No Villains

There are no villains. Not in the waking world. Not in the Bonelands.

Villains are creatures of story. Of fiction. Villains live in the Shadowlands. They cannot survive outside the world of story. Like all creatures of story of myth of Legend they are born with each "Once Upon a Time" and they die with every "and they lived happily ever after".

Belief and villains is necessary. It helps us hide every day from the nature of the people who do monstrous things, who commit unspeakable acts, who cross boundaries we considered unreachable. By giving them their own species, their own label, their own category, we are able to hide from the fact that they are us. They are just other human beings acting as best they can and what they perceive to be their own interests.

In stories there are heroes and there are villains. But there are no stories in the bone lands. And everyone is hero or villain of Their Own Story.

So if you brand another a villain, know that in some other story told by someone else, you were almost certainly the villain. And you will probably never be aware of the sin that you committed, the person you transgressed, the line you crossed.

A First Look at the Dead Gods of the Mirrored CIty

When a god accumulates enough power from offerings and worship they may build themselves a seat of power, a sacred throne which both amplifies their power and serves as a vessel for that power. When the Locust King began to build the capital of his Hungry Empire, he sent his forces to hunt down appropriate gods and steal their thrones for the Hungry Empire. The City of Glass is built around these thrones, now bonded to the wards of the city. The gods from whom the thrones were stolen are now shadows of their former glory. Publically lauded as official Gods of the state, they are little more than propaganda puppets; trapped in the stones and steel of the cityscape, whispering prophecy and begging for offerings in exchange for favors.

• Gildguld, God of Tax Collectors
• Mitchuas, The Son of Ash
• Gaibrus, The Birdgod of the Dawn
• Zeudin Vashas, The Six Faced Lord of Thunder
• Lamris, The God of Obedience and the Underworld
• Friedites, The Goddess of Sin and Purity
• Valstaris, The Goddess of Love and War
• Xerfer, The Goddess of Jealousy and Greed

Suffering and Shame

Suffering is a choice we make to hide from our destiny out of fear that we'll Fail

If you don't have a list of old shame shame then you have not done anything of value.

Suffering is a choice you make
Don't like that idea.
Well you can choose to deny it
It's your choice
Life contains pain
And when not if you encounter pain
You choose
Either
You heal
OR
you suffer
If you choose to suffer
You also choose not to heal
Suffering is a drug
And you may be addicted
Healing means getting clean
Healing means withdrawal
But you must choose 

Life is not suffering. Life IS. During life you will encounter pain. Pain unprocessed turns toxic. Toxic pain is suffering

The Path of the Grey

The Path of the Grey through Myth and Culture

The Grey begins its time in any new Shadowlands as nothing more than whisper of being. Fear of disorder. A desire for control. A flash of red or a reflective shine to the eyes of those who listen to the Grey as it whispers- first in their dreams and then during waking hours. The Grey prefers the dark and the cold. The grey prefers high altitudes and thin air and open spaces. And in these spaces one can hear the Grey more clearly.

And as one's story spins darkly out control, as impending doom approaches due to impersonal forces beyond one's control; then the Grey can sense one's mind and make its offer.

Grey Aliens

Assuming a physical form is possible for the Grey even in its weakest stages of development in this world. In its embryonic form, the Grey appears not unlike a Grey Alien: smooth grey skin, with an over sized head not unlike a Mayan Mummy. The eyes are black upon first inspection, but prove an impossible deep red if light its the eyes at the correct angle. The Grey will move itself as though gravity did not affect it, and without moving any of its body- levitating in total stillness with not limbs moving. Even as it grows in strength, the Grey will still assume this form in many dealings. It appears fond of the form.

The Grinning Man

A horrible precursor to the arrival of the Grey's more powerful Forms. The way will be paved for the Grey by a series of strange homunculi called the Grinning Men. They appear almost human, but their faces have no eyes, merely skin sunken into empty sockets with rictus grins cause by mouths with no lips. The Grinning Men speak without moving or opening their mouths, directly into the minds of the listeners without fail. They dress in anachronistic though formal clothing, ten or twenty years out of date. They do not walk, rather they simply appear in a different location when one blinks or looks away.

They act as evangelical ministers, spreading the word to those willing to hear the Grey's message. They offer warnings of impending real danger. They make promises of safety and good will. And they will insist that they "breath and eat and bleed as men do".

As people begin to listen to their warnings, and people will, despite their terrifying visage; the Grinning Men will begin to speak of a coming danger. And they will offer solace and safety through allegiance to their Elder: The Grey.

The Mothman

The Grey, like most elders, can assume an approximation of a human form once it has sufficient strength. Said form is a tall thin grey figure with reflective grey eyes. The Face looks like a strange mixture of insect and owl-like features- although without features or chitin. The avian/insect hybrid features are cast upon pallid grey skin stretched across a skull which appears overly large and elongated like a classic alien or a preserved Mayan mummy. The Grey wears a grey leather or skin cloak or overcoat which appears to merge with the body of the figure. The Interior of the coat is colored brown and umber and dusty ochre, in patterns which strongly suggest the wings of a moth. Sometimes, the figure will have hands separate from the cloak, sometimes the hands and arms will merge with the cloak. The cloak will move and spread like wings if the figure moves into the air.

The Grey makes sounds, but they are out of sync with it's movements. If it speaks, the mandibles in it's mouth will move after the words have been heard. The sounds of beating wings or scratching claws will come before or after the movements that should produce said sounds.

Ancient Astronauts theory

Stories have power, and the Grey and its homunculi will tell stories claiming credit for human advances int he Bonelands. They will claim increasing influence of the events depicted in recorded history. For as stories are retold, so does history change. As people come to revere the Grey, so does it's power grow. It devours the histories of other cultures and other gods to make itself strong. It will start with rumors and whispers, to make people talk about it. Then it will transform that talk into reverence. Then it will transform that reverence into religious fervor. And finally it will anchor that religious fervor with fear. And it will use that fear to institute control. And through control of the stories told, the Grey makes itself into the Elders and Gods and Demons and Spirits from other older stories. It travels back in time through the minds of those who believe its stories and remakes the history that they know.

And the world that these people live in becomes one where the Grey was always the one true God, and all other supernatural beings which survive in the cultural discourse are demons or evil spirits. The world becomes the story which people tell, and being born of fear becomes a god who rules through fear.

Story Hypocrisy

Buddhism started as a revolution of simplicity. No mention of gods. Just transcending the illusions of this world. From where did all the Bodhisattva come? Christianity is the same. From what part of the lessons of Jesus do we get the saints? If Sikhism began with a man (The Guru Nanak) who mocked Hindus for offering water to the sun, why then is the Sikh holy book venerated and why are there so many gurus subsequent to Nanak?

The answer, I think, arises from the human mind. I see religion as a social technology for storing and transmitting heuristic cultural knowledge. Memory champions have shown that the human mind likes stories and colorful tales. And so every reform minded religion returns to those ancient memory friendly traditions in order to survive as a cultural tradition itself.

The Grey in more Depth

Fear is inescapable. Fear is inevitable. Heroes use fear as their sword and shield, as their drive and fuel. But some use fear as a cage within which they capture everyone, including themselves. In the hopes of total control, the Grey inspires the Locust King to cage and devour the world.

The Grey is a kidnapped infant demiurge. The grey as a reverse alien abduction. 'God' as an accidental prisoner from another story. Always an outsider to the story they infect. The Grey is an infant old one dragged into each new shadowland as an embodied hypersigil thoughtform by the desperate magick of the Locust and the Lion. The child godhead has been driven mad by fear and sensory overload in the new world. He is pain and fear and simple morality and id urges. Because demons and gods live in stories, the bootstrap Paradox is a viable option. The Lion and the Locust are faced with a Wendigo invasion. Wendigo are caused by the Locust touch and thus the Grey, but the paradox can eliminated if the Locust and Lion make the right choice in this retelling.

The Grey Locust/King and the Grey always start as Dead Gods from somebody else's story. They infect new stories. Pulled in when somebody else invokes and embodies their story as a means of power and/or survival. The Grey is anti life. It seeks silence and stillness and order. It seeks to make the world still . Because it is afraid. It is a being from the dark Era of the universe... when entropy has made everything uniform and dark and still. It can't handle the chaos and messiness of the Stellaferrous Era. And so it seeks to enforce order. It is a creature from the end of all stories. It does not understand middles.

Thus the Grey is not evil. The Grey is applying a morality that does not function in this story. It is not evil. It is alien. It is applying tools not appropriate to this world.

Disaster Potential (Food Poisoning for Thought Reprint)

(*Reprinted from Food Poisoning for Thought as part my ongoing process to unify my web presence.*)

Disasters are precious opportunities. If you have no disasters then you are not generating any potential.