Tales from Kalgachia - 42

The following is extracted from the minutes of the Extraordinary Grand Council of 211 AL. It has been edited lightly. Utterances by members of the Council are indicated with GC regardless of speaker, though some individuals may be identifiable from context. Two other individuals were present; their utterances are individually noted.

Celestine: I thank you all for the invitation, though had you not done so I would likely have come of my own accord. For the record, my full birth name is Celestine Vivienne Hypatia de Taniere-Gaudin. You know me, rather less long-windedly, as Celestine, my given name, or as the Broodmother, the title I took as an Incarnate of Shimmerspring.

I see that the Church has changed considerably since last I was exposed to it - to the point, I understand, that you have named me a... Salvator, was it? I admit, when I left behind my status as an Incarnate, I did not expect to be drawn into yet a different version of it. Very well, very well, I won't stop you. I suppose that I'm in good company, to be classed alongside Lord Toastypops, and the Empress, and the very Shrub. And Fleurette...

...excuse me.

...all right, that's a bit better. I appreciate your understanding. We have been fighting an incomprehensibly dangerous foe in hostile conditions, and I have been bearing heavy burdens all the while, but the tidings about my daughter may have been the weightiest yet.

GC: We entirely understand, of course.

Celestine: Lord Toastypops? It is truly a joy to see you in the flesh again - so to speak.

GC: The pleasure is mine. I feared for your people; you had gone beyond my sight.

GC: You say that you have been fighting?

Celestine: Well, of course, you are all in the dark about where we've been and what we've been doing. So is everyone else - we have not been very forthcoming about it, because it is something we take a great amount of relief in no longer having to contemplate. But there are people who need to know; and since you are, as I understand it, the effective successors of the Empress and the Minarborian government, I feel obliged to report the matter to you. I will leave it to you to decide how, or if, to disseminate it to your people, though you no doubt understand that what is known to twenty thousand people is, at best, only temporarily occluded.

Those of you familiar with our history in Shimmerspring know that there were a number of us who were Incarnates. I was one; so was my daughter Fleurette, as the Thoughtseeker, and her father, my partner, Emeric Foucher, the Webweaver. Also among them was the individual once known as the Geneshaper. I will call him the Nameless after this; all that he once was, he renounced or forfeited.

The Nameless was imprisoned after revolting against the other Incarnates, but was abandoned to his fate when those of us remaining in Shimmerspring departed for Minarboria. We assumed that, left in his cell, he would die. You may all know this much about him, because he was quite notorious in our history; the most brilliant of us at shaping organisms, whether by scientific means or arcane, but also the most driven, and the most dogmatic. It's one thing to believe in the power of biology to shape the world; it's quite something else to object to anything else doing the same.

We know now that the Nameless, before his confinement, had hidden within his own body the seeds of a new form of life. Left behind by us, he escaped with the aid of some few followers and moved around for a time, in the end making his way to Minarboria. He went down into the depths of Micras, coming as near to the plate boundary as his body could withstand; he died there, and with his death he unleashed the things he had carried with him, and which he'd made to survive in exactly the conditions that had killed him.

We called it the Crystal Death.

It was designed to change the world, in quite literal ways. It was alive, but it was life built on a different basis than any we know - mineral, rather than organic. It would live almost anywhere there is warmth and water, even within another living body, but was at its most active in the depths of the crust, along fault lines and plate boundaries, which allowed it to spread more quickly. Had it had time, it would have infected the entire crust of Micras, and it would have been able to bend the very geology of the world to its will.

GC: Will?

Celestine: I assure you, it's not a figure of speech. Like a coral, the Death was a colony organism; each unit by itself was of limited potential, but there were many of them, and they were greater than the sum of their parts, especially in intelligence. Each unit was a psionically active synapse in a great brain. I would not go so far as to say it had vast understanding, but certainly it had memory and it had feelings, some of each of which its creator had somehow given to it. It knew of the works of humanity, and hated them; and it likewise knew us, and hated us as well. The former it intended to destroy through earthquake and volcano and outgassing into the atmosphere, but that would take decades, if not centuries. But the Deep Singers… well. The Nameless, you see, still saw us as his people. He did not want to destroy us. He merely wanted us to be what he intended that we should be. So the Crystal Death, instead, sought to change us. And the first step, of course, was to bring us to it.

And that, councillors, is what happened to us. How the Nameless discovered how to provide his creation with psionic potential, we may never know - it was knowledge he never shared with us before his revolt, and we did not learn how to do it until well after we arrived in Minarboria, with inconsistent results. But it sent out a call attuned to our minds and bodies, an urge to burrow into the ground and come closer to it.

GC: There were some reports that the Singers had gone into the earth and collapsed the tunnels behind them.

Celestine: So we did. ...Great Garden, I still remember it… a terrible longing, a craving worthy of a drug addict. Burrow. Dig. Go down. Seek dark and warmth and heat. And so we did. In the last days of Minarboria, few were in any position to follow us.

Lady Protector Nal: It was the same with me. I just didn't get that far.

Celestine: It's just as well. Many of us - most of us - went to our deaths there. Some were so enthralled that they would not stop for food or rest, and died along the way, but they were the lucky ones. Those who made it to the infected strata were themselves infected - crystal deposits formed in the brain, inducting the victim into the gestalt consciousness, and then throughout the body, gradually replacing the skeleton, lodging in the muscles, and protruding through the skin like spines. It was fata... eventually... but in the meantime, the victim, and any capabilities at his or her disposal, became an agent of the Death.

What saved us from extinction, in the end, were our own psions, precious few though they were. Antil Xen and her fellows. They learned to shield themselves - and others - from the Death's call before it was too late. Those of us that remained free did so because of their protection, and we learned what our foe was and what it could do.

GC: And yet you stayed? No one attempted to return to the surface?

Celestine: By that point, it wasn't safe to. But in any event, a victorious Crystal Death would have meant that there was no safe place upon Micras at all - and fleeing it would have given it the chance to spread. And so, even as the Crystal Death bred corrupted Singers to carry on as replacement vessels, we built new settlements and hardened ourselves and threw ourselves into the fight. It was a war of attrition against a foe which, if we were not careful, could turn our own against us - while we, for our part, could not cure those who were infected. As it was, many of those who had already succumbed were biomancers, and could disable or kill those who could not be controlled.

From how long it took, you can deduce for yourselves how difficult that was. Even after we at last purged the infected, it was years more before our psions could locate all the remnants of the Death so that we could destroy them as well. Many of us - most of us - were dead before it was done.

GC: And yet, for the Garden, you prevailed.

Celestine: For the Garden, and through the Garden, we did indeed, though the scars will linger for a long time.

At last, a few samples of the Death were in containment, and all the rest destroyed - we were of sure of that as we could be. At last, we could look to the future. But it is, perhaps, the nature of those shaping the future that everyone has their own vision of it. Not all of us could agree. By that time, many had been born there in the deep crust, their biology adapted to it. However difficult it had been, it was home. Some had no desire to leave it. But we who came from above… well, we had left behind our lives. We wanted to see if there was anything left. And we missed things - cool breezes, forests, rivers. So we returned, with those of the young that wanted to leave the reminders of the war behind.

And so, here we are. However pleased you are to see us, know that it is - at the very least - matched by our joy at seeing that at least something of what we left behind survived and has thrived.

GC: What about those who remained? What will they do?

Celestine: Make new lives, I suppose. With the Death neutralized, the depths will be a more peaceful place now. We will stay in touch with them, as best as we can. They're family, after all. But visitations will be rare, I think. As adaptable as we are, moving from that realm to this one, and vice versa, is a difficult matter. You might very well have not recognized us if we'd come up looking like we did down there, not that we would have survived long if we had.

GC: You mentioned samples of the Death in containment.

Celestine: Ah. Well, yes.

GC: Which were neutralized. But not destroyed?

Celestine: ...understand… we, as a people, are reluctant, even in extremity, to cause extinction. Every thing that lives is a thing that never quite was before and never quite will be again, and the Crystal Death lived; moreover, for all the malice that had gone into it, it was a work of genius. While there was some talk of destroying the remaining samples, it was mostly felt that, having been contained, they should be studied.

And, I confess, there is some hope of… redemption. One of the great dreams of the Singers, from our earliest days, has been that of a living world - not merely a layer of life upon a rock, but a living world, the spark of animacy and purpose brought to inanimate matter. If the Crystal Death, or something like it - an organism tailor-made to integrate the lithosphere into not merely the biosphere, but into the community of intelligent life itself! - could be turned to a benevolent path, what wonders might it achieve?

I think you may understand our decision, even if you don't agree. At any rate, it's out of your hands, and for that matter out of ours; all the samples remained below, and those below will decide how to treat them. We must trust in them and be content that the direct threat is behind us. That must be enough.

GC: And as for the Singers who have returned?

Celestine: I don't doubt that the question begs an answer to what our presence means for you, as well as inquiring after our welfare. Rest assured, the Singers are not much more enlightened than you are. There will be some… reaccustomization to manage, I'm sure, and we will need time to find our footing in Lepidopterum again, but compared to what we've been through already, it will be a respite. And, after everything, we truly need a respite, and time to heal.

In the longer term, we understand that many of our capabilities, including in biomancy, have not as yet been recreated in either Kalgachia or Lepidopterum (publicly; you may know better than I what the Troglodyti have accomplished in private), and reintroducing them will no doubt require careful management by all parties, lest our return prove more disruptive to society than strictly necessary.

Lady Protector Nal: One possibility that we've been discussing involves the gradual genetic reintegration of the Deep Singers with the Nezeni in Lepidopterum - a kind of biological conversion, I suppose you might call it, a rough equivalent of the ongoing integration of ethnicities in Kalgachia. But, of course, there are Nezeni on both sides of our mutual border, so we're aware that the public introduction of the reintegration in Lepidopterum might… complicate matters for you. Your Nezeni might get rather, er, thoughtful. So obviously we would not be comfortable proceeding with the project without thorough coordination.

Celestine: Therefore, in the short term - while the larger issues are being discussed and worked out - we will seek to regain a measure of peace. And on that note, I feel I must use this opportunity to make a personal request. I have not yet formed an opinion about the current Church and its theology, but I've discovered that the location of my new residence outside Lepidopterum has, despite the efforts of both myself and the Lady Protector here, become public knowledge, and is attracting crowds of what I can only describe as pilgrims. I'm flattered, of course; a girl can't help but get a warm glow from having admirers. But a siege is nonetheless a siege, councillors, even if the besiegers have the best of intentions, and while I don't want to give the impression of being upset, I would very much prefer not to be mobbed immediately on appearing in public. So if you could, perhaps, ask your Credents to encourage their parishioners to be more discreet in their adoration, it would be extremely helpful.

GC: Of course. That should've been a consideration from the start.

GC: We'll ensure that you aren't disturbed.

Celestine: Mind you, I don't intend to become a hermit. If it would help satisfy people, I'd even be willing to put in the occasional official appearance. I don't know if you still celebrate Broodmother's Day around here, but it's not that far off, so perhaps that could be an appropriate occasion.

In the meantime... you may have heard that we dug out my Emeric's containment vessel intact from the lower strata of Lepidopterum. Once things are a little more settled, we intend to try to revive him. Provided we're successful, any public engagements are going to have to be scheduled around more, er, domestic needs. I trust you understand.

GC: Certainly.

GC: Returning briefly to the subject of future changes… we understand that it was once possible for Deep Singers to bring healing with biomancy. Obviously, the implications for health and lifespan…

Celestine: Ah, yes. Well, of course, there is much that we could do eventually, though time and resources will be required to organize any of it. There are only so many medically-trained biomancers left, of course, for starters - using biomancy on anything more than light surface wounds is a specialized skill, as the Lady Protector could tell you-

Lady Protector Nal: That's why I was mostly a surgeon. There were some things I could do reliably, but misaligned alterations can result in some odd results; I'd rather repair a torn ligament surgically than accidentally turn it to bone.

Celestine: Indeed. I'm told that there's an ongoing effort to establish a medically-focused institution of learning in Lepidopterum, and that, perhaps, may be an opportunity to integrate the use of biomancy, and other advanced techniques, into the medical professions. While it is true that Singers have a more widespread talent for these things than others, certainly it's a skill that with time and training can be learned by those of most backgrounds; and no doubt the incorporation of Nezeni ancestry into the Kalgachi population would lend your people an extra advantage.

It's worth noting that the benefits of widespread health care on such a level would take some time to be fully realized, as it becomes more effective for an individual the earlier in life it starts and the longer it's maintained. Someone born after it's available, and who has access to it their entire life?... well, they might live as long as any Deep Singer. We're known for our long lives, but that has rather more to do with how we maintain ourselves than how we designed ourselves. But - having discussed this with the Lady Protector in relation to the health of a family member - I must caution you to temper any immediate expectations, particularly among those who might not be aware of our limitations. Aside from the logistics of building a healthcare system of the scale that would be needed to reach large sectors of the population at all, what can be done for those already alive depends very much on their age and the specifics of their current state of health.

But in the long run, there is considerable good that can be done - in other biologically-adjacent fields as well as medicine - and we would be eager to help make such a future a reality. I feel it would be just as well to begin planning for it now.