Section I: The Triumphant Exultation
It was exquisite. That was the first thought that thundered through the Exalted Keeper of Secret’s mind as she began her magical administration. The Godbeast was ruined, even slain, its brain ravaged and punctured by the others that fought in defense of the Dawnlands. She, of course, fought with them too, stabbing and slicing and murdering to save the people and institutions of t-
HAH! Her second thought. There was no respect. No real love; only the promise of agony and ecstasy, of debased hedonism and perfection, of misery and elation. She didn’t fight to save the Dawnlands. She fought to use them, as the Godbeast had planned. To build her own realm, her own fiefdom, her own warp-borne pleasure palace in mimicry of the god whose mantle she bore with an erstwhile rush of ambition.
Of course, she knew that she could not have killed the Godbeast alone; as vain and ambitious as she was, Keepers of Secrets are intelligent, charismatic creatures, possessed foremost of a deep and intuitive understanding of all things that could sense and feel – of qualia, those ineffable traits of conscious experience. She knew how it would fight to save its world-editing crystal, that engine of power that focused and amplified the will on a scale no mere school of magic could ever hope to match. She needed allies, and to obtain them, had to offer payment. Czumneth Ereshkigal, for once in her life, tempered her vanity to achieve greater success, and settled not for the entire crystal but for a mere massive chunk, incapable of reforging the Dawnlands, but perhaps capable of raising a city – a Daemon Realm – from nothing.
Of course, there were traitors; there always were. But Czumneth’s servants had swatted them aside, her vainglorious will forcing her subordinate daemons to ever-increasing heights of accomplishment in pursuit of her directives – and now, she had the crystal, even as the magical ties binding it to her airship released it in the depths of the Synder mines where she had held her temporary court in the Dawnlands.
Reforge. Recast. Renew. Remake. Refashion. Remodel. Remanifest. Reinstantiate. Rebuild…
Replace.
Czumneth’s musings on the past conflict were interrupted by an abrupt response from the crystal, the Synder mines around her warping and curling as it began to resonate with her will. She shuddered as her long, ophidian tongue curled out of her mouth to taste the qualia of the transformation, and her taloned fingers and sensual body gestured and curled in a writhing, lustful dance. She couldn’t help herself, even as the world around her began to match the willful imposition that she placed upon it.
Section II: The Cyrenaic Citadel, or the First Sun
It finished. The Synder mines had warped, even buckled, Uglu itself resisting the influence of Czumneth Ereshkigal and her crystal upon it. But such was her will, her ambition, her very vanity that, with the aid of the crystal, she was triumphant.
Now, as she worked, a white shining palace rose towering into the coruscating cacophony of coloured chaos that was the Warp. Its spires stabbed like phallic members into the void, while its circumvallation grew akin to a sculpted monument to pleasure. Indeed, the entire estate, with its indulgent mockery of an opulent mortal’s castle, became a hedonistic monument to sin and vice, and a mammoth tribute to perfection and ambition.
Around the citadel, the very ground boiled and writhed, upending and sundering with runes of purple-white power as Czumneth’s augmented magic tore the very fabric of her shaping domain from Uglu. The taloned fingers of the Exalted Keeper plunged deep, into the very heart of her burgeoning realm, penetrating far more deeply than any warp-creature had any right to reach. Reality bent, and the sky brightened, the roiling warpstorm hidden outside a dome-like shield akin to the veils around the Realms.
Uprising, unveiling, the realm announced itself to the world. Gates opened by accident as tenuous tendrils still tugged towards Uglu and other nearby realms. The power of Czumneth, amplified by the crystal, strove with the laws of reality, and the laughter of a thirsting goddess, mirthful in its hedonistic exultation, thundered throughout the world. Soon enough, it was finished, and the great artifice of its forming ended.
“Carcosa.” Spoke a voice – a fellow Keeper, serpentine in body, that approached Czumneth unseen as she worked. Czumneth’s gaze turned to regard her with a judging eye. “Carcosa. Why?” she asked, as the ophidian Keeper bowed her head deferentially in servitude to her Exalted superior. “My Lady, it is grown from a carcass of a dying realm, and it is made magnificent. Car-cosa. Carcass, but alive, improved, even pleasurable to speak.”
Czumneth pursed her lips thoughtfully, corners of her mouth curling into a satisfied smirk as her monochromatic eyes flashed with a willful need to dominate. “Yes. Carcosa. Well spoken, my pet.” she whispered, almost threateningly. But there was no need; the other Keeper bowed lowly, swaying her serpentine body with a curling, sensuous grace. “Ophidia Vypress of the Dance Dulcet at your service, Exalted One.” she intoned, humbled by the works before her and by the sheer willpower that radiated from Czumneth like a blazing star.
“Welcome, Lady Vypress, to the Court Abstrusive.”
Section III: The City, or The Second Sun
Uninvited, they arrived. Mortals, first a few, then more, then a hundred, perhaps, poured through the realmgates that tenuously tethered Carcosa to the nearby realms. Some, perhaps, were driven by a need for space, or a flight from war, or perhaps were attracted by the siren song of the daemons that lived in the Cyrenaic Citadel. The most industrious, however, were the ones that arrived as explorers, infected by a desire to know, to experience, to see new things and places. Driven by ambition, these pioneers and colonizers could not help but enter the unknown realm-gates formed by Carcosa’s riotous birth, and could not resist being attracted to the mighty demonic citadel that appeared on the other side like a towering divinity in its own right.
Gradually, over the months, a village popped up, even a city. The process was gradual – food was difficult to come-by, and the water tainted with an unexpected elixir that sent the drinkers into manic frenzies, exhausting them in moments. Still, the attractiveness of the demonic realm brought in all sorts of people unable to resist its mythological status it had attained from the first explorers who returned through the gates. Gradually, industrious and clever as mortals are, the unnoticed family groups and small villages around the Cyrenaic Citadel figured out how to treat the water, to preserve much of the energizing effect without harming the imbiber. They learned to harvest the fog of Lake Hali, the great lake of cloud. They discovered how to hunt harpies, the serpentine and easily-trained Steeds, and the poisoned-tongued Cavorters that roamed the outlands beyond the palace walls.
But ever the palace was silent, its doors shut, the daemons inside entertaining themselves, and paying no mind to the mortal insects that gathered against their abode like wretched bacteria. Even when the influence of the land tugged at their minds, and the effulgent but unseen radiance of the daemons compelled their worship, the mortals were ignored. Even as they carved symbols and built temples, influenced by the titanic, glowing etchings in the very ground upon which they stepped, the mortals were ignored. Even as they cried out to the mysterious being in the citadel, droning in chants and ululating in ecstacy, the mortals were ignored.
Along the shore of Lake Hali, where the fog-waves broke, the mortals often gathered to watch the twin suns sink behind the cloud. They watched the black stars rise, and the strange moons circle through the skies. They watched, and waited, living their lives in the shadow of the decadent fortress where Czumneth wrought her plans and played with her daemonic legions. They wondered, worshipped, and wanted. They waited.
Until…
