"Goddess Gambit"

Anheroic Fantasy (What with a cast consisting of aliens, supras, deviants, devils, demons, faerie tricksters, Hecate-Hellions and Witches of Weir, who are we supposed to cheer for in PHANTACEA?)

I agree. It's a distinct dilemma.

For example, in not just the revised version of 'The Trigregos Gambit' you might appreciate Nergal Vetala's desire to regain control of Hadd, what she believes is her rightful protectorate.

Except, first, Hadd is the Land of the Ambulatory Dead. Except, second, other than indigenous Iraches, who invites their zombie grandparents over for tea and scones these days? Except, third, she's not only a damn devil; she's a damn bloodsucker.

She became a vampire deliberately to boot. (Make that to bite.) Understandably, perhaps. As above, her fellow devils refer to Nergal Vetala as 'Fecundity' for a very good reason. Vamps are infertile.

Ask yourself this: What bright woman, especially if she's an evidently immortal devil, wants to bear a seemingly endless number of azura (Spirit Being) offspring, often simultaneously and invariably in great quantity, who are genetically incapable of disobeying their fathers?

Dad (make that dads) are around, their lone mother is too, guess who gets the Vetalazurs' nutritional worship? It ain't Vetala. No wonder she eats them. No wonder as well she rejects Smiler's suit in Gambit:

“I’ve been contemplating matrimony, Fecundity.” a not-immediately familiar voice said to her, Nergal Vetala, the Vampire Queen of the Dead. She was re-energizing herself on her Brainrock throne. Was also unashamedly wallowing in the worship emanating from her still-gathering multitude of Vetalazur-animated Dead Things dot-ditto.

“Is that a proposal?” she asked after the standard awkward silence that ensued after he, he whom no one could remember even existed until he manifested himself, did just that.

“You might call it that."

"Too bad there’s a rather undesirable drawback to what you’re ever so romantically proposing. As you’re thoroughly aware, otherwise you wouldn’t be here, the problem with Master Devas as fathers is they get first crack at the adulation of their azuras. In that respect we put-upon mothers, the ones who do all the work, are little more than an afterthought."

[NOTE: I decided to throw in a photo I took in Pushkar, India, of Kali on a Porch not just because I had it, though that's not a bad reason. For one thing, given Vetala's attitude towards men in Gambit, it seemed appropriate. In terms of the PHANTACEA Mythos, who else but Vetala would wear a necklace of severed heads? (The answer to that might be Bad Rhad. Then again, to hear him tell it anyway, he only wears two of them; that of his fellow firstborn brothers in Thrygragos Sedon: Varuna and Mithras.)

Another reason is that Vetala has two twelfth-breed, immediate sisters in Thrygragos Mithras. They'd be Mater Matare, the mother of the Apocalyptic Nucleoids, and KalaTal. She's the arachnid devil whose devic protectorate is the Forbidden Forest of Tal, Sedon's Moustache. It's from there, Tal, that so many of Gambit's demonic 'Indescribables' come. And, yes, old time Illuminaries probably did name Kala after Kali.

Salvador Dali's 'Fecundity' was taken in Dubrovnik, Croatia, by Jim McPherson in 2017]

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Then there are demons. There's all sorts of them. In Gambit alone there are KalaTal's 'Indescribables', Klannits (mobile mirrors), a Rockhead (unless he's a Gobble Stone), talk of Grim Grinners (Heinous Hyenas) and nests more. My favourites are the Ghasts. Don't confuse them with ghosts, though they are white as a sheet. That's because that's their most common form.

In PREGAME-Gambit, young Thartarre, age 5 in 5945 YD, is terrified of them. Calls them Hankering Handkerchiefs:

He became convinced his bed-sheets were Hankering Handkerchiefs. No amount of dissembling would dissuade him of that. So what if hankies were small little things you stuffed in your pockets? Demons were shape-shifters, weren't they? They could grow as big as bed-sheets, couldn’t they? Did his sheets have eyes or mouths, did they float about in the dark or talk to him? They did in his dreams. Those are just nightmares. There’s a difference?

There are also Rakshasas demons (singular: Rakshas). In the PHANTACEA Mythos, they're Gatherers of the Dead: albeit the Valhallan 'Glorious' or Warrior Dead (the variety of Dead Things animated by symbiotic Sangazurs as opposed to Haddazurs and Nergalazurs, who are parasitic).

Valhallans figure prominently in 'Centauri Island', another already-serialized novel I haven't got around to revisiting as yet. Both Sangs and the Rakshasas who carry their spirit selves around in Crystal Skulls before inserting them in recently deceased sell-swords, and such like, have major roles to play in Gambit.

Here's a descriptive sequence from GAME-Gambit re Rakshasas. It's told from the perspective of former Kronokronos Susano Mikoto, yet another anheroic sort who's spent literally decades in quest of the Trigregos Talismans. A samurai and deviant both, he's leading the such like referred to a few sentences ago:

As counter-intuitive as the notion was, it seemed to Mikoto they were a race of deviants who grew up to become demons.

Rakshasas suffered from what had been described to him as reverse-butterfly syndrome. Impossibly beautiful, wholly humanoid demigods from birth until sometimes as early as their thirties, but rarely any later than their forties, they would just drop dead, on the spot, without any symptoms or warning signs. Their corpses wouldn’t decay; wouldn’t just rot away like any ordinary dead thing. They fuzzed-up. It was as if, howsoever considerately, they would bodily grow their own shroud of downy cobwebs.

You could leave them like that, where they lay, through all manner of weather, all fluffy bunny rabbit and kind of cute in an immobile and nose-worthily non-smelly way. You had to pen them in or dumb animals would make a dog’s breakfast of them; had to mesh over the top of the pen, too, or dumb birds would peck them pulpy. Animals or birds did that, they usually wouldn’t last until their next meal. The few that did smartened up rapidly. Their descendants weren't anywhere near as dumb either. Marvellous how instinct develops.

Rakshas corpse-flesh, rather the fuzz covering it, was toxic. Just touching it or breathing it in, once it started molting, could kill you. Besides, you penned them in properly, they took up space. You’d be tripping over mommy or daddy all your life, until you dropped dead beside them and became as in the way as they were already.

[NOTE: Rakshas demons figure in the Ramayana, a famous, not to mention sacred, Hindu religious text. The Encyclopaedia Britannica states: "The canons of [Rajasthani] sculpture instruct the artist to carve them with a terrifying appearance, complete with fearful side tusks, ugly eyes, curling awkward brows, and carrying a variety of horrible weapons." Having never read the Ramayana I decided to make up my own PHANTACEA version of the horrors.]

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Let us now consider the Living. After devils and demons, they have to be the good guys, right?

The shaven-headed, brown-robed Sraddhite Warrior Monks are religious zealots. Only they worship a man, Sraddha Somata, who's been dead for nearly five hundred years in 5980. They're so fanatical they choose their High Priests solely because he looks like him. The Godbadians are imperialistically inclined, capitalist pigs who worship Byronic devils. Howsoever ironically, Iraches living in Hadd still worship Nergal Vetala as their Goddess of Life Eternal. They also invite their dead, azura-animated ancestors over for tea and scones.

As for the supras, primarily D-Brig 5 (Raven's Head, Blind Sundown, OMP-Akbar, Wildman Dervish Furie and the Untouchable Diver), well, they're not normal are they? Duh-the-dogfish that, to quote Fisherwoman. That's why they're supranormals. Fact is they're not called D-Brig (the 'Damnation Brigade') for nothing. To say the least, they've their individual issues.

So does Fish, who's a supranormal witch, a deviant (meaning at least one of her half-parents was a possessive devil) and the ex-queen of Aka Godbad, Sedon's Mouth, Lower Jaw and Goatee on a map of the Hidden Headworld. She also has two rows of shark-sharp teeth and likes to eat her meat raw. Besides, she talks funny.

Scratch her. Better pray she doesn't scratch back, though. Fish is a nasty piece of work:

“Splatter-matters are more pressing-for-fish-oil than smacking mackerel Right Whale now. Driftwood-good to see you again. And, speaking of which, the Sea, the otter-other Water Witch, you ever see Sea Stuff again, you tell her Atlantean could have died a whole whitefish-slower than he did."

Although he has those amazing, teleportive rings and is consequently Gypsium-gifted (or Brainrock-blessed, if you prefer), Aristotle 'Harry' Zeross, Ringleader, isn't technically a supra. He's a dad, loves his wife and their three hybrid-Utopian children, curses and swears, gets falling down drunk, beat up and drugged near-comatose. All of which makes him sympathetic enough, I suppose, but Harry's not much use when the going gets rough.

How about Jordan Tethys, the legendary 30-man, or one of my personal favourites,Young Death, the male trickster? Jordy certainly gets a lot of ink but, not only isn't he much use when the going gets rough either, he does a bunk every time it does. As for Young Death, he has some truly disgusting, necromantic talents.

Regarding the Utopians of Weir, their ancestors were aliens. Plus, they're divided into two camps. One is the Zebranid 'lepers' of Demios and Morgianna Sarpedon; the other is the Trinondev Warrior Elite of Golgotha Nauroz, who's a clone, and Saladin Devason, who loves being the Master of Weir. While both camps want the Trigregos Talismans in order to use them to eliminate devils, seemingly both camps would first use them to eliminate each other. Not very nice at all.

So, who's left? The life-defending Athenan War Witches? Devil-worshipping cannon fodder, if you were to ask me. The Morrigan's Mother Earth worshipping Hecate-Hellions? They're anti-devil but work with the Dead. Janna Fangfingers? Too bad she's a blood-sucking vamp, otherwise she might be worthy of a clap (as opposed to the clap). Kronokronos Mikoto and his Good Companions? They're mercenaries.

Vetala's Soldier, her Attis, her golden-brown warrior? He isn't much better, sooth said. Could be a whole lot worse, truth told ditto. Nonetheless, how about him? He fits the definition of protagonist in that he's the leading character in Gambit; is there from virtually its first word to its last and is therefore the glue that holds everything together.

True enough. But, given all he gets up to in Gambit, and to hear his Uncle Harry tell it, all he's got up to in his comparatively short and almost always violent lifetime, should we really cheer for him, hope he finds redemption and either triumphs over Vetala's evil influence or at least meets an heroic end? Hey, be my guest.

All in all then, is it any real wonder I've referred to the PHANTACEA Mythos as Anheroic Fantasy since virtually its Day One.

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