allowed to marry and have children, but these families are largely looked down upon, and it is very rare that a "respected" family will allow their child to marry a Muggleborn. Most Muggleborns or their descendants (when not enrolled themselves) enter the bureaucracy or the mercantile class, or else become the closest thing the British Isles has to free landowners.

(As mentioned, this is a common tactic - the wizard dynasty that replaced the Ottomans uses Janissary as a synonym for Muggleborn.)

Goblins still lack rights and werewolves are prejudiced against, but giants, centaurs, and other intelligent races have their own substantial preserves, most of which were created by forcibly removing Muggle populations. Magical creatures are doing better, especially dragons, since nobody cares if they carry off sheep or the occasional Muggle serfs. Squibs born into proud families tend to suffer from "hunting accidents" but mostly end up in positions of authority over Muggles.

Muggle collaborators, usually occupying the role of overseers, enforcers, or administrators outside of the Ministry, form together with the wealthiest Muggle merchants the very thin upper crust of Muggle society. While they still lack rights, they are at least able to punch down and may even gain some favoritism from their wizard overseers, which leads to corruption more often than not.

There are of course wizards who are sympathetic to the plights of the disadvantaged in their society, including Muggles. Some wizards push for better rights for all intelligent races, reparations for past wars against the giants and goblins, reforms in the Ministry, and sometimes even more radical changes to the social structure (anarchists remain on the very fringe, but are notable as a coherent ideology). Some wizard healers do heroic work trying to alleviate the suffering of Muggles, but those willing to do so are overwhelmed by the much larger Muggle population and lack a basic grasp of medical science.

Britain has been isolationist since the Revolution, but then so is most of the wizarding world. The former British Colonies in North America have not expanded much past the coast, partially due to a lack of immigration from Europe and partially due to rule by wizards putting the Native Americans on an even footing with the colonists. Some of the Native American governments of the interior are quite sophisticated. Latin America didn't hold together very well, and split into multiple fractious governments - the International Confederation of Wizards forced a ceasefire, but there are grudges, and there have been several messy regime changes in the last three centuries. Brazil is the predominate power of the New World, a prestigious "modern" wizard government and active leader on the world stage. Africa remains largely as it did before the Revolution - some large wizard-run empires, numerous petty kings and confederations, and a vast back-country that has never known rule by wizard governments. China and India are meddling in SE Asia, which upsets the traditionally isolationist wizard governments, and Japan is starting to look outwards. Russia is another leading power, though mainly due to size and resources, its government being no more functional than that of Britain. It competes with China for influence in Mongolia and Tibet and with the Arabs for control over Central Asia. Continental Europe is a mess of feudal domains from the Atlantic to the Russian border, with practically no government control save for some wizard-run city-states in Italy. The wizard families here are free to act with impunity, and the International Confederation of Wizards is concerned about their ability to prevent truly destructive turf wars - especially as these wars lead to some startling innovations...

While wars between wizards is difficult, it is now common for a wizard family or even a nation to mobilize "their" Muggles into levies. As there are some actual wizard governments with massive populations under their control (India and China are still home to the bulk of global population), the fears of this strategy spreading are very real. Even worse is the possibility that an arms race could occur, and some wizard could try arming "their" Muggles with gunpowder weapons…

Once conflict between wizard governments was nonexistent, due to the very low resource demands created by magic and the low population of wizards. Now though, since wizard governments can command massive resources, there has arisen a tendency for them to see to their own interests. In addition, while the gap between wizards and Muggles was always greater than that between wizards of different nationalities, bonds between wizards and the people they lived among never quite went away, and old grudges die hard. There have been no wars between wizard governments, but there have been some nasty turf wars, and one trade war between India and the Arabs.

It has been three hundred years since the Revolution, and things have not been completely stagnant. Wizard governments are getting better at organizing good, effective centralized bureaucracies and mass-mobilizing Muggles. The smaller wizard states glance at each other greedily and engage in wand-rattling.

Muggle rights are improving, in some places faster than others – as Muggle Rights Activists in Britain campaign to improve the quality of life for the exploited class, and officials at various levels of government wonder if allowing the Muggles more opportunities could lead to more prosperity overall.

Everywhere, wizard governments are defying the International Confederation of Wizards – sure, it assisted with the Revolution, and helped divide up the world afterwards, but what has it done for them lately?

A beleaguered wizard healer in the slums of London watches a Muggle sawbones wash his hands after a surgery and has a flash of inspiration. A Chinese alchemist, in between work on the Emperor's secret gunpowder stockpiles, does some private research of the type that led Muggles down the path from alchemy to chemistry. After uncovering a hidden trove of works by pre-Revolution Muggle writers like Locke and Newton, a brilliant Muggle studies expert (even rarer in this world) wonders if magic itself couldn't be looked at empirically…