Reviving The Eternal One
I repeat the quote of last non-chapter. 306: ‘The erasure of this Goddess’s religion had been the Kolonian’s[sic] founding story, the holy wars triggering when the Cosmos-Scryers identified her as this Cycle’s 7th and latest reincarnation of The Eternal One, the hermaphrodite form succeeding King Jazeer’s Nameless Bane, The Deathless One, and The Redeemer.’
Taking a minor tangent regarding this 'Eternal One’, I’ve conducted some side-research on this figure, the bulk of which is omitted here due to length and irrelevancy. Through this side-research, I have determined that this Kolonian villain is the linguistic root of the ‘Enemy-Bear-Eternal’ phrase used in the aforementioned monologue by Karnon. He is, additionally, the author of the bizarre letter about mountain climbing cannibal children that frames the Left-Hand King training chapters (273-277), ‘King Rawaahjun Who Kills The Eternal’.
The investigation that uncovered this connection was, in its initial goal, a failure. I was prompted after noticing in my tabulations the repetition of the word ‘Eternal’ across these scattered episodes and suspected they might provide answers to Karnon’s unexplained speech and his unexplained schemes in general. Towards those answers, my quest reached a dead end with The Eternal One's death. Nevertheless, I present below the reconstructed story of this semi-mythological figure, ‘The Eternal One’, since it’s an interesting parable of immortality/non-immortality and an explanation for yet another of the saga’s obscure men. From the wide distribution of the chapter numbers, the reader might gloss a rough map of my omitted ordeals.
The Myth of King Rawaahjun, a.k.a. He Who Kills The Eternal, a.k.a. The Eternal One, a.k.a. The Enemy-Bear-Eternal
Four thousand years ago, Rawaahjun was a Left-Hand King and an Earthfriend.
----274: 'King Rawaahjun…3821 - 3719 B.P.'
----277: 'Four centuries in, the reigning Left Hand switched his apprentice to an Earthfriend.'
Rawaahjun used his Earthfriend Class magic to become a gigantic bear and control the region of Heimland.
----277: ‘snow beast’
----274: ‘The Tasheezi Empire had ruled the present Heimland region...'
One of these regions would splinter after his reign into ‘Neeshif’, the ancestral homeland of the Kolonians, who, thousands of years later, would continue to despise their former ruler so much they still refuse to use his cursed name.
----125: ‘The Kolonians were the last hold-outs from when The Neeshif Empire invaded Yamalai and Kanaru.’
----88: 'Heimland, Neeshif Republic, Koti City…the intellectual capital of Saana’s north...’
----306: 'The Eternal One...King Jazeer’s Nameless Bane…’
At the end of his reign, King Rawahjuun went mad and left civilisation for the north. There, he lived as a snowbeast/bear until he was slain by his apprentice and successor, King Jazeer Who Gazes North, who also died during the combat.
----274: ‘“Strength be upon you, Young Jazeer…I have now elected you...to become my princely apprentice.”’
----277: ‘Jazeer…the strongest of the lineage…Then, one random day, Jazeer’s apprentice was assassinated under unknown circumstances. Instead of rearing another, the King, after the funeral, wandered off into the frozen wastelands north of Heimland. From there, he never returned. Most believed he’d perished in mutual combat with a snow beast capable of equalling his might, a monstrous death roar travelling from over the horizon a few years after his disappearance.’
----306: 'The Eternal One...King Jazeer’s Nameless Bane…’
Prior to that showdown, the mad bear-king terrorised the tribal natives of this snowy north, and they developed from the incident a permanent adversarial relationship with bears, drinking their blood and using them for a curse word. One female descendent of these tribes would thousands of years later marry a trickster deity, who thousands of years later again would bring her into The Tyrant of Saana’s saga for a cryptic parody monologue.
----183A: 'The Trickster God had performed a costume change, switching to his ex-wife's clothing...'
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----183B: ‘Enemy-Bear' is a Mangerish symbol for a destined enemy.’
----163A: ‘...a brother-sister pair of sibling deities who ruled Manger in Heimland crossed a 140km strait between their territory and Togavi with an army, annexing the western half.’
----163B: ‘As the brother deity, Vollus, later described in a groomsman speech, he was startled when his sister, Donnera, parried with a counterproposal.’
----266: 'The Mangerish were, originally, several Inuit-like tribes from the frozen waste north of Heimland, scattered herders of reindeer, drinkers of fermented seal-blubber and bear-blood.'
The End.
Interpretative nuances. The revival of his narrative does require unknotting multiple apparent contradictions.
The epithet in his letter ‘Kills The Eternal’ initially suggested to me that the guy slew The Eternal One, but I then noted that the titles of these kings uses an ambiguous present tense, c.f. ‘King Jazeer Who Gazes North’, which doesn’t establish whether it’s a task done, being done, or intended. Then, it clicked, after further rumination, that ‘Kills The Eternal’ might not be directed at anybody in particular. It instead might be a mad declaration like ‘I’m going to kill eternity [i.e. become immortal].’ The king’s letter certainly affirms this level of arrogance (276: '"Where they have fallen, where you would fall, I, whose grip is stronger than all of yours, will succeed in my ascent."’), and one of the king’s quotes indicates a self-conviction of the reincarnating power ascribed to him by the Kolonian mythos (306: ‘...This Cycle’s 7th and latest reincarnation of The Eternal One...’; 277: ‘“They would forget and return to building their pointless bridges of corpses, as had been the way since my previous retreat to The Cycle, as would be the way until my next return.”’).
For additional evidence of his villainy, I offer the constellation of lore below on his apprentice, King Jazeer. Between the fragments, I interpret a second hidden myth for this successor king, hazed so hard during his training by The Eternal One that he mentally cracks, suicides The Left-Hand Tradition by assassinating the next apprentice, suicides himself after eliminating his mentor, and, in turn, suicides the empire.
----277A: ‘The last Left Hand, King Jazeer...the strongest of the lineage...’
----276: ‘As part of [The Left Hand] practice, as their self-worship, they actively subjected themselves to the unconventional and taboo. They traded their royal clothes for rags, they refused to bathe, they made slaves and foreign women and men their brides, and they covered their faces in hideous tattoos. Public rumours circulated of the domestic enemies they were in charge of executing being put through the worst of it, before death and after. Torture, rape, cannibalism, necrophilia - The Left Hands were suspected of every crime buried in the graveyard.’
----277B: ‘Jazeer’s apprentice was assassinated under unknown circumstances…a monstrous death roar travelling from over the horizon a few years after his disappearance…The abrupt absence of a vital part of their military caused The Tasheezi to lose the subsequent invasions and join King Jazeer beneath the muted snows of history...’
The Kolonian's quote that began this investigation offers another contradiction, indicating that The Eternal One is not dead but still alive, being ‘eternal’. The builder’s whole narrative, however, drips with cynicism over a religious crusade that leads to nothing but his infection with a terminal parasite. Drawing on additional, intratextual support, the last entity he lists as a supposed manifestation, (306: ‘and The Redeemer’), the reader knows could not be part of any reincarnating lineage because Henry duels that monkey god-emperor at the start of this saga, in a jungle where it’s been trapped for seven thousand years while its brain decayed. Less obscurely, if there was a crazy super-bear still lurking around Saana, in bear form or not, presumably this would have been mentioned at some point in the saga. So, I ask, where is the eternal super-bear? There is no super-bear.
Adopting the builder’s cynical tone, I thus deduce that his nation’s identification method (306: ‘the holy wars triggering when the Cosmos-Scryers identified her as this Cycle’s 7th and latest reincarnation of The Eternal One’) is a contrivance, that the whole concept of an ‘Eternal One’ may be an amorphous religious boogeymen. Although inspired by a genuine fanatical despot convinced of his eternity, it has, after this figure’s death, been repurposed to ship crusaders from warfront to warfront without the propaganda chore of inventing new enemies. I’d liken this practice, in modern terms, to us in Planet Earth’s 20s lazily labelling all our enemies Hitler, e.g. ‘The game devs are, literally, Hitler.’
Synchronic Meditation and Conclusion: In The Eternal One’s continuation as this boogeyman, there are many complex moral lessons we might derive, but what I’ve, personally, come to appreciate is one of the saga’s subtlest variations on the immortal theme.
Like a villainous Achilles-Hitler, given an impossible moral choice between 1) a humble but inconsequential life long-lived and 2) a glorious burst of anti-heroic mass-murder, the bear-god, choosing the harder second, has seen his legend ripple on for millennia beyond his tragic passing. His image has since evolved and splintered. In the case of the Kolonians, it has become a highly-flexible device for casus belli. In the case of the bear-blood-drinking Mangerish that Karnon parodies, it has become a generic slur for nemesis. In the case of Togavi's pranksters, it has become as an indecipherable historical satire. And in the case of myself, it has become an example—and a lesson—of the difficulty chasing even the most minor of this saga's mythological tangents.
To become all of this, to become myth, in all its puzzling vagueness and vagaries, is that not, too, a type of immortality, I ask? And the ‘Eternal’ One, I'll add, preserved his carcass in the enigmas of the lore in a mere game century (274: 'King Rawaahjun…3821 - 3719 B.P.'). It's impressive, in a way. Even if it provides no apparent guidance regarding anything else in this saga, I think there is infinite wisdom all of us can take home from his story. Thank you, Eternal One, and may you rest in eternal peace.