Why Ask Me? - The Book of Chuang Tzu

What do I think about Taoism (from this one book?)

I find it calming, there is much I like. It seems to have a very clear dark side, or at least dark-grey side which is there in the text but which most Western interlocutors seem to either not see or just keep quiet about.

Though that seems to go for the majority of religious when you actually read the text. The people living them are usually really living a complex synthesis of the better parts of scripture mixed with broadly pro-social stuff that makes sense. The whacko puritans you see acting like loons are usually people who have actually read the books all the way through and are following them exactly.

I like the stuff about darkness. I like darkness generally as a theme. It feels true to me and more true when talking about deep things.

When I imagine the darkness of Taoism I think of it as akin to the darkness of my own mind in the moments before an idea or perception brings itself into focus or allows itself into being.

When I try to trace back the originating influences for an idea, I often find some of them, traces in the world. But I can't find all of them, and I can never 'see' an idea before it exists. It is like the explosive ignition of a firework. It cannot be observed directly. As soon as its effects come into play they expand outward through the neural nets, forming connections and inferences, but the original moment is something that must happen in timeless darkness, unmeasured.

Because I spend a lot of time making things up, I spend a lot of time essentially praying to darkness. Or at least, waiting. Paused with a pen and a blank pad and nothing on my mind, trying to hold the elements of a problem in my mind but without actually focusing on the solution. Present but not present. Waiting for something.


.....................................

I like this from 'Heaven's Tao'


"Duke Huan was sitting in his hall reading a book. The wheelwright Pien was down below in the courtyard making a wheel. He put down his chisel and hammer, went up to the hall and asked Duke Huan, 'May I ask you, Sir, what words you are reading?'

Duke Huan replied, 'The words of the sages.'

'Are these sages still living?'

'They are long dead,' said Duke Huan.

'Then, Sir, what you are reading is nothing but rubbish left over from these ancient men!'

'How dare you, a wheelwright, comment on what I read! If you can explain this, fine, if not you shall die!' thundered Duke Huan.

The wheelwright Pien replied, 'Your Lordship's servant looks at it from the perspective of his own work. When I work on a wheel if I hit too softly, pleasant as this is, it doesn't make for a good wheel. If I hit furiously, I get tired and the thing doesn't work! So, not too soft, not too vigorous, I grasp it in my hand and hold it in my heart. I cannot express this by word of mouth, I just know it. I cannot teach this to my son, nor can my son lernt it from me. So for seventy years I have gone along this path and here I am still making wheels. The ancient ones, when they died, took their words with them. Which is why I can state that what Your Lordship is reading is nothing more than rubbish left over from those ancient ones!'"

....

The irony of a man obsessed with books, discussing a book in which a central concept is that knowledge from books should not be respected, online, via a textual medium, is far from lost on me.

Still, the wheelwright is right. Books, and words generally, are delusions, or just a kind of arrant programme running over the texture of reality, like a bug running over a cake. They are not things you should believe in, certainly not things you should treat as absolute.

Whether I stand any chance of applying this wisdom to my own life; probably not. I would have to say I have failed, and am failing, in my war, with words, against words. The words are winning.


............


I really liked this part from 'Does Heaven Move?' in which the Yellow Emperor plays his cosmic music, though I am pretty sure I don't understand it, though it is gone over in the text, I like it for the beauty of it;

"At one moment clear, at one obscure, the yin and the yang are in harmony, the sounds pour forth. It is as if I were an insect awakening from hibernation or a crash of thunder; without end, without beginning, at one, death, at one, life, at one, finished, at one, surging forth. It is constant but there is no dependable pattern, this is what alarmed you.

Next I played it with the harmony of yin and yang, and illuminated it by the light of sun and moon. The notes changed from short to long, from gentle to harsh. They all hung upon a single harmony but were not determined by anything. The notes filled the valleys and the gorges, and it was useless for you to try to block them out or protect your spirit, for such notes move as they wish.

The notes are measured and are clear and sharp. So the ghosts and the spirits hide in the dark and the sun moon and stars follow their own courses. I stopped when the music stopped but the sounds flowed on. This worried you; you could not understand it; you looked for them, but could not see them; you went after them, but could not find them. You were stunned and so you stood before the universal witness of the Tao or leaned against an old tree and groaned. Your eyes could not understand and so failed you; your strength collapsed beneath you. I could not catch it. Your body dissolved into emptiness and you lost control and so achieved release. It was this which wore you out.

In the final section, I used notes that did not wear you out. I brought them together spontaneously. This seemed like chaos, like a thicket sprung from one root, like natural music produced from no one knows what, moving yet going nowhere, hidden in deep darkness. Some call this death, others life. Some call it fruit, others the flower. The notes moved, flowed, separated and changed, following no clear pattern. Understandably, the world is uncertain about them.

The world sought advice from the sages, believing the sage to know true shape and true fate. When Heaven has not wound up the spring of life, but the five vital organs are all there ready, this is what is known as the music of Heaven, which delights the heart without words. So the Lord of Yen praised it saying, "Listening for it, you do not hear it; looking for it, you do not see its shape. It fills all Heaven and Earth, embracing the six directions."

You desire to year it, but it is beyond you, which is what confused you."

...

I like its attitude towards people and the public, which seems ever more meaningful today as we live in our infinite maze of glass. This is from 'Leaving the World Open';

...

"Ordinary people are happy when someone agrees with them and distressed when others disagree with them. This happiness and distress comes from the desire to be marked apart from the common crowd, a desire set within their hearts. But if they have set their hearts on distinguishing themselves from the rest, how does this draw them out beyond the rest? Better for go with everyone and be at peace rather than struggle, for, regardless of how clever you are, the others have more skills.

...

There is no way out of it. Trying to be special only highlights the ways in which you are like everyone else. We are all out here posting our travel pics, trying to be unique in exactly the same ways. Why bother?

...

From 'Heaven and Earth'

"The son who agrees with his parents in everything they say and do is viewed by the ordinary people as an unworthy son. The minister who agrees with everything his ruler says and does is viewed by the ordinary people as an unworthy minister. Yet people don't seem to understand the truth of this. Those who agree with everything that the people say and think good whatever the people think is good, are never called yes-men or sycophants. Does this mean popular opinion is of greater authority than parents or rulers? Someone is immediately angry if you tell him he is a yes-man or a sycophant. Nevertheless, throughout this life he will be a yes-man and all his life he will be a sycophant. His stories are designed to agree with people, his turns of phrase are intended to impress them. From start to finish, from beginning to end he never disagrees with them. He displays his robes, exhibiting the colours; his whole carriage is intended to impress and earn him favour with his peers and yet he cannot stand being called a sycophant! He just follows the fashion, liking this and disliking that as others do and yet he does not see himself as just one of the crowd. This is how far his stupidity has reached! The one who knows he is stupid is not that stupid; the one who knows he is confused is not that confused. The greatly deluded will never be rid of delusion; the monumentally foolish will never be very bright."

...

There is simply no escape from the trap of a desire for regard or of a relationship with public opinion. How can any of us get away from it? The public eye is right there, can we ever not dance for it? If we make a big fuss about not dancing for it then we are still dancing for it, just in a different way. It is a labyrinth of mirrors and since there is no exit we may as well just breathe deeply and close our eyes.

From 'Supposed Words'

...

"The Outline asked the Shadow, 'A few minutes ago you were looking down, now you are looking up; a few minutes ago your hair was piled up, now it is hanging down; a few minutes ago you were sitting down, now you are standing up; a few minutes ago you were walking, now you are standing still. Why?"

Shadow said, “Petty! Petty! Why do you ask me about all this? This is all true to me but I haven’t a clue why I do it. I am like the shell of a cicada or the shed skin of a snake: something which seems real but is not. In the sunlight I appear, in darkness I disappear. However, do you think I arise from these? For they are themselves dependent upon others. When it comes, I come also,. When it goes, I go with it. If they arise from the mighty yang, so do I. However, there is no point in asking me about the mighty yang!”

...

Why ask me? Product of things I cannot see and do not understand, ending for reasons I can barely perceive, lasting as long as I last and following rules most of which I can also not see. Why ask me indeed.

And I like this bit on taking action from 'The Old Fisherman'

...

Confucius looked sad and sighed, bowed twice, stood up and said, 'Lu has exiled me twice, I have fled from Wei, they have felled a tree on me in Sung and laid siege to me between Chen and Tsai. I have no idea what I did to be so misunderstood. Why was I subject to these four forms of trouble?

The stranger looked distressed, then his expression changed and he said, ' It is very difficult, Sir, to make you understand! There was once a man who was frightened by his own shadow and scared of his own footprints, so he tried to escape them by running away. But every time he lifted his foot and brought it down, he made more footprints, and no matter how fast he ran, his shadow never left him. Thinking he was running too slowly, he ran faster, never ceasing until finally he exhausted himself and collapsed and died. he had no idea that by simply sitting in the shade he would have lost his shadow, nor that by resting quietly he would cease making footprints. He really was a great fool!

...

Although I think I also disagree with it. You might say I both agree and disagree with it, which doesn't seem to be a big problem with Taoism which loves paradox and uncertainty.

I do think Taoism on politics is interesting interesting and should be taken into consideration.

Bluntly - try hard not to do anything, and if you can't avoid doing anything, then try to do as little as possible, or at least, don't shove or warp things out of the way they are already going to go.

.......

From 'Hsu Wu Kuei'

'I wish to love the people and the act righteously and stop warfare. Would that do?'

'Certainly not. Loving the people is the beginning of harming the people. To act righteously and to cease warfare is the root of increased warfare. If you set about things thus, Sir, you will not succeed. All attempts to create beauty end in evil consequences. You Grace may plan to act benevolently and righteously, but the result is the same as hypocrisy! You may give shape to things, but success leads to argument and argument leads to violence. Your Grace must not have hosts of troops massing in your forts nor lines of cavalry parading in front of the Palace of the Dark Shrine.

'Do not harbour thoughts that betray your best interests. Do not try to overcome others by cunning. Do not try to defeat others by battle. If I kill the leaders and people of another ruler and seize the lands to satisfy my material wants, while my spirit is unsure of the validity of such actions, what is the point? Your Grace, the best thing is to do nothing, except develop true sincerity and thus be able to respond without difficulty to the true nature of Heaven and Earth. Thus the people will not die and it will not be necessary for you to have to enforce the end of warfare!"

...

"Hsu Yu said, 'Yao has become obsessed with benevolence and I am worried that he will be mocked throughout the world. Future generations might even resort to eating each other because of this!

The people come together without difficulty. Give them love, and praise them, and they will be excited, upset them, and they will desert you. Love and assistance arise from benevolence and righteousness, the majority look to them for assistance. Benevolence and righteousness conducted under these circumstances become insincere, and possibly may be evil, like lending traps to others. Allowing one man to determine what the world needs through his own powers is like trying to comprehend everything in one moment. Yao knows that the worthy man can assist the whole world, but he does not know that such a person can ruin the whole world, for it is only those outside this sphere of influence who can really understand."

.......

Maybe. Its a good warning but it doesn't work for me on a number of levels.

There seems to be a difference between what I seem to read in actual (translated) Taoist texts and Western interpretations of them.

The originals seem really, deeply, obsessively morally neutral and non-interventionist. If we are to follow them as they are written, then it looks like most good works are just out the window.

There is nothing outside the Tao, and this must apply to very bad things as it does to very bad things. Like in this bit from 'The Shores of Dark Waters';

...

"Master Tung Kuo asked Chuang Tzu, 'That which is called the Tao, where is it?
Chuang Tzu replied, 'There is nowhere where it is not.'
'But give me a specific example.'
'In this ant,' said Chuang Tzu.
'Is that its lowest point?'
'In this panic grass,' said Chuang Tzu.
'Can you give me a lower example?'
'In this common earthenware tile,' said Chuang Tzu.
'This must be its lowest point!'
'It's in shit and piss too,' said Chuang Tzu."

...

So it must be in rape and earthquakes, murder and mutilation, humiliation, pain, loss and ruin also. After all, it is the Tao, it cannot help but be in those things.

The two ways in which people seem to try to square this circle are the idea of 'essential nature' in the Book of Chuang Tzu, which is broadly a primitivist but slightly positive view in which things only go really badly in nature and between people if people stop following their essential nature. But if we all went and lived on communes or something then all this bad stuff just wouldn't happen.

I don't think this is true. I think that all the way from Chimps to Neolithic Hunter Gatherers to Nation States, these 'negative' or undesired elements have been there. So either there is an essential nature to humanity and it includes a lot of bad shit, or there is no essential nature.

True, the book of Chuang Tzu doesn't directly tell us that this stuff will stop happening if we all become Taoists and follow our essential nature, it just somewhat glides around the issue.

The Westerners, from what I can see, are basically following broadly pro-social Abrahamic/Greek ethics from Jesus, Aristotle and their own lived experience and using Taoism as a kind of contrast or investigative polarity to that, and just calling that Taoism.

Which I think is actually probably a pretty good idea. It's just theoretically stupid, and not what it says on the box, but it does actually work so I can hardly complain too much.

But it is not what it says on the box. What it says on the box is; 

...

"'Body like a rotten tree stump,
Heart like cold dead ashes,
His understanding is true and real,
Not inclined to pursue questions.
Obscure, obscure, deeply dark,
Heartless, no advice forthcoming,
What sort of person is this!"

...

It's really, deeply obscure, and very untrusting of any positive human effort;

...

From Lieh Yu Kou

Confucius said, 'The human heart is more dangerous than mountains or rivers, more difficult to know that Heaven. Heaven has its seasons of spring, summer, autumn and winter, and its times for sunrise and sunset. But humanity has a thickly cloaked exterior and its true nature is hidden deep within. So it is that someone can have an honest face but be miserly; can be truly gifted but be without skills; seem featherbrained but actually have a very clear plan; appear firm but be bent; look slow but be fast. Thus, those who gather around righteousness as if it were there to slake their thirst will later flee from righteousness as if it were a fire."

...

Its not here to make you happy. It's not here to make you anything. It simply is.

Those who deeply follow the Tao seem to reach a state of disconnection which, from the outside, looks almost like total ego death and/or massive depression;

...

From 'Governing the World'

So it was that Shen Tao put aside knowledge and any concern for himself, went where he could not avoid going, seeking always to be without interest and pure in all that he did, seeing this as being true to the Tao, and saying that understanding is not understanding, thus viewing knowledge as dangerous and struggling to be rid of it.

He was without ambition and so he was carefree, taking no responsibility and scorning those in the world who praised the worthy. Drifting and unconcerned, he did nothing and laughed at those who the world saw as sages. Cutting corners, smoothing the rough, he flowed and twisted with all things. He ignored right and wrong and simply worked at avoiding trouble. Having nothing to gain from knowledge or reflection, and with no understanding of what was going on, he went through life with a lofty ease and disregard. he walked only when he was pushed, and only started when he was forced to. He was like a whirlwind, like a feather spinning round and round, like the turning of a grindstone. He had integrity, he was without any wrong, without failure or excess, whether in action or in stillness.

How was this possible? Those who are without knowledge are free from the tribulations of self-promotion, from the entrapment that arises from working with knowledge. Whether moving or resting, he never left the proper path, and throughout his life was never praised. I would like to be one without knowledge, not trapped in the teachings of a sage. Such people, like the earth itself, never lose the Tao."

...

That actually doesn't sound that great? It sounds in some ways rather horrible.

To be fair, being really depressed, and having Ego Death, and being totally absorbed in the Tao are not the same thing internally. And being really depressed is bad, probably, Ego Death is arguably one way or the other depending on circumstances, though I do not like the look of it myself, and being one with the Tao is probably good.

But the only way to really know which of these is going on with someone is to basically ask them, and if they can be bothered answering you they might say "Yes I was one with the Tao, until you interrupted me and fucked it up.

...

"From 'Heaven's Tao'

"The next day Shih Cheng Chi came to see him again and said, 'Yesterday I was rude to you, Sir. Today I have no heart for it. Why is this?

Lao Tzu said, 'I think I have freed myself from knowledge, from the spiritual and from being a sage. If you had called me an ox yesterday, Sir, then I would have said I was an ox. If you had called me a horse, I would have said I was a horse. If people name a reality, but someone won't have it, then he just makes life more problematic. I am always like this, I don't just put it on for certain occasions.'

Shih Cheng Chi shrank back so as not to be even near Lao Tzu's shadow, then he came forward once more in a humble way and asked how he could cultivate himself. Lao Tzu said, 'Your face is unpleasant; your eyes glare; your forehead is broad; your mouth hangs open; your style is pompous; you are like a tethered horse waiting to bolt, ready to go like an arrow from a crossbow; you examine everything in too much detail; you are cunning in your use of knowledge, yet you lounge around. All this makes me distrust you. Out on the frontier someone like you would be called a bandit.'"

...

You can't speak of the Tao because it is wordless. You can barely pass it on. Becoming one with it means you basically just hang around doing very little. It is so seperate from the angst and action of the human experience that there seems very little to link them.

Maybe thinking about the Tao is good for you, just don't actually find it or you will become an essentially useless person. (Good from the Taoist perspective, now you are like the old tree which does not get chopped down because it has no relation to the world of things which are used).

(Another thing I don't really have any respect for is the desire to hang on to life and be immortal, but that seems to have become a thing more in later slightly crapper Taoism.)

But what's the point or the pleasure of such a life? It seems as grey and empty as the sky. Just hang around on a mountain being an immortal to no particular end or reason? Why even care about preserving your body if it has no purpose?

Fundamentally, at my anglo materialist core, I do not trust systems of knowing which cannot be exposed to consensus reality. I don't like it. Consensus reality might be an absolute load of hysterical paper-thin bullshit, but its better than nothing.

...

From 'Dealing with Emperors and Kings'

"As a result of this, Lieh Tzu realised that he had so far learnt nothing real, so he returned home. For three years he did not go out. He cooked for his wife and tended the pigs as if they were humans. He showed no interest in his studies. He cast aside his desires and sought the truth. In his body he became like the ground itself. In the midst of everything he remained enclosed with the One and that is how he remained until the end.

Do not hanker for fame.
Do not make plans.
Do not try to do things.
Do not try to master knowledge.
Hold what is but do not hold it to be anything.
Work with all that comes from Heaven, but do not seek to hold it.
Just be empty.

The perfect man's heart is like a mirror.
It does not search after things.
It does not look for things.
It does not seek knowledge, just responds.
As a result he can handle everything and is not harmed by anything."

...

Is that it? Just stillness and pigs? It sounds better to be Robber Chih.

Presumably other people have thought about this and have quite complex belief systems about how actually following Taoism results in the kinds of pro-social behaviour and recognisable fulfilment they value.

Grieving for Demon Tits

First they came for the nipples of the Keeper of Secrets.

And I said nothing, because I was not a Slaaneshi sex daemon.

Then they came for the nipples of the Sororitas Repentia.

And still I said nothing, for I was not a BDSM Space Nun.

But then, they came for my nipples.....




Ok, Games Workshop has not actually come for my nipples. And they didn't really take them off the Repentia, just made them put their tops on [BORING]. And the Slaaneshi six-titted sex-horses still have nipples.

(Which just makes it weirder in my opinion, like thats ok but not on the space nuns?).

Also the sex-horses only have four tits but that's less fun to write.

Also the new Keeper of Secrets really is much, much better than the old one, and still feels really pervy to an extreme degree.

Still, I feel aggrieved. When I was a young man, the world was a simpler place. You could wander into a Games Workshop store with your packet money, and come out with a metal-cast Keeper of Secrets model with one highly exposed and I think pierced nipple. You could throw in a squad of bald screaming space nuns wielding two-handed chainswords and wearing nothing but strips of parchment listing their sins.

It was a golden time, and a more innocent age.

Remember this Jes Goodwin you dammed COWARD?

We live now in an age of shame.

In todays aesthetically crippled moral universe, we are supposed to feel bad if a female Inquisitor puts high heels on her science-fictional power armour, we're supposed to feel bad about ritualised female secondary sexual characteristics replicated in servo-activated ceramite.

Yes, Xenocide, Genocide, auto-da-fe's and infinite pauldrons are fine, but heaven forfend you wear jimmy choos' on the battlefield, because that would be wrong.

Why? I honestly don't know. But the emotion is a strong one. People really, really really don't like this stuff. It upsets them. I think, to them, it seems dirty.

Its not too late to go back to a simpler time...

I would ask for reasons but I don't think and can really be given. Not true ones any way. It is a matter of feeling and moral intuition and the engines which drive these are always hidden from us, though blathering socio-political claptrap will aways present a series of rather tiresome arguments based on half-occluded facts which rest themselves upon awkward piles of assumption and ever more-occluded facts, all of them wrapped up in gloss and presented as 'common knowledge'.

In this fallen world, everything we know will eventually be taken away from us, demon nipples, Marneus Calgars dinosaur writing desk, the concept of the bolter round as a self-propelled micro-projectile, all shall pass.

All we can do is grieve for the demon nipples of our youth...

The OTHER! - are YOU one of them???

Look, at least some of you probably are. Just don't tell anyone and I'll let it go. Can't have a culture without an Other after all.

And where would D&D be without that ultimate anti-man, the Orc, vector for all our bad feelings about things that look like us, but which are definitely NOT us?

I *think* these are by Stephen Oakley
https://www.artstation.com/possum
(and may not be the final designs)

This was my attempt at creating 'Orcs' for Uud.

One thing that comes back to me is a phrase in a David Mamet film The Edge, where Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin have to fight a bear, Hopkins is dropping some Mamet-lines and asks, rhetorically, why men die in the wilderness.

"Shame. They die of shame."

It would be curious if our Other was just our absolute will to survive, stripped of anything else, looking back at us through the mirror of our thoughts.

But that's the fun of Orcs really, a different Other each time, always bending and warping under the will of the world-creator, moving like bubbles under plastic, forming whatever Other we need them to be for any time.

.........................................................

Many are the monsters bred beyond the borders of the Real, and terrible their powers. But amongst the most despised is one with no numinous terror burning in its blood and no witch-light in its eyes.

It is, instead, a creature which counterfeits man. The Un-Man. The man-mocker. The dissonant tone which kills the hidden harmony of mankind.

Out from the Waste they come, in ones or twos, slinking past the shadows of the towers, raiding in small bands, sometimes wiped of memory and mindless as beasts, stumbling as hunched ravening hordes, naked and bestial.

Or, more terrible, with tactics, weapons and a plan. Bearing heraldic glyphs, scarred symbols and ruined pennants they may no longer know the meaning of.

The Terror-Men. The Orcs.

HATRED OF THE ORC

Humanity is a music that cannot hear itself until it is disrupted. Like a tuning fork wrought to a low, keening note, pressed against the rim of a wine glass, shattering it. So is the Orc to man.

No group can exist without an Other, and the birth of many great nations, peoples and ideas of self has come twinned with a dark shadow of hate and an emission of blood. For with a new self must come a new Other- the expression of what the self is not, which sets its boundaries and forms the antipole to its nature.

Humanity in Blackwater is defined by several things;

First, it is shaped like Somon - the majority, the dominant sub-group and seemingly the one best adapted for this reality.

Second, Humanity dreams - each type may dream differently, but the creatures of Yggsrathaal do not dream. The faithful would say that the gods dream and that in this humanity walks with the gods.

Third, Humanity is Civil - it obeys laws, can be reasoned and negotiated with.

Fourth, Humanity does not prey upon itself - humans do not cannibalise their own meta-species.

Fifth, Humanity is loyal to the integrity of Blackwater against Yggsrathaal. Mankind defends its borders against the Waste, and against Her, and in this, at least, all mankind shares an interest.

And finally, Humanity is stable in form. Children look like their parents, or at least they do not differ wildly. The shapes and inner nature of sub-groups does not swing randomly from individual to individual.

To these can be added many smaller markers; art, language, the capacity to build and mutual descend from the great Diadem of Esh, a shared history of loss.

Many single aspects of Humanity break these rules in one way or another; Nathlings do not dream, but they can and they hate Yggsrathaal and fulfil every other quality perfectly. Avatars are barely human-formed but are seen as sacred representations coming from fallen Esh. Aeth can and will eat Somon, but this is a shameful secret for them, heavily hidden and repressed. (And of course, any Human might cannibalise - in extremis, just don't do it as a matter of course). 

The Orc betrays all.

Inhuman in form (though counterfeiting man). UnDreaming - It's sleeping mind a godless blank. Endlessly mutable, the Orc shifts in form from generation to generation, from parent to child, one barely akin to the other. UnCivil and barbarous - it will not obey laws and cannot be negotiated with. Violent and murderous. Allied with, or unknowingly serving, Her. The Orc is an outsider penetrating from beyond the borders of the Real and the Orc is an eater of men.

So it is that the Orc is loathed in Blackwater, perhaps even more than greater and more threatening beings, and perhaps with even more revulsion than Yggsrathaal. For she is merely an enemy to Humanity, a great and terrible one, but her horror a distant and sombre one, vast, alien and incomprehensible.

The Orc is here and now. The Orc is flesh. The Orc is vile. Most importantly, the Orc seems Human but is not, it is the Other, the hate-object that invisibly gives the Greater Humanity of Blackwater its defining opposite.

ORC MINDS AND SOCIETY

They learn incredibly quickly, especially when relatively young. As they grow and set their own strategies and values, it seems to be, not the ability, but the desire to learn, that changes. They care very little about the future. They can imagine it, but it has little value to them. Can you eat it?

The Orc is entirely present in the moment in a way a Zen master might envy. Their sense of the immediate reality of what is right in front of them seems to be intense, overwhelming, granular, detailed and vibrant. It is in the moment that the Orc is most dangerous and when its particular malicious genius most often comes to the fore.

This also plays a part in protecting the Orc from the mental traumas common to other self-aware beings. They do not really despair, though they can get bored, they adapt rapidly, almost immediately, to torture, mutilation and injury. It’s bad getting your arm hacked off but once it’s done, for an orc, its simply time to get on with things, arm or not. Even an Orc bleeding to death from an arterial wound does not really think of themselves as bleeding to death, they simply have a lot of blood coming out of them right now.

Orcs can often be bullied, threatened, manipulated and, to a certain extent, bribed into more complex social structures (particularly military ones), and long-term plans, though even then it seems they stay because other options are more boring than whatever they are doing now.

Above all, Orcs respect power and will. Physical power, yes, and size. Magical power - absolutely, but even mental or intellectual power of a sort. A curious element in Orcs is that they seem to enjoy the translation or transformation of unexpected or unseen intellectual or magical power into physical dominance. The smaller the package compared to the larger the effect, the more they are impressed. They have a great tolerance for, and interest in, tricksters, especially when the trick is violent, lethal and visibly cruel.

Yet Orcs rarely seek or exhibit these intellectual or magical powers themselves, or even respect them much in their own species. Amongst each other size, strength and relentless physical dominance is what matters. This dominance must be immediate, physical, tangible, ruthless and destructive. This is real to them. This is value to them. They have no honour, or any concept of it, or much compassion as most other breeds of Humanity would conceive of it, even for their own kind, but they do respect strength.

A legend of the Northern Tagia between the Cities and the Realities, speaks of a Knight,  a Bridge of black pine, a Village by a flooding river and a horde of Orcs.

The invading Orcs, in this case, club-footed shaggy creatures from the Northern Wastes, attacked, killing everything they could find and driving all before them. The villagers fled, their one lone defender, an aging Knight stayed behind, matching his tread to that of the slowest escapee.

The villagers only possible safety lay in crossing a nearby river which, they hoped, would at least slow the Orcs down in their pursuit. The river had one bridge, a scratch built timber construction made with the rude style of the Northern Plains. Not a huge structure by any means.

It was Spring, and the river was in flood. As the villagers pounded across the pitch-caulked planks of black pine, the foundations of the bridge began to shift, it began to collapse.

Facing an impossible choice, the Knight leapt into the river, and, holding himself against the surging current, the freezing water and the weight of the bridge, pressed his shoulder into it, hoping to save just a few moments more and just a handful of people before the Orcs inevitably captured and ate all who remained.

The Orcs did arrive, and quickly, some still smeared with fresh blood. But, to the surprise of the Knight, instead of killing him with spears, crossing the bridge to pursue the weak, or leaping into the water to bear him down, the Orcs stopped. They stopped and waited, lining the bank, gazing upon him as his breath caught in his lungs and his skin froze blue, as the thudding feet of the escaping people pounded into his dying flesh though the structure of the bridge.

He realised, they were watching him fight the water. There was no charity in their ceasing, no honour or fairness, they saw only one standing against an unconquerable natural force, the man and the river and the weight of the bridge. They were waiting to see how long his fight would last.

Strength, and only that, compelled them.

Though the Orc has few loves, it also has few hatreds. Or at least few particular hatreds. Orcs as a whole see the world in roughly three categories;

Boss.

Orcs.

Everything Else.

Orcs are at war against Everything Else, all of the time. They are also willing to sacrifice other Orcs, and will occasionally stab a Boss in the back.

That said, within those bounds, they are relatively unprejudiced. The Orc itself has no Other (unless you count all of reality as the Other). They have no in-built, or encultured, hate or fear for any particular shape or form. Mutation and mutilation are all as-one to them and in fact they seem to favour both, as much as an Orc can favour anything. They love variety. (Which they will still totally and absolutely destroy and consume, but in a more excited and enjoyable fashion).

Orcs are often happy to allow members of other species or bioforms to occupy the top of their dominance hierarchy. Vosis Fail, excommunicated Sophont of Yga, suggested that the Orcs were, in fact, 'using' those they select for the top of their hierarchies. If not that any individual band was using such beings, that the species as a whole was. That it is simpler for the 'Orc Strain' to adopt or 'acquire' the intellectual, strategic and long-term planning aspects it needs from other beings, rather than to build them itself.

Though any individual group of orcs might be lead to destruction by such an arrangement, the species as a whole, the Strain, will succeed. There are often Orcs on both sides and, being perfectly adapted to harmonise with the needs of a dominant power, they always have a place even in a world in which they have little control. Though the nature and person of that power may change, beneath them, whoever and whatever they are, there are always Orcs.

THE ORC STRAIN

There are few constants to a creature of such endless mutability, but a few qualities are more common than not. Orcs tend to be taller and stronger than most Somon, with denser muscles and thicker bones. They have thick multi-layered skin and often have bone spurs and strong scales of keratin, like human fingernails. They have wild teeth, almost always bigger and sharper than Somon teeth, and often with massively recurved molars acting as tusks. Sometimes these grow back up to pierce the skull if they are not filed down or snapped off. They often have matte grey skin, this may be inherent to their nature or simply a result of living in, and passing through, Her realm.

Beyond that, the Orc is defined by its crazed variety. The members of a single warband or 'family' can differ from each other to a remarkable extent; orcs with huge flapping batlike ears, orcs with thick, low, sloping skulls, orcs with slitted sharklike mouths, orcs with wild bursts of fronds, perhaps skin, or some more subtle hairlike tissue, orcs with pugnacious front-thrusted jaws, orcs with heavy hammering skulls and thick plates of bone like mail, orcs with strange lappings and overlayings of flesh and skin like cancerous leaves, orcs with random curls of bone instead of hair, like teratomas forming on the skin, orcs with bright shocks of hair or bristling fur, orcs with spines and scales, blind, sniffing orcs with wet black panting nostrils where eyes should be.

Why?

And how?

The Sophonts of Blackwater have laboured long over the problem of the Orc, seeking to divine its strange and formless nature. Though opinions still differ bitterly, they have come to see Orcs not as a species, sub-group or meta-species as Humanity is, but as something akin to a breeding disease; The Orc Strain.

It is known that generations of Orc can undergo very rapid adaptability in their flesh based purely on the lived environment of the spawning Orc. Extreme heat, cold, wetness, light and dark, the Waste or the Real, can produce meaningful changes in the young of an Orc, and once a counter-adaptation or recombination of elements has taken place, it remains a possibility, latent in the bloodline from then on. Every Orc lives with a great library or storehouse of adaptations in its blood, seed and womb, which may emerge 'randomly' in any future young.

Most horribly, the Orc can breed true with any species of Humanity. Aeth, Somon, Deoth. Nathings, even Avatars, all can be made to breed half-orc young. Orc spawn are born awake, aware, ready to move, fight scamper and bite. A feral thing, without language, but capable of mimicry from day one.

The Orc can impregnate any sufficiently complex animal, size permitting, and will do so if the opportunity presents itself. This is why breeding farm animals surviving in the area of an Orc attack or invasion must be put down without exception. The results if they are allowed to come to term can be... extremely unpleasant.

Added to its natural adaptability is that fact that many, or most Orcs have been mutated by their life within, or passage through, the Waste. Though this rarely seems to affect them in a negative way. Of all the self-aware beings in Uud, they seem the least troubled by having their memories and identities wiped. They just don't care, they live so totally in the moment and really value very few of the things that memory and history and social structure bring.

The orc has no history, and desires none. It needs but little abstract memory. It barely needs a name. If its mind is destroyed, it simply gets up and starts over again, learning fast, right from day one, and its irascible, violent, indifferent personality cannot be changed. Not even the darkest, strangest treatments of the Tolerance have been able to 'educate' it, the illusions of thaumaturgy warp it or alterations of the Greenseers amend it.

The orc is an arrow piercing the moment, cutting open what-will-be

Yggsrathaal has certainly tried to produce her own strains, which are often given prominence in Her armies. It is suspected the Lords of the Teratarchies have also made their own experiments. The flesh of the Orc is resilient, adaptable and endlessly malleable, the perfect material for those who would consider themselves sculptors of life.

Yet these changes never seem to stick for long. As soon as the attention of their manipulator slips from any particular strain, they go back to their mad variety of cross-breeding and random mutability.

It was Vosis Fail, excommunicated Sophont of Yga, who devised the concept of the Orc Strain. He perceived the Strain, not as any particular bodily form or precise boundary of flesh, but as a kind of process. Something existing within every Orc, passed in in its seed and in its blood, but which merely wears the flesh of any individual Orc for a while

The Orc Strain is unlike the bloodline of a species, binding with form and flesh and prompting the engines of behaviour. It is something stronger, yet formless, endlessly, relentlessly, violently adaptive, using whatever corpus it is passed into. It is the spirit of a meta-species, warping, altering, adapting, improving, brutalising the meat that, when grown, will in turn brutalise the world. It is one idea, and singular desire, branded in a rubric of fire into every cell and every living moment;

Survive! Survive! Survive!

And it was this extremely heretical concept that saw Vosis Fail (finally) excommunicated from even ever-tolerant Yga. The idea that the Orc is Humanity perfected. Made to survive Yggsrathaal, to survive chaos, despair - everything. Made to ensure that the last surviving life in a dying reality will be one, final, defiant, Orc howling in the face of death.

This guy was my favourite.

The Glass Harmonica by Barbara Ninde Byfield

This is a strange, beautiful and original work which Scrap sent to me and which I knew nothing about beforehand.

From the opening pages description;

"The Book of Weird

being a most Desirable Lexicon of the Fantastical Wherein Kings and Dragons, Trolls and Vampires, to say nothing of Elves and Gnomes, Queens, Knaves and Werewolves, are made Manifest, and many, many further Revelations of the Mystical Order of Things."

I and Scrap both wondered if this was an Appendix N work. Copyright 1967 and published in 1973 it seems to be the kind of thing that Gygax would be reading as he was working on D&D. But I have never heard a mention of it until now. Perhaps it simply swam in the same sea, a A pre D&D Cambrian explosion book, like a soft bodied organism that has not yet grown a fossilised shell.

It is a kind of parallel text to the Manuals and codification of Dungeons and Dragons. But in this, the book itself is an act of play, not a guide towards one. D&D is a 'real' book of record. the things it refers to are imaginary, but you do really need to look them up in an immediate coherent way. Book of Weird is a 'false' or pseudo-record.

It uses the same listing, ordering and information hierarchy as a book of record, but bends those structures to make them deliberately, slightly impractical. It will 'hide' elements inside strange hierarchies of meaning. 'Apotheosis', the act of becoming a god, comes under 'Guises and Disguises'. Its also insanely hyper-specific at points. A 'Dastard' is not a 'Poltroon', both are quite different. Within the entries are winding courses of words, slight pseudo-formal backward-phrasing, and verse. Like very serious answers to the kinds of question a child might ask.

See the hiding man?

And a construction of unknowing. The imaginary authority can tell you this particular thing, but this other thing adjacent to it is quite unknown. Of course both are largely products of the creators imagination, so what is known and unknown about the suggested world is a purely-constructed silence deliberately inviting creation and interpretation on the part of the reader.

It is also a work of visual art, illustrated by Byfield on almost every page. One huge thing that makes it different to the Gygaxian branch is that text and image are imagined spatially, emotionally and factually as-one across every spread. Image relates to text, and the balance of the image to the text is fluid and weighted, so the pages 'flow' not just in a linear sense in the way that their meaning is apprehended but in a spatial and proportionate sense.

You can still use it but it is made to be deliciously, a only slightly impractical. Things are not quite what would be expected so reading is an act of discovery.

Of course, Scrap and I did a lot of this in Fire on the Velvet Horizon, its only reading this book, made 50+ years earlier, and thinking about it, that has let me put some of those methods and techniques into words.

The original version was titled 'The Glass Harmonica' an item referred to only once inside the book, in an offhand manner, and which, if it has some poetic relationship to the meaning of the work as a whole, is beyond me. This very Scrap/Patrick touch was it seems too obscure for the publishers and they changed it for the next edition.

The fictional and imaginative world this draws from seems to be a similar one to the 'Walter Scott Shared Fictional Universe' I imagined in previous posts. A historical-dramatic viewpoint and aesthetic grouping running from Scotts popular novels, through 19th century theatre and into early 20th Century film, ending with 'The Vikings'.

It is a story-world more than anything else, a little like the Discworld. The Barons (well horsed and housed) of 19th Century Medievalism, mix with the Beux of 18th and 19th century modern fiction.

Soothsayers from Shakespeare mix with fortune tellers from penny novels. The Landscape seems to be the same generalised imaginative Landscape of the Anglo diaspora between the 17th and 20th centuries. Something a little like a romanticised England, but bigger in scale and with some things England never had.

There's a little man falling down the chasm.

 

Basic-Ass Imps and Some Vague Rambling

I do wonder often if anyone is ever going to actually play as any of the races or classes I describe. All of this stuff is kinda overkill for the drop-down menu of a 3D printing company. Even assuming (fingers crossed!) that the company does well and a lot of people log onto the site I really have no idea if anyone will actually care about the reams and reams of detailed lore that comes up when you click 'Imp'.

So so far I've just been working on Races, and since Blackwater got largely done, I've been creating the other inferred realms entirely through the descriptions of the races that live there. I haven't done more than a bare number of actual objects, but they are important too.

Part of the idea for this was that, by interacting with the drop-downs of the creation menu on the site, the 'user' is already partly playing a kind of game, because by assembling race, class and objects in a hierarchy, they are effectively partly assembling a specific character, especially if each kind of object has an origin and history.

And I had vague ideas of extending that process and creating a kind of Universe where it existed somewhat at intellectual or fantasy Lego, in that there were a lot of materials, and if you used them you got a strong identity, but you had to actually make use of them.

So Uud, outside of its basic descriptions, and maps, would be communicated through tables, like a Yoon-Suin, Border Princes or Vornheim thing. And that there would be no absolute canon Uud, only a hundred thousand individual ones created by different DM's for their own games.

Basically extending the way 3D printing lets you harness the power of an industrial process and distribution system and extending that to an imaginary world so the whole thing was like a series of pieces that only made sense when you, the chooser, chose a selection and locked in into a particular configuration that was unique to your game.

So the continents, or realms, are ultimately meant to be things you can literally pick up and put down like stickers on a map, arranging the 'world' however you like (within some broad structure). So if you want to do a story or game about two realms meeting then you just draw it like that.

The same, if we ever did a book of fictions, was meant to apply to that, everything was meant to be told exclusively in the 1st person, or what I've been told is called an 'Epistolary' story, so that sense of everything being accurate 'according to the point of view of the teller', but any particular reader can take whichever parts they want to be more real than the rest.

This was all to stop is becoming a 'dead' world, one where there is a set canon, and everyone needs to learn it, and all stories take place in the same history and when you want to know what really happened you ask the company that makes it and they tell you what is canon.

Instead, if its intellectual Lego, its more like a new Lego set came out each time and the conversation is more "what did you do with yours?" rather than "what is the new truth?"

The capacities of the internet and the modularity of 3D printing and industrial design, as well as the dropping of the difficulty of printing, and possibly the talent pool built up by the OSR Diaspora and, sure Storygamers as well, opens the idea of a different feedback response between the company and the 'users' or players, one that encourages not just play in the same world but individual creativity and creation with the tools provided.

Selling people tools essentially. Which yes they don't actually need to be sold those, they can make their own. But the sheer replication power and marketing force of a successful capitalistic enterprise  can create such a powerful feedback response that it can shape the culture, which in turn shapes it.

We've seen nerd companies essentially get poisoned by a negative feedback response in which the company doesn't really like its fans, the fans are resentful as fuck and they essentially seem trapped together, and where the worst elements of fan culture get boosted, loremasters (which isn't necessarily bad in itself) of hyper-detailed but dead creative worlds arguing each other into extinction.

What if that feedback response was a positive one? Where to interact with the thing you had to actually build or make something. It needn't be that complicated at first, you could essentially provide people with parts and tools, like the intellectual equivalent of a push-fit model, but if you could get it working, each development cycle, instead of being "Here's what happened in the Forgotten Realms/41st Millenium this marketing budget cycle" it could be "Here are a new bunch of fresh imaginative tools, what can you make with them and what do your worlds look like?"

All pretty vague dreams at the moment, and possibly deep delusions. We will see. You will be able to watch in real time as see if all this blooms into its own paracosm, disappears into nothing or chugs along somewhere in the middle.

For now, some Imps, who I interpreted mainly as fuckbois. You are welcome.


..............................................................................................................................

"Imps keep it real."

Is something only Imp would say. And is a lie. Imps are inconstant, deluded and frighteningly confident scumbags.

IMP ORIGINS

The shape of an Imp; something like a toybox miniature demon, and the range of mildly diabolic qualities they can exhibit, has lead many to ask; where in the hell to Imps come from?

Or more precisely, exactly which Hell do Imps come from? And why aren't they there right now, curled up and somnolent with the majority of Uuds sleeping or disappeared divine and diabolic hierarchies? Why are they up and about, flapping around in Marginalia and a handful of other places?

There is a legend which most Imps claim to believe, the story of the Imp King.

As they would tell it, long ago, before the fall of Esh, the Imps swapped one of their own for a human child. This child grew up in Hell, amongst the Imps. Over time, they grew strong, and eventually became the King of Imps. This 'King', then lead a revolution in Hell. All the lesser spirits, small demons, minor horrors and others, banded together to overthrow the ruler of that Dark Realm. In this they were successful, but at the last minute the Imps were betrayed. They were cast out of Hell and banished to reality, there to perish.

Which actually turned out OK as the Fall of Esh lead to its realms of Divine and Diabolic judgement falling into a kind of dull sleep, curling up into silence, growing distant and quiet. While out in the world, well, not everything was destroyed, at least some parts lived. And those parts of falling worlds that were spirited away and curled up into Marginalias first strands turned out to be great places for an Imp.

So, win-win?

Regardless, absolutely no-one other than Imps believes the Legend of the Imp King. It is not clear if even the Imps believe it, considering how much absolute rubbish they talk.

Some sophonts claim that Imps are the avatars, or elementals of Primordial mistakes. That the very substance of creation, since its beginning, has thronged with these tiny errors, like imperceptible chips in smooth glass, or like the dots and blurs which sometimes float before the eye. Old philosophies of Esh said that the perfection of existence demanded flaws, as if through some complex teaching, what is perfect could only be understood through what is flawed.

Darker and more realist sophonts since the Fall instead claim that everything is just really really really messed up all of the time, and that reality has been so ravaged by Yggsrathaal that cracks are everywhere, and so Imps are also everywhere.

A popular belief amongst the common people is that Imps are random thoughts from dreaming Gods.

Whenever a Devil, Demon or other dark being turns in its sleep and laughs without restraint, but for reasons that are not themselves cruel, an Imp is born. And whenever a good God or and Angel likewise also smiles when sleeping and sniggers for reasons they really should not, then also an Imp is born somewhere in Uud. For Imps are creatures of inversion, or upside-downness, petty lords of Misrule riding backwards on snails, wine-bags full of nonsense like the farts of chthonic entities.

THE POWERS OF AN IMP

Imps are, by many comparisons, quite powerful for such miniature beings. Or they would be if their catastrophic personalities did not effectively disrupt, neuter and destroy the effects of these powers, causing most of their plans to collapse like badly baked bread.

Their abilities vary greatly, sometimes because the Imp in question has actually forgotten that they can do something.

As well as eating, and more importantly, drinking, anything available, Imps can live off sins. If they can get others to commit minor wrongs, these actions can feed, and ever heal them. This gets much harder to do, and the effects of it lessen the more aware the participants are that, by screwing each other over, they are actually helping the Imp. This causes the action to slip into charity, and to no longer be a sin.

After drinking alcohol Imps can fart fire from their ass. Since many Imps are high-functioning alcoholics, this is a more commonly available power than you might think. Imps find this endlessly amusing, running whiskey-and-cigarette parties where they sit around downing whole bottles of booze and drunkenly lighting each others smokes. It’s all fun until they are grabbed by a Troll, stapled to a stick and used as a pipe lighter.

Many Imps have the ability to turn themselves invisible. Or at least, to make themselves hard to notice. Unfortunately, (for the Imps), they rapidly fall into delusions of invisible omnipotence and are often detected through their own insane cackling and a tendency they have to narrate their exploits out-loud...

"Heh, heh, heh, the fools!"

Many Imps can also change shape, often into small and feral animals, like a Crow, a Rat or something similar. As with the invisibility, they tend to massively over-use and in a sense, to get 'high' on this power to the point where it gives them a kind of delirium, and massive identity issues. An Imp pretending to be a Crow may actually get so involved in the masquerade that it starts to think it is a Crow and forgets what it was originally meant to be doing. One who has been pretending to be an animal, will often adopt that animals behaviours, even when in Imp form.

The only way to resolve this is to pinch, poke or slap the Imp back into sanity.

Imps may have some degree of resistance to at-least small natural fires. An Imp will often snooze in the middle of a campfire while others sleep around it, pulling the ashes or embers over them like a sheet and passing out. Even the Imp doesn't know how far this ability might stretch, whether it applies to large fires, to magical fires or to fires of strange materials, and they will often forget they can do this.

Whether it’s being caught while invisible due to their own insane cackling, being trapped as a mad crow for a decade or passing out drunk, face down in a guttering candle and waking up encased in cold wax, Imps rarely learn anything from any of these mistakes.

In fact, if being an Imp is about anything, it’s about massive and impulsive overuse of whatever you can get and about never learning anything from anything.

PERSONALITY - AN IMPS REGRETTABLE SELF

With Imps, its not really a question of whether they are a Narcissist - just how bad it is.

The less-terrible Imps have a manageable level and often find ways to be an at-least moderately useful person with some level of functional empathy, a vague sheen of reliability and not too many negative behaviours.

'Bad' Imps are simply alcoholic, drug-addicted, scheming feral little bastards, like a cross between a pack of nasty crows and a teenage street gang; somewhere between an infestation and crime spree. Gangs of Imps laugh at old Gnomes who have fallen over in the street. Feral Imps dare each other to climb up a cows asshole simply to see if it can be done. They smash windows with stones, scrawl insults on walls and randomly call on strangers pretending to have Tourettes and asking to borrow money.

Like Goblins, Imps lie a lot, unlike goblins they do not have the excuse of 'alternative cognition', and also unlike Goblins they are bad at it.

Imps like to make crude sexual jokes about the lives of larger creatures, though it’s not clear that they really understand what they are joking about and their attempts at insults come out as strangely surreal;

"You pigged that hooper right in the bloggins! Heh heh heh!"

Resulting in a sense that one certainly has been insulted and that something bad has been said, but a confusion as to how and what exactly the insult meant.

An Imp would totally have a stripper pole in their house, just to be edgy, even if they didn't really know what to do with it. But they would probably never actually own a house, at the most they would rent. (Never leave an Imp with the keys to your house).

Many Imps though, have more manageable, or at least 'civilised' behaviours. Whether this makes them better or worse over the long term is a still-open question.

Knowing a 'civilised' Imp is like knowing a celebrity, except they are almost certainly not actually famous and are probably even more self-destructive and possibly more useless than an actual celebrity.

An Imps greatest treasure is often a six-foot high oil painting of themselves in formal wear, or possibly a giant sculpture of themselves in milk-white marble.

IMP BENEFITS

That said, there are (arguable) positives to knowing an Imp.

Many Imps just want desperately to fit in and will simply hang around making themselves 'useful' until you get tired and let them be your friend. In fact, Imps seem to live their lives almost entirely for other people. They need and feed off attention, and if they can't get good attention, they will get bad attention.

Their garrulous, chatty, sneaky and deceptive nature means they get in anywhere, know everyone and have heard all the gossip (although much of what they know will be lies).

An Imp will immediately find the most questionable character in a pub and immediately sit down with them. When you meet the imps friends they always seem suspicious types, and also not really their friends, they sometimes refer to the Imp by a different name. Imps can find crime, schemes and shady business with unerring accuracy. Bad ideas and terrible con-jobs are their north star and they will always locate the worst of them. This can be bad, or good, if you are looking for shady business.

Imps often do well with assisting another, often stronger, entity. They are strangely loyal creatures, in their own way. They seem almost keyed to do it.

An Imps powers of illusion and invisibility, their high awareness of others attention and their speed of movement make them very handy in a whole range of ways, especially as spies or thieves. Though they are also quite ill-disciplined.

Imps are also shameless Yes-Men, so if you want to be told that your every decision was brilliant, there can be nothing better than an Imp. They are also strangely, bizarrely confident in their own abilities and eventual success despite the ever-unfolding, self-destructive cataclysm of their daily lives. While this can be extremely irritating in good times, in bad times the Imps irrepressible nature can make them quite tolerable.

True, this does often lead to Imps working as dogsbodies for villainous beings. But really, if the best someone can do is to put together a flock of Imps, they are not exactly a high-level threat. It’s like having a gang of miniature asshole teens working for you. (Though they can still be dangerous to smallfolk.)

Less horrible Imps can find places working for less horrible (but still probably not that 'good') rulers. They can be the Queens left hand, a Court Jester or Satirist, and on the side, a spy, thief and messenger. Wherever they are, they are always involved in affairs, in 'business', the work and movement of the court, the gossip, parties, connections and talk.

It’s rare that you would want even a reasonable Imp to be the person in charge, but they can definitely be the person you want backing up the person in charge, especially if there are certain things the leader can't be seen to do.

WHEN DANGER THREATENS

Imps are surprisingly good in emergencies, especially situations involving fire, destruction, darkness, poison and gas, none of which seem to make an Imp especially or unusually afraid.

For such ridiculous flibbergibbets the rest of the time, they don't really get hysterical or emotional in response to danger in the way many others do, and they are surprisingly tactically efficient.

While craven, they are not cowards. They will fight, in fact they are quite aggressive, but not until they think they can win. They HAVE to see a potential route to victory, or at least, survival, so their combat logic is quite different to some other creatures and personalities. They don't do noble last stands (they would just run away). They won't dive into danger to protect a friend unless they think they can win.

Compare this to a Gnome, who might jump into a no-win situation simply out of a sense of duty.

To a Goblin, who might leap in on the assumption that they can connive or improvise some way out of an apparent impossibility.

Or to a Firbolg, who might leap in even if they thought they might die, purely for the élan of the thing, and to make an end worth singing of.

An Imp would need to see a way to win before they got involved. If they really like someone it doesn't need to be a very high likelihood - but there needs to be a chance.

Despite their refusal to fight unless they think they can win - all this goes out the window if the subject is crime.

An imp is always ready for some extra-legal scheme, even if very high risk. The simple fact that it is illegal or wrong seems to energise them. If the matter is breaking and entering, fraud, theft, deception or just a simple piece of electoral Gerrymandering, an Imp is almost always fully ready go right now, regardless of the risk involved.

IMP LIFE AND IMP DEATH

Imps may be functionally immortal, or at least, they do not seem to age. They have short-term minds and forget things after a century or two, so an Imp may have lived many lives and not even remember them. Their ridiculous nature seems to protect them from the tragedy implied by their extra-long lives. In some ways they are like minor comic characters made real. Always the same japes, pratfalls and 'hilarious' misadventures, never developing, never really learning, but growing no closer to death.

But there are ways for an Imp to 'age' and change. Ways both good and bad.

The darker path for an Imp is to dive deep into their capacity for deceit and manipulation. A truly evil Imp can become a kind of emotional black hole, a vortex of pain and degradation who slowly poisons the lives of all who come into contact with them, but who time and time again, escapes any of the consequences. The worst among Imps regard themselves as responsible for nothing. They are always utterly right, its only on this particular occasion that they were let down by others. If an Imp proceeds along this path, they can become more and more powerful, eventually transforming into a form of sleepy Daemon.

Much of the Diabolic hierarchies of Uud are currently lost or asleep, so when an Imp becomes a Demon, they gain incredible powers, but suffer under the same sleeping curse as the rest of Uuds divine and demonic entities. Although they are potentially terrifyingly powerful, and out and loose in Uud, rather than curled up in a pocket dimension, they are also somnolent and narcoleptic, preferring to hang around in a lair, slowly poisoning the atmosphere with their terrible dreams

A 'good' way for an Imp to develop is by drinking mortal blood that has been both freely, and honestly (no deception involved), given. The more of this blood they drink, the more mortal the become. Their emotions and intuitions deepen and widen, they become capable of a greater range of experience and understanding. It presents the opportunity to 'cure' their narcissism. The interior lives and feelings of others become more real to them, and a source of meaning. This also makes them vulnerable to sadness and despair, which they do not much like.