Lazareme's Firstborn -- Harmony's Nemesis-Mode now has a Name

Datong Harmonia – the Unity of Balance as well as the Lazaremists’ realized, not idealized, version of Panharmonium – had just torn out of the Weird not far from where the Thanatoid was waiting to repel whichever members of the Damnation Brigade the Dand chose to send against him.

Tariqartha could not replicate devils per se – he could handle their most common appearances easily enough but he couldn’t imbue any of his doppelgangers with their abilities – so it had to be the real Harmony. Until then they had thought her wiped out by her brother Unity, that of Chaos, nearly five hundred years ago. For one who was reputedly incomparably beautiful, she looked, it had to be said, gods-awful.

... from "Helios on the Moon", the third entry in the 'Launch 1980' story cycle

========

She hadn’t become the Unity of Disharmony. She’d become Freespirit Nihila.

... from "Helios on the Moon", the third entry in the 'Launch 1980' story cycle

========

Even in an unheard-for-Hadd deluge of near-biblical proportions, facially Fisherwoman (born Scylla Nereid) looked good in a glowingly golden, chain-mail.

Plus, there was nothing better against incoming, oversized vultures ridden by Sangazur-animated Dead Things firing modern ordnance, helicopter gunships lower down, Godbadian warplanes higher up and, yes, even a few missiles, no matter what they were tipped with, than teleportive Brainrock chains transmuted into an acreage-covering, Brainrock umbrella that shimmered as if akin to multi-coloured Northern Lights.

Of course, being impossibly huge, so much so that her webbed feet straddled either side of Diminished Dustmound, there was no way that could just be Fish (officially Lady Achigan, onetime Queen Scylla of Godbad). For another thing, she ordinarily didn’t have, let alone display, a third eye. And while it was true she’d managed to acquire no less than three devic power foci in her sixty-odd – very odd – years of deviant life, one of them was not and never had been a Borealis brolly.

Evidently gone was Scylla Nereid; evidently found was Nihila Nereid.

'Pyrame's Progress', a thus far unpublished aspect of the open-ended saga entitled "Wilderwitch's Babies"

========

========

Harmony was the first born of the first born.

The three Great Goddesses were the simultaneous mothers of all the Master Devas ever born. Harmony, by a matter of milliseconds over the male Unities, that of Chaos and Order, was merely the first of them to see the light of Old Weir’s day.

... from "Helios on the Moon", the third entry in the 'Launch 1980' story cycle

========

Incomparable as she, as Harmony, may be, she's no more infallible than any other devil, including her Thrygragos of a father and her Moloch of a grandfather;

What even Harmony ­– the devils’ best and brightest, whom Machine-Memory purported to base herself upon as much as Human Memory ­– failed to grasp was at the vital heart of Panharmonium. The inception of the Ants’ version would mark the day when the inbred-patriarchal, devazur race finally joined other fully sentient races on the Whole Earth as equals, not overlords.

To accomplish that, a gender balance had to be restored. Which, in their view [the Antheans'], meant the Trigregos Sisters either had to be reborn or else lured to the Whole Earth. (The Three Great Goddesses were the simultaneous mothers of all the Master Devas ever born. Harmony, by a matter of milliseconds over the male Unities, that of Chaos and Order, was merely the first of them to see the light of Old Weir’s day.)

... from "Helios on the Moon", the third entry in the 'Launch 1980' story cycle

========

As also per here, Harmony once ran the DDD at the north-east corner of the Diluvia Mountain Range, where it hasn't stopped raining since the Moloch Sedon raised the Cathonic Zone (the Dome) to protect Pacifica, the Places of Peace, from the Genesea (Great Flood of Genesis). She, albeit as an entirely different persona, returns to it near the end of the 'Launch 1980' story cycle and again in 'Acquiring Nihila', the final novella in the three-part "Hidden Headgames" collection released as part of the Phantacea Phase Two revival in 2017:

... the darkly golden-haired, butterscotch-skinned former Unity – her with the Brainrock necklace, stern, oval-shaped face, fresh green tunic, it covered with a mesh of glowing chain mail, and metal-shackled wrists, they with only a couple links of eminently extendible chains dangling off them – smiled benignly, as if in reassurance.

Almost every man in the vicinity – and not just men ­– sighed involuntarily. Their longing suspiration didn’t quite suck all the air out of the tavern but it was almost humourously audible. Not a one withered in her presence, though. Quite the contrary. No one melted either, except perhaps figuratively. (Fortunately for the non-casualty count, none of Tantal Thanatos’s icemen were around.)

Harmony had always had that effect on people, and not just people. If her father was thought of as Thrygragos Everyman because everyone who beheld him when he wasn’t wearing a disguise somehow perceived him as his, hers or its idea of Godhood, then Harmony was everyone’s ideal of feminine loveliness. Seems, despite her atypically grim demeanour, Freespirit Nihila had much the same effect when not acting ferociously.

... from "Helios on the Moon", the third entry in the 'Launch 1980' story cycle

========

Although not the titular goddess in "Goddess Gambit"; Nihila did have moments of madness after Kronokronos Mikoto entirely unintentionally released her from the Susasword after nearly 500 years of immobility. As she tells Quill Tethys she's beyond acting dangerously crazy. Now she's worse; she'd depressed. (BTW, Angelus and Tethys's flapper-footed former sister refer to the same Master Deva, Irisiel Mercherm, Lazareme's Heliodromus):

"Anything in particular I can do for you this fine wintry morning in the land of everlasting rainfall? So long as it isn’t helping you try for Great Godly Goddess Hood again, that is?”

“Like I told Fish, I’m over that.” Nihila grew briefly silent, as if formulating an appropriate response. “What I’m not over is what’s become of me. I’m a mite lost, sooth said. You called me Harmonia, Illuminaries of yore named me Datong Harmonia, both of which mean the same thing: Harmony, me. Winged Booties, your flapper-footed former sister, also called me Balance, as in the Unity thereof. But what is there to balance if Lord Order isn’t back as well?”

“And Abaddon.”

“Angelus told me what became of him too, after he catasterized Yajur.  Am I to leave him in charge of the mess the Headworld’s become in my absence?”

“He isn’t; at least not in the way you’re thinking. Chaos may reign but that’s just a figure of speech; that’s not him. He’s in the Land of Nothingness — after your time; way, way after your time. Think of a dimensional rift letting an Anti-Matter Universe leak into this one without actually vapourizing anything and you wouldn’t be far wrong. Best leave sleeping dogs lie is my best advice to you.”

"... That’s my point isn’t it. Even if I wanted to go back to the way I was before – back to my birthright, in other words – I couldn’t. I’m supposed to stand between my brood brothers; supposed to balance them, Chaos and Order."

... from "Helios on the Moon", the third entry in the 'Launch 1980' story cycle

========

Hush had already guessed her identity. Wasn’t much of a guess, sooth said. Brainrock necklace, glowing chains, body beautiful, everything about her beautiful, including the unmistakable, if muted, rage she couldn’t help but exude: Who else could it be?

... from "Helios on the Moon", the third entry in the 'Launch 1980' story cycle

========

Panel Background Note: The northern lights background is based on image to left of paragraph, also here, as photographed by Tom Mackie in Iceland, 2014, and scanned in from the May 2015 issue of Fortean Times (FT 327); the Nihila figure is by Verne Andru, 2012; it appears on the front cover of "Goddess Gambit" as well as many other places including here, here and here, all of which are both NipHty (Nihila + pHantacea + nifty) and double-click to enlarge in a separate window. Background also used here and on the Nihila Nereid, which could easily have been titled 'Freespirit Scylla', rollover above.

Much more on Harmony pre-Nihila links from here

Top of Page Search Engine - Bottom of Page Ordering Lynx