WHEEL SMASHING LORD 3-56 to 3-57
Chapter: 3
“The law of peace is the weakest law. But the law of the strong is no better. A man who lives his life by this law will very quickly find himself alone – with no foundation, he is constantly at risk and his next step may see him plummeting to his doom.”
– Xte Xte Xto, Yellow Monk
my god she’s going to eat that fish in front of him. i’m calling it now.
“I will now proceed to enlighten myself with this fish.”
𓆟
╰(◡__◡╰)
I think she is going to eat something else from him. And eat it vigorously.
Let the man keep his Salami
salami looks so tired
He just wants to grill for god’s sake
bwahahahaha
thank you
let the man cook
As famous man once said…. NO DINNER FOR YOU!
Heretic!
The correct mantra is NO SOUP FOR YOU!
Cod’s sake. 😉
Her new form looks so good
Biblically accurate
Gnostically Accurate Angel
I just had a mental flashback to when the four girls would combine with Allison god form it had 4 eyes in a row, I wonder if her angel form is borrowing the look?
Every time a tyrant gets roundhouse kicked into the middle distance, an angel gets its wings.
Sorry Solomon the “I have no enemies” meme doesn’t save you here.
…and still they call her brother. Sigh. I guess, perhaps, eventually, they too might change.
Nice update, love the callback to thwir first fight
Give it a few million years and a few dozen reincarnations and the concept of Sister might become comprehensible to angels.
Assuming Jagganoth doesn’t celebrate his release by going to heaven and killing them all.
Are you so quick to forget Vigilant Gaze? It is the nature of the individuals, not that of angels, that limits their ability to perceive what’s plainly in front of them.
Thank you, Garunath. People on all planes are quick to excuse their stubbornness by appeal to nature. They refuse to acknowledge that what is difficult is not impossible.
They are archon of law , the ever still white flame , change is not in their nature
She broke out of her nature , of what was supposed to be impossible by becoming what she is , thsi is not something that they can , it would mean that they have the will to defile what they are meant to be
It is possible that they’re willingly denying her gender. It is also possible they have little utility for gendered terms, but use “brother” as an endearment term for a member of a brotherhood and to them using the term “sister” would estrange her more than using the gender she identify as. These are alien minds after all.
That would have some merit but for the fact that her taking on a feminine form was considered aberrant, while masculine forms were accepted for eons.
And while one may be readily forgiven for misgendering one they are unfamiliar with, White Chain’s choice of a feminine identity is by now well-known. Failing to acknowledge that is either a deliberate choice or a mark of complete apathy.
Either way, it shows a lack of respect.
Stone shifts faster than these angels’ attitudes.
The issue with WC’s form was never that it was feminine. The issue was that it was *human.* She was the one with a human body and face while all the others were in the shapes of animals, of wheels, of things fantastic. They were estranged by her humanity, as they are now by her new found shape.
One of four. Juggernaut Star, Delicious, and the other Petal Knight with the needles, all also have female humanoid forms.
Juggernaut was self-hating enough about it that she(?) might have gotten a pass.
It is always so that bigots will elevate “the good ones” for propaganda while wiping out the rest of their kind, and then finally also eliminate the collaborators when they have no more use for them.
“White Chain’s choice of a feminine identity is by now well-known.”
Has White Chain chosen a ‘female identity’ or just a ‘female form’?
Both. As much as she was able to choose her form.
Are you really trying to apply standards that have only become commonplace in the last decade or so to million-year-old beings who aren’t even biological and have only recently been introduced to the idea of gender applying to them, as literally stated on this page?
I am as far to the left and as pro-gsrm as you can get, so trust me when I say come on, don’t be so surface-level.
i am confused. were the petal angels not female in form? or am i simply misunderstanding? i remember delicious at the very least *looked* human in her true form.
Both named ones, yes. Also Juggernaut Star.
Filet him …
… Methinks you are trying to avenge the seafood that is that fish.
I have a feeling that this meeting will either be the turning point in White Chain’s character arc- or the beginning of a downwards spiral. Either way- I don’t think Solomon will join her, not when he has accepted that he was Ozymandias and is reflecting on the nature of Royalty in this universe.
I was thinking the same thing. White Chain has Solomon’s old key and she doesn’t want it. The trouble is he doesn’t want it either. When he described Yulvur Ironblood as “a very fine and a very stupid man” he was actually describing himself when he was a demiurge. He wants to be left alone but White Chain isn’t letting him be alone.
The problem for White Chain is she either accepts that she’s Solomon successor or she denies what her followers need from her. If she does deny that then Jagganoth has won.
Refusing to use the power you have seems unbecoming of Royalty, but accepting power you have been gifted also seems un-Royal. I hope she can find a third way. I hope there’s time.
IDK about that… Meti was Royalty and she didn’t use her power much. Intra too, would rather get drunk than use his power to save a city. Even Zoss ended up leaving at the end. It would seem that, after attaining Royalty, one becomes uninterested in wielding power in the normal ways
Real royalty is holding back your strength to look cooler.
Can it not simply be fed to Allison’s key…?
::Angry White Chain noises::
Solomon: …okay, I guess we’re doing this.
It’s interesting that, for all her protestations, she doesn’t simply take a page from Solomon’s book and give him his power back. Presumably, if she did he could just give it right back, but she’s been very insistent on the point that he take it back, rather than she give it to someone else.
Playing hot potato with godhood
It’s not just about taking the key, it’s the authority that goes with it. She doesn’t want to be in charge or to have people looking to her for direction, but she can’t really foist that on someone else, especially if they aren’t willing to play along. At this point, he might not be able to take the authority back, even if he wanted to, hence him saying she can’t stop the people from crowning her queen.
With that said, I think he’s partially wrong about people needing a ruler. At the moment, they need protection, or reassurance, and in general they might need some sort of leader or guide, even if it’s just a figure to aspire towards. However, that’s not the same as needing an external force to control them, nor does it need to come from a single, unchanging, person.
Currently, they’re looking to White Chain to follow in Solomon’s footsteps, because that’s what they know and that’s what he set her up to do. That needs to change, but White Chain hasn’t really figured out how to manage the change yet, so she’s half trying to revert what’s already been done while still rejecting the old system. It’s a reaction born from fear and anger, rather than a carefully considered philosophy or plan.
I guess the answer lies in building institutions that will rule instead of personalities, but that’s hard to do in the middle of a multiversal war. Not much point building an ideal republic only to have Jaggu burst out of magic jail and shit on everything.
So, I’ve been thinking… Now that White Chain has received the Key from Solomon… Who would win between her and Allison?
Allison.
She appears to have become something new, just not as plainly as White Chain.
Maybe.
I think it was said at some point that the individual keys only power their respective gates. The master key is the only one that actually gives its wielder other powers.
I’m pretty sure that the 7 god keys grant power, it’s just that the master key is much more powerfull (7 times maybe? since each god key is one seventh the name of god and the master key is the full name). You might be confusing with the leystones which were mentioned back when allison first went to the void, and only give the power to travel through gates and are normally given to emmissaries of the demiurges.
The Keys are said to be terrible weapons, though it seems their only qualitative purpose is to open a specific gate. The Master Key is a copy of every other Key- 777,777 Keys rather than the 111,111 that each Demiurge possessed before Rayuba fell. How Keys grant strength is rather ambiguous. They were said, once upon a time, to “merge the wielder’s will with that of God”.
Generally, Keys seem to let their users manifest their will more effectively than they might have otherwise. It, when wielded properly, enhances what they already have. Emissaries are granted a bit of a Key bearer’s power, but do not have ley stones. Ley stones are the dull imitations of a key, like the one Maya bears.
White chain said at the start of SoT that “mostly they just power the gates, but [Allison’s] can certainly do more]”
🥵
Looking COOL, White Chain.
Hmm. Strange.
Solomon appears to be pursuing the path of royalty, but still clings tightly to his regard of common man as simple things to be Governed.
FOR OUR FATHER IS WEARY WITH THE STRESS OF ELD, AND COMES TO OUR BEDCHAMBER NO MORE.
The key that Solomon and now Cadena Blanca have is the divine word “Diamond” and it is a parallel that both are very stubborn and difficult to accept change, we can say that sure White chain changed a lot but this is what? his 82? arguably his 83 re-encarnation and only then changed after his time with allison.
But it is her first transmutation of *this* variety, unheard of in all the histories of the Angels. One can safely presume that this is far more significant, both to her and to the cosmos, than any prior cycle or mode of incarnation.
Also, still 82. Unlike the previous 81, she did not have to die for this rebirth. Rather, she had to *live*.
Consider the lessons of Meti ten Ryo, Preem Humdum. No great advocate of the common man she. Lowly beasts she considered them, fit only to cook, grow fat, sire children, and die. Indeed, they had only one endearing quality to their names.
That they did not pretend their petty hungers were righteous as the mighty do.
Consider the power of godhood at White Chain’s fingertips. The ability to reshape the Seven-Part World. Now consider how she brings it against he-who-was-Patronum.
Observe, how the fires of creation are turned to the same end a furious housewife might wield a wooden spoon.
It’s all marketing, when you get right down to it.
If a housewife wields a wooden spoon, it is still the fires of creation that are wielded as such, for it is the fires of creation from which the housewife and the spoon were made.
Using a Key of Kings is simply… cutting out extra steps, I would say. Perhaps it is less of a burden on creation for its fires to be wielded directly instead of playing out over eons in the grand march of entropy?
Ahaha!
You speak true, mad one. There are similarities between Meti’s final and Solomon’s current philosophies, but with one glaring difference; Meti found the Lords of the world contemptuous fools beating one another with rocks in the name of God, but Solomon is encouraging White Chain to join their ilk.
I suspect there are cracks in his facade, and I do mean facade. Perhaps they are even literal. Notice Mountain King Solomon still has his right side hidden in his cloak.
Well yeah, he is pursuing the path of royalty. He hasn’t reached the end of it yet and so he still maintains the vestiges of the man he was before he achieved royalty.
If she doesn’t want it that bad, she should give it to Allison =p
Would that work? I don’t think you can have two copies of the *same* Key in the same head. Or at least it wouldn’t be of any benefit.
Jagganoth takes multiple Keys just fine. It seems to be a Highlander-type situation.
If anything, Alison’s Key might make Solomon’s one redundant, since it’s supposed to be the one true uber-Key that Zoss had.
Yes, that’s what I mean. Alison’s master key makes Solomon’s 111,111 keys redundant and useless to her. They both encode the same names of god.
oh good point
By Yisun’s ever-false presence white chain chill the fuck out, damn. Let the man fish
yeet
punted
It’s interesting, he’s giving the standard “mankind needs a tyrant” style speech, but it’s less sneering and more sad. This is what he truly believes, but it feels like he really would rather its not the case.
It’s not “mankind needs a tyrant”, it’s “mankind *wants* a tyrant”. Solomon’s view is less that people are sheep who need to be led, and more that people are cowards who want another to leave them. The common man loathes responsibility and thus will abdicate his free will to another when he can. It’s very Lacanist.
I think Solomon probably started out thinking “I’ll just be like Superman, saving people but not ruling over them,” and then within about a year or two he was chopping babies in half and shit
I don’t know if Solomon is right in a broad, philosophical sense, but I know WC is fighting a losing battle here. Some things you just can’t undo.
never underestimate the amount of raw, burning rage accumulated by a trans woman
by the wheel, this is a mood
White Chain no longer carries the weight of her mask, but she has lifetimes of unfinished business with the universe in general and with this embodiment of arrogant patriarchy in very particular.
Not gonna lie. Her face with her teeth clenched is giving me Grace Jones vibes a la “Conan the Destroyer.”
Thanks, I was just gonna post that when I got to the end of them comments! Though instead of Conan I was thinking Grace in Boomerang.
The problem of power in this setting is… interesting.
The highest levels of badass in Throne and the worlds connected by the open gates basically operate at a level functionally immune from that of regular people or institutions. Solomon David spent centuries building a nominally well-run state that had an army, probably a pretty good one… and it mattered jack shit in the face of the demiurges, who ruined his kingdom merely by fighting amongst themselves, not even targeting it.
So that puts those with republican impulses, like White Chain and Nyaeve, in an awkward position. If White Chain walks away from the Republic, that just makes it meat on the table for the next multiversal conqueror with a key in their head to whip the tar out of it. If she assumes rulership of it, now she’s Solomon David 2.0.
She could try and square that circle by declaring that she will defend the Republic from outside threats that it can’t handle, like other multiversal tyrants, but not intervene in its internal affairs. Okay, cool, but what happens if the Republic is run by fools and homegrown tyrants? What if it passes oppressive, grotesque laws? What if its overthrown by rebellion or coup?
Now White Chain is in a position of “I can keep using my power to protect these assholes, by implication legitimating them,” or “I can walk away, leaving them defenseless,” or “I can impose justice at the end of my fist, which means THEY were never in charge, not ever; I was the only one in charge, I just let them play at ruling themselves.”
It’s difficult to see a way out of that trap. The high end of power in Throne really does place you in that position.
The only potential way I can see out of that trap is “lower the high end; find a way of empowering the masses to make immortal badasses with keys in their heads matter a lot less.” But how to do it?
It’s not necesarily impossible.
White Chain could also draw up a constitution with ground rules for the new Republic that she would defend alongside against Demiurge forces.
A republic without a constitution is just tyranny with slightly more people at the helm, after all.
The United Kingdom says hi.
Ahh, the tolerance paradox.
Democrats everywhere seem to struggle with it.
The answer is: do not have immortal universe-conquering superjerks with bits of God stuck in their head running around the place being jerks. They’re the problem here.
The problem is that once you have immortal universe-conquoring people with bits of god stuck in their heads, you have to figure out how to deal with some of them being jerks.
Yup. It’s the billionaires.
She may not know how. Remember at the start of the story they went to Cio specifically because they didn’t know how to take the key out of Allison’s head. It’s possible they never figured it out.
With how strongly Pree White Chain (rightfully!) feels about the inherent injustice of autocracy, it’s a wonder she would want *Solomon* of all people to have the key again.
The true answer to “who should have world-ending, massive, terrible power” is “nobody” of course, but that means you have to disable everyone else with that sort of power first.
At this point, it’s only catharsis to beat him. Not that there’s anything wrong with catharsis.
It’s simple, really. She is tired of the responsibilities of rulership, yet like he points out she cannot stop people from flocking to her anyway. She also knows that out of all people Solomon’s brand is more famous than hers. Thus he would be guaranteed to divert people’s attention from her if he was to resume kingship, which is why she needs his help.
What is interesting is that this means she is not interested in “how* people are governed, as longs as they’re not governed by her.
I feel as though it may be more than that. I expect that rulership conflicts with the Law as it was beaten into her form.
She may have changed her shell of ash for a shell of flesh, but the cold white flame is still the same.
I think she’s having, not quite an identity crisis, but a crisis of a similar existential nature. The easy solution is to simple make someone else take the position she’s being thrust into.
As Solomon says, this is not going to work. She’s going to have to be even more of an un-angel, even if she ameliorates it by constitutional monarchy.
He doesn’t stand a chance, she’s gone through two redesigns since they last fought, he only got one.
If Solomon wants White Chain to rule, he’ll have to come to terms with being ruled.
Solomon: I’ve heard of a glow up, but this-
*white chain kicks him through a mountain*
“Reach Heaven through Fishing !”
Also popular this year and every year…
“REACH HEAVEN THROUGH FULL CONTACT FISHING !”
For a brief, horrible moment, I thought you’d written
“Reach Heaven through Fisting !”
Happy that I was mistook.
Now to find the brain bleach…
Sounds like one way to get there…. (:
REACH HEAVEN THROUGH FISTING