Legend: Song of the Apocalypses by Bastet of Palimpsest
Celestial
Givesday, Tailormoon, 1313
On Givesday, Tailormoon, Songs of the Apocalypse, were sung by Bastet of Palimpsest.
In the Lair of the Sphinx in the Understacks, Lindie Asklepa traded the Amulet of Detect Thoughts that she had stolen from Vizier Leopold Stargazer with the Bastet of Palimpsest in exchange for Legend Lore information about previous apocalypses.
The Unmaking Rage (Termagant, the Iron Sultan(a))
The Final Shot (Conscript Hodge, the Walking Wounded)
The Story They Will Not Tell (Tybalt, the Prince of Orphans)
The Howling (Worgoth, the Wolf at the Door)
The Scouring Blight (Brambleson, the Prince of Rabbits)
The Breach Unseen (Panopticon, the Eyes and Arms)
The Sickness of the Stars, or the White Death (He-That-Walks-Beyond-The-Wall, the Prince in Saffron)
The Ancient Drought (Whirling-In-Rags, the Queen of the Sea)
"A pantheon of strength and civilisation reduced to half-gone ruins mired in slag, the Iron Sultan alone mustering the raw strength to endure, powered by rage. Her-or-his realm reduced from a Sultanate of Bastions to a lone Throneforge carried by an Iron Behemoth down an Adamantine Road that melts and crumbles almost as fast as her-or-his creations can forge it. She-or-he flips violently between striving to rebuild and destructively venting the pain."
The Final Shot (Conscript Hodge, the Walking Wounded)
"A conflict ended in an instant, the Pitiless Machinery of War broken beyond any repair, and yet, in its perverse relentlessness, still ticking. Allies and enemies alike wiped out without ceremony or tactic. The ranks of the Fallen swollen with unstable, crackling ghosts; stars reduced to singularities before their time. The peace and quiet of lifelessness centred on a single field of mourning, tragically broken by shambling, jittering memories of the slain; no survivors but the dead and the one cursed to live, wounded and remembering."
The Story They Will Not Tell (Tybalt, the Prince of Orphans)
"Beyond the treehouse, beyond the Playground, a spot can be found where beyond the railings is a glimpse of a barren waste. With a practised wave of a paw and a gentle, careful gaze that meets the oldest eyes among Their wards, the Prince swerves every time away from explaining more than that the railings are not safe to climb. But Their brother will say more. He will not sugarcoat the truth that keeps him sharp: the pair themselves were orphaned more than once, not only of their families but of their worlds. They have survived three times, and by luck and dedication the Prince has protected what They are charged with. They will not survive more than eight."
The Howling (Worgoth, the Wolf at the Door)
"Even the Wolf at the Door has a wolf at Its door. The door of the Doorstep is the door of the world, and pain and destruction greater and more final than mere starvation waits outside, growing ever closer. A violent searing light that starts in the soul and burns out to the body through the heart and stomach, as if the spark of life inside you simply ran itself down and choked and sputtered. It cannot be escaped. It cannot be outrun. Not even the gods can stave it off. But those hardy enough, scrappy enough, determined enough, tough enough, may find themselves lucky enough to still be standing when the light fades and the pain becomes bearable. And every time, different wispy remnants are left in the maw of the Wolf, and every time there is less of the door and more of the Doorstep."
The Scouring Blight (Brambleson, the Prince of Rabbits)
"When the sage Fiver Cecily asked the Prince of Rabbits why, as a rabbit in his prime, does he not produce children, the Prince confided that he did, once, but does no more, as those he had were not quite as fleet as he, and there were times when they could not outrun their fate as he could. When Fiver cajoled him into saying more, the Prince let slip two things only: that there is a side of the Briarpatch, opposite the Garden, equally far from the Prince's influence, where the briars have not yet regrown and the effects of the blight remain; and that it is the nature of a hare to be swift enough to jump through the fire that scours the underbrush, where so many other creatures that would have dwelt beyond the briars could not."
The Breach Unseen (Panopticon, the Eyes and Arms)
"On six occasions has any creature claimed without reprisal that they escaped from the Bridewell of the Eyes and Arms, though It-and-They would not admit it. All six stories share a common theme: opportunistic flight as some omnipresent cataclysm shakes the defences that constrain them down to their foundations. Walls split. Bars become unfixed. Eyes are blinded and arms wither. Fellow prisoners perish in a blaze, and one prisoner awakes in the wreckage, burned and weakened but intact and unwatched. The Eyes and Arms may be anywhere and everywhere, but nowhere else has it been suggested that It-and-They should need to make use of this imminence not to monitor but to retreat. The Bridewell is rebuilt each time, its impregnability republicised, but in truth no defence has been found that will not crumble when the time comes again. It is not coincidence that the three most feared of the Bridewell's cells were grouped at the very bottom, where they may last even if the structure is shaken to its foundations."
The Sickness of the Stars, or the White Death (He-That-Walks-Beyond-The-Wall, the Prince in Saffron)
"Another song, brighter and rougher and sharper than the dim, smooth, flat song of the Hyades, has been known to burn through the ancient realm of Carcosa once in a slew of epochs, emitted all at once by every star save, perhaps, the Hyades and the Prince, for what is dead yet liveth cannot die and has no life - and so it is that they alone remain on in the crumbling ruins, surrounded by the liquidating corpses of their courtiers. The source and purpose of this White Death eludes even the maddest and most deep-drunk of the Saffron prophets, and some have whispered, and drawn signs of warding, that perhaps there are things even the Prince in Saffron is forbidden to know."
The Ancient Drought (Whirling-In-Rags, the Queen of the Sea)
"There was a time, when the world was not desert, but valleys, and cities, and forests, and seas. The gods were great vast spirits of these domains. Nothing sank, and nothing was overwritten. Those times are gone; the valleys levelled, the cities ruined, the forests ash, the seas dried to salt. The gods have faded, all at once or one by one, until the oldest and vastest and last floats alone, whirling and twirling in the rags of her mind and her memories, Her world lost to us and our world unparseable to Her."
Related Location
Understacks
Understacks
Related Species
Sphinx
Related timelines & articles
Sphinx
Apocalypse History (article)
History of Religion
History of Elderton University (article)
Campaign History
History of the Beastfolk
History of Palimpsest (article)