Achigan, the Duchy of (deposed King Achigan, deposed Queen Scylla, always faeries-friendly Achigon)
- former King Achigan Auranja, the hereditary leader of the Bandradin ruling class in Aka Godbad until the subcontinent's Civil War in the 5950s fled here, along with Queen Scylla (Scylla Nereid, Fisherwoman, Lady Achigan), once they were deposed circa 5960; after they set themselves up, the tiny Godbadain province of Achigon became in the Duchy of Achigan;
- the Duchy, like Achigon before it, seems unaffected by the Madness of Tal, which it borders, but Fish for one discovers it's faerie-infested once she moves there; it probably always has been;
Later on she (Fish) added a psychomotor; gave her psycho-bike a psychopomp-pump as she was fond of fay-saying at cocktail parties. When she was visiting her Summoning Child husband, Achigan Auranja, the King of Godbad, then the Duke of Achigan, Sedon’s Lower Lip-tip in silhouette, she took enormous enjoyment outracing the security men he assigned to look after her, as if she needed them, on her psycho-motorcycle.
from "Goddess Gambit", Book Three of 'The Thrice-Cursed Godly Glories'
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Apple Isle (Corona City, Kore's Hell, Theopolis Hill, Paternalia, Maternalia)
- Despite it's obvious position on the Headworld, Apple Isle did not get its name for being the apple of Sedon's Human Eye.
- Prevailing wisdom has it that Ap Isle was the Garden of Eden as well as the Island of the Hesperides, three mythical sisters who were the Grecian guardians of the Golden Apples of Immortality. In this regard, since the Head is situated in the North Pacific Ocean, at least it was until the Moloch Sedon raised the Cathonic Dome and thus sheltered Pacifica, the Places of Peace (what we remember as the Archipelago of Lemuria), from the remainder of the Whole Earth during the Great Flood of Genesis, and since Hesperides comes from the Greek: 'hesperia', which just means west, its identification with the Island of the Hesperides makes some degree of sense. Can't get much further west that Ap Isle, can you? Much further west and you'd be east!
- As for its identification with the Garden of Eden, the phrase 'East of Eden' comes to mind. Pretty much everywhere on the Inner Earth is east of Ap Isle. And pretty much everywhere on the Whole Earth is east of the North Pacific. (Of some interest, the name of the Norse or Teutonic Goddess responsible for guarding the Aesgardian version of the Golden Apples of Immortality was Idun. Which sure does sound like Eden.)
- The primary reason Apple Isle got its name is because, until centuries after the Moloch raised the Cathonic Dome out of his own essence, it was the last place on the Whole Earth where the Golden Apples of Immortality still grew. Eating these apples accounted for the extraordinarily long lives of the Biblical Patriarchs, from Adam to Noah. Also accounted for the long lives of the rest of the pre-Genesea members of the so-called Golden Age of Humankind. This
comes into play during the 'Heliodyssey' sequence of stories formerly serialized in PHANTACEA, wherein it is discovered that some of these Golden Apple Trees, and the fruit that goes with them, still exist -- albeit only in Kore's Hell!
- Kore's Hell is found within a still active volcano on Ap Isle known as Mt Maenalus; hence, in PHANTACEA anyhow, the term 'maenad'. (The female co-ruler of Apple Isle goes by the honourific of Miracle Maenad in both the 5938 and 5980 web serials.) There are a great many mostly her-stories associated with Kore's Hell within what I've come to call the PHANTACEA Mythos. Its heart-stone, or hearthstone, links to a similar one on Aegean Trigon. At least it did during the 'Heliodyssey' stories.
- In terms of Outer Earth locales one might think about with respect to Corona City, Ap Isle's lone major metropolis, Valetta on Malta is not a bad reference.
- Also in terms of Outer Earth locales one might think about with respect to Theopolis Hill, where devils regardless of tribal affiliations are worshipped freely as gods (devils = devas = 'devs' = 'Deus' = gods) and which is adjacent to Corona City, Delphi in Greece provides my inspiration. Theopolis Hill will eventually prove to be a pivotal locale in the 'Heliodyssey' serials.
- During the course of
"The Thousand Days of Disbelief". a reanimated dead thing - a onetime fabulous swordsman whose father was the Legendarian - escaped through a painting done by his father to Theopolis Hill; therein it's described as per here; the exact extract is here.
- In 5938 YD (Year of the Dome) Corona City, not its countryside, is the devic protectorate of Cruel Plathon, the Bull of Mithras. Which is one reason Ap Isle is sometimes called Apis Island. Herodotus discusses the Egyptian Apis
Bull sacrifices in some detail during his 'Histories'. These primarily his-stories' were written down, albeit not by Herodotus, who could not write and consequently recited them to his acolytes, sometime in the Fifth Century B.C. (Or BCE, Before the Common Era, as is currently all the politically correct rage.)
- The male co-ruler of Apple Isle goes by the honourific of the Taurus in both the 5938 and 5980 web-serials.
- Lifetime after lifetime, the recurring deviant, Chrysaor Attis, acted as its Taurus. That also meant he controlled the Mithrant Legionnaires during the Age of Mithras, which lasted from roughly 2000 until 4400 Years of the Dome; hence in part why he came to be thought of as the Universal Soldier. There are notes re the Attis here, here, and here.
- The Mother Superior of the Korant Sisterhood, which is based on Apple Isle, is known by tradition as Miracle Maenad. Cybele St Synne was one of the Korants' longest serving superiors in the 20th Century; Rhea Sangati always Ararat, as possessed by Pyrame Silverstar, was an earlier Korant High Priestess.
- Ap Isle has also been called Ape Isle. Can't remember why just now, though suspect it might be because Simian Sapients live there cheek to jowl, maws to paws, with many another anthropomorphic peculiarity.
- Paternalia: male only Mithrant (Bull) Games that happen every year; its winner becomes that year's Theattis if he successfully impregnates his Sybil;
- Maternalia: female only Kore (Korant, Cow) Games that happen year; its winner becomes that year's Sybil if she successfully becomes pregnant by her Theattis;
Theopolis Hill lay on the outskirts of Corona City, reputedly the oldest, continuously inhabited metropolis in the entirety of the Whole Earth. By Sedonic, Mithraic, Lazaremist and even Byronic Decree, worshippers of any stripe could safely gather up and down its slopes to pray to any and every devil-god, of any and every tribe. Verdant, ancient and religiously kept glistening, literally, only the Gregarian Fields could make the same claim.
Before emergent monotheists abandoned it to fall into ruins, Grecian Delphi was probably the Hill’s closest Outer Earth counterpart. According to many, Delphi was haunted too – by the ghost of Apollo, Apollyon or, as the Biblical Book of Revelations called him, none other than Unholy Abaddon.
========
In a way, her answer made sense. Howsoever ironically, with its hundreds of often Tholos-shaped, mostly Yazata-built, temples or sanctuaries, Theopolis Hill was the only place Chaos had recognized when he’d been in the Tethys Tomb admiring Jordy’s landscapes under an hour earlier. Dead again, but Sangazur-reanimated, Quidnunc must have felt it would provide a refuge, so long as he could get through to it.
Since he did, he clearly could.
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Let’s get back to where I started His Story — our sixty-first lifetime. We are on the Earth yet again, this time some sixteen hundred years before the Great Flood or forty-six hundred years prior to our seventh life. Atlantis is finally overwhelmed by the melting ice of the ages.
Alorus Ptah, Helios, transfers Trigon from the sinking continent to an island within the Western Ocean of Pacifica. Which is was what we call the entire archipelago you might think of as Mu or Lemuria. This he names New Eden – though today it is called Apple Isle or, less correctly, Corona, which is actually a gulf, Sedon’s Human Eye.
Things are swell for us.
... from "Helios on the Moon", the third entry in the 'Launch 1980' story cycle
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"What also has to be said is he’s never lost his appetite for golden apples. Call it for what it is — his need for, his addiction to, the things.
"[Helios] often returns to Ap Isle in order to satisfy his craving. We don’t really care. It’s not because we’re so engrossed being pregnant either. We aren’t going to age, not appreciably anyhow. Demons aren’t built that way. But Alorus Ptah will, and is; only thanks to the apples it’s tolerably slowly. Consequently we don’t even notice that Ptah-Helios’s eyes have wandered again.
"Seems a golden-skinned, hence golden apple eating, Apple Islander has captured them this time. This would be Trishtar Thrae, the Biblical Eve, the second such to his second Adam. And if you knew what Harmony likes to look like – her, his one truelove from his second lifetime and whom we helped whelp in his third – you’d realize what the attraction is, and was, for the next eight hundred-odd years.
"Once we find out about her I, Lilith, don’t just hate her. We immediately plot to eliminate her. And maybe she, Thrae, realizes it. Or he does. As it turns out, only one thing saves her. She’s pregnant, too.
... from "Helios on the Moon", the third entry in the 'Launch 1980' story cycle
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Bandrad (The High Plains of Bandrad, the Holy Heights, Family Auranja)
- Bandradins are orange-skinned and orange-textured;
- traditionally the Cattail Peninsula fell within the sphere of influence of Unholy Abaddon, the Lazaremist firsborn better known as Chaos (sometimes Abe Chaos, sometimes also Uncle Abe Chaos) because he is, or was (after the 1000 Days of Disbelief), the Unity of Chaos; however, at an unspecificied period in the distant past, Bandradins began worsphipping Unmoving Byron, the Buddha-like Great God whose age it became after 1000-Daze;
- Bandradins reserved special adoration for his firstborn son, the tiger-like Storm and Beast God Rudra Silvercloud; Chaos being Chaos, he didn't object; in fact Chaos and Byron's Beast became enduring friends; in
"Goddess Gambit", Rudra (also Savage Storm) is described as follows: 'An orange-and-brown furred, tiger-striped were-thing with three eyes';
- Bandradins are mentioned occasionally in
"Janna Fangfingers", the final mini-novel extracted from "The Thousand Days of Disbelief", and much more often in Gambit; mostly it's in connection with Achigan Auranja, the hereditary leader of the Bandradin ruling class in Godbad until the subcontinent's Civil War in the 5950s; he's King Achigan, Queen Scylla is Scylla Nereid, Fisherwoman;
- As per Gambit, there are Bandradin vampires as well as Bandradin mercenaries;
The other two men struck the three spying cosmicompanions as even stranger. One was accoutered in a regular, if somewhat tattered, black business suit while the other wore a tracksuit, as if he just come in from jogging. Clothing aside, what was so strange about them was they both had skin coloured and textured the same as a California orange. What was so strange about one of the women, a young and nice-looking, albeit toothy, dark-haired oriental in a kimono and sandals was both her feet and hands seemed to be attached backwards.
from Pregame-Gamibit: 'Chomping the Cosmicar’s Four', the sixth chapter of "Goddess Gambit"
Two of the other barbarians were Godbadians. Andy (Andaemyn Sarpedon) suspected they were brothers. She didn’t suspect they were part-Bandradin. Orangey skin-pigmentation and a fruity-orange skin-complexion confirmed that in her mind.
... from game-Gamibit: 'Freespirit Nihila', the sixteenth chapter of "Goddess Gambit"
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NOTE: There's a serendipitous entry re Auranja, the ruling family's surname, here
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Cabalarkon, the Weirdom of (Undying Cabalarkon, Master Kyprian, Saladin Devason, Absudyl, Magnus Minus - The Mighty Minotaurus of Minius)
“Sedon didn’t want any of us to come anywhere near here long before he simultaneously lowered and raised the Dome, out of himself. Truth told, which we always do, he forbade us access to what was then a huge island centuries before your Utopian predecessors even arrived on the Whole Earth the last time we know about for sure. Ergo, his proscription has nothing to do with Trinondev eye-staves and everything to do with where they built their first damnable Weirdom: namely, overtop of Cabby the Daddy’s to date final resting place.”
- The Weirdom
of Cabalarkon (Sedon's Devic Eye-Land) is named after Cabalarkon, the undying
Utopian Scientocrat (a geneticist) whose right eye Heliosophos, the Male Entity,
used as instigative raw material when he in effect created the Moloch Sedon during his Fifth Lifetime, which took place in the far-off Planetary System
of Weir (Old Weirsystem); this story is told in 'Odd-3' and well as 'Forever & 40 Days, the Genesis of PHANTACEA', which can still be ordered;
there's an overview of this sequence in the graphic novel here;
- Cabalarkon
("Cabby") himself survives in a tub of Cathonic
Fluid beneath the Citadel of the Thinkers, in the Catacombs of the Sleepers,
within the Weirdom bearing his name; his story is told in 'Odd-6' and well as 'Forever & 40 Days, the Genesis of PHANTACEA', which can still be ordered;
he appears, mostly as a ghost, in 'The Weirdness of Cabalarkon';
- Rulers of the Weirdom of Cabalarkon
are known as Masters of Weir;
- Kyprian Somata was the Master
of Weir from an unspecified date in the Fifty-Ninth Century of the Dome until
the mid-point of the Sixtieth Century; she features in the 1938 story sequences, particularly in 'Helioddity';
- Kyprian is a direct descendant
of Zalman Somata, the Master of Weirdom of Kanin who usurped the throne of
Cabalarkon in the Fifty-Fifth Century of the Dome; he appeared in 'PREGAME-Gambit';
- Saladin Devason is the Master
of Weir in Tantalar 5980; born in 5919 his parents were possessed by devils
when he was conceived; Illuminaries of Weir, together with Scientocrat Utopians
and Inner Earth, old-time Anthean witches, genetically bred his parents, Augustus
Nauroz and Pandora Mannering, such that they would have incarnations of the
Trigregos Sisters; that a solitary male was born instead of triplet sisters
ruined the Panharmonium Project and directly led to the Witches of Weir calling the Simultaneous Summonings
of 19/5920, from whence resulted the Summoning Children;
- As told in 'The
Damnation Brigade: Month One - After Limbo', which is now called 'The Weirdness of Cabalarkon',
D-Brig sought refuge here after Kronokronos Lakshmi of Lemuria booted them
out of Temporis on Tantalar 6, 5980;
- Deep beneath Cabby's Weirdom lies Absudyl, the Land
of the Mandroids; Absudyl (aka Minius)
was where Trans-Time Trigon ended up for the start of the Male Entity's 11th lifetime in 1908; it was
in the same place for part of the Male Entity's 100th lifetime as well; it's an extension of the Hell-Well of the World that begins in Satanwyck and also includes Temporis;
- During the Simultaneous Summonings of 19/5920, the
nominal Lord of the Lower Layers (Absudyl/Minius)
was Magnus Minus (Mr Miniature), whose official title is/was Minotaurus due largely to his self-manufactured bullish ballsiness; thanks in less large measure to Pyrame Silverstar, Magnus Minus appears briefly during
'The 1000 Days of Disbelief', therein he aids Unholy Abaddon, the Unity of Chaos, against Master Morgan Abyss, the so-called Death's Head Hellion;
- Magnus Minus revives
again in 5938; he fancies himself an incarnation of Daemonicus,
the demons' pre-Sedon king and mate of Primeval Lilith; his apparent control
over Stopstone/Solidium, what composes Mandroids and Mantels, as well as Brainstone/Stoprock,
the stuff of Samsara, makes him a formidable character, for a fool;
Pyrame, via her long association with Demon Queen Lilith, or whoever made up her daemonic body, was privy to most things daemonic. That included how they got the minds needed to upgrade their primitive, even primordial, brain functions to a level as close as they ever came to full sentience.
They snared them from minutes-earlier, deceased men and women, many of whom probably fancied their spirits would be on their way to either heaven or hell. Beer-guzzling sybarites dropped dead everyday, if not every hour, on both sides of the Dome. Reasoning – perhaps even knowing it for certain – that the souls of dead drunks would gravitate to it like wasps to discarded salmon skin, Pyrame had the Unity of Chaos boost barrels of the wondrous elixir from the DDD and take them to the Hell-Well’s crusty hollow beneath Sedon’s Devic Eye-Land.
Following her instructions, he liberally sprinkled libations of pilsner over the hitherto seemingly lifeless, underground plains of what Lazareme characterized to Harmony as the bottomless pit. Sure enough, shortly thereafter Abe Chaos had himself a companionable Minotaurus of mightily minute vitality, one who by virtue of his origin, if not anywhere close to a superior intelligence, doubled as a daemonic demiurge.
Even more importantly in terms of Pyrame’s impressive plan forward, this Magnus Minus, a name he gave himself, was a native son. Because of that, he actually eclipsed Morg in the demiurge department; at least he did with respect to that locale, the nearest to Cabalarkon.
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Crepuscule, the Grey Land of Twilight (Krepusyl Evenstar,
the Grey Lady, Feeorin, Queen Godda)
- Once the Land of Daybreak, on the occipital extreme of Sedon's Head (where
now lies Samarand -- once Sedon's Tongue). At that time (which, as detailed
in
"Feeling Theocidal",
lasted for well over 4400 years), it was the easternmost region of the Hidden
Headworld;
- Its Deva Dand or Overlady is Krepusyl Evenstar, Thrygragos Lazareme's Venus
(called Mariamne Dawnstar when she ruled Daybreak). Among her other appellations
nowadays include Miss Mist and, most commonly, the Grey Lady (spelt properly so as not to confuse her with the New York Times). Her power focus
is a morningstar or morgenstern mace (sarcastically known as a holy water
sprinkler in medieval times);
- Feeorin (fay folks) are earthborn exotica, faeries related to the Demons of Satanwyck
and the wights of the Faerie Garden, as encountered
by Wilderwitch and Kronokronos Akbar in the later stages of
"The
War of the Apocalyptics", which was set in Year of the Dome 5980;
- Queen Godda (God-Devil, also Godiva) is the name and likeness Krepusyl's
seemingly endless succession of mortal shells (many of whom were stolen from,
or else paid as teind on, the Outer Earth) goes by; at least it was up to and including 'The Volsung Variations',
which was set in 5938 YD;
- Laird Edric is the Duke or Summertime King of the Seelie or Summertime Court
while Fir Doirche (Fear Dark) is the Duke or
Wintertime King of the Unseelie or Wintertime Court; both are faerie-dusted
mortals; at the end of 'Coueranna's Curse' and in VolVar, the High Queen or Duchess of the Unseelie Court is Mara Macha (Nightmare herself);
- Godda's feeorin mates vary; in VolVar his name's Foinn-bheara ('fin-varra');
- Its capital is known as Tenebrife, arguably a onetime Weirdom; Fisherwoman apparently found haven in its cyclopean castle with her son, Crainte Auranja, before he was stolen by faeries subservient to his father, Achigan Auranja, as a trade-off for them helping him reclaim his throne during the Godbadian Civil War
========
As usual for someone relatively recently returned to the Inner Earth, it took a while to recall the place but Laodice born Atreides was no stranger to the Cyclopean Castle of Tenebrife. The last time she could now recall being here, in the late Thirties, its Grand Hall had been decorated, if you could call it that, with decapitated human heads mounted on spears, poles, rifle barrels and such like. Mostly human heads anyhow.
Fortunately for her stomach, today, the Summer Solstice, the heads had been replaced by graven images of same. Were still grotesque to behold, however, and very nearly put her off her breakfast. Not that breakfast, which consisted of porridge sprinkled with dried, mouseturd-looking raisins, flakes of granulated sugar and goat’s milk verging on cottage feta cheese was all that appealing in the first place.
... from "Harry on the Head", the unpublished sequel to the 'Aspects of an Amoebaman' web-serial
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Crimson
- Never officially proclaimed protectorate of Phantast Thanatos, aka Dream or Dream Weaver;
- A boggy canker or sore on Sedon's Upper Lip within what became the Forbidden Forest of Kala Tal (Sedon's Moustache);
- As noted in 'The 1000 Days of Disbelief', it was here that Phantast used to host his dream bacchanals every Midsummer's Day;
- Phantast and Strife (then still Fitna Marutia) hatched the Crimson Conspiracy here circa 4000 YD (Year 0 AD)
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The Gregarian Fields, Sedon's Mole, the Medusa's Meadow (also Kanin City, the megalithic as well as antediluvian metropolis that became the capital of the Mastery of Marutia a few centuries after Thrygragon)
- as per here, Kanin City was the landing site of the Sedonshem in 669 PD (Pre-Dome);
- the Sedonshem landing caused, among many others, the death of Droch Nor, the Seventh Patriarch of Golden Age Humankind;
- Kanin City became a Weirdom shortly after Sedon raised the Cathonic Dome in Year Zero YD (Year of the Dome);
- as per , site of Thrygragon in 4376 YD;
- sometime after Thrygragon devils began to rule Kanin City by possessing its hybrid Utopian Masters;
- due to turmoil, particularly when Mithradites were ruling it, Thrygragos Lazareme (whose Age it had become) determined that each devic tribe would have the opportunity to rule it for 500 years;
- Byronics ruled it from 4500 YD until passing it over to the Lazaremists in 5000 YD;
- 5000 YD marks the start of the Lazaremists' version of Panharmonium;
- as told particularly in
"Contagion Collectors" and "Janna Fangfingers", the last two (of three) mini-novels extracted from "The 1000 Days of Disbelief", Mithradites were due to take over the rulership of Kanin City – and with it the Mastery of Marutia (Sedon's Cheek Lands) – in 5500 YD;
- the threat of the Mithradites' impending takeover of the cross-Cheek Mastery provides the impetus for much of the turmoil that eventually leads to the First War between the Living and the Dead as well as the so-called 1000 Days of Disbelief;
- in the mid-59th Century of the Dome, Mater Matare, the Apocalyptic of Mundane Death, reputedly became pregnant here with the eventual Quadrang Nucleoids after being demon-devoured by Titania Cabala
The Medusa’s meadow, the site of Thrygragon’s bloodiest engagements and, with them, Thrygragos Varuna Mithras’s most momentous achievements – as well as his thus far proven-fatal fragmentation – was in the Gregarian Fields, aka Sedon’s Mole. The former Weirdom of Kanin City, the devils-thought Blot on Sedon’s Cheek, lay just south of the Fields.
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By their twenty-first birthdays Cain and Abel have not only become aware of each other, they’re both living in the vicinity of Trigon: Cain in the city Ptah-Helios has been building, call it Kanin, after Cain; Abel in the countryside, call it the Gregarian Fields. They quarrel. But not over the merits of their avocations as patriarchal scholars often burble in their blithering, vacuum-headed denial of all things feminine. No, they quarrel over, of all things, a girl. I mean, how dare they!
Call her whatever you want but I tend to go with Hecate, as I reckon, due to what she does to our firstborn – what Lily did to their father – she’s the world’s first real witch.
... from "Helios on the Moon", the third entry in the 'Launch 1980' story cycle
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Diluvian Mountain Range
- externally impassable 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 (the Great Flood of Genesis);
- lies between, and keeps most of their inhabitants separate, Hadd (the Penile Peninsula) and Marutia (Sedon's Cheek);
- the Dinq, Doinq, Danq Cavern Tavern, which the incomparable Harmony ran for many centuries, is situated on the far north-east corner of the mountain range; Pusan Wanderlust, a recurring fauna, has been running it for multiple incarnation prior to Gambit coming along in 5980;
- Sraddhites (the brown-robed priests and priestesse who worship Sraddha Somata despite the fact he was killed during the Thousand Days of Disbelief) have long colonized its southern slopes, mostly because Haddit Zombies cannot abide rain;
- featured in "The 1000 Days of Disbelief", "Goddess Gambit" and "Helios on the Moon"; also visited during some of the web-serials;
- as primarily per "Contagion Collectors", frequented by Master Devas (and one of their fathers) in part because it makes a decent Cathy;
- Jordan "Quill" Tethys has maintained a residence at the DDD for many incarnations;
========
Her [Angelus's] Thrygragos of a father, the last Great God on the Head proper, remained elsewhere; most likely still half-drunk and sleeping it off in the Dinq Doinq Danq Cavern Tavern, on the northern slopes of the Diluvia Mountain Range (between Hadd and Marutia), where it hadn’t stopped raining since the Great Flood of Genesis.
He often went there, meticulously incognito, in order to relax and, as he put it, indulge his human side. (Lazareme looked in a mirror and saw a three-eyed version of the Male Entity currently on the Moon looking back at him. He did so because his Father Sedon creatively based him on Helios.)
One who wasn’t there – because she was appearing right in front of her here and now, large as life on the comparatively much larger landform in the middle of the Aural Sea – was the DDD’s long-time former owner. And she was based on the Female Entity. Unless she was her hived in twain!
... from "Helios on the Moon", the third entry in the 'Launch 1980' story cycle
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The Gypsium Wall, aka Sedon's Headband (Harmony's home more so than her protectorate until around the start of the Thousand Days of Disbelief)
Even if its recipe included rotting fungi, the Dinq Doinq Danq Cavern Tavern was one of the few taverns on the Whole Earth to do a decent Cathy. That it could do so at all had everything to do with its relative proximity, across the devil-dredged and thereafter Diluvia-drenched Auditory Canal, to the westernmost extreme of the Gypsium Wall.
The Unity of Panharmonium
-- from roughly 5000 to 5500 Years of the Dome --
A geologically unstable, ultra hilly strip of terrain upwards to two hundred miles in width and spanning nearly eight hundred miles in length, it was another natural-looking, but Sedon-shaped landscape. Cresting most of it was an actual wall. Thick, though partially collapsing and no longer impenetrable, Cathy’s concocters had no problem locating, then mining, blocks of the transitory Godstuff for preparatory purposes of stimulation more so than refreshment.
Head-worldly wise, the Cattail Peninsula formed Sedon’s Ponytail, hence why the Wall was also called Sedon’s Hairband. Broken as it was, it nevertheless continued its exemplary service as an unmistakable, devil-reinforced, geographical barrier between the eastern Head’s Yajur-dominated occipital regions and Unholy Abaddon’s de facto domain.
Although it had definitely seen better days, very few, if any, of those who passed over, under or around it were better looking than its Deva Dand, also an Over-Lady. When she wasn’t elsewhere, the Danq’s official owner, the Unity of Balance as well as Panharmonium, could usually be found dwelling at her mobile, now-you-see-it and now-you-don’t, High Seat somewhere atop the Wall proper.
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The Hoodoo Hamlet
- At some unspecified period likely long prior to events described in
"Contagion Collectors" (circa 5500 YD, 1500 AD), faeries presumably from Twilight formed the Hoodoo Hamlet right on the south-central coast of the Gulf of Corona (Sedon's Human Eye);
- It's there, safely beyond the Time Quakes that have plagued Marutia (Sedon's Cheek) since Thrygragon, that hybrid Utopians under Sraddha Somata built the barques his father, Zalman, the recently resigned Master of the Weirdom of Kanin City, and his fanatically followers used to sale up north to the Weirdom of Cabalarkon;
“That’s it?” Sparky sounded surprised at the hoodoo hamlet’s lack of size.
“The mist over here and the blue sky over there kind of gives that away for free, Order,” Thrygragos Lazareme noted drolly. “Still, it does seem barely a sty on the eye.”
“Technically speaking, dad,” the Librarian, Biblio Drek as antique Illuminaries of Weir named him, corrected the Great God his father, “A sty’s on the eyelid. Sraddha and the Fop’s bitty bump of a pimply protectorate is beneath Sedon’s Human’s Eye. Which, as you may have heard, is the Gulf of Corona and thus watery, hence the spiffy new barques out there.”
“So what?” the Great God said, dismissing his observation with a wave. “If the sty offends cut it out, I say.”
- In phantacea pHact, thanks largely to Quoits Tethys, Herta Heartthrob and Tomcat Tattletail, it's where Hieronymous Bosch experienced the Garden of Earthy (not Earthly) Delights firsthand;
- It's also where Albrecht Durer became inspired to produce his famous Four Horseman (even if one of them was a woman) and where the infamous Spanish Inquisitor, Tomas de Torquemada, got his smile(r).
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Incain, the Prison Beach of, (All the self-proclaimed Invincible She-Sphinx thereof, Pyrame Silverstar, All's fuel)
- southernmost point of land on the Cattail Peninsula (Sedon's Ponytail) and hence of the entire Hidden Headworld;
- the domain of All of Incain, once Ginny the Gynosphinx;
- link way through Cathonia (the Cathonic Zone or Dome, also the Sedon Sphere) for non-devils to the Outer Earth (emerges through the 'door' of the millennia-moribund Egyptian Sphinx, once Andy the Androsphinx ;
- Pyrame Silverstar also uses the link way between the two sphinxes to traverse the Dome; she can do that because, as a creation of the Dual Entities, All has been programmed not to eat her — rather, more precisely, she's been programmed not to eat Primeval Lilith, whom Pyrame possesses on a regular basis;
“[Not just] Byron Spawn use Incain as an alternative to cathonitizing their own kind. Pyrame Silverstar, the Pauper Priestess, the Mithraic half-mother of Sedon’s sedons, the mortal-mystical foundations of the Sedon Sphere, considered it her protectorate ...
“It is often preferable to deal with rogue devils by imprisoning them in Incain where, if you’ve the mind’s eye to see, their sleeping bodies can actually be seen. There, also, their fingerprint-like essences can be monitored in order to doubly demonstrate they’re still present. Not that anyone has ever escaped from All’s Incain. Probably no one ever will either. It’s just not in the latter day Mother Machine’s programming to allow escapes.
“Besides, how you’d ever come conscious long enough to even plan an escape is beyond me. Furthermore, as I understand it anyhow, even to attempt one automatically causes self-cathonitization. However, because of that programming, but also because all devils, not just the Libertine and the Unmoving One are genetically bound by their oaths, many devils have served time in Incain and been released accordingly.
|
Lathakra, the Frozen Isle of, (King Cold, Crimson Queen, Fourth Generation Thanatoids, Intuits, Fire King Fikings, Ambulatory Snow and Icemen)
- Once Sedon's geographical horn. At that time (which, as detailed in "Feeling
Theocidal", lasted for well over 4400 years), it rose in the Mystic
Mountains beyond the Weirdom of Cabalarkon and extended into the sea far to the north beyond Sisert.
- As such, the base of Sedon's Horn was Mythland, the Jewel of Sedon's Crown.
- All that changed when, sometime after Thrygragon (which occurred on Mithramas 4376 Year of the Dome), the Moloch Sedon rearranged
the Headworld's geography perhaps just to prove he could.
- Perhaps to Sedon's shock, after he made it, in effect, Sedon's Lens by placing it off the west coast of the Gulf of Corona (Sedon's Human Eye, see Apple Isle), Methandra Thanatos, then still Mithras's Virgin and the apple of his (Sedon's) eye (as it were), moved to it from Mythland.
- For reasons never entirely made clear, circa 4725 Sedon again moved it, this time to off the coast of the Cattail Peninsula; as detailed in
"The Death's Head Hellion" this action led directly to the Expansion of the Empire of Lathakra, which very nearly conquered the entired Headworld within a century.
- Geologically Lathakra's landform resembles that of Mediterranean Crete, albeit frozen over, pocked with nevertheless active volcanos and on a north-south axis rather than an east-west.
- In PHANTACEA King Cold is blue-skinned Tantal Thanatos. Thanatos means Death.
Tantalizing comes from Tantal. Does that mean death is tantalizing? Not in PHANTACEA it doesn't. In some respects, especially
for the Thanatoids of Lathakra, it means potential life-everlasting.
- Crimson Queen is red-skinned Methandra,
the Scarlet Seeress, she also of Mythland in the Mystic Mountains (Sedon's Crown) north of
the Ghostlands. Name jumbles from Mediterranean Athena. She may have once
been once Mithras' Virgin but, in the stories set from circa 5920 on the Head (1920 beyond the Dome), she is that no longer. Is the mother of five
sets of three-eyed, devic twins, for a total of ten Fourth Generation Devas. Good for
not just her!
- Night
and Day, the Four Elements and the Four Seasons: those are the attributes
of their ten offspring, their Fourth Generational Devils. Their names are
Erebe (Night), Castella (Day), Aires (Air), Thalassa (Water), Acheron (Fire),
Antaeor (Earth), Orinth (Spring), Veronas (Summer), Constantin (Autumn) and
Auraura (Winter).
- The Parents
Thanatos have one azura spirit being. Her name is Klannit and because of her
affinity for mirrors she is known as the Mirror Mentalist. They also have
another child, one Sedunihas by name. While there appears to be some uncertainty
regarding his parentage, he is definitely deaf, has yellow skin and three
eyes and is an artist who specializes in making ice sculptures that Klannit
animates. For some reason he does not seem to age very rapidly.
- Like
her parents, Klannit appears in both the 5938 and 5980 web serials. Sedunihas
was not born until 5955 and thus only appears in the 5980 series, which is also when and where most of the others make their first appearances
in PHANTACEA. However, there is a strong suggestion
that the Terrible Twins of 1938, Aires and Thalassa D'Angelo, are actually
Elemental Thanatoids. That being the case then Air and Sea of the Angels are
really Air and Water of the Devils. Aires (the Airealist) and Thalassa (Sea
Goddess) D'Angelo are members of the Damnation Brigade and have appeared in
both the 5938 and 5980 serials.
Fire Kings were King Cold’s large-framed, fractious, as in hot-blooded, mostly blond and blue-eyed, battle-craving subjects from the days when Lathakra was Sedon’s Horn. Intuits were big-headed, mutant telepaths bred, then forsaken as ugly undesirables, by Old Eden’s heartless scientists long before Humanity’s Golden Age even began. Howsoever ironically given who they chose to worship, they were generally small and robust, with reddish or brownish skin.
Fire Kings reminded Outer Earth outsiders of Scandinavian Viking types. Intuits were akin to the Inuit of northern Canada, Danish Greenland and Soviet Siberia. Contrarily to many, they were mostly followers of Tantal’s Crimson Queen (and onetime Scarlet Empress) from when she, by herself, ruled Mythland, the Jewel in Sedon’s Crown (the Mystic Mountains, sometimes also Sedon’s Headband) and the then, effectively, seat or foot of Sedon’s Horn.
... from "Helios on the Moon", the third entry in the 'Launch 1980' story cycle
========
Ambulatory snowmen – called Yeti or Almasty, Sasquatch or Shurale, even Wood Goblin and Bigfoot, when they slipped through the dimensional fabric of between-space and ended up on the Outer Earth – were native to one place and, at least in its early centuries, only one place on Sedon’s Head. The same was true of icemen; except, in the case, they were more akin to tellurian mantels than snowmen, who were at least mammalian.
That place was no longer called Sedon’s Horn.
... from "Helios on the Moon", the third entry in the 'Launch 1980' story cycle
========
|
Mystic Mountains (Sedon's Crown, Mythland, Sedon's Jewel)
- Mythland became the devic protectorate of Methandra Thanatos (the Scarlet Empress, Heat to her husband's Cold) after Thrygragon; also known as the Jewel of Sedon's Crown it lies in the far western Mystics where it once formed the base of Sedon's Horn (long nowadays the Frozen Isle of Lathakra);
- Biblio Drek (the Librarian) at one time dwelled in the far-eastern extreme of the Mystics;
========
|
New Iraxas (Petrograd)
- northeasternmost corner of subcontinent of Godbad
- due to extreme pollution, for most of Godbad's Industrial Revolution, only Haddit Zombies, as overseen by Janna Fangfingers' vampire elite, can work there; this only began changing when Fisherwoman's force of indigenet, water-breathing Akans and their allies, including Lemurians and Piscine, started their own revolt in the 5970s;
As dreadful as all that anti-Irache vitriol, too often become violence, in ‘civilized’ quarters, there was more, much more. There was the greening of New Iraxas, the oil-rich Godbadian province across the Gulf of Aka, to consider. Iraches zombies worked there. Its endemic pollution was so foul-smelling, so eye-watering smoggy, so coughing cancerous, so overwhelmingly brumous the Outer Earth North American slang term smaze (smog + haze) bespoke a good day, they were about all that could.
The Godbucks they earned, sent back to tribesmen in Hadd, was so very useful, indeed; particularly when it came to purchasing howsoever primitive weaponry in order to defend the land, its hunting grounds and its crops from the miserable, ever-encroaching Sraddhites. But ever since its backers won the Godbadian Civil War, twenty years ago now, Centauri Enterprises – why Godbad was properly considered a Corporate State – has been trying to clean up the air and thereby drive out its Haddit workforce by robbing them of their raison d’être.
... from 'Pyrame's Progress', a possible entry in the open-ended saga of 'Wilderwitch's Babies'
========
- part of its efforts to green up New Iraxas in order to make it a safe place for average Godbadian to safely work meant Centauri Enterprises was already attempting to deal with the zombies' overseers, Janna Fangfingers and her vamps, a few years prior to 5980:
The province of New Iraxas was the only place in the sub-continental landmass – in most of the known Head, actually – where petroleum could be found in any abundance. Unchecked extraction, on the spot refining, ancillary production and manufacturing factories rendered it so polluted only Living Iraches, in the short term, and Haddit Zombies, for the long term, would work there. Also until recently most of the Iraches, living and dead, working there were overseen, overruled put better, by Janna Fangfingers’ vampires.
Although a decent percentage of them were Iraches, many more were Marutian or Godbadian. However, as an Outer Earthling who was also popular in Godbad once famously sang, the times they were a-changing. Centauri Enterprises, in addition to greening-up New Iraxas, now paid a bounty on vampires.
It was payable in Godbucks and calculable strictly by weight. The weight was made up of bagged, vampiric dust.
... from 'Pyrame's Progress', a possible entry in the open-ended saga of 'Wilderwitch's Babies'
========
|
Ophir-Moorset (Dandset Typhon, Ophidian 'Snake-Sucklers', the Queen of Sheba)
- "the marshy devic protectorate of Dandset Typhon, Boss Boa of all the slither-hither Ophirant serpent-slime," to quote Granny Garuda who, like most garudas, despised Ophidians;
- Dandset Typhon was/is a Mithradite Master Deva; he established Moorset in defiance of his father, Thrygragos Varuna Mithras, some years or decade prior to Thrygragon (4376 YD);
- the mating habits of Ophidian 'Snake Sucklers' were described in 'The Vampire Variations', via Sorciere's recollections of Granny Garuda's instructions:
Sorciere had seen true Ophidians before. A lot were humanoid, two legs, two arms, one head, not much in the way of hair and a lot of scales. Some were quite beautiful, enchanting anyhow, -- if you went for gaudy, multi-coloured,
often glistening and sometimes flaking skin. Most were also venomous.
Which was fine for them. Fine for everyone else too, -- in most respects. They weren't cannibals. She had been warned against going to bed with them because, in the heat of passion, they tended to nibble. Their nibbles were nasty, as in nauseating, at the minimum.
On the men these tails weren't too bad. Comparatively speaking. Were just
an appendage that happened to be a complete snake. Up to its tail. Which
merged with the man's tailbone and extended into his backbone. Shared both
ends of his digestive system, top and bottom, as well. Urinary track too,
albeit not just for urine.
On the females though, well, that was altogether a different matter. Their serpentine tails were neither serpents nor symbols so much as grotesquely
long, fully functional phalluses. They inseminated themselves. All their
men provided, at least in terms of female reproduction, was pleasure and
the occasional meal.
Ophidian males were anything but neuters. Not like the seemingly sexless species that populated Geld Neargon's protectorate on the Marutian Coast opposite Undying. Not like Myrmidon ant-men after they lost their wings either, -- which, having them, was also an indicator of their fertility.
On the contrary Ophidian men were semen-superstars; could impregnate just about anything. Didn't even need them to be sentient beings. Made for some interesting results, to say the least. When they could keep their nibbling to themselves, that is.
Weren't neuters even when it came to inseminating Ophidian women. Just that, when they did, they only procreated more men; never any females. In that case also their tail-snakes, which had mouths, had to get involved. The Worm Ouroboros, what ate its own tail, had nothing on Ophidian mating rituals.
Granny regarded all things Ophidian as abominations. But their sexual practises went beyond the abominable all the way to the morbidly fascinating, even for Garudas. They went something like this, Sorciere recalled Granny telling her in disgust.
Male tail-snake fellates female tail-snake, what was mostly male phallus, recall. Female tail-snake ejaculates into male tail-snake; said stuff rushes through male Ophidian to his regular organ, engorged and at work in female's dick-dildo. Fluids mingle, egg fertilizes, and, bingo-bang-bongo, essence of man.
Oh yes, females bore their own live, like most mammals. Not so their males. Dropped the eggs and let serpent-sires look after the nest. Which they were very good at doing. Had to be. Their women liked nothing better than Ophidian omelets for breakfast.
|
Samarand (Samarand City, formerly Sedon's Tongue-Stud)
As hard as it was for outsiders to credit – as hard as it was for most insiders to do a dot-ditto – Samarand had been Sedon’s Tongue; the city itself Sedon’s
Tongue Stud. By the same token Twilight had once been Daybreak whereas Frozen Lathakra had lain off the Gulf of Corona, Sedon’s Human Eye, where it in effect formed Sedon’s Lens or Monocle. In all three their leading devic Dand or overseer: Yati, Byron’s Dragon; Mariamne Dawnstar; and old King Cold started withholding more than their fair share of reverence received, at least as far as the power that be above them was concerned.
So one preposterous, though obvious not impossible, said power, the Moloch Sedon, uprooted all three massive, territorial landforms, inhabitants with their habitation, and stuck them where they are now. Daybreak, the Land of the Rising Sun became Sedon’s Outer Nose, aka Crepuscule-Twilight, the Land of the Setting Sun. Its devic ruler, no fool she, Lazareme’s Venus, changed her name accordingly. Became the Grey Lady, Miss Mist, Krepusyl Evenstar. Sedon’s Tongue, still called Samarand, took Daybreak’s place on the far east coast Occipital region, such that it saw the Hidden Headworld’s first sunrise.
... from 'Pyrame's Progress', a possible entry in the open-ended saga of 'Wilderwitch's Babies'
========
Samarand, even before the Mighty Moloch moved it, until then Sedon’s Tongue, to the other side of the Head, was a hotbed of homun beings, deliberately-made homunculi once used as expendable soldiers. Not surprisingly since its scientific practitioners were mostly descended from star-trekking, Trinondev techno- and biomages.
... from 'Pyrame's Progress', a possible entry in the open-ended saga of 'Wilderwitch's Babies'
========
|
Satanwyck (Pandemonium, the Domain of Nearly All Demons, Sedon's Temple, the Hell-Well, Satanwyck's Seven Sinistrals)
- The first Prime Sinistral of Satanwyck was Domdaniel Pride; his reign ended circa 3500 YD (1500 BC); his fate is described in 'Feel Theo'; Pride was succeeded, in no particular order, by Lust, Envy, Sloth Gluttony, Anger and Wrath; as noted in 'Feel Theo' all except (possibly) Lust ran afoul of Chrysaor Attis, the Universal Soldier, and were imprisoned within All of Incain until the She-Sphinx released them on Thrygragon at the insistence of Thrygragos Varuna Mithras;
- Gluttony (Arisandesam, the Conqueror Worm) ceased being Prime Sinistral circa 4000 YD (Year 0 BC/AD), his fate is noted in
"The 1000 Days of Disbelief";
- Lady Lust (Beguiling Belialma) was Prime Sinistral pre-Thrygragon and again just prior to the start of
"The 1000 Days of Disbelief"; she plays fairly major roles in both Feel Theo and 1000-Daze; at the risk of giving away a key hook into "Janna Fangfingers", a post-coital, um, interchange between Abe Chaos and Hell's Belle is here; she expressed her dislike for having to act as Sedon's surrogate in Feel Theo; that's also hinted at implicitly in a snippet of a conversation between Herta Heartthrob and her last surviving son by Tomcat Tattletail as per here;
- Wrath or Anger (Grim Thordin) once again ruled Satanwyck after Thrygragon;
- Greed or Avarice (Santa Mammon) also ruled Satanwyck for a while after Thrygragon;
- Cupidity and/or Envy (Bobby Badboy, Robin Goodfellow) became Prime Sinistral either before or during
"The 1000 Days of Disbelief"; one quote re the envious little sprite is here; another might be here;
- Sloth (Baaloch Hellblob) is Prime Sinistral in 19/5980;
- Chancellor Ibal has almost always been its Viceroy, the power behind the throne; his Tvasitar Talisman, the so-called Evil Eye was the source of his authority until Sloth got hold of it circa 19/5950, which was the year Ibal was catasterized (cathonitized or ill-starred);
- The Hell-Well (from whence earthborn or chthonic daemons and demons as well, most likely, both Mantels and Faeries) underlies the Upper Head starting beneath Satanwyck;
- as per here, Utopian Biomages, under the leadership or supervision of the likes of Quoits Tethys and her Masters during the Age of Panharmonium (circa 5000 to 5500 Years of the Dome), constructed their made-to-order horrors using raw material from the Hell-Well underlying the Weirdom of Cabalarkon
“You could go ask her,” Lady Lust said to Abe Chaos in her bastion of bliss overlooking Pandemonium, the sometimes cross-Satanwyck
capital of Hell on
Earth, if not precisely the abode of all demons anymore.
“And you could go fuck yourself,” he replied, inappropriately for anyone except
her.
“That’d be boring.”
“Then change your splendour and I’ll do it for you.”
“Who to?”
“How about Janna Somata? I’m starting to fancy her.”
“Are you really? Hmm.”
========
“About time you got back, Goat. What’s Envy doing here?”
Pusan Wanderlust stepped fully out of the Weird. The 3-eyed cupid who was
indeed most commonly known to devils as Sinistral Envy was perched on her shoulder like a parrot. She’d turned the end of her shepherd’s crook into a basket, like a lacrosse stick amongst the Iroquois of North America (again to use the Entities’ terminology). It held ...
========
“Weirder than daddy feeding a demon a devil?” Herta asked her putto-putative son.
“That wasn’t weird. That was punishment. My internal infernal aspired to the throne Lust hated. How was he to know it wasn’t hers to hate and therefore not his to covet?”
========
|
Sea of Clouds
The treacherous, due to poor visibility, but not impassable – if you were a master mariner – Sea of Clouds separated Lathakra from the Cattail Peninsula, Sedon’ Ponytail.
... from "Helios on the Moon", the third entry in the 'Launch 1980' story cycle
========
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Sedon's Mutton Chop (The Penile Peninsula, First or Old Iraxas, Hadd {home of the Ambulatory Dead, long before 5980}, Lake Sedona - Sedon's Teardrop, the Circumcision Canal, Krachla, the Panic Isles, the Gleaming City of Manoa)
- until the Great Flood of Genesis (the Genesea), in other words during the days of Old Eden and its successor civilization, the so-called Golden Age of Humankind, most of this area was part of the archipelago of Pacifica, the Places of Peace; a large series of islets separated by narrow straits, it was called Iraxas by its indigent population, the Irache descendants, as well as ancestors, of native Americans;
- after the Moloch Sedon raised the Cathonia in Zero Year of the Dome, the straits between the islets filled in; it was still called Iraxas (Old Iraxas) and fell within the Byronics sphere of influence;
- Lake Sedona was named after Sedona Spellbinder, centaurs worshipping Chimaera Glimmenmare (Byron's Stallion) roamed what became Krachla whereas Vayu Maelstrom was worshipped primarily in the northeast corner around the Crashing Islets of Jaag, where an actual maelstrom or huge whirlpool still swirled in 5980 YD;
- Damon Goldenrod, a secondary Nucleoid from Byron's 3rd brood, built or (since it was once a Utopian Weirdom, more likely) had rebuilt the Gleaming City of Manoa to serve as testimony to his sheer wonderfulness (not to mention arrogance) sometime after devils gain solidity circa 2000 YD;
Although to the indigent, initially animistic, non-devil-worshipping Iraches it had always been Iraxas, in the centuries before the Empire of Lathakra took root there circa 4800 Year of the Dome, much of the Penile Peninsula was spotted with the Byronic equivalent of up north’s devic protectorates; spaces generously allocated to individual Byron Spawn by their Great God of a father, who nevertheless reserved the right to remove or relocate them at his whim.
The dominant devil-god overruling Manoa in those days was a third-born, APM and Nevair Neverknight’s brood brother: Damon Goldenrod, Byron’s Apollo, hence the El Dorado reference. Manoa itself was his designated sphere of influence while the plains beyond belonged to Chimaera Glimmenmare and his alien Centaurs, who terrorized Iraches just for sport.
- sometime during the Dome's 48th Century the expansion of the Empire of Lathakra changed that by forcing Byronics to retreat into Godbad and replacing them with one of the Thanatoids staunchest allies, the Mithradite Moon Goddess known as Fecundity to Master Devas (but named Nergal Vetala by long gone Illuminaries of Weir in the Dome's 4th Millennium, when they began returning from the Outer Earth en masse);
- another Byronic, his Grim Reaper, Vanthysces as Illuminaries named him, was cathonitized when the Thanatoids conquered Iraxas; Yama of the Nergalids somehow fused Vanth's power focus, a scythe, with his own, a pickaxe;
Except Vetala – whom Harmony found easily at [in 4824 YD] her new residence in the former Weirdom of Manoa, on the lower west coast of the Penile Peninsula, Sedon’s Mutton Chop ...
- even though Vetala now ruled Iraxas (where the Dead Walked because her azuras animated them) as if her own private protectorate, she still carried on as Fecundity, particularly when it came to her two fellow Nergalids, Yama Nergal and Zuvem Nergalis as antique Illuminaries named them;
“I’m hardly the one to ask,” stated the priapic Planter, Zuvem Nergalis [in 5476 YD], once Lord Yajur found and confronted him in the Gleaming City of Manoa, a former Weirdom just north of the Circumcision Canal in what jesters like Tethys, when he was around to jest, called the Penile Peninsula, Sedon’s Mutton Chop. “But I’d be happy to help you contact the unlucky lady who might know. Then you can ask her directly.”
“You haven’t the power to ill-star the likes of me, Nergalid,” Order responded.
“He never said he did, Sparky,” countered the other Nergalid there. Illuminaries named the Mithradite Moon Goddess, one of a few, Nergal Vetala after a deceptively beautiful Outer Earth ghoul best known for having her hands on backwards, a conceit she seldom remembered to emulate. That did not mean she wasn’t conceited of course, far from it.
“But Iraches love me. That makes Iraxas my protectorate. You’re standing in Manoa, its biggest and most populous city in terms of both the Living and the Ambulatory Dead. So guess who could? Me!”
========
Hadd, old Iraxas, was the shaft to Krachla’s head of the Penile Peninsula, Sedon’s Mutton Chop.
... from "Helios on the Moon", the third entry in the 'Launch 1980' story cycle
========
Then there was the, mostly amongst themselves, perceived plight of the Headworld’s American aboriginal types.
Homogenously referred to as Iraches, they no longer had an uncontested homeland to call their own. Had one once, for multiple centuries on end. It, territorially one of the biggest on the entire Inner Earth, was Iraxas; what was nowadays known as Hadd, the Land of the Dead. Iraches only got what they deserved, Godbadians, and not just Godbadians, would have it. They worshipped their ancestors, not proper devil-gods like nearly everyone else on the Head.
Fed them, too, Iraches countered. Nice to have Dead Aunt Whomever over for supper once in awhile; stopped her from having you for supper, didn’t it?
... from 'Pyrame's Progress', a possible entry in the open-ended saga of 'Wilderwitch's Babies'
========
No matter where you were, on either side of the Dome, water was precious. In old Iraxas, every bit as much as it was in either New Iraxas or Free Iraxas, it was a commodity deeply desired by not just Iraches. Which was why Hadd-Iraxas could no longer be considered the uncontested homeland of a communalized Irache Nation.
Hunter-gatherers skulked and subsistence farmers made do in secluded settlements for the same reason: the seemingly eradicable curse of insatiable Marutian marauders originally from beyond Diluvia. By strength of arms as well as, just as importantly, their ability to live sociably behind skilfully constructed fortifications, these always unwelcome occupiers controlled the most arable area of Hadd’s heartland. Which lay in and around Lake Sedona, Sedon’s Teardrop, it also with its multitude of hospitable islands.
... from 'Pyrame's Progress', a possible entry in the open-ended saga of 'Wilderwitch's Babies'
========
|
Sedon's Peak
Sedon’s Peak sat centrally on the Cattail Peninsula, Sedon's Ponytail. Molten Brainrock filled its caldera, forming a lava lake. Tvasitar Smithmonger, Anvil to his fellow devils, not only dwelled there but continued to forge devic power foci as required. Peculiarly, given their pedigrees, the highborn Lazaremist was Klannit’s beloved from the days when both were stuck inside daemonic lovers.
... from "Helios on the Moon", the third entry in the 'Launch 1980' story cycle
========
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Shenon, Witch Isle
- heart-shaped island in the Headworld's internal ocean of Akadan, off the west-central coast of the Cattail Peninsula (Sedon's Ponytail);
- called Witch Isle primarily because a revolving hierarchy of Witch Sisterhood Superiors reside here;
- as detailed here, it's divided into four quadrants; unlike an actual heart two are known as Aortas whereas, like a heart, the other two are known as Ventricles;
- two of the island's Quarter Queens are Aortics whereas the other two are Ventriculars;
- among the sisterhoods who have or had Quarter Queens include Afrites, Altheans, Antheans, Athenans, Hellions, Korants, Mariamnics and Ophirants;
- some of the characters who have thus far appeared during the course of the phantacea Mythos online that ruled or resided on Shenon include Merthetis, her daughter Amphitrite and her foster daughter, Scylla Nereid (Fisherwoman), Lakshmi of Lemuria, Telepassa of Godbad, Morgianna Sarpedon and her other daughter (not Andaemyn – Tsishah Twilight), Mary Magdalene born Ryne become Mandam, among others;
- there's an interesting quote taken from
"The Death's Head Hellion", the first mini-novel extracted from "The 1000 Days of Disbelief", re Witch Isle here;
- as per here, part of "Harry on the Head", the as yet unpublished, in any form, continuation of the'Ringleader's Revenge' web-serial, takes place on Shenon; it's set in the late Spring, early summer of 5960, when Ringleader was 17;
- in Tantalar, Year of the Dome 5980, the Aortics are the Lemurian Amphitrite and Tsishah Twilight, a cross-sisterhood compromise quarter-queen who plans on retiring come the Spring Equinox (New Years Day 5981 on most of the Head);
========
There were four queendoms, as it were, on the heart-shaped island of Shenon, which was quite properly also known as Witch Island. Why two of them were called Ventricles, while their rulers were called Ventriculars, made some degree of sense to him [Harry Zeross, 17]. Why the other two were called Aortas instead of Atriums or Auricles, and their rulers Aortics rather than Atrials or Auriculas, made absolutely none.
As for why they were not called Atriums and Atrials, she [Mel-Illuminatus via Pusan Wanderlust] supposed neither sounded as good as Aortas or Aortics. He asked her if she was joking. She demurred, protesting that that’s how she had heard it. But, if he wanted to know another variation on the truth of the matter, it was due to the fact that after the ruination of what many called Atlantis on the other side of the planet beyond the Dome, old-time Edenites abandoned its Zoo, the archipelago of Pacifica, the Places of Peace.
Lemurians thereupon took over its headquarters on what was even then known as Shenon. Originally, and indeed throughout most of that nearly 1500-year era, the Whole Earth’s so-called Golden Age of Humanity, there was only one ruler of the heart-shaped island. That would be the Lemurian Frog Queen. She was called their Aortic, their Great Artery, she who pumps life into them, because, symbolically anyhow, that was what she did.
... from "Harry on the Head", the unpublished sequel to the 'Aspects of an Amoebaman' web-serial
========
Shenon was a heart-shaped island in [the Interior Ocean of] Akadan not far off the coast of the Cattail Peninsula. Its non-Lemurian Aorta, for the time being under the chairwomanship of retiring Aortic Tsishah Twilight, served as a sort of United Nations for the Head’s myriad, sometimes feuding Sisterhoods.
... from the Launch 1980 story cycle
========
The same group, Quarter Queen Amphitrite’s mandroid biomages from Shenon, not Temporis nor Samarand, though they were based on degenerate Utopian scientocrats from the latter (once Sedon’s Tongue), had also done a job on Crystallion.
... from the Launch 1980 story cycle
========
Or, rather, it was what Steltsar (Sharkczar), All of Incain, Quarter-Queen Amphitrite, her Lemurians and rogue scientocrats (biomages) in the onetime Weirdom of Shenon, by exploiting her genetic heritage, had made of ... that died. (When, pre-Genesea, Sedon’s Head had been the Archipelago of Pacifica, Eden’s Zoo, the even-then heart-shaped island of Shenon had been the Edenite zookeepers’ headquarters.)
... from the Launch 1980 story cycle
========
Although she [Tsishah Twilight] swore she was like mother [Morgianna Sarpedon], like daughter, more of a Hecate-Hellion than anything else, she was also Shenon’s other Aortic;
the Anthean as well as the Mariamnic and Athenan Quarter Queen. Not for much longer, she hoped. Better not be. She was having a lousy year.
In accordance with Shenon tradition, as someone born in the Thirties she was scheduled to resign at the end of the year. Which, howsoever controversially, was
the coming Spring’s Equinox Eve on most of the Head. Her replacement, albeit as a junior Quarter Queen, a Ventricular, was supposed to be a teenager or young woman barely into her twenties, if that, someone therefore born in the Sixties.
Things weren’t going as planned, however. When it came right down to it, nothing was anymore. The person chosen to take her place as the senior non-Lemurian Quarter Queen was Telepassa of Godbad, a fully trained Ant as well as a pinnacle-level Althean healer and Lovely Lady Afrite. Since Telepassa was already the Forties’ born Ventricular, someone had to replace her. The odds-on favourite to do that was one of Telepassa’s three triplets, Lovely Ladies all. [Except, reputedly, they'd just vanished off the face of the Hidden Headworld!]
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Sisert
- also known as the Silent Sands of Cathune Bubastis (the cat-faced Apocalyptic of Drought supposedly from Mithras's 9th)
- As told in 'The War of the Apocalyptics' the Byronic and Apocalyptic Nuclei cathonitized each other here on Tantalar 6, 5980
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Sleepers, the Hills or Zone thereof
A hilly region that demarcated the inland margin of the oculus in Sedon’s Forehead, it was much more than just where Utopians on Earth lay to rest their effectively dead – effectively because the Sleepers’ remains were first submerged within leak-proof sarcophagi filled with supposedly death-inhibiting cathonic fluid.
The hills were actually artificial landforms camouflaging what was left of Second Weir’s cross-cosmos generational ships. Ancient astronaut Utopians landed them on Cabalarkon’s borders, and then helped nature cover them up, within a decade or two of Sedon raising the Dome to prevent the Genesea swamping the archipelago of Pacifica.
========
It was a long way to go so Melina, in that sometimes annoyingly High Illuminary, teacherly way that reminded Gloriel in particular of Headmistress Virginia Mannering, took the time to explain where they were heading.
“The Zone of the Sleepers rings the Weirdom, the devic eye of Sedon’s Head. From the Ocean of Fobbiat it extends, west to east, as the crow flies, some twelve hundred kilometres. In total it forms an ovular perimeter of almost three thousand K. The hills you see outlining the Zone pre-existed us but, for nearly six thousand years – five thousand nine hundred and ninety, give or take a few months, to be precise, ever since we Utopians came to Planet Earth – we have buried our sacred dead in these mounds.
“Up until the Year of the Dome 4825, eleven and a half hundred years ago, it was just something we did to keep ourselves separate from Elysium, the fabled Elysian Fields of Outer Earth mythology and, as it happens, Inner Earth reality. There dwelled the Glorious Dead, the ‘Warriors of Antiquity’, the Valkyrie, the ‘Choosers of the Slain’, and a series of devic overlords, predominantly, up until 4386 Y.D., Thrygragos Varuna Mithras.
“After Thrygragon when, I devoutly hope, Mithras was exterminated once and forever more, the Upper Head experienced a sort of mass mania. Empires came and empires went but none was greater than the Empire of Lathakra.
“At its peak, it encompassed the entirety of the Cattail Peninsula, Iraxas, what you know as Hadd, Marutia, Sedon’s Cheek, the Mystic Mountains, which you can make out far to the north, Sisert, and the rest of the parietal and occipital regions, the top and backside of the Head. Virtually the only unconquered territories were the subcontinent of Godbad, to the distant south, the Elysian Fields – Old Valhalla, as Golgotha was saying to you, Old Man – and our Weirdom.
“To the outskirts of Grand Elysium, what’s now called Pettivisaya, the City of Sorrow, of Wailing Souls, marched Tantal Thanatos and the armies of Lathakra. Ultimately only one major Master Deva was prepared to stand against them. Her name was Pyrame Silverstar, the Pauper Priestess, whom I have often had occasion to mention to you during our previous discussions.
“To her side she drew the Idiot Twins, Tammuz and Osiraq. Rather than let that Valhalla fall to the Empire, they blew themselves up. Their attribute, you see, was what we now recognize as Atomic Power. They decimated the Land of the Glorious Dead and the entire area that is now called the Ghostlands; rendered it uninhabitable except for the thereafter Accursed Dead.
“Somehow the Zone of Sleepers prevented the fallout from seeping into Cabalarkon. For that we are of course everlastingly grateful. Unfortunately it has also served to isolate us from the rest of the Headworld. Consequently, about the only way we can interact with any other group is by sea and even that is inordinately dangerous.
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Tal, the Forbidden Forest of Kala Tal, Sedon's Moustache, Dukkha, Achigon, Crimson
- most of it amounts to devic protectorate of the spidery Mithradite, Kala Tal, the twelfth-born brood sister of Nergal Vetala and, maybe, just maybe, Mater Matare, the Apocalyptic of (Mundane) Death;
- sometime called Sedon's Moustache though it actually frames Sedon's Mouth;
- Dukkha, a city akin to Paris, is situated in the fat of Sedon's Upper Lip; other than a few caverns in Temporis it is the only place on the entire Hidden Headworld where its inhabitants speak French, though most non-native still understand it as if Sedon Speak with a strange accent;
- the Duchy of Achigon is situated in the fat of Sedon's Lower Lip; it belongs to the imported Bandradin royal family that ruled Greater Godbad for many
centuries until the Godbadian Civil War of the 5950s Years of the Dome;
-
King Achigan Auranja, a Summoning Child who was deposed at the outset of the Civil War was named after the Duchy of Achigon;
========
It wasn't that the western foothills of Diluvia
were impossibly treacherous. They weren't. Were encroached upon, however.
Also wasn't that the Irache canal no longer existed. It did. Was choked up
though. With the same stuff that encroached upon the foothills, outgrowth
from Tal, Sedon's Moustache and lower lip-hairs, better known as the Forbidden
Forest.
It wasn't forbidden to enter. Far from it.
Its devalord, lady actually, Kala Tal was most inviting. Nergal Vetala's arachnid
breed sister from Mithras' Twelfth had nothing against you leaving her protectorate
either. She did exact a toll however. Not intentionally. Or even maliciously.
You just paid it whether you liked it or not.
Tal's toll? Not your life. Never-cathonitized
Master Devas did not kill. Not personally. If you got out with your life,
more power to you. One thing you wouldn't get out with was your sanity, and
that was the toll.
Of course if you were already insane, Tal was
your Pandemonium Panacea. Best stay there though. Especially don't come out
on the Godbadian side of Tal because it seemed Godbadians -- who prided themselves
on being the most forward-thinking, the most advanced, most modern, most Outer
Earth-like of all the Headworld's inhabitants -- considered madness infectious.
They dealt with those coming out of Tal much
as one would a carrier of the plague. Shot them dead. Paid a bounty for their
hide too. How could they tell a madman after death? Slice open the skull and
examine the brain naturally. Something happened to brains in Tal.
Which was also how they could tell if you'd
just come from the Forbidden Forest when you were alive too. How saying she
was coming out of Tal never became an easy defence for murdering your mother-in-law.
Crazy guys, or gals for that matter, didn't just drool or foam at the mouth,
though they did that too.
Weren't always destitute, naked or starving.
Some were, most weren't. A lot did blindfold themselves, to hide the madness
in their eyes, but the real telltale sign was that virtually all of them plugged
their ears and nostrils. Presumably to stop their over-stimulated brain cells
from dribbling out their head-holes.
========
"Know the area too. Got to be the Forbidden
Forest of Kala Tal, Nergal Vetala's breed sister. You can always tell Tal
by its trees. They're so twisted, looks like they could get up on their roots
and walk away at any minute. Sometimes they do too."
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Temporis, the Thousand Caverns of Tariqartha
- also known as the Thousand Caverns
of Dand Tariqartha, Lazareme's Earth Magician; a vast subterranean
devic protectorate that lies beneath Sisert and, indeed,
much of the Upper Head;
- as such it borders on both Satanwyck,
to the south, and at least at one time Absudyl/Minius,
far to the east;
- in this regard, and as recounted
primarily during 'The Volsung Variations'; the warlord
Susano Mikoto went from Temporis to the aforementioned Subterranean
Land of the Mandroids in early 5916; there, guided by his devic half-mom Pyrame Silverstar,
Mithras's then last active Earth Magician or Persian, he came upon the Crimson Corona (aka the Mind of
Sapiendev) for the first time;
- its capital
and central cavern, called Centurium, is replicated Versailles; its palace
therefore contains its own huge Hall of Mirrors;
- ordinarily these mirrors can be
used to far-see almost anywhere on the Inner or Outer Earth; evidently they
can also be usurped by non-Temporites (predominantly, as per VolVar-8,
by Klannit Thanatos, the first ever azura spirit being);
- among its thousand (and more)
caverns, perhaps the most singularly significant is the Hir
Cavern (Hiroshima, 6 August 1945); it was via the Hir Cavern that Kronokronos Akbarartha (Obadiah Melvin Power, the supra codenamed Old Man Power) and his wife, the
Lady Takeda (the supra called Crimson Corona {who may have have
become the recurring Hellion horror codenamed Gynosphinx throughout 'Ringleader's Revenge'}
and mother, by Sedon St
Synne, of the future Crystallion)
arrived on the Outer Earth (one guess as to what day it was);
- Dand Tariqartha celebrates his
4000th birthday (actually the 4000th anniversary of becoming a solid entity)
in early Tantalar 5980 YD; that he lasted that long is at least partially
recounted during 'The Volsung Variations'; he also briefly appeared
during 'Feeling Theocidal',
- The Dand is the Awesome Akbar's
devic half-father; that makes him the devic half-father of Meroudys Artha and, indeed, all the
various Kronokronoi (Warlord Mikoto,
Lakshmi of Lemuria et al) we come across during the course of PHANTACEA;
- Tariqartha is also known as the
Time-Space Displacer, the Chronocollector and Lazareme's Persian (Earth Magician);
- Temporis is inhabited by Mantel
replicas (tellurian half-lifes);
- the Dand sometimes allows these
half-lifes to reproduce, at which point they become fully alive and, possibly,
even unaging after that (Lord Mikoto seems to fall into this category);
- Mantel replicates thus rendered
alive become, in effect, quasi faeries and/or daemons; Man-Dive, Archon Oberon, Titania Cabala
and Democles are, at least superficially, examples of suchlike hybrid beings;
- fully alive former replicas and
their always alive offspring inhabit the so-called 'living caverns' of Temporis; Centurium is the largest
of these; another is the pre-Tokugawa Era Cavern (as per pH-5 and WarPoc-11),
which is where Mikoto came from, Lord Tornado ruled in 5980 and the Tsukyomi
Shadow Woman hied to in shame shortly after Kronokronos Akbarartha (still thinking he was Old Man Power) spotted her naked while she was attending
Lakshmi of Lemuria on the 5th of Tantalar 5980;
- As recounted in pH-5 and 'The Launching of the Cosmic
Express' Tetralogy, which I published in PHANTACEA on
the Web from 1996 to 2001, the final encounters in 'The
War of the Apocalyptics' took place
here on Tantalar 6, 5980;
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Tympani, Eardrum Island, the Island of the Undying One (Thrygragos Lazareme, Mithras as a pillow)
- the second largest island on the Hidden Headworld (smaller than Lathakra but bigger than Shenon)
- where Thrygragos Lazareme (Thrygragos Everyman) sleeps between-space using the turned-to-stone, then pulverized, severed head of his thought-brother, Thrygragos Varuna Mithras, as his pillow;
- since both Lazareme and what's left of Mithras can be found here, it's not absolutely clear which Great God is the Undying One;
- Lazaremists tend to congregate here;
- since committing devic suicide at the conclusion of the 1,000 Days of Disbelief, Unholy Abaddon (aka Abe Chaos), the onetime Unity of Chaos, often stays here as well; at least he did up until the mid-60th Century of the Dome when he ended up in the Land of Nothingness alongside his latest paramour Antagone;
- As per both
"Goddess Gambit" and "Helios on the Moon", Freespirit Nihila comes here looking for her father in Tantalar 5980
========
In her usual patient manner, Illuminatus-Fauna informed him that Auriculas inhabited Sedon’s Ear, that is to say the Isle of the Undying One and the Aural Sea’s coastal regions, most of which were devic protectorates. Aka Tympani or Eardrum Isle was where Thrygragos Lazareme, the Head’s other surviving Great God, dwelled. Like many devils he spent virtually all of his time asleep, hence the Undying One bit. Aural Sea was the Inner Earth’s thoroughly inland sea as opposed to the Inland Ocean of Akadan ... which was not altogether land-encased.
... from "Harry on the Head", the unpublished sequel to the 'Aspects of an Amoebaman' web-serial
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Vanlana, the Vanlan Confederacy, the Pastures of Plenty, Pear Point
Cromwell Necator didn’t have time to waste on diplomatic niceties. Fortunately there was another way. The Vanlan Confederacy, part of what had, since ancient times, been called the Pastures of Plenty, was Godbad’s greatest ally on the Cattail.
(All of the Pastures had once been a part of Greater Godbad; as had Krachla, Iraxas (El Dorado) and the high plains of Bandrad, east of the Pastures, whence came Godbad’s now deposed royalty those selfsame twelve hundred years ago. There was even a Lake Byron in the Pastures, though the Great God, though the Great God hadn’t resided there for even longer.)
... from "Helios on the Moon", the third entry in the 'Launch 1980' story cycle
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Sedon's Head
