User:Najawin/Sandbox 4

=Against Nature=

East
Primo Acamapichtli Isleño de la Vega stood at a fountain in San Miguel Coatlinchan and thought about water, how both science and faith had come to agree that water was the source of all life. Vehicles began to fill the square around him, and he thought back once more, to time spend at Rudolfo's place. And then, harder, to caves and lakes. Rudolfo had told him to see Ultima. And the rest of his memory was out of place. Acamapichtli, the first Tlatoani of Tenochtitlan and the founder of the Mexica dynasty hid in a cave, thinking about the world and the world beyond, and those points where they would meet. Primo turned and walked the streets towards home, and he sees it still in his mind's eye. A man comes to him, sensing he is troubled, which Primo assents to - the idea of becoming full Tlatoani for the Mexica, in his memories, discomforts his remembered self. And it discomforts him now, the realism of these visions, of a healer, a stranger coming to him, with a name of Serpentine Fire. The Primo of his visions explains how he has been cursed, and the healer extracts a tool with four needles from his robes - the painful memory of it piercing him shaking Primo from his vision. A few minutes later he finds himself at his house, and walks in to his mother watching her telenovela. After reheating dinner, he tells her he's going to see Ultima. As he does, the family cat jumps upon the pet bird, throwing feathers everywhere.

North
Todd Calavero stepped out of his car before work and saw a girl with a dog. The spitting image of Selena and his old dog from childhood. Todd worked under the neon lights, spraying down dressers and chairs, moaning to his coworkers about how he should have stayed in school, or the slacker who called in sick with frostbite. Knocking off early, he thought back to a simpler time, with childhood acquaintances and an old dog, not as he is now, with a wife who refuses to talk to him and a life in neutral. Not long later he was at his house, and his mother asked him if he had called his wife. He insisted that he would call Selena the next day, three weeks in the house had past since the two decided to take some time apart. He took out some dead plants, asked his neighbor about his childhood friend, Hector, and began to turn inside just as the first raindrops fell.

West
Emioushameddhoran vel-Xianthellipse stepped slowly out into the Netherweald, the dying local spacetime where House Meddhoran had come to rest. She traipsed the forty seven steps to Rhodenet's hogan, down from forty eight the previous day. Recognizing his comment that her visits were becoming a nuisance, she mentions that their sister, Laethynrisa, has discovered another bellum notitia. Rhodenet makes his lack of enthusiasm abundantly clear, and Emiousha departs back to the chapterhouse. She climbed up, passing the nosocomion to find Laethynrisa ordering some drudges in hanging the bellum notitia. The tapestry shimmered as it told the story of the anchoring of the thread. Laethynrisa slumped over, and Emiousha worries. First the males die in the netherweald, and now the prospect too of a female childe dying to the killing blight?

South
Day Ome Ozmatli of Ce Izcuintli, nine days before the New Fire Ceremony, not the best day for traveling, but one that Momacani had to take anyhow if he was going to depart the capital, Tenochtitlan, and return to deal with the mysteries occurring near the city by that time. But for now he had a meeting in Xochimilco. As he walks south, he thinks of his former patron, Ocotochtli, and how the majesty of the city showed truth in his sayings that the material world is but a shadow of the philosophical world. Momacani thinks further about his mentor's pronouncement, and if there is some sight that could impart its truth to him as well.


 * You will make war with the beast of the city, and the people will be grateful, and in this way will your fame be fortified.

Does this mean the city itself? The ruler? Motecuhzoma Xocoyotzin was becoming increasingly erratic. But Momacani pushes these thoughts out of his head and carries on, further out from the city and proceeds up the hill of Huixachtepetl to find an incomplete temple and officials who inquire what a member of the Ixtilque is doing at the temple, being obviously dismissive of his concerns that the temple is unfinished. Rumors that Motecuhzoma intends to delay the renewal of time by a year are being whispered, the temple is unfinished, yet the officials insist to him that the years will be bound as planned. He accepts this, as he merely came to see the progress being made, and departs, moving down to the lake before climbing in a canoe and traveling south. A thought echoed in his mind.


 * So this is where it will end.

Unsure of where it came from, and recognizing that he could not be sure, Momacani takes up his paddle yet again.

Centre
''Palatine Goralschai wiped mud off his visor and glanced at Sendax, time congeals and she dies months ago. Slightly further out Palatine Enten hardens over centuries. Goralschai can remember five, how many were there originally? Fourteen? Or has that been retro-annulled as well? The enemy rip into him, recognizably human, in pre-industrial brass armor, repulsing Goralschai, as one of them, a biomorph with large eyes seems delighted to the point of tears to cut into his compassionate core.''

East
Primo read to himself from an old account of the myths of the local people as he worked his job at a hotel. Points in the story speak to him, cause him to become certain that this myth, this book, is the source of it. And he reads on, it talks about Huitzilopochtli making a demon from pale wood and breath, a demon called "Fire in the Serpent" and sends him east. The narrative quickly becomes too surreal for Primo, as it involves a character going in three different directions and hiding himself in a barrel cactus, so he places it down, though some of it still echoed in his mind - a cave, a ruler, Fire in the Serpent, or Coahualxiuh in Nahuatl. He walked home that night, heating up dinner, or, well, a midnight snack, and quietly turning to his room to continue with his reading. A twin was made, a twin who lived in the east, replacing the one who lived in the north, causing faces to appear within people and brought things back to life. Primo hears a noise from elsewhere in the house and goes to investigate. He opens the waste bin, prepared to find a rat, and instead finds his mother's cardinal, alive and well, if a bit bloody. Primo places him in his cage, and returns to his room, staring out his window at the vast twinkling lights in the blackness, admiring the beauty of Mexico City.

North
Todd thought about Selena some more while cleaning off more furniture. Meeting too young and staying together almost through momentum, he can't even remember what the fight was about, or if there's any reason for them to try to get back together now. After work his coworkers ask him if he planned on if he had talked to his wife yet, and he diverts attention to his mother, whose health is spotty. She's thinking about heading down to Mexico to see his grandmother, an old witch type, but he's cynical about it panning out. Finally, he works up the courage to drive home and talk to Selena. As he approaches her working outside, it slowly becomes clear that something is off. Selena doesn't recognize him, and instead, from the house, a man holding a child emerges, who she identifies as her husband of two years.

West
Emiousha browses through the athenæum of the chapterhouse, contemplating the changes thrust upon them as they came into the netherweald, how the lattices and gieteforms had become hand scrawled texts on animal hides and how that was the least of her problems. In the shadows a red-orange invertebrate crawled, and she averted her gaze to see in the far distance two male figures. Gedarra enters, and offers her assistance, breaking Emiousha's concentration. When Emiousha returns her gaze, both the twin figures and the creatures have vanished. Gedarra and Emiousha discuss how imperative it is for communication to be maintained with Rhodenet, and Gedarra gives her consent to entangle her cognition with his in order to do this. Emiousha then travels up five flights to find Laethynrisa and Thraenrellis, with the former deteriorating, even experiencing physical pain, something none of the males had done. Thraenrellis then compares their situation to House Paradox and the Eleven-Day Empire, something that enrages Emiousha, who insists that there is no comparison. But Thraenrellis persists, saying that the same technology was used, and the only flaw was that this particular calendar didn't actually lack the thirteen days they once thought were missing. But the conversation is cut short by Arven streaming into the room, ranting about a woman he had seen out in the Netherweald, dressed in black, feathers, and screaming. Prior to this the wraiths in the Netherweald had only ever been things in the background, in the corner of your eye. This was clearly something more substantial.

South
Momacani arrived in Xochimilco, and while it was the hunting season of Quecholli, there were still people working on the chinampas. Momacani disembarked and proceeded through the avenues lined with adobe buildings until he came to the house of Atonal. The 65 year old man told him of how when he was younger he traveled to the cave at Atlixocan and met with Lord Huemac, trading 13 extra years of life for service in the world beyond. He wishes Momacani to in some way free him from this obligation - as he doesn't believe this was Huemac. As Momacani thinks to himself that it might be Tezcatlipoca taking the form of Huemac, he explains that either Atonal bargained with forces beyond his understanding, and there's nothing to be done, or he was drunk. Atonal sputters as Momacani turns and leaves before throwing racial slurs at him for being one of the Mexica. Momacani realizes that he is unable to return to Tenochtitlan before dark, so heads to the embassy for the night. While there, in the firelight, his shadow dances and ever so slightly moves out of place, leading him to wonder what trick of the light had caused it.

Centre
''Goralschai stands disinterested, detached, in a hearing devoted to the Ganda Mnemma campaign, and fails to react as the atrocities he committed to his allies are recounted to him - he considers them necessary in the circumstances and understands this hearing to be a charade. He leaves, considering those around him to be as different as drudges are to them.''

East
Primo felt glued to his seat as the coach made the trip up to Río Frío de Juárez to see Ultima, contemplating the old idea of all things having an ixihtec, some essence that gave them their properties. Maybe spending so long sitting at his job had forced some level of inertia on him. He dozes off, and wakes up just in time to hit his stop. His grandmother is happy to see him, and pleasantries are exchanged, but she tells him that it's important he understand that the Mexico that was, what he's so interested in, never left. "The world is made of symbols. The things we see do not matter so much. It is what they mean that counts." He's politely skeptical, and she continues, stating that a brujera has taken a perverse interest in him, Yaotl. As they converse, Primo notices a small screech owl outside.

North
Todd worked in the garden, digging up rotting tomatoes, as his mother came out, insisting that he should go see his wife on his day off. He didn't have the heart to tell her that he asked for time off or that Selena hadn't recognized him. She shuffles inside and he looks down, having lost all enthusiasm, thinking about how he had looked at the newspaper article of his and Selena's marriage from years ago to find it replaced with a picture of her and her new husband. And he just couldn't take it any more, so he got in his care and drove, to nowhere in particular, but around the town, first to a friend's house where their wife at home didn't recognize him, then to a diner, and finally to McAllister Park, where he fell out of the world, letting life get away from him, thinking about his ancestors and the underworld, Mictlan, where instead of heat it was cold and damp, and, noticing something odd, he reached out to touch a nearby creek and found it to be ice.

West
Emiousha stood in the hogan, watching Rhodenet, the last male childe not to be afflicted by the blight, toil away at encoding archematical symbols into various rocks to tap into the Neatherwealde below. Realizing that there was no use standing over him, she departs, heading back to the chapterhouse, and on her way she sees a Towering Man. Rhodenet is beside her, his words a blur as he collapses, a drudge picks him up and they make a mad dash to the chapterhouse as the world feels wrong. They make it to the nosocomion, where Thraenrellis examines Rhodenet's collapsed body, and doesn't think this is the blight. Rather, something has taken both his consciousness and some of his continuity - he is younger than he used to be. Out of the corner of her eye, Emiousha notices his shadow begin to move, and it knocks both her and Thraenrellis down before fleeing as they give chase.

South
Momacani is certain that his shadow has moved, but it has been a long day, and thinks again of his former mentor, Ocotochtli, and how he called him not quite real, a story that thinks itself a man, someone from the clouds, a man who has come unstuck. He thinks again of how Ocotochtli and him worked to protect him from the sacred thanks to his dubious origins. As this happens, night has fallen, and he attempts to catch animals in his head to fall asleep, but his mind turns instead to the thought of him wandering in a cavern, in Tlalocan. Beside him walked an old woman, and as he inquired if she was his familiar, she dismissed him, and insisted he get down, lest the figure up ahead see him. Momacani sees another woman ahead who he immediately identifies as Yaotl. He's told she's taken an unhealthy interest in him, and has come from Cihuatlan and is heading to Mictlan. Deciding he had seen enough, Momacani opens his eyes.

Centre
''Ordnance-Tetrarch Gorlaschaixianthellipse is introduced to the recently loomed childrene in ceremonial robes, the gaudiness of the circumstance disgusting him. A heavily edited account of his actions in the War is given in a speech to these tainted Newblood house experiments. He's introduced to Emioushameddhoran vel-Xianthellipse and Thraenrellismeddhoran vel-Xianthellipse; the childrene cluster and ask questions, though with a curious detachment to the War. One asks him about the Spike, not the battle, but the structure of the physical object. Gorlaschai wonders what he's doing here, these hybrids don't understand anything - it's as if they're a fundamentally different species.''

East
Primo and his grandmother gathered plants, and she interrogated him about his dreams. He recalled being in the city, and meeting with someone - not a woman with dark hair, dressed like a clerk, as his grandmother asked, but instead someone who was white and was binding logs together with rope in the ruin of the Templo Mayor. As night fell, the two captured a spying heron and wrung its neck, leaving it on their kitchen table. Ultima then talks to him while making the poultice.

"The yolia is the breath, the part by which we live. The tonalli is in the head, and it is the heat and the part which travels to heaven. Then there is the ihiyotl, the dark shadow, the nagual; and it is my belief that your affliction results from damage done to that part of your soul"

She states that this is why special medicine is needed, it's a special type of damage. A dull brown paste is smeared on his spine, and tape is placed to stop it from moving, though she touches his upper arm and finds four strange pinpricks there, which he can't remember ever getting. He asks Ultima if the owl he occasionally sees is her. She chuckles, and tells him he wouldn't believe her, but he can think of the owl as a friend, and they continue with the work.

North
Todd labored in his job as his supervisor came up and told him that another worker had been sent home. Todd, already picking up the slack from one worker not coming in, asks if this worker also was claiming to have been frostbitten, to which the supervisor showed no response, and just moved on. Todd becomes lost in his thoughts, frostbitten plants, hypothermic neighbors in July, and a friend of the family who told his mother that she'd never before heard of Todd, of her son. Finally, not being able to take it, he snuck out of work and drove home, only to find it radically changed, no tree, different colored walls, the works. He goes inside and finds a middle aged white lady sitting on new furniture, say in a British accent, "You're taking this very well". Almost in a daze he goes to the kitchen and takes out a beer before listening to what she says. She introduces herself as Lorraine Conti, and states that there's a War being fought on a cosmic scale, where the history of this culture is one of many contested territories, and he got caught up in it. She also compares him to the death totem, the process of entropy and inertia on a notional level, and indicates that a jewel around her neck is the only thing stopping him from freezing her blood solid. He expresses that he only has interest in returning to his family, and she just denies that he ever had a family.

West
Emiousha feels out of sorts, as she had since she awoke, and listened to Gedarra insist that all their troubles were due to House Paradox as Thraenrellis went to tracking his shadow with an amaranth. Thraenrellis returns later, holding a hidebound volume, Laethynrisa's biologue, and in the archemathical symbols finds that instead of the blight, it seems, Laethynrisa has developed a growth. Less certain, thinking that perhaps the blight, having worked its way through the males might jump to the females, Emiousha wanders off in search of the biologues for those who have already succumbed. But realizing that this task is silly, as the blight removes all evidence of them ever having existed save memory, she questions her own sanity, as rhythmic noises sound and she collapses. She returns to the nosocomion to find them still huddled around the biologue, for not only was a growth described in Laethynrisa, but biodata, a human newborn.

South
Momacani examines a ruined idol as he and and others in the Ixtilque poke around the burned ruins of a temple. Matlacoatl and Chitilma join him, stating that by his account it seems Xochimilco has suffered worse than Tenochtitlan, yet they are aware of no natural way for this fire to have been started. The three contemplate the idea that this might be part of a set of prophecies that have been made, and may yet come to pass, as the priest Tlohtoxcatl comes up to them. While disappointed, he understands, and moves on to other business, asking if Lord Huemac walks the earth again. Momacani relays his view that if Atonal might have met some form of spirit, but it was unlikely to be Huemac, and instead the man was most likely drunk.

Momacani asks Tlohtoxcatl about an insult Atonal made, an accusation that "the Acamapichtli we revere was a monstrous twin". Tlohtoxcatl dismisses it, saying that their founder was made ill from witchcraft and a foreign healer of bizarre appearance saved him. Everything else is amusing nonsense. He continues that Momacani himself was present when the Ixomitectin came to Tenochtitlan years back, and Momacani begs off as he sees movement in the shadows. Chasing in a dark room, Momacani grabs a young boy attempting to steal food. Scolding him and letting him go, the boy insists that it doesn't matter because the New Fire is a trick, and none of it matters.

Centre
''Ordnance-Tetrarch Goralschai considers the assembled group and comes to the conclusion that not one has experienced genuine conflict. A nearby neighbor of his mumbles a rambling monologue that says much the same, but in a tedious, tangential direction. Someone comes forward and places a medal on him, marking him a hero of the First Wave, and also noting that he had been made redundant, that they no longer quite knew what to do with him.''

East
Primo sat on his bed, aware he was in a liminal state, and stared up, both at the stone archway above him and at the stars the stone archway contained. He thought perhaps he was in Tlalocan, so this wasn't too worrying to him. Ultima asked him if there was an animal he felt connected to, and he suggested a (rattlesnake? chiauhcoatl?), which she approved of, an eastern creature that was constantly reborn. The two crossed a great plain under the stone sky, intent on finding his nagual. Ultima leads him down to see Saint John, and a car drives by with a man and a woman, which Ultima describes as the bruja. Primo awakes, and recalls talking to Saint John and being given his nagual, a (rattlesnake? chiauhcoatl?), who Ultima told would guide him from now on.

North
Todd reeled as Conti showed him a picture of his mother south of the border. She never left Mexico, already having had a child, and yet here Todd stood, adrift as an oxbow existence. The two drove south, listening to a cassette, as his entropic existence disrupted anything with a chip in it, and a day later they were in Coatlinchan. As Todd sat eating his food, Conti directs his eyes across the square to María de la Vega Lunas, his mother.

West
Gedarra, Emiousha, Pyrhentana, and Rhodenet all cooperated to set up the gestalt, to link Gedarra's mind to Rhodenet's. Gedarra, previously relating experiences from Rhodenet from his hogan to test the link, had frozen, and Emiousha goes to the window to see what the cause is, and instead sees Rhodenet and Pyrhentana running inside, chased by a third figure, a twisted being with displaced limbs bandaged. As they come in, Pyrhentana notes that they saw the towering man, and then that creature began to chase them. The bellum notitia on the wall has changed to now portray the Yssgaroth in hominid depictions. Emiousha doesn't dwell on this, the gestalt has succeeded, and the group instead reconvenes, letting Rhodenet return to his hogan, this time to examine the flaw in the Netherwealde and see what's on the other side. He does, and words come trickling through Gedarra, a world, like their own, not the most comfortable, but habitable. And then Gedarra begins screaming.

South
Momacani and Chitilma traipsed through the forest on assignment from Tlohtoxcatl, rumors of the Night Wind appearing before a nobleman. Momacani held a dim view of this assignment, and everyone else agreed. But Motecuhzoma already thought little of the Ixtilque, so being disposable to their political superiors was a wise decision. The two discuss their reservations about the New Fire ceremony, and the prophecy dictated to Momacani by his mentor, Ocotochtli, of which is he is skeptical. The two continued through the forest, looking near where the noble had seen the Towering Man, and saw movement in the treeline in the distance before a man stumbles out. The two sigh, before they realize that the man is in fact twice as large as an ordinary person. A voice arises in Momacani's head.

'''If that's really what I think it is, you're going to need something a bit more impressive than big sticks and a positive attitude. It looks like some sort of Mal'akh hybrid to me, although I could be wrong.'''

Momacani interprets this to be the voice of Yaotl in his head, warned off from trusting her as he was before, and also grows cautious of his shadow, thinking she lives inside it, as it snakes after the Towering Man, currently fighting Chitilma, and slays it with some shadowy thorn.

Centre
''Goralschai finds himself in Mictlan, with no memory of how he arrived, conversing with Lord Greatness-In-His-Hand, who questions him about the memecore he found and why he never turned it over to his superiors. Goralschai is unsure, but the moment just never quite felt right in some way. Despite his distaste for these traitors, their honesty and lack of pretension is refreshing, as Lord Greatness-In-His-Hand asks Goralschai what they can offer the man who desires nothing.''

East
While on the trip back down to Mexico City Primo turned his attention to the book in front of him, it speaks of a house in Tamoanchan in the west, where the men have died to disease after being weakened by war. The women are asked to make a sacrifice, but do not feel that the Gods at the dawn of time have done enough to merit it, and so Serpent Fire comes to them and they sneak off. The Devil made himself a twin in Tamoanchan, fooling the women, using the loom that they had used, and left them alone and confused. It lapses again into what Primo considers absurdism, and he sighs, frustrated with the unhelpfulness of the text he had been reading - it even gives the false date for the New Fire Ceremony, Motecuhzoma had ended up postponing it for one year for likely political reasons.

As he left the bus, Primo thought about the wound no doctors could figure out healing and heard the sound of a rattle, but when he looked around saw nothing. He comes back to the fountain in Coatlinchan and sees a car with US plates. The same car he saw in Tlalocan, with two figures, an anglo woman, and a black man about his age. He darts away, trying to get away from the car from his dream, away from Yaotl, yet the woman followed him and spoke his name, Primo, and said that she, Lorraine Conti, was there to help, he was part of a mechanism he didn't understand. Her shadow outstretched and a shape of liquid metal began to drip in the air above them. And then Primo's mind fell out of the world, or fell into it, the volcanoes, the shifting magma, the thin eggshell keeping all that energy contained.

Characters
Centre 1: Is that supposed to be THE enemy, or just combatants on the planet? Unclear to me at this point.

Acamapichtli was the first Tlatoani of Tenochtitlan and the founder of the Mexica dynasty.

Primo Acamapichtli Isleño de la Vega

Todd Calavero - 20, mixed race, black father, hispanic mother, thought he was married to Selena, worked cleaning furniture

Emioushameddhoran vel-Xianthellipse

Rhodenetmeddhoran vel-Xianthellipse - uh, notes could be that he has some weird biodata mixed in, causing him to say odd turns of phrase for members of the Great Houses.

Gedarrameddhoran vel-Xianthellipse - same basic cognitive foundation framework as Rhodenet, offers to be entangled with him

Arvenmeddhoran vel-Xianthellipse - saw stuff out in the netherweald

Pyrhentanameddhoran vel-Xianthellipse worked to set up the gestalt with Rhodenet

Chantico - goddess of hearth, volcanic fire, and of Xochimilco

Matlacoatl

Saint John, either Saint John the apostle, or some combo of him and Mixcoatl or Camaxtli, a keeper of the animals in Tlalocan

Concepts
Oh dear lord I need to do something about the Mexica/Aztec distinction at some point.

Tlatoani - Acamapichtli was the first Tlatoani of Tenochtitlan.

House Meddhoran - house seeded by Xianthellipse as an exercise in diversity, never amounted to much and so was banished to the Netherweald

Ixtilque

Nahuatl - language spoken by the Mexica

ixihtec - intangible essence prescribing a thing's properties (biodata connection)

chiauhcoatl or rattlesnake

Items
"bolt of stone with four hollows carved into its length. Its face was inlaid with an equal number of silvered thorns stood in a row, each projecting outwards like the needles of a young mizquitl tree." Ask around if anyone knows if this is a reference to something (maybe Nate, could be just a generic biodata tool).

Hogan - Rhodenet sewed together a hogan from various garments worn by Amonis, there was an interior and exterior.

Amaranth - shape of silver sphere, other stuff already on the page

Locations?
San Miguel Coatlinchan - a city in Mexico with a statue of "Chalchihuitlicue, the River Goddess", earlier was called Coatlinchan. [Need to put stuff about that here]

Tenochtitlan - Acamapichtli was the first Tlatoani of Tenochtitlan.

Xochimilco - city at the southern extent of the lakes.

Tlacopan - city to the west of Tenochtitlan

Azcapotzalco - city to the west of Tenochtitlan

Tlalocan

http://onereed.blogspot.com/2013/08/against-nature-nahuatl-glossary.html https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/factionparadox/images/1/15/Against_Nature_House_Meddhoran_Glossary.pdf/revision/latest?cb=20170108214304