{
  "$type": "site.standard.document",
  "canonicalUrl": "https://serpentsquiggles.neocities.org//posts/black-nerve/apocrypha/sun-cutter",
  "path": "/posts/black-nerve/apocrypha/sun-cutter",
  "publishedAt": "2024-06-20T00:00:00.000Z",
  "site": "at://did:plc:ivoe7cntxuy6at7uzmxzs2ft/site.standard.publication/3mfk6cpprzt2t",
  "tags": [
    "ramble"
  ],
  "textContent": "Alright, I kinda wanna talk about this one guy in Black Nerve --- and\nthat's almost literal.\n\nHe is the one, the indivisible, the lord of all batkind --- the\nSun-Cutter King.  His signature technique was the [All-Conquering\nDivision!]{.spell}\n\nIn later retellings of his myths, thousands of years removed, it tends\nto get simplified as him having a \"tongue sharp enough to cut\nanything.\"  (This is no metaphor; his vespers had endowed his mouth\nwith a whip sword that was known to behead people with its lash.)\n\nBut that's not really enough to explain what his technique truly was.\n\nFirst, it's worth noting that the most oldest, and still most common\narchetypes for the vespers' design, are breath weapons and enhanced\nclaw attacks --- two arts that come intuitively to the bats.\n\nThus, it's a bit more accurate to say that the Sun-Cutter had raw\nslashing force as a breath weapon.\n\nHis preferred style of attack is a series of rapid cuts dividing the\ntarget into eight pieces, composed of lines that seem to radiate out\nfrom a single point, as if the rays of a bleeding sun --- this is the\neponymous sun-cut.\n\nNow, how he performs this technique bears comment.  He draws one line\nwith either of his foreclaws, and another with his tongue.  You will\nnote that this is only three lines, and you need at least four to\ndivide something into eight pieces.\n\nHow does this work? ~~Simple: his power level is so high he could add\nthree ones together and get four.~~\n\nBut no, this leads nicely into elaboration of what makes this\ntechnique truly powerful.  See, the king only does part of the work,\nthen the technique completes itself.\n\nBecause let's be honest, cutting things really really good is\npowerful, but it's not \"strongest in the verse\" powerful.^Even\n[Sukuna had other\nbullshit going on.]\n\nWe can imagine, perhaps, the Sun-Cutter honed an\nenervate affinity profoundly optimized for cutting,\nbut again, it's still just cutting.\n\nAnd importantly, part of the premise of Black Nerve is that\nphilosophically, the magic system is mere technology --- techniques\nfrom thousands of years ago just fundamentally aren't as advanced,\nrefined, or powerful as what modern vespers are capable of.  This is\nthe mystical stone age we're talking about.\n\nOf course, applying this reasoning depends somewhat on how the king's\ntechnique actually functions --- wheels from the stone age remain\nintrinsically effective.\n\nOne simple and compelling way to implement universal cutting exists\nthrough enervate mechanics: imagine creating a sheet of enervate that\nblocks interactions between atoms on either side of it.  If you can\nmanifest that sheet for a single moment then blow it up, the different\nparts would fall away as if they were different objects.  (Fittingly,\nthis really isn't cutting --- it's division.)\n\nStill, it's not fully clear how this form of technique could be\nconvincingly generalized to cut seminerves or enervate constructs; and\nit is being able to cut through any technique that makes the\nsun-cutter truly worth reckoning with.\n\nBut we digress.\n\nTruth is, the base mechanics of the king's ability aren't actually\nimportant, because at the limit, what matters is the narrative\naround his abilities. You see, the effect of [All-Conquering\nDivision]{.spell} extends to at least two conceptual levels.\n\nFirst, there's a important epithet I left out of the my initial glaze.\n\nHe is also the Author of Arete.  In a meaningful sense, he created\nthe vespers' magic system; it was he who first divided power itself\ninto fungible units that could be accounted and transacted.\n\nThe vespers know this, and they associate this with him so profoundly\nthat they consider arete, endowments, and techniques themselves, a\nvalid axis on which his division can operate.\n\nNow, it would oversimplifying this to say he can cut you off from your\nvespers, but...\n\nWhat you're noticing here is that the operative agent here is not any\nof the specific, concrete mechanics of what the Sun-Cutter is\nphysically capable of, but the high level narrative of what vespers\nexpect him to do.\n\nThus, the true power of the All-Conquering Division is that it is, by\ndefinition, a technique that cuts anything.  That isn't a statement\nof fact --- that's a command.\n\nThe sun-cutter only needs to make three cuts for the final cut to be\nmade for him.  He draws the lines, and if the target isn't thereby\ncut, the vespers actively task themselves with divising a way to cut\nit anyway.\n\nHis is an offense that adapts to anything.\n\n- - -\n\nIn the Sun-Cutter's era, there was not yet any notion of 'prophecy in\nthe flesh', but it isn't altogether incorrect to think of\nAll-Conquering Division as creating a prophecy of destruction for\nanything it initially fails to cut.\n\n(Upon the Sun-Cutter's head once sat a crown of myriad fractal\nbone-blades growing out from his flesh. These are the antlers every\nelder bat boasted.  It is said that every time he conquered a new foe,\nhe grew a new blade there.)\n\nYou may wonder: who is the sun-cutter, actually?  Where and why did he\nlearn to do any of this?\n\nBack in [](dialogue-with-plagues.html), one of the proposed\nexplanations for the origin of vespers was that king of bats created\nthem to tame the virulent blood plagues.\n\nBut let's go back further.  Remember, weevil priestess can become\nimmortal, eventually learning the art of transmigrating their minds\ninto young bodies, reincarnating themselves.  This is the culmination\nof weevil wizardry.\n\nWhen there were dragonriders, the dragonrider pact was considered to\nbe mutally exclusive with learning most arts of wizardry, including\ntransmigration.  A weevil's soul can only have one mate.\n\nHraal, the greatest dragonrider, so adored for her deeds and\nadventures, was allowed to be the exception.  And what an exception\nshe was!  Her genius was said to be sufficient that she had rewritten\nthe process of transmigration.  Immortality soon went from something\nachieved perhaps once a century by the greatest wizard of a\ngeneration, to something any weevil could learn if they devoted\ndecades to the task.\n\nBut you know how this story ends; Hraal learned wizardry, and so did\nher dragon, who tried to save a her miscarried litter through lunar\ndivination, and weevils claim this was the origin of ichor.\n\nThe sorrow and the blasphemy was so great, that as Hraal and so many\nothers entered the cycle of reincarnation, the elders would no longer\nallow weevils to take bats as mounts.  All of them remembered how the\nfirst attempts to teach a bat wizardry lead to catastrophe, and an\nimmortal loving a mortal creature was deemed too painful to allow ---\neven immoral.\n\nAnd so there was a kind of species-wide divorce as the weevils\nretreated into their newly widespread immortality, and bats, once\ndomesticated and uplifted, were left to go feral, stories of their old\nmasters still echoing in their throats as plagues claimed them.\n\nAnd then one bat rediscovered lunar divination.  Perhaps he pieced it\ntogether from the stories, perhaps secrets were revealed to him by a\nfoolish weevil.\n\nTheogony is the ritual by which a weevil foundress first connects with\nthe fungal core of a new gallery, binding her to the roots of the\nworld and revealing to her her role in the cycles and machinations of\nambrosia.\n\nLunar theogony is a dangerous, forbidden ritual of divination in which\na weevil opens their mind just as intimately to the adumbrations of\nthe black moon.  It's a path that leads only to madness and atrocity.\n\nWhen that one bat performed lunar theogony, they witnessed memories.\nThey remembered dying in the womb.  And before that, they remembered\nbeing Hraal's dragonmate, living a life of adventure denoued by\ntragedy, and dying on a soft bed, the claw of their withered wing held\nby a bug in a young new body.\n\nThis, be it a vision or hallucination, lead the bat to conclude they\nwere now the reincarnated mind of Hraal's dragon --- and her stillborn\nchild.\n\nThe weevil elders dismissed this as impossible derangement, and did\nnot even allow them to meet the current incarnation of Hraal.\n\nThis brings us to the vespers. ^[Would it be incorrect to say vespers\nare the product of this bat's attempt to create a new dragonrider\npact? Interesting to consider about how profound an inversion it is\n--- because for all the assertions of equivalence, it's not wrong to\nnote that the dragonrider pact was created by, and therefore is\ndesigned to benefit, bugs first of all.  So what might a pact designed\nby bats, for bats, look like?]\n\nThe vespers saved bats from the ichorplagues and granted them mastery\nover the bugs that had hunted and slaughtered them.  And the\nSun-Cutter held mastery and profound influence over the vespers.\n\nEquipped with the All-Conquering Division, he led the bats with\nuncontested strength.  He promised the vespers unending growth, and he\npromised the bats an everlasting kingdom.  And people believed him;\nhe seemed unstoppable.  After all, the world itself would bend so that\nhe always won.\n\nNow, the weevils don't like this at all.  They dislike it on a number\nof levels, but the biggest is probably the matter of slavery.  The\nthrallspell, and the millions of mantids it kept like livestock, was\nan atrocity that needed to be stopped immediately.\n\nThe problem is, you won't win if you simply kill the Sun-Cutter (if\nthey even possessed a way to kill the sun-cutter).  That would only\ncreate more chaos; vespers exist now, and even if every brick of the\nSun-Cutter's kingdom was destroyed, bats would still be able to use\nvespers to enthrall mantids.  Short of exterminating bats or vespers,\nwhat solution was there?\n\nThis brings us to the instrumental transcendence plan.\n\nThe weevil elders wondered: what if they planted a seed and enchanted\nit to grow a really, really big --- a mountain of wood, a veritable\nworld-tree --- and then feed it to ambrosia and used the resulting\nmegafungus to cast a spell big enough to affect the whole heartlands?\n\nWhat spell?  One of the old stories the weevils tell in hush",
  "title": "Let's Talk About the Sun-Cutter"
}