Mortal Ingenuity: A Retrospective of Mortal Engines

It was a dark, blustery afternoon in spring, and the city of London was chasing a small mining town across the dried-out bed of the old North Sea.

These are the first lines of Mortal Engines, by Philip Reeve - published 2001, and I suspect that I read it for the first time fairly soon afterwards. Frequenters of this blog (being handsome, discerning and well-read) will twig the similarity to the opening lines of Nineteen Eighty-Four - and I suspect that they will recognise how this might hook a young reader, or even an old one. I was that young reader, of course. 

Indeed, I am now also that old reader. A month or so ago I noticed that the 2018 film of Mortal Engines was available in the free-with-advertisements section of YouTube (the box office results may say why). I put it on while about a few household chores, and half-watched the entire thing. I had avoided the film when it came out - and, having watched it, this was not an unreasonable step to take. But a bad version of a good thing can make one think of the good thing, and it sent me back to read the books. Indeed, it also disposed me to take a look at the assorted thoughts of the internet - which have been blighted by the film or didn't touch on some worthwhile aspect, and so on - so, in I dive to get my thoughts down. 

My scope is limited to the initial Mortal Engines Quartet, published 2001-2006: Mortal Engines, Predator's Gold, Infernal Devices and A Darkling Plain. Other books in the same universe, if in different eras, have been published, as have short stories and some collected timeline and 'lore' material. Some reference may be made to these (not that I've kept fully abreast of new entries in the series) and, where vaguely useful, to the film. 

Premise

I don't intend to summarise the books here. But a few details may well be useful.

There has been an apocalypse, the Sixty Minute War. This took place around 2100 between (what Mortal Engines characters call) the American Empire and Greater China. Civilisation, and much of the planet was smashed up - by things that appear to have left the atomic bomb in the dust. North America is 'the dead continent'. As above, the North Sea is mostly gone. New mountain ranges cropped up. Many centuries later, civilisations have risen and fallen - as civilisations tend to. 

The great paradigm of the current age is that of the Traction City. Mankind either dwells on mobile cities - greater or smaller; see above London and the 'small mining town', Salthook - or in static settlements. Said static settlements band together in the Anti-Traction League, opposing the Traction Cities. Traction Cities (principally) move and (notably) will devour one another - as well as static settlements, so said League makes sense. (Traction Cities will harvest or gather natural resources, and trade, but after a millennium of the 'Traction Era' there is less possibility of the former outside the strongholds of the League). The practice of one Traction City consuming another has given rise to a school of thought, or even an ideology - 'Municipal Darwinism'.

The Mortal Engines quartet focuses on Tom Natsworthy (of London) and his journey with Hester Shaw out of London and into the wider world. Both characters are fifteen in Mortal Engines; Wikipedia labels the Quartet as 'young adult'. As nebulous as that phrase is, it's a useful-ish indicator of tone and approach - though we will see both grow to adulthood in a perilous and bustling world, full of moving cities, armies, airships, wastelands, pirates and the lost, fearful, technologies of the Ancients. 

Wikipedia will give you plot details if you want them, though frankly this post probably is most useful for someone who has read all four books. I'm not going to wallow in spoilers, but I shan't dodge them either. Anyway, be warned.

David Frankland did the original covers, which I still think quite the best.  There's a clear sense of the grimy and the mechanical, coupled with those limited colour backgrounds, that suggest something like a 1920s travel poster and the associated sense of adventure. 

In no particular order, then - 

Names

Reeve's characters have three sorts of names.

Cool: names right out of pulp adventure*. Thaddeus Valentine. Anna Fang. General Naga. Magnus Crome. Wolf von Kobold. Dr Zero.

Pompous: likely British, at least faintly and probably overtly posh. Herbert Melliphant, Chudleigh Pomeroy, Cynthia Twite, Thomas Natsworthy, Freya Rasmussen, Clytie Potts, Nimrod Pennyroyal, Dr Popjoy.

Gimmicky: displaced old-world phrases, faintly comic. Chrysler Peavey, Stilton Kael, Nintendo Tharp, Napster Varley, Saab Peabody.

Actually, this is quite a good indication of overall tone. If you can tolerate - or actively enjoy - the sort of sensibilities that these three sorts of names suggest, then you might enjoy Mortal Engines. The 'Gimmick' aspect and vein of comedy is more present in books beyond the quartet, where it can wear out its welcome a little. 

Whimsy and Humour

But such things are a balancing act. The presence of 'Tunbridge Wheels' as a mobile city is a sensical pun (and demands a Sensible Chuckle?); likewise the Arctic predator suburb of Wolverinehampton. Reeve has written what I take to be more overtly comic works for a younger audience than Mortal Engines, but can dial it back sufficiently. (A newspaper called The Wantage Weekly Waffle only has one mention, happily; this is distractingly comic - one says, risking the fate of the po-faced - and more to the point, not quite comic in the way the scene demands.)

You will sometimes see this sort of thing referred to as whimsy - and, indeed, there is a whimsical element in the notion of a moving city (still less one that retains some of its static characteristics: don't ask how they tend the vines in Bordeaux-Mobile, or what the terroir is like). Reeve is also an illustrator, and some of his renditions of traction cities make them seem rather charming. 

Not all his humour is quite so direct, of course. A firm of publishers is named Fewmet and Spraint; as those who recall The Once and Future King will know, this is a quiet indication as to the quality of some of what they publish. 

Consequences

Alongside such things is a real sense of weight to violence. Men may die quickly, but this is never exactly cathartic - especially not for our protagonists. Accident may kill as readily as intention, and it will absolutely kill your allies and would-be collaborators. Deep wounds, even if non-fatal, have later effects - very real disfigurement or long-term health conditions.

It goes a little further than that, mind you. Hurt feelings stay hurt, emotions flare high - deeds done in haste reverberate to dreadful effect. Which sounds like just what you should expect from a novel, but I suspect shouldn't be counted on in every book of the same kind as Mortal Engines.

While we're thinking of bodies, I note that there's a fair amount of urination and defecation in these. Which contributes to that sense of what bodies are and do. I wonder what age Reeve's children were when he was writing these? 

More to the point, this allows for some powerful blows when the time comes: the last paragraph of Mortal Engines has some fairly touching unsentimental sentiments, if you'll pardon the oxymoron.

Britishisms

Philip Reeve is British. He did not have an international audience in mind when he wrote Mortal Engines - indeed, that the United States is a wasteland may not have done much for his sales. I've noted some of the names above for their British characteristics: that London is front and centre in the first (emblematic) book is also important. 

Of course, London isn't Britain, nor is the traction city of London an inheritor of Britain (but it was in an earlier version of Mortal Engines). Britain is gone: some place names and other markers remain - but that there is a portion of London called Crouch End doesn't count for much.

This is something that the 2018 film - with its Union Flag bedecked-maw and Trafalgar Square lions -  didn't take on board.

London's military elite are Beefeaters, not the Brigade of Guards or the SAS or the Gordon Highlanders or Cromwell's Ironsides. It is governed by a Mayor and a guild elite, not the King-in-Parliament. The focal point, the identifying feature of an exterior which is otherwise as vast and complex as Breughel's Tower of Babel is St Paul's Cathedral, not St James's Palace or Westminster Abbey or Tower Bridge (the film couldn't help itself, and included the Palace of Westminster; the guildhall even faintly resembles the former Greater London City Hall). A piece of concept art by Ian McQue shows even more - the Shard and the BT Tower and Battersea Power Station, in an artistic fantasia reminiscent of one of Laubin's capricci. 

I would argue this misses the point of St Paul's Cathedral. There's something eerie about the fact that it has survived when so much else has not (the London Museum of Mortal Engines is clearly akin to the British Museum and the Natural History Museum, but is in fact neither). When you learnt something of the Polytheism much of the world practices in the Traction Era, it becomes even stranger that this Christian temple survives intact. That it is finally the vessel containing the ancient and terrible superweapon MEDUSA bears this out. 

The David Frankland cover again. Think on how St Paul's is just discernible, think how it offers a sense of scale. Think also of the red, livid sky.

Airfix Characteristics

A world-building trick of Reeve's is to refer to makes and models of machinery in universe. Airships are Goshawk 90s or Murasaki Fox Spirits (and this will extend to parts: Jeunet-Carot aëro-engines, an envelope of Silicon-Silk from Shaun Guo....). A small revolver is a .38 Schadenfreude. Something like Jane's Fighting Ships for the Traction Era appears. Granted, significant parts of A Darkling Plain are set on the frontlines, but the business of bunkers and half-tracks and rocket troops conjure the same notion. That Germanic traction cities are frequently named 'Panzerstadt' may contribute to this.

If we are addressing this as a sensibility outside of genre features and expectations, I think the term 'Airfix Characteristics' is good, as in X with Airfix Characteristics. Science fiction with Airfix characteristics; Firefly has them, Star Trek doesn't.**

Extend as necessary, or as amuses: Steampunk with Airfix Characteristics. Bedroom Farce with Airfix Characteristics. Ostern with Airfix Characteristics. Southern Ontario Gothic with Airfix Characteristics.  

Airship (and flying machine) names, incidentally, fall into something like the pulp/pompous/gimmick division above. The 13th Floor Elevator. The Jenny Haniver. The Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka-Dot Machiny. Group Captain Mandrake. The Shadow Aspect. The Archaeopteryx. Die Leiden des Jungen Werther. The Plum Blossom Spring. The Combat Wombat. The Requiem Vortex.

References and Nerdery

As the above may suggest, Reeve enjoys shoving a reference or two into Mortal Engines - frequently something at least faintly nerdy. The very name derives from Othello: Act III, Scene III. A certain amount of this is the product of inspiration. Star Wars and Lord of the Rings had their influence on Reeve - the former quite unsurprising, given that Mortal Engines has a climax with a super-weapon encroaching on a previously unassailable redoubt.*** Other influences exist. 

That a range of mountains is known as the Tannhäuser Mountains might well owe something to Blade Runner (could there be a narrow pass in those mountains, do you think? A defile, a passage, a gate?). Spear-carriers of fighter pilots are known as Ginger and Algy. That a German traction city is called Moloch-Maschinenstadt presumably indicates that it is an unpleasant place even by the standards of traction cities (unless things are unusually clean?). 

Historical periods are also addressed in a familiar and adroit way: the Blue Metal culture, the Raffia Hat Culture.

The Chapter names are rather telling in this regard: The Cabinet of Dr Popjoy, the Land of Mists, Brighton Rocks, The Childermass Experiment, The Sleeper Wakes.

Incidentally, Mortal Engines predates a general consciousness of Steampunk being its own thing. It fits into the aesthetic nicely, but it doesn't get bogged down in genre trappings.

***

There's a line in Predator's Gold that ties a lot of the above together. 

The sky was the colour of packet custard, streaked with rhubarb cloud.

• It's whimsical: the sky as humdrum domestic dessert.
• It's actually not a bad description for a certain sort of dawn, with pinkish clouds and soft yellowish light. Rhubarb, if not processed into pap, is in fact streaky.
• It's quite possibly a reference to Neuromancer: 'The sky above the port was the colour of television, tuned to a dead channel.'
• Rhubarb and custard is a British boiled sweet - and as a combination, would not be unlikely to be served as a dessert. 'Packet custard' presumably refers to Bird's Instant, or something quite like it.

Anyway, I liked this line. Though one wonders how any of the characters know what custard is in this world, like Winston Smith and rice spirit (thank you, Anthony Burgess).

***

Polytheism

As above, the Traction Era is Polytheistic. Clio, Muse of History is frequently called on by the Guild of Historians (there is a reference to her being 'blown backwards by progress into the future', which sounds unintentionally Buckleyesque). Ice Gods and Wind Gods are mentioned. Quirke was the Mayor who turned London into a Traction City, who has been deified. Statues and shrines dot cities and sit in airships. 

There's an extent to which this pushes Mortal Engines into a grand, varied, Faufreluchean setting, like the forehead tattoos of London guildsmen. It's also something that indicates that Reeve can 'do religion' in a way that George Lucas (for instance) doesn't. St Paul's Cathedral aside, Christianity has survived the Sixty Minutes War, even with Bishops and T.S. Eliot (though neither show up on London). The monotheist elements - 'I believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty...' - are seemingly unknown to unbelievers. Strangely, no other Abrahamic faith seems to have lasted, nor have Eastern Axial Age faiths like Jainism or Buddhism. There's monks and prayer flags in the Himalayas, but that's not necessarily the same thing.

Metafiction

There's bunch of metafictional elements that come into Mortal Engines. That several principal characters are historians - narrative-crafters, from a certain point of view - helps, of course. The history of the world is discussed, and later characters even go on to write up the events of the novels they are in (Predator's Gold is also the name of an in-universe sensational history). The final chapter of A Darkling Plain even involves that thing where a character begins telling the tale of the story they're in, beginning 'It was a dark, blustery afternoon in spring...'

Reputation (to be chased into the cannon - the mortal engine's - mouth) plays its own role in all this. In the course of the Quartet, reputations are made and lost, secrets are revealed. People tell stories about themselves.

Bildungsroman and Stalkers

Mortal Engines is about (among other things) youth. Tom Natsworthy and Hester Shaw come of age and begin making their own decisions. Happily, they don't have to spend an entire quartet doing this: there is a sixteen year time skip between Predator's Gold and Infernal Devices. But more to the point: these four books spend a fair amount of time thinking on how children are raised. Plenty of characters are the genre-standard orphans, but who they are raised by counts for a lot: the antiquarian Guild of Historians, an inhuman cyborg, a Fagin-like master of pickpockets, a dwindling population of loyal subjects. Further, have they been raised as a Tractionist or an Anti-Tractionist? This isn't just an ideological difference: in a rather town mouse and country mouse sense, traction city dwellers struggle when they have earth under their feet rather than a deckplate (those from static settlements don't seem to struggle in a comparable way - see Wren in Brighton in Infernal Devices).

Anyway, on top of all this are the Resurrected Men. Old Tech mechanical brains and devices are wired into corpses to bring them back into hideous life - principally to serve in combat. Given the lack of knowledge of Old Tech by the Mortal Engines period, this is an unreliable process - and not all Old Tech is created equal. So some Stalkers have half-memories of past lives, and the desire to learn more, and those who brought them back may wish them to have (or not have) those very memories. Stalkers, like children, must be raised: just ask Victor Frankenstein. 

Ian McQue also did a cover for Mortal Engines. Not bad, despite the disproportionate St Paul's. It has some of the right spirit, even if it makes me think a little much of Disco Elysium.

Predators, Gold

There is an interpretation of Traction Cities and Municipal Darwinism, holding that the entire thing is really about capitalism, expansionism and exploitation. A specimen of this interpretation is here (though I think it a ramshackle piece). I am compelled to say that this isn't altogether wrong. The text makes it clear that Tractions Cities can be pretty unpleasant places to live, and Reeve knew what he was doing when he named the goddess of 'Unfettered Municipal Darwinism' as Thatcher - who is given a faintly Hindu aspect in her depictions: multi-limbed, dancing, all-devouring, as Shiva Nataraja.

Fine, it's not wrong, but it misses a few things, especially when stated baldly. Reeve has stated that part of the inspiration for Municipal Darwinism comes from the growth of Brighton into a conurbation - which (whether welcome or not) is far less malevolent than anything out of a Traction City. Also, Reeve, as Tolkien, dislikes allegory - and has stated that it's not a heartfelt metaphor for Capitalism.

That aside, I think that it's also informative to consider Mortal Engines in the light of the Cold War; indeed, especially from the point of view of a young, fairly liberal British man in the last decades of the Cold War.

[It feels a little odd making this slightly cavalier reading of biography and background, and I hope that Philip Reeve will pardon me if he reads this; I did meet him once, years ago - he signed my books and was really quite kind and charming.]

So: The world is imperilled by dreadful weapons [MEDUSA, ODIN], invented by those long dead (Oppenheimer dies in 1967, wunderwaffen maker von Braun dies in 1977; see also Richard Rhodes here again) for another country [The Ancients] and a cause not your own [The Sixty Minute War]. You [Tom Natsworthy] find yourself aligned (by birth as much as anything else) with those [the leadership of London] pointing those weapons at a foe with a very different way of life [the Anti-Traction League]. Learning more about that foe, it emerges that they're (reasonably) terrified of annihilation; it should not surprise you that they take steps against it [Anna Fang] - and even if you don't approve of it, that they should produce an extreme reaction to the threat [the Green Storm]. Naturally, you become quite disillusioned with childhood heroes [Thaddeus Valentine], though there's no guarantee you'll join with your old foe [Tom and Hester take to the Bird Roads].

[EDIT: Cf. this remark on '80s Britain.]

This is the sort of perspective that forgets or erases the Gulags and the cellars of the Lubyanka and Khrushchev burying the west, but it's not one that I find utterly unsympathetic - or utterly disconnected from reality. But the geopolitical-historical interpretation fits the outlines of Mortal Engines better than the blunt Municipal-Darwinism-bad expression.

The Anti-Traction League, it must be said, is not the Soviet Union or Warsaw Pact, and the Shield Wall of Batmunkh Gompa is defending against a threat in a way that the Berlin Wall wasn't. Russian traction cities (Arkangel, Traktiongrad, Gorky, Novaya-Nizhni, Smolensk, Omsk†) exist. The League seems to draw as much or more on the Third World as the Second World: there are no parades in Red Square or Five-Year Plans or Khrushchevka apartment blocks or Stakhanovite efforts in the factories (though that Northern Fleet of airships and the fuel and ammunition and spare parts for same had to come from somewhere...‡ ). One gets a more Maoist impression from the Green Storm and their cult of personality. Reeve is, happily, unwilling to make this monolithic: the mountainous strongholds of the Anti-Traction League might be in East Asia, the Indian Subcontinent and East Africa but Traction Cities include Zanzibar, Bamako, Perfume Harbour and Juggernautapur. 

Before anyone gets too keen about raising the left-wing banner over Mortal Engines, I would note that Reeve does not strike me as at all partisan or a zealot, and unwilling to engage very publicly with politics. Moreover, the sympathetic portrayal and actions of the Guild of Historians in Mortal Engines suggest a sort of small-c conservative position against progress and expansion: couple this with the non-Green Storm League elements and perhaps one arrives at some sort of 'Ealing Studios' Social Democracy; something which wouldn't much please Ayn Rand, Michael Foot or Robespierre. Indeed, the dreams of Magnus Crome and the Guild of Engineers that transcend the limitations of Municipal Darwinism as we know it (Mortal Engines, Ch. 34) remind one of nothing so much as the visions of progress by H.G Wells, a devoted socialist. 

Municipal Darwinism and Tractionism never gets an articulate spokesman, mind you - only prejudices and Tom Natsworthy at his most callow (unless there's one hiding in the very recent Thunder City or Bridge of Storms). Where is the Adam Smith of Municipal Darwinism? After a millennium there must have been one! Anti-Tractionism fits the reader's default position, and the text has to work less hard. ††

We may also consider the image of Tractionism as aping the sacrifices and trade-offs of the industrial revolution; something heightened by the nickname 'mossies' for the static settlements and the Green Storm, who openly vow 'death to cities'. It would make a certain amount of sense to me if a wider range of goods were available in traction cities, if medical technology were more advanced, if a greater range of culture was available. While no polity in Mortal Engines appears to be a liberal democracy as we may think of them, the concentration of population in a traction city might well mean that there is a greater chance of mass political engagement. None of this means life is necessarily any better: you could end up in back-breaking labour somewhere vile in a traction city due to central planning or competitive examination or one city consuming another - but you are far less likely to end up doing  back-breaking labour somewhere vile due to being of the wrong faith or caste. Slavery is not seen in the Anti-Traction League, though given how accepted it is elsewhere, it would be strange for it not to be present in one of the many members of the League (again, that air-fleet came from somewhere). 

It's worth noting, finally, that Philip Reeve appears to quite like Traction Cities. Certainly more than Swift did Laputa or Orwell did Manor Farm. An exception to the rule of Municipal Darwinism appears early in Mortal Engines in the form of Airhaven; the cooperation of the Traktionstadtsgesellschaft and the resort city of Brighton muddy the waters later. The conclusion of A Darkling Plain, with the birth of an ecologically friendly New London, complicates things further - as does the future state sketched in the final chapter. 

Traction Cities have been noted from the first have developed from nomadism - and the nomadism of those clans or the airship-travelling protagonists is treated quite sympathetically. Is this enough to to make them more than Infernal Devices (Predators seeking Gold on Darkling Plains)? Are they more than Mortal (threatening, fearful, deathly) Engines doomed to mortality? 

Frankly, the best way for you to decide is to read them. They were worth reading twenty-five years ago, they're worth reading today.

Previous Mortal Engines-related content here.

* "Catholics don't light candles any more, Brick."
"I do, sir. I'm Irish and my mother - "
"For Pete's sake! Bronson's not an Irish name."
"What kind is it, sir?"
"It's a pulp name. Now get going."
           'The Last Thrilling Wonder Story', Gene Wolfe 

** Compare remarks on las-pistols here.

***Reeve has a blogpost (5th May 2015) on seeing the first Star Wars in his youth, the interest he had in Ralph McQuarrie and how Star Wars 'was so popular that it even put an end to World War 2. Before Star Wars, schoolboys played Brits vs Germans in the playground, watched Colditz and Where Eagles Dare, and made model kits of Spitfires and Messerschmidt 109s.  After it, we played rebels vs stormtroopers and watched Blake's Seven and Battlestar Galactica.' It's quite good as a reminisce and I'm irritated that I can now only get hold of it through this blog viewer. 

† Incidentally, Anchorage, with its palaces, fur coats, glasses of tea and aristocracy certainly reads as more Russian than Alaskan. Maybe that just comes with Tractionist culture up on the ice.

‡ I can conceive a spirit-of-the-text answer where League arms works are mostly kept in moth-balls in peacetime, with the volunteer machinists keeping them in order outside of seasonal re-supply use or until the threat of a Traction City draws near.

†† It would be interesting to sketch out how an idealised peaceful consumption of one city by another would look as expressed by such a thinker. The gods of one Traction City brought into the fanes and temples of another, the merging of institutions (with senior and junior partners), the language barriers, the demographic transformation.

Solomon and Saturn: Saxon Sages

I recently discovered the Old English dialogue of Solomon and Saturn. This is, of course, highly relevant to my interests. 

There are several of these dialogues, either in poetry or prose. They appear back to back in the same manuscript and are largely thought to have been written at the end of the first millennium. Saturn is here a Prince of the Chaldeans, though not without some measure of knowledge. Solomon is still Solomon, but without some of the more oriental aspects with which he is sometimes presented (see Kipling, for instance, aside from the whole business of summoning demons). 

Saturn calls on Solomon, setting him a series of questions, sometimes with a reward. He either trying to get details of the power of the Lord's Prayer, or quizzing him about the state of the life of man, the nature of creation and God's will. In the former he is sceptical and offers a sounding-board for Solomon's long discussions of the power of prayer. In the latter, he becomes a testing, probing presence; not diabolic, but clearing pushing at a few boundaries. 

Here's an example of the text:

SALOMON cwæð:

Þæt gepalmtwigude  Pater Noster
heofnas ontyneð,  halie geblissað,
Metod gemiltsað,  morðor gefilleð
adwæsceð deoflesfyr,  Dryhtnes onæleð.

Solomon said: The palm-twigged Paternoster opens heaven, blesses the holy, makes the Lord mild, fells murder, extinguishes the devil's ire, kindles the Lord's.

The Lord's Prayer is not only potent, but highly decorated: 'Golden is the word of God, studded with gems, it hath silver leaves...'. The letters of it are themselves given magical and specific associations.

prologa prima  ðam is . ᛈ . P. nama;
hafað guðmæcga  gierde lange,
gyldene gade,  ond a ðone gr[im] man feond
swiðmod sweopað;  ond him on swaðe fylgeð
. ᚪ . A . ofermægene  ond hine eac ofslihð.
. ᛏ . T . hine teswað  ond hine on ða tungan sticað,
wræsteð him ðæt woddor  ond him ða wongan brieceð.

prologa  prima,  which  is
named . ᛈ . P.: the warrior has a long staff, with
a golden goad, and brave he ever swipes at the
grim fiend; and in the track . ᚪ . A . pursues him
with mighty power and also strikes him. . ᛏ . T.
injures him and stabs him in the tongue, twists
his throat, and shatters his jaws.

The prose dialogue features a battle where between the devil and the Paternoster where they take on various forms:

Solomon said: The devil first will be in youthfulness, in the likeness of a child, then the Pater Noster will be in the likeness of the Holy Spirit. In the third instance the devil will be in the likeness of a dragon; in the fourth instance the Pater Noster will be in the likeness of an arrow, which is called brahhia dei. In the fifth instance the devil will be in the likeness of darkness; in the sixth instance the Pater Noster will be in light’s likeness. In the seventh instance the devil then will be in the likeness of a wild animal; in the eighth instance the Pater Noster will be in the likeness of a whale that is called Leuiathan.

Saturn even desires to know of the Features of the Paternoster.

Saturnus quoth. But what kind of head hath the Pater Noster?
Salomon quoth. The Pater Noster hath a golden head and silver hair; an although all the waters of the earth should be mingled with a the waters of heaven into one channel, and it should begin to rain them together upon the earth and all its creatures, yet might it stand dry under a single lock of the Pater Noster's hair; and his eyes are twelve thousand times brighter than all the earth, though it be overspread with the brightest lily-blossoms, and the leaf of every blossom should have twelve suns, and every blossom twelve moons, and every individual moon should be twelve thousand times brighter than it was ere Abel's murder.

'The world was young, the mountains green, no stain yet on the moon was seen'?

And in the Pater Noster’s right hand is the likeness of a golden sword, unlike all other weapons; its gleam is clearer and brighter than all the constellations of the heavens, than there are ornaments and fairness of gold and silver in all the earth: and the right edge of the lordly weapon, is milder and more moderate than all the sweetness or the perfumes of the earth; and the left edge of the same weapon, is fiercer and sharper than all [middle-earth], though between its four pinnacles it should be driven full of wild-beasts, and every individual beast should have twelve horns, and every horn twelve tines of iron, and every tine twelve points and every point should be twelve thousand times sharper than an arrow which has been tempered by a hundred and twenty hardeners. 

The assorted hyperbole and vast numbers and shifts of perspective are somewhat psychedelic, even faintly Hindu in a certain light.

Solomon was more famous; however, Saturn, the bold strategist, had the keys of certain books in which learning was locked. He wandered through all the lands: the land of India, the East Cossias, the kingdom of the Persians, Palestine, the city of Nineveh, and the North Parthians, the treasure halls of the Medes, the land of Marculf, the kingdom of Saul – where it lies south by Gilboa and north by Gadara – the halls of the Philistines, the fortress of the Cretans, the forest of the Egyptians, the waters of the Midians, the cliffs of Horeb, the kingdom of the Chaldeans, the skills of the Greeks, the race of the Arabians, the learning of Libya, the land of Syria, Bithynia, Bashan, Pamphylia, the border of Porus, Macedonia, Mesopotamia, Cappadocia, Christ’s homeland – Jericho, Galilee, Jerusalem.

Saturn is well-travelled, well-read - but not quite supernatural. He might be associated with gloom and be a fairly melancholy type and ask questions about old age, but isn't the god of old age.

Saturnus cwæð:
Nieht bið wedera ðiestrost,  ned bið wyrda heardost,
sorg bið swarost byrðen,  slæp bið deaðe gelicost.

Solomon cwæð:
Lytle hwile  leaf beoð grene;
ðonne hie eft fealewiað,  feallað on eorðan,
ond forweorniað,  weorðað to duste.
Swa ðonne gefeallað  ða ðe fyrena ær
lange læstað,  lifiaðhim in mane,
hydað heahgestreon,  healdað georne
on fæstenne  feondum to willan,

Saturn said: Night is the darkest weather, need the hardest of fates, sorrow the most oppressive burden, sleep is most like death.

Solomon said: Leaves are green for a short while, then later they fade, fall on the earth and decay, turn to dust. Just so, then, fall those who earlier persist for a long time in their sins – they live in crime, they hide great treasures, they hold them eagerly in strongholds, to the delight of  the enemies....

I've been dancing between two translations here, accessible by an academic library: that of Dr Daniel Anlezark and that of John Kemble. You can find the latter here and a third partial for comparison here.

It's not a unique piece of work: one sage setting riddles for another is a familiar enough pattern for Norse legend. But the introduction of Saturn and Solomon as protagonists is noteworthy, though not unique. There's a few interpretations I've come across since encountering this on the shelves a few days ago; that this is a form of catechesis is one. 

But I've not tapped the limits of what's in this poem - for instance, the vast bird, feared by the Philistines (and by Saturn) and called by them Vasa Mortis, due to appear at Doomsday. Anlezark says in his commentary 'the Vasa Mortis passage ranks as one of the most obscure in Old English'. Anyway, there's a greater variety here (if perhaps less focused) than in the tale of St Erkenwald. For your consideration?

The Falcons that Eat Dreams

 ...I dared not speak of the beak of the King's falcon, but well I knew
how it flew through my sleep as now; a slither of wings beats on my face and
brings a hot iron to my heart....

Thomas Cranmer of Canterbury, Charles Williams

The king is troubled by bad dreams and a unquiet spirit. The usual solution has failed, due to the lack of a nearby shepherd boy with anything like the degree of necessary musical talent. But an alternative has emerged from an unseen quarter.

The falcons of the Argelephantine Mountains are said to be swiftest of fowls. A dream moves as quick as thought; a dream need follow no road or path or any track along the ground; a dream is an elusive thing, fading at the break of day. Therefore that which must pursue them must be keen-eyed, swift and possessed of the power of flight. So the king's falconer reasoned.

He set to training his birds, hitting a number of snags along the way.  Inducing them to pursue dreams was a troublesome process. One attempt, involving quantities of opium smoke, may have made the falcons of the Royal Mews see dreams, but did not do so in such a way as spurred their raptor's instincts. 

An alternative was found; the falconer found a broken-hearted young page-boy - whose dreams are transparently obvious, near to the surface of the mind and (if transient) quite potent in their composition. He was induced by alternate beatings and bribes to recount his dreams over several dead rabbits, which were used in lures to train the falcons in the pursuit and taste of dreams. 

The process needed to be repeated several times; fortunately, the court is a place where many dreams can be found, and the falconer is a strangely charismatic and masterful man who was able to suborn more than a few servants and courtiers for his purposes. In time, the falcons took to the air and began to feed on dreams themselves, removing the need for rabbits. They have developed since a certain, disturbing fixed gaze (even by the standards of raptors) and faintly purple eyes; the falconer has taken to making them new hoods, with a layer of silver leaf. They turn on a gyre woven of maidens' hair. Rune-graven bells ring at their talons.

But the falcons did exactly what they were meant to: plunging and seizing the fell dreams out of the sky at twilight. The king sleeps soundly. The falconer basks in acclaim and royal gifts. The page-boys are both beaten and bribed less. 

Of course, the applications for this kind of oneiro-accipitrarian technique have not gone unnoticed. What else is a spell, that sits in and over the mind of a wizard, but a kind of dream? Could not the falcons have some wider use?

Faufreluches: The World of Menchero

On the borders of the Thousand Day Regency there is a small world - not the smallest - orbiting a distant star - not the most distant - another stout bulwark of mankind's domain - not the stoutest.

Behold Menchero: a world of two billion souls, six major mountain ranges, two vast oceans, extensive wetlands, a bracing copper-scented atmosphere and mild paranoia.

Menchero underwent mild terraforming in the days of the Stellar Regulatory, chosen with the opaque criteria of the Machine-Minds. Settlement by lottery occurred some centuries after the Regent entered his tomb, following survey by a Janissariat expeditionary group. Government was initially by an oligarchy of founding families - who collectively prevented any one lineage from rising, even technically, to the rank of Magnate. Generational debts to Schematician planners, Secretariat licensors and Mews carriers made the world beholden to Pillar influence. This has, however, changed; as in systems spinwards of Menchero settled worlds have been devastated in flesh and spirit.

The government of Menchero is now in the direct gift of the Siegneuria. Talented administrators and leaders from Magnate cadet houses have been placed as governors there for the last century, striving to build up Menchero's resources and resiliency. Native Mencherene stewards watch them come and go, and say that Menchero's care rests with them, as it ever has.

What is it to visit Menchero? Set down at the Benxhan cosmodrome; drive out into the depths of Benxhan Rural, or weave your way into Benxhan Civic. On either journey your passage will be noted by the Vigiles, in their dull green uniforms.  Benxhan Civic will show you buildings clad in the local marmoreal, with its distinctive indigo veins. Members of the Gubernatorial Brigade patrol the Topaz Processional, clad in chrome helmets and brocade sashes. Their banners and motor-carriages show the mulberry and white-gold livery of the Lord Governor. Looking past them, one sees the terminus of the Processional, at the Chrysogonian Hall. Beyond this are the shrine towers of Celb. Drusus and Celb. Famke, with their exconjuratory corner pagodas.  Then the aggressively drab walls of the Continental Academy, and the standard-issue ornamental panels on the barbican of the Office of Public Tranquility. Further out? The Herbgarden Quarter, named for the self-satisfied financial street of Mint Row. 

Perhaps you went to Benxhan Rurual. Once past the marshalling yards and warehouses of the cosmodrome's long brownfield shadow, there are the wetlands and the scattered farm outposts. It doesn't all go one way - mostly, the goods that leave Menchero are canvas, ball-bearings, detergents and canned fish.

Menchero is (approximately) self-sustaining, and has been for some time - but the works programmes of successive governors increase the burdens on most. This is borne stolidly. There has been turmoil in Quoningen Civic as the result of a corruption trial - something to do with railway procurement, they say.  In the hills of Xianwijk Rural there has been strife, and religious turmoil: a dispute over the status of a local holy figure and her placement in the 'Anointed Generations'.  You may see convoys of the Mencharene Defence Force heading west that way, the 1st Security Division visible in buff tunics and oxblood webbing.

This is not the threat that most excites the attention of the governor, however. In the closer-than-comfortable outer galaxy, the foes of man gather. Machine-minds and rogue Janissaries are only part of the picture: rumours and psychic whisperings accumulate of the Empire of P'o L'u. Lords of the Regency begin efforts, subtle or gross, to uncover and repel the Cephalopodic Process and the dreadful absorption into that murky and lurid combine.

Will Menchero be prepared for the great trial when it comes? Which light of human settlement will be snuffed next? What could draw the tentacles of P'o L'u to this little world?

+++

Some persons

Brigadier Sebastian Kemecut - heads the First Security Division. Born and raised in Xianwijk.

Twice-Honoured Volcxken Bohelok - an official, and the most senior Mancherene native official within the Lord Governor's staff. A surprisingly keen historian.

Ioess Hanggata - Chief of the Benxhan Civic Vigiles. Increasingly convinced that he should retire soon, and very keen to obtain funds to enable this.

The Venerable Jorinde Saharca - Arch-Pastor of Benxhan. She belongs to the Echoing Circle of the Pastorate, who have a reputation for gnomic utterances, ascetic sensibilities and remarkable success with the stranger type of psychic. Saharca has been known to treat worldliness as a switch that may be flicked on and off - a habit that sits ill with more than a few of her underlings, especially those more worldly than her. 

Klaas Ergonote - Chair of the Second Directorate, Office of Public Tranquility. He is half-convinced that he could succeed on another world of the Regency, and that his talents are needed elsewhere.

Bombastimaches Greatorex - Lieutenant Governor, a Siegneuria appointment. Can't wait to return to Saiph, and spends a lot of time with the Glossatrices in the Herbgarden Quarter.

+++

Other notes

• Manchero's emblem is a mountain with a long-feathered bird perching on it, between two white blossoming branches. The governor's own symbol (usually an obvious variant of his or her Magnate family's) can be displayed below in a small cartouche. 
• This started life as a piece of 40k material; perhaps the greater military element shows. A world like Menchero is by no means the norm in the Regency, but such places do exist.
• The emperor of P'o L'u is nameless and infinite. His marshals will happily tell you as much.
• Further Faufreluches material (which you may in fact wish to read first...) may be found here. 

Phases of the Moon of Gomrath

I recently acquired an old copy of Alan Garner's Moon of Gomrath. I recognise that this name may not be a familiar one to readers. To my mind he is best described as an author of low fantasy, very heavily rooted in certain parts of the British countryside - not as in a generalised sense or spirit of a region, but as in very precise, real bits of Cheshire. If Tolkien is all languages and chronicles, Garner is archaeology and parish registers. I encountered him as a child (perhaps too young), but his works always seemed to need a little push to fully get, which I couldn't (wouldn't?) give*. (And I suspect that the business of adulthood and the effects of the internet mean that I never quite will get it.) Indeed, while I think he will still be praised by writers in (say) forty years, I wonder if he will be read or circulated in libraries. This is for reasons other than the usual declining literacy notions: there is something in Garner that probably only makes sense if you've been twelve and stayed in a cottage with no television and precious little radio reception in the middle of nowhere.

Anyway, you can compare and contrast all this to the various opinions collected on Wikipedia. 

To return to The Moon of Gomrath. Two children, a brother and sister live on Alderley Edge. This is a sequel to The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, which introduced them to the supernatural and fantastical. They don't quite literally 'save the world' but they have thwarted evil on a fairly grand scale. Is it implausible that so many of the great secret powers of the world should be tied to this bit of Cheshire? (How parochial, how nationalistic....) Implausible? Maybe, but that rather misses some of the point: without being too didactic, the notion that the battle between good and evil can be waged in your back garden should not be a surprising one. 

Ignore the scene-setting: the main point is this. There is a passage when something that you might as well think of as the Wild Hunt is summoned up. This chapter has stuck with me, thrilled me for years (even as other bits of Garner didn't)**.

A sample: 

'Wakeful are the sons of Argaton! Wakeful Ulmrig, Ulmor, Ulmbeg! Ride, Einheriar of the Herlathing!'

A breeze stirred the mist into dancing ribbons, and the flames trembled and it seemed that there was movement within them, and voices. 'We ride! We ride!' And out of the fire came three men.

Their cloaks were white, fastened with clasps of gold, and a whip was in the hand of each. Their hair was yellow, tight curled as a ram's head, and their horses white as the first snow of winter on the black mountain of the lean north wind.

Other such horsemen are woken:

'Wakeful is the son of Dunarth, north-king, mound-king! Wakeful is Fiorn in his hill! Ride, Einheriar of the Herlathing!'

'I ride! I ride!'

A lone figure came from the trees. His face as stern, heavy-browed, his beard plaited, two-forked, his mane black, awful, majestic. He wore a tunic of coarse hair without any cloak, and a round shield with five gold circles on it, and rivets of white bronze, hung from his neck. In his hand was an iron flail, having seven chains, triple-twisted, three-edged, with seven spiked knobs at the end of every chain. His horse was black, and gold-maned.

Another:

'Wakeful are the sons of Ormar! Wakeful Maedoc, Midhir, Mathramil! Ride, Einheriar of the Herlathing!'

'We ride! We ride!'

Their cloaks were blue as rain-washed day, their yellow manes spread wide upon their shoulders: five-barbed javelins in their hands, and their silver shields with fifth knobs of burnt gold on each, and the bosses of precious stones. They shone in the night as if they were the sun's rays. The horses' hoofs were polished brass and their hides like cloth of gold.

Well, there's the pattern.

Now, before I continue, allow me to say that I like and respect Garner's work. 

Having said that, you know I'm now going to say something odd. Here it is: these are, on some level, silly. Even at the age of nine or so, I knew that a flail with than many chains was....unlikely. A five-barbed javelin might work, but seemed a bit unnecessary if not fishing for eels. It was thrilling, but almost a little stupid (and not in an OTT way, as depictions of Warhammer and chainswords). And all this set alongside Garner's other historical detail and sense of place. Even in the descriptions of the 'Einheriar of the Herlathing' the images of patterned shields with 'burnt gold' or 'white bronze' provide a note of solid, tangible grave goods out of the untracked past. 

Note that most of the fantastical beings that carry weapons in Gomrath carry fairly ordinary swords and things. The Einheriar of the Herlathing are part of the 'Old Magic', deeper and wilder. So, part of their weapons and accoutrements is meant to show this: a five-barbed javelin is less a five-barbed javelin than it is an indication of some heaviness, some great mass of reality in them that can only be expressed by elaborate items and heavy colours. Don't confuse this approach with other things: it's different to 'The dread spectre held something that looked like a scythe'.***

Does this mean we should never see the Einheriar of the Herlathing? Now, obviously, the mind's eye will do its work here, and Garner has given a detailed description that could allow one to make an image of them. Indeed, they have. The copy I found is below.

Cover image by George Adamson.
Laid out with the lovely Albertus (lovely until one gets to the ampersand, that is).

And here is another cover that I recall in the local library. 

This image found on Ebay. The cover to the Collins edition; I believe this is by David Wyatt - who I have learnt did any number of fantasy covers from my youth (I don't think that this is one of his best, but I do remember it - though happily, I'd forgotten that sparkly font for Garner's name). 

Anyway, I think that it will be agreed that the above depict A) Fiorn, mound-king and B) Maedoc, Midhir, Mathramil, the sons of Ormar. Working from my paragraph above on the 'thrilling but silly' nature of their descriptions and the meta-real (perhaps) idea of the horsemen and the hunt, I'm almost minded to suggest that you shouldn't try and depict these figures at all. 

It's not that I believe it could never look good or right (though there's surely an element of that). Fantasy art has shown itself more than able over the last few decades to depict remarkable and elaborate arms and costume in a satisfactorily realistic, lovingly detailed way. Somewhere, there's no doubt an artist whose version of (say) the Horsemen of Donn utterly succeeds. 

But would this flatten it? Undo it? Pin the drifting butterfly to the card? Collapse the wave function? Of course, given that I'm writing about this one chapter of a children's novel from the 1960s, the covers above haven't utterly undone or obliterated the worth of Garner's work. But I think it would be a mistake to film or animate Gomrath. Other books by Garner are fair game (and indeed have been adapted into television series).

To end: two things you can chew over. Firstly, are there any more uses of description like those above that you can picture? Secondly, is there anything else in fiction of this kind that you think really shouldn't be depicted? I recall a friend once saying that there should never be an attempted map of Gormenghast. 

*I'd have never understood Red Shift if I had found a copy at the time.

** I wasn't thinking of it at the time, but if a recording angel of the celestial bureaucracy were to tell me that it inspired parts of The Orrery of Golems, I'd have little reason to doubt them. 

*** To say nothing of the discussions one sees on the Wings of the Balrog.

March-April 2025 Miscellany

A busier than expected last few months, which included a chance find of Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, as memorably reviewed by Patrick Stuart. I don't plan to address that here - I'm not certain I'd really care to review it at all - but it's worth reading, however weighty a tome it is.

Some less weighty tomes included....

***

A Wonderful Welcome to Oz

That being a collection of The Marvellous Land of Oz, Ozma of Oz and The Emerald City of Oz. All written by L. Frank Baum, but put into one volume by A) The Modern Library Classics and B) Gregory Maguire, the author of Wicked. (Which you may or may not know as a sort of parallel narrative to The Wizard of Oz published in 1995).

The three volumes so picked are sequels to Baum's first, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900); Marvellous Land (1904) and Ozma (1907) being the second and third books and Emerald City (1910) being the sixth. Baum, despite a sensational novel, was not good with money, and kept writing them through most of the rest of his life. A Wonderful Welcome to Oz maintains as near as possible the illustrations of John R. Neill, who illustrated most of Baum's Oz books.

I saw this second-hand and grabbed it, largely because I have no connection to Oz whatsoever. The 1939 film rather passed me by as a child, and I have never seen an edition on a library shelf. Yet we still have extensive reference to it, and various revivals or revisions or similar - as witness Maguire's Wicked, and adaptations thereof. 

So do I regret a childhood without Oz? I may say that I do not. In certain respects, it summons up the image of an Alice in Wonderland without the attendant dislocation and peril. The conceit and spleen of Wonderland's inhabitants is sharper than the whimsy and peevishness of the Ozites, however similar the narratives may be. There is a picaresque, unconnected quality to the plot, especially in Emerald City. 

It does all read as very American, of course. It is written by an American and Americans often appear; Oz itself is at the centre of a sparsely inhabited continent. This is on top of lunch-pails growing from trees, or the pragmatic and industrious conceit of the Tin Woodman. Perhaps it's something to do with the air of a well-fed and self-satisfied citizenry? Calling it America's fairyland makes a great deal of sense, I suppose. 

I note that in Oz, men are either A) Non-entities or B) Remarkable but pretty useless eccentrics. Women are sylphs possessed of wide-ranging magics, witches or (merely) driven, competent and practical. If a man happens to possess any of the latter traits, he will turn out to be a woman in disguise. (Applications of the above to any land other than Oz are made at the reader's own risk.) I wonder what Chesterton would have made of this?

Anyway, I remain (alas) unenchanted. 

***

The Etruscan, Mika Waltari (1955; translation into English published in Great Britain 1957)

In its native Finland, this was first published as Turms, Kuolematon. 

A mercenary (Turms) in 5th century BC Greece has to uncover his own background and supernatural significance, believing himself to be cursed. A comment a year or so back brought it to my attention. I think I had heard of The Etruscan before (and Waltari, if only for being something like the only Finnish novelist with a Hollywood adaptation). I will push a little against Alec - Soldier in the Mist reads like Wolfe's use of Waltari's premise, and even plausibly might be a sequel (Turms sends off soldiers to aid  Persia in Xerxes's invasion of Greece towards the end of the book, and these might have included Latro.) There's also differences in tone: Wolfe's supernatural elements are more blatant and the appearance of historical figures more obvious (Pindar, Themistocles). Turms is doing something like writing his memoirs; Wolfe maintains the structure of Latro's day to day use of the scroll. 

The Etruscan also covers a longer span of time. Turms goes from cast-up soldier to maturity, with several years-long stays in various places or roles.  His gradual apotheosis involves not a little heartbreak and blood - and he aids some fairly vile people in his progress. It's just on the historical side of the border between fantasy historical fiction, maintaining that place despite Turms growing to become a sort of priest-king called a Lucumon and referring to himself as an immortal (Turms Kuolematon translating to Turms Immortal). An interesting comparison might be Votan. I think this will reward your curiosity. 

***

Another chance find was The Modern World, Steph Swainston. I think that a longer piece would be necessary to do justice to her Castle novels, but suffice it to say that I think they work fairly well. The central image of the Castle itself, with its competitive immortals, medieval stylings, mysterious Emperor and constant apocalyptic threat represent the sort of setting that would be good for those looking to do something with Space Knights outside 40k.

***

There is a new edition of The 52 Pages, together with the Next 52 Pages! I have a personal attachment to this system, and have used it for some of my work on this blog - but if you have an interest in a nice compact (and free!) RPG system, do take a look!

***

You may or may not know that there is a Price Drop for False Machine products - if you were on the fence, perhaps this is a time to take the plunge.

Too Like the Lightning-Rod: Serendipitous January Reading

I suppose I could bulk this out into a fuller miscellany, but January's almost over and these go quite well together.

I acquired two bits of reading which I only got round to in the last month or so. Both have a nice connection to the Magical Enlightenment stuff I've been putting together under the name The Rest of All Possible Worlds.

***

No. 1 : The Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu

These were a chance find in a book giveaway. I picked up the Everyman edition. 

Lady Wortley Montagu was alive from 1689-1762. She's perhaps most famous for having gone with her husband as part of an embassy to Constantinople and brining back smallpox vaccination. That's impressive, but forms only one part of her letters. 

She writes sending back reports of her travels - to her lady friends in Britain, to the Abbe Conti in France. These are a mix of responses to their letters, personal news and her discussions of the places she visits. Her journey across Europe takes her through Amsterdam, Prague, Genoa, Leipzig and such places - and she finds time to comment on the local habits, the doing of the aristocracy and so forth. It's when she reaches Ottoman territory that things become more interesting (though comparisons of 18th C London and Amsterdam have their purposes). 

Thus, then to Belgrade, Adrianople, then Constantinople. We are given her impressions of these territories quite closely, with the consciousness of being 'outside of Christendom' (however many Greek or Armenian Christians she encounters). Aside from how observant and discerning Lady Wortley Montagu may herself be, she also has the advantage of being able to enter the women's quarters - to go into the bathhouse and harem and report back. This isn't exactly untitillating, though I note her discussions of Western Europe weren't shy of mentioning dalliances. But it does give her a different insight into the ways and means of another culture - which she uses to pass comment on European customs, be they Catholic or Protestant.

Indeed, Lady Wortley Montagu is sufficiently questing, sufficiently outspoken and well-connected to make her something of a proto-feminist. She's not the model of a Bluestocking - that would come later in the 18th Century - but her remarks on women's education and status certainly indicate a dissatisfaction with the status quo (at least for her class) and places value on the work and wisdom of her sex. 

She wrote throughout her life, and her letters from Turkey only form part of this. Indeed, once she gets past reports from abroad, she is able to write in a more focused way on the place of women - especially to her daughter. Lady Wortley Montagu would live apart from her husband in Avignon and northern Italy toward the end of her life; her letters are still undulled by a long stay and full of the observations of another country.

None of this is crucial reading, of course. But I found it valuable to read the sort of accounts that would fuel what we think of as the Enlightenment; read them in their original mix of the dull, the obvious, the prejudiced, the now-remarkable and the exciting. If you are the sort of person to have read your way to this blog, I think I would suggest reading a similar set of letters at some point. 

***

No. 2 - Terra Ignota

A recent series of four novels (published 2016-2021) by Ada Palmer, Professor of Renaissance Studies at the University of Chicago (I've approvingly linked before now to her blog, Ex Urbe). It's a semi-Utopian society in the year 2454 and a series of tensions and conflicts within it.

First things first: this is embedded with - shall we say - culture war lightning rods. Nation-states as we know them are abolished, courtesy of rapid transport in the form of flying cars. Citizens present themselves in as gender-neutral; that the narrator is going back through apply 'He' and 'She' is controversial. The nuclear family has fallen so far out of favour as it may be said to be abolished. Public religion has been banned, following a period in the 21st century called 'the Church Wars'. Reservations for religion still exist, as do private counsellors called senssayers. Censorship is widespread, if sensitively applied. There is an ongoing in-world controversy about childrearing and cybernetics which is akin to other debates about home education and significant surgery for minors. 

Hence my image of lightning rods. I don't know if anyone was jumping up and down hoping to burn these books, but this is clearly inflammable stuff. Which, naturally, makes it fascinating. 

I've seen Terra Ignota referred to as a dizzying mix of heaven and hell to a 21st century reader, rather like 2025 would be to a human being of the 16th century. This is not wrong, though clearly some would find it far more heavenly than others. And, indeed, you should likely prepare for something to bother you unpredictably in Terra Ignota. 

The world of Terra Ignota has been divided into Hives. These have coalesced over time into several large entities, more akin to culture-blocs than nations - and certainly not geographically contiguous. Wikipedia's guide to these is quite good, laying out the nurturing Cousins and ambitious Humanists. 

It is a world of solid freedoms, drawing from the Enlightenment - and deliberately written to evoke the 18th century. Thinkers of the period are quoted - Voltaire especially - and the writing style is composed to match. There is a focus on the correct form of government, of conflict bounded by a sense of goodwill, of plenty, of debate, of competition among elites. This last part is rather characteristic; it is both delightful that we get such a top-down and wide-ranging view of things, from characters who can and who want to learn all they can about a situation - but one does sometimes have to wonder what the lowest members of the Hives do with themselves. 

I think that this is especially the case with some groups. Palmer seems to have a moderately good idea of who the Cousins are, what sort of person joins the Utopians, and so forth. But while I can see that she knows that there are the sort of people (who aren't Princes or wunderkind) who would join the orderly Masonic Empire I don't get the impression she has a notion of how they think or act. Which is a problem if part of the conditions for later conflict is that the Masons have become the largest hive, with no sign of stopping!

One can certainly take the whole series as an extended meditation and discussion of the Enlightenment, and how it might shake out if sufficiently embraced and extended. There's a set of scenes toward the end which could certainly be read as referential of A) Postcolonial thought and B) A transition from Liberal Democracy to Social Democracy. That is, the end of the Enlightenment, or perhaps a phase thereof. 

I won't delve into the plot here (really). I was more often appreciative of it than swept up in it. The main point I have is that I was not quite satisfied by Terra Ignota, and you should probably read it. It is doing the things that one would wish Science Fiction to do, and it is doing them from a well-read informed position. 

Certainly, it sometimes tries too much - the elements of theodicy are not what they could be (but then, perhaps they are as good or as informed as our theologically innocent [or, perhaps, theologically sophomoric] narrators). The vast list of characters is benefit and hazard both. The extensive reference to the Iliad and Odyssey are apt, but liable to flap a little too loose. There are elements that clearly point forward from present debates - but then the approach to them and the framing feels a little too like the early 2010s, at least in rhetoric, and it turns out that this is exactly when this was written. This can make it feel...late to the party. (The art, culture and sensibilities of the Utopians feel especially guilty of this. It's not un-sensical in universe, but it really does have something too much of Tumblr in it. Though paradoxically, Terra Ignota doesn't feel that 'online', really. Thank the 18th century and the flying cars.)

There are other ways Terra Ignota undercuts itself. I've highlighted the Masons above. There's a sense in which the Mitsubushi are having their cake and eating it by being so based in East Asia without being formally a national or regional culture (also, though it almost certainly isn't the intention, it's difficult to un-see a Yellow Peril element). Religion is private, but there are lines in the fourth book, Perhaps the Stars, of it being unspoken general knowledge that certain hives have a reputation for having many members from a certain faith. And that the religious reservations are freely accessible. This reframes things awkwardly, and if it was going to appear, should have done so earlier. 

There's an anime-esque cast of thousands, along with long scenes of back-and-forth dialogue in moments of vital action. A little cumbersome, but not objectionable - and better than the alternative. There are one or two moments of smug, glib, triumphalist anti-authoritarianism that I associate with the (movement? subgenre? tendency?) tendency Hopepunk, but these are happily few and far between. Palmer has explicitly linked Terra Ignota and Hopepunk in essays and such material, but that doesn't distress me. 

I suppose my reaction to Terra Ignota is largely that I wish to like it more. The flaws it possesses are not severe, but they are flaws. But it is undeniably of such a substance that one can grapple with.

A Map: Possibilities and Realities

I acquired a book called North Russian Architecture in a give-away a few months back. A small item, pages of heavy high-quality paper, a wood-effect hard cover. Published 1972 in the USSR, translation by Kathleen Cook. If it didn't have pages about six inches square in area, I might call it a coffee-table book.

Opening it the last few days, I found it to be quite charming - if the sort of volume replaced these days by Wikipedia and digital photography*. Many details on the wooden Churches in Lake Onega, for instance - which really are incredible. An interesting testimony to the abundance of a resource fuelling architectural creativity.

Among the material within, I found this map, showing Solovetsky Monastery, on the islands of the same name in the middle of the White Sea.

    The key is not conveniently positioned, so I reproduce it here:

Towers:
A - Spinning, B - Assumption, C - Watch, D - North, E - Kvass-Brewing, F - Kitchen, G- South, H - White

Gates:
I - Holy, II - Herring, III - St Nicholas, IV - Kvass-Brewing, V - Kitchen, VI - Assumption, VII - Archangel

Buildings:
1 - Cathedral of the Transfiguration (1558-66), 2 - Cathedral of the Assumption and refectory (1552-57), 3 - Trinity Cathedral (1859), 4 - Bell-tower (1777) and Church of St Nicholas (1834), 5 - Passage, 6 - Church of the Annunciation (1596-1601), 7 - Church of St Philip (1798-1859), 8 - Hospital building, 9-17 -  living quarters and domestic buildings, 18 - Water mill, 19 - Chambers (1615), 20 - Chambers (1642).

Heady stuff - with that assortment of gates and functions and religious areas. All the more so when one reads that Ivan IV (the Terrible) gave the monks cannons. So much that adventurers could tamper with, so many options. Is the herring gate somehow enchanted for monastic anglers? Does the spinning tower revolve?

If you were primed to assume that Solovetsky Monastery was made of wood - well, so was I. However, it is of brick and stone. Don't worry; your version - in northmost Tsymric? - can be wooden.

The other unexpected discovery was in my cross-checking; as it emerges, the Solovetsky Islands were the site of one of the earliest Soviet prison camps. This makes geographic sense: in 1923, the sites of the old Tsarist penal colonies in Siberia (EG) were cut off during the Civil War, and the Allied Archangel Expedition had wrapped up by then. The White Sea would be accessible by rail from the Muscovite heartland and the islands would make escape difficult. I had encountered this before, but it hadn't lodged in my mind like the names of (say) Alcatraz, Devil's Island, Wormwood Scrubs, Botany Bay or Dartmoor. Thankfully, I have encountered attractive maps to be questioned before and I do not regret picking this up by chance.

To end on a milder note - I have encountered few other things in following up for this post, including the Anglican Church in Riga (Cf. St Olaf's, Balestrand), the Estonian and Latvian naval jacks, and the source of the Pinega River, in the Krasnoborsk marshes, at the confluence of the Black and White Rivers - which sounds like something out of the Painted Lands.

*Occasionally it lapses from art-historian technicalities or tour brochure gloss to refer to something oddly specific. See this passage, when referring to old Autumn fairs:
'...they would trade in distaffs, clay toys, household utensils and birch-bark boxes. Similar boxes painted with strange green and red flowers with white and blue leaves are still made by Dmitri Matveyevich Novinsky, a local craftsman who lives not far from Verkhnyaya Uftyuga in the village of Novoandreyevka.'

City of Libations

You must never call it a necropolis, for it is no such thing. It is merely the city where the dead dwell. No memorials, no tombs, no graveyards are to be found there.

The dead dwell there, and have a sense of obligation to the living. At set intervals through the year, therefore, the dead make offerings to them. Shrines radiate out from the city like the spokes of a wheel, set at the end of long roads of white stone. Before the shrines are gardens and covered arbours. The shrines themselves vary in ornament and detail, but not in form. There is a broad double door at the front, facing a back wall with a shallow stage. In the left and right walls are small doors, facing one another in line with the stage. It is usual for a bench to run along every wall other than the back.

Each shrine is associated with a village or the quarter of a town. The people of the region go to their shrine, which they furnish and decorate with painted patterns, geometric motifs and local symbols. Sometimes they sweep out leaves or cobwebs, but the shrines themselves remain curiously free of decay. 

On the days when the dead make their offerings, everyone in the village is meant to come. It is known that the very ill cannot or should not, and that women heavy with child may not - no stigma is attached to this. The misfortune of illness, the laborious necessity of childbirth and the empty gap in the year's cycle is considered burden enough. The wayfarer is not compelled to come, neither are they told what day is coming. A resident outsider, as a foreign merchant, may in time become part of the ritual. 

In the early morning, the village will rise, dress and march the long miles to the shrines. There, they do two things before entering. In the gardens before the shrine are set long troughs of rainwater, with which they wash hands, face and feet. Then, they sit to eat at long benches. The food varies with season and locale - but it is generally both portable and plentiful. Often it is cooked on fires in stone braziers. Flatbreads are not uncommon. 

Aside from the usual business of the daily meal, this has two functions. Firstly, it prepares the villager for the effects of a libation. The wine of the dead is strong and it is largely considered best to have something in your belly before you imbibe. Secondly, the wine of the dead is not of the living; it is otherworldly. Therefore, it is best to face it with a ballast of the mundane within you. There is the tale - invariably passed down from the teller's grandparents - of a lean season, and men eating balls of clay before entering a shrine.

When they have eaten, all enter. Those that tire readily are seated on the benches; most stand. The main door is closed and the shrine is lit only from high windows. after some time, the side doors open and the dead enter. A prominent villager stands nearest the stage, holding a large bowl. Unseen, the dead cross the stage, and moisture is seen condensing on the bowl. Eventually, the last of the dead passes by. In local tradition, this may be the newly departed, the oldest in recollection, the famously tardy, the notably dutiful or something else entirely. The bowl is now full and the side doors close.

Within the bowl is a strong, pallid wine. The taste has been compared to plum brandy. Villagers each extract a small travel cup from their clothing and advance to take a measure. Slowly or quickly, they drink and leave. It is consider well-mannered to pause briefly outside and see how your companions are doing, but this is not a place for conversation. The last out will close the doors and clear any remnants from the garden.

Curiosity is expected of men, and this includes villagers. It is quite common for a youth to walk a ways down the white stone road where the dead walk - but not generally on the day of a libation. Some eventually become brave enough to enter the city itself. 

Those who do report back on two things. Firstly, the white stone which makes up the roads is used for the houses as well. Secondly, the lack of any of the patterning and motifs that artisans would employ in houses or clothes or other worked items in the village. Third, the half-silence that moves in a slow bubble around them as they pass through the courts of the city. Fourth, the cypherbirds. Cypherbirds are seen outside of the city as well, but clearly make the city their home. From a distance they appear to be peafowl of a sort of drab cream colour. Those who actually make into the city have seen them fan open their tailfeathers, displaying inscrutable symbols on a pallid screen. No-one agrees quite what these mean; to the bold, they are pictograms of courage and strength - to the splenetic, they show spite and insolence. To the fearful, they confirm each contradictory fear.*

Those that go the deepest into the city report a taller building with three arched entrances at the front. No light can be seen from within these, nor any sign of a door or side passage. Some have thought this a vault; some a great meeting hall, some a temple. Faded glyphs cover the outside, which may be the same as those on the cypherbirds. 

Curiosity is expected of men, and this includes those not from the villages. Bandits, treasure hunters and bravos have long assumed that the city of libations has within it fabulous wealth. So, they attempt to cross the walls, avoiding the open roads of white stone and the shrines. They find themselves confronted by dense walls of cut thorn, rather like those reported on the savannah. However, these thorn branches appear to be petrified.  

If they can safely cross these, they must climb the walls, and then they must navigate a crowded cityscape of toughly-built homes and high walls. Further thorn clumps are found within. They will be followed - by the cries of cypherbirds, by swarms of insects, by dull roaring that may or may not be the wind, by footprints - and by the open eyes of the dead. 

You must never call it a necropolis, and tomb raiders are unwelcome. 

*   'To the melancholy this sound is melancholy and to the hysterical it is hysterical. To me it has always sounded like a cheer for an invisible parade.'
Flannery O'Connor writing in 'The King of the Birds' on the peacock. 

Faufreluches: O Sister, where art thou?

The eye-catching, vaguely-uncharitable and banally-provocative title of this post being something like 'Your Sisters of Battle suck - HERE is why!'

The Sisters of Battle - the Adepta Soriatas - are one of the more characteristic factions within Warhammer 40,000. A militant order of space nuns, zealous enforcers of the Imperial Creed, simultaneously the strong right arm of the Ecclesiarchy and those who once purged its overlord. 40k being the size it is, they seem to have leaked over into other properties, influencing things in the same fashion as the wider Warhammer look and approach did. I doubt, for one, that the Vestal of Darkest Dungeon (ostensibly more of a piece with Warhammer Fantasy) has quite such a confrontational look without the Sisters of Battle.

Behold, said Vestal.

This extends, of course, to other GW properties - Mordenheim's Sisters of Sigmar appear after the introduction of the Sisters of Battle, and serve as a localised fantasy pastiche of their Far-Future predecessors. I don't mean to suggest that the Sisters of Battle are somehow unique, mind you. They stake out a corner of the ground within which lies Paladin Girl. Indeed, they aren't even the only Pulpy Battle Nun creation of the 1990s. Other forerunners are the Fish Speakers of the later Dune books and the Vestal Vampires of Termight in Nemesis the Warlock.

Of course, the icon of the 41st Millennium is (for better or worse) that horrifying merger of rifleman, astronaut and templar, the Space Marine. The Sisters were left rather adrift for many years. No new models, no new rules, far few books. Yet they kept making an appearance, and it's difficult to imagine the Grim Darkness of the Far Future without them. 

But, while you may have an image of a Sister of Battle in your mind right now - and it may be a detailed and characterful image - it may well be the only image. Further: how many of their characters can you name? How many can you tell apart? Certainly, the various fan projects, art and discussions one encounters (that is, those trying to not to drift too far from the canon...) seem to stick to a fairly narrow stereotype. Even if their miniatures line may have been expanded, I would suggest that we don't have enough models of the Sisters.

Nothing but Joans of Arc, as far as the eye can see.

Why is this? Well, we might point to the mantle of zealous enforcers given to the Sisters. If they are in that role for (quote) 'the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable' it should be no surprise that they are rigid and unvarying. Further, the Ecclesiarchy has more obvious centralising, uniform cultural tendencies that other Imperial factions - both as a matter of in-universe lore and in the wider parodic-satiric aspects it bears. (This overview of an old Sisters codex rather concludes that the Ecclesiarchy-themes and material rather dominate any separate identity the Sisters might have.)

The answer of 'Misogyny' is a little pat, but not necessarily untrue. I don't have the background or knowledge base to properly consider that, but I'd feel foolish not mentioning it. 

There's another aspect, which requires a bit of explaining. I'm going to propose three types of variation for a group principally portrayed as tabletop miniatures, as the Sisters. 

• Football-Strip Variation
• Plurality Variation
• Top-to-bottom - or, more aptly - Cap-à-Pie Variation

Football-Strip Variation is easily explained. Different paint schemes, as developed by individual modellers or suggested by the publishers of the model line. This can even by facilitated by things like transfers with different symbols on.

Plurality Variation is where many but not a majority of elements of the model - and the character represented - are changed. A distinct likeness to the original remains. A sub-faction would be well-represented by this, but a sub-faction can exist with only a few additional models being Plurality-Varied. Both individual modellers or the publishers of the model line could create this.

Cap-à-Pie Variation is top-to-bottom transformation. If we are producing a Chapter of Inca-inspired Space Marines, there will be significant sculpting to add Incan details to their armour. This is really something only individual modellers could do: if the publishers of the model line do this, then the something new has like as not been created. Grey Knights are no longer Space Marines. (Shut up, you know what I mean.) 

All these forms of variation can be seen on (say) fan art as well as in modelling. 

(Incidentally, if a passing semiotician or theorist of aesthetics wants to tell me that there are existing terms for all this, I'd love to hear them.)

Football-Strip Variation is always very likely. A different colour scheme is a simple process. Likewise, I think that there will always be a sprinkling of people who want to go all in on customisation and will produce Cap-à-Pie Variation. 

But I think that Plurality Variation is harder to produce, and is more important for producing a broad range of images for a given line of models. Smith painting Space Marines teal and burnt umber is just teal-and-umber Space Marines. Smith painstakingly converting Samurai Orks or Tau using Necron weapons is just Smith's Samurai Orks. There's a certain point between the two necessary for breadth.

Hence, for instance, the Space Marines. This portion of an interview with Gav Thorpe details the core theme of four Chapters who received Plurality Variation - who could then be taken as a model of (EG) the Unorthodox going forward.

And this ties into something greater. Let's go over some Imperial factions. 

• Our Plurality Variations of Space Marines are those of Warriors - Vikings, Mongols, Arthurian Knights, Plains Indians. Easy to gasp, easy to add to.

(If you encounter a Plurality or Cap-à-Pie Variation which is very clearly drawing from 20th or 21st century military looks, then it's almost certainly resting on 'Special Forces imagery' - which hits the individual and self-directed elements of the Warrior concept . Cf. The various remarkably code-named characters of Metal Gear Solid, et al.)

• Similarly, our Plurality Variations of the Imperial Guard are Soldiers - generic Western NATO types, the Red Army of WWII, Desert Rats, Redcoats, a deliberate mix of everyone in the Vietnam War (except the French). 
• Inquisitors and their followers are, as discussed elsewhere, to some degree professional PCs. Variation is in-built. 
• The tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus are relatively new to having their own faction. But we have multiple instances of characterful, varied tech-priests over the years. They are, to put not too fine a point on it, Nerds (their basic Skitarii infantry are even goggle-eyed and stick-limbed!) and Mad Scientists of which there are variations a-plenty. A whole cult of Victor Frankensteins.

But when it comes to the Sisters - there, we falter. A majority of players/fans/[other] can't provide Plurality Variations of clergy. Our images of religious life are far too limited.

At this point, you might be saying to yourself 'I can imagine all sorts of priests and monks! Haughty Bishops, serene Buddhist monks, Hellenic pagans reading the entrails, ranting Televangelists, mild Vicars, knowing melancholic Rabbis, gold-sickled druids, Hindu ascetics...' 
    Or, for that matter 'I can conjure up a Sister with inner doubts, a Sister who is hiding a bitter loss, a Sister who rejoices in slaughter, a Sister who is enthusiastic about a particular period of poetry....'

This doesn't quite work, of course. The former is far too broad for Plurality Variation; the latter is perfectly good, but off the peg rather than tailored to fit. Compare the proposed Dwarves in Paras 4-6 here. It also runs the risk of the wrong emphasis: consider those adaptations of Chesterton's Father Brown that make him a detective who sometimes says a Mass, rather than a Priest who solves crimes.

I recognise that this is not a new complaint. Neal Stephenson was writing about a lack of religious knowledge and empathy in the aftermath of the Waco siege in the essay 'Blind Secularism'. Less loftily, my praise for Fading Suns had some of this in it. But I will maintain it all the same.

"That's some lovely Polymorphonic Carbon there, be a shame is something happened to it."
Image found in this article on Emperor of the Fading Suns.

[Incidentally, what would this a comparable Plurality Variation look like for Sisters? Well, to point to the Imperial Guard, we have standard khaki-and-rifles army men, scrappy irregulars, heavy-coated gas-masked trenchfighters, troopers for various environments and troopers in dress uniforms.  One would seek at least this level of visual difference, whatever the extent of different characterisation.

Thus, we might suggest Sisters in very plain, functional wargear. Perhaps this Order frequently serves as missionaries, cut off from the normal supply lines. Their devotion to the Emperor is that of loyal servants: ornament and honour is reserved for the altars and reliquaries.

(This is, to be clear, an outline of a sort of order, that a player can tailor closer to fit their preferences. And, of course, they likely aren't only missionaries.)

An obvious contrast is found with a highly ornamental Order, dripping with devotional iconography and decorative elements, drawing heavily on the familiar work of John Blanche. There may be a sense of affective piety among them, stressing a sense of emotional connection to the Emperor - and a willingness to endure his pains. Cue the hairshirt, and other forms of mortification of the flesh. Conspicuous piety of this kind makes them a natural fit for the centre rather than the fringes of the Imperium.

There is also the Sister as enforcer and observer - a Praetorian Guard at the side of a Cardinal, as ready to defend them as to purge them. There's a stress on formality, purity and observation. Think of them drawing from the iconography of the black-and white wimpled and veiled nun - and the black-suited white-shirted secret service agent. Starched white veils concealing high-tech surveillance gear. Gleaming bolter muzzles peaking from under broad black cloaks.

Finally, we might consider an image of the witchfinder. An up-armoured, imposing figure, with exotic weaponry - to both even the odds against the rogue Psyker and, possibly, to take them alive. We might see touches of the SWAT team in them. The inclusion of some in Capotain 'Puritan' hats would be a familiar touch; some of the ferocious elements in the design of the Sisters of Silence might also be apt.

Missionary, Celebrant, Enforcer, Witchfinder. Two outward-facing, two inward. Two plainer, two ornamented. One practical, one passionate, one reserved, one pugnacious. Perhaps this works.]

All very well, though it's unlikely that Games Workshop will come knocking at my door any time soon. So how do I apply all this in my own feudal future  - faufreluchaen* - setting?

+++

Quote:  The Regent knew that Mankind was Changing. The Pastorate are there to make sure that Mankind knows it too. Teachers, counsellors, ritualists - bearers of the vision for all mankind.

As that suggests, the Regent isn't quite viewed as a deity. But a mediator? A prophet? An intercessor? Well, he's managed to be all of those things. Then panegyrics of his own life - and half-life - positioned him as a tool of destiny - undeniably blessed - chosen by chance, by fate - by the universe - by existence itself. This isn't damnable, or even strictly wrongheaded. It may be a misconception, but the Pastorate would rather work with misconceptions that not work at all. 

Established terminology: Ministers as the base representative of the Pastorate, headquartered in temples. Training to occur in seminaries. Witchfinders ('The Office of Detection') and Wardens are among the Pastorate's paramilitary arms. Arch-Pastors to oversee large cities (and their hinterlands), Metropolites to oversee star systems. Typically 'black-clad'. The name of the Regent is repeated once a terrestrial year in the ceremony of the Perennial Obituary. 

So far, so loosely sketched. How do we draw this out into Plurality Variation? 

Well, as Fading Suns, we might have sects still roughly bound together. We should avoid, however, an idea of castes or specialised departments. What we have are circles and networks. Ministers and Pastorate officials align into informal groups - which harden into societies - which put their members to work - which develop talents and specialities - which grow in influence and dominance over a certain discipline, or a certain province, or a certain system. 

It would be very rare for every minister on a fully-settled planet to be of one Circle. It would not be rare for Nine out of Ten Senior Ministers, Arch-Pastors, Seminary Heads or Provincial Pastorate Clarks (PPCs) to be of a Circle.
    It's not quite like being a member of a monastic order (though of course certain Ministers may take certain life-long vows and gather into communities governed by a certain rule), or a political party (though of course Ministers can play politics), or a social clique (though naturally Ministers have a social life). But it's not not like those things.

Time for some examples. 

The Journeying Circle - Have their roots in travelling Ministers, of the first days of the Pastorate. They are no longer mendicants, but continue to use the iconography of travel. This covers devotional literature, rhetoric, art and dress - wide-brimmed hats, robust boots, clothing cut to accommodate space suits even if they never leave their planet. 

They make significant efforts to unearth Psychics, and when they find them spend a lot of time minutely recording their actions within isolated, specially prepared cloisters. 

Their advice and instruction focuses on the constant effort to move forward and develop.

Journeying Circle institutions include the Pilgrims' Sodality, the Geofric Monks, the Seven-Path Trust and the Saiph Sector Pastorate Journal and Record.

The Lector Circle - Prioritise teaching and knowledge, in both the Circle's own lodges and in public libraries. Keen educators, omnivorous readers - irritating know-it-alls, inflexible disciplinarians. A notable mark of a Circle member is the wide lattice-patterned collar; some may carry the flat 'scribe's satchel'. Many will carry the flat square string of Mnemonic beads; each bead is set with a series of Lectorine shorthand marks that allow the carrier to readily recall a long block of text.

They focus both on teaching themselves, on enabling teaching, and on regulating what is and isn't taught.   

Their advice might typically focus on programmes of study and specialist instructors. 

Lector Circle institutions include the Agatho Development Commission, the House of Learned Repose and the Amaranth Echelon.

The Beacon and Banner Circle - can be directly traced to a Minister of the world Bagdemagus, Belisar. He is now 'Celebrated Belisar' in the Pastorate's Glyptotheque of Notables, where slabs of the native rock of their home worlds bear the names and great deeds of those the Pastorate considers the best of humanity. Belisar was chronicler and companion to the Paladin Chrysogon. The Beacon and Banner Circle follow his example, tracking the Paladins that emerge from the Massif, cultivating ties with the Maiors and recording the words and deeds of Paladins past and present.

If not actively tracking a Paladin or agent of the Palace, they will hold revivalist meetings, focussing audiences on their bonds to distant Terra.  Psychics they encounter are left to roam freely, though they are constantly watched. 

Their advice deals often with exemplars or inspirational narratives. 

Beacon and Banner institutions include the Guild of Esoteric Methods, the Yeomen's Benevolence Society, the Rifle-Sisters of Rigel and the College of Celb. Mavrasar.

+++

That's likely enough to give some flavour of what could be apt. The comparison with the Sisters of Battle is loose, I know, but it struck me as a worthwhile exercise all the same. The Circles described above are a bit squishy - but it offers opportunities to focus in on a specific example, which can then be backed by the wider body.

*Semiurge's work is generally good; it is especially nice when it is inspired by my own work!