A little bit of Everything, All of the Time.

sorry it's 70% azune this is a representation of my inner soul

but that said. whenever anyone in this latest episode talked about tachonis maybe trying to open a door to the underworld i did constantly just want to remind them, tachonis has no problem getting in and out of the underworld. we've seen primus use plane shift to do that. we have been told by both aranessa and occtis that at least some of house tachonis do in fact live in the underworld

at least to my understanding of it, we have the answer to some of those questions!

and now granted some of the information we've gotten recently does contradict what we've gotten in the past (namely, aranessa saying that the reason that burst of necromantic energy struck the heart of faerie was because the underworld was too choked with souls that it just overflowed - recent episodes at least seem to be implying there was something else that happened to cause that), so any one character's testimony should be taken with a grain of salt

but i can say at least for sure that their main sphere of control right now is not tansul's afterlife, because we haven't seen tansul's afterlife! (or any afterlife at all, yet). like, i think it's important to make the distinction between the afterlife and the underworld here, because they're not the same. afterlife = plane made by the shapers for the souls of those they shaped to be guided to after they die, underworld/tenebral reaches = place souls end up after they die to await guidance

we've been told that the god planes still exist, but the knowledge of how to get to them from the underworld died with the psychopomps. as you say, if any are still accessible, it would be tansul's, because tansul didn't have a celestial psychopomp, that was house tachonis' job originally, to navigate the underworld to the way out of it - and they're still here. but they might very well lack the ability to get into the afterlife itself, who knows! (we could have found out if they'd done the celestial ritual properly but unfortunately they rerouted that package to their own home instead)

(the other remaining psychopomp is technically the stone of nightsong, because it's original purpose was to skip the underworld completely, ship dead souls straight from the material plane direct to sylandri's heaven - which is inconvenient for house tachonis bc they don't even get the chance to swipe at them on their way past)

and as brennan told us recently, the underworld has been expanding since the death of the shapers, because souls aren't leaving the underworld anymore at anywhere close to the rate they used to. it has become an afterlife of its own when it was never intended to be - brennan described it the other week as a post office but you could also think of it as a bus stop, that suddenly a million people have started camping at bc the buses stopped running. (and tachonis in essence own the bus stop so they're making whatever renovations suit them and maybe also going exploring)

what happens when people die is essentially just they go make camp at the bus stop (which may or may not have catastrophic consequences see: faerie), unless they find another bus! which is why thaisha's work is so important. because the old path druids were the guides before the shapers, and they're trying to be the guides again. they don't lead souls to another plane, they lead souls back to this one (usually in the form of reincarnation), but their work still works! souls that have a personal druid guide get to come back as something else, still (thjazi is presumably on this list unless he did something to fuck with it, because we saw thaisha being his guide at the funeral). the problem for most of the world is because these guiding rituals are one on one, there just aren't enough druids to personally oversee every single death in the world. they've got one bus running and still a million people in the camp. but it's also why primus wants them all dead so badly, because he likes the campers being here! campers today is soldiers tomorrow

The Pariah blades are no longer hidden away in a museum. They’ve been soaked in the freed blood and spirit of the people who forged and wielded them.

They are in the hands of Rungjani, clanging in the streets of Dol-Makjar, calling the people to witness a story.

The Hallowed Round is also covered in the liberated blood of Rungjani. Blood held captive for centuries now shapes the forms and faces of Rungjani, captives who strove and died, but did not fail, because their rebellion was a step forward on the path toward freedom.

The play is going forward, with no influence from the Creed. Everyone in the city will see it in its true form— a story of rebellion.

It makes me think of the Falconer’s Rebellion, another failed rebellion. Two rebellions that failed with the fall of a single great man.

But there were nine blades used in the Rebellion that succeeded. Decades later, the Lloy name is held in highest honor as the creators of the Blades, not the wielders.

It makes me think of Uli saying, “I know now that those who sang songs in this place, even if the words were meant to soothe [Azgra’s] wrath and keep our lives in propitiating his fury; the melody, the dance, the fury and the passion, that was always for us.”

It makes me think of Demodus, saying that things have to start as an illusion first.

It makes me think of Thaisha, speaking a Rungjani blessing, blessing the Conqueror, “for in his appetite, he saw Aramán forever changed from what it was to what it might be. A blessing to him, then, that the Rungjani reject peace in favor of a dream.”

Why do we tell stories?

"what is this BABY doing in space!???"

submitted by @weissruby; courtesy this post

This is how Project Hail Mary went, right?

for the smallest and youngest

animal on earth