#mieville

Until at last one shabti paused by the riverbank-analogues, and stopped. Dropped the bundled shadow-harvest it had cut, and took the tools it was built carrying to its own clay skin. Effaced the holy text it had been made wearing.

Here I am, it shouted in what passed there for its voice. I shall not do it.

On the board & in life for Kraken in the void nothing is not nothing. Kraken stillness is not lack. Its zero is ubiquity. This is the movement that looks like not moving, & it is the most powerful move of all.

Previous | Next A script writer’s latest action schlock becomes a defining cultural moment that awakens adoration and loathing across the political spectrum. “The Junket” is told from the perspective of a pop culture journalist who might be getting a little sick of being a glorified promoter. When Daniel Cane’s new film comes out, the narrator skips some much-vaunted interviews in order to dig…

Role: The Monster Traits: Murderous, determined, sadistic, reckless, sociopathic, ambitious Nickname: The Butterfly King Gender: Male Pronouns: He/him Orientations: Powersexual Alignment: Chaotic evil Likes: Directing his butterflies to kill Dislikes: His son, Bogart, Grave-chains in general and his in specific, Gaolers

Mieville is a monster. He first came to power as a Tundra in the Hewn City. Where his fellow members of Bogart’s clan saw only horror, cold and wet and darkness, Mieville saw...possibility. The magic that lay in the Hewn City offered power, energy, the monsters that the Lightweaver had tucked away for only the Hewn City and the Fortress of Ends to see.

He had a son then, a pathetically small thing who he hoped to experiment on...but what would one body tell him? And supposing that something he did gave his son the things that he deserved more?

It was at this time he crafted his butterflies. Controlled by the polished lacquer mask he wore, they appeared to be tattoos or merely part of his fur, until he summoned them. Once called for, they rose from his body and attacked whoever he directed them at, spied for him, or gathered energy to add to his own power. They could seep energy, or more often, bite chunks of flesh and scale from their victims, and this was enough for him to inspire terror in many.

But he wanted more. Still more -- to gain a power that would rival the gods themselves. And so, gathering his butterflies and his powercoat around him, he plunged into the darkness.

The body of a Tundra ill-suited his purposes. Soft, furry, plant-eating, almost incapable of defense, seen as foolish, with a mind ill-suited to what he craved. For there was one breed that had access to the raw and godlike power, and the ways to transform from one breed into an Imperial was long lost.

Or so it was thought.

It is still unknown how he transformed his body into that of an Imperial dragon, but when he returned to the ruins of the Hewn City, that was what he was. An Imperial, the dragons formed of raw energy at the beginning of the world. And, as an Imperial, within his body he contained the ability to bring the gods to heel. Still, his body appears unfinished, unsettling, for his bodily movements are those of a Tundra still.

Nobody had ever managed to interview an Emperor and live, but Mieville believed he could control the heads and bodies he would one day warp himself to. Alone, he set out to contact the disparate teams of Mediums, Scholars, and Sprangyroo on the backs of their Boran, for what was planned to be his greatest triumph. With an Emperor transporting him, its energies harnessed under one greater mind at last, Mieville would bring down the dragon gods that the Beastclans so hated. And all he needed was one little thing...

The Prince they created for him was a pathetic creature, but it would suit his purposes. There were only two heads, little ones, but someday there would be more, ten heads below his. Of course, it hadn’t quite taken yet, they weren’t entirely attached, but soon, he would be able to meld with their bodies, take them into his.

He did not count on Bogart’s interference. The stumpy little gray beast destroyed half the Prince, adopted the other, destroyed the Beastclans who had aided him, and confronted Mieville in the Hewn City when the two dragons had returned to the shared ruins. Bogart forced him to wear a grave-chain after that, rending him unable to fuse with any other Imperial, and kept Mieville under his claw carefully.

Optimism of the will. The principle of hope. In the face of spite and history, there’s a better category of the positive, perhaps, to recruit into radical theory. One that’s rarer, that we don’t need to strive, a priori, to sustain, and/but that we know, even if for flecks of time in the worst times, we might experience, and that is joy.

Property itself is everyday sadism. To see it overthrown, even for a moment, is to know that joy exists, and to know that it is a material force.”