The Great Game 🎲 Fallar Discordia

Naptha & Saphaltus

The Condensation of Demon Priests meets every nine months or so on the craggy mountaintop overlooking the source of the Ma Laclypse River. The boiling-hot river bursts from the rocks half-way up Voolkan Mountain, which lies at the centre of Fallar Discordia, which has a population of 630 billion and covers an area of twelve thousand square kilometres.

The Ma Laclypse maintains a steady, steaming flow, yet every nine months or so it blasts from the depths of the planet with thrice its usual volume. The moment it erupts it creates a gigantic mushroom cloud of steam above the city. The cold air condenses and then pounds the city with a typhoon rain. The Demon Priests see the mushroom cloud as symbolic of their gathering, and they see the condensation and the typhoons of thrashing rain as its effect (they tend to distrust talk and live instead for results). The initial blast also sends rocks flying for kilometres. It’s at once a wonder and a terror to be on that mountaintop when the river explodes.

Mount Voolkan towers in the middle of a ring of foothills formed by an ancient asteroid. When the river explodes, it turns the mountain into an island, and it turns the Priests above it into mad sailors. As the waters spill over the foothills and into the city, the Priests debate their course — not from tempest to port, but from mast to desert gulch, and from seaside ruin to pounding swell.

Never a peaceful sleeper, the Ma Laclypse floods into Discordia and rages through its maze of canals. The torrents flush out those who live on their banks: drug addicts and alcoholics, murderers and assassins, panderers and prostitutes, whirlpool demons and prophets of doom. This dark demimonde takes refuge in the overflow canals, or trenches, hiding like angry rats from the truncheon squads in the boisterous city overhead. When the waters thrash the hovels and makeshift caravans in the trenches, the citizens above lock their doors and load their shotguns just in case.

Eventually, the water reaches the surrounding plains, where it meanders this way and that before coming together at the pilgrimage city of Prayagarajaka, which some translate as The Meeting Place of Anarchies. While the abstemious priests of the Vicinese White Council (and a great many others in faraway worlds of blinding light) see Prayagarajaka as a violent and dangerous place, this just proves to the Fallarians how mixed up they are about the universe. In Fallarian lore, the site is where ambrosia, the secret bliss of the universe, is churned from the depths of the ocean.

It’s also where the poison emerges and where the dark god swallows it so that the universe can survive. The Six Sex Sects of Discordia go so far as to say that the violence of watery union is the phallic thrusting and sweet release that creates life itself. In the temples of Tantaric, the rites are, well … more colourful than many would imagine.

Once the Ma Laclypse flows out from Prayagarajaka, it becomes a Goddess to the surrounding lands, flooding the soil with rich minerals and heat. It’s because of this warm, nutrient-rich water that Fallarian life began three billion years ago. It’s also along the Ma Laclypse’s banks that the first canals were dug in the Summerland of Kish and the Winterland of Prinsengrattenwunderspiel.

The River runs its course in a mazy motion for 666 thousand kilometres, circling Mount Voolkan thrice. It then divides into a thousand streams in the Delta of Division, before joining the vast Ebony Sea. In their rites, the drumming priests of Vishwanathabad say that it joins the Sea again, which is commonly understood to mean that this process occurs in an exaggerated way every nine months. Yet that isn’t what they mean at all.

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As the River explodes, it drenches the fringes of the cloaks of the Demon Priests. The eyes of the Priests flash a deep red, and fall back into black. This is the signal they’re waiting for. Their Condensation can now begin.

With the River blasting below them, the Priests ascend the slope to a still, candle-lit cave 200 metres above. There, at the mouth of the cave, overlooking the blasting Ma Laclypse, they will hear the report of their wily ambassador, Farenn of Caldemar.

This was the sixth time Farenn had been summoned to the peak of Mount Voolkan. As the overflowing valleys below spilled into the city, Farenn marvelled at what a grim place this was, and at why the Priests decided to choose this place for their sacred deliberations.

It was a grim location indeed, one which made him think of the fanciful descriptions of Hell given by the poet, John Milton. Yet Milton couldn’t see the details of the topography. This was a pity, for even the humans had a saying, the devil was in the details. Milton was a great luminary: from inside his mind, he projected mighty rolling verses of iambic pentameter. Yet luminosity in the outside world wasn’t something he judged accurately. Nearly blind, the Puritan needed vast quantities of celestial light to detect any detail whatsoever. This ocular deficiency had a great influence on his theology.

Milton’s Hell was mythic and static. Above all, it was a place of evil darkness. Fallar Discordia on the other hand was real and dynamic. It wasn’t so much a place of evil as an anarchic place with varied degrees of light and dark. And yet Fallar Discordia was also like Milton’s Hell in the sense that at first it seemed a place where “hope never comes / That comes to all” yet upon closer inspection it had its charms:

Anon out of the earth a fabric huge 
Rose like an exhalation, with the sound
Of dulcet symphonies and voices sweet,
Built like a temple, where pilasters round
Were set, and Doric pillars overlaid
With golden architrave; nor did there want
Cornice or freeze, with bossy sculptures grav'n,
The roof was fretted gold. Not Babylon,
Nor great Alcairo such magnificence
Equaled in all their glories, to enshrine
Belus or Serapis their gods, or seat 
Their kings, when Egypt with Assyria strove
In wealth and luxury. Th'ascending pile
Stood fixed her stately height, and strait the doors
Op'ning their brazen folds discover wide
Within, her ample spaces, o'er the smooth
And level pavement: from the arched roof
Pendant by subtle magic many a row
Of starry lamps and blazing cressets fed
With naphtha and saphaltus yielded light
As from a sky. 

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Farenn had lived on Fallar Prime most of his 400 years. His parents were born in a small town several hundred kilometres from Fallar Discordia, and they moved into the capital when he was 40 years old, just about the time he started high school. His family owned a stunning turret-suite overlooking the lava flows of Mount Iquitar and they had a cottage next to the cobalt sea of Barazz. Yet ever since his university days, Farenn lived on his own in a modest (well, modest according to his parents) penthouse in the middle of the Student Quarter.

It’s true that the trenches of the capital were rough, but the Student Quarter had concert halls, bars, and cafés. Seminars were offered in salons and in university theatres on every subject imaginable. Unlike on other worlds, there were no subjects one couldn’t discuss. If the truncheon squad mobilized to close down a café reading for one reason or another (psycholyptic drugs, experimentations in inter-species S&M, etc.), they lived to regret it. In the streets hallucinogenic colours and houri mists shifted frequencies hourly. Dark, majestic music, high piano notes piercing the dark skies, provided the perfect ambience for a scholar such as Farenn.

Fallarian citizens were more volatile than the fabled mobs of Paris. The Discordians were the worst. They swung from selfish hedonism to legitimate rebellion in a split second, and no Ruler or Council could ever be sure that their will would be done. Indeed, they were almost French.

Only the truncheon squads kept the streets safe at such times. The truncheon squads were looked down upon because of their intimidating size and force, and because of their fascist hierarchy, yet only the most hardened criminal refused to admit that they were necessary.

The Demon Priests of the Black Horde were much like the Golden Council of Vicino Prime: they sent out directives, yet they knew that the real battle happened somewhere else. And it was becoming clear that somewhere else wasn’t the outskirts of Lower Discordia or even the slums of the Datchau District. Everyone there knew that they were already as close to anarchy as it was possible to get without needing to keep a loaded weapon in your pocket. They knew instinctively when to step back from that sort of insanity. For if they carried their guns out into the streets, then the truncheon squads would be prey to every thug, and every thug could threaten every citizen at will. The one thing anarchists and libertarians agreed on was that guns outside the home meant the law of the jungle, not personal freedom.

No, it looked like the real battle was further afield than the trenches and canals of Lower Discordia. The Demon Priests at the mouth of the cave nodded their hoods in agreement: they must focus their attention on the Violet Hoop, the Virgo Supercluster, and the Milky Way.

For several weeks the Priests had debated the fate of the cosmos, and now that the water was raging beneath them they invited their ambassador Farenn de Caldemar to speak. They wanted to know what he thought about the Baulian takeover of the Virgo Supercluster, and about how the matter might be decided in the Grand Council of the Thirteen Universes, which was soon to take place on the Aatari planet of Kollarum.

As was customary among the Fallarians, Farenn jumped immediately to the point: “It’s my view that the Grand Council will allow the Baulians to take over the Virgo Supercluster. It’s also very likely that I will be the opening speaker at the Council in Kollarum. I will of course argue in favour of the clueless yet neutral Baulians. It’s better not to leave the cosmos at the mercy of some sort of United Universes, where every little galaxy gets their say, and where the Vicinese manipulate them with their good intentions!” 

Farenn didn’t believe a word of what he said, but he needed to say it nevertheless.

“The Baulians still don’t understand the larger context in which they’re operating. They’re only aware of the Green Buzz universe and the Violet Hoop universe. They still believe they’re the only ones to understand the full potential of fractal technology.” 

“The Green Buzzards communicate regularly with the Baulians, yet not being an expansionist empire, the Buzzards have remained faithful to their non-aggression pact. Unknown to the Baulians, however, the Buzzards also communicate with the other ten universes, on fractal frequencies that are deeper and denser than those of the Baulians. The Baulians literally can’t see what’s floating, drifting, or speeding right in front of their eyes.” 

“The only Baulian who seems to understand the implications of infinite infraction is a Fractal Mystic named Rablanar. Luckily, however, the only people who listen to him are a few unemployed philosophers and sci-fi writers. These two groups are incapable of developing any political momentum: the philosophers find the fiction of the writers both illogical and fantastical, and the writers find the prose of the philosophers unreadable.” 

“As you’ve requested, I’ve investigated whether or not Rablanar secretly controls the upper echelons of the Fractal Mystics, and whether or not his theories have sown dissension between the Masters and the Mystics. As it turns out, neither is the case. Both groups are drunk on their own infractions. They believe that they’ve delved so deep that no one could possibly delve beneath them. Neither side sees any merit in Rablanar’s theories. In other words, they’re blind as bats!” 

Farenn knew that the Priests loved their bats (the cave behind them had a thousand species), so he added, “And such stupid bats at that!” To stress that he was joking, he also let out a brief laugh. “One has to appreciate the irony: the Baulians completely misunderstand the very fractals that give them power over the races of the Orange and Violet Hoops!”

“With your indulgence, I quote from the great human poet, William Shakespeare. Please note that I change the singular pronoun to plural, without, I think, disturbing the cadence of his iambic verse:

                                         Let it work,
For it’s the sport to have the engineer
Hoist with his own petard; and it shall go hard
But we will delve one yard below their mines
And blow them at the moon. O, it’s most sweet
When in one line two crafts directly meet.”

Farenn’s fondness for drama exasperated the Priests, who were, in theory, his superiors. Yet Farenn knew when to pretend to be a subordinate, and when he could confound them with his allusions. It was the subtle tool he used to stab them in the back, even though the backstabbers couldn’t feel the blade.

Just when the Black Horde wanted to know exactly what strategy Farenn favoured, he begged their indulgence to continue with his foray into Shakespeare’s drama. He begged them to consider the Fractal Mystics as Rosencrantz. He added that this would make everything clear by means of violent analogy, “something that no Demon Priest can fail to understand. I further beg your scholarly indulgence to combine the Hamlet reference with a reference to Dante’s mystic Rose, the mere idea of which would have excited the deluded brains of the Mystics.” 

Farenn knew very well that by referring to Dante he was treading on dangerous territory with the Priests, who hated poetry with a vengeance. Violent symbols were an aphrodisiac to them, but poetic symbols were a poison pill. “Please allow me to also refer to the Fractal Masters as Guildenstern, thus combining the Hamlet reference with a reference to a stern business gild, which in many ways accurately describes the Fractal Masters of Baulis Prime.” 

Farenn knew that the Priests were slightly confused, so he complimented them, insisting that it would be a great insult to treat them as children and explain every obvious point. “I needn’t explain to the scholars of the Black Horde that in Shakespeare’s play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are completely interchangeable. This adds a brutal irony, as it suggests that despite their egocentric distinction, the Mystics and the Masters are equally blinded by their ignorance of what’s really going on.”

In paying the Demon Priests the compliment of not explaining to them, Farenn managed to explain what he said he was refraining to say in so many words. Yet he used a great many words to explain that the guild was the royal court and that the royal courtiers were one as dumb as the next. Finally, he saw their comprehension dawn. Their little eyes, red pinpricks, lit up. The ecclesiastical dolts were with him so far.

“But I refrain from lecturing you as I would my students at the university. Even the dumbest Derelectan in the trenches understands the great range of the Demon Priest’s understanding, especially when it comes to feigning a line of argument and then doubling back across it.” 

Having stretched his point, Farenn left it there, with the Priests out on the ledge, looking up into the sky where a gigantic mushroom cloud was forming, as if an atomic bomb was rising above them. It would have been helpful, to the Priests that is, if Farenn had reminded them that Hamlet had been sent by the Danish king to England, and that the Danish king had given Rosencrantz and Guildenstern a letter instructing the English king to kill Hamlet. It would have been especially helpful to mention (especially to Cagnazzo, who ground his razor-sharp incisors whenever he suspected a rhyme might be lurking somewhere on the horizon) that during their passage to England, Hamlet re-wrote the letter. He replaced his name with those of his two treacherous, interchangeable friends, thus delving one yard below their mines, and blowing them at the moon.

Farenn concluded: “The big question, as I see it, is this: If Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are in the dark about the designs of Hamlet, how much could they have known about the intentions of the king?”

Farenn had no intention of telling the Priests what he really knew or what he really meant. He merely stepped closer to the edge and flew into the night.

All but one Demon Priest stood motionless, staring into the night sky. Cagnazzo, on the other hand, had read both Hamlet and Othello, and knew both plays by heart. As soon as Farenn started in on his guild and stern, Cagnazzo suspected that Farenn would tell them very little. He knew that he would backhandedly treat them with the disdain they deserved. 

Cagnazzo also imagined what Iago might say to Hamlet, and what Iago would think but never say.

Next: 💍 Pinpoints of Light

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