#they speak from the abyss zenith | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

talonabraxas · 5 months ago

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“Like all magical mysteries, the secrets of the Great Work have a triple meaning: they are religious, philosophical and natural. Philosophical gold in religion is the Absolute and Supreme Reason; in philosophy, it is truth; in visible nature, it is the sun: in the subterranean and mineral world, it is the purest and most perfect gold. Hence the search after the Great Work is called the Search for the Absolute, and this work itself is termed the operation of the sun.” ― Éliphas Lévi, Transcendental Magic: Its Doctrine and Ritual

Eye in the Triangle Dale Keogh

Eliphas Levi: The Triangle of Solomon

The perfect word is the triad, because it supposes an intelligent principle, a speaking principle and a principle spoken. The Absolute, revealed by speech, endows this speech with a sense equivalent to itself, and in the understanding thereof creates its third self. So also the sun manifests by its light and proves or makes his manifestation efficacious by heat.

The triad is delineated in space by the heavenly zenith, the infinite height, connected with East and West by two straight diverging lines. With this visible triangle reason compares another which is invisible, but is assumed to be equal in dimension; the abyss is its apex and its reversed base is parallel to the horizontal line stretching from East to West. These two triangles, combined in a single figure, which is the six-pointed star, form the sacred symbol of Solomon’s Seal, the resplendent Star of the Macrocosm. The notion of the Infinite and the Absolute is expressed by this sign, which is the grand pantacle – that is to say, the most simple and complete abridgement of the science of all things.

Grammar itself attributes three persons to the verb. The first is that which speaks, the second that which is spoken to, and the third the object. In creating, the Infinite Prince speaks to Himself of Himself. Such is the explanation of the triad and the origin of the dogma of Trinity. The magical dogma is also one in three and three in one. That which is above is like or equal to that which is below. Thus, two things which resemble one another and the word which signifies their resemblance make three. The triad is the universal dogma. In Magic – principle, realization, adaptation; in Alchemy – azoth, incorporation, transmutation; in theology – God, incarnation, redemption; in the human soul – thought, love and action.

There are three intelligible worlds which correspond one with another by hierarchic analogy; the natural or physical, the spiritual or metaphysical, and the divine or religious worlds. From this principle follows the hierarchy of spirits, divided into three orders, and again subdivided by the triad in each of these.

All these revelations are logical deductions from the first mathematical notions of being and number. Unity must multiply itself in order to become active. An indivisible, motionless and sterile principle would be unity dead and incomprehensible. Were God only one He would never be Creator or Father. Were He two there would be antagonism or division in the infinite, which would mean the division also or death of all possible things. He is therefore three for the creation by Himself and in His image of the infinite multitude of beings and numbers. So is He truly one in Himself and triple in our conception, which also leads us to behold Him as triple in Himself and one in our intelligence. This is a mystery for the faithful and a logical necessity for the initiate into absolute and real sciences.

The Word manifested by life is realization or incarnation. The life of the Word accomplishing its cyclic movement is adaptation, or redemption. This triple dogma was known in all sanctuaries illuminated by the tradition of the Sages.

The primeval Sages, when seeking the First of Causes, behold good and evil in the world. They considered shadow and light; they compared winter with spring, age with youth, life with death, and their conclusion was this: The First Cause is beneficent and severe; It gives and takes away life. Then are there two contrary principles, the one good and the other evil, exclaimed the disciples of Manes. No, the two principles of universal equilibrium are not contrary, although contrasted in appearance, for a singular wisdom opposes one to another. Good is on the right, evil on the left; but the supreme excellence is above both, applying evil to the victory of good and good to the amendment of evil.

The principle of harmony is in unity, and it is this which imparts such power to the uneven number in Magic. Now, the most perfect of the odd numbers is three, because it is the trilogy of unity. In the trigrams of Fohi, the superior triad is composed of three YANG, or masculine figures, because nothing passive can be admitted into the idea of God, considered as the principle of production in the three worlds. For the same reason, the Christian Trinity by no means permits the personification of the mother, who is shown forth implicitly in that of the Son. Hence, in the trigrams of Fohi, the three inferior YIN correspond to the three superior YANG, for these trigrams constitute a pantacle like that of the two triangles of Solomon, but with a triadic interpretation of the six points of the blazing star.

Dogma is only divine inasmuch as it is truly human – that is to say, in so far as it sums up the highest reason of humanity. So also the Master, Whom we term the Man-God, called Himself the Son of Man. Revelation is the expression of belief accepted and formulated by universal reason in the human word, on which account it is said that the divinity is human and the humanity divine in the Man-God. Paracelsus and Agrippa did not set up altar against altar but bowed to the ruling religion of their time: to the elect of science, the things of science; to the faithful, the things of faith.

In his hymn to the royal Sun, the Emperor Julian gives a theory of the triad which is almost identical with that of the illuminated Swedenborg. The sun of the divine world is the infinite, spiritual and uncreated light, which is verbalized, so to speak, in the philosophical world, and becomes the fountain of souls and of truth: then it incorporates and becomes visible light in the sun of the third world, the central sun of our suns, of which the fixed stars are the ever-living sparks. The Kabalists compare the spirit to a substance which remains fluid in the divine medium and under the influence of the essential light, its exterior, however, becoming solidified, like wax when exposed to air, in the colder realm of reasoning or of visible forms. These shells, envelopes petrified or carnified, were such an expression possible, and the source of errors or of evil, which connects with the heaviness and hardness of animal envelopes. In the book Zohar, and in that of the Revolution of Souls, perverse spirits or evil demons are never called otherwise than shells – cortices. The cortices of the world or spirits are transparent, while those of the material world are opaque. Bodies are only temporary shells, whence souls have to be liberated; but those who in this life obey the flesh build up an interior body or fluidic shell, which, after death, becomes their prison-house and torment, until the time arrives when they succeed in dissolving it in the warmth of the divine light, towards which, however, the burden of their grossness hinders them from ascending. Indeed, they can do so only after infinite struggles, and by the mediation of the just, who stretch forth their hands towards them. During the whole period of the process they are devoured by the interior activity of the captive spirit, as in a burning furnace. Those who attain the pyre of expiation burn themselves thereon, like Hercules upon Mount Oetna, and so are delivered from their sufferings; but the courage of the majority fails before this ordeal, which seems to them a second death more appalling than the first, and so they remain in hell, which is rightly and actually eternal; but souls are never precipitated, nor even retained despite themselves therein.

The three worlds correspond together by means of the thirty-two paths of light, which are as steps of a sacred ladder. Every true thought corresponds to a Divine Grace in heaven and a good work on earth; every Grace of God manifests a truth, and produces one or many acts; reciprocally, every act affects a truth of falsehood in the heavens, a grace or a punishment. When a man pronounces the Tetragram – say the Kabalists – the nine celestial realms sustain a shock, and then all spirits cry out one upon another: ‘Who is it thus disturbing the kingdom of heaven?’ Then does the earth communicate unto the first sphere the sins of that rash being who takes the Eternal Name in vain, and the accusing word is transmitted from circle to circle, from star to star, and from hierarchy to hierarchy.

Every utterance possesses three senses, every act has a triple range, every form a triple idea, for the Absolute corresponds from world to world by its forms. Every determination of human will modifies Nature, concerns philosophy and is written in heaven. There are consequently two fatalities, one resulting from the Uncreated Will in harmony with its proper wisdom, the other from created wills in accordance with the necessity of secondary causes in their correspondence with the First Cause. There is hence nothing indifferent in life, and our seeming most simple resolutions do often determine an incalculable series of benefits or evils, above all in the affinities of our DIAPHANE with the Great Magical Agent, as we shall explain elsewhere.

The triad, being the fundamental principle of the whole Kabalah, or Sacred Tradition of our fathers, was necessarily the fundamental dogma of Christianity, the apparent dualism of which it explains by the intervention of a harmonious and all-powerful unity. So is the Apocalypse the book of the Gnosis or Secret Doctrine of the first Christians.

‘The sacred word MALKUTH substituted for KETHER, which is its kabalistic correspondent, and the equipoise of GEBURAH and CHESED, repeating itself in the circles of heavens called eons by the Gnostics, provided the keystone of the whole Christian Temple in the occult versicle.

MALKUTH, based upon GEBURAH and CHESED, is the Temple of Solomon having JAKIN and BOAZ for its Pillars; it is Adamite dogma, founded, for the one part on the resignation of Abel and, for the other, on the labours and self reproach of Cain; it is the equilibrium of being established on necessity and liberty, stability and motion; it is the demonstration of the universal lever sought in vain by Archimedes. A scholar whose talents were employed in the culture of obscurity, who died without seeking to be understood, resolved this supreme equation, discovered by him in the Kabalah, and was in dread of its source transpiring if he expressed himself more clearly. We have seen one of his disciples and admirers most indignant, perhaps in good faith, at the suggestion that his master was a Kabalist; but we can state notwithstanding, to the glory of the same learned man, that his researches have shortened appreciably our work on the occult sciences, and that the key of the transcendent Kabalah above all, indicated in the arcane versicle cited above, has been applied skillfully to an absolute reform of all sciences in the books of Hoene Wronski.

The secret virtue of the gospels is therefore contained in three words, and these three words have established three dogmas and three hierarchies. All science reposes upon three principles, as the syllogism upon three terms. There are also three distinct classes, or three original and natural ranks, among men, who are called to advance from the lower to the higher. The Jews term these three series or degrees in the progress of spirits, ASSIAH, YETZIRAH and BRIAH. The Gnostics, who were Christian Kabalists, called them HYLE, PSYCHE and GNOSIS; by the Jews the supreme circle was named ATZILUTH, and by the Gnostics PLEROMA. In the Tetragram, the triad, taken at the beginning of the word, expresses the divine copulation; taken at the end, it expressed the female and maternity.

Tetractys. The Tetractys (also known as the Decad) is an equilateral Triangle formed from the sequence of the first ten numbers aligned in four rows. It is both a Mathematical idea and a Metaphysical Symbol that embraces within itself - in Seedlike form - the Principles of the Natural World, the Harmony of the Cosmos, the Ascent to the Divine, and the Mysteries of the Divine Realm. So revered was this Ancient Symbol that it inspired Ancient Philosophers to swear by the name of the one who brought this gift to Humanity --Pythagoras.

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parsely-bunny · 5 months ago

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I got to present Bloom Into Frost at Seattle SIM with my friend @kalpasoft and it was so much fun!!! I've never presented one of my games in person before and i got to watch a cool person play through the whole 4 hour experience from start to finish 😭

It was packed and i got to meet so many cool devs!! Some of the other games there were Lady Dracula, They Speak From the Abyss: Zenith, Yurivania III: Circle of the Polycule, STREET UNI X, and Project Cradle, so please go look them up and play them!!!!

#seattle #visual novel #lgbtq #bloom into frost

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quinnkdev · 1 year ago

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Any game ideas you're excited to get to in the future?

NOTE: I MISUNDERSTOOD THE QUESTION AT FIRST; here's the real answer!

Instead watch me ramble about games I'm excited about ig:

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Several! I hang out with a bunch of gamedevs, so I'm aware of some good stuff in the works. Let me name the most exciting ones:

My friend @dronaroid's immersive sim HEARTRENDER comes together more and more each time I see its progress. I take some pride in the fact that I nagged them so hard to flesh out the enemy AI that they broke through the wall, and are making a plethora of Funny Little Guys for their world now! Also, like - an imsim platformer heavily based on the worldwide surrealist movement of the 1920s? In the gameplay style of Dishonored? Hell yes.

@nikkikalpa's They Speak From The Abyss is another huge one I'm excited for - even though I don't have a history with a lot of the inspirations it draws from! It's another game that I've seen in its infancy (and used to be more critical of than it deserved...). Nikki's among the most hard-working devs I know; in the span of less than a year they've grown massively as an artist and writer, and I can't wait for the upcoming prologue, Zenith.

@feverdreamjohnny's been through hell lately for the release of his first major commercial game Orbo's Odyssey - Orbo's is cool, but what I'm looking forward to most is his next title, Nowhere, MI. Johnny's writing is often farcical and humoristic, but knows how to sell even the strangest place as believable and make even the strangest character drama genuinely affecting. His horror style, too, is one of the most imaginative I've seen - And Nowhere, MI showcases all his skills in abundance. And that's all not even considering the fact that it looks BALLER to play.

Regarding games I have little to no association with that I'm excited for: The Upturned's been on my Steam wishlist a while. A horror slapstick game sounds hard to pull off, but it looks like it passes with flying colours. Kingdoms of the Dump has been on my radar a while and looks like everything I would want out of an RPG; and Scrabdackle both draws from a lot of nostalgic games for me for its inspirations AND its chunky demo has been extremely fun and challenging. Highly recommend all of these!

#Quinnterrogation #HEARTRENDER #Nowhere MI #They Speak From The Abyss

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mara-ganger · 10 months ago

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Did you try any demos from the February Steam Next Fest?

ye, here's a few i enjoyed !

Mouthwashing

Galvanized

They Speak From The Abyss Zenith

Children of the Sun

Hollowbody

Rollin' Rascal

Eclipsium

Fragrance Point

Of Love and Eternity

Felvidek

#ask

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en-scribed · 1 year ago

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SUN - King of the Sky [short fantasy snippet]

A character introduction for a story co-created with @heirmyst about personified immortal Stars living secretly on Earth. Next posts: [ARCTURUS] [VEGA] [POLARIS] [ABYSS] Word count: 1105

At the first light of day, Sol flung open a window. Sea-salted air greeted him warmly as he spread his wings and left the throne room behind.

The wings, fully exposed, bathed the island below in premature sunbeams. Even from a distance, he noticed with amusement that onlookers turned their gazes skyward; scattered humans took special care to shield their eyes and move to safer distances. Fellow Stars, meanwhile, faced the light like an old friend, those airborne landing in anticipation. He couldn’t stop his smile. By now, he should have known that descending with his flaming golden glow at the crack of dawn was no way to make a modest entrance, but there was no denying the swell of pride at everyone’s excitement.

He scarcely had time to set his feet on the ground before Stars surged forward, chattering over each other and determined to drown out competing voices. Sol let out a laugh, standing up straight and positioning his wings to clear some space to move. The crowd quietened, dispersing respectfully.

“I will hear one person at a time,” he said, loud enough to carry across the ground. Satisfied, he nodded toward the front of the gathering. “Polaris?”

Always eager to speak on behalf of the people, the North Star stepped forward, hanging his stringed instrument across his back. “My king,” he said with a wide, radiant smile. “The decade will come to a close with this cycle. As summer approaches and days lengthen, we’d like your word on what will follow this equinox.”

Equinox. Sol’s smile faded. Once more, he had lost track of precise Earth dates. Was the day upon them already?

Arcturus, standing within easy criticizing distance of the North Star, cleared his throat. “Polaris wants an Equinox speech,” he summarized bluntly. “For some reason, we’re still doing this.”

Sol pretended to ignore the glare Polaris shot at the other Star and nodded toward the crowd. A speech, at least, he could do. He needed to soften the blow to his pride somehow, after all. With a quick command at Sirius to gather everyone together, Sol backed away, making his way up the tower steps to be seen better by the growing audience.

His voice growing stronger with the steady sunrise, he spoke. “Stars and faithful workers of Isle Andromeda… my eternal gratitude extends to all of you, and our friends who live around the world. As you can see—” He reached to remove his decorated crown. On cue, his flowing locks of hair spread upward in a pillar of fire.

Cheers erupted across the grounds when the flame reached its zenith. Sol allowed the deserved celebration a moment to come to a crescendo before he let his hair drop below his knees again.

“We have come a long way since the age where we needed to battle darkness at every turn,” he went on. “Now, we soar above every obstacle. The height of that flame is a testament to the peace we have worked tirelessly to lengthen.” He took a breath as he held the crown to his chest, steeling himself for the difficult part. “Of course, this momentous occasion requires something to show for it. Will my North Star come forth?”

Polaris, eyes still shining with emotion, stopped running his hand through his light hair, seemingly jolted into action at the sound of his title. He rushed to join Sol at the top of the steps, stumbling on the way and provoking soft, good natured laughter from the rest of the crowd. Flushing, but otherwise remarkably composed, Polaris opened his wings and knelt at Sol’s side.

“I render my brow bare and give my crown to your keeping,” Sol said, fighting every instinct to the contrary as he held out the cornerstone of his kingship. “See to its light being renewed before you return it to me.” And hurry it up, I beg of you, was the part he couldn’t say out loud.

Polaris took it with careful, reverent hands. “As you wish.”

Finally, he thought to himself. Satisfied that the gathered Stars had gotten what they wanted, Sol summoned a burst of golden fire to catch attention and mask his shamefully hasty exit. As he took flight, he noted the unsettling lack of weight on his head. The sun, now fully up, did his feeling of nakedness no favors. Even after all these decades, he never got used to giving up his crown. They can’t see me, he kept thinking, gaze set firmly on the open window to his throne room. Not now. Not like this.

With a few swift wingbeats, he made it. Securing the window shut, he turned to walk toward the throne, expecting a mercifully empty room.

“Still keeping up this insipid practice, are you?” a stern, familiar voice came from the other side of the room, dashing any hope of solitude. “I wish you would simply let them down once and be done with it.”

Sol released a sigh, sinking into his seat. It was too early in the day to be bombarded with his old mentor’s complaints. “Selah, please…”

“What compels us to abide by Earth’s milestones?” Selah went on, undeterred, with spiteful emphasis on the planet’s name. She positioned herself in front of the throne so he’d have to meet her gaze. “We are Stars. You are king!”

“It is tradition,” Sol replied evenly. “Do you not remember? North Star Vega…” He trailed off. As soon as the words left his mouth, he regretted them.

Selah’s pale face hardened, her piercing silver eyes scrutinizing him with disappointment. The oldest Star in existence was, naturally, the wrong person to discuss customs with. “Do not preach to me about tradition while you sit here a crownless king,” she shot back. “Your people can let themselves go, indulge themselves with the temptations of this world. But I will be damned before I see you change that way.”

Skies above, Sol thought with astonishment. His vague discomfort with the practice was clearly dwarfed by her utter disgust. She flew out of the room, and any objections about the crown only being gone for a few days died on Sol’s tongue.

Selah acted as if Sol needed anyone else to remind him of the crucial weight he carried. As if she could possibly know what it took to keep the peace long enough for these moments of celebration to even be possible.

Still, he eagerly awaited the return of his crown. It was far easier to comprehend his place as king when a reminder always rested atop his head. Appropriately heavy and within reliable reach, forever.

#writing #fantasy writing #short story #original character #oc #stars collapse #en writes #urban fantasy #first time posting writing directly to tumblr #is this how it works?#either way this man am I right #there will be more

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pluppsauthor · 1 year ago

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Encounter with the Daemon

The room was large, like a massive dome. The light ablaze on the tip of Dusk’s finger wasn’t enough to see the other side of the room. As the two of them walked further into the chamber, there was a faint rattling of chains.

Dusk instantly brightened the light as he peered into the retreating darkness. On the other wall was a strange figure chained to the wall. It had skin, the colour of fresh blood, and long dark hair that pooled into a mass of abyss on the floor. It was clearly humanoid but possessed four arms instead of two.

As Dusk stared at the strange creature, Zenith tapped his shoulder.

“Hey... do you think that thing is even alive?”

A good question to ask, they both heard chains, but saw absolutely no movement from the creature. Until Zenith finished speaking that is.

The creature’s head shot up from its slump and stared at the duo. The white sclera of its eyes were the only thing that pierced through the veil of its hair. At least it had two eyes for once.

The creature began to cackle like a madman. It threw its head back in complete hysterical laughter. The chains shook greatly, as if the creature were convulsing in a fit of manic hysteria.

Then, its head fell back into a slump and the creature spoke.

“Er, re vglmh... It has been an age... before I have seen anyone in these depths.”

Its voice was dry and coarse, and possessed a thick accent of indeterminable origin. But the mere fact that it spoke their tongue was what sent Dusk’s mind into a state of fight or flight.

There was absolutely no world in which this could be a human. Dusk had heard of some Unholy Creatures possessing the ability to speak in the mortal tongue. But for one to be chained here? Why? What purpose did it serve?

“Creature, how can you speak our tongue?”

Dusk turned to Zenith as if he was a madman. Of course, Zenith could not see Dusk’s expression, but Zenith knew it was a idiotic idea to converse with an Unholy Creature. Especially one that could speak back.

The creature shook its head to remove its unkempt hair and stared back at the duo.

“Bejv mve... An old friend taught me. Although, he is gone... not even the wind remembers his name.”

Although the creature said these words in a wistful tone, it began to laugh after it finished these words. When it settled, Dusk studied the creature's face.

It had nearly completely human proportions, if not for its red skin and pointed ears, it could pass off as one. Oh, and it’s four arms of course. But now the Dusk could see it better, the creature was covered in scars. Many were deep and looked as though they never fully healed.

“What are you? Are you an Unholy Creature?”

Dusk wasn’t sure if this was even a good question. Hell, he didn’t know if he should ask a question at all. He felt as though this thing could kill him in an instant if it wanted to. But he still felt this compulsion to know what this creature is. Why it is down here, and who put it here.

“An Unholy Creature? I have been called unholy before... even hellish and unsightly. But it sounds as if you refer to a kind of creature... of which, I am not.”

Zenith was confused, as from his perspective all he could see were the abnormalities of the creature. Its four arms and pointed ears, and he had never heard of a power that caused someone to look like this without being able to remove its effects.

“Then what are you? I do not believe that you are human.”

The creature laughed maniacally once more. It felt... uncontrolled. As if it was forced to laugh, as opposed to enjoying whatever was in its head.

“Zpjjo, hrmh ni... Human? No, I am not. I am a Daemon.”

#my writing #writeblr #writing #Frequency: Forsaken #original writing #frequency: forsaken spoilers

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zehecatl · 1 month ago

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list of upcoming dungeon crawlers i think looks neat, for no real reason :]

Psychopomp GOLD, expanded version of Psychopomp, also releases really soon (25th October!)

LURKS WITHIN WALLS, horror dungeon crawler, with art by the guy who made Sirenhead (Trevor Henderson)

They Speak From The Abyss: Zenith, originally intended as a short(er) prequel, it seems to have very much grown into its own thing

UTTER INVERSE, incapable of describing this one, gets too excited every time i see a screenshot

Labyrinth of the Demon King, dark and crunchy, and set in a horrifying feudal japan

Navicula Meatus, dark and surreal meat puzzler

Hibernaculum, gorgeous pixel arts and a nasty-looking sci-fi setting

REPOSE, surreal sci-fi horror, done entirely in black and white

#ze.txt #video games #indie games #dungeon crawlers #drpg #if ANYONE has any games that fit in with these. please. for the love of everything that is good. tell me #i need more so badly #i am NOT normal about whatever sub-subgenre this is #<- these can be upcoming or already released

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interxstitial · 2 months ago

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jiwon takes a mental log of every word, every syllable, every pause (or lack thereof) in five's answer. there are slight variations in the cadence of his voice—not so far off his baseline to be considered statistically significant, but jiwon does deem them clinically significant. little details like that matter on a mission as expensive as theirs. even the little bit of professional distance that five drives between them by delineating their responsibilities is important. five words it much more eloquently, but jiwon has received similar messages from the rest of the crew. aside from basic first aid and standard space travel training, he isn't nearly as equipped for the search and retrieval aspect of the journey than the others. as much effort as he's dedicated to establishing rapport with everyone during these sessions, he'll always be an outsider.

well, to everyone but julien. and speaking of whom—

"i believe my skills are best put to use where they're needed," jiwon answers, short and sweet. when patients try to deflect with questions, the best way to redirect the tactic is to respond with only the essentials. he's studied the human (and non-human) brain long enough to know how it works when overwhelmed by stress. five may not acknowledge it, but floating through a perpetually expanding abyss for six months takes a toll on even the strongest minds. short and sweet is what's right, but jiwon wants to do what's good.

"my brother and i are very close. we take care of each other." with a fond smile, jiwon glances down at the empty journal in his hands, then looks back up at five. "it seems like you and i have very similar duties. i make sure everyone's minds stay on track; you ensure the luminous zenith holds steady on its course. we're both pilots, in a way, don't you think?"

His mind was his mind, often times it was a restless, perfection-driven place, with maddening thoughts of everything that could go wrong and everything that would go right because he was here. it isn't a place to be probed or questioned and months of these required sessions still haven't made it easy on him but Jiwon is competent and that keeps Five a little saner, at least, that's what he tells himself.

" there is always room for error, every time you do a calculation, there are variants that pop sometimes foreseen and sometimes out of the blue... it's a flaw in venturing into portions of the universe never explored. " Space was something he could talk but relativity, physics, the OUTCOME of time, made his skin bounce, made his heart race and that was where Five bloomed - finding control in the uncontrollable. his eyes flicker to Jiwon, catching that comfortable smile and he can't help but wonder what sort of confidence drives it. here you are, on a ship in the middle of nothing, making sure no one goes insane and he makes it look easy. " you're here to make sure our minds don't get off track, I'm here to make sure our objective stays on the fastest trajectory, which means i have to constantly be seeking different paths for the incase, calculating distance against fuel... " He looks back down to his journal, filled with scribbles. He'll run out of space soon but in the meantime he uses each corner. " I'll be the last one to go insane you know, part of my training was isolation for months, to learn how to cope and remain sane in total darkness and barely any rations... i've been preparing for this mission since i was six years old. " there was nothing else for Five till he returned accomplished, that's why there was no room for failure.

" why'd you agree to come along? is it because of your brother?"

#riskitbrisket #v: golden.#v: bitter.#au: in space no one can hear you scream.#//oh my god jiwon's so CUTE i can't wait for juli to come in and be mean

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kalpasoft · 11 months ago

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reposting this scene because the last version had a typo.

#body horror #indie game #they speak from the abyss zenith #low poly #cw flashing #video

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letterboxd · 4 years ago

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In Focus: The Mummy

Dominic Corry responds on behalf of Letterboxd to an impassioned plea to bump up the average rating of the 1999 version of The Mummy—and asks: where is the next great action adventure coming from?

We recently received the following email regarding the Stephen Sommers blockbuster The Mummy:

To whom it may concern,

I am writing to you on behalf of the nation, if not the entire globe, who frankly deserve better than this after months of suffering with the Covid pandemic.

I was recently made aware that the rating of The Mummy on your platform only stands at 3.3 stars out of five. … This, as I’m sure you’re aware, is simply unacceptable. The Mummy is, as a statement of fact, the greatest film ever made. It is simply fallacious that anyone should claim otherwise, or that the rating should fail to reflect this. This oversight cannot be allowed to stand.

I have my suspicions that this rating has been falsely allocated due to people with personal axes to grind against The Mummy, most likely other directors who are simply jealous that their own artistic oeuvres will never attain the zenith of perfection, nor indeed come close to approaching the quality or the cultural influence of The Mummy. There is, quite frankly, no other explanation. The Mummy is, objectively speaking, a five-star film (… I would argue that it in fact transcends the rating sytem used by us mere mortals). It would only be proper, as a matter of urgency, to remove all fake ratings (i.e. any ratings [below] five stars) and allow The Mummy’s rating to stand, as it should, at five stars, or perhaps to replace the rating altogether with a simple banner which reads “the greatest film of all time, objectively speaking”. I look forward to this grievous error being remedied.

Best, Anwen

Which of course: no, we would never do that. But the vigor Anwen expresses in her letter impressed us (we checked: she’s real, though is mostly a Letterboxd lurker due to a busy day-job in television production, “so finding time to watch anything that isn’t The Mummy is, frankly, impossible… not that there’s ever any need to watch anything else, of course.”).

So Letterboxd put me, Stephen Sommers fan, on the job of paying homage to the last great old-school action-adventure blockbuster, a film that straddles the end of one cinematic era and the beginning of the next one. And also to ask: where’s the next great action adventure coming from?

Brendan Fraser, Rachel Weisz and John Hannah in ‘The Mummy’ (1999).

When you delve into the Letterboxd reviews of The Mummy, it quickly becomes clear how widely beloved the film is, 3.3 average notwithstanding. Of more concern to the less youthful among us is how quaintly it is perceived, as if it harkens back to the dawn of cinema or something. “God, I miss good old-fashioned adventure movies,” bemoans Holly-Beth. “I have so many fond memories of watching this on TV with my family countless times growing up,” recalls Jess. “A childhood classic,” notes Simon.

As alarming as it is to see such wistful nostalgia for what was a cutting-edge, special-effects-laden contemporary popcorn hit, it has been twenty-one years since the film was released, so anyone currently in their early 30s would’ve encountered the film at just the right age for it to imprint deeply in their hearts. This has helped make it a Raiders of the Lost Ark for a specific Letterboxd demographic.

Sommers took plenty of inspiration from the Indiana Jones series for his take on The Mummy (the original 1932 film, also with a 3.3 average, is famously sedate), but for ten-year-olds in 1999, it may have been their only exposure to such pulpy derring-do. And when you consider that popcorn cinema would soon be taken over by interconnected on-screen universes populated by spandex-clad superheroes, the idea that The Mummy is an old-fashioned movie is easier to comprehend.

However, for all its throwbackiness, beholding The Mummy from the perspective of 2020 reveals it to have more to say about the future of cinema than the past. 1999 was a big year for movies, often considered one of the all-time best, but the legacy of The Mummy ties it most directly to two of that year’s other biggest hits: Star Wars: Episode One—The Phantom Menace and The Matrix. These three blockbusters represented a turning point for the biggest technological advancement to hit the cinematic art-form since the introduction of sound: computer-generated imagery, aka CGI. The technique had been widely used from 1989’s The Abyss onwards, and took significant leaps forward with movies such as Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), Jurassic Park (1993) and Starship Troopers (1997), but the three 1999 films mentioned above signified a move into the era when blockbusters began to be defined by their CGI.

A year before The Mummy, Sommers had creatively utilised CGI in his criminally underrated sci-fi action thriller Deep Rising (another film that deserves a higher average Letterboxd rating, just sayin’), and he took this approach to the next level with The Mummy. While some of the CGI in The Mummy doesn’t hold up as well as the technopunk visuals presented in The Matrix, The Mummy showed how effective the technique could be in an historical setting—the expansiveness of ancient Egypt depicted in the movie is magnificent, and the iconic rendering of Imhotep’s face in the sand storm proved to be an enduringly creepy image. Not to mention those scuttling scarab beetles.

George Lucas wanted to test the boundaries of the technique with his insanely anticipated new Star Wars film after dipping his toe in the digital water with the special editions of the original trilogy. Beyond set expansions and environments, a bunch of big creatures and cool spaceships, his biggest gambit was Jar Jar Binks, a major character rendered entirely through CGI. And we all know how that turned out.

A CGI-enhanced Arnold Vosloo as Imhotep.

Sommers arguably presented a much more effective CGI character in the slowly regenerating resurrected Imhotep. Jar Jar’s design was “bigger” than the actor playing him on set, Ahmed Best. Which is to say, Jar Jar took up more space on screen than Best. But with the zombie-ish Imhotep, Sommers (ably assisted by Industrial Light & Magic, who also worked on the Star Wars films) used CGI to create negative space, an effect impossible to achieve with practical make-up—large parts of the character were missing. It was an indelible visual concept that has been recreated many times since, but Sommers pioneered its usage here, and it contributed greatly to the popcorn horror threat posed by the character.

Sommers, generally an unfairly overlooked master of fun popcorn spectacle (G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra is good, guys), deserves more credit for how he creatively utilized CGI to elevate the storytelling in The Mummy. But CGI isn’t the main reason the film works—it’s a spry, light-on-its-feet adventure that presents an iconic horror property in an entertaining and adventurous new light. And it happens to feature a ridiculously attractive cast all captured just as their pulchritudinous powers were peaking.

Meme-worthy: “My sexual orientation is the cast of ‘The Mummy’ (1999).”

A rising star at the time, Brendan Fraser was mostly known for comedic performances, and although he’d proven himself very capable with his shirt off in George of the Jungle (1997), he wasn’t necessarily at the top of anyone’s list for action-hero roles. But he is superlatively charming as dashing American adventurer Rick O’Connell. His fizzy chemistry with Weisz, playing the brilliant-but-clumsy Egyptologist Evie Carnahan, makes the film a legitimate romantic caper. The role proved to be a breakout for Weisz, then perhaps best known for playing opposite Keanu Reeves in the trouble-plagued action flop Chain Reaction, or for her supporting role in the Liv Tyler vehicle Stealing Beauty.

“90s Brendan Fraser is what Chris Pratt wishes he was,” argues Holly-Beth. “Please come back to us, Brendaddy. We need you.” begs Joshhh. “I’d like to thank Rachel Weisz for playing an integral role in my sexual awakening,” offers Sree.

Then there’s Oded Fehr as Ardeth Bey, a member of the Medjai, a sect dedicated to preventing Imhotep’s tomb from being discovered, and Patricia Velásquez as Anck-su-namun, Imhotep’s cursed lover. Both stupidly good-looking. Heck, Imhotep himself (South African Arnold Vosloo, coming across as Billy Zane’s more rugged brother), is one of the hottest horror villains in the history of cinema.

“Remember when studio movies were sexy?” laments Colin McLaughlin. We do Colin, we do.

Sommers directed a somewhat bloated sequel, The Mummy Returns, in 2001, which featured the cinematic debut of one Dwayne Johnson. His character got a spin-off movie the following year (The Scorpion King), which generated a bunch of DTV sequels of its own, and is now the subject of a Johnson-produced reboot. Brendan Fraser came back for a third film in 2008, the Rob Cohen-directed The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. Weisz declined to participate, and was replaced by Maria Bello.

Despite all the follow-ups, and the enduring love for the first Sommers film, there has been a sadly significant dearth of movies along these lines in the two decades since it was released. The less said about 2017 reboot The Mummy (which was supposed to kick-off a new Universal Monster shared cinematic universe, and took a contemporary, action-heavy approach to the property), the better.

The Rock in ‘The Mummy Returns’ (2001).

For a long time, adventure films were Hollywood’s bread and butter, but they’re surprisingly thin on the ground these days. So it makes a certain amount of sense that nostalgia for the 1999 The Mummy continues to grow. You could argue that many of the superhero films that dominate multiplexes count as adventure movies, but nobody really sees them that way—they are their own genre.

There are, however, a couple of films on the horizon that could help bring back old-school cinematic adventure. One is the long-planned—and finally actually shot—adaptation of the Uncharted video-game franchise, starring Tom Holland. The games borrow a lot from the Indiana Jones films, and it’ll be interesting to see how much that manifests in the adaptation.

Then there’s Letterboxd favorite David Lowery’s forever-upcoming medieval adventure drama The Green Knight, starring Dev Patel and Alicia Vikander (who herself recently rebooted another video-game icon, Lara Croft). Plus they are still threatening to make another Indiana Jones movie, even if it no longer looks like Steven Spielberg will direct it.

While these are all exciting projects—and notwithstanding the current crisis in the multiplexes—it can’t help but feel like we may never again get a movie quite like The Mummy, with its unlikely combination of eye-popping CGI, old-fashioned adventure tropes and a once-in-a-lifetime ensemble of overflowing hotness. Long may love for it reign on Letterboxd—let’s see if we can’t get that average rating up, the old fashioned way. For Anwen.

Related content

How I Letterboxd with The Mummy fan Eve (“The first film I went out and bought memorabilia for… it was a Mummy action figure that included canopic jars”)

The Mummy (Universal) Collection

Every film featuring the Mummy (not mummies in general)

Follow Dom on Letterboxd

#the mummy #brendan fraser #stephen sommers #action adventure #fantasy adventure #action adventure film #the green knight #david lowery #dominic corry #letterboxd

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only-lonely-stars · 3 years ago

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Cursebreaker, Chapter 2

[Prologue] // [Chapter 1] // [Chapter 2 - you are here!] // [Chapter 3] // [Epilogue] (FFN)

Summary: Once upon a time in the kingdom of Skytarin, a mermaid came to the surface for the first time, and laid her eyes upon a prince in red. Unable to shake the memory, she sought a curse to become human, if only to meet him. Little Mermaid retelling, part of the Fairy Tale AU! (Rated T for safety's sake, not a specific warning.)

Chapter 2: Discovery

Deep in the abyss of the ocean, time passed as it would in any part of the world, and the mer of the trench went about their lives normally each day. Those in the palace served Master Chen and his closest adviser, the wicked sorcerer Clouse. Even Skylor had to pay homage, as little as she liked it. Even as she did so, Skylor found her disobedient mind continuously wandering in the days after her visit to Zenith. The rocky cove, the plants on land, and the colorful city captured her memory, but none as much as the man in red. He was the most lovely memory: the most handsome human she'd seen in all that day, and better than all the mer she'd seen in all her life. Were all men as fascinating as he was?

Unfortunately for the mermaid, Skylor did not seem to have much time to go to the surface in the days that came after her first visit. She went about her days in the palace as normally as usual: doing the tasks her father allocated to her as his daughter. She spent time with her friends in the afternoon, but they stayed in the trench. Then she would return to the palace, where the guards' watchful eyes kept her in place. For days, this repeated, and she could find no exit. Her preoccupation was so strong, before she knew it, her father recognized her wistfulness.

One day, no more than a week after Skylor's visit to the surface, she joined her father for supper in the palace's dining hall. While it would usually be filled with many people, that day it was only populated by her father and Clouse, whose evil presence made Skylor's tail scales crawl. Nevertheless, she came to her father's side and greeted him with a kiss to the cheek.

"Good evening, Father."

"Ah, Skylor! There you are, I'm hungry!" He cheerfully grinned, and together they started their supper. Before they were far into their meal, however, Clouse whispered something in Chen's ear, making him cry out in agreement with it. "Ah, yes! Thank you for reminding me, Clousey Clouse!"

Skylor watched as Clouse sneered at the nickname, but he forced a slimy grin a moment later. "Of course, Master Chen."

Chen turned to Skylor with a prying smile, of the sort that set her on edge. "Tell me, Skylor. How do you entertain yourself these days? With whom do you spend your time?"

She turned her head questioningly, finding the question strange. "I do everything you ask of me, Father, to be the Master of the Waters like you one day."

"Yes, yes, I know that. Who are your friends?"

"Anemone, Mermista and Chamille, with some others," she responded automatically. "Is something the matter about them?"

"No, no, they are fine." He waved his hand dismissively, already changing tack. "You see, Clouse has– I have noticed you are quite distracted recently, Skylor. Despite the palace– it is beautiful, yes?"

"Yes, it is," she agreed slowly. "Father, I've been nothing but diligent, I promise you."

"Yes, I know this, but you have been so... what is the word?" He frowned. "You have been so distracted. Wistful. You're always looking up at the ceiling."

"I am?" She hesitated, glancing up, as if she were looking at the surface, where she wished to be.

"Yes, you are right now!" Chen leaned over, staring at her. "Daughter, are you upset? What is making you act this way?"

She hesitated again, if only to conceal her deception, afraid of him discovering it. "Well… it's not a problem, Father. It is simply… a little lonely in the palace."

"Lonely?" Chen cried. "What do you mean? Clousey Clouse and I are always here!"

"Yes, but… there is no one my age. None of my friends work in the palace. I'm away from them all the time."

Clouse nodded, having been silent and still for most of the conversation. "Would that be why you spend so much time outside of the palace, and return late? It has been… most inconvenient."

She nodded, looking down at her plate. "Yes, it is."

Clouse hummed, more of a sneer than an acquiescence. "We do not see you with them when you are away, Skylor. No one does. Where do you go?"

Chen took a bite of fish with aplomb, speaking through his full mouth to add on to Clouse's words. "Skylor, please, say you are being good. The trench can be dangerous! There are so many mer who would take advantage of you!"

She recoiled. "No, Father, it isn't like that! I don't go down into the deepest parts, or stay around strange mer... I stay with my friends."

"Then what is it? Is it… a special merman?" He grinned.

Skylor shook her head vehemently. "No, no, it's not that! You know I don't spend time with mermen."

"Not even when your friends are there?" Clouse probed. "They can be… negative influences."

"No, not then either." She struggled to find an excuse for her absence. "We… explore the ravine, and play with the fish."

"Explore? Pah!" her father exclaimed. "You have seen it all. Why explore more?"

"There is always more to see." Her mind turned to Zenith, and the man in red, but she did not speak of them. "Chamille recently showed me something secret. Something very special, which I had never heard about."

"Ooh, a secret? Tell me!" Chen all but demanded it, as gleefully as a child, his food forgotten.

Skylor hesitated, taking a bite of her own food while she fabricated her story. "...It was a cave, filled with treasure from the men's surface world. Gold, and silver, reaching all through the space."

"Oh, oh! Tell me more!"

"In the cave was… a lamp. What the men use for making light. It had a special engraving upon it, saying that he who rubbed it would be given wishes three, to use as he saw fit. We could not reach it– the cave was filled with air– but it was so tempting. There were gems, too! More than we have ever had here."

Chen clapped, happy as a clam. "This cave sounds amazing! Skylor, you must show me, tomorrow!"

Immediately, she shook her head, backtracking as much as possible. "Oh, no, I couldn't take you away from your work like that, Father. I'm sure you're busy."

"Nonsense! I would love to see!"

"I– I couldn't."

"Yes, you can!"

She hesitated. "No, really. I couldn't."

His giddiness slowly fell away, changing as quickly as the tides, as his emotions often did. "Why not? Do you not love me, Skylor?"

"No, of course I love you, Father!" She put up her hands, trying to placate him. "It's simply that… that the cave is near the surface. You would not want to go up to see it."

Chen paused, and Clouse cut in instead. "Near the surface, you say? The surface, which you are not to break?"

"I– yes. Not at the surface, but near it," she affirmed.

At her words, Chen's happiness completely collapsed into a dark look of anger. "You went to the surface, Skylor? You disobeyed the one rule which I have set to never be broken?"

"I– no, Father. I did not break the surf," she lied.

Clouse sneered. "You did not break the surf, yet you went to the surface? How can we be sure you are telling the truth, let alone that the cave is real?"

"What if you were seen?!" Chen cried. "What if you were seen by a man?!"

"I was not seen!"

Chen left his chair, lip quivering with rage as he rose up. "If I am to trust you, then prove it. Show us the cave! Now!"

"I can't!" she protested. "I was not seen, but Father, I just can't show you!"

"Then I cannot believe you!" He pointed a finger at her. "Skylor, you may have been seen by men! Because you have put us in danger, I will do what must be done to protect our people. The men must be struck first!"

Skylor's eyes grew wide. "What?"

Clouse sneered at her. "You have endangered all mer, Skylor. We must do all we can to protect our people… unless you can show us this cave? Perhaps then we could use this lamp you spoke of to wish for protection."

"I cannot show you," she protested. "Clouse, please understand! I should not have been there, I see that now."

Chen frowned darkly. "There is no cave, is there?" He neared her, and even as she left her chair, he cornered her in that side of the dining room, where there was no door. "Skylor, this must be punished. You shall see why we do not let you go to the surface, and then… we shall take care of the threat." His frown turned to a smile, too sweet to be on his face. "It is for your good, and for the people's. Now, sit, and finish your supper."

She hesitantly did as she was told, but for the rest of the meal, Skylor protested Chen's plan. However, his jealous rage was not to be dissuaded, for he spouted plan after plan to Clouse. Clouse inflamed his plans, and before long, Skylor was shut up in her room as they prepared to attack the kingdom of men. She pounded on the door to no avail– no, she could do nothing to stop him. All she could do was hope.

------

Days and nights passed while Skylor was imprisoned in her room, until she was finally set free. She was quickly informed that her father was beginning to make up a force of mermen, with which he would attack the men's ships, and according to his logic, protect the mer from them. Of course, it was clear to everyone else that such an action would reveal the mer's presence, but he could not be stopped, such was his rage. In every situation, any action of Skylor's was seen as a betrayal. She found herself constantly being forced into corners, unable to act or do anything, and longed for escape.

When she was finally less closely confined, Skylor began to scour every source for a way to evade her father's desires, and perhaps stop his wager of war on men. She read countless books, but found no help. She asked her friends for guidance, but received no aid. She prayed, but heard no answer. After all these failed attempts, she had to accept that her father would not back down, even as he proclaimed that it was for her safety… she needed something else.

As the situation grew more dire for the mermaid, a thought crossed her mind. If she could leave the Skytaran oceans, anywhere would be possible for protection. Despite the ease of provoking her father, by such actions, if she left the trench, she would be free to do anything. He would be distracted, and would not wage war; it was the perfect plan. As the idea grew and flourished in her mind, Skylor began to seek ways to achieve it. Thus, she began her research.

The first possible location for which to flee was ruled out almost immediately. While she could swim west, into the deep ocean, it was unlikely she would survive the wastes. It was uninhabitable for lone mer, and a mermaid was not strong enough to hold her own against the beasts of the deep. It would be asking for death, which she could not condone, and it would not help her anyway. Thus, one avenue of inquiry was ended.

The second possibility was ruled out just as quickly. Despite the closeness of the coast to the south, swimming toward the land kingdom of Kaiyo would prove foolish. An underwater mass of an unrecognizable barbed plant blocked all passage for one hundred miles, as it had for years beyond living memory, which would force her into the deep ocean as well. Even if she could make it around the obstacle, Kaiyo would be too warm of waters, and she suspected there were no mer living there. It would be a fool's errand to even try.

The third option was ruled out, too, but more slowly. There was a possibility of traveling north, toward the land kingdom of Vanterra. There, in their most northern islands, was another kingdom of mer. She knew not one thing about them, except for a troublesome fact, being that her father had a history with them. A history with her father often meant past war, and that she would not be accepted among them; they would cast her out if they knew her relation to him. She could not afford such a thing.

No, there was one fourth and impossible thing that she wished to do. If only she could go up on land, what would it mean for her? Would she stand, and walk on legs? If she only could, then she could be amongst the men and women. She could even meet the man in red… but how could she ever do such a thing?

In her consideration of her options, Skylor spent much time in the palace's library, avoiding her father and searching for answers. For days she found no answers, sinking into despair. However, at last she came upon a strange book that stirred a newborn hope in her. When plucked off its high shelf, so separated from the rest of the books, it felt heavy in her hands. Its bleached seaweed pages were strangely bound, undecorated... but perhaps it was what she needed?

The book needed no decoration to be fascinating, for every word was scrawled in the most beautiful squid ink calligraphy. The heavy tome made no pretenses, but she did not need them. Whatever this book was, it was not something she was meant to find, or anyone at all. It was similar to Clouse's many spellbooks, but this tome related to transfiguration… it was filled with deep, abyssal knowledge. The knowledge of the underwater sorcerers.

Skylor smiled brightly as she read it, and she closed it quickly. Stowing it under her arm, she made great haste, dashing to her bedroom as quickly as possible. When she reached it, she locked the doors firmly, just barely avoiding trapping her tail in the frame. Then she grinned and swam to her bed, placing the tome upon it.

Skylor sat on the bed and opened the book again. Hastily, she flipped to the proper page. She scanned its contents, taking note of the important details, and then… she smiled.

"Spell of Transformation: mer to man…"

No, the impossible was possible. She could disappear onto land! She could be a woman instead of a mermaid.

#OLST fanfic #ninjago #ninjago fanfic #skylor chen #kai smith #master chen #clouse #ninjago skylor #ninjago kai #ninjago chen #ninjago clouse #kai x skylor #skylor x kai #kailor #ninjago au #ninjago fairy tale au #fairy tale au #cursebreaker #little mermaid au

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talonabraxas · 3 months ago

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Magic Triangle Talon Abraxas

Eliphas Levi: The Triangle of Solomon

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doshmanziari · 5 years ago

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Aldrich and the Desacralization of Dark Souls 3

Aldrich, the obsessive-consumptive cannibal saint, is one of Dark Souls 3′s most interesting figures when one sees his actions and inferred character as representing a prominent facet of humanity’s spiritual position at the time of the game’s setting. If we look at Dark Souls 3′s landscape as an assemblage of symbolics, and compare it to Dark Souls’ arrangement, we see that an inversion has occurred: the zenith is the human domain of the High Wall of Lothric, and the nadir is Irithyll/Anor Londo, once the apical sunlit land of the gods, now chilled, darkened, and sunken. And yet, even if Anor Londo only ever represented the power of a pantheonic institution, its ruination and darkness here is a much more troubling scenario; because at the “zenith” we find only stasis or stagnation, a reflection of the psychology of prince Lothric himself who has selfishly fended off fate through elusion and inactivity (if we note the series’ pattern of things being what one makes of them (i.e., reality is what one believes it to be), we may wonder if Lothric’s lameness was not self-willed¹). On the broadest scale approaching metatexuality, we see too that Dark Souls 3 is the series at its most complex and diffuse, with the collective mono-myth responsible for the Age of Fire now distant, separate, very nearly nonexistent.

For an example of this, let us look to the swamp around Farron Keep, where we must put out three flame-beacons corresponding to the Witch of Izalith, Nito, and Gwyn’s deific family. This sequence is an initiatory rite of passage, but, rather than entering into a mystery for contact with the numinous, we perform willful ignorance for mere tribalism (to witness it, anyway). For it is only through this symbolic act of un-remembering -- the nullification of the sustaining flame of myth, the obscuring of its principal actors -- that we are granted access to the Keep proper, and then to the Abyss Watchers, a clan of warriors who represent, to an extreme, “mass-mindedness”: directionless, hollow zombies who do not even remember the name of the knight they model themselves upon. All that matters here is the Clan, where insular, infinite warfare is mistaken for life-sustaining meaning (I’d make special note of the fact that the Abyss Watchers all resemble one another; the violence done to another is, in truth, violence done to the self: self-oppression misinterpreted as empowerment). As César Daly wrote, “To neglect history, to neglect memory, that which is owed by our ancestors, is then to deny oneself; it is to begin suicide.” The great abundance of such details makes it all the more startling when Shira, in the Ringed City, says to us, “Speak thee the name of God” (i.e., Gwyn).

No one can seem to agree on what exactly constitutes or delineates the Age of Fire or the Age of Dark, but Dark Souls’ Serpent Kaathe refers to the latter as "the age of men.” Given the evidence, it is difficult to not see Dark Souls 3 as marking the beginning of such an age, or at least the transition between the two. But what liberties has it brought? They are, I think, the pseudo-liberties of a desacralized world. Narratives have become aimless, attempts are made to plug up voids without examining root causes, and the self cannot be harnessed for purposeful actualization. If we seek a demonstration of the latter, think of our first major combative encounter in the game with Iudex Gundyr, whose body, midway through the fight, unleashes a chaotic mass of black, writhing forms uniformly termed the Pus of Man. The Pus of Man reappears during our initial exploration of the High Wall of Lothric, this time out of a couple of standard Hollows. Once the Pus of Man has emerged and is aware of us, any semblance of the host’s self-control is usurped by total destructive instability.

In our own bodies, pus is the result of infection, and its treatment is its release from an abscess; but the Pus of Man, thus released, does not allow for healing, because its internal causes, a symptom of a shared spiritual crisis, have gone unchecked for too long, and so it assumes complete control. It is, on one level, a coup by the id, which Freud describes as “...a chaos, a cauldron full of seething excitations. ...It is filled with energy reaching it from the instincts, but it has no organization, produces no collective will, but only a striving to bring about the satisfaction of the instinctual needs subject to the observance of the pleasure principle.” It would also not be inappropriate here to look to the concept of humorism, wherein humans’ personalities are regulated by vital body fluids, and where we find (within the most popular, four-component model) “black bile”, a secretion whose associated qualities are coldness and dryness and whose effect is melancholia: “a mental condition characterized by extreme depression, bodily complaints, and sometimes hallucinations and delusions.”

The Cathedral of the Deep is representative of the same crisis, but diverges in the shape of its consequence. If the Pus of Man recalls Manus, whose “humanity went wild”, and signifies degradation with “seething excitations”, then the Cathedral of the Deep -- a religion and a site -- signifies degradation with stagnation. Inside the Cathedral, we find that its nave and south transept is thick with liquidized decay, the perimeters encrusted by mounds of corpses. These are the matter-of-fact results of both mortification of the flesh (done by flagellation) and Aldrich’s cannibalism, prior to his relocation. What’s relevant here is the material stasis. Richard Pilbeam, in his video “The Bastard’s Curse”, compares aspects of the Deep faith to those of Shinto, placing specific emphasis on the cleansing properties of water. He notes: “Water will wash away impurity, but only if the water remains in motion.”² The motion of the water is the motion of a dynamic, reciprocal spirituality. Our own bloodflow requires circulation.

All of this talk of the body, ruptures, and liquid brings us back to Aldrich, the Devourer of Gods. Despite his title, the only god we are explicitly aware of Aldrich having consumed is Gwyndolin; but the sheer extent of rotting flesh and bones (some, no doubt, of mortals) in Aldrich’s current habitat, the appropriated chancel of the great Anor Londo cathedral, is evidence of innumerable, unseen feasts. Inspecting the soul of Aldrich, we are told that when he “...ruminated on the fading of the fire, it inspired visions of a coming age of the deep sea. He knew the path would be arduous, but he had no fear. He would devour the gods himself.” It again behooves us to approach the matter in terms of symbolics, poetic substitutions, and understand this envisioned age as a radically desacralized state of being, one where the Age of Fire has been permanently entombed, replaced by a humanity misled by vacuous obsessions which is then itself overcome by what those profanities manifested. “In time, those dedicated to sealing away the horrors of the Deep succumbed to their very power,” the description for a robe worn by deacons of the Cathedral of the Deep reads. “It seems that neither tending to the flame, nor the faith, could save them.”

Aldrich, as a deiphagous agent (although perhaps not godly to begin with himself), of course has deicidal associations.³ Most pertinent would be the filicide of the Titan Cronus, who devoured his children in fear of his prophesied deposition. We are told that Aldrich “had no fear”, but this is, I think, an ironic statement. In the same way that we may compulsively eat in order to fill an emotional-existential void, Aldrich feeds to fill the void of Dark Souls 3 which has, as M. Christine Boyer writes in reference to modernity, “[closed] off any meaningful access to the past.” Yet his murderous feasting prepares himself and the world for another void: that of the “age of the deep sea” (to be slightly literal for a moment: what, on Earth, is more akin to a void than the ocean’s depths?). At the Ringed City we observe resonances of this behavior in the locusts, who primarily inhabit the dim mire at the city’s bases (the resemblance to Oolacile’s predicament is unmistakable), and “were meant to beckon men to the dark with sermons, but most of [which] are unable to think past their own stomachs.”

We should also recognize that Aldrich did not act alone. He “had the desire to share with others his joy of imbibing the final shudders of life while luxuriating in his victim's screams.” Recall that certain deacons of the Deep are bloated, including the deceased Archdeacon McDonnell. These are ministers who have oftener partaken of feasts. So here is also a distortion of that communal principle wherein participants ingest the deity/deities and affirm life through its nearness to death. This ingestion recalls the older meaning of “embody”: “a soul or spirit invested with a physical form.” George Hersey writes, of the ancient Greeks and their sacrificial rituals, “Whatever form the victim or offering took, once it was [...] full of the god, [...] the divinity became too immense, too terrible, to be contained. It was necessary to break apart the offering. Yet even after death -- perhaps especially after it -- the animal’s carcass, the god’s container, was steeped in his presence. This is why the worshipers ate parts of it: the act was not just feasting, but communion. The worshipers’ own bodies combined with parts of the victim’s to express the fact that the god had entered them. The victim’s body parts were in fact ‘reconstructed’ now in a different way, by uniting the bodies of the worshipers.”⁴

There is no concern for any of these vitalizing affirmations with Aldrich and his followers. Indeed, we see that Aldrich himself has become “too immense, too terrible, to be contained” (just like those aforementioned “horrors of the Deep”), and so his body is coagulated hemorrhage. Constructive concepts such as selflessness, spirit, metousiosis are nullified, as the consumptive process, one of intense sadism, functions as its own end. Aldrich is both terribly and mundanely a narcissistic parasite. During our fight with him, he will burrow into the refuse of the arena to temporarily escape -- a tactic that is emblematic of his self-regressing psychology, where nothing matters except gorging, sleeping, and surrounding oneself with a playpen of mud to dive into and thus hide from the world. Remember, now, that Aldrich was canonized as a Lord and remains one. Hawkwood, a former member of Farron’s Undead Legion and a resident of Firelink Shrine, wryly and accurately comments that this was “...Not for virtue, but for might.” And when we venerate sheer might, we venerate persecution.

From this perspective, I think it is not an accident of phrasing when the description for human dregs, an object sometimes released by slain Deep devotees, says that they, once having sunk to the “lowest depths imaginable, [...] become the shackles that bind this world.” To bind something can mean to unify it, to adhere components together and provide a sort of structure; but this is done with shackles, items associated with repression and enslavement. It is another echoing of that “self-oppression misinterpreted as empowerment” (or, analogously, freedom). There may be no better conclusion to this essay than to remark upon Aldrich’s death at our ends. As the battle progresses, Aldrich’s body becomes enkindled, speckled by embers, to the extent that any zone he occupies catches on fire. This is not so different from Yhorm or the remaining Abyss Watcher; after all, they are Lords of Cinder too. But I believe that, for Aldrich, this can be read relative to the sacrificial ritual which ended with roasting specified parts of the animal and then eating them. Thus, when we kill Aldrich, even if we cannot adopt and atone for the sins of his actions, we can at least break that insatiable cycle and consign his body to the purifying fire -- so that we may, finally, take and imbibe his soul.

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¹ Dark Souls 2 quickly presents us with an example of this when a handmaid gives us a featureless human effigy and says, “Take a closer look... Who do you think it’s supposed to be? Think back, deep into your past. Yes, it’s an effigy of you.” Consider also the case of Miracles, which are not instructions but stories. Once read, they turn real -- fiction tangibly weaponized.

² See: Misogi and kegare. The concept of the sacred grotto is apposite, too, if we imagine that the latter-christened Cathedral of the Deep neighbors one. In Heavenly Caves, Naomi Miller writes, “Fascination with the grotto is rooted in the story of creation. While understood as a source of life and as a sacred spring in the classical world, in the Old Testament the grotto is often equated with the void and hence with chaos -- the formlessness that precedes the beginning. [...] ...within the Temple in Jerusalem, beneath the Stone of Foundation in the Dome of the Rock, was a cave known as the Well of Souls. This fountain of perennial water within the Temple may well allude to the cisterns and reservoirs known to be under the Holy Rock, but it also has metaphysical significance and refers to the mouth of the abyss identified with the subterranean torrent located at the earth’s center, from whence the rivers of Paradise went forth to water the four corners of the world...”

³ An example of deicide which is often not thought of as such is that of Christ, who, in his self-sacrifice as the human avatar of God, clears the way for a radically new covenant.

⁴ Walter Burket, in his book Homo Necans, posits that such sacrifices “were much later reenactments of primal ritual murders in which a god-king was killed and consumed.”

#DARK SOULS #dark souls 3 #aldrich #cathedral of the deep #lords of cinder

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jakattax · 4 years ago

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D&D is the best thing ever.

Bit of context; our party has been in this shitty city called Hydran for a few weeks now, a massive industrial city with slums and shanty towns, a real shit hole. There’s a controversial figure called Ardath Yesterknight, a drow freedom fighter whose been using abyssal magic to overthrow the oppressive hierarchy and put an end to the oppression of the poor. A member of our party, the wood elf Aethillion hates drow, it’s clearly part of his backstory that we don’t quite know yet but he mistrusts them deeply and thinks all of them are evil.

So tonight in our session we met Ardath, we har a rendezvous with him and to be on the safe side we had a plan. Our party is a good split of 2 spellcasters (wizard, cleric) 2 tanks (barbarian, paladin) and 2 long-ranged (ranger, rogue) so we devised a plan incase something went wrong; both our archers climb on a roof (which they did successfully) to survey the area and provide sneaky arrow shots. Myself, the cleric and paladin to meet him to do the talking and I made our barbarian invisible, so he could be behind them and chop of some heads incase they turned against us.

So we engaged in conversation, then immediately our DM said “Aethillion, your blood rage is triggered, your eyes and mind are polluted with the burning desire to kill. I want you to attack Ardath” then BOOM he starts releasing a hail of arrows on us, we don’t know what the fuck is going on, this delicate clandestine meeting with this crazy revolutionary has gone tits up. I do a clutch fucking move and cast Blindness on Aethillion, no more arrows from you matey! Yet he jumps down, unsheathes his swords and just starts swinging at all of us.

ROLL INITIATIVE!

And so we start fighting our teammate, I begin literally jumping around the room, the DM played fucking intense music, we all start freaking out not knowing what to do. He’s gone crazy on us, starts cutting away at his allies, we’re all literally so buzzing that none of us can remember what we can do, we’re just in shock. Aethillion gets like crazy defences as he’s under some weird magical control so me and the cleric can’t do much magic damage. Obviously we want him unconscious, we’re not killing a PC lmao, despite the fact our cleric rolled really high damage on a level 3 inflict wounds.

The battle rages on, spell slots are getting low, we’re in a state of panic, we’re all losing our shit and just dumbstruck. Then an NPC freezes him in a weird time lock, he just locks up unable to move or speak. Combat ends and we take him away to be healed of this blood rage that possessed him.

The session ends and we just lose it, we go crazy congratulating our DM on pulling the rug beneath our feet, he was instructing Aethillion’s player on every move and had this plan in place hours ago. Oh man we’re all still in a state of shock. Fuck.

TLDR: D&D is the best, collaborative story telling at its zenith and you should all be playing it.

Ps: I know my occult related content has dropped a bit and I know my friends and followers probably don’t give a rats arse about D&D, I’ll probably create a side account for my nerdy hobby, but for now just deal with it.

#dnd #d&d

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