Name: Nathen Jerrel De’Kerken, Nathaniel Harkness (Modern AU)
Aliases/AKAs: Natty, Righty Tightass
Title(s): The Right Hand of Creation
Hair Colour: Brown
Eye Colour: Brown
Height: 168 cm
Weight: 70 kg
Build: Slender
Distinguishing Marks: N/A
Dick Size: Average
Relationships (Romantic and/or Sexual): Rawen Janaj He’Matke (soulmate)
Family Relationships: Ikkar Jerrel Ri’Naleth and Nomel Jerrel Ye’Selsa (parents, deceased), Patten Jerrel Ra’Kerken, Selim Jerrel Yo’Nolla, Callag Jerrel Ti’Kerken, Ephrem Jerrel Re’Nolla, Yosh Jerrel Ti’Nolla (brothers, deceased), Deana of Work’s Hill, Daniel of Ash Meadow, Casper the Blue, Gwendolyn Caretaker, Janina Tellmark, Vladislav Youngborn, Taku the Greater, Mark of Orangewater, Tanya the Dark, Jah of Pel Island, Flynn the Builder, Oxana Sugar, Jaakko Teown, Moshe the Empty, Dimitria Aergyn, Cott Braveheart, Bjorn of Clan Wessen, Wynona Duckfeather, Itza son of Itotia, Geneva ven Sancte V, Pálmi Nuorn, Clemence the Mountaineer, Welk Wirearm, Shaan of Old Way, Hori the Wise, Catrina Lightheart, Ruby daughter of Ruby, Cooper Dyla, Linde the Heavy, Richard Stone, Piotr anPetronia, Usheen hee-Nella, Brice daughter of Brodrick, Ledvin Coaleye, Selma of the Western Witch Clan, Lyda daughter of Leanne, Ulysses of House Ovelmach, Chanyi Ironeye, Jiāyí Farrunner, Stephanie Sunbeam, Abram anAlonya (reincarnations, deceased), Calvin Tanner (reincarnation, current)
Sexuality: Pansexual, aromantic
Preferred Positions: Atop his partner
Kinks: N/A
Orgies Attended: N/A
Bio: The youngest son of a clan of river gods, Nathen grew up in the lands owned by his clan and had a peaceful and mostly normal childhood. When became old enough to leave his family’s hold on his own, his parents gave him a sword and made him promise to fight every day for what was good and right, and against all evil, which Nathen promised to do. Some time after that, Nathen realized that his family was evil, and therefore he followed their directives and killed them all. He then realized that the evil represented by his family was not contained to them, but that it was endemic of all gods, and therefore went about slaughtering them, something he accomplished with ease thanks to the power of his convictions. After thirty-seven years, a peace summit was held in Thunder’s Falls, where the gods of the world hoped to negotiate to end the war that his murder spree had caused, and he hoped to have them all conveniently in one place. But it was a trap and they, led by his former friend Rawen, attempted to seal and kill him, but Nathen resisted, tapping farther into the deeper power he had, briefly letting it overtake him. Before he could succeed in his mission, Nathen was killed by Rawen. He was later reincarnated as a human, then another and another, a cycle that has continued since his death. In his different incarnations, Nathen has varying levels of clarity, awareness and control, sometimes fully taking control of his host and sometimes remaining quiescent for their entire lives. His current incarnation is a young artefact hunter named Calvin Tanner, and in his life, Nathen is more clear and present than he has been since he died.
Notes:
- For as long as Nathen could remember, Rawen was his best friend. He never really understood why they got along, but he was always grateful to have someone who understood him so well
- Most people in Nathen’s life accused him of being humourless. He had a sense of humour, he just believed that most things were to be taken seriously
- Nathen’s medium, like most of his family, was rivers, but he always felt more drawn to the rivers of power he could feel running under the world’s surface
- Nathen did enjoy the company of other people, especially his brothers, but usually only for a few hours before he wanted to retreat to somewhere quiet
- Throughout his childhood, Nathen’s parents worried that his extreme dislike of clutter, disorganization, dirt and spontaneity would hinder him as an adult. He does not believe they did
- When Nathen started killing people, he thought it would be hard but necessary. He was surprised to discover it was not hard at all
- Most people thought that Nathen was out of his mind during his murders, because they could see no discernable pattern to his behaviour and he could not be reasoned with. Nathen was of fully clear mind and understood exactly what he was doing, and he had a clear vision of what the correct path was at all times, which was the pattern he followed. Nathen has never cared that other people could not understand his patterns, because he knows them to be right
- Nathen would have escaped Thunder’s Falls were it not for a human girl who possessed sufficient magical power to distract him from destroying the obelisk that was trying to kill him. She distracted him long enough that Meryan Gendan Do’Rovva was able to cast a spell that caused him to remember everyone he’d ever been all at once. Before he could recover, the obelisk shattered
- At Thunderfall when the strange creature appeared, Nathen for the first time understood that his quest was larger than just his world, and that the cosmos as a whole was corrupt. He also understood that integral to his quest to repair it would be the destruction of all other entities remotely like him
- There is no obvious pattern to the frequency of Nathen’s reincarnations. Sometimes he is reincarnated immediately after death, but sometimes he is absent from the world for two or three centuries before appearing again
- Nathen is rarely conscious in his modern-day hosts, often only remembering himself for minutes at a time. He has been getting stronger lately, conscious for longer periods and at shorter intervals
Quotes:
- “This is my sword.”
- “I killed them. All five of them. At the banks of the river where we used to play when we were young. The water was so clear until…now it runs red. It still runs red, even after.”
- “Nobody is innocent. Nobody is clean. Nobody is…”
- “You are no friend.”
Trivia:
- Nathen’s hold is a series of small islands in the midst of a massive river
- Clan Jerrel’s lands were in the area of what is now Laffui, the capital of Tundj. Nathen was reborn in that area recently as a girl named Jiāyí
- Nathen was never sure how to express the sexual feelings he had. Rawen was the one who helped him learn to do so
- Nathen knew Meryan loved him, but he didn’t love her and so he felt bad engaging with her, lest she misunderstand his intentions
- Nathen didn’t find death particularly painful, at least not more so than the fact that it was Rawen who killed him
- Nathen was very interested in sex, but did not know what he liked. Rawen was very happy to suggest they try things
- As a child, Nathen was certain there existed a machine called a radio that could transmit sounds across vast distances, and was repeatedly frustrated to be told this was not true
- Nathen was able to breathe underwater
- Aside from Rawen, Nathen only ever had two other sexual partners: Samon Jevel Ne’Netri, a sex god who talked him into a series of encounters while they worked on a purification spell together; and Pennet Nesek Go’Myra, who almost became his fiancé and whose extreme forwardness Nathen found hard to decline
- Nathen wishes he could still be friends with Rawen, as he recalls that period of his life as being happy. He has absolutely no intention of letting Rawen live any longer than necessary
Modern AU: Modern Nathaniel was a seminary student and model citizen, who, until he started brutally murdering people, had been appalled at the idea of committing a crime. He steadily became convinced over a period of several years that God had abandoned the world and that it needed to be destroyed one person at a time so that a new one could be created, and took it upon himself to do exactly that until he was arrested. At that point, he killed more people in prison, eventually escaped, and became an occultist while he planned to kill even more people. Researching strange magic and otherworldly objects, Nathaniel discovered that the world was unbalanced and that through certain rituals, that balance could be restored. Unfortunately, he was killed by the police before he could attempt those rituals, after his old friend Rowen lured him into a trap to talk to him and ended up betraying him. Prior to his tenure as a homicidal maniac, Nathaniel was known to have liked classical music and libraries, and had planned to become a theologian.
How Best to Use a Sword 
“She Who Lives in Her Name is a fire surrounded by a crystal sphere. That fire whispers its name to the 100 fires that surround it, each in their own sphere. Each of those fires whispers its name to the 99,997 fires that whirl around the whole.
Mortals and demons who hear the name that these fires whisper become its tool. They murmur or shout that name to those around them, never ceasing in this chant, and turn their hands and eyes to the lady’s work. Until their voice fails and they fall from the chorus, they are the servants of the great fire at the center of She Who Lives in Her Name.
Of all the Yozis, She Who Lives in Her Name fought the hardest against her imprisonment. As the flesh of Malfeas closed behind her, she cracked three spheres against his bones, and the flames that rose from them swept across all things. The things they did not burn are now Creation. The things they turned to ash are beyond the memory and ken of the world and the gods. Not even the Yozis know the price Creation paid for her vengeance, before the flames died and the bones of Malfeas sealed her in.
She Who Lives in Her Name embodies the principle of hierarchy. Her touch made the great things greater and the small things smaller. Her fires bound the small to the great. Creation is a place of hierarchies, of rulers and the ruled, with chains of command descending from the greatest gods and kings to the smallest spirits and slaves. Before her vengeance, it held better orders, though their natures are unknown. Now, it reflects her nature, the organization of her fires. For all their glory, the gods fear that they live in her shadow — in the world she remade.
She Who Lives in Her Name still hates the gods and their children, but her plans for the mortal world rarely express this hatred. She wishes to see the world become as she would have created it, a thing of absolute order and regulation, without the freedoms and insubordination that corrupt its hierarchies today. She wishes to rub the gods’ noses in the knowledge that the world is already somewhat hers. For all her bitterness, these motives are benign in comparison to those of her peers. Sometimes, they even lead her to aid the gods and the Exalted in their tasks.”
A while ago, you said that this description reminded you of a certain someone. It was Nathen/the Right Hand, wasn’t it? The obsession with order and hierarchy, the apparent coldness belied by the cosmically destructive temper tantrum they threw when the world refused to be as they wanted it, the disconnection with their own emotions…
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Yes, I was definitely thinking about the Right Hand when I saw this the first time. It has no ability to be anything other than completely obsessed with order and hierarchy and cleanliness and purity, it doesn’t care about its creation except when its mad at it, and it pretends that its anger isn’t one of those silly emotions that mortals have but rather a profound dissatisfaction with the world on a metaphysical level. So it all kind of fits. 😀
Thanks!
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Honestly, it really seems like the Right Hand’s biggest problem is that it’s deeply out of touch with its own emotions, to the point of being at least partly in denial that it even has them. It perceives itself to act solely on logic; thus its feelings on the chaos in Creation cannot be irrational or emotional but must be a reflection of objective fact. And so it throws a massive fit over not getting its way, with no ability to control or moderate the emotional responses it’s deluded itself it doesn’t have.
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Yeah, I would say that’s a problem the Right Hand definitely has! It doesn’t believe it has emotions, or at least it believes that the emotions it feels are either a natural consequence of the imperfections in the world or a disregulated state arising from the Left Hand’s interference. Obviously it’s quite deluded in its understanding of how the world and its own existence ought to function, which also stems from its belief that the Left Hand is a destructive force that ought not to exist. I think a large part of the Left Hand/Rawen’s hope in keeping the Right Hand bound like this is that it will eventually learn to have a positive relationship with its own emotions and therefore stop being such a killjoy (and kill-everything else) all the time. But time will tell if that comes to pass, of course!
Thanks!
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Some quotes from Glitch, by Jenna Moran, on the consequences of a Strategist’s entanglement with the world:
“Flore is the power a Strategist has to awaken the native powers of the world. Among the Strategists of the Host, this is a rare and perverse gift. Theirs, the prevailing ethic goes, is not to indulge in the wonders of Creation. Theirs is not to immerse themselves into its substances and its joys:
To do so gives the world a credit it does not deserve.
Among the Strategists of the Host, few cultivate the peaceful heart that this Attribute requires. Few have time to experience the world, to savor it, to come to know the subtleties of its bounty. Only because Strategists have a kind of immortality do most who walk this path acquire it—and in dribs and drabs, over the course of many years.
A few seek this knowledge to turn it against Creation. A few willingly pollute themselves with this knowledge, dive furiously into an integration with the world, in the name of world destruction. This is folly; inevitably, Flore corrupts them into peace.
Those who can sing to the hearts of the world are not forced to love the world, but their hate is permanently compromised. Somewhere in them is the seed of slow and gentle summer evenings; of deep, affirming human bonds.
Flore is the art of connecting to the things of the world, making them a part of oneself, and then raising them up, enriching them, enhancing them—making them better, and even more themselves. Through Flore a Strategist may find the genius hidden in a simple child or the earthfire hidden in a stone. They may call forth dragons from the lakes and dance the stars down from the sky. They may seize the spirits of the wind to be their own. They may awaken, they may enlighten, they may teach; they can help the people of the world to grow.
The Strategists may do this because they are divine creatures. They are beyond human. They are supernal. When that manifests in hatred it can blot out pieces of the world, it can rip them from existence. When it manifests in glory, it can outshine the sun. But when that divinity is invested in ordinary life, in love, in caring, in community—
It becomes transformative.”
“Flore, then, is the power that a Strategist learns by excessive or atypical immersion into the world. With that immersion, they learn to apprehend the hidden and secret wonders within things. To certain things they bind themselves, making them the treasures of their heart—and, however cruel a distance they attempt to keep, heart-clutching treasures they will remain. These things become their panoply; their coterie; their regalia. Awakening and directing the slumbering powers within those treasures, the Strategist may achieve a myriad of aims.”
“The Flore Attribute measures the degree to which the Strategist has let an entanglement with Creation infiltrate them—the degree to which they have let peace into their heart, found things in the world to care about, and allowed the fibrous cilia of their spiritual and emotional connection to those things to wind deep into the metaphysical structure of themselves. It represents the degree to which they’ve let the delights of the world turn them aside from what they are.
A bleak description, perhaps—but this is an unnatural power. The Strategists of the Chancery are not changed beings, nor is the world they live in a changed world. Existence is not redeemed, nor are they made a fit part of it, simply because they have forsaken the pinnacle of their malice; if Flore ever becomes a natural power for a Strategist, if it ever becomes something pure and just and true and good for them, it is because their original nature has at some point broken and they have remade themselves as patchwork creatures of the world and Glitch.
Such creatures may have some virtue; they may be brighter and more beautiful than any Strategist or Angel…but the process by which they come to be is not correct.”
“Level 0 Flore: ‘Outsider’
Strategists with this level of Flore are still outsiders to the world. Perhaps they have found things to care about. Perhaps they have even found treasures of their heart. But however much they have flirted, or not, with the idea of immersing into the world—they have not done so. They have not given themselves over to it yet, have not spent time existing in Creation since their initial break with it. Their entire context for relationship with the world is one of struggle, grief, or grand design; there has been no room, or at least little room, for peace.
They have not laughed with coworkers while building something they cared about—unless that thing was contributory to the end of Creation, or some other Nınuanni cause. They have not eaten lunch on rocks beside the sea. They have wandered no gardens on cracked stones nor exhausted themselves playing catch with any dogs. They have told few stories and listened to few stories. They have watched no movies, unless with a sinister plan in mind. They have snuggled in few blankets. They have shaken off the pestering of small children. They have not cooked anything badly or eaten what results. Rarely have they lost hours diving into wikis or reading fan fiction. Only the most casually efficient of them pay their bills: for the rest, by one means or another, they are circumvented.
They exist in the world, but they do not live.
Why should they live? The world is wrong.
Why should they eat on rocks beside corrupted seas? Why should they wander gardens when every flower displays the perverse vitality of the earth? Why should they throw a ball to a dog, only to have the dog bring it back to them, only, now, covered in dog spit and probably dirt and possibly worse things besides? And, the dog expects them to take it, possibly even plans to make them work to take it? Seriously? There is something broken in the nature of the maws of dogs.
Surely.
Why should they tell stories to ears that are clogged with the gruesome substance of the world? Why should they watch the puerile movies on its screens? Why should they scratch themselves with the rough fibers of its blankets born?
… these are rhetorical questions, of course, even if they voice them; they know the answers to these things. They remember them, if they lived in a place with rocks and seas, with gardens and with stones, with dogs and movies and blankets and with the ears that hear. But even knowing these things, how may they overcome the visceral revulsion that the world enkindles in them and let experience absorb them? Even if they are personally unaware of the sickness in the sea, even if they cannot see the squelching hurt in the raw red mouth-flesh of a dog, even if an air of disdainful elegance requires that they immerse themselves to some degree in the world’s sensations—
How can they set the truth aside? How can they enjoy it, how can they let experience devour them and transform them, when the world is wrong?
There is no answer, of course. It is not a thing that has answers. There is no good reason, nor no good method. It is simply a thing that some do.
Transcending, overcoming, and experiencing … is a thing that is sometimes done.”
“Level 1 Flore: ‘Ghost’
Strategists with this level of Flore have rebuilt a faint relationship with the world. Metaphorically they are ghosts, they are vapors: they hover at the edges of existence. They are not good at building relationships, at holding jobs, at finding homes. They are not good at leaving a mark on the world that is not damage, nor at receiving any hale and wholesome mark therefrom themselves. Everything is alienated from them, and they from it; they are monsters, they are Not-things, they are the horror that the eyes of Angels sculpted from the void and the royalty of a Creation-conquered land.
…but they have found something, something tenuous, that can bring them peace. That can make them glad. They have an attachment to the world that is not just outrage. They have the capacity and the history for an experience of worth.
The quintessential power of the Ghosts is, perhaps appropriately, the power to visit their Treasures in spirit. They are still lacking a certain pith of connection, and for that reason they must either concentrate deeply or drown themselves in Immersion…but in their dreams, or in a trance, or in that deep concentration, they may touch the hearts and minds of their treasures from afar. Their phantom bonds to the world strengthen and they may share themselves with their Treasures—seeing through their Treasure’s eyes and whispering their secrets into their Treasure’s mind. This can span miles, if not continents:
At all times, effortlessly if not casually—as if wired together by an intranet of the mind—they’re connected to every Treasure in the same metropolitan area or ecoregion.
At the same time, they are still in a very real sense cut off:
If they are not concentrating, or dreaming, or drowning themselves in Immersion, and if their Treasures are not reaching out to them in turn, then all their spiritual connections will be dormant, and they will be as much a bubble of alienated and rejected unreality amidst a broad Creation as any Outsider would be with no Flore at all.”
“Level 2 Flore: ‘Envoy’
Strategists at this level of Flore have found a firmer anchor. Their own nature and their awareness of the Glitch still pollutes their interactions and their experiences, but their bond with their flores has escalated to innate divinity:
It is not necessarily truer or more meaningful than a human bond, but it is more spiritually robust, more thoroughly entrenched in the world, more distance-defying; with but a thought, they may send a portion of their consciousness to any of their Treasures, as if entangled by a silver astral cord. One may say that in a metaphysical sense they and their Treasures have become one being, or at least a symbiotic consortium. The fundamental essence of each being remains its own, but the outer structural layers of their spirits are not distinct.
In the Excrucian Host, Strategists with this level of Flore are known as Envoys; they are understood as plausible intermediaries between Creation and the Not. To some extent, like all expatriates, they are under suspicion of assimilation: any Strategist that has indulged this far in the experience of Creation is tainted even if they have not outright abandoned the cause of war. Nor is the doubt they face from those of Creation any less acute.
…but they are, at least, alloyed with the substance of both sides; if anyone may rightly negotiate with the law-beings and their serfs, it would be the practitioners of Flore. More than that, they have an innate quality of multipresence, a natural tendency to be with treasures in multiple locations at once; this will not fully develop until Flore 6, when it spans the cosmos rather than the Region, but it too intrinsically cultivates a certain emissarial mien.”
“Level 3 Flore: ‘Catalyst’
Strategists with this level of Flore receive the homage of the world. Their presence exalts it…at least, when they are not spreading terror, infection, and destruction. Perhaps even then.
A purpose lives in them, and that purpose is holy. It lifts up those who come into its service.
In the name of the Strategist, their treasures /shine./
Catalysts function as a kind of drumbeat, a kind of drive. It is alien, but it has integrated itself into the world. Their purpose—mediated through their choices and their Treasures’—has acquired naturalness and grace. Even if that purpose is the Wyrd of War against the world, it is a smoothly participating current in the ocean of events.
In turn Creation has infected them. At this point it is difficult for them to retain such dread purpose. The experience of the world has rooted itself in the motion of them, in the tides of their dream-of-self, even as that dream has infiltrated itself into the world. The idea of ending everything becomes not so much unspeakable for them—even mortals compassed entirely within the world can preach that particular bleak gospel—as incoherent:
It begins to contrast against itself. It becomes subtly and increasingly self-dissonant within the music of their dream. Eventually the Strategist bound to the Wyrd of War and the nature of the Catalyst is doomed to collapse in confusion, knowing that they can perhaps unmake the weirds of the law-beings but no longer certain how to even /approach/ the ineffable beingness of Creation and the Glitch that is behind it; nor are they clear on how one might operate /within Creation/, to the eventuation of its end.”
“Level 4 Flore: ‘Awakener’
Strategists with this level of Flore have at last mastered the heart of this Attribute—effortlessly, they see the true faces of their treasures. Effortlessly, they awaken them.
Some are teachers. They unlock that hidden potential that lay dreaming within their students. Others collect rare artifacts and learn a mastery of their secrets. Some infuse themselves with rare essences born from alchemy and keep their treasures melded to their bones and flesh. A few study the lore of the places dearest to their hearts— from gardens to hills and shores. Some find a circle of friends or allies and become its heart, the one who inspires the group, who brings out its best. A few find wonders in ordinary-seeming pets or stones.
Most are at least a little bit eclectic, of course, as one cannot choose what one’s heart will treasure; but one can choose what one spends one’s time with, what one immerses oneself into, what receives the benefit of one’s conscious care…
…It is extremely rare that a Strategist should reach this level of Flore while still an active party in the War. There are some truths that just can’t be seen from an adversarial perspective. Until they relax a little in their enmity to the world, a Strategist tends to be blind to much of Creation’s richness and its deepness.They can perceive its beauty and its truths, but those truths and that beauty are estranged from them. Thus, it requires a deviant perspective to thread the needle of that contradiction and see Creation with the grace of the Awakener while remaining staunchly and fervidly at war.
…though, those who have abandoned war are still so few! Perhaps it is the case that, despite all that above, the Awakeners who are still at war yet manage to outnumber those that aren’t.”
“Level 5 Flore: ‘Geomancer’
Strategists with this level of Flore learn to command their Treasures with exquisite profundity and skill. From insight arises craft, and the ineffable mysteries of Creation yield fluidly to their designs: what was once raw elemental puissance becomes a precision tool. Their greatest skill, and those tools’ greatest use, is found in conflict—in raising up the natural powers of Creation against the law-beings and their servants, against they who have imprisoned the world in their shackling ideals of form…and, perhaps, against their own kind, too, who would tear the whole thing down. Subtle and quick are the powers in a Geomancer’s hands:
With the innate unruliness of a crooked twig, they can disrupt the flow of miracles. With the faithful service of three nameless knights, they can contend with giants. With the rusty magic of an ancient knife, they can hold back Excalibur.
…with just a child’s knack to find lost things, they can break the seal that shelters Avalon.
This too is a form of exaltation; the Treasures in their hands are raised up beyond what they could have been. The Strategist has become the warleader in the world they were already in the void: a general both brilliant and fiery, able to inflame the powers of their flores and put them to good use. They have integrated their nature as warleaders into that part of them that has been subsumed into Creation, and therefore face an enormous crisis of their loyalty from the moment they crest this stage:
There are only one or two Geomancers per major world who are purely loyal to the War; the rest, even if they stand opposed to Creation, have branched off to become third parties, conflicted neutral forces who will one day hurt the world and the next protect it—who serve the War, who cooperate with the Excrucian Host, only so long as it supports their agenda, or out of personal loyalty to their old comrades in the Host.
Conversely, even Chancery members who become Geomancers tend to spend an interval more militant than they had been—not necessarily at war with anything in particular, but nevertheless with adrenaline roused and a directionless will-to-fight swirling around within their souls. As their understanding of how the things they love can be used to fight becomes acute; as the baggage of their original incarnation as ‘that which Creation fears’ and ‘that which wars against the world’ drifts to the surface for resolution and integration into their modern selves…it becomes easy to want an enemy.
Any enemy will do.”
“Level 6 Flore: ‘Eternal’
Characters with this level of Flore have won their Treasures’ hearts, even as their Treasures have won theirs…
…It is the fundamental characteristic of the Eternal that they may win the loyalty of things even of Creation. They do not merely inspire their Treasures to obey them; their Treasures are actively and assiduously motivated to assist. To, if not necessarily to serve them, support them. To stand beside them in the face of what fears or pains may come.
Even Creation itself will serve: the Eternal’s life is blessed by happy fortune. The instrumentality of this remains their Treasures’…but those Treasures acquire a natural timing and skill in their support and service far surpassing what the Strategist could expect of them on their own. For this such Strategists are named Eternal: beloved of both the Is, and Not.
As with the Geomancers, it is a rare Eternal who is properly loyal to Unbeing. To stay at war with the world while ascending to the Eternal requires existing on multiple spiritual layers. One must have an Eide that immerses entirely within the world, but also a second face behind it, controlling it and steering it. One must have a Wyrd that is content to estrange itself from much of one’s existence, showing itself only in the subtlest movements of one’s life. One must, in short, be a puppet to oneself. Otherwise, an Eternal who signs on with the War does so in the same fashion as a turncoat Power:
Their struggle against the world may be equivalent in intensity, but they have assimilated: it is now treason or rebellion, not invasion or assault.
The vast majority of the Eternals have given up the War; though, this does not mean that they have allied themselves with the Glitch-riddled horrors of Creation. Most, instead, take up the Chancery’s uncertainty or pursue some alternative and private goal.”
“Level 7 Flore: ‘World-Weaver’
Strategists with this level of Flore effortlessly create their own wonders. It takes time, perhaps—time, to teach their cat to sing, their car to fly, or to build a magic boat; time, to rebuild their house from scratch, now a soaring manor out of legend born; time, to invest their spirit into a map so that it can guide mortals to their hearts’ desire…
Time, but that is all. The blueprints of the world live in their eyes; they know the secret laws behind its crafting. They understand from what the wonders and the horrors of it all are born, and thus the generative power of the law-beings rests within their hands. To become a World-Weaver is itself a form of treason against the Host:
Only by the uttermost prostration before the altars of Unbeing—the most humble, chained, and constrained service—do a few who have mastered this final art retain position among the Excrucian soldiers in the War. (That … or perhaps secrecy, rejection of the title, and the assertion that one is but Eternal; nothing more.)
One by one, those few turn against their peers, or are turned upon, for it is ultimately the nature of the armies of the Not to disdain them, them and the great drumming of creation that pounds and hums within their veins.”
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Yes, this continues to be very Nathen/the Right Hand energy for me. The more strongly you perceive everything to be wrong the more powerful you get. Or in my terms, the more powerfully you understand the world is fundamentally disordered, the more powerful the Right Hand is able to be within you and the greater chance that you’ll attempt to destroy the universe someday!
Thanks! 😀
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???
These quotes are all about how that world-killing intent becomes compromised, how entanglement with the world erodes a Strategist’s destructive purpose even as it transforms and empowers those worldly things that have become precious to them.
“A few seek this knowledge to turn it against Creation. A few willingly pollute themselves with this knowledge, dive furiously into an integration with the world, in the name of world destruction. *This is folly; inevitably, Flore corrupts them into peace.*
Those who can sing to the hearts of the world are not forced to love the world, but *their hate is permanently compromised. Somewhere in them is the seed of slow and gentle summer evenings; of deep, affirming human bonds.*”
Emphasis added.
I don’t understand how that gives off “the world is wrong and I must destroy it” vibes.
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Oh, oops, hahaha. I fully admit I read and responded to this comment at work and clearly didn’t read very carefully. Sorry about that!
This isn’t so much Right Hand vibes in that case, though it is what Rawen hopes will be Right Hand vibes if it’s sealed long enough. But I guess we’ll have to see if he’s right about that. It hasn’t proven true so far! 😀
Thanks, and sorry again for my low reading comprehension.
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