{
  "$type": "site.standard.document",
  "canonicalUrl": "https://serpentsquiggles.neocities.org//posts/black-nerve/apocrypha/pharmacia",
  "path": "/posts/black-nerve/apocrypha/pharmacia",
  "publishedAt": "2022-08-19T00:00:00.000Z",
  "site": "at://did:plc:ivoe7cntxuy6at7uzmxzs2ft/site.standard.publication/3mfk6cpprzt2t",
  "tags": [
    "ramble"
  ],
  "textContent": "One day, I posted:\n\n!most Black Nerve lore is like this, TBH.\n\nPrompting this response:\n\n> Okay, so I understand that mala being held by mantid groups in\n> common can lead to enclosure by clans or other power-seekers who\n> then use control of the vespermala to cement their advantage, but\n> what are pharmacia, and what are nocturnal accounting and\n> accumulation?\n>\n> --- Hasturtimesthree\n\nSo the important part about the disenthralled rebellion's mala storage\nisn't enclosure, it's that collective access, coupled with mantid's\nshort lifespans, meant that there was a remarkable increase in the\namount of cross-pollination and diversity in vesper crypts. For most of\ntheir natural history (albeit less so in the late myriad kingdoms, as\nthe bats began to amble towards trade and vassalage), a vesper's\ndescendants were very likely to live in the same host or a small number\nof closely related hosts. Any idea or innovation might take many\ngenerations to have a chance of dispersing across the vesperbat\npopulation. Most did not.\n\nWith the disenthralled rebellion, though, it wouldn't just take fewer\ngenerations, those generations would be shorter as well. In addition, it\nwas mantids who invented haruspicy and tarsign interaction, and they\nmade more clever use of the recording and computational properties of\narete than the bats did.\n\nThese facts coupled together meant that, at the risk of some\nmantidomorphization, it was now possible (and indeed necessary) for\nthere to be a kind of 'vesper culture' in a way there wasn't and\ncouldn't be before.\n\nEven when the rebellion-turned-alliance grew to a size that might\ndiminish these initial proximity effects, mala stores were centrally\ntaxed and traded around, and this meant they they continued to be widely\ndispersed.\n\nNow let's skip ahead a millenia, and see where this all leads. A\npharmacium is a stewartry-maintained institution that offers a number of\nvesperbane services:\n\n- a pharmacium must provide means to conduct the pharmakon rites,\n  given a writ of initiation from a countenanced body;\n- a pharmacium may offer additional mala at standard rates to a bane\n  with validated countenance;\n- a pharmacium must perform haruspicy examinations, to the end of\n  preventative or emergency care, for vespertine wellness;^[this\n  service is available to banes even without countenance --- though\n  many countenancing bodies also grant insurance...)\n- a pharmacium performs the the extraction of mala, sclerotia, etc.\n  such items may be stored in a 'vault' (which must be highly secured\n  and insured per regulation) or sold at standard rates; and\n- a pharmacium offers services for the swearing, validating, reading,\n  and restructuring of oaths.^[One special type of oath that is\n  characteristic of pharmacia is the loaning of arete to be repaid\n  with interest. Another is the creation and maintenance of technical\n  property rights.]\n\nLet's switch topics again. A phenomena is peculiar to banes, scarcely\nknown to the bats, is captured in the folk wisdom that 'a mala choses\nits bane'. the mechanism for this rests in the fact that vespermala\nhave very specific, nuanced odors and nerve-signatures. you might liken\nthis to a kind of pheromone, and endowment by the vespers means a bane\nis saliently attracted to those mala that advertise mutual\ncompatibility. (One vesper might be innately suited to water-affine\nenervate, say, and the smell of their mala would declare as much. a\nharuspex could tell you that outright. a water-caster, meanwhile, would\nmerely feel a pull, or say this mala seems nicer than another). A\nside-effect of this is allowed specialization of vespers.\n\nAgain, mantids invented haruspicy, while bats simply ate their mala\nwith animalistic incuriosity. Historically, as vespers gain what we'll\ncall 'culture', you might imagine the complexity of these\nmala-pheromones coevolved with the ability to interpret them. Just how\nmuch information could you convey like this? We've read the example of\na mala that says 'I want to eclose in a water-affine bane'. How about\na mala that says 'I want to eclose in a powerful bane'? But of course,\nevery vesper would say that.\n\nSo what if they produced, alongside their mala, a sclerotia containing\nan amount of arete --- a bid, if you will, and certain requests are\nhonored in proportion with the bid.\n\nBut if a mala can be produced with separable sclerotia, why not go\nfarther? What if a vesper bids arete with instruction 'loan this out to\na good bane with an oath to pay it back'.\n\nHaruspices learned to interpret and enact these sorts of instructions,\nand it's this accounting that most distinguishes a clanwealth ---\nwhich, otherwise, might seem quite similar to a vesperbat's board.\n\nOne of a vesper's most driving desires to obtaining the calories\nsufficient to survive, and accruing still more for future use, and to\ninvest in the flourishing of its descendants\n\nA good vesper, then, is one that gets as much arete as it can.\n\nMost often, this would take the form of ensuring a host's success,\nallowing them to secure it ever more arete.\n\nBut with the rise of malum accounting, other options became available.\nSuppose a very good vesper grants its host exceptional success, and\nthereby accrues a great store of arete. When it produces its\noffspring's mala, it puts the instruction to loan its arete out with\ninterest. Once that interest is repaid, grant it to its descendants\nand only then allow them to eclose in a host\n\nNow, it costs arete for an vesper to sustain itself as a living thing in\na bane's body. It costs arete to grow that bane endowments. If you\nwanted to minimize cost and maximize profits, you'd have to carefully\nevaluate that equation.\n\n(These days, it also costs arete to sit as a mala in a pharmacia's\nvault --- the attendants, after all, need recompense for the work it\ntakes to keep mala clean and free of rot and atrophy. Still, this may\nnot cost as much, depending on factors.)\n\nIf your lineage has a good flow of arete from things other than being a\nvesper in a bane's gut, it would make sense to minimize the time you\nspent in guts --- or, framed a different way, timing your eclosion to\nmaximize the arete available to you each incarnation\n\nStill, at a certain point, if you had enough oaths all paying\ninterest... it might not actually be worth it to ever return to a\nbane's gut. The opportunity cost --- you could get more out of the\narete by spending it elsewhere.\n\nSo, what is a nocturne? A nocturne is a vesper that need not ever eclose\nwithin a bane. An autonomous pharmacium vault. Arete, self-sustaining.\n\n(It might seem terribly wasteful to mantid sensibilities --- all those\ncalories accumulating, with no one to ever actually inherit and consume\nthem? And indeed, for some vespers, the prospect of never knowing the\nbeauty of squirming in flesh, of fashioning endowments, of mating, is a\nhorror. For others, it is ascension.)\n\n> I'm not sure how this instruction leads to a clanwealth.\n\nThat feels a bit backwards. what the text is saying is that this is\nwhat a clanwealth is. For example, \"a horse-drawn carriage is\ndistinguished by being a cart drawn by horses\", doesn't mean horses\nlead to horse-drawn carriages, just they're defined by being a cart\ndrawn by horses.\n\nSo it's not that loans necessarily lead to clanwealths, it's that\nhistorically, clanwealths did accounting in a way that the most\nsuperficially similar thing (bat hoards) did not.\n\nNow, the historical reason for this phenomena being at first a clan\ninnovation is, well, who would have the resources to build a\nproto-pharmacium? What would happen to the owners of such? Clanwealths\nare the antecedents to pharmacia because they are expensive to make,\nmeaning clans would be more capable of creating them than anything else.\nThey are profitable, meaning anyone who created one would meteorically\nrise in status, influence and wealth, which their children would of\ncourse inherit.\n\n> Nocturnal accounting, then, is just the oath-interest that is owed a\n> nocturne, sustaining them while they sit in their pharmacium. A\n> problem: what if a nocturne's debtors die, or their interest is paid\n> back in full?\n\nFirst, note that a vesper can have rights to a vault, so a nocturne will\ngenerally have enough arete stockpilled to pay the pharmacium fees for\nmany years even absent inflow.\n\nSecond, without commenting on the incentives or interest rates, I will\nnote that part of nocturnal accounting also entails making new loans in\naccordance with the vesper's recorded will. What happens when income\nfrom a loan stops? Ideally, new loans can be made as instructed.\n\nUltimately, if all else fails and a nocturne is unable to sustain\nitself, for some of them this just means they'll be forced to go back\nto being regular vespers. But for the oldest nocturnes, their mala may\nhave become unviable with age or accident and there are no extent heirs.\nThen the nocturne may be forced to adopt a distantly related or\ncompletely unrelated vesper as a new heir. Of course, some restrictive\ncharters have adoption restrictions such that no valid heir exists. In\nsuch cases, the nocturne simply dies, in whatever sense a creature of\naccount and policy can die.",
  "title": "Pharmacia & Nocturnes"
}