THE TRIGREGOS GAMBIT

1. The Trigregos Gambit: "Thrygragon"

For a change, Mind Tap does not begin this, the third of four books comprising the Launch Tetralogy. That's because it isn't Saturday, November 29, 1980. Isn't even AD. It's YD, as in Year of the Dome, -- 4376 Year of the Dome, to be precise. And Thrygragos Varuna (Uranus) Mithras would appear about to step into some serious deep-dreck doo-doo.

Doo-doo or not, you don't get to become a Great God by being a dodo. While Mithras is certainly no dummy he might not be a Thrygragos either. May in fact be but a third of the VAM Entity, as Thrygragos Sedon's first born could well be collectively known.

That's definitely one of the things about Master Devas, the third generation of devazurkind. They were all born simultaneously, in litters of three. Though they only have one father, albeit even if which one (Mithras or the Moloch Himself) may prove debatable, and one mother, none of them can be sure which one of the three Great Goddesses (Sapiendev, Demeter, or Devaura, -- respectively, Mind, Body, & Soul) was their mother.

Not that it matters overly much any more. The Trigregos Sisters, their three nowadays fantastical mothers, are long lost, perhaps even long dead. Hell's Banana Peel! -- the Three Great Goddesses are so very long lost, so very long gone, not only did they never reach the Whole Earth 669 years before the Great Flood, or Genesea, they never escaped from New Weirsystem on the Sedonshem, or Sedonship, in the first place.

There's a few other things to know about these devils. For example, there's no such thing as a fourth generation of devazurkind. Master Devas, in the absence of their mothers and even with the help of their fathers, cannot have devic offspring. All they can have are Spirit Beings, the azura-half of this race of extraterrestrials so maligned, usually quite rightly, by the still-emerging monotheistic religions, predominently Christianity, and their Xuthrodite/Anthean allies.

(NOTE 1: Constantine the Great -- whose legions worshiped him as a Leo or Lion, if not as an out-and-out incarnation of god, and considered Mithras their Holy Father -- only recognized Christianity in 313 AD. Which was some 63 years before this chapter takes place on the other side of Cathonia. As well, some would argue, the Roman Catholic Church did not come formally into existence until even later.)

(NOTE 2: Catholic, by the way, is not to be confused with Cathonic, though the Greek root word is similar, -- katholikos, meaning 'universal' or over all. Which is pertinent because, in this chapter, we start to learn a little about All the Invincible, the self-determinedly female, albeit mainly machine, Sphinx-like overseer of the Prison Beach of Incain. Needless to say, she/it comes more into play as this serial progresses.)

Another thing about devils is that they themselves were just Spirit Beings for most of their time on Earth. In fact, they did not start becoming individually solid entities until around 2000 YD. That was when one of them, Tvasitar Smithmonger, discovered Brainrock and began crafting them each power focuses or talismans. Crafted one for each of the Great Gods and, in absentia, the Great Goddesses too.

While most Master Devas can wield each other's power foci, not so the Trigregos Talismans. These three so-called Sacred Objects are poisonous to devas. And that, in a nutshell, is what this entire book's about, -- nut as in it drives whoever has one nuts. Whichever devil has one, that is. Not so non-devils though. Which of course makes them damn fine weapons to wield if you're anti-deva. (Like the Auntie Ants & Antie Uncles are, -- hint, hint!)

Why? Lots of reasons. For one he (also the golden brown warrior because that's essentially what Chrysaor means) is the lone child of Thrygragos Mithras and one of his 'daughters', Marut Kanin (or Marutia, -- named after Sedon's Cheek), the future Kore-Eris, Discord or Strife. For another his birth parents, not altogether as opposed to his possessive parents, were the Male and Female Entities in the early days (daze?) of their Seventh Lifetimes.

The Attis is also the main reason I described deviants as 'mostly still mortal'. Unlike virtually all others of his ilk (deviants being, in many respects, the equivalent of the Twentieth Century's supranormals), it seems that for going on 2400 hundred years now he's been getting killed on a fairly regular basis, -- usually by Cruel Plathon.

(By the way, the Bull of Mithras is an important, albeit usually peripheral, player in the 'Heliodyssey' series of stories currently appearing elsewhere on these web-pages. Along with the future Mater Matare, Mother Murder of War-Pox fame, he also shows up this chapter.)

So what's the deep-dreck doo-doo deal here? Thrygragos Mithras, who had been well venerated on both sides of the Dome, then-currently finds himself sadly lacking in the due-decibal dividends befitting divinity on the other side; this thanks mostly to these upstart Christian folks, fawns if not spawns of the hated Celestials and their Gnostic Christ. Greedy sort that he is, he needs to make up for what he's lost out there by gaining more adherents in here.

Trouble is the Inner Earth's adulation-quotient is currently being shared by his two 'brothers' in the Moloch Sedon: Thrygragos Byron, aka the Unmoving One (a quite-literally Buddha-like figurehead), and Thrygragos Lazareme, aka Lackland Libertine (a 'god-isn't-dead, he's-asleep' character). The solution? Simple. Supplant them, humiliate them, eliminate them as worship-warranted, -- basically just get rid of them. (Look up 'henotheism' if you don't know what it means already. That's what Mithras is prepared to offer his two, second generational brothers. With him as the top-dog top god, it goes without saying.)

They've risen to his bait; are coming at Mithras full-force. With all their then still-surviving spawn and all their armies to boot. And he's preparing to meet them, with all his and all theirs to boot even more butt. Only Mr. Mith's spawn don't like him; particularly his 'daughters'. After all, even on the Outer Earth, no female has ever been initiated into Mithraic rites.

Daddy's a tyrant, no nicer way to put it. Mith's maternally deficient; paternally dictatorial. Much better Great Byron or even Thrygragos Lazareme, dystopic maniac that he undeniably is. This if only because their children, regardless of sexual inclination, are treated as equals. Doubly this if only, in the latter's case, because of the Libertine's complete disinterest in their welfare; the welfare of any of his offspring save his first born, the three Unities: Order, Balance and, Lazareme's favourite, Chaos. All three of them are anarchists but probably none more so than Unholy Abaddon.

(Without giving away too much, Abe Chaos comes to take freewill to its irrational extreme. Still can't find a way to kill himself though. Not for lack of latter-day trying either, -- as will become apparent in future installments of both Launch and Heliodyssey.)

For Mr. Mith it's going to be: 'What's my back doing with all these knives sticking of out it; I feel like an outside-in porcupine' time. Demogorgon, thanks to the Pauper Priestess recently released from Incain, -- in return for nearly a hundred of Attis' ever-loyal Mithrant legionnaires --, will see to that.

Or will it, them, the Unnamable, the Conglomerate Deva? Answer's -- 'Nope!' At the risk of repeating myself, no dodo's our Great Greedy God.

Did I mention the Thrygragos Talismans? Did I mention that another name for Mithras is (was?) Saturn or, more familiarly, Kronos, -- Father Time, he who devours his own? Oh, and did I mention what the 'A' stands for in VAM Entity? Didn't?

Must have forgot!

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3. The Trigregos Gambit: "Balance Betrayed"

Introducing the twelve-foot tall, thickly-bearded, blue-skinned devagod of Fire Kings and Intuits, his six-inch, red-skinned wife, and -- damn, forgot already!

Actually that's wrong. They've been introduced before: the wife by name (not that devas have names as such) in Trig-1; the husband dot ditto; and the other guy, dit dotto. All over the place as well. But this chapter's not all that much about them. Mostly it's about the continuing saga of the Disunition of the Three Unities of Lazareme.

There's other stuff going on though; stuff leading into GAME-Gambit, which begins this time up. For example, we meet Ferdinand Niarchos, the governor of New Iraxas in Godbad's northeast corner bordering Hadd, the Land of the Dead.

We also learn that Alpha Centauri intends to salt the Cloud of Hadd, to make it rain there for the first time since the First War Between the Living and the Dead. And, if it wasn't for the Disunition of the Three Unities of Lazareme, there never would have been a First War.

Oh, and did I mention Gottfried Kenton? Rather, did I mention that Kenton was smiling even more than he usually does? Or, more to point, that Kenton wasn't in Aka Godbad City even though he appeared to be? Didn't?

Must have forgot!

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