Refusing to prune or shape your culture is an act of civilizational suicide. Culture is organic. Culture develops downstream of history, of environments, of people. Art is influenced by the world and, in turn, influences the world. All these things need to be properly conditioned and adapted for the purpose of your nation. Civilization is bound by common pillars. Culture is the foremost of these pillars. Language is the primary means of informational transference. It is at once a virus but also a panacea for the people that stand beneath your banner, and it varies depending on which ideas affect whom.
I cannot overstate the complexity of shaping culture—or its importance. To the end of enduring civilizational health, it is best that your nation has a layered cultural apparatus network. The truth about your weaknesses and failures should be known—but they must be distilled to ensure further patriotism instead of despair and demoralization. Patriotism itself must be properly induced as well. Blind nationalism is often as venomous as an act of genuine sabotage, for refusing to address the malignancy in your culture will see rot spread.
Rot in the form of escapism. Fiction serves a grand purpose. Entertainment is nutrition for the mind and the heart—but watch and see: An empire in decline will drain the teats of escapism and euphoria to dull the crushing ache of hopelessness—and the style of the art will exceed its substance by far. The zeitgeist that follows must be carefully monitored and adjusted at all times, but with not so heavy a hand that culture itself is impeded and wilts.
Delicate. Impossible. Torturous. Paradoxical. All words I can use to describe the great task for the state’s bureau of culture. Yet, it must be done. If there is a chance at all to ensure the continued survival of an empire, it must be done.
But even then, how high the odds of failure. How high. For rarely are the masters of state so inspired—nor in alignment of culture as those beneath them. And in the partitions of class are the first fissures does that cancer named balkanization become manifest…
—The Seeds of Sin, by Master-Statistician Jessie Montez
VIII-8
Mythology
“Is that underfed child supposed to be me?” Shiv squinted at his theatrical counterpart from the height of the mezzanine. A projection of animated flame and amplified sound imprinted scene and song across the vastness of Charhal Theater. Even so, the deafening roar of whistles, applause, and far-flung flowers proved more than a distraction—and forced the performers to assume a brief intermission.
Two figures held the stage, bowing to the bellowing crowds. A flowing carpet of pale mist crawled over their ankles in a poor replication of the atmosphere of Torontus, but that did little to break the atmosphere for anyone but Shiv. There were eight hundred Pathbearers filling the seats below and another fifty littering the privileged little boxes that warped the second floor atop the rabble. A fervent heat ignited the air, building and spreading across individuals deficient of Social Skills or self-awareness. Shiv felt the invasive skill crash—and then shatter against his Harbinger like a glass arrow greeting plate. The lead performer’s Acting Skill affected Veronica even less. Despite this, she seemed genuinely interested in the play, leaning forward and scrutinizing every detail, every movement, every syllable much in the same manner Adam might stalk someone across a battlefield.
The corner of her lip threatened to quirk upward from his statement. He was pointed in the direction of her amusement, but hadn’t reached the point of comedy yet. Still, it meant that she agreed with his assessment to some extent: the lead actor was far too slight of stature. Even with illusory augmentations applied to his stature and physique, he was a poor pretender to the Deathless’s genuine article, and the way he sang in bombastic baritone made Shiv cringe.
Not helping things was the automaton serving in place of the Tarrasque. The enchantments imbued upon the bot actor’s costume were plentiful and remarkable—made it look like a much smaller version of the great beast Shiv had “defeated.” The thing was, he didn't best the Tarrasque in a lyrical battle—and it most certainly wasn’t so overwhelmed by Shiv’s patriotism and persuasion that it converted to being one of the Ascendancy’s faithful on the spot.
“Hero-Baritone Marc Hvsselston was selected by the Office of Cultural Management for being closest to your likeness in appearance and behavior,” Veronica began. “He may lack your size, your skills, your penchant for vulgarity, your casual desire to commit violence, your refusal to groom or wash yourself properly—” She paused as Shiv used only his middle finger to scratch his nose, and accidentally pointed it in her direction. “But in all other aspects, he stands quite close to you indeed.”
“What other aspects?” Shiv spat, glowering at the actor. “Guy has nothing. I mean, where even is his chin? Did he lose it with the rest of his muscles? And when the hell did I start wearing piss armor?”
“It is a dramatized version of your Harbinger,” Kathereine explained dryly.
“I know. But my Harbinger is golden. What he has is shiny piss.”
Veronica shot him a look from the corner of her eye. “I believe you’re just picking at bones now.”
“No, I’m not. Who exactly runs this Office of Cultural Management? Send me their address. I need to have a talk with them.”
“No,” she said, struggling not to smirk. “You will do no such thing.”
“You’re enjoying this shit, aren’t you?” Shiv spat. “Not the play; fucking annoying me. You brought me here just to punish and piss me off for playing with the Faceless Queen without inviting you, huh?”
“No. But it is a welcome byproduct of your education.” Veronica sighed, like a woman savoring the aftertaste of her wine. “Why do you think we are actually here? Why do you think I brought you to see The Redemptive Deathless In: THE BROKEN NORTH!?”
“Well, with how much Kathereine’s been complaining about everyone’s singing—and for once, I would agree with her cause all this moaning and warbling is making my skeleton want to crawl out from my mouth—it’s because you want me to psychologically torture everyone involved in this production into committing suicide to spare the Republic any more shame?”
Veronica’s faint amusement died as her expression shifted toward a place of worry. She questioned if he was serious with a look, and reached for her brandy when she realized he wasn’t joking. The Songbringer broke into cackling laughter as she cheered on her far descendent for the first time he could remember. “Quite so! Quite so! Go down there, boy! Show him what a real beast sounds like. Make that false baritone a soprano for a change by gelding him. Show him that maneuver you performed on that Culturist of yours.”
“No, Grandmother,” Veronica said, fighting back a hiss of genuine outrage. “Enough. Shiv. You will not harm anyone in this theater.”
Her glare was hard with wrathful weight, but Shiv only smirked in response. “Of course not. But you know, this is your fault. I’ve basically been your psychological terrorist and personal butcher for the past two months. When something becomes a pattern, you kind of just accept that to be natural, you know?”
“He has a point,” Kathereine noted, establishing a temporary alliance with Shiv to bully her granddaughter. “You never let the boy serve a constructive purpose until only recently. You of all people should know better than to train someone to be an attack dog and then be offended when they refuse to accept the sanctity of your carpet—or the legs of your guests.”
“You are here today so that I can develop your talents and broaden your understanding,” Veronica continued, ignoring both of their attempts to bait out her rage. “Look at your counterpart again—and observe him seriously this time. Think. Why him? Why this portrayal? What is the worth of this play? And do not be glib this time.”
“I wasn’t being glib before; I actually thought you wanted me to mentally break another guy.”
“I don’t. Now quiet, and think.”
He wasn’t quiet for long with the question being easy to answer and all. Shiv didn’t even need to discuss things with the Harbinger. The Republic loved its propaganda; the state-sponsored bullshit was intellectual and emotional slop for the masses, and Shiv’s inclusion in the Republic’s cultural-political canon served to strengthen Yellowstone’s civilizational morale.
“Aren’t you afraid the bullshit might break the facade at some point?” Shiv asked. He replied with a question, but it was enough to get his understanding across. “This isn’t actually who I am; not really what happened either. Terrence can kind of understand a few things aside from set lists and ingredients, but there’s something deeply wrong with his attention span—felling guy refuses to read anything that isn’t cooking related.”
“Quite remarkable that you managed to form a semi-paternal bond with the creature and teach it rudimental literacy at all, I would say,” Kathereine muttered.
“Disturbing is what it is,” Veronica added. “But yes, it is, in your crude expression, ‘bullshit.’ The thing is, people love bullshit. People love the colorful falsehood—a good story that warms their hearts and makes them feel safe. And it took great effort to rehabilitate your image and include you in our cultural canon. You. Adam. Even that Abyssal.”
“Her name is Uva. And you two will never meet alone.”
Veronica hummed with amusement. “Made me seem like that much of a villain, did you?”
“I didn't need to. She was the Starhawk’s Avatar while Roland was out. Your fuck-up almost led to the Eldest eating her from the inside. Uva’s reason for hating you is all personal, all reasonable. No mythology needed.”
“Ah. Understandable, then.” Veronica’s acknowledgment was succinct and devoid of shame. “It is good that you brought up mythology. Such a thing matters for an empire as much as it matters for individuals. The bullshit you speak is narrative fuel. And you should know that the System loves a good story as much as the people, and should the people be driven to make a specific tale or uniting motif manifest…”
An elevated understanding of this theater struck Shiv. “Specific Feats. Levels. Skills. Rewards from the System. The unreal gets made real because people act on their belief and behave accordingly.” Shiv blinked as he processed that. “And that worship fuels the Ascendants too. All this is… is like… cultural horticulture.”
Junior Lorescribe 67 > 69
Suffer the Implacable Dialectic 181 > 183
The Councilwoman’s eyebrows rose ever so slightly, but it was Kathereine that reacted with a hearty chuckle. Her incandescent manifestation that hovered above her granddaughter like a mirage nodded giddily in agreement. “How very poetic of you, boy. There might yet be a thespian in you enough to cast that mongrel off the stage. Why, if you give yourself to me, I will make a performer of you with ease. Even if you have no grand talent, I will spare you of the drivel that filled the arteries of these fetid modernists and their adherence to ‘emotional realism.’ Disgusting wretches. Realism. As if the people wish to be deprived of fantasy.”
“Grandmother,” Veronica intoned. The Songbringer continued complaining to herself and whispered offers to Shiv—singing lessons in trade for mass murder. The offer was made in such a disarmingly charming way that he found himself smiling for a half-beat—before he remembered who he was talking to, and the threat she posed to his heart and sanity. “But back to mythology,” Veronica continued. “You are no longer a danger to our people; you are another extension to our pride and a representation of our righteousness. You were not bested by force, but by the fact that our faith and beliefs are just—that it is we who are the honored ones. We, and no one else.”
“Arrogant,” Shiv responded.
“Extremely so. But invaluable and inevitable when your religion is engineered from the ground up and the gods are in desperate need of reinforcement to their lore.” Veronica turned back toward the stage as the cheering died and the performance began anew. “As are the people. There needs to be a common goal—something that is above question. Something that everyone in the Republic fights to guard and carry, using their lives as kindling if necessary.”
Once more, the false Shiv began to sing, and his voice was so thick with emotion that the one he was portraying started gagging. “Oh, Broken Moon… He’s killing me up here, Veronica. Now he's singing about how lost and monstrous I was without Cripple, how the Starhawk saved me, how Longinus sacrificed himself and underwent a metamorphosis to change me. What is this shit?”
“It is your place in the Republic now,” Veronica said simply. “I cannot sell the truth of you. I cannot sell the truth of anyone. It is cultural poison.”
“Wait? Is this a Montez thing? That whole ‘it’s civilizational suicide not to shape culture’ thing?”
Now it was Veronica’s turn to gag. “Never speak of that mentally ill creature in my presence again.”
“Montez?” Shiv repeated—mainly because he wanted to be an asshole.
She nonchalantly flicked her wrist and splashed her brandy in his direction. He opened his mouth and sucked the liquid out of the air in an instant. “Thank you.”
“Insufferable savage.” Yet, her frown wasn’t deep enough to be true.
“Why can’t you sell the truth of me?” Shiv prodded—genuinely curious as to her reasoning. “Is it because of my girth? My size? My… roundth?”
“Insufferable,” she repeated. “No. Any number of overbloated Martial oafs can be made to look like you or larger. And we have more than a few High Heroes that might be able to Delve to match your Physicality outright within the next decade.”
“Decade? We don’t even have ten months before we need to fight the fuckers from another dimension. And think about how powerful I’ll be in a decade.” Shiv grinned. Veronica very much did not. “And what do you have against Montez, anyway? She seems like she makes a lot of sense. A little depressing, but still.”
Veronica's scoff came before her words did. “Because I remember that poor girl. Let me tell you something, Deathless. There are few things more pathetic than using your gifts on yourself. She had the intellect. She could see patterns and numbers no one else could, and she used that to abuse herself until she got herself thrown into an asylum, and then she solved her equation. At no point did she reach out for true help. At no point did she stand in her own corner. She was her own abuser all the way to the very end, and she deprived the Republic of her services when they could have used more of her, especially a more mature, wiser version of her.”
An explosive guffaw shook the theater, silencing the performance temporarily as heads snapped toward the mezzanine. Shiv struggled to contain his laughter, and Veronica watched him with squinted eyes. She waited for his response, and when he finally mastered himself, he couldn’t stop shaking his head. “Godsdamn, Veronica! A bitch can't even kill herself in peace without you spitting on her grave, huh? And what's this ‘service to the Republic’ stuff? Everyone's just a thing to you, aren't they? Useful, not useful. Asset or problem.” He gestured at the distant stage as the singing began anew. “And I think she has a point here too: this isn't organic culture shaping at all. It's forced and vulgar. Anyone with half a mind can probably stand what we're trying to do here. It's nothing but blatant propaganda.”
“The feeling it offers is more than enough for countless more-than-you-can-think Deathless. You imagine yourself to be someone who understands people because you've broken a few with your words and your fists. I'm here to tell you that people are disappointments in the best of times. If you feed a wise man or a woman a diet from birth, they will grow accustomed to a plague. They will accept the propaganda because the propaganda is a safety blanket that reassures them, but there's more than one layer of theater going on.”
“Yeah? How’s that?”
“There are the true believers, and then there are the cynics,” Veronica explained, holding up two fingers. “You have to be careful about the cynics. You have to remove them, because they themselves are entropic. That is my greatest problem with Montez. She was ruled by defeat. She was crippled by her fears, by visions of despair and apocalypses to come. She was desperate to perform that perfect dance, convinced that every single failure was a projection of an inevitable end. Not so, in reality. Not nearly. But her suggested measures would have seen the Republic made brittle and strangled. So much control, so much resource allocation, and constant management would cause a cascading series of collapses when even one sector is mismanaged. No, parts of culture are bottom-up instead of top-down. The state itself cannot enforce everything. We can, however, sow certain seeds and wait for people to respond. And we can oppress narratives we dislike with ease.”
Shiv nodded slowly. “Shaping the environment toward a more desired truth, huh?”
“Such is the role of mass media and sophistry. But you asked me earlier, why can I not sell the truth of you? The same reason why I can't sell the truth of myself. The same reason why I can't sell the truth of any cynic. Because too many of us see the foundational nature of things, the unvarnished reality of things. Imagine, if you will, that everything between us is air to the public. Imagine that everyone knows the bargains we've struck, the arrangement we have, the games we play against each other. You, who look at me as a safety umbrella against a man so far beyond anyone on this planet, few can even imagine his power, while also seeking to subvert it from within. And me, using you as an instrument of violence to further my own ends against those who are ostensibly my people—while also pressing down on you enough to keep you suppressed. Imagine if all the world was made up of people like you and I.”
A memory instead of a vision resonated inside of Shiv. He saw the Tutorial. He saw the orcs. They were reality unvarnished. They were the purest expression of the System, and their narratives were violence, psychopathy, subversion, and intellect. No need for propaganda, yet bereft of a true common culture beyond similar urges from their progenitor.
“We'd make pretty good orcs, wouldn't we?” Shiv said, part in insult, part in truth.
It was good enough of a jab that Veronica gave him a nod, acknowledging his strike. “A wretched thought that has occurred to me time and again. Instead of Montez, you should broaden your literature. You should read older works. You should think about how previous empires rose and fell. Statistical ripples alone and deliberate cultural shaping is only a small part of the great tapestry of nation building. But if there was one thing the girl was right about, it is this: people need to believe in something before they can make it real. And before you employ your sarcasm against me, I mean this in specific and figurative contexts.”
“Ruined my fun,” Shiv grunted. “I was gonna complain about how someone doesn’t need to believe I can hurt them for me to do a little body-remodeling.”
“All too predictable,” she replied. “But now you see the need for mythology, I want you to use and apply that to noble houses.”
“Like with Stormhalt?” Shiv asked. “Don't they count as cynics? Usually, the nobles see past the curtain, at least deep enough that they know a part of this is all built on a lie.”
“They are faux cynics. They are bound by another node of mythology, one we have also carefully engineered for them. They are nobility only in the eyes of the Yellowstone Republic. Without us, they are little more than squabbling warlords and, likely within a generation or two, not even that. Butchered down, for as tribe falls against tribe and outsiders devour the scattered city-states standing in our ashes. Now, the nobility are faux cynics because they are hopeful, above the common Pathbearer, in that they see themselves as anointed. They see themselves as honored above the other honored, that they are special because their bloodline or their family, or someone before them, someone in relation to them, has bestowed upon them a grace, a measure of higher power that no one else can possess.”
Shiv considered everything, but there was still something that eluded him. “Why House Stormhalt? Why me? Why non-violence?”
“Because since you already own their patriarch, you might as well take hold of the rest of the household anyway. I know about the Inland Embassy, boy. As for why you, well, it's partially answered already, but also because this will be good practice for you. I want you to be more than a brute, just like you desire to be more than a violent animal. You've grown. You've taken considerable steps to emerge from that quandary, yet you always have a thought in the back of your mind, a refuge you can retreat to. You can choose bloodshed unlike anyone else because you are not punished by bloodshed. You are not punished by death, and so you can make a rational, insane, suicidal choice all at once—and have it be another’s problem.”
“Okay. So if I settle this family feud without getting bloody, what then?”
“Then you take on another role.”
Shiv grimaced. “Yay. What’s my reward for work? More work.”
“Welcome to being an actual statesman, Deathless,” she said dryly. “If you wished to be an idle lout, you should’ve asked to be born as a noble.”
“Like you?”
“Tragically not; you are like me enough that we are here together, aren’t we?”
He had to stop himself from throwing himself over the railing. “That’s the worst thing you’ve ever said to me. And you turned me to dust with one of your letters.”
That reply brought an end to their dialogue, but rather than silence, there was music, and there was baritone. There was the piss-cloaked Deathless proclaiming the glories of Yellowstone and the automaton Tarrasque kneeling in front of him. One redeemed monster saving another, a savior twice over to his own soul and to the beast that was his spiritual kindred. It was all drivel, all madness. No Tarrasque was like that. The truth was stranger and sillier than anyone could imagine, but then Shiv started thinking about the truth. If the true reason behind the Tarrasque's pacification and the North's submission was unveiled, then what damage might that inflict on the Republic?
The Jotun were monsters. They kept more slaves than there was sand at any beach. They made weapons of people and spent them without care, but they were also a vessel of mythology unto themselves. The Republic used them to hone warriors, to enforce shape upon their own civilization, for a reliable enemy was an anvil unlike any other. The gods of blood and sacrifice were almost similar, but they were powerful, and during their times of unity, they were actually a true threat to the Republic. It was a mercy, then, that the southern gods hated one another more than they lusted for expansion—such was the entire reason why Shiv could turn them against each other. The Wolf of No Suns was the most focused of their cohort, ambitious and desperate to reclaim some measure of dignity in the face of his divine father. However, his siblings and rivals didn't share the same desire and more often than not performed raids on their own kin, while homely offering pittances in terms of resources and manpower to this Northern Crusade.
And as the music played on and the audience cheered, the dullards that they were, drunk on the falsehoods of empire, Shiv understood that this was everyone's fate. Everyone created mythology. Everyone lied to themselves. At first, he thought it was degenerate, an act of supreme weakness, but then his Harbinger urged him to think deeper, to settle into that silence and void and find a proper explanation rather than just refuge in judgment. He wanted to feel better than people sometimes. It made it easier to hurt them, and there was a measure of spite that constantly lingered deep inside his breast, a spite left over from his days as a pariah.
Polite society had ostracized him, and there came pain, but also mercy, in that decision. He wasn't so affected by their mythology, but he was affected by mythology nonetheless. He told himself that he was to be his own master, that he was going to decide his own fate, that he was the only strength in this world that mattered, a pillar bearing his own destiny.
But that too had been falsehood. That too had been mythology. He had won, but he'd also bled and lost so many times. Georges. Blackedge. All those who died during his struggles. Adam’s torment at the Challenger’s hand.
Nihilist: Grandma is a piece of shit, but the thing is, just because someone's a piece of shit doesn't mean they can't be right or that you can't learn from them and master what they've mastered.
For once, the Harbinger concurred with the scintillating flame—a skill born in emotional terrorism and Psychology most of all mingling with its kin of Philosophy, Cooking, and Pyromancy. “A performance for a civilization… not so much different than the thoughts we cast upon ourselves. If exposed to the full truth of who we are at times, it would break our legend. It would break us. There is a use for the lie, a medicinal one, rather than a poisonous end, but it depends on the dosage and it depends on how you address the toxicity inflicted in the aftermath.”
As the performance came to a close, the Tarrasque and Shiv raising their voices in a duet, praising the Ascendancy while the actors portraying all thirteen of the Republic's gods hovered overhead, bestowing their blessings upon the two faithful monsters, turning away from their path of monstrosity toward the end of being faithful toward a better tomorrow for all.
Shiv coughed. “Corny felling shit. Kathereine, you sure you’re fine with that actress playing you?”
“I will relish her death. But before that, I will break her lovers and children and take them for my own.”
“And there we go.” Shiv sniffled. “There’s the lovely lack of consent right there. Classic.”
“No, you will not, Grandmother,” Veronica said. “And you stop agitating her.”
“I have to screw with someone. It’s your fault for never biting down on the bait. Speaking of—what to do when your enemy is nothing but mythology?”
“You speak of the Faceless Queen?” Veronica smirked. “Now that’s the right question. And I think we will uncover this together. Perhaps she is listening now—but knowledge doesn’t prevent certain mistakes. And she has to come forward. She has to engage. That, if nothing else, is a consistent behavior on her end. But practice first—instead of just pressing into injuries and emotionally terrorizing someone with the safety blanket of bloodshed behind you, deal with House Stormhalt. Settle their inheritance dispute. Take hold of them. Make something of them. Help them regain a measure of dignity—as a shadow behind the house.”
“Alright,” Shiv said. “Guess I’ll be clearing that weird errand while I handle your problem in the south and our problems back at—”
“I will see twelve more Poly-Magi regiments dispatched to reinforce Gate Piety as well. If the Queen is to be present, we would want her life to be at risk from assassins—nor would we like her to be a risk to anyone else’s life, would we?”
Like everything with Veronica, everything she said could be understood as a threat—but also a reward. And the Poly-Magi had been invaluable…
“Only if they’re a bit more like Ircanos than your advisor lackey.”
“Oh, of course, Deathless. Like calls to like, and your Gate is proving useful in another way—just like how you are helping us purge the wrongful elements of our society. Some problem children go south, and some go toward the coast.”
“And you always win, huh?” Shiv asked.
“Always.” Veronica took another sip from her now empty glass—for sake of the vibe, as a performance all her own. “Now. If you want to learn how to win, always, then start expanding your understanding of people. Of who they imagine themselves to be, and who they actually are. After mastering that, well, you will see violence as the refuge of the incompetent or desperate.”
“Or just cruel and mad,” Shiv said, brushing Kathereine and the Ascendants with his words.
“Yes. Or the cruel and mad.”
And through it all, the Faceless Queen remained absent—and Shiv was starting to get a feeling that vacancy was more a deliberate choice caused by Veronica and Kathereine’s presence than just a happenstance of the moment. Well, Queen, here come the consequences of trying to use me so much; got a lot more choices than one. Be figuring out what lies you tell yourself soon.