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| [[File:Cultist_minotaur.png|200px|thumb|right|Deepist Minotaur]] | | [[File:Cultist_minotaur.png|200px|thumb|right|Deepist Minotaur]] |
| == A description of minotaurs == | | == On Deepism == |
| We are calling these beasts Minotaurs, a name that will no doubt sound familiar out of legend. There is no question in our minds that these incredible masses of muscle, horn, and hate, are the very monsters that inspired those eldritch tales. Still, biceps like these simply don’t translate to the page.
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| What we now know is that Minotaurs share key skeletal and muscular similarities with [[Drauven | Drauvs]], making it highly likely that the two starkly different monsters are somehow related. The obvious differences are possibly indicative of a split early in the dawn of history, and we have heard tell of ancient sorcerers whose canvas was the world, whose paints were living beings and the forces of primal energies... These are merely myths, and myriad reasons exist why such a split might have occurred (sorcerers, though). | | What can you really say is true about Deepism? The most we know comes from those who don't complete their initiations, who give their word and then grow scared in the warrens beneath the earth where they're shepherded, and are able to engineer some kind of escape. Those accounts hold meager weight with me, for who can really credit the words of oathbreakers? Regardless these dubious tales do give us a glimpse at the structure of the Deepist cult. |
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| Minotaurs are shaped like massive men, with the heads of bulls encasing shockingly human-like brains. They stand a good foot or two taller than the tallest man, and are half again as strong as our best warriors, on average. Their powerful bodies are covered with fine hair, and they commonly weave jewelry of bone, and whatever other materials are at hand, into their hides. Like Drauvs, they show disturbing social tendencies, but are much more solitary, appearing more high-strung and unlikely to cooperate than even their famously violent relatives.
| | It is a cult: hierarchical, shrouded in secrets, virulent how it spreads to infect the minds of the disenfranchised and alone. You know those who belong to it by their garb and grunting mouths, slack faces and leeched-looking skin. Mostly they stay out of sight. |
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| The behavior patterns we see are mostly nocturnal, and they show a preference for dark places such as caves and dense forests, away from the sun. Minotaurs, it would seem, have a deep affinity for music. Often, when the noises in the dark feel rhythmic, or hauntingly tuneful, it is the strange soft music of one of these bull-creatures, a tune to give pace to the solitude, or possibly, to calm the nerves in the midst of the hunt. Almost strictly carnivorous, these creatures prey upon other cave-dwellers, no matter how ferocious. A Minotaur seems startlingly incapable of calculating survival-risk, and they will start fights with creatures or bands more than capable of destroying them. A deep rage appears to suffuse their thought-processes, in the moments when a human would normally be weighing the risks and rewards of fight or flight.
| | Deepism is almost entirely counter intuitive to a philosopher of gods and orders, such as myself. In fact, it's almost too neatly opposed, suggesting to me an ulterior ideology beneath the fabrication we observe, and others participate in. While the holy orders I've studied have emphasized light, ascension, and visibility, Deepism holds sacred the opposites. Darkness is truth to a Deepist. To descend is to grow in circumstance and majesty. The thing most obscured is what a Deepist must count most consequential. |
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| Possessed of undeniably deep emotions, Minotaurs are generally proud in bearing, belying their monstrous appearance with sensitive ideas of respect and honor. What little language they use seems borrowed, as if it were merely a convenience they thought to implement, not at all a necessity they would care to develop. They seem to favor elegant, extravagantly powerful weaponry, and rarely possess armor, or even clothing. Normally found alone, Minotaurs show little regard for prioritizing or strategic combat. Some breeds, however, appear to be learning to hunt in threes, favoring simultaneous, multi-directional pincer-movements. One of our mystics has remarked: “That’s just bully.” Take a wild guess who said that…
| | As for the symbolism of the bull, the gravitation towards the monstrous and fungal... It follows that one must ascribe meaning to one's immediates. People anywhere must tell stories about the trees, the birds, the sun, moon, and stars. Such is what they encounter and are fascinated with. It is only logical that the horrors that grow below, grow among the Deepists in their caverns and holes, would figure greatly in their mythologies. From all appearances, they are an ancient, dogged order of devotees, and whatever it is they have given themselves to, they seem to feel rewarded in their service to it. |
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| Do Minotaurs mate? Do they live forever? Both seem unlikely. Perhaps they just congeal out of darkness or cave-mold. Perhaps their propagation is a mystery we should make further attempts to investigate...
| | I will always be curious to ascertain more, though I very much doubt anything of substance will volunteer itself. Thus, I move on to more productive studies. |
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| --These Informed Opinions submitted by the Order of Kralar on <Date>
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| | The Deepists are like the wolves or the [[Thrixl]]: they are there, and to wonder why is only the game of spurious soap-loving scholars and other limp-limbed idlers. |
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| == A Deepist Poem == | | == A Deepist Poem == |
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| And hope for no gory end, you the wheat into the consuming fire. You | | And hope for no gory end, you the wheat into the consuming fire. You |
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| The boastless into the bounteous proud and boast-belting brazens | | The barkless into the bounteous proud and boast-belting brazens |
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| And his great legs danced on the rock and dashed themselves on dunderheads. | | And his great legs danced on the rock and dashed themselves on dunderheads. |
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| While his song split the stones and unsteadied the stabled hearts, | | While his song split the stones and unsteadied stabled hearts, |
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| We wild ones heard and wailed our long-locked warliness, | | We wild ones heard and wailed our long-locked warliness, |
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| And took from timorous hands the the morsels and the troves | | And took from timorous hands the morsels and the troves |
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| And the surpluses we were owed and stamping and clapping and stomping, | | And the surpluses we were owed and stamping and clapping and stomping, |
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| Of a hundred underpeoples. We ended them. And until then had not been us, thundering and thunderous. | | Of a hundred underpeoples. We ended them. And until then had not been us, thundering and thunderous. |
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| == A Deepist Vignette ==
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| The Call of the Horn
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| Amber flames toiled in the dark, digging away at the in-buckling blacknesses of twenty-one generations gone. Eeland sat on a pewter pew and her fingers twined stray fibers of her bleached burlap robe into twists.
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| She sat waiting for the horned prophet.
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| Checking the silk cord around her waist, then the plaits of her three asymmetrical braids. She counted them.
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| “The small braid is for friendships,” she intoned to herself. “They’ve sharded you, they’ve clung, they’ve pulled.” Kah’s face melded out of the crimson places inside her, and she made it crumble, brick by brick. “The middle braid is for family. They’ve cut you, melted you, poured your soul in their miscast molds.” Don’t think about Andlewick, don’t smell the pine-dust of the mill, or listen to the song of summer’s whitejay… by the north willow where you and your sister… don’t.
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| She gripped the middle braid hard like she would uproot it. Her sleeve fell to her elbow, the etchings on her flesh catching candlelight and roiling like burning silver serpents. Comforted her.
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| “The… the third braid.” Her hand wobbled to grip it, and her fingers almost couldn’t circle it. “The third braid is heaviest. It’s—″
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| Something so vast shouldn’t be so quiet.
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| The prophet sat by her. Was sitting by her. Had been sitting by her. His huge fingers stroked the back of her hand.
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| “Ee!” she cried. And fought back instant shame. “Lord—Lord Ilog! Who Art Strangest and Truest and Most Mysterious. The Knower of Labyrinths, the Founder of Course, the Walker through Fog. Lord Ilog.”
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| The prophet’s great legs were bigger around than her body. The skin was damp felt. It buzzed along the side of her knee. He smelled like old rock, old sweat, ancient leather, and… maybe she was imagining the scent of wild freesia.
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| The prophet put both hands in his own lap, a massive elbow on each thigh. She felt his head dip beside her, and knew she was being asked to look in his eyes.
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| Did herself proud, Eeland. Without blinking she met him gaze for gaze. Eyes little more than two wet large orbs in the dark, pricked with light. The head, which belonged to a bull, was indeed ducked low so that she could see it without tilting back overmuch.
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| Lord Ilog seemed to be waiting too.
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| “Lor…ah—ah! The third…” she thought she perceived a nod of his chin, and went on: “The third braid is heaviest. It’s for the self, insisting on selfness. All it grips it endlessly holds.”
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| The breath from his great nostrils struck her face cool.
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| “Truss them up and hang them off you. Be in the falling world a mighty pillar. Be in the darkness a solid flame. As the great bull, be fast and solid and constant in your course. Be unflagging, ferocious, hearty. The change is not in you: the change is in that which trembles before your charge, perceives you anew in your uncloudedness, your righteous steamless light.”
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| For moments throbbing and hypnotic, they sat and the little amber candleflames burned lower. It seemed her words echoed without decay in the black chapel.
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| What would he do? There was muscular heat.
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| Then she felt him shift, and they stood together.
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| Eeland, who had been born in Andlewick, second daughter to a basketweaver, who had grown up a regular girl, who had learned her letters from the kind schoolmaster and only once stolen a plum when she was too young to respect the difference between good and bad… Eeland, that girl others had called the peacemaker, the sweetheart, the brightsoul, destined for happiness and goodness and a joyful life… Eeland followed the atrocious prophet past the candles’ glow down a tunnel that seemed to yawn open just for them.
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| The air in it was moldy and sweet. Broad and high enough for Lord Ilog, she was a small boat in a night sea, drawn along into a strait by her mooring to this invisible whale, whose size was sensed but never seen. As she went, her steps grew heavier, and the heart in her colder and more craven.
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| Go back, her sister whispered to her.
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| Go back said her mother, and even her addled father mumbled something to that effect.
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| Go back went the whitejay, and Kah too, who told her he would love her again, if she would only come back to him, to Andlewick, to life…
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| Go forward, said her training. Said the distant light. Said the morbid aroma of the prophet who now halted, and stepped aside before her, and ahead of them was a hallway, and an arch too small for the prophet to pass through, and beyond it the red of a hearthbound fire. Go forward, where even he cannot go…
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| She swallowed her thoughts away, and shook the distractions from her eyes. Her braids whipped her cheeks but she didn’t feel them.
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| Eeland’s paces began small and faint, but as she continued down the hallway—the walls were painted, she thought, images only dimly visible in the light that grew from the far arch, hunting scenes, maybe—as she continued, surety in her blossomed. Shuffle turned to walk turned to stride. Fear turned to caution turned to pride. And the light swelled before her, the promise, the revelation.
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| And the paintings began to grow clear.
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| Not hunting scenes. Not exactly. More like battle scenes. Heroic figures, at war with monsters: the iron-toothed Drauv, the mechanized Morthage, the twisted and leering Gorgon… Overcoming them all, this group of characters. A man in robes, a woman in armor, two sisters with bows and a strange-eyed fellow with horns emerging from his head. There they all were, appearing in scene after scene, winning, and winning, and casting down evil, growing more powerful, growing older…
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| All at once they stopped. And she realized she was at the arch. The smell of bread hit her homesick nose and made her sob once, before she clapped hands to her mouth. Took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and stepped inside.
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| It wasn’t quite what she expected. Here was no grandiose temple, no raised altar, no monolithic statue of a bull-god, astride the universe. Here were humble bookshelves and there was a bright flame-flowering hearth, there was an oven and sacks of grain, foodstuffs. There were two long tables, and racks of armor, weapons. The ceiling was vaulted, raftered with beams of oak, but dripping with stalactites. At one of the tables sat a solitary woman. She looked positively ancient. She noticed Eeland staring at her and bowed her head, solemn eyes bidding the girl come near.
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| Eeland approached, unsure what she should be feeling. Trying to insist that sucking vacancy inside wasn’t the shock of her disappointment.
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| “Oh,” was the first thing she said. “Hi.”
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| The woman’s face folded itself into unlikely formations. “Yep, yep,” the woman said.
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| “I’m Eeland?”
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| “You seem to think so,” she said.
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| Eeland tested each braid, counting the plaits. She rolled up her sleeves to look at the holy signs etched over her skin. “Well.”
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| “Sit,” the woman said. “There’s bread on a plate somewhere.”
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| Eeland rubbed her face with both hands. “Ah…”
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| “Sit.”
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| Eeland drew out a chair. It roared on the stone floor. She sat down. There was no bread anywhere. “Or…” Eeland said. “I’m wondering.”
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| The woman’s eyes were hard and strong.
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| The two of them sat together, just as she had sat with the prophet. Long, and wordless. Only there wasn’t that same… what do you call that? There wasn’t that eldritch hum, that elicit excitement, that sense of gleeful perversion of the soul.
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| “I studied faithfully,” Eeland decided to say.
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| “A noble thing.”
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| “I really believed.”
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| “You’re not unique in this.” The woman knocked her knuckles together, and then stood up. Eeland was surprised to see an old sword hanging off a belt around the woman’s waist. Bent-backed, she couldn’t stand straight. Could the woman even hold that sword anymore? Even draw it? She walked to a little desk by the hearth, and took a piece of paper off the top of a stack. An ordinary piece of paper. She hobbled back to the table, and groaned as she sat down.
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| “Do you need help?” Asking a bit late, aren’t I? She struck her own thigh with a fist. “What I mean…”
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| The woman didn’t look up. She produced a pen from somewhere, and began writing. She took time with each character, paused for moments of stillness, like someone counting the beats of a rest in a great symphony that must be taking place elsewhere…
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| Finally she tapped the back of the pen twice on the tabletop, and sniffed. She wiped her nose. Then the woman slid the paper over to Eeland, and suspended her pen like a hogspit between the skeletal index finger of each hand. It had several simple sentences on it in dark bold letters, precisely spaced. “Read this to me,” the woman said.
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| Eeland looked from the paper to the woman, to the paper again. She stared into the flames, and wondered why she felt so empty.
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| “No heroes.”
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| Nod.
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| “No monsters.”
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| Nod, nod.
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| “Only you and me, and our imaginations.”
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| Grizzly dry lips curved up.
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| Eeland let her shoulders droop.
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| “Do you want to learn how we did it?” The woman’s phlegm-webbed voice wrapped Eeland’s ear with this last vague promise.
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| Is there still a secret to be had?
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| “Do you want to know how we conquered death?”
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| What does a girl from Andlewick—after she’s abandoned everything she’s ever known in order to join a Bull-cult, only to find out it’s all some kind of fraud inspired by the inelegant words of a decrepit hag eating bread alone in a firelit cave—what does a girl like that—and assuredly there must have been others who got this far, better studiers, more faithful, brighter, stronger?—what does—or do you have to be as dull and desperate as Eeland was to swallow all this drivel?—what can one such as her even say?
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| “Tell me,” Eeland sighed.
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| [[Category:Monster]]
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| [[Category:Deepist]] | | [[Category:Deepist]] |
| | [[Category:Lore]] |
On Deepism
What can you really say is true about Deepism? The most we know comes from those who don't complete their initiations, who give their word and then grow scared in the warrens beneath the earth where they're shepherded, and are able to engineer some kind of escape. Those accounts hold meager weight with me, for who can really credit the words of oathbreakers? Regardless these dubious tales do give us a glimpse at the structure of the Deepist cult.
It is a cult: hierarchical, shrouded in secrets, virulent how it spreads to infect the minds of the disenfranchised and alone. You know those who belong to it by their garb and grunting mouths, slack faces and leeched-looking skin. Mostly they stay out of sight.
Deepism is almost entirely counter intuitive to a philosopher of gods and orders, such as myself. In fact, it's almost too neatly opposed, suggesting to me an ulterior ideology beneath the fabrication we observe, and others participate in. While the holy orders I've studied have emphasized light, ascension, and visibility, Deepism holds sacred the opposites. Darkness is truth to a Deepist. To descend is to grow in circumstance and majesty. The thing most obscured is what a Deepist must count most consequential.
As for the symbolism of the bull, the gravitation towards the monstrous and fungal... It follows that one must ascribe meaning to one's immediates. People anywhere must tell stories about the trees, the birds, the sun, moon, and stars. Such is what they encounter and are fascinated with. It is only logical that the horrors that grow below, grow among the Deepists in their caverns and holes, would figure greatly in their mythologies. From all appearances, they are an ancient, dogged order of devotees, and whatever it is they have given themselves to, they seem to feel rewarded in their service to it.
I will always be curious to ascertain more, though I very much doubt anything of substance will volunteer itself. Thus, I move on to more productive studies.
The Deepists are like the wolves or the Thrixl: they are there, and to wonder why is only the game of spurious soap-loving scholars and other limp-limbed idlers.
A Deepist Poem
"When There Came Our Bull-Headed God"
In dagger-jagged depths, spiral-delved and full of drumbeats,
We banged our braggy drums. Blasted voices in old blessing-songs
Of softbodied gods who supped with us on sweetshrooms
And molds and cavedust, on dropwater and on nothing.
Hoofed and horn-laden he came out of halls buried
In looping heavy notes he laid his challenge-poem across our lakes
And calms and caverns. “Here,” he sang “is cairn and cure for your old
Listlessness: horn your heads and abandon them for glory.
Story your starless cavesky, I say, with the bloods and deeds of
Foes you feared when those old gods flaunted and flustered your faith.
I am unbeatable in darkness I am unquenchable by cool or by wet.
I am your founder
Now. I make, as flamefall feathers new the farmfield,
You my grass, all gathered terror- gripped who witness my greatness
And hope for no gory end, you the wheat into the consuming fire. You
The barkless into the bounteous proud and boast-belting brazens
I call brothers. Be unbound by peacetraders and take bellowing
what is not well-guarded from you: it is yours by law, if by you it is won.”
And his great legs danced on the rock and dashed themselves on dunderheads.
While his song split the stones and unsteadied stabled hearts,
We wild ones heard and wailed our long-locked warliness,
And took from timorous hands the morsels and the troves
And the surpluses we were owed and stamping and clapping and stomping,
Charging, we cantered after him down dauntless into the wells and chambercaves
Of a hundred underpeoples. We ended them. And until then had not been us, thundering and thunderous.
