Tuesday 22 February 2022

Those They Murder are Forgotten

 "There is a gap in our pattern, rooms and duties to which no names attain, yet prepared for some unknown, or as if a ghost had left them. In my memory I have sat at tables with shades, given dictates to spaces in the air - and yet the deed was done, been instructed by no voices, yet performed the act. What is this silence that spreads around us?"

From - A Glossary of the Amber Court; Apocrypha and Miscellanea, Chapter; 'Those They Murder are Forgotten', Unattributed note, Amber Court, late Period.






"Aya we marry the sky!
And make the stars our wives!
Ladies of hunger!
We give to you five hundred sons on whom the sun has never shone!
Un-touched by a woman’s hand!
They are the children of the moon! 
Bathed in starlight!
Pure sons, pale as pearl!
Flesh of great wonder!
Ladies of constellations, eat with our Sons!"

From - A Glossary of the Amber Court; Apocrypha and Miscellanea, Chapter; 'Those They Murder are Forgotten', quote from translated text; 'The Legacy of Reeve'."






"I know not with what army I went forth. 

My Lords, amend me I beg you; how many were my numbers? We have fought a battle and we have the field and no men were lost though we fought a great multitude.

All worked as the Patron stated. Yet, amongst the enemy was a strange company, I remember silver men with black shadows. I know of no harm they did, or how they fought and yet as my mind turns to them a great fear wells up within me. My hand shakes, as it has never done, and I in your service for good years and well-fought as you know well.

Yet I do not understand for we are over-supplied. Tents and material for a great many though we are but few. Something is wrong. Aur surgeon says none have died, none at all, though he has worked all the night. The ground is wet here and this place stinks and yet we cannot find the smell.

It shames me to write so of things which have no mention in your Patron. I fear a Working. I fear as a child fears lost, though the place be small. There is a wrongness here.

I beg you to write clearly to me and with dispatch, to tell me; what number we are and why sent forth with so few, and with such great supply, and why with no General amongst us? For though I am a Major in good standing I would not think myself to command for some years such an expedition, such a diversity of men, for so far, though their numbers do be few."

---

Draft letter, un-signed and un-sent, recovered from the goods of a beggar at our gates. He wove strange tales and was wrapped in the tatters of a flag which seemed to be of our design though of no army we have ever formed. The mans feet were callused and his hands branded with rope-burn and salt, like a sailor, a pilgrim or a slave, his hair grown wild and matted as if he had journeyed a great distance. He came as if bearing a great message and this fevour (sic) and intensity attracted the attention of our guards. Yet when questioned he made little sense, but wept and spoke in fragments


From - A Glossary of the Amber Court; Apocrypha and Miscellanea, Chapter; 'Those They Murder are Forgotten', Unattributed note, Amber Court, late Period."

7 comments:

  1. I think this is in the last part that I sense the dread of the whole situation. Not only the confusion of witnesses of forgetting, but the sheer scale (most of the army) of those who were murdered and forgotten.

    On the side of thinking about the opposite, I wonder how in prescience wars anchoring oneself in the history 'I was always there' effect would be used, creation of false presence and discerning, if any, of such.

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    1. Thats a cool idea K, not one I had considered already but will definitely try to steal.

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    2. I'll be very interested to see any thoughts / records / un-records on this.

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  2. lmao false hydra moment (but better?). the OSR loops back and devours itself :]

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    1. I had actually forgotten about that. I did steal the idea but from a more recent source..

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    2. And yeah the OSR is an Ouroboros definitely

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