#barathron

[dreammakcr]

muse ║ myrcella baratheon fandom ║ a song of ice and fire → can be GOT or HOTD verse

"I'm not going to magically disappear if you keep ignoring me." Her words were soft, lips curving into a small frown as she approached the other.

[inimitablereel]

The parts of the river in harrow the ninth read to me like an utena fight song

[lemon-natalia]

Harrow the Ninth Reaction - Chapter 36

ohhh we’re one week away from the Emperor’s murder now!! things are heating up

‘Ortus’ the First’s callsign is G.P.!!!! not O.P.!! and though Harrow knows that the initials represent the two names, she doesn’t filter it out because its not the full name ‘Ortus’!

also, the Emperor’s callsign is ‘J.G’ for John Gaius, but i hadn’t previously considered that the ‘Gaius’ name might be connected the double naming with the Lyctor practice of using the cav’s name as well

and the Resurrection Beast is coming, how very ominous. what’s even more ominous though is the Locked Tomb Body’s reaction to it, she seems excited and knows it, which doesn’t feel good. i don’t think she’s a monster like the Emperor claims, but that doesn’t necessarily mean she’s good either

wow Harrow’s devotion to the Body is also something, and very much onesided. she assumes that the Body leaving means she’s done something wrong, transgressed somehow

hmm, the ‘barathron’ and ‘bathyrhoic’ are the first things i can think of that have a reference to ‘ba’ in their names, like ‘Ortus’ was beginning to say earlier, but i also feel like that doesn’t necessarily fit in the context of whatever he was talking about?

‘as we speak languishing in Hell!’ well i was wrong they do actually have a concept of Hell here

i feel like it can’t be as obvious as the traitor being one of the other Lyctors, i don’t trust these books aren’t gonna give some blindsiding twist lol.

i feel like it for sure won’t be Ianthe though, since not only is she the overly obvious suspect with Corona being with the BoE, but i don’t think she would necessarily even turn traitor for Corona, being a Lyctor is too important to her. i feel like as long as Corona’s not actually being hurt, Ianthe will prioritise her Lyctor role over her. plus Ianthe had her own agenda & reveal last time, idk if it would happen again

waiiit i just had a thought - given Harrow’s completely forgotten why she wrote the letters at all… could she have been the traitor and then forgotten it? but i don’t think that’s all that likely either

… did Augustine just call Ianthe ‘duckling’?? 🦆

love the way the Emperor just responds to half of what people say with ‘thanks’, its so mundane

‘each Beast is quite unlike the other’ ‘it was a humanoid creature with a beautiful voice that held me under the water’ no mention of the ninth RB here, i can’t remember if its fate has already been mentioned, but if they can look almost like humans, could the Ninth beast be the Locked Tomb body thats been talking to Harrow?

God apparently doesn’t believe in sin … okay

‘So who wants a bikkie’ me. me after hearing all that about the mouth of Hell 💀

[llovelyclouds]

notes on ulysses the first and titania tetra

im grouping ulysses and titania together because there is simply SO little information about them... but anyway here are all my notes on them from my reread!

(you can find the rest of the posts for this project here!)

ULYSSES THE FIRST

titles:

Sixth saint to ascend, (??) gen, founded/was from the fourth (?)

notes:

described as a "madman" at parties by Augustine (htn. pg. 268)

“Number Eight wasn’t tired by the time we got to the barathron, and Ulysses the First had to wrestle it through the stoma, and he is as we speak languishing in Hell!” - Mercymorn (htn. pg. 335)

Came up with the plan to fight Number Eight this way alongside G1deon (htn. pg. 336)

Was known for inciting sexy parties (htn, pg, 335)

Was named after John's grandmother's dog Ulysses S. Grunt, who died from eating too much pizza (ntn. pg. 101)

TITANIA TETRA

titles:

Ulysses’ cavalier, (??) gen, founded/was from the fourth (?)

notes:

Was named after Titania from Midsummer (ntn. pg. 101)

(I CANT BELIEVE THIS IS REALLY ALL I FOUND ON HER... THIS IS SO TRAGIC......)

[gogopierogi]

Thaemine Raid Final Cutscene

The Thaemine Legion Raid was finally cleared. A video of the ending cutscene is below the cut.

Unfortunately we don't get a full shot of Thaemine's face like I was hoping for. Fans have pieced to together composites from pieces of face we've seen, like this one put together by Twitter user hch990414:

Some fans (including myself) wondered if Kadan and Thaemine looked alike because of the popular fan theory about them being Zosma's chaos shards, but that's not the case. There's similarities, yeah, but Thaemine looks somewhat older and his overall facial structurer is clearly different.

Still, there seems to be some kind of connection between Kadan and Thaemine, though. I've seen speculation that Thaemine and Kadan are brothers, or son/father, or that Thaemine is Antares, the disgraced creator god of the Hal race and fire. But, idk, all these theories ring false to me. I also don't put much stock in the theory about them being shards of Zosma (I personally suspect Kharmine is one of Zosma's shards), though I lend that theory more weight than Thaemine being Kadan's dad or something. Maybe I'll try writing more of thoughts about all this in another post.

Anyway, the most interesting part of these cutscenes is Kharmine's unexpected appearance. Here's a (very) rough translation of his dialogue:

Kharmine: "You look troubled. To push Carmen to this level, I have no choice but to admit it. But now it's time to return to Arkasia. This is not a good place to discuss the end."

Kharmine looks at Kadan.

"I'm sure you haven't forgotten Kurzan, have you, Kadan? Now, hurry up. Because Kamen is waking up."

After everyone else leaves, Kharmine stays to address Thaemine.

"Dark…Bharatron. How pathetic. Barathron is beyond the abyss, a place where greater ideas rule. It won't be long, Thaemine. So I hope it happens quickly. The real you that I have wandered around so often."

Bharatron/Barathron is the giant eyeball fortress thing Thaemine summonded and where the raid takes place. Kharmine's line about about "the real you" to Thaemine is also interesting. Thaemine's true nature is still a mystery, and it seems Kharmine might have clue.

[toughtink]

a long time ago i made a guide to keys in Gideon the Ninth. i said i’d do some more Locked Tomb notes in the future, so i’m back to do that! these posts are pretty much my personal notes taken during my last reread, perfectly prone to errors, so feel free to add on if you spot any inconsistencies. also, the citations are specifically for the american paperback versions of the books. and i haven’t put much from nona in this list yet; mostly this one focuses on Harrow the Ninth info.

The River Sections in The Locked Tomb Series:

The Riverbank—seems to have many of the things you’d find on an actual real-world beach: silvery sand, dried wood, colored stones, long feathery plant stems and willow-like branches washed up on the shore, salt wind.

Epirhoic—Uppermost, near the banks. Where the lyctors plan to fight RB 7. Where folks always hope their ghost travels (“may your spirit travel high on the River” or smth), where Abigail assumes Isaac and Jeannemary’s spirits will travel given their youth and goodness ( “[They] never did anything wrong other than the time they tried to pierce each other’s tongues, should have travelled lightly through those waters.” —Abigail, htn 397).

Mesorhoic—middle, i guess. some ghosts.

Bathyrhoic—where the swiftest fight against a RB (8) took place. much fewer ghosts.

Barathron—very few ghosts sink this low. Jod says if he believed in sin, he’d say they died weighted down with sin, placing them nearer the trash space. deeper portions have pressure similar to water pressure in deep ocean (htn 494), but they never figured out what the River’s made of. Apparently there’s also rocks down here??? Because the Mithraeum gets caught on some rock face when dropped into the River (htn 496).

Stoma—Super hell? Opens & closes. Ferocious gravitational pull. Mouth to Hell. “A genuinely chaotic space—chaos in the meaning of the abyss as well as unfathomable…located at the bottom of the River. The Riverbed is studded with mouths that open at proximity of Resurrection Beasts, and no ghosts venture deeper than the bathyrhoic layer. Anyone who has entered the stoma has never returned. It is a portal to the place I cannot touch” (Jod, htn 240). Jod’s rubbish bin 🗑️. When a hole opens, it’s enormous with huge human teeth at the edges, each tooth “six bodies high and two bodies wide.” Gideon also describes it as “an eaten-away tunnel of reality.” (htn 495) Also, thousands of tentacle-y tongues come out (htn 496). Stoma is Greek for mouth, and though medically it normally refers to a hole in the abdomen used to expel waste, if we think of it as a mouth (which like, teeth + tongues sounds pretty mouthy), it could be compared to the mouth of a river, aka where it meets the ocean. Is “The Beyond” (in the next section) that ocean?

The River Beyond—what lies beyond, believed in thousands of years ago, but pooh-poohed now, and researched/believed in by Abigail Pent (htn 397), aka where spirits are attempting to cross to without being dragged to the depths of the River or going insane. Abigail believes there is a whole school of necromancy still undiscovered because of a lack of studying The Beyond (my capitals, not hers) and that something has gone terribly wrong in the River.—Personally, it feels like the system has been gummed up by necromancy, souls coming and going and causing problems when they really should have been going in one direction. Alecto asks Jod where he put all the children in ntn, so maybe normally those souls go directly back to their planets/nearest cosmic bodies? But killing the planets has made that impossible so now they’re stuck in a subspace Purgatory occasionally getting sucked into Hell ala The Good Place where OOPS! No one’s been able to get to Heaven for 10k years!

some miscellaneous thoughts about the river:

perhaps the river was never meant to exist at all? could the destruction of the solar system have created it? and what’s with its use as subspace travel? it’s plot convenient, sure, but is that a feature that can be expanded to all souls, living and dead? or is it the spiritual dimension being sucked into some kinda worm hole that was already in space or something? idk, it’s very weird as you can be there spiritually but not physically or you can be there physically too as evidenced by the very physical kinds of rocks and stuff as well as whole space ships getting dropped in. it’s certainly a fun take on the river styx, and i do think we’ll be going beyond the stoma in alecto. maybe it’ll really lean in to the greek mythology connection this time and we’ll get a bit of an orpheus and eurydice moment with a certain saddest girl in the world going in to rescue a certain goth nunlet?

[iviarellereads]

Harrow the Ninth, Bonus Content, Pronunciation Guide

(Curious what I'm doing here? Read this post! For detail on The Locked Tomb coverage and the index, read this one! Like what you see? Send me a Ko-Fi.)

Similar to the one in GtN, titled "Naming Systems", but for this book's new characters.

John Gaius GUY-us NOTE: He's just some guy, you know? NOTE II: Gaius was not the name John was born with. He picked it for himself circa Y100 of his reign.(1)

Augustine - AWG-us-tin, not awg-us-TEEN.

Alfred Quinque - KWIN-kway.

Augustine and Alfred share an arithmonym. The implications of this were present at the time, but not as developed as they were later on.

Cassiopeia - Cass-ee-oh-PAY-ah. Nothing like her namesake in Greek mythology, "as she was honestly just a universally beloved and clever human being who made beautiful meals with the occasional finger error."(2)

Cristabel - CRIS-ta-bell, not "crees".

Pyrrha Dve - PIRRA DVAY (one syllable). Pyrrha has many connotations, but Muir's favourite is the disguise Achilles took in that name.(3)

Nigella Shodash - NYE-jella SHOW-dash.

Valancy Trinit - VAL-an-see TRIN-it. Derived from "valens", the same root as "valiant", an incredible cavalier name. Valancy and Cyrus both supported each other's belief that they were the most attractive people ever born.

Titania Tetra - Ti-TAHN-iya TET-ra.(4)

Loveday Heptane - LOVE-day HEP-tane.

Anastasia - An-ass-TAYS-iya, rather than an-ass-TAHS-iya.

Samael Novenary - SAM-ay-el No-VEEN-ary

Mithraeum - Mith-RAY-em. From temples of Mithras,(5) of course.

Noniad - NO-nee-add.

Enneameter - enny-AM-eter.

NOTE: The metre of Ortus's epic, The Noniad (Matthias hight Nonius his Deeds and Accomplishments), is dactylic enneameter.(6) This is the traditional metre for serious Ninth House poetry (as opposed to light lyric Ninth House poetry, which is written in enneasyllables(7) and doesn't exist). As befits a Ninth House metre, enneameter is long, ponderous, clunky, and sucks. Ortus sticks grimly to some of its most archaic rules.

Apopneumatism - apo-NEW--mat-ism

Admiral Sarpedon - Admiral (as in the rank) Sar-PEE-don.(8)

Abella Trine - A-BELL-uh TRYNE (like "mine")

Epirhoic - EPPY-ro-ic (the end of which rhymes with "heroic"). Here Muir notes "Rhoic, from the Greek "rhoe," stream or flow; epi-, "on top of," so it's on top of the stream."(9)

Mesorhoic - MEE-so-ro-ic. "Meso" meaning middle.

Bathyrhoic - BATH-ee-ro-ic, with a short "a" which Muir says is in "psychopath". "Bathy" means "deep".

Barathron - ba-RA-thron. Greek for "a pit". "Criminals were classically thrown into one in ancient Athens."

=====

(1) So, what name WAS he born with, and where did "Gaius" come from? (2) How much do we believe this? How much of this should we question? Is Muir revealing truths, or red herrings? (3) Given that she's now a woman in a man's body, in a sort of way, that's a rather interesting choice to refer to in this, imo! (4) I suppose I'd have written out a "not tye-TAY-nya" to supplement this, but it's entirely possible Muir's never encountered that one in the wild. (5) Mithras is a complicated but popular god to reference in fiction. And it's true, real-life mithraea survive to modern day and can be visited. We don't actually know much about the Mithraists because they didn't write their religion down, but there's a lot of guesses of varying skeptical-eyebrow-raising quality available to research if you want to see how deep the parallels might go! Or someone's probably made a post about it somewhere on Tumblr, if you dare risk spoilers. (6) Recall that I explained enneameter before! I completely forgot that this was here! So, "enneameter" meant "poetry with nine feet/groupings". Dactylic means poetry in which each foot consists of one long/stressed syllable followed by two short ones, named for the resemblance to human finger bones. No, that's not just a Ninth House conceit, it's our-world. (7) Literally just nine syllables per line. (8) This certainly gives new light to the John/Sarpedon shippers and Muir's restraint in not saying "PEED-on" is admirable itself. (9) Once again I forgot this was in the guide back here, as it wasn't in the glossary part when I checked that. Still, I found it pretty difficult to track down the etymology, though part of that comes down to search engines getting actively worse over the last couple of years. (I have receipts. It's not just your imagination, if you noticed it too, but this isn't the place to rant about that.)

[liesmyth]

OOOH for the WiP meme!! 🤔📄👻

🤔 Do you have any WIPs where you wish you had chosen a different fandom/character? — Not really! Because what draws me to writing fic is usually the characters and the situations I can put them in, and the fic is built around that.

👻Is there a scene that you find intimidating that you have yet to write? — THE ENDING OF MY TLT BANG. I'm putting it on hold for a while and go back to other stuff in the fandom while my brain cooks :D

📝Share a snippet of an unposted WIP, with or without context.

The HtN Dios Apate-centric AU that has been haunting me for 6 months

The long and the short of it is that Joy decides that Harrowhark should not die. She was always a sucker for a nun, she and John both, and together they bundle up the girl to keep her deficient body safe while her soul fights where they truly need her. Augustine doesn’t know how they’ve strongarmed the girl into agreeing, but he doesn’t mind it—as pitiful as the girl is, it’s far too soon for her to die. Gideon’s dull stone face doesn’t give anything away, but little Ianthe looks all too thrilled even as she’s going to her possible death. Oh, to be young and infatuated.

They leave their bodies behind. They fight for hours, from the banks of the River to the depths of the Barathron, and it’s Augustine who finally wrestles the Beast into hell. Good fucking riddance, he thinks, tired and drained, too fraught with nerves to feel victorious. He’s shaking. That’s one ancient enemy they’ve gotten rid of—one of six in a long myriad, and it cost them three of their number.

In the Mithraeum, John welcomes them eagerly. “Well done,” he says, shifting on his feet, looking restless. His voice is charged in a way Augustine has rarely heard before, but he’s too tired to linger on that thought. They won, nobody died; he needs to sleep. Ianthe, the chit, is bouncing with restless energy, finally feeling like a real Lyctor, and so is Gideon, who has never been happy in his life unless he’s killing something. He catches sight of John reassuring Harrowhark as he leaves. It’s ridiculous how diligently God has been cultivating their little almost-Anastasia, with her broken brain and painted face.

“Oh, it’s fine,” he’s saying, as Augustine stumbles away. “Don’t worry about it.”

He sleeps for two days. On the third day, they all eat together; John has assembled plates of flatbread and meats and steamed vegetables, and Augustine picks at the food half-heartedly. The air is not precisely merry—they are all recovering from the onslaught of the Heralds as well as the fight—but it is comfortable and easygoing; Augustine lets Ianthe pester him for stories of the early days on Korionthos, and even Joy appears relaxed. John, oddly enough, barely talks, but he seems very content to listen, a pensive expression on his face.

The next day, Gideon is gone. This is beyond unusual. John would never—he has never—sent them away on missions so soon after a Beast fight. But when asked about it, John only shrugs. “Oh, nothing too taxing, I promise. He didn’t mind.” That, Augustine believes; Gideon is often in haste to leave and find something else to stick his sword into. “He’ll be back soon.”

“If you say so, Lord.” Joy’s voice conveys perfectly her distaste at Gideon’s eagerness to depart his brother and sisters, as though she didn’t feel the exact same way about all of them.

On the sixth day, John invites them to dinner. Just Augustine and Mercy; he says that the girls are doing their thing, with a gesture that hints at the mystery of young people, and suggest they do dinner and drinks on their own.

“I want to try Cassy’s roast recipe, the one with the cranberries,” he says. “The last time I prepared a whole proper meal… well, must have been before I left for the Erebos. Will you humour me?”

He says it so earnestly. His eyes are terrible. Augustine should not wish to look into them as much as he does.

[hermajestythebomb]

Part of why the book!Martell and the book! Targs make such a great team is because both are houses made of Horny Bastards.

And that's why I stan them both.

[abigail-pent]

theory time, again

ok. hot off my (third? fourth?) reread of the Locked Tomb, and I’ve noticed something that may be nothing or may be everything. as one does.

HTN p. 500/end of chapter 52: Gideon (and Pyrrha) are in the barathron layer of the River, in their respective necromancers’ bodies, and Gideon drowns -- or more specifically, Harrow’s body is imploding due to the pressure of “whatever the River is, we never really knew” (p. 494), and suddenly Alecto appears to Gideon in “a great sunshiny light” and tells someone -- or several someones -- to do chest compressions on Harrow’s body because “we need that heart pumping”.

Now, this sunshiny light is quite interesting, because last we knew, Alecto was “switched off” inside the Tomb. Also because this is not what the barathron layer -- or frankly any layer -- of the River is like. It’s possible, of course, that John’s brief death freed Alecto from the Tomb, but that doesn’t really explain how she got somewhere sunshiny so quickly or how Harrow’s body with Gideon resident within it also made it to the sunshiny place. We know the Tomb isn’t like that, because we have Harrow’s description in chapter 53 (yes I know it’s not the real Tomb, but I’m willing to guess that the imagined Tomb in that chapter is based on the real deal which Harrow has previously observed), and also because it’s well documented that nothing on the whole Ninth is bright and sunshiny.

So, where are they? Well. I think they’re in yet another bubble in the River. It all comes back to John’s assertion that he didn’t kill Alecto, but instead made her “as dead as [he] could make her” by “switching her off” (HTN p. 479). He couldn’t make her truly dead, because if he did there would be negative consequences for him/his Lyctorhood/his authority/his Empire. So he can’t kill her body, and he can’t kill her spirit. But he can separate the two.* And what would be a better way to imprison a spirit, effectively neutering Alecto and removing her from play, than to create a bubble in the River and impose a set of rules that prevent her from leaving?

If the Alecto we see in HTN ch. 52 is her imprisoned spirit, this may explain why they want Harrow’s body so badly. I’m sure a defleshed spirit in the River could really use a body to inhabit.

Furthermore, it’s clear that Alecto is not alone in this bubble, if many-voiced Alecto could ever truly be alone in the first place. She’s giving orders to other people when she tells them to do chest compressions. There are multiple spirits there, or perhaps multiple people.  And I’d be lying if I said the “bright sunshiny light” didn’t put me in mind of the “menacing blue sky-circle” referenced in the NTN book announcement. It only makes sense to be a sky-circle, as opposed to a sky, if you’re not actually outside; and a River bubble is exactly the kind of not-outside that might give birth to a sky-circle. The presence of multiple people makes “a pack of rabid children” possible within the bubble. And why shouldn’t there be at least one extremely good dog in there?

* look, it’s another lobotomy!

[fromtheboundlesssea]

You probably already been ask about this but how about a robert barathron x celia lannister

Celia was made to marry a man who would never love her. But she was a lion and she would not be taken advantage of. Her son would be the king and he would be a greater man than his father would ever be.

[thelockedtomb]

@motherfucker-somewhat-limited​, I do not understand. It is the myriadic year of our Lord, the ten-thousand-and-first year of the King Undying. I have plunged down into the barathron of the River to consult with The One Who Had to Do It to Them, and I have brought back the lost arcane knowledge of the Forgotten Ones since before the Resurrection. This shit is so hot, so fresh. Who are you? Who sent you?

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

“Among tales of gods who go unrecognized or are rejected, who reveal their power and finally win acceptance, the tale of the Mother of the Gods is surely one of the most remarkable. Unlike Dionysus or Demeter, whose arrivals were placed by classical sources in the legendary past, the most famous tale of the Mother’s arrival is set historically, in Athens of the fifth century. The story of the annunciation, rejection, and ultimate acceptance of the Mother of the Gods at Athens has been preserved in a variety of late sources, the most distinguished of which is an essay by the last polytheist emperor, Julian.

In opening his fifth oration, To the Mother of the Gods, Julian asks: “Ought I to say something on this subject also? . . . And shall I write about things not to be spoken of and divulge what ought not to be divulged? . . . Who is the Mother of the Gods?” Julian’s deference to mystic custom here bears comparison to the discretion that reserved the secrets of the Eleusinian Mysteries to initiates, a secrecy not otherwise associated with the Mother of the Gods. Julian continues with his account of the cult of the Mother:

The rites of the Mother . . . were handed down by the Phrygians in very ancient times, and were first taken over by the Greeks, and not by any ordinary Greeks, but by the Athenians who learned by experience that they did wrong to jeer at one who was celebrating the mysteries of the Mother. For it is said that they wantonly insulted and drove out the Gallus, on the ground that he was introducing a new cult, because they did not understand what sort of goddess they had to do with, and that she was the very Deo whom they worship, and Rhea and Demeter too. Then followed the wrath of the goddess and the propitiation of her wrath. For the priestess of the Pythian god who guided the Greeks in all noble conduct, bade them propitiate the wrath of the Mother of the gods. And so, we are told, the Metroön was built, where the Athenians used to keep all their state records.

As Julian reports, the arrival of the Mother of the Gods at Athens was precipitated by the rejection of the man whom he calls “the Gallus.” Gallus was the title by which, as of the third century b.c.e., the Phrygian eunuch priests of the Mother of the Gods were commonly known. Other sources refer to the priest who brought the rites of the Mother to Athens as “the Phrygian man”. Most often, in the sources cited below, he is called “the Metragytes,” the begging priest of the Mother. Julian states that this man was driven out by unsympathetic Athenians. Other accounts make the point that he was put to death by the Athenians, and also explain that the eventual atonement for this offensive behavior was somehow connected to the manner and place in which the Athenians had put the Metragytes to death. The fullest such account is found in the lexicon of Photius, under the lemma “Metroön”: 

A certain Metragytes came to Attica and was initiating women in the rites of the Mother of the Gods, as they say. The Athenians killed him by throwing him head first into the barathron [executioner’s pit]. When a plague broke out, the Athenians received an oracle commanding them to atone for the murdered man. On this account they built the Council House, on the spot at which they had put the Metragytes to death. Fencing the place in, they dedicated it to the Mother of the Gods, and they erected a statue of the Metragytes. They then made use of the Metroön as an archive building and repository for laws, and they filled in the barathron.

Here we learn the manner of death that the Athenians accorded to the Metragytes. We are also told that the Metroön and archive house is identical with the Council House (bouleuterion) of the Athenians. A variant of this account states that it was a law court (dikasterion) rather than the Council House that was built on the spot where the Metragytes was put to death. Another account, explaining the word barathron, states the Phrygian origin of the priest, as does Julian, and adds details that call attention to the link between the Mother and Demeter, as does Julian:

Barathron: A dark, well-like chasm in Attica, into which they used to throw malefactors. . . . Here they threw the Phrygian devotee of the Mother of the Gods because he had gone mad, since he announced that the Mother was coming in search of her daughter. But the enraged goddess sent crop failure into the land; and when, through the advice of an oracle, they realized the reason for this, they filled in the chasm and offered propitiatory sacrifices to the goddess.

These accounts of the Mother’s establishment at Athens are circumstantially detailed and consistent in all important respects. But could they be historically accurate? The fact that they are preserved only in late sources has raised suspicions. The manner in which the story of rejection and atonement so clearly conforms to a mythical paradigm has decided the matter for a number of scholars, who dismiss the entire account as a late invention. ... Athenian drama of the last three decades of the fifth century repeatedly presents the Mother of the Gods to Athenian audiences, often challenging Athenians to see the Mother as somehow the same as Rhea, Demeter, and Ge, the Earth herself, and akin to Aphrodite and Artemis. She is called “the Phrygian . . . Great Mother of gods and men, Mistress Kybele” by Aristophanes. A chorus of Sophocles invokes her as “Mistress Mother, warder of the great gold-bearing Pactolus,” at Sardis. Also at Sardis, “Tomolus’ Lydian stronghold,” and at “the city of the Phrygians,” the “rites of the Great Mother Kybele” are repeatedly proclaimed by the chorus of Euripides’ Bacchae. In the usage of Euripides, she is the “Idaean Mother” in the Troad and in Crete alike. 

While Athenian audiences were thus repeatedly reminded of the Asiatic origin of the rites of the Mother, they were also reminded that it was customary to disparage her wandering priests. The comic poet Cratinus used two different appellations of the begging priest of the Mother: in his Runaway Women he used the term agersikybelis (beggar of Kybele) to satirize the contemporary seer Lampon; in his Thracian Women he used the term Kybebos (Kybebe-man), which Photius’ lexicon cites as an Ionicism for Metragyrtes.  In Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus, Oedipus chides Teiresias, who speaks ill-omened words, as a dolios agyrtes (deceitful beggar), alluding to the type of the unwelcome begging priest associated with the Asiatic Kybele. 

These allusions to the Mother of the Gods, the Asiatic Kybele, and to her wandering priests were all part of the literary record of the late fifth century, and were therefore available to later generations, when devotees of the Mother might, just conceivably, have concocted the story of the Metragyrtes out of them. Likewise, the famous plague of the early Peloponnesian War, which struck Athens in the very period when this growing attention to the Mother is attested, was part of the historical record. It would be hard to defend the historicity of the story on the basis of these elements alone. Other elements of the story, however, involve more obscure details that are less likely to have been common knowledge. For example, the barathron is attested as the executioners’ pit from the beginning of the fifth century, but after the early fourth century it is remembered only as a relic of the past. But the most remarkable set of details, which no source explains or even mentions outside of these stories about the Metragyrtes and the Mother, involves the conversion of the Council House in the Athenian agora simultaneously into an archive for state records and a shrine to the Mother.   Close to the end of the fifth century, a cult image of the Mother of the Gods was created by Agoracritus and installed in the building in the agora of Athens that became known after her as the Metroön. The statue is known to us through the many miniature replicas of it that were produced for household shrines, beginning in the fourth century. Epigraphic sources confirm that the building called the Metroön was also the state archive building, and that it was organized as such by the end of the fifth century. Archaeological investigation has revealed that this building actually was the old Council House, originally built in the time of Cleisthenes, which was replaced in the last decade of the fifth century by a new Council House built beside it, making way in the older building for the state archives, and for the Mother of the Gods.

The coincidence of the story of the “Phrygian man,” the Metragyrtes, with so many circumstantial details, and especially with the archaeologically documented history of the Athenian Council House, raises a strong suspicion that the story of the Metragyrtes bears some relation to historical events. The objection that the story is so late, coming to us from late antiquity, might even be eliminated by evidence indicating that the literary origin of the story of the Metragyrtes and the foundation of the Metroön was a historical work of the fourth century b.c.e. A scholiast, explaining a reference to archival documents “in the Metroön beside the Council House” in a speech of Aeschines, adds the following: “We know from the Philippics that the Athenians converted a portion of the Council House into the Metroön, which is the sanctuary of Rhea, on account of that Phrygian man.” The story of “that Phrygian man” was evidently told in a work entitled Philippics, which was most likely the work of that title either by Theopompus or by Anaximenes, both of whom wrote in the second half of the fourth century. Here, if only it were fully preserved, we could have found the story of the Metragyrtes, and of the foundation of the Metroön, set in its historical context.” - Mark Munn, The Mother of the Gods, Athens, and the Tyranny of Asia: A Study of Sovereignty in Ancient Religion. University of California Press, 2006. pp. 58-64.

[catfever7]

Game Of Thrones

I did some binge watching of some of my favorite episodes (or pivotal episodes) since the final season will be here April 14th, got to be prepared and you know just relive some of the past.

Anyway since death has always been a big part of the show, My top 5 most heart wrenching deaths on GOT.

5. Lady (Sansa's direwolf) Poor lady didn't deserve the way she went out.

4. Ned Stark

3. Rob Stark and Catelyn Stark

2. Shireen Barathron (this little girl was so innocent and she died because that nasty wench Melisandre's whole royal blood power prophesy.

1. Hodor (The only death where I legit cried)

[griddleharkakalockedtombbrainrot]

But The Best is Lost

AO3

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind; Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.

“But I do not approve, and I am not resigned,” Harrowhark Nonagesimus murmured, staring into the depths of the River as if gazing alone would grant her entry into the barathron, that place where even God feared to tread. The barathron, where the stoma all lay in wait...the bowels of the spirit world. But to put things right, that was where she must go. Why should God hold sway in a space that he’d broken in the first place? And why should Harrowhark Nonagesimus fear it? She, who was made of two hundred screaming children all brutally murdered for the purpose of upholding a system that had been rotten to core from its moment of genesis, must naturally consider it her domain. There was no place more fit to end her miserable existence.

Gideon was gone. Beautiful, fiery, utterly impossible Gideon, burnt into ashes so long before her time. So were Abigail and Magnus, who had seen the neglected child she was, buried under layers of pride, ice, and a composure she now couldn’t hope to summon even if she desired it. The universe was a colder, crueler place without them. Palamedes, Camilla...they too were lost. Palamedes, who in the end had been both the better necromancer and the better person. His like would not be seen again for another myriad, if ever again. Camilla Hect, loyal and brave to a fault. Dulcie, who had been so cruelly murdered, but had still spared her the kindness to give her a choice. In the end, all that was left was Harrowhark, a walking abomination who should never have existed. 

Even so, she was only two hundred souls, whereas the man they had all called God had killed billions. Ten billion, to be precise. Sometimes, to kill a monster, you needed another monster to finish the job. All things considered, Harrow was content to be that monster. Not even Alecto had been able to take down the Emperor, in the end. The universe was well and truly fucked if its only hope for salvation rested in Harrow’s hands. You were wrong, Nav, she thought savagely. I am, and always will be unfit to exist. I’m sorry I couldn’t save you. I’m sorry I can’t live like you wished me to. But I meant what I said: I am undone without you. Drawing the longsword from its place against her back, her arms only trembled a little, and she couldn’t be entirely sure that it wasn’t nerves and not lack of muscle. She liked to think that Gideon would be pleased at the muscle she’d built up since everything had well and truly gone to hell. But she wasn’t here to be proud. 

As her eyes burned, Harrow blinked in a sort of disconnected surprise. She hadn’t thought she had any tears left. No matter. She had a job to do. It had taken forever to work out how to bring Gideon’s sword with her into the River, but damn it, she had managed it. Palamedes may have been the greatest necromancer of their generation--and damn, she would cut out her tongue before ever admitting that aloud--but she was no rank amateur. She did not take a moment to steel herself. She did not take a deep, preparatory breath. Instead, she plunged into the depths of the River, calling upon theorems only the mad or the desperate would ever use. She was both. 

The Resurrection Beasts that were left stirred, and she could feel their eyes searching for her. It was suicide to use theorems in the River, and these theorems in particular were...volatile...at the best of times. Well, let them come. Let them follow her into Hell if they wished. With Gideon’s sword glowing like a star, she cut her way through the layers of the River, slashing her way to the barathron with intent permeating her being. The Resurrection Beasts followed, just as she thought they might. The shadows of the barathron with its screaming, tortured souls reached for her, and Gideon’s sword blazed in the dark. Blood sweat was already pouring down her face, and she could feel her power draining. Still, she slashed her way through the shadows, her mad theorems still holding strong. Screams echoed in her ears, though they seemed tinny and distant through the blood in her ears. The screams became a roaring crescendo, and she could feel the Heralds behind her, but she still did not yield as she tore her way to the stoma, which finally opened. WIthout hesitation, she plunged into whatever was awaiting her.

A dark, wild song of power slammed into her, a roar of grief and madness and rage and joy all at once. It tore at her mind, and she saw patterns that defied everything she understood about her reality. This power tore her apart and rebuilt her a thousand times and a thousand times more, but she still managed to keep ahold of Gideon’s sword, still managed to hold on to one kernel of self. It She froze and burned at once, and her mind came undone and then wove itself back together, in seconds and an eternity. With all her will, she seized a tendril of that power and drew it into herself, and it hurt. It would have undone her if she were not already so used to being undone. Finally, stillness came. A sigh, then a vague sensation of a hand stroking her face. Very well, the stillness seemed to say. What do you seek? 

I seek to put things right, a whining, desperate part that she thought she’d killed said. I want them back.

Is that all? A sudden pressure sent more blood rushing from her ears and eyes and nose.

No. 

What do you want?

I want to kill God, and I want the entire rotting system to die with him. I want Gideon back.

Very well.

The power rushed into her, and now her body burst apart, remaking itself from the clay of the River. The stoma opened for her, and she erupted from the surface of the River, opening her eyes to the walls of the Mithraeum. With the power of the stoma coursing through her, she headed for the Emperor, somehow able to locate him with a thought. The Resurrection Beasts followed, but she somehow knew that if she commanded them, they would obey. 

Give them hell,  Dulcie had said. Well, now Harrow was Hell itself.

***********************************

Gideon awakened to sunlight and a soft bed. She sighed, stretching, then paused. “Wasn’t I dead?”

Another beat. It was too quiet. Where was Harrow? Harrow...Harrow wasn’t in her head. She bolted upright, her heart suddenly pounding. She looked down at herself. She was back in her body. Before she could process this, she tore from the room, which looked like part of the Mithraeum, which...why was she here, of all places? There were no guards in the corridor, and it was still suspiciously quiet. Which was why, when Camilla Hect appeared, Gideon nearly took a page out of the Ninth House playbook by dying from a heart attack.

The Sixth cavalier’s eyes were solemn as she took in Gideon’s face. Gideon wasn’t sure what her face looked like, but it couldn’t be good, because Hect said, “Come with me.”

“Why are we here?”

“It’s unclear. We think Harrow did something. Just...come with me.”

Gideon followed her numbly, wondering why Hect’s shoulders seemed so tense. Palamedes met them at the door to the Emperor’s preferred room. His face was ashen, and the look in his eyes was the look of a man who had had everything he thought he knew turn out to be wrong. His eyes flashed to Gideon, then flicked away, as if he couldn’t quite bring himself to look at her. He stepped aside to let them in, and Gideon stared.

The Emperor, her father/sperm donor, lay dead. Like, dead dead. It looked like someone had shoved most of his body into a meat grinder. Only his head was intact, and his face was frozen in horror. But a flash of black robes pulled her eyes away from this tableau, and as she got the full picture, it was this small, sad huddle of robes that had her hurtling across the room.

“Harrow,” she said hoarsely. Her necromancer lay in a tiny heap in the corner. The sharp, pointed little face was covered in blood, and her hair, which now fell slightly past her shoulders, was matted with the stuff. Closer examination revealed that Harrow had bled from her ears, eyes, and nose, and profusely. She fell to her knees beside her necromancer, and lifted her into her arms. “Harrow,” she said again. 

And Harrow opened dark eyes to look at her, and Gideon started. Not because this indicated that her own eyes were back where they belonged, but because the eyes looking at her were still not quite Harrow’s. These were the starless black, shot through with the blue of lightning, and these streaks shifted, like a storm in motion. And her face...it looked...cracked, like someone had shattered her and glued her back together. A look at Harrow’s hands showed more of the same.

“What did you do?” Gideon demanded.

And Harrow fucking smiled at her. “I put things right.” And her voice...an icy fear raced through Gideon’s veins. Her evil little bone witch had never sounded so weak. 

“WHAT DID YOU DO???” Gideon’s voice was a roar, and she shook her necromancer a little, then held her close. “Harrow,” she whispered, and her voice came out strangled sounding. “What did you do?” she asked again, stroking the little, sharp face under her hands, trying to wipe away the blood.

And Harrow’s smile was a fierce, sharp, lovely thing as she replied, “I gave him hell.”

“I don’t doubt it, my shadowy gremlin queen, but how?”

“I entered the stoma.”

From across the room, Palamedes emitted a yelp. “You did WHAT?”

Harrow ignored him, and raised a trembling, scarred hand to Gideon’s cheek. “You’re free, Nav,” she murmured, and the smile she now wore was open and soft, and it utterly shattered Gideon. “The Nine Houses are free from his rot. But I fear you and the others will have to help rebuild what he broke.”

“So will you,” Gideon said, and she hated how watery her voice sounded. “We need you, Nonagesimus. Stay with me...please.”

“My flesh and bones will gladly stay, but I fear that I  am like to head on to wherever abominations such as myself go when we die.”

A sob tore its way from Gideon then. “You’re not a monster,” she snarled. “You’re mine, damn it. Don’t you dare leave me!” Her hands tightened on Harrow, and she pulled her necromancer into an embrace, Harrow’s head resting on her chest. “One flesh, one end, remember? You’re the Ninth, remember?”

“The Tomb has been opened, Gideon.” And Gideon’s heart seemed to splinter apart in her chest. Harrow uttered the syllables of her name like they were something sacred and precious. “The Ninth House’s purpose is done. It’s time for it to find a new purpose...and new life. Like everything else. God is dead, and the false Resurrection is done.”

Gideon shook her head. “You’ll always be the Ninth to me. What am I supposed to do without you.”

Harrow coughed, and blood trickled down her chin. Her breathing sounded wet, and Gideon trembled down to her core. But Harrow met her eyes, and caressed Gideon’s cheek once more. “Live, Gideon,” she said softly. A series of coughs racked her small frame, and blood seemed to leak out of her, and distantly, Gideon could hear a keening wail. It took a moment to realize that she was the one making that sound. She saw the exact moment that last spark of life left Harrow’s eyes. 

Someone tried to take Harrow from her, and she swung out with a fist and an incoherent scream. Her necromancer was so cold...she held Harrow tighter, trying to warm her. “Don’t leave me,” she whispered. “Don’t you dare do this to me, Nonagesimus, you Ninth piece of shit. I love you, damn it! Don’t you dare..”

[iviarellereads]

Harrow the Ninth, Chapter 36

(Curious what I'm doing here? Read this post! For detail on The Locked Tomb coverage and the index, read this one! Like what you see? Send me a Ko-Fi.)

(Herald icon) In which we all snicker with Ianthe.

Harrow begins to pray again, for comfort's sake more than real hope. She prays for clarity, that the Body might point to the apostate among the Lyctors remaining. She prays that everything in the last ten months has been illusion, especially the visit on the jungle planet. She could almost believe that it's all been a dream, except that the letter to Corona is still gone, and two other letters opened. When she thinks about all this, blood drips from her ears again, and her ear canals are now stained dead brown.(1)

One day, about a month after the jungle planet, some alarms go off and a shutter closes over Harrow's window.

The voice of the Emperor of the Nine Houses rasped over the comm speaker beside your door, and you rushed to stand before it as he said: "J. G. calling in. All clear. Lyctors, do you copy?"

"A. A. calling in. All clear."

"G. P. calling in. All clear."(2)

A pause. Then you heard Ianthe's cool, detached tones, as if she hadn't even been asleep: "No one has yet seen fit to grace me with a callsign, but nonetheless, all clear."

Augustine: "You're I. N., of course. Harrow's H ... Yes, Harrow's H."

"H. O. calling in,"(3) you said instantly, and you ignored Ianthe's audible sniggers. "All clear. What's going on?"

It doesn't escape Jod's notice that Mercy fails to copy on the all clear immediately, but when she does check in, she says the RB is here. Welp, that's that, back to bed everyone, no really.

Harrow sees the Body in her bed, her eyes "death-mask gold", and the Body says it's coming, with anticipation and astonishment. Harrow senses that the Body is troubled, so kisses her, or at least the space where she is. The Body looks at Harrow, almost pityingly, and says she has to go away for a while. Harrow thinks she's done something wrong, but the Body suggests otherwise. She reaches out as if to touch Harrow's eyes, and Harrow falls asleep.

There's some tactical discussion as to the best way to take on RB 7. We get a lot more of the physics of the River, including the different "layers".(4) The Saint of Duty wants to drive the RB down to the bathyrhoic immediately but Mercy, who is doing the explaining for the children, disagrees.

"Our swiftest fight against a Beast took place in the bathyrhoic layer."

"Yes, and Number Eight wasn't tired by the time we got to the barathron, and Ulysses the First had to wrestle it through the stoma, and he is as we speak languishing in Hell! It's a Resurrection Beast, honey! Thank you! Next!!"(5)

While staring at her in the meeting, Harrow hopes that Ianthe isn't the traitor Judith mentioned. With a sister in the BOE, Ianthe has every reason to flip sides to them, but Harrow prays for Ianthe's innocence.(6)

The meeting continues, but they start making fun of Mercy's drawing. Even John gets in on it. Mercy says she hates them all, except God.

"I merely want to put you in a jail," said his Lyctor, now meditative, "and fill up the jail with acid once for every time you made a frivolous remark, or ate peanuts in a Cohort Admiralty meeting, or said, 'What would I know, I'm only God.' Then at the end of a thousand years, you would say, 'Mercy, I have learned not to do any of these things, because I hated the acid you put on me.' And I would say, 'That is why I did it, Lord. I did it for you, and for your empire.' I often think about this," she finished.

The Emperor of the Nine Houses said, "I ate peanuts, discreetly, the once."(7)

The elder Lyctors spend some time describing the other Beasts, and how different they were, to reinforce the point that each is different and uses different tactics. Mercy assigns the elders and Ianthe cardinal directions to attack from, and Harrow asks, what's she to do? Mercy says not to get in the way. Augustine smoothes this out, suggesting that Harrow find the place she's most useful, even if that's outside the River. Harrow understands that they just don't want to be burdened with her inevitable death.(8)

God agrees that Harrow can remain flexible and be very useful, and calls for an awkward tea break. Everyone else stands but Ianthe, who asks what the stoma is, they never really said. The elders, particularly August and Mercy, start arguing over neither telling their students about the stoma. August accuses Mercy of not taking it seriously in her life, "which is why your whole damend House sucks at it like a grotesque teat".(9)

John interrupts, and reveals that the stoma is the gate to Hell.(10) when they defeat the RBs as much as they ever do, they let them get sucked up by the "stoma" of the river, the portal to hell, a bridge to a place where his powers cannot touch and have no meaning.(11) It's where they put the RBs. Like a rubbish bin. (12)

=====

(1) She can't stop thinking about her friends, and about why she keeps reacting to them the way she does. (2) Did you catch those initials? There's nobody with a G name on board, is there? (Then again, God's self-and-cav initials given are for John and Gaius, since his cavalier held the initials A. L. So he should've been J. A. by this format, unless it's for John, God to make sure nobody forgets his position. (3) If you didn't at least smirk a little at this one, are you sure you're reading the right series for you? But, it's so cute that she still fully believes Ortus was her cavalier when she obviously planned the whole time to bring Gideon. But in this version of events that's been constructed for her perceptions, Gideon never existed. Remember, "There had been another girl who grew up alongside Harrow - but she had died before Harrow was born." Even more heartbreaking to remember all this in the chapters immediately after we figure out who the narrator has been all this time. (4) The layers of the River nearly all correlate to the layers of our-world oceans. Epirhoic, epipelagic, the surface zone. Mesorhoic, mesopelagic, the twilight zone. Bathyrhoic, bathypelagic, the midnight zone. The roots are all Greek, with "rhoic" related to "rhoe" a seemingly uncommon synonym for "river" or "flow" given how long it took me to track it down to its roots in a dictionary. Muir replaces the abyssopelagic (abyssal zone, near-freezing, almost uninhabited) and hadalpelagic (Mariana Trench only) zones with the barathron, which seems to derive from "baras" (heavy) and "thronos" (throne, seat of power). (5) Pretty sure this is Thank U, Next, by Ariana Grande. I'm not clear on the bit of line before that but it also feels like a reference, just can't be to the same song. Maybe to one of the reality show/influencer types whose memes I don't follow as closely. (6) I think that ship's sailed whether or not she's the traitor Judith meant, Harrow. Sorry. (7) But no protest on the other counts, hmm? (8) I don't know that any of them would put it QUITE that way, Harrow, dear. But yeah pretty much. (9) Mercy's house siphon souls, though. What's this about sucking at the stoma? (10) In our-world terms, a stoma is an opening in the body. Your mouth and your butt are both natural stomata. Sometimes a doctor will create a stoma, such as to set up a colostomy to get poop out without it going through the colon. These may be permanent or temporary. Just food for thought since this stoma in the River seems like it could be important later. (11) But that's not necessarily really Hell as such, though. Just, y'know, saying. It might be Hell for you, John, but your opinions aren't fact just because you've been endowed with God-like power. (I love the character, I don't always approve of his framing or his stances.) (12) Note how often abbreviations are reused. Alright, letterisms, if you wanna get pedantic on me. Still. The same few letters being used for different things. Like AL and Anabelle Lee. I just think it's neat. Deliberate obfuscation.