Seeker of Thrones 5-47
Chapter: 5
“Prince Kassardis was swift, and he was young and his mind was honed. The land about his kingdom was barren but not fierce, and the roads were well kept. Even so, the sun had barely dipped below the horizon before he knew he would soon be caught. For as he glanced back over his shoulder, he saw the cruel glint on Vastoki’s eyeglasses as she traversed the bluffs behind him. And a little further back than that, even for all this distance, he thought he could hear the awful grinding of Littari’s cauldron as she dragged it across the bare earth. And even further back, just cresting the horizon, were the bright and lazy banners of Ipreski as her palanquin was borne along into the desert.”
– Tales of the Silver Prince
Kassardis knew a thing or two
About living as prey, fear was true.
But we should also (me and you).
The Devil Squad. Time to play it Cool, guys!
And, of course, Alice-UN will do something very stupid.
Finally going to see Himself… himself. I’m not sure whether he’s going to be calm and collected or stark raving mad. Colour me excited!
You assume that madmen are incapable of a facade of composure. In truth, the most successful madmen know of their madness, and are capable of concealing it from any who might try to impede their warped agenda.
So naive…
Indeed!
Cio warned her about the monster she had been and may yet become, but Alice doesn’t seem to be an auditory learner.
More likely she just thought that devils were just Odd People. You know, people that live upside down, have weird bodies and bodily processess but still essentially just people.
Here we learn why devils are called devils, why monstrosity is attributed to them and that it is done not at all unfairly.
Of course, what they do here is nothing compared what humans do to themselves. Look merely at the Princes, the Seven blessed with copies of the Divine Name and what they do. The devils have the excuse in that they exist this way, they are made this way and look: they rarely ever bother to hide it.
Many human philosophers and religious orders on many many worlds have counseled against the eating of meat. I have always objected to this taboo for educational reasons, because of their short lifespans. The concept of raising something for slaughter by itself makes the practice of butchery worthwhile; without such a firm grounding it is much harder for humans to recognize or acknowledge the inevitable parallels in their relationships with their leaders. Besides, what other activity sums up the true nature of humans better than the eating of flesh?
Wise words oh Obvious One, again- I dare say that wisdom is wasted upon those of throne. Too bound up in their assumed fates to see it as it is.
Very good, a fellow cannibal endorser! Bravo! There’s no flesh like human flesh, I say.
“Welcome to the show and for this episode we have a real treat for you all, we’re going to feast on the soul of a forsaken child. Stillborn, really, practically unbaptized. Now, morsels such as these are fragile things, but don’t worry, we’ll be very delicate in the abattoir today. So preheat your cast iron and get your pincers out, I’m going to show you how to get a perfect sear to really seal in the agony and get the most flavor from such a tiny discarded fetus…”
Seriously though, I understand less and less why people care so much more about babies than those grown up. Babies are ugly, demand all attention for themselves, can’t understand anything but the most basic stuff, have contributed nothing to society, don’t have any (real) friends, a past, and usually they equal anything strange with pain and cry the same way.
So why do most people seem to feel more empathy, pity or horror when they see a baby being eaten, fucked, torn in pieces or anything else when compared to, let’s say, a cute teenager or a disabled old man or women. We can agree that teenagers look much more beautiful than babies, and we can also agree that disabled old man and women are almost as defenseless.
The pain they feel is likely to be the same. The baby will likely die faster so it will feel proportionately more. For the baby it won’t understand what hell is happening or why or even think of why he feels what he feels anyways – he just reacts with crying anyways.
As the teenagers and the old people will suffer a lot more, before and during the act. They will also despair for a long while if they are bound, and their overall misery will be many times that of a baby. The teenagers might take a long time to die if non-vital areas are eaten or damaged.
For this argument, I assume souls of babies receive the same treatment as baby bodies. With the additional that the baby soul WON’T CARE what happens to it since it is barely more conscient than a fucking dog.
So yeah, guys, if you want to murder some being, better go for babies than grown-up men or even animals.
I imagine Cio’s voice going scratchier and lower over each subsequent panel.
Time to see Himself!
In today’s episode, Allison gets spooked
Know tha self.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a5/Roman-mosaic-know-thyself.jpg
Chilling.
And Allison = ALYISUN = The Great Enemy Called I comes ever closer to facing Himself = Himself.
The I and Himself.
Ego and Circularity.
Your comments on circularity have no end! But i jest. I too am eager to see this most intriguing meeting of polarized philosophical ideals incarnate. But why here in this pit of sin? Why not a garden or a gastropub? Alas it is my lot to wade through the muck of experience in the practice of my art.
another work of art from you
You know, there’s something inherently terrifying about someone whose weapon of choice is a cauldron.
Oh, sure, swords and chainsaws and guns are scary too, but the person who wield them is a person who must borrow some of their fearfulness from what they wield.
The person who chooses to wield the cooking-pot? That’s the person who has so much scary she has to spread it out some so it can rest comfortably. Boulders or cabers would have much the same effect, but she deliberately chose something that could not be confused for a weapon.
Or, as her fate would have it; she’s a finesseless pig. It takes training and finesse to wield a sword; she has neither- a brute by any other name is as easily slain by the Swordsman and the Archer; fear not the Cooking Pot if you are a worthy combatant.
Or fear it, I am not your thrice fated father on this.
Or someone exalted with power than anyone else and yet to meet the match of someone who has trhe same power and actually bothered to use it effectively.
The world has always been meat, the only difference now is that its all rotting.
This chapter just keeps getting better.
A devil never lies.
Revelations abound!
The devil scars, every binder knows, are the goal of devils in their pacts. That is no surprise.
That the devils sometimes resort to darker and more direct means? This is no surprise.
The scale and scope of this horror? That is a surprise. The degenerate state of the Demiurges has allowed vileness to root and fester and spread beyond all reasonable bounds. The weakness and corruption of the Aeons contributes as well.
The Rising Godking is gaining invaluable education here, both from her ill-spoke pact with Incubus and her uneasy alliance with the Besmitten Imp.
Learn well, Al-Yis-Un. The horror you could scarce bear when perpetrated by Mother Om is the meager beginning of the things you must set alight.
By my calculations, it was precisely 0.00000001666% of the horror. Although thankfully the heart tends to grow more dead with time. I know by now my soul flame would serve less as meat and more as roughage, in such a place as this.
Burning it all seems a waste, but alas she is fated to do so it seems. To educate the younger generations as to why such foulness is to be excised is a perfectly legitimate reason to keep this around.
Looks like Incubus’ Confident Asshole Power Boost TM wears off real quick in this place.
Ogrim casts dispel on everyone that enters
The acts of brutality and savagery committed in the pits of the devils are so great that inevitably those either with little sense or with nothing left to loose will try and do something it. A few of my old campaigning friends once came to me and asked if I wanted to join them on a final daring venture to transport a crude nuclear device (which they had smuggled into Throne in the belly of a corpulent servant) to the Heretic’s Court and destroy it.
I declined, as I knew someone would need to be alive to go there afterwards and pick up their bloodied dog-tags.
Still not as screwy as bleeding people out for a dead guy with a tree growing out of him.
Devils they may be, but at least they aren’t demiurge.
That explains why Yabalchoath needed so many slaves; it also raises questions about the fuel the devil engines need for operation.
Hey! Kindly stop trying to blow holes in the ship.
The pit was EVERYTHING; driven by their hunger, but I hunted for something more – I stole the sentience of an ancient power; now I gaze up at through abyss… still hungry.
Fascinating.
Ciocie talks about all this very matter-of-factly, but not particularly proudly.
Continuity of identity aside, she’s really not Yabalchoath anymore. It shows.
People should probably stop calling her that.
she lost
that name
anyway
You’re not thinking Fourth Dimensionally.