#morning in the tomb

[shiningdesignersreflections]

Chapter 1: Morning in the Tomb

Narrated by no one.

Narrator: With water dripping in the distance, the dark, cold stone chamber underground is a far cry from the burning desert above.

Narrator: Drip drop... Drip drop...

Narrator: The sound of water dripping is amplified and lost as it travels through the tiles.

Narrator: Interestingly enough, though, it seems to carry the beeps of an electronic device.

Narrator: The beeps come from the massive stone coffin in the chamber... out of which comes countless black cables and a pale hand.

Narrator: When the pale hand moves, the coffin's lid moves out of the way ever so quietly. Then, the lights in the chamber jump to life...

Narrator: A black-haired girl sits up from the coffin as she yawns.

Tess: Good morning!

Choose either "What are you doing sleeping in a stone coffin?" or "That's really scary!"

If "sleeping," ...

You: Holy, what are you doing sleeping in a stone coffin?

If "scary," ...

You: That's really scary. I thought it was some monster saying hi to me...

--

Tess: It's pretty awesome in here, and I just got a new pillow. It feels great. Do you want to give it a try?

You: I'll pass...

Narrator: As she stretches, she notices the game controller in her hand. She sits back comfortably into her pile of pillows and starts checking her phone.

Narrator: There are a gazillion apps on her phone, but it only takes her a second to spot a green one.

Narrator: It's an app where the player can grow their own plants, and the garden Tess keeps on that app is already a lush green.

Tess: Let's see what I'm going to plant today. White poplars seem nice... they grow pretty fast and can block out sandstorms for me.

Tess: But salt cedars have a nice shape to them, and their flowers are beautiful.

You: Do you like this game?

Tess: A whole forest grows when I'm sleeping. Doesn't that sound awesome?

Narrator: When Tess finishes planting trees and logs on to Moments under the name "MasterDiviner_Tess," her phone goes crazy with comments and notifications.

Narrator: "This is to redeem my vow for helping me pass my exam! You rock!", "My mom's health check results came back just fine, like what you told me."

Narrator: "Is this a scammer's account? I always get my fortune checked before I game. I've done it five times already, and I always ended up losing!"

Tess: This kid's got some guts. His ID is... Yeeso?

Tess: Win some, lose some, no? But... it should be 50/50, right? It's a different kind of lucky when you always fall on the wrong side.

You: Do a lot of people come to you for fortune-telling?

Tess: There has been a surge recently. Well, I should be specific and say, since what happened at Ninir a year ago.

Tess: It disturbed a long-standing peace and troubled a lot of people, which is why they came to me to seek help from fortune-telling.

Tess: But peace will return. The world has seen its fair share of disasters, and peace has never failed to return.

Narrator: The light from Tess' phone shines on all the game consoles in her coffin, and she has just about everything imaginable. The controller she was holding before she woke up is now buried deep within.

You: You can game in the coffin?

Tess: Apple has a wide Wi-Fi coverage in Wasteland, and it's so stable that you can even game when you're in this chamber.

Tess: The Internet is a good thing. You don't need to go out to be able to play all sorts of games and shop. The only catch is that people aren't willing to deliver what I buy.

Tess: The locals aren't fond of this modern stuff, though.

Tess: And there are priests from the other tribes who claimed that "Wi-Fi signals would interfere with their connection with the gods." It's anyone's guess what they based that on.

Tess: I don't agree with that, but from the standpoint of traditional and cultural inheritance, it's still important to keep ceremonies solemn.

Tess: Which is why I still brave the sandstorms and travel to the Quicksand Shrine, where I dance and pray and announce my fortune-telling results.

Tess: Speaking of fortune-telling, I just saw a beautiful sapphire light in my dream. The Rainbow Light was drawing the sapphire light towards it, though.

Tess: That's a good sign, but I can't let you in on the details just yet.

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

[reaandull]

exiting with a bang

[harrowedsoup]

Kinda fucked that Wake had a baby for the sole purpose of killing it to cause an apocalypse but that baby turned out to look almost exactly like her and from a lot of accounts have a personality similar to her.

Gideon is her mother’s daughter even if all her mom wanted was a bomb. That’s so fucked.

[frontlinebicepsoftheninth]

one of my favorite things about gideon is the characterization of "born 2 be jock 😎🔥💪 forced 2 be goth 😔☠️🦴" like quite literally one of the funniest character choices i've seen an author make and pull off

[ari-larsen]

this is a cover for a comic assignment in my graphic design class, where I decided to illustrate The Soup Scene™️ from Harrow the ninth

and here’s the sketch but I forgot to save it initially so now some parts are erased lol

[addamii]

Apologies for the lack of art recently, I’ve been dedicating my entire life to this animatic. Here’s this frame of Nona and the gang :)

Going around the circle to the right starting from Nona there’s hot sauce, beautiful ruby, honesty, kevin, and born in the morning

[thechekhov]

They bring a sort of Twice Divorced Energy to the Not Yet Married playing field.

[dios-apate-megas]

Regarding Born in the Morning-

I know there’s been a ton of discussion in the fam about Born in the Morning’s name but I have a theory! As anyone who has been reading my posts knows by now, this is kinda long-winded.

So I think his name is Chen, a Chinese name that signifies “born in the morning”. Literal translation would be like, “dawn” or “morning”. (I really hope I did the link correctly!)

Kid has so many fathers, right? Well, in Chinese from what I gather grandpa, parents, dad, and male relatives all have the same Chinese symbol in how they are written!

父 fù is the Chinese symbol for patriarch and the compound version is placed above other symbols to produce derivatives! I’m sure there are more than what I’ve listed below, but here are a few.

父亲, 爸爸, 爹, 爸 - Father or Dad

父母, 父母亲 - parents

岳父 - father in law, good-father

祖父母 - grandparents

祖父, 外祖父 - grandfather

舅父, 伯父 - uncle

教父 - godfather

“Born in the Morning, who was saddled with five fathers: Eldest Father, Second Eldest Father, Brother Father, Younger Brother Father, and New Father”

I’d assume these are all on his father’s side as Chinese naming conventions follow the paternal line (and much much more really cool info regarding male lineage!)

Eldest Father - Grandfather

Second Eldest Father - Father

Brother Father - Older Uncle

Younger Brother Father - Younger Uncle

New Father - Father’s New Husband???? (This one stumped me but sexual orientation rules are very evolved in TLT so this wouldn’t be a reach)

In the TLT universe, womb-vacs are available for citizens to use, I don’t think they’d be limited to the Nine Houses since they’re the ones to “Shepard” and take care of newly colonized planets. It’s entirely plausible that Born in the Morning’s family utilized womb-vacs with donated eggs and selected male chromosomes for the child they’d incubate, thus producing only males in their family. This is a fascinating possibility and one that theoretically could be replicated by other families with different variations. (I could go on about the possibilities womb-vacs could create, but I’ll shush for now. Ugh I love TLT so damn much!)

Back to the naming conventions of Father; if Nona is directly translating names from what the name means into House (which I think is assumed to be English) then if Born in the Morning is talking about his shúshu (叔叔) Nona would translate that to Younger Brother Father because she’d automatically add in all of the age and generational differences associated with that name. Which is fucking impressive as hell! As if being able to automatically translate all languages wasn’t impressive enough.

**I do not speak or read Chinese, I’m just going off what I read and dug into during this rabbit hole excursion. I hope I did okay, this was so much fun to work through! I love language!!! And adding in the different types of possible family dynamics made it even more fun! Any Chinese speaker feedback would be great!

[tooturtly]

Something something, Harrow’s entombing of Gideon’s soul is a direct parallel to what John did to Alecto. Acts of desperation. Both of them are different types of geniuses. How angry Kiriona is at Harrow and how angry Alecto is at John. Something something yellow eyes, swords, and beefy women.

[burymeinmelodies]

I've seen so much locked tomb content on here but thankfully the books (or at least the way the fandom discusses them) are so indecipherable that I have managed to avoid spoilers. What's a lyctor? No idea. I think harrowhark is a ship name but do I know what characters? nope.

But I'm gonna start reading them. Right now. And I might post about it so.. fair warning?

[camillarekt]

wild how harrow just gave gideon her body like it wouldn't be the most unimaginable torture. like imagine if u had to live in the body of the love of ur life. look in the mirror every day and see them. running their hands over their hair as u tie it back. feeling their skin but its not them anymore. having no idea if they're ever coming back. wow.

[vaunted-and-vilified]

⋆ Let's Take a Walk, Gang! ⋆

[theriverbeyond]

how i sleep knowing griddlehark haven't even spoken for almost 1,000 pages ❤️

[scalierpepper]

necromancy is cool

I really struggled with this angle and I was too stubborn to give up so there's a lot of things that aren't quite right, but I want to call it done and I really like the composition so I send it into the tumblr void for you to see anyways ~~

[fortjester]

Let Dead Dogs Lie by Silas Denver Melvin vs. Harrow & Gideon's perspectives on cavaliership and lyctorhood

[bitethedevil]