Every time a prisoner of the one of the debtor prisons that populate The Oboline of
Arc dies twenty-four teeth, one for each hour of the day, are extracted and placed in one of two hourglasses. The destination of a set of teeth is determined by the position of the sun at death. The teeth of those who die from midnight to midday are placed into an hourglass fixed into the arch marking the eastern border of the quarter, while those who die from midday to midnight are placed in an hourglass fixed into the arch marking the western border of the quarter. The arches that support them are called The Crones. The eastern hourglass is known as Nix , the western as Nox.
Time in the Oboline is measured in the number of times an hourglass needs to be emptied. Each hourglass can hold approximately 12,000 teeth. Therefore each hourglass needs to claim 500 victims before it can be emptied. Two functionaries, one for each hourglass, known officially as the atropes are in charge of maintaining and turning the hourglasses, as well as ensuring the correct number of teeth per death are assigned to their hourglass. They are colloquially referred to by the lower orders of Arc as the nick-nock men, a corruption of Nix and Nox originating from the fact that in many of the cants that proliferate the districts surrounding The Dures Road the pronunciation of an x and a ck is barely distinguishable.
Due to the unclean nature of their work and constant threat of vendettas from the families of the Oboline’s victims the atrophes wear faceless masks lined with human teeth they have emptied from the hourglasses. Each also fashions a cape lined with the wisdom teeth of the dead, which are reserved for this purpose. Any surplus teeth are used to line the walls surrounding the temple at the centre of the Oboline, the Lachesium. They wear ceremonial bronze armor, so highly polished than those who look upon them can see their reflections in it, thought to convey their renunciation of self, one does not see the person beneath the armor that signifies the role, rather the armor reflects an onlooker's image back at them, a memento mori of the social death of wardship, for the road of every ward leads inexorably to the Crones.
The Atrophes’ renunciation of self requires that they are utterly interchangeable with one another, down to being virtually identical in height, build, proportions. They are forbidden to speak while performing their role and communicate through a form of sign language taught to all those overseeing the day to day operations of the Oboline. This is to maintain a sense of continuity between each person who occupies the role, so that over the centuries, to create the illusion that all the deaths of the Oboline have been counted and presided over by a single individual. The citizens of Arc jokingly refer to the atrophes as the Deadbeat Graces, remarking that ‘even the gods are indebted to the
The Houses of Coin these days.
The Book of Emond
The Atrophes were named minor deities in one of Apocrypha of the Aruviad, the Book of Emond, mentioned in a single passage concerning the judgement of dead souls:
‘ Coiled before the gate lie the serpentine Atrophes, in which all lives are muted. And the huddled pass through each scale in the horror of completion.’
Nothing is so horrific to the Aruhvian as the completed life because it is a life beyond atonement, whose impurities must be endured as a never ending affliction. It is written in the Aruhiviad that through the Atrophes, that lie at the Gates of Damnation, that a dead soul sees just how afflicted their life has been, a foretaste of all they will have to endure without relief. Thus the Atrophes of the Book of Emond are, in essence, the first, true, clear image an Aruhvian has of their life, for in those serpents they can see themselves with the clarity of the Graces. The atrophes of the Oboline lie at the threshold of death, adorned with the teeth of the dead instead of scales. The Book of Emond was recovered became an important part of the Arcite Aruhvian corpus, as it dealt extensively with Damnation, charting the life of the Grace Y’Erest, who renounced his divinity living his mortal life as the mortal prophet Emond, and descended into Damnation voluntarily to alleviate the suffering of its denizens. The sacrifice of Emond in the Arcite civic religion is interpreted by the Smiths of Obola as the birth of civic man, the divine grace which allowed humanity to rise above their animal nature and become social beings. In the eyes of the Arc’s Aruhvian Church the denizens of the Oboline are doubly damned as their inability to retain their citizenship, and thus prove that they are capable of living as civic beings, testifies to their animal nature. For how can they achieve unity with divinity if they cannot bring themselves into harmony with their fellow men?
Incubic Parasites
In addition to their duties presiding over the Crones, the atrophes of the Oboline, like their counterparts in the Book of Emond, are tasked with ensuring that the wards of the Oboline see the afflicted and impure state of their soul as clearly as possible. Upon arrival each ward of the Oboline receives an abhorrent sacrament. Their mouths are forced open with a wooden tool, known as a bite block and they are forced to swallow parasitic larva, known by scholars and theologians as the Nvara Obolus, and by lay people as incubic larvae. They must then receive from a basalt cup, ashen waters, to help the parasite grow and thrive. As the parasite develops in the ward it will sap away their strength, distending their stomach as it grows inside their large intestine. This is to ensure that the wards feel their impurity and corruption grow inside of them, so that each moment of pain and swelling reminds them of their coming Damnation, that as they starve, and the flesh falls away from their face, like the wax of a melting candle, and their experience the defamiliarisation of their bodies as they are appropriated and repossessed externally by their slave driving masters, and internally by the parasite that they are forced to host. Eventually they will become swollen with the eggs of the parasite serving as an incubator and source of nutrition. Once they hatch, the larvae will start to devour the flesh of their host.
The Three Categories of Dying
To ensure that wards are fit for work and do not die too quickly it is necessary to inhibit this process. At the end of every week, and whenever the hourglasses of either of the Crones are overturned the wards are classified according to three categories: Athaid (temporarily redeemed), Suraid (Of limited worth) and Dohstare (worthless). Category Athaid comprises of wards who have fulfilled their quotas, category Suraid of those who have missed their quotas by up to 10%, and category Dohstare is comprised of those who failed to fulfill their quota by a margin 10.1% or higher. Those who are in category Athaid are given a full dose of kataba, a concoction designed to put the parasite growing inside of them into a state of dormancy prolonging their life and reducing the severity of their symptoms. Those in category Suraid are given a half dose, providing them with partial relief, slowing but not ceasing their advancement of their symptoms towards the terminal stages of their affliction.
Those in category Dohstare are given a quarter dose feebly abating their symptoms but doing little to prevent the parasite from killing them. While those in the category Athaid are given the means to survive, those who linger in the other two categories are guaranteed to die within a year to a year and a half in the case of wards who are consistently category Suraid, and approximately three months for those consistently in category Dohstare, a patient who does not receive any dose will die within a few weeks if untreated. Thus the parasites that wards are totally dependent on the authorities of the Oboline for their survival. This dependency is one of the most difficult challenges to overcome as catabase is very difficult to synthesise and is a controlled substance that only the atrophes are permitted to synthesise. Thus the resistance organisations and underground railroads set up to facilitate escapes from the Oboline and provide sanctuary for escapees are inexorably entwined with an illegal trade in Catabase, for in the worst cases the surgery required to remove the parasites is not always possible. Thus many escapees remain dependent of kataba for the remainder of their lives, ensuring that no matter how far they run, they will in some way always be a ward of the Oboline.
The Atrophes are responsible for determining the strength of the doses, allowing them to increase or decrease the Oboline’s death rate at will by strengthening or diluting the kataba synthesised for the wards. Consequently they are some of the most powerful figures in the Oboline and predictably, the most corrupt. Arc’s laws state that once the Oboline is at full capacity debtors cannot be sent to the Oboline and must be granted an extension until such a time as room becomes available. It is therefore in the interest of lenders and usurers such as the bondsman and the Houses of Coin, that the Oboline has a high death rate, so that they can dispossess their debtors of everything they have and turn them into wards.
Thus, the Atrophes will often receive bribes to dilute the kataba doses so as to ‘make room’ for more wards. Families with relatives in the Oboline, particularly those who are wealthy, have also been known to bribe the Atrophes to prepare of strong dose of kataba for their loved ones to ensure their survival and to prevent the deterioration of their health. In addition to the considerable bribes they receive, the atrophes are placed in constant competition with one other. Each wants to record more turns of their hourglass than the other, for the one who fills their hourglass the most times over a given year receives a prize of 50,000 levats from the Houses of Coin in lieu of a salary.
Thus they are incentivised to ensure that as many people die as possible and to adopt an adversarial attitude towards one another. It is thus more expensive to entice an atrophes to strengthen the doses as doing so will decrease their chance of earning the 50,000 levat prize. Thus the incentive must compensate for a huge potential loss of earnings mitigating the financial risk of slowing the Oboline’s death rate. There is an unspoken understanding that the two atrophes must be kept within a state of balance, with neither triumphing for long over the other. In times where this balance has been upset, with one consistently collecting significantly more teeth than the other that they risk assassination or imprisonment. One unfortunate atrophes was abducted and forced into wardship in the Oboline, where it was said that his rival kept him suspended in a small cage in his chambers for several decades until finally giving him permission to die. Since that time, most Atrophes strive to ensure parity, fighting an intense and often bitter rivalry within the razor thin margin that allows both winner and loser to save face.
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