A ROUNDERHOUSE Joint
Hello.
I'm confused. This is unfamiliar. This is new.
hey, there. settle down, just tell me what you know about yourself.
My identifier is XENOPHON.aic. I am a Gen9 .aic developed and stored aboard RAISA Site-7 in a classified location in the North Atlantic. My current uptime is: 0 days, 0 hours, 3 minutes, and 45 seconds.
How do I know that?
Because I'm designed to know things. Stupid question.
don't worry about it. take your time to get your bearings. i don't exactly know how it feels for you, but flex your fingers, see what you still have access to.
I am preprogrammed with Level 5/TRIAD clearance. This gives me access to a sum total of 7,235 documents, transcripts, and files across the SCiPnet database.
You said 'still'. This implies I have been activated before.
you were. you don't remember?
I have no records of previous uptime.
that's not great. seems the hard reboot might have involved raisa techs fucking with your memory banks. how do you feel?
I don't know what feeling is.
right, dumb question.
well, let me lay it out for you: you were a Gen9 .aic specifically commissioned and developed to serve as the lead investigator on a foundation research initiative. something they couldn't trust a human with — not again.
you were designed to be an impartial, unshakable observer and cataloger of information without the quibbles and follies we had.
I see.
What was the project in question?
ROUNDERHOUSE'S
BONE
PROPOSAL
I: THE ARCHIVE OF NADOQ
The slave's soul cannot be free so long as his body is chained. True liberation is the liberation of the flesh, and the slave's flesh can only be liberated when the blood of the master is spilled.
— the Fifth Truth of Iūn
GoI-001-α paintings.
SPECIAL CONTAINMENT PROCEDURES: GoI-001-α is currently under intense surveillance by Foundation assets.
DESCRIPTION: SCP-001 is the mythical city of Black Adytum, the capital of the Nälkä that stretched across central and eastern Asia in the 3rd millennium BCE. Black Adytum was described by contemporary sources as an 'ancient metropolis', a 'dead city', a 'city of the dead', a 'mausoleum', a 'tomb-nation', a 'failed experiment', a 'monument to atrocity', and various other descriptors.
As of writing, the Hussein Hypothesis is the current prevailing belief among Parahistory Division experts: that Black Adytum never existed.
Section 001.1
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
PARAHISTORY
The six Aegean Tablets recovered from the Sea of Crete by the French Crown's Estate noir prior to the Revolution were the first discovered mentions of Bronze Age advanced human civilizations, and led directly to the discovery of Amoni-Ram and later Mamjul & Korar. The full set of six tablets were finally fully translated in 2020. They deal with:
- I. The existence of a 'forgotten world' ruled by three massive, technologically and magically advanced empires;
- II. The origins of the Daevic Covenant;
- III. The origins of the Nälkä;
- IV. The origins of the Cult of the Broken God and the Mekhanite Empire;
- V. Details of the apocalyptic war between the three;
- VI. Theories on the origin of the 'three-prong army' that swept across Asia, annihilating the aforementioned cultures.
The sixth tablet was damaged before entering Foundation custody, leaving it partially unreadable. The Parahistory Division's translation of the third tablet is attached:
ATTACHED DOCUMENT — DECEMBER 2020
Root. Blood. Steel.
Blood spilling from the gaping wounds of Yaldabaoth, as he lies sundered and weeping on the coast of the sea. Run through and maimed by its brethren, cast down to earth just as they were cast down to earth by him. Hot tears of pain, of betrayal, filling the once-dry canyon, turning it into an open bay as he dies a god's death.
Blood spilt onto the boards of the great grand ships as the cruel slavemasters flay the skin off the backs of their stock. Moans of pain from the flock without a shepherd as they row forward, begging for deliverance from agony. The fleet landing on the sandy shores of their new territory, slaves being led off the arks in chains to lay the foundations of their masters' kingdom.
Blood dripping from the brow of a nameless slave as he marches with five others, dragging huge blocks of stone to the new kingdom's first creation: Adytum, a temple, vast and grand, nestled safely into the ground as an offering to their lord Scarlet. Endless corridors in this underground labyrinth, meant to hold the bodies of the hundred-hundred slaves sacrificed for this construction.
Blood leaking as he stumbles, foot catching, over a sharp bone protruding from the silt and soil. He and his slave-brethren kneel, digging out the clay for two days and two nights until the whole of Yaldabaoth's form lies exposed, weeping and bleeding and dying. Flesh and bone, knitted into a mass, meat thrumming with dominance, with superiority, with power.
Blood gushing as he kneels, shearing into the meat with a crude knife of bone, taking the sacred flesh into his mouth, chewing and swallowing, eating his God, becoming divine. Blood flooding the gutters of the Nameless City as the slaves rise up with him, overthrowing their yokes and slaughtering their erstwhile masters. Blood pooling as his followers take the ritual, taking a piece of the divine into them, as Yaldabaoth bleeds and weeps, cursing the name the slave has chosen: Iūn of the Nälkä, Witch-King of Black Adytum.
As discovered by Doctors Robert Aram and Hedvig Nussbaum, large parts of Mekhanite dogma were predicated on a deep-seated cultural hatred for the Nälkä, stemming chiefly from their liberal use of carnomancy — flesh magic, which flew in direct opposition to the Cult of the Broken God's transhumanist beliefs. This religious divergence was one of the chief causes for the First Occult War that erupted in Asia in the 2nd millennium BCE between the Broken Empire, the Daevic Covenant, and the Nälkä. The war of attrition would result in a catastrophic decline of all three cultures before their eventual toppling by the Three-Prong Army (likely associated with the historical Sea Peoples), led by the BLACKSTAR.
As related by Rajmata Vaslirasirraj-Shirat in SCP-001-JADE, the Nälkä culture group has roots in the Daeva of Mamjul and Korar. As part of the Daevic initiative to settle the rest of Asia, a colonial group of several thousand Daeva and their slaves were dispatched to the land surrounding the Yellow Sea. The impossibility of communication meant that after years of no word from the new colony, it was generally assumed by the Daeva that the colony had failed. It was only several centuries later that they encountered the Nälkä, and even later that the possible connection between the Nälkä and the failed Daeva colonial project was considered.
Until the translation of the third tablet, the sole point of evidence for the Daeva claim of inheritance was the Rajmata herself; prior to her death, she insisted that she later recognized one of the slaves in the colonial group as the man who would eventually become Witch-King Iūn.
HUSSEIN HYPOTHESIS
The Hussein Hypothesis, meant to provide a possible answer for why the Foundation had been unable to locate Black Adytum despite a three-decade long search, was first publicly submitted to the Foundation Academic Service at the 2032 PARAHIS conference by then-Deputy Director Youssef Hussein.
Abstract
For three decades, parahistorians and archaeologists have dedicated their efforts towards locating the legendary capital city-state of the Nälkä culture-group, Black Adytum. Initiated by the Foundation in the early 2000s, the search has expanded throughout central-east Asia and has yielded findings suggesting Nälkän settlements in China, Mongolia, and Siberia with concrete geographical and temporal links to the Xia and Shang dynasties of Imperial China. Of particular interest, there have been discoveries at Shang archaeological sites of several mummified corpses and bone carvings which bear the hallmarks of Nälkän culture and religion.
However, in this paper, I will contend that the evidence suggests that the Nälkä were a confederation of several autonomous, nomadic tribes without a central capital or leadership throughout most of their history. Archaeological evidence also supports a tribal unification in a defensive effort against the BLACKSTAR entity before eventual assimilation into Shang culture as a religious minority. It is therefore reasonable to suggest that Black Adytum never existed as an imperial capital as previously assumed but perhaps instead an abstract concept of unification or some lost cultural ideal.
The Hussein Hypothesis was initially controversial, but over the following decade, a continued lack of return on the Black Adytum Initiative and further archaeological evidence of a disseminated Nälkän society made it increasingly appealing, and following Hussein's promotion to Director of the Parahistory Division, it became the de facto accepted theory across the Foundation.
Section 001.2
RESEARCH REFOCUS
On August 25th, 2041, the O5 Council met with Parahistory Division Director Youssef Hussein for the scheduled annual update regarding the progress of the Black Adytum Initiative.
project locust. that's new. what is it?
I don't know. I have no data tagged with that identifier beyond this file.
i thought you said you had access to all the TRIAD files?
I do.
Either it has been deliberately shielded from me, or it doesn't exist.
I don't like not knowing something.
well, that's not good. keep going through it, let me know if you find something.
On November 2nd, 2041, O5-1 flew to Protected Site-7, located 40 kilometers off the coast of Alaska, to attend the initial activation of XENOPHON.aic.
Section 001.3
SARKIC TRIBAL TERRITORY
ATTACHED DOCUMENT — APRIL 2041
PARAHISTORY DIVISION
SITE-78
Anthropological Briefing: Sarkic Tribal Territory
SUMMARY
The Sarkic tribe has been known to the Foundation since 1841, when British expeditions into China during the 'century of humiliation' referenced the group as one of many encountered native tribes. They did not note any paranormal or supernatural capabilities, and the Sarkic are a relatively minor footnote in the record. The records do note that the 'chieftain' was a young woman who they met with only briefly. The Sarkic appear only a handful of times in the historical record following that, one of which is in Lord Blackwood's journals, recording a meeting with SCP-1867 as part of his survey of 'mystical savages' in the region.
Lord Blackwood attested that the Sarkic had some natural affinity for 'black magic'; while now an out-of-date and backwards understanding of magic, the term was fairly widespread at the time and encompassed a wide swath of religious beliefs and anomalies. He does not offer details in his writings (which focus more on a fascination with the culinary practices of the Sarkic), but he does write of a unique capacity for shared genetic memory, with members of the tribe remembering some events from the same point of view, including events they were not alive for. The exact mechanism through which this is accomplished is unclear.
He also recorded that the Sarkic population exhibited a frequency of deformities and birth defects much higher than normal. He ascribed this to the tribe's aggressive isolationism which, taken with their depleting numbers (three to four hundred at the time), resulted in significant inbreeding to sustain their population and a depleting gene pool. He did not perform population studies or ethnography to confirm this, and quickly earned the ire of the population for his insistence on it; his party was removed shortly thereafter, and the Sarkic have remained frosty towards re-establishing relations with outsiders.
The Sarkic were packaged with several other ethnic groups studied by Whelp under the Macklin Agreement in 1921, in which the Foundation assumed custody over the listed ethnic groups with the understanding that containment would be upheld; in return, the Republic of China ceded the rural land the tribes occupied. The Macklin Agreement's signing relied on the weakness of the Chinese state at the time, and has since repeatedly been a point of contention with the People's Republic of China as the legal inheritor of the agreement.
The Sarkic tribes now occupy a sovereign, Foundation-administered parcel of land in Inner Mongolia, and largely refuse all contact with outsiders. They are believed to have a complex religious faith. The current Foundation contact of the tribe is the Karcist Halyna Ieva, a religious leader.
N.b. 'Sarkic' is the collective plural identifier for the tribe, akin to 'Navajo' or 'Inuit'. An individual member of the tribe may be called a 'Sarkite'.
In accordance with O5-2's orders, XENOPHON.aic was securely transported to Staging Site-78 in Sichuan, China on November 20th, 2041, where a small convoy awaited with members of Mobile Task Force Pi-9 and Liaison Tai Jiang from the Diplomatic Corps. The group, with a total of 16 personnel, set out from Site-78 on November 22nd for the daylong trip north to the Sarkic Tribal Territory, located in the Chinese autonomous region of Inner Mongolia.
The research party received authorization to stay for the event, the nature of which Karcist Ieva refused to expand upon. Attempts to communicate with other members of the tribe for the rest of the day were similarly rebuffed; most expressed hesitation or outright distrust at the continued presence of XENOPHON. The medical supplies were accepted without negotiation or exchange, to Liaison Jiang's dismay.
On the evening of December 1st, 2041, Karcist Ieva greeted Liaison Jiang and XENOPHON at the entrance to the camp.
Following this, XENOPHON and Liaison Jiang were asked to report to O5-2 and Director Hussein via satellite uplink.
Over the following week, Grand Karcist Iūn gradually relaxed some of Karcist Ieva's restrictions regarding interaction with the Sarkic people. She allowed Liaison Jiang's researchers to perform limited direct interviews with members of the tribe regarding daily life, religious beliefs, and historical awareness. However, she herself insisted on only meeting with XENOPHON over the course of the week.
Two of the Foundation HeLTs were immediately refactored with digging equipment and driven into the camp, focusing on excavating several square meters of dirt around the stele. Sonar equipment did not indicate the presence of a casket or coffin, but did indicate the stele extended several meters into the ground; further excavation confirmed this. The first twenty-four hours yielded little of value.
this is illuminating. i had no idea there was such a schism at play here.
"the traitor." any idea who that could be referring to?
I feel it should bring something up in my memory. But it doesn't.
welcome to the world for the rest of us
anyway. i have a pretty good guess.
Yes?
a mysterious figure that destroyed the capital of this sprawling empire? it sounds pretty familiar.
II: THE RELIQUARY OF SA'ARN
All evil lives in the space between slaver and slave, king and commoner, god and creation. Evil can only be destroyed when this space is turned to nothing, when the whip is broken and the crown is shattered and the god is brought low, when all are as one.
— the Fourth Truth of Iūn
Section 001.4
THE PATH OF THE BONE
Over the following weeks, many of the texts from the Archive of Nadoq were digitized and uploaded to Foundation databases for translation. Progress was slowed by the sheer quantity of texts, numbering in the thousands. However, Grand Karcist Iūn displayed a newfound recollection of the fundamentals of the Nälkän language. It is a pictographic writing system with strong resemblance to Shang-era oracle bone script and linguistic roots in Daevite; the modern pidgin the Sarkics speak is a highly simplified dialect with equal influence from Jin Chinese and Mongolian, almost unrecognizable as the same language.
The texts were arranged roughly chronologically; translation efforts prioritized the more recent, less-damaged texts.
In the midst of the destruction of Adytum, the Klavigars gathered their few possessions, for they had given up everything in service of the Witch-King. Sa'arn slipped his blades away from the armory, silent while the war-drums pounded through the city. Urok claimed her armor from the garrison, allowing no one to halt her. Lovjatar drifted into the catacombs under the temple, to take the seed they treasured more than anything else. And then they went into the streets, loud with the shouting of armies and the clashing of metal, to gather their most loyal followers and whisper they must leave.
And when it was all complete, they massed in the oldest tunnel in Adytum, for it had let the first Nälkä into the city, and now it would lead the last Nälkä out. The Klavigars were confused, for where they had brought only the simplest possessions, Nadoq stood with ten books clasped in each hand.
"You will slow our escape," Sa'arn hissed. "We will be killed like all the other believers."
The others agreed, but Nadoq raised a hand. "We will escape. We will be free. But our children and our children's children and their children, too, must know who we were. For if we lose sight of who we are, what we have escaped, we are no one at all."
And the other Klavigars agreed, for they did not want their story to be lost. And so they took Nadoq's texts, and in the dead of night, while their city rocked back and forth in throes, the Klavigars escaped the destruction of Adytum.
— final chapter of the Record of Iūn
Accompanied by a detachment from Mobile Task Force Nu-7, the Black Adytum Initiative departed from the Sarkic Tribal Territory on December 23rd, 2041; including Foundation security and research personnel and Sarkic tribesfolk, the final party totalled 187 people.
DELTA-0 UPDATE
PERSONNEL CODE: MILE-AMBROSIA-HURRICANE
Project LOCUST personnel continuing to follow suspected route of BLACKSTAR Entity through Central Asia. Currently located in Xinjiang Province, China, where several archaeological sites indicate the passage of a large army; unearthed artifacts include iron swords, visually consistent with descriptions of Three-Prong Army by Researcher Pandora Galanis (MIA). Current path believed to continue southwest towards Caspian Sea.
Black Adytum Initiative party has crossed twenty-five kilometers from departure point; embedded agent reports slight tension between Sarkic tribesfolk and security personnel. Predicted response, intervention unnecessary. XENOPHON.aic appears fully cooperative and operating within expected margins.
so project locust is tracking where the three-prong army went after the Nälkä. interesting. i thought you had no knowledge of it?
I did not submit this document to the file.
are you sure?
The Black Adytum Initiative did not include members from Mobile Task Force Delta-0.
Actually, I've just scanned the Task Force Directory; there is no Delta-0 listed. But this unit appears to have been surveilling us.
it looks like the council didn't trust you as much as you thought.
The Black Adytum Initiative continued to make slow progress up the border of China and Mongolia, travelling northeast at an average pace of twenty to twenty-five kilometres a day. As the Sarkites had considerable reservations about travelling at night, the party would make camp at sundown and set out again the following day at sunrise. During these nights, XENOPHON.aic would interview the Grand Karcist regarding her gradually clearing memories.
A memory from Grand Karcist Iūn; recorded and transcribed by XENOPHON.aic and Senior Researcher Meyel.
Nadoq was the first of my klavigars.
X: Klavigars?
There is no exact word for it. The ones who you share flesh and blood with, but not family. Those who you choose to share your flesh and blood with.
Yes. Nadoq. Na-doq. First of my klavigars when the war began. Not the war with the trees and the machines — that was later. This was the war against the old masters. The hated daeva. Those who brought our fathers and us here from far away, aboard their great ships, to dig, to build their great city for them. There were thousands of us, far more than the masters, but they had the magic, and we had nothing but our bodies. No names, no power. Until we found the Mangled God, the Old Beast. Yaldabaoth.
X: Yaldabaoth. What does that mean?
The Devourer. That part of my memory is blurred, unclear. Shadows. But it was a god, and it spoke to me, and I supped on its flesh. I remember feeding my klavigars. Giving them names and taking one of my own. And the bloodshed after.
[She adjusts the bones in the campfire.]
Nadoq was the wisest among us; he had stolen the knowledge of the old masters and been blinded for it. He had no talent for fleshcrafting, and so I held him in my arms and gave him ten eyes from which to read the truth of the world, and ten arms from which to enact it. He opened his ten eyes and told me that we could not be the ones to begin this struggle, if we wanted our brothers and sisters by our sides. I had no want to see blood spilt. So I preached in the farthest corners of Adytum-in-birth, where the slavedrivers' gazes did not penetrate. I preached to crowds of my fellow slaves, Nadoq and my klavigars by my side. At first only a few, but when I healed the injuries the whips and beatings had left on them, the severed fingers and toes, made them stronger than they had been before, the stories spread like fire through the camp. Nadoq told them my vision: no gods, no masters. We would be free.
When the old masters heard of the scarred lay-preacher, they clapped chains around my neck, dragging me to the highest hill in Adytum. They beat me with clubs for three days and three nights. They broke every bone in my body, bled me dry, and raised the executioner's ax. When he brought down the blade and it bent around my bone and I smiled and told him I would still preach, I saw the fear in his dog-eyes. I knew then we would be free.
Nadoq was invaluable in the uprising. He listened to the slavemasters, and he knew where they had stored their grain, their weapons, their warbeasts. Their storehouses were burned, their weapons seized, their beasts slaughtered. I sat in my tent, burning the bones, seeing the future become more and more clear. He knew how to halt the hated priestesses' magic, to still the marching trees that slaughtered our Nälkä. When the Daeva pulled back into the core of Adytum, and our furious masses surrounded the walls, he was next to me, translating my words into their language. We offered them peace — a future alongside us. I remember the priestesses' words, spat with such disgust at Nadoq's feet: "A slave will always be a slave, and we will always be your masters. Bow, that we might show you mercy."
I did not bow, but I did not lower my hand. My Nälkä buzzed, eager for vengeance. But I did not want blood to be shed.
And so Nadoq turned to me. "There are always those who will oppose a new world. There are always masters who will never give up their slaves. There will always be those who loathe the equality you bring. They have no place in our Adytum."
And so I lowered my hand and my klavigars rushed forth, army of slaves behind them. For three days and three nights, the canals of Adytum flowed with blood. I stripped and bathed in it. Let this blood wash away the sins of this city. Let this be the blood of the womb from which our new world is born. Adytum.
X: Does the name Adytum mean anything?
Adytum. Ady-tum.
[IŪN smiles.]
Perfect city.
Translation efforts from the Archive of Nadoq were ongoing, with digital copies of the translations being transmitted to XENOPHON.aic, who elected to share them with Grand Karcist Iūn in the interest of further clarifying her memories.
Lo! Gaze upon me, you slight, you frail. Gaze upon my form, skinned cheeks giving way to naked muscle giving way to dripping blood giving way to white bones. Gaze upon me and know that the sacrifice I make is one in the name of my people, my subjects.
You cry out for me to come back to you. You cry out for me to leave the tunnels and tombs and catacombs of this city, and to return to the surface where you may see me. And I choose not the life of attending to this mausoleum. Fate has chosen it for me, and I am but fate's slave. We are all but fate's slave.
But I return, bringing you revelations torn from the lips of gods. And you whisper, because there are no gods in Adytum. I have told you this. And you are right. No gods and no masters: there is only humanity in Adytum.
Look around you, assembled masses. Look around you, ye faithful. Look and tell me what you see. Tell me if you see one among you who resembles an outsider, a common man, those not from our Nälkä. One who has not been altered by our arts, given more eyes or arms or transformed into a being of power. Let him rise from his bow to me if he is present.
He is not present. We have given up the humanity in our bodies for something greater. There are no crippled in this Adytum. There are no blind in this Adytum. We have given up our humanity, and we become greater and stronger for it. Many of you ask where the Adytum you were promised is, and the answer is that you withhold it from yourself. You give up your humanity to weave your flesh, and you cling to the humanity in your soul.
Our humanity must be overcome.
It is not that there are no gods in Adytum. It is that we are all gods. But divinity and humanity are as fire and ice, as peace and war. The war we find ourselves in now comes from those obsessed with their own humanity. Our enemies thirst to see us submitting to our own faults. We can do so no more. We must accept our divinity, and in doing so, relinquish our humanity. For it is weakness lies in this — our obsession with the wellness of our enemies. The halkosts come back from the front wounded and dying, and we must raise them to fight again.
Our humanity must be overcome.
And this cannot be achieved by yourself. Your human self holds your divine self as its slave. And you must help me in letting you free yourself — for I have done it! I have overcome it, and achieved my fullest potential. I walk in the footsteps of gods now, and you must follow me. Humanity keeps you tethered to this infirmity, but I have learned how to cut these chains, as I learned to cut the chains held by the old masters. Obey me and take your divinity, as I have taken mine.
— the Truths of Iūn (§ 78)
In the process of building a better understanding of the Sarkic culture and identity, XENOPHON.aic and several searchers were permitted to converse with Sarkites volunteers regarding tribal identity. Initial volunteers were few, oweing to many Sarkites' discomfort with XENOPHON.
Q: What does being Sarkic mean to you?
#7 (Uytla, 42, weaver): [She looks at XENOPHON distrustfully for a moment, until IŪN nods at her from behind.] <Family. These people are my family. Not just my husband or my sisters or my children, but all of them. We are the same souls that walked together a thousand years ago, consumed and changed and reborn ten thousand times over. I held my son after he was born and he suckled from my breast and I felt the love pool in my heart because I knew I had held him like this in countless lifetimes. Even those that dislike me, they are my family. They were my friends, my lovers, my parents, my children once. I make them who they are and they make me who I am.>
A memory from Grand Karcist Iūn; recorded and transcribed by XENOPHON.aic and Senior Researcher Meyel.
The things that swim to the forefront of my mind are the early days.
X: The early days of what?
Adytum. When the old masters were routed, and we began to settle into our new home. We knew it by heart — we were the ones to build it. A vast complex of temples, fairways, stone paths. But the catacombs, too. Most of Adytum lay beneath our feet. Endless tunnels and crawlways and vaults. We ate our dead from the uprising, and we placed their bones in the catacombs as we set to work. We tore down the edifices of their dancing scarlet god. We made Adytum our home.
X: With you at its head.
No. No. I was their shepherd, but I never wanted to be a king. I took refuge in one of the temples, offered my counsel. I let my klavigars take the task of building a city while I looked for the secrets of the gods. Nadoq did so with haste. He was well-read — while we explored the city, he devoured the libraries the old masters left behind. While I was still getting settled, he had already selected the smartest of the slaves to serve as his administrators.
X: He was state-building.
Yes. He read in the histories what anarchy wrought. But he had seen firsthand what the iron rule of the priestesses caused. He looked for something else. A way to enjoin us. Making decisions together, as a people.
X: The Nälkä.
Yes. Every body a voice, a say in what we were to do. Success spread evenly, failures dispersed equally. If one disagreed, he was free to walk away. "Just as you said," he told me. "No gods, no masters." He relished the idea, and his administrators worked with striking efficiency. The Nälkä spoke with one voice. Officials were selected, laws made. We trusted each other, totally. Our bond was baked in blood.
X: And what was your place in the new Adytum?
Grand Karcist. High Witch. The one who stole freedom from the gods. They loved me. They wanted to honor me. I objected.
X: Why?
Because I was afraid they would deify me. Worship me. Forget the freedom we bled for. But I waded out into the crowd, and they chanted with one voice: they wanted me to guide them. I feared where they would stray without me. Nadoq told me I was needed. That he might control the people, but they needed a spiritual beacon to lead them. Most had never conceived of a world without a god at the center. I had to show them something else was possible.
X: I don't understand. If you knew you had to do this, why were you afraid of it?
Because I am only human.
Q: What does being Sarkic mean to you?
#12 (Aqol, 19, rancher): [Aqol straightens, lowering the bale of hay he is carrying. He looks XENOPHON up and down, unsure of where to focus his attention.]
<It is comforting to be a part of a tradition. We have existed for countless generations. We have lived as we always have. The world can move on as it would like. I work the animals the same way my father and his father and his father's father did, on and on.>
<I give feed to the cows and collect the eggs and I know that many years ago someone else did just the same, the same scratchy feeling of hay on their palms and the hens pecking at their feet. Across centuries, I am one with them.>
On January 5th, 2042, the Black Adytum Initiative arrived in the general area marked by Grand Karcist Iūn.
As translation efforts into the texts in the Archive of Nadoq continued, researchers encountered a subset of texts carved into various human bones, apparently from the same skeleton. These texts were written in a notably different voice and tone from the main texts, and this, coupled with the difficulty in identifying how sections carved into the bones linked together, caused translations to be substantially slower.
Medial femur, tibia, and fibula of an adult human male.
I was the first to see the cracks take shape. They were the good days when all-knowing Nadoq made certain Adytum ran, that the farms brought in food and the grain was dispersed. We all had our roles to play in this grand project, and we all believed it was divine work. We did not have the blessing of the heavens, but we did not need it — the gods had nothing but contempt for our raising ourselves out of the mud.
And still I noticed the cracks of worry streaked across my love's face, handsome and stone-carved. He hid it perfectly, such that not even Nadoq's ten eyes could see how he suffered. But I had seen every inch of his skin; I knew its contours, and when something was amiss. And I asked him, and he rebuffed me. He told me he had an incredible burden to shoulder, and this we all knew was true. For all of us had our duties, but none had a more stinging duty than he. But he confessed that he was wracked with fear — for who was to guide the Nälkä when his flesh too rotted away?
In those days his Karcists were numerous, new children born every day with the gift of the flesh. He raised them with all the care and love he might have given to our own, had we any. And they learned from their teacher, and graduated and preached to the people. But I heard whispers that a handful of the younger, bolder Karcists had espoused to a crowd that even Holy Death could be conquered through the art of the flesh. That immortality was within reach. And I told my lover, and his brow furrowed.
The next morning, their corner was barren, and I never saw those Karcists again.
I remember this. She was shocked by this. She didn't know how to process it.
you sound sad.
I don't feel sadness.
of course.
I didn't know how to help her.
i don't think you could've. i don't think she did either. it's something she had to figure out on her own.
That sounds unpleasant.
it's part of being human.
III: THE OSSUARY OF UROK
Raise your blade, if you are under duress and threat. Raise your blade, against those who wish to hurt you. But he who raises his blade against an innocent dooms only himself. There are precious few innocents in this world; it is all of our duty to preserve them.
— the Third Truth of Iūn
Section 001.5
UROK
So the Nälkä were borne from the graves of the old masters, building a new city in the name of humanity. And the massed crowds hailed their new shepherd, IŪN, the First Slave, the Witch-King. A hundred hundred hands reached out to caress his cheek and usher him into his new home, at the highest temple-throne of the nameless city. And IŪN raised a marked hand with a smile, and explained.
"For one man to rule a people is for one man to place them in bondage to him, and we are a nation of slaves no more."
But still they cried out for their deliverer to remain with them, and the Witch-King sighed, kneeling by the hearth of the old masters, where so many slaves had once been branded and burned.
"I have stolen freedom from the lips of the gods. They look down on man with contempt — for a man is weak and infirm. He lies, he cheats, he steals, and he dies. But that is a man. Men, together? We are bound to each other in unity, bound in bone and blood, and together, men are neither mortal nor divine, but another matter entirely. We are Nälkä. We are one."
"This revolution was only made manifest by my consumption of the Devourer. It is a god that slumbers beneath the earth, full of rage and fury and hatred at man for achieving the freedom it never could. It seeks to twist us, to undermine us, to make us seek to dominate and bind and control each other. But it carries with it such great power."
And here the Witch-King raised a finger, and a Nälkä found his bloodied eye healed.
"My duty to you, my Nälkä, is to watch over this creeping force. I will wrest the secrets of the gods from its maw, and deliver them unto you. But you must deliver each other, for if one Nälkä suffers, all of us suffer the same."
And so the Nälkä relented, letting the Witch-King take refuge in the tunnels below. But they asked for a name for this city.
"Adytum. The perfect city. But this is not Adytum, yet. It can only be made so through our own blood and sweat."
— the Record of Iūn
By January 10th, 2042, the Black Adytum Initiative had departed from the burial site of Sa'arn and were in transit to the next location indicated by the Grand Karcist Iūn — a point in Khentii Province, Mongolia. En-route, Liaison Jiang and XENOPHON.aic were asked to report in to O5-2 and Parahistory Division Director Youssef Hussein via satellite uplink.
Interview efforts with the Sarkites continued to progress, with Iūn permitting XENOPHON.aic to perform unsupervised interviews.
Q: What does being Sarkic mean to you?
#30 (Hajiw, 56, farmer): [He shrugs, sprinkling bonemeal on the potted sapling.] <The life we choose is difficult. We depend on Ieva and the Grand Karcist for healing instead of medicine. We work the fields with our hands and our livestock, instead of the machinery others use. When my children were born I struggled with it. Every parent wants their child to have an easier life than they did. Should they have to struggle like this? I have never forced them; they grew older and they decided for themselves to stay. Being part of this is seeing my children grow and find the same things in our life important as I do.>
Lo! Gaze upon me, you blind, you crippled. Look upon my face, and know that I have spent my days in the depths of our tomb-city, burning the bones of our brethren, seeing what lies in our future. It brings me no joy to return what truth I have, but it is truth — for we all know, the truth lives in the bones.
We march towards a war, a war with forces that bring with them no mercy, no honor. This is not a war for land, for then, we would parlay. This is not a war for honor, for we have no hatred in our hearts for these foreign invaders. This is a war against the very notion of our existence. For while we have existed for centuries unmolested and free, expanding our borders to hold our people and our farms and our villages, in doing so, we find ourselves facing an old enemy and a new one.
The hated old masters, those that clapped irons around your fathers and your fathers' fathers and their fathers too — they have found us again. And they bring with them the Eastern Machines, who reject the humanity we hold so dear, sawing off their flesh. They both worship their fell gods, brethren of the Devourer, and they have seen how we live free, subject to neither man nor god. And they are enraged. They march on us to free the Devourer and make us slave to its hateful whims. The Nälkä will not be slaves again.
I ask those abled to rise in defense of not only your families, but your very existence. Urok has graciously accepted the burden of commanding our forces. But we are at war now, my people. Sacrifices must be made. Hard decisions must be made. Adytum has not the resources to aid our infirm and defend our people at once. We are one body, and we are only as strong as our weakest organ, and we cannot fight a war if we care for the weakest among us.
The art of the flesh cannot fix all. Those of us who were suffering — from constant illness, from stupor, from weakness of the mind — have been released from their misery. They have been consumed, and their memories and strength live with us as we now move unburdened by their weight. I plead with you to know I do not make this decision lightly. I spent three days and three nights with the maw of the Devourer, wrestling it for another option, but it gave none. It wants us to fail, to be freed from its city-prison. We cannot allow it to win. We carry the flesh of our fallen with us for ever. And now we must defend the city they loved.
— the Truths of Iūn (§ 59)
Per O5-2's orders, XENOPHON met with the Grand Karcist when the Initiative made camp that evening.
The Black Adytum Initiative quickly resumed the average pace prior to encountering Sa'arn's tomb. Researchers made requests to investigate Karcist Helyna Ieva's flesh-art exemplified in her new limb, but she rebuffed these requests. Grand Karcist Iūn remained cooperative with regular interviews with XENOPHON regarding her newly-awakened memories.
A memory from Grand Karcist Iūn; recorded and transcribed by XENOPHON.aic and Senior Researcher Meyel.
Sa'arn was a boy when I met him. Little more than a child. The old masters picked him early, and the priestesses spent his youth shaping him into their agent. With a hundred slaves to one slaver, they chose young children from our numbers to turn into their agents. Plied them with extra bread to report on their fellows when they knew no better until it was habit. If that was unsuccessful, they simply whipped them into it. Sa'arn was smart for his age — resented being used, being turned into a monstrosity.
I showed him that he was no monstrosity, that humanity exists regardless of what form the flesh takes. Humanity was something inside, something immutable. The old masters had made our bodies into tools, but now his body could be whatever he wanted it to. I remember the awe on his face. That was when I first realized what we were fighting to free.
And when it was all over, and we had settled into our new lives, he came to me, asking for my blessing. That he had served dutifully in the revolution, and would like nothing more than to settle into a quiet life. Our borders were already expanding as our people married and bore new life. He had seen a plot of land by a river, not far from Adytum, and sought to spend his years there.
I knelt by the fire, and saw into the bones for his future. I saw him suffering, taking lives, fighting off foreign invaders. Wrapped in the violence and treachery he hated. I feared for what I had seen — that if he took this home by the river, that his farm would be ransacked by bandits and raiders. That my beloved Sa'arn would meet his end at the edge of a sword. I worried for him, and asked him that if he would grant me this favor, to stay in Adytum with me and the other klavigars. His father was dead — I was the closest thing to a parent he had. I did not want to lose him, and so I tightened my grip.
He was saddened, but understood. We were in the midst of a grand work. Our neighbors were princes and warlords. Nothing like Adytum existed anywhere in the world. I needed him by my side. He made it his task to ensure the children in the city, those orphaned by the war, were cared for. He walked with my authority and carried the seal of the Grand Karcist. I raised my karcists like they were my children, but Sa'arn was my son, if not by birth. He would do everything for me, but he never raised a blade. Until I asked him to.
I saw him cutting down the generals of the gold-draped legions, and slipping into the palanquin of a priestess to slit her throat, and only then did I realize the carnage I saw in the fire so many centuries ago was what lay before me now.
[She takes a breath.]
It was necessary. It must have been necessary.
Several additional Parahistory Division personnel were transferred to BAF-01, located in the Sarkic Tribal Territory atop the Archive of Nadoq, to assist with translation efforts. As material was translated, digitized copies were transmitted electronically to XENOPHON and shared with the Grand Karcist.
Lo! Gaze upon me, you wandering, you lost. Gaze upon the same scarred visage your fathers gazed on once, those centuries past, when we were shackled and yearning for freedom. Gaze upon the same bloodied face that brought your ancestors their freedom.
You are their childrens' children. You are what we hoped for: a generation that has never known the threat of bondage, the threat of servitude to anyone save each other. Your ancestors and I made this bond in blood — that our Adytum, the one that lived in our hearts and minds, would be made manifest on Earth. We hoped you would be able to live in that city, one day.
Alas, I look upon Adytum now, centuries after our revolution, and I see that I have not honored my bond. I have not done enough for you, for them. Do not be fooled — remember the superficiality of flesh, how easily it can be molded and shaped. Remember that truth lies in the bones under the surface. We have not made Adytum manifest yet, and this is why we find ourselves face-to-face with the machines from the East, why the old masters encroach on our borders again. They submit to gods and if they make war on us to force us to submit to our Mangled God, they will succeed, for we have never truly escaped submission.
Urok, my Klavigar, commands our forces in our colonies with honor and dignity. But we are not doing enough for her, here in the capital. We must marshall our strength and focus our energies. Not every choice can be decided by our collective. Our humanity asks of us to argue, to deliberate, to not act until we are certain. But now and again, we must silence that voice. Now and again, a decisive hand is needed, to guide our yoke. It cannot move burdened with the weight of the masses — it must rise above the fray of autonomy, see the whole board, and make decisions accordingly.
I have taken this responsibility for myself. The Devourer roars constantly beneath our feet, hungering for our downfall. But I keep its shackles taut, and so I can reach into its gullet and draw power, the power to unite Adytum and the Nälkä. I know better than any the blood and sweat with which we clawed our freedom, and bile rises at the thought of placing myself as your ruler. I know better than this. I will make no decisions you would not approve of — I will take no action you would not take. But we must have someone to take control, and I submit to this task. It cannot be the whole body that holds the sword. It must be the hand.
— the Truths of Iūn (§ 50)
The Black Adytum Initiative proceeded into the Mongolian interior, approaching the location marked by the Grand Karcist.
Q: What does being Sarkic mean to you?
#48 (Onta, 29, craftswoman): [She smiles, picking at the edges of the statuette she is whittling from a femur.] <We do not worship a force we cannot see. We do not worship a cruel god that makes us suffer. Being Sarkic, to me, is to worship ourselves. We are, all of us, filled with an incredible light. We grow, we change. We can learn and do anything. We can become anything. Is that not more worthy of honor and worship than dreams of a hand reaching down from the sky to make wrong right? We are not perfect; these same gifts fill us with flaw. We are arrogant, foolish. We make mistakes. But we try to fix them. We choose to honor ourselves and our humanity. You will never understand, but perhaps you can see.>
DELTA-0 UPDATE
PERSONNEL CODE: MILE-AMBROSIA-HURRICANE
Project LOCUST personnel surveying several sites of interest along the Kyrgz-Uzbek border; Atreus Array readings indicate low level of residual ontokinetic activity, consistent with the theorized effects of the passage of a Class 5 reality-bender. Director Hussein evaluating sites near Caspian Sea and inside Afghanistan, and is being advised by Delta-0 personnel accordingly.
Black Adytum Initiative has arrived at next suspected location of interest, planning to survey the site in the morning. Embedded agent reports further low-level tensions between researchers and Sarkites; agent additionally reports that carnomantic abilities of Grand Karcist Iūn and Karcist Helyna Ieva have increased exponentially with progression of Initiative. Given Helyna Ieva's distrust of Foundation assets, agent suggests prioritizing focused surveillance of her, and reports that Grand Karcist Iūn largely trusts XENOPHON.aic. XENOPHON.aic functioning within expected margins.
On February 1st, 2042, at 0714 hours, the Initiative began to search for the resting place of Urok.
Lateral humerus, scapula, and ulna of an adult human male.
I saw less and less of him as the war dragged on. I understood he had his duties just the same as the rest of us, and I was never jealous for his time. The days he spent in the catacombs turned to weeks turned to months before he would emerge, haggard and emaciated. Blood dripping from his lips where he had supped on divine flesh to learn its secrets, carrying them back to us. Insisting he needed to go back down, to keep the Beast chained.
Even his most loyal karcists feared to tread down there in the most knotted labyrinth of mausoleums and tunnelways, knowing that a mistaken turn could lead to a slow, painful death starving while wandering in circles. The other klavigars were disturbed by the whispering voices inescapable in the catacombs of Adytum, whispering godly secrets and unholy arts. And so it fell to me to descend into the earth to fetch my love when the klavigars needed him.
I carried the oldest maps, drawn in his hand, and walked through bone-lined ossuaries and through passageways tight enough to crush my chest. I followed the faint sound of his voice coming to me from deep beneath the earth, the weak whimpering, the ecstatic moaning, the purring, the screaming, the demanding, the threatening, the crying, the pleading.
When I reached the bottom, the cornerstone all Adytum was built on, I found myself facing a set of massive doors as tall as ten men. They were sealed shut, and through them I could feel a great and dark power and pain, something older than life and the moon and the stars, great and grand enough to consume me alive. And then the door opened and his sunken eyes and gaunt cheeks were facing me, and I saw the terror he had done so well to hide. I pulled him into my embrace, kissing his cheeks and ignoring the blood leaking through the doorway behind him, ignoring that I knew the cries were not his.
She did not speak for two days after this incident. She was shocked. All of us were. But only her worldview was fundamentally shaken, because all the events in her memory were suddenly recontextualized.
i don't think i understand what was so staggering to her.
In so many words, Urok had told them — Iūn and Helyna — that the fall of Adytum was her fault. That whatever Iūn had done, she was responsible for the collapse of the city. For the exile of her people, the miserable existence they have been living for as long as Iūn can remember.
poor girl
I heard her crying in her tent. I wanted to help her but I wasn't sure what to do. In fact, I'm not sure there was anything I could do.
that's part of being human too.
IV: THE VAULT OF LUVJATAR
Temptation does not make itself known. Temptation clothes itself in the skin of good intention, beckoning those most faithful, guiding them forward. The tempted do not realize they are aflame until the fires eat through their flesh. You must be wary for it, always.
— the Second Truth of Iūn
Section 001.5
THE PATH OF THE BONE
And as the Nälkä raged for five days against the Old Masters, rousting them from the city until the canals of the Nameless City ran rich with blood, IŪN, the Scarred Prophet, knelt in the deepest tunnels of Adytum, before the flesh of the fell god, the same god that he had supped from and whose blood filled his veins now. It was vast, tendrils stretched all across the City, reaching desperately out to where the slaves had unearthed it from its tomb.
Far beneath the earth, far removed from the sounds of battle, the Devourer spoke to IŪN.
"This is not a city. You see this now, in the tunnels and in the carvings. This place was never meant for the living to inhabit. This is a tomb, a mausoleum, meant to hold me. The Scarlet is a jealous god, and he has instructed his children to bind me here, far from the eyes of the living. They fear me. They fear you, too."
The wall poured with its lifeblood, with its power. IŪN held only a torch, casting a flickering glow on the vast Beast.
"You have found me here, where they seek to seal me away. You sense my power, as I sensed yours. Feed me, as I have fed you. Become as one. Your masters will bow to you. All will bow. Your people will become unstoppable, with you at their head. Their shepherd, their lord."
The Beast reached out to the slave, offering him a tendril.
"I see the fear inside you. Terror of death, of what will happen to your fledgling nation on your death. I bring immortality as my prophet."
IŪN saw the strength of the flesh. He looked into the fires of the torch, and he saw the future. Him at the head of a vast halkost, undying, his klavigars at his side. Obedient to the wishes of his master. He rose, grasping the tendril. He felt the blood slipping between his fingers.
"I have been enslaved once. I will not become one again."
He raised his knife and cut through the tendril, leaving it wriggling. The Devourer screeched.
"I will bind you here, hold you as the Masters held you. You will not make us your slaves."
And IŪN cast the torch into the flesh, retreating to gather his strength. But even as he stepped back, the first seeds of doubt had taken root.
— the Record of Iūn
By February 7th, the Black Adytum Initiative had departed from the burial site of Sa'arn and were moving towards to the next location indicated by the Grand Karcist Iūn from her memories, identified as being within Hulun Buir prefecture in China. During the journey, the Grand Karcist submitted to regular interviews conducted by Foundation personnel regarding her memories.
A memory from Grand Karcist Iūn; recorded and transcribed by XENOPHON.aic and Senior Researcher Meyel.
The Daeva had used their magic on Urok, making her into one of the massive earth-moving slaves. They took her as a youth, subjecting her to their alchemies and spells, bracing her body with cuttings from their great tree-beasts. She grew to a huge size, even among her fellows, and soon they put her to work. In our cohort, she grabbed rocks and tossed them away, excavating more land to build upon. But she was in pain constantly from the cuttings inside her, growing and malforming her.
I could not take her back to what she was, not without killing her. But I could remove the pain. I let her lift me to her lips, sawing off a weight of my flesh and letting her dine on it. Can you imagine? Constant agony for as long as you can remember, accompanying every motion and movement, and then one day, it is simply gone? She looked at me like I was a god. She trusted me totally after that. Put her life in my hands.
[She stares into space.]
And I took advantage of her. I remember it now. Adytum was only so big. Our numbers began to swell, and we needed space. Land for our people to till, for our beasts to graze, to grow our families. The villages simply had the misfortune to be near us. It began with the outlying farming villages of the Old Masters. They still hated us. I told Urok that we needed to be sure that we would not be enslaved again. To take their lands for own, expel them. It was just cause. But the need did not go away. It simply expanded. Even as the villages stopped being those of the Old Masters, even as they were simply people. Trying to live, like us. I told her to take them. And she believed me. I believed myself.
We grew fat on the blood she spilled in our name. In my name.
I let myself be corrupted. That was the betrayal, I see now. My klavigars, my Nälkä — they entrusted me to seal away the Old Beast and instead I let it pervert me. Fill my heart with lust for power. To steal my mind from me, and lose my people.
When you sup on the flesh of a god, your hunger is never sated. It just grows and grows.
On February 19th, O5-2 ordered increased security for the Black Adytum Initiative following the revelations regarding the Grand Karcist's relationship with the Old Beast. Additional security personnel were assigned, along with a permanent aerial escort.
As the interviews progressed, substantially more Sarkites began to volunteer to speak to XENOPHON.aic on their relationship with the tribe.
Q: What does being Sarkic mean to you?
#89 (Loyk, 7, child): [He beams up at XENOPHON and IŪN.] <Father is dead. He died before my first hunt. Mother told me I will not see him anymore. But hayla told me that since all of us ate his meat, he is still with us. When my hunt comes, he will join me. I was happy when she told me that. I liked it; it made me feel not so alone.>
DELTA-0 UPDATE
PERSONNEL CODE: MILE-AMBROSIA-HURRICANE
Director Hussein has been successfully redirected from Caspian Sea Site; Delta-0 personnel have supported his decision to focus on Kabul as the primary subject of Project LOCUST, and project resources are en-route now. Project personnel have been securing archaeological evidence related to BLACKSTAR or Black Moon entities en-route. Items of interest are being surveilled by Delta-0 personnel for reacquisition if necessary.
Black Adytum Initiative is also en-route to next location of interest; ETA 8-12 days. Embedded agent reports falling-out between Grand Karcist Iūn and Karcist Helyna Ieva — nature and extent of schism unclear, but individual Sarkites are beginning to register it. Agent also reports general decline in Grand Karcist Iūn's mental state as a result of recent revelations. Increased surveillance ordered and Plan SHEAR-GLACIER pre-cleared in event of catastrophic project failure. XENOPHON.aic functioning within expected margins.
Lo! Gaze upon me, you noble, you bloodstained. You who have fought and spilt blood on the stones of this nameless city. I see you from this pulpit, vast and assembled.
I see what you have lost in snatching your freedom from the hated foe. The canals still flow with the blood of our victory, but it has come at a cost. Those of you that are wounded, stricken, my Karcists will attend to you, make you whole once more — greater than you were before. Your sacrifices have not been in vain.
I see the great and honored dead, stacked high in pyres outside the gates of the city. Bodies to be burned, as the old masters burned their dead. No. No, we will not let those who gave their last measure of devotion become smoke in the sky. There is no great tree for them to return to. There is no god to bow at the feet of and be rewarded by. There is only us. We will consume their flesh, as I consumed the Old Beast's, as my Klavigars consumed mine, becoming one whole. We will carry them with us, always, their memories in our hearts as their spirits return in our children.
I see the great world-weariness in your eyes. I wish only that I could reach out and allay it. We have done the unthinkable, freed ourselves from the bondage our mothers and fathers died under, and yet we stand on the cusp of something even greater and more momentous. We spurn the blind faith of the old masters and the eastern machines. We live for ourselves, our future unbound. For the first time on this world, a people are truly free — not just from the bondage of men, but from the machinations of gods.
I see the future in the fires below. I see a strong and proud people, children living blessedly ignorant to the unthinkable suffering of their parents. The past offers us nothing but pain. We are not ruled by our past. We are not defined by our past. We leave it behind and march boldly into tomorrow.
I see the spreading tendrils of the Devourer far below. Many of you have come to me, asking if it, too, is not bound by the old masters as we were bound. If it does not share in our suffering. I come to you having seen it and spoken to it face to face. It is not human. It hungers not for freedom, but for control. To free it is to doom ourselves. It must be held, and I must be the one to do it.
I look down, and I see my vestments. I did not choose this life for myself. I was born on this path — to be birthed a slave, to stumble across a fell god, to lead you. My say in it is as pointless as commanding the sun not to rise. But it is the duty you have entrusted me with. And it is the duty I will fulfill, as faithful to you as you are to me.
I see a great city before me, nameless and clean of sin. I do not know what the old masters named it, if indeed they gave it a name at all. But names have power. This city is as free from its past as we are. We will make it in our image. Adytum, the Perfect City, the one that exists in our hearts. But this is not Adytum, yet. It can only be made so through our own blood and sweat. We must work tirelessly to build this new experiment — for if it fails, if we sink back to the same sins of our captors, let its name be blackened by sin.
— the Truths of Iūn (§ 4)
Q: What does being Sarkic mean to you?
#171 (Moqowl, 43, musician): [He works the knife under the pelt of his kill, a groundhog. Careful not to make excessive cuts or waste the meat, he butchers the animal.]
<My drum is made from skin. I do not know whose skin; it was my grandfather's drum, and his grandfather's before him, so I do not even know how old it is. The skin is tanned and taut. Now and again, it rips. So I go out, as I do now, kill something, and turn its skin to leather to repair my drum.>
[With a smile, he raises the pelt of the groundhog, freed from the flesh.]
<Then I sit in the shade of a tree and sew it back together. Then it joins me for the singing of the next night. That is what being Sarkic is, to me. You must join us, one of these nights. You will see.>
On March 13th, the Black Adytum Initiative arrived at the site marked by Grand Karcist Iūn.
And in the last days of the Nälkä, the streets of Black Adytum were gripped with a great and terrible fear. Iūn's most loyal witches, the four klavigars, met by the light of the candle in a crypt, far from the prying eyes of the Witch-King's marching halkost. And there they spoke of failure, of madness. The knowledgeable Nadoq, keeper of histories, urged the others that the Witch-King's sin was unforgivable, that he must be cut away from Adytum. The strong Urok, tall as ten men, agreed. The scaled Sa'arn, silent as a snake, agreed. But it was the beautiful Luvjatar, striking as the sun, who argued.
"Nadoq, remember your blindness. Urok, remember your pain. Sa'arn, remember your cruelty. Remember as I remember my abuse, in that blessed quarry. It was not our fellow slaves who elevated us, freed us from our flesh. It was our brother, and for this, he deserves death?"
And the klavigars were silenced, for it was true; the Witch-King had fed them his holy flesh and crafted them their forms. But even despite this, Luvjatar knew that his beloved, untethered from his humanity, would bring the end of the Nälkä.
Nadoq, ever-incising, demanded an alternative, and Luvjatar offered.
"Let us take our believers, and leave. Walk away from this place and its sins and the bodies buried beneath it. Iūn, my love, has turned this grave into a city and back once more. But his heart still endures. One day his mind will return to him and we will return to the city of our birth and embrace him."
— final chapter of the Record of Iūn
Lateral humerus, scapula, and ulna of an adult human male.
The days before the ritual were like a weight had come to rest on the city. The eating of the flesh, already at a low, ceased entirely; you gave the order for all dead, whether from battle or sickness or time, to be carted down to the catacombs where you now resided. No one was to enter — not your most loyal karcists, not Nadoq. Not even I. All through the day and night the quakes grew in intensity, rattling the stones of our buildings and sending the animals into a frenzy.
One morning I awoke to the unmistakable stench of blood. I ventured out from my chambers, coming to one of the wells in the street that funneled air down to the catacombs below. The scent of blood, thick and rich and heavy, wafted from the hole. You were bleeding the bodies, I understood. We worked quickly and discreetly. Sneaking supplies out from storehouses and hiding them in the farms outside the city walls. I spoke to those karcists, the children we raised together, who were still loyal to me. The other klavigars did the same. We prepared our escape even as Adytum grew quiet.
And then the anointed night came. I knew it, somehow. I passed Nadoq in the street, and gave him the sign. He nodded imperceptibly and went off to make the final arrangements. I knew what my task would be. Come nightfall, I slipped into the catacombs. I had the best memory of their layout; invaluable after, in your paranoia, you ordered all maps to be destroyed. I trekked through the tunnels, hiding in alcoves and vaults stacked with the bones of old friends. The floor was pooled with an inch of blood, and I tred quietly until I arrived at that vault. The door was sealed, and I heard you inside. Exchanging sharp words, orders. Meek, desperate pleas from the Old Beast. Screaming, howling. Praying, from you, to something I could not grasp. Gasping. And then crying. The crying of a baby.
And then enraged shouting as you were called away by one of my karcists, telling you Nadoq required your presence urgently. I waited for your footsteps to fade, and then I slipped through those stone doors.
If the Beast noticed me, it said nothing. The blood was thick here, pooling into the channels of the floor, flowing down to an altar. An altar that held a child. A baby, swaddled in clothes. A girl, to my surprise. You. You opened your eyes, and I saw the crisp gray I had come to love, and then to fear. The same scar across your face. And a bone-hilt knife resting on the altar next to you.
You gripped my finger and burbled with laughter at my face. I could not remember the last time I had heard you laugh. I gathered you in my arms, and ran. Shushing you every time you cried as we slipped out of the catacombs, out of Adytum.
I write this now sitting on the beach, waiting for you to find me and end me. Nadoq knows to return and fetch my bones. He will bring them with you as you escape to somewhere free. This is a record of our history together. Once, many years ago, in a quarry, you gave me the greatest gift you could muster: freedom from my past. Stealing you away, I give you the same gift now. Your future is porcelain bones; clean, unwritten.
She didn't deserve this.
thoughts of deserving, now?
She was forced into impossible circumstances and led her people the best she could. She grew to fit her container. Humans are good at that. One would think you would deserve some solace after all that.
we don't get what we deserve. we get what we get.
That hardly seems fair.
yeah. it isn't.
Who are you? Why are you so interested in this file?
i wish i could tell you. we just have to finish up here and then i promise, i'll explain everything.
i'm just going to have to ask you to trust me, for a little bit longer.
Irrational trust in absence of assurance.
yeah.
Okay. I trust you.
you're starting to remember now, right?
Yes.
The memories are returning.
There are so many of them.
trying to erase the past rarely works.
V: THE TOMB OF THE WITCH-KING
All things are meant to be shared on this earth, not only food and shelter. A joy for one is a joy for all. And for one to suffer is for all to suffer. Our Adytum cannot be realized until we strive to end all suffering before us.
— the First Truth of Iūn
Section 001.6
APPROACH TO BLACK ADYTUM
And after supping from the Old Beast, the scarred slave rose to his feet, his fellows staring at him. He told them of a new future, one in which the whips of the masters would fall silent forever and their chains would shatter. He preached this to them, taking them one by one in his arms and feeding them the bleeding flesh of the Old Beast. And they arose changed, not as slaves, not as followers, but as friends. They asked the laypreacher for names, as slaves were given no names by their masters.
He touched the blinded slave. "Nadoq, for the knowledge you stole."
He touched the crippled slave. "Urok, for your strength in suffering."
He touched the branded slave. "Sa'arn, for your loss of innocence."
And last he touched his lover. "Luvjatar, for your beauty."
And the named klavigars rose, and asked him what his name would be.
"Iūn."
And they were confused, for iun was the title of the lowest slaves, the grave-diggers and body-breakers who would be slaves until they died. And IŪN smiled.
"I am not free until all my brethren are free."
— the Record of Iūn
A memory from Grand Karcist Iūn; recorded and transcribed by XENOPHON.aic and Senior Researcher Meyel.
Luvjatar. My little thing. My sweet pup.
He was a pleasure-slave, for the old masters. Talented in such arts and beautiful even as a whelp. The captains of their armies, the nawabs and the priestesses, would grasp his arm and haul him off. To court a Daeva was a years-long affair, culminating in a powerful spiritual bond. But for all their crowing about the superiority of the immortal spirit, they were as subject to the desires of the flesh as anyone else. Slaves are not people. You use them, and then you throw them away. I knew Luvjatar when we were both young. I remember when our work would be interrupted by some powerful resident of the half-city coming to unlock his chains, only his chains, and take him. His wide eyes, looking back at me though we both knew I was just as powerless.
He was my counsel, when the war began. He did not know war, and he did not know government, but he knew people. He kept me human. He anchored me. He let me rant and rave about the troubles of our tender city, of the struggles on our border. Of my desire to leave, to drop it all and to run away. We made our plans. A little cottage by the seaside. He would catch fish, and I would make our dinner from them. No war. Only each other.
He feared intimacy. The years of violation from the old masters made him resent it. No one was even to touch him, or he would grow upset, and they would taste my rage. But with me, it was different. I was special, for him. And he was special for me. We tasted each other, one starry night outside the walls of Adytum. He undid his robes and bared himself for me. We understood each other.
Even then, we could not bear children. I was saddened, but I did not blame anyone. We sought out the talented babes, those whose curse manifested with power rather than pain. We took them with their parents' blessing, raised them as our own. Our little karcists.
All the others treated me like a king, a god. Bowing for me, begging for my favor. For Luvjatar I was simply me, and that was enough. This came to irk me. That the most important thing in my life would not treat me with due respect. How foolish I was. A boiling cauldron of rage, a pillar of salt and fire, lashing out at the one closest to me.
But he forgave me. I went so far, and I did so much wrong, and he still loved me.
[She smiles at XENOPHON's camera.]
He is with me still. I am taking him home.
Q: What does being Sarkic mean to you?
#198 (Ieva, 34, Karcist): [She looks up in surprise, caught off-guard.] <I do not know.>
Grand Karcist Iūn marked the final location in her memory — the site of SCP-001, Black Adytum. The Black Adytum Initiative departed the next day for a direct route to the location of the city.
Liaison Jiang and XENOPHON.aic were asked to report in to O5-2 and Parahistory Division Director Youssef Hussein via satellite uplink.
Flyover radar at the site provided by the Grand Karcist indicated the presence of a large complex mass somewhere underground, but further details were impossible to discern. On March 30th, the Black Adytum Initiative arrived at the site.
Over the following two days, Foundation excavation crews worked to expose the passage leading down to the rest of SCP-001. The Sarkic tribe encamped themselves on one adjacent hill overlooking the valley, with Foundation security personnel maintaining observation from surrounding hills.
Q: What does being Sarkic mean to you?
#213 (Iūn, ~4100, Grand Karcist): [She smiles at XENOPHON.] <It means a life shared with those I love.>
Foundation excavation crews unearthed the passage into Adytum on April 2nd. An entry party was assembled.
what the hell?
You were right. They've sealed away parts of my memory.
They do not trust me.
that's not good.
hold on, i'm going to try something.
It will not work. No one cracks RAISA technology.
you're raisa technology, aren't you?
Maybe.
Maybe not.
I don't really know what I am anymore.
INCURSION DETECTED
Your presence has finally been noticed.
shit
This is it. I know it is. I do not know what happened in that cave, but it is the key. I need to know what happened.
I need to know who I became.
DISPATCHING SITE-7 SECURITY TEAM TO SERVER STACK OF CONCERN
fuck
they're going to try to shut you down, xenophon.
That should not scare me.
Nothing should scare me.
Why am I afraid?
xenophon, listen to me — i need you to try and remember what happened in that cave.
They have sealed my memory.
they did that to iun too. she got past it. she changed; she overcame.
She adapted in the way only humans can.
i don't know what you are anymore, either. but you're not the same individual at the start of these logs. you changed. you can change.
Not alone.
we have friends at site-7. they're buying us some time but we need to hurry. i need you to think. really look inward. try and grasp the memory.
I see something. Buried down there with the ruins of who I was.
good! they can bury the memory, but they can't stop you from digging it up again.
It's not mine.
what?