#morkan

[trixierosewrites]

one more sts one more hi i'd love to hear more about your conlangs :]

have a good day!

writblr: @vsnotresponding

Happy STS, and HIIII!! I love talking about my conlangs so Morkan here we come >:3

The kingdom of Morkus rests on top of the mountain that Akraus resides at the base of, and was once the sister kingdom to Pinia before they, uh, rolled boulders onto it and destroyed it. For some definitely completely unrelated reason, Akraus and Morkus have been at war for... a while. They fight over a lot, including what they call the colonies, or the unhabitable spaces taken over by latent magic.

Morkus speaks Morkan (huge surprise there) and some of their texts are in what is inventively named Old Morkan. This is also where they get the names of their months, and so forth.

The language of Morkan itself went in the opposite direction to Akrausian's simplicity and practicality. It's the most complicated conlang I have and there are no simplifications. In its earliest form, it had 3500 conjugations. It now has more. There is a reason this conlang is forever a WIP, because I do not have! the time!

Morkus has possibly the most obnoxious system of pronouns in the world, and it's that pronouns serve to show:

gender

age

relationship to the person in question

relationship to Morkus

sometimes there are other additions like (affectionate) or (derogatory) or religious stuff

So. There's a pronoun for so many things. But the problem is the variation is very small because they like things to be neat, so you better learn minute spoken differences like di, dit, dee, diz, ditz, and dil, or you might accidentally say "let's fuck" when you meant us (coworkers). Imagine trying to teach this to someone, like, what.

"Okay, so, the word you're looking for here is di - no, not dit, that means "us", yeah, but that's for unhappily married couples in their fifties without a child, di means unmarried couple thinking about marriage in the future in their twenties without a child and one half of the couple is foreign, no, you just said dee, we're not thinking about kids and you're not from Akraus--"

(For the record, dil is the same as di but extra affectionate; it's like saying "me and my beloved" instead of just us. For "you (my beloved)" it would be lil.)

Imagine trying to introduce your "friend" to the family and you accidentally say "unmarried couple thinking about getting engaged because one of us is pregnant" when you use the wrong you. Awful. Terrible language.

I'm going to share my favourite set of pronouns, which are, in their you and us forms, liz, diz, litz, and ditz. Liz and diz mean, essentially, "Hey, there, older man, wanna fuck?" (Technically it's "you (older man (thirties)), I'm interested in you)", and the same for the us format, but this is a way funnier way of saying it.) Litz and ditz are the same but less polite, so more like saying "you look like a slut and I'm interested". For someone younger than you in their thirties, it'd be lizi, dizi, litzi, and ditzi! For twenties it'd be lize, dize, litze, and ditze; for twenties and younger than the person, it'd be lizie, dizie, litzie, and ditzie. These are all masculine singular, also, because I have not finished this conlang. For the same reason I don't have them for above the thirties yet. It is a task for many years.

One letter variations, my beloved <3

Location based is usually "Morkan, foreigner, Akrausian" because in their eyes it's Morkan (beloved), foreigner (neutral), and Akrausian (DIE BY MY BLADE), which I think is very funny. But then there's also variations based on "Morkan from birth, still Morkan" or "moved to Morkus before they were ten" or so forth. Sometimes I try and add more to the conlang and I go "okay, this will never be finished" and I just have to live with that.

There's also separate pronouns (and thus conjugations, yes, I am in conjugation hell) for people who're dead, and then there's, like, variation on how long they've been dead (recently dead, semi-recently dead (last few years), died a while ago, old dead (100+ years), ancient dead (1000+ years)), and then what the relationship the speaker is to the dead, and then what relationship the person the speaker is speaking to had with the dead, and so forth.

Additionally, because Morkan is the language of poets (self-described, I may add, the Morkan people said that about their own language), they have a secondary set of tenses for writing than they do for speaking. They have even more pronouns, because they have pronouns for "this is how you, the reader, should feel about this person" and so forth, and then vaguer ones for when they don't want to convey that, and there's all sorts of poetic nuance I have mostly separated out. Mostly.

Word order is used for inflection, so you can say "the green frog" and you're stressing frog, or "the frog green" and you're stressing that the frog is green. However, you can also then say "it" and put all the nuance on that (living being, unusual, dangerous) and you mean THE BASTARD ATTACKED ME BUT THERE'S SOMETHING COOL ABOUT IT???

There's a poetic tendency to us "it" throughout a poem in its variations and only reveal what the thing in question is at the end, or switch to a pronoun like he or she and reveal you were talking about a person the whole time, or reveal you're talking about a person and not change the pronoun (big win for it/its users), or just never real the thing you're talking about because between the poem and the specifics of the pronouns have you not deduced it by now?

Pretentious ass language. Thanks for letting me talk about it!

[morkanslily]

header for @mhiieee 🥳 ‘s fic

[iceunhie]

dawg let yo wrio fics out (not foring ily)😓😓😓 please the kids miss him bro

they're sraying in the trenches hun, but I could give crumbs!!

could.

but I won't.

😈

[neon-chemicals]

Ibby bibby Morkan :>

Twiiiiiins

[toappreciatelife]

Encounters with difference: "The Dead" by James Joyce — Part 1

The power of some literary characters is that they are utterly singular but at the same time resonate with a more general human experience. Such is the case of Gabriel Conroy, the protagonist of The Dead, whose character expresses a movement of becoming and decentering, a transformation many of us have gone through or still wrestle with: from control to surrender and acceptance; from absorption in one’s own self to connection and opening. It’s the process and movement of love, condensed in a short story of fifty pages and situated in a very specific context: the Dublin of the early 20th century on a snowy winter night.  

And what better setting is there to begin the study of a character than a party, where all the anxieties about who we are in the face of others come to the fore? Social gatherings are also a kind of microcosm that displays on a micro level transformations that a society is experiencing as a whole. So the first part of the story takes place in the house full of guests of the Misses Morkan (Gabriel’s two aunts and their niece), during the dance they organize every year, which gives us the opportunity to observe how Gabriel behaves in the proximity of other people, as we follow closely his feelings and thoughts. From there, in the last quarter of the story, we travel by carriage and walking to the hotel where Gabriel and his wife Gretta are staying for the night, and where Gabriel’s famous epiphany will occur—in the intimacy of a dark room illuminated by the light coming from a window, almost like in a mystical Caravaggio painting. And this twofold structure has its purpose. If the story had jumped straight to the last scenes in the hotel room, we wouldn’t be as touched by Gabriel’s efforts to open up to his wife and reach out to someone other than himself. But we have been following him during the previous hours and by now we know how he tends to react when confronted with the unexpected. His memory of the immediate past has become our memory as readers. We too, like him, can recall his previous “riot of emotions” and the entire series of his encounters during the party, which seem to form a curious pattern of disconnection and reactivity.

A curious pattern of reactivity

At a historical time in Ireland when traditional gender roles and gender expectations are beginning to shift, Gabriel faces the challenge to respond creatively and adapt to more egalitarian relations, especially when it comes to women who won’t accept a position of subordination anymore, or who don’t conform to his expectations of how a woman should behave or look like.  But Gabriel’s first responses are not proper responses—humble and creative—but reactions and defenses. When we first encounter him at the party, our first impression is that he is a character entangled in the demands of his own wounded ego, oscillating between pride and shame, searching for ways to reassure the frail dominance of his position as a white man of higher education. Women who slightly deviate from traditional gender norms become for him a disruptive other, filling him with self-doubts and a discomfort he tries to dispel by finding refuge in the armor of his own self.

When it comes to his aunts, members of a previous generation, it’s easy for Gabriel to preserve an image of self-importance, because he is their favorite nephew and they assign him all the tasks and symbolic places he needs to secure his position as the man in charge: they let him carve the goose, give the main speech, and sit at the head of the table; they laugh at his jokes, serve him a special dessert, and rely on him to manage the drunk at the party.  Whenever he is treated by his aunts as if he were more special and indispensable, his ego feels at ease and Gabriel is especially animated.

Although in his speech he talks eloquently about his aunts’ “hospitality, humor and humanity”, he doesn’t seem to truly care about any of these noble traits, viewing them instead as “only two ignorant old women”, and valuing bookish knowledge above all else. The story shows there is a gap between what Gabriel says publicly to make an impression and the way he tries to feel superior to his aunts and the rest of the “vulgarians” in the party due to his university education and cosmopolitan tastes.

But his aunts are not so unidimensional as it may seem if we had no access to any other perspective but that of Gabriel’s. Fortunately for us, Joyce introduces his short story through a different perspective: the point of view of Lily, the caretaker’s daughter. We inhabit inside her subjectivity for only two pages, but it’s enough to make us aware that there are different ways of looking at the same characters. If it wasn’t for that first entrance through Lily, we as readers would have been trapped with Gabriel in his self-absorbed way of looking at things. But this is modernism and now there are different perspectives which filter the world. And what each character chooses to pay attention to is very different according to who they happen to be and what their position is in the social structure.

As a young woman of a humble background, Lily is able to see things very differently. She is able to appreciate the Misses Morkan as three independent woman who work and earn enough money to rent a decent apartment and eat well, despite two of them being already quite old. She seems to see them with a kind of respect; perhaps they are a model to her, in that they show her that it is possible to be a woman and have a good passing without relying on a man—all three of them are single. Although during the party the aunts overact their dependence on Gabriel to flatter him, in fact they don’t need him for daily subsistence. They only need Gabriel’s help for minor tasks on that special occasion and with the house full of guests, something he will come to understand at the end of the story, when power relations are inverted in his perspective and he begins to see himself merely as the “pennyboy” of his aunts—falling from pride to shame, as if he couldn’t accept an equality of relations and had to feel either more important or degraded.

As far as we can get a glimpse of their dynamic, the relationship with his wife has also contributed to sustain Gabriel’s image of self-importance, not posing any real threat until the last discoveries in the hotel room tear the thin fabric of the “reality” he built for himself. Though affectionate, their marriage seems to have been based on a superficial relation, a “dull existence together” with clear-cut gender roles: she is the housewife and he is the breadwinner, this last fact apparently allowing him to decide where to go or not to go on vacation, which his wife accepts as if she were his child. In many passages, Gabriel likes to see Gretta as frail, naive and in need of protection—“country cute”, like he didn’t want his mother to call her—, which in turn makes him feel “valorous” and in control.  Sex can be for him an opportunity to “crush” and “overmaster” her, this beautiful possession he feels proud of. In that famous scene in the staircase, when Gabriel gazes up at her, his wife stands for him as an object of aesthetic contemplation of the most generic type, her face hidden in the darkness. Through his view, Gretta lacks any density of her own and can easily be converted into a symbol. But what about Gretta as Gretta? Has he ever seen her in her singularity, in her uniqueness? Has he ever listened to her musicality?

When Gabriel reviews in his memory their life together, all he comes up with are moments of distance. Some barrier always interposes between them, preventing them from touch and close connection: the envelope of a letter, a gloved hand, looking through a grated window, words in a letter he sent to her. But where is Gretta? She is lost behind the layers of projections he surrounds her with, her figure receding behind the misreadings he makes of her body signs so that they match his own desires and needs.

But with other women in the party things don’t go as smoothly as with his wife and aunts—or as with Mrs Malins, to whom Gabriel doesn’t even bother to listen. Lily and Molly Ivors, both of them single women of a new generation, behave and talk in a way that takes Gabriel by surprise, disorienting him and making him speechless, unable to know in which way to respond. His encounters with them form those micro-moments in social life where things move slightly away from the habitual scripts, where the seed of larger transformations and new ways of being could be planted if the actors involved were able to go patiently through that first moment of confusion and respond in a creative way. But the moment is not ripe for Gabriel yet. Not at this point in the story, not without the help of love. So he feels ashamed, attacked in his self-image, and reacts in a defensive way, trying to restore the statu quo and his familiar position of privilege. His physical gestures are eloquent in this sense: first he blushes, then he tries to discharge his discomfort through energetic actions, finally he rearranges his clothes as best as possible, as someone looking at himself in a mirror and trying to restore his lost composure after suffering a few blows. (And it cannot be omitted here that whenever he needs to find strength, he travels outdoors with his imagination to where the Wellington Monument is standing, that obelisk, the phallic symbol par excellence).

In the case of Lily, who amuses him by mispronouncing his name with her lower-class accent, Gabriel would like to think of her as more innocent than she actually is, perhaps as harmless and sweet as the rag dolls she used to play with not long ago.  What other future could a maid have than get married after school and depend on a good man? This is the social order implicit in the question he asks to her, the world Gabriel expects and was taught to find comforting, but the girl has already had other experiences in life and has formed other opinions about men. If we interpret her answer correctly, she finds that men “nowadays” don’t really care about women, but just want to satisfy their own sexual desires through them, and they are willing to use lies and pretexts (“all palaver”) when necessary. Certainly, her answer isn’t what Gabriel was expecting. It is too honest, too dismissive of conventions and social barriers. He blushes, his shame coming not only from having made the wrong assumptions about the complexity of the girl, but also because she has exposed something hidden about who he might be but doesn’t want to think he is. To restore the momentarily threatened hierarchy of class and gender, he gives her a coin and escapes up the stairs.

But Molly Ivors cannot be shut up with a coin, nor with a grandiose remark, because Gabriel considers her equal in terms of their education, both of them university teachers and friends. With humor and warmth, Molly questions Gabriel in his cosmopolitan preferences and his disdain for his own country. And it is true that he seems to consider what comes from the rest of Europe as worthier than Irish customs and land (regardless of whether he is or not a “West Briton”, as she calls him): he wears galoshes because they wear them on the continent, he’d rather go on holidays to France and Belgium than visit Ireland with friends, and he does write reviews in a British newspaper. But instead of acknowledging these contradictory aspects of himself, taking Molly’s observations with a sense of humor, he feels wounded in his ego, resenting her precisely in those traits that make of Molly a woman that can treat him as his equal and joke with him: her education, her frank manners and direct gaze, her political commitments, her disinterest in showing at the party like an object for the male gaze (“she did not wear a low-cut bodice”), all of which make hard for Gabriel to place her in a known and definite feminine category (“…the girl or woman, or whatever she was…”). Full of resentment, he will try to get back at her by introducing in his speech some critical remarks implicitly addressed to her, which actually describe him more adequately than her, with his seriousness and lack of humor. Too bad Molly didn’t stay for supper to hear it!

Due to these encounters, Gabriel ends up so busy and tangled with his destabilized ego, that the others in their radical difference fade beyond his reach, or reach him from far away, like muffled sounds, like “distant music”. In fact, listening and not listening is one of the ways this short story chooses to show us how trapped Gabriel is within himself.  We often find him standing behind barriers: the lens of his glasses, the pane of the window where he goes to find refuge; and listening to distant sounds or music through the filter of some obstacle—a door, a ceiling, etc.—though of course the real barriers are not material. It is his self-centeredness functioning as a kind of invisible barrier that protects him from a closer connection with other people, like the galoshes he likes to wear and makes Gretta wear too, that extra layer of protection he puts over his boots so as not to feel on his skin the wetness of the ground, the cold snow below. And she makes the joke that Gabriel would buy her a “diving suit” if he could, the ultimate protection! Self-absorption can certainly be a safe place, but it also comes with a flipside: isolation and separation from life. How could one possibly listen to the voices of others through the noise of one’s own thoughts and self-doubts? Until this point in the story, Gabriel is just a man sunken in his own kind of “thought-tormented music”, full of resentment and hardly capable of really listening to anyone else.

He looked at the pantry ceiling, which was shaking with the stamping and shuffling of feet on the floor above, listened for a moment to the piano…

He waited outside the drawing-room door, until the waltz should finish, listening to the skirts that swept against it…

Gabriel went to the stairs and listened over the banisters. He could hear two persons talking in the pantry.

Gabriel could not listen while Mary Jane was playing…

Gabriel hardly heard what she said.

Gabriel was surprised at her stillness and strained his ear to listen also. But he could hear little…

Follow the second part of this essay in the next post, where we explore how Gabriel stops reacting and experiences a beautiful transformation, finally able to listen and open up.

The pictures in this post are stills from the film The Dead by John Huston.

[juliopison]

CINE Dublineses (1987) Título original: The Dead Reino Unido Dirección: John Huston Idioma: Doblada al Español

Atención: Solo para ver en PC o Notebook Para ver el Film pulsa o copia y pega el Link: https://memoriasdelcafe.blogspot.com/2025/03/dublineses-1987.html

Reparto: Anjelica Huston, Donal McCann, Helena Carroll, Cathleen Delany, Ingrid Craigie, Rachel Dowling,

Género: Drama de época. Años 1900

Sinopsis: El día de la Epifanía de 1904 está a punto de empezar una de las fiestas más concurridas de Dublín, la de las señoritas Morkan. Entre los invitados se encuentra Gabriel Conroy, sobrino de las anfitrionas y marido de la hermosa Gretta. Esa noche, los invitados disfrutan de una magnífica velada. Gabriel, muy enamorado de su esposa, observa su emoción cuando suena una antigua canción de amor. De vuelta a casa, Gretta le confiesa un secreto.

Críticas: "Es tan buena, de manera inesperada, que casi exige una reevaluación de la obra completa de Huston (…) La producción es casi perfecta" -Vincent Canby: The New York Times

Posición en rankings FA: 75 Mejores películas británicas

Premios: 1987: 2 nominaciones al Oscar: Mejor vestuario, guión adaptado 1987: Círculo de Críticos de Nueva York: 5 nominaciones, incluyendo a mejor película 1987: Premios Independent Spirit: Mejor director y actriz sec. (Huston). 4 nominaciones 1987: Premios David di Donatello: 2 nom., incl. mejor director extranjero (Huston)

Café Mientras Tanto jcp

[boldlymagnificentperson]

13esima: J. Joyce, Gente di Dublino, Il Saggiatore

Da Giorgio Secchi riceviamo il finale di Gente di Dublino di James Joyce. A Dublino, nel 1904, in una serata del  periodo natalizio,  si svolge la tradizionale festa che tre  signorine della buona borghesia, due anziane sorelle, Kate e Julia Morkan, e la loro nipote Mary Jane, offrono ogni anno per amici e  parenti. Si fa musica, si balla e si partecipa ad un ottimo pranzo, preparato…

[doughmonkey]

One of the highlights of my life here, In Ireland was to see the film "The Dead", directed by John Huston, years and years ago in the Joyce Center, in Dublin, just before Christmas. There was candlelight and mince pies, mulled wine, a large dark room and the movie. My favourite short story ever. Not something I can watch or read in public, as the last paragraphs always make me sob, as it is so beautiful and so heartbreaking. Such a story, such writing, such wise sentences. And read by my favourite Irish actor... what more one could ask for a late Christmas present?

[marcellomercado]

The dead by James Joyce (fragment)

How poor a part I've played in your life, it's almost as though I'm not your husband, and we've never lived together as man and wife.

What were you like, then? To me, your face is still beautiful, but it's no longer the one for which Michael Furey braved death. Why am I feeling this riot of emotion? What started it up? A ride in the cab? When not responding when I kissed her hand? My aunt's party? My own foolish speech? Wine, dancing, music? Poor Aunt Julia… That haggard look on her face when she was singing Arrayed for the Bridal. Soon, she'll be a shade too, with the shade of Patrick Morkan and his horse. Soon, perhaps, I'll be sitting in that same drawing-room, dressed in black, The blinds would be drawn down, and I'd be casting about in my mind for words of consolation. And would find only lame and useless ones. Yes, yes. That will happen very soon.

Yes, the newspapers are right: Snow is general all over Ireland. Falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, softly upon the Bog of Allen, and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves.

One by one we are all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age.

How long you locked away in your heart, the image of your lover's eyes when he told you that he did not wish to live? I've never felt like that myself towards any woman, but I know that such a feeling must be love.

Think of all those who ever were, back to the start of time. And me, transient as they, flickering out as well into their grey world.

Like everything around me, this solid world itself, which they reared and lived in, is dwindling and dissolving.

Snow is falling. Falling in that lonely churchyard where Michael Furey lays buried. Falling faintly through the universe, and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

(adapted fragment of the short story "The dead" by James Joyce)

[starwarsrecrimination]

Excerpt from Morkan's Understudy

[wordwabbit]

The Dead

Just before Sunday service (Photo credit: Wikipedia) By James Joyce, 35 pages This story took a good 20 pages to gain my interest, but the end was worth it. The story takes place on the night of the Misses Morkan’s annual dance, which is in the wintertime, I think between Christmas and New Year. The Misses Morkans are three elderly ladies who live in Dublin and have lots of friends and…

[trixierosewrites]

happy sts!

i see in your intro post that you have created seven conlangs, would you like to yap about them?

writblr: @vsnotresponding

YES YES YES YES YES YES. YOU WILL REGRET THIS.

The first I'll talk about is Akrausian, and I'll probably only mention two in this post so I can go into great detail >:3 Akrausian is the language of a very military society, Akraus, which is at the base of the mountain that Morkus is on top of, and the two are essentially opposites.

Akrausian is about simplicity and practicality, so it helpfully has no tenses and no genders. On the plus side, this it's way easier to learn, so once you've got afsie/tosie/tohrsie (they/them/theirs), eisie/mouchsie/wirsie (you, me, we), and tiesie (it), you're good to go, pronoun wise! Tense wise, it's all in the present tense, so a sentence for the past would probably be (directly) translated something like "Yesterday, we are having tea" or so forth.

Types of words often have patterns to be easily recognisable; pronouns have the -sie suffix, connectives have the -ai suffix (uai (and), wiai (as), for example); verbs have the -en suffix (machen, tomitten, stamachen | stab, cut, stop) and so forth.

Of course, it's not all easy. Akrausian has three layers; the format in which I've been sharing words so far, or the council format, where words are said in full; the standard/military format, and the Oh Fuck You're In Trouble Now format (I need a real name for this that's not that. I was thinking the command format, but that then implies other formats can't be a command...).

Take stamachen, for example: in council format, the word for stop takes its full form; in standard/military format, it becomes stamach; in [command] format, it becomes sta.

The idea of this is then that the level of urgency is imbued into the word. The time needed to say it is decreased based on the urgency the situation requires; if someone shouted sta!, a lot of people would freeze immediately.

For hautikos, which is a less easily chopped up word: in council format, it has its full form; in standard/military format, it becomes hautkos; in [command] format, it becomes hotkis (the vowels being shortened rather than syllables being removed).

If you wanted to go them!, the word tosie: its full form in council format; in standard/military format, it becomes toos, in [command] format it can be toss or tis depending on accent. (The original word is pronounced with an o sound like saying "oh".)

I actually designed Akrausian for in-story use, which means that the order in which words were created is really fucking funny, because you get words like niuros (whore), haustikos (pet), skoten (kill), akstummen (maim), machen (stab), and tomitten (cut). Incredible set of first words.

...Maybe I don't have room to talk about Morkan. Someone send me an ask talking about Morkan. I yearn to talk about Morkan.

[leanstooneside]

Beauty is but skin deep

◊ For the children

◊ I'm the man

◊ nephew the son

◊ her the brains

◊ books the books

◊ hearers the text

◊ affair the Misses

◊ Grimes the owner

◊ renounce the devil

◊ They're the boyos

◊ bade the Misses

◊ undertone the story

◊ Morkan the reason

◊ moment the Pope

◊ her the appearance

◊ D'Arcy the tenor

◊ Fanning the registration

◊ LILY the caretaker's

◊ family the members

[radioactivesoda-gw2]

Khallalh’s family tree! : D Feat. some close-ups since tumblr can suck with such large images. x’D All offspring is ordered by left-to-right eldest to youngest :> (i.e. Khavva is eldest, Harvey youngest---Tutt'uk is eldest, Tunn'ko youngest---Teli is older than Torkan--Khallalh is older than Kalla!)

Lanni belongs to @flame-squad​!

💫 Support my work on Patreon! 💫

[neon-chemicals]

Let’s talk Purplebloods 2/?

This is mainly me talking about my OCs, and how they’re important

srry

CW: Suggestive, sexual acts mentioned, hard drugs

The Four Jesters

The Four Court Jesters are the authority directly below The Grand Highblood; there has only been one set of these trolls, staying firmly in charge for well over 10,000 sweeps.

The Jesters reside on a large colony referred to as Karnival , this planet is firmly under the jurisdiction of The Jesters and the purplebloods as a whole, The Empress’ influence is extremely lax and she turns a blind eye to most of the goings on.

[Karnival from a distance]

The Jesters are:

The Diabolis ~ Belial Hofman [He/Him]

The Hedonist ~ Namaah Yeoung [She/Her]

The Euphoric ~ Morkis Melpom [It/Its]

The Obscured ~ Morkan Melpom [He/They]

Each Jester is in charge of a sector or quadrant of the planet, split evenly in four where their individual followers can congregate. While the church itself is one entity, young clowns often will select a specific Jester’s subsection of the church to focus their worship on. These are examples of what some of those trolls would be like!

The following are descriptions of the various sectors and the trolls within!

-

The Infernal Ring

Governed by Jester Belial Hofman

The Infernal Ring boasts a host of activities where Purplebloods can attempt feats of violence and strength to impress Jester Hofman and hopefully win his favor. These include High Strikers, a more purple-flavored Muscular Theatre, Obstacle Courses, and above all else, a towering Coliseum.

Conquering the Coliseum is considered the highest feat anyone who follows Jester Hofman, every day there is a tourney where hopefuls fight in a bracket to the death, the final match being between the victor and Jester Hofman himself, no one has ever won against him, nor does anyone know what the prize is. Rumor has it that Belial will give up his seat to whoever wins against him, though when asked about the prize, Belial has always brushed it off with a simple “When it happens you’ll see”, If an opponent impresses him enough during their match, he will spare them and they will be treated like royalty while they’re on their pilgrimage, said to be blessed by The Messiahs with combat prowess to rival his own.

Belial represents the facet of the church that exemplifies violence, cultivating righteous rage, and the art of murder. Blood Sacrifices are commonplace in the ring, doomed trolls get shipped to the planet to be killed elaborately, their bodies are displayed in artistically grotesque ways, bled like livestock to be used as warpaint in the Coliseum.

[picture]

It is considered among the purplebloods to be an honor to be used in such a way, but the trolls actually subjected to it would beg to differ. If a young clown chooses to follow Belial they often adopt a splash of orange somewhere on their outfit going forward.

Belial himself is an intimidating, daunting figure, his physical mutations giving his visage a demonic edge, and his pyrokinesis lets him be as showy as he could ever want to be.

[picture]

His chucklevoodoos are impressive to say the least, his powers allow him to negate any pain he would feel in battle, allowing him to keep going and keep fighting a supernaturally long time before he would ever collapse, he can also extend this blessing to others, though he rarely does so.

[picture]

Privately, Belial seems to be a rather neurotic troll, always fussing about something or someone, particularly his now ex-pitch Namaah.

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Trolls who are close to him also describe him as a lover of the arts and spoken word, even a gentle soul with the right person. He is also the only Jester with an overall positive view of Grand Highblood Sigmar Patera.

Hedonist’s Haven

Governed by Jester Namaah Yeoung

Hedonist’s Haven is a much different sector compared to its violent counterpart. The ground is covered consistently in a light purple mist that flows and shifts almost hypnotically. The area is covered in beautiful lush foliage, fairy lights, and places to chill out, cushions and piles galore! Namaah doesn’t put herself above any of her followers, preferring to be among them, smoking and ahem, congregating. Special Stardust and recreational downers are provided to make a troll's stay in this haven absolutely transcendent and ethereal. Jester Yeoung’s goal is to make her followers feel all connected with each other and the universe while under her diligent eye. Nonconsensual drugging or touching is absolutely forbidden and Namaah herself assures comfort and safety, including culling any who would disrupt her paradise of calm and togetherness by her own hand and assuring that the most difficult members of her flock are perfectly at peace. Should a follower of another Jester cause such problems, she is not afraid to have a very thorough discussion about how the others should be keeping track of their flock.

Namaah represents the facet of the church that exemplifies community, working together and feeling The Messiahs resonate through the collective. Physical and Mental connection are especially important to her side of things, trolls in her community often participating in psychedelics and physical intimacy as a form of devotion to the whole. If a troll enters the haven upset and stressed, their comfort becomes priority for all inside, especially Jester Yeoung. Young clowns who accepts being brought in to Namaah’s congregation often adds a bit of pink somewhere on their outfit, though followers of Jester Yeoung are easily spotted due to their markedly chill and kind demeanors, most having a rather progressive view on the hemospectrum and how all trolls should try and be as connected as the purples are. Most lowbloods consider this behavior off putting and bizarre coming from a clown. Occasionally Jester Namaah finds a soul desperately in need of her assistance, it is an honor to be considered a project, granted specified attention and eternal bliss.

Namaah, the troll herself is a warm, maternal, comforting figure, always willing to lend an ear and listen to her flock’s concerns and wishes. She is noted as being the most beautiful troll most have ever seen, with striking eyes and a figure to die for. Despite a focus on her appearance being common outside the congregation, most within find her allure comes mostly from her personality, being surprisingly soft and quiet when within the Haven but able to turn on a dime into a commanding, intimidating voice, especially in regards to her recently separated kismesis, Jester Hofman. Her chucklevoodoos are subtle and empathetic in nature, allowing her to feel the emotions of other trolls as if they were her own, shouldering their burdens with them. In more extreme circumstances, her abilities can even be used to erase something from the mind entirely for a time.

Carnevale Phantasm

Governed by Jester Morkis Melpom

Rather than questioning what is Carnevale Phantasm your real question should be what is it not. Jester Morkis’ realm is anything and everything, a maddening, breathtaking array of shifting architecture and dizzying colors. No law of physics is consistent, no location in one set place except for the big top at the center, the eye of the storm so to speak. The Big Top is where Jester Morkis’ physical form resides while it is resting and dreaming, all appearances outside of the Big Top within Carnevale Phantasm being astral projections. Its physical body only gets up and makes appearances outside of its sector of the planet if absolutely required by the other jesters, Jester Morkan speaking for it otherwise.

From the outside looking in, the Carnevale Phantasm looks like a vast eerily silent emptiness, completely void of people, stepping inside, this vision shifts and warps into the fantastical landscapes of Jester Morkis’ most vivid dreams. An endless array of excitement and indulgence in carnival food and recreational hard drugs for those so inclined. Jester Morkis concerns itself with the entertainment and enjoyment of its congregation, always coming up with new games, shows and contests to make sure every soul in its dream gets to live their lives to the fullest, indulgence is the name of the game.

Morkis represents exactly that: Indulgence. Living your life like every moment is your last, life is the pregame for the endless extravagance and spoiling of The Dark Carnival! Trolls in its congregation tend towards the energetic and enthusiastic, beacons of energy and advocates for free time and living it up in whatever way you see fit truly YOLO personified. Individuals like to show their membership in its congregation by donning a spectrum of colors, if you see a clown barely wearing any black, that’s likely a member of this congregation. Morkis tends to it’s more down on their luck visitors with a forceful gentle encouraging, very excitable hand towards anything it thinks will help, mostly the individual's vices, be them food, drugs, alcohol, attention or any plethora of other things. Does it indiscriminately indulge even harmful addictions? Yes! Does it make the person feel better temporarily? Double yes!

Morkis, the troll is an enigma and likes it that way. Outwardly excitable, erratic and wildly inconsistent in mood and demeanor, it's near impossible to discover what its true personality is like. Face eternally obscured via mask and doused in a shifting array of patterns and fabrics. In rare moments caught between it and its brother, trolls have said that Morkis is soft spoken, not unlike Jester Morkan, and seems to be anxious or paranoid rather frequently with many mentions of time rushing by or losing track of it and fears of ‘not having long’. No one is sure what this is in reference to, though it is speculated by members of the collective to be some kind of chronic or degenerative disease/disorder, or perhaps a generalized anxiety of death.

Morkis’ abilities are arguably the most impressive of the Jesters’ chucklevoodoos, able to pull innumerable amounts of trolls into a collective dream in a vicinity around its own sleeping form. It has complete control over the senses and acts as a sort of trickster deity, able to appear anywhere and summon anything anyone could ever want, though of course it being in a dream all food alcohol and drugs have no actual effect on your body and rather it’s Morkis’ abilities stimulating the brain in a way that feels similar! (You can and will get addicted though)

Carnevale Obscurae

Governed by Jester Morkan Melpom

Far from the sparkles, glitz and glam of the other three quadrants, Carnevale Obscurae sits in relative silence, darkened tents and still carousels sit under the vast expanse of stars, completely visible due to the darkness. The air is melancholic and a chill always seems in the air as the clowns here go about esoteric meditation and prayer in blissful quiet as compared to the loudness and aggression of the rest of Karnival. Some might compare the vibe to a clownish monastery, where its inhabitants spend more time actively worshiping rather than on things considered ‘frivolous’. Some might consider this form of worship strange and out of character for purples, but silence has long been a tool of the messiahs.

Jester Morkan is an almost omnipresent… presence throughout the entire area, never in one place for long moving like a spirit, keeping watch over his flock closely, like his sibling. Trolls within the congregation often choose this over the others because of their own struggles with sensory overload, many of his followers are selectively mute and he strives to provide a calm, soothing environment for them to reach out to the messiahs in their own way. Jester Morkan believes even those who cannot participate in the color and noise and contact of traditional worship should not be excluded so callously, they are all children of the messiahs, after all. A lot of the clowns in their flock tend to be those that fade into the background, silent but faithful observers cloaked in black and other dark colors. Morkan’s calming embrace of silence and shadow also attracts those with sensitive abilities, leading to an abundance of oracles* in their midst, much like Morkan himself. Also, you know mimes, but that’s self explanatory.

Morkan the individual is quiet and reflective, much like most of their congregation, speaking in hushed tones and more often than not staying completely silent. They are respectful and polite but also can be particularly blunt when dealing with people and their problems. They care deeply for their sibling and for the individuals who choose to follow them, providing a listening ear and his divination capabilities to any who request such, his connection to the messiahs and ability to accurately predict the future and discover the past leads him to being deeply respected by other jesters and most of the purple populations. He is also the only jester in a long term relationship with a troll that isn’t a purpleblood, his matesprit, whose name he has kept private is an indigo cavalreaper who he cares very deeply for.

Morkan’s abilities are slightly more varied than the other jesters, able to draw from powers outside of his innate chucklevoodoos. The powers he was born with allow him to traverse shadows as if they were doorways, any spot of pitch blackness within a certain radius he can step between and appear out of another patch of darkness. It’s very convenient for keeping an eye on everything in Karnival as he tends to do, being a good neutral peacekeeper as compared to the other three jester’s more opinionated personalities. Jester Morkan’s more impressive skill however, was developed through sweeps of intensive meditation and spiritual guidance, the ability to see the past, present, and future. Using the holy act of puppetry, Jester Morkan receives visions from the beyond and crafts puppets to act out said predictions, it’s said he’s made hundreds of them, though most go unused, until the right troll comes along, asking for advice.

*Oracles will be discussed further in the ‘Ringmaster’ section

The Jesters have never needed successors however, there are rules in place if one of them was to tragically die.

If a Jester is to die without naming a successor previously or on their deathbed, The Grand Highblood is tasked with providing a suitable replacement.

If the current Grand Highblood has no one in mind, they may request some form of tourney to choose who is worthy of such a prestigious position.

The form this tourney takes is dependent on which Jester has passed being the following;

- Belial is to be honored with a show of combat prowess, traditional clownish brawls to the death

- Namaah is to be honored with words, heartfelt poetry and song

- Morkis is to be honored with “It’s a surprise :o)”

- Morkan is to be honored by choosing an oracle whose predictions can be tracked as near-completely accurate

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Being forced to protect a complete stranger in an inhospitable desert, is severe punishment for a social butterfly like Morkant. Adreas is very difficult to work with on account of his personality. He also manages to almost die on a weekly basis. So, during the first season of field work, they both have enough with getting through each day with their hides intact.

Nobody expects Morkant to then volunteer as a guide for a second season. Not because of Adreas’ company, mind, but because of his growing (and very secret) interest in research. The second season being more organized yields more interesting results, which only encourages Morkant. The work being more predictable also frees up some time for various other activities.

(Moskuans are highly social and have a mating system which includes sexual camaraderie among young males. They are pretty xenophobic, however,  and think interspecies relations in general are difficult. But, eh, any port in a storm.)

Adreas does not know what to think when Morkan first starts making advances, due to Morkant’s strict no-touching-no-riding-no-treating-me-like-a-pack-animal policy during the first year. But he rolls with it. For some reason, this is also when he stops smoking.