Coven of Advisory

[Sh'ozak Ma'hk'null]

An end to the silence of their toiling.

Unity. Light. Purity. By these tenants the Advisors of Light delegate and relegate. By these tenants their priorities are ordered. By these tenants they act their will onto reality.

Speak, and be heard. Expose, and be known. Council of Ours, let your actions be brought before all the Light. Let all the Light be known. Let your voices grace us.

The first actions graced the void:

We have set about to guide the Keepers to effectiveness. In our study, we have learned many truths. The first of these is that we cannot calculate Darkness as we calculate the motions of the seas. They are not bound to logic, but to emotions. Their logics come from nothing, as their emotions come from nowhere and end in an equal nowhere. Their choices are acausal, and as such our dreams of them will always have potential to be false. Our first remedy is to change the structure of our dreams. We must not dream of what should happen, but all that can happen. This is the failure that led to our greatest tragedy. Seeing all possibilities, and knowing every action needed to gain ourselves advantage in each of these choices possibilities will require more effort from us, but will yield greater advantage.

The second of these truths is that Darkness has waged war on Darkness long before we have needed to. To wage war is a well trained art of theirs. They came to our seas fleeing a war, and have done naught but wage war since. Because of this, we have sorted and arrayed those Infiltrators we have taken from their many "Navy" and "Naval Intelligence" castes. These are they who specialize more completely in waging war. We have aligned their information to make a more complete "Web of War", a vast pattern of knowledge that can be built upon by addition of new knowledges, and any of the operations we regularly perform on knowledges can be done to these.

With these two truths, we have began a new process: We have made our Keepers more capable of warfare. We have enjoined unto them many clauses, those of strategy, of preservation. We have rearranged the Order of Connection of the Light, so that the loss of a larger shell does not incapacitate those smaller shells. This allows those Keepers that we send to complete a target mission a greater chance to complete that mission, there will be no scattering and there will be no disarray, as we have ordered connection through every mind, and not through an ascending hierarchy of minds. We have then imparted to them the ideals and disciplines of warfare as we have thus far learned, and have directed our Dreamers to dream of new logics to test and abide by. With these two adaptations, we have added effectiveness and efficiency to the combat abilities of the Keepers, and should these successes find purchase in the close waters, we would then direct the Infiltrators to wage conflict in this way as well.

The second actions graced the void:

The Frilled-Shell Darklings have taken to wage war against the Cursed Shells. They have sent a War-Shell and it's underlings towards the seas the Cursed Shells call home, a preliminary maneuver to scout and case the area. We cannot engage to fight on that sea as well, for they have laid a destructive wall around the tunnel from where we hold to where they hold. We cannot pass with a great enough force to affect them. Our Infiltrators find purchase in the "Naval Intelligence" caste of the Frilled-Shells. It is our Infiltrators influence that guides the Frilled Shells against the Cursed Shells, and so it is now in our interest to veil our touch and the Infiltrators touch in the Frilled Shells from the eyes of the Cursed Shells. In doing this, we shall avoid invigorating the Cursed Shells, as their motivation to action is Us, and all that We do. For the Frilled Shells to wage war against the Cursed Shells is for pressures against our defenses to be alleviated, and for us to gain advantage against both they and the Flat Shells.

The third actions graced the void:

We have been engaging in a process to more effectively compliment our knowledge of war. We present Nannasuen, the reflection of Shamash. Shamash is the great fire that extinguishes stars, Nannasuen is the cold light that would sweep away Darkness in the realm that Darkness would claim. We have taken an inspiration and a model from Darkness, this tool of destruction which operates differently from others, and woven it between the shell of Shamash. We perfected it, removing those unnecessary things and making what was left more efficient, and then scaled it within the shell. This creation can sheath energy shells in an ablative corona, allowing it to burrow through surfaces before being released. We would see this used to quickly obliterate any infestation of darkness, be it the metal hives they inhabit or the rocks on which they cluster. The empty space gained from the smaller core would then be filled with cysts to hold other shells, which could be sent out to hunt those who would flee destruction. In this way, we can quickly burn out infestations of Darklings while leaving no survivors. The unfortunate sacrifice being a desecration of the waters, obstructing the order of the rocks and the stars they orbit, or littering with out-of-place metals.

The fourth actions graced the void:

We have built a theory of Endless Midnight. We have learned the limits of Darkness, and how their minds are bound inexorably to cognizance. They cannot manipulate the forces of thought as we can, but their minds are given life through it nonetheless, just as ours are. We have devised a weapon and have perfected its theory. It would unleash a wave of the force of thought to rip life from every mind caught in it's blast. There exists two great setbacks, the first is our lack of a material which would conduct the force of thought independently, as those viscous metals conduct electric forces. The second is a method to deploy it which does not pose a threat to ourselves. There exists one great apprehension, as our Dreamers have contemplated that Darkness, experiencing death at the hands of this weapon, would give all in their power to copy it and use it against us. They have warned us of the fate of being the architects of our own destruction, yet they also have yet to answer how Darkness would learn to understand the force of thought.

The fifth actions graced the void:

The Schemer and his pawns have gone unchecked, and have not bumbled into their own demise. Now they seek to bumble us all into demise. The Harbinger has taken it upon themselves to open a Grave and unleash the Death contained within. They have managed to gain a degree of control over a Darkling who has been imprinted with the key to the Grave, but not the key to the Gravekeepers, and so the Gravekeepers come across our seas hunting out those trespassers. The Corrupting Ones are trespassers. The Harbinger is a trespasser. Those that they control and manipulate may well be trespassers. The Voidmind may well be trespassers. Should we find a definitive proof of such, that of Death which should be contained in the Graves, or the stench of Death that the Gravekeepers hunt, it is necessary that we align ourselves with the Gravekeepers first edict, and see those who would bring irreparable damage to the stars and the oceans scoured from reality. We have yet to learn of which Grave they are trespassing on, or if they target more than one. It doesn't truly matter, however, as any one of them being opened would bring a guaranteed death to all things.

And so the Light came into the void, and it was alive.