#cleaves

Cult of the Stars (aka the Entomologists, the Navigator’s Tribe)

A wind blew from the southwest, and on that wind came the Magister Naoutha, and in his hand he held a sword, and the hilt of the sword was red. His face was calm and his eyes were closed as he descended upon the gevir. As it reared back its seven heads and hissed, he took off every head with a single stroke, then turned and left as quietly as he came. Why he came and why he killed, we do not know; save that the gevir came from beyond Creation, and could return there, and perhaps this offended that most honorable lord.

—from the Thought-Record of Sa’adi Nirumand

Cleave Summary

Ancient human sorcerers used to barter with demons, mythical monsters, and vulnerable Nobilis, trapping them in pentacles and extorting gifts from them. This dangerous practice earned the sorcerer great power, but a single misstep in research or practice could bring the wrath of mystical, Noble, or even Imperial forces down upon their heads.

The Noble equivalent of this practice is High Summoning. The strange and alien beings that some Nobilis call up from the Lands Beyond Creation offer great power at a great risk. Unlike demons, “Outside” creatures rarely spend their time lusting for pain or death. However, many Outsiders resent those who summon them away from their ordinary lives. Others consider their summoning an opportunity to wreak havoc within Creation. The rest have concerns, interests, desires, and powers entirely outside Noble morality and understanding. For a Noble, dealing with the creatures Outside is as dangerous—and, potentially, as damning—as humans find dealing with demons.

Still, some rare Nobilis feel confined by the enormous but arguably finite Ash. For them, the Lands Beyond Creation possess a terrible allure. Touching foot to the soil of every world upon Yggdrasil would require centuries of travel. Exploring every world in full would take an eternity. Even so, some Nobles’ thoughts turn inevitably outwards, past the Weirding Wall, and upwards, towards the stars.

This Cleave calls itself “the Navigators’ Tribe”, although others call it the Entomologists or the Cult of the Stars. They believe the Aaron’s Serpent legend that the stars are the first children of the Ash, cast somehow into the sky before time began, and wish to join them—to ascend to whatever plane of existence the Ash’s first Imperators reached. To this end, they engage in constant study of the creatures and “geography” of the Lands Beyond Creation, using High Summoning as their primary tool.

Nobilis cannot use and abuse High Summoning as frequently as the Star Cultists do without ancillary effects. The Cleave has acquired a disproportionate power base, bargaining fiercely with those Outside creatures that understand communication. At the same time, the greater beings from the Lands Beyond inspire a religious, superstitious awe even in the Nobilis. Not only do a few Star Cultists die every century at the hands of summoned creatures and accidentally netted Excrucians, several more actually change sides and enter some Outside being’s service. (Certain entities from Beyond can break the Noble-Imperator bond.) Nevertheless, the Council of Four has not chosen to actively purge the Cleave; the Cleave’s members suspect that one of the Council Imperators expects to reap some eventual benefit from their efforts.

The ultimate achievement of the Navigators’ Tribe, and its greatest folly, is Fierabras, a great half-completed train coiled—for the time being—around the planet Saturn. When they complete the train’s construction, the Star Cultists believe, it will have the power to take them out through the gaps in the Weirding Wall and up to the superior plane of the stars.

The Sacred Contract

We’re kind of like the Buddha. Only, instead of getting to Nirvana through enlightenment and right action, we’re planning to take the train.  

—Ilona Karavajevs, Augur of the Cult of the Stars

The res of the Cult of the Stars is the violin Momentarily Unjust, currently owned by the Power Vasundara Ilango. On occasion, when the Cult takes action to clean up High Summoning-related messes—their own or others’—Vasundara stands back from the action with Momentarily Unjust in hand, her demoniacal music accompanying the Cleave’s struggle against monsters from Outside.

In a typical game, there are 11 Powers bound to this res.

A Story of the Cult of the Stars: the Giant Killed by Yarn

“I have sworn an efficacious oath,” he said. “I cannot die until I have stood among the stars.”

I grunted. “Raüli, cut off his head.”

That didn’t work. I kind of figured. “Raüli, put his head back on and let’s get him outside.”

I waited until nightfall. Then I took the mirrors from the house and shattered them, and silvered glass fell around him; and in the glass, there shone the stars.

—from the Thought-Record of Hugh Rosewood

Once upon a time, a young man named Jack came across a sleeping giant. Naturally, his first thought was to rid the land of this menace by slitting the drowsing monster’s throat; and this he attempted, but the giant’s skin was as hard as steel. He stood back in thought, and then quietly took a ball of yarn from his pack and began to carefully unroll it, forming a long circle entirely around the meadow where the giant lay. Then he leaned against a tree and set himself to watching. Soon enough the giant woke up, sat up, stretched, and stood.

“It is no good to run,” the giant said. “If you were thinking of it.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” said Jack.

“It was kind of you to wait until I woke up,” the giant admitted. “My meals rarely deliver themselves to me so graciously.”

“I don’t think I’ll be your meal to-day,” answered Jack.

“And why is that?”

“Why, as soon as you set foot across this circle of yarn I have lain down, your heart shall explode and cold iron shall coat your bones, and you shall be no more.”

The giant estimated distances by eye. “I don’t think I can reach you from within the circle,” he said. “Which is most unfair. But I am familiar with such magics as this; I can simply cut the yarn.”

Jack grinned at the giant.

“Perhaps,” the giant concluded, “that would not be wise either.”

Jack shrugged. “Cut it if you like. Step over it if you like. It is all the same to me.” And with a jaunty step and a whistled tune, he turned and walked away.

“This is cruel and unjust!” cried the giant, but Jack did not turn; and soon, he was out of sight.

In good time, the giant withered away from his hunger, never once daring to step across the line that separated the inside from the out; for, after all, it had been told what could come to pass.

A Story tied to the Cult of the Stars: the Ant That Was Too Good to be True

Members of the Cult of the Stars are often called “Entomologists”, after a peculiar cautionary fable found in the Ubiquitous Letters. On occasion, they even use this terminology themselves, naming the various strange creatures found in the Lands Beyond Creation after the orders and families of mortal insects. Therefore, when a Cultist speaks of beekeeping, they refer to tending a farm of Hymenoptera Apidae, semi-material wisps of plasma from which one may harvest miraculous energy, and not of keeping bees; and when they explain that their Lepidoptera Lycaenidae has broken loose, one should not pause and wait for a beautiful pygmy blue butterfly, but rather begin running at all possible speed for the nearest exit from the Chancel.

—from In the Right Circles, by Jasprite Sherrard

Once upon a time, in an arctic tundra not known for its Hymenoptera, an entomological sorcerer encountered an ant. Encountering an ant in such an unlikely place surprised the sorcerer as much as it would have surprised you or I. “How came an ant,” thought he, “so far from any anthills, in such an inhospitable land?”

He knelt and examined the creature. It remained, obstinately enough, an ant. Moreover, from a sorcerous point of view, it was a particularly excellent ant. The length of each leg equaled half the length of its body, save for the front left leg; the length of that leg equaled the body length exactly. (Classical texts, you may recall, list these proportions for the ideal sacrificial ant; c.f., in particular, Pliny’s Geometry, Entomology, Sorcery.) The ant’s antennae, which it waved at him, had a crisp cool texture like snow. Its scent trail, although exceedingly antlike, smelled slightly of jasmine flowers. The sorcerer lifted it onto his finger and marveled.

“A remarkable discovery,” he stated, turning it this way and that. “Clearly, some mystical provenance has created this ant directly from the Empyrean. How fortunate that I have found it before some arctic anteater or rampaging bug-crushing boar.”

The ant waved its antennae some more.

“I shall use this ant,” decided the sorcerer, “to create my masterwork of sorcery. This ant shall let me build a worldwide benevolent empire, with myself as its lord, and I shall have angels to sing me to sleep every night.”

The ant crawled along his finger, reserving its judgment.

“Yes!” cried the sorcerer. “With this ant, I shall be the greatest sorcerer that ever lived!”

The sorcerer proceeded to build his worldwide benevolent empire, but within his first month on the throne, he vanished from all mortal cognizance. At roughly the same time, a shape like an ant’s appeared in the Heavens, outlined amid the stars. “What happened to the sorcerer?” his peers and subjects wondered. “Where did he go?”

That is a story for another time, however. All I will say is this: once upon a time, when an ant went wandering in the arctic tundra, it encountered a man, and thought the following:

“My, this man does seem exactly to match the proportions ... for an ideal sacrificial entomological sorcerer.”

Cleave Philosophy

Summon a Lawbreaker thus. Perform the ritual at midnight, within a summoning pentacle meeting Pelopidas’  specifications. Set the bloom of the live-oak at one corner of the pentacle. Ignite a Hand of Glory and read the dates from a time-chart 13 years old. At the end of this process, the scorched-flesh scent of the ignited Hand’s smoke takes on a strawberry tang. The night around you shall become darker—or, if appropriate to the Chancel, more bright. The earth should tremble in the rhythmic phrase corresponding to the word “Abraxas”.

If any of these signs are missing or are not as I have described them, immediately ignite the time-chart using the Hand of Glory’s flame! I cannot stress this highly enough; the ritual can call forth many unpleasant things if performed incorrectly.

If the signs appear as described, you must then say, “A Kalendis Graecis ad Kalendas Graecas, Deo lex venit,” and hold out an object that defies the laws of the world. A spirit will claim it from you, and the ritual is complete.

—from the Book of the Navigators