#and virgin soul to a lesser extent
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Weekly Anime Rambling Re: Creat...ive Conceit
Another week of getting everything mixed up because my viewing schedules are a disaster hahaha! is it very obvious i’m running out of puns
The season’s drawing to a close, and it looks like every show is rushing at full-gear to wrap up all their loose ends or end on a good place before the season break. Which means a lot of shows are doing shitfests and I have A LOT OF WORDS
I haven’t talked much about Fate/Apocrypha in this feature but I must shamefully admit I’m enjoying it way more than I expected. I’ll talk more about that in my final season rundown, so for the time being I’ll just say Astolfo is my waifu and if you use the T slur to refer to them I’ll gut you alive.
One show clearly struggling to meet its planned middle-point is Altair, with the past two episodes breezing through plot points like a speedcourse on acquiring new party members for Mahmut. The production itself is also clearly suffering, finding an in-model shot of any given character woud be a challenge. I did like the latest episode because we’re finally getting to see more political nuances beyond “Evil empire wants to conquer the world”. I also really liked how they brought the Prenses into the fold by emphasizing her importance in the political moves they’ll carry out next, and that she was the one to come up with them was specially great
Giving female characters agency? What, Like it’s easy?
I’m not even gonna talk about episode 10 of Ballroom because it was so boring I hardly remember anything about it except thinking “is there ever gonna be any dancing” (the answer was no). But I am going to talk about episode 11 because god was it frustrating.
Firstly, this was the episode that featured the most and probably best dancing animation of the entire show. Unsurprisingly, even then it’s overshadowed by the abuse of stills and audience shots. Whatever little magic and good-will they manage to create with, for example, a neat shot of Tatara and Mako hopping is almost instantly voided by a full minute of still frames. Let 👏 me 👏 see 👏 the 👏 fucking 👏 dance 👏 gdi 👏
Of course it wouldn’t be Welcome to the Ballroom without at least a very fine layer of casual sexism and neglecting the female characters entirely, this time awfully noticeable in the second half where all the focus is on Tatara and Gaju having a load of fun with their dick measuring contest! Wait, what do you mean ballroom dancing is a pair sport?
If you ask this show, Ballroom dancing is a sport about men being cool while dragging around women who have no fucking idea of what the fuck is even going on. Add to that all the harping on how “it’s the lead that makes or breaks a pair” “if the leader is bad the pair will look bad” because I guess the follower doesn’t ever matter.Or how only the boys are dead tired after the event, because I gues the girls weren’t dancing at all, what a relaxing job it must be to be a female in competitive ballroom dancing, you don’t have to put in any effort at all!
Also the music choices are atrocious which is finally explained by the Production team revealing they thought the audience would not like “old” music -because I guess the audience is too stupid or smth- so instead they went for completely inappropriate pop-rock themes instead! Maybe don’t underestimate your audience if you want them to buy your produc! (source)
But okay, after god knows how many episodes, the Tenpei cup finally ends, Gaju and Shizuku win but Mako wins Queen of the Dancefloor! At least some recognition fo Mako’s dancing skills, that even in spite of Tatara’s sloppy dancing she managed to outshine Shizuku through her own talents! Wait, hold on, what’s that?
FUUUUUUUUCK YOUUUUU SHOOOOOOW
Adding insult to injury, Gaju doesn’t even apologize to Mako for treating her like crap. In spite of his scummy attitude, Gaju seems to be a good sport, so I thought at least he’d “officially” ask Mako to become his partner again, but no such luck, it’s her who approaches him first. Fuck you again, show.
I also have a lot of thoughts about the garbage treatment of Shizuku, but I’ve talked about the show enough in this week, so that’s another post.
Oh yeah, Vatican is... the expected mess I guess lol. I have literally no idea of what is going on anymore but...
I want some of that cocaine too bruh (i’m kidding, don’t do cocaine my friends)
Also, Made in Abyss is great but can we please drop all the pee jokes.
I’ve technically already watched the final episode of Re:Creators, but I want to address the penultimate episod which is the actual resolution of the conflict because it’s not only a convoluted mess (and if I went into that in detail I’d write thousands of words), it’s ultimately a betrayal of the show’s opening promise.
To elaborate, Sota’s first dialogue is something along the lines of “I’m not the protagonist of this story. This story is about her”. At first I thought it meant Selesia too bad she died meaninglessly and without really doing anything for the story like 99.99% of the creations :’D, but we later learn he’s talking about Setsuna, for whose death he feels guilty yadda yadda Potato McBoring manpain.
But then the show decided to make Altair so ridiculously and unbelievably overpowered that the only way to defeat her is the very predictable “create Setsuna” and this is where the show betrays itself
Because even if the resolution is that Setsuna and Altair go off into this some other world to live as abstract creations happily ever after, the actual emotional climax of the episode is after they disappear:
This is a massive slap in the face to everything the show was trying to do and to Setsuna’s character. Basically she’s stripped of her agency and becomes a figment of Sota’s creation. Sota who abandoned her when she was going through the hardest of times, now gets to be -even if briefly- her creator, her god, and he takes the credit for being the amazing creator that save the world. He even says it out loud in a culminating moment of disgusting conceit.
The whole purpose of the story, of the show, as it turns out to be, is to satisfy Sota’s ego. Setsuna is literally fridged for the sake of Sota’s manpain. This was never a good show, but until now it just felt like a lot of poorly executed great ideas. This, though, is basically giving up on any pretention of being “different” of stepping away from “Blandy McBoring protag saves the world because no one else but him can do it, he is so special”, and it’s made even worse because of the context of Setsuna’s death and the meaning of being a creator. Ugh, I’m coming short of words so I’ll just leave it at this was already a mediocre show and somehow they managed to go all the way and make it terrible.
And now another show that is sadly crapping the bed for its last hurrah, and one I’m very sad to be dissing like this. Yup, I’m talking about Virgin Soul
It’s like 10 episodes late and all the reward we get for waiting so long to hear Charioce’s motivation boils down and awfully rote and predictable to “Bahamut killed my mommy so now I kill Bahamut”. Next we know Charioce’s mom was also named Martha I guess. The explanation is also delivered in the most transparently expositional dialogue possible and seems like a very last-minute attempt by the writers to paint Charioce in a sympathetic light because they realized too late they hadn’t given him anything for the audience to like him beyond his romance with Nina. Somehow their explanation doesn’t even address the genocide against the gods or the enslavement of the demon race, and it seems every insinuation of Gabriel being shady has been forgotten too. Okay...
It’s sad because this feels like a hugely missed opportunity. The first half of the series painted the possibility of a tri-racial conflict in which all sides were to blame, but instead it seems like it was all a fabricated conflict to pad the way so they could have a three-way confrontation bombastic finale, but with none of the nuances and grey morals it initially promised. The characters are still great, but I’m very sad that the story has been reduced to an uninteresting, predictable cliché that doesnt even quite work with all the previously established ideas.
Oh well, the season’s almost over. Next week should be my last Rambling of the season before my Final Review and I also somehow gotta find time to post about my most anticipated shows for the fall. Fun!
#weekly anime rambling#summer anime#welcome to the ballroom#shingeki no bahamut virgin soul#re:creators#oof what a long post#i had a lot of feelings and frustrations about ballroom and re:creators#and virgin soul to a lesser extent#like the plot twist itself is torrible but the characters at least are great
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Tolkien, Jung, and The Paradox of Language
Tolkien has claimed that the stories of Middle Earth were not invented by him, but rather inherited by him, told to him by the Elves, and he was merely recounting what existed independently in the Realms of Faerie. The problem, however, is the extent to which Tolkien borrowed from existing mythology and languages to build his world of Middle Earth. Even the name of the land itself comes from the Norse Midgard. By deriving character names from existing languages, such as Sauron, from the Anglo-Saxon root "searu", meaning "treachery", he has undermined the credibility of his argument that they exist independent of his role as creator. Perhaps he might claim that he has given them pseudonyms in order to translate their names into a form that we can understand, however given Tolkien's understanding about the power of words, and the magic in a name, this does not hold up. Since Tolkien has been so thoroughly studied and written about, as a man, scholar, author and visionary, I am sure this paradox has not been lost on many commentators. The reason I am compelled to give it attention here is that I am grappling with my own journey of words. Unlike Tolkien, I am not fluent in many languages, nor am I knowledgeable in the intricacies of syntax, phrasing, or the melodies of dialects. So when I began to develop my own mythic language, I soon abandoned the idea of basing my words on previously existing tongues, in favor of a more independent, individualistic and intuitive approach. I allowed the words to come to me through pure inspiration, and resisted any words which seemed to similar to existing ones I was familiar with. Of course, some of my words had already been established, and others may have unintentionally reflected my unconscious predilections, but the point was to free myself up, to be open to whatever bubbled from my subconscious and not to impose too much intentional derivation. When I first named the land of Terad Mir, I had taken the obvious path of using the Latin word "terra" for earth, but I later decided to switch it around, so that "mir" was the word for earth, and "terad" meant "horizon". I was able to construct it with the root word "ter" meaning "far" and "adh" meaning "separation". This gave the enhanced meaning of the horizon as the mythic separation between Earth and Sky. Now, having the word "mir" meaning "earth" still provided for an interesting dilemma, because it is such as simple, and therefore, common construct that already has many meanings. In English it could refer to a Russian Village, in German it means "me", in Romansch it means "wall", derived from the Latin "murus". I discovered that the Serbs, Croats and Slavs have inherited the word "mir" from Proto-Slavic, to mean "peace", but it also means "world". So even in switching the words, I still ended up unintentionally reflecting existing patterns of human language. In further research, I learned about the Merriam people, from Murray Island off the northern tip of Australia. For them the word "mir" means "word" or "language", and they call their island "Mer". Interestingly, I had originally been drawn to the French word "mer" meaning "ocean", derived from the Latin "mere", from which we also get "mermaid". I decided to use the word "mer" for the goddess, and the feminine principle of nature. I must have overlooked the obvious fact that "mere" also means "mother" in Old French, derived from the Latin "mater". Furthermore, I couldn't resist using the word "mar" for the sea, which is clearly similar to the Latin "mare" which is still used in Italian for the sea. Middle and Old French use word "mare" to mean "lake", "sea" or "pool", derived from the Proto-Germanic word "mari", and the Proto-Indo-European "mori", meaning "marsh". There is also the High German "meri" for "lake" or "sea", which has become "meer" in German, and "mere" in Old English means "pond" or "pool", still used today. Interestingly, Venetion and Catalan use the word "mare" for "mother", deriving it from the Latin "mater". In English the word "mare" refers to a female horse, from the Old Norse "merr". In Old English "mare" means "evil spirit", which gives us "nightmare", from Proto-Germanic "maron", and the Proto-Indo-European "mor" meaning "feminine evil spirit". This is reflected in the names of Morgana (Morgan le Fey), the sorceress of Arthurian legend, and Morrígain, the Old Irish elf queen. Tolkien's use of the Old English word "morthor", meaning "murder" in naming Mordor. There is also the Danish use of "mare" to mean "succubus" or "incubus" from the Old Norse "mara". In Maltese, "mara" means "woman" derived from the Phoenecian "imara", and it can also mean "rodent", "rabbit", "danger", "hand" or "finger" in various languages. Clearly I have entered into a tangled web of interrelated etymology that can be difficult to navigate for a novice such as myself. Even someone so well-versed in languages as Tolkien could not resolve the contradictory nature of words. Ironically, the diversity of languages that are disappearing from the world at such a rapid rate, that Tolkien's own invented languages stand a better chance of being preserved that those of living peoples. So what is my aim in pursuing this treacherous passtime? Do I hope to somehow improve on what others have done before me? Am I merely adding one more unnecessary dictionary of invented words to the list? The only honest answer that I can give is that I am compelled by some unknown inner force within me which demands expression. In this respect I am in good company, for both Tolkien and Jung have claimed a similar defense for their obsessions. Thus I humbly commit to the unenviable task of laboring in the shadows of giants, without much hope that my effort are of any use other than some sort of personal exorcism. Along the way I have discovered some interesting themes that were latent and only beginning to emerge in the writings of Jung and Tolkien, and this is the idea of the persecuted feminine principle. As we have discovered with the root word of "mare", which led us from "mother" to "evil spirit", the demonizing women is entrenched in our language, going back many generations, through many cultures around the world. Jung sought to give a more nuanced view of the shadow side of the feminine through his development of the idea of the "anima", from Eve, to Helen, to Mary, to Sophia. Tolkien attemped to elevate the roles of women as the equals to their male counterparts, such as Luthien was to Beren, or to a lesser extent as Arwen was to Aragorn. Galadriel is co-ruler of Lothlorien with her husband Celeborn, and she seems to have a more significant role in the story. Tolkien also made Eowyn into a brave warrior woman, reminiscent of the Amazons from Greek mythology. Ultimately, however, both Jung Tolkien were both raised in a patriarchal system, and immersed in a world dominated by men and saturated with male thinking. In spite of their attempts to find a more nuanced perspective, it is clear from their lives and their writings that the male perspective dominates. What is interesting to me is that the entire ethos of my story of the Far Lands was built on the idea of the goddess being overwhelmed by a male conqueror, and the interrelation between language, and the written word in particular, with patriarchy. This was reinforced after I read "The Alphabet and the Goddess" by Leonard Shlain. There is no doubt that a goddess revival movement is now in full swing, having lurched forward during the sixities, along with the embrace of Wicca and New Age theology, a revival of interest in Lilith and the lost books of the Bible, as well as the role of Mary Magdelene. This seems to have culminated in the more recent popularity of "The Da Vinci Code" which completed the mythologizing of a new perspective on the feminine principle. I do not feel that I have anything of substance to add to this movement, however I am compelled to participate, driven by my personal experiences of having strong and loving relationships with my mother, wife, and sisters. I also have an intuitive sense that my own feminine self, my anima, could do with some harmonizing, being faced with the conflicts of my masculine urges, and finding myself still embedded in a male dominated society that continues to objectify women and relegate them to the dual roles of virgin or harlot. I wish to unify my own soul, and therefore must continue on this journey of self revelation and unification.
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CHARACTER PROFILE — AERITH LYLIN
BASIC DETAILS
full name | aerith idiian lylin.
reason or meaning of name |
aerith — soul, spirit. name of his mother’s late mentor.
idiian — only, lone.
lylin — to thrive. family name of his father, vale.
nickname(s) / alias(es) | aer, aeri(th) lorus, valin avalor / valin kano / idiian kano.
how'd they get it? |
aer — a shortening of his name. given to him and used by his friend and traveling partner, vestir kano.
aeri(th) lorus — the name used shortly after birth to age 15 (and occasionally onward), to protect his father’s position within the jedi order. lylin was readopted purely out of spite when his father left.
valin avalor / valin kano / idiian kano — valin avalor was an alias commonly used from 3956 to 3954bby; simply a combination of his parents’ names. avalor was traded for kano, in memoriam, when he thought vestir kano dead. and valin would later be traded for idiian, his middle name.
age | varies depending on point in timeline.
date of birth | month 10, day 11, 3978bby.
zodiac | libra sun, pisces moon, cancer rising.
species | force-sensitive human.
gender | cis male, though largely unattached to “traditionally masculine” gender roles and gender presentation.
sexual orientation | undefined, open to all genders.
when did they realize this? | his sexuality wasn’t something he ever “realized”; it just was what it was.
nationality | jedhan.
hometown | nijedha, jedha, jedha system.
current residence | vestir kano’s ship.
work history / occupation |
caretaker for the temple of the kyber.
for how long? | from 3963 to 3956.
did they like their job? | it was alright. there were some enjoyable aspects but it was also a lot of strenuous work on one end and long hours of doing nothing on the other. in the end he just wanted something else, a change of pace.
salary | dirt, basically. but meals and shelter and other necessities were provided.
independent gardener / merchant.
for how long? | several months in 3955.
did they like their job? | yes.
salary | it wasn’t lucrative by any means, but it was enough to at least help out a bit and take some of the pressure off of vestir.
ABILITIES
if they had an element, what would it be? | water—turbulent, but adaptable.
can they use it? | no.
what animal best represents them? | knobby white spider. hardly an animal, but still. its life cycle is something that resonates with him.
hand-to-hand capability | low to average, but he’s working on it. can win maybe 40% of fights of this nature.
when did they start learning? | as a child. had about 8 years of training before falling out of practice for a solid 7.
who taught them? | his instructors at the temple. he began to retrain himself at the age of 22, with the help of vestir.
weapons training | extremely proficient with a lightbow and reasonably capable with other ranged weapons. melee skill is lacking but effective occasionally.
when did they start learning? | see above.
who taught them? | see above.
physical strength | moderate.
speed | moderate.
planning | virtually nonexistent. relies heavily on instinct.
powers | moderate force-sensitivity.
weapon of choice | lightbow.
FAMILY
any significant ancestors? | none that he’s aware of.
grandparents | unknown / no relationship.
aunts/uncles | unknown / no relationship.
parents | avadrie lorus (guardian of the whills, deceased), vale lylin (jedi master, living).
are they still together? | no. but they were on-and-off from the time aerith was born, through to avadrie’s passing.
birth order | first and last.
siblings | n / a.
nieces / nephews | n / a.
children | n / a.
are all children with the same partner? | n / a.
is their relationship with their children important to the character? | n / a.
grandchildren | n / a.
what is the character's family life like? | his father was always distant to the point of more or less pretending like he didn’t exist, but up until her passing, he was very close with his mother. she was his main mentor when he was training as a guardian, and was extremely patient and supportive of him. and while that very well could have been enough for him if he’d let it be, aerith was still always striving for his father’s approval—or even just his acknowledgment—only to be constantly sidelined and ignored in favor of his father’s padawan.
what does their family love most about them? | his father is the only remaining family member that he has any connection to, and it’s safe to conclude there’s not a single thing vale loves about his son.
hate? | he is a reminder, is evidence of his father’s shortcomings.
does the family have a specific set of values? | naturally, there was a heavily ingrained respect for the force and an aim to always trust it and follow its light. this was the root of everything avadrie did and said and encouraged in him.
what would their family be described like by another person? | at one point, they might have seen a single mother raising her son well, and a healthy and flourishing relationship there. the second you introduce vale back into the equation, there is constant conflict and neglect and heartache.
have they ever had any pets? | none. he would often feed the birds in the temple courtyard, but that’s about it.
what happened to them? | n / a.
RELATIONSHIPS
are they a virgin? | no.
how did they lose it? | at 19. to zhorin vandreen, a disciple who’d found their path to guardianship and began training at the temple. it was a fairly short-lived affair that was, like, 70% physical. they messed around a few times before distancing themselves from each other.
have they ever cheated on a partner? | no. he’s never had an official partner to cheat on, anyway. but in any case, he wouldn’t.
has a partner ever cheated on them? | see previous answer.
how did they react? | n / a.
who was their first crush? | when he was 13, a fellow acolyte a level above him, kaida lissiri.
first love? | vestir kano. as unfortunate as that is for everyone involved.
have they ever been married? | no.
divorced? | n / a.
how many times have they been married / divorced? | n / a.
are they in any kind of romantic relationship? | no, but yes.
how serious / relaxed is it? | it’s completely unofficial; he’s just pining so deeply, he’s unavailable to any prospective sexual or romantic partners who aren’t vestir.
describe the relationship with their current partner | they aren’t exactly a thing, but everyone else can see it, honestly. it’s fairly safe to say they’re never going to arrive at a point where they’re honest enough with themselves or each other to give their dynamic a name. they’re a certified disaster.
how did they meet? | in 3960bby, aerith harbored vestir in his room for a short period of time, under the pretense he was on a pilgrimage and seeking shelter. they later reconnected in 3956bby when vestir returned to check on a stash of credits previously hidden in aerith’s room.
who made the first move? | aerith, unsuccessfully. every subsequent move has also proven unsuccessful.
how does your character truly feel about their partner? | aerith is vestir’s ride-or-die. there’s nowhere vestir can go that aerith won’t follow, so long as vestir will have him. he will kill for him, will die for him. aerith is deeply in love with him—though he’s tried to resist as, for all he knows, the feelings are unrequited. but they always come rushing back no matter what.
when did they realize this? | just shy of a couple years into them traveling together.
who is your characters closest friend? | it’s vestir.
how did they meet? | see above.
why do they get along so well? | a deep sense of trust built on going through so many harrowing experiences together.
describe their relationship with any other significant friends |
liora virai — took aerith in when he was separated from vestir for the span of several months.
inyri silthen — master guardian inyri more or less took on the role of aerith’s guardian after the passing of his mother and the departure of his father.
FAVORITES
favorite foods | anything with a complex flavor profile. he likes things that don’t seem like they’d work together, but somehow do.
least favorite food | any and all things with a remotely slimy texture. would sooner eat sand.
favorite colors | green. despite the amount of red he wears.
least favorite color | he doesn’t have one. thinks all colors have pleasant shades to offer.
music | he’s drawn to the music of singing bowls and string instruments mostly, though he does favor some wind instruments, as well. he likes music with a soothing quality.
literature | he hated everything he ever read from the temple library. so he has yet to discover his favorites.
smell | the smell before rain.
feeling | collapsing into bed at the end of a long day.
season | spring. specifically early spring when there’s still a lot of rain and the plants are thriving.
place | he absolutely lost his mind over felucia.
favorite sport(s) | swoop racing.
possession this character values most | his kyber crystal—a jagged-edged white crystal that spans the width of his palm.
why is it so important to them? | he’s had it since he was a small child. it called to him and bound itself to him through the force. holding it in times of stress or pain or anxiety has always helped to calm him to some extent.
PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS
height | 5’9 / 175cm.
weight | 135lbs / 61kg.
body build | slender, well-toned.
eye color | dark brown.
glasses or contact lenses? | no.
hair color | black / dark brown.
type of hair | straight, coarse.
hairstyle | generally overgrown and messy; usually keeps it tied back if it hasn’t been cut in a while. when it gets quite long, he might braid small charms / pendants into his hair or wear other ornamental accessories.
complexion and skin tone | fair to somewhat golden, depending on time of year and where he’s been; warm toned.
any particular blemishes? | jagged scarring framing the outer corner of his right eye, cutting through his eyebrow and over the top of his cheekbone, fainter as it crosses the bridge of his nose; jagged scarring down the right side of his neck, expanding to his shoulder and partway down his back; hands are covered in lesser scars, especially at his knuckles; scarring of a large gash on his left arm.
tattoos? | n / a.
piercings? | earlobes twice and helix on his left ear.
clothing style | deep reds are a near constant; a lot of layering and a lot of excess material. is wearing at least ten bracelets at any given time.
other distinguishing features | can occasionally be found wearing red pigments, kohl, and kyber dust—generally around his eyes, though prone to wearing sigils anywhere from his throat to his arms.
voice | sits right in the middle of high and low. will fluctuate slightly up or down depending on the mood of the conversation or his personal mood.
what are their nervous tics? | nail biting. picking at scabs. messing with his hair. turning his crystal over in his hands.
how do they walk? | he walks quite fast by default, but will slow down to match the pace of others or if he’s tired.
usual body posture | he tends to shrink into himself a bit; has to remind himself to stand / sit up straight.
do they have any disabilities? | nothing that largely affects the way he goes through life, but he does have chronic pain.
speech patterns | he speaks at an average pace. quite casual in his tone and vocabulary in most instances. pauses a lot in conversations that are more serious, as he likes to think his words through first. when he gets highly emotional or is inebriated, however, he stumbles over his words a lot.
INTELLECTUAL / MENTAL / PERSONALITY ATTRIBUTES AND ATTITUDES
did they go to school? | not in the traditional sense of the word, no.
where? | he trained at the temple of the kyber until age 15.
what did they learn? | hand-to-hand combat training, weapons training (ranged and melee), weapons crafting, meditation, first aid, ceremonial practices, history of the force and force entities.
did they complete the curriculum? | no. he’d just completed his third duan a few weeks before giving up his position.
what were their grades like? | he was a diligent student who showed promise.
native language | galactic basic (jedhan dialect).
do they know any other languages? | he’s picked up some phrases in various others, but displays virtually no fluency whatsoever.
any mental illnesses? | ptsd, generalized anxiety disorder, clinical depression.
character's short-term goals in life | keeping his plants on the ship alive. making sure vestir stays alive. getting more proficient with fighting.
character's long-term goals in life | he would like to get some sense of closure when it comes to vestir and how aerith feels about him. he’d also eventually he’d like to find somewhere to “settle down” (not that he wants to stop traveling anytime soon, he just thinks it’d be nice to have somewhere to return to after a long trip once in a while, and space is cold).
how does your character see themselves? | he likes to think he has something to offer.
how does your character believe they are perceived by others? | he thinks people underestimate him. he knows he’s not the most skilled person in any area at all, but he can do more than people give him credit for.
how self-confident is your character? | his self-confidence is on the lower end of the spectrum, but the air he gives off makes it seem somewhat higher than it actually is.
what makes their self-confidence waver? | failure to accomplish tasks he thought himself capable of. failure to accomplish tasks he promised someone else he was capable of. not receiving the level or type of attention he craves.
what would embarrass your character the most? | his failed advances.
how does your character feel about love? | inconvenient. but he lives here.
about crime? | depends on the crime, depends on the circumstances. sometimes people do what they must and he understands this. he’s not above crimes, personally. he’ll go as far as killing someone if there’s purpose behind it.
politics? | often they find their way into spaces they don’t belong. he always felt uneasy about the jedi order’s level of involvement with the republic—especially their place in the military. he felt it made the temple unsafe, and sure enough, it did. he prefers to stay out of politics.
people of a different sexuality? | doesn’t affect the way he sees someone.
different nationality / race? | doesn’t affect the way he sees someone.
how does your character show affection / love? | for the most part, physically. but he also likes to give gifts when he can, and is also big on acts of service.
how does your character handle grief? | depends on how pressing the cause of his grief is. there are situations that call for an immediate response—typically anger or depression. but in other cases, he doesn’t handle it at all, really. he lets it live inside of him and he learns to live like that. he is rarely vocal about deeper feelings like this, and often the only time he speaks on them is when they inevitably overwhelm him and just come pouring out.
what are they like when they cry? | most times he’s more of a silent crier. will hold in like 9 out of 10 sobs. usually doesn’t attempt to talk through it at all. if it’s bad, he trembles.
what can make them cry? | traumatic situations and otherwise close-calls. physical pain, if it’s bad enough. loss. believing he is at fault for ruining things.
how does your character handle physical pain? | his pain tolerance is fairly high. he suffers from chronic pain in bones throughout his whole body due to overuse, strenuous work, and previous injuries that never healed quite right, so he’s more or less just used to it. most times, you’ll see it in his expression or the way he’s moving before he says anything about it.
emotional pain? | depends on the situation, whether it errs more on the side of anger or sadness. he’ll either snap and make a big deal about it or shut down and isolate himself.
is your character typically a leader or a follower? | follower until it’s inconvenient.
are they 'big picture' or 'little details'? | he thinks there’s importance in both, but is more prone to focusing on the smaller details.
what kind of energy level does your character typically display? | low to moderate.
describe their sense of humor | equal parts teasing and self-deprecating. no stranger to sarcasm. he’s a bit of flirt by nature and this bleeds into his humor on occasion.
hobbies | gardening, ceremonial makeup.
talents | being a pain in the ass.
extremely unskilled at | staying out of trouble.
if any, what musical instruments can they play? | n / a. jizz-box
EMOTIONAL CHARACTERISTICS
how does the character relate to others? | he listens. if people will tell him, he listens and will try his best to understand where they’re coming from.
how does the character deal with anger? | will lash out and say hurtful things if pushed far enough. might get physical in very heated arguments or if he perceives a threat.
with sadness? | he’ll either want to be left alone or want to be close to someone who can comfort him. it depends on the nature of the situation.
with conflict? | removes himself from the conversation and isolates himself, sometimes for up to several days.
with change? | he’s very susceptible and easily adapts to change, so long as it’s not the result of an unfavorable situation.
with loss? | he dwells on it. with quite hard-hitting losses, to the point that it affects his health.
what does your character want out of life? | new experiences. to find the beauty left in a galaxy torn apart by war.
what would your character like to change in their life? | the attack on the temple is the biggest thing for him. he feels like it triggered this sort of downward spiral for him, of losing himself, of trying to rediscover himself. of course that means he likely never would have taken off with vestir, and he likes their arrangement for the most part. wishes he hadn’t developed feelings for him like he did, though.
what motivates your character? | being useful, being needed.
what frightens your character? | he startles at loud noises. and he’s not exactly dying to run into any sith.
are they afraid of the dark? | no.
death? | not so much death itself, but the thought of dying alone and in pain. but he will charge straight into a fight and risk everything if he knows it’s for someone.
what makes your character happy? | seeing new places and their flora. sharing tea with vestir before they go to bed.
sad? | when his plants die. being under the impression that he’s let someone down.
angry? | threats against his well-being. being kept in the dark about things.
aroused? | kiss him with any sense of resolve and he’s gone. it’s been a while, so it honestly doesn’t take much.
annoyed? | not being taken seriously.
guilty? | when he says things that go too far. when vestir doesn’t accept his advances.
is your character judgmental of others? | not necessarily in the way that he judges people’s choices—so long as they’re not hurting anyone—but more in the way that he thinks literally everyone is suspicious.
is your character generous or stingy? | he’s generous when he can afford to be.
is your character generally polite or rude? | depends on the way he’s being treated. is polite by default because he doesn’t want to cause problems, but that only goes so far. if someone mistreats him, he doesn’t lie down and take it.
optimistic or pessimistic? | pessimistic. he always assumes the worst.
introvert or extrovert? | slight leaning towards extroversion.
daredevil or cautious? | 50 / 50. he’s an anxious soul, but he throws caution to the wind in a heartbeat when it comes time to act.
logical or emotional? | emotional. he might consider the logical option at least, if given the time to do so, but follows his heart and his instincts in the end.
disorderly and messy or methodical and neat? | organized mess.
would they rather be working or relaxing? | he doesn’t mind working as long as it doesn’t leave him feeling drained. he prefers doing at least something to just lying around doing nothing and waiting for time to pass.
how do they feel about animals? | he appreciates them from a distance, mostly. he’s never wanted the responsibility of keeping a pet or anything.
they are most at ease when | he and vestir are in bed together.
ill at ease when | unaware of vestir’s status and / or whereabouts.
what is their best quality? | his patience has always served him well.
what is their biggest flaw? | his lack of direction.
SPIRITUAL CHARACTERISTICS
do they consider themselves religious? | formerly. still believes in the force and will acknowledge it, but doesn’t really care what it can do for him.
what religion? | disciple of the whills.
what entities do they believe in? | the force, the ancient order of the whills, the force priestesses, the ones.
why do they believe as they do? | it’s what he was raised into from the day he was born.
how prominent is this in their life? | it isn’t. he renounced his position and his faith at age 15. that doesn’t mean he doesn’t occasionally call back to ideologies or practices of his religion. he is still very much a disciple in the way he dresses, if nothing else.
how far would they go in the name of their beliefs? | will speak up for someone else’s faith, but won’t, like, hurt people in the name of it unless it’s a matter of protection.
how strictly do they follow the rules of their religion? | it’s not strict to begin with. there are basic morals, but it’s more about knowing the force deeply.
are there any things they do specifically they aren't supposed to? | wishing harm upon people that hurt him or people close to him is generally frowned upon. questioning the will of the force is another.
MISCELLANEOUS
additional notes on this character | n / a.
theme song | what’s wrong by pvris.
#this was rly truly just#So Much#jokes on me if i think i'm gonna get this done for more than like three characters#c: aerith lylin#v: sidereal#.chrpr
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The Feast of Our Lady of Expectation – 18 December
Like a secret told by angels,
getting known upon the earth,
is the Mother’s expectation
of Messiah’s speedy birth.
Fr F W Faber (1814-1863) “Our Lady’s Expectations”
One of the most inspiring days preceding Christmas is the feast of “Our Lady of Expectation,” unknown to many today but still kept alive in many countries like Spain, Portugal, Italy and Poland as well as in a few religious orders. In older editions of missals, this feast is still listed as a votive Mass. The feast is celebrated on the 18 December, a week before Christmas Day.
Our Blessed Lady, well advanced in pregnancy, is portrayed in the highest dignity of her Divine Motherhood. Dressed in royal apparel as daughter of David the King, she awaits with joy the arrival of her divine Son, the Prince of Peace. Her whole posture suggests how she remains wholly consumed in contemplation of her Son under her heart. Her immaculate womb has become a living portable sanctuary of divinity. There are special prayers and novenas to “Our Lady of Expectation” available for women who cannot conceive or bear a child.
We can try to imagine what those nine months were like for The Blessed Virgin, knowing that the Lord grew within her, was one with her. We can only begin to understand the patience she had to possess, looking forward to both the glory and joy of the divine birth. We experience these same feelings—albeit to a lesser extent, no doubt—during this Advent season of preparation. We examine our lives and look forward to the saving grace of our Lord, as mediated by Our Blessed Mother. While the Lord’s plan was first enacted at the moment Mary was conceived without sin and made manifest to the Blessed Virgin at the Annunciation, it was made evident to the world at the moment of the Nativity. Prior to that, Mary had seen and heard what others had not and she had only one more week to anticipate the arrival of her son, Our Lord, the Redeemer of the World!
Our Blessed Mother was the original tabernacle, in which the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Saint Augustine wrote that Mary conceived the Word in her heart before she conceived the Word in her flesh—that as she anticipated the birth of Jesus, her faith grew simultaneously. The second Vatican Council declared that during the time of her pregnancy, the heart of the Incarnate Word beat gently below her immaculate heart – two immaculate hearts, beating silently and prayerfully as one.
We can imagine Mary’s nine-month journey as one of wonder and anticipation but given the circumstances she found herself in, we also know of her difficult journey, the doubts of Saint Joseph, the anxiety that she must have experienced during that time. But Our Blessed Mother demonstrated not only patience but also forbearance and deep trust in the Lord. She knew the road would not be easy—in fact, that her joy would almost certainly be linked to suffering throughout her life—but in hope and confidence placed her life in the Lord’s hands. As she prepared for the birth of Jesus, Mary emptied herself, allowing her body and soul to be filled with the grace and spirit of the Lord. During Advent, we pray for a similar experience, that we might approach the birth of Our Saviour with hope and confidence.
The votive Mass of “Our Lady of Expectation” is theologically enlightening and spiritually enriching for the time of Advent and Christmas. With the entrance antiphon, the Church prays with the prophet for the coming of the Just One from heaven that the earth may be ready to welcome the Saviour: “Send victory like a dew, you heavens, and let the clouds rain down the just. Let the earth open for salvation to spring up” (Is 45:8).
In the opening prayer, the Church offers the prayer to God through Mary’s intercession: “O God who wished that your Word would take the flesh from the womb of the Virgin as announced by the Angel and whom we confess to be the true Mother of God, may we be helped by her intercession.”
(via The Feast of Our Lady of Expectation - 18 December)
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I was in the process of writing up a long post about my lingering relationship to Catholicism, and how that relates to my birthday, but I get sick of hearing myself talk even when it’s only written. I can’t stop myself from going on tangents and adding unnecessarily detailed clarifications because I constantly walk the line between not wanting to assume my listeners/readers don’t know things and not wanting to leave people confused.
(This is why anyone who lets me talk to them about wrestling is amazing and patient, because goodness knows I don’t have it in me to be concise.)
Briefly, though, if I can manage:
I am thirty years old today. My birthday, August 15th, is also the feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the day on which Mary was assumed body and soul into Heaven. Being born on this day and raised Catholic, you can imagine the level of Marian devotion that gives a person. Because the Episcopal Church is not as devoted to Mary as the Catholic Church, I go to my old Catholic parish on my birthday, instead. It’s... a weird experience.
Here I was gonna go into the sermon, but it’s fine, you don’t need that. It was a very good sermon, though. I just... have a lot still tied up in being Catholic, even though I’m officially an Episcopalian and hadn’t gone to a Catholic Mass since my last birthday. My beliefs and prayer patterns and love of liturgy mark me as someone raised Catholic, and Marian devotion is a large part of that. She’s important, because we can - by definition and biology - only access Christ via her measured consent, and the Protestant dismissal of her importance (inspired to greater or lesser extents by the false idea that Catholics worship her) is supremely unhelpful.
Mary is important, and her major feast day is my birthday, and because of this I will always be tied to Catholicism. That is the sum of my point.
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Vermeer at the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister
Vermeer at the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister
From 10 September 2021 to 30 January 2022, the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden is organising the largest exhibition of the work of Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675) ever presented in Germany.
Vermeer - Girl Reading a Letter by an Open Window - 1659Vermeer - The Little Street - 1658-61
Source: Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden. Images: Johannes Vermeer, Girl Reading a Letter at an open window, 1659 (including the previously hidden figure of Cupid). Oil on canvas. Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden ·· Johannes Vermeer, The little street (Het Straatje), c.1658-61. Oil on canvas. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
The Gemäldegalerie has made a remarkable effort to bring together a wide selection of paintings by Vermeer, a painter to whom only about 35 works are attributed. Among the loans are "Woman reading a letter" and "The little street" from the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, "Woman holding a Balance" from the National Gallery of Art in Washington, "Lady standing at a Virginal" from the National Gallery in London, "The Geographer" from the Städel in Frankfurt, "Girl with a Pearl Necklace" from the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin, and the "Girl with the wineglass" from the Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum in Braunschweig.
Of course, the two Vermeer works in Dresden's own Gemäldegalerie are included in the exhibition: "The Procuress" and "Girl Reading a Letter at an open window". The latter is arguably the centrepiece of the exhibition, as it is presented to the public for the first time after four years of restoration. Two rooms show audiovisual documentation on the restoration itself and the scientific research carried out as part of the restoration project, which has revealed that a figure of Cupid, covered by layers of paint and discovered by X-rays in 1979, is indeed the work of the painter, and that the layers of paint covering it were added after his death, and have therefore been removed.
The exhibition is divided into nine sections, each focusing on a painting by Vermeer, with titles such as "Reflections of the Soul", "Reality and Deception", "On the Paralysis of Time", "The Language of Love" and "Messages from the Heart". The last room is dedicated to "Girl Reading a Letter at an open window" and its recently completed restoration process.
The exhibition also includes 50 works of genre painting by artists related to Vermeer to a greater or lesser extent, such as Pieter de Hooch, Gerard Dou, Frans van Mieris and Gerard ter Borch.
Read the full article
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@demonurit | said ‘ Eat 8) ’
Her hours are numbered, but time works differently here in the Underworld, slowed to turn earthly minutes into hours, hours into days. Kira asked to see everything, to be alone at his side and walk with him as they toured his manor. To see if this new lifestyle was right for her? To see if he was living well and taking care of himself all this time. So many years spent on opposite sides of a feud led her to break away entirely. Her reasoning? She would not condemn ‘an entire species at the dawn of their civilized development’, namely lesser demons born of damned souls, trapped under the agendas of demon princes, lords, and generals. At least, that was the reason on paper for leaving the office forever.
Her eyes took in every detail of every room, noting what was kept simple and what was indulgent, what felt familiar and what must’ve been what he always dreamed he’d have. She took his hand in hers and gave it a nervous squeeze. It’s dangerous to say, as if speaking any inclination would immediately close the way out, but she dares anyway, “It’s beautiful, like a place out of a painting, but…where do you sleep?” Her sincerity must’ve contrasted well with her attire. All the way to his chambers, she wondered if it was his idea or something from her subconscious. There was no catching him off guard. In the open doorway, Kira threw herself upon him and captured his lips for a kiss. She called in close proximity, just above a whisper, clinging to his chest, “I’m here…because I need you…”
“Vergil?” She felt his heaving breaths and heard them subside in dangerous focus, then his hands gripping the underside of her thighs, lifting her up off the ground, sending her arms around his shoulders. Her wary smile bloomed into beaming as he carried her quite a distance only to drop her onto his bed. Excitement dissipates into seriousness as he craned over her frame. With her legs either side of him, her body shivers as he dips to graze his nose and lips up her form, taking in her scent only to rise and kiss her again. Her eyes closed tight receiving him, content to stay like this and return such affection desperately. One hand slid up her skirt, while the other maintained perfect balance. His fingers pushed aside ivory lacy cotton.
Kira gasped between kisses to feel him stroke her bare skin. To be conscious of his gaze and of the throbbing mass brushing her thigh, she blushed hard. It’s easy to fall helpless and compliant to the idea of his fingers entering, one or two, but it’s torment when he only slides across her inner folds. She gasps steadily as he rounds her clit. It’s much too late to deny how wet she’s become. “Please?” She starts. He knows she can hardly bare it. To lose control, to let go and give herself to unconsciousness–it’s not something she can trust herself to do without harming the person she loves most in this world. And yet, the look he gives her back is indisputable. He’s weathered so much. He can handle her. A clawed hand unhooked from his bedsheets to reach for him.
She held his cheek in her palm, careful but firm. She brushed her thumb against his bottom lip. “Still yours…All this time.” She admitted, if he hadn’t known already, if there was any doubt. Blinking hard, she let her eyes bloom their natural crimson. Alit bright red at the base of her irises, they told the extent of her arousal truthfully. There just ‘wasn’t anyone that she wanted to get that close to her heart but him.’ Just the same, there wasn’t anyone else who would eat that heart if they so desired for ‘all the pain she’s put him through.’ She conceded control with a deep breath and a quiet nod.
She struggles for a proper view of him, but the cool sensation of his tongue knocks her flat on her back, writhing. A moan escapes her before she can shield it, and she flushes deeper rose to feel him overwhelm her folds with a proper kiss. Her thighs twitch, muscles contracting to feel his jaw come closer. His breath sends her dripping. She knew she seemed like an inexperienced virgin in this state, minimally participant, submissive and tearing up with overstimulation. Her hand dares moves over to attempt to run through his hair, and offer encouragement, but as he draws in her clit, she falls weak with a strained moan. Her whole body vibrates at an unnatural velocity in ecstasy, and with a puddle sinking into his sheets, she shakes breathless to recover.
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The Church has always taught a lot of things that we, in this lesser age, haven’t been educated about. Catechesis is still in an alarmingly poor state. College level theology classes now do the basic educating work that CCD once did for children. More often than not, RCIA classes teach outright heresy. We have the “equalizing” wave of the 1960s to thank for that; teachings that didn’t jibe with the “least common denominator” reductionist spirit of the age, that weren’t “tolerant” or “inclusive” enough, that conflicted or appeared to contradict with the “social justice warrior” ethos of modern secular culture were buried under an avalanche of substitutes and derision. So the clear, universal, from-the-beginning teachings about issues such as: the hierarchy of vocations; the necessity of Christ and baptism in Him for salvation; the transcendent and sacrificial character of the mass; the unique and necessary role of the ordained priests; the necessity of physical signs of humility before the Blessed Sacrament; the reality and nature of mortal sin; that the Church is the normative means of salvation; and so much more have been obscured, forgotten, lost, and outright denied.
Just because we haven’t been properly educated, just because we don’t understand, just because we have trouble coming to terms with a teaching, does not mean it is not a genuine truth that the Church teaches and has always taught.
Theologians, even if they are priests, are not the final authority. National collections of bishops are not the final authority. The authentic magisterium of the Church is the universal teaching of all bishops, in union with the pope, and the pope’s teachings given with full authority as the vicar of Christ. If Fr. Dogood contradicts the traditional teaching of the Church, he is wrong. If the USCCB issues a statement that does not jive with the Council of Trent (for example) then the USCCB is wrong. If I, longtime Catholic blogger proud of my theological education, say “I’ve never heard of X, it can’t be true,” and the clear writings of the popes contradict me, then I am wrong. Even if I feel bad about it and it’s hard to accept. Even if it throws me into turmoil.
When we hear something new, something unsettling, something we don’t like or don’t understand, our first reaction ought to be to check ourselves, not to doubt what we’ve heard. What is our final judge for truth? Christ, who has made the Church his voice to us. Not ourselves. Not our own inclinations. Chances are we are more formed morally and in conscience by our culture than by Church teaching, and the concept of hierarchy in any form is antithetical to our sensibilities about egalitarianism. So when we run up short against the teachings of a Church that is as hierarchical as it gets, to whom egalitarianism is not a guiding star, our first reaction ought to be: humility. When it comes to doctrine, we come to the Church to learn, not to correct her.
I have spent most of my adult life in bitter emotional conflict with the Church on just about everything. I speak from long years of awful experience. If our first response to clear teaching is not humility, we are only banging our heads against a wall. Do that long enough, and everything is senseless.
I, a married woman, am called to holiness, to sainthood. I am designed and destined to open my soul up to God as much as possible so that he fills me to the fullest extent possible. The same can be said for every other human being ever created, no matter their vocation or state in life. But we cannot pursue Christ in a vacuum. Without the reality of different vocations, that exist for different purposes, that draw out different virtues in differing degrees, none of us could fulfill our calling to sainthood.
The teaching of the universal call to holiness - that everyone is meant to be a saint - is predicated on the reality of the hierarchy of vocations. Most people are called to marriage. It is a good and holy state, a sacrament. It is natural and it is necessary. It is an honor. But some, a few, are called to a supernatural vocation - celibacy, dedicated to God, an anticipation of heaven lived as fully as it can be on earth. These are the spiritual elite, the poor in spirit, the religious SWAT team, the heavy-hitters. They occupy a unique and especially honored place because the follow directly in Christ’s footsteps and in their celibate chastity and communal living bring the beatific vision alive on earth.
The honor for virginity confirms and deepens the honor given to marriage. If virginity were not good, marriage could not be; if marriage were not good, virginity could not be good. We, all of us who are not consecrated celibates, depend upon those who are, on their prayers, their example, their existence. Whether we “see” it or not. The Church is so much more than an aggregate of local communities. We are the mystical body of Christ, and if the spiritual logic of the order of her parts is not immediately clear to us, we must turn to the Head - Christ - to help us make sense of it, not rewrite the health of the body from our own perspective. This is the universal and ancient teaching of the Church.
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Dark Eldar - History and Events
"We are the lords of despair, masters of terror. Dread and agony are our meat and wine, and they are plentiful indeed!"— Attributed to Asdrubael Vect
The Dark Eldar, referred to as the Eldarith Ynneas, or, in more recent days, as the Drukhari in the Eldar Lexicon, are the forsaken and corrupt kindred of the Eldar, an ancient and highly advanced alien race of fey humanoids. Their armies, like their Eldar counterparts, usually have the advantages of mobility and advanced technology, though they are often lacking in resilience and numbers. The Dark Eldar revel in piracy, enslavement and torture, and are sadistic in the extreme. Dark Eldar armies make use of various anti-gravity skimmers such as Raiders and Ravagers to launch high speed attacks. They strike with little or no warning, using an inter-dimensional labyrinth known as the Webway to traverse the galaxy safely and far more quickly than most advanced races are able to with their Warp jumps. The Dark Eldar are unique amongst the intelligent races of the Milky Way Galaxy because they do not live on a settled world or worlds, but rather the bulk of their population is concentrated in one foul city-state -- the Dark City of Commorragh -- that lies within the "ordered" Immaterium of the Eldar Webway. The Dark Eldar are mainly pirates and slavers who prey on targets across the galaxy to feed their unholy appetites for other sentient beings' souls, a terrible desire called the Thirst, though they are sometimes used as mercenaries by other species.
The Dark Eldar are the living embodiment of all that is wanton and cruel in the Eldar character. Highly intelligent and devious to the point of obsession, these piratical people revel in the physical and emotional pain of others, for feeding upon the psychic residue of suffering is the only way they can stave off the slow consumption by the Chaos God Slaanesh of their own souls. The Dark Eldar, particularly their warrior castes, are tall, lithe, white-skinned humanoids. Their alabaster skin is death-like in its pallor, for there is no true life-giving sun within their dark realm to provide colour. Their athletic bodies are defined by whipcord muscle, shaped and enhanced until they are physically stronger on average than their Craftworld Eldar counterparts, as the Dark Eldar prize physical and martial prowess highly. Yet for all their physical beauty, the Dark Eldar are still repugnant monsters. When viewed with the witch-sight of a psyker, the Dark Eldar's black souls are revealed, for they eternally thirst only for the anguish and torment of other thinking beings in order to fill their own infinite emptiness. Unlike their Craftworld Eldar cousins, the Dark Eldar do not integrate their still powerful latent psychic abilities into their culture, and indeed have a great disdain for psykers of any kind. This is because for the Dark Eldar, the use of psychic abilities would only further draw the attention of She Who Thirsts (Slaanesh) upon them, and their souls are already at risk enough of being devoured by the Prince of Chaos.
History
The Dark Eldar are black-hearted reavers to whom the galaxy and all of its peoples are but cattle to be enslaved at will. These alien pirates strike hard and fast from the shadows of the Webway, vanishing again before the foe can fight back. The Dark Eldar are a twisted reflection of their Craftworld kin. They dwell in the strange realm known as the Webway, inhabiting Commorragh -- a cyclopean inter-dimensional metropolis rightly feared as the Dark City. The Dark Eldar feed on negative emotion, dedicating themselves to a non-stop war with realspace in which they strive to inflict as much pain and misery as they possibly can. Forced through a dark quirk of fate to abandon their once potent psychic abilities, the Dark Eldar instead epitomize physical excellence. Their athleticism and speed are unmatched, except perhaps by their towering arrogance. Add to this their lethal, arcane science, and the Dark Eldar are amongst the greatest of threats in an already deadly galaxy.
Dark Origins
Ten thousand Terran years ago, amid the apocalyptic screams of a newborn god, the mighty Eldar Empire fell to ruin. Yet the architects of this catastrophe were spared the worst of its wrath, hidden deep within the bounds of the Webway. They lurk there still, a race of unrepentant monsters damned to suffer an eternal thirst for the pain of others. The Dark Eldar have fallen from true grace in the most profound of ways. Their roots as a culture lie at the very height of ancient Eldar society, when theirs was perhaps the most highly advanced species in the Milky Way Galaxy. The Eldar once boasted mastery over an interstellar civilization that was the greatest seen in the galaxy since that of the Old Ones. The various cultures of the Eldar that exist today in the 41st Millennium are only shadows of the glory of that ancient Eldar empire. The true origins of those who now call themselves the Dark Eldar can be found in hidden enclaves amidst the atrocity and mayhem of the terrible time of the Fall of the Eldar, the great cataclysm that nearly destroyed the entire Eldar race. It was an event so terrible that not only did it kill trillions of Eldar, but it breached the dimensional barrier between realspace and the Warp, and gave birth to the Chaos God Slaanesh.
The ancient Eldar had perfected their science and technology to such an extent that they could remake planets and quench the light of the very stars at a whim. The need for labor or hard work in Eldar society became nothing but a dim memory of a difficult past. The Eldar, arrogant in the belief that they were now the true masters of their destiny, spent more and more of their time in esoteric pursuits and entertainments intended to escape the ennui that set in over the course of their centuries-long lives of ease and comfort. The Eldar mind and psyche is a thing of duality: it can experience zeniths of bliss and nadirs of suffering far more keenly than that of the other intelligent starfaring races of the galaxy, including Mankind. The Eldar were capable of becoming just as irredeemably corrupt as they were of transcending their flaws and touching the divine. With so much power at their hands, the core worlds of the Eldar Empire -- once the height of civilization in the known universe -- became centered solely on the pursuit of individual fulfillment and self-gratification.
To understand the reasons for the Fall, it is necessary to know something of the Eldar mind and soul. An Eldar's mind is incredibly complex. Their senses are extremely sharp, able to perceive incredible levels of detail. Their emotions can be so strong that a human’s are merely pale shadows by comparison. They are extremely intelligent; their thought processes are much faster than a human’s. All of this means that an Eldar experiences the universe and all its sensations to a greatly heightened degree compared to a human. Similarly, an Eldar's soul is much brighter in the Warp than those of "lesser" sentients like humans who do not possess such potent psychic abilities. Eldar are able to affect the nether-realm of the Warp much more than most other intelligent races. Every Eldar is a latent psychic and has the ability to become a very powerful psyker with training. It is the psychic strength of the Eldar's souls that was one of the primary causes of their downfall.
Before the Fall, during humanity's Dark Age of Technology, the Eldar had an immense galaxy-spanning empire comprising millions of worlds, larger and more powerful than even the Imperium of Man at the height of its power. The Eldar lived in relative peace -- barbarian races such as the Orks were kept at easily manageable numbers and never had the strength to threaten the might of the Eldar Empire. The humans were not yet virulently xenophobic and did not have a large interstellar domain, and the Tyranid Hive Fleets remained unknown. The C'tan and Necrons, the ancient foes of the Eldar, had been defeated long before and still remained dormant, in the midst of their Great Sleep.
Life on the Eldar worlds was idyllic, with fantastically sophisticated machines that took care of all the labor and manufacturing required to keep an advanced society functioning, leaving the Eldar free to indulge in other, more aesthetic pursuits. With all menial work taken care of for them, the Eldar became indolent and decadent. They began to explore more deeply the arts of pleasure, delving ever deeper into hedonism. This descent into decadence spanned millennia. Tradition and order disintegrated as the Eldar pursued the limits of the pursuit of pleasure. Sects called Pleasure Cults were formed, dedicated to achieving the highest levels of hedonistic sensation, and their ceremonies and practices became ever more wild, eventually devolving into violence against one another and even the ritual sacrifice of their own kind. Some Eldar hated what their race had become and left the Eldar homeworlds for the unexplored and virgin Maiden Worlds, or left on the newly-constructed Craftworlds, leaving the Pleasure Cults to their madness.
Among the pleasure-seekers and the interminably curious of the Eldar were those whose pursuit of excess became ever more extreme. These included a great proportion of the aristocracy of ancient Eldar society, who possessed the wealth and time to truly explore the meanings of decadence. One by one, the leaders of the Pleasure Cults that were becoming the centerpiece of Eldar society became obsessed with their own power. They relocated their headquarters to the Labyrinthine Dimension known as the Eldar Webway, for so great was their political influence that they could command the construction of entire extra-dimensional sub-realms just for themselves. Unseen, these Pleasure Cult lords continued to grow in power and influence, initiating more and more of the ancient Eldar population into their strange and shadowy creeds of decadence.
The Eldar are the most psychically gifted of all sentient beings in the galaxy and as the corruption gradually seduced them, the echoes of their ecstasy and agony began to ripple through time and space. In the parallel dimension of the Immaterium, the Warp, the reflections of these intense experiences began to coalesce, as the shifting tides of the chaotic Empyrean can take form around the raw emotions emitted by the sentient beings of the material universe and attract even more of such similar psychic energies to themselves. The constant stream of individual selfishness and indulgence pouring into the Warp from the Eldar empire nourished and empowered that which lay within -- a nascent God of pleasure and pain, content to wait and to grow.
As the Eldar Empire sank into corruption and decadence, brother turned against brother in pursuit of ever more extreme and darker pleasures. Some of the wiser Eldar, however, foresaw the disaster that was approaching their society and fled from the Eldar core worlds to safety. The first of these were the Exodites, who chose to establish a network of Eldar planetary colonies known as the Maiden Worlds far from the blighted heart of the empire. Many of these Exodite colonies still exist in the galaxy, their cultures living in a symbiotic relationship with the world-spirits of the planets they call home and protect. Among the last Eldar to escape from the empire's core before the Fall were the ancestors of the present day's Craftworld Eldar. As their society collapsed into civilisation-wide insanity, these Eldar recoiled in horror from what they were becoming. Realising that they stood upon the brink of destruction, they bent their considerable resources to the construction of the massive Craftworlds, the graceful spaceborne cities that were the size of small moons. The Eldar of the Craftworlds retreated into asceticism and spiritual introspection, preserving what they could of their ancient ways and culture before the time of the Pleasure Cults. They left the core worlds of the Eldar Empire behind for the dubious safety of deep space, to the laughter and contempt of those who remained behind. Some even managed to flee far enough to escape the terrible destruction of the Fall.
The Eldar are exceptionally psychically gifted as a race, and as they wallowed ever deeper into corruption, echoes of both agony and ecstasy began to ripple through time and space. In the parallel dimension of the Warp, the reflections of these intense experiences began to coalesce, for the shifting tides of the Empyrean can take form around raw emotions, feeding on them and growing strong, even sentient. The constant stream of indulgence and depravity pouring from the Eldar empire was as unstoppable as a tide. It nourished and empowered that which crystallized at its center -- a nascent god of excess, content at first simply to wait, and to grow. The long millennia of Eldar hedonism had made a massive impact in the psychic realm of Chaos. Within the Warp the decadent Eldar civilisation was giving shape to a new Power of Chaos, which grew and grew over thousands of Terran years, getting stronger and more defined until suddenly it sparked into a malevolent intelligence -- a shatteringly huge and malign being with an immense and bottomless thirst for Eldar souls. This was the birth of the Chaos God Slaanesh, the Dark Prince of Pleasure, better known as "She Who Thirsts" to the Eldar, Slaanesh as inherently female.
The Fall of the Eldar
This process lasted for thousands of years, corresponding to the historical era that was Mankind's Dark Age of Technology, although when Slaanesh finally came into being the results within the material universe were apocalyptic and sudden. As depravity riddled every aspect of Eldar society, the Pleasure Cults sought ever more violent thrills. Before long the streets of Eldar cities ran with their blood. The elegant architecture of their palaces became battlegrounds as the Eldar preyed upon each other, reveling in the cruelest of crimes. Their insanity and tainted passions poured into the Warp until it finally achieved critical mass. With an apocalyptic bellow that tore the heart out of the Eldar empire, a new Chaos God was born, Slaanesh the Dark Prince of Excess. An almighty psychic shockwave scythed across the galaxy, destroying countless billions of Eldar souls as Slaanesh's birth cries echoed through the material realm. The souls of almost every Eldar were stripped from them in an instant and devoured by the new-born Chaos God in a cataclysm of pain and terror. There were few survivors. Most were driven mad, their minds trapped half in the real world and half in the swirling insanity of the Warp. A great Warp rift was created in the material universe at the site of what had once been the epicenter of the Eldar civilization, encompassing almost the entire Eldar empire and creating the Eye of Terror, thus marking the dawn of the era known to humanity as the Age of Strife. World after Eldar world had fallen into the Warp, to later be known as the Crone Worlds. Slaanesh gorged itself upon the Eldar's horror and despair. Unstoppable in its ascendancy, the new God consumed the ancient deities of the Eldar empire and scattered their psychic remains to the far corners of the Empyrean.
The Eldar civilisation was gone. All that was left of the Eldar race were the Exodites of the farthest-flung Maiden Worlds, the Craftworld Eldar who had traveled far enough to escape the aftershock of destruction caused by Slaanesh's birth and the formation of the Eye of Terror, and those adherents of the Pleasure Cults who were hidden in the sub-realms of the Webway. Much of the Webway was shattered into ruin by the Fall of the Eldar, but unlike the Craftword Eldar who fled the catastrophe in realspace, those Eldar who had built their own jealously-guarded empires in the Webway remained physically unaffected by Slaanesh's birth. The echoes of the new God's apotheosis still resounded within them, but unlike their kin in realspace they had escaped destruction. In their arrogance, they did not end their quest for excess and decadent pleasure, not even for a momentary respite following the death of their empire. Repentance and atonement were meaningless concepts for a people that no longer acknowledge any limits on their actions, regardless of the consequences.
The change that was wrought upon those Eldar sealed within the Webway was far more subtle. Rather than having their psychic essences, their souls, consumed in one great draught by Slaanesh, their souls slowly drained away into the Warp, taken over time by She Who Thirsts. The Eldar hate and fear Slaanesh above all other things, for she was given life by their actions and yet she waits hungrily to claim each and every one of them, now or later. Where the Eldar of the Craftworlds learned to deny Slaanesh's hold upon them by using the mystical Spirit Stones, the Infinity Circuits and the philosophies of the Eldar Paths to safeguard their souls from consumption by She Who Thirsts, the Eldar of the Webway became exceptionally good at ensuring that other beings suffered in their place. As long as they steeped themselves in the most evil and savagely decadent acts, the Eldar of the Webway found that the curse of Slaanesh upon their race could be avoided. The agony of others nourished their diminished souls and kept them vital and strong, filling their spare frames with unnaturally robust energies. Assuming that they could feed regularly enough upon the miseries of other intelligent beings, the Eldar of the Webway became psychically immune to the passage of time. So it was that the Dark Eldar were born, a race of sadistic murderers and torturers who feed upon the suffering of others in order to prevent the slow death of their own immortal souls. Ten thousand standard years later, in the 41st Millennium of Mankind, Slaanesh's Thirst consumes them still. There truly is no escape, for the Dark Eldar have only exchanged a horrible but quick death for an eternity of infernal hunger and the infinite emptiness wrought by self-absorption.
The Dark City
Commorragh was originally the greatest of the Webway port-cities, impossibly vast and able to transport a fleet to any of the most vital planets of the Eldar Empire by virtue of its many portals. Because of the access it granted to the far-flung corners of realspace, this mighty metropolis was reckoned to be the most important location in the entire Webway. It was too valuable to the Eldar as a whole to belong to any single aspect of their empire, so it existed outside the jurisdiction of the great Eldar councils of that time. Precisely because of its autonomy, the Webway city-port quickly became a magnet for those that wished their deeds to remain hidden from prying eyes. The realm of Commorragh expanded unstoppably as wealth flowed across its borders. It spread outward into the void, consuming other Webway port-cities, private estates and subrealms with each new expansion. Commorragh grew ever larger and more impressive as it fed on their plundered resources. Unseen, the dilettante lords who ruled Commorragh's spires and dens of vice grew in status alongside their adoptive city, initiating more and more of the Eldar into their shadowy creeds.
Deep in the Webway after the Fall, the groups of Pleasure Cult survivors came together and laid the foundations of the vast new sub-realm that they named Commorragh, the Dark City, which was built on the foundation of the ancient Eldar port-city within the Webway of the same name that had lain outside the jurisdiction of all the Eldar authorities of their lost empire. As more and more Eldar survivors from other sub-realms in the Webway began to arrive, they soon added their own regions to the new realm, slowly making it even larger and more heavily populated, until it became what it is today -- a vast domain, an infernal city of suffering and death. To this day, the Dark Eldar raid and pillage the galaxy at large from their hidden sub-realms in the Webway, sowing as much misery and destruction as possible and stealing away millions of captive slaves to their lairs within the Dark City to be exploited for their own horrible ends. They are experts in the techniques of torture as well as mental and physical degradation, as the longer a Dark Eldar can drag out the torture of a slave the more psychic nourishment he can take from him or her. A Dark Eldar who has recently fed upon the suffering of others shines with a cold and startling aura of power, his physical form restored to beautiful, youthful perfection even as his soul rots within its pristine shell. A Dark Eldar who is not allowed to partake of such energies for long enough will become a physical shadow of his former beauty, desperately hunting for a taste of misery to stave off the gnawing thirst in the depths of his own withered soul.
The Satellite Realms
If a traveler were somehow to breach Commorragh's runic wards, they would first bear witness to the Dark City's tributary realms shimmering and distorting around it. One minute these vassal domains glimmer in the distance, the next they loom so close that their palaces and minarets can be seen by the naked eye. To venture unheralded past these satellite realms is to invite destruction -- many large and territorial Kabals of Dark Eldar reside within their twisted geometries, deadly pirate bands of pitiless warriors who live only to inflict pain on others, and will suffer no intrusion on their realms. Worse things lurk in their crooked shadows, or swoop swiftly and silently through the air above in their never-ending hunt for prey. These are the hidden domains in which the Dark Eldar enact their vile rites and devilish schemes. Their origins lie in the tumultuous times that preceded the Fall; as the cults of excess began to thrive, their private realms in the Webway flourished unseen until the largest of their number grew powerful enough to threaten Commorragh itself. However, over the course of its millennia-long history, Commorragh has subsumed all of the vassal domains it has not destroyed. Within the gilded corridors and flesh-pits of the myriad sub-realms frolic those Eldar who engineered the fall of their own race, laughing still at the warnings of their sombre Craftworld cousins.
The Rise of Asdrubael Vect
Over the millennia, Commorragh grew from its shrouded beginnings into a galactic nightmare, its expansion driven largely by the machinations of one being, Asdrubael Vect of the Kabal of the Black Heart, who rose from slavery to become the true Overlord of the Dark City. Four thousand standard years after the Fall of the Eldar, in the time that Mankind calls the 35th Millennium, Commorragh underwent its greatest ordeal since its founding. The Dark City was to be subjected to a full-scale invasion by some of the Imperium's most elite warriors. This catastrophic battle saw the rule of the ancient Eldar noble houses of the city brought crashing down. They would be replaced by a city of Kabals under the rule of Overlord Asdrubael Vect, the architect of this time of strife. Vect began his days as a slave. Yet through pure guile and murderous ambition he eventually rose to become the leader of a militant organisation that he named the Kabal of the Black Heart. By the time Vect had established this powerbase, he had been recognised by the Dark Eldar's Trueborn aristocracy as a genuine threat.
The Kabal of the Black Heart was opposed at all turns by the most influential of High Commorragh's noble houses -- Xelian, Kraillach and Yllithian. So it was that Vect -- ever the master of turning foe against foe to his own advantage -- concocted a plan to bring the fury of the Imperium of Mankind to bear against his many enemies. So audacious was this scheme that, to the eyes of most, it would have seemed like a horrific gamble. This could not have been further from the truth. Every angle had been carefully considered, every necessary loyalty bought beyond any danger of doubt. Asdrubael Vect's plan to achieve ascendancy demonstrated that his mind was like some intricate and unstoppable clockwork machine -- by the time the plan had run its course, millions had been ground between its merciless gears. Vect, meanwhile, elevated himself to a position of total supremacy, borne to unimaginable heights upon an ever-growing mountain of cooling corpses.
The seeds of the Imperial invasion were sown in the region of the galaxy called the Desaderian Gulf. This area of wilderness space was well-known among the human starfarers of the Segmentum Tempestus for the number of spacecraft that had disappeared within its confines. General Imperial practice was to avoid it at all costs. Unknown to the Imperium, there existed a vast portal into a main arterial of the Webway within Desaderian space, shielded by holofields that made it appear to be nothing more than a shimmer in the starlight, perhaps a result of gravitational lensing. Behind this portal lurked the pirate fleets of Commorragh, waiting for unwary prey.
The Dark Eldar's noble houses preyed upon Imperial shipping lanes only rarely in order to escape retribution; hence the missing ships were always considered acceptable losses or written off as bureaucratic errors of the Administratum. Vect's first move was to increase the frequency of these piratical raids tenfold. He made it his Kabal's priority to capture every Imperial Navy warship and invade every human world within reach of the Desaderian portal. He tore apart the Imperial Guard Regiments garrisoning the planets of the Desaderian System, devastated their fortifications and disappeared with his living bounty into the depths of the Dark City, leaving nothing but utter ruin in his wake. This campaign saw the Kabal of the Black Heart grow rich in plunder and souls, though Vect's detractors thought him a fool for antagonizing the massive Imperial war machine.
With its usual ponderous, bureaucratic slowness the Imperium eventually reacted to the disappearances in the Desaderian Gulf. A Strike Cruiser belonging to the Salamanders Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes was close enough to investigate. It was patrolling the edges of the Gulf in search of the sacred artefacts and relics of their Primarch Vulkan. Captain Phoecus of the Salamanders ordered his ship deeper into the Desaderian Gulf. After a short but violent exchange with Vect's Kabalite fleet, Phoecus' Strike Cruiser Forgehammer was crippled by Haywire Bombs and transported through the Desaderian portal into the heart of the Dark City. The furor that resulted from this audacious capture set the spires of High Commorragh aflame with new intrigue. A Space Marine Captain was a great prize indeed, for such an individual could withstand extreme and prolonged mental and physical torture before divulging his vital secrets about Imperial defense. Before long, Vect found his Kabal's fleet in the Desaderian Gulf dwarfed by the armada of the Archon Lord Xelian. The Forgehammer, still rendered impotent by Vect's Haywire field, was confiscated by Xelian, taken to High Commorragh and analysed by a long dissection process.
In his arrogance, Lord Xelian had not reckoned with the resourcefulness of the Space Marines trapped within the stricken Strike Cruiser. The ship's vox communications network had been shorted out by the Haywire field, but unknown to Xelian there remained a more pervasive method of communication available to the Astartes. Captain Phoecus' close friend, the gifted Librarian Hestion, had sent a psychic request for aid as soon as the starship's systems had been disabled. Hestion acted as a living beacon to the rest of the Salamanders Chapter, a beacon now trapped within the spires of Xelian's realm in the Dark City. When Lord Xelian sent the elite of his warrior court to bring the Space Marines to his torture chambers, they were met with far sterner resistance than anticipated. The Dark Eldar found it easy to carve through the hull of the strike cruiser and gain entrance to its dark corridors, but overpowering the Space Marines proved impossible. Lit only by the flashes of Boltgun fire, a desperate battle took place within the hull of the Forgehammer until Astartes and Dark Eldar blood had mingled upon its hull plates. Xelian was quick to realize that he had underestimated his victims. He returned the salvage rights for the Astartes starship to the Kabal of the Black Heart, appearing generous but actually intending to seize the Space Marines once the Black Heart had suffered the losses in taking them captive. Vect readily agreed, forming small strike forces of all those warriors in his Kabal whom he suspected of disloyalty and sent them to face the Strike Cruiser's defenders piecemeal. Vect's Kabalite Warriors, triumphant on dozens of worlds, marched into the Forgehammer without fear, but the battle lasted for days.
Xelian was happy to let Vect drive his so-called Kabal to destruction, believing the Kabal's Dracon to be a fool for not attacking with all the force at his disposal in a single, massive assault. Vect played a waiting game, feeding the disloyal elements of his Kabal to the guns of the Space Marines to buy time and even employing Commorrite mercenaries with well-known ties to Xelian's court, all of whom were soon swallowed by the violence within the human Strike Cruiser. On the sixteenth day of the siege, the skies above High Commorragh suddenly broke open. The Salamanders Chapter had received the coordinates that had led them to their beleaguered Battle-Brothers from the Librarian Hestion's psychic broadcasts. The Desaderian portal had mysteriously been left fully operational, its guards slain and its controls locked so that it could not be closed.
The full fury of the Imperium of Man thundered from the crackling jade-coloured Webway portal directly above Archon Xelian's personal spire. Through it came starships bearing the heraldry of not only the Salamanders but also the badges of the Howling Griffons and the Silver Skulls Chapters of Space Marines. Two dozen Strike Cruisers, each appearing like a chunk of Gothic architecture reshaped for war, hammered though the wide-open portal into the shadowy skies of the Dark City. At their heart was the great Battle Barge Vulkan's Wrath, an immense spacecraft with broadside batteries that could flatten whole cities. Its prow was a vast jutting ram that ploughed straight into the spire where Xelian stood, crushing it like a hammer driven into a priceless sculpture.
The Dark Eldar overcame their surprise quickly. From nearby Port Shard came hundreds of exotic craft, each a needle-like splinter next to the slab-like Imperial vessels, but no less deadly for that. Voidraven Bombers and Razorwing Jetfighters careened out of their towering hangars like bats from a cave, descending in swarms to attack each Astartes Strike Cruiser. Though many were destroyed by the Imperial cruisers' broadsides, others systematically targeted the larger ships' guns with focused Void Lance fire and sustained hits from their Disintegrator Cannons. The Vulkan's Wrath was struck by thick blasts of electromagnetic force produced by Port Shard's salvage spars, rendering the majority of its weapons systems useless. One by one, the Imperial ships' guns were silenced. But these were Space Marines, and they were nothing if not resourceful. Ejecting from each Strike Cruiser came Drop Pods, fired with such force that they were projectile weapons in their own right. The Drop Pods hurtled down, smashing through Dark Eldar fighter craft and Commorrite starscrapers alike, each containing a squad of Space Marines who deployed upon impact with their weapons blazing. They left pure ruin in their wake as priceless Eldar statues shattered and the spires of the Dark City fell.
The Astartes' counterattack robbed the Dark Eldar of the initiative. Within only moments of the Drop Pod assault, the Space Marines had established a perimeter in the obsidian-paved streets of the Kraillach Quarter. Though they took constant fire from Kabalite Warriors and Scourges that flew through the dark skies above, Astartes Power Armour proved to be an effective barrier to the Dark Eldar's splinter weaponry. Yet it was not long before more of the Dark City's denizens joined the fight, drawn to violence and death like sharks to blood. Massed swarms of skyboard-mounted Hellions and Reaver Jetbikers swooped down to rake and tear at the Space Marines, who returned fire, literally, with their Promethium-fueled Flamers. The half-daemon Mandrakes and Raider transports loaded with Dark Eldar Warriors assaulted the Space Marines with claws, knives and Splinter Pistols. Battle was joined from one side of High Commorragh to the other and the streets seethed with violence. Entire sections of High Commorragh burned as the invading Space Marines cut down or incinerated each new breed of horror that assaulted them. Word spread quickly through the Dark City of the human invasion and high up in the arenas, the gladiators of the Wych Cults mobilized for war.
The Space Marines within the city were 500 strong, almost half the size of a full Chapter, and they maintained a defensive perimeter throughout the Kraillach Quarter. High Archon Kraillach himself led a massed charge against the Astartes, intending to crush the invaders that were destroying his personal fiefdom. Yet Kraillach's rampage was ultimately halted by a "stray" blast from a Dark Lance that vapourised him where he stood.
As the Forgehammer lay shackled by electromagnetic force high in the spires, the battle in the skies of the Dark City intensified. Xelian's last command had been to destroy the captive human ship no matter the cost, for if mere humans recovered his prize, the Archon's authority and that of his fellow noble-born peers would be shattered forever. Flights of winged Scourges armed with Haywire Blasters and Heat Lances began to systematically destroy the captive ship while a fleet of Ravager gunships forced the Space Marines who sought to rescue the vessel's Battle-Brothers back into cover. Then, in a storm of light generated by their teleportation technology, Terminators from the Salamanders' 1st Company teleported directly onto the hull of the Forgehammer and returned fire. The Scourges were driven back and Captain Phoecus seized his chance. His men emerged from cover as a single force, sending a Krak Missile soaring into each of the nine towering spars that held his craft captive with their beams of electromagnetic force. Miraculously, each missile triggered a chain reaction of explosions, and the burning spars crashed down into the streets below. The Librarian Hestion summoned a psychic storm of his own, a raging inferno in the shape of a flaming drake that tore the Ravager gunships out of the sky one by one. The Forgehammer had been ravaged by the Dark Eldar assaults, but it was free at last from the Dark City's clutches. With a roar, the Strike Cruiser began to ascend into the sky and freedom.
Far below, the Space Marines fighting in the Xelian Quarter were completely encircled as the full weight of Commorragh was pressed against them and warriors from dozens of noble houses joined the defence of the city. Yet the Space Marines' objective had been achieved, for the Forgehammer was free. A single curt comm-signal was sent and within mere moments, the main bulk of the Space Marines in the Dark City teleported away in a brief burst of light. Those that had been cut off from the main assault gave their lives to buy their brethren time or else were paralyzed by Dark Eldar hypertoxins and taken away to later fight and die as warrior-slaves. Confusion reigned as the Haywire fields that had shackled the Imperial spacecraft were disengaged one by one. The Battle Barge Vulkan's Wrath, now joined by the badly damaged Forgehammer, fired its retros and disengaged itself from the ruins of what had been Archon Xelion's pride. The vast starship's engine blast flattened spires and starscrapers alike before the Space Marines made their escape. The entire Astartes fleet then passed through the still-yawning Webway portal above High Commorragh and escaped triumphantly into realspace.
In the aftermath of the Imperial invasion, Commorragh changed forever. The power vacuum left by the vanquished noble houses of High Commorragh was quickly filled by Asdrubael Vect and his jubilant Kabal of the Black Heart, who had proven their superiority to their rivals in the crucible of war. In the years that followed, Vect played politics like a true Machiavellian master of intrigue, forever asserting the meritocracy of the Kabals over the ancient aristocracy of the Eldar noble houses. Into the yawning power vacuum stepped Asdrubael Vect and his Kabal of the Black Heart. Eschewing all pretense at innocence, Vect ensured that word of his machinations became public. All would know that to stand in the way of Asdrubael Vect meant certain death, and in the centuries that followed his grasp on power would inexorably tighten. So it was that the Kabal of the Black Heart rose to ascendancy over the Dark City in place of the old nobility and Archon Vect's new position as the Supreme Overlord of Commorragh and the Dark Eldar race was sealed.
Dark Eldar in the Calixis Sector and the Koronus Expanse
The Calixis Sector and Koronus Expanse are regions that have some significance to the Eldar, and while it has been many millennia since they have had any major presence there, the worlds of that great frontier are still laced with many thousands of Webway passages and tunnels connecting worlds and star systems. Today, these tunnels are twisted, stretched, and torn by the psychic pressure of the Warp storms dividing the Calixis Sector and Koronus Expanse. While the mysterious rites of the Harlequins long ago sealed many of these passages, others still remain open to the tides of the Warp, infested with vile and ephemeral creatures.
This region of damaged tunnels is centered across the Warp Storm known as the Screaming Vortex. The Vortex is home to teeming hordes of daemon-worshipers and mutants, living and dying at the whims of warlords and sorcerers intent on murder and subjugation in the name of their dark gods. While this is a ready source of slaves and victims for the raids of the region's Kabals, it is a realm largely inhospitable to the Dark Eldar, so strong is the presence of She Who Thirsts within the storm. However, suspended at some point between the Screaming Vortex, the Koronus Expanse, and the Webway is an island of relative stability where numerous groups of Dark Eldar have formed a twisted haven. Here floats the Nexus of Shadows, a Dark Eldar outpost built upon an ancient and massive technological relic.
Three major Kabals dwell in the tunnels and passageways that cross the Calixis Sector, the Koronus Expanse, and into the Screaming Vortex. The foremost of these, at the heart of the Nexus, is the Kabal of the Splintered Talon. The others, the Kabal of the Shadowed Thorns and the Kabal of the Crimson Woe, are of a more mercenary inclination due to their lesser status, often selling their murderous skills to other races in exchange for resources or opportunities to grasp at power. The Kabal of the Crimson Woe operates in the Calixis Sector more than in the Koronus Expanse, in part to avoid directly competing with the Kabal of the Shadowed Thorns and thus drawing their ire. Numerous other groups exist alongside these, from the Cult of the Withered Blade, which controls the Bloodspine Pits on the Nexus of Shadows, and The Sutured Helix, a coven of Haemonculi that operates from the Nexus of Shadows, to numerous smaller factions that raid and scavenge for scraps of their betters' might and prestige.
The Dark Eldar operating near the Nexus of Shadows are frequently on the move, either carried within fleets of voidships or travelling in smaller groups on light skimmers through the winding and impossible labyrinth of the Webway, returning to the Nexus of Shadows only periodically to trade their cargo of tormented victims for supplies and to replace slain warriors. These itinerant raiders often cross paths with pirates and reavers of other species, particularly the Chaos-aligned flotillas that hail from the Screaming Vortex and isolated bases like Iniquity. A select few of these have been shown the location of the Nexus, so that they may trade in slaves, dark lore, and abhorrent technologies, but these are relatively rare.
The Dark Eldar are a plague upon the Koronus Expanse. Raiders, slavers, pirates, and even Rogue Traders suffer at their barbed lashes and blades. Any who cross the Maw and sail the void of the Koronus Expanse learn to fear the wicked silhouettes of their voidships and their seemingly endless cruelty towards all life, including their own. Only vigilance and firepower keep the worst depredations of these terrible raiders at bay, though from the dens of Footfall to the commerce halls of Port Wander there are countless tales of crew lost and ships savaged in their sudden attacks. Within the Calixis Sector, the Imperial Navy keeps the Warp routes and sector worlds protected against the worst of these raids, and while some outposts and lone vessels still disappear at the hands of the foul xenos, most Imperial citizens sleep soundly, never even knowing that such a depraved species haunts the stars above their heads.
In the Koronus Expanse it is different, as that lawless place has neither a fleet capable of guarding the uncharted wastes nor a tightly controlled network of worlds that can call upon one another in times of need. The Expanse is a playground for the Dark Eldar, where along with the myriad of other alien menaces they can raid worlds and take voidships with relative impunity, slipping away into the night from whence they came. The power of the Dark Eldar is compounded by the fact that no one knows precisely where they come from or where they go, nor can they explain the aliens' uncanny ability to appear from nowhere and then vanish with their stolen cargos of goods and slaves just as quickly. Some Rogue Traders believe there must be a Dark Eldar world somewhere in the Expanse from which they launch their raids, though where exactly it is and how it could have evaded detection for so long remain a mystery that has yet to be unraveled.
Salaine Morn - Archon of the Kabal of the Shadowed Thorns
The Gaelan Sphere, upon which the Nexus of Shadows was built, is an ancient relic of a long-forgotten age of technology. The size of a small moon, covered with towers and antennae, the sphere was crafted around a solid core, the remnants of some mineral rich asteroid that its automated systems are slowly eroding away as it adds more and more levels to the sphere. Neither the Gaelan Sphere's alien inhabitants nor those few explorers from the Imperium who have had a chance to study it know its true purpose. How the sphere came to enter the Webway is also a mystery. Abandoned for untold ages, the sphere could have drifted through a Web-gate or even been drawn towards one by the ancient programs and protocols of its Cogitators seeking to study a breach in the Webway that it perceived as a celestial phenomenon. Alternatively, it is possible that some unknown force moved it into the Webway for some inscrutable purpose. Once it entered the Webway, the sphere spent aeons drifting from one region to another before becoming trapped in a confluence of ancient forces and alien powerfields. Now, it floats in a relatively stable position, more debris of a forgotten age of enlightenment.
It was Salaine Morn and her Kabal of the Shadowed Thorns that first rediscovered the Gaelan Sphere and decided to put it to use. After being exiled from Commorragh, the Archon spent many Terran years wandering the Webway with her fleet, raiding worlds and looking for a place to claim as her own. The sphere, with its well-hidden location and ancient technology, presented the perfect place for a new home. Unfortunately for Salaine, the sphere's defenses and legions of Servitor guardians were too numerous and powerful for her Kabal alone to overcome. Thus, Salaine forged an alliance with Zaergarn Kul and his Kabal of the Splintered Talon, and together they purged the city of its ancient human defenses, destroying that which they could not control and sealing away the areas that they could not inhabit.
Even though their forces had secured a landing zone and deactivated the aging orbital defenses, it was to take years for the Dark Eldar to carve out the areas where they would build their city. As more Dark Eldar came to the Nexus, new sections would be cleared of their ancient automated defenses. Often the Dark Eldar would drive thousands of slaves into an area to identify these dangers, or simply to exhaust a turret's ammunition so it could be destroyed. Other xenos races were also allowed to settle in the Nexus as part of trading missions, though these aliens had to clear their own areas for in-habitation. The lasting result of this wanton conquest by the Dark Eldar and their allies is that many areas of the Nexus still show signs of battle, and the stripped remains of the combat machinery of the sphere is a common sight along its shadowed streets. Occasionally, the Nexus' old defenders rear their heads once again, but the Dark Eldar usually put them down swiftly.
Almost immediately after the arrival of the Dark Eldar and its establishment as a port, the Nexus began to operate as a hub for trade and a base for raiding. Close to the Koronus Expanse and the Calixis Sector, it opened up fresh opportunities for slavers and worlds that before had been out of reach or too dangerous to raid using the fractured remains of the Webway. The Nexus of Shadows quickly grew in size and wealth on the backs of its slaves, despite the fact that most Dark Eldar of Commorragh at least openly shun the cursed place and the outcasts who live there. The xenos of the Koronus Expanse and the Renegades of the Screaming Vortex have no such compunctions, however, and have found the Nexus to be a useful place to trade and congregate, a place far from the reach of the Imperium and utterly hostile to its agents. Salaine welcomed such factions into her city on account of the wealth and influence they offered, as well as the added protection it afforded her against those who would try and take the city from her. Unfortunately for Salaine, it was not an outside force or an alien that was to oust her from power. In the end one of her own, Zaergarn Kul, usurped her, and exiled her once more into the Webway before she could do the same to him. For many of the inhabitants of the Nexus this change in power meant little, especially for the slaves, to whom one Dark Eldar Archon is much the same as another.
Salaine Morn intentionally projects a presence that is both evasive and unmistakable; her dread majesty is as hard to put into words as it is to ignore. Appearing at once menacing and tempting, the Archon catches many of her foes off-guard, uncertain of the obfuscated nature of this ancient being. Morn is several thousand Terran years old, though only she knows for certain how long she has been alive, and has seen and done much that would long haunt the nightmares of lesser beings. Like all Dark Eldar Archons, she is possessed of a deadly martial prowess, but her true weapon is a mind finely-honed by the lethal intrigues of Commorragh's high society. She finds it utterly distasteful, then, that she and all those she commands are exiles from the Dark City and now even the Nexus of Shadows. At her grudging command, the warriors of her Kabal have turned to mercenary work, selling their efforts to lesser beings as part of a plan to regain the power she once possessed. On the rarest of occasions, she deigns to speak to these prey-creatures herself.
Recent Events
The history of the Dark Eldar is one of unrelenting horror. Much of it is hidden in shadow, recorded only in allegory and fable by those intelligent races whose worlds they have ravaged. Records are kept, however -- tomes scribed in still-living flesh using bladed quills of bone. These histories divide the tale of Commorragh into three ages -- ill-defined and overlapping though they are -- each more redolent with cruelty and evil than the last.
The Age of Dark Genesis
The Port Commorragh (c.M18) - Commorragh establishes itself as the primary nodal port of the Eldar Webway, growing larger with every passing decade. Built entirely within the Labyrinthine Dimension and hence outside the jurisdiction of the Eldar councils, Commorragh acts as a magnet for those who wish to avoid attention.
The Twilight Cults (c.M18-M20) - Those leading the new Eldar paradigm of total self-indulgence rise in status and power until they can secede entirely from the physical plane. They take up permanent residence in the Webway, from which they can plumb the depths of decadence undisturbed by puritans and weaklings. Over time, their sovereign estates grow into entire sub-realms, many of which are powered by the energy of stolen suns. The solar systems and their inhabitants plunged into darkness by the Eldar's star-theft wither and die in the freezing cold of the void, but the Eldar care not.
The Ailing Pantheon (c.M19-M24) - The worship of the traditional Eldar gods beings to wane as new sects and societies rise to power. The Dark Muses, many of whom are synonymous with sensual vice and sin, become the unofficial figureheads of the new order.
Darkness Rising (c.M25-M30) - The depravity of the Eldar race plumbs terrible new depths. Cults of pleasure and pain flourish in the hidden reaches of the Webway, and even the core worlds of Eldar society become obsessed with ever-greater acts of excess. As the lines blur between sensation-seeking and outright evil, a new force stirs in the Warp.
Exodus (c.M30-M31) - Sensing the end, portions of the Eldar race combine and modify their voidships Craftworlds, gigantic living vessels able to accommodate an entire planet’s population. One by one they begin to escape the corruption that plagues their empire. Hundred of Craftworlds sail into the sea of stars in search of the relative safety of the untrammeled void.
The Fall of the Eldar (c.M30-M31) - A new Chaos God is born, collapsing the entire Eldar Empire -- Slaanesh, the Dark Prince, whose birth-screams tear out the heart of the empire and leave pure Chaos in its place. The shockwave of the new god's apotheosis plunges a vast section of realspace into the Warp, creating the Eye of Terror. Most of the Eldar Craftworlds are destroyed in the psychic backlash. Only the Exodites, the Eldar of the farthest-flung Craftworlds, and those hidden in the sub-realms of the Webway survive. The Eldar race is shattered forever in a single apocalyptic instant.
Commorragh Ascendant (c.M31-M32) - In the wake of the Fall, the unrepentant Eldar hidden within the Webway consolidate their power. The next millennium sees the port-cities and sovereign realms of the labyrinth dimension grow steadily in size and influence, and Commorragh becomes a sprawling realm unto itself. The Dark City thrives under the oppressive rule of the noble houses that lurk at its heart.
The Rise of Vect
A Legacy Begins (c.M32) - A halfborn Eldar slave -- known only as Vect -- vows that he shall rule the Dark City, even if it takes an eternity to do so. Vect founds the Cult of the Black Heart, the first organisation to openly refer to themselves as Eladrith Ynneas or "Dark Eldar." The Thirteen Foundations of Vengeance are laid down at this time, an intricate code of dishonour destined to spread through the society of the Dark City in the centuries to come. The impact of Vect's rise to power will resonate through Commorragh's history for millennia to come.
The War of the Sun and the Moon (c.M33) - The solar cults that control the Dark City’s stolen suns rise in power and influence, ultimately declaring war upon the Eldar noble houses that would see Commorragh plunged into permanent night. An aerial war rages for centuries, but ultimately the noble houses emerge victorious. Vect's Cult of the Black Heart transforms to become the first true Dark Eldar Kabal during this troubled time, and is instrumental in the final defeat of the solar cults during the Battle of the Seven Shrouds.
Vect Ascendant (c.M35) - Asdrubael Vect launches a series of punishing raids against the Imperium's shipping lanes in the Desaderian Gulf. True to his plans, this triggers a punishing counterattack from three Chapters of the Adeptus Astartes. Vect manipulates the invasion to cripple the powerbases of the patrician Archons and, in the aftermath, takes their place as ruler of High Commorragh. Shortly after, the Desaderian portal is forcibly collapsed, triggering a massive implosion and annihilating Imperial naval elements mustering for a second attack.
The Kabals Ascendant (c.M35-M36) - The aristocracy of Commorragh is in disgrace. It is soon replaced by the Kabalite system, as pioneered by Vect and his Kabal of the Black Heart. Privilege and status are supplanted by sheer ambition and murderous capability. Many elder noble houses reinvent themselves as Kabals, though they never forgive Vect for usurping their power.
The Breaching (c.M37) - Vect causes the hidden portals that link each satellite realm and port-city of the Webway to be revealed, forcing them open and building the Great Gates: huge edifices that are permanently guarded by Vect’s elite Incubi and Kabalite Warrior garrisons. Over several millennia of civil war and violent strife, Commorragh expands into these once autonomous regions until they become integral to the Dark City. Only the realm of Shaa-dom remains autonomous.
The Age of Pain
The Ghost Planet (156.M35) - The far-flung Hive World Auxilion stubbornly maintains radio silence after its unsanctioned decision to hire Eldar mercenaries, though after one diplomatic gaffe too many the alliance turns sour. Led by the Haemonculus Kresthekia, a Carnival of Pain descends upon the planet. Five years later a large-scale Imperial delegation is sent to investigate the lack of forthcoming tithes. When they make planetfall they find no trace of human life signs whatsoever. The entire planet, every hive, hab-block and spire, is completely deserted.
The Battle for the Thaxar Rift (745.M35) - The Severed begin to plunder the region of space known as the Thaxar Rift. They find their efforts hindered by Chaos-worshipping Renegades, who have a substantial presence in the region. Rather than face the Renegades directly, Archon Ariensis ensures that his foes come to the attention of the Imperial Navy and Adeptus Astartes, and a grinding war ensues. The Severed haunt the edges of this conflict, tales of murderous ghosts and xenos pirates spreading like wildfire in their wake while they test and study the Imperium's way of war. Eventually the Imperium's forces are reduced to a shadow of their former might. They are forced to resort to selective Exterminatus to annihilate what remains of their Traitor foes. While the doomed worlds still smoulder, the Severed descend in full force. They annihilate the surviving Imperial Navy warships left behind to watch over Thaxari space, before proceeding to plunder and pillage at will.
Vect's Gift (677.M36) - Asdrubael Vect tricks his would-be rival Archon Kelithresh into opening a casket that has ostensibly been presented as a tithe. Held precariously in the collapsing field of the casket is the unstable essence of a black hole. Kelithresh's entire realm is plunged into a howling, yawning vortex.
The Black Conquest of Yaelindra (724.M36) - Yaelindra of the Blackened Tear uses her preeminent grasp of the arts of Shaimesh to poison an entire Imperial Hive World. Even as the populace of Tybor III are withering into desiccated husks, Yaelindra is granted a boon by Asdrubael Vect. She chooses to take a spire of her own in High Commorragh, founding the Wych Cult of Lhamaea and training an army of deadly courtesan warriors to further her deadly works.
The Plague of Glass (926.M36) - The noted Commorrite artisan Jalaxlar is feted for his incredibly lifelike black-glass statues of Dark Eldar. His rivals soon discover that he is using an isolated viral helix to create his masterpieces from living victims. In the fight to control this deadly virus it is accidentally released, running rampant through several districts of the Dark City. This Plague of Glass is eventually contained and weaponized by the Hex, whose Haemonculi are intrigued by its artistic possibilities.
The Slow Death of Graegus (345.M37) - The Kabal of the Poisoned Tongue comes into conflict with a fleet of Ork Freebooterz stationed out of Graegus. Lady Aurelia Malys is incensed that mere barbarian pirates should deny her will. Personally capturing a musclebound Ork Nob, Malys instructs her Lhamaean poisoners to prepare a surprise for the greenskins upon Graegus. Lady Malys' Kabal makes planetfall weeks later, fighting their way into the centre of the Ork capital city and impaling their barely-living captive upon a half-built Gargant before melting away into the night. The corpse begins to shed millions of spores into the air, each of which bears a cargo of terrible wasting toxins. As the infected spores corrupt the Orkoid reproduction cycle, the population of Graegus grows weaker and weaker. When Malys returns it is a simple matter to slaughter the survivors.
War in the Webway (579.M37) - A coven of Chaos Sorcerers of the Thousand Sons conduct a great ritual in the Webway, hoping to gain access to Commorragh. At the ritual's climax, hundreds of Dark Eldar pour from an invisible portal into their ranks, led by vaulting troupes of Harlequins. Battle is joined as the Tzeentchian Sorcerers counterattack; the fabric of the Webway is breached in the process and its arterial walls buckle and burst. The backlash strands the combatants in a shattered pocket reality with no way out. It is rumored in Commorragh that they fight there still, locked in an endless cycle of war and rebirth for the rest of time.
The Tower of Flesh (796.M37) - The Haemonculi stronghold known as the Tower of Flesh is created -- a living, breathing fortress, made of the bodies of those who defied the Haemonculi Coven of the Thirteen Scars. The Renegade Space Marine Fabius Bile is tutored in the dark arts within its blood-slicked halls. Bile is accompanied to the Dark City by Lucius the Eternal, who is declared by his "hosts" -- the Wych Cult of the Wrath Unbound -- to be endlessly entertaining both on and off the arena floor.
The Blade of Vect (984.M37) - The sub-realm of Shaa-dom grows steadily in influence and power until Archon El'uriaq, the self-proclaimed Emperor of Shaa-dom, declares himself more worthy of rule than Asdrubael Vect. Vect publicly vows that all of Shaa-dom will feel the edge of his blade, much to the amusement of El'uriaq's famously well-funded and elite forces. Three solar days later, a Warp rift opens suddenly above the satellite realms and a burning Imperial Navy Battleship thunders downward, plunging deep into the hidden city's heart before its Warp-Drive detonates. The palace-fortress of El'uriaq is torn apart. The Warp rift allows Daemons to invade the city, and in a matter of a single solar week the devil-haunted realm of Shaa-dom is reduced to cinders. Vect is reported to have allowed himself a rare smile at the moment of its fall.
The Last Act of Lord Korscht (182.M38) - Inquisitor Lord Korscht of the Ordo Xenos second-guesses the Dark Eldar raid upon the Imperial industrial world of Demoisne. The moment the Kabal of Immortality Denied blink into existence above Demoisne's capital, they are all but annihilated in a thunderous firestorm. Korscht's absence is keenly felt at the post-action debrief, however, and the Inquisitor Lord's underground fortress complex is investigated. His remains are found, spread thinly upon every page of every occult tome in his library.
WAAAGH! Zoggit (227.M38) - The Ork Warlord Zoggit, famous for killing anyone foolish enough to imply he might be a bit of a Weirdboy, declares a WAAAGH! straight into the vermillion spacerift encroaching upon the world of Zogg-Dis. He and his Boyz emerge in the Commorrite port-spar of Blackblood, much to the surprise of its resident Kabal. The resultant storm of violence carries hundreds of thousands of Orks into the twisting byways of Commorragh. War is joined in earnest when the Dark City turns its attention to the Orkoid invasion, systematically isolating each Ork army in order to destroy it piece by piece. However, each Kabal is preoccupied by trying to turn the unexpected invasion to its advantage that the Orks cause far more damage than any of the Kabals thought possible. Several districts of Commorragh are toppled or burnt to cinders by wave upon wave of howling Orks. Eventually the Orks are coralled and over 10,000 greenskins are captured by the Wych districts packed to capacity for almost an entire fortnight.
Beauty Relinquished (717.M38) - A new fashion sweeps the spires of Commorragh, and soon every member of the noble houses has paid to have himself horribly disfigured. The suddenly fashionable Haemonculi consider it to be a very good year, but the trend is predictably short-lived. The Time of Reparations proves even better for business, and suspicions abound.
Pandaimon Betrayed (799.M38) - The trans-dimensional satellite realm of Pandaimon declares independence from Commorragh, instantly triggering a great war between Archon Qu, Lord of the Iron Thorns, and the Kabal of the Black Heart. Qu is ready for Vect's attack, but not for the treason of his own daughter, who reveals herself as one of Vect's many courtesans. Civil war rages for solar weeks but ultimately the realm of Pandaimon is delivered into Vect's hands.
A Gruesome Lesson (933.M38) - During the prolonged campaign for Massgrve, the 121st Cadian Elite, famed across the Ultima Segmentum as the "Eldar Killers," disappear completely without so much as a comm-signal. Weeks later thousands of headless and armless human bodies with Imperial Eagle tattoos are found roaming aimlessly along the arched streets of Commorragh's Vault District, moaning, staggering and bumping into each other before being put out of their misery by Hellion hunter-gangs.
Desperation's End (272.M39) - The Imperial frontier planet of Desperation unwittingly sows the seeds of its own demise when it sends an astropathic message detailing an invasion of hellspawn. In fact, Desperation has been chosen as the theatre for the latest unveilings of the Children of Bone, a clique of Haemonculi who specialise in unusually large Grotesques. After the desolation of the planet's cities, the Haemonculi disappear with holocaptures of their vile creations at work. Years later, the rescue voidships that enter Desperation’s orbit determine the natives of the planet to be heretical beyond recovery, for they now worship the Children of Bone instead of the Emperor. The natives fight with frenzied tenacity, for they fear the Haemonculi far more than the Imperium's troops, but nonetheless the world is completely purged within the space of a solar week.
The Thieves of the Ice Mists (616.M39) - Upon the ice-locked planet of Fenris, aspiring Space Wolves recruits begin to disappear during their Trial of Morkai. Each aspirant has been implanted with the gene-seed of Leman Russ, and only the strongest have iron will enough to prevent it from ravaging their bodies and effect permanent devolvement into beasthood. The Wolf Priests notice that an unprecedented number of these aspirants are going missing and, after fruitlessly patrolling the wilderness of Asaheim, focus their scrutiny on nearspace. Sure enough, a Dark Eldar fleet is stationed above the ice caps of the neighboring planet of Mydgarden. The Space Wolves mount a lightning invasion upon the Mydgarden ice caps, their Thunderhawks descending on tongues of flame to bring the last remaining xenos there to battle. The Space Wolves fight with the fury of the storm, but soon enough the Haemonculi covens garrisoned there fade away into the mists, their mocking and distant laughter receding into nothing. The Space Wolves find a series of white-capped chambers leading deep down into the planet's crust. Each is empty of life -- empty, that is, save for witless brutes of bulging muscle and fur incarcerated in tubular pods, some of whom resemble the Primarch Russ himself. The Space Wolves do not speak of this day.
The Dark Within the Light (117.M40) - The veiled cryptoscientist Vorsch perfects a technique he calls photonic transubstantiation, transforming himself into a living beam of light and travelling distances purely in order to proclaim his genius. He is eventually captured in a prism-trap by the Kabal of the Black Sun, who use Vorsch's technologies to stage large-scale terror attacks upon the peace-loving Naiad Republic.
The Hunters Hunted (835.M40) - Duke Sliscus is hunted by the Groevian Fiends, an elite reptilian bounty-hunter cadre who have a reputation completely annihilating their targets. Sliscus instructs his agents upon the Groevian flagship Last Chance to place a device of the Duke's own invention in the metal belly of the craft. Just as Sliscus is about to pass through an ancient webway portal, it seems that game is up -- the Last Chance emerges from a gas cloud in hot pursuit, guns blazing, and follows it into the webway. The Duke's ship emerges above the home world of the Groevians, primes and ready for planetfall. The flagship Last Chance, its navigational coordinates corrupted by the device placed amidships, emerges in the blazing heart of Groevia's sun.
A Guantlet Thrown (226.M41) - Lelith Hesperax issues a challenge to the Dark City. Should anyone produce an inhabitant of realspace that can pose her a genuine challenge in the arena, that individual will be honoured beyond their wildest dreams by Hesperax herself. The competition sparked by this challenge is immediate, violent and widespread. Archons lead raiding parties to strike at the length and breadth of the material realm, returning with ever mightier champions and deadlier monsters trammeled in their holds. Yet Hesperax defeats every victim brought before her, carving down hissing Tyranid Hive Tyrants, Choppa-wielding Ork Warbosses and righteously indignant Space Marine heroes with equal ease. Archon Khargiel of the Bleaksoul Brethren finally presents Hesperax with a foe that can answer her challenge. In an especially daring and costly raid, Khargiel has kidnapped Brother-Captain Cadulon of the Iron KnightsSpace Marine Chapter. Known as the "Saint of Blades," Cadulon is an exceptionally talented swordsman who has twice been declared victor at the ritual Feast of Blades. As Hesperax meets his eye across the arena floor she knows she faces a worthy foe. With a predatory grin, the belladonna of the Dark City goes to work, her blades ringing against Cadulon's sword in a blizzard of sparks to the maddened roar of the crowd. The duel lasts for over six solar hours before Cadulon finally falls, leaving Hesperax victorious with but a single, bloody cut across her midriff. Amid the sudden hush, Archon Khargiel descends to the arena floor to accept his reward. Yet his look of triumph curdles as Lelith kicks the fallen Space Marine's blade across the floor to land at the Archon's feet, explaining that the greatest honour she can bestow is the deadly kiss of her knives. To the amusement of the crowd, Khargiel is lucky to last six solar minutes.
The Coup-Deamons (248.M41) - The vainglorious Archon Ysclyth of the Kabal of the Talon Cyriix, the last descendant of a pure-blooded lineage that had lasted for thousands of standard years, bridles against the tyrannical dictates of Asdrubael Vect and his forbiddance of Old Empire knowledge. Deciphering the archaic rites inscribed upon the crypts below his palace, he learns how to contact Daemons of the Warp and bind them to his will. Though his plan takes almost a century to come to fruition, Ysclyth stages his coup against Vect with shocking and unstoppable force. Under the soaring skycraft of his Kabal comes a ravening daemonic host that drives all life before it. Before the horde can wreak too much damage Vect activates an ancient failsafe and completely seals off the spur of Talon Cyriix from the rest of Commorragh. It is not long before Archon Ysclyth finds out that his control over his daemonic allies is not as complete as he imagines. Trapped with only the Daemon legions for company, Ysclyth and his Kabal are slowly torn apart.
The Reaving of Garmos (312.M41) - The Garmos System is plunged into a war between the Imperium and the Orks of WAAAGH! Deffsmasha. Throughout the conflict, the Coven of the Dark Creed and the Kabal of the Bladed Lotus lead raiding parties to prey on both sides. They subtly tip the balance of power back and forth, extending the war far past its natural duration and reaping the harvest of fear and misery that results.
The Dancing Dead (327.M41) - The insane Archon Thyndrak of the Last Hatred launches a raid on the Imperial Hive World of Tamantra's Folly. During fierce fighting between her Kabalite forces and the Tallarn 8th Infantry, Archon Thyndrak abducts the planet’s tyrannical governor and his entire sadistic household. Within the cycle, the luckless abductees have been fitted with neural restraints, dressed in improbable and torturous finery, and installed in life support tubes built into the ceiling of Archon Thyndrak's grand ballroom. Trapped in an agonizing half-life, the Imperial nobles can be lowered down to the Archon’s dance floor at will on wheezing brass armatures, their mere presence leaving the hall awash with an aura of pain and misery that the Commorrites find most refreshing. Needless to say, Thyndrak’s new toys are something of a coup, her guests delighting in dancing and frolicking with the whimpering humans amid the mocking laughter of their peers.
The Raven's Prey (394.M41) - The Kabal of the Obsidian Rose suffer an unacceptable defeat when they are overwhelmed by the armoured might of the Cadian 346th Regiment, the "Ironheads," on the mining planet of Greystar. Determined to save face, Archon Khromys orders diversionary attacks against key points all across the planet. While battle rages, a single squadron of Voidraven bombers -- crafted by Khromys herself for just such an occasion -- swoops undetected into the primary spoil-shaft of the northern polar mines. Hurtling through narrowing tunnels and jinking between slabsided industrial machinery, the Voidravens' superior systems see them reach the deepest extent of the mine workings. Here, dangerously close to Greystar’s molten heart, they deploy a trio of masterwork Void Mines that trigger an apocalyptic chain-reaction. Even as the Voidravens hurtle to safety, the Obsidian Rose retreat to the Webway laden with slaves and plunder. In their wake, Greystar tears itself to pieces, billions dying along with their planet in order to satisfy Khromys' need for revenge.
The Plague of Becoming (399.M41) - A narcissist without equal, Archon Vhane Kyharc of the Black Myriad releases the Doppelganger Virus on the planet of Phlogiston VI. This transmorphic plague rewrites the biology of every living creature on the planet, forcing their features to reform in the likeness of their alien conqueror.
Steel Fang (421.M41) - A nameless messenger butchers the Inner Council of Craftworld Lugganath, smashing apart a statue of Khaine and using the shards as deadly weapons. Fleeing into the Webway with a holocapture of her murderous deed, the young warrior calling herself Steel Fang is welcomed by the Wych Cults of the Dark City. She soon founds her own Cult, and her teachings in the art of improvised weaponry spread throughout the arenas of Commorragh.
Fear the Shadows (462.M41) - The Kabal of the Black Heart strike at the Hive World of Lapradus, but are hurled back in disarray by the intervention of Titans from the Legio Castigatum. Mere solar days later, Princeps Gendath -- the author of Castigatum's victory -- is murdered on his own bridge. He is hacked to shreds within his amniotic tank by hissing horrors that slither into being amid the thrashing soup. The murky shapes disappear as suddenly as they struck, leaving only a half-frozen mulch of blood and shattered armaglass in their wake.
Just Beyond the Door (346.497.M41) - It is on this date that word reaches Asdrubael Vect of a disturbance at Khaine's Gate. Something has begun to pound slowly -- rhythmically -- impossibly -- on the other side. Vect stations five hundred Incubi to watch over the Gate chamber as a delaying measure. He pays exorbitant sums to ensure their discretion, while simultaneously ensuring all those Incubi hired hail from brotherhoods who have defied or hindered his machinations in the past. As further insurance, Vect deploys several of his more esoteric arcane weapons within the chamber itself, ingenious failsafes that include temporal flux-mines, the Seventh Shard, and a tri-prismic dimensional mirror keyed to hurl anything reflected in its surface into the heart of a sun.
The Veiled War (518.M41) - The Wych Cult of the Red Grief engages the warriors of Craftworld Saim-Hann in battle over a broken alliance. The war is fought at breakneck speeds through the cloud-archipelagos of the planet Stratos, where visibility is almost zero and the smallest misstep threatens a deadly plunge into the void-ocean far below. The warring Eldar factions are eventually forced to disengage by the onset of a vast superstorm, leaving scores unsettled and bad blood festering between them.
The Harvest of Chogros (543.M41) - The Kabal of the Broken Sigil begins a series of raids on the planet Chogros, capturing the Ogryn natives for the arenas. When Astra Militarum regiments arrive to intervene, the conflict escalates into a planet-wide engagement. Though they fight hard, the men of the Imperium are eventually defeated. The Crucibael is thronged for many nights to come as the captured Imperial Guardsmen are forced to fight the very Ogryns that they were sent to save.
The Enemy Beyond (601.M41) - The Incubi standing guard over Khaine's Gate report new and disturbing developments to Asdrubael Vect. In accompaniment to the slow, relentless pounding, the Gate has begun to vibrate at the microscopic level. Worse, those who stand too close to the portal report hearing whispered voices. Though he shows no outward signs of concern, Vect continues to lay new plans.
The Shadow-Hunt (626.M41) - The Kabal of the Baleful Gaze and Wych Cult of the Wrath Unbound cripple the infrastructure of the Imperial industrial world of Durondas II using sustained haywire bombing. The Cult then lands great packs of hunting beasts, Khymerae and Clawed Fiends, the beasts loping through the darkened streets and tearing the planet's defenders to shreds. Buried in darkness, weapons fried and transportation crippled by the Haywire Bombs, the terrified Astra Militarum and their civilian charges are forced to fall back time and again. The hunted survivors are finally herded together in the Grand Templum District of Durondas' capital city. Here the Dark Eldar Beastmasters loose their feral pets en masse, beginning a horrifying massacre that takes several long and bloody solar days to conclude, and from which no human emerges alive.
The Panacea Wars (824.M41) - Vect sets his Archons a seemingly impossible task: "poison the Imperium of Man, and bring proof of the deed." Lady Malys proves equal to the task. Through the Harlequins she has learned that the Tech-priests of Verdigris IX have recovered an STC codenamed the Panacea, a miracle cure that could save billions of human lives. Using hit and run raids, Malys' Kabal of the Poisoned Tongue lure the might of an Ork WAAAGH! down upon the heavily-defended Forge World. The Ork fleet literally ploughs headlong into Verdigris IX, one massive voidship after another slamming into the world’s surface to cause untold destruction. As wave upon wave of Orks disembark from their wrecked spacecraft, the planet's surviving defenders find themselves embroiled in a desperate war for survival. Malys and her Kabal swoop into the midst of the resultant havoc, cutting down anyone who stands between them and their prize. After prying the Panacea template from the gnarled fingers of the Ork Big Mek who had stolen it before her, Malys returns to the Dark City, leaving Verdigris IX to burn in her wake. Asdrubael Vect is reportedly impressed with this audacious raid -- even as Malys is setting the Imperium's miracle cure atop a pedestal in her personal trophy hall, she receives an invitation from Vect to dine with him by way of congratulations.
The Nobility Resurgent (842.M41) - Descendants of the Eldar noble houses deposed during Vect’s ascension, Archons Xelian, Kraillach and Yllithian attempt a coup. They successfully resurrect the ancient Archon El'Uriach, once Emperor of Shaa-dom and the last individual to present a genuine challenge to Vect's supremacy. However, their schemes go horribly awry, leading the Dark City into a period of strife unlike any it has seen for thousands of Terran years. As a result of their actions, a mighty daemonicDysjunction shakes Commorragh to its very foundations and forces Asdrubael Vect himself to take drastic action lest his city slip into oblivion altogether.
The Vandred Atrocity (864.M41) - Archon Thysk leads his Kabal of the Bloody Storm against Vandred, a Feudal World from which the Angels Sanguine Space Marine Chapter recruits new Aspirants. Sure enough, a strikeforce of Angels Sanguine makes planetfall within solar days, yet they are playing into the Archon's hands. Thysk releases a blood-plague acquired at great cost from the Haemonculi Coven of the Altered, a virus that taps directly into the tragic gene curse of Sanguinius' sons. Aware of their madness but unable to stop themselves, the Angels Sanguine butcher and devour those they came to save before falling upon each other, while the Dark Eldar drink in the agony, terror and despair.
The Long Midnight (891.M41) - The Last Hatred ravages the Imperial Hive World Persya in a six-cycle long siege, using arcane technologies to bring pitch darkness to its principal hives and sending Mandrakes and Ur-Ghuls into its confines. Many hive workers go mad with terror, but are taken back to Commorragh nonetheless. It is claimed that during this siege, Kheradruakh the Decapitator selects an unprecedented seven worthy skulls for his macabre lair.
The War of Dark Revelations (990.M41) - Tau forces defending Vigos against the onrushing might of Hive Fleet Kraken make the fatal decision to ally themselves with Urien Rakarth. Despite initial victories alongside their twisted allies, the Tau soon become alarmed by Rakarth's demands that they engage in ever more costly "cultural exchanges." They finally resolve to strike back when he transforms Tau warriors into monstrous Grotesques, and begins demanding a tribute of their sacred Ethereals. The Tau muster their reserves from the world of Rubikon, yet when their blow falls they find Rakarth's fleet already gone, leaving only holograms and sensor-ghosts in its wake. Panicked distress calls begin to issue from the defenseless Rubikon mere solar hours later. These garbled reports tell of twisted, pale-fleshed invaders calling themselves the Prophets of Flesh. Yet it is far too late for the woefully outmaneuvered Tau forces to respond, and they can only listen in anguish to the death-cries of their world.
The Age of Plenty
As the 41st Millennium draws to a close, the galaxy is riven with war as never before. Madness and mayhem consumes whole star systems, affording the denizens of the Dark City ample chance to raid at will. Yet there are those who whisper that even Commorragh is not proof against the horrors that draw near:
Vect's Declaration (994.M41) - Asdrubael Vect looks upon the war-wracked galaxy and declares this to be an age of plenty. The races of realspace are beset by woes, their civilizations battling a never-ending tide of enemies, each more monstrous than the last. Vect orders his lieutenants to take advantage of the galaxy's worsening plight, to strike wherever the lesser races are spread too thin and pillage unopposed. Slaves and riches flow into Commorragh in a tide, and the Dark Eldar revel in their own unmatched might. However, all of this is but a distraction, albeit on an unimaginably vast and complex scale. While Vect's subjects glut themselves upon the hapless peoples of the material dimension, their eyes are turned outward, away from the dark deeds of their ruler.
An Unexpected Ally (995.M41) - The Craftworld of Iyanden, struggling to survive after its horribly narrow victory over Hive Fleet Kraken, is forced to engage WAAAGH! Rekkfist in order to prevent Iyanden being invaded again. Early engagements cause rippling damage on the greenskin empire, but the Orks counter-attack in force. Iyanden is left with no choice but to disturb more and more of their revered ancestors from their deathly slumbers and place their Spirit Stones into mighty Ghost Warriors in order to contain the counter-invasion. Just as all seems lost, the Wraithkind Kabal and the Cult of the Flayed Hand burst through the webway portal at the Craftworld's rear. Fighting alongside Iyanden's Aspect Warriors and their Ghost Warrior allies, the Dark Eldar drive off the Orks. When asked by Iyanden's Council of Seers as to why they intervened, the Dark Eldar reply that they find Iyanden's angst-ridden forays into the world of necromancy extremely entertaining.
Danger Unseen (996.M41) - In the Undercore, the phenomena that beset Khaine's Gate become ever more pronounced. Many of the strange portal’s guards have been driven mad by the whispering voices that now pervade the Gate chamber. Those who have not hacked each other apart or taken their own lives have begun carving "Let us in" into the walls of the chamber, some scratching this unsettling mantra directly into their flesh. The air of the chamber shimmers with half-glimpsed shapes, while Mandrakes and Shaderavens gather in increasing numbers in the tunnels around and about. Overlord Vect continues to suppress knowledge of these phenomena with cruel efficiency, while quietly relocating ever more of his own powerbase to hidden sub-realms behind multiple, well-guarded portals. A number of Archons who had believed their Kabals out of favour are delighted when Vect presents them with reconciliatory gifts of prime territory, ceded from the ownership of the Kabal of the Black Heart and located directly above the Undercore.
Rakarth's Larder (998.M41) - Urien Rakarth recognizes similarities between his kin’s frenzied reaving of realspace and the blood-mad days that led up to the Fall. Ancient beyond mortal comprehension, Rakarth still dimly recalls that apocalyptic event. His memories are enough to prompt him to precautionary action -- though Rakarth has no interest in the survival of either realspace nor his own race, without the living resources that both provide, his personal quest for depravity would come to a crashing end. Thus the Haemonculus begins stockpiling what he views as raw materials, leading raids to seize vast quantities of slaves and dragging them back to the oubliettes in chains. As the scale of his raiding operations increases, Rakarth enlists the aid of several powerful Covens, including the Black Descent, the Coven of Twelve and the Prophets of Flesh. These monstrous cliques claim new sub-realms within the Webway and begin to fill them with countless ranks of stasis-pods that fade away for miles into the gloom. Each contains a living being, stolen from realspace in order to stock the vile larders of the Haemonculi against hard times to come.
Warpsurge (924.999.M41) - A mighty storm front rolls through Warpspace, plucking at the edges of the Labyrinthine Dimension. Arterial passageways shudder uncontrollably while smaller, more damaged offshoots tear or collapse altogether. Khaine’s Gate glows white hot for several moments, and one of the mighty chains that bind it snaps with a sound like a thunderclap. At the exact same moment, every single portal within the Dark City flickers out and then comes back to life, plunging hundreds of thousands into limbo or tearing them apart in transit. The Dark City is soon in uproar, and demands that Overlord Vect take action to prevent a full blown Dysjunction become ever louder. Vect suspects the hand of Lady Malys in this agitation, but his attempts to procure proof are foiled by troupes of Harlequins that appear from nowhere to slay Vect's agents or abduct his informants.
Stealing the Void (978.999.M41) - The Kabal of the Black Heart and the Wych Cult of Strife lead a massive raid against the Imperial Navy moorings at Bakka. The attack causes immense destruction and leaves a swathe of the Imperium open to further raids, yet this is merely a by-product of Vect's true purpose. While the bulk of the raiding forces are fully engaged with the Imperial Navy, a small Dark Eldar force breaks away under the cover of advanced Night Shields. Led by Vect himself, with Lelith Hesperax at his side, this force assails the Inquisitorial stronghold concealed behind Bakka's third moon. In the ensuing battle, the Black Heart successfully kidnaps a handful of very special Imperial personnel. Aberrant anti-psychic mutants, the very presence of these so-called Nulls deadens the tides of the Warp and is anathema to the Daemons of Chaos. The Nulls are smuggled into the depths of the Dark City, destined for grotesque machines arranged around the Undercore. Yet, though the luckless mutants are moved with the greatest care and secrecy, Vect's plan does not go entirely unnoticed, for the eyes of Lady Malys are everywhere.
The Great Eye Opens (995.999.M41) - The Thirteenth Black Crusade surges from the Eye of Terror, Imperial and allied armies flooding from across the Imperium to oppose it. Kabalite raids descend upon realspace in their thousands to take advantage of the mayhem, yet now battle is also joined in the Dark City. Through arcane channels, Lady Malys has learned of the developing situation around Khaine's Gate. Fearing that Vect plans to intentionally trigger its opening and drown his rivals in Daemons, the Archon of the Poisoned Tongue activates assets all across the Dark City. Waves of empyric energy roll from the Eye of Terror to batter Commorragh, collapsing sub-realms and breaching portals. Bands of Kabalites, Wyches and Harlequins loyal to Malys or Vect engage in increasingly bitter skirmishes around the Undercore, oblivious to the irony that both factions are fighting to achieve the same end. Meanwhile, in a chamber filled with swirling madness, hairline cracks spread across Khaine's Gate, and the caged Nulls begin to scream.
Source: http://warhammer40k.wikia.com
#horus heresy#warhammer 40k#dark eldar#eldar#adeptus arbites#adeptus astartes#adeptus mechanicus#adeptus sororitas#adeptus custodes#astra militarum#Adeptus Astra Telepathica#officio assassinorum
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Blake, Keats 6/18
William Blake (1757-1827)
Biography: Though largely dismissed in his own time, William Blake is now recognized as one of the great poets -- and, to a lesser extent, engravers and painters -- of the English Romanticism. As a child, Blake had religious visions: it is rumored that he saw, for instance, “God ‘put his head to the window” and later a “tree filled with angels” (poets.org). At age 10 he attended drawing school before becoming an apprentice to a master engraver; at 21, he enrolled in the Royal Academy, while earning his living as a journeyman engraver (he invented relief etching, or “Illuminated Printing,” which involved acid), employed by booksellers (branchcollective.org, britannica.com). He married an illiterate woman, whom he taught to read and write, but they had no children. A few years later, he witnessed his younger brother Robert die: “Blake saw his brother's spirit rise up through the ceiling, ‘clapping its hands for joy.’ He believed that Robert's spirit continued to visit him and later claimed that in a dream Robert taught him the printing method that he used in Songs of Innocence and other ‘illuminated’ works” (poets.org).
Much of his work concerned religion, but Blake did not adhere to the traditional religious thought at the time: “a religious seeker but not a joiner… Blake loved the world of the spirit and abominated institutionalized religion, especially when it was allied with government…. For Blake, true worship was private communion with the spirit” (britannica.com). Similarly, he lived during the Industrial Revolution, and the mechanization of England is said to have influenced his works as well.
Blake died in 1827 of liver failure, though it appears that this was unidentified at the time, as he referred to his “undiagnosed disease” as “‘that sickness to which there is no name’” (biography.com). He was, for the most part, unappreciated as a poet until after his death: “At the time of Blake's death, he had sold fewer than 30 copies of Songs of Innocence and of Experience,” a major collection of poetry of his (inclusive of “The Tyger,” “Ah! Sun-flower,” “Earth’s Answer,” “The Garden of Love,” etc. (wikipedia.org).
Questions:
Question #1: Where does the sunflower wish to go, and why does the “youth” and the “Virgin” want to follow it? Does this poem display features of typical Romantic works?
“Where the youth pined away with desire
And the pale Virgin shrouded in snow;
Arise from their graves and aspire,
Where my Sun-flower wishes to go.”
Question #2: What is “Earth’s Answer” an answer to? How does this seemingly light and simple content matter compare to Blake’s other darker and more ominous works, like “The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in Sun” and The Marriage of Heaven and Hell?
https://incitingsparks.org/2016/09/06/an-inspiration-for-murder-the-blakean-images-in-popular-culture/
Question #3: Why is the garden a “Garden of Love”? Does the poem contain the answer to this question?
John Keats (1795-1821)
Biography: John Keats was born in London on 31 October 1795, the eldest of Thomas and Frances Jennings Keats’s four children. Although he died at the age of twenty-five, Keats had perhaps the most remarkable career of any English poet. He published only fifty-four poems, in three slim volumes and a few magazines. But over his short development he took on the challenges of a wide range of poetic forms from the sonnet to the Spenserian romance, to the Miltonic epic, defining anew their possibilities with his own distinctive fusion of earnest energy, control of conflicting perspectives and forces, poetic self-consciousness, and, occasionally, dry ironic wit. Although he is now seen as part of the British Romantic literary tradition, in his own lifetime Keats would not have been associated with other major Romantic poets, and he himself was often uneasy among them. The generally conservative reviewers of the day attacked his work as mawkish and bad-mannered, as the work of an upstart “vulgar Cockney poetaster” (John Gibson Lockhart), and as consisting of “the most incongruous ideas in the most uncouth language” (John Wilson Croker). Yet Keats today is seen as one of the canniest readers, interpreters, questioners, of the “modern” poetic project-which he saw as beginning with William Wordsworth—to create poetry in a world devoid of mythic grandeur, poetry that sought its wonder in the desires and sufferings of the human heart. He is very well known for his philosophical theories for poetry “the authenticity of imagination” (questions his own self in regards to whether the encounter did happen or if it was he who imagined the entire moment) and “negative capability” (when man is capable of being in uncertainties- mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason).
Keats befriended Isabella Jones in May 1817. She is described as beautiful, talented and widely read, not of the top flight of society yet financially secure, an enigmatic figure who would become a part of Keats' circle. Throughout their friendship Keats never hesitates to own his sexual attraction to her, although they seem to enjoy circling each other rather than offering commitment. He writes that he "frequented her rooms" in the winter of 1818–19, and in his letters to George says that he "warmed with her" and "kissed her". The trysts may have been a sexual initiation for Keats according to Bate and Gittings. Jones inspired and was a steward of Keats' writing. The themes of "The Eve of St. Agnes" and "The Eve of St Mark" may well have been suggested by her, the lyric Hush, Hush! ["o sweet Isabel"] was about her, and that the first version of "Bright Star" may have originally been for her. In 1821, Jones was one of the first in England to be notified of Keats' death
John Keats died in Rome from tuberculosis on February 23 1821. His body was buried in the city's Protestant Cemetery. His last request was to be placed under a tombstone bearing no name or date, only the words, "Here lies One whose Name was writ in Water." Severn and Brown erected the stone, which under a relief of a lyre with broken strings, includes the epitaph:
This Grave / contains all that was Mortal / of a / Young English Poet / Who / on his Death Bed, in the Bitterness of his Heart / at the Malicious Power of his Enemies / Desired / these Words to be / engraven on his Tomb Stone: / Here lies One / Whose Name was writ in Water. 24 February 1821
Questions:
Question #4: Keats seems to have an infatuation with death and even contemplates suicide in “Ode to Nightingale”. Do you think that Keats displays the idea of the “damned poet” in romanticism throughout the poem to bring weight to his artistic value or do you believe that he was in fact contemplating taking his life ? Do you feel that his words are inviting to others for an end of their life much like the text in The Sorrows of Young Werther were?
“Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—
To thy high requiem become a sod.”
Question #5: Although Keats expresses through “Sleep and Poetry” how he believes that the sublime experience many seek through this wave of romanticism lies in the emotions brought by poetry, he demonstrates to have an immense amount of respect for God and religion. Could this be conflicting for those are searching for something sublime outside of religion? If so, how?
“No one who once the glorious sun has seen,
And all the clouds, and felt his bosom clean
For his great Maker’s presence, but must know
What ’tis I mean, and feel his being glow:
Therefore no insult will I give his spirit 45
By telling what he sees from native merit.”
Question #6: Keats’s theories of “the authenticity of the imagination” and “negative capability” requires the individual to acknowledge that we, as humans, are; A) always learning and should always wants to learn, and B) can easily confuse a dream or a vision with reality if we are not careful. Aside from Werther, what other characters or stories that we have read can we apply these theories to? *It can be other characters from Werther as well.
Arguments:
Blake:
“The Garden of Love” revolves around the corruption of a place representative of youth and purity. The narrator describes the garden as a location that was once a comfort to him: “I used to play in the green.” Upon revisiting it, to his horror, he finds a brooding and unwelcoming chapel literally built on top of his container of tranquil memories and associations; what was once land to an abundance of “sweet flowers” has transformed into a graveyard. This is the imposition of man-made constructs over nature, I think: flowers are nature, and they have been uprooted for corpses -- the literal bodies of men. Furthermore, there is the imposition of religious institutions over the more free-spirited faith of the Romantic era, which typically stemmed from a sense of the sublime or a reverence for nature.
These ideas are demonstrated further in the concluding two lines, in which the narrator describes “Priests in black gowns… walking their rounds”: priests represent both humanity and organized religion, and the way they “[walk] their rounds” suggests an activity of habit, or one that has become a monotonous routine more than a devout act of faith, which in itself reveals the flaws the narrator might see in religious roles. Their gowns are black to contrast the green of what the garden once was; the priests restrict the narrator’s “joys & desires” with “briars,” which are prickly and painful. This last line is a powerful blow to the narrator -- where nature was once a thing of beauty and happiness, its undesirable remnants are now the final and most direct transmitters of pain to the narrator. Physically, briars are painful, but metaphorically, the garden still remains, only now in warped form -- perhaps the most difficult aspect of this anecdote, for the narrator, is humankind’s forsaking of what it once prized (nature) for restrictive forces also inclusive of industrialization.
Keats:
With the movement of Romanticism, many artists arose to provide both an artistic and intellectual concepts towards a better society. Keats developed the concept(s) of “the authenticity of the imagination” promoting truth being held within one’s imagination and “negative capability” in which individuals find comfort in not knowing everything there is about a subject, place, or event. By using the prior knowledge of Keats’ beliefs with “the authenticity of the imagination” and “negative capability”, we can obtain a greater comprehension of “Ode to a Nightingale” and “Sleep and Poetry” by creating analysis and making connections between the poems to the theories. Keats is clear about his sublime experiences with connecting his poetry to his emotions and discovering the unknown (even if that means one must die to achieve it). Both “Sleep and Poetry” and “Ode to a Nightingale” allow us to see how Keats used his platform to display these ideas through the messages of these poems, their tone, and form in which the poem is written.
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No Classic Rock Ballads playlist can be complete without including one of the worlds' most recognized rock ballads of all time. "I Want To Know What Love Is" by Foreigner. Recorded in November 1984 on their Agent Provocateur album. This song topped music charts all over the world. Knocking off Madonna's long-running "Like a Virgin" out of #1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 on February 2, 1985.
It reached the #1 spot in U.S. ,U.K. ,Canada, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, Norway, and Sweden, peaking at #2 in Switzerland and South Africa, as well as reaching the top ten in many other country's. "I Want To Know What Love Is" is listed as one of the Rolling Stone magazine's greatest songs of ALL TIME at #479. The song is also featured in a number of films.
Basically, this is just a typical power ballad that often deals with romantic and intimate relationships, loneliness, sadness, and to a lesser extent, war (protest songs). However, due in part to Lou Gramm's soulful lead vocals and the New Jersey Mass Choir's background vocals, this song has a dreamy, hypnotic feel to it, that sets it apart from other ballads. As such, I edited several clips in this video that would give it that mood. Hope you all enjoy it.
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