Beside the well-explored rivalry between the ConcordanceThe Concordance most closely resembles mortal hopes for an afterworld: a vast network of metropolises and landscapes in which mortals and petitioners alike seek to prove that suffering is not needed to give context to joy.Turn to chapter and the BrinkExultant yet mindful hedonists who form a kaleidoscopic community of explorations in creation and destruction, joy and suffering, exertion and renewal. Visitors are welcomed into the fold, and it is impossible not to be overwhelmed.Turn to chapter over the ultimate approach to
collective fulfillment stands the Crenellation, immortally convinced
of the superiority of its own approach. Their towers and battlements
soar higher than either realm’s, their populace’s fervor and loyalty
run deeper, and the civilization executes its vision of martial and
material prowess with awesome efficiency.
The Crenellation is a dense city in all directions, one with all
the familiar trappings of mortal totalitarianism—harsh punishments,
crushing competition, intricate bureaucracy, impenetrable caste
systems—and yet everywhere Rifes—alongside no small number of mortal
immigrants—strive with purpose and determination: every citizen at
every moment knows exactly what is required of them. One Rife
hierarch presented their philosophy in some detail to this visitor
which, despite its caricatured view of opposing laminaeAfterworlds that are each aligned with a particular set of facets. The twenty-seven laminae are layered on top of our reality and interact with it in myriad ways.Turn to chapter, deserves relating in full:
The weak assume that beings desire nothing beyond ease,
security and avoidance of pain. In such a view of life there is no
room, for instance, for patriotism and the military virtues. We, for
in our wisdom we feel it with exceptional strength, know that beings
don’t only want comfort, safety, and well-wishes; they also want
struggle and self-sacrifice, not to mention drums, flags and
loyalty-parades. This is psychologically far sounder than any
hedonistic conception of life. It is our duty to impose intolerable
burdens on our peoples. Whereas the Concordance and the Brink have
said to their citizens “I offer you a good time”, we have said to
ours “I offer you struggle, danger, and oblivion”, and as a result
entire cultures fling themselves at our feet.
In this visitor’s understanding, the Crenellation drives its
citizens forwards with two overarching constructs. The first is a
system known as the Eulexia: a monumental oral scripture that all
Rifes must memorize and repeat under myriad circumstances. The
Eulexia, however, is spoken in a language that Rifes do not
understand. An elite caste of hierophants guards the Eulexia’s
meaning, and many advancements in this society are granted by way of
their revelations. It is an elegant system, Rifes say, to find for
instance that the instructions and expectations of a new role are
contained entirely in a segment of scripture that one has been
repeating for countless years.
The second element that holds this lamina together is the enemy.
In an endless city of ramparts one wall larger than all the others
follows a tortuous path that divides it in two. These two sides are
said to carry the same Eulexia but to have entirely different
interpretations of it, and as a result they loathe and fear one
another. And so the Rifes’ considerable energies go towards building
defensive battlements ever higher and deeper into their own
territories, as well as spying upon their opponents, stockpiling war
machines, and training in limitless drills. At predetermined
intervals the two sides face off in great military marches along the
border and yet have never in recorded history come to blows. Despite
this knowledge, the threat of attack is ever-present, and in far
reaches of the Crenellation vast areas of city lie in total ruins,
bolstering this fear.
Alongside its military focus the Crenellation is in its own way
extraordinarily beautiful. From fortress towers one can see the city
spiral into the distance in impregnable geometric arrangements that
rival the UnfoldingArtists and engineers that have architected all of the most famous constructions in existence, original copies of which fill archipelagos that spread across the Glass Ocean, where the enormous automaton wind shifters interlock and glide across empty waters.Turn to chapter in magnificence if not in creativity:
a city of citadels yet also a city of monumental concert halls,
statues, and high-walled avenues through which wend the fearsome
parades and ecstatic cults of a society seized with the iron
conviction of purpose.
aghast at this visitor crossing the gate between the two sides
“optimistic evil” like nazis, their vision of social progress at all
costs.
easily the most militarily powerful of all the laminae, but since
they remain in defensive mode indefinitely, it’s all moot.
there was once some extraordinary incident where a trickster managed
to harness their military might—maybe either by luring an enemy into
hopeless attack against these guys, or by somehow managing them to, for
once, sally out from their fortresses.
orwell quote, but what’s the “danger and death”, wouldn’t they catch
on eventually at possible threats never coming? or maybe orwellianish
they hear about threats and attacks and incursions but none are real or
they’re all inside jobs, maybe even people know but they’re terrified to
say because they’ll get disappeared if they disobey, it’s an open
secret. the struggle is really internal.
Milton Controversy:
why Milton, a fervent (if unconventional) Protestant, would
ultimately give the devil all the poem’s best lines? Why make Lucifer
the most attractive character in Paradise Lost if you’re supposedly
trying to “justify the ways of God to man?” Many in the Romantic
tradition thus argued that Lucifer should be read as a revolutionary, a
Promethean figure who tears at unfair strictures.
[…] Fish interpreted Milton’s epic as “a poem about how its readers
came to be the way they are … to provoke in its readers wayward fallen
responses.” In other words, Lucifer is supposed to be intriguing,
because in forcing the reader of Paradise Lost to be drawn to evil,
Milton demonstrates the original sin that he believed marked everyone’s
soul. That Lucifer gets the best lines isn’t incidental to his evil, but
central to it.
[…] these [Luciferian] characters
share a rage generated from feeling that they are owed something
ꩧဋဓ’ers feel this?
- name
- The Articulation (group in ꩧဥꧠ)
- The Ataraxia (unperturbedness, term used by stoics/skeptics)
- The Axiom (element in ꩧဥꧠ culture)
- The Clasp (place in ꩧဥꧠ)
- The Crenellation <–
- The Fruition (mentioned in ꧹ဥဓ
culture)
- The Horn
- The Hull
- The Keen
- The Knuckle
- The Presupposition (thing tacitly assumed beforehand, requirement
for belief (system) to make sense)
- The Ramification (element in ꩧဥꧠ
culture)
- demonym
- Coilers
- Horns
- Hulls
- Keens
- Keys
- Ligands (molecule that binds to another, from latin “that can be
tied” or bound)
- Rifes <–
- Unfettered (ꧪ၇ဗ mortals)
- Vows
- quotes
- “Nothing that is evil is necessary.” - Tertullian, Adversus
Marcionem IV.29:4
- but i like the reverse!! “Nothing that is necessary is evil.” ꩧဋဓ The Tertullian Inversion
- “Liberalism [forwards] means chaos;
Conservatism [backwards] means
petrifaction. Both are equally repellant. We are always faced with the
questions:”what must be destroyed?” and “what must be preserved?”
Liberalism and Conservatism are not [there are
no] philosophies, only habits, and neither is enough to guide us”
- https://mobile.twitter.com/0x49fa98/status/1447553891109949440 XXP?
CXX? NXX. ꩧဋဓ?
- The mercy of a stone is in asking no mercy. (ꩧဋဓ)
- All stones are broken stones. (ꩧဋဓ)
- orwell hitler quote
- “Humans don’t mind hardship, in fact they thrive on it; what they
mind is not feeling necessary. Modern society has perfected the art of
making people not feel necessary.” ― Sebastian Junger (꧹ဥဓ? ꩧဋဓ?) [a society that perfects the art of making people
feel unnecessary will crumble]
- environment
- Endless castle/palace ꩧဋဓ
- culture
- cardinal interaction
- author notes
- it was here that this visitor realized the cultural flaw—bad
stories—that led to her self-exile, and decided to work to set it right
- ꩧဋꧠ or ꩧဋဓ?
info gathering
- questions
- future research
- strong possible elements
- eulexia
- hitler quote
- ritual border
- more stuff about differences between two sides? or literally just
purported eulexia difference
- from possible ꩧဋဗ but maybe this kind of
thing: “one side terrified of other learning that they’ve lost ability
to communicate, other side believing the first will steal all their
ideas?”
- endless defense building
- there IS a region that’s complete destroyed, everyone fears it, no
one knows when or how it happened
- futuristic
- simpler if you pay less attention
- rumsfeld epistemic cube
- possible elements
- eulexia
- “The Retelling” - some aspect?
- Some enormous oral history (perhaps song in unknown language) that
everyone learns and memorizes but only elite understand what it means -
laypeople are only as necessary initiated into bits of it where they
learn this thing they’ve been doing/saying all their life actually means
XYZ “The Retelling” (something like eulexia - but song). oral history in
wisdom, maybe in clothing and everything.
- hitler quotes!!
- artisan bureaucracy (ꩧဋဗ ꩧဋဓ ꩧ၇ဗ)
- the conception of perfection. (look up quotes?) ꩧဋဓ ꧪဋဓ
- That is “perfect,” which completely fulfills its functions. nothing
to add, nothing to take away
- could have the ritual border (ꩧဋဗ ꩧဋဓ) and that’s how they sustain endless stress,
having an enemy, carefully controlled. obvious orwell
- bottom x% constantly sacrificed/transmuted? ꩧဋဓ ꩧဋꧠ
- maybe stuff getting destroyed and rebuilt?
- something pretty futuristic, but not described as such - ꩧဋဓ?
- some valuable resource intruders want to use… ꩧဋဓ?
- contender for the most populous
- doppelganger
- a prison (w research/testing?) (oubliette in ꧹၇ဓ, but can be used more elsewhere - ꩧဋဗ? ꩧဋဓ?)
- W40k teeming Terra - ꩧဋဓ
- gargantuan statue(s) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statue_of_Unity)
ꩧဋဓ? that’s how you can see where you
are
- “Mental Health Unawareness Campaigns” that stress takes publicized
forms, so here’s some alternative form - maybe ꩧဥဓ or ꩧဋဓ
- headsoak note 440 about genius king who is afraid of not being
heard, entertained by his retinue of scholars, and the decay of this
microculture (ꩧ၇ဗ? ꩧဋဓ? ꩧဋဗ?)
- “a massive chunk of the things that alarm suburbanites about being
in an urban environment are solved in totality by adopting the city
dweller’s habit of simply declining to perceive things that are none of
your fucking business”
https://twitter.com/cakesandcourage/status/1462919432330752006 -
somewhere where this flows naturally, maybe ꩧဋဓ?
- caste systems (ꩧ၇ဗ? ꩧဋꧠ ꩧဋဓ) mentioned in
ꩧဋꧠ and in TOC but doesn’t have to be major
there
- someone who has one squad each of blind, deaf, numb,
untasting/unsmelling guards. (maybe the deaf ones close by, so the
villain can converse privately. maybe the blind ones near all the
entrances). or rather guilds, each petitioner must relinquish one sense.
maybe ꧪဋဓ, ꧪဋဗ,
ꩧဋဓ
- “Two irreconcilable relations to evil: fearing the evil within the
walls, fearing the evil without” -
https://mobile.twitter.com/0x49fa98/status/1093924128044679168 ꩧဋဓ?
- strange loops
- Synthesis facet. relies on the existence of structured/hierarchical
stuff but also violates it. LXX or NXX. ꩧ၇ဓ?
- The ruins of an ancient civilization. The inhabitants share
their ancestors’ obsession with perfecting a single simulation of a
city, endlessly adapting it to reflect new scientific, cultural, and
social insights. ꩧဋဓ ꩧဥꧠ
- “a nice dualism: those who are afraid, and those who are not. the
fearful ones are prey. they hate life because they could be eaten at any
time, they are disgusted with material reality and their bodies because
of their impermanence. the unafraid embrace matter and love their
bodies, capable of the magical feat of integrating the prey’s matter.
there is no higher honor and no better statement of love for life than
to absorb another being. some may call this hate, but it may be love.
these are the ground rules of reality. you can always change sides” -
https://twitter.com/wildbuddhini/status/1463392393978335239 (maybe ꩧဋꧠ, ꩧဋဗ)
- weirdtopias
- Game theory ꩧဋဓ
- expanding the Rumsfeld epistemic quad into a cube
- environment maybe
- ben sacks
- Gothic architecture
- W40k teeming Terra - ꩧဋဓ
- notes
- research notes
1984:
The three states have been at war with each other since the 1960s. By 1984 it has become a constant, and they regularly change allegiance with each other. Each state is self-supporting so they do not war over natural resources, nor is the destruction of the opponent the primary objective; for, even when two states ally against the third, no combination is powerful enough to do so. According to Fabio Parasecoli, war is necessary to use up the oversupply constantly generated by the respective extreme forms of capitalism. Each state recognises that science is responsible for its over-production, so science must be carefully controlled lest the proles or Outer Party expect an increased standard of living. From this analysis stems the policy of permanent warfare: by focusing production on arms and materiel (rather than consumer goods) each state can keep its population impoverished and willing to sacrifice personal liberties for the greater good. The peoples of these states—subject to shortages, queues, poor infrastructure and food— "are no longer domesticated or even able to be domesticated " says Carr.
These states all, in effect, use the same totalitarianism, and are similar monolithic regimes. Historian Mark Connelly notes that "the beliefs may differ, but their purpose is the same, to justify and maintain the unquestioned leadership of a totalitarian elite". Each uses artificially-induced hatred of its then-enemy by its citizenry to control them. Due to the sheer size of the protagonists, there are, says Connelly, no "massive invasions claiming hundreds of thousands of lives", but instead small-scale, local encounters and conflicts which are then exaggerated for the purposes of domestic propaganda.
this is sub-optimal, don’t do this. but there needs to be SOMETHING
to keep everyone busy. though the laws of production aren’t the same on
the laminae
Environment
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Culture & Paradigm
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Visiting
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Locations
Festivals & Traditions
History
Rumors & Mysteries