Weakened by the Battle of Pir-Pahal, Cû’jara Cinmoi was hard pressed to recover his empire. A Second Watch was put upon the Holoinas, but no attempt was made to breach the gold-grooved faces of the Ark. After years of hard campaigning, Cû’jara Cinmoi finally brought the Ishroi of Cil-Aujas to heel, but King Sin’niroiha and the Ishroi of Nihrimsul continued to resist him. The Isûphiryas chronicles dozens of bloody yet indecisive confrontations between the two Kings: the Battle of Ciphara, the Battle of Hilcyri, the Siege of Asargoi. Proud beyond reason, Cû’jara Cinmoi refused to relent, and put to death every embassy Sin’niroiha sent to him. Only when Sin’niroiha became King of Ishoriöl through marriage did the High King of Siöl concede. “A King of Three Mansions,” he is said to have declared, “may be Brother to a King of Two.”
The Isûphiryas mentions the Inchoroi only once during this time. Unwilling to assign desperately needed Ishroi to the Second Watch, Cû’jara Cinmoi had charged Oirinas and Oirûnas, the sole survivors of the First Watch, with recruiting Men for the duty. Among these Halaroi was a “criminal” named Sirwitta. Apparently Sirwitta had seduced the wife of a high-ranking Ishroi and conceived by her a daughter named Cimoira. The Judges of the Ishroi were perplexed: such a thing had never happened before. The truth of Cimoira was suppressed, and despite her mannish blood she was accepted as Cûnuroi. Sirwitta himself was banished to the Second Watch.
Somehow (the Isûphiryas does not go into detail) Sirwitta managed to enter the Incû-Holoinas. A month passed, and all thought him lost. Then he reappeared, deranged, screeching claims so alarming that Oirinas and Oirûnas brought him directly to Cû’jara Cinmoi. What was said between Sirwitta and the High King of Siöl is not recorded. The chroniclers say only that Cû’jara Cinmoi, after hearing Sirwitta speak, ordered him put to death. A later entry, however, describes Sirwitta as “tongueless and imprisoned.” It appears the High King, for some unknown reason, had rescinded his warrant.
Many years of peace followed. From their fortresses in the Ring Mountains, the Ishroi of Siöl guarded the Ark. Whether the Inchoroi lived still or had perished, no one knew. Cû’jara Cinmoi grew old, for the Nonmen of those days were still mortal. His eyesight dimmed, and his once-mighty limbs began to fail him. Death whispered to him.
Then Nin’janjin returned. Invoking the ancient codes, he appeared before Cû’jara Cinmoi begging Mercy and Penance. When the High King of Siöl bid Nin’janjin come near so he might see him, he was astonished to discover his old adversary had not aged. Then Nin’janjin revealed his true reason for coming to Siöl. The Inchoroi, he said, were too terrified of Cû’jara Cinmoi’s might to leave their Ark, so they dwelt in confinement and misery. They had sent him, he claimed, to sue for peace. They wished to know what tribute might temper the High King’s fury.
To which Cû’jara Cinmoi replied: “I would be young of heart, face, and limb. I would banish Death from the halls of my people.”
The Second Watch was disbanded and the Inchoroi moved freely among the Cûnuroi of Siöl, becoming their physicians. They ministered to all, dispensing the remedies that would at once make the Nonmen immortal and doom them. Soon all the Cûnuroi of Eärwa, even those who had initially questioned Cû’jara Cinmoi’s wisdom, had succumbed to the Inchoroi and their nostrums.
According to the Isûphiryas, the first victim of the Womb-Plague was Hanalinqû, Cû’jara Cinmoi’s legendary wife. The chronicler actually praises the diligence and skill of the High King’s Inchoroi physicians. But as the Womb-Plague killed more and more Cûnuroi women, this praise becomes condemnation. Soon all the women of the Cûnuroi, wives and maidens both, were dying. The Inchoroi fled the Mansions, returning to their ruined vessel.
Ishroi from across Eärwa answered Cû’jara Cinmoi’s call to war, even though many held the High King responsible for the deaths of their beloved. Grieved almost to madness, the High King led them through the Ring Mountains and arrayed them across the Inniür-Shigogli, the “Black Furnace Plain.” Then he laid Hanalinqû’s corpse before the unholy Ark and demanded the Inchoroi answer his fury.
But the Inchoroi had not been idle over the long years since the Battle of Pir Pahal. They had delved deep into the earth, beneath the Inniür-Shigogli and out into the Ring Mountains. Within these galleries they had massed hordes of twisted creatures unlike any the Cûnuroi had ever seen: Sranc, Bashrags, and mighty Dragons. The Ishroi of the Nine High Mansions of Eärwa, who had come to destroy the diminished survivors of Pir Pahal, found themselves beset on all sides.
The Sranc withered before the sinew and sorcery of the Ishroi, but their numbers seemed inexhaustible. The Bashrags and the Dragons exacted a horrifying toll. More terrible still were those few Inchoroi who ventured out into battle, hanging above the tumult, sweeping the earth with their weapons of light, apparently unaffected by the sorceries of the Ishroi. After the disaster of Pir Pahal, the Inchoroi had seduced the practitioners of the Aporos, who had been forbidden from pursuing their art. Poisoned by knowledge, they devised the first of the Chorae to render their masters immune to Cûnuroi magic.
But all the heroes of Eärwa stood upon the Black Furnace Plain. With his bare hands, Ciögli the Mountain, the strongest of the Ishroi, broke the neck of Wutteät the Black, the Father of Dragons. Oirinas and Oirûnas fought side by side, working great carnage among the Sranc and Bashrag. Ingalira, the hero of Siöl, strangled Vshikcrû, mighty among the Inchoroi, and cast his burning body into the Sranc.
The mighty closed with the mighty, and innumerable battles were fought. But no matter how hard the Inchoroi pressed, the Cûnuroi would yield no ground. Their fury was that of those who have lost wives and daughters.
Then Nin’janjin struck down Cû’jara Cinmoi.
The Copper Tree of Siöl fell into pitching masses of Sranc, and the Cûnuroi were dismayed. Sin’niroiha, the High King of Nihrimsul and Ishoriöl, fought his way to Cû’jara Cinmoi’s position, but found only his headless body. Then the hero Gin’gûrima fell, gored by a Dragon. And after him Ingalira, who had been the first to lay eyes upon the Inchoroi. Then Oirinas, his body sundered by an Inchoroi spear of light.
Realizing their plight, Sin’niroiha rallied his people and began fighting his way into the Ring Mountains. A greater part of the surviving Cûnuroi followed him. Once clear of their foe, the glorious Ishroi of Eärwa fled, gripped by a mad fear. Either too weakened or suspecting a trap, the Inchoroi did not pursue.
For five hundred years the Cûnuroi and the Inchoroi waged a war of extermination, the Cûnoroi to avenge their murdered wives and the eventual death of their race, and the Inchoroi for reasons they alone could fathom. No longer did the Cûnuroi speak of the Incû-Holoinas, the Ark-of-the-Skies. Instead they spoke of Min-Uroikas, “the Pit of Obscenities”—what would later be called Golgotterath by Men. For centuries it seemed the abominations had the upper hand, and the poets of the Isûphiryas record defeat after defeat. But slowly, as the Inchoroi exhausted their fell weapons and relied more and more on their vile slaves, the Cûnuroi and their Halaroi servants gained the advantage. Then at long last the surviving Ishroi of Eärwa trapped the last of their diminished foe within the Incû-Holoinas. For twenty years they warred through the Ark’s labyrinthine halls, finally hunting the last of the Inchoroi into the deep places of the earth. Unable to destroy the vessel, Nil’giccas instructed the remaining Quya to raise a powerful glamour about the hated place. He and the surviving kings of the Nine Mansions forbade their peoples from mentioning the Inchoroi or their nightmarish legacy. The last Cûnuroi of Eärwa withdrew to their Mansions to await their inevitable doom.
Cûnuroi—See Nonmen.
Cûnwerishau (c. 290—c. 390)—First God-King of Trysë, famed for conquering all the cities of the Aumris as well as forging the first treaty between Men and Nonmen.
“Cut from them their tongues …”—The famous phrase from The Chronicle of the Tusk condemning sorcery and sorcerers.
Cynnea, Braelwan (4059—4111)—Man-of-the-Tusk, Galeoth Earl of A
gmundr, claimed by disease at Caraskand.
D
Dagliash—“Shieldhold” (Ûmeri). The ancient Aörsic fortress overlooking the River Sursa and the Plains of Agongorea, raised in 1601 by Nanor-Mikhus, High-King of Aörsi, upon the ruins of Viri. It changed hands several times in the wars preceding the Apocalypse. During the Great Ordeal, it would be the site of the Scalding.
Dag’mersor—“Westhold” (Ûmeri). Ancient Kûniüric fortress raised to protect roads joining Anûnuarcû to Ûmer proper.
Daimos—Also known as noömancy. The sorcery of summoning and enslaving agencies from the Outside. Daimotic Cants involve exploitation of the extensionless nature of the soul, the fact that all souls occupy the identical space, one orthogonal to the space of Bios, yet still belonging to the space of speech. For both political and pragmatic reasons, many Schools forbid their utterance, condemning the Daimos as irresponsible, if not reprehensible. The Tusk condemns the practice as wicked, and lists three different ways to execute its practioners. Some esoteric scholars claim that Daimotic sorcerers condemn themselves to eternal torment at the hands of their erstwhile slaves when they die. But then all sorcerers arrive where monsters have come before them.
Dakyas—A semi-mountainous district of Nilnamesh.
Dameöri Wilderness—A vast tract of forested, Sranc-infested wilderness extending from the Tydonni frontier in the south and running northeast of the Osthwai Mountains to the Sea of Cerish.
Dark Hunter, the—A common epithet for Husyelt, the God of the Hunt.
“[the] darkness which comes before”—A phrase used by the Dûnyain to refer to the congenital blindness of individuals to the worldly causes that drive them, both historical and appetitive. See Dûnyain.
Daskas, House—One of the Houses of the Congregate.
Day Lantern—See Diurnal.
Dayrut—A small fortress in the Gedean interior, built by the Nansur after the fall of Shigek to the Fanim in 3933.
Dead-God, the—See Lokung.
Decapitants—Name given to the two severed demon heads slung from the waist of Anasûrimbor Kellhus I. In 4121, following the installation of Nurbanu Soter as King-Regent of High Ainon, the Holy Aspect-Emperor famously stayed in Kiz as a guest of Heramari Iyokus, the famed Blind Necromancer, learning the most forbidden of the forbidden arts, the Daimos. He reappeared four months later with the heads of two demons bound to his waist by their hair. Whenever he was asked about them, he would demure, often, as Hilu Akamis, a one-time Mandate Court Advisor, reports in his journals, ignoring the question altogether.
Akamis recounts a tale told him by a Shigeki drover, Pim, pressed into Imperial service working the Aspect-Emperor’s baggage train. According to Akamis, Pim told of a trip across Gedea that took the Aspect-Emperor and his travel court across the legendary Plains of Mengedda. In the deep of the night, near the end of his watch, Pim found Anasûrimbor Kellhus alone and raving on the haunted plain, alternately removing his head and replacing it with one of the Decapitants. Akamis is rightly dismissive of the man’s lurid account, though the Schoolman readily admits being frightened by his sincerity. “He had the look of a Sempic simpleton to him, one who had left his brain with the fish to dry.”
As might be imagined, the Decapitants were a matter of some delicacy among Zaudunyani writers, since focusing upon them exclusively (as the Fanim and Inrithi Orthodox opponents of the Kellian regime certainly did) easily led to questions regarding what kind of man would bear such horrific trophies. So even though regularly extolled as “a verifying contradiction” (a phrase attributed to Werjau) by the Thousand Temples, Zaudunyani were as a rule loathe to discuss them.
Defence of the Arcane Arts, A—The famed sorcerous apologia of Zarathinius, which is as widely cited by philosophers as by sorcerers because of its pithy critiques not only of the Inrithi prohibition of sorcery but of Inrithism itself. The work has long been banned by the Thousand Temples.
Demua Mountains—An extensive range located in northwestern Eärwa, forming the frontier between Injor-Niyas and what was once Kûniüri.
denotaries—In Gnostic sorcery, the “primer” Cants given to students to practice “dividing their voice,” which is to say, saying and thinking two separate things.
Derived—See Sranc.
Detnammi, Hirul (4081—4111)—Man-of-the-Tusk, Palatine of the Ainoni province of Eshkalas, slain at Subis under dishonourable circumstances.
Dialogues of Inceruti, The—One of the most famous “missing works” of Far Antiquity, frequently referenced by Ajencis.
Dinchases (4074—4111)—Man-of-the-Tusk, Captain of Attrempus and lifelong comrade-in-arms to Krijates Xinemus, slain at Iothiah. Also known as “Bloody Dinch.”
Displacement—The immense crack resulting from the Arkfall that cleaves Ishterebinth.
Dispossessed Sons of Siol—Epithet given to the Siolan survivors who made their home in Ishterebinth after the destruction of their Mansion following the Breaking of the Gates.
Diurnal—One of the Sublime Contrivances of the Artisan, Emilidis, the Diurnal was a sorcerous lantern reputed to transform night into day (and so was also called the Day Lantern), thus denying the advantage darkness conferred on their foes during the Cûno-Inchoroi Wars.
“Doff your sandals and shod the earth …”—Common saying meant to remind listeners not to project their failings onto others.
Dolour—The complex of afflictions that eventually overcome all Nonmen, who are then called Erratic (as opposed to Intact). The Dolour is often called the Second Curse of the Inoculation (the first being, of course, the Wombplague) insofar as it follows as a direct consequence of the immortality the Nonmen gained via the Inoculation. The problem is that souls simply cannot remember indefinitely, there is a limit, necessitating that something be forgotten to remember as a certain point. What renders this problem tragic is the way memories of trauma and shame find themselves chiseled, as opposed to simply inked, into the Nonman soul. This mean that the longer a Nonman lives, the more their soul becomes a repository of anguish and pain. The Dolour proper is thought to happen when only painful experiences remain, robbing the sufferer of the ability to remember anything beyond several heartbeats (lest that memory be tragic). This has the effect of rendering them incompetent, Erratic, though in surprisingly diverse set of ways. Far and away the bulk of the Erratic become progressively more loathe to depart places familiar (or once familiar). The Nonman madness for graven image and statuary is often attributed to the Dolour, the hope that externalizing memory would preserve them. But a substantial proportion have been known to “forget home,” to travel far and wide seeking out the kinds of tragic encounters that will reactivate their memory, render them nearly whole, if for only a brief span. These are the souls that populate Mannish history, mad and tragic figures such Sujara’nin, Incariol, Cinial’jin, and many others. Many think these Wayward Erratics are in sooth suicides, souls that have found a means around the inborn inability to take their own lives.
The final stage of the Dolour is called the Gloom, the point where anguish has been worn into animal misery by the endless years. Sufferers lose the ability to speak or care about anything but the most instinctive necessities. As far as anyone knows, a Nonman may live in this state indefinitely.
Amongst human scholars there has been a long tradition of theorizing the Dolour, interrogating the metaphysical implications of the condition. How could a soul, which has no extension, become full? What would it be like to be such a soul? What does it say about the dependency of the present on the past? Is the now but, as Ajencis asks, “an excretion of the past”? These comprise a small fraction of the impious questions Men have pursued under the auspices of the Dolour.
Domyot—(Sheyic version of “Torumyan”) Also known as the Black Iron City. The administrative capital of Zeüm, famed for the cruelty of its rulers and for its iron-skirted walls. For most in the Three Seas, Domyot is as much a place of legend as Golgotterath.
Dragons—See Wracu.
Dreams, the—The nightmares experienced by Mandate Schoolmen of the Apocalypse as witnessed through Seswatha’s eyes.
Dunjoksha (4055— )—The Sapatishah-Governor of Holy Amoteu.
Dûnyain—A severe monastic sect that has repudiated history and animal appetite in the name of finding enlightenment through the control of all desire and all circumstance. Though the origins of the Dûnyain are obscure (many think them the descendants of the ecstatic sects that arose across the Ancient North in the days preceding the Apocalypse), their belief system is utterly unique, leading some to conclude their original inspiration had to be philosophical rather than religious in any traditional sense.
Much of Dûnyain belief follows from their interpretation of what they consider their founding principles. The Empirical Priority Principle (sometimes referred to as the Principle of Before and After) asserts that within the circle of the world, what comes before determines what comes after without exception. The Rational Priority Principle asserts that Logos, or Reason, lies outside the circle of the world (though only in a formal and not an ontological sense). The Epistemological Principle asserts that knowing what comes before (via the Logos) yields “control” of what comes after.
Given the Priority Principle, it follows that thought, which falls within the circuit of the before and after, is also determined by what comes before. The Dûnyain therefore believe the will to be illusory, an artifact of the soul’s inability to perceive what comes before it. The soul, in the Dûnyain worldview, is part of the world, and therefore as much driven by prior events as anything else. (This stands in stark contrast to the dominant stream of Three Seas and Ancient North thought, where the soul is taken to be, in Ajencis’s words, “that which precedes everything.”)
In other words, Men do not possess “self-moving souls.” Far from a given, such a soul is an accomplishment for the Dûnyain. All souls, they claim, possess conatus, the natural striving to be self-moving, to escape the circle of before and after. They naturally seek to know the world about them and so climb out of the circle. But a host of factors make outright escape impossible. The soul men are born with is too obtuse and clouded by animal passions to be anything other than a slave of what comes before. The whole point of the Dûnyain ethos is to overcome these limitations and so become a self-moving soul—to attain what they call the Absolute, or the Unconditioned Soul.