Ravhi @ Salme

Good evening, my friend.

I hope that I may call you that? If it is presumptuous, if it upsets you, let me know, and I will refrain.

I did not have the words to thank you for your performance, properly, in the wake of it; I still do not have the words tonight.

But I wanted to let you know that I’ve hung the tapestry you gifted me on the wall in my chambers, alongside the other tapestries which I most value, and wish to behold in my times of greatest doubt and greatest need.

I would remember your stories, and your presence among us here, with all the time granted to me.

May you find shade and comfort at the end of your day’s journey.

Oh. You’re welcome to call me your friend as long as I can do the same. It’s nice to hear.

I’m glad that … the performance meant something to you. I mean, I saw that it did, but it is still nice to hear. I am also … knowing that tapestry is hanging in such esteemed company means very much to me. I am still only at best an adequate weaver so … thank you for valuing it so. I hope it brings you comfort.

Thank you also for the gift of … wanting to remember, and for valuing the stories. I … that also matters very much to me.

I’m still working on writing a longer story for you; one that doesn’t elide certain truths. I found the writing of it required a lot more than I thought it would, and I wasn’t able to finish it in time. I did want to point you to a version of the story here: So, Your World Is In Peril. I try to keep it updated with events and information. Much of the emotional nuance is stripped from it, but you might find it useful (and perhaps more useful because you can set it down and digest individual portions). I did want to let you know that I am working on it.

The Library has a lot of interesting folios, and if there’s a question you’d like answered, it may have those answers. I try to keep it updated, though I am not always good at doing so. It is yours to peruse as you wish, though.

I do have … many questions for you, actually, but one I was wondering if you might be so kind as to answer is … on Mu, or for you, what is the relationship between radiant and tenebrous gnosis? Something slightly unexpected happened on our travels (I can explain, but I’d like your take before I do, if you don’t mind). (Don’t worry; everyone is perfectly fine).

Take care of yourself as well.

I thank you for this, and I thank you in advance for the gift which you have not yet given me. The Zvahr say that our stories are the only thing we know we get to keep until the God’s Day, and so they are most valuable of all the things in the world; most days I agree with them without reservation. This is, certainly, one of those days.

I see that I will have much reading to do. I– Qarina and I spoke at length before you left the City. I think it helped both of us come to terms with your imminent departure. I promised her, among other things, that I would accompany her to the sietch, in Dyu’s stead, and carry supplies with her. It has been too long since I left the City; it has been too long since I saw the people who live away from it.

So, I think I will have some time, finally– and if I do not, I will make the time– to simply read everything you have made available to me, and I look forward to the education.

Most of the gnosis-weaves handed down from Yazhn to Yazhn are radiant in nature, as I’m sure you’ve learned already from Dyu, and an intense Radiance permeates the entire desert as far as we know it. But the rites which permit growth, by which we reclaim the sands and make of the desert a Garden involve by necessity weaving that Radiance with tenebrousness of our own in intricate and careful patterns, woven into seed and sand.

I hope that this helps answer your question. If it does not, if there is anything more I could provide, you have only to ask.

As a storyteller by both trade and by choice, I’m of course inclined to agree with that, though … I am nimble-minded enough to make everything a story if it serves me. (That is, ah, me poking fun at myself; I do apologize in advance. I think part of the reason we initially didn’t understand each other well is that … I tend to speak in a fairly casual register when I’m friendly with someone and that is obviously different from the cultural standards in Mu!). Still, even without the … slight self-deprecation, I agree. Of course I agree; I couldn’t ever not.

I am glad that you and Qarina spoke. I had … would you believe, that when I spoke to you, I had intended to ask my philosophical question about choosing to know on her behalf? She was having a very hard time, after the Elementals spoke to her, and she didn’t want to burden you. I suspected that what she had to say was a burden you’d gladly bear and was going to be very clever and let her know that with certainty and then … well. That isn’t what happened. I suppose I tell you that so you know … that I was concerned for her, and I’m glad she seems to have found her way. She’s a really amazing person; I feel honored that she wanted to be my friend so immediately. I’m glad you two will care for each other and both sietch and City (and I will keep an eye on both Wolf and Dyu, though I’m probably more intemperate than both of them combined).

Hm, so I had noticed some of that. Archie and I were able to unravel a leaf from the First Field and see how intricate the gnosis-work that went into it was. It’s one of the things that first struck me about the nature of your Work—how intensive and careful it is.

I suppose, to explain: as we travel between planes, we always stop in a space between. We’ve taken to calling it “the Void,” though I’m not sure if that is its name or not. After we’ve opened a gate from the plane we’re on to the Void, usually the corresponding gnosis has transformed the plane. Thus, after Almachadta, it was suffused with flourishing gnosis. However, when we arrived from Mu, it seemed to have been changed by tenebrous gnosis.

I’ve always found a strange … continuity or resonance between the two, but I’m not used to using either with much regularity. I was wondering if you might have more insight, though it’s certainly anyone’s guess as to what’s going on. I figured it was worth asking.

If everything was a story in the first place - if all we get to keep, other than our own selves, are the stories we tell - does that change your calculus? Regardless, I do not think such attention to your own needs is to be criticized, unless it were to come at another life’s expense, and I cannot see, here, how it could. (I hear your casual register, and I warn you that I will take your words with utmost solemnity, but now I am, myself, doing so at least somewhat for the purposes of levity. But I do not think that you have erred, in any way, and it did feel important to me to say so.)

I would believe that, concerning Qarina. I knew – even in the Temple, the very first time we spoke, I already knew you cared about her and about Dyu. I do not know why, I do not know enough, yet, about your mind and your person, to know why and how you already cared so deeply. I just knew, already, at that point, that you cared, and that was enough. I did ask myself what conversation I thought you would want me to have had with her. I looked up at the tapestry you wove me several times, in the course of that conversation. I wonder if she noticed?

In any event, your suspicion was correct, and even if that conversation between us did not play out the way either of us had hoped or expected, at the time – I think you got your message through, and I value having received it.

Very curious, as regards the gnosis and its resonance. Do the other planes consider themselves to be aligned with one or another type of gnosis, themselves, or is this an ontology you’ve placed upon them by observation of more than one? Why did you believe that my plane would be aligned with any particular resonance of gnosis? Why radiant in particular?

My calculus about everything being counted, kept, known or something else? For the first, I’ve been thinking about that a lot, and I do think—I’m not sure if this is how you mean things on Mu, but the process of telling and retelling stories does keep things, but not all things, and not without them being transformed or shifted. I think. Hm.

I don’t know how much Zvahr Yhjrn told you about what I told her about the Mask and how it works, but much like your Fathom, the Mask archives all the memories of Almachadta, going back to … not quite the very beginning, but close to. The line of Sword-Saints is not quite unbroken, but there’s very few ruptures—usually someone was always bearing the Mask. That is a staggering amount of memory. You know how Mu deals with it—the Grasps, and then the Grasp of Grasps, with the original records preserved. The Mask deals with it by choosing. The further back you go, the murkier things get. Certain details stand out—advances that were particularly valuable, or mistakes there were particularly instructive—but other things are lost. Who people were, especially. A project I’ve been … picking at … is trying to find the names and stories of the Sword-Saints before me. It’s been an extremely qualified success.

I suppose I say all that because I think it explains how I, at least, understand what can be remembered, and what can be made into a story and thus told. I think stories can carry many important things. I think even who we are are stories that we tell ourselves and others, more than anything objective or eternal. But I think even the act of telling a story is … the act of, as I said, obliterating certain details for rendering it legible? Maybe they don’t necessarily have to be lost? Maybe another story could carry them? But I think there’s so much distance in the interpretation of language and action and … everything, really, that we’re constantly losing things, even things that matter? And to me, it’s important to accept that loss, acknowledge it, and live within it anyway.

I also recognize that all of this is highly contingent on … my own understanding, very specifically. Much of my Clan will tell you I talk a lot, and that isn’t untrue, but I spent a very long time keeping my own counsel. In some ways, it’s … still an unfamiliar joy to be able to share these thoughts with other people, who can challenge and refine them.

Which is to say, you’re welcome to disagree with any of that.

Oh. Thank you. That is … that means very much to me as well. I don’t know if I have anything thoughtful to say about it, but. I guess …

Qarina immediately wanted to be my friend, and shared things about her brother with me. Dyu taught me something I could have never learned on my own and also let me meet his friend. They both were so immediately open-hearted and genuine, how could someone not adore them both? And they did, of course, save our lives. That isn’t nothing.

And this is where you have flummoxed me. That is an ontology I’ve placed upon them by observation, and assumptions made based off … the fact that there are five gnosis types, and five planes.

On each of the four planes we’ve been to, the people native to that plane, aside from ourselves, have spoken with gnosis resonance that matches that plane’s perceived nature. I don’t know if Wolf or Jorule shared any of them with you? The people of Almachadta speak with flourishing resonance. The people of Samudra speak with pellucid resonance. The people of the Beast speak with burning resonance. The people of Mu speak with radiant resonance. I don’t know if you can hear it once pointed out; after her moment out in the desert, Qarina stopped speaking with radiant resonance. Most of us don’t speak with any particular resonance either. So that is one factor.

The next factor would be that Almachadta, Samudra, and the Beast all have been very clearly and intensively drenched in their assumed gnosis. One of the things the Sword-Saints learned early about Almachadta was that it was a certain overage of flourishing gnosis that began the end of our plane. We’ve known we could combat it with burning and pellucid, but we could never draw enough burning and pellucid. The ambient flourishing gnosis on Almachadta is much stronger than any other gnosis-type, though other types are not absent.

The same seems to be the case on both Samudra and the Beast. On Samudra, there was an event where an anchored island was created by the application of enough burning and flourishing gnosis meshing with the extant pellucid atmosphere. The mechanism of how that happened is still … somewhat opaque to me (and while I hadn’t intended it to be so, the island was a result of the externalization of some of my internal issues at the time; I can. Explain that. In more depth. At some point).

For the Beast and its relationship with burning gnosis, my evidence is thinner, but I was working on spinning a significant amount of the Beast’s gnosis into wool, and then weaving with it, and the outcome was a textile that was mostly burning in nature.

On Mu, I don’t think any of stopped and did much gnosis-work at all, which, in retrospect, was an oversight. The sun emits flourishing, burning, and pellucid gnosis in scalding amounts, and I don’t think the sand is suffused with any kind of gnosis at all, though I would have to double-check with Archie. I encountered radiant gnosis in Dyu’s healing, and several other workings, but not ambiently.

Additionally, and I don’t know if Wolf told you about this, but there is a sixth type of gnosis called “liminal.” This is where the resonance we call “aletheic” comes from: It sounds, as I believe you’ve been informed of, like this. There’s a truth-sense to it, though it is not necessarily truth. Liminal itself is … about defying systematization, so I’m not sure how accurately I could explain it, though I associate with points-of-view that are multiple and refracting?

I apologize. My own understanding of any gnosis is … heavily inflected by my experiences; I have no formal training the way some of the others do, so please take what I have to say as, again, highly subjective.

I asked Caion, the head of Samudra’s Academy and Archie’s partner, about if Samudra has ever conceived of itself as self-consciously “pellucid” and he said he hadn’t considered it as such, but in retrospect, it doesn’t not fit. I’m going to explain the content of our conversation here and see if he has any insights. I will also ask Jae, the Scorpion Queen of the Beast, about her thoughts (she’s angelsGuignol on here because she is ridiculous and cannot simply use her name).

At any rate, thank you for the challenge here! It’s a lot to think about and I think it will be fruitful. If you have any sense of where radiance stems from on Mu, or even how you’ve conceived of the gnosis-makeup of your own world, I would value them immensely.

I’ve been thinking about what you said, about stories, and our Grasps, and the Mask. You can’t remember everything that’s happened, not on your own. Details slip, and the best-kept notes in the world still have a system to them, a discernment, choices. What matters, and what doesn’t. It’s why I’ve always gotten along with the Zvahr as well as I do, myself, I think - there’s been Yazhn in the past who’ve butted heads with them, to some extent or another.

I think, perhaps, the only moment we can truly understand is the one we’re living in.

As for the rest… I think I do finally have an ear for resonance. It’s… funny. Before you’d said that, I’d almost describe Qarina’s voice as sounding more like her own, in a way I cannot describe. Maybe it’s a consequence of her confidence after confronting the elementals, and what they said to her, I do not know. It has been good between us, although she has… we have both struggled with Emberlight’s departure, and have been giving each other both space and comfort by turns as we have needed it.

If there is an experiment you think I could run on Mu whilst you are elsewhere, or any data I could gather - or instruct one of my Yazhn or Zvahr to gether, if appropriate - I am more than willing to try. If not, you honor me by explaining your process, and a part of me is well pleased to have given you an interesting question to examine and explore.

I’m sorry to intrude upon your peace, my friend, but I’ve been reliably informed that if I wish for a good description of what Wolf wore to the masquerade, I ought to ask you, and I very much do wish for that.

(I’m also curious what others wore. I admired your garb very much while you were with us on Mu and I believe you may have begun a fashion trend in the City, so I can only imagine what you designed for a special event! I’m also curious - did Dyu participate in the masquerade?)

Obviously there is – this is idle personal curiosity, rather than anything of world-shaking imporance. But I am curious, and I wished also to send you my regards. I have been reading through the Library in my spare moments (of which I have not had many - I accompanied Qarina to the sietch and it was delightful, but exhausting, work) and I am… terribly grateful to you for your work in making it available and accessible to me. Remind me, does Zvahr Yhjrn have access to this as well? I’m sure she’d love to peruse this smaller but no-less-brilliant Fathom which you and yours have constructed.

• Ravhi