On Midsummer Day, 4376 Year of the Dome, Gorgon Tethys committed an unspeakable crime right in front of Djinn Domitian, the Heliodromus of Mithras; that same devil possessed the praetor sitting in judgement at Tethys's trial later that year
The major exceptions were their multiple millennia old, pre-Earth pursuers and seemingly inexhaustible tormentors: the Hate-Sedon Utopians of Weir and their Trinondev Warriors Elite. Invariably mortal, but long-lived – barring injuries or illnesses, even the mixed bloods or hybrids lived healthily deep into their second or third centuries – they were of course, like fallen angel devils, extraterrestrial in origin.
To this day, if perhaps not for very much longer, that made them technologically far, far, advanced compared to any of the planet’s indigenous populations. However, they generally stuck to their own Weirdoms, which meant they didn’t play much of a role in Headworld affairs.
Besides, the purebloods living up north in the primary and still foremost Weirdom – that of Cabalarkon, Sedon’s Devic Eye-Land – were inbred imbeciles too self-centred to be religious. If it weren’t for their automatons and indentured Sarpedon underclass there’d likely be no such thing as purebloods or a Warrior Elite anymore.
In further fairness to Domitian, the devil possessing the praetor, one of the strangest, pudding-proof-unworldly traits Utopians had was that their males were black-as-midnight in a starless sky whereas their invariably statuesque females were white-as-daylight on a salt flat. The only trace of blackness the Tethys bastard had about him was, as events evinced, confined to his heart.
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On Midsummer's Eve, in the Year of the Dome 4825, Thrygragos Lazareme sent his solid-looking seeming to the Weirdom of Cabalarkon
"I’m also called Thrygragos Everyman for a reason, child. In case you were skipping classes when your parents or teachers got around to me, no matter what their race is whoever sees me thinks I’m their God. I call it my ungodly gift when I’m feeling anarchic, which I usually am. How come you’re not reduced to reverence yourself?"
"Because you’re a man and I’m from Shenon, Witch Isle. We don’t have male deities; at least we don’t in the quarter-queenship I come from. And I didn’t think Utopians had deities period."
"Not deities, Entities, capitalized and plural, a man and a woman, the sun and the moon if you prefer, though it’s nowhere near that straightforward. To them I must look like the Male Entity. I won’t have black skin because neither of the Entities had black skin, and I’ll only have a pair of eyes, but I might be bald and gnarly and have a big beard that keeps me decent since I could be naked.
"To put it unappreciatively, as you may or may not know the idiots of Weir leach off the Sarpedons. That saps their willpower the same as if it was syrup out of a maple tree. It also leaves them simple and, in my experience, simpletons almost always have gods. In a Weirdom empowered by imbeciles, the Sarpedons have just enough sense left to keep their predisposition to idolize anyone, let alone the Dual Entities, to themselves.
"Rather, they had. The cat’s out of the bag now, unless it’s the squirrel. Devils will be queuing up for a shot at their adulation from now on, which might be good news for their continued existence. But, hey, their secret’s safe with me and I won’t tell if you won’t."
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On the 21st of Azky, 5456 YD, Jordan 'Q for Quidnunc' Tethys won the 5 Blades Championship of Weir; Kanin City's then High Illuminary, a very pregnant Melina nee Tethys Somata (whose husband Zalman Somata was the prediluvian megalithic metropolis's reigning Master), was scheduled to pin the medal on the winner; instead, Datong Harmonia, the Unity of Panharmonium, the devic half-mother of Mel's deviant twins-to-come, strode forward to do it for her; the medal's prong was poisoned
From the looks of her Zal’s Mel may be something of a regenerative mutant but she couldn’t possibly be a pureblood Utopian. For one thing, she was no inbred imbecile like the majority of Cabalarkon’s purebloods. For another, her gracefully aging parents lived with her in Kanin City at the Masters Palace.
While they could trace their ancestry back much more than a thousand years, to the borderline legendary pair of George Masterson and Ute also born Tethys, they weren’t purebloods either. Indeed, Daddy Tethys was more white-skinned than black-skinned whereas Mommy Tethys was the reverse, exactly the opposite to the usual state of affairs in most Weirdoms, Kanin’s included.
Finally, she wouldn’t have been allowed to marry Zalman if she was a pureblood for the lone qualifying reason that devil-gods – third generational Master Devas – could not possess purebloods. You didn’t need to be a tale-telling court chronicler like Quill Tethys, an Illuminary of Weir like both Zal and Mel, or even a deliberately kept barely educated, howsoever-superior swordsman like Quidnunc Tethys, to know that was the secret behind the roughly 600-year success story of the Mastery of Marutia.
Its Masters, to a one, were deviants.
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Utopian Biomages -- Fashioning Faeries
Many of those there couldn’t have been happier. One wasn’t. That one, a ‘dobury’ by the name of Nanapollo, stuck a finger times two into each of the beer-bearers nostrils.
‘Doburies’, sometimes also, mistakenly, known as ‘snot-snakes’, were a lumpy, very much dough-like faerie genus – an anthropomorphic tub of lard bleached white, to supply their most widespread depiction. Polydactyl, they always had too many fingers on, only usually, two hands. Today was one of those unusual days.
There were three of them and only one of him. Consequently, Nanapollo extended three hands on three arms. The third’s elbow, wrist and finger joints hinged appropriately. However, growing out of the top of his chest as the arm did, it was akin to a skinny, grotesque goitre. As monstrous as it appeared, the generative effort didn’t particularly pain him. He nevertheless grimaced as he did so.
The Outer Earthlings who’d been at the Danq did too, bracing themselves psychologically as he latched six fingers securely within their six nostrils. They’d endured this predictability-to-the-point-of-routine ritual more than a few times before, after much the same missions as well, albeit to different canteens elsewhere on the Hidden Continent of Sedon's Head. The Danq was hardly the only beer hall that brewed fine pilsners. Pure pill-lovers merely judged it the best.
Insertion accomplished unquestionably unenthusiastically, yet both professionally and therefore satisfactorily – Utopian biomages deliberately bred doburies largely for just this function – Nanapollo took a deep breath.
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Masters of Cabalarkon rule in the same way captains of Utopian so-called millennial or generational ships did pre-Earth — by conscensus
The trick, on the Whole Earth long unique to Masters of the Weirdom of Cabalarkon, was that they ruled by unspoken consensus. The only real way to tell if they had the support necessary to lord over anyone else living within Sedon’s Devic Eye-Land was if everything essentially extraterrestrial continued to work properly. It didn’t, or stopped while they were ruling, then that was it for their term. Exit stage exile, as the saying went.
Such was the self-centred mental might of Daddy Cabby’s Idiots of Weir, as funnelled through their Masters of same. It did nothing to ensure their longevity, or comparative lack thereof, though.
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The Masters' Chain of Office, post-Thrygragon and, indeed, to this day (28 Maruta 5980)
Tethys knew his stuff. An all-red, bloodstone necklace from which dangled a mirrored medallion, triangular in shape and out of which stared a solitary eyeball, with a curved blade underneath it like a cedilla, was the standard chain of office for a Master of Weir.
“Mind you again, Sal’s is just a facsimile. That’s the real thing. So is the Cloak of Many Colours. Master Helena had the original six, anything-but-sacred objects.”
“And we don’t,” Centauri muttered, perhaps deliberately not quite inaudibly.
“Best thank your Almightiest Ubiquity for that. The real Female Three in particular aren’t just anti-devil. They’re positively virulent, anti-anyone. And I should know.”
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Beware Trinondevs with veils drawn
Word to the wise: you see a Trinondev with his veil drawn you better hope
he’s on your side. He isn’t, you better have some armour-piercing bullets in your gun
and, even then, you better have some similarly equipped buddies blazing away at
the same time from all sorts of angles. The force shields they project, usually in the
form of gargoyles, are that strong.
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Utopian purebloods, hybrids and clones in the Dome's 60th Century
AA was particularly pleased to see the three Utopians there: Golgotha Nauroz and the Sarpedons, Demios and his wife, Morgianna, the latter of whom was born Nauroz but brought up Somata, after her grandmother and great-grandmother. Golgotha was an eighty year old, nearly seven foot tall string-bean of a man. Actually a clone, his skin was so tight to his skull he earned his nickname: Black Skull-Face.
Although a few inches shorter than Golgotha, and much broader than most men in his homeland, Demios was as night-black as anyone from the Weirdom of Cabalarkon. Golgotha wore an azure robe and similarly coloured turban, veil not drawn, while Demios was in his trademark black: shirt, pants and boots. Both carried eye-staves but, since Demios’s eye-stave manufactured its own eyeorbs to replace the one on its top should it become full, only Golgotha had a shoulder satchel containing extra eyeorbs. Neither was manifesting a gargoyle off the eyeorb atop his eye-stave. Neither was either of them carrying any sort of gun or blade. For Utopians, even Utopians in exile, eye-staves were the only weapon they needed.
In contrast to her husband of thirty years – 30 being the age when slower aging Utopians attained their maturity – Morgianna was as day-white and almost as expressionless as a pureblood Utopian woman. Which she wasn’t, not quite. While father Augustus was pureblood, mother Pandora wasn’t, although her ancestry reputedly included some Utopian. If she was that old, which she wasn’t, Morg could have been the model for Auguste Rodin’s statue of Eve.
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