“Our lives are important — at least to us — and as we see, so we learn… Our destiny is in the stars, so let’s go and search for it.”
- The (First) Doctor

It’s a new year and a new dawn. And all that jazz. I’m a slow reader, I wonder if it’s the eye-muscles being silly buggers. I’d been warned they’re weak, it’d be bloody annoying if my hands fall off.

Nevertheless. Life’s good. Quiet, but good. I was gifted a wonderful tea caddy and some tea for Christmas, it’s proving to be delicious. I’ve also bought an unholy amount of books for my new eReader, it’s somewhat consuming my life. I’ve also bought a big pile of Dark Eldar to get making and have made significant progress with my Harlequin Troupe, in which I aim high by depicting them coloured for The Dance Without End. See:

The Dance Without End - Partially Completed

To A Point

This is, of course, somewhat away from that which I wish to discuss. I’ve been reading a lot, but my progress is slow and my creativity is reduced to an absolute minimum. At work I’ve waxed lyrical on some topics, espousing some more outré views of mine, though even then they’re largely rehashed from previous thoughts over the years.

To put it lightly: I suspect I’m in a stagnant mire. But it’s comfortable too, which is deeply irritating! I feel this ‘break’ from any sort of creativity or intellectual challenge (except ‘solving’ the work rota for the remainder of the month in a few minutes by interrupting an otherwise interesting discussion) is, hopefully, akin to my ‘summer of heresy’ back in 2007: a precursor to some productive or highly active period.

It’s difficult to plan for, especially as planning might well undermine any hope of it occurring properly, but that’s worrying about impossible-to-know branches in possible outcomes. I should constrain myself. Speaking of which, it’s high-time I started reacquainting myself with stoic philosophy. I’ve long dreamt of renaming this blog “Sceptic, Cynic, Stoic”, but being insufficiently critical in my outlook, over-actively optimistic and cheerful and generally a little too flappable, I’m not entirely convinced with going for it just yet. One day, perhaps. Maybe at least as a blog.

The First Days of Apostasy

When I was a not-apostate, e.g. a creed-bothering Catholic, I was quite confident in the unstated rigours of my belief, my morality. I felt I was forthright, though to almost everyone else I fear I surely must’ve come across as an obstinate pillock. When I came to the summer of ’07, it became clear that I was abandoning my superstition and how I framed my worldview, not the actual, functional particulars of the ethical system I operated within. I knew they’d be open to change, but I promised myself I’d eventually formalise them and come up with my own…secular creed.

I never did.

I coasted for a while at the end of ’07. I say coasted, if you flip back in the blog to [url=http://xisor.wordpress.com/2010/01/07/spectre-of-the-past-part-iv-2007-july-december/]Spectre of the Past IV[/ur], you’ll see how much ‘coasting’ was done. It’s an odd place to have been, but it was also perhaps the happiest time of my life, certainly the longest-most-happy period. Quite remarkable. Leaping from event to event, encounter to encounter and new friendship to new friendship, it was a highly memorable adventure. I’m exceedingly happy that I documented it.

Nevertheless, it was followed by a magnificent plateau and an eventual decline, eventually followed by the long, dark night that’s been enduring since then. Of course, as Aaron Dembski-Bowden has Argel-Tal note in The First Heretic:

‘Of course it worries me. If we are on the precipice of enlightenment, why have I never felt so blind?’
‘Everything is darkest,’ Xaphen mused, ‘before the dawn.’
‘That, my brother, is an axiom that sounds immensely profound until you realise it’s a lie.’

Yes, the darkest of night was a long time ago, it’s surely alright to invite dawn now? Well, dawn’s coming regardless…if the analogy holds. Which, realistically, it has precisely no business in doing.

As much delight as has been entertained in the last four years, I can’t help but think that the future’s a little brighter, even if only on the horizon. Perhaps I’ll flee from the oncoming terminator. Almost certainly it’s a temptation, but I’d like to stand stoically before it. To do that, however, I’ll need to get reading. And thinking. And perhaps, just perhaps, writing.

None of that is singularly important, it seems. Today I’ve spent the day sad that it’s not yet payday. What I want, more’n anything, is a wee bit of freedom and confidence to simply not be stuck here when I’d rather be…over there.

It’d be lovely to jaunt to St Andrews, to head west or east, to take a day or three out to dash off to London or, hell, to briefly escape to Dundee or to Aberdeen.

I don’t need to travel widely to be happy, I’d rather just not be here. Not even ‘here’ in Stirling, but here, metaphorically as well as literally in the house on this couch. That might be due to my feet being cold and it being warmer upstairs.

To put it simply, I want to have a little freedom to mix things up. Though I have that freedom at the moment, I’m not exercising it. I’m…in the doldrums, as it were. Oh for it to be payday, then I could just go to the pub for a quiet pint, or go to grab a coffee. Or even just go out for a nonchalant wander unworried and without the hassle of ‘not having money’ hanging around.

I’ve piles of books to read, I’ve nowhere to read them in comfort that feels my own. My room’s a prison cell, long since filled with irritation and the reminder of restraint and constraint. My companions are loud when they eat and irritating when they speak or grumble, lacking particular insight or vigour in conversation.

I visited a bundle of friends and the weekend and, crucially, it reminded me of how far from it all it seems here. Going out to make friends here shouldn’t be an issue at all, yet here I am: Sat, bored and irritated, and doing bugger all.

My resolution? I’m going to retreat to my earliest forays into proper literary insight and criticism. Or rather, my first proper non-Star Warsy passion, led by the future-spectre of one Leonard Mead.

To enter out into that silence that was the
city at eight o'clock of a misty evening in November,
to put your feet upon that buckling concrete walk, to
step over grassy seams and make your way, hands in
pockets, through the silences, that was what Mr.
Leonard Mead most dearly loved to do.

From Ray Bradbury’s “The Pedestrian”. I guess I’ll just have to suck up the worry and vexation of this no-money business. Humbug!

I suggested that Andy Chamber’s Deus Ex Mechanicus fits neatly with the new ‘shards’ C’tan concept. Or rather, DEM informs the new shard concept in a pretty interesting way, almost as much as it would if it were republished verbatim as if it were written wholly for the new lore.

We, nowadays, have a ‘Shard’ of the Deceiver, rather than the Deceiver itself. LL notes he still thinks he runs the place. I suggest: The Deceiver’s ‘prolific’ magnificence that it claims could be backwards-interpreted as some sense of dispersed self-awareness; knowledge of what other, perhaps non-battlefield, shards are up to. And even if not, why make such claims? Because even as a minuscule shard having escaped some shackles, he’s still the Deceiver, that’s why. And strictly its true. Even if he’s a shard-slave, he can still think he *should* be the master, and thus lie about it.

More than that, the C’tan are still ‘laughing the laughter of thirsting gods’. They probably don’t care about anything else, so are happy enough to just lie and treat their present circumstances as an inconvenience. That could be explicitly contradicted in-Codex, but I’ll wait and see.

LL asked: “also, where does that leave the dark prophecies?”. He hoped the Ousider and Dragon get a mention.

I agree, certainly. LL chooses to think of it as the C’tan are choosing to let the Necron think they conquered them… but I disagree, think about it this way:

1. The Dyson Sphere – it’s a C’tan Quarry. They chip off bits for private use. They’ve managed to contain/pacify the Outsider. Not hard for an insane god. Well, monumentally difficult, but still; if anyone’s doing it, it’s Necrons!
2. The Shrouds assaulting Mars? Again, snapping up a ‘fragment’ of the Void Dragon. That’s the whole point of them going there. They can’t move the whole thing, but they can get ‘bits’. Once in, they have a fraction of the power of the Dragon, they don’t need their ships because they can now teleport back to another site of Dragon fragment.

LL goes on to bring up Mechanicum: The book of the dragon that is implied to be ‘made off with’ by Zouche – a C’tan shard. In human (err, “squat machinist”) cultist hands.

LL suggests, perhaps, the Mechanicus as a replacement ‘slave race’ for the Void Dragon? It’s intriguing. Or a ‘gaoler’ race.

Most Importantly

It also, thank Jebus, reinforces my overwhelming objection to “Mechanicum” that Graham McNeill himself poo-pooed : For Graham, the Emperor fought the actual dragon on actual earth. I always thought of it as a distant ‘sleeping tendril’ eking out in a Cthulhu-esque manner. Nowadays, it was a teeny fragment which had techno-magicked its way to Earth. The bulk of the thing was still on Mars, but this bit made it to Earth and fought the Emperor. The Emperor then is free to build the prison around the Dragon any damn well way he likes over the intervening millennia, perhaps with the ball-rolling beginning right there and then.

LL suggests Graham is wrong. He wrote the book, but it is out of his hands now. He has no say in our interpretation. So there. But LL would say that, nerr nerr.

And yet, hell, it can even preserve things like “C’tan domination” era 40k (how soon after beating the Old Ones do the Necrons wait before turning on the C’tan? When, perhaps before beating the Old Ones, did the C’tan turn on one another?) in the time not detailed in the new ‘dex. That mightn’t stand up to scrutiny of the book, of course, but still.

I don’t want to say “The new Necron lore is genius”, because it’s not, but it does seem to be good at patching over (solidly, in my esteem) most of the previous troubles I’ve had with the Necron lore.

I then berated LL for being (literally) prejudiced about the thing before he’d read it. They all had lemonade. The end.

Edit: Also, as Ashendant on Warseer notes – it also accommodates C’tan Phase Weapons: they’re actually tiny shards of C’tan.

I’ve often remarked, when pushed on it, that I enjoy the loneliness. The solitude is certainly something I’ve enjoyed. One of the best holidays of my life, the trip to Prague in 2006, is ‘the best’ in spite of the actual quality of the holiday. It highlighted the trouble of the relationship I was in at the time, even though I was arguably too blind (or too deluded) to see it. That blindness certainly accounts for its end; I’d like to consider myself a misanthrope of a sociopath, but I think the truth is somewhat less appealing than that.

I really enjoyed Prague!

No, the trip to Prague was excellent. I loved that city. Really, I can’t think of a place I really felt more…comfortable. Perhaps it’s something to do with being in tears on a stone cold bathroom floor that melds ones’ ‘soul’ to a place, I assume that’s what happens in Soul Binding, tears before the Golden Throne. But I digress. Prague was excellent. Soup in breads, drinking bars dry of absinthe, wonderful city steeped in history. It really felt like a wonderful place. It also highlighted that I don’t treat my friends very well. Or something like that, the happiest day was when I got frustrated with them all and resolved to wander off, alone. It was excellent, I found some marvellous hilltop gardens and had a good old, proper explore without having to account for why I’m going one way rather than the other.

But that’s the crux of the issue, deep down: accounting for my decisions. I can do it pretty well, but I despise having to do it. In retrospect, I perhaps wonder if that’s what ended the last relationship. Then again, I think I offer things in a valuable way, I’m honest and, on things which I think are valuable (like not just lying for the hell of it), I’m pretty damn decent and, if I say so myself, comport myself with quite decent integrity. But toeing to other peoples’ bizarre-or-sensible rules and expectations? Somehow it vexes me.

And, in that regard, I have in the past found myself with contempt for my friends. And I hate myself for that. In Prague the ‘trouble’ was we were a big group of friends who’re immensely indecisive but who hate having to hang about and who, frankly, couldn’t stand other people making bad decisions. It’s a bad setup, simply, regardless of how excellent people were (and they all still are) otherwise. Seriously, Prague shouldn’t have been a good holiday for me. Nevertheless, the city grappled me. To put it in the manner I did for the Bolthole’s RP, its spirit had infected me. Like some sort of magical wood near your house (if you lived in a Fantasy Universe), the spirit of the woods gets into your head and captures you, binding you to fondness for the place, no matter what you suffer near it.

B52: What could be better?

Prague was really awesome though. Fantastic place with fantastic food and fantastic drinks. Nice place to visit with fantastic friends too, but a bit of perspective and forethought on the group dynamic is advisable.

Side-effects may vary

The Last Circle

As you may gather, I valued the friends I went away with that year. I met some of them just a month ago. For a wedding, actually. One of them was the groom, the other the best man. It was an excellent, excellent day. Prague was the precursor to a distinctive ‘epoch’ in my life. I should elaborate on that.

For the five years (and three summers) that I lived in St Andrews, I didn’t stay in the same place twice (except for two of the summers). In first year it was St Regulus, second out on Scooniehill Road, third in Andrew Melville, fourth in Albany Park, that summer in Fife Park, fifth in Macintosh, that summer in Fife Park again and, surprisingly with a year’s gap in between, the summer after down on Largo Road. Before St Andrews I lived in Cowdenbeath. After St Andrews I spent a winter (their summer) in New Zealand and now at least a year in Stirling. It’s been seven years since starting University, thirteen since starting High School.

I think the last circle, if it can be put that way, is one which is composite, it’s composed of perhaps some of the most enduring friendships I’ve had in my life. Not all of the enduring friendships, certainly, but as collections go, it feels pretty special.

Seven years and still going strong

The wedding highlighted something that I haven’t really been completely conscious of but which, if I’d known before (and held it in mind [and relied on it]) would perhaps have saved myself more than a few thoroughly shambolic episodes. That is: in certain circles, especially this Last Circle, I find myself without account. Or rather, with people whom I’m wholly comfortable accounting myself to. They know me, they … forgive me. We have an understanding. It’s nice. Had I been more aware of that, I perhaps would’ve conducted myself with more sense and foresight when I cast myself adrift and into new seas in a circle wholly beyond that lot.

Well, I say wholly beyond, that’s not strictly true, but it was without that…comfort. Without the closeness of that group. It was decidedly trying. That would be fifth year, a rather long time ago now. But, without the cherished elements of the circles that came before fifth year, before Macintosh, I wouldn’t have developed a rather enjoyable and wholly different circle, a circle which, I suppose, has pretty significantly dominated my life since, one way or another.

A Circle for the Finale

It’s amusing to see it go that direction. If you’d known me when I was, say, fourteen, I think the only possible circle I could ever end up in would be a circle of the most debased geeks.

Debased? I think not! Upstanding gents if ever I met some.

But it still stands to some reason, I’ve always considered myself somewhat lucky when it comes to my friends. If you’d bear in mind what I said to begin with, it’d be nice to assume that I’m somehow sociopathic or just misanthropic: the trouble is, I’m not. I adore other people, especially the ones I quite like. The trouble is, I’m a bit of a dick to them when I’m not careful (or when I am careful and still manage to be a prat).

It’s been a common complaint levelled against me that I won’t admit I’m wrong and, more achingly, that I won’t say sorry. The trouble is, ultimately, I do. Or at least I feel I do. I feel I’m wrong and sorry all the time. (Woe is me.) It’s not a complaint in that regard, but it does highlight something pretty crucial: there’s a gulf between my perceptions and the perceptions of others. Shooting off phrases like ‘bias’ doesn’t help my case.

Other Circles

That’s enough worry grumbling. These many circles are some of the things I cherish most about my life (possibly on the same level as my fez, kimono, teapot and ‘Albanian’ cap). The problem, then, is maintaining them. I’m rubbish at that. It could constitute a demon in itself, though I’ll refrain from it. Looking backwards, and treating ‘the Last Circle’ as not a proper circle as much as simply a ‘current’ one, I find myself with a very wide selection of people I really, deeply consider friends (or, at worst, valued acquaintances [that's not fair, a very tiny few people in them I consider abominable blights, but that can be repaired, probably]).

This year I had the pleasure of making two whole circles of friends who’re almost entirely ‘from scratch’. My workmates and my coursemates, people I’d never known before yet whom I’ve grown very fond of. I think it’s safe to say that if I’ve met you, you can probably count yourself safely in at least one valued circle!

Before them, I had a small circle of workmates at the Vineleaf and Uni Hall. And before that…well, actually. Before that there were some…intersections. I met a lot of people in New Zealand, but I rarely met them for more than one ‘sequence of stuff happening’, which bothered me a lot at the time, but I had no capacity to ‘rectify’ it. I fear, perhaps, those people are welcome to join the circles, but are…forever separated. Maybe not forever, but I’ll be extremely surprised (and pleased) should they crop up again.

Actually, stretching from here right back to the very beginnings of first year at St Andrews I have another circle. Perhaps one of the fondest for me, if not the closest. DocSoc. They’re a swell bunch.

My DocSoc. They were an excellent bunch,!

But, like all things, they changed. Well, they grew. The situation changed and different people appeared. It was good though. Fantastic, you might say. Absolutely fantastic.

They Regenerated

But DocSoc extends, appropriately, rather far back in time. Further back, even, than before they existed. Appropriate indeed. The next pertinent circle is the sprawling set of people I worked with at DRA, an excellent and highly varied bunch, they added a lot to my life. Even Martin, probably.

DRA, of course, was contemporaneous with the Macintosh/Fifth Year Circle. And with them came the ‘end’ of the circle of Theoretical Physicists with whom I was very close, we all graduated that year and allegedly fled the nest. They did, I lingered in other circles.

Fourth year. I think fourth year and the prior circles deserve their own discussion. Looking back in the Bebo retrospective blogs I uploaded to here, you might find some insight, some tales ‘from the horse’s mouth’. I won’t discuss that just yet.

Reflecting on Circles

It is not without some sadness I consider that, for over a week now, the only circle with which I’ve had proper contact is work. When I think of myself ‘at my best’, both in terms of not-being-a-dick and actually being at my most competent, it was always when I was immersed in more than one circle almost continuously. Though I adore breaks and am a huge fan of a leisurely life, I cannot any more deny that, realistically, I’m hopeless without that exposure. I think, and I might be wrong, the variation is key, that it’s jumping from one situation to the next that helped most, keeping the plates spinning. Or the circles, perhaps.

It is a mistake, possibly, to then assert that ‘jumping from one situation to the next’ is basically a long way of saying ‘adventure’. Nevertheless, that’s precisely what I am doing. What is called for is an adventure. A nice, big adventure. Unfortunately, the only item on the schedule is work, tomorrow, starting 12pm. By my reckoning, it’s the 28th of September, 2011, the day a new adventure shall begin. (Whether reality approves or not.)

In that manner, I felt some discomfort. Not an immense amount, mainly because it’s been a rather pleasant summer, but a subtle discomfort, a nagging that things weren’t quite the way they should be. And it’s ruddy annoying, I’ll say, mainly because it seems there’s nothing to be done to rectify it except actually getting on with things. Life is certainly not in a position, for me, where if I’m not doing something I’m somehow ‘dead’. I’ve prided myself for a very long time on the maxim brought to my ken by way of Marcus Aurelias “To think is to live”, which seems pretty reasonable to me.

The trouble is that, though thinking is al well and good, it would seem that being able to sustain longer, focussed and organised periods of thoughts is something I’m yearning after and which, for the past … well, recent history, it’s something that’s generally been escaping me. I can think well enough to hop from A to B to C, but all the way to Z without touching down in the middle? No, I’ve not done that.

The thing is, I’ve not tried either. Which leads me to the simple case that to really have the perspective I’m mooching after, I need some metric by which to measure success.

Victory is Life

I’ve also been watching a fair amount of DS9. Not that I have any ambitions on serving the Dominion, it does strike me that for a while now, I’ve not actually been held to account for…anything. Not that I’ve done anything terrible, blimey no. Mainly that there’s no opportunity for…measurement, to check progress, to judge between victory or defeat in any given thing. In that respect one might well argue that I’ve just not done a damn thing, not seen anything through to the end.

I’m not sure I’d be able to argue against that, having no metric I also have no useful evidence. Just a big ol’ pile of anecdotes. And I’ll tell you a story: anecdotes should be worthless. They’re not, but they should be. See?

Case closed, your honour.

Demon the Third: The Creature of the Ashen Home

I think it’s fair to say that, beyond a shadow of a doubt, I have a very powerful (and very nagging) sense of shame. A shame in lack of achievement, of amorphous worthlessness. I threw away a perfectly fine degree in Theoretical Physics, I really under-exploited a trip to New Zealand and now I’m almost at the and of, possibly, having threw away a respectable degree in generally unrespectable IT. But that sense of unrespectability has joined me as companion; I don’t think all of this year (2011) I’ve said one good thing about IT, to anyone. I’ve belittled Stirling and the department because, ultimately, I’m fairly ashamed to have stuck at this.

Beyond that, I have a sense of shame in ‘never having fought for what I want’. This is mitigated readily because I never have a good damn clue about what I want, so the shame’s genuinely misplaced. But that’s beside the point, the sense of shame is a factor of a deeper thing: an arrogance that has no business in existing. If it did have business in existing, I’d be doing damn grand with my dissertation, not frittering it away, not inexplicably having lost months due to lack of concentration, to indescribably evaporating enthusiasm or ability.

The motivation to pass most of the miniscule hurdles that assail me should be readily available. I’m aware of the extent of my competencies and I’m well aware of the things that I can do, that I can learn. The trouble is…I don’t. Underachieving. Shame. The most overwhelming thing about the damn sentiment is this: it’s extremely underwhelming. It’s trivial, or at least it should be.

The demon follows in the most easy of moments, the moments in the prelude to prosperity. In moving towards any given goal, a person will feel a dawning sense of opportunity, a sense of change and ability that was not there before. The demon feasts on this, it saps the will and seizes upon the mere moments of doubt and uncertainty, of reflection. It whispers “this is not for you”, it colours the shades of the world around you. Worst of all, it speaks truths, it forces you recollect the greyness, the bitter tastes of desires long since lost, long since passed your grip yet often still visible. But for a different road, the demon suggests, you might have moved to that brighter goal.

The demon, squat behind your shoulder, will open its mouth at the edge of sight, as if to say something. It won’t, it’ll pause and clamp shut its maw, it’s suggestion or insight held forever separated from your assailed mind. A subtle reminder that it doesn’t even need to mention that which troubles you. As soon as the demon manifests the reminder it will not speak springs forth in your mind. It won’t say, it can’t say, but you can.

The demon conjures a darkened grey-scale image, it dulls the vibrancy of reality by distracting you from whatever opportunity awaits, by simply offering you that pause, that alluring moment to, in the guise of righteous, prudent introspection, allowing the opportunity for self-doubt. But the demon doesn’t speak, it also doesn’t last. The memory of its apparition, the imprint on your life is sufficient for it to depart, soon after, the lingering sense of guilt, of spiteful providence where before there had been ambition, a sense of achievement, a drive to seize opportunity.

The demon rarely shows its face; you always suspect it to have a faint disapproval, a familiar, trusted face, a visage dear to your heart. Yet it does not. You expect it to be a beast reminiscent of corrupted familiarity, of stolen warmth and wrecked enterprises.  Glancing at it, it is none of these. It is small and it is pitiable, it is worthless yet it typically blocks sight to those most useful devices, the mirrors and repositories of your true memories…always as a spectre standing between you and any sense of objectivity. Sometimes it simply isn’t there.

The Demon’s name is the Creature of the Ashen Home and it can be fought.

How to fight it?

Preparedness. If the Creature of the Ashen Home preys upon your doubts, your shame, your shame is nothing compared to that should it catch a glimpse of itself.

Recognition: shame is a terribly worthless emotion. Of course, humility, a sense of perspective are worthwhile, but shame itself, being upset, crippled by failure? No. Failure, if that is indeed the wellspring for shame, can be turned against it. Any moment of failure, moments of weakness can be turned around. They can be dissected, analysed and turned back on it. Failure is just one more step on the road to success, right?

(Well, no, of course it’s not, but that’s beside the point.)

Shame cripples ambition unless it spurs it. If shame can’t be dispelled, it can be harness in the short run, turned to service and used as a tool in your own design. It’s not easy, but even recognising and standing against shame is surely the first step in undoing its power; by doing something innately respectable and ‘standing up to it’.

In Other News

Last week I finished my Earl Grey loose leaf tea. For the first time in a very long time, I haven’t got any. Possibly since 2008.  It’s rather disturbing. And yet, it’s rather liberating too. Regimenting myself, dispelling what I’d say to be ‘luxury cases’ (such as my loose leaf Earl Grey) might do me some good, focussing more on the actual work of doing something and less on being distracted by (dearly beloved) distractions.

Who knows?

July and August have become most perplexing months for me. This time last year was both hell and heaven in almost equal measure. I really did have some excellent times…but, by Jove, those idiots plagued me and almost ruined everything. Possibly they did, possibly I let them. I’m not sure, I don’t think the knowledge is beyond discovery, but I think I’m at a point where I can say “I don’t want to know”, for now, because there are more interesting things to know.

There’s allegedly some pressing concerns about what’ll happen over the next couple of months, but, for myself, I’m more interesting in banishing the current demons without conjuring a whole host of new ones. In any case, salvation is the only option!

The biconal seminary hosted a collection of beings. Two sat roughly opposed on silent, motionless thrones of stone, pulsing eathly energies from within their hieroglyph and geometrically adorned exteriors. Around them clustered coteries of beings, members of younger races, their mentors, the scriveners and bio-technicians who commanded the flow of energies throughout the vessel, a great garden of flora and fungi covered the available surfaces. Several of the delegate-elders were near-catatonic in their contemplations of the birthing-clouds extending for dozens of light years from the ship in all directions, their mental exertions brushing lightly against the thoughts of others, mere eddies and whorls in the seminary’s discourse.

The upper of the two focal beings raised a pseudopod, one of many. It writhed and flickered, a flagrant gesticulation conveying an highly nuanced outrage.

+Master Qavarit, be calmed,+ willed the other, raising a paw in deference. +The will of the red hand is naught here, I will not see this creation overturned by talk of threats perforating the rim of the Way. +

The gangling ursid, a communary of the collective attending this nebula and nebulae like it across the entire depth of the Way, saw little value in creation of forthright tools, of precision purposes for the legacy it engendered. Purpose could be cultivated, encouraged to emerge. Such conceit where mere deliberation and forethought would suffice. It rested upon its earthstone throne as a cub on a cough, unhurried. A silver-domed helm twitched nearby, causing those other silvery skullcaps to flicker with etheric static. The ursid’s eyes glowed, a flicker of excitement crossing them, its own crumpled, even crude-looking, cap of rolled metal glistening in the pulse.

+Your objection is noted well,+ it continued, its tone conciliatory, apologetic. +Others who stride far amidst the Way whisper in their minds of a monumental discovery.+

The ursid’s voice was changing, growing deeper, growing higher in pitch. Its timbre extended. The voice of one.

+At long last through these untold aeons,+ it gestured with four paws around the seminary, encapsulating all with their curious path. The invigoration filled the room, the ursid’s back undulated as it turned to lay upon it. +We are no longer alone.+

The room pulsed, the ursid’s cap crimped and crunched, falling from its grinning head. Across the expanse faster than mere information could propagate, the ursid channelled the will of the one far beyond its own mortal body. Molecule after molecule in every direction, wrought closely by the living geometry writing itself across the starship’s hull, oscillated in precision. Artificial telepressure, an ethereal nudge. It was enough to begin the collapse, to speed the fusion at the protocores, to generate the stars needed for the demands of a galactic nursery. The ursid’s muzzle formed a snaggle-toothed smile. +Children,+ it enunciated in the language of reality. +You will not be alone.+

I think this one’s actually pretty easy. Sometimes, in life, you feel yourself. Most of the time, in fact. If you don’t, I understand that to be a spot of an issue. Nevertheless, this Kshawor, as it is difficult to really analyse, except for the things it does, is a fiesty beast. More than that: it’s a binary beast. It either has you, or it’s long gone and untenable.

How would I know it? Looking back, particularly in the times closest to now (what we normally call the recent past, I’m given to understand) I identify the sensation by simply having gaps. Long gaps, usually, (i.e. not mere minutes/hours so contrasts to any points where I lose my temper, for instance) wherein I do almost nothing at all. Not ‘cease existing’ and bored myself up, but fritter the time away. Do nothing, uncaringly ignore plans and schedules I’m supposed to be keeping, half-arsedly attempt/say-I’ve-completed the things I do actually undertake. I imagine I’m probably a bit annoying when I’m in ‘that place’, but perhaps fortunately I’m suitable inactive/lacklustre enough to fly within people’s tolerance levels, to mix a metaphor or three.

Unfortunately, sometimes (indeed: a lot of the time) I’m actually required in my interactions to have sensibly, involved and not-lacklustre interactions with the rest of the world. That stress, that jarring confrontation between ‘I’m on malefic autopilot’ and ‘give me a damn answer/decision’ seems to cause Kshawor to flee. Unfortunately the trauma of its departure leaves the reasserted-me in a fine and awful position. Not only am I often then arguing a case which is patently absurd, I’ve also left whoever/whatever is nearby with good reasons for me-directed ire and often absolutely no sensible justification or accounting for things I’d have done/not-done-but-should-have prior to the moment reasserted-me finds myself in.

As you can hopefully see, it’s realising that you’ve been unwittingly, unintentionally or otherwise acting like a nob for no reason whatsoever, i.e. without intent or deliberation or forethought or any sense of ‘because it seemed like a good idea’.

And that’s a kinda crucial point in distinguishing Kshawor; I normally subscribe wholly to this nugget of Ambassador G’kar’s wisdom from Babylon 5:

Narns, Humans, Centauri… we all do what we do for the same reason: because it seems like a good idea at the time

The case in point: under Kshawor, it’s patently clear that the things I do aren’t based on any notion of ‘a good idea’; the Kshawor-me might say that, but check: there’ll be no conviction. Or not the sort you’d expect. (And yes, this does leave room for false-positives in the ‘check for Kshawor’ that are variously big enough to drive an ant or a bus, or a bus full of ants through.)

The Second Demon: Kshawor, the Mind Claimer

The demon henceforth described is subtle, it shies from conspicuous inactivity and thrives in aversion from excellence, it aspires to some malefic median. This median is orbited by many: the malingerer, the misanthrope, the recluse, the apathetic. The Mind Claimer permits those it has a hold upon to revert to these states, to become lazy in their dreams, to ignore their desires and hopes, it forces them away from any aspirations and ambition. Conversely, however, it pushes a trend. A dynamic, interactive trend which oscillates in a most convincing, almost natural manner: the trend of the vacant, the automatic, that of those whose souls are temporarily absent, whose minds wander elsewhere.

In many respects, those whose mind is displaying its presence will find themselves as if absent on reappearance, returned to their own mind with their own clarity and perspective…but with no vigour, no insight and no calm afforded by their sojourn. It steals away what peace and respite can be gained from simple existence and replaces it with a yawning gulf of void and writhing banality.

The demon preys on being left alone, left to its own devices. But it is canny, it knows it cannot persist with no contact, with no attempt at puppetry or mimicking the behaviour of its host. But it is a spirit-less mockery, a sham to which it supplies only the most basic attentions before it proceeds to feast on the passing time wasted by its host. Unlike the first demon, it doesn’t act on the basis that its host will return, there is no illusion or pretext entertained in its mind. This one is wholly focussed on the advantage offered by the disappearance of its host’s spirit, no drive, no focus can be entertained. Half-hearted words, mockeries of the real desire spew forth from the host when questioned; truths barely deserving of the name, flimsy and without conviction, yet sufficient to slip past the ears of those without scrutiny, without mind or prescience to seek out the demon.

Given the opportunity, the demon will instigate its host to withdraw from its plans, cutting off the prospect of being discovered, fashioning the host into a well-bedded husk, an armoured suit of comforting material with which the demon can continue to feed, turning the host into their own tomb and this tomb-of-the-self into an eternal convalescence for the demon, a comfort with which no escape is needed, no interaction required: merely the peace of a quiet existence, an existence forever denied to its host as nothing and no-one might now shock the demon from its above.

In truth, the demon can be tackled directly and swiftly. Exposure and high-level interactions, interactions which demand the presence-of-mind from its host. To allow too low-level interactions is to allow for automation, to allow for automation is to allow it to win. A lifeless, barren, empty existence for the host. Prodding it, even in the smallest of uncomfortable degrees might be enough to panic the demon, to abandon its grip and try for a more pleasing, less effortful feast. Embedded as the demon is, pushing past the inherent foggy-mindedness of the host is required to endanger the beast within. But yet, as soon as it flees, the host returns…filled with uncertainty, panic, dismay and often rage. To those with a mind to save the host, they may be severely dispirited to discover that the newly reasserted host can be more antagonistic and problematic than was the demon.

Regardless, the host’s sanity and humours can be restored, their will reinstated and their capacity for fighting towards a greater victory once again at the forefront of their minds. With the demon fled, after a time, the host will be themselves once more.

The demon’s name is Kshawor and it can be fought…

How to fight it?

I can think of a few ways. Constant challenge, enlisting the help of others, bringing them onside, updating them with the problems. It’s been an horrific trouble in the Xisor-household recently, escalating to full-blown shitstorm on Easter Sunday itself. The overwhelming ‘it’s happened again’ feeling is precisely that, overwhelming. Like an addiction, I suppose, one might well relapse into the ‘embrace of the demon’, willingly shoving the fact of ‘knowing better’ out towards oblivion in an effort to shut yourself off from the problems that led you to inspect your surroundings. I know I do that, from time to time, it’s not unthinkable that other people do so too.

I imagine, though this is perhaps ‘going off the deepend’, that actually learning proper meditation might be a strong way to resolve this. A standard, regularly repeated ‘cleansing of the mind’ makes a mental-vacuum within which, when it’s boundaries are removed, the mad-rush of reality begins to assert itself in a flood of ideas and insight. The calm mind is capable of dealing with them. By pushing this demon out and allowing it entry again, perhaps one is actually able to recognise their weakness to  it, to pinpoint which activities are drawing its attention and how to conduct themselves suitably in response.

I dearly know I’d like that to be the case. Somehow, I can’t help but think it’d all be solved by simply asserting a proper sleeping pattern. Unfortunately, since that has been outwith my grasp for almost a decade now, I think I shall continue to pursue better options.

Who knows, one day I might just wake up and have found my sleeping pattern!

I’ll confess, I also do it in the name of comedy. It’s lazy, still, but it appeals to my sense of mischief. On a walk this evening, I had a few thoughts. In some of the fictional universes I read a lot (notably the Star Wars, Warhammer and 40k settings, I’m a geek y’see) there’s a prevalence of mental, psychic and faith powers, the manifest will of the mind.

I don’t much care for deities and strict metaphysical orders, mainly because I’m a bit of a materialist in that manner. If ain’t falsifiable or a reasonable extension, it’s up in the air and fair game for messing about with. This is a frustrating position to be confronted with, I imagine, but it’s also a wearying one to hold too. It requires a lot of thinking on my feet, a lot of risking arguments by anticipating points and  dodging contentious issues by thinking it out. Sometimes, many times, it is not successful and an argument will be had. As Dr Steve Novella has mentioned a couple of times on the SGU podcast, it’s an advancement in my style of arguing.

Many years back, I was characterised as argumentative. Or a know-it-all. Or always-has-to-be-right. I always took this to be a good thing, I was either pushing myself or testing myself, in hindsight I see the flaw. I apologise to those who’ve suffered my nonsense because of it. In light of that, though, I see arguments nowadays not about being right, but as a means to foremost understand the difference  between my opinion and someone else’s, but secondarily as a means to see how either, both or neither of the opinions and arguments need be modified to reach an agreeable position. Novella takes the view that it’s about honing one’s ability to craft a sensible argument and, practically, as a means to find out what you and the other person actually agree on. Different styles, but not exclusive, certainly.

To that end, I think I’m at the stage now where I feel capable, perhaps ‘enlightened’ in a manner that I can actually start to poke at the ritual of religion. Eventually I hope to actually be able to take up a nice, secular and grounded bout of meditation again. I tried it as a teenager, failed miserably and looked like a right silly nitwit in the most cringe-worthy situations, but nevertheless I’d like it to become a ‘woollen armour’ to soften any arguments or conflicts I get into (as well as other benefits). Principally, it’s something I could point to to say “look, I’m sorta spiritual, y’see!”. I’d prefer poetry or folksy music ability, but I’m an atrocious artist. I’ve had a violin for months now and I still can’t make it make a proper noise.

One day, it will. One day! *shakes fist*

The First Demon: Dys’tryk’xor

It’s a difficult one to pin down, but I think I can put it sensibly. “Dys’tryk’xor” will be the first component of the name. What of it? Well, I’m perpetually beset by laziness. My plans are grand, but my means to actually concentrate are shockingly minimal at the moment. I have tons of time and I should be using it. Yet, I feel I could maybe once upon a time have justified it by saying “I’m possessed”. I wake up in the morning and something else is in control, it shares my interests and enjoyments, but it seems to blacken over of force down the productive parts, where I might consider reading a chapter of a book, it forces or tricks (or persuades) me to go and do something lesser.

When I could go to the gym at 9am, I somehow find myself only rolling up at 3pm. When I could be searching and applying for jobs during the day, using the phone? Instead I find myself festooned with 11pm or later emails, weariness-addled or ill thought out ramblings which shouldn’t be published, let alone sent to prospective employers.

It is in the brightness of day, in the vitality of a morning rise or the industriousness of an afternoon dash that the demon herein discussed holds power. In darkness, in sleeplessness it is weakest. Here, far from the auspices of bustling civilisation and the bonds of fraternity that ebb in the wee hours does the demon hold no power, but it is also at this weakest point for the demon that the host is themselves least powerful, it drives them to nocturnalism. It pushes them away from society and suggests that only in solitude and quiet can salvation come. Like anything, this suggestion is a demon’s lie, for it is a truism that solitude and personal salvation, that time when the demon is weakest, is also when the host is typically weakest. Victory, fighting it on this battle, will be hollow, for the host will forever be separated and outcast from their peers.

It is a demon that saps strength, that undoes power and feeds on the forethought of grand plans. In many ways it encourages this passion, quietly sanctioning promises that cannot be kept and offering a veil of self-deception which convinces the host that they are beset by other factors, by time, by the weather, by their mood or perhaps even their own bodies. But the demon lies in its natural way for there are truths herein: the will is inextricably linked to the other aspects of existence, it cannot be so simply isolated and segregated. The demon preys upon the self-pity and self-loathing, feasting on the perpetual misery that accompanies plans of epic ambition though with rotten foundations and tools. It is a demon that rots and enslaves nearby thoughts, it weakens new thoughts and grows desperate as time goes on. Eventually, if the demon wins, the host dies  and the demon itself plunges to despair. It thrives when the host is barely capable of enacting half-plans and executing faltering stratagems which can never be fully realised yet never wholly abandoned.

It’s name is Dys’tryk’xor and it can be fought…

How to fight?

I don’t actually know, at the moment. Regimentation, I think, will be of use on this front. The assertion of a pattern over the anarchy of such troubles. Stray ideas, new notions and exciting tangents can be captured, bottled and kept safe. They can be studied, poked and perhaps even prodded, yet cultivated and maintained in a safe, well thought out and, crucially, feasible manner. With regimentation comes a crucial point: testing and verification. Like in experimentation, one needs a control group to really understand quite what effect is actually being perceived, regardless of existence or cause. With increased regimentation, with the assertion of routine plans and hopes and dreams can be measured and entertained (or rejected) on a basis which is not mere whimsy.

Though, of course, whimsy will indeed be a significant part of this ‘battle’.

In studying IT at Stirling I’ve learned a few things. One of them is that even competency isn’t enough to deliver focus. Even confidence and a decided flair/vigour doesn’t sustain indefinitely. To put it lightly, I could do with a bit of a challenge.

I’ve done well so far. My only non-first class grades are from modules I don’t care for, or from items which were delivered late. I shouldn’t be content with this. I’m sortof smiling on the inside, but not far beneath that I’m deeply dissatisfied with the run of things.

Too much time is being wasted, too much time is frittered away never to be recovered. This is both unacceptable and a hideously detrimental thing. I frittered away the better parts of two years by allowing myself to be crippled in this manner. But now I’ve undertaken something more wholesome, something which should be rewarding, I’ve allowed myself to teeter near the edge of squandering it. Again.

No more!

If you read this and you see me online doing something which is neither creative, nor informative please harass or encourage me into doing something grander.

I’ve written a fair bit lately, in a manner. Not what I’d wanted to have done (the Demiurg), but I’m bustling out in different directions. I had a vague hankering for some sort of faintly cyberpunk story, but it seems to have slipped form my grip in the last few weeks.

I’ve had some more success with photography, but it’s all horribly amateur and unrefined. I’ve tried a bit at reading outside the box and have largely been retreading old ground, another flaw.

If I were to pin two things to be cut out/improved, they would have to be:
- Waffle/blather
- Not double-checking things

This blog entry is a fine example. It’s blather and it hasn’t been double checked. This is not productive.

And yet…it’s been thoroughly productive. Failure and flaws are worst, I would wager, when they still yield results.

As a singular upside, I dug out my old Bugman’s tankards a month or so back. I’ve been having pints of tea ever since!

So, here, I shall unveil the last few points I really wish to outline before they get a proper, organised update in my book (not an actual book).

The Machination

This is important to me. It will be a Vehicle for the roleplaying game, riffing on the style of the big mining thing in Into The Storm, except it’ll be transcendent. And ‘for sale’. It’s *exactly* what the Demiurg sell to planets. A great big, awesome, clanking AI that can output more than most small cities in terms of industry and processing.

The Commerce Vessels

I need to get these pinned down so that RT players have something to use as their foils. The Demiurg are impressive, high-powered and high-functioning ships. But they are, for mysterious reasons, not optimised in performance. They’re supremely powerful and yet they are…somnambulent almost in their millenia-long turns around the galaxy (and beyond?). Getting a good idea of them down in RTis crucial, in my opinion, to fully fleshing out the look of the faction.

The Exterminators

Deathwatch. The Star Trawler’s buttress is a ship which I intend to be one of the first xenos vessels noted to have actually (if illegally) used the Halo-Jericho warpgate. A perfect opportunity is here for a Deathwatch team to track and study this starship. A tiny escort-transport of not insignificant power. What lies within its holds? What’s it doing?

Given that it’s for a Deathwatch focus, I want the Star Trawler to be an immensely potent Demiurg who, for whatever reason, is travelling on a tiny ship. I want its exterminators to be legion, I want it to be potent and cunning and also more than just a little dis-interested in the actions of the Astartes. Something to really give Deathwatch players the idea that something else is going on. A something else so serious that some creatures are simply ignoring them.

The Dawn of the Demiurg

Most of all, I want the DH adventure to come together. I have a few plot-hooks obviously seeded (including one for Dead Stars which I’m very happy with). I have an idea for an Ascension-level plot that could easily transcend all three games working towards unravelling Kao-Li. But, with the central adventure, I want to see the Demiurg placed solidly into the low-scale techno-cult. A vague overture of Ateanism and Logicians will permeate this sort of thing, with distinct parallels cast akin to the Tau Empire’s methodology in the Ultima Segmentum.

But, at its core, it’s about the impressive potency of a lone Demiurg. It isn’t a ravening monster, it isn’t an unholy threat transcending reality. It’s one clever and reasonably adept alien being capable of altering the local structure of the Imperium, and possibly more.

Personally? I’m quite excited.