"It’s finished, it’s done. You can’t take loved away.”

- Tamsyn Muir, Nona the Ninth

💝 Thank you for 1k. Special thanks to my lovely friend @sessjudoodles for helping sketch the line work for the Albertaceretops :)

Huevember day 6: Emperor John Gaius

—

The only splash of colour was an enormous portrait of the Emperor as Kindly Master, with an expression of beatific peace.

As seen hanging on the wall of the Eight House’s quarters in Canaan House ✨⚔️💀⚔️✨

Obsessed with that bit where P— told John to be a bad wizard. That they could write the history books later to say he was good, but what he needed to do now was to scare the shit out of people. What he needed was leverage.

Because that's what he did! That's exactly what he did. He got his leverage, he played the bad wizard, he scared the shit out of everyone. And then after the dust settled, when he was the last man standing, he wrote the history books to say he was good.

And like. The thing that gets me is. After all that, he named her Pyrrha.

They won. It wasn't worth it.

reread the epilogue of gideon. god. the desolation. harrow throwing herself down to her god's mercy. harrow asking — harrow, the nun! — how dare you ask me to live with it?

how

dare

you

and he doesn't kill her even though she wishes he did. note the emphasis: you, the god i worshipped along with my beloved, how dare you. you, the emperor who is supposed to be almighty? you, the king, who is supposed to be kind? you, the scourge of death?

the entirety of harrow the ninth is set in stone the second john says "i can't".

Why is Gideon not a necromancer even though her dad is literally the necromancer prime (tm)?

My unserious answer is Wake’s body would have physically rejected a necromancer pregnancy - she’s just that stubborn.

My real answer is Wake was pregnant in space. Space is famously devoid of thanergy. My understanding is that the reason the houses have necromancers and the colonies don’t for the most part is not some coincidence or cosmic gift - it’s a consequence of the resurrection. The houses are thanergy planets and so the people there are soaked in death energy even pre-conception. Also they all have previously dead, then resurrected ancestors, so that probably fucked with their reproduction for ages - literally every one of them came originally from an egg that died and then was resurrected. Harrow is a necromancer because her parents somehow infused her embryo with the death energy from 200 kids - so there is definitely a relationship between thanergy presence around conception and necromantic ability.

I even wonder if John can pass on necromancy genetically (I guess necromancy isn’t fully genetic but w/e), since his necromancy is the only one that didn’t come from dying and being resurrected/coming from a thanergetic line/planet, but was instead apparently just bestowed upon him by the soul of the earth herself (?). And Wake, presumably, comes from the billionaires that escaped from the earth before the apocalypse/resurrection/thanergy bloom, so it’s extremely unlikely if not impossible for her to give birth to a necromancer. But in any case, I’m pretty sure she spent her entire pregnancy, from fertilization to ill-timed delivery, in space. Why didn’t she land on the ninth before giving birth? She could have cosplayed as a pilgrim and had a much easier time of it I would think, but instead she stayed in her ship the whole time. Gideon wasn’t exposed to any thanergy (unless you count the presence of lyctors from her mom’s fucked up polycule lolll) from conception to birth, and that probably negated any potential she had to be born with necromancy.

I’m pretty sure Wake knows all of this though, which means that my serious answer is in fact that Wake physically refused to birth a necromancer - she’s just that stubborn.

never meet your heroes except it’s harrowhark nonagesimus, most devout lil nun, meeting her god and he does nothing when his bestie tries to murder her, he nearly has a threesome in front of her, he tries to give her paternal sex advice and, on top of that, his biscuits fucking suck

I think one of my favourite parts about the locked tombs worldbuilding is that an impressive amount of its holes can be explained by going "yeah John was just kinda being weird here" like.

Why doesn't everyone just use guns??? Why is there a space monarchy??? Why didn't ANYONE figure out how to make paper??? Are there cows??? why are we using human leather, John you can FAMOULSY do necromancy on cows SO WHY HUMAN LEATHER?? It's been 10000 years since the whole nuclear disaster, surely by now one could have cleaned up earth, maybe even reversed climate change using their absurd god like powers??? We know that John's magic goes further than what we've been shown, he made (admittedly fucked up) flowers grow before, he can keep the sun running, HE CAN CONTROL THE COWS, even Abigail says that there could be branches of spirit magic we don't even know about yet just because nobody was given the chance to research them like.

John Gaius you stupid motherfucker ARE YOU EVEN A NECROMANCER OR DID YOU NOT BOTHER TO CHECK IF YOU CAN DO MORE???

this is why john locked her in the tomb btw

The fact that Jod has hopped in and out of the head military ships of the Nine Houses for like 9000yrs is a trip for me. So like if your grandpa survives his time in the Cohort he comes home and was like…. “I saw God eating peanuts in an admiralty meeting, once.” And that is like the family legend/brag for like hundreds of years.

Even worse (or better?) if your ancestor banged Jod. Does he let those people survive? Or does a Lyctor or high ranking officer find a way for them to conveniently die a “heroic death in battle”?

It’s got to be so weird for people of the Nine Houses who worship a god who hasn’t come back to their solar system for 9000yrs but your random cousin of a cousin of a friend’s uncle saw God and the Saint of Patience making out in a broom closet during his time on the Erebus.

the Mithraeum during Nona the Ninth: a summary

Nona the Ninth (2022)

tlt doodles (her divine highness au) I wanted to add more but I ran out of steam 😔

Guys. The cows were about how if people don't like you or don't want to listen to you, they'll decontextualise your actions and use them to discredit you in any situation. How doing one (1) memorable bad thing can be held against you forever. The cows are about looking a council of world leaders in the eyes, telling them we're all being robbed of our futures by megacorporations, showing them the receipts and numbers and photographic evidence, and being told none of your arguments matter actually because you're The Cow Guy.

The cows are about how people don't forgive, not really.

Thinking about the way that John Gaius went from being an avid anti-capitalist, environmentalist, and humanist; the only person left in existence who may have been able to keep Earth and all of her children alive through the coming apocalypse and had the drive to keep working on saving the world even when it seemed hopeless, no matter what obstacles were thrown his way... To becoming not only the person who pulled the trigger to personally kill the Earth and everyone left on it, but also becoming the god-king of a colonialist murdering empire of his own making, killing every planet that crosses his path? I'm chewing through my power cable and it's gonna make me short circuit

Ok I need someone smarter than me to be meta about why John changed Gideon’s name in the way he did. Not that he changed it at all, that one I can understand from his perspective, but specifically why he changed it to something with clear gender markers.

Gideon Nav is perfectly neutral bordering on traditionally masculine, but KirionA gaiA is clearly female. Gaia is literally the feminized version of Gaius according to Latin grammar. In a society of John’s own creation that is apparently past most of our current gender and sexuality norms, how and why would he choose that? Is this another way to show that he’s not as progressive as he thinks he is? Is it about him actually not understanding Gideon at all and forcing her into a weird box? Is there some kind of cultural or linguistic aspect I’m not seeing here? Is it nothing and I’m overthinking? What is going on?

I always come back to how fucking weird Ulysses and Titania are to me post resurrection. Like there's something fundamentally wrong about them and I really need to know what it is.

John said that when the nuclear apocalypse happened he held everyone's soul in place, as they died he made sure to preserve them so later he could go on to resurrect them, right?

But how did that work for Ulysses and Titania? They were dead long before John even got necromancy in the first place, there's no way he could have held on to their souls, but they were still part of his saints post resurrection? Can John get souls that are already dead back? I mean fuck I don't even know if the river existed back then so? Did he lie about something again? Are they just constructs? Are they his weird Necro Cav OCs that he controlled to have insight on what would be brought to a lyctor but not god?

I mean, man, we talk about how fucked up it is he rewrote his friends memories and gave them new names but U— and T— were just... some people whose bodies were donated to help with earths last hope. And he just makes them his servants and turns their legacy into the galaxy's biggest factory for child soldiers?

That's just weird, man.