{
  "$type": "site.standard.document",
  "canonicalUrl": "https://serpentsquiggles.neocities.org//posts/black-nerve/apocrypha/oosifea",
  "path": "/posts/black-nerve/apocrypha/oosifea",
  "publishedAt": "2021-12-02T00:00:00.000Z",
  "site": "at://did:plc:ivoe7cntxuy6at7uzmxzs2ft/site.standard.publication/3mfk6cpprzt2t",
  "textContent": "In the late chaos era, expansion of the ten thousand kingdoms of\nbatkind and their practice of magically enthralling mantids had diven\nthe ancestors of the welkinmarked into hiding.  They barricaded\nthemselves in a tiny pocket of land sheltered by the Welkin Peaks.\nThese lands, now forgotten, are thought to be near what is now border\nbetween the Black Taiga and the Land of Mountains.\n\nTheir new home was rocky and hostile to vegetation: mantids and their\nnoble roach servants struggled to farm it.  And upon them was the\nadded challenge of doing this while remaining inscrutable to any\nenthralled mantis scouts or bats flying overhead.\n\nSome mantids rose up to become protectors of this last bastion, to\nfend off encroaching bats and their thralls.  As their number grow and\ntheir organization congealed, they eventually exalted the strongest\namong them to rule.  The name and banner they fell under was as The\nPure Council of the Most Honorable of Battle-Queens.\n\nThey enforced a doctrine of purity.  Fledgeling warriors were baptized\nin acid, and all were to shun association with fruiting fungus and\nmammalian blood, which were fonts of impurity.  This included the\nsanguine weapons some tribes wielded with success against the bats.\nThis included the Beauveria lymph-mold that was said to ward off\nblack cordyceps.\n\nThe farmers and the common laborers -- together the Protected caste --\nwithin this secluded land were made to fear and venerate these\nwarriors, the Pure caste, that had risen up as their protectors.\nMany of the Protected imagos and nymphs were killed in ritual combat\nor punishment, and the warriors demanded tithes large enough that none\nof their number knew the hunger which dogged the farmers.\n\nDespite or because of these policies, the Pure Council and its\nprotectorate persisted while so many other winged tribes fell to\nvesperbat subjugation.\n\n---\n\nOosifea was one of these warriors, born late in their history when\nthey numbered in the thousands and labored under generations of\na tradition.\n\nShe was a prodigy with the mace, and effortlessly rose through the\nranks.  There was just one caveat; she lacked respect for tradition\nand ritual when no one above her was looking, and sometimes even when\nthey were.  Her interpretation of purity was far from orthodox.\n\nThis was something most of the elders missed or ignored, but for those\nthat did notice, over time they fell into into an informal bloc to\noppose her rise.\n\nOosifea's response was the turn her genius from combat to politics,\nand worm her influence into many of the council's elders.  Yet it was\ntoo little, too late, and she could do nothing to sway the faction\nopposed to her.\n\nThe informal leader of this faction was the matriarch of clan\nSnurratre, a staunchly orthodox family occupying many influential\npriestly positions.\n\nNear her final instar, Oosifea disappeared, travelling outside the\nprotectorate and seeking out one of the wandering tribes that still\npracticed the sanguine arts.\n\nFrom them, she acquired a sword that could drink of blood of bats and\nuse it to enhance its powers and its wielder.\n\nWhen she returned, she was taken to the next battle pitched against a\nvesperbat --- a common ritual for coming of age.\n\nIn this battle she achieved a feat unseen in generations.  Rather than\nmerely fending off and deterring the bats --- which had become the\nstrategy of the pure warriors to minimize loses --- Oosifea killed\na bat.\n\nWere she anyone else, this success would have catapulted her to the\nouter circle of the council.  But being Oosifea, her enemies sought to\nstymie her advancement.  They did not grant her the rank of master.\n\nAll she could do was not to let her fury at this indignity show.\nShe threw herself once more into the pursuit of battle, and with her\nsanguine blade she felled legions of thralls and adolescent bats.\n\nUnbeknownst to anyone, she collected the corpses from these battles in\norder to investigate the source of vesperbats' power and the mechanism\nbehind the enthrallment of her conspecifics.\n\n(And discover she did.)\n\nShe studied the sanguine lore in hopes of a weapon to surpass her\nsanguine blade, or a means to augment her body and wield power beyond\nany of her peers or elders.\n\n(And augment she did.)\n\nOosifea's brazen and continuous success in battle with the bats caught\nthe attention of older bats mightier than the stranglers who braved\nthe cursed and obscured land surrounding the Welkin Peak.\n\nThey deduced the existence of the council's secret protectorate.\nThey declared war.\n\nOosifea knew they would lose.  But she had a plan.  In her study she\nhad discovered the means bats used to enthrall mantids.\n\nIf they turned this upon those peasants the Pure already trampled\nover, they could dispense with the gruesome demonstrations required to\nkeep them docile and afraid.\n\nIf they turned this upon themselves, they could be rid of politics\nand inefficiency.\n\nBut Oosifea had spent too long wrapped up solitarily in her work.\nWhen the weaker minds of the council gazed upon her plans, they were\nrevolted at her use of the necromantic arts of blood.  They were\ndisgusted at her advocacy for self-enthrallment.\n\nShe was declared Heresiarch, and exiled.\n\nHer response was never forgotten: _\"So be it.  I would rather rule as\na queen of worms and rotten things than die a slave to your purity.\"_\n\nOosifea did not go alone.  She implored those who had fought alongside\nher battle, and those with the sense know they could not handled a\nsustained conflict with the kingdoms of batkind.\n\nOne third of the pure council left with her.\n\nForcing the modified thrall spell on swaths of the Protected as they\ncould before departing, they marched into the frozen north.\n\n---\n\nThe legion marched from the snow-covered north and into what is now\nthe Land of Lakes and Rivers.  Here they took the offensive against\nthe bats, assaulting their hunting grounds, slaying their elders, and\ncapturing their hordes.  Many of the Protected from the old country\nhad not survived the trek, falling to starvation or cannibalism.\nSurvival of the warriors loyal to Oosifea was prioritized, and as a\nresult the population came out of it rather top heavy.\n\nAll of this is preamble; suffice it to say a much larger labor force\nwould be required to build cities and monuments fit for Oosifea and\nher followers.\n\nSo she broaded the use of thrall spell.\n\nTo support such an institution, an ideology was needed.  The lie\nOosifea told her legion was that the thralls were fundamentally\ncorrupted by the bats.  They were molded to serve.  They could never\nbe trusted stand side by side with us.  They were essentially animals.\n\nOosifea's campaign against the bats proceeded with devastating\nsuccess.  Envespered bats struggle to coordinate, and in them\npractical wisdom is slow to accumulate.  So much of the organization\nand logistics of a bats' grounds relied on their enthralled servants,\nand with the growing skill of Oosifea's saboteurs, most battles are\nwon long before she arrives with blade in grasp.\n\nSomething had to give, and it was the bats' pride.  In a sense, they\nrecognized her as one of them.  A culture of honor, measuring status\nin martial prowess and material excess, they found something familiar\nin the absolute loyalty Oosifea enforced in her subjects, the avarice\nwith which she pursued blood and land, and her ferocity in battle.\n\nSo a peace fell between Oosifea and the bats, and when asked to name\nit, she took pride in the shame cast upon her.  Oosifea's land was\nchristened the Heretic's Dominion, and she its queen.\nHistory remembers it as the First Dominion.\n\nChallengers still came, as was their custom, and with their blood she\nfed her blade and maintained the secret sanguine augmentations she had\ngiven herself.  Within Oosifea's lifetime, she saw the beginning of\nthe disenthralled rebellion.  They discovered that vespers could be\nbrought to maturity within a mantis, and thus, in essence, the slaves\nstole magic from the bats.  This ritual not only granted magic power\nto a mantis, but broke the thrall spell that bound them.  And, minds\ncleared, they wanted to be free.\n\nOosifea did not care for the liberation of her fellow mantis.  _She_\nwas free of the bats -- and the keen eyed rebel could observe her\ntyranny, and find it scarcely different from that of the bats.\nIndeed, in ways they found it worse.  To the bats, mantids were tools\nor pets or livestock, but to Oosifea they truly were bound: they must\nvenerate her, they must enact her will, and they must conform to her\ntastes.  And that was merely the privilege of the winged.  In the\nDominion, the wingless sometimes found hope in the prospect of death\nfrom overwork, sparing them the bite of the scourge or the sting of\nthe acids their masters used to cleanse them.\n\nThese envespered mantids were synonymous with the wingless thralls.\nSo Oosifea borrowed a mindset from the pure council whose ideas she\nhad abandoned.  To her populace, she decreed the transformation a\ncorruption, and these vesperbanes who fight for freedom as\ngrisly abominations.\n\nShe assisted the bats in tamping down on this rebellion --- an act\nthat solidified her as an equal to them.  Slowly, she roused her\nnation, a populace that has grown vast within the numerous lands she\ncontroled.  She conscripted of them, instilling in them hatred and a\nthirst for the glory of combat.  She honed her personal power,\nemploying manifold secrets learned from the sanguine tribes, and she\nreached heights of biological perfection no mantis has before known.\n\nOosifea sought to influence subtly.  Her support of the bats was\nlogistical and by proxy.  She does not make an immediate enemy of\nthe rebels.\n\nAnd her strategy was deep: rather than seeking to decisively eliminate\nthe threat the rebels posed, she secretly shaped the course of the\nconflict and patterns of engagement so that the rebels could weaken\nthe bats.\n\nBut, the queen of heretics had a weakness.\n\nBlood is a fickle thing.  Unbeknownst to Oosifea, the rebels sou",
  "title": "The Origins of Oosifea"
}