Chapter 82:

Chapter 82: To sing is the Birthright of the Children of the Stars





The Old ones liked few things in life, they liked seeing their children succeed, they liked seeing life flourish and they liked smacking rude and treacherous bastards down when they were feeling petty but beyond that they had little appreciation for other things, such as what most species would consider art.

We tried to make them art they could appreciate, much to the horror of the galaxy, but everyone knew that the Old Ones always got what they wanted in the end, because when they didn't reality cried and bled as they cut into it until it gave them what they wanted.

When the necrontyr came to the Old Ones for help they did the one thing they should have never done, they begged for help, they begged to be made immortal, to be granted succor and they did so by begging.

The Old Ones were gravely insulted by the necrontyr believing themselves worthy of being their children or slaves when they themselves were talent-less and could not claim to be anything of note and yet came to them begging to be something more. Immortality is not something granted to you, it is something you take for yourself from the corpse of whoever had it kept from you or you craft it for yourself.

If somebody else were to grant you immortality then that would make them one of two things, either your masters or your parents, and the Old Ones were not about to grant it to anyone, least of all someone begging for it.

As a human I could understand the perspective of the Necrontyr as they have tried an old merchant's trick on the Old Ones where they start with a great ask first then for a much more reasonable request second, but the Old Ones were so insulted by the Necrontyr for daring to try and sell themselves into slavery or beg to be adopted that they slaughtered the diplomats.

If the necrontyr were to try and merely get a gene-therapy that increased their lifespan and reduced their constant pain, the Old Ones were unlikely to have said no. The price would have been steep, if not one paid in resources, but it would have been granted to them as it had been granted to others in the past.

Inter-species diplomacy is difficult, especially so when trying to talk to species you have little in common with and talking with the strongest species in existence required even greater care than normal. The necrontyr tried to jump straight into it with one big act when they should have started smaller, hired help or asked other species to help them get introduced to the Old Ones' customs and ways of thinking and their gambit failed and they paid little for it, but the fools would not have it.

The life of a diplomatic mission was a small price to pay in the grand scheme of things, but it was not one the Silent King was willing to pay silently and so he declared war and his STL fleets tried and failed miserably to so much as inconvenience the Hegemon of the Galaxy. His fleets were mighty for sure and against most foes they would have given a good showing from what few records we have of the time, but the Ancients were the Ancients for a reason and the fleets died quickly and so did the worlds of the Necrontyr.

The Old Ones were both merciful and petty, and so instead of killing off the Necrontyr for declaring war on them as they did most of the time when the species of the galaxy were getting uppity, they gave them a second chance at life. They destroyed their empire and emptied all of their worlds except their home world of necrontyr and told them that they can go back into space once they relearn how to do that.

It was more than most people got when they decided to declare war against the Old Ones as one does not rule a galaxy by being soft on those that try to take that spot from you, but the horribleness of the Necrontyr's home world gave the Old Ones the pretext to spare them as the Old Ones did not like to kill off species, especially those as valorous as the Necrontyr were who had faced Death and Doom with more dignity than most.

The necrontyr repaid said mercy with spite and hate as they sold their souls to the disease known as the C'tan and the Ancients were forced to give to other species what the Necrontyr wanted and adopted several species of which only us remain as we've killed off the rest and salvaged their remains. Oh and the orks, they're around too but we'd rather not think of our impending demise and they weren't adopted but born.

In their desperation, the Old Ones created a species that cannot die, can scale up their power infinitely and were purpose made to do so endlessly the stronger they got and they got stronger the more they fought and now it's our mess to deal with.

All species adopted by the Old Ones have a psychic field linking its members. Said field is meant to grant the species itself increased coordination and a way to express it's psychic potential in a unique way. The Krorks had their Warfield, it increased their Might the more Violent they were at any given time and the Mightier they were the more Violent they became in an endless feedback loop with no ceiling or end, only the inevitability of more and more violence.

The Song of Our People as Imperial Eldar call it, or the Whisper as the Craftworlders in an aborted timeline would have is our version of the Warfield of the Krork, and even compared to the pale imitation the Whaagh field has become of the real deal it pales in comparison. The Song of our people has four functions, each that even the Whaagh Field does better, but it is ours and unlike the Orks we can use it far better than them.

The first function is Coordination, for the Song allows eldar to understand the mood of those around us, to see what is going on and for a lack of a better term, the theme of a given situation. The second is Connection, it makes it easy to know who is an Eldar and who is not and people without this connection do not understand just how important the fundamental knowledge that you are the same as somebody else is, especially when there are others who are not.

The third function is Might, as it allows multiple Eldar to pool their psychic might together with far greater ease and provides a certain measure of collective protection but it is the fourth function that makes it powerful and that is Concentration. Concentration allows for our Psychic power to focus on a single individual, our royalty, empowering them to obscene heights and doing something similar to our Divines if to a lesser degree.

The Song of Our People is our leash from the Old Ones as well as the source of our Rebirth, for as long as the Children of the Stars have our royalty to Sing for Reality and not against Reality like that of the Small Singing Sword of the Ancient, then reality will do as we wish. All that we are spawns from it, it is a crucial part of our psyche, our very species and the bloody craftworlders forgot that it exists.

The stupefaction of my peers and siblings when they heard that was unimaginable and yet it was topped when they confirmed my claims as each of them that could spare the time tried to confirm my wild claims and all of them confirmed it, the Craftworlders have truly forgotten how to hear the Song of Our People and we weren't even aware you could do that.

I still don't know how to do that, nobody knows, not even the damn craftworlders that did it, because they hid it from everyone, even themselves, but now it's my job to fix it and the only way I know how is through a ritual which was not meant for what I am trying to do but it is the only solution I know of that might work.

And due to this I am spreading psycho-reactive chalk, crystals and a ton of iconography meant to inspire Hoethian and Lileathean principles based around dreams and knowledge and song.

'How do rituals work Bessar? I see you working on them and then I recall the ritual you gave to Diseth Aisse and they do not match. They don't even feel like the same thing and yet we call them the same thing.' My sister Sang to me.

I was busy making the fourth out of five White Towers, one for each of his tenets, in the wide plaza we were in as the Singers rehearsed their performance before the big event. I could feel the curiosity of the onlookers but they let me be and did not touch the ritual and that was enough.

I did not stop as I considered her question. It was not something I was planning to teach her as I hoped she would catch things up on her own in regards to it to give herself more flexibility in how to perform them, but I will never deny the curiosity of my students.

'You need to first explain your own understanding of ritual to me to know where it is lacking before I can correct it.' I told her.

The fifth tower's connection to the dream was missing something, there was some lack in my understanding that was not connecting it to the first properly as I could not see why it did what it did. I can go around it, but I do not know where it is.

The first and fifth principles of Hoeth are 'Strive for diversity of academic training in the arts of magic, science, war, and philosophy ' and 'Share only the knowledge that is needed, not that which is merely desired by the idly curious ' respectively and there as a connection among them that I did not understand and yet I could see it in how the ritual was formed and I did not understand why that is.

'A ritual is a set of actions and instructions meant to guide psychic energy, either your own or that of others to a desired outcome.'

Yes, that is the generally agreed upon definition, where was the issue?

'That is an incomplete if not inaccurate definition of the term, where is the confusion?' I asked.

I could not understand the issue, either with my understanding of Song and Hoeth's principles or my sister's issues and while I can't figure out my own issue for now as I am too tired to think straight I can help my Younger Sister reach the answer to her question.

'How does the making of chalk circuits and having a meeting have the same effects?' She asked

'They don't.' I answered absentmindedly.

I bypassed the strange connection and amplified the one between the third and fourth principles as it should do the trick. Now to go to the connection between the singers and the ritual and make sure the connection is stable.

'Then why do we call them rituals?'

I had to consider that, how do you explain psychic nonsense to people not properly attuned to it?

'Species with an endoskeleton walk by means of contracting thin strips of muscle attached to larger bits of muscle and bone, while most species with an exoskeleton move through a mechanism closer to that of a hydraulic press, yet when either moves we call that process walking. You are most likely thinking about the means through which rituals happen and not what they actually do.' I answered.

That made her think which I took as my clue to refocus on the ritual. The singers continued their rehearsal as they tried to put into noise what our souls experienced and were having far greater success than they should have if the bystanders outside the ritual grounds were anything to go by as their reactions did not match what their ears should hear.

At least this part was simple enough, the connection between the singers and the ritual was incredibly easy to make, same as transforming their song from physical song into the Song of Our People and the other way around in a feedback loop.

'I still don't see the connection.'

I sighed at that. I am too used to talented students that I need to learn to guide their development as opposed to slowly building them up, and building up your students always creates a lower quality product than merely guiding their development.

'Psychic power is the ability of the soul to rearrange reality, rituals are that which affects the soul which in turn affects reality. Personal rituals are those rituals which affect your soul so that it does a specific task. They are a shortcut for those that do not know how to do a specific task themselves and thus require a tool to do it for them. What I gave Diseth Aisse was a personal ritual meant for priests to partake in, which are beholden to propriety and the rituals associated with it. It is in a way something you and the servant of Cegorach have engaged in, in order to make sense of the situation you are in and handle it and guide your Narrative Momentum in a given direction.

What I am doing now is a Mortal Ritual on the entire Craftworld and its population as well as the two singers and it is meant to use the psychic energy of the craftworlders and their home to remind them how to hear the Song of Our People." I revealed.

My ritual is not meant to do that, it's a teaching aide that my adopted father taught me with and how to do, and that he used to teach me and my siblings various skills by showing us a dream of how to do various things and then slowly drilling us in the real world. This ritual will put the vast majority of the craftworld into something akin to a VR, while also existing in reality and teach them how to hear the Song of Our People by masking it as simply a particularly impressive performance.

I will leave this ritual to Anaen too as the two singers will have knowledge of how to do it, and with the entire craftworld now gaining the skill and having a socially acceptable way to reveal it and not forget it. Keeping this as a tradition should ensure that the craftworlders don't need a new god just to remind them of something they really should be knowing by adulthood.

'Does that mean that all psychic technology is ritual then?' She asked again.

Now that is an interesting question, the answer is no and will always be no but I am curious about her thought process on it. The ritual preparations were done now too and all I needed now was to check and make sure that everything was fine before proceeding.

"The ritual is just about done, I need to make my final checks before we can start." I informed the two singers.

The two acknowledged my words but did not answer in words as they were focused on putting psychic song into reality.

'No, ritual is a type of psychic technology, which is extremely versatile for sure, but there exists technology that is not ritual, what brought this question?' I asked.

There is plenty of eldar technology that is not a ritual. Large parts of our technology might have ritual components or require some rituals somewhere in its production line but there are plenty of things in our tech tree that don't demand ritual, like our psy-automata or weapons. Hopefully she can reach the answer herself as the more knowledge I give her that she does not interpret herself the more limited she will be in how she applies it.

My checks were done now and I informed the singers of it, all they needed now was to sing and the ritual would meld with the song of our people as the two blurred the line between the conscious and unconscious of our people and taught them what it means to hear the Song of our People and hopefully teach them how to stop covering it up. I wish I could use it to find out how to cover it up, but none of them know how to do that most likely as for the song being covered up is the default.

I came near her on the Wraithbone bench she was reading a book on Eldar symbology to help her with her personal rituals and her body did not deign to react to my presence but her soul did and it settled under my protection once again.

I looked over the park we were in and took in the sights and the smells of a bright and healthy forest as I considered our situation. The park was the same as many others I've seen, there were some benches, trees, people enjoying themselves and green as far as one can see. The only different thing from any other park I've been in in this life or another was the massive done above us filled with stats and ships dancing in the void.

Narrative Momentum is an interesting creature as it guides our movements and actions and sometimes even thoughts and it is due to this reason that priests of different Divines do not interact. Each of us has our own stories, our own weight and trajectory towards where we wish to go and when multiple clumps Narrative Momentum come in close proximity to one another they need to decide among themselves which is the primary one and their relationship with one another.

In the priesthoods of the same God or when multiple priests of different Gods belong to the same orders then there exists a hierarchy which creates a subordinate-superior dynamic and determines how we can act around one another, but when that is not the case there are three ways things can go: subordination, conflict or marginalization which happens when all of the involved priests are merely supporting characters in another individual's story.

My Younger Sister is my subordinate and student and due to this she enjoys my protection and tutelage and in exchange she must do as I order and depending on how close we are to one another both of us can go beyond what our official relationship would normally permit, such as me giving guidance in more things than just what she is apprenticed to me for, and she can follow orders beyond the remit of her station.

"I am looking at the way symbology affects rituals and I am seeing similarities in the way technology acts and I am trying to figure out why and the fact that eldar psychic technology is merely a sub-type of ritual made sense." She replied vocally.

We were close enough physically that she had to use speech and not song during our lesson now.

I was quite happy to see her pursuing her own academic interests, for it was something any priest of Hoeth encouraged, but I was quite stumped as to how she even reached this conclusion. I considered how to disabuse her of this notion and realized that I had little time to do so before the performance started and she would be too distracted to pay close attention during it.

"There are certain types of psychic technology that make the distinction blurry yes, but in order to get technology to work you need to know exactly how to do what you want to achieve. Rituals are about getting something else to do something for you, and neither the ritualist or the ones being asked to do something, technically speaking, need to know how to do it. It is recommended that the two sides have at least partial knowledge of how to do the task in question so that it removes complications, but again you don't have to know, if your symbology is right you can just make someone do what needs to be done."

Ritualism is a very dangerous art and it is also incredibly powerful and versatile one, but the stronger or more intricate something is the more likely it is to fail. I could see now why she would think psychic technology is merely a type of ritual but it is not. When making any other piece of technology you need to know how most if not all parts are working to get the expected result while with rituals the requirements are far less strict.

You also can't make a techbase worth much solely out of rituals. Get some useful artifacts? Yes, but that does not make you into a void-faring species. Rituals supplement existing technology or help close some gaps for a small while or provide some utility, but eventually you need other types of technology and knowledge to make things work.

My Younger Sister was taking all of that in and I could feel the song take shape as the barriers between the physical and metaphysical was thinning and I drew her attention to it with light tap to her armored shoulder.

"Please pay attention to it, it is quite a rare thing to witness such a performance." I instructed with a smile.

The first time one hears the Song of Our People is always special and it would not do for her to miss it.

That pulled her out of her thoughts as she paid the performance the appropriate amount of focus it deserved, and the people of Anaen could once again hear the Song of Our People in all of its glory and the rest of the craftworld and the fleet protecting it was hearing it now too.

They could her the uncertainty, the hope, the preparations and prayers of themselves and others for a brighter future, for safety for glory and more, always for more. The music was haunting and sweet, it was inspiring and frightening and it was all that we were and more and unlike my cute little sister I could not enjoy it properly for my duties have not ended.

The craftworlders have forgotten the Song of Our People but I need to check if others have as well and Anaen is as good a place to go check as any, for on it there are Imperial Eldar, people from colonies outside of the Empire and even nomads, all settled here, all with their unique songs that merge into the greater whole and each possibly aware or unaware of the Song and I used my psychic might to look throughout the entire craftworld to see how individuals reacted to it.

I Saw merchants, sculptors, dancers, seers, mariners, warriors and more stop what they were doing and Listened. Some cowered in fear and some danced with joy and there was not a single soul unaffected by it. I could see my sister put her book aside and she began to dance possessed by the Song of Our People like many others.

Those that were already familiar with it would have far a far smaller reaction to the Song turning physical, while those that were unaware would have their notes colored in shock, and while I cannot look at each individual on the craftworld I can notice trends and what I was seeing did not make me happy.

The craftworlders that were born on Anaen were all shocked which was expected, same for some of the former colonists and nomads from outside of the Empire I could find, but what wasn't normal was the Imperials.

The vast, vast majority of them acted as they should, but there were a few of them, a handful form what I could see, that were just as shocked as the others which told me one thing I did not wish to hear. The Ignorance of Song was not contained to the Craftworlders only as Cegorach believed, there are Imperial worlds where some individuals cannot hear it.

I remained sitting on the bench as I felt tiredness try to take me as Anaen danced to the tune of Uncrowned Royalty and the dread and anger in my soul intensified as I tried to make sense of what I was Seeing.

Someone tried to deafen us, and while this might be the residual effects of Boredom and our people's attempt at fighting it I doubted it. Someone was plotting our downfall and whoever that someone was they will pay for it.