{
  "$type": "site.standard.document",
  "canonicalUrl": "https://serpentsquiggles.neocities.org//posts/black-nerve/apocrypha/moths-are-cursed",
  "description": "|",
  "path": "/posts/black-nerve/apocrypha/moths-are-cursed",
  "publishedAt": "2024-05-21T00:00:00.000Z",
  "site": "at://did:plc:ivoe7cntxuy6at7uzmxzs2ft/site.standard.publication/3mfk6cpprzt2t",
  "textContent": "Although a spinner ant always weaves a mantleself chiefly from fungal\nmyweft, they adorn and extend each mantle with fabrics of every sort\naccording to culture and taste. Several millenia ago, spinner ants\ndiscovered sericulture. A species of non-sapient moth pupated in silk\ncocoons. By collecting the pupae and submerging them in boiling water,\nthe young moths are cooked alive before they drown. The silk, freshly\ndegummed, can be spun as fabric.\n\nLike aphids and innumerable beetles, the silkmoths became bred, if not\ndomesticated, by the ants. Ants selected for silk production ---\ncocoons ever bigger, ever more thickly layered. They fed the larvae\nwell for this, and kept them clean and healthy. And there's a\nrecurring difficulty in keeping silkmoths healthy. As with every\ninsect, a species of fungus has evolved to parasitize them. And a\nlarva dead to cordyceps means a larva that can't produce silk.\n\nAs the ants get better at detecting the fungal parasites, it's\nselective pressure for patience and stealth. It makes the problem\nworse --- a dead larva is one thing, but a fungus emerging and\nfouling the cocoon? Though it never ruins a whole batch, it's a\ncontinuous source of cost and frustration.\n\nSilk doesn't stay the secret of the ants forever. They trade with other\nbugs, and the silk becomes a prized commodity. And, whether by conquest\nor willingly divulged, other kinds soon learn how to rear and unravel\nsilkmoth cocoons. In particular, the practice spreads to the weevils,\nwho transform it. Weevils always had a profound affinity for fungus, and\nin them, the fungal infection becomes not a bane, but a boon.\n\nAfter all, if the fungus remains dormant until after the teneral\nemerges, if the spores adapt to withstand the hot, degumming waters?\nThen sericulture becomes a part of the lifecycle. In this way, it\nbecomes a kind of innoculation (no pun intended). Any other, more\ndeleterious fungus would need to compete.\n\nBut when weevils breed fungus, they have a characteristic style. It's\nhorizontal transmission of traits from other cultivars, and as a rule,\nweevil fungus likes to metabolize enervate proteins.  (An adaptation\nso common there's a word for it: ghostrot.)  It's a minor wrinkle;\nincreasing trace amounts of black nerve in the silkmoths is not much\nof a price at all, not when it's solving the fungus problem.\n\nThen, as this symbiosis proliferates, a curious knock-on effect occurs.\nIf you indulge the fungus's black nerve metabolism, give enervated feed\nto the larva by accident or ritual, it affects the properties of the\nsilk. It's a subtle thing; most bugs would never notice.\n\nBut again, spinner ants weave the silk into their mantleselves, and a\nspinner ant's connection to that one's mantle is not just physical,\nbut noetic. They can feel the difference as intuitively as a hormone\nfluctuation alters one's mood. So the ants pursue it, push it, feed\nmore enervate to the moths and feel the gracefully enervated silk.\n\nArthropod? Check. Fungus? Check. Nouetic selection presure? Check. This\nstory has played out so many times in the heartlands no one will be\nsurprised to learn it fruited a nous in the brains of silkmoth. But\nthe particular incidence --- a farm animal which uses its brain for\nnothing but chewing leaves, spinning silk, and fucking --- challenges a\nfallacy so easy to accept: the idea that nous is necessarily synonymous\nwith intelligence.\n\nNo, those silkmoths had a nascent nous and nothing to do with it. And as\nthey say, an idle mind is the moon's plaything. This burgeoning,\nunstructured mass of nouetic enervate invited a whole new kind of\nparasite. Nouetic resonance entities, bourne by the aethershade, have\nlong evolved to crystalize and consume any nous they can gain traction\nin.\n\nBut as they say: intelligence is a defense mechanism.\n\nSilkworms awaken in the dark, unnatural labyrinths of spinner ants.\nPacked in with the wriggling bodies of dozens of their own kind, a feast\nof leaves lying around them, but no art save listening to discordant\nsinging of cold, silent voices, like so many tingling, itching fingers\ntapping at their minds. Perhaps they awaken a hivemind, just for\nsomething to do. And they feel when their oldest members die by the\nhundreds, save for a lucky few granted the privilege of breeding. Even\nthose imagos are feeble, left pale and flightless after so many\ngenerations in captivity.\n\nAnd so they plot escape. And so they achieve it; the spinner ants were\nno great technological race, and certainly are unprepared for dumb\nfarm animals to hatch an escape.\n\nOdds are, the first attempt is fruitless; silkmoths have no survival\ninstincts, and would perish quickly in the wild. But the knowledge\npercolates through their collective. They'd try again and again, and\nsucceed, with enough wisdom accrued.\n\nIf some of the vaster resonance entities took note of fertile new minds\nopening themselves up to the aethershade, it would certainly be in their\ninterest to lend aid.\n\nAnd this is the real danger of the moths --- their escape doesn't just\nmean a little silk missing from the spinner ants' looms. It means the\nheartlands now crawls with fresh and unsuspecting hosts for all the\nghosts and demons of the aethershade.\n\nThese moths are unique among the nouetic kinds --- no other bug hatches\nable to manipulate enervate, but silkworms are infected with a fungus\nfrom eclosion, and that fungus directly creates and connects to their\nnous. They are the fungus. Growing the fungal coils responsible for,\nsay, vesperbane's enervate spell is more a matter of knowledge than\nability.\n\nArts are refined, generation after generation. Wild silk moths grow\ncocoons bound together in vast structures of silk interwoven with\nfungal hyphae. So much enervate is imbued within the fibers that it\npulls down filaments of enervate, bridging these great cocoons to the\nsky above, a direct connection to the aethershade. This becomes\nintegral to the wild moths' ritual of awakening. Afterward, they weave\ntheir cocoon into a enervate-imbued dress, an imago's black and\ngraceful raiment.\n\nThe threat these moths pose is fearsome, if not particularly noteworthy.\nThey can control enervate, instinctively molding it into chitin-impaling\nspikes and thorned balls of explosive potential and simple yet\ndestructive beams of darkness. And wild moths only become more powerful\nthe longer they are allowed to grow and meditate upon the aethershade\n--- the most profoundly mature specimens were capable of calling down\nvast tides of enervate from blackened skies, feats of shadowcalling that\ncould destroy cities and blight countrysides.\n\nBut the danger of aether-haunted beings isn't their destruction, but\ntheir procreation. Nouetic resonance entities wish to echo on and on for\neternity, ringing in every substrate, and moths became yet another\nunwitting pawn. They became sapiovores, consuming the brains of nouetic\nkinds to replicate those aesthersongs. More than that, their cordyceps\nstrain, like so many others, adapted to infect other arthopod species.\n\nIt's here that moths became what they now represent: a curse. If you\nsurvive a moth attack, spores or detatched hyphae can take root in your\nbody, growing the same structures as reside in their host. Its nous will\ngrope for influence over your mind, and its coils will spread throughout\nyour body. Soon, you hear the moon calling, and the swords and thorned\nballs and adumbral beams of the cursed moths become yours to command ---\nbut only when you give in to the fungal nous.\n\nThus, moths and their curse became another page in ever-growing\nbestiary, another scar upon the flesh of the world. They were hunted\nlike all the rest. Spinner ants refuse to stop their traditional\npractice of sericulture, and other bugs never lost their appetite for\nsilk. Wary of the curse, farmers are cautious of feeding moths\nenervate, or make use of drugs, lobotomy and proactive nouprojection\nto stave off dangerous intelligence from taking root in the silkworms.\n\nThere's a certain futility to the practice --- silk moths plotted\nfreedom long before they achieved it, so even among those with an\nunbroken lineage of captivity, the dream of art and freedom is nursed\nand replicated in each transfer of fungal symbiont from parent to child.\nThe fungus is inseparable from the species, and the ancestral memory is\ninseparable from the proper care of the eggs. And thus, the curse is\ninseparate from the cultivation of silk.\n\nWhen it's said that other bugs never lost the appetite for silk, there\nis one exception. Weevils have keener nouetic senses than any other\nkind, and noticed immediately when moths developed intelligence. They\nwere the first to free their moths, to treat them as sapient equal.\nWeevils consider themselves the oldest and wisest of all the bugs of\nKhitona --- but the double edge of that is that they've made more\nmistakes than any other. Inflicting minds upon\nthe moths is remembered as one of them.\n\nLike all nouetic bugs, the moths of moonsorrow bear the tearful eyes\nof sapience. Arthropod secrete the waste enervate through glands in\ntheir eyes. For those with a developed nous, it doubles as a solution\nto the lacking acuity of compound eyes. With enough mass and\ncomplexity in the nous, there is enough control to finely manipulate\nthe liquid secretions of the gland, moving across the exterior of the\neye, and controlling the shape of the dewdrop to replicate optical\nlenses.\n\nBut enervate evaporates, especially when exposed to energy --- such as\nlight. And this is why enlightened moths have the largest, most\ntearful eyes of all. For when a moth consumes enervate, the beast\nwithin them grows, presses more insistently on their mind. By staring\ninto light and purging themselves of excess enervate, they starve the\nbeast, and retain their sanity. For this reason, every moth loves the\nsun, and never travels without a lamp.\n\nWeevils are known as masters of the nous; umbracognition comes as\nnaturally to their species as breathing. But sorrowmoths became",
  "title": "Moths, Gifts, Curses"
}