Autumn in Hieron 15: Have You Ever Swung A Sword At A Ghost Before?

...understandably caused us to doubt not only our relationship with them (albeit too late), but also with ourselves and our faculties. The world was large, larger not only than what we'd known before but larger than anything it had been before. And it was large in new ways. In the old Hieron, a big place was wide or it was tall. But we'd learned that this place was deep. We'd regularly find new creatures and cultures in the branches we already knew well. How could we trust that we had not missed something important in a place like this? For the adventurous sort, those who followed in the footsteps of those who founded the modern University settlement, this was a plus. But for those whose task was to catalog, study, and explain the Rhizome, this was an ache that never dulled. "It's made setting up our beat desks that much harder," said Marisol Sweetwater, then editor, now publisher of The New Current. "We have to constantly ask ourselves questions that back in Rosemerrow would've been given. What does 'Local News' mean in a place where a whole civilization can just show up under some giant petal you never flipped over?" The Rhizome was not simply vast, it was vasting, endlessly growing. And in the face of that, stability became the chief, communal referent. Even those who prefered the world this way, who were eager to turn leaves over for the rest of their lives, had their own exploits reframed in the popular rhetoric of cataloguing and mastery. One might take to the long branch to explore, but when their stories reached home, it was as proof that the Rhizome could be explored—routed, mapped, finally put to rest. Who knows why the discourse shifted like this. Some suggest it's because of a generic fear of the unknown. Maybe it was because it was what we already knew. Or, perhaps, it was because deep down we knew that there was only one way left for us to "settle" the world and make it knowable again, and we feared that possibility as much as we desired it. -An Excerpt from The Last Days The We Had: A Narrative Catalogue of Hieron, End Apparent, Pt. 2 by Alonzo Victor Devareaux van der Dawes This week on Spring in Hieron: The Second Spring Pt. 5 Hosted by Austin Walker (@austin_walker) Featuring Janine Hawkins (@bleatingheart) Sylvi Clare (@captaintrash), Ali Acampora (@ali_west), Art Martinez-Tebbel (@atebbel), Jack de Quidt (@notquitereal), Keith J Carberry (@keithjcarberry) and Andrew Lee Swan (@swandre3000) Music by Jack de Quidt (@notquitereal) Text by Austin Walker (@austin_walker) Produced by Ali Acampora (@ali_west) Cover Art by Craig Sheldon (@shoddyrobot) A transcription is available for this episode here.A full list of completed transcriptions is available here. Our transcriptions are provided by a fan-organized paid transcription project. If you'd like to join, you can get more information at https://twitter.com/transcript_fatt. Thank you to all of our transcribers!!

6 Syys 20191h 56min

…unexpected means of conveyance, but at that time, what ought have been reasonably expected at all? Perhaps such flippancy isn't well placed. Now, with the benefit of distance and context, it's simple to recognize the many ways that the Rhizome should have shaken loose our assumptions along with all that old Hieronic dirt. But by all retrospective accounts--including this historian's own limited recollection--no single question dominated our collective anxiety as much as this one: What can we expect? In a world of giant insects, endless growth, unearthed histories older than the Weaver King was long, how could we know what tomorrow would bring? Perhaps it was phrased differently, sometimes more specifically or with more sentimentality. But at core, it was this question--this fear--that led many to swear allegiance to the banners of Alcyon, the University, the Grey Duke. The words delivered to us by the Shepherd confirm that it was what motivated those who came to that fateful Understanding. And while this is admittedly conjecture, it is easy to believe that it is what made so many pray to Galenica, whose most authorial power was still grounded in the one bit of old Hieron still left in grand supply: us. Would tomorrow be worse than today? Would the suns ever find consistency, the pollen ever break? Would those who left us return? Would the threads of the world spiral further apart than they already had? Would 'normalcy' ever arrive? In the face of these things, how common a response fear is. After all, what more could we expect? -An Excerpt from The Last Days The We Had: A Narrative Catalogue of Hieron, End Apparent, Pt. 2 by Alonzo Victor Devareaux van der Dawes This week on Spring in Hieron: The Second Spring Pt. 4 Hosted by Austin Walker (@austin_walker) Featuring Janine Hawkins (@bleatingheart) Sylvi Clare (@captaintrash), Ali Acampora (@ali_west), Art Martinez-Tebbel (@atebbel), Jack de Quidt (@notquitereal), Keith J Carberry (@keithjcarberry) and Andrew Lee Swan (@swandre3000) Produced by Ali Acampora (@ali_west) Cover Art by Craig Sheldon (@shoddyrobot) A transcription is available for this episode here.A full list of completed transcriptions is available here. Our transcriptions are provided by a fan-organized paid transcription project. If you'd like to join, you can get more information at https://twitter.com/transcript_fatt. Thank you to all of our transcribers!!

30 Elo 20192h 21min

..alone would drive many settlements to resign themselves to his vassalage, as the Duke's medicinal stores separated him from many of the other warlords in that first year, when the pollen was so severe not only due to its density but to our own body's sluggish adaptation to it. But the University's leadership was not keen to submit to anyone, least of all a monarch who wouldn't even show his own face on the frontlines; whatever their differences, Corsica Neue and Lord Ephrim had in common a comfort with danger and a respect for those who would wade into it courageously. In hindsight, though, it has become clear that the Grey Duke's grand project—his attempt to re-order and organize the world around him and his territory—did not need others to kneel before him. They need only decide that facing him was a necessity to ensure his centrality in the new maps of the world. Which provides some context for the surprising, and not altogether unwelcome, tactics the Duke deployed... -An Excerpt from The Last Days The We Had: A Narrative Catalogue of Hieron, End Apparent, Pt. 2 by Alonzo Victor Devareaux van der Dawes This week on Spring in Hieron: The Second Spring Pt. 3 Hosted by Austin Walker (@austin_walker) Featuring Janine Hawkins (@bleatingheart) Sylvi Clare (@captaintrash), Ali Acampora (@ali_west), Art Martinez-Tebbel (@atebbel), Jack de Quidt (@notquitereal), Keith J Carberry (@keithjcarberry) and Andrew Lee Swan (@swandre3000) Produced by Ali Acampora (@ali_west) Cover Art by Craig Sheldon (@shoddyrobot) A transcription is available for this episode here.A full list of completed transcriptions is available here. Our transcriptions are provided by a fan-organized paid transcription project. If you'd like to join, you can get more information at https://twitter.com/transcript_fatt. Thank you to all of our transcribers!!

23 Elo 20193h 13min

...good a start as could be imagined, given the circumstances. But there was a confounding question still, which seemed to rent space in everyone's mind: Yes, the university had survived, but where was it? This was not a philosophical question. It was a simple matter of fact, a concrete concern. "Used to be three weeks, with cart, from Twinbrook," said one resident of the University, who operated a food cart both before and after the Second Spring. "Sure, [I] haven't made that trip in eight or nine years, not with everything going on. But [I] could count on it. Three weeks, with cart." The man tapped his temple three times, as if to emphasize the truth of the matter. While early efforts--DuCarte's map school, the Spider Silk Gondola to Alcyon, Feritas' road project--were progressing on schedule, there was the gnawing feeling among some in leadership roles that these moved too slowly. "If even our people, easy-tempered and well-calloused from the old life want to map this tangle out," wrote Corsica Neue in her journal, "then others, those chronically conditioned by control and ease, must be even more eager mappers than we." -An Excerpt from The Last Days The We Had: A Narrative Catalogue of Hieron, End Apparent, Pt. 2 by Alonzo Victor Devareaux van der Dawes This week on Spring in Hieron: The Second Spring Pt. 2 Hosted by Austin Walker (@austin_walker) Featuring Janine Hawkins (@bleatingheart) Sylvi Clare (@captaintrash), Ali Acampora (@ali_west), Art Martinez-Tebbel (@atebbel), Jack de Quidt (@notquitereal), Keith J Carberry (@keithjcarberry) and Andrew Lee Swan (@swandre3000) Produced by Ali Acampora (@ali_west) Cover Art by Craig Sheldon (@shoddyrobot) A transcription is available for this episode here.A full list of completed transcriptions is available here. Our transcriptions are provided by a fan-organized paid transcription project. If you'd like to join, you can get more information at https://twitter.com/transcript_fatt. Thank you to all of our transcribers!!

16 Elo 20191h 46min

…was standing there in the midst of utter chaos, I found strength in words uttered by the immortal warrior Red Jack (who you will become well acquainted with as you read on) only days before he led an assault on the being called the Advocate. "Heroism," he said, "is not such a unique thing." He was right. The heroes that day were not only those who faced down men worshipped as gods—or those that despised them. The heroes were the many whose names were not already known, who rallied their neighbors as the world around them crumbled, and ensured that even if the very body of Hieron itself vanished, Hieron, the collection of people, would not. The world, contrary to this book's title, did not end. All of which is to say that I am grateful that this text is being published in an incomplete state. The truth is that when I first began to write this volume, it wasn't a volume at all. It was just a book. An encyclopedia, collecting in one place stories from reliable (if not always honest) narrators, who together paint an image of the world as it was when it was still ending. As a writer and as an archivist, of course I knew a book like this could never be complete: Even if every fact I'd scribbled were true, even if I'd eradicated my bias—and I haven't—how could I be sure that some key detail was not lost in the telling? And so I am twice happy to be writing this foreword. First, because it means that the world and life (which frankly, I am very fond of) continues yet. Second, with our collective end seemingly deferred it gives me an excuse to begin a second volume, less focused on the apocalyptic end of everything, and more interested in all the minor endings we face as we find out what life even is here in the rhizome. For now, though, I hope that you find this volume insightful, and that if you do not, that you at least find it entertaining. A final note to that end: While you can read this text linearly from front to back, I advise simply opening to any page and reading the first full entry there, and following the references and footnotes there listed. If you absolutely must be given a defined starting place, though, I recommend entry A919: The Island of Eventide. Enjoy. -An Excerpt from the Foreword to The Last Days The We Had: A Narrative Catalogue of Hieron, End Apparent, Pt. 1 by Alonzo Victor Devareaux van der Dawes Hosted by Austin Walker (@austin_walker) Featuring Andrew Lee Swan (@swandre3000), Slyvi Clare (@captaintrash), Art Martinez-Tebbel (@atebbel), and Keith J Carberry (@keithjcarberry), Ali Acampora (@ali_west), Janine Hawkins (@bleatingheart) and Jack de Quidt (@notquitereal) Produced by Ali Acampora (@ali_west) Cover Art by Craig Sheldon (@shoddyrobot) Episode description by Austin Walker Music by Jack de Quidt A transcription is available for this episode here.A full list of completed transcriptions is available here. Our transcriptions are provided by a fan-organized paid transcription project. If you'd like to join, you can get more information at https://twitter.com/transcript_fatt. Thank you to all of our transcribers!!

9 Elo 20191h 58min

Hiya everyone!! Instead of an episode this week, we have a few announcements, which you can either enjoy in audio form or text form or BOTH! -We're at Gen Con this week! We're doing a live show on Saturday, 6 PM!!! Tickets are still available!! W hoo ps ? You can get them here: https://www.gencon.com/events/151345 -We're having a fan meet up Friday, 1:30 at Hudnut Commons!! -Shut Up and Shut Down released our BFF video from SHUX 2019!! The link is https://youtu.be/5mnsV3NtRWg -There's a Twilight Mirage Zine! You can get more info at https://fundly.com/tmzine, or check out their twitter at @tm_zine -We're gonna have a bunch of new patreon content at our highest tier but if you haven't checked it out we have a TON of stuff over at friendsatthetable.cash

31 Heinä 201915min

Across the long lawns below the central tower of the Last University, the grass defies itself. In the mind, a field is a million individual blades blending into one. But when Stars of the steppe arrive, they make mental category into physical reality, each blade blending with the next until the trembling, green pasture becomes blinding, fixed tract. But even this transformation, which spreads across the whole of one of the continent's densest settlements, is minute against what occurs above. A distraught god once promised that he would do anything to hold back the Heat and the Dark. Now, he proves his intent, yet wonders to himself if he can be stopped; if, perhaps, eradication might be better. This week on Spring in Hieron: See Where You're Standing Taken all at once, the unearned length of my life, it is easy to call this unavoidable. After all, before I could hold a chalice, I could only drink with tooth and maw, my thirst unsated, as blood stained the ground. Before I could store unfinished thoughts on a shelf, I could only think in agitation, plans and ideas twirling forever, unending in my focus, lest they be lost to distraction. Before I could hold my love, I coveted raw connection, dreamed an I into being even as I was sent to destroy identity itself. And so, I suspect, as the world becomes more real, more permanent, as those I swore to protect suffer in their sacrifice, even as I too dissolve and join the new firmament, I will have no champions. It will be easy to make sense of my decision this way: 'He was always a beast.' But that would be wrong. Writing these words is a selfish act of guilty conscience, I know. And yet I write them, because I must, because in writing them I am convinced of what must be done. I will not steep to the vulgarity of cruel maths, a list of how many we'd already killed, or how vast the future I build might be. The suffering is real. The suffering is, after all, the motive. And so that should be first. When my father told me what had been done, to the man I'd pinned to the bottom of the world, I saw opportunity. With His final ploy undone, the well of divinity had quietly been unblocked. I needed no clever stratagem. My adversarial source could be held back in the old way, a new strata. And so I began my work, drawing in detail for the first time in ages a new world. The ink flowed fresh, no rust to knock away, no lack of new ideas. I was born to steal words, but I lived for writing them. And then, in that vile cavern, I learned that my dreams were too humble. The ease with which I did it. Hadrian loved her as dear a companion as I did my Wizard. Perhaps, as ours in wisdom kind, theirs in strength. Thoughtless. Grotesque. If anything slithered in the Advocate's room, it was me. It was not only in what I did Death's Servant, though, it was that I so easily broke a promise I made to my aunt, and hid my strength from her, as I once did, so long ago. That is when I knew. That is I felt it, in my wounds, and in my heart, and in whatever motivates the void in the deep core of every living being into glorious motion. That is when I knew that I had to bring into being a world of consequence, of possibilities irrevertible, each moment concentrated justice in its inability to be undone. No second chances. No erasure. No reconfiguration. Immanence alone. A world without us. -An excerpt from the journals of Samot, the Unbroken Lord in Exile and Repose Hosted by Austin Walker (@austin_walker) Featuring Janine Hawkins (@bleatingheart) Sylvi Clare (@captaintrash), Ali Acampora (@ali_west), Art Martinez-Tebbel (@atebbel), Jack de Quidt (@notquitereal), Keith J Carberry (@keithjcarberry) and Andrew Lee Swan (@swandre3000) Produced by Ali Acampora (@ali_west) A transcription is available for this episode here.A full list of completed transcriptions is available here. Our transcriptions are provided by a fan-organized paid transcription project. If you'd like to join, you can get more information at https://twitter.com/transcript_fatt. Thank you to all of our transcribers!!

27 Heinä 20191h 23min

Of all the resources unique to the City of First Light, the Ordennan Impetus was most taken by the ancient city's network of trains. The once-island nation was already familiar with the value of heavy logistics, and though the steam-powered trains of this new island were on tracks, it was not as if their own ships did not have to contend with the more organic rails of weather, wind, and current. As important, they knew first hand how disruptive it would be for a culture to lose control of its transportation system. Which is why they stormed the trains early in their invasion, and grew their occupation through railway terminals. And this is how Fela Malle found his way to the ancient home of Samothes. The same volcanic palace to which Adaire, Hadrian, Hella, Hadrian, and Throndir now enter, under stormswell skies.. This week on Spring in Hieron: Ingenuity and Love When those few who know it tell our story, they tell it wrong. They say that we squabbled for years because He told me that there was no solution for the Heat and the Dark. But my love knew me better than to put it in terms so brusque. He took my hands that afternoon, called me by the name Samol had given me, and shared his hopelessness in the only way he knew would not drive me from him immediately, with the technical mendacity of an engineer or a priest. "Samot, our stumbling block is not in finding a solution, it's in determining the right problem to begin with. We've been trying to brighten the night when we should've been trying to find comfort in the dark." Bad poetry for dressing His cowardice up as practical thinking. I hated it, and soon enough I hated you Him too. But years later, with my Wizard reduced to mere memory and the paladin's heart clouded, I admit that I fell to despair much like my love's. He was right. All of these scenarios, all of this effort, all of this anxiety spent on cures, when I should have been focused on convalescence. An excerpt from the journals of Samot, the Unbroken Lord in Exile and Repose Hosted by Austin Walker (@austin_walker) Featuring Sylvi Clare (@captaintrash), Art Martinez-Tebbel (@atebbel), Andrew Lee Swan (@swandre3000), Ali Acampora (@ali_west) and Janine Hawkins (@bleatingheart) Produced by Ali Acampora (@ali_west) Music by Jack de Quidt (@notquitereal) Text by Austin Walker (@austin_walker) Cover Art by Craig Sheldon (@shoddyrobot)

19 Heinä 20192h 16min