#mentep

[c0gwizard-v2]

Learning experience

[saltynags]

Yeah that's about how that scene went.

[tunaze11x]

[fmab]

did these a while back but here is some sketches of my design headcanons for some TDK characters!

[ghostinthegallery]

Re-reading Twice Dead King, the character I was most struck by on a second viewing was Mentep. Now there’s a tragic figure. Simultaneously a mentor, an ally, an antagonist, someone so terribly understandable who I want to smack upside the head for being a lying liar who lies.

Ultimately, Mentep is a penitent. He has committed terrible acts (that we only get scant details of) and he wants to redeem himself. Thanks to his tampering with his own memories, he doesn't fully know what he is repenting for, which puts him in a bind. However, he knows that he played a role in creating the flayer curse/longing sickness, so he goes to a planet where a high concentration of them have gathered and works on his cure. He's respected, he's able to do his work with only occasional interruptions from the local angsty youth. Things are good-ish (until the armada shows up.)

Mentep and Oltyx have a weird relationship. Despite being his normal asshole-teenager self, Oltyx does respect Mentep more than most. Trusts Mentep enough to let the guy perform experimental brain surgery on him. Twice. And Mentep is able to be much more candid with Oltyx in return. He's one of the few consistently calling Oltyx out for his bullshit. On the surface, it is a standard mentor relationship, but what got me on a second reading is that there is hardly a single conversation Mentep has with Oltyx where he isn’t lying to and/or manipulating him.

It starts early with Yenekh. Mentep knows Yenekh has been suffering from the curse, he hasn’t told Oltyx, and when he finally has to tell him, he conveniently does so right before distracting everyone with the “oh btw, we’re all gonna die to a giant human armada” news. This is done with the best of intentions. Mentep wants to protect Yenekh (and Oltyx, in his way), so he delivers the news this way to get the bad news out of the way and then both of them on the same side. But it is the start of a pattern.

Which we get again when Mentep fails to mention a that Antikef is a flayer den ruled by a “We have Illuminor Szeras at home” Vizier, and boy does that end badly for Oltyx (see the last 60% of Ruin). Naturally, Mentep has a good explanation:

But it is another lie, one that costs Oltyx dearly (put a pin in this, I am coming back to it.)

There's some little fibs and ommissions along the way as they go to Carnotite, but it all builds up to The Big Lie. The one that sends Oltyx spiraling and gets Mentep killed. Because you know what really helps with paranoia? Finding out your mentor and your best friend have been hiding a secret blood pit in your basement! Again, it makes sense why Mentep is lying about this! He has every reason to believe Oltyx would have rejected the flayed ones he and Yenekh were sheltering (he in fact does exactly this), and Mentep's entire goal is to cure the curse to atone for his role in its creation. However...

I think Oltyx is correct to call Mentep out here (Oltyx is wrong about most things, but not this). Somewhere a long the way he became a means to an end for Mentep. Mentep was focused on The Curse and not the person in front of him who was cursed. He used Oltyx's friendship with Yenekh, his need to save his kingdom, his trust, his fears, all in service of admirable goals, but he was using Oltyx. Is it any wonder this is where it ended?

The lies were Mentep's undoing from the start. Remember the lie about Antikef? The one that led to all the events of Ruin? Yes, Oltyx and Djoseras did talk and avoid a civil war, but Oltyx also went through hell. He saw his home turned into an abbattoir, his father reduced to barely more than an animal. Oltyx was literally vivisected and almost consumed by his own dysphoria. And then committed regicide after leaving his brother behind to die. Antikef is where Oltyx truly learned that compassion was weakness and saw how horrific the flayer curse could become. So how was he ever going to accept the flayed ones as Mentep wanted him to? Oltyx experienced the comically perfect combination of traumas to ensure that would never happen, thanks in part to Mentep's manipulations.

I cannot stress enough that Mentep's individual lies all made sense at the time. May have even been the best option, at the time. But the consequences piled up, and even as he is dying he still refuses to give Oltyx even a scrap of the truth. That is the core of his tragedy for me. Well, that and this:

He bases all of his manipulations on his understanding of people's psyche's, which are usually accurate, but it also traps them. It gives them no room to grow or surprise him or for outside factors to come in and intervene. Contrast this with Zultanekh, who is upfront to a fault. He gives Oltyx advice and resources, but what Oltyx does with those things is up to him. Even when he is screwing up royally, he's allowed to make those mistakes. Mentep causes ones of Oltyx's darkest hours (the secret blood pit), while Zultanekh lifts him out of another (the Blood Angel's attack). In the end, Zultanekh is the one who sees Oltyx's true growth and witnesses the birth of his kingdom. A birth that comes not from curing the curse but embracing it.

There was never a sickness to be fixed, which means Mentep never would have achieved his redemption because he was focused on the wrong things. Which does make his death and rebirth as Xott a bit of a reflection of Oltyx. He was too burdened in his first life, but in his second he (or at least a version of him) was able to witness the people he hurt reaching a place of peace.

[chronicallycarnivorous]

[magistralucis]

Oltyx: at last... complete peace... now that i have taken the flesh and won victory for my people nirvana has come upon me... now we go forth into our promised land, and together we shall make it a place of total contentment

Xott/Mentep: hey

Oltyx: (ง '̀-'́)ง i am gonna FIGHT you old man

[cthoseris]

JUST FINISHED TDK: REIGN

HOLY SHIT THAT WAS GOOD

[northwyrm]

Listening to Twice Dead King and my son Oltyx is doing some Villainous Things. Baby boy nooo you're going to be so sad and full of regret in like 1 chapter's time please calm down!!!

[panicbones]

MANNNN I LOVE NECRONS SO MUUUUCH

[courgowr]

???

[metashard]

Oh, creators have been revealed!

Behold, Mentep/Khertykh/Dagon polycule of no return! This was written for OriCat in the 40k Summer Exchange with a very detailed request, the core of which was "Give me all the gaslightling and blackmail and pressure and whatever else they can throw at each other - the most unethical polyamory." Thus this.

We got psychological abuse, emotional abuse, physical abuse, financial abuse, torture, descriptions of surgery, grad students getting drunk, cheating, gaslighting, gatekeeping, and so much they/them girlbossing you could melt a planet with it. Whump was asked of me and so I made whump.

If anyone has the time, I would appreciate constructive criticism on this. It... kind of languished unread for most of the anon period of the exchange, and I'd like to know what I could do to avoid that again. Probably just because the tags were negative and the characters were obscure, but if I'm missing some ingredient that would have fixed it, please let me know.

[saltynags]

Colored forever ago but forgot to post.

[robot-roadtrip-rants]

...What if we release a scarab swarm ahead of the lines as an ablative shield? It might give us fifteen seconds more, but it will reduce out self-repair capacity once we're engaged. You'd be 'robbing Szarekh to pay Orikan,' as it were, [the strategic submind] added, with a rare rhetorical flourish it had clearly borrowed from the cryptek Mentep's catalogue of overused idioms.

@ghostinthegallery what does this aphorism mean. I have been turning it over in my head, comparing what I know about Orikan and Szarekh (Cassandra to the Trojans) to the situation Oltyx is in (fending off orks with limited resources), and I got nothing. You're the Necron expert, Necron this for me.

[ghostinthegallery]

Omg omg it's my black hole tentacle man!! Holy shit this is good (I love how the other characters are just so small!)

The Warlock of Carnotite